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BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

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Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#51

Post by O__________O »

datalopers wrote: post #44
O__________O wrote: post #26

$14M ARR appears to be urban legend. If anyone has a source that’s the founder saying this, please reply with a link. ___________ This tweet appears to be the source of the legend: >> “BuiltWith is an amazing site that I use regularly. But it's also an amazing business. 1 fulltime employee. $14m a year in revenue. [...] Disclaimer: I do not know 100% if this is true.” Source: - https://twitter.com/thesamparr/status/1…

https://www.startupdaily.net/advice/builtwith-is-perhaps-one... He was supposedly making $14M/yr seven years ago too. and dangrossman was complaining about the spam back then too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10316060

Thanks, here’s the specific text that is the basis for $14M ARR, which includes a “[founder] says” in the text:

>> There are three levels of pricing for the paid service, The Basic at $299 per month for customers that want lists of sites mainly for the purpose of lead generation; Pro at $495 per month, suited more for users that work in an industry using a lot of A/B testing and comparison-type data; and Enterprise at $995 per month, which covers all bases and allows sales teams with multiple people to all use the platform at once. Brewer says that in terms of paying users on the platform there is a ‘few thousand’ and the split is about 40 percent Basic, 40 percent Pro and 20 percent Enterprise.

_______

And here’s link to the current pricing:

https://builtwith.com/plans

________

And link to the founder’s comments on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=garazy

Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#53

Post by snorkel »

O__________O wrote: post #26

$14M ARR appears to be urban legend. If anyone has a source that’s the founder saying this, please reply with a link. ___________ This tweet appears to be the source of the legend: >> “BuiltWith is an amazing site that I use regularly. But it's also an amazing business. 1 fulltime employee. $14m a year in revenue. [...] Disclaimer: I do not know 100% if this is true.” Source: - https://twitter.com/thesamparr/status/1…

Based on the price card posted on the website, assuming there’s 4000 active paying customers each paying $300/month, that gets you to $14M/year

Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#55

Post by [deleted] »

screye wrote: post #9

Genuine question, outside of bragging rights, what advantage does this kind of PR have ? If you found a niche that no one else has turned into a race to the bottom yet, why would you want the world to know about it ? It's like Warren Buffet telling everyone what stocks he will be picking. Maybe if the startup was yet to gain traction, this would help get the word out. But from the sounds of it, it is already generati…

[deleted]

Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#56

Post by scubakid »

Ethan_Mick wrote: post #15

Don't hire until you need to. And then don't hire until you want to. I'm doubtful every business can make it to $14M ARR, but I bet many companies could generate $1M ARR without needing employees. And that amount of money would be life-changing for many people (with, of course, the potential to sell what you've created to exit). I've spent much of my life chasing the "make it big" startup dream. I'll be pretty conten…

I've been making a little progress on the "building things I love that generate revenue" piece (in part thanks to the HN crowd!), but oh boy, do the goalposts always keep shifting.

I remember the first dollar I ever made on the internet felt so amazing and validating... but several adjustments later, the mentality is more like "okay, but I still can't do this full-time."

Goalposts aside though, I'd agree that if there's a scenario where you have the autonomy and freedom to work on just the things you love, that's a game-winning scenario.

Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#57

Post by quickthrower2 »

Ethan_Mick wrote: post #15

Don't hire until you need to. And then don't hire until you want to. I'm doubtful every business can make it to $14M ARR, but I bet many companies could generate $1M ARR without needing employees. And that amount of money would be life-changing for many people (with, of course, the potential to sell what you've created to exit). I've spent much of my life chasing the "make it big" startup dream. I'll be pretty conten…

You can hire without hiring! Use other SaaS or even human services for every spot you would normally hire someone.

Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#59

Post by tiffanyh »

woodruffw wrote: post #54

My website was built with such brand-name technologies as "HSTS" and "Viewport Meta"[1]. Hmm. I guess it's meant more for web applications that leak their implementation details or reference vendor resources, somehow? [1]: https://builtwith.com/yossarian.net

You run on DO, use Google Workplace and nginx web server per your link details.

That’s definitely info I’d like to know if I was a sales rep for AWS, Microsoft Office or Caddy Pro.

Re: BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees

#60

Post by quickthrower2 »

58x14 wrote: post #14

The key takeaway for me was that the mid-2000s were the perfect time to be a founder of a software tool. I can’t help but feel that there are so many tens of thousands of similar stories without such a successful conclusion. In previous roles I’ve used BuiltWith before and it’s an invaluable tool. There’s a few companies with similar approaches except focusing on social media profiles (HypeAuditor comes to mind) that…

Mid 2000s might have been harder. I think more people are willing to pay a subscription for a thing than back then.
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