Who Owns 1440 News?

1440 News is an American impartial media platform based in Chicago, Illinois. The service was founded in 2018 by Tim Huelskamp, Andrew Steigerwald, and Pierre Lipton. 1440 seeks to be a beacon of trust in media. Its team produces compelling content without relying on emotional language or clickbait. This approach ensures the media house stays true to its strict editorial guidelines.

Huelskamp is 1440 CEO, Steigerwald is editor-in-chief, and Lipton is COO. In 2022, Pierre Lipton was named to the 10^th annual Forbes 30 Under 30 List for the Class of 2022. The list features trailblazing young innovators in North America. [1]

1440 scours hundreds of sources daily and creates a five-minute newsletter covering culture, science, sports, politics, and business. The 1440 team prioritizes fact-focused news to fulfill the growing demand for accuracy and impartiality in media.

This fact-first approach catapulted 1440 News to new heights. In Nov 2023, 1440 crossed the 3 million subscriber mark. The service secured 1 million new subscribers in around a year. [2]

Social media platforms are notorious for polarizing the masses with fake news. However, 1440 sets new standards in the media industry by leveraging social media to disperse unbiased news stories. In Oct 2023, 1440 was a finalist at the 8^th Annual Shorty Impact Awards for 1440: Facts Without Motives in the News and Media category. The media house had the highest public votes. [3]

1440 was founded to provide an impartial view of world events, allowing readers to make their own conclusions. The idea came from a concern about the time-consuming process of finding reliable, unbiased news stories within the media ecosystem.

In Aug 2023, 1440 Media ranked No. 79 on the 2023 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies. The company earned the spot with over 5,500% growth rate. 1440 was also named to the 2023 Inc. Regionals list as the fourth fastest-growing private company in the Midwest. [4]

Image credit Markus Spiske — Image credit: Markus Spiske

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Who is 1440 News’ Parent Company?

1440 is an independent, employee-owned media company. It is a standalone business with no parent company or sole owner. As of Dec 2023, 1440 had around 25 editors, experts, and analysts, including CEO Huelskamp, Editor-in-Chief Steigerwald, and COO Lipton. The media house makes over 95% of its income from advertisements, with reader donations contributing a small portion. [5]

1440 counters agenda-driven coverage by mainstream news channels to fix distrust in the media. The 1440 newsletter offers a comprehensive news roundup based on facts rather than speculations. In Sep 2023, 1440 won the 1871’s flagship Momentum Awards. The award reinforces 1440’s position as a pioneering force for impartiality in the media. [6]

The 1440 newsletter is the brand’s top revenue generator. 1440’s team members send emails with newsletters to clients and make five cents each time a subscriber opens their daily email. Advertisers pay 1440 to promote their products or services to their newsletter readers. The platform only delivers two ads per issue from a vetted and trusted brand by 1440’s team. The company also makes money through its subscription-based model, affiliate marketing, sponsored content, reader donations, events and webinars, and content licensing. [7]

1440 News’ Ownership History

Tim Huelskamp, Andrew Steigerwald, and Pierre Lipton started 1440 as a newsletter in 2017, making them the original 1440 owners. The newsletter served Steigerwald’s colleagues. The name 1440 refers to the number of minutes per 24 hours (daily) and the year the printing press was invented. In 2018, the co-owners founded 1440 Media and took the top three leadership positions – CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and COO. [8]

The 1440 newsletter launched with 78 subscribers – all friends and family members of the co-founders. Huelskamp and Steigerwald focused the first quarter of operations on enhancing the newsletter to attract more readers. They built a unit-cost business model and leveraged word-of-mouth as the brand’s organic growth tool. By May 2021, the newsletter had 750,000 subscribers and an open rate of over 50%. [9]

1440’s co-founders didn’t focus on subscriber growth at first. They spent the entire summer refining the newsletter to be an industry-leading product. Although the company raised a small amount of capital via equity and debt, it is essentially bootstrapped. The co-founders reinvested the profits into growing the business through the flywheel business model. By 2021, 1440 had over 1 million subscribers. [10]

The co-founders invested in building 1440’s channels, scaling digital assets, and monetizing them. They leveraged paid and organic promotion, including word-of-mouth marketing, to reach the target audience and attract new subscribers.

In Oct 2022, 1440 surpassed 2 million subscribers. 1440 became one of America’s most widely read email newsletters only four years after its founding. [11]

The co-founders and co-owners developed strict editorial guidelines for their editors, experts, and analysts. Each post requires the perspectives of at least 5 team members to ensure brand messaging alignment and accountability. In 2022, Lauren Routt joined 1440 as head of social to help the media house reach new audiences. [12]

The Routt-led social team tailored the news featured in 1440’s daily newsletter for Instagram and tested several content formats, from carousel posts to Reels and intriguing stories on Instagram. This strategy paid off in 2023. 1440’s Instagram following increased by 65,175 from Jan to Jun 2023, with 1.6 million likes and 129,000 comments on posts.

About 19,460 newsletter subscriptions were attributed to social channels during the same period, with 64% coming from Instagram. In Nov 2023, 1440 surpassed 1 million followers across its social channels. [13]

1440 News’ Shareholder Structure

1440 is majority-owned by its co-founders and top management. As of Mar 2024, 1440 had around 25 employees. CEO Huelskamp, Editor-in-Chief Steigerwald, and COO Lipton are 1440’s top shareholders.

Its top management includes Head of Product and Design Aaron Enequist-Leiker, Head of Social Lauren Routt, Chief Growth Officer Mike Rome, Director of Brand Partnerships Amanda Black, Chief Content Officer Sony Kassam, and VP of Product and Growth Mitchell Kapoor. They own a minority stake in the media company. [14]

1440 is minority-owned by venture capital firms. Since its founding, the company has raised over $2.5 million in funding. Its investors include Cannon Capital and Mass Challenge. They funded the business for a minority stake in the company. [15]

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