Sponsored Content

Meet Trufan, The New Platform Celebrities & Big Brands Are Using to Reward Their Top Fans

Courtesy of Trufan

In the last year there has been more money spent on advertising through social media (influencer marketing, paid advertising) than on traditional media outlets like television, radio and print. However, brands and influencers continue to waste millions of marketing dollars on social advertising which fails to reach the correct audience for their objective.

Enter, Trufan, a SaaS company, founded by two of Canada's top young entrepreneurs, Swish Goswami and Aanikh Kler, who were both inducted into Canada's Top 20 under 20 a few years ago. The company's web platform uses a proprietary algorithm to help some of the world's biggest brands and influencers identify and reward their top fans on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Trufan users will be able to highlight their most passionate, influential and trending fans to be able to directly reward and segment them using various filters.

Swish came up with the idea for Trufan near the end of 2017 after Mark Zablow (CEO, Cogent Marketing) asked him if he had a tool that could help NBA All-Star Chris Paul determine who his most engaged fans in Houston were.

Trufan entered private beta on November 15, giving beta access to about 70 influencers and brands that will be able to see their most engaged and influential followers off Twitter. Among the shortlist of 70 are high profile celebrities like Cameron Dallas and Kevin Hart and powerhouse brands like K-Swiss, 100 Thieves, UFC, and Western Union.

The platform aims to help its customers build a direct relationship with their top advocates. This direct access to an engaged or influential audience can help users directly sell to their top fans, set up local events, build influencer lists, structure retargeting campaigns, and most importantly, build a loyal community. Customers will also be able to request CSV files with the top fans of their competitor which they can plug back into existing social media platforms to retarget via advertisements.

The company just raised over $500,000 CAD in a second pre-seed round from several investors including Kyle Kuzma (Los Angeles Lakers forward), Davon Reed (Indiana Pacers guard), Eagle Rock Wealth Management, Manny Padda (Canada's Angel Investor of the Year), Michele Romanow (CEO, Clearbanc) and Jason Robins (CEO, DraftKings).

On the recent raise, CEO Swish Goswami said: "We were fortunate to have attention from several venture firms but actively chose to raise from angels that we knew could benefit from our product and contribute something more than just capital."

CMO Tim Will Hyde believes that "as the vanity metric and organic reach of "followers' decreases it will become more important for brands and social influencers to build engaged communities and enrich the relationship between themselves and their following."

Trufan is based out of Vancouver and is going through The League of Innovators incubator, set up by Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes.