How to fail 10 times and get to $85M on 11th
You can’t fry eggs properly on the first try. However, we believe that building a successful startup without previous experience is a norm. Here’s a story that disproves it.
Nathan Barry — founder of ConvertKit, a media platform that automates newsletters for creators is famous for being a part of #Buildinpublic movement. This movement is supported by the bootstrapped founders who actively share their trade secrets, work process and results they achieve on social media. Most of the founders who belong to this movement are developers and engineers who are launching their products and try to scale them to $2–5KMRR. When the revenue crosses the magic line (about $150K MRR) the “public” vibe tends to disappear. Nathan Barry is not among those who quits. Recently he’s shared ConvertKit lifetime sales — it went over $84M in August 2021.
But it was not an overnight success. Actually, ConvertKit is Nathan’s 11th project. Moreover, most of the previous ones failed. What lessons did he learn by failing time over time and what did he do differently with ConvertKit?
Early years
Nathat Barry was a homeschooler. All 6 Barry kids were homeschooled grades K-12. The upside — we was out of…
