Hello! I’ll keep this super short and simple.

I’m Keaton.

I acquired both the Startup Surf and Startups.Email newsletters — collectively going forward we’ll just go by Startups.Email (I think it sounds cooler and easier to remember).

Here’s the TLDR on myself — I run GM Ventures, a startup studio focused on building digital businesses. I’ve built, grown, and sold a handful of companies over the past few years and have amassed more than five million followers across a dozen media properties. I’m obsessed with the internet and being able to start a business overnight.

So why did I acquire newsletters in the Startup world? Well it’s pretty simple, I saw it as an opportunity to help create the best startup focused content on the internet.

My goal with Startups.Email is to provide you value in two ways: exclusive startup stories and founder interviews that we can both learn from and startup ideas that you can earn from.

On top of that, together with my CTO, we’ll create a gameplan on the startup ideas we think are interesting. With his technical background and my marketing and business background, we’ll create you an actual playbook that you can use to get off the ground.

If you’re a founder, entrepreneur, indie hacker, operator, VC, or just looking for your next big thing I’m here to help you find it.

This won’t just be another newsletter, Startups.Email will be a resource.

And with that, welcome to the first edition of Startups.Email

Buzzin With beehiiv

Living with his parents and a stack of student loan debt, Tyler Denk found himself stuck right in the middle one of those life choices that end up being more impactful than you could ever imagine.

The safe job at Deloitte or forget everyone and move to NYC and join a couple of dude’s in a dormitory building a startup newsletter called Morning Brew.

He chose the latter and the rest is history.

Tyler was Morning Brew’s second employee and helped pioneer it into the behemoth that it is today, writing a majority of the code, and by his words, “just being gritty.” Tyler built the renowned referral program and tech stack that helped scale Morning Brew to a $75M exit in 2020.

Now Tyler is the CEO and Co-founder of beehiiv — that’s right, the exact platform I am writing on to you right now.

I thought it was fitting to highlight Tyler and the beehiiv journey after acquiring Startups.Email and moving the newsletter from Substack to beehiiv.

In just over two years, beehiiv has grown from zero to $7M+ in annual revenue and 50+ employees, that ladies and gentlemen is what Venture Capitalists call hockey stick growth.

Today we’re going to dive in on what worked and how we can learn from Tyler and the beehiiv journey.

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Ship Features Fast and do it in Public

The beehiiv change log looks something like a Martin Scorsese end credits. Tyler and his team have shipped more features than any private or public company that I have followed over the past two years and it's not even particularly close.

When you start shipping features at supersonic speed and posting about it on social media with hundreds, even thousands of users in your network, your product just might start spreading like wildfire.

But how do you build the initial network?

You Do Things That Don’t Scale

At the beginning of beehiiv, users were required to link their X and/or Linkedin. This was a solution for the beehiiv team to counteract spam and make sure their new users were legit, but it also allowed Tyler and the beehiiv team to connect via social media with their new users.

People want to follow a story. People want to cheer for others. People love an underdog. It’s human nature. If you’re going into battle building a product, startup, or whatever — you might as well do it with the support of your network. Tyler and the beehiiv team mastered the craft at connecting with users at the onboarding stages, staying close with them on social media, and were actively helping users from support tickets to acquisition stories.

And to this day, doing things that don’t scale, first coined by Y Combinator Co-founder Paul Graham, continues to compound beehiiv’s growth.

Final Thoughts

Tyler is a monster. It takes a different breed to go from zero to $7M ARR in two years. I was lucky enough to cross paths with him and the beehiiv team for a few months in 2022 and it wasn’t just the passion and grit to be successful that stood out to me, it was the powerhouse of a team and its rallied unity that Tyler put together that left its mark on me.

Everyone wanted to succeed, but they wanted to succeed as a team.

Your Next Big Thing? [Preview]

My legend of a CTO put together a software that literally scans 25,000+ social posts, think Reddit, Upwork, Tweets, Linkedin to find you the very best startup ideas.

And then…we build an entire playbook to go from zero to one. I always found it super intimidating to start, so I’m here to help you.

Here’s a preview

Product Overview

This innovative application allows users to upload documentation, customer support docs, and other text-based resources, then interact with these documents through a conversational AI interface. Simplify information retrieval and enhance user understanding by chatting directly with your PDFs.

Core Features

• Conversational AI Interface

• Multi-Language Support

• Document Contextual Understanding

• API Integration Capabilities

• Advanced Analytics

If you want to see the entirety of the product breakdown, including:

• Business Model

• Pricing Structure

• Target Customers

• Competitors/Similar Products

• Differentiator

• Initial Fixed Costs

• Running Costs

• Building the MVP → perfect for those who are non-technical (like me)

• Initial Traction Strategy

• Growth Hacks

• And More

Then make sure you upgrade to our premium tier. I promise, it’s literally going to be amazing.

That’s all I have for you this edition, thank you for be a subscriber and I hope you found value out the new Startups.Email!

Oh and by the way, I won’t send another newsletter until I find something of substantial value for you. It’s better that way.

Until next time,

Keaton