Transcript
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Kwame
Hey, everybody. Welcome to today's episode of Beyond Influence. I'm here with Scott, my co-host, and today we have a very special guest with us, Evan Wray. Evan, how are you?
Evan
Hey, what's up Kwame? What's up, Scott? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?
Scott
We're doing well. For those of you who don't know Evan, he is the CEO of a pretty awesome company that's growing like gangbusters—Capture the Creator. Scene by storm. Mavely. So super excited for our conversation today with Evan. And, yeah. Evan, what's new with life? What's been going on with you lately?
Evan
Yeah, well, thanks for heating it up, Scott. I mean, life's busy. It's good. I think, you know, I've got two little ones running around right now—two under two. Two at two and under. So keeping me busy. And then, like you said, Mavely is on a roll right now. So, quick background—I’m the CEO of Mavely, founded about five years ago with my co-founder. And we're all about these Everyday Influencers. So it's really just real people being influencers, you know, and driving cool outcomes for brands. It’s resonated super well over the last five years if we can talk about it. But yeah, I mean, it's really fun, it's exciting, and keeps you on your toes every day, as you guys know.
Kwame
I can dig that. What would you say is your favorite part of fatherhood?
Evan
Oh, man. The way I'd say it is that once I became a father, it was like everything was so much more important. And also so much less important at the same time. So much more important because you got a little life to take care of and responsibilities like more responsibilities, but also so much less important because like when you walk in the door and they come running at you, it's like, "Oh, this is... nothing else matters, you know?" So I said, that's my favorite part.
Kwame
You know, it's funny, if I was to ask you a question right after this, we were talking about really important things and not so important things. And so I'm going to throw in a quick question here. We started talking, I guess, a little bit about their shoes of the day. Evan, we want to know what? Tell us a little bit about what kind of sneakers he would wear for the day.
Evan
Oh, man. It depends on the day. I would just say, like I am. Am I sitting here in my home office for the day? Am I going out? So, but I gotta do a shameless plug. We work with a ton of brands. One of our biggest selling brands is. Hey, Dude shoes. So it's like. So my wife actually got me, like, a, a slip on pair the other day, and I've been wearing those around lately, so that's been my newest, my newest one recently. I have to do like two.
Scott
That's awesome. It's funny. The comedian John Crist, he's always posting about, like, dudes and. Hey, Dudes. And I love it because it's just like, all these random, like, cameos. You'll see five stories about his comedy tour and then just some random dude at a bar in Hey Dudes. It's amazing. I love it. I mean, it's crazy.
Evan
I think so, like, Hey Dudes are for like I would say, like the dads, you know, and then and then you've got the Crocs craze, which is happening right now, which is, you know, so Crocs are like one of the biggest sellers on Mavely, massively, bar none, which is insane. And I never I never really realize it until, you know, I had kids and they start walking around and every kid at a daycare has Crocs on right? It's like the coolest thing in the world. So you got those two different dichotomies there.
Kwame
Yeah. That's so funny because Scott actually mentioned that if, if you talked about any dad brands, I'd probably have worked with them or do have them. And that is funny because I did get some gifting from Hey Dude. So I have a pair of Hey Dude slip ons.
Evan
They're not cool, right? Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing.
Kwame
They're good. Yeah, I, I've got to put "dad" and I'm not a dad. Yeah, I put "dad influencer" in my bio now man I have all the dads stuff.
Evan
But you gotta be like I mean, you guys know, right? There's, there's, there's like an arc of influencer lives. And when you get big spikes and followings. Right. And, becoming a parent is one of them.
Kwame
So that is true. That is true. I have two friends who gained quite the following once they became parents.
Evan
Yeah. One of the many, many, many pluses of having kids.
Scott
It's so funny. The group of guys that I hang out with who are from my kind of neighborhood, they're always, like, looking at random brands that they work with. And one of my neighbors is like a steel manufacturing CEO guy. And anytime you pass a rail car, he's like saluting it because all of the skins of the rail cars are like his steel. So I'm just imagining, like even out there and society being like those Crocs paying my bills. Yeah, that's how it is. Like,
Evan
That's pretty much it, right? I feel like I'm walking around and I'm the same thing. I go into a restaurant, I'm like, oh, look at that. It's crazy. And then, yeah, it's amazing. What, what I mean, what's cool, if we can allow it? Maybe we allow people to promote things they love. And I think that's just cool to see, like, you know, products. I wouldn't think we're like, I don't resonate with me, but resonate with, you know, millions of people. And it's cool to see what trends pop up there.
Scott
So I'm curious, you know, you said you're all about the everyday influencers. So what is your definition of an everyday influencer?
Evan
Yeah, it's a good question. So when we talk about Everyday Influencers, we don't we don't really think about it as being small or big necessarily. Like from a follower account standpoint, we think about it being more about resonating with an everyday person or an everyday consumer or an everyday audience. Right? So I think that's like the flip because I think a lot of people immediately go like micro or nano, which is a huge, huge, huge market growing like crazy.
But what we've seen is actually people that started as micro nanos and more of this like kind of everyday. I would say maybe less filtered content is the better way to say it. They've blown up, right? So they're actually now huge and they still talk to their everyday audience. So we think about it as unfiltered, more, more, relatable content. That's not necessarily, you know, I don't see sometimes you see the aspirational influencer on a, on a private jet going to Bali, right? That's not us. We're kind of on the other side of the space here.
Scott
I think that's awesome. We talk all the time about, like, how relatable you know, a lot of the influencers are and the authenticity of the relationship and how the like, shared experience is so important in social and especially in driving great representation for brands. And yeah, there are aspirational brands where being on a private jet and showcasing this or that luxury item, but there's so much of just, everyday items, everyday value for real people living their lives. And, I think it's really cool that social media has developed into that, because I think there was a lot of early society, which was just the rich, just the famous, the aspirational, the kind of not really approachable for most people. So I love that you guys are both supporting that ecosystem from the consumer side, as well as the creator side.
Evan
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really cool, and I think there's been a couple of pretty big shifts over the last five years in society that are driving that. And the first one being we call it internally, like the TikTok effect. Right? So everyone, anyone can go viral on TikTok. And so everyone started creating content on TikTok. So all of a sudden you got the, you know, the high schoolers on the side of the road dancing to try to go viral on TikTok and, and, you know, that's that's that's fun and it's cool, but it basically made everyone a creator and made everyone a chance of hitting this big viral. There's a viral piece of content. And what happened was that creators flooded the TikTok. Right? And then all the other social platforms were like, oh, shoot, they're doing something right here.
So there's been these algorithm tweaks and all the other social networks to actually start to amplify more of your everyday person. Right? Your everyday creator kind of gives that almost, miss example, almost like a lottery ticket or like if I create enough content, one of them is going to kind of go viral. So that's been cool to see. And we can internally call that like the TikTok effect of these social algos. And then the other thing that's been awesome is, is the gig economy's real. And I think if you, if you talk to, you know, elementary school kids or middle schoolers, they want to be, you know, influencers or YouTubers more than they want to be astronauts, which is crazy, but it's real. And so we think a lot about it, not too dissimilar from what Uber did with everyone with a car. Right? Like you used to have, like the super professional high end, you know, limo drivers or black car drivers or whatever it is.
But now what Uber does open up to everyone, right? They have both, right? They have the super top end, but they also have anyone who wants to make a side hustle. You know, on their commute to and from work, even nights, weekends, whatever it is. And we think it's an opportunity to do the same thing in, in, in the social space, in the influencer space. And, so you've got like the social networks pushing it, you've got the influencers wanting to do it. And then like you said, at the top of this, Scott is creators, consumers want to buy from people they resonate with and that's more trusted. So you got the consumer side of it as well. So pretty, pretty fun, fun marketplace to be in right now.
Kwame
Yeah. You know, I think it's my personal distinction between I mean, maybe not everybody agrees with this, but the idea of influencer versus creator, I think when in the like origin phase is of social media and big social media, it really was geared towards influencers really gaining a platform. Right? The people who had these super slick, like, stylish lifestyles and they showed it and portrayed it in just little accents, just little parts of their lives. And now we've gone forward into this very creator phase where people are actually creating content based off of their life. Yeah, right.
What's actually going on when people are influencers? It was just a slither of what you could see, right? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And now it's going into a really, really cool creator. Everybody has access and accessibility to this platform and social status, like capability. And it made it more normal. And when you make it more normal, you make everybody feel more accepted within that space. So I don't know, I think that's cool. And obviously you have a lot of knowledge on this. You've come a really long way with what you started. But since starting and before starting what how did the idea come? You know, come to Mavely. You know, I like the name Mavely. I love to know where the name came from, all that cool stuff.
Evan
Yeah. For sure. The name's a funny story. I'll hit on that in a second. But, but yeah. So far, I guess the kind of where we came from. So, I was, so me and my co-founder were actually roommates in college, which was, you know, feels like forever. It was, like a little over ten years ago, like a little over 12 years ago now. So it feels like forever ago, but, but anyway, we started our first company in college and ultimately, like, navigated, fortunate enough to get venture funding and grew that, and it was in the emoji space. Right. So it was like it wasn't quite creators, but it was, how do you send a branded emoji to your friends? Right. It was kind of the, the, the gist of it.
And we ultimately sold it. And we're thinking about, hey, what do we want to do next? And around that time five years ago. So around that time we're looking at some of the trends I just said, right. Like Uber starting to roll out, the gig economy is coming, the influencers like to your point Kwame is like influencers were more of that, like high end super aspirational, like small, called slice of life. And we thought that ultimately that that wasn't gonna, you know, not that it was going to resonate, but there's just going to be a larger market for it long term. And so that just got us thinking about, okay, cool. Like let's, let's do something with, with influencers or more creators and everyone's going to be a creator. Everyone's gonna be an influencer. That's where the concept of an everyday influencer came from, or an everyday creator. And so we launched and, the same backers backed us from our first company, backed us in Mavely. And we launched and, we called the company. This gets the naming right. We called the company My Favorite Things.
So I'm like, okay, cool. So we're going to get a bunch of people to post about their favorite things. And so we started doing this and we started building the business. And you were real big on creator feedback like, tell us good, bad and ugly about our business. That's how we're going to get better. And, everyone like and I mean, I like nine out of ten people, like 90% of folks were saying, yeah, these aren't my favorite things. These are things I like or I like, like right now. Right. But if you want my favorite things, I'm going to have to spend a lot more time thinking about it if I'm gonna put my name on it. I was like, okay, just okay, we got we got to pivot this name here. So then we, we just we didn't really know about naming. So we're like, okay, well, let's go. Let's go get a naming agency or like a branding agency and like, figure this out. Let's have them then figure out a cool name, do market research and everything. But we were also startup. We knew how much money we raised a little bit and I was I'm like, I never want to pay too much, like outsource too much stuff.
So like, so we, we maybe went a little bit on a budget on the naming agency and they were coming back with stuff that was just not, not great. So like, I think one of the companies was or one of the names was like, like Waverly or something like that. And, my co-founder Sean, who's our CTO, he was having dinner with his wife and he was he was walking through these names with her like, hey, we're thinking about, you know, changing it from my favorite things to this other name and, his wife, because I refuse to say that my husband works at any of those companies names. And, she's like, she's like, give me, give me 24 hours. And in 24 hours, John's wife came back and said, what do you think of Mavely? It's a play on Mavely, and Mavely's a trendsetter, you know, and trendsetter in different industries. And then, like, you know, the lie to be, you know, a little cooler. But yeah. So so it was, my co-founders wife, gave her 24 hours, and she came up with an amazing name, and it's, it's resonated super. Well, creators love it. It's it's been really fun.
Scott
That's awesome. It's funny, My Favorite Things. I'm old and nerdy. And so I just think about, like, Sound of Music and Julie Andrews singing to children. Like, it didn't seem like I had a social platform.
Evan
Pair that with, like, our, the logo looked a little bit old school too like that. So we could have been all right. Maybe.
Scott
So did you guys know that you were, like, was the mission the same the whole time? It's like the everyday creator. Or did you start and pivot? I'm curious. And then for people who don't know, kind of walk through, you know, how you engage with creators, how you connect with brands and ultimately like how you drive success for them together?
Evan
Yeah for sure. So let me let me start there and I'll talk about the vision on the back end. So, Mavely at the core, we're a suite of technology tools geared at creators. And we have about 1300 brands and retailers on one side of the market. We've got about 95,000 creators on the other side. We built a bunch of tools for creators to find brand collaborations, and create shareable links. Commissionable links, and then post them out wherever they want to post. The whole point is, that we like to say we like to help creators make the most amount of money in the least amount of time. And so we work with, you know, major retailers like Walmart and Target and Nike and Nordstrom to connect them with everyday influencers at scale. So, when I post a Hey Dude shoes link and, you know, Kwame buys it, then that, Hey Dudes is paying, you know, Mavely for those transactions. And then we're doing a revenue split with our influencer. So it's a way to get them a lot of income on an ongoing basis. And then, and then, Hey Dudes will come in and then also do paid campaigns and paid flat fee placements for our creators. So it creates a really cool earnings dynamic. And we've built a lot of analytics around it for our creators to, to make it easier for them, frankly.
And then the last thing we've done is we've put a lot of resources around it. So like we've got Mavely University, we've got coaching, we've got account managers. People have scaled influencer programs themselves. So we see a lot of creators come in who are just testing it out. You know, this may be going to be a side hobby. I've never done this before. And then they go through Mavely University and they see the experience and then they connect with the brands and they do their first campaign and then they make sales on their links. And all of a sudden they become like, you know, a full-time creator. So it's cool to see. So that's really what we do like as a company. And then our vision actually from day one was really focused on, I would say, like you know, moms like that, so people that were having families, they wanted to still have flexibility in their lives. They knew maybe we were going to and from, you know, whatever the kid's events are. But they still wanted to build something. Right? And they still want to be entrepreneurs and they still want to be creators. And so that was where we initially focused and probably a better term for it was like, you know, gig economy, folks. But I think there was this when we found out pretty quickly that there were a lot more people that are resonating with it than just moms. But it was like the beginning of this economy, like in the early part of, like, everyone wanting to be in the gig economy. And so we got a little lucky in that sense. I think you have to be able to execute, but you also have to hit the waves at the right time.
Scott
That's amazing. I think it's super cool. You know how you guys, you know, went up to this particular, you know, group of creators, influencers of the market, and it feels like the timing was just just nailed. As far as the shifting ties in social media and, you know, how people were engaging, how this boom and creators and I'm curious, like, how hard was it to get creators to want to work with Mavely, you know, how did you guys start at creating a pool of creators? And then, you know, it's 95,000, I think 1300 brands. Like, how did you where did you even start to try and amass that many people?
Evan
Yeah. It's a great question. It's a whole chicken and egg situation, right? In marketplaces. So, so, so, so, so, from my first company, Swift. We were super, super, super we were 20, 22 when we started it. And, it was in licensing and we were naive enough just to go call Disney and try to get a license from Disney. And after a bunch of pestering, we actually got one right. But we were super naive. We didn't know we were doing it, but once we had, it was like a domino effect. So maybe, I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it with Mavely. So we, on the brand side, at least we started to approach, like, the biggest of the big brands right out of the gate. And the thought being like, once we can have some of these major retailers as major brands on board, it would add credibility. Our creators. The creator side was a lot harder because there was, you know, no one knew who Mavely was right. No one trusted us. No one was like, you know, you're like, you're this startup that looks like you don't have any presence online or on social or anywhere. So that was just like, how do we get our first ten customers? How do we get our first creators? And then how do we lead? And super, super, super hard. So we still have it today.
We have an advisory committee of creators to provide us with real-time feedback. We survey all of our creators, all the time, like probably a couple, I would say at least four times a year, if not more. We've got, these micro-events we do, which we did a lot of those early on, is like getting the creators in a room around the table. What do you like about the business? What's your biggest pain point in being a creator? Period. Right. Like that some of our biggest product innovations just came from now with creators for a day and having us walk, walk us through your day, like walk us through your journey. Where is it? Where's your what's if we can fix one thing? What is that thing? Right. So it's a lot of those customer conversations. But a lot of those creator conversations early on especially that helped us start to build the right thing. And then, we made a couple of strategic bets to try to put our creators in a good spot to succeed with these bigger brands. And it's one of those things like the hardest ones, the first one on the brand side. But the minute you knock the door down like, oh, a Walmart or something, you know, everyone wants to be part of that ecosystem. And then like, so fast forward to the day, we still have that myopic focus on building the best platform for creators.
So, we host like, you know, honestly, like feedback sessions between me and the rest of the C-suite with our creators. Really. We have, you know, two times a week, we still have our account management teams who are talking to our creators daily, providing direct feedback, you know, all the way up to the C-suite. Right? So, like, we don't want to lose that pulse on the customer. And we've put some things in place that are structurally designed to keep that going. And I think that's been super, super helpful. But like, if you do all that. Right, the cool thing is that almost 20% of all of our signups come from creative referrals. Right? So some people like to have a great experience, they make money on their Hey Dude shoes link. And then they say, hey, you know, you got to go join this platform. Maybe that's really cool. They're really supportive. It's helpful. So if you focus on those first ten, you know, 50, 100 customers like that's what we did build for them. And then inevitably that flywheel will start going and get lucky while on the way to it. But the last thing I'd add.
Kwame
Hey, you know what? I always think about this whenever I'm, I don't know, playing a soccer game, and I just take a shot from goodness knows where, and then it somehow ends up in the goal. I always think to myself, I'd rather be lucky than good.
Evan
Yeah, right. I yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think, you know, as you guys know, it's a combo right. You know like you can do everything perfectly and a year round of, you know, bad market timing, bad luck, whatever it is, it's not, you know, it's not gonna work. And vice versa. You can do lots of wrong and be like, yeah, still works. My whole thing is, and I especially like people, like, looking to be entrepreneurs and like, every creator is an entrepreneur, right? I always say like, go, like in life. Go ask for the cookie, right? Like, if you want a cookie, go ask for it. And worst case scenario, they say no. And you, you're exactly where you were before you asked, right? So it's kind of like an inside big upside down thing. So maybe that's a little bit of philosophy too.
Kwame
Yeah. I mean I think that's a good mindset to keep in life in general in any way is like if there's something that I can do that can improve my life and if I can try that thing and failing won't heavily give me a deficit or take me too many steps back, like if I have nothing to lose, I should do it. That's the absolute motto. It's really funny. I learned a lot of that from my wife. I'm actually kind of a laissez faire guy. I'm like, if something happens and it wasn't to the best expectation, I'm like, it's okay. It's life. I'm good, you know? And like, my wife is always like, no, I'm going to go ask for what I wanted. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I get the wrong sandwich at a restaurant, I'm like, you know what? I'm sure this will be good.
Evan
But it's like.
Kwame
I've learned through the last, you know, two and a half years of my life that like, hey, if you want something and it's not going to hurt you, it's not going to take you far back. Like there's no reason not to ask for it, push for it or go for the cookie.
Evan
Yeah, you got to you got to, provided you don't. You never know where life can take you. Right?
Kwame
Yeah.
Scott
So one of the coolest things that never we talked a little bit about before, but one of the, one of the cool things as an entrepreneur, as you know, someone who works in a business or leads a business, is the change that you affect, the outcomes that you drive. And one of the cool things that we talked a lot about creator outcomes, and I think that's one of the cool, you know, a lot of the folks who tune into our podcast are creators, aspiring creators looking to make money, looking to do brand deals and, you know, maybe share with our audience just some of the really cool outcomes that you all have helped drive for these creators. And whatever stats can be shared. But like I mean, I know they're pretty impressive, but if you can share those, that would be awesome.
Kwame
I love the politically correct way that that's got.
Scott
Like, give me the numbers, show me the money.
Kwame
You know, we want to know about the money. That's awesome. I think I love it.
Evan
I love it. Yeah. Politically correct but direct and ask it for the cookie. Right. So that's cool. So I think so from, from our perspective, I, I agree with you, Scott. I think that over time the brands could continue to go to full-funnel marketing. Right. So there's going to be always a spot for like, more campaign-based, like brand-based impressions, engagements, campaigns from brands. But as the market matures, brands are also going to demand performance. And performance can be a variety of things. Right. If it is, you know, impressions can be performance. Is it traffic? Is it sales? Right. And we're Mavely, we've I would say over-index with our creators is helping them drive sales. Right. So a lot of all of our tools are designed to help them drive sales. And what's been super cool is, I guess I'll share what I can share, publicly here, but I mean, this year alone, we're on a run rate to drive over $675 million in direct sales for our brand partners. And we've paid out well over $30 million this year alone to our creators. Right. So it's like that. And it's what we're seeing right now from a brand side. And then maybe this is the feedback on the creators if you can speak a brand's language and understand what is success for them. Right. What is the outcome they're looking for? Then they'll reinvest and they'll double down. And I think that's been really helpful for us to see.
So we see a lot of brands doubling down as we have, you know, top of the funnel down the bottom of the funnel, but specifically like that affiliate conversion, it's helpful for us and our sales team to be able to go back to our brand to say, hey, you gave us that $100,000 campaign. And, you know, two weeks later we gave you $500,000 in sales for your Hey Dude shoes skew right? And so now, now reinvest. And then without and then we can go back to our creators and say, hey, great job. Yo, Kwame, you just sold a bunch of new shoes. This is why you have tried these other products as well. It looks like they would resonate with your audience, so, Yeah. So it's been super fun. And I think from a creator standpoint, you have to be real. You have to be authentic. I think that you don't want a creator who's one day saying drink Pepsi, the next day saying drink Coke. It just doesn't mean that you lose credibility. But if you're real, you find, you know, shoes, products, whatever you really love and promote it. Getting ahead of that and starting to show sales and results can make it so much easier for platforms like Mavely to turn that on for you guys for campaigns. So, that's the income we're focused on, I guess, and outcomes. What we're focused on driving here. And it resonates with brands. I mean, you know, really, really strongly.
Scott
I love that. And, you know, some of the specific outcomes I think of, you know, you mentioned the 30 million and payouts. Okay. You know, that's ten extra thousand a year, 100 extra thousand. I think, you know, we can reference it or not. But, you know, some creators have $1 million or more income-driven based on their ability to go out and drive product sales. And that doesn't happen just because they're like forcing people or they're pushing people. It's because of a deep resonance. And they have an audience, who really values, you know, what they're sharing with them, so much so that they would buy that much product. And also, you know, use that link, you know, and help and it helps support the creator as they're buying this product. So I just think it's so cool. You know, I think you guys are really impacting creators' lives, allowing them to be self, you know, self-sustaining or at least a part of that journey and, and pursue. We talk a lot about allowing people to pursue their passions. Yeah. And be able to, you know, have commercial success with their creation and that it's so cool that we're in a world now where you can quit your job. You can go full-time in and you can, you know, you can work with your audience to find ways to make it sustainable. Yeah.
Evan
I mean, we've had we've had, you know, I, I want our names. I mean, I don't have the okay to their name, but we've had people who, who will we'll start as, like, their teacher. Right? And they start posting things on the side just as a hobby, and then they join Mavely, and then they get coached up and they keep doing it. And this one lady, in particular, I know of is she, like she quit her job and now she's doing, you know, full-time influencing teachers. Right. And I think the reason you were hitting on that authenticity, Scott. And like I think the fundamental thing comes down to like, if your audience trusts you and you're giving them true recommendations, then that's going to drive conversions. And I think that's where it comes down to is that trust. And I love what you're saying in terms of pursuing your passion because we talk a lot about Mavely and, you know, where we serve the creators, right? We work for the creators.
At the end of the day, that's what we wake up every day to do is build amazing tools for the creators. And so we talk a lot about the ripple. I think that's what's just generally cool about every individual who's a creator or every company that's powering the creator. The economy is like, there's a true influence, true, like a ripple that can happen. So one of the things we talk about with our team is like, hey, this you know, you were growing. We're scaling. But, you know, we're not thousands of people in the organization. So, you know, we're a smaller team that's growing, that's interacting and affecting hopefully positively, you know, 95,000 influencers that are obviously affecting positively, like literally hundreds of millions and billions of people. So like that's just cool I think ripple and responsibility like every creator has. And in their own niche way and every company has creators. So, at least that gets me jazzed up every day.
Kwame
So when you think about the creator economy, you think about being a creator. I think having the ability to supplement your income is great. Having the ability to make, you know, your creator's life, your entire income, whatever you want it to be at whatever capacity. I think that that's what's so amazing, right? People think about, you know, when we always thought about, like, having a life in which you could live, you know, in different places or travel or just have the flexibility of life. We always thought about completely different modes of revenue, and ways to get income. And now being a creator, it started out, you know, bit, you know, more siloed in the ways that you could make money. And I love what Mavely has come and now does because you keep on adding different ways to add revenue to who you are as a creator. When you think about anybody who markets in general, you think about the fact that the best way to get an end result is to put money in your pocket, to be able to sell a product.
Evan
Yeah.
Kwame
Right. At the end of the day, and, you know, most creators are out there. They say, hey, buy my e-book or buy my course, you know, and I think what's so cool about it is that this part of the creator economy is like, I'm not selling you something because I want to get rich off of that thing. I'm selling you something because I thought that it was really effective and made an impact in my life, which is why I think it'll also make an impact in your life as well. And why, when you reference the teacher-to-teacher scenario, this was important to this person as a teacher and they knew that and they could pass that on to teachers now who could probably be looking for that same solution. And that's what I love about what this creates within the creator economy.
Evan
Yeah. No, I mean, it's so huge. And I think the best, at least what we've seen is the best. Drivers of business outcomes are the people who are doing it from that exact place you just talked about. I mean, it's like, you know, in the teacher example, a lot of teachers, you can reach into their own pocket to pay for school supplies for kids, right, because they care about so much. And so she was doing this and she's like, hey, here's a couple of cool ways to, you know, pay a little bit less out of your pocket if it helps you. You know, I'm doing it myself, you know, here you go. And that just snowballed. Right. And there was a huge demand for that. And that's like a niche for her, for this creator. But it's like it's actually a pretty big niche. And you play that all the way out, like in that back to that ripple, right? You start to hopefully, you know, affect a lot of people in a positive way about the creator. And then also, the, you know, the teachers or the kids that are there were acting themselves and there's a million examples like that in the creator comedy. Your point? So it's a fun space to do. And I think brands are waking up to that and their brands are real. Like, hey, we got we have to be in this space. Not just, an ad on our budget here or a single line item on a strategy. But it's like a strategy, in terms of commerce, where marketing is going.
Scott
Couldn't agree more. And, you know, for our listeners, you're some of the first to hear it, but we wanted to share with you, you know, one of the reasons why we're talking with Evan and why we believe so much Mavely is because we're actually launching a partnership by which in Later, you can generate natively links, you can monetize and generate income from posts that you make. You can work with brands. And I just also maybe, you know, creators can comment and, and work with brands in our ecosystem. And I just love this, you know, the comment that you made about affecting millions and billions of users. And it was funny when I started out Later, they flashed up a stat on the screen and it was, a 2023 kind of recap of our post stats, and they showed a stat that we did 450 billion impressions on content posted from Later. And I just sat back and I was thinking, that is the most absurd stat that I've ever heard in social media that I'm a part of. And I genuinely feel like, like you said it, we have this ability to impact commerce, to impact, you know, the discovery process of goods in a really, really positive way and, also help creators make money. So I'm super stoked to be partnering with you Evan, and Mavely on this, getting it into the hands of our brand partners, getting it in the hands of creators, and being able to kind of move the whole ecosystem forward as a partnership.
Evan
Yeah. And likewise, Scott, I think what we're super excited about as well. And as I think, as you think about, you know, what's so cool about where we see this space going for creators like so again, creators listening to this today is yeah, more and more transactions are shifting offline to online, which, and more and more brands are aware of that. But people trust, you know, peer-to-peer or close connections the most out of it, out of anyone. Right. One of the things that influencers can do and creators can do is they're able to scale that trust, right? So, you know, you know, people are following. You can be like they trust you, right? They view you as a friend. Right? So like they're scaling that element of that peer-to-peer recommendation, that friend-to-friend recommendation. So you fast forward here. You know, for a couple of years commerce has been shifting offline to online. People want to buy and get recommended products from their friends. And every single creator listening to this, you know, is a friend to maybe more people than you know because of your influence. I mean, it's just kind of a perfect storm. It's a super, super great spot to be in, over the next 5 or 10 years here. And, brands are, I mean, you know, the Amazons of the world, the Walmarts of the world, the targets of the world. They're leaning in heavily. Right. And I think that's exciting because they're definitely trendsetters in terms of where these other brands are going to follow.
Scott
100%. And we talked about those 95, you know, thousand creators that are in your ecosystem, you know, in Later. We currently have 10 million influencers on our platform. We want to bring as many of those across to be able to drive sales within Mavely, to be able to work with brands, to be able to connect with their audience, create and generate income. And it's just so exciting to be able to do more for our creators and to do more for the brands. And, yeah, I really believe in the outcomes that this partnership is going to generate. So yeah, that's cool.
Evan
Yeah. We love it. The more the merrier here. And I think, hopefully just another tool set to help creators be more successful. And at the end of the day, that's what, you know, if the creators are more successful, Mavely and Later are more successful, which means the brands are more successful. So it's a win-win-win, which is great.
Scott
Yeah. Kwame is going to be your next all-star creator on Mavely.
Evan
Yeah.
Kwame
Yeah. Strictly dad shoes.
Evan
I'll send you my links.
Scott
What about, hey can we change your every dad influencer? Let's go.
Kwame
Oh, wow. Well, we might have to clip that out because I. That trademark.
Kwame
Oh, man. Right. You know, Evan, you've touched on this and I would say like in many different parts of the conversation, but you know, to really hone in on an answer for this, you know, what role do you see creators playing in e-commerce? And then just like the larger economy today and then like, where do you see that going in the future?
Evan
Yeah, I mean, it's a super great, great question. And I think probably one I spent a decent amount of time thinking about and, and, talking to a lot of people about actually. So, I guess the way that I look at creators fundamentally is that they are the digital economy's small and medium-sized businesses. And then there are breakouts of that that become mega businesses, right, that becomes, you know, Apple. Right. But that or become like maybe your, your buddy's steel company. Right. So like there but fundamentally creators are the digital economy's small and medium-sized businesses. And if you look at just the US alone, like small and medium-sized businesses are, they're half the economy, right? So they're not, it's not a tiny sliver. It's half and, you know, half of trillions of dollars. So as you fast forward and if you buy in, which I heavily do is like, you know, more and more eyeballs are going towards social more and more conversions and, and sales and customer recommendations are going towards social creators at scale are going to be like a huge percentage of that from an SMB standpoint.
And I think as we go forward in this and as you've got the social platforms enabling more and more people to become creators with all kinds of fun tools. You have platforms like Later and Mavely that are building tool sets for creators to make it easier for them to make more money. You've got major brands that are realizing, oh wow, this is a mega channel for us. I think we're going to fast forward. You're going to have brands that look at digital and they say, I need to have my search budget through Google. I need to have my social budget through Meta. I have my influencer budget through someone. Right. And like, I think that's where it's going to go. And the scale that it's going to get at is to be literally half or more of the digital economy, which is the future of all things. Right? And in my opinion, so I think it's, I think we're like I said earlier, we're in early, early innings is my opinion. I'm probably biased in it too, but, but I truly believe that.
Scott
Well, we're super stoked for the partnership. We're really glad you took the time to come and hang out with us. Tell us more about Mavely and, just the origin story all you guys are doing for creators. So if we have creators listening, if they want to sign up for Mavely, they want to learn more, where should they go?
Evan
Yeah, I appreciate it. So go to JoinMavely.com and you can sign up right there again no follower count is required. Right. So that's our whole thing, big or small. And, we'll get you going. Kwame, I expect you to be on there too,
Kwame
Signing up right now as we speak, I love it. Well, Evan, you know, do you have any, you know, parting words for the audience as we, as we head off? Anything that you want to talk about, whether it's, you know, personal to your life or whether it's, you know, reflective of Mavely or your creator economy, whatever is on your mind right now that you want to share.
Evan
Yeah. I think I appreciate giving you that. So I think the biggest thing for all the creators listening to, I think it's so cool, is to go back to that ripple, right? I mean, every time you post, you might not know who you're influencing or who you're affecting in a positive way. And I think that's just, that Frank is like a superpower. Right. So like, lean into it and go for it and, you know, ask for the cookie. Right. And be real and be authentic because one of the coolest things on social media right now is that people with mega followings and smaller followings can have a super outsized impact on their own lives, and everyone's lives. So I would just say like, lean into that, right? Because it's not every day and age. You can do that. And, this is a pretty special one.
Scott
I love it. So go make an impact, and ask for the cookie. Sign up for Mavely, join Later. Evan. It was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Everyone out there. We'll see you on the next one.
Evan
Thanks, guys.