- SaaS Companies
- Bootstrapped
The Top Bootstrapped SaaS Companies
These companies earned the most without funding (Click to apply)
Bootstrapping a SaaS company requires profitable growth. We went and found some of the most profitable bootstrapped SaaS companies so you could analyze how they’ve done it.
Some of the founders manage against metrics like revenue per employee. The target? $600k or higher. They won’t hire new team members until new hires add enough revenue to get back to $600k in revenue per employee. Other founders manage to a payback period of 3 months or less. Some of the most successful bootstrapped SaaS companies have instant payback periods. They upsell items like consulting, books, and event tickets to immediately recover their customer acquisition cost (CAC) so they can then re-invest it immediately. Call it a “fast money flywheel”.
- Socialrep $1.0M
- Teambuildr $1.0M
- Comnplus $1.0M
- Talvista $996.0K
- Autoklose $972.0K
- QuestionPro $20.0M
- DesignPickle $18.4M
- Hotjar $16.4M
- Paloalto $15.6M
- Vainu $14.4M
- Printful $84.0M
- Getresponse $60.0M
- Adcellerant $24.0M
- Junglescout $22.7M
- 01
$84.0M
100K
2013
—
500
United States
- 02
$60.0M
100K
1998
—
300
United States
- 03
$24.0M
250
2013
—
55
United States
- 07
$16.4M
21K
2014
—
70
Malta
- 08
$15.6M
100K
1987
—
80
United States
- 09
$14.4M
30K
2012
—
23
United States
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NextBootstrapped, Funded SaaS
55 bootstrapped companies made the 2019 list compared to 102 funded companies that have raised $2.8 billion in total.
These bootstrapped founders should be very proud. They found creative ways to drive growth without having to sell big chunks of their company for equity.
53 of these bootstrapped CEO’s are not located in San Francisco or New York.
All except 6 of the 55 are profitable as of December 2019.
Is Churn Important for Growth?
90 of these companies have net revenue retention greater than 100%. This means their upsell and expansion revenue from historical customers more than makes up for any lost revenue from those same customers.
34 of these companies have net revenue retention between 80-99%.
The companies with net revenue retention under 80% annually share a common theme in that only 2 out of the 29 companies have any expansion revenue at all.
Many of these companies simply haven’t added a second product to upsell, or don’t rely on utility based upselling. Expect their growth to expand in 2020 as many of them have expansion revenue in their strategic plans.