18k subscribers from a personal brand

Houck's Newsletter offers tactical advice to help over 18,000 founders build, grow, and raise capital for their startups.

Michael Houck created the newsletter last September as a way to create a resource that founders can rely on when navigating the ever-changing landscape of startup investments. He credits his unique perspective, based on his personal experiences, with helping his readership grow so quickly.

Here are the key takeaways:

• The content system that made it all happen.

• Organizing research, topics, and posts for max efficiency.

• Leveraging personal branding and expertise to build a thriving newsletter.

• Thoughts on monetization, testing, and advice for new creators.

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Looking at Startups From Both Sides

Houck has had success as both a startup founder and a VC.

"Being a startup founder," Houck says, "is super lonely. It's really hard to know what to do. You have a ton of advice out there from different people on Twitter and on the internet. My co-founders and I have seen things from both the investor side and the founder side, so we know what those early stages are all about — especially in the modern age of investing in startups. We know what works and what doesn't work in that world. I want to share that with all the founders out there who are coming from all around the world and trying to navigate this landscape."

From Social Media to Newsletter

In just a few months, Houck has been able to build a newsletter audience of over 18,000 subscribers, with an enviable open rate that hovers around 60%. "It's growing pretty fast for only a couple of months. The early signals are good, and I'm now doubling down on it."

A good deal of that readership is coming from social media. "Posting on Twitter and LinkedIn is huge for growing the newsletter, or at least it has been so far. I drive a lot of subscribers from posting on Twitter and LinkedIn. When I started writing the newsletter, my Twitter audience was somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000," Houck recalls. "Now it's over 33,000. I also have a LinkedIn audience of about 28,000 — that was about 18,000 when I started the newsletter. "

Houck, who describes himself as "pretty metric-oriented," tracks data on the subscribers coming from each source. "I see that my open rates and engagement are higher for people who come from LinkedIn. But more subscribers come from Twitter because my content tends to go viral more on Twitter than LinkedIn."

Although Houck has been able to build a large readership on social media, he's aware that his audience is ultimately owned by the platform. "The main reason I wanted to move to a newsletter was to own my audience. [On social media] you're on rented land. If you're on Twitter or LinkedIn or any other platform, they can turn you off at the end of the day. But an email list is forever, and email's not going anywhere. So it seemed like a no-brainer as I was starting to invest more on the creator side, and not just on my startup. A newsletter made sense."

A Well-Organized Content System

Houck has created a system for organizing his content across platforms. "I use Airtable for a content calendar and I keep ideas in there. I can use the Airtable base to leverage content across platforms, so I have a content bank. I can schedule that for my newsletter for the week, and then I can schedule it to be a Twitter thread or a LinkedIn carousel the following week. I also track a lot of analytics about how my posts do."

In addition to Airtable, Houck uses some of beehiiv's features to develop his content. "I also collect feedback through the beehiiv poll feature. I'll ask people what they think of the issue. They'll leave comments and vote, and I put all that data in my Airtable base. I also write my newsletter right in beehiiv. I think the editor is pretty useful, so I just write my content right in there."

From there, he developed a referral program offering 1 single reward each month. At the end of each month, it goes away and is replaced by a new reward. This drives urgency for people to actually make referrals, and also increases the amount of people making at least 1 referral. This has 10x'd his referrals per week.

Check out the program here:

He’s added custom fields to each subscriber to help better understand his audience. As the automation feature is built out in beehiiv, it’s even more opportunity to look to segment and adjust segments.

“I was already doing this one, but I've gotten almost 4,000 subscribers from beehiiv recommendations. Building a network with other writers who write similarly sized newsletters has been huge.”

Setting the Newsletter Content Apart

Houck is careful not to run the exact same content across all his platforms, though. It's a smart strategy that gives his subscribers a reason to open the newsletter.

"[Offering different content across channels] is something I've thought about a lot, and I've experimented with a couple of things," Houck says.

One method he's used is offering the same content, but with more depth in the newsletter version. "One thing that worked well, and got good responses from my readers, was I posted a Twitter thread about red flags in pitch decks. But I posted it on Twitter, and it was maybe six items long. Six red flags. And then I went to my newsletter and wrote about it, but I included a lot more items and additional content."

The experiment paid off for Houck. "That got great responses. People would say 'I found you through Twitter, then went to your newsletter and you had even more. That made me want to subscribe to get [content] I couldn't get on Twitter."

Houck also uses his newsletter to share content that wouldn't work well on social media. "There's stuff you can do with a newsletter that you can't really do with Twitter. I wrote a newsletter post about how to fundraise using tranches, [which is] where you break your fundraise into different amounts. [For instance,] 'I'll raise 500K at a 10 million valuation, and then another 500K at a 12 million valuation once that first 500K is filled up."

It was valuable content, Houck says, because "it's not something that a lot of early-stage founders know to do. But a lot of investors are open to it."

Creating a newsletter post allowed Houck to add an interactive feature he couldn't have included on social media. "I added a calculator as a resource. People could click this link and actually calculate what their tranches should be for their fundraise with whatever their goals might be. You can't really communicate that the same way [on social media]. Twitter hates links, so it was just easier to do in the newsletter."

Fitting In

Houck creates all the social media posts and newsletter content himself. He also manages the newsletter's growth as a team of one.

"My startup is venture-backed, so there's a team there. But everything else is just me. I have a VA who helps with some personal things and helps me organize some of my ideas. But all the writing for Twitter, LinkedIn, and the newsletter, all the carousel creation, images, everything is all me. Using recommendations on beehiiv and setting up the referral system and these other growth channels — it's all relationships I've built myself."

Houck has a lot going on between managing his own startup, working with founders, and working with investors. But the newsletter is worth investing his time in, because it integrates seamlessly with his other business interests, and the target markets have a huge overlap.

For example, Houck explains, "I work closely with some founders on their fundraises specifically. Every month I'll take on a very limited number of founders who I'll do a sprint with for a month. I'll say 'Hey, we're gonna help you get funded this month. I'll connect you to the VCs that I know. I'll work with you on your pitch. We'll go really deep to make sure you're doing all the right things for your fundraise.' And the newsletter is a great way to meet founders who might be interested in that as well."

Houck's Newsletter may not remain a solo venture forever, but for now it's a choice he's happy with. "Maybe as it grows, and I monetize it (which I haven't really done yet) there'll be opportunities to bring people on to help out. But for now — you know, when you're a founder, you want to be in the trenches. You want to know how everything works so you can see where the problems are and act quickly to solve them."

Weighing Monetization Options

Although he’s just started implementing any monetization strategies, Houck has given the matter some thought. He plans to monetize within the next few months, but he's still working out what approach he wants to take.

"Almost as soon as I hit the 10,000 subscriber mark, I had a bunch of potential sponsors reach out who wanted to partner up and be featured in the newsletter, and get in front of this audience of founders that I've built. I haven't pulled the trigger on any of them yet, because I'm still deciding between the ad-based model versus the paid content model, where people are paying for additional content, resources, or digital products."

At the moment, Houck is leaning toward a paid content model for a couple of reasons. "I like the idea of recurring revenue. As a startup founder, I like the idea of people subscribing to something, me not having to be selling all the time. Because that's additional work that I have to do, on a treadmill basically."

“So I like the idea of paid content," Houck goes on to say. "Obviously that raises the amount of work I need to do on content. But I love making content! So that's not as big a blocker for me."

Although he's leaning towards the recurring revenue model of paid subscriptions, Houck isn't completely persuaded yet. "At the same time, keeping a free tier can be really important. Maybe that's an ad supported tier? The thinking is that if you're only putting out paid content, it's going to slow down your growth, because people don't get that free sample. They have to trust you just based on your personal brand or your social media content. It's a higher bar that you have to climb for a [paid] newsletter."

Having to clear that higher bar feels like an obstacle to Houck, "especially when people talk about newsletter fatigue. I don't know if that's real, but people talk about it.”

Currently, Houck is pondering how to solve these issues with a hybrid solution. "There's a level of importance in sharing some of your content for free, to get people through your funnel. Whether that means making part of every post available for free, and then putting a paywall for the second half, or whether that's having an ad-supported free tier, is a TBD for me."

Ultimately, though, he sees the issue in terms of time. "Do you want to invest more of your time in content? Or do you want to invest more of your time in sales?"

2023 and Beyond

For now, Houck is thinking of investing his time in growth.

"The main thing for 2023 is doubling down on the newsletter. My ambitious goal is to grow it to a hundred thousand subscribers — that's my stretch. My normal goal is 50,000 subscribers."

However, Houck wants to maintain a clean, engaged list. "I think it's to always have a tension metric. I could just flood the email list with a bunch of people, crush my unsubscribe rate, and kill my deliverability. So I would say 50,000, but with an open rate above 50%."

Houck is looking forward to testing some new acquisition methods in 2023. "Twitter and LInkedIn work pretty well, but I'm going to start exploring video content, maybe short form like TikTok, YouTube shorts, something like that. Twitter is supposed to launch short form as well at some point, so I'm excited to see what that looks like."

Paid acquisition is new for Houck's Newsletter. "I've started to talk to a few folks who are industry-best about ads on Facebook, Instagram ads, and ads in other newsletters, which I know are really high-converting."

However, Houck doesn't consider paid ads to be a viable option until he starts monetizing the newsletter. "I don't want more cash going out than coming in, so I'm sticking with organic growth for now."

A Personal Brand

Organic growth requires a strong brand. Houck has built the newsletter around his personal brand because one of the things that differentiates Houck's Newsletter in the field is his personal background.

"A lot of folks who are writing about startups haven't really done it. A lot of these folks are interested in startups, and maybe they're employed at startups, or maybe they're even on the investment side.

"Not saying I'm the most successful founder in the world,” he adds, “but we built a business that has gone on to attract investment from Andreessen Horowitz, which is one of the best venture capital firms in the world. So, we know what we're doing to some degree. I don't see a lot of founders who have that level of success on their resume going out and sharing what's worked for them. I think that's a pretty big differentiation for my newsletter, that I can share that perspective freely."

Leveraging his personal brand, however, makes Houck feel personally responsible for every piece of content. "I don't want [Houck's Newsletter] to be a ghost-written newsletter. I think it's really important for me to be super authentic and own the writing of the newsletter, the perspectives, and the tone, because my name is on it."

Advice for Other Creators

Closely guarding the quality of the content isn't just Houck's personal approach. It's also the cornerstone of his advice to other creators.

"The top priority is making great content," Houck says. "People say that [the top priority] should be growing the newsletter, and it's true that you need people to read the content. But you've got to earn that spot in people's mailbox. You've got to earn that open every single week."

Houck defines 'great content' as material that reflects an author's unique perspective and personal experience. "Building a personal brand in public, on Twitter or LinkedIn or even TikTok, you can build some of that trust. People are going to subscribe to the newsletter because they want more from you. But you need to be driving them toward something that is unique and good."

"So," Houck advises, "don't write about things you don't have a unique perspective on. And if you don't have a ton to add to the conversation, then look deep and try to have more experiences so you can bring them to the table. Otherwise, people are just going to churn at the end of the day."

"Honestly, why do people read the stuff that I post?" Houck asks. "Sometimes I curate great resources, and people appreciate that. But the posts that really resonate the most with people are the ones where I'm sharing tactical advice or frameworks that have worked for me. Like how to email investors, or how I've turned a 'no' on a term sheet into a 'yes.' That's the kind of stuff people really want to see, and will build trust and keep your open rate high."

Houck's other big piece of advice for newer creators is to seek community. "I have a group chat with almost 15 other beehiiv newsletter writers, and we're all sharing our ideas and what works for us. We all started out at a very similar stage, and a lot of us have grown to a similar subscriber base now."

The creators, who found each other mostly through Twitter posts, are actively supporting one another. "Some of us recommend each other's newsletters using beehiiv's recommendation feature, which has been great. If you're going to recommend each other, make sure you're working with people who have relevant audiences or who are writing about relevant things for your audience. But there's enough people writing about everything on beehiiv where you can find the right people."

But recommendations aren't the main purpose in building community, says Houck. "I think it's important, when you're starting out on any new journey or experience, to have a community of people around you who are at that same stage, or maybe just one step further than you. So my advice is literally just find those people, build authentic relationships with them, offer your insights frequently, and hope they do the same."

To find that community, Houck suggests simply reaching out to content creators you admire. "Just DM them and say 'Hey, I really love your content. I have this group chat I'm starting, I'd love for you to be part of it.'"

You can follow Houck on his Twitter, @callmehouck, or subscribe to Houck's Newsletter to get great startup content like How to Be a Top 1% Startup CEO and The Most Underrated Way to Convince Investors — Backchanneling.