Fanbase is on a mission to get creators paid, and the company’s latest news is proof.
According to information shared with AFROTECH™, the social media platform has officially reached its $10 million equity crowdfunding goal.
It’s a historic feat as Fanbase Founder Isaac Hayes III is now reportedly the first Black man in history to raise this amount of money in a seed funding round on StartEngine in a Regulation Crowdfunding campaign.
“We have a plan, and we’re going to be able to scale and build the business in real-time without having to stop and start and stop and start,” Hayes told Will Lucas on “Black Tech Green Money” podcast. “This is a scale-up opportunity because there are so many things that people want out of Fanbase, and I myself do not like to not be able to deliver on what I want to give to the community.”
He added, “This raise is definitely putting us in a position to not only catch up to the current apps that are out there but surpass them because of my understanding of what I’ve learned — just observing how these startups work. In my opinion, what happens with tech companies or social media platforms is they have the privilege of being able to build a product, put it out in the marketplace, and then use the users as a focus group to ideate and take their ideas and build something better.”
In a press release from InnerCity News, it was confirmed that Hayes’ Fanbase has kicked off its $17 million Reg A series equity crowdfunding campaign, which gives the public a chance to invest for $399.
Hayes, the son of the late legendary soul singer Isaac Hayes, launched Fanbase in 2018 to help keep coins in creators’ pockets for the content they produce.
“I think we get so caught up in giving our content away for free and that the value proposition is fame that we don’t understand that there’s a world of people out there who are making money,” Hayes said during a previous episode of “Black Tech Green Money.”
While managing his late father’s estate, Hayes says his experiences helped to shape his mindset more as a businessman than a musician.
Moreover, Hayes is on a mission to ensure that Black creators are properly compensated for their impact and influence. He is using Fanbase to make that a reality.
“I think we have a real metric to understand the value of Black culture,” Hayes said. “Like what Black culture converts to in dollars. We have to understand that Black culture is actually our ‘vibranium,’ our asset. We are so creative, and we shouldn’t just be giving it away for free.”
With the new funding, the founder plans to expand the Fanbase team to continue bringing more money into creators’ hands.
“We can go from a 25-person development team to a 65-person development team and really take these verticals and focus them and scale,” he said.
Ultimately, Hayes wants to protect everyone’s ideas, his included, because it’s not just about profit, but creatives having the right to maintain control and ownership of their content.
