Own Pain Startups

Rocked is an e-commerce platform that optimizes the transaction moment—the critical point at checkout where brands can upsell or cross-sell products. Founded in 2012 by Bruce Buchanan (formerly of Jetstar), the company powers 3,000 enterprise clients across 16 countries with three revenue streams: advertising, product rev-share (distributed commerce), and SaaS. In 2021, Rocked achieved $170M in revenue with $90M gross profit, growing 35-40% year-over-year even through COVID's impact on travel and ticketing verticals.

Accuant is a digital identity and fraud prevention SaaS platform serving both SMB and enterprise customers globally, processing hundreds of millions of identity verifications annually. The company generates 60-70% of revenue from SaaS and uses a hybrid go-to-market combining large OEM partnerships and direct sales. Currently targeting 40-50% year-over-year revenue growth with 180 employees and net revenue retention above 100%.

Armbrust American is a US-based surgical mask and PPE manufacturer founded by Lloyd Armbrust in May 2020, reaching $10 million in revenue within six months during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lloyd raised $5 million in a weekend to build a vertically integrated manufacturing operation from polypropylene pellets to finished masks, achieving peak production of 1 million masks per day with a unit cost of 5 cents. The company pioneered a royalty-based investor structure and direct-to-consumer sales model that cuts out traditional middlemen in manufacturing distribution.

Raffle AI, founded in July 2018 by Suzanne Luritsen and a professor from DTU, provides AI-powered intelligent search tools for customer service automation. The company reduced customer service calls, live chats, and emails by 24% while saving employees 80% of internal search time. With 7 enterprise customers paying $35,000 annually on average (~$245k run rate), they've raised $3.5M across three rounds and are targeting $1.5M ARR by Q1-Q3 2021 to pursue a $10M Series A.

Silenz is a bootstrapped SaaS company providing anti-piracy license compliance and software monetization technology for on-premise software vendors. Founded by Ted Morocco (formerly of AWR Corporation, acquired by National Instruments for $57M+ earn-out) and Chris Louton in 2014, Silenz grew from $1M ARR in 2015 to $10M ARR target in 2020 with consistent 50-70% YoY growth, achieving profitability in 2018 and maintaining a sticky business model with 100% gross retention and 125% net revenue retention.

Doist, founded in 2007 by Amir Salihefendic as a side project, bootstrapped Todoist to $14M ARR with 200,000+ customers through native mobile apps and organic growth. The company remains fully remote, 100% bootstrapped, and profitable from early years, with founder declining acquisition offers to pursue a $100M revenue goal within five years. They recently launched Twist, an asynchronous communication tool, generating $600K annually.

Dan Martell founded SaaS Academy three years ago (around 2021) after building multiple venture-backed exits (Flowtown, Clarity.fm) and becoming deeply involved in angel investing. Starting from his personal YouTube channel where he shares founder advice, he scaled SaaS Academy into one of the largest B2B SaaS coaching businesses in the world, serving close to 3,000 paid founders through group coaching, training, and in-person events. The business model combines free content distribution with premium group coaching programs for founders doing $5M+ ARR.

RightKit is a bootstrapped social media automation platform built around four core tools (RightTag, RightWrite, RightForage, RightBoost) plus an API with 19 endpoints that help marketers automate hashtag generation, image tagging, and other repetitive tasks. Founded by Saul Fleischman in January 2012, the company has grown to 431,000 registered users from 20-25 million site visits, with the API now being the primary revenue driver after originally starting with RightTag as a browser extension.

Vaporware is a B2B SaaS consultancy founded in 2013 that helps entrepreneurs take their ideas to market using lean practices and fixed-budget, flexible-scope projects. The agency operates with specialized pods (product manager, designer, and developers) to build MVPs and test specific hypotheses, with projects ranging from $25K to $100K+. As of 2019, the agency had 8 employees and generated $1.2M in annual revenue, offering unique benefits like 40-hour work weeks and revenue-sharing programs.

Visibly is a search intelligence platform that helps brands understand their complete footprint across search results, including PR hits, e-commerce listings, ads, and reviews—not just their own website rankings. Founded by PR agency owner Chris Dickey, the product launched in beta in July 2020 with 1,000 free signups in three weeks after he spent 18 months and $800,000 developing it. Pre-revenue at launch, the team of 6 was burning $30-40k/month with plans to monetize via freemium model in fall 2020.

Veed is a bootstrapped online video editing platform founded by Saba Kanajad and co-founder Tim that has grown to $1.3M ARR in under 2 years. The company uses a freemium model with a watermark on free videos, driving conversions to paid plans ($15-$30/month), and has gained traction primarily through content marketing and SEO. With 5,500 customers, a team of 20, and consistent daily YouTube uploads, Veed has achieved profitability while reinvesting 30% of profits back into growth.

GitLab is a single-application DevOps platform used by over 100,000 organizations and 10,000 paying customers. The company has raised $468 million in total funding, with their latest Series E round of $268 million at a $2.75 billion post-money valuation, positioning them for an IPO or direct listing in 2020. GitLab demonstrates exceptional unit economics with 150%+ net revenue retention, 72% of ARR from enterprise customers, and plans to break $200M ARR by next year.

Rocket is a full-stack recruiting marketplace founded in late 2016 by Abhinav Agrawal that combines human recruiters with technology to help companies hire talent faster. The company charges a combination of subscription and performance-based fees (typically 20-30% of first-year salary), with customers averaging $80-100K annually and placing 100-1000+ employees per year. Growing from $600K in 2017 to $3M in 2018 to on-track $6M+ in 2019, Rocket has 100 customers, 30 team members, is cash flow positive, and is seeking a $7-10M Series A to expand to 5-10 new offices.

Workable is a SaaS recruiting platform used by 20,000 companies across 100 countries. The company has grown from 6,000 customers in May 2018 to 20,000 today, with ARR expected to reach approximately 30 million by year-end, representing 50-60% year-over-year growth. The platform helps employers find, evaluate, and manage hiring, with a focus on mid-market and SMB companies, and has facilitated nearly 1.5 million total hires.

Proleads was a B2B SaaS tool founded in 2010 that automated sales development through personalized email outreach at scale. After 8 years of operation with high churn issues, founder Anders Fredrickson acquired the Brisk.io technology in 2017 and joined the Alchemist Accelerator, eventually selling the company in February 2018 to Outbound Works for over $1.8M (more than 2x the ~$900k raised), with a mix of cash and stock.

Syncrotab is a SaaS presentation platform designed specifically for face-to-face business pitches, allowing presenters to display high-quality PDFs on clients' devices with annotation capabilities. Founded by David Talbot in 2015 with $120k in friends and family funding, the company has bootstrapped and secured a major investment bank to prepay over $200k to fund development, representing an unconventional go-to-market strategy focused entirely on landing one marquee customer before broader expansion. The team of 4 (founder plus 3-person dev team) is deliberately waiting to close this large enterprise deal before pursuing other sales, betting that success with the largest bank will unlock relationships with 20,000 wealth advisors.

Bombora is a B2B intent data platform built on a massive data cooperative with thousands of publishers (including Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, G2, Captera) that identifies companies actively researching products to buy. The bootstrapped company reached $30M+ in ARR in 2020 with 65% subscription revenue and ~2,000 customers, growing 35% YoY while recently expanding from enterprise (Fortune 1000) to mid-market customers at lower ACVs.

Stratified is a SaaS platform founded by Derek Wang in January 2015 that helps enterprises ingest, analyze, and visualize unstructured data using AI. After 5 years, the company has grown to 120 people globally, serves approximately 50 customers with an average contract value of $100,000-$200,000 annually, and generates approximately $6 million in ARR. The company demonstrates strong expansion economics with 120-130% net revenue retention and only 3.6% annual gross revenue churn.

Solution is an all-in-one marketing and experience automation platform built specifically for manufacturing and wholesale distribution SMBs. Founder Scott Snyder bootstrapped the platform with over $1 million of his own capital over 3 years of development, and is currently in early-adopter phase with 15 companies (10 in Singapore, 5 in Southern California) before converting them to paying customers in Q1, targeting $35-$113/month pricing.

Brex is a corporate credit card platform for startups founded by Enrique Dubugres and his co-founder after they sold Pagarme (the Stripe of Brazil) in September 2016. Launched through Y Combinator Winter 2017, Brex targets tech companies that can't access corporate credit without personal guarantees, offering higher limits, instant approval, and better product experience. The company generates revenue through interchange fees (0.5-3.5% per transaction) and has achieved 0% default rate while growing GMV 50-70% month-over-month on approximately $200M in raised capital.