Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing, Sacra

Sacra

Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing

Bringing transparency to private markets so investors, founders, and employees can build on conviction. Sacra delivers deeply researched insights on the private companies shaping tomorrow's markets. By surfacing the data, context, and operator perspective that are missing from private markets today, we help secondary buyers and sellers price equity accurately and unlock liquidity for the people building these businesses.

Private Capital Markets

<ul><li>OnlyFans’ 100x growth from $56M gross revenue in 2019 to $5.6B in 2022 gave rise to a wave of companies counter-positioned as safe-for-work (SFW) creator storefronts like Stan and Fanhouse (both founded in 2020).</li><li>Passes launched as a “soft R”, banning nudity but allowing creators like Instagram fitness influencer Michela Arbocco and chess personality Andrea Botez to sell membership access to risque thirst traps, live streams with implied nudity, and direct messaging.</li><li>Sacra estimates that Passes is closing in on a $10M net revenue run rate within 14 months of launch, with $95M in GMV and an average revenue per creator (ARPC) of $6,666 across 900 creators.</li></ul>

OnlyFans’ 100x growth from $56M gross revenue in 2019 to $5.6B in 2022 gave rise to a wave of companies counter-positioned as safe-for-work (SFW) creator storefronts like Stan and Fanhouse (both founded in 2020).Passes launched as a “soft R”, banning nudity but allowing creators like Instagram fitness influencer Michela Arbocco and chess personality Andrea Botez to sell membership access to risque thirst traps, live streams with implied nudity, and direct messaging.Sacra estimates that Passes is closing in on a $10M net revenue run rate within 14 months of launch, with $95M in GMV and an average revenue per creator (ARPC) of $6,666 across 900 creators.

Passes: The $9.5M/year Softcore OnlyFans Growing 1166% year-over-year

<ul><li>Stan hit $14.7M of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2023, up 765% year-over-year, as store-in-bio replaced link-in-bio as the default home base of the online creator.</li><li>Stan grew revenue a whopping 765% in 2023 by giving affiliates 20% of all revenue generated from their links into perpetuity, seeding a cottage industry of TikTok Stan influencers.</li><li>Gross churn is high at 13% monthly and Stan is living with the continued risk of being banned by TikTok, which recently sunset its integration with Shopify and will reportedly ban Amazon links-in-bio next.</li></ul>

Stan hit $14.7M of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2023, up 765% year-over-year, as store-in-bio replaced link-in-bio as the default home base of the online creator.Stan grew revenue a whopping 765% in 2023 by giving affiliates 20% of all revenue generated from their links into perpetuity, seeding a cottage industry of TikTok Stan influencers.Gross churn is high at 13% monthly and Stan is living with the continued risk of being banned by TikTok, which recently sunset its integration with Shopify and will reportedly ban Amazon links-in-bio next.

<ul><li>On the flip side, pure subscription SaaS companies like ConvertKit ($9-25/month) and Beehiiv ($42-84/month) with a simple model of charging a fixed monthly fee based on list size hit $38M annual recurring revenue (ARR) on zero capital raised (ConvertKit) and $3M ARR on $4.2M raised (Beehiiv).</li><li>After having dipped to 3% year-over-year growth in October 2021, ConvertKit’s growth re-accelerated to 22% last month with the ad network launches of Creator Network, which lets writers do both free and paid recommendations of other newsletters, and Sponsor Network, which lets businesses sponsor writers.</li><li>Businesses are the biggest tailwind for the creator economy now—while corporate spend on social ads is down 6x since 2020, spending on influencer marketing in 2023 hit $5.1B just through Q3, up 82% from $2.8B in 2020.</li></ul>

On the flip side, pure subscription SaaS companies like ConvertKit ($9-25/month) and Beehiiv ($42-84/month) with a simple model of charging a fixed monthly fee based on list size hit $38M annual recurring revenue (ARR) on zero capital raised (ConvertKit) and $3M ARR on $4.2M raised (Beehiiv).After having dipped to 3% year-over-year growth in October 2021, ConvertKit’s growth re-accelerated to 22% last month with the ad network launches of Creator Network, which lets writers do both free and paid recommendations of other newsletters, and Sponsor Network, which lets businesses sponsor writers.Businesses are the biggest tailwind for the creator economy now—while corporate spend on social ads is down 6x since 2020, spending on influencer marketing in 2023 hit $5.1B just through Q3, up 82% from $2.8B in 2020.

<ul><li>Today, the bootstrapped ConvertKit (valued at $200M) is at $33.5M in ARR growing 15% year-over-year.</li><li>VC funding for creator startups fell to $123M in Q1’23, marking 7 straight quarters of decline since the peak at $1.7B in Q2’21.</li><li>In the near term, the creator economy’s cultural influence has outpaced its GDP—in the long term, the networks that have begun to form at ConvertKit (connecting creators with Creator Network), Beehiiv (connecting creators to advertisers with Ad Network) and Substack (connecting readers and creators with Reader and Notes) are pulling adjacent, distribution-constrained SMBs into the ecosystem, whether they call themselves creators or not.</li></ul>

Today, the bootstrapped ConvertKit (valued at $200M) is at $33.5M in ARR growing 15% year-over-year.VC funding for creator startups fell to $123M in Q1’23, marking 7 straight quarters of decline since the peak at $1.7B in Q2’21.In the near term, the creator economy’s cultural influence has outpaced its GDP—in the long term, the networks that have begun to form at ConvertKit (connecting creators with Creator Network), Beehiiv (connecting creators to advertisers with Ad Network) and Substack (connecting readers and creators with Reader and Notes) are pulling adjacent, distribution-constrained SMBs into the ecosystem, whether they call themselves creators or not.

<ul><li>Substack (2017) built “Svbtle with a paywall”, paying advances to prominent writers like Matthew Yglesias (ex-Vox) and Anne Helen Petersen (ex-Buzzfeed) to create a halo around its brand combined with a business model that enabled them to index on the upside of its big-name writers and focus on quality over mass market.</li><li>Sacra estimates that revenue at Substack grew 58% year-over-year to $19M in 2022 off of 35 million subscribers, 2 million paid subscribers and $145M million in GMV with $82 million in funding raised.</li><li>In March 2023, Substack launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder to raise $5M at a $585M pre-money valuation and estimated 30x multiple on $19M in TTM revenue, a flat round from their 2021 Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz where they raised $65M at a 102x multiple.</li></ul>

Substack (2017) built “Svbtle with a paywall”, paying advances to prominent writers like Matthew Yglesias (ex-Vox) and Anne Helen Petersen (ex-Buzzfeed) to create a halo around its brand combined with a business model that enabled them to index on the upside of its big-name writers and focus on quality over mass market.Sacra estimates that revenue at Substack grew 58% year-over-year to $19M in 2022 off of 35 million subscribers, 2 million paid subscribers and $145M million in GMV with $82 million in funding raised.In March 2023, Substack launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder to raise $5M at a $585M pre-money valuation and estimated 30x multiple on $19M in TTM revenue, a flat round from their 2021 Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz where they raised $65M at a 102x multiple.

United States

Mobile website builder for creators to sell products, collect tips, and manage fans

Price Gauge
52-week Range	0.00 - 0.00
Market Cap (USDm)	0.00
P/E	0.00
Dividend (Yield)	0.00

Beacons (BEACONS US)

Passes: The $9.5M/year Softcore OnlyFans Growing 1166% year-over-year

TL;DR: Passes, founded by departed Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo, is closing in on a $10M net revenue run rate as the safe-for-work version...

Sacra

Stan: The $14.7M/year store-in-bio

TL;DR: Stan hit $14.7M of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2023, up 765% year-over-year, as store-in-bio replaced link-in-bio as the...

Sacra

ConvertKit At $38M ARR

TL;DR: Subscription SaaS creator economy companies like ConvertKit and Beehiiv with simple business models are growing through the creator...

Sacra

ConvertKit Vs. Beehiiv Vs. Substack

TL;DR: Beehiiv just announced a $12.5M Series A to go after Substack as they and ConvertKit all battle it out to build the best, most monetizable...

Sacra

Substack: The $19M/year Content LVMH

Substack grew revenue an estimated 10x during COVID and built a star-studded roster of writers. Now, it faces growing tensions between building for...

Sacra

Price Gauge

52-week Range

Market Cap (USDm)

P/E

Dividend (Yield)