The Trust-Based Discovery Network
by Sachin Monga • Head of Product at Substack
Sachin is the Head of Product at Substack, having joined through the acquisition of his startup, Cocoon. Previously, he spent seven years at Facebook working on video, camera products, developer platforms, and leading the ads growth team.
🎙️ Episode Context
Sachin Monga discusses Substack's evolution from a simple tool for writers into a powerful subscription network, highlighting the legendary 'Recommendations' feature that drives 70% of growth. He contrasts product management at hyper-growth startups versus established giants like Facebook, emphasizing the importance of user agency over algorithmic feeds. The conversation covers how to build trust with founders, the 'Build with Writers' product philosophy, and the future of the creator economy.
Problem It Solves
Solving the 'cold start' discovery problem for creators without relying on attention-hijacking algorithms or ads.
Framework Overview
Instead of a centralized 'People You May Know' algorithm, Substack enables writers to explicitly recommend other newsletters. This leverages the trust readers have in a specific writer to drive high-intent subscriptions to others, creating a viral loop based on human curation rather than machine optimization.
🧠 Framework Structure
Human Curation: Writers manually sele...
Contextual Relevance: Recommendations...
Reciprocal Growth: Driving subscripti...
User Agency: Writers and readers main...
When to Use
When building marketplaces or content platforms where trust and quality are more important than cheap clicks or time spent.
Common Mistakes
Assuming algorithms are the only way to scale discovery; failing to give suppliers (writers) control over the inventory causing them to feel their audience is being hijacked.
Real World Example
Lenny's Newsletter now gets 70% of its new subscriber growth purely from the Recommendations feature, with over 500 other newsletters recommending him.
What if we just asked writers, who do you recommend? What if we just put that in the subscribe flow and just made it as simple as possible?
— Sachin Monga