Tech & VC

When you hear about a business on a podcast 30 or 40 times, you start to wonder about its business model. When I first heard about the Cash App, it seemed like a Lyft to Venmo’s Uber: a viable alternative, but a clear market follower. But Square (Cash App’s parent company) keeps adding new features […]

I keep hearing about the astonishing pace of innovation in China. I’ve seen lots of tweets like this one, and they leave me feeling nervous but deeply curious about what will come of the Chinese tech explosion. What I learned from 5 weeks in Beijing + Shanghai: – startup creation + velocity dwarfs anything in […]

I was recently wandering a bookstore, looking through new arrivals in Fiction. I came upon a book with a summary that was something along the lines of, “a young woman finds herself thrown into the Upper East Side aristocracy, and must navigate this strange new world, where not all is at it seems.” I laughed, […]

Viral posts don’t bring sustained traffic. I thought they did for a long time, before I started building websites and seeing the effects of traffic spikes. It’s natural to assume that if a post “blows up” and is seen by hundreds of thousands of people, it will bring lots of traffic (or revenue, users etc.) […]

Edit: Updated with data from TBHC! In honor of the Arctic Monkeys’ new album Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, I decided to look at Arctic Monkeys data using the terrific SpotifyR package from Charlie Thompson. The package lets you easily pull data from Spotify’s API. You can very quickly extract all the songs by a given […]

I have a bad habit of reading successful people’s bios. Be it on LinkedIn, Twitter, VC Websites…there’s something about the concentrated shot of prestige I find addictive. Stanford! McKinsey! HBS! Sequoia Capital! Spending time with my kids! It’s enough to make you sick. In that vein, I decided to analyze a bunch of VCs’ bios […]

WeWork is a fun company to analyze. Its valuation is huge, its business model is changing fast, and it has a charismatic, audacious CEO. It’s flush with SoftBank cash and has deployed it in some interesting ways. It also epitomizes the divisive stereotype of the yuppie / techie / millennial that inspires both mockery and admiration, […]

Update: Based on a recent filing discussed in this article, it appears that MoviePass’ parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, is losing roughly $20mm a month. The company’s auditor included a statement of concern that it could continue operations while burning through so much cash, and it is scrambling to raise more money. The company’s leadership […]

The books the top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs most recommend All data come from the many, many interviews Harry Stebbings has conducted for The Twenty Minute VC. On the off chance you haven’t heard of it, it’s an incredible resource for learning about tech and venture capital, and features the best VCs and entrepreneurs in […]