• Social Leverage Weekly
  • Posts
  • beehiiv Raised $33M, How Substack Fumbled a Billion Dollar Opportunity, and Gemini Sports Analytics April Newsletter

beehiiv Raised $33M, How Substack Fumbled a Billion Dollar Opportunity, and Gemini Sports Analytics April Newsletter

The Social Leverage Letter | Issue #137

Author

Ethan Berk
May 05, 2024

Get smarter faster with our curated list of thought-provoking content for founders and investors:

3 articles, 1 podcasts, and 1 video.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

READING

Beehiiv (Fund IV), a New York-based startup that offers a platform for creating and distributing newsletters, has raised $33 million in Series B funding led by NEA, with participation from us at Social Leverage, Sapphire Sport, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. This funding follows significant growth, with the company now sending 1 billion emails per month from 20,000 active newsletters.

beehiiv attracts $33M to make its newsletter publishing platform more sticky | TechCrunch

With the number of people using e-mail globally approaching 5 billion, newsletters delivered regularly into people's inboxes continue to look like a

Houck details how Substack missed out on a billion-dollar opportunity by making strategic mistakes in their product design and revenue model, which limited their market appeal and growth potential. He contrasts this with the success of beehiiv, which has effectively captured the newsletter market by offering more control and customization to its users, leading to a strong market presence and laying the groundwork for future expansion into broader communication services.

How Substack Fumbled a Billion Dollar Opportunity

And how to avoid doing the same

The April newsletter from Gemini Sports Analytics (Fund IV) highlights their recent investment from Will Ventures, the release of new features, and much more.

Gemini Sports Analytics - April Newsletter

Welcome back to our monthly newsletter! Here is what’s been going on at Gemini:

LISTENING

Note to Self: Josh Mohrer with Jenny Fielding

Episode 34 of Venture Everywhere is hosted by Jenny Fielding, Co-founder and GP of Everywhere VC, interviews Josh Mohrer, LP of Everywhere Ventures and founder of Wave, a cutting-edge AI Note Taker designed for iOS, offering seamless recording, transcription, and summarization of your audio content…

WATCHING

JOB BOARD

Explore openings at our portfolio companies:

Social Leverage Job Board

Search job openings across the Social Leverage network.

Featured Job:

Product Marketing Lead at Flare

Funded by leading VC firms, Flare (formerly Themis-Tech) is an industry leader in legal technology. We’re reimagining how clients and attorneys work together, with one goal: to make legal services accessible to those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it.