Friends & family email lists
My co-founders and I have tried lots of things at Graphite—some ideas stick, some fade away. One ritual that has stood the test of time is maintaining a “Friends & Family” email list.
Under the hood, it’s a simple Google Group named “fnf@graphite.dev.” It can’t receive—only send emails—and we consistently add anyone who cares about us as individuals to the list.
I love it. Anywhere from once a month to once a quarter, Merrill, Tomas, and I write an email update. We’re honest—we share our wins, our misses, graphs of our progress, and fun photos of us hard at work. We talk about our ambitious future goals and then get to proudly report a year later that we actually hit our targets.
Remembering to send an update to the list takes meaningful energy—about a full workday by one of the founders each quarter (usually Merrill). At a startup where time is precious, it’s meaningfully expensive. But it’s time well spent.
Folks underestimate how much their network is unconditionally rooting for their success. Our friends want to follow along in our adventure; they want to know the twists and turns in our journey, and they write the nicest messages in response to our updates. Nothing is more motivating than us founders sending out an update and getting a torrent of positivity and encouragement from hundreds of our closest relationships. It gives us the fuel to keep pushing quarter to quarter.
There are pragmatic benefits to sending out these updates as well. We can make requests to our network, such as targeted introductions. We have a place to publicly thank folks who have recently lent us a hand. Perhaps best of all, it helps create a sense of accountability—especially in the company’s early days when it can feel like no one cares if your company lives or dies. Sure, we’re targeting a million in revenue—but we also told hundreds of our closest friends, and now we need to report whether we hit the goal or not.
The fnf list I’m describing shares a lot of similarities to an investor mailing list.
Some great thoughts on investor mailing lists:
At Graphite, we maintain both. But an investor mailing list can be too intimidating for some. The name makes it sound serious and limiting. Can you add your mom to your investor mailing list? What if you don’t have investors, or you only have one? The reality is that every team likely has over a hundred folks emotionally invested in their success—that’s who this list is for.
Based on my experience, I strongly recommend to any friends working on a big project or startup to create their own “fnf” mailing list. Selfishly, I want to follow their journey. Selflessly, I know it’ll help create structure, accountability, and motivation for them.
Here are some practical details about Graphite’s list:
It’s in the mid-hundreds of people at this point. It’ll probably pass 1k eventually, and I don’t mind. The more, the merrier.
We’re pretty indiscriminate in who we add. As long as it’s an honest friend to someone on the team, I’m happy to add them.
We try to post every 1–3 months. If we work for longer than three months and don’t have anything meaningful to report on, it’s a red flag.
We try to include hard numbers on our progress, our future goals, pictures, highlights, lowlights, thank-yous, and asks.
