A collection of essays I keep coming back to.
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Status as a Service (StaaS) – Eugene Wei • Feb 19, 2019
Seminal essay on how social networks function as status games. Explores why social platforms rise and fall based on their ability to provide status through proof of work. -
How To Be Successful – Sam Altman • Jan 1, 2019
13 thoughts on achieving outlier success: compound yourself, have self-belief, learn to think independently, get good at sales, make it easy to take risks, focus, work hard, be bold, be willful, be hard to compete with, build a network, own things, be internally driven. -
Commoditize Your Complement – Gwern • Dec 1, 2018
Strategic insight on how smart companies reduce costs of complementary goods to increase demand for their core product. Originally from Joel Spolsky, expanded by Gwern. -
Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail – John Salvatier • May 13, 2017
On how the fiddliness of everything - from building stairs to boiling water - explains why people get intellectually stuck. Seek detail you would not normally notice. -
George Saunders's Advice to Graduates – George Saunders • Jul 31, 2013
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Try to be kinder. Err in the direction of kindness. -
Amazon, Apple, and the Beauty of Low Margins – Eugene Wei • Dec 13, 2012
Why Amazon's low margin strategy is calculated genius, not irrationality. Low margins deter competitors, increase customer loyalty, and create defensible moats. - Try to Take My Position: The Best Promotion Advice I Ever Got – Andrew Graham-Yooll • Jan 5, 2026
- Year in Review 2025 – Andrej Karpathy • Dec 25, 2025
- On Agency – Henrik Karlsson • Dec 5, 2025
- Dev Ittycheria - The Database Evolution – Invest Like the Best • Dec 4, 2025
- China and the U.S. Are in a Race for AI Supremacy – The Journal (WSJ) • Dec 3, 2025
- AWS re:Invent, Agents for AWS, Nova Forge – Stratechery • Dec 3, 2025
- Data Centers Are a 'Gold Rush' for Construction Workers – WSJ • Dec 3, 2025
- The Last Human Edge – Colossus • Dec 2, 2025
- AI Eats the World (November 2025) – Benedict Evans • Dec 2, 2025
- The Untold Story of Charlie Munger's Final Years – WSJ • Dec 2, 2025
- Inside Quince's Quest to Sell Luxury Goods for Less – The Journal (WSJ) • Dec 1, 2025
- The Thinking Game (Full Documentary) – Google DeepMind • Nov 25, 2025