Medium, Online Courses, and Venture Capital’s Soul

Here’s everything we published this week.

July 17, 2022

Knowledge Partner: McKinsey & Company

Saying no could advance your career. When was the last time you were asked to take on nonpromotable work? Handling tasks or assignments that help your organization but not your career can have a profound effect on women’s jobs and lives. In a new Author Talks interview, Lise Vesterlund explains why women so often agree to it—and how they can say no.

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Happy Sunday!

This week, we’ve got words on Medium, venture capital, and online courses. Plus, a crash course on understanding crypto hype cycles.

Let's get to it!

Did Medium Succeed?

Nathan Baschez / Divinations

There’s a certain narrative out there about the publishing platform Medium: they pivoted too much and screwed over writers, raised too much money and failed to achieve their overly ambitious goal of “fixing the media.”

The way Nathan sees it, there’s some truth to that narrative—but the reality is also a lot more nuanced and interesting. So in this post, he digs into the full story of Medium in order to explore questions like: What happens when traditional media and open platforms collide? Why do so many efforts to save media end in disappointment? And what’s next for reading and writing on the internet?

Read.

Has Venture Lost Its Soul?

Evan Armstrong / Napkin Math

When Evan first became enamored with venture capital as a starry eyed youth, he envisioned a future of flying cars and nuclear reactors, of spacecraft and biohacking and teleportation. What he got was infinite reskinned versions of Excel.