Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie discusses the company's early subscriber metrics and growth during their early 2018 Y Combinator batch.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.2s
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“By the time we Finished YC at the end of March. We had, we, 7000 paid subscriptions across the network that we could point to and say, look, this thing is working.”
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More from Hamish McKenzie
Opinion
McKenzie: Billions spent on social media content moderation failed to fix trust
“They've invested billions of dollars on this. They come up with these policy documents that are hundreds of pages long. And it doesn't appear to us like it has actually helped misinformation problems, or it's helped Reduce the level of harassment, or it's help…”
Hamish McKenzieMay 12, 2025▶ 58:30Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie
AssertionNot checkable as stated
McKenzie: Musk offered to buy Substack and make Chris Best Twitter CEO
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Insight
McKenzie: Media succeeds when readers replace advertisers as paying customers
“The core insight he had was that you should make readers the customers instead of advertisers the customers. And if you change that core dynamic, especially if you monetize the relationship over time through enough subscription, then different things are possi…”
Hamish McKenzieMay 12, 2025▶ 26:22Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie
Opinion
McKenzie: Tesla had a messy, cut-throat, throw-under-the-bus culture
“It's totally different from Tesla, which was messy and cut-throat and had to, like, throw everyone under the bus kind of culture.”
Hamish McKenzieMay 12, 2025▶ 21:57Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie
AssertionNot publicly verifiable
McKenzie: Ben Thompson was earning over $1M annually from Stratechery in 2017
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Opinion
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Hamish McKenzieMay 12, 2025▶ 35:43Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie
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