Rewardful

Ryan Scherf launched Rewardful in 2015 after struggling to add an affiliate program to his own SaaS products. Every existing affiliate solution was built for e-commerce or required complex integrations. Rewardful was built specifically for Stripe-powered SaaS: connect your Stripe account, set a commission rate, and get a fully functioning affiliate and referral program in under 10 minutes. The setup simplicity was the product. Ryan sold Rewardful to a new owner in 2019 who continued growing it. The new team focused on integrations with popular SaaS stacks (Paddle, Recurly, Chargebee in addition to Stripe), better dashboards, and marketing to bootstrapped founders. Rewardful became the most-recommended affiliate solution in bootstrapped SaaS communities — recommended on Indie Hackers, MicroConf, and hundreds of Twitter threads about SaaS growth. Revenue grew to $50k+/month from a base of thousands of SaaS companies. A niche product that solved a real developer pain point in a crowded space by being laser-focused on Stripe SaaS rather than e-commerce.