SaaS Startups

Call Loop is a voice and text messaging platform founded in 2009 and soft-launched in 2011 by Chris Brisson and co-founders. The company operates on a usage-based model where customers buy credits in bulk or pay monthly depending on their use case. By 2015, Call Loop had generated $385,000 in top-line revenue and was on track to exceed $450,000 in 2016, serving 2,000-3,000 total customers and sending 300,000-400,000 text messages monthly.

Screw the Nine to Five is a membership-based education platform co-founded by Jill and Josh Stanton in April 2013 that teaches entrepreneurs how to scale their online businesses through community, sales funnels, and strategic marketing. As of March 2016, they had 361 paying members at $69/month (plus $169 join fee) generating approximately $31k MRR, with an additional $6,107 in monthly revenue from introductory tripwire offers. They deliberately shut down their podcast (which had reached 32,000 downloads per month) to focus on higher-converting content marketing channels like blog posts and lead magnets, demonstrating disciplined prioritization of growth levers.

Nexar is an AI-powered dash cam app that uses smartphone sensors and machine learning to detect driving behavior, capture license plates, and create driver scores. Launched 9 months prior to this interview, the app had already captured approximately 80,000 license plates daily across Tel Aviv, San Francisco, and New York. The company raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Olive VC and is building a valuable crowdsourced road mapping data asset that surpassed Google Street View's coverage in just nine months.

Alpha Rank is a data science SaaS company founded by 26-year-old Brian Lay that uses time-series analysis to infer network structures and identify influential customers for brands. Drawing from his background in epidemiology and observations of human behavior patterns, Brian created a tool that scores customer influence and predicts network lifetime value. As of 2016, the company had raised $500,000 from angels and VCs, was in private beta doing free case studies, and remained pre-revenue while building out the technology with a team of seven engineers.

Bridgecrest Medical is a B2B SaaS company founded by 25-year-old Nathan Clair that uses wearable technology and IoT analytics to predict worker fatigue and prevent accidents at heavy industry sites like mining, trucking, and oil and gas operations. Launched in late 2015 after raising $1.3M, the company has grown to 10-20 employees with 10-20 enterprise customers paying five to six figure annual contracts with zero churn. The business demonstrates strong product-market fit with multi-year contract commitments and partnerships with industry majors like Barrick Gold.

AMP Live, founded by Eddie Vaca in 2014, is a live video distribution platform that connects broadcasters with audiences in real time. The company generated $1.3M in revenue in 2015 and was on track to reach ~$3.9M in 2016 by selling audience delivery services to major brands like Microsoft, Salesforce, Martha Stewart, and Home Depot. Eddie bootstrapped the company with a small $100K friends and family round and built it into an enterprise direct-sales operation using outbound sales tools.

Heather Ann Havenwood built DatingTriggers.com, an information marketing business teaching men dating skills, generating approximately $250,000 in revenue in 2015. The core product is a $47 one-time offer (Dating Up program) with an email list of 25,000 subscribers, but 80% of revenue comes from affiliate marketing partnerships where she earns ~$300-900 per day through email promotions, leveraging her expertise in email marketing and relationships rather than funnel creation.

Loot is a platform helping brands engage customers through incentivized user-generated content at scale, enabling micro-influencer marketing. Founded in 2012 by Nicholas Haas at age 22, the company grew from $200 in first-year revenue to over $500,000 by 2015, using a usage-based pricing model where brands pay a multiple of the rewards given to users. Nicholas also experimented with e-commerce through a side project called Startup Drugs, which generated mid-five figures in monthly revenue through Facebook ads.

Kat Lotozo built a seven-figure online business empire starting from a fitness blog in 2007, scaling to $80,000/month before pivoting to business coaching in 2012. She launched The Tribe membership in July 2015 with 24,000 email subscribers, and by March 2016 had 150+ paying members generating over $500,000 in revenue in just 8 months. Her growth is driven by prolific content creation (3-6 daily emails with 2,500+ word posts, 47+ self-published books, and 4-5 weekly podcast episodes) and word-of-mouth referrals, with total 2015 revenue exceeding $1 million.

Hubstaff is a bootstrapped SaaS time tracking and activity monitoring platform launched in 2013 by Dave Nevo and his partner Jared. As of March 2016, the company had 2,600 paying customers with an average revenue per user of $34/month, had just crossed $88K MRR (approaching $1M ARR), and maintained a healthy 3.9% customer churn rate. Growth was driven primarily through content marketing (40K monthly blog views) and viral effects as contractors brought in their managers from other companies.

Blipper is a mobile visual browser powered by computer vision and image recognition that enables brands and advertisers to create interactive augmented reality experiences with physical products. Founded in 2011 by Jess Butcher, the company has raised over $100 million in funding, grown to 300+ employees across 14 offices globally, and achieved 60 million app downloads by working directly with Fortune 500 brands like Pepsi, Coke, and Nestlé on campaigns with average deal sizes in the six figures. The company is transitioning from brand-specific interactive campaigns to a broader visual search platform that recognizes and provides information about any object in the real world.

Predictable Profits is a business coaching and marketing company founded by Charles Gaudet that helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Operating on a pay-for-performance model initially, Gaudet pivoted to focus on private clients as his primary revenue driver. The company leveraged a published book (The Predictable Profits Playbook, launched April 2014 with 1,500+ copies sold) as a positioning and prospecting tool to secure high-value enterprise clients.

Netline is the largest B2B content syndication and lead generation platform, operating a network of over 15,000 publishers to match enterprise technology companies' thought leadership content with targeted audience segments. Founded after David Fortuno pitched himself to the company at age 26, the platform has processed over 30 million leads and currently generates $20 million in annual run rate revenue with 300-400 active client campaigns at any given time.

Castle is a SaaS platform that manages rental properties for landlords using automation and on-demand labor in Detroit. Founded in late 2014 and launched in 2015, the company charges a flat $79/month per unit subscription fee to property owners, eliminating the perverse incentives of traditional property managers who take percentage cuts. As of May 2016, Castle was managing 530 units across ~400 properties with $31,000 MRR, a 1% monthly churn rate, and had raised just under $3 million including a $2 million seed round post-YC acceleration.

Social Rank is a social media audience management SaaS tool that helps brands and agencies identify, organize, and manage their followers on Twitter and Instagram. Founded by Alex Taube, the company went from $5-7K MRR in 2015 to $50K MRR by May 2016 with consistent 30% month-over-month growth, using a freemium model with free basic product as a lead generator and premium/Market Intelligence paid tiers for agencies and brands.

Cladwell is a B2C SaaS platform founded in 2014 by Blake Smith that helps people build minimalist, high-quality wardrobes through personalized tools and advice. Starting from just $1,000 in first-year revenue, Blake pivoted from failing affiliate and dropshipping models to a subscription model (charging $15-21/quarter) and achieved 11,500+ paying customers by March 2016, generating $69,000 MRR with a $17 CAC. The company raised $1.8M in funding and scaled through paid advertising on fashion-focused platforms, with women representing 60% of their customer base despite the original men's-focused launch.

FuelPanda is a subscription-based mobile refueling service founded by Pavan Bhubani that brings fuel directly to customers' cars at home or work. Launched in January 2016, the company achieved $6,000 MRR with over 100 customers and 70-80 weekly refuels within a few months, operating with just two full-time founders. The business was accepted into the 500 Startups batch 17 with $125K investment for 5% equity and maintains a low 4% total churn rate.

Simply Insight is a data analysis SaaS platform founded by Amanda Parker, a former digital marketing agency owner who identified data analysis as a critical pain point for enterprise clients. Launched in late 2015 with her first client contracts signed in November-December, the company achieved $27,500 MRR ($330K ARR run rate) within 6 months by leveraging Amanda's existing relationships with Fortune 500 companies like Pepsi and 20th Century Fox. The company is raising a $500K convertible note to scale its outbound sales operation and aims to reach $50K MRR by year-end 2016.

Avocode is a SaaS platform that bridges the gap between designers and developers by allowing designers to share Photoshop and Sketch files with developers who can extract assets without needing design tools. Founded by 23-year-old An Vu and launched in February 2015, Avocode achieved $50,000 MRR by May 2016 with 2,800 paying customers growing at 15% month-over-month, entirely through inbound marketing with no paid customer acquisition.

ParkBench is a SaaS platform that creates and maintains neighborhood-focused websites for real estate agents, helping them differentiate themselves as community-embedded professionals. Founded by Amanda Newman in 2014, the company grew from a personal marketing idea into a thriving business, achieving $450K in first-year revenue and $880K in 2015, with 215+ paying customers by mid-2016. The company recently found explosive growth through Facebook advertising, generating 30 leads daily with a $5K spend yielding $55K in revenue within three weeks.