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BuiltWith: $14M ARR, no employees
- cj 4y agoWho are their major competitors? At that revenue number and with no innovation and no R&D (zero employees), seems like a no brainer for some smart hacker to replicate and provide the same service for less.
- nojito 4y agoyou can't replicate the historical datasets
- ck_one 4y agoWhy is the historical dataset needed?
- jesterson 4y agoTo analyse what product someone tested and concluded as unacceptable.
- batch12 4y ago> you can't replicate the historical datasets If you start today, tomorrow you'll have history. If you never start, there will be no competition and no historical datasets. Edit: finished thought
- snoopy_telex 4y agoIt sorta seems like they won the 'right place at the right time' lotto in getting the links on about us. A competitor might have a huge battle to win that market share.
- bratao 4y agoI agree, It seems risky to not invest in R&D in any company.
- enahs-sf 4y agoAt 14m ARR, the founder is well past fatFIRE. If someone wants to disrupt him, I doubt he cares.
- dangrossman 4y agoBuiltWith is 16 years old. Their business has been fully commoditized and ripped off so many hundreds of times that most of these "competitors" don't even have names. They're just email addresses in your spam folder. I have literally hundreds of mails that look like this -- "hey, wanna buy a list of every site using your competitors' services, enriched with business info and key employee contacts?". For example: https://i.imgur.com/V9raPcV.png https://i.imgur.com/V9raPcV.png The "$14M ARR" appears to be a journalist's guess/estimate of the company's revenue in 2015, which Gary said was an exaggeration, per https://www.ipobase.com/builtwith/ https://www.ipobase.com/builtwith/ I would bet that BW is long past peak revenue now.
- mtgx 4y ago
- gibb0n 4y agohttps://www.wappalyzer.com/ https://www.wappalyzer.com/
- collin128 4y agoDatanyze raised a round of two of VC 6-7 years ago but I'm not sure what they're up to recently.
- knodi 4y agoWith 0 employees who maintains the site/infra or adds features/datasets? Things aren't adding up in this article.
- nrmitchi 4y agoWith 0 employees, why have the office with all the desks in the background in the picture at the top of the page. It’s pretty clear there are other people doing something, whether they are called “employees” or not.
- dangrossman 4y agoThe photo at the top is almost 10 years old, and was from when BW still had a cofounder. It doesn't any more. He probably doesn't have that office any more.
- nrmitchi 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- xwowsersx 4y agoYeah I'm wondering why Dan is replying to so many of these comments. I don't get it :P
- ayewo 4y agoThat's likely because this is a blast from the past. Someone mentioned [0] his HN handle up-thread [1] and linked to his complaint in 2015 about spam from BuiltWith [2] where the founder responded with an apology and a way to remove his site from their index. Once I understood that value of BuiltWith myself, I absolutely felt the same way about Dan's characterisation of BuiltWith as "brilliantly simple and profitable". 0: He likely found about via an email notification from a neat tool he made for just this purpose http://hnreplies.com http://hnreplies.com 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33185733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33185733 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10316060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10316060
- screye 4y agoGenuine 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 generating a ton of revenue.
- kulikalov 4y agoBecause it's one thing to find a niche and another thing is to make money in it. For instance, I make software that help Private Equity firms find deals. I can't use it myself, because it requires a completely different set of skills.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoI think the only person who can answer that question is the founder. I would posit: if you had that much money what else can you buy besides bragging rights? This coverage wasn’t even bought as far as I can tell.
- prepend 4y agoI would expect that if you had $14M revenue a year with no employees and no investors you would never hear a peep unless he wanted to hype for a sale. Bragging rights are for chumps without millions in cash.
- 58x14 4y agoThis doesn’t seem like a paid promotion piece, although it could be. I don’t see any direct connection between the author and the company/founder. It’s an interesting read, and likely brings some marginally additional traffic to the site, so I don’t see any negative exposure here. Perhaps the founder is considering an exit?
- forte124 4y agoHi, I'm the OP. I have no connection with the founder actually. I just like to research success stories like this to help inform and inspire people I also don't mean to bring harm to the founder. I'm sure he's created scrapers, historical data, and built loyalty that's difficult to replicate If there's something about this story that I got wrong or if it wasn't as helpful as I intended, do please let me know though!
- 58x14 4y agoThe 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 spawned in (iirc) 2017 after Instagram made significant changes to what data were available through their API. It seems similar that Etherscan had this type of first mover advantage with automated data indexing and basic discovery tools for the Ethereum blockchain. I wonder what the next wave of straightforward software utilities will be like.
- dangrossman 4y agoI'm having trouble replicating my own success from that era. Everything is more complicated today: the development stacks, the competitive landscape, the vast increase in regulations and liability around handling data, the move from an open web to social media silos and mobile apps, scammers and bots winning the spam wars and destroying most online advertising. I still have businesses I started in the 2000s and early 2010s that are very successful, and not so much that's newer and doing as well. My non-tech ventures are doing well which is nice for a change of pace after decades of coding, though. I bought a bunch of relatively cheap (3-4 figure cost) manufacturing equipment and turned a spare bedroom into a workshop for designing and creating physical goods. I have a line of home decor that sells well enough that I'm dropping a stack of packages off at the post office 5 nights a week.
- forte124 4y agoThis is actually really interesting to hear. I always hear the argument "you don't need a fancy website or UI, when I started my site/app looked like ___" These people created MVPs in 2010. You're now competing with MVPs that can be built with way more features, the latest tech stacks, and more in the same period of time.
- rising-sky 4y ago
- Ethan_Mick 4y agoDon'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 content if I can generate meaningful recurring revenue by building things I love. Still trying to decouple hours worked from the paycheck.
- aliqot 4y agoHey don't give up. You're gonna make it, just keep pushing irons into the fire, it's inevitable. I believe in you.
- scubakid 4y agoI'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.
- xwowsersx 4y agoCare to share what kinds of things you've built or are currently building?
- scubakid 4y agoFor the past year and a half, I've been focused on just one side project: a privacy-friendly personal finance simulator that doesn't ask to link your accounts (projectionlab.com), can run Monte Carlo simulations in your browser, and keeps your data client-side unless you choose otherwise.
- insaider 4y agoI remember stumbling across this site years ago, thought it was neat, and never thought about it again. There's definitely a lot of untapped potential here. Could be so much bigger with marketing and R&D. A browser extension for example.
- rafael09ed 4y agoThe ROI is already unbelievably high. Putting any more resources in will decrease that ROI
- SparkyMcUnicorn 4y ago> A browser extension for example. The BuiltWith browser extension was how I found out about them years ago. I was under the impression that the extension is what enabled them to collect a big chunk of their data, at least initially.
- Bakary 4y agoDoes it matter? The founder is wealthy and can do whatever they want in life. Why would he spend a single second working?
- mustachionut 4y agoIf they have no employees, why do they have 4 workstations and a conference room with a whiteboard?
- dangrossman 4y agoThe photo is from a different interview almost 10 years ago.
- zuhayeer 4y ago"In 2006, Gary Brewer attended a startup conference in Sydney..." Wow, just learned that BuiltWith is 16 years old. Always just assumed it must have been built in the last 5 years or so.
- jussaying2 4y agoNew startup idea: Find out when a startup was launched - builtin.com
- citizenpaul 4y agoNo employees, except for some content writers. Soooooo.... They have employees?
- dangrossman 4y agoContractors aren't employees.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- citizenpaul 4y agoI suppose that is technically true but I didn't see it mentioned. Either way I feel its disingenuous. The article is another one of those hustle worship pieces. Trying to make you feel inadequate if you haven't single handedly started a multi million dollar startup alone by the time you are 30 you are a failure. Employees? Contractors? who cares don't need'em either way what kind of loser gets ....help.
- mattl 4y ago“No idea like this had existed, and the domain BuiltWith was somehow not taken already. Gary began building scrapers and his database of technologies.” I hate this paragraph. It doesn’t mention any domain names but also makes the assumption that com is the only one?
- seekingcharlie 4y agoThe vast majority of domain names are .com - it’s a fair assumption to make, isn’t it?
- mattl 4y agoNot at all.
- tluyben2 4y agoMost companies (and seo experts) vastly prefer .com domains though; wether for valid reasons or not, this still is the case. Squatters make loads of money from companies getting another tld and then later buying the .com.
- mattl 4y agoI get all that. It’s also not a default by any means. Lots of places around the world do not default to the com domain name and it doesn’t make sense to treat a word without a TLD as a domain name.
- forte124 4y agoGiven that it was the mid-2000s, I think dot com was fairly positive to be the general assumption. But thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure I clarify in future posts
- mattl 4y agoI’d also avoid capitalizing any part of the domain name.
- O__________O 4y ago$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/1257819248484745216 https://twitter.com/thesamparr/status/1257819248484745216
- datalopers 4y agohttps://www.startupdaily.net/advice/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-of-australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/ 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10316060
- O__________O 4y agoThanks, 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 https://builtwith.com/plans ________ And link to the founder’s comments on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=garazy https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=garazy
- snorkel 4y agoBased 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
- yieldcrv 4y agojust a reminder, whether this is an urban legend or not: 1) the pie is big enough, you just have to convince pie holders to give their pieces to you 2) you only need one client to generate all revenue, but many small clients is more intuitive 3) there are many individuals and companies sitting on large revenue streams. headlines come from people that need to advertise, not the ones that don’t.
- forte124 4y agoThis is a great takeaway! In short, I think it just starts with making people money. Then you just have to find your slice
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tysehr37 4y agoSuper impressive. Crazy this was able to scale so much without hiring.
- yibberish 4y ago100% rent-based business. the computers do all the work, the owners just collect the money. the societal mistake is to regard this as 'wealth production'; it's not. this is rent. this is where creative productivity (arguably real actual wealth) goes to die.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Ensydr 4y agoYes it is possible to build multimillion $ companies with a very small team. imagine all the time you save in meetings.
- woodruffw 4y agoMy 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 https://builtwith.com/yossarian.net
- tiffanyh 4y agoYou 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.
- woodruffw 4y agoThat's true, I could see how that would be useful!
- Someone1234 4y agoI can see that you're using PHP, on nginx/Ubuntu, hosted by Digital Ocean, and likely purchased your hostname via Google Domains. Your email is via Google Workspaces. That's pretty useful information.
- woodruffw 4y agoI gave it away by responding to the other comment, but at least one of those is incorrect. Caveat emptor.
- sebastian_z 4y agoI am an academic researcher, and we used BuiltWith.com for a project. Gary and Andrew added various technologies that I suggested to them (for a non-paying customer no less). So, great experience!
- xwowsersx 4y agoOut of curiosity, is there an open source version of BuiltWith? I'm not necessarily looking to use it, but it might actually be an interesting project to work on. I'm sure you learn a lot of interesting things trying to map everything out..and then there's the parsing/extracting and other aspects of this that could be fun if you're into that sort of thing.
- rising-sky 4y agoFrom the pic in the post, that’s a lot of desks, monitors, and office space for a single person company
- civilized 4y agoHe lost his mind because of the isolation and now pretends to be different people throughout the day.
- eschulz 4y agoAs someone who works from home, I do something similar to that as well. Morning meetings at the kitchen table, midday at my desk, and late afternoon work is done from my sofa. The cats and I stay busy.
- Wronnay 4y agoI tested some of my websites. While I got accurate results for some projects, it showed completely wrong information about other projects... E.g. it shows stuff with which I may experimented for one day but which isn't used on the project since multiple years anymore.
- cheriot 4y ago"no employees" but the founder is pictured in front of an office with four visible work stations. What's the source for this article?
- indigodaddy 4y agoWhat an awesome story. I’ve used builtwith plenty, but never knew it’s history nor realized how profitable it might have been..
- Kukumber 4y agoEverything that's wrong with our society, congrats!
- pqdbr 4y agoSo building an actual business, by providing a service that other people see value in, and decide to pay money for, is "everything that's wrong with our society"?
- tluyben2 4y agoYou mean one person getting rich while they could’ve hired employees? Taxation is supposed to fix that, wether or not it does, considering their jurisdiction, is another point, but that’s not their fault.
- b20000 4y ago"But the most important thing was his meeting with Raymond King, the founder of AboutUs. AboutUs was an internet domain directory containing information about millions of businesses. Gary showed Ray BuiltWith, and Ray immediately loved it. He added a BuiltWith.com link to every record in their index to provide BuiltWith information regarding each business." there you go.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fnordpiglet 4y agoWhy does he have a bunch of computers and desks if he has no other employees? Does he move from one seat to another?
- giantg2 4y agoIndependent software is the new gold rush. A few people getting rich and the rest getting nothing.
- stagas 4y agoBy few you mean those that deserve it and by rest you mean those that would have otherwise leeched off of their labor? Yes, that sounds right. And fair.
- giantg2 4y agoIt's mostly about luck.
- ehnto 4y agoHe has been profitible for years, and the business was started in 2006. I wish you were right, but the golden days of low hanging fruit for solo founders was years ago. It's much harder to carve a profitable niche and not have your business undermined these days.
- SevenNation 4y ago> But the paid version is why companies find BuiltWith so valuable. BuiltWith has turned into a colossal database of everything on the internet. More specifically, a database of potential customers and leads. > You can find every website using a specific keyword, and technology, and even break them down by location, spending, and social following. It's the perfect place to build your potential customers. Doesn't this only work well if you can get an email address of a decision maker to contact? Otherwise, it seems like a lukewarm lead at best. Also, it seems that the products and services a website uses tend to be sticky, at least far down the stack. So this lead-generation approach is really just about picking off technologies at the top of the stack, right?
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoBuiltWith has gotten quite good. I tested it on my site and it even correctly detected I use Shutterstock for stock images. We don't credit Shutterstock anywhere (already pay them like $300/mo) so it must actually analyze the images themselves to make this determination
- mmahemoff 4y agoFilenames maybe
- ayewo 4y agoOr perhaps it uses file hashes to determine if certain images are similar.
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoNope my VA is trained to change all filenames to something description such as "dog-playing-with-leash.jpg"
- tiffanyh 4y agoIt's not $14M. Source: this was posted on HN years ago and the cofounder refuted the revenue claims. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322265
- ec109685 4y agoPeople have no shame creating a copycat article with zero references or original sources.
- JamesAdir 4y agoEven if the ARR is half of that, how do you keep your level of service as a single employee? Don't you take a break, go to a vacation? What happens if you're sick? At the level that starts with $295 and goes up to $495 and $995, I guess that the customers expect the service to work all the time and have fast support. Can't understand how it's done without employees at all.
- jesterson 4y agoFrom my experience, their service is plainly terrible/inexistent. The good thing is you don't need it normally, so I am still a paying customer
- dkyc 4y agoI don't have any inside information on this, but at the end of the day, the level of service or availability you offer is up to you. There's no legally mandated support response time or SLA, so unless you're promising something else in your Terms of Service, there's nothing stopping you from offering no support. How customers respond to this is another question, and most of the time companies strive to have good service because they value growth higher than 'lack of employees'. But everyone is entitled to their own approach.
- KingOfCoders 4y agoGreat to see a solo entrepreneur not being shy to take (upto) $1000/month. Too many founders are too cheap.
- yitchelle 4y agoI reckon that it's all done with contractors and gig workers. Its the uber way of running their business.
- biggerbio 4y ago[dead]
- tzm 4y agoLove the concept. I once owned SiteCrunch.com and had a similar idea as BuiltWith in 2013. It was one of many ideas I had, but didn't find validation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- throwaway45643 4y agoI am surprised Google is their customer. Why would google be a customer when it has all information about all the websites on internet?
- throwaway45643 4y agoIt reports so many technology used for "x.com". If you look at the source of "x.com" its just one single letter. How does it deduce the technologies used or is it bug? https://builtwith.com/detailed/x.com https://builtwith.com/detailed/x.com