Founder stories
Founder stories
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227 stories found
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
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
Peter Xu & Harry Yu
Twin Brothers Built the Top Trip Planner App After Working at Stripe and Google
Peter and Harry Yu, twin brothers from Yale, built Wanderlog into the top-ranked trip planning app after previous bootstrapped travel ventures and stints at Stripe and Google.
$10K MRR in 2 years·Team
Mobile AppTravel🇺🇸 US
Cody Arsenault
From 5 Failed Stores to $1 Million in Dropshipping Revenue in One Year
After failing multiple dropshipping stores, Cody Arsenault finally cracked the code: proper branding, niche focus, and relentless ad testing led to $1M in his first successful year.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Solo
OtherE-commerce🇨🇦 CA
KS
Kirk Simpson
From Near Bankruptcy to $400M Exit: Building Wave Accounting
Kirk Simpson built Wave from a free accounting tool to a $400M acquisition by H&R Block, surviving being 10 days from bankruptcy along the way.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSFinance🇨🇦 CA
Waseem Daher, Jeff Arnold & Jessica McKellar
Three-Time Founders Built the Best Bookkeeping Service After Oracle Called Out Their Internal Tool
After two successful exits to Oracle and Dropbox, these MIT friends built Pilot into the largest startup-focused bookkeeping firm by doing all the bookkeeping themselves first.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 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.
$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.
$100K ARR in 6 months·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Mike McDerment
From Parents Basement to $50M Revenue: The FreshBooks Story
Mike McDerment accidentally saved over an invoice and built FreshBooks to solve his own pain, bootstrapping for 3.5 years from his parents basement to reach $50M+ in annual revenue.
$10K MRR in 3 years·Team
SaaSFinance🇨🇦 CA
Shalom Stark
Growing to 200,000 Users Without Any Marketing: The Invoice Ninja Story
Shalom Stark bootstrapped Invoice Ninja to 200,000+ users through open source, SEO, and word of mouth - without spending on marketing.
$10K MRR in 3 years·Team
SaaSFinance🇺🇸 US
Justin Jackson & Jon Buda
How We Built a $1M+ ARR Podcast Hosting Business as a Calm Company
Justin Jackson and Jon Buda built Transistor to over $1M ARR while documenting everything publicly on their "Build Your SaaS" podcast.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇨🇦 CA
Justin Duke
Building a Successful Newsletter Business by Building Less
Justin Duke built Buttondown as a side project at Stripe into a profitable business with half a dozen employees - without raising VC.
$10K MRR in 5 years·Solo
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Justin Moore
From $5M in Sponsorships to Teaching Creators How to Land Deals
Justin Moore made over $5M in sponsorships himself before building Creator Wizard to help other creators do the same.
$10K MRR in 3 years·Solo
Info ProductContent Creation🇺🇸 US
Samy Dindane & Yannick Veys
From a Tweet to 7-Figure SaaS: The Hypefury Story
Samy Dindane and Yannick Veys scaled Hypefury from a tweet asking about thread scheduling to a 7-figure bootstrapped business.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🌍 Remote
Julia Enthoven & Eric Lu
Building a Viral Video Editor with the "Watermark Growth Hack"
Julia Enthoven and Eric Lu bootstrapped Kapwing to 100,000+ users using SEO and the viral watermark strategy.
$10K MRR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent CreationSan Francisco, CA
YE
Yoni Elbaz & Moran Benisty
Loox
How Two Sears R&D Engineers Built a $15M+ ARR Shopify App
Yoni Elbaz and Moran Benisty met at Sears R&D in Israel and bootstrapped Loox to $15M+ ARR without paying themselves for 15 months.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇮🇱 IL
Ben Jabbawy
Privy
How Privy Reached 500K Merchants and a $120M Exit
Ben Jabbawy built Privy into the #1 Shopify sales app with 500K+ merchants, driving $6B+ in eCommerce sales before a successful exit.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Solo
SaaSE-commerce🇺🇸 US
MB
Maxx Blank, AJ Orbach & Ivan Chernykh
Triple Whale
From Internal Tool to $50M+ SaaS: The Triple Whale Story
The Triple Whale founders built an analytics tool for their own DTC brand, then spun it into a 5,000+ customer SaaS with Shopify as an investor.
$100K ARR in 1 year·Team
SaaSE-commerce🇺🇸 US
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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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