Candle Tops $1 Million in First-Year Revenue After Founders Scrapped 5 Failed Startup Ideas
Updated
Updated · Business Insider · Jun 5
Candle Tops $1 Million in First-Year Revenue After Founders Scrapped 5 Failed Startup Ideas
1 articles · Updated · Business Insider · Jun 5
Summary
Candle, a social connection app from Alex Ruber and Parth, generated more than $1 million in its first year after launching on the App Store in March 2025.
Five months after joining Y Combinator, the founders abandoned an AI resale-shopping app that was losing money because users browsed often but commissions on purchases were too small.
Over a three-month stretch, they tested roughly five to six ideas—ranging from therapy and journaling products to dating and B2B tools—building fast and dropping concepts when users did not return or pay.
A simple daily-prompt app built to help them reconnect with loved ones showed the strongest retention among friends and family, leading the pair to turn it into Candle; monthly revenue later reached $144,533 by August 2025.
The four-person team now uses AI mainly for coding, translation and activity recommendations, while keeping question writing human, and Ruber says their biggest lesson was to stay in one problem space instead of repeatedly switching industries.