This Mark Cuban-backed startup is helping creators monetize their audiences

Falon Fatemi first met Mark Cuban in 2011 at South By Southwest, where the two bonded over ideas about untapped opportunities in the tech industry. Though she didn’t initially recognize the Shark Tank star, the two clicked and decided to keep in touch, often catching up whenever Cuban visited the Bay Area.

By 2015, Fatemi, a former Google and YouTube employee, had founded her AI-powered startup, Node.ai, and successfully pitched Cuban to become an early investor.

When Node.ai was acquired by SugarCRM in August 2020, Fatemi didn’t take a vacation. In the height of the pandemic, tuning out traditional media and turning to podcasts and documentaries, she noticed a glaring gap: Creators had no platform where they could truly “control their destiny,” and were instead subject to the whims of the platforms.

That insight sparked her next venture, Fireside, which launched in 2021. After Fatemi secured a term sheet for the company’s first funding round, Cuban, who was reinvesting in her, joined the company as cofounder. Together, they worked closely to iron out Fireside’s business strategy and platform design.

“While I was there early on, on a day-to-day basis, really, it’s her baby now,” says Cuban, who became a billionaire by cofounding and selling Broadcast.com. “I’m just here to provide support.”

Fireside is an end-to-end media platform where creators own their content and connect with their audience. The main draw is the Live Interactive Video community offering, which allows creators to chat with fans on a livestream powered by Fireside’s interactive streaming technology.

“It almost feels like an interactive FaceTime to an audience member,” says Fatemi. “It takes the interactive features of Twitch, Tiktok, or Instagram Live to the next level, but it’s all within a more controlled environment.”

Fireside is like a production studio within an application for creators. On an interactive livestream, creators can have a two-way conversation with their fans, with access to a variety of production tools to screen audience questions, queue audience members, and invite them to join the video.

“The key is that people are not paying for content, they’re paying for access [to the creator],” Fatemi says. “It’s a very low lift way for our partners to deepen their relationship with a global audience, but in a way that feels very intimate and can scale.”

As the company’s focus has transitioned from strategy to execution, Cuban now serves as a strategic advisor, and Fatemi continues as CEO. The platform currently powers over 20 creators’ networks, and fully partners with each creator to help them strategize and scale their business.

Queued up for 2025 includes Michael Mina, celebrity chef and founder of the Mina Group, a restaurant management company operating over 40 restaurants globally, and independent Substack journalist Jessica Reed Kraus, best known for her reporting on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has already begun creating content with Fireside.

They are joining the existing network that includes television host Steve Harvey, former lead FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, narcissism expert Dr. Ramani, and reality show personality Tyler Henry.

Audiences can access content through the Fireside platform, but most consumers enter through the creator’s network portal, which is white-labelled and powered by Fireside. Fatemi says network members spend a minimum of one hour per week on their favorite Fireside powered network.

Creators determine their own prices for their content, and primarily monetize in a few ways: subscriptions, pay-per-view, and brand sponsorships. Fireside has a 80-20 revenue split with partner creators.

Fireside currently has around 30 employees, and has raised $30 million to date, with a direct path to profitability within the next year, according to Fatemi. The company was last valued at $150 million when it raised its Series A.

A shifting media landscape

Social media platforms like Instagram revolutionized content distribution, enabling brands, celebrities, influencers, and IP owners to connect with their audiences more directly. But this new era came with a catch: The platforms retained control over key aspects of the creator-audience relationship—the audience data, analytics, and even monetization strategies.

While individuals now have the resources to create content on social media platforms, (these days, “anybody can be a streamer,” says Cuban), creators are working hard to aggregate an audience that they often don’t own. Those followers remain on the app, and eyeballs are dependent on the whims of social media algorithms.

“We’re going to see a world where talents are just going to distribute content directly to their communities,” Fatemi says. “And Fireside could be one of those platforms that they’re doing that on.”

Meanwhile, users’ desire for authentic, more personalized influencer interactions is here to stay, says creator economy lawyer Tyler Chou. “They want to connect to real people, they want to connect to real stories,” Chou says of consumers.

The push for more personalized connection has largely centered around video livestreams. No surprise there: 28.5% of Internet users reported watching at least one livestream a week in 2023, and most digital platforms already have some version of a live-streaming video feature, ranging from Netflix to Instagram and TikTok.

As creators build these livestream audiences, they’re paying as much attention to engagement as they are audience size.

Fatemi believes that consumers, especially superfans, place their loyalties with their favorite creators, not the platforms they’re on.

“I absolutely think the future is about interaction, ownership, and curation,” she says. “We’re enabling people to really connect at that interactive level, more deeply, and create better content as a result.”

Giving creators control

Fireside accepts under 15 new partner creators every year. Creators must have at least one million in reach across platforms and demonstrate some level of direct audience monetization, such as a paid email newsletter.

“I think the really important signal here is: do they own their audience in any way? Because the algorithms can change tomorrow,” Fatemi says.

Fireside networks with under 10,000 members at a “very low price point” can “easily generate” over $2 million in their first year alone, says Fatemi. Creators often do a free hour-long live show every month, in which top networks can convert $100,000 in recurring revenue from new viewers.

While creators set their own rates, on average, they generate roughly $8 in recurring revenue for each show view (for comparison, on YouTube they can make a maximum of $.06 per view). Audiences also tend to be more long-term focused, with 70% of subscribers to Fireside creators opting for annual subscriptions versus monthly.

Upon partnering with Fireside, creators are fully onboarded, with a playbook designed to align with the creator’s brand and envisioned audience experience. Fireside creates a branded network portal, such as the Steve Harvey Network, integrated with his marketing and branding assets, where fans can access his content and connect to his online events.

“The first 60 days of when someone launches is when we’re most hands on,” Fatemi says. “After that, we’re really acting as strategic advisors and supporting them and helping them grow.”

Creators completely own their audience relationships. For example, when a fan signs up for the Steve Harvey Network, Harvey has access to the consumer’s personal and behavioral data. This means Harvey can directly email fans about giveaways or promotions, for example, or be able to spot signals in his fans’ behavioral data that they would be interested in certain content or consumer products.

Harvey’s network, for example, includes a variety of live, interactive conversations, including Motivated with Steve Harvey, a monthly conversation with audience members who join the stage to receive advice about their businesses, careers, and lives at large. Viewers engage in real time by reacting with a variety of emojis like clapping hands, thumbs up, and hearts, and typing in questions and comments.

A subscription also provides access to monthly sessions hosted by his daughter, Brandi Harvey, and his personal nutrition expert, Dr. Basheerah Ahmad, as well as access to a variety of content and giveaways.

Most of the traffic is driven through the creator’s own branded network portals, such as the Mauricio Umansky Network. These portals are fully powered by Fireside but remain an extension of the creator’s brand.

“Those audiences are coming in through [Umansky] and his network portal,” Fatemi says. “We’re more powering it, so it’s more white labeled in that way.”

While Fireside is an exclusive platform that Fatemi says creators can “graduate into” based on their audience engagement, Chou says her clients are already on a crowded market of platforms helping creators of all sizes own their community and distribution through white-labelling their platform.

She currently recommends her clients to join existing platforms like Mighty Networks and Circle, which she says are accessible to smaller creators and allow community members to interact amongst themselves, without the creator.

Profitability in the future?

Fireside has a 80-20 revenue split with creators. In some cases, Fireside also takes a platform fee, or will take a cut of revenue streams like brand sponsorships they help facilitate.

In 2022, the company acquired Stremium, a streaming platform that operates mobile and connected TV applications, to accelerate the launch of their TV app and second screen experience.

Fireside has raised $30 million to date in two rounds: the seed round was led by Unusual Ventures, and the following Series A was led by PivotNorth Ventures. Fatemi says the company has no plans to raise again, as it has a direct path to profitability within the next year by adding more partners.

Looking ahead, Fatemi says Fireside plans to add partners in new verticals like parenting, as well as new e-commerce and interactive features.

“We are representing where I think the future of entertainment and content creation is going,” Fatemi says, “where creators, not the networks or the platforms, really have the power and control.”