Substack

Substack
Company type	Private
Industry	Digital media, Publishing
Founded	2017; 9 years ago in San Francisco, United States
Founder	Chris Best, Jairaj Sethi, Hamish McKenzie
Headquarters	San Francisco, United States
Key people	Chris Best (CEO)
Products	Newsletter publishing platform, podcast hosting, video content tools
Website	substack.com

Substack is a U.S.-based digital platform providing tools for publishing, payments, analytics, and design to facilitate subscription-driven content such as newsletters, podcasts, and videos. It allows creators to deliver digital material directly to their paying audience. Established in 2017, Substack operates out of San Francisco.

History

The inception of Substack occurred in 2017, founded by Chris Best, who co-founded Kik Messenger; Jairaj Sethi, a lead developer at Kik; and Hamish McKenzie, formerly a technology reporter for PandoDaily. Best and McKenzie acknowledged Ben Thompson's subscription newsletter Stratechery as a significant influence. Chris Best holds the position of CEO.

In 2019, the platform broadened its services to include podcast support and subscriber discussion forums.

By November 2021, Substack announced it had surpassed 500,000 paying subscribers and exceeded one million total subscriptions.

During 2022, Substack launched private beta testing for video functionalities, introduced Substack Chat to facilitate group conversations between creators and subscribers, and released the Substack Reader app initially on iOS followed by Android.

In April 2023, Substack declined an acquisition proposal from Elon Musk. In the same month, it unveiled the Notes feature for brief content posts, positioning itself as a rival to Twitter amid ownership changes under Musk. Twitter responded by blocking links directing to Substack.

By November 2023, video production and editing capabilities were added to the platform, empowering creators to produce original programming.

In April 2024, Substack formed a partnership with Spotify enabling podcasters to distribute episodes on both platforms while enhancing podcast editing tools. June 2024 saw the debut of Creator Studio—a year-long initiative aimed at supporting TikTok creators—alongside the introduction of five-minute video options in chat and video integration within Notes.

By November 2024, Substack had reached a milestone of 4 million paid subscriptions.

September 2024 marked the rollout of livestreaming features. Following U.S. restrictions on TikTok in early 2025, Substack enabled direct video uploads and monetization through its app. By March 2025, paid subscriber numbers exceeded 5 million.

In June 2025, reports indicated that Substack secured $100 million in funding with a valuation of $1.1 billion.

Content

Substack’s user base includes journalists, experts in various fields, and media organizations. In 2019, The New York Times columnist Mike Isaac observed that platforms like Substack regard newsletters as a reliable method for sustaining readership via direct engagement between writers and audiences. The following year, The New Republic noted a relative scarcity of local news newsletters compared to the abundance of national political ones.

By late 2020, numerous journalists gravitated toward Substack amid declining employment opportunities in traditional newsrooms—which had halved since 2004. The New Yorker remarked that although Substack promotes itself as a hub for journalism, most newsletters emphasize personal essays, commentary, research insights, and analysis rather than investigative reporting. Content moderation on the platform remains minimalistic; guidelines prohibit harassment, threats, spam, pornography, and incitement to violence with moderation decisions overseen by the founders.

By 2021, notable contributors included journalist and author Glenn Greenwald; economist Paul Krugman; reporter Seymour Hersh; cultural critic Anne Helen Petersen; music writer Robert Christgau; food columnist Alison Roman; historian Heather Cox Richardson; technology journalists Casey Newton and Eric Newcomer; data journalists Matthew Yglesias and G. Elliott Morris; economists Glenn Loury and Emily Oster; linguist John McWhorter; journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss; along with authors Daniel M. Lavery, George Saunders, Nick Hornby, Susan Orlean, Blake Nelson, Chuck Palahniuk, Marianne Williamson, Salman Rushdie, Tui T. Sutherland, David Bentley Hart, and Skottie Young.

Finances

Writers on the platform have the option to offer newsletters either free of charge or behind a paywall, with the ability to make selected posts accessible to all readers. By 2020, the minimum cost for a subscription was set at $5 per month or $30 annually, with Substack retaining a 10% commission on subscription revenues. The company does not generate income from advertisements placed by publishers. In February 2019, Substack introduced monetization features for podcasts. Paid subscriber numbers increased significantly, rising from 11,000 in 2018 to 50,000 in 2019.

The company's initial seed funding round occurred in 2018, attracting investors such as The Chernin Group, Zhen Fund, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron. In 2019, Andreessen Horowitz led a Series A investment totaling $15.3 million, some of which was allocated to recruiting prominent writers. Substack has also advanced funds to select creators to support content development on its platform.

In 2019, Substack introduced a fellowship program that provided writers with a $3,000 stipend alongside workshop participation. The downturn of sports media outlets combined with the COVID-19 pandemic led to an influx of sports journalists joining Substack between 2019 and 2020, positioning the platform as a competitor to services like The Athletic. During the pandemic, Substack awarded grants ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 to more than 40 writers. Expanding into comics content in 2021, Substack signed creators such as Saladin Ahmed and Scott Snyder, compensating them directly while retaining subscription revenue; after one year of publication, Substack takes a 10% share.

The founders began by inviting a limited number of writers in 2017; by 2019, Bill Bishop’s newsletter Sinocism had become the highest-earning newsletter on the platform. By late 2020, The Dispatch, a conservative newsletter, led with over 100,000 subscribers and generated upwards of $2 million in its first year. In May 2021, Substack acquired People & Company, a startup based in Brooklyn. As of August 2020, more than 100,000 users had paid for at least one newsletter; this number grew to over 250,000 paying subscribers by August 2021, with the top ten publishers collectively earning $7 million annually. According to The New York Times in April 2022, Substack's valuation stood near $650 million. However, in May 2022 the company paused plans to raise between $75 million and $100 million due to unfavorable market conditions.

Programs

Substack launched Substack Pro in March 2021—a revenue-sharing initiative providing advances to writers who create publications on its platform. This program received criticism for not disclosing participating authors publicly and was discontinued in 2022.

Additionally, Substack offers Substack Defender, which delivers legal counsel and pre-publication review services for writers. This program covers legal expenses up to $1 million for eligible cases. In 2025, it expanded through collaboration with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Criticism

In July 2020, an email update from Substack inadvertently revealed users’ email addresses due to a privacy oversight; the company publicly acknowledged this mistake.

After major platforms intensified efforts against COVID-19 misinformation in 2020, controversial figures such as Joseph Mercola and Steve Bannon migrated their content to Substack. In January 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate reported that Substack earned approximately $2.5 million annually from leading anti-vaccine authors. The company’s founders reiterated their stance favoring minimal content moderation.

In November 2023, Substack encountered significant criticism for hosting material from white nationalists, Nazis, and antisemitic authors. More than 100 creators threatened to leave unless the platform took action against hate speech. CEO Hamish McKenzie defended allowing extremist content by asserting that censorship would exacerbate problems rather than resolve them. Subsequently, notable creators including Casey Newton, Molly White, and Ryan Broderick departed from the platform.

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