I keep coming back to a question I don’t have a good answer to. At the end of my life, when I look back at the years I spent working, will I think it was worth it? Not the financial kind of worth. I’m not asking whether I made enough money. I’m asking whether the trade I made (hours, attention, energy, the best parts of my mind) produced a life I actually wanted. Whether the years bought something I’d want to keep, or whether I just spent them. It’s a strange question to sit with because most...
about 22 hours ago • 7 min read
Yesterday I deleted the Pro plan on Commune. Zero people had paid for it. Not one. It sat on the pricing page for months, dressed up as “Founding Member” with a 30-day trial and a small discount for early believers. Nobody believed. The startup playbook would tell me to iterate. Lower the price. Change the features. Add urgency. Better copy. A/B test the button. Maybe try a trial-to-paid funnel. Maybe gate a feature people actually want. Charge sooner, validate willingness to pay, find the...
8 days ago • 4 min read
Quick note before we get into it: I'm reworking this newsletter over the next few weeks. More on that soon. For now, here's what's been on my mind. I recently went back to working alone on Commune. I tried delegating marketing and it didn’t stick. At this stage, marketing is how I learn what users actually need. Doing it myself isn’t just cheaper, it’s the fastest feedback loop I have. With the money I saved, my first instinct was to hire a developer. But Commune doesn’t need more features...
14 days ago • 2 min read
You have probably seen the video of Collin Wynter at the Sasquatch Music Festival back in 2009. If you somehow missed it, you absolutely need to watch it right now. It is a complete masterclass in how to build a movement. The video shows Collin dancing entirely alone on a grassy hill. He gives it everything he has, just throwing his arms around and stomping his feet while hundreds of people sit on the grass around him. For a few solid minutes, he is entirely isolated. Most people would get...
22 days ago • 2 min read
I’ve been thinking a lot about what Commune should look like. Chatting with Steven Willmott, he suggested something I never thought about: is Commune really a Substack alternative? I mean, Commune doesn’t send the emails. It’s not a competitor to Kit, Mailchimp, Beehiiv, Ghost, and other ESPs. Instead, it integrates all these networks. Substack is a closed network. That’s a fact. And it’s a fair business model, this is not meant to be a critique. Kit, Mailchimp, Beehiiv, Ghost, Buttondown,...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
This week I have been super focused on strategy for Commune. For a while, I thought having a flagship community on the platform to use as a rock-solid case study would be a really great idea. I played around with creating a paid community and newsletter to help people become unrejectable. It would be a space with periodic webinars from different folks teaching you how to improve your skills, share your work, and make jobs find you instead of the other way around. Building this would also give...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
The following is an article by Iván García Sainz-Aja, , in response to a previous essay I wrote. When I sent it, Iván quickly replied shocked by my words. He couldn't believe I was saying: ...right now, people are too focused on the “easy” wins of generation because building the runtime integration, like a rock-solid Spring plugin, is hard work. This is what he has been working on for years! And the worst part is that I was aware of it but, for someone reason, it didn't come to my mind when...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
I recently got a couple of VCs interested in investing in Commune. Whenever this happens, I always ask why they want to invest and what they are asking in exchange. It's always the same. They want a huge part of the cake. Usually, they want more than half at this stage. And they offer some good money. It's good for me, but it's actually not much for them. I'm talking about tickets from 200k to 500k USD. However, what many people never tell you is that VCs strictly want hockey stick growth....
2 months ago • 2 min read
In my last issue, I asked you a simple question: should I make Commune open source? I got a lot of responses on Commune (yay!) and over on LinkedIn. Honestly, the feedback blew my mind. I expected everyone to shout a resounding yes. That absolutely was not the case. I was surprised most of you recommended I avoid it. Incredible. That included a lot of people in my network who have spent years maintaining open source projects or building open source products. I definitely did not expect that....
2 months ago • 2 min read
Usually, I use this newsletter to share what I’m reading or thinking. Today, I’m flipping the script. I need your brain on one specific thing I’m wrestling with. Should we make Commune fully open-source? I’ve been building Commune as a headless, creator-first alternative to Substack. The goal is total independence. But lately, I’ve been asking myself if we need to take that a step further. You know my track record here. I built the AsyncAPI Initiative on the premise that specifications should...
3 months ago • 1 min read