Former MasterClass executive Sean Akaks started a new agency aiming to reinvent how brands partner with talent, including creators, celebrities, artists, athletes, actors, influencers and creators.

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Akaks, the former head of business affairs for educational platform MasterClass, founded SonderCo to broker “bespoke” deals between brands and talent that will span “equity stakes, revenue shares, leadership roles and other forms of compensation, tailored to each brand’s unique situation and goals,” according to the agency. SonderCo will also manage brand-to-brand licensing collaborations.

Akaks, SonderCo’s CEO, said the agency works with established brands but its target clients are startups that can’t necessarily afford to spend “millions and millions of dollars” on celebrity sponsorships. The agency provides a way to “both from a monetary perspective and also a non-monetary perspective, align incentives with the talent.”

For instance, if talent is interested “in getting into tech investing, we would figure out a way to get them into the company’s [capitalization] table. Or they want to take a bet on themselves and do a [revenue] share-type scenario. Sometimes it’s a combination of that and cash,” he said.

Akaks will run the five-person SonderCo with Jessie Mash, partner and chief business officer. She is the former head of partnerships for children’s apparel brand Monica + Andy, where she developed partnerships with celebrities and brands including Channing Tatum, Disney, Hello Bello and Lovevery. She also spent time as a producer for ABC in Chicago, where she earned three Emmy awards, producing lifestyle segments with celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, Zendaya, Nate Berkus, Jason Wu and Martha Stewart.

Early in her career, Mash also was an account manager for Edelman.

“I've worked both on the talent side being a producer and then directly at Monica + Andy, and I really saw the power of partnerships at both places,” Mash said, adding that not only are brands increasingly seeing the value of influencer deals but talent is looking at celebrity-backed brands that are flourishing such as Ryan Reynolds’ Aviation Gin and Kim Kardashian’s Skims and they want a piece of that. “Celebrities want to make more money also,” she said.

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SonderCo’s leaders said the agency can do a wide range of deals, spanning securing partnerships for Super Bowl ads and seasonal campaigns, to spokesperson deals, to brand ambassador relationships to co-founder roles, “the latter of which is a growing trend as brands seek long-term solutions to maximize growth.”

Startups increasingly are looking to bring in celebrities as co-founders, in part because changes to Apple’s privacy settings have made it more difficult to acquire customers through social platforms, Akaks said. 

“The idea of having talent affiliated as a co-founder gives you the ability to leverage their distribution model, their audience, to build the brand and then convert customers,” he said.

SonderCo also got the financial backing of investor Matthew Rutler, a former colleague of Akaks and the current executive VP of talent and business development for MasterClass. Rutler has invested in over 100 companies including Lyft, DraftKings, Pinterest and Discord, and was an early investor in MasterClass through MX Investments, the firm he owns with his fiancée, the singer Christina Aguilera.

After investing in MasterClass, Rutler joined the platform as its first executive and recruited Akaks to help him build its talent partnership team and deal-making efforts. Akaks is credited with driving the talent negotiations for celebrity-taught MasterClass courses that boosted the educational content platform’s brand recognition.

Akaks said him and Rutler came up with the name Sonder, which is “the idea that everyone has a unique story and identity, living a life as complex as your own.”

Thanks to Rutler’s backing, Akaks helped secure Aguilera as co-founder and chief brand advisor for sexual wellness brand Playground in March, before SonderCo officially launched. The agency said that the deal served as an early test to prove the business model could work.

The company already has work in the market—it helped form influencer partnerships on behalf of prescription digital medicine company Akili Interactive as it launches EndeavorOTC, a product aimed at helping treat ADHD and attention issues in adults. Akaks said SonderCo helped Akili identify the right influencers to help promote EndeavorOTC, including creator Tank Sinatra, who posts comical content about parenthood and had recently opened up about having ADHD.

“It was one of the first times that [the creator] was talking about ADHD publicly and [we] saw a really interesting way to tie in humor and his whole vibe with what Akili was doing [with] the product and drive consumers to it,” Akaks said.

“We enlisted SonderCo to help us raise awareness via product trials from influential personalities with ADHD symptoms,” said Eddie Martucci, founder and chairman of Akili, in a statement. “By year’s end, our work together will have resulted in multiple talent partnerships—an important component of our growth that helps to both generate awareness and gain user feedback to shape our roadmap.”

Akaks said he and Rutler started “tinkering” with the idea of brokering the types of talent deals he did at MasterClass for other industries about three years ago. Akaks left MasterClass in 2022.

Rutler’s huge network should help SonderCo grow its client base; he’s already made key introductions including to John Zimmer, the co-founder and former president of Lyft, Akaks said. “He just made an introduction yesterday to an early-stage entrepreneur who's looking for a celebrity co-founder.”

SonderCo’s group of advisors includes former Showtime Networks and 360i executive Dani Calogera, as well as execs from Nike, Airbnb, Snap, Google and Everlane.

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There are, of course, risks to consider when tying a business to celebrities, athletes or anyone who is in the public eye. If the celebrity ever comes under fire for any sort of mishap, the brand also risks damaging its image. SonderCo does research to identify celebrities that are less controversial for more conservative brands and ones that are more outspoken, because “some brands might be attracted to that,” Mash said.

Akaks added that “morality clauses” are standard in these types of deals to protect brands, which essentially means they can end a partnership if their views end up not aligning. He said the best deals also entail a fine balance of having celebrities back brands without “swallowing” them, so they can stand alone, as well.

“The celebrity has to really be additive but not the main event,” he said.