The best examples of OpenStartups with public roadmaps

Last updated 16th May 2026

We look at four of the most interesting examples of OpenStartups that have chosen to share their product roadmap publicly alongside their revenue and growth metrics. The screenshots and revenue figures below are from the period when these companies were most actively sharing their data publicly — they are included as illustrative examples of the approach, not as current metrics.

What is an OpenStartup?

According to HackerNoon, an OpenStartup shares its internal metrics — revenue, users, and traffic — publicly. OpenStartups are typically also part of the #BuildInPublic community on social media, sharing the journey of building a company in real time.

A public roadmap is a natural extension of this philosophy. If you are already sharing your revenue, it makes sense to also show users and followers what you are building and why.

OpenStartups with public roadmaps — real-world examples

1. Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

ConvertKit — now rebranded as Kit — is one of the original OpenStartups, sharing revenue and user metrics publicly for years. At the time of their most active public sharing, they had reached $2.4M in monthly recurring revenue with over 38,000 users.

Kit chose to use a dedicated roadmap and changelog tool for their public roadmap — similar to Noora in approach. The main limitation of the tool they chose is that it did not support user interaction, meaning customers could see what was planned but could not add their own ideas or vote on priorities.

ConvertKit's public roadmap — a structured approach without user voting

2. Buffer

Buffer was one of the first well-known startups to go fully transparent with both revenue metrics and their product roadmap. At their most open, they were sharing $1.6M in MRR with 64,000 users via OpenStartups.tm.

Buffer used Trello for their public roadmap — a practical choice that let them move quickly, but one that came with trade-offs. Users needed a Trello account to interact, and the format made it difficult to collect structured feedback or allow users to vote on specific ideas. Buffer has since evolved their approach as their product has scaled.

Buffer's Trello-based public roadmap — simple and transparent, but limited for gathering user input

3. Gumroad

Gumroad built their roadmap in Notion — a visually clean choice that reflects their design-forward brand. At their most transparent, they were at $928K MRR with 27,000 users. The Notion format has a clean aesthetic but lacks native voting or feedback collection, meaning users can see the roadmap but cannot contribute to shaping it.

Gumroad's Notion-based roadmap — clean design, but no mechanism for user feedback

4. SimpleAnalytics

SimpleAnalytics took a developer-native approach: they built a custom layer on top of GitHub Issues to surface planned features and improvements directly on their website. With $10K MRR and 6,000 users when most actively sharing, they are a smaller but instructive example. Their approach means users need a GitHub account to leave feedback, which limits participation — but it has the advantage of tightly integrating their public roadmap with their engineering workflow.

SimpleAnalytics' GitHub-based roadmap — tightly integrated with engineering, but requires a GitHub account to contribute

What can we learn from these examples?

Looking across these four approaches — dedicated tools, Trello, Notion, and GitHub — a few patterns stand out:

• All four companies benefited from having a public roadmap, regardless of the tool. Transparency builds trust.
• The most common limitation is the lack of a structured mechanism for users to contribute ideas and vote on priorities. A roadmap where users can only read — not participate — misses the biggest opportunity.
• Dedicated tools that support voting and automated user notifications close the feedback loop in a way that generic tools like Trello and Notion cannot.

If you are an OpenStartup looking to publish your own roadmap, choose a tool that lets you own your content and enables a genuine two-way conversation with your users. Read more about how to choose the right public roadmap tool.