Passionfroot

8 million euros) Series A round led by Insight Partners, as reported by TechCrunch. This operation, announced on July 22, 2026, marks the startup's third funding round since 2022 and validates the B2B creator marketing niche as a growth channel with sufficient traction to attract a top-tier investor. With this capital, the company will open its first offices in New York and São Paulo, and will double a team that currently has 15 employees. CEO and co-founder, Jen Phan, is personally moving from Berlin to New York to pilot the US expansion, while the choice of São Paulo responds to the startup's commitment to a booming Latin American B2B ecosystem.

Rebecca Liu-Doyle, managing director at Insight Partners, explained to TechCrunch the thesis behind this investment: "Passionfroot has the perfect dynamics on both sides to warrant a dedicated B2B creator marketplace. On the demand side, there's a growing consumerization of how B2B brands go to market, partly a product of AI technology requiring evangelism, narrative building, and constant education. On the supply side, there are people who have real expertise, deeply understand a market, and want to create quality content." 🚀 Before seeking capital, validate the business A community of entrepreneurs building with AI as leverage — no startup hype, with a focus on what works.

This vision aligns with the current context where artificial intelligence is drastically compressing the time and cost of bringing software products to market. As a result, B2B companies no longer compete solely on features, but struggle to stand out in a deafening noise. According to Phan, "every marketing manager or growth leader I speak with says the same thing: AI is commoditizing software and flooding every category with new products, features, and launches. It's incredibly crowded and noisy. That's why B2B buyers turn to channels like LinkedIn, a creator's Substack, or a YouTube podcast to discover new products and tools."

According to the TechCrunch report, Passionfroot increased its revenue 13-fold in the last year and has onboarded clients such as ElevenLabs, Figma, Replit, Framer, and Gamma. The startup claims to have paid at least $10 million to creators on its platform over the past 18 months. Since its last funding round in 2024, the company has launched an AI agent called Zest, which helps brands create, execute, and monitor campaign performance. Passionfroot states that Zest can also help companies find suitable creators both on and off the platform that align with their marketing strategy.

The startup uses a proprietary creator graph based on data about the reach and performance of thousands of campaigns, in addition to a wallet that companies can use to pay creators worldwide and measure their expenses. Passionfroot's Series A round also saw participation from existing investors Creandum, Supernode Global, and s16vc. According to TechCrunch, the company has raised over $21 million in total across its three rounds since 2022. This operation comes at a time when creator platforms like Substack and Beehiiv are helping creators find better monetization opportunities.

Beehiiv launched a new community and ad marketplace last week, while Substack has introduced exclusive subscriber benefits within newsletters. The entry of Insight Partners —a firm with operational muscle more typical of enterprise SaaS than experimental marketing— sends a strong message: the B2B creator marketing category is becoming institutionalized. For procurement and marketing operations teams, this means vendor stability and long-term contracts, two variables that carry weight as creator budgets begin to grow. 1. Evaluate creator marketing as a strategic, not tactical, channel If your B2B startup competes in a space where AI is commoditizing functionalities, brand recognition through authoritative voices can be your competitive advantage.

B2B creators often operate with audiences of a few thousand, but with purchasing authority that multiplies the value of each impression. 2. Consider specialized marketplaces instead of manual outreach Passionfroot's marketplace model changes the workflow: instead of searching for creators agency by agency or through cold contacts and managing contracts manually, a platform centralizes discovery, negotiation, and campaign management.