Uber. Airbnb. DoorDash.
Few tech startups have soared as high and as fast as these powerhouses, each of which achieved billion-dollar “unicorn” status in just a handful of years…
Their founders’ genius was to take aim at large, existing markets and blow them up…
Not just with cutting-edge tech and slick apps, but with people.
In a word, the core strategy of these companies was “democratization.”
They took industries — hospitality, transportation, and food delivery — that had considerable barriers to entry and they tore them down.
It became possible for everyday people with a spare room in their house, an open back seat in their car, or some free time to “dash” food around town easily to earn considerable side income.
The “gig economy” they helped birth is now estimated to contribute more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy, with some 57 million Americans taking part.
And with inflation and housing costs eating up ever larger shares of Americans’ take-home pay, those numbers are likely only to grow.
Visionary investors — from the legendary Sequoia Capital to Jeff Bezos to actor and sometimes venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher — who got in on the ground floor of these companies grew their money faster than they could ever count it.
Uber went from a 2011 valuation of $60 million to a 2015 valuation of $51 billion…
Airbnb took off from $2.4 million in 2009 to $25.5 billion by 2015…
And DoorDash grew from $73.5 million in 2014 to a very impressive $16 billion by mid 2020.
And that was before all these companies went public.
Again, the key to their success was to disrupt large, existing markets by making it possible for everyday people to tap into them.
Just last year, another “democratizing” disruptor entered the arena — not in transportation or lodging or food delivery, but in digital advertising.
Thumzup Media (TZUP) is taking aim at a market that Statista valued at $271 billion in the US in 2023, and that Statista expects will top $400 billion in 2028.
Right now, digital advertising is dominated by industry giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft…
Social media platforms mop up their fair share too, with Meta (Facebook/Instagram), YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and X (formerly Twitter) leading the pack.
A portion of digital ad spending – estimated to reach $24 billion by the end of 2024 — does go to people and not mega corporations, but only to high-flying “influencers.”
Until now.
Thumzup makes it possible to get paid to post on social media — but not just for users with top-tier good looks or athleticism, or luxurious lifestyles… not just for the Kardashians of the world…
Thumzup makes it possible for everyday customers to become “micro-influencers” by creating social media posts and sharing them with friends and followers…
In this way, it is creating an entirely new market.
Here’s how it works…
Thumzup recruits businesses — local businesses but also brands that aren’t tied to particular addresses — to sign up for its app and start advertising campaigns.
A business sets an overall budget, the price it would like to pay per post (generally between $10 and $50), and the frequency it will pay an individual creator (per day, per week, only once, etc.).
Everyday social media users sign up for the app, search for businesses in their area (or brands that aren’t tied to particular areas), seek out those businesses, products, or services, and create posts about them for social media.
Thumzup does preliminary screening and quality control (making sure photos are in focus, etc.), adds one or more hashtags (including #ad), and alerts the businesses when posts are ready for approval.
If a business approves a post — and right now, most posts are approved — the Thumzup app posts it to the creator’s Instagram account and the creator gets paid right away via Venmo or PayPal.
Businesses are therefore able to bypass clunky, difficult-to-learn advertising platforms and pay customers directly to advertise their wares.
They’re also able to bypass ever-more-prominent ad blockers.
Right now, Thumzup posts only to Instagram, but it plans to add other platforms such as Facebook and TikTok in the near future.
Thumzup also includes helpful tools for businesses to measure their return on investment (ROI).
Here’s a helpful video of Thumzup founder and CEO Robert Steele showing how the app works:
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Thumzup studied how Uber got off the ground and realized the importance of starting in a concentrated area.
It’s easy to imagine Uber flopping at the outset if there were only a handful of drivers or a handful of would-be passengers…
Nobody would get paid and nobody would catch quick, convenient rides.
By focusing on the San Francisco area, Uber was able to leverage the city’s tech-savvy population and dense urban environment as a proving ground for what would turn into a global phenomenon.
With Thumzup, the risk was twofold: That advertisers would have bad experiences with not enough users to post about their businesses, and that users would have bad experiences with only a small number of advertisers who would pay them.
That’s why Thumzup staked its initial claim in Venice early last year with 50-60 businesses. It then added Santa Monica with another 50-60 businesses…
It has steadily expanded through the greater Los Angeles area and is now in Monrovia, Santa Clarita, Hollywood, Beverly Grove, Cerritos, and more.
It is also reaching into cities such as Seattle and Portland, and has put down roots in New York City and Columbus, Ohio.
The company has now expanded into twelve states.
By the end of 2023, Thumzup had recruited 183 advertisers, and as of October 2024, the company had reached more than 500 advertisers — nearly tripling its advertiser base in just ten months.
Thanks to more than $7 million in proceeds from a recent public offering, TZUP has hatched plans for “an estimated 1,000 percent increase in advertiser base in 2025.” [emphasis added]
The plans include “expanding into new target markets, adding powerful features like an integration with Instagram Reels, enhancing attribution tools, and integrating additional social media platforms.”
Ronen Helman, the owner of an upscale Venice café called Bellissimo, says that “Thumzup is amazing. It’s made a very big impact on Bellissimo and I think it’s the future… It’s like a chain reaction, the minute you post something and it’s viewed by so many locals, it’s what every business owner is looking for.”
In an interview with CBS Los Angeles, Pam Cox, the owner of Hallowed Ground, a store in Marina Del Rey, said her revenue grew by 40 percent in the first five months of using Thumzup.
“Even if they don’t have as many followers, who are their followers? [They] are people who are their friends, who trust them and their opinions, and so that’s more valuable to me than an influencer,” she said.
Thumzup has earned the acclaim of users, too, some of whom are making upwards of $1,000 a month posting about Thumzup brands and businesses.
In the CBS report, Alvina Judkins, a working artist who uses Thumzup as a side hustle, said she “started off making about $50 to $75 a week, and I am up to about $500 a week, but potentially I haven’t even hit half the businesses.”
She said she does it only on the weekends and only “maybe 4 to 6 hours.”
A November 2023 article about Thumzup in Entrepreneur Magazine quotes Thumzup user Jennifer Noble, who heard about the company in April 2023: “She said, ‘Let me look into this.’ Now, she’s making $400 to $800 a month. ‘It depends how much you want to hustle it.’ ”
Thumzup is a revolutionary platform that is already transforming the digital advertising space…
But tech startups flourish or fail based in large part on the merits of their founders.
Thumzup is the brainchild of its visionary founder and CEO, Robert Steele.
Mr. Steele learned computer programming at 8 years old, and by 12, he had bought an Apple II computer and started his first technology company with controllers for the Apple II, which were sold at a local computer store.
In 1980, at age 14, he was featured in the local newspaper as a “young genius” and a “self-taught computer buff.”
Click here for a full-size version.
The article noted that Mr. Steele’s father had introduced him to ham radio operations, and that the younger Steele “developed a logging system to record all ham radio contacts.”
Robert Steele graduated from George Mason University with degrees in electronic engineering and computer science, and went on to co-create one of the first PC-based GIS (Graphical Information Systems), which could edit and maintain utility maps for an entire county.
In 1999, Mr. Steele founded iBrite, which designed groundbreaking mobile software that was eventually used by MapQuest to put maps on a mobile device for the first time.
It was also used to put Microsoft Powerpoint on a Palm mobile device, also for the first time.
Mr. Steele’s leadership experience includes serving as CEO of two publicly traded companies.
The first provided process outsourcing to clients such as Amgen, FedEx, GMAC, and Ecolab, including processing more than $1 billion a year in accounts payable transactions for Ecolab.
The second company developed software that scans the internet for copyright infringement, and that generated more than $1 billion in judgments for copyright holders using this technology.
Mr. Steele has lived in Los Angeles for more than 20 years and is an amateur musician who plays keyboard and guitar.
He started Thumzup because he wanted to help his friends, including fellow musicians, earn side income from social media.
He designed the Thumzup platform himself, and he says he manages the developers on calls every day.
“Thumzup is my baby,” Mr. Steele said in a recent interview.
“I believe that this is going to be a multi-billion-dollar company,” he added, predicting that it will be “one of the next unicorns.”
There are many reasons to believe Thumzup will make the big time…
Perhaps the most important is that people already post on social media about businesses and brands they love, so why not get paid for it?
A video promotion for Thumzup points out that participating local businesses will themselves help market Thumzup by encouraging customers to access the app, create posts about them on social media, and get paid for the favor.
In an interview, Mr. Steel gave the example of a Venice Harley-Davidson dealer that advertised Thumzup at its 40th anniversary event.
Bikers began showing up in the morning and were told they could earn money to post about the event on Instagram…
By the afternoon, Mr. Steele reports that the caterer said, “I wish someone had told me Thumzup was going to be here. We ran out of food.”
The franchise owner said it was the most people he’d ever had at an event like that, and there were so many bikers that it slowed down traffic on the popular Lincoln Boulevard.
The cost to the Harley dealer was only $520, which was after Thumzup’s 30% commission.
According to a Nielsen report which surveyed more than 28,000 respondents in 56 countries, 92 percent of consumers say they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising.
That was the experience of Eric Gray, a street musician who plays jazz music on the boardwalk in Venice.
Mr. Gray makes money by streaming on Spotify and Apple Music, and he relies on traffic from his Instagram to get people there.
As Mr. Steele tells it, Mr. Gray couldn’t find a good way to grow his Instagram following, but since he started using Thumzup to get the word out, his Instagram following has grown more than 20 fold.
Going forward, Thumzup plans to expand to ever more businesses in ever more areas, and the path to do so is wide open.
The company believes it has no direct competitors, and that it truly is a pioneer in democratizing digital advertising; they’re the only company doing what they do.
Eventually, Thumzup hopes to attract very large brands with national footprints, and it’s planning to use artificial intelligence to make that feasible.
The idea will be to have artificial intelligence be responsible for post approval. AI could make sure photos are in focus and well lit, and that they are in fact of a product or service that the participating advertiser offers. AI would also scan the internet to be sure photos are original.
But ultimately, Thumzup’s core function is working against the trend in AI…
Undoubtedly, AI tools will remove a lot of the human effort required for Thumzup to function smoothly.
But as marketing firms move more and more toward AI-generated content, Thumzup will be a real differentiator by serving up authentic, user-generated content.
Robert Steele started Thumzup based on a simple idea: “I thought there must be some way to democratize social media marketing and advertising so that everybody can get a decent amount of money for helping brands that they already love get the exposure and the interest of their personal friends.”
He studied his democratizing, market-disrupting predecessors, heeded their lessons, and is now following in their footsteps.
Footsteps that led Uber to jump from $60 million to $51 billion in five years…
Airbnb to soar from $2.4 million to $25.5 billion in six years…
And DoorDash to rocket from $73.5 million to $16 billion in six years…
With visionary early investors rapidly growing their grubstakes by incredible multiples…
In a year and a half, Thumzup has recruited 320 businesses willing to pay customers directly to help market their products and services… all while concentrating itself geographically.
It is staking its claim of the $271 billion digital advertising market, wrenching it away from the mega corporations that dominate the industry, and passing much of it along to everyday people.
Its founder and CEO is a true innovator with a proven track record of leadership.
Right now, the company is still in its early stages, and investors who join in (the ticker is TZUP) could stand to ride a wave not unlike the early investors in Uber, Airbnb, or Doordash.
If Robert Steele is right, Thumzup will be the future of digital advertising.
Tell your friends about it.
Disclaimer: The owner of Momentum Media LLC owns shares of (TZUP:US) that we purchased in the market on December 5, 2023.
