The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 94 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gamito: Nathan Barry fired him two weeks before ConvertKit equity vested
“I think my equity was supposed to vest and that director position was supposed to vest the next month, like two weeks after that. So it was a very strategic move on his part.”
Berry: ConvertKit is far ahead of Mailchimp's eight-year growth curve
“When I look at the curve that I'm on with ConvertKit, and if, and the curve that MailChimp did, if we were to overlay those two, ConvertKit is far ahead. Like if we put the start date of the two of them, ConvertKit is far ahead on that curve than MailChimp was…”
Content marketing is a hard way to bootstrap early SaaS
“For trying to grow a SAS business content, by the way, is a really hard way to grow a business. Like go from zero to one and like basic, like no traction to simple traction. And that's what I was trying to do. But if you don't have the community already, it's …”
ConvertKit's first eight years of revenue grew faster than Mailchimp's
“When I look at the curve that I'm on with ConvertKit, and if, and the curve that MailChimp did, if we were to overlay those two, ConvertKit is far ahead. Like if we put the start date of the two of them, ConvertKit is far ahead on that curve than MailChimp was…”
ConvertKit removed individual performance scores from its profit-sharing model
“We used to have something in there where we had another score for individual performance. And we took that out. We basically decided we're going to set a high bar for performance, just like to work at this company and everyone wins and loses together.”
Nathan Berry retained 90% ownership of ConvertKit at $25M ARR
“Yeah, so I own 90% and the team pool is 10%, of which seven percent is currently allocated.”
Berry: ConvertKit removed individual performance metrics from profit sharing
“We used to have something in there where we had another score for individual performance. And we took that out and we basically decided we're going to set a high bar for performance, just like to work at this company default and everyone wins and loses togethe…”
Growing existing SaaS value is 10x easier than chasing outside investments
“Then you're looking at what it takes to add an additional million dollars in Value in the enterprise value for ConvertKit versus what it takes to go make a million dollars somewhere else. And it's just an order of magnitude more effort to do it in real estate …”
Nathan Berry uses a strict two-by-two quadrant model for employee compensation
“So I think of compensation in two different ways that kind of makes a quadrant. So I think of short-term versus long-term compensation, and I think of guaranteed versus performance-based. So short-term guaranteed is salary. Long-term guaranteed is like for one…”
Rachitsky argues newsletter platforms lack moats because creators leave freely
“I don't know if anyone really has a moat. What's interesting is their pitch is you can come and you can leave anytime you want, which works really well for people like me that join. Cause there's no reason not to try it, but then the downside of people can lea…”
Berry: Asking questions during onboarding does not decrease signup completion
“Asking the questions will not decrease the number of people that make it from you know, account signup page to create an account.”
ConvertKit recorded its worst growth month ever after removing upfront credit cards
“It's been live for about a month and a half and we've had our worst month of growth ever in June.”
Pair GMV objectives with counterbalancing adoption metrics for long-term growth
“What I look for is the key metric, which is GMV and then the counterbalancing metric. And so in this case, we're looking to drive the most GMB. That's the main thing. Small creators, big creators all contribute to that, but obviously the big creators drive far…”
ConvertKit reached $25 million in annual recurring revenue
“Yeah, so we're at twenty five million ARR right now.”
ConvertKit's profit sharing is 75% equal and 25% weighted by tenure
“So in that pool it is. 75% based on you're just a team member and everybody participates equally. And then 25% is based on time with the company.”
Adding enterprise value to high-momentum SaaS beats outside real estate investments
“What it takes to add an additional million dollars in Value in the enterprise value for ConvertKit versus what it takes to go make a million dollars somewhere else. And it's just an order of magnitude more effort to do it in real estate investing or something …”
ConvertKit passed $1 billion in aggregated creator earnings in January 2021
“January of this year, we passed a billion dollars earned by creators on ConvertKit or... Through the aggregation.”
ConvertKit pays out roughly $250,000 per month in affiliate commissions
“So we're paying out About 250, we can figure this out, about 250,000 a month to affiliates and paying a 30% commission.”
Platforms should build external discovery loops before internal marketplace discovery
“So it's basically external discovery first, and then later do the internal once the platform is bigger.”
ConvertKit generates $830,000 per month from its affiliate program
“Yeah, so we divided that out. We're at about 830,000 in monthly like top line revenue driven by affiliates.”
Releasing creator photos on Unsplash drives high-authority SEO backlinks
“We have this unsplash collection of creator photos. If you'd like, we'll release those. You know, if you sign off on it and you're up for it, we'll release those photos on unsplash as part of our convert kit, you know, creator collection. And that has, like, t…”
ConvertKit achieved a 5% free-to-paid conversion rate
“We, in our models, we expected a three percent free to paid conversion rate. We came in at a five percent rate and we're like, that's fantastic.”
ConvertKit will not sell early, targeting a decade of further compounding
“We're eight years in and like selling and being done now is just way too early. And so it's really like, if I want to build a MailChimp level company or a Stripe level company or something like that, then it's like, great show up for another decade.”
Nathan Berry: Creator platforms must build external discovery before internal networks
“So it's basically external discovery first, and then later do the internal once the platform is bigger.”
ConvertKit Passed $1B in Aggregated Creator Earnings by January 2021
“January of this year, we passed a billion dollars earned by creators on ConvertKit or, Through, like, other platforms.”
Nathan Berry owns 90% of ConvertKit with a 10% team pool
“Yeah, so I own 90%, and the team pool is 10%, of which seven percent is currently allocated.”
ConvertKit splits profit sharing 75% equally and 25% by employee tenure
“So in that pool it is. 75% based on you're just a team member and everybody participates equally. And then 25% is based on time with the company.”
Dunn: ConvertKit only worked out once Nathan Barry went all in
“I mean, he was at the same point with ConvertKit where he was splitting his time. And when he went all in on ConvertKit, that's when everything started to work out.”
Berry: ConvertKit targets a 3 to 5 month payback period on CAC
“We've been targeting a three to five month payback period.”
Nathan Berry plans to run ConvertKit for 10 to 15 years
“I want to be running SEVA for the next 1015 years.”
Berry: ConvertKit rebranded to Seva to avoid tech-sounding name
“So we changed the name from ConvertKit to Seva and Seva is a Sanskrit word and it means selfless service. And basically we're trying to build a much bigger brand and we didn't want to be, I guess, pigeonholed into a really techie sounding name.”
Barry: Annual plans reduce churn among early-stage prosumer SaaS users
“The annual push has a big impact on churn. And especially when you're going after kind of a prosumer audience, you know, the lower end of the spectrum at that thousand subscribers or less, they might be trying out blogging. They might not be super well establi…”
Barry: ConvertKit does not track CAC closely due to minimal paid acquisition spend
“In the craziness of growth, I haven't nailed it down because we've spent so little on on paid acquisition. It just hasn't been a big channel for us so far that I haven't dialed in those numbers.”
ConvertKit will price solely on subscriber count without feature add-ons
“We're trying to keep the pricing really simple and have it only be on how many subscribers you have, because that, you know, the more successful you are, the more I want to get paid and so I like that really simple pricing. So we're not going to add in, like, …”
ConvertKit does not offer employee equity, granting it only to advisors
“So there are two people that have, or we have two advisors who have shares in the company. So in all across the board, we don't do equity except in these two cases.”
ConvertKit went from 3% to 50% profit margins in five months
“And so we went from having 30,000 in the bank running at like three percent profit margins in February to by July first, we had half a million in the bank and we're operating at a 50% profit margin.”
Mahmudian: Tribe's enterprise customers have near-zero churn rates
“It's for larger organizations, for instance, like ASUS, like IBM, Pipedrive, ConvertKit, and all those sorts of like customers that we have, like Tim Hortons. So for, These customers, the churn rate is very minimal. Almost, I cannot say zero percent, but it's …”
ConvertKit launched profit sharing in 2016 with a $100,000 payout
“We launched profit sharing at our very first team retreat... Summer 2016. And we had grown from 100 K to 300 K in monthly revenue. We'd saved up three months of expenses in the bank. We'd gotten to 50% profit margins through like the team being really lean. An…”
ConvertKit grew from $2,000 to $100,000 MRR in 12 months
“So January, 2016, the previous 12 months, we'd grown from 2000 in MRR to a 100,000 in MRR.”
Organic search drives 40% of ConvertKit's new user accounts
“Search is really like just that anchor that we've, I don't know, gradually invested in over time. And now it pays off in a big way... Yeah, so it drives about 40% of all of our new accounts. Is from search.”
ConvertKit reached 250,000 active users
“But like now for ConvertKit, it's like, oh, we have 250,000 users.”
ConvertKit plans to launch a creator digital product marketplace
“You're definitely going to see it down the road from a marketplace perspective of here are featured products to buy. And, you know, here's the best the best eBooks the best photography resources, you know, all of those sorts of things as we're driving the”
ConvertKit achieved 50% profit margins five months after locking expenses
“We basically locked expenses and then grew our way out of it. And we grew our way from like barely break even to five months later, we had 60%, sorry, 50% profit margins, three months of expenses in the bank.”
ConvertKit freemium tier boosted "Powered by" traffic to 15,000 weekly visitors
“Prior to this year so last year, maybe we were driving two to 3000 visitors a week through powered by links. And then after launching freemium, scaling that up, we're now driving 14, 15,000 visitors a week from powered by links.”