Subject
24 entries
Strategy
Bookmarks
CommonCog Forum: business sensemaking community
CommonCog is a sensemaking community for business analysis — case studies of operators like Charlie Munger and Tom Murphy, decision frameworks, and expertise development. Run by Cedric Chin, who writes seriously about how business knowledge actually works.
Benedict Evans: annual technology industry presentations
Benedict Evans releases major tech industry trend presentations twice yearly — free PDFs with hundreds of slides covering macro shifts in tech. His 2025 edition is 'AI eats the world.' Required reading for understanding where the industry is headed.
How to Build AI Products People Want
Reforge's 2023 framework for finding AI product market fit — introducing the 'AI Survival Curve' to describe which product categories are threatened by commoditized AI vs. which can build defensible AI-native advantages. Strategy framing for product teams navigating the transition.
Leaked Google Document: "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI"
Simon Willison's commentary on the leaked Google 'We Have No Moat' document, providing context and links to the SemiAnalysis publication. Willison frames the memo as significant for its candor about open-source AI's rapid quality trajectory.
Google "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI"
A leaked internal Google document arguing that open-source AI will outcompete both Google and OpenAI — the thesis being that open-source models iterate faster, require no API fees, and are already approaching proprietary quality. One of the most influential strategic memos of the 2023 AI boom.
AI: Startup vs. Incumbent Value
Elad Gil's analysis of where AI startup value accrues vs incumbents — written in 2022, a prescient look at whether AI applications or AI infrastructure captures more value. Still a useful framework for thinking about AI competitive dynamics.
The AI Unbundling (Stratechery)
Ben Thompson's September 2022 analysis arguing that AI would unbundle integrated products by making the creation layer cheap — anyone could build a specialized alternative to an incumbent's bundled offering. One of the clearest early strategic framings of generative AI's market impact.
Build Your Career on Dirty Work
The Dirty Work Theory: work that most people avoid is underpriced, high-impact, and a reliable career accelerator. A practical career heuristic for finding leverage where competition is low.
The T2D3 Path to SaaS Growth and $1B Valuation
T2D3 — triple, triple, double, double, double — is the canonical growth trajectory for B2B SaaS companies targeting a $1B valuation. A useful benchmark for understanding what 'good' ARR growth looks like at each stage.
The CTO Field Guide
The CTO Field Guide is a practical reference for technical leaders — covering hiring, architecture decisions, team structure, and engineering culture. Focused on the operational realities of the CTO role rather than the inspirational.
A Career Ending Mistake
John Arundel argues the career-ending mistake for software engineers is treating their career as a thing that just happens rather than something to deliberately design. Uses the irony that engineers plan meticulously for computers but rarely apply the same rigor to their own professional trajectory.
PioSOLVER: Game Theory Optimal Poker Solver
PioSOLVER is the industry-standard GTO (Game Theory Optimal) solver for poker — computes Nash equilibrium strategies for heads-up and multi-way spots using CFR algorithms. Used by professional players to study theoretically unexploitable play.
Alpha Pro: Permissionless Options-Selling on DeFi
Alpha Pro is a permissionless DeFi platform from Charm Finance for automated options-selling strategies on Ethereum — earn yield by systematically selling options (strangles, etc.) with on-chain execution and no centralized management. The on-chain equivalent of systematic options-selling desks.
How to Get Promoted
Defmacro's contrarian take on corporate promotions — arguing that performance reviews are social fiction and actual advancement happens through visibility, relationship capital, and strategic positioning rather than merit alone. Cynical but useful.
Build Personal Moats
Erik Torenberg's essay on building personal moats — durable competitive advantages that compound over time by combining rare skills in ways that are hard to replicate. The key: find what's easy for you but hard for others.
Why Figma Wins
Kevin Kwok's analysis of why Figma dominates design tools — the browser-first architecture enabled cross-side network effects by pulling non-designers into the design loop, making collaboration both the core product and the distribution mechanism.
Pinduoduo and Vertically Integrated Social Commerce
Turner's analysis of Pinduoduo's vertically integrated social commerce model — how gamified group buying on WeChat, negative working capital, and C2M demand aggregation built China's second-largest e-commerce platform in five years by ignoring premium urban consumers entirely.
Making Sense of Dell + EMC + VMware
Andreessen Horowitz's breakdown of the $67B Dell-EMC deal — the largest tech acquisition in history at the time. The strategic driver was less obvious than it looked: Dell needed enterprise access and scale to survive the commodity hardware collapse, and going private again protected both companies from activist pressure.
Which of the Five Types of Data Science Does Your Startup Need?
A taxonomy of the five types of data science a startup might need — product analytics, business intelligence, growth, ML/AI, and research. Useful framing for understanding that 'data scientist' is not one job.
How to Better Compete with Other Data Scientists
AnalyticBridge post on differentiation strategies for data scientists in an increasingly crowded field circa 2013. Covers specialization, communication skills, and building a public track record as ways to stand out beyond pure technical competence.
The Utilization Gap: Big Data's Biggest Challenge
Forbes on the gap between data collection capability and actual data use in 2013 — organizations were investing heavily in Hadoop and data warehouses while most of the collected data sat unanalyzed. The insight that technology was not the bottleneck; talent and culture were.
Data is Not Always a Substitute for Strategy
LinkedIn Pulse article arguing that data and analytics can't replace strategic judgment — a contrarian take during peak big data hype. Data without a strategic frame is just expensive noise.
Stop Asking "But How Will They Make Money?"
Andrew Chen arguing that 'but how will they make money?' is a lazy question that misses the point of early-stage consumer products. Companies like Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr built massive user value before solving monetization — and that sequencing was correct.
Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup — Class 4 Notes (The Last Mover Advantage)
Blake Masters' notes from Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 class 4 on 'The Last Mover Advantage' — arguing that durable startups aim to be the final word in a market category rather than the first. One of the most-cited ideas from the CS183 series.