Thread by @amlewis4

Morning Brew's Secret Sauce and the Importance of Building a Community (Thread)

Inspired by the North Star podcast between @david_perell, @austin_rief, and @BUSlNESSBARISTA

Notes 👇

Start of Morning Brew

• Alex started Market Corner his senior year of college with 45 subscribers
• In two months he had 1,000 subscribers
• Started it to keep up-to-date on the business world before he started his job at Morgan Stanley

Austin Joins Morning Brew

• Austin was in the same fraternity as Alex and was on the original 45 person email list
• Austin didn't know Alex, but had some ideas on how to improve the newsletter
• Raised 750K and changed name to Morning Brew

Austin and Alex's Functions

• Austin is in charge of sales, growth and tech
• Alex is in charge of content
• This includes written content, design and the podcast

Morning Brew Optimizes for 3 Things

• Write content
• Sell ads
• Grow subscribers

New Ways for People to Monetize Their Following

• Patreon model - solicit donations
• Influencer model - sell sponsorship
• Product model - Sell clothing, courses or other products

Barstool Model

• Barstool has created a new model
• Find digitally native people who create content
• Barstool handles infrastructure, cross promotes content and launches new verticals

Start with Niche Audiences

• If you find success, expand to a new niche that overlaps with existing niche
• Psychographic segmentation is a good way to do this

Ramit Sethi

• @ramit has done a good job of expanding his niche
• Became an expert in personal finance through his book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Started expanding to adjacent niches such as negotiations and finding your dream job

Community Building = Structure and Accountability

• Write of Passage = CrossFit
• WOP teaches you to write, but provides the structure and accountability to succeed
• CrossFit teaches you how to work out, but the classes keep you accountable to put in the work

Community FOMO

• Everyone is trying to build the next successful community
• Community only works if it's in service of something else
• For example, Peloton is all about getting healthy

Community = Modern Day Country Club

• SOHO House is a great example of this
• Communities only work if they stay exclusive
• You can increase the price or let more people in (both are difficult to execute on)

Supreme Clothing

• Supreme has cracked the community exclusivity problem
• They've scaled streetwear
• Supreme is valued at $1B as of 2017

People Look for Exclusivity

• "I don't want to be part of a club that will let me in."
• People will always pay for signaling to be in the upper echelon

Internet is Making it Easier to Monetize Community

• Substack = Paid Newsletter
• Shopify = e-commerce
• FanJoy = Influencer Merchandise
• Teachable = Courses
• Provides infrastructure layer for niches

Ideas Aren't Original

• Most new ideas are bundling old ideas
• Morning Brew took the idea of a newsletter, business, and comedy to create a new idea.
• Morning Brew is a millennial-focused WSJ

Secret Sauce of Morning Brew = Great Writers

• Morning Brew requires all applicants to create a 150-word piece of content
• 2-3% of applicants make it to the next round
• The unique voice of their writers give them a leg up on the competition

Differentiation

• Differentiation is free marketing (have content unique for SEO)
• Infinite niches go way deeper than people thought before (everything is monetizable)
• @benthompson wrote about today

stratechery.com/2020/never-end…

Aggregation of Niches

• Can niches form together to become the next billion-dollar companies?
• Similar to Conde Nast, Hearst Media and other conglomerates of the past

Listen to the podcast

perell.com/podcast/austin…