What A Startup

What A Startup

Home
Podcast
Notes
Chat
Startup Thoughts
Startup Strategies
Startup Stories
Connect
About

Startup Stories

From brainrot to $26K in 30 days
Yoni couldn’t stop doom-scrolling… so he built an app to fix it. It hit #1 on Product Hunt and made $26K in a month. No code, no team, no launch budget…
 • 
Gracie Van
Airtable just joined the "vibe coding" race — and my predictions for the future of AI-native startups
Airtable has relaunched itself as an AI-native app platform centered around the concept of “vibe coding,” and honestly, it might change how early-stage…
 • 
Gracie Van
Two 21-year-olds built an AI to “cheat on everything” and raised $15M from a16z in just 5 months.
The AI was so controversial it got its founders suspended from Columbia, but so compelling it’s now a $120M company backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
 • 
Gracie Van
1
A solo founder just sold his 6 months old AI startup for $80M
Maor bootstrapped Base44, his AI side project, to 300K+ users and $3.5M ARR in just 6 months, and it just got acquired by Wix for $80 million.
 • 
Gracie Van
1
A 22-year-old quit Y Combinator to go full time on bootstrapping his college hackathon project
Today, his product, Schej, attracts over 500,000 monthly visitors, all without spending a cent on ads.
 • 
Gracie Van
Bill Gates’s daughter just launched her own startup to tackle the $40B fashion problem with AI
Phoebe Gates, the youngest daughter of Bill Gates, teamed up with her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni to launch a Chrome extension called Phia AI — a…
 • 
Gracie Van
2
This AI startup hit $15M ARR in 1 year by solving a boring problem
Canva is often seen as the golden child of Australian tech. But now, Heidi Health is making headlines — not just for its product, but for growing even…
 • 
Gracie Van
She faced 100+ rejections, now her startup is a $49 billion design unicorn
So, how did a female young founder with no Silicon Valley connections build Canva — one of the most iconic startups of the decade with the valuation of…
 • 
Gracie Van
2
Lucy Guo just quietly became the youngest self-made female billionaire after leaving Scale AI to build her own startup Passes
At just 30 years old, Lucy Guo has officially surpassed Taylor Swift to become the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. But unlike many…
 • 
Gracie Van
From fashion buyer to tech founder—this lady is building the smartest AI-powered wardrobe!
This story of Cloud Closet is a masterclass in how to spot a behavior, build around it, and create something truly useful—especially when you’re not…
 • 
Gracie Van
1
The journey of a solo founder to a lean team to a $48M-backed creator platform
This story of Beehiiv - a newsletter platform - is a masterclass about how to outperform bigger players by focusing deeply on creators, and what…
 • 
Gracie Van
This $9 billion AI startup could be Google’s biggest threat yet
Perplexity AI is a real-time web search that provide direct, cited answers to user questions instead of just links. It’s designed to act like a…
 • 
Gracie Van
1
© 2025 What A Startup
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture