Divinations

Get smarter about business strategy.

Sep 4, 2020

Strategy Smells

Hints that your strategy isn't working

Nov 12, 2021

The two biggest critiques of web3, analyzed

With a little help from Clay Christensen, strategy legend

Feb 20, 2021

Why I like Dispo

David Dobrik’s new photo-sharing app just might be a winner.

Nov 18, 2021

Notes on ConstitutionDAO

A few quick observations

Mar 5, 2020

Dominance Friction

Jesse Beyroutey, partner at IA Ventures, on why some companies achieve dominance while others get bogged down.

Dec 15, 2019

Strategy Drunk

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,And drinking

Feb 5, 2020

How Clay Christensen’s failure helped me process my own

A eulogy for a larger-than-life thinker

Aug 27, 2021

Spotify Bets on Apple Antitrust

Their new paid podcast feature only makes sense in a world where in-app purchase rules are relaxed.

Aug 3, 2022

How Power Works in the Writing Industry

A market analysis, Divinations-style

Feb 19, 2020

Great strategies depend on great inputs — here’s how to find them.

Hiten Shah on why “garbage in, garbage out” applies to strategy, too.

Jun 13, 2020

Why I wouldn’t invest in consumer health hardware

(Ceci n’est pas investment advice.)

Oct 11, 2020

Why winners sometimes take all, and sometimes don’t

Lessons from ecology’s “competitive exclusion principle”

Nov 25, 2020

Three Shorts: Snap, Apple, Vox

On Snap's take on TikTok, Apple's developer fee reduction, and Vox's talent attrition.

Sep 1, 2020

Disrupting Disruption: Helmer’s Razor

Can disruption be simplified?

Dec 16, 2020

Three Shorts: Axios, Crunchyroll, Periscope

The strategy behind the news, in as few bullet points as possible

Aug 17, 2022

How Every Executes: two tweaks that generated ~54% more paid subscribers

Real data from our business showing how execution is exponential

Sep 29, 2020

Intangible Returns

How strict prioritization processes cause malaise, and why you should take gut instinct more seriously in your planning process.

Jan 20, 2020

Brianne Kimmel’s Momentum Investing

How the founder of WorkLife Ventures built one of Silicon Valley’s most sought after emerging funds from scratch.

Apr 7, 2022

Friendly Competition and Subtle Defection

My wife and I recently bought our first home and we’re expecting our first child soon, so, as you can imagine, we’ve been doing a lot of wor

May 20, 2020

PepsiCo goes DTC

One new strategy. Two new websites.

Mar 12, 2020

How to use incentive alignment to unlock faster growth (in the real world)

My recent interview with Jesse Beyroutey solidified a hunch that I’ve been nursing for awhile: Incentive alignment is one of the most import

Jan 10, 2020

Sahil’s Second Act (audio edition)

Hello again! Yesterday after I published the Sahil Lavingia interview I received a tweet from my friend Alex: https://twitter.com/CantHardyW

May 31, 2020

Kernel Strategies

Six attributes of high-traction startups

Oct 22, 2020

What I got wrong about Quibi

A post-mortem for a failed prediction, and a failed startup