Sales & marketing

1stCollab

Website

1stCollab is the first influencer platform that fully automates and optimizes every aspect of your influencer marketing program. We’ve helped hundreds of startups launch their first campaigns and enabled larger brands to scale to thousands of influencers, while saving them over $1M annually in influencer spend. What we offer: - Smart search & r

Founded 2022Origin source ↗Checked 2026-10-27

Overview

1stCollab is the first influencer platform that fully automates and optimizes every aspect of your influencer marketing program. We’ve helped hundreds of startups launch their first campaigns and enabled larger brands to scale to thousands of influencers, while saving them over $1M annually in influencer spend.

What we offer:

- Smart search & recommendations – Instantly connect with thousands of relevant influencers.

- Full campaign automation – From outreach and negotiations to contracts, payments, and taxes, we handle it all.

- Real-time performance tracking – Monitor conversions, revenue, and run A/B tests with detailed reporting.

Company description As recorded 2026-11-08

Founders & team

Leon Lin

Founder/CEO

Currently working on 1stCollab, the best platform for brands and creators to collaborate on influencer marketing campaigns. I was previously at Pinterest for over nine years, where I watched the company grow from 100 to 3k employees. Most recently, I was Head of Discovery product there where I led our Home, Search, and Pins teams and was responsible for user engagement. Before that, I was a tech lead on the Recommendations team.

Founder profile As recorded 2026-10-27

Varun Bansal

Founder

Co-founder at 1stCollab, a platform for brands and creators to connect and run marketing campaigns together. Before 1stCollab, I worked at Pinterest, where I was a product manager for the homefeed recommendations team, the international growth team, and—most recently—the creator engagement and community teams.

Founder profile As recorded 2026-10-27

Andrew Liu

Founder

Currently working on building a network for brands and creators to connect and launch marketing campaigns. Previously, I was a Tech Lead on search and recommendations at Coupang and Pinterest. If you're interested in search, recommendations, or creators, please reach out :)!

Founder profile As recorded 2026-10-27
11team members reported
Source-reported As recorded 2026-10-27

Founded 2022 · Source

Origins

After working on creator-related products for three years at Pinterest—and talking with dozens of creators about the challenges they faced—Varun and Leon began brainstorming different ways creators could better monetize the enormous value they delivered to their audiences and to brands. After testing a number of concepts, they became excited by the idea of building better discovery experiences to help brands find creators for their campaigns. A mutual friend connected them with Carina, who was independently building something similar. Andrew had also previously worked with Varun and Leon on discovery at Pinterest, and joined the team as well. Soon after, 1stCollab was born!

Founder account As recorded 2026-10-27

News & product activity

Sources & observations

Y Combinator

Profile depthenriched profile
Website observationwebsite reachable
Last website check2026-11-11
Location · source statedSan Francisco, CA, USA
Pricing evidenceA pricing page was detected
Maturity: Not assessed · 4 of 6 areas documented

Source-based assessment · automated evidence rules

The latest capture is empty, blocked or a parked website.

Maturity is an evidence-based assessment, not a success rating. It may understate the current stage where evidence is limited. Coverage records documented areas, not a complete or independently audited company history.

Stage definitions
independent websitesource corroborationreachable websitedescriptive evidenceclassified market and modelsourced peoplesourced founding yearpricing page observed