Substack was first a place for creators to start a publication and community. Now it’s also a place for entrepreneurs to launch entire networks.

The founders of The Free Press and Zeteo didn’t need to hire developers, wrestle with a dated content management system, or stress about subscriber profile management. They can instead dedicate almost all of their focus to the work that matters most: their journalism.

The Free Press is one such institution, and it is one among many on Substack, collectively accounting for millions of paid subscribers. Among this new class are Sarah Longwell’s politics collective The Bulwark, Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim’s Drop Site, Jen Rubin and Norm Eisen’s The Contrarian, Richard Rushfield and Janice... See more

We’re also seeing the emergence of new models that take advantage of Substack’s network-centric design and flexible features, including Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist, which recently sprouted local variants in California and New York, and spinoff publications created and funded by individual writers who have found success on the... See more

These founders are building here because they can enjoy the distribution benefits of the Substack network—which drives more than 30% of all paid subscriptions across the platform—without compromising their vision. That network growth and discovery via the app means a media business can now scale faster, and more cost efficiently, than ever before.