Hey, listeners. Welcome back to episode eighteen of Two Dads and Tech. Today's guest is Tyler Denk, co-founder and CEO of Beehiiv and the creator of Big Desk Energy. We get into a lot today.
We get into the journey behind Tyler, what brought him to Beehiiv from a hundred and twenty K in debt building one of the fastest-growing platforms in media.
We talk about future-proofing Beehiiv, what he's doing with AI as well as intuitive software, security, data, how he's really trying to create a tool that AI won't be able to disrupt anytime soon.
We get into some real founder stuff. Uh, we talk co-founders, what it's like working with yours truly, and the mindset behind building on weekends, and we ask some big questions.
Would Tyler ever sell Beehiiv for a briefcase full of cash? Hang tight, listen to the podcast, subscribe if you haven't already. You're in for a treat. And we would like to give a quick shout-out to our sponsor, Agree.
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All right, Two Dads and Tech listeners, we have a very special guest today, uh, someone who is very near and dear to my heart. Some might even call him my dad. Is the father himself, Father Daddy Denk.
Tyler Denk, co-founder and CEO of Beehiiv, as well as founder of Big Desk Energy, we have today on Two Dads and Tech. Super excited. Tyler, thanks for joining us today. Happy to be here. I think we're off to a hot start.
I think I've already interrupted you twice, and, and we're, we're rolling. That's gonna be a great introduction, though.
I think that's, th-that's, that's what Two Dads and Tech is here for is, is these awesome little snippets where that introduction's gonna do numbers.
Tyler, before we jump in, for those who don't know you, you know, we, we live in a, a, an ecosystem on Twitter where it's like, it seems like everyone knows everyone else in newsletters, but there's a lot of people listening to Two Dads and Tech, people on LinkedIn, who might not know who you are.
I want you to take us back to the beginning. What sparked your journey, and how did it all come together over the last several years to what you're building today at Beehiiv?
Won't go all the way back to the very, very beginning, but I'll start in- Day you were born... Morning Brew days. Yeah, where were you born? Where were you born? [laughs] Yeah. Baltimore, Maryland.
I went to school at the University of Maryland, self-taught software developer, taught myself how to code and built a startup in college that I thought and was convinced would be a multi-billion dollar company, and it was not.
But I spent three and a half years tinkering, building, sacrificing weekends with two of my good friends. What that meant was I never got an internship experience. I never made money in college.
I graduated with a hundred twenty thousand dollars of debt and had nothing on my resume when I graduated outside of, like, a failed startup and, like, the least marketable resume because I was a self-taught software developer.
No jobs, nothing during college. So moved back home, and I actually connected with Austin Rief, who's a childhood friend of mine from Baltimore.
For those who are outside of the Twitter bubble that we live in, Austin Rief is the co-founder, CEO of Morning Brew.
And so at the time, it was just him and Alex, it's two co-founders and a writer, and there were other newsletter companies growing, which was, like, The Skimm, um, was, like, an inspiration to Morning Brew.
Axios was relatively new. And Austin's like, "Yo, we need help building this referral program and this social share feature. Would you be down to do that?" I had legit forty-nine cents in my bank account.
He offered three thousand dollars to build this thing, and no hesitation, I was like, "Absolutely, I can build that thing."
Almost quit a few times during the journey or, like, the three weeks of doing that, which felt like a journey. Didn't quit.
And then as soon as I shipped it, he's like, "We have so many other things that we need help building. Would you build it for us?" And one thing led to another. I end up contracting all of that summer.
Got a full-time job joining Morning Brew as the second employee, which was never really the plan, but kind of what I backed into. And then Morning Brew goes on to be a pretty wild success in this bubble that we live in.
Um, so Morning Brew scaled to three and a half million readers doing about twenty, twenty-five million dollars in revenue a year before getting acquired by Business Insider for seventy-five million.
I was, again, the second employee. I kind of did product engineering and growth and sort of built the different tools and infrastructure and growth strategies to help us scale.
During that journey, we had thousands of people reaching out per week, responding to the newsletter, asking about the referral program, asking about our newsletter templates, asking about what data we were tracking to help grow.
And these were people who either worked at a different media company, publisher, or just aspirationally wanted to build a newsletter as a side project or a hobby, and kind of saw Morning Brew as, like, this beacon, North Star that figured out the formula of how to grow very quickly and how to monetize.
And when they came to me asking all these questions, that was, like, a signal to me of there's something that, that we built here that is special, that helped us grow faster, that helped us monetize and create something that people love outside of just the content, 'cause obviously the content is king.
Content was great.
Um, and then the tools in the ecosystem that already existed didn't solve the pain point or help get people the same outcome that Morning Brew eventually had.And so that was really the impetus for after Morning Brew got acquired.
Actually, I left a week or two before Morning Brew got acquired, totally coincidentally. But after Morning Brew got acquired, um, ended up building Beehiiv with my now two co-founders, and Beehiiv is pretty much that.
The simplest way to put it, Morning Brew in a box. Um, but all of the tools, infrastructure, data, dashboards, sending, you name it.
Like, we help other publishers, creators, writers, journalists ideally have similar outcomes to Morning Brew in one way or another.
And that was the five-minute background that you didn't necessarily ask for, but you got. [chuckles] I love it. No, I love it. No. You mentioned the two co-founders.
Of course, I know Ben and Jake, uh, and I actually asked them before this podcast, I said, "Hey, I'm gonna have Tyler on. What is one question I should ask Tyler that's gonna totally throw him off?"
And Ben, without hesitation, said, "Who is Tyler's favorite co-founder?" And so- [laughing]... you must answer now. Between Jake and Ben, who do you prefer?
No, you don't have to answer that, although we both know the answer. No. But, um, yeah, no, he's like, "Well, I actually don't know the answer-" Let's do it. What is it? "... but you don't have to answer."
Well, well, right now, right now it's Jake because he didn't, because Jake didn't ask that question. [laughing] That's right. That's right. Actually, Jake just didn't respond, so that's very funny.
[laughing] Uh, switching gears.
Two weeks ago, I sent you an episode of Two Dads and Tech where we talked about vibe coding, we talked about AI and SaaS, um, and then of course, you and I have had a lot of conversations about AI over the last few months just with some of what is being built at Beehiiv.
I wanna ask you, with all the stuff happening that's being built right now by what some people call non-technical engineers, people who are just really good at writing AI prompts, and then of course we know, like, all the different, you know, tools that have gone from zero to twenty million ARR in, like, eight minutes, what does Beehiiv do right now to future-proof Beehiiv as a platform, Beehiiv as a service, Beehiiv as a product, let's say twenty-four months into the future as AI is really starting to take hold?
Yeah.
So you might get another five-minute answer here, but I've actually-- You, you sent this to me a few weeks ago, and my evolution of how I think about AI has changed a lot over the past few weeks, um, so I'll try to formulate, like, what I've been thinking about.
I think initially in seeing all of these tools like Lovable and Cursor, which make it so easy and lower the barriers of entry to, like, ship different types of products, my natural reaction as a founder of a tech company is, like, defensive, right?
It's like, oh, are other people just going to be able to build another Beehiiv and offer a similar solution?
And I think that's, like, level one of what my thinking has been for the first, like, few months of this whole AI rush.
And then I speak to the person who leads our data team and realize how much data infrastructure and tools and unique solutions that we've been building to handle, like, five hundred million events every single day.
And I was like, that's not something, at least today, that I'm worried that AI will be able to replicate, like, the sophistication of that. Then I talk to our head of security, and we have ML models.
We ha- We're using, like, eight different vendors. We have our own proprietary tech that's both protecting the security and infrastructure of Beehiiv as a platform, but also on behalf of all of our users.
And this is something that she spent a decade plus kind of like building different solutions at different companies that we've adopted.
And then we have, like, these network effects, we have this brand reputation, we have the ad network, and we have hundreds of different advertisers, and then we have, like, a full support staff of, like, fifteen US-based support people.
And, like, very quickly I started to realize, like, just the pure tech aspect of what you can do, vibe coding, is very far from the infrastructure and sophistication of what we have built, and that doesn't even include what I think a lot of people learn and a lot of engineers have found out is, like, building it is, like, sometimes seems like the hard part, but scaling, building a reputation, processes, like, infrastructure is far more harder than just having a working solution.
So I've kinda shifted, and I do think AI will advance, and the tech will get better, and some of this, like, security infrastructure and data infrastructure may get to a point where it is sophisticated enough to mimic that.
But I think I've moved on from thinking, I'm worried that there's gonna be a hundred different Beehiivs that spin up and try to compete with us.
Where I've shifted to is, I actually think, and maybe this is where people got to this conclusion sooner, the bigger risk is users, large users who's spending a lot of money, may actually just jump to building their own solution rather than using a vendor.
And so if you're used to paying HubSpot or Salesforce seventy-five thousand dollars a year, but you only use five percent of their tools, and it's super clunky, and you need to hire, like, a Salesforce admin to do anything, at what point, as, like, a large enterprise company, does it just make more sense to build your own solution using AI tools?
It might take a few months and iterations, but now you're not paying Salesforce seventy-five thousand dollars, and you only have the tools and features that your company needs.
And so to apply that to, like, email and Beehiiv, for example, if you're a sender or, like, a, a publisher, let's say you have fifty needs, like, feature needs that you want, and when you look and make a vendor decision, you're like, "Okay, Beehiiv does forty-five of those fifty.
Maybe Sailthru does forty of the fifty. Maybe Mailchimp does thirty of the fifty." So there's, like, functionality is, like, one vector. There's price, so which company's gonna give me the best price?
And then there's, like, reputation and, like, do I trust this company? Do I think they can execute?
And I think there's a path where what you notice is all of those vendors only had a maximum of, like, forty-five of the fifty things, and I think that's true of, like, any vendor decision you make.
You're always making some sacrifice where they don't have, like, the perfect custom-fitted solution for you, but you're okay having forty-five of fifty 'cause it's the right price, and you don't have to build it yourself.
And so to answer your question, like, I think the threat is if there are very expensive solutions in the market, and there's a way to create a solution, vibe coding or using AI, that gets you fifty of the fifty things that you want, then there's, like, some overlap of, like, that's where I could see users building their own solution, and that's where I think very expensive solutions fall down.And then to answer your question more directly, I don't feel extremely threatened by that in our current business model 'cause we're actually extremely cost efficient.
Like, no one is spending that much money on our solution where the hurdle of like building your own solution makes a ton of sense.
But I'd also say building it again is like one part, but if you are one of those more ex-- like the users who are spending more money, that means you're probably enterprise, and you don't have the ability for things to break.
And so, like, the risk of building your own solution and it not working, like, who's fixing that? Who's the deliverability expert in your team? Who's doing maintenance?
Like, very quickly, the decision becomes it's actually just easier to pay a company who totally specializes and has all this expertise and has ongoing maintenance and monitoring than building my own solution.
It's a very roundabout way of like kind of how I've evolved in thinking about it, but it used to be, I was scared of companies, like tons of competitors popping up, and I actually think that's much harder to do.
Then it was like, oh, maybe all of our users are just going to build their perfect solution for themselves, but there's a lot of value that we provide too, and I think there might be some facet of that, but I think that's the bigger threat and not a massive threat to us right now.
Yeah, Tyler, what I'm seeing is kind of exactly what you're saying is right now things are much more sophisticated and complex from a tech perspective than people really think.
Like, there's something shiny that someone will build on Cursor, and then like you just mentioned, you have to maintain it, you've got to fix it.
And let's hypothetically say you do build an application on Cursor, and it scales to hundreds of thousands of users, that non-technical person will have no idea how to be able to scale that from a back-end perspective.
And right now what you mentioned was users will... They might just build their own thing, right? Because it's easier to build than ever. Um, and then there's two cases of that. One was a viral story, I'm sure you heard.
One was, uh, somebody built like a DocuSign competitor for free. It w- it was viral a-all over X or Twitter as, as well as LinkedIn.
But I have a friend building a CRM who uses HubSpot, so to your example, who uses HubSpot, but his big issue is he never remembers the follow-up with the people in HubSpot, so he's building a CRM specifically for follow-up reminders and follow-up automations to make sure he's always following up with prospects, customers, et cetera.
And so I agree with that. I think
it's shiny, and it's fun to talk about right now, and it's fun to be like, "Oh, I'm gonna build this application even though I don't know how to code," but realistically, I don't think we're g- there quite yet to build what we spoke about, Daniel, was an enterprise scale application.
But I did have a couple of questions. We're gonna rewind back to your early days when you had forty-nine cents in your bank account. That multi-billion dollar idea, what was it? [chuckles] Yeah.
So it was called Venture Storm, and the thinking was... I'll take a step back.
I was in all of the entrepreneur programs at University of Maryland, and like if you've en- ever done like an entrepreneurship course, it's a lot of like, build your business model, build a marketing plan, maybe build a prototype or wireframe, but you never actually like build the product, and there's a lot of hypothetical of like, oh, once you have this many employees, this is how you do management.
But it's all like theory and like early stage, like ideation, very little building.
And I think that's 'cause most of the people in these entrepreneurship programs, typically, at least my experience, weren't technical, and there wasn't Cursor and Lovable at the time.
So like you were just like had these like tech ideas, like mobile apps were super hot in twenty-fourteen. All the whole class had a mobile app idea. No one knew how to build a mobile app, right?
And then across campus, University of Maryland has like a top twenty computer science program, so like the kids that actually did know how to code and could build those solutions.
But they were like two different worlds, and they didn't interact whatsoever.
So typical college student thinking about college kids' problems, I'm like, if we could connect the two and take like the smartest computer science program kids and the smartest entrepreneurial business school kids, put them together and build these companies, I think that there could be like this hotbed of startups and entrepreneurship on different college campuses.
Problem one [chuckles] is college kids don't have money, so like terrible market to go after. Like where are you... Who's paying for this service?
Two is you're actually targeting not just people that don't have money, but you're targeting the stage of company, like pre-seed, pre-idea, basically, where there is no money being generated.
So like, what are you charging? Like, there's not a transaction fee. It's like co-founder matchmaking. And then you're like, "Oh, maybe we take a bit of equity in this future yet to be launched venture."
And then it just gets super messy 'cause who's doing the legal work to manage all like the two percent equity that you have in these different companies? So i, I mean, again, the experience was ten out of ten amazing.
It taught me how to code. I'm like only on this trajectory because I forced myself how to code 'cause we were also in that same bucket. We were like, "Okay, now that we have this idea, how the hell do we build this?"
[chuckles] And so we had to teach- Yeah... ourselves. Um, but yeah, that, that was- Yeah... the idea for it. D- I think there's still room for that idea.
Um, I know AngelList is now doing their thing and Wellfound's doing their thing as well. Um, do you still touch the code base today at Beehive, or are you completely removed from coding? I haven't in two years.
I'd say like the first, like the first year pre-launch, like there was nothing to do but code. So it was me, Ben, and Jake just coding every free minute that we had.
After launching, you know, we have this ambitious roadmap, but I g- I've written about it a few times.
We launched, and we were like the least competitive product in the market just by nature of like being new and everyone else has been around for like five, ten, fifteen years.
So I spent a lot of the early days coding, but it was like pretty clear.
Like they're all like actual, like properly educated software engineers with like real experience, and I'm just like the scrappiest self-taught get it done.
But like I was causing more issues than I was like helping, and so eventually moved out of the code base. Just taping everything together. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I tried the same thing. I get it.
[chuckles] I do think as like a technical founder or like a, a PM, and like I spend most of my time in product, the superpower of actually understanding how code works, like how the files fit together, what like technical requirements actually means, and like what needs to be built, the difficulty, I think it's like a huge superpower.
So like anyone thinking about product, I think understanding like at least lightweight how to code and like what's actually going on is like a huge, huge superpower.
And I, I think to that point, something IAlways boast about you and Beehive and the story of Beehive and the product is it's uncommon you find someone in your seat, Tyler, that understands as intimately as you do each different organization in the company, and not just conceptually from, like, a thirty-thousand-foot view.
I mean, uh, you know, without getting into all the details, Beehive has a, you know, weekly success lists and to-do lists, and each team giving their commitments of what they're gonna complete that week, and we do a, you know, end of week postmortem on what happened and what didn't, why, why not.
And you're tuned in to, for the most part, all of those things across now almost a hundred employees. That's chaotic. A lot of people couldn't do that, couldn't handle that.
And all the while, you're building this side hustle that, according to this recent interview with Greg Isenberg, is doing somewhere to the effect of twenty to thirty thousand a month, Big Desk Energy.
So walk us through what is Big Desk Energy, and how did it become what it is now from how it began, I think several years ago as just a Spotify playlist. Walk us through that journey. Yeah.
Also, the secret to both of that is, like, I, I actually do sleep seven hours, surprisingly, but I'm stressed- Insane... twenty-four seven. Um, Yeah...
and I work Friday nights, I work Saturday, so, like, that's why I'm not a dad in tech yet. [chuckles] I, I work a shit ton, and that's kind of the sacrifice that I've chosen.
Yeah, so Big Desk Energy was a Spotify playlist back in the Morning Brew days. I don't know where I came up with the name. I mean, I have some ideas, and I think that top... that was, like, trending at the time.
And I have-- I listen to music the entire time that I'm working, and I've just found this, like, niche of music that is kind of upbeat, not distracting, not too hardcore. Like, very vibey, I'd say.
And, like, that's what allows me to focus best. And so I found, like, two songs, created a playlist, named it Big Desk Energy, got a logo for it, and started adding to it.
And then other people in the office at Morning Brew started listening and sharing.
Got to, like, a hundred followers on Spotify, and then, like, the cheat code was Morning Brew just dropped it in, like, a newsletter to two million people. That got it to, like- Mm.... eight thousand followers.
And then it had, like- Yeah... a little, like, cult following since then, and that's, like, kind of all it was for four years.
And then when I launched Beehive, like, I've always wanted to publicize the journey more than just Twitter and LinkedIn and, like, go a little bit deeper and, like, kind of sh- like, one of the...
So I'll speak as if no one has any idea who I am.
I, like, lean very deep into the build in public and do on Twitter, do on LinkedIn, and that's everything from what we're building, what we're launching, who we're hiring, milestones.
We just hit a million MRR or ten million ARR or whatever it is.
Um, shortcomings, failures, like, everything, and I think that's kind of, like, that vulnerability I think resonates with, like, a very wide range of people.
I think some people do build in public, but it's only positive.
And, like, fortunately, Beehive has been mostly positive, but there's definitely been some downers, and I think a lot of founders are scared to publicize the failures because they're on this venture capital flywheel where they can't show any kink in the armor because it hurts their ability to potentially raise money or hire in the future.
And I've just kind of taken the stance of, like, it's totally normal that that happens during the startup journey, and I share everything extremely transparently. And so anyway, I've always kind of had that mentality.
And like two Novembers ago, it was like the lull of the holidays, and I, like, actually had, like, the slightest bit more time than usual, and, like, it was, like, a false promise of like, "Oh, I think I can launch this newsletter now."
And so I, like, stayed up all night. I was, like, trying to think of the name.
I was, like, gonna do, like, a totally different branding, and I was like, wait, I already have this amazing brand, like, retro Windows ninety-eight brand in Big Desk Energy, and it totally kind of aligns with, like, Big Desk Energy, working, startup, building this company, whatever.
So launched the newsletter in January of twenty twenty-four, and it's been, funny enough, like, one of the most stressful things.
For me, like, writing doesn't come super easy, and having, like, a fifteen-hundred-word essay hanging over your head every single week, and you have to get it out on this Tuesday, and, like, you press send, like, I s- I sent it a few hours ago, feels amazing, and I already have, like, this creeping anxiety of, like, I have to come up with the next topic and write this next thing that people are entertained by.
But it's also been one of the highest ROI activities I've done.
I think we're at, like, ninety thousand subscribers today, and the ability to take these insights and learnings from building the company and lessons and failures, w- of which there have been many, and publicizing and sharing them has found, like, a huge community of other founders and startup employees who resonate a ton with that.
So it's, like, very gratifying and enjoyable and, and pays the, the rent a little bit as well. Love that.
And I think as Beehive turns into, you know, the, the unicorn that you have every expectation it will turn into one day, Big Desk Energy is almost like this artifact where, you know, right, already you're doing a lead magnet to give away all the investor updates twelve months behind, so people can follow as though they're an investor.
So ninety thousand people or more can be an investor of Beehive a year behind the fact just to see, you know, what your brain, you know, how your brain works, the way that you're operating the company.
Uh, I mean, I can't imagine how many hundreds, if not thousands, of founders will learn from that into the future just on how to raise and how to build, uh, you know, personnel, everything.
Uh, but Troy, what were you gonna ask? Yeah, I was gonna say, um, it's funny about the really just, like, the anxiety and stress of a newsletter. We use Beehive at Demo. I write the Demo newsletter, and
just like you, every week I'm like, "Damn, I gotta think of something else to write," and it's gotta be in depth. Like, you can't just be like the surfle-- the service level LinkedIn post.
I have to go into the detail, you know, every week. It's the most stressful thing that I probably do every single week at Demo. But I do wanna ask a question. I'm gonna call you out.
Um, about a month ago, I tried to get the exact date, but I couldn't get it on LinkedIn, so that's fine, but you made a post, and I'm gonna read it right here verbatim, very short and sweet post.I'll never bet on a founder who doesn't work on the weekends.
I'd love for you to elaborate on that. So this is one of my two hot takes, so, um, I, I feel like I'm in the wrong podcast to take both of my hot takes.
My, my initial hot take was being single, as-- I'm also not single now, as a disclosure, but being single as a founder is a competitive advantage, which was a hot take for a lot of reasons because people, most people on the internet can't comprehend that, and they think that means that you cannot be successful unless you are single, and that's not what the, the case is actually being made.
It's r- both of them actually just boil down to the exact same thing, and it's time.
And if you, like, do the equation of, like, effort times time is, like, output, like, if you are working efficiently and there's infinite things to do, which there always is in a startup, like, the higher odds of success are, like, probably correlated with your ability to, like, deliver output, and output is a function of how much time you can put into something.
In this world where there is infinite competition, where we are one of the smallest players in this space, as are most startups when they first start off with, like, against any incumbent industry, then I would personally go out of my way to bet on people that, like, put their company as, like, number one, number two, number three priority, and that typically means working on the weekends.
Doesn't mean, again, like, you're a case of this. There's a, a thousands of counter examples of people who are having success.
It's just, like, my shortcut cheat code of, like, if I had to, like, write checks on a founder, someone who's, like, putting their company first is, like, where I'd go first.
Yeah, it's funny because we talked about this on Two Dads and Tech, and I'm actually in a hundred percent agreement with you. So Daniel told me, or he asked me the question, "Do you think...
essentially, do you think you can scale a high-growth startup with a family?" And my answer was, short answer, no. Like, yes, you can do it.
I'm sure you can do it, but he-- I, I essentially said what I'm sacrificing at Demo is revenue growth to be able to spend time with my family. And so I agree with your take that same thing with the single part, right?
Like, if you're single, and I know you have a girlfriend now or you have a partner now, whatever, but I definitely think that with the family, like, I can only work, like, one or two hours on a weekend.
And I even told my wife, I was like, "I love you, and I love our kids, but if we weren't together," which that will never be the case, I don't want that to be the case, "but Demo would probably have four to five X the revenue that we have today because I'd be able to spend so much more time on it.
I wouldn't have to clock out at five PM and go help you with the kids and make dinner, and at that point, I'm tired at nine PM. I don't want to stay up all night."
And so I completely agree with that take, but would you say...
and I think it's a lifestyle thing that you'd have to choose, but would you say that that's true for every company or would you say that's more so true for maybe, like, the VC-backed high-growth startups?
I think it's pretty agnostic. It's just, like, you don't need to be VC-backed to have, like, this high growth trajectory.
And it depe-- I mean, like, if you want a lifestyle business and you wanna open, like, a coffee shop down the street, like, I don't think you need to be, like, slaving every weekend to be able to do this and hit these different revenue milestones.
But if you're, like, in a hyper-competitive space and you want to have multi-billion dollar type of, like, outcome one day, I do think that it takes, like, ev- it's a ridiculously crazy thing to say and to happen, and to make it a reality, I think it takes, like, a ton of sacrifice.
The, the single tweet actually came from I have, like, a founder friend acquaintance who reached out. He's like, "Hey, I'm, like, really struggling with this marketing plan. Can you, like, help me out with this?"
Like, total, like, a total favor, and I was like, "Yeah, shoot. Dude, of course. Let's do, like, how about Friday, six PM?" He's like, "Dude, I can't. Wife has, like, this dinner event.
Like, I, I can't do it on Sat- on Friday." I was like, "All right, fine. Let's do it, like, the next Friday." And he's like, "Ah, I have plans. Like, the wife's, like, friends are in town that weekend.
We're hosting, like, another event." Yep.
I'm like, "You're the one who's coming to me for help, but you can't even carve, like, an hour of your time because of, like, other responsibilities and, like, commitments that you've made?"
It's like that just showed me, like, where his priorities were, and, like, that's totally fine. Yeah. Keeping the wife happy is important, and family is definitely important. I'm not saying that that is not. Yeah.
I'm just saying, like, to me, it became very clear, like, what he was prioritizing in his life. His company ended up failing. Yeah.
So one, one data point, but just, like, that's where that tweet initially came from, and it just resonated 'cause I was locked in headphones in all week, and, like, I couldn't wait till Friday night to work more 'cause, like, I'm, like, very passionate about what we're doing and it was just a total night and day difference between us.
Yeah. No, I think- Yeah, yeah... I, I, I also agree with this take. I, I'm obviously a dad and a husband,
but I also consider myself obsessed in what I lock onto and what I want to build and what I have built in the past. What I'm building now is I think I'm successful because I obsess over it. I want to do it.
I want to give it my all. I wanna be wholly devoted. I think it's why I'm a, a good builder.
I think it's why I'm a good dad and a good husband, but you're starting with a hundred percent bandwidth, and you give a hundred percent of twenty-five percent to your family, and that's just the static, and you got a little bit of time to work, and you got a little bit of time to build on the side.
I mean, you just can't do it all, and I, I, I think Troy and I, we've talked about this, you know, several times in this podcast is i- if I'm, if I'm gonna work for someone, and Tyler, obviously, I, I work for you.
For those listening, I- you may not have known that. You probably did. I'm fairly vocal about it. I work at Beehive.
I bet personally on founders like you because I'm like, "Well, dude, I'm gonna work for this guy that is bent out of shape and obsessed chaotically about succeeding."
[laughs] And, like, not to downplay all the, you know, other complex things in your life, but, like, there's nothing else.
Like, Beehive is, is everything to you, and I'm like, that's so easy to get behind someone with that vision because I'm like, you're obsessed with Beehive winning, and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna just stand in line, and I'm gonna be on the, on the, on the trip with that, so.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna add one c- I'm gonna add one quick thing here because y-you're talking-- I've asked you actually offline. I've said, "How is Tyler as a founder?"
And Tyler, honestly, offline, he says the same exact thing. Like, he's one in a million is what he said verbatim via text.
So I'm gonna ask you, Tyler, I clearly see and hear the passion just how you talk about Beehive and how you talk about just business in general, butWhy do you believe Beehive is going to win with so many other incumbents in the space?
I think a lot of it-- So there's probably a few ways I can answer it.
One is, I think the people, and I think if you heard what Daniel just said, me and my co-founders, leadership, like all the way down, though, to the person we hired last week.
We just brought on a chief of staff, and I, I tasked him with, like, maybe the most annoying thing.
I was like, "I want you to actually meet with all ninety-five employees, like on a one-on-one in your first like three to four weeks." 'Cause I think that is like the best way to learn. One, to meet everyone, obviously.
Two, chief of staff is like a little bit of a weird hire where, like, they kinda like don't have reports, and, like, it's a little defensive. Like, what is this person actually going to do?
And he's going to add so much value, but I want people to see that by meeting him, and I think he'll get the best sense of what's working, what's not working, what everyone does, if he just meets with them.
So he's meeting with all like ninety-five employees in his first three weeks, which like would drive me crazy.
A-and his first takeaway was like, "Yo, it's actually crazy the level of energy and how bought in everyone is and how committed and hardworking everyone is for a remote company that is still so young."
And I think that is, like, the real testament. I actually use Daniel as like u-an example when, like, people are like, "Why are we going to win?"
Daniel took a sales call on Thanksgiving with a guy in Canada 'cause they don't have the same Thanksgiving, and the guy just scheduled it, and Daniel didn't block off his calendar, and he couldn't even think twice.
It wasn't like, "Hey, like it's kind of Thanksgiving. I'm not gonna take this call." He's like, "I wanna win. There's a call and a demo on my calendar." I'm like, "Yes, it's a holiday, and I'm still going to take it."
And, like, didn't even like bat an eye or complain about it. And I think that mentality is kind of like a shared philosophy for everyone on the team.
Like, our competitive advantage is that we give a shit more than everyone else. Yeah.
And I think that is, like, the best way to encapsulate, and that means when we ship something that's, like, not perfect, someone being online till two AM just pushing updates out because it, like, needs to get done, and we've had, like, no issues kind of scaling that type of culture.
So that's like the it factor and answer to why I think we're going to win in this space. I guess, like,
product and, like, vision reason to why I think we're gonna win is, like, what I think we're building is so ambitious and different than what's existing in the market.
I have this slide I've presented like three times that Daniel knows exactly what I'm talking about, but there's this, like, Venn diagram overlap of, like, website, and, like, you can think of WordPress, Webflow.
Like, there's a bunch of web builders that exist. There's another part of the Venn diagram which is email, so like ESPs, like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor.
They, they solely allow you to send emails, but they don't do tools, dashboarding, websites or anything.
And then the third part of the Venn diagram is monetization and, like, ad network, and the example I give there is, like, Meta, and, like, that's where most advertisers go with brand dollars to spend to find more customers 'cause Meta can scale more or less infinitely and, like, gets you a positive ROI.
And that Venn diagram of digital home and website, email and, like, distribution, and monetization and ad network, the overlap of those three, there isn't a company that does that or is better positioned than we are.
And I think that is, like, the multi-billion dollar opportunity that we're sitting on, and- Yeah... that's what gets me excited to build this every day. Yeah.
Yeah, and as a Beehive customer, the way that you've built this ecosystem to be able to monetize literally at a snap of a finger, like Joe Schmo can go spin up a Beehive account tonight and probably make a thousand dollars in the next thirty days if he really tried, probably even more, right?
If you're, like, grinding at it. I think it's really... I-it's very unique because I've used ActiveCampaign, I've used SendGrid, I've used MailChimp.
Like, that's just not really something that you do with those platforms. But I wanna go back to your it factor. It's the people.
It's kind of like the mentality and, and of course, it's really hard to continue to scale that. Um, you're, I believe, Series A recently, right? We did a Series B last year. Series B. That's right. Series B.
Series B is typically when companies start out to scale even faster, and then you start to lose a little bit of that, that touch, that culture, um, at least every Series B company that I've been at.
There's been a few of them. But one thing personally that I'd like to know is what are red flags that you know or that you can identify in people that you're interviewing in the early days?
'Cause I, we-- I've gone through the hiring process. I hate the hiring process. I dread it more than anything, um, besides writing a newsletter.
So what are some red flags that I should be looking out for, anybody else out there that's hiring that, uh, that you've identified while being a founder and scaling out a company? Yeah.
I'd, I'd almost say rather than red flags, it might be like the inverse of, like, the hell yeah that jumps out when you know that you have the right person.
I think typically, like, you kind of go through-- Like, I don't think the people who are interviewing love the hiring process, and typically, the hiring manager doesn't love the hiring process, just as you explained.
And every now and then, you'll fall into a conversation that gives you so much energy because they're just throwing so many ideas that you haven't thought about. They're very thoughtful in their responses.
They, they kind of are like, they take a bias to action and kind of show you what they're going to do, and, like, I think a few examples of that, uh, one of the first...
We actually were never really hiring a product manager because I kind of like led product with my co-founder at the time.
And product is like one of those things you don't really need, I feel like, until you have, like, a lot of engineers.
And Shreya, who is the first product manager that we hired, sent me a full notion company, like, product roadmap of like, "This is what I would build for the next twelve months if I were you guys."
And it was, like, broken down by, like, by quarter and had, I don't know, maybe forty or fifty ideas that probably took her, like, maybe twenty to thirty hours to be able to, like, create this, like, notion document.
And she sent it in a cold email, which is like, she didn't even have a warm introduction. That's like thirty hours of sunk work without even knowing that anyone's gonna ever click or look on that.
And, like, that to me was like, this person gets it. They've put so much time and effort and thought into this, and, like, there's also amazing ideas on this product roadmap that, like, I haven't even thought about.
So, like, the value add was so clear that, one, she wants to put in the work.
Two, she's likeShe will put in the work without the guarantee of success, and she like has already put a ton of thought and effort and brings like new fresh ideas to the company.
So like I got that, and I was like, before even getting on a call with her, I was like, "We're gonna hire this person." And so it's like stuff like that. Um, Daniel did the same thing.
Daniel reached out like every week for I think like a year. I think, I think it was like two hundred and forty times. I counted it once. And like seven different mediums. It was insane chaos.
Do not do this to either of us if you want a job now. It will not work anymore. [laughs] But it did three years ago. But it, but it was like more than just the persistence.
It was also like, yes, the persistence was there, which is kind of like what you want to see out of like a, a ten out of ten seller, right? Like the, the-- Daniel has what I don't have.
It's like when I get a signal that like someone's like not interested, I like just turn the other way, and Daniel like digs in and doubles down and is like relentless, which is what makes him a great seller.
But I would say what Daniel also did was like whenever I tweeted any milestone or any problem, he would be like, "Oh, I can help you with this.
This is what I used to do at my other company," or, "This is what I'm doing now." Mm. So like it was like a real tangible use case of like this is the value that I can provide. And so both are just- Yeah...
like great examples where like, uh, red flags I think are actually fairly easy to see to someone who doesn't bring the energy, who doesn't feel like they'd be- Yeah... a good fit, who doesn't stand out from the pack.
What I think you're looking for is like the needle in the haystack of like I had a conversation I probably didn't wanna have 'cause I'm super busy, and like hiring's like super important, but kind of a drag on my schedule and everything else.
But I left the conversation so motivated with like the wheels turning of if this person started tomorrow, like I think we could do five times more than we're doing today. And I think that becomes- Yeah...
pretty apparent. Yeah. Yeah, and Daniel has this weird uniqueness about him where he thinks he can accomplish literally anything, even if it's impossible to accomplish.
Like he, he can say, "I'm gonna run for president in four years," and literally convince himself that he will be the next president [laughs] and do what it takes to- I don't know.
I haven't had that- To try to- I have not ever had that thought. [laughs] But now- But you know what I'm saying... now you got me thinking. [laughs] My wheels are spinning. What can I do for this country? No.
[laughs] I'm never, ever going to run for president. [laughs] Well, dude, I, I do love when I, when I hosted my last like founder mastermind, this guy, Ryan Shank, I'll give him a, give him a quick shout.
He gave this presentation on the Jesse Itzler, like the words you speak matter type thing, and it just like uh, uh, it's around like journaling and like how you speak to other people, how you speak about yourself, and kind of like talking things into existence.
And it's like a little woo-joo, but it's also like so important I think as like a reinforcing factor to like say like, "No, like our goal isn't this."
It's like, "We are going to hit thirty million in revenue this year," and like speaking with like a level of certainty of when you do things- Yeah... I think is really healthy and helpful.
Um, so like he gave like a whole presentation, and that like really opened up my eyes of like he-- it's all, it goes all the way down to how he speaks to other employees and how they speak about projects and everything else, and how they convey information.
I love psychology 'cause I, like everything is like how your brain works and functions and how it perceives- Yep... things. And so anything around that I think is like a super powerful thing to, to look into.
It's been a wild ride last few years at Beehive. Um, I remember all those messages I sent you. It was, it was a fun time. It was a fun time.
A lot of people know you from Beehive and your story, but what is something you wish more people knew about you that you don't think many people do know? I don't know.
I, I guess like the people that typically know and follow me now know me through the lens of Beehive, start off the, the single as a competitive advantage, like always working weekends.
It's so hard for me to think of something different than that [laughs] because like that isn't a facade. I am like all in. Right.
It's, it's like when people ask me like what, what companies or what, what other trends you see that you admire.
I'm like, "Bro, I, I wake up at five thirty, and I'm like staring at my computer building Beehive till nine PM, and then I, I, I study Spanish for thirty minutes, I read for thirty minutes, and then I go to sleep, and I do it again [laughs].
And like, I'm just like laser focused right now." [laughs] So like I'm a full psychopath. Yeah. Maybe my, maybe my Spanish skills. We can, we, we, we can, we can flex on that. I don't know.
Hey, no, definitely flex on it. I mean, that's, that's, that's admirable. Yeah. Do the, do the rest of the podcast in Spanish. But I'm gonna ask you a different question that's somewhat related to that, but not too much.
But what is one thing from a, a professional standpoint that you need to work on that you've been pushing off? Yeah. [laughs] Well, uh, the one that jumps out at me is like fairly easy to say.
And I go b- there's like two ways to look at it. Me as like a manager, like what I enjoy the most about building a company is like the zero to one phase of like I love building. Mm.
I love working on product and design and engineering, getting it in users' hands, understanding what they like, making it better, and like that r- like repetitive process, right?
Like when we were, like the Morning Brew days when we were five to ten people was like ten times more fun than we were thirty-five, forty people, and there was like more meetings- Of course. Yeah... and process.
Early days at Beehive, and we're just shipping all day long, and it's like that early like rush of getting like the first bit of revenue and growth and like trajectory. Like that is so exciting to me.
And what is less exciting to me at a company of nearly a hundred people is recurring meetings, one-on-ones, performance reviews, career chats, like all of that stuff. And so like- Yeah. Yeah, yeah...
what I, what you could say is like what I need to work on is like almost all of my direct reports, I'm very hands-off. They're fully autonomous. Like I do very little like coaching and management, I'd say.
And like my leadership style is like leading by example. Like I want to build and prioritize the user and the most important thing, and like that's where I want to spend my free time.
And so another way to look at that of like what I could work on is just like being a better manager.
But I've also listened to podcasts about like the founder of Nvidia, or like I, I just listened to the founder of Superhuman, and he's like, "I understood what got me joy out of building this company, and it isn't meetings, it isn't one-on-ones."
And like if I want to continue to like wake up every day with energy and build the company that I'm excited to build, I can't just like pick up what is expected as a growing company, which is like these repetitive processes that like actually drain me.
And so the founder of Nvidia I think has sixty direct reports and zero one-on-ones.So I say that as like a double-edged sword of like, I kinda know what I would work on if it was like if, if Beehiiv's success was dependent on me being the world's best manager who coaches and does, like, these recurring meetings and reviews and everything, but I don't necessarily think that that is what is required for Beehiiv to be successful, and so, like, I know that that is a four out of ten area.
Like, I could be the world's best manager. It's just not what excites me. What excites me is building. Yeah. I was actually just talking to Sendoso's founder, Brayden, who's now n-no longer there.
He just stepped down after ten years of building it. Uh, they're still running and, and doing well. But he was like, "Dude, I hate these repetitive processes. I love building.
Like, I'm so excited to step away from Sendoso to go and build something else, because that's just the fun part." And that's almost a, a demo. That's kinda what we wanna do here.
At least me, I, I don't want to get to a hundred employees, 'cause I know I'm gonna have to start becoming more of a manager or whatever you wanna call it, and there's gonna be more process into place, and that's not how I work.
I'm like, "Let me get scrappy. Let me get things done," and, and that's what's extremely fun to me.
Well, I think that's why, like, I always push back on, like, the status quo of, like, "Oh, at Series A, you have to do this. You have to have these meetings. You have to hire HR. You have to do performance reviews."
And it's like, you actually don't have to do any of those things.
That's just, like, was the formula of things that have been done previously, but that's also why CEOs and managers end up having 15 different direct reports, and, like, they actually lose the fun of actually going to work and building, 'cause they're doing all of this other bullshit that they don't want to do.
And so that's easy for me to say.
It's hard to do in practice, because when you start hiring more senior people who come from other organizations that expect the one-on-ones, the processes, the meetings, the coaching, the career trajectory and everything else, like, it's hard to build a culture, 'cause it's easy for me to say as the CEO that, like, I don't really want to meet with people.
I just want to build and focus on the customer. But it's
harder for people who are expecting this to be, like, a stepping stone in their career or, like, a learning experience or get more time with me to build different skills to accept that as, like, that's how we work.
So that's, like, probably the hardest part of us hiring and, and cultivating the community. Great answer. Uh, before we bring this in for a landing, I have a final question.
If Beehiiv was wiped off the face of the planet tomorrow, what would be the next thing you start building?
[laughs] I think if Beehiiv was wiped off the face of the planet, I would find a, a house on a beach far away from everything and just, like, be there for, like, two months. Love it.
I get a lot of joy out of the thought of, like, not even knowing where my phone is for days on end, not having to, like, run to, like, email and Slack or, like, see which user's mad at me or, like, what employee needs, like, do what or, like, how I need to unblock someone.
'Cause I've been on this hamster wheel from, like, Morning Brew days was three and a half years of me not being a founder, but more, like, second employee, basically a founder, and taking, like, full ownership over that to now, like, being a founder for the past four years and, like, this high-growth, always on SaaS environment of, like, it's ten o'clock in LA, and, like, people in Australia are just getting up and something's not working and they're, like, pinging me on Twitter, and it's just nonstop.
Um, so I think, like, the honest answer is, like, I'd probably get away from everything for, like, a few months. I know myself- Yeah...
well enough to know it wouldn't last long, but just, like, two months of not checking email, Slack, or caring about anything would be, like, the much needed reset that I'm desperately craving. Yeah.
Daniel, I'm gonna ask one last one, and it won't take long. Go for it. All right. Tyler, somebody comes up to you. They've got a briefcase full of cash and say, "I wanna buy Beehiiv. No taxes are taken out."
How much would need to be in that briefcase for you to walk away from Beehiiv? It's a perfect question after I just described this amazing, like, away from everything on a beach- [laughs] Yep. Yep...
'cause, like, now I'm already in the mindset. Some-someone offers $2 billion today, I'm on the first flight to that beach house that I'm talking about, and I'm not touching my phone for a year.
What about $500 million today, cash in front of your face? 'Cause that's a fourth of that. It is a fourth of that, and amazing math. I, I'm not taking that. [laughs] All right. Interesting. Um, cool. Cool. $2 billion.
So if anybody has $2 billion today, they can get Beehiiv, and they can go scale it themselves. Troy, you don't have $2 billion? Awesome.
I, I assume this was a lead-up to you offering to buy Beehiiv for a few billion dollars. Uh, I'm almost there. Almost. We'll get there.
Well, you know, you know the, you know the price now, so whenever you have it- [laughs]... just let me know. That's true. Awesome. Well, Tyler, thanks so much for joining. Daniel, I always have you close us out.
You're much better at it. So where in the world can they find us? Thank you to everyone for listening to this podcast. If you're looking for Two Dads in Tech, go to twodadsintech.com.
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Uh, please do subscribe if you haven't already. If you made it this far, thanks so much for listening. You are why we do what we do. Thanks again, Tyler. Thanks for having me. Tyler, thank you. Awesome.