Divinations

Get smarter about business strategy.

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.

Apr 10, 2020

Notion’s $2b Valuation is Sensible, Probably

Three Shorts: Notion, Roam, and “Time Preference”

Sep 4, 2020

Strategy Smells

Hints that your strategy isn't working

Jul 3, 2020

Product Case Study: HEY

A radical new take on email

May 20, 2022

Mastering the Market Cycle, by Howard Marks

My chapter-by-chapter summary, with notes and reactions

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.

Feb 5, 2020

How Clay Christensen’s failure helped me process my own

A eulogy for a larger-than-life thinker

Jul 16, 2020

Means of Creation #2: Greg Isenberg

On the unbundling of Reddit into vertical communities

Nov 18, 2021

Notes on ConstitutionDAO

A few quick observations

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.

Aug 17, 2022

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

Real data from our business showing how execution is exponential

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

May 20, 2020

PepsiCo goes DTC

One new strategy. Two new websites.

Aug 3, 2022

How Power Works in the Writing Industry

A market analysis, Divinations-style

Jan 30, 2020

The Five Forces—video edition!

Trying something new - what do you think?

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.

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

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.

May 31, 2020

Kernel Strategies

Six attributes of high-traction startups

Jun 13, 2020

Why I wouldn’t invest in consumer health hardware

(Ceci n’est pas investment advice.)

Sep 1, 2020

Disrupting Disruption: Helmer’s Razor

Can disruption be simplified?

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