Built an FTC compliance checker for influencer marketing after watching brands get blindsided by $53,088 fines, here's what I learned
Six months ago I started noticing a pattern. Brands spending thousands on influencer campaigns, content goes live, then weeks later they're dealing with FTC violations that could have been caught in 2 minutes before publishing.
The average FTC fine is $53,088 per violation. Per post. Most brands have absolutely zero process for checking compliance before content goes live.
So I built Valen Sentinel.
What it does:
Compliance checker - paste any YouTube URL, upload a video file directly, or paste an Instagram or TikTok caption manually. Get a compliance score in under 2 minutes with exact violations and exact fixes.
ROI predictor using real YouTube channel data with fake follower detection before you sign any contract
Full collaborative workspace for brands and creators
Milestone tracking and legally binding digital agreements built in
The hardest part wasn't building it - it was figuring out that YouTube blocks transcript extraction from cloud server IPs. Spent days debugging that before finding a third party transcript API that actually works.
Launched on ProductHunt this week. Currently at $99/month.
Happy to answer any questions about the build
or the compliance checking logic.
