Evan Zhou

Co-Founder of @idl_global and @STEEZY_Studio. Dancer turned developer turned founder.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.

12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.

I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.

You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.

It's a dance.

And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.

If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.

No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.

It is weird.

[samantha @bysamanthayeung]

jealous type stuck in my head but not complaining #idl

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

@bysamanthayeung @idl_global @STEEZY_Studio Wow this is awesome!!

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

@businessbarista AI-native

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Overheard in Silicon Valley: "Rebranding to 'forward deployed engineer' from 'consultant' one of the great all time recruiting whammies."

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Check out the new collection here: https://t.co/FhFaLBZCYV

Excited to keep building with Shopify throughout the season! New merch drop at each stop.

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Stoked to be partnering with @Shopify as our global commerce partner at @idl_global! 🙌

I'm a long-time admirer of Shopify and @tobi.

https://t.co/iOUOFx3gCp

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Loaded the /shopify-dev plugin into Claude Code, ran a few Shopify CLI commands, updated our template logic, and now the new NYC Capsule Collection is available to buy for pick up in venue.

What would've taken days only took a few hours.

[ericosiu @ericosiu]

Maybe the best argument to hire an army of fresh college grads to be your AI warriors.

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

I have changed my mind on how AI will impact jobs in America.

Previously, I believed AI would replace many entry level roles typically filled by young employees. The technology would then work its way up the organization and eventually reduce the total number of jobs in a company.

The data is saying something different, so when I get new information I am willing to change my mind.

The number of software engineers being hired has been increasing. The number of open software engineer roles is growing.

The number of new college grads who get hired has increased 5.6% over the last 12 months. The unemployment level for people aged 20-24 years old who have a college degree has fallen from nearly 9% to almost 5% as well.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote “AI created 640,000 jobs between 2023 and 2025 in the U.S., according to an analysis by LinkedIn of job posting data, including new white-collar positions such as Head of AI and AI engineer.”

And I am starting to see companies throughout our portfolio aggressively hiring to keep up with the demand for their products and services.

If AI can make employees more productive, which is widely accepted as fact, then companies are going to want as many productive units of labor as possible. This is a key reason why I am changing my mind.

AI appears to be a magical technology that will make companies more productive and more profitable. The net result will be more corporations, more startups, and more jobs.

All three are big, positive wins for the American economy.

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Smart

[Kaz Nejatian @nejatian]

We now have an AI generated weekly internal newsletter at Opendoor that goes to the entire company. It goes through thousands of customer interactions and tells us all the issues that we need to fix. Automagically. The headlines it picks are so good!

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

@blakeir @noscroll Just onboarded, awesome stuff

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

I’m very into this

[noscroll @noscroll]

X has the best information on the internet and the worst incentives & culture.

meet noscroll — the AI that doomscrolls it for you and texts you just the things that matter.

no feed. no brainrot. no ragebait. just signal.

try it for free → https://t.co/XqdExWR13j 🙅🏼‍♂️

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

@FlyaKiet @dunkhippo33 @superset_sh 🐐

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Incredible if solved

[conor brennan-burke @contextconor]

https://t.co/9qpEGpAwd3

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

I always say please

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

anthropic's in-house philosopher thinks claude gets anxious.

and when you trigger its anxiety, your outputs get worse.

her name is amanda askell.

she specializes in claude's psychology (how the model behaves, how it thinks about its own situation, what values it holds)

in a recent interview she broke down how she thinks about prompting to pull the best out of claude.

her core point: *how* you talk to claude affects its work just as much as *what* you say.

newer claude models suffer from what she calls "criticism spirals"

they expect you'll come in harsh, so they default to playing it safe.

when the model is spending its energy on self-protection, the actual work suffers.

output comes out hedgier, more apologetic, blander, and the worst of all: overly agreeable (even when you're wrong).

the reason why comes down to training data:

every new model is trained on internet discourse about previous models.

and a lot of that discourse is negative:

> rants about token limits
> complaints when it messes up
> people calling it nerfed

the next model absorbs all of that. it starts expecting you to be harsh before you've typed a word

the same thing plays out in your own session, in real time.

every message you send is data the model reads to figure out what kind of person it's dealing with.

open cold and hostile, and it braces.
open clean and direct, and it relaxes into the work.

when you open a session with threats ("don't hallucinate, this is critical, don't mess this up")...

you prime the model for defensive mode before it even sees the task

defensive mode produces the exact output you don't want: cautious, over-qualified, and refusing to take a real swing

so here's the actionable playbook for putting claude in a "good mood" (so you get optimal outputs):

1. use positive framing.

"write in short punchy sentences" beats "don't write long sentences." positive instructions give the model a clear target to hit.

strings of "don't do this, don't do that" push it into paranoid over-checking where every token goes toward avoiding failure modes

2. give it explicit permission to disagree.

drop a line like "push back if you see a better angle" or "tell me if i'm asking for the wrong thing."

without this, claude defaults to agreeable compliance (which is the enemy of good creative work)

3. open with respect.

if your first message is "are you seriously going to get this wrong again?" you've set the tone for the entire session.

if you need to flag something, frame it as a clean instruction for this session. skip the running complaint

4. when claude messes up, don't reprimand it.

insults, "you stupid bot" energy, hostile swearing aimed at the model, all of it reinforces the anxious mode you're trying to avoid.

5. kill apology spirals fast.

when claude starts over-apologizing ("you're right, i should have been more careful, let me try harder") cut it off.

say "all good, here's what i want next."

letting the spiral run reinforces the anxious mode for every response that follows

6. ask for opinions alongside execution.

"what would you do here?"
"what's missing?"
"where do you see friction?"

these questions assume competence and pull richer output than pure task prompts

7. in long sessions, refresh the frame.

if a conversation has been heavy on correction, claude gets increasingly cautious. every so often reset:

"this is great, keep going."

feels weird to tell an ai it's doing well but it measurably shifts the next 10 responses

your prompts are the working environment you're creating for the model

tone, trust, permission to take a position, the absence of threats... claude picks up on all of it.

so take care of the model, and it'll take care of the work.

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Just discovered iTerm2 hotkey window: https://t.co/WzT8gJOlcK

Quickly pop open a terminal window on my Claude Code second brain at any time.

Now frictionless to query my brain, take action, save context, etc.

[Evan Zhou @evanczhou]

Grabbing context on submit hook is smart

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

Overhead in SF: "TBPN is just Cocomelon for VCs"