As an investor and entrepreneur, I’m always looking for innovative ways for inexperienced founders to turn their ideas into successful businesses. Many of today’s most admired companies started from humble beginnings—including as blogs!
Regular people can authentically share their interests, ideas, and experiences through blogging. 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
Arianna Huffington started blogging about her views on politics and current events when blogs were still a new concept. 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
Longtime friends Merrill Stubbs and Amanda Hesser noticed in 2009 that there wasn’t a community for foodies who wanted to talk about recipes, cooking advice, 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
Allen and Linda, a husband and wife team, were struggling to provide for their family high up in the icy Canada. They decided to start their own blog to document their soap business experiments after reading other blogs. 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. Profitable Passive Income In 2008
Pat Flynn was laid off and had to hustle to pay his mortgage. While studying for architecture exams, he made a blog explaining the exam prep process.
As people connected with Pat’s journey, the tutorial website Smart Passive Income unexpectedly gained popularity. 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, a large number of readers were devouring their decorating concepts and solutions for small spaces. 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 all! However, the Dollar Shave Club concept and Dubin’s viral launch video attracted tens of thousands of members right away. Unilever bought the company for $1 billion within a few years. Talk about shaving close!
7. Olive Oil Bar Soap
Two nurses from South Carolina are sisters Sabrina and Tara. 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 in 500 stores across the country!
8. Inside Business 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.
It worked by combining scoops, analysis, and commentary. 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
Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna, both students at Harvard Business School, had difficulty selecting beauty products without first testing them. Their 2010 blog documented trials of makeup samples they sent to themselves monthly.
Over a million monthly subscribers enjoy discovering new products thanks to an idea that was hatched from a humble blog! The feedback was so positive that the duo quickly turned Birchbox into a full-fledged subscription service for customized beauty sample boxes.
10. Groupon
Andrew Mason started a blog called The Point in 2006 to get groups of people to support collective action. Activating groups for local deals and coupon codes, a side project on the blog, gained momentum even though it eventually failed. 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
Nithin Kamath, a former executive at Reliance, had a personal blog where he wrote about his trading mistakes and lessons learned. His candid financial lessons were refreshing to readers. 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.
They turned the blog into the software company Moz so that more businesses could boost their visibility as a result of their practical advice. 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.
Howey was able to improve the chapters thanks to the audience’s engagement and feedback, which led to the sudden rise to the top of Amazon’s bestseller lists for both the print and electronic versions of Wool. Within months he signed major publishing deals and Ridley Scott soon even optioned film rights as interest exploded. Not bad for some blog serials! 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!
