The Solar System Bundle
Anchor a subscription on one sun product, then orbit satellites that share its DNA
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Alex Hardiman's model for turning a single-category brand into an 'essential subscription'. One product is the sun: it is why you exist, it carries the brand's trust and heritage, and it is the top of the funnel. Every other product is a satellite that must share the sun's DNA (same expertise, same trust, same craft), and the bundle is the connected family that lets a user who entered through any one product discover all the rest. It is a portfolio test, not a feature list: if a candidate product doesn't inherit the sun's DNA, it doesn't belong in the bundle.
Origin
Developed by Alex Hardiman and the New York Times product organisation during a company-wide strategy project in ~2021-2022, as the framing for the goal of 15 million subscribers by 2027 (from just over 9 million at the time of the interview). It is the strategic rationale behind the Wordle and The Athletic acquisitions.
Core principles
- 01Business goals sit in service of the mission, not the other way around
- 02One product is the sun — the reason you exist, the trust source, and the widest audience
- 03Satellites must inherit the sun's DNA: same expertise, same trust, same product craft
- 04Bundle value is realised at the seams — the cross-discovery between products, not the product count
- 05Size the addressable market by 'who would pay for this daily', not by category TAM
How to run it
- 1
Size the daily-value market
Run a strategy exercise to find the largest addressable market where your brand can be truly valuable every single day. The NYT landed on ~135 million people worldwide willing to pay for high-quality journalism-based products.
Pro tip Frame the question as daily usefulness, not occasional relevance — the bundle only works if there's a reason to return every day.
- 2
Name the sun
Identify the one product that is the reason the company exists, that carries brand heritage and instils trust, that holds the largest audience at the top of your portfolio funnel, and where your quality is highest. For the Times, that is news.
Watch out The sun is not the most profitable product or the fastest growing — it is the trust source. Picking a cash cow instead breaks the DNA inheritance in step 3.
- 3
Enumerate the satellite categories
List the categories adjacent to the sun where the same DNA — trusted expertise, real journalists, product craft, distribution reach — would produce a credible best-in-category product. NYT: games, cooking, sports, shopping recommendations, audio.
Pro tip Buy the category when a category leader with the same DNA already exists (Wordle for games, The Athletic for sports); build when it doesn't.
- 4
Make each satellite best-in-category on its own
Each destination must stand alone as the best experience within its category. A bundle of mediocre products has no pull — the categories are the deal, so make them the best possible versions of themselves.
- 5
Wire the connected family
Build the cross-discovery layer so that whichever product a user enters through — news or Wordle — they get the best experience in that category and can immediately discover everything else on offer. Shared accounts, shared commerce, shared surfacing.
Pro tip This is a platform problem, not a marketing one: shared account/ID management and a shared commerce engine are what actually make the bundle real.
Watch out Skipping the connection layer leaves you with a collection of adjacent products, not an essential subscription.
In the wild
The Times classed news as the sun: brand heritage, trust, biggest audience, most high-quality coverage. Games was identified as a satellite category and, when Wordle emerged, it was acquired because it shared the DNA of existing NYT word games like Spelling Bee and the Crossword Mini, and because games act as a counterpoint to the news — a break that is fun but still 'time well spent', not empty calories.
→ Hardiman: up until that year the Times was 'more of a news brand with a collection of adjacent lifestyle products'; with Wordle, The Athletic, cooking and Wirecutter it became a brand capable of being an essential subscription, targeting 15 million subscribers by 2027 from just over 9 million.
Hardiman describes the intended user session: open the app on a breaking news story, skip to coverage of China, take a break to play Spelling Bee, plan a Korean dinner party with an NYT Cooking recipe, then go to Wirecutter for the best rice cooker recommendation.
→ A concrete, testable definition of bundle success — one journey crossing five products anchored in news but stretching into everyday life needs.
Common mistakes
Bundling products that don't share the sun's DNA
Satellites inherit their credibility from the sun. A product built without the same expertise, trust and craft doesn't get the halo — it becomes an unrelated app you happen to own, and it dilutes the brand rather than deepening the subscription.
Acquiring more categories than you can make best-in-class
Hardiman stops acquiring once the categories that make the essential subscription work are covered: 'we have all of the major categories'. Adding a seventh category before the six are each the best version of themselves spreads the org thin and weakens every product in the bundle.
Is it for you?
Best for
A product or strategy leader at a single-category brand with strong trust equity, trying to turn one-off audience relationships into a recurring subscription
Not ideal for
Early-stage companies still searching for product-market fit on the core product — there is no sun yet to orbit
From the transcript
“we said, you know, what is the largest addressable market where The New York Times can be”
“there are about 135 million people around the world who we believe are willing to pay for the type of high-quality journalism-based products that The…”
“we actually have the solar system metaphor where for us news is the sun in the sense that it's why we exist. It is what…”
“How do we create a connected family of products that puts all of those things together so that wherever you come into the New York…”
“we were more of a news brand with a collection of adjacent lifestyle products”
From the episode
An inside look at how the New York Times builds product
Alex Hardiman (CPO at The New York Times)