Neo Zhang

back to school @ stanford gsb. builder. writer. investor. ex-coo of ZH (NYSE).

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

I’m about to leave Stanford GSB.

I wrote down what Stanford actually taught me about entrepreneurship.

Not “which class should I take?” but a better question:

How do you use this place to become less alone with an idea?

A few lessons:

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

@thsottiaux No, ChatGPT is a bad name.

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

@pzakin Bringing inference to new environments/workloads - this resonates a lot

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

@ericwu01 Congratulations Eric!

Megan Meyer came to speak at one of our classes about NavigateAI, truly impressed!

Best luck to your new journey!

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

@garrytan Totally resonate.

And the witness exists elsewhere too:

a temporary environment where people are unusually willing to help you think.
https://t.co/AuoZU8BOKb

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

Platform Thinking + 的 email newsletter 会正式停止更新，并迁移为公开存档：

https://t.co/tlulQ4foKh

过去一年它基本处于 sabbatical 状态。之后我会取消付费订阅并处理退款。中文长文仍会不定期发在 Platform Thinking 公众号上，这里则保留为独立 archive。

非常感谢你曾经订阅、阅读、转发、回复这份 newsletter。它陪我经历了很长一段密集写作和思考的时间，也因为你们的反馈而变得更完整。即使它现在以这种形式结束了，我仍然珍惜这段连接。

之后，我会把更多个人性的、英文为主的内容放在个人网站的 reflections 里；而 Platform Thinking + 的中文文章会保留为一个独立 archive，不和新的写作混在一起。

再次感谢。

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

Full essay here:

https://t.co/AuoZU8BOKb

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

I’m about to leave Stanford GSB.

I wrote down what Stanford actually taught me about entrepreneurship.

Not “which class should I take?” but a better question:

How do you use this place to become less alone with an idea?

A few lessons:

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

5. Learn how investors underwrite, then underwrite yourself.

Why this market, why now, why this wedge, why this team, why this sequence?

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

interpersonal dynamics and AI:

people now say “can I Granola this?” which softens the whole “can I record this?” weirdness.

the playful name becomes an edge.

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

How is this "pivot" possible?

Making me feel wearing Allbirds a joke (which I am today).

[Tracy Alloway @tracyalloway]

Allbirds, the shoe brand, now says it's an AI compute company.

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

Just got off a call with an exec coach.

One of her strongest pieces of advice: stop using ChatGPT and switch to Claude.

She has minimal technical background; her expertise is leadership and communication. What makes people like her so confident in these opinions?

If this mindset spreads, @OpenAI could be in much bigger trouble.

Are you hearing similar things from non‑tech folks?

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

Unemployable = when you can no longer outsource direction.

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

Hey @nikitabier, is it possible to fix that really big "Post" button on Android webviews?

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

This is communication disaster.

[Lee Robinson @leerob]

@tekbog Do you think it's unclear? Or just don't like my writing

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

@lifesinger Agreed. Beautiful idea in theory, but the rest of the world moves in its own way.

[Neo Zhang @neozhang]

Another classic example of "shipping your org chart": AI Mode and Gemini for Chrome.