Rahul, a tech entrepreneur in Bangalore, built a sophisticated blockchain product that raised $10 million. But the marketing team couldn't sell it.
So he took over marketing and tried creator marketing. A few collaborations worked surprisingly well. The company noticed and gave him a budget.
Now he needed partners who could put it to work. He tried several agencies. None could reliably execute his campaigns at the scale he needed.
The problem Rahul faced then still defines creator marketing today.
Rahul walked away from a leadership role in a funded company to build something of his own. Bhawana chose to take the leap with him.
Together, they decided to bet on creator marketing. They knew the industry was broken. They believed it could be better.
They thought the answer was a Creator Marketplace.
They built ryme.ai, a creator marketing marketplace. And it grew.
From the outside, it looked like everything was working.
Brands kept increasing budgets. More creators joined. More campaigns were launched. But satisfactory results didn't follow.
The marketplace could connect brands and creators.
But every collaboration needed tailored execution. And that didn't scale.
They asked the industry how to solve it. The answer surprised them.
They refused to accept that this was simply how the industry worked.
They wanted to fix it at the root.
Rahul and Bhawana went back to the drawing board.
They knew what they didn't want to build.
They still didn't know what they should build.