Before I joined beehiiv as a Product Manager, I couldn’t figure out how the team shipped so fast or how they seemed to be everywhere at once. Three months in, I’ve realized there’s no secret sauce, just a a mix of focus, structure, and a few deliberate cultural choices. Here are the most important ones:
Key takeaways from inside the hiiv:
#1 Distribution is everything
So much of what makes beehiiv special is how it thinks about distribution.
There’s no point building incredible products if no one ever hears about them.
This is where I see lots of startups fall down: you spend weeks building a new feature and then barely think about the pre/post launch because you’re already onto the next big thing. The result: new releases have little/no impact and the work can feel wasted.
At beehiiv, every new feature is treated as a major marketing moment that can drive organic growth. This comes down to three key aspects:
Scoping the right product
The better the product, the easier it is to market.
Amazon’s product teams have a process called ‘working backwards’, where Product Managers start a new feature by writing the press release to articulate why it matters and why people should care. beehiiv’s approach is similar.
Although we obviously try and minimise the scope of V1 as much as possible so we can get it in customers’ hands ASAP, we make sure that every new feature has some ‘magic’. Simply put, the ‘magic’ is exceeding the users’ expectations and creating a genuine ‘wow’ moment when they first use the feature. This is core to how we drive word-of-mouth.Distribution plan
Over time, beehiiv has built a small media empire to make sure anything we launch is seen immediately.
From our CEO’s 130k+ subscriber newsletter, to Slack communities of 10k+ users, to the 100k+ people on our product updates list - plus a swarm of employees amplifying across X, LinkedIn, and Reddit - distribution is our superpower, and in many ways, it’s also our moat.
Distribution isn’t just product marketing, this is core to our growth strategy. And it gets prioritised accordingly.Consistency
beehiiv launches a new feature every two weeks without fail. That cadence not only aligns the entire business on a delivery schedule, but it begins to build trust and excitement with our users; When we say “it’s coming next week,” people believe us and look forward to it.
While this has obvious benefits like attracting new users, this consistency also helps reduce churn, with many users trusting that we will solve feature gaps and bugs quickly.
As a quick example, there is perhaps no better illustration of our commitment to distribution than our Winter Release Event next month. We announced the event this week, and our commitment to all three principles prior to launch has meant that we’re already on track to hit over 10k RSVPs for the launch. (You can RSVP here)
Key takeaway: Great products deserve great distribution. Don’t wait until launch day to think about how you’ll tell the story.
#2 Product velocity
To release a major feature every two weeks, and keep that rhythm sustainable, you need relentless product velocity.
At beehiiv, that comes down to a culture of focus and how we hire and empower engineers. Here’s what makes it work:
Hire senior engineers with relevant experience.
Our team is made up of full-stack engineers who’ve spent years building in the creator economy, email, and website platforms (think Teachable, Kajabi, Sailthru, etc). They understand the space deeply and can move fast without sacrificing quality.
Involve engineers early.
At beehiiv, engineers join during the scoping and design phases, not after. They understand the “what” and “why” (including where we’re trying to create the ‘magic’) which leads to better technical decisions, faster builds, and often better UX.
“Let them cook”
The more context and freedom you can give engineers, the more they tend to impress you. I’ve seen firsthand how product managers being too prescriptive about a solution can lead to a suboptimal outcome. If the engineers understand the ‘why’ (and the search for ‘magic’) they can often build something far greater than you ever envisioned.
Keep your engineers close to customers
Every engineer is active in our community Slack channels and on X/LinkedIn, hearing feedback directly from users. It not only creates deep context and intuition of what needs to be solved, but it gives engineers the ability to proactively solve issues for customers, rather than waiting for a PM.
Empower small, autonomous squads.
To maintain constant momentum, we typically run 1–2 person squads per initiative. For context, in my team of seven engineers, we currently have four major launches in flight (all of which are being announced at our Winter release event next month).
The result: you remove the product manager and designer as a bottleneck from product development. Your engineers have incredibly high context and are able to anticipate problems, make smarter trade-offs, and ship better products faster (without waiting for permission.)
Key takeaway: In my experience, velocity isn’t about pressure - it’s about trust, context, and giving great engineers space to build.
#3 The pursuit of Flow State
beehiiv is fully remote, with 100+ employees across 10+ countries, no HQ, no office.
And yet, despite the time zones and lack of face-to-face meetings, it’s the most focused company I’ve ever worked in.
Most startups try to fix “too many meetings” with focus days or no-meeting Wednesdays. But it rarely works. Meetings creep back onto calendars, async systems are weak, and decisions stall without a Zoom call.
beehiiv took the opposite approach: it built an async-first culture from the ground up. Next week, I have fewer than six hours of meetings. Everything that could possibly be async happens through long-form updates, Looms, and shared Google Docs. Communication doesn’t stop, it just stops interrupting you.
That structure only works because it’s built on trust. Every person here has a clear goal and full autonomy over how to achieve it. For me, it’s launching a suite of new features for the November launch event. I’m trusted to run each process end-to-end without endless reviews and presentations, getting feedback when I require it but ultimately being able to have final say on design, scope and prioritisation.
The same applies to engineering. Because they’re trusted to own outcomes, they act like true product partners: spotting issues early, suggesting UX improvements, and finding elegant solutions we never scoped.
Importantly, it all starts at the top. The founders and execs model this behaviour every day - deep work, async communication, and complete trust in the team. This is the main reason why we are able to maintain the culture and ultimately our velocity.
The result: real flow. Space to think, freedom to create, and a level of productivity I’ve never experienced anywhere else.
Summary
These three principles (distribution, velocity, and flow) form the foundation of how beehiiv ships, and they are all things that can be implemented at your startup. As always, the hard part is consistency and execution.
But there’s more to the story. In Part 2, I’ll share how beehiiv has managed to create an evergreen strategy for customer insights, the impact of the founding team, and more.
A quick favor?
I hope you enjoyed Part 1. As this is a new project, I would really appreciate some feedback. I’d love your feedback on the detail, length, or content - just hit reply.
Thanks!
J