Tyler Denk, co-founder of Beehiiv, walks through the exact tactics he used to grow from zero to $1M in revenue in his first year and $30M by year four. He covers founder-market fit, the kill shot story, false urgency on waitlists, manual customer outreach, shipping one marketable feature per week, building in public via investor updates, and the team-wide social culture that amplifies every win. Shaan frames it all against examples from Product Hunt, Twitch’s EMTT, and the South Pole race.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Tyler Denk (guest, co-founder of Beehiiv)
Opening: The Coke Formula and the Sauce [00:00:00]
Shaan: Tyler, what’s up, man? How are you?
Tyler: What up? How’s it going?
Shaan: Did you see the YouTuber — I think his name is Lab Coats — who figured out the Coke formula from scratch after two years of testing?
Tyler: No.
Shaan: The Coke formula — the flavor — is top secret. There’s a handful of people in the world who’ve ever known it at Coke. They never patent it because if you patent it, you publish it and other people can clone it. This YouTuber, after two years of scientific testing, made a chemically identical formula for Coke. Got it exactly right. And people are worried for this guy. They’re like, “Dude, you need security. Coke does not take this lightly.”
I feel like what you’re giving us right now is the sauce just like that. It’s like the brick-by-brick way you can build — get those first 100 users, then the first thousand, then the first $10,000 of revenue, get to the first million, and now you’re at $30 million. So I want to remix what you did.
How long did it take you to get to $1 million in revenue?
Tyler: About a year.
Shaan: By year two, where were you?
Tyler: About $5 million.
Shaan: And now?
Tyler: We just did about $30 million last year, which was our fourth year in business.
Shaan: Your growth is bananas. You were at Morning Brew, you helped make Morning Brew the fastest-growing newsletter, it got to $75 million in revenue and exited, and then you took those learnings and remixed them into a product. I want to see if we can extract the basic principles so anyone out there trying to get to that first million can copy what you did.
Walk me through what actually worked. Not the high-level “build a great product” — the real specific stuff.
Founder-Market Fit and the Kill Shot Story [00:05:00]
Tyler: I think you already hit on it — founder-market fit. The Morning Brew story of taking something you did at a company, becoming an expert in a low-risk way as an employee, and then applying those learnings to start a new business. In the founders I’ve backed and seen become successful, there’s typically a through line.
Quick story I’ve never told before: while I was at Morning Brew, crypto was the biggest thing ever between 2017 and 2020. I didn’t own any Bitcoin, I had no business starting a crypto company, but I wanted to get into it as a founder. So I found an open-source 3D model of a cold storage wallet, found someone in China to make them, bought a thousand of them, shipped them to New York, and on day two started trying to sell cold storage crypto wallets.
I didn’t know a single person who owned Bitcoin. I wasn’t in any Discord channels. The point of that story: I thought I could will myself into being a founder in a space where I had zero credibility and zero connections. I sold three of those wallets. I still have 997 in my basement.
In complete contrast to that: when I joined Morning Brew as the second employee, I had built the referral program. I saw what success looks like from the inside. And as newsletters became more popular, I became the newsletter person — out of experience and credibility. That was the foundation.
Shaan: So you needed a story at the beginning. I was given a talk once and I call this the marketing kill shot. A guy stood up and I go, “Tell me about your business.” He says, “We’re a marketing agency for CPG companies, usually DTC, CPG.” Alphabet soup. “We help with copywriting, packaging, design — we do everything.”
I said, “Let me ask you this: if you couldn’t tell me all that and you only had one sentence, but off that sentence I had to want to work with you — what would that be?”
He started with “We do marketing for consumer companies.” I said, “Cool. You and a thousand other companies.” Then I pushed: “What’s the most impressive thing you’ve done?” He goes, “We helped launch” — he named like Poppi or some huge consumer brand — “we did all of Poppi’s initial branding, marketing, positioning.”
I said, “Why didn’t you say that?” If I’m a new consumer brand, and you say “we help brands like Poppi launch with their packaging, positioning, and copywriting” — I want to be like them, so I’m going to work with you. That’s immediate credibility and proof that no general marketing claim can touch.
Your kill shot: “I ran growth for the fastest-growing newsletter in the world. Now I’m building a tool for you to grow your newsletter.” Sign me up.
Somebody listening might say, “But I didn’t do that.” You’re offering two things: one, go get credibility in a low-stakes way — join a fast-growing company and kick ass there. Two, you can create a story even without that direct experience. “I spent 1,000 hours studying how Morning Brew grew and built those tools so anyone can use them.” That also works.
Tyler: Whether you raise capital or go bootstrapped, in the early days all you really have is that story. Storytelling is the biggest asset as a founder, especially before revenue, before customers, before traction.
The Milk Road Story and Anti-Credibility [00:16:00]
Shaan: Can I tell you the story I used to grow my newsletter? After you launched Beehiiv, I launched Milk Road — the crypto newsletter. In one year it grew to the biggest crypto newsletter in the world and we sold for millions of dollars. Probably the easiest and fastest business I ever built.
I needed a story to start it, so I started manufacturing stories. One of them was anti-credibility. I told people: “Can I tell you about the stupidest moment of my entire career?” And people lean into that. “This mistake cost me more money than every failed investment and every failed company I’ve ever had combined.”
And then: “It was 2017. My technical co-founder — the smartest guy I know — was about to come to a meeting. I texted him: ‘Come on, started five minutes ago.’ He replied: ‘Hang on, I gotta buy this.’ ‘Buy what? What are you on eBay?’ He was buying the Ethereum pre-sale at about 17 cents. I should have leaned in and said, ‘Why is the smartest technical guy I know urgently buying this crypto token?’ Instead I said, ‘Ethereum? Weird name, dude. Come on, we got real business to do.’ He made hundreds of millions of dollars. I made zilch.”
I basically vowed never to make that mistake again — that when there’s an explosive new industry where I might start as the dumbest guy in the room, I’m going to ask a lot of questions and learn fast. That was the gateway into Milk Road. Anti-credibility as the opening hook.
Tyler: Yeah, 100%. Credibility is huge — but you can also find it by building in public before you launch. While I was building Beehiiv as a side project nights and weekends, I was on Twitter connecting with everyone who had a newsletter. I’m doing consumer research using Twitter. Hey, I’m using Substack but it doesn’t let me customize XYZ. They don’t have a referral program like Morning Brew has. I’m lurking and connecting, understanding pain points. So when I’m ready to reach out for early users, I already have hundreds of people I know have newsletters, know their pain points, know how to sell to them.
Shaan: Were you cold emailing, DMing? How many people roughly?
Tyler: Directly: a few hundred. Either DMs because I found them searching “newsletter” on Twitter, or eventually through a tweet sharing what we’d been building. I had 5,000 followers — not big by any means. I posted a tweet about our waitlist with “limited time only.” Complete lie — we had zero people on the waitlist. But you try to build urgency.
I worked in the frustrations I’d heard from the industry. Substack takes a cut of revenue. We won’t. We’re totally writer and creator-friendly. And then the credibility: I built this at Morning Brew and I’m giving you access to the exact same tools that Morning Brew had to grow to 4 million readers. We got 400 people to submit to the waitlist. That became my initial lead list.
Step by Step: What Actually Worked [00:25:00]
Shaan: So if we break it down: step one was story — credibility or anti-credibility, a problem you had, a failure you had that drove you to fix it. Step two was talking to a couple hundred potential customers before and while building. That gave you messaging that resonates. Step three: false urgency, false scarcity — waitlist, few spots left, limited time. That attracts early adopter types who are okay with imperfect, love to give feedback, share when they find something cool.
Tyler: Exactly. And then we asked the right question on the form: “Why are you interested in using Beehiiv?” They serve up on a silver platter exactly what intrigues them — limitations with their current platform, they love Morning Brew, whatever. Now as a team of three I have this 400-person list, their emails, their social handles. And I’m doing the non-sexy things: cold outreach myself. Not 15-step automation funnels. Just direct emails, every week, to all 400 people. I got 25% to convert in the first few months.
Shaan: The forcing function I use in sales: “What would make this a huge win for you?” You start there. Not features and pricing. You ask the dream outcome question first, then you know exactly how to sell them. Did features and marketing messages come out of this for you?
Tyler: Yes. The referral program was one of the biggest hooks. I’d gotten asked “how did you build this referral program?” by a thousand people a week at Morning Brew — either independent journalists or people at other companies who wanted what we had. Eventually I wrote a Medium article breaking down exactly how we built it. It got thousands of engagements. That was the signal. What I had personally built was valuable to other people who wanted it. So when we launched Beehiiv, one of our value props was: “This is the same referral program that Morning Brew used to scale to 4 million readers and get acquired by Business Insider. You get it out of the box for free.”
Manual Approval as a Growth Lever [00:35:00]
Tyler: Another thing that doesn’t scale but compounded: our signup flow. We couldn’t just let anyone in and start blasting emails — spam concerns. Instead of spending 3-4 months building automated security checks, we had the highest-friction signup of all time. You’d submit your name, platform, Twitter handle, LinkedIn handle — and then you couldn’t do anything. You were in a brick wall until I manually approved you.
I had a dashboard where everyone who signed up would populate. I’d go line by line, click their Twitter profile, their LinkedIn profile, look up their newsletter, and manually click approve. They’d get an email saying they could now use the platform.
But here’s the flip: while I was reviewing their Twitter profile, I’d follow every single person who signed up. And I’d send them a DM: “Hey, I’m the co-founder at Beehiiv. Thanks for signing up. Here’s what we’re working on. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to improve your experience.”
Someone who was initially probably annoyed they couldn’t use the platform they signed up for now thinks: “The CEO just messaged me and followed me on Twitter.” And when I’m amplifying new features or user wins, I now have all these people who followed me back as super fans watching the journey. Turning a friction point into a relationship.
Shaan: There’s always an advantage buried inside a disadvantage. If you have to manually approve them one by one, might as well shake their hand while you’re there.
Ship One Marketable Feature Per Week [00:44:00]
Tyler: We entered a space with 25-plus competitors and when we launched we had nothing. No automations, couldn’t customize anything, no basic features that every competitor had. Our competitive advantage had to be product velocity.
So we decided to ship one marketable feature every single week.
And we turned each product release into a moment. We’d figure out: what would prevent churn? What would unblock new people from switching to us? What would create maximum hype? Three-part framework:
One: prevent churn. We had 10 users. If one churns that’s 10% of revenue. If someone says “you don’t have X and I’m leaving if you don’t build X” — that’s first priority.
Two: unblock growth. If I’m trying to convince people to leave their perfectly good platform and they keep saying “you don’t have this feature” — once I hear that two, three, four times, it becomes a pattern. Build it, open the door wider.
Three: maximum hype. The AI writer in the editor — we launched it at the peak moment, about a year after ChatGPT. We knew it would spread.
Shaan: The “marketable feature” framing is key. It’s like Amazon’s press release method — you don’t get to build a feature until you’ve written the press release. For you, it’s: what’s the tweet? If there’s no tweet, why are we building this?
Tyler: Exactly. And it comes from knowing the users from the beginning. You talk to them, you know what they care about, so you know what will spread when you tweet it.
Building in Public: Investor Updates as a Growth Tool [00:53:00]
Shaan: I want to talk about your investor updates, because I think you’ve turned them into something unique.
Tyler: Yeah, so there’s the altruistic view: entrepreneurship is great, and a lot of successful people don’t share why they’re successful, which disadvantages everyone else who wants to build something. Then there’s the selfish view: if I tweet about newsletters all day, maybe a few thousand people love that. But if I post about how we hire, how we built this feature, how we went from $1M to $2M — the addressable market is 10x bigger. Anyone who wants to build a startup, anyone at a small business, anyone thinking about going out on their own.
So I made a very intentional decision from the beginning to share everything — the ups and the downs.
Shaan: We were one of your early users. We were badgering you about automations — “we need these email sequences.” And then your technical co-founder passed away. And we were sitting here badgering you about features. I felt like such a jerk when you were like, “Here’s why we’ve been a little slow.” And then you picked up velocity like crazy after that. I thought: if he’s going to do this, solve problems this fast and this well through that — I have to make this bet. I didn’t change my mind about the market. I still thought it was small. But I thought new things about him that would trump those concerns.
Tyler: And the investor updates create accountability. No matter what happens at the end of the month, I’m sending an update to 500 people who trusted me or passed. I don’t want the people who passed to get the gratification that they were right. So I want those numbers green and up and to the right. That’s the motivational component.
It’s also the greatest life hack for time. When investors reach out — “want to grab coffee for 30 minutes?” — my time is too valuable. But I do need to nurture those relationships. So: “No, I won’t grab coffee, but I’ll add you to our investor update.” You’ll learn more about me and the business from 3-4 months of updates than from any 30-minute coffee.
We raised our Series A in one week. $12.5 million. That’s partly because of the investor updates.
Every Employee Is Distribution [01:03:00]
Tyler: One last thing: we’ve built a social-first culture where everyone is distribution. When you get hired at Beehiiv, our social media manager shows you how to engage with our content and promote different initiatives. Starting from me building in public, we have a Slack channel called Pump Channel — any time a user says something positive about Beehiiv, someone drops it there. The whole company gets that notification, jumps in, engages, retweets, likes.
We’ve created this narrative of “everyone’s moving to Beehiiv” — because every time someone says anything nice about us, they get a like and retweet from me, from our house account, and from 15 employees. A very grassroots method, now scalable to over 100 employees.
Shaan: Everything you’ve said is so simple. And when I run back through a mental audit of my startups, I’m like: didn’t do that, didn’t do that, left that low-hanging fruit right there. Stop searching for the genius strategy. The answer is: stop not doing the obvious common-sense things.
Tyler: Which is why I’m always a little self-conscious sharing these tactics. To me they’re second nature. Engage with your users, listen to their complaints, build what they want on a day-to-day basis. It sounds intuitive, but a lot of people over-complicate the startup building journey and don’t do the little things right. We want it to be complicated because if it’s complicated, that’s why we’re not doing it yet. But when the answer is “you’re not doing the obvious simple no-brainer tactics” — you’ve got to look in the mirror.
The 20-Mile March [01:11:00]
Shaan: Do you know the story of the guys who conquered the South Pole?
Tyler: Nope.
Shaan: Back in the day, between the world wars, countries competed to reach geographic poles and summits — ego contests about who’s bravest, fastest, strongest. The South Pole race had two teams. One team bet on having the strongest animals, fully stocked, sturdy camps. When the weather was good, they’d go all-out. When the weather was bad, they’d hunker down and wait it out. Seemed smart.
The other guy took the opposite approach. “I’m going to go in a straight line. Not bringing all those supplies — too heavy. Using dogs, not horses. And my approach: 20 miles a day. Good weather: 20 miles. Bad weather: 20 miles.” Just march 20 miles no matter what.
The second guy won. Handily. The lesson is called the 20-mile march: if you just walk from New York and you commit to 20 miles every single day, you’ll be on a California beach soon enough. But if you sprint some days, rest some days, bring all the wrong resources — you’ll never make it.
Your story is this kind of 20-mile march. You wake up every day, do the next thing, do the basics really well. The common-sense things really well.
Tyler: Getting started is always the hardest part. And if this journey shows anything, it’s that I don’t have any special secret. The only two things I can control are effort and attitude. Brute force working hard, doing the little things that start to compound. There’s no secret sauce outside of very applicable things anyone can listen to and start applying today.
Shaan: All right, Tyler, thanks for coming on. Everybody should go listen to Big Desk Energy on Spotify — great playlist. And subscribe to the newsletter. It’s a fun read.
Tyler: If you liked anything in this episode, my newsletter pushes out all of this. Subscribe to the newsletter, follow the playlist, and thanks for having me.
Shaan: All right, that’s it.