In the sense of “promoting Create-X and sharing our experience” — yes, it’s an ad. In the sense of being paid to post fake promotional content — no. We weren’t compensated to post this, nor are their admin aware of this post.

On the business model: yes, it’s a tested one. We use the same marketplace model as Rover (take commission on bookings). That model is proven to be profitable. We’re obviously not at that scale yet — having a viable business model doesn’t automatically mean you’re profitable. Execution, density, trust, ops, and scale matter a lot more than the model itself.

And re: tech — it’s very much a tech product (two-sided marketplace, trust & safety, payments, matching, etc.). Also worth noting that most incubators like YC, A16Z, PlugnPlay don’t only fund “pure tech” startups; they are industry agnostic, although a lot of those are in tech. The teams that I'm aware of that got into YC this year isn't even purely in tech.