it was the right platform at the right time to take advantage of the trend of writers from legacy newspapers trying to break out from their newspaper brand and

it was the right platform at the right time to take advantage of the trend of writers from legacy newspapers trying to break out from their newspaper brand and produce indpendent paid newsletters instead. it's very much a case of a product that was made for a market that was asking for exactly that product. They took great advantage of that trend by directly paying newspaper writers to make it even more popular. The writers brought their existing audiences from whatever platform they were coming from, and wrote a lot about the process of switching to substack. and then they leveraged the popularity among newspaper writers to sell an image of "make a substack and you too can be a popular and successful writer", which brought in the mass market.