nathanbarry

I love everything that Colossus puts out. Thanks for sharing this one!

I started ConvertKit (email marketing for creators) as a side hustle in 2013. In 2011 I had started blogging about my process for building iOS apps. In 2012 that turned into an email list on MailChimp and then a self-published book called The App Design Handbook (launched right here on HN).

I thought that social networks like Twitter and Facebook would drive most of the sales, but it was actually the 800 person email list I'd built. From then I became obsessed with how to optimize email marketing. I hacked MailChimp to organize lists, give away incentives for opting in, and more. But it was all hacks. In early 2013 I decided to build an email marketing tool specifically for bloggers and content creators like me.

I made it really easy to give away free incentives (ebooks, sample chapters, etc) to get subscribers, pioneered a new writing interface for time-based email sequences, and made subscriber organization really easy. It stayed a side project for two years (hitting $2k MRR and then flatlining).

In 2015 I decided to double down and make it my full time venture. From there I focused on direct sales and concierge migrations (a fancy way to say I'd do the full switch for you for free). In 2015 we grew from $2k in MRR to $98k. Then in 2016 from $98k to $500k.

Today ConvertKit is at $33M in revenue and has a team of 68, but it all started as a side project!

I didn't know that! runs off to pin the animated robin hood for my 3 year old

Yikes. I'm glad you're going public with this. Companies shouldn't be able to get away with legal bullying like this.

What data do you base that claim on?

Interesting. That wasn't my experience at all. Maybe hunger is the wrong word: love of learning is better.

I grew up to truly love learning and be excited for our weekly trips to the library to get more books. Then when I had access to the internet I spent so much time learning code and design. My parents taught me how to learn and then gave me access to whatever I needed (mostly just the library and a computer).

Thanks for sharing! Glad you enjoyed the article.

Such a great interview. It's fascinating to see how different education styles can have such a big impact.

While homeschooling isn't the right fit for everyone, I was homeschooled and it had a huge impact on me. My habits now for constant learning, working to complete tasks quickly, building projects with my hands (remodeling, woodworking, etc), and my desire to start companies all came from the time and energy that my parents put into crafting a unique education for me.

I'm so excited to see more and more parents considering homeschooling their kids.

Thanks for mentioning ConvertKit! We're happily building our niche product for creators and growing quickly.

Just a couple corrections, at the end of 2019 we were just under $20M ARR (Not $24M). Today we are at $22M ARR and 30,000 customers.

You can see all our numbers (updated in realtime) here on Baremetrics: http://convertkit.baremetrics.com

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Perfect!

Hey HN,

I got frustrated with how long it takes to build a site to get a creative project off the ground, so for the last year I've been working with the whole team at ConvertKit to build a new landing page editor.

It's now totally free and you can start building a page without needing to create an account. I'd love to hear what you think!

Love seeing the transparent breakdown!

If you're interested in more of a discussion on _how_ to increase wealth I wrote a 5,000+ word post on it a few weeks ago called "The Ladders of Wealth Creation".

https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/

Congrats on writing and publishing this book!

This is such a dumb service. Emails just get unsubscribed or reported as spam.

A burn rate assumes a negative number. At ConvertKit we operate with about 18% profit margins.

ConvertKit (http://convertkit.com) | Senior Full-stack engineer | Remote | Full-time

Convertkit is looking for a Senior Rails engineer with significant Javascript experience. Come join our amazing, rapidly growing company!

About the team The engineers at ConvertKit are smart, highly motivated and highly productive developers who care greatly about the craft of coding. We champion learning, bettering ourselves, and teaching to the rest of the team.

About ConvertKit - We are a fully remote company, scattered across 8 states and 4 countries. - Bootstrapped, profitable, and growing very quickly. - We put a high emphasis on work / life balance, and we value and strive for 40 hour work weeks. There aren't set hours, but there's a lot to get done! - We have a positive, vibrant, and genuine culture.

About the role

You'll be part of our awesome engineering team, helping to build our product. We primarily use Rails, Mysql, Redis and Sidekiq to get the job done. We're facing real (fun) scaling challenges because of our incredible growth. Ideally you've been there, done that before.

We're also looking for someone who cares deeply about writing clean, maintainable, well-tested code, and generally tends to leave code in a better state than when you encounter it.

About you

You’re a perfect fit for this role if you’ve got experience developing software, love pragmatic OO design for its long-term cost benefits, and testing. Clean code is not just a phrase for you. Given our high rate of growth, you'll need to have strong knowledge of scaling Rails applications up.

We're a 100% remote company, so you should be autonomous, self-driven, and remote-disciplined.

Apply here: https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/5185-senior-full-stack-engin...

I've had 50+ similar stories end up in my inbox. So I agree that these stories are a lot more common than people think.

Check out the reviews on Amazon as well: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-...

Someone else mentioned this. Is there a link that is going to https that should be http?

Yep, it was a link to this article (http://nathanbarry.com/investment/) about "how ConvertKit raised $1.8m from a large group of angel investors".

Just read more than the title before commenting. ;)

That's true. What's odd to me is that I'm not actually sure why or how RSS is broken, but bloggers are finding again and again that the engagement happens on the email list. Even though objectively RSS should be a much better experience. It just hasn't connected with bloggers and readers in the same way that email does.

Hey Graeme! Good to hear from you. Send me an email. I'd love to hear specifics on how the book and course sales are doing now!

This talk is so good.

Did you read the article you linked beyond the first paragraph?

Yeah, It was an experiment I started running when I focused on ConvertKit. So far it's increased revenue, but it obviously has the side effect of fewer purchases.

Yep, like everyone is saying ConvertKit is about following content creators you get a lot of value or entertainment from. We tend to get better open rates and deliverability across the board because we exclude a lot of the traditional businesses that would use email marketing poorly (purely for sales).

I think it depends a lot on how specific you are. I hate generic cold emails as well, so I've always struggled with this. My theory is to just personalize as much as possible. And more importantly, only reach out to relevant potential customers.

Though anyone who sends the third email after no response with something like "did you get squished by an elephant or eaten by an alligator? Because I can't think of any other reason you haven't replied" is instantly dead to me.

Love this. I think early on I had the same idea as the commenter above—that 2-3 years without results is the anomaly and means it's time to move on.

Hopefully we can tell more stories to show that two years really should be your minimum commitment to just get traction.

Huh, this is the first time I've heard it suggested that putting all of your savings into a company is not bootstrapping. And to add some detail, it was $5k initially, then $50k when it was time to focus on growth.