46 Saas Product Developer Business Success Stories [2024]
SaaS product is online software that uses a license to access. With cloud computing omnipresent, starting a SaaS company is a low barrier to entry idea with exponential growth potential.
Modern users recognize the SaaS cost-saving benefits and the ability to offer project collaboration. Besides, there are multiple technologies you can use to build SaaS platforms.
To build a successful SaaS product, you need database management skills, programming language, cloud computing, design & development skills.
If you decide to build a SaaS solution, start by conducting market research and competition analysis.
Before starting the development, you must choose a good app monetization model and select an appropriate technology stack.
Here are some real life success stories of starting a saas product developer business:
1. Xena Intelligence ($300K/year)
Akhil Nair and Dhvanish ‘Danny’ Shah started off by taking up marketing and operations projects with small businesses in the Greater Boston area. They realized that many small businesses lacked the resources to hire consultants, so they decided to build a tech platform to automate data analytics using machine learning and AI. They have already had over 50 businesses take their free assessment test and have made $23,000 in revenue within a month of launching their product.
How much they make: $300K/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 3
Two friends from India co-founded a management consulting firm that offers free basic business assessment tools and paid in-depth analysis tests, with 50 businesses taking the free assessment test and 4 clients paying for the in-depth analysis test, resulting in $23,000 in revenue in just a month.
2. Studio Ninja ($1.8M/year)
Chris Garbacz, a professional wedding photographer, came up with the idea for Studio Ninja after experiencing various challenges in his photography business, including forgetting his camera bag on a wedding day. He realized the need for a user-friendly and comprehensive solution to manage his leads, clients, contracts, and invoices, leading him to create Studio Ninja, the world's most user-friendly photography business management app. With 7,000 active subscribers and monthly recurring revenue of $150,000, Studio Ninja has become a successful tool for photographers worldwide.
How much they make: $1.8M/year
How much did it cost to start: $75K
Current team size: 13
Studio Ninja is a photography business management app that has achieved 6 years of success, with 7,000 active paying subscribers and monthly recurring revenue of $150,000, thanks to co-founder Chris Garbacz's experiences and failures as a wedding photographer and serial entrepreneur.
So... can you actually make money with a saas product developer 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. Exto.io ($1.15M/year)
market research and validation before launching our product. We assumed that the demand would be there based on our own beliefs and experiences in the industry, but it turned out that we needed to make adjustments and improvements based on customer feedback. This taught us the importance of listening to our customers and constantly iterating on our product to meet their needs.
How much they make: $1.15M/year
How much did it cost to start: $80K
Current team size: 10
Exto.io's CEO and founder shares how they grew their flagship product, Recom.ai, into a full-fledged marketing tool with a $96K monthly turnover, attracting a diverse range of customers from small mom-and-pop shops to enterprise companies using a performance marketing approach and prioritizing customer feedback.
4. Document360 ($408K/year)
Saravana Kumar, founder of Document360, came up with the idea for the software as a service knowledge base while searching for good documentation tools for their existing enterprise products. Realizing the lack of a suitable tool for SaaS businesses, Saravana developed the idea into a viable project and eventually launched Document360, which has since been rated the #1 Knowledge base product by Gartner Digital Markets.
How much they make: $408K/year
Current team size: 200
Kovai.co, a bootstrapped SaaS startup founded by Saravana Kumar, has grown to over 200 employees with $10M in ARR and has developed numerous products including Document360, which has been rated the #1 Knowledge base product by Gartner Digital Markets, and their goal is to generate $30M ARR within the next 3 years and become a SaaS Unicorn by 2030.
So... can you actually make money with a saas product developer 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. Truein ($480K/year)
Ankit Tanna, the founder of Truein, came up with the idea for his business after realizing the pain points in attendance management for contractual and remotely deployed staff. He noticed that existing solutions lacked controls, transparency, and employee experience, so he leveraged AI and face recognition technology to create Truein. The business is currently generating an impressive $40,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
How much they make: $480K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50
Current team size: 20
Truein is a face recognition-based attendance solution that uses AI technology to address attendance use cases for contractual and distributed staff, boasting an MRR of $40,000 and targeting low and medium skill enterprise customers.
6. FeedLetter ($480/year)
Jens Boje, a software developer and mindfulness coach from Frankfurt, Germany, came up with the idea for FeedLetter, a feedback system for newsletters, after struggling to receive feedback from his readers. He combined a voting system with a follow-up question and built a version for his own newsletter before turning it into the first version of FeedLetter. Since its launch, Twitter and word of mouth have been the major acquisition channels for attracting and retaining customers.
How much they make: $480/year
How much did it cost to start: $20
Current team size: 0
FeedLetter.co, a simple feedback system for newsletters that started as a personal app, now has 14 customers and relies on Twitter and word-of-mouth for acquiring new users, with founder Jens Boje emphasizing the importance of focusing on publishing and growing your product instead of waiting to perfect it.
So... can you actually make money with a saas product developer 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. Resume Maker Online ($24K/year)
Fernando Pessagno, an Argentinian Product Designer, came up with the idea for ResumeMaker.Online when his sister asked for help designing her resume and he couldn't find a user-friendly online tool. He saw an opportunity to create a simple, intuitive resume-making web app for non-tech-savvy users, and thus ResumeMaker.Online was born. Since its launch in 2018, the app has been downloaded over 700,000 times and is generating over $2,000 per month.
How much they make: $24K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 0
An Argentinian Product Designer created ResumeMaker.Online, a WYSIWYG web app that has been downloaded over 700,000 times and averages more than $2,000 a month after the recently introduced v2.0.
8. Bunnyshell ($300K/year)
Alin Dobra, the CEO and Co-founder of Bunnyshell, came up with the idea for his business while working as a CTO for an outsourcing development company. Facing technical challenges with servers and high costs, Alin realized there was a need for an automated cloud management solution. He and his co-founder launched Bunnyshell in 2018, and they have since secured €750K in investment, built a team of 15 people, and generated a revenue of $12k/month.
How much they make: $300K/year
Current team size: 15
Bunnyshell CEO and co-founder Alin Dobra discusses how he created the managed cloud automation SaaS solution from scratch, securing €750,000 in investment in under 18 months, and generating $12k/month in revenue from providing services to corporate clients worldwide.
9. Tally Forms ($840K/year)
The founders were working on a previous startup, which aimed at help hotels to connect with travel influencers, but then COVID hit and travel stopped abruptly.
That's when they decided to work on Tally, another idea they had in the backlog.
Why Tally? As makers and frequent form users, they were unsatisfied with the existing tools out there. They either force you in a specific format or bombard you with countless limits and paywalls.
They wanted a simple, yet powerful form builder that allows you to create any type of form without breaking the bank. They set off building Tally—a new type of form builder for makers and no-coders.
How much they make: $840K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 3
This case study analyses how Tally, a no-code SaaS tool to create forms, achieved an impressive 12.6k users and $6,000 MRR within just a year of bootstrapping.
10. SaaS Labs - pushing boundaries of the SaaS world ($120K/year)
How much they make: $120K/year
Current team size:
How Helpwise went from a $20k budget to $100k annually building SaaS businesses.
11. Mailbrew ($120K/year)
How much they make: $120K/year
Current team size:
Aspiring founders can learn from Fabrizio who quit their job to launch apps, focusing on their product Mailbrew which now generates $2k per month.
12. Backlink Tracker by Linkody - The most accurate backlink monitoring tool ($300K/year)
How much they make: $300K/year
Current team size:
Learn how one founder quickly grew Linkody to $145k/year through building an MVP in just 3 weeks after facing challenges tracking backlinks.
13. HTMLG ($72K/year)
Ferenc Denes, the founder, started his business by developing websites and online tools that generate passive income. He came up with the idea for his online HTML editor when he was working at an internet marketing agency and needed a tool to convert Word documents to HTML. After realizing the potential of the tool, he launched it on a separate domain and it started ranking first on Google. He monetized the site with Google Ads and later launched a premium version with paid subscriptions. Now, he has over 40 websites and continues to build passive income sites.
How much they make: $72K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50
Current team size: 1
This case study is about an engineer who developed a free online HTML editor that generates a passive income of $6K per month and owns over 40 websites with a total of roughly 8-10 million monthly visitors.
14. Choicely ($840K/year)
Kaius Meskanen, founder of Choicely, came up with the idea for his business while playing around with SMS and voice call voting during a TV show. Realizing the need for more user-friendly engagement tools, he founded Choicely in 2015 and later pivoted to focus on building a mobile app builder that enables businesses to easily create high-quality mobile apps. With $70,000 monthly revenue and a client list that includes ITV Studios and the International Judo Federation, Choicely has experienced rapid growth and success in the media, sports, and entertainment industries.
How much they make: $840K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1M
Current team size: 15
Choicely is a no-code app builder that offers a simple, fast, and affordable platform for companies to build and maintain high-quality mobile apps, bringing in a monthly revenue of $70,000 with clients being leaders in media, sports & entertainment.
15. ScrapingAnt ($240K/year)
Oleg, a serial entrepreneur with a technical background, came up with the idea for ScrapingAnt after trying out various e-commerce projects and realizing the need for a reliable data scraping solution. He partnered with his friend Andrii, who had experience in setting up scalable infrastructures for data gathering, and together they created a simple solution based on AWS Lambdas. They launched the business on the RapidAPI marketplace and focused on content marketing and providing excellent customer support to attract and retain customers. The company has achieved profitability and continues to invest in technology and search for their "thingy" that will bring in more customers. Recently, they entered into a collaboration with software development company Codery to expand their capacity.
How much they make: $240K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 2
ScrapingAnt is a web scraping service with an easy-to-integrate API, making it the ideal data extraction infrastructure solution for companies and private entrepreneurs, making a profit of $7.1K in December 2021 and actively looking for technical and non-technical content creators.
16. Keap ($100M/year)
How much they make: $100M/year
Current team size: 398
CRM and sales and marketing automation company, Keap, founded in 2001, rebranded from Infusionsoft in 2019 and has since become a $100 million dollar business with over 2,500 software integrations and a product range that includes Max Classic, Keap Lite, Pro, and Max, the majority of which are Pro.
17. Ziflow ($8M/year)
How much they make: $8M/year
Current team size: 99
18. Ahead Intranet ($936K/year)
How much they make: $936K/year
Current team size: 14
Ahead Intranet is a SaaS platform that fosters employee engagement, innovation, and customer satisfaction, while costing 90% less upfront than existing intranet solutions; making $78K/month and growing a team of 14 employees.
19. Golee ($420K/year)
How much they make: $420K/year
Current team size: 26
Golee, founded by Tommaso Guerra, is a SAAS platform that has helped over 2500 sports clubs across Europe simplify day-to-day management and boost income.
20. Stravito ($12.1M/year)
How much they make: $12.1M/year
Current team size: 79
Stravito is a powerful knowledge management platform enabling consumer businesses to organize expertise and insights with centralized, accessible information.
21. CLOSEM ($360K/year)
Richard Miles, co-founder of CLOSEM, came up with the idea for the business after realizing the missed opportunities for follow-up in his own experiences with service providers. He reached out to his friend and co-founder, Laura Betterly, who loved the idea and saw the potential. Together, they created CLOSEM, a software tool that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners automate the process of following up with leads and increasing sales.
How much they make: $360K/year
Current team size: 1
CLOSEM is an AI-powered software tool that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners automate the time-consuming work of following up with leads, prospects, and customers, and increasing sales, grossing around $200,000 this year and confidently targeting $12MM next year.
22. SaasRock ($52K/year)
Alexandro came up with the initial idea for SaasRock after 8 years of being a developer.
He built multiple web apps using C#, Vue, .Net, and Tailwind CSS.
Alexandro felt like his web development process was too slow because of the multiple stacks he was using. He migrated my Vue2 app to Vue3, then to React, and then to Svelte to create a similar boilerplate but with different frontends.
With this in mind, he started looking for tools to speed up his web development process.
How much they make: $52K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
23. PinMeTo ($6M/year)
How much they make: $6M/year
Current team size: 82
Learn how PinMeTo has become a global leader in location marketing and local SEO technologies, trusted by major brands like H&M and 7-Eleven, with 3000+ accounts in 100+ nations, and more than 70 employees who represent 17 different nationalities and manage millions of data points annually.
24. UserGuiding ($2.4M/year)
Osman and his co-founder Muhammet started UserGuiding after a failed search for a business model in San Francisco. They had the skills, time, and money, but no idea until they analyzed a difficult-to-use product they were offered a job for and realized they could build a better user onboarding tool. They received positive feedback from experienced SaaS founders and quickly developed a prototype, making their first sale to Mobile Action founder Aykut. Within their first month, they made $2,000 and launched on Product Hunt, gaining more customers and attending SaaStr Annual 2018 with Aykut's gift of tickets.
How much they make: $2.4M/year
How much did it cost to start: $200K
Current team size: 30
UserGuiding is a SaaS product that has attracted 73 subscribers, 5,000 sign-ups from 92 countries, and 4 million end users, with a monthly recurring revenue that has increased from $413 to $9,400 in the past 14 months.
25. 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.
26. eWebinar ($600K/year)
Melissa Kwan, co-founder and CEO of eWebinar, came up with the idea for the business after experiencing the pain of having to run the same webinar over and over again for her previous enterprise SaaS startup. Recognizing the need for a scalable webinar automation solution, Melissa decided to create eWebinar, a platform that turns any video into an interactive webinar that can be set on a recurring schedule or made available on demand. With customers ranging from solopreneurs to publicly traded companies, eWebinar has achieved an MRR of around $50k and continues to focus on delivering the best product and customer experience.
How much they make: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500K
Current team size: 0
Melissa Kwan, CEO of eWebinar, discusses how she identified the pain point of running the same webinar over and over again, leading her to build an automated webinar solution, with a current MRR of $50k and a focus on word-of-mouth marketing.
27. 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.
28. Widebundle ($480K/year)
He used Shopify Facebook Groups and communities to read people’s problems and questions, add comments, and start conversations. It’s a long job that only a few people want to do, but it works.
At some point, Matt found 3 people who wanted the same thing but it didn’t exist in the Shopify App Store. They wanted features from a bundled app that didn’t exist. And if 3 people want it, maybe there are more.
How much they make: $480K/year
How much did it cost to start: $300
Current team size: 5
WideBundle is a Shopify App founded in May 2020, that has grown to making over $40,000 monthly, with 5 people working full-time, and helps Shopify merchants create bundles and offers to increase their average order value.
29. Funnel ($8M/year)
How much they make: $8M/year
Current team size: 353
Funnel raised $13 million in investments in 2017 and $47 million in 2021, with yearly revenue quadrupling to $10 million from 2017-2022 and an average customer value doubling over the past few years.
30. SEON ($10M/year)
How much they make: $10M/year
Current team size: 283
SEON - the fastest-growing fraud prevention company - which recently became Hungary's most financially secure tech startup after raising a total of $106 million from IVP and Creandum, creates a customer's "digital footprint" to weed out fake accounts and stop fraudulent transactions, has helped over 5000+ merchants to date, saved over 50+ million Euro, and had 1 billion+ transactions reviewed.
31. ProfitWell ($22M/year)
How much they make: $22M/year
Current team size: 85
Find out how ProfitWell, the SaaS platform specializing in marketing analytics, saas metrics and positioning, achieved over $22M in annual revenue and was recently acquired by Paddle for $200M in cash and equity, with over 30,000 companies using its products, including Canva and Autodesk.
32. MicroConf ($420K/year)
Besides bootstrapping and selling multiple startups, most recently an email service provider named Drip, Rob has been creating content about startup since 2005. A blog, a podcast, a book,... and a community seemed like a natural next step.
How much they make: $420K/year
Current team size: 2
MicroConf co-founder establishes largest community for bootstrapped founders with over 24 in-person events and thriving online presence.
33. Cledara ($2.4M/year)
How much they make: $2.4M/year
Current team size: 43
Cristina Vila and Brad van Leeuwen founded Cledara, a subscription management company that has acquired over 700 clients, a $2.4M ARR, raised $7 million, and partnered with financial giants such as PayPal, Caixa Bank, and Railsbank.
34. 10er ($120K/year)
How much they make: $120K/year
Current team size:
A Danish stand-up comedian created 10er, an automated and ongoing Patreon-style app for creators to receive payments from their fans directly, which grew to almost reach its $2,000/month goal within months of its December 2014 launch.
35. Baremetrics ($996K/year)
How much they make: $996K/year
Current team size: 18
Baremetrics, a subscription analysis platform, started as a side project by founder Josh Pigford, generating over $1 million in revenue annually, with close to $27,000 in recurring monthly revenue and 280-300 users within one year of operating, and was sold for $4 million in November 2020.
36. Evotix ($17M/year)
How much they make: $17M/year
Current team size: 150
CEO Matt Elson acquired health and safety management company Evotix for $1, improving their traditional sales team and raising $10 million through Series A and B funding rounds, increasing revenue by 50% YoY and achieving over $14 million in annual recurring revenue with a team of 150 people and 400-500 paying customers.
37. Attest ($6.6M/year)
How much they make: $6.6M/year
Current team size: 173
How Jeremy King turned a $650K fundraising effort into a $100M+ business with Attest, a fast-scaling SaaS technology platform offering top-level accuracy & speed to over 125 million customers across 58 countries worldwide.
38. Data Talks ($3M/year)
How much they make: $3M/year
Current team size: 51
Data Talks is a bootstrapped CDP that has gained 500 customers and makes $250K in monthly recurring revenue by focusing on the sports vertical market.
39. TinySeed ($1M/year)
How much they make: $1M/year
Current team size: 11
TinySeed is a funding and mentoring company, established by Rob Walling and Einar Vollset, that offers between $120,000 and $160,000 to participating companies, after raising a funding round of about $4M dollars.
40. 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.
41. INCRMNTAL ($846K/year)
How much they make: $846K/year
Current team size: 25
INCRMNTAL has completed its $4.1 million seed round, raising a total of $5.5 million, and offers a platform using causal inference and machine learning to provide actionable insights, allowing marketers to measure waste and convert it into value.
42. Crystal ($4.2M/year)
How much they make: $4.2M/year
Current team size: 42
Adaptive selling platform Crystal utilizes Personality AI to offer conversational insights and data-based predictions for sales reps, with a current ARR of $4.2M and a roster of Fortune 500 clients including Accenture, Google, and Microsoft.
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- 4,818 founder case studies
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- 8,628 business ideas
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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
