![]() And by making its pitch to big names with big followings, Substack had multiple enthusiastic audiences at the ready – the marketing is built-in. By putting writers at the centre of the platform, and promising them a path to financial success (or at least a decent income), the company ensured many of the best writers and journalists in the world would migrate to newsletters. McKenzie’s writerly aspirations have deeply influenced Substack. The idea of helping many other good writers, most of whom are way better than me, reach their potential … and make great money from doing it – that feeling is just as good as doing the work myself.” “I think that’s an itch I’m not fully scratching by choice at the moment. Having listened to The Fold podcast, I don’t ask him to elaborate about founder Elon Musk – the quote from that interview which stuck in my mind was “I wouldn’t want him to be my dad” – but I do ask him if he’s done with writing books. McKenzie published the book Insane Mode about his experiences at Tesla in 2018. It’s an adventure.”įollow Duncan Greive’s NZ media podcast The Fold on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.Ī writer becomes a cheerleader for writers It’s thrilling to be at the centre of that, playing this game I never thought I’d end up playing and getting exposed to its inner workings. The top companies in the world, probably by market cap the biggest in history, are tech companies. “The changes were giant at each step … going to be an entrepreneur was a massive as well, and a different flavor. After another comms stint at messaging startup Kik he founded Substack with colleagues Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi. McKenzie’s desire to write led him to study at the University of Otago, then took him around the world until he ended up at tech news site PandoDaily covering Silicon Valley, switching after a few years to a communications job at Tesla. I think that Silicon Valley is like the NBA of the tech industry.” There’s Hollywood and there’s New York … and then there’s the NBA … that’s a uniquely American sport and spectacle and business. “There are some things America is great for. When I tell him he doesn’t sound like an American despite having lived in California for years – he’s temporarily in Wellington sitting out Covid – he thanks me, and says he hopes he stays a New Zealander in his “culture and disposition” as well. To get a sense of how he speaks, have a listen to his appearance on Duncan Greive’s media podcast The Fold. McKenzie grew up in Alexandra in Central Otago and to my ears is 100 percent Kiwi. I remember I was maybe eight years old, writing a series about the crocodiles trapped in the toilet.” ![]() “I was more an aspiring writer, ever since I was a kid. “The entrepreneurial thing is something I’ve done almost reluctantly,” he says. That’s a lot of money at risk every time he speaks to a reporter. Substack is supposedly worth over $900m NZD, around half the market cap of Air New Zealand. A single ill-chosen sentence from a founder could sink a company in this febrile shadow-epidemic world. He waits a moment before speaking, making sure he has the words right. McKenzie is a thoughtful guy, and it feels like he’s learned to be careful. This is one of the keys to understanding how a company based on a medium at least 40 years old could be changing the digital media ecosystem.Īccording to Hamish McKenzie, the New Zealander who co-founded Substack in 2017, the company sprang from a belief that good writing, and good writers, had become undervalued – but that a lot of readers were ready and willing to pay. Writers write and readers read Substacks. In the world of Substack, those who make newsletters are not “producers” or “creators” and newsletters are not “content”. Only a writer could have started Substack.Įverything about the platform – a system for making, sending and getting paid for email newsletters – smacks of writer. The New Zealand-born co-founder of the newsletter publishing startup tells Hal Crawford how he gave up writing to focus on supporting writers – and why he believes the subscription boom is still far from over.
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