Emily Sundberg, creator and founder of the Substack, Feed Me, Photo Credit: Courtesy of Feed Me
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Feed Me
Emily Sundberg has been referred to as “the Carrie Bradshaw of her generation,” a comparison that’s appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to CULTURED.
With Feed Me, her daily newsletter about the spirit of enterprise,” Sundberg curates tips, trade news, deep conversations with industry experts (in her series called “Guest Lecture”), and job boards for a growing, hyper-engaged audience on Substack. It’s a corner on the Internet where she talks about business and finance with a bit of a wink – and it’s become a media empire setting the tone for culture and what success can look like as a creator.
She started Feed Me after getting laid off from Meta in 2022, where she was helping to sell Instagram ads. She had originally launched the newsletter while still working there — and when she lost her job during a layoff round, she decided to bet on herself. What began as a side hustle alongside consulting gigs at brands like Shopify quickly became a serious, legitimate business, and she decided to go all-in on her Substack.
But while Carrie Bradshaw talks about sex and dating — the things she “couldn’t help but wonder” on Sex and the City — Emily Sundberg writes about money, ambition, and power, in a section called “If We Had a Watercooler, I’d Talk to You About…”
Feed Me, her Substack-turned-media-brand, has become the place where the conversation starts. What began as a daily newsletter read over morning coffee is now industry currency, with an audience of everyone from Wall Street bros to bartenders — a blend of news, gossip, and analysis that lands with authority.
When Sundberg broke the news in September that Erewhon was finally opening in New York City, it didn’t just go viral — it became the story. The kind of scoop that confirmed what insiders already knew: if you want to know what’s next, you read Feed Me.
Sundberg identified a gap in how business and culture were being covered – everything newsy felt either too dry or too gossipy. She realized she could merge both: financial fluency with cultural curiosity.
The stories she was already texting her friends — the ones that lived somewhere between The Wall Street Journal and DeuxMoi, smart enough to inform but irreverent enough to entertain — were the ones people actually wanted to read.
Those text threads became the DNA of Feed Me. “I was already having these conversations,” she says. “Texting Wall Street people, business friends: the real stories were in those threads.” Those private exchanges helped her see what her audience craved: the business behind the culture, and the culture behind the business.
And unlike traditional outlets, Sundberg doesn’t pander to potential partners or advertisers. “I don’t write for gatekeepers or other journalists,” she says. “I write for my readers: people who are smart, curious, and want to be in the know.” That’s what gives Feed Me its signature tone: confident, conversational, and unfiltered in the best way.
She’s also been called “provocative,” which makes Sundberg wonder: “I’m not saying anything crazier than what male journalists or podcasters say every day,” she says. “I’m just doing it in my voice.” It’s what makes Feed Me so magnetic and what ensures its content has bite.
The next chapter of Feed Me arrives with Expense Account, a new podcast produced in partnership with Substack. Hosted by Jason Lee (formerly Semi Anonymous Restaurant Critic J Lee), the show builds on the Feed Me column of the same name — a sharp, funny diary of New York’s hardest tables to book. The launch marks a new phase for Sundberg as she expands Feed Me into a studio-model business for creator-led media.
The origin story is peak Feed Me: Sundberg was editing one of Lee’s pieces when she paused on the line, “I’ll save that for the pod.” “He didn’t have a pod,” she laughs. “But it felt like a manifestation. I texted him: ‘Do you want one?’ He said yes. So we made one.”
It’s the next evolution of her vision — building Feed Me into a media studio with real legs.
Today, Feed Me is one of Substack’s top-grossing business publications, reaching more than 150,000 readers and projected to bring in seven figures in revenue this year. Over the past twelve months, readership has grown more than 60%, with Feed Me consistently ranking among Substack’s top-ten business and culture newsletters. Its subscriber base spans New York, London, and Los Angeles: the very cities that define the industries Sundberg writes about.
That growth reflects the platform’s own momentum: as of March 2025, Substack has surpassed five million paid subscriptions, according to the company.
Feed Me is a universe with strong IP: it features merch with its branded logo that sells out every time it drops and hosts parties and get-togethers in New York and London.
She’s not in competition with Bloomberg or The New York Times, and that’s the point. Where they chase scale, she builds an intimate community vibe. Where they write for everyone, she writes for the reader who gets it.
(One of the things that Sundberg shares she’s most proud of is the friendships and connections formed in the Feed Me comments section: stories of people who came out to the London get-together because they wanted to meet IRL and take the conversation out of the proverbial group chat.)
Her discipline runs deep. “I like listening to athletes,” she says. “Kobe Bryant once said, ‘If you’re lazy, I don’t want to talk to you.’ I get along with other people who are proverbially in the gym with me.” It’s a mindset that sums her up: less about the sprint, more about staying power.
Even the name Feed Me came from that energy. “I started writing during COVID,” she says. “Most of my ideas came from my newsfeed. It was like the whole world was opening up every time I tapped my phone. The name came from that — all the people who were feeding me ideas.”
Now, she’s feeding an entire generation, with wit, honesty, and an appetite for what’s next. She built Feed Me on curiosity, consistency and bite — and in doing so, rewrote the rules of what independent media can be.
While she’s become an expander for a new generation of writers and creators — proof that a Substack can grow into a thriving business — Sundberg is quick to note that none of it came without sacrifice. Behind the success is a level of discipline and curiosity most readers don’t see: the kind that fuels a daily newsletter (Feed Me has been daily since its launch), a sharp independent voice that doesn’t seek validation, and the willingness to navigate uncomfortable rooms with confidence.
“I’ve worked really hard to make this happen. It took a tremendous amount of work and sacrifices that aren’t always evident. It’s not always fun to sit at dinner with people you’ve written critically about. It’s not always fun to be up at 5 a.m. calling random real-estate agents to confirm stories. It’s not always fun to feel like your phone is always dying because you’re on it looking for the next tip. But it’s been totally worth it.”
