How Startups Grow with other

Firegang Dental Marketing is a dental marketing agency founded by Jacob Puhl that operates through an apprenticeship model. Corey Ames was brought on as an apprentice and is now preparing to take over as CEO, demonstrating a unique business succession and talent development approach.

Blackbelt Commerce is a productized service business founded by Tristan King. The company specializes in generating business ideas for entrepreneurs, particularly focused on productized service models that can be started quickly with minimal capital. Tristan has appeared on the Tropical MBA podcast multiple times sharing ideas and strategies for starting service businesses.

ConvertPlayer is a marketing technology company founded by Clay Collins, who was also involved with LeadPages, the leading landing page software platform. The company was discussed in a Tropical MBA podcast episode where Clay shared insights about the company's growth and their decision to pursue venture capital funding.

Atomic is a startup studio founded by Jack Abraham (who previously sold Milo to eBay for $75M at age 24) that creates multiple companies per year by identifying real problems across his portfolio and personal experiences rather than brainstorming. The studio has generated numerous successful exits and companies like Hymns (now public), Bungalow, Homebound, and Replicant, operating across healthcare, PropTech, FinTech, education, AI, and marketplaces. The studio is strategically selective, launching only 10-12 companies annually despite maintaining a list of 600+ potential ideas.

Trends is a business ideas newsletter and SaaS platform that helps operators execute on ideas. Recently launched Trends Deals, a feature providing exclusive discounts on business tools and services to subscribers, with around 100 deals available including partnerships with startups like SendEats and DEEL.

Toggle AI is a fintech platform that provides predictive analytics and screening tools for investors. The company has attracted notable investors including legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who credits the platform as a valuable multi-discipline screening mechanism for identifying investment opportunities and understanding what drives stock movements.

f.ink is an emerging tech incubator founded by Furcon (former CTO of AppLovin, which IPO'd at ~$20B valuation) that invests in young engineers building on cutting-edge technologies. Rather than a traditional startup with revenue metrics, f.ink operates as an investment/mentorship vehicle where Furcon provides capital, technical expertise, and intensive hands-on collaboration through a Discord community of founders exploring hardware+ML, crypto/DeFi, and other frontier technologies.

Ryan Beagleman co-founded Biz Now Media, a real estate-focused newsletter and media business similar to The Hustle, which he grew from 4-5 people to 80 employees with $7M in profit before selling for approximately $60M in cash. Simultaneously, he co-founded Summit Series (a $20M revenue conference business) and acquired Powder Mountain, a 10,000-acre ski resort, using $50M raised through pre-sold land to community members. His approach was obsessively process-driven and bootstrap-focused, emphasizing operational excellence, systematic hiring with custom tests, and building strong company culture without outside capital.

MoePoints is an online course and consultation service founded by Moe, an expert in airline points and credit card rewards maximization. The service teaches entrepreneurs and high-spending businesses how to earn significant cash back (up to $350,000+ annually) through strategic credit card usage, which is largely tax-free. The business operates as a course with hand-to-hand consultation model.

Everly Well is a direct-to-consumer blood testing company founded by Julia Cheek, a former management consultant at Deloitte with an MBA from Harvard. Started five years ago despite nearly universal doubt from her network, the company targets women aged 25-45 who struggle to get meaningful health testing through traditional healthcare channels. Cheek's personal experience spending over $2,500 on fragmented blood tests without clear results or communication from doctors motivated her to create a more accessible testing solution.

Shortspift Capital is a company acquisition and management firm founded by Kevin McArdle that acquires profitable, bootstrapped internet businesses—typically from solo founders or small teams—and scales them using business discipline, operational expertise, and capital. In just over two years, the company has acquired 28 businesses, ranging from small passive-income ventures to larger deals in the $1M–$10M range, offering founders an alternative exit path beyond VC-backed unicorn dreams.

SaaS Ads Studio is software that combines professional AI tools with ad agency expertise to help SaaS companies generate Google Ads campaigns, write ad copy, and optimize specifically for SaaS. Founder Max Sinclair, a long-time microconf attendee, built it to eliminate the choice between expensive agencies and outdated DIY learning. The product aims to get users to a profitable Google Ads engine in around six months.

Routable is an affiliate management SaaS platform founded by Laura Sprinkle, who brings nearly a decade of experience in affiliate marketing and management. The company enables businesses to create and manage affiliate programs to generate more leads and revenue. Laura presented at MicroConf Europe 2025 in Istanbul, sharing her expertise in affiliate program optimization with the bootstrapped founder community.

Seinwell is an electronic signature SaaS product founded by Ruben Gomez, a 16-year veteran of bootstrapped software companies. In this podcast interview, Gomez discusses key misconceptions in the bootstrap SaaS community, including the myth that founders never need to sell their companies, the 'built differently' excuse for avoiding uncomfortable marketing work, and the overattribution of success to luck rather than systematic effort.

ThreadLive is a freemium B2B SaaS product designed as a Chrome extension for Gmail that lets sales, procurement, and project teams manage emails in a workspace with planned collaboration features. The founder faces the classic challenge of marketing an unknown product category with a low-touch freemium model ($20/month after 2 months) and no existing search volume for the problem they're solving.

Session Lab is a bootstrapped SaaS product helping facilitators and team leaders design and deliver workshops through drag-and-drop agenda planning and a library of workshop activities. Founded 10 years ago as a side project before going full-time, the company is now 13 people, fully remote across multiple countries, growing profitably. The interview focuses on their strategies for keeping remote teams engaged through daily async check-ins, weekly alignment calls, bi-weekly all-hands, monthly social events, and twice-yearly team retreats.

TypeDesk is a template builder and text expander for entrepreneurs and small teams. The founder Mike shared that while the product has low churn and high stickiness once users invest time creating templates, the main challenge is getting new users to value quickly given the technical nature of the product and unique needs of each company.

Nugget.one was a community and database platform created by Justin Vincent to curate and organize startup ideas. Over several years, Vincent gathered 4,000 different business ideas from mastermind friends and his own ideation process. The platform served as a testing ground for evaluating which ideas had potential, helping Vincent refine his own criteria for what makes a good startup fit for a solo bootstrapper versus ambitious teams or VC-backed ventures.

Bluetik is a SaaS product founded by Mike Tabor that has been in development since 2013 (launched to market in 2017). Despite years of operation, the product has never supported Tabor full-time and has remained on a slow growth trajectory. After an unsuccessful 18-month merger attempt with another company that ultimately fell through, Tabor is committing to a 90-day marketing-focused plan to determine if the product can gain traction or if he should move on to other projects.

Adii Pienaar is a multi-exit founder (WooThemes/WooCommerce sold to Automattic; Convercio sold to Campaign Monitor in 2019) who has launched Cogsy, an e-commerce SaaS tool. He recently published 'Life Profitability: A New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success,' a philosophical framework for building businesses that enhance rather than compromise personal wellbeing. Rather than pursuing coaching, speaking, or investing full-time post-exits, he chose to return to founding because he loves the work and missed building teams, applying his evolved understanding of life profitability to his new venture.