If you are a creator, you're a business owner, you are creating content for a living. We really want to be the tools and infrastructure that allows you to build and launch your business and grow faster and make more money.
The game becomes not just to have like the best newsletter platform. It's more moving towards this like operating system for the creator economy, right? Or for the for the content economy.
Do you think this is something that you want to move towards more generally?
Me as a content creator, I want to spend time creating content. Simplicity and ease of use is very important. We are the tools. We are the infrastructure. You come on to beehiiv, you launch a website, you launch your newsletter, you sell digital products. We want to be in the back just supporting.
To me, like that's what the content economy is — an acknowledgement of like all of these things collapsing.
If I were to sum up what do creators or anyone in the content economy really care about? I think there's two things. It's to grow faster and to make more money. If you can help your users or our creators do those things, I think that's like the key to success.
You acquired a newsletter at one point, right? That was part of your growth.
You really did your research. I didn't even think I publicized that I acquired this newsletter.
You did. You definitely did.
Yeah. I've never been confronted about it.
Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. My name is Francis Zir and for the first time today we are recording in person with Tyler Denk, the CEO and co-founder of beehiiv. Uh and also full disclosure, my boss, which is how I was able to convince him to give me budget to record in person. So, if you enjoy this in-person recording, DM Tyler, leave comments on those LinkedIn posts, and maybe we'll get to uh record more of these in person.
Yeah. What's funny is I actually never got that budget request. I think you just booked it, so hopefully...
I I did just book it. Um, you know, that's it's the trust you give me, and so I appreciate that. Um, as we record, beehiiv's winter release event is still a mystery. Um, but this comes out about four or five days after it's released. What are the what are the highlights?
What are the takeaways of the winter release event? Should we tell the people what the winter release event is?
We we should tell them. We should tell them what was in it.
So, well, yes, we will definitely do that. I didn't even take a step back. And if you live under a rock or or are unfamiliar with our marketing schemes from the past month or so,
if you haven't read your LinkedIn,
my LinkedIn bio, my title, my Twitter title, everything. Uh yeah, the winter release event, what beehiiv has been known for over the years is that we ship product very quickly. And so me like and I think we'll get to this as well around my own newsletter like half of the company yourself included like has a newsletter on the platform. We're constantly in touch with our users from Twitter and and LinkedIn and like I think we're as in touch with like our end user as anyone and that allows us to get feedback constantly and then consistently understand like if we launch this that solves these problems. We launch this that helps these people. And so we've been in this motion from day one, which is almost four years to the day that we just ship features as quickly as possible. And we'll we'll announce these in like a weekly email roundup. And after a while, it kind of got a little tiring of like, you know, this just like another email dump. It's like a 40% open rate. Some people click, it is whatever. And in looking at the product pipeline, I was like, "Wait, we have like three to four like very tentpole features that are market expanding, very exciting, very flashy." And rather than dripping them out as like the same old same old, what if we were to do a live event that is streaming of us announcing these features and making like a bigger spectacle of what this is. So like the Apple keynotes, like the the classic example, but a lot of other companies have started to adopt that. Um, and so what went from me thinking I was going to create a slide deck and have like my surfboard in the background and just like read through it on Google in my home in my bedroom and just like kind of go through slides presenting these features and like a Google Hangout. One thing led to another. I was going to be in New York and then most of the PMs that were working on these projects were also in New York and I was like, let's just record this thing live and like actually get like a live shot of us going up on stage and doing like an Apple keynote thing. So, that's the evolution of the winter release event. And if you're watching this and you missed it, go check it out. I don't know what the link is, but it'll it'll we'll drop it in the show notes like what the link where we put everything is. Um, but what we what we launched earlier this week or last week when you watch this is a bunch of things honestly. So, the the big market expansion thing for us is digital products. Yeah. And so, we have and and if you are unfamiliar with beehiiv, we do newsletters best-in-class better than anyone. We have a website builder. Uh, I think we can compete in the website space by bundling web and email very tightly. We also have paid subscriptions. We also have an ad network to help you monetize. So, when you all add it all up, if you are a creator, you're a business owner, you are creating content for a living, whether you're a publisher, an independent content creator, uh, we really want to be the tools and infrastructure that allows you to build and launch your business and grow faster and make more money. And we already have a lot of those pieces. So the next evolution of that was digital products which could be everything from you have Notion templates that you want to sell or you um want to book time which is really interesting. So a lot of people offer like interviews or or 30 minutes of their time to connect with their fans for 50 bucks or or whatever it is or if you're a a fitness coach maybe you meet with someone and you charge them $100 to do like a fitness analysis and like coaching session type of thing. So digital products is like the first thing I think it's a natural evolution of serving the creator and what we call the content economy which we'll get to and like how do you monetize your value and your expertise. Um I don't know if you want me to run through all of the things that we're launching.
I think well real quick though I do want to stop on like the fact that like digital products is this net new thing right because when I first joined the company people would ask me what I would do and I would you know kind of jokingly say like I write a newsletter for a company that makes newsletter software and then after a while like this year I guess I would say like oh well like I work I'm like a journalist in house at this company that uh makes newsletter software website software and has an ad network right and so that digital products is like this net new thing um and I think to me it's like the company is going from obviously went from websites already to these two other things. But it's like the game becomes not just to have like the best in-class newsletter platform, but like it's more moving towards this like operating system for the creator economy, right? Or for the for the content economy, right?
And and you see that through line honestly where I went back to of like introducing beehiiv and like what we're known from. It comes from a place of we know our users so well and when they're in my DMs being like, "Hey, like this software is great. I love it for the newsletter. I I have my website host on you guys, but I'm using X platform to sell digital products or I have to integrate this third-party platform to like do this booking and whatever. Now I have multiple logins. I'm like signing into different places. I have two different wallets. It's like hard to like connect all these different pieces." So understanding that these like data points that we get of our users being like I'd love if I can do all of this right in beehiiv. Yeah. Well, that's like the market signal of like I think there's a real opportunity there. So digital products we're we're very excited about.
Yeah. Um, this reminds me I I once interviewed another tech CEO who has a digital products company and they had this story about scaling very quickly. The first year was like, you know, a little I forget the exact rate, but I think it was the second year they like doubled up to like 30 million very quickly and then they kind of stalled a bit. And for the first time I thought about this fact that like or this idea that a challenge for any tech company building in the creator economy, right, is is the education gap where like you might saturate at one point the market of like educated people like with beehiiv for example, who are knowledgeable enough about growth and about like web design to where they know how to grow an email list and like they know how to invest in Meta ads to do that and they know how to make all the decisions you have to make to make like a good-looking website with the beehiiv product, right? Um, and then after a certain point though, like there's a pretty big education gap to to grow your market, right? Um, so I think there's two to me it's like for beehiiv to reach that large scale success like yes, you have to expand the product portfolio, add digital products, but it's also like that to me is a major challenge, right? Like how do you how do you help people figure out how to design and sell digital products, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we need to get better at like the outcome-based marketing where I think we're really good at saying we just launched this feature and people are like cool. Like if unless they asked for it, they're like, I don't really know what this does or like you leave it to their imagination of what does that actually mean for me and like how can I use this like new feature that you hyped up to benefit like my livelihood or my business. Yeah, the evolution of that is like now with beehiiv, you can sell you can have charge your fans directly to book time with you, bundle that into an email product, so you're constantly contacting your fans or you could sell a digital product for cheap and understand who those high intent fans are who are interested and a willingness to pay that you can then cross-sell into different like higher ticket items. Yeah. And our platform allows you to do all of that. And so like once you position as that, it's everyone who's thinking about like whether they have a high ticket item that they're selling or digital products or an expertise with like a rapid fan base. You're kind of telling them that we have the tools to support you because you've kind of given them the playbook or you're inspiring net new things or plays for them to kind of run by creating marketing that's more outcome-based. I think we fall into the trap of like new shiny feature this is available today and like people are busy like everyone has their own thing. Like it's top of mind for us, but it's not top of mind for like our users that we're emailing. And so like really spelling out like what this unlocks for them to do, I think is like an evolution of product market that I hopefully we do with the winter release event and continue to push on.
Yeah. I mean, going back to what we were talking about about the winter release event earlier and like this being like a moment of like, oh, instead of dripping these all out, kind of like every week we'll release digital products, we'll release the the podcast feature, right? Like all these things. Um, do you think this is something that you want to move towards more generally? Like I've when I I mean my my role now is not so much a marketing role but in the past I've been part of these big releases and it's like oh great we're going to do this thing in 3 months and you kind of like overpromise externally and then like people internally get so rallied up and it's like this organizing forcing function for the whole company of like everybody from marketing to engineering is like coming together to work on this one thing and it's high stress and you're like working too much and it's like you can only really do this maybe twice a year maybe once a quarter at most because people get burnt out and like the novelty kind of disappears for for the audience for the customers, right? But yeah, I guess I don't know. What how do you feel about this as opposed to like the typical just like weekly release release release?
Well, right now because it hasn't happened, so this is like us in the future. Like I hope it went extremely well and like people love it. Like the reception was great. We we didn't overpromise and underdeliver and that it's something that like we can actually celebrate as like a huge win in like our users and the broader market is like that was all like again my initial idea was to stream this live on a Google Hangout with a slide deck in my room and I think that's like maybe what some people are expecting like no one knows like what we're a small scrappy Series B startup. I think once they see the production value of what we put on, I'm hoping that it actually is like a larger than life like we're punching above our weight. I don't know. I I I don't think we're going to like the constant drip of like constantly releasing features kind of gives and is the perception of like oh they're always looking to make their platform better which is kind of the reputation we've had. So I see both sides of it. I think we'll go back to constantly releasing features and like dripping them out as they become available because the other the downside of this like big event is like two of these features are actually available today like they're QA'd, they're ready to go. We're actually like withholding them for this like big announcement and I'm someone who like am much more product like get into the market, let your users play with it, you get feedback and you make it so much better and like we only built those features cuz people had already been asking for them. So we're kind of like we already have their solution they've been asking for but like we're withholding it for like 3 to 4 weeks. Yeah. Um, but I do what you said and something I think is like you can tell me as as an employee at the company like one of I think my superpowers as a founder is like finding like that rallying cry that can actually get everyone kind of rowing in the same direction. We're 110 people totally remote across the world so we don't have like the touch points at the water cooler. So, it's like I'm very intentional... massive features. It's they're all ambitious individually. We're going to do a huge production thing. We're doing a marketing thing. Customer support's involved. Sales is involved. Marketing and growth. Um, so I think that's like really fun and it gives something people to like wake up and look forward to.
Even I'm involved. That's why we're doing this.
You know, exactly. Right. So, like it goes all the way down. And so, yeah, I think there's value to both of them, but no, I don't think this is going to be like a monthly thing for us.
Yeah, definitely not a monthly thing. Um, okay. I I'll this will make sense in a second. Bear bear with me. Um, you know, I've had people ask me like or I've also seen people on Twitter say like, why do people say a Substack but not a beehiiv, right? And like to me, the very obvious example is Substack is so templatized, right? It's like it's you can customize more nowadays, I think, but it's still like it's going to look basically the same. The format of the email is going to look basically the same. Your your web page is going to look basically the same, right? And so it's very easy to know what a Substack is. It's also the the written style is usually kind of this bloggy column. I'm I'm you know definitely reducing a lot, but that's basically true. And then with a beehiiv, that's not really true because you could have some you Arnold Schwarzenegger big customer on the platform. You could have a Creator Spotlight. You could have a Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day. There's all these different people producing different styles of content with also different looking newsletters and websites. So, I think long-term, I mean, I don't know, as a marketing tool, it's great for Substack that they have like this Kleenex, right? But I think for creators, it's much better to not be attached to that thing. Not to get too, you know, deep into the bias here, but all that being said, I mean, with introducing digital products and like widening the range of like what a beehiiv could be, I think there's probably like a few different versions of like what is a beehiiv, but I wonder what you think a beehiiv is.
Yeah. Um, well, it it kind of brings me back to like one of my favorite analogies is the Amazon versus Shopify analogy, right? And so to give everyone context, like Amazon is the destination. You go to the Amazon.com website, you go to their app, you buy things. Like rarely do I know what brand I'm actually buying for from on Amazon. I'm just like typing in toilet paper. Find toilet paper. Couldn't care less. Like whatever the brand is, right?
Yeah. And and then it shows up in an Amazon box. If you have any problem any problems whatsoever, you contact like Amazon customer support. So like they're there for distribution, but Amazon is the brand through and through. Um, Shopify and like Amazon has millions of third-party affiliates, but like it's Amazon who you go to. You don't go to the third-party affiliates. Um, Shopify like you go to websites all the time to purchase from them. You have no idea that they're even built on Shopify. It's purely the tools and infrastructure to actually make online commerce possible for all of these different businesses and put their brand first, their distribution. And there's trade-offs like you have to do your own customer support, you have to like kind of set up your own templates. Um, but there's a lot more customization there and like you kind of own the audience or your customer end to end. And I think that analogy is like very very similar to like the the beehiiv versus Substack. Like Substack has a reader destination. They have a mobile app that they push your readers into. The desk they are cross-posting all the time. So I follow your content on Substack and other similar content is constantly popping up because they are moving into more of a social app. And so where distribution feels like a sugar high for creators cuz you're getting this like new channel of distribution kind of like the early days of Twitter, you're also giving up your brand, your uh your distribution, the control of the audience and like your reader experience and like that's like the complete opposite direction that I want to go in. So we don't say launch a hive like it it we are literally the we are Shopify. We are the tools. We are the infrastructure. You come on to beehiiv, you launch a website, you launch your newsletter, you sell digital products. We'll talk about some of the other features we're launching for the winter release event, but like we don't want to be known like we want to be in the back just supporting. Um, I think it's more creator friendly. I think you'd see that in like the business model as well. So we don't take a cut of subscription revenue like Substack does and other creator platforms. So I think there's like a a very consistent ethos through and through of we don't want our brand front and center. We don't want to take your revenue. We want to give you the tools where you can build your own successful business and own your customer end.
Totally. Um, okay. Going back to the winter release event and the features release. Uh, when I was looking at the list, what stands out to me is that this is really like a website product swing, right? So, for the web product, there's um digital products, podcasts, AI website builder improvements, website templates, web analytics. That's a lot for the web product. And then for the email product, there's overhauled automations, dynamic content, and an overhauled paid subscription feature, right? Um, it started as newsletters and then we bought Typedream and introduced this much better uh website tool than we had before and then the ad network came before that as well. But I guess why were website and ad builder the correct bets to take after newsletter and like now maybe the next bet is digital products. Why is that the order of bet?
Yeah. Um, the order of bet. Yeah. I I think that for us like the website to me is like the front door to the rest of the creator economy. You kind of have to have like a a like web presence and whether it is the the smallest thing you can do which is a link in bio which you missed on the list. We did we did launch a link in bio uh offering as well.
Going to dock my pay for that.
Yeah. So that's that's like very top of funnel, right? Like almost every creator who has like a YouTube or an Instagram or TikTok and has like multiple places to send their traffic like link in bio there there's quite a few large companies in that space and it's because it is very utilitarian for like these different creators.
Um, Linktree is like a very large or I mean multi- dozens of millions of dollars business, right?
Yeah. And like I don't think we're like we're not trying to be a link in bio tool like I don't think we're trying to actually compete with Linktree at all. Um, it it's more so just like I think it's an add-on feature of our overall offering than like a standalone product. Like we're not like a link in or a link in bio tool. Yeah. Um, so yeah I I think that like to me the website unlocked one link in bio like I said digital products. Um, the AI website builder I think is like extremely exciting. You've obviously seen the companies that have launched in the AI space like their revenue their traction. I think lowering the barriers of entry to create really beautiful websites where it used like way back when it was like you hire a you teach yourself which is like untenable for most people or you hire a web developer expensive you go to like a custom shop and like then like there was like brands that came along whether it's like Wix and Squarespace where there's like templates and you can get there but like there's still templates and there's still drag and drop and like there's a lot of like customization you have to do where AI just like totally blew like blew that out of the water where you can like give me a page that looks like this, make it my colors, my font, my like theming and like that becomes possible and you can prompt with like plain English to bring these like different experiences to life. So I think again bringing the barriers down for anyone to have like something they're proud of is like a big focus of ours. Um, so that's the AI website builder. Web analytics is like again it's kind of like just looking at like what is the old paradigm of things.
Yeah. Previously, you set up Google Analytics, you most people don't, that's the other thing. Most people just don't set up Google Analytics and like they would get a lot of value out of like taking the time to set it up, but it's like another platform. It's a pixel. It doesn't fire all the time.
This is the education barrier.
Or or like my my thesis when I started beehiiv was like, hey, look, you could have a website on WordPress and you can copy and paste your content into Mailchimp and then if you wanted ads, you can use like these banner ads and like LiveIntent. You can use like third-party web analytics with Google Analytics. You could use a referral program and that's like another third-party. You can use Stripe and like start doing like a membership business. And I just named like six different tools and like as like the content creator with like 2,000 readers who just wants to get off the ground. They're like where do I even start? And like I don't know how to do this. Like I'm not technical.
I would never do it myself.
You just wouldn't. So, it's either like a total barrier to entry of like I'm just not going to get started on my content like creator journey because it's not worth the struggle to be able to get there or it's I'm going to try it's I'm going to get frustrated along the way or like me as a content creator I want to spend time creating content not configuring Google Analytics and like the pixel and like double and like QAing that it's firing properly. Um, so like roundabout way of getting to your question is really just like to me the website is the front door to the rest of what we can do in this creator economy. Um, and I think the the other thing that I've learned with a lot of these content creators is simplicity and ease of use is very important. And the more third-party platforms you have to like integrate, the more complicated it gets and the less time you're spending actually creating content. And so the more that we can bundle and like what I think our competence is like product excellence, if we can just bring product excellence to all of these different creator tools, bundle them in one solution, I think the all-in-one if done well is a very compelling offering.
Yeah. I mean like the way I tend to define creator is somebody who is creating digital media for distribution on digital platforms. They are somehow growing an audience for that media and then they're somehow monetizing it, right? And I mean what you're describing there is like productizing the growth and monetization aspects through the website. Um, which is like giving then time for the creator to focus on creating. Uh, which brings me to my next question about the content economy. Um, you've been using this term more internally as opposed to the creator economy. Um, we were talking about Brian Morrissey rebooting right before we started recording. He I think calls this the information space. I think it's kind of the same thing as the content economy. Tell me be tell me about uh this term and why you've been using it.
Well, we're we're trademarking that for sure or like in the process of trademarking it. Um, I've like never heard it referred to previously and I don't know where it came from, but like we've been constantly trying since we started the company, it's always been very difficult to describe what we do because it started off as newsletter platform, but then when you bundle in like ad network and website and link in bio and digital products, it's like you're actually a lot more than that. And then the other thing we've always struggled with is who's like our classic like startup term like who's our ICP like who are we actually building for and when you look at our customers not only do we have such a wide range of customers we have a wide range of customers who are having tremendous success. So like Arnold Schwarzenegger sends has a million subscribers on his newsletter sends out daily, like Time, Time Magazine, The Ringer, Creator Spotlight, myself. Um, Brian, Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day, independent journalist now has Oliver Darcy, independent journalist. So like there none of those people have anything in common with each other, right? Outside the fact that they create content, they send emails for a living. There was there was a time when we would lean into creator economy and then our head of sales is like hey I'm talking to like Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Banner, like uh Time, The Ringer like they are not creators they don't refer to creator economy like when I say the word creator like they're like is this tool even for me and I was like that's a fair point your job is to do enterprise sales and the thing is like we serve those customers extremely well so we don't want to isolate them in like our marketing and language. Um, inversely if we go all the way into like hey we're building for like publishers and whatever else Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kyle Kuzma, like Russell Westbrook, they're like I'm not like a publisher, right? And so like what's like the unifying thing that is underlying all of these and like content economy is like kind of where we landed of a bit more abstract but some purpose of their content or their of their business or um themselves is just creating some sort of content primarily text-based in email today, but you mentioned we're launching podcasts as well. Um, with sneak peek in 2026 like video is definitely on the road map. So you can see like this multimedia thing evolving over time.
Yeah. I mean I at a previous job I was I still give credit to my my old boss who who told me this. He was like cuz I I was in marketing right and he was like Francis we're not competing with other companies like ours. We're competing with anything you can look at on your phone, right? Which I think for a while I've applied that to the creator economy, but I think the content economy is more accurate because whether you're like if you're scrolling Instagram Reels, right? I might be seeing something that my friend made, something that some creator I follow made, something that is an ad from a brand, something that is kind of an ad but kind of like entertainment from a creator working with a brand, right? And it's like, does it matter where it came from when it's all like when I'm looking at it all just like scrolling my thumb on the same screen, right? So, I think to me like that's what the content economy is is an acknowledgement of like all of these things collapsing where like even in your in your inbox, right? It's like I might be seeing an email from you. I might be seeing like 20 newsletters that I subscribed to coming in today. I might be seeing like a notification that Natalia has like added a comment to some piece we're working on in the beehiiv editor. It's like it's all coming from different places and for different purposes, but like it's all coming to me in the same screen, right? Like...
I love the product placement there too when you see when you get a email when someone comments and edits your doc because we do have live collaboration in the editor.
It is very good. Um, yeah. Okay. Going back to pre-winter release event besides any of the features that have just just now come out as this is released. Um, what do you think was the most impactful? Not even necessarily like flashiest feature this earlier this year, but like what do you think was the most impactful release on the business?
Yeah, great question. I I want to say website, but we just spent so much time talking about website. Um, so I'll go the other big bet that I think you hinted at earlier, which is the ad network. Yeah. Um, for me, like my if I were to sum up what do creators or anyone in the content economy really care about? I think there's two things. It's to grow faster and to make more money. Yeah. And if you can do if you can help your users or our creators or or publishers do those things, I think that's like the key to success. Which is why like our initial wedge when we launched four years ago was the Morning Brew referral program worked so well for Morning Brew. Everyone wanted it. That's like a lot of like the idea came from people just DMing me constantly like, "How did you build the Morning Brew referral program?"
And it literally was my first claim to fame and I was like, "You know what? We're just going to make that default on the product. So if you sign up for beehiiv, you have the Morning Brew referral program."
Yeah. Admittedly, the referral programs because of that exact reason has become like there's only so many referrals that you can do. So, I think it's become a bit more saturated, but like that's why we keep releasing new features.
Exactly. And so, like like but that was like our DNA from day one is like what's our wedge into the market is like oh like yes, Mailchimp you can send an email and an email is an email. But does Mailchimp actually help you grow any faster? And the answer is no. As do all of these like email platforms? They help you send emails. And so not only do we offer the website, so we're giving you more um and helping consolidate your tech stack, but we help you grow faster and we have whether it's the referrals, recommendation network, Boost, like a lot of things to help you grow faster. And then monetize is the second piece of that. And Morning Brew when I left, we were doing like 20 25 million in revenue. And we had like 20 people on the sales team. And so I saw this engine of like, okay, it's amazing. We're doing 20 million in revenue, but we have like a full staff of people that are like pitching agencies, pitching brands, doing copywriting, uh doing reporting, invoicing, managing advertiser relationships. Your average content creator who's writing about sports like three times a week, they don't, yes, like Nike would be an amazing advertiser for them, but they're one busy writing about sports and they have no business like negotiating with Nike or like they don't know any contacts there. So, if we because we send three billion emails a month, can aggregate demand from advertisers and we work with Nike and Netflix and HubSpot and Roku, can we bring those ad opportunities to these content creators? So, they wake up, they're like, "Oh, I have a Nike ad that's paying me $10 CPM." So, I have to do nothing. I add this ad that adds legitimacy to my business because I have a big Nike logo in it. It's good copy. I know my audience is engaged because one, beehiiv knows with all of our first-party data, like we serve ads that we think will perform best. And two, you know, as a content creator that writes about sports, like you would be a great advertiser and then a few weeks later you get uh deposited into your wallet like 500, 5,000, whatever depending on the size of your list, like that's great. And so like I mean it's not totally novel like YouTube invented this, right? Or or like pioneered the you focus on creating content, we will help bring advertisements. Um, and so while YouTube is like lack of control for the most part, like it's just they'll monetize your video and you get money. It's great. It's hands-off. We're a bit more hands-on where you actually get to see the advertising options and choose which one you want to run. But yeah, I mean I I think we we made considerable strides on the ad network this year. I think we're still like in the first inning of what this ad network can be. I think that's like one of our big like multi-billion dollar bets.
Not to well, not to get too ahead of the skis, but what's like the second inning, third inning of what the ad network looks like?
Well, part of it's just like time in market and scaling. So like the the ad network, we're constantly in a supply and demand market where we either don't have enough publishers and we have too much advertiser demand or we grow really quickly and we publishers are complaining, hey, we need more ads. So like there's constantly just like over time uh getting more publishers and more advertisers and the more publishers we have the big numbers attract larger and larger advertisers which then gets publishers more excited to come onto the platform. Um, we so like to get ahead a bit like right now the way that it operates is every Sunday you get your like slew of like here's the five ads that you have for this week and you can accept them you can decline them but you have to like kind of schedule them. We're moving into a world where it's like real-time ads where you can say as you're writing your newsletter give me an ad. It will give you like the top 10 recommendations for your newsletter specifically and you can choose them on demand rather than having like schedule in advance. So, a lot more control, a lot more optionality. Um, from there, I think like AI like could play a part in this. So, like if we have your entire content library, we know how Francis writes Creator Spotlight rather than the Nike ad in Creator Spotlight being the same as every other Nike ad. Can your this one be in your voice and tone based on all of your content, which in theory would increase like the engagement, the click-through rate, and then also how much you're getting paid. Um, so there's like a few of the different things we're talking about, but I think from a broad, not from the creator lens, but from the advertiser lens, most advertisers go to Meta and Google, like the duopoly of digital advertising. And those are like on-platform algorithmic feed, super twitchy, like there's a lot going on. Um, well, in the Meta case and and Google just runs the world. But like if we could be the third there like I the first deck I ever made like very ambitious of beehiiv. The first beehiiv deck I ever made for a seed is like our competitors one day will be Meta and Google because I want a brand marketer to be like we need new customers. We're AG1 and we want new wellness-focused. I'm just giving a bunch of shout-outs in this friend. Uh, free advertising, but they are advertising. So shout-out if you're an advertiser you get you get shout-out.
Yeah. Yeah. You get shout-outs on the pod. Um, if if you're AG1 and you're like hey we need more like health-conscious customers or whatever like you're already maxed out on Meta you're spending a ton you're spending a ton on Google like can beehiiv that third platform where you're like we know that there are so many health-conscious readers and newsletters and content being created and right now there's not a way if you're AG1 to go to you could you could manually reach out to hundreds of these newsletters and negotiate one so in like that's so resource-intensive it's never gonna work. Well, okay. So, another thing does it become does the marketplace become more like tiered? Like is there like like whether for the advertiser I guess it would be both for the advertiser and the publisher. Do there become like menus of like here's like you know you go to restaurants like here's the cheaper wine, here's the more expensive wine.
Yeah. I definitely like going to get more sophisticated with like all of our targeting and the optionality. The other thing that we actually started tossing out which is pretty interesting. Um, so really very forward and transparent with our roadmap. But like with the launch of digital products, like how cool would it be if you launch a digital product on beehiiv and be like I want like it's selling but I want thousands of customers. Can this be an ad? So like now we have distribution baked in. So you launch a digital product on beehiiv. Uh, say it's like a Notion template and you want like uh work I don't even like work efficient like...
I mean I've interviewed for example like one that we have on the I don't know if it's on the platform right now but I interviewed um Nicolas Cole from Ship 30 for 30 and Premium Ghostwriting Academy earlier this week and I know that they have had um I think both of those products in the ad network maybe just Ship 30 for 30 like that's a digital product that has been on the network.
Yeah, so could you launch a digital product on beehiiv you push your audience to it with your own distribution you're like oh this is great it's selling. Could you make that an affiliate offer that then flips to the beehiiv ad network? So, if you uh Francis launched like a Notion template for how you write, like you're writing Notion template for how you create Creator Spotlight and you have these 400,000 people in your email list. Like, if you ever wondered how I create content on like a weekly basis, here's my template. It's $5. Yeah.
And you're like, "Oh, there's like a lot of demand for that, but I only have my 400,000 people in my audience, only 400. Uh, where do I go from here?" Well, if you could be like, I'd like to target anyone else that that creates content in the beehiiv ecosystem around creators, then as a creator, I log in to write my newsletter, and if I want to monetize it, I could see an ad from Francis to be like, if I promote this Creator Spotlight template, I'll get paid $3 or whatever it is. So, I think that...
The distribution aspect is really interesting, and that's like where the bundling comes in, where I really think we're at the first inning of we did the hard part first. I think email is incredibly hard, and I think as we add more and more products, you can see how a digital product on like these other platforms, you're kind of living in like isolation, where with us, you flip the 3 billion impressions and you can get a lot of distribution, which is like a really unique competitive advantage.
Yeah, I think I mean this goes back to like this portfolio operating system for the creator economy, right? Where it's like you're not necessarily forced to use any of these things. You can just have like the email product, but those other things are available and like synergistic with the email product. Um, you said only 400,000 subscribers with Big Desk Energy, your newsletter, this today as we record. You hit only 120,000 subscribers. You do this both I think because you like it. You're a good writer and it's dogfooding, right? You're using the tool so you understand the customer better. Um, how did you hit 120,000 subscribers? Was it like a mix of Meta ads, boosts, and just organic?
A lot of organic. Like I didn't put any money into it for like the first 20, 25k subscribers, and like we'll talk the book like a lot of beehiiv native features, right? So every piece of content that I write has an email gate on it. So in order to read it, you have to put in your email, and so I'll promote it on X, I'll promote it on LinkedIn, I'll promote it on like whatever other channel it gets people's interest. They click on it, they have to put in their email. So like that's not like a silver bullet, but like it adds to like a few dozen subscriptions every time I do it.
I do have a referral program that works decently well. I connected to like drop shipping and like digital goods. I have a lot of lead magnets as well. So, I'm very transparent about like this whole building in public persona. And so, I built or like the deck that I built for our seed round and our Series A and our Series B, like if you're interested in that. So, you're a founder. Again, it all comes back to understanding who your audience is. For me, my audience is like founders, and so like what do founders actually want? Like if I'm thinking about leaving my job and starting a business, how do I raise money as like a seed round is very interesting to me. So, if Tyler shares me talking in third person, shares like this lead magnet to put in my email and I get the actual deck, unedited, totally raw, that like he raised $2.5 million for. That's interesting. So, like lead magnets work a lot.
You've got your the investor updates one, right? Where it's like I think it's on a on a two-year delayed track.
Yeah. Just because I started it later, but yeah. So, I sent ever since we launched the business, I've sent a monthly investor update, and it ended up just being like, and like one day maybe it's a book, I don't know. But like it's this really like beautiful and like vulnerable journey of like every month of like, oh, this is this is a rocket ship.
We're very unmediated guy. You lay it out there.
And so it's like this is a rocket ship, this is amazing, to holy like that that sucks. Like but it's the entire journey with the numbers. And like so I had all this content. I was like again, what would a founder be interested in? Like I think the investor updates are incredibly helpful. So one of my lead magnets is you put in your email and every month you get an investor update from me as if you invested at the very beginning and you kind of follow the journey unfold.
So I think that's like really like creative and differentiated type of like lead magnet.
Yeah.
Recommendation network works great. I think I have like 4 or 500 different publishers promoting Big Desk Energy, which is which is one of them. Thank you. What else do we have? The boost network. I put a little bit of money into boost, and then there is a point with like paid like with newsletters where like you have to invest into paid, whether that's like Meta or Google. And so I've done a little bit of all of that. And yeah.
I think I mean going back to my question of like what is a beehiiv? Again, I think there's a lot like there is the larger publisher using it. There's like the famous person very well known. You listed a few of those. And then like what you're doing though is sort of the individual creator version of what is a beehiiv, which is to say like you are using all of these different features in different ways. You are also like you're not a paid subscription product. You are monetized through ads, which I whenever I've like described people, if somebody asked me about like a beehiiv versus a Substack versus a Mailchimp or whatever, right? I'm like the the DNA you have to understand of beehiiv is that it comes from you working at this company that was an advertising-based company, right? So, it's like the DNA of beehiiv comes from you building that and then coming here and like a beehiiv then is there might be a paid subscription option, but it's going to be monetized through ads. There's going to be lead magnets because it like there is this sophistication about growth, about monetization, about like turning this thing into kind of a working business. So, I think I mean that's kind of the point of you doing it too is to like have this like prime example of here is a thing you could build on beehiiv. Um, you acquired a newsletter at one point, right? That was part of your growth. What I don't know like how many subscribers you had when you did that, but I'm also curious of like how you integrated that because I've you know I've talked to a few people on the pod who've acquired other newsletters or been acquired, and I know that it like like it's a little I don't know if tricky, but there's like some measures you have to take in like integrating those lists and making sure people don't like mass unsubscribe, and then your investment was kind of worthless. Um, tell me about that acquisition.
Yeah, you really did your research. One, I didn't even I didn't even think I publicized that I acquired this newsletter.
You did. You definitely did.
I mean, if you did it, we could we could cut that.
I would just have yeah. I've never been confronted about it. I think I was at like 20,000 subscribers, and it was like pretty early on.
And it was more of like someone who was building in like kind of a similar space being like, 'Hey, like I have this list of 5,000 subscribers. Like it's really engaged. My work's busy. Like there's a lot going on. Like I just don't think I'm going to carry this on. Love your content. Would you want to buy it?'
You kind of figure out like a price per like subscriber. Again, it wasn't like a ton of money, nor was it like a ton of subscribers, but like if I was already open the door to like I'll pay $2 per subscriber on Meta, like what would I pay to get 5,000 somewhat engaged subscribers? There's obviously like a discount there of like to your point, not everyone's going to opt in. Not everyone's going to convert. Some people are going to miss the announcement that like you're now subscribed to this other thing and be like, 'What the hell is this?' and like mark spam. So there's not like an exact science to it, but like the the traditional playbook if I was going to put on like my email deliverability hat here. Well, one, the acquisition. Two, I think best practice would be in the old list within the old email, you announce like, hey, like this newsletter has been acquired by X.
And you will now start receiving Big Desk Energy every Tuesday, and then you add like some hype. It's written by Tyler. He's a co-founder of the company. Like my newsletter was on this platform. I think you'll personally like love this.
We did this a bit when I started writing Creator Spotlight. We did this whole thing of like here's a note from Tyler. It's like I'm the founder of beehiiv and Francis is doing this thing now. Blah blah blah. Like yes, it's still we rebranded it, but.
You want to get out like I think where people get in trouble is they just like take, they download the CSV, they have 5,000 new emails, they just throw it on their email, and like now you have like a fifth of your list being like, what one? What is this? I never signed up for this. Like you just kind of set it's like a little scummy as well. It also might be illegal. So something around there like it's not best practice. So best practice would be like from the old email sender like full disclosure got acquired, this is what they expect, hype up the new person like what they're getting, and then what you what you there's like an opt-in versus opt-out thing. One is prefer depends on how like what your risk tolerance is. The the most like white hat way to do it would be if you want this newsletter that just got acquired or just acquired us, click this button and we'll automatically add you, but you can assume like click-through rates are 1, 2, 3%. So you bought this whole asset and like 3% of the list actually decided that they want that. So like that's what like our deliverability.
Subscriber has just gone up a lot. Like.
That's what like what email deliverability experts would recommend, and it's like definitely the most like above board thing to do is like disclose it and let them say, 'Oh, I signed up for this. It's no longer that.' So you have to kind of resubscribe and get consent.
I'm like a little bit more gray hat in that area. I would be like, 'Hey, if you're like totally out and don't want this new newsletter, click this button and we'll remove you and you'll never hear from us again.' Like maybe 500 to like a thousand people opt out because like they didn't sign up for that initial newsletter. Totally fine. But everyone else who did not click that button, you just assume they're good. That's consent, and you kind of move them over.
Again, like the scale that I was doing at like 5,000 subscribers, like it's like pretty low-key and fine. And I and like my content's great. So like it's honestly a gift that they read everyone. Yeah.
