😮 Startups are Darkposting to Raise more Money

...and Morning Brew is in on it

I was scrolling Instagram the other day when my eyes were drawn to a familiar logo - Morning Brew

The post was from Morning Brew and promoted a startup’s investment round that was open to the public

My eyes immediately lit up - I had stumbled across a Darkpost, the first I’d seen for startup investments

What is a Darkpost?

It looked like a Morning Brew post - and that’s because it was a Morning Brew post.

But go to the Morning Brew account page, and that post is nowhere to be found

A Darkpost is a social media ad that comes from another brand or influencer’s account, it allows you to harness the credibility of an established brand while targeting the ad to your desired audience

The Darkposts began popping up for a startup called ReAlpha, and were distributed by popular brands like Morning Brew, Entrepreneur, and Forbes

Here’s HOW and WHY a business would do this:

Let’s imagine a new startup called Larry’s Ice Cream wants to raise money to fund their operation

Since Larry is just starting out, he barely has credibility with potential customers - and has even less credibility with potential investors

Investors are less willing to invest in Larry’s Ice Cream as they have not yet established trust with this new entity

Larry needs people to believe that he’s credible, otherwise he won’t receive any investments

Larry knows that a lot of people trust Morning Brew, a popular newsletter among people that would be potential investors

His message would carry a lot more weight if it came from Morning Brew

So, he reaches out and asks them to advertise on his behalf - below is an example of how the deal goes down:

Darkposting sounds sinister…but really it’s just a clever tactic that’s now finally being deployed by startups

Investors should keep their guard up

From the investor point-of-view, I would urge people to understand that these are simply paid ads. Forbes + Morning Brew are not recommending these startups, they’re just generating ad revenue

And just because trustworthy brands/individuals are being paid to promote something, does not mean that that you should blindly invest in it

Remember that Kevin O’Leary + Tom Brady were promoting FTX through a paid advertising deal - and that didn’t turn out so well

‘We got him gang!’