How a Plain Daily Newsletter Reached 4.6 Million Readers

In 2017, Tim Huelskamp and Andrew Steigerwald sent the first version of their news summary to 78 friends and family. It went out once a week to start, and the first send produced an open rate above 60%, with the list growing from 78 to 91 by the next week. 

Huelskamp had spent nearly a decade in private equity, modeling unit economics and working with underperforming companies, then used a severance package as runway for a startup. Steigerwald, his cofounder, holds a doctorate in interdisciplinary materials science and has worked in technology policy, including a stint as a legislative fellow in the US Senate. 

They had met through a college football email chain full of academics and policy people, and they wanted a single publication that covered a little of everything and avoided explicit opinion. The name 1440 refers to the minutes in a day and to the printing press around 1440. The newsletter now reaches more than four million people, and a major investment bank has valued the company at $101 million.

A Flat Tone Created a Wider Market

Huelskamp and Steigerwald built around two complaints. Most news was too specialized, with nothing for the busy professional who wanted a little of everything, and too much of it arrived wrapped in ideological framing. 1440 scours hundreds of sources each day and produces a brief that takes about five minutes to read, running across politics, business, science, sports, and culture, written to inform while avoiding an explicit take. 

People who distrusted slanted coverage could get the day's facts without the editorializing they resented elsewhere. Source selection still involves judgment, and Steigerwald has said as much, so the product was never neutral in an absolute sense. What it did was keep overt commentary to a minimum, which lowered the chance a reader would quit over a stated position. That widened the audience. Huelskamp has put the total market at roughly 100 million curious Americans.

Growth Ran on Unit Economics

Huelskamp ran the business the way he had once evaluated portfolio companies. Acquisition cost had to remain below the long-term value of a subscriber. His rule was to avoid paid acquisition until the product achieved a 45-50% open rate and clearly retained readers. The company now spends a little under $1 million a month on acquisition, mostly through Facebook, Instagram, and Google, and adds 200,000 to 300,000 readers a month. About half stay, and roughly a third arrive organically. It took about five years to pass one million subscribers, then two million in October 2022, three million in November 2023, and four million in October 2024. In 2023, it ranked 79th on the Inc. 5000, with 5,764% growth over three years.

Advertising Sold Against Predictable Reach

Nearly all revenue comes from advertising, with a small remainder from other sources, including a paid option that removes ads. The newsletter runs up to two advertisers a day across a couple of placements, which carry a combined cost of roughly $50 per thousand readers in early 2025. 1440 prices on reach rather than clicks, which keeps weekly revenue predictable. By mid-2026, the flagship Daily Digest was reported to command around $100,000 a day, and a majority of advertisers rebooked. The operation has stayed bootstrapped and was already profitable by 2022. Reported annual revenue is now around $27 million across a team of 27, roughly $1 million per employee. Every staff member holds equity, and the company pays dividends to employees and founders. In 2026, a major investment bank valued 1440 at $101 million using a multiple of about 4 times its revenue. 

 One Research Process, Several Products

In October 2024, the company launched Topics, a web product of explainer pages built from the same research that feeds the newsletter, with around 600 pages by mid 2026. A YouTube channel launched around 2025 has reached about 166,000 subscribers, roughly 80% of whom are new to the brand. The podcast has passed 500,000 downloads, and an Instagram for curious people is planned. Each addition reaches readers through curation that the team was already doing.

In its final edition of 2024, the company said it had sent more than a billion emails, recorded more than 600 million opens, and grown to 4.1 million readers over the year. By mid-2026, the audience was near 4.6 million. The plain style that most publishers treat as a weakness is the thing 1440 built its product around, and it broadened the audience enough to support a profitable business with one of the largest email lists in America.

Most coverage of 1440 frames the blandness as a quirk. A boring newsletter that happened to get big. But Huelskamp and Steigerwald picked a position almost no other publisher wanted: the absence of a stated opinion. A distinctive voice wins over readers who agree and loses those who do not. A brief with no stated position keeps both, which is why Huelskamp could put the market size at 100 million people.

Open rates well above the category norm, advertisers paying near $100,000 a day for a broad and inoffensive audience, and a bootstrapped business valued at $101 million all trace back to a product built to put off as few readers as possible. The voice that most publishers sell is the one thing 1440 left out, and for its segment, that absence was worth more than the alternative. See you next week.

If you liked this edition of Growth Curve, forward it to a founder or marketer who needs to stop renting their audience — and start owning it.