Indie Hackers #202 – How to Build a Rabid Fan Base with Austin Rief of Morning Brew
21 snips
Apr 20, 2021 AI Snips
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College Freedom Fueled Authentic Growth
- Austin started Morning Brew in college with no pressure to make money, which let the product be authentic and iterate freely.
- Those two unpaid years were essential to growth because mistakes didn't matter and authenticity compounded over time.
Distribution Often Beats Product
- Distribution matters as much or more than product because attention is the scarce resource for consumer businesses.
- With no marketing budget, Morning Brew focused on organic tactics and direct outreach to prove product-market fit.
Hand-Entering Emails After Lectures
- Austin and Alex manually collected emails after a 500-person lecture by passing paper and typing each address into the landing page.
- They did small, non-scalable tasks because those were the only viable growth actions at the time.