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Morgan Barrett: From beehiiv Investor to beehiiv Newsletter Operator
Using beehiiv to Take His Offline Community to the Next Level
Kanishka Kumawat & Brandon Storey
August 21st, 2024
How do you build a community?
For some people, it means starting online by posting content.
Then later incorporating in-person meetups.
But, others do the complete opposite — by launching an offline community before branching out with an email newsletter.
That’s what Morgan Barrett is doing with his newsletter, Tech Breakfast Club, which is targeted towards venture capitalists and founders in the tech world.
Tech Breakfast Club is a beehiiv newsletter geared towards venture capitalists, founders, and startup operators to help them connect with one another online and offline.
In the newsletter, Barrett shares upcoming Tech Breakfast Club events and insights into the startup world, specifically about the connection between founders and investors.
Now, let’s dive into how beehiiv helped Barrett take his offline community online to help his tribe thrive.
Table of Contents
- Kanishka
Tech Breakfast Club Backstory
Meet Morgan Barrett, the voice behind Tech Breakfast Club:
Barrett is a Startup Lawyer at Optimal, a startup law firm representing clients funded by Sequoia, Kleiner, and other popular VCs.
He shared, “My day job is as a lawyer for early-stage startups. I work with a lot of founders with everything from formation to acquisition and all the equity financing in between.”
Barrett explained that it’s tough to set up meetings outside of work hours, especially in the afternoons and evenings when he’s often working late into the night.
He shared, “Nobody was really doing any [meetups] at breakfast time. Selfishly, I wanted to do something in the morning because that's when I had free time.”
Barrett explained, “People are energized at the beginning of the day. You go to a happy hour or a dinner and you're kind of exhausted from your day. So the vibe over breakfast is infectious.”
He shared how a morning meetup attracts a particular type of person. He explained how “it has a kind of a filtering effect for people who are doing exciting things and are enthusiastic about what they're building. As soon as we figured out we had something we started doubling down on it and taking it to different places.”
Barret shared how it’s not just about him leading the event and speaking the whole time. Instead, it’s about the different people who make up the meetings.
He explained how “It's the regulars. It’s the VCs who source deals through it, it’s the founders who raise big checks through Tech Breakfast Club, and it's just been a fantastic way to celebrate a bunch of really cool, really smart people.”
Barret even shared how some people have seen the success of his morning tech startup events and have “tried to copy it and have been inspired to host their own breakfast events.”
Taking the Offline Club Online With beehiiv
We asked Barrett what led him to make the transition from strictly running an in-person meetup to creating a digital community.
He shared, “I run Tech Breakfast Club monthly meetups for founders and VCs in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Miami. It started by getting together with friends and acquaintances in real life.”
“As it grew, it kind of took on a life of its own, we needed to do more to organize the community and introduce people in the community to other community members.”
Barrett had no shortage of positive remarks to share about beehiiv.
He shared, “I’m a big fan of beehiiv. I started the beehiiv newsletter, Tech Breakfast Club as a way to keep people up to date about our events and also to do some content around founders and VCs that I was excited about.”
Barret recalled, “I got introduced to Tyler [Denk] when he was just starting beehiiv. They were raising their pre-seed [funding]. I got introduced to invest and I ended up investing in the next round.”
Barrett's journey to launching a beehiiv newsletter isn’t the typical path. It started with an in-person community and later became an online meeting place.
His story proves that newsletters aren’t just a way to communicate with a digital audience. But, they can make a massive impact on offline communities as well.
He shared, “A lot of newsletters will start just virtually and it's all about the content of the newsletter. And then maybe they'll do events down the road. We’re the reverse of that. I started with events and then morphed into a newsletter to go along with it.”
We asked Barrett what kind of content he likes to produce with his newsletter.
His approach?
A community-focused newsletter.
Barrett shared, “I love doing thoughtful, written interviews with founders. I've done some cool things where I’ll go out with a Founder, walk around Venice, or go to an art show or have dinner with them and I talk about that experience and what they're building. It brings a little bit more personality to it.”
The newsletter content is primarily targeted towards founders including “The good, bad, and ugly of being a founder, the pitfalls, and what to watch out for.”
Barrett explained how to get on his email list- you have to first come to an in-real-life event. So it’s an exclusive newsletter, almost like a tight-knit VIP experience.
However, he admitted he’s thinking of new ways to make the newsletter “more top of funnel” — so getting people into the newsletter and then coming to events.”
Enjoying this beehiiv case study? Learn how Matt Navarra made $25,000 from beehiiv Boosts.
What Is beehiiv to Barrett?
We asked Barrett to give his thoughts on what beehiiv is to him.
He shared, “[beehiiv is] basically a media company in a box. It empowers you to run whatever business you want pretty seamlessly and you don't have to piece together a million different tools. It’s easy and infectious and best of all, it just works.”
As an investor, he shared how he loves “investing in companies that make people money or find new ways to make people money.” For Barrett, beehiiv checked off that box right away.
He recalled, “Maybe 15 years ago, Airbnb was giving all these people new ways to make a lot of money. It’s the same thing with beehiiv. They’re giving a lot of entrepreneurial people ways to build their own media companies.”
From an investor standpoint, Barrett explained, “The coolest thing is to watch beehiiv make other people, in some cases, pretty rich, from selling their companies and newsletter businesses, and using it to supplement an existing business.”
Favorite beehiiv Features
We asked Barrett to share his favorite features on the beehiiv platform.
He shared, “I like how easy it is to look professional and have a really clean, crisp design with your newsletter. It takes all the headache out of that. And It makes you look good.”
He continued, “Five years ago, to get a newsletter that looks like my newsletter today would have taken a lot of time, effort, and money. The design features and how turnkey it can be is pretty impressive.”
Barrett admitted he hasn’t fully tapped into all the beehiiv features yet, but has “a lot of things to experiment with” in the near future.
He shared, “There are so many [beehiiv] features you guys are rolling out. I’ve played around with things like segments and some of the tools. You've had Boosts for over a year now… It's such a powerful tool.”
Monetization
As of now, Barrett generates revenue from sponsors at his in-person meetups.
Barrett hasn’t monetized digitally yet, but he’s considering tapping into that soon.
He shared, “I love that I get ad offers all the time and maybe I should be making more use of that. But, it hasn't been a priority to monetize the newsletter, specifically.”
“I’ll be looking forward to experimenting more with that. It's pretty impressive hearing people talk about the revenue they've generated from Boosts.”
Barrett shared how he’s seen people who have taken advantage of beehiiv Boosts to increase their subscriber base and also make money.
He explained, “In some specific cases, you can get a positive reader acquisition cost if you're making content on TikTok, YouTube or Twitter (X). You feed that into your newsletter where you're doing it through ads and just hit on the right formula [with Boosts] and can make money from acquiring readers immediately, which is insane.”
The Power of Owning Your Audience
Barrett started the newsletter mainly because the in-person Tech Breakfast Club community got so big that it was hard to stay in touch with everyone.
Barrett mentioned, “I go to a Tech Breakfast Club event, and I can only talk to so many of the attendees. It's tough to keep up with everybody. Being able to let people know what's going on, what's happening in the market, what's changing with startups, especially from a legal standpoint — that's invaluable.”
He explained how a newsletter “allows you to leverage your network and connections in a way that just doesn't scale in person-to-person contact.”
Barrett continued, “You can post on LinkedIn all you want, and Tweet things out, but going directly to someone's inbox and having that direct connection to somebody is super powerful — owning your audience.”
Unlike social media platforms that may suppress your ability to reach your audience due to changing algorithms, email newsletters are reliable communication tools.
He shared, “You never know what the algorithm is gonna be on Twitter (X) or LinkedIn, but having control over getting in front of people you need to talk to is super valuable.”
We asked Barrett to share his advice for someone new to the newsletter game looking to make theirs a success.
He mentioned, “Experiment with content and when you're sending it. You're going to get feedback pretty quickly from your stats and people replying to the newsletter.”
He continued, “What works for one newsletter is not going to work for another newsletter. So you need to constantly run little experiments. There are so many different ways, like A/B testing subject lines.”
Barrett shared, “For emails, you should be running at least a couple of experiments a month. I'll run a newsletter with one piece of content and I'll get a dozen emails with people replying about it.”
He continued, “Then one week I'll run a slightly different piece of content and I'll get 60 emails back, and I'm like, ‘Okay, this is resonating with people.’
I can immediately tell what matters and what doesn't. If you find something that's working, double down on it. You don't have to keep reinventing stuff.”
Goals for Future
Barrett shared how he’s planning on tapping more into his online community, especially when it comes to growth, in the coming year.
He explained how the primary way people have signed up for the newsletter is after they’ve attended his in-person event.
Barret mentioned, “There are definitely ways to juice growth, whether it's Twitter (X) ads or beehiiv Boosts or [beehiiv features] I haven't really used. The flip side of that is the people that subscribe to the newsletter are super high quality, engaged people who I have either met, or seen, or come in contact with in real life.”
Barret shared, “The goal now, we're on year two of Tech Breakfast Club, is to transition more into what can we do content-specific just for the newsletter and making the newsletter more of a priority.”
He explained how the newsletter has primarily been an “infrastructure tool to help support the community” but how he recognizes its value and potential as a digital asset.
He continued, “Maybe it can become more of a thing on its own. I'm very very excited to spend more time building out the Tech Breakfast Club newsletter.”
Advice for People Considering Using beehiiv
We asked Barrett to share his advice for anyone on the fence about using beehiiv.
He shared, “If you don't use beehiiv, then you're leaving a lot on the table. It’s going to make your life easier. I think some people might be like, ‘Do I want to start off paying money for a newsletter?’, or ‘There are options out there that might cost a little bit less.’”
Barrett explained how the alternatives to beehiiv just aren’t as easy to use and could end up costing your time to put together
He shared, “Your time is super valuable. Go ahead and pay for beehiiv and there's going to be a million different ways for you to make money off of beehiiv along the way. There's no other platform serving you a dozen opportunities a month to monetize your newsletter.”
Barrett finished by sharing cheekily, “If they don't use beehiiv I will bully them a little bit. I'm not afraid to terrorize them.”
Key Takeaways
Morgan Barrett launched his beehiiv newsletter last year to support his offline tech events for founders and VCs.He has since put out 34 editions of the newsletter, highlighted several community members, and established himself as an authority in the tech startup scene.
Here are some key takeaways:
Fuel Offline Communities With an Online Newsletter: If you’re already part of an in-real-life community, start a newsletter to support it and bring the tribe closer together.
Use a Newsletter To Support Different Ventures: Just because most people start with a newsletter first, doesn’t mean you have to. You can add a newsletter to a community or business venture for additional infrastructure and support your initiatives.
Launch a Newsletter To Keep Your Options Open: Barrett didn’t intend on creating a newsletter as its own entity, but he now has a digital asset that he’s able to grow and monetize. It’s bringing him new opportunities completely separate from his in-person events.
Experiment to Iterate: One of Barrett’s key pieces of advice for newsletter operators is to not shy away from experimentation. Test different content, send times, subject lines, and more. Don’t be afraid to try something new and listen to your audience for feedback so you can continue evolving as a creator.
By leveraging beehiiv’s platform, Barrett was able to give his offline community a digital meeting place, create a tight-knit tribe with his audience, and establish himself as an authority in the founder and VC world.
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