Apr 23, 2024 · 29m · founders-journal
My New Business
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Alex Lieberman shares how he navigated post-CEO identity challenges after Morning Brew by launching StoryArb, detailing his journey of bootstrapping, hiring leadership, and pivoting from bespoke executive ghostwriting to a scalable productized copywriting subscription.
Statements from this episode (13)
Lieberman: Morning Brew built ambassador program to 200 college campuses
“I remember being super excited when we built out our ambassador program and expanding it to 200 different college campuses”
Lieberman plans to hire CEO co-founders so new ventures operate without him
“Whatever I launch first, I want to bring on a co-founder who's going to be the CEO of this business. So that the business, if we do it the right way, can operate without me.”
Lieberman: Short-form video agencies will commoditize and suffer poor retention
“I fear those agencies are going, they're going to be super commoditized because they're very easy to spin up. I worried that retention of customers wouldn't be high because it would be hard for customers who are, let's say, paying 3000 dollars a month to actua…”
Lieberman received 20 DMs from founders willing to pay $5k-$10k monthly
“I ended up getting like, 20 DMs from founders, which was sick because then I was like, okay, I have customers, and clearly they're qualified because I indicated in the tweet that you'd have to pay five to 10,000 dollars.”
Lieberman took zero profit on StoryArb's first client to study workflow
“What I literally did is I asked the ghost writer, how much would you charge for five posts a week? And how much would you charge for that on a monthly basis? I think originally he said, 3000 dollars. I went back to my first customer. I said, it's gonna be 3000…”
Lieberman increased StoryArb pricing to $5,000 monthly, netting $2,000 per client
“I started bringing on more clients. And as I did that, I started charging those clients, 5000 dollars instead of 3000. So I would make 2000 dollars per month per client.”
Lieberman hired StoryArb's CEO through a one-month contract-to-hire trial
“What I decided to do, and I don't think I've ever seen this done, but it just made sense to me, is we basically did a freelance to full-time arrangement, where Abby acted as the freelance or contracted CEO for StoryArb for a month, and I set the expectation up…”
Lieberman: StoryArb reached $1.2M-$1.3M run rate in first three months
“And we got ourselves to a place where the business Had gotten over a million dollars in annualized revenue. It got to basically like call it 1.2 or 1.3 million in annualized revenue within the first three months.”
Lieberman: 98% of writers on the internet are mediocre
“98% of writers are really bad, are really mediocre, and I would never trust them to create content for our business, for StoryArb, whether it's our website copy, our social copy, you know, articles we write, et cetera, and so then I shouldn't trust them with a…”
Lieberman: Founders view personal branding as a nice-to-have, hurting retention
“I believe that founders view executive, social, and personal brand as a nice to have, not a need to have.”
Lieberman: Targeting heads of marketing makes copywriting services a need-to-have
“By switching who our customer was from a founder to a head of marketing, we believe we could take our product from being a nice to have to a need to have.”
Lieberman: An audience's greatest value for startups is hiring, not customer acquisition
“And I think the obvious benefit that companies get from partnering with a creator or someone who has audience is getting more customers. But I would actually argue that is like the least exciting thing about having an audience, When I think about the value tha…”
Lieberman: StoryArb's first ten hires must have future-founder potential
“When I think about having the right people, especially for, like, my first 10 employees, it is people who I could see being entrepreneurs one day, where they're using StoryArb as a launch pad for the next four or five years, where ultimately, I could see them …”