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Hey 👋

Happy Tuesday! I have a feeling these will pretty consistently come out at the end of the month. Turns out I am still a chronic procrastinator.

In today's issue we have a trip report from the 76-mile thru-hike I just did with my dad of the Foothills Trail in South Carolina, Yelp for Accountants (something I've wanted to see exist for a long time), and the first bootstrapper twitter rom com??

Let me know what links you like best, and please feel free to share if you make anything you're proud of. I'd love to check it out and may include it in a future issue.

Cheers,

Andrew

From the bootstrapped world

​The case for the 7-day credit card required free trial​

I'm getting close to having the MVP of ChartJuice ready to start sending traffic to. I'm hoping I'll get there by the end of May, if not sooner. And I'm planning to test out a 7-day credit card required free trial. This article from Geoff Roberts at Outseta is the latest in what feels like a long line of successful bootstrappers advocating for this model. Geoff and his team switched Outseta from a freemium model to a credit card required free trial and even with the dropoff in new leads saw their customer growth rate DOUBLE (and they drastically reduced support time).

​The art of the update​

A super thorough guide to writing product updates that help reduce churn and provide opportunities for upsells. Also, their product looks super interesting. They use GenAI to help you automate the process of writing updates, which seems like a killer use case for AI.

​Yelp for Accountants​

Sam Parr just launched a new project - a directory of accountants with reviews, tags, and pricing info. I've wanted this to exist for ages for my own personal use, I've never found an accountant I really loved. And it makes so much sense for Sam to launch it, because he can really kickstart the recommendations with his audience. He nailed the branding too. Now I can finally turn autorenew off for greatcpas.com, lol.

From me

​My 76-mile thru-hike with my dad on the Foothills Trail in SC​

People seemed to enjoy my write up of the Camino, so I thought I would put together this trip report of my hike with my dad on the Foothills Trail. We did sections of the trail when I was younger, so it was really cool to finally go back and do the whole thing. This was also the first time that I felt our roles shifting, and I was taking care of my dad in some of the ways he has always taken care of me. All-in-all it was a fantastic hike on a beautiful, incredibly well-maintained trail.

From the internet

​When YouTubers ask for money​

A popular YouTube channel/group called Watcher recently came under flack from their audience when they announced they were moving all of their content behind a paywall. They eventually walked the decision back. Colin and Samir, who regularly break down the creator economy, talk about the decision and the implications for other creator businesses in this episode of their podcast. This is essentially a price increase, which can always be dicey. But I was struck by the way they talked about other attempts creators have made to charge directly for their work, and the complications that come from the creator/subscriber relationship vs a typical customer relationship.

​Lil Dicky on New Heights with Travis and Jason Kelce​

A friend recently told me that my love of football is the most offbrand thing about me. But growing up in South Carolina, it's kind of unavoidable. Like every other football (or TSwift) fan in the past few years, I've fallen in love with the Kelce brothers. And I had a blast listening to this interview they did with Lil Dicky, who is from Philadelphia and is a massive Eagles fan (Jason played for the Eagles until this year). They all seemed to be equally starstruck which was cute, and they clearly had a blast talking to each other. It's a fun listen.

​Nick Gray's Tokyo blind date - The first bootstrapper twitter romcom ​

If you need a little bit of wholesome fun this week, check out Nick Gray's tweets about his Tokyo blind date. He flew a random person to Tokyo, and they're spending 5 days together exploring the city and getting to know each other. The updates have everyone in bootstrapper twitter swooning.