Upstream is at $1.1M in annual recurring revenue. Fully bootstrapped. Profitable. Five core team members.
Crossing $1M was a milestone Dom and I set for the business. We wanted to build a product that customers would fund through their subscriptions, with the automation to keep a small team effective as it grew.
That shaped how we built it.
A small team has to be deliberate
Our customers have serious broadcasting needs. A channel that stays live continuously keeps needing infrastructure whether our team is at their desks or having dinner.
Automation is how we make that workable. The more routine operation the platform can handle, the more attention we have for customers, product decisions, and the problems that actually need a person.
Headcount on its own says very little about the value a company can deliver. I’m much more interested in what a team has made repeatable.
The first product opened the door
We started with 24/7 streaming. Creators uploaded their videos, arranged their programming, and let Upstream keep the channel live from the cloud.
This year we added Live Studio and multistreaming. A customer can now produce a live show, send it to several platforms, and use the same product for their channel between live appearances.
The pricing follows the same idea: one stream, one price, every workflow. As customers add streams, they pay us more. They don’t need to buy a separate product to do the next part of their broadcast.
The next stage is reach
The business works. The infrastructure is running. The product has expanded.
Now we need more of the people who could use it to know it exists. That means taking Upstream to a much larger audience of creators, teams, and broadcasters, including people already using established streaming tools.
$1M was the milestone. It was never the ceiling.