subscription Startups

Bright Funnel is a B2B marketing measurement and attribution platform founded in late 2012/early 2013 by Nadim Hussain. Chris Mann joined as Head of Product in January 2016 and became CEO in April 2017. The company has grown to $3 million ARR across 70 customers with an average contract value of ~$50K, positioning itself as a neutral attribution platform for enterprise B2B marketers.

Lean Data is a SaaS platform founded in 2012 by Evan Liang that helps marketing and sales operations scale lead management through lead routing and marketing attribution. After raising $18M in total funding, the company serves 250 enterprise customers with $7.5M ARR and $30k average ACV, leveraging its native Salesforce app integration as a key competitive advantage and growth driver.

YAP is a SaaS platform for event applications launched in 2012 that serves the professional events industry (MICE - meetings, incentives, conferences, events). The company charges $400 per app per year with volume pricing up to 50 apps, and has published over 85,000 apps since launch while remaining profitable and bootstrapped with a remote team of five. Maria Seidman grew the company through unconventional guerrilla tactics, including sneaking into conferences as an attendee to sell directly to event organizers.

Ascentage is a 15-year-old budgeting and planning SaaS company founded in 2003 that started as on-premise software and recently underwent a multi-million dollar platform conversion to cloud-based subscription model. With 1,000 customers, 10,000 users, and $12 million in annual revenue, the company has achieved 80% retention while building through traditional inside sales and minimal paid marketing (approximately $100k/month spend). Barry Klapp's bootstrapped approach has delivered results with significantly less capital ($13.5 million raised) than competitors like Adaptive Insights, which raised $175 million.

Vidyard is a video marketing platform founded in 2010 that has grown to serve over 1,000 customers across three offices (Vancouver, Boston, Waterloo). The company has raised $70M in funding and is more than doubling year-over-year revenue while maintaining 85-90% gross margins through economies of scale and strategic product expansion. Growth is driven by personalized video prospecting, referrals, and a freemium Chrome extension called ViewedIt that has reached 100,000 users since October.

DemandBase is an account-based marketing platform founded in 2007 by Chris Ogola that has grown to serve 400-600 enterprise customers across financial services, tech, manufacturing, healthcare, and telecom. The company is targeting $100M+ ARR in 2017 with 50% year-over-year growth, 110% net revenue expansion, and has raised $156M in funding to continue expanding AI capabilities and international operations.

BuildFire is a no-code mobile app builder founded by Ian Blair in 2014 that allows non-technical users to create custom mobile applications. Starting from a white-label reseller model generating $25K/month in 2012, Ian built his own platform which launched in August 2014 and achieved $1M ARR by 2015. By December 2016, the company was generating approximately $250K/month in revenue with 1,000-5,000 customers, powered primarily by organic search traffic and retargeting.

Full Circle Insights is a B2B SaaS company founded by Bonnie Crater and three co-founders in 2012 that helps marketing teams measure and track campaign impact on pipeline and revenue. Built on the Salesforce platform with just $22,000 in initial capital and sweat equity, the company has grown to $4M ARR with 150 enterprise customers, achieving a 90% renewal rate and a six-month CAC payback period through event-driven sales and partnerships.

Demand Jump is a SaaS platform that gives marketers 100% visibility into their competitive digital ecosystem and qualified traffic sources. Founded by Christopher Day and Sean Swigman (former CMO of Overstock.com) in February 2015, the company grew from $165k first-year revenue in 2016 to an $85k MRR run rate approaching $1M ARR by 2017, with 22 customers and 89% annual retention.

ConverSocial is an enterprise SaaS platform that helps large consumer brands deliver customer service through social media and mobile messaging channels. Founded by Josh March (who previously sold i-Platform to a UK agency in 2012), the company has raised $20 million in capital and serves approximately 250 enterprise customers including Google, Sprint, Hertz, and Hyatt Hotels with ARR exceeding $10 million.

Wealth Factory, founded by Garrett Gunderson in 2006, is a virtual family office for entrepreneurs doing $1-10M in revenue that helps them optimize cash flow and keep more of their earnings. After refocusing the company following a tragic plane crash that killed two co-founders, Gunderson built a consulting-based model where clients pay $10,000-$150,000 for comprehensive financial advisory services. The firm limits new client acquisition to 10 per month and focuses on deep customer intimacy with around 125-250 clients.

Yeti Data is an enterprise SaaS platform that creates a virtual data warehouse unifying customer touchpoints and providing AI-driven actionable insights. Founded by Victor Sherba in 2014 with $1.5M in convertible note funding, the company spent 2-3 years in deep development before launching go-to-market efforts in earnest last year. With less than half a dozen customers paying $250K-$500K annually, Yeti Data is approaching $1M ARR and seeking a Series A at a $15-20M pre-money valuation.

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.

Ripple is an enterprise blockchain solution for global payments, founded by early Bitcoin advocates who pivoted from pure cryptocurrency to practical financial interoperability. Led by Stefan Thomas (CTO and early team member), Ripple has raised $94 million and grown to 170+ people, positioning itself as the "Zapier for global payments" by enabling banks and payment providers to interoperate seamlessly.

Socido is a B2B SaaS platform that helps B2B marketers find prospects on social media showing real-time behavioral interest and engage them through automated social and email nurturing campaigns. Founded by Asim Badshah (formerly of Uptown Treehouse agency), the company is backed by Techstars Ventures, Vulcan Capital, and Divergent Ventures. Currently at $2.5M ARR (~$200k MRR) with a 20-person team, Socido has shifted from outbound/ABM to a product-led growth model using free trials to build pipeline, focusing on SMB/mid-market B2B companies.

Conga is a SaaS company specializing in data management, document generation, and contract management for Salesforce users. Founded in 2006 and joined by CEO Matt Schiltze in 2015, the company has grown to serve over 9,000 paying customers across 140+ countries with hundreds of thousands of seats, achieving 200% bookings growth in the prior year and 100% expected growth in the current year, with industry-leading negative churn and gross margins of 85-87%.

Q is a SaaS platform launched in 2015 that provides hand-curated content suggestions for social media users and helps content creators promote their work through Qpromote. The company grew to 5,000 paying customers largely through an AppSumo lifetime deal that generated $30,000-$40,000 upfront, though only about 300 customers were later converted to recurring monthly plans. Currently operating at ~$25,000 MRR with 8% monthly churn, they're scaling through influencer partnerships and just beginning paid acquisition.

Geniebelts is a Copenhagen-based SaaS platform built by six co-founders from diverse backgrounds to solve communication and collaboration challenges in the construction industry. Starting with a free platform that attracted 10,000 users in 2014, the company now serves nearly 200 paying customers across 40+ countries, growing from €10,000 MRR in December 2016 to €100,000+ MRR by late 2017 with a 149% negative churn rate. The company raised €4 million in external funding a year prior to this interview and achieved a 7-8 month payback period with €4,500 customer acquisition cost.

Vuture is a marketing automation platform purpose-built for enterprise professional service firms (law firms, accounting firms). Founded by Robin Stevens in 2007 and still bootstrapped after 10 years, the company has grown to $10M ARR with 300 enterprise customers through high-touch, low-volume direct sales. The company ranked #16 on the SaaS 1000 list for staff growth, maintains exceptionally low churn (~0.3% monthly), and achieves 85%+ gross margins.

Popton is a lead capture platform for creating customized pop-ups and overlays, built by co-founders Gal and Tomer (both 28) who met in high school. Launched officially two months prior to this interview in early 2017, they bootstrapped the product using revenue from their profitable digital agency ECPM ($30k/month). They grew to 72 paying customers with $2,300 MRR by leveraging their agency network and content marketing community.