
Substack - sethbannon
https://a16z.com/2019/07/16/substack/
======
taurath
I don't immediately understand what this solves over say patreon, which has a
lot lower fees (10% + 2.5% for CC fees... holy crap). Whats the value add
here? And for publishing text? Is there DRM involved?

It feels like you're just charging for a paywall and a mailchimp list... maybe
thats enough, but given the amount of failures in the space, it feels like
just another to go on top of the pile. Maybe its the right mix, and they have
some big plans?

One issue from the Terms - if you post something publicly, they can keep it
published and licensed to them forever, even after you delete your account.
I'd think for such a high price, and a high emphasis on content creator
control, you'd not take away the legal rights to delete public posts.

Also pretty disappointed at the arbitration agreement and unilateral terms of
use updates (they can update them at any time, and if you don't agree you will
be kicked off the platform).

[edit: its certainly easy to see the value of something like this existing -
just trying to understand why this is different than the others]

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Is there any site that _doesn 't_ allow for unilateral terms of use updates?
I'm not being snarky; I genuinely haven't seen one, and I'm not sure what the
alternative would be. "We're changing our terms of use, but if you don't agree
with our changes, you can keep following the old rules you originally agreed
to" sounds like it'd be a nightmare to keep track of in practice.

~~~
taurath
I think its more important when you're putting something on a platform that is
publishing your work. Having control of your work is paramount - this is what
they're saying is one of the benefits of the platform. That they can
effectively change the "license" to creators work at any time and kick them
off the platform if they disagree seems like a large amount of rights to give
away.

They could for instance have a generalized terms of service that does NOT
cover works licensing, and works licensing be its own agreement which is not
subject to change except with more proper controls than an auto-agree if you
use the platform any time after they unilaterally update.

Who owns the audience and content at the end of the day? Legally, its still
the content creators copyright, but with an unlimited irrevocable license
Substack de-facto is co-owner. The audience is entirely built on their
platform - the email list looks like it'll be owned entirely by Substack since
its through their platform - no mention of this in the ToS. I doubt there'll
be an export feature. They may legally protect their rights to "your"
subscribers.

------
dawhizkid
Surprised something like a simple platform for paid email newsletters would be
something that catches the eye of VCs hoping to find the next unicorn. The
best case scenario feels like Medium, which to my knowledge has changed course
dozens of times and doesn't seem to be going particularly well.

The current subscriber figure I've seen is around 50k paid subscribers across
all newsletters. I think even in a best case scenario of having 1m subscribers
pay $10/month, that is 1m x $10/mo x 12mo x 10% = $12m in revenue/year (at 20x
the current subscriber rate). Unclear how that translates to a VC-sized
unicorn biz.

~~~
andrew_null
hey! This is andrew from a16z -- substack is still relatively new (~2 years)
and the product is solving a real problem for writers. The numbers are already
strong, but think about where it might be over the next 5-10 years. I think
your calculation focuses too much on where it is now versus where it might go
in the future

~~~
neotokio
Profits scaling were already discussed in a comment above, ofc, this assumes
linear growth where substack is charging (as it is now) only on subscription
without going in for revenue from promotional activities (internal promotion
of content), advertisements (external sponsors), reader/creator data (google
model) or digital/print publishing (leverage of user base __substack reach
out) in form of a (e)book. Yes, this can make profit multiplier really big
(12M /yr subscription + 50x from else)

But what about integrity of service over time then?

All of this means losing initial flavor of 'doing-things-differently', a lot
of other companies can provide boilerplate '-stack' for publishing newsletter
(ie, recent yc news
-[https://github.com/knadh/listmonk](https://github.com/knadh/listmonk) \-
self hosted). So, in the end, the only edge of content hosting platform is how
well it delivers it's content (UX, rec systems, internal ads), the bigger
substack gets, the less of an edge for its creator base it will have - same as
medium.com.

I risk a statement that substack is happening only because medium.com is
ending.

Yes, as an author I would be interested in hassle free publishing, but after
that, i am interested only in how service is helping me grow an audience,
nothing else.

------
simonebrunozzi
Long, nice (and a bit too verbose) article about the media space, and why A16Z
has invested in the series A for Substack.

I am personally very excited to see how Substack will evolve. I think that
they are trying to solve a very compelling problem, and I also think the
founders have managed to build a straightforward, polished product.

Side note / rant: I wish the large majority of the "crypto" crowd would take
note of how "solving a problem" should trump any "cool tech stuff" when you
want to build a company. (and no, I don't want to name any names here, you can
find plenty of examples, even specific to the media industry, just by googling
for a few minutes).

~~~
seibelj
The model of cryptocurrency is nothing like a traditional business. In one
sense, it is arguably the most fair way to pay developers for their work - the
more useful a coin / token, the more it's worth, and the majority of overhead
goes straight to developers for their work on the software.

This conversation is extremely complex and I'm not sure why you related
investment in substack to crypto.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I owe you some clarification, as I probably bridged the two in my mind, but
clearly not in my comment :)

I think that Substack focused very nicely on product effectiveness, and as a
result its business is now doing so well that A16Z decided to invest.

Most crypto projects in the media space tried to offer similar features, but
instead of focusing on a great user experience, they mostly focused on "cool
technical stuff" that had nothing to do with adding value for the user.

Perhaps it is more clear now? I hope so.

You also say: "[crypto] it is arguably the most fair way to pay developers for
their work".

I think that we don't need a cryptocurrency to pay for a media subscription.

Also, we don't need crypto for micro-payments - you can simply handle it with
a credit system (e.g. you pay 1$ and you can then use $0.01 to pay media
content 100 times using your credit).

~~~
seibelj
I was meaning something more along the lines of 0x
([https://0x.org/](https://0x.org/)) where the token powers a decentralized
exchange protocol, and the more the protocol is used the more the protocol
token is worth. It's more akin to the creator of SMTP making money for every
email ever sent. Instead of selling data or being advertising powered, you
charge access inherently every time the protocol is used. It is simply a
different business model and time will tell if it pays off.

------
npollock
If you want to understand the appeal of Substack to journalists/writers,
there's a great interview on the BOC podcast with one of the more successful
authors on the platform, Robert Cottrell (formerly of The Economist)

[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-indie-
newsletter-...](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-indie-newsletter-
generated-over-10-000-paying/id1339451218?i=1000438126489)

------
ChristianBundy
I don't have any strong opinions on the product being built by Substack Inc,
but I _do_ feel weird that they swiped the name "substack", which is a handle
that's been used by open source hacker James Halliday for at least a decade.
[0]

It's been his handle on GitHub, Twitter, Hacker News, YouTube, Reddit, etc.,
and it makes me uncomfortable to see a startup try to turn his name into a
corporate brand.

[0]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20091113043728/http://substack.n...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091113043728/http://substack.net/about)

~~~
jasode
_> they swiped the name "substack", which is a handle that's been used by open
source hacker James Halliday_

Did they use the "substack" name because JH made it famous? I've heard of the
word "substack" before but I've never heard of James Halliday.

"substack" was in use for several decades before 2006:

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=substack&year_...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=substack&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

~~~
ChristianBundy
I don't mean that they used Substack _because_ JH was using it, but a quick
web search of the company name would make it obvious that there was a naming
conflict.

------
onemoresoop
[https://substack.net](https://substack.net)

~~~
futureastronaut
Even worse than having Golang replace your Go language!

------
merpnderp
Am I the only one who saw the name and thought this would be about the Node.js
prolific module author?

------
shay_ker
Substack seems like a not-horrible acq target for Medium, if Medium has the
funds to buy it. Many content creators appear to trust Substack and trust the
potential to earn money on it. The acquisition would be worth it for the trust
alone.

The model for paying content creators seems interesting, but I'm really
curious what the market opportunity here is. My guess is that it's not that
high... so it seems likely that Substack would consider inserting ads into the
free newsletters.

However, if they pivoted to other mediums like video, then maybe there's
something here. People will pay really little for a blog post emailed to them
each week, but they'll pay a ton more for great video content.

~~~
cjbest
> People will pay really little for a blog post emailed to them each week

You'd be surprised.

~~~
shay_ker
Compared to Netflix tho? Individually there may be outliers, but I'm wondering
about the market as a whole

------
rorygibson
Substack is cool - but it's kinda expensive.

I wrote a short blog a few months ago about how to get most of the benefits it
offers with way less cost (and without being tied to a single platform) -
plugging together Mailchimp and Trolley with a static website and a l'il bit
of Zapier.

[https://trolley.link/2019/03/03/paid-email-
newsletter.html](https://trolley.link/2019/03/03/paid-email-newsletter.html)

(Disclosure: [https://trolley.link](https://trolley.link) , which I've used
for the payment elements in this example, is my product)

------
tschellenbach
People are willing to pay for educational content, most of the content on
Substack is news. It's hard to get people to pay for news. Interesting to see
another play in this space though, hope someone gets it right.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Isn't News the current big winner in paywalls for articles? The NYT digital
service grosses $700M.

~~~
vuln
It’s also interesting that the NYT is the only online news site to almost
always have at least one article on the front page of HN.

~~~
jumbopapa
WSJ is on the front page a lot too.

------
ihm
This needs an editor badly. You have to make it through 4 long paragraphs of
grandiose posturing before learning what the post is even about.

------
random023987
I can't wait to see the flood of posts in 12 months about "why I'm leaving
substack"

