Substack CEO Chris Best on raising $100M Series C to evolve from newsletter tool to creator network

Substack, the best CEO Substack's ever had, arguably in the conversation. Welcome to the stream, Chris. How are you doing? Congratulations. You got some news for us. You got some numbers. Get it ready. What's going on? What do we got? What's going on in your world? Please tell me at least nine figures. Doing good.

We've raised $100 million. Series C. Congratulations, man. I was hoping you guys would ring that thing. Congratulations. Uh you guys are incredibly back. Yes. Uh it's been a journey since I believe you raised something. It was like 75 on 700 back in what was it? 2021. 2021. That was those were different times.

I don't know if you guys remember 2021. I do. I do. It was I remember it fondly. You were at the center of the storm and I was in the depths of a Yeah. slog basically. Um anyway, uh give us the update. How' the round come together? What is the plan going forward?

I heard you were was the reporting accidentally profitable going back into burn mode. What's the money for? What are you thinking? Yeah, I like that. Um yeah, we're, you know, partnering with Mood Rogani at Bond. Um I love that guy. Consumate Bro joining the board.

Um, the big thing is, look, the the big thing that's happened is like Substack's gone from being like a rinky dink email newsletter company to a proper sort of network that's taken over the world. Yeah.

And we kind of want to look basically kind of like switch into a mode of thinking about long-term ambition, long-term like how do we actually make the big [ __ ] version of this thing? What investments do we need to make?

How do we focus on the things that actually matter for like the long-term flywheel growth of the network? Uh, and this just gives us like a total free hand to to do that thing and build the the best possible version of it. Okay. Give me the pitch for I I think of Substack as the no-brainer place to launch a newsletter.

You have a lot of other products. Talk to me about what the future of the Substack creator or someone who has Substack as like their primary out. it's the main engine of their creator economy business for example. Um, what does that look like over the long term?

I imagine that people are still doing top offunnel stuff on Tik Tok, Instagram, other places, but you're adding more and more features. What is a well-run Substack business look like? Yeah, you know, the core of Substack is the direct connection with your audience, right?

So people subscribe, you get their email, you get the ability to reach them, you even get the ability to like leave Substack and take your list with you, which is a big deal. People can pay you directly, so you get recurring revenue. Um, I don't know if you guys have had this, but recurring revenue hits different.

Uh, it does. The sponsorship business is a great business. Yes. Uh, you know, I think that thing matters. Lots of people on Substack have sponsors. We love it. But that thing's like very cyclical. It's boom and bust.

It's like, you know, whereas you have recurring subscribers, these die hards, that's sort of like it funds sort of like you to be creative. It funds you to take risks. And so Substack's the place where you sort of like your hardcore people are. That's where you have a real connection to your audience.

You can write, you can post short form, you can post video, you can do live video now. Um, you can have a community. We're kind of like building more and more stuff. The center is not any one format. It's like the relationship with the subscribers.

And then Substack is just becoming, you know, you said you do top off of funnel on on Tik Tok and LinkedIn and YouTube and everywhere else. Sure, keep doing that. That's great. Those are massive platforms, but increasingly you can do that stuff on Substack, too.

And because you have such a dense audience of like smart people, the quality of growth you can get there is already very high. Interesting. That makes a ton of sense.

Jordy, I think the I think the magic thing that you guys tapped into that I that I end up find myself I I find myself explaining to other people is there's this beautiful like like economy of people on Substack that just want to support people that are nerding out about a specific topic just want to give them money.

And so it's almost like this there's like there's this like exchange of like yes I want the content but it's also enabling somebody to live a life that allows them to just just obsess over one thing or just explore a series of topics or just be who they are um and be entertainment through that.

I mean, we've had um Emily Emily Sunberg has come on the show a bunch of times and it's just like it's so awesome to see what she's built and the kind of creator writer that she's able to be unshackled from being at a specific, you know, platform legacy media company. Um, so it's just it's so it's so awesome to see.

Talk about the use of funds. You said you can afford one AI researcher now. Uh, I imagine that won't be how you spend it. Um, but no, yolo, yolo, start coaching from Mark. Concentrated bets, man. That's how it works. Concentrated bets.

But I mean, concentrated bets, it's not the craziest idea to go give a bunch of money to, you know, creators to kind of pull forward the uh the the the the leap from what they're doing currently to to get on Substack.

There's different incentive models, kickstart ad businesses, just hire engineers that can build new tools and new features and just chop wood and advance the ball down the field.

Um, what are you most excited about to put that money to work over the next like 12 to 18 months, but you're probably thinking like decades now at this point, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the big thing, right? It's like what's the this this lets us have that longer horizon.

You can still have all of the same math, but you can just like put the the planning horizon further in the future and look for something really big. Listen, all that stuff you said, the stuff that I'm really excited about is like making the product [ __ ] great. Yeah. Right.

I want it to feel like my joke is Substack does everything for you except the hard part, right? You are the talent. You got to figure out how to write something that's worth reading, how to have a conversation that's worth listening to.

If you can do that thing, though, we should just build this magic machine that takes everything else off your hands and makes it dead simple. Makes it just like this magical thing where anybody who has something worthwhile to say can make something. We're starting with that.

We have a bunch of little bits of that that are kind of working that we're really proud of that are exciting.

But I just think the new technology coming online is going to make us like the the version of that magical sort of like media studio, personal media empire in a box that we can build now is going to be so much more powerful. And then building up like the network, right?

The fact that we're getting, you know, not just political commentators, but politicians.

I think if we get not just sports commentators but athletes, I think we can start to build up kind of like this network and this ecosystem that winds up being this positive sum game, right, where everybody that's on Substack benefits from this growing network.

Yeah, I've certainly never subscribed to anyone on Substack and been like, "Ah, I didn't get my money's worth. I've I always have a good time. " Um, what uh what are the different uh strategies for Substack writers? I know in like the Patreon podcast world, the people do like one is free, one's behind the payw wall.

I've also seen substaxs where there's like a fold and you get every email, but you get half for free and then you at some point there's a call to action to go and subscribe and and and finish reading essentially, but you get every email. What works? What are the different strategies?

What are some of the weird stuff that you've seen around uh the way people are using Substack today? There's a pretty big mix, right? Some people make almost everything free and it's just basically like, you know, if you want to comment or if you want to get the occasional thing, that's what you're paying for.

Some people really low margin for Chris over here. You just give everything away for free. He doesn't make any money. That's the beauty of your system. Nobody's paying to get more to get more things to read, to get more email, to have more a seconds of audio in their inbox. They're paying for perspective. Interesting.

Right. Yeah. That's the thing. like, you know, even and even if you have a magical LLM that can spit out media in any format, you care about who it's aligned with. You care about like what version, you know, what worldview you're getting. Is this something I trust?

Is this something I want to be culturally and aesthetically a part of? You know, you talked about people paying because they want to support people. The other way to say that is it gives you agency, right? When you choose who to subscribe to, you're choosing what part of the culture you want to live in.

You're choosing what gets created. You know, in a world where people, I think, feel like a lot of the media they consume is kind of like stuff down their throats, getting to kind of like exert a voice and say, "I'm causing this thing to exist. " That I think is great is really powerful.

It's like paying with your paying with dollars versus attention is super powerful, right?

Because if you're paying with attention, it's like, well, then everybody's focused on the Cold Play uh the Cold Play debacle last last night, which is trying to steal thunder from your fund raise announcement, but we're not we're not letting it.

Uh and and and being intentional about like I want to pay for this because I want more of it to exist. I want I want it to get better. This is how I want to spend my life. I don't want to be on a platform that just is designed to like suck my time from me. Yeah. Right.

I want to I want to spend my time and attention better on smart things like TBPN and everything on Substack. Yeah. Noing and coming soon. Hopefully, we will figure it out. No, we're about to bet we're about to bet big on Substack and we're riding with you. So, congratulations.

It's it's it's really tremendous to see how um far the business has come um since uh since those those glory days in 2021 and uh excited for the next five years. Thanks, guys. Cheers.