2026 Company Offsite

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Every year I’m reminded again that what we’re doing is not normal. 

It’s not normal to build a remote-first company with employees equally distributed around the globe. Nor is it normal to have such a strong company culture despite the distance between us.

It’s not normal to have a group of people who are all genuinely so passionate about their work and bought into what we’re building. Nor is it normal for those same people to be so fun and cool that you’d willingly want to spend time with them outside of work. 

I know it’s not normal because each year at our company offsite, all of the new employees pull me to the side and rave about how special this company is.

This year was no exception. This past week, 120 of us descended upon San Diego to work, collaborate, and have a whole lot of fun. 

Here’s how the week went down…

Me and Dan (COO) drove down from LA on Monday morning and arrived at the beautiful Hotel Del Coronado by lunch. 

Lots of hello’s and nice-to-meet-ya’s as people arrived and settled in. We grabbed lunch down the street then came back to the main conference room to knock out work for a few hours.

We had a big welcome dinner on the beach to kick off the week. Lots of tacos and a pretty immaculate sunset.

Some people wasted no time hitting the hotel bar afterwards, but I headed to bed early to have a super productive Tuesday.

I woke up early for a 6am gym sesh, followed by a 7am surf sesh. I can’t really imagine a better possible way to start the day.

I hustled out of the water to shower and get to the main conference room for my presentation. Each year I give a state of the union type presentation to take advantage of having everyone together and present in the same room.

Tuesday was the day to prioritize meetings with your team and to go deep on all the things that are just better to hash out IRL. I did not get the memo to take these meetings outside, so instead, here’s the Ad Network and Engineering team doing their thing:

All around, Tuesday was a super productive day. We wrapped with a big outdoor dinner by the beach.

Sadly no surf session on Wednesday. Instead, I knocked out a bit of work before heading over to the conference room to kick off day three.

Darren, our CMO, gave a brief presentation about our ICP and positioning, then Ainsley, our new Head of Podcasts, gave one as well. The team are subject matter experts in newsletters, but podcasts are a newer medium for us. It was helpful to have Ainsley drop 30 minutes of industry knowledge as we start innovating podcasts the same way we did newsletters.

Then at 10am, we officially kicked off the AI Hackathon. We’ve been pushing AI adoption across the company for several months, and the hackathon was meant to be a dedicated time for everyone to build something impactful. It helps to do it in person when you can legit tap the shoulder of an engineer to assist you.

As the slide above states: teams of three, 28 hours to build, and you will be judged on “cool factor” and usefulness. Demo day was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, where each team would present and everyone in attendance would vote for their favorites.

Everyone on the winning team would receive a $1,000 stipend to pimp out their workspace.

I teamed up with 2 people on the customer support team to build something to make our support faster and more efficient. I want to leverage AI to give them superpowers and offer the best human support experience in the world. 

Everyone spent the majority of Wednesday heads down with their respective hackathon teams. Then for dinner, we split out to different restaurants with our actual teams (engineering, sales, etc.) to explore San Diego.

The product team dinner was lit.

We have a large constituency of employees who love karaoke, so we hit a karaoke bar downtown. I have many talents, but singing isn’t one of them. I hung for a bit, performed a respectable duo, then went back to the hotel where I could tell Claude “Yes” to continue my project.

Opened my laptop, once again told Claude “Yes” before getting out of bed to start the day. We had just 6 hours to get a working prototype of our project live. 

Before lunch, Conor presented the beehiiv employee superlatives, which is always a crowd pleaser.

Then at 2pm we kicked off demo day: 42 teams presented their 3-minute demo. 

I don’t say this lightly — those two hours were genuinely the most inspiring two hours I’ve had as CEO since starting the company. Every single project was ridiculously impressive. Without giving away all of the secret sauce, here are some of the projects that were built: 

The past two years at offsite, we did a pitch competition where employees could pitch an idea or initiative that we should pursue. It was a hit, but most of those pitches stayed in the idea stage. 

The AI Hackathon was the opposite. This is why this moment in time with AI is so remarkable. Rather than simply pitching ideas, we had 42 new ideas actually come to life with working prototypes (and some new features that have already made their way into production). 

Even if we assume that only half of these projects carry on beyond the hackathon and see the light of day, that might have been the most productive 28 hours in company history. Each team seized an opportunity to resolve their biggest problem or pursue the largest opportunity.

After the hackathon, we all headed to the Padres game, where we rented out the Skyline Patio. The game was a bit of a snoozefest but the European lads seemed to be entertained by American sports.

For me, the best part of baseball in Southern California is micheladas. Best ballpark beverage and I won’t be engaging in debate.

As is tradition on the final night, we hit the club and made our CFO, Dan Bae, regret greenlighting this whole offsite thing. 

Four rounds of 1942 later and we had half the company absolutely vibing out on the dance floor. I’m not being facetious when I say that these experiences and memories do really matter.

Building a counter culture against the stuffy corporate HR bullshit where people can genuinely have fun and be themselves is what deepens the relationships we have with each other and the company. It builds a culture that people want to be a part of (which btw, we’re hiring).

Farewells and adios for everyone to head back to their respective homes. I only included Friday in this writeup to flex that somehow after shutting down the club I was up at 7am for a surf outing with my homie.

Although, that’s a bit less of a flex now as I deliriously write this newsletter on just 3 hours of sleep. Worth it though. 

The annual company offsite is one of the highest ROI initiatives that we do. The lift in energy and vibes is palpable for months afterwards, as people return to work feeling closer to their coworkers and more inspired to be building something together. 

I’m so damn proud of the team we’ve built here. 

You stay classy, San Diego ✌.

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I wish our hotel in San Diego had views like this. There’s always next year…

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