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

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right, okay. So you are, let's pause here for a moment because this is where eventually we'll circle back with Hamish. Hamish, I want to bring you in and ask you a little bit about your life before you and Chris met. I know you grew up in a small town in New Zealand, right?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were you able to personally make any money from the company? I mean, you had investors. Were you able to take some money off the table?”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're thinking, well, let's use it, let's start a cryptocurrency because we've got hundreds of millions of people using it, so maybe they'll buy it.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this was, again, a major app. It's almost impossible to believe that something with almost 300 million users doesn't exist anymore today. But you're there grinding away. And by 2017, I guess you decide you're done. You're maybe burned out and you want to go. Tell me what was going on.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And essentially the great good fortune was that Blackberry is declining very rapidly and iPhones, of course, just made them obsolete. Yeah, it turned out in the long run.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eventually gets $20 billion or something. Yeah, by Facebook. And by 2015, actually, I think you guys had like over 250 million users. I mean, massive.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's amazing. I mean, it had 90 million users by 2013. I mean, this was bigger than the BlackBerry Messenger, which had 60 million users. They would eventually sue you guys claiming there was patent infringement. And eventually you guys settled with them.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of it. And so between 2010 and 2015, I mean, you guys had started, I mean, you're getting investors coming at you. This was the hottest messenger app. By 2015, it was valued at over a billion dollars, 100 employees. This is no joke. I think there might be people who are listening who remember KIC.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so you were essentially the CTO and the co founder of this thing. And I guess Ted was also co-founder or the founder too. And he's kind of NCO, and he kind of oversaw the fundraising and the business side of it.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is, I think this is called kick, right? You call it kick interactive, and the app is called the kick messenger app, chaos.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What Blackberries were, of course, I had one. And it was, of course, a Canadian company. So you guys originally had this idea to build an app for the BlackBerry that was like a music app.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fair enough. Yeah. All right. So you are doing this program. And while you're there, I guess you meet this guy named Ted Liningston. Was like a roommate or he becomes a friend, and he's somebody I guess you start to talk with about maybe coming like a cool idea. Tell me about these conversations you guys start to have.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have big ambitions for what they expect substack to become in the future. In a few minutes, you'll hear from Hamish, the other founder, but first to Chris Best, who grew up in the suburbs of Vancouver in the nineteen nineties and early two thousands. Chris got his degree in engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slowly, they started to attract writers. First, a few obscure ones, and eventually some pretty heavy hitters like Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibi. The business model is pretty straightforward. The writer can charge a monthly subscription fee, usually five to eight bucks, and substack takes around ten percent. Now today, it's estimated that more than fifty substack writers earn over half a million dollars a year from paying subscribers. And recently, Substack announced that it has about 5 million total paid subscriptions. For some journalists who used to work for big publications, Substack has become a lifeline. But the company has also taken a pretty strong position on free speech. It means that with a few exceptions like calls for violence or pornography or spam, Substack will let you write basically whatever you want.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recent years. Substack. It was founded in 2017 by Crispest and Hamish McKenzie. At the time, Chris was a tech entrepreneur who had left a once promising startup that would eventually fade away. Hamish was a journalist who wrote mainly about tech and culture for different websites. They had a hunch that people would pay to read the writing of specific writers. But at the beginning, most people were skeptical. Understandably because newspapers and magazines were hemorrhaging paying subscribers. What Chris and Hamish were offering was a platform that would make it easy to basically run a small publishing business with almost no technical skills anyone could write an article, insert photos and videos, publish it to the internet, manage a mailing list, and accept payments all in one place.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back when I started out as a reporter, and this is the late 1990s, the idea that some random person with a laptop could reach more people than the New York Times or CNN was absurd. At the time, most people got their information from mainstream sources and a little bit from the internet. Now these days, the average evening newscast on CNN gets around half a million viewers, half a million people. And yet there are one hundred forty thousand YouTubers with audiences at least as big. One smitey newspaper, radio news magazines, and TV broadcasts have largely lost their influence and power. And while this isn't a new story, these products have been pushed aside by podcasts, the aforementioned YouTube channels, social media feeds, Twitch streams, and something that's grown a lot in”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to How I Built This is a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Rosen on the show today, how two partners built a getaway vehicle for journalists called Substack, a platform where writers could connect directly with their readers and write pretty much what they wanted.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you're ready to launch, you offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At airbnb.ca slash host. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out. It's an all-in-one website platform that gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your products, and get paid. Anyone can use Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools to build an online presence that truly reflects what makes your business special. There are templates, intuitive drag and drop editing, and even an AI enhanced website builder. Then, Squarespace's built-in analytics tools help you make smarter business decisions, review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue all in one place. Looking to grow your business, Squarespace even offers fast, easy business financing through Squarespace Capital. Go to Squarespace.com.”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2025-05-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Substack: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT