500M humans are not in Twitter looking to have pleasant, cordial, thoughtful interactions and consume high quality content in a highly moderated environment.
Actually that's exactly what we don't want.
So Substack will be successful in its own niche, doesn't need to eat Twitter's lunch for that.
The problem is at the current valuation of $650M and bleeding $25M per year, they will have to come up with a plan to generate revenue pretty soon, most likely in the form of ads and generally that's incompatible with high quality content.
Now if Substack's fan base put their wallets where their mouth is and pay say $30 per month, then maybe Substack wouldn't need ads, but we know that's not going to happen, not even at $5 per month.
Actually that's exactly what we don't want.
So Substack will be successful in its own niche, doesn't need to eat Twitter's lunch for that.
The problem is at the current valuation of $650M and bleeding $25M per year, they will have to come up with a plan to generate revenue pretty soon, most likely in the form of ads and generally that's incompatible with high quality content.
Now if Substack's fan base put their wallets where their mouth is and pay say $30 per month, then maybe Substack wouldn't need ads, but we know that's not going to happen, not even at $5 per month.