Startsub

By Mehmet Davut2017–2021

A subscription-commerce platform that grew through cost discipline, reinvestment and tenant trust, and stayed alive because I put my own money behind it.

Startsub gave subscription-commerce startups the infrastructure they’d otherwise have to build themselves: recurring billing, customer management, and the plumbing behind a “subscribe once, get it every month” business. I joined its technical team, later became its sole technical owner, and improved the platform step by step, rewriting parts of it where they needed it, while keeping it running and making it easier to operate and extend.

When the company was close to running out of money, I put my own money in as a shareholder, and others followed. As a shareholder I also carried sole responsibility for the technical direction, which let decisions move faster.

I used that speed to cut costs that weren’t earning their keep, mainly infrastructure spend, and redirected what was freed up into marketing and SEO. The business had already relaunched under the Aydanaya.com brand, growing alongside the original Startsub platform; as the product became more stable, tenants were willing to invest more in advertising through it. Revenue grew from both.

Startsub is still running today. I moved on a few years ago, and it is now maintained by others. For years after I left, the platform continued generating revenue without me.