Owner’s Edge cuts both ways.

Until now, I wrote about it from the positive side. Where the owner’s beliefs and worldview are an edge that benefits the company. Today I want to approach it from the opposite side by saying Zuckerberg’s edge is too poisonous for Meta’s own sake.

The owner’s edge, inverted

On May 27th this year, Meta’s shareholders voted on whether to end Mark Zuckerberg’s control of the company.

Proposal Five. Eliminate the dual-class share structure. The argument was simple (and made sense IMO): Zuckerberg holds around 14% of the economics and roughly 61% of the votes because his Class B shares carry 10 votes each instead of 1.

The proposal lost. 26% for, 74% against.

I want you to think about the irony: The vote to end his control was decided by his control. All ten shareholder proposals failed that day. The best any of them managed was 27%.

I’ve written this newsletter for a while now on the premise that owner-operators have an advantage. They can think in decades. They don’t have to explain themselves to a board every ninety days. They can hold a position through the years when it looks stupid.

Zuckerberg has more of that advantage than any founder alive. He is the purest expression of the thing I’ve been arguing for.

So it’s worth asking what he did with it.

The bill

Reality Labs (Meta’s VR division) lost $19.1 billion in 2025. Revenue for the same division, the same year, was $2.2 billion.

Let that sink in (Like Elon entering Twitter HQ with a sink). Nine dollars out for every dollar in.

Q1 of this year: $4.03 billion of loss against $402 million of revenue. Cumulative, depending on where you start counting, the metaverse project has consumed somewhere north of $80 billion. He bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, and everyone called it insane. This is four WhatsApps, spent quietly, on a product with no comparable outcome.

No hired CEO survives that. Not one. It doesn’t reach year four. The board would remove them somewhere in the middle of the second year, and the removal would be uncontroversial.

Zuckerberg was never at risk. Not for a single quarter. And what’s crazier that if you ask any person anywhere, 99% of them could see that Metaverse will be born dead. I’m sure this ratio applies to Facebook’s management as well. But Zuck was so deep in his tunnel vision, he even changed the company’s name to Meta.

A quick request from me. The recent change from the Founder Marketer to Owner’s Edge hurt my deliverability. I expected some, but this was way too much. So if you can answer the poll below and reply with anything (even a simple hi!” will help me tremendously.

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The reflex

They call Bernard Arnault the wolf in cashmere. It is a beautiful phrase that reflects the man, who is the most aggressive buyer in his industry. Zuck reminds me of him. A wolf in Meta glasses?

There’s a line the FTC dug out of his 2008 emails and read into the record: “It is better to buy than compete.”

For a decade the strategy worked. Instagram in 2012 for a billion dollars. WhatsApp in 2014 for nineteen. Snapchat said no in 2013, so Meta built Stories (and destroyed Snapchat). TikTok couldn’t be bought, so Meta built Reels. Twitter fell apart, so Meta shipped Threads (failed). The pattern is consistent and, on the numbers, extremely successful. Meta did $56.3 billion in revenue last quarter, up 33%.

Then he tried to buy something that wasn’t for sale.

$14.3 billion into Scale AI to get Alexandr Wang. Reporting says Zuckerberg opened at $5 billion, Wang asked for $20 billion, and they met in the middle. Compensation packages reportedly run from one to a hundred million dollars, aimed at individual researchers at OpenAI and Google. A new division, Meta Superintelligence Labs, was announced in June 2025.

By October, it had cut 600 jobs. In November, Yann LeCun left after twelve years. Llama 4 landed badly enough that Zuckerberg said so publicly. Behemoth was delayed. Capital expenditure guidance for this year now runs to $145 billion.

He is doing to AI exactly what he did to the metaverse, which is what he did to Snapchat, which is what he did to Instagram. Spend until the problem gives up. It worked when the thing he wanted was a company. It works less well when the thing he wants is a research breakthrough.

The number nobody wanted

In the same quarter Meta posted record revenue, daily active people across the family of apps came in at 3.56 billion. Down more than 5% from Q4.

First sequential decline since Meta started reporting the family as one number.

I don’t want to over-read one quarter. But it points to the uncomfortable thing underneath all of this. Ask people why they use Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, and you rarely hear that they love it. You hear that their family is there. Their customers are there. Their group chat is there. Their photos from 2011 are there.

In short, they have to use it either socially or financially.

Zuck went on a PR tour to fix his image. Cool videos, Jui-Jitsu, stuff like that. I don’t think it worked that well. But doesn’t matter. I think he's getting close to the point where he can’t get away with his dictatorial management. There is a beautiful phrase in Turkish: The grasshopper jumps once, jumps twice, but on the third jump…

Or you might also say the pitcher will go to the well once too often. Metaverse was the first, and AI was the second.

Third is waiting for its time.

What I actually take from this

The owner’s edge is real. I’m not walking that back.

But the edge is not control. Control is just the raw material. The edge is control plus somebody who can make you stop — a partner, a board, a spouse, a number you’ve agreed in advance means the experiment is over.

Zuckerberg has the control and removed everything else. What that produced is twelve years, counting from the Oculus purchase, of a project nobody asked for, funded by a business he built before he was thirty, defended by a voting structure his own shareholders tried to dismantle and couldn’t.

You don’t need $80 billion to make this mistake. I’ve made the small version of it. The side project I kept funding past the point of evidence, because it was my money and nobody had standing to tell me it was finished. Nobody to argue with is just a slower way to be wrong.

So the question isn’t whether you have control of your business. If you’re reading this, you probably do.

The question is who is allowed to tell you to stop, and whether you’ve ever actually let them.

Until next time,

B.

Rocco Forte

You know what I hate most? Luxury hotels. Even more, family-owned boutique luxury hotels.

Why? Because, as a hotel owner, I always wanted to build a small chain of boutique luxury hotels. Of course, there is a problem: money to invest. Out of envy, I see an independent luxury hotel chain, and I hate it.

Now, of course, this is a joke (?). But looking at these brands motivates me to build a similar one. That’s why I am writing about them.

Back to the story.

Yesterday I was looking at the hotels in Rome for our upcoming trip. Out of boredom, I filtered the hotels by price, high-to-low. You know what I saw? Rocco Forte is standing there like an Olympian, looking down at the mortals from the top. Its price is more than 10X our budget.

Rocco Forte hotels were always on my to-write list. I need to write about them after yesterday. I love the brand and have been following them for a long time, even though I will probably never be able to afford to stay. It’s hard not to admire them. They compete with giants, even though they are more expensive.

Especially once you know what the giants did to them first.

The Empire

Every luxury brand has an origin myth; Rocco Forte’s starts with ice cream.

A young Italian named Rocco Forte leaves his village in the hills south of Rome and lands in Alloa, a mill town in Scotland. He opens a café. Coffee, light snacks, ice cream. He names it the Savoy Café.

An immigrant’s café, named after a palace. Remember that detail.

His son Charles takes the ambition and runs with it. In 1935, he opens a milk bar on Regent Street, London. Then another. Then restaurants. Then hotels.

By the 1980s, the family café had become Trusthouse Forte — the largest hospitality group in the world. The George V in Paris. The Ritz in Madrid. Travelodge. Le Méridien. A FTSE 100 company that ran everything from motorway diners to palaces.

Charles becomes Lord Forte. In 1993, he passes full control to his son — named Rocco, after the grandfather with the café.

Three years later, it’s all gone.

The Takeover

In January 1996, Granada — a British TV-and-leisure conglomerate — wins one of the most brutal hostile takeover battles in UK history. £3.9 billion. The institutions sold. The family was out.

Eighty-five years, three generations of work, gone in a two-month bid war. And here’s the detail that hurts the most: they lost the name. The Forte trademark went with the company. For five years, the Forte family legally couldn’t put their own name on a hotel. Granada only handed it back in 2001, as a gesture of goodwill.

Rocco Forte was in his early fifties, with roughly £350 million of family money from the sale. Rich enough to never work another day. Everyone assumed he’d take the cash and retire to a pampered life.

Instead, within months, he and his sister Olga started over.

The Rebuild

This is where the story turns poetic.

The first hotel the new company bought, in 1997, was The Balmoral in Edinburgh — a former Forte hotel, put up for sale by Granada itself. He bought his family’s own hotel back from the raider.

In 2000, the Hotel de Russie in Rome. Another property from the old family portfolio, rotting as TV offices. He restored it, reopened it, and repaid the $15 million renovation within three years. In 2003, Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair. Original Forte portfolio. Bought back.

But notice what he didn’t do. He didn’t rebuild the empire. He built the opposite of the previous one: Trusthouse Forte had hundreds of properties across every price point — motels to monuments. Rocco Forte Hotels has 14 hotels. Not fourteen brands. Fourteen hotels. Each one aiming to be the hotel in its city.

The Edge

The strategy will sound familiar if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while:

• One hotel per destination, positioned as the best address in town

• No franchising, no flags, no asset-light games — they own and operate

• Olga Polizzi personally designs every property

• All three of Rocco’s children work in the business: food & beverage, wellness, development

We’ve seen this logic before. Aman refusing to scale past 50 rooms. Le Labo refusing department stores. Limitation as luxury. Power of niching down.

But Rocco Forte adds a layer those stories don’t have: the family itself is the product. “Hospitality is in our blood,” Olga says. When you pay 10X for a Rocco Forte room, you’re not buying thread count. You’re buying three generations of a family that lost everything to a conglomerate and refused to become one.

The market has priced this. Latest reported revenue: about £294 million. And in December 2023, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund bought 49% of the company at a £1.2 billion valuation. Sit with that number. Fourteen hotels, worth roughly a third of what the entire global empire — hundreds of properties — sold for in 1996.

And the family? They kept 51%. Rocco is still executive chairman. The sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia wanted in, and the deal was structured so the hotel family stays in control.

The giants took their company. Thirty years later, the family takes the giants’ customers — at ten times the price.

That’s how a family hotel business competes with giants: it refuses to become one.

So why does this story sit in my chest the way it does?

I told you at the start: I hate them because I want to be them.

The Hotel Guy

Running an SMB is hard. Running a family business is hard. Running a hospitality business is hard. Running a business in a fragile economy is awful.

What if you merge all these into one? You get me.

In the last couple of years, I tried my hand at crypto (failed miserably), a personal brand (I don’t have the guts to overcome the cringe), an agency (failed), and some more. All the while hopping on the family business train, getting married, and having a baby (didn’t fail; he’s cute). You can read more about this topic here.

I returned to my family business in 2018, after getting an MSc in Marketing from Trinity College Dublin. I spent two years transitioning and learning. I worked long hours and stayed in the hotel most of the time. I often wondered if I had made the right choice by leaving a great social life and an offer from Meta. But the business was growing, so I didn’t distract myself.

Then, 2020: COVID hits. We closed our doors. Same year, my father was diagnosed with late-stage cancer (one week after my honeymoon). My brother’s and my whole life shifted between hospitals and bank loans. That’s around when I got the itch. We were free-falling while some businesses (like ecom or content) were skyrocketing. I remember saying wtf — but the cancer process left room for nothing else.

April 2021, my father lost the war against cancer.

After a couple of months of recalibrating, I started thinking about the future of the business. Whenever we had the chance to grow and make some money, something happened. Whether domestic or foreign, tourism was affected by EVERYTHING. We made money only to spend it on renovations or lose it to crises. Don’t get me wrong — this is the life of most business owners, and by no means were we living in poverty.

But the human mind is a crooked thing. On Twitter and Instagram, people were earning the magic internet money. My attention started to shift. A hotel was a business that couldn’t scale. We were trapped in middle-income status: not a luxury hotel, and without 500 rooms to sell cheaply. We were in the middle.

I thought our only chance was to take my shot at online business.

Fast forward to December 2025. In those four years, I tried trading, crypto, NFTs, DeFi, an agency, and content. Lost money (because we never had a personal surplus — always underpaying ourselves in the business). My relationship with my brother got tense because I was distracted. Always stressed, anxious, and sleepless with a growing baby.

I’m going to drag more about failures. With consistent therapy, personal reflection, and just stopping, I saw I didn’t need anything extra.

I could shift my perspective.

Over the years, I became skilled in marketing and business. I learned about automations, ads, copywriting, funnel building, AI, cold email, and more. All the while getting better at actually running a business — human relations, finance, and the rest. And most importantly, I learned to like what I’m doing. Learned to like my business.

Something clicked. I was trying to act like someone else because I didn’t want to become the hotel guy. But the thing is, I am the hotel guy. So I decided to treat this as the combination of all my learnings and interests.

Two things stand out for me above most others: marketing and alternative finance. A weird combination of Meta Ads and hedge funds. Email campaigns and private equity. You get the gist.

Now, I will publicly build a marketing operation that will turn into a permanent capital roll-up. First, the playbook has to work on my own hotel. Then the same engine goes into other properties. If I fail, I’ll fail publicly.

The Diagnosis

The hospitality industry follows trends ten years behind.

An ecom operator sells $50 face cream. They track which ad brings each customer. Then, they email customers based on their behavior. They can also show their 90-day repeat rate to the decimal. All this runs on software that costs €100 a month.

I know my guest’s name, her hometown, and her birthday. I also know which room she likes and what caused her knee pain. She has visited eleven times since 2015. That data sits in my PMS doing approximately nothing. Industry research shows that less than one in four hotels have integrated their core systems. Big groups are fixing this. Independents like us can’t, because the enterprise stack doesn’t work for mid-size businesses.

But here’s the thing. Even the big groups (I get emails from Marriott, Hilton, Aman) don’t do this properly. They don’t have half the funnel a 6-figure ecom brand has. The gap isn’t knowledge. It isn’t even money — the tools are nearly free now. The gap is that no one has shared the playbook with independent owners. It’s not been shown at our scale, on our legacy software, or with our staff. That’s the experiment.

The Snapshot

Here’s where we stand today. Some of these numbers are embarrassing. That’s the point — that’s why we’re experimenting live.

1) We’ve operated the hotel since 1996. Four stars, 128 rooms, a licensed thermal property with the water piped into every room. Mid-market price tag. Occupancy was 68.7% last year. This half-year, it dropped to 51%. This happened as Turkey became more expensive in dollars, plus there’s been the tension between the U.S. and Iran. Repeat guests: ~45% of stays, more than double the industry average.

2) Of room revenue, 59% came direct, 9% through OTAs, 31% through foreign tour operators. Total OTA commissions paid: about $27k — around 1% of revenue. Small, right? For years I told myself our low OTA share was discipline. With occupancy at 51%, the honest read is different: some of that “discipline” is just unfilled rooms. An empty room earns 0% margin; an OTA room earns 83%.

Here’s the number that actually matters, though. This year we raised prices $36% per guest-night — and lost only 5% of our domestic guests. The tour operator side failed, but repeat customers stayed even with a one-third price hike. That base is the moat this whole experiment is built on.

3) Online bookings tracked as completed sales in our analytics last year: zero. Not close to zero. Zero. Our booking engine is in a cross-domain iframe. This means online sales are hidden from our analytics and ad platforms. Most of our sales don’t happen online. They close over the phone. We receive between 780 and 2,100 calls each month, depending on the season.

Sit with that combination for a second. We spend money on Google and Meta every month. The platforms optimize toward clicks and page views — cheap proxies — because they have literally never seen one of our actual sales. We have been advertising blind. Most independent hotels I talk to are doing the same and don’t know it.

4) Ad spend: ~$1,700/month, under 1% of revenue. An e-commerce brand at this revenue would consider ten times that normal — because they can see what returns. We can’t. Yet.

5) Our list: ~1,500 emails and ~13,000 SMS numbers, on a basic SMS gateway, zero segmentation, 3–4 mass blasts a year. An ecom operator would laugh, and they’d be right to.

Last year, we invested more than $500k in renovations. This is where our money goes in this business. In this industry, there is no such thing as consistency. Sometimes, there’s a currency crisis. Other times, a pandemic hits. Even an earthquake in a not-nearby province can empty hotels here. You know this if you own one.

The Experiment

Currently we run a local, legacy, SQL-based property management system. No automations. No segmentation. Data pulling is hard and slow. Our email/SMS tooling is a basic local gateway — no segmentation, no automation. The phone system is modern. We created a simple tool that recognizes incoming numbers and displays guest history. We run Meta and Google ads with no sales tracking, as mentioned. Decent organic presence with over 35k Facebook and 15k Instagram followers. However, most traffic comes from paid sources. No content strategy yet, though we’ve started with an agency.

So over the next 9–12 months, on my own P&L, on my existing legacy PMS, with a stack costing under €100/month, three hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Measurement & CRM infrastructure

New PMS systems like Mews and Cloudbeds, along with add-ons like Klaviyo and Duetto, are costly. But we need to track and measure.

To-do list:

• Call tracking matched to PMS sales.

• Move the booking engine out of its iframe.

• Feed real conversions back to the ad platforms.

• Redirect spend to what actually sells.

  Target: direct share of room revenue from 59% to 70%, and commissions measured in hard currency.

Hypothesis 2: Direct revenue increase

Automated email & SMS flows, per segment: welcome flow, abandoned-cart flow, thank-you flow, and so on.

And the one I’m proud of, because I don’t think many hotels do this, let alone independents: reactivation and call-back automation. We are building a system that integrates our calls, PMS and pushes the results to Google and Meta APIs. The whole system is being built on top an AI layer, with transcription and filtering capabilities.

We did this manually in June: called back 124 people, booked 17 rooms — roughly $9,500 in direct revenue. Not bad for a spreadsheet and a phone.

Hypothesis 3: Repeat guest activation

Our repeat base is the moat, so it gets its own hypothesis. Automated call, email, and SMS journeys for guests who stayed with us and went silent. The 36%-price-increase-with-5%-churn number above says this base has more to give — the question is how much, and how systematically we can harvest it without burning trust.

What’s next

This is a battle against giants. We don’t have the resources of the big groups (and my father was not a Lord), and no other income supporting this. So the whole experiment has to be cheap, fast, and repeatable. Fixing attribution on a 30-year-old hotel’s tech stack is going to be ugly.

But we have a moat most businesses don’t: guests who come back, year after year, at prices a third higher than last year.

Rocco Forte started with a café named after a palace. We started with thermal water and 128 rooms. Same bet, different scale: the family is the edge.

Most of you own or operate an independent business. This is a battle you fight every day. I promise you’ll get something for yours as well.

All the best,

Bugra

Before we start, Founder Marketer newsletter is called Owner’s Edge now (and we crossed 50.000 subscibers!). I won’t bore you with details, but I wanted to focus more than marketing while keeping the founder/owner angle.

Hundreds of hours of research for this newsletter showed me that if an owner-led brand wants to survive, they have to have some sort of edge. This is what saved our family business, and my primary goal for the business is to deepen that moat. That’s why I started reading about owner-led businesses in the first place, which led me to this newsletter.

Not much is changing. New editions will continue to be insightful and deeply researched, with a unique agenda, focusing on the owner’s edge.

For many business owners, deciding to go public is probably the biggest decision of their career. It is a nerve-wracking process, high-stress months, and expectations of high capital raising.

Now imagine inviting bankers and financiers to your rural area (instead of going to them in financial districts), and telling them not to expect the typical high growth of a luxury fashion house. Even better, telling them not to participate in the IPO if they expect 30-40% growth. But if they believe in 8-10% sustainable growth alongside the family, they are welcome.

Daring, isn’t it?

Yes, and it completely suits the man’s life philosophy. We’re talking about Brunello Cucinelli, and this is the story of how he created a culture that became the business model.

I. The Beginning

The company started in 1978 with its first product, colored cashmere sweaters.

Sounds small, but cashmere already had status. Cucinelli didn’t invent the material. He changed what it felt like by adding color to something that had only ever been beige or grey. Made a formal fabric feel alive.

That’s a taste decision. He looked at something everyone accepted as normal and decided it could be better. Harry Dry, the copywriter, has a line about this kind of work: writing involves seeing something, believing in it, then writing about it. Something AI can’t do, because it hasn’t seen anything. Cucinelli’s sweaters are the same instinct, just in wool instead of words. He saw the gray sweater. He believed it could be orange. That’s the whole company, before it was a company.

Most premium businesses start here. Not with a moat. Not with a funding round. With one judgment call somebody else wasn’t willing to make.

In 1985, he bought a 14th-century castle in Solomeo, his wife’s home village in Umbria. Solomeo became everything: headquarters, factory, theater, the company’s entire reason for existing in this one specific place.

The romantic version of that story writes itself. The interesting version is what the village actually does to the decisions.

A company anchored to one Umbrian village (a very old one), its craftspeople, and business culture of fair profit instead of chasing trend cycles. The place itself is the discipline. Hermes has a version of this too: their whole brand strategy leans into the fact that they’re the only company who can claim their own history. Nobody starting today gets to have participated in what Hermes participated in. You can’t manufacture that kind of root system. You either have it or you don’t.

If a business has no center, every opportunity looks reasonable. That’s the danger. A center gives you something to say no to.

II. Humanistic Capitalism

Every company talks about culture. Most of that talk is decoration, replaced every time leadership changes, like a new government promising the same things the last one did.

Cucinelli’s culture costs the company something real. That’s the only test that matters. Pleasant workspaces. Humane hours. Constant reinvestment in craft and in restoring Solomeo stone by stone. “Fair profit.” His phrase, repeated for decades, not focus-grouped.

You can be skeptical of the language, and the business logic still holds up. Luxury runs on small differences nobody can quite name. The exact shade of beige that reads expensive instead of dull. The weight of a button. How a salesperson treats you before they know if you’re buying. None of that survives if the people making it don’t care.

And people care more when the work treats them as craftspeople rather than production line items.

His father left farming for factory work. Cucinelli watched how the factory treated him. He calls it humiliation, and he’s been calling it that for forty years. That memory sits under everything the company does.

Founder stories get sanded smooth with retelling. But a story earns its place when it explains what kind of pain a business is actually trying to fix. Cucinelli’s pain was never a product gap in the market. It was watching work strip a man of his dignity. Everything since has been an attempt to build something opposite.

A company that sells to the wealthy, built by a man whose emotional center is a humiliated factory worker. That tension is the whole shape of the business.

David Ogilvy wrote that no creative organization, a lab, a magazine, a kitchen, an ad agency, produces great work unless a formidable individual is running it. Cucinelli is that individual

III. The Playbook

The brand’s main signal is restraint.

Soft colors. Relaxed tailoring. Almost no visible branding. Quiet stores. The whole thing whispers to people who already know what they’re looking at.

This only works because the product matches the company. A quiet sweater made by a loud, overdistributed, desperate-for-growth company would feel like a lie. Restraint reads as true here because it shows up everywhere at once: controlled growth, selective distribution, Solomeo, family control, Italian craft, the fair profit language. Naval Ravikant has a line about specific knowledge that fits this perfectly: it’s knowledge you can’t get through training, because if it could be taught, it could be replicated, and then it wouldn’t be yours anymore. Cucinelli’s restraint isn’t a style choice you could hire a consultant to replicate. It’s accumulated, decade by decade, the way real specific knowledge always is.

In 2025, the company reported roughly €1.41 billion in revenue, growing around 10%, with a public target of €1.8 billion by 2028.

The philosophy doesn’t float above the business like a mission statement on a wall. It runs through the P&L.

IV. Conclusion: Play With Your Terms

Before the market could set the terms, Cucinelli set them first. He told investors exactly what kind of growth belonged to this company, and what kind didn’t. Peter Thiel’s whole argument about monopoly is that the end state of a great business isn’t winning a competition, it’s exiting the competition entirely. You stop playing the game everyone else is playing and you make your own. Cucinelli did that with his own shareholders, in public, at the one moment most founders are busiest promising the market anything it wants to hear.

That’s rare. It’s also the reason the business still feels like itself fifteen years later.

The takeaway here isn’t “build a luxury brand out of an Italian village.” It’s that a culture only becomes a business model once it starts changing actual decisions. Isadore Sharp, who built Four Seasons, put it simply: culture can’t be mandated as policy, it has to grow out of what people actually do, over a long stretch of time. And: don’t copy the what, copy the how.

Cucinelli’s culture changes the growth rate he’ll accept. It changes where the company is headquartered. How the factory floor is designed. How he talks to bankers. What gets produced and what doesn’t. Where it’s sold and where it isn’t. The same belief, repeated across product, people, place, price, and pace. That repetition, not any single decision, is what turns a philosophy into a strategy.

Most businesses run this backward. They write the values after the operating model already exists, then wonder why the values on the wall feel fake to everyone who works there. The hard part was never writing the values down. It’s the refusal. Saying yes creates motion you can point to. Saying no creates silence you can’t measure: the store you didn’t open, the discount you didn’t run, the supplier you didn’t squeeze, the line you didn’t launch.

Premium positioning gets built on a pile of declined opportunities. The brand is shaped by everything that never reached the customer.

Parting Note

For a hotel, the center might be repeat guests, direct relationships, and service standards that don’t bend when occupancy is low. For a service business, it might be the client you turn away, the diagnostic process you won’t shortcut, the promise you refuse to make just to close the deal.

Scale changes. The principle doesn’t.

If everything in your business is negotiable, the business has no shape. And if it has no shape, the market will shape it for you, on its terms, not yours.

— B

Humans worship extraordinary individuals. The ones worthy of lasting memory. The ones who will be remembered.

Einstein. Jobs. Bonaparte. Curie.

They are all legends. World changers. History writers. Or at least we like to think so. Because it connects to a deeper mindset, to our ego. If they changed the world, maybe we can too.

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The Great Man Theory

That is the essence of the Great Man Theory. Originating from the historian Thomas Carlyle, this school of thought argues that history is the product of extraordinary individuals.

• Caesar shaped Rome, thus changing history.

• Einstein shaped modern physics, thus changing history.

• Bonaparte shaped European politics, thus changing history.

This theory is very much loved by the public. I guess simplifying history into individuals eases our anxiety. Whether we praise someone or blame them, we assign responsibility to a select few. History is driven by genius, willpower, charisma, and leadership. In that sense, we assume business works the same way.

Except it doesn’t.

If only the world were that simple. Or so Fernand Braudel argues. Enter the structuralist response.

Long Duration & World-Systems

Braudel, a French historian, argued that history is shaped by deep structural forces — geography, climate, trade routes, and demographics. In short, what he called longue durée (long duration).

According to Braudel, individuals exist on the surface, while structures operate underneath. The Roman system was the ocean. Caesar was the wave.

Another theory close to this one is Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, the world operates as a system: core, semi-periphery, and periphery. This means systems create the conditions for genius.

I’m inclined to think this way as well. But how does all this theoretical info dump connect?

I call this Critical Threshold Theory.

Structures, culture, knowledge accumulate. Then, at a breaking point, someone becomes the “Great Man”.

Structural energy builds > Tension accumulates > A catalytic individual triggers the release.

The work of dozens of thinkers — from Newton to Maxwell — laid the groundwork. Einstein triggered the rupture.

The individual is not the origin. He or she is the ignition point. So how does this circle back to business?

Well, we love the great founder myth. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos.

But let’s look at one example.

The iPhone required several things to happen first:

• Semiconductor maturity

• Globalized Chinese manufacturing

• A venture capital ecosystem

• Mobile internet infrastructure

These fundamentals matured, and an individual leveraged them.

Think about the marketing success stories you often hear:

• “This ad campaign transformed the category.”

• “That founder’s storytelling changed the industry.”

• “This brand won because of genius positioning.”

Now, these can all be true. Most likely they are true. But marketing genius usually works only when the category is structurally ready.

You can’t position your way out of a structurally dead market. You can’t brand your way into a non-existent demand curve. You can’t storytell your way through bad timing.

Categories emerge before heroes.

• Luxury DTC brands? Needed Instagram distribution, cheap Facebook ads (2014–2018), globalized supply chains, improved Chinese manufacturing, and consumer fatigue with legacy brands.

• Crypto? Needed zero interest rates, liquidity cycles, and the COVID-era retail speculation wave.

• AI? Needed GPU supply, transformer breakthroughs, and cloud infrastructure maturity.

You get the point.

So how can we theorize this in a way that founders can actually use?

The structural layers of marketing success:

1. Slow Layer: Deep structural changes you cannot hack.

• Demographic shifts

• Technological maturity

• Capital availability

• Distribution channels

• Regulation

• Cultural shifts

2. Cyclical Layer: Mid-term dynamics where growth opportunities appear.

• Ad platform arbitrage (Meta, YouTube, TikTok)

• Cost of capital

• Media fragmentation

• Consumer sentiment cycles

3. Event Layer: The founder and campaign layer — the one we see, talk about, and analyze.

• A great ad

• A viral moment

• A charismatic CEO

Why does this matter?

Because if you only believe in the Great Man Theory, you might learn the wrong lesson. You should first analyze structural forces: timing, capital cycles, distribution shifts, and regulatory changes. Only then should you think about founder execution: copy, branding, storytelling, and charisma.

If you only see what is above the water, you will copy visible tactics without replicating invisible conditions.

If you try to do exactly what Gymshark did, copy Apple’s branding, or recreate Shopify, you might fail — because those conditions no longer exist.

• Cheap Facebook ads are gone.

• Zero interest rates are gone.

• Organic reach is mostly gone.

The structure has moved. And so should you.

If you misattribute success to individuals instead of structures, you will systematically misallocate capital, time, and ambition.

Economics and history moved on from the Great Man Theory long ago. But business culture is still stuck in 19th-century hero worship.

Think of business opportunities as a box. As a founder or executive, your task is to choose the box, not simply optimize inside it.

When you study “how X won,” you are studying a frozen outcome. By the time you copy them, the structure has already changed. Tactical imitation is almost always structurally late.

On a more personal note, believing too strongly in the Great Man Theory can also create unnecessary anxiety.

You start telling yourself:

• “If I just become better, I’ll win.”

• “If I hustle harder, I’ll break the market.”

But sometimes the truth is simpler: it may just be the wrong time for what you’re trying to do.

Don’t let bad timing feel like personal failure.

Step back.

Try to see what’s happening underneath.

And try again.

Until next time,

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Social media has become slop.

What's more depressing is that it is not even a human slop. It's an AI slop. Every single platform had its share of this meaningless, lazy, inconsistent content creation. Business writing had the worst of them all. LinkedIn and X have become the sloppiest of slops.

99% of the business writing is just trend chasing. Predictable. Shallow. Ignores the meaning and what drives the markets. If you spend some time reading online, you will be able to spot the AI slop. And the more you realize how much of them is written by a LLM, the more depressed you will be.

Here’s the thing. We can't let the clankers do our deep thinking. I'm guilty of this, too. I relied too much on the LLMs when I first started this newsletter. When I was trying to spit out an article every week. Reading what I wrote after some time, I hated most of it.

I'm writing to learn. To express myself better. To think deeper - and clearer. This is why my publishing schedule turned into whenever I want. I wrote the last couple of editions by hand, including this one. My perspective is changing. And I want to help you change yours.

This is why the structure and flow of my writing became something different. The old frame was useful. It got me started, but I was looking at the world through execution and leverage only.

Founder Marketer is now much more long-term focused. We are exploring why certain things deserve to last and scale. I'm trying to see what's behind the curtain. This is not about spiritualism or growth maximalism. It's about seeking coherence and meaning.

We'll focus more on:

- Founder & consumer psychology

- Marketing & brand history

- Market dynamics & incentives

- Brand, taste, power

and more...

So if you care about how markets work, and how to live inside them, follow along.

Let's explore why and how people think, buy, and sell.

There’s a kind of nobility in doing something quiet, difficult, and unseen - every day. You show up, push the boulder, knowing it might roll back tomorrow. But still, you return. Not for applause. Not for recognition. But because that’s who you become.

A craftsman of the mundane.

I would like to thank Appy.AI for sponsoring today’s edition.

We’ve talked about always chasing the next big thing here before. It’s a trap—one that costs money, time, and sanity.

But the money-making logic is actually pretty straightforward:
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Whether it’s a story, a framework, or a product doesn’t matter.
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Let’s roll with today’s edition.

I.

As humans, we like to start. We’re good at it. Inspiration hits, we plan, and call the daydreaming a start. But what we’re not good at is moving. Mind you, I didn’t say finishing - because I don’t value finishing as much as continuing.

Because the real changes often happen during the process. We iterate. We rethink. Re-calibrate. We find new ways to push the rock further. Here’s the thing. Until we die, we never really finish what we started. We just continue the process. The rock falls to a new road, and we start to push again.

And that’s okay. That’s more than okay. This is how it should be. It’s how great things are made.

II.

Albert Camus wrote that Sisyphus - cursed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity - could still be happy.

Because meaning isn’t in the victory, it’s in the doing. That’s business. That’s brand. That’s life.

We often think we’re one big break away from success. But the real shift happens when you learn to push the stone again and again - without resenting the process. Because each push sharpens your edge. Each repetition is a layer of strategy. And slowly, without the noise, you build something that doesn’t need to shout - since it speaks for itself.

III.

Fresh out of college, I was fascinated by the flashy, trendy businesses. Fast unicorns, trend topics, all the talks. During the last 8 years of running my own business, I realized that as I get older (and more experienced), I started to like boring businesses more.

Don’t get me wrong. Boring doesn’t mean ugly or outdated. For me, it means a cash-flowing business that is formed around a ritual.

Aman doesn’t rebrand every year. Le Labo doesn’t chase virality. Superhuman got better by obsessing over milliseconds. Calm won because it delivered the same promise consistently.

Beneath all the romantic myths we attach to brands - the bold bets, the vision, the innovation - what you’ll often find is this:

Repetition. Refinement. Relentless discipline.

IV.

You too should imagine Sisyphus happy. Not because the struggle disappears - but because he accepts the absurdity. Because he finds meaning in pushing the stone, not waiting for it to stay at the top.

Maybe that’s what business (or art, science) really is about. Not escaping the repetition, but surrendering to it.

• Practicing the same kick 10,000 times

• Painting the same scene over and over again every day.

• Or answering yet another customer complaint without getting angry.

Doesn’t matter what you are seeking. You should know that it’s not glamorous. But it’s the path.

And maybe, just maybe - the stone doesn’t roll back to the starting point every time.

Maybe it moves a little bit higher, further.

And maybe that’s enough.

Or even the whole point itself.

Until next time,

BA

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.”
— Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

After months of absence, returning with a more personal issue. But first, I would like to thank HubSpot for sponsoring this edition.

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The hunger for stimulation, the illusion of momentum, the burnout of endless starts.

What you read above is a poetic definition of the shiny object syndrome.

A fake world constantly surrounds us. On LinkedIn, everybody is thrilled to announce a milestone. On Instagram, everybody is living an exciting life. On X, everybody is a billionaire (or, more likely, a bot). The point is, everyone is happy and successful.

Everyone but you.

This creates a pressure on you. You might not be able to recognize it immediately. But slowly, it creeps into your thought process. You start thinking that if people on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram are so successful and happy, you should be too.

And it seems so easy. Just a course to get rich. A no-code tool to create. A 7-step plan to have 1,000,000 followers. The big idea of falling behind in life starts to turn into shiny goals. They begin to distract you. And eventually, these objects become your new needs. Obsessions. You start to drift from one thing to another, while not achieving anything.

Eventually, you forget what matters. Focus, simplicity, routines, solidarity… You neglect them. This, my friend, is the ultimate consumer-founder. Someone who tries to build and create by constantly trying new things.

I’ve been suffering from the exact same thing for some time. Obviously, my past depression and anxiety have multiple causes, but the shiny object syndrome is a major enemy.

Now, recognizing it doesn’t make it go away. I’ve chased dozens of side projects, all of them unfinished. Spent money on courses that weren’t worth it. Set goals I had no intention of seeing through. Each time, it felt like the thing that would finally make everything click. Each time, it didn’t.

Because this wasn’t about any particular goal or project. I was hooked. Hooked to the idea of making money online, living a more luxurious life, becoming someone that I had no guts to handle the process.

It has reached a point where I was trying to build a side business while maintaining a stable, brick-and-mortar business that is already my own—spending more than I can afford, both monetarily and time-wise, all the while learning to be a father to a newborn.

Looking back, it was completely and utterly unnecessary. I got burned out, gave myself severe anxiety, and hurt my bank account badly while trying to act normal. I was mostly hiding what I’m doing because I wanted to come and say that I made it. Which worsened my relationships in turn.

And here’s the irony: the businesses I admire don’t operate like this at all. The brands I wrote about in this newsletter before - they don’t sprint between shiny strategies. They don’t constantly relaunch. They repeat. They focus. They commit.

• Aman doesn’t scale for headlines — it refines experiences until they feel sacred.

• Calm doesn’t compete on features — it wins through emotional clarity and daily presence.

• Bloomberg doesn’t chase virality — it compounds trust by being indispensable to those who matter.

• Le Labo doesn’t chase trends — it distills identity through unchanging formulas and ritual.

Because when your mind is addicted to novelty, your brand becomes unstable.
Messaging changes too often. Offers are rebranded before they’re tested. Funnels multiply, audiences fragment, positioning collapses.

You don’t market — you react.
You don’t build authority — you just stay visible. But visibility without clarity isn’t trust.

And confused people don’t buy.

The irony is, the strongest marketing strategies in the world are mind-numbingly repetitive.

Realizing all these made everything finally quieter. I completely stopped. Closed my X account, dropped LinkedIn, unfollowed every account on Instagram except friends and family. Eliminating the sources of shiny objects gave me back my clarity and focus, and honestly, my life.

But by far the most helpful thing was asking myself what I am really chasing. Because it was not traction. Not clarity. It was recognition. It was validation. It was a temporary relief of being seen as capable, successful, and clever. The problem is, when you build from that place, you don’t finish things. You just start enough to be noticed.

Even this newsletter was part of that ambition. It was forced. I was writing every week because I was eager to monetize.

Now, I don’t (try to) care about metrics. This newsletter is part of my thinking process. I was already journaling about what I wrote here — I just turned them into a structured essay.

From now on, I won’t disturb your inbox weekly. If my handwritten notes start to form something useful, I’ll shape them into an essay — and tie them back to business. If not, I’ll wait.

Because I’ve started to understand something I missed for years.

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”
— Arthur Ashe

Until the next one,

BA

Nothing creates cool like scarcity.

Neil Blumenthal, Warby Parker co-founder

A standard Rolex Daytona retails for $14,550—but regularly sells for $30,000+ on the secondary market. This isn't an accident.

Last week, we explored the philosophy of "enough" and how values-driven limitation creates meaning and premium positioning. But limitation isn't just philosophical—it's a powerful economic strategy that creates extraordinary pricing leverage for brands that deploy it effectively.

Today, we examine how deliberate scarcity translates into economic advantage and how leading premium brands use limitation not just to enhance their image, but to fundamentally alter their market position and pricing power.

Supply-Demand Imbalance as Strategic Choice

Economics 101 teaches that when demand exceeds supply, prices rise. What's less discussed is how premium brands intentionally engineer this imbalance as a core strategy rather than as a temporary market condition.

Consider Ferrari, which explicitly caps its annual production at approximately 10,000 cars despite having the capital and capability to produce many more. This self-imposed limit accomplishes several things:

• Creates perpetual excess demand

• Maintains or increases values in the secondary market

• Preserves brand exclusivity and mystique

• Allows selection of "worthy" customers

• Justifies continuous price increases

  

This deliberate under-production isn't a manufacturing constraint—it's a strategic choice to maintain what economists call "excess economic rent" (pricing above what a balanced market would sustain). When Ferrari's CEO publicly states they'll never satisfy market demand, he's not lamenting a limitation—he's announcing a strategy.

Rolex employs a similar approach with its most coveted models. Despite substantial manufacturing capacity, they deliberately maintain shortages of popular models like the Daytona. This creates multi-year waitlists and secondary market prices that exceed retail by 50-200%, turning each retail sale into a privilege rather than a transaction.

The Price Elasticity of Perceived Scarcity

If a brand can manage the deliberate scarcity, it’ll have a remarkable price inelasticity in return; the ability to raise prices without corresponding drops in demand.

Hermès provides the perfect case study (we touched on this briefly last week as well). The Birkin bag has seen price increases that far outpace inflation, from approximately $2,000 in 1984 to $10,000+ today, with exotic versions exceeding $200,000. Despite these increases, demand has grown rather than contracted. The waitlist system—where customers cannot simply purchase a Birkin but must be offered one—reinforces the perception of scarcity while allowing the company to continually test price elasticity.

What makes this possible? The psychology of scarcity creates a perception of value that transcends product attributes. When something is difficult to obtain, consumers:

• Attribute higher quality to it (the "effort heuristic")

• Place greater subjective value on ownership

• Experience a stronger emotional attachment

• Gain a more significant status utility from possession

• Feel greater anticipation during the acquisition process

But remember, you’ll get these opinions only if your products are perceived as genuinely scarce.

Waiting as Value-Building Mechanism

Counterintuitively, making customers wait doesn't diminish desire—it amplifies it. Waiting becomes not a bug but a feature of the premium experience.

Supreme, the streetwear brand acquired for $2.1 billion in 2020, built its business model around the "drop" system—limited releases at specific times that guarantee demand will exceed supply. This creates:

• Physical queues that become social events and brand rituals

• Secondary market prices 2-10x retail

• Free marketing through scarcity-driven media coverage

• A culture of anticipation and participation

The waiting isn't incidental—it's central to the value proposition. The pursuit becomes as important as the product itself.

Premium services use waiting as a value-creation tool too. Restaurant Noma in Copenhagen releases reservations months in advance that sell out in minutes. This anticipation cycle makes the reservation itself a status marker and deepens the experiential value of the eventual meal.

Access Restriction as Premium Signal

Beyond simple product scarcity, many premium brands create multi-layered access systems that function as powerful signaling mechanisms and price discrimination tools.

Hermès doesn't just limit Birkin production—it creates a sophisticated filtering system determining who can buy one. Customers must develop a purchase history, build relationships with specific sales associates, and receive invitations to purchase special items through a deliberately opaque system. Just like some car brands that only offer certain cars to new customers.

This creates a social dynamic where access itself becomes a form of currency and status. The question shifts from "Can I afford this?" to "Am I worthy of being offered this?"

This mindset shift creates a cult among customers. I repeat, not fans, but a cult.

We see similar patterns with other premium brands:

• Private banking services requiring minimum investments

• Membership clubs with application and vetting processes

• Limited-edition collaborations offered only to selected customers

These systems allow price discrimination beyond list prices, create loyalty through earned privileged access, and build community among those "in the know."

Artificial vs. Authentic Scarcity

Not all scarcity is created equal. The market increasingly distinguishes between authentic limitations (based on genuine constraints or values) and artificial ones (purely marketing-driven limitations).

Authentic scarcity stems from real limitations related to:

• Craftsmanship requirements (hand-making takes time)

• Material restrictions (truly rare inputs)

• Quality standards that limit production capacity

• Philosophical commitments to controlled growth

Artificial scarcity merely simulates limitation through:

• Arbitrarily limited editions

• Engineered "sellouts" of abundant products

• Manufactured waitlists for readily available items

Consumers have become increasingly sophisticated at distinguishing between these approaches. Brands practicing only artificial scarcity without authentic limitation find their premium positioning unsustainable long term.

Tactical Applications: Designing Your Limitation Strategy

So how can you implement scarcity for your brand?

1. Identify your authentic limitation: Begin with what you genuinely cannot or should not scale. The most credible limitations are those connected to real constraints in expertise, materials, process, or values.

2. Make your limitation visible and story-worthy: Transparency about why you limit production or access creates authenticity that arbitrary limitations cannot match. The limitation should become part of your brand narrative.

self-promotion here: I do 1-1 consulting for premium brands on their story-building in emails and ads. if you want to talk, please fill out this form.

3. Create graduated access systems: Rather than simple binary availability, develop multi-tiered access that rewards loyalty, creates aspiration, and allows for different levels of participation in your brand.

4. Balance frustration and desire: The art of scarcity management is maintaining want without tipping into resentment. Too much limitation creates negative sentiment; too little eliminates premium positioning.

Final Word: The Alignment of Philosophy and Economics

What makes limitation such a powerful premium strategy is the alignment it creates between philosophical values and economic advantage. When done authentically, limitation simultaneously:

• Creates meaning through boundaries and context

• Builds community through shared access and understanding

• Generates status through selective participation

• Enhances quality through focused mastery

• Delivers premium pricing through managed scarcity

This alignment explains why limitation strategies have proven remarkably durable across varied markets and periods. From medieval guilds to modern luxury houses, from traditional crafts to digital products, the power of "enough" transcends specific contexts.

As markets continue to face commoditization with technology, globalization, and automation, the brands that will command an extraordinary premium in the future will likely be those that embrace limitation not as a compromise, but as their defining advantage.

The ultimate luxury, perhaps, is not unbounded growth, but the confidence to say: "This is enough."

See you next week,

BA

If you want to reach out to me, please don’t reply to this email. You can always send a separate email to: bgr.altuntas@gmail.com

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We’ll explore the philosophy behind the limitation in premium brand building in the first episode. Next week, we’ll be focusing more on the business side, with the upcoming episode “The Economics of Scarcity”.

By the way, Founder Marketer is now +40,000 subscribers strong. If you want your brand to be in front of founders and premium brand builders, click here.

Let’s jump in.

The Great Shift: More Is Better vs Better Is Better

In our OneUp Project podcast episode, Sarah and I talked about why I’m writing this newsletter (you can listen from here). I explained to her that, as a brand owner, I believe the escape from the price competition for independent brands is only possible through premium brand building.

For most of the consumer history, luxury meant excess - big houses, larger portions, more features; aka loud luxury. This approach reflected a psychology of scarcity, where having more than others was itself a marker of status.

But things have changed. We live in an algorithmic abundance, where Amazon delivers on the same day and digital goods can multiply indefinitely.

The theory of this essay is that premium value comes not from what the brand adds, but from what it deliberately chooses to remove or limit. This school of thought represents an evolution in how value is created and perceived at the high end of any market.

Let’s revisit our Aman Resorts episode. Mass tourism brought travel to the masses through scale and standardization (and look what is happening all around in Europe as a reaction!). But Aman Resorts took the opposite approach, building properties with a radical commitment to minimalism, not just aesthetic, but operational.

• Most Aman hotels have around 40 rooms on a massive land

• Signature service style is characterized by invisibility and anticipation

• The brand is tranquil, rather than dipped in gold

These limitations aren’t concessions to reality - they’re strategic choices that create extraordinary value. The average daily rate at Aman properties is around $2,000, making them among the most expensive hotels.

Values-Driven Limitation as Positioning

When limitation is authentic - connected to genuine values rather than artificial scarcity - it becomes a powerful positioning tool that justifies premium pricing.

You probably saw an ASMR Japanese craft video. If not, please stop reading and go check some on YouTube. You’ll be amazed.

Watching a crafts person doing their craft in such an artistic way is a meditation in itself. There is a Japanese concept that explains why if there is a Japanese doing something, you’ll bet it’ll be good.

Shokunin is a crafts person who dedicates their life to mastering a single skill or craft, embracing extreme limitation on focus as the path to transcendent quality.

It is not only about technical mastery, but a mindset where limitation itself becomes an ethical and aesthetic choice.

Take Jiro Ono, the legendary sushi master, as an example (he also has a documentary on Netflix!). His restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, deliberately maintains:

• 10 seats

• No appetizers

• A single, chef-selected menu

• No photography or deviations

This extreme limitation allowed Jiro to become the first sushi chef awarded three Michelin stars (and command around $400 per person). The limitations aren’t apologies - they’re the very source of the value creation.

Similarly, Hermes has maintained its extraordinary position by deliberately constraining its production. The company has a generational craftsmanship philosophy;

• A single craftsperson makes one bag at a time

• Artisans train for years before making their first Birkin (similar to sushi masters)

• Limited production regardless of market demand

• No mass manufacturing

As you know, Birkin bags are one of the hardest goods that you can find. Again, the limitation itself becomes the luxury when the brand’s limitations reflect genuine values.

The Psychology and Identity of Premium Restraint

Humans find more meaning in experiences that are bounded and involve effort. Experiences feel more meaningful when they have clear boundaries. That’s why we feel anxious when we encounter too many choices.

This creates a two-way relationship;

• Brands that limit themselves create stronger identity markers

• Consumers who choose these brands make the choices a part of their identities.

The psychology extends beyond physical products to experiences, services, and digital goods.

• Minimalist writing apps that remove formatting options

• Restaurant reservation lists

• Wait-lists for new products etc.

The concept of “less but better” isn’t just marketing - it taps into fundamental human psychology where meaning comes from constraints.

From Philosophy to Economics

The “philosophy of enough” isn’t merely an abstract principle. It translates into concrete business advantages for brands that embrace it authentically.

In our next issue, we’ll explore how this stance creates powerful economic leverage through:

• The mathematics of scarcity and price elasticity

• How waiting lists function as both qualification mechanisms and desire amplifiers

• The secondary market dynamics that reinforce primary market pricing power

• Operational advantages of controlled growth and production

See you next week (hopefully)!

"Whoever controls the flow of information controls the world."

George Orwell

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Trading is always an information game. Whoever has the fastest and most reliable data has an enormous advantage on Wall Street. Nowadays hedge funds are pouring millions on overseas data centers, trillion GB data, or even weather forecasts to gain a millisecond advantage, this game belongs to one company only.

One can even say that the game was invented by the company.

Dear reader, welcome to the amazing story of how one company created a monopoly in the middle of our financial system.

What is Bloomberg?

Founded in 1981 by Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg L.P. is a financial information and media company best known for the Bloomberg Terminal—a computer system providing real-time financial data, analytics, news, and trading tools to financial professionals. The company has expanded into a media empire including Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Bloomberg TV, while maintaining its core business of premium financial information services that generate over $10 billion in annual revenue.

The Information Desert: When Wall Street Operated in the Dark

In the late 1970s, Wall Street faced a paradoxical problem: despite being the global epicenter of finance, it operated with shockingly poor information infrastructure. The financial landscape was characterized by:

• Bond traders relying on paper tickets and phone calls to discover prices (yes, those chaotic scenes where everyone is shouting to everyone)

• Market data arriving with significant delays, sometimes hours old

• Critical information siloed within institutions or individual paper records

• Research buried in physical documents with limited circulation

• Analytics performed manually or on primitive computing systems

For the average trader or investor, obtaining accurate, timely information was a constant battle. Major financial institutions maintained information advantages through size and relationships, while smaller players operated at a significant disadvantage.

The conventional wisdom was clear: information asymmetry was a feature of markets, not a bug. Those with privileged access to information enjoyed an advantage that translated directly into profits.

The Vision Builder: How Michael Bloomberg Saw Opportunity in Transparency

Michael Bloomberg's path to creating an information empire was neither direct nor obvious. After being fired from Salomon Brothers following its acquisition in 1981, Bloomberg took his $10 million severance and made a bet that would put him among the most powerful people in the world.

Bloomberg had worked at Salomon Brothers since 1966, rising through the ranks from a lowly clerk counting bond certificates in the vault to become the head of equity trading and sales. This journey gave him intimate knowledge of Wall Street's information problems. As he would later recall: "I understood that on Wall Street, information was money—but only if you had it before others, could organize it better than others, and could leverage it faster than others."

His insight wasn't simply that information was valuable—everyone knew that. His revolutionary perspective came from recognizing three critical truths:

1. The value of organized information exceeded raw data. Simply having numbers wasn't enough—context, analytics, and usability were what created premium value.

2. Technology could standardize financial information. Customized, proprietary systems could organize chaotic financial data into standardized formats usable across institutions.

3. People would pay premium prices for reliable, real-time data. Information wasn't just another commodity—it was the fundamental resource upon which all financial decisions depended.

With these insights, Bloomberg founded Innovative Market Systems (later Bloomberg L.P.) and created the Market Master terminal—which would evolve into the Bloomberg Terminal. The first customer was Merrill Lynch, which ordered 20 terminals and invested $30 million in the startup.

The Billion-Dollar Blueprint: Creating a Premium Information Ecosystem

Bloomberg's story reveals profound principles about premium value creation that extend far beyond financial data:

1. Important Problems = Higher Prices

The Bloomberg Terminal now costs approximately $24,000 per user annually—a price that has remained remarkably stable despite technological advances that have dramatically reduced costs in other information sectors.

Why can Bloomberg maintain this premium? Because the depth of the problem it solves—immediate access to comprehensive financial information—directly impacts billion-dollar decisions. Financial professionals don't merely want this information; they fundamentally cannot perform their jobs without it.

The more essential a problem solution is to high-value decisions, the more premium you can command.

2. Ecosystem Over Product

Bloomberg didn't simply create a product; it built an ecosystem. The Terminal evolved from a data display into a comprehensive platform including:

• Real-time market data across virtually all asset classes

• Sophisticated analytics and trading tools

• Secure messaging between market participants (Bloomberg Chat)

• News targeted specifically to financial decision-makers

• Directory services connecting the financial community

This ecosystem created powerful network effects—the more people used Bloomberg, the more valuable it became for everyone in the network. This created a moat against competitors who might offer individual features at lower prices.

Building interconnected systems creates more sustainable premium value than selling isolated products.

3. Interface as Premium Marker

Paradoxically, the Bloomberg Terminal's user interface has maintained an intentionally distinctive design that defies conventional user experience principles (unfortunately it is ugly as hell tho). The system uses a specialized keyboard with colored function keys and a dense, information-rich display that appears outdated by consumer technology standards.

This wasn't a failure to evolve but a deliberate strategy. The distinctive interface became a status marker in the financial world—a signal of professional belonging. Mastering the Bloomberg Terminal's shortcuts and commands became a form of specialized knowledge that separated insiders from outsiders.

Deliberate friction creates value by signaling expertise and establishing cultural boundaries.

4. Media as Premium Extension

Bloomberg made a counterintuitive move by expanding into media businesses, including:

• Bloomberg News (1990)

• Bloomberg Television (1994)

• Bloomberg Businessweek (acquired 2009)

While these ventures might appear to commoditize the very information Bloomberg sold at premium prices, they actually strengthened the core business by:

• Establishing Bloomberg as an authoritative information source

• Creating broader brand awareness that reinforced premium positioning

• Generating content that added value to Terminal subscriptions

• Building relationships across the business and financial ecosystem

Vertical integration into a sector can deepen your moat.

Mining for Gold: Finding Your Bloomberg Opportunity

So for non-finance folks, how can you apply these principles to create premium value in your own contexts?

1. Identify critical decision points. Where do professionals face high-stakes decisions with inadequate information? The higher the stakes, the greater the premium potential.

2. Create order from chaos. Industries drowning in disorganized data present opportunities for premium solutions that transform information overload into actionable intelligence.

3. Build network effects. The most defensible premium positions come from platforms that become more valuable as more people use them.

4. Create specialized languages. Systems that require specialized knowledge to use effectively can create premium through exclusivity and professional identity.

5. Look for information asymmetries. Markets where information is unevenly distributed often hide premium opportunities for those willing to increase transparency—at a price.

The Deeper Meaning: The Man Behind the Machine

Michael Bloomberg's story reveals a deeper truth about premium value creation: personality and principles matter. His leadership approach—combining technical vision with commercial pragmatism—shaped Bloomberg's premium positioning in several critical ways:

1. Conviction in value. Bloomberg famously refused to discount his product, even when facing rejection. This pricing discipline communicated unshakable confidence in the Terminal's value.

2. Meritocratic culture. The company's famously demanding culture—including the controversial open office plan where even the founder sits—reflected Bloomberg's belief that excellence justifies the premium.

3. Reinvestment philosophy. Unlike many founders, Bloomberg continuously reinvested profits into improving the core product rather than diversifying into unrelated businesses, maintaining the premium quality of the core offering.

4. Customer immersion. Bloomberg regularly visited clients personally, maintaining direct connections with users that informed product development and reinforced the company's commitment to its customers’ success.

After building his information empire, Bloomberg took his approach to problem-solving into politics, serving three terms as Mayor of New York City (2002-2013), where he applied data-driven approaches to urban governance. He later returned to lead his company, demonstrating his continued commitment to the business he built.

Perhaps most tellingly, when Bloomberg (the man) considered selling Bloomberg (the company) in 2013, the estimated price was $40 billion—extraordinary value created from solving a fundamental information problem.

Just like we highlighted in the last edition - Profit through Purpose - solving fundamental problems better than anyone else creates a moat so unassailable, that the business becomes a natural monopoly.

A lesson that extends far beyond financial terminals to any business seeking to escape commodity competition. So anyone building and growing a business should reflect on the question once again: What fundamental problem I am solving?

Until next time,

BA

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Fortune at the Foundation: Why the Next Billion-Dollar Opportunity Lies in Solving Fundamental Problems

As humans, we are drawn to flashy things like mosquitoes. We want to hop on the latest trend, catch the buzzword, or bet our savings into coins because of FOMO.

It is no different in business. Entrepreneurs are always on the hunt for the new thing. Even though sometimes this works, today’s story provides a fresh, counterintuitive argument: Solving fundamental human problems is always a good idea.

Today we’ll dive into M-Pesa. But before that, I would like to thank Sarah Kelsey for providing the idea. I joined her for a podcast episode, and to celebrate the collaboration, asked for the next newsletter’s deep dive.

Sarah hosts the OneUp Project, a podcast where she unpacks fresh perspectives and thought-provoking insights every week - with her own lovely style.

You can check her work from the following links;

• Spotify Link - OneUp Project

• Sarah’s Instagram

The Financial Desert: When Traditional Banking Failed Millions

So What is M-Pesa? Launched in 2007 by Safaricom (Kenya's largest telecom provider), M-Pesa is a mobile money service that allows users to store and transfer money using only their mobile phones.

The name combines "M" for mobile and "Pesa," the Swahili word for money. The service enables users to deposit money into an account stored on their cell phones, send money to others via secure SMS, and redeem deposits for cash through a network of agents.

Without requiring bank accounts or smartphones, M-Pesa effectively turns basic mobile phones into pocket-sized banks.

In 2007, Kenya's financial landscape presented a stark reality: over 80% of the population had no access to formal banking services. This wasn't just an inconvenience—it was a massive economic barrier. Without bank accounts:

• Sending money to family in rural areas meant entrusting cash to bus drivers or friends

• Savings were kept under mattresses, vulnerable to theft

• Building a credit history was impossible

• Small businesses couldn't access capital to grow

Traditional banks viewed this market as unprofitable. The cost of establishing physical branches across Kenya's diverse geography was prohibitive. The average transaction size would be too small. The documentation requirements would exclude most potential customers.

The conventional wisdom was clear: banking the unbanked wasn't just difficult; it was financially unviable.

The Invisible Network: How Mobile Phones Became Africa's Financial Backbone

While Kenya lacked banking infrastructure, it had something else: widespread mobile phone adoption. By 2007, over 30% of Kenyans owned mobile phones—a number growing exponentially while banking access remained stagnant.

Safaricom, Kenya's largest telecom provider, had an insight that would redefine financial services: What if mobile phones could become banks?

This a-ha moment came from recognizing three critical truths:

1. Trust already existed in different forms. Kenyans had developed informal financial networks based on community relationships. What they lacked wasn't trust—it was efficient infrastructure.

2. Simple technology could replace complex infrastructure. A basic SMS system could facilitate transactions without requiring sophisticated banking platforms.

3. Mobile penetration was creating an overlooked opportunity. The rapid adoption of mobile phones had established a network that could be repurposed for financial services.

Mind you - don’t think this with today’s Western lenses. At the time, mobile banking wasn’t popular - even in developed countries.

The Billion-Dollar Blueprint: Harvesting Value Where Others See Obstacles

M-Pesa's story reveals profound principles about premium value creation that extend far beyond mobile money:

1. Fundamental Problems Hide Opportunities

M-Pesa has processed transactions worth over 50% of Kenya's GDP annually. What began as a simple money transfer service has evolved into a sophisticated financial ecosystem including savings, loans, and international remittances.

By 2021, Safaricom was generating over $700 million in annual revenue from M-Pesa—proving that solving fundamental problems can create enormous financial value.

There is literally unlimited wealth to be made in basic human needs. The more fundamental the problem, the more valuable its solution becomes.

2. Trust Is the Ultimate Currency

In markets with fragile institutions, trust becomes an extraordinarily valuable asset. M-Pesa's brilliant move was not creating a new currency but monetizing and scaling existing trust networks.

M-Pesa agents—often small shopkeepers—became the human interface for a digital system, combining technological efficiency with familiar face-to-face interactions. This hybrid approach allowed M-Pesa to achieve what banks couldn't: widespread trust at a fraction of the infrastructure cost.

3. Simplicity Creates Premium When It Enables the Previously Impossible

M-Pesa's initial interface was remarkably simple: SMS messages with basic commands. This simplicity wasn't a limitation—it was the key to adoption. By designing for the most basic phones and minimal technical literacy, M-Pesa achieved what sophisticated banking apps couldn't: universal accessibility.

So it is obvious that premium doesn’t always mean sophistication. Sometimes, the ability to make something complex radically simple creates the greatest value.

4. Controlled Growth Maintains Value

M-Pesa's expansion was methodical. Rather than immediately pursuing multiple countries or services, Safaricom focused on establishing dominance in Kenya before expanding. This controlled growth allowed them to:

• Build network effects that made competition increasingly difficult

• Refine their model based on real user behaviors

• Establish regulatory relationships that became competitive moats

• Develop the trust and reliability that became their premium marker

We saw this with more premium brands. Strategic limitation can create more value than rapid expansion. It was what Aman Resorts and Le Labo did.

Mining for Gold: Uncovering Your Own Fundamental Market Gap

How can businesses apply these principles to create premium value in their own contexts?

1. Seek overlooked infrastructure. What existing networks or technologies could be repurposed to solve fundamental problems?

2. Identify trust gaps. Where do institutional weaknesses create opportunities for trusted intermediaries?

3. Focus on fundamental frictions. What basic activities are unnecessarily complicated or inaccessible?

4. Look beyond obvious markets. The most valuable opportunities often exist in markets others have deemed unprofitable.

5. Design for actual constraints. Creating value in challenging environments requires embracing limitations rather than fighting them.

The Deeper Meaning: Profit and Purpose Are Not Opposing Forces

Perhaps the most profound lesson I learned from M-Pesa is that social impact and financial success aren't necessarily opposing forces—they can be perfectly aligned. By solving a fundamental societal problem, Safaricom created more value than if they had pursued profit alone.

You don’t have to be purely capitalistic or charitable to create value for the society. M-Pesa proves an alternative path: businesses can generate extraordinary returns by solving real human problems.

The model suggests that the most sustainable premium positions aren't built on artificial scarcity or status games, but on creating genuine utility where none existed before.

As markets mature and consumers grow more discerning, this alignment of profit and purpose may be the most powerful premium strategy of all—not because it sounds good, but because it works.

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How Aman Created the Ultra-Premium Hotel Category: The Intimate Luxury Framework

Adrian Zecha, Founder of Aman Resorts

In 1988, when Adrian Zecha started looking for land in Phuket to build a holiday home, banks thought his eventual business plan was insane. He wanted to build a resort with just 40 rooms, charging five times the rates of local luxury hotels.

Traditional hotels operated on scale - 400+ rooms were standard, allowing them to spread costs and maximize efficiency. Zecha proposed the opposite: extreme limitation as a luxury strategy.

No bank would fund the project, and the numbers didn't make sense on paper. So Zecha and three friends invested their own money to build what would become Amanpuri, the first Aman resort. Their bet? That true luxury wasn't about scale but intimacy.

This wasn't just another hotel launch. It was the creation of an entirely new category in hospitality - one that would transform how the world thinks about luxury travel.

The Market Context

In the 1980s, luxury hospitality followed a clear formula:

The industry's focus was efficiency at scale. Even five-star hotels operated on the principle that more rooms meant more profit. Service was professional but standardized. Luxury meant marble lobbies and white-glove service, not cultural immersion or personal connection.

The Premium Insight

Zecha's vision for Aman came from a fundamental insight about luxury: as the world became more efficient, standardized, and connected, true luxury would mean the opposite - intimate, personal, and distinct.

Amanruya, Bodrum, Turkey

This insight manifested in three key principles:

1. Intimacy Over Scale: While other luxury hotels competed to add more rooms, Aman limited each property to under 50 rooms. This wasn't just about exclusivity - it was about creating an atmosphere where every guest could feel like they were staying in a private home rather than a hotel.

2. Personal Over Professional: Instead of standardized service procedures, Aman gave staff the freedom to be creative and personal in their interactions. They hired for attitude over hospitality experience, believing that genuine care couldn't be taught through manuals.

3. Culture Over Convenience: Rather than prime city centers or tourist hubs, Aman chose locations for their cultural and historical significance. In Cambodia, they restored a guest villa once built by King Sihanouk. In Venice, they occupied the 16th-century Palazzo Papadopoli. Each property became not just a hotel, but a deep immersion into local culture.

This wasn't just a business strategy - it was a complete reimagining of what luxury could mean in the modern age. As Zecha noted, "There are enough hotels in the world. What we need are more unique experiences."

The Strategic Framework

Aman's transformation of luxury hospitality was built on three core strategic pillars:

1. Limitation as Luxury: While counterintuitive, Aman's most powerful strategy was what they chose not to do:

• Never more than 50 rooms per property

• Maintain a 6:1 staff-to-guest ratio (as a hotelier, I just can say woah to this)

• Select only culturally significant locations

• Grow slowly and selectively

The result? Every limitation increased desire. With such few rooms, occupancy stayed high despite premium pricing. With so many staff per guest, service became legendary. With such selective locations, each property became a destination in itself.

2. Anti-Corporate Approach: Aman deliberately rejected standard hotel industry practices:

• No standard operating procedures

• Staff encouraged to be creative and personal

• Hiring focused on attitude over experience

• Managers run properties like their own businesses

As one Aman manager noted, "Without preset rules, our staff can focus on what really matters - creating unforgettable experiences for our guests."

3. Cultural Integration: Each Aman property was designed to be inseparable from its location:

• Architecture reflected local heritage

• Food focused on authentic local cuisine

• Activities centered on cultural experiences

• Deep connections with local communities

A French manager spent six months exploring the area around Aman-i-Khás in India by motorcycle before opening, discovering a forgotten 12th-century village that became part of the guest experience.

Growth Strategy

Aman's approach to growth was as unconventional as its service philosophy. Instead of rapid expansion, they focused on what they called "organic growth" - letting each property develop naturally and only expanding when the perfect opportunity arose.

The Word-of-Mouth Engine

Rather than traditional hotel marketing, Aman built desire through;

• 90-day preview postcards to 120,000 select recipients

• Intimate pre-opening events for influential guests

• Natural coverage in exclusive travel publications

• Strong relationships with luxury travel advisors

Selective Expansion

Growth was guided by strict criteria;

• Unique, historically significant locations

• Cultural richness of the destination

• Limited accessibility

• Potential for authentic experiences

Building the "Aman Junkie" Culture

The brand's most powerful growth tool became its loyal customer base;

• Guests returning year after year

• Trying every new property regardless of location (I don’t know any other customer base that does this)

• Creating an informal community of Aman devotees

• Spreading the brand through personal recommendations

As Zecha noted about their expansion strategy: "We don't look for markets. We look for places that touch the soul."

This patient approach meant slower growth than traditional luxury chains, but it protected what mattered most - the intimate, exclusive experience that made Aman unique.

Key Lessons for Premium Brands

Aman's success offers clear lessons for any brand aiming to create and maintain premium positioning:

1. Scarcity Creates Value 

The fundamental principle behind Aman's success wasn't luxury amenities - it was strategic limitation:

• Fewer rooms meant higher demand

• Limited locations increased desirability

• Restricted access built mystique

• Controlled growth protected quality

2. Experience Over Efficiency 

Premium positioning often means rejecting industry "best practices":

• Personal service over standard procedures

• Cultural authenticity over convenience

• Quality interactions over quantity of customers

• Individual creativity over corporate efficiency

3. Location Defines Premium 

Aman proved that where you are matters more than what you offer:

• Cultural significance drives value

• Historical connection creates story

• Unique locations justify premium pricing

• Authenticity beats accessibility

4. Staff as Brand Builders 

The most powerful premium experiences come from people, not policies:

• Hire for cultural fit over experience

• Trust staff to be creative

• Encourage personal ownership

• Let personality shine through

Conclusion

Vladislav Doronin, Current Owner and CEO of Aman

Aman's transformation of luxury hospitality isn’t just about building better hotels - it is about understanding that true premium value comes from limitation, not expansion. By focusing on intimacy over scale, experience over efficiency, and culture over convenience, they created an entirely new category of ultra-premium hospitality.

Today, as luxury becomes increasingly accessible and mass-market brands try to move upmarket, Aman's story offers a powerful lesson: In a world of more, less can be worth much more - if you're brave enough to break industry rules and patient enough to let scarcity build desire.

For founders building premium brands today, Aman's framework provides a clear roadmap: limit access, focus on experience, choose meaningful locations, and let your people build your brand. The result might not be the fastest path to growth, but it could be the surest path to premium.

Until next time,

BA

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The future of luxury lies in craftsmanship.”

Fabrice Penot, Co-Founder of Le Labo

In 2006, two former L'Oreal executives made an audacious bet on an unassuming street in Nolita: they would build a luxury perfume brand by breaking every luxury perfume rule. No marble counters. No crystal bottles. No celebrity marketing. No wholesale distribution.

Instead, Fabrice Penot and Eddie Roschi opened Le Labo at 233 Elizabeth Street, which features exposed brick walls, concrete floors, and lab coat-wearing staff. Their manifesto was clear: "There are too many bottles of perfume and not enough soulful fragrances."

The idea probably seemed crazy to others. Luxury meant excess, perfection, and polish. Yet Le Labo bet on simplicity, imperfection, and raw authenticity. The result? They built a billion-dollar brand that was sold for $60 million.

This is the story of how breaking every industry rule created a new luxury category. It is also probably my favorite story so far. Le Labo’s history and principles resonate with me, and I hope they will with you as well.

The Cultural Timing

By 2006, the luxury perfume market had become formulaic. Every brand followed the same playbook: celebrity endorsements, heavy advertising, and mass distribution through department stores. Consumers found the same fragrances in LA, Tokyo, and Paris.

"We were fed up finding the same stores everywhere," Penot recalls. "We wanted to add a cultural experience that you would not find anywhere else."

The Anti-Luxury Strategy

Le Labo's approach was radical in its simplicity:

• No fantasy names, just ingredients and numbers

• Fresh blending in front of customers

• Simple bottles with typewriter font labels

• No PR or marketing spend

• City-exclusive fragrances

"We may only address a small minority," Penot explains, "but those that do like our scent bond with them very closely." The result? 85% brand loyalty.

I love this approach, which was both this newsletter’s and my brand’s strategy - find a niche and crush it (we still have so much to do in the newsletter part, I know).

Premium Through Process

Instead of hiding perfume creation behind marble counters, Le Labo made it a theater. Each fragrance is hand-blended at the moment of purchase. The industrial aesthetic wasn't a design choice—it was a declaration that true luxury lies in craftsmanship, not packaging.

A) The Growth Strategy

Le Labo's unconventional growth path proved remarkably effective. Without formal investor backing or advertising, they expanded through pure product focus and word-of-mouth. "We had to put all our efforts into our product and trust that it would speak for itself," Penot notes.

The strategy worked. Lifestyle magazines and bloggers wrote enthusiastically about the fragrances. Premium hotels and retailers sought partnerships (I just saw that Singapore Airlines made a partnership with them). Le Labo became the antidote to mass luxury.

When Estée Lauder acquired the brand in 2014, they made an unusual promise: complete creative autonomy. "Creation is an autocracy, not a democracy," Roschi explains. "When you ask for opinions, your concept becomes diluted and the result is a mass product."

B) The Framework: Anti-Marketing Marketing

Le Labo's success offers a clear framework for premium brand building through strategic anti-marketing:

1. Process as Premium

• Make creation visible

  • In-store blending stations

  • Lab coat-wearing staff

  • Transparent production

• Turn craft into theater

  • Personal mixing ritual

  • Custom labeling

  • Date stamping

• Educate customers

  • Ingredient knowledge

  • Perfume construction

  • Scent education

2. Scarcity by Design

• Limited Distribution

  • Selective store locations

  • No wholesale channels

  • No department stores

• Geographic Exclusivity

  • City-specific scents

  • Location-based releases

  • Cultural connection

• Fresh Production

  • Made-to-order blending

  • Small batch creation

  • Expiration dates

3. Cultural Over Commercial

• Local Integration

  • Neighborhood selection

  • Cultural alignment

  • Community presence

• Experience Design

  • Industrial aesthetic

  • Minimal branding

  • Craft focus

• Organic Growth

  • No advertising

  • Word-of-mouth

  • Natural advocacy

This framework works because it creates desire through constraint rather than promotion. Each element reinforces the others:

The result? A premium brand that grows through reduction rather than expansion.

Today, with over 150 global points of sale, Le Labo proves that rejecting industry conventions can create a stronger desire than following them. The key? As their manifesto states: "The soul of a fragrance comes from the intention with which it is created and the attention with which it is prepared."

C) Implementing the Anti-Marketing Marketing Framework

Several lessons can apply to your business in this story. I tried to categorize them with simple explanations. Of course not all will work for every business, but I believe there is something for every business.

Process as Premium Implementation

• Design retail spaces like workshops, not stores

• Train staff as artisans, not salespeople

• Document production steps visually

• Create signature rituals for key moments

• Build educational content into an experience

• Make craft visible at every touchpoint

Scarcity Implementation

• Start with a single flagship location

• Expand only to culturally aligned areas

• Create location-specific products/experiences

• Build waitlists naturally

• Never discount

• Limit wholesale/distribution

Cultural Implementation

• Choose locations for cultural fit over foot traffic

• Build relationships with local artists/creators

• Create community spaces within stores

• Document brand story through the process

• Let customers discover you

• Resist rapid expansion

From Local Workshop to Global Luxury

Le Labo's evolution from a single Nolita store to global acquisition provides key lessons in scaling premium brands:

Controlled Growth: Their first expansion was selective - only neighborhoods that matched their cultural ethos. No rush to scale, no compromise on experience. When lifestyle magazines discovered them, they refused traditional PR opportunities. When luxury hotels wanted partnerships, they maintained strict product control.

Preserving Premium: Post-Estée Lauder acquisition, they kept their anti-marketing stance. Still no advertising. Still no mass distribution. Still fresh blending in every location. Today, with 150+ points of sale, each store maintains the workshop aesthetic and artisanal approach.

The Results

• $5M+ revenue without marketing spend

• 85% brand loyalty

• Global recognition without mass exposure

• Premium pricing power

• Category influence

Key insight: They scaled the experience, not just the product. As stated in the beginning, "The future of luxury lies in craftsmanship." Each new location needed to feel like discovering that first Nolita workshop.

Conclusion

Le Labo's success isn’t just about making great perfumes. It is about understanding that in an era of mass luxury, authenticity becomes the ultimate premium. Their anti-marketing approach created more desire than traditional luxury marketing ever could.

The key lesson for premium brands: Sometimes the best way to build desire is to resist the conventional paths to growth.

They proved that:

• The process can be more luxurious than packaging

• Scarcity creates more value than availability

• Cultural capital beats marketing capital

• Anti-marketing can be the best marketing

For founders building premium brands today, Le Labo's story offers a powerful framework: Focus on the soul of your product, make your process your premium, and let authenticity drive your growth.

Today, as luxury becomes increasingly mass-market, Le Labo's anti-luxury revolution feels more relevant (and personal) than ever. Sometimes the best way to stand out is to break every rule in the playbook.

Thanks for reading,

BA

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TLDR

Superhuman turned a free utility (email) into a $30/month premium product by:

- Positioning speed as luxury

- Creating scarcity

- Obsessing over premium experience

- Using price ($30) as a status signal

- Making personal onboarding mandatory

The Premium Utility: How Superhuman Built a $30/Month Email App

"Email is broken for power users, and we're going to fix it,"

Rahul Vohra, Founder & CEO of Superhuman, 2014

When encountering Superhuman, your first thought is “WTF?”. At least that was the case for me.

A billionaire I follow (I think Andrew Wilkinson) mentioned it as a super-productive tool he loves. Well, Superhuman sure does look cool.

But it was not the looks that got my attention, it was the price.

A solid $30 per month. Let me repeat, 30 bucks for a month. For an email app. What was Superhuman doing that was worth 30 dollars, when almost any competitor is free?

This is what I call “the premium utility”. Market it with strong storytelling and bum! You have a luxury email app.

Don’t get me wrong. Superhuman is not aiming to replace Gmail or Outlook. As any premium brand should, it is going after a niche—which it calls “ a power user.”

The Premium Insight

Vohra understood three key things about the market:

1. For professionals, email wasn't just utility - it was identity

2. Speed could be positioned as a luxury

3. Power users valued time over money

These can be combined as a single sentence, which is Superhuman’s core premise; Performance as premium. 

While competitors focused on features, Superhuman obsessed over speed. Everything had to happen in 100ms or less - the threshold where interactions feel instantaneous. 

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Strategic Decisions

Rather than compete on features, Superhuman built desire through three key decisions:

1. Invitation-Only Model 

The waitlist wasn't just about managing growth. It created artificial scarcity in a market of abundant free options. Getting a Superhuman invite became a status marker in tech circles. This is also called scarcity bias, a form of cognitive bias. We tend to place more value on scarce things.

2. Mandatory Personal Onboarding 

Imagine going into a luxury store - but for an email app. Every user gets a personal onboarding session. This serves multiple purposes:

• Justifies the premium price

• Ensures user success

• Creates emotional investment

• Builds premium expectations

3. Price as Positioning 

The $30 price point isn’t just about revenue - it is a statement. In a world of free email, paying for Superhuman signaled both status and seriousness about productivity.

But you can’t just dictate yourself as a premium product without providing a premium value. This is where Superhuman’s premium experience comes in.

The Premium Experience

Superhuman's premium experience is built on three pillars:

First, their obsession with speed sets a new standard for email, enforcing a strict 100ms interaction rule that makes every action feel instantaneous. Instant search capabilities and a zero-lag promise back this rule.

This performance obsession transforms basic email interactions into a luxury experience.

Second, their interface design elevates the everyday email client into a premium tool through a minimalist aesthetic that removes clutter, a command line interface that signals power-user status, and keyboard shortcuts that make users feel like email ninjas.

Finally, Superhuman creates desire through carefully designed exclusivity markers: an invite-only system that creates scarcity, a private community that builds belonging, and mandatory personal onboarding sessions that make users feel like members of an elite club.

Together, these elements transform a free utility into a coveted $30/month premium product.

So, what are the lessons that can be filtered into a framework here? If you want to turn your digital product into digital luxury, these might help;

The Premium Utility Framework

1. Start with power users

• Clear target audience

• Specific pain points

• Willingness to pay

2. Make speed luxury

• Performance as premium

• Response times matter

• Interaction design focus

3. Design premium touchpoints

• High-touch onboarding

• Quality interface

• Premium support

Today, Superhuman processes millions of emails daily, proving that even the most basic utility can become a premium product with the right positioning, storytelling, and experience design.

Premium isn't just about features - it's about understanding how to transform utility into identity through strategic storytelling and flawless execution. This is what we are obsessed with here.

Until next time,

BA

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TLDR

Calm turned meditation from a "vitamin" into a "painkiller" by focusing on sleep.

Grew to 7M downloads before spending on marketing.

Built a $2B company with just 30 people

Used "ICE" framework (Investment, Content, Engagement) for premium partnerships

Currently: 100M+ downloads, 4M+ paying users, 10M enterprise users

"Always keep a careful eye out for those huge waves that are forming on the horizon, and timing is everything. If you're too early you'll be waiting in the freezing cold water for too long. If you're too late, the big wave will have passed you by."

Michael Acton Smith, Founder of Calm

In 2012, that wave was just forming. The mental health conversation was in its infancy. Meditation and mindfulness were still fringe concepts. The idea of paying for guided meditation seemed absurd to many. Yet Michael Acton Smith, fresh from the rollercoaster of Moshi Monsters, and Alex Tew saw something others didn't.

What You'll Get From This Deep-Dive:

1. How to transform a "nice-to-have" into a "must-have" premium product

2. A proven framework for premium partnerships and celebrity collaborations

3. The "Product First, Marketing Later" playbook for sustainable growth

4. Why slow, disciplined scaling often wins in premium markets

5. How to place strategic "small bets" while building a premium brand

The Journey

Calm & Michael Acton Smith

I don’t know about you, but I have an up-down relationship with meditating. There were times I meditated every day, and there were times I didn’t sit down and focused on my breath for months.

We often think of meditation as a one-shot problem solver, a tool that will come out amid a crisis. On the contrary, it is a muscle. You need to train it everyday so that it will be useful when you are in need.

Your typical meditation journey usually ends up in two apps; Calm and Headspace. If you use both, you’ll see although they offer the same service (meditation), they are different. Not only they look different, they feel different as well. And that difference comes from the founder’s perspective.

Unlike many premium brand stories that start with inexperienced founders, Calm began with seasoned entrepreneurs. Michael Acton Smith had already built Firebox, one of the UK's fastest-growing companies, and Moshi Monsters, a children's entertainment empire. But it was the painful experience of scaling and then restructuring Moshi Monsters that led him to meditation.

"I was very intense," Acton Smith reflects on his earlier founder journey. "Every spare second needed to be spent hammering out emails or working on the business. I'd go to bed firing off a few last emails at midnight before falling asleep with the phone glued to my face."

This burnout became the catalyst for Calm. After discovering meditation through books and research, Acton Smith experienced what he calls a "mindful transformation." The key insight wasn't just personal – it was market-defining: meditation needed to be accessible, backed by science, and positioned as a practical tool rather than a mystical practice.

Painkiller vs Vitamin

The crucial insight came through what Acton Smith calls the "vitamin versus painkiller" framework: "Are you a 'nice to have', or are you a necessity? 'Vitamins', people may be willing to try out, they know they should do it but aren't necessarily willing to pay for it or change their habits around it. Conversely, people will pay again and again for 'painkillers'."

This led to their first major strategic pivot. While meditation interested people, it was hard to get them to come back daily. But sleep? That was different. "8 billion people sleep every night, that's a pretty huge TAM," notes Acton Smith. "If we could build something that could help improve your sleep, we'd be creating an incredibly popular painkiller."

It is easy to look at Calm today and say they handle everything about meditation. They have challenges, courses, stories and videos. But good old niching down worked here as well. They solved 1 big problem first, then scaled from there. Also, the timing was on point as well.

Cultural Context & Timing

Three key elements aligned in 2012-2013:

1. Digital Wellness Emergence: Smartphones were becoming ubiquitous, creating both the problem (digital anxiety) and the potential solution (accessible mindfulness).

2. Subscription Model Validation: Netflix and Spotify had proven consumers would pay monthly for digital content.

3. Workplace Wellness Evolution: Companies were beginning to take mental health seriously, opening the B2B channel.

Growth Strategy & Evolution

We can split Calm’s growth into 3 eras.

1. Product First, Marketing Later (2012 - 2014):

   Calm grew to 7 million downloads without any major marketing. The philosophy was clear; “Marketing is like the gasoline that you pour over the fire once it's burning. If you don't have a strong product foundation, then you're constantly going to be wondering whether product or marketing needs tweaking.”

2. Multiple Small Bets (2014 - 2016):

   This is when Acton Smith decided that it is time to grow from their niche. So they started to have little bets across multiple areas. This strategy allowed them to experiment and double down on what was working.

   The breakthrough came with two key features:

   • Daily Calm: A unique 10-minute daily meditation that gave users variety and motivation

   • Sleep Stories: A creative solution to the sleep problem that would become their killer feature

3. Strategic Partnerships (2016-2020)

   Calm developed what they call the ICE principle for partnerships:

   • Investment: Getting partners to have skin in the game

   • Content: Creating unique, exclusive content

   • Engagement: Ensuring partners actually used and believed in the product

The Matthew McConaughey Sleep Story partnership is a great example. I remember my shock when I saw McConaughey on the app. A Sleep Story by Matthew McConaughey? Count me in.

Premium Experience Design

Calm's approach to premium positioning had three key elements:

Scientific Credibility

Calm used extensive research and neuroscience library to prove this ancient method works.

This science-first approach differentiated Calm from more spiritually-oriented meditation apps.

Content Quality

Unlike their competitors who focused on meditation quantity, Calm invested heavily in quality content:

• Daily refreshed content to maintain engagement

• Celebrity narrators for Sleep Stories

• Professional production

Sustainable Value Proposition

Acton Smith believes Calm will be useful not only today, but in years to come as well.

So, their top priority is to maintain a sustainable value chain, not a hit-business VC backed strategy.

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Business Model & Growth Metrics

Calm's growth trajectory tells a story of patient, sustainable scaling:

Key Milestones:

• 2012: Launch

• 2017: Apple's App of the Year

• 2019: $88M Series B funding

• 2020: $2B valuation

• Present Day: Over 100 million downloads, 4 million paying users

Revenue Channels:

1. Direct Consumer Subscriptions

2. Enterprise (10 million users through corporate benefits)

3. Content Partnerships

What makes this growth remarkable is how they achieved it. "We weren't hiring like crazy," Acton Smith reveals. "We've been slower, and we've set the hiring bar extremely high." Even at their peak success, they maintained a lean team of just 30 people while serving millions.

The Sustainable Premium Playbook

From Calm's journey, we can extract several key principles for building premium digital brands:

1. The Product-Marketing Sequence: "All your energy and effort in the early days needs to be spent obsessing over the product," Acton Smith emphasizes. Their framework:

• Build an organic, viral product

• Test and validate with zero (or small) marketing

• Only then add marketing fuel

2. The Multiple Bets Strategy: "Have a fast metabolism, test quickly, ditch the things that don't do well, and double down on the bets that are working." This approach led to their two biggest successes:

• Daily Calm (engagement driver)

• Sleep Stories (revenue driver)

3. The Premium Partnership Triangle: Their ICE framework for partnerships:

• Investment: Equity stake for alignment

• Content: Unique, exclusive material

• Engagement: Authentic product usage

Key Lessons for Premium Founders

1. Find Your Painkiller: The shift from meditation (vitamin) to sleep (painkiller) was crucial. Premium products need to solve urgent, universal problems.

2. Build Cultural Timing: "We benefited from fortunate timing," Acton Smith admits. "Meditation went from being a bit weird and 'woo-hoo' to being cool and getting a lot of mainstream attention."

3. Scale with Discipline: Calm's growth wasn't about rapid expansion but careful cultivation:

• High hiring bar

• Slow, deliberate growth

• Focus on product excellence

• Patient marketing approach

4. Think Long-Term Premium: "You want to build businesses that aren't hit-driven," Acton Smith advises. "Those are the kinds of businesses you can go deep with and bet the rest of your career on."

The Calm story provides a masterclass in building a premium digital brand in the wellness space. Their success wasn't just about having a great product – it was about timing, positioning, and most importantly, the discipline to build sustainable premium value rather than chase rapid growth.

As Acton Smith reflects, "Like a lot of entrepreneurs, in my first two companies, I was very intense... With Calm, we're building something that serves fundamental human needs. That requires a different approach."

For founders building premium brands today, Calm's journey offers a powerful lesson: true premium value isn't built through marketing or hype, but through patient, deliberate creation of genuine utility and value.

Thanks for reading!

See you next week,

BA

Former Disney star turned MIT PhD student Bridgit Mendler has raised $6.3M in seed funding for Northwood Space, a startup revolutionizing satellite ground infrastructure. While others chase satellite launches, Mendler focuses on the overlooked foundation: building the "data highway" between Earth and space. And we are focusing on how she is leading the growth.

What’s To Come In This Issue:

• How an actress became a space infrastructure founder

• Space opportunities exist on the earth too

• The evolution from Home Depot experiments to venture-backed startup

• Analysis of space infrastructure as the next frontier

• Key insights into timing and market positioning

Once Upon A Time, In Home Depot

Sometimes you come across a story that makes you inspired and anxious at the same time. Bridgit Mendler’s story is just like that. You read her transformation story in awe, you think how much can be achieved in a lifetime, and you end up questioning your own life.

From the clutchpoints article

But let’s rewind to covid lockdowns. While most of us were busy making sourdough and binging all the TV shows ever made, Bridgit was in New Hampshire building satellite antennas from parts she found at Home Depot.

This isn’t a typical hobby turned into a career story. At 31, Mendler had already lived several lives: Disney star, recording artist, USC graduate, MIT Media Lab researcher, and Harvard Law student. But in those early pandemic days, tinkering with makeshift antennas, she stumbled upon what would become her next chapter: building the infrastructure for space communication.

She wasn’t just experimenting, she was discovering the seeds of something bigger.

The Ground Game

The space industry has a blind spot. While billions pour into launching satellites and building rockets, the fundamental infrastructure connecting Earth to space hasn't evolved since the 1960s. The current system is like having an information superhighway in the sky, but dirt roads on the ground.

SpaceX and several others are leading a revolution in the skies, but no one is actually looking down at the Earth. You can’t break through in space if you can’t communicate with the earth.

The numbers tell the story:

• Traditional ground stations cost over $1 billion

• Custom manufacturing leads to frequent failures

• Growing satellite launches create communication bottlenecks

• Limited infrastructure restricts space industry growth

This is where Mendler spotted her opportunity. Instead of joining the space race upward, she decided to solve the problem on the ground.

From Star to Startup

Mendler's path to space infrastructure wasn't linear, but it wasn't random either. Each step built crucial understanding:

• USC anthropology: studying how humans build and use systems

• MIT Media Lab: exploring technology's impact on society

• Harvard Law: understanding space law and regulation

• FCC: diving deep into space communication policy

The pivotal moment came during her time at the FCC in 2022. "I completely fell in love with space law," she told CNBC. This wasn't just academic interest - it was market insight.

Building The Space Highway

Northwood Space's approach is fundamentally different from traditional space infrastructure. Instead of custom-built, billion-dollar ground stations (which are mostly for governmental use), they're developing advanced phased array antennas that can be mass-produced.

The technology tells only half the story. The real innovation is in the business model. Their satellite systems are;

• More capable than consumer technology

• More affordable than government systems

This positioning isn't just about price - it's about democratizing space access. Like how SpaceX paved the way for private space companies, Northwood aims the same for the ground.

Market Timing

The timing of Northwood's emergence is crucial. Three key factors converge:

Infrastructure Gap

• Satellite launches outpacing ground capacity

• Communication blackouts becoming common

• Traditional infrastructure showing its age

Technology Maturity

• Phased array technology becoming viable

• Digital beam steering advancing

• Manufacturing costs decreasing

Regulatory Understanding

• Space law evolution

• FCC's growing role

• Infrastructure regulations adapting

The $6.3M Bet

Northwood raised $6.3 million in seed funding from venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund recently. While others chase the glamorous aspects of space, Mendler and her team recognized that the real opportunity lies in the unglamorous infrastructure.

“For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people.”

Bridgit Mendler

This focus on practical impact over hype reflects a deeper understanding of how infrastructure drives innovation. Just as telegraph networks enabled real-time journalism and stock trading, reliable space communication could enable the next wave of human progress.

The Founder's Edge

What makes Northwood's story particularly interesting is how Mendler is leveraging her unique background in their go-to-market strategy. Instead of hiding from her entertainment past, she's using it to differentiate Northwood in a crowded space industry.

When most space startups lead with technical specifications, Mendler leads with vision and accessibility. Her communication style, honed through years in entertainment and refined in academia, makes complex space infrastructure digestible to a broader audience.

Chief Technology Officer Griffin Cleverly, CEO Bridgit Mendler and Head of Software Shaurya Luthra.

Through her public statements and interviews, we can see a clear positioning strategy:

1. Relatable Innovation

• Using the Home Depot antenna story

• Making space infrastructure tangible

• Connecting ground stations to everyday impact

2. Credibility Stacking

• Entertainment success showing adaptability

• Academic credentials establishing expertise

• Legal background demonstrating regulatory insight

• FCC experience proving industry knowledge

3. Vision Communication

• Clear "data highway" metaphor

• Focus on Earth’s impact over space excitement

• Emphasis on democratizing access

Growth Strategy

Northwood's approach to growth appears to follow three key principles:

Institutional First

• $6.3M seed from institutional investors

• Focus on industry credibility

• Strategic announcements and timing

Narrative Control

• Clear, consistent messaging

• Strategic use of Mendler's profile

• Focus on infrastructure story

Market Education

• Emphasis on ground infrastructure importance

• Clear problem-solution framing

• Accessible technical explanations

This approach stands out in an industry often characterized by highly technical or overly promotional communication. Mendler is threading the needle between credibility and accessibility, using her unique background as an asset rather than a liability.

Building a Different Kind of Space Company

Unlike typical space founders who come from aerospace or traditional tech, Mendler's multi-disciplinary background is shaping a different kind of growth story.

The Communication Advantage

The space industry suffers from a communication problem. Most companies either speak in highly technical jargon or resort to sci-fi level hype. Mendler's approach is refreshingly different:

"While everybody else was making their sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot."

This isn't just a cute origin story. It's a deliberate positioning that makes complex space infrastructure relatable to investors, customers, and potential talent.

Growth Through Education

Northwood's communication strategy shows clear patterns:

The Future Playbook

Looking at Mendler's public statements and company materials, we can see a clear growth strategy emerging:

1. Market Development

• Educating about ground infrastructure importance

• Building industry partnerships

• Creating new market categories

2. Technology Evolution

• Phased array advancement

• Mass production capabilities

• Multi-satellite tracking

3. Impact Scaling

• Environmental monitoring

• Global security applications

• Healthcare and education access

The Founder-Led Advantage

What makes Northwood's strategy particularly interesting is Mendler's unique ability to leverage her diverse background. Her journey through entertainment has given her rare storytelling expertise, while her academic research at MIT has instilled analytical rigor, and her legal studies have provided deep regulatory understanding.

This multi-disciplinary foundation enables her to operate at a unique communication scale - she can explain complex technical concepts to investors in the morning, discuss regulatory frameworks with government officials in the afternoon, and share the company's vision with the public in the evening.

Moreover, her credentials form a powerful credibility matrix: technical depth from MIT, regulatory insight from her FCC experience, and industry knowledge from Harvard Law.

It's this rare combination that allows Northwood to bridge the gap between complex space technology and its practical impact on Earth, making the abstract concept of space infrastructure tangible and relevant to multiple stakeholders.

The Bigger Picture

What's emerging isn't just another space company - it's a new model for founder-led growth in deep tech. Mendler is proving that in an industry dominated by technical founders, the ability to communicate vision and build bridges between disciplines might be just as valuable as traditional aerospace experience.

As she told CNBC, "For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people."

This isn't just marketing - it's a fundamental understanding that the next space race won't be won just on technical merit but on the ability to make space infrastructure accessible and relevant to everyday life.

Key Lessons for Founders

The Northwood Space story offers valuable insights for founders, particularly those bridging different industries or bringing unconventional backgrounds to technical fields.

The Multi-Background Advantage

1. Turn Perceived Weaknesses into Strengths

• Mendler didn't hide her entertainment background

• Used communication skills as differentiation

• Leveraged diverse experience for unique insights

2. Credibility Building

• Systematic skill acquisition (MIT, Harvard Law)

• Strategic role choices (FCC, space law)

• Clear expertise demonstration

3. Vision Communication

• Making complex topics accessible

• Using relatable metaphors

• Connecting technical solutions to human impact

Market Entry Strategy

Key principles from Northwood's approach:

Growth Framework

Northwood's playbook reveals a systematic approach. It is actually similar to their communication approach, which means communication leads the growth in founder-led brands.

Northwood's growth playbook starts with rigorous problem education - they don't just explain the challenge of ground infrastructure, they demonstrate its market size and visualize its impact on everyday life.

This foundation of understanding then flows into establishing solution credibility, proven through their technical capabilities, validated by $6.3M in seed funding, and reinforced through industry recognition.

But what truly sets their approach apart is how they scale their vision: they've articulated a clear long-term mission that extends beyond just building better antennas, identifying multiple application areas from environmental monitoring to global security, and painting a picture of potential global impact that makes their infrastructure play feel less like a technical solution and more like a crucial step in humanity's space future.

Final Thoughts: A New Kind of Founder

Perhaps the most important lesson from Mendler's journey is that there isn't one path to entrepreneurship. In an industry dominated by traditional technical founders, she's showing how diverse backgrounds and strong communication skills can be crucial advantages.

The key is turning your unique background into an asset rather than trying to fit a predetermined mold. As space becomes increasingly important to everyday life, we'll need more founders who can bridge technical innovation with human understanding.

As Mendler demonstrates, sometimes the best preparation for solving complex technical problems isn't just technical expertise - it's the ability to see patterns across disciplines and communicate solutions in ways that resonate with both experts and everyday people.

See you next week,

BA

Welcome to the world of Late Checkout Capital, where small bets and community ownership are replacing the traditional venture model. And where Greg Isenberg is proving that in the era of digital communities, the real opportunity isn't in hunting unicorns - it's in nurturing foals.

Before we start, here’s a fun little trivia; last year I publicly applied for Late Checkout’s Growth Manager role (with a Twitter post). It went semi-viral, and had a great conversation with Theo (Greg’s co-founder). Even though I didn’t get the role, I appreciate their honesty in the process. They still have plenty of open roles, in case you are in search of a new job.

TLDR

Greg Isenberg is building a different kind of investment firm. While VCs write million-dollar checks hunting unicorns, Late Checkout writes $100K-$500K checks buying undervalued digital communities. Through his "buy, build, and bridge" strategy, Greg is proving that building ten $100M companies might be smarter than chasing one billion-dollar outcome. This isn't just another investment thesis - it's a fundamental rethinking of how value is created in the digital age.

What’s To Come In This Issue:

• How the traditional VC model is breaking, and why community-based businesses are the future

• From selling his first startup at 22 to developing a contrarian investment thesis, Greg’s Journey

• Inside Late Checkout's "buy, build, and bridge" methodology for turning small communities into valuable assets

• How Greg's philosophy translates into practice through real community acquisitions and growth

• Deep dive into the manifesto that's challenging traditional notions of business building

• Where Greg sees the next wave of opportunity in digital community building

The Great Disillusionment

Greg himself

The venture capital model is not for everyone. For every unicorn success, thousands of sacrifices are made. The traditional VC world has a simple formula: Raise big money. Write big checks. Hunt unicorns. Pray for the one investment that returns the entire fund.

This model worked in an era where building software companies required millions in capital. But something has shifted in the digital landscape. While venture capitalists are still writing bigger checks and chasing bigger exits, a new kind of opportunity has emerged in their blind spot.

Through his writing, Greg identifies three fundamental shifts in the market:

1) The Great Unbundling

The era of monolithic platforms is ending. Where Facebook once dominated all social interaction, we're now seeing the rise of focused, niche communities.

• Discord communities are turning into million-dollar businesses

• Subreddits are launching successful products

• Facebook Groups are becoming marketplaces

• Slack channels are evolving into media companies

These aren't just user groups - they're micro-economies waiting to be built. Yet traditional investors largely ignore these opportunities. Too small. Not scalable enough. No clear exit path. The very reasons VCs passed on these communities were exactly what makes them valuable.

2) The Creator Evolution

The first wave of the creator economy was about individuals building personal brands. The second wave, as Greg notes in his newsletter, is about creators building sustainable businesses. They don't just want followers - they want ownership. They don't just want reach - they want revenue.

3) The Investment Desert

Between the angel checks under $50,000 and the VC checks over $1 million lies a vast desert of opportunity. Communities too successful for angel investment but too "small" for traditional venture capital. It's in this desert that Greg spotted his oasis.

There is an opportunity exists in three intersecting trends:

Greg spotted this early on

This isn’t just a gap in the market. It is a completely overlooked market in itself.

Greg's Journey

Before Greg became the community kingpin, he lived the traditional startup life. At 13, he was already showing signs of entrepreneurial spirit, flipping items on eBay and learning the fundamentals of value creation.

By 22, he had already tasted success, selling his first company, 5by, to StumbleUpon. But instead of following the typical founder path - raising bigger rounds, chasing bigger exits - Greg started noticing patterns that others missed.

Then came the chapter that would reshape his entire perspective on business building. As a product leader at WeWork, Greg had a front-row seat to one of the most spectacular implosions in startup history. He watched as billions in venture capital transformed into valuable lessons about the dangers of growth at all costs.

The experience crystallized something he had been thinking about since his early entrepreneurial days: Maybe the real opportunity wasn't in building what VCs wanted to fund. Maybe it was in building what customers actually wanted to use.

The Thesis Evolution

This realization led to a series of experiments. Instead of raising a traditional fund, Greg started testing a different approach. Small check sizes. Quick turnarounds. Active operation instead of passive investment.

Each deal taught him something new about what worked in the new digital economy:

These lessons would eventually form the foundation of Late Checkout's investment thesis.

The Investment Strategy

Greg's approach to investing bears little resemblance to traditional venture capital. Through his Late Checkout newsletter and Multipreneur Manifesto, he outlines a methodology that's more reminiscent of old-school business building than modern startup investing.

The Core Thesis

"Stop trying to build one billion-dollar company," he wrote in his manifesto. "Build ten $100 million ones instead."

This isn't just a catchy phrase - it's the foundation of a completely different approach to value creation. While VCs spread big bets across many companies hoping for one massive winner, Greg makes focused bets on smaller opportunities he can actively grow.

The Acquisition Criteria

Through his published content, Greg outlines what he looks for:

Check Size Sweet Spot

• Investments between $100K-$500K (even less for beginners)

• Too small for institutional capital

• Big enough to have proven traction

• Small enough to be overlooked

Community Fundamentals

• Engaged user base

• Clear niche focus

• Basic monetization in place

• Single operator (or a small team) running things

Growth Potential

• Multiple revenue stream possibilities

• Cross-promotion opportunities

• Tool and infrastructure needs

• Scaling potential

The Operating Principles

But what truly sets Late Checkout apart isn't just what they buy - it's how they operate. Greg's published frameworks show a systematic approach to community growth:

The Buy Phase

• Find undervalued communities

• Evaluate engagement metrics

• Assess monetization potential

• Structure intelligent deals

The Build Phase

• Improve user experience

• Add revenue streams

• Enhance tools and systems

• Maintain community authenticity

The Bridge Phase

• Connect complementary communities

• Share resources across properties

• Build common infrastructure

• Create network effects

Growth Framework

Unlike the traditional venture model of "grow at all costs," Greg advocates for what he calls "sustainable scaling." This includes:

1. Revenue First

• Focus on actual money-making

• Multiple revenue streams

• Clear unit economics

• Sustainable growth rates

2. Community Health

• Member engagement metrics

• Content quality measures

• Moderation systems

• Culture preservation

3. Operational Efficiency

• Shared resources across properties

• Common technology infrastructure

• Knowledge transfer systems

• Team optimization

This framework isn't theoretical - it's battle-tested across multiple acquisitions and shared openly through Greg's content and case studies.

Case Studies in Community Building

Through his Late Checkout newsletter and public content, Greg shares his approach to community acquisition and growth. Let's look at how his frameworks translate into practice.

The Buy-Build-Bridge Model

"Buy, Build, and Bridge isn't just a strategy, it's a repeatable system for turning undervalued communities into thriving businesses."

Greg Isenberg

We talked about it above, but this system shows up consistently across his investments:

Islands: The Community-First Product

Perhaps the most interesting implementation of Greg's thesis isn't about buying communities - it's about building products for them. Through his public content, he shares how Islands emerged from studying community needs:

Islands X WeWork

1. Find Existing Behavior

• Study how communities currently operate

• Identify common pain points

• Look for manual workarounds

• Spot repetitive tasks

2. Build Targeted Solutions

• Focus on specific use cases

• Keep it simple and focused

• Solve real problems

• Listen to user feedback

Islands was acquired by WeWork, where Greg became the Head of Product Strategy.

Pattern Recognition

Across his investments and content, clear patterns emerge in what Greg looks for:

1. Community Characteristics

• Natural gathering points

• Organic engagement

• Clear shared interests

• Basic monetization potential

2. Growth Indicators

• Word-of-mouth growth

• Active discussions

• Regular user-generated content

• Strong retention

3. Monetization Opportunities

• Multiple revenue stream potential

• Clear value proposition

• Willing-to-pay audience

• Scalable economics

Key Learnings

Through his newsletter, Greg shares crucial insights from implementing this strategy:

Community First, Product Second

• Don't disrupt what's working

• Enhance existing behavior

• Keep community trust

• Build what users need

Value Creation Over Growth

• Focus on sustainable metrics

• Build multiple revenue streams

• Maintain healthy unit economics

• Grow through value, not hype

The Multipreneur Philosophy

While others were chasing unicorns, Greg was developing what he calls "The Multipreneur Manifesto" - a different vision for building wealth and value in the digital age.

The Core Philosophy

"The future belongs to people who can spot undervalued assets, know how to grow them, and can hold them forever" Greg writes in his manifesto.

This isn't just about buying businesses - it's about fundamentally rethinking how value is created in the digital age. The manifesto lays out several key principles:

1. Small is Beautiful

• Don't chase billion-dollar outcomes

• Focus on sustainable businesses

• Build multiple revenue streams

• Create compound growth

2. Own, Don't Rent

• Build lasting assets

• Control your destiny

• Create real equity

• Think in decades

3. Operate, Don't Speculate

• Active management over passive investing

• Hands-on growth

• Operational excellence

• Value creation through improvement

The Traditional VC Contrast

Greg's approach stands in stark contrast to traditional venture capital:

The Operating Framework

Through his content, Greg outlines a systematic approach to multipreneurship:

Portfolio Strategy

• Diversified but focused investments

• Complementary businesses

• Shared resources

• Network effects

Value Creation

• Improve operations

• Add revenue streams

• Build better tools

• Enhance user experience

Long-term Vision

• Build lasting businesses

• Create compound growth

• Develop infrastructure

• Foster ecosystems

The Long Game

Unlike the traditional startup world's focus on quick exits, Greg's philosophy emphasizes playing the long game by;

• Building Infrastructure (creating lasting value, developing systems, scaling operations)

• Focusing on Fundamentals (profit, engagement, sustainability)

• Thinking in Decades (network effects, value accumulation, compounding growth)

The Future of Digital Empire Building

Through his writing and podcast appearances, Greg paints a picture of where he sees digital business building heading - and it looks very different from the venture-backed startup world we know today.

The Late Checkout Empire

The Industry Evolution

In his Late Checkout newsletter, Greg outlines several key shifts he sees happening:

1. The Platform Shift

• From massive platforms to niche communities

• From rented audiences to owned spaces

• From scale obsession to engagement focus

• From growth hacking to community building

2. The Investment Evolution

• From fund structures to permanent capital

• From passive investing to active operation

• From unicorn hunting to zebra building

• From exit focus to perpetual ownership

3. The Business Model Shift

• From single revenue streams to multiple

• From user growth to user value

• From venture scale to sustainable scale

• From blitzscaling to steady growth

Greg sees several major opportunities emerging, which are all growth potentials. These include (but are not limited to);

Community Infrastructure;

• Tools for community operation

• Analytics and insights platforms

• Monetization infrastructure

• Growth frameworks

Digital Property Development

• Undervalued community acquisition

• Professional management

• Value-add operations

• Network building

New Operating Models

• Personal holding company structures

• Permanent capital vehicles

• Operational playbooks

• Scalable systems

Market Opportunities

Through these shifts, Greg identifies several key areas ripe for the multipreneur approach.

Vertical Communities

• Professional networks

• Hobby groups

• Interest-based communities

• Learning circles

Creator Infrastructure

• Monetization tools

• Engagement platforms

• Analytics systems

• Growth frameworks

Digital Property Management

• Community operations

• Content management

• Audience development

• Revenue optimization

The Next Phase

Looking ahead, Greg envisions a new kind of digital economy where value creation, a community-first approach, and long-term vision dominate.

In my personal opinion, this is the ultimate way for majority of the entrepreneurs. Building a unicorn is exhausting. It is only worth it if you have the necessary ambition.

Personally, I prefer a smaller, steady, and profitable income. But it might be still risky to have multiple, small bets. Thus, my own reflection on the multipreneurship thesis is this;

One main cash flow business > Smaller digital business > Alternative investments

I believe you should focus on creating a single cash flow business first. Then, automate it as much as possible and invest in smaller niche businesses. All the excess profit goes to an investment portfolio afterward.

A Final Thought

As Greg writes in his newsletter, "The future belongs to those who understand that real value isn't in the platform - it's in the people who call it home."

This vision represents more than just a new investment thesis. It's a fundamental rethinking of how value is created and captured in the digital age. While venture capital continues to chase the next big thing, Greg and Late Checkout are building an empire of small, profitable, sustainable businesses - proving that sometimes the best way to build something big is to think small.

See you in the next edition,

BA

Welcome to the first issue of the Founder Marketer - where I spend 20+ hours researching successful founder-led brands to give you an actionable road map.

This newsletter won't be about successful grifters selling courses. I will be deep diving into legitimate businesses, where their founders are leading the funnel, but not the only source of revenue. I believe this is the healthiest and longest-term approach to any founder-led business.

P.S You’re probably receiving this because you’ve downloaded one of my free guides.

What’s To Come In This Issue:

• How to enter a saturated market with a unique angle

• Real examples of authentic community building

• Practical lessons in product-led growth

• Strategic insights into the newsletter industry

• Actionable frameworks for scaling a software business

Every content revolution starts with an infrastructure play.

In the 1450s, Johannes Gutenberg didn't write books - he built the machine that would enable millions of others to share their ideas. His printing press wasn't just another tool; it was the infrastructure that powered Europe's intellectual revolution.

Five centuries later, we're witnessing a similar pattern. The creator economy isn't just being shaped by individual writers or creators. It's also being defined by the infrastructure builders - the ones creating the tools that enable others to build content empires.

This is where our story begins. With a mechanical engineer in his parent's basement, questioning everything at 2 A.M.

The Beehiiv Blueprint: How Tyler Denk Is Building the Modern Infrastructure for Digital Publishing

Cute Bee, from Beehiiv’s X Account

It's 2 A.M. 

A young mechanical engineer is questioning his decisions in his parent's basement. He knows he lied to his friends about his skills. He feels shame, disappointment, and let down. There is no way he could figure out what he promised. There seems to be only one way out, and that is quitting.

But Tyler Denk is not that type of person. 

The task was building a referral program for the ultimate newsletter of all times, Morning Brew. Although Tyler knew nothing about the matter, he manages to build what he promised, against almost quitting 5 times.

And that was the start of the race of building the ultimate newsletter tool, amidst the newsletter boom, against the giants.

The Newsletter Gold Rush

"Email newsletters are having their Shopify moment. Just as Shopify made it easy for anyone to open an e-commerce store, newsletter platforms are democratizing media ownership." - Packy McCormick, Not Boring

The Evolution of Newsletter Industry

Even my grandma knows content is king (and she’s long gone). We are being bullied to create content. We see how Instagram made Gymhark a billion-dollar company, how YouTube made Mr.Beast the richest creator, or how X won the election for Trump.

But nothing comes free. Building your business on your content is risky. You are playing in someone else's garden. They make the rules, and you can't question or appeal if they decide to shut down your business. One algorithm change, one policy update, one account suspension, and your entire business could crumble. The platform holds all the cards; you’re just playing their game.

This reality sparked a renaissance in one of the internet's oldest tools: the humble email newsletter. In 2020, this "outdated" medium was already a $7.5 billion market. By 2027, it's projected to reach $18 billion. Why? Because every day, over 4 billion people check their email multiple times. Social media might get the glory, but email remains the backbone of digital communication.

The gold rush analogies wrote themselves:

• Morning Brew sold to Axios for $75 million

• The Hustle was acquired by HubSpot for $27 million

• Substack raised funding at a staggering $650 million valuation

But Tyler saw something beyond the obvious. During the actual gold rush, the real money wasn't in panning for gold – it was in selling shovels to the miners. Except Tyler wasn't interested in just selling shovels. He wanted to build the entire mining operation.

"The next decade will see the rise of thousands of profitable newsletter businesses. The infrastructure is finally catching up to the opportunity." - Sam Parr, The Hustle

"I have worked first-hand with dozens of content creators, publishers, and businesses who have struggled to really unlock the value of email," Tyler explains. "Whether it's overpaying for clunky software, or trying to piece together a handful of different solutions... building a successful newsletter has been far too difficult and expensive."

The market was (and is) crowded, yes. Mailchimp, Substack, Campaign Monitor, and countless others were already serving millions of customers. But Tyler had a unique insight from his Morning Brew days: most newsletter creators were stitching together five or six different services, each costing hundreds or thousands of dollars monthly. The tools were fragmented, expensive, and often frustratingly complex.

It was time for something different. Not just another email tool, but a comprehensive platform that would make enterprise-level newsletter capabilities accessible to everyone. The vision was clear: build the infrastructure that would power the next generation of media companies.

The Engineer Who Couldn't Get Hired

Tyler Denk wasn't supposed to be here. Silicon Valley had already decided that. He was a mechanical engineer who never worked in mechanical engineering because he was too busy building startups. He was a software engineer without a CS degree. Big tech didn't want to take chances on him. But they missed something crucial: you can teach skills, but you can't teach drive.

That drive manifested early. During college, while others were planning their corporate careers, Tyler was sleeping on university auditorium floors. "I sacrificed my weekends," he recalls. "We would drive to university hackathons at Harvard, Toronto, University of Michigan, trying to get signups." His first venture, Venturestorm, aimed to connect entrepreneurs with student developers.

Tyler and his friends during VentureStorm

But Venturestorm failed. The lesson was painful but invaluable: they had targeted university students – a market with a real problem but no money to spend on solutions. This early failure would later shape every business decision at Beehiiv. Tyler learned that identifying a problem isn't enough; you need customers who can and will pay to solve it.

The $2.50 Moment

After graduation, Tyler found himself in his parent’s basement, freelancing and building Shopify sites to make ends meet. His bank account had $2.50 in it. Not exactly the tech success story he had imagined.

Then came the call that would change everything. Austin Rief, a childhood friend and co-founder of Morning Brew, needed someone to build a referral program for their growing newsletter. Despite having no experience with referral systems, Tyler said yes. What followed were three weeks of sleepless nights, constant doubt, and near-quitting experiences.

"It'd be 2 A.M. and I lied about knowing what I was doing," he admits. "I was like, there's no way I'm going to be able to figure this out. I just kept hitting roadblocks. I quit almost five times but eventually got the product out."

That simple referral system would become Morning Brew's growth engine, helping them scale to millions of subscribers. More importantly, it earned Tyler a position as their product manager. For the next 3.5 years, he would get a front-row seat to one of the most successful newsletter operations in the world.

The Morning Brew Education

If Tyler's college years were his bachelor's in entrepreneurship, Morning Brew was his master's in newsletter operations. Under his product leadership, the newsletter grew to nearly 4 million subscribers and $20 million in revenue before its eventual $75 million acquisition by Axios.

But something bigger was brewing. Morning Brew was getting flooded with emails from smaller newsletter creators asking how to grow their lists (or build/design like them). Tyler started noticing a pattern: successful newsletters weren't just using one tool – they were cobbling together entire tech stacks:

• WordPress for content management ($299/year)

• Mailchimp for email sending ($1,200/year)

• Separate analytics tools ($600/year)

• Custom-built growth features ($1,000+/year)

• Various monetization platforms (taking 20-30% of revenue)

The total cost? Easily $3,000+ annually, plus the technical headaches of making everything work together. For bigger operations like Morning Brew, this meant building custom solutions. For smaller creators, it meant either massive expenses or severe limitations.

The Market Gap Tyler Spotted

Existing Solutions' Limitations:

1. Email Marketing Platforms (Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor)

• Built for general email marketing

• Lack newsletter-specific features

• Complex pricing for growing creators

2. Newsletter Platforms (Substack)

• Limited monetization options

• Basic growth tools

• Rigid branding options

3. Enterprise Solutions (Salesforce Marketing Cloud)

• Prohibitively expensive

• Overly complex

• Not optimized for content creators

The Weekend Project That Couldn't Wait

By 2020, Morning Brew was becoming too corporate for Tyler's entrepreneurial spirit. He took a job at YouTube Music, but an idea kept him up at night: what if someone built the entire Morning Brew tech stack as a single, accessible platform?

He started working on Beehiiv during weekends, but he knew he couldn't do it alone. He reached out to Ben, the first engineer he hired at Morning Brew, and Jake, Ben's best friend and another Morning Brew engineer. Both were just 24, married, with families to support. Going all-in on a startup was a huge risk.

Tyler and his co-founders

"We were overly excited and incredibly burnt out," he says. They were pouring endless hours into building while balancing full-time jobs, waking up every morning with anxiety that one of dozens of competitors could launch something to render their work useless.

But they had something others didn't: a deep understanding of what newsletter creators actually needed. They weren't building just another email tool; they were creating the infrastructure that would power the next generation of media companies.

The Leap of Faith

"In the early days, they had to attract customers and retain them while building the product." This dry statement doesn't capture the reality of what the Beehiiv team faced in 2021. They were entering a market dominated by giants, with a product that was the least developed among dozens of providers, many of which had been around for decades.

But Tyler had learned something crucial from his Venturestorm days: you don't have to be first, you just have to be right about a different point of view. While Substack bet everything on the subscription model alone, Beehiiv saw a different future – one where creators would need multiple revenue streams, complete customization, and enterprise-grade tools at consumer-friendly prices.

The team's first pitch deck was met with skepticism. "I lost count at how many thought we had a 0% chance of competing with Substack, Mailchimp, Revue (RIP), and Bulletin (RIP x2)," Tyler remembers. But Howard Lindzon and the team at Social Leverage saw what others missed – the potential to build the infrastructure layer of the creator economy.

When that first $2.6 million wire hit the bank in July 2021, it was time for the ultimate test of conviction. The team quit their jobs and went all-in on Beehiiv.

Howard Lindzon (wings are not real, probably)

The Ship or Die Mentality

Most startups talk about moving fast. Beehiiv redefined what that meant. Their philosophy? "Ship or die." This wasn't just a catchy slogan – it became the company's DNA.

Early hires were what Tyler calls "unicorn engineers" – people who could own a feature end to end. The team operated with a simple principle: progress over perfection. Features might launch unpolished, but they'd improve rapidly based on real user feedback.

"We entered a very competitive industry as the least developed platform among dozens of providers," Tyler explains. "The only way to win customers over is to show that we are serious players by building things and launching things. And then do it over and over again."

This wasn't just talk. The numbers tell the story:

• 3-5 new features shipped every week

• Product updates announced almost daily on social media

• Features going from user request to production in days, not months

Here’s the Q1-Q3 release velocity, just as an example;

Q1 - Q3 2023, the team was shipping as always

A competitor might take three months to launch a new feature. Beehiiv would do it in three days. Not because they were careless, but because they understood something fundamental: the product is always the worst it'll ever be today; tomorrow it'll be a little better.

The Beehiiv Mentality

Building in Public (The Real Way)

Beehiiv team is everywhere. I mean everywhere. You can recognize them with their signature bee emoji. You will see them almost anywhere where Beehiiv is mentioned. Whether it is X, LinkedIn, Reddit or Youtube.

They will be there.

I've never seen a company engage that much with their users. They answer questions, help people using the software, or even grow their personal newsletters. And what's more impressive is that they listen to their customers so vividly. The whole engagement serves as a tool for gathering user feedback, responding to queries, and providing support - all the while growing the community.

Of course, Tyler is leading the whole show here as well. I personally tested this by replying with a question to one of his newsletters. He replied in 48 hours. Look at any of his social media profiles, especially X, you'll see that he's answering questions, solving problems, and sharing small newsletters.

This approach created a virtuous cycle:

1. Users felt heard and shared feedback openly

2. The team shipped features based on real needs

3. Successful users became vocal advocates

4. More creators joined the platform

5. The cycle repeated, stronger each time

Here’s a real example from X;

• User requested better sponsor management (Day 1)

• Team discussed publicly on X/Twitter (Day 2)

• Feature specced and developed (Days 3-5)

• Launched to beta users (Day 6)

• Full release with user case study (Day 10)

Simply amazing.

The Growth Mechanics

While others in the space were spending heavily on advertising, Beehiiv built growth mechanisms into their product. The subtle "Published on Beehiiv" footer at the bottom of every newsletter wasn't just branding – it was a growth loop that turned every sent email into a potential customer acquisition tool.

• 8% of new sign-ups came through footer clicks

• 45% higher conversion rate than other channels

• 3.2x higher retention rate for referred users

But the real magic was in their approach to creator success. Instead of just providing tools, they became active participants in their users' growth:

• Sharing user success stories on their social channels

• Creating detailed case studies of growing newsletters

• Building features that directly addressed monetization challenges

• Actively connecting creators with advertisers

This approach paid off. By early 2023, the numbers were staggering:

• Nearly $2M in monthly recurring revenue

• Over 2 billion emails sent monthly

• A team of 75 people across the globe

• Thousands of creators building their businesses on Beehiiv

In less than two years, they'd gone from a weekend project to raising $12.5M in Series A investments. But Tyler saw something even more important than the metrics: "The product is always the worst it'll ever be today; tomorrow it'll be a little better. I'd rather be over-capitalized during our worst days and survive to see our best days ahead."

Not Just Another Newsletter Platform

What makes Beehiiv different isn't just their speed of execution or growth metrics. It's their vision of what a modern media company's infrastructure should look like.

Take their approach to monetization. While Substack stuck rigidly to the subscription model, Beehiiv built what Tyler calls "the Modern Medici of Content" – a platform that enables multiple revenue streams:

Their ad network, modeled conceptually after Meta Ads and Google Ads, lets brands programmatically target and deliver campaigns across thousands of trusted email newsletters. This creates a low-friction revenue stream for creators while giving brands access to engaged audiences.

But ads are just the beginning. They're building what they call "the full stack" of creator monetization:

• Subscription management

• Sponsorship marketplace

• Commerce integration

• Affiliate systems

• Custom revenue streams

They're not just providing tools; they're building the entire ecosystem. Beehiiv is vertically integrating the whole value chain into one writing system.

The Technical Evolution

Behind this rapid growth is a technical infrastructure that had to evolve just as quickly. The team made several crucial decisions early on:

They built with a microservices architecture from day one, allowing them to ship features independently and scale different parts of the system as needed. Their API-first approach meant everything they built could be extended and integrated.

But perhaps most importantly, they built their analytics engine from scratch. "At Morning Brew, we had to stitch together multiple tools to get the insights we needed," Tyler says. "We wanted to give every creator enterprise-level analytics out of the box."

This focus on technical excellence paid off. While competitors struggled with deliverability issues or platform outages, Beehiiv maintained reliability while shipping features at a breakneck pace.

Looking Ahead: The Next Chapter

Now, with nearly $2M in monthly revenue and over 75 employees across the globe, you might expect Beehiiv to slow down. Instead, they're accelerating.

Their roadmap reads like a creator's wishlist:

• AI-powered writing and optimization tools

• Advanced commerce integration

• Community features

• Mobile-first publishing

• Enterprise-grade features for individual creators

All these feed into a single vision: Letting creators build sustainable media businesses, not just send emails. I also read in one of Tyler’s interviews that they are considering expanding more into the email marketing industry, but not on a short term horizon.

The Lessons for Founders

First, you don't have to be first to win. Beehiiv entered a crowded market with established players, but they won by having a different point of view about what creators needed.

Second, authenticity in building in public matters. While others treated it as a marketing tactic, Beehiiv made it part of their company DNA, creating genuine connections with their community.

Third, technical excellence and speed aren't mutually exclusive. By making smart architectural decisions early, they could maintain both rapid shipping and platform stability.

But perhaps the most important lesson is about focus. In an era where companies try to be everything to everyone, Beehiiv chose to be the best at one thing: helping creators build sustainable newsletter businesses.

Here’s a more structured form of key lessons from the issue;

For Early-Stage Founders

1. Market Entry

• Find underserved segments

• Build minimum viable audience

• Start with core features

• Focus on sustainable economics

2. Product Development

• Ship fast, but deliberately

• Listen to early users

• API first design

• Build distribution into product

3. Team Building

• Hire for potential

• Create clear processes

• Maintain startup culture

For Scaling Companies

1. Growth Strategy

• Invest in community: Authentic engagement, quick response, public problem solving

• Build multiple growth loops

• Focus on unit economics

2. Technical Architecture

• Plan for scale

• Maintain flexibility

• Prioritize reliability

3. Market Expansion

• Test new markets carefully

• Build strong partnerships

• Maintain core focus

Beyond Newsletters

The newsletter boom of 2020-2023 was just the beginning. What we're seeing now is the emergence of a new kind of media company – one that starts with a newsletter but grows into much more.

Look at Morning Brew's evolution:

• Started as a daily newsletter

• Expanded to multiple newsletters

• Added podcasts and events

• Built a marketing agency

• Created educational products

This pattern is repeating across the industry. Single-person newsletters are evolving into multi-product media operations. But here's the catch – the tools haven't evolved with them. Until now.

The New Media Stack

Beehiiv's rapid growth (from $0 to $24M ARR in three years) isn't just a success story. It's a signal that the market was waiting for this evolution. Their platform is becoming what WordPress was to blogging – the foundation upon which creators build their empires.

The numbers tell an interesting story about where this is headed:

• The newsletter market is expected to hit $18 billion by 2027

• The creator economy is projected to reach $250 billion by 2027

• Email remains the most direct and valuable channel for audience connection

But these numbers don't capture the real transformation happening. We're witnessing the birth of a new kind of media infrastructure, one that's:

• Creator-first but scalable to enterprises

• Built for monetization from day one

• Designed for multi-channel publishing

• Focused on sustainable business models

The Next Wave

Tyler sees three major shifts coming in digital publishing:

1. The Rise of Owned Platforms: Social media will remain important, but creators are increasingly building their businesses on platforms they control. Email isn't just surviving; it's becoming the backbone of creator businesses.

2. The Monetization Evolution: We're moving beyond simple subscriptions or ad models. The future is in diverse revenue streams, all managed through a single platform. Beehiiv's bet is that creators shouldn't have to choose between monetization methods – they should be able to use them all.

3. The Infrastructure Layer: The next big opportunity isn't in creating another social platform or content tool. It's in building the infrastructure that powers the entire creator economy.

A Final Thought

The Team

There's a certain poetry to Tyler's journey. The mechanical engineer who couldn't get hired by big tech companies is now building the infrastructure that's reshaping digital publishing. The guy who started with $2.50 in his bank account is now helping creators build sustainable businesses.

But perhaps the most interesting part of this story is what it tells us about the future of media. We're not just seeing the rise of a successful startup; we're watching the emergence of a new kind of media infrastructure. One that's built for creators, shaped by community, and designed for sustainability.

Tyler's journey with Beehiiv demonstrates that success in a crowded market comes from:

• Deep understanding of user needs

• Relentless focus on execution

• Building genuine community

• Long-term value creation

As Tyler puts it: "We're not just building a better newsletter platform. We're building the foundation for the next generation of media companies."

And you know what I learned from spending dozens of hours researching about them?

They are just getting started. Or in his own words, “we are still so early”.

See you on the next one,

BA