Substack Plays With the Giants. Can It Be Valued Like One?
Having birthed a humble newsletter service, the platform’s founders now have their sights on YouTube.
Everyone seems to have a Substack these days. What started as a simple newsletter service in 2017 has become the platform of choice for a wide range of content creators. Even the State Department has one – a sign of the platform’s arrival in the mainstream. Readers have responded in kind: Last month, Substack’s website attracted more traffic than those of the Wall Street Journal or CBS News, marking a dramatic shift in digital media consumption.
Full disclosure: I’ve run a weekly newsletter on Substack since its early days, giving me a front-row seat to the platform’s evolution. So when news broke last week that Substack raised $100 million in a funding round at a $1.1 billion valuation, I paid close attention.