I used the New York Times API to see how it has covered the Coronavirus since the crisis began. My feeling was that for about a month, from mid-March to mid-April, it was all anyone could talk or think about. And since then, it still dominates the public consciousness but people are, understandably, tired of […]
Data Visualization
Which companies have the most likable CEOs?
Glassdoor asks employees whether they’d recommend a company to a friend and whether they approve of the CEO. For the most part, you would expect those two numbers to match closely. And for the most part they do, but there are some interesting ways in which they don’t. I looked at data from Glassdoor for […]
Exploring Trends in the Coffee Industry through Text Analysis
I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and this has led me to want to know more about coffee and the industry around it. To this end, I analyzed text from posts to reddit’s coffee forum and looked for trends, following the same process I outlined in this post on nutrition trends. I […]
Buy the (avocado) dip: Analyzing nutritional buzzwords on Reddit
Big CPG companies are struggling to move quickly enough to meet changing tastes. Kraft Heinz’s recent write-downs are a particularly salient example of this. One way incumbents have sought to keep up is by acquiring small brands that have a more direct connection with consumers and are perceived as healthier, fresher, or more authentic. Prominent […]
What does it take to get your VCs to come to the closing dinner?
I read this tweet a year and a half ago and have remembered it because I found it to be a terrifically concise summary of the venture capital model: I sold my first startup for $50 million after 13 months and made my investors 5x in a year None of them showed up to the […]
Visualizing the Strange World of Corporate Social Media Accounts
I have watched with morbid fascination as huge brands have taken to tweeting in a strange sort of inverse-corporate style that mimics popular twitter accounts. .@NASA wyd — MoonPie (@MoonPie) May 12, 2019 As many people have noted, it is rather surreal to see the corporate account of Moon Pie exchange existentialist tweets with Clorox. […]