Own Pain Startups

Limelight Health, founded in 2014 by Jason Andrew and three co-founders, started as a multi-carrier quoting system for insurance brokers. The company pivoted multiple times—from brokers to enterprise carriers to focusing exclusively on the carrier market—and grew from $1,000 in first-year revenue to nearly $19 million by the time of acquisition in August 2020 for a $93 million exit. Success came through relationship-building, strategic pivots driven by market insight, and authentic company culture centered around music.

G2 Exchange provides market intelligence and actionable insights to government contractors, sales professionals, and business development teams selling to federal, state, and local government. Founded before 2020 and acquired by a private investor, the company grew from $800K in 2020 to $2M ARR by late 2021, then plateaued at roughly $1.7M run rate. CEO Ron Jones joined in mid-2021 and has begun driving growth through organic search optimization, landing pages with free trials, and plans to expand into defense contracting with a dedicated product vertical.

Austin Artificial Intelligence is a data science, ML, and AI services firm founded by Robert Corwin in 2021 after he left the hedge fund space. The company operates a packaged services model, deploying pods of data scientists (typically a senior data scientist, mid-level engineer, and junior resources) to solve business problems for clients in technology, financial, and industrial sectors. They raised an angel investment from Silicon Partners in 2021 and are currently working with seven customers, focusing on practical business results rather than selling frameworks as panaceas.

TabsScore (TabsSuite) was a due diligence SaaS platform built by non-technical founder Unat Bak that used proprietary ML/AI to help investors perform quantitative analysis on qualitative business aspects. Launched in January 2020 with first customer in March 2020, the company grew to approximately 70 paying customers and $500K-$1M+ in combined SaaS and consulting revenue before being acquired by Pre-IPO in a $20.8M deal (with $5M cash component) for its proprietary technology and team.

U-mail started as a voicemail service for carriers in 2007, pivoted to B2C robocall blocking with 65,000 paying customers at $12/month ARR (~$10M) by 2019, and recently shifted to B2B enterprise and carrier solutions with ~20 enterprise customers paying $10K+ annually. The company uses its 10M-user B2C network as a sensor to detect scams, creating a differentiated B2B offering, and is targeting $15M+ ARR by mid-2025 with an 80-20 B2C-to-B2B split expected to flip to 40-60 within two years.

Justify is a payment infrastructure platform for vertical SaaS companies, founded in January 2021 by Joe Scales and co-founder from Sports Engine. The company helps vertical SaaS platforms monetize payments and embedded fintech products (lending, card issuing, insurance) through a combination of payment processing infrastructure, LMS training (Engage), and analytics dashboards (Insights). With 24-48 platforms live on the platform managing approximately $5 billion in GMV, Justify has raised $10.6M in seed funding and operates with a team of 27, positioning itself as "payment and fintech sherpas" for vertical SaaS companies.

Relayed is a new product being built by David Okenyev, co-founder of Typeform, with just one other engineer. The product combines async audio conversations with meeting insights, aiming to reduce unnecessary meetings and help teams efficiently capture and share meeting highlights. Currently in beta with a few hundred people on the waitlist from a LinkedIn post.

Kuvama is a B2B SaaS platform that helps companies manage customer value across the entire customer journey—from marketing and sales through customer success. Founded in 2017 as a consulting agency, the company generated close to $1M in revenue in 2021 (majority consulting) and has now transitioned to a SaaS model with 4 paying customers at $50k-$200k ACV. They recently raised £1.1M (~$1.4M) in pre-seed funding at a ~$10-20M valuation to accelerate platform development and scale their market opportunity.

Artial is an AI-driven autonomy software platform for drones, founded by 24-year-old Igor Fali, a former AI tech lead in robotics and computer vision. The company raised $500,000 pre-seed (at a valuation under $5M) and is building software that adds intelligent obstacle avoidance and autonomous navigation to drone platforms for urban safety, inspection, and logistics applications. They're currently in their first customer deployment with a prominent US drone manufacturer, targeting 20-25 drones in real-world testing, with plans to hit $100,000 in total revenue by December.

LemonEdge is a low-code development platform for financial services with integrated accounting, built by Gareth Hewitt who spent 20 years in the industry witnessing legacy system problems. Launched in March 2020 during lockdown, the company raised $2.5M in early 2021 and extended seed funding to $6.5M total by end of 2021 with strategic investor Black Swan, landing its first five paying customers by Q4 2021 with an average contract value of ~$100k/year, generating approximately $500k ARR and aiming to exceed $1M this year.

Gong.io is a revenue intelligence platform that automatically captures and analyzes customer interactions from calls, emails, and meetings to provide actionable insights for sales teams. Founded in 2015 by Amit Bandop, the company grew from 200 customers in early 2018 to approximately 1,500 customers serving over 60,000 sales reps, with expansion revenue driving exceptional net revenue retention of over 150%. After raising a Series D of $200 million at a $2.2 billion valuation, the company is approaching a $45+ million run rate and expects to approach $100 million ARR in the near term.

Outreach is a sales engagement platform that sits between CRMs and sales reps, orchestrating daily sales activities to improve team performance. Founded by Manny Medina in 2014, the company has grown to 3,100 customers with an $40,000-60,000 ACV, passing the $10 million quarterly new bookings mark and maintaining 140%+ net revenue retention through obsessive focus on user adoption and expansion workflows.

Salesloft is a sales engagement platform founded in 2014 by Kyle Porter that helps companies codify and execute their go-to-market plays. Starting from zero ARR in 2014, the company grew to $50M ARR with 120% net revenue retention, serving between 2,000-10,000 customers ranging from SMB to Fortune 500 enterprises. The company has raised $140M in total funding and is targeting $100M ARR next year with 100-120% growth.

Penny.co is a procurement software and B2B marketplace platform founded by Mohamed Ibrahim and four co-founders that helps companies streamline procurement processes and save money on their SaaS and product purchases. The company uses a revenue-sharing model (0.5-15% take rate, averaging 7-10%) and charges an average of $1,000 per year per user, targeting medium to large companies with 20-100 user teams in procurement departments. Starting from ~$3,000-4,000 MRR a year ago (late 2021), Penny.co has grown to approximately $100,000 MRR with 60-90+ customers and recently raised $5 million at a $20-25 million valuation, targeting 4-5x growth during this funding round.

Kobalt.co is a B2B marketplace connecting creators with vetted suppliers for physical product manufacturing. Founded by Elle Black in late 2019, the company has facilitated 177 product launches in the past year with 36% of creators launching second products. The company operates on an 8% transaction fee model from suppliers and is venture-backed with $2.8M raised to date.

Joe Coll is a 25-year-old founder who built Pulse, an AI-powered SaaS platform that predicts emotional responses to ad creative with 97% accuracy before publication. He bootstrapped the business with over £1.48 million of his own capital from his successful marketing agency (Oncore), which generates over £1M in revenue annually with 25 employees. With 50 users in beta testing and pricing ranging from £500-£5,500/month, Pulse is preparing to launch paid offerings and raise a Series A round in early 2022.

Topia is a platform for creative social experiences that enables communities to gather in virtual worlds. Founded by Daniel Liebskin in 2020, the company gained major traction by hosting Burning Man virtually with 25,000 attendees just 5 months after launching, leading to a $600k friends and family round and later a $5.2M Series A from 776 and Bonfire Ventures. The platform generates revenue from world ownership ($9/month), B2B events (ranging $100-$40,000), and pays 30% of B2B revenue to creators, with thousands of paying users and growing confluencer payouts.

Flight is an AI-powered automated note-taking SaaS platform founded by Shilpa Sharma and her husband in January 2021. The startup raised $120K from Techstars (6% equity) and Founder Institute (4% equity warrant) and reached 350+ waitlist signups and 70 beta users through word-of-mouth marketing with zero marketing spend. They launched their freemium pricing model ($10-$89/month) and targeted a $750K pre-seed round by Q1 2022 at a $7-8M pre-money valuation.

Sales Choice is an AI-powered SaaS platform founded by Dr. Cindy Gordon in 2013 that analyzes Salesforce data to predict sales outcomes and provide behavioral analytics insights. The company is bootstrapped and focuses exclusively on upper mid-market and enterprise customers, with an average contract value of $100,000 annually across at least 10 enterprise clients. With a team of 20 and over $1M in ARR, the company is planning to raise $2-3M in its first institutional round while maintaining its focus on transportation/logistics and technology sectors.

Veeam is a regulated global payment platform founded in 2014 by Marwan Forzley that helps 300,000+ SMBs across 110 countries send, receive, and manage payments in 70+ currencies. The company took three years to reach $1M in revenue (2017) due to regulatory licensing requirements, but has since doubled customer accounts annually. Revenue is generated through three primary streams: foreign exchange (0.25-2%), credit card fees (2.9%), and real-time debit card deposits (1%), plus a newer embedded capital/buy-now-pay-later program. With 65% of new customer acquisition coming from word-of-mouth referrals within the payment transaction flow itself, Veeam demonstrates exceptional product-market fit in the SMB payments space.