Deciding on Substack

How I'm using Substack for my founders blog while keeping my personal site weird

Published December 28, 2025 ET
reflectionwritingstrategy

I have this blog going, and I want to get it out there a bit. Maybe get some dollars flowing into it so I can afford to spend more time on it. Maybe eventually almost all of my working time on it.

So, naturally, I'm looking at Substack. It has paid subscriptions, a built-in audience, and an ecosystem of writers who cross-pollinate readers. That's appealing.

The Problem

I looked into it, and Substack does not offer a plugin for my site to provide an auth layer. I need to actually put my content on Substack to use Substack. That's pretty annoying because I want all my content on my site. I like owning my stuff.

Looking for Inspiration

I was chatting with Claude about this and said:

I found this guy, whose setup I like:

Here's his substack page: https://substack.com/@lenny

When you try to go to his site (https://www.lennyrachitsky.com/) — you see a call to action to subscribe.

When you go to the "newsletter" tab, you get brought to his newsletter site (https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/), which has a paywall, but goes away if you click "no thanks" and seems to be hosted by Substack. If you click "no thanks" the site that follows does seem to have a custom design, or is that a standard substack design?

And apparently he has the opposite of what I want—he gives all his content to Substack. His personal site is basically just a funnel to his Substack. So maybe that's a better approach?

I'm also noticing he has a lot of guest posters, who I'm guessing pay him for the opportunity to be shown to his very wide reader base. Good revenue stream there.

The Fork in the Road

Claude suggested switching to Ghost if I prefer to host my own content. Ghost gives you ownership and monetization tools. But here's the thing: I like Substack's ecosystem. The discovery, the network effects, the Notes feature, the recommendations. Ghost gives you ownership but not distribution.

That's the trade-off.

The Decision

I went with the hybrid approach—and it's working better than expected.

Here's the split:

  • My founders blog (Building Bidet New York) goes on Substack. This is the premium, paid content. The startup journey, the business lessons, the growth story.
  • Everything else lives on my personal site. This is where I can be a total freak—exploring random interests, thinking out loud, writing half-baked ideas.

The beauty of this split? I'm going all-in on Substack, but only for the content that fits. My personal site stays authentic and experimental. My Substack stays focused and valuable.

It's not fragmented—it's intentional separation of concerns.

Who Is This For?

I've gotten more specific about my audience. The Substack newsletter is for a focused intersection of people:

  • NYC people — The local community, people who get the city, who might run into me at a coffee shop
  • Founders — People building things, interested in the startup journey and what it takes to grow a company
  • Bidet enthusiasts — People who care about the product, the company story, or just think bidets are the future (they are)
  • Growth watchers — People who like following journeys, watching things get built from scratch

It's the intersection of these groups where I'll find my people. Not everyone interested in NYC cares about bidets. Not every founder cares about my specific journey. But the people in the middle? They're my tribe.

The content focus: About 90% of the newsletter will be Building Bidet New York—the founder journey, the lessons, the wins and failures. The other 10%? Occasional asides about the things that make me human: crossword puzzles, working toward a full split, learning Afrikaans, navigating freelance life. Flavor, not filler.

The Target: 3,000 Subscribers

I'm aiming for 3,000 subscribers on Substack.

Why 3,000? It's big enough to matter—to build real momentum, to get Substack's algorithm working in my favor, to create a community. But it's small enough to be achievable without going viral or getting lucky.

3,000 people genuinely interested in watching a bidet company get built in NYC. That's the goal.

The Answers

Remember those open questions I was wrestling with? I've got answers now:

What content deserves a paid tier? My founders blog—Building Bidet New York. The startup journey is inherently valuable content. People pay to follow founders building companies. That's the premium stuff.

How do I maintain a cohesive experience? I built a sync system. Posts I mark for Substack automatically sync as drafts. My site shows a preview with a soft paywall that points to Substack. One-way sync means I own all my content in markdown/Git, but it flows to Substack when I want it to.

Is the hybrid sustainable? Not just sustainable—it's better. My personal site is where I can explore without constraints. My Substack is focused on the founder journey. Different audiences, different expectations, both authentic.

Should I go all-in on Substack? Yes—for the right content. I'm going all-in on Substack for my founders blog. But I'm also going all-in on my personal site for everything else. It's not either/or.

How the Hybrid Works

Here's the technical setup I built:

  1. Frontmatter flags: Any post with substack: true in its frontmatter gets synced to Substack as a draft.

  2. Automatic sync: A pre-push git hook triggers the sync. When I push to main, marked posts flow to Substack automatically.

  3. Soft paywall: On my site, synced posts show a preview (first few paragraphs) with a blurred teaser of the rest. A call-to-action points readers to Substack to continue reading.

  4. One-way ownership: All content lives as markdown in my Git repo. I own everything. Substack is just a distribution channel for the premium stuff.

The workflow: write on my site, iterate freely, mark the founder content for Substack when it's ready, push, and it syncs as a draft for me to publish.