Jonathan Gans and Adam Kershner met as freshman-year roommates at Duke, where Gans said they became best friends. Although they majored in biomedical engineering, their shared passion for content creation led them to create a startup for content creators.
“Adam has always been very creative; he is a writer,” said Gans. “My little sister […] has a YouTube channel, she has around 12,000 subscribers or so now that she’s been building out since she was 9. She’s really been a big reason why this is so meaningful to me. I’ve seen her dedicate so much time [to it] and […] that’s really inspired me.”
Kahana helps content creators monetize their digital content by protecting them from creator piracy. The startup is based in Chicago, but its ties to the Triangle landed them a slot to present at CED’s Venture Connect summit in Raleigh last month. Gans serves as CEO while Kershner is the Chief Operating Officer.
Kahana uses a freemium pricing model. Creators can access the startup’s SaaS platform and marketplace using Kahana’s free version; the expert version for $9.99 per month; or the enterprise version for $99.99 per month. In exchange, the creators can sell their digital content securely.
The delivery mechanisms of other existing platforms enable customers to directly download files they purchase from digital content creators, allowing them to resell the product or share it with others without having to pay the creator.
“That really directly impacts their ability to make money and their motivation because they just see that people are stealing,” said Gans. “It’s very, very debilitating. So, our platform is structured in a way to prevent that type of behavior.”
Customers purchase creators’ digital content through Kahana’s hub. In the hub, the customers can see what they’ve purchased but cannot download any of the material or copy and paste the text. And if they share the link with someone who hasn’t paid, a paywall will stop them from accessing the creator’s content for free.
The startup has attracted several noteworthy creators, including Benjamin St-Juste of the NFL’s Washington Commanders and wAmy, a YouTuber with 186,000 subscribers.
In addition to its high-profile clients, Kahana doubled its subscription upgrades in 2024. Gans believes that increase is largely attributable to a feature the startup released in January that limits the maximum file size upload on the free subscription to five megabytes.
“We’ve had people who, within literally 12 [to] 48 hours, upgrade because they are so excited that they found a platform that can protect their products,” said Gans. “And they’ve actually told us on live chat how excited they are that they finally found a platform that can do that. They immediately upgrade too so that they can upload those bigger files.”
Now, Kahana is focused on its next fundraising round. After raising $150,000 in its first family and friends fundraising round, Kahana is looking to raise $2.4M in this round, which it recently started.
While fundraising, Kahana will work on developing and implementing screenshot and recording protection in building toward the goal of hitting $3.4M in annually recurring revenue (ARR) by the beginning of Q3 2025.
“Our primary goal at this point is to hit our various milestones with respect to fundraising so that we can implement and execute our go-to-market strategy,” said Gans. “And start to really build consistent, predictable MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and ARR.”
