Social commerce platform Millions is looking to change the way athletes at the professional and collegiate levels use their name, image and likeness to make money.
The startup closed its first round of funding, amounting to $10 million Canadian ($7 million), about three years ago, and shared the pitch deck it used in the round with Business Insider.
The idea for Millions came about during the pandemic when former boxing gym owner Matt Whittaker heard from boxers looking to sell their merchandise online and thought an e-commerce platform could help them.
“We decided to help out our friends and build a little e-commerce platform for boxers,” Matt Whittaker, CEO and co-founder of Millions, told BI.
Then, while developing Millions, Whittaker noticed a rise in UFC watch parties and celebrities like video podcaster Joe Rogan, which inspired the company to add streaming and personalized video components to the platform.
Athletes and event promoters can not only sell merchandise on the platform, but also host livestreams and watch parties, and sell personalized videos.
“Millions is an e-commerce and streaming platform built for athletes to connect with their fans,” Whittaker said. “As part of the streaming platform, hundreds of events use Millions each month to host pay-per-views. So it's the elevator pitch, e-commerce and streaming for athletes and sports.”
Millions is bringing together services offered by platforms such as personalized video company Cameo, live-streaming platform Twitch and e-commerce company Shopify for athletes.
“If you're an athlete, a sports team, a gym or an event promoter, you can use Millions as a one-stop shop rather than using four different platforms,” he said.
One month after release In April 2021, Millions welcomed about 300 combat sports athletes to its platform. The company said the platform currently has profiles of more than 10,000 athletes, including mixed martial artists such as Valentina Shevchenko and Bryce Mitchell, as well as UFC announcer Bruce Buffer. Buffer joined Millions' co-founders “after seeing a pre-launch demo of the product,” the company said.
The company launched in September 2021 with a seed funding round led by venture firm Volition Capital and with participation from angel investors. The company said it has not needed any outside funding since then.
Whittaker shared key slides from the presentation Millions used in its initial fundraising round, which the company has since updated to remove some of the financial information, including revenue and sales targets, year-over-year growth rates and the number of profiles created.
Whittaker said one of the key selling points for investors is the platform's “network effect.”
“More athletes mean more fans, and more athletes and fans mean more content,” he said, adding that “there are multiple revenue streams and teams are growing globally.”
Below are the 29 key presentation slides that Millions used to raise their $7 million seed round.
