How They Make Money
Weekly business breakdowns delivered by a Silicon Valley senior finance executive. Join investors, visual thinkers, and data-driven professionals. Become a smarter decision-maker in minutes.
- Top in Finance
- #8
- Paid leaderboard
- #50
- Subscribers
- 346K
- Paid subscribers
- 1,000+ paid
- Badge
- Bestseller 1k
- Followers
- 364K
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- Recommends
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What they write about
Visual business breakdowns explaining how individual companies make money, written by a technology finance executive. Regular features include earnings visuals, weekly roundups of reported results across dozens of tickers, and deep dives into software, semiconductor and consumer-hardware businesses.
- business breakdowns
- earnings
- software
- semiconductors
- technology companies
- data visualisation
Recent examples: 📊 PRO: This Week in Visuals · ⚡ TSMC: Not Slowing Down
Written from How They Make Money’s own published post titles and openings in Sep 11, 2026. It describes the subjects the newsletter covers, not its views, and is not investment advice.
Most-mentioned tickers
Symbols named in the headline of a post from the last 30 days, most-covered first. The number is how many of those posts mentioned it.
ACNASMLBACBLKCCLCOSTDALDPZDRIGISJNJMTN
Read from 4 post headlines in the last 30 days. A newsletter that names a company only in the body of a post will not appear here, and a mention is not a recommendation — it only means the symbol came up.
Growth history
Subscribers (thousands, nightly)
334K on Sep 10, 2026 → 346K on Oct 20, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #8 today · #8 a week ago · #8 a month ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 41 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 2%
- Best rank seen
- #8
- Subscribers added
- +12K
- Followers added
- +12K
- Posts
- 13
- Reactions per post
- 80
- Reactions tracked
- 2.3K
- Tickers covered
- 45
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Oct 20, 2026
since tracking began
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 29 posts
in tracked posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: 💬 Meta Wants The Interface — 109 reactions on Sep 25, 2026.
Recent posts
- 📊 PRO: This Week in Visuals
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: ⚡️ TSMC: Not Slowing Down 💯 How To Find 100-Baggers ☁️ Oracle: 850 Megawatts Later 🏦 Big Banks Face a New Reality Premium members get: 📊 Monthly reports : 200+ companies visualized. 📩 Tuesday articles : Exclusive deep dives and insights. 📚 Access to our archive : Hundreds of business breakdowns. PRO members get everything PLUS : 📩 Saturday PRO reports : Timely insights on the latest earnings. Today at a glance: 🔬 ASML : Demand Reaches 2030 💊 J&J : MedTech Needs Work 💼 UnitedHealth…
- ⚡ TSMC: Not Slowing Down
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: ☁️ Micron Raises The Floor 💍 How Oura Makes Money 🏦 Big Banks Face a New Reality ⚡️ How SB Energy Makes Money 💸 AI’s debt problem Financing is the latest obstacle in the AI infrastructure boom. CoreWeave shares plunged more than 15% on Wednesday, while yields on some of its bonds have climbed above 16%, a level associated with distressed debt. The NVIDIA-backed cloud provider has taken on tens of billions of dollars in debt to build the data centers powering the AI boom. The pressure extends…
- 🏦 Big Banks Face a New Reality
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 💯 How To Find 100-Baggers ☁️ Oracle: 850 Megawatts Later ⚡️ How SB Energy Makes Money 📈 Stock Buybacks & Dividends Explained A new earnings season is here, with the big banks kicking us off. Later this week, we’ll have a look at TSMC and ASML for our first signals from the AI infrastructure boom. AI is already making waves in banking. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned today about letting AI agents access customer accounts: “If people are using them, they should understand the risk. […] We’re not…
- 📊 PRO: This Week in Visuals
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 💯 How To Find 100-Baggers ☁️ How Nscale Makes Money Premium members get: 📊 Monthly reports : 200+ companies visualized. 📩 Tuesday articles : Exclusive deep dives and insights. 📚 Access to our archive : Hundreds of business breakdowns. PRO members get everything PLUS : 📩 Saturday PRO reports : Timely insights on the latest earnings. Today at a glance: 🥤 PepsiCo : International Takes Over 🛩️ Delta : Fuel Eats the Upside 🍺 Constellation : SpikedAde Joins the Mix 🌿 Tilray : BrewDog Carries…
- 💯 How To Find 100-Baggers
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 📈 How to Analyze a Stock 🤓 OpenAI’s Next Interface 📊 Earnings Visuals (9/2026) ⚽️ Why Is Bezos Buying Liverpool FC? Great investing is 1% buying, 99% waiting A 100-bagger is a stock that returns 100 times your initial investment. Put in $10,000 and, eventually, you have $1 million. Naturally, most investors focus on the first challenge: finding one. But that is only half the battle. In his book 100 to 1 in the Stock Market , Thomas Phelps showed how long it takes for compounding to turn an…
- 🤓 OpenAI’s Next Interface
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 🏢 Meta Goes to Work 📊 Earnings Visuals (9/2026) ☁️ How Nscale Makes Money ❄️ Snowflake: AI Fuels Consumption Connecting the Dots OpenAI used DevDay last week to unveil more than 20 products and features. The most important announcement was Dots . Source: OpenAI DevDay 2026 Dots are always-on AI agents with their own cloud computer, access to more than 4,000 apps, and the ability to keep working toward your goals even when you are not actively prompting them. Sam Altman described the shift as a…
- 📊 PRO: This Week in Visuals
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 🏢 Meta Goes to Work 📊 Earnings Visuals (9/2026) ☁️ How Nscale Makes Money Premium members get: 📊 Monthly reports : 200+ companies visualized. 📩 Tuesday articles : Exclusive deep dives and insights. 📚 Access to our archive : Hundreds of business breakdowns. PRO members get everything PLUS : 📩 Saturday PRO reports : Timely insights on the latest earnings. Today at a glance: 🌐 Accenture : AI Creates More Work 👟 Nike : Still Going Downhill 🛳️ Carnival : Europe Comes Back 🎿 Vail Resorts…
- 🏢 Meta Goes to Work
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 💬 Meta Wants The Interface ☁️ How Nscale Makes Money 🤖 OpenAI’s Advertising Machine ⚽️ Why Is Bezos Buying Liverpool FC? 🤖 Anthropic cracks open Anthropic’s IPO prospectus hasn’t officially landed yet, but Reuters obtained a leaked draft this week, giving us the first real look inside one of AI's most extraordinary growth stories. A few numbers already stand out: Revenue reportedly reached ~ $4.6 billion in 2025, up 12x Y/Y . Compute and infrastructure spending topped $7 billion . Nearly half…
- 📊 Earnings Visuals (9/2026)
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. 🔥 The September report is here! All the key earnings visuals from the past month in one report. ✔️ Cut through the noise with clear, concise financial snapshots. ✔️ See revenue trends, profit margins, and key takeaways instantly. We visualized 200+ companies this season: In case you missed it: 📊 Earnings Visuals (7/2026) 📊 Earnings Visuals (8/2026) Download the full report below or log in to your account. Your voice matters! Help us shape future reports. Got a company or sector you're curious about? Hit 'Reply' and…
- ☁️ How Nscale Makes Money
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: ☁️ Neocloud Economics 📈 How to Invest in IPOs 💍 How Oura Makes Money ⚡️ How SB Energy Makes Money ☁️ Nscale is going public Nscale was spun out barely two and a half years ago. It has already signed contracts worth up to $103 billion in future revenue. Now it wants to build a full-stack AI hyperscaler from power to token. The company secures power and land , builds data centers , buys the GPUs , sells the compute , and is now pushing further into AI software . And it’s scaling at an almost…
- 📊 PRO: This Week in Visuals
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 💬 Meta Wants the Interface 🤖 OpenAI’s Advertising Machine Premium members get: 📊 Monthly reports : 200+ companies visualized. 📩 Tuesday articles : Exclusive deep dives and insights. 📚 Access to our archive : Hundreds of business breakdowns. PRO members get everything PLUS : 📩 Saturday PRO reports : Timely insights on the latest earnings. Today at a glance: 🛒 Costco : Refunds Fund Price Cuts 🍪 General Mills : Innovation Gains Traction 🫒 Darden : Olive Garden Still Lags 1. 🛒 Costco…
- 💬 Meta Wants The Interface
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: 🚖 Uber: AV Anxiety 💍 How Oura Makes Money 🤖 OpenAI’s Advertising Machine 💳 PRO: Apple, Meta, Samsung, Visa…. 📊 Check out 100+ companies visualized in our latest monthly report. Muse breaks out Muse launched on September 8 as Meta’s latest attempt to catch up in AI. Despite being available only in the US and Canada, Meta’s new personal agent has reached more than 3.4 million downloads , according to Sensor Tower. Muse climbed to the top of the US app stores, and sent investors scrambling to…
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Data: Substack public leaderboards and publication archives, refreshed nightly, plus public beehiiv sitemaps and recommendation pages, refreshed weekly. Source for this page: How They Make Money. Subscriber counts are Substack’s own rounded public figures, so week-on-week changes move in steps. beehiiv audience sizes are self-reported by the publisher and are not verified. Last snapshot: Oct 20, 2026.