FAQ: Why is there now a paid tier and what do I get?
After a year debating with myself on what this Substack should be, it came to me…
I need to start a paid tier.
I have had a long-time reluctance to accepting money for my writing on here but I now realize I have been doing myself, and my subscribers, a disservice.
Let me explain with this frequently asked questions format.
Q: Why did you not want to accept payment until now?
A: The reason I did not accept money was because I always viewed people who charged for investing “advice” very skeptically. If you’re so good at investing, why do you need money from subscribers? Also, put another way: “those who can’t, teach.” I felt putting up a paid tier would be a signifier that I wasn’t a capable investor.
Q: What changed?
A: Multiple things. For one, I realized I loved to write about biotech stocks but incentives were important. Why pour my heart into pages and pages of writing for nothing? I simply wasn’t producing much and I wasn’t pushing myself to my best level because I thought why work for free?
Secondly, I realized I was truly loving Substack as a reader. I follow more than 20 publications right now and pay for four with plans to probably pay for 8-10 publications ultimately. And these aren’t biotech publications. I follow two for restaurant recommendations and cooking tips, one for political analysis, one for advice on literally buying better gifts for my wife. I also subscribe to a couple Patreons, including one for news and podcasts on the Phoenix Suns. They are so many amazing, smart people out there with unique point of views and I love to hear what they have to say. And I think that’s what I want from a biotech publication. I want to publish all my thoughts about the space in detail and how I came to those conclusions but I am not a financial advisor and certainly don’t want anyone to blindly trust me. My goal is to publish thought provoking research and long-form content you won’t find anywhere else. I think that’s a niche I can fill. I’m not trying to be a “guru” just save you time and provide ideas and rationale for how I arrived there.
(Oh, and the last thing was the celiac disease I mentioned last month had really been destroying my life without me knowing. Now I have so much energy to write! If you have any concerns about your health, go see a doctor and get tested! I’m so mad I waited.)
Q: How much will you charge and how much will you be making?
A: I will be charging $10/month or you can choose an annual plan for $100/year if you trust me in advance. And now I will be fully transparent about my current metrics.
As of this writing, this publication has 1,972 subscribers. Not a lot but not a little. Substack guides that you can expect 5% to 10% of your free subscribers to convert to paid. Under 5% and your marketing or audience trust is pretty bad. Over 10% and you are doing great. For a base case I will take 5% and use round numbers. This all means I can expect 100 paid subscribers at $10/month. $1000 in income a month before taxes and fees. Not a king’s ransom! Barely a side hustle.
So, rest assured: my main income will still be, far and away, my own personal investing. But I am excited to have a little carrot to keep me motivated to do something I love. And trust that I will work my freaking butt off to give you more than $10 of value each month.
Q: So what do I get for $10/month?
A: The most important question.
What you’ll get now:
One long-form article per month. I’m targeting a length of 7,500 words to 15,000 words. My Q2 Earnings Calls recap was 8,868 words. Certainly, length isn’t indicative of quality. But I’m fairly proud of that post, I would say it was a B- article as far as quality but I aim to keep improving and put out A+ content continuously. My goal is for you to say this it too cheap for the value.
One to two medium length articles per month. These will be about a new idea that I came across or a current event or trend in biotech that has my attention.
Subscriber chat. Any quick idea or thought that pops in my mind will be posted in the subscriber chat feature accessible through the website or Substack app. (I really am liking the Substack app and rarely read through my email now.) Members will also be able to comment or post their own thoughts in the chat, of course. Over time, a valuable community could emerge but no guarantees. I will definitely be talking to myself in there over the next year at the very least. ☺️ It seems like a great place to just post an idea that pops into my head while avoiding Twitter where I feel trolls and negativity have taken hold to a certain degree.
Features I would like to add in time:
I’d like to add more benefits after my first year in operation like an in-person meetup in Los Angeles or New York and longform writing on the history of biotech and why past companies have succeeded or failed. I love going deep in newspaper archives, books, and EDGAR filings from the 90s to find stories of old biotech companies that grew or collapsed rapidly. I have a remote drive filled with PDFs of saved articles, SEC filings, old press releases, and slide decks and four years worth of recorded sessions from investment webinars. (A hobby I picked up during COVID.)
With a paid subscriber base I may eventually have time to start writing those stories. But first I’m focused on actionable ways to make money in the biotech stock universe.
What you won’t get:
News Round-Ups: Other people can do it much better and most anyone can figure out how to set up alerts on the stocks they like.
Mock Portfolios: Personally, this never appealed to me as I like reading about ideas and thinking about if they fit my strategy or how to weight them myself. I can read a person’s content for 6-9 months and figure out if I trust them, agree with their view of the investing world, and their historical accuracy.
Weekly Market Recaps: Again, most people follow the indices and I don’t feel the need to comment weekly on the stocks I follow. I’ll be doing it real-time in subscriber chat or writing an entire article if an event is noteworthy enough.
Charts. I personally have never found value in charts beyond looking at a 1Y and 5Y line chart for a general sense of company history and perception. Maybe I subconciously use them without realizing - I look at the market each day and generally feel which stocks are “strong”, “weak” or “reversing” but the idea of notating a short-term chart with green and red bars is, to me, something like a personal hell.
I’m not throwing shade on services that do these things! It’s an impressive feat to build a community and following and I wish them immense success. There’s room for all. They are filing a niche for people that want those things and I recognize those areas are already well served. I need to fill a different need and that’s what I intend to do.
Q: What will the long-form posts be on?
A: Another great question. Here is a tentative schedule I made of post ideas for the next year:
January: JPM Week Roundup. I will consume an insane amount of webcasts from the JP Morgan Healthcare conference (and even the lower-tier conferences held the same week) and tell you which companies came off well and which give me red flags. Also, my impressions of the data sets released during that week. (It seems like a good amount of data this year is already announced to be timed/held for the week of the conference.)
February: Upcoming Binary Events. I have definitely shifted my investment focus to commercial names based on where I think unrealized value is but I recognize a lot of biotech investors love to debate the boom/bust binary events that give that hit of dopamine (and cash) when they work. I’ll cover as many as I can that are scheduled to happen by EOY with my thoughts and expectations.
March: Q4 Earnings Call Recaps. Detailed recaps and analysis of 15-20 earnings calls of companies in my coverage universe (60-80 companies typically). This will come one month later than the usual cadence because most small biotechs do their earnings call in early March due to the need to get their annual filings prepared. This will roughly follow the same format as this article but I will continuously tweak the format and probably rely a little less on pull quotes and add in more analysis and forward looking analyst estimates.
April: Intellectual Property/Balance Sheet/Hidden 10-K Items. This small gap on the calendar feels like a good time to go into the annual filings of each of my biotech positions to screenshot discussions of intellectual property, outstanding warrants/debt, and anything else in the 10-Ks that may be lurking under the radar. This will also be great as a quick reference guide on these stocks if you just want to quickly find the Loss of Exclusivity date or assess their need to raise capital.
May: Q1 Earnings Call Recaps. Same format as mentioned above. These long-form posts will be four times a year and will be the bedrock of value for subscribers and determinations on how I adjust my position sizing in the commercial-stage names. People lie, revenues don’t.
June: Half-Year Review: What Worked, What Didn’t. This will come almost exactly 6 months to the day following my end-of-year preview and will critique what has worked and what didn’t. Hopefully a lot more will be working than not if I’m doing my job right but I intend to call it like I see it.
July: Left For Dead Setups. A fun feature for the doldrums of summer where no biotech name is off limits. Pitch me your stinkiest biotech stock and what would need to happen for it to rise from the dead. I will come with a long list of my own and maybe we can find an actual hidden gem. Not many biotech that experience a -80% drawdown reverse to do a 10x from the bottom but it does happen from time to time. This is the one month a year where we indulge these wounded names.
August: Q2 Earnings Call Recaps.
September: Fund Manager Interviews. This is something not fully fleshed out yet, but I have made contacts with various hedge fund managers. I would love for the ones willing to share their journey to agree to be interviewed (even if anonymously but hopefully with their name) and share their journey. I’d also love their top ideas whether it be specific companies or thematically. I don’t mind them talking their book - all I ask is that they be truthful. I have 11 months to work on this so hopefully by then it will be some of the most exciting content!
October: Subscriber Q&A. You can ask me anything. Literally anything. I don’t have to answer but you can ask it. Anything on biotech! Questions on my investing journey! What it’s like to manage a kid with Type 1 diabetes! My favorite city! Sports teams I dislike the most! What life is like living with Celiac Disease! Workout regimen! Favorite retro video games! Best pro wrestling submission finisher! Anything! (Most of the questions will probably be about biotech and that’s fine.)
November: Q3 Earnings Call Recaps.
December: Next Year Strategy Preview. Heading into a new year, what stocks are primed to potentially have a big next 12 months? Laying out my justification and thesis for every long position I currently own.
Q: When does the paid tier start?
A: The first paid post will be tomorrow November 13th. It will be Part 1 of the Earnings Call Recaps, with Part 2 appearing next Wednesday.
Q: Will there still be free posts?
A: Yes. I will still do one monthly free post with my Top 10 positions and recaps of the paid content I did that month with some teaser quotes hopefully to convince more people to upgrade to the paid tier.
Q: Will your writing start being more “fun” again and incorporate silly GIFs occasionally?
A:
Q: When can I sign up?
A: Right now!
If you choose to sign up, thank you thank you thank you!
If you choose not to sign up, thank you for being a free subscriber and I hope I can woo you over time!
If you are not a free subscriber but ended up here to the very end, it feels like might be interested! I encourage you to give me a shot! I’m working on enabling week long free trials so hopefully that will be an option by the time you consider signing up.
I can’t wait to see where this goes from here.
With gratitude,
Matt Gamber