Building by doing what others don’t

Let’s go all the way back: What early experiences—childhood, college, or otherwise—most shaped how you see the world today?

Ben was raised to think differently. “I remember having conversations with my parents about intellectual honesty, having your own thoughts about things, and how to evaluate ideas,” he says. With a father who studied physics and worked in Silicon Valley, the Billups household emphasized critical thinking from an early age.

Ben describes himself as obsessively curious. “I’d get super into random topics—music, web development, filmmaking.” It was filmmaking, in fact, that unexpectedly led him into marketing. “My brother and I made ads for businesses in college just to make money, and then I started getting job offers out of school.”

His education followed a similarly nontraditional path. He completed college entirely online, starting at 16 and finishing by 20. “It wasn’t your typical college experience, but it gave me time to pursue things I was genuinely interested in,” he says. That flexibility, combined with a foundation in debate and writing from high school, helped him build a toolkit that would later become invaluable across startups.

You started in filmmaking, then landed in the beauty space (hair extensions)—how has that foundation influenced your approach to business strategy today?

Ben’s transition into the beauty industry was entirely unplanned. “I was working at an edtech company when a friend introduced me to this CEO of a beauty brand,” he says. “After one phone call, the guy hired me.” Despite having no background in beauty or e-commerce, Ben quickly found success by thinking differently.

“I didn’t come in thinking about what Sephora was doing,” he explains. “I looked at the data—what was working, who was buying, where the money was coming from.” That approach paid off. Within months, he was outperforming every previous email marketer the company had hired in nearly a decade.

“It wasn’t flashy. It was just a matter of testing relentlessly and thinking analytically,” he says.

What personal belief or philosophy drives you, even when things get messy or uncertain?

Ben’s philosophy centers on understanding the real value behind a product. “It’s not always what it appears to be,” he says. He points to Seth Godin as an example. “Most people don’t share Seth because he’s right—they share him because it makes them sound smart.”

That insight drives how Ben thinks about both content and commerce. “You have to know what people are really buying. And if you choose to build around certain values, you have to understand the trade-offs. Every belief creates a local maximum. If you say, ‘we don’t do X,’ that’s great—but you’ll probably make less money. You just have to be okay with that.”

What did your first version of Noble look like vs. what it looks like today?

Noble began as a side project. “I had a few clients coming in while I was still at the beauty brand, so I started an LLC to handle it all,” Ben says. Initially, it was just him freelancing. But as demand grew, he hired a team, brought in operational consultants, and started to scale.

The major shift came with the launch of their newsletter growth services. “We developed a strategy that sounded like it shouldn’t work—but it did. Over and over.” That success led Ben to rethink the business altogether.

Can you give me a bit of background as to what companies you run today, who they serve?

Today, Ben is focused entirely on Breaker. “All roads lead to Breaker now,” he says. Breaker is a newsletter platform similar to Mailchimp or Beehive—but with a key difference. “It has an automated growth engine built in. You log in, and the number goes up every day,” he explains.

The secret is a matching algorithm. “You tell us who your audience is, and we go find subscribers for you—for a flat rate,” he says. It’s a more scalable version of the agency work he was doing before, built to drive consistent subscriber growth.

How do you keep your company aligned on the right problems to solve, especially as you grow?

Ben operates based on a clear sense of priority. “If something’s important enough, I’ll throw everything else out to solve it,” he says. Early on, that meant bouncing between sales problems and fulfillment problems. “You solve one, the other becomes the constraint.”

Over time, he built a system to project capacity and sales rates more reliably. “But in the early days, it’s just pure reaction. Eventually, you get out of that mode and start planning.”

What do you look for when hiring someone new to your team?

Ben evaluates hires on two core traits: trustworthiness and competence. “Early on, I hired people I trusted more than I valued raw skill,” he says. “I needed to know they wouldn’t screw me over.”

That approach created stability, though not always high performance. “But if you hire someone smart and untrustworthy, that’s the person who can really hurt you,” he adds. The ratio depends on the role, but for Ben, trust has always been the starting point.

When people talk about Ben Billups 20 years from now, what do you hope they say about your work and your impact?

Ben isn’t chasing a legacy. “I gave up on five-year plans 15 years ago,” he says. But he does hope Breaker makes a real impact. “What we’re doing is controversial in the email space—and it works,” he says. “It’s built on a fundamentally different philosophy than anything else out there.”

Whether or not the industry takes notice, Ben’s focused on building something that works, delivers value, and scales on its own terms.

What’s a source of inspiration you continue go back to as a founder?

Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics has been foundational. “Even if you’re not into economics, it teaches you how to think,” Ben says. He also draws from books on psychology and sociology—anything that helps explain why people do what they do and how systems behave.

To learn more about Ben Billups, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-billups/ and https://breaker.email/