Insight
Aug 18, 2025
How Nathan Barry bootstrapped Kit from zero to $42M ARR in 10 years
Alex Turnbull
Introduction
What does it take to grow a side project earning $1,000 a month into a $42M ARR business with $4M in profit?
On this episode of the Zero to $10M ARR Podcast, we sat down with Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of Kit, to find out.
Nathan’s path started with freelance web design. Then selling iPhone apps. Then writing books about design. In 2014, he went all-in on Kit (then ConvertKit), even though it was only making $1K per month.
Fast forward 10 years. Kit has grown into a $42M ARR powerhouse.
In this episode, Nathan walks us through the real inflection points that drove that growth:
Acquiring his first 100 customers
Going from $60K ARR to $1M ARR in 9 months
Scaling to $6M ARR in a single year, then hitting $10M ARR soon after
How niching down into email marketing for bloggers changed everything
What role direct marketing, content, and affiliates played at each stage
The most pivotal decision that changed Kit’s entire trajectory
We also asked Nathan what he would do if he were starting from scratch today. His answer was tactical, specific, and worth hearing if you're scaling a SaaS business right now.
Nathan has lived every stage of the founder journey, from scrappy side hustle to serious scale. If you’re growing your own SaaS or considering what lever to pull next, this episode delivers.
Listen in to learn how he did it—and how you can apply the same tactics.
Links and Resources
Subscribe to the Podcast
If this episode helped you, subscribe and leave a review. Share it with another founder trying to figure out what actually moves the needle.
Ready to stop guessing
and start building?
Join the Academy to get the real GTM system we’re using in real time - playbooks, weekly live calls, private Slack, and honest feedback from operators.
