Substack's Community round is a Massive Testimonial from Writers & Readers
1 Day Left to Invest in Substack
Welcome back!
At the end of the day we’re just all people, who enjoy writing and supporting other writers.
So Substack’s massive Wefunder community round has been a success and I wanted to better understand how writers felt about it. Crucially the community round gives Substack a bit more time to scale their product.
You can Restack this if you think it summarizes it well:
What Writers who Invested are Saying?
“I’m cheering on Substack’s laser-like focus on readers paying publishers, rather than gathering eyeballs and data for advertisers. It completely changes the incentives and therefore the places we live in online and offline in the best way. I’m thrilled to be able to stand with Substack in this way.” -
GenZ Creators are starting to leverage platforms and products that enable them to take ownership of their creativity, following and massive user-generated-content following. Of these Suback and Laylo may be the most interesting. Anything that enables Creators to be empowered is fundamentally good for how the internet is evolving.
This isn’t just about money, this round is also a Collective Testimonial for the future of the internet. It’s for more Substacks, Patreons and Laylos. It’s for Creators actually being able to make a living wage doing what they intend to be doing.
I cannot emphasize this point more.
Substack’s simple publishing tools have helped thousands of writers start thriving businesses.
If the startups flourishes, that number will be millions. And it’s important it succeeds. Along with the Gumroads and other dozens of Creator products that help us earn, own and thrive.
“Substack is making it possible for me to make a living at work I love, on my own terms. I’m excited to see and be a part of how it grows.” -
People want to share their inner wealth with the world. But the internet has been lacking the facility to enable that.
Creators come from all around the world and talk about a million different things.
I believe Substack is the future of media. -
Of course those of us who are growing a following here are more invested in Substack’s Success, but 8,000? Nearly 8,000 writers, readers and fans have invested in the community round. At $8.4 million with more than a day to go on the community round, clearly there are some BIG BELIEVERS.
That’s the thing though, we need to believe in dreams, and not just YouTube fame and TikTok glory. It may take another decade for the Creator economy friendly internet to finally materialize. It’s not quite here yet. But there a buds, and Substack certainly is a beautiful 🌹 Tulip of the future in this regard. Substack has some swag and product-market fit.
The community of writers around it using Notes is indeed a festival of the Subscription Network.
The Deadline is April 20th, 2023
Writers don’t just need the occasional fan, they need actual readers. The Substack Network leverages a community to build an audience very effectively already in 2023. They are somewhat creator centric, somewhat reader centric and very Subscription network orientated. There are deep advantages in this product model for Creators to scale, especially if they have momentum elsewhere.
Creators need products that empower them that don’t sacrifice their mental health or contribute to burnout.
Substack’s payment model raises the bar to what a Creator platform looks like in terms of monetization percentages that go to the owners and creators themselves. The SaaS vendor model in this sense means Substack is agnostic about moderation, the way it should be.
There are over 1,400 comments on the what people are saying section of the Wefunder round.
There are dozens of comments related to the Community round elsewhere like here and here.
Anyone can cherry-pick testimonials and as a means of social proof, but when you have experienced it yourself it feels different.
I was the first publisher on Substack back in 2017, when it was a simple newsletter publishing and payment platform.
Hamish and Chris, two of the three co-founders along with Jairaj, reached out to me in mid-2017 when I was publicly considering starting to charge for Sinocism, my newsletter about China that I wrote free for several years. They flew to Washington D.C. to talk to me about something they wanted to build that would help writers start making money on the Internet. I got lucky. They built a simple yet excellent system for publishing and charging for newsletters. After a few months, I was so impressed with how they were executing that I asked to invest, and they agreed.
Since then the team has kept shipping great new products, raised money from one of the top venture capital firms in the world, and built a platform that enables so many writers to make a living from their work, and so many people to read what they want. And they did all this while managing a startup during the worst pandemic in a century. I have done startups and understand how crazy and hard they can be in the best of times; they have sustained business and product momentum through one of the most difficult business environments in decades.
Substack is far from a simple newsletter publishing platform now. It has evolved into a much more robust creator and community platform, and one of the reasons I am investing more money now is that I believe it has tremendous potential to take its place among the much larger platforms like Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. And it could do so by providing a place for better, more thought-provoking and more civil discourse, and without the perverse incentives created by advertising and the need for ever more eyeballs and clicks. The Social Media Era has changed how so many think, and Substack is a platform that can help many of us get our minds back. -
When
says Substack is the ultimate MVP, Minimum viable product, I take notice. Brian has interviewed hundreds of folk in media, Newsletters and the Creative business.When
speculates on Newsletters, I'm listening. Because fundamentally all of these voices echo much of what I am thinking as well.Subsack’s Pillars
Substack’s mission is to build a new economic engine for culture.
Substack is a subscription network based on writing, podcasting, community, and other forms of culture-making.
The network has more than 35 million active subscriptions, including 2 million paid subscriptions.
The Substack network now drives 40 percent of all subscriptions and 15 percent of paid subscriptions on the platform.
Cumulatively, readers have paid writers more than $300 million through Substack.
No more firebrands this is a real mission to empower Writers. I want Substack’s PR to be pristine, and its story to tell the customers’ story.
I believe in the ideas and spirit behind the concept of substack. We need a more decentralized way of circulating information and one which does not exert control over what is published, in order to ensure that free-speech can live on. - Maurico Longo (Brazil, Investor)
The Liberty of the Next Internet
Substack’s main investor is a16z, they have a major focus on Web3 platforms. Substack is somewhat likely to integrate with Bluesky Social in the future. This is also due to the background of people like Chris Best. The Substack Subscription network actually has a relatively high ceiling.
It can connect with other apps and interoperable frameworks and protocols creating the next layer of the internet. Some of a16z’s most interesting bets are in the area of NFTs, for a Substack Creator to auto-complete an NFT and a drop, isn’t unimaginable.
I'm a paid Substack creator myself, not to mention a paid subscriber to other Substacks. As an independent writer, I believe deeply in the righteousness of the mission to connect creators directly with readers who want to reward them for their work. -
The 1:1 aspect of Creators having creative freedom is extremely important. Many of the quotes and testimonials and even comments refer to this point.
I want to create, express myself, prosper, trade and make more money. Additionally, I want free speech, capitalism and individual rights to thrive. -
The round was a testimonial on freedom. This even as Substack’s own writers try to politicize America’s bizarre poor relationship with content moderation and human rights. This isn’t Canada Paris! This is a SaaS platform that is agonistic. The Verge podcast of Chris Best recently was the dumb stuff you expect from American media.
People still do dumb stuff for clicks, because that’s what the toxic internet taught us to do.