Insense Stock Represents the Short-Form Video Revolution
Founded in 2015, Insense is a platform that allows brands to create custom assets and run influencer campaigns at scale, such as for short-form videos. This is definitely a red-hot category because of the growth and dominance social media sites like Snap (NYSE:SNAP), Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), TikTok and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB). Well, interestingly enough, you can also invest in Insense stock.
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How? The company is currently running an equity crowdfunding campaign on Republic. So far, it has raised $25,924 from 63 investors.
So let’s get some background on this startup. The founders include Danil and Anton Saliukov, who are brothers that grew up in the Russian city of Ufa (Alexander Fedorenko soon joined them as another founder). Before starting Insense, Anton operated an advertising agency and Danil was a content manager at Qiwi (NASDAQ:QIWI).
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But the brothers got the entrepreneurial itch. They saw that they could leverage their online marketing experience and they also had first-hand experience of some of the pain points, such as with Instagram.
So, they set out to create a service to provide more transparency, better ad metrics and an easier process for connecting with influencers and professional creators.
How It Works
There are five main steps when using Insense. Here’s a look:
Brief: You will fill out a form, which will include the campaign goals, the content needed and so on. Insense will then review it and provide feedback. After this, the brief will be sent to creators (there are over 35,000 in the networks).
Responses: In some cases, a creator will provide a proposal within a few hours. Although, for the most part, there should be enough responses within about three days. Keep in mind that there are no middlemen, such as agencies.
Chat: As you cull through the responses, you can then setup chat sessions, which are integrated in a centralized profile that helps to manage all the communications.
Content: In several days, you will then start getting samples of creative content.
Publish: Once you have the content you like, Insense has tools to get distribution. For example, there is a Facebook Ads Manager integration, in which you can run targeted ads.
Of course, when it comes to evaluating Insense stock, the key is the traction. Then, how has the company done so far? According to the investor profile, the year-over-year growth is at 2x and the gross sales are estimated to hit $3.8 million by the end of 2020. The company makes money from two main sources: a content production fee, which can be up to 30% of the campaign, and there is a premium monthly subscription that has three pricing tiers.
Consider that there are over 30 clients with 65 brands. Some include Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), Nestlé (OTCMKTS:NSRGY), Uber (NYSE:UBER) and L’Oreal (OTCMKTS:LRLCY). Insense notes that its approach is four times faster in delivering video assets and ten times cheaper than traditional studios.
Bottom Line on Insense Stock
For the crowdfunding round, the valuation for Insense is set at $10 million and the minimum investment amount is only $100. The company is also offering a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) instrument to investors. This means that equity is not allocated until there is a “trigger event,” such as an acquisition or IPO.
However, on such an event, the investor will get a 20% discount to the valuation.
But as with any early stage startup investment, there are considerable risks. No doubt, the online marketing category is intensely competitive, with operators like Vidmob, Animoto, Genero and Vidsy.co. Moreover, it is difficult to build a thriving marketplace, as there needs to be significant scale and a balance for the buyers and sellers.
In other words, before making an investment in Insense stock, it’s important to do your own research and analysis.
Tom Taulli (@ttaulli) is an advisor and author of various books and online courses about technology, including Artificial Intelligence Basics, The Robotic Process Automation Handbook and Learn Python Super Fast. He is also the founder of WebIPO, which was one of the first platforms for public offerings during the 1990s. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
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