What do you do in your leisure? You might read, watch television or do some gardening. For Lyonel Dougé from West Orange, New Jersey, this is a time to chase his dream.
Today, we introduce you to Lyonel Dougé, a man of courage and perseverance.
A digital product manager at Johnson & Johnson, the 37-year-old spends his leisure running his own social media company ‘TipSnaps’, which launched in 2017. A subscription platform, TipSnaps offers exclusive content from local social media creators.
The platform registered more than 450,000 users within five years of launch. It paid out over $2.5 million in subscription fees to more than 60,000 online creators and influencers with the company keeping 10 per cent of each transaction.
How did Dougé get this idea? He says it hit his mind in 2016 when he was mindlessly scrolling Instagram. It struck him that social media influencers could make more profit if their fans pay them directly, especially for exclusive content. Although the mainstream content creators like YouTube offer this now, Dougé says he has introduced this way before them.
He used to spend three hours every night doing the background work of TipSnaps. He direct-messaged Instagram influencers who have more than 100,000 followers, explaining to them that they could earn more with TipSnaps. Within a week, Tip Snaps received its first transaction. Within six months, the registered user base rose to 50,000. Later came on board Vic Boddie as a co-founder. Now, TipSnaps has four part-time employees – Dougé, Boddie and two support staff from the Philippines.
Dougé’s dream is to expand TipSnaps with millions of users and billions of dollars of an annual subscription. For Dougé, TipSnaps is also a space for encouraging creators of colour, who are often neglected by the mainstream content creation platforms. He feels the pain because he says his efforts have been overlooked by angel investors and venture capital firms just because he is black. Had he received outside funding, he would have left his day-time job to pursue TipSnaps full-time, he says.
Dougé says he never wanted to bootstrap TipSnaps. Although he pitched his concept to 40 VC firms and several angel investors, none of them worked out. Now, he is planning to launch an equity crowdfunding campaign on the investment platform Republic hoping that it would raise an additional $750,0000.
His dream is to surpass 20 million registered users within the next three years, with over $1 billion in annual payouts to creators.
