
I initially had another post planned for today, but I decided to change direction last minute.
On Friday we surpassed $10M ARR (annual recurring revenue). I was working on a presentation and needed to pull a number from Stripe, refreshed the page, and the dashboard showed $10M ARR almost exactly on the dot. (For those of you who donβt refresh Stripe as frequently as I do, the numbers are only updated daily, so it was a bit of a coincidence for it to land exactly where it did.)
It took me a moment to realize before taking a screenshot and dropping it in Slack, followed by a quick victory lap on socials.
what are you supposed to do when your company just surpassed $10M ARR ?
asking for a friend
β #Tyler Denk π (#@denk_tweets)
10:52 PM β’ Jun 14, 2024
Usually, Iβd barely acknowledge these arbitrary milestones, and just throw myself right back into what I was doing. But I had to hop in the shower before my friends arrived, which was sort of a forcing function to think on it and let it sink in. And Iβm glad I did.
I had this unexpected rush of emotion and memories. I ran out of the shower to my desk and just started writing. Itβs for sure a little rough, but itβs raw. And Iβm glad I tried to capture it.
Hereβs what I wrote π
At the end of each quarter I spend a few hours putting together a presentation for the team. The purpose is twofold: recap the prior quarter and align the team for the quarter ahead.
I was reviewing last quarterβs presentation when I came across the Highlights slide that shouts out a few of the top recent accomplishments. Right at the top sat βSurpassed $7.5M ARR.β

Naturally I was curious to what number Iβd throw on top of this quarterβs slide so I refreshed Stripe to see what we were working with. The page refreshed displaying $10M ARR more or less exactly on the dot.
Iβll admit that I really struggle with being able to enjoy the moment and appreciate the journey in real-time.
I have such a vividly clear vision for what this business can become will become, that in its current form, it always feels like itβs not enough. Because relatively speaking, what beehiiv is today should be a lot worse than what it will be in the future.
From a product perspective, my DMs are filled with βholy shit beehiiv is such an incredible platformβ and my genuine reaction is always βyou havenβt seen anything yet, weβre just getting started.β
Itβs because I know the roadmap and whatβs to come. I can see around the corner where outsiders canβt, and I know whatβs in store is going to be multiples better than what it is today.
And from a revenue perspective, yes these milestones are cool, but I didnβt start the company to grow to $10M ARR. I know we can build this into a multi-billion dollar business, so when you put it into perspective, $10M feels so insignificant.
Itβs a blessing and a curse because yes I sound like a total miserable fuck, but the lack of complacency has me so locked in to relentlessly push this thing forward.
But this time feels a little different.
Maybe itβs because the sun finally came out for the first time in weeks, amidst the βJune gloomβ of West LA. Or maybe because itβs a Friday afternoon and I already have plans with some friends to see Fred Again tonight at the LA Coliseum.
When I was reflecting in the shower just now, my mind immediately went to this visceral memory from December 2021. Coincidentally, it occurred the last time I went to a concert at the Coliseum (shoutout Kanye and Drake).
We had just launched beehiiv a month prior, and I couldnβt contain my excitement. My cofounders and I had just spent the past 10+ months balancing our full-time jobs while working late nights and weekends moonlighting beehiiv on the side.
And here we were just a month after launch, with real people actually using it and paying us. Of course, that was always the plan, but it was all so new and surreal.
We were stuck in traffic to get downtown and I couldnβt shut up about how amped I was. I was talking about the user adoption and feedback, the roadmap, how big this thing was going to be. As a bystander in this conversation, you would have thought we were about to IPO.
A mutual friend in making some conversation goes βdude thatβs awesome, how much revenue do you think youβll make this month?β
I replied β βI donβt know, maybe $2,000.β To which he goes, βOh, cool.β
And for whatever reason I can never remove that memory from my head. Itβs not even that I was embarrassed, but it was at that exact moment where I realized the discrepancy between what I felt and believed in, and reality.
To me it meant everything β we had real revenue, this thing had legs. It wasnβt even remotely a good product yet and people were paying for it.
To anyone else it meant nothing β a business doing $2,000 in revenue per month couldnβt sound less impressive, no matter how you dress it up.
I was absolutely delusional. You sort of have to be as a founder. Just months prior I was trying to convince investors to write a small check into our seed round. I was saying things likeβ¦
βWeβre going to have hundreds of thousands of quality newsletters on the platform, and by leveraging all of this first party data we can help them monetize with premium sponsors. Weβre going to steal marketshare from Facebook and Google by building our own vertically integrated Ad Network.β
At the time you couldnβt even send an email on beehiiv, we hadnβt built that yet. No wonder over 40 investors passed and told me to kick rocks.
Fast forward to today and weβre paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to publishers, and working with advertisers like Netflix, Hubspot, Betterment, Monday.com, Betterhelp, and dozens of others.
Iβll be honest β this isnβt my best-organized or finest piece of writing. I have a running list of topics I want to write about, and I usually spend a good amount of time mentally preparing and thinking through each piece before writing it. Iβm rambling a bit and this is straight off the cuff.
But now that Iβve gotten that off my chest (i.e. this isnβt my greatest post, get over it) β Iβm going to drop one more story that comes to mind.
Back in 2022, we were really in the dog days. Iβm talking like, maybe 12 employees, Iβm spending hours each night answering support tickets until midnight, I wakeup every morning to another fire that entirely derails my day β the whole nine yards of startup life. The days where one hour you think you might actually IPO at some point in the future, and the next hour you donβt know if the company is even going to exist in a week.
I got introduced to someone and agreed to hop on a call with him. I canβt even remember who it was or the purpose of the call. Nothing ever came of it (like most calls), but there was one thing that I remember so vividly.
At the time we had just surpassed $30K MRR. We were bullshitting around on the call and I mentioned that, and he responded, βOh wow, congrats man β thatβs the hardest part. Zero to $30K is infinitely harder than $30K to $300K.β
At the time I could barely believe we were doing $30K in MRR, and here this guy just told me that $300K was right around the corner. It was realistic, and in fact, according to him, would be easier than what we had already accomplished.
Truthfully my mind couldnβt comprehend the thought of refreshing Stripe to see $300K MRR. What a fucking dream come true that would be.
Iβm not going to say that guy changed the trajectory of the business or even led us to doing a single thing differently than we already were. But I also canβt understate how that totally trivial piece of encouragement made me feel. I remember the exact feeling to this day.
βTo this dayβ being the day we just surpassed $10M ARR. Just 2.5 years after launching a business no one believed we could build.
Iβm going to dance my ass off tonight and enjoy this one.
If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/10m-arr


Credit: me
Good view, great lighting, excellent couch. Would invite all the homies over to spectate and watch me write emails.
Reply with your own AI generated office and Iβll feature it in an upcoming issue.

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Click on any of the tracks below to get in a groove β each selected from the full Big Desk Energy playlist.

Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this weekβ¦
Quinn is one of beehiivβs earliest adopters and his newsletter about science and activism is fantastic (Subscribe to Important, Not Important)
Why the Surgeon General is calling for a warning label on social media platforms (NY Times)
Alex Liebermanβs new company, Storyarb, is hosting an online event on digital contentβ¦ and Iβm speaking (RSVP to CommaCon)
The creators of South Park explain what makes a good story (Twitter)

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