#paid’s Bryan Gold Selected as Endeavor Entrepreneur at the 105th International Selection Panel

Endeavor Canada is excited to announce that Bryan Gold, co-founder and CEO of #paid, has been selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur at Endeavor’s 105th International Selection Panel (ISP) in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

This milestone recognizes Bryan’s leadership and the scale and impact of #paid, a fast-growing creator-marketing platform that helps brands turn authentic creator content into high-performing, measurable marketing assets across digital and real-world channels.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Toronto, #paid operates across North America and supports campaigns for global brands including McDonald’s, Sephora, Samsung, and Disney. Under Bryan’s leadership, the company has established itself as one of the most innovative platforms in the creator-marketing ecosystem, helping brands move beyond awareness-driven influencer campaigns toward performance-oriented creative that delivers real business outcomes.

In 2025, #paid earned two wins at the Adweek Tech Stack Awards, being named both Creator Marketing Platform of the Year and Social Media Platform of the Year. This rare recognition reflects the company’s ability to combine creativity with measurable performance, building technology that enables brands to engage audiences in ways that are authentic, scalable, and effective.

The creator economy is undergoing a fundamental shift from a niche, awareness-focused channel to a core pillar of performance marketing. The North American content creator market was valued at approximately $55.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to exceed $331 billion by 2034, driven by a significant reallocation of digital advertising spend. Social media surpassed paid search as the world’s largest advertising channel in 2024, with brands expected to spend nearly $267 billion on social media marketing by the end of 2025.

As the market scales, execution has become increasingly complex. With more than 200 million content creators worldwide, including over 45 million full-time creators in the United States alone, brands are struggling to discover creators, manage campaigns, and maximize content performance. A key evolution has been the shift toward licensing high-performing creator content for use beyond social platforms, allowing a single asset to be deployed across e-commerce, paid media, out-of-home advertising, newsletters, and other owned and paid channels. This approach gives brands greater control, enables real-time testing and optimization, and allows them to leverage creator authenticity at scale. As creator marketing becomes embedded in the broader digital mix, platforms that enable fast, compliant access to content rights are becoming essential infrastructure.

#paid sits at the center of this shift. The company partners directly with major social platforms including Snapchat, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube. These relationships increasingly serve as meaningful sources of customer acquisition, as platforms often turn to #paid when large brands seek support executing creator-led campaigns. This dynamic has created a strong pipeline of qualified brand opportunities and reinforced #paid’s position as trusted infrastructure within the digital advertising ecosystem.

#paid was co-founded by Bryan Gold and his longtime friend Adam Rivietz, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer. Bryan’s path into entrepreneurship began at Western University, where he co-founded Textbook Forest, a campus marketplace that funded tree planting through textbook resales. Originally a film student, Bryan once expected to spend his career making movies, but his trajectory changed after watching a close friend grow a large social media following without a clear way to connect with brands or monetize their work. That experience revealed a market gap around creator discovery, fair compensation, and trust, and became the foundation for #paid.

Over the course of #paid’s Endeavor selection journey, Bryan was deeply engaged with Endeavor’s Canadian and global networks, participating in curated conversations and working sessions with experienced founders, investors, and operators. Through this process, he received strategic feedback on #paid’s growth trajectory, product vision, and long-term potential, while building meaningful relationships across the Endeavor community.

The journey culminated at Endeavor’s 105th International Selection Panel, held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, where Bryan presented #paid’s vision and progress and was unanimously approved to join the Endeavor network. Endeavor Canada extends its sincere gratitude to the members of the Endeavor community who supported Bryan and #paid throughout this process, including LP Maurice of Busbud, Susan Anderson of Cannonball Capital, Joanna Harries of Sagard, Samantha Skye of SHE Media, Gary Swart of Polaris Partners, and Arvind Rajan of Cricket Health.

Bryan also benefited from insights and mentorship from his selection panel, including Diego Piacentini, former SVP of International Consumer Business at Amazon; Dare Okoudjou, Founder and CEO of onafriq and Endeavor Outlier; Hassan Hamdan, Founder of Unifonic and Endeavor Outlier; Michael Heyink, Co-Founder of Yellow; Tjaart van der Walt, Co-Founder of TymeBank and Endeavor Outlier; and Katlego Maphai, Co-Founder of Yoco and Endeavor Outlier.

As an Endeavor Entrepreneur, Bryan joins a global network of founders who will support him with strategic guidance, peer learning, and access to capital as #paid enters its next phase of growth. His selection underscores the role Canadian founders are playing in building globally relevant companies at the forefront of emerging digital markets.