Turning Brand Loyalty Into a Community, Not a Discount Code

01 /The Concept

TYB built a loyalty program app for brands. The site doesn't advertise a vertical focus, but in practice the startup currently works exclusively with beauty brands.

The name TYB stands for "Try Your Best" – though the startup has quietly dropped that phrase from its current site.

Technically, TYB gives brands a community inside a single shared app. Each brand's community looks like a standard social feed – posts, photos, likes, comments.

In a conventional loyalty program, members earn rewards for purchases. TYB's real play: members earn rewards for community activity.

Interestingly, the points aren't brand-locked. Points earned inside one brand's community go into a shared wallet, and users can spend them across any brand community they belong to – redeeming for discount coupons, event tickets, or direct gifts from whichever brand they choose.

Community activity also affects a user's status within a particular brand community. Status is visibly displayed on posts so other members can see it and unlocks access to exclusive perks only available at that tier.

Different activities yield different point totals. The highest-value action: posting a review of a recently purchased brand product with photos, a product description, and a personal opinion.

Points can be earned from posts, likes, shares, and comments – and also from playing brand mini-games. In practice these "games" are essentially feedback surveys or branded quizzes that teach users about product features.

The app launched in 2022 and now hosts communities for more than 80 brands. TYB has just closed $11M in new funding, bringing total investment to $24M.

02 /Why It Matters

Eighty brands sounds modest – but there's a reason for the restraint. As the founder puts it with candor: "We want to work with brands that already have a significant online audience." Which raises the obvious question: why would a brand with an audience need TYB?

Simple answer: TYB promises to increase LTV of customers the brand already has. Bringing existing buyers into an active brand community keeps them engaged – and spending more.

According to data cited in Fortune, it delivers on this promise. Members of a brand's TYB community purchase 40% more frequently and show 28% higher LTV than non-members. The founder claims a TYB community can generate 5–10% of a brand's total revenue – a better return than comparable spend on Facebook or Instagram community-building.

Specific brand examples back this up.

The Outset saw its 5,000 TYB community members buy 26% more frequently within months of launching.

Set launched a new product and generated $1M in sales within the first hour – with $500,000 of that coming in the first 15 minutes from early access offered exclusively through its TYB community.

A closely related model – but for musicians rather than beauty brands – is Sesh ([related review](/review/vot-gde-tvoi-samye-glavnye-dengi)). It has about 250 artists on the platform so far and raised $7M in its first funding round in April.

The TYB and Sesh model rests on two observations about buyer behavior.

In any product category, a small subset of buyers does the heavy lifting. A 2016 book titled “Super Consumers” argued that the top 10% of buyers generate 30–70% of total sales volume – buying more frequently and spending more per transaction than everyone else.

Spotify has observed the same dynamic in music. Most artists have a core of "super-listeners" who stream their music obsessively. These super-listeners represent just 2% of total listeners – but account for 18% of total streams. And they convert into super-buyers: that same 2% generates more than 50% of merch sales.

The implication for TYB and Sesh: create a space where brands or artists can concentrate and cultivate their super-buyers and super-fans. The effort required to serve a small percentage of the audience can produce disproportionately large returns.

The second observation is about what actually builds loyalty.

Pushing customers to buy more by sending more promotional emails doesn't build loyalty – it trains customers to wait for deals. What actually builds loyalty is pulling customers into non-transactional engagement: contests, quizzes, feedback prompts, branded experiences, community discussions.

Cohora ([reviewed here](/review/chtoby-bolshe-prodavat-nuzhno-menshe-prodavat)) built a platform for exactly this kind of "non-selling" brand engagement. The company claims its platform can increase revenue per user by up to 30% – through a 20% lift in average order value and up to 25% higher average LTV.

StriveCloud ([covered here](/review/prostoj-sposob-uderzhanija-polzovatelej-i-pokupatelej)) applies the same logic to boost engagement and LTV for web services and mobile apps.

Superlogic ([reviewed here](/review/hochesh-imet-lojalnyh-klientov-dari-im-jemocii)), which raised $13.7M in new funding in February, takes a somewhat different angle. It argues that customer loyalty is built through experiences – non-transactional perks that look nothing like the discounts that power most loyalty programs today. Its platform catalogs these experiences: NBA Finals tickets, VIP concert access, backstage tours of Broadway shows, seats at private dinners with celebrity chefs. Brands embed this catalog into their loyalty programs so points can be redeemed for memorable experiences instead of coupons. The startup claims this boosts loyalty program participation by 9x.

03 /Opportunities

Growing revenue without growing marketing spend means getting more from customers you've already acquired – so they keep buying without you paying to bring them back.

And when existing customers keep buying while you're also growing acquisition budgets, the two effects compound: that's what a rocket ship looks like.

Almost every company wants to grow profitability, and some of them want the rocket ship. Building platforms that make this happen is a compelling, durable market.

Two core functions these platforms need:

- Sustaining and growing loyalty among users, customers, or fans through non-selling engagement.

- Converting ordinary buyers into super-buyers, and rewarding existing super-buyers with elevated status and exclusive access.

The simplest execution path is probably TYB and Sesh's model. But the other startups covered today each contribute interesting ideas and mechanics worth stealing.