Question 1

Where does the money come from?

Accepted Answer

Three lanes. (1) Direct monetization — ISL takes 10% of tips, subscriptions, content unlocks, live tickets, premium DMs and merch; creators keep 90% from day one. (2) Brand deals — a flat 15% net take-rate on every deal papered and escrowed through the platform; creators keep 85%. (3) Ad revenue — infrastructure is built and dormant, paying a geography-indexed 70/30 in emerging markets and 60/40 in mature markets once advertiser onboarding launches. Secondary lines: paid Directory access for brand-side buyers, agent services and Founding Brand seats.

Question 2

How do you host media without the usual cost blowout?

Accepted Answer

Zero-egress object storage. Media sits in Cloudflare R2 and streams via direct progressive playback with metadata-only indexing — no per-gigabyte egress billing and no third-party transcoding SaaS in the path. That removes the single biggest line item in the creator-platform P&L while keeping the creator relationship, and the audience, on the platform.

Question 3

The founding-cohort budget looks high for a CAC number.

Accepted Answer

It isn't pure CAC. The line combines creator verification onboarding + product hardening + Scout's Fee viral-loop seeding. Paid CAC is near-zero by design — the loop is Scout's Fee + UCA signing + Founding Cohort Addendum (lifetime brand-deal split lock at the better tier). Falsifiable inside 90 days.

Question 4

Is the Universal Creator Agreement (UCA) actually enforceable?

Accepted Answer

The UCA is a countersigned contract between ISL and each creator, backed by the Certified Human badge and public revocation. For brand-deal facilitation specifically, individual Statements of Work sit under the UCA and are enforceable in the normal way. The community-norm piece (badge, revocation) is closer to Creative Commons or the App Store developer agreement than a courtroom weapon — the value is the signal and the gate.

Question 5

Why PayPal-only when local rails would convert better?

Accepted Answer

PayPal is v1 rails for brand-deal payouts only — it works for a Trinidad-domiciled operator today while Stripe and Paddle do not. Phase 2 adds local rails (M-Pesa, Paystack, Razorpay, MercadoPago) once incorporation in a Stripe-supported jurisdiction is funded. We'd rather ship a real day-one deal payout than wait for the perfect rail.

Question 6

Is the $10–14K monthly base case realistic?

Accepted Answer

It's built on conservative brand-deal-facilitation assumptions with the founding cohort — a small number of brokered deals per month at a modest average deal size. The model has a stress-tested downside at ~40% of base and a Phase-2 case once brand-side subscription revenue compounds. We'd rather investors push on the assumptions than take the headline at face value.

Question 7

How do you train AI on creator work? You don't.

Accepted Answer

Contractually forbidden in the UCA. No first-party training, no third-party data licensing of creator material. This is a non-negotiable line in our terms — and doubly true given ISL never hosts the underlying files in the first place.

Question 8

What does the Founding Cohort actually get?

Accepted Answer

A Founding Cohort Addendum to the UCA: a Lifetime Brand-Deal Split Lock at 85% plus the geography-indexed ad-revenue tier (70/30 emerging, 60/40 mature) that survives any future ISL pricing changes. It is an addendum, not a parallel contract.

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