Sponsorist was featured in the Miami Herald’s startup blog The Starting Gate. A guest post written by Rosston Meyer about how Sponsorist is working with local startups and event organizers was shared with the South Florida startup community.  Click here to read the article on The Starting Gate or read it below.   Tech entrepreneurs and startup companies often have a difficult time getting their name out to the right people, especially in an area with such sprawl as South Florida. Tech events and conferences run from Miami all the way to Palm Beach and beyond, and it can be hard for companies to reach the right group. Seeing a need to help event organizers and businesses promote themselves on a local level, I founded Sponsorist to help make the all important sponsorship connections happen. The site allows anyone who throws an event, has a festival/race/marathon, or is simply looking for some local promotion to create a free listing that is then shared with their social network. Similar to Kickstarter, the more eyes on each listing the more likely they are to get funded, or in this case, sponsored. Some of the success stories on Sponsorist have come from South Florida‘s own backyard: Annual Miami startup conference SuperConf and monthly tech meetup Refresh Miami have both used Sponsorist to raise funds for their tech focused events. SuperConf organizer Auston Bunsen used the service to secure sponsorships ranging from local companies such as Straat Investments and OnTime Telecom to national brands like Microsoft’s Bizspark and Boulder, CO based Sendgrid. “Sponsorist is a great way for me to acquire sponsors with little to no overhead on my part,” said Bunsen. Sponsorist isn’t just for tech events and entrepreneurs, though. Anybody from the South Florida area can get involved; from your local business to your favorite charity to your kid’s soccer team. Since the idea behind Sponsorist is to help out the community, we accept all inquires looking for and wanting to be sponsors, especially those in the South Florida area. The company recently partnered with Palm Beach based Atlas Party Rental to help local charities get free exposure through the Charity Minute promotion. Since launching late last year, the site has undergone a handful of revisions and has been featured on CNN Money and in The Wall Street Journal. New features that will help local businesses and event organizers help find more sponsors quicker such as geolocation and embeddable widgets will be added to the site by year’s end. To keep up to date with the latest from Sponsorist visit the blog at http://blog.sponsorist.com, or connect via email (info@sponsorist.com), Twitter (@sponsorist) or Facebook (facebook.com/sponsorist) Rosston Meyer is the founder of Sponsorist Inc. in Lake Worth, Fla.