创始人模式：克里斯·贝斯特，Substack创始人兼首席执行官

我是杰西卡·利文斯顿，我和卡罗琳是社交雷达。开个玩笑，你们该笑一笑，因为开场白通常都是这样的。这是预先录制的我。不过当然，今天我们是在现场，面对一群Y Combinator的创始人和校友观众，他们来参加Y Combinator创始人模式静修会。

I'm Jessica Livingston, and Carolyn and I are the social radars. I'm just kidding. You're supposed to laugh because that's how how the intro usually goes. It's a recording of me. But of course, we are here live today in front of an audience of Y Combinator founders, alumni who are here for the Y Combinator founder mode retreat.

我很高兴第一次有现场观众。对吧，卡罗琳？太棒了。我们非常兴奋。是的。

And I'm delighted to have an audience for the first time. Right, Carolyn? That's excellent. We're very excited. Yeah.

耶。今天我们请来了Substack的创始人兼CEO克里斯·贝斯特。克里斯，今天能和你交谈我特别激动，因为

Yay. And we are here today with Chris Best, the founder and CEO of Substack. And I am so excited to talk to you today, Chris. Because

谢谢邀请。

Thanks for having me.

我对Substack了解不多，因为你是2018年冬季加入Y Combinator的

I don't know much about Substack, because you went through Y Combinator in winter eighteen

是的。

Yes.

那时我已经搬去英国了。所以迫不及待想听你的故事。如果你不介意的话，我希望你能向可能不了解的观众介绍一下Substack是什么。

After I had moved to England. So I can't wait to hear your story. What I'd like you to do, if you don't mind, is telling the audience what Substack is for anyone who doesn't know.

天啊。这是我...这是最难回答的问题。Substack是一个媒体网络，是独立创作者的发布平台，而且越来越成为你能找到全球最聪明、最优秀独立声音的地方。

Oh, god. This is my this is the one question. It's so hard to answer. Substack is a is a media network. It's a publishing platform for independent creators, and increasingly, it's a place you can go and find all the smartest and best independent voices in the world.

似乎所有人都在使用它，上面有太多有趣的内容。但请告诉我们你是怎么开始的。

Everyone seems to be using it, and there's so many interesting things found on it. But tell us how you got started.

我一直是个热忱的读者——不是高深的读者，而是媒体内容的狂热消费者。我始终相信你阅读的内容很重要。这不仅仅是你消耗生命和注意力的方式，尽管即便媒体消费仅是你花费的时间，这也足够重要。但你消费的媒体，尤其是阅读的内容，会塑造你的思维方式、世界观，并改变你将成为什么样的人。它就像你的训练数据。所以优质写作是极其宝贵的。

So I've always been an avid reader, not an elevated reader, but an avid reader and consumer of media, and I've always believed that what you read matters. It's not just a way that you spend some fraction of your life and attention, although, you know, even if the media you consume was just the time you spent, that's important enough. But, you know, the media you consume, and especially what you read shapes how you think, shapes how you see the world, and changes who you become. It's like your training data. And so great writing is this valuable thing.

在我离开作为技术联合创始人的第一家初创公司后，我休了一段时间的假。我花时间陪伴朋友和家人，阅读书籍，学习驾驶飞机，做所有那些在经营初创公司时无暇顾及的事情。于是很自然地，我想，我应该写作。这能有多难呢？

And after I left my first startup where I was a technical co founder, I was taking some sabbatical. I was taking time off. I was seeing my friends and family and reading books and learning to fly airplanes and all the things you you don't have time to do if you're running a a startup. And so, naturally, I was like, I should write. How hard how hard could it be?

我会打字。而且我有些想法让我自己都印象深刻。我开始写一篇我以为会是随笔或博客文章的东西，大致阐述我对互联网媒体经济的不满。基本上就是一篇牢骚，说哇哇哇，互联网来了，摧毁了所有文化产业的商业模式。

I know how to type. Like, I I have thoughts that I I'm very impressed with. And I started writing what I thought was gonna be an essay or a blog post sort of outlining my frustrations with the media economy on the Internet. Basically, this screed that says wah wah wah. You know, the Internet came along and smashed all of the business models for culture.

而那些取而代之的大规模互联网网络虽然是惊人的商业体，却快把我们逼疯了。这篇文章就这么哇哇哇地抱怨着。我写完后就发给了我的朋友哈米什，他现在是我的联合创始人，实际上是个作家——他曾是记者，出过书，还在特斯拉当过一段时间的主笔。我问他觉得怎么样，他非常委婉地打击了我，说，‘好吧，克里斯，现在是2017年。’

And these massive internet scale networks that have taken its place are phenomenal businesses, but they're driving us fucking crazy. Wah wah wah goes this essay. And I wrote it and I sent it to my friend Hamish, who's in the audience somewhere, who's my co founder now, who's actually a writer. He'd been a journalist, he'd written books, he'd was lead writer at Tesla for a while, and I was like, what do you think? And he let me down very gently, you know, he said, okay.

你的论点大概是报纸有麻烦了，Facebook可能并非纯粹的好东西。这算不上什么新颖、精彩的观点。我们都知道这些，这是常识。

It's 2017, Chris. And your thesis is maybe newspapers are in trouble and maybe Facebook is not an unalloyed good. This is not the quite the original, you know, brilliant thought. Like, the we know this. This is known.

是的，这对任何人来说都不会是震惊或新奇的见解。但更有趣的问题是——你可以这样改进文章：加一节内容问问‘那我们该怎么办？事情怎样才能有所不同？’

Yeah. This is not gonna come as a shock or as a as a novel insight to anyone. But the more interesting question, like, here's how you could improve this essay. Add a section that says, so what do you do about it? Like, how could this be different?

既然这些技术变革已经发生，假设情况完全如你所抱怨的那样发展，我们未来该何去何从？我们开始争论这个问题，这场争论没有催生出一篇像样的文章，却催生了一家公司。

Given that this techno this these technological shifts have happened, and let's assume that it's played out in exactly the way you're complaining about. Where where do we go forward from here? And we started arguing about that and that argument turned into not a finished essay that was any good, but into a company that we built.

你们最初做了些什么？你说‘有道理，我们能做什么？’然后呢？

What were the first things that you did? You said, okay, that makes sense. What could we do? Then what did you do?

所以，这是我们的创业故事，不一定建议别人效仿。但我们做的第一件事是写了一份宣言。

So, this is this is this is our story of what we did, not what I would necessarily recommend that anybody do, but the first thing that we did was write a manifesto.

哦天哪，好吧。

Oh, gosh. Okay.

于是哈米什开始起草宣言，我们一起完善它。同时我开始编写用来托管这份宣言的博客软件——我们可不会把创始宣言发在别人的平台上，那太荒谬了。

And so, Hamish started writing the manifesto. We worked on it together and I started writing the little blogging software that was gonna host this manifesto because we're not gonna post our founding manifesto on somebody else's software. That would be ridiculous.

而你是一名职业程序员。

And You are a programmer by trade.

我是程序员，算是技术联合创始人，在上家公司我们一起搭建产品。我们写了这份宣言，搭建了一个简单的博客平台并发布了它。

I'm a I'm a programmer. I'm sort of a, you know, was a technical co founder at my last company. We sort of built the things. And so we did that. We wrote this manifesto and I stood up this very simple blogging platform and we published it.

哈米什在新闻行业认识的某人读到这份宣言后说：'我觉得我需要这个。我一直在写电子报，想像本·汤普森那样收费，但懒得研究如何整合所有环节。'当时我们对Substack的构想既宏大又具体——在文章里描述为'文化的新经济引擎，创造带来更好结果的新激励机制'等等。

And somebody that, Hamish knew from his journalism career read this manifesto and said, hey, I, you know, I I think I need this. Like, this is the thing that we you know, I've been I've been writing this email newsletter and I could I've been wanting to go paid like Ben Thompson does and But I can't kind of be, you know, can't be bothered to figure out how to connect all the pieces. Because we'd sort of At this point, our The idea for Substack was both, kind of this sweeping, very grandiose idea that I've been trying to put down in this essay of like a new economic engine for culture that creates a new incentive structure that has better emergent outcomes and blah blah blah blah blah.

这些写在你的宣言里了？

That was in your manifesto?

写得不算很好。

It was not very well.

好吧。

Okay.

但那种精神内核是在的。我们私下称它为宣言，但很识趣地没把'宣言'写进标题。

But there was the the energy for all of that was there. Did you call it manifesto? We we referred to it as a manifesto among ourselves. We we had the grace not to put manifesto in the title. Totally wondering.

我们既有宏大构想，也有简单切入点：'这个疯狂计划的最小可行产品就是让付费电子报变得极其简单的服务'。这是互联网时代独立创作者的新商业模式，已有先行者证明了这种更优的激励机制——他们追求让用户爱上作品并持续付费，而非单纯获取注意力。

But and, but we so we had this we had this very grandiose idea, but we also had this very like simple kernel to begin with. We're like, okay, the smallest possible instantiation of this harebrained scheme is like a service that makes it dead easy to make a paid email newsletter. Because that is the It is the smallest instantiation. People are gonna be able to use the Internet to go independent in a new way. There's a different business model.

我们写了宣言，获得了第一个客户，申请了YC孵化器，时机把握得很好。

There's already people doing this. Their incentive structure is is different and better. They want to make things that cause people to fall in love with the work they're doing and want to retain and give them value rather than just get as much attention as possible. And that's where we started. We wrote this manifesto.

我们写了这份宣言，获得首位客户后申请了YC，时机恰到好处。

We got our first customer. We applied to YC. We had really good timing.

我能快速问个问题吗？因为我相信他曾是Pando Daily的撰稿人？他可能是为自己使用而创建这个的吗？比如，他是否想离职成为独立记者？

Can I ask a quick question about Because I believe he was a writer at Pando Daily? Might he have been creating this for his own use? Like, did he want to leave and be an independent journalist?

这你得问他本人。我当然认为他...他确实在创造自己想要的东西。他清楚自己是作家，亲身经历过这些。他曾写过书，也体会过那种煎熬。

You'd have to ask him that. I I certainly think he want he It was creating something that he himself wanted. Like, knew he's a writer. He lived this thing. He'd gone and written a book and had the heartache of doing that.

他一直在努力打造职业作家和记者的生涯。所以他正是这类产品的初始目标用户。我不确定他是否计划过辞职单干——至少现在还没行动，如果有计划也没告诉我。

He'd been trying to craft that, you know, a career as a professional writer and journalist. And so he he was the class of person that was gonna be the initial customer for this. I don't know whether he planned to quit and go start his own at some point. He hasn't yet, and he hasn't If he still has plans, he hasn't told me, but

你们的首位用户是谁？

Who was your first user?

我们真正的首位用户是比尔·毕晓普，他运营着名为《Cynicism》的通讯（这是个糟糕的双关语）。这是份面向国际商界和政府读者的中国主题通讯，他希望实现付费订阅，当时已颇具影响力。

So our first real user was this guy named Bill Bishop, who wrote a newsletter called Cynicism. It's a it's a terrible pun. And it's a newsletter about China for like an international business and government audience. And, he'd like he wanted to go paid with it. It was like widely respected.

他就爽快答应了：'行啊，如果你们想做个收费系统，尽管开发吧'。于是我们带着这个点子申请了YC孵化器，申请表上写着'当前零收入'。

And we just he's like, yeah. Okay. If you wanna build a thing that lets me charge for this, you can build it. And so we applied to YC with this idea. We put on the application form, you know, we're making $0 in revenue.

在提交申请到面试期间，我们为比尔这位首位客户上线了服务。记得他首日就赚了约100美元——真的！当时我盯着那个临时搭建的Stripe支付接口想：这算成功了吗？或许真的可行。

And then between the interview or the application and the interview, we launched this first customer, Bill. And I think he made like a $100 his first day. Really? And I was sitting there on this like hacked together like, you know, light stripe wrapper that I'd written and I was like, is this good? I think this might be good.

YC面试时评审说：'资料显示你们零收入'，我立即补充：'有个新进展'。印象很深的是贾里德当时说：'你们已经有一个客户了，再发展两三个同类客户就能起飞'。

And so we show up for the YC interview and they say, well, says here you make $0. And I said, I have a I have an update on that. Like, here's what's happened. And very memorably, I think it was maybe Jared who told me, oh, you got that you got one customer. If you just get like two or three more like that, you're gonna be golden.

意思是你们即将一帆风顺。

Like, this is gonna be, you know, you're sailing.

卡罗琳你还记得吗？当时我也在场，贾里德和阿朵拉都在，不过我确实没印象了。后来我查记录发现我们当时都很看好你们团队，你们展现出积极态势肯定让人特别振奋

Do you remember this, Carolyn? Because you were in the I was in the interview, and Jared and Adora were also in it, and, I don't actually remember this. Okay. But I went and read I I mean, I went and looked at it, we were all pretty excited about you guys. So it must have been, like, super positive that you had Glad

听听。

to hear.

这些更新。这位作者是怎么赚到100美元的？

These updates. How did this writer make a $100?

嗯，因为他已经做了好几年了。所以地球上大概只有五个人是这种产品的完美早期用户，他们早就迫切需要它了。他有一群用户一直想付钱给他。所以这不是从零开始，也不是在成长阶段。

Well, because he'd been doing it for years. So he was like there was probably, like, five people on Earth who were like the perfect early customer for this thing that just already needed it so much. And so he was like He had all these users who had wanted to pay him. So it wasn't he was starting. It wasn't he was growing.

他真的只是发了封邮件说‘现在要收费了’，然后对方就直接打钱了。

He was like He literally just sent them an email being like, this costs money now. And they're like, here's the money.

哇哦。那你们是怎么找到他的？

Wow. Wow. And how did you get him?

哈米什认识他。我们...好吧，我们飞去华盛顿和他面谈，说服他加入了。当然他们都说‘你们再找两三个这样的客户就行’。结果他成了我们多年最大的客户。

Hamish knew him. And we've Okay. We flew down to DC and like talked to him and convinced him and brought him on. And of course, they're like, oh, you just gotta get two or three more like this. He was our biggest customer for years.

之后很多年我们都没再取得那样的成功。我常开玩笑说，就像职业赌徒往往开局连胜——这其实是幸存者偏差，因为开局连败的人根本成不了职业赌手。Substack有点像这种情况，早期那个成功让我们觉得...

We did not taste success like that again for many years. And I sometimes joke, you know how they say that, professional gamblers often start their career with a winning streak? And of course, that's just selection bias where people who start their career with a losing streak don't become professional gamblers. I kind of feel like Substack's like that a little bit. Like we had that early win.

当时想‘这也太容易了吧’，结果后来发现并不简单。但那个开门红给了我们长期坚持的勇气。

We were like, oh, this is gonna be so easy. Like off we go. And it did not turn out to be that easy, but that initial push gave us a lot of courage to go for a long time.

所以你们申请YC被录取了？还记得那个冬天对Substack发展最关键的事吗？

So you apply to YC, you get accepted. Do you remember anything from that winter that was pivotal for Substack's growth and success?

有件事我记得很清楚，每周和贾里德开会时他都会问：‘你们还没上线吗？’

There is one thing I remember where every week we would meet with Jared, and he would say, have you launched it yet?

听起来很熟悉。

Sounds familiar.

我们会说，不，我们有充分的理由。因为那时候如果你想新建一个Substack，我得手动录入数据库。就像，'来跟我谈，我帮你上线'。他会问'你上线了吗？'，而我会说'当然没有，但原因首先是我们要这样那样...'

And we would say, well, no. We have good reasons why we you know, because at the time, if you wanted to make a new substack, I had to input it into the database. Like, was like, yeah, talk to me and I'll launch for you. And he's like, have you launched it yet? And I would say, hell no, but here's why first we have to blah blah blah.

最后他彻底用羞辱点醒了我。他说'你们简直蠢透了，赶紧把这该死的服务上线'。哇，那真是关键一刻。

And eventually, he just completely shamed me into it. He's like, you guys are being complete idiots here. Like, launch your goddamn service. Wow. That was important.

如果我们当时没有

Had we not done

那张椅子。对。

that chair. Yeah.

很犀利。他用一种温和的方式让你自己意识到有多愚蠢。如果我们没上线，肯定行不通——这点我很确定。

Tough. I mean, he said it. He did the gentle thing where he causes you to realize yourself how much of an idiot you're being. And then we did, and like if we hadn't launched it, it wouldn't have worked. I'll tell you that much.

你们是在那三个月内上线的吗？好的。那演示日表现如何？有人感兴趣吗？

Did you launch that during the three months? Yes. Okay. And then did you do okay at demo day? Were there people that were interested in

有感兴趣的人。我感觉我们大概排在第三梯队，可能是同期公司里的中游水平——这是我情感上的记忆，没有数据支撑。

Yeah. There was people that were interested. I kinda feel like we're maybe like a, you know, somewhere in like the third quartile. Maybe we're the median company in our batch at demo day is sort of my emotional recollection of it. I have no data on that.

总体不错。我们融到资了，有支持者，但不是最热门的公司。可能现在依然不是。

So we were like, it was good. We raised around. It was a good thing. We had, you know, there was believers, but we were not one of like the hot companies. Maybe we're still not.

那批公司里现在仍有表现非常突出的。

There's still companies from that batch that are crushing it.

那就跟我们说说你成长过程中下一个重大的转折点吧，毕竟你现在已经非常成功了。

Then tell us about like sort of the next biggest thing that happened in your growth because you're huge now.

是啊。我是说，这其实是一连串的阶段。明白吗？比如在演示日之前，我记得我们还没有团体订阅功能，但有个客户大量采购团体订阅，我们就手动操作给这些破产律所卖了很多团体订阅，就为了让演示日的数据好看些。那段经历还挺有意思的。

Yeah. I mean, there's just been a there's been a series of eras. Right? So I mean, leading up to demo day, I remember we didn't have a group subscription feature, but there was one customer that was selling a lot of group subscriptions, so we just manually went and sold a bunch of group subscriptions to these like bankruptcy firms in order to make our like demo day numbers. That was pretty fun.

之后我们埋头苦干了一阵子，努力吸引用户加入，说服早期客户尝试并成为标杆案例，再逐步转化他们，让他们认同我们正在做的事。后来我们A轮融资意外被提前锁定，因为我们曾试图招募Andrew Chan来Substack写作——他在优步工作过，有个很棒的博客。我们反复邀请他来Substack工作。

And then we were just grinding for a while and trying to like get people, you know, get people to join, you know, convince early customers to start and become sort of lighthouses and then sort of tip them over and sell them on the religion of this thing that we were doing. We ended up getting preempted in our series a kind of unexpectedly because we, we tried to recruit Andrew Chan to to write for Substack. Because he'd been at Uber. He had this really good blog. And we kept trying to recruit him to come come work at Substack.

最终他加入了Andreessen Horowitz风投，打电话说'我不会把博客搬过来，但你们要不要来聊聊？'我们回复'不了，别打扰我们，正忙着呢'。

And eventually, he joined Andreessen Horowitz and called us up and was like, okay. I'm not gonna I'm not bringing my blog over, but like, do you wanna come talk to us? And we're like, no. Leave us alone. We're busy.

我们通常不和投资人接触。但他坚持说'来和马克吃个饭吧'，结果我们A轮融资就这么被提前锁定了，整个过程挺戏剧性的。不过确实，公司发展过程中充满了各种波折。

We don't talk to investors. He's like, oh, come have dinner with Mark. Come do the thing. And so we ended up like getting kind of like preempted in our series a and having a whole thing there. But, yeah, we grew the thing for there's lots of lots of twists and turns.

我们时间比往常紧张些。所以我想重点聊聊——Carolyn也感兴趣——你们推出类Twitter竞品的事。但既然这是创始人模式大会，我们想探讨下创始人模式：作为创始CEO能做而职业经理人不会/不能做的事。不过实践中这个概念很模糊，今天我们算是现场收集案例，希望未来能分享给业界。

We have a little bit less time than usual. So what I would love to get to, and I know Carolyn's interested too, we want to ask you about when you launched sort of a Twitter competitor. But since this is the founder mode conference, we want to talk talk a little bit about founder mode because there is a, you know, clear definition for it. It's things you can do as a founder CEO that a hired manager wouldn't or couldn't do, but we're not really sure what that means in practice. So we're we're kind of collecting data here today that that we're hoping to share with the world.

我觉得这两个话题有交集，比如你处于创始人模式的案例就和与埃隆·马斯克的戏剧性事件相关。这样讨论会很高效，你觉得呢？

So I know I think these two stories converge, like examples of you being in founder mode and some drama with Elon Musk converge. So that could be a very time efficient thing to do. Don't you think?

好的。关于创始人模式，我的理解是：我们始终秉持长期主义原则，清楚自己在创造什么、核心理念是什么以及为何能胜出，并对此保持'长期贪婪'。同时认真践行这个理念带来的所有后果——并非所有初创企业都如此。很多人会转型调整，我们当然也在持续学习，但创业之初就怀揣着宏大的构想和宣言。

Yeah. Well, okay. So here would be my answer to the the founder mode thing, which is I think one thing we've been able to do is have kind of a long term principled vision for why we're making the thing we're doing and what the actual center of the idea is and why it ought to win, and to be kind of like very sort of long term greedy about that, And then to take seriously the consequences of what that theory about the world actually means, which I think is not every startup is like this. Like, think a lot of people pivot and discover things, and we've definitely we're learning stuff all the time. But we started the company with this very grandiose idea and And manifesto and all this so we sort of knew that we wanted to build this new You know, at every stage, the product has been this There's a handle.

每个阶段产品都需要有个切入点让人理解，但我们始终在构建的是文化领域的新经济引擎。我们想打造能引发文艺复兴的平台，主角不该是我们，而应是作家、创作者这些文化缔造者。

You have to give people a handle to it of how to understand it. But the thing that we've always felt that we were building is this new economic engine for culture. And we wanted to be able to like create a platform that could spark a renaissance, basically. And we're not supposed to be the heroes of that thing. It's supposed to be the people who are the writers, the creators, the people making and living in the culture.

这才是激动人心的部分。我们认定必须建立这个经济引擎，其体系和契约必须更优越才能吸引人，同时产品本身必须足够出色，让人们自愿采用。在这过程中，我们清楚要补足哪些缺失环节。

That's the exciting part. And so we're like, we had this idea, like, we have to make this economic engine, and the the the system and the social contract we make for it has to be better, and that's what pulls people in. And then it has to actually work. It has to actually compete and be a good product that people willingly adopt because it's great. And so along the way, we knew we had to do those things, and we would discover pieces that we were missing.

最初的一个重要部分是，我们曾是这样的工具。对吧？你可以托管博客，运营电子邮件通讯，还能收取订阅费。

And so one big piece at the start, we were this tool. Right? You could host a blog. You could run an email newsletter. You could charge subscriptions.

一旦人们发现了你，就可能爱上你并为你付费，这很棒，一切都很顺利。但这个系统的缺陷在于：他们是在哪里发现你的？

Once people found you, they could fall in love with you and pay for you, and that was great, and everything worked. But the the flaw in that system was where did they find you?

对，对。那他们是在哪里发现你的呢？

Yeah. Yeah. And the Where place did they find you?

在其他所有社交网络上。他们在Twitter上发现你，在Facebook上发现你，在LinkedIn上发现你。这种情况现在越来越普遍。

On every other social network. They found you on Twitter. They found you on Facebook. They found you on LinkedIn. It's increasingly now.

所有这些地方。这意味着两件事：首先，我们试图建造的那座美丽小城，始终处于其他平台有毒污泥激励工厂的下游。因为如果你想在Substack上表现出色，首先得擅长Twitter或Facebook。没错。

All these places. And so that meant two things. That meant that our little beautiful city we were trying to build was downstream of the toxic sludge incentive factory of everywhere else. Because if you wanted to be great on Substack, you had to first be good at Twitter, or you had to first be good at Facebook. Yeah.

其次，如果马克一时兴起决定暂时禁止政治内容，而你是Substack上依赖Facebook流量的政治作家，那就真成问题了。或者像后来发生的——如果埃隆收购Twitter后，又想收购Substack，若收购不成就要打压你们，这也会造成大麻烦。

It also meant that if Mark had a fit of pique inside of no more politics for a while, and you're a political writer on Substack that gets all your traffic from Facebook, it's a real problem. Or as it turned out, if Elon buys Twitter and decides maybe I want to buy Substack and maybe if I can't, I'm gonna kill those guys, it creates a real problem.

听起来是个有趣的故事。

That sounds like an interesting story.

所以你们

So Are you

愿意分享吗？

open to sharing?

当然。当我们意识到这点后就开始行动——这可能属于创始人模式——我们着手解决这个问题。当时我们有个很酷的双边市场业务正在增长，那时正值市场狂热期，人们争相给我们投钱。但我们清楚，如果不建立这个网络，长远来看将会举步维艰。

Yeah. So when when we realized this, we started And this is maybe the founder mode part. Is we started working on this. We had this cool business that was like this two sided marketplace that was growing and at the time, it was like we went through a period that was like super hot and flush market and people throwing money at us. But we knew that if we didn't build this network in the long run like, that was gonna be a very hard thing to do.

但从长远来看，如果我们不去做这件事，它就不会成为真正的事业。所以我们开始投资一些我认为，如果你只想着最大化接下来几年的商业价值，就不会去做的事情。你不会说，我们必须去开发一个移动应用。对吧？这显然是件非常困难的事。

But in the long run, if we didn't do it, it wasn't going to become the real thing. So we started investing in stuff that I think was not something that you would do if you were just trying to maximize even the next couple year value of the business. You wouldn't say, like, we have to go and build a mobile app. Right? That was something that's like it's it's obviously very hard to do.

你知道，我们有一个自认为很有说服力的理论，解释为什么长远来看我们需要它，但这就像是个难以让人相信的事。我们告诉的很多人都不认为这是个好主意。我觉得PG可能至今仍觉得这是个坏主意。他跟我说过几次，最终我们中会有一方被证明是对的。于是我们开发了这个移动应用，打造了这个短内容推送流，然后意识到——嘿，这正是我们需要的那种让人愿意来关注的有趣东西。

It's, you know, it's you you we had a we had a theory we thought was convincing for why we needed it in the long run, but it's just like it was a hard thing to believe in. A lot of people we told about it didn't think it was a good idea. I think PG might still think it was a bad idea. He's told me a few times, we'll find One of us will be right in the end. So we built this mobile app, we built this short form feed, we realized, hey, this this is just what's like, is we need the thing that is, like, fun to come to and pay attention to.

是的。我们想要建立这个能更好利用用户注意力的系统，但你不必——使用Substack不需要像苦行僧一样。所以我们打造了这个短内容推送流，开发了这个移动应用。就在我们即将发布时——

Yes. We want to have this better system that support makes good use of your attention, but you don't have to you can't be have to be a monk to use Substack. So we built this short form feed. We built this mobile app. And we were about to launch it.

那时候——我试着回忆所有细节——埃隆已经收购了推特。我想他当时已经对运营感到厌倦，正在寻找新目标。你知道，他对言论自由和新闻自由立场非常强硬。我们也一直持有类似观点，认为自由媒体是自由社会的基石。于是他给我打了电话。

And at the time, I think I'm trying to remember all the ins and outs of this, but Elon had bought Twitter. I think he was already, like, getting sick of running it and was, like, looking for, like, something to do. And, you know, he had this very strong stance on free speech, freedom of the press. We had also have we had, like, had had and still had like a a similar view that, you know, free press is essential to a free society. So he I mean, he called me up.

他说：'嘿，想见面聊聊吗？' 我说：'好啊，没问题。'

He's like, hey. You wanna come meet? And I was like, yeah. Okay. I'll do that.

后来我半夜左右去了推特旧总部见他。

And I went I went and met him at at the old Twitter HQ at like midnight or something.

不会吧。果然是在半夜。

No way. Of course. It was like midnight.

是啊，很有戏剧性的时间点。和他交谈后——他真是个充满魅力的人。总之简而言之，他说：'要不要考虑联手？'

Yeah. You know, very dramatic hour. And talked to him. He's a fascinating guy. Anyway, the the long and short of it was he's like, you know, would you consider, you know, joining forces?

就是'让我收购Substack，来运营推特这个平台。会很酷的。' 我回答：'好吧，让我考虑下。'

Like, you know, let me buy Substack. Come run this Twitter thing. And, you know, that would be cool. And I said, okay, let me think about it.

他提具体金额了吗？

Did he talk numbers?

不。不。我当时在概念上是这么想的。那是在我们准备推出这个看起来很像推特竞品的东西之前几周——不，甚至不是几周，就是几天前。

No. No. And I was like Conceptually. And this was weeks before we were not even weeks, days before we were going to launch this thing that looks a lot like a Twitter competitor.

是啊。我的天哪。

Yeah. Oh my god.

所以当我们准备推出时，我还在这个小小的间隙里，我就直接告诉他了。我说，嘿，就是让你知道，我们要推出这个东西。我们计划了很久。这就像，你知道，这是我们长期战略的一部分。我们不是要成为竞争对手来对抗，我们在很多方面都很一致，比如你所坚持的很多原则。

And so when we went to launch it, like, as I was still in this little gap, I just just let him know. Was like, hey, just so you know, we're launching this thing. We've been planning it for a while. It's like, you know, this is just like a part of our long term strategy. We're not trying to be a competitor and fight, and we're very aligned in a lot of, like, the things you're you know, a lot of the principles of of things.

然后他说，别管它。而我说，不。就像

And he was like, don't watch it. And I was like, no. Like

这是会议之后吗？还是在会议期间？

This is after the meeting Yeah. Or during the meeting?

是之后。

This is after.

好吧。好吧。所以你还没对他说不。你只是提前告诉了他关于移动端的事。

Okay. Okay. So you haven't told him no yet. You just gave him a heads up about the mobile.

我只是提前通知了他。然后我们就推出了。我不可能不推出。是的。他非常不高兴。

I just gave him a heads up. And we launched it. I'm not gonna not launch it. Yeah. And he was very unhappy.

他是怎么表达不满的？

How did he express his unhappiness?

嗯，你可能还记得。有那么一周，你在推特上不能提Substack这个词。所以如果你说了Substack，你的推文就没人能看到。于是人们开始像对待伏地魔一样对待我们。他们会说，'那个不能提名的平台上有我的文章'。

Well, you might remember this. There was like, there was a week where the You couldn't say the word substack on Twitter. So if you said the word substack, your tweet would just Nobody would see it. And so people started treating us like Voldemort. They would be like, the platform that cannot be named is where my article is.

不仅如此。你甚至无法说出Substack这个词，也无法搜索它。直到今天，我想只有我们《纽约时报》受到这种待遇——如果你偶然找到一个Substack文章的链接并点击，它会重定向过去，但要等上五秒钟。

And he But not only that. So you couldn't you couldn't say the word substack. You couldn't search for the word substack. And I think to this day, I think only us in the New York Times got this treatment. Where if you did somehow accidentally find a link to a substack article and clicked it, it would redirect there, but it would take five seconds.

哦，他用延迟来惩罚你们。

Oh, he he punished you with slowness.

这非常严重。加载要五秒？是的，五秒简直像永恒。

That's a that's a very serious thing. Your legs take five seconds? Yeah. Five seconds is an eternity. Yeah.

他还...给我发了一些指责性的愤怒短信，我认为他把这视为拒绝。

And he I think he like he made some accus he sent me mean texts and got very angry, and I think he took it as a no.

我正想说，他是不是觉得交易告吹了？就当没这回事？

I was just gonna say, like, was he like deals off? Like, consider it over?

用更强烈的措辞...哦。

In stronger terms oh.

哇哦。好吧。所以你当时没被吓住？

Oh. Oh. Okay. Wow. So you weren't intimidated?

不至于那么夸张。我是说...我开着特斯拉呢。确实有过瞬间在想：他会不会杀了我？

I wouldn't go that far. Okay. I I mean, I drive a Tesla. I had moments where I was like, will he kill me?

这种想法真诡异

That's a weird feeling

我觉得他不会。我现在还开着这车，所以...应该没那么担心吧。

I don't think you would. I still drive it, so I'm not that that concerned, I guess.

这是哪一年的事？

What year was this?

有个记性好的人告诉我的。是2022年吗？哈米什说是的。

Somebody who remembers years told me. Was this 2022? Hamish says yes.

好的，2022年。那么你们从推特具体获得了多少流量？比如，很多潜在客户是不是流失了？

Okay. 2022. So how much traffic did you get from Twitter specifically? Like, did the did a lot of leads evaporate?

如果这事发生在2019或2020年，公司可能就垮了。因为曾有一段时间我们所有的增长都依赖人们在推特上发布内容。我觉得他以为现在还是那样。幸运的是，推特带来的流量占比早已下降，而且我们一直在构建社交网络和内容发现功能。

So there was a time if this had happened to us in 2019 or 2020, it would have killed the company. Because there was a time where all of our growth came from people launching on Twitter. And I think he thought that that was still the case. Fortunately, Twitter's share of traffic had already been declining. And we've been building up some like network and discovery features.

所以最终情况是，虽然这对那些依赖推特读者的作者们来说很痛苦，但从整体数据来看，你甚至看不出这个事件的影响。

And so it it wound up being the case that although it was very traumatic for a bunch of individual writers who had Twitter audiences who were kind of depending on it, if you looked at like our numbers overall, I don't think you'd be able to see where it happened.

明白了。哦，有意思。

Okay. Oh, interesting.

而且这不是...这是一个长达数年的过程，推特作为流量来源对我们的重要性逐年递减。所以这虽然是件令人压力山大的事——许多用户也确实感到压力，这很合理——但并没有构成你想象中那种关乎存亡的威胁。

And it wasn't It was It it had been like kind of like a multi year process of just Twitter becoming less and less important as a source of traffic to us. And so it was a big stressful thing. A lot of people customers experience that as stressful, rightfully so. But it was not the existential threat to the business that I think you probably imagined that it was.

那么事后看来，这么做值得吗？

So sort of looking back in hindsight, was it worth doing this?

我认为值得。顺便说下，我们推出了这个笔记流功能，里面有类似推文的短内容，可以链接到长文章，整合得很好，还能优雅地分享引文。

Well, I think it was. And and because and by the way, so we launched this this, you know, this notes feed, right, that's got short form, you know, it's got short form things that are kind of like tweets. You can actually link to long form articles. They're well integrated. You can share quotes nicely.

它能引导你深入阅读长内容。可能有两年的时间这个功能完全不起作用，只有少数最忠实的作家和Substack用户在默默使用——大概就几千人活跃在这个隐蔽的角落。当时它甚至不在应用首页，而是藏在二级页面里，像个奇怪的小功能。

You can it sort of leads you into long and interesting things. And it probably like we probably spent two years where that thing like didn't work at all. There was kind of just like this core hardcore set of like a few of our most intense writers and sub stackers were kind of like there was maybe like a few thousand people using this quiet little corner of the app. It wasn't even the home screen of the app at the time. There was like a second page where it just had this weird little thing.

我认为如果你是个职业经理人，早就把这个项目砍掉了。它太蠢了，根本行不通。说实话，在我这个曾开发过通讯应用的人看来，它没彻底死掉已经是个奇迹。按常理它早该彻底失败了。

And I think if you were a professional manager, you would kill that thing. It's stupid. It's like it's not working. It's actually in my view, having built a messaging app before this, it's a miracle it didn't totally die. Because the expectation is that it just it completely dies.

所以当它像靠着生命维持系统般苟延残喘时，我觉得这太棒了。但公司里所有人都反问：你在说什么胡话？这哪里棒了？不就是让一千多人在应用里那个愚蠢的二级标签页里聊天吗？但我们坚信这是我们要创造的核心部分。

And so the fact that it was, like, kind of there on life support was pretty I was like, this is great. And everybody, even at the company, was like, what are you talking about? This is great. Like, you got, like, a thousand people kind of, like, talking in this stupid second tab of the app. But we believed that it was an essential part of the thing we were trying to create.

所以我们始终坚持它必须成功。我们不断改进，持续优化，最终让它运转起来了。

And so we just kept insisting that it had to work. And we worked on it, and we worked on it, and we worked on it. And eventually, we got it working.

贾斯汀·卡恩午饭时刚跟我说他特别喜欢这个功能，简直爱不释手。

Justin Kahn was just telling me over lunch that he really likes it. He's really into it.

嘿，我们做到了。是啊。

Hey. We made it. Yeah.

所以如果你不是创始人，没写过那份宣言书的话...

So if you had been sort of a non founder, you hadn't written that manifesto, this

这东西根本...你一开始就不会...你甚至不会和埃隆展开那场单方面的较量。或许用'被碾压'更准确？这个类比可能不太...事实大概就是如此。

thing would be You it wouldn't in the first place. You wouldn't get in a pissing match with Elon, even if it was one-sided. And I guess, is that just getting pissed on? Maybe this is this analogy is not as That may be what it is. Fact.

而且我觉得你也不会坚持下来。对吧？如果处在...这其实很合理。大多数情况下正确的做法就是：尝试各种可能，遇到阻碍就及时放弃。

And I don't think you would have kept it up. Right? Like, if you're sort of if you're in the and it's very reasonable. This is a in most cases, the right thing to do is like, yeah, you try lots of stuff. If you start hitting a wall, it's not going easily.

你转战其他方向。我们经常这么做。但必须分清哪些事是在试错，哪些事是你认定必须成功、并愿意花数年时间攻坚的。确实有些伟大成就，只有用第二种方式才能实现。

You give it up. You try something else. We do that all the time. But you have to be able to know the difference between things that you're trying to figure out if they will work and things that you have decided that they must work and that you're willing to apply yourself over a period of years to figure out how to make them work. And I do think that there are there are great things that you can build that are only accessible in that second mode.

这个观点太棒了。我觉得每个人都该学学这个。最后问个题外话——你在推特上还是用'伏地魔'这个账号吗？

I love that. That thought. That's a good thing that I think everyone can can learn from. Just so I have closure, are you still Voldemort on Twitter?

不，我认为你现在可以直接说Substack了。

No. I think you can say Substack now.

那你能添加链接吗？我是说，

And you can link? I mean,

我知道链接。现在它们基本上全网都失效了。所以我们和其他人处境相同，很不幸。但你不用再依赖推特了，可以直接打开Substack应用。

I know links. They don't are kinda dead across the board now. So we're sort of like, we're in the same boat as everyone else, unfortunately. But you don't have to use Twitter anymore. You can open up the Substack app.

贾斯汀·汗会在那里。

Justin Khan will be there.

我们时间不多了，现在典型的Substack用户是什么样？你们覆盖各行各业，普通用户画像是什么样的？

So just I we don't have ton tons more time, but who who is the typical Substack user right now? What are you in all different industries and things? What does a normal one look like?

不存在所谓的典型用户。我把我们看作文化的指数基金，人们创作的主题广度令人震惊。但确实有些共性特征——如果你是Substack上的创作者，往往是能培养忠实追随者的那类人。无论受众规模大小，用户对其内容的在乎程度和价值认可度都很高。这正是Substack独具价值之处，也是这类创作者特别看重我们平台的原因。

There's no such thing as a normal Substack user. I mean, I think of us as like an index fund of culture, and there really is There's just like a staggering breadth of like what people write about and produce, but there is there is some common attributes. And I would say, if you're a creator, a writer on Substack, it's somebody that can have a cult following. It's somebody where the the intensity of how much people care about it and value it is high regardless of the size of the audience. That's the the place that Substack is uniquely valuable for and the the type of person that uniquely values what we can bring.

至于读者群体，我认为是那些追求深度真实内容的人，他们渴望有思想的长篇阅读。

And then, you know, I think of the audiences are the people who are who are showing up for those things. Who want something that's like deep and real and are interested in, you know, smart long form stuff.

听起来你像是在描述paulgraham.com。

I sort of feel like you're describing paulgraham.com.

是啊，但他讨厌这个说法，至今认为这套模式行不通。

Yeah. But he he hates this idea. He still thinks it's not working.

我总得试试。大家一直想让他放弃雅虎那个古董级的网页版。

I had to try. People are always trying to get him to to get off the Yahoo, the old, via web Yahoo.

我们得赶紧把这期播客放到Substack上。

We gotta get we gotta get this podcast on Substackers. Do.

请简单说说，你们为播客主提供什么服务？

Tell us just very quickly, what do you offer for podcasters?

所以，你可以

So, you can

具体怎么操作呢？

How would it work?

你可以像在其他播客平台一样在Substack发布节目。内容会同步到所有平台——能上Spotify，也能上苹果播客应用，完全免费。听众可以像订阅其他Substack内容一样注册，这样你就能获取他们的邮箱。

You can publish your podcast on Substack just like you would any other podcast host. Goes everywhere. You can put it on Spotify. You can put it on the Apple podcast app, totally free. When people They can sign up to it just like they would any other Substack, and you get their email Oh.

不是必须的，但如果你某天想给订阅者写封信，完全可以——这是个不错的附加功能。

Don't have to, but if you ever decided, hey, I actually wanna like write a note to all the people who subscribe to my podcast, you can, which is a nice benefit.

这个功能很实用，因为我们节目是分季制作的，有时两季之间会间隔几个月。这样就能主动联系真正感兴趣的听众，告诉他们'新季即将在下个月回归'之类的消息。

I would like that because we do seasons, and sometimes there's a couple months in between seasons. And it would be a nice way to reach people that actually care to say, hey, it's coming, you know, next month or whatever.

没错。而且所有使用Substack应用的听众都会发现——发现你的精彩片段，发现完整剧集，还能进行分享讨论。

Great. And all of the lovely people who use the Substack app will discover your your nice, you know, discover clips, discover episodes, be able to share and talk about it.

太棒了。听起来很不错。虽然这次该结束了，但希望下次你能来做期更深入的长对谈。

Awesome. That sounds great. Well, I think we better wrap up, but we'd love to have you come back sometime and do a real longer form episode with us.

非常乐意。

I would love that.

我一直很喜欢听你的故事，感谢你如此坦诚地与我们分享。

I've I've loved hearing your story and thank you for for being so honest and sharing it with us.

谢谢邀请我。

Thank you for having me.

谢谢，克里斯。

Thanks, Chris.