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A snappy daily on business and tech for entrepreneurs, acquired by HubSpot to anchor its media strategy.
Overview
Niche, audience, and how it makes money.
The Hustle built a large, loyal audience of entrepreneurs and side-hustlers with punchy, opinionated coverage of business and tech. HubSpot acquired it in 2021 to put a media flywheel at the top of its funnel.
The niche
Entrepreneurs, founders, and business-curious professionals who want the story behind the headline. The tone is irreverent and skeptical — a deliberate contrast to corporate business media.
How it monetizes
- Sponsorships. Native ads across a multi-million list are the core revenue line.
- Premium research. Trends, a paid membership, delivered deep-dive reports and a private community — a higher-margin subscription layer on top of the free list.
- Strategic value. Post-acquisition, the newsletter feeds HubSpot's brand and CRM funnel, which is worth more to HubSpot than standalone ad revenue.
The risk
Inside a large parent company, a media brand can lose the independent voice that made it work — the acquisition is the monetization and the risk at once.
Steal this: a distinct point of view builds a list that an acquirer will pay a premium to own.
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