Can Substack Live Up to $650 Million Valuation?

The newsletter company that’s drawn in high-profile writers and journalists like Patti Smith, Roxane Gay, Anne Helen Peterson and Casey Newton is going big with a new round of venture capital funding, but can Substack successfully live up to its new $650 million valuation? Last week, the newsletter company announced it had agreed to a $65 million Series B funding round led by Andreesen Horowitz’s Andrew Chen, placing Substack at a roughly $650 million valuation. Andreesen Horowitz also, notably, led a $100 million Series B funding round earlier this year for the live audio app Clubhouse, which is in talks for another round of funding at a $4 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. “I imagine the Substack execs won’t be sleeping that much in the near future,” Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, told TheWrap in an email. Also Read: Substack Seeks to Raise $65 Million in New Fundraising Round Substack, in a recent blog post, said it would use the new funding in the following ways: Expand the Substack Pro program, which pays writers during their first year on the platform in exchange for a larger cut of their earnings. Create more...

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