THE ONE TO WATCH
BEEHIIV
Long before I was even considering launching my own newsletter, I came across Big Desk Energy from Tyler Denk. I was working in fintech at the time, and it felt genuinely insightful — a simple, behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build a startup at scale, namely Beehiiv.
ABOUT
Established 2021 — a platform built like Shopify for newsletter-led media: ownership, scale, and infrastructure for modern creators.
Creator-first by design — white-labeled, growth-focused, with built-in commercial tools that take newsletters far beyond the inbox.
Their POV, as CEO Tyler Denk puts it: “Newsletters are good, but the content economy is the opportunity.” One place for creators to run everything: publishing, products, memberships — the whole digital business.
WHY THEY STAND OUT
Content economy, not newsletters
Beehiiv isn’t optimizing for sending emails — they’re building for media businesses. Newsletters are just the format. The real opportunity is creators turning content into scalable companies.
Ownership, not algorithms
Beehiiv isn’t Instagram, LinkedIn, or Substack. It’s the rails underneath modern publishing — where creators own their audience, data, and monetization instead of renting reach from platforms.
Betting on a multibillion-dollar ad network
The plan for the future is to be a matchmaker between advertisers (businesses) and creators — think Meta and Google Ads. The opportunity lies in developing a new type of ad placement with even better ROI for all parties.
Instagram @beehiiv
HOW BEEHIIV IS BUILDING
FOR THE NEXT ERA OF MEDIA?
You win, they win
Beehiiv grows when creators grow — structurally. Product decisions aren’t driven by rigid roadmaps or yearly planning cycles, but by visible creator needs as they emerge. They actively dialogue with users, ship fast, and build with creators — not ahead of them.
In-house creators as first customers
Their own team runs newsletters, media brands, and experiments on Beehiiv (Big Desk Energy, Creator Spotlight, Release Notes). Internal projects become real-world test cases — ensuring the platform is built by people who actually live the creator economy.
Monetization is native, not an afterthought
Ads, referrals, subscriptions — built into the product from day one. Beehiiv treats monetization as foundational infrastructure, not a bolt-on feature once scale happens. Just 3.5 years after launch, they’ve surpassed $20M ARR, according to Tyler Denk (see screenshot below).
X @denk_tweets
Beehiiv is here to serve people and close a gap in the content business — not by having everything figured out, but by building as they go. What stands out is how openly they do it, through emails of course — with Big Desk Energy (which has become its own revenue stream for Tyler Denk via sponsors) and monthly company recaps that anyone can subscribe to. It all happens in plain sight.
It’s a reminder that Beehiiv isn’t just building a product — they’re building the conditions for a new kind of media business. One where ownership, monetization, and distribution are designed into the system, lowering the barrier to entry for you to build on it.
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THE ONE TO WATCH
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