I am very sad that, Medium as a platform is so completely misunderstood here. It's not trying to be a place where writers are the center of attention. It's one of the few attempts, I think is somewhat successful, in democratizing the content, not the writer. I thought Quora was on it back in the day, but it drifted off now, completely.

I am also not sure why anyone who is serious about his personal-branding as to pay $29 would want to stick to a common-theme, especially when there are so many free super-customizable alternatives. People who are serious enough to pay might as well consider paying someone else to design the personal-theme and have it setup with Markdown somewhere for free.

What's even more disheartening is to see someone who is such a skilled person to ram up the themes from Medium and setup a product with such ease, is the person who misunderstood the Medium and add more product-clutter into the market, indifferent to the work of the designers of Medium with a great and noble vision.

Edit: I said 'misunderstood' because of following

> Medium is great for readers but it is bad for writers.

I am sorry, but it's great for writers, you don't need to be among the elite to share an idea with world. And that's something very powerful.