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FOUNDER INTERVIEW

In February, I wrote a newsletter issue where I mentioned my willingness to see more offline events for newsletter creators. Just a few days after, I saw a social media post where Ryan Sager announced they are organizing The Newsletter Conference.

Imagine how much I got excited!

The Newsletter Conference is the FIRST-EVER offline gathering organized only for newsletter creators. It tells a lot about the growth and potential of the newsletter industry and provides a great opportunity for newsletter creators around the world to meet and learn from each other.

I really want us to understand that this is a milestone for the newsletter space.

So, I thought we should listen to what it really means to newsletter creators from the founders of the event.

Today, you’ll read an exclusive interview with Ryan Sager, who is the co-founder of The Newsletter Conference. He kindly answered my questions about:

• How they ended up deciding there was a need for an offline event specific to newsletter creators

• Who should exactly come

• What kind of networking opportunities they offer

• How they shaped the speaker line-up

• What they aim attendees say after the conference

Let’s dive in!

🏷 THE NEWSLETTER CONFERENCE IDENTITY CARD

👋 MEET THE FOUNDERS

Welcome Ryan. Let’s start by getting to know you and hearing about how you came up with the idea of The Newsletter Conference.

Thanks for featuring us! My background is primarily in big media, at places like the Wall Street Journal and TIME Magazine.

I met my co-founder, Jesse, at a company called Ladders, where we stood up a media operation about the future of work. As part of that, we built out a large newsletter program, which drove all of our ad revenue. Jesse came in and just monetized the heck out of that. Ultimately, we built it into a multi-million-dollar media business per year.

After that, we did third-party sales for some big newsletters for a while, selling ad inventory for them. And, as part of doing that, we needed a way to track who was sponsoring what newsletters. Initially, I just built out a huge Airtable of sponsors for our internal use. But as the database grew, we realized that this was a data product that we should sell to newsletter publishers.

We then turned our internal product into what is now Who Sponsors Stuff.

Now, more than 60 newsletter publishers, from the big guys like Morning Brew and The Daily Upside, down to individual creators use us to power intelligence about the email ad market and to power their sales outreach.

So, about a year and a half ago, along with Dan Oshinsky, we started doing a series of private dinners for newsletter operators called Dine & Deliver. These are small, intimate, off-the-record dinners with about 20 to 30 operators in the room. We had to set up an application process to manage the flow of people who wanted to attend. We ended up getting 700-plus applications last year, which really solidified our view that the industry needed some big ways to connect.

🥁 MEET THE NEWSLETTER CONFERENCE

What is The Newsletter Conference all about? What is your main objective with it in a few sentences?

The Newsletter Conference is here to bring together the broad-ranging community of newsletter operators, professionals, and creators who have very few other avenues through which to connect with each other.

The programming will be serving all sorts of people in the industry, from editorial to revenue to growth to operations. We’ll be hitting B2C media, B2B media, local media, creators, and really everything under the sun.

We noticed several events aimed at content creators, but there wasn't one specifically focused on the newsletter space. 

What motivated you to organize the first offline gathering exclusively for newsletter creators?

This is an important point, and it goes to the heart of why we are doing this. There are conferences for digital media, conferences for creators, conferences for email marketers. But there has long been a gap where there is not anything specifically aimed at newsletter publishers.

Obviously, we have seen some independent newsletter publishers blow up and even have huge exits.

In a world where cookies are going away and Facebook is increasingly unreliable, there is a tremendous amount to be said for an owned channel like email.

👥 WHO SHOULD JOIN

Is there a particular group of newsletter creators you're targeting with The Newsletter Conference? Or can any newsletter creator, whether they're just starting out or a seasoned professional, benefit from attending? 

We have representatives of some of the biggest news brands in the world who will be on stage. And we have completely independent creators. The lessons about content, growth, monetizing through ads and memberships and events... all of these things are applicable in different ways for different-sized organizations.

On top of the programming from the main stage, there will also be some lunch-and-learn workshops in the middle of the day that will be much more nuts and bolts and hands-on for people to take away very practical lessons and speak one-on-one with some of the top people in the industry.