ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business

``` > Since we haven't raised money and aren't planning on a > big exit, I want to continue to pay myself well through > distributions so that offers to buy the company continue > to be easy to decline.

``` That's my favorite line from the post. People in the middle stages of building a long-term business have this tendency to think it's somehow wrong to take some portion of the profit for yourself - most believe it should be reinvested or redistributed.

This doesn't take into account that claiming a portion as yours is an investment - it's an investment to secure your own continued long-term interest in the project.

Clearly you wouldn't do it to the point where the company is suffering - but to the point where maybe you're just not growing as fast? Or have to do to add some features? Often a worthwhile tradeoff.

concierge migrations

This was a hack I used on an eventually failed software venture. We were in an incubator and had about $10k and the start of a pivot. We hired 3 contractors to build an MVP in about 2 weeks. We focused on the core functionality of the product. Since we used Rails we also were able to use a module that gave us a nice admin UI around our data model. This let us do the data entry for pilot members while we got feedback on the core product. Since we were providing a way for vendors to sell products with complex facets (prices in multiple currencies, descriptions in multiple languages, complex product availability etc) we could control the data entry and also avoid building complex wizard UIs for users that surely would be given up on with our limited value prop at the time.

Thinking back on that hack I think it is definitely something I'd do again.

Congrats on the success Nathan! I was at your workshop in Boston back in 2013, and read Authority in 2013. It inspired me to launch https://lsathacks.com (I had an existing book series).

I've now released video courses on the site, things are going very well revenue wise, and I'm on a steady path of much further growth. I honestly don't know what would have happened had I not read Authority back when I did.

Very inspiring to see what you've done with Convertkit, and it's making me consider more direct sales.

p.s. Here's an early writeup you did, in case you don't remember. http://nathanbarry.com/authority-case-studies/

«Bootstrapped» with 55k$ and an already succesful business is not exactly boostrapping to me.

This achievement is very impressive nonetheless. Growing a business even in a known environment is very hard, I know it first hand.

It's especially interesting that he shares numbers, some I'd love to be able to do but money is particularly taboo in my field. Having your accountant and banker tell you that your numbers are actually very good compared to others despite being under the target you set to yourself is especially comforting.

Having your banker call you and congratulate you because you're now largely cash flow positive is exhilarating.

Nathan, thanks for telling your story! I'd like to hear what your take is on something I thought when reading this article. One factor in ConvertKit's success is that RSS is still sort of broken.

My thinking is that a big benefit of the service is that I can sign up for my favorite blogger or YouTuber to email me when they post something new, rather than checking the page a couple times a week and finding nothing new half the time. I've never found an effect RSS service for myself and I suspect many, many others feel the same. If we had, the content providers we love would reply on that instead of being a potential customer for you.