How Last Money In Grew Their Newsletter to $700k In 14 Months

DEEP DIVE

In just 14 months, Alex Pattis grew his newsletter Last Money In to over 41,000 subscribers and $200k/year in ad revenue. 

He also runs a paid newsletter called Deal Sheet that he started in Feb 2024. Deal Sheet has a $4k annual subscription fee, approximately 165 subscribers, and is now at $500K ARR, seven months after launch.

That’s a $700k business built on the back of newsletters.

I spoke to Alex to find out how he did this. Here are my takeaways...

You can also listen to the podcast I did with Alex for more details.

How Alex Created Last Money In

Pre-existing credibility

Prior to starting their media company, Alex and his co-founder Zach Ginsburg led more than 800 SPVs and deployed over $200 million in deals. They spent years building their network in the SPV space and establishing authority and credibility.

Picked a niche 

Alex and Zach realized there was a gap in the market. While there were tons of VC newsletters, there wasn’t anything covering special purpose vehicles.

So they built it.

If you’re personally struggling to find a niche for your newsletter, I wrote about it here but below is a quick recap: 

1. What unique experiences and skills do you have?

2. What are your passions and interests?

3. How lucrative is this niche/topic?

4. How exactly can you monetize?

The next step is to select a niche that fits this criteria:

1. You have genuine interest in it (so you can consistently write about it)

2. You have experience in (so you can create insightful content)

3. Has lucrative monetization opportunities (so you can build a successful business)

Building an owned audience

Alex initially wanted to start a podcast about SPV investing, but Sam Parr advised them not to.

Instead, he recommended starting with a newsletter because it's shorter and easier to capture someone's attention, own the audience, and collect data. 

With an owned audience you can collect and store valuable audience data like engagement, location, interest, purchase behavior, and more.

 Plus, if your newsletter is successful, you can always turn it into a podcast.

Have a clear audience

Since their first post 14 months ago, Last Money In has been serving two audiences: 

1. Individual accredited investors who have invested in syndicates and deals with Alex and Zach

2. People looking to start a syndicate of their own and want to learn how to do it 

Consistency

Alex and Zach publish Last Money In every Wednesday.

Every week they switch who writes the newsletter and have a brainstorming session to come up with topics to write about.  They also keep a spreadsheet with a backlog of ideas that they continuously add to. 

Monetizing Last Money In 

Unlike most newsletters, Last Money In works with annual, long-term sponsors.

As of right now, they have 2 annual sponsors: Forge and Sydecar. 

They got their first sponsor, Sydecar, in the 2nd week of publishing their newsletter. A big reason Sydecar was eager to sponsor the newsletter is the complementary value props:

Sydecar is a platform that supports the admin of SPVs, and Last Money In is a newsletter about SPVs. 

So how is a long-term sponsorship structured? 

Prior to having their sponsor commit to one year, they test a pilot program. If the pilot program is a success, they move to an annual sponsorship.

The annual sponsorship looks like this:

• Ad placement at the top and bottom of almost every newsletter

• Quarterly sponsored deep dive

• Quarterly sponsored dinner

• Facilitating quick and seamless connection between sponsors and interested Last Money In subscribers 

Growing Last Money In

Last Money In is using these growth levers: 

• LinkedIn: On Wednesday when Last Money In is published, Alex will post a TLDR on LinkedIn to build hype. He typically posts 3 mini deep dives on the latest newsletter throughout the week. Example here

If you don’t want to spend time writing up mini promo deep dives, use pre and post-CTAs.

These are short posts that create curiosity and FOMO.

Post 24 hours before your newsletter is published and immediately after.  Below is an example from Justin Welsh.

• Beehiiv Boosts: Last Money In has been testing beehiiv boosts to acquire subscribers from other newsletters for $2-$3.

• Meta Ads: They run Meta ads to drive newsletter subscribers for $2-$5 and send them into a funnel to book a call and lean more about there paid subscription, Deal Sheet. Check out their ad library here.

Building There Paid Subscription, Deal Sheet

In February 2024, Alex launched Deal Sheet. Deal Sheet is a paid newsletter for accredited investors. For $4K/year, subscribers receive 2 things: 

1. Curated Deal Flow: Weekly curated deal flow of 3-5 high-quality syndicate deals

2. Economic Incentive: Deal Sheet’s carried interest is only 10% relative to the syndicate norm of 20%  

In about 7 months, they reached $500K ARR.

Here’s how:

Growing Deel Sheet

To get new subscribers for Deal Sheet, Alex experimented with cold outreach. This didn’t work. 

They decided to be more strategic and create the following funnel:

Identifying individual accredited investors → Build trust and get them to invest in syndicate deals → upsell them to Deal Sheet.

So far, they’ve seen success with this funnel method and are also leaning on word of mouth and referrals from current Deal Sheet subscribers. 

A great way they can supercharge their referral network is through a referral or affiliate webinar that’s structured like this: 

Another way they’re getting more Deal Sheet subscribers is by plugging it in The Last Money In newsletter and extending a 14-day free trial.

Here’s an example below: 

Other ways Deal Sheet can grow

To become a multi-million dollar newsletter, Deal Sheet will eventually need to grow beyond the existing syndicate investors.

But it’s not easy. With a $4k subscription fee, it’s a high consideration purchase. 

On the podcast Alex and I talked about growing Deel Sheet with webinars and a salesperson.

Most companies hire salepeople too late. 

Because a sales person’s compensation is mostly from commission, it’s one of the lowest risk hires you can make.

I recommend hiring a salesperson when you have enough leads for them to call and a structure and process in place to drive the sale.  

One of the keys to a sales hire is ensuring the incentives are aligned. Below are two common structure I’ve seen:

• Lower base salary (inside the US $50k-$70k, outside the US $30-$40K) with the intention that they can double their income through through a 8%-15% commission on the paid subscribers they sell.

• Waterfall commission. If they exceed their quota, then they get above their standard commission. That commission may go from 10% to 12% to 15% as they sell more.

In 2-3 months you should be able to tell if a salesperson is driving ROI or not. 

Check the out podcast I did with Alex for a more in-depth look into all of this.