SaaS Startups

Voyagu is a two-sided SaaS platform connecting travelers and travel agents, operating as "the Uber of travel." Founded by Ivan Saprov during the pandemic, the company spent $600k and 18 months building its backend, search engine, and platform, achieving a 54% repeat booking rate by Q3 2023 through strong product-market fit and word-of-mouth growth. Voyagu uses ML technology and targets 1 billion in gross annual bookings by solving the speed and competitiveness gap travel agents face against DTC platforms.

Easy Ear Training is a business founded by Christopher Sutton who documented the emotional challenges of starting a company in a blog post. Sutton found support and community through the Tropical MBA podcast and its Dynamite Circle community of listeners, which became instrumental in helping him navigate the entrepreneurial journey.

ConvertPlayer is a marketing technology company founded by Clay Collins, who was also involved with LeadPages, the leading landing page software platform. The company was discussed in a Tropical MBA podcast episode where Clay shared insights about the company's growth and their decision to pursue venture capital funding.

AdBadger is a software product created by Michael Erikson, who previously built Search Scientists, a six-figure services business. The product represents a transition from services to software, allowing Erikson to scale his business model beyond hourly consulting work.

Greenback Tax Services was founded in 2008 by Carrie and Dave McKeegan as a tax service business. The company has grown to a 55-person fully distributed team, demonstrating successful scaling and remote team management practices.

Team Croco is a done-for-you split testing services company founded by Martijn Reintjes. The company was mentioned in a Tropical MBA podcast episode focusing on balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship, with minimal business traction details provided.

FatCat Apps is a productized business founded by David Hehenberger, who began his entrepreneurial journey as an SEO consultant after completing an internship at Tropical MBA in 2010. The company represents a successful transition from consulting to a productized service model, helping entrepreneurs achieve financial independence and escape traditional corporate constraints.

Legendary LeadGen, founded by Dana Lindahl, is a lead generation company that specializes in helping marketing agencies connect with their ideal prospects. The company operates in the competitive lead generation space where cold email outreach is positioned as a dominant method for acquiring new customers alongside word-of-mouth marketing.

AdmitScout is a lead generation service founded by Nate Smith that specializes in paid traffic acquisition for addiction treatment facilities. The company was featured in a Tropical MBA podcast episode discussing how their business model addresses efficiency gaps versus knowledge gaps in the market.

Bulk Buy Hosting is a web hosting business founded by Kevin Graham, who previously built a suite of Amazon Associates affiliate sites. Kevin has decided to take a new direction with the hosting business and shares insights about entrepreneurship and long-term business building.

SiteArrow is a web hosting business founded by Kevin Graham that emerged from his entrepreneurial journey and philosophical reflections on 'The Helsinki Bus Theory.' The company pursued an aggressive growth strategy, acquiring 9 different businesses in less than a year, but this led to founder burnout and prompted a strategic pivot toward sustainable growth principles.

Miss Excel is a creator who went viral on TikTok teaching Microsoft Excel tips and tricks through entertaining short-form videos. After getting featured in major publications, she created a course business that now generates six figures per month with minimal overhead (just a $97/month Thinkific subscription and a virtual assistant). She's expanding into the full Microsoft suite and using paid ads to amplify already-viral content, with a goal to reach $1M/month in revenue.

Bolt is a payments company founded by Ryan Breslow that achieved a $14 billion valuation. Breslow became notable for publicly criticizing Stripe and Y Combinator on Twitter, alleging that these powerful institutions engaged in anti-competitive practices that nearly prevented Bolt's existence, including dissuading investors from funding the company and manipulating rankings on Hacker News.

Linode is a cloud computing platform founded by Chris in 2003 that provided affordable server hosting before AWS existed. Bootstrapped with no outside funding, the company grew quietly from single-digit hundreds of thousands of dollars in year two to over $100 million in revenue by the time of its acquisition. Chris maintained 100% ownership throughout and kept the company lean with heavy automation and exceptional customer service, eventually selling to Akamai for $900 million in cash.

Amy Porterfield built Digital Course Academy to help entrepreneurs create and sell digital courses, leveraging her experience working with Tony Robbins and learning from top internet marketers. The company offers three digital courses, a membership program, and generates significant revenue through affiliate partnerships, with her podcast "Online Marketing Made Easy" reaching 1.3 million downloads monthly and 35 million total downloads.

5x is an end-to-end data platform that bundles and integrates multiple data vendors (like Snowflake and Tableau) so enterprise customers don't have to manage separate contracts and implementations. Founded by a former Salesforce data engineer, the company hit $1M ARR in less than a year through a hybrid model combining semi-automated platform access with pre-trained engineers, averaging $10-15k/month per customer with 10-15 paying customers.

Pieter Levels is a solopreneur running a portfolio of 7 bootstrapped projects generating ~$2.7M ARR with 13M monthly active users. Starting in 2014 while traveling, he built Nomad List, Remote.ok, and other niche products targeting remote workers and digital nomads. His approach combines radical transparency (publicly sharing revenue), lean PHP/jQuery stack for fast iteration, and a personal brand flywheel where each product feeds audience and content back into the ecosystem.

Only Problems is a subscription-based app pitched as 'OnlyFans for therapy' where subscribers pay monthly to observe real therapy sessions anonymously in a fly-on-the-wall format. Therapists receive subsidized or free sessions while gaining more clients, viewers get entertainment and secondhand therapeutic benefit, and the platform monetizes through a revenue-sharing model where users can tip therapists with hearts to influence payouts.

Cherry is a browser extension that helps accommodation businesses get direct bookings by showing customers better deals when they search on travel sites like Expedia and Booking.com. In four months, they onboarded nearly 1,000 partner properties across Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with plans to launch in the US with 20,000 properties by November. They charge hotels a performance fee of $10/month plus $0.79 per click, significantly cheaper than the 30% commissions charged by major OTAs.

Amit Agarwal is a one-man operation in India generating between $15-30 million annually through a suite of 14+ plugins for Google Workspace. Starting as a tech blogger writing tips and tricks on his Digital Inspiration website, he built plugins including a mail merge tool for Gmail (7.5M downloads), Document Studio ($79/year), and custom enterprise solutions for companies like Airbus, LinkedIn, and Disney. His freemium model with premium tiers ($39-79/year) demonstrates the massive revenue potential of niche productivity tools.