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$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 th

$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 ago
https://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 ago
  Thanks, here’s the specific text that is the basis for $14M ARR, which includes a “[founder] says” in the text: >> There are three levels of pricing for the paid service, The Basic at $299 per month for customers that want lists of sites mainly for the purpose of lead generation; Pro at $495 per month, suited more for users that work in an industry using a lot of A/B testing and comparison-type data; and Enterprise at $995 per month, which covers all bases and allows sales teams with multiple people to all use the platform at once. Brewer says that in terms of paying users on the platform there is a ‘few thousand’ and the split is about 40 percent Basic, 40 percent Pro and 20 percent Enterprise. _______ And here’s link to the current pricing: https://builtwith.com/plans 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 ago
Based on the price card posted on the website, assuming there’s 4000 active paying customers each paying $300/month, that gets you to $14M/year
- h0l0cube 4y ago
  Off by an order of magnitude - 1.2M
  - gkoberger 4y ago
    $300 * 12 months * 4,000 customers = $14M I'm not saying it's true or not, but the math works. You're (roughly) calculating MRR, not ARR.
    - h0l0cube 4y ago
      My bad
  - rossriley 4y ago
    Don't forget to multiply by 12 for yearly revenue.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nimchimpsky 4y ago
sn0w_crash 4y ago
I agree this sounds suspect. A lot of people don’t realize what “$14mm ARR” means. The contract, accounting and legal work alone would require a couple of people. Not to mention Infrastructure, monitoring, QA, etc - all that good stuff. It costs money to generate revenue.
- sbarre 4y ago
  My bet is employees here refers to full-time salaried employees. No doubt they work with contractors and freelancers. The article even says they have "a few people to write content for the blog".
  - tomschwiha 4y ago
    Those need to be managed, I would definitely hire someone to manage and to load off stress yourself.
    - eloff 4y ago
      Get one of those people to manage the group. You call it the lead role, and pay them sightly more. You don't need a dedicated manager.
- proamdev123 4y ago
  Yeah, but if those things were outsourced that would support the “1 full time employee“ claim.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  I mean, I run a startup not doing that much worse. I have 0 accountants (pay CPA yearly for tax work). 0 lawyers. 0 devops. 0 QA. 0 monitoring . 0 HR. I do have : 3 devs (if I include myself) 3 support (tickets) 2 other supporting roles If I coded 100% myself (which I have in the past and could in the future, it would just mean less new features) and had a way to not answer tickets (like the OP story it sounds like due to product complexity), I could totally do this alone… It’s amazing how lean you can be in SaaS if you must. Us bootstrappers know this. So much if a modern enterprise is bloat. You have how many DBAs? How many QA? Lol.
princevegeta89 4y ago
Can someone tldr on how the site makes money? I read the linked article quickly and still confused what the revenue model is. Thanks!
- selcuka 4y ago
  https://builtwith.com/plans https://builtwith.com/plans
  - princevegeta89 4y ago
    Right. But how does the advertising part work and why is it so effective?
    - dangrossman 4y ago
      They don't sell advertising, they sell data. Primarily, leads for sales teams. If you want to start a new payment processing service, you subscribe to BuiltWith and they'll give you the contact info of the decision makers at the top 10,000 websites that use Stripe or whatever competitor you choose.
      - princevegeta89 4y ago
        Got it, my follow-up question is, how is it acceptable for customers to have their data to be freely sold as "leads" to random 3rd party companies? Is it in the BuiltWith terms or something?
        dangrossman 4y ago
        They're crawling and packaging already public information. If you don't want anyone to know you're the CEO of StartupCorp and your email is ceo@startupcorp.co, don't put that on your LinkedIn and the footer of your website. The business value is in the convenience of the packaging, not in revealing secrets or something.

datalopers 4y ago

https://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 ago
Thanks, here’s the specific text that is the basis for $14M ARR, which includes a “[founder] says” in the text: >> There are three levels of pricing for the paid service, The Basic at $299 per month for customers that want lists of sites mainly for the purpose of lead generation; Pro at $495 per month, suited more for users that work in an industry using a lot of A/B testing and comparison-type data; and Enterprise at $995 per month, which covers all bases and allows sales teams with multiple people to all use the platform at once. Brewer says that in terms of paying users on the platform there is a ‘few thousand’ and the split is about 40 percent Basic, 40 percent Pro and 20 percent Enterprise. _______ And here’s link to the current pricing: https://builtwith.com/plans 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 ago

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

h0l0cube 4y ago
Off by an order of magnitude - 1.2M
- gkoberger 4y ago
  $300 * 12 months * 4,000 customers = $14M I'm not saying it's true or not, but the math works. You're (roughly) calculating MRR, not ARR.
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    My bad
- rossriley 4y ago
  Don't forget to multiply by 12 for yearly revenue.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nimchimpsky 4y ago

sn0w_crash 4y ago

I agree this sounds suspect. A lot of people don’t realize what “$14mm ARR” means. The contract, accounting and legal work alone would require a couple of people. Not to mention Infrastructure, monitoring, QA, etc - all that good stuff. It costs money to generate revenue.

sbarre 4y ago
My bet is employees here refers to full-time salaried employees. No doubt they work with contractors and freelancers. The article even says they have "a few people to write content for the blog".
- tomschwiha 4y ago
  Those need to be managed, I would definitely hire someone to manage and to load off stress yourself.
  - eloff 4y ago
    Get one of those people to manage the group. You call it the lead role, and pay them sightly more. You don't need a dedicated manager.
proamdev123 4y ago
Yeah, but if those things were outsourced that would support the “1 full time employee“ claim.
brianwawok 4y ago
I mean, I run a startup not doing that much worse. I have 0 accountants (pay CPA yearly for tax work). 0 lawyers. 0 devops. 0 QA. 0 monitoring . 0 HR. I do have : 3 devs (if I include myself) 3 support (tickets) 2 other supporting roles If I coded 100% myself (which I have in the past and could in the future, it would just mean less new features) and had a way to not answer tickets (like the OP story it sounds like due to product complexity), I could totally do this alone… It’s amazing how lean you can be in SaaS if you must. Us bootstrappers know this. So much if a modern enterprise is bloat. You have how many DBAs? How many QA? Lol.

princevegeta89 4y ago

Can someone tldr on how the site makes money? I read the linked article quickly and still confused what the revenue model is. Thanks!

selcuka 4y ago
https://builtwith.com/plans https://builtwith.com/plans
- princevegeta89 4y ago
  Right. But how does the advertising part work and why is it so effective?
  - dangrossman 4y ago
    They don't sell advertising, they sell data. Primarily, leads for sales teams. If you want to start a new payment processing service, you subscribe to BuiltWith and they'll give you the contact info of the decision makers at the top 10,000 websites that use Stripe or whatever competitor you choose.
    - princevegeta89 4y ago
      Got it, my follow-up question is, how is it acceptable for customers to have their data to be freely sold as "leads" to random 3rd party companies? Is it in the BuiltWith terms or something?
      - dangrossman 4y ago
        They're crawling and packaging already public information. If you don't want anyone to know you're the CEO of StartupCorp and your email is ceo@startupcorp.co, don't put that on your LinkedIn and the footer of your website. The business value is in the convenience of the packaging, not in revealing secrets or something.