Sahil has been a friend of mine for almost a decade — we met when he was at Pinterest, and I remember the day he launched Gumroad and thinking "damn that is a good idea and a great MVP."

It has been awesome to watch the trials and tribulations of Gumroad since then, and like everyone else that discusses Gumroad, I must urge you to read Sahil's amazing blog post detailing some of the highs and lows.

When I reached out to Sahil to introduce him to Journey, I was aware that he was planning to fundraise for Gumroad and was excited to see if he'd like to use Journey as part of his fundraise. Crowdfunding is a recent innovation to startups, with services like Republic doing an amazing job at supporting the process.

Why Journey

Gumroad uses Journey as a 'data room' of sorts — the Gumroad Journey not only has board meeting slides, but also the actual call recording of the meeting, and even a data dump of all of the months Gumroad metrics.

It's the perfect way for a discerning investor to browse and see in detail what they are investing in.

Without Journey, all these documents would simply be links floating in the ether — there'd be no clear structure or easy way for a reader to find and discover the materials.

We found that not only did people engage with the Gumroad Journey, but people also shared it on social media:

This presents an exciting opportunity for crowdfunding projects to "go viral" in a way akin to a YouTube video going viral — allowing startups to read expanded audiences in highly cost effective ways.

If you're a startup thinking about fundraising or crowdfunding, reach out to create your own Journey experience!