Best Articles I Wrote (2018 Edition)
I’ve already written up my favorite articles I read this year, and so it is time to talk about my favorite articles that I wrote this year.
I wrote 173 pieces for TechCrunch this year, covering a huge gamut of topics including the rise of China’s technological dominance, enterprise and infrastructure startups, and the changing nature of venture capital. It’s been quite a year!
Without too much ado, here are the top three articles and a couple of honorable mentions.
Top Articles
Subscription hell
Subscription is increasingly the default revenue model for software and media, but what happens to consumers when every single service we use requires an annual payment? Subscription Hell, basically. This was a cri de cœur for software developers and media executives to consider the anti-consumer nature of subscriptions, and in a follow-up piece, to consider the high costs of all of these aggregate subscriptions. I think subscriptions are vital for sustainability, but they also have to be aligned with consumer wallets. (1,420 words)
Digital nomads are hiring and firing their governments
Through a startup called Jobbatical, in-demand and talented workers are increasingly choosing where to work and live based on the amenities that are offered by governments. In the global battle for talent, the governments that do the best in attracting the top experts will see the most economic growth and status increase, which means that mobile talented workers have an unusually strong level of influence on these administrations. Expect to hear more about these changes in 2019. (1,840 words)
The death of once high-flying VC funds
This was a retrospective on the deaths of four well-known venture capital funds and what it says about Silicon Valley. A certain era of VC, with big images, audacious ideas, and bold agendas seems to have disappeared, and a new generation of managers is coming to the fore with a much more heads-down approach. That’s a healthy dynamic for the industry, but how long until these lessons are unlearned? (2,280 words)
Honorable Mentions
- HR has lost the trust of employees. Here is who has it now - New HR startups like Bravely are rebuilding HR from the ground up in the wake of sexual harassment and pay scandals that have rocked the profession.
- Algorithmic zoning could be the answer to cheaper housing and more equitable cities - Could machine learning ever help with land use design? An imaginative essay on what computers might be able to do for city planners.
- Programming as craft - An essay on what it means to code in the context of the book The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford.
- Special Report: New York’s enterprise infrastructure ecosystem - A deep dive into the world of infrastructure startups in NYC.
- Open source sustainability - There are multiple competing business models for open source, and this is a deep dive into the different arguments and incentives behind each.
- SoftBank’s debt obsession - SoftBank may be the loudest name in Silicon Valley today, but Masayoshi Son’s vision is fueled by crazy levels of debt.
Image by Jo Morcom used under Creative Commons.