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Emily Sundberg is a believer in the power of a simple hangout. “Hanging out is a big part of my business,” she told Glossy. “I’m here talking to you right now, and a bunch of readers are talking to each other in the comment section of the newsletter I sent this morning.”
But Sundberg does a lot more than hang out and chat. As the founder of Feed Me, a Substack that describes itself as “a daily newsletter about the spirit of enterprise,” she also does ample writing and reporting for a growing readerbase that does indeed enjoy hanging out in her comments section. A February New York Times profile on Sundberg cited Feed Me as having roughly 60,000 readers. As of October, she said that number now tops more than 150,000.
Launched in 2022, Feed Me has come to exemplify much of the appeal of the Substack format — that is, writing driven by an individual voice and curation that is often absent in large-scale media. Recent issues of Feed Me have touched upon the opening of a Dimes Square members-only club, shakeups in the Starface C-suite, and an interview with Cosmopolitan and Seventeen editor-in-chief Willa Bennett.
And hanging out and keeping her eyes and ears open, whether IRL or online, is a major part of Sundberg’s ability to land the kind of scoops that keep her readers coming back week after week.
For example, Sundberg said her September scoop that the Los Angeles grocery store Erewhon, famed for its $20 smoothies, was coming to New York via Kith’s upcoming members club was discovered in a public post that had been live for several days on Kith founder Ronnie Fieg’s Instagram feed. “I was just zooming in on a blueprint for a build that he had, and it said ‘Erewhon’ on it, and nobody had picked it up. I picked up the phone, called a few friends who work in real estate and got the confirmation that it was legit.”
While Substack has allowed many independent writers to build platforms akin to one-person magazines, Sundberg does not believe in doing it all alone. 2025 marked an expansion stage for Feed Me. In September, she hired on two editors in New York magazine and Business Insider alum Anna Silman and recent journalism graduate Cami Fateh. That same month, she announced the launch of a podcast hosted by Feed Me’s “semi-anonymous restaurant critic” J Lee, which Sundberg described as filling a white space for a “bitchy, fun restaurant podcast.”
With those engaged eyeballs and global readers, brand deals and ads have come knocking. In 2025, Sundberg’s brand partners have included the likes of David Protein and J.Crew. And while Feed Me is resolutely New York-centric, she has her eye on expanding her coverage to Los Angeles in the near future.
With media rapidly evolving, Substack’s growing readership and advertising potential have made it a threat to traditional media, in some views. But Sundberg sees new mediums like Substack as more of a complement than a direct competitor to legacy outlets.
“Being edited by somebody who’s been at GQ for 10 years is such a gift to me,” said Sundberg, who has contributed articles on topics like Zyn and members-only clubs to the Condé Nast-owned publication. “It makes me a better writer, and I also link to these places every day. Although some of them might fear Substack, I am also getting emails from audience teams all the time being like, ‘Can you please include our story?’ because it’s probably driving more traffic than their homepage.”
