Substack is spending $20 million to court TikTokers

Meta and YouTube are not the only platforms seeks to profit from TikTok potentially disappearing – Substack also wants in on the action.

The company announced on Thursday that it is launching a $20 million “creator accelerator fund,” promising content creators won’t lose revenue by jumping ship to Substack. Creators in the program also receive “strategic and business support” from Substack, and early access to new features.

“We established this fund because we saw creators who specialize in video, audio and text expand their audience, revenue and influence on Substack, where the network effects of the platform amplify the quality and impact of the work they do.” the company said in a blog post.

This pivot on Substack’s part has been in the works for a while—for months, the company has been marketing itself not as a newsletter delivery service, but as a creatures platform similar to Patreon.

“In Substack, [creators] can build their own home on the Internet: one where creators, not platform managers or advertisers, own their work and their audience,” reads the blog post. The post also cites “differences, backlash and politics that change with the political winds” as a reason creators cannot depend on traditional social media services.

It’s all good (we at The Virgin they say this for a while). But the creators who focus on Substack are also subject to ebbs and flows depending on what the company prioritizes: first, it was newsletters, then it was micro blogs similar to tweetsfollowed by complete websites and live streaming. For someSubstack’s initial mission to give more freedom to independent writers is gone. And TikTok creators trying to move to Substack have to rebuild their following again – obviously you can’t export your TikTok followers.

The $20 million fund isn’t the first time Substack has offered a pool of money meant to entice creators. Under a program called Substack Pro, the company lured top media talent from traditional newsrooms with higher wages, health insurance and other perks. This program ended in 2022, with Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie saying the deals were not employment arrangements, but “seed funding deals to remove the financial risk for a writer in starting their own business”. In other words, welcome to Substack. Now that you’re here, you’re on your own – which is pretty much the deal that other platforms offer.