Number
~$18M/year newsletter run by a 4-person team
Kevin Van Trump confirms his daily agriculture newsletter has roughly 30,000-40,000 paid subscribers at ~$600/year, written mostly by him with a staff of about four including his son and wife.
$18M
Estimated annual revenue of the Van Trump Report newsletter · USD/year
“Yeah, it's just myself. There's about 4 of us on our staff here. A friend of mine that used to be a golf pro, a buddy that I went to school with, Stacy out in California, and my son Jordan on this side of the fence. My wife does bookkeeping with accounting team, but That's really it.”
Story
How a trading journal sent to friends became a $18M newsletter
Van Trump started writing notes to become a better trader, emailed them to friends, and saw them circulate back from Goldman traders. He priced it at $40/month 'like a storage unit deal' to test demand, and it grew to 45 countries with zero advertising.
“So I started journaling and I said, hey, I'm going to send my notes out to friends. And then it started circulating back to me. It was coming from guys at Goldman and different trading firms. It was circling back to me. And I told my wife, I said, shit, we were investing, trying to do some storage units at the time. So I thought, I'll send it out for $40 a month. It'll be like a storage unit deal. Let's just see if people buy it or pay. And it just kind of took off and went nuts from there. And we've never advertised and we're about 45 countries now.”
Steal thisPublish your working notes, charge a small monthly price to test willingness to pay, and let word of mouth find the audience.
Framework
Value vs. uniqueness 2x2 for screening businesses
Van Trump plots business ideas on a grid of value vs. uniqueness. High-value/low-uniqueness (tires) forces you to be a low-cost, high-volume provider; low-value/high-uniqueness (Google Glass) is a money pit; high-value/high-uniqueness (the iPod) is where high margins live.
“Now you get over to where Apple likes to play or some of the others, you go high value, high uniqueness. That's something like an iPod, 10,000 songs in your pocket. You know, that was their main stick. And it's like, that's where you can create high gross, that's where you can create high margin, and that's where you can make a lot of great things happen. Obviously lower left corner, you're, you're an idiot.”
Steal thisPlot any new idea on value vs. uniqueness; only chase the high-value, high-uniqueness quadrant.
Framework
People buy value, not price
Van Trump's mental model for screening deals: customers buy value, not price. Cutting price on a low-value product won't sell it (a bin of LaserDiscs at 5 cents still won't move), so build value rather than competing on cheapness.
“You know, and I always say on there, people buy value, not price. And this was a hard one to understand for a lot of people. Because if I went into Walmart and I put a whole bin of LaserDisc in there and I put them for sale for 5 cents, I mean, baguette, nobody's gonna buy them just because there's no value to them.”
Steal thisStop discounting to move a weak product; raise the value or kill it.
Take
For most people, long-term buy-and-hold beats trying to trade
Despite being a career commodities trader, Van Trump advises his own kids and most people against active trading. Beating the S&P or Nasdaq year in and year out is too hard; passive long-term holding is the way to build wealth.
“Like I said, I'm more with Buffett. You know, I think, you know, everybody's trying to beat the indexes. I mean, everybody's trying to beat the S&P or the Nasdaq year in and year out. That's tough to do. And, you know, so I think, you know, as a passive investor, long-term hold is probably a good play for the majority of most people. And that's the way to build wealth.”
Prediction
Hit
Midwest farmland becomes the new oil for data centers
Van Trump predicts data will be 'the new oil' stored centrally in the Midwest, and that farmland is already being gobbled up for massive data centers, solar fields and wind farms as land gains new utility value.
“And we think it's kind of like Cushing, Oklahoma, where we store our oil. Now we think data is going to be kind of the new oil. And so we're going to try and store our data here in the U.S. centrally into the Midwest. So we're seeing a big push in some farmland being gobbled up for big data centers.”
Fact
80% of farms are owned by people over 60
Van Trump notes the ag world faces a major succession crisis: roughly 80% of farms are owned by people over 60, with many kids unwilling to return and most families lacking succession plans.
“80% of the farms are owned by people over 60. You know, it's, it's a really aging demographic. And a lot of the, the kids, you know, have other jobs or went off to great colleges and great schools and they don't necessarily want to come back.”
Tactic
The adjacent farmer always overpays for neighboring land
When buying acreage, your fiercest bidder is the farmer whose land butts up against the parcel, because it may only come available once in their lifetime and a contiguous piece is hugely valuable for running equipment. Pension funds like California Teachers also bid against you.
“The person whose farm butts up against you, they're going to be willing to pay a big premium because the land may only come available once in their lifetime. And so they're going to be bidding heavily. So whoever's in close proximity, because as you know, driving the combines or driving the harvester, it makes a lot of sense to get a continuing piece of ground.”
Billy
The FarmersOnly.com guy who out-boothed John Deere
Van Trump recalls mocking a tiny FarmersOnly.com booth with Polaroids at a Louisville farm show. Year after year the guy's booth grew until it nearly rivaled John Deere's, and he eventually ran Super Bowl ads, turning a farmer dating site into a hit.
“He's like, it's called FarmersOnly.com. And you guys have seen all of the ads. Man, I'm not shitting you, Sean. We're like all making fun of him. And then the next year he comes and he has like a 20 by 20 booth. And then the next year he's there and shit, his booth damn near as big as John Deere. I mean, his booth is massive and we're like, what the hell? And then he's got Super Bowl ads.”
Number
Farmland hits $20,000 an acre in a bidding war
Van Trump says a friend recently sold inherited ground outside Missouri for $20,000 an acre, far above the typical $5,000-$15,000 range, driven by neighbors and funds bidding up contiguous parcels.
$20K
Price per acre paid for farmland in a bidding war outside Missouri · USD/acre
“And he ended up getting $20,000 an acre down here outside of Missouri. Now that's pretty rare off the books. You know, acreage around here typically go for, you know, $5,000 to $12,000 to $15,000. But if someone needs the ground or wants the ground and it's a continuing piece of track, to their farm, you can see guys get in the bidding war.”
Take
Bet on buying and rolling up blue-collar businesses
Van Trump loves the blue-collar space and the Cody Sanchez playbook of buying retiring trades businesses, patching them up and selling them. With few young people entering the trades, good skilled operators are in short supply and the growth upside is large.
“You know, we really love the blue-collar space. I mean, I think we love, you know, like what Cody Sanchez has going on or some of the other things. We like the thought of buying blue-collar businesses, rolling them up and, you know, kind of patching them up and selling them.”