Dev Hub

Mark Michael and Daniel Rest met in high school and have been working together ever since. They identified a critical gap in the CMS market: while website builders existed for small sites and enterprise solutions existed for massive operations, there was nothing in between for brands and agencies that needed to launch thousands of websites at once. Dev Hub emerged to fill that void, positioning itself as the platform for "web experience at scale."

The company launched in 2007. By 2009, they'd attracted investment from top-tier VCs and angels across Seattle, LA, New York City, and Silicon Valley—raising just over $2 million. But then came the hard lesson: they spent it all in six months. "We did all the stupid stuff," Mark recalls. They expanded from 3 to 35 people, leased an expensive 20,000/month office, and burned cash without a clear product-market fit. The economy was collapsing, their investors told them to slow down, but they kept racing. The money evaporated.

After the 2009 crash, Dev Hub rebuilt leaner. Their breakthrough came from understanding their actual buyer: not CEOs, but project managers, digital marketing managers, and brand managers within larger organizations. Using Outreach.io for cold email outreach, they'd start with landing page campaigns (their simplest use case), gain trust, and then expand into more complex, higher-value projects. This methodical approach to finding and converting customers became their primary growth engine.

What didn't work: burning $2M on rapid expansion without product clarity. What did: staying small (7 core team members today), obsessing over revenue per employee, and targeting the right buyer personas. Their pitch to skeptical enterprise clients became legendary: one brand worried that 7 team members couldn't handle their needs. Mark's response: "Nobody in the history of the world does as much revenue per employee as we do... we're printing money." They'd already delivered for 127 similar deals. The company is private-labeled for most of its customers—meaning people don't know Dev Hub exists behind the brands they see. This secrecy became their competitive advantage.

By late 2017, Dev Hub had 61 customers, with an average contract value around $2,000/month baseline plus per-unit fees. Some enterprise customers pay $50k–$100k/month. Year-over-year growth nearly doubled (from ~$60k MRR in December 2016 to ~$120k MRR a year later). Churn is remarkably low (~12% annually) because once customers get real traction on the platform (20+ units), they rarely leave—early dropoff happens in the first three months if they can't reach scale. With 90%+ retention and an enterprise SaaS model, Mark and the team are marching toward $2M ARR while remaining disciplined about hiring.