Ben Thompson is an American business, technology, and media analyst, who is based in
Taiwan. He is the author of ''Stratechery'', a subscription-based
newsletter
A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of int ...
/podcast featuring commentary on tech and media news.
He is also the co-host of ''Exponent'' with James Allworth and ''Dithering'' with
John Gruber, all
podcasts focused on the same themes.
Thompson's career includes stints at
Apple, where he interned at
Apple University
Apple University is a training facility of Apple Inc., located in Cupertino, California. This corporate university was designed to instruct personnel employed by Apple in the various aspects of Apple's technology and corporate culture.
History
...
;
, where he worked on its
Windows Apps team;
and at
WordPress developer
Automattic as a growth engineer.
Thompson launched Stratechery as a blog while still a Microsoft employee, and in April 2014 devoted himself to the site full-time, operating on a "
freemium
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...
" subscription model.
He has stated his primary inspiration was
John Gruber, author of the site
Daring Fireball.
As of April 2015, Thompson had more than 2,000 paying subscribers.
By 2017,
Recode
''Recode'' (formerly ''Re/code'') is a technology news website that focused on the business of Silicon Valley. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher founded it in January 2014, after they left Dow Jones and the similar website they had previously c ...
described Stratechery as having pioneered the paid newsletter business model.
The founders of
Substack, a newsletter platform launched in 2018, called Thompson a major inspiration for their project.
Thompson's undergraduate education was at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his graduate education at
Northwestern University, where he received an
MBA from the
Kellogg School as well as an
MEM
Mem (also spelled Meem, Meme, or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew mēm , Aramaic Mem , Syriac mīm ܡ, Arabic mīm and Phoenician mēm . Its sound value is .
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek mu ...
from the
McCormick School of Engineering
The McCormick School of Engineering (branded as Northwestern Engineering) is the engineering school of Northwestern University, a private university in Evanston, Illinois.
History
The trustees of Northwestern University founded a College of ...
.
Aggregation Theory
Thompson is a proponent of 'aggregation theory', which describes how platforms (i.e. aggregators such as Google and Facebook) come to dominate the industries in which they compete in a systematic and predictable way. Aggregators have all three of the following characteristics: 1. direct relationship with users; 2. zero marginal costs for serving users; 3. and demand-driven multi-sided networks with decreasing acquisition costs.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Ben
American business writers
American podcasters
Kellogg School of Management alumni
Northwestern University alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
Place of birth missing (living people)
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American technology writers
Technology commentators
WordPress