A close friend of mine, Miguel (https://twitter.com/...), started his newsletter called IPOBrief. He quickly noticed that there was not a standard nice way of receiving and managing sponsorships. We joined forces with Diogo (https://twitter.com/...) and build the first MVP. Sponsy was born.
Sponsy mainly consisted of a page for newsletters to receive sponsorships paid via Stripe. Speaking with bigger publishers, we found out that their problem was not in the booking. It was in the management. And they would happily pay us to solve their struggle.
Time to pivot! We rebuild Sponsy from scratch focusing 100% on the sponsorship management completely based on user feedback.
MicroFounder
How did you find your first customers?
Michele
Finding newsletters that could take advantage of Sponsy (e.g. multiple publications to manage), then cold emails and DM.
MicroFounder
How are you finding your customers today?
Michele
Same as the first. Our clients are successfully focused on their newsletter, the best way to reach them is direct and to the point.
MicroFounder
What's your advice for other microfounders who want to get started?
Michele
I may sound like a broken record but...validate before you build. Seriously. We did not write a single line of code for the latest version of Sponsy before we had a couple of potential leads in the queue. But there's more, I'll break it down:
- find an issue worth solving, not a nice to have. Painkillers, not vitamines. Ideally, the problem you solve will save your customers money and/or time
- identify the niche that would pay to have the problem solved and it has the budget to do so
- make sure you like (or better love!) the problem and the niche. If everything works great, you will work for both for a while
- build designs in Figma or anything else that does not cost you much time. The goal is to support you to better visualize your idea
- approach your leads directly. Find one, study him/her and personalize your contact. No one likes copy-paste sales messages, you are talking to a real person
- listen to your leads and shape your solution based on your shared vision. You don't need to agree to everything, use your judgment
- after validation, build as fast as you can and give updates. Your leads could decide not to wait for you anymore. Be clear on the features, priorities, and timeline
- always be kind and pay back your debts. Reward early customers, you could not succeed without them
