User:Josejuanqm/sandbox/Curastory

Overview
Curastory is an online multipurpose advertising platform founded in 2019, where content creators can shoot and edit high-quality videos, monetize shows, and distribute to all of their video channels for free.[1 ] As of 2022, Curastory has successfully empowered over 42,000 content creators and 2,000 brand partners to distribute video content across multiple platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram Reels, and TikTok.

History
Curastory was founded by Tiffany Kelly, former ESPN Sports Analytics Associate, in 2019 in Brooklyn, New York. After observing the creator economy take shape while at ESPN, she knew content consumption was going to mainly be driven by creators or niche media companies in the near future. Realizing content creation is supported by thousands of workers at media companies, she started Curastory to assist content creators in building media businesses around their videos.

Considered one of the pioneers in native-recorded ad reads, Curastory allows creators to easily make, edit, monetize and share their videos to all of their video channels — just with one click. It’s one of the only all-in-one platforms for creating, monetizing and managing quality video content across social media without compromise, and it’s 100% free for creators.[2 ]

According to Crunchbase, Curastory raised $2.3M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on September 14, 2021, from a Seed round.[[3 ] ]

Among Curastory’s investors are Google for Startups, Lightspeed Scout Fund, Techstars, Elysian Park Ventures, R/GA Ventures, Mindspring Capital, Randi Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg’s sister) through Republic, Billie Jean King, True Capital Management and others.

Ad Reads
Recent studies showed that 90% of online consumers skip pre-roll video ads in platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, and try to avoid sources where these types of ads are unskippable[4 ]. On the other hand, brands see their revenue decrease when consumers skip those ads, given that 54% of consumers want to see more video materials from brands and creators they support.[5 ]

Curastory addresses this problem by allowing content creators to upload videos within their platform, matching them to brand campaigns for native, creator-recorded ad monetization before they distribute the final video, including the baked-in ad read, to all of their channels with one click.[6 ]

This allows brands to secure native, creator-recorded ad segments in multiple videos shown across the internet in a matter of 10 clicks, tracking consumer conversion to provide consistent returns on their video ad spend, while providing creators with a paid alternative to video-only platforms like YouTube.[7 ]

Founders
Curastory’s Founder, Tiffany Kelly, is an Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Data Scientist, and Media Maven born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1994.[8 ]

A former ESPN Sports Analyst, Tiffany Kelly is currently the Founder and CEO of Curastory and is the former Co-Founder of Break the Love, a sports mobile app making it more accessible to be matched with players of your skill through pickup, recreational games.[9 ]

While working for ESPN, Tiffany created ESPN’s College Football Fan Happiness Index [10 ] and was the first African-American analyst to join the Sports Analytics team.