VShojo's own 2020 site names seven founding talents before launch

The setup

VShojo is a US-based VTuber agency built around independent, already-established talents rather than in-house auditions, a structural break from the Japanese agency model. The earliest surviving capture of the company's own homepage, archived by the Internet Archive on 24 November 2020, already describes VShojo as “a talent-first VTuber company, dedicated to the growth and success of its members,” founded, in the page's own words, “by fans of VTuber culture.” At that point the page's own launch video was not yet public, listed only as “Watch Launch Video (Placeholder till Monday).”

What the documents show

The November 2020 page names two founders directly: CEO Justin “theGunrun” Ignacio and CTO Phillip “MowtenDoo” Fortunat, both credited with backgrounds in streaming technology and video production rather than in talent management. The same page lists seven founding talents — Nyatasha Nyanners, Projekt Melody, Apricot (Froot), Zentreya, Silvervale, Ironmouse, and Hime Hajime — as already-active performers joining the company, not as new personas built by it. A later capture of the same homepage, from 15 January 2021, shows the launch video now published and adds combined follower totals across the roster: over 1.9 million YouTube subscribers, over 1.2 million Twitch followers, and over 871,000 Twitter followers. No page opened for this entry gives an exact founding day; this entry does not assert one beyond what these two captures document.

The craft

The roster model these pages document — recruiting talents who already had established audiences and personas, rather than auditioning and building characters from scratch — is the practical difference this entry credits VShojo with. For a creator evaluating agency structures, that distinction changes what an agency actually offers: production and business support for an existing act, rather than a studio-built character and a house style.

Keeping the creator in control

Because VShojo's model starts from independent talents, the pages describe members joining with pre-existing channels and follower counts already attached to their own names, the clearest documented contrast with an audition-built roster. This entry treats that as a structural fact the company's own pages state, not as a value judgment about either model.

• What does an agency actually provide when its talents already have established audiences before joining?
• How would you verify a founding date when a company's own site offers none?
• What changes for a creator's leverage when they join an agency with a channel already in hand?

VShojo's own earliest archived pages document a founding team, a founding roster, and a stated talent-first mission, even without a single clean founding-day announcement, a gap this entry preserves rather than papers over with an invented date.