Founder stories
| Startup | Founder | Story |
|---|---|---|
| ChatSEOMarketing | Paul Vengeons Nicholas Dulait Léo Leducq | ChatSEO's paywall after five prompts, then euros without adsPaul Vengeons wrote that ChatSEO was doing €19,000 a month eight months after launch with zero advertising. Co-founder Nicholas Dulait had already said a paywall on the sixth prompt lifted conversion from 0.90 percent to 10 percent and unlocked $9,000 in twelve days. |
| FootlyHealth & wellness | Angel Stoevski Mihael Borchevski | Footly crossed $10K MRR after three broken onboardingsAngel Stoevski wrote that Footly, an AI soccer training app, crossed $10,000 MRR after an embarrassing first version and three failed onboarding attempts. His own site dates that mark at about a month and a half and keeps Locked, a prior app, as a separate $15,000 MRR clock. |
| PostFastMarketing | Petar Georgiev | PostFast paid after Petar Georgiev stopped buying tools that failed silentlyPetar Georgiev told Indie Hackers that PostFast, a cross-platform scheduler he built beside a remote engineering job, reached profitability in about half a year and €5,400 MRR. His own site and a 2025 n8n tutorial describe the same origin: he needed posts to publish without unexplained failures. |
| AutoShorts.aiContent creation | Eric Smith | Eric Smith dated AutoShorts.ai from a December idea to $20K, then $40K soloEric Smith's 28 April 2024 X update listed AutoShorts.ai from a 20 December idea to $20,000 MRR on 27 April, naming affiliates and Facebook ads. A 16 May 2024 post put the same product at $40,000 MRR solo. The live site still sells monthly plans from $19. |
| SupaBirdMarketing | Farid Shukurov | Farid Shukurov kept SupaBird's $1,987 month, $7k revenue, and $10k revenue apartFarid Shukurov wrote that six months of daily posting added about 200 followers, then built SupaBird as a data engine for X. His own LinkedIn posts later put July at $1,987, a three-month stretch at $7,000 in revenue, and the app at $10,000 in revenue after more than a year. |
| MediaFastMarketing | Arthur Yuzbashev | MediaFast packaged six Reddit bans as a posting roadmapArthur Yuzbashev says six Reddit suspensions taught him the posting rules he later sold as MediaFast, a product a compiled May 2026 case study put near $6,000 monthly recurring revenue and that he later described as $56,000 all-time revenue with no ads. |
| BridgeMindDeveloper tools | Matthew Miller | BridgeMind sold the livestream, then labeled the run-rate two waysMatthew Miller livestreams building BridgeMind toward $1,000,000 in revenue; a compiled May 2026 case study put the product near $15,000 monthly recurring revenue on day 165, while a later YouTube description states $211,044 ARR, a different unit from the same public grind. |
| Motionvid.aiContent creation | Anatoly Pashias Nick Nicolaou | Motionvid's AppSumo cash is not the $7K MRR on Anatoly's siteAnatoly Pashias lists Motionvid.ai at 80,000 users and $7K MRR on his own site, while a compiled case study adds AppSumo lifetime-deal cash spikes and a $7,775 monthly recurring figure that should not be merged with those one-time marketplace totals. |
| RankInPublicMarketing | Antonio Escudero | RankInPublic's $17k month was mostly one-time payments, not a clean MRR lineAntonio Escudero says RankInPublic sat under $300 a month, then hit $17k in a single month, while also writing that most of that money is one-time payments and that monthly revenue moves between $11k and $17k, a split a compiled case study still filed as MRR. |
| AIDesigner.aiDesign | Tyler Yin | AIDesigner climbed on MRR while the founder also quoted ARRTyler Yin, posting as Wiz, launched AIDesigner.ai by admitting he was bad at UI; a compiled May 2026 case study says the product went from under $1k to $9.5k MRR in 30 days, a monthly line he also restated as ARR jumping from about $11.4k to over $100k. |
| ForgeGUIDesign | Giulio Greco | ForgeGUI sold game-native UI, not another image generatorGiulio Greco says ForgeGUI launched on 12 March 2026 as an AI studio for Roblox, UEFN, Unity, and Unreal assets, then he later reported a $3.2 million seed at a $40 million cap after about 100,000 game developers had used it. |
| Pep AIHealth & wellness | Cedric Roberge | Pep AI's first subscriber paid before the founder woke upCedric Roberge says Pep AI launched on the App Store in mid-February 2026, drew a paying subscriber within an hour of a Reddit and Discord post, then reported $4,000 revenue in two weeks and $50,000 cumulative revenue about seven weeks in. |
| Stanley for XContent creation | Vitalii Dodonov | Stanley for X left Lisbon with $4K MRR and second placeVitalii Dodonov says a ten-day Lisbon sprint shipped Stanley for X to 777 day-one signups, about 1,000 paying customers, $4,000 MRR, and second place on Product Hunt the same day as OpenAI's Images 2.0. |
| ToneAdaptEducation | Kyan Santiago-Calling | ToneAdapt's $25K month was four-week revenue, not ARRKyan Santiago-Calling showed about $11,500 in web revenue and $14,000 in mobile revenue across four weeks, called the combined $25,000 a month of revenue, and should not be read as annual recurring revenue. |
| InfluenceLabMarketing | Adam Knorr Ben A. Wise | InfluenceLab coached one niche to $5,651 MRRAdam Knorr says InfluenceLab, built with Ben Wise on his financial-advisor LinkedIn edits, charged beta testers $19, launched in February 2026, hit $1,584 MRR in nine days, and reached $5,651 MRR from 119 paying users by 8 May 2026. |
| ReplyDaddySaaS / Marketing | Neel Seth | ReplyDaddy's own figures stay smaller than Neel Seth's portfolio headlineNeel Seth has published ReplyDaddy-specific clocks from $1,207 in under twelve days to $17,173 ARR by payment rail; those lines are not the combined MRR that also includes other tools he runs. |
| RemodexDeveloper tools | Emanuele Di Pietro | Remodex's $10K first month is revenue, not a proven MRR floorEmanuele Di Pietro shipped Remodex as a local iPhone remote for Codex, told MacStories he knew OpenAI would follow, and later told Indie Hackers his best month was $9k before official Codex mobile cut the stack toward $1.5k. |
| SwifteqSaaS / Productivity | Sorin Alupoaie | Swifteq's €20k MRR post was a checkpoint, not the last euro figureSorin Alupoaie wrote that Swifteq crossed €20,000 MRR and 300 customers in June 2024, then €40,000 MRR a year later after a price increase that added more than €3,000 MRR and spiked churn first. |
| SuperLemonSaaS / E-commerce | Preetam Nath Sankalp Jonna | SuperLemon passed $25k MRR after cutting a price that had climbed too highPreetam Nath wrote that he and Sankalp Jonna launched a Shopify WhatsApp app in April 2019, crossed $25,000 MRR in fourteen months as a two-person team, then told Starter Story they were at $29,000 MRR by July 2020. |
| 3AK Track & FieldHealth & wellness | Christian Rac Braylin Byrd | 3AK Track's TrustMRR row is a listing; the founders' quotes sit beside itTrustMRR lists 3AK Track & Field with RevenueCat-connected MRR that moved between snapshots; Rork's March 2026 case study quotes $10,000 first-month revenue and $17,460 in 28 days, while Christian Rac's listing note cites ~$100k in under six months. |
