$3M From 36 Startups, a $10K MRR Solo AI Tool, and the Failed Founder Now Worth $2.2B

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Hey! It's Chris & Daniel again.

Welcome back from the Labor Day long holiday weekend! In this week's edition we have got another insane lineup of tools launching this week, with revenues that they are already making . 

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Startups FYI Spotlight

Here are the startups that made it to the top of the list in this week's edition.

🖼️ AI Image ($10,000 MRR): Every time a new image model comes out, you need another website, another subscription, and another login. This founder basically said, “Why not put everything in one place?” So they combined Nano Banana, GPT Image 2, Midjourney, and Flux into one workspace. So it became one product with multiple models. And it’s already doing about $10K MRR as a solo project.

🌙 Moonmap (Pre-revenue): This one is interesting. The founder spent 20 years managing hundreds of millions of dollars in e-commerce ad spend. He noticed something: ad platforms are basically grading their own homework. So he built Moonmap to watch Meta, Google, and Shopify the way an experienced media buyer would.

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🔍 IndexPlease ($70 as a side project): If you build websites or publish content, you probably know the frustration of creating a new page and then having to worry about getting Google to actually find and index it. This solo founder automated the process across Google, Bing, Yandex, and other search engines.

The pitch is simple: get your pages indexed within 48 hours. It’s only making around $70 right now, but I actually think this is one of the more interesting ones.

Why? Because it solves a very specific problem.

🛡️ Darkcheck ($200): A startup discovered that employee credentials had been leaked only after an attack happened, and it led them to a simple question: “What if we knew about these leaks before they became a problem?” So they built a real-time dark web monitoring tool aimed at startups that can't afford traditional enterprise cybersecurity products.

💳 Quidkey ($500): A co-founder almost lost a major client because of a failed card payment and ridiculous transaction fees. Instead of just complaining about it, they built something. A tool that lets businesses accept account-to-account payments without relying on cards.

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Startups FYI Roundup 

💼 His first startup failed. His second became a $2.2B company. 

Rujul Zaparde dropped out of college to build FlightCar, and it failed. But the interesting part wasn't the failure itself. It was what he learned from it. With his first company, he said he was too focused on investors, the press, and how the company looked from the outside.

The second time around, he approached things differently. He focused on building something customers actually needed. That company became Zip, a procurement software company that has raised $370M and reached a $2.2B valuation.

His YC interview goes into how he thinks about enterprise sales, pricing, and building a company.

(Tag @ChrisBulen to get your project featured in next week’s roundup)

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That’s it for this time! See you again next week.

— Chris (@ChrisBulen)

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