One in, one out

I'm a big fan of the Hiut Denim brand and their philosophy (great jeans too – for a price). I came across this "No Growth" statement in their Snapbook Chronicles newsletter this week and it really struck a chord. It makes a lot of sense for a physical product business that relies on artisanal craft and quality – something that would be really hard to replicate at scale.

It got me thinking about scaling web products. What if I adopted a similar philosophy for Pagecord? I still need growth right now because it's early days and I'm far from hitting a scaling problem, but what if I introduced a hard limit? After that you join a waiting list with one in, one out.

I don't think it would be too hard to support and maintain 10,000 blogs from a scaling perspective (famous last words), and at current conversion rates that number would be enough to pay the bills for me to work on Pagecord full time. Or I could cap paying customers only at, say, 2000 and be more generous with free accounts. Either way, it's the same philosophy – grow the product to a sustainable position, but no bigger. Sustainable software has been my thing for a while after all.

Are there any web products out there that actually do this? I can't think of any, which makes sense because most products will never grow enough to come close to such a limit, and those that do gain huge popularity are usually milked for maximum moolah.

It will take something of a miracle to get Pagecord to that magic number, but a seed has now been planted should I ever get close.

(I once visited the old Hiut factory back in 2014. Here's a pic)