Cruising Altitude 🤝 The Crossover

A year and a half later: We. Are. Back.

Jan 10, 2023

👋Welcome!

What is up Cruisers? We are back for Newsletter #33!

Actual Footage of Cruisers to me after resurfacing after a year. (Don’t worry. You all are a lot prettier than Squidward.)

What is Inside?

💸An Update From Alan
😂Meme of the Week
💸An Update From Alan:
👋College

What. Is. Up. Cruisers. It is crazy for me to think that the last time I put pen to paper (more like finger to key, but pen to paper sounds cooler) for the newsletter was August ‘21.

At the time, I was going into my last semester of college, taking more credits than I had at any point prior in my collegiate journey. Making my education the priority for those last few months in College Park was the priority and deserved all of my attention.

To be honest, making college the priority was more of my parents call than mine. If it was up to me, I would have just kept on focusing on the newsletter, but they said getting a college degree and finding a way to make money was important. Ridiculous. I know.

Regardless, we locked in, crushed it and got that degree. What did we not get? An in person graduation as the Omicron variant had different plans cancelling graduation just a couple days before.

Not actual footage of me on graduation day as the graduation ceremony was canceled. And I didn’t go to Dartmouth where this GIF is from. #stateschoolbaby

👋Job

Throughout my job search process, I was always took an open minded perspective. I did do some classic interviews with some of the big finance names and was moving on nicely through the interview processes. At the same time, I felt that this newsletter and the relationships I had could help me go after some less main stream opportunities

Ultimately, I ended up connecting with a brand new startup called Workweek Media - a creator focused, B2B media company. I hit it off right away with Adam and Becca, the CEO and COO of the company.

They had crushed it in the past in the media space being critical members of the team at The Hustle before they were acquired by Hubspot. Adam and Becca had a unique view on the future of the media space. I was ready to take a risk with them and they were ready to take a risk with me.

I was originally hired to write the Just Raised newsletter, a venture capital newsletter where I was working for my first 6 months at Workweek. We crushed it. I helped grow the newsletter from zero to over 5,000 subscribers in just a few months. Today, Just Raised has over 10k subs!

Workweek was so pumped with the heat I brought to Just Raised that they spun me off to create my own vertical at the company called The Crossover where I would break down the intersection between the public and private markets.

I have been writing The Crossover for a few months now, and it has been going great. We are at just about 3,000 subscribers including investors from some of the biggest hedge funds and venture capital funds in the world. The Crossover has seen great success due to market analysis delivered in a fun and unique voice - just like Cruising Altitude!

Here are three of the most recent Crossover’s in case you want to see what they are all about:

Actual footage of Lebron when he hears that The Crossover doesn’t break down the NBA, but rather investing (which Lebron is pretty good at too)

👋Next Chapter

Over the next month, I will be officially spinning out from Workweek Media, and be the sole owner of The Crossover. Simply put, I am going all in for the next several months trying to build something special, and I want all of you to be on that journey with me.

Including Cruising Altitude and The Crossover base, we have 4,000 subscribers. I have the ambitious goal of reaching 10,000 subscribers in 2023.

I have some big things in store to try and make this goal a reality and look forward to sharing them with you over the coming weeks. The first and number 1 priority is continuing to crush it with the weekly Friday send of The Crossover newsletter.

Second, which I am particularly excited about is the launch of “The Crossover Podcast” a weekly podcast with myself and Jacob Cohen. Jacob is a big time creator for The Hustle where he writes their daily email (to millions) and hosts one of their daily podcasts (to thousands). It is going to be sweet. He is also a good friend, my roommate, and one of the big reasons Cruising Altitude came into existence. (But most importantly I am just using him for his clout for the pod. Even though he will likely read this, don’t tell him as there is a chance he doesn’t!)

Later this week, I will be merging the lists of The Crossover and Cruising Altitude. You won’t have to do anything at all! If you do not want to be a part of this journey, which would make me very sad, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of the email.

I can’t wait to keep building The Crossover and see what it becomes. Thank you all for being a critical part of my journey. I truly could not do it without each and every one of you.