Why I left Substack and the Email renaissance

In Substack’s case, life in the “paid publishing platform” market was rough, because very few people thought they wanted it, and the people who did were locked up by switching costs from the complex systems they rigged together. But competing in the “newsletter platform” market was a dream in comparison. Hamish could email writers on Mailchimp and ... See more

For example, the next writing platform I am paying close attention to these days is Substack. Substack is aiming to be the “social” writing platform for paid newsletters. The reason I say “social” is because, unlike true social platforms where the purpose is to browse and scroll, Substack actually operates much closer to a tool for writers rather t

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Email subscriptions don’t have network effects by themselves. Right now, there isn’t a large switching cost for a creator to leave Substack – the creator owns their email list and content. The interesting part, however, comes in when the platform provides enough value that a writer would lose subscribers by switching platforms and when subscribers ... See more

In a typical Act III, Substack would abandon intellectualism entirely. But it has an edge—a potential way out: the inbox is still Substack’s secret weapon.

Its direct creator-to-subscriber model can temper the algorithmic flattening that plagues other platforms. E-mail as a channel allows high-brow, middle-brow, and low-brow content to coexist whil... See more

Other Creator's See Creator Is Using Substack