Ben Thompson says Taiwan was a Japanese colony for the first 50 years of the 20th century, which influenced Taipei's mixed-use layout.
“Taiwan was a Japanese colony for the first 50 years of the 20th century”
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Ben Thompson
2 episodes · 23 quoted claims
Ben Thompson says Booking.com aggregates hotels while itself being aggregated by Google, making it Google's biggest customer.
“they aggregate all hotels, but they are also aggregated by Google”
Ben Thompson says he argued that OpenAI could stop making models and still be among the world's most valuable companies because of ChatGPT.
“I put forward a few years ago that actually OpenAI could stop making models and be one of the most valuable companies in the world just because of ChatGPT.”
Ben Thompson says OpenAI's published ad principles state that ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers.
“they release their ad principles, right? Which is, our ads do not influence your answer.”
Ben Thompson says Twitter did little with its MoPub acquisition and handed it to AppLovin, which he says has since thrived with it.
“Now, Twitter was incompetent, so they did nothing with Mopub, gave it to AppleEvin, who's now ridden Mopub to like the top of the world.”
Ben Thompson says Mark Zuckerberg always wanted Facebook to be a platform, but Apple's control of phones forced it to be an app and lean into advertising.
“And Mark has always wanted to build a platform. And if you're just an app on a phone, you can't build a platform.”
Ben Thompson says that around 2015 he used Paul Krugman's fax machine quote to argue that too little interesting user content limited Meta's long-term potential.
“I brought up that quote around 2015 by saying this is a fundamental limiter on Meta's long-term potential.”
Ben Thompson says he tested TikTok searches for NBA teams from Taiwan and via a US VPN after Daryl Morey's Hong Kong tweet, and every team returned clips but the Houston Rockets.
“And I noticed that on TikTok, and this was from, I tested it from Taiwan and via VPN from the US. If you search for every single NBA team, you got NBA clips.”
Ben Thompson says the US passed a law banning TikTok, TikTok was not banned but sold, and ByteDance still controls its algorithm.
“we somehow do pass the law banning TikTok, and it didn't get banned. And now it is sold, but China still controls the algorithm.”
Ben Thompson says Stratechery reached his one-year goal of a thousand subscribers, a roughly $100,000 run rate, after six months.
“at six months I actually hit my one year goal which was a thousand subscribers, a thousand true fans 100,000 dollar run rate”
Ben Thompson says Stratechery gained 250 new subscribers, a 25 percent increase, within 24 hours of announcing it had hit his goal.
“the only step change in subscribers I've ever had in the next 24 hours. I got 250 new subscribers, 25 % increase.”
Ben Thompson says Andrew Sullivan, who he credits as an earlier paid-newsletter pioneer, went independent and earned around $1 million from a leaky paywall.
“He went independent. He was pretty successful. I think he did like around $1 million or something like that.”
Ben Thompson says more than half of Stratechery's subscribers are subscribed to its podcast.
“more than half my subscribers are subscribed to the podcast”
Ben Thompson says cable television began in small rural US towns that built shared towers to receive TV signals from big cities.
“And all of cable television started in small town, rural America to get TV from the big cities.”
Ben Thompson says Spotify could assemble its music bundle because it only had to negotiate with about four major rights holders.
“the reason why they were able to assemble the bundle is because they only needed to negotiate with like four entities.”
Ben Thompson says nearly all the cost of a chip fabrication plant is depreciation, so unused capacity is very damaging.
“Like basically 99 .9 % of the cost for a FAB is depreciation”
Ben Thompson says the memory market has three competitors, Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung, which pushes each to overbuild capacity and creates boom-bust cycles.
“There's three competitors in memory. If Micron doesn't do it, SK Hynix will. If SK Hynix doesn't do it, Samsung will.”
Ben Thompson says Apple prepaid for TSMC capacity during TSMC's large expansion in the 2010s.
“So Apple famously did a lot of this, sort of prepaid and particularly when TSMC was sort of expanding hugely in the 2010s.”
Ben Thompson says TSMC cut its capital spending two years in a row after ChatGPT launched, before raising it to 41 last year and about 60 this year.
“They actually decreased their capex year over year, two years in a row.”
Ben Thompson predicts a major chip shortage around 2029 because TSMC is expanding too slowly for AI demand.
“I think we're looking at a massive shortness in chips in 2029 or so”
Ben Thompson relays Mark Zuckerberg's remark that Facebook advertising is the largest and most successful agent in the world, because advertisers set a price per customer and Facebook delivers.
“actually the largest and most successful agent in the world today is Facebook advertising”
Ben Thompson says Amazon's own workloads are the biggest customer of its Graviton ARM CPU, a playbook he expects Amazon to repeat with its Trainium AI chip.
“I think the thing with Graviton, their ARM CPU, is who's the number one customer for Graviton? Amazon itself.”
Ben Thompson says that in Stripe's ACH implementation, a failed add-on to a team subscription cancels the entire plan.
“If that add-on fails, the entire plan gets canceled.”