Sterling Proffer

People are looking for more meaningful narratives and communities than brands can offer, and companies want to supply this “meaning demand”—but are structurally disincentivized to do so.

Once you have hypotheses for who is successful and why they are successful, you can hypothesize possible adjacent users segments. This will involve changing one or more of the vectors that you identified.

Solving for your adjacent user is not short term thinking; it is this disciplined sequential execution that will enable your longer-term roadmap and faster growth.

Some users have already burned out, which raises the question of how many people with a coveted pro deal will find Substack’s grind unsustainable once they exhaust their advances. At the same time, many other writers simply won’t be able to make a living on Substack no matter how hard they try. But nevertheless, Substack’s growing cast of... See more

The good news is, you have the freedom to pursue the new opportunities. The bad news is, so does everyone else. The good news is you can do it yourself. The bad news is you have to. Again, it looks easy only in retrospect. It always looks doable, from the perspective of people who have already done it.

The industrial economy laid claim to our bodies. The knowledge economy laid claim to our minds. Now the creative economy is laying claim to our souls. Like the farmer with the proverbial pig, we use everything except the squeal. The squeal is when we realize what’s happening to us.