Today, I wrote about the remarkable success of Lenny Rachitsky as a harbinger of change coming to B2B media. Also, some addendums to my newsletter hustlers piece.
I got a bunch of feedback on Tuesday’s newsletter about newsletter hustlers. Interestingly, some objected to being thought of as hustlers and others offended that their hustler status was in question. A few clarifications/amplifications:
I screwed up a couple things. For some reason, despite doing a podcast with him, I misidentified 6am City COO Ryan Heafy as his partner Ryan Johnson. Sorry. Also, the Neuron newsletter founder isn’t a teenager; he has graduated from college.
A couple people wrote in about how male and white the newsletter hustler crowd is. I tend to skip over the demographics of these areas. It’s just not an area I have much to add rather than the business dynamics.
I’m not critical of Substackers. Many are building great businesses on Substack, others who use it as a side hustle and still others who just use it like social media. Lenny Rachitsky and others have shown that Substack is a great business platform, even if the typical internet power laws exist.
My viewpoint is biased by my background. I come from journalism. That means I’m always going to be biased to people who build a business around content rather than the reverse. But I’m also self-aware enough to know there are lots of ways to do things. I’m doing a podcast for next week with Adam Ryan, CEO of Workweek, who comes from a different point of view.
There is a newsletter bubble, but there is a YouTube bubble, a podcast bubble and lots of bubbles. The beauty of the newsletter world is that it is an open protocol – maybe the successor to the open web? – that now has dead simple tools and platforms. That elimination of friction means a flood of newsletters. In the long run, this always washes out. Most will not stick with the habit and consistency required to build publications.
For more feedback, send me an email by hitting reply or emailing [email protected].
The Lenny effect
This week, Lenny Rachitsky achieved a remarkable achievement: He crossed 1 million subscribers to his newsletter. Lenny, who has first name status in the Substack world, is noteworthy because he built a juggernaut not in politics or general business strategy but by focusing on product management.
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