Hundreds of startups are hoping to emulate the success of a model popularised by eyewear brand Warby Parker – cut out the middle man and offer a designer aesthetic direct to the customer at highly competitive prices. It’s easier said than done.
A look at the Ocado warehouse in Andover, UK, where automation has been implemented sufficiently effectively to allow the company to sell their solution to other organisations.
Tom Wolfe’s final piece for Esquire, written in 1983, and one of his most famous stories, looking at the mythical early days of Silicon Valley and the co-founder of Intel.
A profile of a man who makes a lots of money identifying and exposing financial chicanery.
A representative from Pinkerton, a long-established American detective agency, takes the author on a tour of one of China’s counterfeiting hotspots.
The story of two homegrown technology heavyweights slugging it out for dominance in China.
A searching piece about Amazon and monopoly, published in a newspaper owned by Amazon’s CEO. If you have the time, it’s also worth dipping into the elegantly wrought 28,000 word ‘note’ in The Yale Law Journal that inspired the piece.
A piece examining the growing insect farming industry, with around 1,900 species worldwide already part of human diets.
Benedict Evans is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a leading venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. This piece is a deep dive into the automotive industry, comparing the incumbents (Ford, GM, et al) with the disruptor (Tesla), and searching for insights in other industries that have already seen disruption (mobile phones, desktop and laptop computers).
A piece navigating the troubled waters of Deutsche Bank.