Thanks for reading and writing, Joe. It's a curious train of thought; does lowering barriers to entry for "qualified" writers (we know one when we see one?) mean also doing the same for unqualified ones trying to game the system? (Thinking of what I call the expat strategy here.) There are potential governance problems with this train of thought of course.

The viral lottery is just not a sustainable business strategy for most people at Medium (or elsewhere). There's definitely a business opportunity to support experts who write at Medium (should they be willing to come back) in monetizing their content. In other words, Medium will basically be a discovery platform, the opportunity would be to support creators in making money with their expertise—coaching (a-hah!—the incoming CEO also leads a coaching platform), books (like Thought Catalog), merch, etc.

I'm not sure Medium should take this opportunity on itself (probably not!), but it could be interesting to build out a set of alliances—a Medium partner ecosystem so to speak—that would include agencies, ambassadors, champions, etc. (like Notion), the same way it used to do with publications like The Ringer.