6 Digital Services Business Success Stories [2024]

Pat Walls

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Updated: November 1st, 2023

Start A Digital Services Business

Here are some real life success stories of starting a digital services business:

1. Legit Check By Ch ($240K/year)

The founders of Legit Check By CH stumbled into their business unintentionally. What started as a side project to help people authenticate luxury items quickly gained traction and turned into a full-fledged business. With almost 10 million users and 25,000+ paying customers, they now offer authentication services and have even helped customers get back as much as $5,000 from scams.

How much they make: $240K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50
Current team size: 8

We Grew Our Authentication Tool To $200K/Year With Zero Marketing Spend

Legit Check By Ch is an authentication company for luxury items that has almost 10 million users and generates $200,000+ per year with 95%+ profit margins, helping customers get their money back from scams and proving a model for building distribution before building the product.

About

Ch started Legit Check By Ch over 6 years ago

Revenue

Ch grew the business to $20K/month

Costs

It cost Ch $50 to start the business

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2. theta. ($864K/year)

Emmanuel Iroanya, the founder of theta, had a unique journey that led him to start his civic and government-focused digital firm. Inspired by his father's entrepreneurial efforts in working with the City of Baltimore to provide mental health and family preservation services, Emmanuel realized he could make a difference by working with federal agencies. His time at a large federal systems integrator solidified his idea to create a company that existed at the intersection of technology and government, with the goal of addressing the limitations and implications of technology in the public sector.

How much they make: $864K/year
Current team size: 0

Inspired By My Father, I Started A $72K/Mo Digital & Management Firm [Baltimore]

Digital and management firm theta. has served over six government agencies since its inception, providing innovative solutions to unique computing problems that meet client needs so effectively, it has doubled its employee number and is aiming for a 50/50 prime-subcontractor revenue split.

About

Emmanuel started theta. about 9 years ago

Revenue

Emmanuel grew the business to $72K/month

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Learn more about starting a digital services business:

Where to start?

-> How much does it cost to start a digital services business?
-> Pros and cons of a digital services business

Need inspiration?

-> Examples of established digital services business
-> Marketing ideas for a digital services business

Other resources

-> Digital services business tips

3. BairesDev ($524M/year)

How much they make: $524M/year
Current team size: 5000

MarTech Interview with Paul Azorin, Co-founder and Chief Brand Officer, BairesDev

BairesDev, a California-based nearshore technology solutions provider, saw impressive 50% growth in the last 5 years, thanks to founders Pablo Azorin and Nacho De Marco's ability to tap into untapped tech talent in Latin America.

About

They started BairesDev about 15 years ago

Revenue

They grew the business to $43.7M/month

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4. Gumroad ($21.2M/year)

Sahil loves building stuff. He really enjoyed the process of taking a problem coming up with a solution, and then shipping a prototype of that solution to see how good his concept was. Before finishing college he had already shipped a dozen products. Most of the time, they weren't that great.

But sometimes something works out really well, and then he has to decide if he actually wants to work on the idea some more. Very rarely, the answer is yes. That was the case with Gumroad. The question at its core was really compelling to him: How easy could one make it to sell something?

How much they make: $21.2M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 17

I Started Gumroad as a Weekend Project and Now It’s Making A Million Per Month

Gumroad is an e-commerce platform for digital content creators, which generates $350K in monthly revenue and assists creators to earn over $5M/month, with approximately 5.31M website visitors per month.

About

Sahil started Gumroad over 13 years ago

Revenue

Sahil grew the business to $1.77M/month

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Read by 999 founders