How 3 Guys Killed a $650M Competitor With $0 Marketing Budget

In partnership with

Everyone says you need millions in funding to compete with tech giants.

But three guys working nights and weekends built a newsletter platform that went from zero users to challenging a $650 million competitor... while charging exactly zero dollars for their core product.

And they did it by breaking every rule in the SaaS playbook.

I tweeted about this story yesterday: "Can 3 guys kill a $650m competitor?"

Tyler Denk, Beehiiv's CEO, replied: "I think so."

He's not wrong. Here's exactly how they did it.

Today, we’re breaking down:

• The "Ship or Die" framework that let 3 people outpace 100-person teams

• Why charging $0 made them MORE money than competitors charging thousands

• The 3 viral loops running simultaneously (most startups are lucky to have one)

• The exact operating system preventing chaos at 20% month-over-month growth

• The 3 rules they broke that every SaaS founder should study