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Welcome to The Newsletter Growth Memo. Twice a month, I share short reflections with my newsletter clients + other operators.
Zero formality, ads, or affiliate links - just a guy sharing learnings from working with media operators doing $25k-$2M+ / month with newsletters.
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A bunch of people have been asking me about buying and selling newsletters.
Three different founders reached out about selling so far in 2026.
One does about $500k a year in revenue. Another a bit over $1M. A third ~$300k.
Last week alone I was tagged in two threads in Hampton from members with non-media businesses interested in buying up newsletters.
The sellers all had unrealistically high expectations. And the buyers, zero strategy.
So I figured I'd share how I actually think about newsletter M&A.
(This will focus on newsletters below the $5-10M range, where most deals happen)
Understand if you’re selling a list or a business
The vast majority of newsletters do not have their own advertising partners or products at any level of scale ($100k+).
Therefore they have an email list, not a business.
There was a huge surge of these sales back in 2024 - mostly distressed acquisitions from burned out founders in the 25-100k subscriber range with no sponsors.
Lists go for under $2 per subscriber.
The reason The Neuron (which I almost acquired :’( ), The Milk Road, The Hustle, etc. all sold is these were all profitable businesses that could operate without the founder in place.
Which brings me to my next point.
Your multiple is probably 3-4x
Most newsletters below $1-2M in EBITDA should sell for around 3-4x profit, namely for two reasons:
Unless you have a leadership team, you have just built yourself a very high-paying job, not an asset. High paying jobs are 3-4x exits.
You don't have long-term contracts. Sponsors come back with some frequency, but without committed deals, the revenue stream is inherently less valuable.
#1 is far more important than #2 and the litmus test is simple:
Can your business keep operating if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?
I can’t comment on price, but I will say The Neuron did a very smart job of passing the bus test ahead of its sale.
My team was running growth.
Another agency did all the sales.
Noah Edelman had hired Grant, a full-time writer, in the months prior to the sale.
Their all-in cost for this was <$300k if my memory serves me, although if you wanted to in-house everything with full-time roles I’m sure you’d be looking at closer to $500k.
This is the price of buying back your time.
Look at The Rundown, The Deep View, and Superhuman.
They have a team of writers and killer sales people.
The Rundown should almost certaintly fetch more than $20M were it to sell (they were run-rate $4-5M in profit as of Oct 2025).
Sell to strategics, not other newsletters
You want buyers with high-LTV products.
The most classic example is HubSpot buying The Hustle. HubSpot has enterprise software deals each easily worth $50k+ - no brainer!
These buyers will pay premiums because your audience is worth more to them than just ad inventory.
Selling to other newsletters is harder.
One of the permutations of The Neuron deal was me investing in another media company who would use those funds to do the acquisition.
They backed out.
Their reasoning was "Nathan, we're getting subscribers from you for $XYZ on Meta. Why would we pay more than that per subscriber to buy a business? We should just spend more on ads"
Hard to argue with that logic!
The arbitrage opportunity
I mentioned a long tail of AI newsletters that got gobbled up in 2024.
Most sold for less than $1 per subscriber.
They were making a couple thousand a month.
But they didn't have the HubSpot, OpenAI, and Anthropic relationships that newsletters like The Neuron, The Rundown, and Superhuman had.
So they got bought at fire sale prices.
The Neuron did this brilliantly.
Bought huge troves of subscribers - over 100k - for sub-$1.
Monetized them quickly.
Every offer they got was a significant premium on the list roll-ups they did. Very smart!
Three things to do now if you want to sell in 12 months
Get yourself out of the business as much as possible. Delegate writing, sales, and growth. Prove the business can run without you.
Clean your books. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen newsletters get paid 2-3 months after a sponsorship runs - that is BAD for clean financials.
Retain your sponsors. High repeat purchase rates signal a healthy business even without long-term contracts.
That’s the letter.
- Nathan
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