The old newsletter growth playbook is broken. We're building the new one | Prev @Wharton @BCG

Tap for better newsletter ads
Joined August 2021
Nathan May retweeted
ANNOUNCEMENT: Our next set of speakers for the Outliers Summit VIP Day are those who the @nypost called the "Media Mafia". On November 4, they’re taking the stage at Outliers Summit VIP Day. Each person featured has built a seven-figure company in their 20s, and they did it by figuring out distribution before most people figured out what they wanted to do after college. The Post even found them lifting weights together between meetings. – Nathan May (@_May_Ham) – Shamus Madan (@shamusmadan) – Oliver Brocato (@oliverbrocato) – Jacob Klug (@Jacobsklug) – Josh Suggs (@joshsuggss) – Luke Thorburg (@lukethorburg) – Matthew Epstein (@mattepstein) At VIP Day, they’ll break down how they built it: how they grow audiences from zero, how they turn attention into revenue, and what they’d do if they were starting over today. VIP Day is November 4 in New York City, the day before the Outliers Summit. Only a handful of VIP passes are left. Apply to attend below.
15
6
3
29
4,725
Nathan May retweeted
IRL this week for @elevenlabsio and creators 👀 - working with some of our favourite creators for our first ever summit in bengalaru on tuesday - hosting a panel with @creator__spot, @_May_Ham @DenneyDara in the NYC office on tuesday - @0xaneri is speaking at @Adweek about how top brands are using agents in their creative workflow and hosting happy hour on wednesday - speaking at a sf tech week event with @passionfrootme and @_talaawwad on wednesday Big week!
1
1
6
275
Nathan May retweeted
Daniel Fazio
@danielfazioAug 25
On August 22nd @GadzhiIman acquired a stake in ListKit. ListKit.io is the only platform in the world that lets you send cold emails without needing to be a GTM engineer. 1,000 cold emails per day for $597/mo. Domains, inboxes, leads, sending, and scripts included.
Proud to announce that I've acquired a stake in ListKit. 10 years ago I was sending cold emails one by one with no data and no infrastructure. Every business I've built since came down to reaching the right people at scale. ListKit is the first platform that gives a first-time founder the same outbound firepower as a funded sales team. So this isn't a passive investment. Their full sending infrastructure is being built directly into Consulting.com. Credit to the founders Andre, Daniel, Christian, Dan and Oliver. Bootstrapped to a €45M valuation in under three years. Latest addition to the portfolio. Now back to work.
114
15
11
706
155,446
Nathan May retweeted
The Media Mafia is a crew of young founders. They share revenue and profit every month on a ranked leaderboard, then go to dinner. @oliverbrocato, Founder of Bustem, was paying a college kid named Josh $1,500 /mo to make street interviews for one of his businesses. When Josh came back from studying abroad to take an internship, Oliver told him no. "You need to productize this, start an agency." Josh did, and blew it out of the water with hundreds of brands and an 8fig run rate. From there, the Media Mafia grew: - Seamus. A 19yr old running a LinkedIn ghostwriting agency for founders - Nathan. Grows newsletters for big names like Codie Sanchez, Jay Shetty, The Points Guy, and came from nothing. - JT. His family brand Pop Daddy went to TikTok Shop and grew to millions in a month, then spun into a TikTok Shop agency. "Having a community and these guys in your corner is invaluable." "And most importantly, it makes all of this way more fun." @ecommcowboy is live M-F at 12P CT.
My benchmark for hiring: “Is this person better at this than I would be if I just did it myself?” People with real experience? Usually hell yes. People without it? I can normally figure it out faster than they can. If the answer is no: congrats, you hired someone to babysit. If the answer is yes: give them the keys, get out of the way, and build a company that scales past you.
6
3
2
34
17,061
Over the past 2+ years I have been consolidating a fragmented industry - finance newsletters. Following an exciting new transaction, my aggregate newsletter audience now exceeds 265k+ folks. I believe email is one of the most important mediums of communication out there and from a @WallStRollup standpoint we have gone from 0 to 200k+ in 2+ years with 7 tuck-in acquisitions. I miss parts of finance so it’s cool to parlay all the platform/Rollup nuances into my own unlevered thing. Long way to go but there’s a method behind the madness. Nil satis nisi optimum.
Finally got my newsletter @WallStRollup to 100k+ readers. This is my platform to rollup smaller finance publications as well. We’re also moving from 2x/week to 3x/week soon. Ready to take some swings at the sloppy big guys. Exciting times.
12
2
70
38,685
Nathan May retweeted
Wanting work-life balance is fine. Wanting to build a breakthrough company is fine. Just don't expect both at the same time. I've watched a lot of founders. The ones who build something breakout are not the ones keeping perfect balance. Anything that stands out takes sacrifice. Talent is never enough. You have to toil.
8
1
56
3,058
Nathan May retweeted
Over the last 90 days, 25% of the sales MarketBeat generated were from subscribers that originally came from Meta. Two years ago, Meta didn't work for anyone in financial media/publishing. at all. Andromeda made Meta ads work for our industry.
4
1
1
67
7,845
Nathan May retweeted
I recently asked for questions on Twitter, and you delivered. Below is the first of a three-part Q&A series. In this episode, I'm answering your questions about business, marketing, and email—from growing a business and reaching customers to building an audience and creating effective marketing strategies. youtu.be/Y-2hYN_7zUM?si=9g5s…
6
4
2
35
5,150
i have studied 1000+ newsletters, and this is the most effective intro I have ever seen! 1. zero formality, ads, or affiliates: immediately wins trust because you feel like you are not being sold to (at least with some plug-and-play ads) 2. just a guy sharing learnings...: signaling i'm here to give value 3. ...working with media operators doing $25k - $ 5m+: signals he works w good brands, which tells he knows his shit 4. new reader highlights: signals you attract top talent love @_May_Ham's work
3
1
13
452
Nathan May retweeted
Daniel Fazio
@danielfazioJul 16
Your paid ads will work about 3x better if you're posting content & sending emails btw Perhaps 5x or 6x realistically
21
18
5
457
27,491
Nathan May retweeted
Just did a 2 hour session on newsletters for @_May_Ham’s cohort (was supposed to be 1 hour but I was having so much fun). I like coaching. May consider doing more 😈
1
1
9
1,602
Nathan May retweeted
Claude Code made this entire video. The voice, footage, script is all AI. Everything was made with a content system I built in Claude Code. In this video, I'll be taking you behind the curtain. This machine will be responsible for my entire content workflow this week. Full video is in the comments below.
🤖 Made with AI
27
8
2
134
18,671
Nathan May retweeted
Ran into Nathan May and Josh Suggs and they asked me to join the media mafia (I said no)
10
2
31
4,496
Nathan May retweeted
80% of MarketBeat's revenue comes from subscribers we acquired through paid channels. For years I thought organic was the whole game. The truth is the opposite. Paid acquisition, done with real payback discipline, is the engine. Organic is the cushion underneath it.
9
3
112
6,064
Nathan May retweeted
I have officially left beehiiv 🤯 After cooking with the most talented team on earth for 4 years, I had to take a bet on myself. The window of opportunity to build any life you can dream of has never been better than it is right now. I joined beehiiv when there were less than 10 of us. We had all-hands every morning. We celebrated $99 Stripe payments like a bunch of hooligans. It was the most electric culture I’ve ever experienced and the journey of a lifetime. I was there for $1M ARR. $2M. $5M. $10M. $30M, and I’m going to be right here on the internet rooting for them when they hit their next milestone. beehiiv has reached escape velocity. Nothing stops it now. The people building it are some of my closest friends in the world, and I will always be grateful to Tyler, Ben, and Jake for giving so much responsibility to me to help them build. As for me, I’m going to be writing everything I know about building businesses that generate money. I’ve done it over and over and over again with emails, courses, podcasts, communities, products, and more. And I’m going to do it again 😏 Subscribe to learn everything I know. danielberk.com/subscribe
135
13
2
519
145,292
Nathan May retweeted
My buddy @_May_Ham grew up in a hoarder house in Ohio and didn't leave the state until he was 18. His family made $30k/year. Today he runs one of the fastest growing newsletter agencies. How he got here: - Overweight at 13, 2.1 GPA, addicted to Minecraft - At age 14 starts selling custom Minecraft maps, by the time he graduates high school it’s a 6-figure business - Gets accepted into Wharton - Joins BCG after graduation - Starts a crypto newsletter, sells it for a small exit In Feb 2024 starts The Feed Media (newsletter agency): - 0 to $1M revenue in 10.5 months - $4-5M revenue this year - Clients include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jay Shetty, and more. Became a millionaire at 22. And yes, he’s a Hampton member.
17
5
2
103
24,245
Nathan May retweeted
My little startup went from 0 to $4M ARR in 14 months. We are going to $12M by EOY. And we are about to make our most important hires: 2 founding engineers. Up until now, we’ve had one absolute tank of a CTO building everything solo. Now we are looking for his counterpart: - Someone who ships at lightning speed - Lives in NYC and is fired up to work in person and lock in - Thinks most people are retarded and gets frustrated by incompetence or slow movers - Neurodivergent, thinks different, acts different. Plus if you can’t hold eye contact, very bullish - I need to sit you down and explain the importance of deodorant, cologne, sunlight, and touching grass We are looking for a needle in a haystack. If that’s you or you know someone, comment and DM me. $10K to whoever helps me land my rainman.
16
10
1
53
6,986
Nathan May retweeted
I just met a 20-year-old who makes $2M/yr from LinkedIn. What he showed me broke my brain: 8 months ago, Shamus Maden was kicked out of college and moved to NYC with just $14 in his bank account. He was on track to lose everything. Then something clicked. He spent months obsessively studying the LinkedIn algorithm and discovered a secret that he’s used to generate $10M+ for startups backed by a16z, Sequoia, and Kevin Durant. I visited my buddy @_May_Ham's office in New York recently, and he introduced me to Shamus. @shamusmadan showed me under the hood of how he writes viral content. He pulled up two posts side by side. One had 24,000 views. Solid engagement. Decent post. It generated 1 sales call. The second post got 2.1 million views. Massively viral. Flooded with comments, likes, and reshares. It generated 84 qualified sales calls. I asked him what was different. He called it the EVC Framework: 1. Emotion — the hook makes you feel something before you understand anything. 2. Value — every line hints at what the reader gets if they keep going. 3. Credibility — proof is baked into the story, never bolted on at the end. Most LinkedIn content gets attention but doesn't make money. He figured out how to do both. If you're a founder looking to blow up on LinkedIn, talk to Shamus. He’s killing it.
14
5
1
89
8,993
Nathan May retweeted
I went to Austin Rief's house for dinner with eight founders recently. - One guy raised $140 million - The oldest guy in the room was 25 - A bunch of them were building 7-figure media companies - They told me they already feel threatened by 13-year-olds who are building better things than them Algorithms are feeding teenagers case studies of kids selling companies for tens of millions. Success is completely normalized now. The timeline is accelerating. Pretty crazy.
70
13
6
384
63,306