Brands looking to scale social distribution have traditionally had two options: build internal teams to manage more accounts, editing, and community moderation, or rely on agencies whose retainers grow regardless of performance. Clip is betting on a third model: paying a network of independent clippers to distribute branded and creator content across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X, turning people it does not employ into a performance-based advertising network.

Nicolai Amirzadeh, who goes by Nico, is Clip’s COO and co-founder, and the engineer behind its technology. He says the company is applying the same marketplace model used by companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Stripe to social media distribution. “Uber has the most cars, the most cabs, the most taxi drivers, but employs zero and owns zero cars,” he says. “This doesn’t exist for social media.”

Clip officially incorporated in the U.S. in January 2025, but the idea developed earlier. Nico met co-founder Max Peterson roughly four years ago while Max was a client of his previous company, a Discord marketing agency he ran from Oslo, Norway. In 2023, Max approached him after noticing music fans were increasingly clipping and reposting content organically and asked him to build a system around the behavior. The pair launched their first campaign in November 2024 while working across time zones between Norway and the U.S.

The early results exceeded their expectations. Clip set a first-year revenue target of $150,000 and generated $2.4 million instead, according to Nico, without raising outside capital. “We bootstrapped the entire thing,” he says. The company reports paying more than $4 million to clippers, building a network of over 100,000 participants, and running more than 900 campaigns for more than 200 clients, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music, BMG, Kick, The Chainsmokers, and Taco Bell.

The Marketplace Runs on Reach a Brand Could Not Assemble Alone

Clip’s clippers have posted more than 500,000 clips across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X, generating over 6.4 billion views at an average CPM of $0.09, per company data. Nico argues brands could not replicate that reach on their own without major overhead. 

Coordinating thousands of individual creators directly would mean negotiating contracts and invoices one at a time. “It’s just going to take too much time,” he says.

Clip’s client base spans banks, podcasts, sports teams, movies, television shows, music and live events, according to Nico, along with business clients such as venture capital firms that want podcast appearances clipped to build credibility with entrepreneurs. Not every category gets the same treatment. Clip avoids sports betting and gambling campaigns on ethical grounds. “These companies are earning money on other people losing money, while we’re earning money on other people earning money,” Nico says.

Scaling the Model Took Longer to Solve Than Building It

“It’s always finding that balance between supply and demand,” Nico says of the biggest challenge in scaling Clip, describing cycles of too many clippers chasing too few campaigns, or the reverse. It took roughly a year to find that balance, he says, followed by the separate problem of routing individual campaigns to the right clippers.

Compliance added another layer. Clippers work across many countries, raising questions about how to classify and pay independent contractors and how the work intersects with FTC disclosure rules, according to Nico. Brand safety required building a review system: Clip now has seven people working around the clock, alongside AI, checking every clip within two to three minutes of posting, he says.

Fraud prevention took even longer to build. “We’ve spent over two years now perfecting the system,” Nico says, adding that Clip has caught more than $700,000 in fraudulent clipper payments in the U.S. He does not claim the system is complete: even platforms worth hundreds of billions of dollars fail to catch all fraudulent activity, he says, and Clip does not either.

Clip Rejects Roughly Half the Campaigns It Reviews

Clip turns down 45% of the campaigns brought to it, notes Nico, a filter meant to protect both sides of the marketplace. Before a campaign launches, it can go to a 200-member Clip Council for feedback from experienced clippers, and Clip runs a free education program called “Clip Academy” to teach newer clippers how to earn money without cutting corners.

Payment moves through an automated system. Brands wire a budget upfront along with a target CPM, and Clip places the funds in escrow before paying clippers through PayPal once a campaign runs. Unused budget is either rolled into a new campaign or returned to the client, and Clip charges no setup fees or retainers. 

“We’re fully performance-based,” Nico says. “If you don’t get the views, you don’t pay for it.”

Raw Footage Outperforms Polished Content, and the Reason Is Not Creative

Clip’s own data shows unedited clips typically beat produced ones, largely because clippers post many small variations of the same raw footage, effectively running a real-time test that a single polished video cannot. “We don’t decide what looks good,” Nico says. “The algorithm decides what looks good.”

That dynamic also explains why a campaign’s cost keeps falling after it ends. Clip refetches view counts at three, seven, and 21 days after a clip posts, and some campaigns have seen their effective CPM drop by as much as 98% in the weeks that follow, according to Nico. 

Clippers are not paid for those additional views once a campaign’s budget is spent, something Nico says caused friction early on, before content quality improved enough that clippers largely stopped wanting to delete their posts afterward.

Ceding Creative Control Is Central to the Pitch, Even When Brands Resist It

Most brands get less oversight than they are used to. Clip’s default process posts clips first and reviews them after, though Nico says one major technology company insisted on reviewing every clip before it went live for a keynote campaign. Clip sets guidelines upfront but generally recommends brands loosen their grip. “It’s not us that decides, it is the algorithm, and the clients are happy with it,” Nico says.

That trade-off invites an obvious critique: paying thousands of people to post about a brand amounts to engagement farming with better branding. Nico’s answer contrasts Clip’s model with buying ads directly. “Do you want to give more money to Mark Zuckerberg?” he says. “He’s already a billionaire.” 

Clip’s review systems also screen for clippers pairing a sponsored clip with unrelated or damaging content.

Clips Have Stopped Being a Byproduct

Nico expects clipping’s adoption curve to keep climbing. The tactic moved from a niche streaming and music strategy in 2024 to broader entertainment adoption last year, he says, and 2026 has brought interest from directors and producers willing to bring the same approach into movies and television. Clip’s own community is growing about 15% a month, according to Nico.

He argues the more notable shift is conceptual rather than technical. Clips were once a byproduct of longer content. Increasingly, some creators build long-form videos specifically to generate them. “You create the long form to get the clips,” he says. “This is the way people consume.” He points to his own habits as an example: “I’m not going to watch a three-hour keynote. Instead, I’m going to watch the clips.”

Nico frames Clip’s ambitions in terms broader than advertising economics. “We now hold one of the biggest megaphones in the world, and we have the ability to either use that for good or for bad,” he says. “In our case, we want to use it for good.” 

On where he sees the Creator Economy five years out, he points to clippers who have used their earnings to pay down student debt or cover rent, then closes on the model itself: “I hope we just set a good example for people that want to build the same top companies.”

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Check Out Our Podcast