Reinventing Media Economics: How Substack Empowered Independent Writers

"We started Substack because we believed it was important to offer writers and readers a way out of the media systems that were serving them poorly," co-founder Hamish McKenzie wrote. Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie imagined a world where writers didn't have to rely on legacy publications or corporate advertising.

The Broken Model

Chris Best, co-founder of Kik Messenger, and Hamish McKenzie, a former tech reporter at PandoDaily, saw the same problem from different angles: the traditional journalism model was failing writers.

Ad-driven media incentivized clickbait over quality. Writers were underpaid. Readers got increasingly polarized content optimized for engagement rather than enlightenment.

The Contrarian Bet

In July 2017, they founded Substack with CTO Jairaj Sethi. Their thesis was simple but contrarian: readers WOULD pay for quality content if given the option.

Many people told them "nobody will pay for Internet content." But Best and McKenzie trusted their instincts - the economic model for journalism provided a raw deal for independent writers, and that had to change.

Ben Thompson's Blueprint

They were inspired by Ben Thompson's Stratechery, a subscription-based tech newsletter that proved the model could work. If Ben could do it independently, why couldn't more writers?

Substack made it easy: writers could publish for free, and if readers wanted to subscribe, they could pay. Substack would take 10%.

The Creator Economy Pioneer

What started as a newsletter platform has evolved into something bigger - Substack now hosts podcasts, video, and community features. By 2019, the company had raised around $17.5 million across its seed and Series A rounds; it would go on to raise over $100 million and reach a billion-dollar valuation years later, in 2025.

More importantly, thousands of writers now make a living through Substack. Some earn over $1 million per year. The platform proved that quality content can thrive without advertising.