You’re likely reading this right now because you’re either curious what beehiiv looked like in its earliest form (idea), you’re an entrepreneur looking to raise money, or you just accidentally clicked the wrong thing (lucky you).

Way back in 2020, I had just left Morning Brew and was toying with the idea of launching a startup with my would-be cofounders, Ben and Jake. The email space was already incredibly competitive, and the newsletter space specifically was really beginning to heat up.

Twitter had just recently acquired Revue (RIP), Facebook had just launched Bulletin (RIP x2), and Substack was fresh off a $65M Series B led by A16Z. Not to mention Mailchimp was a multi-billion dollar behemoth, Wordpress ran (and still runs) the internet, and there’s nearly a hundred other email marketing and CMS solutions available.

So how did a few unproven twenty-somethings convince nearly 30 people to wire us money with a mostly piece of shit pitch deck?

Drop your email below and I'll send you the exact raw and unedited deck we used to successfully raise our $2.6M seed round 👇🏽

p.s. the deck only shows Ben as my cofounder and excludes Jake… but that’s a story for a future email 😏.

p.p.s. by entering your email you’ll also be signed up to my weekly Big Desk Energy newsletter where I share tactics and stories from my experiences building beehiiv… and a whole lot of music and good vibes.