2025 Founder Recap: State of Sublime

I have been doing these endofear reflections every year for the past three years, but I normally write them.

This is the first year that I do a video. So, here we are. This is a

video. So, here we are. This is a behindthecenes video reflecting on 2025 and where Sublime is as a business. If

you're a customer, a fan, have been following Sublime, I think you'll enjoy this rare and pretty detailed sneak peek of where we are. And if you're an ambitious founder or aspiring founder

looking for an alternative narrative or approach far from the entrepreneurship casino that is everywhere around us, I think you'll appreciate this too.

Big story of the year for us is one of relief or at least this feeling that we are entering chapter 2. And many people listening to this may have been following our journey for many years.

But if you haven't, to give you some context, we launched Sublime in private beta in August of 2023. So, it's been about 28 months since the first

incarnation of Sublime went live. Many

more years truthfully marinating the ideas that would later become Sublime.

For example, I wrote an essay in 2022 called the future of search is boutique.

And it's just so easy to draw a line from there to here. I spent a good portion of the two years since Sublime launched trying and mostly failing to

explain what Sublime is. Pinterest for

ideas felt too flat. Part note-taking,

part bookmarking sounds unexciting. A

second brain but communal felt so without heart. If you read my 2023 end

without heart. If you read my 2023 end of year letter, there was this sort of naive belief that if only we could find the right tagline, everything else would fall into place. And I no longer believe

that's true. But I would say the

that's true. But I would say the defining emotion of chapter 1 wasn't doubt. Of course, there were moments

doubt. Of course, there were moments where I doubted myself, but the truth is I've had a bone deep belief or conviction in this project from the beginning. I think the defining emotion

beginning. I think the defining emotion was more frustration. I knew

intellectually the amount of energy it takes to get anything really off the ground. But I think it's different being

ground. But I think it's different being a mother where it's not just the physical presence sacrifice, it's the it's the mental presence. Maybe shame is

a good word, too. Something I wrote a few years ago when I was still kind of getting Sublime off the ground. I said,

"I am ashamed of how many Sundays I sat in my backyard with my 2-year-old thinking, "This is boring." Secretly

wanting to be back in my laptop because the pieces of the puzzle weren't coming together. And I think that was it inside

together. And I think that was it inside of me for the for chapter 1, right? The

first two years of building Sublime, I was making conceptual strides. I was

figuring out you know what is this thing going to be and what is the information architecture of this thing and what kind of team do we need and also practical strides I mean in order to build anything cool you still need to build

the login features the authentication features and so you're making all of this progress but there is nothing outwardly impressive to show and that is

just so much of how everything begins this is where I think most people quit at the end of 2023 we had 993 users. At

the end of 2024, we had about 9,000 users. Near the end of 2025, we have

users. Near the end of 2025, we have about 50,000 users. Obviously, users is a vanity metric, and we weren't actively trying to get new users. We were really focused on building the foundation for

something wonderful and retentive, but still in a vacuum. Is that a lot or a little? And I think it depends on who

little? And I think it depends on who you ask. You see stories of overnight

you ask. You see stories of overnight success on Twitter, the vibe coded app that got 60,000 users in one day. The

truth is, I don't care. That's not who I'm benchmarking against. The majority

of those apps won't be around in 12 months, let alone in 5 years. That path

is just so uninteresting to me. I am

just so much more interested in the idea of a lifelong business, something that can be nurtured and cared for and improved over decades. I knew from the

beginning that my first priority was to get to a place where Sublime could exist indefinitely. Most businesses have an

indefinitely. Most businesses have an exit strategy. I wanted an exist

exit strategy. I wanted an exist strategy. I wanted above all to make

strategy. I wanted above all to make sure we could stick around and we could play an infinite game. That was my focus to get enough revenue to sustain a small team so that we can continue pursuing

this vision for many many decades. There

was no plan B. And I think in that dimension 2025 feels like a massive colossal relief and that we have reached the first mountaintop of basic fiscal

health. We are default alive financially

health. We are default alive financially speaking and what that means is that we are not reliant on outside funding to survive. We can break even with the

survive. We can break even with the money that we have in the bank and that feels worthy of calling entering chapter 2. Sarah Manguso in her book 300

2. Sarah Manguso in her book 300 Arguments wrote something beautiful where she said, "I knew I was getting somewhere when I began losing interest

in the beginnings and ends of things." I

feel that so deeply. It's with Sublime.

It's no longer about the introduction or the tagline or the launch video and it's not about the exit. Now it's about the ongoing practice. I think there's the

ongoing practice. I think there's the practical sort of financial win, but then I also think there's this sort of spiritual feedback of we seem to be

writing a book, so to speak, on a version of or a definition of ambitious, but willing to take our time, so to speak, that just feels so deliciously

exciting to me. There's something that only really happens in Silicon Valley where you'll meet a founder friend and they're supposed to be acquired by Meta or Google this week and you don't know

when you sit with them whether they are now $10 million richer or whether they have to shut their company down. That

line between success and failure is so thin sort of only in Silicon Valley.

There's a place for that. But for me, for Sublime specifically, I wanted first and foremost for this tool and service to exist for a long period of time. The

last thing I'll say about that is that I am not philosophically opposed to venture capital or to raising funding.

We did raise some capital early on and that was so key to being able to get off the ground. We just didn't follow the

the ground. We just didn't follow the traditional arc of, you know, raise money, scale at all costs, race to the next round. We just like raised stayed

next round. We just like raised stayed lean and focused on getting to financial sustainability. I think VC is an amazing

sustainability. I think VC is an amazing tool that works particularly well for companies that want to answer the question of can this be enormous quickly, but my incentive with Sublime

is simpler and maybe stranger. I just

want this thing to exist regardless of its size. But the idea of someone like

its size. But the idea of someone like Ev Williams, the founder of Twitter, or Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, owning a piece of Sublime is appealing to me. So just manifesting and leaving

to me. So just manifesting and leaving the door open.

All right, so let's dive deeper into the state of the business. The way I think about any business is there are two functions. One is build something people

functions. One is build something people want and two is find people who want that thing. Have we built something

that thing. Have we built something people want? I think at a very high

people want? I think at a very high level currently in December 2025, I would say yes. And if I had to synthesize or distill what that thing

is, a personal library of all the interesting things you come across that is connected to other people's libraries. There's a lot more to the

libraries. There's a lot more to the product. There's collections and canvas

product. There's collections and canvas and imports and vibe search, but you know and all these things of course are additive and important to the product, but I've had to strip it down. What we

can credibly deliver on that is differentiated is give me a place where I can save anything interesting I come across where I can trust that I can retrieve those things later because the

search is really damn good and that reliably will help me discover highquality related ideas that are human curated and serendipitous. I think that is an experience that we offer that

people can't get elsewhere. Now I don't think building something people want is a static one-time milestone. People talk

about product market fit but in my experience both the product and the market side of this equation are constantly shifting. The world changes

constantly shifting. The world changes and people are evolving their expectations constantly. For example,

expectations constantly. For example, Evernote. Evernote might have been a

Evernote. Evernote might have been a really good product at one point but then AI comes around and makes good semantic search possible. And not having good search puts you in real trouble.

It's tempting to think of these things in binaries, but the truth is reality has a surprising amount of detail. Let

me give you an example. As Sublime's

library has grown to over 8 million cards, we've ran into a new kind of problem with duplicates. And on the surface, this sounds trivial. Just ddup

the data. But Sublime is a multimedia system. You can save articles and links

system. You can save articles and links and images and quotes and screenshots and highlights. And we don't treat those

and highlights. And we don't treat those as static files. We run them through layers and layers of analysis so that the LLMs help us interpret the meaning

and not just the the metadata. So it

gets subtle. So for example, if I upload an image and you upload the same image, we might interpret the image as okay, there's a serious person here and in your case there's a resolute person here

and so it's semantically similar but not identical. So that just means the more

identical. So that just means the more we grow, the harder this problem becomes, not easier. So all of this is to say that hitting product market fit doesn't mean the work is done. It just

means that the work changes and it's more about tending to the product than building more and more features. So

what's next for us in this dimension is to protect and evolve the core product very intentionally and shift more energy into helping the right people discover

and understand.

There's the classic saying that goes, "First time founders focus on product, second time founders focus on distribution." And I think there's a lot

distribution." And I think there's a lot of truth to that. I saw a tweet the other day that made me laugh where somebody said, "A guy sent me a message telling me that he's building an AI

marketing co-founder. He says it works

marketing co-founder. He says it works incredibly well and that he could see it replacing marketers. Then he asked me if

replacing marketers. Then he asked me if he could pick my mind on how to promote it." You know, if you believe in the

it." You know, if you believe in the quality of your work, you owe it to yourself to package it in a way where it can reach more people. We're still on the journey, but we do have several

thousand paying customers. So, I'm going to talk about how we got those first paying customers, what we learned, and how we're thinking about distribution.

For the first 18 months, I would say we focused exclusively on building a great product and sharing the journey of building that product specifically on

Substack. We started writing when the

Substack. We started writing when the product was not mature at all. And a lot of the appeal was come on the journey with us. Here's the vision. Join us as

with us. Here's the vision. Join us as we build the product. I think an important parenthesis here is that I had been writing for years on Substack before even starting Sublime. And I

legitimately think that I would not have been able to get Sublime off the ground had I not earned that trust for years before building this product. So I wrote a Substack post pretty much weekly

during that period. And I think a few of the Substack posts did a lot of the work. Each brought a couple dozen paying

work. Each brought a couple dozen paying customers. There was one on what problem

customers. There was one on what problem Sublime solves for me. There's another

on like what does Sublime actually do.

There was one on what matters in the age of AI is taste. Then I was invited to write a guest post for every called the end of productivity. That brought in a

uh generated a big spike in customers.

Then I did a workshop with every. There

were over 700 people rcpd for that zoom workshop on how to build a library for creative work. We did workshops with

creative work. We did workshops with other communities that we partnered up with like inner intellect uh worldbuilders. We also have published Z

worldbuilders. We also have published Z every year for the last couple years and that generates it's not product awareness but it's a brand lift and it just drives traffic. So overall I would

say there was no silver bullet. It was

one at a time slow and steady and the strategy throughout this time was growth at the speed of trust through storytelling. I also think it's worth

storytelling. I also think it's worth mentioning that the product was not mature at all. We hadn't even invested in onboarding and so it was very

insidery type context meaning if you just came to our landing page without the context of a Substack piece etc you would be lost. It sort of mattered that the people that were coming to Sublime

had the context of having read one of our more detailed kind of substack vision pieces. I would say around summer

vision pieces. I would say around summer of 2025 is when I said okay the product retention is feeling good. There's

enough here. Let me spend more time thinking about growth intentionally.

Keep in mind, we have a team of four people. And most of my time and

people. And most of my time and attention over the last two years had gone to building the product. I was kind of deep in Figma files, etc. But I said, "All right, let me just shift more of my

headsp space to growth." And we did a couple things. The first is we activated

couple things. The first is we activated a few creator partnerships. I we had never paid a single penny for an add-on sublime for an influencer, but we did

our first influencer partnership in August uh with Anna Howard, who has a YouTube channel called Wild Geese. I had

a gut instinct that she would be the perfect first partner. And gosh, we were right. She was amazing. It was just a

right. She was amazing. It was just a chef's kiss. Like brought in so many

chef's kiss. Like brought in so many people to Sublime in such a natural, authentic way. Yeah, she's one of the

authentic way. Yeah, she's one of the shining sort of bright lights for Sublime this year was was partnering with Anna. We did two other creator

with Anna. We did two other creator partnerships since I'll share the lesson on those in a bit. The second thing is we just started doing the more kind of table stakes, lowhanging fruit stuff,

life cycle email marketing. We have a lot of people joining Sublime, but a lot of people we lose because for in that first mile it doesn't click. So, we

invested in just education and onboarding emails and all that stuff that I find pretty boring, but actually is is really important. If if you're optimizing for paying users, which we are, that's all we care about, then it

mattered that we could convert more of the people that were already coming through the doors. The other thing is we So, we did viral drops of sorts. Sublime

is a product that is sort of dense and it's got a lot of features and there's a lot of doors into Sublime. And so we thought how could we peacemeal the value

proposition such that we figure out like one specific thing that it can do that becomes a doorway to experience other things. So for example we launched vibe

things. So for example we launched vibe search your ex bookmarks on sublime. We

have different integrations with Twitter bookmarks, Instagram bookmarks, Kindle etc. And you can with one click import all those things. And there's a lot of benefits to doing that. But instead of

listing all of these things, we made this video that went viral on how you can vibe search your Twitter bookmark.

Great example of how you just have to kind of start with one small thing. And

so after that, we we invested a little bit more in video. We did a couple videos. One launching our chat feature.

videos. One launching our chat feature.

Also another video we partnered up with Kyle McCarthy artist and we did more video stuff with him. We started getting active on Instagram with the help of Mickey Galvin who's been amazing. So

this is all very kind of early and new to us but it's exciting and fun to just think about those stories. We always

think about what are kind of aesthetic, delightful, fun and useful things that we can do to pull people into the sublime universe and that can look like merch. So, we launched the deadline

merch. So, we launched the deadline candle that got picked up by Lenny's newsletter and a bunch of other gift guides, and that was just a fun way to build the brand, but actually ends up

driving more people to Sublime and interesting ways. And then there was

interesting ways. And then there was podcast magic, which has actually been a very kind of important topunnel for us in the last couple months that I think is just has so much potential. But

essentially, we found a way to capture insights from podcasts with just a screenshot where you just take a screenshot, email it to podcastmagicsublime.app.

podcastmagicsublime.app.

You don't need to have an account on Sublime or even know what Sublime is, but then once you get it in the email and you get this the transcript of the moment you were listening to, there's a

link to view that moment on Sublime and see related ideas. And it just has worked wonders for us. And I think when we think about the kinds of growth

things that we genuinely enjoy, it's really the more creative stuff. SEO, we

don't do that because it just bores me.

These kinds of drops and fun experiments are really we get excited about. that we

plan to keep. You know, it's funny that I think a lot of the strategy for us since August when our growth really started to like the momentum um has just

been like a big big shift is just like throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks which is almost like the opposite of the advice you get of do one thing and do it consistently. And I think we did a lot of things we just you know and

it it was like I think the combination of of doing a lot of things that worked.

Okay, lessons. The first is creator marketing only works at the speed of trust. Inconsistent and expensive. When

trust. Inconsistent and expensive. When

we had our first successful partnership with Anna, I had a brief moment of thinking, wow, we could really easily scale this. There must be a hundred

scale this. There must be a hundred Annas out there. And I still believe that's true. But after that happened, I

that's true. But after that happened, I asked a few founder friends and just people I know to introduce me to agencies or, you know, anyone in the

creator world that could help us navigate this world. And I just found the vibe to be so different and transactional. A lot of creators who

transactional. A lot of creators who won't even try the product until you name a budget, who are willing to promote anything as long as the price is right. I don't know, just the model

right. I don't know, just the model isn't isn't for us. We'll lead to the kind of content that people can smell from a mile away. So, I'm still excited about creator partnerships and we're

going to continue to invest in them, but it's going to be slower by design. We're

going to work with creators one at a time. I want to get to know them. I want

time. I want to get to know them. I want

them to actually use and love the product. I think the other nuance here

product. I think the other nuance here is that the internet itself has changed and that platforms have sort of tilted in favor of the platforms themselves

instead of the creators. So oftent times you'll you'll see a creator with 2 million followers on YouTube struggle to break 20K views on a single video. But

yet they're going to charge as if they had this very engaged 2 million person following. And so followers is no longer

following. And so followers is no longer a right a good proxy. How many views something will get, let alone how much engagement that thing will get. And so

that's also part of why working with smaller, more aligned creators has been so compelling for us. I think these relationships will take longer to build and find. And it doesn't scale

and find. And it doesn't scale overnight. I think it'll be a slow

overnight. I think it'll be a slow channel and I think it's one that's going to work really well for us if we if we pursue it in this more intentional way. Okay. Second lesson. The tagline

way. Okay. Second lesson. The tagline

matters less than you think. I obsessed

over having the right tagline for so long. And I think for products like

long. And I think for products like Sublime, no oneliner is going to save you. People will describe it in a 100

you. People will describe it in a 100 different ways in a 100 different places. And that's fine. This isn't, you

places. And that's fine. This isn't, you know, like the landing page is just one touch point in a much larger journey.

Also rarely the deciding factor for users. In the past, a product was being

users. In the past, a product was being sold in a billboard and so yes, you need it like that one thing. But the reality is that a product like Sublime is going

to best be shared over a 30 minute YouTube video or somebody listening to a longer podcast where they're going to walk away with a deeper appreciation for the product. And these channels exist

the product. And these channels exist and they are the ones that work for us.

And so I just think that my obsession with the tagline feels a little bit silly in hindsight. Third lesson and I think it's very important to talk about

this is not all attention is created equal. There is this whole class of

equal. There is this whole class of startups that are very good at earning attention online right now. Cleon

and several others and I think if you're a founder it's you know there's this pressure to be a founder influencer.

there's this just like special sort of like feeling that makes me want to hide in a cave of in order to to to build and and and make this thing that I'm making successful, I have to really

put myself out there in in in these ways and it's easy to get discouraged because you see the playbook and the formula for these companies is pretty simple. It's

make people angry, they comment, the algorithm rewards it and then suddenly you have reach. There's there's two things I'll say. Number one is that reach and customers have no correlation.

I'll give you an example. The Anna video was very successful. I got a little bit over 100,000 views and several hundred paying customers. We have had posts that

paying customers. We have had posts that somebody uh posted something on Substack that mentioned Sublime and it had millions of views. The number of people that converted from that was negligible.

And that should tell you something. You

know, a viral post with a million views when push comes to shove might generate a handful of paying customers. An online

workshop with a community of, I don't know, 30, 40 people might generate might convert half of those, you know, 20 paying customers or what you earn attention for matters more than how much

of it you get. And that should be something to be hopeful about. Attention

is cheap and volatile. Trust is slow, expensive, and durable. And I think if something reaches a lot of people but creates no relationship, that's not

distribution. That's just noise. So my

distribution. That's just noise. So my

advice would be to be the bait you wish to see in the world. There's a way to show up and promote your product where you feel authentically you and your job

is to figure out what that format is.

Not that I figured it out myself, but I'm at least I'm here right now trying.

The last lesson, and I wrote this mostly as a reminder to myself, is just put good stuff into the universe. And most

of the time, the universe will return good stuff to you. And I think I wrote this as a reminder to myself because a lot of what we did this year was throw spaghetti at the wall, do a lot of things, and we'll continue to do that

pressure, tendency to want to build more repeatable frameworks or systems or blah blah blah. And I think a lot of the

blah blah. And I think a lot of the stuff that has paid off over the years is stuff that is hard to quantify, but anecdotally things will happen where

somebody will write to us and be like, "Oh, you know, I've read so much of your writing over the years and I heard this podcast you went on a year or two ago and then I just signed up for Sublime

yesterday and you know, how do you even track or quantify that?" You know, some people say there's like this controversial thing of if you build it, they will come. I would sort of like

append that and say if you build it well, they will eventually come. And so,

of course, like that that is what I think of as earned growth. Build a great product and do good things and the universe will reward you. Now, I think we've built most of Sublime thus far

through that earned growth. I think

there are ways to fast drive that through borrowed growth, which is, you know, the paid ads and the, you know, you creator partnerships and that kind of stuff. And, you know, I'm excited to

of stuff. And, you know, I'm excited to continue to experiment and and grow up and evolve and try these things. But I

think part of this lesson is like don't forget that at the end of the day, it's pretty simple. Do good things and the

pretty simple. Do good things and the universe will reward you. Last thing

I'll say on distribution is I don't actually know what the I'm doing.

I'm just following my gut and trying to build a company that I and a life that I don't want to escape from. But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I can't believe they haven't done SEO. I

could totally help and it's a no-brainer or, you know, I could run paid ads for them or do XYZ, whatever it is, I am very genuinely curious and want to soak

up all your knowledge. So, email me.

I think we're on the path. I think we're on to something. And the way I imagine explaining our success years from now is simple. We just went on with it and

simple. We just went on with it and stayed on with it. And wherever you are in your path, I hope this inspires you to stay on the path. Put one foot in front of the other. There is no big bang. You just sit and wait and water

bang. You just sit and wait and water your garden every morning. And then one day you wake up and discover a small farm. And a small farm in our case is a

farm. And a small farm in our case is a business that 3 years in can support a small team of engineers full-time. I

still get nervous and anxious and scared about the future and how it'll all unfold. But it's okay to be scared. I

unfold. But it's okay to be scared. I

think stress is just a sign that you care. I'm scared and anxious, but I'm

care. I'm scared and anxious, but I'm also excited. If we did this in two to

also excited. If we did this in two to three years, what can we do in 20 years?

What can we do in 30 years? All right, I think that's that, folks. I'm tuning off to spend a week in Colorado with my three beautiful boys. I worked my ass off in 2025 and cannot wait to fully

disconnect and recharge batteries. But

before I go, two things. One is if you were one of Sublime's first couple thousand paying customers, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You have

no idea how much that meant to me. Some

days a single Stripe notification could shape the mood for my entire day. So

truly, thank you. And if you're not yet on Sublime, join us. We have a lifetime membership currently priced at $400, but

you can use code last chance to get $100 off. And that's not a slimy marketing

off. And that's not a slimy marketing tactic. It really is your last chance to

tactic. It really is your last chance to lock that founders pricing rate because we intend to raise prices in 2026. So

join us. I am I feel so lucky that I get to build this sublime world for you and for me and I hope we get to do this together for a long time.