17 Data Analytics Software Business Success Stories [2024]
Data analytics is a crucial aspect of an organization’s decision-making process. It involves the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data to gain insights and make informed decisions.
If you’re interested in starting a business in this field, the first step is identifying a particular industry or niche you want to serve.
Once you have a clear idea of your target market, you can begin developing user-friendly software that addresses that niche’s specific data analysis needs. This may involve creating custom reporting tools, dashboards, and other features that help your clients visualize and interpret their data.
Once your software is ready, you’ll need to market it effectively to potential clients. This may involve emphasizing the simplicity and efficiency of your tools and the value they bring to your client’s decision-making processes.
By focusing on your target market’s unique needs and challenges, you can build a successful data analytics business that delivers real value to your customers.
Here are some real life success stories of starting a data analytics software business:
1. Diesel Laptops ($50.4M/year)
Tyler Robertson, founder and CEO of Diesel Laptops, came up with the idea for his business while working at commercial truck dealerships. After seeing the complexity and cost of truck diagnostics, he found a software program in Canada that could make diagnostics easier, and started selling kits on eBay. This side business eventually became Diesel Laptops, a company that offers bundled kits, technical support, and repair information to the diesel industry.
How much they make: $50.4M/year
Current team size: 180
Diesel Laptops, a B2B company that sells diesel diagnostic hardware, software, and services, successfully doubled revenue each year to make $20 million annually within three years, grew from its founder's garage and dining room table to a 21,000 square foot facility with over 90 employees by listening to customer pain points and offering the bundled products, technical support and repair information to attract and retain diesel technicians and repair shop owners.
2. Analyzify ($144K/year)
DataPack, the founder's productized offer for data-analytics-related projects, had received too many requests from Shopify stores. So they decided to create a standalone product for the Shopify market.
How much they make: $144K/year
How much did it cost to start: $6K
Current team size: 3
Analyzify.app is a Shopify app that helps enable accurate and reliable data tracking and generates $12K+/month with over 350 stores empowered, thanks to a freemium version on YouTube and exceptional customer support.
So... can you actually make money with a data analytics software business?
Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.
But how?
- Research real, profitable businesses and see exactly how much money they make.
- Study exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
3. Helical Insight ($960K/year)
Nitin Sahu and his co-founder Nikhilesh Tiwari identified the pain points and limitations of existing BI products while providing services in the domain. They launched Helical Insight as an open-source BI product, attracting customers by showcasing how their product can solve their issues. They invested heavily in SEO and content marketing to generate inbound leads and focused on providing high-quality support to retain customers.
How much they make: $960K/year
How much did it cost to start: $20K
Current team size: 42
From several failed startups to building a $960k/year open-source BI business with 51+ clients, Helical Insight offers a B2B focused enterprise software product that can be used by any company generating data, boasting a client list including CA Technologies, Tata Communications, and Fractal Analytics, making a profit margin of 35%, with plans to partner in non-English speaking countries and to raise funding for development, hiring, sales, and expansion.
4. Ivee ($120K/year)
Chelsea Rhoads, the CEO/Co-Founder of pup-eeze, came up with the idea for the business after experiencing the difficulties of traveling with her dogs during a camping trip in 2008. Realizing the need for a device to ensure their safety, Chelsea and her co-founder developed Pup Alert in 2016. After encountering challenges with their hardware solution, they adjusted the concept and launched pup-eeze, a wellness tracker for dogs. They have since focused on creating an adjustable ecosystem for dogs' environments and have garnered support from the technology community.
How much they make: $120K/year
How much did it cost to start: $250K
Current team size: 3
Pup-eeze, a wellness tracker for dogs that tracks activity, monitors location and automates their lives, was created by Chelsea Rhoads and Elizabeth Hess after realizing how difficult it was to travel with dogs, and now has a consumer-facing application for pet owners to monitor their pets' data and visualize trends.
So... can you actually make money with a data analytics software business?
Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.
But how?
- Research real, profitable businesses and see exactly how much money they make.
- Study exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
5. Attributer ($360K/year)
The founder, who worked in B2B marketing, couldn’t find a tool that showed which channels were converting leads, sales opportunities, and customers. So he built the tool himself, and recognizing its potential, he turned into full-time entrepreneurship.
How much they make: $360K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
Marketing attribution tool Attributer.io has generated $60k in annual recurring revenue just five months after launch, with a focus on search engine optimisation for high-intent keywords to acquire customers for the platform, offering a lesson in market-first startup development.
6. Decidable ($12K/year)
Decidable, founded by Craig Smith and Mike Bugembe, was born out of their shared frustration with the low levels of insight adoption in businesses and the inability of leaders to harness the value of data. After collaborating on the vision of data storytelling, they developed a platform that automatically translates complex data into short, easy-to-read stories, enabling businesses to make informed decisions. The company's innovative products, such as automated Google Analytics stories and e-commerce data sources, have already helped beta customers increase daily revenue by 25-40%, demonstrating the impressive potential for growth.
How much they make: $12K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1M
Current team size: 2
Decidable has created an automated Google Analytics platform that helps UK e-commerce companies between £5m-£50m find all the missed revenue in their data with some of their Beta customers seeing daily revenue increases of between 25% - 40%.
So... can you actually make money with a data analytics software business?
Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.
But how?
- Research real, profitable businesses and see exactly how much money they make.
- Study exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
7. TerminusDB ($240K/year)
How much they make: $240K/year
Current team size: 10
TerminusDB has raised €3.6 million in seed funding for its open-source knowledge graph database that offers dependable, private, and effective revision control & collaboration, with a mission to make fundamental changes regarding how data is curated, managed or stored.
8. Data Fetcher ($276K/year)
In 2020, Andy learned about a Google Sheets add-on called API Connector, which imports your data into a simple Google sheet.
Around the same time, Andy noticed the rise in popularity of Airtable.
Since Google Sheets and Airtable were close in compatibility, Andy decided to build a similar type of data integration tool for Airtable.
Andy’s 3-step method for coming up with ideas is helpful context for understanding how he came up with the idea: - Find a platform that is already growing massively. - Look at already successful tools for more mature platforms. - Build an equivalent tool for the new platform.
How much they make: $276K/year
How much did it cost to start: $100
Current team size: 0
Data Fetcher is a no-code tool that imports data into Airtable which has reached 190 paying customers in just over a year after launch and is making $6500 in MRR, with a goal of reaching $30k+ in MRR, for aspiring founders looking to bootstrap an app to life-changing revenue as a solo founder.
9. Songstats ($828K/year)
Oskar Eichler, co-founder of Songstats, came up with the idea for his business while working as a label manager and DJ in Shanghai. Being involved in the music industry, he recognized the value of data analytics for artists and record labels and wanted to provide a platform that aggregated insights across various music services. After teaming up with his co-founders, they built Songstats and now have over 6,000 customers generating almost $1 million in annual recurring revenue.
How much they make: $828K/year
How much did it cost to start: $400K
Current team size: 8
Songstats is a music data analytics SaaS platform that aggregates insights across 14 different music services, approaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue and growing its team of music lovers, ultimate frisbee players, and close friends that came together in Bali, Indonesia with a shared vision of launching their startup.
10. FreightWaves ($30M/year)
How much they make: $30M/year
Current team size: 229
FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller grew his company to a $30 million total revenue while generating $15 million in ad income, with no costs spent on client acquisition, through its top media and market analytics.
11. Supermetrics ($20M/year)
How much they make: $20M/year
Current team size: 313
Marketing data extraction tool Supermetrics allows thousands of marketers worldwide, including big names like BBC and Google, to transfer data from their chosen analytics and reporting platforms to marketing and ad platforms such as Facebook and Google.
12. Keito ($5M/year)
How much they make: $5M/year
Current team size: 22
Pune-based start-up Keito raised $360,000 via seed rounds to develop their human-assisted low-code machine-learning platform, which provides a no-code intelligent information management platform for clients across India, US, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and the Middle East.
13. Timescale ($12M/year)
How much they make: $12M/year
Current team size: 151
Timescale, an open-source time-series database solution for IoT workloads compatible with PostgresSQL and designed for simple use and query solving, has raised $180 million at a $1 billion+ valuation with over 500 paying clients and 7x community growth alongside 20x revenue growth.
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- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
