Top all-time · #1022
Benn Stancil
Personal blog · benn.substack.comdatabusiness
Benn Stancil writes benn.substack, a personal blog at benn.substack.com about data and business. Since 2021, 65 different Hacker News readers have linked it 105 times, most often “How the modern data stack got lost”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Benn Stancil's Substack, linked for its writing on the data infrastructure economy and VC-driven hype in tech; one commenter calls it super interesting.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Called "super interesting" for its writing on the data infrastructure economy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A weekly Substack on data and technology, with some occasional conversations about culture, sports, and politics. Click to read benn.substack, by Benn Stancil, a Substack publication.
Most-linked posts?
- How the modern data stack got lost3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-02-18
- The Technical Pay Gap3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-27
- The End of YC3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-01
- The case for consolidation2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-06
- “How DBT Fails”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-10-07
- Snowflake goes shopping, and buys the store2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-11
- Don't Be Evil2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-26
- The Banality of Surveillance2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-06
- Why do people want to be analytics engineers?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-07-01
- Is BI dead? – On dismantling data's ship of Theseus2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-18
What Hacker News says?
Benn Stancil’s newsletter on the data infrastructure economy is super interesting https://benn.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What hyper-focused industry newsletters do you enjoy?”Submitted Do AI companies work? as a story · 402 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of Benn Stancil’s post — “The posters decide” Winners in the tech space are increasingly pre-determined by VC-influencer cos/ individuals, who create the buzz around products. https://benn.substack.com/p/the-posters-decide
Comment linking /p/the-posters-decide
on “A16Z blogs are just glorified marketing”Submitted The end of big data as a story · 200 points
HN discussionOne thing that has become apparent to me over the years is that most of these exploration and visualization tools will be pretty ineffective unless the data is modeled correctly. Some of the tools mentioned here will actually do a lot of the modeling before the exploration and visualization kick in, but the tool is probably only doing the best it can but will most likely not understand a lot of the structure and bus…
Comment linking /p/is-bi-dead
on “Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?”Submitted Is BI dead? – On dismantling data's ship of Theseus as a story · 174 points
HN discussionI think this might be the article you mentioned https://benn.substack.com/p/do-ai-companies-work
Comment linking /p/do-ai-companies-work
on “OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B”Submitted Do data-driven companies win? as a story · 109 points
HN discussionLearning with Lucy[0], a beginner excel course. ---- curated direct links from searching hackernews / search engines on 'excel' * excel for everything : https://benn.substack.com/p/the-next-billion-programmers * The World Cup of MS Excel : https://archive.ph/DgDYQ * user-centered approach to user functions in excel : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... * MS opens up Excel to custom data t…
Comment linking /p/the-next-billion-programmers
on “Ask HN: Does anyone teach spreadsheet architecture?”Submitted The Industrialization of IT as a story · 45 points
HN discussionSubmitted The case for consolidation as a story · 39 points
HN discussionSubmitted The rise of the analytics pretendgineer as a story · 29 points
HN discussionSubmitted The End of YC as a story · 26 points
HN discussionSubmitted Did the "modern data stack" not deliver? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Industrialization of IT as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The End of YC as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Banality of Surveillance as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is Excel Immortal? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why do people want to be analytics engineers? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ban ChatGPT as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Enough as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted SaaS 2.0 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Ads Are Coming as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Scorpion Box as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Labor of Little Decisions as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The End of YC as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't Be Evil as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How A Startup Feels as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted LLMs Shouldn't Write SQL as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted LLMs Shouldn't Write SQL as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
