The Diff

It's Maturity Transformation All The Way Down

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:01:39 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - It's Maturity Transformation All The Way Down
(06:17) - Weather
(07:19) - Adverse Selection
(08:33) - Compute, and P/S Ratios
(09:46) - Software PE
(10:48) - Automation and Utilization

Using AI for Writing like a Responsible Adult

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:57:48 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Using AI for Writing like a Responsible Adult
(06:25) - Granular Price Discrimination
(07:04) - ETFs
(07:52) - Form Factors
(08:41) - Training Data

The Rocketship

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:55:59 -0500

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(00:00) - The Rocketship
(08:52) - Unit Economics
(10:01) - Rearrangements
(10:42) - Vibeslop
(11:35) - Mindshare
(12:08) - Consumption Equality

What Can You Learn from a Deterministically Chaotic Market Simulation?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 May 2026 10:32:26 -0500

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(00:00) -
(07:19) - Prediction Markets
(08:18) - Exotics
(09:34) - Binning
(10:38) - Unpopular AI
(11:51) - The Rebalancing Trade

Why does Resource Extraction Produce Such Concentrated Wealth?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:37:45 -0500

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(00:00) - Why does Resource Extraction Produce Such Concentrated Wealth?
(08:30) - RLHF
(10:17) - When Will AI Show Up in Labor Market Data?
(11:16) - Aligning Incentives
(12:00) - Local Volatility
(12:41) - FDE Shortage

Dead Airlines

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 04 May 2026 10:51:58 -0500

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(00:00) - Dead Airlines
(04:46) - Synergy
(06:02) - Indexes
(06:58) - Warehousing
(07:53) - Capacity
(08:43) - Defense

Are the AI Labs Ready for the AI Backlash?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:22:05 -0500

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(00:00) - Are the AI Labs Ready for the AI Backlash?
(06:27) - Barter
(08:06) - State Hypercapitalism
(09:05) - AI Pricing
(10:05) - Reflexivity
(10:48) - Complements

Ad-Based Platforms Have Mostly Solved Optimal Taxation

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:24:16 -0500

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(00:00) - Ad-Based Platforms Have Mostly Solved Optimal Taxation
(08:06) - The Infrastructure Put Option
(09:14) - Monetization
(10:03) - Headless SaaS
(11:36) - Gazumped!
(12:49) - Bits and Barrels

Ring, Cloudflare, and the Supply Chain of State Capacity

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:54:31 -0500

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(00:00) - Ring, Cloudflare, and the Supply Chain of State Capacity
(08:32) - Work Trials
(09:43) - The Mezzanine Tranche
(10:29) - Politics by Other Means
(12:51) - Lawyers
(13:51) - Token Shortages

Uncanny AI

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:12:30 -0500

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(00:00) - Uncanny AI
(05:39) - Organic Content
(06:22) - Inconsistent Candor
(07:28) - Liquidity
(08:22) - Return to Office
(09:06) - Long-Lead Time Hacking

Handy Robots

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:32:59 -0500

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(00:00) - Handy Robots
(08:25) - It's Personal
(10:03) - Rationing
(10:37) - Penny Stocks
(11:47) - The Text Glut
(13:34) - Sora

Apple, Occasionally a Commodities Trading House

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:33:39 -0500

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(00:00) - Apple, Occasionally a Commodities Trading House
(06:08) - How Inflation Spreads
(07:50) - Reaching Your Target Audience
(10:00) - Labor Substitution
(11:05) - Agents
(12:04) - Financing

Are We Already Building a Piecemeal AI Data Royalty Model?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:11:17 -0500

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(00:00) - Are We Already Building a Piecemeal AI Data Royalty Model?
(05:30) - Refounding
(06:20) - User Acquisition Costs
(07:09) - Data Sharing
(08:05) - Fees

America Has a Comparative Advantage in Handling Global Disorder

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:23:32 -0500

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(00:00) - America Has a Comparative Advantage in Handling Global Disorder
(08:14) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:17) - Where We Are in the Cycle
(09:47) - Insurer of Last Resort
(10:27) - Marketplaces and Routers
(11:10) - Getting a Bid
(12:14) - Talent

The Year of Convergence

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:21:53 -0500

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(00:00) - The Year of Convergence
(09:03) - Ads
(10:10) - Maximalism
(10:50) - Comparative Advantage
(11:35) - Trader-in-Chief
(12:20) - GenAI

Routers, Apps, AGI

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 09:38:00 -0500

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(00:00) - Routers, Apps, AGI
(23:09) - Peripheral Bets
(23:59) - Fragmentation and Industry Maturity
(24:35) - Deepfakes as Pull Quotes
(25:12) - Benchmarks
(26:15) - Platforms

In Defense of Generative Video Accelerationism

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 09:45:40 -0500

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(00:00) - In Defense of Generative Video Accelerationism
(14:12) - Notifications
(15:14) - IP
(16:09) - Hyperliquidated
(17:45) - DOGE
(19:11) - Painting the Tape

Technological Progress is a Stack of S-Curves; Diffusion is a Stack of J-Curves

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 10:13:11 -0500

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(00:00) - Technological Progress is a Stack of S-Curves; Diffusion is a Stack of J-Curves
(10:01) - AI Efficiency
(10:54) - Dollar Diplomacy
(11:48) - Sora
(12:44) - Capital Structure
(14:12) - Reshoring Paradoxes

Media Gluts Happen at the Level of Distribution, not Content

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 09:57:13 -0500

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(00:00) - Media Gluts Happen at the Level of Distribution, not Content
(09:16) - Headline Risk
(10:02) - The Crypto Treasury Trade
(11:10) - The Paradox of Decentralization
(12:08) - TikTok
(13:04) - Signal and Noise

A Sense of History

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 10:07:05 -0500

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(00:00) - A Sense of History
(09:30) - Coasian Labor Markets
(12:06) - Industrial Policy
(13:05) - Trading
(13:41) - TikTok
(14:52) - Crypto Treasury M&A

On Faking It 'Til You Make It

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 09:38:06 -0500

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(00:00) - On Faking It 'Til You Make It
(08:01) - GPU Clouds
(08:55) - Going Global
(09:51) - Prediction Markets
(10:41) - Revenge Trading
(11:41) - Authenticity

The Autistic Half-Century

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 09:50:29 -0500

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(00:00) - The Autistic Half-Century
(11:58) - Burn Rates
(13:06) - Round-Tripping
(13:41) - AI and IP
(14:36) - IPOs and Network Effects
(15:46) - Spinoffs

Rumor Markets

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 09:34:36 -0500

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(00:00) - Rumor Markets
(08:14) - Legitimacy
(10:25) - Tariffs
(11:26) - AI and Complements
(12:21) - Tariffs and Elasticity
(13:15) - Economic Nationalism

Figure and the Crypto Mullet Strategy

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 09:38:55 -0500

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(00:00) - Figure and the Crypto Mullet Strategy
(09:17) - Billions
(10:09) - Intel
(11:09) - Negotiating the AI Transition
(11:47) - Price Discrimination
(12:52) - Sanctions

Corporate Populism

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 09:47:02 -0500

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(00:00) -
(04:19) - Credit Spreads
(04:57) - Retail and Institutions
(05:38) - Scale
(06:12) - Non-Tariff Barriers
(07:11) - Technology Adoption

Concentrate

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 09:34:32 -0500

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(00:00) - Concentrate!
(07:31) - Coasian Geopolitics
(09:00) - Relaunching
(10:13) - Tariff Inversion
(11:16) - Crypto Holdcos
(12:22) - Buybacks

What Would the Aftermath of the AI Bust Look Like?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 09:00:15 -0500

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(00:00) - What Would the Aftermath of the AI Bust Look Like?
(09:37) - Succession
(10:29) - The Stats
(12:58) - Going Direct
(13:40) - Banks are Back
(14:17) - Young Founders

Strip-Mining the Maybesphere

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:52:16 -0500

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(00:00) - Strip-Mining the Maybesphere
(09:28) - Regulatory Clarity
(10:15) - Eurobonds
(11:17) - Just-In-Time
(11:59) - Ratings
(13:14) - The Crypto Credit Cycle

The Finance of Alchemy

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:30:04 -0500

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(00:00) - The Finance of Alchemy
(08:01) - SPACs, Back
(08:46) - Sanctions and Supply Chains
(09:17) - AI Filtering
(10:13) - Measurement Errors
(11:19) - Data Labeling

Compensation as Game Design

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:53:04 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Compensation as Game Design
(13:00) - More on Talent
(14:21) - Financial Engineering
(15:06) - Where We Are in the Cycle
(15:46) - Product/Service Complementarity
(16:41) - The Missing Panic

What We'll Lose With AI

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 09:26:20 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - What We'll Lose With AI
(09:05) - Platforms and Reputation
(10:35) - General-Purpose Technologies
(11:26) - Court Politics
(12:46) - Post-Ozempic Snacking
(13:20) - The Next Phase of Crypto Treasury Strategies

In Defense of the Ad Economy

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 09:42:21 -0500

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(00:00) - In Defense of the Ad Economy
(09:45) - Wage Elasticity
(11:23) - Coopetition
(11:58) - Capital Structure
(12:46) - Market Breadth
(14:26) - Playing Chicken

Gonzo Startups

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:20:45 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Gonzo Startups
(07:01) - Don't Bet on a Third World War
(08:11) - Perplexity
(08:39) - Equity Compensation
(09:36) - Hiring
(10:36) - LLM SEO!

What Happened to Working Your Way Up from the Mailroom?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 08:59:44 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Reasoning Models Don't Really Reason, But It's Fine: Computers Don't Really Think in 1s and 0s, Either
(05:51) - Guidance
(06:21) - Correlated Outages
(06:57) - Attrition
(07:52) - Policy Impact
(08:35) - Antitrust

Search Remains the Best Business in History

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 08:45:32 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Search Remains the Best Business in History
(09:38) - Equity Market Vigilantes
(10:27) - Scale
(11:15) - Volatility
(12:02) - Tariff Impact
(13:03) - Splits and Synergies

Democratizing Complicated Financial Products is Inevitable, but Fraught

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 09:58:11 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Democratizing Complicated Financial Products is Inevitable, but Fraught
(08:27) - Startup Fraud
(09:09) - Automation
(09:52) - Motivations
(10:31) - Ads
(11:15) - Utilization

Adversarial Attacks in Statistical Arbitrage

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 27 May 2025 09:58:34 -0500

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(00:00) - And, elsewhere:
(00:03) - Banking
(00:44) - Financial Engineering
(01:20) - Hiring and Game Theory
(02:38) - Currency Blocs
(03:13) - AI SEO

Competing Elite-Selection Mechanisms

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 19 May 2025 09:34:17 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - TK Competing Elite-Selection Mechanisms
(06:39) - Left-Tail Outcomes
(08:18) - Downgrades and Giffen Goods
(10:21) - Bearer Instruments
(11:27) - Currency
(12:07) - Shipping

Arbs Close, Infrastructure Remains

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 12 May 2025 10:44:52 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Arbs Close, Infrastructure Remains
(06:41) - Abundance and Realignment
(07:17) - AI Undeath
(08:11) - Basic Capital
(09:42) - Tariffs
(11:28) - Insurable Risks

When Step One is to Light Money on Fire and Measure How Fast it Burns

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 09:29:57 -0500

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(00:00) - When Step One is to Light Money on Fire and Measure How Fast it Burns
(06:21) - Groupchats and Norms
(09:56) - Venture
(10:23) - Made in America
(11:08) - Real Estate Elasticity
(11:47) - Lagging Investments

Thinking-Things-Through Privilege

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 09:40:22 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Thinking-Things-Through Privilege
(08:11) - Trade Negotiations
(10:05) - M&A
(11:09) - AI and IP
(11:58) - Consolidation
(12:42) - Sourcing

Information Economies and Institution Economies

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:22:58 -0500

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(00:00) - Information Economies and Institution Economies
(07:58) - Distribution
(09:19) - Non-Tariff Barriers
(10:24) - Low-Background Text
(11:08) - Application Layer
(12:05) - Socks

Finance as a Scale-Invariant Global Computer

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:13:21 -0500

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(00:00) - Finance as a Scale-Invariant Global Computer
(06:29) - The Market
(08:45) - Supply and Demand
(09:38) - The March Continues
(10:43) - ETFs
(11:42) - Intellectual Property

"Do Firms Need Juniors?" Might be the Wrong Question

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 09:28:40 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - "Do Firms Need Juniors?" Might be the Wrong Question
(06:02) - Solve for X + X
(07:45) - Refactoring
(08:21) - AI and Distribution
(09:11) - How Models Think
(10:14) - The AI Business Model

There's More Than One Efficient Market Paradox

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 09:49:24 -0500

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(00:00) - There's More Than One Efficient Market Paradox
(08:06) - Reciprocal Tariffs
(08:46) - AI Purgatory
(09:24) - Payments and Credit
(10:47) - LinkedInFluencers
(11:43) - Efficient Markets

Klarna and the Two Pivots of 2022

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 09:14:03 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Klarna and the Two Pivots of 2022
(11:00) - Crypto Adoption
(12:26) - Art Margin Calls
(13:13) - Liquidations
(14:07) - Corporate Espionage
(15:26) - DeepSeek

Text and Telos

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:59:15 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Text and Telos
(07:03) - Scaling
(07:49) - Retail Investors
(09:12) - Comparative Advantage
(09:47) - Transaction Costs and Corporate Structure
(10:58) - DeepSeek Governance

Tools, Agents, Interfaces, and Synthetic Luck: AI Interaction Models

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 09:53:25 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Tools, Agents, Interfaces, and Synthetic Luck: AI Interaction Models
(06:40) - Lyft Got Fined For Telling the Truth and is Now Compelled to Lie to Drivers
(09:59) - Ozempic and Signaling
(10:41) - Wargaming and Pivots

Tokenomics, Revisited

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 09:37:14 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Tokenomics, Revisited
(04:41) - AI and Education
(06:59) - Money Laundering
(07:54) - Agglomeration Economics
(08:49) - Threat Models
(09:24) - Universal Hardware

Offshoring and AI Agents

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 09:17:26 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - And, elsewhere:
(00:01) - Capital Structure
(01:12) - Designer Brands and Transaction Costs
(02:45) - SMBs
(04:27) - Top-Down Market Reform
(05:10) - Chosen Obligations

Money and Legitimacy

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 09:24:43 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Money and Legitimacy
(06:53) - Moats
(07:36) - Big Tech Sees Like a State
(08:43) - Shifting Costs
(09:31) - Managing Macro
(10:11) - Experimentation

Auto-Paternalism

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 09:08:53 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Auto-Paternalism
(05:11) - Growth
(06:58) - AI Deployment
(08:06) - S-Curves and TV
(09:04) - Increasing the Asymptote
(10:00) - China

Look for Boring First

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 09:06:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Look for Boring First
(07:27) - Moderation
(08:46) - ex-SBC
(10:26) - Platform Risk
(12:51) - Strategic Resources
(13:40) - Meta and AI

Will The EU Choose to Compete?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 08:33:06 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Will The EU Choose to Compete?
(13:45) - Unit Economics
(15:02) - Coreweave and Capital Structure Arbitrage
(15:57) - AI and the Distribution Problem
(17:10) - Markets and Narratives
(18:15) - Convergence

On Currencies

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 09:10:21 -0500

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(00:00) - On Currencies
(08:23) - Taiwan and the US
(09:11) - Massaging the Numbers
(10:09) - First Loss
(10:56) - Pods
(11:54) - Fake Offers

What, Exactly are we Trying to Tax?

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 08:30:31 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - What, Exactly are we Trying to Tax?
(11:40) - Correlations
(12:33) - Reorganization
(13:57) - Dating Copilots
(15:24) - Thematic Investing
(16:42) - Bid Density

Mission and Variance

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 09:23:04 -0500

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(00:00) - Mission and Variance
(05:37) - Transitory, After All
(07:38) - The Amazon Model
(08:46) - Contextual Ads
(09:57) - The PE and Sports Transition
(11:24) - Credit and Insurance

Building the Oracles

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:44:41 -0500

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(00:00) - Building the Oracles
(07:07) - Price Discrimination in Media
(07:53) - AI-Generated Propaganda
(08:54) - War Economies, Redux
(09:40) - Unbundling and Rebundling
(10:26) - Attrition

Our Surprisingly Capital-Abundant World

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 09:28:11 -0500

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(00:00) - Our Surprisingly Capital-Abundant World
(05:58) - Audience Capture at Two Levels
(06:58) - Does Crypto Add Value to Financial Markets?
(09:21) - Continuation Funds, Club Deals, and the New Equity Market
(11:07) - Implementation Details
(12:30) - Anti-Goldilocks Economy for Junk Loans

P&L Beta: How Much You Keep out of How Much You Make

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 09:41:00 -0500

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(00:00) - P&L Beta: How Much You Keep out of How Much You Make
(06:51) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:25) - Narratives and Volatility
(08:14) - The New Acqui-hire Model
(10:34) - A Good Trade
(11:55) - Terms
(12:57) - Celebrity AI Economics

Meta's Open-Source AI Economics, Re-Revisited

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 09:22:11 -0500

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(00:00) - Meta's Open-Source AI Economics, Re-Revisited
(08:26) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:29) - The Quantum Gambit
(09:33) - Monetizing Volatility
(10:45) - Banking and Credit
(12:03) - How Long is the Long Game?
(13:26) - Sticky Expectations

Software is the new Hardware

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:10:34 -0500

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(00:00) - Software is the new Hardware
(07:18) - Vendor Risk
(08:19) - Hardware and Software
(09:44) - Compounding
(10:41) - AI as an Interface
(11:38) - Rotation

The Quality Factor

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 09:24:13 -0500

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(00:00) - The Quality Factor
(05:21) - Predictions
(07:03) - The 4Chan of Crypto
(07:54) - Adverse Selection
(08:57) - AI and Ads
(09:59) - Algorithmic Collusion

“Bullshit Jobs” is a Terrible, Curiosity-Killing Concept

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 09:22:55 -0500

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(00:00) - “Bullshit Jobs” is a Terrible, Curiosity-Killing Concept
(17:48) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(18:30) - Sanction Economics
(20:00) - Exiting
(21:19) - Building Complements
(22:18) - Shares and Votes
(24:00) - Quality Problems

The Supply Chain of Talent

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 08:47:04 -0500

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(00:00) - The Supply Chain of Talent
(07:36) - Getting the Cycle Right
(08:55) - Regulatory Arbitrage in E-Commerce
(10:04) - Dry Powder and Meta-Stability
(11:11) - The Split Market
(12:00) - Transmission Mechanisms

Fertilizer and Toxins

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 09:16:58 -0500

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(00:00) - Fertilizer and Toxins
(07:50) - Margins
(08:41) - A Better, Costlier Alexa
(09:30) - Elasticity
(11:08) - Counterparty Risk, Served Two Ways
(12:20) - The Universal Denominator

"Nobody Knows Anything": Backtests are Hard

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:20:54 -0500

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(00:00) - "Nobody Knows Anything": Backtests are Hard
(06:59) - The Economics of Hacking
(07:43) - Lead Generation
(09:30) - Adverse Selection
(10:58) - Tip Economics
(12:36) - First and Last Resort

The Bid/Ask View of Who Gets to Raise and What Gets Traded

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 09:31:00 -0500

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(00:00) - The Bid Ask View of Who Gets to Raise and What Gets Traded
(06:40) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:38) - Privacy and Insurance
(08:59) - AI Fragmentation
(09:40) - Too Central to Fail?
(10:45) - Meritocracy
(11:54) - Activism

Details!

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 09:17:00 -0500

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(00:00) - Details!
(08:53) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:48) - The Google Feedback Loop
(10:42) - Fees on What?
(12:41) - The Micro Meta Turnaround
(14:34) - Yes, We're Doing the Meme Stock Thing Again
(15:39) - Diverisification

Get Used to a More Hallucinatory Search Experience

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 28 May 2024 09:00:50 -0500

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(00:00) - Get Used to a More Hallucinatory Search Experience
(09:19) - Cap Structure Arbitrage and Elon Musk
(10:51) - Active, Passive, and Risk
(12:57) - Convergent Evolution
(14:09) - Market Timing
(15:01) - It's All Ads!

One Edge or Many? Reflections on Renaissance Technologies

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 20 May 2024 09:09:56 -0500

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(00:00) - One Edge or Many? Reflections on Renaissance Technologies
(11:22) - Retention
(12:24) - Training Data
(13:20) - Social Networking Primitives and Local Maxima
(14:33) - Renting
(15:02) - Ads

Invisible Efficiencies

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 May 2024 09:13:04 -0500

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(00:00) - Invisible Efficiencies
(06:49) - Making a Market
(07:53) - Outsourcing
(09:35) - Multicloud
(10:53) - Can Frackers Collude?
(12:37) - Infrastructure
(13:25) - Area Man Tweets

Martingale Beliefs

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 May 2024 09:15:21 -0500

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(00:00) - Martingale Beliefs
(07:18) - Country Equity
(08:25) - Costs and Benefits
(09:38) - Continuation Funds
(10:36) - Deepfaking the Dead and the Last Generation of Celebrities
(11:47) - Mature Financial Systems

AI Ruins Education the way Pulleys Ruin Powerlifting

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 09:11:09 -0500

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(00:00) - AI Ruins Education the way Pulleys Ruin Powerlifting
(12:38) - The Other Kind of Bank Unwind
(13:30) - AI Asset Plays
(14:15) - Retail Rides Again
(14:59) - Single-Family Rentals
(16:21) - AI Math

Who's Afraid of Index Funds?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:49:37 -0500

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(00:00) - Who's Afraid of Index Funds?
(10:25) - The Market for Data
(11:52) - Crowded Careers
(12:42) - Black Boxes, Everywhere
(13:32) - Externalities
(14:45) - Intra-Elite Conflict

Most Market Phenomena are Older than they Look

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:58:32 -0500

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(00:00) - Most Market Phenomena are Older than they Look
(06:58) - Labor Arbitrage
(07:40) - Reddit and Search
(09:23) - On-Prem
(10:21) - Audience of One
(11:07) - Ads Everywhere

The Data Business, At Three Resolutions

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 09:31:54 -0500

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(00:00) - The Data Business, At Three Resolutions
(08:45) - The Instagram Numbers
(09:57) - Trader Pay
(11:08) - The Distribution of Near-Misses
(12:54) - Benefits
(13:34) - Funding Cycles

Algorithmic Collusion

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:33:43 -0500

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(00:00) - Algorithmic Collusion
(08:38) - Operationalizing Secrecy
(09:36) - Product Convergence
(10:00) - Black Box Update
(10:49) - Data Scarcity
(11:41) - Cash Management

The Duolingo Disaster That Wasn't

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 09:15:05 -0500

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(00:00) - The Duolingo Disaster That Wasn't
(07:34) - Chatbots
(08:31) - Alpha Capture
(09:45) - Coreweave
(10:58) - Preannouncements
(11:41) - AI's ROI

The Case for Marking More to Market

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 09:23:36 -0500

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(00:00) - The Case for Marking More to Market
(06:47) - Petrodollar Recycling
(07:44) - Importing Talent
(08:19) - Self-Regulation
(09:38) - Apple/Google
(10:39) - Exits

Death Spirals

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 09:25:41 -0500

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(00:00) - Death Spirals
(05:19) - Ads!
(06:10) - Healthcare and Insurance
(07:01) - Transition Economics
(07:46) - Volatility
(08:49) - Strategic Investments

Should You Hedge It All?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 10:34:23 -0600

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(00:00) - Should You Hedge It All?
(07:22) - Apple Car
(08:35) - State-Directed Investment
(09:26) - Flywheels and Bubbles
(10:28) - Inflation Impacts
(11:42) - Vertical Integration

Exposed! Your Torrid Love Affair With Airline Fees

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 09:51:47 -0600

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(00:00) - Exposed! Your Torrid Love Affair With Airline Fees
(08:43) - Malicious Compliance
(11:01) - Sanctions and Third Countries
(12:00) - Bing and BATNAs
(13:19) - Celebrity Endorsements and Binary Outcomes
(14:10) - Supply/Demand Balance

Building for Power Users

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:08:29 -0600

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(00:00) - Building for Power Users
(10:16) - Adtech and "Sky Bridges"
(11:04) - SuperMicro!
(12:57) - GDP YoY
(13:43) - Black Boxes
(14:43) - Pods and Cycles

Antithesis: Debugging Debugging

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:44:33 -0600

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(00:00) - Antithesis: Debugging Debugging
(12:59) - Rebooting
(13:40) - AI, UGC, and Communities
(14:18) - Land Rushes
(15:21) - AI and Share Shift
(16:20) - Nirvana

AI-Based Disinformation Will Not Be An Especially Big Deal in the 2024 Election

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 09:54:14 -0600

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(00:00) - AI-Based Disinformation Will Not Be An Especially Big Deal in the 2024 Election
(06:10) - Discount Pods
(07:22) - China and Real Estate
(08:26) - Microcaps
(09:30) - Unraveling
(10:14) - Market Structure

Is "Social" an Enduring Category or Just a Phase?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 09:58:41 -0600

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(00:00) - Is "Social" an Enduring Category or Just a Phase?
(07:13) - The Carbon Discount Rate
(08:43) - Alternative Data
(10:16) - Transitory Lessons
(11:17) - App Economics
(12:15) - Where Does the Basis Trade Come From?

Being Not-a-Tech-Company

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:03:34 -0600

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(00:00) - Being Not-a-Tech-Company
(08:52) - Media
(10:41) - News: Supply and Demand
(11:56) - Preferred Habitats
(12:49) - Liquidation
(14:12) - The Activism Cycle

Momentum, Intellectual Humility, and Missing Pieces of the Model

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 09:40:23 -0600

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(00:00) - Momentum, Intellectual Humility, and Missing Pieces of the Model
(06:57) - War Finance Meets Green Finance
(08:03) - AI-Assisted Creativity
(08:56) - Property Rights and Mortal Institutions
(09:41) - Complements
(10:25) - Hedge Funds

A Theory of Grift

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:35:08 -0600

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(00:00) - A Theory of Grift
(08:40) - Buy The Change You Wish to See in the World
(10:27) - Schmuck Insurance
(11:22) - Uncertainty
(12:23) - Block Trading
(14:59) - Ads

Why Does Any Company Own its Corporate Headquarters?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 10:13:10 -0600

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(00:00) - Why Does Any Company Own its Corporate Headquarters?
(09:36) - The Noise Election
(11:04) - Automation
(12:03) - Complementary Businesses
(14:26) - Talent Cycles
(15:22) - The Mechanics of Regulatory Moats

How Many Trillion-Dollar Companies Should There Be?

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 09:51:59 -0600

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(00:00) - How Many Trillion-Dollar Companies Should There Be?
(09:57) - Choice
(11:09) - Durables
(12:01) - Lobbying
(12:55) - The China Model
(13:37) - Training Data

How Should Higher Education Be Financed?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 10:13:28 -0600

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(00:00) - How Should Higher Education Be Financed?
(10:28) - Accredited Investors
(11:54) - Gambling on Gambling
(12:41) - Price Discrimination
(13:25) - In Play
(14:19) - Even More Product Convergence

Graduating to Parallelized Strategies

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 10:02:00 -0600

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(00:00) - Graduating to Parallelized Strategies
(07:16) - AAI
(08:13) - OpenAI
(10:36) - Twitter
(11:31) - Pod Shop Math
(12:22) - Privacy, Security, and Monopoly

In Investing, and in Life, The More Timeless the Discovery the More It's a One-Off Gain

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 10:01:22 -0600

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(00:00) - In Investing, and in Life, The More Timeless the Discovery the More It's a One-Off Gain
(08:01) - Airlines
(09:21) - Deflation
(10:07) - VC
(10:32) - Automation
(11:13) - Vertical Integration

Can Argentina Dollarize? Should They?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:02:02 -0600

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(00:00) - Can Argentina Dollarize? Should They?
(07:06) - 0DTEs
(08:57) - Corporate Politics
(09:45) - Ads and Sports
(11:15) - AI Creating Jobs
(11:48) - Marketing Real Estate

Risk: Too Much, Too Little, the Wrong Kind, or the Wrong Measure?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 09:45:02 -0600

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(00:00) - Risk: Too Much, Too Little, the Wrong Kind, or the Wrong Measure?
(05:55) - OpenAI's Oops D'Etat
(11:05) - Meta
(12:10) - Unit Economics and the Japanese Labor Force
(13:15) - Cruise
(13:50) - Growth and Corruption

What Do Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake Really Prove?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:51:58 -0600

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(00:00) - What Do Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake Really Prove?
(05:12) - Social Network Nuances
(06:02) - The Cost of Dropping Ads
(07:03) - Credit Outlook
(08:10) - Investment Niches
(08:51) - Wages

LLMs and Communicating in More Dimensions

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:48:38 -0600

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(00:00) - LLMs and Communicating in More Dimensions
(04:58) - Cruise's Asymptotes
(07:02) - Shrinkage
(08:12) - Open Source Economics
(09:12) - Derivatives and the Underlying
(09:53) - Shorting

The Long, Long View of Interest Rates

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 08:52:29 -0500

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(00:00) - The Long, Long View of Interest Rates
(10:46) - Insiders
(13:12) - Threads
(14:09) - Where the Pandemic Didn't Happen
(14:49) - Leftovers
(15:19) - Opportunity Cost

The Economics of Startup Swag

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 08:34:10 -0500

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(00:00) - The Economics of Startup Swag
(05:18) - Trappings of Success
(06:27) - Globalization and the Movies
(07:29) - AI & IP
(08:46) - AI & Religion
(09:48) - Innovator's Dilemma Epicycles

A Bull Market in Facts; A Bear Market in Narratives

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 08:37:38 -0500

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(00:00) - A Bull Market in Facts; A Bear Market in Narratives
(06:09) - The Decline of Meme Stocks
(07:16) - Volatility
(08:12) - Lobbying as a Competitive Advantage
(09:09) - Goldman
(10:16) - "Name and Shame"

Predicting, and Knowing What to Predict

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 08:48:12 -0500

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(00:00) - Predicting, and Knowing What to Predict
(07:27) - FTX Addenda
(10:41) - Slack and M&A Integration
(11:41) - The Global Meme Stock Rally
(12:57) - Shrinkage
(13:33) - The Coasian Border in Ridesharing

Paradoxes of Productivity Growth

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 07:43:08 -0500

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(00:00) - Paradoxes of Productivity Growth
(08:11) - New FTX
(10:08) - Apple Search
(11:16) - The IPO Window
(12:04) - Markets in Everyone
(12:55) - The Dollar

"Capital Light" is a Trait of the Cycle as well as the Industry

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:38:44 -0500

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(00:00) - "Capital Light" is a Trait of the Cycle as well as the Industry
(06:21) - Individual Bets and Risk Premia
(07:50) - Tinder's Price Discrimination
(08:38) - Smartphone Competition
(09:26) - The Partner-With-AI Arms Race
(10:29) - Mediocre Success

Making A Match

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 07:52:42 -0500

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(00:00) - Making A Match
(11:49) - Instacart: Ahead of the IPO
(13:47) - Movie Clips and the Piracy Equilibrium
(15:00) - EVs and Public Choice Theory
(16:39) - Banks Retrench
(17:32) - China's Lost Decade?

Price-First or Thesis-First Research?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:15:50 -0500

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(00:00) - Price-First or Thesis-First Research?
(08:35) - Aging Up
(09:31) - Housing
(10:33) - Virality
(12:05) - LLM Arms Races
(13:26) - The Uber of X

The Supply Chains of Bits and Atoms

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 17:51:29 -0500

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(00:00) - The Supply Chains of Bits and Atoms
(08:21) - 7nm
(09:20) - New Yahoo
(10:39) - Red Teams and AI Unit Economics
(11:52) - Horizontal Expansion
(12:57) - Private Markets

Instacart is the Best and Worst Grocery Business Imaginable

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 07:46:02 -0500

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(00:00) - Instacart is the Best and Worst Grocery Business Imaginable
(14:47) - New Cities
(15:21) - Scraping
(16:19) - Klaviyo
(17:03) - Crowdfunding
(17:36) - Maturity Matching

Should We Expect Valuations to Mean-Revert Over Time?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 07:44:42 -0500

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(00:00) - Should We Expect Valuations to Mean-Revert Over Time?
(11:48) - Sushi
(12:40) - Modeling Demand
(13:35) - China's Debt
(14:24) - Coevolution and Pulling Up the Ladder
(15:21) - The Venn Diagram Career

Inside the Decline of Stack Exchange

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 07:17:06 -0500

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(00:00) - Inside the Decline of Stack Exchange
(11:20) - The Other X
(13:14) - Refinancing China
(14:06) - The Activist Short Death Spiral
(15:10) - Rebundling
(16:05) - Fitness Bands

Information as a Universal Complement and Universal Substitute

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 08:24:54 -0500

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(00:00) - Information as a Universal Complement and Universal Substitute
(09:14) - Making a Market
(10:25) - Financial Innovation
(11:02) - IRL
(12:10) - Open-Ended Liabilities
(13:19) - Meme Stock Relapse

You Hate The Products You're An Early Adopter Of Because of Invisible Base Rates and Anthropic Bias

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 07:23:20 -0500

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(00:00) - You Hate The Products You're An Early Adopter Of Because of Invisible Base Rates and Anthropic Bias
(06:54) - The Big Tech Cycle
(08:00) - Chinese Consumer Internet Competition With American Characteristics
(08:32) - Reallocating
(09:38) - Durables
(10:07) - Crypto Use Cases

Don't Get Addicted to Fantasy Economics

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 07:45:23 -0500

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(00:00) - Don't Get Addicted to Fantasy Economics
(07:04) - Exporting Clean Energy
(07:48) - Reverse Turing Tests
(08:56) - Syndicate Economics
(09:51) - Integration
(10:38) - Data

It's Hard to Build a Durable Business Selling Durable Goods

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 07:22:53 -0500

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(00:00) - It's Hard to Build a Durable Business Selling Durable Goods
(13:02) - Wrappers and Layoffs
(13:53) - The Movies
(15:38) - Evaporating Sanctions
(16:09) - Bonds
(16:52) - Errors in Translation

Was it Worth it for Facebook to Become Meta?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 07:07:13 -0500

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(00:00) - Was it Worth it for Facebook to Become Meta?
(09:38) - Carbon Accounting
(10:48) - Social Mobility
(11:23) - To Replicate or To Replicate
(13:06) - Energy Transitions
(14:04) - Financing

AI Turns UGC into a PVP Zone

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 08:11:50 -0500

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(00:00) - AI Turns UGC into a PVP Zone
(07:04) - Goldman
(08:17) - ETFs
(09:02) - Dispersion
(10:09) - Softbank
(11:20) - Contrarianism

The Economics of Engineering Blogs

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:36:32 -0500

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(00:00) - The Economics of Engineering Blogs
(08:27) - Art Exchange
(09:51) - Fraud
(10:56) - Airlines
(11:44) - The Long Tail
(12:29) - Chinese IPOs

Reddit and Platform Politics

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 07:30:08 -0500

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(00:00) - Reddit and Platform Politics
(09:12) - The Boomer Market
(10:18) - Network Effects
(11:20) - Direct to Retail
(12:08) - Strategic Investing
(13:05) - ByteDance and AI

Where Does Stripe Go From Here?

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 08:00:21 -0500

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(00:00) - Where Does Stripe Go From Here?
(10:43) - Deal Flow
(11:32) - Proprietary Data
(12:31) - Beyoncéflation
(13:09) - Pricing and Local Maxima
(14:28) - Funds and Spoils

Unavoidable Drawdowns

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 08:09:47 -0500

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(00:00) - Unavoidable Drawdowns
(06:45) - Dumb Money
(08:08) - Adversarial Environments
(09:04) - Coasian Bargains in Immigration
(10:05) - Asset Allocation
(11:23) - Lock-In

In Defense of Made-Up Metrics

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 07:58:27 -0500

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(00:00) - In Defense of Made-Up Metrics
(07:32) - Scaling the Non-Scalable
(09:49) - VR and Platform Ownership
(11:15) - What is a Bank?
(12:19) - The Non-Recession Recession, in One Graph
(13:23) - Going Direct

Data, Prices, and Central Planning

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 30 May 2023 07:51:54 -0500

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(00:00) - Data, Prices, and Central Planning
(09:02) - Japan Remains Cheap
(10:08) - Tipping and Price Discrimination
(11:10) - Bad News is Good News
(12:26) - Black Markets
(13:08) - Jobs

Cava: One Brand, Many Channels

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 May 2023 07:46:16 -0500

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(00:00) - Cava: One Brand, Many Channels
(07:41) - AI and Incumbents
(08:51) - Buying Reputation
(09:40) - Restaurant Pricing
(10:35) - Debt, Prices, and the Pull-Forward Effect
(11:46) - Assets and Distribution

Why Do Equities Build So Much Wealth?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 15 May 2023 07:45:03 -0500

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(00:00) - Why Do Equities Build So Much Wealth?
(07:36) - Efficient Markets
(08:15) - Logistics
(09:28) - Markups
(10:02) - The New Geography
(10:34) - Marking to Market

The Relationship-Transactional-Relationship Business Cycle

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 May 2023 07:26:10 -0500

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(00:00) - The Relationship-Transactional-Relationship Business Cycle
(07:46) - Metrics at Twitter
(09:04) - Workarounds
(09:49) - Generative Ads
(10:14) - Elsewhere in AI
(10:55) - Banking

SVB in Retrospect

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 01 May 2023 07:34:46 -0500

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(00:00) - SVB in Retrospect
(09:01) - And in Other Banking News
(10:05) - States See Like Big Tech
(11:17) - Aggressive Competition
(12:12) - Agglomeration and Sports
(13:02) - The Narrow Rally

Why The Answer Is So Often Ads

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 07:44:35 -0500

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(00:00) - Why The Answer Is So Often Ads
(07:33) - Strategic Shutdowns
(08:11) - Verification, Ads, and Membership
(08:49) - The China Cap Table
(09:28) - Very Long-Term Investing
(10:46) - Branding a Bank

Working with a Copilot

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 07:14:58 -0500

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(00:00) - Working with a Copilot
(11:59) - Catching Up
(14:09) - Private Capital
(15:35) - AI Regulation
(17:17) - AI Stocks
(19:04) - Cars and Interfaces

Dueling Over Platforms

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 07:30:05 -0500

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(00:00) - Dueling Over Platforms
(09:46) - De-Googling
(10:17) - Reshoring
(11:53) - Attribution
(12:49) - Volatility
(13:18) - The State of AI Workers

Bet-the-Company Ideas

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 07:12:44 -0500

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(00:00) - Bet-the-Company Ideas
(08:48) - The Universal Second Language
(09:31) - Asset and Liability Management in Sports
(10:37) - Light Contagion
(11:20) - Buying Status
(11:50) - Shutting Down Banks

A Short 100-Question Diligence Checklist

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 07:33:45 -0500

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(00:00) - A Short 100-Question Diligence Checklist
(17:51) - Bank Capital
(18:34) - Where Venture Funding is Squeezed
(19:13) - Free Shipping and Marginal Costs
(20:21) - Chinese Apps and Data Advantages
(21:21) - Many Funnels

The Banks: What's Next?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 07:32:04 -0500

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(00:00) - The Banks: What's Next?
(09:27) - SVB's Incentives
(10:22) - Cross-Disciplines
(11:57) - Cable's Evolution
(12:29) - Training Your Replacement
(13:26) - Resources

Financial Institutions and Franchise Value

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 07:12:49 -0500

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(00:00) - Financial Institutions and Franchise Value
(09:03) - SVB Updates
(13:19) - Hit Economics
(13:56) - AI Costs
(14:44) - Lending Against Regulatory Uncertainty
(16:42) - AI Assistants

Airlines: Unit Economics, Served Four Ways

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 08:21:47 -0600

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(00:00) - Airlines: Unit Economics, Served Four Ways
(23:44) - High-Variance
(25:40) - Deadweight Loss
(26:17) - Managing Cash Flow
(27:06) - Twitter Shrinks
(27:30) - Generative AI

Empiricism Disappears into the Black Box

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 08:07:51 -0600

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(00:00) - Empiricism Disappears into the Black Box
(09:22) - Back to Normal
(10:18) - Theoretical Profits
(11:04) - Ukraine and US Energy
(11:50) - "Altasia"
(12:32) - Rebirth of the Author

Internal Software as a Competitive Advantage

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 08:24:56 -0600

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(00:00) - Internal Software as a Competitive Advantage
(11:48) - Copying
(13:08) - Performance
(14:18) - Un-IPO
(16:06) - Back to the Office
(16:51) - Why Private Equity?

History Begins Again for Big Tech

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 08:40:32 -0600

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(00:00) - History Begins Again for Big Tech
(09:03) - Yachts, Taxes
(10:20) - Bad Ads
(10:52) - Investor Relations
(12:11) - Market Signals
(13:37) - More AI-in-the-Browser

Companies and Entropy

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 08:31:17 -0600

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(00:00) - Companies and Entropy
(07:51) - Frontends All The Way Down
(09:13) - Alternative Data
(10:08) - Competition
(10:44) - Network Effects and IPO Listings
(11:44) - Decentralizing Twitter Revenue

Equity as an Option on Future Reinvestment

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 08:01:49 -0600

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(00:00) - Equity as an Option on Future Reinvestment
(10:44) - Apple AR
(12:06) - Car Loans and Non-Stationary Distributions
(12:55) - Shorting
(14:04) - Working Capital
(14:43) - Acceleration

Where Fraud Lives and Why

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 07:59:20 -0600

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(00:00) - Where Fraud Lives and Why
(07:21) - Segmented Markets
(08:33) - Apple the Outlier
(09:28) - Outsourcing
(10:26) - Working as Intended
(11:10) - Headcount

In a Stable Career Track, Where Does the Risk Go?

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 08:12:29 -0600

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(00:00) - In a Stable Career Track, Where Does the Risk Go?
(09:05) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:48) - AI Lobbying
(10:34) - Fraud and Credit
(11:36) - How Markets Clear
(12:35) - Deglobalization in Miniature
(13:08) - Crypto Exchanges and Airdrops

Is AI More VBA or Steel?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 07:38:15 -0600

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(00:00) - Is AI More VBA or Steel?
(15:12) - Formalizing an Economy
(16:02) - Shoplifting
(16:51) - Plane Shortage
(17:54) - Mastodon Metrics
(19:02) - The Mystery of the UAE Holding Company

Closing Industry Frontiers

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 07:50:39 -0600

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(00:00) - Closing Industry Frontiers
(07:23) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:38) - The Slow Move to Subscriptions
(08:58) - TINA Trades
(11:03) - Geoengineering
(11:58) - Warning Signs
(13:07) - Elasticity in Electricity

How Companies Think About Layoffs

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 09:09:14 -0600

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(00:00) - How Companies Think About Layoffs
(14:15) - Moderation
(17:48) - Understanding TikTok
(19:19) - Reputational Bank Runs
(20:13) - Coal
(21:02) - Disney

"A Solution in Search of a Problem" is a Low-Rates Phenomenon

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 08:32:00 -0600

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(00:00) - "A Solution in Search of a Problem" is a Low-Rates Phenomenon
(09:38) - Money and Equilibria
(11:50) - eSports
(13:03) - The Price of Liquidity
(13:43) - Plausible Deniability
(14:30) - The Illiquidity Premium, Continued

The Uses of Friction

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 08:21:00 -0600

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(00:00) - The Uses of Friction
(07:37) - Market-Making
(09:19) - Poaching and Equity Currency
(10:44) - China's Covid Economy
(11:31) - The Cost of AI
(11:55) - Friendshoring

Why Finance is Hard to Decentralize

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 08:18:47 -0600

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(00:00) - Why Finance is Hard to Decentralize
(09:40) - Why They Don't Drill
(11:26) - Shorting
(12:30) - Crypto Liquidity
(13:24) - Food Convergence
(14:29) - Crypto Transparency

What Part of the System Needs to be Smart?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 08:47:11 -0600

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(00:00) - What Part of the System Needs to be Smart?
(05:44) - Redemptions
(07:05) - FTX, Continued
(07:51) - Single-Celebrity Companies
(09:00) - Unretiring
(10:56) - Activism

Money, Credit, Trust, and FTX

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 08:41:25 -0600

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(00:00) - Money, Credit, Trust, and FTX
(24:40) - Alternatives
(25:44) - Where Inflation Hits
(26:09) - The Best Job In Tech
(26:59) - Sitting it Out
(27:56) - LNG

The Beloved Regional Grocery Store Chain Model

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 16:10:57 -0600

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(00:00) - The Beloved Regional Grocery Store Chain Model
(07:15) - The Microcap Manipulation Boom Continues
(08:41) - Persistence
(09:58) - Bad Hedges
(11:12) - Repurposing Assets
(12:18) - Comebacks

Kroger / Albertsons: Buying Data in Bulk

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:56:55 -0600

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(00:00) - Kroger / Albertsons: Buying Data in Bulk
(06:10) - Meme Shorts in Crypto
(08:48) - Unfiring
(09:52) - Will Expensive Food Cause Expensive Food?
(10:25) - The Outrage Cycle
(11:24) - Stability and Financial Repression

Is Mental Math Part of the Current Meta?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 07:35:05 -0500

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(00:00) - Is Mental Math Part of the Current Meta?
(07:15) - Diseconomies of Scale
(08:58) - Licensing
(10:06) - Inflation
(10:52) - Normalization
(11:41) - Ads: Content and Context

Snowflake Revisited

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 07:10:35 -0500

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(00:00) - Snowflake Revisited
(15:28) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(16:11) - Microsoft's Antitrust Edge
(16:47) - The Free Time Dividend
(17:28) - Feedback Loops
(18:32) - The News Business
(19:50) - Ending the Traffic Jam

The Rise of Single-Result Search Products

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 07:02:01 -0500

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(00:00) - The Rise of Single-Result Search Products
(09:54) - Mango Manipulation
(13:10) - The Other Emerging Labor Shortage
(14:23) - China's Labor Shortage
(15:10) - Unspinning
(16:14) - Bad News

Newsletter Economics in 2022

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 07:17:24 -0500

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(00:00) - Newsletter Economics in 2022
(15:35) - Dogfooding the Metaverse
(17:27) - Distribution
(18:12) - Rebundling
(19:44) - Negative Yields
(20:34) - The Labor Shortage Continues

The Counterintuitive Economics of Hiring

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 07:42:42 -0500

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(00:00) - The Counterintuitive Economics of Hiring
(13:44) - Smartphones and Distributed Law Enforcement
(15:16) - Actors as IP
(16:08) - Microtransactions
(16:52) - Partnerships
(18:16) - Streaming

The Porsche IPO and Mass Luxury

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 07:17:17 -0500

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(00:00) - The Porsche IPO and Mass Luxury
(07:00) - Growing Out of an Energy Deficit?
(08:16) - Subscription Travel
(09:03) - An ETF For Everything
(10:32) - He Is More Machine Now Than Man
(11:06) - Talent

How Does Upwork Work?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 07:49:29 -0500

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(00:00) - How Does Upwork Work?
(12:53) - Captions
(14:08) - Robotics
(15:02) - Fixing Airports
(16:03) - Capex
(17:13) - YouTube Shorts

The Other "MoviePass Economy"

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 07:20:55 -0500

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(00:00) - The Other "MoviePass Economy"
(09:59) - Economists
(10:40) - Regulatory Outsourcing
(11:10) - Come for the Network, Stay for the Tool
(12:20) - Oil
(13:08) - Covid and Social Mobility

A Taxonomy of Drawdowns

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 07:34:22 -0500

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(00:00) - A Taxonomy of Drawdowns
(13:18) - Watercooler Shows
(14:26) - Smart Thermostats
(15:08) - Substitutes and Complements
(16:25) - Monetization
(17:27) - Apple Ads

Turning Non-Tradables Into Tradables

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 05:04:52 -0500

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(00:00) - Turning Non-Tradables Into Tradables
(10:43) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:19) - Grills
(12:30) - Ads
(13:43) - Pricing
(14:59) - Drops
(15:54) - Movies

Hand-Crafted Artisanal Liquidity Provision

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 07:05:04 -0500

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(00:00) - Hand-Crafted Artisanal Liquidity Provision
(09:32) - Consolidation
(10:14) - Shareholder Activism
(11:17) - Cash Burn
(12:24) - PE and Software Compete to Eat the World
(13:19) - Reinsurer of Last Resort

The Economics of Noncompetes

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 07:34:18 -0500

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(00:00) - The Economics of Noncompetes
(07:27) - Always a Bull Market Somewhere
(09:03) - SPACs
(09:45) - "Most-Hated Rally"
(10:58) - Pricing
(11:26) - Amazon and Seasonality

Inventing Demand

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 07:12:06 -0500

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(00:00) - Inventing Demand
(08:18) - BNPL
(09:20) - Coopetition
(10:29) - Marketplaces and Ads
(11:34) - Last Mile, Last Users
(12:19) - Value and Rates

Moderna's Bets: Moonshots and Platforms

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 08:13:18 -0500

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(00:00) - Moderna's Bets: Moonshots and Platforms
(12:38) - The China AI Stack
(13:09) - Closing the Loop
(13:50) - Ads and Addiction
(15:02) - The Second-Order Costs of Inflation
(15:58) - Fraud and Transaction Costs

Tegus and the Research Stack

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 07:59:46 -0500

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(00:00) - Tegus and the Research Stack
(07:38) - Apple and Ads
(08:26) - MetaBonds!
(09:12) - Capex
(10:18) - Distribution
(11:00) - Expensive Executive Assistants

Understanding Jane Street

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 07:39:05 -0500

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(00:00) - Understanding Jane Street
(32:01) - Pensions
(32:50) - Customer-Facing
(33:18) - Use Cases
(33:44) - Making a Market
(34:09) - Reflexive Energy Politics

Is Everything Getting Old?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 07:23:43 -0500

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(00:00) - Is Everything Getting Old?
(10:07) - Parity
(11:36) - Work from Home
(12:03) - Surgery
(12:37) - Buffett and Energy
(13:33) - Splinternet Update

Correlations go to One, in Good Ways and Bad

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 07:40:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Correlations go to One, in Good Ways and Bad
(10:32) - Network Effects, Pt. 1
(11:47) - Network Effects, Pt. 2
(12:28) - Rebalancing
(13:29) - Leapfrogging
(14:42) - Getting Funding

The Perks of the Recent Keynesian Tech Boom

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 07:01:55 -0500

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(00:00) - The Perks of the Recent Keynesian Tech Boom
(06:43) - Celsius
(07:13) - The Uber Playbook
(09:52) - Price Discrimination and Amortization
(10:39) - Pricing Power
(11:46) - Sanctions

The Network Before the Internet

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 07:35:25 -0500

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(00:00) - The Network Before the Internet
(07:47) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:18) - Operational Issues
(09:50) - The Cloud
(10:43) - Rent and Inflation
(11:52) - The Glut
(12:54) - Credit and Macro

NextEra Energy's Green Growth

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 07:43:41 -0500

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(00:00) - NextEra Energy's Green Growth
(09:10) - Specialized Cloud
(09:57) - Bailouts
(11:30) - Another Look at Inflation
(12:34) - Trucking Recession
(13:29) - Belt and Road Alternative

Data's Limits and the Judgment Gap

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 07:09:43 -0500

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(00:00) - Data's Limits and the Judgment Gap
(07:14) - Mobility
(08:26) - More Housing, Just in Time
(09:26) - Wargamification
(10:35) - Worker Shortages
(11:43) - Taiwan

Clean Trades and Dirty Hedges

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 06:53:06 -0500

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(00:00) - Clean Trades and Dirty Hedges
(09:49) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:27) - Cash as Cosmetics
(11:58) - Two Inflations
(12:46) - AI
(14:26) - Offline-to-Online
(14:59) - Starlink

Valuation Metrics: A Cross-Examination

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 07:10:10 -0500

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(00:00) - Valuation Metrics: A Cross-Examination
(15:20) - What's Still Fundable (Con't.)
(16:09) - ESG and Measurement
(16:49) - Sentiment Tracking
(17:54) - Volatility

AWS for Industry, But Better: The Railroad Investment Case

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 31 May 2022 07:48:17 -0500

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(00:00) - AWS for Industry, But Better: The Railroad Investment Case
(18:21) - Smart Margin
(19:55) - Peak College?
(20:23) - Two-Sided Markets
(21:01) - Bonds

Snap: The Relentless Quest to Own the Interface

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 May 2022 06:58:45 -0500

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(00:00) - Snap: The Relentless Quest to Own the Interface
(13:55) - Media Convergence
(14:50) - What's Still Fundable
(16:03) - The Piracy Continuum
(16:48) - Crypto Relearns Regulation
(18:28) - Shrinking Alpha

$1 Trillion Worth of Risky Loans Packaged Into Highly-Rated Securities is not the End of the World

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 16 May 2022 07:39:55 -0500

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(00:00) - $1 Trillion Worth of Risky Loans Packaged Into Highly-Rated Securities is not the End of the World
(12:42) - Netflix's Explore/Exploit Strategy
(14:34) - EVs and Platforms
(15:16) - Third-Party Sellers
(16:20) - An Entrepreneurial Country

Buy Now, Pain Later?

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 09 May 2022 07:51:51 -0500

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(00:00) - Buy Now, Pain Later?
(24:36) - TikTok
(25:36) - Factors
(26:24) - Replacing Passwords, and a Big Tech Truce
(27:05) - Solve for the Disequilibrium

Cars Manufacture the Modern Middle Class

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 02 May 2022 07:07:30 -0500

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(00:00) - Cars Manufacture the Modern Middle Class
(08:27) - Not Enough Housing
(09:24) - Durable Network Effects
(11:00) - VPN Integration
(11:59) - Reserve Currency Problems
(12:58) - Movies

Refactoring Restaurants

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 06:50:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Refactoring Restaurants
(09:07) - 401(k)s With Chinese Characteristics
(10:37) - Middlemen and Leverage
(12:00) - Concentration
(13:43) - A Mixed Trucking Recession
(14:24) - Deglobalization in Autos

A Future Where Most Media Is Produced for an Audience of One

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 07:50:43 -0500

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(00:00) - A Future Where Most Media Is Produced for an Audience of One
(09:17) - Universal Prime
(10:28) - Strategic Shifts
(11:24) - Bundling
(12:13) - Enterprise Twitter
(13:02) - Energy Leaks

The Gym Business: Usage, Slacking, and the Duel Between Margins and Lifetime Value

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 07:46:52 -0500

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(00:00) - The Gym Business: Usage, Slacking, and the Duel Between Margins and Lifetime Value
(10:51) - Twitter
(13:32) - Remote Work and Neurodiversity
(14:45) - Granularity
(15:57) - Unhealthy SPACs
(17:00) - More Evidence for the Travel Boom
(17:26) - Surcharges

Regulating Big Tech is a Product Problem

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 07:32:16 -0500

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(00:00) - Regulating Big Tech is a Product Problem
(10:27) - Failing Fast
(12:20) - More Signs of Slower Inflation
(13:10) - Six-Figure Truckers
(14:07) - Free/Frictional Complements
(15:01) - Shadow Banking

NFTs and the Money/Status Exchange Rate

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 08:40:59 -0500

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(00:00) - NFTs and the Money/Status Exchange Rate
(07:29) - Demand Management
(08:19) - Influencers
(09:11) - Downsides to Scaling
(09:47) - Look-Through Emissions
(10:39) - Lore

What Works in SaaS Pricing

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 08:30:48 -0500

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(00:00) - What Works in SaaS Pricing
(07:33) - Reformatting Competition
(09:10) - Ending Oil Won't End Energy Politics
(10:04) - The Bullwhip Effect in Discounters
(10:56) - Russia's Gold

HelloFresh: Mealkits Can Work After All

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 09:41:04 -0600

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(00:00) - HelloFresh: Mealkits Can Work After All
(07:37) - PR Campaigns for Ads
(08:49) - Underperformance
(09:42) - Monetizing Dead Mileage
(10:35) - Movies and Dynamic Pricing
(11:27) - Peloton and Inventory Management

Plaid: Data Layer to Payments Layer

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 09:30:08 -0600

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(00:00) - Plaid: Data Layer to Payments Layer
(09:10) - The Next Conflicts
(10:06) - Decentralization as a Liability
(11:42) - Decentralization as an Asset
(12:34) - Reopening
(13:39) - Succession Problems

Match Group and Managed Dissatisfaction

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 09:42:49 -0600

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(00:00) - Match Group and Managed Dissatisfaction
(08:29) - Revolving Doors
(09:36) - Sanctions
(10:58) - Iterating
(11:54) - Bad Funds, Conflicts, and Bias

How Would You Run a 10,000-Year Endowment?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 09:29:40 -0600

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(00:00) - How Would You Run a 10,000-Year Endowment?
(07:55) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:39) - Buy-to-Sell?
(09:30) - Dematerializing Gaming
(10:37) - New Profits in Old Media
(11:35) - Insourcing

VC and the Systematic Search for Outliers

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 08:23:05 -0600

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(00:00) - VC and the Systematic Search for Outliers
(05:44) - The Paradox of Decentralization and NFTs
(07:05) - Pigouvian Benefits Update
(07:46) - Two Kinds of Growth
(09:03) - Accidental Shortages
(09:43) - LNGeopolitics, Continued

The Factorio Mindset

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 09:31:56 -0600

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(00:00) - The Factorio Mindset
(07:14) - The Carbon Rally
(08:21) - The Bridge
(09:03) - Housing and Rates
(09:49) - Full Stack Media
(10:16) - Buying Out Contracts

What Happens When You Buy at an All-Time High?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 09:12:40 -0600

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(00:00) - What Happens When You Buy at an All-Time High?
(05:57) - Amazon and Ads Ads Ads!
(08:22) - NFTs as Tickets
(09:50) - Wages: Who's Losing?
(10:56) - Media-to-Monetization
(12:19) - Negawatts

Learning from Overdetermined Failure

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 09:30:18 -0600

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(00:00) - Learning from Overdetermined Failure
(08:01) - Blackstone Buys the Dip
(09:13) - Growing an Ecosystem
(10:12) - Shortages are Demand-Side, Not Supply-Side (Again)
(10:56) - Pricing out Values

Reflexivity in Tech Returns: Talent Chasing Money Chasing Talent

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 09:04:39 -0600

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(00:00) - Reflexivity in Tech Returns: Talent Chasing Money Chasing Talent
(10:58) - Fixed Costs and Airlines
(11:43) - Goods Shortages and Worker Shortages
(12:16) - Marketing and Diversification
(13:01) - OverSPACed
(13:47) - Talent Shortages

Keeping Options Open: The Equity Compensation Story

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 09:20:46 -0600

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(00:00) - Keeping Options Open: The Equity Compensation Story
(09:10) - Prime Elasticity
(10:22) - Labor Arbitrage
(11:08) - Location Arbitrage
(12:07) - Legal Accessibility

Facial Recognition as a Pareto Technology

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 07:44:22 -0600

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(00:00) - Facial Recognition as a Pareto Technology
(09:43) - Aligned Incentives
(10:40) - Lord, Make Me Low-Emissions—But Not Yet
(11:33) - Elasticity
(12:32) - Google/TikTok Coopetition
(13:14) - The Remittance Economy

Daloopa: Data-to-Information Accelerant

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 08:30:24 -0600

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(00:00) - Daloopa: Data-to-Information Accelerant
(10:12) - Covid Zero vs Ο-Variant
(10:50) - Covid Hormesis
(11:54) - Life on Planet Baumol
(12:45) - The Right Amount of Fraud
(14:03) - Selective Disclosure

AndCo Remixes Commercial Real Estate

Byrne Hobart — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 08:44:05 -0600

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(00:00) - AndCo Remixes Commercial Real Estate
(09:07) - Privatizing Emissions
(10:04) - The Put-Seller of Last Resort
(10:55) - Prayer-as-a-Service
(11:37) - (Voluntary) Crypto Regulation
(12:19) - Grinchbots

The Liberty Complex: Cash Flow Today, Taxes Eventually

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 09:24:48 -0600

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(00:00) - The Liberty Complex: Cash Flow Today, Taxes Eventually
(21:22) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(21:59) - Portal and Technology Prosthetics
(22:54) - Browsers as a Shopping Tool
(23:37) - BNPL Rules
(24:25) - John Kelly and YOLO Stocks
(25:56) - News Post-Trump

Drone Delivery: Accelerating to Inevitable

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 08:05:48 -0600

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(00:00) - Drone Delivery: Accelerating to Inevitable
(09:18) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:56) - Media/Software Synthesis
(10:54) - The Working Capital Accelerant
(11:57) - Klarna Fills in the Gaps
(12:28) - Younger SPAC Targets
(13:24) - Consumer-Facing DeFi

BuzzFeed and the Platform Squeeze

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 09:25:14 -0600

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(00:00) - BuzzFeed and the Platform Squeeze
(07:37) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:16) - The Great Unclogging
(08:49) - The First-Party Data Gold Rush
(09:31) - Open Data
(10:12) - Bitcoin Loans
(10:55) - The Arms Race

What Happened to all the Diamonds in the Rough?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:01:21 -0600

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(00:00) - What Happened to all the Diamonds in the Rough?
(08:59) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:20) - A Different EV Network Effect
(11:16) - Supply Chain KPIs
(11:45) - The Underwriter's Loop and Cyber Risk Insurance
(12:40) - Pro-Regulation Tech
(13:44) - Local Chips, Global Companies

Defensive Monopolies

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 09:12:49 -0600

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(00:00) - Defensive Monopolies
(07:42) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:15) - Supply Chain Disruption and Retail Membership Programs
(10:14) - Evergrande and Unlimited Liability
(11:14) - Alameda Goes Direct
(12:02) - Off-Brand
(12:43) - State-sponsored VC

The Coming Carbon Short-Squeeze

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 09:00:55 -0600

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(00:00) - The Coming Carbon Short-Squeeze
(09:37) - The Streaming Race
(10:34) - Captive Banks
(11:09) - Construction Credit
(11:53) - Illiquidity Doesn't Always Pay
(12:46) - Instacart Shifts Further Towards Ads

The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 08:47:34 -0500

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(00:00) - The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization
(12:04) - Valuation Arbitrage
(12:47) - Labor Liquidity
(13:52) - Pricing Power

What's a Ponzi Scheme? What Isn't?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 08:20:44 -0500

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(00:00) - What's a Ponzi Scheme? What Isn't?
(08:39) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:14) - Meta
(13:18) - ROE and CAPM
(15:49) - Expensive Cheap Energy

Blimps, Bots, and the Future of Cargo

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 08:18:51 -0500

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(00:00) - Blimps, Bots, and the Future of Cargo
(07:45) - Bitcoin's Long March: Pensions
(08:40) - Last Mile
(09:20) - Google's Laffer-Style Tax Cut
(10:38) - Sales

FedEx: Two Bets on Network Effects

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 08:27:25 -0500

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(00:00) - FedEx: Two Bets on Network Effects
(07:24) - Aging Into Owning the Metaverse
(08:14) - Fake Reviews
(08:47) - Ads and Addicts
(09:53) - Coal

Discourses on Big Tech

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 07:49:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Discourses on Big Tech
(21:03) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(22:06) - Sticky Wage Growth
(23:04) - The Coal Boom
(23:55) - Equity and Collateral
(24:59) - Building an Apple Car vs Appleifying a Built Car

Your Life is (Almost) a Call Option

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 07:29:10 -0500

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(00:00) - Your Life is (Almost) a Call Option
(09:29) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:32) - Reactive Strategy
(12:00) - Working it Out
(13:30) - Standardizing the Metaverse
(14:11) - Probability
(14:39) - When Payments Work

Identity and the Login: Who Owns "Who's That?"

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 07:00:32 -0500

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(00:00) - Identity and the Login: Who Owns "Who's That?"
(08:28) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:08) - Facebook Apologetics
(11:13) - Food Delivery and Unit Economics
(12:38) - More Air Taxis
(13:11) - Business and China

Yandex: Google Through the Looking Glass

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 07:59:27 -0500

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(00:00) - Yandex: Google Through the Looking Glass
(10:42) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:16) - Shifting the Curve
(12:26) - Where Housing Demand Comes From
(12:50) - Throughput
(13:33) - Lobbying
(14:38) - Customer Service-as-a-Service

Modern Financial History Begins in 1998

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 07:24:31 -0500

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(00:00) - Modern Financial History Begins in 1998
(11:00) - Two Turnarounds
(12:07) - Smart Glasses
(13:23) - Credit Cards, Spending, and Splurging
(14:03) - The Cyclical CEO Condition
(15:07) - Permanent Pricing

Globalized Talent and the Brand Grab

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 06:30:03 -0500

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(00:00) - Globalized Talent and the Brand Grab
(07:33) - Developing Vietnam
(08:58) - Liquidity, Discount Rates, and Theft
(09:41) - Shortages
(11:05) - Pigs and OPEC
(12:02) - Statistical Privacy

Freshworks' Efficient Frontiers

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 06:30:05 -0500

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(00:00) - Freshworks' Efficient Frontiers
(06:07) - Ad Bugs
(07:09) - A Money Market Modest Proposal
(08:06) - Restructuring China Tech
(08:58) - Shrinking Shrinkage
(09:42) - Limits to Copying

Warby Parker and EssilorLuxottica: Irresistible Force, Immovable Object

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 08:14:03 -0500

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(00:00) - Warby Parker and EssilorLuxottica: Irresistible Force, Immovable Object
(07:27) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:11) - Cutting the Apple Tax
(09:52) - Messaging
(11:10) - China and Security
(12:32) - Cyber Risk and Coordination
(13:12) - CEO Training

The Dividend Futures Disaster Revisited: Anatomy of a Very Bad Trade

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 08:22:24 -0500

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(00:00) - The Dividend Futures Disaster Revisited: Anatomy of a Very Bad Trade
(11:13) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:52) - What's Big on Facebook
(12:43) - OnlyClothed?
(15:24) - Elite Overproduction as Risk Aversion
(16:11) - A Second Cleantech Boom
(17:29) - Chip Consolidation
(18:00) - Channel Shifts and Comp

Magalu: Inside Brazils' Omnichannel Powerhouse

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 07:33:00 -0500

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(00:00) - Magalu: Inside Brazils' Omnichannel Powerhouse
(06:34) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:16) - The Privacy/Security/Centralization Axes
(08:18) - Factors of Production
(09:27) - VPNs and Streaming Price Discrimination
(10:41) - The Belt and Road Alternative
(11:32) - Privacy and Tradeoffs

You And Your Investment Research

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 08:18:29 -0500

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(00:00) - You And Your Investment Research
(11:48) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(12:26) - A Successful IPO from Robinhood
(13:39) - Convergence
(14:47) - Underinvestment
(15:55) - Consumer-Friendly Defaults
(17:08) - The Amazon Rollup Boom

Taking Strategy Seriously

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 08:21:24 -0500

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(00:00) - Taking Strategy Seriously
(09:06) - Streaming as Instant Gratification
(10:39) - Batteries
(11:42) - Shrinking Analyst Teams
(12:33) - Diffident Voters
(13:28) - Oil, Recapitalized

Newsletters Can Move Markets

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:26:39 -0500

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(00:00) - Newsletters Can Move Markets
(10:34) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:12) - "Real Men Have Fabs"
(12:03) - Rollups
(12:54) - Platform Control
(13:46) - Outperformance
(15:04) - Chips and China
(16:27) - Double Zero

Illumina: "View Source" for Life

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 08:48:41 -0500

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(00:00) - Illumina: "View Source" for Life
(10:17) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:55) - The Balance Sheet-Constrained Bank
(11:59) - The Global Kuznets Curve in Action
(12:35) - Net Zero
(13:30) - Real-Time
(14:35) - Aviations Big Two (Plus One)

The Robinhood Challenge

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 08:51:07 -0500

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(00:00) - The Robinhood Challenge
(12:38) - Another Gulf Carrier?
(13:37) - Air Buyout
(14:06) - The AI Layer
(14:50) - Didi and Information Asymmetry
(15:53) - Strategic SPACs

Chumboxes or Trust-Busters? Taboola and Outbrain

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 07:00:47 -0500

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(00:00) - Chumboxes or Trust-Busters? Taboola and Outbrain
(12:07) - Sticky Wages
(12:46) - Robinhood!
(13:53) - Search Engines
(15:09) - 1-to-M-of-N Secret Sharing
(16:02) - Housing

We are All Buffettologists Now

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 07:00:40 -0500

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(00:00) - We are All Buffettologists Now

Shifting the Global Kuznets Curve: Why Climate Matters More

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 08:32:28 -0500

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(00:00) - Shifting the Global Kuznets Curve: Why Climate Matters More
(09:32) - Online-to-Offline
(10:20) - Consolidation
(11:10) - Unintended Consequences
(12:02) - Supply Chains as Banking Systems
(13:22) - International Software Nationalism

A Normal Country?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 10:01:40 -0500

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(00:00) - A Normal Country?
(27:18) - Negative-Marginal-Cost Billboards
(28:17) - Spillovers
(28:44) - Piecemeal Privatization
(29:25) - Financial Protectionism

Prediction Markets and Worse is Better

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 07:30:16 -0500

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(00:00) - Prediction Markets and Worse is Better
(09:18) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:56) - De-Dollarization on Paper
(10:56) - The Amazon Bundle
(12:05) - The Extension Market
(13:10) - Zombie Airlines
(14:03) - Supersonic
(15:25) - Fractal Fraud

Paradox Interactive, The Little Big Media Conglomerate

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 28 May 2021 08:00:10 -0500

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(00:00) - Paradox Interactive, The Little Big Media Conglomerate
(09:14) - Millennials: Not Poor, But Levered
(10:32) - Vaccine Markets
(12:09) - Only Chamath can go to the SEC Headquarters
(13:33) - Reigning Over Big Tech in China
(15:08) - Investment Boom
(16:29) - Archegos and SPACs

The Economics of Pseudonymity

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 21 May 2021 08:10:33 -0500

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(00:00) - The Economics of Pseudonymity
(13:31) - Fungible Energy Jobs
(14:48) - Robinhood's Other IPO News
(16:00) - Financial Engineering in Home Improvement
(16:31) - The Case for Steeply Progressive Ad Taxes
(18:15) - Like OPEC In a Good Way

Building Parallel Financial Systems

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 14 May 2021 09:37:54 -0500

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(00:00) - Building Parallel Financial Systems
(11:46) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(12:24) - Tethers and Dollars
(15:08) - The Hotel Shortage
(16:01) - The Credit Reopening
(17:01) - Ransomware Acceleration
(18:20) - Churn, Margins, and Habits

Crypto as an Overheated Emerging Market

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 11 May 2021 08:27:35 -0500

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(00:00) - Crypto as an Overheated Emerging Market
(11:03) - Rolling Blackouts, Floating Power Plants
(11:48) - Scalable Review Fraud
(12:42) - The Risk of Writing Options
(13:55) - Socially Responsible Hackers

Stripe and Solid-State Economics

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 07 May 2021 08:56:33 -0500

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(00:00) - Stripe and Solid-State Economics
(35:50) - Hulu's Regulatory Arbitrage
(36:48) - Post-Archegos
(38:07) - Patents
(40:20) - Emissions: a Global Problem

The 2x2 Inflation Debate

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 09:35:19 -0500

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(00:00) - The 2x2 Inflation Debate
(08:20) - Valuementum
(09:34) - Quants and Lumber
(10:29) - Cheap Hacks
(12:16) - Tax Adjustment

Surviving a Combinatorial Explosion

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 08:46:30 -0500

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(00:00) - Surviving a Combinatorial Explosion
(07:29) - Sanctions, Cautiously
(08:16) - Adtech Always Adds Layers
(09:19) - Unfundable Mines
(09:55) - Less Marginal Business

Cloudflare's Intelligent Design

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 08:06:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Cloudflare's Intelligent Design
(10:30) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:11) - Travel Recovery
(12:08) - Targeted Restrictions
(13:05) - Another Retail Ad Product
(13:40) - Semi-Public

Decoupling, Digital Currency, and the Consumer of Last Resort

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 07:20:29 -0500

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(00:00) - Decoupling, Digital Currency, and the Consumer of Last Resort
(08:30) - A SPAC Modest Proposal
(09:49) - Scraping for Profit
(10:39) - Post-Cookie
(12:06) - Best Buy Bundle
(12:51) - Debt is Here
(14:27) - The Short-Selling Cycle

Partial Deregulation as an Antipattern

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 07:36:14 -0500

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(00:00) - Partial Deregulation as an Antipattern
(08:57) - China's Inflation Inflection
(09:51) - The Next Amazon IPO
(10:29) - The First Shopify Pivot
(11:25) - The Other Two Supply Chains
(12:34) - Non-Monolithic China

Electrocloud!

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:04:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Electrocloud!
(20:14) - IPO Demand Curves
(20:54) - Blackout Insurance
(21:56) - Theaters and the Streaming Option
(22:32) - Easy Comps
(23:28) - Permanent Shifts

Where Apple Can Own I/O

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 09:07:04 -0500

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(00:00) - Where Apple Can Own I/O
(00:13) - The Great Inflation
(00:54) - Two-Way API Businesses
(01:46) - Zoom and Cities: The Five-Century-Old Case Study
(02:48) - From ETrade to eToro
(03:37) - Hardware-as-a-Service

The Value of Time Rounds to Either Zero or Infinity

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 09:59:45 -0500

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(00:00) - The Value of Time Rounds to Either Zero or Infinity
(07:36) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:15) - Limits to Hardware-as-a-Service
(09:29) - Shareholder Activism in Japan
(10:34) - Flipping (pt 1)
(12:20) - Flipping (pt 2)
(13:03) - Better Disclosure

What Salesforce is Selling (and Buying)

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 11:46:41 -0600

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(00:00) - What Salesforce is Selling (and Buying)
(11:49) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(12:21) - Multilateral Vaccine Diplomacy
(13:18) - State Capacity Straussianism
(14:02) - Bicameral Diplomacy
(15:25) - Chip Insourcing, Slowly
(16:44) - Password Price Discrimination

Understanding Coinbase

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 12:34:47 -0600

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(00:00) - Understanding Coinbase
(12:15) - Security
(13:25) - Different Abstractions
(15:15) - Facebook Futurism
(16:13) - SPAC Apathy

IBM: The Center of Gravity

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:43:15 -0600

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(00:00) - IBM: The Center of Gravity
(15:47) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(16:21) - Price Signals
(17:28) - Texas Energy's Banking Crisis
(18:43) - Greensill's Arbitrage(s)
(20:05) - Which Long Run?
(21:29) - The Supply-Side/Demand-Side Seesaw

What Happened in Texas

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 12:05:02 -0600

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(00:00) - What Happened in Texas
(19:38) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(20:39) - Technology Prosthetics
(21:47) - Brutal Coopetition
(22:58) - From Quotation System to Market-Maker
(24:29) - GameStop Risk
(25:37) - The Bull Market in Conservation

Three Bull Cases for Starlink

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 12:25:53 -0600

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(00:00) - Three Bull Cases for Starlink
(09:11) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:49) - Distributed Business Clusters
(10:27) - More on Texas
(12:07) - The India Model
(13:06) - Clean Shipping
(13:40) - Price Discrimination

Why Did One Internet Subculture Spot Covid-19 So Early?

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 17:56:35 -0600

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(00:00) - Why Did One Internet Subculture Spot Covid-19 So Early?
(04:37) - Deep Freeze

An Airline IPO? In This Economy?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 10:03:11 -0600

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(00:00) - An Airline IPO? In This Economy?
(08:17) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:40) - Facebook vs Bullying
(09:19) - Scale and AI
(10:09) - Chip Shortage Updates
(11:30) - Decarbonization
(12:07) - Supermicro, Redux
(13:35) - The Value of Safety: A Natural Experiment

Four Refoundings

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 09:16:08 -0600

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(00:00) - Four Refoundings
(15:50) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(16:03) - The Other Bitcoin Standard
(17:16) - Carbon Updates
(18:23) - Loyalty and Information
(19:02) - The Chip Shortage
(20:51) - Stimulus: How Much is Too Much?

Messaging Wars, Round Two

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 10:37:20 -0600

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(00:00) - Messaging Wars, Round Two
(08:38) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:16) - GameStop
(12:55) - Too Much of a Good Thing
(14:48) - Controlled Boom
(15:39) - Decarbonizing
(16:11) - Taiwan and China
(16:42) - Local News

The Road Not Taken: Stripe, Ant, PayTM & Defi

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 11:16:46 -0600

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(00:00) - The Road Not Taken: Stripe, Ant, PayTM & Defi
(21:26) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(21:57) - Facebook's Outsourcing Moderation
(22:47) - Amazon's Outsourced SEO
(23:40) - Scarce and Free Resources
(24:35) - Moderating Social (Pt 3)
(25:28) - Business Travel and Veblen
(26:24) - Intel's Semi-Hack

The Technocrats' Recovery

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 11:13:36 -0600

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(00:00) - The Technocrats' Recovery
(06:51) - Big Tech Sees Like a State Update
(08:08) - Why Don't Car Subscriptions Work?
(08:53) - Taylorism-as-a-Service
(09:53) - The Semiconductor Boom
(10:38) - R&D and the Genius Problem

Homesteading Mental Models

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 11:24:49 -0600

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(00:00) - Homesteading Mental Models
(07:08) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:47) - Robinhood's Plot to Make IPOs Less Exciting
(09:03) - Momentum-Squared and Value-Squared
(10:32) - Dollar-Weighted Returns
(11:36) - Blocking Trump
(13:00) - Meta-Bundles
(13:33) - Commercial Ties

What's Happening in Logistics

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 10:29:38 -0600

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(00:00) - What's Happening in Logistics
(09:43) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:15) - Infohazards
(11:20) - How The Grinchbots Steal Inflation
(12:54) - The Hack Expands
(13:59) - AR and the Physical/Digital Switch
(14:56) - Antitrust and Real Interest Rates

DoNotPay: The API for IRL

Byrne Hobart — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 10:44:10 -0600

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(00:00) - DoNotPay: The API for IRL
(06:11) - The Index
(08:05) - Twitter: Subscale
(09:34) - Chaos Engineering
(10:12) - Space Law
(11:45) - The Login Layer

Sharing and Owning Standards

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 10:45:24 -0600

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(00:00) - Sharing and Owning Standards
(09:08) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:38) - More Institutional Bitcoin
(10:16) - The Latest Asset to Trade at Negative Prices
(10:50) - Facial Recognition
(11:27) - Recursive Product Development
(12:21) - Every Tech Company Becomes a Bank
(13:25) - Can Anyone Afford for Robinhood Not to Underwrite IPOs?

Taiwan and Supply Chain Frenmity

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 12:07:05 -0600

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(00:00) - Taiwan and Supply Chain Frenmity
(10:50) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:28) - Airline Green Zones
(12:29) - Short Sellers and the Supply Chain of Information
(13:49) - Housing and Pull-Forward Demand
(14:57) - Facebook and Visa Arbitrage

Just One Thing or Every Single Thing?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 10:53:32 -0600

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(00:00) - Just One Thing or Every Single Thing?
(10:42) - Media Disintermediation
(12:16) - Amazon's Tactical PR, Con't.
(12:54) - Roll Your Own Green Zone

Wish: E-Commerce, Fast and Slow

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 11:24:32 -0600

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(00:00) - Wish: E-Commerce, Fast and Slow
(08:30) - Online-to-Offline
(09:39) - Less Than $10 Per Month
(10:22) - Movie Lots
(10:48) - Taxes and Incentives
(11:33) - Unfairness

Roblox: Tweenage Mutant MMT-ers

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 11:03:46 -0600

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(00:00) - Roblox: Tweenage Mutant MMT-ers
(08:46) - The Gini Coefficient Bull Case for SaaS
(09:58) - Big Banks as Common Carriers
(11:10) - Yuan Bonds
(12:24) - In-House Chips
(13:21) - Understanding Consulting

What’s Gold For?

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 12:08:33 -0600

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(00:00) - What’s Gold For?
(15:11) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(16:00) - Bitcoin, Flows, Autochthony
(17:01) - Digital Media, Distribution, Autochthony
(17:43) - Leaving “Little Taipei”
(18:44) - Scrap

Understanding Airbnb

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 11:47:08 -0600

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(00:00) - Understanding Airbnb
(12:42) - Measuring Eyeballs
(13:29) - Property Rights
(15:05) - Reputational Bug Bounties
(16:08) - Running Out the Clock on Tariffs

How Bubbles and Megaprojects Parallelize Innovation

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 11:27:42 -0600

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(00:00) - How Bubbles and Megaprojects Parallelize Innovation
(10:52) - Vaccine Economics and Emerging Markets' Tough Choices
(11:58) - Big Tech and the Missing Middle in Emerging Asia
(14:17) - The Personal, The Political, and Ant
(15:08) - Form, Function, and Ads
(16:40) - Understanding Value's Underperformance

Big Tech Sees Like a State

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 11:32:26 -0600

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(00:00) - Big Tech Sees Like a State
(14:34) - Pirate's Treasure, Redux
(15:23) - Takedowns
(16:10) - Antitrust and Laggy Beliefs
(16:51) - Money, The High-Order Bit
(17:44) - Perceptual Arbitrage in Crowdfunding
(18:50) - Covid and the Talent Shift

Media Refragmentation and Funnel Capture

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 10:55:23 -0600

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(00:00) - Media Refragmentation and Funnel Capture
(05:57) - Disaggregation and Reaggregation in Fundraising
(06:45) - Separation of Powers
(07:29) - The Mortgage IPO Boom
(08:10) - Multichannel Retail
(09:13) - Recursive R(t), Redux
(09:52) - Case Studies in Central Bank Fiscal Policy

Hardware-as-a-Service

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 10:42:13 -0500

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(00:00) - Hardware-as-a-Service
(10:08) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:45) - The Muni Crisis
(12:46) - Worker Mobility
(14:03) - Supply Shocks

Engineering a Conglomerate

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 10:01:42 -0500

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(00:00) - Engineering a Conglomerate
(09:18) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:50) - Pretty Bad Privacy
(11:31) - Exercising the Whistleblower Option
(12:13) - Who Owns Streamed Games?
(13:08) - Rebooting Transit
(13:45) - Palantir
(14:59) - Tech Sees Like a State
(15:49) - Rationalists and Thymos

The WeWork Arc

Byrne Hobart — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 09:40:00 -0500

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(00:00) - The WeWork Arc
(07:26) - Amazon's Third-Party Data
(08:14) - The Lucas Critique in Finance
(09:20) - Matching the Huawei Strategy
(10:02) - Froth
(10:52) - Demand and Logistics

How the Pandemic is Fixing Some of the Real Estate Market's Flaws

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 10:22:09 -0500

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(00:00) - How the Pandemic is Fixing Some of the Real Estate Market's Flaws
(06:32) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:11) - Measuring the World's Largest Economy
(08:14) - Showrooming and Retail
(09:58) - Google Continues to Disaggregate Pages
(10:43) - Canada Policy Goes Post-Covid
(11:18) - The Bus Factor
(11:56) - Retro Trade Policy
(12:52) - Payments and the Acquisition Option

Inside the House Report on Big Tech and Competition: Part II

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 09:56:56 -0500

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(00:00) - Inside the House Report on Big Tech and Competition: Part II
(21:57) - Yelp’s Crypto-Coinbase Moment
(22:50) - Life at a Hypergrowth Startup
(25:38) - Square and Bitcoin
(26:15) - Driverless
(27:21) - Local Champions and Good Globalization
(28:04) - China’s Domestic Consumption Push

The Gamer/Arbitrageur to Generalist Pipeline

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 10:06:52 -0500

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(00:00) - The Gamer/Arbitrageur to Generalist Pipeline
(06:15) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(06:52) - Office Politics, Redux
(08:53) - Vaccine as Perk
(10:13) - Who Owns User Data?
(10:53) - Tech Sees Like a State, Test-and-Trace Edition
(11:36) - Conflicts of Interest
(12:18) - The Negotiate-With-Hackers Hack
(12:51) - Small Deals and Stagnation

Surfing the Right S-Curve

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:35:36 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - Surfing the Right S-Curve
(10:43) - Google: Benefits and Retention
(11:21) - Tail Risk on Trial
(12:37) - A Theory of Policy Homogeneity
(13:38) - Procurement
(14:45) - Density Redistribution
(15:45) - Crisis Hormesis
(17:07) - The Other Derivatives Narrative

Big Tech at the End of History

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 10:05:07 -0500

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(00:00) - Big Tech at the End of History
(19:49) - Belt & Road & Vial
(20:55) - CCP and SMBs
(21:17) - Hire Fast, Transfer Fast
(21:52) - Life Imitates Science Fiction
(22:28) - Koanic SaaS Secrets
(23:00) - Interactive Brokers' Big Option Trade

Banking When You Can't Bank on Anything: Part 2

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 10:08:06 -0500

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(00:00) - Banking When You Can't Bank on Anything: Part 2
(09:18) - Inside Taiwan's Covid Response
(11:15) - Defense Tech
(12:34) - The Right Amount of Fraud
(13:18) - Prizes
(13:51) - The Airshow
(14:20) - The Reliance Model
(14:49) - Moderation and Politics

Banking When You Can't Bank on Anything: Part 1

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:17:11 -0500

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(00:00) - Banking When You Can't Bank on Anything: Part 1
(09:51) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:29) - France's New Industrial Policy
(11:41) - China Exit Subsidies
(12:32) - China Chips
(13:23) - Basic Income With Right-Wing Populist Characteristics
(13:48) - Facebook's Election Redistribution
(14:34) - Antitrust Timing

Ant Group and China's Fitful Convergence

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 11:16:30 -0500

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(00:00) - Ant Group and China's Fitful Convergence
(08:26) - The Startup Cycle
(09:05) - Buybacks
(09:53) - Return-on-Kickback
(10:24) - Legalization
(11:06) - Housing
(11:31) - Big Tech, Monopolies, and Attack Surface
(12:50) - TikTok

Business Model Meta-Models

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 10:53:28 -0500

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(00:00) - Business Model Meta-Models
(12:17) - Fed Maximalism
(13:58) - CFOs Vocally but Passively Worried About Valuations
(15:09) - TikTok
(16:09) - Coming Soon: Experimental Data on IPO Unfairness
(17:16) - Death and Base Rates
(18:49) - Rapid Testing
(19:30) - The Other Wuhan Story
(20:01) - Politics in a One-Party State

Palantir: On Business, Cults, and Politics

Byrne Hobart — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 10:07:36 -0500

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(00:00) - Palantir: On Business, Cults, and Politics
(16:36) - Wirecard's Scramble & Gamble
(17:53) - Global Yuan?
(18:32) - The Housing Boom
(18:56) - Financial Education for the Soon-to-be 1%
(19:29) - Alphabet Insurance

Amazon: A New Kind of Antitrust Risk

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 09:41:44 -0500

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(00:00) - Amazon: A New Kind of Antitrust Risk
(15:55) - PPE Nationalism, Vaccine Internationalism
(16:54) - A Macro Renaissance?
(19:37) - Tech Sees Like a State: Parties, Fires
(20:13) - Technology-Governance Fit
(22:16) - China’s (Internal) Immigration Reform

Newsletters and New Media Economics

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 09:58:46 -0500

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(00:00) - Newsletters and New Media Economics
(12:05) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(12:42) - Fortnite, Apple, and Platform Wars
(15:06) - Apple's Other App Problem
(15:43) - Theaters Restart the Two-Sided Network
(16:18) - Singapore, Reconsidered
(17:54) - Wealth Taxes and Peak California
(18:46) - A16Z Revisits AI Economics
(19:31) - Bullet Trains and China Stimulus

Working in Public and the Economics of Free

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 08:08:14 -0500

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(00:00) - Working in Public and the Economics of Free
(08:33) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:12) - Household Delevering
(09:35) - More Alternative Lending
(10:33) - It's Time to Build in Britain
(11:22) - Pinduoduo
(12:19) - Industrial Espionage in Taiwan
(13:13) - Executive Orders
(14:27) - Executive Orders, Con't.
(15:11) - Executive Orders, Pt. 3

To Understand Jio, You Need To Understand Reliance

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 08:08:27 -0500

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(00:00) - To Understand Jio, You Need To Understand Reliance
(11:15) - Earnings
(12:30) - Amazon Sees For the State
(12:51) - Gerontocracy
(13:56) - M&A in Kids YouTube
(15:07) - Monopolists Still Compete
(16:48) - China, Infrastructure, and Risk-On
(17:43) - Fintech is all about CAC, Part #1281241
(18:25) - Dollar Shortages, At Home And Abroad
(19:45) - Second Acts

The Bullwhip Effect

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 08:06:09 -0500

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(00:00) - The Bullwhip Effect
(09:11) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(09:48) - State Capacity Liquidationism
(11:24) - Hong Kong: Still a Financial Center
(11:48) - More of the Infrastructure Long Game
(12:42) - Big Tech Plays Hardball With Big Data

SPACs as a Call Option on Hype

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 07:07:48 -0500

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(00:00) - SPACs as a Call Option on Hype
(10:26) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(11:04) - More on the Twitter Hack
(11:30) - Corruption, Liquor, and the China Bubble
(12:25) - Q/Q^4 != Y/Y
(13:11) - Wolf Warrior Diplomats to Puppydog Plenipotentiaries
(15:48) - More Evidence That the Next Stimulus Round Will be Slow
(16:54) - Keeping the Big City Network Effect Alive

The Hack: When Crime Pays Fractions of a Penny on the Dollar

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 08:30:48 -0500

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(00:00) - The Hack: When Crime Pays Fractions of a Penny on the Dollar
(08:52) - Jio!
(09:21) - The Bans: Huawei Employees. Party Members? Dollars?
(11:25) - Slacktivism at the New York Times
(13:12) - Slackifying Gmail
(13:30) - Micro PE vs Value Capture
(14:44) - Airbnb: Somewhat Back

The Depressing Bull Thesis for Rocket Mortgage

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 07:51:38 -0500

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(00:00) - The Depressing Bull Thesis for Rocket Mortgage
(07:37) - China Equities: Not 2015 Yet
(09:30) - Twitter by Subscription
(10:02) - Oil as a Currency Area
(11:10) - Decoupling
(11:56) - Recoupling?

In Defense of Hiring Based on Side Projects

Byrne Hobart — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 07:13:56 -0500

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(00:00) - In Defense of Hiring Based on Side Projects
(08:53) - Companies as Narrative Arcs
(09:21) - Live Data and Pandemic Stimulus
(10:52) - Trucking Bailout
(11:30) - "Did a Chinese Hack Kill Canada’s Greatest Tech Company?"
(12:01) - Facebook on Boycotts; Journalists on Facebook
(13:08) - Rebuilding Hong Kong
(14:01) - Pure-Plays and Reputational Risk

Software, Full-Stack, and Sumo Startups

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 07:20:41 -0500

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(00:00) - Software, Full-Stack, and Sumo Startups
(07:29) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(08:33) - Google Paying Publishers
(09:25) - National Champions
(10:51) - Quant Crowding
(11:45) - Compare and Contrast
(12:30) - Working Capital
(13:17) - Stimulus Checks for the Dead
(14:12) - Social Credit
(14:36) - More Browser Commoditization
(15:05) - QVC Returns

Free Press vs Free Expression

Byrne Hobart — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 07:34:08 -0500

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(00:00) - Free Press vs Free Expression
(10:27) - The Apocalypses That Weren't
(11:20) - Bureaucracy APIs
(12:16) - Big Tech Sees Like a State
(13:01) - Facebook's Prediction Markets
(13:53) - Outflanking Carta
(14:22) - Japan and Corporate Espionage

The Invention of Postwar Europe

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:32:17 -0500

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(00:00) - The Invention of Postwar Europe
(06:20) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(06:48) - Identity (pt 1)
(07:49) - Identity (pt 2)
(08:44) - Google Outsources the Ultra-Long-Tail
(09:30) - YouTube and the Influencers
(10:09) - Putin on Geopolitics
(10:38) - Tech and Externalities
(11:40) - The German Enron

Communications, Commerce, and Money as the High-Order Bit

Byrne Hobart — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 06:45:52 -0500

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(00:00) - Communications, Commerce, and Money as the High-Order Bit
(07:29) - Levered Pensions
(09:26) - Bankrupt Stocks: Not a Great Bet
(10:03) - Chip Wars
(11:29) - The Fame Market
(12:10) - Inflation and Missing Prices

Lemonade: Solving the Market for Lemons

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 06:55:25 -0500

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(00:00) - Lemonade: Solving the Market for Lemons
(11:55) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(12:35) - Zoom Transpacific Problem
(13:29) - Drawdowns
(15:39) - Chris Cox Returns to Facebook
(16:30) - Reopening and Stay-Opening
(17:37) - Short Laws
(18:11) - Tech Astroturf
(18:59) - Partner Banks
(19:17) - Hertz's Plan to Wipe Out Slightly More Shareholders

Incumbents, Not Startups, Are Regulatory Arbitrageurs

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 06:06:15 -0500

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(00:00) - Incumbents, Not Startups, Are Regulatory Arbitrageurs
(07:07) - Limits to Automation
(08:22) - Silver Lake
(09:58) - 1830, 1930, 2030
(10:35) - Google Dissolves the Webpage
(11:11) - Globalizing Cybersecurity
(11:58) - Private Equity in 401Ks

The Bloomberg Terminal Shows How to Create Virtual Economic Cluster

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 29 May 2020 06:00:51 -0500

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(00:00) - The Bloomberg Terminal Shows How to Create Virtual Economic Cluster
(06:13) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(07:10) - Big Tech M&A
(07:54) - Europe Reopens for Vacation Season
(08:19) - Reverse Hong Kong
(09:05) - Microsoft Subsidiary Disrupts Microsoft Subsidiary
(09:48) - Airbnb for Warehouse Space
(10:29) - A16Z on Accounting Versus Economics
(12:03) - How Social Engineering Drives Technology
(13:48) - Systematic Value, Re-Revisited
(14:24) - How Stripe Scales Remote

You Learn From Good Businesses and Bad Trades

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 22 May 2020 06:00:55 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - You Learn From Good Businesses and Bad Trades
(13:45) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(14:31) - ByteDance
(15:00) - Clubhouse
(15:56) - What's China Up To?
(17:25) - The Cloud
(18:25) - Facebook Goes More Remote
(19:04) - Italy's Financial Engineering

Bretton Woods Revisited

Byrne Hobart — Mon, 18 May 2020 06:00:43 -0500

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(00:00) - Bretton Woods Revisited
(10:37) - Facebook/Giphy
(12:21) - Africa and Covid-19
(13:02) - China, Chips
(13:38) - Italy Doesn't Plan to Miss Tourist Season
(14:12) - Good Bubbles

The Future of Remote Work is not That Remote

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 15 May 2020 06:00:38 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - The Future of Remote Work is not That Remote
(09:28) - A Word From Our Sponsors
(10:06) - Multilateralism
(11:01) - Unilatéralisme
(11:58) - 51% of Ad Dollars Spent, Not Wasted
(12:35) - Domestic Fabs
(13:27) - Google Privatizes the Web
(14:08) - Restaurant Software; Restaurants as Software

VC and Public Choice: Logo-Hunting and Optionality

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 08 May 2020 06:00:28 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - VC and Public Choice: Logo-Hunting and Optionality
(07:11) - Negative Oil Futures: Almost Precedented
(08:41) - Uber: Meet the New Boss
(10:39) - Zoom Makes Progress
(11:22) - California Approaches a 2009-Level Deficit
(11:53) - Quantifying Gouging
(12:30) - This Time is Different

V-Shaped Recovery for Me, L-Shaped Recovery for Thee: The Aftermath

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 01 May 2020 06:00:35 -0500

This is an audio version of the free newsletter. Read the newsletter at thediff.co, and subscribe for an additional 3 posts (and podcasts!) per week.

(00:00) - V-Shaped Recovery for Me, L-Shaped Recovery for Thee: The Aftermath
(07:29) - Supply Chains and Deflationary Bullwhip Effects
(08:25) - Microsoft Commoditizes the Complement
(09:25) - "I think this is the future"
(09:57) - Apple's Demographic Crunch
(10:30) - State Bailouts
(11:11) - Adpocalypse: Bad News and Green Shoots

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Airline Fuel Hedges

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 06:00:38 -0500

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(00:00) - The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Airline Fuel Hedges
(09:23) - Amazon's Decentralization and Reputational Risk
(10:37) - More Adpocalypse
(11:30) - Tax Policy as Accidental Industrial Policy
(12:47) - More Clever Policy Plans

Sparta, LARPs, and Ivies

Byrne Hobart — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 06:00:47 -0500

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(00:00) - Sparta, LARPs, and Ivies
(04:57) - Out-Aggregating Amazon
(05:24) - YC Undoes Something That Doesn’t Scale