Social Leverage Leads Beehiiv $2.6 Million Seed Round

Social Leverage is excited to have led the seed round in beehiiv, a platform that streamlines the ability to create, customize, scale, and monetize email newsletters. The company was founded by Morning Brew alums Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett, and Jake Hurd.

This investment means beehiiv will triple the size of its team with new hires across engineering, community, growth, and marketing. The company will continue to invest in growth and product development; to include robust data analytics, and a native referral program tool.  

The tech is in private beta with several dozen active publications on the platform, including our own Sunday Letter. There are several hundred people on the waitlist, and plans are in the works to open up access broadly in November. 

With a total addressable market of around $135 billion, and nearly 80% of some 32 million small and medium sized businesses citing email as their primary source of retention and customer engagement, the newsletter space is still so early—add in all the new content creators, tools, and business models continuing to emerge— the future looks bright for this team.

Instead of focusing on the top 1% of creators that already have big audiences, beehiiv is differentiating itself by focusing on making it easier for smaller creators to monetize their work.

Here's a sampling:

• Thinking Cool

• The Drop

• Your Content Should Sell

• Everyday Driven

At its core, beehiiv is custom-built CMS optimized to create responsive email newsletters, publishing and hosting content on the web on behalf of users. It's a quasi-email service provider who handles the delivery and deliverability of email campaigns while leveraging SendGrid. The subscription management platform allows users to monetize their audiences directly through monthly or annual subscriptions. Best-in-class data analytics help creators understand their audience, overall engagement, and other core metrics that better position those creators for success.

We're thrilled to support beehiiv. The company is well-positioned to capitalize on trends in this space. Tyler and his team are at the forefront of providing creators the tools to seamlessly go direct-to-audience and generate meaningful revenue.