Video Content Studio Kyra Raises $15 Million in Funding; Q&A with Creator and Former Product Manager Luo

The startup, which is remote-first and has staff in London, New York, Los Angeles and other cities, built a following by conceiving and producing shows for YouTube but now focuses on TikTok. “We felt like it democratized YouTube even further,” co-founder Devran Karaca said in an interview. Kyra ran popular YouTube fashion channels PAQ, which has 788,000 subscribers and Nayva, with 375,000 subscribers. Both stopped posting videos two years ago, which Karaca said was part of the firm’s move to focus on TikTok. 

That same year, creators on Kyra-produced shows spoke out about tough working conditions and mistreatment of people of color. “We have made mistakes in the past and ultimately didn't uphold our company's core values. Creators are at the root of our business, so we knew a restructure was going to be our catalyst for long-term, impactful change,” Karaca said in a statement. “We've taken the last two years to rebuild the company with an emphasis on DEI to foster an environment for people to succeed.”

Despite those allegations, Kyra has remained popular with some creators. The company has worked with around 5,000 creators to produce TikTok campaigns in the last year, according to Karaca. It works with brands including Nike, Calvin Klein and Amazon Prime Video, he said. 

Kyra charges advertisers for each campaign and will charge for using its marketplace. Those brands will pay a minimum of $50,000 to access the marketplace. It pays creators for every view, which Karaca says translates into “significantly better payouts than, say, the creator funds.” Kyra creators are free to strike other deals. Karaca declined to disclose revenue figures or how much it charges an advertiser for each campaign. 

The startup’s biggest growth driver has been running social media channels for global brands, Karaca said. Kyra has “the keys” to creating content for them, he said.

The Takeaway: Kyra is one of many startups in the Creator Economy Database dipping its toes into marketplaces to connect creators with advertisers. Those startups include #Paid, Backstage, Clutch, MagicLinks and Storyhunter. For Kyra, the step seems like a natural one. It already has years of experience finding the right advertisers for creators to work with on a one-on-one basis. A marketplace could allow it to expand that service significantly. 

Here’s what else is going on…

Deals & Debuts

See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors.

ByteDance is offering to buy back shares from employees at a price of $155 per restricted stock unit in an effort to boost staff morale after its plans to go public stalled, Bloomberg reported, citing an internal memo. This is the company’s second round of employee share buybacks this year. 

TikTok, the ByteDance-owned social media app, is taking a cut from the donations Syrian refugee families earn from pleading for support on the app, the BBC reported. 

Twitter is reviewing its policies around permanently banning users, the Financial Times reported. Changes are unlikely to allow Donald Trump to return to Twitter since the policy on content inciting violence is not under reconsideration, the report noted. Elon Musk opposes the platform permanently banning anyone. 

UnitedMasters, a music distribution service for creators, announced a partnership with The News Movement, a social media-focused news company. The News Movement will use songs from UnitedMasters musicians to supplement its social media videos. 

Lumanu announced on Wednesday that it will now support international creators. It will also integrate with Quickbooks and Zapier. This will allow businesses to pay creators across more than 40 countries, including in Canada, Latin America, Europe and many in Asia. 

Warren James, a merchandising startup that works with influencers to create branded apparel, appointed Saurabh Shah as CEO of the company. Shah was previously an advisor to the company and was most recently chief growth officer at Jaanuu, a medical apparel brand. 

ICYMI: At Meta Connect, Meta Platforms’ virtual reality and metaverse showcase, the company announced that creators can now share videos taken on Horizon Worlds, its social VR app, on Facebook or Instagram as Reels. 

There were other updates for 3D creators and developers: By next year they’ll be able to use Adobe’s Substance 3D apps on Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2 to model objects in virtual reality. And starting Tuesday, creators were granted the ability to build interactive virtual objects inside Meta Spark Studio, its AR editing service, and test them in Meta Spark Player through a beta program. 

Creator Profile: Cherie Luo

Cherie Luo, a student at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, worked in product management at LinkedIn for almost five years and first began posting TikTok videos during the pandemic for fun. By now she has amassed more than 100,000 followers and 2.6 million likes as @cherie.brooke on the short-form video app, where she posts videos about technology careers. 

How she runs her business: Around 80% of Luo’s content is short-form video, she said. She posts on a variety of topics around the general theme of tech, education and entry-level jobs; examples include a day in the life of an MBA student, how to use power words in a resume, what to wear to your internship and how to prepare for interviews. The videos are often geared towards women in tech, which comprise 73% of Luo’s TikTok audience, she said. Luo recently started posting longer videos on YouTube and also uses Instagram Stories to share more candid videos. 

Luo says she makes the bulk of her earnings as a creator from brand deals. She’s generally inked one or two such deals per month over the past six months, she said. She is selective with those advertising partners, which have included Notion, Morning Brew and Meta Platforms, and says she only works with those that align with her content. She plans to use these earnings to pay for part of the MBA, which she began in September. 

Creators and NFTs: In January this year, Luo decided to explore non-fungible tokens as a way to understand the buzz around digital collectibles. She launched an NFT collection titled “Stay Hydrated” that features animated cans of “La Cherie” sparkling water, a play on La Croix. 

“From my experimentation, I learned that in order to create an NFT collection and actually sell it, there’s so much marketing involved,” she said. “It helps if you already have an audience, like my TikTok community, who are bought into what you have to say.” 

Luo thinks that while NFTs can be useful for things like memberships and tickets and might eventually be widely used, the timing isn’t right. “There is a gap between people using the NFTs with creators that they follow, and creators knowing how to utilize NFTs to their advantage. I think there has to be a lot more education.” 

Measuring success: As a former product manager, Luo is used to running tests and reading metrics, which she says infuses the way she thinks. If something doesn’t work at first, she uses feedback from comments to create a new concept. “There’s this idea of building in public, but now I’m creating in public. It’s really a mix of art and science,” she said.

Plans for the future: Luo said she has an “entrepreneurial itch,” and as a creator, she knows the pain points influencers encounter, such as editing and uploading or even stolen content. “What is the solution that exists today, and if one doesn’t exist, how can I create something that helps creators?” she said. 

Meta Platforms, Twitter and Snap Execs on The Market

Top leaders on the market for new jobs include Jerome Pesenti, previously vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, Vanessa Guthrie, former head of original content at Snap and Kayvon Beykpour, previously general manager of consumer at Twitter. Those movements among the top ranks take place as tech companies cut jobs and shelve products. (Read profiles on six executives on the job market) 

What We’re Reading And Watching

• Elon Musk Has the World’s Strangest Social Calendar (The New York Times)

• TikTok and the Universal Law of Internet Companies (The Information)

• How a Diabetes Drug Became the Talk of Hollywood, Tech and the Hamptons (Wall Street Journal)