Quarter Won

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One thing about this newsletter is that it isn’t entirely for you all, it’s for me too.

It doubles as a journal that I keep to document the journey of building beehiiv. Something that I think will be remarkably cool to look back on at some point in the future.

Today’s newsletter may read a bit more like a journal entry. We just had arguably the greatest quarter in company history, so I wanted to reflect and take you all behind the scenes on what went down.

#1 Revenue

We came out the gates swinging in 2025. We experienced pretty explosive growth the very first week of the year and never really slowed down.

In total we added almost $260K of MRR in Q1, or a little over $3M of ARR.

That only represents our subscription revenue, and doesn’t include revenue from Boosts or the Ad Network (the latter of which had a blowout quarter). With our latest round of upcoming updates, publishers on beehiiv will be taking home well over $1M per month via the Ad Network in Q2.

Back to subscription revenue — it took us 4 months to surpass $5K MRR back when we first launched in 2021. In March (i.e. last month) we were routinely adding more than $5K of net MRR per day.

Sure, it may not be the unprecedented growth of some of these AI native companies going from 0 to $20M ARR in just a few months… but it feels like just yesterday when getting a single new paying customer was a massive achievement. Adding $5K of MRR per day feels pretty surreal.

#2 Product

When we got back from holiday break, I presented a ridiculously ambitious product roadmap to the company. And the team absolutely delivered…

In January we launched our brand new website builder (it’s currently available in beta). It unlocks the ability for our users to build world-class websites natively within beehiiv.

Websites that come in all different shapes and sizes, like my retro Windows 98 themed website…

Or this powerful data-forward website from Defence Metrics…

Or the new Publish Press website that Colin & Samir just relaunched and announced today (which is remarkably stunning)…

The website builder is really just the tip of the iceberg. We also launched Direct Sponsorships in Q1, which allows publishers to sell and manage ad inventory (and handle invoicing, scheduling, and reporting) all natively within the platform.

My cofounders and I built a similar ad platform back during our time at Morning Brew, which helped us scale revenue and get acquired by Business Insider for $75M. A lot of those same tools and workflows are now available to any publisher on beehiiv.

And if users don’t want to sell and manage their own ad inventory, the beehiiv Ad Network can seamlessly plug in and help them monetize with some of the most notable brands in the world (HubSpot, Netflix, Roku, Nike, etc.).

But that’s not all — like I said, we were pretty busy this quarter…

#3 People

The team we’ve assembled at beehiiv is probably what I’m most proud about — we have a roster full of shooters (that’s a basketball reference).

We added a handful of new employees in Q1, but I wanted to highlight a few that really emphasize the direction we’re heading in:

• JT (VP of Sales) is going to considerably expand our enterprise GTM. He was previously the Sales Director at Sailthru and closed some of their all time largest deals while he was there.

• Moshe (Sr. Lead Advertiser Success) joins us from LiveIntent and has more than a half decade of experience working with programmatic ad networks within email.

• Dan (Chief of Staff) has spent more than a decade at the intersection of media x growth x subscriptions at companies like The Information, BuzzFeed, The Telegraph and worked closely with the founding teams at both Puck and Air Mail. He most recently worked on consumer products at both DoorDash (DashPass) and Meta (Reels).

We also added a handful of incredibly badass engineers to accelerate our product velocity even more (trust me, it’s possible).

2025 Outlook

Last October I gave a presentation to the company describing the upcoming six months as pivotal to address the gaps in our product, launch a handful of new features, and add some much needed firepower and expertise to the team.

Well, fast forward six months and we are exactly where I had hoped to be.

beehiiv today is so much more than just a newsletter platform. We’re building a full content and monetization engine for anyone who creates content online.

Meanwhile, we’re able to replace a handful of existing solutions to save users money and simplify their team’s workflows.

This is really just the beginning. Behind the scenes, we’re making a few huge bets that I think have the opportunity to totally transform the business.

At the end of the day — reflecting on these past 90 days I feel like the luckiest person in the world. I wakeup every single morning so damn excited to build this thing.

And I can’t wait to show you what we else we have in store 😈.

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

Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this week…

• Superhuman’s secret to success as told by their CEO Rahul Vohra (Lenny’s Podcast)

• YouTube TV, Wiz, and why monopolies buy innovation (Stratechery)

• I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life (Vinay.sh)

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Until next Tuesday 🕺🏽

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