32 Software Developer Success Stories [2023]
A software developer is a person who creates computer programs. They design, test, and oversee the creation of software for a variety of purposes including businesses, personal use, or social networking.
If you have strong technical skills and experience in programming, you can start a software development business. You should also have a good understanding of how the software works.
The average salary for software developers is $110,140. The best-paid 25 percent earn an annual income of up to 140K dollars while the lowest-paid workers make just under 84K dollars.
The recent trends in software development are moving towards mobile apps and cloud-based solutions. Businesses are providing a variety of programming languages and tools to create software that meets the client's needs.
Starting a software development company is the perfect way to explore in this exciting industry. This type of business is growing in popularity as businesses are looking for ways to offer their customers a convenient way to access their data and applications.
Here are some real life success stories of starting a software developer:
1. SkyVerge, Inc. ($4.2M/year)
Max Rice, the co-founder of SkyVerge, came up with the idea for the business while working as an IT Director. He reached out to Justin Stern, who was knowledgeable about WooCommerce, for help with an eCommerce project. The successful collaboration led them to start SkyVerge, which now generates $350,000 in monthly revenue and provides software tools for over 100,000 eCommerce brands.
How much they make: $4.2M/year
Current team size: 32
SkyVerge, a software company, has grown rapidly with revenue of $350,000 per month, over 100,000 eCommerce customers, and a globally distributed team of 30 people, all through starting with consulting projects and building focused and solutions-based products, acquiring small products from other developers, and focusing largely on content marketing and providing excellent customer support.
2. UserGuiding ($1.68M/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: $1.68M/year
How much did it cost to start: $200K
Current team size: 20
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.
So... can you actually make money with a software developer?
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 doesnβt.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
3. Epixel Solutions ($1.8M/year)
Sajin Rajan, co-founder of Epixel Solutions, came up with the idea for the company after attending a trade show and realizing the difficulties faced by product-selling companies in the direct selling industry. He saw an opportunity to provide a stable and advanced MLM software solution to help these companies manage their business more effectively. Since launching in 2015, Epixel has experienced impressive growth, with a monthly revenue of $70,000 and a client base that includes direct selling, MLM, blockchain, cryptocurrency exchanges, and more.
How much they make: $1.8M/year
Current team size: 150
Epixel Solutions, LLC provides MLM software as a complete solution to manage and organize direct selling and MLM businesses, and has seen significant growth since launching, currently making a monthly revenue of around $70,000 and completing over 200+ projects in different sectors around the world.
4. Treblle ($60K/year)
Vedran, a developer with years of experience, came up with the idea for Treblle while running a development agency. Frustrated with the time-consuming tasks of providing integration support and writing API documentation, Vedran saw a need for a tool that would streamline these processes. After months of development and testing, Treblle was born and quickly gained traction among clients and developers worldwide. With a seed investment of $1.4 million and over 200 customers, Treblle is poised for future growth and success.
How much they make: $60K/year
Current team size: 2
Treblle is an API management tool that provides real-time API monitoring; with 200 clients to date and a Seed investment round that raised $1.4 million, Treblle is providing developers everywhere with a solution to API discrepancies.
So... can you actually make money with a software developer?
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 doesnβt.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
5. Barn2 Plugins ($1.44M/year)
Katie and her husband Andy founded Barn2 Plugins in 2009 as a web design shop. They saw the opportunity to transition into a product business and identified gaps in the market by leveraging their insider knowledge of the industry and researching pain points online. They started with their first product, WooCommerce Password Protected Categories, and focused on low-cost, low-risk solutions that could be quickly developed and launched. Through content marketing and targeted advertising, they have been able to attract and retain customers, generating over $100,000 in monthly revenue with their 16 products.
How much they make: $1.44M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 14
Barn2 Plugins, founded in 2009 by a husband-and-wife duo, sells innovative software products generating over $100,000 in monthly revenue aimed at website owners on the WordPress and WooCommerce platforms, with their first product, WooCommerce Password Protected Categories, launched to market after identifying a gap in the industry.
6. Cobuild Lab ($1.08M/year)
Angel Lacret, the founder of Cobuild Lab, started the company 5 years ago after moving to Miami from Venezuela. As a software engineer with previous experience in creating products for startups and government organizations, Lacret saw the need to help entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with custom software solutions. Over the years, Cobuild Lab evolved its product development process, focusing on sustainable software development and establishing a strong customer service approach. Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company adapted its strategy and saw significant growth, doubling its revenue and staff in 2021. Cobuild Lab's future goal is to continue expanding its sales and lead generation efforts, aiming for a 2x growth in 2022.
How much they make: $1.08M/year
How much did it cost to start: $20K
Current team size: 45
Cobuild Lab's CEO and Founder Angel Lacret shares his journey of starting a custom software solutions company, starting from $20k and growing to a team of over 50, and offers insights on attracting and retaining customers through a strong digital marketing campaign and building personal relationships, as well as emphasizing the importance of product market fit and sales.
So... can you actually make money with a software developer?
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 doesnβt.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
7. TRIARE ($300K/year)
Boris, the founder of TRIARE, came up with the idea for his software development company after working as a project manager for a German startup. When the company closed down, Boris decided to keep the team and build a business together. With just a $500 investment, they started providing software development services and eventually evolved into a full-cycle service provider. Through word of mouth and various marketing tools, TRIARE has attracted and retained customers, with their website receiving 22,000 unique visitors and generating dozens of leads.
How much they make: $300K/year
Current team size: 60
Ukrainian software development company TRIARE, with a current annual turnover of $500,000, shares how personal and collective responsibility, paired with patience and consistency, can help build a profitable business.
8. Dreamonkey ($360K/year)
Federico Schianchi and his four partners started Dreamonkey after their first project, Check Your Life, failed to take off. With their expertise in web app development and industrial IoT, they shifted their focus to selling their services to enterprise-level customers, leading to a constant growth of 50% per year and revenue of $300K.
How much they make: $360K/year
How much did it cost to start: $40K
Current team size: 2
Italian software company Dreamonkey grew from $90k to $300k in revenue with a constant growth rate of 50% per year, thanks to their focus on high-quality web development, industrial IoT, and open-source software development for web developers.
9. Dusseau and Company ($420K/year)
Mark, the founder of Dusseau and Company, drew inspiration from his personal experiences as a former foster child and his professional background in software development. He saw a need to help small businesses and diverse founders build disruptive software companies, and thus, Dusseau and Company was born. With a scientific approach to product development and a commitment to empathy and helping others, Mark has successfully worked with clients like Chevron and JP Morgan Chase, helping diverse founders raise $700k in funding and achieve over $15 million in company valuations.
How much they make: $420K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1.5K
Current team size: 0
Dusseau and Company is a boutique product development firm focused on helping diverse founders ideate, design, develop, and scale disruptive technology companies, with a leading service of executing different levels of the product development lifecycle, and boasts an impressive metric of helping diverse founders build products that have gone on to raise $700k in funding and over $15 million in company valuations.
10. OneHash, Inc. ($144K/year)
Rohit Gadia, co-founder of OneHash Inc, came up with the idea for their business, OneHash CRM and OneChat, based on the concept of FaaS (FOSS as a Service), which provides the benefits of SaaS at the affordability of FOSS. The company started with a two-person team and a modest investment of $2 million from their savings, and despite initial obstacles, OneHash now has over 410,000 signups and aims to have 10 million users within the next 10 years.
How much they make: $144K/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 7
OneHash Inc. is a startup that offers affordable FOSS+ SaaS CRM and customer assistance services, with powerful reporting features as well as scalability and extendibility, and currently has over 410,000 signups from all seven continents.
11. Data Excavator ($48K/year)
Vitaly, a programmer and entrepreneur, came up with the idea for Data Excavator while working on a project to create a catalog of automobile oils. Frustrated with the difficulty of obtaining data from manufacturers, he developed a prototype that could scrape information from websites using CSS selectors. The prototype proved successful, allowing him to collect the desired database in just a few hours.
How much they make: $48K/year
How much did it cost to start: $30K
Current team size: 2
Vitaly, a programmer and entrepreneur, accidentally created a data scraping app while working on a different startup that has since compiled energy-efficient databases of about 500,000 goods used by five large companies and many small ones, with monthly sales of over $100 million.
12. ScrapingBee ($99.6K/year)
How much they make: $99.6K/year
Current team size: 2
ScrapingBee, a web scraping tool founded in 2019, has grown to $1M+ ARR in just three years with 99% of revenue attributed to SEO strategies and practices, used by businesses for price monitoring, tracking SERP results, lead generation, and general data mining.
13. Glean ($25.3M/year)
How much they make: $25.3M/year
Current team size: 170
Glean's founder saw a need for an intuitive work assistant that provides search solutions to teams, which led to the creation of the company, while successful co-founding of Rubrik achieved $600M revenue in fiscal year 2020.
14. SmartSuite ($1.2M/year)
How much they make: $1.2M/year
Current team size: 8
SmartSuite gained 400 customers and $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue in just 4 weeks after 3 years of development, offering three monthly seat pricing tiers with the largest deal closed for 150 seats.
15. Pingboard ($6.3M/year)
How much they make: $6.3M/year
Current team size: 30
Pingboard, the remote employee engagement platform, has experienced 16 consecutive months of growth during the pandemic and generated $6.3M in revenue in 2022 while serving over 750,000 employees across 2,500 companies globally.
16. Habu ($12M/year)
How much they make: $12M/year
Current team size: 61
Habu founders made $12M in 2022 from its 50 customers with its SaaS software that produces high-value analytics from regulated datasets while defending customer privacy and data owners' rights.
17. DashThis ($4.2M/year)
How much they make: $4.2M/year
Current team size: 33
Automated marketing reporting tool DashThis was created by IT expert and entrepreneur Stephane GuΓ©rin to solve the pain point of manual monthly reporting, since its founding it has saved marketers hours of work and helped the company grow strategically.
18. Abstrakt ($2M/year)
How much they make: $2M/year
How much did it cost to start: $60K
Current team size: 22
"Creator of Conversational Intelligence software launches Abstrakt.ai, a real-time call coaching software valued at $4 million after raising $500,000 in a Seed Round; founder invested $60,000 of his own funds to develop proof of concept."
19. CartHook ($1M/year)
How much they make: $1M/year
Current team size:
CartHook, a Shopify app, has helped increase income and AOV for e-commerce businesses by adding a post-purchase upsell tool, handling over $1 billion in transactions and was founded by Jordan Gal, who previously generated $500k in revenue with his own e-commerce business.
20. TerminusDB ($240K/year)
How much they make: $240K/year
Current team size: 10
TerminusDB has raised β¬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.
21. Enquire AI ($1.5M/year)
How much they make: $1.5M/year
Current team size: 228
Enquire AI offers an AI-powered platform that collaborates with 50 businesses worldwide and 300 clients, generating a 300% increase in revenue and 207% expansion of its expert network in the last year.
22. Raffle ($1.1M/year)
How much they make: $1.1M/year
Current team size: 40
Raffle AI's enterprise search engine uses intelligent search tools to reduce bounce rates, calls, live chats, and emails by 34% on average while raising $21.8 million from investors including K1 Investment Management, Vaeksfonden, and PreeSeed Ventures.
23. Codiga ($660K/year)
How much they make: $660K/year
Current team size: 7
Codiga, a platform for programmers to receive code snippets & analysis, has raised $2.1M from various investors, and automates code reviews on GitHub, Gitlab, and Bitbucket, identifying flaws in over 10 programming languages.
24. Gruntify ($3M/year)
How much they make: $3M/year
Current team size: 21
Gruntify, an automation tool designed for fieldwork that combines geospatial, augmented reality, and real-time messaging technologies, has built its customer base organically and currently generates $250K MRR, ending the fiscal year with 25% more revenue, and hopes to raise $5M-10M to finance growth and expansion.
25. Client Portal ($48K/year)
How much they make: $48K/year
Current team size: 2
This case study examines how Laura Elizabeth made $4k per month in her first year by creating Client Portal, a simple WordPress plugin that provides clients with access to their project's progress, which helped expand on the success of her later businesses.
26. Agendrix ($4.6M/year)
How much they make: $4.6M/year
Current team size: 36
Agendrix is a workforce management software for retailers, restaurants, and nursing homes offering team communication, scheduling, and time tracking, that started as an agency bringing in $500K in its first year, and has since grown steadily, receiving its second round of funding of $4.2M in August 2021.
27. Concentrix ($5.59B/year)
How much they make: $5.59B/year
Current team size: 125800
Learn how a young entrepreneur built an award-winning digital consumer experience company, Concentrix, with over 225,000 global employees and impressive YoY growth of 13.45%, serving prominent Fortune Global 500 clients in various sectors including technology, banking, and retail.
28. Cognism ($25M/year)
How much they make: $25M/year
Current team size: 401
Cognism, an international B2B sales intelligence provider, recently received an impressive $87.5 million investment and furthered their growth in March 2022 by acquiring French LinkedIn sales automation software company Kaspr.io, with a focus on development through complementary partnerships, hiring international freelancers, targeted marketing and expansion into new global markets.
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