Long Form Reads
I believe that one of the richest ways to learn is long form essays written by people who deeply understand their subject matter. Here are some of my favorites.
AI: The Technology
- Attention Is All You Need by Ashish Vaswani et al.
- Emergent Deception and Emergent Optimization by Jacob Steinhardt
- Software 2.0 by Andrej Karpathy
- Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence by Sébastien Bubeck et al.
- State of AI Report 2022 by Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth
- Text Is the Universal Interface by Roon
- The Illustrated Transformer by Jay Alammar
- The Road to ChatGPT (Presentation) by Rama Ramakrishnan
- The Scaling Hypothesis Gwern Branwen
- What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work? by Stephen Wolfram
- Collections: Aman.ai; Deepmind Research Index; LessWrong AI Index; OpenAI Research Index
AI: Impact on Society and Policy
- Alien Minds by Susan Schneider
- Artificial Intelligence Made Me Write This by Tom Morgan
- Creating Friendly AI by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok
- How to make AI that’s good for people by Fei-Fei Li
- Superintelligence FAQ Scott Alexander
- The Age of AI has Begun by Bill Gates
- The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence and Our Immortality or Extinction by Tim Urban
- When will AGI arrive and how it will impact society? Responses from Anton Troynikov, James Poulos, roon, Max Anton Brewer, Robin Hanson, Niklas Blanchard
AI: Impact on Business
- AI and the Big Five by Ben Thompson
- AI Platforms, Markets, & Open Source by Elad Gil
- AI: Startup Vs Incumbent Value by Elad Gil
- Developer Tools 2.0 by Charlie Curnin, Josephine Chen, Stephanie Zhan
- Every Company Needs and AI Strategy (Presentation) by Sarah Guo
- Startup Opportunities in Machine Learning Infrastructure by Leigh Marie Braswell
- The AI Unbundling by Ben Thompson
- The Bull Case for OpenAI’s threat to Google’s dominance by Sarah Tavel
- The Business of Artificial Intelligence by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
Case Studies
- Brex: The Future of Business Banking and Cash Management by Anu Hariharan, Nic Dardenne, Karan Shah
- Don't Forget Microsoft by John Luttig
- Food Delivery Wars by Sarah Tavel
- Lessons from Spotify by Ben Thompson
- Nintendo, Disney, and Cultural Determinism by Matthew Ball
- Pinduoduo and The Rise of Social E-Commerce by Anu Hariharan and Nic Dardenne
- Stripe: Platform of Platforms by Ben Thompson
- Shein: The TikTok of Ecommerce by Packy McCormick
- Tencent: The Ultimate Outsider by Packy McCormick
- The Epic Games Primer by Matthew Ball
- The FANG Playbook by Ben Thompson
- Understanding how Uber & Lyft Grow in Markets by Kevin Kwok
- What is Amazon? By Zack Kanter
- Why Figma Wins by Kevin Kwok
- Why Uber Fights by Ben Thompson
Defensibility
- A Taxonomy of Moats by Jerry Neumann
- Apple, Its Control Over the iPhone, and The Internet by Matthew Ball
- How to Lose a Monopoly by Benedict Evans
- Measuring the Moat by Michael Mauboussin, Dan Callahan, Darius Majd
- The Power of Defaults by Julian Lehr
Differentiation and Competition
- Aligning Business Models to Markets by Kevin Kwok
- A Quickstart Guide to Positioning by April Dunford
- Consoles and Competition by Ben Thompson
- How to Eat an Elephant, One Atomic Concept at a Time by Kevin Kwok
- Market Share: Understanding Competitive Advantage Through Market Power by Michael Mauboussin and Dan Callahan
- Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary
- Positioning and Competition by April Dunford
- Should You Pay Attention To Competitors? by Casey Winters
- Tech’s Two Philosophies by Ben Thompson
- The Audacity of Copying Well by Ben Thompson
- Understanding Abundance by Alex Danco
- Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough by Brian Balfour
Disruption
- Aggregation Theory by Ben Thompson
- Beyond Disruption by Ben Thompson
- Creating in The Era of Creative Confidence by Scott Belsky
- Disruption, disintegration and the dissipation of differentiability by Clayton Christensen, Matt Verlinden, George Westerman
- Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen
- Great Surges of Development by Carlota Perez
- Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model by Bill Gurley
- Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done” by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan
- On Inflection Points by Michael Dempsey
- Playing on Hard Mode by Ben Thompson
- Strong and Weak Technologies by Chris Dixon
- The Best is the Last by Benedict Evans
- The End of the Beginning by Ben Thompson
- What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong by Ben Thompson
- What Is a Tech Company? by Ben Thompson
- When Tailwinds Vanish by John Luttig
Flywheels, Systems, Loops
- Growth Loops are the New Funnels by Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, Kevin Kwok, Andrew Chen
- How Complex Systems Fail by Richard Cook
- Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows
- Uber’s virtuous cycle by Andrew Chen
Growth and Marketing
- 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
- Ads Don't Work That Way by Kevin Simler
- Building an Efficient Marketing Machine by Emily Kramer
- Building your Growth Model and Ladder of Engagement by Josh Elman
- Conservation of Intent by Andrew Chen
- Crafting The First Mile Of Product by Scott Belsky
- Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane by Lenny Rachitsky and Dan Hockenmaier
- How to Win with Product-led Sales by Elena Verna and Naomi Ionita
- Hierarchy of Engagement by Sarah Tavel
- Making Uncommon Knowledge Common by Kevin Kwok
- Product Channel Fit Will Make or Break Your Growth Strategy by Brian Balfour
- The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs by Andrew Chen
- Why Onboarding is the Most Crucial Part of Your Growth Strategy by Casey Winters
Marketplaces: Industry and Evolution
- A Guide To Marketplaces by Angela Tran, Max Webster, Boris Wertz
- All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces by Bill Gurley
- Building and Investing in Marketplaces by Erik Torenberg
- Platforms vs Verticals and the Next Great Unbundling by Jeff Jordan and D'Arcy Coolican
- Sequencing Business Models: Can That SAAS Business Turn Into a Marketplace? by Casey Winters
- Sequencing Business Models: The Types of Marketplaces by Casey Winters and Gilad Horev
- Sequencing Business Models: So You Want To Be A Platform? by Casey Winters and Gilad Horev
- The Rebundling of Craigslist by Josh Breinlinger
- What's Next For Marketplace Startups by Li Jin and Andrew Chen
- Why Marketplaces Fail: The Role of Engagement by Sameer Singh
Marketplaces: Liquidity and Scaling
- Four Strategies to Win Big with Low Frequency Marketplaces by Casey Winters
- How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business by Lenny Rachitsky
- How to Structure a Marketplace by Simon Rothman
- Marketplace Liquidity by Borja Moreno de los Rios
- Online Marketplaces by Jeff Jordan
- Pen, Pricetag, Flashlight by Michael Dearing
- Solving the “Marketplace” Business Model by Jason Cohen
- The Hierarchy of Marketplaces by Sarah Tavel
- Underutilized Fixed Assets by Kevin Kwok
- “White Space” For Building A Marketplace by Sarah Tavel
- WTF is Marketplace Liquidity? by Julia Morrongiello
Media and Advertising
- Apple Robbed the Mob’s Bank Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 by Eric Seufert
- Data Factories by Ben Thompson
- Everything is an Ad Network by Eric Seufert
- How Technology Shapes Content and Business Models (Or Audio’s Opportunity and Who Will Capture It) by Matthew Ball
- Netflix is Not a Tech Company by Benedict Evans
- Seeing Like an Algorithm by Eugene Wei
- Status as a Service by Eugene Wei
- Signaling as a Service by Julian Lehr
- The Four Horsemen of the TV Apocalypse by Doug Shapiro
- The Great Unbundling by Ben Thompson
- TikTok and the Sorting Hat Eugene Wei
Metrics and Forecasting
- BlitzFail: How Not to Go Off the Rails by David Sacks
- Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All by Bill Gurley
- Choosing Your North Star Metric by Lenny Rachitsky
- How to Calculate Market Share of a Product by Janna Bastow
- Invisible Asymptotes by Eugene Wei
- Metrics Versus Experience by Julie Zhuo
- Operating Leverage by Alex Taussig
- The Burn Multiple by David Sacks
- The Nag Metric by Julie Zhuo
- The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula by Bill Gurley
- The Elephant in the room: The myth of exponential hypergrowth by Jason Cohen
- The Lightspeed SaaS Operating Model by Natalie Luu and Alex Taussig
- What is Good Retention by Lenny Rachitsky and Casey Winters
- Why Most Analytical Efforts Fail by Crystal Widjaja
- Your Organization Needs a Data Hierarchy Map by Elena Verna
Monetization and Pricing
- A Rake Too Far by Bill Gurley
- Conducting Pricing Research & Experimentation by Naomi Ionita
- Freemium vs. Trial by Lenny Ratchitsky
- Is There a No Man's Land in SaaS ACVs? by Tomasz Tunguz
- Matching Price to Value—3 Lessons in Monetization by Naomi Ionita
- Pricing primer by Michael Dearing
- Pricing your SaaS product by Patrick Campbell
- The Car Bundle by Alex Danco
- The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More by Pete Flint
- The Obscure Economic Idea Behind SaaS Pricing Challenges by Tomasz Tunguz
Organization and operating models
- Apple’s Organizational Crossroads by Ben Thompson
- Functional versus Unit Organizations by Steven Sinofsky
- How Apple Is Organized for Innovation by Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen
- The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup by David Sacks
- The Planning Issue: Decide What to Work on and How You'll Get There by Brie Wolfson
- The Types of Product Team Organizational Structures by Casey Winters
- Why Microsoft’s Reorganization Is a Bad Idea by Ben Thompson