Addictive Tech, How to Beat Perfectionism, & More

Happy Sunday!

We hope that you’re taking care of yourselves. This week, we’ve got explorations of addictive tech and perfectionism, plus the answer to a question we know you’ve all been asking: How does the waste management business make money? Plus: a Harvard economist on tokenomics, and a potential new model for crypto gaming. 

Let’s get to it! 

The Addiction Economy

Evan Armstrong / Napkin Math

In 2010, Paul Graham predicted that technology would grow more addictive over the next 40 years. It’s taken way less than 40. In sectors from social media to sports betting to food delivery to corporate communications, products have gotten a lot stickier lately. And that’s not an accident. 

In this edition of Napkin Math, Evan explores the business and technological factors that have led to the acceleration of the addiction economy. Specifically, he unpacks how the commodification of technology has created a world where the ability to grab attention may just be the last differentiator standing. 

Read.

Perfectionism: Why and How to Beat It

Dan Shipper, Dr. Clarissa Ong, & Dr. Michael Twohig / Superorganizers

There’s a perfectionist streak a mile wide in tech—name one industry where people are more likely to tether their sense of self-worth to what and how much they achieve. But as anyone with perfectionist tendencies can attest, it can be the teensiest bit counterproductive. Not only does failing to live up to your own exacting standards make you miserable— it actually gets in the way of doing the good work you want to do. 

This week on Superorganizers, Dan brings in Dr. Clarissa Ong and Dr. Michael Twohig—two experts who literally wrote the book on perfectionism—to better understand what perfectionism is, where it comes from, and how we can work around our perfectionist tendencies in order to do our best work. 

Read.

An introduction to the waste management business

If you’re looking for a business that will definitely still be around in the year 2072, look no further than waste management. But how does the waste management business actually work? And is it a good investment? In this post, Scuttleblurb unpacks the numbers behind the business of waste management, explaining everything from the margins of residential vs. commercial waste to why disposal operations is a better business than trash collection, and what this all looks like in practice at the four publicly traded waste management companies. 

Read.

Market Design Masterclass

Sari Azout & Joey Debruin / Tokens, But How?

Building tokenized products means bridging the gap between theory and practice.This week’s TBH guest brings a healthy combination of both to the table. Scott Kominers is a Harvard Business School professor, a member of a16z’s crypto research team, and an advisor to many web3 companies. He’s an expert on how tokens can help design markets and build reputation-based systems, and he joins Sari and Joey to discuss those topics and more. 

Read.

Crypto Unicorns: How to Play & Crypto Analysis

Nat Eliason / Almanack

Building a good video game is hard. Building a game that stands the test of time is even harder. How many games can you think of that are still popular a decade after they’re released? For crypto gaming, this presents a unique problem. After all, how much are your tokens going to be worth if nobody’s playing your game in two years? 

This week on Almanack, Nat takes a look at one game that’s taking a different approach to crypto gaming. Rather than putting all of their focus on building one game, the folks behind Crypto Unicorns are building out a set of NFTs and tokens that can be used across multiple games. In this post, Nat covers the games–both present and future–and takes a look at the tokenomics. 

Read.

A Few More Recommendations

Sequoia’s Downturn Deck | Sequoia Capital

A 50-page deck from the Sequoia made the rounds on Twitter this week. The deck, titled “Adapting to Endure,” covers the investment firm’s take on what’s happening in the market, plus their advice to founders on how to respond. 

Who Owns 4chan? | Wired

Reporters at Wired get to the bottom of one of the biggest mysteries in tech: who owns the world’s most infamous imageboard? 

In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia | Colin Morris

The collective knowledge of Wikipedia is a beautiful thing, of course not all that knowledge is equally interesting to people. In this post, Colin Morris uses the power of data analysis to get to the bottom of one urgent question: what is the least-viewed article on Wikipedia? 

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