Vietnamese-Canadian independent operator. SatPost newsletter (250K+ subscribers), Not Investment Advice podcast with Bilal Zaidi + Jack Butcher, ~500K Twitter followers. The meme-and-analysis format that anchored the post-Hustle independent-writer category.
Beehiiv is the third leg of the newsletter economy — alongside Substack and Ghost. Founded 2021 by ex-Morning Brew operators Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett, Jake Hurd. ~$45M raised from Lightspeed. Flat SaaS pricing, no revenue share.
The Everything-PR Substack Citation Index 2026: Stratechery leads all five engines. Platformer second. Big Technology third. Which independent newsletters ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews actually cite — ranked with PR strategy for each. Updated August 2026.
Bari Weiss built The Free Press from a Substack newsletter into an independent publication with 1M+ subscribers, an editorial roster, and its own infrastructure. The reference case for journalist-to-publisher arcs in the creator economy.
Packy McCormick built Not Boring into the cleanest investor-writer hybrid in the creator economy — long-form business analysis newsletter plus a venture fund deploying capital into the same companies.
Robinhood didn't buy its retail investor base with paid acquisition. Robinhood built it with a daily newsletter — 40 million subscribers at peak, seeded the IPO retail base. The content-creation case for fintech, unpacked.
Many consumers have stated that they find email newsletters to be a great way for companies to communicate with them.
Lead generation in 2022 has moved past the 2010s playbook. The brands generating leads that actually convert are running narrower programs aimed at fewer accounts \u2014 with ABM, intent data, and substantively better content doing the work the gated whitepaper used to.
One of the most important parts of email marketing and PR campaigns is email newsletters.
