free Startups

Will Robots Take My Job is a free web tool that analyzes job titles against a 2013 Oxford research report to predict automation risk. Built by Mubashar Iqbal and Tim Matar over 2 months and launched on Product Hunt, the site achieved 6 million page views in less than 3 weeks, demonstrating how a well-executed launch on Product Hunt can drive viral press coverage across major outlets like MSN and AOL.

ndLondon is a free quarterly meetup community for bootstrapped entrepreneurs and indie hackers in London, founded by Jislan Gayat in February 2018. Starting with just 5-10 people responding to a forum post, the meetup has grown to regularly attract 80-100 attendees through speaker-driven formats, workshops, and hands-on sessions that deliver actionable value. The meetup has become one of the largest in the Indie Hackers global meetup program, with notable success stories including attendees launching projects and even co-founders meeting at the events.

Free Code Camp is a non-profit online learning platform founded by Quincy Larson that has helped over 40,000 people learn to code and get jobs in tech companies. Operating with just 12 full-time staff and thousands of volunteers, it delivers an incredible product and community while maintaining a non-profit structure. In 2020, with a budget of $498,000, Free Code Camp delivered 1.3 billion minutes of learning (equivalent to 2,500 years of learning), or about 50 hours of learning per dollar spent.

My First Million is a podcast hosted by Sean Puri and Sam Parr, two serial entrepreneurs who discuss startup ideas and business opportunities. The show grew from entertainment content to becoming influential in the startup ecosystem, eventually being acquired by HubSpot. The hosts leverage their platform to build social capital, invest in startups through rolling funds and syndicates, and convert audience trust into financial opportunities.

Steph Smith launched 'S#it You Don't Learn in School' podcast by committing to a 30-day challenge of daily recording, editing, and production to test conviction and ability. She grew from 200 downloads per episode during the challenge to approximately 10,000-15,000 monthly downloads by leveraging her existing Twitter audience and repurposing tweets about episode topics into podcast promotion, achieving viral engagement (10,000+ likes on tweets) that drove substantial episode downloads.

ndhackers is a community platform and podcast for indie hackers and online builders, co-founded by Cortland Allen and his twin brother Channing Allen. Acquired by Stripe, the platform hosts a forum and podcast where founders discuss their ideas, opportunities, and growth strategies, with community events like founder conferences bringing members together.

Pioneer is a founder-scouting platform that identifies promising people working on interesting ideas around the world using psychometrics and machine learning, then creates and funds companies for them on the spot. Founded by Daniel (age 28), a former Apple executive and Y Combinator partner with angel investments in companies like Uber, Coinbase, and Figma, Pioneer operates as a venture capital generator rather than a traditional accelerator, having invested in approximately 90 people in its first year with check sizes in the tens of thousands of dollars. The company is partially funded by Daniel and investors including Stripe co-founders and Marc Andreessen.

The Hustle/The Move is a podcast created by entrepreneurs Sam Parr and Sean Cannell featuring unfiltered conversations about startups, business ideas, and market trends. With around 15 million downloads per year and aspiring to reach 100,000 daily listeners per episode, the show has built a loyal audience of engaged listeners who are inspired to start their own ventures based on ideas discussed on the podcast. The hosts leverage their existing networks and company exits (Sean sold to Twitch) to attract high-profile guests and have recently launched a venture fund to invest in companies featured or discussed on the show.

Clubhouse is an audio-based social app in beta that exploded in popularity among Silicon Valley tech executives and VCs in early 2021. The app allows users to join audio rooms and either speak on stage or listen as audience members, creating a real-time conversation experience. Despite rapid viral adoption among tech elites, the founders expressed skepticism about its long-term viability as a business, comparing it to similar failed apps like Blab and HQ Trivia.

Kelly Erb is a tax attorney who built a personal brand as 'Tax Girl' by creating accessible, non-political tax content on Twitter and Forbes. Her viral article on Trump's tax returns garnered over 200,000 views, demonstrating strong traction in tax education content. She monetizes through her podcast and likely consulting services, positioning herself as an expert in business taxation strategy.

The Hustle is a content media platform run by Sam Parr in partnership with HubSpot. The podcast is experiencing rapid growth with projections of reaching 400,000-500,000 monthly listeners growing to 1 million per month, contributing to HubSpot's broader content initiative targeting 100 million monthly audience across all channels. The business model is supported by advertising revenue and sponsorships.

The Hustle is a podcast that has grown to 600,000 monthly listens, up from 430,000 the previous month. The hosts discuss entrepreneurship, business ideas, and startup trends while sharing various business insights and guest interviews with notable founders and investors.

DeSo is a blockchain infrastructure built from 2019-2021 that powers decentralized social networks. BitClap was the first prototype app launched in March 2021 with a viral growth mechanism of pre-populated user profiles and creator coins, achieving $80M in invested capital across the network despite only ~10,000-50,000 daily active users. The project faced criticism for anonymity and lack of withdrawals initially, but shifted to transparency by revealing founder Nader Al-Naji and establishing the DeSo Foundation, with 100+ apps now built on the blockchain and creator monetization through NFTs and social tokens.

Huberman Lab is a free educational podcast and content platform launched in January 2021 by neuroscientist and Stanford professor Andrew Huberman. Within 10 months of launch, the channel became one of the top 10 most popular podcasts globally, with the first video reaching 652,000 views and subsequent videos hitting 1+ million views. The growth was driven by consistent weekly content, word-of-mouth from major podcast appearances, and a commitment to free, science-backed health and wellness education.

Tropical MBA is a long-running entrepreneurship podcast hosted by Dan and Ian that has produced 400 episodes over nearly 8 years. The show features Q&A formats and discussions on entrepreneurial topics like "Comfy Bed Syndrome" and "The Golden Handcuffs." The podcast demonstrates sustained traction through consistent content production and listener engagement.

Zach Schachkeed built a mobile app version of the viral Wordle game over a weekend and achieved 30,000 organic downloads in just days, reaching the top of the App Store. However, his public celebration of this success on Twitter—despite previously tweeting against app clones—led to significant backlash from the tech community and ultimately resulted in Apple pulling all Wordle-branded apps from the store.

How to Take Over the World is a podcast where Ben Wilson reads biographies of historical titans of industry and breaks down their strategies and mistakes into 2-3 hour episodes. The show gained significant traction through word-of-mouth and recognition from Sam Parr (First Million), eventually attracting attention from MrBeast who reached out for advice and mentorship conversations.

Blueprint is Brian Johnson's publicly documented personal health experiment aimed at reversing biological aging faster than chronological aging progresses. Johnson, the bootstrapped founder of Braintree (sold to PayPal for ~$800M) and early Venmo investor, launched Blueprint as an open-source health protocol shared via blog and data, applying his system-thinking approach to human longevity and achieving measurable physical transformation through data-driven nutrition, exercise, and biometric tracking.

Acquired is a long-form podcast launched in September 2019 by David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert that tells the detailed histories of major tech companies and acquisitions. The show averages 200,000 downloads per episode across Spotify and RSS feeds, with a highly valuable audience composition of 40% C-level/VP executives, 23% current founders, and 12% former founders. The hosts intentionally avoid common podcasting strategies like short episode formats, weekly releases, and frequent guest appearances, instead focusing on deep-dive research and conversational storytelling that has grown steadily over 8 years with no viral moments.

Charity Water was founded by Scott Harrison in 2006 after he transitioned from being a nightclub promoter in New York to volunteering on a humanitarian hospital ship in Liberia. Witnessing the water crisis firsthand, he pivoted to solving global water poverty using an innovative nonprofit model: 100% of donations go directly to water projects while overhead is funded separately by entrepreneurs and major donors. The organization has raised $750 million, provided clean water to 16.8 million people across 22 countries, and pioneered donor engagement through birthday fundraising campaigns that have raised over $100 million.