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Essays / personalTech news / industry

’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
132 from 14 Apr 2019 to 25 Feb 2026
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now and then (1 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 1

  1. Infinite Jest belongs in the techno-optimist canon

2025 10

  1. Prediction: the Successor to Postmodernism
  2. I'm joining a16z
  3. A startup is a bundle, and Windsurf broke the bundle
  4. Scarcity and Abundance in 2025
  5. If you're first out the door, it's not called panicking
  6. Wine tasting with Claude Shannon
  7. 10 Predictions for the 2020s: Midterm report card
  8. Innovation takes magic, and that magic is gift culture
  9. Have you ever seen a goth downtown?
  10. Manifest Destiny Returns

2022 1

  1. Tokengated Commerce

2021 27

  1. Games
  2. When Did Things Happen?
  3. Twist Biosciences: The DNA API
  4. Ten More Books
  5. Dancoland, Part 5: The Two Meanings of Why
  6. Dancoland, Part 4: Everything Loops
  7. Dancoland, Part 3: Thinking in Layers
  8. Dancoland, Part 2: Just-So Stories
  9. Dancoland, Part One
  10. Michael, Dwight and Andy: the Three Aesthetics of the Creative Class
  11. World-Building and the Early Internet, with Jim O'Shaughnessy
  12. Without Memes
  13. Civic LARPing
  14. Power, Proximity, and Standup Comedy
  15. Building the World of Alex Danco's Newsletter
  16. What's Behind the Shopify Effect
  17. World Building and Antifragility
  18. World Building
  19. Ten Books
  20. How Scenes Work, with Jim O'Shaughnessy
  21. Pipe It! Platforms, Funding, and the Future
  22. NFTs and CBGBs: how's that for a clickbait title
  23. The next evolution of the Internet Newsletter: with Mario Gabriele of The Generalist
  24. The Pirate Problem
  25. R/WhiteHouseBets
  26. The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class
  27. Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn't Work

2020 47

  1. Shopify, SPACs and Status, Part Two: with Jim O'Shaughnessy
  2. Shopify, SPACs and Status: My Interview with Jim O'Shaughnessy (Part One)
  3. Fixing Audit Won't Fix Fraud: An Interview with Kris Bennatti of Bedrock AI
  4. Bfcm
  5. A Hypothesis is a Liability
  6. Election Day 2020: Rene Girard, Part 2
  7. Tune in today at 2 PM EST / 11 PST
  8. Six lessons from six months at Shopify
  9. Covid Kills Inertia: Homeownership Edition
  10. Making is Show Business now
  11. The future of the CFA Institute: An interview with Margaret Franklin, CFA
  12. Are Founders Allowed to Lie?
  13. The Kids are Alright: An Interview with Eugene Wei and Julie Young (Gift Culture, Part 4)
  14. Scarcity Status versus Abundance Status (Gift Culture Part 3)
  15. The SE Suite: an Interview with Julie Young (Gift Culture, Part 2)
  16. Homesteading the Twittersphere
  17. Rollin' (ARR-paid vehicle)
  18. It's not debt, it's better: An interview with Harry Hurst of Pipe
  19. SPAC Man Begins
  20. The Freud Moment
  21. Summer Vacation
  22. Craft is Culture
  23. The Most Famous Loop
  24. Never Hertz to Ask
  25. Disrespectful to Wrestling
  26. Let's just get rid of peer review
  27. The Medium Post is the Message
  28. Debt: the First 5000 Years
  29. Funding the future, the Two Torontos, and the Audio Revolution - with David Perell
  30. Download Cards, "eCommerce", and Covid Commerce
  31. Shopify
  32. It's going to get worse
  33. Life is Made of Unfair Coin Flips
  34. Positional Scarcity and the Virus
  35. Please Read: Two COVID-19 initiatives
  36. Black Swan Events
  37. Immune systems / Antifragility, Part 2 | TTT S2E9
  38. Antifragility
  39. Employee Stock Options: free money, kinda
  40. VCs should play bridge
  41. Progress, Postmodernism and the Tech Backlash
  42. Debt Follow-up: a guest post from Ali Hamed of CoVenture
  43. Can Twitter Save Science?
  44. Debt is Coming
  45. Counterfeit Food
  46. Social Capital in Silicon Valley: an important fix
  47. Social Capital in Silicon Valley

2019 46

  1. 2019 Year in Review
  2. Ten Predictions for the 2020s: Part Two
  3. Ten Predictions for the 2020s: Part One
  4. Five "I, Too"s for 2019
  5. Stone Soup, Diversification, and the Alchemy of Venture
  6. The Social Subsidy of Angel Investing
  7. The Car Bundle
  8. Internet Crowds and Personal Space
  9. An Interview with Jamie Catherwod
  10. The Trillion Dollar Lawsuit, Part Two
  11. The Trillion Dollar Lawsuit, Part One
  12. Everything is amazing, but nothing is ours
  13. The Audio Revolution, Part Two
  14. An Interview with Brent Beshore
  15. The Audio Revolution, Part One
  16. Five Writing Tips
  17. Disruption Theory is Real, but Wrong
  18. Netflix, Positional Scarcity and the Red Queen's Race
  19. Snippets finally has a new name
  20. The Founding Murder and the Final Boss
  21. Why I don't love Light Rail Transit
  22. Positional Scarcity
  23. Misunderstanding "Skin in the Game"
  24. Can you lose on purpose?
  25. WeWork could win
  26. The players are the artists; the game is the venue
  27. Catch Up Episode: Book writing, links and more.
  28. An Interview with Casey Newton from The Verge
  29. An Interview with Zachary Sun from Tierra Biosciences
  30. A Midsummer Night's Term Sheet
  31. An Interview with Jonathan Hsu from Tribe Capital
  32. Birthday Issue
  33. All the other kids with the pumped up BTCs
  34. Facebook's Crypto Strawman
  35. Bonus Content!
  36. Would you accept cheaper rent in exchange for an Amazon purchasing quota?
  37. I'm Writing a Book, and I Want Your Help: Snippets 2, Episode 8
  38. Google Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?
  39. What happens if building more housing doesn't work?
  40. Crowds, Power and Bitcoin
  41. Cooking As A Service
  42. Billy Joel, American Kayfabe Master
  43. Snippets 2, Episode 2: a Girardian take on Trump, Online and more
  44. Snippets 2, Episode 1.
  45. Snippets 2.0!
  46. [Temporary Snippets 2.0] from Alex Danco - coming soon