BC STARTUPS
Saved by @Massimokris

How Morning Brew grew to 2.5M subscribers in 5 years ☕

Here are the early growth tactics used to reach 20M+ revenue in 2021

A thread👇👇

 1) In 2015, Founders Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief started the Morning Brew, an email newsletter with the purpose of making business news more interesting for young people. Students wanted something to keep them informed in a more engaging and fun way
2) They noticed students felt the need to follow business news but found current media dry and difficult to read.

Current outlets like the Wall Street Journal lacked the high level roundup that most young people needed to quickly stay informed and not put them to sleep
3) Strategy 1: Pure hustle
At 20 years old, Alex created a PDF newsletter (originally called the Market Corner) and sent it to 45 friends and family. They then got their first 300 subscribers by putting out flyers and speaking at lectures to fellow students at Michigan University
4) They spoke at 50 business classes/clubs explaining what they’re doing, the problem they solve, and that it’s free to join. Students gladly joined and word of mouth spread fast. After 4 months the list grew to 1000 people, eventually reaching 1M in 2019. 15% from word of mouth
5) Strategy 2: Referrals
Referrals account for 30% of their total subscribers today. This component was key to accelerating their growth flywheel.

They have a section at the bottom every newsletter called “share the brew”, which takes the readers to the referral program hub.
6) Readers were incentivized to share the brew for prizes/exclusive content. This section shows how many referrals they had/needed to claim the next reward (motivating them to take action).

They also made it easy to share right away via link, email, or social media
7) When the referral received the invite, they saw a clean and minimal page intended to optimize for signup conversions.

Once they signed up, Morning Brew sent an email reminding them of their reward progress (designed to encourage more referrals, maintaining the viral loop)
8) To make things interesting, they constantly changed what the reader saw when they checked their referral count. They showcased different rewards because people are motivated by different prizes. It also educated users about their prizes and encouraged them to take action
9) Strategy 3: Copywriting
They used enticing email subject lines that got noticed, while showcasing the brand's quirky personality.

Their copywriting was key to their success, leading to a daily open rate of 45% (15% -25% considered “good” in most industries)
10) They continuously A/B tested email subject lines every morning.

They sent emails to 4 groups of readers with different subject lines (but not all readers, a smaller portion), and whichever one had the highest open rate was used for the remaining (majority) of followers.
11) Strategy 4: Content
Their content was perfectly catered to their younger audience.

They gave quick rundowns of current events, breaking down content into bite sized chunks to not feel overwhelming. Students were tired of too much business jargon. It solved real problems
12) Morning Brew’s content (product) was so good that people were already sharing the newsletter with friends before the referral program. Once they realized people were sharing their content without expecting anything in return, they knew they had product market fit and scaled
13) Note: When it comes to creating a viral loop that guarantees long term growth, even the best incentives can only take people so far. Only when people share the product on their own without expecting anything in return, is when you are ready for a referral program
14) Today:
- $75M valuation
- Acquired by Business Insider

Keys to success:
- Finding a unique niche and solving a problem
- Created content people loved and relied on
- Referral system with clear rewards and tracking
- A/B testing Copywriting
15) Subscribe to my substack for a more in depth breakdown of Morning Brew’s rapid growth!
https://t.co/8DMqYhu5ii

And follow me on Twitter for a new thread like this every week!

More from Startups

Hiten Shah
Hiten Shah
@hnshah
Startup life can be summed up in three steps:

1. Find problem
2. Fix problem
3. Go back to step 1

Works for every thing you need to do in a startup.

Growth is determined by a combination of how fast you can go through the steps successfully and how long you can keep at it.

Finding the right problem to solve starts with understanding your customers.

Nobody says I wish I talked to less customers.

There aren’t any hacks or shortcuts to this.

Go talk to your customers.

Fixing problems in a startup isn’t usually straightforward.

You don’t have time, money or people to throw at the problem.

You have to go deep, dig for the details and think very creatively about solutions.

Then experiment like there is no tomorrow.

You can’t grow a startup without a fundamental understanding of how to problem solve really fast.

This skill comes from practicing jumping into the unknown.

You don’t usually get time to prepare for what’s coming next.

You’ll have to learn how to figure it out along the way.

Startup people have to become comfortable with the discomfort of uncertainty and the unknown.

This is why I say, nobody knows what they are doing.

We’re all just jumping from problem to problem expecting to figure things out.

Hopefully our past helps us not crash and burn.
STARTUPS
Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
With @ycombinator #demoday kicking off, @atrium gathered advice from past YC founders.

.@jaltma from @latticeHQ says “Don’t confuse investor interest with product-market fit. You’re about to be on the receiving end of a lot of hype and FOMO - use it to your advantage by taking the money and then keep your burn and ego low.”

.@typesfast from @flexport says “I like to remind myself that even Bruce Springsteen still gets nervous before his concerts. Remember that, and then try to focus on what investors want: First, not to be bored. Second, to get rich(er).”

.@collinmathilde from @frontapp says “Leverage your data to tell a story about what the business has achieved and where it is going. Metrics are necessary, but they are too often shared without a narrative arc.”

.@drusenko from @weebly says “Make it relevant. Investors can live in their own world, so try to find an angle that they can relate to.”
STARTUPS
Advertisement
Jan-Erik Asplund
Jan-Erik Asplund
@janerikasplund
.@zapier built a $140M ARR business on $1.4M in VC that has become the logic layer of the no-code industry.

But it has the potential to be something even bigger: the Netflix of productivity.

Our report and a thread 👉

We believe @seqouia and @steadfast got a good deal buying into Zapier at $5B.

We value Zapier at $7B based on:

- 30-50% YoY growth over the next five years
- Zapier’s monopoly status in the solopreneur/SMB market
- 30-40% YoY growth of no-code TAM

No-code is huge and growing, but as @edavidpeterson has written, no-code is about more than tools: it’s about a philosophy that emphasizes interoperability and customizing your software to your needs.

https://t.co/UJY6BRtXwl


.@zapier enabled interoperability by building a solution to one of the intractable problems in SaaS: APIs that don’t talk to each other.

The product took off and hit $100M ARR in just 9 years, comparable to companies that have raised 100x as much money.

https://t.co/0Thk42eRpJ


Zapier was riding an explosion in APIs that started the same year they were founded—2011.

Suddenly, every SaaS business wanted to offer its users extensibility, but not spend time figuring out what integrations to build or building them.

That’s where Zapier came in handy.
STARTUPS
Brainhub
Brainhub
@brainhubeu
“Every time you write a new code, you should do so reluctantly, under duress, because you completely exhausted all your other options.” - Jeff Atwood @codinghorror

Hence the growing popularity of the no-code software.

A quick thread 👇


1/

NO-CODE IS EATING THE WORLD

The concept isn't new (remember Microsoft FrontPage?) but the capabilities that the no-code and low-code tools offer today change the way individuals and businesses approach building digital products.

WHY IT'S INTERESTING? 👇

2/

No-code tools let you build things without writing code. Websites, mobile apps, online stores – all that (and a lot more!) can be built without any prior coding experience.

3/

Even though the “no-code” label is often an oversell (many platforms are "just" low-code and still require some low programming effort), the capabilities offered are game-changing, especially at the first stages of product development.

4/

Key no-code platforms:

•@Shopify: e-commerce
•@canva: design
•@airtable: databases
•@webflow: web development
•@zapier: process automation
•@bubble: mobile app development
STARTUPS
Elizabeth Yin
Elizabeth Yin
@dunkhippo33
Today I want to talk about the legal aspects of startups. How to set up? How to think about legal costs?

Fun!

Read on >>

1) Lawyers are expensive -- oof! A startup lawyer can cost you $300-$1k per HOUR! An associate paralegal may be slightly cheaper. But still pricey.

What do you need from a lawyer?

-company setup costs
-doc creation and review for financing rounds
-exit negotiation

2) For the purpose of this thread, we're just going to focus on setup costs, because this is where I see the most mistakes.

Once you get going, you may quickly realize you need a better lawyer - hah - and that generally helps w/ solving for financing rounds and exits

3) If you want to potentially raise money from VCs, you'll want to set up as a Delaware C Corp. If you don't ever want to raise from VCs, an LLC is fine.

Lots of ppl start out as an LLC because you can get tax benefits if you are not profitable.

4) But to me, if you know you want to raise VC money, it feels a bit penny wise / pound foolish, because you will need to spend $$ to convert your LLC to a Delaware C corp.
STARTUPS

You May Also Like

Eric
Eric
@ericbahn
1/ Recently, I learned about the concept of ‘struggle porn’. This refers to the fetish of sacrificing nearly everything (health, relationships, time) for your startup. I fear that this label is creating more harm than good.

2/ @nateliason wrote a fabulous article about this topic, which first introduced me to this concept. Everyone should read it:

3/ @alexisohanian also recently spoke about struggle porn, though referring to it as ‘hustle porn.’ (as the co-founder of @hustlefundvc, obviously I take issue with this pejorative definition of ‘hustle’, but that’s another topic)

4/ Struggling in itself isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s be real here--if you’re going to start a startup, you will struggle. Founders should expect to work harder generally than employees. You will be challenged in many ways and also be super rewarded in others. This is normal.

5/ However, if you are over-indexing on hard work without clear purpose and degrading your mental health/relationships in the process--then this is very bad and we obviously should not celebrate this behavior.
STARTUPS
\u092a\u094d\u0930\u0924\u093f\u091c\u094d\u091e
प्रतिज्ञ...
@RamaInExile
#twitterArts
Arts are best form to Express thoughts & devotion. In All civilization Arts played very important role to express sprituality. Tibbeten Tangkhas are prime example .

List of My Paintings & Sketches


प्रलय पयोधि-जले धृतवान् असि वेदम्
विहित वहित्र-चरित्रम् अखेदम्
केशव धृत-मीन-शरीर, जय जगदीश हरे!!


छलयसि विक्रमणे बलिम् अद्भुत-वामन
पद-नख-नीर-जनित-जन-पावन
केशव धृत-वामन रूप जय जगदीश हरे


नंदसि यज्ञ- विधेर् अहः श्रुति जातम्
सदय-हृदय-दर्शित-पशु-घातम्
केशव धृत-बुद्ध-शरीर जय जगदीश हरे


क्षत्रिय-रुधिर-मये जगद् -अपगत-पापम्
स्नपयसि पयसि शमित-भव-तापम्
केशव धृत-भृगुपति रूप जय जगदीश हरे
ALL
Advertisement
Anu Satheesh
Anu Satheesh
@AnuSatheesh5
Thrikkangode Sree Randu Moorthy Temple
Ottappalam, Kerala. 🚩
#keralatemples

This is very unique temple as Shiva and Vishnu both are in the “linga” form in the same Garbhagriham. The Srikovil is in a circular pattern. Temple's Prathishta was done by Parasurama.


Mahadeva and Maha Vishnu in the same Srikovil is very rare Prathishta, but poojas are done separately Dhara is done to Maha Vishnu here. People suffering from “KAIVISHAM” and mental illness are fully cured on drinking a medicinal herb supplied by a nearby family here.


The root of the banyan tree around the Ayyappa Sannidhanam is said to have great powers for skin ailments.

Very ancient temple but was covered with forest for many years.
Later two persons Chakki and Chaathan, while cutting trees their axe hit on the nearby
@SriramKannan77


Vigrahams and it suddenly started bleeding. Later Devaprashnam was held and thus found out that these were murthy's of Shiva and Vishnu which was worshipped long back. And thus temple is constructed here.
Om Namah Sivaye
Om Namo Narayanaya
🕉🙏🕉
ALL
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.
TECH
Dr Naomi Wolf
Dr Naomi Wolf
@naomirwolf
1/Just had an interview scheduled with @goddeketal, Dr Simon Goddek, the post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics in the field of biotechnology, at an unnamed Dutch university. This researcher has been publicly pointing out that the paper that...

2/ the PCR test as the gold standard underlying global "lockdowns" was passed after maximum ONE day of peer review, as opposed to the average at that same journal of 172 days in 2019. Also that several authors have conflicts of interest. Unfortunately we were forced to cancel..

3/ because he was strongly advised by his university to maintain silence and not speak publicly -- to step back from this issue. I learned from a source that his university was heavily assailed by many complaints. Other scientists who have signed the review criticizing the PRC..

4/test, the "Retraction Request Letter", a critique that got worldwide attention, have also been bombarded with attacks, their relatives are being called at night, and their universities assailed. Some are at risk of losing jobs. Even former employers are being harassed. I..

5/ Note : scientists around the world are being silenced and harassed if they speak up in normal criticism of the scientific methods or conclusions used to advance the lockdown agenda and COVID testing. This is not post-enlightenment scientific discourse, this is how scientists
SCIENCE