I am personally very excited to see how Substack will evolve. I think that they are trying to solve a very compelling problem, and I also think the founders have managed to build a straightforward, polished product.
Side note / rant: I wish the large majority of the "crypto" crowd would take note of how "solving a problem" should trump any "cool tech stuff" when you want to build a company. (and no, I don't want to name any names here, you can find plenty of examples, even specific to the media industry, just by googling for a few minutes).