31 founder stories
I built Fantasy Congress as a side project - a fantasy sports game but for politics. It went viral and taught me everything about building in public....
Steph leveraged her experience leading content at The Hustle to launch Doing Content Right, earning $40K in the first month.
I started Blogging for Devs as a free newsletter teaching developers how to grow their blogs. It evolved into a paid community and course. Building...
After 80+ failed projects, one finally went viral. 4 million page views in 4 weeks, $4K/month in ad revenue, then sold.
David Perell launched Write of Passage in April 2019 with ~150 students at $600. He ran it with Tiago Forte. Instant Success Even the first coho...
Kevin turned his SaaS research into a newsletter, growing from $0 to $10K MRR in 5 months by building in public on Indie Hackers.
In December 2020, Dickie Bush tweeted: 'is anyone interested in doing a daily writing challenge for 30 days?' Rapid Validation Around 20 people...
Kieran Drew was a dentist working 50-60 hours per week when he decided to build an online business. Premium Pricing He launched High Impact Writ...
Alex Hormozi sold his six gyms, poured the money into a licensing model, and hit $17M profit in the first year. He scaled to 4,500+ locations across 13 countries, sold for $46.2M, then built Acquisition.com into a $250M+ portfolio.
Tiago Forte 'rage quit' consulting with a month of savings. He created a course on SkillShare that became 2 on the platform. Cohort Model After...
Marie Forleo, along with Laura Roeder, created B-School. The first year enrolled a few hundred students. Fun Marketing The marketing broke all r...
Wes Bos started teaching at a coding bootcamp, then launched "React for Beginners" — 2,300 students in 3 weeks. His free JavaScript30 challenge attracted 680K+ sign-ups. Total: $10M+ in course revenue from Hamilton, Ontario.
A side project to catch the ChatGPT wave became a paid Substack newsletter doing roughly $30k a month, built on quarterly product drops and a founding member tier.
Jack Butcher assembled cars at a Honda factory, talked his way into design school, spent 8 years at agencies, then burned out running his own. In January 2019, he started posting simple visuals on Twitter. Within 18 months: $180K/month.
Left Amazon with 150 Twitter followers. Three years later, $1M in cumulative revenue from info products and community.
My partner Danielle was an online English teacher. Every day after teaching, she'd spend hours writing personalized feedback for each student. I watch...
Ramit Sethi waited two years before creating his first product, building audience to 50,000 visitors per month first. First Product His first pr...
Marie discovered Notion in 2018 and started sharing tips on YouTube. When her audience asked for a course, she launched Notion Mastery to $40K/month.
Ellen pre-sold her first program with zero content, then built it based on customer feedback to reach 7-figure lifetime revenue.
Arvid and his partner Danielle built FeedbackPanda for online ESL teachers, reaching $55K MRR before selling for a life-changing amount.
After building Ministry of Testing to $1.2M, Rosie started Rosieland to teach community building. Reached $10K/month in 2.5 years.
Started as a free MVP in 2018. Two years later, first paid customers. One year after that, $2K revenue months.
David Park sat at roughly $2,000 MRR for three years before a niche pivot to academic writing and a viral thread sent Jenni AI on a climb to $10M ARR and 10 million users.
I failed with my first 5 online businesses before Backlinko worked. Created the "Skyscraper Technique" which became an industry standard. Eventually a...
Ali Abdaal started making YouTube videos in 2017 during his final year of medical school at Cambridge. The Grind He uploaded 85 videos with 0 vi...
Started with a blog nobody read. Rebranded to Creator Science and built to $500K/year through newsletter, podcast, and community.
Sumit saw colleagues struggling with Excel and built TrumpExcel to 1M+ monthly pageviews and $10K/month revenue.
I was SVP of Sales when I had a panic attack from burnout. I quit to build a solo business. Now I make $5M/year with 89% profit margin and zero ads....
Dan Koe tried fitness YouTube, dropshipping, a Facebook ads agency, and two e-commerce brands — all failed. Then he started writing on Twitter. Within 4 years: $3.3M/year and 3.4M followers.
Chris Do ran an Emmy-winning design agency for 22+ years. In 2014, he started making YouTube videos teaching creatives how to run businesses. That side project became The Futur — 2.5M subscribers and $4.9M+/year.
Started as a free forum in 2007. 12 years later: $1.2M ARR from conferences, memberships, and courses.