Hi, I’m Andy.
I write essays like a public journal, the audience is both you (the reader) and myself (the first reader).
I’m usually interested in the gap between how things claim to work and how they actually work. Cultural/interpersonal phenomena, status games, signaling, incentives, the stuff that’s quietly running the world while everyone pretends it isn’t. Most of my essays end up being about common observations from different angles and my own personal experience.
I’m also a tech founder. Building products for millions of users taught me more about what actually motivates people than any textbook could, because you learn it from the backstage. You watch what people do when they think no one’s measuring, and it almost never matches what they say they’ll do. That pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking, and I’m looking to share some of those observations here.
I write because it forces me to think deeply and figure out how to articulate. Paul Graham made the case that essays are a way of discovering ideas, not presenting them, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. Work out what I actually think by committing it to words and publishing it where I can’t take it back.
I draw from psychology, consumer behavior, evolutionary biology, and occasionally, God. I try to write about useful topics in plain language, because if I can’t explain it simply, I probably don’t understand it yet.
I publish when I have something worth saying, so don’t expect a schedule. And if you think my reasoning breaks somewhere, I’d genuinely love to hear it. That’s my whole motivation for writing on Substack instead of somewhere private!
