Own Pain Startups

Ticketing Hub is a cloud-based reservation and ticketing software for tours and activities, founded by Carl Peel after a decade-long journey building related businesses. Currently serving 250 customers including major brands like Secret Food Tours and Immersive Game Box, the company has grown from $15,000 MRR a year ago to $50,000 MRR today while remaining 100% bootstrapped and profitable. Carl attributes early pandemic survival to learning SEO and signing the largest UK zoo, and now plans to reach $1-1.5M ARR before considering raising capital.

Clearview Social was a social media management SaaS platform launched in December 2013, positioned as 'Hootsuite for lawyers.' Founded by Adrien Dayton, the company grew to over $2M ARR with 60,000 users across 12 countries and 180 customers by 2021. The company was sold in March 2021 for 13X EBITDA (approximately $6.5M total deal size), with 70% cash upfront and a two-year earnout structure, generating $400-700K in EBITDA at the time of sale.

Vinu is a Helsinki-based firmographic data provider launched in 2014 that helps revenue operations teams access company data and integrate it into their workflows. The company grew to $12M ARR with only $4M raised, demonstrating significant capital efficiency by firing low-fit customers and focusing on higher-value enterprise accounts. Their strategy shift from sales-focused to revenue ops-focused, combined with content marketing and thought leadership, has enabled them to maintain strong unit economics with net dollar retention above 100%.

Rapid Funnel is a SaaS platform that gamifies prospecting and follow-up for field-driven sales organizations through a mobile app. Founded by Patrick Shaw, the company has grown to $3M ARR with 70 remote employees across 9 countries while maintaining only 3% turnover. Patrick attributes their success to building a healthy organizational culture, using the Traction/EOS system, implementing creative equity alternatives (rapid shares), and securing $1M in non-dilutive funding from a private equity investor.

Zopa AI is an HR tech SaaS platform founded by Nina Alexuri in 2017 to automate and de-bias the hiring process for large companies and startups. The company achieved a $22 million valuation in their Series A (December 2023) and operates with a $5 million ARR target, using transparent incentive and ESOP structures to keep their globally distributed team aligned and motivated.

Folderly is an email deliverability SaaS platform founded by Michael Maximoff as a spin-off from the Balkans appointment-setting agency. Rather than raising capital, the founders bootstrapped by first selling their email spam solution as a service to existing agency clients, then productized it into a SaaS offering at $200 per seat. The company leverages its parent agency's customer base, lost deals pipeline, and performance-based organizational structure to drive growth while maintaining high margins.

Fulfunnel.io is an early-stage B2B SaaS company founded by Vladimir Blagojevich and Andrey Zinkovich that specializes in account-based marketing on LinkedIn for companies selling five and six-figure deals. The company grew from $250k revenue in its first year to projected $500k ARR by leveraging LinkedIn content creation, engagement-based outreach, and strategic influencer partnerships to generate inbound opportunities without paid advertising. Their framework focuses on targeting complete buying committees, creating relevant content, and using engagement triggers to achieve 40-80% response rates on outreach.

Doc Sales is a contract and proposal automation platform that helps sales reps close deals by automating document generation and payment processing on top of CRMs. Founded by Mauricio Quiguela (a serial founder with 2 exits), the company started in Brazil two years ago and expanded to the US market in May. By implementing revenue operations methodology and aligning all departments around global KPIs (15% monthly MRR growth, <2% churn), they doubled their ARR in one year and tripled their paying customers.

Rallyware is an enterprise SaaS platform that re-invents training by connecting learning activities with operational and performance data for remote and distributed workforces. The company generates over $7.5M ARR by focusing deeply on the direct selling niche (companies like Avon and Herbalife) rather than a broad market, and has successfully expanded into adjacent industries through proven case studies and industry credibility. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rallyware's core values-driven culture enabled the company to safely relocate 82 employees from Harkiv while maintaining business continuity and continued growth.

B is a visual builder SaaS for creating emails, landing pages, and other digital assets, founded in 2014 as a business unit within publicly-traded Italian company Growance. Starting with just a €500k credit line and bootstrapped growth, B has grown to $10M ARR through product-led growth, with half the revenue from white-label embeds in other software and half from direct customers. The company recently embraced freemium, which increased signups by 60% and active user growth from 17% to 55% year-over-year.

Surefire Local bootstrapped from a managed services company starting in 2010 to a SaaS platform for local marketing serving contractors, attorneys, and home services companies. After launching their SaaS product in 2017 and pivoting leadership in 2020, they grew to $26M ARR through outbound sales and sophisticated data infrastructure. The company raised $11.5M in venture debt (starting with $1M in 2016) while retaining founder control, positioning for a $125-150M exit.

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.