Charles Fitzgerald

Until the post-Twitter landscape resolves, my primary online hangout is platformonomics.com. You can subscribe to get my blog posts and the short-form observations that traditionally would have all been here.

Read and subscribe at platformonomics.com/2026/04/platfo…

Platformonomics TGIF #122: April 3, 2026

@IsForAt @kmoore8228 What is Seattle’s next act? Software era is over. Too many people take prosperity for granted. geekwire.com/2026/a-warning…

I'm not moving anytime soon (but won't die here... that's a different issue). but I am SUPER worried about being able to get the best people to work with here and my kids and grandkids having great job options here. We are risking taking a TOP area for jobs and turning it into Cleveland. (to cite @charlesfitz )

Legitimately can't understand the type of person that would uproot their lives like this over a tax once you're over some minimum bar of not really having to worry about money. There are just so many reasons why I want to live in a place that are more important than my tax rate.

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Platformonomics TGIF #121: March 27, 2026

@aviel @randompnwguy84 @remarkmarketing Plumbing is the biggest issue. Really hard to retrofit concrete slabs. Easier with older buildings.

@randompnwguy84 @remarkmarketing No, illegal for several reasons. Places like Cleveland have done the work at the gov level to make this possible though. We are for sure headed there cc: @charlesfitz

"Approximately a third of downtown commercial space remains vacant" is right but also 60% of the non-vacant spaces are vacant (leases people can't get out of). It's even worse than this. I have a portfolio company who is sub-leasing 20k sqft for $2000/mo in a downtown tower with a water view 😭

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Platformonomics TGIF #120: March 13, 2026

@jesseproudman @aviel @geekwire “Bye Bob!”

My @geekwire opinion piece has resulted in a bunch of private communications from entrepreneurial peers who have either: - Already relocated out of Washington - Are now actively in process It's a surprisingly higher number than I expected. The avalanche has started...

@IsForAt “Bye Bob!”

Let me interpret this post from Howard Shultz (founder of Starbucks): We are leaving Washington with our money making. We aren't going to pay taxes that we don't have to - especially when they are not accountable. We are still proud to have built our fortune in Washington, and Vivek (btw, a friend of mine, and great guy) will run our give-away funds here, which that doesnt' cost us money yet, but they can go anywhere and all our money will be made elsewhere now. We will not live here or worry about stuff here. Kudos to Howard for saying it. all the non billionaires are just doing it and not saying it right now. we really have an issue in our yard. linkedin.com/posts/howardsc…

@aviel Sounds like Cleveland. World changed and politicos oblivious/made transition worse…

Given that we're now hours away from a vote that will forever change Washington State, I might as well do some truthmaxxing. The income tax is not a doomsday job destroyer. Those jobs are going away whether or not this bill passes. The only real choice is whether we manage the transition well or employ bad tax policy to make it near impossible. With AI, what's collapsing isn’t just "knowledge work", it’s "process work". A huge number of jobs (and even companies) existed to serve workflows, not outcomes. In the age of software, busy work changed and knowledge work expanded. In the age of AI, busy work will be gone and knowledge will be democratized. That’s the nuance too many people are missing... and it's huge. This transition is going to be brutal. The workforce will be smaller and many careers built around managing process rather than producing outcomes are already ending. This is happening now. And cities like Seattle are especially exposed. Bad policy has already begun pushing out innovators and now our biggest employers are no longer AI durable business, but instead are universities and healthcare systems who have a huge concentration of process-heavy work that is under serious pressure. I still think that there’s a way through this and that the democratization of knowledge work will unlock a new wave of innovation, but places that try to tax, regulate, or moralize their way around this instead of helping people transition are going to get crushed. That transition is also NOT through increased government spending from higher taxes. Let's please not get crushed.

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Platformonomics TGIF #119: March 6, 2026

@aviel I would have picked Cleveland

“Being offered the option to relocate”. Washington State policy is a homewrecker that separates and destroys families. Full stop.

MUST WATCH: Is Seattle’s grim future hidden in Cleveland’s past? @charlesfitz shares a cautionary tale of one of our greatest and most prosperous cities that became one of the poorest after politicians turned their backs on the industries that made it great. Sound familiar?

I had fun talking to @jcurleyshow at @KIRONewsradio about Seattle's next act and why Cleveland is a cautionary tale for us.

Read and subscribe at platformonomics.com/2026/02/platfo…

Platformonomics TGIF #118: February 27, 2026

@charlesfitz Content gold & comedy gold! "there are hyperscalers and mere scalers of hype." 😂😂😂

"Keeping up with the hyperCAPEX Joneses has pushed Meta into off-balance-sheet machinations (Hello Enron!)"