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If I were Substack, I would end up doing a standard recommendation feed. I would use recommendations from authors, but I would also use recommendations based on AI: Substack has much more data on readers’ favorite types of authors and articles than writers do. If somebody reads the same five authors as you, it’s likely you’ll be interested in a 6th... See more

Modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having taste to know what to buy. That’s where human curation comes in, and why it’s increasingly considered both a differentiator in fashion, food, travel, wellness, design, and an important value-add for tech platforms from Spotify to Netflix and HBO to Facebook and Apple.

The main difference between Medium and Spotify is that Spotify is public about the share it gives to musicians (about 70%), because at least in the music industry, most of the rights are owned by a handful of labels who can pressure Spotify. Medium doesn’t face that pressure, because there are millions of writers who don’t coordinate. So Medium’s... See more

This is anything but an argument against technology, were such a thing even coherent. It’s an argument for taking technology as seriously as it deserves to be taken, for recognizing, as McLuhan’s friend and colleague John M. Culkin put it, “we shape our tools, and thereafter, they shape us.”

The key is to take five minutes at the end of staff meetings and ask the question, “What do we need to communicate to our people?” After a few minutes of discussion, it will become apparent which issues need clarification and which are appropriate to communicate. Not only does this brief discussion avoid confusion among the executives themselves,... See more

An SPB and its bondholders together form an entity very similar to a DAO: the bondholders form a grassroots organization and share an economic fate via the bonds they own. What is particular about this type of “DAOs” is that its token (the bond) derives its value from the quality of a public good.