Founder stories
Browse Stories
Founder stories
Browse Stories
462 stories found
JR
Johannes Reck
Five bookings in two years, three from his mother, then GetYourGuide started over
Two years of building a peer to peer student guide platform produced exactly five bookings, three of them from Johannes Reck's mother. Then a Swiss rafting company called.
$1B/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 2 years·Team
MarketplaceReisen🇩🇪 DE
Josh Comeau
How Josh Comeau pre-sold $577,000 of a half-finished CSS course in one week
A repetitive strain injury pushed Josh Comeau out of a $165,000 engineering job. Seven months later he opened pre-orders for an unfinished CSS course, aimed at $50,000, and closed the week at $577,000.
$100K ARR in 8 months·Solo
Info-ProduktBildung
Julian Hearn
Two orders on day one: how Julian Hearn started Huel from his garage
Huel's website went live with no buzz at all and took two orders on the first day. Julian Hearn packed them himself, and says revenue reached £9 million two years later.
$103M/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 1 days·Team
SonstigesGesundheit & Wellness🇬🇧 GB
Justin Mares
Justin Mares took nearly $500 in two weeks before Kettle & Fire had any bone broth to sell
Before quitting his job in April 2014, Justin Mares put a $29.99 bone broth page online with a PayPal checkout and about $50 of Bing ads. Two weeks later he had taken nearly $500 for a product that did not exist.
$100M/Jahr·$10K MRR in 1 year·Team
SonstigesE-Commerce🇺🇸 US
Kristo Käärmann
Wise launched with a one pound fee and had customers moving money in seven days
TransferWise went live on 24 January 2011 with a flat one pound fee and one TechCrunch post. Seven days later the founders reported customers moving money between eight countries.
$1.2B/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 7 days·Team
MarketplaceFinanzen🇬🇧 GB
MR
Marcus Rader
Free beer for Airbnb hosts: how Marcus Rader took four years to get Hostaway to $100k MRR
Investors told Marcus Rader the short term rental niche was too small. He printed a t-shirt reading Free Beer for Airbnb Hosts, stood on a Toronto street corner for an hour, and spent the next four years getting Hostaway to $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
$30M/Jahr·$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSReisen🇨🇦 CA
Matt Paulson
The stock ratings email that turned into a $50 million media company
Matt Paulson built a daily stock ratings email to keep an ad network happy. The paid version sold 12 subscriptions its first weekend and became MarketBeat.
$50M/Jahr·$100K ARR in 2 years·Solo
Info-ProduktFinanzen🇺🇸 US
Matteo Franceschetti
Eight Sleep hit its $100,000 goal in under 11 hours, then spent a year learning to manufacture
Matteo Franceschetti and three co-founders put a sleep tracking mattress cover on Indiegogo on 27 January 2015. The $100,000 goal was met the same day, and the campaign closed at $1,231,729 from 5,202 backers.
$100K ARR in 4 months·Team
SonstigesGesundheit & Wellness🇺🇸 US
Matthieu Rouif
Two weeks from the first commit to a paid app: how Matthieu Rouif started Photoroom
Matthieu Rouif and Eliot Andres shipped the first version of Photoroom, then called BG, fourteen days after the first line of code, with subscriptions already wired in. It now processes more than 7 billion images a year.
$50M/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 14 days·Team
Mobile AppDesign🇫🇷 FR
MB
Mike Beckham
Six months of research, then the first Simple Modern bottle sold
Mike Beckham and two co-founders put $200,000 into a drinkware brand competing with Yeti. The first bottle sold about six months later, and 24 million followed in seven years.
$200M/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 7 months·Team
SonstigesE-Commerce🇺🇸 US
MC
Mike Cessario
Mike Cessario spent 14 months building an audience for Liquid Death before there was a can to sell
Liquid Death was a Facebook page and a fake commercial for over a year before it was a product. By the time the first cans shipped in January 2019, the brand already had 100,000 followers and less than $10k of paid media behind it.
$263M/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 1 year·Team
SonstigesE-Commerce🇺🇸 US
Moiz Ali
Native sold 60 deodorants before it owned a single one
Moiz Ali launched Native on Product Hunt in July 2015 with no inventory, no factory and a formula bought from an Etsy seller. He placed his first production order only after 60 units were already sold.
verkauft für $100M·Erster Kunde in 1 days·Solo
SonstigesE-Commerce🇺🇸 US
NM
Nunzio Martinello
Akiflow won Product Hunt, scrapped the product, then reached $1M ARR
Akiflow's first product was a command bar that made other task apps faster. The founders scrapped it, rebuilt around one inbox and one calendar, and hit $1M ARR in March 2024.
$2.5M/Jahr·$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSProduktivität🇮🇹 IT
Patrick Campbell
Patrick Campbell wrote an ebook, then sold pricing audits to ProfitWell's first 20 customers
Patrick Campbell cashed out his 401k in 2012, wrote an ebook about SaaS pricing and turned free pricing audits into the first 20 customers of Price Intelligently. He sold the company, by then ProfitWell, to Paddle for over $200 million.
verkauft für $200M·$100K ARR in 2 years·Solo
SaaSFinanzen🇺🇸 US
Peter Askew
He bought an expired domain for $2,200, then went looking for a farmer
Peter Askew won VidaliaOnions.com at auction with a bid he expected to lose, spent a month working out what to do with it, then partnered with a Georgia onion farmer. They forecast 50 orders in season one and shipped over 600.
Erster Kunde in 1 month·Team
SonstigesE-Commerce🇺🇸 US
RB
Ryan Bartlett
$26,000 in month one: how Ryan Bartlett started True Classic as a side project
Three friends put a few thousand dollars into a t-shirt brand in late 2019. Bartlett says the first month brought $26,000 and 651 orders.
$10K MRR in 1 month·Team
SonstigesE-Commerce🇺🇸 US
Sam Corcos
How Levels Health went from a $389 beta to a $12,482 month in 158 days
Sam Corcos publishes Levels Health's monthly investor updates in public, so the early revenue line can be read directly instead of reconstructed. It runs $6,774, $4,507, $7,221, $12,482.
$21.1M/Jahr·$10K MRR in 5 months·Team
Mobile AppGesundheit & Wellness🇺🇸 US
Taimur Abdaal
Causal went 18 months with nobody paying, then landed a first customer at $300 a month
Taimur Abdaal and Lukas Köbis quit their jobs in 2019 to build a better spreadsheet. Users called it cool and left. The first paying customer only arrived in early 2021, after they booked 40 demos in a single month and ran a free pilot.
Erster Kunde in 1 year·Team
SaaSFinanzen🇬🇧 GB
Tanay Kothari
Tanay Kothari killed a three year hardware product and had Wispr Flow selling in 91 days
In July 2024 Tanay Kothari shut down the hardware Wispr had spent three years building and cut the team from 40 people to 5. The dictation app that replaced it was in users' hands six weeks later and selling subscriptions by the end of September.
Erster Kunde in 3 months·Team
SaaSProduktivität🇺🇸 US
Tom Blomfield
How Tom Blomfield got Monzo to a million customers without buying them
Monzo shipped a loss making prepaid card as a stand-in for a bank account, put the first 500 into customers' hands 271 days after founding, and reached a million customers in September 2018 with no meaningful ad spend.
Erster Kunde in 9 months·Team
Mobile AppFinanzen🇬🇧 GB
Victor Cardenas
Slash sold a $100 a month card to sneaker resellers and hit $5m ARR in 11 months
Victor Cardenas and Kevin Bai spent a year failing before a handful of sneaker resellers told them exactly what to build and what they would pay. Eleven months after that pivot, Slash was at $5 million in ARR.
$150M/Jahr·$100K ARR in 11 months·Team
SaaSFinanzen🇺🇸 US
Volkan Kaya
Seven months on an MVP, then a free side tool brought Versoly its first paying customer
Volkan Kaya and his co-founder spent seven months building a website builder nobody would use for free. A two week side project that hit number one on Product Hunt finally produced customer number one.
$126K/Jahr·Erster Kunde in 7 months·Team
SaaSDesign🇬🇧 GB
Will Ahmed
Will Ahmed spent three years building WHOOP before its first hundred users
Will Ahmed asked athletes what they wanted and heard one thing, asked what their problems were and heard another, then spent three years building for the second answer.
Erster Kunde in 3 years·Team
SonstigesGesundheit & Wellness🇺🇸 US
Yahya Mokhtarzada
Two years free, then the last chance subscription that saved Truebill
Truebill spent two years as a free app whose founders assumed nobody would pay a subscription to cancel subscriptions. The premium tier they shipped as a last resort converted at 3.5 times what Yahya Mokhtarzada expected.
verkauft für $1.3B·Erster Kunde in 2 years·Team
Mobile AppFinanzen🇺🇸 US
Browse by Industry
Explore founder stories in your niche
Hit a revenue milestone?
Share your journey and inspire other founders. We'd love to feature your story.
A note on these stories: The founders featured here represent those who publicly shared their success. Not every startup succeeds, and timelines vary widely. These stories are meant to inspire and educate, not to set expectations.
Never miss a new founder story
We add 5+ new stories every week. Get them delivered to your inbox along with insights on what's working for founders right now.