"How I Turned a Weekend Project to a $15K/Month Newsletter Business"
From Side Project to a Profitable SaaS, Without Investors or Experience
How does a side project born out of sheer frustration become a profitable software business pulling in $15,000 a month?
Justin Duke’s journey from a restless engineer at Stripe to the founder of Buttondown — a simple newsletter SaaS with a cult following — shows that sometimes the best ideas come from simply scratching your own itch.
No investors, no prior experience, just a determination to build something better.
How One Engineer Built the Tool He Couldn’t Find
Justin Duke never set out to create a major software company.
As an engineer at Stripe, he simply wanted a tool that made sending newsletters easier without the baggage of overly complex platforms like Mailchimp or ConvertKit.
None of the available tools fit the bill — they were either too heavy, requiring users to manage far more than just sending emails, or they sought to control the entire …