Workable's Biggest Customer Pays Six Figures. On Purpose.
Workable turns down million-dollar contracts deliberately, because winning them would cost the company the segment it already leads. Its CEO explains the trade.
Accucode Keeps 4 Cents on the Dollar and Uses It to Build Software Companies
A hardware reseller keeping four per cent of $100 million sounds like a bad business. Kevin Price has spent 24 years turning that four per cent into software exits.
Salesloft Revenue: $50M ARR in 2019, Past $100M by Mid-2021
In July 2019 Kyle Porter put Salesloft at about $50M ARR, doubling with 120% net revenue retention, after he cancelled a $7M data product to build it. He forecast $100M for 2020. The company passed $100M ARR in early summer 2021, months before Vista took a majority stake at $2.3B.
Yellow.ai Is Paid by the Minute to Kill the Phone Call
Yellow.ai bills by the minute of phone call it handles, and spends its R&D budget making those calls unnecessary. Its CEO explains why that isn't a problem yet.
Ignition Charges Accountants $150 for Software and $250 for Moving Their Money
Ignition sells software to accountants and moves their money. Only one of those two lines expands on its own, and it is not the software.
How Cloudbeds Passed $50M Revenue Replacing 18 Hotel Systems With One — Then Bet on Fintech
Cloudbeds grew from $10M to $50M+ by consolidating the 18 systems a hotel runs on. The next act, Adam Harris explained on tape, is the money itself: payments, direct bookings at a sub-5% take, and a $87B intermediary-fee pool to raid.
Guesty Takes 2% to 5% of Every Reservation It Touches
Amiad Soto did not want to quote a price. What he eventually gave is the clearest published account of how Guesty makes money — and where it sits between homeowner and property manager.
Chorus Turned On Pricing in 2017, Hit $8.4M, Then Passed $10M
Chorus charged almost nothing in 2016 and was carrying $8.4M a year later, with under $50,000 a month in paid spend and a head of marketing hired weeks before this tape. The channel was the product itself.
Wunderkind Revenue: The Real Story Behind the $150M Claim
Wunderkind crossed $100M in annual revenue in early 2020, and Ryan Urban called $150M 'in the ballpark' in late 2021 — but the old version of this post got the dates and the claim wrong. Here is the sourced two-era revenue story, from BounceX to today.
Onfleet Revenue in 2020: About $800K a Month, Billed Per Task, 0% of the Order
In August 2020 Onfleet's CEO confirmed Latka's math: about $800K a month from roughly 900 customers paying about $900 each. Those customers ran over 3M delivery tasks a month through Onfleet's software with their own drivers or couriers, and Onfleet took no cut of the orders.
How SevenRooms Grew Past a $6M Run Rate on Shadow Hosting and a Comcast Partnership — and Sold to DoorDash for $1.2B
In October 2018, SevenRooms co-founder and CTO Kinesh Patel confirmed to Latka a revenue floor north of $500K MRR — not the $10M ARR our old headline claimed. Here's what the tape actually says, and how the story ended in a $1.2B DoorDash acquisition.
Typeform Hit a $40M Run Rate With Its $35M Series B Still in the Bank
Typeform raised about $52M across four rounds, reached a $40M-plus run rate, and still had the whole $35M Series B sitting in the bank three and a half years later. Co-founder David Okuniev explains what that paid for.
How Ahrefs Achieved $100M Revenue Through Product Innovation and Content Marketing
Ahrefs grew from a $300K bootstrap in 2010 to roughly $100M ARR by 2021 — and an estimated $149.1M in 2024 — with zero funding and no sales team until the very end. Patrick Stox laid out the numbers at SaaSOpen in March 2024. Here is the dated record.
How Magic Eden Hit $8M a Month Seven Months After Writing Its First Line of Code
Four founders, equal equity, a site launched in 14 days — and by month seven, $8M a month in revenue on a 2% take of $400M in NFT trading volume. Jack Lu's May 2022 interview is a time capsule of the fastest revenue ramp we've ever recorded.
6sense Runs 18 Reps at $1M Quotas and Pays $1.10 for Every New Dollar of ARR
Jason Zintak inherited four quota-carrying reps and 30 customers, and refused to hire more until attainment proved the product fit — then tripled bookings three years running at $1.10 per new dollar of ARR.
How Tractian Grew to $1 Million in Revenue: Igor Marinelli's Strategy
Igor Marinelli told Latka in December 2021 that Tractian had just hit $100K MRR — 10x in a year — on a $45-per-sensor model. Here's the real math behind the $1M milestone, and the roughly $200M in funding that followed.
TeamSnap Revenue: $18.9M Reported for 2018, and a CEO Who Forecast a Flat 2020
TeamSnap's only published revenue figures are $12.3M for 2017 and $18.9M for 2018, reported to ICIC's Inner City 100. In July 2020 Dave DuPont wouldn't give Latka a newer number and said he expected 2020 to match 2019. That was a forecast, not a result.
How ActiveCampaign Hit $250M Revenue with LinkedIn, Earned Media, and Influencers
ActiveCampaign last confirmed $165M ARR in April 2021. By mid-2024 its CMO was citing $250M. Casey Hill told Latka in July 2024 how LinkedIn, podcast guesting, and performance-paid influencers power the growth program — and why the company won't confirm the number.
Productsup Charges for One Thing Only: SKUs
Productsup spent four years as an agency, then rebuilt as pure software with exactly one pricing lever. Expansion of 25-30% comes from customers loading more SKUs, and nothing else.
FloQast's CEO Won't Tell You His Revenue, But He'll Tell You How to Bill
Mike Whitmire declined to state FloQast's revenue and gave away something more useful instead: the single metric he runs sales on, and the billing term that makes it survivable.
WebPT Reached $42M Having Raised $1M, Ever
WebPT built a $42 million business on a single million dollars of capital, and the 2014 private equity deal everyone calls a raise put no new money into the company at all.
How Jellyvision Hit $60M ARR in Employee Benefits — Under CEO Amanda Lannert, Not "Amanda Leonard"
Jellyvision told Latka in November 2018 it had passed $60M ARR with 1,400 employer customers and 18 million employees on ALEX — on just $6.6M of primary capital. One correction first: the CEO is Amanda Lannert, not "Amanda Leonard."
HackerEarth Refuses to Give Its CSMs an Expansion Quota
HackerEarth's CEO pays customer success managers on retention and never on expansion, because a quota can be hit while a fifth of the accounts walk out the door.
LeafLink Was Running at $1.4B in GMV, Aiming at $1.8B
LeafLink's headline GMV number is a target, not an achievement. What it had actually built was 23 state marketplaces and a payments rail it had to construct itself.
QuestionPro Bought a $3.5M Company for $1M, Cash, in 30 Days
A private equity firm called Vivek Bhaskaran to sell him a company doing $3.5 million. He offered $800,000 from his iPhone and closed in thirty days, all cash.
How Collibra Reached $50M ARR — and Why "Bootstrapped" Is the Wrong Word
Felix Van de Maele told Nathan Latka in March 2017 that Collibra was just under $50M ARR — 200 enterprise customers paying $200K–$250K a year, with 3–4% churn. An earlier version of this post called the company bootstrapped and dated everything a year late. Here is what the tape and the funding record actually say.
HappyCo Hit $9M ARR by Noticing Its Support Tickets Didn't Scale
Jindou Lee sold nineteen property managers on screenshots of an app that didn't exist. Six years later a single phone call showed him the SMB business was priced against the wrong cost.
Expensify Revenue: How David Barrett Built to $100M+ ARR With No Sales Commissions and No Ads
Expensify broke every growth rule at once: a fake product that became real, a janitor-first sales motion, zero advertising, zero commissions — and it worked all the way through an IPO. The tape where Barrett explained it, and the decade of numbers since.
$2,500 × 10,000 Customers Leaves $75M of SmartBear Unexplained
Nathan Latka multiplied SmartBear’s 10,000 customers by its $2,500 average transaction live on the call and came up $75 million short. Justin Teague’s answer was expansion inside developer teams and years of buying founder-led tools companies.
About $1,000 a rooftop: how Volie bootstrapped its way to $1.2M a month
Scott Davis sells call-center software to automotive business development centers at roughly $1,000 per rooftop per month. He has almost 2,000 of them, 85% of the company, and no investors.
Reveleer Went $25M to $100M in Two Years. Only 10% of It Was Bought
Six years to get from $1M to $25M. One year to get to $50M. Jay Ackerman explains how two small acquisitions moved the addressable market tenfold.
How Algolia Crossed $20M ARR Making Engineers Answer Support Tickets
Search-as-an-API sounds like a product story. Algolia’s growth was really an organizational bet: no dedicated support team in the early years, engineers answering customers directly, and a two-motion model in which 5% of customers brought about 80% of revenue.
He Sold Adify to Cox for $350M, Then Spun the Next Company Out of It
Jim Larrison sold his ad-tech company to Cox for $350 million, built the next one as a division inside the buyer, and left with signed deals. Year one revenue was a couple of million.
Agiloft's Founder Refused to Give a Revenue Number. Twice.
Colin Earl bootstrapped Agiloft for thirty years and refused to give a revenue figure in two separate interviews. Both numbers on his profile turn out to be someone else's multiplication.
How SafetyWing Grew to $24M Revenue Selling a Social Safety Net for Digital Nomads
Sondre Rasch helped build Norway's social safety net, then noticed the internet's labor market didn't have one. By April 2023 SafetyWing was at a $24M run rate, doubling yearly — and Rasch disclosed his Series B valuation on the tape for the first time anywhere.
Surefire Local Reached $26M on $6M of Equity and $11.5M of Debt
Surefire Local reached $26 million in ARR on about six million dollars of equity, by using debt at every step and refusing the dilution that comes with the alternative.
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