Typetura
A smarter, more thoughtful method of typesetting text for the internet. Typetura handles text rendering for your site, automatically scaling your fonts to fit on any screen by using intrinsic typography and eliminating up to 90% of the code that you were previously using to power fonts. Typetura brings an incredibly thoughtful perspective to design.
Tech
Software
Plausible Analytics
Privacy friendly analytics tool independently run out of the EU by Uku Täht and Marko Saric. I use Plausible on Gold's Guide and the Public DB.
Tech
Software
Notion
An incredibly powerful tool for organization and ideas. Notion is kinda like if Google Docs had a beautiful baby with Wikipedia. The entire Public Database is all built using Notion, and I keep track of all of my drafts and notes for Gold's Guide articles and columns in Notion. A critical tool.
Tech
Software
Ghost
A delightful, open-source publishing platform. Created by a former Wordpress engineer, Ghost is a clean, minimal CMS that has built-in support for membership options. The Gold's Guide website is published using Ghost.
Tech
Software
Basic Attention Token
A cryptocurrency that's automatically created in exchange for viewing ads on the Brave advertising platform. BAT can be sent as tips to creators directly through their websites and social media channels.
Tech
Capital
Brave Browser
The privacy-first web browser that pays you for viewing ads. Seriously — Brave pays users 70% the ad revenue they see in BAT, cryptocurrency based on Ethereum. Brave has an incredible ad blocker, is super fast, and is my default web browser.
Tech
Software
Feedbin
Feedbin is a paid tool that lets you roll your own custom RSS feed by subscribing to whoever you want. It's a reverse chronological feed with folders for each publication or personality you subscribe to. My favorite part is that it gives you an email address, so you can forward newsletters directly into your RSS reader. $5 per month or $50 per year, super worth it.
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Software
Stratechery
Ben Thompson's always insightful column on the business, strategy, and impact of technology. The original paid email newsletter.
Media
Publication
Mailbrew
Create your own personal daily newsletter with this tool that generates a personalized digest from Twitter, RSS, and other sources you enjoy following online. Kind of like rolling your own Morning Brew.
Tech
Software
PartyRound
A mysterious startup that does "better tools for founders" that's been making waves on Twitter with mischievous shitposts and experimental NFTs.
Tech
CapitalNetwork
Day One
My favorite app of all time. Day One is a private journal app with a wide-ranging set of features, most-notably that it records all kinds of metadata as you make entries. What song were you listening to as you wrote that note, what was the weather like? All tracked in each Day One journal entry. There app is available for free, but has a subscription offering that lets you record audio notes and transcribe them simultaneously. Day One is like a personal time-capsule, a private social network with only one user: you.
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NetNewsWire
Completely free and open-source RSS reader app created by Brent Simmons. My preferred RSS app. Available for iOS and Mac.
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Software
Barstool Sports
It's about so much more than sports, really. Barstool was started as a print magazine in Boston back in the early 2000's, and over the years has become a major media company in and of its own. They are prolific and publish tons of video shows, podcasts, and all kinds of other media. Their voice is unique and has tons of character. Purchased by Penn International Gambling company in the mid-2010's.
Media
PublicationNetwork
Platformer
A newsletter about platforms and democracy. After three years of writing a daily column called The Interface for The Verge, Casey Newton struck out on his own in October 2020 with Platformer, an independently-run daily email newsletter on Substack.
Media
Publication
Instapaper
A read it later app which lets you save articles for later. Best part is that it syncs everything offline so you can read even when you have no cell signal.
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Software
Overcast
My favorite podcast app, run independently by Marco Arment. The free version has ads which you can pay $10 per year to disable. Worth it for so many reasons (I love the design and just find that everything just works in this app) but especially for Smart Speed, which cuts out pauses and has saved me a whopping 65 hours since I started using Overcast a few years ago.
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Software
Product Hunt
A list of the best new products launched every day, with an upvote system to democratically bring the most popular posts to the top.
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Network
Daring Fireball
A paragon of the weblog era. Longstanding online column written by John Gruber since the early 2000's. It's mostly about design, technology, and specifically Apple, but it's really about so much more than that. Gruber writes in a clear voice that cuts through the clutter of bullshit, and his site has only become better with time.
Media
Publication
Kahn Media Law
A law firm designed for creators and artists. Kevin, the founder and principal partner of KML, is thoughtful, knowledgeable, and brings a unique legal perspective to the business of creativity.
Media
Network
Scroll
Scroll partners directly with big publishers to block ads for readers, who pay a membership fee. Scroll then tracks how much time readers spend with each source and pay a commensurate portion to publishers — providing as much as 40% more money than ads. Acquired by Twitter in April 2021.
MediaTech
Network
VeeFriends
Gary Vaynerchuk's new NFT project that grants admission to a new annual conference called VeeCon. Auction is set by price each bidder is willing to pay.
TechMedia
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Uphold
The first crypto-exchange that supported receiving BAT rewards from viewing advertisements in Brave browser.
Tech
Capital
Foster
An invite-only, paid writer's room for independent writers aiming to provide the sense of community that comes from working at a media company, but with none of the BS. YC W21.
Media
Network
A storefront for buying and selling music beats, all licensed and legally set up so that you can make a rap song on top of them. Lil Nas X bought the beat for his infamous 2019 bop "Old Town Road" on BeatStars for $30, and most beats on the site today still sell for around that price.
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Tiv
A library and publishing tool for creators, Tiv is designed to help you own and organize your content as simply and smartly as possible.
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Software
Substack
A darling of the passion economy, Substack provides a newsletter platform for free of charge, with the option to create members-only email lists. The combination of openness and easy subscriptions has made Substack extremely popular amongst both Silicon Valley investors and the New York media.
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Super
Really cool, really simple webapp that lets you use custom domains on Notion pages. Also works for adding custom fonts and analytics. Super is being used to render the very page you are reading, right now, and is a key part of the Public DB tech stack.
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Andreessen Horowitz
Venture capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, investors in many notable tech startups ranging from Substack to Facebook to Lyft.
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Capital
Gold's Guide
What's good? Gold's Guide is a magazine for innovators, creators, and early adopters. There's also the Public Database (you're looking at it!). What's next?
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Publication
Apple MacBook Air with M1 processor
The MacBook Air is the best laptop for most people, now that the keyboard is fixed. The new M1 processor, designed and built by Apple, combines the speed and battery life of an iPhone or iPad with the robust operating system of the Mac. Combined with the great battery, high-resolution display, huge trackpad, legendary build quality, and TouchID, and you've got everything you need in a lightweight, affordable laptop.
Tech
Hardware
Apple iPad Pro
The best tablet, by no comparison. It's almost there, but unless you're on the cutting edge, the iPad is still best thought of as a supplement to a smartphone and laptop. Worth getting good / familiar with tablets now, they are going to really become popular in the 2020s and beyond. Still, as of now, my personal order of operations remains as it has been: smartphone first, laptop second, tablet third.
Tech
Hardware
Superhuman
A high-end email service that apparently makes emails fun again. It looks kind of like texting, and is very expensive ($30 per month to check email!), and it has this awful email signature attached to every message. But the people who use it seem to love it.
Tech
Software
Carrd
Simple, affordable, accessible one-page websites. Probably the easiest way to make a quick webpage.
Tech
Software
Webflow
A website builder offering incredibly robust customization without using any code. Webflow has an amazing graphical interface that's like Photoshop for HTML. Y Combinator class of summer 2013.
Tech
Software
Domainr
A great way to search for domains — Domainr will show short domains that help spell out the word you enter. Searching for weird new domain names with Domainr is strangely satisfying.
Tech
Software
1Password
Once you have 1Password, you won't be able to live without it. 1Password is an app that makes it so you only ever have to remember one password by securely recording all of the usernames and passwords for every website or app you visit. It can even automatically generate complicated passwords for extra security and autofill passwords synced between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Individual plans are available starting at $36 per year ($3/month) and it's so worth the peace of mind to never have to remember a password.
Tech
Software
SocialBlade
A service that tracks creator statistics across social networks including YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, and more, SocialBlade is an amazing free resource. Their historical stats are really interesting — there are similar social listening services out there that are incredibly costly. SocialBlade is like Google Trends in that it's good enough for most use-cases.
Tech
Software
Y Combinator
Famous startup accelerator and incubator founded in 2005. YC has raised money for companies including Reddit, Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch, and more.
Tech
Capital
Angel List
A social network for startups and venture capital, sometimes called the LinkedIn for startups. Angel List has a robust system to connect founders with investors (and vice versa), a job-finder with clear salary and equity info, and owns Product Hunt since 2016.
Tech
Capital
Anchor
Super simple podcast distribution and monetization — just upload your podcast and Anchor takes care of all of the advertising for you. Purchased by Spotify in 2014.
Tech
Software
Telegram Messenger
Instant messaging client available on all platforms, secured with end-to-end encryption in secure-chats with optional self-destructing messages. Created by the Durov brothers.
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Network
Patreon
A social platform based around creativity and paid memberships. Patreon is kind of like a label for creators. Patrons pay monthly subscriptions to their favorite creators, and Patron takes a small percentage.
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Network
Pocket
A read-it-later service, like Instapaper, that lets you save any content for later. You can even read offline, which is great for commuting. They have a premium version that strips out ads, lets you search your saved links, and make as many highlights as you want in articles. Pocket becomes more valuable the more and longer you use it.
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Software
Descript
An amazingly smart AI app that transcribes audio into text, and then lets you edit the audio by editing the text. It also does the same thing for video, too. Wildly cool.
Tech
Software
Apple iPhone 12 Pro
The iPhone is the most significant invention of the 21st-century (so far), and this is the latest and greatest version. The iPhone was the first smartphone with a capacitive touch screen, which allows for the precision of touch that we all take for granted now. When the iPhone was first announced, the keynote audience literally applauded the moment when Steve Jobs flicked the screen to scroll down a list. Apple's combination of the iPhone and iOS has created the most significant digital platform in the history of humanity. If you're making something today, it has to be compatible with the iPhone first — everything else follows.
Tech
Hardware
Foundation
Self-described as "culture's stock exchange", Foundation is a blockchain auction platform for NFTs.
Tech
Network
Hey
An email app by Basecamp that reimagines emails, making it way easier to triage messages from strangers and sort important mail. Was famously blocked from Apple's app store in summer 2020, then reinstated.
Tech
Software
Dell XPS 13-inch
I prefer Mac over Windows, so this is here as an alternate just in case you really need a Windows machine. Keep in mind that even though it runs Windows, this laptop isn't a gaming laptop by any means. The 13-inch model is the best Windows laptop according to both The Wirecutter and The Verge. Good trackpad and keyboard, solid specs, and a great display, one of the first laptops with super tiny bezels — really nice. Thin and light body, good keyboard, and strong battery life. Decent price too!
Tech
Hardware
Hacker News
Kind of like Reddit before it got complicated, except it's only for tech news, kind of like a competitor to ProductHunt.
Tech
Network
Robinhood
Invest on your phone (or computer, or wherever). Wildly popular. Sign up with my referral code and we both get a free stock lol.
Tech
Capital
Personal Capital
A dashboard for seeing all your bank accounts, credit cards and investments in one place. Personal Capital makes it incredibly easy to keep track of income and spending and budgeting.
Tech
Capital
Otter.ai
An "AI-powered assistant" that records and transcribes audio. Now it can recognize different speakers and essentially create a transcript of a conversation as it's being had, almost like a virtual stenographer.
Tech
Software
Campaign Monitor
An email marketing tool that has highly granular options for targeting audiences. If you want to automate elaborate, contextual email campaigns, Campaign Monitor is a good way to do it.
Tech
Software
The Reinforcement
Reinforce positive mindsets. A publishing and apparel company I co-founded with my brother Spencer.
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Publication
Sponsor
Bullish Studio
A new conversation about money, Bullish Studios is a dedicated content studio that produces content for a suite of finance-focused creators who help audiences learn how to save, earn, and spend their money.
Media
Network
Defector
The website created by the former staff of Deadspin. Honestly the story is so wild and intense that I won't try to retell it here: go read the official retelling. Their membership is starts at $8 per month or $80 per year, with the option to pay more for commenting privileges.
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Publication
The Morning Brew
A free daily newsletter covering Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and everything in between. Quick, easy to digest, and salient information for any entrepreneur, engineer, or author. Completely free to read and monetized through sponsorships. According to Digiday, the Morning Brew has nearly 1.8mm subscribers as of February 2020 — with an impressively high 42% open-rate (compare that to 10-15% industry standard). Sold to Business Insider in late 2020 for a whopping $70m.
Media
Publication
Kottke.org
A longstanding independent website that's been around since 1998, run by Jason Kottke and friends. Kottke.org has something that's interesting to click on or read or watch every single day for as long as I can remember. A great source of stories for starting conversations.
Media
Publication
Fintech Today
A weekly newsletter analyzing financial technology, founded and run by Ian Kar and published via Substack. FTT has seen some rapid growth lately.
Media
Publication
Craig Mod's Special Projects
The delightful member's program by Craig Mod, a publisher and writer with a unique attention to detail. Craig's special projects mostly cover his peaceful and serene walks through Japan, with incredible photography.
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Publication
The Information
A relatively new but already very reputable source for breaking tech news, created by Jessica Lessin and funded by readers who pay an expensive subscription — something like $400 a year — but their reporting is certainly speedy and efficient.
Media
Publication
Farnham Street
Dedicated to mastering the best of what other people have already figured out, Shane Parish created the Farnam Street blog as a way to think smarter about the complicated decisions he was making as a Canadian spy.
Media
Publication
2pm
A weekly newsletter about e-commerce and DTC (sent on Mondays at, you guessed it, 2pm) run by Web Smith, who also founded the successful ecommerce company Mizzen+Main. 2pm is short for "to polymaths" — a polymath is "a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning". 2pm has a membership program that provides additional letters, an Executive Library, and reports and databases surveyed from their readers.
Media
Publication
Stir
A small agency and software house that provides tools for creators, backed by some of the biggest names in the creative economy, including Li Jin and Jack Conte among many others. Makes it easier to keep track of the diversified revenue streams (merch, YT, Patreon, collabs) that are so often associated with being a creator.
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Network
Axios
A new media company founded in 2016. Axios quickly developed a big following based on its brief, clear, and sound articles (most of their stories are quick reads less than 500 words) and landed a news show on HBO in 2018. In 2021 they launched AxiosHQ, a service that turns the same concise, informative writing style that made their content famous into an internal email tool for companies. The name is Axios based on the Greek word for "worthy".
Media
Publication
DistroKid
License and distribute your music to Spotify, Apple Music, and all the other streaming services you could imagine, all for a flat rate and no royalty fees. The best way to independently publish your music.
Tech
Network
Columbia Journalism Review
An incredible resource for news, studies, and information about the business and philosophy of the press and journalism.
Media
Publication
AlternativeTo
Crowd-sourced recommendations of alternative products, tools, networks, etc. — a super useful resource!
Media
Network
Nieman Journalism Lab
Part of Harvard University, the Nieman Lab is an amazing source of research and opinion about the journalism and media industries.
Media
Publication
Ghost Publisher Weekly
A newsletter published by Ghost (the CMS I use to power Gold's Guide) about the latest in the world of digital publishing.
Media
Publication
Creator Economics Podcast
A podcast covering the creator economy, by Blake Robbins, an investor, and Reed Ruchscher, talent manager for YouTubers including Mr. Beast.
Media
Publication
The Awl
It was so good, but alas, it's over. Unfortunately The Awl had to shut down. It will be missed. Thankfully the original articles are still up!
Media
Publication
Means of Creation
A podcast by Li Jin and Nathan Baschez exploring new trends in the passion and creative economies.
Media
Publication
MakersPlace
A marketplace for selling rare digital art and NFTs. They collaborated with Christie's auction house in 2021 to auction Beeple's Everydays collection.
Tech
Network
OpenSea
A crypto market for all kinds of digital goods including rare art and video game items minted as NFTs.
Tech
Network
Clubhouse
Drop-in audio conversations, like a live podcast that you can interact with. Clubhouse became popular amongst Silicon Valley circles for being a good way to socialize during the 2020 pandemic, and in 2021 it looks to grow further.
Tech
Network
The Profile
Profiles on the most interesting people and companies. Polina Marinova researches the most influential people in the world, collects interviews and other information about them, and then collects it all into one profile.
Media
Publication
Your Stack
A network for developers and creators to share the tools they use — their stacks. Created by Ryan Hoover, who also created ProductHunt.
Tech
Network
Kit
A platform for creators to organize and curate their favorite tools (hardware and software) to share with others.
Tech
Network
Write of Passage
A writing school by David Perell. It's costly but some of my favorite writers have gotten their chops here.
Tech
Network
The Generalist
Mario Gabriele's publication about the tech and finance industries. The Generalist is notable for the S-1 Club, a series which collects analysis on big tech company IPOs from a variety of highly informed sources.
Media
Publication
Not Boring
"An email newsletter from another guy on the internet, the name escapes me." Not Boring is monetized by a unique business model where its author Packy is sponsored by the companies he writes about, diving deep into their internal processes and operations.
Media
Publication
Masterworks
A platform for investing in blue-chip art, including works from artists like Picasso, Monet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and more.
Tech
Network
Social Capital
Venture capital firm focused on "advancing humanity", founded by Chamath Palihapitiya.
Tech
Capital
Ethereum
Cryptocurrency and blockchain protocol and platform. Ethereum is unique because of its "smart contracts" feature which makes it possible to develop applications based around Ethereum tokens. Created by Vitalik Buterin.
Tech
Capital
AirPods Pro
The best earbuds. They're expensive, but if you have an iPhone the sound quality and convenience of AirPods can't be beat.
Tech
Hardware
Apple iPhone 12 Mini
Honestly, I wanted this thing so badly... small phones are the way to go. But I had to get the Pro because I wanted the telephoto lens. Keep in mind that the mini has a shorter battery life because the phone is smaller. See iPhone 12 Pro for more.
Tech
Hardware
Binance
Trading platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. Like Coinbase or Gemini but more complicated.
Tech
Capital
Metamask
Digital wallet for holding Ethereum-based crypto tokens from decentralized apps.
Tech
Capital
Atelier
An early-stage VC firm founded by Li Jin, focused on investing in the passion economy and the future of work.
Media
Capital
Mirror
Blockchain based publishing platform. The only way to get access is to enter the $WRITE race, a weekly competition which pits creators against each other to compete for ten positions. Mirror is fully decentralized, so writers who are on the platform actually own a portion of the platform itself.
Tech
Network
Nifty Gateway
Digital art marketplace owned by Gemini. Artists mint their work as NFTs and sell limited edition digital artwork as drops, like sneakers or fashion.
Tech
Network
Reeder
Apple design award winning RSS reader app. Minimalistic design and nice fonts make this a favorite for reading articles from RSS. Available for iOS and Mac.
Tech
Software
A Media Operator
Insights on the strategy and the tactics of media operators, by Jacob Cohen Donnelly. Two newsletters a week, one free, one for paid members only.
Media
Publication
Dithering
A paid podcast hosted by John Gruber and Ben Thompson about tech and business and not-sports.
Media
Publication
CoinMarketCap
A massive price-tracking website for cryptoassets and cryptocurrencies, tracking price, market cap, sale volume, and other useful data. There are over 9,500 cryptos listed on CMC as I write this. The company is owned by Binance (one of the largest crypto-exchanges in the world).
Tech
Network
LetterList
LetterList is a service that lets you enter your email once and then easily one-click subscribe to hand-curated newsletter collection.
MediaTech
InformationNetworkSoftware
dailyBrew
Roll your own custom email newsletter from sources you choose, and automatically get sent a daily digest. Android only.
Tech
Software
Twitter
Twitter wasn't originally going to be in this DB because it's too mainstream (you'll notice that the big blue app is not here). But Twitter is the spot. It's still the place to be if you want to stay on top of the latest ideas.
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Network
