Bright Wants You to Take Classes With Celebrities

Bright, a live video platform aimed at connecting celebrities, influencers and experts with audiences for interactive classes, debuts today. The premise is simple: People can use Bright to sell and operate paid, interactive video lectures with their fan bases. Creators can set their own topics and prices, and Bright will take a 20% cut off the top. Bright sessions can accommodate five to 100 people at a time, including multiple "on stage." Some will be one-off classes, and others will be running series. The company is led by Michael Powers, an early YouTube employee most recently at CBS Interactive, and Guy Oseary, a noted talent agent for acts like Madonna and U2. “Our goal at Bright is to create the biggest classroom for leveling up your life by combining the best of live conversations with incredible talent and entertaining learning experiences,” said Powers, the co-founder and CEO, in a statement. Live video meets education with celebrities At first glance, Bright sounds like an interactive version of Masterclass or Cameo, built for the Zoom revolution and the creator economy. But it also has moderator controls similar to the latest live audio platforms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Powers and Oseary teamed up last June after a mutual contact set them up. They had both been toiling about venture ideas in the live video and education spaces. Financial backers of the company include Sound Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Oseary and actor Ashton Kutcher, RIT Capital, Northwest and a series of other undisclosed VCs, celebrities and entrepreneurs. The platform kicks off today with a high-profile roster of celebrities, including Kutcher, director and comedian Judd Apatow, Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, skier Lindsey Vonn, comedian Amy Schumer and the Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott. Actress Laura Dern will lead a session called Tell Your Story, about unexpected journeys. Sportscaster Kenny Smith will host Champions Talk, an interview show with his favorite athletes. About 1,500 creators are on a waitlist to participate, the company said. “The idea for Bright was born from years of working to empower artists in connecting directly to the audiences that support them,” Oseary said in a statement. “Bright creates a direct, inspiring educational connection between talent and their audience through live video. This type of interactivity and connection doesn’t exist on any other platform, and it’s what makes learning more accessible for all while enabling talent to extend their brand and scale their business.” In an interview last week, Powers said that creators will be able to have access to their entire audience lists through the platform and use Bright to manage and grow a paying fan base. Many creators were already doing similar things like this during the pandemic, he said, using Zoom, PayPal, Google Sheets and email, for example, to build their own platforms. Monetization model While many of the names announced today are A-list celebrities, Powers is also trying to attract a class of online influencers who are looking to monetize their audiences originally built on other platforms. “I think creators are struggling on different platforms because the ad-driven model and the rev share just doesn’t quite sustain them—it doesn’t quite build a full business,” Powers said. “But they have scale; they have an audience that is listening to them ... they just want to go further.” Right now, Bright does not have any built-in advertising or sponsorship capabilities but will allow creators to get paid by brands for sponsored sessions, as long as they provide audiences with proper disclosure on Bright. With any live platform, however, content moderation is extremely tricky. The platform has a set of community guidelines and, for now, one of Bright’s 30 employees will sit in on each and every session to monitor it. “Our primary function is to help people add value to their lives," said Powers, "to be a positive space, and I think reinforcing that means we have to pay attention to when things go beyond the edges and kind of go in a direction that’s not helpful for people.”