Founders spend a shocking amount of time trying to find the right person. A cofounder who can code. A marketer who's done this before. An advisor who knows the space. An investor who actually writes checks at their stage.
The idea is a Google Sheet that holds those contacts for one kind of startup, kept fresh by the people who use it. Sell access, or trade access for contributions.
It's one of the 100 business ideas in Google Sheets I put together, and it's the one with the strangest and most interesting payment model.
The idea
Start with a question. What kinds of contacts are the startups you're looking to serve interested in making? Are they looking for cofounders, marketers, or virtual assistants? Are they looking for advisors or VCs?
Pick one answer. A list of everyone is a list of no one. A list of 200 fractional marketing leads who work with pre-seed B2B startups is a list founders will pay for and share.
The list includes contact information such as name, email, phone number, company, and industry focus. It also includes notes on past interactions or potential partnership opportunities. That notes column is the difference between a directory and a network. Anyone can scrape names. Nobody can scrape "replied within a day, prefers a warm intro, currently focused on climate."
Here's the part I like. People can submit their contacts and the way they connected with them. Use a Google Form to ask for contacts, and grant admission to the sheet that way. Submit three good contacts with notes, get access to the whole list.
It's an innovative and maybe weird way to pay it forward, without having to pay. The list grows because the price of entry is growth. And the notes stay honest, because they're written by people who actually made the connection.
You can run both models at once. Contribute and get in free, or pay and skip the contribution. Some founders have contacts and no money. Some have money and no contacts. Both are customers.
How to build it in Google Sheets
Tabs
- Contacts: Name, Role, Company, Industry Focus, Stage They Work With, Email, LinkedIn, How to Reach Them, Notes, Submitted By, Date Added, Verified checkbox.
- Submissions: raw Google Form responses. Nothing gets into Contacts until you've checked it.
- Members: who has access, how they got in (contributed or paid), and when.
- Find: a dropdown-driven view. Pick "Advisor" and "Fintech" and see just those rows.
- Interactions: a log where members note outreach and outcomes, so the Notes column keeps improving.
Features to use
- Google Forms intake for submissions, with required fields for the notes, so nobody can dump a name and an email and call it a contribution.
- Data validation dropdowns on Role, Industry Focus, and Stage, so the Find tab actually works.
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FILTER with two conditions on the Find tab:
=FILTER(Contacts!A2:L, Contacts!B2:B=B1, Contacts!D2:D=B2), where B1 and B2 are the dropdowns. - UNIQUE to generate the dropdown options from the data itself, so you never maintain a separate list.
- Checkboxes for Verified. Show members only verified rows.
- Apps Script onEdit trigger with MailApp, so when you check a submission as approved, the contributor gets an email with their access link.
- Protected ranges on Contacts, with the Interactions tab left open for members to write in.
Seed it with 50 contacts you personally know before opening the form. Nobody contributes to an empty list.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
The buyer is a founder at the stage where the next hire or the next check is the whole problem. They're paying for verified contacts with notes, and for a list that's fresh because it's fed by people like them. Recruiters and accelerator staff are a second buyer, and they'll pay more.
Price it two ways. Contribute three verified contacts and get in free. Or pay for access, monthly or yearly, because the list changes constantly. A one-time snapshot on Gumroad is possible, but a snapshot of a contact list is stale in six months, so I'd only sell it as an entry point.
For paid access, use OnlySheets. It handles payment and shares the sheet with the buyer automatically, which is exactly the "pay and skip the contribution" path.
The service on top is the intro. For a fee, make the introduction yourself with a note about why the two people should talk. Founders pay for warm intros, and you're the warmest person on the list.
For the first ten members, don't sell. Ask ten founders you know to each add three contacts in exchange for access. Now you have 30 more contacts and ten members who have a reason to tell other founders. The eleventh member is the first one who pays.
Related ideas from the list
- Co Founder Coffee Matchmaking Service, the same founders, with the matching done for them instead of by them.
- Sales Leads Contact List, the same contact-list mechanic pointed at customers instead of partners.
- Startup Accelerator, a bigger program for the same buyer, where this list would be one of the tabs.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.