In Practice: My Newest Beta Product

Hi all,

Today is a unique post. Up to this point, each of my weekly essays for Napkin Math have been explainers of fundamentals, basic concepts, and stories that lay an intellectual foundation by which you can understand finance, technology, and business strategy . This essay today is an experiment contained within the Napkin Math brand. I’m calling it In Practice.

In Practice (just like Napkin Math’s other content) stems from my personal frustration with the existing tech/business news offerings. Most content is focused on being clickable, not actionable. This is bad! I want to know not just what happened, but why, and what that means for me. The minority of stuff that is actionable is usually boring. This is also bad. For the even smaller subset of writers producing actionable, entertaining content, it is usually long-form and again, is designed to be clickable/viral so as to grow their top of funnel. *Stares in mirror uncomfortably*. 

In Practice is my attempt to solve these problems. The name was chosen because these pieces will focus on the so what of the news for individual practitioners. It’ll have only the tech news that matters and will be accompanied by analysis to tell you why you should care and what the practical implications are for you. Additionally, if there are news items that require deeper understanding, I’ll link to my other explanatory writing where relevant so you can go deeper if you like. 

If the Daily Show, the Harvard Business Review, and The Information had a weird, threesome-conceived media baby, it would look like this.

To ensure that this is not a stupid idea, I need your help. It is entirely possible that this is only something that I want and everyone else thinks is pointless! Your feedback is key. I’m going to insert a button below. It will link to a Google Doc with the very first edition of In Practice. It’ll have comment access enabled. I’ll ask that you leave comments on the piece. What was interesting? What pissed you off? Is this In Practice product a good idea? I want your criticism as much as your praise. While your feedback on my writing is nice, what I would love is feedback on the format. How does it feel? Do you want me to cover something in greater depth? Less? Your feedback will shape what this will be…and if it will exist at all.  With that, on to the show.