How creator partnerships drove 6,600+ sign-ups for Stream in FY-2025

Stream builds infrastructure for in-app communication — Chat, Video, Activity Feeds and AI Moderation — used by companies like Adobe, Walmart, Strava and Patreon.

In early 2025, Stream partnered with Ankur to build a creator-led acquisition channel from scratch.

There was no systematic creator pipeline. Outreach was ad hoc, cost per sign-up was well above $100, and there was no repeatable process for managing campaigns across YouTube, X, newsletters and open source simultaneously.

Goal: turn creator partnerships into a predictable, cost-efficient channel that compounds over time.

Built a repeatable creator pipeline. Sourced, vetted, briefed and managed 60+ external creators across YouTube, X, LinkedIn, newsletters and open source — matched by technical depth and audience fit, not follower count.

Shipped 19 YouTube videos through creator partnerships. YouTube became the highest-converting channel.

Published 40+ technical blogs by external creators — on Stream's domain and across developer publications like freeCodeCamp and TheNewStack — building long-term SEO and organic traffic.

Identified compounding creators. Burak Örkmez (CodeSistency, 113K+ subscribers) delivered in every quarter of FY-2025. One of his videos alone crossed 200,000 views and continues to drive sign-ups into FY-2026.

Supported Vision Agents' open-source launch in October by coordinating X and LinkedIn creators for launch-day awareness. Vision Agents crossed 3,500 GitHub stars at launch and has since grown to 8,000+.

Documented playbooks for Product Hunt launches, Reddit distribution, social media growth and creator engagement — reducing future coordination overhead and transferring institutional knowledge to Stream's internal team.

End-to-end ownership. Every step from creator sourcing to execution was managed without creating much dependency on Stream's team.

Content built to last. YouTube videos, technical blogs and open-source content created through these partnerships continue driving sign-ups and GitHub stars well after publication.

Compounding over campaigns. Focus was on identifying creators and formats that deliver across multiple quarters — not one-off wins that spike and fade.