22. KOMI: the final platform for social media creators

Founders: Lewis Crosbie, Ben Deigman, and Olly Haddon-Patton
Year founded: 2019
Website: komi.io

Everywhere you look today, there are social media creators. They’re dancing on the London Underground on your commute. They’re unboxing their food orders while you’re on your lunch break. They’re taking Outfit of The Day snaps at your door when you get home.

KOMI’s founding team saw this trend and were empathetic. Creators were clearly the future of marketing. Yet they had no website to sell from, and no way to communicate with their following without social apps. No wonder they were wandering, lost, through UK streets.

In answer, the three put their heads together and came up with KOMI, on a mission to build the first all-in-one management app for creators. Its flagship offering is a curated landing page which can house all links, content, and merchandise. But there is also newsletter, email, and SMS marketing, and a suite of data analytics tools.

“We could see there was a huge lack of digital infrastructure to empower creators,” the team tells Startups. “Things needed shaking up to put the power back into the creator’s hands”.

Other content management tools exist. However, these tend to be feature-light versions of tools built for corporate marketing teams. Or else, single-function apps that must be cobbled together with several other costly subscriptions. KOMI is designed with its core user in mind.

Things needed shaking up to put the power back into the creator's hands.

Naturally, being a first mover in any new industry can create challenges. But KOMI’s team knew that, in the marketing world, the right name could open several doors. 

“We knew getting one large artist on-board would immediately unlock several others and create the snowball effect”, they say. You might have heard of who they eventually landed: Usher, Paris Hilton, and Gwen Stefani. Safe to say, the doors were unlocked.

Today, KOMI’s user base spans a following of four billion. They are targeting one million creators within the next half decade, helped along by the healthy injection of £5.5m last May, and a successful £9.2m Series A funding round in 2022. 

Like Shopify, KOMI wants to become the default platform for creators. It’s a big ask to overtake the ‘gram, but in today’s fast-moving marketing landscape, anything is possible.