Is This The Future Of Media?

The secret behind a $833k/mo newsletter

GM! It's Tuesday, January 3rd - Today, we're covering how Teslas deliveries are up 40%, Wall Streets 2023 predictions, SpaceX raising $750m, Trump's tax returns, how Francois Pinault built his $43 billion net worth, what top VCs think about the market, and the secret behind this $833,000/month newsletter.

- Callum

HEADLINES:

> Tesla reports 1.31m deliveries in 2022, up 40% since last year, which is 10% short of the 50% annual growth target the company set for itself.

> Twitter sued for not paying its San Fran headquarters rent, totaling $136,260 in unpaid rent.

> 2023 Investment outlook predictions from over 500 Wall Street Analysts, including Barclays, Citi, Blackrock, and Goldman Sachs.

> IMF chief says a recession is expected for 1/3rd of the world economy in 2023.

> SpaceX is raising $750m at a $137 billion valuation from investors, including Andreezen-Horowitz.

> Anduril Industries raises $1.5 billion in Series E Funding from top investors, including Valor Equity Partners. The company closed a 10-year $967m contract.

> House releases Trump's Tax Returns, begging the question, what was he hiding?

> Nuralink Co-Founder left to start his own company, and it's catching up!

> Walmart enforces a new policy after losing $3 billion per year to shoplifting. But it's so annoying that customers threaten to stop buying.

> How Billionaire Francois Pinault built a $43 billion empire that owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Alexander McQueen.

FEATURE:

Is This The Future Of Media?

This newsletter business makes $833,000/month just 12 months after launch.

Considering Industry Dive sold for $525m, doing ~$100m in revenue. In a few years of sustained growth, Workweek has the potential to scale the brand to an even larger outcome.

Most people will miss the business model innovation here - now, you won’t.

So What's The Business?

Adam Ryan is the founder of Workweek - a B2B newsletter business he co-founded in 2021.

The company partners with niche industry experts (aka “creators”) and provides them with an operating system to write, grow, and monetize a newsletter business.

The Numbers Are Impressive!

  • Revenue: $833,000/month (~$10m run-rate)

  • Newsletter Subscribers: 350,000

  • Creator Partnerships: 21

  • Growth: 4% WoW, with 43% being organic (e.g., Twitter)

Workweek raised $6m in VC funding but became profitable (Huh! profit!?! don’t hear that often) in October of this year.

The “Aha” Moment:

1) When HubSpot acquired The Hustle, a daily tech newsletter with ~2m subscribers, Adam was the President and oversaw every aspect of the business. Upon the acquisition, he left to look for his next thing.

2) Adam met Packy Mccormick, the founder of NotBoring, a 177,000-subscriber tech newsletter. Packy wanted to make $1m from his newsletter that year. But with his engagement, quality, and reach, Adam knew he could get closer to $10m.

3) Adam realized creators weren’t monetizing effectively and knew there were thousands of creators, like Packy, who created amazing content but didn’t have the media experience to monetize it to the fullest.

4) Workweek was born - it partners with top creators and supports them with a full suite of services like tech, operations, writing support, and ad sales.

So What’s The Innovation?

1) Workweek partners with writers: Traditional media co’s like Morning Brew (4m+ readers) rely on writers to churn out content under their brand for a fixed salary.

Workweek does it differently. You may never see the name "Workweek", but you might know its creators:

  • Trung Phan, a business writer with 500,000 Twitter followers.

  • Nicole Casperson, a fintech writer with 50,000 email subscribers.

  • Nik Sharma, a marketer with 144,000 Twitter followers.

In this model, the writers (aka creators) become the highest-paid people in the company and are incentivized to continue to grow their newsletters via profit-sharing.

2) The Newsletter Operating System: When creators plug into the Workweek system, they grow faster, make more money, and work far less. How? Because Workweek has ghostwriters to power social media, advertising sales to earn the most money, and operations teams to run it like clockwork.

This can effectively 10x the output of any single creator.

Prefer to listen? Check out our conversation here.

ON TREND: Here's what entrepreneurs are talking about

Every year, the best investors in the world release their reflections on 2022 and predictions for 2023.And while Marc Andreessen is correct...

Consider it a healthy exercise in aligning and clarifying your thoughts.

For those looking to reflect on 2022, check out What Just Happened by Brad Feld, VC at Foundry Group, who's invested in notable companies like Zynga, Yesware, and Cloudware.

And for a sharp forward-looking perspective on 2023, check out What Will Happen in 2023 by Fred Wilson, who's known for his investments in Coinbase, Twilio, Twitter, and Etsy.