Beehiiv Revenue: How beehiiv Grew From 0 to $33M ARR

beehiiv launched in November 2021.

Less than five years later, the company reported $33 million in annual recurring revenue, roughly 600 enterprise customers, and customers ranging from individual creators to TIME, TechCrunch, Newsweek, Brex, and The Texas Tribune.

The growth was not driven by one viral launch or one acquisition channel.

beehiiv grew by doing several things in sequence:

1. Its founders turned tools they had already built at Morning Brew into a product.
2. They recruited newsletter operators who already understood the problem.
3. Successful early customers became proof that the product worked.
4. The team shipped missing features very quickly.
5. Referrals and Recommendations helped customers grow.
6. Boosts and the Ad Network helped customers make money.
7. Those products created network effects between publishers.
8. Once beehiiv won with creators, it moved upmarket into larger publishers and enterprises.

The important part is the order.

beehiiv first built something newsletter operators wanted. Then it turned customer growth into its own growth engine.

beehiiv's growth in numbers

The numbers come from beehiiv's own company updates, TechCrunch, Reuters, and public statements from its team. ARR and total revenue are not the same metric, so they should not be treated as interchangeable.

1. The founders had already solved the problem at Morning Brew

beehiiv did not start with a random idea.

Co-founder and CEO Tyler Denk joined Morning Brew in 2017 as its second employee.

Morning Brew had about 100,000 subscribers at the time.

Denk worked across engineering, product, and growth. He helped build tools for:

• referrals
• newsletter publishing
• websites
• audience analytics
• sharing
• subscriber acquisition
• advertising

Morning Brew eventually grew into one of the largest business newsletters in the world.

Many of the tools helping it grow were built internally because existing email software was not designed for the way a modern newsletter business worked.

That created an opportunity.

Other newsletter operators wanted the same systems, but most had to connect several products together.

They might use one tool to send emails, another for their website, another for referrals, another for subscriptions, another for analytics, and spreadsheets to manage advertising.

beehiiv's original idea was simple:

take the infrastructure that helped Morning Brew grow and make it available to everyone.

Denk later teamed up with former Morning Brew engineers Benjamin Hargett and Jacob Hurd.

They started building beehiiv in 2021.

That founder-market fit mattered.

The team was not guessing what newsletter publishers might need. They had spent years running the same workflows themselves.

2. beehiiv started with a narrow market

The email software market was already crowded.

Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Substack, Ghost, HubSpot, and many other tools existed before beehiiv.

Trying to become another general email marketing platform would have put beehiiv against much larger companies.

Instead, it focused on one category:

email newsletters.

Tyler Denk summarized the strategy in beehiiv's second-year retrospective:

Email newsletters > email marketing.

The product was built for people trying to run newsletters as real businesses.

That meant prioritizing things like:

• referral programs
• newsletter websites
• audience analytics
• paid subscriptions
• recommendations
• advertising
• subscriber growth

This gave beehiiv clear positioning.

Mailchimp could serve almost any company sending email.

Substack made it easy to start writing and charge readers.

beehiiv wanted to become the infrastructure for people trying to build, grow, and monetize a newsletter business.

Starting narrow also made product decisions easier.

The team did not need to solve every email use case. It needed to build the features preventing serious newsletter operators from moving to beehiiv.

3. The founders manually recruited the first users

Before beehiiv had strong organic distribution, the founders recruited publishers themselves.

Denk announced a private beta in June 2021.

The announcement generated roughly 400 submissions.

Instead of putting everyone through an automated onboarding flow, Denk read the answers and personally followed up with potential customers.

He has said he converted around 25% of prospects during the first few months.

This gave beehiiv something more useful than a large waitlist:

real newsletter operators using an unfinished product.

Some of those users were also investors or people the founders knew from the newsletter industry.

That helped because moving a newsletter is risky.

A publisher is trusting a platform with its audience, email delivery, website, and sometimes its revenue.

An unknown startup needed respected publishers willing to take that risk first.

4. Early customers became beehiiv's distribution

One of beehiiv's first major customers was Litquidity's newsletter, Exec Sum.

It already had roughly 100,000 subscribers.

That was a meaningful test for a young platform.

Exec Sum also gave beehiiv visibility.

Emails and web pages created using beehiiv carried beehiiv branding, so every successful publication became a small distribution channel for the product.

Other newsletter operators followed.

One of the most visible examples was Milk Road.

Shaan Puri and Ben Levy launched the crypto newsletter in early 2022 using beehiiv.

The newsletter grew to roughly 250,000 subscribers and was sold within about ten months.

Milk Road's founders already had audiences and benefited from the crypto market at the time, so beehiiv cannot take credit for all of that growth.

But it became powerful social proof.

It showed other newsletter creators what could be built on the platform.

Young Money offered another example.

Jack Raines moved a roughly 2,000-subscriber newsletter from Substack to beehiiv and later grew it past 35,000 subscribers.

These stories gave beehiiv something better than generic marketing claims.

It could point to real publishers growing on the platform.

The loop looked like this:

good newsletter joins beehiiv → newsletter grows → beehiiv shares the story → other newsletter operators discover beehiiv → more newsletters join

Customer success became customer acquisition.

5. beehiiv spent $0 on paid acquisition in its first year

beehiiv says it spent nothing on paid customer acquisition during its first year.

Yet by November 2022, one year after launch, the company was:

• approaching $1 million ARR
• averaging 55% month-over-month growth since launch
• operating with a team of 12
• responsible for more than 275 million emails sent

Most of that growth came organically.

There were several reasons.

The founders already had credibility in the newsletter industry.

Customers were talking about the product.

beehiiv branding appeared on newsletters and websites.

Denk regularly posted company updates online.

And each new product launch gave the company another reason to talk to the market.

By June 2023, beehiiv said roughly 90% of monthly growth was still organic.

Paid acquisition came later, after the company knew people wanted the product.

6. Shipping fast became a marketing channel

beehiiv launched with a much smaller product than it has today.

The first public version launched on November 17, 2021.

It could send newsletters and publish posts to the web.

Many important features were missing.

Even the referral program (one of the systems most closely connected to Morning Brew's growth) was not available at launch.

It arrived about a month later.

The team kept repeating this process.

They watched what prevented publishers from switching and built those features.

Denk described the product priorities in three groups:

1. Features missing that stopped users from migrating.
2. Existing features that frustrated users and needed improvement.
3. New features that made beehiiv different from competitors.

That framework helped beehiiv expand its market over time.

Each feature also became marketing.

A launch created a reason to post on social media, email users, get covered by newsletters, and bring former prospects back.

The cycle became:

talk to users → identify missing feature → build it → launch it → attract new users → collect more feedback

Product velocity became part of distribution.

7. Referrals helped beehiiv customers grow

beehiiv's referral program was based on a system Denk had already worked on at Morning Brew.

Each subscriber could receive a unique referral link.

A newsletter could then offer rewards for bringing in new readers.

For example:

• refer 3 people → get a guide
• refer 5 people → get access to a private community
• refer 10 people → get merchandise

The important part was that the system was built directly into the newsletter platform.

Publishers did not need to connect another referral product or manually track rewards.

This made beehiiv more attractive to growth-focused publishers.

More importantly, beehiiv was no longer just helping someone send a newsletter.

It was helping them grow it.

That distinction became central to the company's positioning.

8. Recommendations turned separate newsletters into a network

A referral program helps readers promote one newsletter.

Recommendations connect different newsletters to each other.

beehiiv launched its Recommendations product in 2022.

When someone subscribed to one publication, the publisher could recommend other newsletters that reader might like.

Those newsletters could recommend others in return.

This created another growth loop.

A new publication joining beehiiv did not only become another customer.

It could become part of the distribution network for other beehiiv newsletters.

The more publishers joined, the more useful the network could become.

beehiiv later added money to the same system.

9. Boosts turned audience growth into a marketplace

beehiiv launched Boosts in April 2023.

The idea was simple.

One newsletter could pay for new subscribers.

Another newsletter could recommend it and earn money whenever it generated a verified signup.

For example, a publication might offer $2.50 for every new subscriber.

Another publisher could show that newsletter to its readers and receive part of the payment when someone joined.

beehiiv handled the marketplace and verification.

This solved two problems at once.

A newsletter that wanted to grow could buy subscribers.

A newsletter that already had an audience could make money from it.

And beehiiv earned a fee for connecting the two.

That creates a stronger loop:

more publishers → more recommendations → more ways to acquire subscribers → more ways to make money → more publishers

In 2026, beehiiv combined free Recommendations and Boosts into one Recommendation Network.

By July 2026, the company said Recommendations and Boosts had generated more than 15 million subscriptions.

That is one of the clearest examples of beehiiv turning customer activity into product distribution.

10. beehiiv made itself a way to earn money

Most SaaS products are expenses.

Customers pay the software company every month and hope the software produces enough value to justify the bill.

beehiiv tried to make the relationship more direct.

Its customers could earn money through:

• paid subscriptions
• advertisements
• paid recommendations
• digital products

beehiiv also takes 0% of paid subscription revenue.

Stripe processing fees still apply, but beehiiv itself does not take the 10% cut that Substack takes from paid subscriptions.

That becomes important as a publication grows.

Suppose a newsletter makes $10,000 per month from subscriptions.

A 10% platform fee is $1,000 every month.

At that point, paying a fixed software subscription can become much cheaper.

beehiiv therefore becomes more attractive as some newsletter businesses get larger.

The company has repeatedly said one of the metrics it cares most about is how many customers make more money through beehiiv than they pay beehiiv.

That is a powerful retention strategy.

If the software directly produces revenue, cancelling it becomes much harder.

11. The Ad Network created another marketplace

Advertising is one of the main ways free newsletters make money.

But selling newsletter ads manually takes a lot of work.

A publisher needs to find advertisers, agree on pricing, schedule campaigns, manage creative, track results, report performance, and collect payment.

Large media companies can hire people to do this.

Small newsletter operators often cannot.

beehiiv started testing an advertising network manually.

Its team matched advertisers with publishers, collected the copy, and handled reporting.

This let beehiiv learn how the workflow worked before fully automating it.

The in-product beehiiv Ad Network launched in September 2023.

By then, beehiiv said it had already paid more than $500,000 to publishers through the earlier version.

Twelve days later, beehiiv acquired Swapstack, an existing newsletter advertising marketplace.

Swapstack had:

• thousands of publishers
• hundreds of advertisers
• more than $2 million in historical advertising spend

The acquisition gave beehiiv both relationships and experience instead of forcing it to build the marketplace from zero.

By 2025, Reuters reported that beehiiv's Ad Network was paying publishers more than $1 million per month.

The business had created another flywheel:

more publishers → more ad inventory → more advertisers → more revenue for publishers → more publishers

beehiiv was becoming more than software.

It was becoming infrastructure connecting different sides of the newsletter market.

12. Founder-led content kept beehiiv in front of its market

Tyler Denk became an important distribution channel for the company.

He regularly shared:

• product launches
• revenue milestones
• mistakes
• fundraising stories
• company metrics
• lessons from building beehiiv

This created an audience of newsletter operators, creators, founders, and investors who followed the company as it grew.

Denk later launched his own newsletter, Big Desk Energy, on beehiiv.

That newsletter became both a marketing channel and a live demo of the product.

He could use beehiiv's referral tools, recommendations, website builder, automations, analytics, ads, and other products on his own publication.

By January 2026, Big Desk Energy had more than 130,000 subscribers.

It also created enterprise leads.

Denk has said TIME's CTO subscribed to the newsletter, read it for months, and eventually helped move the company's newsletters to beehiiv.

Founder-led content worked because it sat close to the product.

People were not only reading advice from the CEO.

They were watching him use the product he was selling.

13. beehiiv expanded only after winning its initial niche

beehiiv did not launch as an all-in-one platform for every type of creator.

It started with newsletters.

Then it expanded.

Over time beehiiv added or improved products for:

• websites
• paid subscriptions
• advertising
• automation
• analytics
• digital products
• podcasts
• communities
• AI tools
• APIs
• enterprise publishing

It acquired website builder Typedream in 2024.

By 2026, beehiiv was positioning itself less like a newsletter tool and more like infrastructure for modern media companies.

That expansion made sense because the company already owned the starting point: the newsletter.

A creator might first join beehiiv to send email.

Later they could build their website there.

Then sell subscriptions.

Then run ads.

Then sell digital products.

Then host a podcast or community.

Every additional product increases the amount of a customer's business running through beehiiv.

14. Enterprise became the next growth engine

beehiiv's first customers were mostly individual newsletter operators and small media businesses.

Over time, the product became strong enough for much larger companies.

Customers have included:

• TIME
• TechCrunch
• Newsweek
• The Texas Tribune
• VICE Media
• Brex
• Ramp
• The Ringer
• Kalshi

beehiiv reported around 600 enterprise customers in August 2026.

Its team said enterprise revenue was growing about 70% year over year, compared with 56% for its product-led segment.

This is a useful example of moving upmarket.

beehiiv did not begin by spending years building enterprise software and then trying to find customers.

It won smaller publishers first.

Those users forced the product to improve.

As the platform became more capable, larger publishers started becoming realistic customers.

The same core infrastructure could now serve someone launching their first newsletter and a media company sending millions of emails.

beehiiv's growth flywheel

The whole strategy can be reduced to a few connected loops.

Product loop

customer feedback → new feature → product launch → more users → more feedback

Customer proof loop

publisher joins → publisher grows → beehiiv shares the result → other publishers join

Recommendation loop

more newsletters → more recommendations → more subscriber growth → more newsletters

Monetization loop

more publishers → more ad inventory and paid recommendations → more earning opportunities → publishers make more money → more publishers join

Founder distribution loop

build company → share lessons → grow founder audience → acquire customers → create more stories to share

These loops reinforced each other.

That is much harder to copy than one acquisition channel.

Why beehiiv beat much larger competitors

beehiiv entered a market full of established companies.

Its advantage was not that it could send email better than everyone else.

Email sending itself was already a commodity.

beehiiv focused on everything around the email.

It helped publishers:

create → publish → grow → monetize → understand their audience

That changed the comparison.

A newsletter operator was no longer choosing between two email editors.

They were choosing which platform could help them build a better newsletter business.

That gave beehiiv room to compete with companies much larger than itself.

What founders can learn from beehiiv

1. Start with a problem you know deeply

The beehiiv founders had already spent years building newsletter infrastructure at Morning Brew.

They understood the problems before starting the company.

2. Start narrow

beehiiv did not try to win all of email marketing.

It focused on newsletters.

Winning a small category first gave the company somewhere to expand from.

3. Recruit your first customers manually

The founders personally reached out to early newsletter operators.

At the beginning, direct conversations can teach you more than scalable acquisition.

4. Make customer success visible

Milk Road, Exec Sum, Young Money, and other publishers became proof that serious newsletters could run on beehiiv.

A strong customer story can be more persuasive than an advertisement.

5. Turn product launches into distribution

beehiiv shipped quickly and talked about what it shipped.

Every major feature gave the company another reason to reach its market.

6. Build growth into the product

Referrals and Recommendations helped beehiiv customers acquire subscribers.

That made growth part of the product rather than something customers had to solve elsewhere.

7. Help customers make money

Subscriptions, paid recommendations, and advertising made beehiiv more than a software expense.

When customers make money through your product, retention becomes easier.

8. Build networks, not only features

Recommendations, paid recommendations, and the Ad Network become more useful as more publishers participate.

Those network effects are harder for competitors to copy than an editor or analytics dashboard.

9. Move upmarket after the product is ready

beehiiv won creators and small publishers first.

Years of product development then made enterprise customers possible.

The founder-content part is the easiest to copy and the first thing to slip when the team gets busy. Okara's LinkedIn Agent and X Agent draft that weekly content from your positioning documents, so it keeps going while you're heads-down on the product.

The real reason beehiiv grew

It is easy to look at beehiiv and conclude that it grew because Tyler Denk built an audience online.

That helped.

But it does not explain the whole company.

beehiiv grew because its product made customers better at the things they cared about most:

growing an audience and making money from it.

Then beehiiv connected those customers together.

One publisher could recommend another.

One publisher could pay another for subscribers.

Advertisers could pay publishers.

Successful publishers created examples that attracted new publishers.

Every new customer had the potential to make the network more useful for existing customers.

That is why beehiiv's growth became stronger as it scaled.

The company started by selling software.

It eventually built an ecosystem.

Frequently asked questions

How did beehiiv grow?

beehiiv grew by turning newsletter infrastructure its founders had built at Morning Brew into a SaaS product. It recruited influential early publishers, grew mostly organically during its first year, shipped new features quickly, and built referrals, Recommendations, paid recommendations, and advertising directly into the platform. These products helped customers grow and make money, which attracted more publishers.

Who founded beehiiv?

beehiiv was founded by Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett, and Jacob Hurd. All three had previously worked at Morning Brew.

When did beehiiv launch?

beehiiv publicly launched on November 17, 2021.

How much revenue does beehiiv make?

beehiiv reported $33 million in ARR in August 2026. That figure refers to recurring software revenue. The company has also generated separate revenue from its Ad Network and paid Recommendations, so ARR should not be treated as the same thing as total company revenue.

How fast did beehiiv grow?

One year after launch, beehiiv said it was approaching $1 million ARR and had averaged 55% month-over-month growth since launch. By November 2023, it expected nearly $7 million in annual revenue. It passed $20 million ARR in 2025 and reported $33 million ARR in August 2026.

How did beehiiv get its first customers?

The founders recruited newsletter operators directly. Tyler Denk used an early beta announcement to collect hundreds of interested publishers and personally followed up with potential customers. Existing relationships in the newsletter industry also helped beehiiv land early publishers such as Litquidity's Exec Sum.

Did beehiiv use paid advertising to grow?

Not initially. beehiiv says it spent $0 on paid acquisition during its first year. Early growth came mostly from founder-led distribution, word of mouth, product launches, customer success stories, and beehiiv branding across customer newsletters. Paid acquisition became more important later.

How is beehiiv different from Substack?

Substack combines publishing with a consumer network and takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. beehiiv uses a software subscription model, takes 0% of publisher subscription revenue, and focuses heavily on tools for audience growth, websites, advertising, analytics, and business operations.

What is beehiiv's growth strategy?

beehiiv's strategy can be summarized as: start with a narrow newsletter niche, ship quickly, make customers successful, turn their success into social proof, and build product loops that help publishers grow and monetize each other.

Sources

• The beehiiv Story: Chapter 1, beehiiv
• The beehiiv Story: Chapter 2, beehiiv
• The beehiiv Story: Chapter 3, beehiiv
• The beehiiv Story: Chapter 4, beehiiv
• Morning Brew referral program, Tyler Denk
• Inside the beehiiv playbook, The Split
• How beehiiv reached its first $1 million, My First Million
• Introducing the beehiiv referral program, beehiiv
• Introducing Boosts, beehiiv
• Recommendations Reimagined, beehiiv
• Meet the beehiiv Ad Network, beehiiv
• beehiiv acquires Swapstack, beehiiv
• beehiiv expects revenue to nearly double, Reuters
• beehiiv's $12.5 million Series A, TechCrunch
• beehiiv's $33 million Series B, TechCrunch
• beehiiv crosses $33 million ARR, Daniel Krenitsyn
• beehiiv's 2026 Summer Release, beehiiv