Trend, a Miami Beach-headquartered company working to open up the creative economy by connecting brands, including Amazon, with video and photo content creators, has raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round. from venture capital firm Flybridge and inclusive Pharrell Williams‘Black ambition.
Other investors in the curated creators network and platform include Techstars Ventures and founders of companies like Twitch (Kevin Lin), Crunchyroll (Kun Gao), Kabam (Holly Liu), and Rotten Tomatoes (Patrick Lee).
“We believe that anyone with a smartphone should have the power and tools to become a maker,” Trend co-founder and CEO Ramon Berrios said at the unveiling of the capital injection. “Today’s creators should no longer rely on a pre-built audience or the influencer economy, so we’ve built a community where passion works with our platform to bring image and video content to over 1,000 brands, while we empower global creatives to earn a living doing what they love.”
Williams said of the investment in Trend: “I was immediately drawn to their mission of empowerment and individuality. They enable a whole new set of creators to harness the power of what makes them unique and allow brands to tap into that magic and collect content from around the world, all while working through a single community and platform.”
The bulk of the funding round will go towards building out the maker side of the Trend platform. “We plan to expand into new industries and reach even more companies,” Berrios said. “This will allow us to continue our mission of becoming the world’s largest creative studio, without ever being confined to a single studio space.”
The Trend network has already “produced more than 100,000 pieces of content” for brands, according to the director who co-founded the company with Zach Moosbrugger. “Our founding team comes from the creative side, so we know firsthand why and how creators want to be empowered.” He also praised, “We’ve paid out more than $1 million to creators so far.”