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
498 cases published, every figure linked to its source. JPY amounts are approximate conversions at ¥150/USD.
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Just a Girl and Her Blog: $2,446 to a $51,803 Peak Month, With Ads Only 8% of Income, Over 34 Published Reports
Home-organization blog Just a Girl and Her Blog published 34 monthly income reports, from $2,446 in February 2014 to a $51,803 peak in October 2016. The October 2015 breakdown shows $17,639 in income with $9,144 from their own eBooks and just $1,365 from ads. After December 2016 ($41,700), the reports stopped without explanation.
Key Values: A One-Person Job Board Doing ~$80K a Quarter, $25K in Its Best Week, on a Few Hundred Dollars of Monthly Costs
Key Values, an engineering job board, is run by founder Lynne Tye with zero employees. She booked about $80K in Q4 2018 and $25K in her best week, on a $300K–$350K annual run rate with monthly expenses of a few hundred dollars. Only companies pay, via a flat annual listing fee, while developers browse free.
Fat Stacks: $1,117,301 Revenue, $130,659 Expenses in 2021 From Unnamed Niche Sites Running on Display Ads
Jon Dykstra's niche-site portfolio booked $1,117,301 in revenue against $130,659 in expenses in 2021, almost all of it from Mediavine display ads, and held $93,676 in April 2023. He never names the sites: totals are public, coordinates stay behind his paid course, a half-transparency he has kept for over a decade.
EOFire: 136 Straight Monthly Income Reports End at $131,587 Revenue, 91% Margin, $27.9M Lifetime
The daily podcast Entrepreneurs On Fire published its finances every month for 136 months from September 2013. The final report, December 2024, showed $131,587 in revenue, $12,156 in expenses, and $119,431 in net profit (a 91% margin). Lifetime gross revenue reached $27,893,207 before the disclosure stopped.
Thankbox: £150 to £12,000 a Month in 11 Months Selling $5.99 Online Group Cards
Thankbox, an online group greeting card service, grew from £150 in monthly revenue in October 2020 to £12,000 eleven months later. With a ~$1,000 starting budget and $15/day in ads, growth ran on product-embedded virality: dozens of colleagues sign each card, and one of them becomes the next buyer.
Boot.dev: From $500 Months to $110K Monthly Revenue in 15 Months, on a Customer LTV of Just $100-300
Boot.dev, the backend-only programming course platform, spent all of 2021 stalled around $500 a month, then took off after a three-part pivot: radical specialization, gamification, and founder-run marketing. From $6K MRR in August 2022 it reached $110K monthly revenue by October 2023 and $1.3M in 2024, all while customer LTV sits at just $100-300.
Columns
Columns →In the 1960s Nintendo ran taxis and sold instant rice, then pulled out by 1969. Neither appears in its official history
Nintendo's official history runs from hanafuda cards in 1889 to the Family Computer in 1983. Neither a taxi company nor the instant food it sold with Omi Kenshi appears in it. According to a compilation citing securities reports and Nikkei Business, Nintendo diversified outside its core business in the 1960s, failed across the board and withdrew by 1969. One article says it was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1964.
ColumnsRakuten Ichiba opened with 13 stores. Six people traveling the country signed up only about 5 a month
Rakuten's official timeline says Rakuten Ichiba opened in May 1997 with six employees, one server and 13 stores. Hiroshi Mikitani recalled in his own essay that even with six staff visiting shops across Japan, they won only about five stores a month. A compilation says the store fee was a fixed ¥50,000 a month with six months paid in advance. In December 1998, a year and seven months later, there were about 320 stores.
ColumnsIn 1982, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son was diagnosed with chronic hepatitis. Before he recovered, the company hired an outside president
Nihon SoftBank started in September 1981 with capital of ¥10 million. Son was diagnosed with chronic hepatitis in 1982 and was in recovery until 1984. In April 1983, during that period, an outside executive who was neither family nor shareholder took the president's seat, and sales grew from ¥2.3 billion in the second fiscal year to ¥11.5 billion in the year to December 1985. The years when the founder was away from the company remain in filings and reference books.
ColumnsNidec began with 4 employees in a prefab hut. The hut now sits on the ground floor of its headquarters, beside the life insurance policy pledged for a loan
Nidec's official history says the company, then Nihon Densan, began in July 1973 with four employees and a prefab hut. A compilation says domestic makers refused to buy and 95% of early sales were exports. The founding hut has been moved into the ground floor of the headquarters, where the life insurance certificate pledged as loan collateral is on display. In 2026, a third-party committee concluded that the founder "bears the most blame" for accounting irregularities.