Hi, I'm Austin Rief and here's my story:
Rough Timeline
1995 — I was born and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.
2011 — My interest in the business world began during my junior year of high school.
2013 — I graduated from Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School.
2014 — I started college at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.
2015 — My future co-founder, Alex Lieberman, started a basic business newsletter; I joined him as a sophomore to help build it. We officially launched Morning Brew as a daily email newsletter, with me as co-founder and COO.
2016 — We focused on grassroots growth for Morning Brew, using an ambassador program to expand to more universities nationwide.
2017 — I graduated from college and we secured a $750,000 seed funding round for Morning Brew.
2018 — Morning Brew hit 1 million subscribers, and I was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
2019 — Morning Brew neared 2 million subscribers and $13 million in revenue; we also launched our first podcast, "Business Casual."
2020 — Insider Inc. acquired a majority stake in Morning Brew in a deal valuing us at $75 million; we launched new newsletters.
2021 — I became CEO of Morning Brew, focused on expanding our content, and began making personal investments through Austin Rief Ventures.
2022 — Morning Brew hit 4 million subscribers and $50 million in revenue; we launched several new B2B newsletters like IT Brew.
2023 — We launched our "Money Scoop" personal finance newsletter and our daily news podcast, "Morning Brew Daily."
2024 — Morning Brew celebrated reaching 5 million subscribers; I also invested in Beehiiv through Austin Rief Ventures.
2025 — Axel Springer fully acquired Morning Brew, and I transitioned from CEO to the role of Executive Chairman.
I also wrote about why joining Hampton was one of the best things I did for my career.
I sat down with the Hampton founder series to share how I'd build an audience from scratch today.