The CQ | Backing Agentio: The Agentic Marketplace for Creator Media
Plus the Forerunner Team's Must-Reads of the Week
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For more than a decade, influencer and creator marketing has been hailed as the next big channel. But while it’s grown into a multi‑billion‑dollar global force, it’s remained notoriously fragmented and inefficient. Brands have long relied on manual outreach, spreadsheets, or agency intermediaries to manage creator partnerships, making it tough to scale.
Agentio changes that equation. The platform makes creator partnerships as simple and trackable as traditional online ads, automating everything from intelligent matching between brands and creators to creative reviews, payment processing, and analytics measurement. This turns what was once a bespoke, ad-hoc workflow into a repeatable, structured performance channel.
We were drawn to the network effects inherent in this model: every new brand that joins the platform attracts more high‑quality creators, improving matching speed and campaign outcomes. As those creators succeed, they bring new brands into the fold, creating a compounding loop of growth. Agentio’s revenue model, which takes a percentage of ad spend rather than charging fixed SaaS fees, aligns its incentives directly with performance. The more successful its brands and creators are, the more successful Agentio becomes.
We’re proud to lead the series B for this team that’s building the first agentic marketplace for creator media. See more here!
What We’re Talking About On Slack:
Holiday shopping turnout jumped to 202.9 million people during Thanksgiving weekend—the largest turnout since the National Retail Federation began tracking the period in 2017 and well above last year’s 197 million and the forecasted 186.9 million. Shoppers were driven by deep discounts, free shipping, and limited-time promotions. A total of 129.5 million consumers shopped in stores (3% YoY increase), and 134.9 million shopped online (9% YoY increase). Adobe Analytics reported $14.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday (7.1% YoY increase) and $44.2 billion over the five-day period (7.7% YoY increase), including $11.8 billion on Black Friday (9.1% YoY increase). Top-purchased categories included clothing (51%), toys (32%), books/media (28%), and gift cards (26%). “Even when consumers are pulling back and making trade-offs, they may still shop as December approaches. The holidays are ‘very much an emotional purchase.’”
Shoppers turn to discounts and debt, but not just for holidays. BNPL usage has surged, with nearly $80 billion spent through these services so far this year, an 8% increase from 2024, and Klarna reported a 32% rise in users and 4 million in its debit-card sign-ups. The National Retail Federation predicts holiday retail sales will exceed $1 trillion for the first time, though spending patterns diverge: High-income shoppers are purchasing more at premium stores while middle-income consumers shift to value retailers like Burlington, Ross, and Walmart. A Harris Poll found 24% of households earning under $50,000 expect to take on credit-card debt to afford holiday shopping. “Consumers have faced several years of rising costs, and what we’re seeing now is resilience turning into strategy. It’s a long-term shift in how consumers approach spending, with a stronger focus on making every dollar work harder.”
On Black Friday, dog food is in, and luxuries are out, reports Bloomberg. Dish soap and dishwasher rinse aid were some of the top sellers during Amazon’s summer Prime Day, and 64% of shoppers said they planned to buy on-sale essentials during October deal events, up from 58% in 2024. The NRF reports that 85% of shoppers expect higher prices this season because of tariffs, and nearly two-thirds planned to wait for Black Friday discounts. “More consumers are showing budget consciousness and choosiness in how they spend, which means more necessities over discretionary.”
Meet the teens investing in stocks for their future home and retirement. Greenlight, a platform that lets children invest with their parents’ permission, reported that trades directed by minors were up 77% last month compared with two years earlier. A growing share of young investors are using automatic, recurring contributions, a sign that many are focused on long-term goals. Financial education is also expanding as 12 states currently require a personal-finance class for high-school graduation—a number expected to rise to 30 states by 2031. Gen Z investors are starting earlier than previous generations, beginning at age 19 on average, which is six years earlier than millennials.
Gen Z shoppers aren’t spending like retailers need them to, says the Wall Street Journal. Gen Z currently accounts for 8% of U.S. retail spending, a figure projected to grow to 20% (about $2 trillion annually) within five years. But according to a Deloitte survey of 4,200 U.S. adults, Gen Z shoppers expect to cut their holiday spending by an average of 34%, far more than any other generation. (Gen X is the only one planning to spend more.) PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found Gen Z is also reducing spending on travel, dining out, and clothing. Many young people say they are resorting to handmade or secondhand gifts this year. Retailers, like e.l.f. Beauty, are responding by adding lower-priced products to meet rising demand from younger and low-income consumers.
The new, in-demand job skill: being a TikTok influencer for your company. Companies used to discourage their workers from posting about the brand, but now more and more are starting employee-influencer programs. There’s Starbucks’ Green Apron Creators, which has selected 53 baristas since 2024 to post coordinated, on-the-job social content. These creators receive prompts tied to specific promotions, like seasonal menu items, and are paid per post, under clear corporate rules. Delta Air Lines similarly handpicked 15 front-line employees, including pilots, flight attendants, and customer-service agents, for an employee-generated content initiative. “The strategy lets employers showcase their workplaces as happy ones and get some grassroots-like marketing out of their often young, digital-native staffers. For employees, it is a chance to channel their budding content-creation skills into greater visibility and access to perks, such as work trips and professional-development training.” The catch, of course, is that the posts must sound authentic in order to be effective.
The Atlantic looks at the trend of people outsourcing their thinking to AI. Some extreme users are becoming overly dependent on AI for even the basic aspects of daily life, from writing emails and getting marriage advice to determining if fruit at the grocery store is ripe. These “LLeMmings” are “always LLM-ing, but also because their near-constant AI use conjures images of cybernetic lemmings unable to act without guidance. For this set of compulsive users, AI has become a primary interface through which they interact with the world. The emails they write, the life decisions they make, and the questions that consume their mind all filter through AI first. It’s like a real addiction.”
The brain has five ‘eras’, scientists say—with adult mode not starting until early 30s. Scientists at Cambridge University analyzing nearly 4,000 brain scans from people aged from one to 90, identified five major eras of brain development, marked by four turning points at roughly ages 9, 32, 66, and 83. At about 32, the brain enters its long “adult mode,” with more stable architecture. Later turning points at 66 and 83 reflect declining connectivity linked to ageing and white-matter degeneration, marking early and late ageing phases. “Understanding that the brain’s structural journey is not a question of steady progression, but rather one of a few major turning points, will help us identify when and how its wiring is vulnerable to disruption.”
Portfolio Highlights
Agentio’s series B was covered in TechCrunch, Axios, AdExchanger, and Adweek.
Forbes profiles Decagon co-founders Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas.
Reuters and The Hill report on the new guidelines from the American Cancer Society that women can test themselves for cervical cancer using the Teal Wand. Boston Globe and The San Francisco Standard interviewed CEO Kara Egan.
Fast Company names Chime as one of its 121 Brands That Matter.
NBC News takes an inside look at Prenuvo’s MRI body scans.
Job of The Week:
Founding Product Manager at Alma, the AI-native immigration law firm.
There are over 4,000 open roles at other Forerunner portfolio companies, check ‘em out.