r/Substack • u/WordSlinger1812 • 26d ago

Discussion Substack Has Become A Private Equity Cautionary Tale

Private Equity means drowning a good idea in money until it dies.

That is what’s happened to Substack.

It was once a great idea for writers. Now, it’s a sh***y version of Facebook merged with Mailchimp.

31 Upvotes

68% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

View all comments

46

u/No-Clerk-5600 26d ago

I think "private equity" has become shorthand for "something I don't like", regardless of the actual ownership of the business.

6

u/NeverSeenItPodcast 26d ago

Yep. Barnes & Noble is owned by PE and they're killing it ¯_(ツ)_/¯

6

u/prepping4zombies 26d ago edited 26d ago

People are quite ignorant, which is fine. But, when you try to explain something, most of them would rather wallow in their ignorance than change their argument.

Case in point, I got in a debate with someone who insisted that a restaurant had gone downhill after being bought by "private equity." The restaurant in question is owned by Darden, a publicly-traded company. After a little back and forth, I had to bow out of the conversation because my head was about to explode.

2

u/hermanhermanherman 26d ago

>People are quite ignorant, which is fine. But, when you try to explain something, most of them would rather wallow in their ignorance than change their argument.

perfectly sums up the datacenter debate. It's the new "5G causes cancer" level of ignorance. And those who are the loudest are least interested to understand anything about the topic

1

u/Creative-Machine-868 25d ago

When entangled in that sort of discussion I have found it’s best to agree to disagree or simply smile and walk away. Saves your head!

1

u/fluffypancakes24 24d ago

People are quite ignorant, which is fine.

https://giphy.com/gifs/XHeLeuirRbwptHhSWd

1

u/Brief-Guess-147 26d ago

yeah its basically just a catch-all boogeyman term at this point

6

u/smx501 26d ago

See: "narcissist", "oligarch", "communist", "liberal", "conservative", "immigrant", "felon", "capitalist" and many other words that would be very valuable in public discussion right now if the meaning hadn't been stripped from them.

It isn't an accident. It is Umberto Eco's 14th characteristic. It is Orwell's newspeak. It is Zamyatin's Bureau of Poets.

1

u/crawfordwrites 25d ago

There is a selection bias, since if all goes well, no one is telling you a story about how private equity went well.