Growing an email newsletter to 16k+ subscribers whilst validating your startup idea
Dan Shipper was big productivity nerd. After his company Firefly was acquired he spent a couple of years angel investing before he began to think about creating something in the ever-expanding software productivity space.
However, he first needed to understand the space better. So in August 2019 Dan set out to speak to people who have a similar passion for productivity and learn more about how they approach productivity and how they created their own personal productivity systems.
Unlike most user interview strategies, Dan decided to publicly publish his interviews and insight. To do this Dan created a newsletter called ‘Super Organizers’ on Substack. Specifically, Dan wanted to understand how people organize their lives in order to do their best work.
Dan then began promoting it through his social channels and started to grow his newsletter audience.
And it get’s even better. Later, Dan decided to see if anyone would be interested in paying for his content through Substacks paywall feature. Turns out they did. He now has 1,500+ paying subscribers and growing.
