Slice Group, an Indonesian developer of creator management tools for the creator economy, has on Wednesday announced the completion of a $645,000 seed round of financing led by Intudo Ventures and Arise.
Slice said in a statement that with this round of financing, it plans to refine its product offerings, accelerate platform development, drive sales, and enhance recruitment efforts.
The company plans to build out embedded finance features for both brands/agencies and content creators within the platform, including invoice financing for agencies to offer invoice loans for agencies to manage cash flow and help creators get paid faster; and a digital wallet for brands, agencies, and creators to facilitate payments and track financial transaction history.
“Despite brands investing more in creators and influencer marketing, far too many marketers are still relying on manual processes, which siloes a lot of brand dollars to the same few mega influencers,
“We created Slice with the needs of both brands and creators in mind, to help them build sustainable relationships and work more efficiently on influencer campaigns,” said Jesse Bouman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Slice.
In the future, he believes that aspiring entrepreneurs will start as content creators, then use their audience as distribution for new endeavors.
“We want to power this creator transition across Asia by stabilizing their income and enabling them to be full-time creators,” he added.
Founded in January 2022, Slice is an influencer marketing creator relationship management (CRM) that helps brands and agencies better manage their relationships with influencers and content creators, enabling them to work faster, more efficiently, and build long-term relationships.
Slice’s CRM platform offers brands and agencies a full-suite of tools to manage long-term relationships and unlock the ability to work with more creators without increasing headcount.
Slice also offers a wide range of targeted features for brands and agencies, designed to streamline creator management with automated and customized products and services.
Features include automated reporting, providing validated campaign reports within 24 hours of the most-recent creator post; creator discovery, helping brands and agencies find creators for campaigns; and payment distribution, enabling payment of multiple creators simultaneously and making sure creators are rewarded for their work in a timely, transparent manner.
By working with Slice, content creators are able to unlock brand deal opportunities, analytics, and media kits to transition to become full-time creators through stable and recurring income streams, and ultimately position creators to launch their own brands.
As Slice grows, the platform will include more product features to help content creators scale their businesses.
Slice is led by a team of experienced media and influencer entrepreneurs, including co-founders Jesse Bouman, a long-time creator who was previously the Head of Innovation and Technology at Mindshare Worldwide; and Nesha Hanzdima (Chief Operating Officer), who previously founded Indonesian production house Violad Creative Studio.
The team created Slice based on their experiences managing brand campaigns, recognizing the inefficiencies that plagued the creator economy, developing a platform that would streamline operations and help brands, agencies, and creators make better informed decisions, backed by verified data.
“Influencer marketing has become a mainstream practice for brands to engage with audiences around the world, especially in Indonesia, and a marketing function that brands must invest in and manage on a regular basis,” said Eddy Chan, Founding Partner, Intudo Ventures.
According to him, different markets require localized knowledge of the unique conditions and habits of local creators and audiences.
With their intimate understanding of Indonesia’s creator economy, he believes Slice is positioned to deliver outsized value to both brands and creators alike.
Arise Partner Aldi Adrian Hartanto said that based on the firm’s creator economy thesis building in #ARISEConviction, the number of social media users globally reached 4.6 billion in 2022, shaping a $100 billion creator economy on a global scale.
“These numbers are still relatively minuscule given the rise of short videos that continuously change our society’s behavior in consuming content and commerce,” he said.
Despite the evolution, he said creators still face classic problems of the informal economy that lack of financing access and operational inefficiencies.
“This is where we believe Slice’s product along with Jesse and Nesha’s robust experience is well-positioned to empower millions of creators in Indonesia from seed-to-scale, from micro-to-mega influencer, together with Slice,” he added.