What Is Markett? The Get-Paid-to-Recommend App

Markett was a Los Angeles startup, launched publicly in 2017, that paid everyday people to recommend and advocate for tech companies and products they liked. In effect, it was a referral and advocacy marketplace that turned loyal customers into paid brand ambassadors.

What Markett was

Markett pitched a simple, appealing premise: the people who already recommend products to their friends should get paid for it. Instead of a brand spending its marketing budget on ads, Markett proposed routing that money to its actual customers, who would then spread the word.

Founder Franky Bernstein summed up the ambition in a memorable line: he wanted Markett to become “the largest marketing company in the world that doesn’t spend any money on marketing.” The company framed itself less as an advertising platform and more as a way for enthusiastic users to monetize the recommendations they were making anyway. Ambassadors signed up, chose brands they genuinely used, and earned money when their advocacy drove sign-ups or sales.

At launch, Markett leaned on recognizable venture-backed names. Reported early partners included Airbnb, Thrive Market, FanDuel, The Bouqs, Zeel, and Winc, companies chosen for their customer-focused reputations. Later coverage tied the platform to larger brands such as Walmart, Unilever, and MGM. The common thread was consumer products with a clear referral hook, where a personal recommendation could realistically move someone to try the service.

How Markett worked

Markett operated as a two-sided marketplace. On one side were brands with marketing budgets. On the other were ambassadors, everyday users willing to promote those brands to their own networks.

The mechanics were built around advocacy and referral tracking rather than traditional advertising:

Sign up and pick brands

Users joined the platform and selected companies they actually liked and used. The pitch emphasized authenticity, because a recommendation from a genuine customer tends to convert better than an anonymous ad.

Promote and refer

Ambassadors shared brands with friends, followers, and peers. Bernstein’s own origin story fed the model: he had worked as a campus brand ambassador for Uber and Lyft while attending Loyola Marymount University, and he built Markett to formalize and scale that kind of word-of-mouth hustle.

Earn commissions

Ambassadors were paid based on the results they drove. Bernstein said the model was designed so that nearly all of a brand’s marketing dollars flowed directly to the people doing the advocating, with Markett eventually taking a transaction cut. Early marketing claimed motivated ambassadors could earn anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars a week, though those were promotional figures, not guaranteed averages.

In short, Markett tried to convert word-of-mouth, historically free and hard to measure, into a trackable, payable channel.

Who made Markett

Markett was founded by Franky Bernstein, a young serial entrepreneur who was 24 when the company launched publicly. He conceived the idea after his stint as a paid campus ambassador for ride-hailing companies, where he saw firsthand that brands would pay real people to spread the word.

The company was small, around ten employees, but attracted notable early backing. Markett raised roughly $2 million in venture capital from investors including KEC Ventures, Amplify.LA, Luma Launch, and Wavemaker VC, along with angel investors such as Jamie Patricof and Michael Kane. Bernstein was later named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, reflecting the attention his approach to advocacy marketing attracted.

Is Markett still around in 2026?

Based on the available evidence, Markett does not appear to be operating as an active product in 2026, though the company has not published a formal shutdown notice.

The clearest signal is Markett’s own website. Rather than a working app or marketplace, it currently shows only a brief “Big news coming soon” message and an email address for inquiries, with a footer reading “© 2023 Markett Inc.” That is the profile of a dormant or parked domain, not a live, growing platform. There is no functioning ambassador marketplace visible to new users.

The more telling detail is what its founder did next. Bernstein went on to launch Kickback, a friend-to-friend social shopping app that rewards users with cash and discounts for shopping and for referring others, and that debuted with brands including Nike and Walmart. Kickback carries forward the same core idea, paying ordinary people to drive referrals, which strongly suggests Markett itself wound down or was effectively succeeded rather than scaled.

To be clear about the limits of the record: no widely reported announcement pins down exactly when Markett stopped operating, and the placeholder site technically leaves the door open. But treating Markett as a currently available service you can sign up for would be misleading. The honest summary is that Markett was an active, funded startup in the late 2010s and is best understood today as inactive.

The trend Markett was part of

Even if the company itself faded, Markett was an early bet on ideas that have since become central to how brands market online. It sat at the intersection of three overlapping trends.

Referral marketing. Paying existing customers to bring in new ones, the model Markett and later Kickback built around, is now a standard growth tactic. Refer-a-friend programs, unique referral codes, and two-sided rewards are baked into fintech apps, food delivery, and subscription services.

Affiliate marketing. The idea of earning a commission for driving a sale predates Markett by decades, but it has exploded. Platforms like Amazon Associates, Impact, ShareASale, and Rakuten Advertising let anyone earn a cut for referrals, at massive scale.

Creator and advocacy monetization. The notion that everyday people, not just celebrities, can be paid for their influence is now the foundation of the creator economy. Creator-commerce marketplaces such as LTK and ShopMy, plus cashback apps like Rakuten and Ibotta, all monetize personal recommendations in ways Markett anticipated.

Markett versus its modern equivalents

The bottom line

Markett was a smart, well-timed idea from a founder who understood word-of-mouth firsthand. It raised real money, signed real brands, and helped popularize the concept of paying ordinary people to advocate for products. It just does not appear to have survived as a standalone company. If you are searching for Markett hoping to sign up and start earning, the practical answer in 2026 is to look instead at active referral apps, affiliate networks, and creator marketplaces, which now do at scale what Markett set out to do.