Substack CEO Chris Best on crossing 5 million paid subscriptions and building a network that doesn't depend on other platforms

Summary

Substack has crossed 5 million paid subscriptions, and CEO Chris Best argues the company's next phase is less about newsletters and more about becoming an independent media network that doesn't need other platforms to survive.

Best traces the original thesis back to Ben Thompson's Stratechery — a writer making millions from his bedroom in Taiwan via paid email — and asks why more people couldn't do the same. The answer was friction, and Substack's job was to remove it. Seven years later, the platform has expanded from email newsletters into podcasts, long-form video, and a live video tool that Best describes as a FaceTime call that AI automatically turns into a produced show with clips.

Platform independence

The X/Twitter link-suppression episode is Best's clearest illustration of why Substack needed its own network. When Elon Musk restricted Substack links, it was painful for creators who had built audiences on both platforms, but Best says it didn't slow growth at all — X traffic was a small fraction of the total. The lesson he draws is structural: Facebook, TikTok, and X have no real incentive to help creators own their audiences. Substack's app exists precisely because it does.

Business model as editorial filter

Best's most pointed argument is that Substack's business model is what keeps it from becoming another engagement-maximizing feed. Substack only makes money when creators make money, so its algorithm is tuned to surface content people would pay for rather than content that keeps them scrolling. He contrasts this directly with X's stated position: a user who clicks a link, reads a long piece, and closes the app tanks the platform's metrics. On Substack, that's a win.

He's open to advertising coexisting with subscriptions — several Substack creators run sponsorships successfully — but the structural bet is that a subscription-first model produces a different quality floor than one optimized for impressions.

AI and the attention problem

Best is relaxed about AI-generated content eating Substack's ecosystem. His framing is that even before AI, there was already infinite content. The scarce resource is trusted perspective — someone telling you what to pay attention to and why. AI amplifies both sides: more content, but also more creative leverage for writers who have earned an audience's trust. He cites Lenny Rachitsky's subscriber-facing AI bot as an example of that leverage working well. Writing itself, he says, is the AI application he finds least exciting for now.

Growth advice

His only concrete growth prescription is consistency. Publishing multiple times a week, maintained over a long period, is the strongest predictor of success he sees across the platform. Beyond that, he says the data is inconclusive — the opposite of almost any tactical rule also works for someone — so the real advice is to start, publish, and correct based on feedback rather than planning in advance.