“Community means there's a reason why these people are here, irrespective of the platform.” - Nadia Eghbal
If you haven’t heard of Substack, you will soon. The company is just three years old and growing quickly.
The co-founders came together to see if they could solve a problem: helping writers earn a living directly from their readers. When readers pay writers directly, the founders realized, writers can focus on doing the work they care about most, not what editors, algorithms or advertisers deem valuable.
Substack resembles the email newsletter tools you’re familiar with, but with a crucial twist. When readers subscribe to a Substack, you have the chance to pay the author for their work–maybe $3 a month, maybe $10 a month. With economies of scale, these paying subscribers can really add up for writers and for Substack, which takes a 10% cut of the revenue writers earn. Some writers have turned Substack into their full time gig and earn into the six figures, while others are using Substack as a reliable anchor of income.
We spoke with Fiona Monga and Nadia Eghbal, two of the early team members at Substack who work with the writer community. In their own rights, each have led impressive careers that add dynamic value to the Substack team. Having worked in publishing and at Instagram, Fiona understands how creators connect directly with growing audiences. Through Nadia’s past experience working at Github and writing Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, she’s developed an appreciation for the power of documentation to scale know-how.
In this episode, Fiona and Nadia share the systems and signals they have in place to notice and nurture best practices on the Substack platform.
Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:
- Pinpointing their “kindling.” Writers with the potential to go independent were the kindling that sparked Substack’s community.
- Defining Substack’s “why.” How the Substack founders got clear as an organization on why they were bringing writers together.
- The platform vs. its communities. The community investments for Substack aim to increase the number of direct relationships writers have with each other, not with the Substack team or brand.
- Scaling support. How the Substack team manages their time with inbound requests, helping people help themselves and each other at scale.
👋🏻Say hi to Fiona Monga and Nadia Eghbal and learn more about Substack.
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