[rglullis]

Could you perhaps write up how this came to be? Did you know anyone there already, or did the contact come through some previous network? Did you put together a pitch deck or did they reach out to you first?

The reason I am asking is that I was some years ago I was working on an open source payment gateway for crypto which I was sure would be something interesting for companies like Shopify, and I even posted an "Ask HN" how I could approach companies to ask for sponsorships [0]. I'm not working on it anymore, but I'm pretty sure that I'd be if I were any better at establishing these connections.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907711

[akling]

Tobi (Shopify CEO) has been supporting my open source work via GitHub Sponsors since early 2022, so I reached out to him and said (very paraphrased) "I'm gonna start pushing harder on Ladybird, would Shopify want to be an official sponsor?"

[ljlolel]

Also notice that the quoted engineer Mike Shaver was a leader at Mozilla before. So helps to have knowledgeable internal support too.

[akling]

Indeed! Mike has been really helpful :)

[ralgozino]

now I'm wondering if the "let's make Ladybird render Shopify better" video series was before or after that... :D

[rglullis]

Ok, so by induction... how did you get your first Github sponsors?

[akling]

I've been broadcasting my programming sessions on YouTube since 2019. I have over 1000 videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling

Over time, my audience grew, and some people really liked my videos, so I first made a Patreon and later a GitHub Sponsors for those who wanted to help me turn it into a full-time job someday.

Thanks to growing support, I was eventually able to make it a full-time job. For more details on this journey, I wrote about it here: https://awesomekling.substack.com/p/i-quit-my-job-to-focus-o...