Founder stories
Founder stories
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30 stories found
Andy Puddicombe & Richard Pierson
From Buddhist Monk to $3B Meditation Empire: The Headspace Story
Andy Puddicombe spent 10 years as a Buddhist monk before co-founding Headspace, now valued at over $3 billion.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
Mobile AppHealth & Wellness🇬🇧 GB
Dylan Field & Evan Wallace
How Two College Friends Bet Everything on the Browser and Built a $20B Design Tool
Dylan Field and Evan Wallace launched Figma in 2016 after betting that web technology would eventually replace desktop apps.
$100K ARR in 4 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇺🇸 US
Clark Valberg & Ben Nadel
From Agency Side Project to Every Fortune 100 Company: The InVision Story
Clark Valberg built InVision as an internal tool for his agency, then watched it become used by every Fortune 100 company.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSDesign🇺🇸 US
Pieter Omvlee
Nine Years of Side Project to Design Tool That Challenged Adobe: The Sketch Story
Pieter Omvlee started Sketch in college, took 9 years to ship it, and built the tool that dethroned Photoshop for UI design.
$100K ARR in 9 years·Solo
SaaSDesign🇳🇱 NL
Shahed Khan
How 9 Months of Failure and 2 Pivots Led to a $975M Exit
Shahed Khan and his co-founders pivoted twice before landing on Loom. The async video platform was acquired by Atlassian for $975 million.
$100K ARR in 3 years·Team
SaaSProductivity🇺🇸 US
CB
Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie
Reinventing Media Economics: How Substack Empowered Independent Writers
When Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie started Substack, everyone said nobody would pay for internet content. They proved the skeptics wrong.
$100K ARR in 2 years·Team
SaaSContent Creation🇺🇸 US
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A note on these stories: The founders featured here represent those who publicly shared their success. Not every startup succeeds, and timelines vary widely. These stories are meant to inspire and educate, not to set expectations.
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