8. If I Were You: The Next 90 Days
The single most important thing
Get 20 creators paying at least $20/month (or ₹ equivalent) for one narrow job before you build anything else.
- Segment: creators with 10k–500k followers who already do brand deals, in one geography, on 2–3 platforms.
- Job: "Price my deals correctly, get paid on time, and earn affiliate income from every video."
- How: start with a concierge MVP. Use a Notion or Airtable deal tracker, a rate-card sheet, and manual affiliate link suggestions that you research per video. Charge from week 1. Automate only what you've done manually at least 20 times.
Week-by-week
| Weeks | Goal | Exit criteria |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Discovery. Interview 40 target creators and 10 talent managers. Ask about their last 3 brand deals: how they priced them, how long payment took, what went wrong, what tools they use, what they pay for today. | You can write down the top 3 pains in the creators' own words, with dollar values attached. |
| 3–4 | Concierge pilot. Offer 10–15 of them a done-with-you service: deal tracking, rate recommendations, invoice chasing, and affiliate links for their next 4 videos. Charge for it, even at a discount. | 10+ paying pilots. If fewer than 5 will pay, the pain isn't real. Change the segment or the job, not the pitch. |
| 5–8 | Build the thin v1 (web only): connect YouTube and Instagram, auto-generated live media kit, deal pipeline, rate calculator, invoice reminders, affiliate matching for 2 networks. | Pilots move from concierge to self-serve. Weekly active use by 60% or more of paying users. |
| 9–10 | Free acquisition hook. A public rate calculator and a free media-kit page, with SEO landing pages for "how much to charge for [platform] [deliverable] in [niche]". | 500+ free signups from organic or referral sources. |
| 11–12 | Measure and decide. | 20+ paying, ≥60% M1→M2 retention, at least one measurable money outcome per creator. If you hit it, keep going and consider manager seats. If you miss it, go back to discovery. |
Kill criteria (write these down now)
If at day 90 you have fewer than 10 paying creators, or paid M1 retention is below 50%, the wedge is wrong. Don't respond by adding features. Respond by changing segment or job.
The one thing to stop doing
Stop building the auto-editing tool (and, with it, the dual mobile and web apps).
It's the most expensive item on your list (GPU costs, 6–12 months to reach parity), the most contested (CapCut, Descript, Opus Clip, Captions, Meta Edits, all free or heavily funded), and the least likely to generate revenue. It feels like progress because it demos well, but it's the clearest case of building to avoid selling. Every week spent on it is a week not spent finding out whether anyone will pay you.
A close second: stop describing this as an "all-in-one" or "in-and-out" solution. Creators hear "mediocre at everything", and investors hear "no focus".
What stays on the long-term roadmap (only after proof)
- Manager and agency roster tier (B2B expansion, higher ARPU).
- Pre-publish packaging score trained on each creator's own data, for Instagram and TikTok only. YouTube now does this natively.
- Sponsorship and AI-content disclosure checks.
- Anonymized closed-deal rate benchmarks (the data moat).
- Then, with data and supply leverage, the brand-side marketplace and payments. That's the venture-scale step and the moment to raise.