I’m lucky to have incredible co-founders. Like many startup ideas, this one started casually—just some thoughts in a Google Doc or a pitch deck shared with friends. Most of my ideas usually stop there.

But this one was different. I shared it with my friend Garvin—one of the two Garvins I work with. He has over a decade of product management experience across startups and public companies. Normally, I bring him ideas expecting him to shoot them down. But this time, he leaned in and said, “This actually seems buildable. There’s real market potential here.” That’s when we started prototyping and bringing the idea to life.

We spoke with 15 to 20 developers, trying to understand the tech side—what stack we’d need, whether we could build it ourselves, or if we needed a technical co-founder. That’s when we met the other Garvan, a seasoned software engineer with over a decade of experience in fast-paced startups. He started as a technical advisor, helping us vet freelancers and review the early code.

Eventually, after seeing the response from our early users, he decided to join full-time as a co-founder. He’s now the one leading the technical side of the business.

We also brought on a junior developer—a bit of a hidden gem. He has a PhD in geology, is a drummer, and just naturally fits into our culture. While finishing school, he’s been learning fast and helping us build. It’s been a win-win.

The original idea was simple: help sales teams share all the materials they usually send across a sales cycle—files, links, resources—through a single co-branded kit. That’s where the name SalesKits came from.

At first, there was no product—just Figma mockups and Canva designs. We interviewed about 200 salespeople to test the concept, then hired a freelancer to build a clickable MVP in two months for just $500. It wasn’t polished, but it worked.

As we evolved, we rebranded the product as SendKits to better reflect what we were actually doing. We changed the landing page, emails, and outward branding. But the legal name stayed SalesKits, Inc., mostly because we were bootstrapping and balancing full-time jobs—updating the name on paper just wasn’t the priority.

Once Garvin joined full-time, we really picked up speed. The product matured, the design got tighter, and we started bringing in real users. Now, over 100 sales teams have used SendKits, we’ve got revenue, and it’s become a real business.

There were a few key reasons behind the rebrand.

First, the customer experience.

Our product sends links with our brand name in the subdomain. When customers received something labeled saleskits.io, it felt a little too salesy—like they were being pitched. We wanted something more neutral and trustworthy, something people would feel comfortable clicking. SendKits felt cleaner and more in line with that experience.

Second, how users actually talked about it.

No one was calling it a “Sales” kit. In user interviews, people used phrases like client resource kit, sales room, or brand kit—but rarely our name. We realized we shouldn’t force them to adopt our language. The word kit resonated, but SendKits was a better fit with how they naturally described it.

And third, we were growing up.

The original SalesKits brand was something we threw together using an automated logo generator for $25. But now, with paying customers and a product that was starting to feel real, we wanted a brand that looked the part.

So we spent a night brainstorming with ChatGPT and Midjourney, generating logo ideas, looking at tech branding styles, and narrowing it down. Once we landed on SendKits, we refreshed everything—logo, site, visuals in the product. It only took a few weeks, but it made a big difference. We’ve iterated on the site since, but the core brand has stayed solid.

A really common challenge for startups is that building brand credibility doesn’t deliver quick, tangible ROI.

In the early stages, so much of your focus has to be on acquiring new customers and supporting the ones you already have. That makes it tough to prioritize time for content development, evergreen assets like blog posts, PDFs, videos, or even website redesigns. These all take significant time away from immediate sales efforts.

That tension has been a real struggle—figuring out how much time to dedicate to brand-building versus manual, one-on-one outreach for new users.

But there’s a clear payoff. Once we completed the rebrand and polished the website through a few iterations, everything else got easier. Now, when I follow up with a website link, prospects are more likely to resonate with what we’re doing and take the next meeting.

So the investment was definitely worth it, but balancing brand-building with direct sales efforts is still something we’re actively working on.

Definitely. I first came across Brandfetch at a previous company—we didn’t use the API, just the marketplace. We’d manually search for logos and brand colors to include in sales decks or marketing materials. It was super useful but also pretty manual—we had to plug everything into our design tools ourselves.

So when we started building SendKits, I knew we needed something better. If we're helping reps package content for customers, it needs to be branded—but sales reps aren’t going to spend time Googling logos. We've actually heard from customers that it’s a major time suck.

Brandfetch’s API solved that perfectly. Now when someone builds a kit, they just type in their customer’s name and the logo, brand colors, and cover image auto-populate. It’s seamless, and customers love it.

It’s honestly one of our biggest “aha” moments in demos—seeing the branding pull in instantly. Plus, the coverage is surprisingly good. Even when our users are selling to smaller auto dealerships or trucking companies, Brandfetch usually has a logo. That makes a big difference.

The rebrand had a clear purpose: to show that we were no longer in beta, but a legitimate, established company. Before, when we were still SalesKits, the website and brand felt like we were still building something early-stage. It didn’t reflect where we had gotten to.

Our main goal with the new brand was to communicate credibility and focus on simplicity—building specifically for the sales rep on the front lines, not just for larger sales teams or managers. We wanted the brand to reflect value for the actual end user.

That focus on simplicity and credibility was key. Since the rebrand, we’ve received much more positive feedback. After redesigning the website a few times, we now consistently hear from prospects that when they visit the site, they immediately understand what we do and are curious to learn more.

Before, the brand clearly felt like a founder’s project in beta — something not quite ready. Now, it feels professional and trustworthy.

There are a few key moments we look for to know if SendKits is really adding value. One big one is around deal prioritization—helping reps focus on the right accounts. When you send a kit, you can track engagement: did they open it, how long did they spend, what did they click?

If you’re managing 50–60 accounts and only half are actually engaging with what you send, that tells you a lot. You don’t want to waste time chasing the other 25 or 30 who aren’t showing buying signals. That’s something users tell us helps them work more efficiently.

Another moment we look for is when the kit helps push a deal forward—whether that’s sparking a conversation, impressing a stakeholder, or getting a key intro. One of our early beta users, Reda, was an enterprise rep at Embrace, an IT monitoring company. He was targeting one of the biggest accounts he’d ever gone after. After sending a kit, the client actually forwarded it to the CTO and said, “This was essential for us to sell your solution internally, thanks for the extra effort!”

That was a big "aha" moment for him—and for us. It got him in the room with someone he normally wouldn’t have access to, just because of the kit. And this was back when the product was still early, not very polished, and required a lot of manual work. But that feedback helped validate what we were building and got him to lean in and keep using it.

That’s a great question. We definitely see opportunities to grow beyond just “kits.” SendKits already has a solid user base, and there are still improvements we want to make to simplify and enhance the product. But lately, we’ve been exploring a new direction with AI.

Sales teams have told us that one of the biggest challenges is preparing for meetings. Reps often spend a lot of time opening multiple tabs, researching the customer’s website, and gathering information to tailor their pitch. This prep can take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours for larger accounts, and sometimes reps don’t have the time to prepare thoroughly.

To address this, we’re developing an AI tool—currently in prototype with some early users—that automatically generates a detailed report on the customer. It provides insights on who they are, their strategic priorities, products, and more. You can also ask specific discovery questions before the meeting.

For example, if you’re selling virtual reality software and pitching a brand like Nike, you could ask what VR programs Nike has invested in. Instead of digging through multiple sources, the AI delivers clear, relevant bullet points to support your pitch.

This also connects back to SendKits. Once the AI report is ready, it can draft the kit and even the follow-up email for you. So after the meeting, you have everything prepared to send—streamlining the entire process and making it much easier for sales reps to use.

When I started, I came into this primarily to learn. My perspective has shifted quite a bit since then. At first, it felt like a small project with a couple of friends—something we were building and sharing casually. It didn’t feel like a real company.

But over time, as users started engaging with the product, sharing success stories, and eventually paying for it, the whole thing became more tangible and real. Each step made it feel more like a legitimate business.

One moment I remember clearly was meeting my CTO in person to celebrate hitting our first paid users. We talked about the responsibility that comes with people paying us and committing annually. It wasn’t just about us learning and building anymore — it became about delivering the best possible service and creating the most valuable product for our customers.

That mental shift has influenced many of our decisions, including exploring the AI product we’re working on now. That wasn’t on the roadmap two years ago, but customer feedback guided us there.