ByteByteGo: From a Self-Published Book to a Million-Subscriber System Design Empire
Former Twitter/Apple/Zynga engineer Alex Xu self-published System Design Interview in 2020 and hit the Amazon bestseller list. In 2022, he and ex-Discord engineer Sahn Lam launched a Substack newsletter that crossed 26K subscribers in month one and hit one million in two and a half years. From book to newsletter, YouTube, and paid platform, ByteByteGo reached $3.5M ARR in 2024 with a 26-person team — all fully bootstrapped.