11–20 of 56 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They took VC funding. That requires them to attempt to grow to the size of Facebook or Amazon, or implode. Merely being profitable forever is not an acceptable outcome.
There must be an opportunity here for someone who can stand up a medium-sized website and integrate it with a payment provider to take Substack's lunch money?
Why is it that Substack can’t just be run as a 10-20 person small-medium sized business forever? If publishers want to go there for a basic product, and Substack can collect rent from them, what’s the problem?
They took VC funding. That requires them to attempt to grow to the size of Facebook or Amazon, or implode. Merely being profitable forever is not an acceptable outcome.
“You know, you could just not take VC money.”
“… We don’t do that here.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They took VC funding. That requires them to attempt to grow to the size of Facebook or Amazon, or implode. Merely being profitable forever is not an acceptable outcome.
There must be an opportunity here for someone who can stand up a medium-sized website and integrate it with a payment provider to take Substack's lunch money?
> It’s as unstable as a SpaceX launch Hate makes people blind. Starship is failing by design - that's just how they're choosing to develop it. The chopsticks video that we saw earlier was very nearly science fiction. And as far as regular launches go, SpaceX has done more successful launches than any company or nation ever. But more generally, this idea of abandoning an app (or product) the moment you encounter peopl…
Ana's contention that Substack is "rickety" seems motivated by her conviction that they should adopt a more assertive, aggressive censorship regime, and that "we need a world where a social safety net protects risky writing".
There are certainly many interesting questions about the future of media and Substack's business – but the parade of people saying it can't succeed without more moderation keep being proven wrong.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/business/substack-fundrai...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They took VC funding. That requires them to attempt to grow to the size of Facebook or Amazon, or implode. Merely being profitable forever is not an acceptable outcome.
There must be an opportunity here for someone who can stand up a medium-sized website and integrate it with a payment provider to take Substack's lunch money?
They seem to be doing well, 8.5 million in revenue
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There must be an opportunity here for someone who can stand up a medium-sized website and integrate it with a payment provider to take Substack's lunch money?
I've always struggled to understand this part: what is it that Substack came up with that we did not have earlier? Aren't there a hundred examples out there of medium-sized websites providing a similar infrastructure mix?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There must be an opportunity here for someone who can stand up a medium-sized website and integrate it with a payment provider to take Substack's lunch money?
I've always struggled to understand this part: what is it that Substack came up with that we did not have earlier? Aren't there a hundred examples out there of medium-sized websites providing a similar infrastructure mix?
* Patreon kind of sucks for writing / newsletters or else they could have captured part of this market. Medium was supposed to fix this but they had an epic collapse.
* Single point where subscribers can manage their subscriptions and preserve a common identity across subscriptions in the comments etc. Again, Medium/collapse.
* A rapid adoption of substack by well known online writers with loyal followings. These writers either had their own blogs or were exiting traditional media or getting dumped out by the collapse of online media (gawker network, buzzfeed news, etc). Again, could have been Medium if not for their collapse.
* I suspect Substack spent a lot of that VC money guaranteeing 2 years of X revenue for a non-trivial number of high profile writers so they would onboard.
Reading this story I didn't realize just how much they had taken over the years (I use to operate in this media space, but haven't in a long time). I'm not sure what the headcount is but that amount of money is staggering and I can only imagine it was all used to acquire DAUs and very little novel technology has been created with it.
I think Substacks first 10m/100m (their keep of rev/total rev from subscriptions) was extremely impressive and fast. But also it was a kind of low hanging fruit. There was a market already there for this and Medium/Patreon couldn't capture it. Now if they are really at 45m/450m that is much less impressive. It will be extremely hard to get to 100m/1000m and IMO impossible to get much higher than that with their current approach.
But, I can just click on the "Following" link to avoid it. In fact, I can even set that as my homepage. So, so far, it's not that bad. And I continue to enjoy the diversity of writers; and am much more worried by virtuous scolds than by neonazis.