Inspiration
Fans already support their favorite creators through donations, memberships, and crowdfunding. But most of the time, they give money without expecting anything in return.
We wanted to explore a different approach: What if fans could invest in their favorite creators' next videos and earn a share of the revenue?
At the same time, creators often have ambitious video ideas but lack the upfront budget to produce them. Palvest connects these two sides. Fans help fund bigger productions, while creators share just 20% of the video's first-year revenue.
This also gives fans another reason to promote the videos they support. The more successful a video becomes, the more both creators and fans can earn.
What it does
Palvest turns fan donations into investments.
Creators propose their next video, set a funding goal, and offer fans a share of its revenue. Fans can invest as little as $5 and receive a proportional share of the earnings.
The process is simple:
- Creators pitch an idea. They describe a video, and AI helps generate a proposal with a production budget and funding terms.
- Palvest forecasts performance. Using the creator's previous YouTube videos, we estimate potential views and revenue.
- Fans invest. Fans browse projects, see potential returns, and fund videos through PayPal.
- Creators produce and publish. The upfront funding helps them make videos that might otherwise be too expensive.
- Everyone shares the success. Revenue is distributed proportionally to investors through PayPal Payouts.
Fans can track their investments, expected returns, and payouts in one portfolio.
How we built it
We built Palvest using Next.js 16, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, and Supabase Postgres.
We integrated several APIs:
- PayPal Orders API: Allows fans to fund video proposals through PayPal Sandbox checkout.
- PayPal Payouts API: Distributes video revenue to fans based on their investment share.
- YouTube Data API: Analyzes a creator's previous videos to estimate views and revenue potential.
- Claude AI: Turns a creator's video idea into a structured proposal, including the title, production budget, and investment terms.
One important design decision was to keep financial calculations separate from AI. Claude helps creators write proposals and identify comparable videos, but all revenue forecasts, investment shares, and payout calculations use deterministic code.
For payouts, we built a ledger that tracks each fan's share and ensures the total distribution matches the available revenue down to the cent.
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest challenges was making investment forecasts understandable without presenting them as guaranteed returns.
Instead of asking AI to predict earnings, we built a forecasting system based on each creator's actual YouTube performance. It analyzes their last 20 eligible long-form videos and generates low, expected, and high scenarios.
Another challenge was handling PayPal payments reliably. We needed to ensure that a fan's investment was only recorded after PayPal confirmed the payment, while preventing duplicate transactions.
Distributing revenue to multiple fans was also challenging. We implemented proportional payouts with precise rounding so every cent is accounted for.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud that Palvest demonstrates the complete journey from a creator's idea to a fan receiving revenue.
Creators can analyze their channels, generate proposals, and raise funding. Fans can explore projects, simulate potential returns, invest through PayPal, and track their portfolio.
We also built a working revenue distribution system using PayPal Payouts, showing how a single video's earnings can be shared across many supporters.
Most importantly, we created a model where fans and creators benefit from the same outcome: making great videos that more people want to watch.
What we learned
We learned how to combine AI, real performance data, and PayPal's payment infrastructure into a single product.
We also learned that AI works best when it helps people make decisions rather than generating financial numbers without a reliable basis.
What's next for Palvest
We want to expand Palvest beyond YouTube and explore how the same model could help streamers, filmmakers, musicians, and other independent creators.
We also want to introduce automated revenue tracking, more detailed creator analytics, and better tools for fans to discover projects worth supporting.
Our bigger vision is simple: Instead of just donating to creators you love, you can invest in their success.
Built With
- claude
- paypal
- typescript
