← All shelves
Numbers straight from a filing
No founder-stated figures, no estimates. A regulator has these numbers, and so can you.
32 teardownsEvery teardownFortressesEasy to copy. Won anyway.Built on rented landDoesn't scale. On purpose.Still here after 15 yearsOne-time money
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 → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
AudioEye
SaaS
ADA-lawsuit insurance, delivered as a script tag.
$40.3M
Filed · FY2025 revenue, +15% YoY
Its demand engine (lawsuits) can turn on it.
★ The edge: Courts manufacture the demand: thousands of ADA web suits a year scare SMBs into buying compliance they can't judge.
Open → full teardown→
Bark.com
Marketplace
Local-service marketplace where pros buy leads
£70M
Filed · $88M · £15M ($19M) profit, '22
Earns whether the pro wins the job or not
★ The edge: Pros pay upfront for lead credits, so Bark earns before any job happens or any deal closes off-platform.
Open → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
Chrono24
Marketplace
Global marketplace for pre-owned luxury watches.
€103.2M
Filed · FY2021 group accounts
Dealers could bypass; GMV swings with prices.
★ The edge: Free built-in escrow lets strangers wire $50K for a used watch across 150 countries without fear of fakes.
Open → full teardown→
Clear (ClearTax)
SaaS
India made GST filing the law. Clear became the rails.
$25M
Filed · FY24 rev, +93% YoY
Govt's free portal can commoditize filing.
★ The edge: When a govt forces millions to file taxes digitally, whoever ships the easiest compliant rails becomes default plumbing.
Open → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
Dedao (iGet)
Community
China's paid-knowledge app of curated expert courses.
$130M
Filed · 2021 revenue · prospectus
Its moat is a celebrity, not a network.
★ The edge: Sells curation, not content: expert books condensed into audio courses for busy, status-anxious professionals.
Open → full teardown→
Envato
Marketplace
The bootstrapped stock-asset market that paid out $1.3B
$245M
Filed · all-cash exit, 2024
Its subscription now cannibalizes its authors
★ The edge: Launched the marketplace, then built Tuts+ — the web's biggest design-tutorial network — to feed it buyers.
Open → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
GeoGuessr
SaaS
Guess your spot on Earth from Street View — paid only.
$29M
Filed · 2024 revenue (filed)
Entire game rents Google's Street View.
★ The edge: Streamers like Rainbolt made it viral for free; a loyal fanbase let it kill the free tier and still grow.
Open → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
Idealista
Marketplace
Spain's #1 property portal. Agents pay, buyers browse.
€300M+
Filed · $325M · 2024 revenue, +16% YoY
Liquidity is local; each market restarts.
★ The edge: It out-executed same-era rival Fotocasa on listing quality and trust — now valued about 20x higher.
Open → full teardown→
iDenfy
SaaS
Identity checks you pay for only when they pass.
€6.0M
Filed · $6.5M · 2024 revenue · LT filing
Thin layer on a mandate; low pricing power.
★ The edge: Only KYC vendor that bills per approved check, not per attempt — cuts onboarding cost up to 70%.
Open → full teardown→
iFirma
SaaS
Poland forces digital tax filing. iFirma runs it.
PLN 58M
Filed · 2024 rev · about $15M
Locked to Poland; hard to cross borders.
★ The edge: Poland's first online-accounting brand; 15+ years of local tax law make it the default upgrade as KSeF turns mandatory.
Open → full teardown→
IndiaMART
Marketplace
India's B2B directory where only sellers pay
$165M
Filed · FY25 rev · listed (BSE)
Paying base flat; growth from price hikes.
★ The edge: Only sellers pay: 217K of 7M+ suppliers fund the whole marketplace while 200M+ buyers browse free.
Open → full teardown→
Makuake
Marketplace
The crowdfunding site Japan uses to launch products
$30M
Filed · FY2025 net sales (public)
One-shot campaigns; makers rarely come back
★ The edge: Takes 20%, 4x Kickstarter's cut — because it sells curation and PR, not software. Vets makers in person; rejects 30%.
Open → full teardown→
note inc.
Community
Japan's ad-free platform for paid writing.
¥4.14B
Filed · $27M · FY25 net sales, +25% YoY
Thin take, Japan-only, thin profit.
★ The edge: Built by a hit book editor: no ads, about a 17% take, creator-first design — so writers bring their own fans.
Open → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
Sansan
Data
Japan runs on business cards. Sansan digitized them.
$280M
Filed · ARR, May 2025 (¥41.5B)
The card ritual fades as work goes remote.
★ The edge: Rivals trust OCR; Sansan runs every card through human operators too — 99.9% accuracy is the data moat.
Open → full teardown→
smallcase
Marketplace
Stock baskets that trade as one, via your broker.
₹67cr
Filed · $8M · FY24 rev from ops
85.8% of revenue is a toll brokers can cut.
★ The edge: smallcase never became a broker. It's a neutral rail on top of every major Indian broker, tolling each basket trade.
Open → full teardown→
Timee
Marketplace
Spot shifts, no resume, no interview, paid same day.
$230M
Filed · FY2025 revenue (up 28% YoY)
Clients can hire workers direct, fee-free.
★ The edge: Every shift is a direct hire, not temp dispatch — no staffing license, no interview, worker paid same day.
Open → full teardown→
Tracxn
Data
The startup database global VCs rent, built in India
$10.1M
Filed · FY25 revenue - public filing
Revenue plateaued; AI erodes the labor moat.
★ The edge: Two ex-VCs weaponized India's 10x-cheaper analysts to out-cover Crunchbase, then sold the data back to global VCs.
Open → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
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 → full teardown→
Woodpecker.co
SaaS
The email hack they built for themselves went public.
$5.5M
Filed · 2024 revenue, official
A Gmail policy change can gut deliverability.
★ The edge: Sends cold email one-by-one from your own inbox with human-like pacing, so messages land in the inbox, not spam.
Open → full teardown→
Workiva
SaaS
A mandate forced XBRL filings. They owned the tool.
$739M
Filed · FY2024 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 → full teardown→
Yoti
SaaS
The law says prove your age - Yoti sells the proof.
$37M
Filed · FY2025 rev, +62% YoY
The market lives or dies by the regulator.
★ The edge: No ID upload, nothing stored - just a selfie, deleted instantly. It solved the privacy fear that killed the 2019 law.
Open → full teardown→