Enrich Layer is almost three years old, and we are marching towards 5 million (USD) in annual recurring revenue (ARR). In this post, I will tell you exactly how we got here.
Enrich Layer is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and we sell data enrichment services on people and businesses to other businesses looking to build data-driven applications. Our customers include brand-name VC firms, top banks in the US, and various pre-IPO startups. And we are happily bootstrapped and profitable :)
Did I also mention the cryptocurrency exchange I built and failed or the paywall-busting Reddit alternative I made and almost got criminally charged over?
I did not come from money.
A common theme in the startup world is that founders who do well come from money. However, I most definitely did not come from money. Not that I am doing well, but I wanted to share my background with you.
My mother works as an assistant at a humble hawker store, and my estranged father works as a delivery guy at Foodpanda. I am based in Singapore and grew up in subsidized government housing. I stopped taking money from my parents when I was 15.
However, I am very lucky. I was born in a first-world country and have had access to computers since I was a teen. I am also a reasonable programmer. I have been coding since I was 12, graduated from university when I was 26 with a computer science degree, and I built a few products with millions of (freemium) users and five digits in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) less than a year after.
I always knew I was going to build a company. I am on my fourth company. The others before had shut down.
With a significant appetite for risk, I invested 100+K SGD of whatever money I had saved in cryptocurrencies in 2017 and sold them for my first pot of gold last year (2021) at the peak of the crypto-mania.
I also sold a partial stake in my last venture, NuMoney, to the Indonesian partner.
On top of that, Enrich Layer is generating healthy profits.
Sure, I did not come from money. But today, I am financially de-risked from the outcome of Enrich Layer or any future endeavors. My point is that successful outcomes do not necessarily require old money or "pedigree."