Sam Blumenthal

Because ecommerce is such a big market, there have been many attempts to do pieces of what Swaypay is going. There are platforms and agencies like Tribe that match influencers with brands, and there’s a growing number of alternative payments solutions that offer customers a different way to pay at checkout. No one currently does both, and that’s... See more

Founded by Zhang, an early TikTok investor in 2017, Shop LIT Live received a $6 million seed round led by CRCM Ventures in April 2021. It currently has slightly under 100,000 monthly active users, over 10,000 weekly active users and “thousands” of daily active users, said Zhang. Month-to-month user numbers are growing by 40%, he said. The platform... See more

Once creators have earned consumers’ attention in a crowded bar called Twitch or Facebook, BYOA is the creator version of: “let’s get out of here, I know a spot😉”.  OnlyFans has grown on the back of Reddit as a free marketing channel, where adult content creators market themselves through popular R-rated subreddits. Reddit itself is not conducive... See more

Many DeFi advocates anticipate a future world of peer-to-peer uncollateralized lending on blockchains, allowing crypto holders to lend and cut out fees charged by banks for credit scoring, monitoring and payment. Good luck with that. Fintech lending holds some clues since the industry uses AI tools to make uncollateralized lending decisions, and... See more