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LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🎨 Unfiltered: The Creative Chaos Behind PostHog’s Success. PostHog spill the beans on hedgehogs, pivots, and the fun behind the brand.
🦔 Gone Hog Wild: PostHog's Zero To One. Turning failures into features: How PostHog found its groove and made analytics fun.
🐺 Starkian Leadership: The King Who Knelt. The last King in the North, and the greatest leadership story ever told.

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Working on some new video content that not even my team knows about for Open Source CEO in 2026. I’m pretty excited to see how it comes together. My inspirations are Channel 5, Mr Beat, goodwork, Meditations for the anxious mind, if anyone knows these awesome channels.

We have a small but growing team now, so we will have a handful of new channels and content verticals to be excited about. I’m looking forward to it. Anyway, Happy Holidays to you all. Let’s dive into our 2025 wrap.

BUILDING IN PUBLIC 🔎

A Look Back At The Year That Was

Another year down for this newsletter, and one I feel pretty good about, looking back on it. It’s as if we are maturing from a fun, little side project to a fun, but somewhat serious, side project. So much so that companies are seeking our support for their IPOs; it’s all a little crazy.

But it’s a great feeling. There is nothing better than creating something in the world that others enjoy. I also feel particularly proud of how weirdly unique this brand is. We are optimizing for fun, and people dig it.

Today’s post is only a short summary of two things: firstly, our favorite posts of the year, and secondly, a quick grading of my predictions from this time last year. Let’s dive right in!

But first, some stats

Before we dive into the wrap-up of the year, content and predictions-wise, I thought it would be interesting to share some bare bones statistics with you, ESPN box store style. So here they are.

The first thing that jumped out at me is the fact that I punched out 274,500 words. That’s the equivalent of 3-4 typical Malcolm Gladwell-style books. To be honest, I’m thrilled that I am a newsletter operator instead of being an author, as most authors are on a prolonged founder diet of ramen and H2O, the poor buggers.

The second thing that stood out to me was the US readership, and the third was revenue. I don’t really track revenue closely with my newsletter, but it has become a real business. If I am honest, I am projecting revenue to probably 2-3x this coming year as well.

Where does the money come from? Well, again, I don’t track it closely. Still, when I speak to budding newsletter founders, I always tell them that they need to find a way to create high-value offerings, which, for me, are my deep dive, advertorial (advertising editorial) pieces.

It honestly feels criminal what I can charge. Not because the value is not there, it is—Vanta, Attio, Sidebar, PostHog, Paddle all came back for at least three campaigns—but because I would actually pay to study these companies.

Take my experience with Vanta, for example, for which I have written a few pieces so far: To write Cybersecured: Vanta’s Zero To One, and the follow up, How Vanta Went From 1 To 100 pieces with Vanta, I needed to sit down with Christina, who is the founder and CEO, along with the chief product officer, chief revenue officer, and a couple of other Vanta teammates.

This allows me to network, learn, and teach all in one hit. Again, I do this with the greatest companies in the world, a gift I should be paying for, not them.

My post of the year

When it comes to my favorite post of the year, it was tough. There were so many options, from stories about trends I’m seeing in tech, build-in-public breakdowns of what we are working on at Athyna, to historical looks at how plagues have changed labour markets. There was one post I enjoyed above all else, though, and that was THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS, my 6,000-word breakdown of the Ross Ulbricht story.

This piece was me at my most journalistic. I wanted to ensure I got the majority of the facts about Ross correct and left room for ambiguity, where the real world was ambiguous. THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS was also the most divisive, with a lot of readers claiming I’d written a puff piece on the controversial founder.

The runners-up

I could have chosen any number of pieces for my post of the year. Still, the two I had on the podium, along with my Ross post, were Middle-earth, Big Brother & A Philosopher King: The Palantir Story, and The Black Death & How It Birthed Today's Prosperity. I loved writing both pieces. Palantir because it helped me understand the company on a much deeper level, and the Black Death piece because I just find how historical events reverberate through time.

A handful of other pieces I loved writing this year were as follows.

• 🍿 CrossFit & The UFC: A Case Study. Comparing how leadership led to one meteoric rise, and one precipitous fall.

• 🏦 Open Sourcing My Investment Portfolio. Here is what my budding little investment portfolio looks like.

• 🙂‍↕️ The Negative CAC Media Pyramid. Cost to acquire a client is changing, and you'd be smart to change with it.

And a shoutout to my favorite guest pieces of the year, Substack Just Committed Creatorcide, by beehiiv founder Tyler Denk. It has come to my attention that guest pieces are not very popular, so I plan to reduce them in 2026, but this one was a certified banger.

Rating my 2025 predictions

As mentioned, now we will dive into my predictions from last year’s My 12 Takes Of Christmas piece. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there were actually only eight predictions, and a handful of ‘takes’ looking back. Here they are…

1/ The adoration of Mr Beat will recede

I don’t really think I got this one right. Mr Beast has been involved in numerous controversies, and his brand seems to be losing luster after the crypto scam and Lunchables launch, but he is still widely respected in business circles.

2/ We will begin to question the ’prediction market’ gambling industry

I feel like I got this one right, aside from a tiny immoral corner of the world. The gamblification of everything has led prediction markets to reach the point phones did, but in 1/10^th the time. People all around the world are asking, ‘Why the fuck can I bet on whether it will rain today?’ Economically, these gutter trash startups will continue to grow like weeds, but so will the pushback.

What a loser, honestly. I’d be ashamed of myself if I were Tarek Mansour. And I feel sad for how he will need to explain how he made all his money to his children and grandchildren.

3/ Smartphones will trend towards low-status items

Although I firmly believe we are on our way to a Frank Herbert-style Butlerian Jihad—when, in the Dune universe, humans rose up and destroyed all the machines—the year 2025 didn’t bring us much closer to a future where smartphones are socially frowned upon. In the words of Howard Marks, “Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.”

4/ Trump’s first year will be seen as a success, and the US economy will boom

I gave myself a rating of 6/10 for this one. I think I got the economy part right, depending on what you call the economy. Stocks are ripping, inflation seems to be ok (for now), GDP is up, I’d say the economy is kinda booming. But it’s the wrong kind of booming. It’s AI and AI only that is dragging the stock market along, while life is getting tougher—as per the trend in recent years—for the lower and middle classes. As for Trump’s year being seen as a success, I got that wrong.

His approval rating is in the tank overall, and is massively underwater on every key issue. My Trump-aligned friends seem to be pretty bullish on his first year, mainly thanks to what I could call ‘culture war’ issues, but I think most non-MAGA see the GOP getting smashed in next year’s midterms.

5/ Elon becomes a total villain outside of MAGA

On January 1, 2025, at approximately 8:39 am, an improvised explosive device exploded in a Cybertruck parked outside the main entrance of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. This means it took approximately four days for my Elon prediction to prove correct. It hurts me to be honest, as Elon has always been my hero, but in my opinion, this was a horrible year for his brand. He continues to be the world’s loudest (or second loudest) troll online, and the USAID debacle, highlighted by the “What did you do last week?” email, was the nail in the brand coffin for Elon.

6/ Apple will continue to lose prestige

Honestly, this was an easy one. Apple’s lack of innovation, hesitation to enter the AI race, and general malaise would be enough to call this prediction correct. But then they went and released the iPhone sock, the most embarrassing product launch of 2025. Apple is still an insanely profitable, well-run organization, but the glitter is gone.

7/ Google + others chase down OpenAI

This is another prediction that I feel like I got correct. If you look at the chart below, it shows OpenAI’s LLM API market share (word salad) degrading from 50 percent to 34 percent to 27 percent. And although Google didn’t pass OpenAI, it likely will next year, sitting in what is likely 2nd place to Anthropic.

It seems OpenAI is shaking out as the consumer-facing player, while Anthropic is dominating enterprise, with Google waiting in the shadows, as the not-so-dark-horse to dethrone them both, on both. OpenAI is incredible, but if I were to back companies here, it would be: Google, Anthropic (leading the better market), then OpenAI.

Looking ahead

2026 is a very exciting year for us at Open Source CEO. In December, our internal team began onboarding, with January marking the start of what I’d called newsletter 2.0. Julia, Bia, and Maru are three individuals I’ve worked with at Athyna for years, who are now transitioning across. These three are incredibly talented, so I’m excited for what we can accomplish.

For now, thanks for reading. Now go and enjoy the holidays. I’ll be back in a few days with a fresh set of predictions for the new year in business, tech, and the world at large. Ciao for now!

Extra reading

• New Year, New Newsletter - Our 2024 Plan - January, 2024

• Chasing Lenny & Open Source CEO - Year 1 Recap - March, 2024

• My 12 Takes Of Christmas - December, 2024

And that's it! You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and also don’t forget to check out Athyna while you’re at it.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

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