About The Bay Table

The Bay Table is an unsigned weekly of analysis and commentary on the business of technology: the money, power, policy and strategy behind it.

What we do

Technology is too important to be left to the technologists, and too interesting to be left to the regulators. We follow the capital that funds it, the firms that dominate it, the governments that try to tame it and the founders who keep trying to outrun all three. We write for people who build and run companies, and who would like the argument quickly.

Each week we publish leaders, analysis of business and finance, and pieces on policy and regulation, along with a digest of the week’s news. Three regular columns, Giannini, Warren and Terman, take on money, politics and the next generation of founders.

The columns

• Giannini: Business and finance, after A.P. Giannini, the San Francisco banker who lent to the people other banks ignored.
• Warren: Policy, after Earl Warren, governor of California and Chief Justice.
• Terman: The next generation of founders, after Frederick Terman, the Stanford dean who pushed his students Hewlett and Packard into business.

Why we are unsigned

Articles here carry no bylines. This is not coyness. An argument should stand or fall on its evidence and its logic, not on the reputation of whoever happens to make it. The institution speaks, in the first person plural, and takes responsibility for what it says.

The house view

We start from the radical centre. We are pro-market and pro-competition, which makes us sceptical of monopoly in all its forms, including the kind that arrives with a friendly interface. We are pro-immigration, because the most reliable source of new companies is new people. And we are just as wary of heavy-handed regulation, which has a habit of protecting incumbents from the challengers it claims to help.

None of this is a licence to be vague. Every piece takes a position, and we expect to be wrong from time to time. When we are, we say so. Our editorial standards explain how we source, correct and stay independent.

Contact

To report an error, or to write to the desk, email corrections@thebaytable.com. Published corrections are listed on our corrections page.