Benedict Evans
ben-evans.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Benedict Evans, an independent tech analyst and former a16z partner, writes essays and a newsletter on tech industry trends.
What HN saysCommenters recommend it as long-form industry analysis, with one preferring it to Stratechery for being more insightful and less wordy.
402HN people shared it
111linked it in comments
605stories submitted
9.5Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Great Unbundling24 people · 391 points · first shared 2020 · 131 comments on HN
- 2Why Amazon Has No Profits, and Why It Works21 people · 25 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Homepage14 people · first shared 2013
- 4Newsletter11 people · first shared 2017
- 5Mobile, Ecosystems and the Death of PCs10 people · 24 points · first shared 2015 · 5 comments on HN
- 6Mobile, smartphones and hindsight9 people · 12 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 7How to lose a monopoly: Microsoft, IBM and anti-trust8 people · 17 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 8Not Even Wrong: Ways to Predict Tech8 people · 15 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 9Mobile is eating the world8 people · 13 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 10What's Amazon's market share? 35% or 5%?7 people · 189 points · first shared 2019 · 93 comments on HN
- 11Cars and second order consequences7 people · 127 points · first shared 2017 · 74 comments on HN
- 12Covid and Cascading Collapses7 people · 126 points · first shared 2020 · 63 comments on HN
- 13Amazon's Profits, AWS and Advertising7 people · 15 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 14How Will OpenAI Compete?7 people · 12 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 15Office, messaging and verbs7 people · 7 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
alberth · 2023-12-06
TechMeme (short-form industry news)
https://www.techmeme.com/m/
Benedict Evans (long-form industry news)
https://www.ben-evans.com/
Best of HN (tech specific)
https://news.ycombinator.com/best
tiffanyh · 2023-07-10
Highly recommend Benedict Evans.
https://www.ben-evans.com
I actually unsubscribed from Stratechery, and replaced it with Benefict Evans since I find it more insightful (and less wordy / more to the point).
sradman · 2021-01-30
Former a16z partner and now independent analyst, Benedict Evans [1]:
> Every year, I produce a big presentation digging into macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year, ‘The great Unbundling’.
This is a 134 slide presentation:
> Covid brought shock and a lot of broken habits to tech, but mostly, it accelerates everything that was already changing. 20 trillion dollars of retail, brands, TV and advertising is being overturned, and software is remaking everything from cars to pharma. Meanwhile, China has more smartphone users than Europe and the USA combined, and India is close behind - technology and innovation will be much more widely spread. For that and lots of other reasons, tech is becoming a regulated industry, but if we step over the slogans, what does that actually mean? Tech is entering its second 50 years.
[1] https://www.ben-evans.com/
verganileonardo · 2019-12-05
My favorite is Ben Evans' newsletter https://www.ben-evans.com/
krrrh · 2018-01-17
Benedict Evans’ newsletter on mobile and related tech (everything in tech is related) is quite good as a weekly round up of important stories, plus his own long form writing which is top notch. [1]
Ben Thompson’s Stratechery is good too. More hit and miss because it’s mostly his original hot takes, but frequently insightful. [2]
[1] Subscribe at bottom https://www.ben-evans.com
[2] Also a blog I guess, hit menu and subscribe by email. https://stratechery.com
light_triad · 2025-02-18
If you've been in SV long enough, you've seen multiple hype cycles. AI is the latest one. It doesn't mean AI is a con, there's just a tendency to exaggerate and make hyperbolic claims to sell.
AI is primarily used to write text and code. Actually integrating it into workflows across markets will take time.
A great article that is neither overly pessimistic or optimistic is Benedict Evan's The AI Summer [1]. He argues that there's a lot of excitement with big corporates but their actual adoption is low so far.
"an LLM by itself is not a product - it’s a technology that can enable a tool or a feature, and it needs to be unbundled or rebundled into new framings, UX and tools to be become useful. That takes even more time"
[1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2024/7/9/the-ai-summer
zachmjr · 2023-12-26
I haven't found my favorite this year, but instead I was heavily into newsletters. Currently I'm subscribed to:
https://www.pragmaticengineer.com/ - industry insights.
https://www.workspaces.xyz/ - people sharing their home office setup incl. photos.
https://bigtechdigest.substack.com/ - all recent tech articles from companies engineering blogs.
https://leaddev.com/ - leadership stuff.
https://hackernewsletter.com/ - weekly hackernews summary nicely split into categories.
https://www.ben-evans.com/ - product and business around tech with nice deep dives.
benedictevans · 2023-06-17
If you look at the chart in the essay, you'll see that though there were lots of what I called 'proto-smartphones' before the iPhone, and enthusiasts (like me!) loved them, the actual user base was tiny. SMS was huge, MMS was a rounding error and very few people were doing anything else. I was a mobile analyst - I even went to the actual S60 launch event where the Nokia 7650 was announced - and then worked at a telco, and I wrote some more about this a few years ago. https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/2/19/mobile-smartphones-a…
(Also, Blackberry was big for UK teenaged girls due to free BBM)
er4hn · 2022-04-26
As an example, the UK tech analyst Benedict Evans: https://www.ben-evans.com/
ksec · 2021-10-26
May be instead of arguing Apple is normalising Surveillance, they are normalising Data collection where only Apple can connect Data and everyone else who want Data will have to ask and pay Apple. Likely in the future for Ads on Apple user and Apple taking a 30% cut. This is not some sort of joke I wouldn't be surprised if there are internal plan somewhere. Which would also turn Apple into possibly the largest Ads platform.
I was actually expecting Apple to be doing something like this in 2018 timeframe the moment they dip their toe into App Store Ads. But then the whole privacy thing blow up.
Probably worth linking to Benedict Evans blog post again.
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads-music
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/8/27/understanding-privac…
elyobo · 2021-02-18
I'm taking Facebook's side on this particular issue only (and I don't even like that, because they're - as you note - bad).
I agree with all of the things you want, but this isn't a tax on Google or Facebook (and we need more taxes on Google, Facebook, and their ilk that offshore profits to low tax locations), it's an attempt to tax links.
This is a good read and worth your time - https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for-news.
fossuser · 2020-07-24
I find all these pretty great:
- Persuasion (liberal democracy, free society): https://www.persuasion.community/
- Money Stuff (finance, also sort-of comedy?): https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine
- Stratechery (tech companies and strategy): https://stratechery.com/
- Stay Tuned with Preet & Cafe Insider (law and politics): https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-podcast/
- The Morning Paper (CS papers): https://blog.acolyer.org/about/
- Slate Star Codex (rationality, currently in a weird state): https://slatestarcodex.com/
Some new ones I subscribed to, but haven't read a lot of:
- Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/
- Andrew Sullivan: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/coming-soon
- Benedict Evans: https://www.ben-evans.com/
kevsim · 2020-06-21
I read Benedict Evans' newsletter every week [0]. He worked previously at a16z and gives an overview of big trends in the tech industry each week. While I get my fill of low level technical news here at HN, Benedict's newsletter gives a good overview of macro trends in the industry and his essays are good as well.
0: https://www.ben-evans.com/
hising · 2020-02-09
I like Benedict Evans newsletter. Not too often (good thing IMO), but when it comes it is really readworthy.
https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter/
EDIT: Probably not underrated though (missed that bit)
iyn · 2019-07-30
1. Already mentioned Benedict's Newsletter (https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter)
2. James Clear's (https://jamesclear.com/newsletter), author of the Atomic Habits, which is a fantastic book about... habits (https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits)
Both are no-bullshit and consistently provide value.
ashraymalhotra · 2018-12-08
Loved this presentation from Ben Evans at the a16z conference. Talks about the same thing in more detail.
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/11/16/the-end-of-the-begi…
Artemis2 · 2018-10-16
Some favorites of mine I haven’t seen mentioned:
https://blog.acolyer.org
https://jvns.ca
https://stratechery.com
https://blog.cloudflare.com
https://latacora.singles
https://www.schneier.com
https://www.ben-evans.com
plus an endless amount of newsletters…
gringoDan · 2018-04-12
Agreed that a lot of time will be freed up, but I don't think the majority of people will use this time productively. Most people will just end up watching Netflix in their cars instead of focusing on the road.
I highly recommend this Benedict Evans post on the second-order consequences of electric & autonomous vehicles: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second-orde…
julian_digital · 2018-03-07
Have a look at Benedict Evans' articles:
https://www.ben-evans.com/
Pandabob · 2017-04-11
Interesting. I've been thinking about subscribing to "Stratechery" by Ben Thompson. Any recommendations for or against it?
Currently subscribed to:
- The Morning Paper (https://blog.acolyer.org/)
- Benedict Evans (http://ben-evans.com/newsletter)
- a16z (https://a16z.com/)
anacleto · 2017-04-11
Last week I launched an open source newsletter about product & tech marketing. Here's how it works: https://github.com/plainflow/plainflow-digested-week/
A few of my favourites:
- Snippet by Social Capital: http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/home/?u=d7f0f45160075006b25756cd0&am…
- Ben Evans: http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/
- A16Z: http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=35c671b34bb404149166bf755&…
jakebaker · 2017-03-25
Worth reading about whether or not Amazon makes money:
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-…
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/8/8/amazons-profits
dood · 2017-03-24
Amazon always reinvests most of their profits into growth, so the PE ratio is somewhat irrelevant, or at best misleading.
Edit on downvotes: this is not a controversial opinion, see this respected analysis from 2014: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-…
davidiach · 2017-03-12
I subscribe to Benedict Evans newsletter. It's basically a collection of interesting tech related links with commentary.
It's not daily though.
http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/
mikeyouse · 2016-05-24
Benedict Evans was like this and has since joined A16Z. His focus is mostly mobile, so you end up with a lot of overlap between the other people covering Google / Apple / MSFT, but he definitely has an interesting perspective (He formerly worked in research for an investment bank, so he knows the ins/outs of global telecom very well):
http://ben-evans.com/
His annual mobile deck is usually really good;
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/3/29/presentation-mobile-ate-t…
punee · 2016-02-22
I'm pretty sure that Wittgenstein, while agreeing with your point about meaning being defined by use, would still argue that there's a lot of unspoken confusion that comes from calling the smartphone a smartphone.
The first thing I did when opening this thread was Ctrl+F to see if anyone was suggesting it should be called a "personal computer", because that's what I've thought best described what the smartphone really has become.
Now, to suggest even trying to use that to refer to smartphones these days would be adding a much heavier does of confusion. But the insight seems fundamentally right to me.
Interesting article on the subject that brings up this point: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/11/7/mobile-ecosystems-and-the…
caminante · 2015-07-24
Accounting profits are too easy to manipulate. Valuation experts prefer to look at cash flows.
Here's a precocious '09 writeup on AMZN from an analyst at Andreeson-Horowitz.[1] He points out how Amazon's re-investing CF's to finance capacity, warehouses, real estate, etc. This is instead of realizing accounting profits.
[1]http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-…
edit: it's worth pointing out that AMZN could be one of the most profitable companies (accounting profits) at the flick of a switch if it diverted its CF's away from capex and internal investment. Its CF's have been enormous for quite some time.
sazary · 2015-05-02
http://ben-evans.com/news/ a weekly newsletter by Ben Evans, which is highly insightful on mobile world. It has a seperate 'stats' section which is really nice
r12s · 2014-10-25
Benedict Evans (Andreessen Horowitz) wrote an excellent post on Amazon's "profits". The comments are good value too.
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-…
As for the Fire Phone and it's product discovery functionality, I get Bezos' vision (I think ...) which would be a world with only one retailer.
pinaceae · 2013-03-13
http://ben-evans.com/
thanks for clearing this up, hard to find the real org chart of google.