In-depth founder interviews, MRR journeys and post-mortems, with the real numbers.
71 posts
Buttondown's founder Justin Duke is radically transparent about growth and profitability, but stopped publishing his revenue. The best estimate is roughly $392K a year and rising 61%. Inside the bootstrapped newsletter tool that hides its own number.
Everyone asked for it. Almost nobody used it. The month I reached $14K MRR, I killed the most-requested feature on my roadmap and learned the difference between what customers ask for and what they actually use.
Simple Analytics never took a cent of funding and grew almost entirely by word of mouth. The dated ledger runs from $30K ARR in 2019 to a ~$500K/year third-party estimate in 2026. The number is real. The lesson underneath it is slower than it looks.
By the numbers it was my best month ever. By the way it felt, it was the month the job stopped being building and started being answering. A support-overwhelm diary at $25K MRR.
Fathom Analytics has never published its revenue, on purpose. The only figure in circulation is a third-party estimate of $5M to $10M ARR. Inside the privacy company that keeps its own numbers private.
Baremetrics made its revenue public for years, then sold to Xenon Partners for $4M cash in 2020. The real numbers behind the exit, and why the transparency pioneer walked away.
I hired my first employee at $9,000 MRR and it was the best decision I had made, until revenue slid from a $27K peak back to $22K and a fixed salary became a slow leak. A 2026 diary on the math I avoided, why I waited four months too long, and how to do a first layoff with decency.
Balsamiq's founder publishes exact revenue every year: $6.58M in 2024, down on purpose. The real number, the 2008 arc, and why data brokers get it wrong.
A solo founder pours three months into a version 2 and a Product Hunt launch at $13K MRR, and it moves revenue by about $190. The real story is the month after, and what actually grew the business.
Carrd founder AJ confirmed about $100K MRR and $1.2M ARR on The SaaS Podcast, then went quiet. The real revenue number, the $2M raise he took anyway, and why a $19-per-year, one-person business staying flat is the whole point.
The month my SaaS hit $21,000 MRR I signed my first enterprise deal: one $40,000-a-year contract worth 16% of my revenue. A first-person 2026 diary on the 280-question security review, the SSO build I pulled off the roadmap, net-60 cash delays, concentration risk, and the three rules I wrote afterward.
