Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
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Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
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Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#2Why 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?
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#3> 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 people who disagree with you is disheartening.
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#4Why 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?
> Why is it that Substack can’t just be run as a 10-20 person small-medium sized business forever?
They have taken VC money.
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#5> 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…
>But more generally, this idea of abandoning an app (or product) the moment you encounter people who disagree with you is disheartening.
It is a behavior Substack itself encourages by turing itself into a social media platform instead of simply a newsletter provider.
Yes, it is useful for building a moat of network effects, but it also forces views and opionions down people's throats that reflect badly on the platform.
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#6Why 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.
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#7Why 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?
VC money and you can't boast to your peers with your monopoly valuation that doesn't have any real merit.
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#8Why 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.
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?
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#9The network effects of substack seem pretty weak. Authors can use their own domain name and export a list of their subscribers any time. Their value is in providing software that is sticky for writers and solves a lot of the problems of creating and retaining an audience, which they seem to be doing pretty effectively. For better or worse, I don't think substack has much influence on the broader ecosystem either way; it's all down to consumer demand.
Re: Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business
#10Earlier 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?
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?