ReferralSaaS / B2B

Everhour

Time tracking SaaS that hit $1.4M ARR by living natively inside every other tool.

MRR
$400K+ MRR
Gross Margin
80%
Time to 1,000 Customers
2 years
Primary Channel
Referral

The storyHow they got there

Mike Kulakov and his team at Waveaccess built Everhour in 2013 as a side project, spending two years as a free tool while figuring out what it needed to be: not just a time tracker, but a time tracker that integrated natively with the tools teams already used — Asana, Trello, Jira, Basecamp, GitHub.

The first ten paying customers came from posting in Asana and Trello user forums offering a free time-tracking integration. The first hundred came from Asana's official integration directory listing — the single biggest channel in the company's history. Every new PM tool integration (ClickUp, Notion) was treated as its own launch event.

At maturity, the channel mix: integration marketplaces (Asana, Trello, Basecamp, ClickUp) (~50%), SEO for long-tail "time tracking for [tool]" keywords (~25%), content blog and comparison posts (~15%), and affiliate/partner referrals (~10%). Paid social ads were killed. Being the #1-rated time tracker for each PM tool was doubled down on.

Unit economics: CAC around $50–100, ARPU around $10–15 per seat or roughly $100/month per team, LTV around $2–4K with churn around 2–3% monthly because the product is integrated into daily workflows. Browser extensions reduced activation friction dramatically — users don't have to change their PM tool, they just add a timer. At $400K+ MRR reported, the integration-led moat has proved extraordinarily durable.

Channel MixWhere the growth actually came from

Most case studies hand-wave channels. Here's the rough allocation — not in dollars spent, but in users acquired — across the routes that actually mattered.

Referral
60%
Structured referral loops with incentives for sharing.
Product-led
25%
Free tier designed to showcase value and convert teams.
Word of mouth
15%
Organic sharing driven by strong product satisfaction.

TimelineWhat happened, when

2013
Free MVP launched
Waveaccess side project. Two years free while learning what time-tracking inside PM tools actually needed to be.
Early 2015
Beta List launch
1,500–2,000 early adopters. Email list built before paid plans. Chrome extension as wedge product.
Sep 2015
First paying clients
Paid plans launch. Asana integration directory listing becomes the single biggest channel.
2016–2018
Integration directory compounding
Listed on Asana, Trello, Jira, Basecamp, GitHub directories. Each integration = new launch event.
Nov 2018
$117K MRR, 2,300+ teams
$1.4M ARR. 100%+ YoY growth. 2,300+ paid teams in 70 countries.
2022+
$400K+ MRR
Reportedly $5M+ ARR. Still bootstrapped. ClickUp and Notion integrations added as new distribution channels.

StackTools they used

StripeBraintreeGoogle AnalyticsIntercomHelpScoutChrome extension (wedge)

In their own wordsThe quote

"Find the platform with the user, not the user."
Everhour founder
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