subscription Startups

Bram Kahnstein created No Code MVP, a course teaching entrepreneurs how to build and validate startup ideas without coding. After validating the concept with 2,800 BetaList subscribers and delivering corporate workshops (generating ~$20k), he launched the course with $4-5k in monthly revenue. The course teaches mindset, lean startup methodology, and practical no-code tools (Carrd, Zapier, AirTable) to help founders move from idea to validated MVP in small, testable steps.

Close is a CRM tool helping small and medium-sized businesses close more deals and communicate better, founded by Steli Efti. The company has grown to 45 people across 14 countries and is profitable, though exact revenue figures are not disclosed in this interview. Steli emphasizes building a sustainable company focused on serving entrepreneurial customers rather than chasing enterprise deals, prioritizing long-term relationships and maintaining a workplace culture that fosters both professional growth and personal fulfillment.

Jonathan Little is a professional poker player who built pokercoaching.com into a $1.8M ARR business teaching poker strategy through memberships, books, YouTube, and podcasts. Starting as a community passion project that lost $5,000/month for 8 years, the business took off when a marketer named Dan helped sell instructional videos online. Little's success comes from his authentic expertise in poker, prolific content production (9am-6pm daily work ethic), strategic distribution across multiple channels, and a focus on genuinely helping recreational players improve—creating alignment between his passion, skill, and revenue.

JustReachOut.io is a SaaS platform that helps founders get press coverage by connecting them with journalists, providing journalist databases, and teaching them how to pitch stories that media actually wants. Dmitri Dragilev has grown the business to $30k MRR primarily through SEO by ranking for terms like 'media pitch' and 'PR outreach', demonstrating that consistent, targeted PR efforts compound better than chasing viral moments.

CoderPad is a browser-based code execution platform for technical interviews that Vincent Wu bootstrapped to millions in revenue before selling it to a private equity firm for tens of millions of dollars. After the sale, Wu has pursued investigative journalism, including exposing issues at Lambda School, while reflecting on entrepreneurship, wealth, and what success actually means.

Streak is a Chrome extension that integrates CRM functionality directly into Gmail, allowing users to manage sales and business workflows without leaving their inbox. Founded by Aleem Mawani in 2012 after pivoting from a failed loyalty rewards startup during Y Combinator, Streak grew profitably through word-of-mouth adoption by YC founders and early users who discovered it on the Chrome Web Store. By 2020, the company had reached millions in annual revenue with 30 employees, choosing to remain bootstrapped and profitable rather than pursuing venture funding.

Raskyoli is a wine bar and restaurant in Rome founded by Alessandro Pepe that expanded into a wine club and online educational platform (Community.wine) during the pandemic. After losing approximately 65% of restaurant revenue (down from $200k/month to ~$90k/month), they pivoted to building an online wine community and educational platform with 900 wine club members and 1,200+ community members. The business focuses on teaching wine appreciation through storytelling and cultural context rather than technical sommelier training.

Apps Without Code is an online bootcamp teaching non-technical entrepreneurs how to build profitable apps and businesses using no-code tools. Founded by Tara Reid in 2019, the company has grown to $5M ARR by charging $1,900 per student for an 8-week program with lifetime access. Growth came from free webinars, influencer partnerships, affiliate marketing, and eventually paid social advertising, with emphasis on teaching sales and business model first before product building.

Chris Oliver built GoRails starting in 2014 as a successor to the dormant Railscasts, offering weekly screencasts teaching advanced Ruby on Rails topics. He bootstrapped from zero to over $1 million in total revenue by combining free educational content (blog posts, videos, community forums) with paid products including a subscription screencast service ($20/month), courses, app templates, and Hatchbox (a Rails deployment automation tool). His traction came primarily through SEO and organic discovery, combined with strategic email list building (23,000 subscribers) and community engagement.

Dave Geddes quit his high-paying job at Domo to pursue his passion for creating educational games. He built Flexbox Zombies as a free game that grew to 70,000 subscribers through word-of-mouth and remarkable design, then launched Grid Critters at $99-$229, making $30,000 on day one of pre-orders. He's now full-time for 4+ years, building a suite of coding education games through interactive gameplay rather than traditional tutorials.

On Deck Course Creators Fellowship is a cohort-based online education program led by Andrew Barry that teaches course creators how to build and scale educational products. The platform emphasizes community learning, practical frameworks (the "three Ps": personal meaning, peer-to-peer learning, and prompts to action), and has grown through word-of-mouth and social proof from successful course creators like Marie Poulin and Ali Abdaal.

John Yongfook is a solo founder who built Banner Bear, an image and video generation API, after leaving corporate life at Aviva insurance. Starting with $200k in savings, he launched 7 products before finding success with Banner Bear, which now generates $16k MRR by targeting both social media managers and digital agencies with automated creative tasks.

Derek Reimer launched Savi Cal, a scheduling tool competing directly with Calendly, around the pandemic onset. After a failed attempt with Level (an anti-Slack communication tool), Derek applied rigorous lessons about founder-market fit and built Savi Cal to address the friction and etiquette issues surrounding scheduling links. The product reached $10K MRR by leveraging Derek's existing audience from his podcast and public presence.

Interviewed was a non-technical hiring assessment platform founded in March 2015 by Chris Bucky and co-founders who met at 42 Floors. Starting from a hackathon prototype, they grew to $2.5M ARR in 2.5 years by targeting high-budget HR tech spending and strategically taking early bets on fast-growing startups like DoorDash, Canva, and Taskus that would scale their usage over time. The company was acquired by Indeed for approximately $50 million.

Andre Azumov, a Ukrainian founder living in Bali on $400/month, quit his job to spend a year building multiple projects. His first successful project was Sheet to Site, a tool allowing non-coders to convert Google Sheets into websites. After initial launch at only $300/month, he shelved it to explore other ideas, eventually winning Product Hunt Maker of the Year before returning to Sheet to Site and rebuilding it with proper features, turning it into his flagship subscription product.

Hype Fury is a Twitter-focused SaaS tool built by Sammy Dean in August 2019 that specializes in thread creation, scheduling, and Twitter growth features. Starting from pure curiosity with a 3-day MVP, Sammy gained 20 paying customers within days of launching paid billing in November 2019, and has grown to $22,000 MRR ($264k ARR) within two years by focusing on deep Twitter integration rather than shallow cross-platform automation, hiring a co-founder for growth, and prioritizing direct customer outreach over flashy marketing.

Geocodeo is a geocoding SaaS founded by Michelle Hansen and her husband in 2014 to solve their own problem with Google's limited free tier for their mobile app. They launched with minimal infrastructure ($20/month in server costs) and made $31 in their first month after a Hacker News launch. The company has grown to over $1M in annual revenue while Michelle has built additional ventures including the Software Social podcast and her book 'Deploying Empathy' on customer research.

Demand Curve is a SaaS education platform with a community of 40,000 marketers and operators that helps companies grow through research-backed playbooks and tactical education. Julian Shapiro built significant personal brand authority (199,100 Twitter followers) through content marketing across multiple channels including Twitter, newsletters, blogs, and podcasts, establishing Demand Curve as the hub for growth strategy education.

ClearFind is a SaaS platform that helps enterprises understand their software stack at a feature level—something no competitor offers. Founded by serial entrepreneur James Leifeld, the company spent 3 years building proprietary datasets on software features before launching to market in October of the previous year. Now serving major clients like Airbnb, Zoom, and Slack, ClearFind helps organizations identify redundant tools and optimize software spending.

Ghost is an open-source, nonprofit publishing platform founded by John O'Nolan that evolved from a WordPress alternative into a comprehensive creator economy platform enabling audiences to become sustainable businesses through memberships and subscriptions. Bootstrapped from a $300k Kickstarter with zero percent payment fees and a commitment to never be acquired or sold, Ghost has competed against heavily-funded competitors by focusing on long-term reliability, strong engineering, and a compelling story of independence and decentralization.