Milk Road
by Shaan Puri & Ben Lakoff
Crypto news with jokes, not jargon.
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A fun, plain-English daily on crypto and web3 that hit hundreds of thousands of subscribers in under a year and sold fast.
Overview
Niche, audience, and how it makes money.
Milk Road took the Morning Brew playbook and pointed it at crypto: friendly, funny, and jargon-free at a moment when everyone else was either shilling or lecturing. It reached hundreds of thousands of subscribers in under a year and the founders sold it remarkably quickly.
The niche
Crypto-curious retail readers who wanted to understand the space without the toxicity or the technical wall. Approachable tone in an intimidating category was the whole wedge.
How it monetizes
- Sponsorships. Crypto and fintech advertisers pay well to reach an engaged, on-topic audience.
- Built on beehiiv. Using beehiiv gave it native growth tooling — referral programs, recommendation networks, and the beehiiv Ad Network — that accelerated both list growth and ad monetization.
- Speed to exit. A hot category plus fast growth made it an attractive, quick acquisition.
The risk
Crypto audiences are cyclical — engagement and ad demand swing hard with the market, so revenue is inherently volatile.
Steal this: an approachable voice in an intimidating niche is an underrated growth hack. Be the friendly guide.
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