Fanhouse was built by creators, for creators (and they mean it)

Rosie Nguyen isn’t your typical founder of a startup. The Instagram grid is a perfect representation of the two aspects of who she is: In one post, she’s live on CNBC protesting against Apple’s fees for developers. In the second image, she’s sitting on a floor covered in wood with the caption “day without sex, 89 years old lying on the ground, so I can feel the hard wood beneath my feet.” Then, in the next post she’s sharing her front-page photo within The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Nguyen serves as the Chief Marketing Officer at Fanhouse Fanhouse, the creator-based platform for monetization that is competing with Patreon and OnlyFans. However, in the same time she’s creating Fanhouse and establishing the career of a creator of content. On the internet, Nguyen is known as jasminericegirl when she streams games such as Valorant via Twitch or tweeting raunchy jokes to her 157,000 twitter followers.

“I am an artist by nature and will always be. And just being a founder does not mean that I’m not an artist,” Nguyen said. She views these two sides of her character as complementary and not in conflict with each other, orin the worst case scenario — not professional. “It’s something positive that truly is in sync and I believe an investor who is a smart one will recognize this.”

In the end, Nguyen was on the right track. Fanhouse has just received a $20 million Series A round by Andreessen Horowitz. it is expected to hit the threshold of $10 million in creator payments within just two years. The creators of the platform include The Chainsmokers (who are also pre-seed investors), Andrea Botez, Yoshi Sudarso and many others.

It’s not uncommon to have to have a YouTube celebrity or TikTok celebrity to become the main face for a startup in the creator economy However, usually when this occurs, it’s with well-known, high-earning people seeking new business opportunities. For instance, MrBeast and creative Juice or David Dobrik of the Dispo. As a new, young creator, Nguyen knows what is the “creator middle-class” individuals who earn some income from social media, but who aren’t taking advantage of it — is in need of right now to build their business.

“I have met Khoi [LeMy co-founder via Twitter and we became best buddies,” Nguyen told TechCrunch. “I told him that things like, “Official Fans is a joke and I’m not happy and want to quit it but I’m still in need of cash … or like, Twitch takes 50% of the subscriptions it’s exhausting.”

An Stanford student with an experience in entrepreneurship, Le told Nguyen that together they could develop her ideal monetization platform which is why they began to experiment with concepts that would eventually develop into Fanhouse. The team of three founders is joined by the Chief Technology Officer Amy Shen, who brings expertise in engineering from Robinhood as well as Google.

“I had been one of those people who didn’t know if they had a dream job” Nguyen said. Growing up in a poor household, her main goal was to earn enough money to lift their family away from the slums. When she completed her studies at Penn State University’s Wharton School, she took an investment banking position for the sole reason of a pay raise. Then, she discovered herself working all evening to develop the concept of Fanhouse.

“I realized that I do really have the dream career and that’s what it is,” she said. “I would not say that my obsession is entrepreneurial, but my love is helping creators of content.”

In contrast to OnlyFans, Fanhouse does not permit NSFW content. There are too many hoops to go through for credit card companies and fundraising. Nguyen does not oppose the concept, but she believes there must be “a more legal and societal change” before it could be a possibility for Fanhouse. OnlyFans had its own hiccup in the past year, when it almost eliminated explicit content due to the shifting guidelines of credit card companies.

Fans pay a monthly cost for access to exclusive content, that includes text, images videos, audio and text uploads. Fanhouse has also recently added its integration to Spotify which means, for instance that if you’re among the most avid listeners to The Chainsmokers You can sign up to their music on Fanhouse at no cost.

However, what distinguishes the platform is its dedication to protecting creators. This is, naturally connected to Nguyen’s personal experiences in the public sphere.

“On Twitter, I’ll receive unwanted dick pictures, file them and never receive any response on Twitter,” Nguyen said. She also remembers receiving threats from members of OnlyFans. “All these issues that I have on platforms, I decided to fix them.”

As Nguyen posted via the Fanhouse account the previous day “just an opportunity to remind you that when someone leaks private information from Fanhouse, not only can our team of support track who did it, be fined and then deactivate them and take action to DMCA the website. We’ve removed entire discord servers and subreddits in the past. Don’t mess with the creators of our community.”

Nguyen claims that Fanhouse can take off leaks and discover who was the leaker because every upload by creators is watermarked. Every fan has their own watermark, which means that when they leak information, Fanhouse can trace the leak back to their own account.

All accounts on Fanhouse must be linked to a telephone number. If users are banned on one occasion the ban is lifted, they are unable to create another account on Fanhouse with the same number.

When it comes to payment, Fanhouse takes 10% of the creator’s earnings, which is not much in comparison to OnlyFans 20 percent as well as Twitch’s 50% split. Although it’s a new app that has only 25 members on its team, Fanhouse has already stood against Apple with regard to its 30% share for in-app purchases.

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