The Shopify Growth Show Nathan Barry: How to Bootstrap a Company to $30M in a Crowded Market (#131)
26 snips
Jun 5, 2023 
Nathan Barry, CEO of ConvertKit, bootstraps a company to $30M in ARR with zero funding. Topics include wealth creation framework, acquiring vs starting a business, competing with powerful incumbents through niche focus, approach to capital allocation and talent acquisition as a bootstrapper, and the evolution of his book Authority.
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Productize Your Services First
- Treat product and service as a continuum and productize repeatable parts of your service work.
- Practice building small information or template products before investing in full software.
Acquire To Bypass Early Product Years
- Buying a product can shortcut 6–36 months of build time if you buy traction and product‑market fit.
- Watch for legacy tech and ensure the acquired product aligns with your marketing strengths.
Prefer Usage-Based Expansion Revenue
- Prefer usage‑based expansion revenue over static feature tiers when evaluating acquisitions.
- Usage pricing scales with customer growth and avoids hitting a feature‑cap ceiling.