F2F #55: One year of Founder to Founder

Compendium of the first year of Founder to Founder and a big thank you to all the members of the community. The support you provide is fundamental and sincerely appreciated.

Photo by engin akyurt / Unsplash

One year ago, I hit "send" on the very first issue of Founder to Founder. I still remember thinking "will this be a good idea?". Back then, I didn’t know if this would stick, or if I’d find anyone who'd read my braindumps.

Twelve months later, here we are: 55 issues, four guest articles, 63% average open rate, 15% average click-through-rate, not a single week without sending it, too many words written, zero lawsuits, hundreds of subscribers, and countless conversations started. What began as a small experiment has become a steady routine in my founder and personal life.

I began this newsletter to learn how to do newsletters. I had managed a few in the past: the MarsBased newsletter, the Startup Grind BCN newsletter (with 9000 subscribers) and Startup Digest, but they were all mostly aggregated-content newsletters. I wanted one with more soul to it than just a compendium of the next events, our podcast episodes, and whatnot.

Highlights from year one 🚀

Most-read issue: Side project burnout.
Most viral issue: F2F #45: Calm entrepreneurship - it ended up included in a PhD thesis 🤯
Most surprising reply: My second most-popular post ever, Raise THEIR prices, got me answers from some of my providers saying thank you for that and one of them came with a project for us. We didn't end up working on the project, but it was a nice gesture anyways!
Fun stat: Quite surprisingly, the two posts driving more free members to sign up for this newsletter are my pokémon replays: Pokémon Red replay: a diary & Pokémon Crystal replay: a diary cos why not 🤷
Spiciest hot take: While I have blunt opinions, I still don't get in trouble for saying them. That might change the day I decide to fire on all cylinders about politics, but so far, I've found that my best-performing issues are those that I've written in the heat of the moment, like F2F #11: Side-project burnout, F2F #49: Check your cortisol, Harry, F2F #54: Your deal is lost in another room and F2F #37: The chase is better than the catch.

I never expected the pokémon articles to be read by anyone. Turns out, founders don’t just read: they scroll down to past articles, they write back, challenge, and share their own scars and victories with me. That’s been the best part.

Feedback like this keeps the momentum going:

When you get this kind of feedback from the latest article, you know you're onto something.

What's working:

Surprisingly, the ones with only recommended content perform exceedingly well, but that's not my main driver, so I've stopped doing them.
Opening up about my doubts, insecurities and concerns about work and life in general.
The guest posts.
The low fee of "support this project".

What's not working:

A couple of articles where I delved into some current affair topics like F2F #44: Who is Soham Parekh?
I don't really have the time to market the articles as I should.
The social media profiles for Founder to Founder.

The campfire 🔥

This newsletter isn’t just my monologue. I want it to become a campfire. Some place where founders can gather and open up about their best and worst moments, horror stories with vendors and providers, biggest and most expensive fuckups, favourite books and whatnot.

Some voices already share their stuff with me. Noel de Martin shares his feedback every other issue with me and we have good exchanges over email and sometimes in person. I often jump into calls with subscribers to get to know them. I got the best feedback meeting Sol Vernet, one of the first paid subscribers. I got a nice office in the center of Barcelona thanks to Rufo de la Rosa when I asked about any leads, back when I was asking for stuff at the end of the newsletter article.

One of the best parts of building this community is when I suggested that I wanted friends and community members to write guest articles to cover for my paternity leave and I got 10 replies right away standing up to the challenge. Four have been published already:

We've got a few others in store because I ended up writing more than I expected during my leave. My brain was on fire.

These exchanges are fuel. They remind me that this isn’t about metrics. It’s about having a space where the founder journey feels a little less lonely.

Year two: the roadmap 🛸

What’s next?

I don't care about the metrics I mentioned above. In fact, I don't even check how many paid subscribers I have (but I am very thankful for you) because I don't need the money. It's just a validation to what I want to do.

I ran Startup Grind for eleven years, month in month out, and I never skipped a single month, so I am VERY stubborn about not breaking chains. This feels like another long-term project. In fact, I'd like to write more often, instead of less.

As you might've noticed, I am still testing formats. Most recently, I'm just writing opinion articles, but I've written mixed kinds of content, sometimes I've only recommended third-party content and if you go back in time, you find my old blog posts about travel, SEO, remote work and other topics.

Thank you for showing up, reading, replying, and sometimes disagreeing. A year ago, I just wanted to share what I’ve learned (and unlearned). Today, I know I’m writing with you, not just for you.

A big thank you, also, to all the registered members and extra kudos to the paid subscribers. You keep this going.

Please, reply to this email with what you want to see more of, less of, or written about in the next issue and I'll make sure to include it in my calendar.

Here’s to year two.

Àlex