Token Economy

We keep making users solve our problems

Anthropic removed a choice, a delayed train explained missed medical care, and one investor thinks the most important system to debug might be yourself.

Sep 19 • Ben Johns

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Polish is cheap now

AI is making writing smoother, launches noisier, and software easier to change. The edge is knowing what deserves attention, what belongs together, and…

Sep 12 • Ben Johns

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The valuable layer keeps moving

Netflix may start distributing its rivals, Alloy escaped the vertical that made it famous, and PostHog is funding its own replacement. Advantage rarely…

Sep 5 • Ben Johns

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August 2026

The result is not the mechanism

Warmly sold before it could scale selling. Spotify proved audiobook demand before monetizing it. Medicine reminds us that "it works" often comes before…

Aug 29 • Ben Johns

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The product is becoming the easy part

Paperform bought access to its first 3,000 users, SavvyCal chose the market before writing code, and AI is moving software work from implementation…

Aug 22 • Ben Johns

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The bottleneck moved again

As AI makes creation cheaper, advantage is shifting into the systems around it: attention, capital, trust, and distribution.

Aug 14 • Ben Johns

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The system around the product is becoming the product

ReelShort figured out when to charge, Spotify is turning copyright into a feature, and General Catalyst is treating customers like infrastructure.

Aug 7 • Ben Johns

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June 2026

Jet2 Holidays: A viral jingle 🎶

Why a budget airline's jingle became 6.6 million videos

Jun 16 • Ben Johns

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May 2026

IKEA's Trash Collection: How Showing Products in Garbage Doubled Buyback Rates

The sustainability campaign that worked because it made the brand look implicated, not heroic.

May 1 • Tom

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April 2026

Doritos All Dressed NPCs

The Fortnite campaign that turned the most ignored thing in gaming into the most talked about.

Apr 24 • Tom

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March 2026

Rovio Made 51 Games That Flopped.

Here's What Actually Happened With the 52nd.

Mar 17 • Tom

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23andMe Had 15 Million Customers' DNA. Here's What Went Wrong.

What the collapse of a $6B company tells us about building on data you can't monetize

Mar 15 • Tom

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