Clayton Rannard: Marketplace To Find and Hire Influencers in Seconds

Collabstr is a marketplace to find and hire influencers in seconds. Our mission is to allow any content creator to make a living doing what they love.

Tell us about yourself?

In university, I studied computer science. Learning how to code opened up my opportunities for starting a business. I now had what felt like a magical power: I could create something useful from scratch using just my brain and laptop.

Before Collabstr, my Co-founder and I worked together on many ventures. Our most successful one was a tool to audit anyone’s Instagram account for fake followers and engagement. This was our first taste of the influencer marketing industry and ultimately inspired us to create Collabstr.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Enjoy the process. Like most entrepreneurs will tell you, there have been countless times where I wanted to give up.

The only thing that has prevented me from doing so, is my natural desire to keep working on what I am passionate about. While you may have moments, days, or weeks where you feel like giving up, if you enjoy what you are doing, you will push through those times.

What problem does your business solve?

Collabstr allows brands to find and hire the right influencers in seconds, for no upfront cost. Being an open marketplace, we’ve made influencer marketing accessible to business of any size, from Fortune 500s to SMB’s running on Shopify.

Most influencer platforms charge thousands of dollars per month and require yearly commitments. We also allow creators of all sizes to make a living doing what they love, creating content for their fans.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

Anyone who has done influencer marketing will tell you, the biggest pain point is time. Finding, organizing and paying influencers is the most tedious and time-consuming process. This is why we created an All-in-one platform for brands to search, discover, and pay influencers all in one place.

Being a company in 2022 means you need to be posting content for 4-5 social media platforms all at once. That isn’t feasible for most, a great way to fix this is by working with content creators who can help tell your story. That is what Collabstr is allowing brands to do at scale.

What is your magic sauce?

Within seconds, you can find and hire an influencer for your brand in over 35 countries on Collabstr. Businesses, Marketers, and Founders don’t have time to spend hours scrolling through social media to find an influencer for their product. We make the process simple, by allowing you to filter on over 10 metrics like niche, location and platform and see what they charge instantly.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

Allow any brand to find and work with content creators in their niche, and at the same time, allow any content creator to earn a living doing what they love.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

Scaling is always tough, running a platform for 100 users is vastly different than running one for 100,000+ users. It is likely one of the better problems to have, as it means your company is growing and providing value to an increasing amount of people!

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

If you’re a content creator and you want to start monetizing your craft, or you’re a brand that wants to get your business in front of new audiences, you can join Collabstr today at https://collabstr.com