OK, SO HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED WITH SUBSTACK
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Sit down. Pour something. I want to talk to you about this platform we are stepping onto sometimes, often, rarely or constantly.
Not the Substack you use every day. I mean the company. The business. Who built it, who owns it, who is getting rich, and what they are willing to tolerate to stay that way.
But first — and I mean this — Substack gave us something we didn’t know we’d lost. For a glorious, genuine moment, it gave us a reason to love our inboxes again. Not the inbox of Nigerian princes and dental appointment reminders. The inbox of Heather Cox Richardson explaining American history before your first cup of coffee. George Saunders publishing short fiction on a Tuesday. Laid-off journalists who kept going anyway, straight to your door, no algorithm required. Readers and writers finding each other on purpose.
That part is real. That part matters. Hold onto it, because the rest of this is going to complicate it considerably.
THREE GUYS AND A MESSAGING APP YOU FORGOT YOU HAD
Chris Best, Jairaj Sethi, and Hamish McKenzie all worked at Kik. The messaging app. You used it in high school. You have not thought about it since.
In 2017, the three of them watched Facebook eat journalism’s advertising revenue, watched Twitter reward outrage over accuracy, watched the entire media economy optimize for clicks instead of truth — and decided to build the alternative.
The idea: writers get paid directly by readers. No ads. No algorithm. No editor calling at 4pm about the headline.
The name “Substack” evokes both a stack of subscriptions and the tech stack supporting a writer. They were engineers. Bear with them.
My favorite founding detail: for the first two years, they didn’t have an office. That’s worth repeating:
For the first two years, they didn’t have an office.
Keep that in your pocket.
ONE NEWSLETTER. ONE DAY. SIX FIGURES. ABOUT CHINA.
Before they could save journalism, they needed a proof of concept.
That proof was Bill Bishop, who wrote Sinocism — a daily newsletter about China, for businesspeople. Hamish knew him. They convinced him. On October 18, 2017, Bishop emailed his 30,000 subscribers: his newsletter was moving behind a paywall.
By the end of that day, Sinocism had generated six figures in revenue.
One day. One newsletter. About China.
Thirty thousand people said: yes. Fine. Take my card. For a newsletter about Chinese foreign policy.
That is how hungry readers were for writing that wasn’t engineered to make them angry.
The money followed. Y Combinator, Winter 2018. A $2 million seed. A $15.3 million Series A in 2019. Then $65 million in 2021 at a $650 million valuation. Then the pandemic sent every laid-off journalist in America to Substack, and between 2020 and 2022, paid subscriptions surged from 250,000 to over 2 million.
In July 2025, the company raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation — unicorn status, with investors including Rich Paul (LeBron James’s agent) and Jens Grede (CEO of Skims). The creator economy contains multitudes.
THE REAL MATH (NOT THE MATH IN THE HEADLINE)
Substack’s pitch to writers: you keep 90%.
What actually happens on a $5 subscription:
YOUR $5.00 SUBSCRIPTION, BROKEN DOWN
Substack takes 10% = $0.50
Stripe (payment processor) takes ~4% = $0.20
Writer takes home ~86% = $4.30
Not $4.50. $4.30. Every month. On every subscriber.
Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight founder who publishes Silver Bulletin on Substack, confirmed this in a footnote in April 2026:
“10 percent goes to Substack and roughly 4 percent goes to Stripe for financial processing fees.” — Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin, April 5, 2026
That 4% doesn’t appear in the “90% to writers” headline. But across the approximately $450 million that flows through Substack to writers annually, it adds up to roughly $18 million a year that quietly leaves the ecosystem before Substack takes its cut.
Substack’s annual revenue: approximately $45 million. Out of that, they pay roughly 100 employees, cover server costs, fund email delivery for every creator on the platform — including every free newsletter that has never charged a cent — and finance the ambitions.
This is why, eight years after founding, the company first reached positive cash flow in Q1 2025. Eight years. First time.
Eight years after founding. First time.
WHO IS ACTUALLY GETTING RICH
Not the writers. But let’s be specific about who is.
FOUNDER PAPER WEALTH (ESTIMATED)
Combined founder stake: ~30–40% of $1.1B valuation
Total: $330M–$440M. Roughly $110–147M each. On paper.
No IPO date. No shares sold. Not cashed out yet.
The largest outside shareholder is Andreessen Horowitz — a16z, which led the Series A and B. Estimated stake: 15–20%, worth roughly $165–220 million on paper.
Here is the detail I want you to ponder.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, is not merely one of Substack’s most powerful investors. He is also a Substack publisher — twice over. He runs his own personal Substack. His firm runs Web3 Weekly, a crypto newsletter, also on Substack. The man with an estimated 15–20% equity stake in the platform publishes his content on the platform he profits from.
He discloses this on the a16z website, in the newsletter section, in a font size you would need reading glasses to find.
And then there is Nate Silver. The stats legend. Silver Bulletin. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers. He confirmed the 86% math. He also disclosed — in parentheses, on his About page, not in the article — that he is a Substack investor, part of a $10 million strategic round in late 2024 that also included AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant.
So when Silver writes about Substack’s economics on Substack, with a financial stake in Substack, and confirms the math that benefits Substack’s narrative — the disclosure is there. Technically. In parentheses. On a different page.
THE NAZIS (YOU KNEW WE’D GET HERE)
In November 2023, The Atlantic found at least 16 Substack newsletters carrying Nazi symbols — swastikas, sonnenrads — in their logos. White nationalist newsletters. Monetized. Substack collecting its 10%.
More than 200 writers signed an open letter. Were Nazis part of the vision?
Co-founder Hamish McKenzie responded:
“We don’t like Nazis either — we wish no-one held those views.” — Hamish McKenzie, December 2023
Then he said they wouldn’t remove them. Censorship, he argued, makes extremism worse.
Writers noted that Substack was already moderating content — removing spam, removing sex workers — just not Nazis. Casey Newton of Platformer left the platform. Eventually, Substack removed five publications — none of which had paid subscribers. The content guidelines did not change.
File that. You’ll need it immediately.
AND NOW. APRIL 2026.
Andrew Tate has been on Substack since 2024. Eighteen months of quiet posting — a few hearts per video, paid content behind a lock, barely a ripple. “Clown World has an Antidote”: 2 hearts. “Jack Neel x Andrew Tate Full Interview”: 5 hearts. Substack collected its 10% and said nothing.
Then, in April 2026, the algorithm moved. Suddenly he was #1 New Bestseller, #2 Rising in News, front and center in the discovery feed where new readers land. Substack wasn’t surprised by his arrival. He’d been their tenant for a year and a half. What changed wasn’t him. What changed was that Substack decided to surface him.
The question worth asking isn’t why he joined. It’s why now.
He faces 21 criminal charges in the UK including rape, assault, and human trafficking. A separate Romanian investigation involves 35 alleged victims, including a minor. The White House intervened on his behalf during a federal investigation. He has been banned from Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
Substack — which removed sex workers and eventually removed five Nazi newsletters under pressure — has not removed Andrew Tate. In eighteen months, it never tried.
ANDREW TATE ON SUBSTACK, BY THE NUMBERS
On platform since: 2024
Months posting in obscurity: ~18
Followers imported from other platforms: 1.1 million
Best post engagement: 165 hearts
His earliest posts: 2–5 hearts
What changed: the algorithm. Not him.
He brought a million names. He couldn’t bring a million readers. There is a difference, and Substack’s algorithm cannot tell them apart.
Substack takes its 10%. Stripe takes its 4%. Tate keeps his 86 cents on the dollar, same as everyone else. Same as it has been since 2024.
Substack has not commented.
THE REVOLUTION AND THE ROT
I want to leave you with the thing I keep coming back to.
Chris Best once said the attention economy rewards things that provoke, divide, and drive outrage — producing a broken media economy that doesn’t represent the best version of ourselves.
He built the alternative. He is now hosting Andrew Tate in it, with a lead investor publishing crypto newsletters on the side and a stats legend confirming the math with an undisclosed conflict of interest.
And yet. Substack's 5 million paid subscriptions now exceeds the Wall Street Journal (4.3 million), the Washington Post (an estimated 2.5 million and falling), and Medium (just over 1 million) — each one, individually. The only major English-language news platform with a larger paid base is the New York Times at 12.2 million. Make of that what you will. The platform that gave the inbox back its dignity is the same platform making peace with its complications, one 10% cut at a time.
The revolution and the rot, living at the same address.
Every revolution becomes an institution. Every institution eventually becomes the thing it was built to replace. The only question is which writers will still be here when it does — and whether we’ll remember why we came.
I’ll be here.
The work matters. It always did.
Anyway! Thanks for reading and, as always… Here are five questions for you — each one a lit match:
1. Substack has been collecting 10% of Andrew Tate’s subscription revenue since 2024. At what point does collecting money from someone facing 21 criminal charges — including trafficking minors — stop being a platform decision and start being a moral one?
2. Nate Silver confirmed the real writer take-home is 86%, not 90% — in a footnote — while being an undisclosed investor in the platform he was writing about. Is that journalism, or is that a press release with better prose?
3. Marc Andreessen’s firm holds an estimated 15–20% of Substack. He also publishes two newsletters on the platform he profits from. When the investor and the publisher are the same person, who exactly is the platform serving?
4. Substack moderated sex workers. Substack eventually removed five Nazi newsletters under sustained public pressure. Substack has not removed Andrew Tate in eighteen months. What does that pattern tell you about whose comfort this platform is actually designed to protect?
5. You chose to be here. So did I. So did Heather Cox Richardson, George Saunders, and Andrew Tate. Does knowing everything you now know change that — and if not, what would?
Powerful post, my friend. Powerful.
The way money changes hands in the world is surely deceiving, and almost always hidden from the normies (like me).
Will I change platforms? Probably not, at least not until I am able to find somewhere else where I can mute ridiculously copious over posters who love to fill up the space with themselves and block the idiots, abusers, bigots, and trolls who linger everywhere.
The problem for me as one single human is not so much how to “stop” the facists and bigots from speaking and writing, rather it is how to educate the world about these people so they become naturally shunned by the majority of us. You are doing this, educating.
I will never understand the people who support them, nor support their points of view.
What I can do is to close the door to them and how much they are present within my life, and to be purposeful about the way in which I speak and act. I choose not to feed any energy towards those people at all. No speaking their names, no complaining about what they say by copying their words, no attention nor energy at all. They are dead, destructive things that do not merit any of my energy. Eventually, what we feed grows.
I see you feeding the flame of clear information, education and removing of masks. This is wonderful. All your dedication to research and integrity in what you write is fabulous. Your role is important. 💞 others of us do not have your capacity, so we do what we are able to with great love.
I was a free newsletter and just before that closing of funding in 2025, I had noticed that they (Substack) was limiting my reach and artificially culling my subscribers. As soon as I got over 2K subscribers, I would add 5 in a week, and the subscriber totals would stay the same. They were trimming my list to keep it static. I knew that I would be forever hampered in my growth and reach as long as I refused their entreaties to connect Stripe to my account they would algorithmically prevent me from reaching new readers on Notes.
Notes was the beginning of the end of their original business plan, although it was innocuous at the start, the last round of funding brought in investors who wanted concrete paths to profitability.
I bolted to Ghost, first a self hosted (I got tired of the maintenance headache) and now I just pay the $560 a year to host my main page (sweatyspice.com - don't ask why the name) as it is a hobby for me.
The Nazi's caused me to move my professional (product management centric newsletter) as I didn't want my professional voice near that shit, but the algorithmic chicanery was what drove me away.
And now Tate? That is just awful.
I see a lot of people threatening to move, but not many who have yet, I have seen some say they won't let that piece of human garbage chase them away. But I think by staying, you are supporting the founders and their complete lack of moral fiber. They really are all in it for the money, aren't they.