There’s something almost poetic about the way Ari Siegel’s business idea was born. He was interning at the U.S. Senate, giving tours of the Capitol building, when he stumbled upon a letter from President Abraham Lincoln sitting in a box at the Library of Congress. Just sitting there. A piece of American history gathering dust because nobody seemed to think the general public should actually see it.
That moment sparked something in him. Why should these documents, which technically belong to all of us, be locked away in warehouses? So he started replicating that Lincoln letter for family and friends. They loved it. More requests came in. Then more. Before he knew it, he had turned a personal passion project into History By Mail, a subscription-based business selling replicas of historical documents.
Today, the company has sent over one million letters to people across the country. In 2019, it did $2,300 in revenue. In 2025, it pulled in just over $2 million. That’s not a typo. The growth curve is genuinely staggering.
The Unsexy Part of Building Something Real
Here’s what doesn’t make it into the inspirational highlight reel: the grunt work. The endless process of finding documents that tell compelling stories but also look visually interesting. Obtaining use rights from museums, private collections, and universities. Touching up high-resolution scans to make them as close to the original as possible. Writing context stories that need multiple rounds of editing. Managing subscriptions, which is infinitely more complicated than selling a one-off product.
In the early days, Siegel did everything himself. Now he’s got a remote team of 12 people, but each piece had to be figured out organically from scratch. When he was pitching to retail partners, he’d spend half his week sending samples to buyers and showing up at trade shows. Getting in front of decision-makers is brutally hard. There’s so much noise, so much competition.
But then a buyer from Uncommon Goods took a risk on him in 2020. History By Mail became their first subscription offering, and suddenly the business had legitimacy and reach. The national press followed. And the press led somewhere even bigger.
The Shark Tank Preparation That Actually Mattered
Most people watch Shark Tank casually. Ari Siegel watched every single episode, wrote down every question the investors asked, and practiced his pitch constantly for the better part of a year. He hired a Broadway producer to help him think through the minutiae of television performance: hair, makeup, wardrobe, body language, vocal intonation, everything. He made giant cardboard cutouts of the sharks so he could practice talking to them without getting nervous.
His graphics team even mashed together clips of the sharks into a half-hour YouTube video with different expressions so he could stay focused while they looked happy, sad, or frustrated at him.
This level of preparation sounds excessive. And it probably is. But when he walked onto that stage to film Shark Tank, he wasn’t nervous. He was excited. The preparation had worked.
He pitched five documents, including the check used to purchase Alaska. Think about that for a second. Most people know Alaska was purchased, but they’ve never actually wondered about the physical piece of paper that made it happen. Who wrote it? How much was it for? Where was it cashed? Those questions matter. They make history feel real and tangible rather than abstract.
Daniel Lubetzky from KIND Snacks saw the potential and went in on a deal. After due diligence, he stayed committed. Having an investor who actually understands business and can help solve problems is worth more than you’d think.
When Passion Isn’t Enough
Here’s the part that cuts through all the inspiration: Siegel doesn’t think passion is enough to sustain a business long term. He fell in love with history, sure. But what actually kept the business going was his willingness to fall in love with solving problems.
Every business has them. Every single one. And the bigger you get, the bigger and messier those problems become. The companies that survive aren’t the ones founded by people who just had a cool idea and loved the subject matter. They’re run by people who get genuinely excited about identifying a problem, brainstorming solutions, testing them, shutting down what doesn’t work, and iterating constantly.
That’s the real skill. That’s what separates a side hustle that stays a side hustle from one that becomes a multi-million dollar operation.
History By Mail started in a niche: people buying historical replicas as gifts. It worked. But seasonal gifting patterns meant that March would be brutal. So now Siegel is pushing into corporate gifting, schools, museums, and tying it to America’s 250th anniversary. He’s not just riding the wave of what worked before. He’s actively steering the ship in new directions.
The company hit one million letters sent just last month. That’s a real, tangible milestone. But it’s also just a number on a spreadsheet unless it connects to the actual mission: making history tangible and exciting for regular people. The revenue projections are impressive ($3 million for 2026), but the real question is whether that mission continues to mean something as the business scales.
Maybe the better question is whether, once you’ve proven that people genuinely care about connecting with history in this way, the real work is just figuring out how many people you can reach before something else disrupts the market entirely.
