Own Pain Startups

Book in a Box is a publishing service founded in 2015 that helps busy professionals and speakers write and publish books without spending years writing. By interviewing authors and converting their spoken content into professionally published books, they've grown to work with 500 authors in 2.5 years, generating $11.3 million in cumulative revenue with no debt or VC funding. They've scaled to 30 full-time team members and 100+ freelancers, averaging 25-30 new books per month.

First Blood is a gaming platform built on blockchain that allows amateur gamers to compete against each other for money. The company conducted one of the fastest ICOs in crypto history in September 2016, raising approximately $5 million in under 5 minutes by selling 465,000 ether at $11 per token. The team liquidated 80% of the raised ether (372,250 tokens) immediately to fund operations, converting roughly $4 million into USD for salaries, marketing, and platform development.

Christoph Jentzsch, a theoretical physicist and early Ethereum contributor, co-founded Sloc.it in 2015 to enable decentralized sharing economy through blockchain and IoT integration. After learning hard lessons from the failed DAO project, he pivoted to building software that sits on top of IoT devices (like smart locks and EV charging stations), allowing asset owners to receive payments via smart contracts. The company raised $2M in seed funding in early 2017 and deployed its solution on over 1,000 EV charging stations.

Foursquare transformed from a hot consumer social network (valued at $650M in 2013) into an enterprise location intelligence powerhouse under CEO Jeff Glick's leadership starting in 2016. The company monetized its 70,000 free developer community through a tiered SaaS licensing model based on API calls, with over 90% of revenue now coming from B2B customers including Fortune 500 companies, tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and ride-sharing platforms like Uber. Their Pilgrim technology, built on nearly 12 billion cumulative check-ins (7 million per day), enables contextual mobile marketing and real-time foot traffic analysis that has made Foursquare an essential infrastructure layer in apps across the globe.

Cameron Harald is a business growth consultant who coaches high-level CEOs and executives to scale their companies. Starting with a $80,000 annual retainer as his baseline fee (doubling for larger clients like Sprint's second-in-command), he has helped companies like Justix grow from $80 million to $250 million in revenue over four years. He also generates income through book royalties (50,000 copies of "Meeting Suck" sold in the first year), speaking fees ($30,000 per engagement, up from $7,500), and equity stakes in portfolio companies.

Bugsnag is a B2B SaaS crash monitoring platform founded by James Smith in February 2013 that helps companies detect and fix errors in their software applications. After bootstrapping to profitability in 6-9 months with $4.5K MRR, they raised $9.5M in venture capital (Series A from Benchmark for $7.2M) and grew to 4,000 paying customers and 60,000 total users. The company has achieved over $2M ARR with healthy metrics including sub-1% logo churn and net negative revenue churn, growing primarily through word-of-mouth and freemium adoption.

Poseidon Asset Management is a venture capital firm founded by Emily Paxia and her brother Morgan in 2013, focused exclusively on investing in the cannabis industry. The fund has grown from $20 million to approximately $25 million under management, making late seed and early Series A investments while achieving a 40-44% internal rate of return over 3.5 years. With 30 active companies in their portfolio spanning business technology, agriculture technology, and consumer engagement solutions, the firm targets the rapidly growing cannabis market that Emily saw as a significant white space of opportunity.

Miracle is a SaaS platform launched in 2012 that enables large retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Urban Outfitters to operate their own third-party vendor marketplaces on their websites. The company has raised $22M in equity funding and serves over 125 customers across 25 countries, using a percentage-based pricing model tied to incremental revenue generated through the marketplace. Adrian Nossenbaum bootstrapped the initial development with proceeds from his previous exit (Split Games to Fnac) and built a 160-person team focused on enterprise B2B sales with a sub-one-year payback period target.

Hirewire is a mobile-first marketplace connecting job seekers and restaurants/hourly employers, founded by Joe Wynn in 2015 after he sold his previous company Campus Special for $25M. In their first year beta in Atlanta (Jan 2016), they acquired 4,000+ employers, 100,000+ job seekers, and placed 20,000 people in jobs, with over 50% organic growth. They've raised $4.1M and charge employers $50-$100/month per location, expecting to reach ~$200k/month in revenue soon.

Jumeo is a SaaS platform providing trusted identity verification services (ID verification, identity verification, and document verification) primarily for merchants in the sharing economy, fintech, and online gaming sectors. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Stephen Stude since 2015, the company has raised $60 million and serves 350-400 customers across 40 countries with a 1,500-person team. Growing 46% year-over-year, Jumeo processed 26 million identity verifications in 2016 and is on track to exceed 30 million in 2017.

Riskalyze is a SaaS platform launched in 2011 by Aaron Klein that helps financial advisors align client portfolios with their actual risk tolerance using a quantitative "risk number" score. The company achieved $24M in total capital raised (mostly bootstrapped until late-stage institutional funding), serves 19,000+ paying financial advisors at $145/month base pricing, and maintains industry-leading 90%+ annual retention by focusing on solving the behavioral finance problem of investors making poor short-term decisions driven by fear and greed.

Shoppable is a SaaS platform that enables purchases from anywhere consumers discover products online by bringing checkout experiences to social media, blogs, videos, and other digital channels. Founded by Heather Marie in 2011 and officially launched in 2012, the company has grown to 20 employees in New York, 438 merchants, 2,000+ brands, and generates well over $500k per month in revenue with customers paying $10k-$90k annually.

Simplify Inc. is a HIPAA-compliant SaaS platform founded by orthodontist Ryan and tech M&A veteran Zach Hungate that helps healthcare providers communicate securely and improve patient experience. Accepted into Angelpad in 2015 after both founders gave up six-figure salaries, they've raised approximately $3.5M and grown to serve over 1,000 healthcare provider offices with 98% annual retention and customers paying between $150-$200 per month.

Danavir Sariya, 22, launched Copymonk to teach direct response copywriting through online courses after gaining 5 years of freelance copywriting experience. In his first two months, he generated $6,000 in course sales, with a standout 4-day promotional campaign earning $4,000 from 12 emails to a 1,700-person email list, resulting in 40 course sales at $99 (50% off from $200).

Stowaway Cosmetics is a venture-backed direct-to-consumer cosmetics brand founded by Julie Frederick that creates right-sized makeup products (half the size and half the price of prestige cosmetics) targeting women who don't finish traditional full-size products. Launched in February 2015 after raising $1.5M in seed funding led by Gary Vaynerchuk and Metamorphic Ventures, the company has sold over 100,000 units in 18 months with impressive 40% repeat purchase rates and 80-90% gross margins through their DTC model.

Steve Chu runs a profitable online education business through his blog mywifequitterjob.com, which launched in 2011 and now generates seven-figure annual revenue. He drives sales through a systematic funnel combining organic SEO traffic, email nurturing sequences, monthly webinars, and Facebook retargeting ads, converting 10-13% of live attendees at $1,100 per lifetime course membership. His approach demonstrates the power of content-driven, list-based businesses with minimal ad spend ($500/week for webinar promotion) yielding $40-70K per webinar.

Concept Drop is a marketplace that connects businesses with vetted designers to create marketing materials (presentations, one-pagers) on-demand. Founded by Phil Alexander in 2012 as a side project, the company grew from a couple thousand dollars in first-year revenue to over $300k in 2015 and closed a $1.1M Series A in mid-2016, bringing total funding to $1.35M. The platform serves over 300 leading brands with a network of less than 100 vetted freelancers, targeting director-level and higher marketing teams at mid-market and enterprise companies.

Corey McGregor is a 37-year-old fitness entrepreneur who co-founded Muscle Farm, which went public and reached $168 million in revenue before he left to pursue his personal brand. He launched CoreyGFitness.com in December 2015, generating $34,000 in first-month revenue with a $9/month membership model offering fitness programming, diet plans, and exclusive content to thousands of members across 50+ countries. His traction comes from his personal credibility as an 11-time magazine cover model, powerlifter, and fitness content creator with nearly 200k Instagram followers.

Carissa Hill built a Facebook marketing course teaching small businesses how to acquire customers through Facebook. After launching in February 2015 with $100k annual revenue, she discovered Facebook Live in June 2016 and dramatically accelerated growth, generating $105k in sales in one week and $180k in June 2016 alone. She now replicates her Facebook Live model across multiple partner groups, converting warm audiences at 50% rates.

Pear 3D is an augmented reality app that lets consumers visualize home furnishings in their actual spaces before purchasing. Founded by Andrew Commendoni in 2015, the company pivoted from a B2B architecture model to a B2C consumer model with manufacturer partnerships, generating revenue through CPM and CPC advertising. With over 2,000 products in their catalog from 15 major manufacturers and ~20,000 monthly object placements, they project $1.5M in annual revenue.