Board

My colleague Stephen recently wrote an excellent and well-received post about the Developer Experience Gap – the chasm separating modern promises of developer productivity with the reality of stitching environments together by hand. There are so many powerful tools and platforms out there – we keep calling it a Golden Age for developers – but

Open source companies such as MongoDB, Elastic, and HashiCorp are commanding multibillion-dollar valuations. How do these companies generate tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue by monetizing "free" software? Two revenue models are taking the software industry by storm.

Spotify’s investor day may not have convinced Wall Street, but the company provided compelling evidence its approach was working.

MLS agreed to a 10 year deal with Apple; exploring the details, what it means for MLS, other sports, Apple, and bundling.

Diving into Apple’s CarPlay announcement suggests that Apple is more interested in recruiting car companies than in proposing something new; then, TSMC doubles down

Notes on WWDC, including the emergent AppleOS, M2 and speculation on M3, and the privacy shoe that didn’t drop

Snap’s revenue warning, and a closer examination of past earnings, point to a business that is much more driven by brand advertising than it is by direct response

Warner Bros. Discovery is a company that makes a lot of sense, both because of its content and also its strategy, which treats streaming as an additional channel, not a reason-for-being.

Elon Musk may be trying to renegotiate his Twitter deal by citing bots; all available evidence suggests that Twitter’s number is not only accurate, but conservative.

Disney’s earnings raise the question as to whether the company is over-investing in streaming; I don’t think so, and I also think ads will help.

This year’s Google I/O built on last year’s focus in a way that lends credence to Google’s longer-term goals. Plus, Pixel hardware and the problem of design by regulation.

Shopify Audiences looks a lot like the ad product they need to build; then, Unity has a big miss, but is adamant it is a one-time problem.

Shopify’s earnings were disappointing; worse, they were confusing. The company knows its mission, but needs to clarify its strategy

Apple’s earnings were dominated by supply chain issues in China, which are ultimately driven by COVID. Then, the EU gets it right in an antitrust case (for now).

Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer; the nature of his financing suggests what might come next. After that, though, is more uncertain than ever.

Notes on Elon Musk’s Twitter bid, why Facebook’s AR efforts may be too early, and an interview with Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri about creators, blockchains, and TikTok

A bit more on Spotify, and then the lessons to be learned by Uber and Spotify. Plus, a potential Uber-Waymo partnership, and why they company will likely sell-out in Southeast Asia.

Take-Two buys its way into mobile, and the New York Times re-bundles.

An interview with Patreon CEO Jack Conte and Memberful CEO Drew Strojny on the occasion of Patreon acquiring Memberful, the membership software used by Stratechery. This Daily Update is free for ev…

Cloudflare dropped 8chan as a customer after this weekend’s shootings; CEO Matthew Prince explains the company’s thought process, the responsibilities of infrastructure providers, and w…

WarnerMedia’s move to stream all of its movies on HBO Max appears to be value disruptive, but if the company is actually meaningfully responding to disruption, that was inevitable.

Amazon announces Amazon One: how does it work, and is the underlying technology a good idea?

Facebook earnings demonstrated the power of its auction-based direct-response model; what makes it different from Google is Zuckerberg’s drive.

Apple and Amazon make a deal; I suspect it has been in the works for a long time, including Apple Music being on Alexa.

Spotify has acquired Megaphone, which brings clarity to its podcast advertising ambitions.

Spotify’s mixed earnings, why podcasts are uniquely valuable to the company, and where The Ringer fits in.

Epic Systems, an electronic health records company, is protesting a mandate that they make consumer health care available via API. Their arguments highlight the tension between interoperability and…

An interview with Eric Seufert about the post-ATT landscape, including Facebook, Shopify, Google, YouTube, Apple, and the future of ad agencies.

An overview of Niantic’s new developer platform, and an interview with Niantic founder John Hanke about the company’s history and future

An interview with Coda founder Shishir Mehrotra about documents, go-to-market, and competing with Microsoft, plus bundling, Spotify, and Passport.