Ben Thompson (writer)
Ben Thompson is an American business, technology, and media analyst, who is based in Taiwan. He is the author of Stratechery, a subscription-based newsletter/podcast featuring commentary on tech and media news. He is also the co-host of Exponent with James Allworth and Dithering with John Gruber, all podcasts focused on the same themes.
Thompson's career includes stints at Apple, where he interned at Apple University; Microsoft, where he worked on its Windows Apps team; and at WordPress developer Automattic as a growth engineer. Thompson launched Stratechery as a blog while still a Microsoft employee, and in April 2014 devoted himself to the site full-time, operating on a "freemium" subscription model. As of April 2015, Thompson had more than 2,000 paying subscribers. Thompson's success with Stratechery has drawn comparisons to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish and Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight. However, Thompson has stated his primary inspiration was John Gruber, author of the site Daring Fireball.
Thompson's undergraduate education was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his graduate education at Northwestern University, where he received an MBA from the Kellogg School as well as an MEM from the McCormick School of Engineering.
