Substack
American online newsletter platform
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| March 2025 | Substack announced reaching 5 million paid subscriptions. |
| February 2025 | Following TikTok restrictions in the United States, Substack announced the ability to post and monetize videos directly through the Substack app. |
| November 2024 | Substack reached 4 million paid subscriptions. |
| September 2024 | Substack added livestreaming options for creators. |
| June 2024 | Substack launched a year-long Creator Studio development initiative for TikTok creators and added five-minute video capabilities to chat function. Video was also added to Notes. |
| April 2024 | Substack partnered with Spotify to allow podcasters to distribute episodes on both platforms and added new podcast editing features. |
| December 2023 | Multiple newsletters, including Platformer by Casey Newton, Citation Needed by Molly White, and Garbage Day by Ryan Broderick, left Substack in response to the platform's decision to allow Nazi and extremist content. |
| December 23 2023 | Jonathan Katz published a detailed critique of Substack in his newsletter 'The Racket', challenging the platform's stance on extremist content and its financial partnerships. |
| November 2023 | Substack introduced new video creation and editing tools, with content creators launching original shows on the platform. |
| November 2023 | Substack faced significant criticism for hosting content from white nationalists, Nazis, and antisemites, despite its Terms of Service prohibiting hate speech. |
| April 2023 | Substack implemented the Notes feature, a microblogging tool allowing users to publish and repost short-form content, which was seen as a response to changes at Twitter. |
| April 2023 | Elon Musk approached Substack's leadership about potentially purchasing the platform, but the proposal was not seriously considered. |
| 2022 | Substack launched the Substack Reader app for iOS, with an Android version following six months later. |
| November 2022 | Substack launched Substack Chat, enabling content creators to create private group chats with subscribers. |
| May 2022 | Substack dropped an effort to raise between $75 million and $100 million in funding. |
| April 2022 | The New York Times reported Substack may be valued at $650 million. |
| January 2022 | Substack announced the beginning of private Beta testing for video features on its platform. |
| January 2022 | The Center for Countering Digital Hate accused Substack of allowing potentially dangerous public health content, estimating the platform earns $2.5 million annually from top five anti-vaccine authors. |
| 2021 | Substack expanded into comics content, signing creators including Saladin Ahmed, Jonathan Hickman, Molly Ostertag, Scott Snyder, and James Tynion IV. |
| November 2021 | Substack reported over 500,000 paying subscribers, representing over one million subscriptions. |
| May 2021 | Substack acquired Brooklyn-based startup People & Company. |
| March 2021 | Substack revealed its Substack Pro program, a revenue sharing initiative where the company paid advances to writers to create publications on its platform. The program was controversial due to a lack of transparency about which writers were participating. |
| 2020 | Major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube began restricting accounts spreading COVID-19 misinformation, leading some controversial authors to migrate to Substack. |
| 2020 | Large numbers of journalists and reporters migrated to Substack, driven by the long-term decline in traditional media jobs. |
| 2020 | Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Substack extended grants of $1,000–$3,000 to over 40 writers to begin working on the platform. |
| July 28 2020 | Substack experienced a privacy incident where user email addresses were accidentally exposed in the 'cc' field of a mass email about privacy policy changes and CCPA compliance, potentially compromising user email privacy. |
| 2019 | Substack added support for podcasts and discussion threads among newsletter subscribers, expanding its platform functionality. |
| 2019 | Substack provided a fellowship to some writers, including a $3,000 stipend and a one-day workshop in San Francisco. |
| 2019 | Andreessen Horowitz provided $15.3 million in Series A funding, partly used to bring high-profile writers into Substack's network. |
| February 2019 | Substack began allowing creators to monetize podcasts. |
| 2018 | Substack raised an initial seed round of funding from investors including The Chernin Group, Zhen Fund, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron. |
| 2017 | Substack was founded in San Francisco as an online platform enabling writers to publish and monetize subscription-based newsletters. |
| 2017 | Substack founders reached out to a small pool of writers to acquire their first creators, with Bill Bishop being among the first to put his newsletter Sinocism on the platform. |
| 2017 | Chris Best, Jairaj Sethi, and Hamish McKenzie founded Substack, a newsletter publishing platform inspired by Ben Thompson's Stratechery subscription-based tech and media newsletter. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Substack, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.