Chris Best

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.

there's a piece of received wisdom that, you know, among professional gamblers, they tend to have started out with a big winning streak at the start of their career.

Um, and of course, if you think about it for a second, that's not because, you know, the reason for that is because people who started their career as a professional gambler with a losing streak actually don't go on to become professional gamblers.

It's just a selection effect.

It's like, oh yes, that's, that's how, that's the origin story of these things.

And I feel a little bit like that because our first customer was this guy, Bill Bishop, who had been writing a new, an email newsletter about, you know,

for an international business and government audience for ages.

He was perfect.

There was probably like five people in the world that were the perfect first customer for Substack, and he was one of them.

And he had been thinking about charging for his work.

He'd been inspired by Ben Thompson, but he kind of couldn't be, you know, didn't want to futz around with all the technology.

So he was sort of this perfect first customer.