Filipina actress raises $2m for startups PEG, BrandNation

Filipina actress Yassi Pressman is launching her own own startups – PEG and BrandNation – after raising $2 million in seed funding.

Funding from the seed round that was led by Sonla, a cryptocurrency exchange and digital asset custodial provider, will be used to drive the deployment of the proprietary PEGFi interoperable and integrated digital financial infrastructure offering to its target GameFi and Web 3.0 market participants.

It will also be used to support a related venture, BrandNation.io, an influencer marketing platform for digital and web3 brands.

While many in the tech community would raise eyebrows at celebrities getting into the field, the 27-year-old Pressman, who has close to 20 million followers on social media, already has a feather on her cap: She’s venture-backed.

And Pressman said she would not mind the attention that she would get as a celebrity building tech start-up because this will surely help PEG and its two flagship brands.

“There’s always extra attention when an entertainer launches a startup. This is great because we’ll need all the help we can get. Changing gaming and influencer marketing will not happen overnight, even with this seed funding. We’ll need a strong community to band together, inspired by the vision of what our respective industries can one day be,” Pressman said.

Sonla said they were attracted to the fact that Pressman has deep alignment with the two fields that PEG is targeting: P&E gaming and influencer marketing.

Her being a popular actress and endorser gave Pressman the clout to attract large strategic clients in GameFi and Web 3.0 for PEGFi and brands and influencers for BrandNation.io.

According to Kiran Sharma, a Senior Partner at Sonla, Web3 products are not built through advertising, but through the community and Pressman has the influence needed to attract the critical mass of users needed for both PEG and BrandNation.io.

Sharma expressed confidence that Pressman will lead them toward a more professional, efficient, and digitally enabled industry for both gaming and influencer marketing respectively.

Sonla also saw that both PEG companies have significant value-add in the form of technology. BrandNation.io is not just a middleman, more effectively matching influencers with brands.

The platform boasts of a suite of features that make it easy for both brands and influencers to interact with one another, beginning with the core user experience.

In just a few click, brands are able to automate the campaign creation process for influencer marketing, gain access to real-time data about each campaign, and achieve mainstream adoption through collaborations with even A-list celebrities, including Pressman herself.

BrandNation.io also offers complete integration with all social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter, as well as real-time rewards and payments via PEG Token, the native token of PEG and the PEGFi ecosystem.

The PEG Token is backed by BLX, the native token of BLOX, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) registered in Wyoming, United States. With this technological backbone, users and brands with PEG can easily collaborate and partner through the PEG and BrandNation.io platforms.