iStory Every one of us has an origin story: We define ourselves by our background, the narrative of what made us who we are. However, people often don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, and the narrative of “I” is often that, a story. James Frey found no takers for [ … | Continue reading
I’m at Founders Forum in the Cotswolds … which they assure me is somewhere outside of London. There are a lot of Teslas and recycled Mason jars as … we’re making the world a better place. As at any gathering of the tech elite in 2023, the content could best be described as AI and … | Continue reading
This millennium, Apple has introduced a string of landmark products: the definitive portable music player, the most popular tablet computer, those ubiquitous wireless earbuds, an iconic lightweight laptop and the standard issue coder’s laptop, a new way to pay, a smartwatch that … | Continue reading
I recently spoke at the WSJ Europe CEO conference, and within days a clip from my talk was viewed 7 million times on TikTok. Rewarding, as Elon Musk had spoken earlier in the day and received … fewer. Yes, I’m petty that way. Anyway, the gist of the clip was that young people’s t … | Continue reading
In the past 30 days I’ve been approached by three groups asking if I’m interested in joining a consortium to bid on European football clubs. The prospect violates two of my core investing tenets: stoicism, and boring > sexy. I try to remain unemotional and avoid investments with … | Continue reading
Forty years ago, 190,000 British coal miners went on strike. The U.K. government, which owned the mines, met none of the strikers’ demands. After a year the strike ended with the union gravely weakened. Over the next few years, the British coal industry dwindled to nearly not … | Continue reading
I run two organizations. Prof G Media is a (wait for it) media company that produces books, videos, podcasts, TV shows, talks, and this newsletter. The second organization is the aircraft carrier squadron that runs my life outside of work. The tutors, trainers, accountants, lands … | Continue reading
I’m on a flight from London to LA, where I’ll kick off a six-city tour (then to San Diego, Seattle, Austin, NYC, and Miami). In each city, I’ll stand in front of several hundred people with a hundred-plus charts peering down from behind. Then I’ll tell stories. My favorite part i … | Continue reading
The name of the podcast I co-host with Kara Swisher is “Pivot.” I don’t like the name, but I’ve had my hands on the wheel for so long at my own companies, I’m down with sitting in the backseat and occasionally asking, “Are we there yet?” Besides, Kara does most of the work and ha … | Continue reading
Last week we learned about a significant leak of classified material that exposed key details of the Ukrainian war effort and America’s security apparatus. The perpetrator? Not an extremist group or criminal network, but someone we’re more familiar with. A young man who spends to … | Continue reading
Stabbings, state secrets, whores masquerading as Supreme Court justices — it’s been an especially depressing week in the news. So I’d rather focus on scarves. Specifically, Hermès, the iconic luxury brand. With $12 billion in annual revenue, Hermès now has a larger market capital … | Continue reading
Our podcast, the Prof G Pod, now has four different weekly episodes: Monday is Markets, where we break down the financial news; Wednesday is Office Hours — listeners ask questions; Thursday is Conversations, where we speak with blue-flame thinkers in tech and business; and Saturd … | Continue reading
Until my forties, I was known … but not famous. Known in grad school at Berkeley, known in the e-commerce scene in the Bay Area, and, after having taught 5,000 students, known around NYU’s campus. Day 1 of “fame” came in 2016. The team at L2 (my business intelligence firm) was he … | Continue reading
Sixty years ago, Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged. The book is set in a dystopian United States on the brink of economic collapse. Exhausted by a corrupt government, the hero, John Galt, packs his things and starts a self-sufficient community in an isolated valley, hidden — and sepa … | Continue reading
In 1907, amidst rising interest rates and a declining stock market, two New York bankers attempted to corner the stock of a copper company. Their scheme collapsed, and depositors at the banks that backed them pulled their money. One bank, Knickerbocker Trust, lacked the capital t … | Continue reading
The universe is a product of the collision of materials and gases that added value to one another. Humanity’s ascent to the world’s apex predator is also a function of our ability to add value, converting one substance into another. We learned to morph wood into fire, and walnut … | Continue reading
On Saturday I went on CNN with Michael Smerconish to talk about the challenges young men face in America. The headline: 63% of men aged 18-29 in America are single (neither married nor in a committed relationship) — up from 51% just four years ago. Among women, that number is 34% … | Continue reading
Three years ago today there were 53 known cases of Covid-19 in the United States. The first U.S. death was recorded five days later at the EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington. At that point, the only lockdown was in a city that would become the most famous on E … | Continue reading
Regardless of skin color, sexuality, or politics, young men are falling. They are falling behind academically, failing to attach to mates, and trading potential for addiction. Their less-evolved prefrontal cortex is especially susceptible to opportunities for quick dopa hits that … | Continue reading
The U.S. healthcare industry is a wounded 7-ton seal, drifting aimlessly, bleeding into the sea. Predators are circling. The blood in the water is unearned margin: price increases, relative to inflation, without a concomitant improvement in quality. Amazon is the lurking megalodo … | Continue reading
Early on a Monday morning, 51 people assemble at a safe house in northern Mexico. A semi truck pulls up, and the man they’ve paid to shepherd them to America directs them into the trailer. Hours later, they are found dead of exposure, still in that trailer, on the outskirts of Sa … | Continue reading
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced NFTs are coming to Instagram. What does that … mean? The announcement was a word salad of platitudes, so we don’t know how the Zuck will bolt this latest thing onto his Frankenstein product structure. The good money is it won’t work — Meta is … | Continue reading
It’s been a bummer summer for crypto. Flagship coins Bitcoin and Ether are at multiyear lows, while lesser coins barrel to zero. Luna went from a market capitalization of $34 billion (“market” and “capitalization” are becoming misnomers for crypto) to worthless in a matter of day … | Continue reading
Malcolm Gladwell writes about a fascinating episode in history. Neville Chamberlain’s first plane ride was a trip to meet Adolf Hitler. The British Prime Minister was taken by Hitler’s charisma. He believed the German leader when he promised not to invade Czechoslovakia. After hi … | Continue reading
Your ancestors pet snakes and drank foul-smelling water. You (likely) do not, as you have learned from their mistakes via the ultimate streaming network of life lessons, always on in your head, called instinct+. In sum, our instincts help us predict the future. If you get close t … | Continue reading
Work has been the most important thing in my life. It’s my identity, and has been the greatest source of reward. Yes, my kids mean more to me now. But, for 35 years, the majority of my waking hours, effort, skills, and even relationships have been focused on work. Is that dysfunc … | Continue reading
The shifting tectonic plates that inspire earthquakes in the markets are interest rates. And for the entirety of Gen Z’s lifetime, they’ve laid still at record lows. In the 1980s, consumers garnered 10% interest on a CD. That’s a “certificate of deposit” for anyone under 30. For … | Continue reading
I recently vacationed with friends. As we were wrapping lunch one day, my friend said, “Watch this.” His 11-year-old son walked to the couch and lay on his side. With his arm extended in front of him cradling his phone, he … went vacant. For the next hour, he was comatose. No sig … | Continue reading
Mount Everest has been scaled by 6,000 climbers, and 300 have died. Of those, 85% died on the descent. Just as invasion is (usually) harder than occupation, criminality itself is often easier than figuring out how to spend your ill-gotten gains. Digital bank records and internati … | Continue reading
Round numbers have no inherent meaning — they’re a consequence of 10 fingers. But they provide a benchmark, a way to focus our observations. The last few years in tech, we’ve witnessed several firms breach $1 trillion market capitalizations, a few hit $2 trillion, and one touch $ … | Continue reading
I didn’t anticipate how much I’d appreciate a @Jack of fewer trades. Key to progress is class traitors: Generals warning of a military-industrial complex, product managers who narc on mendacious management, and tech leaders who violate the Silicon Valley code of the white guy — n … | Continue reading
Finally. Two years ago I wrote a letter to the chairman of Twitter calling for Jack Dorsey to be replaced as CEO. Or, more to the point, for the board to appoint a full-time CEO. An executive who spends 90% of his time running another company and plans to spend half the year on a … | Continue reading
Smoking wasn’t popular among women until Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, rebranded it. In 1929 he capitalized on the feminist movement and repositioned cigarettes with a “torches of freedom” campaign. Bernays hired women to march down Fifth Avenue smoking as a pub … | Continue reading
Three weeks ago, “someone” floated the idea of PayPal buying Pinterest. PYPL plunged 5% the next day (shedding the value of Under Armour) and the company then denied the rumors. Our thesis: PayPal’s management leaked the story as a trial balloon, and let it float away when the ma … | Continue reading
Don Draper suggested that when you don’t like what’s being said, you should change the conversation. Facebook is trying to change the conversation to the Metaverse. But we should keep our eyes on the prize, and not look stage left so the illusionist can continue to depress teens … | Continue reading
If Edward Snowden was injected with a megadose of Super Soldier Serum, he’d look something like Frances Haugen. Perhaps Haugen’s disclosures — that among so many other evils, Zuckerberg knew Facebook’s products “harm children” — means that Facebook has crossed the wrong cowboys, … | Continue reading
Each of the following trends, in isolation, is perplexing. In concert, they are disturbing: I’ve mentioned this topic before, highlighting an emerging crisis among young men, and it elicits a range of emotions and responses — especially in the reductionist world of social media. … | Continue reading
Note: I was not under influence of Zacapa or edibles writing this one … so it’s wonky. Oh well, my blog. A perfect storm may be brewing: tech, software as a service (SaaS), and climate change. My podcast co-host, Kara Swisher, believes the first trillionaire will be an entrepren … | Continue reading
The Hall of Fame for Catastrophic Geopolitical Decisions is concluding its first-ballot induction of the decision to nation-build in Afghanistan. After we acknowledge the recency bias, and stop blaming Biden or Trump, we can ask W to write, in chalk made from the bones of 370,000 … | Continue reading
The Hall of Fame for Catastrophic Geopolitical Decisions is concluding its first-ballot induction of the decision to nation-build in Afghanistan. After we acknowledge the recency bias, and stop blaming Biden or Trump, we can ask W to write, in chalk made from the bones of 370,000 … | Continue reading
Thanks to a consolidation of stimulus checks, increased food stamps, enhanced unemployment benefits, and child tax credits, the number of Americans living in poverty will be nearly halved this year. This is the largest short-term poverty reduction in our nation’s history, a 45% d … | Continue reading
I’ve lost a lot of other people’s money. The most stressful times in my life have been when people believed in me and invested tens (if not hundreds) of millions in my company or idea, only to see their capital go up in smoke. I’ve also made a lot of people a lot of money […] | Continue reading
When Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce last week, people expressed a surprising amount of shock and disappointment. Seattle’s second-wealthiest divorcing couple will be fine, as money is the modern world’s shock absorber. Similar to its effect on so many other things … | Continue reading
I often write about platforms (iOS, Amazon Marketplace, etc.) as they are a source of value creation and power. The platform of unprecedented wealth creation is the free market of capitalism. The global adoption of markets has corresponded with the greatest expansion of prosperit … | Continue reading
In February 1946, President Truman directed his intelligence apparatus to prepare a daily summary of critical national security issues. The President’s Daily Brief (“PDB”) has been produced ever since, and those that have been made public illustrate the breadth and complexity of … | Continue reading
Real estate is an awesome gig. For starters, the supply of fertile land (urban centers) is finite, but the source of demand keeps growing (more people/capital moving to cities). On top of that, we’ve granted real estate development such favorable tax treatment that it is nearly i … | Continue reading
Post-crisis periods are among history’s most productive eras. London rebuilt after the Great Fire with grand new architecture, and Europe after the worst of its plagues underwent a commercial revolution. The Marshall Plan turned enemies into allies, fomenting peace and prosperity … | Continue reading
Q: How do you know when Prof G is on Bill Maher? A: He tells you. We took this (whatever “this” is) on the road last week, visiting my hometown for an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. There was a 50/50 chance I would throw up and pass out, but I kept my […] | Continue reading