This year — really great, we grew a lot, shipped a bunch of stuff, sent many emails, had little downtime.
Next year — localization, better API/programmatic access, prettier archives/subscription pages, better writing/sending experience, better in-app experience.
It's been a while since I've shared a "peek-behind-the-curtain" style of essay — the last one was technically Q1 Planning, published in the first week of January. It was meant to be a year-in-review blog post, and of course it ended up being published a little too late for that.
Indeed, the last true year in review essay I wrote was three years ago. It is cute to re-read this: I was very confident that internationalization was going to ship (it still has not shipped), and I was already fed up with Heroku, which Buttondown uses for infrastructure (I would say my likelihood of churning off of Heroku in the next twelve months has decreased, not increased.)
Here's, in no apparent order, a bunch of stuff that happened in 2023:
One of the hardest things about running a business is managing your emotions: the thing that made this challenge much easier is hearing from so many of y'all that Buttondown has made your life — in some small, marginal way — better, or easier, or less frustrating. I can easily and confidently say that 2023 has been the most fulfilling work of my career.
Okay! Enough with the navelgazing! What's coming down the pike?
I've spent the past month chatting with users, sifting through the backlog, and thinking hard about how best to spend the next year. Here's what I've got:
Beyond that, very little new stuff is going to be added. Instead, we're doubling down on the parts of the authorial experience that can be improved:
That's a lot of "re"'s, I know. It's intentional! Buttondown has expanded a lot in the past twelve months, but I'm very mindful that the majority of you trust Buttondown not because of the knobs and whistles but because it does the core work very well. I think we can do that core work even better, and that's where time and energy will be spent next year.
Justin Duke is a software engineer, lover of words, and the creator of Buttondown.