The short version
Three companies. One exit. One very public flop. I write about all of it, the good months and the ugly ones, for people who are tired of highlight reels.
Founder by accident. Writer on purpose.
I sold socks out of my car, then sold the sock company. Since then I have built a calm notes app, started a podcast about tiny companies and written a book about not being busy. I like small teams, clear writing and boring business models that work.
- Building
- Fieldnote 3.0, with a team of six
- Writing
- Book two, very slowly
- Reading
- Anything about bakeries
Selected work
Things I have built
Some are still running. One was sold. One was shut down, and I learned the most from that one.
Writing
Fresh from the notebook
Short essays on building small, pricing without panic and the parts of founding nobody posts about.
All writing- What I learned shutting down KindlingFourteen months, eight hires and one hard email to our customers. The honest postmortem I wish I had read first.Postmortems1 min
- The two hour rule for meetingsOur team caps meetings at two hours a week per person. Here is how it works, and what we do instead.Running a company1 min
- Pricing your first product without panickingPick a number, charge it to ten people and listen. A simple way to price when you have no idea what you are doing.Money1 min
On stage
Next stop
- Bootstrap Week
- Indie Makers Day
- Studio Hours Conference
- The Long Game Show
- Margin Notes Magazine
- Builders on Tuesday
- The Small Business Hour
The newsletter · Second Draft
Sunday notes.
One short letter a week about building a small company on purpose. What worked, what flopped and the numbers behind both.
- One email a week, never more
- Real numbers, real mistakes
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Every Sunday morning. 41,000 readers.