Please welcome Martijn de Kuijper, the founder of Revue.
Davis Baer: What is Revue, and how did you come up with the idea?
Martijn de Kuijper: Revue is a tool for journalists, writers and publishers to easily create editorial newsletters. We started 3.5 years ago when we noticed it was hard to keep up with the all the information that was being shared. We then realized that email was a great way for people to actually reach their audience and get them to read their content.
How did you get your first 10 users?
We created a first version in 4 weeks and launched it on Product Hunt, which resulted in 2000 users in 2 weeks :)
Revue might actually be the king of Product Hunt launches — they have 3 different launches with an average of over 1000 upvotes for each.
Why would someone choose Revue over a service like MailChimp?
MailChimp is a great service if you want to promote your products or company. With Revue we specifically focus on editorial newsletters, and not on promotional newsletters. We make it extremely easy to just start writing, so everybody can do it. We have a Medium-like editor, integrations with all kinds of content sources, and we have templates optimized for mobile and readability.
Example of a Revue newsletter
Have you raised any money?
Yes, we raised a pre-seed round 1.5 years ago.
What’s your business model?
We have freemium model. You can send to 50 subscribers for free and the Pro plan starts at $5 per month, which allows you to send to 200 subscribers, change colors, set a custom email address and domain, etc. We also have a Publisher plan that is specifically for publishers that want to manage multiple newsletters. It allows them to add editors to those newsletters, and it has a built-in approval workflow so they can easily work together with their editorial team. We also offer the implementation of a custom template.
Lastly, we just released a feature that allows you to add a paid version of your newsletter by simply connecting a Stripe account and set a monthly fee. You can then choose if you want to send your issues to everybody or just your paid members. We take a 6% transaction fee.
Example of a Revue profile
How big is the Revue team?
We’re currently 5 people.
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
As with every startup the hardest part is to find the right customers and build the right set of features for them.
What can we expect to see from Revue in the future?
We’re currently focusing on the creation side of things, where we still have a lot to do. Important themes for us are customization, segmentation and analytics. Eventually we also want to cater to the readers and create more tools for them to, for example, interact with the creators, but also to discover content on our platform.