How I went from $0 to $1M in 12 months

January 29, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

The Format: Casual interview-style podcast chat between host and guest, diving deep into startup growth tactics with anecdotes and back-and-forth banter.
The Key Players:
- Tyler: Co-founder/CEO of Beehiiv, a newsletter platform that hit $30M revenue in year 4; previously grew Morning Brew (fastest-growing newsletter, acquired for $75M). Famous for brutal-force execution, building in public, and investor updates.
- Host: Experienced founder/investor (hints at Alex Hormozi vibe), sharing his own stories like Milk Road crypto newsletter (sold for $4M).
The Vibe: Motivational and educational with fun, gritty startup tales—high-energy, no-BS tactics mixed with humor and "aha" moments.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

The episode unpacks remixing proven strategies to scale newsletters/SaaS from $0 to $30M, emphasizing storytelling, gritty execution, and user obsession over fancy tech.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: Tyler Denk**
2 (02:25) **Founder-Market Fit and Credibility Story**
3 (07:51) **Building and Spreading the Story**
4 (12:13) **Waitlist and First Users**
5 (17:56) **Customer Discovery and Key Features**
6 (20:34) **Do Things That Don't Scale: Examples**
7 (25:59) **Shipping Imperfect Product with Velocity**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Get Shaan's money rules he used to go from broke to $25M by 30: https://clickhubspot.com/rhp

Have a newsletter? Want to pitch it live on an upcoming episode of My First Million for a chance to win Shaan and Tyler becoming official advisors plus $10K? Join the MFM Newsletter Challenge → beehiiv.com/mfm

Episode 790: Shaan Puri ( ⁠https://x.com/ShaanVP⁠ ) talk to Tyler Denk ( https://x.com/denk_tweets ) about every step he took to grow Beehiiv to $1M in 12 months.

Show Notes:

(0:00) Intro

(5:10) The marketing kill shot

(7:52) launch a company with one story

(10:56) getting your first 100 users

(15:28) the underrated customer question

(1812) one feature

(21:59) 7-min customer interviews

(25:57) message from the founder

(29:10) big desk energy

(3239) 1 marketable feature

(35:19) death of a co-founder

(37:02) write monthly investor updates

(41:00) everyone is distribution

(43:10) school of common sense

(44:39) inherent virality

(45:23) don't make people think

(5016) the 20-mile approach

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Links:

• Big Desk Energy - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5s8443tfYUq3LLARJwGeYP

• Beehiiv - https://mail.bigdeskenergy.com/

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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com

• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.

• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!

Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC

• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:

beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge

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Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/

• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

• Copy That - https://copythat.com

• Hampton Wealth Survey - https