About
Welcome to my newsletter! Every week or two, I will be (1) exploring a particular topic or idea in technology / business / policy; and (2) picking out ~5 recent articles / analyses I found particularly interesting.
My goal for this experiment is to sharpen my writing and thinking, to meet like-minded people, and to promote healthier discourse in these ideas. If you know anyone who would be interested in the discussion, please forward this along or have them subscribe.
FAQs
Who are you?
I’m currently a graduate student at Stanford studying law and business. I’m concurrently working as a legal research assistant for the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Before Stanford, I worked at Facebook as a Software Engineer on the News Credibility team. Before that, I studied computer science at Yale and ran / founded a few hackathons (YHack, HackPrague).
I’ve also had a few temp gigs doing venture capital (Bessemer Venture Partners and HOF Capital) and doing litigation (MoFo).
If I just want a feel for what you write about, where should I start?
Here are a few of my more popular newsletters:
The COVID-19 forcing function. New technologies and applications that may otherwise have required longer times for adoption have now been ushered into the market thanks to COVID-19.
Surviving in a world of aggregators. Ben Thompson, one of my personal heroes, developed a framework, called Aggregation Theory, to understand businesses in the Internet age. This is a post about how companies can withstand the onslaught of aggregators.
What is your logo?
Well, it’s a quick and dirty thing I made in Sketch, haha. It’s like the slippery road caution sign, but instead of a regular car, it’s a self-driving car.
My over-used analogy is that businesses are vehicles for technological innovation; the ultimate destination is human societal advancement; and laws are the roads that govern how we get there. In my opinion, we need a tight, efficient interplay between tech, business, and law to ensure we get to the destination. Hopefully my logo captures some of that idea.
Are you elsewhere on social media?
Yes! On Twitter, I post random thoughts that sometimes get turned into topics for this newsletter. On Medium, I post more fleshed-out thoughts (~2,000 words) on topics often unrelated to this newsletter.
Can I contact you?
Sure! Feel free to reach me on Twitter or via email at chrisxwan@gmail.com