Pre launch / MVP (2023)
Physical flyering and door to door
Broke into university dorms posing as faculty to hand out flyers to students, while knocking on local business doors during the day to sign up bars and restaurants as early employers on the local jobs marketplace.
→ ~3,000 students and ~20 businesses in Madison
Users 3.0k users
Post graduation expansion (Summer 2024)
Physical campus expansion
Went full-time after graduating and ran the same dorm-flyer + door-to-door playbook across ~8 other Big 10 and SEC campuses (Michigan, Iowa, Georgia, Texas, Ohio State, Indiana, etc.), spending ~10 days per campus.
→ ~10,000 students on platform total; businesses still not paying meaningfully (~$10/month max)
Users 10k users
Pivot discovery (~1 year before interview)
Organic product usage tech twitter
Noticed Tech Twitter / indie hackers were organically using the student marketplace to hire college students for UGC content — without being prompted. The team observed this usage pattern in platform analytics and decided to lean into it rather than force the local jobs model.
→ Identified new use case that became the pivot; early UGC brands started shaping V2 of the product
UGC pivot / V2 build
Product iteration on organic demand
Re-engineered creator profiles (from student job profiles to creator profiles showing top videos, posts, and experience), built proper brand tooling, and opened the platform beyond college students to creators of all types. Started actively recruiting UGC-oriented brands like Brex, Suno, Pixart, Paramount Pictures.
→ Platform repositioned as UGC marketplace; ~800 active paying brand customers eventually
Growth / scaling UGC (Last summer before interview)
Owned ugc campaigns on tiktok
Nick personally posted 4x per day across 5 TikTok accounts (20+ posts/day) to understand and prove the UGC model firsthand. Got a video with ~5M views within 3 weeks. Then used Sideshift's own creator network to run large UGC programs promoting Sideshift itself, generating 50–60M views/month from their own campaigns.
→ First viral video hit ~5M views in ~3 weeks; own programs now drive 50–60M views/month, creating a growth flywheel
B2B sales scaling
Word of mouth and referrals
Gave every customer a personal Slack channel, shared Nick's personal phone number with all customers, and maintained 1:1 relationships. This generated strong word-of-mouth and referral loops — customers who didn't convert would still refer others. Inbound became 80% of sales vs. 20% outbound.
→ 80% of sales are inbound; ~800 active brand customers; $8M ARR
Users 800 users
Product expansion / operating system
Product led retention
Expanded beyond creator recruitment to build a full operating system for brands: analytics, creator management, messaging, payouts, legal, tax, and 1099s — making Sideshift a one-stop shop so brands never need to leave the platform.
→ Brands running programs of 5–100 creators entirely within Sideshift; case studies include Voodoo (0→90M views in 1 month), All In Motion/Target (25M views in first month), Yapper (80M views/month)
Creator supply growth
Ugc creator acquisition via owned ugc
Ran large UGC programs using Sideshift's own top creators to promote the creator-side value proposition (earn $20–35K/month posting content). Mobile app built around gamification and training to convert everyday people into creators.
→ 700,000 zero-based creators on the platform
Users 700k users