In my experience, there’s usually no shortage of "thought leadership" and clickbait opinions online, but there is a shortage of real perspective from people who are actually building.
Working at beehiiv right now feels like a masterclass in how to scale a business and a front-row seat to how both technology and media are changing. For context, we grew over 80% last year, reaching $30M revenue, successfully expanded our product suite beyond just newsletters, and witnessed firsthand how the creator economy is shifting.
Unsurprisingly, I’ve spent the last 12 months obsessing over:
How creators are monetizing
How media businesses are adapting
How new tools can drive 10x productivity gains
What skills product managers need in the era of AI
With that in mind, here are 26 things I’m betting on for 2026.
Hot takes incoming…
Media & Creator Economy
Monthly Active Users (MAUs) on Threads will exceed X.com
Founders launching newsletters and “building in public” will be the default GTM motion for startups.
Brands will start launching standalone newsletters (similar to beehiiv’s Creator Spotlight) to access new audiences.
There will be a surge in newsletter acquisitions as brands and media business seek fast growth. (eg. Hubspot acquisition of ‘The Hustle’).
B2B creators (like Corporate Natalie, Varun Rana, Ian Evans) will explode in popularity as brands look for other ways to activate on social (see Salesforce discussing letting Mr Beast do their Superbowl commercial).
Brands will start to put pressure on employees to post on social to increase organic reach via ‘employee generated content’ (this wont work).
Newsletter advertising explodes in popularity as brands for niche audiences as an alternative to influencer marketing.
SAG-AFTRA will go on strike again in response to AI adoption in Hollywood.
Creator-focused platforms will start working with (and monetising) brands in an effort to find more sustainable unit economics.
Substack will double-down on their transition to a social media platform and introduce ads into the feed.
Beehiiv will hit $50m revenue.
Substack will introduce some form of ‘boost’ where you can pay to increase discoverability.
Linkedin will allow creators to start selling digital products through Linkedin Learning.
Content consumption will shift back from short-form content towards long-form, high quality content across Youtube, Linkedin and newsletters.
Product & Tech
Open AI’s market share will fall below 40% (down from +80% 12 months ago).
Gemini hits 40% market share
Being able to build an agent becomes a minimum requirement for product managers.
Apple (finally) launches a viable integrated AI solution into the iphone to compete with chatgpt & Gemini.
’Spotify wrapped’ initiatives will be on the roadmap for every product team as everyone looks to generate word-of-mouth and organic reach
AI churn: Consumers who have been juggling and sampling multiple tools and models will begin to converge of a small set of tools that are integrated fully into their stack.
Job postings for Junior Product Manager roles will disappear (as Senior PMs become more productive with AI).
Job postings for ‘super IC’ Senior Product Manager roles increase.
Product VPs and Directors move into IC roles to work on AI tools and not get left behind.
“Evals” will become the buzzword of 2026, as PMs realise their new AI feature doesn’t work that well and need a way of measuring performance.
‘Eval Product Manager’ will be the fastest growing product role.
Lines between product/growth/marketing continue to blur as brands realise the most effective WOM strategy is building products people actually want (see recent interview with Elena Verna from Lovable).
Let me know what I missed!
Jake