About this episode
Chris Best is the cofounder and CEO of Substack . Substack makes it simple for a writer to start a paid newsletter. They were in the Winter 2018 batch of YC. You can check them out at Substack.com . Jonathan Gill is the cofounder and CEO of Backtracks . Backtracks is a podcast analytics and hosting platform. You can check them out at Backtracks.fm. Chris is on Twitter @cjgbest and Jonathan is @jgill333 . The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year. Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ *** Topics 00:00 - Intro 1:03 - Paid vs advertising in podcasting 3:33 - Are advertisers overpaying for podcast ads? 6:13 - What percent of the market will ultimately be paid content? 8:13 - Payment mechanisms 9:48 - Price anchoring 12:28 - Individual creators vs brands 17:23 - Deplatforming 18:53 - Spotify 20:23 - Discovery and growth in newsletters 22:53 - Public and private feeds 25:23 - Apple's role 26:38 - Will education be the driver of paid content? 30:23 - Educational podcasters in China 32:23 - How are their newsletter and podcast customers growing? 36:18 - Jack Ryder asks - In 5 years time, are personal newsletters going to replace social networks like Facebook? 38:13 - Debdut Mukherjee asks - Do podcasts actually work? If so, how do startups calculate the ROI & the CAC? 43:38 - Measurement 45:23 - Best practices for new podcasters and newsletter creators