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

#126 - Chris Best and Jonathan Gill

Y Combinator Startup Podcast