Substack Cofounder on AI Slop Content & the Decline of Social Media

1. 0:00 – 0:48

   The Future of Media & Substack’s Role

   1. ETErik Torenberg0:00

      Let's talk a little bit about the, the future of media. Are people going, going to be reading less?

   2. CBChris Best0:05

      Great writing, great media, great culture in general is this inherently valuable thing. We've entered a world where attention is the scarce resource.

   3. KBKatherine Boyle0:13

      There was one platform that stood up and said, "Hey, we are, we are protecting free speech," and that was Substack.

   4. CBChris Best0:18

      This was also an era where, like, the blogging ecosystem was sort of dying. A really important moment, um, to actually save blogging really and, and sort of like writing on the Internet.

   5. CBChris Best0:27

      In the early days, people would often say to me in an accusatory tone, "Substack is just blogging with a business model." And I was like, "You know, that sounds pretty good."

   6. ETErik Torenberg0:36

      We've been talking a lot about disrupting media. What are, what are the big plans here?

   7. CBChris Best0:39

      I aspire that the Substack app can be a place where you, you look back at the time you spend on it and think, "Damn, I'm glad I did that. That made me a better person."

2. 0:48 – 3:19

   The 2020 Media Landscape and Free Speech

   1. ETErik Torenberg0:50

      Katherine, we've been talking for years about how much we, we, we love Substack, even before we were formally, uh, affiliated with the, with the company. Um, wh- why don't you go first and talk about what you find so remarkable or striking about Substack's impact?

   2. KBKatherine Boyle1:02

      Yeah, I think the, the impact is, is truly understated. Um, and I think we've moved so fast as a country, and as an Internet, and, and as a world in the last few years that we've sort of memory holed what it was like in 2020, 2021, but particularly for media, how crazy the 2020 moment was for anyone in the thought leadership space, anyone in the media space. So let me just go back to the summer of 2020. Um, James Bennett, who was the editor of the op-ed page at The New York Times, was forced to resign for publishing a sitting senator, an op-ed by a sitting senator who was still in office. Um, you know, the, the, the craziness that was around writing anything that was seen as heretical, or asking questions, or something that was seen as unorthodox in 2020. There were mass firings. Um, you know, Twitter deplatformed a sitting president, um, you know, Facebook as well, right? Like, it, it was an extraordinary time and, and, and I would say a fearful time, where ver- very many people were afraid to say what they were thinking. You know, there was, there was always rumors of people having unfettered conversations, like how dangerous it was that the people were, were having these conversations behind the backs of journalists. And there was one platform that stood up and said, "Hey, we are, we are protecting free speech," and that was Substack. And I think people forget that because it's just seen as, "Oh, of course, we're in this new time." You know, Elon bought Twitter in November 2022. The Overton window has swung open. People can say what they thought, and I think people have forgotten that only a few years ago, we were in desperate times, where people were losing their livelihoods. No one was willing to say that, that freedom of speech was under attack. Um, but the one platform, the infrastructure that was there to support those people, it was, it was Chris, it was Substack, and they never wavered. And so I think that is the cultural impact. Like, where we are today would not be... Like, we would not be where we are today without Substack. Uh, so I get very emotional. I'm like a super fan of Substack. I was on Substack in 2021.

   3. ETErik Torenberg3:02

      Yeah.

   4. KBKatherine Boyle3:02

      I'm very proud of that, but it's like, it's, it's one of these things where I think we need to remember that we could've been living in a totally different time and a totally different culture had people not stood up and had the courage to say that freedom of speech matters.

   5. ETErik Torenberg3:14

      Yeah, and this was years before Elon had, had, had bought X, and, and it was just kind of the, the first bastion of, of,

3. 3:19 – 6:10

   Substack’s Founding Philosophy

   1. ETErik Torenberg3:19

      of free speech. Uh, Chris, why don't you talk about sort of when was the moment or what was the evolution for how you guys decided, "Hey, w- we're gonna take this stance, even if it's gonna upset some of our most important writers, even if it's gonna, gonna upset some employees, some investors, the, the ecosystem"? Ta- talk about what that was like for you.

   2. CBChris Best3:36

      I've always seen the, [clears throat] the free speech thing as sort of an, an important pillar, but not the main pillar of what Substack is actually setting out to do. You know, the way that we think of Substack is making a new economic engine for culture, and the idea... And it's not a partisan idea. It's not a political idea directly. It's just this idea that, you know, great things are made by independent voices who can do the work they believe in, make money, have editorial freedom, have a direct connection with their audience. Basically, you know, uh, the backdrop of starting Substack was the, just this idea that, hey, you know, the Internet came along and smashed a lot of the existing business models for culture. And cr- what came in the wake of, of that was these massive Internet-scale networks that are phenomenal businesses and that connected everybody like never before, and had a lot of amazing positive attributes, but in, in my estimation, in our estimation, were kinda driving us crazy. And the core of Substack is this idea of independence, this idea that the individual left to, like, do the thing they believe, say the thing they believe, make the thing they believe, supported by an audience that's there for them, is this, like, crucial ingredient in a healthy culture in a free society. And freedom of the press, freedom of speech, is one necessary precondition for that. Um, and we... You know, I, I kinda think that in the long arc of history, that's, that's not hopefully that controversial of an idea. I think it's a very American idea. Um, but at the time, w- just because of the world, [chuckles] the world was as it was, it was kind of, uh, out of vogue, shall we say, quite severely. Um, and the people that it really... I, I think in 2020, the thing that surprised me, the people that felt the brunt of that were not conservatives, were not Republicans necessarily. It was the, it was the people in the liberal media. Uh, in, in, you know, in, in, in my telling, I would say selectively the best and most interesting people that were getting just thrown from the ramparts. Uh, and the fact that this thing that we were creating, this new economic engine for culture that gives you this independence, happened to be there at a time where a bunch of the, the most interesting writers in the world were getting summarily tossed from their [chuckles] longtime institutions, you know, that, that lined up really well for us from a business perspective. It was, it was-Spicy from a cultural perspective, but that's, that's the gig

4. 6:10 – 8:27

   The Evolution of Blogging and Business Models

   1. ACAndrew Chen6:10

      And then may, may, maybe just, just quickly add, you know, I, I was gonna say that the, um, uh, it's amazing to see on the other, you know, side of the coin with just the blogging ecosystem how much that's changed. You know, we've gone through kind of, you know, LiveJournal and Xanga and, you know, Blogger, and we had, you know, Google Reader, RIP, and then you had kind of basically a phase, you know, Chris, when, when I met, um, uh, you know, your, your cofounder, Hamish, um, initially, and the, and the company was, was three people. Um, this was also an era where, like, the blogging ecosystem was sort of dying, and, uh, you know, people sort of, you know, you, you had sort of the open, um, you know, WordPress powered, you know, blogging ecosystem, but there was no economic model. Um, you ended up with a lot of, like, spam, a lot of, like, you know, people hacking, you know, like, like, these, these poorly maintained, um, you know, PHP websites. Um, and, uh, you know, and, and, and so, you know, I think this is also a really important moment, um, to actually save blogging, um, really, and, and sort of, like, writing on the internet to actually create a, a model that, you know, for a long time people just thought, "Oh, well, I'm just gonna, you know, plug XYZ, you know, Amazon, uh, book and get affiliate fees," or, "I'm gonna put Google AdSense, you know, all over my, all over my blog." That was the only way to create an, you know, sort of this, this, uh, in any sort of economic thing. And for mo- you know, for all of us that are in tech, um, you know, it was cool to see that, you know, you had Ben Thompson from St- Stratechery really show that, like, oh, there's maybe an alternate model. Um, but it was almost, like, always, like, a curiosity and something that was, like, annoying to actually build. You know, you'd have to set up your, your, your, your blog. You'd have to, you know, set up your payments. You'd have to do all these other things. And so, um, you know, I, I think also really important moment for, for Substack to kind of emerge from the internet media side to actually clean that all up and actually make it, you know, e- easy, easy to actually, uh, you know, put together something that, that, that, uh, you know, that, that became the, the big economic engine.

   2. CBChris Best8:12

      In the early days, people would often say to me in an accusatory tone, "Substack is just blogging with a business model." And I was like, "You know, that sounds pretty good."

   3. ACAndrew Chen8:20

      [laughs]

   4. CBChris Best8:20

      Like, if that's all it was, that would be pretty cool, and it turns out it's more. It's podcasting. It's a whole network. But I don't know, it s- seems good.

5. 8:27 – 11:41

   Building Direct Connections with Audiences

   1. ACAndrew Chen8:27

      Yeah, and it, it, it really reaches the dream, achieves the dream of sort of reaching your audience in the sense of, you know, if you have 100,000 Twitter followers but you can't really engage them, and you're dependent on the platform, and, and, you know, sort of, you know, that's, that's not as thrilling as owning your, your own e- e- email audience. And I, I think what you, what I love about what you guys did is you took the risk that, hey, we're gonna give people their emails, and they can choose to leave if, if, if they want to as opposed to being trapped, you know, to, to the platform. But we're just going to build such a compelling offering that writers are gonna wanna stay, and it's amazing, you know, years later to see a, a large majority, if, if not all of the, the biggest writers, stay on the platform.

   2. CBChris Best9:09

      There's only one thing that's better than people staying on the platform, which is when people leave the platform, take advantage of the export features, and then subsequently return to open arms-

   3. ACAndrew Chen9:18

      [laughs]

   4. CBChris Best9:19

      ... uh, and come back. We call them boomerangs, and we, we love to see that too. I think the right to exit is really important. People thought that was very dumb. They said, "Well, if you just let your customers leave, like, won't they just leave?" Uh, and I think in the, in the short run, that might be true, but in the long run, that created the right structure for us. Like, it meant that we have to, and still have to, build a network that has enough value that even though you can leave, you don't want to, and even if you do leave, you, you might choose to come back. And I think that has caused us to keep the right thing at the forefront of our minds. But I would say there's a, I think there's something even more important about the direct connection, which is it's not just that I can leave. It's that, you know, uh, to, in my mind, just, like, what a subscription is, is the option to give someone to, like, reach out and tap you on the shoulder. It's to say, "If you want to s- you don't have to send me an email all the time if you don't want to, but if you want to send me an email, if you want to send me a push notification, if you want to show up at the top of my inbox, I kind of, like, give you that right." And something that, that lets you do as a, as a writer or as a creator is to take creative risk. Something that I hear a lot from YouTubers is people who are very good at YouTube, people who have massive followings, who are, who are very successful, who say, "I have this idea for a thing that I could make, and I know that it would be great, and I know there's an audience out there who would like it, but I can't make it. Because if I made it the way that I wanna make it, no one's gonna see it, 'cause it doesn't please the algorithm." And so the direct connection, in addition to being this way you can bring your audience with you, is a way to give humans the power to override the algorithm and say, "Hey, I've got this trust relationship with my audience. I want to exercise it and go out on a limb and say, 'Hey, I wanna call in that favor and, like, have you pay attention to this thing that I'm saying is good.'" And sometimes it might be bad, and you might unsubscribe, but sometimes it might be great, and it might be something great that could not have existed if the only way to reach everyone was to kind of, like, you know, please the algorithm every single time.

   5. ACAndrew Chen11:19

      So i- in the beginning, it was a, a blogging platform with a, with a business model, as, as we just said, and, and, and the vision has gotten bigger in- into more of a, more of a network, m- more of a platform a- across formats. Expand on what, what is the big vision for Substack, and I'm also curious i- i- how, how that's evolved, if that sort of, you know, the vision in 2018, 2019, 2020 is, is the, is the same vision as it is now. So

6. 11:41 – 17:57

   The Vision and Growth of Substack

   1. ACAndrew Chen11:41

      te- tell us the vision, then we can talk about h- you know, trace the evolution of it.

   2. CBChris Best11:44

      I would say that we started from the very beginning with this, you know, I, I think a very ambitious [laughs] , some might say derangedly ambitious vision. Um, you know, again, the backdrop was kind of we think that the internet has massively reshaped the economic incentives for media, and y- th- th- actually, the origin of the company, I'll just briefly tell this 'cause it's germane here, was I was taking some time off after my last startup, and I'd always wanted to be a writer. I'd always been an avid reader. I've thought that what you read matters, and, you know, so it, it's not, what you read, the media you consume is not just a way you spend your life. It changes who you are.It changes who you are as an individual, it changes how you see the world, and it changes cultures and societies. And so great writing, great media, great culture in general is this inherently valuable thing. And my first instinct was, I should make some of that. Like, I could write an essay. How hard would that be? I know how to program, I know how to type. And I started writing what was supposed to be this essay or this blog post detailing my frustrations with the media economy on the internet. So this is where it started. I'm like, wah, wah, wah, look at this, look at all these great things the internet has done, but it's also kind of like created these, you know, memetic evolutionary landscapes that are driving us nuts. Um, you know, this is, this is going nowhere good. Look at how the culture is shifting. Uh, wah, wah, wah. And I sent this essay to my friend Hamish, who's actually a writer, and he let me down very gently. Um, he said, "You know, it's 2017 and your essay is about, you know, maybe the newspaper businesses are in trouble, and, like, maybe Facebook is not an unalloyed good. Dude, we know. Uh, everybody knows that, or everybody who's in my industry knows that. But the better question is, let's say that all of those things you're complaining about are true, what could you do about it? How could that be different?" And then we started arguing about that, and so we, we had this sort of, uh, I think maybe the... This is an a16z relevant thing, is this sort of techno-optimist idea that it's like, look, you're not gonna turn back the clock. These... If there's new powerful technologies that are changing how everything works, and, you know, those things come with trade-offs, and there's like upsides and downsides, and there's contingencies. There's historical contingencies where the world could tip in one of many ways. Um, the right way to address that is not to lament it or to wish, hey, we should go back. It's, hey, we should put these things to use in service of people. We should imagine what the best version of this future is as these new networks take off, as these new technologies take off, and we should work proactively to help usher in the better, freer, more exciting version of that future. You know, heady stuff. And then [chuckles] the, so we had this big idea, this big sort of grandiose thing, and then we just had the kernel of like the way to start. [lips smack] And the way to start was we could make it dead simple to start a paid email newsletter. And that was a thing that like there was, uh, probably like 20 people in the world that really, really wanted it, but they really wanted it like it was gonna be the best thing ever for them. And it was the kernel. It was like the smallest possible instantiation of that much bigger idea where, you know, you were gonna create this new economic engine that lets any independent voice make the things they believe in, make, make real money doing it. Um, and it's... I mean, it's a way around the cold start problem 'cause you could have an in, you could have an individual person. Like the very first Substack newsletter made total sense. Uh, so we started with a very, with the, the, the grandiose version of Substack firmly fixed in our minds. We'd always imagined, you know, we'd look... Even then, I think we looked at YouTube as the, something that was like maybe the closest version to this thing that, that already existed.

   3. ETErik Torenberg15:35

      Talk more about how you decided to, to launch Notes or, or, or, or go from, okay, we've got this sort of business engine where we've got all, all these writers making a lot of money. Where do we go from here?

   4. CBChris Best15:46

      I'll tell one, I'll tell one step before that 'cause it, it w- went into my thinking. But very early on, in the very early days of Substack, we were like, okay, the thing that's gonna be really different about Substack is it's all gonna be paid because the, that's the thing that aligns the incentives. That's the thing that, uh, you know, makes this thing different. And so in order to be very pure to our vision, we're not gonna allow anybody to have a free Substack or to like send emails to free people. And that evaporated with our first customer because he was like, "Oh, okay. I'll, then I'll just use MailChimp for the free version, and then I'll f- yeah, I'll funnel the people here." And he created this like, you know, stitched together thing, and it was like, oh, this is really dumb because if you want to be successful, if you wanna make a successful paid Substack, you have to have a free Substack. And in order to make that experience good and have the conversions actually work, we should just support that. And it's not a, it's not a abrogation of our vision. It's actually like you need... I- in order for the thing to work, you have to provide this other thing. And then the thing that we realized not too long after that was the same was actually true about Twitter and about the social networks, which was, you know, in 2018, 2019, if you wanted to have a successful Substack, you had to also have a successful Twitter or a successful Facebook or a successful LinkedIn increase. Like, like, the, you had to have some top of funnel place. You know, the same way that the, the legacy media was struggling and s- like you had to have Facebook traffic, or you had to have Google traffic, or you had to have something. There was always these other networks that were the source of your business. So even if you were this independent writer, excuse me, independent creator, you were, you were downstream of these other platforms. And that had both a philosophical consequence, which is we're trying to make this place that has these different incentives, but you're still at the whim of the, you know, the crazy [chuckles] the Thunderdome, right? You still have to play the Twitter game, or you still have to play the Facebook game. Um, and it had this very practical problem of those networks don't give a shit about you as

7. 17:57 – 22:00

   Algorithms, Networks, and Creator Incentives

   1. CBChris Best17:57

      a creator that makes money. And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg can decide in a fit of pique that people are h- annoying him about politics, so he's gonna like turn off politics. And if you're a politics creator that depends on Facebook for your livelihood, you know, that's, uh, that's a, a existential event. And it's not even 'cause it's like they're trying to do that. It's just like, hey, these networks twist and turn, um, and they don't really have any intrinsic interest in helping you build your audience and make the thing you believe.And so we had this idea that in the long run, the only way we were gonna like really make that work for people is to build one of these networks ourselves that was built on different laws of physics. And so we were gonna build, you know, a network, a place, a destination, a place that you could go and experience the internet and have like all of those great things that you get from social networks, but with a different business model and with a different incentive structure. And it would be, it's not gonna like replace them, but it'll live alongside them, and it'll be like the one place on the internet where it, it actually does want you to succeed. It actually does want you to go and find something interesting and long-form to read or long-form to watch. It does want you to f- like find and fall in love with something enough that you might choose to pay for it. And that's gonna create a very different feel from everywhere else that just wants to keep you glued to the screen. So we had sort of this like phil- like theoretical idea of why we had to do this thing, but we also knew that it was gonna be quite difficult. Like, it's very hard to start a new internet scale network, uh, and it took years.

   2. ACAndrew Chen19:37

      And by the way, Chris, to, to your earlier point on this, on, on the algorithm, um, it's so interesting to watch actually all of the major platforms move towards the algorithmic for you, you know, world because in that world, then actually the creator's relationship with their audience is even further away, right? Like, it's, it's literally-

   3. CBChris Best19:57

      Sure

   4. ACAndrew Chen19:57

      ... like it actually maybe doesn't matter. And this all originally started with, oh well, you know, we have this problem of any, you know, social app where you need people to follow enough folks so that they get enough, you know, feed content. And well, one way to solve that is even if you're not following somebody, maybe we'll just kind of suggest things, and it turns out then the algorithms are so good that maybe that should be their entire feed is just suggested content. But then what does it mean as a creator to even build a following on one of these platforms if, you know, even if you have, you know, 100,000 followers or whatever, maybe they'll see none of your content because the algorithm like doesn't d-d-doesn't, doesn't care, like is caring less and less about the follower graph these days.

   5. CBChris Best20:39

      Definitely. And I think there's, I mean, there's two, and there's two, uh, tacks you could take with that, and the one that I think a lot of people, their first reaction is to say, "Oh, well, algorithms are bad," right? Like, the algorithm is whatever. It's severing our ties. It's putting us into bubbles. It's exposing us too much to people outside our... Like, whatever the thing is, you know, okay. So there's, there's trade-offs with algorithms, therefore algorithms are bad. I think a more productive take is algorithms are powerful, and they're a tool that people use, and they serve the ends that we tell them. And if we tell them better ends, they'll help us get better results. And so this is something that we, we talked about a lot at Substack 'cause I think people had this... There's a lot of our users who felt like at the time, they're like, "The good thing about Substack is there isn't an algorithm, and I just connect directly, and that's the thing that's actually good." And I think the take that we have is there's something that's much better than that, which is what if there was an algorithm that actually served you and that was actually trying to help you find the things that you deeply valued and actually had a, you know, uh, like, uh, the, the, the nerd term for this is an objective function. If the objective function was actually closer to... In, in, in, in, in other words, the, the secret hidden master that the algorithm is serving is actually your own interest rather than, you know, trying to sell you more ads.

8. 22:00 – 23:48

   High Value Audiences and Advertising

   1. ETErik Torenberg22:00

      Y- you have a very sophisticated writer base and then by extension, a very sophisticated reader base, very high value audiences and, and now especially with, with video and people aren't us- used to paying for video in the, in the same way they're used to paying for writing partially because of your [laughs] Substack's innovation there. Um, will you also launch an ad network at some point, or, or do you think that risks sort of the golden goose in some way, or how, how do you think about that?

   2. CBChris Best22:24

      I kinda take the same, you know, the same thing we talked about with an algorithm, the same thing about building a network, um, I'm gonna say the same thing when we talk about AI, which I assume we will do. Um, but I see, you know, sponsorships, advertising is a powerful force, and I think there are definitely like the w- the thing that would, would break Substack is if we just looked at the same way that the legacy social media things built advertising and said, "Oh, we're just gonna copy that," like that's gonna work. Because w- if we did that, the thing we would be doing is importing the incentive structure and the business model that puts the platform at odds with the people on the platform. Um, on the other hand, there are a ton of Substackers today, some of them are like, in my opinion, some of the very best Substackers, who are selling sponsorships. And I think there's a version of unlocking, you know, more economic, more economic opportunity, more ep- economic upside that is aligned with the idea of independence, the idea of having differentiated value and quality. Um, and so we're very interested in doing that, but, you know, my belief is we have to take a sort of a first principles approach and not just, you know, stuff ads in a thing, but ask the question, like, what would the good version of this be, and help build that.

9. 23:48 – 29:17

   AI, Content Creation, and the Value of Attention

   1. ETErik Torenberg23:48

      Yeah, I think the, the, the bear case for, for ads h- has been sort of, you know, d- dumb it down content or, or sort of, you know, c- click, clickbait for, for the masses. The, the, the bull case has been sort of allows, you know, niche writers to, to monetize, uh, s- without charging their, their audience a, a, a, a ton, or it, you know, doesn't fall succumb, uh, it doesn't succumb to audience capture in the same way that a subscription bus- could, could. Ba- basically there are, there are pros and cons with, with, with both business models, and you guys have to, you know, figure out how to, how to integrate it in a way that, that, that works for the reader and the writer.

   2. CBChris Best24:21

      And I think the same is true of all of this magical AI technology that's coming online. I mean, we're, we, we're building a live product that basically feels like, you know, I do a... feels like doing a FaceTime call and then magically turns into a highly produced podcast and a YouTube video and a series of short form clips and a transcript, and pretty soon it's gonna be in whatever language you want. And we just, we're gonna be, live in a world where, you know, one thing you could have is you could have a bunch of like-AI slop that kind of keeps dumb people clicking. The other thing you could have is you could have a future where there's way more creative leverage, and where the people who are making this independent stuff, who have the independent voice, can do way more, can make something much better, can realize their vision much more fully. Uh, and so in all these things, I'm kind of... You know, I think you look at the technology not as good or bad, you look at it as a, as a powerful means to an end, and if you pick the right ends, then applying the technology is, is very exciting.

   3. KBKatherine Boyle25:20

      This is something I think you were so early to understand that is sort of common knowledge now or becoming more common knowledge, but wasn't five years ago, which is that everyone can be a creator, and we don't have enough content. Like, I think there's, there's this horrible meme, like we have... We're... Podcasts are over. We have too much content. There's too much online. And it's like, actually it's the opposite. If you look at any of the For You feeds, I mean, most of it is now AI slop, which says that there's, like, there's just-

   4. CBChris Best25:47

      Yeah

   5. KBKatherine Boyle25:47

      ... a, a, a dearth of extraordinary content. And what I always thought was so brilliant about what you understood about professional writers, and having been a professional writer, it was almost like you were inside my psyche. The hardest part about writing is writing. Like, it's really, really hard to get [laughs] started writing if you, if you're, like, a true writer and you have writer's block. And so everything you can do to make the production of that writing easier, everything you can do to sort of create the, the flywheel where your readers are expecting something, you're, you're artificially creating deadlines. It- if you can create something very quickly that turns into a host of different products that then gives you the positive feedback loop that you need to keep doing it. Like, there was something about from the very beginning you really understood sort of the, the artist's way or the writer's drama of just how difficult it [laughs] is-

   6. CBChris Best26:30

      Yeah

   7. KBKatherine Boyle26:30

      ... to be a creator. And that exists within everyone, right? Like, it's like none of us are... You know, none of us are, are... Our day jobs are not writing, right? But all of us are writers, all of us are creators o- on this, on this pod. And so there's something about if you can make people's lives much easier and make the, the, the creation loop easier, people who have day jobs will then do it and create magical, you know, great content, uh, to rival the, the kind of terrible content [laughs] that now is being produced by these, these, like, meme farms. Like, I think, I think that's, like, a, a very ear- You had a very early insight, and you're, you're seeing sort of AI push us this direction-

   8. CBChris Best27:03

      Yeah

   9. KBKatherine Boyle27:03

      ... where it's gonna be this hybrid of really creative people using AI to, to make, make beautiful products that otherwise it would be like the, the barrier for entry is way too high to do that.

   10. CBChris Best27:14

       Yeah, I started a whole company to procrastinate from finishing an essay.

   11. KBKatherine Boyle27:17

       [laughs]

   12. CBChris Best27:17

       So I definitely know, know that end of it. But, but the way, the way... The thing you're describing and the way I, I, I would put it, would've put it at the time and I would still put it is we- we've entered a world where attention is the scarce resource, and that's actually not... That's not new with AI. I, I date this to kind of the social media revol- the internet re- revolution, where it used to be like, when I was a kid, you could get bored. You could be sitting around, and you'd be like, "Dang, I, I wish I had something to pay attention to right now, and if you could give me something free to distract me, that would be a really good deal." And that was like, you know, that was the, the situation where the original, like, you know, m- media, like, social media network giants rose up, was it's like there's this land grab for attention. Everybody has, has so much attention to give and not enough things to distract them, and we have won that war. We have won the war on boredom, right? Nobody has the problem of I have five minutes and I don't have anything to do to kill that time. But the amount of attention I have is not infinite. And so now I live in a world where there's, there's no s- there's no scarcity of content, but there's a huge scarcity of good content. There's a huge scarcity of things that are worth paying attention to. And this is the fundamental insight of Substack, is, you know, as somebody who has one life to live, if I could spend a little bit of money to get better culture, better ideas, more interesting use of my time, things that help me become more the person I want or aspire to be, that's actually a phenomenal deal, and it would be insane of me not to be willing to spend money or spend a bit of effort to, to find that better thing. And people are starting... The culture is starting to catch up now, I think, to this reality that's been true for a decade, that, you know, you're... Don't... You're spending your life when you choose what media to, to consume.

   13. ETErik Torenberg29:09

       I, I, I think the, uh... Another huge contribution that you guys have made, um, and it, it, it is around price discovery,

10. 29:17 – 33:01

    Unbundling, Rebundling, and the New Media Economy

    1. ETErik Torenberg29:17

       where, where it turns out the, the true value for, let's say, Noah Smith is- isn't 80K writing at Bloomberg, it's a million dollars or, or whatever it is that he makes now wr- writing on his own. If, if only it had existed when Katherine was a reporter at the Washington Post, maybe she wouldn't have had to, you know, slide away-

    2. KBKatherine Boyle29:31

       Wouldn't have had to suffer through this venture career.

    3. CBChris Best29:33

       There's two, there's two... Yeah, two people on this... Maybe three.

    4. ETErik Torenberg29:35

       Yeah. Yeah.

    5. CBChris Best29:36

       All of you are actually people that we've tried to-

    6. ETErik Torenberg29:37

       Yeah

    7. CBChris Best29:38

       ... recruit to be Substackers-

    8. ETErik Torenberg29:39

       Yeah

    9. CBChris Best29:39

       ... but wound up at a16z instead.

    10. ETErik Torenberg29:41

        [laughs] Uh, yeah, exact- And so it is just fascinating to see ka- y- to... You, you guys align kind of value capture and v- and value creation in a way that w- wasn't aligned beforehand. And, and we're starting to see not just people go independent, but also sort of the rebundling happen where, where people like Bari, where, where Katherine's on the, on the board of, of Repress, um, build sort of Substack first, you know, media, media companies and, and, and other people as well. Ta- talk a little bit about sort of the unbundling and rebundling and, and kind of the future of how you see m- media companies b- b- being built.

    11. CBChris Best30:15

        This actually reminds me of one of the first things M- Marc Andreessen ever said to me when we were talking about Substack. He said, "You're gonna do to media what the venture capital industry did to, to software companies or to tech," which was there used to be this time where if you were somebody who knew how to build great software, the way that you could do that would be to go get a job from somebody in a suit that would tell you what to do and pay you a salary. And the, the hidden reality of that situation was the people who actually could make the things were creating so much valueThat they were massively getting underpaid and under, you know, under-recognized compared to what they were doing. And more interest, like less obviously, but even more interestingly, once you could free them up from that structure and you actually put them in charge, put the people who are actually making the thing, make them the boss, um, it massively increased variance in this very positive way. Didn't always work, right? Not every software programmer is gonna be a great founder. Um, but the best founders who actually build the thing are so much better and so much more, and the results are so much more interesting and extreme and wonderful than the world where they just got bossed around by whoever was the software company middle management, um, that the net effect of kind of like pulling the talent out and unleashing it and putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum in tech was this renaissance, basically. And I think the same thing is possible in the cultural industries. I think that the people who are actually making the stuff are the heroes. Um, they're putting themselves on the line. They are-- You know, if we're gonna have a, a renaissance and a new flourishing of, of culture, those are the people that are gonna make it, and the people that are investing in them and, you know, investing their time and their money and participating. And the th- the ambition that I have, and we have at Substack is to basically just like build what they need, build the tools they need, build the network they need to have a fighting chance to win, and I think we're on the way.

    12. ETErik Torenberg32:34

        Um, yeah, it's interesting. And even in VC, there, there are sort of, you know, solo capitalists as sort of like Noah Smith example, but then there are also people who, you know, like I s- go on and build, you know, m- bigger platforms, you know, uh, sort of much bigger than their-

    13. CBChris Best32:45

        Yeah

    14. ETErik Torenberg32:45

        ... individual selves.

    15. CBChris Best32:47

        I, I think of them as ambitious media founders, right? We have a whole team at Substack who's dedicated to the principle that if you're an ambitious media founder, we want Substack to be the best possible place to realize the biggest version of your ambition.

11. 33:01 – 38:10

    The Future of Media

    1. ETErik Torenberg33:01

       L- let's talk a little bit about the, the future of media in a sense of, you know, there's only 24 hours in a day. There, there's only, you know... There's a, a portion of that people spend, you know, engaging in content, and it all competes with each other. Um, you know, looking out a few years, do you see the, the amount, uh, that people spend on just that overall content in general increasing? I, I, I guess I'm curious, like if video is obviously going to increase, are people going, going to be reading less, or is just more of everything? Or h-how do you, how do you view consumptions habits, uh, changing over time?

    2. CBChris Best33:35

       I wrote this piece called The Two Futures of Media, where I kind of argue-- I think, I think inevitably when you ask these questions, you get into sort of like weird philosophical questions like, "What is the purpose of media, and what are we doing here?" And I think that one of the purposes of media is, uh, to entertain, to have some effect. Like, and people use... The, the extreme way to say this is people use media like a drug, right? I'm gonna sit there, I'm gonna scroll this thing, I'm gonna watch this thing. It's gonna have some effect on me in the moment that's gonna create a pleasant feeling, and that's like one of the things that I want from it. And I think that that side of media is gonna get supercharged. Um, we have very sophisticated AI goon bots now. Is that a good thing? I don't know, but it's, it's happening. And we're gonna have that across like, you know, everything, every short form video, every- everything that could be like this, you know... It's, it's, it's almost approaching wireheading, the science fiction idea of like you plug a wire into your brain and it stimulates the pleasure centers. I think that future is, is we're well into it. It's only accelerating. The stronger the technology gets, the stronger that thing becomes, and the stronger it's a hazard for people, quite frankly, because there's a mode of consuming media and culture that is like drug addiction, where it is compelling in the moment, where it is something you want, it is something even you'd be willing to pay for or at least spend your time on, um, but it kind of like, it pulls against your long-term interest. And the re-remember, the media you consume is not just how you spend your time, it's who you become, and so it degrades you. And so it, it, it makes your tastes get more base and makes you want more of the dumb thing. It, it sort of pulls you in. That, that's already happening. It's gonna continue to happen. Um, that's a big part of the future. I think that thing is baked in right now. But that's not the only purpose of media, right? The other purpose of media is culture. The other purpose of media is to like live in a society and become, become the kind of person you want to become, and to figure out how to live and act back on the world, like the intersubjective multiplayer game of building with other people. And that is something that people really, really want as well. And I think that the same technologies that are making the first thing much more compelling can make that second thing much more compelling as well. And the thing that I think we can do at Substack is to create a version of that thing that is also fun and is also good and is also empowering, and you don't have to kind of be like, I don't want to... You have to be like a monk to use Substack. You're like, "Well, I could scroll TikTok or I could go to the library and flip through some microfiche." And it's like, yeah, you could do that, but nobody's actually gonna do that. And so if we can take kind of like the good and interesting and culture-laden future of media and make it really good and make it really compelling and make, have it, people make money from it when they make something truly great, and have people realize that, you know... I, I, I aspire that the Substack app can be a place where you, you look back at the time you spend on it and think, "Damn, I'm glad I did that. That made me a better person. That made me more interesting." Um, and I think that that is possible, and that if we... When there are these massive changes, when the world changes, when technology reshapes everything, I think the fact that it's going, there's going to be change can become inevitable.But which version of the change happens, which future you go to is contingent, right? People often ask, like, is the, is the future determined or is, is great man theory true? Is, you know, h-how does history happen? And I think it's just both, right? There are these inexorable changes that are gonna happen no matter what. But then in the moments of change, which future emerges is contingent on the choices people make and the accidents of history and individual decisions. And so I think the thing that is possible for us to do is to build a version of that second future of media where people are reading things that, that make them smarter, or listening to conversations that plug them into the world. In general, acting back on the culture and participating and engaging in ways that they value, and that that creates a ton of economic value and creates... This is why it's an economic engine for culture, creates like a, a whole world that is intensely valuable and great. Is it gonna be-- Is, is that gonna be the world that everybody goes to? No. Some people are gonna sit on the AI goon bot. But I think we can, we can make a real difference by making that second future as good as possible.

    3. ETErik Torenberg38:08

       Building upon your culture point,

12. 38:10 – 43:53

    Academia, and Long-Form Writing

    1. ETErik Torenberg38:11

       I've s- I've started to see some academics als- also on Substack.

    2. CBChris Best38:14

       Mm.

    3. ETErik Torenberg38:14

       We've been talking a lot about disrupting media. I'm also curious if you think much about sort of, uh, academia or, or, or, or books or kind of these adjacent, um, industries, or is that, is, is that a, a distraction or you're, or, or you don't think about it super deliberately?

    4. CBChris Best38:29

       I'm, I'm a total crank on the subject of academia, so it might be fun.

    5. ETErik Torenberg38:33

       [laughs]

    6. CBChris Best38:33

       Which is, this is, this is sort of like ill-considered on my part. But I think a lot of science is totally broken.

    7. ETErik Torenberg38:38

       Yeah.

    8. CBChris Best38:38

       Um, I think that there, like, I think that a lot of the... And I think that the, the scientific project is incredibly important and one of the most valuable things in history, but that the, the, the practice of science and the current situation in, in aca-academia, and especially in academic publishing, is like pretty far from good. And even to the point of like I think maybe peer review is a huge mistake and doesn't actually work, and is, you know, we've got this thing that's supposed to make everything good and there's like this massive crisis of huge bodies of fake science that nobody believes 'cause it's all luck being. And I'm very interested in the idea of like, what if you apply some of these same principles? What if you give people an alternative? What if there's just y-y- one way you could do science, if you want to, is to go on the internet and publish it. Um, I think that's actually pretty radical and pretty interesting, and I see some early shoots of people doing that. It's a topic that I a-am excited about and think that there's more that we could do, um, but hasn't been kind of like central to our effort so far.

    9. ACAndrew Chen39:50

       I was just gonna say something about books, right? 'Cause I think, I think it's, it's, uh, the, the, the process of why people decide to write books today, um, is in itself a really interesting decision. 'Cause like first you have to spend, you know, it's a multi-year project to actually, you know, write a book. And I, and I worked with, um, uh, Harper Collins to, to do The Cold Start Problem, I think it's like been three or four years ago. But you know, it's, it takes, takes like three years or something like that to actually, you know, write a book. Um, and then, you know, many of you guys know that, uh, if you, if you literally just get enough pre-orders that you can get 10,000 units sold, that's like a best seller. I mean, it's like people are not reading books right now, um, which is, which is insane. There's literally I think like one book printer left in the US. Um, and so if, uh, if Michelle Obama decides to, you know, write a book around the same time as you, like, you, the, the, like, they're like, "Oh, the, the printer's booked for the next, you know, X months," and like that's, that, that's just how... It's, it's all down to one, one set of printers, which is, which, which is itself insane. Um, and, and so Chris, when you, when you compare that to like the amount of work involved in writing a book versus being able to like click the publish button and have that go to, you know, 100,000, you know, people's inboxes each day, it's just like, it's a completely different thing. Now, it is fascinating that like, you know, there, there's, uh, there's certainly a cultural prestige in the fact that books have been around forever. But I have to imagine that it just changes over time. I imagine that, you know, it's like when, when people were playwrights then, um, you know, and, and, and film gets created, they're like, "Oh wow, people love film," but like it's not as prestigious as, you know, plays. And then TV is the same. It's like, oh, but people are watching a lot of TV, it's not as prestigious as being in a film. And then we're gonna go down the same thing with like YouTube, YouTube stars and, you know, streamers or, you know, whatever. So like of, of, of, you know... So I, I think, I think like, uh, a lot of this stuff is obviously very much lagging, um, and the ability to just reach, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, you know, with, with something that you write over, over a cup of coffee is like itself, um, you know, just so powerful, uh, when, when, when you really think about it from an ROI basis of like writing a book or a Substack. And of course they're not mutually exclusive. Like, you know, if I were to redo- have redone my whole thing again, I probably would've like written it all on Substack and then taken it and put it into a book, as opposed to thinking about it like, oh, I'm gonna lock myself into, into, you know, hotel rooms during my vacations and try to crank out all these pages, and then kind of do it all, all as one big thing.

    10. CBChris Best42:18

        Yeah. No, I, I, I agree with that. I think there's, there's this like cyclical moral panic that happens, and it certainly happened in media, where it's like people are writing on the internet without an editor.

    11. ACAndrew Chen42:28

        [laughs]

    12. CBChris Best42:28

        Oh my God. Edit- no one's editing the, the, the writing on the internet. What are we gonna do, right? Like that was like the media's version of this. It's the same thing happening with books. People are reading, but it's not in a book.

    13. ACAndrew Chen42:38

        Yeah.

    14. CBChris Best42:38

        Like they're reading things on the internet, but the, but the book process is, you know, it, it's, it's incredible to me and it, it happens all the time. It's always like legacy industries realizing that the internet actually is a thing.

    15. KBKatherine Boyle42:49

        That it becomes easier to produce the same thing you were going to produce in a book format, or the same thing [chuckles] you were gonna write for a print paper is... It can be put on the internet, and it's the same content. And so I think there's always these, like, moral panics that we're somehow getting dumber, or people aren't reading enough, and that's, that's a, that's a huge problem. And, and I just don't think people are looking at it holistically, that, that people are reading. They're reading in different ways. Yes, you could say something there is a huge problem if, if young people, you know, grow up never having read an actual physical book that was written before the, you know, the current times. That, that, that's a, that's a different discussion. But the moral panics about the actual medium I, I think are something that are, are very cyclical, have been happening since the birth of the internet. Um, and it hasn't, it hasn't necessarily affected, um... It's, it's, it's affected the freedom of what we can, we can actually say and the freedom of what we can get our hands on, but it, but it hasn't necessarily affected our ability to read. Um, and certainly I, I would argue it actually hasn't affected our ability to, to make arguments either, which I know would be, would be controversial in some domains. But, but I think it, it's, it's, it's more the, the moral panic of industries realizing that things are changing and they have to adapt.

13. 43:53 – 47:07

    Substack’s Ambitions and Recent Fundraising

    1. ETErik Torenberg43:53

       Yeah. And, and there's an interesting question about where, sort of, what, what is the source of kind of intellectual culture these days? Or, or is, is it more streamers? Is it more Twitter nons? Is it more professors, more journalists? I, I think w- w- you know, Alex Danco, um, uh, wrote this really interesting sort of a, a, you know, case for, for why it's long-form writing. And, and one of the reasons he said was it's not that everyone reads the long-form writing, it's that an important group of people reads it and then translates it or, uh, transmits it in kind of a different format, and then the masses r- read or, or sort of engage with that content. And I think just, uh, having a more sophisticated understanding of the supply chain gives us a greater appreciation for, for sort of long-form writing as, as a, as a source.

    2. ACAndrew Chen44:36

       Yeah. And Er- Eric, to, to your point there, it's like, what, what that means is, um, everything that you read in, in, in sort of, you know, printed out, you know, pieces of paper, you know, in traditional press is, like, delayed by a huge amount compared to, you know, the actual discourse that's happening on, on, on, on, on the internet. And, and so, um... And, and the long form, of course, is like you're actually able to generate really, really original thoughts. And then, of course, all the, all the memoirs are, are, are where, where the real discussion happens in re- real time, so-

    3. ETErik Torenberg45:04

       Yeah

    4. ACAndrew Chen45:04

       ... you, you, you kinda have both. [laughs]

    5. ETErik Torenberg45:07

       Totally.

    6. ACAndrew Chen45:07

       You know, both, both, both flows like generating, uh, you know, cultural, cultural, uh, you know, um, kn- knowledge over time.

    7. ETErik Torenberg45:14

       So Chris, we're, we're here partially to, to, to celebrate your, your, your big round. Um, 100 million? Is it, is that right?

    8. CBChris Best45:20

       100 million, yeah.

    9. ETErik Torenberg45:21

       So talk about wh- wh- why raise 100 million? You're already, you know, crushing it as a business. You've already a lo- lo- lot of cash. What, what are, what are the big plans here?

    10. CBChris Best45:29

        So I think the big story of this to me is we've, we've had this long-term ambition for what are the pieces of Substack. I literally put this meme in my pitch deck, which was, you know, the handshake meme. And one hand is the, you know, a, a, a, a model that supports independence, and the other hand is an internet-scale network. And to me, this is sort of like the core of what Substack has always meant to be is, hey, this model that supports independence, but also this, like, this place, this part of the internet that's a first-class destination that has this, like, thriving scene that, that, that feeds it. And I think after years and years and years of working to kinda make that into a reality, we have that fledgling network alive now, and it's growing. And I see the next phase of Substack as kind of like feeding that machine and helping it sort of like grow and throw off all of this value and, like, economic value for the creators and cultural value for the world. And it's kinda gonna mean rebuilding the company to match that scale and ambition. And this fundraise was really just a, a, a, a way to unlock that kind of transformation. And so we're sort of, like, in an exciting period of reimagining, you know, the product, the company, and h- what this thing can become now.

    11. ETErik Torenberg46:48

        Well, that's a great place to, to wrap. Chris, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

    12. CBChris Best46:51

        Thanks. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 47:18