Own Pain Startups

Oramed Pharmaceuticals, founded in 2006 by Ndave Kydron, developed proprietary technology to deliver insulin orally rather than through injections, targeting the massive diabetes market. The company went public on NASDAQ in 2013 pre-revenue and secured a major partnership with a Chinese pharmaceutical firm that paid $50 million ($12M investment + $38M licensing deal) while conducting FDA trials for approval.

WatchIt is an enterprise video creation platform launched in 2012 that combines automation, creative tools, and licensed content to help brands and publishers create short-form videos in minutes. Founded by George Ginsberg, the company has raised $29M and serves over 200 enterprise clients with minimum first-year ACV of $50k and lifetime value of $300k+, achieving healthy sub-6-month payback periods through content marketing and direct sales.

Zuberance is an SaaS platform for advocate marketing that helps brands activate their existing customers to become brand advocates. Founded by Rob Fugetta in 2008 after his decade at Apple, the company has worked with 250+ brands including Intuit, Lyft, and Nido Robotics, with 100+ brands paying monthly subscriptions averaging $10k-$20k per month. The company generates over $1M in monthly revenue with 80% annual retention and a 6-month payback period.

Volio is a social trading platform that enables groups of friends, family, and colleagues to invest together while splitting trading fees. Founded by Thomas Beatty, a recovering investment banker, the platform addresses barriers to entry by lowering costs, enabling diversification, and leveraging collective intelligence. After raising $5 million and launching soft in March of last year, Volio has attracted hundreds of real-money users and is now expanding into crypto and exploring white-label partnerships with credit unions and community banks.

BioWave is a medical device company founded by Brad Smith in 2007 that uses electrical signal technology to provide FDA-cleared, non-opioid pain relief. The company sells professional-grade devices ($3,500) to sports teams and hospitals, consumer home units ($895), and recurring revenue through disposable gel pads ($15 per pair) and high-margin percutaneous needle electrodes ($150 per pair). With 16 employees, 90+ pro sports teams as customers, presence in 34 VA hospitals, and a growing network of 70+ distributors, BioWave is projected to cross $5 million in annual revenue.

Lucky Orange is a SaaS conversion optimization suite founded in 2014 by Danny Weitzman and Brian Gruber that helps websites track visitor behavior and improve conversion rates. The bootstrapped Kansas City-based company serves 15,000+ paying customers across diverse verticals with a diversified revenue model where partnerships account for approximately 40% of revenue. Growing 80-100% annually with 3% monthly logo churn and a healthy two-month CAC payback period, Lucky Orange demonstrates sustainable unit economics despite being deliberately lean at nine team members.

ChatMeter is an online reputation and local SEO SaaS platform founded in 2009 by Colin Holmes that helps large multi-location businesses manage their presence and reputation across review sites like Google Maps and Yelp. After bootstrapping to $2M ARR in the first 4-5 years with less than $100k in initial funding, the company pivoted to enterprise-focused deals and has grown to approximately $10M ARR with 90% annual retention. The company serves hundreds of enterprise brands managing hundreds of thousands of individual locations across the country.

LogicBay is a partner relationship management (PRM) software company founded in 2003 by John Panna Chone, built from a spun-out US government contract worth $3M that couldn't transfer to an acquiring company. After 15 years of bootstrapping and selective fundraising ($2.5M equity, $3M debt), the company serves ~60 customers with 99% renewal rates, 5% annual logo churn, and generates $10-15M ARR with 10-15% YoY growth. The business focuses on wallet expansion within existing Fortune 500 customers rather than new account acquisition, achieving 90%+ net revenue retention and profitability at 10% EBITDA.

Zendesk is a customer service platform that revolutionized the industry by making complex support software simple and accessible. Founded in 2007, it grew to over 2,000 employees across multiple offices globally, achieving profitability through a product-led growth model that attracted 10,000 customers without a sales team before IPO in 2015. The company continues to expand through acquisitions like Outbound and internal innovations like Answer Bot, focusing on increasing wallet share with existing customers while moving upmarket and exploring new buyer groups.

Best Food Trucks is a marketplace platform helping food truck operators book premium locations and enabling consumers to order ahead while reducing wait times. Founded by Kevin Davis (who previously sold GeekAtoo for $20M in 2016) after merging with his co-founder's existing food truck booking platform, the company has 1,000 trucks across 10 cities and processed $1M in transactions in 2017. The business operates on multiple revenue streams: lot booking fees ($5 per $50 transaction), SaaS subscriptions for truck operators ($149/month), and convenience fees for customers.

ShareThrough, founded by Dan Greenberg in 2008, is a SaaS platform that powers in-feed native advertising for major publishers like Rolling Stone, Vice, ABC News, and Disney. The company charges on a SaaS model (CPM-based at 25-50 cents per thousand impressions) plus a revenue share on programmatic ad spend. With 200 employees, 1,200 publisher customers, and processing approximately $250 million in annual gross ad spend, ShareThrough has raised $30 million and generates $25+ million in annual revenue, positioning itself as an alternative to the Google-Facebook duopoly in digital advertising.

Plot.ly is a charting library SaaS founded in 2013 that serves data scientists and developers with visualization tools for both cloud and on-premise deployment. Starting from $300k in their first year of sales (2014), they've grown to approximately $2M ARR with 3,000+ cloud customers and ~300 on-prem customers by doubling revenue year-over-year. Their growth has been driven entirely by organic/SEO strategies built around exceptional documentation and product quality, with minimal paid acquisition spend and a healthy sub-60-day payback period.

SomeAll is a free analytics platform that helps small businesses consolidate data from multiple sources (Shopify, Etsy, PayPal, ad accounts, social media) and provides automated recommendations and actions to improve revenue. Founded by serial entrepreneur Dane Atkinson in 2012, the platform has grown to serve approximately 500,000 small businesses with over 100% quarter-over-quarter growth in new user signups, entirely through word-of-mouth and partner visibility. With $25M raised and a team of under 50 based primarily in New York, SomeAll is deliberately staying free to maximize adoption before introducing a monetization model.

WePay was founded by Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman in August 2008 as a group payments platform, but after struggling to monetize peer-to-peer payments, they pivoted to become a payments API for platform businesses like marketplaces, crowdfunding sites, and SaaS companies. Growing to low single-digit billions in total payment volume by 2016 and nearly $400M in reported acquisition price by JP Morgan Chase in October 2017, WePay became one of the most successful fintech APIcompanies by focusing on providing valuable payment infrastructure to software platforms rather than competing in the saturated consumer payments space.

Outbound was an event-based customer communication platform founded by Josh Weisberg and Drew in 2013 to solve their own pain at GetAround. Rather than using email lists, it triggered messages based on customer actions inside products. The company stayed lean with just 5 people, grew to over 100 customers doing well north of $30k MRR, and was acquired by Zendesk in May 2017 for significant leverage on their $2.1M raise.

Real Content Network is an ad tech SaaS platform launched in 2015 that automates native advertising campaigns across publisher networks. Founded by David Beniollio, the company packages premium content with advertising and distributes it to multiple publishers via a revenue-share model (30-50% take rate). Growing from $30k/month in 2016 to $90k/month by December 2017 on $300k in monthly transaction volume, the bootstrapped six-person team in Canada now partners with 150 publishers.

Ivy is a membership-based social university founded in 2012 that brings together 20,000 inspired individuals across 7 cities for learning, growth, and impact. Members pay $1,000 annually (with tiered pricing for under/over 35), and the company generates approximately $10M in ARR through membership dues, ticketed events, and brand partnerships. Growing at 100% year-over-year with strong retention (below 10% churn) and minimal paid acquisition (less than $10k/month), Ivy leverages word-of-mouth and personal interviews ($400 CAC) to build a highly engaged community.

Bitnami, founded in 2013 (building on predecessor BitRock since 2005), provides a catalog of over 140 packaged applications across 14 different platforms for leading cloud vendors like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. With over one million deployments per month, the company generates revenue by selling to cloud vendors directly and is launching a new productized offering for corporate IT departments in Q1. Almost entirely bootstrapped with $2M from Y Combinator and convertible notes, Bitnami has grown to 75 employees across San Francisco and distributed globally.

Influencer is the largest product review platform outside of Amazon with 4 million micro-influencers and 21 million product reviews. The company evolved from a market research panel (2010) into a social media-driven product discovery platform connecting major brands like Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal, and Estée Lauder with consumer reviewers. They've raised $9M in funding (friends and family ~$1M, Series A $8M from Ebates in 2015) and are tracking to ~$15-18M in annual revenue with healthy repeat customer relationships.

Malwarebytes is a cybersecurity SaaS company founded by Marsen Klazinski in 2008 that provides malware remediation and protection software for consumers and businesses. Starting with a free remediation tool and $40 annual subscription model, the company bootstrapped to $25 million in ARR before raising $80 million and achieving over $130 million ARR by 2017. The company has grown to 650+ employees with 3+ million consumer subscribers and 50,000+ business customers through word-of-mouth reputation and community-driven acquisition, maintaining profitability throughout its growth.