Founder stories
Browse Stories
Revenue in 6-12 months
59 founders who reached milestones in 6-12 months
Key Statistics
Stories
59
Avg Time
8 months
Fastest
6 months
Solo
49%
Top growth channel
Twitter / X (16)
DC
Damon Chen
Building a $10K MRR testimonial tool by building in public
I built Testimonial.to after experiencing the pain of collecting and displaying customer testimonials for my previous projects. Every founder knows so...
$2.4M/yr·$10K MRR in 11 months·Solo
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Tyler Tringas
How I built a $20K MRR micro-SaaS while traveling
I built Storemapper while traveling as a digital nomad. It started as a simple store locator widget and grew into a stable micro-SaaS business. The...
$480K/yr·$1K MRR in 6 months·Solo
SaaSE-commerce🇺🇸 US
Samy Dindane
Built MVP in 3 days, grew to $23K MRR in 2 years
Hypefury started as a weekend project. I built the MVP in 3 days after spotting a gap in Twitter tools. Two years later, we hit $23K MRR and kept grow...
$564K/yr·$10K MRR in 12 months·Team
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Ricardo Ghekiere
Acquired at $1,500/mo, scaled to $274K/month with paid ads
We acquired Betterpic when it was doing $1,500/month. Through multi-channel paid advertising, we scaled it to $274K/month. The Acquisition Buyin...
$3.2M/yr·$10K MRR in 7 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
LW
Leo Widrich
Wrote around 150 guest posts in 9 months to reach 100K users
I wrote around 150 guest posts in 9 months, close to one every other day. Content drove 70%+ of Buffer's signups and we hit 100K users in 10 months....
$25M/yr·$10K MRR in 10 months·Team
SaaSMarketing🇦🇹 AT
Ali Salah
Status Page SaaS: Learning Customer Support While Reaching $1K MRR
Ali Salah built Instatus, a service for creating status pages. Reaching $1K MRR was his goal for 2020. Product-Market Fit Initially offered a fr...
$480K/yr·$1K MRR in 8 months·Solo
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
AB
Alex Belogubov
From Failed Launch to $10K MRR and 6-Figure Exit
Alex initially launched Replyze in October 2023 on Product Hunt, but it was unsuccessful. Ready to sell for $20-25K, he received an interesting offer....
$10K MRR in 8 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
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...
$6M/yr·$100K ARR in 7 months·Team
MarketplaceDesign🇺🇸 US
Pat Walls
Starter Story Founder Builds SaaS: $1K MRR Harder Than Expected
Pat Walls, founder of Starter Story, worked on Pigeon for over a year as a side project. Different Challenge Reaching $1K MRR was significant be...
$1K MRR in 10 months·Solo
SaaSMarketing🇺🇸 US
Ben Thompson
Growth Engineer Launches Tech Analysis Newsletter, Builds $3M Business
Ben Thompson founded Stratechery in March 2013 from Taipei while working at Microsoft. Accidental Format He introduced paid daily updates in 201...
$5M/yr·$1K MRR in 7 months·Solo
Info productContent creation🇺🇸 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 Six days after th...
$500K/yr·$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
Info productEducation🇺🇸 US
P
Prince
21-Year-Old Indian Developer Makes $3.5K in 2 Months Selling AI Chrome Extension Source Code
Prince built Helper-AI and earned $3.5K in 2 months by selling the source code on Gumroad - without a large following.
$1K MRR in 8 months·Solo
Chrome extensionAI / ML🇮🇳 IN
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.
$1.4M/yr·$100K ARR in 11 months·Team
SaaSContent creation🇵🇹 PT
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.
$330M/yr·$100K ARR in 9 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 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.
$700M/yr·$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.
$650M/yr·First customer in 6 months·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Demi Guo
Pika: Two Stanford PhD Dropouts Built a $470M AI Video Generator with 500K Discord Members in 4 Months
Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng dropped out of Stanford's AI PhD program after being frustrated with existing AI video tools. They launched Pika on Discord, hit 500K members in 4 months, and raised $135M — all with a team of 13.
$10K MRR in 10 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 US
Noam Shazeer
Character.ai: The Transformer Paper Co-Author Who Left Google to Build a $1B AI Chatbot Platform in 16 Months
Noam Shazeer co-authored "Attention Is All You Need" — the paper that created modern AI. When Google refused to release their chatbot technology, he left to build Character.ai, reaching $1B valuation in 16 months.
$50M/yr·First customer in 10 months·Team
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 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.
$500M/yr·$100K ARR in 9 months·Team
MarketplaceE-commerce🇺🇸 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
Jack Friks
how jack friks built post bridge to $11k mrr by undercutting bloated schedulers
Tired of paying for overpriced social schedulers, Jack Friks shipped his own simple tool in about a month and built it in public to roughly $11k MRR.
$492K/yr·$100K ARR in 7 months·Solo
SaaSMarketingOshawa, Ontario, Canada
JS
Justin Shiels
722 orders in one quarter rebuilding socurious from an austin apartment
Justin Shiels rebuilt his stationery brand SoCurious solo from his Austin apartment, landing 722 orders, 485 preorders from a friend's collab and 38 subscribers in Q1 2026.
$72K/yr·$1K MRR in 10 months·Solo
OtherE-commerceAustin, Texas, USA
Hirvesh Munogee
how habit pixel hit $1k mrr in about 9 months as a solo app
Hirvesh Munogee built a gamified habit tracker, launched it quietly in March 2025, and reached $1K MRR by January 2026 through purchasing power parity pricing, localization, and seasonal timing.
$12K/yr·$1K MRR in 9 months·Solo
Mobile appHealth & wellnessMauritius
Juanjo Valiño
how juanjo valiño turned a repeated-code problem into a $15k month with wrapfast
After shipping 15+ iOS apps, Juanjo bundled the boring repeated code into a SwiftUI boilerplate called WrapFast, made $750 on day one, and rode a Black Friday surge to his first $15k month.
$180K/yr·$10K MRR in 9 months·Solo
OtherDeveloper toolsGalicia, Spain
MN
Mako Nguyen
how mako nguyen took robopost to a self-reported $55k mrr in a year on meta ads
A solo software engineer in Japan built a social media scheduler in two months, then leaned hard on Meta Ads to grow Robopost to a self-reported $55k MRR in its first year.
$660K/yr·$100K ARR in 7 months·Solo
SaaSMarketing🇯🇵 JP
ML
Michael Lynch
how michael lynch bootstrapped tinypilot to nearly $1m and sold it for $598k
After two money-losing years out of Google, Michael Lynch built TinyPilot in his third year as an indie founder, grew it to roughly $1M in annual sales, and sold it for $598,000.
sold for $598K·$100K ARR in 6 months·Solo
OtherDeveloper toolsWestern Massachusetts, USA
Alexander Belogubov
how Refgrow reached its first 33 paying customers without a viral moment
Alexander Belogubov spent about nine months building Refgrow, an affiliate program tool for SaaS, then pieced together his first 33 paying customers through affiliates, niche Facebook groups, and repeat Product Hunt launches.
$35K/yr·$1K MRR in 6 months·Solo
SaaSMarketing🇺🇦 UA
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.
$1M/yr·$100K ARR in 7 months·Team
SaaSContent creation🇺🇸 US
AC
Angus Cheng
how a hong kong developer reached $1k mrr converting pdf bank statements
Angus Cheng spent thousands on Google Ads and barely broke even selling PDF conversion credits. Switching to subscriptions and writing blog posts got Bank Statement Converter to $1K MRR in ten months, then past $7K with ads switched off.
$84K/yr·$1K MRR in 11 months·Solo
SaaSFinance🇭🇰 HK
Katt Risen
how katt risen grew a no-code newsletter to 11,400 subscribers and sold it for $35k
A non-technical generalist from Belgium turned a viral build-in-public tweet into a two-year newsletter that earned about $33k and exited for $35k.
sold for $35K·$1K MRR in 9 months·Solo
Info productContent creation🇧🇪 BE
MD
Mat De Sousa
how mat de sousa bootstrapped widebundle to $25k mrr as a student
After three failed Shopify apps, an engineering student built a bundling app in two weeks and grew it to $25,134 MRR in under a year with no paid ads.
$302K/yr·$100K ARR in 10 months·Solo
SaaSE-commerce🇫🇷 FR
PA
Pranay Agarwal
how Pranay Agarwal grew Mockey.ai to $12k a month by adding download limits
Pranay Agarwal and his co-founder ran Mockey as a free, ad-supported side project for years. Adding subscriptions and download caps roughly tripled revenue, reaching about $12k a month.
$144K/yr·$10K MRR in 11 months·Team
SaaSDesignNew Delhi, India
BW
Ben Waterman
how a non-technical finance pro built strabo to $1k mrr with no-code and seo
Ben Waterman left a finance job to build a personal finance dashboard with no coding background, starting in Bubble and reaching $1K MRR with 1,100 monthly active users.
$12K/yr·$1K MRR in 9 months·Team
SaaSFinanceLondon, UK
JM
Justus Mulli
Three fast AI launches, then $1K MRR with SQL for data teams
Justus Mulli shipped BlazeSQL after two abandoned AI products, won the first subscriber two months after launch, and crossed $1K MRR within about six months.
$1K MRR in 6 months·Solo
SaaSAI / ML🇩🇪 DE
Dan Willoughby
How a broken Slack install button turned into $2K MRR
Dan Willoughby left Tellspin as a landing page with a broken Slack install button, then built the MVP only after users hunted down his email. One year later it had 100 customers and $2,033 MRR.
$24K/yr·$1K MRR in 9 months·Solo
SaaSProductivityUtah, USA
C
Chetan
How Chetan grew Schedo to $5K MRR after a $12 first customer
Chetan built Schedo because scheduling tools felt dated, validated it through communities and his own meetings, and turned a local window-cleaning customer paying $12/month into proof that the product could sell.
$60K/yr·First customer in 6 months·Solo
SaaSProductivity🇮🇳 IN
MP
Miquel Palet
Leaving a VC-Backed Edtech to Bootstrap Zernio to $1M ARR in 10 Months
Miquel Palet left a venture-backed edtech path, built a focused developer API in a weekend, and used bottom-of-funnel SEO plus paid ads to bootstrap Zernio to $1M ARR in about 10 months.
$1M/yr·$100K ARR in 10 months·Solo
API / developer toolDeveloper tools
RH
Rob Hallam
how Rob Hallam turned five failed products into SuperX at $23k MRR
After 2.5 years and five products that made $0, Rob Hallam rebuilt his distribution around public X content, partnered on SuperX, and hit $1k MRR on launch day.
$276K/yr·$10K MRR in 6 months·Team
SaaSContent creation🌍 Remote
NB
Noah Bragg
how Noah Bragg reached $100 MRR with Supportman before a $27k sale
Noah Bragg built Supportman on nights and weekends for Intercom support teams, needed 7.5 months to reach $100 MRR, then later sold the small SaaS for $27k after it grew to about $400 MRR.
sold for $27K·$100 MRR in 7 months·Solo
SaaSProductivity
Fernando Pessagno
Turning a ten-day build-in-public challenge into a $5K MRR creator tool
Fernando Pessagno built aiCarousels in a 10-day public challenge, got five paying users on launch day, and later grew the AI carousel maker to $5K MRR.
$60K/yr·$1K MRR in 6 months·Solo
SaaSContent creation🇸🇪 SE
Mattias Geniar & Freek Van der Herten
Building website monitoring from two operators' blind spots to $1.5K MRR
Mattias Geniar and Freek Van der Herten turned their developer-plus-sysadmin blind spots into Oh Dear, a website monitoring SaaS that reached more than $1.5K per month within its first production months.
$18K/yr·$1K MRR in 6 months·Team
SaaSDeveloper tools🇧🇪 BE
Anatoly Pashias & Nick Nicolaou
How Motionvid.ai used a 21-day MVP and AppSumo launch to reach $7.8K MRR
Anatoly Pashias and Nick Nicolaou built Motionvid.ai from a filmmaker's motion-design bottleneck, launched a 21-day MVP through AppSumo, and grew the AI video tool to about $7.8K MRR without relying on paid ads.
$93K/yr·$1K MRR in 8 months·Team
SaaSContent creationLimassol, Cyprus
Christian Rac & Braylin Byrd
How two Division I track athletes built 3AK Track & Field to verified $10K MRR
Christian Rac and Braylin Byrd turned a 150K-follower track audience into a subscription training app, building with Rork and ChatGPT instead of custom code and later showing $10,045 MRR on TrustMRR.
$121K/yr·$10K MRR in 8 months·Team
Mobile appHealth & wellness🇺🇸 US
MJ
Mun Jun (Edmund) Yong
How Easy Folders reached $3.7K MRR by organizing ChatGPT and Claude chaos
Edmund Yong turned his own overflowing ChatGPT sidebar into Easy Folders, a Chrome extension that added folders, search and prompt management before native AI-chat organization caught up.
$1K MRR in 6 months·Solo
Chrome extensionProductivity🌍 Remote
AV
Ana Vershinina
FlapTrip took eleven months of nights and weekends before its first three paying users
Ana Vershinina and two co founders built a travel planner on evenings and weekends around full time jobs. Eleven days after launch: 700 installs and three PRO subscribers.
First customer in 12 months·Team
Mobile appTravelSerbia
Bryce Adams
Bryce Adams quit Automattic to build Metorik and had 10 paying customers in four months
Bryce Adams left a job he loved at Automattic in August 2016 to build the WooCommerce reporting tool nobody else would build. Ten paying stores signed up four months later.
$1K MRR in 12 months·Solo
SaaSE-commerce🇦🇺 AU
Chris Coyier
Chris Coyier started CSS-Tricks for beer money and sold it 15 years later
Chris Coyier launched css-tricks.com on July 4, 2007 as SEO filler in a network of Adobe help sites. By his own 2007 wrap up post in January 2008 the blog already had paying sponsors, and in March 2022 he sold it to DigitalOcean.
First customer in 7 months·Solo
OtherEducation🇺🇸 US
Dawson Whitfield
How Dawson Whitfield went from a Google Trends tab to $70,000 in a month with Logojoy
A designer who had made about 150 client logos built his own logo maker in two and a half months, launched it on Product Hunt, and made nearly $70,000 in February 2017.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Solo
SaaSDesign🇨🇦 CA
Eric Migicovsky
Beeper charged $10 a month from its first public day
Eric Migicovsky named Beeper in public in July 2020 and launched it on Hacker News 195 days later as a paid chat app at $10 a month. Automattic bought it in April 2024.
First customer in 7 months·Team
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
Gagan Biyani
Maven hit a $4M run rate in three months, then spent two years undoing it
Gagan Biyani tested one live course before writing any software, launched Maven to a $4M course sales run rate in three months, then discovered the customers paying him did not need him.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
MarketplaceEducation🇺🇸 US
Gretta van Riel
How Gretta van Riel turned $24 and an Instagram account into $600,000 a month
Gretta van Riel started SkinnyMe Tea in May 2012 with $24 in her bank account, while still working a full time marketing job. She says the brand was doing $600,000 a month within six months of launching.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Solo
OtherE-commerce🇦🇺 AU
JK
Jake Karls
How Mid-Day Squares sold 500,000 bars in its first 11 months
Jake Karls and his two co-founders started making chocolate bars by hand in a condo kitchen in August 2018. Eleven months in he posted that they had sold 500,000 of them.
$20M/yr·$100K ARR in 9 months·Team
OtherE-commerce🇨🇦 CA
JN
Jesse Neugarten
Jesse Neugarten charged from day one and reached $1,500 a month in six months
A non technical founder with a full time job built a flight deals email list on Instapage and MailChimp, priced it at $1, $9 and $19 a month, and had 100 paying members by the end of month one.
$1K MRR in 6 months·Solo
OtherTravel🇺🇸 US
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 productEducation
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/yr·First customer in 7 months·Team
OtherE-commerce🇺🇸 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.
First customer in 9 months·Team
Mobile appFinance🇬🇧 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/yr·$100K ARR in 11 months·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 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/yr·First customer in 7 months·Team
SaaSDesign🇬🇧 GB
Have a similar story?
Share your revenue journey and inspire other founders.
Quick Stats
Stories59
Avg Time8 months
Fastest6 months
Technical78%
Narrow Your Search
Data Report
See Fastest Founders