> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # An Ode to Ben Thompson - URL: https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/an-ode-to-ben-thompson/ - Published: 2026-08-30T15:45:08.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-30T16:17:18.000Z - Author: MBI Deep Dives - Tags: Sunday **Programming Note**: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing. If you are reading MBI Deep Dives everyday, I think it would be rather useful for my readers to understand my personal lens a bit better since that presumably affects (at least in some capacity) the way I analyze businesses as well. --- When Om Malik [passed away](https://om.co/2026/06/24/1966-2026/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com) a couple of months ago, there was an outpouring of remembrances and admiration for Malik’s work and how his words sketched Silicon Valley for many readers. I have come across Malik’s work and enjoyed reading his words (especially this [one](https://om.co/2015/04/27/brunello-cucinelli-2/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com)), but wasn’t quite a regular reader. But reading through the lofty praises by his regular readers helped me appreciate the role he played for many who were voracious readers of his work. A part of me lamented that Malik wouldn’t get to see all the ways he touched so many people which prompted me to write today’s Sunday piece about my own favorite analyst for whom my admiration and gratitude run deep. Ben Thompson has been writing [Stratechery](https://stratechery.com/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com) since 2013, but I came across his work in 2019 right after finishing my MBA at Cornell. One of my colleagues at work mentioned “[aggregation theory](https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com)” with the caveat that he’s not entirely sure if the theory makes sense. I looked up “aggregation theory” later and signed up as a free subscriber. I was forwarded a couple of emails from my colleagues back then which led to more water cooler talk later. I don’t exactly remember what prompted me to upgrade to be a paying subscriber, but I’m sure it was an easy decision. Some of you may not be aware of this, but even in 2019 the internet was not a great place to find compelling and engaging analysis on big tech. As someone who just moved to the US for my MBA in 2017 and found a seat in a buy-side role a couple of years later, I needed to get up to speed on companies whose revenues were threatening to eclipse the entire GDP of the country I emigrated from. After finding Stratechery, I remember some weekends I basically binged on Stratechery. A few weekends like that elevated my understanding of the world of big tech to a level which made me start to feel I can do a good job at my work. For someone who was trying to find his feet in a foreign land in covering the most analyzed companies in the world, you can imagine why I started to feel such a reservoir of gratitude to Ben Thompson. To my utter surprise, many of my peers didn’t quite appreciate the depth and rigor of Thompson’s analysis as many seem to have struggled to get beyond the fact that Stratechery is “[just a blog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDKMxdV1w4&ref=mbi-deepdives.com)”! On the contrary, the more time I spent reading Stratechery, the more I realized how differentiated many of his point of views were, and as more and more people started to take him seriously, Thompson was increasingly driving the conversation around big tech. Over time, one of the things that really struck me about Ben Thompson is that he is perhaps among a handful of analysts in the world who has a very good grasp on both [the east coast and west coast school of investing](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/my-valuation-approach/). To simplify, east coast philosophy is more grounded on the present state and married to numbers whereas west coast is far more imaginative and way more attuned to technical aspects of the technology itself. While most analysts from business school have a predilection towards east coast philosophy (including yours truly), Ben Thompson is one of those analysts who can swim both currents with an ease that I still find hard to find on the internet (and beyond). I subscribed to Ben Thompson to deepen my understanding on big tech, but he ended up educating me on a broad range of topics. From chips to geopolitics, Thompson’s work is a pedagogical session for me almost every time he writes on Stratechery. My friend Liberty has a very intriguing [hypothesis](https://www.libertyrpf.com/p/why-your-mentors-seem-less-impressive-6a5?ref=mbi-deepdives.com) why your mentors seem less impressive over time. Liberty points out that once we quickly consume the foundational concepts and "greatest hits" of our mentors, we have a tendency to create a false sense of having caught up with our mentors. However, true expertise relies on hard-to-transfer traits like judgment and execution, meaning a critical gap in actual ability remains even when their insights begin to feel familiar. Of course, since almost everyone reads Stratechery these days, one may be more incentivized to claim it is pointless to read anymore since there is not much alpha there. I have always held the belief that most investors underestimate how much work it requires for active investors to earn the beta (although almost free if you’re passive). Anyways, I do believe Liberty is onto something real with his hypothesis, and I too suffer from it once in a while. But there are two “mentors” for whom I can confidently articulate that I have gained more, not less, admiration over time. One is Warren Buffett, and the other is Ben Thompson. While there are plenty of people who want to harangue Buffett for “mid” performance vs the S&P 500 last two decades, I would be more than happy to be “mid” when I’m closer to be an octogenarian. God knows how hard it is to keep pace with the benchmark (just look up the [data](https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/research-insights/spiva/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com) how many managers outperform the index over any 5,10,15-year period), so I know most of our **base case** should be that we may not need to be so patient to reach the “mid” stage since we may be inherently ordinary to begin with! Ben Thompson doesn’t actively invest. So, we cannot quite compress his “work” to mere relative numbers, but as a reader, I know I don’t need some numbers to tell me the value of his work. His care and passion for the pursuit of truth is deeply inspiring and a constant reminder how lacking it is in most of other people’s work. When Thompson argued in [favor](https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com) of banning TikTok or came out [against](https://stratechery.com/2025/trump-allows-h200-sales-to-china-the-sliding-scale-a-good-decision/?ref=mbi-deepdives.com) the chip export control policies, you could sense he wrestles with his opinions and show his reasoning in front of the readers. Reasonable people can certainly disagree with his positions, but I have never come away thinking Thompson hasn’t considered opposing views. I know very well that in an 'opinion' business, it is absurd to claim or pretend that your or anyone else's opinions are always 'right', but that's hardly ever the point. What matters is whether the opinion you settle on has appropriately weighted opposing views, and whether you can lay out the reasoning that led you to your stance. The world is too infinitely complex to always have the correct point of view from any particular vantage point on a broad range of topics Thompson covers. I too have slight disagreements here and there, but I am not writing this piece intending to allude to a “but” lurking somewhere down the line. No, I merely intend to express my gratitude for the analyst I personally look up to. The other similarity between Buffett and Thompson that I personally feel is there is never going to be anyone like them in their respective field when you carefully consider what exactly they accomplished and what they offered to the world. People talk about Buffett’s performance against benchmark and while his total track record is so damn impressive, I am extremely confident there will never be another investor who will allow you to enjoy a track record as good as Buffett’s without basically any fees. Thompson also fits this bill perfectly. Sure, he bills me $150 per year and he would be the first person to know this is **nowhere close to value maximizing price**. Given what Buffett and Thompson offered to the world and the prices they charged for it, I think such prices are closer to charity than actual market clearing price. You know I sometimes wonder about this inherent “communist” tendency of capitalism. It’s hard to imagine two industries that are more capitalistic than finance and tech, and yet the best investor and perhaps the best tech analyst offered their services to the world at a fraction of their market-clearing price. Of course, for anyone unfortunate enough to be in a group chat with me, none of this is news to them since they know how aggressively I tend to reply to any message that insinuates anything remotely negative about Ben Thompson. That doesn’t make me a fanboy, it is only a mere expression of the deep gratitude I carry with myself for Ben Thompson. I take great inspiration from him for my own work, and I hope he continues to share his work for decades to come! --- *Subscribers get the daily journal and five+ years of Deep Dives, i.e. full-length analyses with financial models on* [***65+***](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/models/) *companies. The daily is just how I think out loud between the Deep Dives!* [Subscribe](#/portal/signup) --- **Disclaimer:* All posts on “MBI Deep Dives” are for informational purposes only. This is NOT a recommendation to buy or sell securities discussed. Please do your own work before investing your money.*