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!
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.
One of the biggest advantages as well as disadvantage of homeschooling I think would be limiting the amount of school induced brainwashing.
I don’t mean they make kids into automatons, but there is a tendency to _tell_ kids this is right and that is wrong along ideological lines without allowing kids to discover those things for themselves.
I’m talking about things like tax policy, education, religion, government, etc.
For example, kids are indoctrinated to believe if they get good grades they can go to college and they’ll be set. That government is there to take care of you, that the education system is good, etc.
So these kids graduate, go to college, university and then wonder why after doing all that their humanities or business classes don’t land them jobs.
They should be allowed to discover more and question the whole system more. Some should be tracked for vocational schools rather than everyone expecting they are fit to work anywhere they desire... its unrealistic.
I feel like this would be a strong argument against homeschooling (and private religious schools for that matter). Because if they're home-schooled then they'll get exposed to fewer people from different social backgrounds than themselves, and that would reasonably reduce the amount of "brainwashing".
It depends for sure. However most households have a diversity of friends and the kids do have to go in group outings. Besides, depending on school district your claim might not be accurate (ie you may attend a school full of rich brats, you may attend a school full of ne’er do wells, or a school where everyone is on the lunch program) neither broadens horizons).
Religion might be a problem with strictly religious parents, but I don’t see the damage being worse than that done by school systems. I experienced way too many friends who didn’t fit in and dropped out and other kids who believed in the system and believed things their teachers told them.
If Rodger Waters thinks the schools are a bit heavy , there’s gotta be a problem.
Children are very impressionable and unless their parents are attentive and let on that there’s more to things in life than school's take on things (which is potentially six hours or more of institutional indoctrination), the kids have little chance.
After homeschooling, I also have a hunger for learning. It is the hunger of someone that did not always get enough to eat as a child and isn't going to let calories go by uneaten. The hunger of someone who suspects others know how malnourished they were as a kid and is afraid to look skinny. A hunger that keeps them up at night, telling them to eat and eat until sleep seizes them, then wakes them up early in the morning, so they can eat again.
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).
That's cool. I'm happy that some people had good homeschool experiences. I grew up in a house full of books and loved to read and it mostly turned out okay except for the constant feeling that I had never learned enough.
My point is only that homeschooling in the US has an enormous variety of outcomes. This should be expected, because there is very little oversight, even here in California where some of my siblings only acquired what education a reasonably bright child can acquire by cultural osmosis. If you think I'm exaggerating, it might because you've never had to explain to an intelligent 13-year-old that the '<', '/', and '>' they are learning to use for html can also mean less-than, division, and greater-than.
I see you are invested in a company catering to homeschoolers. I think it's fantastic that education is becoming easier and easier to come by. Homeschoolers need all the help they can get. As long as you are encouraging people to consider homeschooling, I hope you'll take a glance through r/HomeschoolRecovery and get a view of what happens when homeschooling goes wrong.
Public school also goes terribly bad. Graduation rates are problematic, the government’s own 2014 study on sexual abuse found that fully 10% of kids are abused at school, not counting abuse by other students including sexual abuse and bullying, some kids are promoted year to year without ever learning basic skills, many kids have to take remedial math and English in college to get up to speed, suicide rates of teens goes way down during the summer months compared to school months, schools teach to the test, funding is a a problem, California is 44th educationally in the nation, etc. As far as I can see, there is no epidemic of former homeschooled students on welfare or being any sort of drain on the state. Sure, there are bad outcomes... there are with any percentage of childhoods, period. But the advantages of homeschooling, the freedom of being able to choose with your child the kind of educational methods and resources one uses, including how learning happens, and making sure it doesn’t look like school (because that way doesn’t work for everyone), is what makes it amazing. Sure, it doesn’t look like school. It’s not supposed to, and that oversight you speak of is exactly what would kill it and make it Just like school. Which would be a problem because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing most do the time...not exactly the gold standard we should hold up as an example.
> 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.
Who knows were these habits come from. There are many people who went to regular schools and share these exact same habits.
Very surprised he hadn't heard of ConvertKit. It's usually in the running whenever I google for email marketing/automation software. Price seems reasonable too (but not for us, we're more newsletter-based rather than conversion-based so it doesn't really work out).
Can I throw my hat into the ring? I run an email marketing platform (https://emailoctopus.com) that’s affordable and aimed at entrepreneurs/makers with newsletters. Shoot me an email if you’d like a discount.
Sure no problem, I have heard of it before, there are just a lot of options out there and it takes time to dig into each one when I only help out part time. Having a "start for free" option is definite a good idea and I probably will check it out soon.
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!
Hi Nathan. Congrats on the launch of the page builder!
I was looking through the css of the 'abbey' page https://demo.ck.page/abbey and noticed a problem: the spinner doesn't show correctly on the submit button. More specifically, it does show, but the word 'Subscribe' is over the top when it should be hidden, so you can't see the spinner properly. The problem is an easy fix, it's just a small misalignment between the css selector and html structure :)
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".
