An Evening with Austin Rief

On Feb. 4, the TAMID Group, an on-campus club offering students an educational course that integrates business leadership principles with Israel’s economic landscape, brought in Morning Brew COO Austin Rief to speak about his company and journey, and to give advice to students. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the company, Morning Brew is a successful newsletter subscription that delivers easily digestible news from the business world into your inbox daily. Morning Brew developed from an idea that the current CEO, Alex Lieberman, had during his college days at the University of Michigan. As a business student and tentative investment banker, Lieberman understood the necessity of keeping up with the world of the market. Almost anyone in the business world today will tell a student how important it is to keep up with the news. However, most college students do not choose to sit down with a copy of the Wall Street Journal every morning with their coffee. Lieberman came up with the idea to summarize business news in simplified English, which can be more easily understood by readers.

Lieberman decided to draft his idea by sending a sample email to the students in his fraternity and asked them for feedback. The first reply was from Rief, who thought this was a brilliant idea. Together, the two established Morning Brew in 2015. The successful newsletter has grown rapidly since then and currently has 1.7 million subscribers. The majority of subscribers are college students and young professionals from the business world.

The newsletter now has a franchise of other specific newsletters focusing on retail news, artificial intelligence (AI), the presidential election and more. The Brew’s unique content and style of writing, which does not shy away from including memes and referencing pop culture, make reading the news enjoyable, conversational and most importantly, understandable.

Lieberman and Rief, who are 25 and 24 years old, respectively, initially aspired to be investment bankers. Both had impressive jobs at renowned firms ready for them as soon as they graduated, but the young entrepreneurs changed the course of their careers and decided to pursue a different path. The story of Morning Brew’s success is inspiring to many students who look to pursue different trajectories in their careers but are unsure or afraid of the risk.

Rief’s session offered students ample time to ask questions and benefit from his advice. Rief explained topics ranging from venture capitalism to his personal experience working at an investment banking firm. The crowd of approximately 50 students at the event was impressive, and although the event was run by TAMID, many students who are not regular members of the club and do not attend Sy Syms School of Business were in attendance. Not everyone there was necessarily subscribed to or had even heard of Morning Brew before, but they were there to learn about what made the corporation so successful.

“It was great speaking with TAMID YU,” commented Rief following the event. “I really enjoyed sharing the lessons I've learned with the students of TAMID.”

Students found the evening inspiring, and those in attendance learned a lot. Hearing Rief speak impelled me to continue reading the news and be more conscious of current events but also to see behind the lines. Being productive and aware of important current events does not strictly entail reading the daily paper. Even business news can be fun and personalized, perhaps so much so that it can even become a career.

Photo Caption: Austin Reif addressing the students of Yeshiva University 
Photo Credit: TAMID