As our Creator Economy Database shows, influencer marketing is a crowded field. The two-year old startup Howl hopes to stand out by focusing on a variety of collaborative tools on its marketplace for creators and retailers, including Samsung and Sephora. The startup has raised $27 million in Series A funding led by venture firm Highland Capital Partners, The Information is first to report.
“There are dozens of products that are mostly creator databases. They give you access to a list of partners, but it ends there,” Li Haslett Chen, Howl’s CEO and founder, a former McKinsey consultant, said in an interview. Howl, instead, matches retailers with creators, and surfaces information such as real-time sales data and products a retailer wants a creator to market. Advisers to the company include David Fischer, the former chief revenue officer at Meta Platforms, and former Slack CMO Bill Macaitis.
