Palworld: self-funded Pocketpair's 'Pokémon with guns' bet — 25M players in first month
A small Japanese studio with no investors self-published Palworld: 7M copies in 5 days, 25M players in a month, 2.1M Steam concurrent peak.
Read the casestartups.centerA CASESTUDIES.CHAT ARCHIVE
Every company
starts somewhere.
How businesses began, found their footing and faced what came next.
The full archive, in the appPublished cases
2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDUdemy raises $50M from Benesse at a $2B valuation on its marketplace bet
Marketplace of ~150,000 short courses from 57,000 instructors reached a $2B pre-money valuation in Feb 2020 as Benesse invested $50M.
Read the caseFarmcrowdy's crowdfund-the-farmer bet: SEC rules arrive, 2021 exit, Crowdyvest defaults
Nigeria's first farm-crowdfunding platform lets city investors sponsor smallholder farms; when SEC rules land in 2021 it exits, and Crowdyvest cannot repay.
Read the caseStarfish Space bets satellite servicing can become a real business
Starfish Space bets small software-driven tugs can dock with unprepared satellites and turn on-orbit servicing into a repeatable commercial business.
Read the caseWM Motor bankruptcy leaves 100k EV owners without app access or cloud features
China's largest EV startup failure to date cut off owners from smartphone controls, infotainment, and vehicle diagnostics when cloud servers went dark.
Read the caseRemedial Health's pharmacy bet: vetted medicines plus inventory credit across Nigeria
YC-backed Nigerian startup digitizes pharmacy procurement with embedded inventory financing; $12M round, 7,500 customers, all 36 states.
Read the caseMAX: financing Africa's moto drivers, then electrifying them into Nigeria profit
Lagos' MAX went from motorcycle delivery (2015) to driver vehicle-financing and electric fleets: $31M Series B (2021), $24M raise and Nigeria profit (2026).
Read the caseSidekick bets factory workers will text, not install, for answers
A YC Summer 2026 startup routes factory questions, work orders, and training over plain SMS — no app, no login, no training.
Read the caseUpstage: Korea's Solar model bet, KRW 200B funding
Founded Oct 2020 by ex-Naver Clova head; pivoted to Solar model; raised KRW 200B total.
Read the caseApoha bets molecular behaviour must be measured, not simulated; raises $36M
A physicist spent 15 years on liquid-boundary sound waves, then built VIBE readouts that predict drug and material failures; Boehringer Ingelheim is a customer.
Read the caseMombak delivers Amazon removal credits 2 years early, proving its reforestation bet
Mombak's bet that Amazon reforestation can sell premium carbon credits paid off: 21,000+ credits delivered to Google and McKinsey two years early.
Read the caseCayena's wholesale-food marketplace bet: R$300M Series B toward 500 Brazilian cities
Cayena bet Brazil's fragmented restaurant supply chain would digitize on one B2B marketplace; 5x annual sales growth earned a R$300M Bicycle-led Series B.
Read the caseDUPR bets one universal rating becomes pickleball's standard; 2M players, 3,233% growth
Pickleball rating startup DUPR bets one universal scale can unify the sport; 2M+ players, official rating of MLP and PPA, 3,233% search growth.
Read the caseMathpresso's photo-a-problem bet: QANDA hits 98M users, then bets education-specific LLMs
Korean edtech Mathpresso bet students would photograph homework and get AI answers; QANDA hit 98M users in 50 countries with ~$130M raised.
Read the caseWave bets free app-based mobile money beats telcos: $200M Series A, $1.7B
Sendwave founders spin out a Senegal mobile-money app with free deposits and 1% transfers; half the country adopts it; Africa's largest Series A, $1.7B unicorn.
Read the caseRocket Lab's Neutron bet slips toward 2027 — customers stay booked
Rocket Lab's reusable medium-lift Neutron rocket lost its 2026 debut to a tank test failure, yet record backlog shows customers are waiting.
Read the caseGenki Robotics bets humanoids are a software platform; Rubin's Tokyo startup hits $1B
Andy Rubin's 2025 Tokyo humanoid startup plans an Android-style robot ecosystem; ~$50M seed, Series A at ~$1B before first product.
Read the caseHealthify bets AI coaches scale metabolic care; merges with US's Berry Street, Aug 2026
Bengaluru's Healthify, 45M+ users on AI coach Ria, merges with US clinical network Berry Street to build insurance-covered GLP-1-era metabolic care.
Read the caseDoorDash acquires Scotty Labs and Lvl5 betting on sidewalk robots to fix unit economics
DoorDash acquired self-driving startups to build delivery robots betting that removing human couriers would solve profitability crisis of on-demand delivery.
Read the caseCharm bets the terminal wins AI coding; Crush hits 25k stars, 367-pt HN launch
Charm brought Kujtim Hoxha's terminal agent home as Crush in July 2025; it hit the HN front page and grew to 25k GitHub stars by June 2026.
Read the case