Why Startup Is Pivoting From Social Media, and From Touchdown to Zeen

Touchdown, a social collaging app that turned a favourite amongst Gen Z customers, is making a pivot.

The startup is rebranding to Zeen and concentrating on content material creators as its core person base. Zeen is providing these creators the flexibility to make shoppable collages.

“We saved seeing this habits of individuals wanting to buy from one another’s collages, and style was at all times the largest vertical on Touchdown,” Zeen cofounder Miri Buckland advised Enterprise Insider.

Like all social media platform nowadays — simply take a look at any TikTok or Instagram put up that features an outfit — Buckland stated the remark sections on Touchdown posts had been flooded with questions like “The place did you get that gown?”

Whereas some individuals (myself included) used Touchdown to create digital collages with out clothes or merchandise, Buckland stated the overwhelming use case was outfit planning and style temper boarding.

Zeen, the startup’s new product, is doubling down on this.

The net-only instrument lets customers design collages by dropping in on-line purchasing hyperlinks or importing photographs. Creators also can embody internet affiliate marketing hyperlinks, like from ShopMy or LTK. Then, creators can save a picture or a video of the collage to share on platforms like Substack, Instagram, and TikTok.

“What we’re constructing with Zeen could be very strictly a instrument and a utility,” Buckland stated. “We’re not constructing a full social platform.”

Pivoting is par for the course for startups — and it is not Zeen’s first time doing so. The startup initially centered on inside design with Touchdown earlier than increasing into broader classes like imaginative and prescient boards or fandom artwork. Zeen shut down Touchdown in September.

The startup has cash within the financial institution to again its pivot, too.

Final 12 months, Zeen secured one other $2.5 million in funding led by enterprise capital agency Stellation Capital, bringing the startup’s complete funding up to now to $9 million, Buckland advised BI.

Constructing for the creator financial system

Creators typically have a sturdy stack of inventive instruments they use to make content material. In the event that they’re video creators, perhaps that is modifying instruments like CapCut. For others, it may very well be Canva, Adobe, or photo-editing instruments like VSCO.

Zeen desires to be a part of creators’ tech stacks for making visible, shoppable content material.

A number of of Zeen’s early customers are Substack e-newsletter creators, significantly within the style and life-style class. As an example, Erika Veurink, who writes a style Substack referred to as “Lengthy Dwell” with 28,000 subscribers, has used Zeen for in-newsletter collages of furnishings and clothes. Veurink is an advisor to Zeen.

Aditi Shah, a Peleton teacher and creator, has additionally been utilizing Zeen on her Substack “Work in Progress” to showcase her favourite magnificence merchandise of the month.

With Zeen, e-newsletter creators can earn cash in the event that they use affiliate hyperlinks. When importing affiliate hyperlinks right into a Zeen collage, the platform will generate an inventory of the merchandise and hyperlinks for creators to repeat and paste into their newsletters.

Zeen’s premium tier ($6 monthly) lets creators bulk-upload merchandise from their ShopMy Collections, and unlocks limitless use of instruments like one which removes the background of product photographs and watermarks.

Whereas a lot of Zeen’s early adopters are Substackers, the startup is “platform agnostic” and geared toward creators utilizing any e-newsletter instrument (comparable to Beehiiv) or social platform (like Instagram and TikTok). Creators can export collages to suit Instagram tales and export video variations of the collage for vertical video feeds.

“The thought is, can we take what our creators are actually good at, which is that this curation and merchandising of merchandise, after which mechanically give them one thing that enables them to have a content material sort that competes on a video-first platform,” Zeen cofounder Ellie Buckingham stated.