Hello again my friend,
I’ve just hit my three-year anniversary at beehiiv. In that time, we’ve gone from $300k/year to more than $33M/year, and we’ll be worth over $1B soon. The money is great, but what’s more interesting is that we’ve done it by ignoring so much “conventional wisdom.”
Most companies pursue one solution for one type of customer. We’re pursuing 5. Each one (our platform, ad network, co-registration, etc) could operate as a standalone business.
TIME uses beehiiv. Arnold Schwarzenegger uses beehiiv. The top creators in the world too. But so do hobbyists and small business owners like myself.
The challenge over the years is describing our product in a way that just works. But when you do so much, for so many different situations, how do we explain it in simple terms? I’d need 10min. That’s bad. It should be 10 seconds or less.
Our CEO, Tyler Denk, recently walked us through a presentation on how we’re different, our new category, and what’s next.
From my seat, it’s when everything fell into place. Today, I’ll share what it means to me, and everything I’ve learned getting to this point.
After the three years. This is the most valuable thing I can share about the journey.
We’re creating a new category.
Let’s lock in.
“Different” is better than “better”
It’s not about better dashboards, features, or tools. We’re the only company doing what we’re doing. We’re 1/1.
Our features are better, sure. But that’s not the game changer. For example, we’re the only email product with monetization built in. Everyone else makes you chase down monetization on your own. That’s just one example.
Naturally, people try and copy us. We have many copycats. But they can never replace our uniqueness. They can only try and fail.
Being different can be a great thing, if you do your thing well. Priorities and hard work are unbeaten. Execution is still everything. The way we work is in a league of its own. But it’s against so much “conventional wisdom,” that’ll turn you into everyone else. Yet, being different is proven to win again and again with time. Look back to the early days of these companies.
Apple wasn’t always better than Microsoft, it was different.
Tesla wasn’t always better than Toyota, it was different.
Netflix wasn’t always better than Blockbuster, it was different.
Different gets remembered. Better gets replaced.
It starts with seeing what others don’t see.
It’s what led us to creating our own category.
Welcome to the Content Economy.
Everything is for the content
Everything is for the content. Doesn’t matter if it’s a major media company, a creator, or a hobbyist. All of them are creating, publishing, and monetizing content, in one way or another. And beehiiv is winning because we’re the best at this. Today it’s with email. Tomorrow, it’ll be so much more. The game has changed. This is the new way.
The old way was to have a big “org chart” listing all the departments, teams, and people in a business. Within that chart, there’s a spot for “email marketing,” another for “advertising,” and finally one for “content” (almost always an intern or someone fresh out of school).
The company would look something like this:

HR people never cared about how content impacted the business. It had nothing to do with their department right? Well, it does now. Think about spreading corporate culture for recruiting, it takes content.
So does pretty much everything else, in 2025 and beyond.
Content is not a single spot on an org chart anymore. It’s the foundation everything else is built on?
Now, the org chart looks like this:

That’s the Content Economy. The beehiiv category, and how the today’s winners see business. This is how an expression like “for the content” becomes practical.
Creating, distributing, and monetizing content is it now. It can be about money, hiring, or clout. But either way, it’s all run on this ecosystem.
Being different is not a bad thing. It’s your category.
Three years at beehiiv taught me a lot. How hyper-growth companies work. How to execute like a madman. What it takes to really win, and then keep winning. We’re far from done. But if we changed our style now, we’d lose what made us great. You can’t change the game playing by everyone else’s rules.
The most valuable lesson is that different is better than better, and new categories will emerge over time following your specific path. It’s tough to do something no one’s succeeded at previously. It’s risky, scary, and stressful. But it creates advantages.
Hailey Bieber didn’t reinvent skincare, she turned influence into infrastructure and sold for a billion.
Uber didn’t invent taxis, they redefined trust.
Netflix didn’t just Blockbuster, they changed the rules of time.
That’s the power of new categories. They make the old scoreboards meaningless.
“Content Economy” was never on our minds before Tyler’s presentation. Now, it’s the foundation for our run to a billion.
It’s not about bitter rebellion for its own sake. It’s about in your own direction.
And once you’ve found that, the real challenge is protecting it.
Protecting what makes you, you
It’s easy to do your thing, win, and then change. As if you suddenly need to do things differently now that you’ve ‘made it.’ Why? What’s wrong with something simple, that works?
We’ve watched competitors lose themselves chasing every feature request, until they collapsed under their own weight and sold for pennies on the dollar.
We have a competitor, a leader in email, specifically for very large, enterprise businesses. They constantly added more features, customization, and complexity. We refer to this as “feature bloat,” in tech.
So many people us to do what they do. The last thing I want to do is go in the same direction. It’s proven not to work (if it was working, they would have sold for more).
These requests are not for the content. They’re not for building a better business. They’re smaller customizations that add up, to make a middle-managers life a little bit easier each time, at the expense of everyone else navigating so many confusing options. Mind you, I’m a product manager that focuses on the enterprise customers, and even I’m saying this.
We win when we care more, and show it. Why turn everything into a process? Some things should be structured, of course, but there’s no honour in making your own life “easier” (if it even is), at the expense of what’s winning.
We were built on the right priorities, hard work, and it felt like chaos sometimes. I vividly remember the 12 hour days, and weekend work sessions.
What’s the rush to change? We’ve got to $33M this way, we don’t need “transformation,” we need to stay on our path. Yes, most would make big changes at this point. It’s different to stay the course. That’s the point. And it applies to all of us.
The hardest part of being different isn’t starting that way, it’s staying that way when you finally start winning.
Thanks as always for reading. I hope sharing my journey is valuable to you.
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