It shows great confidence in their ability to find paying readers that aside from Substack's VC money they also borrowed $4 million to pay themselves. They don't need an office, printing and distribution, or a sales team and Substack provides and maintains all the IT infrastructure (maybe one admin assistant / bookkeeper).

Has Piper ever been paid to write by an organization that was not funded by her college buddies like Caroline Ellison and Open Philanthropy staffers? RationalWiki mentions Vox (EA funded), something called Asterisk (EA funded), and this Substack blog.