Taken from Substack’s latest financial results 3

I’m excited – so true I was thrilled to learn that Substack’s equity crowdfunding efforts were producing financial results.

Unfortunately, due to the rules and the timing of the fundraising, Substack is not required to detail its financials for 2022, and so the startup released hard data for 2020 and 2021 with some user-specific metrics for last year. This provides an interesting, if incomplete, picture of the company’s health.

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I expected to spend some time this morning weighing in on the morality of not sharing Substack Choice’s audited 2022 results, but Dan Primack nailed that argument on Pro Rata this morning. I can’t improve on the wording, so let’s leave that point to Axios and instead focus our fire on analyzing the data.

So to kill some time while nursing the post-Y Combinator demo day, let’s examine Substack’s growth model (including the most recent non-financial data), consider the company’s current financial health, and then compare the upcoming capital raise with. Its potential financial interest.

This will be fun. Think of it as a quick look at a partial S-1 filing, but for a Series B company. looking good? to make!

There is a lot of data, but not enough.

If you want to play along, you can read all of Substack’s financial results here.

To begin with, the company It will raise more funds in 2021 to invest in the platform and grow its user base. So while considering the results till 2021, it is wise to remember that the company was focused on growth during that period. How did that work out?

The collective growth model is expensive if effective.

Collective gross revenue increased 400% to $11.9 million in 2021 from $2.4 million in 2021. This is exactly the kind of top line expansion that venture capitalists want to see early in the investment cycle. The company It announced a massive $65 million Series B in early 2021, meaning it should have raised that amount within the year.