My top essays from 2024

Hi readers,

I’m kicking off my writing in 2025 with a quick roundup of my “best of” essays list in case you missed anything from last year. Am proud that I managed to keep up some decent momentum on my writing over much of the year, and hope to do more in 2025 as well.

Top essays. Without further delay, here’s my top essays from 2024:

• How novelty effects and Dopamine Culture rule the tech industry: AI apps with shitty retention, consumers with zero patience, and what happens next

• The case against morning yoga, daily routines, and endless meetings: How to maximize 10x work and avoid thoughtless daily 1x work routines

• 10 years after "Growth Hacking": What's changed and what's new

• How AI will reinvent Marketing: What happens in a world of infinite labor, infinite content, and mass personalization

• Time sinks and money sinks: How business models drive product design and user behavior

• Why data-driven product decisions are hard (sometimes impossible): All the excuses we make when we see data, but why that's sometimes OK

• Why high growth, high churn products never seem to work: yes, D30 ends up dominating over random social media spikes

• The end of the 1 billion active user ad-supported consumer startup: And why highly-monetizing, useful, vertical apps might be the next thing

• Bureaucrat mode: The road to hell is paved via collaboration, consensus, inclusiveness, stability

• Always Be Launching: Because tbh no one gives a shit about your new product, anyway

• Why your product idea sounds too complicated: The "simple" to "WTF" scale of product complexity

Enjoy! Besides that, what am I up to? Here’s some updates.

Back in SF for a bit. We’re living in San Francisco for the next few months months as part of the a16z SPEEDRUN program, hanging out with founders from 45+ startups. We kicked off at the start of the year and have a demo day in late March, so it’s been great to work with an exceptional group of founders. The energy’s been great, and always nice to be back in town.

SE Asia holidays. We spent the holidays in SE Asia, which was a first for me. Flew in and out of Singapore, hung out with some great folks there, and then spend a few days in Sumatra, Cambodia, Laos, Hanoi/Vietnam, Bali, all while listening to audiobooks about the region. Learned a ton, and am glad to see some of these countries start to turn the corner after some dark years in decades past.

Reading. Managed to get through a bunch of nonfiction and fiction over the break. Wanted to list out a few:

• A City on Mars. Here’s a detailed discussion on what it actually takes to build a colony on Mars. tldr; it’s a lot more complicated than you’d think. Talks through everything from tech, societal issues, political issues, space law, etc.

• Things I’ll Never Forget, The Vietnam War, In the Dragon’s Shadow. Couple of the books we read on our trip, a memoir, a Ken Burns companion book, and a book discussing China’s relationship with each SE Asian country

• The Corporation That Changed the World. The history of the East India Company, including its initial formation, the competition with the Dutch (and their charter company, the VOC), how it worked, and their eventual decline. Super interesting in how it touched many parts of Asia including India, China, and SE Asia too.

• The Maniac. The history of John von Neumann, World War 2, AlphaGo, AI. What more could you want!??

• Lots of sci-fi, including Player of Games (Culture series, set in a post-AI/post-economic universe), Delta-V (space mining), Old Man’s War (military scifi), etc etc.

Fires in LA. And finally — I really appreciate many of you checking in on myself/family given the recent fires in LA. Luckily we live across town from the affected area, and have been in the Bay Area last few weeks. But obv we have many friends and colleagues that were directly affected. Really tragic. Anyway, thanks again for your kind notes.

Andrew
Lower Pac Heights, San Francisco, CA