Mumbrellacast Interview: Hamish McKenzie explains why Substack won’t be enabling advertising
“It’s not because we think advertising is evil,” Substack founder Hamish McKenzie says. Rather, the company is really excited about the potential of subscriptions and direct payments “as a way to support the kind of work that we hope to enable”.
New Zealand-hailing Hamish McKenzie co-founded Substack with the goal of helping journalists get paid for writing newsletters. McKenzie worked as a journalist in New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US, and is now based in LA.
McKenzie – who has also worked for Tesla, and is the author of ‘Insane Mode’ about the arrival of the battery revolution – joins Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes to chat about his departure from journalism and eventually creating Substack.
Substack is only 4 years old, but is already being talked about in the same way that journalists were talking about WordPress 15 years ago. Its valuation is already close to a billion Aussie dollars.
