Napkin Math

Profit and power in technology.

Sep 14, 2023

Defense Tech Shouldn’t Be Sexy

Weapons are a necessary evil, not a hype-y consumer product

Mar 7, 2024

Ads in the Age of AI

Weirder, different, and new

Apr 16, 2024

Distribution Is King

What video games can teach us about building billion-dollar companies

Jul 11, 2024

Searching for Signal

When building a startup gets hard, where should we turn?

Sep 22, 2022

The AI Writer

How tech is changing what it means to be an author

Dec 5, 2024

The Religion of Ramp

How the fintech became one of the fastest-growing startups—ever

Mar 21, 2024

Why Polarity Pays

The complicated social and financial incentives at the heart of online publishing

Aug 24, 2023

A TikTok Competitor Is About to IPO—And It’s Deeply Suspicious

Triller's S1 raises questions about its numbers

Dec 1, 2022

The House of the Bloody Mouse

Where does Disney go from here?

Dec 1, 2021

Investing on Instinct

Why the best deals are done with no data at all

Apr 28, 2022

Cash—Kingmaker or Killer?

A examination of when cash can anoint a market winner

Nov 24, 2021

How Do You Compete with Free?

Notion: The Embattled Artist

Jul 20, 2023

Of Course You Can Beat the Market

Free your mind from the Efficient Market Hypothesis

Feb 6, 2024

Profit, Power, and the Vision Pro

Will Apple’s new headset change everything?

Sep 19, 2024

Live Fuller, Not Bigger

You must escape the shallow joy of more

Feb 25, 2022

Joe Rogan: The Platform-Proof Creator

Spotify’s No-Win Predicament

Jun 24, 2020

Why Software is More Profitable Than Content

Written by... a content company

Jul 22, 2021

Snowflake: How a Revenue Retention Behemoth was Built

TL;DRThis is the second post on a deep dive in GTM metrics with a focus today on Revenue RetentionSnowflake is a software Dracula. It latche

Jun 27, 2023

Shopping for AI Shovels: The MosaicML Acquisition

Why would Databricks spend $1.3B?

Jan 6, 2022

What the hell is going on with Lambda School?

The complicated business of selling social good

Jul 9, 2024

Paramount’s Dilemma: Content Isn’t King—Distribution Is

Half a century removed from its glory days, the Hollywood giant has a new rescue plan

Aug 13, 2024

The Addiction Economy

Addicted, overwhelmed, oversubscribed: How technology hooked the world

Dec 7, 2023

The Impossibility of Being Charlie

RIP to nerd Jesus

Oct 6, 2022

The Face That AI Built

My explorations in image generation