Founder Stories

Brand MRI: How a Designer Built an AI Visibility Scanner With Claude

A designer with no engineering background built a 34-signal scanner in a few days. Here’s what Brand MRI checks, what it can’t judge, and what early feedback changed

By Chris Kernaghan Oct 24, 2026 3 min read

Founder Stories

Build n Booked: How Chukwuezugo Aronu Runs Pay-Per-Lead Cold Email for B2B

We asked Chukwuezugo how they qualify leads, where AI fits in, and why a targeted list of 1,000 beats a loose one of 10,000

By Chris Kernaghan Oct 19, 2026 3 min read

Founder Stories

DDScore Founder Q&A: How AI Due Diligence Helps You Prepare to Raise

Mikko Heilimo explains how DDScore scores pitches across 12 dimensions, what founders learn from a report, and how it handles sensitive data

By Chris Kernaghan Oct 12, 2026 3 min read

Founder Stories

How to Market Your SaaS on Reddit: Q&A with Spacestation Labs' Paul Xue

Disclosed accounts, picking the right subreddits, and the single post that pulled 983k impressions

By Chris Kernaghan Oct 8, 2026 7 min read

Founder Stories

Serena Fordham on Building ProspHER, the AI Coaching App for Ambitious Women

Serena Fordham turned a Norfolk networking group into ProspHER, an AI-powered growth platform for women. She talks culture, resilience, and what's next

By Chris Kernaghan Sep 23, 2026 6 min read

Founder Stories

"I Was Bored. So I Built a Social Network." How a 19-Year-Old Hit 1,000 Users in a Week

It started with 50 impressions and a blue check

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 8, 2026 7 min read

Founder Stories

How Two Brothers Are Trying to Put the Person Back Into AI

Wilfred and Onome Okajevo spent months documenting how people actually write before writing a line of extraction code. The result is Noren, a voice profile engine that any AI model can follow

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 5, 2026 6 min read

Founder Stories

PlotRoom Wants to Be the Home AI Filmmakers Don't Have Yet

Tengo Tadumadze's Bet on AI-Native Cinema

By Chris Kernaghan May 21, 2026 6 min read

Founder Stories

From Stay-at-Home Dad to Privacy-First Founder: How Mark Built Moss Piglet

Mark Thayer taught himself Elixir during his son's nap times to build alternatives to surveillance capitalism. Six years later, Moss Piglet has two products live, an open source codebase, and a thesis that privacy is good for people and good for business

By Chris Kernaghan May 3, 2026 6 min read

AI and Dev Tools

Turbotic Automation AI: The Swedish Startup Making Automation Simple

Meet the Stockholm startup turning plain English into instant automations

By Chris Kernaghan May 2, 2026 6 min read

Founder Stories

How Does StoryGraph Make Money?

Here's a full breakdown of how the bootstrapped book app sustains itself

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 11, 2026 7 min read

Founder Stories

From Open Source to Billion-Dollar Valuation: The Hugging Face Founders

How a teenage chatbot pivot built the GitHub of Machine Learning

By Kai Chen Apr 8, 2026 4 min read

Founder Stories

The Anthropic Story: The Siblings Behind the $20B AI Behemoth

They're the siblings who quietly built a $380B AI behemoth

By Kai Chen Apr 7, 2026 3 min read

Health and Fitness

How Scrolletics Uses Computer Vision to Help You Stop Doomscrolling

How one founder swapped guilt for movement to fix focus

By Chris Kernaghan Feb 14, 2026 3 min read

Founder Stories

How to Save Hours of Research and Stop Building Products Nobody Wants

How Dalexor survived a pivot to save founders

By Chris Kernaghan Feb 5, 2026 2 min read

Design Services

How bnbicons.com Turned an Airbnb Design Trend Into a High Velocity Startup

Nicolas built a viral design tool using high-speed vibecoding

By Chris Kernaghan Feb 5, 2026 2 min read

Design Services

How Cyril Vanneste Scaled a Productized Side Hustle to €2,000 MRR

Swapping custom client chaos for a "safer" and lighter subscription

By Chris Kernaghan Jan 28, 2026 2 min read

Case Study

How Runpod Turned Failed Crypto Rigs Into a Leading AI Hosting Platform

Two friends turned a failed crypto hobby into one of the fastest growing AI platforms in the world

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Jan 22, 2026 2 min read

Case Study

Vercel: How One Founder Built a Nine Billion Dollar Cloud for Developers

How a self-taught developer turned deployment into a $9 billion empire

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Jan 13, 2026 2 min read

Case Study

Supabase: How Two Founders Built a $5 Billion Empire by Rejecting Millions

How Supabase became the default backend for the AI boom

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Jan 13, 2026 4 min read

Founder Stories

The AI Researcher That Never Sleeps: Say Hello to Userology AI

Userology AI automates user research, turning Figma prototypes into actionable, decision-ready insight reports

By Chris Kernaghan Dec 22, 2025 2 min read

AI

Cambium AI: Replacing Marketing Guesswork with Verifiable Data

Cambium AI replaces marketing guesswork with verifiable public data strategies

By Chris Kernaghan Dec 15, 2025 2 min read

AI

Talesbox: The Search for an AI Cinema Ecosystem

Talesbox is building the unified cinematic ecosystem for AI storytellers

By Chris Kernaghan Dec 8, 2025 2 min read

Case Study

The Basecamp Blueprint: How to Bootstrap a Billion-Dollar Business

Build a profitable tech empire without investors by solving your own problems

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chloe Ferguson Nov 20, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

They Built the Wrong Product, Ignored It for Years, Then Sold It for $970M

They ignored gaming for years. Then it made them billionaires

By Chris Kernaghan Nov 18, 2025 3 min read

AI

How Windsurf Hit 1 Million Users in 4 Months: The Complete Playbook

Windsurf's co-founder reveals how they built a magical AI code editor

By Chloe Ferguson Nov 15, 2025 10 min read

Customer Acquisition

How One Founder Scaled from $1M to $10M by Changing Who She Sold To

She 10x'd revenue by firing small customers and chasing enterprise

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Nov 15, 2025 6 min read

AI

From "Dumbest Idea" to $2B: How Gamma Proved Everyone Wrong

Three founders built a $2B presentation tool everyone called "dumb."

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Nov 15, 2025 8 min read

Founder Stories

Did Jack Dorsey Just Revive Vine? Meet diVine

Jack Dorsey revives Vine with diVine, blending nostalgia and authenticity

By Chris Kernaghan Nov 13, 2025 6 min read

Case Study

WhatNot: How a Livestream Shopping App Became the Billion-Dollar Empire Nobody Saw Coming

WhatNot turned livestream collectible shopping into a $3.7 billion empire

By Chris Kernaghan Nov 5, 2025 8 min read

AI

How Replit Built a $1B Developer Ecosystem Without Venture Debt

Replit built sustainable revenue and community instead of chasing debt.

By Chris Kernaghan Nov 5, 2025 7 min read

Founder Stories

How Marcel Built a 7-Figure Business in a Category That Didn't Exist

Marcel built a seven-figure business in a category nobody understood

By Chris Kernaghan Oct 1, 2025 5 min read

Founder Stories

Building a Social Network for Thought Leaders: Meet Draego Zubiri of INSPO

"There was no social network dedicated to professional thought leadership."

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Sep 15, 2025 3 min read

Founder Stories

From Corporate Burnout to Connection: How Seshr Tackles London's Loneliness Crisis

Angelina shares how John & Stephen built Seshr to combat London's loneliness crisis

By Chris Kernaghan Sep 8, 2025 5 min read

AI

"I Was Just Being a Bitch by Not Launching": How Alex Built Agentsmith to Fix LLM Development's Messiest Problem

Alex built Agentsmith to fix LLM prompt management workflow chaos

By Chris Kernaghan Sep 4, 2025 4 min read

AI

From Travel Boss to AI Training Pioneer: How Richard Built SkillsTeq After COVID Hit

SkillsTeq uses conversational AI to fix corporate training's engagement problem

By Chris Kernaghan Sep 4, 2025 3 min read

Productivity

How a YouTuber and Game Dev Built the #1 App Store Hit That Actually Gets People Off Their Phones

Hank Green and Bria Sullivan's passion project proves sometimes the best business ideas come from dinner conversations and a love for knitted socks

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 20, 2025 4 min read

Case Study

How SoundMap Beat Spotify at Their Own Game: The "Music Game" Strategy That Changed Everything

From consulting burnout to building the "Pokemon Go for music": here's how one founder cracked the consumer app code

By Chloe Ferguson Aug 14, 2025 4 min read

Customer Acquisition

WhereTheyTalk: Finding the Conversations That Lead to Your First Customers

Stefan left a high-paying VP role to help founders find and join the right conversations online

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 12, 2025 2 min read

Founder Stories

Intlayer: Making Internationalization Simple, Scalable, and Developer-Friendly

Marine joined Intlayer to fix a pain every SaaS team faces. Making i18n smooth for developers and manageable for non-developers.

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 10, 2025 2 min read

Productivity

Nud.gy: Turning Corporate Learning Into Real-World Action

Meik is closing the knowing–doing gap with science-based micro-interventions, making workplace learning stick.

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 9, 2025 2 min read

Productivity

BuildRunKit: A Complete Toolkit for Starting and Running a Business

Brent Whistler is building a founder’s dream kit, everything from startup planning to invoicing, in one place

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 9, 2025 2 min read

Case Study

From Side Projects to $10k MRR: How Adrian Horning Built Scrape Creators

Adrian Horning grew a scraping API to $10k MRR fast

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 7, 2025 3 min read

Productivity

Hoardo: Never Lose Track of Your Stuff Again

Johan built Hoardo after becoming a dad and drowning in baby gear, tools, and mystery cables from 2012

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 7, 2025 1 min read

Customer Acquisition

RedLead: Using Reddit to Find SaaS Leads in Real Time

Tired of shouting into the void, Atharva built RedLead to help SaaS founders find leads and real conversations, right where people are already talking.

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 6, 2025 2 min read

Case Study

From Zero to $4 Billion: How Vlad Magdalin Built Webflow Into a No-Code Empire

The inspiring journey of a founder who revolutionized web design without writing a single line of code

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 1, 2025 4 min read

Marketing

SocialRails: One Tool to Schedule, Automate, and Grow on Social

Matt built SocialRails to alleviate the pain of managing multiple platforms. Now he’s helping founders automate their social media with $700 MRR and counting.

By Chris Kernaghan Aug 1, 2025 1 min read

Productivity

He Built an App to Fix His Phone Addiction. It Made $26K in 30 Days

Yoni Smolyar turned his own screen addiction into a product. The result? $26,000 in revenue within the first month

By Mia Jones Jul 29, 2025 2 min read

Legal

Tritium: The Rust-Based Word Processor Built for Lawyers

Rust-based word processor built to streamline legal drafting workflows

By Chris Kernaghan Jul 28, 2025 3 min read

Customer Acquisition

From Zero Sales to 100 Customers in 60 Days: How GojiberryAI Got the Pivot Right

Pierre-Eliott pivoted his failed AI assistant into a successful lead generation SaaS

By Chris Kernaghan Jul 24, 2025 3 min read

Customer Acquisition

How BigideasDB Turned Reddit Complaints Into an $18k Startup

How Om Patel identified a gap in the market by analyzing what people hate about current tools

By Chris Kernaghan Jul 22, 2025 3 min read

Marketing

How Perspective Hit €10M ARR by Fixing What Every Entrepreneur Gets Wrong About Funnels

Beautiful doesn’t convert. Fast, mobile-first funnels with psychology do

By Chris Kernaghan Jul 15, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

Who Founded Twitch? The Surprising Backstory & Key Founders Behind the Streaming Giant

Discover the fascinating origin story of Twitch, meet its visionary founders, and learn how a small startup transformed into a streaming empire

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Jul 13, 2025 4 min read

Design Services

Canva Case Study: From $0 to $40B in 10 Years

How Three Aussies Democratized Design and Built a SaaS Empire

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chloe Ferguson Jul 11, 2025 11 min read

Case Study

Airbnb Case Study: How Two Broke Roommates Built a $75B Empire

How desperate roommates transformed air mattresses into hospitality industry disruption

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 28, 2025 5 min read

AI

Cluely: The AI Startup That Turned Getting Expelled Into a $5.3M Superpower

How Roy Lee built a viral content empire, raised millions, and redefined what "cheating" means in the AI age

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 27, 2025 4 min read

AI

How Two Brothers Built Buildpad After Multiple Startup Failures

Meet David Heikka from Sweden, who co-founded Buildpad with his brother Felix after learning the hard way what it takes to build products that actually work

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 27, 2025 4 min read

Founder Stories

How This Texas Landlord Built PropertyLenz to Solve Rental Property Inspections

Meet Riley from Texas, a landlord-turned-entrepreneur who's building PropertyLenz to drag rental property inspections kicking and screaming into the 21st century

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 24, 2025 4 min read

Case Study

From Gaming Teen to $2B Exit: The Kayak Story

How Paul English turned terrible early mistakes into billion-dollar lessons

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 23, 2025 3 min read

Founder Stories

From Smartwatch Stats to $800 MRR: How Shervin Built AnyTracker

From personal frustration to 200,000 downloads and steady growth

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 18, 2025 4 min read

AI

From Stock Market to AI Innovation: How Huzaifa Zahoor is Democratizing Financial Research with Meyka AI

Australia founder turns ChatGPT idea into 3,000-user stock research tool

By Chris Kernaghan Jun 16, 2025 3 min read

Case Study

Groove: The Transparent Journey to $500K MRR

How Alex Turnbull Built a $5M Help Desk Business Through Radical Transparency

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Jun 11, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

JK Molina: The 4-Hour Workday Millionaire

How One Founder Nearly Doubled His Revenue While Working 66% Less

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Jun 4, 2025 3 min read

Education

Why LifterLMS Cracked the Code on WordPress Learning Management

From agency work to $6M+ in premium add-ons: How one founder turned client problems into product gold

By Jessica Hamilton Jun 2, 2025 4 min read

Productivity

From Zero to $2M/Year: The InboxDone Story

InboxDone grew from a simple newsletter test to $2M/year

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan May 28, 2025 7 min read

AI

From "Nonsense" to $1M ARR in 14 Days: The OpusClip Story of Finding Gold in the Wreckage

From "nonsense" to $1M ARR: OpusClip's stunning 14-day pivot

This article is for Paid-members only

By Mia Jones May 26, 2025 8 min read

Case Study

From EdTech Dud to Teen Bop: The Accidental Genius of Musical.ly (and How it Became TikTok)

Pivoted hard, nailed product-market fit, and scaled into TikTok gold

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan May 21, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

Justin Welsh: From Corporate Burnout to Solopreneur Sage

Chased prestige, hit a wall, chose freedom over status instead

This article is for Paid-members only

By Mia Jones May 20, 2025 4 min read

Founder Stories

Photopea: The Free Photoshop Alternative Earning $3M a Year

One dev, zero funding, a hobby project turned $3M business

By Chloe Ferguson May 13, 2025 3 min read

Founder Stories

KaneFilous: The New Social Network Ditching Algorithms, Ads, and Surveillance

What if social media weren’t built around ads, noise, or spying?

By Chris Kernaghan May 5, 2025 1 min read

Design Services

Penpot: The Open Source Design Rebel Taking On Figma

Penpot grew via open source, community feedback, funding, and self-hosting

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 29, 2025 6 min read

AI

Perplexity AI: The "Answer Engine" Challenging the Search Giants

Cited answers, AI hype, and freemium fueled Perplexity's rapid growth

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 29, 2025 4 min read

AI

Sourcegraph: From "Code Search Sucks" to Enterprise Darling

Developers solved code search pain, earned trust, scaled Sourcegraph to enterprise

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chloe Ferguson Apr 29, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

Llama Life: How Building a Calm Productivity Tool Started a Quiet Revolution

Marie built Llama Life in public, finding community and feedback

By Mia Jones Apr 25, 2025 5 min read

AI

Texting Their Way to $1.5K/Mo - receipt-ai.com

Founders simplified receipt tracking using AI and simple SMS texting

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 23, 2025 4 min read

Marketing

Case Study: Cometly – Achieving $54K MRR in Launch Week Through Strategic Affiliate Partnership

Co-marketing webinar and affiliate deal drove $54K launch week

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Apr 19, 2025 4 min read

AI

From Startup Graveyard to $50k MRR: How JotBot Used Absurdly Long Domains and Viral Hacks to Win

Absurd domains, viral videos fueled JotBot's rapid $50k MRR growth

By Mia Jones Apr 18, 2025 4 min read

Marketing

Bannerbear: Built by One, Scaled with Automation

How one developer used nocode marketing and an API-first mindset to grow a profitable SaaS

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Apr 16, 2025 4 min read

Founder Stories

How Baremetrics Built in Public, Hit $100K MRR, and Burned Out Anyway

Baremetrics: Transparent growth, faced challenges, founder burnout led to sale

This article is for Paid-members only

By Mia Jones Apr 14, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

How Linear Rebuilt Issue Tracking by Breaking Every Rule of SaaS

Startup replaces Jira with beauty, speed, and product-first focus

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chloe Ferguson Apr 10, 2025 6 min read

Founder Stories

KeepMyHomeIP: Staying “at home” when you’re halfway across the world

From one digital nomad’s workaround to a worldwide remote work solution

This article is for Members only

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 9, 2025 3 min read

Case Study

Case Study: Mailchimp - From Side Hustle to $12 Billion Powerhouse

Mailchimp mastered SMB email. Acquired by Intuit.

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Apr 7, 2025 6 min read

AI

From $250k ARR to Zero: Why Marblism Killed its Hit AI Product to Chase a Bigger Vision

Ulric Musset pivoted Marblism to AI employees after misjudging their users

This article is for Members only

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 6, 2025 4 min read

Case Study

Sketch: How Focus, Community, and Saying 'No' Built a Design Disruptor

Bootstrapped success, funded by sales, later shifted to subscription model

This article is for Paid-members only

By Mia Jones Apr 3, 2025 6 min read

Case Study

Flipkart: From ₹400,000 Startup to $35 Billion Giant

Apartment start, local solutions, strategic growth, massive e-commerce success

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Apr 3, 2025 4 min read

Case Study

Loom: Scaling Async Video with Speed and Simplicity

How Loom rose, fell, and became essential for remote teams

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chloe Ferguson Apr 3, 2025 4 min read

Founder Stories

Monkeytaps: Quietly Dominating the Mobile App Market

Small team, big payoff: Monkeytaps earns millions with minimal overhead

This article is for Members only

By Jessica Hamilton Apr 1, 2025 2 min read

SEO

SEO Arcade: Turning Frustration into a SaaS Business

Born from frustration, built for speed: SEO Arcade simplifies SEO

This article is for Members only

By Chris Kernaghan Mar 31, 2025 3 min read

Productivity

Case Study: How Notion went From Struggling Tool to Workspace Powerhouse

From near failure to billion-dollar workspace used by millions

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chris Kernaghan Mar 27, 2025 5 min read

Case Study

Tailscale: Quietly Powering a Better Internet

How a dev-first VPN solved a $10B problem—without marketing hype

This article is for Paid-members only

By Mia Jones Mar 26, 2025 5 min read

Productivity

Case Study: How SavvyCal Bootstrapped, Positioned, and Became Profitable

Bootstrapped to over $1 million ARR by solving scheduling pain

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Mar 26, 2025 4 min read

Case Study

Case Study: How Figma Outdesigned the Giants: A $20B Disruption Story

Figma turned rivals' strengths into fatal weaknesses. Game over

By Chris Kernaghan Mar 25, 2025 7 min read

Case Study

Case Study: From Layoff to $20K/Month with The Wayward Home

Laid off, broke, blogging from a boat—now earns $20K/month

This article is for Paid-members only

By Jessica Hamilton Mar 24, 2025 3 min read

Case Study

Case Study: How BrüMate Built a $1.1M/Month Drinkware Brand at 23

Case Study: Scaled from $0 to $1.1M/month using Facebook ads

This article is for Paid-members only

By Chloe Ferguson Mar 24, 2025 3 min read

Founder Stories

Kushank Aggarwal's Journey to 1M Followers and $35K/Month in Revenue

Kushank Aggarwal shares how he built a $35K/month indie business

This article is for Members only

By Mia Jones Mar 22, 2025 3 min read

Founder Stories

Testimonial: How One SaaS Made Collecting Customer Reviews Effortless

Testimonial makes collecting and sharing customer reviews stupidly easy

This article is for Members only

By Mia Jones Mar 18, 2025 2 min read

AI

Lovable: The AI Full Stack Product Engineer That Hit $10M ARR in 2 Months with 15 People

AI-generated apps in seconds? Lovable is making it happen, but can they sustain the hype? Let's break it down

By Chloe Ferguson Mar 17, 2025 3 min read

Hiring

From Resume Template to $5M SaaS: How Jacob Built Rezi

A viral Reddit post turned into a $5M AI resume SaaS

This article is for Members only

By Mia Jones Mar 15, 2025 3 min read

AI

From Zero to $40M ARR in Months: How Bolt.new Is Killing DevOps and Speedrunning SaaS

What do you want to build?

This article is for Members only

By Mia Jones Mar 14, 2025 3 min read

Founder Stories

From Idea to $24K Exit in 30 Days: How Josh Pigford Speedran His SaaS Like a Video Game

Optic wasn’t about scaling. It was about speedrunning SaaS exits.

This article is for Members only

By Chloe Ferguson Mar 13, 2025 2 min read