The past month has been a wild ride for Spinnakr who not only has used their own software to game AngelList (resulting in a ton of investor attention) but also compelledChart.io’s Co-Founder to join their team. Unfortunately we still aren’t quite sure whyDavid Beyer, Co-Founder of Chart.io and ex-CEO, jumped ship as he has been difficult to get in touch with (respond to our emails David!!!). Here isDavid’s AngelList update though:

However it’s obviously a major win for the team who just finished up with the last batch of 500 Startups companies. When I first saw Spinnakr moving up our internal dashboard a month ago I had to reach out. I had known one of the founders from back in D.C. and I knew there had to be a good story there.

The two Co-Founders, Michael Mayernick and Adam Bonnifield, came over and we chatted for a bit (we even did a video interview but I haven’t gotten around to editing it). The best part of their story was how they had used their own product to game AngelList. To understand how they did this, it’s important to understand how Spinnakr works.

Spinnakr provides website owners with what’s effectively smart calls to action for their visitors. In the case of AngelList users, they prompt all referrals from AngelList with a form which says “Find us on AngelList” and a follow button. The result was that they became the third-most popular Analytics startup on AngelList, second most followed in the B2B market, and the most followed for all D.C. startups. All of this by just using the following call to action on their site:


What had me most surprised about Spinnakr was how incredibly simple their product is: they literally optimize calls to action. I think a fair comparison would be a product like HelloBar, which provides targeted calls to action at the top of a company’s site. For Spinnakr, they have some similar features but ultimately they are one giant analytics and optimization play.

They want to help website owners increase conversions … whatever those conversions may be. They accomplish this by segmenting a website’s audience into buckets. Those buckets could be based on referral sources, or alternatively demographic buckets (similar to how some of the larger ad networks like Doubleclick provide segmented audience buckets).

Rather than just filling up a display advertising spot though, any call to action on the site can be perfectly targeted to the right audience. While the company is just getting started, they’re clearly moving quickly. With another successful leader on board, I’d keep an eye on them!