Steven Tey: From Vercel Side Project to Modern Link Attribution with Dub.co
How a former Vercel developer advocate turned an open-source link shortener into a profitable attribution and partner growth platform.
- MRR
- Not publicly disclosed
- ARR
- Not publicly disclosed (self-reported strong multiples)
- Users
- Thousands of companies
- Founded
- 2022 (side project); 2024 (company)
- Team
- Small (remote, ~10-20)
- Stack
- Next.js, TypeScript, Edge/Cloudflare, Open Source
How did Dub start?
Steven Tey built the first version of Dub in 2022 while working as a Senior Developer Advocate at Vercel. He wanted a fast, low-latency link shortener that could generate beautiful Open Graph images for social shares—something the team needed internally and that existing tools like Bitly handled poorly for modern developer workflows. He shipped it as an open-source project on GitHub under the AGPLv3 license.
The launch landed well. It hit #1 on Hacker News and trended on GitHub. People started self-hosting it or signing up for the hosted version. Tey continued building it part-time on nights and weekends. Growth came almost entirely from word of mouth and the open-source repository. In a year-end post he noted that 2023 saw a 13x increase in MRR, 13.8k GitHub stars, 250k links created, and 16.5 million clicks tracked—all without paid marketing.
He left Vercel in December 2023. In January 2024 he publicly announced that he was turning Dub into a full company. The product was already solving real problems for teams that wanted branded short links, clean analytics, and the ability to track what happened after the click.
From short links to attribution and partners
The original product was a better link shortener with free custom domains and solid analytics. Users quickly asked for more. Many wanted to understand the full journey: which link drove a signup, a purchase, or an upgrade. That pushed Dub toward conversion tracking and attribution.
Tey had previously run an affiliate-driven business, so the limitations of legacy affiliate tools were familiar. In 2025 the team launched Dub Partners, a modern platform for affiliates, creators, and referral programs. One year later he reported that the product had paid out $25 million to partners, delivered more than 300% ARR growth, and produced 12 straight months of profitability. It powers programs for companies including Framer, Beehiiv, Granola, Wispr Flow, and Polymarket.
The core SaaS business and the partner network reinforce each other. Early on the affiliate channel itself was only generating a few hundred dollars in MRR; later it became one of the larger growth channels. The company also dogfoods its own tools for tracking.
Distribution without paid ads
For the first couple of years Dub grew without paid acquisition. The open-source repository was the main discovery engine. Developers found it on GitHub, tried the self-hosted version, and some later moved to the hosted product to avoid maintenance. Public posts about shipping features, design decisions, and occasional revenue multiples kept an audience engaged on X.
Tey has described the early content work—shipping notes, open-source transparency, and product updates—as the highest-leverage use of time. Big customers sometimes arrived via the GitHub repo itself; the head of engineering at Twilio was one early example. Product Hunt launches and technical content added spikes, but the consistent engine was the combination of a polished open-source core and public building.
As the company scaled, the team started formalizing more channels: SEO, content, affiliate programs (again using their own product), and limited experiments with ads. The original constraint of zero paid spend is no longer absolute, but the foundation remains organic and product-led.
What the work looks like now
Dub is still a small, remote team. Public profiles and about pages list a handful of people including Tey, a chief of staff, engineers, and a founding designer. Third-party directories have listed headcount in the low teens to low twenties; the company has not published an official number. They have held team offsites (including one in Tokyo) and continue to hire.
The product surface has expanded to three main areas: Dub Links (short and deep links), Dub Analytics (conversion tracking), and Dub Partners (affiliate and referral programs). Infrastructure needs have grown with usage—Tey has mentioned scaling past a billion requests per month and moving to Vercel Enterprise. The team still keeps a high bar for design; finding a founding designer took months because they wanted someone willing to iterate rather than impose a fixed style.
Support, enterprise conversations, security work (including SOC 2), and the operational side of paying out large affiliate volumes take time. Tey has posted about the difference between a $30/month customer asking for extensive legal paperwork and a $5,000/month customer simply wiring money. Free trials improved conversion but also created edge cases with Stripe analytics around failed charges and churn reporting.
Lessons and caveats
Ship something useful and open enough that other developers can evaluate it without a sales call. The early traction on Hacker News and GitHub came from the product being both fast and inspectable. That does not guarantee revenue, but it created a distribution channel that pure closed-source tools rarely get for free.
Word of mouth compounds when the product is genuinely better for a specific audience. Modern marketing teams and developer-facing companies were underserved by older link tools. Focusing on speed, design, custom domains, and later conversion tracking matched what those users needed.
Building in public helps, but it is not a substitute for the unglamorous work. Tey has noted that generational companies are built by showing up month after month, not by a few viral posts. The multiples he has shared (13x MRR in 2023, 14x in 2024, 8x ARR growth in 2025) are self-reported directional figures, not audited statements. Exact current MRR and ARR have not been published in a consistent public format; third-party directories have listed widely varying estimates and should be treated as such.
Open source creates both opportunity and ongoing maintenance. The core remains available for self-hosting, which built trust, but running a reliable hosted service, handling compliance, and paying out millions in partner commissions are different problems. The path from side project to company required leaving a stable job, hiring carefully, and evolving the product past the original link shortener.
Dub is a useful case of turning an internal tool into a public open-source project and then into a focused SaaS business. The numbers that matter most are the ones the founder has chosen to share: consistent growth, profitability, and large partner volumes processed on the platform. The rest is still being built.
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