Building the World’s Largest Sponsorship Platform: Inside the Ambition Behind Faved | 176: Stephen Titus

Stephen Titus is the Co founder and CEO of Faved, a platform connecting brands with creators for paid sponsorships. After studying engineering and realising it was not the career for him, Stephen started building businesses with his best friend and now co founder. Several failed ideas followed, including Emit, a watch designed to make people more mindful of their time. Those failures taught them to stop building what they thought people wanted and start listening to the problems customers were actually facing. That eventually led to Faved, which today has 30,000 creators on its platform and is strongest across YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. Listen to this episode to discover Stephen’s journey from failed startup ideas to finding his place in entrepreneurship and building Faved. We go behind the scenes of the creator economy to explore how influencer sponsorships really work, what brands actually look for in creators, what makes a creator valuable to work with, and where the industry is heading next. You will also hear Stephen’s ambition to build the world’s largest platform for paid creator partnerships, and how he found work that genuinely brings together his curiosity, interests and passion every day. Connect with Stephen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-titus/ https://faved.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 - Meet Stephen Titus 01:03 - From Engineering to Entrepreneurship 02:32 - Building a Death Watch 04:25 - Why His First Startup Failed 07:44 - The Failed Ideas Before Faved 10:17 - The Failure That Changed Everything 11:27 - Discovering the Brand Deal Problem 13:28 - The Rise of the Creator Economy 16:41 - The Problem Faved Is Solving 22:51 - What Makes Faved Different 26:30 - AI vs Human Judgment 29:14 - What Brands Look For in Creators 33:31 - Why Creator Reliability Matters 35:24 - How Brands Scale Creator Marketing 39:31 - YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn 42:33 - Finding Unexpected Audiences 44:01 - Finding Work You Actually Love 46:30 - Life of Pi and Stephen’s Philosophy 48:42 - The Big Ambition Behind Faved 51:35 - The Story Behind Faved’s Star 54:19 - The Future of Creator Marketing Connect with Tomas: Stan: https://stan.store/Tommen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠ Unproduced: Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotes Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIW More: Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠ Patreon: https://patreon.com/tomasloucky Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠ The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/ Tools & gear that support the show: Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZK Favikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommen Riverside: https://riverside.partnerlinks.io/2752q1ai767z Ra Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19 JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bf Some links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.