I Made Something New For You
The Weekend Leverage, September 7
This week the courts reshaped tech. Google almost faced an antitrust restructuring, and instead got away with a slap on the wrist, lifting its valuation by $230 billion. Anthropic could’ve been bankrupted by copyright claims, but instead settled for $1.5 billion, less than 15% of its latest fundraise valuing it $183 billion. I don’t say that to complain about lawyers or the courts, but to point out that these organizations are so large and powerful that politics and legality may be the only way to contain them.
I have a ton of great data for you this week. But first, this edition is brought to you by the wonderful folks at Composer.
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MY RESEARCH
Something new and exciting!
The Leverage exists because the period we are living through is NUTS. There are multiple paradigm-shifting, civilization-altering technologies all coming to fruition all at once. Biotech, AI, nuclear energy, and crypto are all changing the world. I started this company because I wanted a beautiful, rigorous organization that gives the world the language and tools to figure out what happens next.
Today, I am pleased to announce an extension on that mission: The Leverage Podcast.
These changes are highly concentrated. There is a select group of individuals, likely fewer than 10,000, almost wholly based in Silicon Valley, who are deciding what the future looks like for the rest of us. If you want to understand the changes coming, you can’t just debate ideas or business strategy, you have to understand what drives these people. What made a founder bet their life’s savings on a crazy idea? Why has a researcher spent a decade preaching that AI will kill us all—and accidentally starting a cult or two along the way? What makes a top-decile VC completely disrupt their own career?
The Leverage Podcast is my way of making that understanding possible. Think of it as an extension of The Leverage’s intellectual universe where I ask the most urgent questions I can think of to the people best equipped to answer them.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure I should do this. But I have found that these conversations have changed me as a person. I’m already viewing the world and my work differently just through the first few recordings. That’s the best possible evidence that this is worth trying. If y’all dig it, I think this will be an important part of my research going forward. You can check out a quick teaser reel below. The first episode will go live on Wednesday, completely free.
The hottest new marketing channel is a cult. Peter Thiel argued a decade ago that cult dynamics were what made startups win. Now that vague (but powerful sounding) theory has maturated and ripened into an actual playbook. By being wholly focused on distribution, founders are growing their companies with a new set of strategies that may look incoherent from the outside. I wrote an analysis on how you can do the same.
DATA YOU’LL DIG
In-app purchase revenue passed game revenue for the first time in human history. I view this as a positive sign that we are all slowly freeing ourselves from the grips of Candy Crush. This is only 60 percent a joke. In reality, it is a combination of struggles in the mobile gaming market, the rise of advertising in app gaming, and consumers becoming more comfortable purchasing software for themselves. Personally, I spend thousands a year on all of the software in my life!
Atlassian bought The Browser Company for $610 million, a startup with essentially no revenue. I previously profiled the company’s latest product Dia—an AI-first attempt at reinventing the browser. There is a chance that in the near future, LLMs will operate any browser-based application for us. This is bad if you happen to be in the online app business. Which is why Atlassian, the owner of stuff like Jira and Loom, was willing to make this very large bet. The Browser team is one of a very, very select few companies that has shown they have the ability to get millions of consumers to remake their relationship with the internet. Pair that with their world class marketing and this is a bet that I would also make. Congrats to all involved.
Prediction markets are going downhill. I strongly believe that we will need new mechanisms to determine truth in a post-AGI world. Prediction markets offer a solution so compelling that I devoted an entire edition to them. However, the current leading startups are squandering that opportunity by spending their time on sports gambling. Kalshi, the leading U.S. prediction market, had its highest trading day ever with $87 million in trading value. Only 4% of that was non-sports activity. The rest was taken up with sports, mainly college football. Is this all that we aspire to be? Kalshi's mission statement is to, "bring more truth to the world through the power of markets." People betting their life savings on a football game is the exact opposite of that ideal.
TASTEMAKER
YouTube is the modern Library of Alexandria. It is a wonder. This week I was reminded of what a miracle it is. A few current favorites:
Bobby Ganoush—Smooth Funky City Pop DJ Set. Ganoush is a DJ who mixes mostly Japanese music from the 60s and 70s, all on vinyl. It is hypnotic to watch him groove along to the tracks. Trust me on this!
The Evolution of Paul Thomas Anderson's Style: In a recent debate with friends, I argued that Paul Thomas Anderson is the greatest director working today. Not Nolan, not Peele, not Gerwig or Villeneuve, PTA stands apart. The challenge is that for each of those previous directors, you can point to the definitive aspects of what makes them great. However, PTA’s greatness is a more subtle, flexible thing that metamorphoses from film to film. This video is the best, most succinct argument I’ve found for what makes PTA so great. His new film, One Battle After Another is my most anticipated of the year and comes out later this month.
Radiohead playing Fake Plastic Trees live at Glastonbury in 2003: I’ve heard the track a million times, but something about lead singer Thom Yorke’s effortless flip to falsetto at 0:29 sent shivers down my spine this morning.
As a reminder, the podcast launches Wednesday. When it goes live I would appreciate you all amplifying!
Evan
Sponsorships
We are now accepting sponsors for the winter. If you are interested in reaching my audience of 36K+ founders, investors, and senior tech executives, send me an email at team@gettheleverage.com.
Hey Evan, loved the piece! As an antitrust lawyer, the Google dismantling saga is my favorite—I’ll be following the podcast closely.
Best of luck with the podcast!