Media

Read the pitch deck that Catch+Release, a startup that helps creators and everyday social-media users license their content to brands, used to raise $8.8 million

Catch+Release is a startup that licenses user-generated content for brands to use in ads.
The company just announced an additional $8.8 million in Series A funding.
Here’s the deck the company used to pitch investors.

Catch+Release, a startup that licenses user-generated content from creators and sells it to brands, announced in early August an additional $8.8 million in Series A funding led by return investor Accel. This brings the total funding the company raised to over $31 million.

Other return investors included Cervin, Astia Fund, and Stagwell, with new investors HarbourVest Partners, tech founder and CEO Nick Mehta, and Rich Kleiman and Kevin Durant’s fund 35V.

“We just raised this round in an incredibly difficult environment, with lots of market insecurity and many ups and downs,” Analisa Goodin, founder and CEO of the company, told Insider. “We met over 100 investors over a 6-month timeframe. We were fortunate to have our existing investors contribute to this round and they continue to be very supportive and believe in our mission.”

Goodin founded the company in 2016 after she experienced firsthand pain while working at an ad agency to source and license content for brand customers. The two options she saw at the time were stock content or costly original production. Catch+Release aims to provide a “third way,” Goodin said: licensing existing content from the internet.

Creators who are interested in licensing their content — not just influencers but also filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, and regular social-media users — can sign up for the platform and upload the content they want to put up for licensing or sync their social-media accounts, for free. They are then paid a fee that varies depending on factors like how long a brand will use the content for, and for which advertising channels.

Brands can browse the platform’s library of content that is available for licensing, or if they find content online they’d like to use for advertising, the company can handle the licensing process for them. The company also offers “curation packs” to help brands find different types of content depending on their needs.

Catch+Release has worked with brands like Ford, Delta, Walmart, Samsonite, and Nike, among others.

The fresh $8.8 million investment will go toward improving the platform’s marketplace, the software that brands and agencies can use to discover relevant content. The company is also developing new tools to help creators get discovered and license their work more easily.

Read through 12 pages of the pitch deck Catch+Release used to raise its $8.8 million Series A round:

Note: Two slides containing confidential information were removed at Catch+Release’s request. These slides included information about social proof and customer ROI.

The first page presents the company’s aim, to “license the internet.”

The second page highlights a pain point for brands: the constant need for content to promote their products.

The third slide explains options brands have to create content for advertising: stock images, custom shoots, or generative art.

The next page presents the solution Catch+Release offers: getting the content from the internet.

The idea behind Catch+Release is to simplify content licensing, which can be a “manual, complex, risky, & time consuming process.”

The following slide explains what Catch+Release aims to do.

Another slide explains how the platform works.

The next slide explains what the company is planning next: develop and grow its licensing marketplace.

The slide reads:

Up next we’re using our licensing traction to drive the marketplace

Just launched beginning of Q2’23
Every IP owner is invited to join the network – 76% conversion so far
58% publish on a regular basis – good sign of engaged community
they can self-publish to the marketplace or turn on “synch” which gives C+R a live feed of everything they post – 35% use this feature.
On average since launch each creator is publishing 574 pieces of licensable content.

Then, the deck presents the company’s founder, Analisa Goodin, and some of the core team.

The slide reads:

I lived and breathed the pain, which is why I started this company.

Analisa Goodin
CEO

Lived and breathed customer and creator licensing pain for 15+ years
Cleared thousands of pieces of creator owned content myself
Worked intimately with teams at premium brands and agencies on content discovery & licensing

Jim McCollum
Head of Product & Engineering

Bill Lewis
Head of Finance

Deirdre Mahon
Head of Marketing

Investors
Accel
Cervin

Selected Advisors
Gokul Rajaram
Gary Swart
Tom Willerer

The deck also breaks down some of the achievements the company’s had so far, like paying out over $12 million to creators and retaining 97% of its customers.

Before closing, the deck describes the long-term vision Catch+Release has for its product.

The last page repeats the company’s aim and slogan: to “license the internet.”

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