In October, Ms. Lugrin posted a blog post announcing FYPM, which, she wrote, was “birthed out of rage.” Taking aim at influencer marketing platforms, she said most were “really just another platform designed to help more business owners exploit influencer talent, but in a new ‘innovative’ way!”
After building a prototype of FYPM, she was accepted in March into a 10-week start-up incubator program in Taiwan led by Backend Capital, a venture capital firm. There she met her co-founder, Ms. Mehra, who was on the hunt for her next challenge.
“I wanted to use technology for good,” Ms. Mehra said. “I saw FYPM as a perfect way to tackle pay inequality.”
FYPM is already on the radar of brands. James Nord, chief executive and founder of Fohr, an influencer marketing company that has paid out over $65 million to creators in the past five years, said he supported Ms. Lugrin’s mission but hoped more nuance could be incorporated into the platform as it grew.
“It can lead to some creators having false expectations of what their pay could be because they hear about one person who booked one job at one specific price,” he said.
FYPM, which is still being tested, allows users to filter brand deals by platform such as Twitter, Clubhouse, Substack, Instagram and OnlyFans. Creators can also sort by location, niche and brand category, such as travel or food and drink.
So far, about 1,500 creators have posted more than 2,000 reviews of 1,300 brands on FYPM. Ms. Lugrin and Ms. Mehra have raised a small amount of funding and plan to do more fund-raising.
