SaaS Startups

Andrew Fiebert is a software developer turned entrepreneur who built Lasso, a WordPress-based SaaS product. The podcast episode covers his journey building Lasso with a freemium model, struggles with initial pricing and product-market fit, and discoveries around UI/UX sticking points.

Hustle is a B2B SaaS company built by Sam Parr that reached 8 figures in revenue. The company was acquired by HubSpot. Sam also co-hosts the popular podcast 'My First Million' and discusses strategies for building email lists and identifying business opportunities.

Senior Place is a placement and referral agency software founded by Jason Buckingham. The startup was born from over 70 cold calls Jason made to understand the senior placement market's pain points. He got accepted into Tiny Seed accelerator right before COVID-19 hit.

Gather is an interior design project management SaaS founded by husband-and-wife team Brian and Scottie Elliott. The company successfully moved upmarket from solo designers and small design firms to serving large firms, achieving significant growth momentum. They are on track to 10x their MRR and have doubled revenue over the course of their participation in TinySeed.

With Jack is a UK-based insurance SaaS platform founded by Ashley Baxter that provides professional indemnity, public liability, contracts, and legal expense coverage tailored for freelancers. Ashley initially funded the venture with revenue from her freelance photography business while learning critical lessons from inheriting and operating her father's failed insurance business at age 18. The company demonstrates the importance of diversifying growth channels and maintaining confidence despite competitive pressures in a regulated industry.

CodeSubmit, founded by Dominic and Tracy Phillips, provides a library of real-world take-home coding tasks across 60+ programming languages for developer hiring. The bootstrapped company was part of TinySeed's spring 2020 batch and achieved a 25x MRR growth that year, with major customers including Netflix, Apple, Audi, Carbon Health, and 3M. They grew through content marketing and SEO after testing multiple channels, while navigating the unique dynamic of running a startup as a married couple.

ChurnKey is a B2B SaaS product founded by Nick Fogle (previously cofounder of Wavve, acquired in early 2021) that helps reduce customer churn by collecting feedback at the point of cancellation. Nick bootstrapped the company while learning the differences between B2C and B2B SaaS sales models, eventually hiring a head of sales to transition from low-touch to high-touch sales.

Hotjar was bootstrapped to $40 million ARR with a fully distributed team of 170 employees before David Darmanin and his cofounders sold the company for a 9-figure exit in 2021. The company took a unique DTC approach to sales and marketing in B2B SaaS, building an initial launch list of 60,000 subscribers and tripling growth from $1M to $3M in the first year. Their initial launch strategy gave them a major competitive advantage when they later shifted to content marketing.

DemandMaven is a SaaS product founded by Asia Orangio. The company was discussed in episode 607 of a podcast where the founder answered listener questions about customer onboarding videos, revenue scaling, stealth launches, and enterprise sales strategies.

Adrian Rosebrock bootstrapped PyImageSearch, an info product company teaching visual image detection and classification in Python, after leaving traditional employment with a PhD in computer science. He grew from $38,000 in 2014 to $600,000 in 2016 as a solo founder using the stair-step approach and content marketing. He successfully exited the business in 2021 as a seven-figure company.

Time Doctor is a remote work and time tracking SaaS company co-founded by Liam Martin, who has been running it for the past 12 years. Martin is also an author of 'Running Remote: Master the Lessons from the World's Most Successful Remote Work Pioneers,' sharing insights on asynchronous communication and remote work best practices gained from operating the company.

SEOTesting.com is a SaaS tool that automates reporting of page updates and changes for SEO professionals and agencies. Nick Swan launched it initially as a free tool, then transitioned to a paid subscription model and eventually rebranded and rewrote the codebase. The product has grown to $18,000 MRR.

Builder Prime is a CRM software for home improvement contractors founded by Jonathan Weinberg. The company has achieved nearly $1M ARR through unique early traction strategies and has reached product-market fit. Jonathan quit his day job to focus on Builder Prime before it generated revenue.

CloudForecast is an AWS cost monitoring tool co-founded by Tony Chan. The podcast episode reflects on Tony's journey over eight months after TinySeed Tales Season 3, covering challenges like losing an engineer, hiring approaches, and founder psychology.

Suggestion Ox is a feedback platform co-founded by Andrew Berkowitz that helps HR teams build candid communication between leadership and employees. The platform focuses on creating trust-based team dynamics through transparent feedback mechanisms. Berkowitz previously co-founded a sports management platform that was acquired in 2021.

ProcurementExpress is a SaaS business founded by James Kennedy that implements annual price increases of 8% across all customers. The company uses strategic price increases as a growth and profitability lever, communicating these increases proactively to both leads and customers. Kennedy has spoken at MicroConf about reducing churn and building sales processes.

Bluetick is a SaaS tool that Mike Taber bootstrapped as a side project alongside his podcast co-hosting duties. Over 15 months, it evolved from a side hustle to a profitable, full-time business, with Mike pivoting the product to better serve agencies at scale.

Sidekiq is a backgrounding library for Ruby that started as an open-source project and was later monetized by selling premium features. Mike Perham runs the multimillion-dollar business solo with no employees, representing a unique sustainable SaaS model. His 10-year journey to "overnight success" demonstrates the power of building on top of established ecosystems and maintaining control as a solo founder.

John Warrillow, author of Built to Sell, launched VidGuide as his second SaaS business by validating a "scratch-your-own-itch" problem. The episode discusses his validation process, positioning methodology following April Dunford's framework, and how Standard Operating Procedures can improve business operations and exits.

Rick Hymanson is the founder of detamoov, a SaaS product he started after exiting his previous company Shugo in 2018. Shugo was built over ten years while Rick worked a day job before achieving product-market fit and being acquired. Rick is now growing detamoov and has joined TinySeed as part of his startup journey.