Small Start
Real revenue and exit numbers from businesses that started small.
Real numbers from small businesses, solo founders and micro-exits in Japan and beyond
JPY amounts are approximate conversions at ¥150/USD.
¥4.61M a Year, 5 Years After Learning to Code: Full P&L of an Indie Education App
An education web/mobile app that began as a homemade tool to ease cram-school work grew from ¥120K in FY2023 to ¥1.47M in FY2024 to ¥4.61M in revenue (¥3.91M profit) in FY2025. The developer discloses what drove each year's growth. He went fully independent in March 2025.
¥10M+ Peak Months and '80% of Articles Tanked': Japan's Top Bloggers' Real Numbers
Hitode (peak of over ¥10M/month across all his sites), Kiguchi (¥500M cumulative — but Google updates swung his annual income from ¥30M to ¥100M and back to ¥30M), and Tsuzuki (¥1M/month within a year). A three-way conversation between top bloggers that lays out, in numbers, both the ceiling and the fragility of blog income.
Peing: Built in 6 Hours, 200M Monthly Pageviews in Weeks, Sold in a Month
In November 2017, 26-year-old developer Seseri cloned an anonymous-Q&A concept for Japanese Twitter in six hours. Five days later it hit 400K daily pageviews; within a month it was pacing 200M monthly PV — and was sold to Jiraffe Inc. (price undisclosed).
Tsuzuki Blog: ¥42K/Month at 100 Posts, ¥1M/Month at One Year
An SEO marketer's side-project blog published its real numbers: after 5 months and 100 articles, revenue was just ¥42K/month concentrated in 2-3 posts. Roughly one year in, it crossed ¥1M/month — then a Google update dropped his top posts from #1 to #5, cutting traffic to near zero.
$2M ARR, Zero Marketing, Anonymous Solo Founder: Carrd's 'Fewer Features' Strategy
Carrd, the one-page-only site builder, is run single-handedly by an anonymous developer known as AJ. It hit $1M ARR five years after launch and later $2M ARR, with 3.3 million sites and 2.2 million users to date. Marketing spend was zero — growth came from the audience AJ had built with the free-template site html5up.
MENTA: His 30th Side Project Hit ¥1.4M Monthly Revenue, Then Sold to Lancers
Shingo Irie built 30 products over 12 years. The 30th — mentorship marketplace MENTA — reached ¥9M monthly GMV and ¥1.4M revenue after pivoting to programming-only, and was acquired by Lancers via share transfer in October 2020.
Selling a Japanese Affiliate Site for ¥950K in 21 Days — the Full Playbook
A telecom-niche affiliate site sold on Japan's Rakko M&A marketplace: listed at ¥1M, closed at ¥950K in 21 days, at roughly 20 months of monthly profit. 12 inquiries, 3 real negotiations, zero seller fees — with the preparation checklist made public.
PhotoAI: $132K/Month, Zero Employees, 37,000 Commits a Year — Levels' One-Man Operation, Dissected
Pieter Levels' AI photo generator PhotoAI makes $132K/month; his whole portfolio exceeds $228K/month with zero employees. 37,000 commits a year, 2-second deploys, GPT-4 moderation — and a stated hit rate of '4 out of 70+ projects.'
Zenn: A Solo-Built Dev Publishing Platform, Acquired 4.5 Months After Launch
Nine days after launching Zenn, indie developer catnose publicly posted 'Zenn needs help.' Over 20 companies responded, and 4.5 months after launch the service was acquired by Classmethod — chosen not for the highest offer, but for understanding the product.
Two Failures → $5M ARR → an 8-Figure All-Cash Exit: ScrapingBee's Textbook Run
French duo Pierre de Wulf and Kevin Sahin failed twice, then built web-scraping API ScrapingBee: $1K MRR in month one, $100K ARR in 14 months, $5M ARR — and an 8-figure all-cash sale to Oxylabs in 2025. The full arc, published.
Month One Paid ¥400/Hour: A Food Truck's Full 4-Month P&L, Then COVID Stopped Everything
Real month-by-month data from a food truck's first 4 months. Month one: 8 days of vending, ¥64K in sales, ¥28K in profit (¥400/hour by the owner's own math). By month four, sales had improved to ¥384K with ¥334K in profit. Best single day: ¥50K. Then, in month five, COVID wiped out every vending spot — a rare public record capturing both the ramp-up and the fragility.
