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How The Neuron Grew to 500,000 Readers & Was Acquired
Learn the Acquisition Secrets Behind One of the Fastest Growing AI Newsletters
Kanishka
April 02, 2025
In recent years, there have been several major business acquisitions:
Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk (2022)
Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft (2023)
21st Century Fox was acquired by Disney (2020)
Every year, massive acquisitions occur in the business world based on millions — and sometimes billions of dollars.
But what about newsletters?
Can you sell them for profit just like a “real business”?
The answer is yes — and it’s happening more than you think.
In this beehiiv case study, we break down how Noah Edelman, alongside co-founder Pete Huang, grew their AI newsletter, The Neuron, from zero to 500,000 subscribers before being acquired in 2025.
Meet Noah Edelman, the co-founder of The Neuron:
In 2023, Noah Edelman and Pete Huang founded the daily AI newsletter, The Neuron.
Every day, The Neuron gets sent to over 500,000 subscribers, covering the latest news trends, tactics, and tools to help them become more knowledgeable about AI.
In just two years, Edelman and Huang grew the daily AI newsletter into a full-blown media company with a podcast and educational courses – where they’ve served over 20,000 students.
Then, in January 2025, The Neuron was acquired by TechnologyAdvice.
Now, let’s dive into how Edelman started the newsletter on beehiiv, grew it, and eventually cashed out through its acquisition.
Table of Contents
The 2023 Launch: From LinkedIn to beehiiv
In November 2022, Daniel Berk from beehiiv reached out to The Neuron co-founder Pete Huang on LinkedIn after seeing his AI social media content.
That conversation led to the launch of The Neuron on beehiiv.
Edelman shared, “The Neuron helps anyone interested in AI stay up to date with the latest research and developments.”
Want to read more on how The Neuron got its start? Check out the original beehiiv case study from 2023, where Noah and Pete grew The Neuron from zero to 10,000 subscribers in their first month.
So, how did Edelman get involved with The Neuron? And what led them to finally take the plunge into the newsletter world?
Edelman shared, “I've been writing different newsletters and blogs for over five years now and was always interested in exploring my interests through writing about those topics. After ChatGPT came out, I became interested in AI.”
It was around that time in late 2022 when Edelman reconnected with Huang.
He recalled, “We understood that there was going to be a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt around AI and that we could build up a brand to serve as a thought leader in the space, and that's what we did.”
January 2025: Selling the Neuron Newsletter
Every business goes through growth stages. The same is true whether you’re a tech giant like X (formerly Twitter) or a newsletter.
At certain stages of growth, you understand that if you want to reach the next level, you need to adjust your strategy and potentially restructure the company. Edelman realized he and Huang had reached that point.
He explained, “We started thinking about wanting to maybe sell The Neuron last fall (2024). I think we did a really good job getting the daily newsletter to around half a million subscribers and felt like we had kind of gotten to stage one of building this media company.”
Building a newsletter of 500,000 subscribers and reaching revenue levels he’d never seen before in business in a span of two years was a major accomplishment for Edelman.
He shared, “I personally have always been interested in a lot of different areas and just thought it was a good time to hand over the torch to a bigger company with more resources so that they could really take The Neuron to the next level with different modes of content and more content, more writers.”
Edelman explained how TechnologyAdvice has the resources to take The Neuron to the next level.
He continued, “It was a good transition for me to step away and go and explore some different areas that I might want to build businesses in.”
Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. In my daily newsletter, Storey Time, I teach 3,000+ readers how to escape their 9 to 5 with freelance copywriting. Feel free to reach out to me on X (Formerly Twitter) anytime!
Choosing beehiiv Over the Competition
We asked Edelman to share why he chose beehiiv over other platforms to build The Neuron from day one.
He shared, “I've been using beehiiv for over three years. I think I was one of the earliest users on the platform and have written four different newsletters — The Neuron being the last of those. So I was already familiar with the platform.”
Edelman explained, “We originally chose it because it seemed like there was a high velocity of launching new features for the newsletter editor and that they were really innovating at a very fast pace.”
Edelman looked at other platforms like Substack but felt like beehiiv had them beat on several features (and the speed at which they released new ones).
He shared, “Compared to something like Substack, which I've also used, they just had less features than beehiiv did related to growth and understanding your audience, segmenting, monetization, all of those things.”
Plus, beehiiv’s support was second to none for Edelman.
He recalled, “We had a direct line of communication to the team in the early days. if we wanted something new, they would be super responsive, and they were around to help out. And that was a really unique user experience that we really appreciated.”
Favorite beehiiv Feature: 3D Analytics
We asked Edelman to share about his favorite beehiiv features.
He shared how the feature that played the biggest role for him is the 3D Analytics.
Edelman shared, “The Posts Report where you can see all the different posts and all the metrics side by side. That's really interesting to [be able to] see what the trends of engagement are. It’s also good for seeing where you can improve based on which posts have been engaging better than others.”
Not only does 3D analytics show you what’s going on behind the scenes of every newsletter you send, but it also breaks down where your subscribers are coming from (including engagement metrics).
He shared, “The Subscribers Report is really useful so that we can understand how our audience is performing across different acquisition channels. So for readers who are coming in organically, are they performing better than readers we acquire through Instagram ads?”
Edelman mentioned how it’s crucial to have engaged subscribers if you want to run your business the right way, and 3D analytics allowed him to keep a close watch on his readers.
He shared, “I think all of the surveys and polls that we've done in the newsletter have been really helpful for us to accumulate feedback from the audience and then implement that feedback in the newsletter.”
From day one, Edelman has kept his finger on the pulse of his audience to serve them well.
Edelman explained, “We really take an iterative approach to writing the newsletter, and we want to be continuously improving it every day and every week. And so we get a lot of feedback from our audience. That's really useful, and that wouldn't be possible without the beehiiv features.”
Timeline: From Zero to 500,000 Subscribers
In just two years, Edelman built one of the fastest-growing newsletters in the world. He and Huang took The Neuron from zero to 500,000 subscribers in 24 months.
We asked him to break down a bit of the growth journey.
He shared, “Growth has been actually quite linear, which maybe people might not expect. So after 6 months, we got to 100,000 subscribers. After 24 months, we were at 500,000.”
Edelman used a mix of both organic and paid acquisition channels to tap into hypergrowth.
He explained, “The acquisition channels have changed over time. In the early days, it was more organic. Then we bought a few AI newsletters, and it was more paid acquisition. Now it's a little bit of organic again so that's changed a little bit over time but the growth has actually been very consistent over time.”
Edelman continued, “We started growing as soon as we launched the newsletter. We got to 10,000 readers in a few weeks, which was nice.”
Enjoying this beehiiv case study? Learn how Dan Koe makes $2 million per year writing 2 hours per day.
We asked Edelman to share a bit more about the growth strategy over the course of 2 years growing The Neuron.
He explained, “The first 100,000 readers came from LinkedIn. My co-founder, Pete had a big following on LinkedIn. We funneled a lot of his followers into subscribers.”
But, they didn’t stop at bringing in organic readers from social media. They quickly began reinvesting their revenue back into more growth.
Edelman shared, “Once we started generating revenue from newsletter advertisements, we pumped basically all of that back into paid growth via paid Meta ads — so, running campaigns on Facebook and Instagram to get new subscribers.”
The final piece of the growth puzzle for The Neuron was to tap into the audiences of other AI newsletters through acquisition.
Edelman recalled, “Early last year, we bought, I think, four other AI newsletters that were looking to kind of exit and sell their email list. So, we bought those. That helped us jump up a bunch, and we've just been continuing to run Meta ads, and then we also get a decent amount of traffic to our website, and we're able to convert some of that traffic into newsletter subscribers.”
The Acquisition Process & Next Steps
We asked Edelman to share a little about the acquisition process and his next steps in 2025.
He explained, “We really built up a unique voice and style in the way that we communicate to our audience. I think that TechnologyAdvice saw the value in that. And they also saw the value in being a major presence in the AI space given how much the industry has exploded over the last few years.”
Edelman explained how the acquisition process was streamlined over the transition from 2024 to 2025.
He shared, “The acquisition process was a few months at the end of the year and into 2025. It was a very simple process and very transparent.”
For the time being, Edelman is helping in the transitionary period, and then he’ll be venturing off into new business.
He shared, “I'll be leaving the company next month. But TechnologyAdvice has an amazing team of salespeople and writers and growth marketers that are really going to take the brand to the next level.”
Edelman continued, “Looking back, I've just been able to build a really good network through all of this connecting with other founders in the media space and AI space. And, getting to go deep on this topic that was unfamiliar to me a few years ago has been a really valuable experience.”
We asked Edelman what kind of advice he’d give someone who wants to succeed with their own newsletter.
He shared, “Focus relentlessly on quality. There are a lot of newsletters out there. To stand out, you have to create something that's five times better than your competition, otherwise, you're not going to get noticed.”
Edelman continued, “Don't be lazy with the content is probably my biggest advice. Really think about how you can stand out and be unique in whatever field you're writing about. And then think about how are you actually going to get in front of readers?”
He also shared how growth tactics and hacks aren’t sustainable.
Edelman shared, “It's kind of easy to growth hack your readership to 10,000-20,000 subscribers with low-quality readers, but at the end of the day, that's not a sustainable business, and you need to have real people who are high quality who are reading your newsletter. So you need to think about, ‘How can I get people to read this who are actually going to be engaged?’”
Advice for Anyone on the Fence About beehiiv
Edelman had some final advice for anyone thinking about launching their newsletter on beehiiv.
He shared, “Whenever someone asks where they should start a newsletter, I always recommend beehiiv. They definitely have the most features that could possibly be useful for a newsletter writer on the platform.”
Edelman explained how beehiiv isn’t just a great platform for the writing part but also for running an entire media business.
He shared, “beehiiv covers all of the needs of an operator. So it's not just a place to write and publish a newsletter. It's also a place to really run a true media business and monetize your list and grow your list and analyze who your readership actually is, connect with other newsletters, do drip campaigns, and paid subscriptions.”
Edelman closed by stating, “beehiiv really has everything you need, and they’re constantly innovating so the platform's only getting better.”
In 2023, Noah Edelman and Pete Huang came together to launch The Neuron newsletter on beehiiv. Within two years, they grew their daily AI newsletter to over 500,000 readers before being acquired by TechnologyAdvice in January 2025.
By leveraging beehiiv’s 3D analytics, intuitive editor, and highly supportive team, Edelman was able to write, grow, and monetize his newsletter, eventually evolving it into a complete media business.
Want to create your own newsletter acquisition story? Get a free trial of beehiiv today.
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