2022 Wrapped + PTO

Hi friends! 👋

Instead of our usual deep dive today, I bring you a very short update. 

I’m currently back in South Africa visiting friends and family — taking my vacation for the year. I moved to New York about 3 years ago, and once a year I take some time off to head home and spend time with everyone here in Cape Town. 🇿🇦

I’ve had the absolute best time writing this newsletter over the past 4 months, and the response from you all has been way better than expected. I really didn’t think this would be growing around 55% every month — and a huge thanks to everyone who’s sent kind words and shared this with people. I truly love researching and writing these pieces and appreciate all of you for reading — and I’m very much looking forward to writing more this coming year. 🙏

So, for the next 2 weeks, there will be no deep dives or 5-Bit Friday’s. I like to spend a lot of time on everything I write and maintain a really high bar for what I send you all each week — and I don’t think I can do that while taking vacation and making as much time as possible to see everyone.

I’ll be back early Jan, with the promised content every week. I’ve started work on the next deep dive already, and all I’ll say, is that it’s like none of the companies we’ve done before, or will likely do again. It’s, dare I say, epic. 

If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter so far, and haven’t yet, please consider sharing with anyone else you think might enjoy my pieces— and if you write a Substack, I’d love it if you added me to your recommendation list. ❤

I wish you all a lovely rest of December and holidays, and I’ll see you all again in Jan! If you’ve subscribed recently and haven’t read all the deep dives yet, catch-up here with some of the most popular pieces:

• How Notion Grows: What we can learn about product-led and community-led growth strategies from a $10bn SaaS startup.

• How Intercom Grows: What we can learn about acquiring early B2B customers, jobs-based marketing, SaaS pricing strategies, and content-driven growth from Intercom.

• How Superhuman Grows: What a $2bn email startup can teach us about not launching, pricing, viral growth loops, and reverse-engineering product-market-fit.

• How Shopify Grows: Lessons on starting and scaling a B2B product from Shopify's $44b business-building platform.

• How Etsy Grows: Lessons on kickstarting and growing a marketplace from Etsy’s $14b handmade empire.
  

Happy holidays! 🎄

— Jaryd ✌️