12 Wildly Successful Companies That Started as Blogs
Folks, as an entrepreneur and investor, I’m always on the lookout for new and creative ways for scrappy founders to turn their ideas into thriving businesses.
Many of today’s most admired companies started from humble beginnings—including as blogs!
Blogging enables regular people to share their passions, thoughts, and experiences authentically. And some have leveraged that platform and audience to build impressive companies.
Let’s check out 12 super successful corporations that originated from bloggers just doing their thing. Their stories are real journeys that can inspire any founder dreaming big today!
1. The Huffington Post
Way back when blogs were still a new idea, Arianna Huffington started sharing her takes on politics and current events online. Readers loved her fresh voice and analysis.
Within a few years, she turned her popular site into The Huffington Post—a leading news outlet challenging old-school journalism. 16 years later, the site drew massive audiences, got acquired for $315 million, and even won its first Pulitzer Prize.
2. Food52
Back in 2009, longtime friends Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs noticed a lack of community for food lovers looking to dish about recipes, cooking tips, and kitchen questions.
They launched Food52 to create that space themselves. 10+ million monthly views later, their humble cooking blog has expanded into its major cooking site, along with a vibrant e-commerce marketplace for kitchen tools.
3. TreeHut
Way up in frigid Canada, husband and wife duo Allen and Linda were struggling to support their family. Inspired after reading some blogs, they decided to launch their own covering their experiments in the soap business.
As TreeHut won fans across Pinterest and other social channels for their DIY bath products, they slowly turned their home project into a 7-figure brand on Amazon and other retailers.
4. Smart Passive Income
Pat Flynn got laid off in 2008 and needed to hustle to pay his mortgage. While studying for architecture exams, he made a blog explaining the exam prep process.
Unexpectedly, the tutorial site Smart Passive Income took off as people connected with Pat’s journey. He quickly grew his fan base by sharing lessons learned while testing various online businesses. Today SPI is a mini media empire for entrepreneurs!
5. Apartment Therapy
Back in 2004, brothers Maxwell and Oliver Ryan enjoyed decorating their New York City rental on the cheap through thrifting and DIY projects. They decided to write Apartment Therapy to share home design secrets and inspiration with other city renters.
Soon scores of readers were eating up their decoration ideas and small space solutions. The blog’s become a top lifestyle site and e-commerce shop filling houses across America!
6. Dollar Shave Club
Founder Michael Dubin was just looking to solve an annoying personal problem in 2011—the hassle of buying razor blades. He created a simple blog outlining his new subscription service mailing cheap blades to doorsteps.
That’s it! But the concept and Dubin’s viral launch video for Dollar Shave Club immediately attracted tens of thousands of members. Within a few years, Unilever acquired the company for $1 billion. Talk about a close shave!
7. Ors Olive Oil Soap
Sisters Sabrina and Tara are two nurses from South Carolina. Based on their first-hand experience with skin conditions, they decided to start a blog reviewing natural skin care products and sharing related tips.
As popularity grew for the Ors blog and handmade olive oil soaps featured on it, the duo turned their passion into a full-fledged bath and body care brand. They now sell across 500 stores nationwide!
8. Business Insider
Back in 2007, Henry Blodget was banned from the finance industry. But the former Wall Street analyst still wanted to discuss current business events, so he launched a little site called Business Insider.
Combining scoops, analysis, and commentary proved a winning formula. Today BI is one of the biggest business and tech news destinations with over 100 million monthly visitors and a recent $300 million acquisition by Axel Springer.
9. Birchbox
Harvard Business School students Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna struggled to pick beauty products without testing first. Their 2010 blog documented trials of makeup samples they sent to themselves monthly.
The feedback was so positive that the duo quickly turned Birchbox into a full-fledged subscription service for customized beauty sample boxes. 10 years later, over a million monthly subscribers enjoy discovering new products thanks to an idea hatched from a humble blog!
10. Groupon
In 2006, Andrew Mason launched a blog called The Point to rally groups of people around collective action. Though it fizzled out, a side project on the blog caught steam—activating groups for local deals and coupon codes.
Mason pivoted his efforts to the crowd-powered discounts idea called Groupon. Daily deals took off like wildfire, with Groupon selling millions of coupons in cities across the US and then internationally shortly after. Despite rocky times since, Groupon became an iconic Chicago startup story, going public at a $12.7 billion valuation just 5 years later!
11. Zerodha
Former Reliance executive Nithin Kamath had a personal blog where he wrote about mistakes and lessons learned from his trading years. Readers found his candid financial learnings refreshing.
In 2010, many kept asking why there weren’t more discount brokerages in India. Sensing an opportunity, Nithin stopped blogging and launched Zerodha to disrupt status quo financial institutions. Today over 5 million clients make Zerodha India’s largest retail stock brokerage valued at over $2 billion!
12. Moz
Back in 2004, Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig were struggling consultants who decided to blog about their SEO and inbound marketing experiments under the name SEOMoz.
As their tactical tips built an audience, they transformed the blog into the software company Moz to empower more businesses to improve their visibility. Today over 100,000 brands use Moz’s tools, which have expanded far beyond Rand’s early blogging days about keyword targeting!
From Blog Readers to Book Buyers
Beyond commercial startups, blogs also serve as launching pads for writers looking to pen the next big book series.
Novelist Hugh Howey started writing science fiction as an indie ebook in 2011. Rather than big publishers, he published installments on his own blog where a small but passionate group of readers became hooked on his dystopian series Wool.
The engagement and feedback allowed Howey to refine the chapters until suddenly print and ebook versions of Wool started topping the bestseller charts on Amazon. Within months he signed major publishing deals and Ridley Scott soon even optioned film rights as interest exploded. Not bad for some serials on a blog!
The lesson – while reaching every future customer at once through print or stores is hard for any first-time author, bloggers can easily connect with niche audiences passionate about their themes and style, and incrementally turn them into evangelists for their future books!
Key Takeaways: From Blog to Booming Biz
These stories reveal some common threads amongst blockbuster companies spawned from blogs:
- Solve real needs – Blogs focused on addressing peoples’ concrete problems or dissatisfactions often translate well into lucrative product or service offerings once scaled.
- Establish authentic community – Building an engaged audience around shared interests is invaluable no matter what. Readers provide feedback to improve offerings and often become first-paying customers.
- Learn iteratively – Blogs enable rapidly testing concepts and tweaking based on input before huge investment. Fail fast, learn faster!
- Leverage original perspectives and voices – Sharing fresh yet accessible commentary allows for attracting loyal, diverse crowds.
