Sam DeBrule Profile picture
Aug 11, 2021 8 tweets 4 min read Read on X
I chatted with some of the top writers on Substack recently.

Here’s their advice on growing a newsletter:

[thread]
Rusty Foster (@fka_tabs), @TodayinTabs

Get people with a bigger audience to mention you.
Will Lawrence, Product Life

Remix content for social channels.
Jeffrey Ding, ChinAI

Go organic.
Jeremy Caplan, Wonder Tools

Partner with other newsletters + write consistently useful posts.
Anton Howes, Age of Invention

Post regularly to increase the chance of sharing.
Ali Abouelatta, First 1000

Optimize content for organic search. Be active on Twitter.

(Ali’s newsletter is read by 20k+ people now! He shares about his journey from 0->2k subscribers in detail here: read.first1000.co/p/growing-firs…)
Thinking of starting a newsletter of your own?

Top creators join us every week for AMAs to share tips and mistakes they made.

@mikulaja is joining us tomorrow to share the story behind "Fintech Business Weekly."

Come hang with us:

links.usejournal.com/slack-community

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More from @SamDeBrule

Jun 28, 2022
I’m fired up to share that Heyday raised a $6.5M Seed led by @kevinthau @sparkcapital

We’re sharing our pitch deck as a resource for founders trying to raise in this environment 👇
@kevinthau @sparkcapital A deck alone isn’t enough to raise money

But it does determine whether or not investors meet with you

And it all starts with an often-overlooked slide...
@kevinthau @sparkcapital The Title

Investors see god knows how many decks each day

Grab their attention immediately.

(huge thanks to our friends @order for designing our deck!) Image
Read 21 tweets
Apr 4, 2022
Heyday is live on @ProductHunt today!

In just 6 months we went from:

Idea > beta > @FastCompany feature > 150 paying subscribers > launch

Here’s how we did it: 🧵
First, we are not an overnight success story

We struggled for 4 years with our previous company (Journal) before @samiur1204 and I shut it down to start Heyday.

50,000+ people tried it, few stuck around

It was a worse version of more popular, better-funded tools
We started by setting ground rules

• If it’s not differentiated, it’s not worth building
• Only work on what we're uniquely capable of making
• Fun is mandatory
Read 11 tweets
Oct 12, 2021
Melanie Perkins co-founded Canva when she was 19 years old and still in college.

Last month, the company hit a $40 billion valuation.

This is a story of how two gutsy Australian entrepreneurs convinced Silicon Valley to fund their dream and change the world of design forever.👇
.@melaniecanva's journey to get @canva built wasn't easy.

She had:
• Zero Silicon Valley connections
• No technical background
• 100+ investor rejections

What she did have was product market fit and an ambitious vision.

(photo h/t: @zachkitschke)
Melanie's original idea for @canva was to enable anyone in the world to design.

When she taught design @uwa in 2006, she found design software clunky and difficult to use.

"Students would take a whole semester just learning where the buttons were and how to design something."
Read 22 tweets
Aug 30, 2021
Ruben Harris started Career Karma, a platform that helps people break into the tech industry, in 2018.

Career Karma raised a $10 million Series A led by Garry Tan @Initialized in 2020.

This is a story of an outsider breaking into the Valley with sheer determination and hustle👇 Image
.@rubenharris’ story is all about overcoming long odds:

• Broke into investment banking with no connections.
• Linked with VCs like @balajis through Twitter.
• Landed a job in SF 3 weeks after booking a one-way ticket.
• Built an audience for CK before building a product. Image
Ruben went to college wanting to be a professional musician.

He’s been playing the cello for 30 years.

His cello teacher told him to understand business to help him become a professional musician.

To do that quickly, he chose to get into investment banking. Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 23, 2021
In 4 years, Jamila Souffrant took @JourneyToLaunch from nothing to a six-figure personal finance business.

Her podcast has over 2 million downloads.

This is the story of how a bootstrapped entrepreneur is building the media empire she wants to see. Image
Jamila had no plans to make Journey to Launch (JTL) a business until a regular commute brought on an existential realization.

She and her husband Woody saved $169,000 in 2 years, with a growing family, so that she could leave her corporate job and focus on JTL full time. Image
Jamila first got into personal finance through the #financialindependence movement.

She set a goal of aggressively saving money and retiring at 40.

In 2016, she and Woody saved $85,000.
In 2017, they saved $84,000. (h/t @RyanDerous for Forbes). Image
Read 13 tweets
May 24, 2021
Sam Udotong is one of the scrappiest founders in tech

In 2016, he moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket.

Today his startup Fireflies raised $14 million from top investors.

This is the story of his "overnight" success 👇👇👇
Sam's journey has been far from easy

• He moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket
• For years his daily diet consisted of a bottle of Soylent and three slices of pizza
• He and his co-founder pivoted the company *7 times*
Sam & co-founder @krish_ramineni started @firefliesai at an MIT hackathon

After graduation many of Sam's classmates took jobs at companies like Facebook and Google.

Sam bet on himself and decided to bootstrap his company.
Read 8 tweets

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