The 'Late Co-Founder' Who 2.5x'd Revenue: Usersnap's 7-Figure Exit After 10 Years
Usersnap, a bug-reporting and feedback-collection tool, was grown by two Austrians (one of whom joined in 2018 as a 'late co-founder') to $2.2M in annual revenue and 1,500 customers including the BBC and Lego, then sold to saas.group for seven figures in 2023 — complete with the seller's practical advice: 'keep your data room up to date at all times.'
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
JPY figures are approximate conversions at ¥150/USD (annual revenue of $2.2M ≈ ¥330M).
Timeline
| Period | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2012-13 | Josef Trauner founds the company after solving a feedback problem at a telecom firm. Raises a $500K seed from SpeedInvest, then runs on revenue thereafter |
| 2018 | Klaus-M. Schremser joins as a “late co-founder”, taking charge of growth |
| 2018-23 | Revenue grows 2.5x. Customer base reaches 1,500 companies including BBC, Lego, Red Hat, and Microsoft |
| Late 2023 | Sold to saas.group for seven figures (broker: i5invest). The founders stay on for a year and leave in mid-2024 |
| Afterward | The two co-found Otterly.AI, an AI search optimization tool |
The Business by the Numbers (at Sale)
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Annual revenue | $2.2M (≈¥330M) |
| Customers | 1,500 companies |
| Team | 20 people |
What You Can Learn From This
Bringing in a co-founder later is a real option. Schremser, who joined in the company’s sixth year, was treated as a co-founder in both title and equity — and he 2.5x’d revenue. The combination of a founder who can build the product and a joiner who can sell it is essentially Transistor’s marketer-plus-engineer pairing, achieved with a time lag. A missing skill set is worth recruiting even later — at “co-founder-level” terms.
“Keep your data room always up to date” is among the most important practical advice a seller can give. A seller who can’t produce the numbers during due diligence gets their price beaten down for that reason alone, and the risk of the deal collapsing rises. PsychCentral’s “get your numbers in order beforehand” and AppArmor’s “due diligence is hell” — every successful seller says the same thing.
The one-year post-sale lock-in followed by immediately founding the next company has become the standard route for serial entrepreneurs. They carry customer understanding from the previous business (feedback, UX) into the next wave (AI search). It sits alongside Tibo’s restart and Kahl’s pivot into media as a recognizable “life after exit” pattern.
Related Cases
Sources
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