Jan 31, 2021 · 42m · another-podcast
Telling stories with charts
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Benedict Evans and Toni Cowan-Brown break down the research, visual design, and editorial methodologies behind crafting Evans' expansive annual macroeconomic presentation. The discussion highlights how rigorous contextual benchmarking, simplified slide architecture, and disciplined curation transform complex industry data into clear strategic insights.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 7.1 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:25 Rant against Statista and sloppy sourcing
Benedict forcefully vents against people citing Statista or Google without knowing the primary source, vintage, or definitions of data.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 7:23 Insisting on classroom context benchmarkToni challenges single data point obsession by introducing her school benchmark analogy to stress why comparative denominators matter.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 5:35 Deconstructing retail vs e-commerce denominatorsBenedict breaks down why Amazon market share claims are flawed unless evaluated against whole retail segments including non-e-commerce spend.
The host holds their own ▶ 17:40 Bridging tech, policy, and media boundariesToni demonstrates analytical synthesis by explaining how modern tech analysis necessitates cross-disciplinary literacy in media and policy.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Four Chart Archetypes and Visual Scaling | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Toni prompts Benedict on his presentation process, allowing Benedict to detail his analytical methodology, circles of competence, and the four chart archetypes he uses to tell stories. | |
| Benchmarking and Contextualizing Macro Data Points | 4 | 8 | 2 | 1 | Benedict demonstrates deep macro literacy by dissecting US retail, Amazon's true market share, and Chinese fintech volume, explaining why big isolated numbers lack meaning without macro denominator benchmarks. | |
| Navigating Data Sourcing and Verification Pitfalls | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Benedict criticizes unreliable data scraping aggregators like Statista and shares his arduous research process of trying and failing to find exact consumer gasoline spend data. | |
| Expanding Scope Beyond Traditional Tech Verticals | 4 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Benedict explains moving from narrow telecoms/smartphone analysis to broader industry-spanning verticals like solar, battery forecasting, and global commodity trade. | |
| Tech Convergence and the Fox Versus Hedgehog | 5 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Toni and Benedict discuss the Isaiah Berlin 'Hedgehog and Fox' metaphor, exploring how tech analysis has transformed into analyzing adjacent sectors like retail, TV, policy, and media. | |
| Structuring Logical Deck Flow and Visual Hierarchy | 3 | 8 | 1 | 1 | Benedict breaks down presentation mechanics, contrasting high-concept TED talks, multi-quadrant banking books, and his single-idea, single-accent-color narrative slides. | |
| Driving Structural Understanding via Unfair Comparisons | 4 | 8 | 2 | 1 | Benedict argues that 'unfair comparisons'—such as fixed-line vs mobile employee ratios or Amazon vs Walmart leverage—are the most illuminating analytical tools. | |
| Framing Thematic Arcs and Editing Presentation Content | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Benedict describes deciding on deck themes late in the cycle, referencing Jim Barksdale's bundling quotes and ruthlessly cutting topics like digital transformation to maintain flow. | |
| Long-Term Historical Trajectories and Unused Charts | 3 | 8 | 1 | 1 | Benedict details building multi-decade historical time series, including US advertising share of GDP and an unused bell-curve dataset of historic elevator attendants. | |
| Diagrammatic Value and Avoiding Empty Metrics | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Benedict contrasts intuitive diagrammatic curves against unhelpful vanity metrics, citing UK open banking API call data as an example of uninterpretable numbers. | |
| Tooling Simplicity and Final Presentation Reflections | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Benedict and Toni wrap up by reflecting on the value of simple tooling—CSV to Excel to Keynote—over overly complex visualization software. |
Statements from this episode (11)
Evans: Every analytical chart fits one of four narrative archetypes
“I basically make four kinds of chart which is, this is going up a lot, this is going down a lot, these two things are exactly, these two things are very different, or these two things that you don't think are the same are the same. And so every chart is a diag…”
Evans: Lengthening a time series makes recent chart trends look visually larger
“Very basic trick to make a trend look bigger is to have a longer time series. Because then, instead of having your five percent change spread across the whole width of the slide, it's all squashed up over into the right hand side of the slide, so the change lo…”
Benedict Evans: US TV adoption surged from zero to 80% in three years
“US TV went from basically zero to 80% in like three years.”
Benedict Evans: Disney spends ~$20B on content annually, Comcast ~$15B
“Well, it turns out Disney probably spends 20, Comcast maybe spends 15, everybody else spends less. If you don't ask that question, the 15 doesn't tell you anything.”
Benedict Evans says Statista scrapes data incorrectly without context or sourcing
“There's this website called Statista, which scrapes other people's websites, copies the numbers in, copies them in wrong without telling you when they were calculated or what you're actually, what's being defined or who did them.”
Evans: Tesla market cap roughly equals top 40 auto companies combined
“Tesla's market cap is roughly equivalent to The market cap of like the top 40 companies in the auto business.”
Evans: Netflix is a TV company, not a software company
“I think Tesla is pretty clearly, sorry, Netflix is a TV company. All the questions that matter are TV industry questions.”
Evans: If Tesla is a car company it is screwed; if software, everyone else is
“Tesla, this is the argument. Is it a software company or a car company? If it's a car company, it's screwed. If it's a software company, everyone else is screwed.”
Evans: Investment banking slide decks are publishing documents, not presentations
“The other thing you could do is what you get from sort of the investment ranking world, which is where I started, where what you call a slide is actually a book. And it's, you're printing it out, so you would have sort of, the, typically the slide is split int…”
Evans: US Elevator Attendant Employment Peaked at 100,000 in 1950
“And the elevator attendants go up from zero in 1870, they go to like a 100,000 in 1950, and then they go all the way back down again. Because before you had, you only get automated elevators with button, with a push button for each floor in the 19 fifties. Bef…”
Benedict Evans: Tech has entered its phase of universal adoption consequences
“The first 50 years of tech, of cars or aircraft were about making car companies and working out what cars are and working out what aircraft are, and the second 50 years was everything that happened once everyone had a car, and everything that happened once air…”