WordPress Startups

FatCatApps is a WordPress-focused SaaS product built by David Hehenberger to help marketers drive conversions from their WordPress sites. David transitioned from podcast production work to building his own sustainable software business. The company operates within the WordPress ecosystem, serving marketers seeking conversion optimization tools.

Ramon Van Meer built the world's most popular soap opera blog starting with just a $49 WordPress theme investment. He grew a 350k-person mailing list using quizzes and content marketing, eventually selling the business for millions. The interview covers his journey from idea to exit, including his mindset, growth strategies, and decision to sell.

WP-OK.it is a WordPress services agency founded by an Italy-based entrepreneur operating from The Netherlands. The company helps small businesses manage and maintain their WordPress sites.

WURA was an on-demand video streaming platform for African and Nollywood movies founded by Mike Ojo in 2013. The platform grew to $3,800/month in revenue with a team of 10 people, but ultimately failed after burning $250,000 when YouTube flooded the market with the same content for free, making the paid subscription model unsustainable.

WedMap was an online marketplace for wedding locations and service providers founded in 2015 by Tauras Sinkus and two co-founders. Despite reaching $2k monthly revenue and $20k in year three revenue, the startup failed after nearly 3 years due to team friction, resource constraints, lack of customer validation, and over-engineering the product before achieving product-market fit.

Teacher Finder was a two-sided marketplace connecting language teachers with students in European cities, launched in 2016. Though it generated £67,000 in total revenue and peaked at $3,000-$5,000/month, Andrew ultimately struggled with the fundamental marketplace challenge of balancing supply and demand across different cities. The business was eventually scaled back to 10 core cities and now operates as a minimal-effort side project generating $500-$1,000/month, teaching Andrew valuable lessons about the complexities of two-sided marketplaces.

SinOficina is an online coworking community for Spanish-speaking freelancers and entrepreneurs that Bosco Soler built to solve his own isolation as a remote worker. Starting with 30 early adopters from his email list, the community grew to 500+ paying members generating €5k/month (approximately $5,500 USD) through word-of-mouth alone, with only 3% churn. The business demonstrates that authentic community-building and trust can drive sustainable growth without paid advertising.

Refolo was a meal-planning app for plant-based eating founded by Lola Ojabowale after her father's cancer diagnosis required major dietary changes. Despite building community through meetups and virtual events with influencers, the startup failed because people weren't willing to pay for meal planning when free alternatives existed, and Lola didn't have a repeatable process for finding paying customers.

Rankd SEO is a subscription-based SaaS product offering step-by-step guides for creating backlinks on high-authority websites. Martins Sulcs launched it in April 2019 with 200 guides and generated $2,364 in revenue within the first month, primarily through SEO forums and Reddit. The service gained immediate traction by solving a real pain point he experienced personally—the difficulty and risk of traditional link-building methods.

QuickHaggle was a skill-exchange marketplace built on a barter system model where users could trade services without payment. Despite positive reception and $500+ in Facebook Ads, the platform failed after a year with zero completed trades due to trust issues between parties and high customer acquisition costs.

Mongoose Cricket launched a radically new cricket bat design in 2009 with a glitzy PR campaign at Lord's that generated massive media coverage across British newspapers and TV. The company spent over $130,000 sponsoring professional cricketers like Matthew Hayden in the Indian Premier League, betting heavily that the innovative product would disrupt a tradition-bound sport. Despite early revenue success (£130,000 in the 2011 season), the business ultimately failed due to the conservative cricket market, fragmented Indian distribution challenges, and unsustainable player sponsorship costs that far exceeded sales.

Sean Ogle founded Location Rebel in May 2009 after leaving a corporate job that left him unfulfilled. He created a blog around his bucket list and monetized it through a course teaching freelance skills and online business building, selling out his first beta launch of 20 spots in 48 minutes for $7,000. Over 10+ years, the business grew to six figures annually through organic SEO and content marketing, with over 4,000 students going through the academy and hundreds quitting their jobs to start online businesses.

LeadsBridge, founded in 2015 by Stefan Des and Alessio, is an all-in-one lead generation platform that helps companies collect more leads and connect Facebook Lead Ads to their CRMs. Starting with a simple WordPress website and Facebook API integration built over weekends, the platform reached $150,000/month in revenue within 3 years by leveraging content marketing, strategic partnerships, and Google Adwords. The founders attribute their success to strong customer support, data-driven decision making, and the ability to quickly iterate based on market feedback.

Formatically was an instant citation formatting tool built by Duncan Hamra and Tyler in high school that spent 5 years iterating through different versions before ultimately failing to gain significant traction. Despite reaching 260,000 visitors through SEO-driven how-to articles, the project generated only $5,000 in revenue from an essay formatting service and $200-$300 from ads, while costing around $10,000 total to build. The founders eventually abandoned it to pursue Memberstack after discovering the original idea lacked a sustainable business model and required resources they didn't initially possess.

ExploreVR was a directory marketplace for virtual reality businesses, built by first-time entrepreneur Andrey Norin in 2017. Despite investing 6-8 months and $5,000-6,000 of his own money, the startup failed to gain traction because Andrey built the product without validating market demand, lacked marketing skills, and entered the market too late in the VR hype cycle. The project ultimately generated no revenue and served as a learning experience in what not to do as a first-time founder.

Ed Latimore built edlatimore.com, a self-improvement blog focused on stoicism, addiction recovery, and personal mastery, growing it to $25k MRR through a combination of high-quality SEO content and active social media presence. He monetizes through free blog content, books, and courses delivered via Gumroad and Circle. His strategy emphasizes authenticity—only teaching what he has personal experience with—and delegation to focus on content creation while others handle tech and advertising.

Colin Gray built Alitu, a simple podcast editing SaaS app, on top of an existing audience he'd cultivated through thepodcasthost.com (a content site, blog, courses, and podcast about podcasting). After launching in June 2018 with a large existing audience, growth was slower than expected—reaching only $3,000 MRR after 6 months and $8,000 after a year—because his audience was too technical and preferred DIY solutions. By pivoting content to attract non-technical entrepreneurs and solo founders, Alitu grew to $45,000 MRR within two years, with significant acceleration during COVID.

Jason Grishkoff launched Submit Hub in November 2014 as a solution to the overwhelming number of music submissions he received at Indie Shuffle, his popular music blog. Within 8 months, Submit Hub reached $46,000 MRR by connecting musicians with industry professionals (blogs, labels, radio stations) and incentivizing those professionals to listen. The platform grew to ~250 other platforms using Submit Hub and fundamentally changed how music discovery works in the industry.

Brennan Dunn built Double Your Freelancing as a content marketing initiative to support his struggling project management SaaS (Planscope), but the educational content about freelancing business fundamentals exploded in success. The business now generates $900k+ annually (on track for $1.5M+) through high-volume, one-off course and workshop sales powered by personalized content marketing and sophisticated website personalization that adapts messaging based on visitor profiles.

Wes Bos is a web developer, designer, entrepreneur, and teacher who built a six-figure course business through content marketing and community engagement. Starting with popular blog posts about Sublime Text, he self-published a book that sold 300 copies in the first day to his 2,000 email subscribers, proving demand for his teaching. Over 15+ years, he scaled to ~30,000 paid course users across four major courses (React for Beginners leading with 14,000 students), an email list of 165,000 subscribers with 30-70% open rates, and 100,000 Twitter followers, leveraging authentic content and community interaction rather than aggressive marketing tactics.