usage-based Startups

Flip is a verticalized AI voice assistant that automates customer service calls for transportation, retail, and healthcare brands. After their Cornell ridesharing app was banned, founders Brian Schiff and Sam pivoted to voice AI and now serve over 250 enterprise companies, automating up to 90% of routine support calls. The company recently raised $20M Series A at a $100M valuation with 3X year-over-year growth and maintains 75% gross margins using a $1.50-per-call usage-based pricing model.

Sheel Mohnot created an online auction marketplace for internet domain names, positioning it as eBay for digital real estate. The platform has hosted over $100M in auctions, generating millions in revenue through a 4% commission model, transforming a niche market into a profitable business.

Rev.com is a transcription service that built a $206M business by leveraging a remote workforce of 50,000 freelancers to transcribe audio content for less than $1 per minute. The founder, Jason, grew the company by focusing on simplicity, remote work flexibility, and demonstrating value through initial free work. The company expanded beyond Silicon Valley conventions and adapted to the evolving landscape of AI and remote work.

Celitech is an eSIM platform that helps travel and hospitality companies like Expedia monetize connectivity services for their customers. The company is targeting a $1.5M raise to scale their enterprise partnerships and expand their eSIM distribution network.

Cargamos is a last mile delivery platform operating in Mexico that has scaled to $12M in annual revenue. The company is currently raising $30M to expand its logistics network and operations.

Swag.com is a corporate swag and merchandise platform acquired by CustomInk for over $20 million. The company is projected to do $60 million+ in annual revenue this year with 30% margins, demonstrating strong unit economics in the B2B merchandise space.

This startup offers a pay-per-scan model for vehicle inspection technology targeted at insurance companies to reduce fraud. The company has achieved $30k MRR by solving a specific pain point for insurers—automated vehicle damage assessment and verification.

DataLab is an agricultural SaaS company that charges farmers on a per-cow basis, reaching $15M in annual revenue. Their pricing model aligns customer value with usage, resulting in ACVs as high as $100,000 for large farming operations.

Checkr is a background screening SaaS company that has grown to a $5 billion valuation by implementing a usage-based pricing model. The company has leveraged data-driven operational improvements and incentive alignment to drive growth, as discussed by COO Lindsey Scrase in a SaaStr podcast interview.

Sport Draftr was a Daily Fantasy Sports platform in the UK offering leagues in the English Premier League and UEFA Champions League. The product achieved strong product-market fit with engaged users and grew to 1,000 users with 50% playing weekly, but failed due to unfavorable gambling legislation changes that scared off investors and made scaling impossible without significant capital.

Scalefusion is a mobile device management platform helping SMBs configure and secure employee devices without IT expertise. After 3 failed startup attempts, founder Harishanker Kannan leveraged his kiosk technology experience to build a simple, affordable solution that grew organically to $400k/month through SEO and customer support excellence.

Melon was a food delivery startup that achieved $10K MRR within 2 months by pooling orders for coordinated, efficient drop-offs. Founded by Kevin Wang and two technical co-founders, the service paired pre-ordered meals with fixed delivery windows, allowing them to deliver 15+ items per trip in under 30 minutes. Despite early success with 500 users, the founders realized the path to profitability mirrored unsustainable on-demand competitors and chose to shut down rather than chase growth with heavy capital.

Henry is a Latin American coding bootcamp that teaches software development for free and operates on an income-sharing agreement model, taking 15% of graduates' salaries up to a $4,000 cap. Founded by Martin Borchardt after his experience hiring for his FinTech startup Nubi, Henry validated its concept through a simple Wix site and Typeform, attracting 100 applicants on day one through organic social posts. After receiving $300K from Y Combinator in Summer 2020, the company aims to train over 100,000 developers by 2025, with 90% of job placements driven directly by Henry's efforts.

Gulp was a college-launched app designed to let bar-goers pay cover charges digitally instead of using ATMs. Though the founders acquired 2,500 users (25% of the campus bar-going crowd) in one month with creative grassroots marketing, the startup failed due to broken unit economics: they made only $0.52 per cover while spending $1.50 to acquire each user, and lacked alternative monetization beyond a $.99 convenience fee.

GawkBox was a platform enabling fans to donate to content creators by playing mobile games funded by publishers. Founded by Christopher Brownridge, the startup raised $4.4M and reached 500k users with $1M+ in revenue in just 2-3 years, but ultimately failed due to poor unit economics, misaligned incentives between its three customer types, and a strategic pivot away from its core YouTube success toward unproven live-streaming markets.

Eola is a management platform and marketplace for activity centers that automates booking, scheduling, and payment processing. Starting from a beta with 5 customers in 2018, the founders grew to £1M/mo through customer-centric content marketing, SEO, and referrals, nearly 5x-ing revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic by positioning their usage-based pricing model as ideal for businesses facing uncertainty.

Briq is an AI orchestration platform for construction and manufacturing that automates back-office work for enterprise customers. Founded by Bassem Hamdy (former Procore executive who scaled the company from $10M to $100M), Briq now does 8 figures in revenue by pioneering an unconventional enterprise sales approach: selling on vision and value before demos, never offering free POCs, and always charging from day one. Bassem's strategy of targeting CFOs instead of innovation teams and growing through disciplined land-and-expand has compressed typical enterprise sales cycles from 6-12 months to 9 days.

Stephanie Harbert and Rich Galdrakus built Binomial, a GPU-optimized image and texture compression product for game developers. Starting from burnout and consulting work, they discovered the product opportunity when a client requested compression software. After prototyping for 3-4 months while maintaining their networking and conference presence, Netflix's engineering team discovered their work through Rich's blog and became their first major customer, providing financial backing to complete the product. Today, as a lean two-person team, they negotiate seven-figure deals with major gaming companies.

Tremendous is a B2B payout and incentive platform that grew out of Gift Rocket, the founders' earlier consumer gifting startup. After realizing businesses were using Gift Rocket repeatedly for market research incentives and referral programs—unlike consumers with low retention—the team pivoted and focused on the B2B use case. Through direct sales to market research firms and other businesses, the company scaled to eight-figure annual revenue, remains profitable, and is fully founder-owned after buying back investor equity.

Japan Dev is a curated job board for English-speaking software developers seeking work in Japan, founded by Eric Turner in 2019. Starting from a personal pain point during his own job search in Tokyo, Eric bootstrapped the two-sided marketplace to $83k ARR with just his wife as his co-founder, using a unique per-hire revenue model (companies only pay when they successfully hire) instead of traditional job posting fees. Growth came primarily through SEO and organic discovery as developers Googled for English jobs in Japan.