Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Best: Market failure causes society to underinvest in cultural creators

Chris Best · Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator · May 15, 2019 · at 6:25

Substack CEO Chris Best explains the foundational thesis behind Substack's subscription model for independent creators.

0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.9s
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“We think there's basically a market failure where all of society would be richer if there was more efficient mechanisms to like allocate more resources to creative people that are making kind of culture writ large”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Chris Best

Opinion
Best: Ad-supported podcast market is small compared to paid audio
“I think that the podcast market that can be supported by advertising is small and sad compared to the audio market that could be supported if we had an effective way to pay for it.”
Chris Best May 15, 2019 ▶ 1:29 Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Best: Media will see a meteoric rise of individual creators
“So I'm not saying that everything's going to be individuals and there's not going to be any big sort of media things, but I think it's going to look like there's a meteoric rise of individual creation.”
Chris Best May 15, 2019 ▶ 13:22 Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator
Insight
Best: Writers should offer their best content for free
“And the advice we give people is basically take your best, most accessible, most focused stuff and make that free. Right? Like make your sort of like your very thoughtful essay on a specific topic free, because that's how people are going to share it. That's h…”
Chris Best May 15, 2019 ▶ 21:29 Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator
Opinion
Best: Consumers now prefer paying for high-quality content
“I think the pendulum's really heavily swinging the other way now. Like people that were sort of like my generation were like the least likely to want to pay for stuff. And we are getting increasingly more likely to want to pay. And then younger generations are…”
Chris Best May 15, 2019 ▶ 31:07 Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Best: Newsletters will replace social feeds for news within five years
“I think the answer is it won't replace the social network aspect of it. The thing that Facebook and the social networks are great at is having the relationship between you and like the people, you know, in real life... The part of it that should absolutely be …”
Chris Best May 15, 2019 ▶ 35:53 Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator
Insight
Best: Podcast downloads resemble early internet banner ad impressions
“It feels a little bit like podcast downloads are almost like the banner ad impressions of the early internet.”
Chris Best May 15, 2019 ▶ 3:14 Monetizing Podcasts and Newsletters - Chris Best of Substack and Jonathan Gill of Backtracks · Y Combinator
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