morning-brew
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Jacob Cohen Donnelly
Jacob Cohen Donnelly is the founder of A Media Operator, a subscription publication, podcast, and conference for the people who run digital media companies. He started it in August 2019 as a weekend Substack while holding down full-time roles at CoinDesk and then Morning Brew, where he became Publisher. In 2024 he went all-in, rebuilt AMO into a five-person media business doing roughly $1 million in revenue, and turned the annual AMO Summit into the room media executives consider essential to be inside.
Alex Lieberman
Alex Lieberman co-founded Morning Brew out of a University of Michigan dorm room in 2015 and grew it from 40 campus subscribers to 4+ million before selling a majority stake to Axel Springer's Insider Inc. for ~$75 million in 2020. Since stepping back as CEO at 28, he has reinvented himself as a multi-company builder, launching Storyarb (a B2B content agency hitting mid-7-figures), Tenex (AI strategy for enterprises), GrowthPair (marketing talent), and Distro (an AI content platform), while hosting the Founder's Journal podcast and building one of the most transparent creator brands in business media.
Austin Rief
Austin Rief co-founded Morning Brew in 2015 as a college sophomore after cold-emailing a classmate about a PDF newsletter. He helped grow it from a campus PDF to a 5-million-subscriber media company with $70M+ revenue before Axel Springer bought it outright. He served as CEO from 2021 to 2025, then stepped back to Executive Chairman while building Oceans Talent (an offshore staffing platform at $15M ARR) and Rief Ventures, a seed fund with 16+ investments including enterprise AI unicorn WRITER.