Today starts a 365-day challenge to grow Papermark to $1M ARR.
One year ago, Iuliia and I started working on Papermark full-time. The last twelve months were incredibly rewarding: new challenges, new customers, and building an open-source, product-led growth business. And we did most of it in public.
A public goal keeps us honest. When the number is out there, every week counts, and every experiment either moves it or teaches us something. So we decided to write the goal down and share how it goes.
1. Where we came from
Papermark started in 2023 as a simple way to share documents and see who read them. In September 2023 it became #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt. In December, Papermark AI followed as #2 Product of the Day.
Those launches gave us our first users. Going full-time in January 2024 gave us the time to turn those users into a business.
2. What we built in 2024
In 2024 we:
- launched data rooms and turned Papermark into a full virtual data room
- shipped file-level permissions and dynamic watermarks
- reached the top 1% of fastest-growing companies on Stripe
- grew monthly website visitors 8x, from 7k in January 2024
Around those headlines we shipped folders, Excel and CSV support, bulk uploads, one-click agreements, link presets, visitor overviews and a new onboarding flow. The full list is in our changelog.
3. 2024 quarter by quarter
Here is the same year, step by step, with what each release does for a team sharing documents for a deal.
Q1: from single documents to organized documents
- January: we went full-time on Papermark.
- Folders and subfolders: group documents by deal or topic without changing any link you already shared.
- Page previews and improved analytics tracking: see which page held attention, with idle time left out.
- Links to specific pages: open a document on exactly the page you want to discuss.
Q2: data rooms
- Data rooms: many documents, one link, with analytics across the whole room.
- Excel, CSV and Google Sheets support, so financial models can go in the room next to the deck.
- A new onboarding flow that lets new users start with a data room straight away.
- Security updates, including email verification for visitors.
Q3: control and protection
- Bulk file uploads and drag and drop: move a full deal folder into Papermark in minutes.
- One-click agreements: visitors accept your NDA before they see anything.
- File-level permissions: each group of visitors sees only the files meant for them.
- Watermarks with the viewer's details on every page.
- Link presets, so every new link starts with your settings.
Q4: better insight into visitors
- Visitor overview: every visit by one person across all your documents, in one place.
- Archive visits: remove outlier visits so your analytics stay accurate.
- Search and sort for documents, which helps once a team has hundreds of files.
- In December: export of data room visits and visitor locations inside data rooms.
4. What customers did with it
Our 2024 year in review shows how people used Papermark last year: 20,883 documents uploaded, 23,264 links shared and 207,303 views from 201 countries. Visitors spent 7,873 hours with those documents.
Behind those numbers are founders raising rounds, teams running M&A and due diligence, and sales teams sharing proposals. More and more of them now start with a data room instead of a single link.
5. What we learned
- Data rooms are the product. Customers moved from sharing one deck to running a whole deal in Papermark. That shift shaped most of our roadmap.
- Speed wins. A secure data room that is live in minutes, without a sales call, is what most teams want.
- Talking to users is the job. Iuliia and I still answer support ourselves. It is the fastest way to know what to build next.
- Building in public works. Sharing numbers and experiments on LinkedIn and X brought us users, feedback and a lot of encouragement.
6. How we run a public goal, step by step
This is the process we are using for the $1M challenge. It is the same process that got us through 2024, written down.
- Pick one number. For 2025 it is ARR. One number keeps every decision simple: does this move it or not?
- Say it in public. This post is that step. Once the goal is out, we cannot quietly move it.
- Ship every week. Most releases are small. Each one goes into the changelog, so customers can see what changed.
- Answer support ourselves. Every request reaches a founder. That is where most of our roadmap comes from.
- Run experiments and write down the result. Some will work and some will not. Both go into the monthly update.
- Share a monthly update. Numbers, what we shipped, what worked and what did not, on LinkedIn and X.
None of these steps is new. What changes in 2025 is that we write each one down and share it, including the experiments that fail.
7. The plan
In 2025 we want to take building in public to the next level: share our numbers, our experiments and what does not work. The goal is simple: $1M ARR by the end of the year.
That means more of what worked: ship every week, keep the data room fast and secure, and keep listening. It also means trying new growth experiments and being honest when they fail.
8. How to get started with Papermark
If you want to follow along as a user, not just a reader, this is the fastest way in.
- Create a data room from the welcome screen. See how to create a data room.
- Add folders for each part of your deal, then bulk upload your files.
- Set permissions with groups, so investors, buyers and advisors each see the right files.
- Protect the link with email verification, an NDA and a watermark.
- Share one link and follow every view, page by page.
Follow along in our monthly updates. (Update: we reached $1M ARR in September 2025, more than three months early.)