How Pierre de Wulf Built ScrapingBee to $1.5 ARR in 2 Years Without VC Funding
Scraping Bee is a web scraping API that allows users to extract data from websites at scale.
ScrapingBee Revenue
Who is Pierre de Wulf?
Pierre de Wulf is the CEO and co-founder of ScrapingBee, a web scraping API. Prior to founding ScrapingBee, Pierre worked as a data engineer at MeilleursAgents, where he led a research and design team. He holds a master's degree in Data and Knowledge from Telecom Paris.
What problem does ScrapingBee solve?
How did Pierre come up with the idea for ScrapingBee?
Pierre de Wulf leveraged his experience as a data engineer and reused code from a failed startup to launch ScrapingBee in 2019, which now generates $1.5 million annually.
How did Pierre build the initial version of ScrapingBee?
When building the initial version of ScrapingBee, Pierre, and Kevin focused on creating a scalable and cost-efficient solution. Since they were budget-constrained, they reused PricingBot’s (their failed startup) front-end and billing code and deployed the application and database on Heroku. Then, they outsourced Redis to manage concurrent connections.
Initially facing scaling issues with CPU-intensive Chrome browser API requests, they turned to AWS Lambda for enhanced scalability.
For proxies, they combined their private IP pool with various proxy providers. They used Landen for a quick landing page setup and internally relied on Slack and Notion for communication and project management.
Here is a breakdown of ScrapingBee Techstack and tools:
- Heroku (for web application and database)
- Redis (For Concurrent Connection Management)
- Chrome browser (API Requests)
- AWS Lambda (for handling up to 1000 concurrent connections)
- Proxy Management: Mixed private IP pool with multiple proxy providers
- Landing Page built with Landen
Internal Tools:
- Communication: Slack
- Knowledge Base, CRM, Project Management: Notion
We were able to build the API in just 3 weeks and sent out the landing page to our subscribers from PricingBot and to our personal email lists. — Piere de Woulf (source)
A screenshot of ScrappingBee landing page from 2019
What was the growth strategy for ScrapingBee and how did they scale?
Content, blogging, and Indie Hackers.
We follow the "Skyscraper" technique when thinking about SEO content. When you’re in a city, you only notice the highest skyscraper. Your skyscraper is your content. Try to write the best possible post on a topic so that it sticks out above the rest. Piere de Woulf (source)
The team spent their time writing helpful content that ranked high on SERPs. They also posted to subreddits like /r/learnprogramming and /r/webscraping, as well as all of the programming-language-specific subreddits.
What's the pricing strategy for ScrapingBee?
Scraping Bee offers four pricing plans:
- Freelance: @ $49/Month
- Startup: @ $99/Month
- Business: @ $249/Month
- Business+: $599+/Month
ScrappingBee pricing as of May 2024
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More about ScrapingBee:
Who is the owner of ScrapingBee?
Pierre de Wulf is the founder of ScrapingBee.
When did Pierre de Wulf start ScrapingBee?
2019
What is Pierre de Wulf's net worth?
Pierre de Wulf's business makes an average of $125K/month.
How much money has Pierre de Wulf made from ScrapingBee?
Pierre de Wulf started the business in 2019, and currently makes an average of $1.5M/year.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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