My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Content-First Newsletter Economics
Building newsletter businesses by obsessing over content quality first, then layering on growth and monetization rather than optimizing for vanity metrics
How It Works
High-quality content creates genuine engagement, which drives higher CPMs, better retention, and sustainable unit economics vs growth-hack approaches that optimize for subscribers but destroy monetization
Components
Print out competitor newsletters daily and critique every story
Set content standards and never allow suboptimal work to pass
Focus on engagement metrics over subscriber count initially
Only add paid acquisition after proving organic engagement
Measure revenue per subscriber, not just total revenue
When to Use
When building any content business, especially newsletters where engagement directly impacts advertising revenue
When Not to Use
In winner-take-all network effect businesses where growth speed matters more than engagement quality
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“Printing Morning Brew, Axios, The Hustle, and The Skimm daily, circling good stories and crossing out bad ones to maintain content standards”