Grade Makes Paying Creators as Simple as Entering Their Email

The Macro: Paying Creators Is Way Harder Than It Should Be

The creator economy generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Brands pay creators for sponsored content. Platforms pay creators for engagement. Agencies pay creators on behalf of clients. The money flows are massive and growing.

But actually paying a creator is surprisingly painful. Each creator needs to be onboarded into a payment system. They need to submit tax information. They need to choose a payment method. International creators add currency conversion, compliance requirements, and banking infrastructure challenges. The process is so bad that many brands simply avoid working with international creators because the payment logistics are not worth it.

Existing solutions handle pieces of this. PayPal works but takes fees and requires account setup. Wise handles international transfers but is not built for managing hundreds of creator relationships. Tipalti and Bill.com serve enterprise AP but are overkill for creator payments. Nothing combines the simplicity of “send money to an email address” with the infrastructure for tracking performance, managing invoices, and handling multi-currency payments at scale.

The Micro: Email-Based Payments With Zero Creator Onboarding

Lotanna Ezeike and James Heaney founded Grade. Lotanna is a 2x VC-backed founder who was previously a Product Lead at Barclays Bank managing $78 billion. James built and exited four mobile AI applications and sold a cryptography startup. They are a two-person team from San Francisco, part of YC Winter 2026 with Brad Flora.

The core insight is radical simplicity. Track creators by email and send payouts without requiring any platform setup from the creator. No accounts. No onboarding. Just an email address. Grade handles the rest, including multi-currency support, automated invoice generation, and flexible payment structures from fixed rate to performance-based to hybrid.

The product supports 190+ countries and integrates with Venmo, Wise, PayPal, Revolut, and other payment methods. Companies have used Grade to pay out $380K+ to creators within 30 days, with 120% month-over-month growth. Total payouts exceed $1M across 790+ creators.

The performance-based payroll angle is interesting. Instead of paying creators a flat fee, companies can tie compensation to metrics. Pay per view, pay per conversion, pay per engagement. Grade handles the tracking and the payment in one system. That is genuinely useful for brands that want to shift from guaranteed payments to performance-based models.

The Verdict

Grade is solving a friction point that everyone in the creator economy complains about. The email-based approach removes the biggest barrier to fast payments: creator onboarding. If you can pay anyone with just their email, the operational overhead of managing a creator program drops dramatically.

The risk is that Stripe or a payment infrastructure giant builds this natively. Stripe already has Connect and Payouts. If they add a “pay by email” feature with creator-specific workflow tools, Grade’s differentiation shrinks. But Stripe tends to build horizontal infrastructure, not vertical solutions. Grade’s creator-specific features like performance tracking and flexible comp structures are unlikely to be a priority for Stripe.

In 30 days, I want to see the average payout cycle time. How fast does money reach creators? In 60 days, the question is enterprise adoption. Are large brands with 100+ creator programs using Grade, or is it mostly smaller campaigns? In 90 days, I want to know about the performance-based payroll adoption. If brands are actually tying creator payments to outcomes, that is a much stickier product than simple bulk payments.