Chapter 4

Yesterday marked four years since we launched the company with this tweet.

Fast forward to today and beehiiv…

Although the number that I am most proud of isn’t about us. It’s about our users. To date they have generated over $45M of earnings on the platform… and that doesn’t include the estimated $100M+ of earnings that happens off-platform but on our rails (like newsletters who secure their own sponsorships).

While beehiiv powers notable…

I’m especially proud that we have cultivated and empowered the next generation of these names. That, I believe, is the true promise of the creator economy. Which is why this is easily one of my favorite slides that I’ve ever created.

My initial thesis was that we could build enterprise-level features, like we had built at Morning Brew, and bring those capabilities to the masses. And with that, we could democratize outsized outcomes for anyone willing to put in the effort to succeed.

I think we have been able to deliver on that mission. And despite this being our fourth full year in business, I truly believe that we are still operating in the first inning — there is so much more to build and accomplish.

On the last three anniversaries of our launch, I’ve taken the opportunity to reflect and share the highs and lows of the year (you can read them here: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3). Year four was undoubtedly the most challenging and rewarding yet. Let’s dig in…

Back in the early summer of 2024, we acquired Typedream, an AI-native website builder. We brought three of their cofounders over and immediately began to rebuild their tech natively within the beehiiv ecosystem (but 1000x better).

After an intense six months of work, we launched the beta of our brand new website builder in January. It was an absolutely electric way to kick off the new year.

It was admittedly pretty buggy at launch and lacked a ton of features, but it was still a massive upgrade from our previous web experience. Most importantly, it allowed our most sophisticated users the ability to create totally bespoke webpages, and allowed us to collect valuable feedback from them.

This was a monumental shift in the company’s trajectory: shifting from “newsletter platform” to a solution for creators and publishers to build their website and newsletter on our rails.

During the first all hands of 2026, I laid out a simple two-part plan to kick off the year:

We executed. We shipped the new website builder (above), email and website templates, Direct Sponsorships, an App Marketplace, native integrations, Send API, cohort analysis, shortcuts, merge tags, etc.

Then launched the campaign: the one place to build.

In my opinion, if you’re going to commit, you need to commit all the way. Brand awareness only really works if you can actually capture people’s attention and make them aware.

That requires a high frequency of impressions, ideally within a shorter period of time. We sponsored podcasts and newsletters, ramped up spend across digital channels, and bought a ton of ad space on the New York City subways.

Did it work? I’d say so — we set several records for daily signups, and added $30K of net MRR per week for several weeks.

One of my homies (also a beehiiv investor) invited me and a few other founders to attend the Bahrain F1 race as guests of the Bahrain Economic Development Board. One, it was super dope to get hooked up with Paddock passes. Two, I got to connect with a handful of impressive founders from around the world.

I don’t spend too much time in the Middle East, so I took advantage of the Bahrain trip and decided to spend a week working remotely from Dubai afterwards. I enjoyed Dubai a lot more than I had anticipated, minus working til 4am every night due to the timezones.

Nearly 100 of us descended upon Riviera Maya Mexico to work, collaborate, and have a whole lot of fun for our annual company offsite.

We’re an entirely remote company, with employees located across more than a dozen different countries. These offsites are the only time we really have to collaborate in person and do all of the IRL shenanigans you take for granted when you work in person… like the 5pm pool bar, unlimited tacos, and 15 bottles of 1942 at the club.

After a week in Riviera Maya, a few of us headed down to Tulum to run it back another week and work remote from there. It’s hard to quantify the productivity gains and good vibes coming out of these offsites, but this year was definitely the best yet.

This was our first year at Cannes Lions and it was electric. We hosted an invite-only event at our villa, networked like undergrads at a career fair, and saw 50 Cent perform 21 Questions at the Snapchat party.

There’s definitely plenty of fun to be had in the French Riviera, but it was also ridiculously fruitful. Some of those coffee chats and run-ins have led to new deals and opened up so many doors for the business.

After spending the majority of the week in Cannes, I flew back to Los Angeles just in time to speak on two panels at VidCon. A very exhausting week indeed 😮‍💨.

After launching the new website builder in beta back in January, we onboarded thousands of users and sprinted on addressing all of the feedback. That culminated in the full launch of the website builder, available to all users, in mid-July.

Suddenly, users were launching beautiful new websites left and right, all natively built on beehiiv. We actually built a website (using the new website builder) to show-off a collection of our favorites.

After spending the better part of a year building and training machine learning models for the Ad Network, we finally shifted over to launch this new automation provisioning process. This meant that publishers would now receive a handful of the most relevant ad opportunities in their inbox each week.

Our sales team caught fire too. With the added capabilities of the platform, we were routinely closing logos like TIME, TechCrunch, The Ringer, and Kalshi.

This all culminated in us surpassing the $20M ARR milestone.

I basically spent all of October flying back and forth from LA and New York.

Trip 1: I spoke at the AMO Summit about newsletters and media, co-hosted an event with Lachlan Cartwright from Breaker, and recorded what went on to become the Winter Release Event.

Trip 2: We co-hosted a media breakfast with Brian Morrissey from The Rebooting, I later joined his podcast live from Morning Brew’s studios, and also recorded a podcast with Francis on Creator Spotlight that drops today.

Trip 3: I spoke at Lazard’s Foursquare conference, updated my LinkedIn to become the Head of Product at Kit, and supported some of our newest users at The Lighthouse’s launch party in Brooklyn.

Last Thursday we hosted our first ever Winter Release Event.

We teased that we would be announcing our biggest updates in company history, and based on the reaction, I believe we actually delivered.

It wasn’t just another platform update — it’s an entirely new operating system for the content economy. We introduced more ways for our users to monetize (selling digital products like templates, guides, and sessions), more ways for our users to create (AI website builder), and a whole lot more…

By the way: if you missed it, you can watch the full 22-minute event here.

I truly don’t believe there’s a group of people as passionate, talented, or motivated as us to rewrite the rules and build the modern infrastructure of the content economy.

And we’re already working on what’s next. I’d consider the Winter Release Event just an appetizer for what’s coming in 2026.

So with that teaser, I’ll end this post just as I did last year…

Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein, famously said in 2021: “We are arming the rebels… the entrepreneurs, the small business owners, the independent brands, and the rebels are winning.”

If Shopify is arming the rebels of digital commerce, beehiiv is arming the rebels of digital content.

We’re still so early 😈.

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