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New to Gonzo Capital? Start with a curated selection of essays on money, technology, power, internet culture, and the strange future we are building.
New to Gonzo Capital? Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Gonzo Capital is an independent publication about technology, money, power, culture, and the increasingly strange future we appear to be building together.
There is venture capital here. Artificial intelligence. Surveillance. The internet. Markets. Politics. Occasionally history, science fiction, meditation, and other things that probably seemed related when I started writing about them.
If you are new, these are good places to begin.
Capital, Startups & Venture Capital
Essays on venture capital, startup fundraising, investing, incentives, and the strange social rituals that appear whenever founders, VCs, and LPs all need something from somebody richer than themselves. Written from inside the industry, with enough suspicion to occasionally check whether the furniture is nailed down.
Confessions of a Compromised Capitalist
From anti-capitalist to venture capitalist, and the uncomfortable contradictions that came with it.
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Everyone Is Asking Someone Else for Money
Founders ask VCs. VCs ask LPs. Somewhere above them, someone richer is still saying no.
Read essay →Technology & Power
Essays about artificial intelligence, surveillance, emerging technology, Silicon Valley, and the institutions deciding how new systems get built, deployed, and justified. The gadgets are interesting. Who controls them, who benefits, and who gets stuck living with the consequences usually interests me more.
Tech Doesn't Understand Why You Don't Like It
Silicon Valley is extraordinarily good at imagining futures. Understanding the people expected to live in them is proving harder.
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The Most Observed Event in Human History
How the 2026 World Cup became a global testing ground for surveillance technology built to remain after everyone went home.
Read essay →The Internet & Culture
Essays on internet culture, social media, algorithms, AI-generated content, online communities, and what living inside the web is doing to human beings. The internet used to be somewhere we visited. Now it is infrastructure, culture, memory, entertainment, employment, and possibly a low-grade neurological condition.
The Internet Was Better When It Was Worse
The web became cleaner, smarter, faster and more personalized. Somewhere along the way, it also became less weirdly human.
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The Internet Ouroboros
AI learned from the human internet. Now the machine-generated web is beginning to train the machines.
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Music for People Who Aren't Listening
What happens when human musical history becomes training material for machines built to make more music than anyone could possibly hear?
Read essay →So What Is Gonzo Capital?
Gonzo Capital is an attempt to understand the systems shaping modern life without pretending they are any less strange than they actually are.
Money, technology, politics, and culture rarely operate separately. The interesting part is usually what happens when they collide.
But the interesting stuff usually happens where they collide.
New pieces arrive every Wednesday.