What Works for Startups Like Yours?

SaaStr is a SaaS community and events platform founded by Jason Lemkin in 2015, generating $25M in annual revenue through a combination of ticket sales (~$5M), sponsorships ($20M), and other revenue. The company grew from 800 attendees at its first one-day event in 2015 to over 10,000 people at its flagship annual conference, with growth driven primarily by word-of-mouth and email marketing to a curated 120,000-person community list. The business operates lean with only 10 full-time employees plus embedded agency partners, emphasizing quality over scale and community value as its core moat.

First customers: word-of-mouth

Pursuit is a daily self-development email newsletter founded by Case Kenny with 172,000 subscribers that generates revenue through brand sponsorships at $30-40 per 1,000 opens. The company made approximately $100,000 in revenue last year and is projecting $800,000-$900,000 for 2019 through a diversified monetization strategy including sponsorships, events, and digital products. With just two team members in Chicago, Pursuit maintains a 39% open rate and 2% advertiser click-through rate by strategically managing advertiser frequency and only exposing subscribers to sponsors after 28 days of engagement.

Dory Clark is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and business consultant who successfully diversified her revenue from consulting into a multi-stream business including book sales, speaking engagements, and coaching. Starting with her first paid speaking gig of $5,000 in 2013 for her book 'Reinventing You,' she scaled to delivering 59-61 talks annually and generating $125,000-$150,000 from speaking alone in 2015, while her books have sold over 30,000 copies (Reinventing You) and 6,000+ copies (Stand Out) within months of launch.

First customers: Referral from casual acquaintance for a speaking engagement at a large association convention

Collin Kartchner and Samir Chaudry launched the Lacrosse Network in 2011 as a YouTube channel aggregating lacrosse content. After struggling to monetize through traditional ad models, they pivoted to service work and secured live sports rights on YouTube, which attracted the platform's attention. The company was acquired by Whistle Sports in 2014 as an acq-hire. Today, they run the "Collin and Samir" YouTube channel with 813K subscribers, a seven-figure advertising-based business, and an accompanying newsletter, focusing on creator economy content and interviews.

First customers: Collin uploaded a trailer for a video about the Colorado club lacrosse team; Samir saw it and emailed him suggesting he put videos on the Lacrosse Network.