Founder stories
62 историй найдено
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.
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.
Manish Chandra bet that fashion resale could be social. Poshmark's Posh Parties turned shopping into community events. Result: IPO at $7.4B, 80M+ users.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jon Bittner pivoted from astrophysics to building Splitwise, now used by tens of millions worldwide.
Guillem and Desmond built a Strava for weightlifting that grew almost entirely through word of mouth.
Scott found a $130 round-trip to Milan and turned his flight-finding hobby into a 2M+ subscriber business.
Jack turned his personal flight hacking hobby into the UK's leading cheap flight service.
A hobby project tracking aircraft in Sweden became the #1 flight tracking app in 130+ countries.
Ben Chestnut bootstrapped Mailchimp for 20 years without VC funding, then sold to Intuit for $12 billion - the largest bootstrapped acquisition ever.
Three friends from Airbnb, Uber, and Coinbase spent a year validating their idea before quitting their jobs to build Linear - now valued at $1.25B.
Kirk Simpson built Wave from a free accounting tool to a $400M acquisition by H&R Block, surviving being 10 days from bankruptcy along the way.
After two successful exits to Oracle and Dropbox, these MIT friends built Pilot into the largest startup-focused bookkeeping firm by doing all the bookkeeping themselves first.
Immad Akhund left Google and sold his first startup for $45M before building Mercury, the go-to banking platform for startups valued at $3.5B.
Mike McDerment accidentally saved over an invoice and built FreshBooks to solve his own pain, bootstrapping for 3.5 years from his parents basement to reach $50M+ in annual revenue.
Justin Duke built Buttondown as a side project at Stripe into a profitable, solo-run business with a handful of contractors - without raising VC.
Frederic Lalonde built Hopper through a scary pivot - from travel blog aggregator to AI-powered booking app with $1B+ in sales.
Andy Puddicombe spent 10 years as a Buddhist monk before co-founding Headspace, now valued at over $3 billion.
Dylan Field and Evan Wallace launched Figma in 2016 after betting that web technology would eventually replace desktop apps.
Изучите истории основателей в вашей нише
Поделитесь своим путём и вдохновите других основателей. Мы будем рады опубликовать вашу историю.
Важное замечание об этих историях: Основатели, представленные здесь, — это те, кто публично поделился своим успехом. Не каждый стартап добивается успеха, и сроки могут сильно различаться. Эти истории призваны вдохновлять и обучать, а не задавать ожидания.
Мы добавляем 5+ новых историй каждую неделю. Получайте их на почту вместе с insights о том, что работает для основателей прямо сейчас.
Показаны истории с 25 по 48 из 62