Thank you this is an interesting perspective. Substack today is definitely targeted at people who want a full stack thing and don't want to worry about coding one's own template etc.
As someone who does want to self host, which Substack services would be valuable to you? What do you feel like we could offer you?
Google Reader, which y'all claim to love, supported reading any blog, not just Google's owned Blogger.
You could have done the same thing and built a generalized newsletter app.
But instead you built a reader just for Substack, which is clearly built to lock in an open ecosystem, just as medium tried with blogging and Spotify is trying with podcasts.
I think your company has done a lot of work around building resources for up-and-coming writers—legal services, health insurance—as well as educational offerings. Most of those have requirements tied to Substack usage or revenue. If you offered a package that made these accessible to non-Substackers, that would be a useful contribution to the space in general.
I think promotional options within the ecosystem would be nice for newsletter creators outside of Substack, but at the same time, I think the work that you’ve put into building significant resources is a unique offering in the sector that nobody else is doing to the same degree.
A good model to compare this to, in my mind, would be the Freelancers Union (https://www.freelancersunion.org), which offers a lot of services to people who freelance. That I think could be of interest even to people who don’t publish with you.
I’ve been around the block for a bit, and I think a big part of the reason the blogging ecosystem died is because there weren’t any nets. You have done a good job of creating a net for your audience. There’s no reason that net has to be for Substack users alone.
As someone who does want to self host, which Substack services would be valuable to you? What do you feel like we could offer you?