The indirect monetization models leverage the power of the Curator's brand and community, but are loosely coupled in its incentives, with most or none of the ad revenue going towards Curators. We are seeing glimmers of an increasing shift towards direct, more symbiotic business models between curator and commerce, starting with a trend that points... See more
The biggest risk to an evolving system is that you become bogged down by experts from a world that no longer exists. The more evolution you have, the more you should expect that expertise has a shelf life.
If Medium were built on open data, Substack wouldn't have to build an editor, interface, and CMS from scratch. They'd build a subscription module that operates on top of the Medium editor and content. You could continue writing in Medium (or elsewhere) and publishing there while using Substack's subscription feature to build an audience and deliver... See more
The best description of a business I ever heard came from Richard Branson. He's like, "All businesses, it's an idea or service that make somebody else's life better. If you make other people's life better, you'll capture that value in return." So I don't find many of these people are moderate.