The Neuron: From Zero to Acquisition in Two Years

Situation

In 2023, Noah Edelman and Pete Huang founded The Neuron, a daily AI newsletter. The newsletter grew to over 500,000 subscribers and evolved into a full media company with a podcast and educational courses that served more than 20,000 students. In January 2025, just two years after launch, The Neuron was acquired by TechnologyAdvice.

The Neuron started when Daniel Berk from beehiiv reached out to co-founder Pete Huang on LinkedIn after seeing his AI social media content. The newsletter's mission was to help "anyone interested in AI stay up to date with the latest research and developments."

Edelman had been writing newsletters and blogs for over five years before The Neuron. When ChatGPT launched, he became interested in AI. He reconnected with Huang, and they recognized an opportunity to "build a brand to serve as a thought leader" in the AI space amid growing fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Highlights

• 0 to 10,000 subscribers: First few weeks
• 0 to 100,000 subscribers: 6 months
• 0 to 500,000 subscribers: 24 months
• 20,000+ students enrolled in educational courses

Challenge

The newsletter market is extremely competitive, and standing out requires exceptional content and strategy. For The Neuron, several challenges needed to be overcome:

As Edelman noted, "There are a lot of newsletters out there. To stand out, you have to create something that's five times better than your competition, otherwise, you're not going to get noticed."

While it might be "easy to growth hack your readership to 10,000-20,000 subscribers with low-quality readers," Edelman emphasized that "at the end of the day, that's not a sustainable business." The challenge was building a list of genuinely engaged readers who would remain consistent over time.

Edelman also faced the challenge of growing from zero to a substantial audience quickly, then maintaining steady growth over the long term. After reaching 500,000 subscribers, the team needed to determine their next steps - whether to continue scaling independently or partner with a larger organization.

Key Challenges

• Creating standout content in a saturated newsletter market
• Building an engaged audience rather than inflated subscriber numbers
• Maintaining consistent growth over a two-year period
• Deciding on an exit strategy versus continued independent scaling

Solution

The Neuron implemented a multi-faceted growth strategy while focusing on content quality:

Edelman chose beehiiv as his newsletter platform because it "seemed like there was a high velocity of launching new features" and they were "really innovating at a very fast pace." Compared to competitors like Substack, beehiiv offered more features "related to growth and understanding your audience, segmenting, monetization."

The team also appreciated having "a direct line of communication" to beehiiv in the early days, noting that "if we wanted something new, they would be super responsive."

To grow their subscriber base, The Neuron employed three key strategies:

1. Organic social media: "The first 100,000 readers came from LinkedIn. My co-founder, Pete had a big following on LinkedIn. We funneled a lot of his followers into subscribers."
2. Paid advertising: "Once we started generating revenue from newsletter advertisements, we pumped basically all of that back into paid growth via paid Meta ads — so, running campaigns on Facebook and Instagram to get new subscribers."
3. Newsletter acquisitions: "Early last year, we bought, I think, four other AI newsletters that were looking to kind of exit and sell their email list."

The team maintained a consistent growth trajectory throughout, noting that "growth has been actually quite linear" and they "started growing as soon as we launched the newsletter," reaching "10,000 readers in a few weeks." They continued running Meta ads and converting website traffic into subscribers.

To maintain quality and relevance, Edelman leveraged beehiiv's analytics features, particularly the 3D Analytics. He found the Posts Report especially valuable as it allowed him to "see all the different posts and all the metrics side by side... to see what the trends of engagement are" and identify "where you can improve based on which posts have been engaging better than others."

The Subscribers Report was also crucial as it helped the team "understand how our audience is performing across different acquisition channels" and compare performance between organic readers and those acquired through Instagram ads.

The team took "an iterative approach to writing the newsletter" with the goal of "continuously improving it every day and every week" based on audience feedback collected through beehiiv's survey and poll features.

Results

The focused strategy yielded remarkable results:

Within just two years, The Neuron grew from zero to 500,000 subscribers, becoming one of the fastest-growing newsletters in the world.

Growth was consistently strong and linear - "after 6 months, we got to 100,000 subscribers. After 24 months, we were at 500,000."

The newsletter expanded beyond email content to become "a full-blown media company with a podcast and educational courses" that served over 20,000 students.

In January 2025, The Neuron was acquired by TechnologyAdvice. Regarding the acquisition, Edelman explained: "We really built up a unique voice and style in the way that we communicate to our audience. I think that TechnologyAdvice saw the value in that. And they also saw the value in being a major presence in the AI space given how much the industry has exploded over the last few years."

The acquisition process was streamlined and transparent, taking place over "a few months at the end of the year and into 2025."

For Edelman personally, the experience of growing and selling The Neuron provided valuable connections and knowledge: "I've just been able to build a really good network through all of this connecting with other founders in the media space and AI space. And, getting to go deep on this topic that was unfamiliar to me a few years ago has been a really valuable experience."

For those considering beehiiv for their newsletter, Edelman's endorsement is clear: "beehiiv covers all of the needs of an operator. So it's not just a place to write and publish a newsletter. It's also a place to really run a true media business and monetize your list and grow your list and analyze who your readership actually is, connect with other newsletters, do drip campaigns, and paid subscriptions."

In his final advice to prospective newsletter creators, Edelman emphasized that success comes from quality content delivered to the right audience, and that beehiiv provides all the necessary tools to execute that vision effectively.

Key Takeaways

• Focus relentlessly on quality content that's "five times better than your competition"
• Build a genuinely engaged audience rather than inflating subscriber numbers
• Reinvest revenue into sustainable growth channels
• Use platform analytics to continuously improve based on reader engagement
• Consider acquisition as a viable exit strategy for successful newsletters