>This is Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, the founders of Substack, with Sachin Monga, the head of product. Are there any female top brass at Substack?
[deleted]
We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
51–60 of 451 posts
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#52No post body was provided.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#53For publications I subscribe to, how do I get them in my RSS reader? (And if I can't yet do that, when will it be available?)
If you're talking about getting Substack publications into your RSS reader, you can add /feed to the end of the relevant URL and then add that into your reader (e.g. https://sinocism.com/feed).
For adding non-Substack publications into the Substack app via RSS, go to reader.substack.com (make sure you're logged in) and click on "Add RSS feed" in the left sidebar.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#54A popular sentiment on HN is "don't make an app when you can just have a web page". Reading articles is an an almost perfect fit for the web. What are your reasons for having an app?
Reading articles may be an almost perfect fit for web, but we see a really clear pattern among the 70% of our users that read in mobile: they discover stuff to read on the web through links that get shared, but once they sign up they overwhelmingly read in their email client.
Email is actually pretty great for this, and email is especially powerful for giving writers direct connection to their readers. But there are limits to what you can do there, and stuff like community discussion, audio and video, and even 'not accidentally going to the promotions tab' can get a big upgrade.
Somewhat related: developing for email is still a pretty big pain. It's kinda like the bad old days when you had to support IE6 - lots of people still use old versions of outlook or whatever.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#55Specifically and precisely how did you decide what data you are going to collect and keep on your users with the app? Of that, how much of it is only accessible with an app rather than providing the same thing through a web-browser?
edit: I think this is a very reasonable question to ask. I'm sorry it's making some uncomfortable but that discomfort really doesn't change the economic realities of competitive space in the industry.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
We definitely care a lot about about freedom of the press, and have written a bunch about it at e.g. https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more I think the Substack model gives us a bunch of advantages here: readers are choosing to subscribe to writers they trust, and who they then have a direct relationship with. I don't think that Apple is likely to try to police that too heavily, and if they do the…
Quoted post unavailable.
This follow-up question is being down voted for the personal attack at the end, and rightly so, but I would still be curious to see a response to the larger point about that kind of content from someone at Substack.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#57No post body was provided.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#58>This is Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, the founders of Substack, with Sachin Monga, the head of product. Are there any female top brass at Substack?
Yes. VP of Partnerships, VP of Communications, Head of Talent are all women at the top table.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#59You have held firm so far on not acquiescing to cancel culture. But I imagine Apple will start demanding you censor content available through the Substack app, like they have with Parler and others. What will you do in response?
We definitely care a lot about about freedom of the press, and have written a bunch about it at e.g. https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more I think the Substack model gives us a bunch of advantages here: readers are choosing to subscribe to writers they trust, and who they then have a direct relationship with. I don't think that Apple is likely to try to police that too heavily, and if they do the…
> I don't think that Apple is likely to try to police that too heavily
As someone who uses and loves substack precisely because of its censorship resistance, this sounds like wishful thinking at best. Even if substack is primarily web based, introducing a dependency on the ever-changing Apple content policing system is a potential conflict of interest.
A cynical take is that smaller platforms compete early by allowing more speech, only to close it down when they become bigger and tied up in corporate relationships.
How do you remain independent as you grow?
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#60I noticed some of the magic of Cocoon when I started up the Substack app. While I hate to see Cocoon get neglected (please keep it alive!), I do love to see the Substack app so well designed. It's a pleasure to use. Well done!
Have you ever considered offering subscription packages? I find it hard to justify making multiple paid subscriptions (they add up fast), but would love to be able to build a package of newsletters that I could subscribe to at a bundled rate of some sort. Something like a cable tv plan for Substack newsletters?