Last week, a reader of my email newsletter who works for an Agora affiliate clued me into the following fact:
Stansberry Research is going public.
Stansberry, as you probably know, is one of the biggest imprints that came out of Agora. They had the End of America promo. This was one of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars through a single VSL.
When I heard that Stansberry is going public, my first thought was to David Bowie.
Back in 1997, Bowie released 10-year bonds backed by the future royalties of his album sales.
Bowie bonds put $55 million into David Bowie’s pocket, and were given a respectable A3 rating.
But within a couple of years, digital file sharing caused the whole music album market to implode. Bowie bonds were downgraded to Baa3, one notch above junk bond status.
Maybe David Bowie, with his artist’s intuition, sensed it coming, and made a smart cash grab just in time?
And maybe Porter Stansberry, using his entrepreneur’s intuition, senses something similar in the current moment?
The Agora copywriter who told me about this assured me I’m imagining things. “It’s probably Stansberry himself wants to be a billionaire. He must be pretty close now.”
A Barrons article that reported on this quoted the CEO of the company that’s taking Stansberry public through a merger. That guy’s reasoning:
“We were looking for a company in the attention economy with scalable, digitally delivered IP. As people say, ‘content is king.’ But it’s rare that you find a company that’s as prolific at creating new IP… They’re like the Netflix of financial content.”
So rather than this being a Bowie moment, maybe it’s a Netflix moment?
A moment in which a somewhat limited, niche company uses its own existing assets and a bunch of cash to become a mainstream powerhouse?
Or maybe it’s a sign of things to come — Stansberry & chill?
Maybe. I’m not convinced. But I am curious. So if like me, you dip your toes in the direct response pond, it might be worth keeping an eye on the the ripples from this isolated pebble drop.
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