Napkin Math

Profit and power in technology.

Jun 21, 2024

You Can’t Math Your Way to Success

Whether in art, startups, or parenting, you can only control so much

Sep 23, 2024

What Are AI Agents—And Who Profits From Them?

The newest wave of AI research is changing everything

Jul 16, 2024

What I Got Wrong About VR

Whoopsie, I may have gotten a little excited

Jan 11, 2024

The Books, Videos, Movies, and TV Shows That Changed Me Last Year

If you want to develop great taste, you must taste a lot of stuff

Jul 23, 2024

Vibes Are a Legitimate Economic Indicator

In her debut book, Kyla Scanlon makes the case for feeling the numbers

Mar 24, 2022

Planet of the Billion Dollar Bored Apes

Is Bored Ape Yacht Club a Decentralized Disney?

Jan 13, 2022

3 Thoughts On Justworks

The newest SaaS company to hit the public markets

Jun 30, 2022

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair

I Have Some Thoughts To Share

Apr 14, 2022

The Race for New Payment Rails

Who is building the next Visa?

Feb 10, 2022

Is YC the Monopoly It Thinks It Is?

The Pricing Power Flex

Apr 18, 2024

Don’t Dismiss the Apple Vision Pro

Apple has a hit on its hands. Will it seize the opportunity?

Aug 28, 2020

Uber and Lyft Live Once Again

What drivers think of AB 5, why it was written, and the pricing differences between services

Apr 29, 2021

Gross Margin: An Indicator of Market Power

What America's Oldest Jeweler Can Teach Us About the Value of Bling

Apr 22, 2021

Am I getting ripped off writing at Every?

Screenshots of my contract and the financial model I used to decide

Jul 30, 2020

GPT-3 Will Accelerate The Privatization of Internet Communities

What GPT-3 is, GPT-3's capabilities, if GPT-3 will replace jobs, and how it affects social media.

Apr 3, 2024

The One-person Billion-dollar Company

Can AI agents make you a billionaire?

Aug 13, 2020

Sometimes You’re The Datadog, Sometimes You’re The Hydrant

The history of cloud computing, how DevOps and Observability became so big, and the fate of Datadog

Apr 10, 2025

How to Write Online

It’s less about capturing attention, and more about deserving it

Jun 18, 2020

Explaining the Hertz Situation

A layman’s guide to bankruptcy

Apr 2, 2025

OpenAI Is a Once-in-a-lifetime Startup

This newest funding round means this company has either a trillion-dollar outcome—or nothing at all.

Aug 20, 2021

How a Climate Tech Startup Closed 5+ Enterprise Deals Before Even Launching

Remora, The Bureaucracy Buster

Mar 23, 2022

BIG announcement incoming

I'm going full time on Napkin Math

Apr 11, 2024

Can the Truly Moral Billionaire Please Stand Up?

My quest to find Jesus Christ with a Gulfstream

Oct 14, 2021

Who is Making Money in Space?

Exploring the SPAC Frontier