Peak Newsletter's Canadian Success
Share
The Peak is a daily newsletter focused exclusively on Canadian news, demonstrating how a geographically focused newsletter can build a profitable business by dominating a specific market.
Key Points:
-
Business Overview:
- Daily newsletter covering Canadian news
- Team of 10 people
- Mostly bootstrapped operation
-
Performance Metrics:
- 90,000 newsletter subscribers
- 53% open rate
- 67,000 monthly podcast listeners
- ~$3M in revenue
- ~$1M in profit
-
Revenue Strategy:
- Focus on B2B advertisers with limited advertising options in Canada
- Key advertisers include:
- Banks
- Telecommunication companies
- B2B software companies
- Enterprise companies
-
Growth Strategy:
- Started with cold emailing and hiring writers
- Built over 2-3 years
- Leveraged gap in Canadian media market
- Writers described as "kind of good but not really that good" - suggesting content quality wasn't the primary driver of success
The business demonstrates how targeting an underserved geographic market with high-value B2B advertisers can create a profitable media business, even without exceptional content quality.
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.