The Data Minute Newsletter Hit 20000 Subscribers

Let's gooo - 20,000 of you lovely people now subscribe to our Data Minute newsletter. Means a lot to me!

Obviously I had to celebrate the occasion with a chart. But I also have a few thoughts about building a newsletter audience for a company and how little it differs from personal newsletter writing.

Chart below shows daily new subscribers (in bars, blue bars mean 100+ new subs that day) and cumulative subscribers in the orange line.

What stands out from 80 weekly newsletters?

• Not that many huge spike days. Best day last year was ~580 new subs but the change was in the delivery method not really the content.

• 2024 has begun slowly but perspective helps. More than 3x the average from the early days.

• A smidge of seasonality in these numbers - definitely an uptick in interest when we release new data (every quarter like clockwork).

So how about the writing? Our newsletter is super focused - one chart per week with a short explanation, refutation, or musing alongside it. The weekly writing ritual has been deeply impactful on my thinking around venture data. It's made for more incisive, clear, and valuable analysis. Can't recommend it enough (even if you're just writing for yourself).

Writing for a company as opposed for yourself may seem like a bit of a straightjacket. But the truth is authenticity matters even more from a brand perspective. So write like you speak! Skip the corporate stuff, make jokes, convey excitement.

The Data Minute is only getting better. Subscribers get the weekly missive, of course, but also subscriber-only invites, Q&A sessions, and (soon) we'll be adding a podcast! If you think I can drone on in the posts, just wait until it's audio 😆. If you've kickstarted a podcast in the last few years, I'd love your advice.

Thank you for the support so far. As always, just getting started 🙏

You can subscribe to this farm-fresh data newsletter at the link in graphic!

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