Working side by side, Ameer Brown and his brother, Anthony, have made strategic strides as founders.
Ameer and Anthony trace their roots to a Jewish hospital in Queens, NY, on Long Island. From a young age, rapper Nas, also from New York, was an influential figure in their lives. In their later years as founders, that admiration would come full circle.
The pair, both HBCU graduates, lead Breakr—a company empowered by technology that fosters collaboration between artists, labels, brands, and creators to create successful social marketing campaigns, its website mentions. Breakr removes barriers to entry, welcoming users at any stage of their journey and supporting them with AI-powered deal presets, contract templates, and automated payment processes.
“At the end of the year, our clients don’t have to do 1099s and tax compliance paperwork with thousands and thousands of influencers that they’ve contracted and worked with across the year…So they’ll make it easy for you to get the invoices, they’ll make it easy for you to get the tax paperwork from the creator, but they still pass that back to you and your finance team, and you have to go off and file the taxes and do the invoicing yourself. So it’s truly a one-stop shop innovation when it comes to the financial, the flow of money,” Brown mentioned on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast with host Will Lucas.
Breakr officially launched in 2020 and is also supported by co-founders Rotimi Omosheyin and Dan Ware. The idea was conceived by Ameer, who brings five years of experience as a software engineer at Adobe, his LinkedIn profile notes. He recently became Co-CEO, now sharing the title with Anthony, who previously worked as a portfolio manager at Acumen Fund and as a management consultant at Manatt Health Strategies.
“I think for the first four years, it just made sense for me to be head down there and for Tony to be head down and building the business and building all the resources around what we were building on the technology side, but I think it got to a point where we found product market fit, and at that point, our worlds were just converging every single day. We’re talking every single day, obviously. But we’re also realizing that our jobs, in order to complete them, we needed each other,” Ameer said on the podcast.
Investment From Nas
Their collaborative efforts have earned Breakr recognition from major clients like Universal Music Group and Sony. In its early days, the company also partnered with Nas during the launch of his 12th studio album, “King’s Disease.” Their campaign launch to promote the album was a success—so much so that they would secure his investment during a $4.2 million seed round led by Slow Ventures in 2021, as AFROTECH™ previously reported.
“We crushed the campaign. Nas even interacted with at least two of the posts from our initial campaign with “King’s Disease” and reposted them on his page. And this was something that was told to us that he didn’t really do, and particularly working with marketing companies, etc.,” explained Ameer. “So just to see him be happy with the campaign, interact with the post, and then also double down with an investment in the company. It was just a huge nod to us at the time, still. It was a huge nod to us, and we’re forever grateful to Nas and Anthony Sole and the team over there.”
In total, Breakr has raised $9 million in funding supported by institutional investors and family office that also includes Baron Davis a16z, Precursor Ventures, Marc Benioff, Thomas Laffont, and Plexo Capital, among others, mentions Ameer’s LinkedIn.