The difference between a sponsored post and a sellout collection is not just a contract. It is roughly 18 months of sketches, production delays, and creative iteration. Ponte Firm founder Shana Davis-Ross founded her agency around the belief that one of those outcomes does more for a creator’s long-term career.

Shana launched Ponte Firm in late 2018 after years in brand-side roles at Oscar de la Renta, Vogue, and WWD. From that vantage point, she watched the largest talent firms in the Creator Economy operate around a clear logic: sign established names and generate deal flow. Development came later, if it came at all, and primarily for creators who had already grown large enough to attract it without needing it.

“There was a white space between creators being able to be given the strategy in addition to the brand opportunities they really wanted to get to,” she says. “The large firms worked with talent once they already had larger personalities. The journey of getting from point A to B is just as important.”

Ponte Firm operates today as a boutique management and strategy firm with offices in New York and Austin. The firm represents talent including Kit Keenan, Audrey Peters, Jully Patel, and Abigail Lin, whose collective followers exceed 74 million across platforms. Long-term partnerships with companies including Chanel, Dyson, Target, SKIMS, and Tiffany & Co. sit alongside publishing deals, consumer product launches, and television projects built for individual clients.

What Ponte Firm’s Week-to-Week Work Actually Looks Like

Ponte Firm’s engagement with its clients spans both organic and paid content strategy, a combination Shana positions as the core of what separates active management from deal brokering.

“We are in constant communication in terms of everything from what they’re posting organically, in addition to everything on the paid front,” she says, “to give them good guidance to make sure they are putting themselves forward so they are getting the attention of the brands they want to work with.”

The firm’s intake criteria reflect that orientation. Rather than setting a minimum follower threshold, Ponte primarily looks for creators who are already generating revenue and understand the mechanics of the business they are in.

“We really are open to talent in all stages of life,” Shana says. “We mainly look for them to already have a level of revenue that they are generating, so they have more familiarity with their end of the business.”

Roughly 90% of new talent arrives through referral, according to Shana. That structure reflects a preference for alignment over volume, though it also means the firm’s higher-stakes deal architecture is, in practice, relationship-gated. Ponte Firm hosts an annual summit that Shana describes as a cross-pollination opportunity: a way for creators to connect, share interests, and expand their professional networks beyond individual brand partnerships.

Why Custom Product Work Differs From Sponsorships

The Audrey Peters collection with Olympia Le-Tan is Ponte Firm’s development model in its most concrete form: roughly a year and a half of creative work that culminated in a sell-out. The timeline is the point.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ponte Firm (@pontefirm)

“Whenever you do anything that requires any sort of sketching, putting together something that feels custom, it always is going to take a lot longer,” Shana says. “It’s entirely different than working with somebody and pitching them the idea of doing a line, then having it take a while in production and sketches and all the things.”

A standard brand partnership compresses that timeline significantly. A brand delivers a finished product, sets a post date, and evaluates performance in the near term. Co-created product work requires the creator to function as a genuine collaborator, staking time and creative identity on an outcome that may be months from market.

“For a brand to invest money into a talent, not just for a paid post on something they’ve already created, but to create something new, is a really valuable and big investment for them,” Shana says. “It’s a really amazing way for clients to expand their relationship and grow professionally.”

When to Take Equity, When to Take the Flat Fee

As the commercial value of creator-associated products has become clearer, the question of when creators should push for equity rather than accept a flat fee has grown more consequential. Shana’s view is that equity makes sense when the creator has a genuine conviction about the brand, not simply when equity is available.

“If you are doing an equity deal, it might be a brand that you really love and have sought out getting equity in,” she says. On timing: “Investments are typically best when you’re getting in early.”

Early-stage brands represent the more natural equity opportunity, where involvement before a brand achieves scale can compound over time in ways that a one-time payment cannot. The flat-fee structure remains appropriate when the relationship is campaign-specific rather than built around long-term shared growth. In Shana’s view, the right choice depends on what the creator is actually trying to build.

The Case for Multi-Platform Distribution

Ponte Firm’s clients typically maintain active presences across at least two of the three primary platforms: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Shana’s platform logic is less about picking a primary channel and more about maximizing the distribution of content that has already been produced.

“It’s really about being able to cycle your content in ways so you’re able to maximize the value of everything you do,” she says. Each platform reaches a distinct audience, so a creator’s followers on YouTube are not necessarily the same people following them on Instagram. Multi-platform distribution is additive rather than redundant.

On long-form content on YouTube, Shana is measured. She advises clients toward it only when it aligns with their existing skills and preferences, not as a response to industry trend reports.

“If that’s their preference and passion to start doing more long-form, then it’s worth investing time in it,” she says. “Whatever feels natural to them, wherever their audience is, and how to best communicate with them truly is the most important thing.”

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DMqVaicAiTW/
Ponte Firm clients Taylor & Jeff as long-term Expedia partners

Why Brands That Move Fast End Up With Content That Falls Flat

From her position managing inbound brand outreach for Ponte Firm’s roster, Shana sees a recurring pattern: agencies and brands contacting creators quickly without adequately researching who they are reaching out to.

“In some cases, you have brands or agencies who reach out that move really quickly, and they’re reaching out to several creators at a given time,” she says. “The more familiar they are with whom they reach out to and their content, the happier they’re going to be with the content they receive.”

Content that departs from a creator’s established voice and subject matter underperforms not because of execution failures, Shana notes, but because it runs against what the creator’s audience already responds to.

“If they were to do anything that is out of the norm for them, it simply won’t perform the same,” she says. “It will feel less organic.”

The Expansion Path: From Creator to Multi-Hyphenate Business

In the near future, Shana frames Ponte Firm’s trajectory around helping clients develop into what she calls multi-hyphenate professionals: active across consumer products, publishing, television, and digital content rather than concentrated in any single format.

“Clients who have their hands in all different types of projects, collaborative projects, publishing projects, TV projects, in addition to their digital projects, that really gives them a lot of variety in what they’re doing,” she says. “For the ones who really stick within the digital space, it’s really about perhaps the variety of the brand partners they work with. Whether they’re doing luxury fashion or they’re doing tech.”

For the creators Ponte Firm represents, the distance between a sponsored post and a product that sells out is a management and development problem before it is anything else. 

“The ideal is to really find them the partnerships they’re looking for, be able to double down and make those things happen quicker,” Shana says, “and really be able to help them feel like they have a partner in doing that.”

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Check Out Our Podcast