Archive - Dan Hock's Essays

The Leaky Bucket Theory of Network Effects

A framework for understanding the strength of a marketplace’s network effect

Dec 9, 2024 •

Dan Hockenmaier

October 2024

Playing Game One

A two-minute career manifesto for ambitious people

Oct 8, 2024 •

Dan Hockenmaier

September 2024

How to be Strategic

The actual nature of strategic work, and how to become great at it

Sep 30, 2024 •

Dan Hockenmaier

August 2024

When to join a startup

Learning to assess risk will help you maximize the economic outcome of joining a startup

Aug 1, 2024 •

Dan Hockenmaier

February 2024

The Best Way to Drive Demand in Marketplaces is Hiding in Plain Sight

This is a joint post by Casey Winters and Dan Hockenmaier.

Published on Casey Accidental • Feb 22, 2024

Why growth models fail

Why most growth models don't get adopted, how to avoid this fate, and a template model to get you started.

Feb 14, 2024 •

Dan Hockenmaier

January 2024

How to describe your business as an equation

And why you don’t fully understand your business until you can

Published on Lenny's Newsletter • Jan 16, 2024

The Two Paths of a Manager

Diagnosing and course correcting two of the most common stumbling blocks for new managers

Jan 3, 2024 •

Dan Hockenmaier

December 2023

How to Choose a Startup

And why so many people get it almost entirely backwards

Dec 4, 2023 •

Dan Hockenmaier

September 2023

Generalist Disease

What elite professionals get wrong about career growth

Sep 25, 2023 •

Dan Hockenmaier

July 2023

The Next Trillion Dollar Marketplace Will Put SKUs on Services

Why service marketplaces aren’t scaling and how they might get unstuck

Jul 27, 2023 •

Dan Hockenmaier

June 2023

The Concept That Explains Everything About Marketplaces

Understanding transaction costs will help you understand where marketplaces will succeed, what kind of marketplace to build, and how to price them.

Jun 27, 2023 •

Dan Hockenmaier

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