Founder in Focus: Tyler Denk of beehiiv

This week’s Founder in Focus features co-founder Tyler Denk of beehiiv, a Social Leverage Fund IV portfolio company that streamlines the ability to create, customize, monetize, and scale email newsletters. beehiiv was co-founded by Morning Brew alums Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett, and Jake Hurd.

Tyler’s entrepreneurial drive is a combination of four things: physics and engineering, eternal optimism, a general annoyance when things don’t work properly, and he’s hyper competitive. He fell in love with physics in high school and studied engineering in college. Tyler is completely infatuated with learning how the world works while pursuing the most optimal solutions to complex problems.

This combination keeps Tyler looking through the lens of “how can this be done better?” He says this approach has been both a blessing and a curse, but he loves solving problems and the challenge of trying to do it better than anyone else. And if you really have an entrepreneurial spirit, Tyler says’ it’s hard to find a well-defined “job” that scratches that itch. While some people love direction and boundaries, others thrive in open space and ambiguity. Tyler has always enjoyed the latter.

His family work ethic runs deep. Tyler’s father ran a car detailing business on the side while working full-time. He did this throughout most of his career, waking up at 4:30am every morning for his full-time job and detailing cars on his day off. Tyler says his dad’s work ethic was next level, and he never once complained. But…