SUBSTACK

Chris Best had watched the media industry gut journalism and destroy writer independence for a decade. He wanted to know: what if writers could just be paid directly by readers?

He, McKenzie (former journalist), and Sethi (engineer) launched in 2017. The original thesis was simple — email newsletters were underrated, direct subscriptions were cleaner than advertising, and readers would pay for writing they genuinely valued.

The COVID lockdown in 2020 was an unexpected accelerant: bored, engaged readers plus writers suddenly needing income produced explosive growth. Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan, and others left mainstream media and launched Substack newsletters to hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers.

Substack charges writers nothing to publish — it takes 10% of subscription revenue when a writer charges readers. The math is elegant: Substack only makes money when writers make money.

Writers set their own price (typically $5–$10/month or $50–$100/year). Substack handles payments, email delivery, web hosting, and analytics.

Substack newsletter platform (subscription email newsletters), Substack Notes (short-form content feed), podcast hosting, Substack Chat, recommendation network between writers

Substack grew by going directly after high-profile media talent. They reportedly offered advances to established writers — guaranteed minimum revenue to de-risk the switch from a salaried job to subscription writing.

This was expensive but effective. Once Greenwald, Taibbi, and a handful of others were paying their mortgages via Substack, every other journalist with a following had proof the model worked.

The Substack model does not work unless writers succeed. So the challenge is always at the top: attracting writers who already have audiences large enough to convert to paying subscribers.

A journalist with 100 Twitter followers is not a Substack success story. A journalist with 100,000 loyal readers is.

Building tools that attract the second category while not discouraging the first is a constant tension.

Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz (led $65M Series B at $650M valuation), Naval Ravikant, The Chernin Group