- Founded in 2013, Ben Thompson’s $120-a-year Stratechery newsletter is beloved by tech executives and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and reaches subscribers in more than 80 countries.
- By one estimate, Thompson’s solo-media enterprise is expected to generate more than $3 million in revenue this year.
- Yet as a raft of big-name writers leave their jobs to start their own newsletters via the “pivot to Substack” trend, Thompson’s success will be difficult — if not impossible — to replicate.
Primarily working out of Taipei, Taiwan, Ben Thompson sits some six thousand miles away from his adoring fanbase of techies in California.
His Stratechery newsletter reaches subscribers in more than 80 countries, but his most rabid readership is in Silicon Valley where he has built a large following of tech executives and venture capitalists including Upfront Ventures’ Mark Suster and Facebook top brass Andrew Bosworth. The co-founders of newsletter platform Substack even cite Thompson as the inspiration for starting their business.
Thompson’s prolific daily analysis covers the intersection of technology, business and society and digs into companies ranging from Apple to Zendesk. Often accompanied by hand-drawn doodles, Thompson’s missives are focused around catchy concepts like “aggregation theory” and “disruption theory.”