Napkin Math

Profit and power in technology.

Jun 14, 2023

OpenAI’s Code Interpreter Is About to Remake Finance

Get in loser, we’re disrupting Oracle

Aug 7, 2024

The Horny Truth About AI Chatbots

What our digital companions reveal about human loneliness

May 11, 2022

Crypto’s Failed Promise

The problem with crypto-as-a-nation-state

Nov 29, 2023

How I Use ChatGPT (As A Reasonable Person)

My AI awakening

May 20, 2021

You Probably Shouldn’t Work at a Startup

It’s overrated—both financially and emotionally

Mar 22, 2023

How AI Changes the Media Business

Why community and social network effects will be key to winning the future

Mar 4, 2024

Claude 3 Is The Most Human AI Yet

But that doesn’t mean it's going to beat ChatGPT

Jun 28, 2023

What Happened to the Creator Economy?

The burden of missed expectations

Nov 2, 2022

How Elon Wins

Twitter needs to pursue the algorithmic feed

Jun 1, 2022

The Inventor of the iPhone Has Some Thoughts

Build by Tony Fadell: A Review

Oct 26, 2022

Venture Capital Is Ripe for Disruption

A world where a billion is a drop in the bucket

Aug 9, 2023

The Futility of Utility

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

Dec 21, 2022

Meditations on AI Mecca

A dispatch from a hacker conference in San Francisco

Mar 15, 2023

Technology Is Good Actually

Startups screw up sometimes, but making things cheaper is a moral necessity

Feb 22, 2023

When Content Creation Goes to Zero

AI is making a world where it costs nothing to produce anything. What happens next?

Jan 4, 2023

It Is Always Time to Build

Interest rates do not equal innovation rates

May 17, 2023

Meet Your New Finance Intern: GPT-4

How AI will reshape what finance professionals do

Oct 18, 2023

Every Software Business Has the Same Playbook

The strange contradiction at the heart of B2B SaaS

Mar 12, 2023

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

We may be entering a more ruthless era in tech

Aug 23, 2023

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

Triller's S1 raises questions about its numbers

Apr 26, 2023

Death of a Flywheel

How Amazon and Berkshire got too big

Dec 20, 2023

Should You Fire This Newsletter? 2023 Edition

2024 is the year I go big

Mar 1, 2023

Should I Quit and Start a Franchise?

I’m wondering if I can deep-fry my way out of the apocalypse

Nov 9, 2022

Pinterest Has a Chance

The first full-stack shopping platform