Leon Zhang

(YC W24) 📚 @Wharton @UChicago

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@FischerKing64 do you know that area of new york? it's not competing with anything except warehouses

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@andruyeung @politimal

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@pitdesi Are you going to delete this one too

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@a16z Some of the fastest growers are at either extreme of this chart - more evidence of the K shaped economy!

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@eternalism_4eva @HabCorpLinguist Grocery is so regional that the level of aggregation in the map is a bit meaningless. Ahold made up of so many different banners with very different businesses

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Hardware Supply Chain
@dessaigne

In Shenzhen, a team can go from design to a new physical part in a day. In the US, that same loop often takes weeks, and that gap compounds.

The overall stack for rapid hardware iteration still doesn't exist in America, and we want to fund the startups building it.

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@iiiitsandrea yes but you can look at other data points like how much morton williams and others sold for, also there's a publicly traded operator with stores in the immediate region, it's still quite a big gap

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@mil000 it's not that they are reinventing things, they just don't have a value prop that's special

retailers already have decades of data on the couple thousand things that people want, and expanding assortment / increasing fulfillment speed of the long tail doesn't move the needle

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@tanayj Getting timely product data (prices, availability, delivery speed) is both very difficult thru integration but also critical for customer experience. Funny that Walmart getting taste of its own medicine as it unsuccessfuly tries to bring other retailers on to its own marketplace

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

Not just oil that is flirting with new territory at $6... beef has been on a straight line up since covid. prepare to see more chicken burgers at the cookout this memorial day

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

spent the morning signing and scanning checks we received for the month

before we get to agi it'd be nice to get ach everywhere first

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@johnloeber foxes vs hedgehogs - the fox knows many things and can make connections between disciplines, hedgehogs like academics have to know one thing deep. foxes like nate silver (another uchicago alum) have more interesting insights, often more accurate, than a narrow / constrained pov

[Tom Goodwin @tomfgoodwin]

When are tech folk going to get that people like wasting time, it's life. They don't optimize for efficiency, they try to get by, they watch dumb stuff, they enjoy shopping. Inefficiency is another work for living and life.

Your m mean and median job isn't a software engineer in Menlo Park, it's Ashley in accounts in a not for profit in Columbus, it's Jesse , the office manager for a tool rental business in Tallahassee, they are more likely to use a Fax machine than Slack.

They quite like meetings because they like chatting, they'll use AI to make a better invite to their baby shower, not agentify their job.

These people, nor their bosses boss, aren't in a rush to build software as a side hustle, they are keen to use AI to check if their vet is overcharging them. They'd like AI to check spelling on the email to the school governor.

They don't want agentic commerce, they want AI to be in the background and make living a little less stressful

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

"To this day, Wal-Mart's vendors are required either to provide a toll-free phone number for their company or accept collect calls from Wal-Mart buyers." - The Wal-Mart Effect, Charles Fishman

taking cost cutting to a new level...

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@McFranchisee @McDonalds if your beef prices are hedged then it makes sense to run a beef-based promo while beef prices are high for everyone else. your example actually proves the point; you actually would not want to run chicken promo when market prices are low, everyone else has low prices too

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@stevehou @danwwang two biggest tech co's in china by market cap are what you would categorize as "accidents". no doubt there are differences in the two systems, but reality is shaped by cultural narratives and what elements of success it chooses to celebrate

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

Massive divide I’m seeing:

A) Startups where the founder hands-on, building with the latest AI tools and best models, sees first-hand what this means and championing everyone to use it, not caring about $$$

B) founder not engaged, devs still think AI (aka Copilot) is “meh”

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@billybinion some amount of dynamic pricing reduces irrational behavior - nobody needs that many toilet paper rolls

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

at long last, some much needed asian food in fremont (iykyk)

(it's going to do crazy numbers)

[Raj Salwan 🇺🇸 @RajSalwan]

BIG news for Fremont: H Mart is coming to Pacific Commons — and it’ll be the largest H Mart in the U.S. (100,000 sq ft, 2 stories) with a food hall and restaurants.

Proud we’re repurposing the former Kohl’s space and updating zoning to turn vacant retail into vibrant destinations again.

Article linked in comments below.

#FremontCA #PacificCommons #HMART #EconomicDevelopment #GTD

[Leon Zhang @leonz4264]

@kathrynwu1 well said - i think there's a level of grinding in order to get information, but still need some time to process that information thoughtfully, and oftentimes it's easier to overdo the grinding because it requires less introspection