Meet Sunroom, a New App That Wants to Empower Women and Non-Binary Creators

Keerthi Vedantam

Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.

​The interface for the Sunroom app.
Courtesy of Sunroom

After Lucy Mort left Hinge, where she served as the popular dating app’s director of design, she grew fascinated with sex-positive platforms like OnlyFans—and how creators who built followings on Instagram and TikTok would move to OnlyFans to monetize their content.

Through a roommate, Mort connected with former Bumble marketing director Michelle Battersby, who was also looking for a new venture that would better the lives of women. The fellow Australians struck up a partnership that resulted in an app of their own, Sunroom.


Similar to membership platforms like OnlyFans and Patreon yet geared toward empowering women and non-binary creators, Sunroom launched on Wednesday with $3.6 million in seed funding. The Venice-based app is backed by the likes of Australian venture firm Blackbird; venture capitalists Li Jin, Cyan Bannister and Sarah Downey; and founders like Peanut CEO Michelle Kennedy and Brud CEO Trevor McFedries. (Sunroom says more than 50% of its investors are women or women-led.)

\u200bSunroom cofounders Michelle Battersby (left) and Lucy Mort (right).

Sunroom co-founders Michelle Battersby (left) and Lucy Mort.

Image courtesy of Sunroom

Unlike Instagram and Tiktok, Sunroom bakes in frictionless ways for people to support creators. Using an in-app currency called Beams (which are worth roughly 5 cents), users can pay for monthly memberships and tip creators. Sunroom also replaced a “like” button with a “cheers” button that sends creators a few cents per tap.

“There's kind of a big apprehension among our creators around monetizing,” Mort said. “They're really afraid that they'll be judged for asking to be compensated.”

The app deploys anti-screenshot technology to prevent users from stealing content, while also welcoming content that may normally get creators banned or their platforms demonetized on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Sunroom relies on a moderation team led by women, rather than algorithms, who allow creators to make content about sexual health and show more skin. (The platform does not allow pornography.)

“It feels like when things are moderated at scale, context is sometimes missed or not taken into consideration,” Battersby said. “And it really is women and non-binary people that are kind of losing out in among all of that.”

Sunroom is launching on iOS with around 100 creators, who can set their own membership prices ranging from $1 to $30 per month. Sunroom’s initial creators include sex-work activist Aella, actress and podcaster Paige Elkington, artist and model Charlie Max and actress and model Marta Pozzan. The startup is also offering reduced service fees for Black, Hispanic and indigenous creators as part of a commitment to reducing the racial wage gap.

While the creator economy has long been a major source of revenue for social media giants like YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, those platforms traditionally have offered those creators little in the way of a direct or efficient way to make money from their followers and subscribers. Sunroom joins a growing number of startups, from Substack to Cameo, that have looked to address that issue.

But the giants are taking note. YouTube gives creators a portion of advertising revenue and rolled out a membership platform in 2018. Last year, Twitter gave prominent figures on its platform a way to make money through its Super Follows feature. Even Github, an open-source software development platform, began allowing users to sponsor contributors in 2019.

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The Impact of Authentic Storytelling. LA Latino/a Founders and Funders Tell All

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

The Impact of Authentic Storytelling. LA Latino/a Founders and Funders Tell All
Decerry Donato

As one of the most diverse cities in the world, Los Angeles is home to almost 5 million people who identify as Hispanic or Latinx. Yet, many feel they still lack representation in the city’s tech space.

“I can safely say that last year’s LA tech week hosted all of the events on the west side, and very few were focused on telling Latino and Latina entrepreneurial stories,” said Valeria Martinez, investor at VamosVentures. “We wanted to change that this year.”

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LA Tech Week Day 3: Social Highlights
Evan Xie

L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.

Here's what people are saying about day three of L.A. Tech Week on social:

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LA Tech Week: Female Founders Provide Insights Into Their Startup Journeys

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech Week: Female Founders Provide Insights Into Their Startup Journeys
Decerry Donato

Women remain a minority among startup founders. According to Pitchbook, even though women-led startups in the United States received a record $20.8 billion in funding during the first half of 2022, U.S. companies with one or more female founders received less than 20% of total venture funding in 2022. U.S. companies solely led by female founders received less than 2% of the total funding.

The panel, titled Female Founders: Planning, Pivoting, Profiting, was moderated by NYU law professor Shivani Honwad and featured Anjali Kundra, co-founder of bar inventory software Partender; Montré Moore, co-founder of the Black-owned beauty startup AMP Beauty LA; Mia Pokriefka, co-founder and CEO of the interactive social media tool Huxly; and Sunny Wu, founder and CEO of fashion company LE ORA.

The panelists shared their advice and insights on starting and growing a business as a woman. They all acknowledged feeling pressure to not appear weak among peers, especially as a female founder. But this added weight only causes more stress that may lead to burnout.

“The mental health aspect of being a founder should not be overshadowed,” said Kundra, who realized this during the early stages of building her company with her brother..

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Kundra was surrounded by the startup culture where, “everyone is crushing it!” But she said that no one really opened up about the challenges of starting your own company. .

“Once you grow up as a founder in that environment, it's pretty toxic,” Kundra said. “I felt like I really wanted to be open and be able to go to our investors and tell them about challenges because businesses go up and down, markets go up and down and no company is perfect.”

Honwad, who advocates for women’s rights, emphasized the value of aligning yourself with people with similar values in the tech ecosystem. “[Those people] can make your life better not just from an investment and money standpoint, but also a personal standpoint, because life happens,” she said.

Moore, who unexpectedly lost one of her co-founders at AMP Beauty, said that entrepreneurs “really have to learn how to adapt to [their] circumstances.”

“She was young, healthy, vibrant and we've been sorority sisters and friends over the past decade,” she said about her co-founder Phyllicia Phillips, who passed away in February. “So it was just one of those moments where you have to take a pause.”

Moore said this experience forced her to ask for help, which many founders hesitate to do. She encouraged the audience to try and share their issues out loud with their teams because there are always people who will offer help. When Moore shared her concerns with her investors, they jumped in to support her in ways she didn’t think was possible.

Kundra said that while it is important to have a support group and listen to mentors, it is very important for entrepreneurs to follow their own thinking and pick and choose what they want to implement within their strategy. “At the end of the day, you really have to own your own decisions,” she said.

Kundra also said that while it is easy to turn to your colleagues and competitors and do what they are doing, you shouldn’t always follow them because every business is different.

“When I was in the heat of it, I kind of became [a part of] this echo chamber and that was really challenging for us,” Kundra added, “but we were able to move beyond it and figure out what worked for us [as a company] and we're still on a journey. You're always going to be figuring it out, so just know you're not alone.”

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