Chris Best

But the problem with it was there wasn't really a business model to back it up.

It was things got acquired or things kind of stuffed ads in in a way that didn't really work.

And so you were missing – you know, if you were an ambitious young person who wanted to –

had something to give the world and wanted to make this a career or make this a business, it was hard to see a way to do it.

And there was sort of the legacy media, which was in decline.

And there was kind of this, you know, this new world of social media, which you could potentially get a big audience, but wasn't going to give you a way to...

make money doing the work you believe in.

The paywall is maybe not the core of it, but it is the economic bargain.

And it's – look, I think when you – great companies, in my mind, come from the fusion of a really grand, ambitious idea for the world paired with –

modest but achievable first instantiation of that idea.

And the big idea for this is like, look, you can have a different social contract for media and culture.

The idea that this stuff is valuable and the idea that, you know, you should be willing to pay real money for something that

is as meaningful for your life as a great essay or a great podcast or a great book or a great community or any of these things.

That's actually a very big idea.

And once that engine starts to go, this is what you're seeing in the Substack app now.

The Substack app is the best place on the internet.

It's still very small compared to, you know, the other sort of at scale social networks.

But it's, you know, some of the best and smartest and most interesting, most creative things are happening there because of this different economic model.

It's kind of like there's like a, you know, a social contract and a philosophy behind it.

But at the time, you know, when we started, nobody thought that anybody would ever pay for anything.