What is Dude Stuff?

Morning dudes. We’ve had some pretty wild growth lately, closing in on 1K subscribers, which is freaking nuts. Figured now’s the perfect time to answer a question some of you might be wondering. What exactly is Dude Stuff, and how did this all start?

A quick introduction. Who is Dude Stuff?

I’m Evan—one half of the Dude Stuff team. I run this with my buddy Adam.

With that out of the way, let’s get into it.

The Baconator & the Lightbulb Moment

Picture this: I’m on my lunch break. It’s 11 a.m. (construction life—lunch comes early), and I’m sitting in a Wendy’s parking lot, eating a Baconator. I’ve got My First Million playing—a podcast where entrepreneurs talk about how they built their empires. It’s part business strategy and part two guys just riffing on what makes money in the world. Basically, the perfect thing to listen to when you’re daydreaming about building something big (or just eating a Baconator in your car).

Like every podcast, there’s an ad break. Normally, I skip those. Sorry, Sam and Shaan. But this one caught my attention—an ad for a platform called Beehiiv. A website that makes running a newsletter easy. They handle all the backend stuff. All you have to do is come up with content. I thought, what the hell? Newsletters are cool, and I’d been looking for a fresh creative outlet.

So I finished my Baconator, headed back to work, and later that night, I sat at my computer trying to figure out what people might actually want to read. I asked myself, what’s interesting?

Here’s what came to mind: Big machines. Knives. Weird facts. Historical figures who did insane things. You know—dude stuff. The random, useless knowledge that every guy seems to have an encyclopedia’s worth of in his head, ready to drop into conversation at any time.

And just like that, Dude Stuff was born.

The First Edition

So what did I write about? Believe it or not, that was way harder than I expected. My first idea was Apollo Creed’s “No Tomorrow” scene from Rocky III. Don’t ask me why—I just thought it was badass and wanted to write about it.

Turns out, I hadn’t written anything in depth in over a decade, and it was brutal. Trying to put my thoughts into words was tough. So rather than spiraling into an existential crisis over a quote from a 40-year-old movie, I went with the next best thing—giant dump trucks. And thankfully, for your sake and everyone else’s, that never made it out of the rough draft stage.

I scrapped that idea and decided to write about current events that felt like Dude Stuff. See below for the first-ever edition, which was sent out to exactly 10 people (three of which were my own emails).

Building Momentum

From there, I just wrote about whatever popped into my head for the next few weeks. Sometimes a friend would say, “Have you heard of this?”, and I’d turn it into an article. That’s the beauty of Dude Stuff—everything falls under its umbrella. If it’s cool and interesting, we can write about it.

Adam jumped on board after the fourth edition. By then, we had about 30 subscribers. We started busting our asses trying to get people to sign up. Over the next four months, we climbed past 500 subscribers. I remember checking the dashboard and seeing that number, thinking, “Wait, people are actually reading this?” That felt like a huge accomplishment. Because, well—it was. Seeing something we built actually grow was insane.

We were publishing twice a week, getting great feedback from complete strangers on the internet, and for the first time, it felt like Dude Stuff wasn’t just an experiment—it was turning into something real.

By December, we decided it was time for a change. We switched to one edition a week, figuring the slower pace would give us more time to put out a longer, better-written, and more polished edition. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten so far, that was clearly the right move. That shift gave us more time to refine what Dude Stuff really is.

Where We’re Headed

And now, here we are. We’re still figuring out exactly what this newsletter is. At its core, Dude Stuff is meant to be a place where you learn something new and interesting once a week—plus a handful of cool things to check out. I’ve got a good feeling this is going to keep growing and turn into something special.

So, if you’ve got critiques, suggestions, or just want to tell me my grammar sucks, please reach out. I want this newsletter to be the best it can be, and your feedback is what’s going to make that possible.

As always, thanks for the support.

—Evan