Hibi — 日々, day by day.
A small team in New York building financial infrastructure for local marketing: a store pays out of the sale a customer actually made, and the person who sent them is paid from the same one.
The unit a store pays for should be a customer walking through the door.
A local store is billed on views and clicks, and no platform can tell it who walked in. Local creators send customers to that same store every week — and because nobody counts it, they are not paid for it.
Hibi counts it at the counter. A creator posts with a code, a customer redeems it, and every fee comes out of that one sale. Marketing stops being a budget spent in advance and becomes a cut of revenue that already exists.
We are not a marketplace. Marketplaces sell matches, and matches get bypassed. One scan here writes three records — the store’s, the creator’s Passport, the customer’s history — and they meet at settlement.
Four commitments
No numbers before data
Pilot results, not projections. No scale narrative before the first cohort produces its three: stores that run a second campaign, net new return visits, creators who stay unsubsidized.
Customers are never charged
Redeeming a code is claiming a reward. Nothing more is asked, and nothing is added to their bill.
No selling of personal data
Insights leave anonymized and aggregated — a neighborhood, never a person and never a list.
No exclusivity, no rankings, no paid reviews
Creators post where they like, stores set their own terms. Merchants buy customers, not praise.
Nine seats, hired in New York before and during the pilot
Pre-funding, said plainly: early team seats under a written advisor agreement, not salaried employment, and no cash compensation today. Targets are written down in your first two weeks and equity is earned against them; the first compensation offers go to people already here, within 30 days of the angel round closing.
Technical lead
Prototype to 1.1, then hires the team. Sets the stack, the cadence and the quality bar. Ships weekly with the founder.
Systems architect
The settlement ledger: scan verification, fee splits, payouts, anti-fraud, Stripe rails. One checkout, three records.
UI/UX designer
Counter flow, creator app, customer reward flow. Takes the prototype to production and keeps five seconds honest.
Finance & payments
Money movement and compliance: Stripe Connect, settlement accounting, creator tax forms, state-by-state rules.
Data & risk lead
The record itself: data quality, anti-fraud rules, matching signals, and the analytics that become Insights.
Creator partnerships
Sourcing, matching, briefs, Passport tiers, disputes. Knows every creator by name.
Ground sales agents
Bilingual, block by block. Sign stores, train staff on the scan, onboard creators, keep both sides live.
Operations manager
Weekly settlements, disputes, payouts, store support, reward inventory. Turns the record into a bill stores read.
Marketing & outreach
Brand, community and press. Launch events, referrals, word of mouth. Earned channels — Hibi does not buy impressions.
Pre-seed, New York
Raising a pre-seed on a YC post-money SAFE to run the first cohort: a ground team in two New York neighborhoods, product from 1.0 to 1.1, and creator payouts funded from day one. Materials on request.
Request the deckGet early access
The first cohort opens in New York in Q4 2026. Tell us who you are and we will reach out when your neighborhood goes live.
- Based inNew Yorkone neighborhood at a time
- First cohortQ4 2026merchants and creators, forming now
- Reach usDirectlyhello@hibi.club — every message is read
No subscription, no setup fee, nothing prepaid. Deducted from the sale, settled weekly.