Facebook Startups

Ramon acquired Alpha Paw, a dog ramp e-commerce business, for $300,000 and scaled it to $35 million in lifetime revenue. He identified the business as underoptimized on Flippa—it had product-market fit, existing customers, and no paid advertising—and applied his playbook of improving website conversion, implementing Facebook ads, and leveraging the existing email list to drive exponential growth.

Missouri Star Quilt Company is a bootstrapped e-commerce business that grew from zero to over $100M in annual revenue in 12 years by targeting the underserved 45-70 year old quilting demographic. Founded by Tom and his mom in 2009, the company pioneered accessible quilting tutorials on YouTube and built community through forum engagement, eventually expanding into owning two towns (Hamilton and Kingston, Missouri) as physical brand experiences. The company is now 400+ employees, 90% online revenue, and valued at potentially $1B with 20% EBITDA margins.

Missouri Star Quilting Company is a bootstrapped, family-owned e-commerce business co-founded by Al Doad and his mom Jenny that generates nine figures in annual revenue. The company started when Al's mom discovered a six-month waitlist for machine quilting services, leading Al to buy a machine and launch a service business. Growth accelerated dramatically when they launched a YouTube channel featuring Jenny teaching quilting (now nearly 1M subscribers) and implemented a daily deal strategy inspired by Woot.com, combined with turning their manufacturing facilities into a tourist destination called the "Disneyland for quilters" that attracts 100,000+ visitors annually.

Ziglar Corporation, led by Tom Ziglar, is a legacy personal development and training company that has modernized its distribution through digital channels. The company offers a $7,500 five-day Ziglar Legacy Certification course and generates significant traction through 4 million Facebook fans, 400,000-500,000 unique weekly visitors to the Ziglar Vault content hub, and a top-100 US podcast with 35,000+ downloads per episode, adding 3,000-5,000 email subscribers weekly.

Lewis Lautman founded Supreme Outsourcing after going broke funding 'The Yes Movie' in 2007, spending over $200,000 and realizing the pain of paying $80-120/hour for U.S.-based freelancers. Between 2008-2010, while building his entrepreneur training business, he began outsourcing overseas and discovered he was making more money fulfilling outsourcing work for other entrepreneurs than from his training business itself. He launched Supreme Outsourcing full-time in 2010 with a tiered pricing model ranging from $15/hour pay-as-you-go to $1,000/month for full-time virtual assistants, using customer financing to fund operations.

James Hickey built an internet marketing consulting business serving 6-8 retail and local service clients at $750-$5,000/month, then scaled into a digital course business in 2011 after his mentor suggested he train people nationally. The 12-module course with 45-50 training videos has enrolled approximately 300 people, generating significant revenue through a tiered funnel of $295 digital products, $1,000 group coaching, and $2,000 one-on-one coaching.

Kim Garst built a social media consulting and training business centered around her Social Selling Inner Circle membership ($47/month). She uses a funnel approach starting with free value-driven e-books (generating ~12,000 leads/month via Facebook offers), converting to a $9 mini-course, then upselling to her membership. With 560 members and 85-87% monthly retention, the Inner Circle generates over $26k MRR.

Amy Schmetawa built Savvy Sexy Social, a video content strategy platform, starting with YouTube videos in 2008 and growing a community of 2+ million views. She transitioned from hourly consulting to a membership model (Social Authority Membership, launched May 2015) at $59/month to work only with committed clients willing to execute. Within five months (October 2015), the membership was generating $5K/month with plans to phase out lower-tier offerings and focus on annual premium memberships.

Harris Media is a digital agency founded by Vincent Harris in his dorm room that provides comprehensive digital communications and strategy services for political campaigns and advocacy organizations. Operating with approximately 35 employees and 25 clients on retainer, the agency generates over $1.2M annually by managing websites, social media, video production, online advertising, and email marketing campaigns. The agency's primary revenue driver is email fundraising, which accounts for 70-90% of online donations for clients like Senator Rand Paul.

Jen Scalea is a visibility strategist and business coach who built a multi-six-figure coaching and membership business. She generates approximately $50,000 per month on average (reaching six figures in some months) through a combination of one-on-one mentorship ($10,000 for four months, scaling to $15,000), a membership site with ~200 members ($30-47/month), and periodic course launches. Her growth came primarily through organic social media and word-of-mouth before adding paid advertising in April.

Flourish and Thrive Academy is an online education platform founded by Tracy Matthews, a jewelry designer with 20+ years of industry experience. After her first jewelry brand failed despite nearly $1 million in sales due to poor business structure, she built an academy to teach emerging jewelry designers business skills, marketing, and operations. The academy has grown to 800 students in three years using a Facebook ad-driven funnel ($500/month spend generating ~1,000 monthly opt-ins) and webinar-based sales, with both one-time courses ($795 generating $160,000 from 245 signups) and newly launched subscription offerings ($49-$78/month).

Sue Zimmerman built a multi-million dollar business selling online Instagram marketing courses and coaching services. Her flagship "Insta Results" course priced at $997 generated approximately $67,000 from 67 sales in one year, though total course revenue exceeded $300,000+ when including her lower-priced offerings. Her primary growth channels were speaking engagements, podcast interviews, and strategic email list building (4,900 subscribers from a single strategy guide funnel), focusing on relationship building before conversion.

NowThis is a digital-first news and media company focused on creating short-form video content for social platforms. As of January 2016, they achieve approximately 1 billion monthly views across all channels and had just closed a $16 million funding round with a team of about 50 full-time employees. Their success comes from data-driven content optimization, particularly on Facebook video, where they've pioneered techniques like volume-agnostic videos with on-screen text and close-up interview formats designed for mobile consumption.

Regan Hillier built a 100% online personal development and coaching business focused on success mindset and personal branding, generating $140K in February 2016 with 91% retention across multiple product tiers. Her funnel strategy moves customers from low-end membership sites ($97/month, ~200 members) through online programs and live masterminds to high-ticket one-on-one coaching ($10-30K per client), with consistent revenue distribution across all products.

Emerson Spartz is a viral media entrepreneur who started MuggleNet at age 12, growing it to 50 million monthly page views through link swaps, content curation, and recruiting a 120-person team. He later founded Dose, a data-driven content platform that now reaches 15 million unique monthly visitors and 27 million social followers with just 6 writers and 50 total employees by leveraging machine learning algorithms (Kepler, Dante, Lindell, Lovelace, Darwin) to predict viral content and optimize headlines and thumbnails. The company has raised $35 million and monetizes through programmatic advertising while building native advertising products for brands.

metadata.io automates demand generation for B2B companies by reverse engineering customer data to build ideal prospect profiles and find look-alike audiences across social platforms and networks. Launched in May 2015, the company reached $35,000 MRR in February 2016 with a dozen customers paying an average of $3,000/month, after raising $300,000 in seed capital from angels, 500 Startups, and Right Side Capital. Founder Gil Alush, a 33-year-old software engineer turned VP of marketing, is targeting mid-market and enterprise companies with a value-based pricing model and planning to raise a couple million in equity at a $5-6M pre-money valuation.

Vincent Dignan runs Magnific, a growth hacking and consulting agency that helps startups and companies get traffic and customers. He has a small number of high-value clients paying $5,000-$10,000 per month for personalized growth consulting, and is expanding his reach through a book called "The Growth Hacking Playbook" on Kickstarter, speaking engagements, and content marketing. His growth hacking talk was voted best workshop at South by Southwest, and he has established himself as a thought leader by teaching specific, actionable tactics for finding customers and driving traffic.

Loot is a platform helping brands engage customers through incentivized user-generated content at scale, enabling micro-influencer marketing. Founded in 2012 by Nicholas Haas at age 22, the company grew from $200 in first-year revenue to over $500,000 by 2015, using a usage-based pricing model where brands pay a multiple of the rewards given to users. Nicholas also experimented with e-commerce through a side project called Startup Drugs, which generated mid-five figures in monthly revenue through Facebook ads.

Kat Lotozo built a seven-figure online business empire starting from a fitness blog in 2007, scaling to $80,000/month before pivoting to business coaching in 2012. She launched The Tribe membership in July 2015 with 24,000 email subscribers, and by March 2016 had 150+ paying members generating over $500,000 in revenue in just 8 months. Her growth is driven by prolific content creation (3-6 daily emails with 2,500+ word posts, 47+ self-published books, and 4-5 weekly podcast episodes) and word-of-mouth referrals, with total 2015 revenue exceeding $1 million.

Kim Garst built a social selling education business centered around her Social Selling Inner Circle membership, which generates over $27,000 MRR with 560 members. She uses a proven funnel: free e-book (gaining 12,000 subscribers/month), $9 mini-course upsell, then $47/month membership with 85-87% monthly retention. Her business demonstrates the power of content marketing and community-driven recurring revenue.