Michele Patrassi

Building a media company in public
Co-founder @getsponsy | AdTech @WeTransfer

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

I'm building a local newsletter. And I'm doing it in public

It's been on my mind for too long not to give it a shot

And of course I'm doing a newsletter about the newsletter. So meta!

The messy in-between. The first subscribers. The failed tests.

PUMPED FOR THIS

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@Navink68 @rdbuilds7 absolutely not

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@wickedguro You have a new dm sir

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@startupwithana @SenjaHQ I’ve following the vlogs. You nailed it congrats!

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@dom_gag_96 🍕

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@DG_9_6 Cool initiative, love seeing this

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

I've doubled my ad spend on weekends for my local newsletter. I decided to remove it. Here's the data:

Previous weekends: 134, 66 and 65 new subs
Weekends with double budgets: 54 and 42 new subs

The highest ROI is definitely testing out new ads

Ad fatigue is real!

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

It feels like a bad habit, but I check my subs count on my local newsletter almost every day.

I've noticed my sub acquisition goes up on weekend, especially Sundays.

Doubling my ad spend budget on Sundays for the next month.

Let's see if acquisition doubles too 👀

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

It feels like a bad habit, but I check my subs count on my local newsletter almost every day.

I've noticed my sub acquisition goes up on weekend, especially Sundays.

Doubling my ad spend budget on Sundays for the next month.

Let's see if acquisition doubles too 👀

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

March was a good month for my local newsletter

Doubled my subs by just testing different ad formats

The "Apple note" format ad has been killing it with $0.14 CPL so far

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@jonnokim @levelsio #nofilters

[Aniket Panjwani @aniketapanjwani]

I just released a free 3 hour course on Claude Code for complete beginners.

I assume zero experience with Claude Code, and take you through the following topics:

> Skills - including building a Gmail email triage skill live
> MCPs - live exercise connecting to Notion, parallelizing research with a dozen subagents, and writing async to a Notion db
> Plugins and subagents (with @every's Compound Engineering)
> git and Github
> Web app development with authentication (login): including a live exercise building a job application tracker
> and much more!

The course is here on YouTube: https://t.co/IkRY4hNAiN

On Thursday at 8 PM EST, I'll have a free group call inside my Skool server (https://t.co/M4e29ID8gI). You can ask me any questions you have about Claude Code/Codex/agentic coding, whether for economics research or otherwise, and I'll stay on until all questions are answered.

You can also ask me questions async by posting in the Skool server, and I'll record the call and distribute it on YouTube in the next few weeks.

Additionally, inside the Skool server in the classroom section, you'll find a slide deck with 51 slides corresponding to the material in the course on YouTube.

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

If you're not testing out multiple Meta ads you're losing

Reduced my paid sub acquisition to 10 cents from 60. I had an evergreen ad running, less than 20 cents/sub initially but it increased with time. Ad fatigue is real

Not too bad!

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Thanks @calcsam

It’s so nice to receive a physical copy at home 🏆

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Local newsletter folks

How transparent are you with sponsorship rates?

Do you share every type of offer pricing ahead, or you work on a budget basis and make a proposal?

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Launched a Dinner Club this week with a simple @youformdotcom in my local newsletter now at 1.2k people

Got fully booked in less than 24 hours.

I wanted to get a bit more fancy, so I shipped a custom page ridiculously copying @MikeyPesto style.

Still not perfect, but ok!

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Sunday 8AM. Sharp.

Got off my bed. Got into my running shoes, and joined a local run in Ancona.

A local newsletter is not just writing. It's bounding. It's community.

And I would not ever absolutely ran 10km by myself!

photo of Francesco Flores

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@cooperx86 ah! The floppy disk analogy sounds just right, well spotted Peter

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Can anyone tell me what the Preview icon on Mac is supposed to be?

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

@sbabmarks Congrats and fuck off

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Gathering feedbacks about organizing a dinner club for my local newsletter

18/20 people would like to join in. Also received a bunch of positive emails.

The signal is good

But man, Italy taxation makes it very expensive for me to sell seats. I may need to find a sponsor

[Michele Patrassi @michelepatrassi]

Don't beat yourself too much over perfection.

@github sent me this product update. There's a clear undesired repetition. Probably it could have been avoided with an extra pair of eyes

but at the end of the day...who cares?

What's important is to SHIP