A new ad unit for the agent era.

Stories that play like video and answer back. Sponsors fund the AI. Creators share the revenue. The format is published in the open.

WHAT WE’VE BUILT

It works today. You can open it right now.

Authoring, playback and agents are live. Everything below is a screenshot of running software, not a mockup — and you can play a story yourself on the site.

each clip is a card drag to reorder

Stack the clips — video, photo, text, narration, music

a 3-choice agent each button jumps anywhere

Give it an agent — 26 agent types across 9 categories

plays like a video then answers back

Share one link — plays anywhere, answers back

THE PROBLEM & THE OPENING

Ad tech needs an alternative to tracking people.

ADVERTISERS $1.3 Trillion

Global digital ad spend

Privacy regulation, cookie deprecation and user distrust are pulling apart the old stack.

CREATORS $480B

Creator economy by 2027

Platforms own the ad relationship. Creators get reach, but no stake in the revenue they produce.

LEARNERS $30B+

AI education, compounding

Everyone is told to learn AI; almost nowhere can you learn by doing — and get paid for it.

WHY NOW

Every era of media invented its own ad unit.

Instigate is building the open Agents + Ads format now — defined in the open, before the platforms enclose it.

HOW IT WORKS

One loop takes a creator from concept to revenue.

1

Build

Pick a ready-to-deploy concept and remix it with your own content and voice.

2

Publish

Deploy it anywhere as an open ad-unit format — feeds, sites, banners, classrooms.

3

Engage

Audiences interact with the agent; sponsors underwrite the AI behind it.

4

Earn

Revenue splits automatically across creator, platform and compute.

REMIX

Remix is the distribution, and the reason creators earn.

Creators remix sponsored clips into their own content and share in the revenue it generates. Every remix carries its lineage, so the system always knows who to pay.

BUSINESS MODEL

Advertising covers the AI bill, and everyone shares the revenue.

SPONSORS
Fund campaigns on the agent format.

AGENT ENGAGEMENT
Token costs covered by sponsors — GenAI compute is offloaded.

THE SPLIT
Creators, hyperscalers and Instigate each take a share of what a remix earns.

Creators never pay for tokens.

GO TO MARKET

Distribution starts where creators already gather.

MacroMind seeded Director into design schools and agencies until it became the industry default. Instigate runs the same motion — new tools spread because users teach each other faster than any sales team.

Gen Z creators

The tool lands in their hands first; they show everyone what it can do.

Agencies

Campaign-ready formats for clients who need post-cookie options.

Schools

Learn AI by building agents — a curriculum-ready on-ramp.

Open communities

Open source lets anyone stand up a system and build with us.

THE POLITICS

Politicize the issues, get attention.

1

Existing Ad-Tech is universally reviled.

We check the viral spread of creator-shared media, not humans.

2

Humans need to stay in charge of AI.

3

Women need to be more in charge.

Our open source “Women Included” license will require women to have, at least, partial ownership of the license.

THE SYSTEM

Overall Instigate system.

1
Open source globally focused.

2
Utilize AI to enable viewers to talk to a story or ad.

3
Mobile First vertical format.

4
Integrated player and editor = mobile web browser.

5
Leverages the need for AI education globally and the need of the creator economy to find new revenue streams.

6
Company is honest, transparent and pro women.

WHERE WE ARE

Five phases, plainly stated.

Two of these are done or underway. Three are not. We would rather you knew which was which.

TEAM

This team has seeded new creative tools before.

Marc Canter

Founder & CEO
Co-founded MacroMind in 1984 — which became Macromedia Director and defined the multimedia era. Four decades making new media authorable by humans.

Jack Shapiro

Co-founder & Partner
Head of Engineering. Nineteen years at AspenTech leading UX, with four patents in micro-services and industrial UI. Builds the AI and LLM product layer.

John Henry Thompson

Chief Scientist & Inventor
Invented Lingo, the language behind Macromedia Director. MIT graduate and former Chief Scientist at Macromedia.

Matt Ricciardi

Partner
A sales leader who scales revenue and builds international teams, with go-to-market experience across SaaS, fintech and B2B.

THE ASK

The raise is staged.

PRE-SEED — RAISING NOW

Ship and seed

Creators, agencies and schools; sponsor pilots cover the token costs.

SEED — NEXT

Revenue share live

Open-source releases land and the format spec is published.

SERIES A

The format scales

The open default; hyperscaler partnerships; marketplace scale.