[Influencer Tech Inc.] Cleaning Up the Entertainment Industry: Disrupting Intermediary Exploitation with \"Weaver,\" an AI-Driven Transparent Casting Platform

Targeting NASDAQ: Reforming the Archaic and Opaque Casting Industry

Hello, everyone. My name is Yuta Kai, Representative Director of Influencer Tech Inc. It is a pleasure to be here. Since our time is limited today, I will focus on presenting a live demo of our platform, \"Weaver.\"

I was born in Sakado City, Saitama Prefecture. I spent the early part of my career in the advertising industry. While web advertising and ad-tech have evolved rapidly over the past decade, I noticed a stark contrast when I transitioned to influencer marketing. The closer you get to the talent and entertainment sectors, the more archaic, manual, and opaque the business practices become.

The most critical pain point is the excessive middleman markup (margin exploitation) pocketed by casting agencies and multiple layers of advertising agencies. Simply for matching an influencer with a brand, agencies charge clients millions of yen in hidden fees.

Furthermore, the post-contract workflow is incredibly tedious. Reviewing draft concepts or scripts—which involves multiple intermediaries—is still done manually via Excel. It is common to have eight different versions of an Excel sheet just for the first draft review. Despite the AI-driven digital age, the entertainment sector remains flooded with redundant middlemen.

To eliminate this middleman exploitation, bring transparency, and automate post-contract operations, we launched the production-ready version of our casting SaaS platform, \"Weaver,\" in March of last year.

Direct Automated Casting and 100% Cost Transparency of 250,000 Influencers

Weaver is not just a matching or database tool. It is an all-in-one SaaS platform that digitizes and automates casting agency functions. We developed specific features tailored for four distinct stakeholders: advertisers, ad agencies, talent agencies, and influencers.

Weaver features a database of approximately 250,000 influencers in Japan. Advertisers can run high-precision searches based on follower demographics, engagement rates, hyper-local geographic data (city level), and granular category niches like specific gaming genres.

The most disruptive feature of Weaver is the absolute transparency of influencer cost (net cost).

We expose the direct cost paid to influencers, eliminating hidden agency markups. The price shown on Weaver consists of the influencer's net fee plus our transparent 15% transaction fee. This is half the traditional industry rate of 30% or more, enabling the most cost-effective and clear casting transaction in the market.

Furthermore, the casting process is automated. We have mapped the direct email addresses of 250,000 influencers (or their managers) into our database. Advertisers can select a pre-designed template and automatically send a casting proposal to managers with a single click, eliminating hours of manual email correspondence.

Currently, we are seeing rapid adoption from major enterprises and talent agencies, with close to 100 corporate clients. Since launching active sales last month, we have added roughly 50 new corporate accounts monthly.

Raising 30M to 200M JPY to Accelerate toward a NASDAQ IPO

We have built a strong intellectual property barrier, holding patents for compliance screening and AI-driven script generation using LLMs.

Most importantly, Weaver is currently the only platform globally that digitizes and automates the post-contract workflow (draft checks and progress tracking) for influencer marketing. This is our primary differentiator against standard matching databases.

The inefficiency of casting is not unique to Japan; it is a global issue shared across the US and China. To clean up this industry globally, we have established a corporate roadmap targeting a NASDAQ IPO.

We are currently raising our final round of funding before going public, with a ticket size ranging from 30 million to 200 million JPY. We look forward to partnering with strategic allies and investors who share our ambition to disrupt the archaic entertainment ecosystem. Thank you.

Q&A and Feedback

Mr. Ogawa (Commentator): Thank you, Kai-san. Disclosing influencer cost and capping transaction fees at 15% is a highly disruptive model that directly threatens traditional agencies.

Did you face any backlash or pressure from powerful legacy agencies and media players when you opened this industry black box?

Mr. Kai: Yes. In the past, a service like ours would have been shut down before we could even pitch to clients. To prevent this, we spent the first 1.8 years in stealth mode, quietly building partnerships with select talent agencies, influencers, and shareholders without launching aggressive public marketing.

Today, even media giants like Fuji TV can no longer ignore the direct power of influencers and social media. In an era where AI and digital tools make information open, hiding pricing is no longer sustainable. We decided to enter this market with a high-risk, high-reward mindset.

Mr. Ogawa: I see. You captured the momentum of the market shift and executed with conviction. How do you position Weaver against listed competitors like Toridori?

Mr. Kai: Listed players like Toridori focus mainly on basic matching. Other search tools let you search for influencers but require you to find their contact information and manage the contract manually.

Weaver is a fully integrated AI agent. We handle everything from automated casting (utilizing direct manager emails for 250,000 influencers) to digitizing the post-contract workflow (progress tracking and script review) which other tools do not touch. This places us in a completely different functional layer.

Mr. Ogawa: Providing post-contract workflow SaaS is indeed a massive value add for marketing teams. I look forward to seeing your growth toward a NASDAQ listing.

Mr. Kai: Thank you. We will scale this into a global standard.