Own Pain Startups

Johnny Robinson co-founded Home Services Academy in January 2022, a 90-day coaching program and community built from his experience scaling a window cleaning service to profitability. The platform coaches others to reach five-figure MRR by either starting their own cleaning business or optimizing existing ones. The business has grown into a multi-million dollar enterprise by leveraging Johnny's deep understanding of home services industry pain points.

AppsEvents was an events company that pivoted during COVID to become a Google for Education partner and Value Added Reseller (VAR). The company now sells Google services with added value through support services, setup, and customization rather than relying solely on conference revenue.

Zen Founder is a podcast hosted by clinical psychologist Sherry Walling that focuses on entrepreneur mental health and wellness. Walling also wrote a book titled "Touching Two Worlds: A Guide To Finding Hope In The Aftermath of Loss" in which she shares her personal journey coping with the loss of her father to cancer and her brother to suicide, offering practical suggestions for others navigating similar grief.

Zero to DeFi is an educational course created by Cathryn Lavery, CEO of Best Self, to teach practical cryptocurrency and DeFi investing. Born from her personal interest in crypto and a desire to share knowledge despite initial hesitation about the stigma, the course represents Lavery's expansion into crypto education alongside her existing planning journal business.

Authentic Leather Patch Co., co-founded by Lisa Norman and Ian, is a custom leather patch manufacturer that grew from a small California shop into a multi-million dollar business. The company creates custom leather patches that clients stitch onto various products, with their hats becoming notably popular at Dynamite Circle events. Last year they generated over $2 million in revenue.

Jodie Cook built a social media consultancy agency designed as a lifestyle business around her name, allowing her to balance entrepreneurship with her career as a competitive powerlifter representing the UK internationally. The business achieved a successful exit with no earnout period required, demonstrating strong fundamentals and the ability to scale beyond a personal brand dependency.

Greenback Expat Tax Services, co-founded by Carrie McKeegan and her husband Dave, helps Americans living abroad prepare and file their taxes. The company emerged from the McKeegans' personal experience raising their children as "Third Culture Kids" outside the United States, with Carrie using the Covid pandemic as an opportunity to reinvent her family's educational approach while building the business.

TouchMBA is a service founded by Darren Joe that matches prospective students with MBA programs. Darren operates as a solopreneur and has authored a book called 'The Fail-Safe Solopreneur' based on his experiences navigating entrepreneurship independently.

Nick Huber pivoted from Storage Squad, a student storage company decimated by COVID-19, into Bolt Storage, a multi-million dollar real estate private equity company. He leverages Twitter to find investors and has built significant traction in the real estate space through strategic pivoting and rapid decision-making during the pandemic.

Objection.co is a SaaS business founded by Curtis Boyd to identify and dispute fake reviews on the internet. Curtis started by disputing a single review for a client and evolved the concept into a software platform addressing a multi-million dollar industry of online review manipulation. The business grew out of Curtis's expertise in review authenticity and his decision to study artificial intelligence to better combat fake reviewers.

ZenMaid is a niche scheduling software for maid services founded in 2013 by Amar Ghose. Born from the failure of Amar's own maid services company, the product pivoted to serve the industry he learned from firsthand. Amar has applied digital marketing strategies to the blue-collar maid services industry with his software solution.

ShipHero is a remote company offering outsourced shipping fulfillment services and warehouse management software to eCommerce businesses. Founded by Aaron Rubin, a veteran of the eCommerce space, the company was born from his frustration with high shipping costs in his own business. Today, more than 1 in every 200 eCommerce packages delivered in America are shipped through ShipHero.

HubSnacks is a productized service founded by Ian Horley that offers unlimited tasks on the HubSpot platform for a fixed monthly fee. After leaving corporate in 2014 to start a web agency, Ian struggled with the stress of agency work and pivoted to productizing his HubSpot expertise. The business represents a shift toward systems-driven operations and community-focused growth.

The Effective English Company is an agency founded by Ali Marsland, a former corporate communications professional who transitioned to entrepreneurship seeking freedom. She 'stair-stepped' her way into building a successful agency by progressing from on-site freelancer to outsourcing work before growing her own venture.

Easy China Warehouse is a third-party logistics company founded by Brian Miller that helps online entrepreneurs consolidate products in China. The company operates within the Dynamite Circle, a community of globally-distributed entrepreneurs. While specific traction metrics are not provided in this source, the company serves a niche market of e-commerce sellers managing supply chains from China.

Maddermore is an AI-powered SaaS platform designed to help remote sales managers improve team engagement and reduce sales rep stress through behavioral science and data integration. Co-founded by Matt Schenker (licensed therapist and management trainer) and an enterprise sales veteran, the company is currently in beta after a year of research involving 400+ sales team interviews. With a newly onboarded founding CTO from medical AI, they aim to launch an MVP within 6-9 months while running paid pilots with existing customers.

MakeMeIcon is a Kenyan education technology platform teaching graphic design, web design, photography, and business skills. The founder Tony Mumo validated the concept by teaching 100 students in WhatsApp groups using minimal Facebook ad spend (~$1.50), then built a mobile app with $1,000 in developer costs and raised $18,000 in pre-seed funding from AfrinX Ventures. Launching a paywall in January at $10/month or $30/quarter, the platform currently has 102 beta users with 64 daily active users.

Optimus is a SaaS platform serving vocational training providers in the UK, priced per learner per month. With 170 customers averaging $40,000 annually, the company hit $8M ARR in 2024, growing 20% YoY with minimal 2.3% churn. Founder Richard Olberg, a serial entrepreneur who previously sold a company, bootstrapped the initial technology, later raised $8-9M across multiple rounds, and is now leveraging LLMs to accelerate growth.

CJ built Mostly Metrics, a newsletter for CFOs launched in December 2020, starting from zero subscribers by obsessively engaging on Twitter around relevant keywords and partnering with B2B companies like Ramp and Brex. The newsletter grew to 35,000 subscribers (7,000 of whom are actual CFOs) in 1.5 years with a 46% open rate and 5-7% click-through rate, attracting sponsorships of $5-10k per post and up to $100k for bundled deals. He also launched a podcast called Run the Numbers with Turpentine Network while maintaining his full-time role as CFO at Parts Tech, planning to transition fully to media within three years.

Regpacks is a registration and payment processing platform for the service industry, primarily serving education, camps, courses, and afterschool programs. Founded in 2012 by Asaf Darasi and bootstrapped throughout its growth, the company reached $10.5M+ ARR with 1,500 active customers by generating revenue through three streams: SaaS subscriptions, payment processing fees, and purchase protection insurance. The introduction of intelligent payment installments drove a 30% revenue increase for adopting customers.