Repointing a newsletter at the right reader

Founders Engine Room is my weekly newsletter. For a while it leaned on AI news and new tools. That's an easy newsletter to write, because there's a new tool every morning.

It was also aimed at the wrong reader.

Shipped

A new position. Founders Engine Room is now about business growth for people who own the number: lead generation, sales and marketing, and how AI and agents change that work in practice.

The reader is a business owner, mostly in the UK. Marketing agencies. Consultancies. Coaches. Professional services firms. Early and growth-stage tech companies. Established businesses updating how they grow.

Broke

Tools-first coverage.

A newsletter about tools attracts people who like tools. Some of them run businesses. Plenty don't. And the ones who do rarely wake up wanting another tool. They wake up wanting more of the right customers.

Leading with the tool put the answer before the question. The reader I build for cares about the question.

One number

5. Every edition has five sections and can be read in one sitting. One signal for the week, what's moving in the market, and one question to take away are the spine of it.

One lesson

Pick the reader before you pick the topic.

It sounds obvious. It's also the easiest thing to get backwards, because topics are fun to choose and readers are hard to choose. Once the reader is fixed, most editorial decisions make themselves. Would an agency owner in Leeds care about this? If not, it's out, however interesting it is.

The newsletter is weekly and free. If you run a business and want one useful read a week on growing it, that's Founders Engine Room.