🎯The Content Economy

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Strategy Playbook: Don’t just build the apps. Build the Operating System.

Yo TD welcome to the chat! Pumped for this so let’s just dive into Q1:

When you think about beehiiv’s evolution before vs after this drop, what’s the contrarian strategic thesis?

Why expand into net new categories like digital products, link-in-bio etc?

9:06 PM ✓

Thanks for having me - let’s rip.

Our users are primarily outcome-oriented creators (like yourself) and publishers who’s content is their primary product. We call this the content economy™️ and our goal is to become the operating system of it.

• Both share a similar goal: to grow their audience and monetize.

• Both also share a similar preference: ease-of-use so they can focus on what’s most important (their content).

Rather than having to stitch together a dozen different platforms, we believe we can consolidate the content tech stack and provide best-in-class solutions. This means introducing more ways for our users to monetize (selling digital products like templates, guides, and sessions), more ways for our users to create (AI website builder), and a whole lot more (podcasts, link-in-bio, analytics, etc.).

This is in addition to already providing what I consider to be the most comprehensive newsletter platform, and a website builder that I believe will be able to go head-to-head with the incumbents.

9:13 PM ✓

I use probably 50 tools to run my business. There would be at least 100 categories you could enter - how did you decide which ones you should enter?

Any strong opinions on tools you wouldn’t build into the platform?

9:20 PM ✓

I believe our real superpower as a company is our ability to actually listen to customers and understand them. Our roadmap is mostly devised from their feedback.

When we launched our new website builder back in July, users loved it, but also asked for so much more: analytics, link-in-bio, podcasts, digital products, templates, etc.

We dropped 10 massive updates last Thursday, which addressed the most common requests from the past several months. We’ve already begun to identify what users are wanting next as we plan out our 2026 roadmap.

I don’t think I have super strong opinions about what not to build. I ultimately report to our users, so whatever best serves them is what I’ll explore and prioritize.

9:27 PM ✓

When I look at each new product you launched - AI builder, podcasts, analytics, digital products - it all points toward beehiiv powering more and more of the media/creator stack.

Are there specific case studies / examples / playbooks from other industries that have inspired this direction? Which companies / founders would you say have most influenced your strategy for beehiiv?

9:33 PM ✓

There are two that jump out to me: Shopify and Stripe. 

Shopify and Stripe both began by solving a single, painful problem (online selling and payments) and then evolved into a full operating system for their users.

9:37 PM ✓

The AI website builder is an interesting one because anecdotally I’ve recently switched from drag-and-drop landing page builders (which used to be the fast/easy way) back to the IDE (Cursor), because AI development is now 10-100x faster for bringing an idea to life.

What was the key insight that convinced you this is a product worth shipping?

9:42 PM ✓

I think you just answered it 😂

9:46 PM ✓

True lol.

I write a lot about high-profile acquisitions (eg1 eg2 eg3), but rarely get a front-row seat to things like the evolution of the website builder

→ You acquired Typedream, launched the upgraded native Website Builder, and now we get a full natural-language AI builder for beehiiv sites.

→ You acquired Swapstack, launched the Ad Network for native newsletter monetisation, and shipped a bunch of features like storefronts, inventory management etc.

What are the biggest product-learnings from these tuck-in acquisitions? Did they go as planned?

9:49 PM ✓

Most acquisitions fail (at least, according to the statistics). We’re fortunate that both of these were absolute home runs for us.

I’ll rattle off a few reasons why I think they were successful and additional learnings…

• We were acquiring expertise. Jake from Swapstack had been in the weeds for years building this two-sided marketplace for newsletters and brands. The Typedream team had been building their website builder for more than 4 years. We wanted the people and their expertise more than anything else.

• We were patient. We knew we couldn’t just fold the Typedream product right into our codebase, despite the desire to act on the acquisition immediately. Instead, we rebuilt a brand new website builder natively within beehiiv, led by their team. This was the longer route, but removed all tech debt and allowed them to “start over” with all of their learnings.

• We had realistic expectations. We wanted and attempted to convert users from both Swapstack and Typedream over to beehiiv in the aftermath of the acquisition… to mixed success. I viewed any of these conversions to be a cherry on top, but wasn’t why we did the deal.

9:58 PM ✓

Digital products are a big leap beyond newsletters. There are many dedicated platforms that just do this.

Obviously lots of beehiivers (like myself) have businesses built on email + automations + digital products, but I’m sure you’ve thought about how this could be a massive customer acquisition lever too → Folks who want all these core building blocks in one platform will now become beehiiv evaluators.

It also opens the door business model evolutions (take rates, marketplace / discovery). Put your Strategy Breakdowns hat on and give us the TLDR on the digital products bet 🎩

10:04 PM ✓

I’d say it’s twofold:

1. Our existing users are subject matter experts, have rabid followings, and are able to monetize their audience in many different ways. Rather than them having to seek out other platforms and build complex integrations, they can now experiment with additional monetization methods (like digital products, booking sessions, etc.). This makes our product more valuable and stickier for our existing users.

2. Acquiring new users who are using one of the many platforms for digital products that takes a cut of revenue. Many of those people are both unnecessarily losing revenue to fees, and also need to sync and connect with third party platforms for web, email, etc. We can consolidate and make their lives much easier, while also saving them a ton of money.

   

10:11 PM ✓

When you showed me the native traffic analytics my mind instantly went to all of the unique datapoints beehiiv could bring to the table that external tools couldn’t.

E.g. full lifecycle tying subscriber acquisition and engagement data to web activity and digital product purchases, backlink / referral insights from other beehiiv newsletters, display ads for ad network partners.

I won’t try to WikiLeaks your roadmap, but what are you hyped about on the first-party data front?

10:16 PM ✓

I’ll start with stating that most creators don’t have a good sense of any of their data in the first place. Configuring javascript pixels and building funnels in GA4 isn’t really a core competency of many people… so our website analytics launch makes that accessible to a lot of people for the first time. We’ll be coupling this pretty tightly with digital products and link-in-bio as well in the coming months 👀

We already provide what I consider to be best-in-class newsletter analytics, and we’re constantly pushing the limits to improve that as well.

And with the latest native podcast integration launch, I’d expect a more comprehensive hosting solution with data and analytics sometime in 2026.

When you add it all up, we believe we can provide a full 360 view of your audience engagement, funnels, and conversions… all native within beehiiv and super simple to use and extract insights.

10:23 PM ✓

Ok this one’s for me: Imagine you had a weekly newsletter, Strategy Shakedowns 🎯, with 100k tech nerds reading each week.

With your learnings across 1000’s of newsletters - what would you spend the next 12 months building / focusing on / learning / avoiding to turn this into a mini media empire?

10:29 PM ✓

1. Growth. There’s obviously a direct correlation between the size of your audience and your ability to extract value and launch new products and offerings successfully. I’d double down on ways to scale that audience.

   1. For the newsletter: recommendations, beehiiv Boosts, SEO, paid acquisition, cross-posts with other writers, reddit, etc.

   2. Other: experiment with long form video on YouTube, short-form video on TikTok/Reels, and podcasts to serve your audience more deeply and reach net new audiences due to the algorithmic nature of these feeds.

2. Revenue diversification. From your LinkedIn post today, it appears most of your revenue is from sponsorships and affiliate. Obviously both of those scale well as you scale your audience… but are there other ways to monetize.

   1. Paid subscription for exclusive deep dives or private AMAs with the founders and companies you are covering in your breakdowns.

   2. Events? I’ve made it all the way to the end without promoting my own startup-focused newsletter, Big Desk Energy (you should subscribe btw), but in addition to sponsorship revenue I host a 5-day Founder Mastermind in Costa Rica every few months. I only accept 7 people to join, but it’s both super fun and super high margin. I’m sure there’s something there to bring together the top 1% of strategy tech nerds.

10:38 PM ✓

Appreciate you doing this! Excited to see the beehiiv AI browser next?

10:41 PM ✓

Any time 🤝 Let’s do Part 3 when we launch our physical hardware device 🐝

10:42 PM ✓