Founder stories
Founder stories
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254 stories found
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
Steve Kamb
Nerd Fitness: Building a 7-Figure Business for Fitness Misfits
Steve Kamb turned his nerdy approach to fitness into a 7-figure business with 300K+ email subscribers.
$10K MRR in 2 years·Solo
Info ProductHealth & Wellness🇺🇸 US
AD
Aaron Davidson
Cronometer: A Nerdy Side Project That Became the Most Accurate Nutrition Tracker
Aaron Davidson built Cronometer as a personal tool for CRON dieting, now used by millions for precise nutrition tracking.
$10K MRR in 12 years·Solo
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇨🇦 CA
BT
Bernie Tschirren & Michael Cameron
Rome2Rio: From Side Project to $40M Exit by Solving "How Do I Get There?"
Two ex-Microsoft engineers built the definitive travel search for getting from A to B anywhere in the world.
$10K MRR in 4 years·Team
SaaSTravel🇦🇺 AU
MR
Mikael Robertsson
Flightradar24: How Two Aviation Geeks Built the World's Flight Tracker
A hobby project tracking aircraft in Sweden became the #1 flight tracking app in 130+ countries.
$10K MRR in 8 years·Team
Mobile AppTravel🇸🇪 SE
EM
Erikas Malisauskas
Kaching Bundle Quantity Breaks
Building a $4.5M/Year Shopify App Portfolio with $0 Marketing
Erikas Malisauskas quit freelancing and built 5 Shopify apps generating $4.5M annually without any paid marketing.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Solo
SaaSE-commerce🇱🇹 LT
Marc Chapon
Dropshipping Store (Pets Niche)
From Restaurant Manager to $200K in 3 Months with Dropshipping
Marc Chapon quit restaurant management and built a pet store doing $200K in 3 months by dropshipping US/EU products.
$10K MRR in 3 months·Solo
OtherE-commerce🇺🇸 US
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
David Holz
Midjourney: The Bootstrapped AI Art Revolution That Said No to Apple Twice
David Holz bootstrapped Midjourney to profitability within months, building a billion-dollar AI art platform on Discord without VC funding.
$100K ARR in 2 months·Solo
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
JD
Jimmy Daly
Superpath: The $500K Content Marketing Community That Costs $500/Month to Run
Jimmy Daly built Superpath into a $500K business with just $500/month in operating costs using no-code tools and community-led growth.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Solo
OtherMarketing🇺🇸 US
Patrick Woods
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
JC
Jake Cooper
Railway: Making Cloud Deployment Simple After Getting Laid Off from Uber
After Uber sold Jump to Lime and laid off his team, Jake Cooper built Railway to solve the infrastructure headaches he kept running into with every project.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Solo
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
Cassey Ho
How a Farewell YouTube Video for 40 Students Became a Multi-Million Dollar Fitness Empire
Cassey Ho posted one Pilates video for her 40 students before moving cross-country. It accidentally became the #1 female fitness channel on YouTube with 500M+ views.
$100K ARR in 6 years·Solo
OtherHealth & Wellness🇺🇸 US
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