If you’ve ever pulled the trigger on founding a new startup or even considered doing so, the first realization you come to is how diverse the range of solutions, services and structural components are. The sheer magnitude of options can be overwhelming and lead to decision-making paralysis as you sift through your choices. This task is made even more burdensome by the fact that everything is spread out across the web, so you wind up spending countless hours searching before you can even begin to weigh your options. Startup Stash looks to help budding entrepreneurs find the resources they need quickly and efficiently by providing a curated, organized directory for everything from design and development to sales and fundraising.
How it Works
The moment you hit the Startup Stash homepage, it becomes obvious how everything is laid out. Each category is displayed on a box in a 40 item grid. Simply click on one and you’ll be whisked over to a list of sites and tools for that category. Diving deeper into one of these list items reveals basic information about the resource, including a brief description, contact information and a link to the site. For example, let’s say you want to launch a new website and need to find a hosting solution. Simply click on ‘Hosting’ from the home screen, navigate to the provider you’re interested, like DigitalOcean, and click on the entry. If you are interested in learning more about their offerings, just click on one of the company links on the page and your browser will open their site in a new tab.
The Founder
Startup Stash was created by Bram Kanstein who, after accumulating a tremendous repository of notes involving various resources he has worked with over the years while partnering with multiple startups, decided to consolidate this information into a website for everyone to use. Although the initial set of listings were developed by Bram, he has opened up a submission portal for other users to upload resources to the site. After setting up a small landing page where people could register their emails to get updates on the site, Startup Stash was featured on Betalist and StartupList, which led to an explosion of subscribers. His next step was to post the site in Product Hunt, expecting to see a few up-votes and maybe get a few more users. What actually happened is every founder’s dream. Within a few hours, Startup Stash had received hundreds of up-votes, which continued to build until it had become one of the most successful launches in Product Hunt history.
Bram posted his results after 48 hours, which are truly astounding:
- 1573 upvotes
- 35K unique visitors (with 17K from PH, 4.5K Business Insider, 4K Facebook, 2.1K Reddit)
- 230K pageviews (5.17 pages/session)
- Average time on site: 3 minutes 43 seconds
- 293 suggestions for new resources via Typeform
- 680+ Twitter mentions (@startupstash + @bramk)
- 1400+ social shares via the site’s sharing buttons
- 524 new Facebook likes
- 729 new Twitter followers
- 1140 new Newsletter subscribers
- 250+ emails to hello@ (suggestions, feedback, spelling corrections, tweaks, compliments)
Conclusion
Sometimes the simplest ideas, executed well and timed perfectly, can catch on like wildfire. Startup Stash not only provides other aspiring entrepreneurs with a service to help them succeed, but also an inspiring story worthy of emulation.
