SaaS Startups

Danavir Sariya, 22, launched Copymonk to teach direct response copywriting through online courses after gaining 5 years of freelance copywriting experience. In his first two months, he generated $6,000 in course sales, with a standout 4-day promotional campaign earning $4,000 from 12 emails to a 1,700-person email list, resulting in 40 course sales at $99 (50% off from $200).

Blurbiz is a SaaS platform that helps media companies create and distribute mobile-optimized video content for Snapchat, Facebook, and other social platforms. Founded by Hamza Amir in March 2016, the company quickly reached $50K MRR across 20 enterprise clients (including Cheeky Magazine, Team Wobe, Allure) by July 2016. The company was raising a $2M Series A round at an $10M post-money valuation on the back of strong growth and a clear enterprise market need.

ProsperWorks is a Google Apps-integrated CRM platform founded in 2011 by John Lee that automates data entry by pulling conversations directly from email, phone, and calendar. The company serves over 40,000 customers with approximately $2 million in MRR and has raised $10 million in funding, achieving negative revenue churn and a healthy LTV to CAC ratio of 6:1 through primarily inbound, product-led growth channels.

iCharts is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform founded by Seymour Dunker in 2010 that embeds analytics into SaaS platforms like NetSuite. The company serves 200 customers with an average contract value of $15,000 annually, and has raised $23 million while maintaining healthy 5-7% annual churn and a 6-month payback period.

Simplify Inc. is a HIPAA-compliant SaaS platform founded by orthodontist Ryan and tech M&A veteran Zach Hungate that helps healthcare providers communicate securely and improve patient experience. Accepted into Angelpad in 2015 after both founders gave up six-figure salaries, they've raised approximately $3.5M and grown to serve over 1,000 healthcare provider offices with 98% annual retention and customers paying between $150-$200 per month.

Sherry Atwood founded Support Pay in 2011 to solve the complex problem of managing child support payments and shared parenting expenses. The platform transforms child support management by providing transparent, documented expense tracking similar to corporate expense reports. With 2,000 paying customers, $20k MRR from subscriptions, plus $80k monthly from setup fees, Support Pay has raised $7.1M including a $4M Series A, boasting a 3% annual churn rate and 12% visitor-to-paid conversion.

Shoppable is a SaaS platform that enables purchases from anywhere consumers discover products online by bringing checkout experiences to social media, blogs, videos, and other digital channels. Founded by Heather Marie in 2011 and officially launched in 2012, the company has grown to 20 employees in New York, 438 merchants, 2,000+ brands, and generates well over $500k per month in revenue with customers paying $10k-$90k annually.

Chuzel is a digital advertising platform founded by Andrew Fisher in fall 2012 that serves agencies with a hybrid SaaS and rev-share model. The company generates $75k/month from 250 SaaS customers at an average of $300/month, plus significant revenue from taking 40% of ad spend through their platform. With $8.5M raised, they achieved $10M in revenue in 2016 and were on track to hit $20M in 2017 while becoming profitable.

Riskalyze is a SaaS platform launched in 2011 by Aaron Klein that helps financial advisors align client portfolios with their actual risk tolerance using a quantitative "risk number" score. The company achieved $24M in total capital raised (mostly bootstrapped until late-stage institutional funding), serves 19,000+ paying financial advisors at $145/month base pricing, and maintains industry-leading 90%+ annual retention by focusing on solving the behavioral finance problem of investors making poor short-term decisions driven by fear and greed.

Velocity is a marketing intelligence SaaS platform founded in 2010 by David Dunne that helps agencies, brands, and analysts make data-driven marketing decisions. The company has raised $15 million to date, serves under 500 customers with an average ARPU of $6,000, and maintains over 90% annual retention. They're now pivoting toward AI-powered insights to accelerate how analysts derive actionable intelligence from their data.

Jumeo is a SaaS platform providing trusted identity verification services (ID verification, identity verification, and document verification) primarily for merchants in the sharing economy, fintech, and online gaming sectors. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Stephen Stude since 2015, the company has raised $60 million and serves 350-400 customers across 40 countries with a 1,500-person team. Growing 46% year-over-year, Jumeo processed 26 million identity verifications in 2016 and is on track to exceed 30 million in 2017.

Work is a payroll and HR compliance SaaS platform serving cannabis businesses across 17 legal states. Founded by Keegan Peterson in 2015 after a friend's dispensary was dropped by traditional payroll providers, the company solves a critical gap: major payroll companies like Gusto and ADP cannot serve cannabis businesses due to banking restrictions. With over 200 companies and thousands of employees on the platform, Work is doing more than $40,000/month in ARR and has raised $3M from traditional VCs.

CleverTap is a mobile analytics and user engagement platform founded by Sunil Thomas and two co-founders in 2013. The company combines analytics with real-time user engagement (push notifications, email, in-app messaging) and raised $9.6M total ($1.6M seed, $8M Series A) from Sequoia and Excel. By May 2017, CleverTap reached $400K MRR and $5M ARR from 200 paying customers, growing from $1.5M revenue in 2016 through content marketing and direct sales.

Duetto Research, founded in 2012 by Patrick Bosworth and two co-founders (including Craig Weissman, former CTO of Salesforce), is a hotel pricing optimization SaaS platform serving over 3,000 hotel properties across 98 countries. The company has achieved remarkable unit economics with $17,000 annual ACV per property, ~$50M ARR run rate, 14-month payback periods on $20K CAC, zero customer churn in five years, and improved gross margins from 30% to 75% through operational efficiency.

Mural is a digital whiteboard SaaS platform that enables modern teams to collaborate visually on design thinking and complex problem-solving. Founded by Mariano Suarez in 2014 as a startup in residence at IDEO, the company has grown to serve 1,200+ companies with 45,000 monthly active users, generating $280k in MRR (~$3.36M ARR). The business is heavily enterprise-focused, with IBM accounting for 26,000 of their users, and operates with a long-tail revenue distribution and best-in-class gross margins north of 85%.

Front is a shared inbox management SaaS platform founded by Matilda Collins in early 2015 that helps teams collaborate on asynchronous communication (email, Twitter, Facebook, Twilio). The company has grown from 240K MRR with 1,200 customers in 2016 to 700K MRR with 1,700 customers by 2017, tripling revenue in 11 months through land-and-expand motions and a newly formed marketing team. Despite raising $14M total (including Series A), Front maintains an 88% gross margin, negative net churn, and operates lean with only ~$250K monthly burn.

Health Loop is a patient engagement SaaS platform founded in 2009 by physician Jordan Schlein and led by Todd Johnson (joined 2013), who previously sold his first healthcare IT company for $15 million. The platform automatically sends push notifications to patients after diagnosis or surgery to check on their health status and alerts doctors to potential issues, monetizing through enterprise subscriptions with health systems and physician groups at $120k-$150k ACV. Growing at 150% YoY with $4M ARR, 90%+ annual retention, and $21M raised in venture capital, Health Loop is capturing market share in the rapidly expanding value-based healthcare delivery space.

Park Bench is a SaaS platform that builds neighborhood-focused websites for real estate agents, allowing them to become the 'digital mayor' of their neighborhood by aggregating local content like events, deals, and news. Founded by Amanda Newman in 2014, the company has grown from 70K MRR to 628K MRR in one year, with over 1,000 customers paying $4,500-$5,000 annually upfront. Operating with 90% gross margins and a CAC of $676 on a $13,163 LTV, Park Bench is projecting $6.3M ARR with only $125K in initial funding, scaling profitably out of Toronto with a team of 30.

Komiko is a sales intelligence SaaS tool founded in 2015 by Hal, a former Microsoft Dynamics ERP leader with 20 years at Microsoft. The product helps customers understand which engagement patterns with clients are working by mining data from email, calendar, phone logs and CRM systems. Currently at $60k MRR with 2,000 seats across 50 customers, the company has grown primarily through inbound referrals and founder network, with zero customer churn to date.

Logs.io is a cloud-based log analytics SaaS built by Tomer Levy, launched in October 2014 and achieving product-market fit within 6 months. The company leverages the open-source ELK stack as a lead-generation engine, becoming the #1 content contributor to the ELK community and ranking #1 in Google for key search terms. With ~300 paying customers across 80 countries, a 10-40K ACV sweet spot, and a minimum $3.6M ARR run rate, Logs.io has raised $24M (including a $15.6M Series B in October 2016) and operates with 80% gross margins and sub-one-year payback periods.