Writing Review

A 2-post collection

This week saw several big news stories: the final, final repeal of Net Neutrality, the Time Warner-AT&T merger, the Kim-Trump summit, and the continued ups and downs of President Trump’s trade tariffs and ZTE penalties.

Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

This article went hyper-viral this week. It’s essential argument is that now that ISPs like AT&T and potentially Comcast have bought large content libraries, content companies like Netflix and YouTube (i.e. Alphabet) are going to have to get into the distribution business in order to compete effectively. That doesn’t mean they need to blanket the U.S., but a careful strategy of targeting the most lucrative markets for the biggest carriers could allow

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Writing Review for Week of June 4th, 2018

This week, I focused on several major Asia tech and finance stories that will radically reshape the divide between the U.S. and China. Several of these stories have been issues debated for years that are now seeing resolution, such as MSCI’s decision below. It’s a constant reminder in Silicon Valley that despite the region’s power in tech, many others around the world are plotting to compete effectively.

Xiaomi CDRs, SoftBank’s successors, and China’s Samsung investigation

China is launching a new financial vehicle known as Chinese Depository Receipts, which are mirrors of a similar vehicle in the United States known as American Depository Receipts. This mechanism allows local investors to invest in foreign companies, without the logistics of moving money

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Biography

I’m an editorial manager at TechCrunch, where I cover technology and power. Get in touch if you have a unique perspective on strategy, finance, or politics.

Formerly, I was a venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures and General Catalyst, a Harvard PhD dropout, and a graduate of Stanford in Mathematical and Computational Sciences.

Ethics

Please read my ethics disclosures.

Motto

Fortune favors the bold

Contact Me

My TechCrunch email is danny@techcrunch.com

Currently Reading

Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities

Reading Docket

Paul Scharre's Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War
Malka Older's State Tectonics
Cho Chongnae’s The Human Jungle

Updated June 12th, 2018

Send me book recommendations!

Recently Read

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Skin in the Game
Eliot Peper's Bandwidth
Suzy Hansen's Notes on a Foreign Country
Pankaj Mishra's From the Ruins of Empire
Dan Drezner's The Ideas Industry
Gideon Rachman's Easternization
Gary Rivlin's Katrina
Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Gabriel Wyner's Forever Fluent

Current Obsessions

Political Risk: The risk from elections, changes in government, war, etc. have seemed to increase signifniacntly in the last few years, and yet our tools to understand how political risk affects companies and individuals have remained stagnant. How can we revolutionize the field?
Competitive Cities: After Amazon's bid for its HQ2 got hundreds of proposals from cities across the United States, how might cities more efficiently use economic development dollars to create job growth? How can we analyze what works and what doesn't?
Cost Disease: Costs for many services in the US have skyrocketed, including industries as diverse as housing, health, education, and infrastructure. What is driving these prices, and what can be done to bring prices more in line with inflation in other industries?
New Approaches to Political Lobbying: Lobbying remains completely ancient compared to the technological change that has happened to nearly every other form of brokering industry. What can be done to improve its effectiveness, with the hope of improving access for all people to politicians.
Next-generation Media: Media businesses are still struggling, yet it is clear that a persistent focus on audience development and subscriptions is the way forward. What tools need to be built to bring this world to fruition faster?
Graph Databases and Learning: This is more broad-based – how can we use knowledge maps to improve learning (specifically thinking around foreign languages).

Danny Crichton