Gaps Income Report, October 2024: 41 Insights on Digital-First Startups

Welcome to the first-ever Gaps monthly income report. I’m so excited (and a little nervous) to finally share this with the world.

This report, combined with a complete relaunch of Gaps.com, is something I’ve felt I had to do for a very long time.

As a quick backstory, for a number of years I’ve been writing about successful startups reliant on search traffic for our sister site, Detailed.com. More recently, I started writing quarterly reports on the state of SEO and those driving millions in revenue from it.

I love writing these reports and I’m already working on the fifth one, but writing them presented a gap in the market (excuse the pun).

During my research for Detailed I find countless interesting startup success stories which don’t fit into my SEO-focus. As someone who has built dozens of different businesses online, I’m fascinated by which companies are succeeding in an age where many of us are beholden to algorithms – of which SEOs know only too well.

With Gaps I plan to comb through hundreds of funding rounds and revenue updates each month to share who is thriving online, which niches stand out and the trends amongst the data.

Before we dive in, a disclaimer feels like the right thing to share:

My ultimate hope is that this report is valuable enough that you’ll consider entering your email address at the end to get the next edition.

But first I have to wow you with the inaugural report…

Sports Blog Defector Just Revealed They Generated $4.6M in Their Fourth Year

This is exactly the kind of update I relaunched Gaps to cover.

Sports blog and media company Defector recently shared a full deep-dive into their fourth-year revenues, revealing they generated $3.8M from subscriptions and ~$800,000 from other sources (events, podcast advertising, etc.).

That’s around a $100,000 increase on 2023.

Expenses came to around $4.5M for the year, with employee-owner compensation making up the bulk of that ($2.6M).

Other expenses include rent ($30,000), freelance reporting ($325,000) and professional fees ($250,000).

On the surface those numbers make it look like a very low-margin business but we don’t know how much the owners are paying directly to themselves.

The entire deep-dive is worth a read if sports sites or blogging relate to what you’re working on.

Their year four high saw them reach 42,500 net active subscribers. They might not see huge growth year over year, but they’re still pulling in impressive numbers.

If My Pitch With These Monthly Reports Is That I’ll Spot Trends, These Three Similar Companies Raising $50M+ Is the First One

Primarily due to the reports I write for our sister site, I’ve followed hundreds of earnings calls and funding rounds over the past few years.

Three companies that stood out to me in October as doing something very similar are FullyRamped, Avarra and Nooks, who raised $2.3M, $8M and $43M respectively.

It’s very clear what Fully Ramped offers straight from their homepage:

Here’s my take on their business model: They allow sales teams to practise their pitch with AI-based prospects, meaning they don’t burn great leads before they’re ready to tackle them.

The ‘don’t burn great leads’ line was taken from a FullyRamped testimonial, which is a great description of why companies would be interested in such tools.

Here’s a quote from the site of each startup so you can see the similarities:

• Fully Ramped: “Train your reps faster with AI role play”
• Avarra: “Our AI avatars are trained using your own data and behave like real prospects”
• Nooks: “AI bots that simulate actual prospect conversations.”

Nooks – which raised the most by far – doesn’t just offer this functionality, but it’s the second selling point on their homepage and they have a dedicated landing page for it.

Note the green highlighted text:

If I aim to notice trends in these reports, then this one couldn’t be clearer: Companies offering to train your sales team with AI roleplay are attracting a lot of interest.

What a cool niche, no?

This WordPress Plugin Reveals Revenues of “Nearly” $2M/Year… and That They’re Leaving WordPress.org

If you haven’t seen the drama surrounding WordPress and WP Engine in recent weeks, that might be for the best.

That said, this deep-dive from the creators of WordPress plugin Paid Memberships Pro will get you some of the way up to speed.

I don’t want to take away from the message of the post, but as someone interested in business revenues, one line stood out to me.

Now going on our 14th year maintaining this platform, we have slowly bootstrapped the company from 2 people to nearly 20—from a few thousand dollars in annual revenue to nearly $2,000,000.

I’ve run a few membership sites on WordPress over the years and wasn’t familiar with the plugin so seeing them doing so well is awesome.

The name Paid Memberships Pro gives away much of what they do, which includes member management, recurring payments, user registration and more.

Again, I don’t want to take away from the message of their post just to focus on revenue numbers. The whole article is an interesting read and leaving obviously wasn’t an easy decision to make.

FaceUp Just Raised $3M in a SaaS Niche I Had Never Considered (And An Exact-Match .com is a Top Competitor)

When I first read what FaceUp offers, I never imagined for a second I would be reporting on them here.

The company, which offers a whistleblowing system for companies and schools, isn’t exactly in the most glamorous of niches.

Purely out of curiosity for discovering a new (to me) niche, I started doing more research and ultimately concluded that we might see many similar companies emerge in the next few years.

FaceUp is currently used by over 3,000 organizations including Vercel, KFC, Heineken, Taco Bell and other big names you would likely recognise.

Competitors in search results like SpeakUp also boast an impressive array of clients including Ikea, BMW and Swarovski.

So why would companies pay for a SaaS tool that lets employees anonymously report issues in the workplace?

I’m the first to admit this is not my field of expertise, but a 2019 EU directive required that companies with 50+ employees must have solutions in place for anonymous whistleblowing reports.

It gave countries until December 2021 to “transpose it into their national laws”. In other words, large companies – at least in the EU – must have some tool like this.

According to keyword research conducted in Ahrefs, it appears that the number of companies looking for tools like this is increasing as well:

There’s thousands of monthly searches for the specific offering, and tens of thousands if you include branded queries as well.

Finally, as an SEO for more than half of my life, I can’t help but admire that the top rated solution on G2 is on the exact-match WhistleblowerSoftware.com domain.

Not to take anything away from them of course. These things just always interest me when I have my SEO hat on.

This Publicly-Listed Network of Gaming Sites Just Had Their Best Q3 Ever

I follow dozens of news sources originating around the world and I’ve never seen a single one covering M.O.B.A, yet I find them pretty fascinating.

(I once covered them in a quarterly report – Insight #7 – for Detailed.com).

M.O.B.A runs several online communities for gaming enthusiasts, covering the likes of Minecraft, League of Legends and Counter Strike.

For Q3 2023 (July 1st – September 30th) they recorded revenues of 80.1M SEK (~$7.5M USD), a 12% increase year over year.

EBITDA amounted to 15.4M SEK (~$1.4M USD), an increase of 35% year over year.

If you’re in the gaming niche, I think you might be fascinated by some of the brands they’re behind.

Mini Scoop: AI Content Writer Cuppa.ai Surpasses $37,000 in Monthly Revenue

Cuppa recently shared with me that they’re now generating $37,000 in monthly revenue. When they had previously shared a $30,000 MRR revenue chart, I estimated they were growing that number by around $1,333 per month.

Long-time friend and builder Ian Nuttall founded AI-writer Cuppa.ai before quickly selling the project for $9,000 to entrepreneur Chris Riley.

To clarify, Ian ships like few people I know and as he said himself when asked about their growth, “I wouldn’t have taken it as far and built it as well.”

I haven’t used Cuppa personally but being active in the SEO space, I know a few of the people on the Cuppa team and quite a few of their users.

Finally, I want to address why I used ‘Scoop’ in this headline (don’t worry, I’m not that egotistical). This is the first ever version of this report and so I want to give an insight into what I hope to do going forward: Get more exclusives.

If there’s no interest in this monthly angle, Gaps will still continue with daily updates, but I would love to do more of these so need to know if the monthly reports have a chance (more on this at the end).

App Revenue Generally Isn’t Exciting To Me, But This One Raised $3.4M and I Think It Could Be Special

Manifest, a free app for iOS users, describes itself as being like “shazam for your feelings”.

From what I gather you talk (or type) to the app, share what you’re currently feeling or struggling with, and receive AI-generated advice.

Just a year or two ago it would have been hard to believe people would be happy to talk to a “bot”, but the success of tools like Character AI – with 20 million monthly users – shows there’s a real market for it.

I can totally picture people using this daily, adding to their streak, and feeling a strong emotional connection with the app over time.

Before their full launch the app had already generated “15.8 million manifestations”, though I couldn’t find out how many users that was to.

If we guess the average user has had 100 replies, that’s over 100,000 so far.

Social Media Scheduling Tool Buffer Impressively Gets to $19M ARR (Again)

I’ve long admired what Joel Gascoigne has built at Buffer and was honored to consult for them on an SEO project a few years ago.

In a detailed post on Twitter, Joel shared how Buffer has passed $19M in annual recurring revenue for the second time in their history.

It’s hard enough to hit that number the first time, but even more impressive when you’re able to reverse declines.

The comment replies are where some of the real value was, where Joel shared what he thinks helped bring their revenue back up:

The key overall was re-focusing on a down-market segment (creators, professionals, entrepreneurs and small businesses), embracing that we have a wide variety of types of customers and a high volume of them, rather than feeling overwhelmed by them and that it’s a lack of focus.

We re-invested in marketing and built that team back up after we had made it super lean for years.

The social media scheduling tool market is one I’ve covered a lot on Gaps in the past, primarily because there are so many similar businesses able to generate impressive revenues.

From Tens of Thousands of Stock Photos, Alexandre Rotenberg Generated $840 Last Month

I can’t recall how I came across photographer Alexandre Rotenberg’s blog but I’m glad I did.

His monthly revenue reports give insight into how much people can make by uploading their photography work to sites like Deposit Photos, iStock, and Shutterstock.

From over 16,000 images on Alamy.com he netted $95 for the month. That sounds low, but my understanding is that you get paid any time someone downloads one of your images. Otherwise, you earn nothing.

Due to how many images he sold on that specific site, he earned around $8 for each download, which is higher than I would have expected.

Here are some additional numbers:

Ultimately, it doesn’t sound like Alexandre is happy with his results.

I mentioned in my August report that if I’m not earning a decent sum from September until December then I might as well give up this business…so I had high expectations for this month.

I’ve made a note to check back on him in the next few reports to see if he can increase the numbers.

I also just really wanted to share something you (hopefully) wouldn’t typically come across or think about if you’re not a photographer yourself.

Josh Mohrer Shared His AI Note-Taking Has Reached $4M in ARR

On an X (Twitter) thread highlighting Josh Mohrer’s success in building his AI note-taking app to $2M in annual revenue, Josh replied, “It’s $4M actually.”

Wave is the app in question.

Once again there’s some great in the replies, where Josh revealed that inference costs are around 10-20% of revenues; he pays around $0.10/hr to OpenAI for transcription, and a similar amount for summaries.

My focus for these reports will be more on websites rather than apps. That said, his growth is so impressive – and there will be countless web-based alternatives to cover going forward – that I had to share this one.

They Acquired a Content Site, Then Raised $5M to Promote the Sport That Site Covers

I think this is so interesting.

TCG recently announced raising $5M to help promote a sport that you probably haven’t played before: Curling.

The announcement comes just a few months after they purchased a content site that covers the sport, The Grand Slam of Curling. The acquisition included an event site which is “the world’s only international curling event series”.

I’ve seen the sport on TV thanks to events like the Olympics, but never for a second have I thought about playing it.

Apparently, the sport is growing quickly,

In recent years, global interest in curling has risen dramatically, sparked by its popularity during the Winter Olympics and a new generation of young and charismatic international curlers.

On one hand, I love the bold vision.

On the other hand, I feel it would take a lot more than $5M to significantly impact the growth of a sport. Either way, I wish them the best of luck.

I Don’t Have the Acquisition Price for Padlocks.co.uk, But I Can Share Revenues from a “Related” Success Story

You don’t get much more niche of an eCommerce store than Padlocks.co.uk, which was acquired by John Good Group in October.

Unfortunately I don’t know the acquisition price involved, but the sale allows for a nice segue into a success story I love following.

The thing about Padlocks.co.uk is that you don’t have to go to the website to know exactly what they sell and to whom (people in the UK).

When I saw the sale announcement I was instantly reminded of CarMats.co.uk, founded by entrepreneur Ash Young. He’s one of the most inspiring people I follow.

Started during the covid pandemic, the site generated over £1M in revenue in the first 9 months of operations.

As of September 6th, 2024, the brand has been responsible for over 500,000 orders and has surpassed £20M in lifetime orders.

Ash has also moved into a related space with VanMats.co.uk, where he has already hit the 10,000 order milestone.

Social Media Scheduling Tool Pallyy, Generating $70K+/m, Sees Signups Increase After Price Increases

Tim Bennetto, founder of Pallyy, recently revealed the results of increasing their pricing from $18/m to $25/m.

Here’s what happened:

• A 24% increase in monthly recurring revenue
• Increased sign-ups (and of a higher quality)
• Additional annual upgrades
• Increased churn, primarily from inactive users

Tim has been open about Pallyy’s numbers for a long time, sharing that it took around a year to reach $1,400 in monthly recurring revenue and another year to reach $3,000 in MRR.

Revenue quickly grew, whereby on October 1st, 2023, Tim mentioned Pallyy was currently at $74K in MRR. In March of 2024 he stated revenue was still “over $70K MRR”, which coincides with other posts about revenue being fairly stable.

This Online Jewelry Store with $12 Products Has Surpassed $10M in Revenue And Grown 70% YoY

Entrepreneur Karen Frederick launched the accessory and jewelry business Kole Jax in 2012, initially using Facebook to promote an Etsy store.

Just six years later she had already passed $1M in annual revenue and went on to generate an additional $10M in revenue since.

More specifically she revealed in an interview with Entrepreneur that:

• The business has seen 70% YoY sales growth (July ’23 – July ’24)
• Orders have increased 129% YoY
• Year-over-year growth of 665% on Facebook and Instagram

As of this update, their Facebook page has 500,000+ followers and they have 18,000 followers on Instagram. They may also have other pages on each platform promoting the company.

I say this in the most respectful way possible, but it’s interesting how their website breaks many traditional “rules” about running an eCommerce store.

It doesn’t have a favicon.

The navbar takes up most of the page before you scroll.

They have a common collections canonical issue that many Shopify sites suffer from, and at least from my point of view from the website alone, you don’t feel any connection with the owners or the mission behind the brand.

Despite this, people clearly love the products they offer and the price at which they’re sold, which makes for a great success story to me.

With $3.2M in Funding, Kapa Shows the Next AI Chatbot Trend is Niche

Many AI chat tools have been receiving funding recently. One example is Rep AI, which raised $8.2M in September to improve its AI chatbots for eCommerce stores.

One funding round that caught my eye this month was that of Kapa, which offers a similar solution but with a different audience focus.

Kapa’s gap in the market is that they build AI chat bots that can answer advanced, technical product questions.

While other chat bots might be better suited to answer questions like “How can I get a refund?” or “Which jacket do you recommend for winter?”, Kapa is more focused on answering questions about why developers might be getting errors with a company’s API.

They’ve already proven interest in the model with users from companies like OpenAI, Monday.com, Docker and more.

As AI chat bots become more ubiquitous, marketing a more niche version seems like the next logical iteration.

Another Trend I Spotted: Three Startups Raised $42.3M to Bring AI to Email Outreach

Generative AI marketing platform Singulate announced a $2.3M funding round this month, promising to offer individualised and segmented email outreach.

It helps take all your information on a prospect and reach out to them in a way that feels inherently personal.

The idea makes logical sense. Outreach works, but nobody wants it to look and feel like it was automated.

Just a month earlier, 11x AI announced a $24M Series A, and they seem to offer a very similar service. (They’ve just raised money again, but as it happened in November, I’ll cover that next month).

Around the same time, Bounti raised $16M for its “AI-powered, human-perfected outbound” offering.

Doing some quick maths, that’s $42.3M in additional funding for just three companies in the space of ~30 days.

Granted, they’ll all have their own take on the offering and features others lack, but from an outside perspective, they primarily look to do the same thing.

I don’t think you are looking forward to receiving more AI-generated outreach, but it seems like an inevitability at this point.

This AI Content Detector Hit $8,200/m In Just Five Months

Entrepreneur Jozef Gherman shared on X that his AI detection tool, AIDetect.com, is currently generating over $8,000 per month.

Even more impressive is that it only started generating revenue five months earlier, in May.

The front of the tool is a free AI detection service, and the premium offering is for people interested in writing content that can’t be detected.

Starting at $9.99/m for 250 “undetectable rewrites”, pricing goes up to $24.99/m for 1,000 monthly rewrites.

I tested the free tool a few times on my own writing and it always said my work was 100% human (which it was).

I then tried it on some text partially written with AI and it also picked that up pretty well.

Note: These reports will never be written with AI. I enjoy putting them together too much, and I think (hope?) a human viewpoint is crucial for a topic like this.

You have to credit the marketing angle where you can get a ton of people looking to bypass what you check for and offer that as your upsell to help them.

It Just Reached $1Bn in Revenue, So Is KiwiCo the Most Successful Subscription Box Ever?

There’s probably a food startup that takes the “most successful ever” title but I like this headline so please let me roll with it.

Fortune magazine had the scoop this month (paywalled) that the educational subscription box company KiwiCo has now hit $1Bn in lifetime revenue.

Perhaps even more impressive is that the company is profitable, and annual revenues are increasing.

Their site claims they’ve shipped over 50 million education crates to customers, where subscriptions come in age ranges (0-3, 3-6, 6-12, and so on).

As a parent of two young children, I love the idea. They get excited about a new guaranteed delivery each month (or every two months in the 0-3 range), and you get to encourage creativity in your children.

I was first introduced to KiwiCo as they were regular sponsors on Mark Rober’s YouTube channel, which now promotes his own monthly subscription box with a similar angle.

The UK’s Farewill.com Gets Acquired for $16.7M (But I Can’t Forget to Mention They Raised ~$39M)

Launched in 2015, Farewill helps UK citizens deal with wills, funerals and how to apply for a probate.

The website is beautiful and fitting for the topic, and the positive reviews on their homepage are not only recent, but seemingly endless.

When I saw they had been acquired by funeral services director Dignity for £12.9M ($16.7M) I assumed it must have been a great payday for everyone involved.

Then I saw in a Techcrunch writeup of the acquisition that they had actually raised $39M before that.

I didn’t know of the company before the acquisition so won’t claim to have insights on how their team feels, but I’ll check back in a future update if there’s news to share.

iAsk, the AI Search Engine Answering Up to 1.5M Daily Queries, Raises $4.2M

$4.2M doesn’t sound like a lot to compete in one of the most dominated industries online, but with 350 million queries served since launching last year, iAsk might be on to something.

The pitch is that you can ask the search engine questions using natural language, and you’ll get fast, accurate and factual (their words) responses in return.

The search engine does link to external sources, but they’re typically much further down the page than Google or Bing.

I asked it what the best SEO extension was for Google Chrome, and it listed our own extension as the top result, which was a nice surprise.

The images shown in results definitely need a bit of fine-tuning. I asked it to find the percentage of a number, and the two prominent images it displayed next to the answer – one which looked like it was part of the page – used figures completely different from my query.

Still, I admire anyone willing to tackle this space and will continue to follow their journey.

Matthew Yglesias Reveals His Political Newsletter Is Generating Around $1.4M Per Year

Business Insider had the scoop (paywalled) that political newsletter Slow Boring continues to generate 7-figures annually.

I can’t give any more specifics from their private article as that would be disrespectful, but if you head to SlowBoring, you’ll see that it currently has more than 156,000 free subscribers. The newsletter also appears to be ran by a team of four.

I understand politics impacts all areas of our lives but it’s not a topic I find myself reading often. I’m not in founder Matthew Yglesias’s target audience, but I always love to read how much money newsletters can generate.

We have a report on more newsletter success stories if you’re looking to be inspired for your own.

I Remember Their Kickstarter Like It Was Yesterday, and Now CMS Ghost Just Surpassed $7.5M in ARR

I’ve loved following Ghost’s journey over the years, way back since founder John O’Nolan shared his vision for an alternative to WordPress and raised $350,000 via Kickstarter to bring that vision to life.

As recently revealed by John, “Ghost earns over $7.5M per year and is completely self-sufficient, with no outside funding of any kind.”

One challenge they have – which is my reasoning for this very website being run on WordPress – is that most WordPress are very familiar with the platform and all that goes with it.

I’m incredibly familiar with the UI and theming options.

I have access to great developers who know WordPress inside out.

And here’s a huge ecosystem around plugins which allow you to customize it as much as you want.

With that said, its founder isn’t putting the CMS in the best light at the moment, so don’t be surprised if I ever make an announcement we’ve made the switch.

Billables AI Raised $3.9M For a Time Tracking SaaS I Think Could Work Well in Other Industries

Billables AI offers “legal time tracking, powered by AI.”

A glance at their hero image and testimonials tells you they help lawyers and other professionals track their client’s work better, allowing them to bill for more hours (and better show how they’re spending their time).

It makes total sense, even if the clients of their users might not love the extra fees.

Whenever a SaaS company raises money to serve a specific niche, I always like to think of other industries that solution might apply to.

After a bit of thinking and a huge list of examples from ChatGPT, architecture and construction was another industry where I felt this would work well.

The key to any solution is allowing professionals to show precisely how they spend their time (in Word, Gmail, Zoom calls, etc.), which is automatically tracked for them.

After Just Two Years, This Local News Site Has Already Reached $42,000 in MRR

Hell Gate NYC recently released their second annual report (requires an email) revealing some impressive stats.

Not only has their annual revenue grown to over half a million dollars in subscriptions alone, but they have:

• 5,000+ paid subscribers
• 20,000+ biweekly subscribers
• 19,000+ daily morning subscribers

The report also attributes some of their success to a recent redesign, which looks great. It’s not easy to make a site look modern and approachable while pushing a lot of stories on the homepage.

If you’re interested in more success stories in the local news space, we have a dedicated report on exactly that.

Clerk Chat Raises $7M for a Simple Idea, But They’ve Done the Hard Work That Probably Gives Them a Nice Moat

I’m breaking my own rules here slightly because while the concept behind Clerk Chat is relatable and something a lot of people reading this could build, how they’ve gone about that will take some work.

As you’ll quickly see from their homepage, Clerk Chat allows you to message anyone you have the number of (leads, customers, etc.) via WhatsApp, SMS and iMessage.

There are a lot of SMS marketing startups out there, so it isn’t something radically new.

What Clerk did differently is “meticulously crafted relationships with Verizon, T-Mobile US, AT&T” and other networks.

I can’t imagine those conversations were fun or easy, but that sounds like a moat (for now) to me.

My assumption from clicking around is that they now have integrations and features that anyone trying to copy will have to piggy back off another product (such as Twilio) to compete.

Hirevire Generated $4,000 in September (Revealed In October) With Their Employee Candidate Screening SaaS

Hirevire co-founder Sanat (he doesn’t reveal his surname, and I won’t try to find it to be respectful) recently shared several interesting stats about his job applicant screening SaaS.

Specifically he noted the site:

• Generated $78,905 in the past 12 months
• Received 7,000 unique visitors last month (4,700 from Google)
• Received $3,223 one-time revenue for September
• Reached $937 in recurring revenue in September (an increase of 14.72% MoM)

The Hirevire homepage states hundreds of companies have tried their technology, including the car rental giant Hertz.

The service allows anyone hiring to record a video about the available role and their expectations. It also allows candidates to post a video in response, which is then transcribed with AI.

It’s a simple but smart idea, and I hope I share many more of their revenue updates to come.

Despite Half of Their Homepage Links Being Broken (I’ll Explain Why I’m Writing This), DocJuris Raises $8M for AI-Focused Contract Management

Let’s get the “homepage links being broken” part out of the way first.

If I emailed DocJuris to let them know half of their homepage links need to be fixed, I’m unlikely to get a response. Trust me, I’ve sent more personal outreach emails than you would believe (as this older case study can attest to).

Even when I tweet directly at companies, I rarely get a response.

Weeks later, their staging site is still publicly open. (That’s totally fine and up to them, of course).

On the other hand, when I talk about large companies with website issues on our sister site, Detailed.com, they seem to get noticed (and fixed) very quickly.

I promise I have no ego about this. It still blows my mind that people behind these large companies might ever see what I write.

So, if anyone connected to DocJuris is reading this, please tell them none of their Capterra links work across the site, and many of their homepage links are placeholders.

Back on topic, DocJuris aren’t building the kind of SaaS I would create myself, but they’re in an industry where someone will be majorly successful.

The number of businesses that rely on contracts is limitless, so anything that can help manage those has a huge total addressable market.

We’re almost finished with our dedicated report on contract and document management startups, and there’s more companies in the space than you might expect.

AI Customer Support Tool Decagon Raises a Massive $65M (And For One Customer, It’s Handling 42,000 Support Tickets Monthly)

Enterprise-grade AI support SaaS Decagon has raised a $65M series B led by Bain Capital Ventures.

If you need a sign that AI customer support is here to stay, this is it.

Go through their client list and you’ll notice a number of digital-first startups you’re probably familiar with like Duolingo, Eventbrite, Webflow, Substack and Rippling.

It’s easy to see the value in such a tool when you read the scale of support requests their type of customer receives:

Working with Decagon was like hiring 65 agents overnight. We get 60,000 tickets per month. Seventy percent of those are being handled by Decagon’s AI agents. Our monthly savings are hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There will be far more of these tools in the future, especially as AI responses get as good as their human counterparts.

Tag Parrot (Temporarily?) Shutting Down is a Reminder About Building On Top of Another Company’s Platform

Being heavily active in the SEO space for over a decade now (and writing about it for just as long), I tend to notice new tools popping up in the industry more than other sectors.

In the past 18 months or so there has been a noticeable trend of people building tools on top of the Google Indexing API to help websites get more pages indexed in Google.

My understanding is that Google shared this solely for job post listings, but it was ultimately effective beyond that.

Google eventually made some changes here, and in October one tool built on the API, Tag Parrot, shut down and emailed all of their users about the API changes.

Entrepreneur John Rush, founder of IndexRusher, wrote on X that it was “the worst news for my microsaas that I could think of.”

It was only earlier this year that my good friend Ian Nuttall built URL Monitor – which helps get pages indexed – to $100,000+ in annual recurring revenue before selling it.

On one hand, it’s a sad reminder that when you build a service on top of someone else’s platform you’re always going to be at the whim of what they do with them.

On the other hand, I don’t think this is a message to avoid that altogether. There was a lot of money to be made for people who acted quickly, building upon an idea they essentially “just” had to create the interface for.

Still, this is always a shame to see.

I should add that I believe IndexRusher and similar tools have found alternative ways to deliver their service since the news.

$4M in Funding and $3M in ARR Says There Might Be a Gap in the Market for Handling Prenuptial Agreements Online

Libby Leffler, Sheryl Sandberg’s first Chief of Staff, has raised $4M for her company First, which aims to help people complete prenuptial agreements online. Fortune had the exclusive.

What surprised me about the announcement was that First is only offering this service, for now, to people in California.

In other words, if you think there’s a market here, it might be something you could look to model in another state or even country.

A quick Google search will show they weren’t the first company with the idea though, as HelloPrenup.com tops a lot of search results.

A quick Google search again, and it turns out HelloPrenup is now generating more than $3M in annual revenue.

This Bootstrapped Financial Planning SaaS Just Surpassed $50,000 in MRR

Kyle Nolan shared the news on X that four years after launching, his financial planning software ProjectionLab has reached $52,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

ProjectionLab allows users to “simulate your financial future” while tracking your progress towards self-defined milestones.

Their free plan allows you to play around with the tool, but you can’t save the data you’re working on. From there, there are $9 and $45/m options (if you’re paying annually) to sync all of your data sources and see if you’re on track towards your financial goals.

A simple focus, very well executed, that is currently visited by over 25,000 people each month.

After a €22M Exit, Their Next Startup Is an AI-Take on Contract Management

Previously founders of Prescreen, an online human resources platform, a trio of Austrian-based entrepreneurs are at it again with their latest startup: fynk.

October saw the announcement of a €3.1M funding round which is in addition to their previous €1.25M pre-seed.

I’m sure they won’t claim contract management is the most exciting industry, but it is a much-needed one.

And when there are huge companies in the space like Docusign, that’s generally a good sign there’s always room for one more company with its own spin on things.

The AI element appears to primarily be that previous contracts (like employee contracts) can be uploaded and fynk will extract the data from them, saving data entry time.

Sans Acquisition Numbers, Seeing One of My Favourite Blogs Get Acquired Feels Newsworthy (20M Annual Readers)

Though I’m not a typical “watch guy”, I’ve visited Hodinkee.com enough times over the years to be interested in what’s happening behind the scenes at the media brand.

Founded 16 years ago and currently reaching more than 20 million readers per year, Hodinkee now has a new owner in the retail brand Watches of Switzerland.

(You’ve probably seen WoS in airports and high streets around the world).

Hodinkee has built a passionate following in the watch space, where articles can still pick up hundreds of comments in an age where people tend to give feedback on social media platforms instead.

From a we’re-trying-to-build-something-people-are-passionate-about-too perspective, I love their drive to create something great for their industry. That’s reflected not only in how much thought they put into their reporting (though not every reader would agree) but also in their site design and various monetisation angles over the years.

Email Marketing Platform ConvertKit Rebrands to Kit and Continues Past $3.5M in MRR

Before we dive in, a disclaimer: I’m a paying ConvertKit customer and have consulted for them in the past, but I don’t have any current arrangements with them, affiliate or otherwise.

Some of you will know that ConvertKit rebranded a few years ago but it didn’t quite work out.

This update feels far more polished and professional, and who can’t be envious of a three-letter .com.

I saw a competitor disagree with this (of course they would), but I think the public documenting of the process was smart.

It took around two years for people to stop calling Moz ‘SEOmoz’, and I imagine it won’t be too dissimilar for Kit, but people will get there.

As of this writing, they’re generating $3,590,000 in monthly revenue from over 58,000 customers, each of which has increased by around 1% in the past month.

There are likely other things to consider regarding their revenues (like annual subscriptions) but it’s still an impressive number to follow.

Seats.aero Surpasses 40,000 Pro Users and Is On Track for $400K in MRR

Entrepreneur Ian Carroll recently shared that his travel startup, Seats.aero is continuing to grow its impressive numbers.

Seats.aero is a travel awards search engine, allowing you to use points you’ve accumulated to book the best travel deals.

The thing I love most about the site is that looking at it quickly, you wouldn’t have the slightest clue it’s generating so much money.

It’s one of those sites where if you redesigned it, you might increase the conversion rate for new users, but would probably really annoy your most loyal customers.

It might be something Ian has already tested, but I would love to know how well putting the search functionality directly on the homepage would perform.

I Predict Documentation & Onboarding Tools Will Be a Regular Occurrence Here, So Let’s Start With Driver (Which Just Raised $8M)

Driver, who no longer wish to go by Driver AI, revealed in a press release they’ve raised $8M in seed funding led by Google Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator.

The company promises the ability to create high-quality technical documentation and onboard team members “twice as fast”.

With an Apple-esque web design, they explain (at least my understanding of it) how their software helps companies create manuals, guides and source code documentation for employee onboarding and customer support.

I’m seeing similar companies get attention in recent months, each with their own spin on what kind of documentation they’re helping companies manage (many focused on standard operating procedures, or SOPs).

I don’t think Driver on its own is a particularly exciting business to cover, but not every business has to be and I believe they’ll be the first of many in these monthly reports.

The UK’s Online Bathroom Specialist Sees Revenue Grow 4% YoY and Shuts Down the Rival It Acquired for £22.5M

I’ve been following the UK’s Victorian Plumbing brand for close to two years now, but I was very confused when they said they were shutting down Victoria Plum. I assumed that was shorthand for their own business name.

It turns out I missed the news that they acquired AHK Designs, who themselves had brought Victoria Plum out of administration.

In an October 15th press release Victorian Plumbing confirmed Victoria Plum (equally confused yet?) would discontinue operations by the end of 2024.

They also revealed that:

• Revenue increased around 4% year over year
• Revenue decreased 1% if you exclude the acquisition of Victoria Plum
• Order volume increased 3% (or 10% if you include the Plum brand)
• They delivered a record 1.02 million orders for the year

Additionally, they noted that customers happily purchase their own range of products, which have higher margins than third-party offerings.

While it’s unlikely you are in this niche or looking to get into it, being a digital-first brand generating most revenue online, they fit the Gaps ethos for these updates perfectly.

Open-source Typebot Continues to Increase Revenue, Growing to $36,000 MRR

Entrepreneur Baptiste Arnaud revealed that his chatbot builder, Typebot, has recently hit $36,550 in monthly recurring revenue.

That’s up from the $31,518 he was generating in the second quarter of 2024.

Typebot is free for up to 200 chats per month, and then you’ll be asked for $39/m for up to 2,000 chats and to remove the Typebot branding.

If my calculations are correct, Baptiste has been working on the tool – which allows you to customize embeddable chatbots for your website – for four years now.

Uprise Has Raised $3.3M To Do Something Pretty Interesting (Especially if You’re In the Finance Space)

Gaps. Is. Back. (And I Would Really Love Your Help)

Myself and two others have been working on this project for so long now that I wasn’t sure we would ever get to the point of releasing this first report.

It feels incredible to finally be sharing this with the world, many years after I put all my focus into Detailed and client work.

He doesn’t know I’m sharing this, but I kept thinking about this tweet a lot during the last few months.

Sorry for the wait, boys.

It’s my dream to be able to write and share these reports every month, but there’s no point doing them if nobody wants to read 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…).

What you see throughout Gaps.com is about 30% of what we’ve been working on…

Click around our homepage and there’s a lot that has changed.

The truth is, there’s still a lot missing, but I felt it would be overwhelming (and get little attention) if I launched every new feature and idea at once.

These monthly reports are what I hope become the backbone of everything else so it seemed fitting to start with these first.

Ultimately, while this is absolutely a launch event, it means little if we’re not still updating content many years from now, so that’s the priority.

I’m thinking long-term with this project, and I’ll have some behind the scenes revenue updates coming on some of my own projects as well, which is only fair.

For now, thank you so much for giving me a chance with this new venture.

It’s great to finally hit Publish.

If you like this, signing up to the email list and sharing this would mean the world to me.

No pressure.

THANK YOU!

– Glen Allsopp

P.S. Here are the links again to discuss the report on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.