The H Hub is pioneering a new system of decentralized content creation with their community-driven content engine -- repl...
Problem
Brands struggle to create affordable, quality content
Brands need more images than ever (consumers must view 11.6 pieces of content before making a purchase decision). But, there's no standardized place to source quality content for an affordable price.
At the same time, talented photographers across the country (there are over 100,000) have no standardized place to find consistent work to make a living.
Solution
The Hub: a marketplace to connect brands to photographers
The Hub connects the most talented photographers in the country to quality-focused brands that need content – for their socials, their website, & their ads. All of our photographers are hand-selected based on their experience and the quality of their work. Clients can easily post a job, browse photographers, book shoots, approve images, and pay, all in one place.
We have worked with over 1000 brands and our roster speaks for itself. Check out some of our favorite work HERE.
Product
The Hub: an end-to-end marketplace to hire top photographers
The Hub serves both sides of the freelance content economy: we help photographers find paid work while connecting quality-focused brands to the top talent in the country. We are the more streamlined source of quality content on the internet – our client roster speaks for itself.
Traction
Monthly job posts are up 2.9x since COVID started
At the start of COVID, we narrowed our demand side to Food & Beverage brands only. Our focus (on a COVID-friendly industry) paid off, and we've increased monthly job posts 2.9x since April.
More, our top 50 Brands and top 50 Photographers come back constantly with top Brands shooting 1+ times per month and Photographers completing 3+ shoots per month. In fact, both Brands and Photographers use The Hub as their 'go to' – for top quality content and paid work respectively. As such, we feel we have resounding Product-Market-Fit.
Customers
Our top brands can't live without us
We surveyed our top 100 brands. They have an NPS of 86 (a score of over 70 is considered "exceptional"). More, when asked, "how disappointed would you be if The Hub no longer existed" 78% of respondents chose "very disappointed" (40% is considered "Product-Market-Fit" by Superhuman).
Our top 50 brands say that The Hub is their primary source for content—replacing agencies, influencers, friends, and other platforms. After using The Hub, nothing else compares.
The 9 shoots per year that top brands have done, on average, mean that the LTV (even just across the trailing 12 months) of our top 50 brands is more than 7x the CAC it took to get them to post their first job.
Business model
18% fee on all transactions
The Hub collects an 18% "rake" on transactions that occur on our site. With over $150,000 of shoots now happening per month on our platform, we are generating meaningful revenue despite raising only $1.7MM from investors. More, we generate over $25,000 per month on incremental agency services – by helping Brands with higher-touch creative needs as a supplement to our software platform. As of this summer, we are cash-flow-positive.
Market
Food & beverage brands who need content monthly
There are ~60K small e-commerce food and beverage brands in the U.S. alone. On The Hub, small F&B brands shoot an average of 4 shoots per year.
Our goal is to capture 5% of this market (240,000 annual shoots) by January 2022. This will yield $1.7MM of revenue in 2022 across 12,000 shoots. This will enable us to raise a large Series A to continue growth or continue to grow profitably as we have all summer.
Competition
Platforms or agencies
Brands have three primary choices to make content in 2020 – a friend, platforms, or agencies. Most platforms are low quality. Most agencies are overpriced. The Hub is the only option that's fast, affordable, and extremely high quality. Once brands work with us, they ditch their prior solution.
Vision and strategy
The go-to place for photography for all e-comm and B2C
In 5 years, The Hub will grow from a solution for small F&B brands to other verticals, too. By 2025 we will be the go-to place for B2B photography – across all of e-comm. Thereafter, we will expand by skillset (videography, animation, design). And, finally, we will expand into B2C use cases (headshots, weddings, sports photos etc). The combination of B2B and B2C use cases represents a $10B total opportunity per annum.
Funding
Over $1.7M raised to date
We've raised over $1.7M to date in seed funding. We are cash-flow-positive and will be for the foreseeable future. We have plans, in the coming 18 months, to raise an outsized Series A to scale.
Founders
You can read about our Mission and Founders HERE.
We have three members of our executive team, Shannon, Jason and James. We bring balanced expertises and backgrounds (professional photographer, creative agency lead, and CTO) – prior to The Hub, Shannon was a professional photographer, James worked at large ad agencies and ran content for a large 40MM user app, and Jason has worked at Lockheed Martin, USPS and ran product for Doctor Oz.