The Hustle (Podcast)

Zoom is a freemium SaaS video conferencing platform founded by Eric Yuan in July 2011 after he left Cisco to build a next-generation collaboration solution. The company has grown to 850,000+ paying customers across individual, SMB, and enterprise segments, generating over $12M in monthly recurring revenue with approximately 100% year-over-year growth. Rather than focusing on customer stickiness or aggressive growth targets, Zoom emphasizes customer happiness and organic word-of-mouth acquisition, which has proven highly effective in driving viral adoption.

Plunge is a hardware company that manufactures and sells at-home cold plunge devices. Founded in 2020 by Ryan Duey and Michael after their brick-and-mortar float therapy and sauna businesses were impacted by COVID, the company grew from $270k in first-year revenue to $120M+ ARR in four years. Their success is driven by influencer gifting, organic word-of-mouth, and highly efficient paid advertising (7-10x ROAS on Facebook and Google).

Active Campaign started in 2003 as an on-premise email marketing solution built by Jason Vanderboom to fund his fine arts degree. After 10 years and 8 employees generating a couple million in revenue, he transitioned to a SaaS model starting at $9/month. The company now has over 60,000 customers generating over $50 million annually and employs 330 people, growing primarily through organic adoption, partnerships, and focus on the SMB market despite pressure to move upmarket.

NutriSense is a direct-to-consumer metabolic health platform that pairs continuous glucose monitoring devices with proprietary software analytics and dietitian coaching. Launched in September 2019 with pre-sales in keto and Oura Ring Facebook groups, the company grew from under $1M MRR a year ago to $3.3M MRR today (3x growth), with 15,000-16,000 active paying customers and 170 employees. The business has raised $32M in funding across multiple rounds since a $250K seed in early 2020.

Batch Products is a bootstrapped SaaS company founded in 2018 by three co-founders (Evo Dragunov and two partners) that provides five separate data and lead generation platforms for real estate professionals and other industries. Starting with Facebook group outreach and affiliate marketing, they grew to 18,000 customers generating $2.5M in monthly revenue ($30M ARR projected for 2021) with 57% profit margins, all while maintaining 100% ownership and adding 100 employees in six months during 2020.