Beehiiv’s CEO isn’t worried about newsletter saturation

Newsletter platform beehiiv recently celebrated its four-year anniversary by launching a suite of new features, including an AI website builder, plus support for podcasts and the sale of digital courses and products.

In other words, beehiiv is about a lot more than newsletters now. Co-founder and CEO Tyler Denk (who writes a popular startup newsletter of his own) spoke to TechCrunch about why the company has been expanding, explaining that it was largely in response to customer demand, particularly since beehiiv offered very basic blog templates from the start.

“All of our users were like, ‘Hey, this is great, I like using your email stuff, [but] my blog looks like everyone else’s. It’s terrible. It’s not customizable. I want to sell courses. I want to collect leads. I want more flexibility on my website,’” Denk recalled. “So that led us to acquiring TypeDream — they were a YC company to address that need, as people wanted better websites. Then, you know, you give an inch, they ask for a mile.”

This does mean beehiiv is becoming more competitive with other creator platforms, even the ones that weren’t necessarily focused on newsletters. Indeed, Denk predicted that we’ll see “huge consolidation in the creator space,” whether that’s “through companies going out of business, or M&A or merging, or what.”

That doesn’t, however, mean that Denk thinks the opportunities for new newsletters have dried up.

“Quality content will always rise to the top,” he said, arguing there might be even more opportunity as the social media landscape becomes more fragmented.

Read a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

You’ve repeated this quote that beehiv is “arming the rebels of digital content.” What do you mean by that?

I got the inspiration from the president of Shopify [about] arming the rebels of digital commerce — I think that’s what he said.

The promise of the creator economy is taking power from institutions, giving it to individuals, and allowing them to succeed. Going back through who actually had the means of distribution and power previously, and now this new distributed, independent media world, where a lot of people go to their favorite podcasters or content creators for information, where it used to be the big TV and radio programs.

And [there’s a] democratization of information, but also the ability for people to succeed on the internet by creating content is constantly evolving. I think the trends are starting to accelerate a bit more. The latest election year showed a lot about what actually moved the needle for votes and everything else. You’re seeing this massive wave. 

This year, we’ve seen tons of these journalists, whether it’s from The Washington Post or other traditional outlets, where these people have built up these personal brands, they have their beat, they know their audience really well, and they actually now have the tools and capabilities to go independent. I think that’s inspiring and fun and interesting, and ideally, we can be part of the toolkit to help empower them.

One of the interesting things about beehiiv is that you’re working with these individual creators, but you’re also working with larger publications like TechCrunch, and you’ve got even more legacy publications on the platform as well. What is it like trying to build a platform that serves those different needs?

It’s a great question, and it’s actually why we led with this tagline during our event: the operating system of the content economy. Because I don’t want to be painted into just the creator economy. And we do serve TechCrunch and Time and Newsweek and all of these large publishers, and we serve them extremely well, just as we serve the long tail of content creators really well. 

There has to be some commonality in that, and it’s just [that] content is what makes their business run, and that we think we can really be the operating system and help them succeed in doing that. My thesis from way back when I was at Morning Brew, and I was the second employee, I built all of their internal infrastructure and helped them scale. And when we were building Morning Brew, we had 3 million readers at the time, and all of these independent journalists and writers and smaller outlets came to us being like, “We want the same toolkit that you have.” All the way down to someone who’s writing [for] 10 people, their best friends and their mom and like that.

The initial thesis for beehiv was: Can we build enterprise level software like we built at Morning Brew, that any of these large publishers would want … but make it affordable for the long tail of everyone to have access to that? So that’s how we found ourselves in this weird spot of true enterprise-level software, where my brother launched a UFC newsletter last week with five people [reading] it, and there he’s using the same toolkit that Time is using, and TechCrunch.

It makes it more difficult on the product marketing side of things, PR is more difficult, how we talk about our users is difficult, because they are cohorted, but I still believe they all want the same thing. Ultimately, it’s a seamless experience to create content, but also [to] grow faster and make more money. And if we can do those three things and play nicely with the other tools in their tech stack, it’s usually the winning formula.

You mentioned your recent launch event, where my takeaway was that beehiiv is not just a newsletter company anymore — most notably, you now have this AI website builder. Was that always the direction you wanted to go in, or did that come later?

So no, I’d say most of the roadmap actually just comes from feedback from our users. I think our superpower is, we listen to our users better than anyone else does, and we actually act on it very quickly.

If you asked me four years ago, [I’d say] we’re the best newsletter platform that has this ad network that can democratize access to premium advertising, kind of like what YouTube did for video. But we can do that for email, and that means brands like Nike and Netflix being able to sponsor all of these different newsletters, and these newsletters having access to brands they otherwise never would have had. And I think that’s really exciting, and that’s a big vision in itself, and it’s still part of the vision. 

We rolled out from day one a very basic website builder — I wouldn’t even call it a website builder, it’s like a blog template that you had by default. All of our users were like, “Hey, this is great, I like using your email stuff, [but] my blog looks like everyone else’s. It’s terrible. It’s not customizable. I want to sell courses. I want to collect leads. I want more flexibility on my website.” So that led us to acquiring TypeDream — they were a YC company to address that need, as people wanted better websites. Then, you know, you give an inch, they ask for a mile. We build this new website builder, and we launched it in July, and people [say], “That’s amazing, now I’m actually using you guys for my website, but there’s things I had on WordPress or Wix that I could do that I now can’t do, like booking time, selling digital products, courses, embeds, all that type of stuff.” 

We launch something to address a need, and that opens up a broader market. And I think our superpower outside of listening to users is really just product velocity and engineering. If we think we can serve these users better than anyone else, [it’s] just the natural march to the next thing that can serve them.

One aspect of this trend is that any platform that has some kind of creator tool — if you’re focused on one area, whether that’s subscriptions or newsletters or whatever, you inevitably start adding things and, I wouldn’t have thought of beehiiv being competitive with Patreon a couple years ago, but it feels like every creator platform ultimately becomes competitive with all the others, because you’re trying to do all these different things.

I’ve been saying it recently: I think there’s going to be huge consolidation in the creator space. I don’t know if that’s through companies going out of business, or M&A or merging, or what, but we’ve already seen some of the traditional creator economy platforms expand. Maybe they were link-in-bio, and then they launch a website builder, or maybe they were courses and community, but then they launch a newsletter or an email platform. 

I do think you’re going to see this feature creep of consolidation across the creator stack and content stack. My bet is, email is very difficult to do. There’s tons of infrastructure, it’s very complicated at scale. I think it’s one of the more competitive wedges, because it’s the means of communication. And I’m making the bet that we can go into website, link-in-bio, courses, community better than they could go the other way. 

Obviously, you believe you have the best product. But is there something else at the core that you think makes beehiiv different from those other platforms?

It’s harder to quantify, but it’s the product quality and excellence. There’s a lot of platforms, even outside the creator economy, that I use on a day-to-day basis, which aren’t the greatest software. One thing I’ve been saying a lot recently is, I want beehiiv to be the most delightful product that anyone uses on a day-to-day basis, and I think we have an opportunity to make it just an enjoyable experience.

[Also,] most of the creator businesses are take rate businesses, and we don’t take a cut of revenue, whether it’s paid subscriptions, digital products, appointments, sales. That’s just our ethos: We don’t believe [that] by connecting Stripe and doing that as a middleman, that we should be taking a 10% fee.

We move quickly, not just out of necessity, but we think our users have a lot of needs, and we can serve them quicker and better. I think that shines through in what we’re building.

As you evolve and expand into these other areas, are you still committed to that idea of that you’re not going to be taking a cut of any of these revenue streams? Or could you imagine some scenarios where maybe the core product has SaaS pricing, but there’s different product lines and business models?

Our goal is to not charge a take rate on anything, only the subscription fee.

In your post, you talked about this idea that, especially earlier this year, you wanted to put a lot of energy into increasing brand awareness. I live in New York, so I’ve seen a lot of the beehiiv ads on the subway. How successful do you feel like those ads have been?

That time, in particular, was definitely the most growth we’ve ever seen — really going all-in on brand and trying to make a statement.

And I think the product today is 10x what it was back then. We’re really ready for the mainstream, to be able to serve a much wider cohort of users. I’d expect more of that in Q1 [of next year.] I think we’re going to go much harder into marketing and growth.

I mean, the job’s never done on the product side. There’s always things we can improve. But I think the product’s in a great place where we can support and convert users and continue to deliver our promise to them. Now we need everyone in New York and everyone who has the ambition to build something on their own, around their content, to know exactly who we are as a company.

Philosophically, I think we’re going in a very different direction than Substack, but because of when we launched, we’re always compared to them. And [with their] first mover advantage, they definitely have more of the brand name. We need to make up some ground there.

Even though beehiiv has become more visible this year, it does feel like Substack has really done this amazing job of making their name almost synonymous with the idea of: You’re going to start a publication around your personal brand, and it’s going to be newsletter-centric, that’s a Substack. Is that something that worries you? Do you want more of that mindshare?

Yeah, for sure. We definitely want the top of mind, and we definitely want the mindshare there. [But] like I said, we’re going in two very different directions. I think they’re trying to build a social feed to compete with X and Threads and Instagram and Bluesky and all of that. We are just tools and infrastructure.

The analogy I always use is Amazon versus Shopify. You go to Amazon, there’s millions of third-party sellers, but you don’t really know who they are. The third-party sellers don’t get the data. The consumer goes through the Amazon app, the Amazon website, [their order] shows up in an Amazon box. It’s very Substack — going through their app, they take control over the reader experience, you’re giving up a lot of control and data.

We are very much the Shopify — tools and infrastructure in the background to help support these content businesses. We’re not having people launch beehiivs. We are simply just the tools and infrastructure to help them succeed. And I think that that is appealing to a large portion of users. There’s some who just don’t care and just want a blogging platform and maybe Substack’s the better fit for them, but I think we can both coexist and succeed here.

I also want to talk more about how you’ve seen the media business evolve and how you imagine it might evolve. Like you said, it’s this really exciting moment because anyone who’s had some degree of success could conceivably go direct and start their own thing and bring some of their audience with them. It also feels like this is a time where people are doing that because the number of traditional opportunities — there aren’t as many of them as there used to be.

Definitely, it’s an interesting market and predicament. I think the plus side is, we’ve seen on our platform, there are so many successful, quote-unquote, “no name,” small creators that are just being born — that cover a topic, whether it’s EVs or crypto or AI, that have actually built a very successful business.

And also what we’re seeing from the Morning Brew and theSkimm days is that the equation for newsletter used to be: How do you grow as fast as you possibly can, get a million subscribers, sell massive sponsorships. [Whereas now] we have a farming newsletter that has 2,500 subscribers and makes $15,000 a month. So there’s a lot of power in niche content, and that is because there are tools that you can do paid subscriptions directly, so you’re not relying on Google AdSense, there’s the community play, there’s digital products, there’s courses, there’s events.

Beehiiv plays a small part in that, but there is a much more established ecosystem of tools that makes it possible. If you can find your 1,000 true fans, you can build a real, sustainable business off of that. I don’t know if that was the case five, 10 years ago.

You answered this a little bit, but let me ask a related question. As a tech journalist who has, once or twice, toyed with the idea of starting something on my own, I just immediately think, “God, there are so many tech journalists who’ve started Substacks or other newsletters.” It feels like the window for that is closed. Do you worry that we’re approaching the saturation point — if not necessarily everywhere, then at least in certain sectors?

Saturation has always been the most interesting question, because ever since we raised our seed round, people thought we were [at] peak email back then. Peak email comes every week, apparently.

But I also think we have more podcasts than ever, more video content, UGC, and actually, professionally done, high production video. But no one ever says [we’re at] peak Netflix, ever. This is one of those things where, one, the world’s massive, and I think that you can carve out a niche in any content category. Two, I think the most quality content will always rise to the top.

So, sure, there’s tons of tech writers, right? What’s the unique perspective and beat and access and whatever that looks like, and how is it packaged in a way that’s unique? Yes, it’s definitely getting more crowded, but I think everything is getting more crowded. Quality will still rise to the top, and I think that there’s enough people and enough business models in the world to be able to differentiate.

You mentioned this idea of the best content rising to the top. I always hope that’s true, but this challenge of standing out — because of how the landscape has changed, all the stuff that’s happened with Twitter/X, it feels so much more fragmented than it used to be.

Do you see there’s more opportunity in the fact that there is now Mastodon, YouTube, Reels, TikTok, Bluesky? It’s more fragmented, but that’s also more opportunities and touchpoints to reach people. I think there’s almost more of a threat in being overreliant on old Twitter, where it had such a dominance over the mainstream zeitgeist of what was going on, and by being shadowbanned or limited, whatever the algorithm wanted to decide to feed or not feed, you’re actually a little bit more vulnerable in that situation.

There’s two sides to every coin, right? It could be scarier or it could be more opportunity to reach different audiences.

Intellectually, I think that having many different platforms with slightly diminished power seems better for the world, but I also realize that I don’t rely on those platforms in the same way that, say, a sole proprietor of a newsletter would rely on them for finding an audience.

That said, I also wanted to ask about this spectrum from Time to TechCrunch to individuals. One of the success stories people are looking for is not just can people start something to support themselves, but actually build the newsroom of the future on these kinds of platforms. Is that something you’ve seen on beehiiv? 

Yeah, plenty. We have a lot of newsletter native companies that have started — Status and Oliver Darcy is the most recent example that comes to mind. He left CNN, launched his own thing, now has two people on the team. [Or three, depending on how you’re counting.] I think they’re going to launch an additional vertical. 

There’s plenty of newsletters who started off as a hobbyist newsletter that scaled to 50,000, 100,000 subscribers, found some revenue, and expanded beyond just one-person teams. 

My last question is: Thinking about the creator economy, the media economy 10 years from now, how is it going to be different from today?

I’m not predicting anything crazy, but someone asked me my predictions for 2026, and I just think all the trends are just going to continue in the same direction. I don’t think it’s going to be a step function change, but I actually think with AI, the tailwinds are, one, there will be some level of job displacement at some point. And where do you differentiate yourself if you’re a mid-level PM? If I’m hiring a product manager, I’m probably hiring a product manager who has put their thoughts out into the internet, and I know exactly who they are, what they think about, what they value, and I can actually resonate [more] with them than another faceless PM who’s applying for the job.

So I think leaning more into personal brand storytelling and this human connection will be more important than ever as AI proliferates. Whether that shows up in email and web and podcasts and video, probably all of the above, I actually think there’s going to be a larger importance placed on putting your voice and yourself out there to really differentiate, both in the workforce and broadly.