Parade’s Cami Tellez pronounces new creator financial system advertising platform, $4M in funding

Cami Tellez is again. 

Tellez is the founding father of the viral undergarments model Parade, which at one level was seen because the Gen Z rival to Victoria’s Secret. Launched in 2019, when Tellez was simply 21, the corporate went on to boost hundreds of thousands in funding and appeal to hundreds of shoppers, however was offered in 2023 to the lingerie producer Ariela & Associates. Late final 12 months, Parade introduced it was formally closing its doorways. 

However it seems Parade was only the start of Tellez’s journey as a founder. On Monday, she and former TikTok government Jon Kroopf introduced the launch of the influencer advertising platform Devotion, which they mentioned will assist giant manufacturers to run and handle their influencer packages. 

Proper now, many of those manufacturers have human groups juggling current influencers and discovering new ones. It’s a tedious job, typically slowed down by how briskly this house strikes. 

“The primary model of the creator financial system was constructed round macro creators, manufacturers working with 15 or 20 extremely seen faces every month,” Tellez mentioned. “That mannequin hasn’t labored.” Citing a 2025 IAB report displaying that creators nonetheless account for about 2% of advert spend, she added, “The difficulty isn’t perception in creators, it’s unlocking the high-scale mannequin that works in a content-based algorithm.” 

Devotion automates components of this course of, utilizing AI to assist manufacturers scale their creator discovery, administration, and content material workflows. They nonetheless have people to evaluate the AI’s choices. 

“There are not any rogue-like brokers that function independently of a human evaluate,” Kroopf advised TechCrunch. “However they make all the things we do a lot quicker.”  

Devotion works with manufacturers on duties akin to analyzing influencers’ posts and captions to make sure they’re inside firm tips; it helps manufacturers resolve which posts to share and enhance; and it may well present a model match rating indicating how properly a creator aligns with the model’s ethos. It additionally helps manufacturers pay creators, which might be troublesome to handle if the duty lay solely with people, Kroopf mentioned. 

“It’s all about high-scale creator ecosystems,” Tellez, the corporate’s inventive director, mentioned. “A brand new kind of creator neighborhood that drives extra scale, decrease CPMs [cost per millage], [and] extra algorithmic affect.” 

Tellez mentioned Devotion spent a lot of final 12 months in beta mode and has already amassed greater than 10 purchasers and reached seven figures in income. Apart from rising from stealth, the corporate additionally introduced it raised $4 million in a spherical led by Basecase and Will Ventures. 

“We’re leveraging expertise to open up what we predict is a brand new alternative, the place there hasn’t been plenty of consideration paid from the house to date, as a result of it simply wasn’t possible,” Kroopf mentioned, including that beforehand, it wasn’t cost-effective for a model to dedicate a lot cash and sources to constructing a platform like this for themselves.

“In 2019, after I began Parade, there was no actual type of software program that allowed you to actually interact ambassadors [influencers] at scale,” Tellez mentioned. Again then, she and her workforce constructed expertise that helped them monitor and execute gifting, engagement, and cost, and construct an end-to-end pipeline to handle their relationships with creators. “That was a dramatic drive of our progress,” she continued, noting that many different founders got here to her throughout that point asking how they, too, may replicate influencer engagement. 

On the identical time, she mentioned she realized that the algorithm had modified, actually in an effort led by TikTok. Although Devotion was her thought, she introduced on Kroopf to assist her perceive learn how to interact with this new algorithm. 5 years in the past, for instance, she mentioned, a creator may make a publish, and it could attain about 20% of their viewers; at this time, that quantity is nearer to 2%. 

“The feed is not decided based mostly in your social graph or your follower rely,” she mentioned. “It’s way more decided on the efficiency of the content material and the algorithm and pushed by your pursuits and different content material, related content material you’ve interacted with.” 

The result’s a courageous new world: A nurse in Ohio has the identical algorithmic potential as a macro-creator, Tellez mentioned. “We’re coming into into a brand new paradigm the place affect has been democratized.” 

Consequently, manufacturers must function like content material networks and work with tons of, no, hundreds of influencers a month in the event that they need to create content material that may drive scale, Tellez mentioned. 

Devotion works on behalf of manufacturers to construct a bespoke content material engagement technique to raised perceive which influencers to faucet and learn how to foster that neighborhood over time. 

There are different creator financial system companies just like this, like Pearpop. Tellez mentioned Devotion’s contemporary capital will likely be used to rent extra engineers and model operators to construct out extra of the corporate’s tech stack. 

There are plans to construct extra AI brokers quickly, although nothing will be introduced but, they mentioned. General, Tellez mentioned she thinks manufacturers are nonetheless searching for genuine methods to attach with actual individuals, working with individuals from throughout the spectrum (not simply probably the most well-known) to get model messaging throughout. 

“We’re already seeing the consensus shift in direction of our imaginative and prescient for scaled creator ecosystems for even the world’s largest and historically most risk-averse manufacturers,” Tellez mentioned. “They don’t need to get caught behind the algorithm. On the identical time, we’re deepening our AI methods so we are able to handle hundreds of creators with precision — with out sacrificing style or intimacy.”