Hi James! Thank you for the wonderful words, and for being a Postmark customer!
We always seem to land in the same markets as these 800lb gorillas. What settles us, and keeps us focused, is a clear understanding of what is enough for us. We don’t want to be a funded, fast growth company that IPOs one day. So we focus instead on building a business that can financially sustain ourselves, our team, and all of our experiments.
With Postmark in particular, what really worked for us is playing the slow game. We always held true to our values and principles, from how to build product all the way to how to treat people. We love doing things that don’t scale. For instance, our support team is absolutely second to none. They dive deep into all kinds of obscure issues. We’ve maintained our reputation amongst our early adopters as the “place you go when you really care about your email”. As a small team with smaller expenses, our targets have never been as aggressive as our competitors, so we could play it slower. And in the end, even if our competitors out-market us, we’re second in line once they (inevitably) disappoint folks. We’ve been fortunate that 2020 was a great year for us, and a clear signal that the slow, intentional game really worked. You’ve heard other founders, like Brendan and Nick, state similar points of view in their AMAs. It’s all about brand.
What makes this type of growth special is, as founders, we still control and own the whole business. We could have sped things up by taking on VC, which would have added a ton of risk to our personal success, and lost control to try to chase those bigger gorillas. But waiting a few years to reach our bigger goals was totally worth it, both financially and personally in how we enjoy our work and whom we get to work with.