Share this page!

Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
Twitter logo
17 Dec 20, 12 tweets, 3 min read
1/ "What I've learned" meta-thread

I enjoy posting content on running a business, leadership and what I've learned along the way.

I will continue to add as I share more. Feel free to share with others!
2/ A thread on how we got our first 10k subs
2/ A thread on the best job pitch I ever received.
3/ A thread on how I think about my calendar

4/ A thread on what new founders shouldn't be thinking about

5/ A thread on how we ran the Brew-bassador program

6/ A thread on my 2019 year end reflection

7/ A thread on how a fortune cookie changed my life.

8/ A brief history of Morning Brew when we hit 1 million opens.

9/ Insights into early hiring

10/ A thread on a few key insights as we began ramping up paid acquisition

11/ Why @MorningBrew didn't raise VC funding.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Austin Rief ☕️

Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @austin_rief

Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
6 Jan
1/ "Why didn't @morningbrew raise VC money?" is a question I answer a lot.

So I thought I'd answer it here for everyone.

This is why we didn't raise VC money, and what I learned about raising capital.

[thread]
2/ Morning Brew started as a college side project in 2015.

In 2015, media was BOOMING.

Here were some headlines from the time.
3/ We had very well known media execs (whom you would know by name) telling @businessbarista and I that we *need* to raise capital.

They insist we raised $10s of millions of dollars to "pivot to video".

We had no idea what we'd even do with $10s of millions.
Read 14 tweets
Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
30 Dec 20
1/ One of my 2020 New Year's resolutions was to share more about what I've learned.

I've written dozens of threads on everything from hiring to paid acquisition.

Here are a few of my favorite 2020 threads. Enjoy!
2/ How @MorningBrew got its first 10k subscribers.

3/ How I think about my schedule

Read 6 tweets
Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
28 Dec 20
1/ When @morningbrew began spending money on paid acquisition in 2018, 2 small insights exploded our growth ~10x in a year.

Small insights can have a huge impact.

Here is what we learned.
2/ The first insight was that the best way to grow a specific medium was to get promoted on that medium.

If you are a podcast, cross-promote with podcasts.

If you are a newsletter, cross-promote with other newsletters.
3/ We found that readers we acquired from ads in other newsletters were >2x as engaged as readers we got from Facebook or referrals.

Noticing this, we bought ads in every newsletter that would let us.

These ads were incredible effective in acquiring quality readers.
Read 16 tweets
Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
16 Dec 20
1/ In the early days of @morningbrew, we launched a college ambassador program.

This "Brew-bassador program" was the main catalyst in our early growth to 100k subscribers.

Here is how we ran it and what we learned.

[thread]
2/ As I said in this thread, the program started organically.

@businessbarista and I went from class to class at Michigan pitching @morningbrew.

We'd pitch the Brew, pass around a piece of paper, and people would give us their email.

Pretty simple.

3/ This was very effective.

We had thousands of University of Michigan students reading within months.

We thought that if we could scale this to other colleges, it could be a huge growth driver.
Read 15 tweets
Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
12 Dec 20
1/ I often get asked how @MorningBrew got its first 10k subscribers. So, I’m just going to share some thoughts here:

[thread]
2/ I joined @businessbarista in 2014 to transform a PDF attachment with 250 readers into a media business.

We had 0 money to spend on marketing, so we had to get creative.

We had to (quote @paulg) do things that don't scale.
3/ We were students at the University of Michigan at the time, and knew many business lectures had 400+ students.

We spent weeks asking professors if we could speak in their econ/accounting/finance 101 classes.
Read 13 tweets
Austin Rief ☕️ Profile picture
5 Dec 20
1/ New founders spend too much time trying to emulate mature companies they admire, and not enough time learning what those companies did in the early days.

Understanding the journey is more important than knowing where they are today.
(cont.) This leads to an immense lack of focus.

The mature company is most likely doing 10-100x what they did in the early days.
This is a top 5 mistake I see in early stage companies.

"But company X has 5 revenue steams"... yes, company X also has 100 people, $50m in funding, and is best in class at their core function.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @austin_rief has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @austin_rief!

Read all threads by @austin_rief