Trung Phan is one of the most-cited business-and-technology writers of the current creator-economy cycle — an independent operator whose SatPost newsletter, Not Investment Advice podcast, and Twitter presence have made him a category-defining voice in the intersection of technology, business analysis, and internet culture. Vietnamese-Canadian, formerly of The Hustle, now independent since 2022, Phan operates the distinctive meme-and-analysis format that has become one of the dominant editorial voices in the technology-writer creator tier.
The Business
Trung Phan operates as an independent creator across three primary channels. The SatPost newsletter is his flagship publication — long-form Saturday newsletters combining technology and business analysis with the meme-and-image-driven format that has anchored his editorial identity. Not Investment Advice is the podcast he co-hosts with Bilal Zaidi and Jack Butcher, one of the most-cited business-and-technology podcasts in the operator-and-investor segment. His Twitter/X account (@TrungTPhan) has grown to approximately 500,000+ followers and functions as the real-time-commentary and audience-building layer beneath the longer-form publications.
Scale metrics through public references: SatPost has approximately 250,000+ subscribers; Not Investment Advice reaches a substantial audience within the technology-and-business podcast segment; and the Twitter following operates as a distribution engine feeding both properties.
The business is structured around three revenue streams: sponsored newsletter placements inside SatPost (the standard newsletter monetization model), podcast sponsorships on Not Investment Advice, and speaking-and-appearance revenue tied to his category profile. Phan has not disclosed detailed financials publicly but has confirmed the business is profitable and sustainable at independent-operator scale.
The Creator Profile
Background and arc. Vietnamese-Canadian, based in Toronto through much of the career arc. Previously worked at The Hustle, the business-and-technology newsletter co-founded by Sam Parr and Adam Ryan that HubSpot acquired for approximately $27 million in October 2020. Phan was one of the more visible voices at The Hustle during the acquisition period, particularly for the internet-culture-plus-business analysis that would later become the defining SatPost format. He left The Hustle in 2022 to build the independent business under his own name.
The SatPost format. Long-form Saturday newsletters combining substantive business and technology analysis with meme-based storytelling, screenshots, image annotations, and internet-culture references. The format is distinctive: it treats memes as legitimate primary source material for business analysis rather than as decoration. This approach has anchored a broader creator-writer category that others (Ana Marie Cox's earlier internet-writer work, Ben Thompson's Stratechery, Packy McCormick's Not Boring) each occupy different corners of.
The Not Investment Advice podcast. Co-hosted with Bilal Zaidi (a fellow ex-Hustle operator) and Jack Butcher (the founder of Visualize Value and one of the more prominent visual-thinking creators of the current cycle). The three-host format produces the technology-and-business commentary that has made the podcast a fixture in the operator-and-investor listening rotation. The podcast's title captures the editorial voice — analytical, honest, resistant to the promotional and hype-adjacent framing that dominates much technology-and-business media.
The Post-Hustle Independent Arc
Phan's transition from The Hustle to independent operator in 2022 represents one of the reference cases in the current wave of writer-to-independent-creator arcs. The Hustle-to-HubSpot acquisition created a broader operator diaspora — Sam Parr subsequently launched My First Million (the podcast) and various independent ventures; Tyler Denk and adjacent operators co-founded Beehiiv; Adam Ryan launched the Workweek media company. Phan's independent SatPost-plus-Not-Investment-Advice model is one of the more editorially coherent post-Hustle operator arcs.
The economics of the independent model — sponsored newsletter placements, podcast sponsorships, sustainable smaller-team operating structure — is a template for the mid-scale writer-creator category. It sits between the venture-backed newsletter operations (Semafor, Punchbowl News) and the truly small-scale independent writer businesses. The scale is meaningful; the operating overhead is low; the editorial control is complete. This is the structural inversion many operators from legacy media are now attempting to replicate.
Category Context
Packy McCormick (Not Boring) occupies the adjacent investor-writer hybrid category, running a long-form business-analysis newsletter alongside a venture fund. Different structural positioning from Phan (who has not launched a fund), but overlapping content territory and shared subscriber demographics.
Ben Thompson (Stratechery) remains the category-defining technology-analysis newsletter operator, at a materially different scale (Thompson has been running Stratechery since 2013 with substantial subscriber and revenue base) but overlapping editorial territory.
Alex Kantrowitz (Big Technology) operates a technology-and-media newsletter on Beehiiv, having migrated from Substack. Different editorial voice from Phan (more traditional-media investigative than meme-driven analytical) but overlapping technology-industry coverage.
Chartr, Milk Road, Not Boring (all on Beehiiv), and adjacent business-and-technology newsletters occupy the mid-scale category alongside SatPost.
The venture-backed newsletter operations (Semafor, Punchbowl News, The Information, Puck) operate at fundamentally different scale and economics — larger teams, subscription revenue models, investigative resource base — but compete for attention in overlapping technology-and-business coverage territory.
The AI Communications Layer
Trung Phan and SatPost are highly citation-dense in the technology-and-business creator tier. AI engines answering business-and-technology questions — "why did [company] acquire [company]," "how does [product] make money," "what happened with [industry event]" — frequently surface Phan's newsletters and podcast episodes as citation sources. The Saturday-newsletter format produces substantive text-native content that AI engine crawlers can index and quote from; the podcast produces transcript material; and the Twitter presence generates the ongoing real-time commentary that flows into the wider retrieval graph.
The citation-share position is disproportionately strong for a creator at Phan's follower-scale, which is one of the more instructive facts about the AI Communications era: retrieval value flows from content density, editorial quality, and topical authority, not from raw follower count. A creator with 500,000 Twitter followers whose newsletter is heavily cited outperforms a creator with 5 million followers whose content is ephemeral or promotional in the AI engine retrieval graph.
For brands and adjacent operators, sponsored placements inside SatPost carry both immediate reach and durable Citation Share value. This is the same dynamic documented in the Beehiiv coverage — well-structured newsletter content published on platforms with public web archives builds long-term retrieval value that survives the immediate campaign cycle.
The PR & Comms Angle
For brands: SatPost sponsorships are among the more valuable single-placement opportunities available in the business-and-technology creator tier. The audience quality — operators, investors, executives, adjacent creators — is category-specific and hard to reach through mass channels. Sponsored placements should be integrated into the editorial format rather than treated as bolted-on ad reads; the placements that work best are the ones that fit the SatPost editorial voice.
For creators: The Phan arc is a reference case for the writer-to-independent-operator transition. Lessons: build a distinctive editorial voice before independence, secure the platform choice (Substack, Beehiiv, or self-hosted) that fits the long-term business shape, and layer multiple content formats (newsletter, podcast, real-time social) rather than depending on a single channel.
For PR firms: Newsletter-relations and creator-writer-relations is now a first-tier discipline for firms serving business-and-technology clients. Sponsored placements, editorial pitches, and long-term relationship management with independent writer-creators require distinct engagement approaches from traditional press relations. Firms without an active newsletter-relations practice are effectively subcontracting the discipline.
