SideShift

SideShift is a New York based creator marketplace launching an AI agent that runs user-generated content campaigns for brands from end to end, covering sourcing, creator outreach, contracts, analytics, attribution, payments, and tax paperwork. The platform is aimed at consumer brands and mobile app teams who want a steady output of short-form video on TikTok and Instagram rather than one-off influencer deals, and it currently connects over a million creators with more than a thousand customers. This launch matters because the company is pitching the AI as a replacement for the human campaign manager who historically coordinated all of that work. The thesis behind the product is what the team calls the "unweighted" algorithm, the idea that TikTok and Instagram now reward volume of content over follower count, so deploying dozens of mid-tier creators to produce many videos outperforms paying a single large influencer for one post. The AI operates against that logic, running always-on UGC programs that test hooks, formats, and messaging in parallel so brands can find what the SideShift team describes as content market fit. SideShift was founded by Nick Lawton, Canyon Pergande, and Drew Levin, University of Wisconsin graduates who started the company in late 2023 as a campus job marketplace in Madison before pivoting after mobile app founders began using it to hire students for user acquisition content. Lawton, the CEO, is positioning this launch as the next step from that pivot, turning the marketplace itself into an autonomous system that can plan and operate creator campaigns without a human marketer in the loop.