Anne-Laure Le Cunff went from zero to 6,000 newsletter subscribers in just 100 days, built a 100K+ subscriber base, and created a six-figure community—all while completing her PhD in neuroscience. Here’s how her experimental approach created a flywheel of growth.
You can read the full deep dive into Anne-Laure’s journey here.
The 100-Day Challenge That Started It All
“Most people feel like they need to be experts before they start writing their newsletter. When in reality, you can use your newsletter as a way to learn, as a way to explore,” Anne-Laure told us on the Growth in Reverse podcast.
This philosophy fueled the challenge that kickstarted her growth: writing 100 articles in 100 days.
What made this challenge unique wasn’t just the volume, but her approach. Unlike most creators who set subscriber goals, Anne-Laure focused purely on output.
“The only commitment I made was to show up and write a hundred articles in a hundred days. I didn’t have any aim or milestone for subscribers.”
Rather than sending daily emails, she published five articles per week on her website and sent a weekly newsletter with links to all five pieces. This approach:
- Prevented reader overwhelm
- Gave her permission to mix it up (some deep rabbit holes, some quick hits)
- Built a substantial content library quickly
The results were staggering: 6,000 email subscribers, 250,000 website pageviews, and four appearances on the front page of Hacker News (with one generating 30,000 pageviews). Wild.
Building in Public: The Content Creation Multiplier
What amplified Anne-Laure’s growth wasn’t just her writing cadence but her process of “building with the garage door open.” She shared her work early and often:
- Pre-writing: Tweeting potential topics to gauge interest
- Drafting: Sharing screenshots of outlines and introductions
- Feedback loop: Incorporating suggestions from Twitter responses
- Publishing: Creating a weekly roundup of all articles
“I would start sharing about my articles a lot earlier in the process than most other newsletter creators would at the time,” she explained. “Sometimes just a couple of ideas, saying ‘I’m curious about these things. What do you think?'”
This approach served two purposes simultaneously:
- Free marketing: Creating buzz before she even finished writing
- Free editing: Getting smart people to point out her blind spots
When asked about downsides to building in public, she acknowledged just one legitimate concern:
“It is more work, and people who say otherwise haven’t really done it.”
Taking screenshots, posting updates, responding to feedback, and incorporating suggestions all add significant time to the creative process—but she believes the results are worth it.
The Science-Backed Answer to “Quantity vs. Quality”
Anne-Laure’s approach challenges the common belief that creators should focus on quality over quantity.
Forget everything you’ve heard about “quality over quantity” – she’s got actual research that flips this on its head.
She referenced a famous study where an art teacher divided a pottery class into two groups:
- One group focused on creating a single, perfect piece
- The other group focused on making as many pieces as possible, then selecting the best one
Surprisingly, the quantity-focused group produced better art in the end.
“It’s a metaphor, but I think it’s a really good one when we think of creativity as a muscle,” she explained. “It does atrophy, and you need to use it.”
Through repetition, creators develop both their skills and their taste. You start finding that sweet spot between “what you love making” and “what your audience actually wants.”
Tiny Experiments: A Framework for Newsletter Growth
Anne-Laure’s new book, Tiny Experiments, takes this experimental mindset and packages it into a framework anyone can use. And it’s far less intimidating than trying to build “habits for life.”
“An experiment is saying ‘I’m going to do this thing for this specific period of time, and I’m going to withhold judgment until I’m done collecting that data,'” she explained.
For newsletter creators, this might mean:
- Testing a different format (links vs. essays) for a month
- Adding sponsors for six weeks to gauge reader response
- Bringing in guest contributors for a limited series
- Changing your publishing frequency temporarily
The key is setting both a specific action and duration, then evaluating results objectively once the experiment concludes.
But here’s how this can be a complete game changer in real life.
Escaping the Newsletter Comparison Trap
Anne-Laure dropped a bomb that stuck with me for days after our conversation.
“Linear goals breed competition and isolation. When everyone around us is climbing the same ladder, scrambling over one another, we become competitive for all the wrong reasons.
Even when we think of goals as our own individual ladder, we look at others on theirs and race toward the top.”
This comparison trap is the silent killer of creator happiness and success. Think about it – how many times have you:
- Refreshed someone else’s subscriber count to compare with yours
- Felt a pit in your stomach when you see a peer’s newsletter featured somewhere
- Questioned your entire approach after seeing someone else’s massive growth
- Given up on what was working for you to copy someone else’s “proven” strategy
“We’re all doing that in parallel as if you can picture a bunch of parallel ladders that we’re all climbing at the same time,” Anne-Laure explained, “and we keep looking left and right asking ourselves, ‘am I going fast enough?'”
The worst part? Social media turns this into a public spectacle with “leaderboards where we can actually see where everybody is, on which rung of their ladder, and where we are, and we can compare ourselves to each other.”
This constant comparison doesn’t just feel awful – it actively sabotages your growth by pushing you away from your unique voice and toward a homogenized approach that’s probably wrong for your specific audience.
Anne-Laure’s experimental mindset offers an escape hatch. When you’re running your own tiny experiments, you create a path that can’t be directly compared to anyone else’s.
“Because of that, my series of cycles of experimentation are going to look nothing like yours,” she explained. “There’s really no way I can compare my success to yours because we’re in our own little sandboxes trying different things.”
With experiments, there’s also no binary “succeed/fail” judgment – just interesting data points that help you navigate toward what works for you and your audience.
With experiments, you’re playing in your own sandbox with your own toys. It literally makes comparison impossible because nobody else is running your specific experiment.
A Sustainable Path to 100K
Today, Anne-Laure’s newsletter has over 100,000 subscribers, and she’s built a community generating “more than six figures” annually—all while completing her PhD and writing a book.
When I asked how she grew from 50K to 100K, her answer wasn’t about algorithms or growth hacks:
“In the past few years, connecting with other creators has probably been my biggest source of growth,” she said. “By just becoming friends with fellow creators.”
I told you – it’s all about the relationships 🙂
These authentic relationships led to natural promotion opportunities when her friends shared her work with their audiences. The key difference? She never approaches these relationships with an agenda.
“I generally have never connected with someone in the hope that they will put something in their newsletter. That would be such a long game that I feel tired just thinking about it,” she laughed.
Instead, she suggests using this simple heuristic: “If we were to find ourselves in the same city, would I be excited to grab coffee with them? If yes, reach out and make that connection.”
Behind the Scenes: How She Manages It All
At the beginning, Anne-Laure managed everything alone while “optimizing for exploration.” As her commitments grew, she built a small team:
- A partnership manager who handles all newsletter sponsorships
- A community manager who runs events and social media
- An executive assistant who helps with her overflowing inbox (a consequence of using her personal email for the newsletter)
Only one team member is full-time; the others work part-time. This support system allows her to focus on content creation while maintaining other commitments.
Her Tool Stack
Despite writing about productivity and knowledge management, Anne-Laure keeps her tech stack surprisingly simple:
- Roam Research: For personal note-taking and idea organization
- Google Suite: For documents and spreadsheets
- Kit: For newsletter delivery
- Canva: For newsletter visuals (she recommends their AI generator)
- AI assistants: Claude and ChatGPT for brainstorming and process optimization
Interestingly, while her team uses Notion extensively, she sticks with Google Docs—sending content for them to integrate into their workflows.
Lessons for Newsletter Creators
Anne-Laure’s journey offers several interesting and counterintuitive lessons for newsletter growth:
- Use your newsletter as a learning tool, not just a teaching platform
- Optimize for output over outcomes in the early stages
- Build in public to improve quality and create anticipation
- Run experiments rather than adopting others’ habits without testing
- Focus on creator relationships as a sustainable growth channel
- Don’t be afraid to adjust frequency when life demands it
Perhaps most importantly, she reminds us that rigid goals can become traps:
“We’re all doing that in parallel as if you can picture a bunch of parallel ladders that we’re all climbing at the same time, and we keep looking left and right asking ourselves, ‘am I going fast enough?'”
Instead, running your own experiments creates a unique path that can’t be compared to others—and might just lead to 100,000 subscribers, a thriving community, and a lot more freedom along the way.
Anne-Laure’s book Tiny Experiments is available now wherever books are sold.
