SaaS Startups

FreeConferenceCalled.com, founded by David Erickson in October 2001 with a $10 domain purchase, grew to become a dominant conferencing platform serving 40 million monthly users and processing 1 million conference calls per day. The company monetizes through terminating access fees from telecom carriers rather than charging end users, enabling completely free conferencing and achieving 100%+ profit margins in early years. Now at 140 employees and over $100 million in annual revenue, the company remains bootstrapped and debt-free, having rejected a $250 million acquisition offer.

Eugene Woo launched Venngage in 2012 as a freemium infographic design tool after selling his previous company Visualize Me (a resume infographic tool) to Parchment in 2013 for less than $1M. After returning to Venngage in 2014 with a bootstrapped, cash-flow positive model, he grew the company to 11,000 paying customers generating ~$250K MRR ($3M ARR) through primarily organic channels like SEO and PR, with minimal reliance on paid acquisition despite 10% monthly churn from consumer users.

Instapage is a SaaS landing page optimization platform founded by Tyson Quick in 2012 to solve the problem of wasted ad spend. Starting with $600k seed funding and pivoting with only $75k remaining, the company bootstrapped to over 16,000 customers and $10M+ ARR by 2017 through aggressive paid acquisition, achieving 350% CAC ROI with a $1,200 average customer lifetime value.

Centro, founded in 2001 by Shawn Riecksecker, is a media operations software and managed services company that automates digital advertising across search, social, programmatic, and direct buying. In 2017, the company processed over $500 million in digital ad spend, generating between $110-130 million in revenue with 700 employees. After rebuilding their platform from scratch starting in 2013, they launched Basis in July 2016—a comprehensive ERP platform combined with a DSP and BI tools—to help agencies and brands manage digital advertising more efficiently.

Haste is a network optimization platform founded by Adam Toll and an engineer co-founder to reduce lag and improve stability for real-time applications, starting with competitive gaming. The company gained 350,000 signups primarily through influencer partnerships and grassroots community engagement, converting between 1,000-10,000 to paid subscribers at $6.99/month after launching their paywall in 2017. With $6M+ raised and a 15-person team based in Atlanta, they're scaling infrastructure support beyond their initial two game titles while maintaining a sustainable 4-5% monthly churn rate.

Tech Capital is a UK-based intellectual property investment company that acquires and commercializes university discoveries through a global network of 4,500 research universities. The company generated £3.8 million in revenue in the first half of 2017 by providing three core services: invention discovery, invention evaluation, and executive placement in technology transfer, while also building a portfolio of seven maturing companies. Founded in 2014 with £9 million in capital raised through a listing on the London stock exchange's AIM junior market, Tech Capital exemplifies the partnership-driven approach to scaling university IP commercialization.

Red Seal is a cybersecurity SaaS platform providing network modeling and risk scoring for enterprise networks and government agencies. Founded in 2004 and re-launched under CEO Ray Rothrock in 2015, the company grew from $17-18M ARR to $40M ARR by focusing on cash flow profitability and gross margin expansion (77% to 86%) while maintaining 90% revenue retention. The company serves approximately 240 global 2000 and federal customers with average first-year ACVs around $200K, expanding to multi-million dollar deals through customer expansion.

ParkMobile is a mobile app and web platform that enables drivers to find, reserve, and pay for parking across nearly 300 U.S. cities by contracting with municipalities and private parking operators. Launched in 2009, they generate revenue through a flat convenience fee (typically 30-45 cents per transaction on-street, and percentage-based fees on off-street reservations). With 7.5 million registered users, 1.5 million monthly active users, and 250,000 new registrations per month, the company does well over $500,000 in monthly revenue and operates with a team of 106 based in Atlanta.

Jitterbit is an enterprise integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) founded in 2005 by the Sasan brothers. George Gallego joined as CEO in 2011 when the company had 50 customers and ~5 employees, scaling it to over 1,000 paying customers with $40-50M ARR by 2017, growing 70-80% year-over-year. The company acquired customers primarily through trade shows, webinars, and inbound marketing, maintaining a healthy 10% annual churn rate with 105% net retention.

Mitch Russo founded Time Slips in 1985 as a tax deduction tracking tool for personal computers, but pivoted to time tracking and billing software when the market changed. After attending Comdex and distributing the product directly, he grew it to $5.6 million in revenue, sold it to Sage in 1994 for $10.5 million (2x top-line valuation), and continued running the business as part of Sage's division until 1998 when it reached $10.5 million in annual revenue.

Qualtrics is an experience management SaaS platform founded in 2002 by Ryan Smith and his family. Starting with academic customers, the company grew to ~$50M revenue by 2012 while remaining highly profitable, then pivoted to aggressive growth mode, scaling to 9,000+ customers and $250M+ ARR by 2017. The company turned down a $500M acquisition offer and is preparing for a public offering.

Automattic was founded by Matt Mullenweg in 2005 to build services around WordPress, the open-source blogging platform he created in 2003. The company operates primarily as a subscription business with three main products: WordPress.com hosting, Jetpack services, and WooCommerce e-commerce platform. Automattic has grown to over 100 million ARR, operates fully remotely across 62 countries with 650 employees, and has strategically remained private to maintain long-term strategic flexibility.

RingLead is a cloud-based SaaS data management platform built by Chris (formerly SVP at CA Technologies) and Russ (founder of Computer Associates). They acquired the struggling company in November 2016 and transformed it from losing money to over $550k MRR in roughly one year by consolidating operations to Long Island, building a performance-based culture with employee equity, and launching a new unified product portfolio (DMS) in April 2017. They grew from ~160k to 550-600k MRR with 700+ customers and plan to hit $2.6M MRR by 2019.

Insight Squared is a sales analytics and business intelligence SaaS platform launched in 2011 by Fred Shohmer and two co-founders. The company raised $1M initially and $27M total in venture capital, growing to 750+ customers (primarily mid-market and enterprise) with a team of 135 in Boston. They focus exclusively on sales operations and analytics, positioning themselves uniquely in the intersection of business intelligence and sales enablement.

Malwarebytes is a cybersecurity SaaS company founded by Marsen Klazinski in 2008 that provides malware remediation and protection software for consumers and businesses. Starting with a free remediation tool and $40 annual subscription model, the company bootstrapped to $25 million in ARR before raising $80 million and achieving over $130 million ARR by 2017. The company has grown to 650+ employees with 3+ million consumer subscribers and 50,000+ business customers through word-of-mouth reputation and community-driven acquisition, maintaining profitability throughout its growth.

Centrify, founded by Tom Camp in 2004, is an enterprise identity and access management SaaS platform that helps organizations manage passwords, multi-factor authentication, and privileged access control. The company bootstrapped for 4-6 months before raising capital across five rounds totaling $90M from investors including Excel, Mayfield, Samsung, and others. With over 5,000 customers (including two-thirds of Fortune 50), Centrify passed $100M ARR in early 2017 and achieved cash flow positivity, demonstrating strong SaaS metrics with 95% net dollar retention.

JotForm is a bootstrapped SaaS form builder launched in 2006 that has grown to over 3 million users across 192 countries without taking any venture capital. With 75 employees and organic growth driving over 4.5M MRR, the company has achieved healthy unit economics through SEO-driven acquisition and freemium conversion, maintaining sub-5% monthly churn and 900-day payback periods.

Core DNA is a pre-built SaaS digital experience platform (DXP) that bundles over 80 applications for agencies and customers to build e-commerce, CMS, intranets, and franchise portals without redevelopment. Founded by Australian entrepreneur Sam Saltis and launched in the US in 2016, the company bootstrapped from his agency's internal technology and has grown to 25 customers paying an average of $8,000/month ($200k MRR), with less than 5% annual revenue churn and a 14-year customer lifetime demonstrated by clients like Nintendo.

funnel.io automates marketing reporting and analysis for e-commerce companies and online marketers, eliminating reliance on spreadsheets. Founded by Frederick Scansy in 2014 and launched in beta in 2015, the company has grown to 340+ customers paying an average of $525/month, generating $2.2M ARR with 180K MRR and low 2.8% monthly logo churn. They raised $13M total ($3M seed funding and $10M Series A at $20M pre, $30M post valuation) and employ 37 people across Stockholm and Boston offices.

Bitnami, founded in 2013 (building on predecessor BitRock since 2005), provides a catalog of over 140 packaged applications across 14 different platforms for leading cloud vendors like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. With over one million deployments per month, the company generates revenue by selling to cloud vendors directly and is launching a new productized offering for corporate IT departments in Q1. Almost entirely bootstrapped with $2M from Y Combinator and convertible notes, Bitnami has grown to 75 employees across San Francisco and distributed globally.