Data
As of 2026-10-08 · 437 cases
This page aggregates the numbers from every case study published on Small Start. The sample contains only businesses whose figures were disclosed by the operator or reported by the press — no estimates. It recomputes automatically as cases are added.
- Cases
- 437
- Operating
- 243
- Sold
- 183
- Shut down
- 11
- Source links
- 696
- Founder-disclosed
- 85%
Japan: 167United States: 133Other: 137
Monthly revenue distribution
Only cases with a disclosed monthly revenue figure. Includes both operating and sold businesses; for the latter, revenue at the time of sale.
- Disclosed
- n=277
- Bottom 25%
- ¥420K
- Median
- ¥2.3M
- Top 25%
- ¥10M
- Max
- ¥625M
Median monthly revenue by business type
| Segment | Cases | Disclosed | Median | Chart |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SaaS | 148 | 106 | ¥6.9M | |
| Community | 8 | 5 | ¥5.7M | |
| Blog/Media | 75 | 39 | ¥2.3M | |
| Affiliate site | 10 | 5 | ¥1.7M | |
| Web service | 30 | 21 | ¥1.5M | |
| E-commerce | 24 | 18 | ¥1.2M | |
| Mobile app | 30 | 22 | ¥812K | |
| Other | 20 | 12 | ¥724K | |
| Social account | 4 | 3 | ¥400K | |
| Offline | 38 | 9 | ¥384K | |
| Digital products | 41 | 30 | ¥361K | |
| YouTube | 8 | 7 | ¥173K | |
| Real estate | 1 | 0 | Too few (< 3) |
Median monthly revenue by team structure
| Segment | Cases | Disclosed | Median | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company | 20 | 12 | ¥48.1M | ¥250M |
| Small team | 146 | 82 | ¥9.2M | ¥625M |
| Solo | 199 | 131 | ¥1.6M | ¥175M |
| Side project | 62 | 43 | ¥152K | ¥6.1M |
Exit price distribution
Only exits with a disclosed price. Deals published as a range, or not published at all, are excluded from the distribution. Of 183 exits, 50 disclosed a price. 50 published only a range and 83 disclosed nothing.
- Disclosed
- n=50
- Bottom 25%
- ¥30M
- Median
- ¥413.5M
- Top 25%
- ¥2.3B
- Max
- ¥86.3B
How the businesses were sold
| Segment | Count | Share | Chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct deal | 122 | 67% | |
| Batonz | 21 | 12% | |
| Other | 17 | 9% | |
| TRANBI | 9 | 5% | |
| Rakko M&A | 8 | 4% | |
| Acquire.com | 5 | 3% |
Acquisition channels by frequency
A case can use several channels, so the total exceeds the number of cases.
How to read these numbers
- Monthly revenue
- Gross monthly sales before costs — not profit. Each case lists its revenue model (subscription, ads, physical goods, etc.).
- Monthly profit
- What is left after costs. Far fewer operators disclose it, so the sample is much smaller than for revenue.
- Exit price
- The publicly disclosed consideration for the business. Treatment of fees, tax and earn-outs varies by source, so each article states the terms.
- Multiple
- Sale price ÷ monthly profit — the convention used in Japanese small-site M&A. Not the same as a multiple of annual revenue.
- Median
- The middle value. Averages here would be dominated by a handful of very large deals, so medians are used throughout.
- n
- The number of cases with a usable figure. Published cases without a disclosed number do not count toward n.
- Founder / Reported
- Source type. "Founder" means the operator published it themselves; "Reported" means a news or trade outlet did. Every article labels its sources.
- Currency
- Non-JPY figures are converted at roughly ¥150 per USD, so amounts differ from the exact figure at the time.
Method and limitations
- The sample is the set of cases we publish, not the population of small businesses. Operators who publish numbers skew toward those doing well, so the distribution is biased upward (survivorship bias).
- By editorial rule we exclude exits at or below ¥1M and one-off, non-recurring revenue, which cuts off the bottom of the distribution.
- Segments with fewer than 3 figures do not get a median.
- Everything is computed from article frontmatter. No number is invented on this page; the underlying figure and its source sit on each case page.
Columns that dig into this data
Affiliate revenue per pageview runs from ¥0.1 to ¥417. Across 33 cases, the writer was not the one setting the rate
We counted the 33 cases on this site (20 Japanese, 13 overseas) whose main revenue is affiliate commissions. Where both monthly revenue and pageviews are published, revenue per pageview ranges from ¥0.1 to ¥417, a 4,000-fold spread with a median of about ¥4. The gap was set not by writing quality but by what advertisers pay per customer. Nine cases record a drop of 50% or more.
AdSense pays ¥386 per 1,000 pageviews. What 225 blogs sold on Rakko M&A say about the distance between PV and revenue
We counted every sold AdSense-monetized blog and media site on the Japanese marketplace Rakko M&A, 240 listings in all. For the 225 with both monthly pageviews and monthly revenue, the median revenue per 1,000 PV is ¥386, and half the listings fall between ¥200 and ¥800. Above 300K PV the rate drops, to ¥179 for sites with 1M PV or more. Listed prices (the asking prices set by sellers) ran 19 months of revenue.
We counted the causes of death in 11 closures. Platforms and "profitable but unsustainable" beat running out of money
Of our published cases, 11 carry status: closed. Classify the causes of death and the running-out-of-money type is a minority: three closures trace to platforms and terms-of-service, and three businesses were folded while profitable or even high-earning. Operating spans run from 4 months to 10 years. The scarcity of failure cases is itself survivorship bias, and that is part of the analysis.
How True Is "My Only Employees Are AI"? 26 Solo-and-Side AI Businesses, Median ¥1.5M/Month
We fact-checked the "one-person company staffed by AI" narrative against our archive. Across 26 solo or side-project AI businesses, the 20 with disclosed revenue have a median of ¥1.5M a month — higher than the all-solo median (~¥900K), but the same order of magnitude. What AI replaces is development and support; distribution and judgment remain human work.
Median monthly revenue is ¥250K in Japan and ¥4.5M overseas — what divides the 18x is not the border
Splitting our 346 published cases into 135 Japanese and 211 overseas, the median monthly revenue of operating businesses is ¥250K against ¥4.5M, an 18x gap, while median sale prices are ¥2M against ¥130M, 65x apart. Reading that as a difference in ability is premature. The two distributions are missing different halves.
Word of mouth ¥7.5M, marketplaces ¥260K. Median monthly revenue lined up by acquisition channel
We aggregated the 235 published cases that disclose monthly revenue by their main acquisition channels. The highest median is word of mouth and referrals at ¥7.5M, the lowest marketplace-driven at ¥260K, a spread of roughly 29x. Read it the other way round: the business model chose the channel, and this gap is the result.
The median business sold for 25 months of revenue — 20 disclosed deals, 7.8 months in Japan against 29.3 overseas
Across the 20 published deals that disclose both sale price and monthly revenue, we computed "how many months of revenue the sale was worth." The median is about 25 months; Japan's median is 7.8 months against 29.3 overseas. What moves the multiple is not the border but the repeatability of the revenue.
Over 60% of 167 exits were direct deals with no broker
Tallying the deal routes of 167 listed exits: over 60% were direct deals with no broker. Platform deals: Batonz 27, TRANBI 9, Rakko M&A 8. Buyers and pricing differ by route.
Monthly revenue varies 50x by type — a median map across 12 business types
Median monthly revenue varies over 50x by business type — SaaS at about ¥9 million vs. YouTube at ¥170,000 — but the gap isn't about which field "pays."
One person, 121 cases, a median of ¥900K a month. The ceiling is not set by hours worked
121 solo/side-business cases with disclosed revenue: median ~¥900,000/mo, max ~¥175M. The gap was labor decoupling, not hours worked.
37 disclosed exit prices and no single going rate. The median is ¥30M, the top quartile clears ¥600M
The smallest was ¥1.2 million, the largest ¥4.8 billion. Of 168 published exits, 37 disclose a price. The bottom quartile sits at ¥3 million and the top quartile above ¥600 million, and the same words, "selling a business", cover worlds that differ by orders of magnitude.