In April, tech company Starfish released a completely rebuilt influencer marketplace that addresses the trust deficit in influencer marketing through built-in escrow payments, in-app messaging, and custom offer capabilities. 

After eight months of development, this second version of the platform connects small businesses directly with micro-influencers through a transparent pricing model without subscription fees or paywalls.

“We’re introducing pricing transparency to an industry that is muddled with agencies and layers and all these different things. You’ll be able to know the price of an influencer to go on their profile like you would know the price of a car at a dealership,” states Starfish CEO Thomas Rodberg, who co-founded the company in July 2022.

The Miami-based platform emerged from Thomas’s firsthand struggles as an e-commerce entrepreneur during the pandemic. “I listened to e-commerce coaches and mentors about how to advertise my products. They all said, ‘Use influencer marketing,’” Thomas recalls. “The one way they said to use influencer marketing was to blindly reach out to 100 or so influencers via email and direct message and hope you get a response. After doing this, I never got a response or, in the case where I did, I would send them money through a third party and get scammed.”

This experience revealed a gap in the market that Starfish now aims to fill. The overhauled platform features an integrated messaging system for direct communication between influencers and brands, as well as a custom offers function that enables flexible negotiation without requiring influencers to adjust their public rates.

The workflow is designed to be intuitive: Businesses browse influencers through an “Explore” page, select services like a 24-hour story post, and specify their content requirements at checkout. Influencers approve or deny these requests, and funds are held in escrow until the ad runs for its full duration. 

“The influencer gets paid when the duration of the post is complete,” Thomas explains. “If the buyer bought a 24-hour story post, we’ll pay the influencer when that 24 hours is up.” This security mechanism prevents both premature post removal and payment fraud.

The Underrepresented Middle Market

What distinguishes Starfish among influencer platforms is its focus on a specific, underserved segment of the market. “There was a huge segment of the market that was overlooked and underserved, that being the micro-influencers,” Thomas points out. “The influencers that don’t have this massive fan base, this massive following, as well as theme pages and meme pages.”

For creators, Starfish offers a level of independence. “Our ideal influencer profile is an influencer who wants to take control of their entire transaction flow, who wants to integrate vertically and get control over everything from the contract talks or the back and forth, to producing the content, to posting the content,” says Thomas.

As Thomas notes, this autonomy is particularly valuable for creators who are established enough to monetize but not large enough to justify agency representation. “It is designed for, on the creator side, the influencers who are big enough to monetize but not necessarily big enough to where it makes sense for them to use an agency,” he says, revealing that the platform has gained traction among fitness creators and theme pages, though it’s designed for influencers across all niches.

For businesses, especially smaller operations, Starfish aims to remove both financial and knowledge barriers to entry. “Our app is significantly easier to use. You don’t need some in-house marketer that you’re paying X amount of money a year to learn how to use our platform and try to figure it out,” Thomas explains. “You could be the average mom and pop local business, and it’s very straightforward what you’re getting on our platform and how it works.”

The platform’s simplicity and accessibility have generated positive feedback from users. “The biggest feedback is people saying it’s making their life easier, which is the holy grail of positive feedback, and also that we’re solving a real problem,” Thomas shares.

One success story occurred before the app’s official release, when Starfish manually facilitated a partnership between Winterthur Point-to-Point Steeplechase, an annual horse racing event in Wilmington, Delaware, and influencer Jaymi Devin (@jaymiknowsfun), a local Delaware mom with 63k followers. 

The process mirrored what users now experience through the app: after identifying the right influencer match, both parties maintained direct communication, established clear deal terms before payment, and completed the transaction once the content was satisfactorily delivered.

The Business Model

Starfish’s revenue model is built on transparency. The platform takes a 10% commission from both sides of each transaction. “On a $100 advertisement, the buyer pays a 10% fee. So the buyer pays $110. And then on that advertisement, the influencer gets paid out 90% of the original ad price,” Thomas explains. 

He adds that this approach allows Starfish to maintain a free-to-use platform while generating revenue from successful transactions, with all payment processing handled through Stripe.

This business model supports Thomas’s view of a more genuine influencer marketing approach. “The shift is happening because there’s this movement, this paradigm shift towards authenticity,” he notes. “It’s become evident now that when you work with a celebrity or some A-list influencer, that is bought and paid for. And with the smaller creators, there’s this sense of authenticity that you really can’t buy.”

The industry itself has matured, with brands having “a lot less guesswork” about what works in influencer marketing. Thomas notes that this maturation has led to a shift in how influence is valued. 

“Follower count is borderline irrelevant and will be in the next five or so years,” he predicts. “People care about conversions, not as much clout. We have some pages with a hundred thousand followers charging more than others with a million followers. It’s crazy.”

Analytics, AI, and Industry Change

With the new platform launched, Starfish is already developing its next update. “Next is version three, which will have a ton of new features, AI obviously. And version three will really be all about the analytics,” Thomas shares. 

The company plans to implement AI for influencer discovery, creating a matchmaking tool that will recommend appropriate influencers to brands as soon as they join the platform.

“There’s going to be a media section for influencers to share their metrics. Almost like a photo gallery where they can share more details about their profile and more metrics,” Thomas explains. Future plans also include potential partnerships with academic institutions and exploration of the NIL space.

“Our entire marketing strategy is buying ads from Starfish influencers to advertise the platform,” Thomas reveals. “We’re proving that it’s working. We’ve only advertised by buying ads on the platform and done all our marketing that way.”

The company’s ultimate vision extends beyond creating a useful tool – it aims to transform the way influencer marketing operates. “Starfish will disrupt the industry over the next five years by allowing all our influencers to completely take control of the transaction process, integrate vertically, and not rely on agencies,” Thomas states, adding that he foresees a creator economy without influencer agencies.

For small businesses and micro-influencers dealing with the fragmented nature of influencer marketing, Starfish’s platform aims to offer a more accessible future where they maintain control and can leverage authentic influence. 

“Our goal is to allow the influencer to take over the whole influencer marketing process and give them that independence to do so,” Thomas concludes. “And we hope Starfish is the infrastructure behind that.”