Own Pain Startups

Ryan Pahl is COO of Community Co, an umbrella company managing multiple professional communities including YEC (Young Entrepreneurs Council), Founder Society, and Forbes Councils. The company generates revenue through annual membership fees ($500 for Founder Society, $1,200 for Forbes Councils) and has grown to 50+ employees across Boston and the country. They combine proprietary technology with human curation to connect members with peers, business resources, events, and media opportunities.

Hold Your Hunches is a patented line of fashion leggings with integrated compression and shapewear, created by mothers Aaron Bickley and Jenny Greer. After building to $300K in two years through direct-to-consumer online sales, they appeared on Shark Tank Season 5 and became the first company to score a deal with both Lori and Barbara, resulting in a massive spike. They grew to $1.5M in revenue in 2014, with 90% still from direct online sales and 15% from their new Amazon store launched in April 2014.

At Minute, founded by Nils Madison (formerly at Apple's exploratory design group), makes a sensor called Point that monitors homes using sound and environmental data analysis instead of cameras, preserving privacy. The company raised $300,000 from angel investors including notable figures like Hampus Jacobson and Sean O'Sullivan, plus $250,000 from a successful Kickstarter campaign that achieved a 7% conversion rate. They've sold 4,000 units at $99 with plans to scale production while iterating on early feedback.

June is a recruiting marketplace founded by serial entrepreneur Lane Campbell that connects recruiters with candidates willing to take calls for payment. The platform addresses the high cost of hiring (which Lane found had ballooned to $26,000 per hire) by letting recruiters search for candidates by skill and location, then pay them directly for phone interviews. Though the initial launch between August-November 2015 didn't resonate with the technical community as hoped, Lane is relaunching with new partnerships and positioning the platform as a solution to the broken recruiting economy.

12 Labs, co-founded by Ashu Dubey, is a data science-powered weight loss application called Applays that has achieved over 500,000 downloads with approximately 75,000 monthly active users as of early 2016. The company raised approximately $1 million in a priced round led by Salesforce founder Mark Benioff in 2014, focusing on solving the engagement problem that plagues most health apps. While the free app generates no direct revenue, 12 Labs monetizes through an engagement platform for wearables that powers Applays and has shown a 7x improvement in user retention.

Phenom is a community platform for young athletes (13-18) to share their athletic gear and game stories, launched in September 2014 by college athlete Brian Vernon and co-founder Mike. With 60,000 registered users and 25,000 monthly actives, they've built a B2B2C model where brands like Wilson Sporting Goods pay for grassroots athlete product feedback and consumer behavior insights. The team raised $700k and operates lean with a 4-person core team in San Francisco through 500 Startups Batch 16.

Chris Guillebeau is a bestselling author and entrepreneur who has built a diversified business around content creation, books, and online communities. His book 'The $100 Startup' sold over 300,000 copies, generating multiple six figures in annual royalty income, with his total business split 50/50 between traditional book royalties and online products (membership sites, courses, guides). His primary growth driver has been relationship-building with influencers and his community of 100,000-130,000 email subscribers.

Mailbird is a desktop email client and unified communication tool built by CEO Andrea Lubier, based in Bali, Indonesia. Launched in 2012, the company has grown to manage over 1 million email accounts with approximately 500,000 paying customers and $500,000 in annual recurring revenue. The business uses a freemium model with lifetime purchase and annual subscription options, leveraging flash sales and smart pricing structure to achieve 20% conversion rates on their website.

iMoji is a sticker platform that enables users to create and share custom emojis across messaging apps. Founded by Daniel Gruselowski and Jason Stein with four other co-founders, the company raised $2M in seed funding and grew to over 1 billion impressions per month by December 2015. They monetize through partnerships with messaging apps and plan native advertising as their primary revenue model.

Matthew Berman built Sonar (sendsonar.com) to enable customer communication via SMS and messaging platforms. Starting from a prototype built in 6 weeks nights-and-weekends, he raised $1M in seed funding and grew to 120 paying customers with 35% month-over-month revenue growth in 2015, targeting $1M ARR by end of 2016 for Series A.

Cohesity is an enterprise storage company founded by Mohit Rahn, the inventor of hyperconvergence, in June 2013. The company raised $15M Series A from Sequoia and Wing Ventures in November 2013, and $55M Series B in May 2015, achieving a pre-money valuation between $150M-$500M. As of October 2015 (two months after GA), the company had generated under $10M in revenue.

Rumber is a manufacturing company founded in 1991 that produces composite boards from recycled tires and plastic for industrial applications including military, oil field, transportation, and marine industries. Brian Adams acquired the company in 2012 for $5 million when the original owner became ill, and has since grown it into an efficiency machine producing 30,000 pounds per day with a 2016 revenue goal of $10 million.

Shelf Media is a digital-only publishing company founded by Margaret Brown in 2010 that creates niche magazines including Shelf Unbound (indie book reviews with 125,000 readers across 75+ countries), Middle Shelf, and newly launched Podster (about podcasts). The company generates revenue through advertising and competitions, with Shelf Unbound alone generating approximately $120,000 annually from ad sales at $20,000 per bi-monthly issue, plus $40,000 annually from a book competition with 1,000 entries per year.

BestSelf is a beautifully designed undated journal that helps people set 13-week goals and build daily habits through a structured framework. The founders, Catherine and Alan, validated their concept on Kickstarter (raising $322,696 and selling 10,000+ units) before launching their Shopify store on January 1, 2016, generating $16,721.43 in sales within 12 days. With 70% profit margins and a highly engaged email list of 19,355 subscribers, they're scaling rapidly with virtual support while maintaining their primary focus on the physical product.

Angelo Ramora built Ohio Cash Flow, a real estate investment company that buys distressed properties, renovates them, tenants them, and sells them to passive investors across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Starting from a failed highly-leveraged approach at age 23 that lost $3-4k monthly, he pivoted to cash-flow focused investing and scaled to 7 closed deals generating $210k in profit by January 2016, with a goal of 250+ deals that year. The company operates two offices with 10 full-time staff and provides end-to-end property management services to investors seeking passive real estate income.

Project Repat turns customers' old t-shirts into quilts made in the USA with recycled plastic bottle fleece. Starting with just $25k in seed funding and $8k in the bank, Nathan Rothstein and his co-founder scaled from struggling with a Groupon viral moment in August 2012 (selling 2,000 quilts in a week) to $750k in revenue by November 2015. They aggressively scaled through Facebook ads and email marketing (Klaviyo), reinvesting heavily into customer acquisition to dominate the blue ocean market of affordable t-shirt quilts.

Gusto is a SaaS platform helping small businesses manage payroll, HR, benefits, and health insurance. Founded by Josh Reeves (who previously co-founded Unwrap, acquired in 2010), Gusto has grown to over 25,000 paid customers with a 98% conversion rate from free trial to paid status, serving companies with 1-100 employees at $29/month plus $6 per employee.

Lila Zimmerman is a 19-year-old University of Maryland sophomore who built Fresh Fit and Fearless, a content-driven lifestyle brand centered on plant-based vegan eating. She grew her Instagram account from zero to nearly 15,000 followers in approximately one year (with serious effort starting at 6 months) through consistent quality content, strategic hashtags, and share-for-share partnerships. Her monetization strategy includes a $14.99 recipe e-book that has generated approximately $900 in sales, plus sponsored posts ($100 per two posts) and free product partnerships from 20-30 companies monthly.

Kristi Zouki left a six-figure salary at Procter & Gamble to found Knowledge Hound, a SaaS platform that solves 'corporate amnesia' by making companies' market research searchable and discoverable. The platform had grown with double-digit growth rates for three years by 2016, with a goal to hit $5 million in annual revenue by the end of that year.

Sue Zimmerman built a multi-million dollar business selling online Instagram marketing courses and coaching services. Her flagship "Insta Results" course priced at $997 generated approximately $67,000 from 67 sales in one year, though total course revenue exceeded $300,000+ when including her lower-priced offerings. Her primary growth channels were speaking engagements, podcast interviews, and strategic email list building (4,900 subscribers from a single strategy guide funnel), focusing on relationship building before conversion.