Morning Brew founder shares growth tips and dispels notion that email is next media pivot

Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief started Morning Brew from a dorm room at the University of Michigan in 2015 as a hobby – first as a means of engaging other students, then locals, and then a few years later around 2.5 million modern business leaders (MBL).

From the start, they knew to create an email that they themselves would read. Riddles drove intrigue. Quotes provoked thought. Bullet points kept people moving.

Five years later it boasts $13m in revenue – mostly from advertising on its daily email. There are 33 employees – including Lieberman’s mom as chief of staff holding the operation together.

Lieberman, at 25, and Rief, a year younger, have built a business that forces businesses that have been using email for 20 years to rethink the strengths of the platform.

Pivot

Alongside the likes of Substack, Morning Brew is driving a new wave of newsletter media that threatens to be the next big so-called ‘pivot’ in the sphere. Lieberman‘s done very well out of the channel, but he is wary of advising anyone to go all-in on it.

“I don‘t think email ever deserved to not be the hot thing – media is an industry that is driven by herd mentality. When they hear about the shiny new thing, they flock towards it.”

There have been tough lessons after many have been “screwed over by the algorithms”. And this most recent fetishism of email is occurring as the pendulum swings back towards controlled audience relationships. Email hasn‘t changed. We have. As Lieberman puts it: “Everything about email is as sexy today as it always – all that’s changed is our perception of it. MBLs are is glued to email.”

Morning Brew readers are invited to respond to emails directly – it is “intimate” and inquisitive with its database of 2.5 million (which is ruthlessly trimmed). ”We are very focused on list health. We‘d be at around 5 million subscribers now if we didn‘t have the practices that we have.”

The daily email goes out six days a week. MBLs only get one day off, it appears. But it wasn‘t enough. An email maketh not a media company, but a few emails do. Once its formula was established, the pair whipped up the Emerging Tech Brew, the Retail Brew, The Marketing Brew and The Turnout newsletters.

The mindset

There’s a simple piece of psychology at play underpinning the entire business. “We go a mile wide and an inch deep with a single newsletter to help readers avoid social embarrassment,“ says Lieberman. “We arm them with information – they won‘t be caught not knowing something. Human beings are generally risk-averse or loss averse, so we build the habit. We‘re saving them from embarrassment with people they respect.“