How To Grow A $75M Newsletter Business | Morning Brew Co-Founder (#398)

About this video

Austin Reef, founder of Morning Brew, joins Sam and Shaan to discuss the evolution of newsletter businesses, their competitive journey, and operational lessons learned. The conversation covers their paths to building and partially selling their companies, the importance of focus and metrics, and emerging business opportunities in AI and outsourced talent.

Key takeaways

• Austin emphasizes the importance of identifying and obsessing over one key metric (like open rates) and reviewing it daily—Morning Brew tracked their ‘Great Wall of Opens’ every single day for two years to stay disciplined on what mattered
• Austin identifies three newsletter categories: editorial/long-form, aggregation at scale, and niche aggregation (‘Morning Brew for X’), noting that niche aggregation with strong tone/brand in growing verticals (B2B, professional job titles) is the biggest opportunity
• Austin advises that in downturns, focus on helping businesses save money or individuals earn side income, citing opportunities in outsourced talent marketplaces and niche content agencies as more defensible than venture-backed scaling
• Austin was initially competitive with Sam and Shaan but learned to respect their execution; both founders ultimately succeeded by deeply understanding their unit economics and staying focused on simple, repeatable models rather than raising capital aggressively
• Austin invested 85-90% of his exit proceeds into boring diversified investments (S&P 500, bonds, target-date funds), only allocating 5% to crypto and 5% to venture, and hired a wealth advisor to avoid lifestyle creep and preserve capital

Episode details: published December 20, 2022 · 105K views · 1:16:06 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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