The first platform where every fan has a face, every demographic is a fact, and every data share is a choice.
Marquee is a three-portal platform that turns the creator–fan–brand relationship from a guessing game into a verified marketplace. Creators credentialize their audiences — transforming unverified follower counts into liveness-proven, government-ID-verified fan communities with deterministic demographics. Fans receive a portable identity credential they use once and carry everywhere. Brands access the only audience targeting in the industry where every reached human is confirmed real, the demographics are government-derived, and every data access is consent-gated with cryptographic receipts.
A marquee is the illuminated sign above a theater — the most visible, most coveted real estate in entertainment. Creators want to be on it. Fans look at it. Brands sponsor it. Cameo is the company; Marquee is the product.
Three tectonic forces are creating the market Marquee serves.
Only 28% of Americans trust newspapers, television, and radio to report news accurately — a record low and a 42-point drop from the 1970s when Gallup first measured trust at 70%. The decline is steepest among younger adults: no age group under 65 exceeds 28% trust. The audience isn't disappearing — it's migrating to independent creators they trust more than institutions.
Source: Gallup, October 2025 — "Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S."The global creator economy reached $250–310 billion in 2026 and is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2034. More than 200 million people worldwide identify as content creators. Goldman Sachs projects 107 million creators by 2030. YouTube alone paid creators, artists, and media companies more than $100 billion over four years. Independent creators are not a niche — they are the new media.
Source: Grand View Research ($310B, 23.3% CAGR); Goldman Sachs (67M creators 2025 → 107M by 2030); YouTube CEO letter, Jan 2026Influencer marketing hit $32.55 billion in 2025, yet 37.2% of followers are fake and $4.8 billion is wasted annually on fraud. Brand deals are negotiated on estimated reach — estimated demographics that are wrong 37% of the time. Creator-brand deal-making is ad hoc, manual, and built on data nobody trusts. 81% of marketers encountered influencer fraud in the past year with median waste of $128,000 per campaign.
Source: SociaVault Labs 100K-account study; World Federation of Advertisers (1,400 marketers, 28 countries); HypeAuditor"I have 2M fans but I can't prove a single one is real. Brands discount me."
"I want to be seen by the creator I love — and I want one credential that works everywhere."
"I need to know the audience is real before I spend $50K on a campaign."
ID.me proved that verified community users deliver 43% higher average order value with 5.4× ROI in a single quarter. Their 157 million verified users generate $150M+ in annual revenue. Applying this verification model to the $310 billion creator economy — where 37% of the audience is fake — represents a massive value creation opportunity for creators, fans, and brands alike.
Any startup attempting this from scratch faces a three-sided cold start — creators, fans, and brands — with no distribution, no data, and no identity infrastructure. We start with all three.
Existing creator-fan transaction relationships. Every Cameo request is a fan who paid to interact with a creator — the highest-signal relationship in the creator economy. These transaction pairs are the seed for verified fan communities.
Creator intelligence data — authenticity scores, brand safety assessments, audience demographics, engagement metrics — across thousands of YouTube creators. Plus existing brand deal relationships that shorten the sales cycle from months to weeks.
Privacy-preserving identity infrastructure, biometric verification, Passkey for user LOVE, Graduated Identity framework, 751-component React library, Chelsea FC as customer, government-grade credential issuance.
The optimal launch unit is a cluster of 5 YouTube creators with overlapping fan bases — identified by BentPixels data, launched together. Portability proven on day one: a fan who verifies for Creator A taps into Creator B's fan club instantly. Replicable monthly. One cluster per month = 60 creators in Year 1.
Three React/Vite SPAs deployed to Cloudflare Pages, powered by Supabase and QiD's identity infrastructure. Jake's component library (751 components across 18 packages) provides the UI foundation — including the Cameo v2 demo with 317 components covering Fan, Talent, and Business surfaces.
Onboard, credentialize fans, manage audience, negotiate brand deals
Discover, verify, access exclusive content, manage portable credential
Discover creators, target verified audiences, measure real delivery
The star is the universal signal. What it unlocks depends on where you present it. A ⭐⭐ at a fan club opens the VIP section. The same ⭐⭐ at a bank opens a full account. The credential doesn't change — the context determines what it's worth.
This is the data that no other platform in the world can show. Facebook Ads gives probabilistic audience estimates from tracking signals. Marquee gives deterministic verified demographics from government IDs.
15 personas and 90 user stories — 30 per class — all tagged with tier, priority, and QiD dependency. 31 stories are P0 (must ship for MVP). Full backlog available in companion document.
Five overlapping YouTube creators, identified by BentPixels data, launched together. A fan who verifies for Creator A taps into Creator B's fan club instantly — portability proven on day one. One cluster per month. Scale by replication, not by individual onboarding.
5 creators who collaborate · 30%+ mutual audience overlap between at least 3 pairs · Combined unique audience of 1M+ · Authenticity scores above 85% · Brand-safe content · At least one 500K+ anchor creator
BentPixels identifies 5 creators with overlapping audiences. Account manager makes personal outreach. Founding terms: 0% platform fee for 12 months.
All 5 creators verify (⭐⭐). Each gates 5-10 pieces of exclusive content. BentPixels provides content strategy support.
All 5 announce simultaneously. Cross-promotion is natural — they're friends. Total addressable: 1M-3M fans.
Target: 10K-20K verified fans across the cluster. Fans who verify for one creator discover instant access to the other four.
BentPixels brand team pitches verified audience data. Target: 2-3 deals. Campaign results become the case study for Cluster #2.
QiD verification embedded in Chelsea's mobile app. Verified fan ticketing for at least one match. First sponsor campaign against verified audience data. Case study for every sports entity. Timeline: 6-9 months.
Sign organizations adjacent to each creator base: UK financial services for Chelsea fans, US digital services for creator cluster fans. Each new partner expands the portability value. The "holy shit" moment isn't Chelsea ↔ Cameo — it's Chelsea ↔ Barclays and Cameo ↔ Cash App.
Continuous due diligence on failed creator platforms. Active creator base + clean contracts at distressed price ≤ $5M. When the right target appears, move fast.
12% of campaign value. A $50K campaign → Platform keeps $6,000 → Creator receives $44,000. Positioned at the top of Patreon's range (5-12%) but justified by verified audience data + brand deal marketplace that Patreon doesn't offer.
$500-$10K/month for brands to search verified audience demographics and community maturation data across all creators.
Verification sponsorship ($1-5/fan verified) · Open Call posting ($500-2K) · API access for agencies ($2K-10K/month) · Optional fan subscriptions (creator-set price, 5% platform fee) · Superfan segment premium (3-5× base CPM)
MVP (3 portals), 5 creators, 10K-20K verified fans, 2-3 brand deals, first case study. Team: 3-4 people.
Clusters #2-#4, Patreon migration, Chelsea verified ticketing, Rewards Card, portable credentials. 25 creators, 100K verified fans. Team: 5-6 people.
100+ creators, 500K+ verified fans, licensing marketplace, API access, credential network expansion. Team: 8-9 people.
Every competitor is either consumer-facing but walled (your identity only works within their network) or infrastructure-only (invisible to end users). Marquee is the only platform that's both consumer-facing AND portable.
ID.me is the closest analog and the strongest evidence that the verified-audience model works at scale.
ID.me proved the thesis: verify once, create a portable credential, monetize the trust layer by charging brands for access. Verified users spend 43% more and deliver 5.4× ROI because they're confirmed real humans, not probabilistic estimates. Marquee applies this same mechanic to creator audiences — a market that's 2× larger and currently has no verification infrastructure.
| Capability | Marquee | ID.me | Clear | Clerk | UNiDAYS | SheerID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer-facing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Portable credentials | ✓ | ✗ walled | ✗ airports | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| User identity ledger | ✓ The Map | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Evidence receipts | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Creator communities | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Progressive trust tiers | ✓ 3-tier | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Brand deal marketplace | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Gov-verified demographics | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ⚠ student | ⚠ segment |
| Zero fraud guarantee | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Developer SDK | ✓ 751 components | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Community maturation | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
The team must review each assumption below and certify through their own judgment and experience that the plan is achievable in reality — not delusional or built on false premises. Where an assumption is wrong, the dependent sections of this document must be revised.