0 to $10M ARR in 1 year with 2 person: Small Teams+AI are the Future
Aragon AI hit $10M ARR in 2 years with 9 people
With the booming of AI, some SaaS have also experienced rapid growth, there were 3 SaaS that hit the $200M ARR milestone last week.
Areas include HR and Payroll platforms like the $800M ARR Deel: Identity management and security solutions; Plus a crowd-sourced digital quality testing platform.
Employment Hero ARR hit $250M
Employment Hero is a comprehensive HR, payroll, and recruitment platform focused primarily on Australian businesses. Its all-in-one solution streamlines various employment processes effectively.
The platform combines tools for managing human resources, payroll processing, and offering employee benefits, catering especially to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
They have officially surpassed $250M in annual recurring revenue and are now profitable. Employment Hero achieved this by prioritizing customer value and leveraging technology to enhance service delivery.
Saviynt ARR at $200M
Saviynt is a pioneering company specializing in identity management and security solutions, providing cloud-first identity governance and access management solutions tailored for businesses.
Its solutions focus on ensuring that entities have the appropriate access to sensitive information and that identity management processes are both efficient and secure.
In 2024, Saviynt achieved remarkable growth in cloud identity security, with a Year-end 2024 ARR up over 35% year-over-year at $200M.
Applause ARR hit $200M
Applause is a leading company specializing in testing and digital quality assurance. It excels in providing real-world feedback on digital experiences through authentic user interactions. This enables brands to refine their digital assets effectively.
With services ranging from employee engagement software to ticket reservations for popular shows, Applause ensures high-quality standards and satisfaction across various sectors. Whether you're looking to enhance your digital presence or secure excellent seating for a live event, Applause offers reliable solutions.
They Achieved an impressive achievement by surpassing $200 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). The continuous expansion of their services and the increasing demand for high-quality digital experiences have propelled their growth.
Beyond SaaS, AI is still growing eating the market. A big trend is that Small Teams are doing a great job.
This image has been shared widely recently. Some details might not be exact (for example, ElevenLabs now has over 120 employees), but the main trend is clear: in the AI era, small teams are creating more value faster than ever.
We are familiar with all the products on this list except for Aragon.ai:
Aragon.ai, according to its website, is an AI portrait photo generator for professionals, using “AI photography” technology to make professional photography more accessible to the public. Its goal is to replace Nikon, Sony, and Canon, much like how digital photography replaced Kodak years ago.
Aragon AI hit $10M ARR in 2 years with 9 people
Many teams have worked in this field, creating successful products and making a lot of money. Surprisingly, Aragon.ai, with only a 9-person team, has reached $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just 2 years.
Unlike many products aimed at consumers, Aragon focuses on professional photo generation, mainly serving teams and businesses. It helps companies create professional portraits for employees, claiming to generate hundreds of photos in a few hours, saving time and money, while eliminating the need for physical shoots. It already has thousands of business clients.
The user base has grown to over 1.2 million, with more than 25 million portraits created. According to Wesley Tian, the founder’s LinkedIn profile, the company reached $1 million ARR in 4 months, $4 million ARR in just over a year, and $10 million ARR in almost 2 years. It has received investments from Neo, Sequoia, and the founders of Vanta, DocSend, and Decagon.
Aragon.ai, according to its website, is an AI tool that creates professional portrait photos using “AI photography” to make professional photography more accessible. Its goal is to replace big brands like Nikon, Sony, and Canon, similar to how digital photography replaced Kodak years ago.
Three weeks ago, Wesley Tian shared in a post that when he and his co-founder first launched Aragon.ai, no one believed in them because the images weren’t very realistic and the competition was strong. Now, they’re about to land a Fortune 500 company, creating over 500,000 corporate avatars for them. The portraits they create are so realistic that no one can tell they’re AI-generated.
Getting to this point wasn’t easy. Wesley Tian said their engineers worked late every night, and he and his co-founder worked from 9 AM to 10 PM almost every weekday.
He believes that Small teams + AI are the future. Everyone on their team spends hours each day working with AI. While humans still make the final decisions, AI helps them think and decide faster. I strongly agree with his view on application layer:
The application layers have always been where the majority of the value accrues and has more of a moat than infra.
Infra has always been the most competitive, have the least differentiation, get commoditized, and have the worst margins.
Alternatively you could vertically integrate or work on infra that is highly differentiable via tech or distribution like Nvidia.
0 to $10M ARR in 1 year with 2 person
Meanwhile, there’s another AI tool that has done even better, reaching $10 million ARR in just one year with a two-person team. What’s interesting is that almost 50% of its code was written using Cursor, making it an AI-created AI product.
