Dylan Duke and Christian Brown were your not-so-typical 20-somethings, living in Los Angeles in a home with a group of their influencer friends.
While Duke and Brown were not on the content creation side of influencing, requests began to pour in from large companies on behalf of their friends.
"It was all over the place; we had brands even reaching out to us, saying, 'Can you talk to your friends?'" Duke said.
"You would go back and forth [with the brand] and then get a DocuSign link, which no one knew what it was," Brown added. "There would be wild forms of payment, like on Venmo. There was a lack of organization and trust on both sides."
Brown and Duke decided to address the needs on both ends, founding Glewee in 2020. Pronounced "glue-y," the company works as a broker of sorts for brands and influencers to ensure a solid deal on both ends.
"These guys [as influencers] are masters at being creative and excelled at the art of going viral," Duke, the company's CEO, said. "But when it comes to the business side of things ... they are more on the creative side of thinking. To have this in a few clicks is why we wanted to do it in the first place."
The company has both a website and app for the 675+ brands it works with, that can search Glewee's base of more than 11,000 vetted influencers. Brands can search for specific needs — like targeting the 20- to 30-year-old age group in Miami — and reach out through the app to the influencer.
"Living in this Gen Z and millennial world, everyone is on their phones," Duke said. "And it was so native to build an iOS app to help them, give them a voice, give them representation of new streams of revenue, and help them feel represented in the space."
Their work has begun to pay off. Duke and Brown were tapped as Forbes' annual 30 Under 30 feature in the "marketing and advertising" category. They are the only Florida company to make the list in that category.
The duo has a headquarters in Clearwater, which they acknowledge is largely removed from the influencer space — and exactly why they chose the city.
"With the remote world, we weren’t forced to move and spend a ton of money on a headquarters in LA," said Brown, Glewee's chief marketing officer. "We had the flexibility to have a primary focus on an industry led in LA, but be bicoastal and put our heads down where we work best."
The co-founders also had a relationship with Clearwater-based Deuterium Capital Management, which led Glewee's $9 million seed round in 2022. The company has 40 employees, with the goal to use the funding to focus on its technology.
Glewee plans to seek a Series A at the end of the year for an undisclosed amount and will use the funding to expand internationally.
"I compare it to the dot-com boom," Duke said. "All the brands that wanted to stay old school got left in the dust. In the social media era, a lot of brands that are not doing influencer marketing see themselves falling behind. And the ones that are doing it, are excelling."
