Not Boring by Packy McCormick

Hi friends 👋 , Happy Thursday! Three years ago, Mackenzie Burnett, the founder and CEO of Not Boring Capital portfolio company, Ambrook, wrote the first in a short-lived series we called The Founder’s Letter. At the time, it was basically a dream. Today, Ambrook is a real business with more than 2,500 customers across the country, helping them realize their American Dream. And on Tuesday, Ambrook...

Welcome to the 1,000 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since our last essay! Join 244,199 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: Hi friends 👋, Happy Wednesday! Sending this one a little later than usual because we’re timing it with an announcement about a portfolio company and previous Deep Dive subject: Wander raised $50+ million in a Series B led QED and Fifth Wall The fun part is,...

Welcome to Episode 008 of Hyperlegible, a Not Boring Radio production. To find all of the excellent essays we’ve discussed on Hyperlegible, head to Readwise . Golden Age with Mike Solana is live at: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts The guest selection process for Hyperlegible is three parts art, half part science, and four parts serendipity. It boils down to: if someone writes an essay I love, I...

Nobody on the internet writes about all of the complexity involved in actually building things -- from homes to jet engines -- better than ⁠Brian Potter⁠ , the author of ⁠Construction Physics⁠ . I am a huge fan of Brian's writing. I use it as a reference for a lot of my pieces. I once tweeted, "Construction Physics is a national treasure and the president should give Brian Potter a medal or czar j...

In this timely conversation, Conrad Bastable ( https://x.com/ConradBastable ) breaks down his epic essay "Forsaking Industrialism" and explores why the West has abandoned manufacturing while China built a world-beating industrial platform over decades. Read it here: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/forsaking-industrialism-the-most-expensive-thing-you-didnt-buy We dive into how EU regulations...

Pseudonymous writer ⁠Parakeet⁠ joins me to discuss her viral essay " ⁠Skittle Factory Dementia Monkey Titty Monetization⁠ ." I first heard about Parakeet a couple weeks ago when I saw half of my Twitter feed and half of my Substack Notes feed sharing her essay, including a bunch of people I wouldn't expect to share an essay with "Monkey Titty" in the title. I read it immediately, and saw why. Para...

Hi friends 👋, Happy Wednesday! After almost two years, Julian Lehr is BACK to writing. He wrote a piece called The case against conversational interfaces , arguing that we're not going to be talking to our computers instead of using graphical user interfaces. GUIs work pretty well! Instead, he thinks that conversational interfaces are going to be a complement to existing workflows. We'll talk to...

Hi friends 👋, Happy Monday! Kicking off the week by sharing Episode 002 of Hyperlegible . This is a conversation with Utsav Mamoria on his excellent essay, How to live an intellectually rich life , which broke out of containment in India and raced across the globe to the tune of 1,100 likes at the time of recording. For good reason: Utsav combines philosophy, mathematics, biographies, personal ex...

For the first episode of Hyperlegible, I talked to my friend Tina He (@fkpxls on twitter) who writes the excellent Fakepixels, which she recently brought back to life after a four year hibernation and on which she’s dropped gems each week since. Last week, Tina wrote an essay called Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective about something surprising she’s noticed: AI is causing a lot of people to wo...

In April 2022, Packy wrote a Deep Dive on Primer: https://www.notboring.co/p/primer-the-ambitious-home-for-ambitious Three years later, a lot has changed. Primer is building schools. The opportunity is both bigger and more challenging than it was then. In this conversation, Packy and Primer CEO Ryan Delk discuss the need to fix in K-12 education. Ryan shares insights on Primer's transition from a...

Welcome to the  596 newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since Monday! If you haven’t subscribed, join  125,666 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: Hi friends 👋 , Happy Thursday! This really will be the shortest Not Boring in history. You have a Memorial Day Weekend to get to. But since odds are you’ll be in a car for a couple hours at some point in the next few days, I thought it wo...

Welcome to the 1,912 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Thursday! Join 48,356 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by … Secureframe Secureframe  helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance. Secureframe allows compani...

Welcome to the 1,265  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday! Join 47,388 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… Rows In March, I wrote that Excel Never Dies. I may have spoken too soon. Rows very much wants Excel to die. It has a shot: Rows is one of the most “Holy shit 🤯 ” new product experiences I’ve had in a long time. Rows is...

Welcome to the 225 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Thursday (Substack confirmed they dropped some)! Join 46,444 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: Today’s Not Boring, the whole thing, is brought to you by … Truework Read on to learn how Truework is building the verified identity layer of the internet. Hi friends 👋 , Happy Thursday! I met Ryan Sandler, Truework ’s CEO,...

Welcome to the ???  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday - on Thursday, Substack suddenly cut my subscriber count by ~1,200 and I’m not sure why. But onwards: join 46,123 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring is presented by… Masterworks In January I wrote about Master...

Welcome to the 867 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Thursday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 45,133 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Hi friends 👋 , Happy Thursday! Startup stock options are one of those things that startup employees should know a ton about but just don’t. There’s a nev...

Welcome to the 974  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 44,858 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts (in ~30 mins) Hi friends 👋 , Happy Monday! We have a special one for you today.  Back in January, I wrote a piece about Alibaba . Lillian Li , whose writ...

Welcome to the 1,091 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Thursday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 44,266 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… BlockFi BlockFi is a new kind of financial institution. With BlockFi, you can use cryptocurrency to earn intere...

Welcome to the 537  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 42,205 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Hi friends 👋 , Happy Monday! This is a big one for me: Not Boring’s first birthday. Instead of writing about a very big company, which I normally do on M...

Welcome to the 873 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Thursday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 41,936 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this deep dive straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring - the whole thing! - is brought to you by… Secureframe Secureframe  helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC 2 and...

Welcome to the 997  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 41,668 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… Masterworks Last week, you might have heard that the art market went—as they say in b-school—absolutely bonkers,...

Welcome to the 404  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since Monday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 41,075 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this memo straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… Important, Not Important The world is changing, and the issues we face are not only connected, but enormously complex....

Welcome to the 675  newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 40,671 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen on  Spotify or  Apple Podcasts Today’s Not Boring sponsor asks: Looking for a new investing app? Unclear what J.R. Smith is looking for here. Perhaps a new investing app, in which case...

Welcome to the 2,104 newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since last Monday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 39,996 (so close!) smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧  To get this essay straight in your ears: listen  here  or  on  Spotify (in ~30 minutes) Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… Secureframe Secureframe helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC 2 and ISO...

Welcome to the  1,747 newly Not Boring people  who have joined us since Sunday! If you aren’t subscribed, join 39,474 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: This week’s Not Boring is brought to you by… UserLeap Hi friends 👋 , Happy Thursday! Our little Not Boring family is growing — nearly 7,000 of you joined the party in the past month alone. That’s wild. I continue to be amazed that this is...