← All shelves
Still here after 15 years
Founded 2011 or earlier and still running. Survival is a fact; hype is not.
108 teardownsEvery teardownFortressesEasy to copy. Won anyway.Built on rented landNumbers straight from a filingDoesn't scale. On purpose.One-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→
52Frames
Community
A free weekly photo challenge, monetized after a decade.
$11K/mo
Stated · premium · about 700 pay
⚠ Bus factor of 1
solo, weekly, forever
solo, weekly, forever
★ The edge: Rivals hand you a prompt or a crowd. 52Frames fuses a weekly ritual with a 13K-member feedback loop.
Open → full teardown→
AgencyAnalytics
SaaS
White-label client reports for marketing agencies.
$15M+ ARR
Estimate · Latka est.; not disclosed
Reporting is commoditized; rivals copy fast.
★ The edge: Priced per client, so revenue scales with each agency's roster; white-label makes the report the agency's own.
Open → full teardown→
AppSumo
Marketplace
Sells software lifetime deals to a 1.5M-buyer list.
$80M
Stated · 2023 revenue
One-time cash, no recurring revenue.
★ The edge: The product is distribution, not deals: a 1.5M-buyer list makers hand 70-80% of a Select deal to reach.
Open → full teardown→
AstroBin
Community
Astrophotography's default gallery + gear database.
$350K/yr
Estimate · est. subscriptions
Tiny niche; storage costs climb as it grows.
★ The edge: Members' photos double as a gear database - the reference imagers check before spending thousands on a scope.
Open → full teardown→
AstroSage
SaaS
Free birth charts for 80M - AI reads them for pay.
$10M/yr
Estimate · FY25 revenue (Tracxn est)
1/14th of rival Astrotalk's revenue.
★ The edge: Free Kundli tools pull 80M installs via SEO; the paid AI astrologer then answers at about 90% margin.
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→
Avalara
SaaS
Sales tax on autopilot for 13,000+ US jurisdictions.
$1B+
Stated · 2023, founder-stated
Stripe Tax bundles the core calc cheaply.
★ The edge: IPO'd days before the 2018 Wayfair ruling forced millions of online sellers into multi-state sales-tax filing.
Open → full teardown→
Balsamiq
SaaS
Ugly-on-purpose wireframes designers keep paying for
$6.58M
Stated · 2024 revenue
Figma now does low-fi; TAM is shrinking
★ The edge: Wireframes look hand-drawn on purpose: every mockup is instantly recognizable and markets the tool for free.
Open → full teardown→
Bandcamp
Marketplace
Fans buy music direct — and artists keep about 82%.
$21M/yr
Estimate · est. net (10-15% cut)
Streaming gravity caps the ceiling
★ The edge: fans buy music direct instead of streaming pennies — revenue rises only when the artist's does.
Open → full teardown→
Bandzoogle
SaaS
The site builder that takes 0% of what artists sell.
$8M/yr
Estimate · Est. subscription revenue
Bounded, slow-growth music niche
★ The edge: A music-only website builder that takes 0% of what artists sell - you keep 100%, it lives on your flat monthly fee.
Open → full teardown→
BeatStars
Marketplace
Where a $30 beat becomes a No.1 record.
$400M+ to creators
Stated · lifetime GMV, not revenue
Producers multi-home; little lock-in.
★ The edge: An ex-distribution insider turned a beat-curation blog into the marketplace where unknown producers sell No.1 hits.
Open → full teardown→
Beeminder
SaaS
The habit tracker that charges you when you fail.
$1M
Estimate · ARR (2024, est.)
Paying to be punished repels the masses.
★ The edge: Rivals sell success. Beeminder gets paid the moment you fail — your own procrastination is the meter.
Open → full teardown→
BetaList
Marketplace
The startup directory that charges you to skip its line.
$1M
Stated · cumulative over 10 years
Entry low
directory = a weekend clone
directory = a weekend clone
★ The edge: Turned its review backlog into 70% of revenue by charging startups to skip the queue.
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→
BiggerPockets
Community
Real estate's town square — a free forum, 3M+ members.
$7M
Stated · 2016 rev · last public
⚠ Need cyclical
under 1% pay
under 1% pay
★ The edge: Dorkin kept the forum free for years before charging — trust and UGC compounded into a moat rivals can't buy.
Open → full teardown→
BIS Safety Software
SaaS
Boring safety software. 99% of customers never leave.
$25M CAD/yr
Stated · founder-stated ARR, 2025
Labor-heavy; one vertical, mostly Canada.
★ The edge: Leaving BIS means re-certifying your whole crew — so under 1% churn. Half of new customers come by referral, not ads.
Open → full teardown→
Bizness Apps
SaaS
DIY app builder for SMBs. Bootstrapped, sold $20M+.
$10M
Stated · ARR at 2018 exit
SMB-native-app demand later collapsed.
★ The edge: Raised just $100K, so a clean cap table let a PE firm buy 100% all-cash — no VCs to negotiate out.
Open → full teardown→
Boardroom Insiders
Data
Deep C-suite dossiers, licensed to B2B sales teams.
$5M
Stated · ARR at $25M exit
Hand-written data; scaling means hiring.
★ The edge: 14 years and a 25-person research team built 29,000 deep exec profiles rivals couldn't scrape or fake.
Open → full teardown→
BrightGauge
SaaS
Client dashboards MSPs run on top of their PSA tools
$10M ARR
Stated · 2019 exit · bootstrapped
A report add-on the platform could absorb.
★ The edge: Built by brothers who ran their own MSP, so it plugged into the exact ConnectWise/Autotask tools MSPs already used.
Open → full teardown→
BuiltWith
Data
Fingerprints a site's tech stack — then sells the reverse.
$14M/yr
Estimate · annual revenue (est.)
Lookup is free · lead-gen cut first
★ The edge: the lookup is free — the real moat is 18 yrs of crawl history nobody can back-fill.
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→
Catawiki
Marketplace
Curated auctions where experts vet every lot
€105M
Stated · 2024 revenue (about $114M)
Experts scale linearly; margin near zero.
★ The edge: Paid experts vet every lot, so buyers trust it enough to pay a 21.5% combined take in a market full of fakes.
Open → full teardown→
CattleMax
SaaS
Ranchers' herd records, bootstrapped since 1999.
$2M/yr
Estimate · 8,000+ ranches, bootstrapped
Small herds, small budgets — low ceiling.
★ The edge: A niche too small and unglamorous for big SaaS to bother with, held by 25 years of ranch-specific depth and referrals.
Open → full teardown→
CellarTracker
Community
The shared cellar book wine geeks all write in.
Undisclosed
· estimate withdrawn
A wine cellar is a niche, however deep it runs.
★ The edge: Millions of community tasting notes — a bigger wine-review database than every pro critic combined, and free to build.
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→
CIMcloud
SaaS
Bootstrapped B2B stores synced to legacy ERPs
25+ yrs
Stated · Inc 5000 · rev private
Every deploy is an ERP integration project.
★ The edge: Shopify treats B2B as an add-on. CIMcloud was ERP-first: real-time price, stock and order sync for distributors.
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→
C
ClickClaims
SaaS
The claims desk for storm-chasing insurance adjusters.
$4M+
Stated · ARR · 50 accounts
Tiny buyer pool, revenue rides the storms.
★ The edge: A claims adjuster who'd already built claims software inside a big firm — he knew the workflow before line one.
Open → full teardown→
Cliniko
SaaS
Bootstrapped clinic software, built with an osteopath.
AU$22M/yr
Estimate · $14M · est. from 2% giving pledge
Crowded category full of funded rivals.
★ The edge: Built with an osteopath, not by a generalist — 14 bootstrapped years turned clinical depth into trust rivals can't buy.
Open → full teardown→
Construct 3
Dev
A no-code game engine, in your browser.
$1.2M/yr
Stated · founder-said $100k/mo '21
Small niche; free tier caps who ever pays.
★ The edge: No-code 'event sheets' let non-coders ship real games; a free tier feeds paid upgrades as the hobby gets serious.
Open → full teardown→
Craftybase
SaaS
Inventory + true-cost bookkeeping for makers
14 yrs
Stated · profitable · rev private
⚠ Scale capped
niche TAM · revenue hidden
niche TAM · revenue hidden
★ The edge: Generic books stop at 'spent $200 on supplies.' Craftybase costs every gram — true per-item cost.
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→
Cronometer
Data
The accuracy-obsessed answer to MyFitnessPal.
$3.8M
Estimate · Latka estimate, 2024
Free apps count calories fine for casuals.
★ The edge: Food data from lab-verified USDA and NCCDB databases, not crowd entries, so every number earns trust.
Open → full teardown→
Discogs
Marketplace
Fans built the database. Discogs takes 9% of sales.
$30M
Estimate · 9% fee on records sold
One niche: physical-record collectors.
★ The edge: A definitive music catalog crowd-built by collectors over 25 years — a data moat no rival can rebuild.
Open → full teardown→
DudeRanch.com
Marketplace
Bought DudeRanch.com; the domain does the marketing.
$50.5K
Stated · /yr TTM · solo · sold '25
⚠ Scale capped
one niche, about $50K/yr
one niche, about $50K/yr
★ The edge: He didn't build demand — he bought the door to it: about 50 free type-in visits a day, costs near zero.
Open → full teardown→
Empire Flippers
Marketplace
Buy & sell online businesses — vetting is the moat.
$7.2M
Stated · 2024 · founder-stated
⚠ No recurring rev
lumpy, deal-by-deal
lumpy, deal-by-deal
★ The edge: Flipping sites wasn't new — they made it safe: every listing vetted, every handover done by their team.
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→
eRecht24
SaaS
German law makes every website buy legal texts.
$9M+/yr
Estimate · est floor, P&L private
Germany-only: law and SEO don't cross borders.
★ The edge: A lawyer owns Germany's SEO for the exact legal texts every website is legally forced to publish.
Open → full teardown→
ExpressTruckTax
SaaS
E-file the truck tax the IRS forces on every big rig.
$6M/yr
Estimate · SPAN group est. (private)
Just a $15 one-time fee — easy to undercut.
★ The edge: Federal law makes every heavy truck file Form 2290 yearly. ExpressTruckTax became the default place to do it.
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→
FastBound
SaaS
By law, every gun dealer logs every gun. We're the log.
$2-5M/yr
Estimate · est. ARR, undisclosed
US-only FFL ceiling; ATF/politics can shift.
★ The edge: The only e-bound-book bundled with an attorney-backed legal defense — it sells the ATF-audit fear, not features.
Open → full teardown→
Focus NFe
Dev
Brazil forces e-invoices by law. He's the API.
$5-15M/yr
Estimate · Est. ARR (undisclosed)
Gov owns the standard + a free emitter.
★ The edge: Brazil's 5,570 cities each run a different e-invoice system. Focus integrated 3,000+ into one API.
Open → full teardown→
Follow Up Boss
SaaS
The CRM every real-estate team runs their leads through.
$400M+
Stated · Zillow buyout, 2023
Owned by Zillow now — is it still neutral?
★ The edge: The neutral hub: it ingests leads from Zillow and its rivals alike, so every team needs it.
Open → full teardown→
FreeTaxUSA
SaaS
Filing is the law. They gave away the federal part.
$35-100M/yr
Estimate · private, third-party est.
One season; Direct File died, politics shift.
★ The edge: Bootstrapped 2001; low cost lets federal stay free forever. 82M+ returns = trust rivals buy with ads.
Open → full teardown→
Geocaching.com
Community
A GPS treasure hunt, sold as a subscription.
$20-30M
Estimate · est. yearly, private
Unpaid volunteers keep the whole map alive.
★ The edge: Users hide and maintain every cache free; Groundspeak owns the one global database and charges to search it well.
Open → full teardown→
Gumroad
Marketplace
Sell any digital product from one storefront — flat 10%.
$20.7M
Stated · 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 → full teardown→
HiddenLevers
SaaS
The risk tool advisors used to keep clients calm.
$8M
Stated · ARR at 2021 exit
Copyable math, finite US advisor market
★ The edge: Reframed copyable analytics as an advisor client-retention product — then 10x'd the price to prove it.
Open → full teardown→
iClassPro
SaaS
The software a gymnastics-gym owner built for himself.
$5.7M+ ARR
Estimate · Latka est., undisclosed
Crowded niche; Jackrabbit pioneered it.
★ The edge: A national-champion coach who owned a gym built the tool he needed, then won schools on trust and support — not ads.
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→
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→
Inflectra
SaaS
Self-funded test software vs VC-backed giants
$13M
Stated · yearly rev · bootstrapped
Thin 5-10% margins, slow linear growth.
★ The edge: A programmer-founder undercut costly HP/Micro Focus ALM on price, then owned the regulated niche giants ignored.
Open → full teardown→
iubenda
SaaS
Every website's privacy policy, auto-updated forever.
$24M
Estimate · est. ARR - undisclosed
Control Mid low end cloneable
★ The edge: Laws keep changing - iubenda's lawyers auto-update every policy, so churn stays near zero.
Open → full teardown→
Komoot
SaaS
Europe's outdoor map, bootstrapped to 45M users.
$54M
Stated · 2024 revenue, reported
Goodwill, not lock-in, was the only moat.
★ The edge: User-contributed 'Highlights' make its trail routing beat any pure-map rival — a 15-year community data moat.
Open → full teardown→
L
LabStar
SaaS
Cloud back-office for the labs that make your crown.
est. $1-3M/yr
Estimate · EST: 600 labs, monthly subs
Tiny, shrinking market limits the upside.
★ The edge: Noles had run a dental lab AND led eBay Asia, then built the cloud tool his old lab needed, co-designed with six labs.
Open → full teardown→
Less Annoying CRM
SaaS
The anti-Salesforce CRM for small business.
$5.4M
Stated · 2024 rev · founder-stated
Simple CRM is easy to copy; low lock-in.
★ The edge: One flat $15/user price, no tiers, no lock-in, and real people answer support — rare in a CRM market.
Open → full teardown→
LCPtracker
SaaS
Free for contractors. The agency the law forces pays.
$31M ARR
Stated · 2024, from $1M in 11
US-only law; grows one slow agency at a time.
★ The edge: Gave the app free to contractors and billed the agency - the party the law forces to collect payroll weekly.
Open → full teardown→
MetaFilter
Community
The forum Google built, then nearly killed.
$380K/yr
Stated · 2020, community-funded
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 → full teardown→
Metrc
SaaS
The system 20+ states force on cannabis sellers.
$28.4M/yr
Stated · CA contract only, 1 of 23
Every dollar rides on renewable state deals.
★ The edge: A state mandates Metrc; every licensed cannabis operator must then pay in to stay legal. The regulator is the moat.
Open → full teardown→
Ministry of Testing
Community
Where software testers gather, learn, and get hired.
$1.2M
Stated · a year (2019, stated)
Revenue leans on in-person conferences.
★ The edge: A free 2007 forum grew into testing's biggest community; she monetized the trust later via conferences and courses.
Open → full teardown→
Moraware
SaaS
The default software for countertop fabrication shops.
$2.2M
Estimate · ARR, Latka est. 2025
Countertop-only market caps growth.
★ The edge: A co-founder's brother ran a countertop shop, so v1 was built inside a real fabricator's daily workflow.
Open → full teardown→
OnlineJobs.ph
Marketplace
Flat $69/mo to hire from 2M Filipino workers.
$10M+/yr
Stated · founder-stated, 2022
Employers cancel right after they hire.
★ The edge: 15 years of free how-to-hire content sends every 'hire a Filipino VA' search to the niche's deepest worker pool.
Open → full teardown→
Open Dental
SaaS
Practice software a dentist built to undercut Dentrix
$30-50M/yr
Estimate · modeled, not disclosed
Just closed its 20-year open-source promise
★ The edge: Free GPL code for 20 years won trust and about 20,000 practices; painful data conversion now keeps them from leaving.
Open → full teardown→
OpenSnow
SaaS
Skiers pay for the one forecast they trust.
$5.9M/yr
Estimate · Annual revenue (est.)
Free AI weather may erase the edge.
★ The edge: Free weather is everywhere; they sell trust: a decade of accurate powder calls from named meteorologists.
Open → full teardown→
OwnerRez
SaaS
Run your rentals, own your bookings. Flat fee.
$7M
Estimate · est. yearly revenue
Steep setup — power users only, not newbies.
★ The edge: Direct API links to Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com let it charge a flat monthly fee, never a percent of your revenue.
Open → full teardown→
OzBargain
Ad
Australia's deal hive — the crowd posts, ads pay.
$2-6M
Estimate · ad rev/yr · our estimate
Scale mid AU-only ceiling
★ The edge: The crowd writes every deal for free; OzBargain just owns the hive and rents attention to advertisers.
Open → full teardown→
Pagero
SaaS
E-invoicing network riding a wave of tax mandates.
$75M
Stated · 2023 net sales · $800M exit
⚠ Control: rules shift
loss-making land-grab
loss-making land-grab
★ The edge: They pre-built compliance across dozens of countries, so every new e-invoice mandate lands as ready-made demand.
Open → full teardown→
PerformLine
SaaS
It reads your affiliates' ads before the regulator does.
$3.2M
Estimate · 2021 ARR, self-report
Demand rises and falls with enforcement.
★ The edge: Brands are liable for affiliate ads they never see. PerformLine auto-discovers those hidden channels and scores them.
Open → full teardown→
Pinboard
SaaS
Paid bookmarking, one guy, no VC — profit is the pitch.
$212K/yr
Stated · gross 2020, founder-said
Tiny shrinking market, one-man bus factor.
★ The edge: Charging from day one keeps it solo and profitable, so 'we won't sell you out or vanish' is a promise he can keep.
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→
Planning Center
SaaS
Church software that made itself impossible to sell.
$19M/yr
Estimate · EST; private, bootstrapped
Bounded to churches; low ARPU by design.
★ The edge: Two church staffers fixed their Sunday-service chaos in 2006, then compounded 20 years of trust with no VC and no exit.
Open → full teardown→
PredictWind
SaaS
America's Cup weather tech, sold to every sailor.
$12M/yr
Estimate · 3rd-party est, unconfirmed
Free rivals like Windy commoditize the data.
★ The edge: Licensed the exact weather models that won the America's Cup, then sold them to every cruiser for $29-499 a year.
Open → full teardown→
PriceCharting
Data
Turns every eBay sale into the price of every game.
$2-5M/yr
Estimate · est · Inc. 5000 2025
Its whole dataset rents eBay's sale feed.
★ The edge: 18 years of completed eBay sales, auto-graded into the one price dealers quote — a time-series rivals can't rewind.
Open → full teardown→
Printavo
SaaS
A screen printer built the software his shop needed
$1M+ ARR
Stated · founder-stated, 2017
Thin tech moat — a dozen lookalike rivals
★ The edge: He ran a screen-print shop first, then built the tool for his own order chaos — an insider selling to insiders.
Open → full teardown→
Ravelry
Community
Knitting's community — run profitably by about four.
11M+ members
Stated · revenue never disclosed
One niche · community-dependent
★ The edge: it earns from its own members (self-served ads) at about 3.5% — aligning beat taxing the crowd.
Open → full teardown→
ReciPal
SaaS
FDA labels are the law - he made them $59.
$1M ARR
Estimate · our estimate, unconfirmed
Scale Low
tiny, price-capped niche
tiny, price-capped niche
★ The edge: The FDA mandates the label. ReciPal sells it at $59, not the $5,000 lab-software incumbents charge.
Open → full teardown→
Recite Me
SaaS
The accessibility widget the law makes you buy.
£5M
Estimate · $6.5M · est. ARR; undisclosed
Masks accessibility; doesn't fix WCAG.
★ The edge: Dyslexic founder built the tool he needed, so it sells as genuine inclusion — not a compliance band-aid like AccessiBe.
Open → full teardown→
Rentec Direct
SaaS
A landlord coded his own rent tool — now $14M/yr.
$14M
Stated · annual rev · self-reported
⚠ Entry
crowded
crowded
★ The edge: A landlord taught himself to code, then undercut every VC-funded rival and stayed bootstrapped 18 years.
Open → full teardown→
RTA Fleet
SaaS
The grandson turned grandpa's fleet software into SaaS.
$15M ARR
Stated · ARR run-rate, 2024 (stated)
Slow, high-touch government procurement.
★ The edge: Inherited 40 years of government-fleet installed base and trust, then rebuilt the legacy product as cloud SaaS.
Open → full teardown→
RunSignup
Marketplace
Free for race directors; a small cut of each signup.
$14M
Estimate · 2023 revenue (est)
Fee-only; growth capped by race volume.
★ The edge: Free full platform for race directors; monetized only at checkout — undercut Active.com to about 50% US share.
Open → full teardown→
SafetyCulture
SaaS
Turned the mandatory safety audit into an app.
$100M+
Stated · annual revenue, 2021
Low moat vs generic form/checklist apps
★ The edge: Ten years filming workplace injuries as a PI gave Anear buyer access and hazard know-how no app-first rival had.
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→
ServiceM8
SaaS
Job software for tradies, built Apple-first.
$4-5M
Estimate · est. yearly, undisclosed
iOS-only long capped its market reach.
★ The edge: Kim ran a locksmith; the paperwork pain was his. Son Ben, an engineer, built the software fix.
Open → full teardown→
Sharetribe
SaaS
The no-code platform behind 1,000+ marketplaces.
$2.4M
Stated · ARR (2023, founder)
No-code ceiling: buyers outgrow it and churn.
★ The edge: Ran a marketplace before selling the tool to build one — operator instincts rivals lack, plus a vow never to sell.
Open → full teardown→
Shodan
Data
Google indexes web pages. Shodan indexes devices.
$1M+/yr
Estimate · Bootstrapped, no VC · est
Key-person lean; Censys cloned it with VC.
★ The edge: A 15-year, continuously-crawled index of every service on the public internet — a dataset newcomers can't back-fill.
Open → full teardown→
shopVOX
SaaS
The back office for custom sign and print shops
$6M/yr
Estimate · est. revenue, unfunded
Thin niche, low ARPU, glacial word-of-mouth
★ The edge: Every sign shop already ran QuickBooks, so shopVOX sat on top as the quote-to-cash layer, never replacing the books.
Open → full teardown→
Silktide
SaaS
The free accessibility checker that upsells compliance.
$3M/yr
Estimate · 2024 ARR (Latka est.)
Axe and AI commoditize the core scan.
★ The edge: Twenty years of free scanners built the top-of-funnel; regulation (EAA, ADA) now forces every site through it.
Open → full teardown→
Supermetrics
SaaS
Marketing data pulled into the sheet you already use.
€50M+ ARR
Stated · about $52M · 2022, bootstrapped origin
Google can build the connectors natively.
★ The edge: First to connect Google's API to a spreadsheet, then let Google's own add-on store sell it. No sales team.
Open → full teardown→
Swappa
Marketplace
The used-electronics market without the scams
$3M/yr
Estimate · est. 3% of $100M+ GMV
Scale Low capped
★ The edge: Free to list, so supply floods in; buyer and seller each pay about 3% on a sale for what used tech lacks: trust.
Open → full teardown→
TalkingParents
SaaS
Court-proof messaging for divorced co-parents.
$10M+
Stated · ARR · no outside funding
Churns the moment the custody case ends.
★ The edge: A lawyer cofounder made records court-admissible, so judges and attorneys prescribe the app — courts are the channel.
Open → full teardown→
TaskRay
SaaS
Salesforce-native onboarding app, bootstrapped to $10M
$10M ARR
Stated · founder-stated, 2021 exit
Salesforce owns the platform it stands on.
★ The edge: Native to Salesforce: it lives where the customer data already is, and AppExchange delivers enterprise buyers.
Open → full teardown→
Tax1099 (Zenwork)
SaaS
The IRS made e-filing mandatory. They sell the button.
$30-60M
Estimate · est. revenue (private)
The IRS offers the same filing free (IRIS).
★ The edge: IRS-authorized transmitter status is a licensed moat; QuickBooks, Xero and Bill embed its filing button.
Open → full teardown→
Tebex
Marketplace
Let game servers sell in-game perks — for a 5% cut.
$5-7M
Estimate · est · 5% take, 2021
⚠ Control Low
rides games it can't own
rides games it can't own
★ The edge: he lived the pain as a server kid, then became the default payment rail before rivals showed up.
Open → full teardown→
Text-Em-All
SaaS
Mass texting SaaS, now owned by its staff.
$20M/yr
Estimate · est. 2025 · private co
Commodity SMS — the pipe is easy to clone.
★ The edge: 16,000+ orgs rely on it for must-send alerts — an unglamorous niche Twilio ignores and where customers rarely churn.
Open → full teardown→
Ticket Tailor
SaaS
Event ticketing at a flat fee, not a % of the sale.
$6.6M
Estimate · revenue, 2024 (est)
No audience network — bring your own crowd.
★ The edge: Flat $0.30-$0.85 a ticket, never a % of price. An $80 ticket costs cents here vs about $7 on Eventbrite.
Open → full teardown→
Toptal
Marketplace
The top 3% of freelance talent, sold at a premium.
$200M+/yr
Stated · Revenue, self-reported '21
Big markup underpays talent; they can defect.
★ The edge: Instead of maximizing supply like Upwork, Toptal rejects 97% of applicants and sells scarcity at a premium.
Open → full teardown→
Towbook
SaaS
Dispatch, impound and billing for tow companies.
$2.9M
Estimate · Est. ARR 2024 (Latka)
Niche TAM ceiling; the code is copyable
★ The edge: Run a tow company's dispatch, impounds and billing through one app and switching costs quietly become the moat.
Open → full teardown→
Vinted
Marketplace
Europe's clothes resale. Buyers pay, sellers don't.
€1.1B
Stated · $1.2B · 2025 revenue, +38% YoY
Most revenue is one fee buyers love to hate.
★ The edge: Taxes buyers, not sellers. Free listing grows supply, supply grows demand — liquidity fee-charging rivals can't match.
Open → full teardown→
Voices.com
Marketplace
Hire a pro voice actor in a day — Voices takes 20%.
8-figure/yr
Stated · membership + 20% fee
⚠ Need at risk — AI TTS undercuts human talent
★ The edge: Charge the side with the money: bill clients only when they hire, via escrow — that flip unlocked liquidity.
Open → full teardown→
Wall Street Oasis
Community
Free finance forum that sells interview courses.
$300K/mo
Stated · founder-stated · 2020
⚠ Control low
rides on Google traffic
rides on Google traffic
★ The edge: A forum earns pennies on ads; he stacked a niche ad network + paid courses on the same audience.
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→
Wappalyzer
Data
Detects any site's tech, then sells the list.
$1M+
Stated · ARR, founder-stated
Closing the OSS core spawned free forks.
★ The edge: The free 2M-user extension crowdsources a live tech dataset rivals must crawl for — data as a byproduct.
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→
WebPT
SaaS
A PT built the software her whole field learned from.
$100M+
Stated · ARR, founder-stated
One vertical; a UX-led rival is taking share.
★ The edge: An insider PT made WebPT the rehab profession's teacher (blog + Ascend summit), so clinics arrived before any ad ran.
Open → full teardown→
WeSuite
SaaS
Quoting software for security-system installers.
$5M
Stated · 2024 revenue · cash exit
Tiny niche: 16 years to reach $5M.
★ The edge: Ex-integrators built the one quoting tool that models security installs, recurring monitoring and commissions.
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→
Zerodha
Marketplace
India's biggest stock broker, built on zero ad spend
$1B
Stated · FY24 rev, 55%+ margin
Most revenue is retail F&O; SEBI now curbs it.
★ The edge: A flat fee per order plus free equity delivery undercut percentage brokers; options volume at scale yields 55% margins.
Open → full teardown→