Rapid Response: The trampoline effect, w/ Morning Brew CEO Alex Lieberman
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Revenue for Morning Brew's booming email newsletter operation dried up when the pandemic hit, but its audience remained devoted. Morning Brew CEO Alex Lieberman, who started the business with co-founder Austin Rief as undergraduates at the University of Michigan, leaned into the brand's distinctive personality, fueling a sharp rebound. By last fall, they sold a majority interest to Business Insider for a reported $75 million. Lieberman explains the roots of this "trampoline effect," the potential of the creator economy for entrepreneurs, and why an authentic voice is a shortcut to business success.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I love media. I think it front runs a lot of trends that happen in society. I also think that every |
| 0:07.2 | Company in the world is a media company even if they don't know it |
| 0:11.2 | Peloton's a media company Netflix is a media company |
| 0:14.8 | Facebook or Twitter whether they agree or not their media companies at the end of the day if the hardest thing is that there are |
| 0:22.0 | finite people on earth. They have finite attention |
| 0:24.0 | So every company if they want to have a customer and they want to monetize that customer |
| 0:29.5 | They're way better off having trusted own detention of an audience |
| 0:34.5 | That's such a fascinating is to become an expert in doing that within a media company. I think the second is |
| 0:40.3 | I'm just fascinated by how people think I'm fascinated by the information that people consume and how that leads to them making |
| 0:46.9 | Decisions in life. I don't think there's a better industry to understand human psychology and also impact |
| 0:53.6 | Decisions that people make then in the information industry the media industry |
| 1:02.5 | That's Alex Lieberman CEO of Morning Brew |
| 1:06.5 | Alex and his co-founder Austin Reef started an email newsletter about the business world while undergraduate at the University of Michigan |
| 1:14.7 | Today just a few years later |
| 1:16.5 | They have an audience of nearly three million people and in the midst of the pandemic |
| 1:21.1 | Sold a majority interest to business insider for reported $75 million |
| 1:26.8 | I'm Bob Safian former editor of FESC company founder of the flux group and host of masters of scale rapid response |
| 1:34.2 | I wanted to talk to Alex because he found a way to unlock extraordinary value even in an environment last year that initially |
| 1:42.5 | Punished his business pretty hard |
| 1:44.9 | Alex chalks up Morning Brew's success to its distinctive personality a brand less than that any |
| 1:50.5 | Entrepreneur can learn from particularly when wooing next generation customers |
| 1:55.3 | Alex at first wanted to be a trader at a bank like his parents |
... |
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