ConvertKit's Revenue Journey

A story about how ConvertKit grew rapidly while maintaining public transparency of their metrics, despite advice against it.

"We had two friends who sat me down for an intervention. They said 'Nathan, take down your public metrics page.' They were right - they had talked to competitors who were looking at our data. But for us, it wasn't about marketing, it was about our mission to help creators earn a living.

We wanted to put out a public blueprint that wasn't just a snapshot in time. When someone is at $50K MRR and their churn is brutal, they can go back and see what ConvertKit's churn was at that same stage. They can find the date range, see all our metrics, and how fast we were growing.

The company is totally self-funded - no outside capital. We grew from $2,000 a month to $100,000 a month in 12 months, all starting from just $50 I put in. We spent all that money and were only doing 3% profit margins. At one point, we got down to having just $10,000-$12,000 in the bank. Even though we were growing, our expenses were increasing so much that our days worth of expenses kept getting shorter and shorter. It got super scary.

But now we're at $26 million in recurring revenue, with 69 employees, and we still keep all our metrics public. My hope is that it serves as breadcrumbs for every future entrepreneur who wants to recreate this in another industry."