Ultra Light Startups

Myopenbar.com is a website that lists where drinks are free, according to this New York Times article.  It was founded in 2005 by two friends and had over 30,000 subscribers in six cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and Honolulu) by the end of 2008.  The site has 30 employes and is [...]

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HotOrNot is a photo rating website founded in 2000 by two Berkley undergrads.  It was acquired by Avid Life Media in February 2008 for a reported $20 million.
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PlentyOfFish is a free internet dating site.  The New York Times says the owner, Marcus Frind, works 10 hours per week and earns over $10 million per year on the site.  The Wall Street Journal gives similar numbers and adds that the site is now the busiest dating site in the U.S.
Headquarters: Vancouver, CA
Platform: ASP.NET
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Smule is a California based company, founded in 2008 that makes iPhone applications.  Its biggest hit is called Ocarina, a virtual musical wind instrument (video).  As of December 2008 the application has been downloaded 400,000 times and Smule is set to become a $1 million revenue company in its first year.  This article in Newsweek [...]

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Ticketstumbler is a Boston-based two-person startup that functions as “a secondary ticket market search engine and comparison website. We search thousands of ticket listings from hundreds of brokers and ticket exchanges across the internet and present the information in an easy to view and use format. TicketStumbler allows simple ticket comparison, enabling you to find [...]

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This NY Times article describes the small but significant number of independent content producers on YouTube who make significant money.  Apparently 6-figure annual incomes are not uncommon with the right content, audience, and advertising mix.  The same NY Times article is reviewed by Denis Hancock in this article on the Wikinomics blog.

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This TechCrunch article talks about CabEasy, a website which facilitates strangers sharing taxi cab fares.  The 1-man startup was built by New York based entrepreneur, Laurent Kretz.
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Someecards.com, is an e-card website with a sarcastic or provocative message.  According to the NYTimes it sends out more than 500,000 cards each month (as of October 2008) and it has been profitable as of September 2007. Both Time and PC Magazine named it among their top web sites of 2008.
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hiphopmusicdotcom.com gets 45.8K users per month, according to Quantcast.  The about us information on this site is somewhat less than revealing about who is behind the project.  But word has it that it is largely run by a single individual who has been successful in monetizing the site and making a significant living off of [...]

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Brownstoner.com is a blog about New York real estate.  This article in the New York Observer describes its founding by Jonathan Butler, a native New Yorker, and his decision to quit his investment banking job to pursue Brownstoner as an entrepreneurial venture.

Platform: Movable Type
Size: One person
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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