2/ BuiltWith• It helps you find what technologies and services a website uses• Founded by Gary Brewer• It generates $14M in revenue per year
- No location available
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4/ Photopea• It's a free photo and graphics editor• Made by Ivan Kutskir• It generates 10M visits per month and ~$1.5M in revenue per year• People spend 1.5 million hours a month using Photopea
- No location available
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5/ Digital Inspiration• It builds google plugins for docs, sheets, slides, and more• Founded by Amit Agarwal• It gets 5M visits per month and earns $10M in revenue per year• 40M+ have downloaded the plugins
- No location available
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10/ Carrd• It's a one-page website builder• Founded by AJ• It generates $1M+ ARR• 4M+ sites have been built on Carrd
- No location available
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So he identified an unserved customer base, then he built Stardew Valley S-L-O-W-L-Y. This wasn't an overnight success for him. He couldn't get a job out of college, so started developing the game in 2011 as a way to learn skills to get into the industry. The game didn't release until Q1 of 2016. Along the way, he kept a online community updated about the development which slowly grew through word of mouth. He refused to do a early release or presale, so he was effectively unpaid that entire time working as much as 10 hours a day on the game.He sold over 400,000 copies within 2 weeks, and over 2 million within 2 months. Within 18 months 3.5 million copies. The latest numbers I could see showed over 20 million copies sold. The game launched at $15, and as far as I know has stayed at that price. The mobile version is the only one that is cheaper at $5. Each of the platforms take around a 30% cut. The $300M+ sounds about right.The takeaways that I see is that he took advantage of a difficult situation (couldn't find a job), identified a underserved market, created something /excellent/, refused to commercialize until it was able to deliver real value, while validating the idea every step along the way. He used a base level of skills (computer science degree), then learned the rest of his skills to make the product (art, music, marketing, etc).
- No location available
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The crazy thing about the Stardew Valley story to me is that at no point did he ever stop and say "oh I don't know how to do that. I need to get someone else to do it for me." He is not an artist. He taught himself how to do the art. He is not a musician. He taught himself how to do the music. And not only that, the music and the art are really fucking good. He didn't half-ass it. When presented with a challenge he just said "welp, I need to teach myself how to make music now." There are a million easier ways to approach that problem other than "I will do it all myself," but the game is in my opinion more special specifically because he didn't choose any of them.
- No location available
-

2/ BuiltWith• It helps you find what technologies and services a website uses• Founded by Gary Brewer• It generates $14M in revenue per year
- No location available
-

4/ Photopea• It's a free photo and graphics editor• Made by Ivan Kutskir• It generates 10M visits per month and ~$1.5M in revenue per year• People spend 1.5 million hours a month using Photopea
- No location available
-

5/ Digital Inspiration• It builds google plugins for docs, sheets, slides, and more• Founded by Amit Agarwal• It gets 5M visits per month and earns $10M in revenue per year• 40M+ have downloaded the plugins
- No location available
-

10/ Carrd• It's a one-page website builder• Founded by AJ• It generates $1M+ ARR• 4M+ sites have been built on Carrd
- No location available
-

So he identified an unserved customer base, then he built Stardew Valley S-L-O-W-L-Y. This wasn't an overnight success for him. He couldn't get a job out of college, so started developing the game in 2011 as a way to learn skills to get into the industry. The game didn't release until Q1 of 2016. Along the way, he kept a online community updated about the development which slowly grew through word of mouth. He refused to do a early release or presale, so he was effectively unpaid that entire time working as much as 10 hours a day on the game.He sold over 400,000 copies within 2 weeks, and over 2 million within 2 months. Within 18 months 3.5 million copies. The latest numbers I could see showed over 20 million copies sold. The game launched at $15, and as far as I know has stayed at that price. The mobile version is the only one that is cheaper at $5. Each of the platforms take around a 30% cut. The $300M+ sounds about right.The takeaways that I see is that he took advantage of a difficult situation (couldn't find a job), identified a underserved market, created something /excellent/, refused to commercialize until it was able to deliver real value, while validating the idea every step along the way. He used a base level of skills (computer science degree), then learned the rest of his skills to make the product (art, music, marketing, etc).
- No location available
-

The crazy thing about the Stardew Valley story to me is that at no point did he ever stop and say "oh I don't know how to do that. I need to get someone else to do it for me." He is not an artist. He taught himself how to do the art. He is not a musician. He taught himself how to do the music. And not only that, the music and the art are really fucking good. He didn't half-ass it. When presented with a challenge he just said "welp, I need to teach myself how to make music now." There are a million easier ways to approach that problem other than "I will do it all myself," but the game is in my opinion more special specifically because he didn't choose any of them.
- No location available
-