Substack CEO Chris Best explains the company's philosophy on platform neutrality and content moderation during a discussion with Guy Raz.
Disclosure
Best: Substack was pitched to journalists as a media 'getaway vehicle'
“I had this speech that I would give to people at the time. I was like, think of sub stack as your getaway vehicle. You don't have to get in it right now, but like, Fuel it up, have the engine idling, like create your account, like claim your handle, have this …”
Disclosure
Best: Substack does not change content enforcement based on public pressure
“If something comes to our attention that is against the broadly applicable substack rules, we're going to take action. But we're not changing what we enforce based on pressure.”
Disclosure
Chris Best: Substack does not need to raise outside capital again
“We're not running the company to, like, turn a profit, but the thing that is true, and we've kept true pretty much the whole time, is we don't need to raise money again. We're not on this clock. We have, like, we are in control of our financial destiny.”
Insight
Best: Losing half a cross-platform messaging network destroys 95% of users
“And if you're a messaging app, and your big drive is your half on Blackberry and half on iPhone, if you lose half your users, you don't actually lose half your users, you lose like, 95% of your users.”
Insight
Best: Facebook's core issue is working too well without serving its users
“The problem with Facebook is not that it doesn't work, right? The problem with Facebook is that it works too well. And doesn't serve the people who use it. Right. Yes, it kills all the newspapers, but it's a massively successful business that takes, takes adva…”
Assertion Supported
Best: Kik launched a cryptocurrency to solve free messenger monetization
“In part to raise money, and in part kind of like as a, in answer to the question, what do you do if you have a very popular messenger that lots of people use, but you don't know how to make money from it?”