Hardware Podcasts

Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie

How I Built This · 12 May 2025 · 1h 18m

What this episode covers

Chris Best, former CTO of Kik Interactive, and Hamish McKenzie, a journalist and author, co-founded Substack to create a direct monetization platform for writers, moving away from the ad-supported models of Facebook and Twitter. They discuss the skepticism they faced when pitching the idea that people would pay for newsletters, the strategic decision to take a low 10% cut to align incentives, and how a free-speech stance helped them attract prominent journalists during the pandemic. The episode also covers their refusal of an acquisition offer from Elon Musk and their strategy to maintain financial independence by avoiding excessive fundraising.

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Kik Interactive, Blackberry, Facebook, Twitter, X, Y Combinator, Patreon, Medium, Tesla, SpaceX, U.S. Bank
Products
WhatsApp, Stratechery
Also
Elon Musk, Ben Thompson, Bill Bishop, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Taibbi

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