Contact - The Online Marketplace for Creatives

Company & Team Introduction

Contact is a creator economy platform to book industry-leading creatives directly, currently offering services from 3 separate verticals, including modelling, hair + makeup artists, and photographers. The company was founded in 2020 by industry expert Reuben Selby, who is a renowned fashion designer and previously cofounded Cortex Creatives, an advertising agency specializing in the fashion, lifestyle, and music industries, where they built an impressive list of notable clients such as Thom Browne, Arc-teryx, New Balance, and Stone Island. Contact is headquartered in London, England and has built a team of ~10 employees.

Product Overview

Contact’s marketplace connects brands with top creative talent. Creatives make an account, and then once they pass the verification process, they can begin showcasing their work on the platform. Businesses can find top on-demand talent while being able to quickly filter down results based on talent type, location, gender, etc., to find the exact creatives you’re looking for. Once a business has found creatives that match its criteria, it sends a proposal to the creators detailing the job's specifics, including a description, dates, location, pay, etc., allowing businesses to hire high-quality talent quicker than ever before. Contact Bloom is a key feature of Contact’s platform, which allows creatives to receive instant payouts as soon as the job is completed for a small fee, rather than the typical 30+ day wait to be paid. A recent study by Freelance Corner showed that self-employed creatives are owed a collective 1.1B euros in late invoices. The flexibility of this feature is incredibly useful for creatives when unexpected expenses come up, like medical bills or work travel, as well as to invest in new equipment or a new project.

Total Addressable Market

Contact’s total addressable market is enormous and ever-expanding. For example, the TAM for photography in the US alone is estimated to be ~12.9B market annually and estimates for the creator economy as a whole at ~104B. Furthermore, over a half million new internet users every day are looking for ways to monetize their skills and become their own boss, giving Contact’s business massive long-term tailwinds.

Business Model & The Numbers

Contact utilizes a simple take rate-based business model to align the platform’s success with that of its creatives. The company charges businesses a 20% booking fee on top of the agreed-upon creative pay. This allows creatives to keep all the money they make on the platform, compared to traditional agencies, which take up to 40% of what a creator earns. Another way Contact monetizes its platform is through its Contact Bloom feature that allows creatives to get paid immediately upon completing a job in exchange for a 4.9% fee.

Traction

Since Contact’s founding in 2020, over 900 top-tier creatives have joined their platform to help them find new clients and keep more of their earnings online. Contact has also seen strong adoption from the demand side of the marketplace due to its high-quality talent pool, attracting over 2000 of the largest brands in the world, including prestigious designer brands such as Balenciaga, Burberry, and Saint Laurent, in addition to massively successful lifestyle-oriented brands like Nike, Vogue, and Adidas. Contact has also created a strong network of partner brands offering additional services such as production and content creation support, having worked with industry-leading brands such as Depop, Hunger Magazine, Ellesse, and Super Magazine.

Competitors

Contact doesn’t face any notable direct competitors. The majority of competitive pressures will be felt from legacy talent agencies such as William Morris Endeavour, the Creative Artist Agency, and the United Talent Agency due to the relationships, massive resource pools, and expertise these companies have built up over the years. Nonetheless, with the new ability to self-promote and build a personal brand, many of the valuable benefits from working with an agency are dwindling, especially with how quick and easy it is to find top talent through a platform like Contact.

Funding

Contact has only raised two rounds of funding since its founding in 2020. The company raised a 1.4M Euro seed round in 2021 led by Founders Fund with participation from other top-tier funds, including Sweet Capital, Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH fund, and Rogue VC, in addition to notable angel investors like Eric Wahlforss (co-founder of Soundcloud) and Simon Beckerman (co-founder of Depop). Less than a year later, Contact raised another seed round, totalling 3M Euro. This round was led by Vancouver-based venture firm Rhino Ventures, as well as a follow-on investment from Founders Fund and a prominent list of creator economy angel investors such as actress Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), Steven Galanis and Martin Blencowe (co-founders of Cameo), and Sasha Kaletsky from Creator Ventures.