Recently, I said that I think there’s a huge opportunity in local newsletters. Not just local news – but niche, industry newsletters designed to serve specific cities.

This week, I have a perfect example.

Brett Dashevsky runs Creator Economy NYC, (shout-out to Chenell Basilio for turning me onto his work).

I got a chance to chat with him and while it’s early days for the brand, I’m convinced that in 1-2 years this can be a multi-million dollar business. Here’s why…

Background: Brett’s got some really interesting experience with newsletters already.

Back in 2020, he and his brother launched Healthcare Huddle, which they grew and sold to WorkWeek in summer of ‘21. As part of the acquisition, Brett joined WorkWeek’s core team, eventually overseeing Creator Success and helping their stable of writers launch and grow other newsletters.

It was useful experience, but being immersed in the creator ecosystem, he always knew he wanted to get back into building his own brand…

He Started with Just Events: After moving to New York, Dashevsky wanted to build connections. So in January of last year, he started hosting regular creator meetups at a local bar.

They snowballed from 15 attendees to dozens, then hundreds as word spread.

For almost a year, there was no formal newsletter. This was essentially a side project, and it was focused on in-person conection. Then, after parting ways with WorkWeek toward the end of the year, he decided the time was right to go all in, adding a newsletter component and making a real push to turn CENYC into something bigger.

Event Platform:
People sometimes ask what tools are good for hosting events right now. Brett started on Partiful, but switched to Luma last year because he felt it had better features for professional community-building.

“You can build out an events calendar for people to subscribe to,” he said. “It automatically captures RSVPs emails and provides them to you, and events automatically add to an attendees calendar.”

Luma’s also a bit more email-centric, whereas Partiful is built around SMS.

Don’t Reinvent The Wheel: One big advantage Brett had when launching CENYC was experience. He’d built Healthcare Huddle, and spent years helping WorkWeek creators launch their newsletters. So he already knew a lot of the important things about how the newsletter should be built.

He leaned hard on the branding, and I gotta say, CENYC has probably got the best branding of any newsletter I’ve seen recently. Seriously, check this out.

The look is designed to mimic the NYC subway, and every section of the email is a subtle nod to NYC culture. They even hide easter eggs in each issue. It’s great.

There’s also stuff in there every newsletter operator should think about. For example…

1 . Use the same intro line across each issue. It reminds people quickly why they’re there and what they can expect to get.

2 . Remember that people will forward your email to friends – drop a subscribe button up top for anyone who likes what they see.

At Trends, we used to put this at the bottom. I haven’t seen any data on whether one or the other is better, but up top makes sense to me if you have the space.

3 . Use the Rule of Three in your lists or articles. A lot of writers get themselves in trouble trying to create huge lists or round-ups each week. Three is plenty, it’s useful to readers, and visually satisfying.

Growth & Monetization: So far, events have been the main driver of growth for the list, followed by social media posting, and Beehiiv’s recommendation network. It’s early though, and I suspect this year we’ll see those shift as the newsletter becomes more of a focus.

As for sponsors, some big names have taken notice. CENYC has worked with brands like Teachable, Mekanism, Notion, and more.

At this point, many of the sponsors are helping with event logistics, paying a few thousand dollars for food or meeting space. But that’ll change too as the community gains steam and the price of tapping into it goes up.

Why I Think This Will Work: The short version is that CENYC is in a big city, targeting a professional audience. Sheer numbers are on their side.

  • There are ~20 million people in NY Metro area
  • Many people want to be creators (like… most of GenZ)
  • Lots of brands want to partner with creators, and CENYC is uniquely positioned to make that connection

Plus a lot of the content is valid to readers outside NYC. Similar to The New Yorker I expect a decent chunk of their audience will eventually be outside the city. But even if it’s not, the math is still on their side.

If they only ever reach 1% of readers in the metro area they’re still looking at a list of ~200k well-targeted subscribers, and that’s more than enough to build a 7-figure business on.

I think The Newsette is an interesting example to learn from here. In 2021, they did $40 million in revenue with a list of ~500k subscribers, which is incredible.

Almost half of that was ads, and the rest was agency services they sold their advertisers on the back end (e.g., “Look how well your ad worked in our newsletter. We know content. We can help with yours!”).

Creator Economy NYC will have a lot of options when it comes to monetizing – ads, affiliate deals, event tickets, paid creator communities, etc. But the trick will be finding the highest-leverage one.

A creator marketing agency might be an interesting option. After all, they’ve got an ever-growing list of up-and-coming creators. And founders like Mae Karwowski have built these kinds of agencies to incredible exits.

At any rate, this is one I’ll be keeping an eye on. If you want to follow along too, check ‘em out here: