Morning Brew's Alex Lieberman - Building a Newsletter Empire | E1243

Top Takeaways

When Alex & Austin decided to go full time on Morning Brew, it was not monetized & they had ~35,000 subscribers.
Morning Brew sells ads written in the voice & style of the Newsletter, so they get higher conversions (ads are clearly marked).
They used paid acquisition to scale. They found it was more important to acquire high-quality customers than cheap customers.
They measure high-quality customers as someone who opens 5/10 of their first emails.
10% of Morning Brew's 3 million readers have used the referral program.

Guest: Alex Lieberman @businessbarista is the Executive Chairman & Founder of Morning Brew

Morning Brew Founder & Executive Chairman

Going into his senior year, Alex had secured a job at Morgan Stanley in their trading division. Because he knew what it took to get an offer, he would help younger students with mock interviews.
He would always ask them, what do you read to stay up to date with the business world?
Basically, every answer was “I read the Wall Street Journal, and I read it because I feel like I have to (because my parents told me it was a good thing to read etc.)”
So, Alex started writing a PDF newsletter called “Market Corner” which he would distribute via a school email listserv ([email protected]).
Alex acknowledges it was advantageous to start Morning Brew in college at Michigan because his personal burn rate was low at the time.