---
aliases: ["August 2024"]
Is A: Month
Created at: "2024-08-28"
Belongs to: "[[24q3]]"
Rating: "🤩"
---
# August 2024

## Focus

- Build and launch [[24q3-premium-tier]] — set up payments, create first premium content
- Continue [[24q3-summer-reading-sprint]] — deep reading weeks with lighter work schedule
- Record first episodes of [[24q3-podcast-season-2]]

## Highlights

- Launched [[24q3-premium-tier]] at EUR 8/month — 120 subscribers in the first week, bumped to EUR 12/month after seeing strong demand
- Premium content: published first deep-dive case study ("How Stripe Scales Engineering Teams") and announced monthly AMA calls
- Finished [[24q3-summer-reading-sprint]]: 8 books total across July-August, including "The Ride of a Lifetime" and "Thinking in Systems"
- Recorded episodes 13-16 of [[24q3-podcast-season-2]] — new guest interview format with [[person-sara-ricci]] coordinating guests
- Newsletter at 44.8k — August is always slow, but premium launch generated a subscriber bump
- [[person-matteo-cellini]] began outreach for [[24q3-new-sponsor-verticals]] — targeting cloud and DevOps companies

## Reflections

August is usually my favorite work month — lighter pace, longer mornings, room to think. This year it was productive in a different way. The premium tier launch felt risky: asking people to pay for something they'd been getting for free. But the response was encouraging. 120 subscribers in the first week validated the hypothesis. Bumping the price from EUR 8 to EUR 12 was a gut call based on [[person-matteo-cellini]]'s advice — "if people are subscribing this fast, you're underpriced." He was right.

The reading sprint was exactly what I needed. Eight books in two months, with time to actually think about each one. "Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows is probably the most underrated book in the business canon — it changed how I think about feedback loops in newsletter growth. Summer energy is real — I feel recharged and ready for an intense September.
