From Failed Startup to a $100K+ Newsletter

**Chenell Basilio** (0:00)
4.2 million views is what I see. How many subscribers do you think you got from those views in the last 30 days?

**Esteban Perez** (0:07)
We can schedule about 110 posts per week. Wow. So it's like 12 posts per day.

**Chenell Basilio** (0:13)
You sent me this like screenshot of like the growth beforehand and then the growth after, and it was like, how much AI are you using to generate this?

**Dylan Redekop** (0:21)
Cause I don't feel like this is humanly possible.

**Esteban Perez** (0:23)
We built this app and we launched it, and thought everyone should use it, everyone should download it. It's meant for everyone and then no one downloaded it. Only people with ADHD did. Two months in, we actually started getting people paying for the newsletter more than what we were getting for people who were paying for the ADHD Meal Planner. And the conversion just went like crazy.

**Chenell Basilio** (0:47)
Well, Esteban, thanks for coming on the Growth In Reverse Podcast. We're excited to chat today.

**Esteban Perez** (0:52)
Thank you so much for having me over. It's an awesome experience.
I mean, I saw you both at the event earlier this year. So it's kind of like surreal to now be part of the podcast. And so thank you so much for having me over.

**Chenell Basilio** (1:05)
Yeah, I'm so excited because the whole way this came about was that you actually sent me an email with like this huge document. And you were like, hey, by the way, that talk you gave at the New Media Summit last month, we actually did something from that, which never happens just for clarity. Like, no one ever sends these emails. So the fact that you took what I had been talking about and went ahead and acted on it was awesome. So kudos to you, appreciate that.
It's like the highest compliment you could ever give me. So I appreciate it. So let's jump in. For the ADHD Weasel is the name of your newsletter. How did you guys start this thing? How did you start the newsletter? And when was that?

**Esteban Perez** (1:45)
It goes actually way back. So we started working together like three years ago as a company or a startup. And when we started, we wanted to just do something around food waste because we were like students living by themselves for the first time, meaning that they get to actually manage their own groceries. And we were experiencing a bunch of food waste personally.
And yeah, we wanted to build a startup. So it's like, okay, let's just try to fix this problem that we are currently having. And so we built this app. We actually didn't do the proper research and customer discovery, problem discovery that we should have. We just wanted to build a solution and change the world. And we launched it and thought of everyone should use it, everyone should download it. It's meant for everyone. And then no one downloaded it, only people with ADHD did. So it was a grounding moment. But at the same time, our mentors sort of like highlighted that as like, there's a pattern here. Like, what's the thing like for the people downloading it and why? So we just started having calls with them. We realized that there was like a deeper issue or like a deeper problem, not just food waste, but like food related overwhelm. It's what we ended up them describing it as. And we decided to pivot, decided to try to understand what's this thing between food overwhelm and people with ADHD. Why did they download the app? And so that was like a year into the entire sort of like cycle. We spent like the next six months to eight months after that, we were stuck into anyone we could, reaching out to ADHD organizations, to practitioners. And we ended up landing like 200 calls, 300 calls in that sort of like six to eight month period. We ended up learning also that we had ADHD, and it's like a crazy, crazy sort of like journey and entire like cycle.
And yeah, we decided to now build something specifically for people that struggled with food overwhelm that had ADHD. So we launched into this ADHD meal planner journey. We did that for a couple of months. And as we were doing that and talking to more of these people coming in, we realized that there was like this gap of like, just talking more about ADHD for late diagnosed ADHDers in particular. And we were learning about it ourselves from like our own experience. And we just thought of like, maybe this could be a good marketing channel. We were starting to use Instagram threats to find people. And we were sort of like cracking different ways to get to more people. And it seemed like a good idea, like, okay, like we see these formats were working. Maybe we can open it up and not be like super close about food and ADHD, but just late diagnosed ADHDers. And as we were like shifting this tool that was our ADHD meal planner, which was a website, we were shifting it into a mobile app, because it was just like what our users were asking for.