Marketing · Partnerships · Bootstrapping
How to get event sponsors with no budget: our five-star venue cost nothing
When you are bootstrapped, a big event looks like the one thing you cannot afford. We threw one anyway in Vietnam: hundreds of guests, local celebrities, social media influencers, a five-star hotel. The venue cost us nothing. This is how in-kind sponsorship works when you have no budget, with what we actually paid.
Short answer
- Pay in value, not money. Ask every party what they are trying to build, and give them that instead of cash.
- The venue: a five-star hotel gave us its space for free. In return, influencers and celebrities stayed there and mentioned the hotel to their followers.
- The celebrities: instead of an hourly fee, we offered a five-day trip to Finland, costs covered for them and their team, as a content journey their audience had never seen.
- Combine partners: an airline we already worked with flew them for free, in return for mentions on board and on arrival.
- What it cost: nothing for the venue, about 20% of the usual celebrity fees, close to nothing for flights, and 10–20% of tourist prices for the activities in Finland.
What is in-kind sponsorship?
An in-kind sponsor gives you goods, services or space instead of money: a venue, flights, food, equipment, airtime. In return they get something they value more than what they gave: visibility, content, customers, a reason to be talked about. Cash sponsorship needs a budget on their side and a contract on yours. In-kind sponsorship needs a good idea and a fair trade.
For a bootstrapped company it is the only kind there is at the start. We could not put even 100 dollars a day into social media campaigns, and we would not have wanted to: money spent on ads stops working the day you stop paying.
How did we get a five-star venue for free?
We asked. With a better offer than money. The idea came from my co-founder Peter Vesterbacka, who had done this kind of thing for years with Angry Birds and Rovio.
We went to a five-star hotel and asked whether it would give us its big event space completely free. In return, we would bring social media influencers who would mention the hotel and how good it was. We would book a few rooms so they could stay the night. We would bring well-known people, so the hotel could say in its own marketing that they had stayed there.
The answer was yes, and it was always going to be. It is not every day that a hotel gets several celebrities under one roof and an event with hundreds of guests. Buying that kind of attention yourself costs tens of thousands of dollars for a single celebrity appearance.
How do you get a celebrity to your event without paying their fee?
The usual way is simple. You call the agent, agree a rate per hour, they show up, smile and leave. We knew exactly what that hour cost. So we asked a different question: what is this person trying to build next? Money is nice, but every celebrity and influencer is also running a business, and their business is their brand and their content.
So we offered one of them something worth more than the fee in the long run. We would take them and their team to Finland, pay their costs, and show them five days that most celebrities and influencers in Vietnam had never experienced. Our network in Finland could arrange things a tourist could not, and a busy person would never find time to organise themselves. They could post all of it. They did not even have to tag us.
For them it was a content journey to a place that feels exotic to audiences in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, at no cost. For us it was a celebrity at our event for a fraction of the usual price.
How do you combine partnerships to get more?
Once you have a few partners, you can put them together and create something out of nothing. We already had a partnership with an airline. So we told them we were flying a celebrity to Finland, and asked whether they would like that person to mention how nice it was to fly with them, on board and when they landed.
Of course they would. Their next question was how much it would cost them. Nothing, we said. Just provide the flights.
What did the event actually cost?
| Item | What we offered instead of money | What we paid |
|---|---|---|
| Five-star venue | Influencer and celebrity mentions, a few rooms booked for them | Nothing |
| Celebrities and influencers | A five-day content trip to Finland | About 20% of the usual fee |
| Flights to Finland | Mentions on board and on arrival | Close to nothing |
| Activities in Finland | Our network in Finland | 10–20% of tourist prices |
Put simply: if the event would normally have cost 50, we paid about 10. And everyone involved came out ahead. The hotel, the airline, the celebrities and the influencers all got visibility that would have cost them far more to buy.
Why not just pay?
Because money is cheap. There is plenty of it in the world, and offering it is the easy way out. Everyone does it, so it does not set you apart from anyone. In social media marketing, the most creative and the deepest pockets win, and a bootstrapped startup does not have deep pockets yet.
What you can do is be more creative than the companies that can pay. None of our competitors would have thought of this event, which made it cheap and different at the same time. And here is the part people miss: we would have got most of the value even without a social media account of our own. Our name was mentioned by the hotel, the celebrities, the influencers and the airline. Your own posts multiply it, but they are not where it starts.
What if your event flops?
Some will. We had the same fear: what if we throw a Christmas event nobody has ever done in Vietnam and nobody comes? If you run ten events at the start, maybe seven flop. Then five. Eventually nine out of ten work, and your customers love you for them.
Events are worth the risk, especially in a business that sells to consumers. Your net worth is your network. Bring interesting people into one room and offer them something of value, and they will come for free or close to it, and make deals among themselves. Customers want to meet the people they admire, and they remember the company that made it happen. I still see photos from that event being posted, two years later.
How to plan your own event with no budget
- List every cost, from the venue down to the flights and the activities.
- For each one, ask who would benefit from being part of it, and what they are trying to achieve: a hotel wants guests talking about it, an airline wants to be seen, a creator wants new content.
- Offer that instead of money, and make the trade fair. A deal that is good for only one side does not repeat.
- Combine the partners you already have before you look for new ones.
- Make sure your name travels with the mentions. The point is that people know who made it happen.
This is step four of the five-step bootstrapping playbook, marketing without money, worked through on one real event. The partner side of it is in the partnership playbook, and why we worked this way at all is in bootstrapping vs venture capital.
Questions
What does in-kind sponsorship mean?
A sponsor contributes goods, services or space instead of cash, such as a venue, flights or catering, and receives something of value in return, usually visibility or content. It is easier to agree than cash sponsorship because nobody needs a marketing budget approved.
Will a big brand sponsor an event for a company nobody knows?
If the trade is good for them, yes. The hotel did not sponsor us because of our name. It agreed because we brought celebrities and influencers it could not easily get on its own. Lead with what they get, not with who you are.
Isn't it simpler to pay the celebrity's fee?
Simpler, yes. We paid about 20% of the usual fee by offering a trip that gave the celebrity content worth more to them than one hour's pay. Paying cash is what everyone does, so it buys you an appearance but nothing that sets you apart.
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