YouTube, Google execs join $2.1m round of Indonesian influencer marketplace

Current and former executives of YouTube, Facebook, and Google have participated in a US$2.1m seed round of BintanGo, an Indonesia-based startup that provides tech and business solutions for digital content creators.

The names of these investors, however, were not disclosed.

BintanGo co-founders Jason Lee and Oktorika Mandasari / Photo credit: BintanGo

The latest funding was led by Investible and eWTP Tech Innovation Fund with participation from Farquhar, Plug and Play, Aksara, Redbadge Pacific, Moonshot Ventures, Mulia Sky Capital, and United Creative.

This follows BintanGo’s US$500,000 pre-seed round in June 2021, which was backed by Flash Ventures.

BintanGo was launched in September 2021 as a SaaS-like platform that provides productivity and monetization tools as well as financial solutions for digital content creators to help them manage, simplify, and grow their businesses.

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“Creators are the new MSMEs in Indonesia,” said BintanGo co-founder and CEO Jason Lee in a statement. Lee also co-founded CoHive, Indonesia’s largest co-working space.

“In Indonesia, they are classified under the informal worker segment and hence do not have the same privileges as employees in terms of financing and credit with banking institutions,” he added.

BintanGo believes that the creator space taps into many unexplored opportunities due to Indonesia’s massive digital consumption. Since its launch, the company has onboarded over 10,000 creators, whose total earnings exceeded US$150,000 in the past three months.