> Substack isn't a technology platform - it's a business model. They paid a bunch of well known writers a bunch of money to come to their platform and it paid o

> Substack isn't a technology platform - it's a business model. They paid a bunch of well known writers a bunch of money to come to their platform and it paid off. I think they have wisely bet that there is no shortage of content on the internet, and focusing on curation is more important than access. I would say Substack is both a technology platform and a business model, but I think the point you're making is the technology platform is very simple and easy to replicate, so not the focus of their success or lack of it? Which I'd agree with. What I would not agree with is that Substacks business model has anything to do with curation. I do subscribe to a couple of writers on Substack, but my decision to subscribe to each was independent of the fact that the other one was on Substack, or who else was on Substack. The Substack brand isn't reader facing at all. And in fact, Substack doesn't actually do curation. Anyone can sign up, and when they were signing their advance deals, they were fairly clearly offering them to anyone who their models predicted would bring in enough subscribers to bring a profit. Which in turn later harmed them, as people imputed some sort of editorial opinion to the deals. In short, I'd say their suceeding so far because of their business model. but the business model is that there's a lot of content out there that people are willing to pay for, so they'll offer a technology platform with zero curation that lets people pay for content.