Antler Investor Memo Series: Pactify makes it easier to manage and empower creators

Early stage investment company Antler Australia recently backed a new cohort of startups as part of its ongoing program to build great local tech companies.

Startup Daily is sharing the details of each venture in the “Antler Investor Memos” series, which is designed to give you a quick, sharp understanding of the startups and people involved, with many seeking follow up capital following Antler’s initial pre-seed investment.

Company: Pactify

Founded: February 2024
Stage: Pre-seed
Founders: Rahul Moudgil (CEO) and Nagendra Yadav (CTO)
Current investors: Antler
Currently raising: Yes

The Business

The creator economy has seen explosive growth over the past two decades, evolving into a USD $250 billion global industry today and set to grow to half a trillion dollars by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs. However, this growth has come with significant challenges, particularly surrounding effective and efficient creator and talent management.

This problem space is marked by a lack of cohesion, standardised practices, and regulatory oversight, leading to numerous issues in how deals are created, managed, and executed. The average talent manager can spend up to three months to finalise a deal for their creator and can spend up to $3000 in legal fees alone.

Pactify’s digital SaaS solution addresses these critical pain points of disjointed processes, murky regulatory waters, and inefficient communication that talent managers face daily.

Rahul Moudgil, Pactify’s CEO and former University of Cambridge student, and Nagendra Yadav, the CTO with over 10+ years of experience as a successful founder, are building a comprehensive agreement creator and CRM platform that minimises administrative burdens, complex workflows, and legal overheads to allow managers to focus on nurturing and growing talent and for creators to focus on their core offering.

By leveraging their backgrounds in licensing, Rahul’s experience as a founder in London, and exposure to complex international deals, they have created a platform that not only meets current market needs but is scalable for future growth.

Antler investment thesis

“Pactify stands out as a pioneer in the talent management space, offering a solution crucial for the rapidly evolving creator economy,” says Mike Abbott, Partner at Antler in Australia.

“As creator management grows increasingly complex with creators taking on more direct control over their brands, like ventures such as Prime and Mr. Beast’s chocolates, Pactify’s platform addresses these challenges head-on.”

“Rahul and Nagendra’s deep expertise in IP licensing and startup development, combined with their platform’s early traction, provides a competitive advantage and sets them up for rapid growth and significant impact.”

“Over the course of the DD process, we were impressed by the team’s drive and hustle, and have developed high conviction in their ability to deeply engage with customers and sell their solution.”

Traction/milestones

Pactify has demonstrated impressive traction and market validation since its inception in February, fast-tracking its journey to reaching a wide network of talent managers.

Rahul and Nagendra successfully launched the agreement creator tool’s MVP and opened it up to various talent and agencies. They onboarded three paying MVP AI agreement creator users to validate pain points in just two weeks. They then received crowd-sourced feedback from over 50 talent managers and 1,000 full-time content creators, iterating based on their needs to prepare for their Beta release in November.

Their user growth has been swift, securing 20 Letters of Intent from prominent global talent management agencies within the first two months since their MVP launch and garnering significant interest from large creators.

Finding distribution mechanisms to be a core driver for their growth, they have made numerous experiments globally in order to ensure efficient user growth and traction when they go-to-market as well as establishing strategic partnerships with four leading influencer marketing agencies.

Latest funding

Pre-Seed from Antler

Use of Funds

The funds from this raise and their subsequent pre-seed will enable growth and further market penetration. A significant portion of the funds will go towards enhancing the product, incorporating advanced features such as AI-driven analytics and seamless integration capabilities to further streamline administrative processes.

As the platform grows, Pactify plans to continue expanding its headcount, bringing in top-tier talent in areas like product, marketing, and customer success to maintain a competitive edge. This will allow them to execute marketing campaigns and partnerships to accelerate user acquisition and brand visibility, whilst enhancing their operational infrastructure to ensure they can handle increased demand and deliver a superior user experience.

The founders say

“Our vision for the future is to become the go-to platform for talent management across all creative industries whether it be artists, musicians, athletes and more who all have fundamentally similar workflows and pain points that we’re solving, as well as creators of all sizes knowing their value in this vibrant industry and managing themselves with Pactify,” says Rahul.

“In the creator economy we see today, the higher volume of deals, increased complexity, and diverse revenue streams demand a solution like Pactify to streamline and manage these multifaceted transactions efficiently so creators don’t lose out like they currently are.”

“Antler has been instrumental in getting Pactify past the starting line, helping us grow and scale our vision beyond their financial investment.

“Their network has provided a wealth of invaluable connections with industry experts, mentors, and potential partners, helping us refine our product and strategy. Additionally, their rigorous validation processes have ensured our business model is robust and scalable, positioning us strongly for future growth.”

What’s next?

Antler, a global early-stage VC, is revealing its latest investments in ambitious Australian founders and startups. With over 100 investments in early-stage companies, Pactify is one of its most recent portfolio companies.