beehiiv Raises $12.5M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners

Our goal has always been to provide the most robust ecosystem of tools for content creation, subscriber acquisition, audience development, and monetization.

In just the 18 months since launching beehiiv, we have accomplished so much with relatively so little.

Relevance — beehiiv is home to thousands of the top newsletters in the world, sending over a quarter billion emails per month. Customers include The Boston Globe, Milk Road, Cult of Mac, TheFutureParty, Overtime Sports, Exec Sum, Superhuman, Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life, The Publish Press, and so many more.

Revenue — We currently have a $4M revenue run rate, with a 42% compounding monthly growth rate (CMGR). In addition to our recurring SaaS revenue, we have three other meaningful revenue streams: Ad Network, Boosts, and courses. We’re currently projecting a $12M+ revenue run rate by the end of the year.

Growth — Our growth is primarily product and community led; we didn’t spend a dollar on acquisition for the first 12 months. ~90% of our monthly growth remains organic (e.g. unpaid).

Product — We have the most well-rounded and publisher-focused suite of products and features in the industry…and we’re still in the early stages of ramping up our small team.

Despite entering an intensely competitive industry with only a small amount of seed funding, we managed to compete head-to-head with incumbents who have either been around for over a decade, or are considerably more capitalized.

But as of today, that’s all about to change…

I am so excited to officially welcome Lightspeed Venture Partners into the beehiiv family, who led our $12.5M Series A.

It’s a competitive industry and we’re not here for second place.

We’re looking to be market leaders and pave the way for the next million creators, publishers, and companies to scale and monetize their audiences.

As of April 2023 we achieved profitability on a per month basis, and will use the funding to…

• Double the size of our team in the next 12 months—hiring primarily across engineering, design, operations, marketing and sales (see open roles)

• Invest in vendor and infrastructure upgrades across the board

• Deploy considerably more aggressive marketing and acquisition campaigns to expedite growth

Looking ahead, we aim to become a dominant player in the advertising space.

We are building a platform to help companies and brands reach their customers via targeted native placements in email; while simultaneously helping publishers and creators to significantly scale their revenue.

We’re still so early in this journey, but we’re damn hungry. If the company’s progress and growth to date is an indication of anything, just wait til you see what we do next.

Welcome to the team, Lightspeed.