Creatively, a jobs platform that allows creatives to showcase their portfolios digitally and offers collaboration tools, has raised $8 million in new funding, the company announced on Wednesday.
The latest seed round of investment includes contributions from Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures, Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Link Ventures and entertainment attorney Kevin Yorn (who reps Scarlett Johansson, Matthew McConaughey and Taika Waitiki and was named to The Hollywood Reporter‘s 2021 Power Lawyers list). The new investment will go towards boosting the New York-based platform’s product and engineering teams and growth marketing and data tools, as well as more quickly debuting a planned payment feature called CreativelyPay. (CreativelyPay offers same-day bank payments and can eliminate net 30-day payment terms for certain workers.)
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“The pandemic changed how creatives work – and now, opportunities for creatives to collaborate, make money, and get paid are undergoing a quantum shift,” Creatively CEO Gregory Gittrich said in a statement. “The creator economy encompasses a massive $100 billion-plus total addressable market in the U.S. alone and is growing quickly. Our mission is to help creatives live and work however they want and achieve their boldest ambitions.”
Co-founded by Alice + Olivia CEO Stacy Bendet, Joe Indriolo and Reagan Silber, Creatively launched during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and now has more than 275,000 signups, with users working in fields including film, animation, video editing, fashion, branding and others. Early investors in the platform included Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital, the Tornante Company and Aryeh Bourkoff’s LionTree, LLC.
So far, the platform has raised $19 million in funding and says more than 2,000 brands including Nickelodeon, Discovery, Comcast, PBS and BritBox use Creatively to find job candidates. The platform touts the diversity of its users: Two-thirds of users self-identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color and about two-thirds self-identify as female.
