Sovereign writers and Substack
Substack’s business model doesn’t make sense. They are just using VC money to try and build social platform, but it’s a flawed one at best:<p>- MOST people will not want to pay for articles. Especially in an ever increasing world of subscription payments across tv, music, SaaS, I really don’t see how email newsletters will be high on people’s lists<p>- for the quality writers that people do want to pay, they will eventually move off the platform if it makes sense to do so (ie they get their brand recognition and followers and then jump ship to their own website). For the smaller ones, patreon onlyfans or some other direct contribution model would make more sense IMO<p>So I really don’t get Substack’s model and how it can be successful long term unless it truly becomes the landing page &#x2F; YouTube of articles. Which I can’t imagine it will with all the competition<p>More generally I’m looking forward to the day where the SaaS bubble bursts a bit or at least pricing consolidates - every Tom, Dick and Harry is taking a crud app and adding a few features and trying to create a b2c or b2b business<p>It works to some degree, but I’m looking forward to the day that there are enough programming specialists that many solutions are done in house<p>As to substack, it’s a very simple technology stack; really the play with it and all other vc funded startups is to spend big, grab marketplace &#x2F; users and exit. Then the buyer needs to monetize or is left holding the bag<p>I’m much more of a fan of the Medium model, and even there it’s very hard for writers and for the platform to make reasonable money.<p>It’s interesting how substack is asking everyone to bring their own mailing list with them, it’s a very smart way to build out their users &#x2F; network, I give them that.