They Got Acquired - The newsletter monetization race

Oct. 20, 2023
​Read on web​

Newsletter platforms that serve creators are in a race to help them grow and monetize their audiences.

And the pace kicked up a notch, with email service provider beehiiv acquiring Swapstack, a monetization platform, in September 2023.

It was a 6-figure deal for a company that raised $650,000 in funding – so not a huge win in terms of money in the bank – but one that allows the product and half of its small team to join a fast-growing and well-funded startup.

The sale closed before Swapstack’s third birthday, when it was bringing in about $300,000 annually in revenue.

Yet the business had already been acquired once — before celebrating its 3-month birthday.

Here’s our full story:

​Newsletter writers created ad platform Swapstack and grew to $25K/month in revenue​

Sponsored by

Would you move states to save big on taxes?

Here's the most surprising thing about my (Lexi here!) interview with Matt Camrud, a Certified Financial Planner at Brighton Jones:

He said entrepreneurs sometimes move states ahead of a sale to save on taxes.

Perhaps this shouldn't surprise me, because I was talking to a founder a few months ago who did just that: he moved to Austin from California because he was aiming to sell his company in the next two years.

There are huge savings to be had with this strategy, especially if you move from a state with high income tax (like California, where you can pay up to 12% state tax on top of federal income tax) to a state with no income tax (like Texas or Tennessee).

But still, is it worth moving your life — maybe even your family — across the country to access those savings?

Would you do it?

(If you would do it, press reply and let me know, just for fun.)

We discuss the details of this residency tax reduction strategy in our conversation, which you can listen to via video or audio-only:

Coming Monday...

We're launching a new report next week. This time, our focus is:

👉🏽 Newsletter Deals

We're spilling the beans on 13 newsletter acquisitions, plus 3 bonus deals in the newsletter space.

Newsletters are hot right now, so it's helpful to see how these deals come about and how many subscribers each one had at sale.

Our Newsletter Deals Report will hit your inbox on Monday.

See you then,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​