The air in Lisbon smells like salt and roasting coffee, which is a much better backdrop for a crisis than the fluorescent hum of a traditional office. I sat there last Tuesday, watching a software developer from Chicago stare at his laptop screen with the kind of pale, wide-eyed terror usually reserved for witnessing a … Read more
I was sitting in a small, slightly overpriced coffee shop in downtown Austin, Texas, last Tuesday when I saw a guy at the next table scrolling through a KDP dashboard that looked like a graveyard. He had fifty titles live, all of them clearly generated by a prompt and a prayer, and not a single … Read more
I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Austin about three years ago, watching a friend try to explain why he was buying a digital fraction of a logistics warehouse in Germany. At the time, it felt like a fever dream or a very expensive hobby for people who enjoyed staring at spreadsheets. Fast forward … Read more
I was sitting in a coffee shop in Austin last Tuesday, watching a founder stare at a spreadsheet with the kind of hollowed-out expression usually reserved for tax audits. He wasn’t looking at his revenue. He was looking at his “stack.” Specifically, he was looking at the twenty-four separate line items that hit his business … Read more
There was a time, maybe three or four years ago, when we all thought a book trailer had to look like a high-budget Hollywood teaser. You remember those. The dramatic orchestral swells, the stock footage of a woman running through a misty forest, and that deep, gravelly voiceover that sounded like it belonged in a … Read more
I remember standing on a cracked riverbed in the Central Valley of California a few years ago, watching a farmer stare at a horizon that offered absolutely nothing in the way of rain. He wasn’t looking for clouds though. He was looking at his phone, checking a digital ledger. That was the first time I … Read more
I sat in a coffee shop in Seattle last Tuesday watching a woman scribble furiously into a yellow legal pad while her laptop sat closed and dark beside her. It felt like a protest. In a year where every writing interface is cluttered with “magic” buttons and predictive text that begs to finish your sentences … Read more
It feels like every time I open a browser lately, I’m being chased by a billboard for some massive, all-in-one enterprise suite that promises to “revolutionize” my workflow for the low, low price of a monthly payment that rivals a small car loan. There is a certain exhaustion that settles in when you realize you’re … Read more
I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Austin last spring, watching a guy at the next table freak out because his exchange had frozen his accounts for a routine audit. He had his life savings in there, or at least a significant chunk of what he called his “future freedom,” and he was realizing … Read more
The golden age of the newsletter was supposed to last forever, wasn’t it? We were told that as long as we owned our list, we owned our future. But walking through a crowded park in Chicago last autumn, watching everyone glued to their screens, it hit me that the “inbox” has become just another chore. … Read more