SaaS Startups

Miracle is a SaaS platform launched in 2012 that enables large retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Urban Outfitters to operate their own third-party vendor marketplaces on their websites. The company has raised $22M in equity funding and serves over 125 customers across 25 countries, using a percentage-based pricing model tied to incremental revenue generated through the marketplace. Adrian Nossenbaum bootstrapped the initial development with proceeds from his previous exit (Split Games to Fnac) and built a 160-person team focused on enterprise B2B sales with a sub-one-year payback period target.

Packet Zoom is a mobile networking SaaS company founded in 2013 that optimizes mobile application performance in areas with poor network connectivity. CEO Shlomi Gian joined in mid-2016 when the company was pre-revenue and has grown it to ~$1M ARR with 68 customers through enterprise sales and strategic partnerships with CDN companies. The company plans to scale rapidly through partnerships with resellers and CDN partners, targeting millions in ARR by end of 2017.

Livepeer is a decentralized video transcoding and live streaming platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. It solves the problem of centralized video streaming services failing in censorship-prone environments by allowing users to earn tokens as miners and stake in the network. The platform incentivizes participation through token economics, where participants benefit from network growth similar to early Bitcoin or Ethereum adopters.

Bugsnag is a B2B SaaS crash monitoring platform founded by James Smith in February 2013 that helps companies detect and fix errors in their software applications. After bootstrapping to profitability in 6-9 months with $4.5K MRR, they raised $9.5M in venture capital (Series A from Benchmark for $7.2M) and grew to 4,000 paying customers and 60,000 total users. The company has achieved over $2M ARR with healthy metrics including sub-1% logo churn and net negative revenue churn, growing primarily through word-of-mouth and freemium adoption.

Mobile Walla is a mobile consumer audience platform that collects and processes mobile behavioral data to create targeted audience segments for enterprise marketers and sells raw mobile data to large companies like Oracle. Founded in 2013 with $4M in venture funding, the company initially generated revenue through media buying ($1M in 2014, $4M in 2015) while building its data platform underneath. In 2016, they pivoted away from media buying to focus exclusively on the SaaS and audience data business, achieving remarkable 20x year-over-year growth in data revenues ($12k in May 2016 to $250k in June 2017) with just 9 SaaS customers paying $8,500-$41,000/month and zero paid marketing spend.

Progressly is an enterprise SaaS platform positioning itself as the operational system of record for Fortune 1000 companies with extended value chains (energy, utilities, transportation, CPG). Founded by Nick Candito in 2014 after his experience at Relate IQ (acquired by Salesforce), the company has raised $10M and serves hundreds of customers with a mobile-first approach targeting field workers. With less than 300K MRR but a high-ARPU enterprise sales model, Candito aims to hit $5M ARR by end of 2017.

Likefolio is a fintech SaaS company founded by serial entrepreneur Andy Swan that analyzes tweets to identify shifts in consumer behavior and purchase intent for professional investors. The company operates two revenue models: a $2,000/month subscription service (Likefolio On Demand) for smaller hedge funds and boutique investors, and a robust API priced $100,000-$300,000 annually for quantitative funds, with the API model currently generating the majority of revenue. Andy has bootstrapped the company with a lean team of 9 (5 in Kentucky, 4 in Argentina) and deliberately avoided raising capital to maintain full ownership and strategic control.

Host Analytics is a SaaS company providing enterprise performance management software for corporate finance departments. Founded in 2001 as a consulting firm and bootstrapped for seven years before raising VC funding, the company has grown to serving 700 customers with a $40-50M ARR run rate and has raised $85M in total capital. CEO Dave Kellogg, who joined in 2014 when ARR was ~$10M, has grown the company 4X through a focus on nurture marketing, unconventional tactics like EBITDA stickers, and long-term customer relationship building in a market where only 5% adoption of cloud solutions exists.

Foursquare transformed from a hot consumer social network (valued at $650M in 2013) into an enterprise location intelligence powerhouse under CEO Jeff Glick's leadership starting in 2016. The company monetized its 70,000 free developer community through a tiered SaaS licensing model based on API calls, with over 90% of revenue now coming from B2B customers including Fortune 500 companies, tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and ride-sharing platforms like Uber. Their Pilgrim technology, built on nearly 12 billion cumulative check-ins (7 million per day), enables contextual mobile marketing and real-time foot traffic analysis that has made Foursquare an essential infrastructure layer in apps across the globe.

Christoph Jentzsch, a theoretical physicist and early Ethereum contributor, co-founded Sloc.it in 2015 to enable decentralized sharing economy through blockchain and IoT integration. After learning hard lessons from the failed DAO project, he pivoted to building software that sits on top of IoT devices (like smart locks and EV charging stations), allowing asset owners to receive payments via smart contracts. The company raised $2M in seed funding in early 2017 and deployed its solution on over 1,000 EV charging stations.

BigchainDB, founded by Bruce Poon, is a blockchain database platform designed to handle data-driven enterprise use cases that Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot efficiently support. Currently serving 5-10 customers at $5-10k/month with $50-60k MRR (targeting $100k by year-end), the company has raised $6 million and employs 20 people (mostly PhDs) to solve supply chain tracking, regulatory compliance, and data provenance problems across industries like pharmaceuticals, energy, and automotive.

Dev Slopes is a learn-to-code platform founded in March 2016 that generated $600k in first-year revenue primarily through affiliate partnerships on Udemy (90% of revenue) with over 100k students. They recently launched their own SaaS subscription model at $20/month, acquiring 130 subscribers in the first month ($2.6k MRR), with a goal to reach $1M annual revenue. The company raised $500k total ($190k from Kickstarter and $300k from private investor) and operates with an 8-person team.

June Group is an ad tech platform founded by Mitchell Rich in 2005 that connects brands with consumers through non-interruptive video advertising in mobile apps. The company bootstrapped profitably for 10 years before raising $28 million in mezzanine debt and a private equity investment in 2015, growing to 75 employees with consistent 10-25% year-over-year growth while maintaining profitability.

Widespace is a mobile ad tech platform founded by Patrick Figerland in 2007 that evolved from selling media to building enterprise SaaS technology. The company processes approximately $36-40 million in annual ad spend through its system, serving ~1,000 advertisers (including 75% of top 50 global advertisers like Procter & Gamble) and 500+ publications, generating ~$17 million in gross profit in 2016 with 130 employees. After raising $30 million in VC funding, Widespace shifted to a high-margin technology model charging usage-based fees (typically 50% of spend for demand-side, with supply-side cuts as well) rather than media margins.

Mobstack is a Bangalore-based SaaS platform founded in 2010 that pivoted in 2015 to focus on Beaconstack, a proximity-based marketing and analytics solution using Bluetooth beacon technology. The company has grown to $25k MRR with 100+ customers and 10,000+ beacons deployed globally, including a major deployment with Google at 117 Indian train stations. They've raised $3.5M in capital from Accel Partners, Cisco, and angels, and are on track to hit $500k ARR by end of 2017.

Book in a Box is a publishing service founded in 2015 that helps busy professionals and speakers write and publish books without spending years writing. By interviewing authors and converting their spoken content into professionally published books, they've grown to work with 500 authors in 2.5 years, generating $11.3 million in cumulative revenue with no debt or VC funding. They've scaled to 30 full-time team members and 100+ freelancers, averaging 25-30 new books per month.

Bright Funnel is a B2B marketing measurement and attribution platform founded in late 2012/early 2013 by Nadim Hussain. Chris Mann joined as Head of Product in January 2016 and became CEO in April 2017. The company has grown to $3 million ARR across 70 customers with an average contract value of ~$50K, positioning itself as a neutral attribution platform for enterprise B2B marketers.

Lean Data is a SaaS platform founded in 2012 by Evan Liang that helps marketing and sales operations scale lead management through lead routing and marketing attribution. After raising $18M in total funding, the company serves 250 enterprise customers with $7.5M ARR and $30k average ACV, leveraging its native Salesforce app integration as a key competitive advantage and growth driver.

Lead Crunch AI is an intelligent B2B demand generation platform founded by serial entrepreneur Olan Hyde that pivoted from a healthcare AI project to help mid-market companies find high-quality leads. Launched in September 2016, the company reached 90 lifetime customers with 55 active within 10 months, growing at 37% compound monthly rate with $200k in monthly bookings and $2M in trailing twelve-month revenue. The company operates on a hybrid subscription/on-demand model with 186% revenue expansion on customer rebookings.

Picatiki is an event ticketing SaaS founded in 2008 by Jayesh Parmar with a freemium model targeting nonprofits and community organizers with a free product, while monetizing through commission-based Pro and enterprise API offerings. The company raised $1.5M total and achieved $1.2M in revenue (4% of $30M gross ticket revenue) in 2016, with plans to break $60M in gross ticket revenue in 2017 through 100% YoY growth driven by newly hired VPs of Growth and Sales focusing on enterprise API customers.