Falon Fatemi first met Mark Cuban in 2011 at South By Southwest, where the two bonded over ideas about untapped opportunities in the tech industry. Though she didn’t initially recognize the Shark Tank star, the two clicked and decided to keep in touch, often catching up whenever Cuban visited the Bay Area.

By 2015, Fatemi, a former Google and YouTube employee, had founded her AI-powered startup, Node.ai, and successfully pitched Cuban to become an early investor. 

When Node.ai was acquired by SugarCRM in August 2020, Fatemi didn’t take a vacation. In the height of the pandemic, tuning out traditional media and turning to podcasts and documentaries, she noticed a glaring gap: Creators had no platform where they could truly “control their destiny,” and were instead subject to the whims of the platforms.

That insight sparked her next venture, Fireside, which launched in 2021. After Fatemi secured a term sheet for the company’s first funding round, Cuban, who was reinvesting in her, joined the company as cofounder. Together, they worked closely to iron out Fireside’s business strategy and platform design. 

“While I was there early on, on a day-to-day basis, really, it’s her baby now,” says Cuban, who became a billionaire by cofounding and selling Broadcast.com. “I’m just here to provide support.” 

Fireside is an end-to-end media platform where creators own their content and connect with their audience. The main draw is the Live Interactive Video community offering, which allows creators to chat with fans on a livestream powered by Fireside’s interactive streaming technology. 

“It almost feels like an interactive FaceTime to an audience member,” says Fatemi. “It takes the interactive features of Twitch, Tiktok, or Instagram Live to the next level, but it’s all within a more controlled environment.” 

Fireside is like a production studio within an application for creators. On an interactive livestream, creators can have a two-way conversation with their fans, with access to a variety of production tools to screen audience questions, queue audience members, and invite them to join the video. 

“The key is that people are not paying for content, they’re paying for access [to the creator],” Fatemi says. “It’s a very low lift way for our partners to deepen their relationship with a global audience, but in a way that feels very intimate and can scale.”

As the company’s focus has transitioned from strategy to execution, Cuban now serves as a strategic advisor, and Fatemi continues as CEO. The platform currently powers over 20 creators’ networks,........

© Fast Company