When Yash Daftary was 15, investors loved his startup idea. They just weren’t convinced by the founder.
After being turned away time and again because of his age, he crisscrossed the country pitching at startup competitions instead, eventually raising enough money to launch his first company. More than a decade later, the Broward native is chasing an even bigger idea with Commas (formerly FanBasis): making it dramatically easier for anyone to earn money online.
“We’re trying to commoditize making money on the internet,” Daftary [pictured above] told Refresh Miami. “AI is coming and starting to displace people’s jobs, and it’s only going to happen more over the next few years. When someone gets replaced by AI, they’re going to need to turn to the internet to make money.”
That vision represents a major expansion from where the company began.
Daftary’s first startup, Rentall, was a marketplace that let people rent out everything from bikes and speakers to textbooks and party equipment. He then worked in venture capital and built marketing agencies and ecommerce businesses – all while gaining firsthand experience in how internet companies scale.
Those lessons eventually led to FanBasis, which originally focused on celebrity experiences. As the creator economy matured, however, the business evolved into an all-in-one platform that helps entrepreneurs sell courses, memberships, communities and other digital products. This month, it officially became Commas, reflecting a broader ambition than serving creators alone.
“Our business today has been, if you’re already making money on the internet, we give you tools to make more money,” Daftary said. “With Commas, we opened that up to anyone who wants to make their first dollar online.”
Artificial intelligence is central to that strategy.
Rather than simply adding AI features, Commas is using the technology to remove much of the complexity involved in launching an online business. Users can already generate landing pages and sales funnels with AI, while an upcoming AI copilot will help create courses, communities and other products even faster.
“If you want to start your own online business today, it’s pretty difficult,” Daftary said. “We’re trying to decrease that barrier to entry as much as possible.”
AI is also changing how existing customers grow. Because Commas sits at the center of thousands of online businesses, it can use data to help sellers personalize offers, recommend products and increase revenue based on customer behavior. According to the company, businesses on the platform generate an average of 2.3 times more revenue after a year.
The technology is reshaping Commas internally as well. The company has reduced its hiring projections by roughly 70%, appointed AI leaders across departments and is recruiting a Head of AI to help automate workflows across the business.
“We’ve basically been able to automate as much busy work as humanly possible,” he said.
Commas now employs about 107 people globally, including more than 50 in Miami, and has raised approximately $22 million to date. The company is preparing to launch its next fundraising round this summer.
For Daftary, Miami has been part of the story from the beginning. He has spent more than a decade building companies in the city and believes it has become one of the best places in the world for businesses serving internet entrepreneurs, even if attracting top technical talent can still be a challenge.
“I’ve been building in Miami for about eleven years now,” he said. “For a business like ours, where we work with internet entrepreneurs, there’s no better city we could be in.”
Yet even that isn’t the finish line. The next phase, Daftary said, is helping people earn money online without having to build a business from scratch, potentially through concepts like digital franchising, where newcomers can join and help grow businesses that already exist.
“We want anyone, from anywhere in the world, to come to our platform and figure out how to make money online,” he said.
It’s a big goal. Then again, convincing people to bet on a 15-year-old founder once seemed ambitious too.
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- Commas is building the operating system for making money online – August 10, 2026
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