Work

About

Contact

Work

About

Contact

Sunroom

Content monetization platform

Role

Co-founder & CEO

Product management

UX/UI design

Branding

Creative Direction

Date

Nov 2020 - present

Problem

We started Sunroom for a group of content creators who were missing out on income they could have been generating directly from their online communities, because of deficiencies with existing community monetization platforms. Specifically, this group did not want to use existing platforms because:

  1. The existing platforms allowed adult content, and this demo of creators did not want to offer adult content or have an association with adult content.

  2. The existing platforms did not promote the discovery of creators within the platform, which put enormous pressure on the content creator to generate their own demand.

  3. The existing platforms did not protect the creator’s content. Content leaks were rampant, causing creators distress and lost income.

  4. The existing platforms did not offer their services via native mobile apps, which was inconvenient for creators who needed to run their accounts on-the-go.

Solution

We developed Sunroom — a safe space for women to earn by creating content and connecting with their communities. The Sunroom service runs across iOS, Android, and web, with screenshot blocking technology, an internal discovery feed, and content guidelines that sit halfway between OnlyFans and Instagram.



To drive adoption among this particular demographic of women creators, we knew our solution had to:

  • Be aesthetically pleasing, with a feminine look and feel.

  • Borrow design patterns from social media platforms used by creators, so learning was minimal.

  • Contain built-in education, to teach our creators how to craft and market their offering, as most had never done this before.

  • Have a mission-driven brand. We needed to provide creators with a reason to use Sunroom that was bigger than making money. This was critical to enabling this group of creators to freely promote their accounts, where they would typically be hesitant due to the stigma that surrounds monetizing yourself.

Key Focus Areas

  • Creator onboarding. To scale, we knew Sunroom had to be a self-service product. In the early versions of the product, 5% of prospective creators made it through the creator registration and profile set-up funnel. We made several changes that resulted in 14% of creator prospects making it through the funnel and launching their Sunroom accounts.

  • Conversion to membership purchase. Memberships were the only form of recurring income on Sunroom, so maximizing the % of a creator’s audience who purchased a membership was critical to income stability.

  • Membership retention. The levers that impacted membership retention are: the frequency of creators’ posts, creators’ responsiveness to DMs, variation in content, and utilizing content series.

  • Creator retention. This was driven by total earnings. Generally, if we could get new creators to earn $100/mo, we could retain them and coach them to earn increasingly higher amounts. We built a 12 week onboarding series of emails that taught new creators how to position their offering, promote it, and upsell. We leaned heavily on examples from successful creators in our community.

  • Upselling. We sought to increase the amount creators were earning from each of their members, by adding additional ways to transact content and messages. These features include Custom Experiences, VIP Posts, Submit A Question, and Locked Messages.

  • Cross selling. We sought to increase the number of creators each of our members was connecting with and spending on. We built out an internal discovery feed, which became the source of 11% of the total memberships sold on Sunroom.

  • Safety. We built SunBlock — patented technology that prevents users from taking screenshots or screen recordings of photo and video content on Sunroom.

Guiding Design Principles

Non-transactional

Our creators are cautious about asking their audience for money, which is why they haven’t done it before. Sunroom can’t feel salesy or overly transactional. We abstract away money where we can, and make any transaction as fluid as possible.

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The skin matters as much as the bones

How Sunroom represents creators is a huge part of why creators love us. They love our feminine branding, they love our modern, futuristic aesthetic. The skin of the product needs to make our creators look and feel elevated, sexy, and cool.

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Productize caring

Use the safety features we build for creators to show that we care. Use these features as moments to bolster our brand messaging.



Use the safety features we build for creators to show that we care. Use these features as moments to bolster our brand messaging.





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Usher towards intimacy

People pay for access to their favorite creators, and in these 1:1 interactions is where the most value is unlocked for members and creators. Where appropriate, we funnel creators and members into 1:1 conversations.

People pay for access to their favorite creators, and in these 1:1 interactions is where the most value is unlocked for members and creators. Where appropriate, we funnel creators and members into 1:1 conversations.


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Do the sales heavy lifting for creators

Creators feel awkward constantly selling themselves. Where possible we automate sales moments, and assist creators with new member acquisition.


Creators feel awkward constantly selling themselves. Where possible we automate sales moments, and assist creators with new member acquisition.



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Results

  • The product has generated $5M in earnings for Sunroom creators

  • We’ve achieved a 94% retention rate for creators who earn (considered “great” for the category)

  • We’ve achieved a 70% membership renewal rate (considered “good” for the category)

  • 3,800 women have earned income on Sunroom

Results

  • The product has generated $5M in earnings for Sunroom creators

  • We’ve achieved a 94% retention rate for creators who earn (considered “great” for the category)

  • We’ve achieved a 70% membership renewal rate (considered “good” for the category)

  • 3,800 women have earned income on Sunroom

Branding

The goal of the Sunroom brand was to change the often negative perception that people have towards content monetization platforms and the creators who use them. At Sunroom’s inception, the existing players in the space (OnlyFans, Fansly, Patreon) bore dated, inelegant, and even cringeworthy branding. To break into a market of creators who had never directly monetized their audiences via subscriptions, we had to show these creators that we were a safe, credible, and modern solution. We had to build a brand that these creators felt proud to associate themselves with. We learned that creators saw launching on a subscription platform similarly to how they saw partnering with a brand on a brand deal — they had to feel aligned with the brand in order to do the work. For Sunroom’s brand, we set out to create a new universe. One that felt futuristic, feminine, and unapologetically bold. We set a high bar for aesthetics, including illustration, animation, UI design, and typography, as we knew our newly found market of creators would only adopt and bring their audiences to the platform if they felt impressed with the visual identity and if they resonated with the ethos of the mission.

Branding

The goal of the Sunroom brand was to change the often negative perception that people have towards content monetization platforms and the creators who use them. At Sunroom’s inception, the existing players in the space (OnlyFans, Fansly, Patreon) bore dated, inelegant, and even cringeworthy branding. To break into a market of creators who had never directly monetized their audiences via subscriptions, we had to show these creators that we were a safe, credible, and modern solution. We had to build a brand that these creators felt proud to associate themselves with. We learned that creators saw launching on a subscription platform similarly to how they saw partnering with a brand on a brand deal — they had to feel aligned with the brand in order to do the work. For Sunroom’s brand, we set out to create a new universe. One that felt futuristic, feminine, and unapologetically bold. We set a high bar for aesthetics, including illustration, animation, UI design, and typography, as we knew our newly found market of creators would only adopt and bring their audiences to the platform if they felt impressed with the visual identity and if they resonated with the ethos of the mission.

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Lucy Mort

©2025