Brave New Work 36. The Case for Profit Sharing with Nathan Barry

Not that long ago, we were living in a grow-grow-grow economy where stock options in a hot venture-backed startup were what most employees coveted. Today, a profitable bootstrapped company that shares its profit with its own employees feels like a revelation.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak with Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of ConvertKit, about how his bootstrapped software company shares profit with its employees, and while we're at it, how they think about compensation more generally. Hopefully, some of our listeners will follow in their footsteps.

Learn more about Nathan on LinkedIn and Twitter.

You can read the thread that sparked this episode here: https://twitter.com/nathanbarry/status/1231227172238422016

Learn more about ConvertKit at their website.

Mentioned references:

• ConvertKit's publicly available financial metrics
• Coinbase's decision making framework (PPS and RAPIDs)
• Radford Global Compensation Database
• "Joel and the transparency episode": BNW Ep. 6
• nathanbarry.com/uncertainty

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00:00 Intro + Check-In: Share one way in which you are difficult to work with, and one way in which you are easy to work with.

04:21 Nathan’s ConvertKit story

05:56 ConvertKit’s profit sharing approach

13:16 Walking away from tying performance intro profit sharing

17:03 Calculating what profit is available to share

20:20 Shadow of profit sharing

24:09 ConvertKit’s transparency principles

27:07 The other components of compensation

33:06 Trade-offs to reach philosophical outcomes

36:37 Nathan’s advice for leaders navigating this moment

39:44 Wrap Up: Leave us a review!