For founders

What an open startup is, and how to become one.

An open startup publishes its own business metrics — usually monthly recurring revenue and paying customers — for anyone to read. This page covers what to publish, what to keep private, and the difference between a number you typed and a number that was measured.

What to publish, and what to hold back

Metric	Publish?	Why
MRR or ARR	Yes	Describes the business in one number. The whole point
Paying customers	Yes	Together with MRR it implies your average price, which readers will work out anyway
Growth rate	Yes	Derived from the above; withholding it looks evasive
Churn	Optional	Persuasive when good, and honest when published anyway
Named customers or deal sizes	No	That information is theirs, not yours
Burn, runway, cap table	No	Invites conversations you did not choose, and proves nothing a customer cares about

Self-reported and verified are not the same thing

Most open-startup pages are built by hand: a founder updates a figure in a spreadsheet or a CMS every month. That is still worth doing, but it is a claim, not evidence — the reader is trusting the founder’s typing. It also decays, because the month someone gets busy is the month the page stops being true.

A verified page inverts that. The figure is computed from a direct connection to the billing system, using the same definition for every company, and the founder cannot edit it. What the founder controls is scope — which entries appear at all — not the numbers themselves.

Read-only wherever it can be. Where your processor offers a read-only key, that is the one you paste, and it cannot move money or change your account. Where it does not, the key is only ever used to read.
One definition of MRR, applied to everyone. Annual plans amortised, trials excluded, discounts applied, mixed currencies refused rather than guessed at. The rules are published.
Hide, never rewrite. A measured month can be kept off your public page. It cannot be edited into a different number by you, or by us.

The numbers alone are not the interesting part

A revenue chart tells a reader that a company grew. It never tells them why anyone did anything, which is the part another founder actually wants. The open-startup pages that get read and linked are the ones that put the decisions next to the numbers: the pricing change, the launch, the pivot — each with where the business stood that day and what it did in the months after.

That is what Thonest builds. Connect your revenue and your history is reconstructed as far back as your subscriptions go, with the milestones already found; you add the decisions, and the verified figures from each date attach themselves.

Read a full example →

Becoming one, in four steps

Decide your scope once. MRR and customers is the standard floor. Write down what you will not publish, so you are not deciding it under pressure later.
Connect your billing. Your history appears without you entering anything.
Add the decisions that explain the shape of it. Five is enough to turn a chart into a story.
Publish, then embed it where people already look. An about page or a footer beats a post that scrolls away, and an embed that updates itself beats a screenshot you have to redo.

Questions founders ask

What is an open startup?: An open startup publishes its own business metrics for anyone to read — most commonly monthly recurring revenue and customer count, often alongside churn and traffic. The page is usually public and updated continuously rather than announced once. The term has been used by software companies for years and there are still several long-running examples.
What metrics do open startups publish?: Almost always MRR and paying customers, because those two describe the business in one line. Beyond that it varies: some publish churn, ARPU, traffic and signups; a few publish expenses and profit. Very few publish burn, runway or anything from the cap table, and there is no expectation that you should.
Why would a founder publish their revenue?: Three reasons that hold up. It is credibility a competitor cannot copy, because it is a record of your own numbers over time. It is distribution, because the page gets read, linked and cited. And it is accountability, which some founders find is the only thing that makes them look at the numbers monthly.
What are the risks of being an open startup?: Competitors learn your size and can time their pricing against yours. Recruits and customers see a bad quarter. And it is hard to stop: going quiet after a strong run is more conspicuous than never having published. The mitigation is not to publish less but to choose the scope once, deliberately, and then keep it — and to be able to hide an individual entry without hiding the trend.
How do I make my open startup page verifiable instead of self-reported?: Connect the source rather than typing the number. A page where a founder edits the MRR figure by hand is a claim; a page computed from a direct connection to the billing provider is a measurement. Thonest reads Stripe, Paddle, Polar, Dodo Payments, RevenueCat, Superwall, Creem and Lemon Squeezy — with a read-only key wherever the processor offers one — computes MRR the same way for every company, and never lets the founder edit a measured figure. They can hide an entry, but not reword it.
Can I stop being an open startup later?: Yes. With Thonest you can make your timeline private again at any time, and the published page stops resolving. What you cannot do is quietly rewrite what was already measured, which is the property that makes it worth reading in the first place.
Do I need to be profitable or growing to publish?: No, and the pages worth reading usually are not uniformly either. A flat year with an honest explanation of what was tried is more useful to a reader — and more credible — than a curated upward line. The audience for these pages is largely other founders, who know what a real chart looks like.

Become an open startup this week.

Connect your revenue, see the history you already have, and decide what to show. Nothing is public until you publish it.

Build my timeline See how it works

What to publish, and what to hold back

Metric	Publish?	Why
MRR or ARR	Yes	Describes the business in one number. The whole point
Paying customers	Yes	Together with MRR it implies your average price, which readers will work out anyway
Growth rate	Yes	Derived from the above; withholding it looks evasive
Churn	Optional	Persuasive when good, and honest when published anyway
Named customers or deal sizes	No	That information is theirs, not yours
Burn, runway, cap table	No	Invites conversations you did not choose, and proves nothing a customer cares about

Self-reported and verified are not the same thing

Read-only wherever it can be. Where your processor offers a read-only key, that is the one you paste, and it cannot move money or change your account. Where it does not, the key is only ever used to read.

One definition of MRR, applied to everyone. Annual plans amortised, trials excluded, discounts applied, mixed currencies refused rather than guessed at. The rules are published.

Hide, never rewrite. A measured month can be kept off your public page. It cannot be edited into a different number by you, or by us.

The numbers alone are not the interesting part

Becoming one, in four steps

Decide your scope once. MRR and customers is the standard floor. Write down what you will not publish, so you are not deciding it under pressure later.

Connect your billing. Your history appears without you entering anything.

Add the decisions that explain the shape of it. Five is enough to turn a chart into a story.

Publish, then embed it where people already look. An about page or a footer beats a post that scrolls away, and an embed that updates itself beats a screenshot you have to redo.

Questions founders ask

What is an open startup?

An open startup publishes its own business metrics for anyone to read — most commonly monthly recurring revenue and customer count, often alongside churn and traffic. The page is usually public and updated continuously rather than announced once. The term has been used by software companies for years and there are still several long-running examples.

What metrics do open startups publish?

Almost always MRR and paying customers, because those two describe the business in one line. Beyond that it varies: some publish churn, ARPU, traffic and signups; a few publish expenses and profit. Very few publish burn, runway or anything from the cap table, and there is no expectation that you should.

Why would a founder publish their revenue?

Three reasons that hold up. It is credibility a competitor cannot copy, because it is a record of your own numbers over time. It is distribution, because the page gets read, linked and cited. And it is accountability, which some founders find is the only thing that makes them look at the numbers monthly.

What are the risks of being an open startup?

Competitors learn your size and can time their pricing against yours. Recruits and customers see a bad quarter. And it is hard to stop: going quiet after a strong run is more conspicuous than never having published. The mitigation is not to publish less but to choose the scope once, deliberately, and then keep it — and to be able to hide an individual entry without hiding the trend.

How do I make my open startup page verifiable instead of self-reported?

Connect the source rather than typing the number. A page where a founder edits the MRR figure by hand is a claim; a page computed from a direct connection to the billing provider is a measurement. Thonest reads Stripe, Paddle, Polar, Dodo Payments, RevenueCat, Superwall, Creem and Lemon Squeezy — with a read-only key wherever the processor offers one — computes MRR the same way for every company, and never lets the founder edit a measured figure. They can hide an entry, but not reword it.

Can I stop being an open startup later?

Yes. With Thonest you can make your timeline private again at any time, and the published page stops resolving. What you cannot do is quietly rewrite what was already measured, which is the property that makes it worth reading in the first place.

Do I need to be profitable or growing to publish?

No, and the pages worth reading usually are not uniformly either. A flat year with an honest explanation of what was tried is more useful to a reader — and more credible — than a curated upward line. The audience for these pages is largely other founders, who know what a real chart looks like.