👋 Hi Reader,

ICYMI, OpenAI acquired TBPN earlier this month.

If you haven’t heard about TBPN before, I feel sad for you. Jordi Hays and John Coogan run a show every weekday chronicling what’s happening in tech and business. What’s remarkable is they are getting acquired within 18 months of their existence.

Is this the first instance of a tech company buying out a media brand? Hardly.

HubSpot might be the one to get credit for starting the movement, buying out the Hustle, My First Million, and most recently, Starter Story, to build out their expansive HubSpot Podcast Network.

Why on earth are tech cos buying media brands, instead of other tech cos?

Because they all understand this underlying principle.

Brand and distribution is key to everything they intend to market.

And what’s better than building a soapbox by yourself? Buying an existing solid soapbox which works, and insert yourself in the conversation. Balaji S summed this up succinctly in this tweet way back in 2021.

Balaji @balajis Every SaaS company should have a media arm with a newsletter that gives industry news. Just acquire an influencer in your space with a solid following. Make them editor-in-chief. Bundle their content for free with your software subscription. And make all customers readers. 2:10 PM • Mar 23, 2021 363 Retweets 3250 Likes Read 89 replies

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Balaji understood this early. So did HubSpot.

HubSpot did not buy out the Hustle for $27 million to get free eyeballs. They knew the Hustle’s audience for startup founders and tech entrepreneurs was a great watering hole to immerse yourself in the conversation. And even if a fraction of the ~1.5 million daily subscribers bought a HubSpot subscription, they would have recovered their investment.

This Wishpond video provides a great breakdown on the rationale and the math.

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Tell me HubSpot isn't the only one to crack this...

They are not.

​Plaid (with This Week In Fintech) and a16z (with Turpentine) have been discreetly scooping up media businesses along with their founding teams to expand their owned audience, so that becomes a captive corner for them to introduce their listeners and readers to their product portfolio.

​Dan Krenitsyn from beehiiv summed the current shopping spree well this week on LinkedIn.

Good for them. How can I do it?

Thought you would never ask.

Now you don’t need millions in your coffers to buy out an owned audience or newsletter - a few thousands would do the trick. I should know, because I acquired this very newsletter in the same fashion.

Companies like LetterTrader (formerly Duuce) and Flippa would allow you to buy out smaller pockets of audiences aligned to your business. Then you could eventually introduce your product and lower your customer acquisition costs, like HubSpot did.

Curious to know how all that works out? We went through this process with Chris Cerra, who bought out a similar newsletter which aligned to his audience for RemoteBase.

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If you are still uncertain on what this looks like for your newsletter and brand, I would be happy to be a sounding board for you.

Hit ‘Reply’ on this email, or send a note to marketing@letterstack.co.

This newsletter is sponsored by The Alien Design

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Cheers,

Renga from LetterStack

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