Founder stories
Founder stories
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7 stories found
Julia McCoy
19-Year-Old College Dropout Builds Content Agency from $75 to $4M
At 19, Julia McCoy was in college pursuing a degree she didn't want. She taught herself to write by writing hundreds of cheap articles. Finding the...
First Customer in 3 months·Solo
Agency / ServiceMarketing🇺🇸 US
Robin Vander Heyden
ManyPixels
Unlimited Design for $359/Month: Productized Service to $60K MRR
Robin didn't have a job and decided to launch a productized service offering unlimited design work for a fixed fee per month. Rapid Growth He gr...
$100K ARR in 4 months·Solo
Agency / ServiceDesign🇺🇸 US
KP
From cold emails to $2M+ in funding for our startup
We started Pocketed during the pandemic to help startups find grants and funding they didn't know existed. The Idea During COVID, there was sudd...
First Customer in 14 days·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
JB
Josef Büttgen
12x12 Challenge: From Dwindling Runway to $10K MRR in 14 Months
Josef taught himself to code at age 13. He freelanced until he saved enough runway to commit to entrepreneurship. The Challenge His first produc...
$10K MRR in 1 year·Solo
SaaSAI / ML🇺🇸 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
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
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
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A note on these stories: The founders featured here represent those who publicly shared their success. Not every startup succeeds, and timelines vary widely. These stories are meant to inspire and educate, not to set expectations.
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