You've never seen a newsletter grow like this.

He’s got a full-time newsletter team of eight people.

He’s got over 135,000 subscribers.

And the craziest part? He only launched three months ago on beehiiv.

Who is this man of mystery?

None other than Zain Kahn, one of the world's leading AI voices.

We recently sat down with Zain Kahn, the founder of the Superhuman newsletter, to discuss his approach to rapidly building and growing a successful newsletter business in the saturated AI space.

Key highlights:

• How he leverages the most important skill for newsletters.

• Building his online following.

• Insights (and warnings) about building a team.

• What sponsors want to see.

• So much more.

Please note that at the time of this record, Superhuman had ~135,000 subscribers and has since reached over 250,000 subscribers.

Let’s get into it!

It All Started With a Roommate’s 8-Figure AI Exit

Zain Kahn wasn’t an overnight success. How did his journey to creating a successful AI journey begin? He just so happened to be rooming with AI startup founders.

Tony Robbins once said, “Proximity is power.” Zain’s journey into AI and entrepreneurship is a prime example of this quote.

He shared, “I have a background in marketing, I work in tech. My housemate, a few years ago, sold an AI company for eight figures, which first got me into AI. My roommate was building that company, and we used to live together, and he used to tell me all about it.”

“I lived right next to the University of Toronto campus, which was one of the biggest (if not the biggest) universities for AI research. So I got a lot of exposure to it.”

Whether he realized it or not, Zain had dove head-first into an AI hotspot. But, there was a problem: AI was still for tech junkies, not the average Joe.

“I just didn't feel like AI was at a point where it had reached a mainstream appeal, or there were any mainstream applications. But, a few months ago, with GPT-3 and ChatGPT coming out, a lot of that changed. I saw that a lot of it was becoming mainstream.”

So, what did Zain do?

“I noticed that a lot of folks had a lot of questions about it. And then I decided to launch Superhuman, which is my AI newsletter. It’s essentially trying to make AI accessible to the general audience and help everyday folks like me (who are not from an AI background) understand what's happening in AI, how you can use it at work, and how you can use it to become more productive.

Validating the Concept on Twitter

But, Zain didn’t launch his newsletter flippantly. He had a large Twitter following already, so he wanted to put out his feelers to see if there was a demand for an AI newsletter.

“I started doing the newsletter part-time and it happened in stages. There was a lot of groundwork that went into the newsletter. I think the newsletter's only been around for about 100 days, so just over three months at this point. Initially, I did a couple of Twitter threads on AI, just to see what the appeal there was, and both of them were big hits. I think both of them got 15,000 to 20,000 likes.”

“I was like, ‘Okay, cool. Seems like folks are finally interested in AI and they want to learn about this.’ Then, I slowly started to do my own research and started posting a little more content. It seemed like people were still keen.”

Zain figured he would just go for it–so he set a clear goal to see if there would be enough demand for a newsletter.

“Before I launched the newsletter, I said, ‘I'm gonna do a small test for two weeks.’ My stretch goal was—in these two weeks—if I can get 2,500 people to sign up, I'm going to launch this newsletter.”

And, it worked. Big time.

“Within two weeks I had 5,000 folks who signed up for the newsletter. I was like, ‘Cool. This beat my stretch goal. There's pretty strong demand here. This deserves my attention at this point.’”

From Side Hustle to Full-Time Gig

“I started doing it part-time. I was spending maybe half an hour a day creating content for growth and to get people into the newsletter—find it and sign up for it–and maybe an hour every week writing the newsletter (in the beginning, it was weekly).”

“It's been around for a little over three months. I started off as a once-a-week thing and I was working on it, all-in, in less than five hours a week. But the growth was pretty strong, I gotta say. It reached a point where, after a month, I was like, ‘Let me just open up sponsorships, and let's just see what happens.’”

That’s when everything changed. Zain had found his golden nugget while out prospecting the digital world in an AI newsletter. But now, he realized he had stumbled upon land that he could transform into a fully functioning gold mine.

“Within 48 hours of opening up sponsorships, we'd sold out two months' worth of advertising spots. We couldn't sell anymore just because I hadn't opened up anything beyond two months. I just never thought that would even be a possibility.”

“Readers were saying, ‘We want more. Why didn't you include this news in this week's edition?’ There's only so much you can fit into a newsletter. This led me to turn it into a daily newsletter. Then, in less than three months, we hit 100,000 subscribers—extremely strong traction for both the readers and the sponsors.”

“At that point, I quit my job. Now, I've very suddenly gone from a five-hour-a-week kind of hobby into a full-fledged company. Now I have a team approaching 10 people that are there helping me build a newsletter.”

While Zain has grown his newsletter to the point where he’s earning a full-time income, he believes it’s not an easy journey.

“I think most newsletters are probably stuck in the 5,000 to 50,000 reader dead zone. It's a dead zone because at that point it's good enough to be a side hustle, but it's not really good enough to go full-time.”

Subscriber count isn’t always an indicator of success, though. “There are some extreme niches,” Zain explains. “If you're writing some kind of private equity newsletter with 2,000 readers, mostly senior managers at funds, that's a very different situation because that's an extremely valuable audience. Even with a 2000-person newsletter, sponsors will pay you $1,000 to $5,000 for an ad.”

How to Win: Curiosity & Copywriting

Zain shared how curiosity was a driving factor to his success early on. Combined with consistent writing practice, he became a leading writer in AI.

“It's not like I started writing on Twitter the day I launched the newsletter. I had been honing my writing skills for a year and a half before that. I'd been on Twitter for a year and a half by the time that I started the newsletter.”

“At that point, I had over 250,000 followers on Twitter. I had a pretty good idea of how to write well, especially how to write good copy. That's the skill side.”

“The second thing is that I genuinely was interested in this. It wasn't just an opportunist thing of, ‘Oh, it looks like we can make a couple of quick bucks here.’ I was genuinely interested. I had been reading about this for a few years now. I even explored building something in the space myself. That's what led me to build this.”

“The interest part is really important because then you're genuinely gonna go that extra step and scratch your own itch. A lot of folks are in a bunch of different niches. We saw a lot of that with crypto. And frankly speaking, a lot of the folks who were in the crypto side of things have now switched over to the AI side and they’re trying to build an audience there.”

Zain believes what separated him from others in the AI space early on is that he was actually interested in the subject himself. Many people say you don’t need to be passionate about something to run a successful business. But, for Zain, his passion is what drove him to succeed in the niche.

“My two cents is, the reason why I'm doing better than them is that I was just trying to solve a problem for myself. I was like, ‘All these AI tools are coming out. Which ones are the right ones? There's all this news coming out. Which one's the best one? ChatGPT’s really good, but how the hell do you even use this thing?’”

"Then, I wrote a few guides and shared those online. I literally was just scratching my own itch, and I had a deep, genuine interest in the topic and in the subject, and that probably led me to create better content.”

“To sum it up, I honed my copywriting skills, I was building my audience for quite some time, and I had that skill in place. And the second part was a genuinely deep interest and curiosity in the subject. Both of those meshed to help me create better content, get more traction, and then get more subscribers than anyone else that early on.”

The 3 Steps to Success: Growth, Content, Monetization

Zain believes that every newsletter can be successful if it understands when to prioritize different aspects of the business. By following a simple process, you can build the right foundation that leads to long-term success.

He shared, “There are three key parts of creating a newsletter business: growth, content, and monetization, in that specific order.”

“If you don't have growth—if you can’t find a way to get subscribers onto your newsletter, no one's going to be there to read your newsletter. It doesn't matter how many ads you're selling or how good your newsletter is. If you can’t get people to sign up, it's not going to work.”

“Number two is the newsletter content. If your newsletter content isn't any good, people aren't going to open the newsletter, and then people aren't gonna click on the newsletter, and then people are going to start unsubscribing from the newsletter. If that's happening, you can't monetize that audience, whether you want to do a premium newsletter, whether you want to do sponsorships, or something else.”

“The final part is sponsorships. Monetization becomes a little bit easier if you've executed the first two parts pretty well.”

For Zain, he found that focusing primarily on growth over content and monetization.

“Early on I was pretty brutally focused on growth. Initially, I wouldn't say the newsletter was below average or bad. The newsletter still was pretty good, and I put a lot of effort into that newsletter. But I was like, ‘If I can’t get people to sign up for this, it just doesn't matter how good the newsletter is.’”

“I had a full-time job,” he adds. “I can only allocate so much time. In my ideal world, I would be doing this 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and I'd be allocating all my time towards these three things. But I have a job where I'm pretty tired at the end of the day, and I'm trying to build something for maximum impact. To get the most bang for my buck in terms of every hour that I'm spending on this project, number one is growth.”

Content: Quality or Quantity?

Zain shared how consistent action and writing practice is a necessity if you want to have your own successful newsletter business.

He commented, “People always come up to me, and they're like, ‘Should I focus on quality or should I focus on quantity? Should I just post every day? Or should I spend a whole week writing the best thread ever and post it?’”

“And my answer is—it’s not quality or quantity. It's quantity leads to quality. If you're posting a couple times a day and you're posting every day, you are getting closer to the truth. You are learning by process of elimination. I reached a point recently—when I write a piece of content, I have a gut instinct for what's going to work, what's not going to work, what framing's going to work, and what adjectives are going to work in the copy, what topics are going to work, or not going to work.”

Mastering your writing ability is a lot like working out. You’re not going to go from flabby to jacked after one gym session. It takes weeks, months, and years of consistent action to start seeing results.

“All of these minor things that go into creating content… I've just developed a sixth sense for it based on the fact that I've put in over a thousand reps at this point in terms of creating content. Some of my content still fails because I'm constantly trying new things, but it feels less than it did in the beginning. In the beginning, it was hard. I wouldn't say it was easy.”

“Most of the stuff was failing pretty early on. I was looking at other folks who were doing better than me. But, they just put in more reps than I did, and I just got myself to the point where I put in more reps than they have now. And that's why a lot of my content is perhaps doing better than other folks.”

Optimizing the Newsletter for Advertisers

Another valuable aspect of a successful newsletter strategy is thinking about your content. How do you know what to write or who to write to? For many newsletter creators, they’re thinking about their readers, of course. But, Zain believes the key to being a revenue-driving business means serving both your readers and potential advertisers.

He shared, “A newsletter is a two-sided thing. You want to create something that's compelling for readers. And once you do that, then you create something that's compelling for sponsors.”

“If you are a sponsor, what would you care about? Even though the newsletter has grown pretty fast, it could have grown significantly faster. But I made some choices and I put certain constraints on myself because certain things matter to sponsors.”

There is a strategy to it, but it’s not an exact science. “I don't think there's a basic formula for what's going to appeal to every sponsor in every niche. But, in my case, I knew that a lot of the sponsors are going to be tech companies. Their major market is Western Europe and North America. I really focused on getting my audience there. So, most of my audience comes from North America and Western Europe.”

“If I had gone to broader markets worldwide, and I started catering my content to those folks in certain ways, my newsletter could have been twice as big as it is now. But, I intentionally focused it on the market that I knew would be most valuable to the advertiser.”

How to Close More Deals: What Sponsors Want to See

One of the biggest hurdles to running a profitable newsletter is making it attractive enough to get a company to pay you for an ad spot. Thankfully, Zain was willing to share a few insights into the mind of the sponsor when it comes to landing more deals.

He shared, “Some fundamentals that are always gonna be compelling to the advertiser is, ‘How big is your list?’ The open rates really matters to them. Click rates matter somewhat because there are ways you can game the click rates and sponsors have sort of wisened up to it.”

“I don't even include the click rate number anymore in my newsletter. I do tell them the range of clicks they can get, but I don't give the high-level click rate because there are ways you can create clickbait content and drive up your click rate. It has been around 15% to 20% click rates most weeks, but recently I just stopped focusing on it completely because I realized it's not driving value for the readers for me to constantly get them to click. And it's not driving value for sponsors either if I'm driving clicks for things that are not their ads.”

Zain shared how having a few key elements in place, you can begin to make a case to potential sponsors why they should advertise with you.

He commented, “Number one, figure out what the sponsors in your niche care about. And number two, get the fundamentals of the size of the list, the open rate, the click rate, so you have a compelling story to sell the sponsors.”

Zain says you don’t need to worry about sponsors right away. It’s the last step to focus on in the three steps mentioned above: growth, content, and monetization.

He shared, “I would say newsletters probably should not be focusing on sponsorships too much before they hit 20,000 subscribers. I think by that point, you have put in the reps to be stronger.”

“With 10,000 readers, I think you can start at that point as well,” he notes. “But when I talk about priorities, you want to get your first hundred reps in for the growth side of things. Then you want to get your first 50 reps in for the newsletter. I'm assuming you're writing it daily, maybe less if you're writing it weekly, and then you want to move towards the monetization thing. The more compelling your growth is, the more compelling your newsletter is, the more compelling it's going to be to sponsors.”

Content Before Monetization

Zain shared that it can be easy to pull the trigger too soon on the monetization strategy. But, it’s much smarter to master your content game before trying to drive revenue since it leads to more opportunities in the long run.

He explained, “The reason to focus on content before monetization is also that it opens up the path towards monetizing the audience in different ways.”

“If you've created quality content and built trust with your audience, you can do a paid newsletter, you can sell courses, you can do a bunch of other things. I think The Hustle had the Hustle Con—the whole conference thing. If they were not writing quality content and didn't have the trust of their audience, that would not be a thing.”

“The Hustle also launched Trends, which is the subscription newsletter that I'm sure brings in a good chunk of change for them. Content matters from that perspective as well, because it opens up other avenues besides ads, especially recurring revenue.”

“If you have a paid subscription, that kind of changes the economics of your business pretty significantly. Because ads, you gotta get them out there every week and sell that ad. If you sold a subscription, it’s probably gonna stick around for at least a few months.”

When to Go From Solopreneur to a Team

Zain’s advice for newsletter publishers looking to scale is to tread with caution. A team isn’t a magic button you can press to simply grow your newsletter. You should be very careful hiring too soon. Instead, you should work to master the fundamentals of the newsletter business.

He shared, “The Superhuman team is at eight people right now and we’re still looking to grow it a little bit further. I would say do not hire someone before you hit product-market fit. For every extra person that you're going to add to the team, you should assume your velocity's going to drop by 50%.”

“In the beginning, everything from figuring out Twitter as a growth channel, to then figuring out what content is resonating with the audience, to then figuring out how to pitch to sponsors and get the sponsors to sign… I did all those things by myself. I did not hire a single person for that stuff.”

In short, it’s important to find your groove before hiring. “It’s only when I figured it out and the loop was running pretty fast and I know that I can just bring someone in and pass a playbook to them and train them, and they're just going to repeat the same playbook that I've already figured out… That's when I started hiring pretty aggressively and growing.”

Then, it’s about finding specialists who can take things off your plate. “On the content side, I’ve got researchers and content writers. On the growth side, people who are helping me do research on the social media side and craft content there. On the monetization side, people dealing with the inbound are also doing outbound.”

Zain emphasized the importance of understanding that when you start a newsletter business, you’re stepping into the rs captain. At the end of’. At the end of the day, you have to be the one to take initiative and lead the way.

“[Focusing on building a team] is the least important factor in the success of this business because no one is going to figure out how to do this stuff. You have to figure it out yourself.”

“No one can figure out how to build a channel,” he explains. “No one can figure out what's resonating with the audience. No one can figure out how to sell these ads. You just have to figure it out for yourself. And it's only when you figure these things out that you should bring someone in.”

So, what is the right time to hire? “My strong advice to folks,” Zain answers, “would be that your team shouldn't have more than one hire before 100,000 readers. The first revenue goal should be enough to pay yourself. And you should definitely be going full-time before you hire someone else.”

Hire for the Right Reasons

Understanding when to hire is one thing. Understanding why to hire is another. Superhuman isn’t Zain’s first rodeo.

He shared, “My situation is pretty unique because I have other businesses and revenue streams. I can move cash around and hire folks because of that.

“But, I would genuinely say that hiring people is the quickest way of destroying your newsletter. That’s how strongly I feel about it. I only hire people because I built a newsletter to 5 million people before and I built it to more than seven figures annually. I have a good understanding of where the pieces fit.”

Zain shared that many people hire because they think it will help them grow more, but he thinks it can do the opposite.

“Initially, speed really matters. Every employee you're bringing in is just going to slow you down for multiple reasons. A lot of folks come to me about building an audience and they ask me about the team thing. I always say the team factor is the least important.”

“The only reason the team is there is for leverage because I have already built something that people want to buy and pay for. That's basically it.”

“The key reason I hire is not to grow the business. It’s to free my time so I can grow the business. I love my team. They're great. But I'm honest with them as well. I just keep telling them, your key job here is to take work off my plate so I can spend more time working on other avenues of growth... Things that no one else can do except for me. The best use of hiring is to free up your own time, and to focus on other priorities which you think can grow the newsletter.”

He continued, “You should probably hire for things that you are either really bad at or don't enjoy doing. This advice comes with a caveat because if you don't like creating content, you should not be building a newsletter. You're not cut out for this.”

“But, if there are other parts of it—you want to set up a corporation, or you've got payroll, or you have to deal with taxes and you don't enjoy doing that, and you wanna hire someone part-time or full-time to deal with those things, awesome.”

“For the content and the growth part, you can hire someone to maybe assist you a little bit. But at the end of the day, you're the one who has to lead that function.”

Why Newsletter Writing Shouldn’t Be Outsourced

If there’s one thing that Zain says shouldn’t be delegated, it’s the writing. Newsletters are driven by the quality of the writing. He believes that your writing should be the unique value you bring to your niche.

“This is a creator business,” he says. “At the end of the day, your ability to write compelling content is a differentiator. If you feel like anyone else can write as well as you can, quit the newsletter, and go find another thing to do because then you're just not really cut out for this. If you're a hobbyist and you have 5,000 to 10,000 readers or something, it's fine.”

“This advice is more for folks who want to build a really big newsletter. You really have to be an outstanding writer. If you're not and feel like you can hire someone and train them to do your job in one month, it means you are one month away from someone coming in and destroying your business.”

Your Writing Skill Is the Moat Protecting Your Castle

A newsletter business is like a castle. Inside the castle, you have all kinds of weapons to fend off competitors. Maybe some swords, shields, bows, and plenty of knights to back you up. These weapons could be your monetization strategy, niche, growth plans, your team, and more.

But, your best defence against the enemy, your moat, is your writing ability.

Zain shared, “I have 325,000 followers on Twitter. I know that no one's just going to come up tomorrow and completely wash away that advantage. But, the moat isn't the 325,000 readers. The moat is the ability to write well.”

“If you, as a newsletter operator, don't feel like you or your co-founder are world-class writers, I would say focus on becoming a world-class writer before you start a newsletter. Or, even if you already have a newsletter, it’s a good practice to forget about everything else at first and focus on being a great writer.”

“Growth hacks and that kind of stuff—they come and go. But, at the end of the day, if you don't know how to write well, you're going to end up with a very big newsletter that no one wants to read.”

Superhuman Goals Moving Forward

Now that Zain’s amassed a six-figure list by doubling down on growth, his focus is shifting more to the second step of his 3-step process: content.

He shared, “…Now that I’ve got the growth part down, I'm just really focused on the content.”

“We’re growing faster than most other folks out there. I'm not too worried on that end. Going forward in the next six months, the main focus is how good the newsletter content is.”

“The end goal is, if you see it in your inbox every morning, you desperately want to read that email. And I don't think it's there yet. I think we're very far from it. I don’t think the newsletter’s at the point where people would be miserable if they're not getting it in their inbox every morning.”

“I want the newsletter to be at a point where if I miss a day because I'm sick and I can't send it out, I should be getting emails in my inbox saying, ‘Where the hell is this email?’ That's the way that I look at it.”

If you’re interested in staying up to date on the latest AI insights to advance your career and improve productivity, you can sign up for Superhuman or check out some of Zain’s recent newsletters like 91% of companies hiring for ChatGPT 🤖 or Musk goes to war with Microsoft 🤺.

Thanks for reading!