. Home of Kickstarter.
Four weeks of research and countless hours sifting through hundreds of startups and we’re here: The second ever Gaps income report.
In an age of AI and a reliance on algorithms for marketing, I’ve become obsessed with which companies continue to thrive. These Gaps reports aim to keep you in the loop on exactly that.
Before we dive in, I just have to say a massive “Thank you!“.
The feedback to the Gaps relaunch has been incredible, and I really feel like this is something I’m going to be putting my all into for years to come.
As last month was the first edition, I had to write a lot of back story as to what these reports are and a few (important) disclaimers about trying to make sure our insights are accurate.
Now we can get to the good stuff…
This Drag & Drop Email Builder is Now Generating Over $15M Per Year
One goal with these monthly reports is to share revenue updates you (hopefully) haven’t seen elsewhere. I love following the journeys of those who build in public, but that’s not the only source of financials I want to cover.
One revenue update I accidentally stumbled upon during this month’s research was from Beefree.io, an HTML email builder.
For their tenth anniversary, they shared that they now have over 100 employees and that the business is generating more than $15M in annual recurring revenue.
Their offering has a free tier which grants access to more than 1,700 email templates, then rises to $25 and $133,33/m if you need more features (and are willing to pay yearly in advance).
Recovery.com Raised an Additional $5M for a Smart SEO Play Helping People Find Rehab & Treatment Centers
Look at Recovery.com on your favourite SEO research platform and you’ll likely see a massive spike in traffic starting in December of 2023.
That’s when the LuxuryRehabs.com domain was redirected to its new premium address. (I actually really like the LuxuryRehabs name, but Recovery.com is a great alternative).
The company also used to be called RehabPath and that domain was redirected around the same time, but LuxuryRehabs was more popular.
Mobi Health News had the exclusive in November that they’ve raised $5M to continue to help grow their “mental health Yelp-like platform”.
I was a little surprised not to see other sites covering the story. I get that MHN had the exclusive, but typically they still get picked up elsewhere.
The company has seen growth of 2,013% in the last three years and now employs more than 70 people.
Similarweb estimates that more than 65% of monthly visitors to the site come from search, which makes sense when you think of what they’re offering and how Google searches are perfect for that.
With 15,000 treatment centres listed on their platform, you have to imagine their revenue is pretty substantial.
Bootstrapped Form SaaS Tally Hit the $150,000 MRR Milestone Last Month
I’ve enjoyed following the journey of Tally over the years, and with their latest update they continue to be a motivational success story.
On the 12th of November co-founder Marie Martens shared that Tally had hit the $150,000 recurring revenue mark, while serving 400,000 users.
Tally describes itself as “the simplest way to create forms” and has a clean yet aesthetic design to match. The service offers a generous free plan, which I presume makes up most of those user numbers.
I recently had to build my own custom form solution because there was a specific feature I couldn’t find in Tally and other popular tools like JotForm.
It’s something I might have developed to share with others one day, which epitomizes what Gaps is about: Seeing others succeed with something you can build a niche version of, or for another audience, or with a different specific use case.
Never copying anyone, but being inspired by their story and putting your own spin on a solution you genuinely need yourself.
Onfolio, Perhaps The Most Relatable Public Company on the Planet, Grew Q3 Revenue 53% to $2.01M
I was familiar with Onfolio founder Dom Wells online for a few years but was as surprised as anyone to see him take his company public in 2022.
Onfolio is behind companies I’m more likely to build myself, rather than say…the next Etsy or Shopify. That’s a big part of why I love following their journey.
Their portfolio includes brands like:
- Mighty Deals: A deals site for designers
- Contentellect: Link building and SEO content writing services
- Proofread Anywhere: Courses and resources for people looking to become proofreaders
- All Things Dogs: A website for and by dog lovers
If you want a more exhaustive list, you can see their portfolio page, though it’s still missing some companies.
For Q3 of 2024 they generated $2.01M in revenue, a 53% increase on the same quarter a year prior. Gross profit grew 42% to $1.2M.
They had a total loss from operations of $485,478, down from $4,740,623 in Q3 of 2023.
Though it’s down from when they IPO’d, the stock is up 186% over the past 12 months.
They recently acquired the marketing and web design agency Eastern Standard, so expect to see next quarter’s revenue jump from that.
If My Pitch With These Monthly Reports Is That I’ll Spot Trends, These Three Similar Companies Raising $54.5M Is the Fourth One
I’m intentionally stealing a headline from our October 2024 report because it states my goal perfectly: To spot trends in the absolute mass of revenue and funding news each month.
With three trends spotted in our last report, here’s the first one for November: Three startups raised money to help you sell your content to AI companies.
Those companies are:
Troveo: $4.5M in funding from Reddit and Zynga founders
Prorata.ai: Raised $25M then received additional investment from the Daily Mail owners
TollBit: Raised $25M
It’s interesting that Tollbit doesn’t even have a title tag on their homepage, so if anyone from Tollbit is reading this, I would probably add that to your to-do list.
I love angles like this not because I would want to build a similar business but because it’s the kind of opportunity that has only existed in recent years.
Thinking logically, it’s a smart idea. As an individual, it’s almost impossible for you to contact OpenAI or similar companies, nevermind strike a deal with them like many large publishers already have.
On the other hand, if you have a well-funded company acting on your behalf, you’ll have to give them a cut, but you stand a better chance of getting something.
As Booking Revenue Surpasses $2.5M, Cal.com’s Co-Founder Reminds Us There’s a Market for Charging for Your Time on a Call
The co-founder of Cal.com, Peer Richelsen, revealed that paid bookings made via the platform have now surpassed $2.5M in revenue.
Compared to the size and popularity of Cal.com that seems small, but revenue from bookings through the platform has only spiked recently.
The spike is even more interesting because the ability to connect Cal to Stripe – so you can directly charge for your time – has been available for a few years now. It just took a while for people to start using it.
Of course, coaching and consulting isn’t anything new, but my aim here is always to inspire what you have going on (or give you your next idea) and being paid directly for your time might just be what’s next.
Are.na Is About to Hit $110K in Monthly Recurring Revenue With the Simplest SaaS Homepage Design You’ve Ever Seen
Around six months ago I was looking for a place to store my favourite design elements from across the web and stumbled upon Are.na.
Something about the simplicity of its homepage stood out, but I couldn’t have guessed the stats I was about to discover.
This tool for organizing content was about to hit around $90,000 in monthly recurring revenue, and has since hit the $108,000 MRR mark.
They even get into the specific details, sharing they have:
- 31,376 monthly active members
- 1.42M monthly connections
- 16,277 total payment members
In other words, more than half of their users are paying for the tool (assuming those who pay are still regularly logging in).
Their current expenses are made up of:
- Salaries: 54% (4 full-time employees and 2 part-time)
- Taxes: 21%
- Hosting: 14%
- Software & third-party services: 4%
- Business insurance & health benefits: 4%
- Legal & compliance: 3%
On the scale of the internet it’s rare to see companies so open about how much money they’re generating. It’s even rarer they go into the details of how much they’re paying their team.
If you’re curious to learn more about the business, this interview goes into more detail about why Are.na is a refreshing alternative platform.
Last Month I Shared How Subscription Box KiwiCo Hit $1Bn in Revenue. Now LINGO Has Raised $2.25M to Challenge Them
If you head on over to the LINGO homepage, their focus might be familiar.
They’re not too distant from projects like KiwiCo (which recently passed $1Bn in revenue, and is still increasing ARR) or CrunchLabs, created by YouTuber Mark Rober.
LINGO takes a different angle with its branding, with a more ‘edgy’ approach and targeting an older age group. Created by former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, the company raised $2.25M to help expand its educational product line.
Educational packs are available separately, or you can also subscribe to receive a new educational box each month for $34.99.
Once again, this is the kind of startup movement I created Gaps to cover.
You can see businesses doing very well with a particular angle, feel like you can put your own spin on it (or just give consumers more choice) and know there’s a proven path to success if you nail the marketing.
Beautifully Simple BankStatementConverter.com Generated $32,284 in November
You might have seen people sharing Bank Statement Converter on social media over the years.
Founded by Angus Cheng, it has to be one of the most straightforward success stories in the Gaps database, but don’t let that take away from how useful it is.
Bank Statement Converter, as the name suggests, allows you to convert PDF bank statements from thousands of different banks and outputs them into an .xls (for Excel) format. It has proven popular, generating over $32,000 in November.
Users can convert one page every 24 hours without logging in, while signing up for a free account allows you to convert five pages over the same period.
If your needs exceed that, pricing plans start at $30/m for 400 pages and increase from there.
Just twelve months ago the tool was generating around $18,000 per month, so it’s continuing to grow fast.
In Some Personal News, Four Years Building Our SEO Extension for Chrome and We Just Had a Record Month for Installs (23,500+ New Users)
As Gaps is so new, if you’re reading this it’s probably because I (Glen) sent you here in some form.
(We’ve started picking up some nice rankings on Google, but we’re not at the stage of getting much referral traffic yet.)
With that in mind, you probably also know that in 2020 I created an SEO extension for Chrome and Firefox (the Detailed SEO Extension) which started to become much more popular in recent years.
What surprised me is that in 2024 we’ve already had two record months in terms of new user installs. If I’ve calculated correctly, November was the highest install month we’ve ever had, at just over 23,500 new users.
Of course, not everyone who installs the extension keeps it (some people expect it to do things it can’t, like directly edit your website <title> tags).
Still, I’m proud of what we’ve built there, and many more features are coming.
And of course, a huge thank you to anyone who uses and has helped spread the word about the tool.
Enthusiast Gaming, With 50+ Niche Gaming Sites, Just Had Its First Ever Profitable Quarter
In last month’s report I discussed M.O.B.A, a publicly listed gaming site network that had the best Q3 in its history.
This month we’re looking at Enthusiast Gaming, which isn’t too different.
They’re behind a lot of sites, with one of the most well-known likely to be PocketGamer.com, pictured below.
In November, interim CEO Adrian Montgomery announced “achieving our first profitable quarter on an Adjusted EBITDA basis”.
I can’t ignore that their Q3 revenue of $16.8M is down massively on the $45.6M they generated a year ago. Most of the decline was attributed to video platform revenue they no longer focus on.
There’s more information here if you would like to dive in, where you’ll also see they generated 1.9 billion pageviews for the quarter.
Papermark, an Open-Source Docsend Alternative (Their Words), Reached $9,561 in MRR
I’m impressed by what Papermark co-founders Marc Seitz and Iuliia Shnai have built.
Their open-source Docsend alternative allows you to securely send documents and track when they’re opened (and how often).
Iuliia shared on X their specific recurring revenue amounts for each pricing tier:
- Pro: $1,236.79 MRR
- Business: $3,758.95 MRR
- Datarooms: $4,567.55 MRR
Those tiers start at €29, €59 and €99 per month respectively if you sign up for an annual plan. Surprisingly or not, they’re making the most money from their more expensive plans.
In November, Both Highnote and Pibox Raised Millions to Offer Audio Collaboration in the Cloud (Essentially, Figma for Songs & Podcasts)
On the 6th of November it was revealed that Highnote.fm raised an additional $2.5M in funding to continue growing their platform into the best way to share and discuss audio.
Just a day later, Pibox announced $1.2M in funding for a very similar project.
Just take a look at their homepages:
Of course, each of these companies will have their own unique angles and feature sets, but the essence of what they offer is very much related.
It’s a cool angle, and I couldn’t help but think of other industries this could work well in.
We have Figma for design collaboration. Frame.io for video collaboration. Pibox and Highnote for audio collaboration. Document collaboration is already handled quite well by the likes of Google Docs and Notion.
(And of course, there are many more tools in each of those industries).
What is the world missing in terms of online collaboration for a specific skillset? Could you build it?
With Clients Like PepsiCo and BlueOrigin, Robin AI Raises $25M for Using AI to Analyse Legal Contracts
There can’t be many better examples of a use case for AI than Robin AI.
They’re far from the only company using AI to manage contracts (or even specifically legal contracts) but they might just be making the most noise.
The Robin AI team claims they trained their proprietary machine learning models on over 100M legal clauses. With more than 500,000 contracts processed to date, they state they can help you review them 80% faster than before.
The $25M funding comes on the back of a $26M Series B they raised in January. Their total funding to date is $61.5M.
Screenshot API ScreenshotOne – Which We Use Here at Gaps – Grew to $11,682 in Monthly Recurring Revenue Last Month
ScreenshotOne, a screenshot automation tool, was founded by Dmytro Krasun in May of 2022.
We use ScreenShotOne here at Gaps to help take the site screenshots on our homepage updates.
I don’t have any connection with Dmytro that led to saying this; we’re just fans of the tool and haven’t yet needed to upgrade due to their generous tiers.
In just two and a half years he’s grown the SaaS product to six figures in annual revenue.
In October he generated $11,682 in monthly recurring revenue, a $1,176 increase on September. That income came from 285 paying customers, which has already surpassed the 300 mark since his last update.
I Don’t Normally Get 1,000+ Likes on My Tweets, But Talking About This Founder Surpassing €10M ARR Definitely Helped
Maxime Barbier founded one of the most interesting startups I’ve ever heard of, even if the idea wasn’t wholly new.
I shared his story on X last week and it ended up being one of my most popular posts ever.
His app, Timeleft, allows you to meet up with five strangers for lunch, with the idea being it helps people combat loneliness even when they’re living in big cities.
It took Maxime three years and multiple pivots to make his first euro, then just seven months to hit €1M in annual recurring revenue. Seven months later again, the company surpassed €10M in annual recurring revenue.
I haven’t used it myself, but research suggests it costs around $26/m (pricing varies depending on location), allowing you to go to a new meetup once per week.
I’ve been hard-pressed to find anyone talking badly about the service, and it seems most people who try it out can’t wait to go to their next meetup.
This is what product market fit looks like.
In November We Added Four New Reports Covering 61 Different Startups (There Are Just About 50 More Niches Left to Go)
Hopefully it shows our small team of three spent many months working on Gaps before sharing it with the world.
As I hinted at in our first monthly income report, what you see right now is only a small part of what we’re planning to launch.
At the top of our to-do-list however is creating more niche-specific reports, and we plan to have around 80 of these by the time we’ve covered everything.
The reports we added in November are:
- AI Content Report: 18 startups generating $1.2M in MRR
- Automotive Report: 17 startups generating $5Bn in MRR
- Document Management Report: 12 startups generating $317M in MRR
- Law & Legal Report: 14 startups generating $43M in MRR
And this doesn’t include the 30+ updates we made to existing reports during the month.
We’re still missing some big industries (Finance, Gaming, Healthcare, and so on) but our Industry Reports page is starting to fill out.
The design of that page looks way too plain at the moment, so I have refreshing it on my to-do-list as well.
Table22 Just Raised $11M+ On the Back of 300% YoY Growth And I Can’t Help But Describe Them As “Like Patreon, But for Restaurants”
Launched in 2020, Table22 offers restaurants, shops and producers the chance at an additional revenue stream by smartly packaging their creations.
As a specific example, we can view the profile of Antonelli’s Cheese Club in Austin, Texas, which offers access to their monthly cheese club for $72. The page includes some effective social proof when you see they’ve picked up 459 reviews (which appear to technically be ratings).
Consider how many restaurants and independent food producers are in the US and then imagine how many could benefit from a subscription offering. Table 22 is the middleman in that huge potential market.
Their $11M Series A brings them to over $45M in funding in total.
I have a feeling someone reading this outside of the US is already thinking about whether they could bring this to their own country.
This India-Focused Travel SaaS Isn’t Something I Would Build Myself, But The Concept Is So Smart
StampMyVisa.com raised a Pre-Series A funding round of around $780,000 (converted from rupees) in November.
The business allows any travel agent in India to effortlessly handle the visa requirements of their customers who wish to travel to countries like Malaysia, South Africa, Singapore and beyond.
Essentially, they take a tedious job and enable companies to easily outsource it to them.
To date they’ve helped process over 5 million visas with a 98.5% success rate.
As I said in the headline this isn’t something I would be interested in building myself, but I could totally see people modelling this concept around the world.
They’ve Generated $50M in Four Years, and Now I’m Monitoring ‘Washable Rugs’ Search Results
Entrepreneur.com had an interesting interview with the founders of Tumble at the start of November.
Co-founders Justin Soleimani and Zach Dannett saw an opportunity to improve the existing washable rugs on the market, which had issues like curling corners and insufficient cushioning.
Their alternative solution has been a hit, generating $50M in just four years and expected to generate in the region of $20M for 2024.
The smallest rugs they offer – 3×5′- start at around $99 and can reach the $500+ mark for larger sizes.
Similarweb estimates that around 25% of their traffic comes from search engines, which is lower than I would have expected when there’s so much search traffic up for grabs.
As many of you will know I track dozens of different niches to find the top-ranking sites, then compare their results over time. I added the rugs space to that list, where the current top performing sites are:
| Rank | Site | First-Place Rankings | Top 3 Rankings | Points |
| 5 |  Rugs.com |
10 | 32 | 436 |
| 4 |  Tumble |
31 | 57 | 656 |
| 3 |  Amazon |
3 | 21 | 661 |
| 2 |  Rugs USA |
15 | 73 | 798 |
| 1 |  Ruggable |
54 | 91 | 1,069 |
It’s not the most thorough research but it looks like Tumble (highlighted) still has some great opportunities to grow from search traffic.
Points are given based on ranking, so a first-place organic ranking gets 10 points, second-place gets 9 points, and so on.
A site might not get many first-place rankings but still score well because they’re present in a lot of search results, like Amazon.
Whenever I talk about SEO it’s important to me I’m not “outing” anyone, so I won’t discuss specific rankings, backlink profiles or similar. These are just the numbers for a small but focused set of phrases.
This SaaS Company for Roofers Just Raised So Much Money ($330M) That I Had to Dive In Further
Head on over to the homepage of JobNimbus and you imagine you’re looking at a reasonably successful business. Their CRM for contractors is used by over 6,000 roofing business owners throughout the US.
I would have estimated it was comfortably a 7-figure per year business, but seeing they just raised $330M (!), my guess must be off by a mile.
It’s the fact that their offering is so niche that surprised me the most.
To be fair, they really seem to handle it all for their users, from billing, ordering materials, managing projects and creating quotes.
Unfortunately, any revenue estimates I can find online vary wildly (from $20M-$40M/yr), and are from sources I don’t always trust.
One assumption for such a high value on the business is that they’re now heavily involved in payment processing, which alone is a huge market.
If anyone has additional insights on this one, I would love to hear them.
On Raising £2.75M It’s Revealed This UK-Based Saas for Increasing eCommerce Conversions Is Generating £3M Per Year
Salesfire, a conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool for eCommerce stores has just raised £2.75M (~$3.47M).
If you’re in the eCommerce space you’ve probably seen other tools offering some of their features, like deciding which products to include in email promotions based on what customers previously viewed on your site.
In the fundraising announcement it was revealed they’re currently generating £3M (~$3.8M) in annual recurring revenue.
The company employs 65 people and plans to use the funding to add ten more members to its team.
Political and Entertainment News Site The Daily Beast Just Had Its First Ever Profitable Quarter, Growing Revenue By 81%
Variety shared the news that political and entertainment media brand The Daily Beast had its first-ever profitable quarter.
Generally I wouldn’t comment on the content of internal memos and definitely wouldn’t be the first to share them, but their revenue is more available since Daily Beast is 51% owned by public company IAC.
(IAC owns Dotdash Meredith, whom I regularly report on at Detailed, and are behind brands like PEOPLE, Investopedia and All Recipes).
It should be noted that Daily Beast recently went through a significant reorganization, whereby their headcount was reduced by around 35% (some of these were voluntary buyouts).
This Shopify Theme Creator, Acquired for $12.7M, Has Grown Revenue By 32% Year Over Year
Tiny Ltd, who you’re most likely to associate with being behind design platform Dribbble, recently shared some interesting stats on their earnings call.
One brand they discussed was CleanCanvas.co.uk, a Shopify theme developer they had acquired a year earlier.
A lot of their focus was on dealing with past piracy of its creations:
So when we bought the business, it was performing very well, but we knew that we could implement best practices around license enforcement. Essentially what happens in the Shopify spaces a lot of these themes end up being pirated and put online for people to use without paying for a license and what we developed with an Archetype was a really novel way of finding these and acting on them and then recovering actually significant amount of pirated license.
When the acquisition was announced it was revealed that over 80,000 Shopify merchants use Clean Canvas designs.
The purchase by WeCommerce (a Tiny subsidiary) involved an upfront cash payment of $11.5M and up to $1.2M in additional payments based on performance.
That would help account for profitability, but not their impressive 32% year-over-year revenue growth.
TypingMind Just Passed the $1M Mark for Revenue Generated During the Past 12 Months
TypingMind, created by entrepreneur Tony Dinh, allows access to multiple Large-Language Models (LLMs) from a single interface.
With the tool you can perform many of the tasks you’ve likely heard LLMs are useful for, like chatting directly with documents and creating copy for websites or social media updates.
What TypingMind adds to the equation is user management, usage stats and the aforementioned ability to connect to multiple platforms at once. They’re adding an extra layer that’s incredibly useful for business owners.
Entrepreneur Samuel Rondont Takes Another Startup Past $10K in MRR. This Time It’s for AI Short Story Video Generation.
You probably aren’t the target audience for the videos they create, but there are several AI-generated short story tools taking off at the moment.
Samuel Rondont revealed in November that StoryShort.ai passed the $10,000 monthly recurring revenue mark, and has already hit $14,000 in MRR by the time I’m publishing this just a couple of weeks later.
Samuel also confirmed that he’s using ads and affiliates to promote the app, which seems to be how similar competitors are also growing their audience.
You’ll Probably Have to Translate Their Website from German, But I Had to Share a Company Adding €1M in ARR Every 12 Days
Buena CEO Din Bisevac said it took almost two years for his property management SaaS platform to hit €1M in annual recurring revenue.
Now it’s growing by that number, on average, every 12 days.
In simple terms, Buena helps landlords with repair management, tenant support, legal services and utility bill processing.
I reached out to Din to clarify, but I’m going to assume that growth is not from the €25/m they charge property owners but rather how much is now being billed to tenants via the property owners on their platform.
Still, it’s impressive growth in what has to be one of the most competitive industries out there.
With 300,000 Daily Users, Extensis is Acquired by Monotype, Who Dominate The Font Niche Online
I don’t use the word dominate lightly.
Here’s a look at some of the sites Monotype is behind:
- Monotype
- Typography.com
- Fonts.com
- MyFonts.com
- FontShop
- Linotype
- Monotype Fonts
- Sharp Type
Now we can add Extensis and its 300,000 daily users to that list, with an offering that allows companies to manage the fonts they use in a compliant way.
They claim to manage 10 million fonts for users, which I presume means a single font can be counted as many times as users of it.
No acquisition numbers were revealed, but it does give me a chance to talk about how prolific Monotype are.
I’m an active user of their MyFonts site and have only had a positive experience, so this isn’t a complaint, but they truly have taken over the font space online.
According to their About page, their network of sites reaches over 100 million visitors each year.
The Arena Group, Behind Media Brands You’ll Likely Be Familiar With, Just Had Its First Ever Profitable Quarter (Stock Up 183%)
If you’re familiar with our sister site Detailed.com then you’ll have seen me cover The Arena Group ($AREN) numerous times in recent years.
Most recently they were in the news for losing their licensing deal to publish Sports Illustrated — both the magazine and on the SI.com domain. The ensuing legal battle has made a number of headlines.
Content sites The Arena Group are behind include:
TheStreet.com
Parade.com
ParadePets.com
Men’s Journal
Autoblog
Their revenue for Q3 was down to $33.6M compared to $37M generated in the same quarter a year ago.
Total operating expenses were $8.9M, a large drop compared to the $18.4M of Q3 2023, helping result in a net profit of $4M.
Their stock price has increased substantially since.
Of course, you should also take a zoomed-out view of how shares are performing, as it’s not the best picture over a five-year timeline.
Argil Raised €4.9M to Generate Your AI Video Clone for Social Media
Paris-based Argil has raised €4.9M (~$5.1M) to help you create videos with your AI-generated clone or a pre-selected avatar.
The company was part of the summer 2024 cohort of Y Combinator.
Their AI avatars are some of the best I’ve seen, even if the technology is not quite there yet and something about them still feels “off”.
It’s hard to imagine the user-generated clones will be as good as those that have been pre-created, but I haven’t seen an example of those yet so I shouldn’t judge in advance.
We’re probably not too far away from watching AI characters promote something and have no idea we weren’t looking at a human.
After Two Years, This SaaS for Collecting Testimonials Reached $3,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue
We’ve all seen the success stories where companies seemingly fly past big recurring milestones every month.
I love Goutham Jay’s story because his success with Famewall is still impressive, but also a lot more relatable.
Famewall makes it easy to collect testimonials from your customers and display them on your website in an attractive way.
In November he passed $3,000 in MRR for the first time, while running the business as a solo founder.
PlayAI Raised $21M to Be the AI Voice Agent Platform People Turn to
PlayAI calls itself a “voice model for fluid, emotive conversation” and in playing around with it, I think they’re on the right track.
As a new wave of AI-powered software proliferates every industry online, developers will need voice integration to help take their offering to the next level. PlayAI wants to be the enabler of that.
Playing around with the tool I didn’t find the result very similar to my own voice, but the speed of responses was impressive.
With 791 Paying Customers, Status Page Creator Instatus Grows Past $30K in MRR
Not too dissimilar to Hyperping who we featured in our October report, Instatus allows people to create beautiful status pages for their website.
These typically display to visitors which parts of a website are operating normally, such as email services, API, integrations and so on.
One nice touch is that Instatus, founded by Ali Salah, also gives free Pro accounts to nonprofits, of which there are 93 using the platform at the moment.
With 27,000 Users, This AI Writer for LinkedIn Now Generates $41,500 in Monthly Recurring Revenue
Entrepreneur Ruben Hassid revealed he has surpassed another MRR milestone, just 195 days since launching his SaaS.
The tool in question, EasyGen, uses AI to help you come up with ideas for LinkedIn posts that you can refine before publishing.
The idea is that you take a lot of successful LinkedIn posts to train ChatGPT (or a similar offering) on what a “good” post looks like, then use that to help write a lot more.
LinkedIn users could argue that it devalues their feed by introducing a lot of similar-sounding updates, while creators of tools like this could argue you get to choose who you follow to help filter that out.
These Three Funding Rounds Were All for a Very Similar Type of Company You Could Model in Countless Industries
One trend isn’t enough for these reports, so here’s another: SaaS companies are raising money to help businesses manage their operations in a specific industry.
The homepage of Archy is probably the best to show what I mean:
Including Archy, the three companies in question are:
| Startup | Simple Description | Funding |
 Mangomint |
Helps salons and spas manage their daily operations | $35M Series B |
 Semble |
Helps healthcare companies manage their practice | $15.3M Series B |
 Archy |
Helps power your entire dental practice | $15M Series A |
I had previously tracked updates at Mangomint and Archy, but when Semble raised £12M (~$15.3M) at the end of October, I knew I finally had to talk about this.
Semble already supports more than 10,000 healthcare professionals who care for over seven million patients.
There are other startups doing similar things for different industries (and one already in this report which raised $330M) so I’ll have to do a full deep-dive into this space soon.
Entrepreneur Matt Paulson Reveals His Stock News Site MarketBeat is Now Generating $40M in Annual Revenue
I’ve been a big fan of Matt Paulson for years, following his newsletter and reading his quarterly business reports.
I’ve also exchanged a few emails with him over the years and have been lucky enough to have him share my work.
Many people will know Matt as the founder of stock market news site MarketBeat, which he revealed last month is now generating more than $40M in annual revenue.
Matt also shared he has:
- Just 18 people on his team
- Traffic of 10M monthly visitors
- 5.1M email subscribers
Perhaps even more impressive is that it’s far from the only business he’s involved in.
As someone trying to build my own media company here with Gaps with a slightly related focus, I love following his journey.
Post Bridge Hits $3K MRR in Just Two Months, Proving Saturated Niches Are Still Great to Target
When building in a new industry I like to find companies already getting results I would love to emulate.
There’s value in being the first offering in an industry, but it’s nice to know the higher-levels of potential as well.
In the world of social media scheduling tools we have Buffer, Sprout Social, HootSuite and Publer all generating millions online. We have an in-depth report on the space.
That’s why I’m impressed, but not surprised, to see Jack Friks quickly growing his own social media scheduling tool Post Bridge to $3,000 in MRR, just a few months after launching.
Just to be clear, Jack is very good at marketing his offering on social media, but he’s also built something people want to use at a price point that gives him a competitive edge.
Spines Raised $16M So You Can Use AI to Publish A Book Faster (And They’ve Already Published 1,700 Titles in Just Three Years)
Have you always wanted to have your name on the cover of a physical book? Spines.com, previously Boox AI, might be what you’ve been looking for.
In November they announced a $16M Series A funding round, with $10M of that coming from Zeev Ventures. Zeev Ventures was founded by Oren Zeev, an early investor in Audible before it was acquired by Amazon, so he knows the book space well.
Once you’ve written your manuscript, pricing starts at $1,478 to prepare it for print-on-demand sales. If you’re looking to offer hardcover and eBook options, the price increases to $2,298.
Spines then state you’ll get 100% of royalties, which is their selling point over using a traditional publisher.
I’m not sure how much I would want to use their AI proofread companion compared to using a tool like Grammarly, but clearly there’s demand for having everything in one place.
Similarweb estimates that around 30% of their traffic comes from paid search ads, and 41% comes from direct traffic. I’m curious to know how much affiliates contribute since there are a lot of popular courses on becoming a successful author.
Remember the Photographer Sharing How Much He Makes Selling Stock Photos? He Reached Out, and We Have Two More Revenue Updates
A nice surprise in October was the number of people who commented on how much Alexandre Rotenberg was generating with the photos he uploads to stock photo sites.
It was one of the lowest numbers I reported on ($840/m) and even Alexandre himself said it wasn’t enough for him to view the time he put into it as a success.
Since then, Alexandre has shared two more revenue updates, so here are all three combined:
- September, 2024: $840
- October, 2024: $795
- November, 2024: $1,377
The reason for the big jump in November? Alexandre had three book covers licensed by the stock website Arcangel for an average of $250 each. He doesn’t reveal their exact numbers as he was asked not to.
This wasn’t something I ever expected to report on but I find it fascinating and hope you do as well.
If you’re reading this, Alexandre, thanks for being so open about your journey.
Last Month I Shared Three Startups Raising Money to Add AI to Email OutReach. Now I’m Introducing One That Just Hit $100,000 in ARR
In our October income report I shared three startups raising money to use AI in email outreach. The idea being it can help make the emails more personalized to the recipient.
One company that is proving the business model is Alvas.ai, whose founder Villads Leth revealed is now generating $102,300 in annual recurring revenue.
Villads achieved the six-figure ARR milestone while being just a team of two.
I couldn’t find any good sources on their total funding to date, but I know they raised $61,500 in May which might be the entirety of it.
I Stuck to My Promise of 40 Insights, But Here’s Three More (Free) for Gaps Readers
Note: If you get the password once, you’ll be able to use it on every future Gaps report.
You support the future of this media company – where we’re trying to become 1% of the Financial Times – and I get to give you more insights in return.
I don’t want to hype this up too much, but I will say I didn’t write 6,000+ words for free in the open, just to end this report with a boring bonus section.
The right way to approach this is that I want people to actively look forward to this bonus section each month.
I Want to Build Gaps Into 1% of the Size of The Financial Times, and Would Love Your Help to Get There
It’s my dream to be able to write and share these reports every month, but as a team of three we don’t have a ton of time to market them.
There’s still a ton of features we have in development that I can’t wait to share (the first one is going live next week).
I might be totally wrong, but I think if we truly care about making these reports insightful, we’ll have people who want to read them. Hopefully it shows how much effort goes into these, but I actually feel very lucky to have the chance to write them.
If you found any value in this at all, sharing it on social media would be sincerely appreciated. Here are direct links to discuss this report on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.
And if you’re not the sharing type, you can DM me with feedback via those same links.
Or even better, reply to the first email when you subscribe to our email list below (hey, if you don’t ask and all that…).
Thank you so much for giving me a chance with this new venture.
– Glen Allsopp
P.S. Here are the links again to discuss the report on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.
