Situation
The 4th Quarter is a weekly newsletter breaking down the business of sports and entertainment – read by team owners, investors, and senior executives across the industry.
After nearly two years on Substack, cofounders Sid and Suraj made a major move: they left their roles at Fanatics and Bank of America to build The 4th Quarter full-time into a next-gen media company backed by Courtside VC.
With that leap came a new requirement:
“Now that we’re building The 4th Quarter full-time, we need a platform that can scale with us. Beehiiv gives us the flexibility, data, and design tools to operate like a true media business. We’re no longer a personal Substack anymore.”
They chose beehiiv as their new platform – and needed to be fully migrated, rebranded, and live in just a few weeks.
Challenge
Sid and Suraj needed to move fast, but they had three constraints:
Tight deadline: Their move to beehiiv was tied to a public launch date and investor-backed “we’re going full-time” announcement. Missing that window wasn’t an option.
New platform, no time to learn it: Neither founder had worked in beehiiv before. Learning a brand-new platform while managing content, sponsors, and a launch would spread them too thin.
New brand to implement: A third-party had just finished their logos and overall branding. They needed a homepage, post layout, and newsletter design that made all of that look clean and cohesive on a new site—without weeks of trial and error.
On top of that, they had to:
Migrate their entire subscriber list from Substack
Preserve a backlog of content and make it easily discoverable
Ensure readers didn’t miss a beat or wonder, “Where did The 4th Quarter go?”
They needed a partner who understood beehiiv inside and out and could execute quickly and cleanly.
Solution
Thunderclap stepped in as The 4th Quarter’s implementation and design partner, owning the entire Substack → beehiiv transition from planning to handoff.
1. List & Content Migration
Subscriber migration: Exported the full Substack list and imported it into beehiiv, ensuring all subscribers came over cleanly so readers didn’t have to re-opt in.
Content migration: Brought over the existing archive of issues and deep dives, organizing them so the full back catalog now lives on a single, cohesive beehiiv site.
2. On-Brand Homepage & Archive
With their existing branding and logo assets in hand, Thunderclap designed a clean, modern homepage that:
Uses fresh typography and colors aligned with their brand
Features a simple, high-impact hero opt-in that immediately tells new visitors what The 4th Quarter is and who it’s for
Showcases social proof with a clear message that it’s read by team owners, investors, and executives across sports and entertainment
Surfaces both recent pieces and evergreen deep dives so new readers can quickly see the depth of coverage
Lays down SEO-friendly rails so their content can compound over time in search
The site is intentionally minimal – no clutter, no distractions – just a sharp media brand that feels bigger than “two guys writing a newsletter.”
To keep the reading experience consistent across inbox and web Thunderclap:
Designed a custom beehiiv newsletter template that matches the new site and branding
Created a polished post layout for articles on the site, so deep dives and weekly issues feel cohesive, mobile-friendly, and easy to skim
Built social sharing images so links to The 4th Quarter look professional and on-brand across platforms like X and LinkedIn
Thunderclap also produced multiple design variations—
A few options for the homepage header/hero
A few options for the newsletter layout
…then walked Sid and Suraj through everything live so they could pick, combine, and refine their favorite elements.
4. Operational Setup & Training
To make sure readers didn’t miss a beat, Thunderclap also:
Set up a welcome email to onboard new subscribers, reinforce what The 4th Quarter covers, and prompt readers to move emails to primary inboxes
Ensured core beehiiv settings, sending domains, and basic deliverability best practices were in place
Recorded and delivered tutorials and walkthroughs so Sid and Suraj could confidently:
Publish and schedule issues
Manage the list
Monitor performance inside beehiiv
The end result: a fully configured beehiiv instance that feels familiar to readers but far more powerful behind the scenes.
Homepage
Archive
Results
In under 10 days, Thunderclap helped The 4th Quarter:
Execute a clean, on-schedule migration from Substack to beehiiv before their October announcement
Upgrade their brand presence from “side project” to a venture-backed media property with a cohesive homepage, archive, and newsletter design
Protect reader trust by keeping subscribers and content intact, with a seamless transition instead of a jarring platform switch
Free up the founders’ time so Sid and Suraj could stay focused on what matters – breaking down the business of sports and entertainment for a who’s-who audience – while Thunderclap handled the technical lift
With beehiiv as their new foundation and Thunderclap’s setup in place, The 4th Quarter now has the infrastructure to operate like the next-gen media company they’re building – without getting bogged down in the mechanics of email and site management.