👋 Welcome to Hance Zhang’s Blog
I write about learnings in leadership, AI, product building, and investment. I’m currently based in Tokyo, DM me via X!
GPT-5 Is the Watershed: From 'Model Will Absorb Everything' to 'Environment Is What Matters'
The model and product layers in the AI industry are more clearly separated than ever.
Compute Is the New Leverage (and Probably the Best One)
Rich concensus is no longer necessary as compute outperforms labor as a leverage
Bitter Lesson, End-to-end Coding, Creator Economy
The Bitter Lesson is true for research, but product development requires working with the model’s grain, not against it.
Why Growth Hacking and A/B testing is Bullshit Before PMF
Forget growth hacks before PMF; your first, unscalable mission is to craft a ‘10-star’ user experience that people truly love and rave about
From 'I Think' to 'I Tried': Building an Experiment-Centric Team Culture with AI
We’ve all been in those meetings: discussing a new idea, an innovative project, and then getting bogged down in endless debate. Everyone speaks with conviction, citing classics (or perhaps just an article they saw yesterday), but the discussion seems to go in circles, often ending inconclusively or with the decision made by the loudest voice, the highest-ranking person, or the most stubborn. Why does this happen? Especially in the realm of innovation?...
The Scorecard Fallacy: How Promotion Decisions Are Really Made
Your stellar performance review isn’t the key to promotion; the real secret lies in understanding the humans making the decision.
Corporates Hire by Abundance, Not by Necessity
Big-tech hiring is driven by excess, not necessity.
Socratic Questioning and the Reality Distortion Field
Simply doing Socratic questioning can be simply annoying.
The Heresy of Simplicity
The best businesses make complexity invisible.
Does Proactive Design still mean anything in the world of randomness?
Great design is not about predicting the future but about crafting the antifragile system