Not enough companies bootstrap. Some people work 45 hours / week at their job and 55 hours / week on their side business. That is less risky to me than taking investment and working 100 hours / week on a VC funded business.
All of ConvertKit's SaaS metrics are visible to the public at <a href="https://convertkit.baremetrics.com" rel="nofollow">https://convertkit.baremetrics.com</a><p>Fascinating company to follow, an "overnight success" after years of hard work. Look at that MRR go <a href="https://convertkit.baremetrics.com/stats/mrr#start_date=2013-03-03&end_date=2016-04-02" rel="nofollow">https://convertkit.baremetrics.com/stats/mrr#start_date=2013...</a><p>I remember hearing about Nathan and ConvertKit years ago on patio11's podcast when they were discussing pricing. Congrats on bootstrapping to some impressive numbers, don't forget to enjoy some of the benefits now!
Interesting read, but… Specifics? "Hope and teamwork" was all it took to get on top of a crushing backlog of support requests? Sounds like a fairytale…
Thanks for sharing Nathan, glad to see things are working out so well for Convertkit! And very glad to see a bootstrapping story in such detail.<p>Nathan's book Authority led to my creating a website from my books in 2013, and it's grown handily. I currently have the opposite issue: my revenue growth slowed, but expenses are low so I have a largish runway. Recently started investing more in capital and look to be on a path to grow revenue with a new product very shortly.<p>Specifically a Macbook pro. I had been trying to launch an initial video product using a macbook air, figuring I'd buy the better computer once I had proven revenue. But that delayed me for months due to technical slowdowns. I bought the pro last week and will probably have a very minimal product out this week.<p>Slack's been a big help. Several years into the business my processes had gotten too complex and it was slowing progress.
What's the trade off here? Say he raised money instead, would that have meant that he can focus on growth and product instead of doing house keeping?