Nathan Barry Had One Shot at Kit.com. Here's His Framework for Getting It Right.
Kit founder Nathan Barry explains how he led a second attempt to rename ConvertKit, made his own fear part of the discussion, and gave his team a clear process for the decisions that followed.
ConvertKit had already tried a new name and rolled it back. When kit.com became available, Nathan Barry had to ask his leadership team to consider another rebrand—and admit that he was afraid of failing at the same thing twice.
The domain was an opportunity. Getting the decision right took more than the founder wanting it. Nathan walks through the conversations that led to Kit, the process his team borrowed from Coinbase, and the work of carrying a decision through the company.
What we cover
- Why the failed 2018 rename made buying kit.com a harder conversation.
- How a founder’s fear of repeating a mistake can shape a decision without anyone naming it.
- How imagining both success and failure helped the team separate the domain purchase from the rebrand.
- Kit’s decision-making framework: one decision maker, a small group of input providers, private votes, and discussion from least senior to most senior.
- Why asking people to take a position—and argue the other side—makes disagreement more useful.
- How one person kept the rebrand’s context clear across an eleven-month rollout.
Say the part you are nervous to say
Nathan asks people to name what they have held back. In the rebrand discussion, he had to answer first. He wanted the new name, but another failure would feel different from the first: he worried it would mean he had not learned.
Making that fear explicit gave the team something concrete to discuss. The same question can expose a missed cost, a competing goal, or a concern nobody wants to raise in front of the boss.
Set up the decision before the debate
Kit defines the question, the decision maker, the people who will provide input, the deadline, and how long the team will commit to the result. People vote privately before discussion. Then the least senior person speaks first, and the group votes again after hearing everyone.
The votes inform the decision. The named decision maker still makes it. Nathan uses this process for choices ranging from a logo to how the product should work.
Give the work a clear owner
Renaming the company touched nearly everything. Nathan put Kit’s creative director, Charlie, in charge of answering questions about the change, with another person managing the project. People knew where to go for an answer as the work moved across the company.
The decision needed structure. So did the follow-through.