A weekly letter
for people quietly
running small software
companies.
Tendril is one short essay, every Thursday morning, about the unglamorous parts of building a profitable SaaS — pricing the thing, saying no to the feature, hiring the second person, knowing when to ship and when to wait another week.
No funnels. No "frameworks." No screenshots of MRR graphs. About 900 words. Read in under five minutes. Forwarded more often than it's posted.
4,180 founders already reading. Free, weekly, unsubscribe with one click and no theatrics.
From the archive.
Recent issues — 147 total- № 147 · Nov 14 The price you're afraid to charge is probably the right one. On the strange psychology of doubling your price and watching nothing bad happen. 5 min
- № 146 · Nov 07 Hire the second person eighteen months later than feels reasonable. Why most two-person companies should have stayed one for another year. 4 min
- № 145 · Oct 31 Ship it on Tuesday. Don't tell anyone until Thursday. A small case for the quiet release. 3 min
- № 144 · Oct 24 Saying no is a product feature. The single most underused word in a founder's vocabulary, and what it does to a roadmap. 4 min
- № 143 · Oct 17 On revenue you don't want. Some customers are loud, expensive, and shaping your product without paying for the privilege. 5 min
- № 142 · Oct 10 The week I stopped reading Hacker News. It did not, in fact, change my life. Things just got slightly quieter. 3 min
- № 141 · Oct 03 Annual plans, and why your pricing page is lying. A short field guide to what discount actually buys you, and what it costs. 6 min
- № 140 · Sep 26 Don't build the integration. Write the doc instead. How a markdown file outperformed six weeks of API work. 4 min
- № 139 · Sep 19 Focus is what you do on the bad days. Anyone can stay focused on a Tuesday in March. The real test is the Tuesday in November. 4 min
Saying no is a product feature.
Acustomer wrote in last Tuesday asking for a feature. It was a reasonable request. Two of his teammates would use it. He was polite, and his company pays us $84 a month, and he attached a screenshot of a competing tool to make his case clearer.
I said no. I tried to say it kindly. I gave him a small workaround that handled most of what he wanted, and I told him plainly that we wouldn't be building the larger thing. He thanked me. He's still a customer. The interaction took eleven minutes and involved no engineering at all.
I used to think the job was building things. Increasingly I think the job is deciding what not to build, and then explaining that decision to someone whose Tuesday afternoon you've politely complicated. It's a strange, slightly uncomfortable skill. It doesn't feel like work. There's no commit, no pull request, no satisfying line crossed off. There's just a closed tab and the same product you had this morning.
But the product you had this morning is, in some quiet way, sharper than it was. It still does one thing well. The next person who signs up will not have to navigate the feature you didn't build. And next quarter, when you're thinking about what to focus on, your focus has a slightly clearer floor to stand on…
What readers say,
occasionally, in their reply.
On the record
The only newsletter I read on the day it arrives. Most of the others I save for never.
Founder · Plainfield Analytics · 1 employee
I raised our prices the week after issue 89. Nothing bad happened. I owe you about $40,000.
Co-founder · Outpost · 2 employees
It reads like someone who has actually run a company and isn't trying to sell me a course about it.
Founder · Tilemap · solo
I print it out on Thursdays. I am thirty-four years old and I print out a newsletter on Thursdays.
Founder · Casework HQ · solo
What it covers
The boring middle of running a software business. Not the launch, not the exit. The 2,000 days in between, where most of the actual work happens and almost nobody writes about it.
- Pricing, and the strange feelings around it
- Hiring slowly, or not at all
- Saying no to features, customers, partnerships
- When to ship, when to wait, how to tell
- Focus as a daily practice, not a slogan
- Money, taxes, runway, and quiet anxiety
- Working alone without losing the plot
Who it's for
You run, or want to run, a small software company. One or two people. Profitable, or close to it. You are not raising. You are not "scaling." You are trying to do good work for paying customers and have a life that doesn't end at the laptop.
- Solo SaaS founders, ramen-profitable and up
- Two-person teams who want to stay two-person
- Bootstrapped founders past the launch phase
- Indie hackers tired of indie hacker content
- Designers and engineers gone independent
- Anyone allergic to the word "growth"
The internet has
enough loud advice.
Here is something
quieter.
One essay a week. About 900 words. No tracking pixels, no upsells, no thread on Twitter announcing it. It arrives in your inbox at six in the morning and waits there patiently until you have a moment.
If, after a few weeks, it isn't for you — there is one unsubscribe link at the bottom of every issue, and clicking it is the entire process.