Tuple

Ben Orenstein, Joel and Spencer built Tuple in 2018 after Screenhero — the original beloved pair programming app — was acquired and shut down by Slack. They saw 5,000 developers mourning its death on Twitter and immediately started building. Before writing a single line of product code, Ben emailed the waiting list and sold pre-orders at $149/month to test price sensitivity. They made $20,000 before the product was finished. Tuple launched in 2019 with a focus on ultra-low latency, native macOS quality, and developer ergonomics that browser-based tools couldn't match. Remote work exploded in 2020 and Tuple's revenue quadrupled. Ben built in public on Twitter and podcasts, sharing exact revenue milestones, and Tuple grew into a multi-million-dollar ARR business with a small remote team. Ben later stepped back from CEO to explore new things. Tuple became the definitive story of pre-validating a product with paying customers before writing a single line of product code.