TLDR; Jotform started as a simple solution to a frustrating problem. A free plan, built-in virality, and a massive template library fueled steady, bootstrapped growth. Nineteen years later, it's still founder-led, still growing, and still investor-free. Want to know the revenue? Aytekin’s next book might finally reveal it.
In 2005, web apps were starting to reshape the internet.
Gmail had just launched the year before, proving that serious software could live in the browser. It was the perfect time to build something new. Aytekin Tank, a developer working at a media company in New York, found himself drowning in a task he despised—building forms.
Editors constantly requested them, and every time, it was the same repetitive, mind-numbing process. He scoured the internet for a tool to automate it. Nothing fit.
So, like many great founders before him, he built his own solution. Jotform wasn’t born from a grand vision.
It was born from pain.
