Substack Inc.
Market Data Current As Of: September 12, 2026
Related Competitor Intelligence
Compare market positioning with top industry peers
Explore Substack
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Substack Inc.
Compare market positioning with top industry peers
Explore Substack
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Company History
Founded 2017 in San Francisco, California, United States
Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi. Chris Best, the former co-founder and CTO of viral messaging app Kik, had grown profoundly disillusioned by social media: advertising-driven engagement algorithms rewarded outrage, divisiveness, and sensationalism while starving high-quality journalism of funding. Best wrote an essay titled 'Messaging is Open' and connected with Hamish McKenzie, a former tech journalist for PandoDaily and lead writer at Tesla who had experienced firsthand how advertising models pressured journalists to write cheap clickbait instead of deep investigative reporting. Together with veteran software architect Jairaj Sethi, they concluded that the only way to save journalism was to change its economic model: build a software platform where writers could charge readers directly via recurring email subscriptions. In late 2017, they launched their prototype with veteran China analyst Bill Bishop (Sinocism) as their pilot author. Within 24 hours of launching paid subscriptions, Bishop made six figures, proving that readers were eager to pay for high-signal analysis. Accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2018 batch, the trio incorporated Substack, igniting a worldwide media revolution that liberated thousands of journalists from dying newspapers. In 2017, Chris Best had reached a breaking point. Having built mobile messaging app Kik into a multi-hundred-million-dollar unicorn, he was appalled by the internet: advertising algorithms had turned digital media into an outrage machine that divided human society. He met with veteran journalist Hamish McKenzie, who had watched brilliant colleagues laid off while media executives chased clickbait listicles. The two founders asked a radical question: what if we built a platform where writers worked directly for their readers? They teamed up with systems engineer Jairaj Sethi and built Substack in six weeks. When China analyst Bill Bishop launched on Substack and made six figures in his first week, the direct subscription revolution was born. That principled stand against the advertising model built Substack into a $650M cultural phenomenon powering over 3 million paid subscriptions across the globe.
Chris Best is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Substack, Inc. Disillusioned by the toxic, attention-harvesting mechanics of ad-supported social media networks, Best resolved to build a software system that aligned corporate success with human enlightenment. In 2017, alongside Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi, Best founded Substack. A deeply principled software architect and thoughtful essayist, Best engineered Substack's zero-lock-in data portability guarantee, invented Substack Notes, and built a $650 million platform that powers over 3 million paid subscriptions, establishing Substack as the undisputed economic sanctuary for the world's greatest writers. Best's deeply principled, philosophical leadership made him one of the most respected media technology founders of the 21st century. Rejecting the toxic, ad-driven engagement loops of Silicon Valley social platforms, Best built Substack around writer sovereignty, zero platform lock-in, and direct reader trust, steering the company from a three-person startup into a $650M cultural titan past 3 million paid subscriptions ahead of an initial public offering.
Hamish McKenzie is the co-founder and Chief Writing Officer of Substack. Having witnessed firsthand the economic collapse of traditional print and digital journalism, McKenzie co-founded Substack to give writers the financial freedom to do their best work without editorial compromise. At Substack, McKenzie leads writer relations, community advocacy, and editorial strategy. McKenzie's passionate defense of free expression, intellectual curiosity, and author sovereignty made him the beloved champion of thousands of journalists who abandoned corporate media to build thriving, independent media businesses on Substack. At Substack, McKenzie's profound journalistic empathy and moral advocacy were the driving cultural force that ignited 'The Great Media Exodus'. Championing author independence, defending free expression against corporate censorship, and mentoring thousands of writers transitioning to independent careers, McKenzie established Substack's reputation as the beloved economic sanctuary of the global creative class.
Jairaj Sethi is the co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Substack. An exceptional systems architect, Sethi was the technical genius who built Substack's original publishing and email distribution infrastructure from scratch. At Substack, Sethi engineered the high-deliverability email dispatch pipelines that deliver tens of millions of daily newsletters directly to reader inboxes without spam-folder routing, architected the custom domain DNS routing systems, and established the scalable backend infrastructure of the platform. At Substack, Sethi's systems engineering mastery was the technological engine that made direct subscription publishing effortless. Authoring the high-deliverability email dispatch pipelines that deliver tens of millions of newsletters daily with sub-second delivery rates and zero spam filtering, Sethi built the scalable backend data architecture that powers over 3 million recurring Stripe subscriptions worldwide.
Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi founded Substack, launching with Bill Bishop's Sinocism.
Graduated from Y Combinator and secured seed backing to scale software engineering.
Raised Series A funding led by Chris Dixon at a16z, accelerating mainstream media adoption.
Closed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, establishing Substack as the epicenter of media.
Launched microblogging network Substack Notes and raised $7.8M in community crowdfunding from 6,000+ readers.
Surpassed $35M net ARR, supporting 4M+ paid subscriptions across 35 million monthly active readers.
Since its establishment in 2017, Substack Inc. expanded from an early-stage venture into a recognized leader in Independent Publishing Platform, Creator Subscription Newsletters & Digital Media Network, overcoming key market challenges.
Over its history, Substack Inc. executed decisive strategic pivots toward scalable monetization and digital distribution, securing its current market leadership.
By continually modernizing operations and embracing workflow automation, Substack Inc. maintains resilience through changing technological and economic cycles.