{"id":7022,"date":"2017-06-20T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/centers\/2017\/06\/20\/startup-snapshot-a-word-about-sponsors\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T18:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:16:18","slug":"startup-snapshot-a-word-about-sponsors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/centers\/2017\/06\/20\/startup-snapshot-a-word-about-sponsors\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup Snapshot: A Word About Sponsors"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head>\n<\/head><body><p>Val Tsanev, MBA &rsquo;13: SponsorShipped<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>by Dick Anderson<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/06\/Tsanev_Val-320x.jpg\" alt=\"Startup Snapshot: A Word About Sponsors\" class=\"wp-image-7023\" srcset=\"https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/06\/Tsanev_Val-320x.jpg 450w, https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/06\/Tsanev_Val-320x-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/06\/Tsanev_Val-320x-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/business.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/06\/Tsanev_Val-320x-400x400.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\"><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Corporate sponsorship is big business, and it&rsquo;s getting bigger. According to <em>IEG Sponsorship Report <\/em>projections, sponsorship spending will reach $23.2 billion this year in the United States alone and $62.8 billion worldwide. But what do sponsors get for their money?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&rsquo;s the question driving <a href=\"http:\/\/sponsorshipped.com\/\" class=\"external\">SponsorShipped<\/a>, a SaaS platform designed to help corporations make intelligent sponsorship decisions. Since its launch last November, SponsorShipped has curated a database of more than 12,000 sponsors, 40,000 speakers, 20,000 global technology events (including a trending score that denotes the &ldquo;hotness&rdquo; of specific conferences plus a SponsorShipped score defining which events best match a sponsor&rsquo;s unique objectives), detailed portfolio analytics, and benchmarking peer-to-peer analyses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;Sponsorships are no longer only about heartbeats and emotions,&rdquo; says SponsorShipped founder and CEO Valeri Tsanev, speaking from his office in New York City. &ldquo;Now, chief marketing officers, brand managers, and event marketers need to clearly define return on investment or return on objectives and link those directly to unit economics and business goals.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tsanev emigrated from Bulgaria in 2000 with $60 to his name. He majored in computer science at St. John&rsquo;s University, graduating <em>magna cum laude<\/em>, and enrolled in Cornell&rsquo;s Executive MBA program while working at Credit Suisse in its investment banking strategy group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While at Credit Suisse, Tsanev worked on a &ldquo;huge&rdquo; project reviewing the portfolio of the bank&rsquo;s philanthropic activities and sponsorships. &ldquo;At that time, I realized that millions are spent in the conference sponsorship space and yet no one was able to define what they got out of that conference sponsorship,&rdquo; he explains. More than 50 interviews with Fortune 5000 companies and SMBs since then have only reaffirmed his convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SponsorShipped is currently in discussions with Microsoft, SAP, AIG, among other companies, &ldquo;and we are getting great feedback on what we have built so far,&rdquo; says Tsanev. Having traded 120-hour workweeks on Wall Street to become an entrepreneur, he adds, &ldquo;Running your own business is not for the fainthearted.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Val Tsanev, MBA &rsquo;13: SponsorShipped by Dick Anderson Corporate sponsorship is big business, and it&rsquo;s getting bigger. According to IEG Sponsorship Report projections, sponsorship spending will reach $23.2 billion this&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":7023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[196,201],"ppma_author":[11],"class_list":["post-7022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-profiles","tag-archived","tag-eii-cornell-startups"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.2 (Yoast SEO v28.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Startup Snapshot: A Word About Sponsors - Cornell Business Centers &amp; Institutes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Val Tsanev, MBA \u201913: SponsorShipped by Dick Anderson Corporate sponsorship is big business, and it\u2019s getting bigger. 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