Matt Johansen grew his cybersecurity newsletter, VulnerableU, from 12 to nearly 30,000 subscribers in less than 2 years.
It pretty quickly turned into a six-figure business, and he decided to leave his job at Bank of America to go full-time on the project.
His secret? A platform-by-platform growth strategy that most creators completely overlook.
Matt had been writing online for years in the early 2010s–blogging, tweeting, speaking at conferences, etc. People really enjoyed his takes on the happenings in the cybersecurity space and he amassed a decent amount of Twitter followers.
But once he started working at Goldman Sachs, and then Bank of America—two of the most security-obsessed companies in the world. They told him that it was off limits.
No tweeting, no speaking, no public presence.
So he went dark. For years.
He Built an Audience Before He Had a Newsletter
It wasn’t until he joined Reddit—a company that encouraged employees to be public-facing—that he got back to posting again. Around that same time, newsletters were taking off.
A friend in the space told him he should write his own newsletter and just see what happened.
He’d spent years being helpful, showing up, and teaching. And when he finally launched something of his own, people jumped in.
“I’ve been talking about cybersecurity on the internet since Twitter was born,” he said. “I ran a blog back when that was cool. I gave hundreds of conference presentations. I was on podcasts before that was cool. I just couldn’t shut up if you tried.”
Matt had built what he calls “industry clout” over years of consistent public engagement, without really realizing what he had done. When he announced his newsletter in 2023, he converted 1,500-2,000 subscribers almost immediately from his existing 10,000 Twitter followers.
Matt’s Holistic Growth Engine
Most creators make the mistake of treating all platforms the same – repurpose your LinkedIn content to Twitter, Threads, and even Instagram carousels.
But Matt discovered that each platform operates like its own universe, each with unique conversion patterns and audience behaviors. So that previously mentioned strategy? It’s kind of a waste of time.
Here is how he thinks about each platform.
Twitter: The Conversion Champion
“If I go viral on Twitter, I absolutely get a lot of conversions. If I go viral on Instagram, not a whole lot of conversion there.”
Matt’s Twitter strategy is mostly around creating long-form threads that break down complex cybersecurity news stories. He’s really good at translating technical topics into simple stories average people can understand.
Here’s one of the most viral tweets about a timely hack that happened in 2023:
When a Twitter thread goes viral, he sees massive newsletter signups. And of course at the end, he adds a CTA: “Want to stay on top of news like this? Join over 5k pros who trust me to give them what they need to know every week in cybersecurity.”
Simple, but it works.
Instagram: The Engagement Powerhouse
With 131k followers on Instagram, Matt has built what he calls his “most engaged community.”
His “floor” for Instagram Reels is 20,000 views – meaning his worst-performing content still reaches a substantial audience. That’s wild.
Fun Fact: Matt also came into the Growth In Reverse Pro community and gave a whole hour-long session walking through how he thinks about and creates short-form video. You get the full recording when you join 🙂
But here’s where it gets interesting: despite the massive reach, Instagram converts pretty poorly into newsletter subscribers.
“Of 129,000 followers, I probably have maybe high hundreds of people that have subscribed, not thousands.”
This boggled my mind because, hypothetically, I feel like you should be able to convert way more folks than that.
And I’ve asked Matt about this in the past because he’s not consistently pushing a CTA on Instagram, or using tools like ManyChat to setup “comment” triggers. For example, he could say “Comment the word “CYBER” and I’ll send you the latest news stories in the industry.
The tool would then DM everyone who comments and ask for their email address. Voila, more email subscribers!
But he doesn’t do that because his audience is so tech-based that he feels like he would lose a lot of followers and hinder his reputation.
Once I heard that, I understood. Makes total sense.
So it begs the question: if you’re just getting lots of views, what’s the point – why continue with Instagram?
Well, Instagram drives his highest-value sponsorship deals – we’re often talking multiple thousands of dollars per sponsored video.
Which is wild to me, because 99% of his videos are a green screen of him talking over a news story:
Sometimes we think these have to be super well-polished to command prices like that. But we’d be wrong.
Matt can command these high rates because he has proof of conversion – B2B SaaS security companies have closed million-dollar deals directly attributed to his Instagram videos.
I wouldn’t be as worried about the email subscribers either 🙂
TikTok: The Feast-or-Famine Platform
TikTok represents Matt’s most unpredictable platform. His floor is 200 views, but when he hits, he hits big – sometimes reaching over 3 million views.
“The algorithm over there is just very strange. I either get like a couple hundred, couple thousand, or I get two million like randomly.”
But he gets nowhere near the sponsorship deals on TikTok. So he relies more on the Creator Fund TikTok has.
His best month on TikTok generated $2,000 in creator fund payments, though he typically earns “dozens to hundreds of dollars” monthly.
YouTube: The Future Bet
Matt started posting YouTube videos just a few months after he launched the newsletter, in June of 2023.
Initially, his YouTube strategy seemed logical: write the newsletter Thursday night, record a video version Friday morning.
But…it was a disaster (he said it, not me).
“Turns out that’s a dumb idea,” Matt reflects. By the time he edited the video with B-roll and proper production value, it couldn’t go live until Monday. “I’m writing news on Thursday to go out Friday morning – already borderline maybe a few days old. Now you wait till next week.”
So yea, not great to have your “news” focused content coming out multiple days after it happened.
But the deeper problem was platform mismatch. “YouTube rewards evergreen content. If you stumbled on this six months from now, it is a completely useless video.”
So publishing more timely content that didn’t really have a place months down the road was kind of silly for him. So he came up with a new content strategy for YouTube a few months ago.
The Evergreen Content Formula
His new content approach follows a specific framework:
- Start with current events – but don’t just report the news
- Zoom out for broader implications – what does this reveal about the industry?
- Focus on lasting lessons – what can someone learn 6 months from now?
Example: Instead of “Here are 10 security breaches this week,” he creates “What the hell is going on with extensions turning into malware” – a deep dive that remains relevant regardless of when someone watches it.
The “10 security breaches this week” might sound fun in the moment, but if someone finds that video in 6-12 months, they’re not going to watch it.
The latter? It’s gotten 75k views in just 3 weeks. And it’s much more relevant if someone finds it in a few months.
The Anti-Production Revolution
This new approach is also much less polished. He deliberately rejects the popular model of hyper-edited content.
His inspiration came from a channel called Some Ordinary Gamers, a creator who breaks every YouTube best practice – terrible lighting, inconsistent audio, basic thumbnails – yet gets millions of views.
“He breaks every single rule that they would teach you in a YouTube academy and he’s killing it.”
Matt’s current philosophy: “I’m almost trying to break the mold from the ‘Mr. Beast in your face. I’m going to treat you like a little cat with a laser pointer and change the screen every two or three seconds.'”
YouTube courses teach the “3-second rule” – change something on screen every three seconds. Matt finds this insulting:
“You’re treating your audience like little ADD children. That’s not the audience that I’m going after.”
His editing process is radically simple – he uses only Descript to cut out dead air and misspeaking, reducing his “all-in” time for a video from days to 2-3 hours.
Why YouTube is His Future Bet
YouTube represents Matt’s highest ceiling platform for several reasons:
- Better monetization: “YouTube pays out better than all these other platforms”
- Evergreen discovery: Content can gain views months or years after publication
- Higher conversion rates: Similar to Twitter, YouTube converts better to newsletter subscribers than visual platforms
The results speak for themselves – his recent video hit 51,000 views in five days. He considers 10,000 views a successful video, and four videos have crossed this threshold with his new approach.
Update: Actually 12 of them have at this point – congrats Matt!
“I’m putting most of my effort into right now because I think it’s got the highest ceiling for me.”
His new approach: “Take a current event that’s prevalent, but zoom out, go deep. What can people learn from this six months from now that would still be valid?”
The results speak for themselves – his recent video “what the hell is going on with extensions turning into malware” hit 51,000 views in five days (now at 75k).
Note: these updates are wild considering we didn’t really record this that long ago. Maybe a few weeks at this point?
How He Makes Money
Matt’s business operates on multiple revenue streams, creating the stability he needed to leave corporate life:
Sponsorships (~50% of income)
Matt started selling newsletter sponsorships around 12,000 subscribers.
His premium Instagram video sponsorships are now his highest-dollar offering because he can prove they convert. Companies in cybersecurity aren’t buying $20 products – they’re making million-dollar purchasing decisions, which means Matt can charge accordingly.
Agency Revenue (~50% of income)
Matt runs a 25-person agency under the VulnerableU agency brand, mostly cybersecurity practitioners and journalists looking for side hustles. They write blogs, manage social media, and help security companies figure out short-form video (even though most are terrified to try it).
The insight here was simple: most marketing agencies serving cybersecurity companies don’t actually know anything about cybersecurity. Matt does, and so he capitalized on that.
Premium Subscriptions (Pretty new)
Matt recently launched paid subscriptions across everything – newsletter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.
The premium newsletter brings back the mental health angle through interviews with industry insiders sharing their “low lights” instead of highlights. It’s early days, but the goal is creating a revenue safety net if advertising markets tank.
The Paid Growth Strategy That Actually Works
While organic content drives engagement, Matt’s primary growth lever is paid acquisition through Beehiiv boosts.
“My biggest growth lever is boosts in Beehiiv. Either free recommendations from friends or boosts from other adjacent newsletters that I pay about two bucks per subscriber.”
The key though, is that Matt only accepts boosts from high-quality newsletters in adjacent spaces (tech, cybersecurity).
This selectivity ensures new subscribers have 50-60% open rates compared to 19-20% from broader acquisition channels like Refind.
Matt has auto-pruned over 8,000 low-engagement subscribers, prioritizing quality over vanity metrics. “I think I would be at over 40,000 if I didn’t do some of that pruning.”
Consistency Beats Everything
If there’s one principle that underlies everything Matt does, it’s consistency.
“I have not missed a single week of VulnerableU since I started it. Consistency is like the number one thing I tell everybody.”
This extends beyond just showing up – it’s about reliable quality and timing. Matt’s newsletter goes out every Friday morning, written Thursday night. His audience knows exactly when to expect content.
“If you’re going to have a break, announce it. Get a guest writer for those two weeks. Do not miss the time.”
The Truth About Multi-Platform Growth
The interview with Matt reiterated some interesting truths about content creation these days.
- Platform switching is rare: Despite massive followings, very few followers convert into other platforms or become email subscribers
- Engagement metrics lie: Open rates and view counts can be misleading, especially in privacy-conscious niches. His readers often have tracking turned off, which is how most ESPs will count opens (and thus, the quality of a subscriber). So his readers might look unengaged, but many of those folks are still actually reading, which makes cleaning a list kind of challenging.
- Quality beats quantity: Better to have 30,000 engaged subscribers than 100,000 inactive ones
- Niche markets pay better: Specialized audiences with purchasing power outperform broad, general audiences
- Consistency compounds: Showing up daily on social media for 18 months beats sporadic viral hits
Matt Johansen’s success is about understanding that content creation today requires treating each platform almost as its own business, with unique audience behaviors, monetization opportunities, and content requirements.
His multi-platform approach works because he’s not trying to be everything to everyone. He’s built deep expertise in one niche and deployed it strategically across platforms that reward different types of engagement.
I think the key point from this story is to stop trying to crack the universal growth code. Instead, understand your audience, pick your platforms purposefully, and show up consistently with content that is insanely valuable.
