Interview: Jacquelle Horton, Founder/CEO of Fave
Jacquelle Horton is the founder and CEO of Fave, a platform she created to empower the superfan ecosystem. Fave captures and rewards fan activity, and its industry-facing tools allow for creator teams to understand and contact key fans directly based on detailed attributes of their fanship to strengthen their strategies.
Fave recently launched a new feature called FanFinder, which now allows artists to discover and communicate directly with their most engaged fans.
NxtNow Music caught up with Jacquelle for an exclusive interview to discuss the FanFinder feature, how she originally came up with the idea for the Fave platform, her advice for new founders, and more.
Congratulations on your new feature, FanFinder, and the success of the Fave platform overall. Tell us about how FanFinder can be a game changer for artists looking to be more proactive in interacting with their fanbase.
Think about how artists attempt to reach and mobilize their fans now. A social post sent to everyone who’s ever followed them stifled by an algorithm optimizing for the platform’s goals, not the artist’s. It’s impersonal, ineffective, and completely misses the need to target activations to the right fans at the right time. FanFinder is using actual, realtime fan data to make sure that artists can find their true fans no matter where they are and reach them. You can find and target fans based on detailed traits about the way they engage with you as a fan - filter down for heavy concert goers that are new fans of yours to offer a discount on merch at your next show, or hit up influential fans in Paris with large social followings who have been listening to latest single heavily to help you promote the music video launch, or rally cool fan artists to create and share additional lyric music videos. Not only can you announce to the right fans, you can mobilize them to spread the word, take specific actions you need, and buy based on their interests and intensity as a fan.
This could mean anything from exclusive tickets to an upcoming show, participation in a creative campaign, early access to merch, collabs with various fan artists, or invitations to secret activations where fans will be around others just like them. It’s personal and effective and builds a fandom that is lasting.
From the fans’ perspective, how can Fave help them generate revenue utilizing the platform, while also supporting the artists they love?
Fave’s Marketplace was built for exactly this reason. On our fan-to-fan marketplace, fans can sell unique creations inspired by the artists’ world and resell items in a trusted environment where they know they are selling to other true fans. Fans are creating really unique pieces from bookmarks and bracelets to custom Nikes that actually don’t contain the artists’ copyrighted IP but instead symbolism and/or representations of the world of the fandom, and because of these non-duplicative pieces, this doesn’t cannibalize the artist’s merch store. We also allow artists to earn a percentage of the revenue generated from their fandom’s marketplace, allowing them passive income generated from allowing their fans to immerse in the world they created for them. Once again, this creates a win-win, where instead of sending cease and desist notices to stop your most passionate supporters, we instead allow you to finally earn alongside them.
From this marketplace, fans themselves have a lane to become a part of the creator economy, and our goal is to allow fans to make a living off of being amazing fans.
Where did your idea for Fave come from, and what propelled you forward from idea to actually building the platform?
I created Fave because I grew up a superfan myself. Ask me any piece of trivia about Eminem from back in the day. But I didn’t have the community around me to share in that type of superfandom or a way to do more as a fan when I was so willing to. So truly, I’ve always had this desire for Fave long before it existed, but the idea that actually be the one to create the platform came about when I was working at YouTube seeing that this problem of superfans being undervalued across the landscape continued to go unsolved.
How would you say that your prior work experiences at Google and YouTube have helped you in your role as founder/CEO at Fave?
My days at YouTube gave me hands-on experience building and leading the experiences that allow creators to share their passions with fans, but I saw clear opportunities to also empower the passions of the fans themselves to recognize and propel their lean-in energy with their creator. Then when I was leading AI experiences in the Google app, Assistant surfaces, and Android phones, I was at the forefront of the power of this tech before it was in most people’s awareness, giving millions of people their first experiences with AI without realizing that was the tech behind the screen. Since there was no aura effect about AI back then, we had to make sure the value could speak for itself, and that empathy to solve real problems had a big impact on why I was able to detect whitespace that no one was tackling in the right way across entertainment. Even though it seems many are building AI just to appear relevant (and I get it, as its competitive world out there for founders), I still most often describe Fave not by its tech stack, but by the powerful experiences it enables for fans and the industry, and I think that discipline was honed at Google needing to ensure people found high value to return every day before AI was the cool kid.
What advice would you give to new founders who are looking to take their ideas to the next level, with little to no capital, while trying to build the right team?
We’re seeing the traditional startup playbook - the one where you raise, build community, raise again and worry about revenue later - change in real time. My best advice to a new founder would be to be aware that there is this shift happening and to choose the advice coming in your ear carefully. Lots of people will have lots of great ideas, but perhaps it’s best to keep your core team tight, and focus your time on the tasks you know will move the needle if you just get them done.
Follow Jacquelle Horton on: Website