It’s somehow been exactly one year (!) since I left VC to become a solopreneur.

I had spent four years treating Growth Unhinged as a passion project that I squeezed in alongside a full-time job. Despite seeing other creators strike out on their own, I was pretty anxious about it. But the opportunity to built something of my own felt too compelling to pass up, despite the extra risk.

In hindsight, betting on myself was the best decision I’ve ever made. Today I’m sharing a candid look at how it’s going – with real numbers – and my advice for anyone interested in stepping off the corporate treadmill.

But first, I’ve got two fun upgrades for you. What’s new at Growth Unhinged:

I got rejected by multiple insurance companies before I managed to get covered. It turns out that most insurers don’t have a clue how to underwrite a solo media and consulting business. Hard to blame them.

It took about 65 emails and 94 days to get paid for a $10k invoice. Some of that’s on me: I just cannot figure out Coupa.

I’ve cycled through three business entities in the past year (sole proprietor > LLC > S-corp). Each has involved increasing amounts of paperwork.

When I made the switch to an S-corp, I needed to start paying myself a “reasonable salary” via payroll (what’s reasonable?!). Then I missed what was supposed to be my first official payroll. Ouch. Maybe I shouldn’t have quit my day job…

The thing is that I’ve learned to (mostly) take this in stride. I’m even embracing some of the back office work since I know that it’ll benefit my business in the long-run.

I set a big goal for myself this year: scale to $1 million in revenue with 0 employees.

I’ll exceed that goal in September, which is wild to say out loud. That’s not something I ever expected when I was making the leap.

Stripe’s data tells me I’m part of a broader movement of solopreneurs striking gold. What makes this possible is better technology (yes, including AI) that now allows us to wear dozens of hats at the same time.

Some of my processes are decidedly old school.

People are surprised to learn that I still create the visuals for Growth Unhinged by hand in Google Slides. No, I’m not kidding. I’ve found that hand-designing these visuals forces me to think critically about what message I’m trying to convey and how to tell a story with data.

But I do try to automate everything that isn’t a core part of the job and use about 14 different tools on a near-daily basis. Here’s a look at my solopreneur tech stack.

Switching to beehiiv at the beginning of the year has been a solopreneur hack, as I’ve shared previously. Before switching I watched as my deliverability rates steadily plummeted – reaching a low point of 90.3% in December 2025. As deliverability fell, so did open rates. Now both are way up. (Full disclaimer, beehiiv is a Growth Unhinged partner.)

I’m an insanely heavy user of the beehiiv MCP in Claude Cowork (you can learn more about it here). AI won’t write this newsletter. It will help with editing, data analysis, and growth tactics. I especially love to use AI as my personal editor: before every post goes live, I run a skill to fact-check claims, review grammar and flow, audit whether posts sound like me, and write SEO titles/descriptions.

People are often curious about how I make money. It’s a trippy topic since I’m monetizing my own expertise and audience. I’ll be as transparent as possible in the hope that this is useful for someone else thinking about becoming a solopreneur.

My business has four main revenue streams, and my plan is for all four to build on one another.

More than 700 of you are premium subscribers (thank you!), which is up from a whopping zero this time last year.

What’s premium today includes the full archive of 200+ newsletter editions, quarterly research reports, templates, 15+ Claude skills for GTM and pricing, and GTM vendor discounts. The assets were getting pretty hard to navigate, and so I vibecoded a new Growth Unhinged member library to make everything easier to find (let me know what you think!). Pricing starts at $15 per month, similar to other B2B newsletters.

I wish I could say this was the biggest revenue stream (especially because beehiiv takes a 0% cut 😊), but it’s not yet. I’m trying to strike a fine balance between keeping the newsletter accessible to everyone while charging for resources that are difficult to produce and are valuable to a subset of readers.

What’s coming next: virtual events, like Growth Unhinged LIVE on September 22, to go deeper into the topics covered in the newsletter. Premium subscribers will get early access to all session recordings.

Let me know: what would you most like to see added to the premium tier?

This is the bread-and-butter for Growth Unhinged and probably most B2B newsletters with a niche audience. I initially undercharged. Classic.

My advice for anyone considering brand partnerships is to be strategic about who you partner with – products that your audience loves will see the highest ROI from a partnership. I personally prioritize a small number of longer-term partners over a bunch of one-off deals. This cuts down on admin, approvals, and invoice chasing so I can focus on the core business. (If you’re just starting out, beehiiv makes it easy to start monetizing with their Ad Network.)

Part of what fuels my writing is that I spend half my time working 1:1 with software companies on topics like pricing, product-led growth, and GTM strategy. I’ve advised 15 companies over the past year, mostly Series A-C startups and scaleups.

When I was a VC operating partner, I never charged for my time. I’ve had to change that mindset quickly. I now proactively bring up pricing very early as a way to qualify conversations and avoid wasting time on both sides.

What I’ve found works for me: (a) never charging per-hour, (b) doing a mix of consulting sprints alongside lighter touch advising, and (c) packaging my work into clearly-defined products that are easy to buy (I was inspired by FletchPMM).

Speaking engagements are probably my lowest ROI revenue stream, especially after factoring in travel time. Yet I still do about one paid engagement each month. Events force me to leave my Boston WFH bubble and to meet people IRL, which is probably a good thing.

The newsletter now reaches 88,000+ subscribers, which is up about 15% year-on-year.

Audience size is absolutely a vanity metric – metrics like deliverability, open rates, and views are far more important for overall newsletter health. Yet this is something I still think about. Constantly. I wish the audience was growing faster. But I don’t see obvious easy, low CAC growth channels.

Four things ARE working for me right now:

In February I created a three-question survey to figure out how new readers first heard about Growth Unhinged. I was surprised to find that 6% came from LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude considering that LLM referral traffic is near-zero.

That number keeps growing. LLMs now drive 15.6% of new subscribers, up 150% between February and August. It’s been the single biggest win from a growth perspective. The prompts that are working the best are, e.g., “what are the best growth newsletters for SaaS founders?” (I have been doing some AEO optimization work and suspect I’m benefiting from beehiiv’s AI discovery investments, too.)

Despite all the algorithm whiplash, LinkedIn remains a growth channel I can’t ignore. 29% of new subscribers first heard of Growth Unhinged via LinkedIn, down from 38% in February.

A few recent changes on LinkedIn make me (somewhat) optimistic about its future. The platform seems to be cracking down on AI slop. Finally. Claude now invisibly watermarks AI outputs, making them easier to catch (although it wasn’t that hard before!). And the classic link-in-body penalty seems to be going away – I’ll take that as a win.

27% of new subscribers came from a friend or colleague referral. Little of this actually gets captured via referral links, although those are steadily picking up as well. Word-of-mouth is probably the hardest growth motion to hack; the content just needs to be worth sharing.

I’ve spent $1,848 this year on advertising through beehiiv’s paid recommendations, where readers get advertised Growth Unhinged while they’re subscribing to a similar newsletter. This has netted 940 new subscribers at a $1.96 cost-per-acquisition. Another 1,926 subscribers have come in organically through free recommendation swaps with other writers.

Paid recommendations are the highest ROI paid channel I’ve seen because intent and relevance are so high, and because I’m only paying for verified subscribers. I also get to support fellow writers instead of paying for Meta. I’ll keep investing here.

I was worried that becoming a solopreneur might end up like a sabbatical or early retirement (I'm still 38 lol). The more time I spend on the business, the more I feel like a startup founder myself and my ambitions keep growing. I’ve got a ton in store for the rest of this year so please watch this space.

This leap into the unknown was only possible because readers like you take the time to open my emails, tell your colleagues about the newsletter, upgrade to paid, and contribute your first-hand experiences. I don’t take that lightly.

Thank you again for being part of the journey. Now let’s get even more unhinged 🍻

- KP