Founder stories
122 stories found
Started as scripts to catch domains for myself. Two years later, $125K/month revenue with zero employees.
Started as a free MVP in 2018. Two years later, first paid customers. One year after that, $2K revenue months.
Left Amazon with 150 Twitter followers. Three years later, $1M in cumulative revenue from info products and community.
Started as a free forum in 2007. 12 years later: $1.2M ARR from conferences, memberships, and courses.
Started curating single-page websites in 2008. Cross-promotion between projects grew to $100K+/year.
Started with a blog nobody read. Rebranded to Creator Science and built to $500K/year through newsletter, podcast, and community.
After building Ministry of Testing to $1.2M, Rosie started Rosieland to teach community building. Reached $10K/month in 2.5 years.
Marie discovered Notion in 2018 and started sharing tips on YouTube. When her audience asked for a course, she launched Notion Mastery to $40K/month.
Victoria built a WordPress blog with only 89 posts and 15,000 monthly visits to reach $1K/month from affiliate marketing.
Andy left his tech job in 2014 and bootstrapped SevenAtoms to $275K MRR with a 90% client retention rate.
Derryck recognized the growing demand for SEO content and built Big Star Copywriting to $30K/month, surviving the 2008 crash.
Steph leveraged her experience leading content at The Hustle to launch Doing Content Right, earning $40K in the first month.
Nathan turned his podcast interview data into Getlatka, reaching $20K/month in 100 days and $150K MRR within a year.
Ellen pre-sold her first program with zero content, then built it based on customer feedback to reach 7-figure lifetime revenue.
Sumit saw colleagues struggling with Excel and built TrumpExcel to 1M+ monthly pageviews and $10K/month revenue.
Prince built Helper-AI and earned $3.5K in 2 months by selling the source code on Gumroad - without a large following.
Luca documented his solopreneur journey publicly on Twitter, reaching $1.5K MRR in his first year while working a day job.
Morflax launched with a viral tweet about the 3D mockup builder and generated $7K revenue in the first month.
A non-technical founder went from idea to first customer in 4 days and five figures in 30 days using no-code tools and TikTok.
PostBridge reached $7K/month and 100K users with just 1 hour of daily TikTok content creation - zero ad spend.
After Nomad List, Pieter built Photo AI using PHP/jQuery to $150K/month - 87% profit margin, 100% bootstrapped.
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.
Andres Ugarte started building Copilot Money in 2018, creating a native iOS finance app that became an Apple Design Award finalist.
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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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