The buzzy candle brand that quit Instagram and never looked back

Sitting down with Keap Candles founder Harry Doull on why leaving Instagram was the smartest business move they ever made.

A year ago, I wrote my most popular Substack essay yet about the pressure to be online to stay relevant. Whether you’re a brand, a niche creator, or just a mom with a private account, the demand to stay visible truly never lets up.

When I wrote that essay, I’d set out to find a modern brand thriving without Instagram. I couldn’t find one back then.

But then a few months ago, Harry Doull of Keap Candles reached out and introduced himself. I learned he’d taken his brand—the makers of the viral scent Wood Cabin, the one drifting through every Greenpoint speakeasy and cool girl apartment in Carroll Gardens—off Instagram. For good, in early 2021.

Wait, so a brand that employs 9 people full-time, got off Instagram and didn’t tank?!?

I had to know more. Harry and I left Instagram for different reasons, and our paths diverged (they’re still off IG; I’m back), but I was intrigued. One of my jobs after I left influencing full-time was running social media at D.S. & DURGA where I helped boost their views and made a few posts go viral. And while I loved the brand and my coworkers, it quickly became clear: quitting social media only to run it for someone else is not quite the radical reset I’d imagined.

This essay is free thanks to Keap Candles, who have generously sponsored this post to keep it open to all. Keap is owned by Harry, an ex-Google employee, and I’m jazzed to share my conversation with him, now CEO.

In conversation with Keap Candles founder Harry Doull

Me: Harry, it’s so good to meet you. I have to admit, when you first subscribed to Offline Time, I freaked out. Your candles are at every cool girl’s house in Brooklyn. My friend Adriana is so chic, the ultimate chic girl. At her birthday party, she balled out with a Keap Candle in every room. The Wood Cabin one. Every candle brand has an ‘upstate’ candle, but yours is more mellow and city-like, colder and refreshing. Her party is what put your brand on my radar.

Harry: Amazing. I might even know who she is. We have a lot of longtime customers I’ve gotten to know personally. 

Me: I love that. We’ve chatted a bunch since meeting, but I want to bring everybody up to speed. To understand Keap is to know your past. You grew up with a family running small hotels, so hospitality is in your blood. But your last job before you started Keap… you worked at Google. Can you walk me through what you did there—and how that experience planted the seeds for starting your own business?

Harry: I spent five years at Google, mostly on YouTube, acting as a data analyst. I was in charge of telling the sales team how to sell more YouTube ads. At the time I joined, I believed in the mission—Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ ethos felt real. I loved the social conscience and innovative spirit, but over time, the culture shifted. Long-term thinking gradually gave way to obsessive tracking of short-term metrics: watch time, daily revenue. The algorithm. My future Keap partner Stephen and I presented the now famous Tristan Harris deck about the platform’s addictiveness with some of our higher-ups, who brushed it off with, ‘Very interesting—now where's the daily revenue report?’ That was a turning point. Keap came out of a desire to build something different—based on connection, not addiction.

Me: So… you went from optimizing YouTube addiction to launching a candle brand that smells like a forest and slows people down? That’s kind of the exact opposite—and maybe a little upstate cliché?

Harry: I have to admit it sounds like a pretty cliché mid-life crisis situation! I was desperate to find something meaningful. Steve and I were roommates at the time and both worked at Google. We spent our evenings talking about what it would mean to build a business that focused on long-term over short-term. And meanwhile, we were burning candles late into the night—nerding out over scent and the different brands we liked. And then we realized there was a hole in the market for what we wanted to create. Eventually, those two threads came together. That’s how Keap started.

Me: So then you started squirreling money away while working at Google, quit your jobs, and started Keap.

Harry: Yes. We almost went into debt renting out our first studio in Sunset Park. In hindsight, we probably should have stayed at Google a little longer while doing Keap on the side. But I think we wanted to feel legit right away with a candle studio and everything.

The vibes are VIBING

Me: I think doing things like that, if fiscally possible, can be smart. It pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Harry: Yes. And so then we launched in 2015 and joined Instagram in 2016. Because that’s what you did! We used it as our main marketing channel, trying to share our story, our values, our scents, the design behind each candle. But over time, it started to become a huge timesuck. We were posting just to stay visible, not because we necessarily had something to say. Eventually, it felt like Instagram had become our boss—one that never slept and always wanted more.

Me: Wow. I really relate to that. ‘Not having a boss’ is fake news. We all have bosses, whether it be the customer, the platform, or your rich daddy if you are a nepo baby. We are never truly free.

Harry: Yeah, and we were spending all our time crafting posts, trying to keep up with the algorithm, and it wasn’t really translating into meaningful revenue. Meanwhile, we were building a business that was supposed to be about presence, about helping people feel grounded in their homes—and here we were, glued to our phones, optimizing content just to stay relevant. It felt off. Like the way we were marketing didn’t reflect the world we were trying to build through our product.

Me: Yup.

Harry: I think the final push came when we realized, ‘wait, if we keep on this path, this will feel just like Google: fast, reactive, and defined by forces we can’t control. That scared us. So we wondered, what if we just… stopped? We spoke about it with some of our business mentors, who urged us not to leave.

Me: Like me, talking to my business managers. Leaving Instagram back then felt like career suicide. Maybe it still is.

Harry: Exactly. So hearing this hesitancy stalled our leaving for a bit. But when The Social Dilemma came out, it reignited everything. We started to believe that the most resilient businesses of the future would be the ones that figured out how to exist outside the grip of social platforms. A few weeks later, we pulled the plug on Instagram.

Me: Do you think if you guys had been killing it on Instagram, like, say, if it was 40% of your revenue, you would have stayed, even if you knew it wasn’t inherently aligned with your brand?

Harry: It’s hard to imagine a reality where we were killing it on Instagram and still wanting to leave. If the platform had been that successful for us, it probably would’ve meant we were in alignment with it—which we weren’t. That said, I totally get how hard it would be for someone with a big following and real revenue dependency on the line. For us, the decision was easier—we didn’t have as much to lose. It seems like the candles that do well on Instagram are the ones that look like vaginas or boobs or other sexual organs. They’re the bright pink, holographic, or super flashy ones. Everything moves fast—it has to be candy-like or a meme. If your product isn’t a meme, it’s invisible.

Me: Tell me about the day you logged off Instagram.

Harry: We posted a farewell video on Instagram (it’s still up) and sent a letter to our email list explaining our decision. And let me tell you, we’ve never received, and still haven’t received, as much positive feedback and engagement as we did from that post announcing our departure from social media. We were flooded with close to a hundred emails and messages. It felt profound.

Me: Are you afraid that people won’t be able to discover you though. I’m not gonna lie… I tried looking you up on Instagram at my friend Adriana’s party and I couldn’t find you. That deterred me a bit, as I’m so used to brands having a social presence.

Harry: Well yeah, I hate hearing that. That’s every business owner’s worst nightmare. What’s surprised me though is how many people are actually into the fact that we’re not on social media. We’ve had customers tell us all the ways they’ve jumped through hoops to find us. Recently, someone emailed saying, ‘I had a few too many drinks at a bar, saw your candle in the bathroom, and decided I had to have it. But then I passed out and couldn’t remember the name. The photo I’d taken on my phone was blurry, so I called the restaurant—but they wouldn’t answer. I even left a voicemail. Eventually, I went back just to find the candle again.’ It’s quite an honor that someone is willing to go through all of that to connect with our work—and it’s also a great story and a great relationship starter between them and us.

Me: How has leaving affected you and your employees?

Harry: We’ve all benefitted from logging off. Our employees love that we are walking the walk, and I think we’re all less stressed. And without the constant pressure to drop a new product every week, we can focus on doing a few things really well. We recently improved our glass candleholder, which I think is grossly underrated in terms of luxury candles. The vessel is what you first see and hold when you experience our products. Our glass is not the cheaply mass-produced fare you see in even the priciest luxury candles—we work now with Schott-Sweisel, a multi-generational family-owned German glassmaker. Their factory is absolutely incredible and you can see immediately when you look at the glass that it is really high quality.

Me: What else has improved since leaving social?

Harry: Our partnerships, the way we’re able to build community with our audience, are so much more meaningful.

Me: But to me, partnerships means doing things on social media—what do you mean by that?

Harry: We’ve leaned into creative, offline collaborations with companies we love—like Craighill, Saipua, or Jono Pandolfi. Things like events, pop-ups, product collaborations, storytelling campaigns. At first, we worried people would think we were out of touch or even elitist for leaving Instagram. Like, who are we to log off when everyone else feels stuck? I also wonder if we would have been hit harder with more criticism if we were a female-run company?

Me: I think people, especially reading this newsletter, might say you are doing online partnerships, as you’re working with me on social media, and this is your first time sponsoring a post (thank you, by the way). What do you have to say to that?

Harry: We are not anti-technology. I could imagine us trying a different kind of social networking platform someday—but not Instagram or other big social media platforms under the current model. That chapter feels really closed. It’s not about being anti-social media altogether, it’s more about being thoughtful about the tools we use. If there’s ever a platform that truly aligns with our values—one that fosters slower, more intentional connection—we’re excited to explore it. And I’m exploring it now, in a way. I think we’re finally entering a phase where new exciting digital social networks are emerging.

Me: I love that for you, and that’s exactly how I felt. When I wrote that essay, I hadn’t fully returned to posting as Lee From America yet—but I could feel it looming. I knew I’d probably have to once my book came out, and I felt this deep, simmering resentment about it. I’ve come to terms with it more now, but back then, I was frustrated. Angry. I had hate in my heart. Once you see the machine for what it is—and I know many of you have—it’s hard to unsee it. But I’ve come to peace with it now.

Harry: I think a lot of people see that, and feel that low-grade dread. And I guess what we’re doing at Keap is trying to show that there’s another way, even if it’s slower, even if it’s harder to find us. We just want to build something that has the potential to bring us joy every day.

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Thank you, Harry, for sitting down with me. Check out Keap Candles at keapcandles.com, or join their newsletter to stay updated on what they’re doing. Their spring scent, Terraces, a crisp, herbaceous blend of Calabrian bergamot and minty greens, dropped for subscribers last week and is available to all to shop on June 1st.

You may not see Keap on your feed, but you’ll probably smell them the next time you’re out for martinis in Cobble Hill.