It feels like short video clips of podcasts, songs, and movies are suddenly all over social media right now, and that’s no coincidence. Brands are finding this format to be a very cost-effective way to market their products.
Brands and marketing agencies often outsource to independent creators the process of finding the most engaging 30 to 90 seconds of a video, known as “clipping.” But managing these gig workers and determining exactly where to distribute their videos poses major operational challenges.
Clouded, a 2024 startup powered by a16z’s Speedrun accelerator, is building an infrastructure that automatically handles both the delivery strategy and the logistics of the clipping process. The platform leverages a network of over 100,000 gig creators to edit your clips and uses AI to determine the best social media platform and the best target audience to promote.
Clouted co-founder and CEO Justin Banusing first applied the company’s technology to his personal passion of creating electronic music and festivals. The long-time DJ uses Cloouted to promote and grow &Friends, a Manila-based electronic dance music and pop culture festival that currently attracts more than 20,000 people.
Crowted’s approach is attracting investor interest. The startup just announced a $7 million seed round led by Slow Ventures with participation from Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, Peak XV’s Surge, and others.
Unlike purely volume-based marketing tools, Clouted isn’t just about chasing high clip counts. Instead, its AI runs continuous test loops, experimenting with different formats and channel strategies to find out what actually performs best. The practical effect is that each campaign becomes more targeted and efficient because the system accumulates data about what works.
Cloud-enabled functionality is similar to penetration testing for social media algorithms. This concept is borrowed from cybersecurity, where researchers investigate a system’s defenses by attempting to defeat them. Rather than looking for security flaws, Clouted’s AI and its network of creators test thousands of different clipping and distribution approaches to identify what makes content go viral.
“As a result, every campaign Clouted runs makes the next campaign faster, smarter, and more effective,” Banusing told TechCrunch. “The platform will learn which formats will win, which audiences will convert, and which distribution channels will compound over time.”
While Clouted competes directly with similar startups like Overlap AI in the automated clipping space, Banusing said the company is eyeing larger marketing infrastructure players, particularly CreatorIQ and Hightouch, as ultimate competitors. High Five recently surpassed $100 million in ARR. This suggests that the space for enterprise marketing infrastructure is large and still growing. That’s the market that Clouted is ultimately aiming for.
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