Chicago, March 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- User-generated content is taking over the media industry. Platforms like YouTube, Roblox, and TikTok now dominate youth media consumption as authentic, creator-led content flourishes–on pace to become a $650bn market by 2030. But short-form video has dominated thus far, leaving out long-form illustrators, writers, and storytellers from the benefits of the creator economy–until now.
Unvale is a creator platform for creatives. A space for illustrators, writers and storytellers to share their work, be discovered, and self-publish long-form content. With over 20k monthly active users publishing 160k original creations per month–receiving over 1MM comments and social engagements. Unvale is today announcing a $1.8M funding round to continue to grow their userbase and implement new content types and social features.
The pre-seed round investors included Antler, Graham & Walker, Ganas Ventures, GFR Fund, LongJump VC, Network Ventures, and Vitalize Angels.
Unvale founders Bri Clark and Casey Lawlor.
Before Unvale, creatives would use separate platforms to develop creative work and then try to grow an audience–often via social platforms that favored video creators with massive audiences. Unvale combines the content development and audience growth. Users build their stories piece by piece, sharing characters, concept art, maps, and events to their audience as they go. Each piece is a discoverable social post that gets fans excited about the larger narrative they are creating. Each interaction motivates them to keep improving and growing as a storyteller.
The Unvale founders Casey Lawlor and Bri Clark believe the future minds behind the next Harry Potter, Star Wars, or Marvel Comic Universe will not be wasting their time publishing 280 character tweets or creating 15-second TikToks to promote their work. Instead, they will build on Unvale, making discovery and audience growth part of their creative process. Then when these future superstars are ready to publish something big–a webcomic, illustrated series, novel, or larger narrative–their audience is already engaged and eagerly awaiting their release.
Creatives on Unvale now have 320k total followers watching their stories unfold. Almost every piece of content on Unvale has engagement or a comment from a real user motivating them to keep building. Users report this engagement as the number one most motivating force to keep them coming back and developing their work long-term.
Unvale is a space for illustrators, writers and storytellers to share their work, be discovered, and self-publish long-form content.
Unvale’s key insight was understanding the creation and consumption preferences of younger users. They launched as a character creation platform targeting the place where most younger creatives started their stories: with the heroes, villains, and monsters of their worlds.
Day one, a user might have just the name for the next great superhero–a future spiderman they just launched. Eventually using Unvale’s bite-sized creator tools that make storytelling fun, they will have the entire narrative ready to share with their fanbase. Unvale is there from first idea to published work. It is now home to 2MM original creative works shared thus far with 95% of users stating goals of publishing a comic, novel, series, movie, or video game in the future.
Like all successful user-generated content platforms, Unvale’s founders know that access is everything. By providing the tooling for a new, younger market to create authentic new stories, Unvale is following in the footsteps of platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and Roblox. As they grow, their users will niche into new genres, new styles, new markets, and even new languages, becoming a global ecosystem for creative and IP development.
Casey Lawlor, CEO Unvale commented: “When I view our digital media landscape, I am less interested in the individual brilliance of established creatives who built well-known franchises like Star Wars and Marvel. I am fascinated by the near certainty that people of equal talent exist everywhere, undiscovered, and only lack access for their ideas to be seen by millions. Our mission is to provide that access.” -
Founded by a team of creatives, ex-Twitch builders, and six-time founders, Unvale is free from all AI-generated content. As other platforms continue to allow low-effort, AI content that competes for engagement, the team behind Unvale is proudly on the side of creatives. They believe the demand for human-created work will only grow in this new reality.
Authorship, authenticity, and a connection to the original creator have been key to the success of existing UGC platforms often at the expense of traditional media viewership. This may accelerate the trend towards younger consumers following younger creators they feel a connection with and view as authentic. Early users on Unvale echo that sentiment.
Another differentiator was Unvale’s approach to getting to creatives at the beginning of their journey, while simultaneously being a home for their audience. As the platform continues to develop, it will set its sights on both publishing tools and monetization tools, meaning creatives will never have to direct their audience to other platforms in order to publish comics, novels, animated series, and even more on Unvale. Users are already requesting video support, voice-over support, and webcomic viewing to create more engaging audio/visual content.
“Unvale's growth has been nothing short of remarkable. They consistently deliver on their lofty goals and are clearly driven by a deep mission to change how consumer media is created and distributed. Ryan Sommerville, General Partner, Antler VC.
In the future, Unvale wants to provide the tools, discovery, and massive audience that creatives need to be successful. Instead of studios and publishers providing content development resources, promotional channels, and publishing channels, users will have everything they need to do it themselves in one space.
When reaching the scale of other successful user-generated content platforms, Unvale could be the largest collection of creative talent in the world, and the largest publisher of new characters, worlds, stories, and IP in the history of publishing.
Ends
Media images can be found here.
About Unvale
Unvale is a social platform for creatives, helping 150k aspiring illustrators and writers develop stories, grow an audience, and self-publish their work.
For further information please contact the Unvale press office: Bilal Mahmood on b.mahmood@stockwoodstrategy.com or +44 (0) 771 400 7257.
