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Young people's favorite business media, to challenge the "Wall Street Journal".

　　The self-media myth that makes people rich overnight has been frequently staged in China in the past few years.

　　With a pen, we can pinpoint the current situation, instill chicken soup, and impart knowledge. . . . . . Countless people are frantically digging gold on social media platforms such as official accounts to achieve a rapid jump in life.

　　In recent years, however, there have been fewer and fewer stories of getting rich. Even the top self-media people are still in the anxiety of declining traffic, not to mention those middle-waist self-media people.

　　Just as "no one stays 18 years old forever, but there are always 18 year olds", although your "self-media dividend" is gone, there are always people who are creating wealth myths.

　　In 2020, the media company  Morning Brew  was valued at $75 million and a majority stake was sold to Insider. Two co-founders,  Alex Lieberman and  Austin Rief  , made millions by selling stakes. Now the two of them are only twenty-seven or eighteen years old, but they have already tasted the taste of reaching the pinnacle of life.

Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief | Source: Internet

　　Right now, Morning Brew's fortune-making machine is still moving forward. According to the latest data released by Alex Lieberman, the revenue of Morning Brew has exceeded 36 million US dollars in the first half of this year, compared with 50 million US dollars last year and 20 million US dollars the year before.

　　Nowadays, people no longer have much expectations for the commercial space of the media, and how did the two young people start the road to gold? What experiences can a large number of we-media people in China learn from?

　　01

　　The Birth of Morning Brew

　　Back in 2015, Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief were students at the University of Michigan.

　　On campus, Alex Lieberman found that business students read financial news like The Wall Street Journal every day. Although these news content is professional, but most of them are jerky and boring.

　　So Lieberman started trying to write interesting and engaging business news. Not only that, he also opened an email subscription service called "Market Corner" , which carefully screened out high-quality financial news every day, then translated it into his own content in more interesting language, and finally sent it to students on campus by email.

　　Soon, "Market Corner" was favored by many students, and the number of users rapidly increased from 45 to thousands. At this time, Lieberman found one of the users of "Market Corner", also a classmate Austin Rief, and the two teamed up to start Morning Brew on the basis of "Market Corner".

Morning Brew | Source: Internet

　　At the beginning, the two were still using their spare time to start a business, and then they simply worked full-time. The hard work pays off. In 2020, Morning Brew was acquired by Insider at a valuation of more than $75 million. The two co-founders also cashed out their shares, instantly creating a myth of wealth.

　　Although it was sold, the company still maintained rapid growth. Morning Brew had more than 3 million subscribers last year, and reached 4 million by the end of March this year. Overall, Morning Brew's overall audience is around 25-40 years old, and the average age of subscribers is 30 years old.

　　Unlike other Newsletters, which mainly generate their revenue from paid subscriptions, Morning Brew generates most of its revenue from advertising, and it is quite profitable. Austin Rief revealed that the company has been profitable since its inception and currently has double-digit profit margins.

　　Supporting revenue and profits are its seven products related to B2B and B2C.

　　On the B2B side, there is Marketing Brew for marketing professionals, Retail Brew for retail professionals, and Emerging Tech Brew for emerging technology professionals.

　　In terms of B2C, there are Daily newsletter for various users, Sidekick for anchoring business people's life services, and Business Casual, an interview podcast for famous people in the business world.

Several business lines of Morning Brew | Source: Internet

　　While opening several business lines, Morning Brew's staff size has grown from 50 to 230 now. Under the leadership of the executives, employees not only built the company into a media brand, a news communications company, but also began to spread the business into multimedia, video and audio programming.

　　Looking back now, Morning Brew has evolved from an ordinary subscription email service in a college dormitory to a media enterprise worth tens of millions of dollars in just seven years. Right now, it has a bigger dream: to be the "Wall Street Journal for millennials . "

　　02

　　Expansion Magic: Referral Program and Quality Content

　　When the wave of digitalization flooded the media landscape, many media companies were born. After a short burst of popularity, many companies quickly disappeared into the night sky like shooting stars.

　　Why did Morning Brew go all the way down and get better and better?

　　Alex Lieberman once summed up the reason for his success, believing that there were years of hard work and slow linear growth in the early stage, after which the company reached a certain critical point and completely changed its trajectory, eventually forming explosive growth.

　　Of course, this is just Alex Lieberman's macro view of Morning Brew's growth trajectory.

Alex Lieberman | Source: Internet

　　On a more granular level, the "recommendation mechanism" is one of the most important drivers of Morning Brew's growth.

　　The first thing Alex Lieberman did after establishing Morning Brew was to create a recommendation mechanism, with the purpose of allowing those who read Morning Brew and are passionate about it to share with others, forming a fission effect to cover more users.

　　So, how should this self-propagation be formed? Naturally, it is driven by profit.

　　Earn rewards when you sign up for Morning Brew via a link retweeted by a friend, and earn money from the Sunday edition of our newsletter, Light Roast—from stickers on Brew mugs to Brew crew neck shirts and more Known as Breweck.

Brew round neck long-sleeved shirt | Source: Internet

　　Basically, Morning Brew wants to give users two kinds of rewards.

　　The first is to reward the most enthusiastic readers for wearing Brew as proud as being a VIP in a club.

　　The second is to come up with rewards that are inexpensive but meaningful to users, so that Morning Brew won’t pay too much in the process of pulling new ones.

　　So, what is a meaningful reward? In Alex Lieberman's view, Sunday's version of Brew is Light Roast, and it makes sense to reward the best readers with great content, and the cost of making Light Roast isn't very high.

　　Using this "rewarded" referral mechanism, Morning Brew has the foundation to spread quickly.

　　Of course, the recommendation mechanism is not enough, content is still the foundation of a media.

　　When it comes to content creation, Morning Brew has two principles, one is to be fun. Every article in Morning Brew has a natural and interesting beginning, which can attract readers and enhance their sense of interaction and participation. Obscure and blunt content is obviously not favored.

　　"We wanted to make business news more fun to read," Austin Rief said. "It's an attention economy, so we're competing with everybody. But in terms of direct competitors, we're not."

　　Plus, Morning Brew wants every article to have a sense of value. The content should not only be funny jokes, but also gain knowledge and value in the fun, which is what Morning Brew values more.

　　The high requirements for content quality make Morning Brew extra cautious in handling advertisements. Although all advertisements of Morning Brew are clearly marked, they do not have too much incongruity with the content of the article. Not only will users not be disgusted by the advertisements, but even interact with them.

　　This allows Morning Brew to find a balance between content quality and commercialization, and superimpose the catalytic effect of the recommendation mechanism, Morning Brew directly sits on the high-speed development channel.

　　03

　　Expansion Road and Value Inspiration

　　Now it seems that Morning Brew has not satisfied the current achievements, and continues to spread its tentacles to other fields, opening the road of expansion.

　　This is reflected in the subscription business and verticals.

　　Previously, Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief gained financial freedom by selling stakes, so they are not so eager to raise the valuation of Morning Brew.

　　A typical example is that Morning Brew has not done a subscription business for a long time, but mainly advertising revenue. Keep in mind that advertising-based new media companies are typically valued at multiples of 1 to 3 times annual revenue, while subscription-based products can be valued at 5 to 8 times annual revenue.

　　Earlier this year, though, Austin Rief said he was open to subscription offerings once he felt the company could produce content that a large audience would pay for.

　　In fact, Morning Brew has launched a subscription-based education product that offers users several weeks of virtual courses on topics including audience building, storytelling, finance and leadership, and the courses cost between $500 and $2,000.

　　In addition to developing subscription products, Morning Brew is preparing to expand into more verticals.

　　"We want to do more of what we're doing now," Austin Rief said. "We want to target new verticals, and more creators who focus on money, work life and business news."

Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief | Source: Internet

　　Right now, Morning Brew has launched a few businesses anchored in verticals. Examples include Emerging Tech Brew and Marketing Brew, as well as a commerce site that sells branded coffee mugs, clothing and other merchandise. Morning Brew is looking to acquire other media companies for further expansion, Rief said.

　　From a small mail service to a large media company that is now expanding, Morning Brew's success has attracted the attention of many people, and it has also brought some value implications.

　　To use a popular phrase, Morning Brew is doing the hard and right thing.

　　What is the right thing to do? The right thing to do as a media company is to create great content.

　　With the development of the times, the media are also changing, from newspapers in the past, to radio, television, and now the Internet. These mediums are just tools that can be updated and iterated to make it easier for readers to receive information.

　　For readers, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the desire for quality content.

　　They want to see accurate news in newspapers, good TV shows on TV, and interesting and informative content on the Internet.

　　As long as the content is high-quality, there will always be consumers willing to pay.

　　To overcome the inner desire for wealth, of course, is a difficult thing. But to be a media, you must first put the money aside and put the content in the main position, just like Morning Brew's business philosophy.

　　The content is good, users and capital will follow, and external expansion is a matter of course.