Doing Well From Doing Good: A Conversation with Substack Co-Founder Hamish McKenzie

Enter Substack. Substack, by eschewing the marketing communications (MarCom) market entirely, and focusing on writers people actually wanted to read, reversed the perceptions of the technology. Instead of trying to scam people into giving you “permission” to send them emails, Substack said, why not charge them to subscribe.

Creator Distributes That Content

The longstanding struggles of digital media businesses drive home the fact that internet-native media requires a fundamentally different business approach. Monetizing content assumes that the value is held in the content itself. Under the physics of infinity – frictionless content creation and distribution – the marginal value of every additional a... See more

Substack sits on top of a trend that’s very dear to me: the democratization of monetized information. In simple terms, writers can earn money by sharing valuable information without the dependency on a publisher or newspaper. That’s not just better for creators but also for consumers because they can have a direct relationship with each other.