§ 01 — Origin
I started Tendril because I was tired of the other newsletters. The ones that promised ten ways to 10x your MRR, that confused activity with progress, that treated software like a sport with a leaderboard. I'd been running my own SaaS for four years — small, profitable, two people — and almost nothing I read reflected the actual texture of the work.
The actual texture is mostly waiting. Reading support tickets twice. Choosing between two features that both sound right. Wondering whether you priced too low. Sitting with a difficult email for three days before sending it. None of this makes for good Twitter content.
So I started writing it down on Sundays.
§ 02 — The reader I'm writing to
You probably run a software business that makes between $8K and $80K a month. You have one cofounder, or none. You don't want to raise. You're profitable, or close to it, and you've noticed the advice industry doesn't have much to say to you — because most of it is calibrated for companies trying to become a hundred times larger than yours, very quickly.
The interesting questions stop being how to grow and start being what to keep, what to cut, and how to stay in love with the work for another decade.
That's the conversation Tendril is trying to have. Not the only one worth having — just one that wasn't happening enough.
§ 03 — What you can expect
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01.
One essay. Sunday morning. 800 to 1,400 words. Long enough to say something. Short enough to read with coffee.
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02.
No tactics, no funnels, no playbooks. If you want a checklist for cold outreach, this isn't it. If you want to think more clearly about pricing, focus, or saying no, it might be.
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03.
No sponsors. No tracking pixels. Reader-supported, when it's anything. Mostly free. Always plain text.
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04.
Written by a practitioner, not a pundit. Everything here comes out of running a real, small, slightly boring software company. Sometimes that means I don't have an answer. I try to say so.
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05.
The opposite of urgent. Nothing in Tendril needs to be acted on this week. Most of it doesn't need to be acted on at all.
§ 04 — Why "tendril"
The word came from a long walk and a slow argument I was having with myself about how small businesses actually grow. Not in straight lines. Not in hockey-stick curves. They feel their way outward — slowly, through whatever they can find purchase on. They wrap around problems instead of crashing through them. They go quiet for a season, then they don't.
That seemed like the right shape for a newsletter, and the right metaphor for the kind of company I want to keep running.
Anders Holm, writing from Copenhagen