Browse Case Studies

John Fry is a 19-year-old founder who appeared on ABC's 'Startup You' reality show filmed at Draper University. He pivoted from his original idea 'Study Better' to launch Granted, a Netflix-style platform for nonprofits to discover and apply for grants. The company is currently in closed beta with free users, targeting 250 nonprofit customers within six months, focusing on mid-tier nonprofits rather than large or small organizations.

Mad Mimi was an email marketing platform launched in 2007 by Dean Levitt and his brother Gary that prioritized culture, simplicity, and organic growth over aggressive scaling. Built with a freemium model (2,500 free contacts with unlimited sending) and zero paid customer acquisition spend, the company grew to 250,000 total users (14,000-18,000 paying) generating approximately $500,000 MRR ($6M ARR) before being acquired by GoDaddy in 2014. The free accounts themselves became a profitable viral growth engine through branded referrals, demonstrating that sustainable, culture-first growth could rival venture-backed scaling.

Notable is a next-generation collaborative note-taking platform launched by Amal Sarva, an experienced founder and investor. The Chrome extension launched ~90 days before this interview achieved 15,000 free users, driven primarily by a LifeHacker feature obtained through strategic Twitter outreach to productivity journalists. The company raised $1M in seed funding from angels and early-stage investors including Bloomberg Beta and 500 Startups.

Neil Patel built Quicksprout into a content powerhouse generating 3.9 million monthly website visits, collecting approximately 1,000 email leads per day through educational marketing content. He is now building a SaaS product that automates the marketing optimization tasks he and his team have performed for hundreds of clients, offering a freemium model to help small businesses grow their web traffic without expensive consulting.

BiggerPockets is a freemium community marketplace for real estate investors founded by Joshua Dorkin in 2004. Starting as a personal forum to help himself learn real estate investing, Dorkin spent 3-5 years focused purely on building community before monetizing. The platform now has 390,000 members, over 10,000 paid subscribers at $9-$29/month, 1.2 million monthly unique visitors, and a podcast ranked #14 in business podcasts, generating well over $1.1 million in annual recurring revenue.

Darren Rouse built Pro Blogger starting in 2002 as a personal blog, eventually consolidating 20-30 topic-specific blogs into his two main properties: Pro Blogger and Digital Photography School. Pro Blogger generates ~$4,000-5,000/month from eBooks plus six-figure event profits, while Digital Photography School reaches 4 million monthly visitors and generates over $1M annually through eBooks, affiliate marketing, and advertising. Growth is driven primarily through organic search, content marketing (7-8 pieces per week), and an email list of 950,000 subscribers adding 800 new emails daily.

Tweet Jukebox is a content distribution system launched by Tim Fargo in February 2015 to solve his own pain point of managing frequent tweets for marketing purposes. The product grew to 16,000 users by the time of this interview, with approximately 150,000 tweets distributed daily, operating on a free model before planned paid tiers launching in 2016 at $9.99/month entry level.

Yuri Elkaim built a digital health and nutrition business centered around the Super Nutrition Academy membership ($49/month) and the Defeating Diabetes Kit ($37 one-time offer). By offering a free 1-month academy trial with the diabetes kit, he achieved a 60% upsell conversion rate and ~$237 average customer lifetime value, enabling him to profitably acquire customers through paid media at $50-55 CPA, generating approximately $65,000 monthly from the academy alone (1,300 members) plus additional revenue from nine other product brands and consumable products.

Stephanie Nicolich founded Success Society in August 2015 as a free community platform for women entrepreneurs, offering resources, tools, training, and mentoring from seven expert CEOs. The platform has grown to tens of thousands of active members with over 500 fully profiled members, generating revenue through a $97/month e-course offering and an $1,997 eight-week intensive bootcamp that runs quarterly with attendance doubling each iteration. She's built a team of eight and leveraged email marketing (4,000 opt-ins in a four-week period from a free lead magnet) to drive growth.

Jim Fowler is a serial entrepreneur who built Jigsaw, a business data company, from 2003 and sold it to Salesforce in 2010 for $175 million (with a $25 million earnout). The company had $17-18 million in annual revenue the prior year with a $25 million run rate at the time of sale and was already cash flow positive. He is now the founder of Owler, a free competitive intelligence tool that tracks over 13 million companies using a crowdsourced model.

Scott Voelker built The Amazing Seller as a podcast and educational platform teaching others how to sell on Amazon through FBA private labeling. Starting his Amazon business in October 2014, he achieved $307,000 in gross revenue within 12 months with a 38% margin (~$114,000 net), while simultaneously building a successful podcast and coaching business. His teaching business now generates 75% of his income, demonstrating the power of documenting and monetizing expertise.

Bundle is a location-driven mobile app that aggregates local news as users move around their city. Kelvin Lockwood left a £35k account management job in the UK to build the app, which had 50 beta testers in the UK and 20 in the US at the time of this interview. The business model relies on mobile advertising, with projections of £25M annual revenue from 6 million users based on a £5-7 CPM.

Nick Sonnenberg is a former Wall Street high-frequency trader who gave up a seven-figure salary to launch Calvin App, a productivity tool that helps users store 'someday' events and simplifies scheduling by showing overlapping free time without exposing full calendar details. Launched in public beta with ~400 monthly active users after being featured at Twitter's developer conference for innovative API integration, Calvin is pursuing a $750K funding round at a $6-8M pre-money valuation with plans to monetize through affiliate partnerships and brand integrations.

iSideWith is a political information platform that uses an engaging quiz format to match voters with political candidates and issues. Founded by Taylor Peck and an engineer co-founder, the platform went viral on Facebook, reaching over 25 million quiz takers in four years through organic sharing, with 1.5 million new completed quizzes per month. While currently generating modest revenue (~$10k/month from Google AdSense), Taylor is building toward monetization through sponsored candidate communication tools and email-based campaign offerings.

Harry Campbell quit a six-figure aerospace engineering job at Boeing to build The Ride Share Guy, a leading content platform serving ride share drivers. Starting with a blog and podcast, he's grown to 450,000 monthly page views and 10,000 email subscribers, generating $25K/month through driver referrals, direct advertising, and an insurance marketplace.

John Lee Dumas built Entrepreneur on Fire, a daily podcast interviewing successful entrepreneurs, which generates over $300,000 annually with over 1 billion unique monthly listens. Recognizing a gap in helping his audience actually accomplish their goals (not just be inspired), he created the Freedom Journal, a physical goal-setting workbook priced at $35 with a $6.50 production cost, launching via Kickstarter with a partnership to donate $25,000 per funding level to pencils of promise charity.

Chat with Traders is a weekly podcast launched by 25-year-old Aaron Feifield in January 2015 that interviews successful traders to help others learn trading. Starting from zero monetization but focused on audience growth, the podcast reached over 620,000 cumulative downloads in its first year with nearly 5,800 email subscribers, primarily driven by consistent weekly episodes and active Twitter engagement.

Clue is a period tracking and fertility app founded by Aida Tannen that has grown to nearly 3 million monthly active users across 180+ countries. The company raised $10 million from Union Square Ventures and other investors while remaining pre-revenue, strategically focusing on user growth before monetization. With a team of 24, Clue is one of the most popular health and fitness apps globally, particularly in the US, Germany, France, and Mexico.

Blab is a live conversation platform launched in January 2016 that allows users to broadcast live discussions where audiences can comment, chat, and call in to join conversations. Founded by Sean Peary after experiences in sushi, biotech, and an idea lab in San Francisco, Blab achieved millions of watch minutes per week with daily active users watching for over an hour per day, competing with Netflix and traditional TV by offering niche content from everyone ranging from basement creators to major brands like ESPN, UFC, Adobe, IBM, and Cisco.

Latergram is a freemium SaaS platform that allows users to schedule and post to Instagram, launched in May 2014 by Matt Smith and co-founders. Starting with 20,000 signups at launch through heavy PR and founder outreach, the company grew to nearly 500,000 users and 3,000-4,000 paying customers generating $50,000 MRR by January 2016. The company raised a $1.2M seed round from investors including Rocket Ship and angels like Heaton Shaw and Aspect Ventures, aiming to reach $1M ARR in 2016 with 25-30% month-over-month growth.