"Database of entrepreneur success stories and business case studies."

Pat Walls came up with the idea for Starter Story during a period of transition and reflection. After moving to a new city and experiencing the failure of a previous startup, he found himself longing to start his own business, but without co-founders or a clear direction. Inspired by reading stories from Indie Hackers and creators like Pieter Levels, Pat began to see the potential in starting an "indie" business by himself.

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He was motivated by the idea of working for himself and the freedom it would bring. While exploring different ideas, he noticed a lack of resources that consolidated real stories from entrepreneurs. This observation led him to create Starter Story, a platform where founders could share their journeys, complete with financial details. Pat validated his idea by testing how people responded to early interviews and refined his approach to align with his growing understanding of what potential entrepreneurs found valuable.

A key challenge was maintaining focus and motivation, especially post-launch, as Pat faced personal hurdles and health issues in his family. However, he learned the importance of discipline and eventually established productive habits that fueled his progress. One pivotal lesson Pat took away was that initial setbacks or lack of resources shouldn't deter seriousness in pursuing a genuinely impactful idea.

Pat Walls built Starter Story by initially focusing on grassroots content creation and experimentation. He spent his early days developing lean processes, using tools like Ruby on Rails to automate and manage the blog’s backend. This allowed him to balance between the technical and content production sides effectively. During the initial phase, he worked tirelessly post-day-job hours to create engaging, text-based interviews, ensuring each story was detailed with revenue numbers and unique business insights. The first version of Starter Story came together rapidly, with the website launching just a few months after its conception.

Walls faced significant challenges, especially in marketing and achieving visibility amidst the digital noise. He conquered these hurdles by leveraging platforms like Reddit and Product Hunt for exposure and adopting a build-in-public transparency that attracted an engaged audience. Through persistent testing and SEO optimization, he scaled Starter Story's traffic to over 1.6 million visitors per month and reached a revenue of over $1 million annually by 2023. Despite early skepticism and operational difficulties, Walls utilized a lean SEO framework and continuous content iteration to refine and perfect Starter Story’s value proposition.

Reddit

Reddit played a crucial role in Starter Story's growth, especially in the early stages. Pat Walls effectively leveraged the platform by sharing content in relevant subreddits like r/Entrepreneur. For instance, he shared interviews formatted in a Reddit-friendly way, which meant cutting down on too much self-promotion and ensuring the content was valuable for the community. This strategy led to several features on the subreddit, drastically increasing traffic to the website.

Why it worked: Reddit is a community-driven platform where authentic content can flourish. By providing genuine, valuable content without heavily promoting his brand, Pat was able to earn the trust and engagement of Reddit users. This resulted in bursts of traffic and a growing email list, supplying Starter Story with a foundational audience base.

SEO

Initially, SEO was not the primary focus for Starter Story. However, Pat soon realized its potential and developed a 'Lean SEO' approach. This involved creating Minimum Viable Content (MVC) to test which topics would rank before investing heavily in content development. Once an article gained traction, it would be further optimized and expanded, leveraging keyword insights obtained post-publication.

Why it worked: This agile approach to SEO enabled Starter Story to quickly identify and capitalize on content opportunities without excessive upfront investment. It allowed Pat to effectively scale content creation efforts, contributing to a significant increase in organic traffic, reaching over 1.6 million monthly visitors.

Sponsorships & Ads

Sponsorships, particularly from Klaviyo, have been a successful revenue stream for Starter Story. Early success came when Klaviyo sponsored the website and newsletter for a sizable fee annually. This not only provided financial backing but validated the website's market position to other potential sponsors.

Why it worked: High-value sponsorships provide a stable revenue source and increase the brand's credibility. The consistent sponsorship from a notable company like Klaviyo signals confidence in the product to other potential advertisers and partners, creating a virtuous cycle of interest and revenue.

Building in Public

Pat Walls has been a pioneer in building Starter Story in public, sharing his successes, failures, and insights openly with his audience. This transparency has fostered a sense of community and accountability and drawn interest from other entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

Why it worked: Building in public cultivates a loyal following that feels personally invested in the journey. It also creates networking opportunities and attracts more founders who are eager to share their stories, further enriching the platform's content offering and broadening its appeal.

AI tool turning text instructions into Excel formulas.

David Bressler, the founder of Excelformulabot.com, came up with the idea while on paternity leave. After discovering the power of AI and its potential in Excel formulas, he realized there was a need for an AI-based Excel formula generator. With 1 billion Excel users worldwide, Bressler saw a big enough market and quickly built a barebone application that went viral and gained traction through Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Since the launch in September 2022, the website has generated over $14K in monthly recurring revenue.

Excelformulabot was developed quickly to capitalize on the growing AI industry, with a minimalistic MVP built using the no-code platform Bubble.io. The initial version had basic functionality: an input field for user instructions, a button for generating formulas, an output field displaying the results, and a copy button. This barebone MVP took just a few weeks to build, reflecting David's urgency to harness the first mover's advantage in the AI space. He faced challenges related to unexpected high API costs due to viral exposure and immediately had to create a business model to manage costs efficiently. Feedback from the Excel subreddit was crucial for iterating on the initial version, which transitioned into a subscription-based platform with paywalls and logins over several months, demonstrating the effectiveness of user feedback in refining product offerings.

Viral Marketing on Social Media

Excelformulabot experienced significant growth through viral marketing, particularly on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. The platform gained traction when users began sharing it as a "website that feels illegal to know." The ripple effect from influencers and micro-influencers posting about Excelformulabot amplified the brand's reach substantially. The virality continued across different social platforms, leading to widespread recognition and traffic.

Why it worked: Viral marketing tapped into the power of social proof. When influencers shared their experiences, their followers were intrigued and inclined to check out the service themselves. The portrayal of the site as a secretive hack added a compelling element that spurred curiosity and shareability.

Influencer Collaborations

Direct engagement with influencers has been a crucial part of Excelformulabot’s marketing strategy. David Bressler reached out to influencers whose audiences aligned with the product's use case in areas like finance, data, and accounting. Collaborations were either based on free promotions or paid partnerships, typically ranging from $200 to $3K per engagement.

Why it worked: Engaging influencers allowed Excelformulabot to tap into established communities that trusted their recommendations. This strategy effectively positioned the product in front of targeted users who found immediate value in the tool, especially amidst audiences who frequently use Excel.

Organic SEO and Branding

Excelformulabot benefitted from organic search traffic, largely driven by people searching for terms like "Excel formula bot." The brand's presence as both the category creator and the main solution provider resulted in high exposure on search engines. The site also garnered backlinks from reputable sites, enhancing its organic search appeal.

Why it worked: The brand's dominance in its niche and the creation of targeted content helped capture users actively searching for AI solutions for Excel. Having a name that directly matched user intent searches significantly enhanced discoverability and credibility.

Email Marketing and User Engagement

For customer retention and reengagement, Excelformulabot deployed email marketing strategies. Personalized messaging was developed based on user interactions, such as the type of formulas searched and user engagement levels. These tailored emails helped retain paying customers as well as encourage trial users to convert.

Why it worked: Personalized email campaigns aligned closely with user behavior, increasing the relevance and impact of each communication. This approach fostered a sense of connection and ensured users saw continued value in maintaining their subscriptions.

Stripo's founder, Dmytro Kudrenko, a seasoned programmer-turned-entrepreneur, identified a major gap in the email marketing industry when he realized HTML email design required coding skills that marketers usually lack. Launching in 2017, Stripo rapidly grew to one million users worldwide, generating approximately $400,000 in monthly recurring revenue by offering an intuitive, coding-free email template builder with seamless one-click exports to over 80 platforms.

The initial build of Stripo was handled by a small, resource-constrained team, consisting of at least three developers, a QA, a BA, a CEO, and a designer. For the frontend, they used the Angular framework, while the backend was based on a Java microservices architecture, both deployed on Amazon AWS, leveraging the team’s extensive experience with the Java tech stack. The team focused on building an email editor that separated design from data, enabling marketers to easily create and manage professional emails without coding. Early development involved collaborating closely through healthy debates to make user-focused decisions. Reaching a working product took several months of iterative prototyping and testing; after about nine months, the product was stable enough to introduce paid plans. A core challenge was differentiating their editor from existing email service providers by providing unique solutions like modules and seamless integrations with email marketing tools—efforts enabled by prioritizing integration capabilities and direct export functionality.

SEO & Organic Content They produced comprehensive blog articles, eBooks, and educational webinars addressing key email marketing topics and new technologies, which became the main driver of organic traffic and customer acquisition. Their blog served as a resource hub, sharing use cases, expert interviews, and in-depth industry insights. Why it worked: High-value content positioned Stripo as a trusted authority, attracting both individual users and agencies searching for reliable information and tools.

Partnerships & Integrations Stripo invested heavily in direct integrations with over 80 major ESPs and email platforms, making it easier for users to export emails directly to their preferred tools. They also offered a plugin version to embed the editor into other platforms like CRMs. Why it worked: Seamless integrations removed technical barriers, expanded their reach, and made Stripo attractive for large teams and agency workflows.

PR & Industry Thought Leadership Stripo's team engaged in industry interviews, case studies (e.g., FC Chelsea, Forbes), and participated as panelists at relevant events. They shared product improvements and innovations openly within the community. Why it worked: Thought leadership and association with high-profile clients bolstered trust, credibility, and word-of-mouth growth among email marketers.

Product-led Innovations They were early adopters of technologies like AMP for Email and offered interactive content generators, establishing a reputation as an innovator. Key product advancements were communicated through content and community involvement. Why it worked: Introducing new features ahead of competitors attracted forward-thinking customers and kept retention high by continuously providing value.

Short-term storage marketplace for urban travelers.

Cody Candee, the CEO and co-founder of Bounce, came up with the idea for his business after experiencing the problem of carrying luggage while traveling and the inconvenience it caused. He wanted to create a solution that would allow people to store their belongings easily and eliminate the burden of carrying them around. After sitting on the idea for three years, Cody launched Bounce with his co-founder Aleks in 2017, and the business quickly gained traction, reaching over $100k of annualized revenue within the first 7 months.

Aleks and Cody Candee, the founders of Bounce, began the development process by creating a basic landing page for bag storage and delivery in New York City within just three hours. They used a simple landing page builder and integrated Adwords to attract their first customer almost immediately, illustrating a lean startup approach. Initially, they physically fulfilled requests by biking around New York, but soon realized that the logistics of coordinating exact times and places were impractical. To solve this, they shifted to a model where customers could drop off and pick up their items at designated "Bounce locations," which were local businesses with extra space. This iteration allowed them to simplify logistics greatly. They set up this new version quickly, building the core functionality in about three weeks. For their mobile applications, they utilized React Native, which enabled them to simultaneously launch on both iOS and Android platforms, streamlining their development process. This intense and rapid development approach, however, came with challenges as they struggled to balance speed with product optimization, especially since the mobile app development temporarily detracted from enhancing the existing web platform.

Google Search

Bounce attracted a significant number of customers through Google search right from the start. People frequently searched for "luggage storage," a popular keyword, which naturally aligned with Bounce's service offering. While they didn't focus heavily on SEO in the beginning, the organic demand for luggage storage solutions helped them grow.

Why it worked: The inherent demand for luggage storage meant that potential customers were already actively searching for Bounce's services. By having a web presence that matched these searches, they naturally captured attention and bookings without needing extensive SEO strategies.

Referrals

A substantial portion of Bounce's customer base came from referrals by satisfied users. This type of word-of-mouth promotion proved invaluable, bringing in new users who heard about the service from others who had positive experiences. Although they initially hadn't formalized a referral program, the natural referrals demonstrated the product's desirability.

Why it worked: Happy customers become ambassadors, sharing their experiences with friends and family. This organic referral process spoke to the trust and satisfaction users had in Bounce, making it one of the most effective ways to gain new customers without any additional marketing spend.

Advertising

Bounce utilized paid advertising, including Google Adwords, which allowed them to quickly gather traffic and customers even when they were just starting. This targeted approach helped them reach potential customers who were searching for similar services, providing a quick boost in visibility and engagement.

Why it worked: Paid advertising, particularly on platforms like Google, reaches users who are already searching for related services. By investing in Adwords, Bounce ensured they appeared in front of a relevant audience, leading to direct bookings and increased brand awareness.

"All-in-one platform for productized service businesses."

Mas, founder of Queue, built a ~1.6M ARR platform after solving his own pain point of syncing feedback on Overwatch videos, which quickly gained traction among esports coaches and video editors, evolving into a comprehensive productized service tool.

The initial version of Queue was built by the founder alone using Ruby on Rails for the backend. There was no frontend in the very first iteration, aiming to avoid unnecessary complexity and speed up development. The first working prototype was developed in just 1–2 weeks, costing around $50 total—$30/month for hosting and $20/month for deployment software. Free SaaS tools like Pusher.com enabled real-time features, and Konvajs was used for the drawing overlay. Early challenges included overbuilding features too quickly, leading to user confusion, and difficulty explaining the product simply, which affected adoption. Iterative feedback from a close friend who was an early use case (esports coaching) guided the build and testing process.

Discord Community Outreach
The founding team shared Queue in relevant Discord servers (e.g., for esports coaches, designers, Webflow, and Figma users) and directly messaged over 300 potential users, resulting in the first 100 customers and a fast path to early revenue.
Why it worked: Targeting active communities with a real, specific problem fostered trust and enabled direct feedback, accelerating product–market fit.

Word-of-Mouth & Referrals
Existing users began sharing Queue with peers, particularly after experiencing its streamlined workflow. This organic sharing became especially important as Queue transitioned to agencies and teams.
Why it worked: The platform solved an acute pain point, making users eager to recommend it to others, especially in tight-knit service provider circles.

Product Hunt Launch
Queue launched on Product Hunt, driving hundreds of new accounts within 24–48 hours.
Why it worked: Product Hunt has a large, engaged user base of early adopters, enabling rapid exposure and signups for a SaaS business targeting agencies and solopreneurs.

Direct Sales
The team proactively reached out to larger agencies, focusing on tailoring solutions and building relationships, which became a primary revenue stream.
Why it worked: Personalized outreach to agencies with clear value propositions led to higher-value contracts and long-term retention.

Inspired by a childhood fascination with CMYK printing, Mark ventured into the print-on-demand industry in China after discovering Printful in 2015. Leveraging his software development background, he launched JetPrint, now generating $700,000 monthly and prominently featured on Shopify.

The founders assembled an independent IT team of six members from their existing software development company to create JetPrint’s initial product. They focused on building a Shopify app that would allow e-commerce sellers to customize products, integrate with Shopify stores, and process payments. The most critical technical challenge was developing a mockup generator for users to visualize customized items, which became the core feature. In the early version, many extra functions were achieved through third-party licenses, leading to a basic but functioning platform. It took about 45 days for the team to develop a working app and pass Shopify's app review, with emphasis on compliance, user privacy, and integration stability. Key challenges involved ensuring compatibility across browsers and creating a smooth integration with Shopify's backend, particularly under resource constraints typical for a small, focused tech team.

Shopify App Store Feature Within two months of launch, Shopify approved and prominently featured JetPrint’s app in the Shopify App Store. This visibility quickly led to 1,000 installations within six months, driving initial traction directly from Shopify’s ecosystem. Why it worked: Featuring in the App Store gave JetPrint immediate credibility and access to highly relevant e-commerce store owners looking for print-on-demand solutions.

Forum & Facebook Group Marketing They promoted JetPrint in e-commerce-focused forums and Facebook groups, using posts and videos to showcase their product capabilities and drive traffic to their dashboard. This targeted outreach resulted in consistent, linear user growth and a 30% month-on-month increase in users shortly after launch. Why it worked: Direct engagement in communities where e-commerce sellers gather enabled JetPrint to reach its target users at low cost and build early trust.

Google Ads JetPrint prioritized Google Ads with a focus on high-intent search keywords related to print-on-demand services. They carefully researched and selected keywords, allowing them to attract precisely the right audience of e-commerce sellers. Why it worked: Paid search captured users actively looking for specific solutions, resulting in more qualified leads and increased customer acquisition efficiency.

PDF-to-CSV tool for bank statement data extraction.

The idea for Bank Statement Converter was born out of a personal need and frustration. The founder wanted to analyze his own finances but was stuck with PDF bank statements that were difficult to work with. This led him to write a script to extract transaction data, and he realized that if he had this problem, others might too.

He decided to turn this script into a web app and collaborated with a friend to handle the front end while he focused on the back end. Inspired by the principles of launching a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), they initially created a simple tool for uploading PDFs and converting them to CSV downloads. Through this process, they faced various challenges, such as refining their API to handle real-world use cases like multiple file uploads and password-protected PDFs.

Early user interaction helped them validate the need for their product, as people started using it immediately. There was also a lesson they learned along the way: avoid building features based on assumptions rather than actual user demand. This realization saved them time and resources, allowing them to focus on what's truly needed by their users.

When building Bank Statement Converter, Angus Cheng began by writing Kotlin code to extract transaction data from PDF bank statements—a process that initially took over 10 hours. Recognizing potential wider utility, Angus partnered with a friend to transform this script into a web app. They had a single-page application ready quickly, focusing initially on functionality with an API stack that included three endpoints to handle PDF uploads, password setting, and conversion requests. The backend was powered by a tech stack of PDFBox for reading PDFs, AWS Lightsail for hosting, Ansible for deployment, and Kotlin with Ktor for the HTTP server. Within a week, they had a working version live online, though initial challenges included missing vital features like registration or a payment system, and limitations in handling diverse bank statement formats. Despite the simplicity at launch, it was a testament to agile development and user-driven iterations that relied heavily on feedback and ongoing adjustments.

Word of Mouth

Bank Statement Converter experienced steady growth primarily through word of mouth. As users found the service effective for converting bank statements, they likely recommended it to peers, fostering organic growth.

Why it worked: People tend to trust and act on recommendations from those they know. Since the product effectively solved a common problem, users shared their positive experiences, leading to new customer acquisitions without the need for aggressive marketing.

Google Search Ads

In the initial six months, Bank Statement Converter invested about $1,000 USD monthly in Google Search Ads to boost visibility and attract customers.

Why it worked: Initially, Google Ads brought awareness and some customer inflow. However, the cost exceeded returns, prompting them to cease this expense. While it didn't generate immediate profits, it validated interest in the product, guiding future marketing strategies.

Supporting More Banks

The strategy involved enhancing the software to support more bank statement formats. They engaged in customizing configurations for specific banks to ensure higher conversion accuracy.

Why it worked: By continuously improving the system to support a wide range of bank statements, Bank Statement Converter increased the likelihood of successful conversions for potential users. This adaptability led to higher subscriptions as users received reliable outcomes, encouraging repeat usage and subscriptions.

Customer Retention through Quality Service

Their approach to retaining customers focused on maintaining software reliability. Customers with ongoing needs, such as accountants, continued their subscriptions as long as the service remained effective.

Why it worked: High retention rates were achieved by ensuring the software consistently met user expectations. For recurring needs, reliability was key, prompting ongoing subscriptions without any additional marketing efforts.

Started reaching out to people he knew who either owned a business or had higher-up positions in a business in order to brainstorm business ideas. A consistent theme that came up was lead generation. There's always a big demand for good leads and salespeople are willing to pay.

Came up with the idea after seven years of trying different ideas, and a bunch of different SaaS apps, most of which went nowhere.

Built the initial MVP in 4 weeks using AWS, Webflow, and GitHub.

4 weeks to the first sale.

The majority of customers were generated through the tool itself, creating awareness and leads on LinkedIn.

Initially, he created these outreach campaigns and conducted demos with people almost daily, often multiple times a day.

Eventually, he built a white label and welcomed 4 resellers who referred customers for a commission.

In March of this year, Twitter got filled with a lot of AI content. So they founder started to wonder if there was any way he could make use of AI to help customers of his previous product. That’s when he thought – every one of his customers has a blog, so why not add a way for people to chat with those blogs? That’s how everything started.

His other product was doing relatively well at that time (around $4k MRR). But as he started working on this feature, he realized that the potential for this was so huge, that there wasn't any reason to limit it to his current customers. Anyone who has a website could make use of this. That’s when he decided to launch this feature as an entirely different product.

SiteGPT started as a side project and as one of the features of the founder's previous main product

In less than a month after launch, SiteGPT crossed $10k MRR. After just 6 months it has hit $15k MRR.

Building an entire chat platform was so much more difficult than the founder initially expected. At that time, this ChatGPT use case was not that popular and there were no resources available; so he built everything from scratch.

But he knew the problem was there, he had the UX that he wanted the users to experience. So decided to build a very bare minimum version of it in 2-3 weeks and launch it. The only feature it had was the core feature – you add your website link and then a chatbot will get created and trained on all the content on your website. That’s the only thing the chatbot did at the time of launch. The goal was to improve it later only if necessary. But it was important for the founder to launch it first and see if anyone would use it.

During the pre-launch stage, the founder leveraged his 10K followers on Twitter audience to share the process and attract some attention. Following this same strategy, his launch consisted in sharing a tweet.

Within the first hour of launching he already had a few customers. Around 15k people visited his website that day.

A few days later, he also shared the project on Hacker News, where it also got a lot of attention and reached the front page.

Lastly, he launched Product Hunt, where it ended up being the #1 product of the day and the #4 product of the week.

AI-powered Twitter growth tool for audience monetization.

These two founders worked on launching a product every month. And every time, the tech co-founder brought in a few early sales because he had a small but high-quality audience on Twitter. The marketing founder tried too, but failed.

At the time, they had built up a database containing thousands of tweets that they were using for another product. So he thought he could maybe use the best-performing content as inspiration for his own tweets.

The tech co-founder made a very quick prototype, and… it worked! Writing became better and quicker, and he achieved a higher engagement.

That was the first version of Tweet Hunter: a searchable library of high-performing tweets.

It took them one week to reach $150 of MRR. One month to hit $600. After 3 months, they were at $3,500.

The core idea was simple: users should be able to search for a topic, and in return get relevant tweets that overperformed. So they built a very basic search field and tweet tiles.

Overall, the building of the MVP took about a week and $50, including the domain name. It was a “viral tweet search engine”. No schedule, no automation.

They didn’t take any early validation steps. Didn’t ask people if “they were facing that problem” if “they would be interested in X” or “how much they would pay for Y”.

They felt very strongly that the only way to validate a product is through revenue. Their focus was on building a non-optimal MVP as quickly as possible and try to get sales. If they could do that, it’d be an indicator that they could do 10x better with a more advanced product.

They've launched a bunch of free side products that are related to Tweet Hunter in the problem they help solve, and for which Tweet Hunter makes a logical next step for serious users. Some examples include a tool that retweets everything you’ve ever retweeted; and a tool to find the best times of the day to tweet. They also have made a lot of free tweet collections on specific topics. Some of them were launched on Product Hunt, and a few keep bringing in traffic today.

Another key strategy was paying influential people who feel it's a good match for their brand. They’ve developed a network of people who love the product and support us. Similar to this, they managed to enlist 450+ affiliates who promote their product for a commission.

Sniply: Custom URL tool boosting social media conversion.

Matt Bentley, the Marketing Lead at Sniply, came up with the idea for the custom URL shortener after experiencing the problem of losing customers gained from curating other people's content. He realized that when sharing third-party content on social media, traffic is diverted away from your own website. This led to the creation of Sniply, which adds a custom call-to-action button on any shared page, directing the traffic back to the user's website. With 550 paying customers and an annual revenue of $420k, Sniply has become a valuable tool for startup founders, brand managers, and social media managers.

The founding team at Sniply, all experienced software engineers, built the initial product as a SaaS tool that lets users add a custom call-to-action (CTA) button to any page they share via a shortened link. They started by focusing on just the basic functionality: generating a new URL, embedding a branded CTA button with a custom message onto any third-party content, and delivering the modified page seamlessly to visitors. As a web-based tool, Sniply likely used common web development stacks of the era (2014), such as JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and possibly frameworks like Node.js or Ruby on Rails; details on the exact stack weren't disclosed. The prototype involved programmatically 'framing' third-party web pages to overlay the CTA, which required robust handling of iframe limitations and browser compatibility, iterating as they hit edge cases. Building the first working version was relatively quick due to the team's prior engineering experience, but a major challenge was technically differentiating Sniply from basic link shorteners while ensuring it reliably embedded CTAs on varied content without disrupting user experience.

Content Marketing & Blogging
Sniply's most effective acquisition channel has been inbound content marketing, driven primarily by their blog and sharing posts on Twitter. Their blog focused on unique thought leadership in the content marketing niche, with posts addressing ROI concerns and Sniply's controversial value proposition.
Why it worked: Targeted, original content helped establish authority, drove shares, and amplified word-of-mouth in a specific, underserved marketing problem.

SEO & Link Building
In recent years, Sniply invested in SEO initiatives through guest post outreach and link placement on high-profile industry blogs like Business.com and Jeff Bullas. These efforts resulted in more organic search traffic and improved brand discoverability for marketers looking for CRO tools. Why it worked: Strategic backlinks and search-optimized content raised organic rankings and drove qualified leads searching for specific marketing solutions.

Word of Mouth
Word spread among marketers frustrated with losing ROI by sharing third-party content, as Sniply offered a visible, novel solution. The discussion—sometimes even critical—around Sniply's approach spurred curiosity and trials. Why it worked: The product addressed a real and often-discussed pain point, resulting in organic referrals and credibility within social media and content marketing circles.

Email management tool batching messages for focused productivity.

This founder has built 25+ side projects. Most of them failed but a few brought in some revenue. After failing small and big over two dozen times, he had one product that investors wanted to invest money in, and after five years of growing it, sold it, and took some time off from making stuff. He started advising and investing in startups, especially crypto startups.

To find time from all the chaos happening in his inbox, he wrote a small script that would make sure that emails landed in his inbox only every four hours, in batches. Nothing comes in between. He used this script to find time to find good ideas that he could be building next.

That’s when he saw a tweet from Andrew Wilkinson (Dribble owner), and he immediately emailed him with the script and a video tutorial. His reply was, “What if we make this into a business?”

They acquired 800 customers in 12 months (~$7K/month with their current pricing)

One of the founders owns several agencies for design and marketing. They went from idea to launch in 3 months.

Andrew owns several agencies for design and marketing. As soon as they shook hands, they were working on Mailman’s branding and UX/UI. Within a couple of weeks, they had the first designs ready. And from there, they coded and put life into those designs over the next few weeks.

Also, before they could launch publicly, they had to go through Google’s Security Assessment program. Every product that works with Gmail has to go through it.

Once they had a working product, they expected Google's security assessment to take a couple of months. So, they decided to build a waitlist meanwhile.

Andrew tweeted about this new project he is involved with and given his Twitter followership of 160k+, they got thousands of people on the waitlist overnight. Starting from the top, they sent out invites to ~50 people every day. Of those 50 invites, about 25 would sign up, and he’d schedule a 10-minute call with them to walk them through their Mailman account. This short call helped him understand what they were looking for, and plan future features.

While trying to scale, they realized Mailman is a brilliant solution to a problem that most of our users do not realize they have. So their biggest challenge was to accept the fact that people are not searching for the solution to their inbox problems. They spent thousands of dollars on search ads to learn this lesson.

So they shifted gears and started using social media and influencer marketing to spread awareness of the problem. Only when someone is aware of the problem, they’ll look for a solution, for which they've invested in SEO to make sure Mailman comes up when they search for a solution.

E-commerce sizing plugin for accurate clothing fit.

The founder of Kiwi Sizing used to run a dropshipping store that sold dog clothing and pet accessories, but he always struggled with setting up size charts for the pet products.

He faced two main issues when it came to sizing: each product had different sizing, and the vendor only provided sizing in centimeters.

As a result, he had to manually convert each number from centimeters to inches using Google search, which was a time-consuming process. At the time, there were two size chart apps available on the Shopify app store, but neither of them offered unit conversion features.

This meant that he had to waste hours adding up to 20-30 new merchandise each week. The business started because the founder, being an engineer, was highly motivated to create a tool that could help him automate this tedious process.

This product started just as a side project. The founder spent around 10-15 hours each week after work building the tool. Success in the first year motivated the founder to continue investing time in the project.

Once launched, it brought in $10k by the end of the year.

Kiwi Sizing started as a basic size chart app that allowed customers to create size charts and provide their measurements in centimeters, which were then automatically converted to inches. At the time, it was more advanced than other solutions available on the Shopify app store, making it a better option for merchants who were dropshipping from Chinese vendors. The founder was confident in their ability to create a better user experience.

The founder placed a great emphasis on increasing the number of app reviews as a means of measuring the success of the business. This strategy not only had a direct impact on the app's search ranking and download rate but also contributed to its overall growth.

The founder also hired professionals to handle SEO, ads, and content marketing, which proved to be a wise investment, leading to an increase in organic traffic and MRR revenue.

Todd Hooper, a software engineer, came up with the idea for Prerender.io after experiencing the problem of JavaScript websites not showing up on Google. Worked on this on the side until the monthly profit was close enough to quit his day job and have Prerender.io become a full-time thing.

Came up with the idea when he kept running into the problem where the projects he was building were not showing up on Google.

Worked on this on the side until the monthly profit was close enough to quit his day job and have Prerender.io become a full-time thing.

Started out hosting the open-source software and charged customers for how much they used the hosted service, which enabled Prerender.io to be profitable from day one.

Bootstrapped from zero to $2.5 million in ARR in just over 5 years

With Prerender.io being a developer tool, many blog posts were written about Prerender.io because they could show our open-source code and then just include a link to our hosted service at the end.

Those early blog posts helped give them a huge boost in SEO. For the first few years, they put zero money into advertising, and to this day most of the traffic is completely organic.

Both founders had similar experiences with Google and its products. They went from big fans, using several of their tools for many hours every day, loving them and recommending them to my family and friends, to becoming more aware of Google’s size, its business model, and how their dominance negatively impacts the web.

The first line of code was typed on December 2018, on January 2019 they launched their public beta, got the first paid subscribers by May 2019, and took them one year to hit $1K MRR.

Both founders work full-time on the project.

Their marketing is a bit different and a bit unconventional compared to the normal way of doing things in the startup world. They don’t do any paid advertising, don’t use pixels and other tracking to do retargeting around the web, don’t do any experiments on website visitors, don’t have an affiliate program, and don’t pay anyone to promote or recommend Plausible.

They focus on content marketing and community engagement. Publishing regularly on their blog and engaging on different social media platforms and niche community sites. Their posts are longer and well-researched pieces on the different topics that are relevant to their product and audience. They always create content with their audience in mind. What questions do they have? What issues are they trying to solve?

One of their very first posts was titled 'Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website' which got traction immediately as it did great on communities such as Hacker News. That first post has been read by about 65,000 people until now.