ConvertKit's No-Interest Loan

A story about how Andrew Warner offered Nathan Barry a $25,000 no-strings-attached loan during ConvertKit's early financial struggles.

"I was at a Mixergy meetup in San Francisco - he would do these scotch nights. After one of those, we were walking out of the building and he pulled me aside and said 'Dude, you seem super stressed.' I told him about our financial situation - our bank balance was growing but we were paying all these people and had no money.

He said 'Here's what we're gonna do: I'm gonna wire you $25,000 tomorrow. If you need the money, spend it, do whatever you want with it. Whenever you feel right, pay me back. Or if you don't need it, just put it in a savings account as an insurance blanket.'

The only condition he added was that if I decided to raise funding, he'd want to convert it into an investment. But the thing that he specifically said was 'The only thing that will piss me off is if you ever try to pay me interest on it - don't try to make this a loan.'

I held onto the money for 8 or 9 months until we had plenty of savings, then I wired it back. Andrew is forever one of those people I'm thankful for - he pulled me aside, noticed I was stressed, and loaned me a security blanket."