In an effort to challenge the dominance of major social platforms and give creators a sustainable business model, TopFan, an entertainment marketing technology company led by Jeffrey Kohnin February began offering independent creators a way to own their audience data in February. Founded by Kohn in 2015, TopFan has long powered fan engagement for big names, including the Denver Broncos, Maroon 5 and Warner Bros. Its white label websites, apps and data platform help entertainment organizations understand how fans behave beyond likes and clicks. Now, the company is expanding that infrastructure to independent creator.
The idea is simple: by moving live streams, online sales, and other assets to their own branded apps and websites (and gaining access to fan data like phone numbers and locations), creators can gradually reduce reliance on platforms like TikTok, Instagram AND to YouTube. Over time, that autonomy could help them build independent businesses.
With easy access to YouTube and TikTok, anyone can be a producer or artist today, but most creators still struggle financially. More than half earned less than $15,000 in 2025even when the general economy of creators has exceeded 250 billion dollars. Kohn argues that the imbalance highlights a broken system.
“It’s getting harder for a creator to survive on these social media platforms because their content isn’t being seen,” Kohn told the Observer, noting that average engagement rate for Instagram posts it stands at around 3 percent. “You would never build your house on rental land,” he added.
A technologist by trade, Kohn began his career as a mission specialist at NASA in the mid-1990s, later serving as executive director and enterprise architect at The burden before founding TopFan in 2006. A conversation there with a studio executive sparked the idea for the company. “I started asking him about the data he had on his fans and he said he didn’t have any,” Kohn recalled. Despite tens of millions of Facebook followers, the studio couldn’t actually reach those fans directly.
The same problem now plagues the creative economy. “When we assessed the landscape of tools available to creators, we saw a lot of fragmentation,” Kohn said. Creators often cheat Cameo, Patreon, Sub-stack and commodity platforms—all linked by a messy biography. TopFan aims to consolidate them into a branded ecosystem where creators can sell merchandise, host communities or courses, manage subscriptions and track key fan data.
TopFan still encourages creators to stay visible on major platforms for discovery. “They need to continue to post and grow their audience on these big platforms,” Kohn said. “But over time, they become less dependent on black-box algorithms and surface-level audiences.”
Currently, TopFan partners with influencers who have at least 10,000 followers accumulated across platforms. “It shows them that they’re not just starting yesterday — that they’re taking this seriously,” Kohn said.
Formula for lasting success
Kohn believes that long-term success means going beyond content to offer tangible products and services such as training, classes, episodic programs or merchandise. One area of rapid growth is microdramas—short-form serialized web videos popular in China such as love you. These bite-sized dramas, often built around cliffhangers and romance or revenge tropes, have found global appeal; last year, the microdrama app DramaBox was selected for the Disney 2025 Accelerator Program.
Another promising category is family-friendly content. With social platforms facing scrutiny over youth exposure – even Australia social networks banned for minors—creators who own their distribution channels can provide safe, gated environments for younger audiences to engage responsibly.
On all counts, Kohn insists the principle is the same: ownership matters. “Your local plumber has a database of their customers,” he said. “It surprised me that all these big companies had established relationships through the intermediary of social media.”
High profile examples like of Alex Cooper not good AND MrBeast’s Beast Industries show what’s possible when creators control their platforms. With TopFan now extending those tools to independent influencers, Kohn hopes more creators will follow suit, moving from renting social media audiences to owning entire digital ecosystems built to last.
