Cami Tellez has made her return. 

Tellez founded Parade, a popular undergarment brand which was once seen as the Gen Z competitor to Victoria’s Secret. Established in 2019 when Tellez was merely 21, the company successfully raised millions and drew a substantial customer base before being sold in 2023 to lingerie manufacturer Ariela & Associates. Toward the end of last year, Parade announced its decision to officially shut down. 

However, it appears that Parade was merely the start of Tellez’s entrepreneurial path. On Monday, she and former TikTok executive Jon Kroopf revealed the launch of Devotion, an influencer marketing platform designed to assist major brands in managing their influence initiatives. 

Currently, numerous brands have dedicated teams manually balancing existing influencers while identifying new ones. This is a labor-intensive endeavor often hindered by the rapid pace of the industry. 

“The initial phase of the creator economy focused on macro creators, with brands engaging 15 or 20 prominent figures monthly,” Tellez noted. “That approach has proven ineffective.” Referring to a 2025 IAB report indicating that creators make up about 2% of advertising expenditure, she remarked, “The problem isn’t a lack of faith in creators; it’s about unlocking a scalable model that operates within a content-driven algorithm.” 

Devotion simplifies aspects of this process, employing AI to assist brands in scaling their creator identification, oversight, and content processes. Human oversight remains intact to assess AI-generated decisions. 

“There are no independent agents acting without human oversight,” Kroopf informed TechCrunch. “Yet, they significantly expedite everything we handle.”  

Devotion collaborates with brands to perform tasks like assessing influencers’ posts and captions for alignment with brand standards; it helps brands determine which posts to promote and share; and it offers a brand fit score illustrating how well a creator matches the brand’s values. Additionally, it assists brands in compensating creators, a challenge if solely reliant on human management, Kroopf indicated. 

“It revolves around expansive creator ecosystems,” Tellez, the company’s creative director, stated. “A new kind of creator community that ensures larger scale, reduced CPMs [cost per mille], [and] enhanced algorithmic influence.” 

Tellez mentioned that Devotion was predominantly in beta for most of last year and has swiftly garnered over 10 clients, achieving seven-figure revenue. In addition to stepping out of stealth mode, the company also disclosed its successful $4 million funding round led by Basecase and Will Ventures. 

“We are utilizing technology to unveil what we believe to be a new opening, where previously little focus has been directed because it wasn’t viable,” Kroopf added, noting that it had not been cost-efficient for brands to allocate substantial finances and resources to create a platform like this independently.

“When I launched Parade in 2019, there was no real software that enabled mass engagement with ambassadors [influencers],” Tellez shared. At that time, she and her team devised technology that facilitated tracking and executing gifting, engagement, payments, and developed a comprehensive pipeline to manage their interactions with creators. “That drove a significant portion of our growth,” she went on, highlighting that numerous other founders approached her during that time inquiring how to mimic influencer engagement. 

Simultaneously, she realized that the algorithm had evolved, significantly influenced by TikTok’s trajectory. Although Devotion originated from her vision, she collaborated with Kroopf to better navigate this new algorithmic landscape. Five years prior, she noted, a creator’s post could reach about 20% of their audience; today, that figure has reduced to roughly 2%. 

“The feed is no longer dictated by your social connections or follower count,” she explained. “It’s far more influenced by content performance and the algorithm, as well as by your interests and related content you’ve engaged with.” 

This evolution signifies a new reality: An Ohio nurse possesses the same algorithmic potential as a macro-creator, Tellez stated. “We are venturing into a new era where influence has been made accessible to all.” 

Consequently, brands must function like content networks, collaborating with hundreds, if not thousands, of influencers monthly to generate content capable of driving scale, Tellez noted. 

Devotion represents brands by crafting a tailored content engagement strategy to gain insights on which influencers to engage and how to nurture that community over time. 

There are other agencies operating in the creator economy with similar frameworks, such as Pearpop. Tellez expressed that the newly acquired funding will enable the hiring of more engineers and brand operators to enhance the company’s technological infrastructure. 

Plans for the development of additional AI agents are in the pipeline, though no announcements can be shared just yet, they stated. Overall, Tellez believes that brands continue to seek genuine methods to connect with authentic individuals, collaborating with a diverse array of people (not solely the most prominent) to effectively convey brand messages. 

“We are beginning to witness a consensus shift towards our vision of scaled creator ecosystems for even the largest and traditionally most cautious brands,” Tellez concluded. “They aim to avoid falling behind the algorithm. Simultaneously, we are enhancing our AI systems to efficiently manage thousands of creators with accuracy — without compromising on quality or personal touch.”