The rise of Lenny

Today, I wrote about the remarkable success of Lenny Rachitsky as a harbinger of change coming to B2B media. Also, some addendums to my newsletter hustlers piece.

Newsletter hustlers (con’t)

I got a bunch of feedback on Tuesday’s newsletter about newsletter hustlers. Interestingly, some objected to being thought of as hustlers and others offended that their hustler status was in question. A few clarifications/amplifications:

1. I screwed up a couple things. For some reason, despite doing a podcast with him, I misidentified 6am City COO Ryan Heafy as his partner Ryan Johnson. Sorry. Also, the Neuron newsletter founder isn’t a teenager; he has graduated from college. 
2. A couple people wrote in about how male and white the newsletter hustler crowd is. I tend to skip over the demographics of these areas. It’s just not an area I have much to add rather than the business dynamics.
3. I’m not critical of Substackers. Many are building great businesses on Substack, others who use it as a side hustle and still others who just use it like social media. Lenny Rachitsky and others have shown that Substack is a great business platform, even if the typical internet power laws exist.
4. My viewpoint is biased by my background. I come from journalism. That means I’m always going to be biased to people who build a business around content rather than the reverse. But I’m also self-aware enough to know there are lots of ways to do things. I’m doing a podcast for next week with Adam Ryan, CEO of Workweek, who comes from a different point of view.
5. There is a newsletter bubble, but there is a YouTube bubble, a podcast bubble and lots of bubbles. The beauty of the newsletter world is that it is an open protocol – maybe the successor to the open web? – that now has dead simple tools and platforms. That elimination of friction means a flood of newsletters. In the long run, this always washes out. Most will not stick with the habit and consistency required to build publications. 

For more feedback, send me an email by hitting reply or emailing bmorrissey@therebooting.com. 

The Lenny effect

This week, Lenny Rachitsky achieved a remarkable achievement: He crossed 1 million subscribers to his newsletter. Lenny, who has first name status in the Substack world, is noteworthy because he built a juggernaut not in politics or general business strategy but by focusing on product management. 

He’s gone well beyond newsletters with a popular podcast that he says makes more money than his newsletter, a recruiting service and jobs board, and a one-day summit. His subscription now includes a product bundle with discounted access to various tools. He’s also an angel investor. There is no institutional publication that carries his level of influence in this area.

And he’s done this with no full-time employees, relying instead on contractors and fractional help, an approach that’s become more popular as individuals look to build businesses without building typical companies. 

Lenny’s success is a warning to B2B media companies that have breathed a sign of relief that the “extinction event” visited on the consumer side of media has not reached them. B2B has long been insulated from the challenges of B2C. Distribution isn’t typically as reliant on search and social; business models aren’t built around ads; and B2B sectors typically have far less competition.