In 2011, Pinterest designer Sahil Lavingia wanted to sell an icon he had made directly to his audience. But it was too difficult. Why setup a storefront? Just share a link–customers can click, pay, download. A weekend later, Gumroad was live.
A lot more has happened since then, but we won't bore you. If you're curious, you can read all about it on Sahil's website.
We have a lot in common with our creators: we also earn a living doing what we love. But we are different from many other companies.
We're profitable.
We are focused on improving our product in a sustainable way. We even share our numbers, so that others can learn how to run a creator-focused business.
Collectively, @gumroad creators earned $142 million in 2020, up 94% over last year:
— Sahil (@shl) January 4, 2021
6 creators made at least $1,000,000
179 made at least $100,000
1,853 made at least $10,000
7,945 made at least $1,000
20,591 made at least $100
45,917 made something! pic.twitter.com/UAR2zDf6Wq
We work differently.
Today, working at Gumroad resembles working on an open source project like Rails. Except it’s neither open source, nor unpaid.
— Sahil (@shl) January 7, 2021
It's been a while since April 2011. But rest assured, we're just getting started. Want to follow along?
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