[sachinmonga]

Thanks for the kind words!

The nice thing about "network-first" products like Medium and Twitter is that there's a large audience baked in (as you mention) that you can tap into is a small time writer. But the trade-off is that you don't own your audience - you can build up followers, but you don't have a direct connection to them outside of that product. You typically don't get their email addresses, and you can't take your audience with you if you choose to leave.

You also don't necessarily own your work! I was a huge fan of Medium when it launched, and an early active writer. One day, my best performing post got added to someone else's collection, and now it "lives" in some random space that I have nothing to do with (https://medium.com/p/3eadcdc56ff2). This was a pretty frustrating experience.

We think there's a way to have your cake and eat it too: own your own audience, and be in full control. But also get access to a network of readers that grows over time. We're trying to take a deliberate and thoughtful approach to growing the destination for readers, and the app is a major step.