Napkin Math

Profit and power in technology, every Tuesday and Thursday.

May 25, 2023

Dying Whales and Dying Billionaires

A note about power

Nov 2, 2023

How to Win Arguments and Manipulate Managers

Make your spreadsheets shape strategy

Jun 15, 2023

OpenAI’s Code Interpreter Is About to Remake Finance

Get in loser, we’re disrupting Oracle

Jul 28, 2022

Snapchat’s Probably Screwed

Apple's ATT Fallout Continues

Mar 30, 2023

Tinder Is Way More Important Than You Think

Forget AI, the people want to bone

Aug 10, 2023

The Futility of Utility

Why do I choose to do things that aren't in my best interest?

Oct 19, 2023

Every Software Business Has the Same Playbook

The strange contradiction at the heart of B2B SaaS

Apr 20, 2023

You Probably Shouldn’t Work at a Startup

It’s overrated—both financially and emotionally

Oct 27, 2022

Venture Capital Is Ripe for Disruption

A world where a billion is a drop in the bucket

Sep 15, 2022

When Creation Goes To Zero

Skynet Who?

Apr 27, 2023

Death of a Flywheel

How Amazon and Berkshire got too big

May 18, 2023

Meet Your New Finance Intern: GPT-4

How AI will reshape what finance professionals do

Jan 26, 2023

How Technology Giants Die

GE, Amazon, and the flywheel of death

Dec 14, 2023

Want to Build? Technical Excellence Won’t Be Enough.

This new era of startups requires a founder baptized in the humanities

Dec 15, 2022

Should You Fire This Newsletter?

In which I analyze whether I’m good at my job

Dec 21, 2022

Meditations on AI Mecca

A dispatch from a hacker conference in San Francisco

Nov 22, 2022

6 New Theories About AI

Software with superpowers

Jun 2, 2022

The Inventor of the iPhone Has Some Thoughts

Build by Tony Fadell: A Review

Nov 3, 2022

How Elon Wins

Twitter needs to pursue the algorithmic feed

Feb 9, 2023

The Meditations of Vinyl Jesus

Music producer Rick Rubin explores the creative process

Mar 13, 2023

A Dearth of Secrets, an Excess of Capital: SVB’s Explosion

We may be entering a more ruthless era in tech

Aug 8, 2024

The Horny Truth About AI Chatbots

What our digital companions reveal about human loneliness

Feb 16, 2023

Bada Bing: Why Microsoft Wants Google to Dance

Surely nothing bad will happen with an AI hooked up to the internet

Sep 29, 2022

Why Culture Eats Strategy

The Search For the Winning Formula