Founded by Google AdMob and Yahoo alums, Glystn is a tool for content creators that allows them to engage with followers, gather insights and read/answer comments from multiple social media platforms all in one place. The startup announced the public launch of the web app as well as $4 million in seed funding.
The seed round was led by Eniac Ventures, Hannah Grey VC and Future Perfect Ventures. Glystn is also backed by angels Michael Spiegelman, Netflix’s VP of content and business product innovation, and Craig Sherman, managing director of Meritech.
“We really believe that Glystn and their multi-platform creator analytics is building that infrastructure and platform to solve the problem in this next phase of growth, customer acquisition, brand awareness and authenticity in the coming years,” Jessica Peltz-Zatulove, partner at Hannah Grey, told TechCrunch.
Glystn, dubbed a “community engagement engine,” uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to scan thousands of comments and threads from Discord and YouTube and categorizes them, giving influencers the ability to learn what the trending topics are within their community. Users have access to insights and analytics, such as top messages, repeat engagers and trending segments or videos.
Notably, influencers can individually and bulk respond to subscribers, sending customized responses to multiple followers that comment about the same topic.
However, co-founder and CEO Ethan Fassett told us, “We do not enable creators to simply message their entire communities in mass direct replies… this keeps messaging targeted to relevant recipients at all times.”
Creators can also invite followers to their Discord, launch polls and more.
Image Credits: Glystn
Currently, the platform only integrates across Discord and YouTube—at least for now. However, the company plans to add others soon, Fassett explained, who previously worked at Yahoo as a senior product manager. Fassett declined to name which social media platforms it plans to add.
If the platform manages to combine most of the popular platforms like Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, we could see this being a relevant tool for creators. Influencers are increasingly relying on multiple social media channels to engage with audiences and earn enough revenue. YouTube ad revenue — which declined 2.6% year over year — arguably isn’t enough on its own for full-time creators to comfortably make a living. YouTube recently lowered the requirements for its YouTube Partner Program, giving smaller creators (500 subs or more) access to monetization tools.
The recent funding will mainly go toward the product, which will eventually adopt a tiered subscription model for solo creators, larger creators (over one million followers) and brands. Glystn is currently offering a free trial to users.
Founded in 2021 by Fassett and co-founder Michael Rowehl, former director of technology at Google AdMob, Glystn has over 20 pilot partners, including Louis Weisz, Steve Mould, EmperorLemon, AJ Rafael, Podcast Junkies, RollingLive Studios and Fox Sports, among others.
Weisz, a YouTuber with nearly 730,000 subscribers and over 4,000 Discord members, spoke with TechCrunch about Glystn, expressing how connected he feels to his followers since using the platform. From a brand perspective, Weisz also mentioned how helpful Glystn is for sponsors to get a better idea of the target audience and what products they’ll respond to.
“The biggest time save is how easy it is to see what your audience is talking about on the whole at a glance,” Weisz said. “[Glystn] is a way to get a hold of your audience in real-time as opposed to just making assumptions based on what videos your audience clicks on.”
Updated 6/15/23 at 11:30 a.m. ET with the correction to launch date (it launched today) and removal of the statement that the total funding raised was $4.75 million.