Adproval

Matthew Anderson spotted the opportunity while still an undergraduate at Indiana University, studying entrepreneurship. A family friend's lifestyle blog was growing rapidly, but she lacked a good system to monetize it. She was doing manual work—back-and-forth negotiations with advertisers, uploading ad images, tracking analytics, and lining up sponsors—all while wanting to maintain editorial control and only work with brands aligned with her values. Anderson's initial instinct was to become a "Blog Coach" consultant, but a professor intervened, suggesting that software could scale what services could not. The seed was planted: build a marketplace connecting bloggers and social media influencers with brands, giving creators control over who they partnered with while automating the process.

Anderson's background was deeply entrepreneurial. His great-grandfather had invented the Travel Trailer; his father constantly tinkered with businesses; and he'd run his brother's lawn and landscape company in high school. This family DNA, combined with his fascination with "how websites make money" and digital advertising, created the perfect storm of motivation. The problem was real, the market was emerging, and he had the drive to solve it.

Anderson embraced the "fake it til you make it" approach his professor recommended. He spent three to four months validating the market using only Google Forms, Google Sheets, and a simple landing page builder. He created a fake two-sided marketplace with static listings of bloggers and brands, then manually collected data through surveys and forms. On the blogger side, he leveraged word-of-mouth within tight online communities—breaking into one or two influential bloggers led to others joining. On the brand side, he printed flyers and attended a local Handmade/Vintage Goods convention, collecting feedback and emails from Etsy-type sellers.

Once he had about 15-20 bloggers validated, Anderson built the actual MVP marketplace software with a design and development agency partner. The strategy was deliberately one-sided at first: a tool for bloggers to embed on their own sites, create a public listing page, and manage advertiser submissions. He charged bloggers a 10% commission on display ad sales and didn't charge brands initially, betting that volume would eventually turn profitable. He sponsored a blogging conference with 300 attendees—his first major paid marketing push—which helped seed the platform with active users. The whole approach prioritized accessibility and complete self-service control for creators, reflecting Anderson's core value of giving bloggers agency over their partnerships.

The conference sponsorship generated the initial core of 20 bloggers, which grew organically from there. But the most impactful growth driver wasn't traditional marketing—it was exceptional customer support. Anderson implemented a three-word mantra borrowed from a friend's clothing business: "Spoil, Reward, Enlighten." Spoil meant replying immediately with empathy. Reward meant voluntarily refunding commissions when issues occurred, even if user error was the cause. Enlighten meant educating users and making a clear ask about new opportunities—like introducing them to new brands or suggesting free ad swaps with other bloggers.

This obsessive focus on support generated organic word-of-mouth. Users would tweet about how great Adproval's service was, driving inbound interest. Anderson also allowed free "ad swaps" through the platform—bloggers cross-promoting each other with no commission—which built goodwill and expanded the network without revenue expectations. Beyond conference sponsorships, he relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth and community effects, avoiding expensive paid acquisition channels.

The turning point came when Anderson realized his revenue model was fundamentally broken. At most, the fully self-service commission model generated only $200 per month. The marketplace was filling with small or zero-dollar transactions—bloggers promoting themselves rather than real brands paying for exposure. Anderson's obsession with the "purity of fully self-service software" prevented him from pursuing what actually worked: managed services.

His hubris played a major role. He was a non-technical, first-time founder building in a city dominated by managed services and enterprise technology, which he dismissed as inferior. He refused to go down that road, believing it was an excuse for bad software. He didn't focus aggressively on converting advertisers into repeat customers, assuming they'd come naturally through the blogger side. His technical competitor could bootstrap more effectively; then PR and marketing agencies started offering the same services without a platform, an angle Anderson wishes he'd pursued earlier.

Late in the game, Anderson finally found success with consulting services. He began helping brands with significant budgets build influencer strategy and manually execute campaigns while pivoting the platform to a B2B offering for brands to manage their own ambassador teams. This consulting side eventually generated real revenue—their last year hit just over $200,000 in revenue. But by then, burnout had set in. After nearly six years of bootstrapping on a $1,500-to-$2,000 monthly salary, while spending $85-$150 per hour on design and development contractors, Anderson was battling clinical depression and anxiety. He couldn't continue.

Adproval ultimately shut down after nearly six years and $300,000 in raised capital. Anderson had invested his own savings, raised from friends and family, and received multiple tranches of angel investment via convertible notes. The consulting services business had finally achieved meaningful revenue—over $200,000 in the final year—but it wasn't sustainable for him personally or scalable as originally envisioned.

Today, Anderson has moved on to different ventures. He's working with a partner on a Shopify app designed for subscription-first e-commerce businesses and serves as a strategy and growth consultant for direct-to-consumer subscription companies using that app. He's also pursuing personal artistic projects—music production and painting—with his first full-length album set to release and his work scheduled to appear in art shows. Anderson's key takeaway: he should have stayed with the manual, email-list-based version much longer, charged for curation and managed services from the start, and only built software once that business was generating real revenue. Most importantly, he recognizes that his mental health should have been the priority all along.