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Built on rented land
Their business lives inside somebody else's platform. Some got rich. Some got de-listed overnight.
49 teardowns · Under $1MEvery teardownFortressesEasy to copy. Won anyway.Built on rented landNumbers straight from a filingDoesn't scale. On purpose.Still here after 15 yearsOne-time money
Indifferent Broccoli
SaaS
Private multiplayer servers for survival gamers.
$82,386/mo
Stated · founder-stated
Commodity; churns as each game's hype fades.
★ The edge: Bought a site already page-one for one game ($1,600/mo), then launched a host for every new title.
Open →
Pope Tech
SaaS
Bootstrapped shop rents the web's most-trusted scanner.
$770K
Estimate · est. annual revenue
Core WAVE engine is WebAIM's, not theirs.
★ The edge: Built the enterprise layer on WebAIM's court-referenced WAVE engine — rented credibility no ad budget can buy.
Open →
Resellbot
SaaS
One dev owns the search result Poshmark resellers tap.
$756K/yr
Estimate · 2024 ARR (Latka est)
Automates platforms that ban automation.
★ The edge: Ranks #1 for 'Poshmark bot,' a buying-intent keyword rivals ignored, so customer acquisition is free organic search.
Open →
GrowthMentor
Marketplace
One flat fee, unlimited calls with vetted mentors.
$720K
Estimate · ARR, reported 2022
Control low
free supply can walk
free supply can walk
★ The edge: Most mentors work for free — so members get unlimited calls and GrowthMentor keeps the whole subscription.
Open →
FeedbackPanda
SaaS
One-click lesson feedback for ESL teachers
$55K/mo
Stated · MRR at 2019 exit
All revenue rode on one platform, VIPKid.
★ The edge: Danielle was an ESL teacher herself: she felt the pain daily and had trust inside the teacher groups they sold into.
Open →
MySignature
SaaS
Bought his rival at $25K MRR; it's now the bigger one.
$55K/mo
Stated · about $700K/yr, self-funded
One Google algo change can gut the traffic.
★ The edge: Owns top-5 Google rankings for 'email signature generator'; a free tool turns that evergreen traffic into $12/mo subs.
Open →
PDF.ai
SaaS
Chat with your PDFs - a $20K buy now doing $50K/mo.
$50K+/mo
Stated · MRR, founder-stated
Thin AI wrapper - cloned in a weekend.
★ The edge: He didn't build it - he bought a working AI toy for $20K, then used the audience his other SaaS already had.
Open →
StandOut CV
SaaS
A recruiter turned CV advice into the UK's #1 CV site.
£40K/mo
Stated · about $50K · MRR at exit, all via SEO
One channel: Google. AI now writes CVs free.
★ The edge: 10 years placing hires at Barclays and Deloitte made his CV advice ring true; 1,000+ SEO articles became the moat.
Open →
Pappers
Data
Free French company data. The paying 1% funds it all.
€0.49M
Filed · $0.53M · 2024 net profit (filed)
Moat is UX and SEO, not the data itself.
★ The edge: Made paywalled French company data free with far better UX; the 1% who buy the API and exports fund the free 99%.
Open →
CookieYes
SaaS
The cookie banner the law made you add.
$523K
Estimate · est. ARR 2024 (Latka)
warn entry Low
banner is a commodity
banner is a commodity
★ The edge: A free WordPress plugin with 1M+ installs funnels sites into the paid consent platform.
Open →
Cyberleads
Data
Leads on startups that just raised, for agencies.
$500K+/yr
Estimate · ARR, founder-disclosed
Copyable data, thin moat, high churn.
★ The edge: Built entirely in public: every MRR-milestone tweet was free marketing, so his audience compounded with the revenue.
Open →
PDFLiner
SaaS
Ranks every US tax form, then charges to fill it.
$40K/mo
Stated · MRR, founder-stated (2022)
Google ranks the forms; one update sinks it.
★ The edge: Every IRS, legal and real-estate form is its own SEO page, so 'fill form X online' searches land on a paywalled filler.
Open →
Hiface
SaaS
A face-shape app with 96% margins and zero ad spend.
$455,754/yr
Estimate · Annual rev at sale (Flippa)
A one-shot utility; users rarely come back.
★ The edge: 100% organic traffic means zero CAC and 96% margins — the whole business runs on App Store rankings, not ad budgets.
Open →
GummySearch
Data
Mined Reddit's complaints, sold them to founders
$35K/mo
Estimate · MRR at 2025 shutdown
Control low
lived and died on Reddit's API
lived and died on Reddit's API
★ The edge: One search box over 10,000+ subreddits — founders validate ideas in minutes, not weeks of scrolling.
Open →
Post Bridge
SaaS
Schedule one post to every platform, no bloat.
$35K MRR
Stated · about $420K ARR, stated
Thin layer over social APIs he can't own.
★ The edge: He hand-posted to five platforms daily to grow his own app — then sold the automation of that exact chore.
Open →
Typeshare
SaaS
Sold two-thirds of his app to get an audience.
$34K MRR
Stated · MRR, founder-stated 2025
Flat MRR; depends on Ship 30 for 30.
★ The edge: His co-owners were the exact influencers whose thousands of students needed a place to publish.
Open →
MySlabs
Marketplace
The 2% fee that moved $80M and still lost money
$389K
Filed · FY2023 revenue (SEC)
Thin 2% fee; still unprofitable
★ The edge: Sellers pay 2%, not the 13% eBay takes or the 20%+ auctions charge. The low fee is the whole pitch.
Open →
MetaFilter
Community
The forum Google built, then nearly killed.
$31.5K/mo
Stated · income vs $30.5K/mo expenses
Built on Google traffic it didn't control.
★ The edge: Ads died overnight when Google's Panda update cut traffic 40%; 15 years of member goodwill funded the site instead.
Open →
TypingMind
SaaS
The power-user UI ChatGPT forgot to build.
$30K/mo
Stated · avg/mo, founder-stated
A wrapper OpenAI could absorb overnight.
★ The edge: Wrapped ChatGPT's clunky default with the search, folders and bring-your-own-key its power users asked for.
Open →
Judoscale
Dev
Autoscaling sold inside Heroku's own app store.
$300,000 ARR
Stated · founder-stated, 2021
Heroku's decline hit the main channel.
★ The edge: The Heroku add-on marketplace shipped him customers for five years while he kept his day job.
Open →
Data Fetcher
SaaS
The API importer Airtable never shipped, done solo.
$23K/mo
Stated · MRR · up 4x from $6K
Its whole market lives inside Airtable.
★ The edge: Airtable can't pull live API data itself. Data Fetcher is the no-code fix, sitting right in Airtable's app store.
Open →
Visa List
Data
Free visa data. $22K/mo. One guy in Sydney.
$22K/mo
Stated · founder-stated, 2022
A Google update can halve everything.
★ The edge: He never sells the visa info - it's free bait that ranks on Google. The money is the traveler's next purchase.
Open →
Flusk
Dev
Security audits for Bubble apps — bought by Bubble.
$240K
Stated · ARR · 2024 exit
⚠ Control low
100% on one platform
100% on one platform
★ The edge: a self-serve product — you can't acquire a service, you can acquire a product.
Open →
FeedHive
SaaS
Turned a tweet scheduler into an AI content studio
$227.7K ARR
Estimate · est. ARR, Latka '24
Commodity category; AI writing is now free.
★ The edge: AI scores a post's likely reach before you publish and auto-recycles your best ones, in a clean solo-built workspace.
Open →
P
PA Crunch
SaaS
Passive Instagram growth SaaS. Sold for $300K.
$18K MRR
Stated · at 2018 exit · 50% margin
Zero control; it all ran on Instagram.
★ The edge: Delegated to a 4-person team so it ran in about 3 hours a month — profitable, hands-off, and clean enough to sell fast.
Open →
SEOTesting
SaaS
SEO A/B testing, powered by Google's own data.
$18K/mo
Stated · MRR, founder-stated 2023
Lives and dies by Google's Search Console
★ The edge: Built by an SEO for SEOs: turns Google Search Console's raw data into repeatable, client-ready A/B tests.
Open →
Coolify
Dev
Open-source Heroku you run on your own server.
$15.7K/mo
Stated · gross, self-reported
Just 5 people handle code, support, security.
★ The edge: Owns the self-hosting crowd's trust — open-source, no VC, no lock-in — the anti-Vercel a VC clone can't copy.
Open →
BlogToPin
SaaS
Auto-pins your blog to Pinterest for free traffic
$15K MRR
Stated · founder-stated (IH)
10-15% monthly churn — a leaky bucket
★ The edge: Connect a blog once and AI writes and pins forever — rivals like Tailwind still make you build each pin by hand.
Open →
B
Black Magic
SaaS
Turned down $500K. API bill forced a $128K sale.
$168K ARR
Estimate · at sale · 90% margin
One dependency: Twitter's API.
★ The edge: Real-time X analytics plus a CRM rivals lacked, sold straight to the 100K+ audience the founder built in public.
Open →
FreeAgent
SaaS
UK freelancers' books, now free inside their bank app.
150,000+
Estimate · businesses on FreeAgent
Its growth now leans on one bank.
★ The edge: Owned by NatWest, which hands it free to every business-banking customer — a channel rivals cannot buy.
Open →
Inbox Zero
SaaS
Open-source AI for email. The license is the paywall.
$10K+ MRR
Stated · founder-stated MRR, Oct 2025
Google can ship this free inside Gmail.
★ The edge: Open source solves the trust problem for an app that reads every email, and GitHub trending brought the users.
Open →
Tool Finder
Ad
Where 450k fans pick their productivity tools.
>$10K/mo
Stated · Founder-stated, 2026
Affiliate traffic hinges on Google and AI.
★ The edge: Fourteen years of hands-on reviews and a 450k-sub audience make each pick trusted before a vendor pays.
Open →
Buildpad
SaaS
Two failed founders built the AI cofounder they wanted.
$7,300/mo
Stated · MRR, 7 mo in (May 2025)
100k free founders, about $7K MRR.
★ The edge: The AI keeps your project in memory across sessions and guides you through phases: research, validate, build, launch.
Open →
Potion
SaaS
Sold for $300K on $6,300 MRR and 2 hrs a week.
$6,300 MRR
Estimate · MRR at $300K exit (2023)
A thin layer on Notion's own API.
★ The edge: Built in public on Twitter for two months before launch, so the audience giving feedback became the first 75 customers.
Open →
BitsForDigits
Marketplace
Sell part of your SaaS — cash out, keep control.
$72K/yr
Stated · self-reported · pre-exit
⚠ Control thin
buyer pool owned by rivals
buyer pool owned by rivals
★ The edge: they turned a rich-founder move — Basecamp selling a stake to Bezos — into a self-serve marketplace.
Open →
Remote Rocketship
Marketplace
Free Google traffic, sold back to job seekers.
$6k/mo
Stated · MRR · self-reported
⚠ Retention low
seekers cancel once hired
seekers cancel once hired
★ The edge: Everyone bills employers to post jobs. He scraped 60k firms' listings free and charged the job seeker instead.
Open →
U
Userfeed
SaaS
Customer feedback, native to Intercom.
$50K ARR
Stated · at exit; sold 6-figures
All distribution rents Intercom's platform.
★ The edge: Lived in the Intercom App Store, so Intercom's own users were its ready-made distribution channel.
Open →
My AskAI
SaaS
AI support agent that plugs into Intercom or Zendesk
$40K
Stated · MRR · about $500K ARR
⚠ Entry low
crowded; incumbents bundle it
crowded; incumbents bundle it
★ The edge: Built on OpenAI's embeddings soon after launch, shipped in three weeks; 2 people run 75k chats/mo at 82% margin.
Open →
Cloakist
SaaS
Wrapped Notion pages. Sold for $60k in one month.
$2k MRR
Stated · at $60k exit · 2.5x ARR
Rides on platforms that could ship this free.
★ The edge: One job, recurring revenue, no founder brand to replace. A buyer could run it day one, which is why it sold fast.
Open →
TaxJar
SaaS
E-commerce sales tax a court made mandatory.
23,000+
Stated · businesses at acquisition
Platform risk: Stripe absorbed the category.
★ The edge: Built pre-Wayfair. When the 2018 ruling made sales-tax collection mandatory, TaxJar was already the incumbent.
Open →
RecordJoy
SaaS
A 'poor man's Loom,' flipped for about 1.7x.
$20K
Stated · sold on Acquire.com '22
No moat vs Loom and free recorders.
★ The edge: Sold within a month for $20K, about 1.7x the $12K buy split with a cousin — proof a clean micro-SaaS is liquid.
Open →
sellerboard
SaaS
The net profit Amazon hides - for $19 a month.
20K+
Stated · Amazon sellers
100% dependent on Amazon's API and fees
★ The edge: The accurate net-profit number Amazon hides, priced at $19 so every small seller says yes.
Open →
FincenFetch
SaaS
The filing rails for whatever FinCEN mandates next.
1,000+
Stated · firms
Its whole market is one rule's political whim.
★ The edge: Built FinCEN filing rails before the law landed; 1,000+ CPA and law firms white-label it instead of DIY.
Open →
Storecove
Dev
One API for compliant e-invoices in 30+ countries
31
Stated · countries, API compliance
Peppol access is commoditizing fast
★ The edge: Bet on Peppol in 2014, years before mandates. Now ERPs that must comply plug into one API instead of building it.
Open →
Hypefury
SaaS
Thread scheduling for X, born from one tweet.
7-figure revenue
Stated · founder-stated · not ARR
Depends entirely on X's API and pricing.
★ The edge: Focused only on X threads while Buffer/Hootsuite stayed generic. Bootstrapped, no VC, grown via build-in-public.
Open →
LeadDelta
SaaS
The LinkedIn CRM that won Product Hunt twice.
40,000+ users
Stated · revenue never disclosed
One platform's rules decide if it works.
★ The edge: Sells to people who live on LinkedIn but refuse to spam it — organize the network you earned, not blast strangers.
Open →
RightTool
SaaS
The power-user layer QuickBooks never built.
40,000 users
Estimate · revenue never disclosed
Wholly dependent on Intuit's goodwill.
★ The edge: Hector Garcia's 337k-sub QuickBooks YouTube channel supplies the buyers; the audience predates the product.
Open →
Stock Alarm
SaaS
An app that phones you when your stock hits your price
$500,000 exit
Estimate · revenue never disclosed
A feature big brokers can ship for free.
★ The edge: It calls your phone. Push alerts get ignored; a ringing phone does not, so traders pay $4.99-19.99/mo for it.
Open →
Wisesheets
Data
Institutional-grade stock data for $5 a month.
70,000+
Stated · users
Rents its data from upstream APIs.
★ The edge: Sells the data inside Excel and Sheets, so investors never leave the workflow they already model in.
Open →