Browse Case Studies

Melon was a food delivery startup that achieved $10K MRR within 2 months by pooling orders for coordinated, efficient drop-offs. Founded by Kevin Wang and two technical co-founders, the service paired pre-ordered meals with fixed delivery windows, allowing them to deliver 15+ items per trip in under 30 minutes. Despite early success with 500 users, the founders realized the path to profitability mirrored unsustainable on-demand competitors and chose to shut down rather than chase growth with heavy capital.

Japan Dev is a curated job board for English-speaking software developers seeking work in Japan, founded by Eric Turner in 2019. Starting from a personal pain point during his own job search in Tokyo, Eric bootstrapped the two-sided marketplace to $83k ARR with just his wife as his co-founder, using a unique per-hire revenue model (companies only pay when they successfully hire) instead of traditional job posting fees. Growth came primarily through SEO and organic discovery as developers Googled for English jobs in Japan.

Gold Belly is a marketplace that connects customers with famous regional specialty foods and products from local restaurants and shops across the US, shipping them nationwide with special preservation packaging. Founded by Joe Ariel (former CEO of Deliver.com, Y Combinator alumnus), the company raised $33 million and is experiencing explosive growth, with many partner restaurants showing delayed delivery due to high demand.

Campertunity is a peer-to-peer camping marketplace that launched in Canada in 2018, introducing camping to the shared economy. Founded by Nora Lozano, an engineer with a passion for nature, the platform allows landowners to list private land for camping and campers to book sites. After generating significant pre-launch media attention, the company grew through organic PR and Facebook community engagement, reaching 400+ users and 50 listings within its first year.

Doug DeMuro, a popular YouTube car reviewer with 4 million subscribers, launched Cars and Bids in June 2020 as a modern alternative to Bring a Trailer. The platform focuses on 1980s-onward cars and generated 75 million in gross sales in 2021. In 2022, Doug sold a majority stake to Churn Group (a PE firm specializing in creator-led businesses) for approximately 40 million dollars, allowing him to scale operations while maintaining creative control.

Gojek is a Southeast Asian super app that started as a motorcycle ride-hailing service in Indonesia and evolved into a comprehensive platform offering 30+ services including ride-hailing, food delivery, grocery delivery, payments, and financial services. By the time of their IPO (Indonesia's largest ever at ~$27-28B valuation), Gojek had 2.7 million drivers, completed 3 billion orders annually, and dominated the region through early investment in brand, operational excellence, and solving uniquely local problems that global competitors overlooked.

Handshake, a 10-year-old career marketplace with 18M students and professionals, launched a data labeling business in January 2024 by leveraging its massive network of experts (500k PhDs, 3M master students) to create high-quality training data for frontier AI labs. In just 4 months, the new business hit $50M in revenue; by 8 months they're on pace to exceed $100M ARR—rivaling their core business in annual revenue.

Mercor is a labor marketplace connecting AI labs with expert professionals to evaluate and train AI models. Founded by 19-year-old Brendan Foodie in January 2023, the company grew from $0 to $400M in revenue run rate in just 16 months—the fastest ascent in history. The company operates at the intersection of the exploding demand for model evals and reinforcement learning, hiring highly skilled professionals (lawyers, software engineers, doctors, etc.) at $95-$500/hour to create evaluation rubrics and training data that improve model capabilities.

Bellhops is a tech-enabled marketplace connecting DIY movers with local, vetted college athletes who provide affordable moving and lifting help at $40/hour. Operating in 128 US cities with nearly 5,000 active service providers and processing 3,000-5,000 bookings weekly, the company has raised $8M+ in funding (including a $600K seed from Lampus Group and a $6M Series A led by Binary Capital).

Onboy is an on-demand food delivery app exclusively focused on the college market, founded by 20-year-old Anthony Zhang. The company has processed nearly 10,000 orders and generates just over $10k in monthly revenue with 45% month-over-month growth, powered by a 100% student delivery workforce and exclusive restaurant partnerships that allow deliveries in under 30 minutes. Anthony pitched Mark Cuban and got funded $100,000 on the spot, and is part of the 500 Startups batch in Mountain View.

Chad Whitman is a serial entrepreneur who first built Edranck Checker, a Facebook analytics tool that grew to $60K MRR before selling to Social Bakers for approximately $2.8M in 2014. He then co-founded Dolly, an on-demand moving marketplace that leverages pickup truck owners as a unique asset class, raising $1.7M seed and $8M Series A (valuation ~$50M range) by taking a 20% cut of jobs on the platform.

Borrowell is a Canadian online marketplace lender connecting borrowers with lenders through a proprietary platform. Founded about a year before this interview (circa 2015), the company raised $5.4 million in seed funding and was approaching a significant Series A round. Their growth strategy centers on an innovative product-led approach using a rate-checker widget as their primary customer acquisition tool, exemplifying the "engineering is marketing" principle.

DealFlicks is a Priceline-style marketplace for discounted movie tickets, partnering with over 600 US theaters (including 13 of the top 50 chains) to sell empty seats at up to 60% off. Founded by Sean Wycliffe in late 2010, the company generates a ~$2.4M annual revenue run rate with 2x year-over-year growth, selling roughly 100,000 tickets and concession packages monthly at an average price of $15. Growth is driven primarily through SEO (people searching for movie deals), AdWords, and affiliate partnerships, with DealFlicks keeping 15-20% of transaction value while theaters capture the remainder.

SoundBetter is a two-person marketplace connecting self-producing musicians with freelance audio professionals (including Grammy winners) to help them complete professional-quality songs. As of June 2015, the company achieved an $800k annual run rate through a two-sided commission model: freelancers pay $4 per proposal and 5% of completed job value. Their primary growth driver is organic search traffic, bringing in approximately 30,000 unique monthly visitors searching for audio production services.

Spring Leap is a marketplace of 180,000 advertising agency experts offering faster market research and creative testing compared to traditional firms. Founded by serial entrepreneur Iran Ayel, the company launched an MVP in January 2015, generating $20,000 in the first month and scaling to highs of $100,000 per month by the time of this interview. The business charges $50-$150 per expert per hour with markups, and has attracted enterprise clients like Unilever and Sony while preparing to raise a $2.5M seed round at an $8M pre-money valuation.

GNAP is an app promotion marketplace from Barcelona that connects app developers and advertisers with bloggers and content creators who promote mobile apps on a cost-per-install (CPI) basis. Founded by Gina Tost, the company processed $750,000 in advertiser spending in 2015 and generated approximately $320,000 in revenue by taking a 30% commission. The company grew entirely through word-of-mouth with no paid marketing spend, and was raising $500,000 at a $5M post-money valuation to scale their operations.

YouStake is a marketplace where fans can buy equity stakes in professional poker players competing in live tournaments. Launched in June 2015, the platform has processed $2.8 million in stakes from 335 poker players and attracted 1.4 million in pledges from 2,700 users, generating approximately $70,000 in revenue through an 8% commission (5% to YouStake, 3% to payment processors). The team is targeting 50,000+ users and 20% month-over-month growth to hit a Series A by end of 2016.

June is a recruiting marketplace founded by serial entrepreneur Lane Campbell that connects recruiters with candidates willing to take calls for payment. The platform addresses the high cost of hiring (which Lane found had ballooned to $26,000 per hire) by letting recruiters search for candidates by skill and location, then pay them directly for phone interviews. Though the initial launch between August-November 2015 didn't resonate with the technical community as hoped, Lane is relaunching with new partnerships and positioning the platform as a solution to the broken recruiting economy.

Lenda is an online marketplace lender founded by Jason Vandenbrand in October 2013 that streamlines mortgage refinancing for consumers in California, Washington, and Oregon. By January 2016, the company had originated over $70 million in loans with zero defaults, generating $1.5 million in revenue in 2015 by earning 1-1.5% margin per loan. The company uses automated underwriting technology to predict required documentation upfront, dramatically reducing the typical 60-day mortgage process and cutting consumer costs by eliminating traditional loan officer commissions and lender fees.

Italist is a luxury e-commerce marketplace founded in 2014 that connects Italian boutiques with global customers, operating in 85+ countries. By January 2016, the company had achieved $10M in annual transaction volume with $250K in monthly gross margin on approximately 2,000 monthly customers spending $500-600 per order, with 30% of traffic driven by affiliates. The company raised over $1M in seed funding including investment from 500 Startups and was approaching Series A at a $40M pre-money valuation.