Title: How Our First $150 Sponsor After 300 Rejections Became the Foundation for Everything.

Hey everyone,

Prince Gupta and I Sumit Raghuwanshi will never forget that email. It was a simple Stripe notification: $150.

It’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. But for two guys working late nights, fueled by cheap coffee and a lot of doubt, it was everything. It was validation. It was the first real signal that our project, Apives, wasn't just in our heads anymore.

This is the story of that first "yes" and how it changed the entire trajectory of our journey.

The Grind: "Is This Just Another Directory?"
The early days of Apives weren't glamorous. Sumit and I had a simple but frustrating problem: finding a good API felt like a lottery. We were tired of slick landing pages hiding unreliable services and confusing docs.

So we started building Apives with a core philosophy: curation over volume.

We decided to go all-in on a sponsorship model from day one. No commission, no usage fees. Just honest partnerships. We put together a list of companies we thought would be a good fit and started sending cold emails.

The first 100 emails? Mostly silence.
The next 100? A few "not interested" and a lot of being ghosted.
After 300+ emails, the self-doubt was creeping in. We'd have late-night calls asking each other the same hard question:

"Are we just building another glorified list of links? Does anyone even care about 'curation' enough to pay for it?"

It felt like we were shouting into the void.

The Turning Point: The $150 That Felt Like a Million
Then, one morning, the notification hit. A small, innovative API company had said yes. They saw the value. They believed in the vision.

That $150 payment wasn't just revenue; it was fuel.

It was proof that at least one other person in the world understood the problem we were trying to solve. That single "yes" silenced the hundreds of "no's" and the deafening silence we had faced.

It made everything feel real.

Then vs. Now: What That First $150 Helped Us Build
That first sponsor gave us more than just money; they gave us the confidence to double down. To not just maintain Apives, but to evolve it.

Here’s what’s changed since that first payment:

From a "List" to an "Ecosystem": We started with a handful of APIs. Today, we've curated over 300+ vetted APIs, each with standardized data on pricing, stability, and access types.
Solving the Next Problem (The Big One): We listened to our users. They loved finding APIs on Apives, but then they had to leave to fight with the documentation. So, we took our biggest leap yet and built Apives AI. Now, you don't just find the API; you can ask our AI questions about it in plain English and get instant answers. We solved not just discovery, but comprehension.
A Real Business Model: That first sponsor proved our model could work. We've since refined our sponsorship tiers, partnering with more amazing companies who want to connect with developers in a genuine way.
Our Biggest Lessons
Your First "Yes" is a Compass: That initial payment wasn't our destination; it was a compass needle that told us we were heading in the right direction. It gave us the energy to keep walking.
Persistence is a Co-op Game: Facing 300 rejections alone is soul-crushing. Facing them with a co-founder means you can pick each other up on the days when one of you wants to quit.
Listen to What Happens After They Use Your Product: The real opportunity for Apives wasn't in improving our list; it was in solving the problem our users faced after they found an API. That insight led directly to Apives AI.
We’re still small. Still learning. Still sending emails. But we're no longer just two guys with an idea. We're the builders of a platform that has real partners and real users.

If you’re out there in the trenches, feeling like nothing is working, we hope our story helps. Sometimes, you're just one "yes" away from everything changing.

We'd love for you to see what that first $150 helped us build.

👉 Check out the Apives journey here: apives.com

Thanks for reading our story.

Prince & Sumit