Chris Best

I had this parlor trick because I would describe this idea for Substack to people and they would say, ah, that sounds nice.

It would be cool if it would be cool if writers got paid.

But, you know, no one's ever going to really pay for something on the Internet.

That's not how it works.

Like I would never people would tell me I would never pay for some person on the Internet.

And my parlor trick is I would say, well, who's your favorite writer?

And they'd say, you know, so-and-so I'd be like, would you pay five bucks a month for them?

And they would say, well, yeah, for them, for that person, I would, but that's different because they're really good.

They've, I've grown to trust them.

They've got this, they've got something, you know, there's something about that person that they love.

They wouldn't do it in the abstract, but they would do it in the specific.

And that kind of told me, okay, we're actually at the moment where this is ready to happen.

Like it's lots of people doubt that it can happen, but you can actually, it can work.

And, you know, we had sort of like the very initial version of this was, you know, paid email newsletters made simple, right?

That's kind of like the MVP kernel that fully, you know, is the first full realization of the big idea that unlocks for writers, right?

And for a long time, I think people who wanted to copy Substack, including, you know, Twitter and Facebook and lots of other people, they mistook the thing that was working about Substack as the surface level thing.

It's like, ah, it's, you know, email newsletters are the secret or, you know, this thing is the secret.

But it is actually the underlying economic model and the philosophy that makes it go.

There's a few moments that stand out in my memory, but I'll give you two.

And the first was actually when we launched the very first customer.