How Write of Passage Became the Internet's Most Celebrated Writing School

There is a particular kind of courage it takes to teach something you once couldn't do yourself. David Perell has built a career around that irony. A self-described terrible student he graduated high school with a 2.8 GPA, college with a 2.9, and earned a C in a college writing course Perell spent years helping thousands of people discover what he once struggled to find: a systematic, repeatable method for turning everyday observations into publishable ideas that travel across the internet.

Write of Passage, the premium cohort-based writing course he founded, became something rare in the creator economy: a program that felt like a genuine intellectual community. Over five years and through dozens of cohorts, it enrolled more than 2,000 writers from 72 countries, attracted students from companies including Google, Intel, and Twitter, and achieved a Net Promoter Score of 75 higher than Apple's. Graduates described the experience in terms usually reserved for life transitions more than online courses. "It didn't just unlock my pen, it changed my heart," wrote one student, Ayomide Ofulue.

Then, in August 2024, Perell sent an email to the community announcing the end. "This has not been an easy decision," he wrote, "but it's necessary." The October-November 2024 cohort would be the last. The news landed for many readers like news of a friend's retirement: unexpected, a little sad, and freighted with questions about what happens to the people left behind.

But the story of Write of Passage is not really a story about closure. It's a story about what it costs and what it takes to build something worth mourning when it ends.

The Spark: A Terrible Student Meets a Better System

Before Write of Passage existed, Perell was drowning in information. He describes his earlier relationship with ideas the way many knowledge workers do: a daily fight against a rising tide of articles, books, podcasts, and half-formed thoughts. Then he took a course called Building a Second Brain, taught by Tiago Forte.

The transformation was immediate. "In just five weeks, I went from fighting a tsunami of information to surfing the waves of information overload," Perell wrote. He describes learning to work with the computer in his pocket to improve his thinking, and systematically collecting the best ideas he consumed more than letting them slip away. His writer's block disappeared. His speed of creativity exploded.

Six months after taking Forte's course, Perell launched a weekly newsletter called Monday Musings and published essays like "The Algorithmic Trap" and "What the Hell is Going On." His online audience began to grow. Financial advisors reached out for help building their own audiences a logical fit, since the finance industry has long had a writing-heavy culture, spurred by famous memos from investors like Howard Marks and Warren Buffett that double as both analysis and marketing.

Investment managers hired him to outline their online growth strategy. But even as clients accumulated, Perell found himself exhausted by consulting. "Clients had the same problems, so I kept repeating myself when I offered the same solutions," he recalled. The repetition that made consulting profitable was the same thing that made it unbearable.

The Idea on a Napkin

In November 2018, Perell did something bold. He tweeted his goal to help 1,000 people start writing in 2019. He would create a course to show people the roadmap, he said, and asked interested readers to share their email. Within 24 hours, he received hundreds of responses from people on every continent. For the first time, he knew there was demand.

That same month, Perell called Tiago Forte with a pitch: co-create an online writing course that would serve as a sequel to Building a Second Brain. Perell had noticed that Forte's most successful students used his note-taking system to share ideas publicly. His course would give them a blueprint to become prolific creators. The phone call lasted less than five minutes before Forte said yes.

They agreed to film the course in Mexico City and launch it in mid-2018. But there was a problem: Perell didn't have the money to film, edit, and produce the course. The origin story he tells includes a focus group held just before the first cohort three friends, burritos from his favorite taqueria, an afternoon in his apartment exploring every aspect of the curriculum. He describes all of them doubting the vision, especially him. But a glimmer of faith propelled them forward.

Sixteen months after that first napkin sketch, Perell was welcoming the fifth cohort: roughly 300 students from 30 countries, from Singapore to Panama to Saudi Arabia.

The Five-Week Playbook

What made Write of Passage distinctive wasn't proprietary content it was structure. The program operated as a five-week structured cadence with weekly modules, live sessions, peer cohort interaction, and graduated content delivery. Students who enrolled were promised three things: live instruction that taught them to write something exceptional over and over again; connection to a community of smart, ambitious writers to jam on ideas with; and detailed edits on everything they wrote, working with a personal editor who made sure they were proud of what they published.

The cohort model sits between self-paced courses (lower price, lower completion rates) and individual coaching (higher price, lower scale). Perell's execution made the format the reference template for education creators across multiple verticals. The structural elements he developed five-week cadence, peer cohort as content, graduated delivery became some of the most-copied templates in the creator economy.

"You're guaranteed three things," the course site promised. The language was confident, even bold: "Live Instruction. People. Feedback." The curriculum wasn't about teaching writing the way schools do arbitrary requirements, padding to reach minimum length, flowery vocabulary foreign to everyday life. Instead, it taught what Perell called a "results-focused approach to writing."

By the time students finished, they would have published a series of insightful articles, built a professional website, launched an email newsletter, learned how to use these assets to connect with anyone on the planet, and developed a framework for uniquely framing their expertise. The promise was transformation: from passive consumer to active creator, from the "Mediocre Majority" who endlessly consume without ever producing to someone with a body of work that grows in value over time.

The Community as Curriculum

What distinguished Write of Passage from countless other writing programs was something harder to copy than a curriculum: the culture. Perell described it as a "beacon of belief in a world of cynicism." The community was, as he framed it, "equal parts optimistic, ambitious, and supportive." A place to explore entrepreneurship, improve thinking, and make friends from around the world.

The peer cohort was explicitly part of the product. Students learned from each other's writing and feedback in ways that pure-instructor-led courses couldn't replicate. The network effects extended value beyond course completion cohort relationships often persisted for years, producing business and creative connections that justified the premium pricing. The program's alumni mentor program, launched partway through its run, allowed graduates to take community leadership roles, with seven alumni mentors each running writing groups in later cohorts.

Graduates described the experience in terms that went beyond skill-building. "Write of Passage has made me significantly more confident in sharing my ideas with the world," wrote Justin Frank. "It's an intense course, but I feel transformed by it in the best way." Rick McClelland put it simply: "It got me over my biggest hurdle: fear of publishing. In week one, I was scared to hit publish. By week five, it felt natural."

Packy McCormick, who grew his newsletter from zero to 229,000+ subscribers, called starting to write online "the single best professional decision I've ever made, by an enormous margin." Chris Cordry said Write of Passage gave him structure and community to support his creative process, and that because of the friends he'd made, he felt "more intellectually and creatively stimulated than I have since grad school."

Perhaps the most revealing testimonial came from Eviana Vergara: "Write of Passage cured my intellectual loneliness and reminded me that the Internet isn't just bots and trolls and algorithms. There are real humans out there, full of curiosity and warmth and passion."

The People Behind the Product

Perell has been candid about what he couldn't do alone. Early on, he describes moments of "extreme doubt and self-loathing." After the second cohort, he was embarrassed about the program. "The student experience wasn't up to my standards, but I didn't know how to improve it," he recalled. "I feared that my messy, disorganized mind would kill the business."

Then Will Mannon showed up. A former student, Mannon called Perell with a list of things he should improve about Write of Passage specific, actionable suggestions that became the foundation of his job description. Mannon did such exceptional work that Forte and Perell hired him full-time to serve as Student Manager for both courses. Perell describes Mannon as having "a heart of gold and an uncanny telepathy with our students. He always knows what they need."

The company operated as a remote team, meeting in person a couple times per year to design the curriculum, plan in three-month increments, and what Perell emphasizes eat delicious food. The glaring weaknesses that used to sting "like salt in a fresh wound," Perell said, were increasingly covered by his team. Forte, he notes, is "the single most organized person I know."

Why It Closed

The announcement came on August 19, 2024. Perell's letter to the community called the mission an "astounding success" more than 2,000 writers trained, 72 countries represented, a Net Promoter Score that outperformed Apple's. But the business economics hadn't worked out. He cited two primary reasons: a missing "dependable flow of new students" and his own desire to return to creative work.

The closure raises questions that the independent publishing world is still working through. Cohort-based courses sit in a difficult middle ground: premium enough to support a business, but dependent on continuous enrollment to generate revenue. Unlike self-paced courses, which can sell indefinitely, cohort programs require fresh marketing pushes for every new cohort. Unlike coaching, they don't scale easily. The structural insight that made Write of Passage work cohort momentum substituting for self-discipline also created the sustainability challenge: you can't coast on past cohorts.

Perell has said he is eager to return to his own writing and to his podcast "How I Write," where he interviews writers about their creative processes. He has also mentioned interest in writing a book. His essays, newsletter (70,000+ subscribers), and Writing Examples collection continue on his main site.

What Remains

The formal Write of Passage course is no longer running. But much of the underlying philosophy remains freely available. The course's core ideas-publishing consistently, capturing ideas from daily life, building in public are documented across Perell's essays, his podcast, and the Writing Examples collection on his website.

This matters for a simple reason: the course's value was largely in its structure, community, and accountability more than proprietary information. Perell didn't invent a secret method for writing well. He built a system for showing up consistently, a community for feedback, and a curriculum for developing a public voice. Those ideas don't require a $2,000 program to access.

The question the closure raises for the broader world of online education is whether the cohort model particularly for knowledge-work skills like writing, where the content is relatively commoditized is economically sustainable at scale. Write of Passage achieved extraordinary outcomes for its students. It may have been a victim of its own success: the community it built was so good that graduates didn't need to recruit friends, and the audience that followed Perell personally was devoted but finite.

Why This Matters for Independent Publishers

The Write of Passage story is worth studying not because it ended lots of businesses end but because of what it achieved before closing. Over five years, it demonstrated that there is real demand for serious writing education delivered through community. It showed that the cohort model can produce outcomes that self-paced courses rarely match. And it generated a generation of writers who describe the experience as life-changing.

For independent publishers and creators considering their own programs, the story offers both inspiration and caution. The inspiration is straightforward: it's possible to build something that genuinely changes people's relationship with their own ideas. The caution is more subtle: building a great product isn't the same as building a sustainable business. The missing "dependable flow of new students" that Perell cited isn't a failure of marketing it's a structural feature of cohort-based education that every creator in this space needs to understand.

The writers who went through Write of Passage didn't just learn to write better. They learned to think in public, to treat their ideas as assets, and to build the kind of audience that creates unexpected opportunities. Those outcomes don't disappear when a course closes. They're what remains.

Where to Read Further

The full story of Write of Passage, in Perell's own words, is available in his essay "The Story of Write of Passage", which details the origin, early struggles, and first-year lessons. For the cohort-model template that became so widely copied, the Everything-PR breakdown maps the three structural elements that made the program distinctive. And for the closing chapter and what it means, YourBlogger's earlier coverage traces the program's arc from launch through shutdown.

Perell continues to publish essays and host the How I Write podcast, where he interviews writers about their creative processes. His newsletter, with more than 70,000 subscribers, remains active.

Key Dates and Numbers

Total enrollment across five years: more than 2,000 writers from 72 countries. Net Promoter Score: 75, higher than Apple's. Current status: course closed; Perell continues writing, podcasting, and publishing freely available essays and resources.

FAQs

What was Write of Passage?

Write of Passage was a premium, five-week cohort-based writing course founded by David Perell. It taught students how to publish consistently online, build an audience, and develop a systematic process for generating ideas. The program ran from April 2019 through November 2024, enrolling more than 2,000 writers from 72 countries.

Who was the course designed for?

The course was designed for anyone who wanted to publish quality content consistently, build a following that brings professional opportunities, create intellectual assets that grow in value over time, connect directly with peers and leaders in their industry, and increase serendipity in their work and life. Students came from companies including Google, Intel, and Twitter, as well as independent entrepreneurs, coaches, and writers of all backgrounds.

Why did Write of Passage close?

Perell announced in August 2024 that the company would shut down at the end of that year. In his announcement letter, he said the mission had been an "astondaing success" but that the business economics hadn't worked out. He cited a missing "dependable flow of new students" and his own desire to return to creative work as primary reasons.

Is the course content still available?

The formal Write of Passage course is no longer running. However, much of the underlying philosophy publishing consistently, capturing ideas from daily life, building in public is documented freely across Perell's essays, his podcast "How I Write," and the Writing Examples collection on his website.

What is David Perell doing now?

Perell has said he is eager to return to his own writing and to his podcast "How I Write," where he interviews writers about their creative processes. He has also mentioned interest in writing a book. His essays, newsletter (70,000+ subscribers), and Writing Examples collection continue on his main site.