Inside Puck's Bet on Writer Ownership

In April 2021, Jon Kelly announced a media company that had been in the works for months. Kelly had worked as an editor at The New York Times and Bloomberg and founded The Hive at Vanity Fair under Graydon Carter. His co-founders were Joe Purzycki, who co-founded the podcast company Luminary, Max Tcheyan, an early employee of The Athletic, and Liz Gough, a Condé Nast executive. 

Puck launched in September 2021 with four verticals covering Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and founding writers that included Matthew Belloni, Julia Ioffe, William D. Cohan, Dylan Byers, and Peter Hamby. Nearly five years later, Puck has more than 100,000 paying subscribers, was on track to exceed $20 million in revenue in 2025, and has expanded through its acquisition of Air Mail. Its growth shows how a compensation model built around salary, equity, and subscriber-linked bonuses can shape both the newsroom and the business.

Writers as Shareholders

Puck's writers received a base salary, an equity stake in the company, and a bonus tied to the paying subscribers their work attracted. The New Yorker reported in 2022 that the bonus was $10,000 for every 1,000 subscribers a writer brought in, and that some Puck writers earned between $300,000 and $400,000 a year. Cohan, a former Wall Street banker, wrote in his first Puck piece that the equity was shared by the writers, the editors who edit them, and the data staff who track performance.

The structure has since gained a second layer. In March 2025, chief executive Sarah Personette told Digiday that writers receive one bonus for new subscribers and a second for retained subscribers, tying pay to lifetime value as well as sign-ups. Writers who launch podcasts with Puck are paid out of those deals as well. Partners also receive detailed briefings on the state of the business, an unusual arrangement in an industry where writers typically have a dim view of the balance sheet.

Readers could follow individual franchises such as Belloni's What I'm Hearing on Hollywood, Ioffe's Washington coverage, and Cohan's Dry Powder on finance, all bundled within a single Puck membership. A regular membership cost $100 a year at launch and included every newsletter, the archive, and the podcasts. An Inner Circle tier at $250 a year added off-the-record calls with writers and invitations to in-person events. 

The Numbers

By November 2022, Puck had 25 staff members and 200,000 email subscribers. In August 2023, the company raised a Series B led by J Rothschild Capital Management, valuing the company at around $70 million, with roughly 240,000 total subscribers and about 30,000 paying. The Wall Street Journal reported that Puck ended 2023 with nearly 40,000 paying subscribers and more than $10 million in revenue.

By March 2025, the paying subscriber base had grown 30% over the previous year. In October 2025, Axios reported that Puck was on track to exceed $20 million in revenue for the year, with the majority coming from advertising and sponsorship, and that the company had nearly 50,000 paying subscribers and was still unprofitable.

That same month, Puck completed its acquisition of Air Mail, the digital publication Graydon Carter founded in 2019, in a deal valued at about $16 million and paid mostly in stock. In an April 2026 interview, Personette said Puck had passed 100,000 paying subscribers following the acquisition. Subscription revenue grew by more than 50% in 2025, advertising revenue by more than 35%, and total revenue by 40%. She described the company as very close to profitability.

The Trade-Off Between Ownership and Independence

Substack lets a solo writer keep roughly 90% of subscription revenue before payment-processing fees, and the writer carries the full cost of running the business. Puck offers salary, editorial support, sales, events, podcasts, and equity in exchange for working inside a larger organization. 

The equity adds upside, but its value remains uncertain. Puck does not pay dividends, and the company has not outlined an exit plan. The Air Mail acquisition showed that Puck shares can be used as transaction currency, and for writers, those shares become cash only if the company creates a liquidity event.

Where Puck Stands Now

Puck operates from a 10,000-square-foot newsroom at Trinity Commons in Manhattan, with reporting teams in Washington and Los Angeles. Its podcast slate includes The Powers That Be and Impolitic with John Heilemann, produced with Audacy, and The Town, produced with The Ringer. Summits such as In the Arena for sports and The Art of Influence for the art market draw 100 to 125 attendees, with tickets priced at $1,500 to $2,000 each. Advertising and sponsorship now account for the majority of revenue, while subscription revenue is growing rapidly.

Puck makes a strong case for writer ownership as a media business model. Equity and subscriber-linked bonuses give journalists a financial stake in both attracting and retaining readers, while the company provides the infrastructure that independent writers would otherwise have to build themselves. Puck does not prove that equity automatically produces better journalism, but it shows that ownership can materially change the incentives around how writers build an audience and how long they stay.

Puck pays writers more like startup employees than traditional newsroom staff. The equity extends beyond reporters to editors and data staff, while partners also get visibility into the company's financial performance. That ownership became tangible when Puck used mostly stock to acquire Air Mail.

The model has already produced something worth studying. A newsroom built around shared ownership has passed 100,000 paying subscribers, retained nearly every major writer it launched with, and moved close to profitability in under five years. For media companies competing to hold onto strong writers, this is the playbook to follow.

See you next week.

If you liked this edition of Growth Curve, forward it to a founder or marketer who needs to stop renting their audience — and start owning it.