#126 - Chris Best and Jonathan Gill

Y Combinator

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/
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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