A whopping $9M revenue per employee

This startup is absolutely crushing it

This unknown startup is absolutely crushing it!

With a whopping $9M revenue per employee, Surge AI just claimed the 3rd position on the Lean AI Native leaderboard.

The most impressive parts:

• Completely bootstrapped!
• A website that looks like a Word document (just text - no images, no testimonials, nothing)

Edwin Chen has proved that you can build a unicorn with next-to-zero funding.

.. and his playbook is amazing.

“We rarely talk publicly about the work we do. That’s by design.”

#1) Have 100% focus on delivering an incredibly valuable product. Nothing else matters.

Press releases, conferences, social media presence - for most startups this is just distractions and noise.

#2) Focus on an underserved market

Data labelling is a crowded space. While competitors labeled stop signs, Chen focused on complex agentic behavior - the harder, higher-value work.

#3) Get profitable asap

Build something customers are “desperate” to pay for today.

Chen’s competitors, Scale AI, was recently acquired by Meta for $15BN after reporting €870M revenue in 2024 (with a 900+ headcount).

Both companies are great success cases but with different approaches.

Author

DIGITIZING ASIA, ABN ASIA was founded by people with deep roots in academia, with work experience in the US, Holland, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. ABN Asia is where academia and technology meet opportunity. With our cutting-edge solutions and competent software development services, we're helping businesses level up and take on the global scene. Our commitment: Faster. Better. More reliable. In most cases: Cheaper as well.

Feel free to reach out to us whenever you require IT services, digital consulting, off-the-shelf software solutions, or if you'd like to send us requests for proposals (RFPs). You can contact us at [email protected]. We're ready to assist you with all your technology needs.

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