Founder stories
Co-Founders $100K ARR Stories
124 co-founderss who reached $100K ARR
Key Statistics
Stories
124
Avg Time
3 years
Fastest
1 month
Solo
0%
Top growth channel
Communities (32)
Filter further:via Communities (32)|via Word of Mouth (26)|via SEO / Content (25)|via Twitter / X (20)
Adam Wathan
From open source to $2M+ with Tailwind UI
We built Tailwind CSS as an open source project, then launched Tailwind UI as a commercial product. The first day made $500K. Building in Open Sour...
$100K ARR in 1 month·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇨🇦 CA
Thibault Louis-Lucas
Shipped 11 products in 4 months, then built $3.5M ARR tool
Before Taplio succeeded, I shipped 11 products in 4 months. The key was speed and willingness to move on from failures. The Shipping Mindset I r...
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Marie Martens
Built a $3M ARR form builder with 400,000 users and a 5-person team
Tally grew to 400,000 users and $3M ARR with just a 5-person team. The secret? Product-led growth with viral loops. Viral Badges 30-40% of our g...
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Uku Täht
Built a privacy-first analytics tool to $3.1M ARR with 8 people
Plausible grew to $3.1M ARR as a privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. The privacy focus isn't a gimmick - it's our core value. The Slow S...
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Wade Foster
Found customers in help forums, charged $100 for beta, built to $140M ARR
Zapier started by finding customers in help forums. We charged $100 for beta access to filter for committed users. With only $1.4M in funding, we buil...
$100K ARR in 10 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Grant Lee
60K users in 8 months, then 60K more in 1 week after adding AI
Gamma grew steadily to 60K users in 8 months. Then we added AI and got 60K more users in a single week. Now at $100M ARR. The AI Inflection Pre-...
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Joe Thomas
Near bankruptcy to 10M users after pivoting based on Product Hunt launch
We were near bankruptcy when we launched on Product Hunt. 3,000 signups in 24 hours saved the company. We pivoted from usability tests to video record...
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Ivan Zhao
Rebuilt the product 4 times, moved to Japan, now $567M ARR
We rebuilt Notion 4 times before it worked. At one point, we moved to Japan to rewrite the entire tech stack. Now we're at $567M ARR with 30M+ users....
$100K ARR in 8 years·Team
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
Tim Soulo
CMO who led Ahrefs marketing to $100M+ ARR with zero sales team
Tim Soulo joined Ahrefs as CMO (Ahrefs was founded by Dmitry Gerasymenko) and led the marketing strategy that grew the company to $100M+ ARR with no s...
$100K ARR in 10 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇸🇬 SG
Rand Fishkin
Mom and son startup built Whiteboard Friday into multi-million ARR
Moz started as a mom and son startup. Whiteboard Friday was our worst performing content for 2-3 years, then became our 1 growth driver. The White...
$100K ARR in 8 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
SE
Steli Efti
Found content niche where nobody was writing about sales
Nobody in Silicon Valley was writing about sales. We found that gap and owned it. Switched to recording voice instead of writing to remove friction....
$100K ARR in 5 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Brian Halligan
HubSpot
Coined "inbound marketing", built $38B company from 3 customers
We coined the term "inbound marketing" and built HubSpot into a $38B company. Started with just 3 customers. Earned attention by being helpful. Cre...
$100K ARR in 10 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Des Traynor
Wrote 93 of first 100 blog posts, content is majority of acquisition
I personally wrote 93 of Intercom's first 100 blog posts. Content became the majority of our customer acquisition. Now at $300M+ revenue. Founder-L...
$100K ARR in 7 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇮🇪 IE
Jason Cohen
4th bootstrapped company to $1M+, "A Smart Bear" blog built massive authority
WP Engine is my 4th bootstrapped company to hit $1M+. My "A Smart Bear" blog built massive authority that attracted customers and investors. Serial...
$100K ARR in 8 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Marcus Sheridan
$2.5M in sales from single article answering "how much does a pool cost"
One single article answering "how much does a fiberglass pool cost?" generated $2.5M in sales. This became the "They Ask, You Answer" philosophy. T...
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
Agency / ServiceMarketing🇺🇸 US
OS
Oleg Shchegolev
Started 2008 with 2 tools, grew organically for decade without VC to NYSE
We started Semrush in 2008 with just 2 tools. Grew organically for a decade without VC money. Now public on NYSE with 7M+ users. Bootstrap to IPO...
$100K ARR in 15 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Adriaan van Rossum
Privacy-First Analytics: From Tenerife Idea to $100K ARR
Adriaan van Rossum came up with the idea for Simple Analytics while on holiday in Tenerife. He wanted to build a privacy-first analytics tool as fast...
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇳🇱 NL
RS
Roman Sevast
From Crushing VC Rejection to YC: Designer Marketplace $100K ARR in 3 Months
Roman struggled to find the right designer while working on a previous startup. They launched Awesomic with a simple Facebook post. Fast Validation...
$100K ARR in 3 months·Team
MarketplaceDesign🇺🇸 US
Sarah Hum
Ex-Facebook Designers Build User Feedback Tool to $1M ARR
Sarah studied graphic design and worked as a product designer at Facebook. There she met her co-founder Andrew. Community First They started wit...
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Tyler Denk
Morning Brew Engineer Builds Newsletter Platform to $1M MRR
Tyler Denk joined Morning Brew in 2017 as the second employee, where he led product, growth, and engineering. The Opportunity After building the...
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Dickie Bush
Writer Creates 30-Day Challenge, Grows to 4,000 Students and Millions in Revenue
In December 2020, Dickie Bush tweeted: 'is anyone interested in doing a daily writing challenge for 30 days?' Rapid Validation Around 20 people...
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
Info ProductEducation🇺🇸 US
David Perell
Writer Launches Online Writing Course, $200K+ from First Two Cohorts
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...
$100K ARR in 3 months·Team
Info ProductEducation🇺🇸 US
Marie Forleo
Business Coach Launches B-School, First Million-Dollar Launch in Year Two
Marie Forleo, along with Laura Roeder, created B-School. The first year enrolled a few hundred students. Fun Marketing The marketing broke all r...
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
Info ProductEducation🇺🇸 US
Cody Schneider
From Google Drive folder to $1.1M ARR: How we built Swell AI with degenerate growth tactics
Started with 10 friends uploading MP3s to a Google Drive folder. Now doing $1.1M ARR by cold emailing 100,000 people per month.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Spencer Fry
How a bootstrapped portfolio platform grew to $55K MRR and a life-changing exit
Built the first online portfolio platform for designers in 2005. Bootstrapped to $55K MRR, then sold to private equity.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇺🇸 US
MJ
Mayank Jain
Digital Startup Veterans Build AI Content Platform, $100K MRR in Year One
Mayank and co-founders leveraged 10+ years of digital marketing experience to build Scalenut to $100K MRR in one year.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSMarketing🇮🇳 IN
Hamish McKenzie
Newsletter Platform Co-Founder Gets First Publisher, $100K+ Revenue Day One
Substack found the perfect first customer in Bill Bishop, who generated $100K+ in revenue on his first day going paid.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Abraham Burak
Digital Nomad Builds $1B eSIM Marketplace to Solve Travel Connectivity
Abraham Burak experienced roaming bill shocks as a digital nomad, then built Airalo - now valued at $1B+ with 20M+ users.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
MarketplaceTravel🇺🇸 US
Arvid Kahl
Arvid Kahl Built FeedbackPanda to $55K MRR in 2 Years, Then Sold It
Arvid and his partner Danielle built FeedbackPanda for online ESL teachers, reaching $55K MRR before selling for a life-changing amount.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSEducation🇩🇪 DE
Christopher Gimmer
Christopher Gimmer Built Snappa to $1.5M ARR with Content-First Strategy
Chris and Marc built an audience with a viral blog post on free stock photos, then leveraged it to launch Snappa and reach $10K MRR in 5 months.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇨🇦 CA
Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson Built Transistor to $1M+ ARR by Building in Public
After years of solo projects, Justin teamed up with Jon Buda to build Transistor.fm, documenting the journey publicly on their "Build Your SaaS" podcast.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇨🇦 CA
Francesco Di Lorenzo
Francesco Di Lorenzo Launched Typefully to 1000 Users in One Day
Francesco and co-founders launched Typefully on Product Hunt and Hacker News, getting 1,432 signups on day one. Now at $100K+ MRR.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇵🇹 PT
Guillaume Moubeche
Guillaume Moubeche Bootstrapped Lemlist from $0 to $250K ARR in 365 Days
Guillaume and two technical co-founders built Lemlist, reaching $250K ARR in one year with $0 in funding through Product Hunt and AppSumo.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSMarketing🇫🇷 FR
Uku Taht & Marko Saric
Plausible Analytics: From $400 MRR to $500K ARR as Open Source
Uku and Marko built an open source, privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. One blog post changed their trajectory.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇪🇪 EE
Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee
Hevy: 10M+ Downloads With Just $15K in Ad Spend
Guillem and Desmond built a Strava for weightlifting that grew almost entirely through word of mouth.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🌍 Remote
Jack Sheldon
Jack's Flight Club: From Hobby to 1M+ Members
Jack turned his personal flight hacking hobby into the UK's leading cheap flight service.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSTravel🇬🇧 GB
ML
Mike Lee
MyFitnessPal: From Personal Diet Tracker to $475M Acquisition
Mike Lee built a calorie counter to lose weight for his wedding, then bootstrapped it to 80M+ users.
$100K ARR in 7 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇺🇸 US
Davis Siksnans & Lauris Liberts
Printful: From Garage Printing to $289M Revenue Print-on-Demand Giant
Started printing posters in a living room, Davis Siksnans bootstrapped Printful to $289M revenue and 1,700+ employees.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
MarketplaceE-commerce🇱🇻 LV
Ben Chestnut & Dan Kurzius
Mailchimp: The $12 Billion Bootstrapped Exit That Changed Email Marketing
Ben Chestnut bootstrapped Mailchimp for 20 years without VC funding, then sold to Intuit for $12 billion - the largest bootstrapped acquisition ever.
$100K ARR in 8 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
GW
Gareth Williams, Barry Smith & Bonamy Grimes
Skyscanner: From Ski Trip Frustration to £1.4 Billion Exit
Three friends frustrated by expensive ski flights built Skyscanner on the side, bootstrapped it to £1,000/day, then sold for £1.4 billion.
$100K ARR in 5 years·Team
SaaSTravel🇬🇧 GB
Paul Yacoubian & Chris Lu
Copy.ai: Building in Public from $0 to $157K MRR in 10 Months
Paul Yacoubian launched Copy.ai on Twitter and grew to $157K MRR in 10 months by building in public and leveraging GPT-3.
$100K ARR in 10 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Mati Staniszewski & Piotr Dąbkowski
ElevenLabs: From Polish High School Friends to $1B+ AI Voice Platform
Mati and Piotr, childhood friends from Poland, built ElevenLabs to fix robotic AI voices and reached 1M users in 5 months after beta launch.
$100K ARR in 9 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Joshua Xu & Wayne Liang
HeyGen: From Snapchat Engineer to 40K Enterprise Customers with AI Video
Joshua Xu left Snapchat to build HeyGen, growing to 40K+ enterprise customers and $35M+ revenue with AI-generated video avatars.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Dave Rogenmoser, Chris Hull & JP Morgan
Jasper: From 0 to 100K Customers in Under 2 Years, Unicorn in 18 Months
Dave Rogenmoser launched Conversion.ai and grew to 100K paying customers in under 2 years, reaching unicorn status in 18 months.
$100K ARR in 2 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Cristóbal Valenzuela
Runway: From NYU Research Project to Hollywood's AI Video Tool
Cristóbal Valenzuela started Runway as a NYU research project and grew it into the AI platform behind Oscar-winning films like "Everything Everywhere All at Once."
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Rand Fishkin & Casey Henry
SparkToro: How the Moz Founder Built a Calmer Company After VC Burnout
After building Moz to $30M ARR then stepping down, Rand Fishkin bootstrapped SparkToro to 1,000+ paying customers with a radically different approach.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Rick Perreault
Unbounce: From Agency Frustration to $100K MRR Without a Sales Team
Rick Perreault solved his own pain as a creative director - waiting on developers for landing pages - and built Unbounce to $100K+ MRR without a sales team.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇨🇦 CA
Colin Nederkoorn
Customer.io: From 5 Customers at $10/Month to $70M ARR Over a Decade
Colin Nederkoorn started Customer.io with 5 customers paying $10/month and grew it to $70M ARR over 10 years through patient, methodical growth.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Patrick Woods
Orbit
Orbit: Creating the Community Growth Category and Raising $22M
Patrick Woods created the Orbit Model for developer relations, then built Orbit to help teams manage communities - raising $22M in the process.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
David Cramer & Chris Jennings
Sentry: From Open Source Side Project to $3B Error Monitoring Platform
David Cramer started Sentry as django-db-log in 2008. Five years of open source work led to product-market fit from day one when they launched the cloud service.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman
Linear: Building the Issue Tracker Developers Actually Love Using
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
David Hsu
Retool: Pivoting from Fintech to $3.2B Internal Tools Platform
With 60 days of runway left, David Hsu pivoted from a UK Venmo competitor to Retool - and had a $1.5M pilot signed by Y Combinator Demo Day.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Kayla Itsines & Tobi Pearce
From Training Women in Parents Backyard to a $400M Fitness Empire
Kayla Itsines started at 18 training women in her parents backyard in Adelaide, created a PDF workout guide that went viral on Instagram, and sold her Sweat app for $400M.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇦🇺 AU
KS
Kirk Simpson
From Near Bankruptcy to $400M Exit: Building Wave Accounting
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.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSFinance🇨🇦 CA
Waseem Daher, Jeff Arnold & Jessica McKellar
Three-Time Founders Built the Best Bookkeeping Service After Oracle Called Out Their Internal Tool
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Henrique Dubugras & Pedro Franceschi
From YC VR Pivot to Billion-Dollar Fintech: The Brex Story
These 22-year-old Brazilian founders pivoted from VR in Y Combinator to build Brex, solving their own pain of not getting a corporate credit card despite having funding.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Immad Akhund
After Selling Heyzap for $45M, Building a Bank for Startups
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.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Justin Jackson & Jon Buda
How We Built a $1M+ ARR Podcast Hosting Business as a Calm Company
Justin Jackson and Jon Buda built Transistor to over $1M ARR while documenting everything publicly on their "Build Your SaaS" podcast.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇨🇦 CA
Samy Dindane & Yannick Veys
From a Tweet to 7-Figure SaaS: The Hypefury Story
Samy Dindane and Yannick Veys scaled Hypefury from a tweet asking about thread scheduling to a 7-figure bootstrapped business.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🌍 Remote
YE
Yoni Elbaz & Moran Benisty
Loox
How Two Sears R&D Engineers Built a $15M+ ARR Shopify App
Yoni Elbaz and Moran Benisty met at Sears R&D in Israel and bootstrapped Loox to $15M+ ARR without paying themselves for 15 months.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇮🇱 IL
MB
Maxx Blank, AJ Orbach & Ivan Chernykh
Triple Whale
From Internal Tool to $50M+ SaaS: The Triple Whale Story
The Triple Whale founders built an analytics tool for their own DTC brand, then spun it into a 5,000+ customer SaaS with Shopify as an investor.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇺🇸 US
Andrew Bialecki & Ed Hallen
Klaviyo
How Klaviyo Bootstrapped to $1M ARR Before Raising
Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen bootstrapped Klaviyo to over $1M ARR before raising, eventually building a $6B+ public company.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇺🇸 US
Satya Rajpurohit
How ITF Built a $2M/Year Font Empire for Indian Languages
Satya Rajpurohit co-founded Indian Type Foundry in 2009 and now designs fonts for Apple, Google, Samsung, and 300+ Fortune 500 clients.
$100K ARR in 10 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇮🇳 IN
MC
Michael Cameron & Bernie Tschirren
How Two Ex-Microsoft Engineers Built Rome2rio to a $40M Exit
Michael Cameron and Bernie Tschirren built Rome2rio from their parents' living room to 10M+ monthly visitors before selling to Omio.
$100K ARR in 8 years·Team
SaaSTravel🇦🇺 AU
Frederic Lalonde
How Hopper Pivoted from Blog Aggregator to $1B+ Travel App
Frederic Lalonde built Hopper through a scary pivot - from travel blog aggregator to AI-powered booking app with $1B+ in sales.
$100K ARR in 10 years·Team
Mobile AppTravel🇨🇦 CA
Varun Khona
How Headout Grew from 0 to $130M Revenue in Under 4 Years
Varun Khona built Headout from a 500 Startups incubation to $130M+ revenue, pioneering the managed experiences model.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
MarketplaceTravel🇺🇸 US
Henrique Dubugras & Pedro Franceschi
From Brazilian Teen Hackers to $12B Fintech: The Brex Story
Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi started working together at 16 and built Brex to $12B valuation.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Andy Puddicombe & Richard Pierson
From Buddhist Monk to $3B Meditation Empire: The Headspace Story
Andy Puddicombe spent 10 years as a Buddhist monk before co-founding Headspace, now valued at over $3 billion.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇬🇧 GB
Saeju Jeong & Artem Petakov
800 Rejections, 8 Years No Revenue, Then a $3.7B Valuation: The Noom Story
Saeju Jeong pitched 800+ times over 4 years with zero funding before building Noom to $3.7B valuation.
$100K ARR in 8 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇺🇸 US
Alex Tew & Michael Acton Smith
From Million Dollar Homepage to $2B Meditation App: The Calm Story
Alex Tew, creator of the Million Dollar Homepage, teamed up with Michael Acton Smith to build Calm to $2B valuation.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇺🇸 US
Dylan Field & Evan Wallace
How Two College Friends Bet Everything on the Browser and Built a $20B Design Tool
Dylan Field and Evan Wallace launched Figma in 2016 after betting that web technology would eventually replace desktop apps.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇺🇸 US
Clark Valberg & Ben Nadel
From Agency Side Project to Every Fortune 100 Company: The InVision Story
Clark Valberg built InVision as an internal tool for his agency, then watched it become used by every Fortune 100 company.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇺🇸 US
Tobi Lütke
ShopifyFrom Snowboard Shop to $200B E-Commerce Empire: How Tobi Built Shopify
Tobi Lütke built Shopify because he wanted to sell snowboards online and hated the existing software.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇨🇦 CA
MF
Mark Forrester, Magnus Jepson & Adii Pienaar
Three Strangers From Three Continents Built the World's Most Popular E-Commerce Platform
Mark Forrester met his co-founders in an online forum, launched WooThemes, then WooCommerce - acquired by Automattic for $30M+.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇬🇧 GB
Eddie Machaalani & Mitchell Harper
From IRC Chat Room to $4.6B IPO: How Two Strangers Built BigCommerce
Eddie Machaalani met his co-founder Mitch Harper in an IRC chat room in 2003, and built BigCommerce to a $4.6B valuation.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇦🇺 AU
Davis Siksnans & Lauris Liberts
From Garage T-Shirts to Latvia's First Unicorn: The Printful Story
Davis Siksnans started printing t-shirts in his co-founder's garage at age 22 and built Printful to $1B+ valuation.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇱🇻 LV
Kenny Rueter & Travis Rosser
From Backyard Sprinkler to $500M+ Creator Platform: The Kajabi Story
Kenny Rueter wanted to sell a sprinkler toy for kids, realized selling information was easier, and built Kajabi into a platform that has paid creators $500M+.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Jack Conte & Sam Yam
Musician Builds $4B Platform After YouTube Paid Him Almost Nothing
Jack Conte had millions of YouTube views but made almost nothing. He called his friend Sam Yam and together they built Patreon, now worth $4B.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Greg Smith
From Law School Side Project to $160M IPO: The Thinkific Story
Greg Smith created an LSAT prep course while in law school, moved back in with his parents, and built Thinkific to a $1.36B market cap.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇨🇦 CA
Vlad Magdalin
From Freelancer to $4B Founder: The Webflow Story
Vlad Magdalin started as a freelance web designer, frustrated with the gap between design and code. After two failed startups, he built Webflow into a $4B company.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇺🇸 US
Koen Bok
From Facebook Exit to $2B Design Tool: The Framer Story
Koen Bok sold his first company Sofa to Facebook, then built Framer from a JavaScript library into a $2B AI-powered website builder.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇳🇱 NL
Michael Mignano
Democratizing Podcasting: How Anchor Became Spotify for Creators
Michael Mignano built Anchor to make podcast creation free and easy. The platform now powers one-third of all new podcasts and was acquired by Spotify.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
SK
Shahed Khan
How 9 Months of Failure and 2 Pivots Led to a $975M Exit
Shahed Khan and his co-founders pivoted twice before landing on Loom. The async video platform was acquired by Atlassian for $975 million.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
RK
Rob Kalin
Building the Handmade Marketplace: How Etsy Created a $45B Community
Rob Kalin built Etsy as a cheaper alternative to eBay for handmade goods. The marketplace is now worth $45 billion and changed how makers sell their work.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
MarketplaceE-commerce🇺🇸 US
CB
Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie
Reinventing Media Economics: How Substack Empowered Independent Writers
When Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie started Substack, everyone said nobody would pay for internet content. They proved the skeptics wrong.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Scott Keyes
From One $130 Flight to 2 Million Subscribers: The Going Story
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSTravel🇺🇸 US
DJ
Dr. John Berardi
The Launch That Made $140K in One Week — Then Almost Bankrupted Them
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.
$100K ARR in 1 month·Team
Info ProductHealth & Wellness🇨🇦 CA
Michael Truell
Cursor: From $1M to $100M ARR in 12 Months with Zero Marketing Spend
Four MIT grads spent a year wandering in the desert building CAD tools. When they pivoted to an AI code editor, they built the fastest-growing SaaS product in history.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Anton Osika
Lovable: From a Weekend Side Project to $10M ARR in 60 Days
Anton Osika's weekend hack became the fastest-growing GitHub repo ever. After two failed commercial launches, a rebrand to Lovable hit $10M ARR in 60 days with just 15 people.
$100K ARR in 2 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇸🇪 SE
ES
Eric Simons
Bolt.new: From Near-Death ($80K ARR) to $40M ARR in 5 Months
Eric Simons spent 7 years building browser-based dev tools at $80K ARR. When Claude 3.5 Sonnet made AI coding viable, a single tweet launched Bolt.new to $4M ARR in 4 weeks.
$100K ARR in 3 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Aravind Srinivas
Perplexity: How Four AI Researchers Built a $200M ARR Google Competitor
Aravind Srinivas left OpenAI to attack "solved" search with AI. Perplexity launched 7 days after ChatGPT and grew to $200M ARR by shipping faster than anyone thought possible.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Varun Mohan
Windsurf: Double Pivot from GPU Infra to a $2.4B AI Code Editor
Varun Mohan killed a profitable GPU business to chase AI coding. After pivoting twice, Windsurf grew from $12M to $100M ARR in 4 months — then Google acquired it for $2.4B.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Amjad Masad
Replit: 9 Years of Grinding, 4 YC Rejections, Then $70M ARR When AI Hit
Amjad Masad was rejected from YC four times and was stuck at $2.8M ARR after 8 years. When he launched Replit Agent, revenue exploded 25x in 12 months.
$100K ARR in 9 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Victor Riparbelli
Synthesia: From Academic AI Research to $4B Video Generation Platform Serving 90% of the Fortune 100
Victor Riparbelli assembled a founding team of two AI professors and one operations co-founder to turn academic video AI research into a $4B enterprise platform with 65,000+ business customers.
$100K ARR in 7 years·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇬🇧 GB
Melanie Perkins
Canva: Rejected 100+ Times, Then Built a $40B Design Empire from Perth, Australia
Melanie Perkins started teaching design tools in college and realized they were too hard to use. After being rejected by 100+ investors, she built Canva into a $40B platform with 220M+ monthly active users.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇦🇺 AU
Sam Liang
Otter.ai: From Google Maps "Blue Dot" to $100M ARR Meeting AI with 35 Million Users
Sam Liang built the "blue dot" at Google Maps, then founded Otter.ai to solve his own meeting problem. A Zoom partnership, free tier that undercut $1/minute competitors, and journalist evangelists drove 35M users.
$100K ARR in 9 years·Team
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
Alex Hormozi
How Alex Hormozi Built Gym Launch to $17M Profit in Year One — Then Sold It for $46.2M
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.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
Agency / ServiceEducation🇺🇸 US
Dan Anisse
Relume: From Webflow Agency to $1.8M ARR SaaS — Bootstrapped, 41K+ Users, Zero Outside Funding
Dan Anisse and Adam Mura ran a Webflow agency and kept building the same components. They productized the work into Relume — a component library that grew to 41K+ users, $150K MRR, and an AI site builder, all bootstrapped.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇦🇺 AU
Chris Do
The Futur: How Emmy-Winning Designer Chris Do Built a $4.9M Education Business from YouTube
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.
$100K ARR in 7 years·Team
Info ProductEducation🇺🇸 US
Nick Huber
Sweaty Startup: How Nick Huber Built a $150M Self-Storage Empire from a College Side Hustle
Nick Huber started Storage Squad at Cornell, expanded to 25 college towns, then caught the self-storage bug. He used Twitter to raise $20M+ and scale to 63+ properties worth $150M+, while building Sweaty Startup into a media brand.
$100K ARR in 9 years·Team
OtherFinance🇺🇸 US
Manish Chandra
How Posh Parties and Social Commerce Built a $7.4B Fashion Marketplace
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
MarketplaceE-commerce🇺🇸 US
Grant LaFontaine
How Whatnot Turned Livestream Auctions into a $3.7B Collectibles Marketplace
Grant LaFontaine saw Pokémon card sellers going live on Instagram with clunky workarounds. He built Whatnot — a dedicated live auction platform. Result: $3.7B valuation, 200K+ sellers.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
MarketplaceE-commerce🇺🇸 US
MR
Max Rhodes
How Faire Used Net-60 Terms and Free Returns to Build a $12.4B Wholesale Marketplace
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.
$100K ARR in 9 months·Team
MarketplaceE-commerce🇺🇸 US
Christine Yen
How Honeycomb Created the Observability Category and Built a $200M+ Developer Tools Company
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇺🇸 US
Jack Ellis
How Fathom Analytics Built a Profitable Privacy-First Alternative to Google Analytics
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.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇨🇦 CA
PR
Peer Richelsen
How Peer Richelsen Built an Open-Source Calendly Alternative with 20K+ GitHub Stars
Peer Richelsen launched Calendso as an open-source Calendly alternative, attracted 20K+ GitHub stars, rebranded to Cal.com, and raised $32M.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSProductivity🇩🇪 DE
Alex Lieberman
How Two College Students Built a Newsletter to 4M+ Subscribers and a $75M Acquisition
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.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
OtherContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Sam Parr
How Sam Parr Turned a Conference into a 1.5M-Subscriber Newsletter Acquired by HubSpot
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.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
OtherContent Creation🇺🇸 US
TC
Tim Chen
How Tim Chen Turned $800 and a Credit Card Spreadsheet into a $500M+ Revenue Public Company
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.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
OtherFinance🇺🇸 US
Shaan Puri & Ben Levy
How Two Founders Grew a Crypto Newsletter to 250K Subscribers in 10 Months — Then Sold It
Shaan Puri had 300K+ Twitter followers. He and Ben Levy launched Milk Road in February 2022. Ten months later, they sold it to Beehiiv.
$100K ARR in 10 months·Team
OtherContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Ben Francis
How a 19-Year-Old Pizza Delivery Driver Built Gymshark into a $1.45B Fitness Empire
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
OtherE-commerce🇬🇧 GB
ZM
Zuhayeer Musa & Zaheer Mohiuddin
How Two Engineers Built Levels.fyi into the Definitive Tech Compensation Platform With Zero Marketing Spend
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.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
Dan Shipper
how dan shipper's newsletter audience funded a $1.2m suite of ai apps
Dan Shipper grew Every from a paid newsletter into four in-house AI products doing about $1.2M ARR, using the audience he built as the launch channel for everything that followed.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSProductivityNew York, USA
Nicolas Cole & Dickie Bush
how Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush grew Write With AI to $400k a year
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.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
Info ProductEducation🇺🇸 US
John Rush
how john rush turned an internal seo tool into a $1m arr ai agent
John Rush built SEObot to automate SEO for his own 24 projects, then opened it up and reached roughly $1M ARR within a year of its public launch.
$100K ARR in 3 months·Team
SaaSMarketing🌍 Remote
Olly Meakings
how senja reached $1m arr with a viral testimonial loop
Olly Meakings and Wilson Wilson bootstrapped Senja, a testimonial tool, to $1M ARR in under four years, largely on a product-led viral loop and relentless build-in-public reporting.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSMarketing🌍 Remote
Ramon Berrios
how ramon berrios bootstrapped castmagic to $1m arr in under 9 months
Ramon Berrios and his co-founders built Castmagic to fix their own podcast workflow, then bootstrapped it to $1M ARR in under nine months with no outside money.
$100K ARR in 7 months·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
David Park
how jenni ai ground through three flat years to hit $10m arr
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.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSEducation🇺🇸 US
Alex Danilowicz
how two frontend engineers built magic patterns to $1m arr with no employees
Alex Danilowicz and Teddy Ni were tired of rebuilding Figma mockups in code. They turned that frustration into Magic Patterns, an AI design tool that reached $1M ARR profitably with just the two of them before raising a $6M Series A.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSDesignSan Francisco, USA
AV
Aurelio Volle
how a lawyer and a developer bootstrapped wp umbrella to $110k mrr
Aurelio Volle and his co-founder lived on French unemployment support while reinvesting every euro into WP Umbrella, a WordPress maintenance tool that grew to $110K MRR without outside funding.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇫🇷 FR
Junaid Ansari
how two freelancers turned Draftss into a 7-figure productized design service
Junaid Ansari and his cofounder packaged their freelance design and code work into a flat monthly subscription, then grew it to a 75-person bootstrapped team serving thousands of founders.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
Agency / ServiceDesignMumbai, India
John O'Nolan
how john o'nolan bootstrapped ghost to $10m arr as a non-profit
Rejected by Y Combinator twice, John O'Nolan crowdfunded Ghost on Kickstarter and built it into a $10M ARR open source publishing platform owned by a non-profit foundation.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSContent Creation🌍 Remote
KK
Katie Keith
how katie keith turned a wordpress agency into a $1.7m plugin business
Katie Keith and her husband ran a WordPress design agency for seven years before betting on plugins. By 2025 Barn2 booked $1.78M in revenue, most of it recurring.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSDeveloper Tools🇬🇧 GB
SR
Sergi Ruiz
how a personalized map shop quietly made over 500k as a side project
Sergi Ruiz and his wife launched Mapness in 2017 selling custom map prints. Organic Instagram posts grew into a six-figure pandemic peak, then a slow fade.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
OtherE-commerce🇪🇸 ES
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