This Entrepreneur Turned a Challenge to a $24 Million Company
Back in 2012, Nathan Berry had made over $80k in 4 months selling two books to his audience of 4,000 newsletter subscribers!
An impressive feat. But Nathan was ready for the next challenge… Finding a source of recurring revenue.
He started The Web App Challenge aiming to launch a SaaS business and reach $5,000 in recurring revenue in 6 months.
The rules:
Only spend $5,000on the project.Only spend 20 hours a weekon the project.
Ideation
As a content creator, Nathan was no stranger to the struggles that creators faced when using general-purpose email outreach tools like Mailchimp.
His idea: Mailchimp for content creators.
To validate the idea, he called potential users to ask for their opinions. The feedback he got was overwhelmingly positive.
Long story short, Nathan built Convertkit and Within 6 months reached $ 2k MRR.
But then revenue stagnated.
The Pain Point
A year and half in, revenue was dwindling.
He tried content marketing, webinars, & partnerships without success.
It turns out, Nathan’s problem was his lack of commitment.
The initial growth showed that Convertkit had potential so Nathan decided to focus on the project full time.
His new strategy? Direct Sales.
He reached out to bloggers to figure out why they weren’t using his platform.
Instead of directly pitching Convertkit, he would listen to their frustrations and help them find solutions. He would then plug his platform at the end.
The response that he heard from most was:
“ConvertKit sounds great & I love what you’re about, but…switching providers is so much work. Sorry, it’s not going to happen.
His solution:
"I'll do it for you for free."
It turns out, the only thing holding back growth was the friction of switching.
Once he offered a solution, customers came on board.
Only six months after starting to offer free migrations, revenue hit $15k MRR!
Today, Nathan doesn’t have to do any migrations himself. There are 68 other team members that can help with that! And the monthly revenue… it crossed $2.4 million 🚀.
Sources:
https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/convertkit-2fcb58f1fa
https://nathanbarry.com/starting-web-app-challenge/
