In this interview, host Eric Siu talks with Morning Brew co‑founders Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief about how they built a $20M+ advertising‑driven media company from a simple newsletter. They describe their unconventional founding story—meeting through reader feedback rather than a startup accelerator—and how their partnership thrives on honesty, directness, and an unemotional, merit‑based approach. The conversation details Morning Brew’s business model: high‑margin, high‑CPM advertising across seven products, including a flagship B2C daily newsletter, multiple B2B newsletters (Retail Brew, Emerging Tech Brew, Marketing Brew), and podcasts (Business Casual, Founder’s Journal). Austin argues that subscription isn’t inherently superior; it’s a tool for monetizing niche audiences, which he sees as the future of media. They discuss market saturation, emphasizing that new newsletters can succeed if they offer a unique voice or expertise, citing examples like Packy McCormick and Pump. Hiring is portrayed as a rigorous process centered on a 150‑word writing test that seeks “unicorn” writers with conversational tone, technical chops, and pop‑culture awareness. As the brand grew, they leveraged their passionate audience to recruit talent directly through the newsletter, reducing reliance on traditional job sites. The founders reflect on early bootstrapping challenges, the perception that media newsletters weren’t “sexy,” and how they eventually leveled up the team to become the most junior members among senior leaders. Finally, they outline the evolution from a single newsletter to a multi‑platform media brand while remaining ad‑based, and they share their outlook on niche audiences and the role of subscription as a future monetization path.
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I don't think subscription is a better model than ad-based. I just think subscription is the way you monetize a niche audience, and niche audiences are the way of the future.
A lot of partnerships, you start to see them fall apart after a while. How have you guys evolved as partners over the years? Because things typically change.
Yeah, I mean, I would say that it's interesting because Austin and I probably didn't— not probably, definitely didn't meet like most co-founders meet. We didn't meet on Hacker News or Reddit like Brian Armstrong and his co-founders. We didn't meet through YC or any accelerator. We met because Austin was a reader of the OG Morning Brew, and he had feedback for the product. It's interesting because it's not like I did so much due diligence into a co-founder. I was just like, This guy's really smart. He thinks really differently. Let's bring him on. And at the time, it wasn't a business. It was just a hobby. So it was okay to think about a co-founder in that way, because it wasn't even like co-founder of a business. It was like co-founder of a project. And I would say we've maintained a really good co-founder relationship, I think because we're honest with each other. We are direct with each other. Also, we're, I would say in a good way, unemotional about things. We try to be as objective as possible when talking about things. And of course, there's going to be emotions some of the time, but I think we've been generally pretty good at having conversations that are level-headed, that are steeped in just merit and objectivity, which I think becomes really difficult when there's oftentimes between partners a great deal of ego, at least for a lot of businesses.
I don't think it's really a credit to us. Nothing we did was that sexy. We started a newsletter. And we didn't raise millions of dollars of venture funding from a16z or a big fund. So for us, it was such a grind. And because we were 2 young founders, I do think we were always, until recently, half a step behind as opposed to half a step ahead. Because the business was growing so quickly, and I think finally second half of last year, we really leveled up the team, the Morning Brew team, and we were finally able to get a half step ahead. But I think we were always, we were still like always in the race, but we were never, you know, in the driver's seat, really, really confident. We were always trying to make sure we were there. So there was really never time to get cocky, and we didn't have the We weren't in Silicon Valley. Like what we were doing just wasn't that cool. It wasn't a software company, it wasn't social media, it was a media company. To us it was cool, to us it was really great. We thought we were doing something awesome, but it wasn't what was being glorified or, you know, we weren't like, you know, social, like Mark Zuckerberg where it's very idolized. So it was like just media founders. So it's, you can't, when you have a newsletter company, you can't get too big of a head. Yeah.
Well, here's the thing though, like this newsletter company, I mean, like when you look at like the HubSpots buying, you know, The Hustle or, you know, you guys with Business Insider, It is actually sexy because the attention at the end of the day is super valuable. Maybe just to back up a second, can you guys speak to the business a little bit, what the business model is, how you guys make money? Because I want to give people a sense of how it's all set up.
Yeah. We make money through advertising. We make money across 7 different products at this point. The first, obviously, you alluded to was the daily newsletter. Which we launched in March of 2015, has just short of 3 million subscribers right now. And then we've launched other products over time. Our first foray into something else was still in the newsletter space, and that's when we launched our B2B newsletters like Retail Brew, Emerging Tech Brew, Marketing Brew. And the whole ethos around the B2B part of our organization is that B2B media, even less sexy than B2C newsletters, And there's a ton of opportunity to help modern business leaders be better at their jobs. In addition to B2B newsletters, we launched podcasts. So we have Business Casual, where we interview the biggest names in business. We have my podcast, Founder's Journal, where I talk about the mental aspect, the thoughts that builders need to have in general to build successfully. And over time, the business has evolved from newsletter brand into multi-platform media brand. That's what we are now. Still entirely advertising-based. We're testing paid products outside of just advertising, but the advertising business has been really good for us. Newsletters are a high-margin business. It's a high CPM business because we have really quality attention of people who have opted into the product. And I think also part luck, over time, brands have just become more amenable to paying up to get in front of a newsletter audience.
Do you think we're reaching a bubble at this point, or do you think it's still very viable to start one?
Yeah, I think it's newsletter is just the medium, right? So it's, it's, you can totally start a newsletter, just like you can start a YouTube channel or a podcast and everything saturated until someone comes in and does something differently. So I don't know if you know Packy McCormick, but if before Packy started his newsletter, if you say, hey, Packy, hey, I'm going to write about business, business stories and break down business, people have been like, There are 100 people, maybe 1,000 people who do that. I don't care if you do it in a YouTube video or a Twitch stream or newsletter, it's been done before, but he did it in an interesting way. He does it in a very funny, interesting way, and he's really smart and a great writer. And so there's space. Same thing with Pump. Pump does business interviews. If you would have said when Pump launched his podcast, another person interviewing people in business, everyone would like— he has a different point of view on the world. And so I think there's absolutely opportunity. You just need to have a unique point of view in the world or be an expert in the space you're talking about, or just do it in an interesting way. But I do think if you're trying to recreate, let's say, a Morning Brew or a Hustle or the Skimm, then it's more challenging to create a successful business. And because of that, that is why you see so many people going to subscription. I don't think subscription is a better model than ad-based. I just think subscription is the way you monetize a niche audience. And niche audiences are the way of the future. There's so many content creators out there. You have to be niche to stand out.
I do want to kind of double-click on you guys building this amazing team, right? Because actually in Miami, I met up with one of your first employees, Josh Kaplan, right? Super smart guy. And he's just talking about everyone else that you had in the beginning and how the team continues to level up. So I think there's a lot that goes into that, right, Alex? Like the way you test people, to see how they write from a tweet. I think it might be interesting to explain that story here because obviously podcast, but also from a broader perspective, how are you guys finding all these great people?
Where are you scaring? Yeah, what I would say is we've been really fortunate to level up the business over the years, and I think we've had to find smart ways to do it because to Austin's point, Up until the last year, newsletters weren't sexy. Basically bootstrapping a business wasn't sexy. And so it made it more difficult for us to hire great talent because we didn't have all the advantages that a lot of venture-backed businesses had. In the early days, as I had mentioned to you yesterday, for writers, that's always been so difficult for us. Writers are absolute unicorns. Because one of the ways that Morning Brew stands out is through our voice that we communicate to our audience with, where it feels like you're chatting with someone over drinks after work in this passionate and quippy way that's not condescending, but really informed. It's such a specific blend.
And so when you're talking about having to find writers who can write with great technical writing chops, in 150 words, in a quick-witted way, who have a good sense of pop culture to be able to make references, you're looking for a unicorn every time. And so it's not surprising that our first writer, who is now our managing editor, had no professional writing background, but he had this just wonky set of experiences in life, from being in his a cappella group and writing the lyrics for it, to his parents being professors. So growing up in an academic household to writing his school's newspaper, it was like the perfect mix for him to be the really funny yet informed newsletter writer. I would also say it takes a certain type of person to love writing curated stories every single day. And so that was how we thought about writers in the early days. And I think we've done a good job as the business has grown, leaning into the growth of our brand and our legitimacy, and selling it well to prospective hires. And I think that's what allowed us in the last half year or year to build out a full senior leadership team. For the first time ever, Austin and I are the most junior people around the senior leaders of the business. And to have that as your team of Avengers, we feel confident we have, in general, the best team in digital media, especially our senior leadership team, but the entire company as a whole. I would say the final part is when you build a brand where you have an audience that really cares about you and is really obsessed with the product, it makes recruiting a lot easier because we don't have to worry as much about job sites. You market your jobs through your newsletter. You have a ton of people who are super passionate Morning Brew readers that ultimately apply for jobs because they're like, I love that brand, I would love to work there.
Got it.
I love that. And so can you, can you tell us, just the audience real quick, what that 150— I think it's a 150-character test, right? What does that look like?
Yeah, so 150 words. And yeah, I mean, very simply, writers have had to apply to The Brew by basically writing a 150-word story max about a business story that happened in the last few days that they think is worth the modern business leader's time. And they have to write it in a way that they hit the points that they think the modern business leader should care about or will care about. And with a voice that feels conversational in nature, but still direct to the audience. And, you know, we've had thousands of people apply for writing jobs at Morning Brew, and I don't know the exact acceptance rate, but what I can say is like 95% of people who go through writing assignments, you know, within a sentence if they're going to have kind of this balance, this weird balance of skills that makes sense in the context of the Brew.
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