Co-founder and CEO of newsletter platform beehiiv and author of the Big Desk Energy newsletter; previously at Morning Brew and YouTube.
After taking a year to reach its first $1M, Beehiiv grew to about $5M in revenue in year two, a 5x jump.
“About $5 million in revenue. So 5x in year 2.”
Tyler Denk lays out Beehiiv's trajectory: ~$1M in year one, $5M in year two, and about $30M in revenue by the fourth year in business.
“We just did about $30 million in revenue last year, which was our fourth year in business.”
Wanting to be a crypto founder despite no credibility, Tyler found an open-source 3D model of a cold storage wallet, had 1,000 made in China, and shipped them to NYC. He sold only 3 and still has 997 in his basement — the lesson that you can't will yourself into a space where you have no expertise.
“And so I found this like open source library of like a 3D model of like a cold storage wallet. I went to— found someone in China who could make them, bought 1,000 of them, shipped them to New York, and then like on day 2 started just trying to sell cold storage crypto wallets.”
Steal thisDon't force yourself into a market where you have zero credibility or connections; build expertise first, then launch.
With only 5,000 Twitter followers and zero people on the waitlist, Tyler tweeted that Beehiiv had a 'limited time' waitlist with 'only a few spots remaining' — a complete lie to manufacture urgency. It pulled 400 signups that became his core lead list.
“I talk about that we have this waitlist, limited time only. Complete lie, right? Like we had zero people on this waitlist, but you try to build some urgency. Like I call out that there's only a few spots remaining. Obviously there's unlimited spots remaining.”
Steal thisManufacture urgency with a limited-spot waitlist to attract early adopters, even before you have any signups.
Tyler skipped HubSpot and 15-step automated funnels and just cold-emailed all 400 waitlist signups once a week, every week, himself. It converted 25% of them in the first few months.
“I didn't use HubSpot. I couldn't afford it at the time. I was just doing cold outreach on email once a week, every week to all 400 people. And I got 25% of the people convert in like the first few months.”
Steal thisDo unscalable manual weekly outreach to your early list instead of over-engineering automation; it converts.
After fielding ~1,000 weekly replies asking how Morning Brew built its referral program (which drove 1M+ subscribers), Tyler wrote a Medium teardown of it — his 'building in public' origin. That validated demand and made the referral program Beehiiv's out-of-the-box differentiator at launch.
“And people would reach out and I kid you not, maybe 1,000 a week would reply to the email and be like, how did you build this referral program? Like, how are you? What software are you using? Like, how were you able to build this?”
Steal thisIf thousands ask how you did something, that demand signal is your product wedge — build it for them.
To avoid spammers without spending months on automated security, Beehiiv made signups submit name, platform, and social handles, then sat in limbo until Tyler manually approved each one. While reviewing their Twitter/LinkedIn he'd follow them and DM as the co-founder — converting annoyed users into superfans who followed the journey.
“The way that I flip that into a growth thing is when I would go to their Twitter profile and their LinkedIn profile, I would follow every single person who signed up for the platform and I would send them a DM being like, hey, I'm the co-founder at Beehive. Thanks so much for signing up. Here's what we're working on. Let me know if there's anything I can do to improve your experience.”
Steal thisFind the hidden advantage in a manual bottleneck — use forced human touchpoints to personally win early users.
Entering a space with 25+ bigger competitors and a bare product, Beehiiv made product velocity its only edge: ship one *marketable* feature each week and turn each release into a Twitter/LinkedIn moment. The repetition built a narrative that it's only a matter of time before they have everything a user wants.
“And so basically what we decided we would do is we would ship one marketable feature every single week. So like we had a core team of engineers. Our core competitive advantage was going to be product velocity and it was the only option.”
Steal thisShip one marketable feature weekly and announce each as a moment — velocity becomes a narrative that you'll catch up.
Tyler's roadmap framework prioritizes in order: (1) prevent churn — when one of ten users threatens to leave over a missing feature, ship it first; (2) unblock growth — features prospects repeatedly cite as blockers; (3) maximal hype — the sizzle feature (e.g. the AI writer post-ChatGPT) that spreads on launch.
“One is preventing churn. In the earliest days, we had, we had 10 users, right? If one user churns, that's 10% of our revenue. So if someone says, hey, you don't have X, and if you don't build X, I'm leaving, like, I can't take that 10% hit of revenue. So that's like top of the line. We have to ship that first. Next is unblocking growth.”
Steal thisRank your roadmap by churn-prevention first, growth-unblockers second, hype features third.
Tyler sends a monthly investor update to ~500 people who invested or passed — using it for accountability, motivation, and to nurture investor relationships without taking 30-minute coffees. The strategy let Beehiiv raise its $12.5M Series A in one week.
“And so by using these investor updates, we actually raised our Series A in one week. We raised $12.5 million in a week. I don't know, with AI companies, maybe that's not as impressive, but it was amazing for us.”
Steal thisSend regular investor updates to everyone who invested or passed; it nurtures relationships and compresses your next raise.
Beehiiv built a social-first culture where every employee is distribution: a weekly 'social media girly of the week' award, and a Slack 'Pump' channel where any positive user mention gets dropped so the whole company piles in to retweet and like — making it look like everyone is moving to Beehiiv.
“We have a Slack channel called Pump Channel or Pump, whatever. And the whole purpose of the channel is like anytime that one of our users says something positive about Beehive, whether they're having success, they had a milestone, it's so much better than their old platform. Someone sees it, drops in that channel. Now the entire company gets that notification, jumps in, engages, retweets, and likes.”
Steal thisCreate a Slack channel where any positive user mention triggers the whole team to engage and amplify it.
While every competitor used confusing volume-based pricing nobody could calculate, Beehiiv launched at $99 for every premium feature and unlimited emails. Not the most scalable model, but it was explainable in a single tweet — choosing progress and clarity over a theoretically optimal pricing structure.
“And so when we launched, we had an all-inclusive, every premium feature for $99, and you can send unlimited emails. In retrospect, not the most scalable model and not the most optimal model to make the most amount of money. But going back to not letting perfection get in the way of progress, I could explain that in a tweet at any time saying for $99, unlimited emails, every feature you see here.”
Steal thisPick a simple, tweetable price your customer can instantly understand over a 'more optimal' model they can't.