Popfly secured $2 million in seed funding in March to revamp how outdoor brands manage creator relationships from initial contact through payment and content licensing. 

Founded in July 2023 with clients like The North Face and HeyDude, the platform has grown from signing 5-10 creators daily to hundreds, all while focusing exclusively on the specialized outdoor recreation vertical.

While most creator marketing platforms focus on discovery—the digital equivalent of a business card exchange—Popfly addresses what happens next. 

“The core issue with influencer marketing is ultimately it starts and ends with something that is simply introductions,” explains Taylor Hoekstra, founder and CEO of Popfly. “In the industry, there are 30 bits of that relationship that have to unfold or dissect or work together. And the introduction, although important, isn’t where it stops and starts.”

Unlike typical tech startups that build products and then seek customers, Taylor took a scientific approach to creating Popfly. “I spent 18 months studying the category, launching subset businesses into the space. I then generated revenue from about seven different business models as I just tested things,” he explains. 

This methodical strategy included conducting over 500 conversations with brands and creators before launching a deliberately minimal platform—”I built the product, really hacked the product together in four weekends. It was like duct tape and bailing wire type thing.”

The insight behind Popfly emerged from Taylor’s hands-on experience at Farmers Business Network, where he deployed farmer influencers to help exceed growth targets by 400%. After launch, Taylor intentionally avoided premature optimization of the platform. “I didn’t touch the product. Solved problems manually, outside of what you would typically want to do or what anyone with a tech background would do,” he reveals.

Popfly was specifically designed for outdoor and recreation brands, which face unique challenges in creator marketing. “The reason no one solved the problem sets that lie within outdoor user-generated content (UGC) influencer space is because it is harder,” Taylor notes. “These people have to know how to rock climb. They actually have to care about the technical details of a $475 coat for that UGC even to work at all.”

How Popfly Works

Popfly’s platform provides a range of distinct tools that address the entire collaboration lifecycle. For creators, the platform provides free public-facing profiles that showcase their work, categories, and previous brand partnerships. 

“Public-facing creator profiles is an entirely free tool. A brand can reach out to a content creator and strike a deal with them. Popfly does not take a cut. There’s no fees, there’s nothing,” Taylor explains.

This approach extends to payment tools as well. “We don’t work with Nike today. However, if the creator does and wants to receive payment from a single, uniform source, they can actually create an invoice and bill Nike, allowing them to collect money. We collect no fee on that.”

For brands, Popfly serves as both a technology platform and a service layer. “Right now, Popfly exists as a technology and a team. So we have a platform that makes it 10 times easier to source, manage, pay, and license content and content creators, specifically in the outdoor and recreation niche vertical,” Taylor notes. “And then we also have larger paying customers who are working with our team who can just do things three to four times cheaper because they have ready access to content creators and processes, and solutions.”

Strategic Focus on Outdoor Recreation

Popfly’s specialization in the outdoor recreation vertical wasn’t just due to Taylor’s personal interests. “It is a passion, but I wouldn’t have chosen the field because it was a passion,” he clarifies.

The decision was based on strategic market analysis. “Outdoor and rec moves about five to six years slower than makeup, beauty, and fashion. Had a lot of space there,” Taylor explains. 

He also recognized a strategic expansion path: “I also knew that if I could do outdoor content and creator relationships better than anyone else, I would be able to expand the other way down the pipe to any category down the line. But I also knew that if I started in makeup and beauty, it would be very hard to get the rock climber to join.”

This focused approach has enabled Popfly to develop specialized expertise that addresses challenges in outdoor creator marketing—creators often travel, require technical product knowledge, and represent brands in demanding environments. As Taylor shares, this specialization has contributed to a low rate of customer churn.

Creating Effective UGC: Method Meets Genuine Content

Popfly has developed specific expertise in UGC for outdoor brands, applying methodical principles to what many consider purely creative work. “UGC is just as much a science as it is an art on both sides,” Taylor explains. 

He outlines specific techniques that make UGC effective: “The best UGC creators and the best brands get the logo in there within the first three seconds very authentically.” This focus on technical execution helps brands avoid a common pitfall: “So many dive into UGC, but it’s also the reason why so many hop out of the pool so freaking fast is because they get UGC and it’s terrible.”

For content to work effectively, Taylor notes, “It has to be watchable. It has to tell a little story that’s engaging, but it has to be built like a TikTok. It takes someone who truly understands what it takes to create a socially watchable, culturally relevant cut to succeed in UGC.”

Popfly’s approach balances these technical requirements with genuine creator interest: “It has to have some level of creator who would be interested in the product. In outdoor products, it’s pretty clear when someone actually loves the product or is just wanting some cash.”

Building Community Through Value-Added Tools

Rather than treating creators as data points, Popfly has built an engaged community through free tools and services.

According to Taylor, this community-building approach offers practical benefits: “When you work with content creators on Popfly, the team has access to their phone number, email address, shipping address, and other information that isn’t readily available to every brand that pays.”

The platform also helps creators with relationships outside of Popfly through tools like the Creator Adventures database: “There’s a creator going to Iceland and he got sponsored by Camp Chef, Hey Dude, ALPAKA, High Camp Flasks, and five others. Popfly helped pay for his entire trip.”

This approach addresses the supply-demand imbalance in creator marketing: “We have more supply than we have demand, full stop. We don’t have a brand deal for every creator that signs up today, even. Not even close.” This is why Popfly continues to develop tools that add value to creators outside brand deals.

The Funding Catalyst and AI Integration

Originally planning to raise just $500,000, Taylor was approached by lead investor Rand Currier, who brought both capital and expertise to Popfly. 

“We were approached by numerous venture capitalists and weren’t interested in any of them. But then we were introduced to Rand Currier, who has actually built a product before, has very strong conviction as an individual, and has a long-term horizon.”

The $2 million funding will accelerate development in three key areas:

1. “Tripling down on creator tools” to make content creation and collaboration more efficient
2. “Bringing in brand collaboration into the platform” to help internal stakeholders align
3. AI tools that streamline processes without replacing human creativity

Popfly’s AI strategy focuses on enhancing rather than replacing creators: “We’re going to build a lot of AI-based tools that will enable us to move faster and cheaper for all of our partners. Whether it’s self-serve or fully managed. We’re going to build tools that allow our humans to do more. We’re not going to remove our humans or our creators.”

Taylor sees AI as potentially increasing the value of real creators: “I think there’s a risk that AI content becomes so easy that it does kind of infect everything and that we lose some of that genuineness and creativity. I think I feel an obligation to level the playing field.”

A Creator-First Team

Popfly’s collaborative approach extends to its team composition. “Over half of our employees came as applicants into the Popfly community as creators,” Taylor shares, revealing that this creator-centric perspective influences everything from payment policies to product design.

“They’re extremely empathetic to the creator’s plight. That’s why I personally paid creators who weren’t paid on time by brands,” he explains. This commitment to creator success has built goodwill: “Since day one, if a creator weren’t paid on time from a brand, I would float them the money personally. So, needless to say, word of mouth around a platform that never missed a creator payment got out.”

The Front Door to Social Commerce

Looking ahead, Taylor positions Popfly not just as a creator marketing tool but as infrastructure for the future of social commerce.

“My pitch is ‘influencer discovery is the front door to social commerce,’” he explains. “Social commerce is going to go from big to bigger to ginormous no matter what happens in the future. And if we are able to effectively solve pain points associated with not only influencer discovery, but also full-scale collaboration, there’s no reason we can’t be one of, if not the main player in social commerce in 10 years.”