Hiis and his co-founders got tired of expensive, stagnant feedback tools at a previous startup, so they bootstrapped Featurebase in Tallinn to give product teams a cheaper, faster place to collect ideas and ship changelogs.
Bruno Hiis is co-founder and chief executive of Featurebase, a Tallinn, Estonia-based product feedback and changelog platform used by startups and product teams. He builds alongside co-founders Robi Rohumaa and Markus Palm and still owns the business without outside funding.
Shipping a Teenage Startup Before He Could Own One
With Robi he scaled a first startup from zero to about $20,000 in monthly recurring revenue in six months when they were 14, according to his Featurebase founder essay. When Featurebase began he was 17 and could not yet legally own a company, so the early years were pure product work and indie hacking rather than fundraising.
Parking the First Featurebase Build for a Year
The team started Featurebase at the end of 2020 because feedback collection at their previous startup was a mess and existing tools felt expensive and stagnant, as they write on the Featurebase about page. An early MVP launched on Product Hunt and Reddit, then stalled. They put the project on hold for more than a year, improved as engineers and designers, and came back with a 2.0 release that finally got traction.
Crossing $100K ARR Without Raising
By September 2023 Featurebase had crossed $100,000 in annual recurring revenue with 163 paying customers after more than two years of bootstrapping, Hiis wrote in the same essay. They turned down acquisition offers, raised nothing, and kept answering customers around the clock. The company remains based in Tallinn and markets itself as a modern support and feedback workspace, with Hiis listed as co-founder for design and tech on the Featurebase careers page.
