Starter Story

Analyst Breakdown

• Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut: Sold for $12B in 2021 after 20 bootstrapped years.
• Atlassian: Grew to $3B acquisition without early VC.
• ConvertKit’s Nathan Barry: $30M ARR email platform for creators.

Analyst Breakdown

• Users: 500 million (TikTok took 2 years to hit 100 million).
• Revenue: $2.5 billion annualized (zero marketing spend).
• Valuation: $50 billion after a secondary share sale.

Analyst Breakdown

• In the cutthroat world of startups, success stories often gloss over the gut-wrenching failures that pave the way
• Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva—the design powerhouse now valued at over $26 billion—knows this better than most
• From a scrappy university side hustle in Perth, Australia, to becoming Australia’s youngest female billionaire at age 32, her path to a $1 billion valuation (achieved in 2019) was littered with setbacks

Analyst Breakdown

• Freemium model hooked 10K users in year one.
• Viral referrals: 30% user growth MoM.
• Partnerships: Integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce—explosive distribution.