THREAD: Here are 10 insights I've learned over the last 5 years from cofounding and selling business.

On startups, investing, marketing, and career advice:

👇👇
"I learn more from speaking with others than reading" is complete nonsense.

The smartest people in the history of the world have distilled their life's work into a few hundred pages.

No, a 30 minute convo with your buddy won't teach you more.
The best businesses in the world expand their target market

-Nike convinced the world that everyone is an athlete
-Apple convinced the world that everyone is a creator
-Shopify is convincing the world that everyone is an entrepreneur

Champion customers and they will reward you
"Follow your passion" is complete complete crap.

People are passionate about things they are good at. Get really good at something, and you will become passionate at it.

Then you will make enough money to follow your original passion in your free time.
There is no industry in the world that is easier to get to an 8 figure exit than digital media.

There is also no industry harder to get to a 10 figure valuation than digital media.

Understand your industry and plan accordingly.
The best advice I ever received was to increase your "luck surface area".

- Work hard
- Befriend likeminded people
- Learn faster than others

If you do that, you will get lucky at some point.
B2B businesses should hire a "chief storyteller".

Their entire job should be to tell the story of the founding team.

No one cares about a SaaS business in the early days, but people love passionate entrepreneurs.

If you get people to love you, they will love your business.
There is no such thing as subscription fatigue

People do get fatigued with average content

There is more amazing content available than ever before and it can reach people easier than ever

If you think subscription fatigue is why people aren't reading your content, think again
The VC vs. bootstrapping argument is way too caught up in good vs. evil.

Answer 2 questions:

1. What are my business goals?
2. What am I optimizing for personally?

Only once you know the answer to those 2 questions can you decide what funding source is right for you.
Twitter is a complete bubble.

99% of people don't care about who is moving to Miami, what journalist is writing on Substack, or how many hours a week you should work.

If you think I am wrong, you are in the center of the bubble.
If you want more content on startups, business and investing, give me a follow. I post threads 2x/week like this.
For more of this content, here are all of my threads.

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More from @austin_rief

15 Jan
People find motivation is different places.

Many find theirs by proving others wrong. Here is a story that put a chip on my shoulder in the early days.

[thread]
2/ During the first year of @MorningBrew, a *very* well known media exec (you would know him by name) reached out to us.

He mentioned wanting to invest, or even buying @MorningBrew.

We told him every single thing we knew about our company, our readership, and the industry.
3/ After @businessbarista and I spoke with him, he made it clear he was interested.

We were very excited, and thought it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

However, we didn't hear from him for a few weeks.
Read 7 tweets
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
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!
Read 6 tweets
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
17 Dec 20
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.
Read 12 tweets
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

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