Inside ML@Scale #3
MRR goes BRRRRR
Every 25th of the month, I publish Inside ML@Scale — a full, honest look at the business behind this newsletter.
The good, the bad.
What’s growing, what’s stagnating, what I’m trying that isn’t working (or sometimes is?)
Why?
Three reasons.
1. Because nobody else does it.
The ML newsletter space is full of people performing success. “Just crossed 50k subscribers 🚀” with zero context on how, for how long, at what cost, with what retention.
I’ve been building ML@Scale since 2023: from 0 to 14k+ free subscribers, 45k on LinkedIn, and some of them paid.
That didn’t happen linearly. It happened with a lot of stupid decisions in between. Those are worth writing about.
2. Because transparency compounds.
The same way our 25th-of-the-month ritual makes us better at money, writing this publicly will make me better at running this business. You can’t hide from numbers you’ve committed to publishing.
3. Because you deserve to know what you’re paying for.
If you’re a premium subscriber, you’re not just getting “The Blind ML Review” or “The Zürich Feed”. You’re buying into a thing that either works or doesn’t. I owe you visibility into which one it is.
What’s in the free section (this part)
Every edition will have:
Top-line numbers
The one thing that worked that month
The one thing that didn’t work
What I’m trying next
Top-line: where we are in April 2026
14,000+ free subscribers
45,000+ LinkedIn followers
~25% open rate (still constant, need to work on this!)
6x/week LinkedIn cadence, 3x/week newsletter cadence
What worked this month
This month was a big month! Lots of thing drove it.
![THE ZÜRICH FEED [Edition #4]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!v1Ft!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Febfb7a31-38e8-455c-90ba-b9b4db261496_5632x3072.jpeg)
![ML@SCALE - 1:1 - 100 billion rows, three mistakes, one lesson [Edition #1]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hd1M!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc808c425-33c5-4685-9162-31595583b63e_1408x768.jpeg)
![THE ZÜRICH FEED [Edition #5]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!InRQ!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6cc85510-dded-4462-852c-0396f1178fd2_5632x3072.jpeg)
Sub split:
Zurich feed: 63 subs, 30+29 free subs, 0+4 paid subs
ML@Scale 1:1: 20 subs, 2 paid 18 free
How to pick the right ML team: 7 subs, 3 paid 4 free
Not a bad month!
What didn’t work
Honestly, this month was hard to find lowlights. Even deep technical content performed great. Love such months!
What I’m trying next
Still trying to find time for a big month of august edition. Time is scarcest resource when you juggle a full time job (pretty demanding one) and this side project.
No data on drip campaigns yet. But they are setup to convince paid subs to come back and to convince new free subs to convert to paid!
I want to focus a bit more on “personal stories” as those seem to be the driving force behind things. Maybe a new format where I give advice to people in 1:1 on career things (which people seem to love) and then share the anonymized version of it for all paid subs. That’d be cool i think!
The business numbers
All right. Let’s get into the details. (metrics are very shiny this month!!)