Own Pain Startups

Jason Grishkoff launched Submit Hub in November 2014 as a solution to the overwhelming number of music submissions he received at Indie Shuffle, his popular music blog. Within 8 months, Submit Hub reached $46,000 MRR by connecting musicians with industry professionals (blogs, labels, radio stations) and incentivizing those professionals to listen. The platform grew to ~250 other platforms using Submit Hub and fundamentally changed how music discovery works in the industry.

Ali Ispahani built MassMobileApps in 2014 to solve his own problem as a retail clothing store owner seeking a mobile solution to connect with customers and increase sales. Growing from $25-26k MRR a year ago to $45k MRR today through a white-label reseller model ($35k), direct-to-business sales ($7k), and custom work ($3-4k), the platform now serves 250+ paying customers. 100% bootstrapped and built with a lean outsourced team of 7 developers in India plus Ali wearing most hats locally, the company is scaling through organic growth and word-of-mouth with plans to upsell an embedded e-commerce solution.

Shine is a pre-hire recruitment and screening SaaS platform founded by David Koppel in 2016 that uses video interviewing and values-based recruitment to reduce time and cost to hire by up to 70%. With 55 paying customers at $10k ARR each, the company has grown from $30k MRR to $45-50k MRR year-over-year with negative 5% net revenue churn and strong expansion revenue. They recently raised a $350k seed round and operate lean with a 10-person team in the UK, focusing on outbound sales and partnerships to scale.

Forever Labs is a Y Combinator-backed longevity company that stores patients' stem cells via a 15-minute outpatient bone marrow aspiration procedure for $2,500 upfront plus $250/year in storage fees (or $7,000 lifetime). Founded in 2015 by Steven Klausenitzer and Dr. Mark Katakowski, the company has nearly 200 paying customers across nine states with credentialed physicians from top universities (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.), generating ~$45k/month in recurring revenue from storage fees and referrals.

Colin Gray built Alitu, a simple podcast editing SaaS app, on top of an existing audience he'd cultivated through thepodcasthost.com (a content site, blog, courses, and podcast about podcasting). After launching in June 2018 with a large existing audience, growth was slower than expected—reaching only $3,000 MRR after 6 months and $8,000 after a year—because his audience was too technical and preferred DIY solutions. By pivoting content to attract non-technical entrepreneurs and solo founders, Alitu grew to $45,000 MRR within two years, with significant acceleration during COVID.

Dill Mill is a matchmaking app for South Asians founded by K.J. Singh in late 2014, disrupting the broken arranged marriage model. The freemium app with a 10 daily likes limit and $10/month premium subscription has grown organically to nearly 1 million downloads and approximately 4,400 paying customers, generating around $44k/month in revenue ($528k annualized). Having raised $3.8M across two funding rounds (via SAFEs), the 9-person team is targeting $1M annual run rate by end of 2016.

Demio is a bootstrapped webinar platform built by David Abrams and his co-founder after losing $100K to a bad development agency and rebuilding from scratch. By stripping to a true MVP (reliable video streaming plus marketing integrations), running a 3-month free beta with 1,000 users, and launching with affiliate-driven annual sales, they reached $42K MRR. The journey demonstrates the value of slow hiring, product focus, and community validation over rushed scaling.

Das-services.com is an AI training and automation company founded by Aaron Vitas that helps mid-market tourism, retail, service, and real estate businesses implement AI solutions. The company operates a hybrid model combining high-ticket services (AI Maximizer, Das Training) with SaaS products (Das Hub and Das Content Manager). With combined revenue projected at $500K+ for the year and the content manager generating $179/user/month with 218 people on the waitlist, Das is scaling rapidly just 8 weeks after SaaS launch.

Tweet Hunter is a bootstrapped SaaS that helps people build and monetize Twitter audiences. Co-founders Thomas Jacquesson and Tibo grew the product from zero to $41K/month in roughly a year through organic launches, free side products, and a key partnership with Twitter growth expert JK Molina. The tool now includes scheduling, automations, and a searchable tweet library, with the team aiming for $1M ARR.

MyLands is a SaaS platform helping independent consultants build better businesses by handling backend operations like taxes, bookkeeping, invoicing, and lead generation. Founded by Bradley Jacobs in 2020, the company grew from $8,000 MRR a year ago to $40,000 MRR today with over 800 customers paying an average of $50/month. Growth was driven primarily through consistent LinkedIn content marketing, SEO, word-of-mouth referrals, and a referral program, with Bradley writing almost daily posts to a 13,400-follower audience.

Ocale.ai is a control tower platform for operations teams managing mobile assets (delivery, ride-sharing, logistics). Founded in 2019 by Aditi Sinha and Rishabh, the company launched its product in August 2020 and has grown from ~$1,000 MRR to $40,000 MRR in one year. They've raised a $1.3M seed round and are planning to raise Series A as they approach $1M ARR with a team of 20 (11 engineers).

Carrot is a cloud-based employee recognition and rewards platform founded by Aaron Carr in 2018. Starting at 15K MRR in 2019 with mostly one large enterprise customer, the company has grown to 40K monthly net platform revenue with ~100 small-to-mid-market customers (50-200 employees) paying an average of $230/month for subscriptions, plus 3% take on employee reward purchases (digital gift cards). The bootstrapped team of six has achieved 109% net dollar retention and sub-15% annual churn through a combination of SaaS subscriptions and marketplace revenue.

Flask Data automates detection and response in virtual clinical trials, charging $500 per patient. Founded by Danny Lieberman, a solid state physicist and former medical device security consultant, the company grew from $287,000 in 2019 revenue to $320,000 in 2020 and now does $40,000 monthly recurring revenue (December 2020). The bootstrapped startup is pursuing a $2 million contract with a 20,000-patient trial and aims to break $1 million ARR in 2021.

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.

Panna is an on-demand travel concierge service founded by 23-year-old Devin Tavona that handles flight, hotel, car, and restaurant bookings through a white-glove service model powered by AI-trained concierges. The company raised a $200K angel round and $1.3-1.35M seed round, and grew from zero to 5,000 beta users in 90 days almost entirely through referral and word-of-mouth marketing. With about half of beta users on paid plans at $25-$50/month ARPU, the company is approaching $40-50K in monthly recurring revenue.

Oasis is a freemium water quality app founded by Cormac that aggregates free government water testing data and makes it easily accessible. The app started at $10k/month revenue and has grown to $40k/month ($480k ARR) by creating viral TikTok videos about water contaminants. Users pay $45-50/year for detailed reports and independent testing data, while the company earns affiliate revenue from water filter recommendations.

Karma Bot is a SaaS platform for remote team engagement that started as an internal tool at a New Zealand-based web development agency and evolved into a $40,000 MRR business. Founded by Stas Kulesh and co-founder David, the product gamifies team recognition through a point-based rewards system integrated with Slack, helping distributed teams stay connected and celebrate wins together.

Rebase is an immigration-as-a-service platform that helps remote workers and digital nomads establish residency in Portugal. Founded by Peter Levels, it went viral on Twitter when he shared a casual photo of building the landing page, generating thousands of sign-ups. The platform now serves approximately 9% of all people moving to Portugal annually, processing around 400-500 sign-ups per month with $30-50k MRR.

Stone is a brand developing innovative trade and lifestyle products for the food and drinks industry, launched with a flagship notebook designed for chefs. Through a strategic gifting campaign targeting renowned chefs like Pierre Koffmann and Marcus Wareing, the company built organic word-of-mouth momentum that generated 3,000 emails before launch and hit a $30,000 Kickstarter target within 24 hours. The business has reached $40,000 in monthly revenue (18 months post-launch) by maintaining product quality, authentic chef endorsements, and high-production content collaborations.

Jordan O'Connor built Closet Tools, a SaaS product for selling more on Poshmark, while managing student loan debt and supporting his family. Through years of learning and skill development, he grew the business to $38,000/month as a solo founder. His focus on genuinely helping users succeed drove both product development and business growth.