Founder stories
365 témoignages trouvés
Max Rhodes left Square to fix wholesale. Faire offered retailers net-60 payment terms and free returns — eliminating the risk of trying new brands. Result: $12.4B valuation, 700K+ retailers.
Christine Yen and Charity Majors didn't just build a product — they created the "observability" category. By writing, speaking, and defining the space, Honeycomb became the category leader. Result: $200M+ in funding, used by Slack, Vanguard, and HelloFresh.
Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis bet that website owners would pay for analytics that didn't track visitors. GDPR made privacy a selling point. Result: $100K+ ARR, profitable, bootstrapped — no VC needed.
Peer Richelsen launched Calendso as an open-source Calendly alternative, attracted 20K+ GitHub stars, rebranded to Cal.com, and raised $32M.
JR Farr built Lemon Squeezy in public on Twitter, targeting indie hackers who needed simpler alternatives to Stripe for selling digital products. Stripe acquired it in 2024.
Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief started Morning Brew as a college newsletter. A viral referral program fueled growth. Business Insider acquired it for ~$75M in 2020.
Sam Parr started with HustleCon conference, leveraged the email list to launch The Hustle newsletter, grew to 1.5M+ subscribers, and sold to HubSpot for ~$27M.
Tim Chen invested $800 to build NerdWallet, a credit card comparison site. Obsessive SEO grew it to 20M+ monthly visitors, $500M+ revenue, and an IPO in 2021.
Brian Lam left Gizmodo, moved to a surf shack in Hawaii, and launched Wirecutter. The NYT bought it for ~$30M in 2016.
Shaan Puri had 300K+ Twitter followers. He and Ben Levy launched Milk Road in February 2022. Ten months later, they sold it to Beehiiv.
Noah Kagan was fired from Facebook before the IPO. He launched AppSumo with a Reddit post and a $12K deal — building it into $80M+ annual revenue.
Ben Francis was delivering pizzas when he started screen-printing fitness apparel in his garage. By partnering with YouTube fitness influencers, he turned Gymshark into a £1.45B brand.
Two software engineers built a side project to map compensation levels across tech companies. Word spread on Blind and HN. Now Levels.fyi dominates tech compensation data.
Amir Salihefendic built Todoist as a side project to manage his own tasks as a student. 17 years later it's a fully bootstrapped, $20M+ ARR company used by 30 million people.
Tiago Forte developed his note-taking system to cope with a debilitating voice disorder. That personal system became Building a Second Brain, the world's most popular personal knowledge management course.
Matt Kepnes quit his hospital admin job after a trip to Thailand opened his eyes. His travel blog became Nomadic Matt — one of the world's largest travel media brands with over 1 million monthly readers.
In December 2013, Scott Keyes found a $130 roundtrip flight from New York to Milan. His friends wanted the next one. Three years later, that email list became Going — a subscription service with 2 million members.
Andrew Henderson built a radio broadcasting empire at 22, then faced a 43% tax bill that changed his worldview. He founded Nomad Capitalist to share what he discovered — and built a 60-person global advisory brand.
Dr. John Berardi launched Precision Nutrition to a 30,000-person newsletter. They made $500,000 in six months. Then their payment processor froze every dollar. This is the story of how they survived.
Zeno Rocha created the Dracula color theme in 2013 while in a hospital, to cope with bad lighting conditions. Seven years and 3 million downloads later, he launched a paid version — and made $5K in 72 hours.
Alex Tew started meditating as a teenager, built the viral Million Dollar Homepage, then channeled that success into co-founding Calm.
Andy Puddicombe spent 10 years as a Buddhist monk, then co-founded Headspace with Rich Pierson to bring meditation to millions.
After nearly a decade in automotive/aerospace, Martin Moravek built Minimalist Phone to solve his own screen addiction problem.
Jesse Mecham built a simple spreadsheet to manage money with his wife. That spreadsheet became YNAB, now used by millions worldwide.
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