21. Live AmA, AJ (Carrd.co): Accidentally bootstrapped Carrd to $1M ARR, 3m sites, and a funding round

The Usual SaaS-pects with Ch Daniel

AJ"s Bio, from their AmA

Hi folks! I'm AJ, the guy behind random projects like HTML5 UP, Pixelarity, and for the last few years Carrd, a platform for creating one-page sites for pretty much anything (from personal profiles to landing pages to ... well, a whole bunch of use cases I never anticipated ;)

Carrd began life back in 2015 as an experiment to see if I could tackle a big project (like a site builder) entirely on my own using skills I'd picked up from years of doing smaller projects. After months of work it finally launched on both Twitter and Product Hunt in early 2016 and despite having zero expectations it ... kind of blew up. Since then Carrd has grown into a platform that hosts over 3.3M sites (built by some 2.2M users), generates over $1M ARR, has become a popular tool in the no-code movement, and has even become something of a phenomenon among various subcultures. Despite all this, Carrd has remained lean (just me on product/dev and my now-cofounder Doni on operations/biz), profitable, and continues to grow organically without any paid marketing or advertising. We did, however, close on a small funding round earlier this year (which might sound weird given that we're profitable but we had our reasons -- happy to elaborate though).

Anyway, ask me anything!

PS: Use code RSAAS21 (or go to try.carrd.co/rsaas21) for 30% off your next Carrd Pro Upgrade or renewal

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Links

Reddit SaaS: https://www.reddit.com/r/saas

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/chddaniel

My product: https://Simple.ink/notion-website-builder