Founder stories
227 stories found
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.
Chris and his co-founder validated demand first by talking to WooCommerce store owners, then built One Click Upsells to $1K in 30 days.
After Nomad List, Pieter built Photo AI using PHP/jQuery to $150K/month - 87% profit margin, 100% bootstrapped.
Alex Tew started meditating as a teenager, built the viral Million Dollar Homepage, then channeled that success into co-founding Calm.
Andy Puddicombe spent 10 years as a Buddhist monk, then co-founded Headspace with Rich Pierson to bring meditation to millions.
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.
Jon Bittner pivoted from astrophysics to building Splitwise, now used by tens of millions worldwide.
Peter Xu and Harry Yu (twin brothers) leveraged their Stripe and Google experience to build Wanderlog, now top-ranked for travel planning.
Abraham Burak experienced roaming bill shocks as a digital nomad, then built Airalo - now valued at $1B+ with 20M+ users.
Andres Ugarte started building Copilot Money in 2018, creating a native iOS finance app that became an Apple Design Award finalist.
After 12 startups in 12 months challenge, Jon found his calling in automated image generation and bootstrapped Bannerbear to $50K+ MRR.
Arvid and his partner Danielle built FeedbackPanda for online ESL teachers, reaching $55K MRR before selling for a life-changing amount.
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.
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.
Francesco and co-founders launched Typefully on Product Hunt and Hacker News, getting 1,432 signups on day one. Now at $100K+ MRR.
After selling his AI writing tool Headlime for 7 figures in 8 months, Danny Postma built HeadshotPro - now serving 196,000+ customers.
Guillaume and two technical co-founders built Lemlist, reaching $250K ARR in one year with $0 in funding through Product Hunt and AppSumo.
AJ built Carrd as a weekend side project to test if people wanted one-page websites. Now it powers 3.3M+ sites with 2.2M+ users.
Uku and Marko built an open source, privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. One blog post changed their trajectory.
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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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Showing 121 to 144 of 227 stories