How Justin Duke is building Buttondown into the perfect bootstrapped business

Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown, a simple email tool he launched in 2017. Justin was last on the podcast 2 years ago when he’d hit $15k MRR and just left his role at Stripe to focus on Buttondown. I was struck by Justin’s well thought through approach to building. He makes calculated risks and shares a lot of his learnings on his blog, Applied Cartography (which is an essential read for any indie hackers).

This episode I catch up with Justin to hear how he’s grown the team to 8 people and his approach to building a company he loves. This is a cut down version of an hour long catch up I had with Justin available on the Indie Bites membership which is available at indiebites.com/membership, where we discuss his personal blog, how he structures his time as a new parent and we go deeper into hiring high agency unicorns.

Timestamps
  • 00:00 - Intro
  • 01:58 - Buttondown growth
  • 03:40 - How to build a company you don't hate
  • 07:16 - Marketing and positioning Buttondown
  • 11:17 - Buttondown's unique home page approach
  • 13:45 - Building a business you enjoy
  • 15:32 - Recommendations
My links
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Creators and Guests

James McKinven
Host
James McKinven
Host of the Indie Bites podcast & founder of PodPanda.
Justin Duke
Guest
Justin Duke
Founder of Buttondown. Prev Stripe & Amazon.
How Justin Duke is building Buttondown into the perfect bootstrapped business
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