Co-founded with Lucy Mort, Sunroom was built to serve women and non-binary creators — giving them a platform where they could earn directly from their content and build strong, supportive communities. It was a creator-first approach long before it became trendy and now, perhaps an oversaturated market. “At the time of doing the capital raise, the creator economy was blowing up,” Battersby tells Missing Perspectives. “The term ‘creator economy’ was coined in 2020, so it was a very emerging, hot space. So it was very hot – and we were an all-female team and we raised pre-product, pre-revenue building specifically for women.”
Over five years, Battersby and Mort poured themselves into the business. So much so, that the idea of selling hadn’t even crossed their minds – until it did. “We were so in it and so committed to the task that we never sat down and spoke about selling our company or what came next,” she says. “It happened in a slightly reverse order where a competitor in our space reached out to us and asked if we wanted to merge. And so it created this opportunity to create momentum around someone wanting us.”
That moment sparked a shift in thinking. “You know, we started this company to make women and non-binary creators as much money as possible. Could they actually make more money if we took this somewhere else? Like, what can we continue to build, continue to provide? What can they gain from our ecosystem?
“To be totally honest, we’d reached this point in the business where it had just become harder and harder to grow. And it felt like we were perhaps maxing out.”
Watching similar platforms in their space pivot or stall gave them even more reason to reflect. “This is something that we had seen with another platform in our space where they had really done a great job to acquire a lot of gamers. And then it was like they kind of niched out of that area. And I guess that had made us question, how much room is there for these sorts of platforms?
“So we started to have questions, conversations like that — you know, who’s winning in this space, who keeps beating us, who is able to offer more to their creators than us?”
Those questions led to a full exploration of the market. The pair kicked off a process of reaching out to “every competitor” in their space – from direct rivals to porn platforms, social networks and talent agencies. “That was probably the funnest, most intriguing part of the journey,” Battersby says. “Working out that you can actually package your business up in all these different ways to appeal to different types of companies.”
Throughout, their creators whose trust they had built at Sunroom remained front of mind, guiding a lot of their decision-making process. “I guess that’s the thing Lucy and I kept coming back to – we have acquired all of these users where some of them, well, a lot of them, they’re paying their car insurance with their Sunroom earnings, they’re paying their rent, they’re paying their tuition. Some of them it’s their whole income, they’re making a living on Sunroom.
“What became very clear was that we had to choose the best outcome for them. We kind of put them above everything else. And so when it came to our competitors, it was really about what platform has the most similar community guidelines to us, who has amazing creator support and like a big team.”
That partner, it turned out, was Fanfix. “There are definitely some things Fanfix doesn’t have that our creators really want and they do have a different brand, but they just have nailed it,” Battersby says. “They have huge creators, millions and millions of users, a really big creator support team, features that help creators automate the way they’re making money.
“It was like everything I’d spent five years manually coaching our creators to do, they’d productised it.”
Joining forces with Fanfix also brought perspective. “It was very interesting once we started working with their team on the integration, because we got an inside look. I’m like, how has this company just kept beating us? And then you start to see certain things in their product and you’re like, that’s good. Why didn’t we do that?
“But then there are certain things they don’t have, like they don’t have the anti-screenshot technology, which they’re building. But it’s so hard to put a timeline on those sorts of things.”
Still, the decision to sell wasn’t without its moments of doubt that any founder can resonate with. “I had moments where I was like, my god, how would it feel to reach this point and not be able to sell? Especially once Lucy and I had kind of made the decision that this is what we were going for,” Battersby says. “Maybe that would be the most devastating outcome you could reach as a founder – putting so much into something and not being able to get that kind of bow on it at the end.”
But that feeling shifted. “I’ve kind of realised that it doesn’t really matter what the outcome is. Like if you make money, if you don’t, if you sell, if you don’t, if you launch and fail within three months – you will have inflated your value as an individual so much that you really can kind of go and do whatever you want on the other side. And it was actually the freedom part for me that has felt the most rewarding.”
Another highlight for Battersby? The strong relationship she’s maintained with her co-founder, Lucy Mort.
“Lucy and I were talking about this the other day and we were writing down the wins and I was like, I think it’s a win we don’t hate each other. We didn’t go into this knowing each other. We didn’t go into this being friends. We were completely unknown to one another and we came together passionate about achieving the same kind of goal with similar values.
“We had a complementary skill set. We worked quite well together and we kind of had our own lanes and our own things that we were good at. But we definitely also didn’t agree with each other all the time. We 100 per cent had conflict.”
That’s where co-founder therapy came in.
“We actually had a co-founder therapist. We are based in California where I do think co-founder therapy is probably big business. But it actually got to a point — I think when our growth started to plateau for the first time — you take on different pressures as a founder, and how you respond to that pressure created a bit of tension in our relationship. We were just both really honest about it and kind of knew that we needed to get better at communicating.
“So we got this co-founder therapist and it was just the best thing we ever did. I would totally recommend that to anyone in a co-founder relationship. I think there was a lot of personal growth in this for both of us from that perspective.
“And I also feel — I think we both felt — not relieved, but just fortunate that we also came to the same point. We were both ready to kind of see this through to its next era.”
Listen to Michelle’s full journey in our latest High Agency Women podcast episode.