How he built a $20M/year newsletter (Tim Huelskamp of 1440)

Hey, Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders! Premium subscribers get full access to this newsletter, exclusive events, event discounts, and more.

In this day and age we have what it feels like an infinity of resources one click away, so in theory learning stuff should be the easiest thing in the world.

Then why does it feel so overwhelming to do so?

Tim Huelskamp felt this as his pain point. He thought learning should be easier, more accessible and, overall, more fun.

Then he met Andrew Steigerwald and not only did they instantly connect over college football, but over this new vision of learning as well.

And very quickly, the initial idea for 1440 was born—a newsletter that would break down the barriers to knowledge through credibility and simplicity.

As of today, over 4.4 million readers feed their curiosity daily with 1440.

In this episode of the Just Go Grind podcast Tim Huelskamp talks us through 1440’s founding and growth story.

Listen to Tim’s interview on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

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• The core business of 1440 can be broken down into just three things: writing a beautiful product everyday to enlighten the readers, selling ad placements to their partners and growing the subscriber list. It’s a flywheel: write, sell, grow and repeat.

• Tim believes that, although the product-market fit can be seen by data, he mainly feels it vividly through user feedback. Hundreds of people email 1440 everyday to let them know how much they love the newsletter, how much they learn with it, how much of a difference it’s made in their lives; to Tim, that’s the most substantial evidence you can wish for to know that your company has made it into the market.

• If user feedback is that important to measure product-market fit, how to get it then? Well, at 1440 they’re not shy to ‘beg for feedback’. They encourage readers to reply to the newsletter. They have a feedback-only email for people to reach out to. They even added a pop-up function to the website that’ll ask you about your experience throughout your read. Most importantly, they make sure their Head of Product is always in contact with the users and speaking directly to them.

• For the first year, they grew their subscription base organically while constantly improving the product based on the feedback they were getting. It was at the 10,000 subscriber mark that they started investing in Facebook ads to grow bigger and test user-retention. What they earned with those new subscribers they reinvested in Facebook ads; they reached 500,000 subscribers that way.

• The deeply researched, precise and fleshed out content that 1440 offers can only get the effort’s worth by keeping it visible over time, constantly sending people back to it even after the release. That’s what they’re doing by having the inventory linked, so that any time they mention any concept or theme previously covered by 1440, curious readers will draw a bunch of traffic to past editions. They profit off of everything twice now, with the newsletter and website. But they aim to ship the existing content out in several other formats in the future, such as podcasts and events. This process is what Tim essentially describes as ‘doing the work once and then selling it four or five times’.

Listen to Tim’s interview on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

00:00 What’s coming in the episode…

1:18 Introduction

2:32 Where is 1440 now?

4:11 The story behind ‘Topics’

12:30 How did Tim know 1440 had product-market fit?

15:07 How do they get user feedback

16:32 ‘Topics’ monetization

21:28 1440 vs AI

25:49 Founding 1440

27:27 Partnering with Co-Founder Andrew Steigerwald

31:09 The first year of experimentation

35:34 Tim’s investment in 1440

37:18 Start of advertising

39:00 Funding 1440

45:33 How much of revenue is reinvested in growth

49:36 The team at 1440

51:40 How does AI fit into 1440?

53:36 Where’s the opportunity for a new media company today?

58:20 Reach out to Tim Huelskamp

• Pinterest

• Disney

• Pixar

• Axios

• theSkimm

• Morning Brew

• The Hustle

• Industry Dive

• Politico

• Shark Tank

• Mailchimp

• Jeff Bezos 

• Pipe

Best,
Justin

Founder of Just Go Grind

P.S. Hiring? Check out the team at Athyna