Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown, a simple email newsletter tool without all the bloat. In December 2022 Buttondown was around $15k MRR. He also runs Spoonbill, which is a way to stay updated on what people change on their social profiles. At the time of recording this Justin was an engineering manager at Stripe so you’ll hear references to that, but he’s since left to go all in on being a founder.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:57 Origins of Buttondown
03:25 Buttondown launch
05:37 Keeping Buttondown as a side project
07:47 A pricing conundrum
09:26 Having a free plan
10:20 Finding balance
12:31 Are Stripe side-project friendly
13:56 Recommendations

Recommendations

Book - The Great Beanie Baby Bubble
Podcast - Metamuse
Indie Hacker - Amy Hoy
Newsletter - Matt Levine Money Stuff

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Building a $15k MRR side project while working at Stripe - Justin Duke, Buttondown