The Exchanges

Q value audiences. And, and now, especially with, with video and people aren't used, used to paying for video in the, in the same way that used to paying for writing, partially because of your sub-stacks innovation there. Um, will you also launch an ad network at some point, or, or do you think that risks sort of the golden goose in some way, or how do you think about that?

A I kind of take the same, you know, the same thing we talked about with an algorithm, the same thing about building a network. Um, I'm going to say the same thing when we talk about AI, which I assume we will do. Um, but I see, you know, sponsorships advertising is a powerful force. And I think there are definitely like the, the thing that would, would break Substack is if we just looked at the same way that the legacy social media things built advertising and said, oh, we're just going to copy that. Like that's going to work because And if we did that, the thing we would be doing is importing the incentive structure and the business model that puts the platform at odds with the people on the platform. Um, on the other hand, there are a ton of sub stackers today. Some of them are like, in my opinion, some of the very best sub stackers who are selling sponsorships. And I think there's a version of unlocking, you know, more economic, more economic opportunity, more economic upside that is aligned with the idea of independence, the idea of having differentiated value and quality. Um, and so we're very interested in doing that, but you know, my belief is we have to take a sort of a first principles approach and not just, you know, stuff ads in a thing, but ask the question, like, what would the good version of this be? And help build that.

AI assessment note: “we're very interested in doing that, but you know, my belief is”

Q Talk more about how you decided to, to launch notes or, or go from, okay, we've got this sort of business engine where we've got all, all these writers making a lot of money. Where do we go from here?

A I'll tell one, I'll tell one step before that because it went into my thinking, but very early on in the very early days of Substack, we were like, okay, the thing that's going to be really different about Substack is it's all going to be paid because that's the thing that aligns the incentives. That's the thing that, uh, you know, makes this thing different. And so in order to be very pure to our vision, we're not going to allow anybody to have a free Substack or to like send emails to free people. And that evaporated with our first customer because he was like, oh, okay, I'll, then I'll just use MailChimp for the free version and then I'll, yeah, I'll funnel the people here. And he created this like, you know, stitched together thing. And it was like, oh, this is really dumb because if you want to be successful, if you want to make a successful paid sub stack, you have to have a free sub stack. And in order to make that experience good and have the conversions actually work, we should just support that. And it's not a, it's not an abrogation of our vision. It's actually like you need in order for the thing to work, you have to provide this other thing. And then the thing that we realized not too long after that was the same was actually true about Twitter and about the social networks, which was, you know, in 2018, 2019, if you wanted to have a successful sub stack, you had t…

AI assessment note: “I'll tell one step before that because it went into my thinking”

Q value audiences. And, and now, especially with, with video and people aren't used, used to paying for video in the, in the same way that used to paying for writing, partially because of your sub-stacks innovation there. Um, will you also launch an ad network at some point, or, or do you think that risks sort of the golden goose in some way, or how do you think about that?

A I kind of take the same, you know, the same thing we talked about with an algorithm, the same thing about building a network. Um, I'm going to say the same thing when we talk about AI, which I assume we will do. Um, but I see, you know, sponsorships advertising is a powerful force. And I think there are definitely like the, the thing that would, would break Substack is if we just looked at the same way that the legacy social media things built advertising and said, oh, we're just going to copy that. Like that's going to work because And if we did that, the thing we would be doing is importing the incentive structure and the business model that puts the platform at odds with the people on the platform. Um, on the other hand, there are a ton of sub stackers today. Some of them are like, in my opinion, some of the very best sub stackers who are selling sponsorships. And I think there's a version of unlocking, you know, more economic, more economic opportunity, more economic upside that is aligned with the idea of independence, the idea of having differentiated value and quality. Um, and so we're very interested in doing that, but you know, my belief is we have to take a sort of a first principles approach and not just, you know, stuff ads in a thing, but ask the question, like, what would the good version of this be? And help build that.

AI assessment note: “we're very interested in doing that, but you know, my belief is we have to”

Q Building upon your culture point. I've sort of seen some academics also on Substack. We've been talking a lot about disrupting media. I'm also curious if you think much about sort of, uh, academia or, or, or, or books or kind of these adjacent, um, industries, or is that, is, is that a distraction or you're, or you don't think about it super deliberately?

A I'm, I'm a total crank on the subject of academia. So it might be fun, which is, this is, this is sort of like ill considered on my part, but I think a lot of science is totally broken. Um, I think that they're like, I think that a lot of the, and I think that the, the scientific project is incredibly important and one of the most valuable things in history, but that the, the, the practice of science and the Current situation in, in academia and especially in academic publishing is like pretty far from good. And even to the point of like, I think maybe peer review is a huge mistake and doesn't actually work and is, you know, we've got this thing that's supposed to make everything good. And there's like this massive crisis of huge bodies of fake science that nobody believes cause it's all LARPing. And I'm very interested in the idea of like, what if you apply some of these same principles? What if you give people an alternative? What if there's just one way you could do science, if you want to, is to go on the internet and publish it? Um, I think that's actually pretty radical and pretty interesting, and I see some early shoots of people doing that. It's a topic that I am excited about and think that there's more that we could do, um, but hasn't been kind of like central to our efforts so far.

AI assessment note: “hasn't been kind of like central to our efforts so far.”

Q Talk more about how you decided to, to launch notes or, or go from, okay, we've got this sort of business engine where we've got all, all these writers making a lot of money. Where do we go from here?

A I'll tell one, I'll tell one step before that because it went into my thinking, but very early on in the very early days of Substack, we were like, okay, the thing that's going to be really different about Substack is it's all going to be paid because that's the thing that aligns the incentives. That's the thing that, uh, you know, makes this thing different. And so in order to be very pure to our vision, we're not going to allow anybody to have a free Substack or to like send emails to free people. And that evaporated with our first customer because he was like, oh, okay, I'll, then I'll just use MailChimp for the free version and then I'll, yeah, I'll funnel the people here. And he created this like, you know, stitched together thing. And it was like, oh, this is really dumb because if you want to be successful, if you want to make a successful paid sub stack, you have to have a free sub stack. And in order to make that experience good and have the conversions actually work, we should just support that. And it's not a, it's not an abrogation of our vision. It's actually like you need in order for the thing to work, you have to provide this other thing. And then the thing that we realized not too long after that was the same was actually true about Twitter and about the social networks, which was, you know, in 2018, 2019, if you wanted to have a successful sub stack, you had t…

AI assessment note: “I'll tell one step before that because it went into my thinking”

Q competes with each other. Um, you know, looking out a few years, do you see the, the amount that people spend on just that overall content in general increasing? I, I guess I'm curious, like, if video is obviously going to increase Are people going, going to be reading less or is just more of everything? Or how do you, how do you view consumption's habits, uh, changing over time?

A I wrote this piece called the two futures of media. Where I kind of argue, I think, I think inevitably when you ask these questions, you get into sort of like weird philosophical questions, like what is the purpose of media and what are we doing here? And I think that one of the purposes of media is, uh, to entertain, to have some effect, like, and people use the extreme way to say this is people use media like a drug, right? I'm going to sit there. I'm going to scroll this thing. I'm going to watch this thing. It's going to have some effect on me in the moment. That's going to create a pleasant feeling. And that's like one of the things that I want from it. And I think that that side of media is going to get supercharged. Um, we have very sophisticated AI goon bots now. Is that a good thing? I don't know, but it's, it's happening. And we're going to have that across like, you know, everything, every Short form video, every, everything that could be like this, you know, it's, it's, it's almost approaching wire heading, the science fiction idea of like, you plug a wire into your brain and it stimulates the pleasure centers. I think that future is, is we're well into it. It's only accelerating. The stronger the technology gets, the stronger that thing becomes and the stronger it's a hazard for people, quite frankly, because there's a mode of consuming media and culture that is li…

AI assessment note: “that side of media is going to get supercharged”