Chased the wrong metric

Just back in Jaipur from Ranthambore. Back to Hyderabad tonight.

Surely one of the most beautiful weeks with Roach Mafia. Truly life-changing. Many learnings and action points to a point I feel overwhelmed, but net-net confident about making the right decisions.

Being in the same room as founders making $5-15k MRR surely shapes how you think about business.

This might sound like a cringe LinkedIn post, but hear me out.

In the last 3 months or so, I have worked on nothing but increasing subscribers.

While I was hanging out with the Mafia, I realised how I had missed the obvious, most crucial success metric: Revenue.

I quickly pulled up stats. Cognition made an all-time revenue of ~$3000 with an email list of less than 1000. This includes Beehiiv Ad Revenue, 1-1 consultations, community membership, and newsletter cohort. Excluded services.

The stats made me feel stupid. All this time chasing thousands of subs for what? If I can make $3000 from a small list, why wasn’t I optimizing for list quality and higher sales?

Sure, subscriber growth is super important. Content is a volume game in many ways. But now I also work on business math.

Today I pulled up data for the last three months. Calculated MRR, ARPU, LTV, and what it takes to reach $1000 MRR as a first checkpoint (now at $200, will build in public here.)

If the terms make you feel oh-ooh, don’t worry. We will get nerdy over the next few weeks.

For now, all I want you to take away is to make revenue from your newsletter.

All your growth and content tactics must align with business goals. Obvious, but needed to be told for me.

Should you move to Beehiiv?

December is about reviews and plans for next year.

That’s what we’re up to in the community. 17th this month, we have an internal call to discuss targets and strategy for Q1 2026.

If you want in, join the community →

PS: I’m raising prices from December 15th

(Scrappy landing page, working on it)