- Ted Raad launched his influencer marketing agency Trend on January 7, 2019, while still working in IT mergers and acquisitions at Hewlett-Packard, with nothing but a laptop and an internet connection.
- Trend now facilitates approximately $80 million in annual brand deals, represents over 130 creators, and employs nearly 100 people across offices in Nashville and Houston.
- The global influencer marketing industry reached $32.55 billion in 2025, a 35.6% increase over 2024, with projections hitting $40.51 billion in 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence.
- Raad grew revenue roughly 200% year-over-year in the early years by focusing on creator alignment and transparency, two things he saw the existing agencies getting wrong.
- His biggest regret: waiting too long to hire, trying to stay lean while revenue outpaced his ability to serve clients well.
How a Corporate IT Guy Built an $80 Million Influencer Agency From His Living Room
Ted Raad was 30 years old, working in IT mergers and acquisitions at Hewlett-Packard, reviewing contracts and negotiating deals for a living. His wife Dede was a content creator who had signed with a talent agency that kept pushing brand campaigns that didn’t fit her audience or values. Raad watched the misalignment play out in real time: awkward sponsored posts, confused followers, a creator feeling stuck in deals that served the agency’s bottom line more than her own brand.
That frustration became a business plan. On January 7, 2019, Raad launched Trend, an influencer marketing agency built on a premise that the existing players had neglected: put the creator first, and the brand deals will follow. His startup cost was exactly zero dollars beyond what he was already paying for a laptop and WiFi. “My only startup costs were a laptop and internet,” Raad told Entrepreneur. Seven years later, Trend facilitates approximately $80 million in annual brand deals, represents over 130 creators, and employs nearly 100 people.
The story is worth studying not because it’s a fairy tale, but because it illustrates a specific kind of founder advantage: seeing a broken system from the inside and building the fix.
What Made the Influencer Agency Model Ripe for Disruption?
The influencer marketing industry was growing at rocket speed but operating on a model that hadn’t evolved much from traditional talent management. Agencies signed creators, found brand deals, took a commission, and moved on. The problem was alignment. Agencies optimized for deal volume, not deal quality. Creators got pushed into campaigns for products they didn’t use, in categories that confused their audience, at rates that undervalued their reach.
Raad saw this firsthand through Dede’s experience and realized the misalignment wasn’t just bad for creators. It was bad for brands too. When a creator promotes something they clearly don’t believe in, engagement tanks. Audiences notice. The brand pays premium rates for content that performs like a bad banner ad.
The global creator economy was valued at $205.25 billion in 2024, with influencer marketing alone hitting $32.55 billion in 2025, a 35.6% year-over-year increase. Yet despite the scale, income distribution remains brutally uneven: more than 50% of creators still earn under $15,000 per year. The gap between what the industry generates and what most creators actually capture creates a massive opportunity for agencies that genuinely advocate for their talent.
The First Six Months: From Side Hustle to Real Revenue
Raad didn’t quit his HP job on day one. He built Trend as a side hustle, working evenings and weekends while collecting a corporate paycheck. His first move was decidedly unglamorous: he sat down with Dede and her creator friends and asked them to walk him through their rate cards, deal structures, and pain points with existing agencies. That homework gave him something most first-time founders skip: deep understanding of the customer before building anything.
He hired a lawyer to draft creator contracts that were transparent about fees, obligations, and exclusivity terms. He signed his first batch of creators, including Dede, and started pitching brands directly. Within about six months, Trend was generating consistent monthly revenue.
The early growth strategy was simple but effective. Rather than chasing volume, Raad focused on getting a small number of deals right. If a brand campaign didn’t align with the creator’s audience and values, he turned it down. That selectivity, which felt like leaving money on the table in the short term, became the company’s competitive moat. Creators talked. Word spread that Trend was the agency that actually said no to bad deals. More creators wanted in, and the best creators attracted the best brand budgets.
For founders thinking about running a business alongside a day job, our guide to building a side hustle while keeping your day job covers the tactical playbook for managing both.
The Scaling Decision That Almost Broke the Company
Trend’s early growth was explosive. Revenue climbed roughly 200% year-over-year in the first few years. But Raad made a mistake that almost undid the progress: he took on too many creators without hiring enough staff to support them.
“I was trying to stay lean,” he explained. The instinct made sense on paper. Bootstrapped companies survive by keeping costs low. But Raad was running a service business, and service businesses break when the ratio of clients to staff gets too high. Creators started experiencing slower response times. Communication gaps opened up. Campaign quality wobbled.
Raad caught it before the damage became permanent, but the recovery required hard conversations. He called creators directly, owned the failure, and restructured the team. The fix: Trend now maintains one of the lowest talent-to-manager ratios in the influencer marketing industry, ensuring every creator has a dedicated point of contact who knows their brand, their audience, and their boundaries.
His biggest takeaway from the experience? “I regret waiting too long to hire.” The lean startup mentality served him well at zero to $1 million, but between $1 million and $10 million, the bottleneck shifted from capital to capacity. Founders who don’t recognize that inflection point end up burning out or burning their reputation with early customers.
How Trend Competes in a $40 Billion Market
The influencer marketing industry is projected to reach $40.51 billion globally in 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence. Competition is fierce. Major holding companies, boutique agencies, and tech platforms are all fighting for creator relationships and brand budgets. So how does a bootstrapped agency from Nashville hold its ground?
Trend’s answer has been diversification. The company now operates three divisions: Trend Social (the core influencer management business), Trend Elevate (a division focused on scaling emerging creators), and Trend Athletes (representing professional and collegiate athletes in the NIL era). Each division serves a different segment of the creator economy while leveraging the same infrastructure and brand relationships.
The strategy reflects a broader shift in how the best creator-economy businesses operate. Creators with three or more revenue streams earned $75,000 more on average than those relying on a single income source in 2025. Trend helps its creators diversify, which makes them stickier clients and more attractive to brands that want multi-platform campaigns.
With 74% of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2026, the demand side isn’t the constraint. The constraint is trust. Brands want creators who authentically connect with their products. Creators want agencies that protect their brand integrity. Raad’s bet, that alignment and transparency would win in the long run, is paying off precisely because the market grew large enough for quality to matter.
What Founders Can Learn From Raad’s Playbook
Raad’s story offers a specific, replicable playbook for founders building service businesses in booming industries.
First, start from personal frustration. Raad didn’t read a market research report and decide influencer marketing looked promising. He watched his wife get poorly served by an existing agency and said “I can do this better.” That personal connection to the problem gave him conviction, customer insight, and a first client before he had a business entity.
Second, be the person who says no. In a market where agencies optimized for deal volume, Raad optimized for deal quality. Every campaign he turned down built trust with the creators who stayed. In service businesses, your reputation is your moat, and reputation is built by what you refuse as much as what you deliver.
Third, know when lean becomes liability. Bootstrapping demands financial discipline, but Raad learned the hard way that underinvesting in people is just as dangerous as overspending on them. The signal to hire isn’t when you can comfortably afford it. It’s when service quality starts slipping.
Fourth, diversify before the market forces you to. Trend didn’t wait for the core business to plateau before launching Trend Elevate and Trend Athletes. Building adjacent revenue lines while the core is still growing gives you optionality and insulates against platform risk. For more tactical growth strategies, check out 6 tried and true startup growth strategies.
Finally, your unfair advantage might not look like an advantage at first. Raad’s background was in IT mergers and acquisitions, not marketing or entertainment. But that background gave him skills in contract negotiation, deal structuring, and relationship management that translated directly to building a creator agency. The career you’re leaving often gives you the tools for the business you’re building.
From Side Hustle to Category Leader
Trend’s trajectory, from a one-person side hustle in 2019 to a nearly 100-person agency facilitating $80 million in annual brand deals, didn’t follow the Silicon Valley playbook. There was no seed round, no pitch deck that went viral, no growth-at-all-costs mandate from a board of directors. There was a founder who understood a customer’s pain because he lived next to it, a willingness to grow at a pace the business could sustain, and a bet on quality over volume that compounded over seven years.
The creator economy isn’t slowing down. With 207 million creators active worldwide and brands allocating up to 25% of digital marketing budgets to influencer campaigns, the market is only getting bigger. The question for aspiring founders isn’t whether the opportunity exists. It’s whether you’re willing to start small, stay patient, and build something that earns trust before it earns scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the influencer marketing industry generate?
The global influencer marketing industry reached $32.55 billion in 2025, a 35.6% increase over 2024. Mordor Intelligence projects the market will hit $40.51 billion in 2026, with 74% of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets.
How did Ted Raad start Trend with no money?
Raad launched Trend on January 7, 2019, while still working at Hewlett-Packard. His only costs were a laptop and internet connection. He used his wife’s experience as a creator to understand the market, hired a lawyer for contracts, and signed his first creators before generating consistent revenue within about six months.
What is a creator management agency?
A creator management agency represents content creators and influencers, negotiating brand partnership deals on their behalf. The agency handles campaign logistics, contract negotiations, and brand relationships while taking a commission on deals. Trend, for example, represents over 130 creators and facilitates approximately $80 million in annual brand deals.
How much do influencer marketing agencies charge?
Agency models vary. Most take a percentage commission on the deals they negotiate, typically 15% to 25% of the campaign value. Some agencies charge brands a project fee or retainer instead. The best agencies, like Trend, earn their commission by securing higher-value deals through better creator-brand alignment.
Can you start an influencer marketing agency as a side hustle?
Yes. Ted Raad built Trend to consistent monthly revenue in about six months while maintaining his corporate job at Hewlett-Packard. Service-based businesses in the creator economy have low startup costs since the primary assets are relationships, industry knowledge, and negotiation skills rather than physical inventory or technology infrastructure.
