4 resources from ben-evans.com we point founders to, and the questions each answers.
✍️ Essay
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Why we picked it
Benedict Evans is one of the sharpest people at separating a real structural shift from noise, and this essay lays out his instinct in the open. His core line, that there is a huge gap between an amazing demo and something a big complicated company can actually use, is a practical filter for any market that looks like it is about to explode. Treat it as a way of thinking, not a call on any one wave.
A great demo is not a market: real shifts survive the slow grind of integration, trust, and switching costs, and that grind is where fads die.
Look at whether a technology follows the long pattern of past automation (old jobs go, new ones appear) rather than promising a clean overnight break, which is usually the hype tell.
Adoption runs on the buyer's clock, not the startup's 18-month funding clock, so early flatness can mean too early rather than wrong, a distinction worth being honest about.
Why we picked it
Twice a year Evans publishes a free deck reading the macro and strategic shifts in tech, strong on second order effects, not just that something changes but what it drags along with it. It is a worked example of how a careful analyst separates a real structural shift from noise. Study it as a model for how to think, not only for what to think.
Why we picked it
Evans is the clearest writer on separating what a technology can actually do from the story being told about it. He repeatedly walks through how a new platform gets overhyped in the short run and misjudged in the long run, and how to reason about adoption instead of headlines. Reading a few of these builds the exact instinct a non-technical founder needs: judging a trend by what it changes for real users, not by demo excitement.
Why we picked it
Evans is a working example of the habit you are trying to build: a weekly pass over the noise that pulls out what actually matters and explains why. Subscribing gives you a reliable high signal input for your reading routine, and studying how he frames things teaches you to ask better questions. His line that you should stop paying attention to something once you fully understand it is a trend spotter's compass.
