Slack Startups

Results Junkies is Paul Singh's community-driven newsletter and platform that evolved from a blog into a weekly newsletter written during his time as an investor. It's not currently a business, but rather a passion project bringing together a couple thousand founders and investors in Slack and through meetups to discuss building businesses. Paul built this after exiting Disruption Corp to 1776 and spending 30 days traveling to startup hubs globally to understand how communities grow.

Gimlet Media is a premium podcast network founded by Alex Bloomberg, a veteran of This American Life and Planet Money. The company produces high-quality narrative audio shows including Startup, Reply All, Mystery Show, Science Versus, and Surprisingly Awesome, generating over $1 million in annual ad revenue per show through CPM-based sponsorships well above industry standards ($50+ CPM vs. industry average of $20-30).

Chat with Traders is a weekly podcast launched by 25-year-old Aaron Feifield in January 2015 that interviews successful traders to help others learn trading. Starting from zero monetization but focused on audience growth, the podcast reached over 620,000 cumulative downloads in its first year with nearly 5,800 email subscribers, primarily driven by consistent weekly episodes and active Twitter engagement.

Gusto is a SaaS platform helping small businesses manage payroll, HR, benefits, and health insurance. Founded by Josh Reeves (who previously co-founded Unwrap, acquired in 2010), Gusto has grown to over 25,000 paid customers with a 98% conversion rate from free trial to paid status, serving companies with 1-100 employees at $29/month plus $6 per employee.

Aircall is a cloud-based phone support software founded by Olivier R. Payees that launched in June 2015. The company grew from $10,000 in first month revenue to ~$100,000 MRR by December 2015 (30% month-over-month growth) through a combination of direct outreach and strategic product integrations. They've achieved negative churn and recently raised $2.8M in seed funding on top of an initial $500K investment.

Ryan Pahl is COO of Community Co, an umbrella company managing multiple professional communities including YEC (Young Entrepreneurs Council), Founder Society, and Forbes Councils. The company generates revenue through annual membership fees ($500 for Founder Society, $1,200 for Forbes Councils) and has grown to 50+ employees across Boston and the country. They combine proprietary technology with human curation to connect members with peers, business resources, events, and media opportunities.

Steals.com is a daily deal e-commerce marketplace founded by Jaina Francis in 2008 that features one high-quality brand per day across four niche sites (BabySteals, KidSteals, ScrapbookSteals, SheSteals). Built entirely bootstrapped without investors, the company generates approximately $8 million in annual revenue with a 17% net margin, driven primarily by email marketing (55% of revenue) and direct traffic (25%). With 22 full-time employees in Utah and a custom-built platform, Jaina is seeking $2 million in equity funding at an $8 million pre-money valuation to fuel growth.

StudySoup is an education marketplace launched in April 2014 that connects college students by allowing top performers to sell study materials (lecture notes, study guides, flashcards) to classmates via subscription. The platform generated approximately $40,000-$45,000 in first month revenue, grew to $400,000 in 2015 (10x growth), and was tracking toward several million in 2016 revenue. With over 5,000 active monthly subscribers and nearly 1,000 elite note-takers, StudySoup demonstrates strong marketplace dynamics with a subscription SaaS model.

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.

Cirrus Insights is a productivity platform for Gmail and Outlook that helps sales teams with prospecting, email tracking, meeting scheduling, and deal closing. Over six years, Brandon Bruce grew the company from a few hundred thousand to over $1M MRR with 150,000 paying users and 250,000 total users across acquired products. The company maintains a bootstrapped model with low churn (~15-20% annually) and healthy unit economics, recently acquiring Attach to expand document management and e-signature capabilities.

Label, a tech lead and former rabbi now operating as a developer, acquired reporti.app for $20k through Microquire as a 'mini MBA' learning project. The Shopify app helps e-commerce store owners send automated notifications and reports via Slack, currently serving 26 paid customers generating $385 MRR. Label's immediate focus is on customer outreach to improve app ratings and gather feature feedback to drive growth.

Moth and Flame is an award-winning immersive VR learning platform founded in 2015 that helps enterprises drive behavior change through virtual reality training experiences. After launching with custom innovation projects, they pivoted to a SaaS model in 2019 when Accenture approached them, and have grown to $5M in total revenue with $2M recurring (40% of revenue). The team of 39 is targeting a Series A of $10-12M to build out synthetic media and NLP capabilities, positioning themselves as the Squarespace for VR.

Disco is a SaaS platform for knowledge creators to build live learning communities, founded by Candace Factor (former head of business at Wattpad). Launched in August 2020, the company raised $750k in pre-seed (friends & family) and $5M in seed funding, with plans to hit $1M+ in revenue. They use a freemium model (10% take rate) plus $85/month SaaS plans, with hundreds of customers and some creators on track to do seven figures annually.

Atta is a digital fitness tracker for developers that monitors productivity and collaboration by integrating with GitHub, GitLab, and Slack. Launched on Product Hunt on January 28, 2022, achieving #1 product of the day with over 1,000 signups and 50 paid conversions. Currently at 200 customers and $3,000 MRR, with a $1M pre-seed round raised to scale growth.

Tetra is a knowledge sharing and internal wiki tool built on Slack, founded in 2015 by Andy Cook and Nelson after they left HubSpot. After an initial MVP failed to gain traction, they pivoted to integrate with Slack's newly opened platform and gained 500 signups in 3 weeks, riding the early wave of Slack app ecosystem growth. Today with 535 customers paying an average of $110/month, they've achieved $721k ARR with 104% net revenue retention and 67% YoY growth while maintaining a lean 7-person team.

Karsten founded Usercentrics in 2011 as a consulting business focused on privacy and data compliance, launching the SaaS product in May 2018 alongside GDPR. After struggling early on (only $140 monthly revenue one year post-launch), he achieved 100x revenue growth within 12 months by focusing on product quality, reducing churn from 60% to 3%, and implementing systems that controlled customer acquisition costs. By 2021, the company reached $5M ARR with 70% of the top 100 Danish companies using the product, and completed a secondary transaction in April 2022 that valued the company higher than Google Analytics in Denmark.

Chat Desk, founded by Anato (formerly a Product Manager at Google working on Voice Search and Google Assistant), is a customer support platform that uses generative AI to help brands scale support and drive sales. Operating for over 6 years based in New York, the company has tripled annual revenue through strategic upselling to existing customers by expanding from initial entry points (like social media moderation at a few hundred dollars/month) to comprehensive multi-channel support solutions.

Wing Assistant is a platform connecting SMBs with remote talent, positioning itself as a software-driven alternative to traditional virtual assistant services. They grew from ~$1M to $10M in GSV by mastering Google Ads with sophisticated conversion tracking and analytics, using techniques like tracking 'inconspicuous words' in chat to identify high-quality leads while filtering out job seekers and fraudulent traffic. Their data-driven approach led to a $41,000 refund from Google after detecting and proving malicious click fraud.

Organize.app, launched in March 2024 by Andrew Fan, is a Slack application that brings org charts and HR tools into Slack for smaller, growing teams. With 5 paying customers across ~200 seats generating ~$400 MRR, the product was bootstrapped as a side project within Andrew's 55-person consulting and agency business (Upsilon). All customers came organically from the Slack App Exchange through keyword optimization.

Chaser is a Slack-native project management tool that lets users delegate tasks to anyone via Slack or email without requiring them to be platform users. With 100 companies signed up over 16 weeks and 43% retention, the team (2 unpaid co-founders + 2 full-time contract developers) raised $120k ($100k pre-seed at $7M cap + $20k angels) and is focusing on growth and product-market fit before monetization.