Stratechery 4.0 | Hacker News Reader

Stratechery 4.0

stratechery.com

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In short, the "new" Stratechery provides three ways to consume its 308 articles:

1) Concepts

2) Companies

3) Topics

There's search, a new logo, a new email template.

This should have been the tl;dr on the page itself :) upvoted!

I'm really excited about the Concepts page. Business school is often denigrated within tech, but past the startup stage, B-school strategies become increasingly important. Ben does a great job taking these concepts (eg aggregation theory), and applying them to tech industry, in a way that is interesting for folks who are more interested in understanding Apple than theories in abstract.

Excited to read through these Concepts!

To be clear though, many of his theories are self created and are not of an academic origin.

I’m not judging their validity or value, just pointing out their origins.

Interesting. I didn't know that. That's for sure something to keep in mind when communicating to others, so as to avoid addressing something as though its common knowledge.

Genuine question: when does startup stage end?

while and after raising your series B, more senior people come in and "startup phase" diminishes visibly.

Never :(

So B-school strategies never become important? ;)

Aren't all B-schools permanent start ups too?

Stratechery is one of those blogs I've stumbled over from time to time and I have the nagging feeling it should be at least mildly interesting, but I can't attune myself.

I think it's mostly the personal style of people and I'm much more inclined to read the same people for years even if they totally switch topics, over reading things about a certain topic.

Maybe not the reason, but I see his level of abstraction as at an order of magnitude higher than just about any other mainstream tech writer. Making his long posts both unique and somewhat less practical.

I just haven't found anyone else digging in as deep with regard to the fundamental economic differences between Google/Facebook/Amazon and past giants of industry. His recent points on the privacy scandal at FB were very insightful in that he explains how Zuckerburg's problems originated in being in denial that FB is an ad company first and platform second. (If they'd realized that sooner, they never would have given away data like they did, goes his theory. They would have still hoovered up data, but would have avoided recent scandals.)

But can definitely see how it may not speak to everyone the same.

Yeah, see, so I've given up on the details of such grand-scheme meddling of geopolitical results of companies - for these kind of in-detail things you mentioned I'll gladly accept the Guardian/NYT/WaPo level or I'm going to Schneier or Krebs :)

I've no aspirations to start a company ever again, I'm nowhere near Silicon Valley and I'm happily hacking away at small and interesting problems. ;)

Interesting. I feel the exact opposite and it's one my frustrations with Twitter. If I follow Person X due to Topic A, I really do not care their opinion on Topic B.

I know the feeling and I've definitely unfollowed people for this, but only if it never 'clicked'. There's people whose blogs (and Twitter) I've been following for nearly as long as I've been online (20 years in a few months) and we interact every few months or years and it's totally fine if they switch topics from time to time (important note: nowhere near calling these friends or acquaintances, really just random people whose blogs I liked and we've commented on each others stuff over the years).

Yeah, never really been a fan.

I like the effort to categorize previous writings. I primarily listen to the podcast and think Ben has some really great insights and theories that he's clearly put a lot of thought into (the perennial favorite: aggregation theory), but are sufficiently complicated that they can't be re-explained every time they are mentioned. Making it easier to look back into the archives seems like a good way to address this problem.

New logo looks really nice, too!

I love the new way Ben's organized his content. Since it's WordPress, I've always wondered why his categories and tags weren't publicly available. This is a fantastic way to surface up old content.

Not everyone may agree with this, but since I love his podcast as well, I would love to see that content integrated with the rest of his site. I realize it's a different vehicle and he co-hosts it with someone else, but since they often summarize Ben's weekly updates, there's a lot of synergy between both services.

+1 to his podcast, here's a link since it is goes by another name: http://exponent.fm/

This is the single newsletter I pay to subscribe to. I don't always agree with his stance on stuff, but am a fan of the thorough analysis he tends to give. Kudos to him for building a sustainable solo-publishing company.

"Stratechery." When I first read it, it sounded like a break-down on startup founders' stretching of their "trajectory" as a sure thing. This includes their "strategy," i.e their well-typeset pitch deck that says they'll be making $400B in revenues next year. Then you mash those two with "treachery" for a play on words.

"Stratechery: How founders false-advertise, legally." It's almost like Amazon's Cadabra | "Cadaver."

Don't even know what the company is, but will read now.

I like the blog and the redesign, but I'm not so sure about the logo. I use fountain pens all the time, and it still wasn't apparent at first what it was supposed to be.

To each his own of course, I love the new logo. A PCB etched writing instrument, it's unique, fits beautifully with the content, and not over the top

> I use fountain pens all the time

For art/fun or practically?

I love the new logo!!! I read most of the free articles whenever they come out, and like some of the insights that Ben has pointed out (the one about Apple's organizational crossroads is a personal favorite). It happens to be one of the few sites that makes a very good amount of money from subscriptions alone (I do not subscribe because it's way too expensive for me and my currency).

If you are in silicon valley you should check out

https://www.strategytmt.com/

The classes are great if you are a PM or an entrepreneur or simply if your company pays for these kinds of classes.

Is there a relevance to the story that I've missed? The announcement doesn't mention this organisation and I can't find any relationship going by its About page or Ben's.

No. It has no connection with Stratechry, but I think folks who like Stratechry might like these classes as well.

Is there an online equivalent course?

This one seems to be in person only.

No, they are not online classes but only in-person by a former UC Berkeley professor and venture capitalist.

tl;dr? Could someone please explain what this website is in 50 words or less?

a blog that thoroughly explains why a tl;dr approach to business strategy and reporting is problematic using novel approaches to business strategy and market theory. (25 words)

A decent blog.

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