Hance Zhang
中文

About

I’m Hance Zhang. I write about AI, product building, business models, investing, and human relationships. Across all of them, I’m ultimately interested in one thing: structure.

That means how incentives shape behavior, how time amplifies what is already there, and how systems quietly train people, organizations, and markets over the long run. I care less about slogans and stated values than about the deeper mechanisms that produce durable outcomes.

Why I write

Writing has been a habit since elementary school, when poetry was my first love. It feels less like a duty than a natural impulse: with countless thoughts circling, writing is how I put them in order, and when I don’t write, I feel uneasy. The blog started when my notes outgrew the memo app on my phone. The longer story is in Why I Write Blogs.

The site is bilingual because most of my readers use Chinese or English, and because my natural writing style is a blend of both. Most essays exist in both languages.

Influences

I don’t claim much originality. Most of what I write is a personal reinterpretation of ideas from people I admire, including Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Brian Chesky, Steve Jobs, Naval Ravikant, Friedrich Nietzsche, René Girard, Charlie Munger, and Peter Thiel. The list keeps growing.

Elsewhere