# 🚀 Startup #16: Crowdpad

By [Ali Shaikha](https://paragraph.com/@alishaikha) · 2022-05-18

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**Segment:** DeFi / **Business Model**: B2B / **Stage**: Seed

[https://www.crowdpad.io/](https://www.crowdpad.io/)

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**Purpose**: Take part in the growth of creators

**Problem**: Moving from Web2 where platforms own your content to Web3, where creators own the monetization of their content. Creating your own coin and reaching your customers to invest/particate is complex and not a key focus area.

**Solution**: Simplifying the process for creators to create their own tokens, where they can offer specific content to token holders and even have tiers within their token holders.

**Team**:

*   [Joel Alexander](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-tom-alexander/) - Co-founder and CEO
    
*   [Drishti Chawla](https://www.linkedin.com/in/drishti-s-chawla/) - Co-founder and CTO
    

**Traction:**

*   Funding: Raised $2.5m seed round in Apr 22 from Infinity Ventures Crypto, Morningstar Ventures, CreatorLed, Kosmos Ventures, Ocular VC, Akshay BD, Balaji Srinivasan, Lily Liu, Furqan Rydhan, Joyce Yang, Anirudh Pai, Julian Weisser, Tanmay Bhat, Shradha Sharma, Ali Abdaal, Wong Joon Ian
    
*   Progress: Currently in private beta, they have gone throguh OnDeck’s accelerator program. They have a waitlist for their public beta.
    

**Positive Signals:**

*   Investors: Going through OnDeck unlocks a huge network and resources for them
    
*   Alignment: A key component to Web3 is to give power back to the creators, Crowdpad aligns to this perfeclty - enabling creators to monetize their content
    
*   Team: Drishti was a developer at IBM for a year while at university, Joel has been an entrepreneur twice before so knows the ups and downs
    

**Risks**:

*   Self-serve: Creating a token itself isn’t really complicated, I wonder if creators will just do that themselves. It’s more the restritive covenants on the tokens that might require a bit of work. Interesting to see how big of a problem this is to solve for.

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*Originally published on [Ali Shaikha](https://paragraph.com/@alishaikha/startup-16-crowdpad)*