Morning Brew Daily

What do Madonna, Mark Zuckerberg, and Mike Bloomberg have in common? They’re richer than you They all get name-dropped by social media personality The Fat Jewish the second you ask him to talk about the influencer economy.

This week on Business Casual, we did just that. The Fat Jewish (real name: Josh Ostrovsky) takes us on a roller coaster ride of content, from selling his Babe wine brand to AB InBev to Mike Bloomberg’s meme campaign for the White House.

And in this unpredictable election cycle, Bloomberg’s social strategy matters. Josh breaks an NDA with Bloomberg’s camp to explain exactly how those fake DMs will play out. Want to know how it ends? Go listen.

If that’s not enough to convince you, this episode also features Josh...

ID’ing when the influencer marketing bubble will pop

Explaining how to reverse engineer your audience into an R&D flywheel

Giving tangible examples of “cutting through the noise” that don’t sound like they came straight from a self-help book for entrepreneurs

If you survived the 2019 IPO season, you learned two things: 1) Morning Brew’s tailgates rivaled D3’s finest and 2) the only guaranteed win was investing in software as a service (aka SaaS) companies.

This week on Business Casual, we speak to Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena to figure out why SaaS companies are doing so well right now...and what it’ll take to nip all that forward momentum in the bud. We also cover...

How businesses build “sticky” models

Why the relationship between customer acquisition and customer value matters so much

When it’s better to buy than build

Because in the last few years, we’ve seen a boom in “plug-and-play” models—businesses whose divine purpose is to make creating a subsequent business as easy as possible. Why now, and what comes next?

Did you have yesterday off from work? If you didn’t, we’re sorry. But even if you did, chances are you still answered a few emails, checked a few Slacks, and furrowed your brow thinking about all the things you’ve got to catch up on this morning. 

But what if work...didn’t have to be like that? 

This week on Morning Brew’s Business Casual podcast, we tear apart how work came to rule our lives—and what some in the business world are doing to fix it. Basecamp CEO, remote work enthusiast, and Bezos-approved founder Jason Fried explains why today’s idea of a work/life balance isn’t doing us any favors. Plus…

How Silicon Valley’s ideas of “move fast and break things” broke the wrong things

How venture capital puts companies in “pressure cookers”

And how tech could change the notion of 9–5

Listen and let us know what you think.

Maybe you’re the kind of person who holds your plank an extra 15 seconds during 6am HIIT class (showoff). Maybe you need a full day to recover from 20 minutes on the elliptical.

Either way, this one likely applies to you: tech obsession. The zeitgeist’s current fixation with new-wave, at-home, tech-enabled fitness is changing the way we define success, both in terms of personal health goals and in terms of happy business endings (read: IPOs).

This week on Business Casual, we talk to Mirror CEO Brynn Putnam to understand exactly how tech’s influence on today’s fitness startups is impacting the business world. Brynn explains…

What about the at-home fitness business model works

How good tech and smart engineering can scale the unscalable

Why every company is fighting for a tech valuation, even if it doesn’t deserve one

One parting idea: Putnam thinks in-home fitness streaming devices can become the next iPhone. Do you?

In five short days on Super Bowl Sunday, Americans will split into two distinct categories: those of us watching for the commercials and liars.

Half kidding. But whatever your reason for tuning in, you’re supporting a massive revenue generating business when you watch the Super Bowl—ads during this year’s game sold out in November for prices up to $5.6 million per 30-second spot. And the Patriots aren’t even playing.

This week on Morning Brew’s weekly Business Casual podcast, we tackle the massive business beast that is the National Football League. Famed NFL analyst and exec Michael Lombardi explains the ins and outs of the NFL as a business, including…

Super Bowl hype sustainability

International expansion

Legalized sports betting

And the biggest threats to profitability

Even if you didn’t play Pop Warner, you went to a D3 school, or you’re really only watching the Super Bowl so you can eat 13 wings without being judged, you’ll learn something from Lombardi’s episode.

Look—we all have goals. For some of us, that goal is not lying when we tell the dentist we floss 2x a week. For others, it’s getting a 183-year-old consumer goods giant to buy our 2.5-year-old company for $100 million.

Moiz Ali belongs in the “others” category. As the founder of natural personal care (read: deodorant) brand Native, he brokered the kind of deal young startups only dream of when Procter & Gamble bought his company. But once the ink dried on the contract, the hard work began.

This week on Morning Brew’s Business Casual podcast, Moiz takes us on a guided tour of the acquisition process—how to stand out, how to keep your head down, and how to make a graceful exit.

Even if you aren’t shopping your growing business for billionaire buyers, this episode has something for you:

How to communicate any message with the right audience (and not blow your $$)

How to persevere when the odds are stacked against you

And a whole lot more

FYI: When you make it to the end of the episode, you’ll be looking for a very specific link pertaining to Moiz’s daily routine. Here’s that link.

FYI x2: Make sure you subscribe to Business Casual and leave us a rating + review on your platform of choice.

This week on Morning Brew’s weekly podcast, Business Casual, we explore the inner workings of direct-to-consumer (DTC) retail with two of the best in the business: Zak Normandin, CEO of Iris Nova, and Nik Sharma, the strategist dubbed “The DTC Bro.”

But this episode is about so much more than every suitcase, toothbrush, and mattress company’s effort to become a “lifestyle” brand (even though we cover that, too).

We dive deep into the idea of conversational commerce—aka utilizing text messaging to create a more sincere 1-1 relationship with the consumer. 

Zak and Nik explain how an influx of venture capital funding in DTC retail can be a net negative on the space.

We explain what “cutting out the middleman” actually means for retailers and for customers.

After all, DTC accounts for 40% of e-commerce sales growth in consumer goods. So...safe to say this movement is going anywhere. Don’t you want to know the ins and outs from the brightest in the business?

Want to text Nik? You can reach him at 917-905-2340.

Where were you 10 years ago? Morning Brew’s managing editor, Neal Freyman, was trolling Duke basketball players as a college freshman at the University of Maryland. But oh, how times have changed.

This week on Morning Brew’s weekly podcast Business Casual, Neal joins host and fellow Brew editorial team member Kinsey Grant to discuss a decade’s worth of trends, themes, and breaking news in the business world. 

And after years of writing your daily Brew newsletter, Neal has seen a thing or two. In the episode, Neal covers...

The rise of tech and how it’s impacted our interpersonal relationships, from Facebook to Fortnite.

Amazon’s stealth mode world takeover.

How his bar mitzvah money is doing in the longest ever U.S. bull market.

You don’t want to miss this episode, especially if you’ve ever wanted a peek inside how the Brew covers everything in business, from the student loan crisis to Beyoncé’s greatest hits.

Check out the rest of our decade in review coverage here.

What was the first thing you looked at when you woke up this morning? Chances are, it was a product from Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Apple. But who makes the rules for the very exclusive Big Tech club running our lives, from how we eat to when we travel to what we buy?

This week on Morning Brew’s weekly podcast, Business Casual, we figure it out. Kara Swisher, who co-founded Recode and has been covering tech for as long as there’s been tech to cover, sits down in a wide-ranging conversation on tech ethics, futurism, and more.

Some highlights:

What company wins the title of “rapacious data thief”

Elon Musk and the future of the mad scientist CEO

Why Uber’s top leadership might be misunderstood

As Silicon Valley’s resident kingmaker, Swisher ranks as one of Business Casual’s most outspoken guests yet, and she pulls no punches explaining just how cleverly Big Tech fooled us when they said they’d do no evil.

Check out the answer to this week's trivia here.

Like building something from Ikea or responding to an “are you in the right headspace to receive information that could possibly hurt you” text, getting insurance can be complicated. But does it need to be?

This week on Business Casual, we hear the argument that it does not. Lemonade CEO Daniel Schreiber suggests the traditional broker-based insurance business model is “fundamentally and structurally” flawed.

Because when there exists a misalignment of incentives that egregious (insurer and insuree fighting for the same dollar), we’ve got no choice but to fire off those “it’s so ducking annoying” messages to the group chat after making a claim.

Schreiber wants to reinstate insurance in the realm of social goods. To do that, he’s leaning hard into technology, behavioral economics, and 100x the data of traditional insurers. 

Hear Schreiber’s theses on the promise of the insurance sector, the future of the IPO market for tech startups, and what it’s like to know Masayoshi Son on a first-name basis.

P.S. Did you stick around to the end? This week’s trivia: Rank these insurance types by market size—health insurance, auto insurance, home and renter’s insurance, life insurance, and disability insurance. Check for the answer today on my Twitter.