9 Software Tool Success Stories [2023]
Businesses are focusing on automating their operations, a need that has resulted in increased demand for software developers.
If you have software development skills and looking for a low maintenance business idea that will generate passive income, it is time to practice your skills.
A software company can build a plethora of applications and earn a passive income from them, with very little to no maintenance needed to keep the applications running. If you plan to start a software business, research the market to find high-potential opportunities. You may focus on a certain niche, or serve any business.
Choose a payment option that allows you a passive income over the lifetime of your software.
Here are some real life success stories of starting a software tool:
1. Nextiva ($120M/year)
Yaniv Masjedi (from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA) started Nextiva about 15 years ago.
Hi, Everyone! My name is Yaniv Masjedi and I’m the CMO of Nextiva, a leading business communications company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’ve been with the company since the very beginning (spring 2008) when we signed our first customer.
We’ve also grown exponentially since those early days in 2008. While we started with a few people in a windowless conference room, we now have more than 1,000 team members spread out across offices across the world.
2. ScrapingBee ($99.6K/year)
Today’s guest had been hearing about stories of entrepreneurship and finally he took the leap himself. And do you know what happened? He failed. Badly. You’ll hear that story in this interview and how he eventually got to where he is today. Kevin Sahin is the founder of ScrapingBee, a web scraping A…
Kevin Sahin and Pierre de Wulf (from Paris, Île-de-France, France) started ScrapingBee over 4 years ago.
ScrapingBee was founded by Kevin Sahin and Pierre de Wulf. It’s a useful tool specially designed to help people or businesses that need to quickly scrape the web but don't want to spend a lot of time doing it.
They completely bootstrapped their business and built their MVP very quickly, as they needed cash to come in as quickly as possible.
The business started in 2019 and in just three years, the founders have grown ScrapingBee to $1M+ ARR. 99% of revenue is attributed to SEO strategies and practices.
The ScrapingBee API takes care of headless browsers and rotates proxies so you can concentrate on data extraction. They set up the web application, database, and the entire system on Heroku.
Businesses across a variety of industries, including e-commerce for price monitoring, SEO firms for tracking SERP results, lead generation, and general data mining, uses ScrapingBee.

Read the full story on failory.com ➜
Learn more about starting a software tool:
Where to start?
-> How much does it cost to start a software tool?
-> Pros and cons of a software tool
Need inspiration?
-> Examples of established software tool
-> Marketing ideas for a software tool
Other resources
4. Occupier ($6.6M/year)
Real estate has lagged in terms of digital adoption and there’s a massive opportunity waiting for founders. Today’s guest is someone who seized it. I want to find out how he did it. Matt Giffune is the founder of Occupier, an end-to-end lease lifecycle management software platform for commercial te…
Andrew Flint, Erik Pearson, and Matt Giffune (from New York, NY, USA) started Occupier over 5 years ago.
Occupier is an end-to-end lease lifecycle management tool for commercial tenants. The company was founded by the trio – Andrew Flint, Erik Pearson, and Matt Giffune in 2018 and it’s headquartered in NYC.
They create software that commercial tenants use to execute lease transactions, manage real estate leases, and ensure compliance with lease accounting standards.
For roughly ten years, Matt and Andrew worked at JLL in NYC and Boston as commercial real estate brokers. This experience & knowledge proved to be useful in building this business.
After working together at VTS, the top leasing asset and management platform for landlords, they founded Occupier. Occupier achieved its goal by raising $10.5M in Series A funding.

Listen to the full podcast on podcasts.nu ➜
5. Abstrakt ($2M/year)
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/NathanLatkawatchAbstrakt CEO Greg Reffner: Real-time call coaching software... Visit them: www.abstrakt.aiSee more of Gr...
Greg Reffner (from Phoenix, Arizona, USA) started Abstrakt over 3 years ago.
- Greg Reffner is the creator of Conversational Intelligence software who also launched Abstrakt. ai in March 2020, just as the pandemic was causing the entire planet to collapse.
- Abstrakt is a real-time & practical call coaching software that helps every sales rep and leader avoid the agony of forgetting their number by combining machine learning, natural language processing, and custom algorithms.
- The founder invested $60,000 of his own funds to develop a proof of concept before finally launching Abstrakt.ai in March 2020.
- Greg looked for a technical Co-Founder to launch Abstrakt.ai with him because he isn't a technical person.
- Abstrakt.ai raised an additional $500,000 in a Seed Round at the end of 2021, valued at $4 million.

Watch the full video on youtube.com ➜
6. Grammarly ($208M/year)
Grammarly makes money using a freemium model to sell premium writing subscriptions to three different customer segments: individual users, businesses, and educational institutions. Apart from selling premium writing subscriptions, the company also generates some revenue by selling its human proofreading service.
Max Lytvyn, Dmytro Lider, and Alex Shevchenko (from San Francisco, California, USA) started Grammarly over 14 years ago.
Max Lytvyn, Dmytro Lider, and Alex Shevchenko founded Grammarly, an AI-powered writing tool, in 2009.
The tool provides individuals and businesses with unrivaled, market-leading communication support by combining technological approaches with human expertise.
Grammarly aims to improve people's lives by fostering better communication. Every day, 30 million people and 50,000 teams use this writing assistance technology.
The company raised $200 million in November 2021 from investors, including Baillie Gifford and BlackRock, at a valuation of $13 billion.

Read the full story on forbes.com ➜
7. TerminusDB ($240K/year)
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/NathanLatkawatchTerminusDB CEO Luke Feeney: Git for data... Visit them: www.terminusdb.comSee more of Luke's data: https...
Luke Feeney (from Dublin, Ireland) started TerminusDB over 4 years ago.
In 2019 Luke Feeney founded TerminusDB, an open-source knowledge graph database that offers dependable, private, and effective revision control & collaboration.
TerminusDB is for people who love coding and aspire to make fundamental changes regarding how data is curated, managed, or stored.
Kevin Feeney and Gavin Mendel-Gleason came on board to help the idea for TerminusDB turn into reality. The former is the company's CEO, while the latter, having extensive programming and software specification knowledge, is the CTO.
TerminusDB, a Trinity College Dublin spinoff, has raised €3.6 million in seed funding for its open-source collaboration platform for large and complex data.
TerminusDB joined the AI Infrastructure Alliance earlier this year, a nonprofit organization and industry group created to promote greater cooperation among artificial intelligence and machine learning start-ups worldwide.

Listen to the full podcast on soundcloud.com ➜
8. Codiga ($660K/year)
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/NathanLatkawatchCodiga CEO Julien Delange: True bonding for remote teams... Visit them: www.codiga.ioSee more of Julien'...
Julien Delange (from Denver, Colorado, USA) started Codiga about 3 years ago.
Julien Delange founded Codiga, a platform offering code snippets & code analysis services that aids programmers in producing better code faster.
Codiga automates code reviews on GitHub, Gitlab, and Bitbucket by identifying security flaws, duplicate code, and other issues in over 10 programming languages.
Codiga announced the completion of its seed funding round after collecting $2.1M from numerous illustrious investors.

Watch the full video on youtube.com ➜
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