Spoonflower

Spoonflower sold to Shutterfly for $225M

Shaan highlights Spoonflower, a niche marketplace where designers sell patterns that buyers turn into pillows, wallpaper, curtains, and more. Founded in 2008 and based in North Carolina, it sold to Shutterfly for $225 million.

“And so they sold for $225 million to Shutterfly. I thought it was really cool and just like kind of this niche product that has been around for a while that sold.”

Seed a marketplace with design challenges and contests

Shaan explains how Spoonflower (3.3M artists, ~4,000 new designs/day) bootstrapped supply via design challenges: the top ~50 voted designs get featured and capture ~95% of sales. Food52 used the same playbook with sponsored recipe contests like 'Your Best Recipe Using Fresh Mozzarella.'

“And what they did was they would do design challenges. And so Spoonflower would host a design challenge and then the top 50 voted, popular voted designs would get featured as the winner circle and it would get to the top of the website. And then if you go to the website, you click like, you know, oh, let me see the best Halloween designs that would drive like 95% of the sales to a lot of the creators.”

Steal thisTo seed a content marketplace, run themed contests around what buyers are already searching for, then feature the winners to concentrate demand.