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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LA Venture: B Capital’s Howard Morgan on What To Look For in Potential Founders

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 Venture: B Capital’s Howard Morgan on What To Look For in Potential Founders
Provided by LAV

On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, B Capital Group General Partner and Chair Howard Morgan discusses his thoughts on early stage investing and the importance of company ownership.


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Mullen Automotive Pays Millions to Settle Lawsuit with Qiantu

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

Mullen Automotive Pays Millions to Settle Lawsuit with Qiantu
Image Courtesy of Mullen Automotive

Like a zombie from the grave, Mullen Automotive’s electric sports car grift lives once more. Earlier this week, the Southern Californian company announced that it had resolved its contract disputes with Chinese manufacturer Qiantu and would begin to “re-design” and “re-engineer” the DragonFLY K50 platform for sale in the United States.

On the surface (or if you just read the press release) this would seem to be excellent news for the Californian EV startup. But the saga of the Mullen/Qiantu partnership is long, and in the context of their shared history, the deal’s terms look considerably less favorable for Mullen.

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