My First Million — "How I went from $0 to $1M in 12 Months"

Podcast: My First Million | Host: HubSpot Media
Date: January 29, 2026
Guests: Patrick McKenzie (interviewing), Tyler Tringas (Beehiiv founder)

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Tyler Tringas’s journey building Beehiiv from zero to $1 million in annual revenue within twelve months – now scaling to $30 million in its fourth year. The conversation with Patrick McKenzie is an actionable, candid exploration of the real tactics, mindsets, and “unscalable” moves that fueled Beehiiv’s fast growth, including specific strategies for early-stage founders, the underestimated power of storytelling and credibility, and practical ways to outcompete in a crowded market. The tone is informal, energetic, with a strong focus on actionable takeaways over theory.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power of Founder Story and Credibility

• Founder Market Fit: The “kill shot” in early startup growth is credibility. Tringas leveraged his experience leading growth at Morning Brew to instantly gain trust from newsletter creators considering Beehiiv.

  • “All you really have is that story. Right...I did this at Morning Brew and I believe I can do it again and do it for more people.” (Tyler, 07:54)
  • “If you couldn’t tell me all that junk and you only could say one sentence…but off that one sentence, I had to want to work with you, what would that be?” (Patrick, 06:00)

• Alternative to Credibility: If you lack a brand-name résumé, create your own narrative—study successful businesses obsessively, then openly productize and share your learnings.

• Anti-Credibility as Hook: Patrick shares how he launched Milk Road by opening with a “dumbest mistake” story, making himself relatable before demonstrating expertise. (10:30)

2. Getting Early Customers: Scalable Tactics That Don’t Scale

• Customer Research on Twitter: Tringas actively DM’ed and interacted with hundreds of newsletter creators, targeting users by searching Twitter for newsletter-related posts, building relationships without an existing massive following.

  • “In the early days…it’s a lot of the dirty, gritty work of just doing the cold outreach yourself.” (Tyler, 15:30)

• Building a Waitlist with Scarcity (Even If It’s Fake):

  • Announced a "limited time waitlist" (when there were actually unlimited spots) to drive urgency—culminated in 400 signups.
  • "Not a large content creator. I got 400 people to submit on this wait list and that really became like my, my lead list." (Tyler, 13:45)

• Using Outreach Insights for Messaging: Each signup was asked “Why are you interested in using Beehiiv?”—collecting exact pain points and copy for future sales and marketing communications.

• Do the Unscalable Work: Cold DM, personalized onboarding, and hands-on customer research laid the foundation—later paying off as credibility and trust in the market.

3. Differentiating in Crowded Markets

• Feature Positioning from Direct Feedback:

  • Recognized referral programs (as built at Morning Brew) were a universal pain point; made “The Morning Brew-style referral program” Beehiiv’s killer feature.
  • “When we launched Beehiiv, one of our value props was this referral program. The same one that Morning Brew used to scale to 4 million readers...you get that out of the box.” (Tyler, 19:44)

• Embrace Competition: Rather than avoid crowded markets, learn from real user frustrations and out-execute legacy players.

4. Product Iteration & Launches

• Shipping “Marketable Features” Weekly:

  • Beehiiv intentionally built and launched an attention-worthy, shareable product feature every week, focusing on things users cared about for user retention, growth, and “hype.”
  • “What we decided to do…was we would ship one marketable feature every single week.” (Tyler, 31:27)

• The “Amazon Press Release” Approach: Features must be “tweet-worthy”—if it can’t be compelling in a tweet, don’t ship it. Start with the marketing headline, then build to that.

• Immediate Feedback Loops:

  • Prioritized features by: (1) Preventing churn, (2) Unblocking prospective users’ objections, (3) Maximizing hype on social media.
  • “We had 10 users...If one user churns, that’s 10%.” (Tyler, 33:55)

5. Overcoming Perfectionism and Leveraging Friction

• Release Early, Iterate Fast: Don’t let perfection—or building elaborate automations—delay getting a working version in users’ hands.

  • “It’s like, shipping and being comfortable shipping things that are 80 to 90% of the way there...” (Tyler, 24:46)

• Manual Onboarding as a Growth Hack: Beehiiv’s high-friction onboarding (manual approval, requiring Twitter/LinkedIn profiles) allowed direct founder contact and relationships, flipping a drawback into a benefit.

  • “…I would send them a dm, being like, hey, I'm the co founder at Beehive. Thanks so much for signing up… I turned someone who was initially probably pissed off...into a superfan.” (Tyler, 27:17)

6. Build in Public & Harness Investor Updates

• Building in Public: Sharing everything—the wins, losses, revenue growth—built massive trust and expanded Beehiiv’s audience well beyond newsletter creators.

  • “I want to share everything that we do...because I think people follow people and they want the story and they want the narrative.” (Tyler, 37:57)

• Investor Updates Drive Growth & FOMO:

  • Investor update emails sent monthly not only informed current investors but intrigued those who passed, creating “FOMO” and helping close their Series A in a week.
  • “I also have everyone who passed as an investor. You were on this list as well?” (Tyler, 39:28)
  • “By using these investor updates, we actually raised our Series A in one week.” (Tyler, 41:04)

7. Building a Social-First Culture

• Every employee is part of distribution—new hires are trained to engage with the brand on social media.
• Internally, positive user mentions are shared in a Slack “Pump” channel for quick amplification.
  • “When you get hired at Beehive, our social media manager shows you how you should use social media...Starting from the top of like, me, actually building in public...” (Tyler, 41:28)

8. The Virtue of "Common Sense" and Simple Execution

• It’s Not About Genius Hacks: The episode is a recurring meditation on the compounding power of simple, clear, repeated daily actions—not "genius" secrets.
  • “Everything you’ve said here so far is so simple...But when I run back through an audit of stuff we did…I’m like, oh, didn’t do that.” (Patrick, 42:53)
• Remove Complexity, Remove Friction: All-premium, no-fine-print pricing (“$99, unlimited emails”) made Beehiiv easy to sell and easy to buy, even if not optimal long-term.
  • “I could explain that in a tweet at any time saying for $99 unlimited emails, every feature you see here.” (Tyler, 46:43)
• 20-Mile March Metaphor: Slow, steady, daily effort (“the 20-mile march”) outpaces bursts of intensity and perfectionism.
  • “You could start in New York…but if you take this 20 mile march idea...You can get to California.” (Patrick, 51:43)

Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• The Kill Shot Statement
  “I ran growth for the fastest growing newsletter in the world. Now I’m building a tool for you to grow your newsletter. Sign me up.”
  — Patrick (07:23)

• On Unscalable Tactics
  “It’s the non sexy things at the beginning…cold outreach yourself.”
  — Tyler (15:30)

• On Simplicity
  “I could explain that in a tweet at any time saying for $99 unlimited emails, every feature you see here.”
  — Tyler (46:43)

• Building in Public Drives Growth
  “There’s like a more selfish reason…I could tweet and post about newsletters all day long…But if I were to post all day about, here’s how we hire, here’s how we built this feature…then all of a sudden…the addressable market of that content is 10 times bigger.”
  — Tyler (37:57)

• 20-Mile March Insight
  “You live to fight another day just by doing, you know, the basics really, really well. The common sense things really, really well.”
  — Patrick (52:29)

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Summary | |-------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–03:00 | Introduction, revenue milestones overview (Year 1: $1M, Year 2: $5M, Year 4: $30M)| | 03:04–05:07 | Founder market fit, leveraging previous experience, importance of story | | 10:30–12:25 | Finding early adopters through Twitter DMs, niche community engagement | | 13:45–15:30 | Using waitlists, scarcity tactics, and direct outreach for user growth | | 18:14–20:27 | Turning unique features (referral program) into core differentiation | | 24:46–28:17 | Shipping fast, overcoming perfectionism, flipping onboarding friction into a benefit | | 31:27–33:55 | Shipping one marketable feature weekly; the “press release/tweet test” | | 37:57–39:49 | The philosophy and tactical value of "building in public" | | 41:28–43:47 | Creating a company-wide social “distribution” culture | | 46:43–48:07 | Simplicity in pricing and messaging, pushing off unsolved problems | | 51:43–54:29 | The "20-mile march" analogy — daily, compounding steps beat bursts |

Memorable Moments

• Tyler's Crypto Storage Wallet Fail: Early lesson on the dangers of entering a market with no credibility or community, contrasted against his later "play to your strengths" path with Beehiiv. (04:08)
• Patrick's “Anti-Credibility” Story: Admits missing out on early Ethereum, using vulnerability as a hook for connecting with his audience. (10:30)
• Manual User Approvals as a Growth Lever: Beehiiv’s painstaking process of individually reviewing every applicant, which doubled as direct customer outreach and personal onboarding. (27:17)
• Investor FOMO via Updates: Sending updates to both investors and those who passed, converting doubters as traction grew and helping raise their Series A quickly. (41:04)
• Simplicity = Scale: $99/mo simple pricing—imperfect but frictionless—helped Beehiiv win switching customers from complex competition. (46:43)
• The "20-Mile March" South Pole Story: Consistent, daily, unsexy progress wins in business and extreme adventures. (51:43)

Actionable Takeaways for Founders

• Leverage personal credibility or build a learning narrative
• Talk to hundreds of target customers directly and keep doing it
• Turn user pain points into product features and headline messaging
• Do the manual, unscalable work — it doesn’t scale, but it compounds
• Market before you build — every feature should be “tweet-worthy”
• Default to simplicity in pricing and messaging. Optimize later
• Build in public to build trust, community, and investor appetite
• Create an internal “amplification engine” — make social everyone’s job
• Don’t overcomplicate execution; the basics, done daily, add up

Final Thoughts

Tyler Tringas’s Beehiiv journey is a masterclass in founder scrappiness, candor, and common sense execution—every insight is rooted in repeated, compounding micro-actions: customer conversations, public storytelling, continual shipping, and human-centered outreach. The episode is a motivating, myth-busting manual for any founder seeking zero-to-one growth—especially if you lack big resources or flashy hacks.

Subscribe to Beehiiv founder Tyler Tringas’s newsletter “Big Desk Energy” and listen to the playlist of the same name for further insights and entrepreneurial jams.

For episode-specific insights or to revisit key moments, use the timestamps above.