Own Pain Startups

OrderMark, founded by 26-year-old Alex Cantree in January 2017, solves the problem of managing multiple online ordering platforms for restaurants by consolidating them into a single dashboard and printer. Starting from $1,500/month in November 2017, the company grew to $100,000/month in revenue with 1,000 paying restaurants averaging $100-150/month, achieving less than 2% monthly churn. The company has raised $12.6 million in capital (including a $9.5 million Series A in September) and employs 60 people across LA and Denver.

Connect Insights is a bootstrapped social listening and analytics SaaS platform founded by Samir Narkar. Starting from side projects in 2013, the company reached profitability immediately and now serves 90 customers with ~$100K MRR and 90% annual logo retention. Growth has been driven primarily by word-of-mouth and online advertising, with a lean 26-person team across India.

Buzz Builder is a SaaS platform for sales reps and entrepreneurs to find and connect with customers using cold email campaigns and website analytics. Founded by Jake Atwood in 2013 after 5 years of development, the company is now bootstrapped and generating ~$100K MRR ($1.2M ARR) with 1,500 total seats across 700 customers. Growth has been driven by referrals, SEO, and the team dogfooding their own outbound email product.

Muscat is a marketing performance management SaaS platform founded in 2014 by Oscar Nelson and a co-founder. After bootstrapping for a year with $200k in personal savings, they launched a beta product in 2015 with $100k in revenue, then grew 5x to $500k in 2016. By mid-2017, they reached $100k MRR with 60 customers and a $25k average annual contract value, having raised $1.2M from angels and seed funds.

Your Social Voice is a done-for-you digital marketing agency founded by Kim Barrett that grew from near-zero to $450k in revenue in 2015 and is on track for $110k MRR by October 2016. The agency uses Facebook lead generation and content retargeting to drive leads for clients through tiered service packages ranging from $4,400 to $11k AUD monthly. With a 80% month-to-month retention rate and 25 active clients, Kim scaled the business using owned Facebook lead gen, two full-time salespeople on commission, and a distributed team across Perth, Philippines, and Africa.

Whiplash is an order fulfillment and shipping service for e-commerce companies founded by James Marks and two co-founders. The company generates approximately $100k in monthly recurring revenue from 157 customers, with October gross revenue of $330k including carrier fees. They are bootstrapped with three warehouses, recently joined 500 Startups, and are planning to raise $2M at an 8-10M cap valuation to scale their sales efforts.

Visible is a SaaS platform founded in 2014 that helps companies send investor updates and report KPIs to investors, team members, and stakeholders. Built originally as an internal tool at a venture fund, it now serves 600+ paying customers at $150/month, having just crossed $1M ARR with 200% YoY growth and exceptionally low 2.5% annual revenue churn. The company has raised $1.1M, maintains a lean 5-person distributed team, and has grown primarily through organic channels.

I'm Scalable is a digital marketing agency founded by Justin Brooke in August 2011 that manages online advertising campaigns for high-level clients including Trump University, Russell Brunson, and Stansbury Research. Operating as a lean team (primarily himself with contractors as needed), Justin manages approximately $1.5 million in monthly ad spend across clients and earns 5-15% commission on those budgets, generating over $90,000 in monthly revenue. The agency recently transitioned from struggling to reach $100K/month to rapidly scaling to $1.5M in managed spend, with plans to expand into media and content networks to capture higher margins.

Crawl Queue is an AI-powered SaaS platform that helps B2B companies and agencies identify their ideal customer profiles and create niche-specific content automatically. Founded by Harish Kumar in 2019 and fully bootstrapped with $350K of personal investment, the company grew from 5 beta customers earning $1,250/month to 350 paying customers generating $88,000/month in just over a year. The founder is planning to raise $1.5-2M at a $10M valuation while maintaining strong unit economics with only $7,500 in monthly operating expenses.

APSEN is an AI-powered SaaS platform that automates expense audits and back office finance functions for mid-to-large enterprises (500+ employees). Founded in 2013 by Anant Kail and co-founder Kunal Verma, the company achieved nearly $1M in ARR by 2015 with 22 enterprise customers at $50K average contract value, having raised $3M in venture capital. Their enterprise-focused cold sales approach yielded an $18K CAC with zero churn and strong product stickiness.

Hubstaff is a bootstrapped SaaS time tracking and activity monitoring platform launched in 2013 by Dave Nevo and his partner Jared. As of March 2016, the company had 2,600 paying customers with an average revenue per user of $34/month, had just crossed $88K MRR (approaching $1M ARR), and maintained a healthy 3.9% customer churn rate. Growth was driven primarily through content marketing (40K monthly blog views) and viral effects as contractors brought in their managers from other companies.

Better Agency is a CRM built specifically for independent insurance agents, launched in late 2019 after the founder realized agents were juggling 6-8 different platforms. The company bootstrapped to $1M ARR while serving 260 customers and maintaining only 2% monthly churn (24% annual), with net dollar retention above 105%. They just closed a $2.1M seed round at a $15M post-money valuation, with founders retaining 75-80% equity.

Skyhive is a machine learning-powered competency discovery tool founded by Sean Hinton that helps enterprises understand workforce capabilities, identify skill gaps, and create upskilling pathways. Launched in April 2017, the company scaled from zero to 17 enterprise customers generating ~$85k/month in revenue through inbound leads and the Singularity University network. The company raised $1.5M CAD in seed funding and expects to reach profitability in Q3 2019.

GNU is a bootstrapped marketing automation and email marketing SaaS platform launched in 2008 by Kim Albee, serving small and mid-sized businesses with deep WordPress integration. Currently operating at $85k MRR with ~500 customers paying an average of $170/month, the company has achieved healthy 42% YoY growth while maintaining less than 5% monthly churn through a partnership-driven growth strategy focused on niches like continuing education and entrepreneurship.

Waldo Labs is a recruiting automation platform founded by Taylor Bergen in July 2021 that charges a flat $7,000/month fee to handle a startup's top three hiring roles. The bootstrapped team of four has grown from $35,000 MRR one year ago to $84,000 MRR today with 12 active clients, achieving a 40% hire rate on first candidate submissions and maintaining ~52% diversity hires. The company is highly profitable with ~$40,000 monthly net revenue reinvested into development, and has grown primarily through referrals and word-of-mouth.

FleetDrive360 is a cloud-based SaaS platform helping trucking companies manage FMCSA and DOT compliance. Founder Amkaram Chandani, a 25-year tech veteran, built the product after running his own 20-truck trucking business and identifying a critical gap—no integrated compliance solution existed. Since launching in August 2022, the company has grown to 700+ paying customers managing 1,400+ drivers, adding 200-300 new customers monthly through cold calling, with a ~$1M run rate and targets of $3M in 2023.

Massive is a data-as-a-service SaaS platform that helps large CPG companies like Procter & Gamble and Nestlé with product strategy management by transforming public e-commerce data into actionable insights. Founded in 2019 by Gianluca Ruggiero, a 20-year consulting veteran, the company grew from $40k/month to $83k/month in one year and has reached a $1M run rate while remaining bootstrapped with a lean team of seven.

Packet Zoom is a mobile networking SaaS company founded in 2013 that optimizes mobile application performance in areas with poor network connectivity. CEO Shlomi Gian joined in mid-2016 when the company was pre-revenue and has grown it to ~$1M ARR with 68 customers through enterprise sales and strategic partnerships with CDN companies. The company plans to scale rapidly through partnerships with resellers and CDN partners, targeting millions in ARR by end of 2017.

SoloSuit helps consumers fight debt collection lawsuits by allowing them to generate legal response documents for free, then paying $197 to have an attorney review and file the document. Started in 2018 as a free service during law school, the company pivoted to a paid filing service in 2019 and has grown to process 400 cases per month ($80k/month revenue) through almost entirely SEO-driven customer acquisition. The team of 6 recently raised less than $1 million in seed funding from Y Combinator to scale engineering and automate filing across thousands of U.S. courts.

Event Espresso is a WordPress plugin and SaaS platform that allows users to sell tickets to events, positioning itself as an Eventbrite alternative. Seth Schultz launched the plugin in 2009 to solve his wife's scrapbooking class ticketing needs, and after reaching $2,000/month on his own, he quit his job in 2011 when the business grew to $20,000/month. Today, the bootstrapped company generates $80,000/month from 20,000 paying customers across two platforms (the WordPress plugin and their SaaS offering EventSmart), processing over 100 million in ticket sales per month.