Framework
Buy media assets, then rebuild the P&L as a 5-person bootstrap
Andrew Wilkinson bought Girlboss only as asset purchase, ignoring its bloated venture cost structure. He valued it on its 2M social followers and audience, then reimagined what the business could do if run lean with about 5 employees instead of a full venture P&L.
“I said, "Look, I will buy it only if I can just buy the assets," because we looked at it and we said, hey, they've got 2 million social followers, they've got a huge newsletter, they've got a massive podcast feed. All the pieces are there, but the cost structure was venture, right? So they had a big P&L, they had a ton of employees, and we looked at it, we went, okay, what if this company had 5 employees? Could you run it with 5 employees?”
Steal thisWhen buying a money-losing media company, value the audience assets and re-underwrite the P&L as if you ran it with 5 people.
Framework
Underwrite acquisitions on base hits, not the home runs
Andrew Wilkinson explains his acquisition math: if every big upside fails and only the obvious base hits land (e.g. selling $40-50K/month of ads against 250K subscribers), the deal still returns well. Girlboss could do $3M/year and be amazing, with $20-50M as the upside case.
“if we're wrong about all the big opportunities and we're only right about just base hits, so like, hey, we've got 250,000 newsletter subscribers, can we sell $40,000 or $50,000 a month of ads on that? If we do that, we've got a good little business. And then if we do that on the podcast, we've got a really good little business. And then if we do that on social, again, it's bigger and bigger and bigger. It doesn't need to be huge. Based on the price we paid, it could do $3 million a year in revenue and be an amazing business and give us a good return.”
Steal thisBuy a business so the base-hit scenario already returns capital, and treat every growth bet as free optionality.
Idea
Bolt a $100/month job board onto any audience site
Andrew's classic move: add a job board to a content site as a low-effort revenue stream. On Girlboss it pulled $5K–$10K/month, spun up with jobboardfire.com for ~$100/month plus an Upwork contractor.
“I think that job board, I think it did $5,000 last month. We did $10,000 the month before, and we just use jobboardfire.com, which is like $100 a month to spin it up. And it's one of those things where you're like, wow, that plus some Upwork contractor to help us, you know, administer it. And we made an extra $5,000. Like, why not?”
Steal thisAdd a cheap job board to your audience site as a near-passive add-on revenue stream.
Number
Girlboss: 500K copies, 20 weeks on the NYT list
Amoruso's book Girlboss sold roughly half a million copies, was published in numerous languages, and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She notes a launch pop gets you on the list, but you don't stay 20 weeks without merit.
$500K
Copies of Girlboss sold · copies
“it would go on to sell half a million copies and be published in like a bazillion languages and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list”
Number
Girlboss: 500K copies, 20 weeks on the NYT list
Amoruso's book Girlboss sold roughly half a million copies, was published in numerous languages, and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She notes a launch pop gets you on the list, but you don't stay 20 weeks without merit.
$500K
Copies of Girlboss sold · copies
“it would go on to sell half a million copies and be published in like a bazillion languages and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list”
Number
A signed deal worth 4x last year's revenue, killed by COVID
Girlboss had a brand-partnership deal signed and on the CFO's desk for countersignature worth four times the prior year's revenue, a single check for a year-long deal, before COVID caused most brand partnerships to fall through.
$4
Signed deal size vs prior-year revenue · x annual revenue
“I mean, we had something signed that was like 4 times last year's revenue. That would have been a one check for a year-long deal that was signed on the CFO's desk for countersignature and then fucking COVID.”
Story
Investors killed the paywall to look 'sexier' to VCs
Girlboss had a paywall built and ready, but investors told Amoruso not to reinvent a paid-social model that had never worked and to launch free first. Cash-strapped, she launched a free product that drove no revenue, purely to be more legible to venture capitalists.
“launched something that didn't drive revenue because it would be sexier for venture investors and they'd like understand, you know, something that, you know, isn't like a subscription social network that we've never seen work before.”
Steal thisDon't kill a working paid model just to look fundable; revenue you control beats VC legibility.