From Developer to Solo Entrepreneur to $5M+ Revenue: Sporcle Founder and CTO Matt Ramme (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the thesis of Sporcle?

Matt Ramme: I didn’t know. I had an idea to build a website. I didn’t know what it was going to be. I liked the creation of websites. If you’re familiar with the March Madness Bracket for collegiate basketball where millions of people do it every year. They try to predict all the way out to the end. I thought that was an interesting idea, but it would be cool if I could do it for other sports or other leagues. I built a product that allowed people to predict other sports.

Sramana Mitra: Did you think about how you were going to make money off of this?

Matt Ramme: At that time, most things were just ad-based. I figured it would be ad-based. That was a pretty common model.

Sramana Mitra: The reason I’m asking is, we do a lot of developer-to-entrepreneur transitions in One Million by One Million. A very large percentage of our audience is developers who are trying to become entrepreneurs. Most of these developers don’t have any idea about how to position a product and figure out a monetization strategy.

This reaction that you’re describing that you think it’s going to be ad-based is a very common reaction. It’s a flawed reaction. Even then, if you want to make money off of ads, you need millions of eyeballs. Most applications and most websites don’t have that kind of usage. To get to that kind of usage, you have to invest money and time. This is not a reasonable bootstrapping strategy of how to get a business going. The reason I’m calling this out is, this still exists.

Matt Ramme: I would agree that the likelihood of success isn’t terribly high, but people create stuff all the time that people like. Again, what I found when I built out this whole site was that there were not many people who wanted this. Maybe people wanted to do it or not. One of the biggest pieces is marketing. How do you tell anybody that it exists? Even if you have millions of people who might want this, how will they find out?

Sramana Mitra: Exactly, how do they find out about you.

Matt Ramme: I had hundreds of people using this, which is not enough even if you were to have them pay you. I was building that but I was also building out the website and all the things you need. I was learning about databases which I hadn’t done before. I was doing this much because it was interesting. I go pretty lean in my own personal life.

Sramana Mitra: It was just you?

Matt Ramme: Yes. I was able to not spend very much money and used some savings. I figured I had about a year to just play. I could always go and find another job if this didn’t work out, but it was a chance to do something that was interesting to me and see what happens. I didn’t have a business plan and I didn’t have a whole path. I did have the ability and interest to see what happens. Around six months into that, while I was still doing all of the sports products, I still hadn’t figured out marketing and how to reach people.

This segment is part 2 in the series : From Developer to Solo Entrepreneur to $5M+ Revenue: Sporcle Founder and CTO Matt Ramme
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