Sunil Chawla remembers meeting countless artists during his time at university who all wanted one thing: a sustainable economic infrastructure that would help them scale, rather than drowning in paperwork, filings, and chasing receipts.
Chawla thought he might have a solution and launched a music monetization platform in 2020. During the pandemic, he pivoted the company to its current form: Slingshot, a company that helps creators find the tools they need to manage their business requirements. The company also offers its own corporate card to further centralize financial transactions on the platform.
“Today, many talented creatives are forced to spend countless hours dealing with the complex financial and business challenges that come with being self-employed,” Chawla told TechCrunch. “Our goal is to leverage technology to radically simplify these tasks, freeing up creatives to focus on what they love.”
The company announced a $2.2 million pre-seed round on Monday, led by Dorm Room Fund, 1916 Enterprises, Key Partners Group and angel investor Vincent Francoeur, the former head of web and mobile at Blizzard.
Slingshot emerges amid a booming $250 billion creator economy, but it's not the first company to try to build infrastructure for this vibrant economy. The company says it differentiates itself by centralizing functionality and data and offering automated bookkeeping linked to a business card. It also works with banks to facilitate financial transactions so creators can manage funds, send money and make payments. Its primary BaaS partner for customer accounts is Stripe through its treasury and issuance program.
Image credit: Slingshot
The company also offers features such as allowing creators to save a portion of their income and providing benefits such as medical care and retirement benefits. The company acts like a human resources department and handles legal applications and tax documents. Chawla, now 24, said it took the company four years to raise pre-seed funding because it raised funds in multiple rounds. The company raised funds from small angel investors in 2020 and transformed into its current form in 2023.
Slingshot started as a company that provided legal and financial infrastructure for musicians to grow their audiences without a label, but in a way that allowed artists to control the majority of their royalties. The company raised $50,000 on the idea, and then another $1.2 million to scale. In late 2022, the company pivoted. Its customers wanted more financial products, and Slingshot answered their demands. It then raised another $1 million in funding last year and this year to get to where it is today.
Looking to the future, Slingshot has ambitious plans. The company plans to raise funds again next year to bolster its feature offerings with a $2.2 million pre-seed round. This includes developing an AI assistant, which aims to revolutionize how creators manage their work. Chawla said better tools and infrastructure for the creative economy will help enable creativity and diverse artistic expression. “We're still early in our journey, but I'm inspired by the impact we've made so far and the potential for so much more to come,” he said.
This piece has been updated to reflect the spelling of Vincent Francoeur's name.