$491 in Year One: How Submittable Found Its Product in Missoula
Submittable began as a fix for a writer's problem. Its founders built the wrong product first, then found the right one inside it.
Missoula software company Submittable is now a grants management and corporate giving platform with national investors. It started with a writer who was tired of sending stories to literary magazines.
A list of things that were broken
Michael FitzGerald was a web developer in Missoula with an MFA in fiction. He told Montana Public Radio in 2015 that sending work to journals was "a jumbled process": some accepted email, some used expensive systems, some had homemade forms and some took only mail.
In a 2013 interview with The Believer, FitzGerald said he and his friend Bruce Tribbensee made a list over lunch of things that annoyed them. He added "Sending Out Work." Tribbensee called it "a Submishmash." They started writing code that night. John Brownell joined a few months later. The company says it was founded in 2010.
Building the wrong thing
The first version missed. FitzGerald told MTPR that after nine months of coding a marketplace for writers and publishers, the team finally showed it to publishers, "and within minutes it was obvious that we had built the wrong thing."
One feature caught their attention: a tool that turned a Word file into a version readers could review and vote on in a browser. "We ripped out 90% of the functionality and we just sold that little widget," he said. That piece took off.
Lean years and a new name
Money was tight. "The very first year we made $491 for the entire year," FitzGerald told MTPR. The founders built, sold and supported the product themselves.
The name caused trouble with universities and businesses, FitzGerald told The Believer, so the company changed it to Submittable. "It's a little soul-crushing, but our revenue instantly doubled," he said. The company adopted the new name in 2012 and broadened its software to awards, scholarships and grants.
From Missoula to national scale
Submittable went through Y Combinator in 2012, according to Wikipedia, and later raised a $5 million Series A in 2017, a $10 million Series B in 2019 and a $47 million Series C in 2022. By 2015 it had more than 9,000 clients in 35 countries and 14 employees in the Florence Building downtown, MTPR reported.
FitzGerald also gave a practical reason for staying in Missoula. He told MTPR the company decided early that half of its product was customer support, and that Montana's educated, personable workforce made that a strength. Office space, he said, cost about 10 percent of what it would in San Francisco or New York.
Lessons for founders
- Talk to customers before you build. Nine months of code nearly went to waste.
- Look for the feature people love. A small piece of the first product became the business.
- Names matter to buyers. A playful name can block a sale to a cautious IT department.
Submittable's story is a good reminder that a product often needs several tries before it fits a market, and that small revenue in year one does not decide the outcome. More Montana tech stories are at the Montana Statesman.
