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Numbers straight from a filing
No founder-stated figures, no estimates. A regulator has these numbers, and so can you.
49 teardowns · $10M+Every teardownFortressesEasy to copy. Won anyway.Built on rented landNumbers straight from a filingDoesn't scale. On purpose.Still here after 15 yearsOne-time money
Mercari
Marketplace
Japan's used-goods app. 23M users. It takes 10%.
¥192,633M
Filed · $1.2B · FY2025 revenue, filed
GMV growth has stalled in a maturing Japan.
★ The edge: Holds no inventory. 23M users list and buy; Mercari keeps 10% per sale, then adds payments and ads on top.
Open →
Shutterstock
Marketplace
He shot 30,000 photos to seed an empty marketplace.
$935M
Filed · revenue (FY2024)
AI image generators undercut paid stock.
★ The edge: Buyers pay flat monthly subscriptions; contributors get a royalty. Shutterstock keeps the spread on stock it never shot.
Open →
Workiva
SaaS
A mandate forced XBRL filings. They owned the tool.
$884.6M
Filed · FY2025 revenue · public
⚠ Scale: heavy sales
GAAP-loss years
GAAP-loss years
★ The edge: The SEC didn't allow XBRL filings — it required them, making every public company a forced buyer.
Open →
Xometry
Marketplace
Upload a part, get a price in seconds. It takes a cut.
$686.6M
Filed · FY2025 revenue (XMTR)
Thin 34.7% cut; still a net loss.
★ The edge: AI trained on millions of orders prices any custom part in seconds; rivals still quote by email.
Open →
SafeSend
SaaS
They ignored the tax return. They sold the last mile.
$600M
Filed · all-cash exit price, 2025
Sits downstream of engines it doesn't own.
★ The edge: Eight years selling paperless tools inside tax firms told them exactly which 30 minutes to automate in 2016.
Open →
Doximity
Community
Over 80% of US doctors are members. Pharma pays.
$570.4M
Filed · FY2025 revenue, up 20%
Leans on pharma marketing budgets
★ The edge: Founder Jeff Tangney built Epocrates first, so he already had physician trust and knew pharma pays to reach doctors
Open →
BizReach
Marketplace
Japan had no way to poach talent. BizReach built one.
¥68.6B/yr
Filed · $460M · BizReach net sales, FY25/7
One country, one white-collar hiring cycle.
★ The edge: Both sides pay — seekers to be scouted, firms to scout — at 90%-plus gross margins, in a market agencies used to own.
Open →
Poshmark
Marketplace
She sells her closet; Poshmark keeps 20% of every sale.
$326M
Filed · FY2021 net revenue
Never profitable; heavy marketing spend.
★ The edge: Feeds, follows and Posh Parties turn one-time resale into a social habit; buyer retention topped 104%.
Open →
HealthStream
SaaS
Rules force the training. It bills for it every year.
$304.1M
Filed · FY2025 revenue (10-K)
Growth is slow: about 4% a year.
★ The edge: Accreditors, OSHA and CMS require the training; HealthStream is where US hospitals buy and log it.
Open →
ThredUp
Marketplace
Free closets in, 80% gross margins out.
$260.0M
Filed · 2024 revenue (net)
Still net-loss-making after 15 years.
★ The edge: Distribution centers that photograph, price and ship 230M+ one-off used items — logistics P2P rivals refuse to build.
Open →
Weave
SaaS
The dentist's office phone, now a public NYSE SaaS.
$239M
Filed · FY2025 net revenue
Never profitable; retention under 100%.
★ The edge: The most boring wedge won: replace the dentist's phone, tie each call to the patient chart, impossible to rip out.
Open →
Craneware
SaaS
Sells 4 in 10 US hospitals their billing-rule software.
$205.7m
Filed · revenue, yr to Jun 2025
Finite TAM; about 40% already installed.
★ The edge: They wrote the first automated hospital chargemaster in 1999; US billing rules keep about 40% of hospitals renewing.
Open →
Auction Technology Group
Marketplace
$3.3bn of goods sold. ATG keeps $190m.
$190.2m
Filed · FY25 revenue, audited
GMV tracks cyclical art and surplus spend.
★ The edge: Owns the bidding rails thousands of auction houses depend on, and the bidder demand they can't aggregate alone.
Open →
Weedmaps
Marketplace
The ad platform for an industry Google won't touch.
$184.5M
Filed · FY2024 revenue (10-K)
Revenue has fallen two years straight.
★ The edge: Cannabis sellers are banned from Google, Meta and Yelp ads, so Weedmaps became the one place buyers and sellers meet.
Open →
Pushpay
SaaS
Digital tithing for US megachurches, built in NZ.
US$202.8M
Filed · FY22 revenue, up 13%
US churches only — a finite, capped market.
★ The edge: Owns the church software and the payment rails, so it earns a margin on every dollar of US$7.6B given yearly.
Open →
BASE
Marketplace
Free to open a shop. BASE takes a cut when you sell.
¥20.7B
Filed · $138M · FY25 net sales (TSE)
Tiny sellers churn; GMV per shop stays low.
★ The edge: Free to start pulled in millions of tiny sellers Rakuten priced out; BASE earns a cut of every sale.
Open →
Hemnet
Marketplace
Sweden's default home portal. Sellers foot the bill.
SEK 1,394.6M
Filed · 2024 net sales · +39% YoY
One country, one housing cycle.
★ The edge: Brokers built it in 1998 and fed it every listing. Private equity later bought control and made the sellers pay.
Open →
StartEngine
Marketplace
Crowdfunding marketplace. Crowdfunding is 12% of revenue.
$109.6M
Filed · FY2025 revenue (10-K)
79% of revenue sits in one product line.
★ The edge: Eleven years of startup raises built a 1.79M-investor list. Selling that list pre-IPO stakes now pays 79% of revenue.
Open →
Bengo4.com
Community
A lawyer's Q&A site now sells Japan's top e-signature.
¥16.3B
Filed · about $109M · FY3/2026 net sales (filed)
One country, one law. It travels nowhere.
★ The edge: Motoe is a lawyer. CloudSign was the first witness-type e-signature Japan's Ministry of Justice recognized.
Open →
Twinkl
SaaS
Sells teachers the worksheets they made at 10pm.
£78.6M
Filed · about $98M · turnover, FY to Apr 2024
Free AI can draft a worksheet in seconds.
★ The edge: It industrialised unpaid evening work: salaried teachers turn every curriculum change into ready-made resources.
Open →
PowerOffice
SaaS
Accountants do the selling. It bills per invoice.
NOK 925M
Filed · about $96M · FY2025 revenue, filed
Norway only; Visma now owns it.
★ The edge: Accounting firms put clients on it, so partners do the selling — and every invoice meters the bill.
Open →
Infomedia
Data
Carmakers endorse it, their dealers pay for it.
A$146.5M
Filed · FY25 revenue · pre-buyout
Tied entirely to the automotive industry.
★ The edge: Microcat is the maker-endorsed parts catalog dealers update monthly and rely on across 186 countries.
Open →
1stDibs
Marketplace
Where designers buy five-figure furniture online.
$89.6M
Filed · 2025 net revenue
Rare, cyclical buys cap repeat and growth.
★ The edge: Invite-only curation plus authentication let strangers trust five-figure buys that open marketplaces can't safely host.
Open →
VisasQ
Marketplace
Japan's marketplace for one-hour expert calls.
¥9,974M
Filed · $64M · revenue, FY ended Feb '26
Demand swings with deal & consulting cycles.
★ The edge: Global ENS firms sold pricey retainers to megafunds in English. VisasQ made expert calls self-serve, in Japanese.
Open →
Coconala
Marketplace
Japan's skills flea market — design to fortunes.
$62M
Filed · FY25 rev, +43% (TSE-listed)
Core GMV up 4.6%; growth leans on staffing.
★ The edge: Sells what Fiverr won't — anonymous fortune-telling and worry-chats are flagship categories, not novelties.
Open →
HaloPSA
SaaS
Bootstrapped PSA that MSPs quit Kaseya for.
$62M
Filed · FY25 turnover (filed)
Growth rode rivals' PE-driven price hikes.
★ The edge: Two IT-support guys built their own ticket tool, never took VC, and undercut PE-owned rivals on price and depth.
Open →
BharatMatrimony
Marketplace
India's paid matchmaker, one caste at a time
$55M
Filed · FY25 rev, NSE-listed
Young urban India is leaving for dating apps
★ The edge: Paid matchmaking: brides and grooms subscribe to contact verified matches, split across 300+ caste and language sites.
Open →
GunBroker
Marketplace
The gun auction site that sells nothing itself
$51.1M
Filed · FY26 revenue (marketplace)
Revenue still sits below its FY22 peak.
★ The edge: Every online gun sale must end at a licensed dealer. GunBroker wired 32,000 of them in and bills the sale.
Open →
Admicom
SaaS
The ERP he sold to Visma, rebuilt for Finnish builders
€37.7M
Filed · about $43M · 2025 revenue, Nasdaq filed
Grows 6% a year. One industry, one country.
★ The edge: Sells only to Finnish construction and building-services firms — then keeps their books and payroll too.
Open →
BUYMA
Marketplace
A crowd abroad shops luxury for you — guaranteed real.
¥6.3B
Filed · about $41M · Net revenue, FY Jan 2026
Discretionary luxury; weak yen bites GMV.
★ The edge: No inventory, no imports: 244k personal shoppers abroad are the supply, and BUYMA underwrites every sale as authentic.
Open →
Flightradar24
Data
The crowd built the network. 36 staff sell the view.
SEK 418.8M
Filed · about $41M · FY24 revenue (filed)
The signal is public. It owns no data.
★ The edge: ADS-B is a free radio signal any hobbyist can catch. FR24 spent 18 years turning scattered listeners into one network.
Open →
Freelancer.com
Marketplace
He didn't build the marketplace. He bought his rivals.
A$55.3M
Filed · FY25 revenue, audited
Freelance revenue grew 0.7% in FY25.
★ The edge: Takes a cut from both sides, 10% from the worker and 3% from the client, then sells upgrades on top.
Open →
Cookpad
Community
Millions of free recipes. Pay to find the best.
¥5.3B
Filed · $35M · FY2025 sales (TSE-filed)
Premium members keep leaving; revenue halved.
★ The edge: 6M+ user recipes, 100M+ monthly users, 25 years of habit — a UGC library rivals can't clone.
Open →
Airtasker
Marketplace
The odd-jobs marketplace that traded shares for airtime.
A$52.6M
Filed · FY25 revenue, about US$34M
New markets restart the liquidity problem.
★ The edge: A marketplace's real bottleneck is demand-side awareness — Airtasker bought it with equity instead of burning cash.
Open →
Wantedly
Marketplace
Hiring by mission, not resume — flat monthly fee.
$33M/yr
Filed · Op. revenue, FY25 (listed)
Japan-only; casual-visit hiring is local.
★ The edge: A flat monthly subscription where agencies take 30-35% of first-year salary — cheap enough for cash-poor startups.
Open →
Hatena
SaaS
18 manga publishers rent their reader from Kyoto.
¥3,794M
Filed · $23M · FY2025, TSE-filed accounts
One wire fraud cost 5x annual net profit.
★ The edge: Sells the viewer, never the manga. Shueisha, Kodansha and Shogakukan all ship on Hatena's platform, IP untouched.
Open →
Intellicheck
SaaS
The law put a barcode on every ID. They read it.
$22.67M
Filed · FY2025 revenue (10-K)
Top 10 customers = 77% of revenue.
★ The edge: Reads the barcode on every North American license - including the ones that break the AAMVA standard.
Open →
ReposiTrak
SaaS
Grocers mandate it. Suppliers pay. 99% recurring.
$22.6M
Filed · FY2025 revenue (to Jun 30)
FDA moved its deadline to 2028. Demand waits.
★ The edge: Retailers sign on as hubs, then order their suppliers onto the platform. The mandate replaces the sales call.
Open →
Gumroad
Marketplace
Sell any digital product from one storefront — flat 10%.
$20.7M
Filed · 2023 · $8.9M net · 0 staff
GMV plateaued · flat fee invites churn
★ The edge: he hiked the fee and cut to zero staff — a shrinking company that's wildly profitable.
Open →
Street Group
SaaS
He learned PHP to fix his dad's estate agency.
£15,936,619
Filed · FY2025 turnover, about $21M
One country, one trade, one housing cycle.
★ The edge: They grew up inside an estate agency, so they built for the one job agents get paid on: winning instructions.
Open →
Skillcast
SaaS
Compliance training nobody wants and everyone must buy.
£15.3M
Filed · about $20M · FY2025 revenue, audited
UK is 81% of revenue; NRR only 101%.
★ The edge: Sells the audit trail, not the lesson. Every new UK rule adds a mandatory course to 1,221 clients' renewal.
Open →
PIXTA
Marketplace
Japan's biggest stock-photo site, on local faces
$18M/yr
Filed · FY2025 net sales, TSE 3416
AI now generates what buyers once licensed
★ The edge: Licenses amateur-shot photos to Japanese buyers by credit or subscription; keeps 58-78% of each sale.
Open →
AutoCount Dotcom
SaaS
Malaysia mandated e-invoicing. AutoCount owned the SMEs.
RM75.3M
Filed · about $17M · FY2025 revenue (audited)
Mandate bump is partly one-off revenue.
★ The edge: 26 years owning the books meant when e-invoicing became law, 240k locked-in SMEs bought the fix from AutoCount.
Open →
Creema
Marketplace
Japan's curated craft market out-earns its rival.
$16.9M
Filed · net sales · yr to Feb '26
Thin margins in a small, mature market.
★ The edge: minne lists more sellers, yet Creema does the bigger GMV — it won on curation and a live festival, not ad spend.
Open →
Fishbrain
Community
20M anglers log their catches. Fishbrain sells the map.
$16M
Filed · FY24 turnover · SEK 165M
Growth has flattened; still lossmaking.
★ The edge: Every catch users log — 14M spots — feeds a forecast dataset rivals can't copy. The community builds the moat for free.
Open →
Floify
SaaS
Bootstrapped loan-doc SaaS. 1,500 lenders. $90M exit.
$15M
Filed · 2022 rev (Porch est.)
One workflow; now Porch owns the roadmap.
★ The edge: Rivals sold bloated loan suites top-down. Floify sold one job, doc collection, bottom-up to individual loan officers.
Open →
UserWay
SaaS
One line of code, 'instant' ADA compliance
$13.8M
Filed · FY2023 revenue (+78% YoY)
Overlays don't actually make sites compliant.
★ The edge: Turned ADA-lawsuit panic into a self-serve $49/mo widget — dread and distribution, not accessibility, built the revenue.
Open →
Web Manuals
SaaS
Aviation rules change. Their manuals change with them.
SEK 111.6M
Filed · about $11.7M · Sweden AB net turnover, FY25
Aviation only. One downturn hits everything.
★ The edge: Compliance libraries link each manual line to FAA/EASA text, so every rule change is an upsell, not a churn risk.
Open →
Fakturownia
SaaS
The invoicing app Poland's VAT law made unavoidable.
$11M/yr
Filed · 2025 revenue (KRS filing)
One country's law; free govt KSeF looms.
★ The edge: Polish tax law is complex and always changing; Fakturownia's compliance fluency is a moat generic apps can't copy.
Open →