SphereUs
Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania)
Industry: Marketing Technology
Founding Student Name(s): Ace Kim, Julian Ward
Brief Description of Solution: Brand ambassador programs are often complex, time-consuming, and inefficient. SphereUs is an AI-powered platform that transforms how brands manage ambassador campaigns by automating key processes—sourcing, onboarding, task management, and performance analytics. Leveraging real-time analytics from platforms like Instagram and TikTok, we provide brands with data-driven insights to optimize campaigns. Particularly, using “follower-base connectedness” and “post-success” metrics, we deliver recommendations on which groupings of ambassadors to activate in a pulse, how much “Paid” to allocate behind each post, and how to optimally space out ambassador activations to maximize ROI.
Funding Dollars: We have raised $137,500 in total funding. $100,000 from angel investments, $27,500 from non-dilutive grant funding, and $10,000 from bootstrapping.
What led you to launch this venture? In recent years, marketing through macro-influencers and content creators has become more expensive and less effective. With the explosion of TikTok and short-form content, people are bombarded with sponsorship-after-sponsorship. This has led to “ad-blindness” where audiences increasingly ignore content creator product placements. In contrast, brand ambassadorship (marketing through micro-influencers) has gotten more effective, as consumers continuously rely more-and-more on their own social circles for product recommendations.
Recognizing these trends, we became heavily involved in brand ambassadorship, wanting to learn as much about the process by setting up ambassador programs for brands like astrobabe, By Design, and SoulCycle. After building several ambassador programs from the ground up and experiencing firsthand how time-consuming and difficult brand ambassadorship programs are to build and manage, we set out on building SphereUs and have been working on it ever since.
What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with venture? I’d say that our biggest accomplishment has been developing a strong and productive team culture. Outside of work, we often go to the gym together, cook dinner for one another, and go on mini weekend adventures. Building team camaraderie has been instrumental in helping us navigate the challenges we face.
How has your business-related major helped you further this startup venture? The courses I’ve taken throughout my time at Wharton have informed much of our work, from building our business model and determining our pricing structure to analyzing our competitive landscape and creating a sales pipeline. However, a significant part of the value I’ve gained from my business-related major comes from having a community of students and mentors to draw inspiration from as we face unconventional and creative challenges.
Which business class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? Professor Rachel Krol’s class, “Negotiations”, has been one of the most valuable courses I’ve taken so far in the context of my entrepreneurial journey. The course offers many opportunities to develop your skill-set as a negotiator and as an actor in difficult conversations.
The framework that I used to prepare for my negotiations in class has informed the way I now lead conversations with clients and potential investors. I learned to separate positions (the outcomes people want) from interests (the reasons they want those outcomes) from options (all the possibilities in which people might agree) in order to form value-creating agreements. This framework has helped me stay organized and identify creative solutions no matter the context.
What business professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? As both a veteran entrepreneur and investor, Professor Jeffrey Babin’s support has been instrumental in the development of SphereUs thus far. Through the Wharton Venture Labs VIP-X Accelerator, we’ve received consistent mentorship from Professor Babin and the entire Venture Labs team. From evaluating and iterating our business model to guiding product development and structuring our customer discovery, Professor Babin’s advisory sessions with us have been invaluable. One of the main lessons I learned from Professor Babin is that entrepreneurship is a never-ending series of existential problems and that the best entrepreneurs keep their heads held high through every challenge.
What founder or entrepreneur inspired you to start your own entrepreneurial journey? How did he or she prove motivational to you? It’s difficult for me to pinpoint a single founder as the source of my entrepreneurial inspiration, but I’m constantly inspired by my peers in my entrepreneurship fraternity, Sigma Eta Pi (SEP). SEP is both a pre-professional fraternity and a startup accelerator, and it was through the accelerator that I first started SphereUs. Being surrounded by a community of builders makes me feel like I’m part of a cohort of entrepreneurs. When it comes to things like how to conduct effective customer interviews or how to shortcut your MVP so you can launch faster, having a group to ideate with is crucial.
What is your long-term goal with your startup? Over the next three years, we will create network effects that solidify our position as the leading platform for ambassadorship. As we scale, our analytics tools will empower brand managers with comprehensive insights, enabling them to make optimal decisions to maximize campaign ROI. Our client acquisition strategy focuses on industries with the largest and fastest-growing ambassador networks, helping us onboard new ambassadors in these key spaces. Ultimately, we aim to become the all-in-one platform for the sourcing, management, and analytics of any and all ambassador campaigns, and to lead a paradigm shift where anyone can be an ambassador.
How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? Being a part of Penn’s vibrant startup ecosystem has fueled me with both the inspiration and the resources to pursue SphereUs at every stage of my entrepreneurial journey. Wharton’s entrepreneurship center, Venture Labs, has offered countless opportunities for professional mentorship, non-dilutive grant funding, and interactive events with entrepreneurs. We received the majority of our early funding from the Penn Wharton Innovation Fund, the UPenn Startup Challenge, and the VIP-X Accelerator. As a member of VIP-X, we’ve been given a workspace to build the company (so we can finally stop working from our dorms and coffee shops), access to expert mentors and advisors, and bi-weekly meetings with successful entrepreneurs and other influential figures in business. Whether I’m discussing our sales prospecting strategy with the rest of my VIP-X Cohort or grabbing coffee with a fellow entrepreneur, I’m grateful to be surrounded by a supportive community.
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