Helping front office teams grow better

Here you’ll find an archive of Nathanael’s weekly email. In it, he features an essay and curated reading on technology + marketing + simplicity.

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Why to Avoid Becoming a Brand - Issue #326

It's probably the crusty Mainer in me, but I like playing the contrarian. I get almost the same juice from the things I do not do as from the things I do. It makes me more than a little smug to say that I'm not on Instagram (or Facebook or Tiktok); I'm such a hipster that I gave up social media for Lent in 2006 (but I definitely posted about it on social media to get those classic thumbs-ups).

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Two Jim Fallows on Jimmy Carter - Issue #325

History may not repeat, but it rhymes. It's not hard to see the echoes of the 1970s today: inflation, foreign wars, recalibrating political coalitions, one-term GOP presidents... there may be lessons to learn from what happened then to what might happen now.

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Is there something wrong with big companies? - Issue #324

This week has been a pretty busy one for me: I spent the week doing the normal consulting of my HubSpot customers and preparing my team to cover that work during my 30-day sabbatical, which starts today. It's part of the fairly cushy benefits you get when working for a software company: after five years of unlimited vacation, I'm granted a 30-day sabbatical.

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Why people like to chat with bots - Issue #322

Whenever you see hockey-stick growth, you have to wonder why. In 2010, why did everything need to be a daily deals website? Why did every category suddenly need new luxury DTC brands? Why is everyone on Tiktok?

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Nostalgia vs. Progress vs. ? - Issue #321

Are things getting better or worse? By some measures, now is the best time ever to be alive: people have never been healthier or wealthier or longer-lived; by other measures, it seems grim: teenagers, especially girls, have never been more depressed or suicidal, and people of all ages report fewer real friends and participation in robust communities. We're coming apart, inside and out, at a time when we might expect to be doing our best.

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But will it scale? - Issue #320

People at a certain kind of growing software company are always asking if a thing will scale. You can win meetings by asking the question, "will it scale?" every so often.

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Generation to Generation - Issue #319

I'm a sucker for fake trends and the sorts of cool, simple explanations of complex phenomena that have to be mostly false. Generational analysis usually fits the latter category: the idea that all Americans born between 1995 and whenever share traits is a composition fallacy. Some of the "Greatest Generation" were cowards and some of the Boomers were selfless heroes: I don't think you can accurately and completely generalize groups of people by birth year.

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Nathanael's Reading

More than a hundred and fifty  people read the weekly email “Nathanael’s Reading,” which he’s sent every Friday since 2016. Nathanael includes original thoughts and curated reading on technology + marketing + simplicity. Subscribe by entering your email here