Means of Creation #5: Nathan Barry

Our guest on Means of Creation this week is Nathan Barry, co-founder of ConvertKit!

Nathan got his start in the passion economy nearly 10 years ago, when he launched a series of books for web and mobile designers. They became a massive success, but he wanted to try something new.

So Nathan set his sights on creating a SaaS product. The natural place to begin was scratching his own itch, so he decided to build an email marketing platform for creators. He named it ConvertKit. Today, ConvertKit has 56 employees and is growing as fast as ever!

We’re excited to talk to Nathan about topics such as:

• Why he started ConvertKit, and how the vision has changed since launch
• In a recent tweet, Nathan argued that paid newsletters were a much more difficult path to get to $100k in revenue than courses and books → let's unpack that!
• Deciding to go horizontal or vertical when building for creators
• Comparing and contrasting ConvertKit and Substack: a platform vs. aggregator approach?
• What advice he would give to an aspiring creator who has built an audience, but is struggling with turning it into a livelihood/profession
• His 3 business philosophies: Teach everything you know, create every day, and work in public⁠.
• How to navigate the tradeoff between simplicity and power in building tools for creators.
• Shifting towards creating more vs. consuming less. How can people do this? Where do they start?
• Where does he ultimately want to take ConvertKit? It’s bootstrapped — what’s the end goal?

Join us live on zoom this Friday at 10:30am pacific / 1:30 PM eastern.

Click the link below to RSVP!