Ace Kim is Transforming Influencer Marketing with SphereUs, A New Approach to Influencer Discovery
As social media has become a bigger part of our lives, the influencer marketing space has exploded. The market has grown at a 33.11% CAGR over the last decade, and organizations like Unilever have shared plans to partner with 20x more influencers in coming years.
But as brands look for more sophisticated ways to connect with influencers and their audiences, traditional influencer discovery tools are falling short. Most rely on inconsistent discovery methods like hashtags and captions, making it difficult for brands to find the right creators for their campaigns.
UPenn Wharton student Ace Kim wanted to facilitate stronger relationships between agencies, brands, and influencers. After developing several solutions and learning more about the space, he and his co-founder, Ethan Szeto, set out to build SphereUs, a new approach to influencer discovery.
Introducing SphereUs: A New Generation of Influencer Search
SphereUs is an AI-powered influencer search engine that helps brands, PR firms, creative studios, and talent agencies discover the best influencers for their campaigns at scale.
Unlike traditional tools, most of which search by hashtag (e.g., #running), SphereUs uses AI and sentiment analysis to analyze influencer content to power their search engine. This enables brands to run highly specific searches like “lobster fishermen that ride motorcycles” or “accounts that make edits of animated shows” so that they can find the niche influencers aligned to their needs.
In addition to search, the platform also provides email prospecting, creator outreach, and analytics enrichment, which help agencies assess engagement rates and audience demographics. In the long-run, Ace aims for SphereUs to become the most comprehensive people search solution in the creator economy, allowing searches by content, sponsored performance, and audience purchasing intent.
Ace’s Journey to SphereUs
As soon as he started at Penn, Ace recognized the rise of influencer marketing amongst the student community. He knew there was an opportunity to create a solution that would support better brand-influencer relationships—but it took several pivots before he landed on the platform SphereUs is building today.
Initially, Ace launched a marketing agency that built campus ambassador campaigns for companies interested in working with Penn students. Brands gave students free products, such as dresses, makeup, and workout classes, in exchange for Instagram posts. The program led to great campaigns, but Ace was managing it all manually—from influencer introductions to campaign analytics.
In an effort to build a more scalable solution, Ace developed several software products, first a CRM before pivoting to an influencer gifting platform. But after building several different products and working with dozens of brands, he uncovered that the biggest hole in the market was in influencer discovery. So he partnered with co-founder Ethan Szeto, an engineering student at Northeastern University, and set out to build a solution.
Two years later, the SphereUs search engine is now being used by teams across every corner of the creator economy, including leading agencies, such as Team One, and enterprise consumer organizations, such as Wonder.
Ace’s Advice for Fellow Founders
Ace’s success with SphereUs thus far can be largely attributed to his commitment to constant learning and iteration. While building SphereUs, Ace has conducted hundreds of customer interviews, many of which didn't lead to sales but provided critical context about the space.
“Always try to talk to as many people as possible. I think a critical part of my journey is that the entire time I've been building, I've always been doing customer interviews. It's really important to talk to a ton of people in the space, even people that might be tangential, because you just need a lot of context about the ecosystem you're building in."
Ace also notes that founders shouldn’t wait until they’re fundraising to talk to investors — conversations early on can shape product direction and market understanding. “It’s a VCs job to understand the broader ecosystem they’re investing in. They’ll be able to tell you what the trends are, whether they've seen other companies building what you're doing, and any mistakes that other founders have made when building similar things.”
To learn more about Ace’s journey, you can follow him on LinkedIn and visit sphereus.co.
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