How Coastal Recruiting Built a 20K Newsletter in Under 45 Minutes

Situation:

Coastal Recruiting, co-founded by David Friedman and Asher Hoffman, is a boutique recruiting agency focused on early-stage, VC-backed startups. With a background in tech and marketing (Google), David saw newsletters as a high-intent channel to share job opportunities and build community. They aimed to connect elite engineers with startups by nurturing a relevant, high-quality talent pool.

Challenge:

Despite their deep recruiting expertise, the team lacked a dedicated marketing function and needed a scalable yet easy way to engage thousands of engineers regularly. Existing ESPs were either too limited or not optimized for their branding, speed, or subscriber scale. They needed a platform that could deliver personalized, high-value emails fast and consistently.

Solution:

They launched their newsletter on beehiiv from day one, leveraging its ease of use, templates, and reliable deliverability. They used beehiiv to send job openings and community updates, spotlight events, and promote partner companies—all in under 45 minutes per send. The newsletter maintained a personal tone (“Hey, I’m the founder...”) and curated only highly relevant content.

Results:

• 20,000+ engineers subscribed
• 5–7 qualified leads generated each week
• High open rates and only 10 spam complaints after 10+ sends
• Newsletter built and sent in 45 minutes weekly

Read the full story here.