Podvertise-fm - YC Sprint from A to Z - Podcasts Advertising Marketplace

Hey Indie Hackers!

I would like to share our YC Sprint journey and would really appreciate your feedback on what we've achieved so far. When I've read this today, it really excited and stressed me at the same time :) :

"This is week 3/4, and there are 12 days remaining in the YC Build Sprint!"

Podvertisor is direct podcasts advertising & sponsorships marketplace.

Your sprint goal: Podvertise.fm -

1. Launch - Podcasts Marketplace MVP with 20k profiles sorted into categories and connected with marketplace features >
2. onboard 30-50 podcasts to enlist their offerings >
3. start working with few ad agencies and brands and close $500-1000 in marketplace sales/relations services..

After a few years into startups you think you know what to do and how to structure and prioritize your time and team resources into startup sprints :).. Not at all :). That's why I'm sharing my experience to see how messy building & processes also works if you focus on delivery.

Since it's 3 different processes, I try to split my day on 2 time slots:

• building - till 4 pm - content, website, landers, clients requests
• communication till 12 pm (since I'm in Bulgaria, Europe) - outreaching, messaging, calls with potential advertisers or podcasts
  --

Weekly plans, delivery & disasters management:

1. Development: Moves quite fast, but small issues can consume most of the time, so the sprint should be focused on core features.
   Week 1.)

• CTO finished the MVP with the 20k profiles - we've already started working on this concept a few months ago from a Pioneer.app hackathon (https://frontier.pioneer.app/posts/c6ceedd0-podcasts-advertising-sponsorships-marketplace), so we've already had the profile prototype and partial database already compiled.

https://beta.podvertisor.com/profile.html - profile prototype
https://podvertisor.com/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience-2954 - current 1/5th content version :)

• We've created Ad Wizard, where the advertiser can fill up his business details. Integrated it within the profiles.

Week 2.)
https://marketing.podvertise.fm - Podcasts Relations Marketing Service - to compile & curate podcasts lists, to outreach them and request their offers & pricing, to assist during the sales and to onboard both sides on the marketplace, so we build up the marketplace chicken & the egg issue at the same time.

Week 3.)
We've made the Search Engine works on a very basic level, searching among everything from the podcast: Title, Host, Description.. We need to gather way more data to be able to sort them by global popularity.

Week 4.)
We have to finish the marketplace.podvertise.fm multivendor, theme design, categories matching.. And most important to connect marketplace offers to display on the podcast statistics profiles, so advertiser can be forwarded to the right marketplace order.
--

2. Podcasts onboarding: Mistaken assumptions #1: Since we've started tests after the Pioneer Hackaton the interest of podcasters is very big, so I thought the onboarding process will be super smooth.. So I've put a high number prediction to enlist on the marketplace...

• However, interest is 1 thing - when it comes to request details on traffic, audience, sales - things take way more time, as most podcast hosts still haven't got sponsorship request/offering.. so it will be a longer process than expected.
• Also, we don't have the marketplace infrastructure ready on time :)... So I've figured to offer them free profile with detailed their rankings, reviews, traffic stats, which they can use, link to, or eventually have brands sponsorships later on..

Week 1.)
We've had a conversation with few podcasters, so I've finished their customized free profiles to gain their interest:
https://beta.podvertisor.com/growth-mindset-university.html
https://beta.podvertisor.com/The-Top-One-Percent.html
https://beta.podvertisor.com/The-Mind-Vibe.html
https://beta.podvertisor.com/game-consultant.html

Week 2.)
I've started outreaching to podcasts from https://podvertisor.com/category/technology/12 - Technology > from least popularity top 200 to 1.. :
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/la-manzana-mordida/id1087967019 - under development

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TKwAwVF6iKlZgnlZpn0XRpxZQc50KTKTPm0v_6JfOHE/edit?usp=sharing > "podcasts" sheet

• After listening YC Sprint weekly calls, Eric gave advice to a startup to look for initial onboarding on active Facebook groups.. So I've found out tens of those pretty active groups > in the sheet above "Facebook Groups - pages"
  2 podcasts interest out of those without even pushing through yet.

(* If someone wants to participate into podcasts or find guests for his/her podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/poddit/ - poddit.com)

• 1 in 15 success rate and it was too much time consuming to create detailed beautiful free profiles and I still don't have their pricing :) So I have to switch the messaging to request their pricing.. Same time I've got quite big interest by a Facebook friend with big Teeth Whitening brand.. So I've tried to switch my priority from Free profile as an incentive > to outreach on a brand behalf (marketing.podvertisor.com was developed as our podcasts marketing agency service), where I ask for their offers and pricing and later will give them the free profile and onboard them through actual Brand spending!

So here is the curated list for the teeth whitening brand:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UV6oTTyDJ9p0AS1oI86iPsaWC4mqwzfCr7UMtr5Xdig/edit?usp=sharing

• Another week gone with 15% success of the #2. podcasts onboarding, but if we close the $1k deal.. we will be 100%+ on #3.

Week 3.)
We've got confirmation for the brand deal, so we are outreaching to the 220 podcasts with offers & pricing requests .. which should help us to achieve goal #2. way easier.. I will update in the comments below in a week to inform you if this assumption was wrong or right haha.

Week 4.)
Focus is to keep outreaching with the current and more brands budgets as incentive so podcasters have interest to send detailed offers & pricing and we can build up their profile, list their offers & pricing and ask them to link/host the profile on their website and to onboard them to manage their sales through the marketplace. Then to automate the process > rinse & repeat 20k times :).

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3. Advertisers clients (Brands, Ad Agencies, Media Buyers):
   Week 1.)
   We've started initial communication with a leading podcast advertising agency to enhance their portfolio of podcasts/shows per industry.. I can see this will be way longer process to close partnership during the YC Sprint.

Week 2.)
Great teeth whitening brand had interest to enhance his influencers marketing campaigns within podcast environment with our help..

Week 3.)
CFO co-founder of Podvertisor started negotiation with a great brand in Europe about potential long term agency services & to become a client of Brandvertisor & Podvertisor marketplaces - as huge brand, they need all brand solutions in a single shop/agency services to care to discuss future collaborations.

• I'm trying to close smaller $100-400 packages with discount or letter of intents to build cases with more friends brands/podcast & influencers marketing agencies, so we can keep outreaching podcast hosts with an incentive budget:

• 360 Facebook friends in the biggest Facebook ads & media buying Facebook global group.
• Linkedin search: "podcast advertise" , "podcast advertising"
• Google lists of Podcasts & Influencers Marketing Agencies > Linkedin outreach to their CMO/CEO

Week 4.)
Plan is to close and sign up as many small & brand advertisers deals or letter of intents with marketing agencies, so I can build basic marketing report for those and have the most important MoM KPI - revenues growth to actually grow :).
--

Wednesday - Week 3: #1. - 60% / #2. - 15% / #3 - 0/100% :).

Thank you for reading! I will keep you posted on the journey in the comments below with updates if we succeed to fulfill our YC Sprint goals on time!