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If you’re finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Hello! Newsletter publishers are having a moment again. Beehiiv, a four-year-old competitor to the larger and older Substack, is on pace to double its total revenue this year, to $30 million, CEO and co-founder Tyler Denk told my colleague Akash Pasricha on Tuesday during an interview on TITV, The Information’s new daily streaming show. Investors valued Beehiiv at $225 million last year, and Denk hopes the startup can get to profitability next year. He’s been playing up how Beehiiv’s products and business models are different from Substack, which recently fetched a more than $1 billion valuation and has been expanding its app to add video, livestreaming, audio and social features. It’s not clear how much revenue Substack is generating. “Substack’s actually closer to building a social network competing with an X and a Threads, more so than an open newsletter platform and website builder that we are building,” Denk said. Beehiiv has focused on highly customized templates and an application programming interface that integrates with other services such as WordPress, Shopify and membership site Patreon. It’s already generating revenue at a $30 million annualized pace, or the last month’s revenue times 12. The majority, or $20 million, comes from a monthly fee to use its service, beginning at $43 for writers with 1,000 subscribers and going up to $404 for 100,000 subscribers. That’s a different structure than Substack, which takes 10% of writers’ subscriptions. At Beehiiv, another $10 million in annualized revenue stems from selling space to advertisers including Nike, supplement maker AG1, Netflix and Roku. Denk said the company uses machine learning to identify which newsletters would make good opportunities for particular brands. “The end result is publishers wake up every Sunday. They receive an email with five to ten different ad opportunities, and it's totally opt in,” he said. The startup is also trying to take on Substack in other ways, including the types of writers it recruits. Last November, Beehiiv announced the Media Collective, a multimillion-dollar investment in independent journalists meant to lure them over to the platform. The effort took aim at Substack, which has been successful recruiting journalists from traditional media publishers. The Media Collective has since attracted journalists including former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy and ex-CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge. “You can move from Substack hypothetically to our platform [and] you earn 10% back immediately,” Denk said. The company only operates a website, so it’s not getting the tailwind from recent changes Apple is making to its App Store. Substack on Monday said it will now allow U.S. users to purchase paid subscriptions to publications in its iOS app in response to looser restrictions from Apple over in-app purchases. Previously, Apple would take a 30% cut of in-app purchases, but has since relaxed its rules amid regulatory scrutiny and lawsuits. Substack CEO Chris Best called those App Store changes “fantastic” at The Information’s Future of Influence conference in June. “You’ve always been able to discover things in the Substack app and you know, you have options for how you charge for it now, which we think is a big win for independent media.” Here’s what else is going on… See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. Meta Platforms rolled out automatic AI voice translations on Reels on Instagram and Facebook globally on Tuesday. YouTube is making a play to host The Oscars, and has inquired about buying the rights to the Hollywood awards show, according to Bloomberg. Sounds Profitable, a trade association for the podcasting industry, is merging with Podcast Movement, a podcasting conference. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Webtoon Entertainment, an app that lets users create and read graphic novels on their phones, announced a new short-form video feature called Video Episodes for some of its series in English. • TikTok is planning to update its guidelines on Sept. 13, including that it will now make content less visible that tells users to “purchase products off-platform in markets where TikTok Shop is available,” according to TechCrunch. TikTok also said it will now personalize comments, meaning comment sections will look different depending on the user. • ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is trying its hand at making AI models that can generate realistic worlds that users can explore, such as immersive video games, The Information reported. • TikTok announced a partnership with The Association of Tennis Professionals, including a new tennis creator network which will give TikTok creators in certain cities exclusive access to men’s tennis events. Mark Rober, the former NASA engineer turned top YouTuber, is getting a Netflix show. His kids and family competition series will premiere in 2026 and will be produced by his company CrunchLabs, which sells monthly STEM kits, and Kimmelot, Jimmy Kimmel’s production company. Separately, Rober will also bring some of his science experiments to Netflix later this year through a licensing deal for some of his existing YouTube videos. Read more about Netflix’s ambitions to bring more YouTubers and their videos to its service here. Alix Earle partnered with probiotic soda maker Poppi on an internship for next summer to “dive into the world of social, influencer, experiential and brand marketing.” The paid position at Poppi is open to college juniors and seniors studying business, marketing, or advertising in the U.S. Poppi will select the winner on Sept. 22. Zaria Parvez, who has led language learning app Duolingo’s viral social media strategy for the past five years, announced she’s leaving the company. Patrick Blackwood and Nina Santiago, two food creators, were filming a video review of them eating at CuVee's Culinary Creations in Houston when a video that has since gone viral on social media shows a car hitting the restaurant. The glass window near their booth shattered, and both were treated later for injuries. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I’d love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy
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