When Justin Duke started building Buttondown, he didn't mean to start a company. He just wanted a newsletter tool that didn't feel broken.

The Origin

"I was using TinyLetter," he explains. "I loved it. But they got bought in 2011; years later, it had just accumulated cobwebs. There were very obvious bugs."

He was working full-time as an engineer at Stripe, sending a newsletter to family and friends. On nights and weekends, he hammered away at his own version.

Accidental Business

"It was just meant to be self-hosted. But I would show people and they'd say 'I'd use this! How much does it cost?'"

That was 2017. Today, Buttondown is a lean platform powering newsletters for thousands of customers with about half a dozen employees.

The Anti-Growth Approach

Justin never raised VC - not for lack of interest. "I owe my career to the tech industry. But if there's one complaint, it's the feast-or-famine mindset where you have this one possible correct end game: billion dollar exit or failure."

Selling What They Don't Have

"We found a lot of success in selling customers on what we don't have. We'd deliberately reference Markdown on landing pages as a shibboleth. If you're terrified of Markdown, Buttondown probably isn't for you."

• Started: 2017 as nights/weekends project
• Left Stripe to go full-time: 2021
• Team: ~6 employees
• Raised: $0 in VC