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the smartest way to hire. This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka, but I am not Peter Kafka.

I'm Kara Swisher, the editor at large of Recode, and the host of Recode Decode.

Peter is out this week, so in a minute I'm going to pass the microphone to Casey Newton.

But first, here's your weekly reminder.

Tell someone else about this show.

Thanks.

That's all I've got for now.

I'll be back later in the show to read some ads. Take it away, Casey. Thank you, Kara. I am here today with Christopher Best, the co-founder of Substat. Christopher, welcome to Recode Media. Thanks for having me. Can I just call you Chris? That's way easier. By the way, Chris Best, pretty incredible CEO name. Oh, thank you. Is that a real name? I worked hard on it. We workshopped it. We had some focus groups. No, that's my name. Wonderful. Well, cool. I'm excited to talk to you. I am a big fan of email newsletters. Last year I started my own daily email about social networks and democracy, which is called The Interface, which we also publish on The Verge.

But I have learned a lot over that past year about the power of writing a daily email and

kind of cultivating an audience.

And so I wanted to talk to you about substack.

So for folks who may not yet be familiar with what you're doing, tell us what substack is.

So substack really simply is a platform for readers to pay writers directly.

And what that looks like is basically a paid email newsletter.

So you know about the power of the email newsletter as a way to reach people.

You know, you come directly into their inbox.

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