10 Writing Tool Success Stories [2024]
Here are some real life success stories of starting a writing tool:
1. Rytr ($60K/year)
Abhi, the founder and CEO of a startup platform and business incubator, came up with the idea for Rytr, an AI writing assistant, after realizing the pain points of content generation for small teams. With the potential he saw in GPT3 technology, Abhi set out to create an intuitive AI assistant that offered the best quality outputs, launching in April 2021. Since then, Rytr has become a market leader with 300,000+ customers worldwide and plans for future growth.
How much they make: $60K/year
How much did it cost to start: $25K
Current team size: 1
Rytr, a new AI writing assistant developed by a startup platform and business incubator, has become a market leader, serving over 300,000 customers across the world and doing seven figures in ARR.
2. WritePhobia ($360/year)
After struggling with his own discipline in writing, software engineer Burak Kanber built WritePhobia, an app that punishes writers for not meeting their daily word count goals. With a few dozen users already on the app, Burak has done zero marketing and is gaining traction through word-of-mouth and social efforts.
How much they make: $360/year
How much did it cost to start: $50
Current team size: 0
Burak Kanber created WritePhobia, an app that motivates writers to write regularly by punishing them for not meeting their word count goals, which has gained a usership of a few dozen users in public beta and has found success through word-of-mouth marketing.
So... can you actually make money with a writing tool?
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. InstaText ($600K/year)
Matej Guid, CEO and co-founder of InstaText, came up with the idea for his AI-based online writing assistant while working as a professor and struggling with editing academic papers. Leveraging advances in AI, Guid and his team created a tool that uses reinforcement learning to continuously improve text, resulting in over half a million active users and more than $50k in monthly revenue in just two years. InstaText was even named the Slovenian Startup of the Year in 2020.
How much they make: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50K
Current team size: 4
InstaText is an AI-based online writing assistant that helps non-native speakers improve their English, with over half a million active users from 150 countries worldwide, bootstrapped from $0 to $50k monthly revenue in two years and quadrupled their sales in 2021, becoming Slovenian Startup of the Year and expanding to web applications and browser extensions.
4. The Word Counter ($240K/year)
After recognizing the lack of a comprehensive and user-friendly word counter tool, Kevin Miller decided to build The Word Counter. Using his expertise in SEO, he aimed to prove the effectiveness of his strategies by growing the website from scratch and achieving the top ranking on Google. In just two years, The Word Counter has achieved impressive results, with over 300,000 keywords rankings and 2,400 domain referrals.
How much they make: $240K/year
How much did it cost to start: $25K
Current team size: 1
Founder Kevin Miller's online word counter tool achieved over 300,000 keyword rankings, over 2,400 domain referrals and made $40,000 per month through Google's top results in just two years through SEO practices, proving the value of investing in quality and SEO.
So... can you actually make money with a writing tool?
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. Ship 30 for 30 ($2.5M/year)
Dickie started writing online in 2020.
He was writing a newsletter, but after 9 months, he only had around 300 subscribers.
He decided that if people weren’t going to find him, he needed to go to where the people were and double down on it.
The people were on Twitter, so he committed to writing 30 threads in 30 days to grow his account.
That personal writing challenge turned into the foundation of Ship 30 for 30, which started as a Slack accountability group to help people publish consistently.
How much they make: $2.5M/year
Current team size: 0
This business case study shares the story of an online course, teaching students how to write 30 pieces of content a day, that has grown from no followers to nearly 50k on Twitter in 12 months, helping over 4000 students and resulting in a successful six-figure company.
So... can you actually make money with a writing tool?
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:
6. Grammarly ($208M/year)
How much they make: $208M/year
Current team size: 1057
AI-powered writing tool, Grammarly, founded by Max Lytvyn, Dmytro Lider, and Alex Shevchenko, raised $200M at a $13B valuation, assisting 30M people and 50K businesses with market-leading communication.
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
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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
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
