Pico is a startup based in NYC that helps online creators and media companies make money and manage their customer data.

$6.5M financing
The company recently completed a $6.5M financing led by Ann Lai at Bullpen Capital which brings Pico’s total funding to $10 million.  Precursor Ventures, Stripe, BloombergBeta and Village Global have also invested.

Solving two problems that creators have

• Co-founder and CEO Nick Chen said Pico helps creators with their two biggest problems — “how to make money more easily and how to get to know your audience better.”  According to Chen, Pico helps them gain control over the two most important assets of a media company which are “your brand and the relationship to your audience.”
   
• Co-founder and President Jason Bade emphasized “the power of our CRM to help creators understand their audience” as the most significant upgrade to the Pico platform. He suggests that the upgraded platform “makes Pico the operating system for the creator economy.”

The Pico toolkit
Pico’s wide range of solutions for creators include landing pages, on-site popups for email capture, paid newsletters, subscription paywalls, paid memberships with tiers and benefits, recurring and one-time donations, and online course revenue tools for on-demand and live streaming.

According to the company, its customer count increased close to 5X in the past year and said that customers are “making tens of millions of dollars per year through us.”

Customers include The Colorado Sun, Defector Media and The Generalist. 

Monetization strategy
Pico charges its customers 5% of revenue for use of their platform, but is exploring different pricing systems.  It has hired Rodolphe Ködderitzsch from YouTube who was the global head of partner sales there, and appears to be looking at adopting more SaaS-style pricing models.

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