Chasing Lenny & Open Source CEO - Year 1 Recap

First year building in public wrap up of the newsletter so far. šŸ“–

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BUILDING IN PUBLIC šŸ”Ž

A look back 12-months in

Well, that was a crazy year, nearly 30k subs, some major sponsors, a side-hustle come second startup and a new passion I never knewā€”or maybe forgotā€”I had. Firstly, let me start by saying thank you if you are reading this.

Whether you an old subscriber, a new one, reading this online or were forwarded it by a friend. Whether you are staying for good or are unsubscribing later todayā€”thank you. Your attention to the words I punch out on the keyboard has allowed me to build something really cool that a lot of people love. And together, we can keep building.

I want this newsletter to be the best place for founders, investors and leaders to come and; a) be entertained and b) be educated. Business is hard and sometimes, not all that fun. Not here. Here we want to highlight the wins and the losses in business but also work hard to help it al be a little bit easier. Again, from the very bottom of my heart, thank you.

Happy birthday to us.

Todayā€™s edition, like our first building in public post at 10k subs, and our last at the New Year, will be a random smattering of interesting things that I think could be cool for us to share with you. So without further ado, letā€™s jump in.

ESPN.com/newsletters

I am avid sports fan. Every single dayā€”without failā€”for the last 20 years I check ESPN.com to see the box score from the NBA, cricket and a few other bits and piece. Here I present out little stat sheet from the first year of operations.

Date of first edition:

March 04, 2023

Frequency:

Weekly but sometimes twice weekly

Editions & words:

43 & 129,000 (approx)

Subscribers count:

29,317

Average open rate:

48.6%

Click through rate:

3.7%

Time commitment:

10-12 hours per week

Team:

Me and Bia my Content Assistant

Reader profile:

Tech leaders in NAMER and APAC

Monthly revenue:

$6,350

Monthly expenses:

$1,120

Overall, if I were to look back and assess how I think the first year of operations went, Iā€™d be pretty happy. Iā€™d probably give it a B+. As youā€™ll see as we get a little further into this edition, I am very competitive.

And although this is my artistic expression, I am still coming for the other newsletters. I want to beat them. I want to win it all. Itā€™s as if Leonardo DaVinci challenged Vincent Van Gogh to a duel to death because he thought his feathering was simply too thick. Itā€™s artā€”but I want to win at art.

Having said all that, Lenny, Packy, Mario and the other players I look at in the newsletter space are all full time newsletter operators. Whereas this is my side thing. So overall, B+. I am happy with the first year.

Letā€™s talk acquisitions

I still believe very heavily in the business of newsletters. So much so that, over the last 12 months I acquired three smaller newsletters as a trial. Why? Wellā€”I ran the numbers on the last 10 or so major acquisitions of media brands in the last few years and found that the average price per subscriber at sale was $38.

Today, you can get a good subscriber using a referral network like beehiiv Boosts or SparkLoop Upscribe for ~$2. And similar results on Meta and Twitter Ads. But you can also buy an engaged list for pennies on the dollar.

I paid between $0.50 and $0.80 per subscriber on three acquisitions in the last year. The first was a Notion tools newsletter, the new was a startup newsletter, and the most recent a newsletter about AI.

None of these newsletters were more than 5k sub, but they were a great trial. I think acquisitions will be everywhere this year and in 2025 in the newsletter space, and at least now I know how to execute on them, and how an audience might respond. As you can see from the stats above, the results were ok but not great.

I do think there I will buy more newsletters again, but I will hold off until I can buy larger newsletter that I believe were a much better fit. A buddy of mine actually came up with a brilliant play recently also, which was buying lists of startups that were winding down. There are so many companies out there that are dying and the list usually just dies with them, but a smart newsletter operator might be able to buy an engaged newsletter list from a startup for 10 cents on the dollar. There are a world of opportunities out there if you just know where to look.

Good, Bad & The Ugly

At Athyna, internally and in our investor updates we like to use the Good, Bad & The Ugly framework when reassessing weeks, months, years, projects etc.. Letā€™s do the same exercise here and look back at the last 12 months highs and lows.

The Good

  • The content. I am really proud of the content we product for the most part. I think people really enjoy it and I think I have a found a really unique voiceā€”my voiceā€”that people seem to get behind.

  • Tools & resources we built. We build some amazing tools and resources in the last year. Really useful stuff; from investor updates, to CRMs, to OKR templates. Weā€™ll double down here in the next 12 months to continue to add more value again to you, our community.

Collections.

Proud of these.

  • This tweet. I suck at Twitter, but this tweet was a little ray of sunshine in my otherwise dreary Twitter experience.

  • My Content Assistant. My Content Assistant Bia, was an incredibly help to me this year. She came on midway through the last 12 months and having her enabled me to write more deep dives, up my sending cadence and create even more great resources to share. She also allows me to focus on the core elements of the business, and the thing I enjoy doing. She takes care of the rest. Sheā€™s also good at creating memes. She asked me to put this one in the piece today. If you are looking for your own Content Assistant, head to Athyna where weā€™ll happily hook you up.

ā€œA typical Friday messageā€.

  • Our sponsors. So far, we have more or less had a 100% fill rate. We have sold most of our ads ourselves and only called upon beehiivā€™s Ad Network for some last minute fills. Our sponsors have been The Startup Podcast, Sidebar, Deel and Athyna. Deel was a great one as they are one of the largest startup companies in the world. And when we did use beehiivā€™s network we were able to partner with Vanta, Superside and Husbpot. Overall, being a sponsor led company today has been a pretty seamless experience.

  • Other revenue opportunities. I think the ad supported model for a good newsletter can still work well, but you can build a really great company if you can build in some more high ticket options. In my example, I have successfully sold interview pieces and deep dive piece. These are what you would refer to as advertorials. Advertising editorial. By offering these options you are able to charge a much higher premium than just an main ad up front. For example, recently, I was selling a main ad for ~$750, but if that edition also had a sponsored interview or deep dive in it the value of the newsletter skyrocketed to ~$3k all up. These content types are really amazing for a newsletter operator and I feel like creatively, nothing has changed. I still write, just what I would have written anyway on said company.

The Bad

  • Entertaining over educational still. I have two goals with this newsletterā€”to educate and to entertain. As it stands, Iā€™d say we are around 80% entertainment and 20% educational. I would have liked to have gotten that close to parity, but with the delay of The Curriculum, that hasnā€™t been the case.

This newsletter in a GIF.

The Ugly

  • Cadence and system. I would like to have more regularity to what we release and how often we release them. Itā€™s very ad-hoc today, which means it always feels like a bit of a scramble.

  • Product Hunt launches. I screwed up two separate Product Hunt launches in the last few months. I wonā€™t bore you with the details but it was one of lowest ebbs of the journey so far. I feel like a total dork.

Chasing Lenny - Update #1

"My motivation is this ghost I'm chasing," LeBron James said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. The ghost he was referring to was Michael Jordan. MJ, or His Airness, had six championship rings, five MVPs and the widely accepted moniker of ā€˜the greatest to ever do itā€™. But the young kid from Akron, Ohio, LeBron James wasnā€™t phased. He knows he has a ways to go. And he knows that some will never consider himself the GOAT. But he is undeterred.

My Michael Jordan is Lenny Rachitsky, author of Lennyā€™s Newsletter, and the man that I would say holds the moniker of ā€˜the greatest to ever do a B2B, product and growth focussed, Substack newsletterā€™, haha.

Coming for the crown.

Let me be clearā€”Lenny is a better writer than me. His newsletter just surpassed 500k subscribers, and he is the epitome of educational content. If you read Lenny, you are likely getting better at your job. Even so, I remain undeterred. Lenny holds the crownā€”but I am coming for it.

ā€œThis orangutan has a very particular set of skillsā€.

More building in public

And that's it! As a reminder, you can connect with me on LinkedIn here and Twitter (X) follow here.

TWEET OF THE WEEK šŸ£ 

I donā€™t know what it is about clips like this but I find them so wholesome. I guess it makes me remember we all start at the bottom too.

BRAIN FOOD šŸ§  

The Startup Podcast had a pretty cool chat with Michael Houck, author of the Houckā€™s News media brand. We all knowā€”like it or loathe itā€”that the idea of a ā€˜founder brandā€™ is more important than ever now.

Houck is very well positioned to talk about your online reputation after growing his own brand and newsletter audience to over 100k in a flash.

Note: if you are a founder looking to build your founder (/leader) brand give us a shout at Athyna - we can find you a great Content Assistant.

TOOLS WE USE šŸ› ļø

Every week we highlight tools we actually use inside of our business and give them an honest review. Today we are highlighting Sidebar - a leadership program I use to accelerate my growth as a CEO.

Apollo: We use Apollo to automate a large part of our 1.2M weekly outbound emails.
Deel: the only HR platform with everything you need, for everyone.
Taplio: We use Taplio to grow and manage my online presence.

Accelerate your career.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP šŸ„³

Here are the options I have for us to work together. If any of them are interesting to you - hit me up!

šŸŒ Hiring global talent: Check out my startup Athyna.
šŸ§° Want to outperform the competition: See our suite of tools & resources.
šŸ‘€ Reach thousands of tech leaders: Advertise with us here.

And thatā€™s it from me. See you next week.

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