Social Native has quietly built a platform that has completed 1.8 million creator collaborations over the past decade. Founded in 2015 by David Shadpour, the platform connects brands needing high volumes of genuine content with creators seeking reliable income opportunities.

“We can sell products to people or we can empower people to sell products to themselves,” says David, explaining his founding vision. “In some ways, I believe that the early inception of media was very one-sided. This lipstick is great because it’s red, and then we push it to the masses. Well, perhaps I like that lipstick because of the way it feels on my lips, and you like it because of the color, and someone else likes it because of the price.”

The Los Angeles-based company serves major brands from Adidas to Lego by automating the sourcing, recruitment, and rights management processes that typically create friction in creator marketing. But perhaps its most distinctive characteristic is its direct challenge to the creator economy’s fixation on follower counts.

“There is a systematically flawed value being given to follower count,” David asserts. Despite industry discussions about moving beyond vanity metrics, he notes a clear difference between rhetoric and reality: “Conceptually, yes. Discussion? Yes. Share of wallet? No. The numbers that are going towards the larger volume follower account type influencers are still higher than the others.”

This gap presents both challenges and opportunities for creators at various career stages. While established creators with large followings continue to capture the majority of brand budgets, Social Native’s model offers different paths based on content quality rather than existing reach—especially helpful for talented creators with smaller audiences.

“In all of the collaborations that I’ve done, I don’t see a statistical advantage, like a math-oriented logical advantage to working with someone that has amassed a large following as the primary KPI,” David explains, pointing to the platform’s measurement approach that evaluates creators on performance rather than popularity.

How Social Native Works

Social Native’s platform streamlines traditionally complex creator-brand collaborations through technology and automation.

“Step one is defining your goal,” David explains. “As a brand, for example, let’s say your goal is to generate X million views across TikTok to drive further awareness around your product or service.” From there, brands specify their target audience and creative brief requirements before launching their campaign.

Similar to other marketplace platforms, the call goes out to creators who meet the specified criteria. Those who opt in then create content in accordance with the brand’s guidelines. Social Native automates the administrative aspects that typically slow down creator marketing.

“You’ve managed to cut out all the email back and forth, all of the rights management discussions, contractual negotiations, all the editing and revisions — all that’s been automated for you,” says David, adding that this efficiency allows creators to focus on what they do best—creating content—rather than administrative tasks.

The result is a library of branded content that brands can leverage across their marketing channels. But Social Native has grown beyond its marketplace origins into a performance-driven organization that sources content and identifies which assets will connect most with specific audiences.

The Volume Strategy

Social Native’s approach directly addresses the pressure to produce viral hits versus the need for consistent content production. David champions the latter, offering a perspective that might relieve creators’ pressure.

“It’s really not about getting the viral ad, that’s a little bit of the one-hit wonder. It’s about constantly staying top of mind,” he explains. “The best influencers who don’t have the resources that brands have can grow and amass very large followings and retain a lot of customer attention because they create large volumes of content. Some of it hits and some of it doesn’t.”

David notes that this volume-based approach matches how today’s social media algorithms reward consistent posting. Rather than pushing creators to create the perfect piece of content, Social Native’s model acknowledges that successful content often emerges from quantity.

“We’re going to collaborate with a hundred people, we’re going to make you 100 videos. Let’s find out which one of those hundred videos will be high performing and fuel a significant amount of media dollars behind that,” David says, describing their approach with brands.

Ambassador Relationships

One of the main pain points for professional creators is the unpredictable, project-by-project nature of brand collaborations. David’s vision for ambassador programs tackles this directly, pointing toward more stable creator-brand relationships.

“To constantly go out and activate different creators without building an ambassador pool is a waste of capital,” he states. “If you found 20 winners out of a hundred for your brand, I would be partnering with those 20 people every single month like a retainer and building your ambassador pool up to a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, whatever it may be.”

This strategy benefits both sides of the equation. For creators, ambassador relationships provide more predictable revenue while allowing them to develop a deeper understanding of the brands they represent, ultimately producing better content. For brands, these ambassador pools offer notable agility in responding to market opportunities.

“Something is trending right now, you want to take advantage of it. By the time you have an internal meeting, the trend is over,” David explains. “If you have an army at your fingertips and you can call on 100 people and 10 of them are available to make content within that day and the next day, you can be out in market talking about whatever is trending, you are at a considerable advantage.”

Balancing Brand Guidelines with Creator Creativity

A rising tension in the creator economy involves balancing brand control with creator expression. David believes many brands err too far on the side of control, limiting the potential impact of creator collaborations.

“Many brands try to be highly prescriptive, and when they are, it limits the creativity,” he explains. “If you write the script for the influencer, you can do that… but you also inhibit authenticity, and in doing so, kind of lose the magic.”

Social Native’s philosophy encourages brands to provide guidelines while empowering creators to interpret briefs in ways that genuinely connect with their audiences.

An example David shares involves a major beauty brand that opted for broad rather than narrowly defined creator targeting. Among approximately 100 creators who produced content for a makeup product, two men opted into the campaign, with one delivering standout content.

“This man knew so much about makeup and cover up and shadows and shades, he was so passionate, and it really came through in the video,” David recalls, revealing that the brand recognized this unexpected value, investing substantial media dollars to promote this content.

“We would have never uncovered that individual if we were overly selective in our targeting or overly prescriptive in our guidelines,” he notes.

AI and Prediction: Enhancing Creator Content

For creators frustrated by the seemingly arbitrary ways content gets selected for amplification, Social Native has developed artificial intelligence systems to predict which creator content will perform best for specific objectives.

“Our AI algorithms are predicting that these assets made by these individuals will resonate the most with your target audience,” David explains. “That, I think, can help brands gain confidence and remove subjectivity.”

Rather than decisions based solely on personal preferences or gut feelings, this methodology uses performance metrics to identify which content deserves investment. As David puts it: “Just because one person on the brand team doesn’t think it’s a good video does not mean it’s not a good one. There’s a lot of subjectivity. I’m subjective, so are you. The target audience is diverse, so as long as it meets the brand standard, let’s give it a go.”

David sees AI enhancing rather than replacing human creativity—addressing a key concern for professionals worried about generative AI tools. Social Native has approved a multimillion-dollar budget for AI tool development this year, focused on empowering creators rather than displacing them.

“I think one really talented person can probably produce 10 times the amount of creative that they were yesterday. It doesn’t mean they’ll be replaced. It means that they can now really flex their muscles more significantly,” he says.

In three years, David envisions a system where brands can specify their product and business goal, and platforms like Social Native will recommend specific content strategies, creator partnerships, and distribution approaches with predictable results.

“If you’re not an early adopter, you will lose the race,” David warns. “If you are an early adopter, you’re just going to be competing against the other early adopters for attention span.”

A Culture of Care

While technology and strategy form the foundation of Social Native’s modus operandi, David emphasizes that the company’s true differentiator lies in its culture and people.

“I’d say we care. The team at Social Native really cares,” he reflects. “A lot of companies on their websites are identical. It’s the people behind those companies that make a difference.”

This people-first perspective emerged when David visited his daughter’s first-grade class to discuss his work. While other parents had spoken about professions like medicine and law that directly help others, David found himself explaining entrepreneurship as creating something that didn’t exist before.

“My idea was empowering human creativity and sharing about how, you know, almost 2 million people now have had the opportunity to create a secondary source of income via some of these collaborations and share their unique views and their creativity through video and visual content,” he recalls.

For David, this represents the deeper meaning behind Social Native’s work—creating ripples that become waves of opportunity. “I am very grateful to be in a position to collaborate with the caliber of brands that we do and the fantastic volume of creators that we do,” he concludes. “Everything is a blessing.”