Maybe Substack can grow just fine without venture dollars
Substack, a publishing company platform known for its newsletter service, announced this week that it had crossed the 2 million paid subscription mark. Given the wealth of historical data we have on paid subscriber growth at Substack, the number caught our attention.
Substack’s simple business model also makes it possible to generate a few gross transaction volumes and revenue estimates for the company, which we’ll examine.
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First a bit of context: Substacks first known external capital came in January 2018 via the startup accelerator Y Combinator. The company raised a $2 million seed round in April of the same year. From there, the startup’s ability to raise new funds quickly accelerated, with Andreessen Horowitz leading Substack’s $15.3 million Series A in mid-2019 and a massive $65 million Series B in March 2021.