Articles Ranking
Revenue per dollar of starting capital, ranked
A $150 window cleaning kit, $250 of hand tools, a $500 detailing setup and a $10,000 vending route. Ten founders, ranked by what each starting dollar turned into, and why the smallest cheques top the list.
Ten founders in this database built their business from scratch and stated what they started with. This page divides each one's latest reported annual revenue by that starting figure and ranks the result. The multiples run from about 50 to about 5,400. The order says less about who built the best business than about how small the first cheque was, and that is the most useful thing about it.
Every starting figure and revenue figure comes from the owner's entry. The multiples are our division, rounded. Where an owner gave a monthly figure we multiplied by twelve, and where they gave a range we used the midpoint. Revenue is not take-home: the margin ledger covers what each trade keeps. And the years differ enormously, from fifteen months to more than forty.
$150 of gear in 2017. About four and a half years later they were running $65,000 to $70,000 a month, roughly $810,000 a year at the midpoint, and sold the company. A peak month annualized, so this multiple flatters them most.
About $250 of hand tools in 1981. He put revenue at $600,000 to $700,000 a year on a podcast in 2024, more than forty years in.
$500 of equipment between high school and college. GoDetail reports roughly $900,000 a year at 60 percent gross margins.
$300 of used tools, including a $50 mower, in 2008. Plan-It Vision does $22,000 to $29,000 a month, about $306,000 a year at the midpoint.
$6,000 in 2020. UpFlip reports $2.5 million annually; his entry notes the coverage does not say whether that is revenue or take-home, and that he sells a course.
About $5,000 of equipment in 2016. $1 million a year within roughly four years, and about $2 million a year by 2023.
About $5,000 in 2015. Now $120,000 to $140,000 months, about $1.56 million a year at the midpoint.
About $1,700 all-in, including a $1,000 truck, in 2016. About $20,000 a month at its later run rate, roughly $240,000 a year, before he sold it in 2024.
Her last $2,000 in July 2023. About $10,000 a month by late 2024, or $120,000 a year. The newest business on the list.
$10,000 of savings on two machines in 2018. About $5,000 in year one, and $500,000 in sales by 2022.
Left out, and why
Brian Scudamore, junk removal. A $700 pickup truck in 1989 against about $600 million of systemwide revenue would put him far above everyone. That figure is what all 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchisees bill together, so it is not comparable. The same goes for Augusta Lawn Care, whose early operators started on about $9,000 and whose system reports $50 million-plus.
The buyers. Adam Hill paid $60,000 for a vending route in 2014 that now grosses over $58,000 a month, about $700,000 a year. A purchase price buys customers on day one, so it sits on the buyers ranking instead.
Owners without a starting figure. Michael Haskell's first storage locker cost about $10, but that was inventory, not a start budget. Steve Hunsaker started with a ladder and a sedan, and Haley Gallagher with a bar's cleaning contract; neither published a dollar amount.
What the order shows
The denominator decides the ranking. The top four all started on $500 or less. Rank the same ten by revenue alone and Landwehr, Brown and the Mondragons lead, with Robinson and Silesky in the middle. A tiny start produces an enormous multiple almost automatically, which is why the under $10,000 list and this one overlap so much.
Time is missing from the column. Winch's 2,600 times took more than forty years. Ortiz's 60 times took fifteen months, and Gram's 50 times took four. Read per year in business, the bottom of the list looks a lot better than its rank.
None of these figures includes runway. Kokenge worked several part-time jobs while every dollar the business earned went back into it. Gram kept full-time work for about three years. The starting figure is what went into the business, not what it cost the founder to live while it grew, and our piece on when the owners quit their day jobs covers that side.
Cheap starts are labor businesses. Every trade in the top six sells the owner's hours first: cleaning, detailing, mowing, hauling. The capital-heavy trades on the startup cost ladder, like portable toilets at about $250,000 for a credible start, cannot post a multiple like this, and they are not trying to. Before comparing any of these numbers, our guide to reading a revenue figure explains why a peak month, a season and a decade of cumulative sales are not the same thing. Start here sorts the models by capital and hours, the Boring Index scores each trade, and every owner above is in the database. This site is one of SideRoad's weekly builds, itself a small start with a cost we know to the dollar.
Common questions
Which documented business turned the least money into the most revenue?
Johnny Robinson and Sergio Silesky's window cleaning company. They started with $150 of gear in 2017 and were running $65,000 to $70,000 a month when they sold it about four and a half years later, roughly 5,400 times the starting figure on an annualized basis, by our arithmetic. Brian Winch is second, at about 2,600 times his roughly $250 start, though it took more than forty years.
Does starting with more money produce a bigger business?
Not among these ten. The two largest revenue figures, Kyle Landwehr's reported $2.5 million and Joshua Brown's roughly $2 million, came from starts of $6,000 and $5,000. Marcus Gram started with the most, $10,000, and reported $500,000 in sales four years later. The startup cost ladder shows the capital-heavy trades for comparison.
Why is 1-800-GOT-JUNK? not ranked first?
Because its roughly $600 million is systemwide revenue, the total billed by every franchisee, not the revenue of the business Brian Scudamore started with a $700 truck. Dividing a franchise system's revenue by one founder's starting cost would not be a like-for-like comparison, so it is listed separately.
Built by