Substack is at a Great Crossroads

Notes on Notes and Burning Cash

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Hey Everyone,

(Warning: This post has tons of typos, and I’ll get around to editing it.)

It’s April 9th, 2023, and I’m enjoying the anticipation before Substack launches its Notes product (Thanks Mel!).

I’m always a bit alarmed at its PR war with Elon Musk and of course, its tendency to burn though cash very quickly (in 2021).

Substack has a lot of ideology for a startup basically built off the backs of political Twitter traffic. But let’s study their financials shall we? Now I love Substack, but I have to be honest, does the referral traffic of 17k paid writers constitute their entire approach to marketing?

While Substack bashes Advertising, their hyper-aggressive PR (We did get some Flack) of the last few years had made them a community for hotheads, conspiracy theorists and political antagonists of various kinds of clickbait. Substack grew off the back of covid vaccine conspiracy theorists. Even my experience of their Notes closed beta, has sadly confirmed this. Does this startup understand marketing?

I’m not sure they have the budget for it either way. I can love the product, but there are aspects to Substack’s origin and growth story that irk me. It comes down to not taking some business aspects very seriously in my view.

I’m all for Creator middle class rights you see, I’m for data transparency and many other things.