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listen to podcasts. Now onto the show.

What's up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founder's Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,

a team, or a new product. We have a very special episode for you today. This is the inaugural Founder's

Journal Live, where the recording for this episode is happening in front of a live audience of

Morning Brew readers and Founder's Journal listeners. And I am so excited to welcome an amazing

guest, journalist, for this live recording. Austin Reef is my co-founder of Morning Brew and CEO

of the company. Today, I'm going to ask Austin three very simple questions that I believe will

leave you with three very profound answers. Austin, you ready to do this? Do you want the easy,

the harder the harder question first? Let's start with the easy. Give me the layup.

Okay. What is the number one time that you felt the greatest joy in what we were building with

Morning Brew? Yeah, that is definitely an easier one than the other two. I think for me, the time

that stands out the most was 2018, when we were on that path from 100,000 subscribers to 800,000,

that entire year was a pretty crazy year where we went from something that we thought had value,

but I don't think our family or our friends really understood what we were doing. And we

shed a few employees to, I think it was really end of summer 2018, which when we really started to

hit our groove and we were racking up the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. We found a couple

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