Henry Blodget, Chief Executive Officer, Insider Inc.  Photo credit: Rodrigo SEPÚLVEDA SCHULZ, licensed under Creative Commons

Insider Inc, the parent company of popular media brand Business Insider, is on the cusp of a deal to acquire a controlling stake in Morning Brew, a news startup best-known for a popular email newsletter on the topics of business and finance with 3 million subscribers, according to a report [paywall] by the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, Insider is discussing acquiring a controlling stake in a deal that’ll value Morning Brew at over $75 million including certain performance incentives, a good win for a startup founded just five years ago and having raised less than $1 million in outside funding.

According to the Journal, Morning Brew is on pace to clinch revenues of $20 million this year and is profitable, a combination that’ll surely be an attraction to a bigger media company like Insider Inc. Although not yet confirmed, a $75 million+ acquisition deal for Morning Brew would cast a light in a digital media sector that’s been dulled by a number of challenges, one major such challenge being an online advertising market that was already on the decline before being worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. 

A coronavirus pandemic this year widely affected digital media businesses and caused thousands of job losses as a result. Morning Brew doesn’t seem to be one of such businesses, with relatively lean operations that produce strong and sustainable results. The company makes money by selling advertising space for companies to reach its business-savvy newsletter subscribers, with current advertisers including the likes of Oracle, the software giant; Fidelity, the financial services giant; and Allbirds, the sustainable footwear brand.

Morning Brew was founded in 2015 by the duo of Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief, both of whom were students at the University of Michigan as of the time of its founding. They have since grown the company with relatively little outside funding, $750,000 known so far, and a lean workforce. For reference, Morning Brew was early this year reported to have hit $13 million in annual revenue with only 33 employees.

Along with its popular newsletter, Morning Brew also publishes a popular podcast, “Business Casual,” which has featured talks from prominent business luminaries such as former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and Netflix co-Chief Executive Reed Hastings. Insider Inc, the company’s reported acquirer, is itself owned by a bigger media company, the German media giant Axel Springer, which purchased it in a $450 million deal in 2015.

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