The Exchanges

Q And where's video in this whole ecosystem? Like, You know, everyone's saying video, video, video, short form is everything. Like, how do you think about video in your whole Morning Brew ecosystem?

A For us, short form is important, but it's hard to monetize. And so you have to do short form in a really inexpensive way. And so either you need to take long form. And make it in short form, right? So take a podcast, clip this up, and put it all over TikTok. There's a bunch of people out there who do that quite successfully. I know a few who we've worked with. That's option one. Or option two, make it at basically zero cost, right? And so make it with just a great personality and a camera. But it's very challenging to monetize short form via ads at least, because how do you integrate an ad partner into a 32nd video?

AI assessment note: “For us, short form is important, but it's hard to monetize.”

Q Um, couple more questions. You and Sam Parr, on the surface, like, you would think you wouldn't be friends, but you're friends. Or he ran The Hustle, which was, you know, direct competitor to Morning Brew. Could you talk a little bit about how you're able to have a, you know, a good friendship with, with someone like that?

A Yeah, so we weren't friends until we sold our businesses, right? And by the way, I'm going on My First Million this week, and I think that's why I want to talk to him about it, and I want to do it in a public manner. I don't want to speak for Sam, but I will speak for Sam anyways, and I'll see if he agrees on Wednesday, but I don't know if either of us had the, the humility or the, or mature enough to be friends with each other at that time. I think we both had so much Personal effort and, and, and so much of our self-worth was tied up in our businesses, and I think we very much view them as our babies, and they were so competitive, at least they seem so competitive, that there's no way we could have been friends. Now, after the fact, all of a sudden, We have so many similarities, so many stories we can share with each other. Oh, he was doing this. I was doing that. And, and that's how I think we bonded. And now I have so much respect for, for him and how he's different than me and how he's the same, same as I am. And I think one interesting thing is I viewed him as he started the hustle when he, when he ran the hustle, I had heard stories and I heard him on podcasts and I viewed him as very, very rude. And I was like, oh, this guy is like an asshole. I, he seems like a complete asshole. And now, you know, I've been working with him on a couple of projects and I've been on call…

AI assessment note: “we weren't friends until we sold our businesses... that's how I think we bonded.”

Q And why is that? Like, why should every creator have an email newsletter?

A Yeah, I think platforms typically come and go. Snapchat was really popular, and now at least for my friends, it's less popular, and Facebook was popular, and it's not. And people change algorithms, you know, algorithms change. But newsletters, for the most part, is a way to build a connection with people. It's a very intimate connection. I think people don't really think about this. Podcasts, it's the platform we're on now, and newsletters are both incredibly intimate, right? When I'm reading my inbox, I'm either, except for junk emails, which typically now are actually filtered out. Gmail does a good job of this. Your emails are from your friends. Your family and your coworkers. And so if I can get in that inbox, you know, you kind of treat Morning Brew like it's a friend, like it's a coworker and takes a level of seriousness. And so I think that's the first thing. And the second thing is newsletters have really good conversion rates, click through rates. So you can, over time, if you want to sell something else, you can sell something else, push something else you can, but you don't have to, it's long forms. You can push something to people every day. That's long. I mean, that's what we did at Morning Brew, right? The idea was The whole idea behind Morning Brew was we saw these other publications and they had newsletters, but it was a link to their website. And we said, what …

AI assessment note: “platforms typically come and go... newsletters, for the most part, is a way to build a connection”

Q If you were Mr. Beast and you wanted to create an email newsletter, how would you go about it?

A That's a tough question. I actually spoke to him about this for a little bit. I think it depends if he wants to continue the same brand cross channel, right? Does he want to continue to do, cause he can do crazy giveaways and he can build the world's biggest email newsletter in like two months, right? Because he gets to give away, you know, half a million bucks, but what's the content, right? People will watch his long form content. For the payoff of seeing people make money. But I mean, I would make it in that vein. It would be like almost like a gimmick, right? He would pay you some amount of money or do some amount of raffle for every open. And there'd be some way they would get compensation, whether it's some arbitrage for an advertiser, or whether it's you have to buy Feastable, something like that. So I would use email for him as a way, again, to push content to people and push something of theirs. You know, I don't know what I know those plans are, but Again, like maybe you have to buy a pack of Feastables to get signed up for some, some lottery or something like that. And I would make it a way where every time you open up the email, you have an opportunity to make money. And I think that would build a habit, right? Like you want, when people open up a newsletter, they get something for Morning Brew. Hopefully it's a nugget of information. Maybe for Mr. Beast, it's like …

AI assessment note: “I would make it a way where every time you open up the email, you have an opportunity to make money.”

Q you're interested and that sounds like you, email frontdesk at latecheckout.studio with what you're working on, What you need help with. And don't forget to mention the where it happens pod. Thank you. We'll go back to the other categories, but what do you think of, you know, these bundle newsletter companies? Like there's every, I think it's called every.to is one. Like, what do you think of those businesses?

A I think bundle economics are quite hard. And Everest is doing great, right? And so it's really good for them. I think they have an interesting value prop of like, hey, we're going to be this more holistic business experience. But I think in general, bundling's hard because The person who adds the most value to the bundle is always going to be curious why they're in the bundle to begin with and why the bundle's not adding them value. And I think it's very much a game of who adds the value and, you know, you're not bundling it with distribution and technology like a Netflix or a Disney, right? And so it makes sense for most people to be a part of the bundle of a Disney plus, right? As in, let me sell my content to Disney, because one, we're talking about such high numbers, such big scale and two, They're adding so much value. It's hard to, you know, deliver my 90 minute movie to a lot of people, uh, in a quick way, a tech friendly way. A newsletter is a newsletter. So I think it's hard to bundle.

AI assessment note: “I think bundle economics are quite hard. And Everest is doing great, right?”

Q website as if Bill Gates is reading my website. And because if you think about it, like Tim probably has a bunch of billionaires who read his stuff. So I think it's an interesting framework for thinking about like creating a startup, which is, especially if you're in the B to B space, how do you think about crafting an experience for that type of audience? From a product perspective.

A A hundred percent. And to be honest, you should be creating content for billionaires or at least very rich people, right? It's very hard to build a media company if you're not building B to B or you're not building for high income earners. And that's why some of these niche publications, I've spoken a lot about B to B AI, uh, but there's other ones, right? I know people who have three, 4000 subscribers, but it's a Ferrari enthusiast newsletter and you charge a thousand bucks a year. A Rolex enthusiast, right? So if I was starting a newsletter, a newsletter today, it'd be super high income or it'd be B to B and going after one of those niches that's growing in a growing industry and, and, you know, ride the wave.

AI assessment note: “you should be creating content for billionaires or at least very rich people”