Building Substack | Sachin Monga (Substack, Facebook)
1. Just Start Your Substack
Begin by simply starting your Substack, gathering subscribers, and publishing one or two pieces of content (writing, audio, or video) to gauge interest and see what happens.
2. Be Patient and Consistent
Commit to a slow and steady approach, consistently publishing for several months (e.g., nine months for free) before expecting significant growth or monetization, to build momentum and assess viability.
3. Aim for 1000 Paid Subscribers
Focus on building a base of around 1,000 paid subscribers, as this number can be sufficient to make a living, demonstrating the power of ‘1,000 true fans’.
4. Don’t Underestimate Audience Support
Don’t let worries about audience perception or your own worth prevent you from charging for content or taking breaks, as paying subscribers are generally forgiving and supportive.
5. Focus on Quality, Not Scale
Create high-quality work for a relatively small number of people who value it highly enough to pay for it, rather than chasing millions of viewers or attention games.
6. Build a Home Base for Audience
Use platforms like Substack as a home base to accumulate your most valuable audience, where you own their contact information and can deliver your best work on your terms.
7. Adopt “You Are Not Late” Mindset
Counter the feeling that it’s ’too late’ to start something new on the internet; recognize that the internet’s evolution is still in its early stages, offering immense opportunity for those willing to engage.
8. Prioritize User Control
When making product decisions, prioritize options that provide more control to the user (e.g., writer or reader) over their experience, even if it seems harder to implement.
9. Leverage Organic User Behavior
Observe and build upon organic user behaviors, like readers discovering other Substacks through their favorite writers, to create powerful, user-controlled growth features.
10. Empower Users to Curate
Instead of algorithmic recommendations, empower users (writers) to personally curate and recommend content, fostering trust and driving high-intent subscriptions.
11. Build Products With Your Users
When making fundamental product changes, actively involve your users (e.g., writers, readers) through pilots and feedback groups (like a ‘product lab’) to ensure the product meets their needs and aligns with core principles.
12. Facilitate, Don’t Just Decide
When working with a product-minded founder, act as a facilitator rather than solely a decision-maker, ensuring clear communication between the founder and teams to align on vision and priorities.
13. Maintain Open Communication
Establish a routine of open communication with the founder, such as weekly check-ins to discuss big problems and concerns, to build trust and ensure alignment.
14. Internalize Founder’s Vision
Actively seek to understand and internalize the founder’s long-term vision and historical context of the problem, then help your teams do the same to align efforts effectively.
15. Prioritize Continuous Process Improvement
Don’t strive for a perfect process, as it will quickly become obsolete in a high-growth startup; instead, focus on continuously improving your processes week by week, month by month.
16. Embrace Constant Change
Be comfortable with constantly feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing, as success in a high-growth company means processes and knowledge will frequently become obsolete.
17. Rotate Recommendations to Share Growth
If you have a platform, rotate your recommendations among different quality creators to share growth and give others a platform, assuming you genuinely like their work.
18. Filter Out Media Noise
When facing negative press or chatter, focus on parsing out signal from noise, and generally keep your head down to continue shipping and executing on the vision, as most external chatter won’t impact day-to-day work.
19. Study Architecture for Product Insights
Explore books on architecture and urban planning, such as Christopher Alexander’s ‘The Timeless Way of Building,’ to gain insights into building good spaces for human interaction and avoiding suboptimal user experiences caused by misaligned incentives.
20. Don’t Overthink Initial Setup
Don’t overthink initial decisions like your newsletter’s name or a grand plan; just sign up and start trying things out to see if you enjoy it and if there’s an audience.
21. Leverage Retool for Internal Tools
For small teams (up to five), use Retool to build custom internal apps for free, streamlining operations and gaining productivity without the usual time and cost burden.
22. Streamline User Authentication with Stytch
Integrate Stytch’s flexible, out-of-the-box authentication solutions to make user onboarding more seamless and secure, potentially increasing conversion by over 60% and saving engineering time.