💡 3 million impressions and not a single missed edition

Céad míle fáilte!

It's been over 12 months since our last behind-the-scenes update. In that time there’s been lots going on (including weddings and babies) and through all of it, every single Thursday, the irish insights email landed in inboxes. We've never missed a week.

I don't know if that's dedication or just a frankly concerning inability to stop. Either way, here we are.

So. Grab a coffee. Let's talk numbers, lessons, and what's actually going on behind the curtain. ☕

Crunching The Numbers

3,213 subscribers.

When we last checked in (July 2025), we had 1,365. That took 24 months to build. We've more than doubled since then — adding 1,933 new subscribers in 12 months while losing 352. Net: +1,581.

That's 115% growth in a year. Not venture-scale, but for a side project run by three people with day jobs and a collective negative amount of free time? We'll take it.

Open rate: 53.72% (down from 60% — more on this below). Click rate: 6.93%. Both comfortably above industry averages, though the open rate dip is real and worth watching.

Revenue: $171.44. That's $91.44 from the ad network and $80 from recommendations. This time last year? Zero. It's beer money, not a business model — but it's the first time Irish Insights has made a single cent, and that matters.

Top acquisition sources: LinkedIn (622), word of mouth (365), Smartlead email outreach (114), founder directory (110), and recommendations from partner newsletters (102). LinkedIn is doing the heavy lifting.

WHO’S READING

By role:

By geography:

The diaspora spread is exactly what we hoped for when we started — half at home, half abroad. The ANZ contingent is notably strong (12% Australia + 1% NZ), which tracks with the Irish exodus Down Under.

LINKEDIN: THE ENGINE

Last July we had 2,687 followers. Today: 10,008. We added 7,062 followers in 12 months.

The reach numbers are bonkers:

That's 3 million eyeballs on Irish tech content. For a newsletter run out of spare bedrooms and lunch breaks. LinkedIn has been our primary acquisition channel from day one.

The formula hasn't changed: sharp headlines, Irish tech stories nobody else is covering, and enough personality that people actually want to click through to the newsletter.

The Good And Not So Good.

IRISH AI 50

In August, we published The Irish AI 50 — five editions, 50 people, one countdown of the most influential Irish minds in AI globally. It was the most ambitious thing we've ever attempted.

The results:

Combined: ~15,100 sends, and the series added ~250 net new subscribers — roughly 50 per edition. The open rate fatigue on Part 5 is real (people had seen four already), but the click-through held strong throughout.

The AI 50 did something more important than numbers: it established us as a voice in the Irish AI conversation. We got messages from people on the list, people who should have been on the list, and — most satisfying — people who now want to be on next year's list.

WHAT’S WORKING WELL

1) The AI Agent Pipeline. This is the biggest operational change since last year. We've built an automated content pipeline using AI agents. What used to take 7–8 hours of human effort per edition now runs mostly on rails. Weekly production is down to 3–4 hours, and we're publishing more consistently than ever.

The pipeline isn't perfect — the agents occasionally hallucinate, get confused, or produce something that reads like a corporate press release — but the baseline quality is solid, and the time savings are transformative. We've essentially built a three-person AI newsroom that works while we sleep.

2) Website homepage. About 12 months ago we overhauled the homepage — stripped it back to a simple, confident design anchored around one thing: get people to subscribe. Big, unmissable sign-up buttons. Social proof plastered front and centre ("Trusted by thousands of founders, operators & investors"). A clear, psychological flow: scroll, read, sign up. No clutter, no distractions.

3) The format works. Short, sharp, story-led. The ii Dispatch template — one big story, a few quick hits, some personality — has proven remarkably durable. 144 editions and counting.

WHATS NOT WORKING…

1) We're tracking behind target. Our end-of-2026 goal was 5,000 subscribers. At 3,213 with three months to go, we'd need to add ~600/month to hit it. That's roughly double our current monthly growth rate. Barring a miracle (or going viral), we'll finish closer to 4,000. Still decent. Not what we aimed for.

2) The St. Patrick's Day survey was a but of a miss. We ran a "Founders Sentiment Survey" leading into Paddy's Day with a full series of founder profiles across multiple cities. The content was actually great — Eoghan did some lovely interviews. High effort, low impact. The lesson: pulse-check surveys need either a much bigger audience or a much sharper angle to be worth the effort.

3) Team time is the binding constraint. We spend almost no time together. Between jobs, kids, weddings, and life on three different time zones, our "collaboration" is mostly async WhatsApp messages sent at absurd hours. It works — barely — but it means we can't do deep collaborative work. Every piece of original reporting, every deep dive, every founder interview happens in the cracks between everything else.

The Honest Bit

Here's the thing. Despite limited collaboration time, the process is effective enough to maintain output. The newsletter goes out every week. The LinkedIn posts go up. The subscribers keep coming.

But there's a gap between what Irish Insights could be and what it is. If we had even 10 more hours a week between us — proper dedicated time, not stolen lunch breaks — we could do original reporting, build real community, and produce the kind of deep-dive content that the audience clearly wants.

The infrastructure is there. The audience is there. The content pipeline is there. The missing ingredient is time.

And yet: 3,213 people. A 54% open rate. 3 million LinkedIn impressions. Revenue for the first time. An AI agent newsroom that actually works. All built on the side.

Not bad for a project that started as "what if we wrote about Irish people doing interesting things?"

WHATS NEXT?

Realistically, the next 12 months are about consolidation, not revolution:

✅ Keep the weekly rhythm. Never missed one yet.

✅ Refine the AI pipeline — it works but it's fragile.

✅ Figure out the community thing. We've been talking about a WhatsApp/discussion space for two years. Time to actually do it.

✅ One more big editorial swing — the AI 50 proved people want substantial content. We need the next one.

✅ Hit 4,000 by year-end. 5,000's probably out of reach, but 4,000 is right there.

And if someone could invent a 28-hour day, that'd be great too.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for sticking around. And if you made it this far — you're exactly the kind of person we write for.

— Chris, Stephen & Eoghan

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