A creator marketing startup wants to make the influencer model less about follower counts and more about performance. Noise, which connects brands with everyday creators, announced a $5.5 million seed round on Wednesday.
From gaming experiment to creator marketplace
Noise was launched in 2025 by Diego Kafie, Stu Feldt and Nic Weber after they spent two years building Playbite, a mobile game app. While scaling that app, they tried recruiting players to create social content about the game. The approach began with a small group and grew as installs increased, which became the starting point for Noise.
The platform now says it has 1.5 million creators. Anyone can sign up regardless of audience size, complete training modules, and browse campaigns. Creators can post to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, and Noise pays them based on views rather than a flat fee.
How the brand side works
Brands share a content brief and budget. Noise handles sourcing, payments and management, so campaigns can run across thousands of creators at once. The company takes a fee from what brands pay once views are delivered.
- Noise creators do not need an existing following to join.
- Brands set briefs and budgets.
- Creators choose campaigns and post on their preferred platform.
- Payment is tied to delivered views, not fixed creator rates.
- Brands can operate multiple creator campaigns simultaneously.
The seed round was led by Capital Midwest, M25 and Grishin Robotics, with participation from Capitalize VC and operators from DoorDash. It brings Noise’s total funding to $7.2 million.
Organic-to-Ads pushes creator content further
Alongside the funding, Noise announced Organic-to-Ads. Brands can take videos originally made by Noise creators and run them as paid ads on Meta and TikTok, while creators continue posting organically. This gives brands a path to extend the reach of creator content beyond the creator’s own audience.
Kafie said the company’s top creators earn more than six figures a year. He also pushed back on the idea that the model underpays creators, saying brands name their rates and creators choose whether to accept. Early users can access certain campaigns, and more training and completed work unlock higher-paid opportunities.
What this means for marketing teams
The shift matters because influencer marketing is expensive and resource-heavy when it depends on established creators. Noise sits alongside platforms such as Billo and JoinBrands in trying to make creator content more accessible and measurable. The startup notes that 57% of young people and just over 40% of U.S. adults want to participate in the creator economy.
For marketers, the takeaway is not to abandon professional influencers. Instead, the model adds a performance layer. Teams can test briefs with everyday creators, link spend to view-based outcomes, and feed the best organic content into paid distribution. That changes budgeting from fixed creator fees to variable spend tied to results.
“By democratizing ‘becoming a creator’ to literally anyone with a smartphone,” Kafie said, “we’re bringing costs down for brands, but enabling millions of people to make their first dollar on the internet.”
The fresh capital will go toward product expansion and hiring.
Source: TechCrunch
