Industry benchmarks across 11 industries
The same milestone takes very different amounts of time depending on what you build: median time to $10K MRR runs from 5 months to 2.0 years across industries. Only industries with at least 8 documented journeys are shown.
Based on 462 documented journeys · data regenerated 2026-08-31
Median time to $10K MRR, by industry
AI / ML5 months (n=40)
Marketing12 months (n=66)
Content creation12 months (n=51)
Developer tools12 months (n=51)
E-commerce12 months (n=47)
Education14 months (n=40)
Design2.0 years (n=41)
Productivity2.0 years (n=39)
Finance2.0 years (n=32)
Health & wellness2.0 years (n=31)
Travel2.0 years (n=24)
Shorter bars are faster. Industry medians mix product type, price point and audience, so treat these as context, not destiny; the explorer lets you combine industry with founder type and channel.
The full comparison
| Industry | Journeys | Median to first customer | Median to $10K MRR | Top channel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing | 66 | 30 days | 12 months | SEO / Content |
| Content creation | 51 | 30 days | 12 months | Twitter / X |
| Developer tools | 51 | 30 days | 12 months | Communities |
| E-commerce | 47 | 30 days | 12 months | Communities |
| Design | 41 | 30 days | 2.0 years | Twitter / X |
| AI / ML | 40 | 7 days | 5 months | Twitter / X |
| Education | 40 | 3 months | 14 months | Twitter / X |
| Productivity | 39 | 3 months | 2.0 years | Communities |
| Finance | 32 | 2 months | 2.0 years | SEO / Content |
| Health & wellness | 31 | 2 months | 2.0 years | Word of mouth |
| Travel | 24 | 3 months | 2.0 years | SEO / Content |
Each industry links to its deep-dive page with the matching stories.
Run this against your own numbers
Filter the full dataset by industry, channel and founder type in the benchmark explorer.