ZenBusiness Revenue: From $41M in 2021 to Past $82M by 2024

ZenBusiness has crossed $82 million in annual revenue. The floor comes straight from the CEO: on stage at SaaS Open in March 2024, Nathan Latka asked Ross Buhrdorf whether the company had more than doubled since 2021 — a year both men anchored at $41 million — and Buhrdorf answered "oh my god, yes," then laughed that he'd been tricked into the disclosure. Twice $41 million is $82 million, and that is the last revenue figure the company has actually stood behind on tape.

GetLatka's database carries higher milestones — $115 million for mid-2023 and $150 million for 2024 — but those are database rows, not on-camera confirmations, and the same page elsewhere estimates 2024 revenue at $90–120 million. This article sticks to what four Latka interviews with Buhrdorf, recorded between February 2019 and March 2024, plus the public funding record actually support.

ZenBusiness revenue, year by year

Here is every dated revenue figure the tapes and the database support, with its provenance. Where a number is host arithmetic rather than the guest's claim, the table says so.

The safest reading: at least $82 million as of March 2024, possibly well above it, with $150 million unverified.

February 2019: 6,000 customers and a house full of engineers

The earliest tape in GetLatka's archive catches ZenBusiness barely two years into Buhrdorf's tenure. A note on its date: the archive stamps this episode February 8, 2016, which is impossible — on it, Buhrdorf refers to the company's February 2018 raise as "February last year," and when Latka had him back in September 2020 he described this same conversation as the one where ZenBusiness had "over 6,000 customers." It was recorded in February 2019.

The numbers were small and Buhrdorf was open about them. ZenBusiness had just passed 6,000 customers paying an average subscription of $17.25 a month. Latka multiplied on air — roughly $103,000 a month, a $1.2 million pure-SaaS run rate — and Buhrdorf called it "in the ballpark," while noting that subscriptions were only two-thirds of revenue and transactional income put the total "well north" of the quoted math. The $1.2 million GetLatka's database logs for February 2019 is that subscription line, not the whole business.

The origin story, as he told it then: at the end of 2016 he put $25,000 into a struggling Capital Factory startup (with a matching check from the accelerator, where he was a partner), took over as CEO the same day, moved the team into one of his rental houses, and pivoted the product toward acquiring customers at the top of the funnel — business formation. In February 2018 he raised about $4 million from Austin friends and family, largely founders he had angel-funded himself: "all of the people that I'd written checks, I went back to them." At the time of the interview the team was 17 people, gross revenue churn ran about 5% a year, CAC paid back inside 12 months, and reseller affiliates — mostly accountants — kept a 30% cut in perpetuity.

September 2020: 70,000 customers and the Joust deal

Twenty months later the customer count had gone from 6,000 to more than 70,000, all paying, with about a third of that growth arriving in the six pandemic months. Buhrdorf had stopped sharing ARPU but confirmed revenue was "north of $10 million," and when Latka asked whether he could break $30 million by the following fall — the date he'd set for profitability — the answer was "oh yes… very easy to hit that number." He was candid about the tailwind: "there's nothing like a pandemic to make a venture-backed company profitable."

The strategic move that quarter was buying Joust, an Austin fintech that had raised about $11 million. ZenBusiness paid an undisclosed sum off its own balance sheet, took on the 10-person team, and rebranded the product ZenBusiness Money. Headcount was 140, only around 20 of them engineers; the rest skewed heavily toward customer service, which Buhrdorf defended as the whole point for a segment of first-time founders who "want to get a hold of someone" — while insisting margins stayed in the 80–90% range. Monthly revenue churn was 1.5% or lower. Funding to date: $19.5 million, including a $15 million Series A led by Greycroft in mid-2019.

December 2021: tripling into a $1.7 billion valuation

By the December 2021 interview ZenBusiness had passed 220,000 customers and was adding 10,000–20,000 a month. ARPU was now "confidential," so Latka reached for the $20-a-month figure implied by the previous tape and argued the company had to be north of a $40 million run rate. Buhrdorf: "we're north of that." Would they break $50 million that year? "I'm not disagreeing with that." He put trailing revenue growth at close to 3x — which squares with "north of $10 million" in late 2020 landing at $41 million for 2021.

A month earlier, on November 9, 2021, the company had announced a $200 million Series C led by Oak HC/FT with SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Cathay Innovation and Greycroft participating, at a $1.7 billion valuation — per the company's press release on Businesswire, the largest SaaS round out of Austin that year. Buhrdorf told Latka in 2024 the round actually closed at $205 million after a late $5 million came in. He also cleaned up the Series B on this tape: announced at $55 million, it "ended up being 56," at a $256 million post-money. Headcount had reached 380 full-time — 43 hired in a single month — including 150 engineers.

March 2024: past $82 million, buying Google rankings outright

The SaaS Open conversation is where the current revenue floor comes from, and it took a trap to get it. Latka low-balled a $40 million run rate mid-podcast, Buhrdorf jumped in with "we're well north of that," and on stage Latka closed the loop: more than doubled since 2021's $41 million, confirmed. Buhrdorf's only pushback was theatrical — "tricked me."

The most quotable disclosure was the growth engine. Most of ZenBusiness's SEO traffic comes from programmatic state-name-plus-LLC pages, and beyond that: "We've done 15 acquisitions. Ten of those acquisitions were organic search position." Find who ranks for a keyword you want, buy the company, integrate the ranking — DNA he traces to HomeAway, where he was founding CTO for eleven years through the IPO and the $3.9 billion sale to Expedia, personally clearing more than $10 million on the exit.

He also retold the origin in one line — "I lay in bed and pray for customers to come to the website" — and traced the pricing arc: free formation in 2018 to disrupt incumbents, a shift to paid tiers in 2020 because "we were leaving a bunch of money on the table," and now back to free formation as the whole market followed. The rest of the March 2024 disclosures: 500,000 cumulative customers with "around 400,000 plus" active; customer acquisition cost "way under" $1,000; a banking product built on Unit as middleware (ZenBusiness holds no charter) with check-writing customers referred to Bank of America; tens of thousands of ZenBusiness credit cards in circulation; and "we're making money on everything — otherwise, we don't do it." On the valuation set in 2021: "we're growing into that valuation like the rest of the market." At both the Series B and C, employees past a one-year cliff could sell up to 10% of vested shares in a secondary; "most everybody took it," which he endorsed: "you should always take money off the table."

The funding history, corrected

An earlier version of this article compressed the funding story into an impossible sequence — a 2018 Series B at a $1.7 billion valuation, followed by a $250 million one. Here is the record with each round dated:

Add the announced figures and you get the roughly $275 million total the Series C press release used; GetLatka's database counts $277.1 million; Buhrdorf's "ended up being" versions push it a few million higher still.

Where the record disagrees with itself