How To Make $1M So Fast, Your Accountant Gets Nervous.

How long did it take for you to get to 1

million in revenue?

>> Took about us about a year to get our

first million.

>> If I copied step by step what you did,

could I do the same?

>> I think most people could replicate the

same strategy that we use.

>> Tyler, what's up, man? How are you?

>> What up? How's he going? Did you see the

YouTuber, I think his name is Lab Coats,

who copied, he figured out the Coke

formula from scratch after two years of

testing. Did you see this?

>> No. No.

>> Okay. So, the Coke formula uh the the

the flavor for Coca-Cola is top secret.

There's like I don't know a handful of

people in the world who have ever known

it at Coke. They never patent it because

if you patent it, you publish it and

then other people can clone it. And so

this YouTuber after 2 years of

scientific testing, flavor testing, made

a chemically uh identical formula for

Coke. So he literally like got it

exactly right. And people are worried

for this guy. They're like, "Dude, you

know, you need security. Uh you know,

Coke Coke does not take this lightly."

Um but it's a pretty remarkable thing.

And I feel like what you're giving us

right now is the sauce just like that.

It's like brick by brick way that you

can build, you know, that get that get

those first 100 users, then those first

thousand users, then that first 10,000

of revenue, and get to the first million

of revenue, and then now you're at 30

million of revenue. And I'm kind of

wondering if we can kind of remix what

you did. How long did it take for you to

get to 1 million in revenue?

>> Took about a year to get our first

million.

>> Okay. So, it took you a year to get to a

million in revenue. By year two, where

were you at? about five million in

revenue. So 5x in year two.

>> And now where are you?

>> We just did about 30 million in revenue

last year which was our fourth year in

business.

>> Yeah, your growth is bananas and you

know you're one of the investor updates

that I like to open up. But what I

thought would be cool and we were

talking we were like what would be fun

to talk about here? Really I think it's

about growth. I have this book um that's

on my bookshelf called Steal Like an

Artist. And this book is basically about

how most of what we think is original is

this is a remix or a straightup copy of

something that came before it. And I

feel like you kind your story is kind of

like that. you were at Morning Brew and

you made you helped make Morning Brew

the fastest growing newsletter and you

know it got to 75 million in revenue and

it exited and all this good stuff and

then you took kind of like the learnings

from that you remixed it into a product

so that anybody could grow their product

and I'm kind of wondering if we can kind

of remix what you did and see if we can

extract the basic principles so that

anybody who's out there trying to you

know get to that first million in

revenue can copy what you did. So, I

want you to walk me through what did you

do to grow and not like the high level

like build a great product, but like the

real the real [ __ ] the specific stuff

that actually worked.

>> Yeah, let's get into it.

>> What was the first thing that worked?

You're ground zero. You have no

customers, no revenue. How did you get

going? Yeah, I actually think you

already hit on it a bit of like I think

about founder market fit a lot and the

morning brew story of actually and

you've talked about this before of

taking something you did at a company or

something you've learned previously

become an expert in a low-risk way as an

employee and then apply those learnings

to start a new business. I think in in

the founders that I've backed and seen

become extremely successful, there's

typically a through line between them

doing that previously and then launching

again. Quick story that that I've never

actually told before is while I was at

Morning Brew, crypto between 2017 and

2020 was the biggest thing ever. I

didn't even own any Bitcoin. I had no

business starting a crypto business, but

I wanted as like a founder, I wanted to

get into crypto. And so I found this

like open- source library of like a 3D

model of like a cold storage wallet. I

sh I went to found someone in China who

could make them. Bought a thousand of

them, shipped them to New York, and then

like on day two started just trying to

sell cold storage crypto wallets. No,

I'm the crypto guy.

>> And I I didn't know a single person who

owned Bitcoin. I didn't know crypto at

all. I wasn't in any Discord channels.

And like the point of that story is like

I thought I could will myself into being

a founder in the space that I had no

credibility whatsoever. I had no

connections. Um I just wanted to be a

crypto guy. Lesson learned. I sold three

of those and I still have 997 in my

basement at my house. In complete

contrast to that, what you alluded to at

the Morning Brew story, like when I

joined Morning Brew as the second

employee, I had built the referral

program. I had built the growth

mechanisms. I've seen what success looks

like from the inside of that business.

And Morning Brew became this golden

child of the newsletter ecosystem. And

as newsletters became more and more

popular, I became like the newsletter

person out of experience and

credibility. So, I preface all of that

of like what is the first step there?

One was like actually just having the

experience at Morning Brew and being

able to lean in that credibility of I

have done this before and now I'm

building something that I think we could

quote unquote democratize access to the

same tools that Morning Brew had.

>> Right. Right. So you you needed a story

at the beginning. I was uh given a talk

and I call this the marketing killshot.

So some guy stood up and he I go tell me

about your business. He says, "Uh, we're

a marketing agent, uh, we're a marketing

agency for CPG companies, usually DTC,

CPG." I'm like, "Bro, this guy just

throw an alphabet at soup at me." And

then he goes, "You know, we help with

copywriting, packaging, design, you name

it, we could do it. We do everything."

And I was like, "Okay." So, you threw an

ac, you know, threw six acronyms at me

and then said, "We do everything." All

right. I said, "Let me ask you this.

When you're pitching your company, who

are you trying to get on board, right?

And some new brand you want to work with

you." And I said, "If you couldn't tell

me all that junk," and you only could

say one sentence, but off that one

sentence, I had to want to work with

you, what would that be? And he started

with, "We do like uh marketing for

consumer companies." And I was like,

"Cool. You and any you and a thousand

other companies out there that did that

didn't do it for me." And I go, "What's

the most impressive thing you've done?"

And he goes, "Well, we helped launch."

And he named like, I don't know, Poppy

or like some like huge consumer brand.

We did all the all of Poppy's initial

branding, marketing, positioning. And I

go, "Why didn't you say that?" Cuz

that's the kill shot. If I'm a new

consumer brand, and I meet you and and

all you say is

we we help brands like Poppy launch with

their packaging, their positioning, and

their copywriting. And then I'm like,

"Oh, I want to be like them, so I'm

going to work with you." It's a

immediate credibility and proof that no

general marketing claim could ever

touch. And I feel like credibility and

proof is so massively underrated. And I

like this forcing function of coming up