The Pioneering wave of Category Surfers: A Dive with Founder Stan Rymkiewicz

In this edition, we're catching a wave with Stan, the visionary behind Category Surfers. Stan's journey from tech entrepreneur to newsletter pioneer offers a unique perspective on the interplay between technology and business insights.

👋 Meet Stan: The Mind Behind Category Surfers 

Stan's entrepreneurial spirit, honed through the highs and lows of founding a sales tech company, set the stage for his newsletter journey. After navigating the challenges of monetization and company closure, Stan channeled his insights and experiences into creating Category Surfers, a newsletter that has become a beacon for go-to-market professionals, media buyers, and startup enthusiasts.

💡 The Genesis of Category Surfers 

The inception of Category Surfers stemmed from Stan's ambition to dissect and report on various software categories. What began as a passion project quickly evolved into a sought-after resource, offering deep dives into the growth stories and strategies of emerging companies.

🧭 Mission and Vision

At its core, Category Surfers aims to illuminate the paths of business growth and innovation. Stan's vision is to equip his audience with the knowledge to understand intricate go-to-market strategies and the dynamics of company scaling, serving as a bridge to the often opaque world of startup expansion.

♟️ Content Strategy and Engagement

Stan's approach focuses on delivering concise, impactful insights. Each issue is crafted to meet the audience's hunger for actionable business intelligence.

His content creation process starts by spending about 30 minutes to 1 hour researching a company, and crafting bullet-points outlining the insights to be shared.

The key to finding the right newsletter format that most resonates with his audience, has been playing around with content and analyzing what was getting the best response, until adjusting to a final format.

Regarding AI, his view on it, is that it’s just another tool, that amplifies the truth about every creator, the good and the bad. One thing AI, along with other tools like Beehiiv, has had a big impact on, is lifting the barriers to starting and creating written content, causing a big wave of new newsletters, and ultimately lowering sponsorship rates.

📈 Growth and Milestones

Category Surfers has seen steady growth, with a subscriber base surpassing 2,000. The journey from zero to this milestone was propelled by Stan's strategic use of his network, social media (particularly Twitter), and a dedication to providing value through his content.

He leveraged cross-promotions and recommendations to feed that organic steady growth, which helped him adding a consistent number of subscribers each week for a year, not having to rely on paid growth.

💰 Monetization

Stan experimented with sponsorships as a monetization avenue but found more value in cultivating one-to-one connections, which was a difficult by-product to get out of running a newsletter.

There is a premium subscription, where people can dive deeper into Stans expertise on GTM insights, but he points out the high difficulty of coming up with valuable content each week, as it requires substantial time and effort to craft each issue.

One thing he is convinced of, is that a newsletter is a product, and so it should be treated, if you want to grow it.

After only 18 months, he successfully sold Category Surfers to a fellow Newsletter owner. The selling process was straightforward, as he had built a relationship with the buyer, while cross promoting each other’s newsletters. No intermediary platforms or services were required.

⚙️ Behind the Scenes – Operational Insights

Stan's solitary venture into the newsletter world reflects a meticulous process of content creation, from ideation to publication. His commitment to authenticity and quality is evident in his hands-on approach to writing, editing, and curating content that resonates with his audience.

📝 Founder’s Advice

While Stan focuses on building personal connections and sharing his knowledge, he also emphasizes the importance of adapting and staying true to one's goals. His journey underscores the potential of newsletters as tools for learning, networking, and personal branding, aiming ultimately at broader horizons.