Seriously, F#ck Substack, Y Combinator, and a Lot of Other Stuff

Doing my small part to undermine platform profiteers and generally evil people.

If you’re not in the startup scene, the name Y Combinator (YC) may sound like a failed invention by Nikola Tesla. But for those of us in the scene, YC is considered one of, if not the premier incubator and investment vehicle for tech startups. I’ve written about YC before in the context of housing startups, highlighting their perfect record of failure, the result of hubristic startup bros issuing big checks for stuff they don’t know shit about. 

Substack is a YC alum and portfolio company. I started using the platform in late 2021 as a place to explore subjects beyond real estate innovation and sustainability, which is mostly what you’ll find on my Medium page. I had no grand financial ambitions for Substack, nor was I opposed to making money. Mostly, I liked the platform’s elegant interface and the possibility it held for attracting new readers as my content would presumably be in the mix with many other writers.   

But Substack never delivered money or new readership—at least, not that was proportional to the amount of effort I put into the content I published on the platform. Perhaps it’s because my content sucked, but I think there were other forces at play.   

First off, let me say I did make some money on Substack —probably around $800 over two-plus years. Perhaps some of that money came from you. And if so, thank you! This is money that helped me to continue writing and living. I truly appreciate the support.

But there were issues with the money. The first was Substack’s 20 percent cut; e.g. I get $4.07 from my $5.11 monthly subscriptions. Now, if Substack provided lots of new eyes, some of which leading to new subscriptions, that 20 percent would be money well spent. But basically everyone of my paid subscribers was a friend or family member. I have no doubt these people believed in me and appreciated my writing, but I don’t believe they would necessarily have subscribed if they didn’t know me. In other words, I, not Substack, was doing all the marketing for my Substack account.   

This leads me to the second issue with Substack, which is the fundamental problem with its subscription model. I think the New York Times is a nefarious organization, but at least they have a logical subscription model: one monthly fee gets you all of its content. It’s the same with Medium, which charges a flat $5/month to access all of its member-only content (I’m a subscriber, though a lot of its content makes me want to ditch it). But Substack’s piecemeal pricing means readers are supposed to pay for multiple subscriptions to multiple writers to get a diversity of views. This is a stupid, expensive business model for most readers and writers, which surely factors into Substack’s financial woes and, I suspect, their likely death in a few years. 

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Substack is emblematic of the startup world’s fixation on platform profiteering. Consider some of YC’s biggest “successes,” Airbnb, Postmates, and Doordash. These startups became behemoths by taking on large infusions of external, non-revenue capital. This capital was then combined with the startup’s unregulated business and labor practices, which allow them to undercut regulated legacy industries they were competing against. As long as the investments flow in, the platforms grow, but once the capital is exhausted and regulations are enacted to address the startups’ novel business and labor conditions (short term rentals, gig worker rights, etc.), those startups prove to be bad businesses and abominable employers —but not before YC makes a ton of dough on the promise of the platform, not before mortally wounding legacy industries, and not before exploiting the shit out of folks powering the platform: the gig working Airbnb maid, the Postmates and Doordash drivers making less than minimum wage, the earnest Substack writer hoping to be read, and so forth. I don’t want any part of enriching this unholy model. My aversion, combined with my recent dearth of writing on Substack, has led me to suspend charging my last few subscribers. I will likely move to my own site for future content, though I’m still weighing options. I will keep you posted.   

Helping my decision to depart Substack was the announcement of YC’s first investment in a military startup the other day. Ares Industries is making “low-cost cruise missiles that will be compatible with existing launch platforms,” according to TechCrunch. Viewed broadly, this investment makes perfect sense. So many of YC’s—and the tech industry, generally—is focused on removing humans from satisfying human needs. Hungry? An app will get it to your doorstep without interacting with poor delivery drivers. Want a place to stay? You can book a vacation home on an app without ever directly interacting with the homeowner or angry neighbors. Want to say something clever or ask a hard question? AI will say the things and answer the questions we formerly used our minds and social networks to arrive at (YC’s former president, Sam Altman, co-founded Chat GPT). Want to eliminate hostile populations? Well, YC is helping bring you low cost missiles, a far more direct way of eliminating people than making their occupations redundant.