Streamyard The two founders of Streamyard bootstrapped to $12M in ARR without any employees. They reached $30M ARR with 19 employees before selling to Hopin for $250 million.
Among Us The popular game Among Us reached 500 million active users with only 4 employees.
Instagram The photo sharing app was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion with only 13 team members. Everyone thought it was insanely overvalued at the time, but now it will go down as one of the greatest acquisitions of all time.
WhatsApp The messaging app had only 55 team members when Facebook bought them for $19 billion. An astounding $345 million per employee!
Plenty of Fish Marcus Frind started dating site Plenty of Fish in 2003 to improve his resume. By 2008 it was netting him $10 million per year as the only employee, and he was part time! Later he scaled a team to 75 people before selling to Match Group for $575 million.
Ahrefs SEO research software Ahrefs hit more than $50M in annual recurring revenue with just 50 employees.
ConvertKit The Creator Marketing Platform
@ConvertKit(my company!) is at $29 million in revenue with 68 people on the team. Our mission to provide financial independence to everyone on our team (and the broader creator community) means we'll keep using leverage to scale.
Stardew Valley Eric Barone built Stardew Valley to add to his resume & get a job after graduating with a CS degree. He did everything himself with no employees. 4 years after launch he sold over 10 million copies across all platforms, estimated at over $150 million in revenue.
BuiltWith Gary Brewer scaled BuiltWith to $14 million in annual revenue with just one employee.
Those are 10 examples of companies that scaled to impressive heights with surprisingly small teams. What are your favorite examples that I’m missing? Follow me
@NathanBarryfor more threads on growing a company and earning a living as a creator!