YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Best

lines on the record: 70
first: 2025-05-12
most recent: 2025-05-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And also please sign up for my newsletter at guyroz.com or you can find it on Substack. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Rontin Arab Louie. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Iman Mahani. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Catherine Cypher, Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Sam Paulson, Chris Massini, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Razz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's crispest and Hamish Mackenzie, co founders of Substack. By the way, Substack has become the go-to launchpad for a new generation of media brands, including some big ones like the Free Press and the Dispatch, both sites, not surprisingly, were founded by veteran journalists who left big companies to move to Substack. The latest former Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin's publication called The Contrarian founded just days after she quit.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, when you guys think about your whole journey, right? And I mean, even the fact that you met, you ended up working for doing some consulting work for KIC Hamish, and you were on your way out, Chris. And then you started this thing, which really was kind of weird. And I don't know if, I think a lot of people were skeptical. They were, as we know, as we heard. But now that you've landed, 2025, you know, you're eight years into this thing, how much of where you are now do you attribute to the grind and the work you put in, and how much do you think had the success of it so far has had to do with just luck and circumstance?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my industry, podcasting, have changed so much since it began back in the day where you had to plug an iPod into your computer and download some weird wonky thing. There were people like Mark Marin and Joe Rogan in early days, Adam Corolla. Now it's a mass of business. And so it's changing, right? The whole, and this is natural and normal. How do you see the substack model changing? I mean, right now, most people, they might subscribe, they might pay for it, or they might not, but they're getting a thing to their inbox, a letter. There are some people who are also doing audio, some people who are making sort of these videos. So what does it look like? What is a successful substacker going to look like in five years from now?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you're small. I mean, it's small but efficient, right? Because in terms of the what's generated, it just takes 100 people to do that.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Substack is not yet profitable, which is not unusual, right? It's going to take some time. Based on your experience at KIC, Chris, you know, right things can always go south. And obviously you don't anticipate it, but it can always happen. How do you protect the future? How do you build, let's say, the proverbial moat around substack? There are competitors you may not consider all the companies like Patreon or Ghost or Medium or Beehive or some of these other even HubSpot you may not consider those as necessarily as competitors but how do you make sure that the momentum continues and what happened to Kick doesn't happen to you guys”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's bigger than the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker. There's a narrative that you often hear, and I'm sure you've heard from people who really are skeptical of mainstream media organizations. And the narrative is, look, they lied about the Hunter Biden laptop. They lied about COVID restrictions. They told us that it was no lab leak. Do you guys think that as we see the influence of big media organizations, the CNNs, the New York Times, the Washington Post decline, do you think that they're partly responsible for that, or do you think that it's just that the business model doesn't work anymore? Or maybe a combination of those things?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As of the end of 2024, you had, it was reported that there were about 35 million active readers and about 4 million of those people were paying subscribers, probably a little bit more now by the time we're talking.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So interestingly now, 2025, when Twitter's fortunes have turned, and Substack obviously is also grown and as successful, he actually, I've seen him tweet links to Substack. So clearly not an issue anymore.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, it sounds like the only course of action was to just let it pass. It was going to be painful. On a certain number of levels, but you just eventually would just pass”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. In one of the most powerful voices in the world, so it was a bargain. But at that time in mid-2023, that was the narrative. So I guess from his perspective, he was probably feeling threatened. And were you guys worried that those decisions could have a negative impact on your business?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess at the time, I mean, just to put it in context, I mean, he was because of the changes he had made at X and sort of the media narrative. And look, I think some legitimate, certainly legitimate blowback and criticism, they were struggling. There were no advertisers and they were losing advertisers. They were hemorrhaging cash. A lot of people were like, what did he do? Why would he buy this for $44 billion? Why would he buy? Now, of course, saying the reverse. They're like, look, he's got 200 million followers and he's the most powerful, probably one of the most powerful country.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seems like an interesting offer, right? He's saying, hey, we'll buy you. And at this point, you'd raise some money and, you know, you're doing well and he's probably going to offer you a premium. And you could be the head of the whole operation. What did you think, Chris?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just to slightly back up for a second, I should mention that right around this time, Elon Musk actually made an offer to buy you guys out. I think the way this started is that right before you released notes, you called them, and you guys let him know that you were going to do it as a courtesy, I guess. And you had like a call with him and told him that?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To clarify, there are plenty of people who link their subst on Twitter or X now. It's very common. And so that's obviously no longer the case. But let's just talk about, and Hamish, I'd love to hear your take on this, because he's somebody you really did admire for the work he did around electric cars. And I think that you felt this way, but all of a sudden, you're on his radar as an enemy. And that's no joke.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, is he fire a shot across the bow? Like he basically says anyone tweeting out a substack link, we're just going to block those.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, let's go back to our old friend Elon Musk, who Hamish you first encountered back in 2014, I think, when you started to profile him, and then would eventually work for him. He comes back into your world less than 10 years later. He buys, of course, Twitter, which becomes X. Now I think fair to say, one of the, if not the most influential sort of social media platform in terms of shaping policy because it's clearly read in the White House. He buys it, and one of the things that happens in 2023 is you guys launch notes, which is a sort of a short feature where you can do short form content to your followers on Substack. And he basically says, look, this is a Twitter clone. And he kind of, you know,”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As you know, I read a lot of substackers, and I really pay for a bunch of them. And based on what I see, I still feel like the best or most prominent writers tend to be iconoclasts. Now, obviously, there are some who are on the left, but I find that the ones that I seem to feel like are more successful are like maybe on the sort of the libertarian center right. Is that fair? Would you say that's fair?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys have responded at times, like there was an article that you know about, was there in the Atlantic in November of 2023. It was called Substack Has a Nazi Problem. And this writer identified, I don't know, 15 or 20 newsletters that use Nazi symbols. You guys did ban some of these newsletters. So what was the reason behind that?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the theory is like if people are writing a lot of nonsense, they're just not going to succeed on substack because it's not an outrage machine like social media. It just doesn't work in the same way where that actually is successful.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Etc. It should be clear no incitements to violence, no spamming people, and no doxing. So you can't expose where people live or personal information about them if you don't like them. Those are red lines. If you do any of those things, you're off.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And let's be honest, I think objectively voices that all of us here could agree are objectionable, like people who are racist or spewing conspiracy theories that we may find objectionable. There was a lot of pressure to deplatform people who I'm sure even both of you personally thought, I'm uncomfortable with this person. So how did you... How did you do the gymnastics in your brain at the time when the culture was somewhat different to say nope, we're still gonna let that happen?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You start to get people coming to your platform. Matt Taibi and Drusullivan, Barry Weiss, Leisa New York Times, starts a substack.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very fortuitously you had raised money in the summer of 2019, which would come into great use, I'm sure, by COVID. You raised $15 million as led by Andreessen Horowitz, but you've got the pandemic. And this really is a turning point year for you. I mean, in many ways, I think you would both agree because of circumstances beyond your control. On the one hand, you've got the pandemic. A lot of the social media companies were, as many of them have admitted, cooperating with the government to de-platform specific people who were talking about who were opposing COVID vaccines, for example, or people who were writing about what was perceived to be misinformation. All these things happening in the background. On the one hand, the social media companies are deplatforming and banning people. On the other hand, prominent journalists are”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And let's say a prominent writer has a million subscribers, they really just need a fraction of those people to pay them a monthly fee to make significant money, right? I mean, the math is clear.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We come back in just a moment. Elon Musk comes back into the story this time to make Chris an offerer that he can and does refuse. Stay with us. I'm Guy Ros, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Ross. So it's around 2019 and Chris and Hamish have built a solid scaffolding for Substack. Writers offer their content for free or for money, and Substack gets a cut of the subscriptions. But now the question is, how do they get more writers?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so here's my question. Initially, right? Now, this is, you know, you're getting some momentum, right? Obviously, people are starting to believe in you. But I just want to be clear about something to people listening, which is why combinator, we know about the Coinbase. We know about the Airbnbs. We know about the Instacart. But most of the companies that come out of Y Combinator don't end up making it. I mean, the founders might go on and do something else. So just being in Y combinator is a guarantee that it's going to work. And so we've seen these headlines every day. So-and-so company was your own company, KIC, was valued at a billion dollars at one point. Knowing now you are the CEO of this company, you've learned a lot of lessons because you were the CTO of that business. What was the sort of the primary kind of lesson that you took from that experience that you were like, we're not?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, but that was going to take a while. And I think even now it's a very small number of people who are making over a million, a small, you know.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you about the business model and the math, right? So the model, if I understand it correctly, from the beginning and even till now was the writer gets basically you guys get a 10% commission or whatever plus there's going to be the payment processing fees, which is another 2% or something. And so effectively the writer is getting about, let's say 85 to 87% of the total revenue, how did you work, I mean that math is like by any account very beneficial to the writer, right? They're getting a good deal here. Like if you compare that to any other platform, right, the writer is doing really well, but it means that your margins are really thin. Like how did you come up with that math instead of, let's say, 20% or 25%?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so you're now together. In 2018, you did raise some seed money, and you got some interesting investors who I guess were interested in this. And I imagine Y Combinator, being part of Y Combinator was certainly helpful.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you get into Y Combinator, obviously, big deal because now you've got you're going to get exposure to big time investors and you're going to get mentorship. And I'm assuming that's when you move to California, Chris.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, all right, so that summer you're working on it, and by October of 2017, you're ready to officially launch. And you've got this guy, Bill Bishop, who you knew him from your time in Asia. Hamish, he had been writing about China, and he agreed to, because I guess this was a free blog that he was writing, and he agreed to join Substack and to start charging.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And given, and we've had this conversation with co founders many times, given that you're initially kind of this idea that you have in your head, Hamish helps you to kind of refine it. You had some money to put in, and Hamish probably didn't have a whole lot of cash to put in because you were a worky journalist. How did you guys have that delicate conversation about, okay, here's how we're going to split the company”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, alright, so you are building this, Chris, and Hamish, you are kind of trying to drum up potential people to join this platform. And it officially launches in 2017. Before we get to that, up until that point, right? Because I think you guys really kind of decide, let's do this in July, so that summer of 2017, you guys are really working on building this thing because you're going to launch it in October. You probably didn't need a whole lot of money at this point, right? I mean, you had a little bit of money from your time at KIC, Chris. So were you able to use some of that money to just finance what needed to be financed initially?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Chris, you're in Kitchener in Canada, and Hamish, you are in San Francisco. And you obviously, you're communicating every day, but Chris, you are on your own starting to build the platform. You're just working on trying to create this thing that would become Substack.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, I mean, there were other models Patreon, right? For musicians and artists and filmmakers, like that existed. People were being supported for their work through Patreon.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an important point because this is 2017 when you're having a conversation, and it's even more of an acute issue now, which is that you might have a million subscribers on YouTube, but if YouTube changes the algorithm and stops delivering your videos to people automatically, it might be really hard to make a living off of that. But YouTube still benefits every time you post or Facebook benefits every time you post, Instagram and TikTok. They benefit because they're more eyeballs and they're more advertisers.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this was, I mean, so basically, you're looking at this and saying, well, if you're creating content and you're bringing people to the platform, they should be the people doing this should have a guaranteed way of reaching those people.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Hamish, so you basically were like, okay, I'll try this. I mean, you did not want that life. You knew what it was going to entail, the like long days, the travel, the sleepless nights, worrying about other people's incomes. And you agreed to sign up for this.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chris, why did you think you needed Hamish so badly? I mean, you were a tech guy, and obviously Hamish is a talented journalist and writer, but why were you so convinced that you needed him to start this thing?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how Chris learns to push back when people tell him how bad his idea is. Stay with us, I'm Guy Rise, and you're listening to how I built this. Welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Ross. So it's 2017 and Chris and Hamish have an idea for a new digital platform for writers. And even as they're talking about partnering on the idea, Hamish, the journalist, is wary about becoming a founder.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meantime, and this is, I guess you're there over a two year period. Chris, you are starting to kind of think about transitioning out. And you leave in early 2017. And just to kind of take some time off. And what did you want to do during that year off?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you guys, you're the editorial kind of editorial advisor at KIC, Hamish, and you get to know Chris because you're helping him prepare for interviews, and you just become friends, basically.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think that can be denied by anybody, even people who hate Elon Musk. All right, so you're there for a year. You leave, you write this book. And I guess shortly after you leave, you get some consulting work at this company called Kik Interactive. Tell me how, and because now we're going to come together with you and Chris, how did you get work there? Were you just looking for work? Were you looking for consulting work?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But to be clear, I mean, it sounds like you were a big believer in what he was trying to do. I mean, you would eventually write the book about him. You didn't cooperate. But, I mean, it was about... This revolution in electric cars, and I mean, it sounds like you really did believe in what he was trying to do.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember I profiled Tesla maybe in 2009. Gosh, it was a long time ago. It was like when the Roadster was still, you know, it was their car.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around 2012, you started working for the Tech Blog Pando Daily. And one of the things you start to cover is Tesla. And I guess this kind of catches the eye of an editor at Faber and Faber. And they said, hey, do you want to write a book about Elon Musk?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you stay there for a couple years, and 2010 you leave. You move to the United States. Why and where did you go?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this really is kind of like, I mean, you're still young, right? You're still in your late 20s at this point, but working in music entertainment, like music and entertainment journalism, right? Because timeout's more about culture. It's like what's on, what's going on, nightlife. That's right.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got it. I know that eventually you went to university and you end up getting a master's degree in journalism. Pretty soon after I think you started your career, you moved to Hong Kong and started working there as a writer. Tell me about how that happened. What did you do there?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT