Solopreneur case studies — 2/11
Solopreneur and side-business cases
25–48 of 256
PlentyOfFish: Sold for $575M in All Cash with Zero VC and 100% Ownership — 12 Years of the Man Who Coded a Dating Site Alone
Canadian dating site PlentyOfFish was sold to Match Group in 2015 for $575M in all cash. Founder Markus Frind ran it for 12 years with zero VC funding and 100% ownership. By his own account, in 2008 the site netted about $10M a year while he worked 10 hours a week. It had 75 employees at the time of sale.
Gadgeneko: Six Years, 356 Posts, 70K Monthly Pageviews and ¥60,000 a Month — Revenue Doubled After Surviving a Core Update and a Domain Change
The operator of Japanese gadget review blog Gadgeneko published a six-year report: 356 posts, about 70,000 monthly pageviews, roughly ¥60,000 a month (peaking near ¥130,000), with revenue about double the previous year. Annual check-ins record the October 2023 core update hit, the August 2024 domain change, and the recovery driven by Google Discover.
55% margins, a ¥35.3M price: the supplement subscription nobody bought at ¥80M
A supplement subscription EC business asked roughly ¥80M, found no buyer, and closed at ¥35.3M (about ¥40M including the 10% brokerage fee). Monthly operating profit was about ¥1.3M on a 55% margin, repeat rate 90%, zero complaints in five years. Of roughly ten deals the buyer approached, one survived.
Piroriro: Six Years of Whisky Blogging, ¥2,209,289 Total — a Full Disclosure of the Downhill from ¥73,421 to ¥7,975 a Month
The operator of whisky blog Piroriro published all six years of earnings: ¥2,209,289 in total (13,818 approved conversions), all via a single affiliate network. From a 2021 peak of ¥668,050 a year, income fell to ¥192,801 in 2024; best month ¥73,421, worst month ¥7,975. A rare record of the decline, not the climb.
Bankaholic: A 2-Year-Old One-Man Finance Blog Bankrate Bought for Up to $15M
In 2008, US finance blog Bankaholic sold to Bankrate for $12.4M upfront plus an earnout of up to $2.5M — up to $15M total. Owner Johns Wu was the sole owner and sole worker of a roughly two-year-old WordPress blog. The buyer's CEO cited organic search rankings for deposit and credit card keywords as the reason.
Keshilog: ¥1.5M a Month in the Telework Boom, Then a Deliberate ¥9.9M Landing — Three Years of a PC-Desk-Gear Blog
Keshilog, a Japanese blog specializing in PC desk peripherals, hit roughly ¥1.5 million a month in the spring-2020 telework boom — then deliberately slowed down to land under Japan's ¥10 million consumption-tax threshold. A three-year report that discloses the surge, the throttling, and the slump that followed.
Landlord Larry: 40 Rentals at 24, a $480 Payment and $1,400 Rent
Lawrence Guerguis, known online as Landlord Larry, grew to 40 single-family rentals in the American Midwest in three years. He has not published total rent or total cash flow. What is published is unit by unit: a property with a payment in the $480 range collected about $1,400 in Section 8 rent.
Podscan: $4,000 in the Red Every Month, Two Months After Declaring Profitability — Arvid Kahl's Second Act Is a Fight With GPU Bills
Podscan, the current venture of FeedbackPanda seller Arvid Kahl, transcribes 50,000 podcast episodes a day. One month in: $300 MRR against $2,000 in costs. Profitable after one year — then a big-customer churn flipped it to $6,000 MRR against $10,000 in expenses. He narrates the whole ride, weekly and in public.
Directify: $85,000 Buyout, MRR Fell 20% in Handover, $50K ARR Seven Months Later
Directify, a no-code directory-site builder, was sold to an individual buyer for $85,000 in February 2026 while doing $2,000 MRR. Keeping his nine-to-five, the buyer brought revenue back from the $1,600 it sank to during handover and reached $50K ARR in seven months. As of the six-month mark, roughly $70,000 of the purchase price was still unrecovered.
Kyoichi Anzai: Paid note Sales From ¥10,000/Month in Year One to ¥1M/Month in Year Three — the "Tenshoku Devil" Curve
Kyoichi Anzai, who publishes career-change know-how as "Tenshoku Devil," disclosed his note sales curve: ¥10,000/month in year one from his first paid article, ¥100,000/month in year two from a long-form paid article, past ¥1M/month in year three after launching a subscription magazine, then ¥1–2M every month. His book has sold over 30,000 copies.
Ruki: Selling a Personal Blog for ¥2.8M — a Seller's Full Walkthrough of a Brokered Site M&A in Japan
Most personal-blog sales in Japan never disclose price or process. In 2023, blogger Ruki sold her blog for ¥2.8 million through the brokerage Saitoma and published the entire journey: the appraisal form, interviews with three buyer candidates, the price negotiation, and the payout arriving the day after final inspection.
Typebot: Stuck at $100 MRR for 8 Months, Then Open Source and a Brazilian Tailwind Took the Solo SaaS to $623K a Year
Typebot, a chatbot builder run solo by French developer Baptiste Arnaud, made just $100 MRR in its first 8 months. A lifetime deal brought in $23K, an open-source rebuild reset the trajectory, and MRR went from $2.7K (Dec 2022) to $31K (Oct 2023). Estimated 2024 revenue: $623.1K.
Genji Reincarnation: 32 copies in month one, and a payout of zero
Usagijo spent about three years building the visual novel Genji Reincarnation and sold 32 copies on Steam in its first month, one of them refunded. Revenue never reached Steam's $100 payout threshold. Ten press pitches, 25,200 ad impressions and 24 activated review keys are all disclosed tactic by tactic.
Kokou no Tabibito: A Multi-Topic Blog Hitting 500K Monthly PV and ¥300,000/Month in About a Year
Yonesuke, who runs the fishing, outdoors and travel blog "Kokou no Tabibito," disclosed reaching 500,000 monthly pageviews and ¥300,000/month about one year after launch — roughly ¥0.6 per PV. His thesis: a general-interest blog can compete with niche blogs by exhaustively covering each category.
Pinboard: 11 years of revenue in one table, a $259K peak and three straight years of decline
Maciej Ceglowski publishes Pinboard revenue and active users in the same table every year. Revenue peaked at $259K in 2017 and stood at $212K in 2020, while active users fell from 29,000 to 19,000. Running the site costs about $17K a year, with zero funding and zero employees.
Take Me to Koshien: ¥12.9M in 11 months, and the ¥100 ticket that multiplied IAP revenue by ten
Yu Furuta, a solo developer in Nagoya, shipped a high school baseball manager sim in November 2017. By the end of September 2018 it had earned ¥12.9M in total, peaking at ¥2.57M in August. With 48,000 downloads and about 3,000 DAU, 76% of revenue came from in-app purchases. The turn came from a ¥100 draft ticket.
Gadgemaga: 594,562 Pageviews, ¥3,784,734 in a Month — The Ledger a Former Civil Servant Published Down to the Last Yen
In November 2020, Japanese gadget blog Gadgemaga logged 594,562 pageviews and ¥3,784,734 in revenue; its peak month was ¥5.08M in February 2021. The monthly reports, published to the yen, show how YouTube lifted the blog — and how fast it decayed.
Instatus: $48K MRR with Every Metric Public, After Dropping "Sup" and Repricing Upmarket
The first version, "Sup," never got a single paying customer. Founder Ali Salah threw away the name and the brand, repositioned toward larger companies, and raised prices. $5K MRR in February 2022; per the public metrics page, most recently $48,017 MRR and 1,248 paying customers. A solo status-page SaaS growing with its numbers in the open.
NinjaPear: After LinkedIn Sued His $10M ARR Company, the Founder Rebuilt in Two Weeks and Reached $15,000 a Month in Six Months
Steven Goh grew Proxycurl, a LinkedIn scraping API, to about $10M ARR before LinkedIn sued in January 2025. He settled and sold to a competitor. NinjaPear, a B2B data API he rebuilt in two weeks with Claude Code, reached 1,036 users and $66K ARR in 54 days, then $15,000 a month within six months.
Hitsuji: Quit With No Website, Savings Down to ¥20,000, Then ¥1.7M a Month in Year One
In April 2016 he quit his job without even owning a website. By June, accrued commissions were still zero and his savings fell from 700,000 yen to an eventual low of 20,000 yen. Working 14-16 hours a day, he wrote 120 articles, hit 200,000 yen a month in September, 1 million yen in January 2017, and over 1.7 million yen in March — Hitsuji's self-published record of year one.
Closet Tools: A Tool That Just Automates Poshmark Sharing, Making $30-40K a Month — a Solo SaaS Built in the 5 AM Hours at a Single $30 Price
It started as a 30-line script to help his wife sell on Poshmark. After three years of self-teaching from 5 to 7 AM, Jordan O'Connor launched Closet Tools in February 2018, reached $38K/month and 1,500 customers by late 2020, and was still in the $30-40K MRR range in 2023. The price has stayed at $30/month, and acquisition runs almost entirely on SEO.
Laugh-Raku: ¥1.91M a Month from 256K Pageviews — the ¥7.5-per-View Math Behind a 12-Year Solo Blogger
Taku Suzuki started blogging in January 2013 and went independent the following year. His about page states ¥1.91M a month from 256,000 pageviews and a peak month of ¥6M. We look at the unusually high revenue per pageview — roughly ¥7.5 — and at how a personal blog stays alive for 12 years.
Trivipedia: 560 Articles Mass-Produced With Claude Code in 3 Months for ¥12,948 a Month. Reading an AI-Automated Media Site by Its Own Reports
A trivia blog opened in 2017 and dormant for seven years relaunched as Trivipedia in June 2026. A Claude Code pipeline published 90 articles in June, 174 in July and 286 in August. August brought 54,786 pageviews, ¥11,255 in AdSense and ¥1,693 in note sales. Pageviews doubled monthly while search CTR fell from 4.22% to 2.80%.
Fukugyo Compass: Under ¥10K/Month for 8 Months, Then ¥4.84M in Month 25 — Inside Kunitomi's 200-Hour-a-Month Side-Hustle Blog
Fukugyo Compass, the side-hustle blog run by Kunitomi — a salaried worker who moved from a trust bank to a web marketing firm — earned under ¥10K/month for its first 8 months, hit ¥4.84M in month 25, and peaked at ¥12M/month. We chart the monthly progression and the 200 hours per month behind it from two interviews.