Challenge

Launched at a hackathon in 2018 by Rennie Haylock, Huntr began life as a free tool to help job seekers track and manage their job search by organizing applications, deadlines, and contacts in one place to give a clearer, more actionable view of the job hunt. As the tool gained traction with users around the world, Haylock realized it could be the foundation for a new business focused on digital solutions for job seekers and the organizations that assist them, such as code academies, job training programs, and university career centers.

Since 2018, Huntr has grown to six employees and has began developing advanced features such as an AI-powered resume builder, interview preparation tools, and job-matching capabilities. The team quickly realized they needed a way to monetize this suite of solutions without taking the time to build billing capabilities from scratch.

For its tools aimed at individual job seekers, Huntr wanted a flexible subscription management solution that would allow them to experiment with pricing tiers and offer discounts and coupons. At the same time, the company planned to develop custom pricing for its B2B customers and needed a flexible invoicing solution that would accommodate its global customer base. For example, countries like India and Portugal have specific, complex invoicing and compliance requirements that would be difficult for Huntr to track and manage manually.

“We needed a lot of flexibility and experimentation to figure out our product-market fit and scale subscriptions for our diverse customer segments. As a bootstrapped company, we needed to manage it efficiently as well,” said Sam Wright, head of operations and partnerships at Huntr.

Thinking longer term, Huntr also wanted to ensure it aligned itself with a payment and billing partner that could help the company scale, offering a range of sophisticated financial tools that Huntr could tap as needed as it faced new opportunities and challenges in billing or payments.

Solution

Huntr launched its paid subscription business on Stripe, using Stripe Billing and Stripe Invoicing to quickly enable subscription models for its B2C and B2B customer segments without the time and expense of building its own infrastructure.

Stripe Billing allowed Huntr’s team to experiment with new subscription tiers and discounts on the fly. The company tested several multitier pricing plans before finding product-market fit with its current freemium model. Huntr also used Billing to launch, manage, and scale a custom coupon code program for affiliate partners in just a few weeks, giving the company the ability to run promotions that help drive user adoption.

Alongside Billing, Huntr integrated Stripe Invoicing to meet the needs of its global B2B clients. Stripe Invoicing makes it simple to customize invoices on a country or client basis to ensure they meet specific regulations, such as mandatory license IDs and local formatting requirements. Stripe’s APIs made it easy for Huntr to integrate Invoicing into its internal admin tool, which was built with Retool. When a new B2B customer signs on, the team uses Retool to automate account setup, such as creating records in their internal database, provisioning user logins, and connecting with Stripe to configure the correct billing plan and seat count based on the contract.

As Huntr’s user base grew and payment volume increased, the team continued to lean on Stripe to address new operational and customer experience needs. During those first years of rapid growth, Huntr’s team didn’t have the bandwidth to investigate chargebacks for fraud. Instead, they accepted most chargebacks by default. But as chargebacks increased along with its transaction volume, Huntr added Stripe Radar in 2024 to proactively prevent fraudulent transactions and reduce the risk of chargebacks. The detailed transaction data Stripe provides allows Huntr to make informed decisions about which disputes to contest and learn how to be more effective when countering disputes. That data also makes it easier for the support team to submit evidence and manage the dispute process.

In 2024, Huntr also added Link to its payment methods to streamline the checkout experience. Link allows users to check out with one click using auto-filled customer payment details already saved in Stripe’s network so customers can quickly pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH.

Results

Huntr doubles its revenue year-over-year four years in a row

With Stripe powering its billing and payment infrastructure from day one, Huntr has been able to stay lean while focusing on its product. With just a six-person team, the company has recorded more than 100% year-over-year revenue growth for four years in a row. It is quickly approaching over $1 million in recurring revenue—all without requiring outside investors or dedicated payments engineers. Huntr grew its affiliate program 10% over the last year by offering additional value to participants and creating customer codes for partners.

“We started with a product that people love to use, but had no idea how to monetize it. All of our growth has been with Stripe as our main partner,” said Wright.

Stripe enables B2B revenue from customers in 30+ countries

Huntr uses Invoicing to capture revenue from universities, academies, and job programs from around the globe, with more than 20% of invoices paid in the first few hours and 95% on-time collection. Automated account setup saves Hunter seven hours per month in customer setup and onboarding time.

“Automated reminders, global payments support, and invoice customization make it super easy for us to be an international company with a staff of six,” said Wright.

Huntr reduces its dispute losses by 20%

Since implementing Radar, Huntr has been able to recover revenue from chargebacks that would have previously gone unchallenged. In less than six months, the company won 20% of dispute cases that they would not have won before.

“We can now easily go in and figure out what is going on to see if it’s worth our time to dispute. Every dollar helps as a bootstrapped business, so it’s nice to be able to respond to some of these disputes in a way we couldn’t before,” said Wright.

Huntr processes 13% of transactions with Link

By adding Link to its B2C checkout, Huntr was able to reduce friction during those transactions. Link is now responsible for processing 13% of their transactions, which is double over the previous year, and is now their most popular payment method after cards.

“We’re always thinking about how to give our users the smoothest checkout experience possible. Stripe Link was a no-brainer for our small team—super easy to set up, and users genuinely love how frictionless it makes payments. We consistently hear positive feedback from customers about the simplicity of Link, and we’ve seen adoption double as a proportion of our total payments over the past year,” said Rennie Haylock, cofounder and CEO.