Recommended: 10 Noteworthy Substacks on Data & AI
A list of independently published newsletters with expert perspectives, insights, and attitudes on the tech industry.
Welcome to the Cloud Database Report. I’m John Foley, a long-time tech journalist, including 18 years at InformationWeek, who then worked in strategic comms at Oracle, IBM, and MongoDB. I invite you to subscribe, share, comment, and connect with me on LinkedIn.
It’s been nearly four years since I launched the Cloud Database Report on Substack, and it’s now one of the leading database-related newsletters on this self-publishing platform. I try to write about complex technologies in a way that’s meaningful and interesting to a wide audience of business and technology people.
Substack is a rich source of independent reporting, writing, and analysis, with an estimated 35 million+ active users and 17,000+ writers. There are hundreds of tech-related blogs/newsletters that you might find interesting. Following are ten of my favorites. [Note: Some require a paid subscription for full access.]
Technically, by Justin Gage, a marketing professional based in Brooklyn, NY. It’s described as a knowledge base for learning about software concepts. Gage has created a niche writing explainers on technologies that people want to know about, such as vector databases.
See: “What is RAG?”
Supervised, by Matthew Linley, a former data analyst and experienced tech journalist. Covers AI, language models, and big data. Linley has a hands-on background in Python, SQL, C++, Airflow, PyTorch, Dbt, Snowflake, and open source.
Benn.substack, by Benn Stancil, analytics expert and founder of Mode, a BI platform company. His “Benn” franchise includes Benn.company, Benn.ventures, Benn.substack, etc. Something of an iconoclast, Stancil writes long pieces often with an unconventional POV. Example: The site’s most-viewed article begins, “Databricks is a $38 billion mistake.”
See: “Don’t be evil*”
Big Technology, by Alex Kantrowitz. Formerly with mainstream media (Advertising Age, BuzzFeed), Kantrowitz has established a sizable following by focusing on a handful of the biggest names in tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft. Hosts a podcast.
See: “Is OpenAI’s New ‘o1’ Model the Big Step Forward We’ve Been Waiting For”
Data Analysis Journal, by Olga Berezovsky, a self-described analyst, data scientist, and big data enthusiast based in SF. Berezovsky’s articles are aimed at practitioners (data analysts, data scientists), including career advice for those on the learning curve. Occasional guest posts bring outside perspective.
See: “Mastering Critical Thinking: How to Improve Your Analytical Skills”
Understanding AI, by Timothy B. Lee, a journalist who previously wrote for the Washington Post, Vox.com, and Ars Technica. Originally, he published a Substack newsletter called Full Stack Economics, then transitioned to Understanding AI. In a recent post, Lee provided competitive analysis between Tesla and Waymo for self-driving taxis.
The AiEdge, by Damien Benveniste, whose background includes a PhD in Physics and stint in machine learning at Meta. His newsletter goes deep into ML — engineering, system design, algorithms, MLOps — with an emphasis on continuous learning. Recent topics include LLM pipelines and defining an agent.
Artificial Ignorance, by Charlie Guo, a tech entrepreneur with two CS degrees from Stanford. Note the catchy URL: ignorance.ai. Newsletter aspires to provide simple, practical explorations of AI companies and concepts. Examples include a review of AI-generated voices and building a smart assistant.
ByteByteGo, by Alex Xu, who has worked as a software engineer at Oracle, Zynga, Apple, and Twitter and now a full time Substacker and author on system design. Popular topics have included understanding database types and a crash course in Kubernetes.
See: “Big Data Pipeline Cheatsheet for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud”
Scarlet Ink, by Dave Anderson, who served in a variety of software development and IT roles at Amazon, AWS, and Bezos Academy. Anderson’s Substack is focused on career development, leadership, and other aspects of talent. I’m including it here because in my experience at places like Oracle and IBM, you won’t be successful in data and AI without the right skills and experience.
See: “Good Employees Follow the Rules. Great Employees Break Them.”
Further reading
These are a small sampling of the estimated 20,000 newsletters on Substack. You can see the Top 100 tech Substacks on the leaderboard here.
I also subscribe to many non-tech Substacks, such as Cafe Anne; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and Patti Smith.
Do you know of other Substacks on data and AI that are worth checking out? Are you a Substack writer who covers enterprise IT? Feel free to share a link in the comments section of this blog post.