Yuzheng Sun · 立正
MAKE
WHAT
LASTS.
I’m Yuzheng Sun. I founded Superlinear Academy, where 20,000+ people learn to build with AI. Since 2020 I’ve hosted 200+ long conversations with researchers and founders, and I bring what I learn back into teaching and real work.
- Cornell UniversityPhD, Economics
- AmazonEconomist
- MetaData Scientist
- Tencent IEGDirector, Growth Data Science & AI
Led a 30-person team - StatsigPrincipal Data Scientist · early team, later acquired by OpenAI
- Superlinear AcademyFounder, full time
Invited to speak and train atAmazonNetflixLinkedInWalmartPinterestDoorDashTencentMeituanXiaohongshuBinanceSafewayMonzoFlowGPTColumbia UniversityUniversity of WashingtonAmerican Statistical Associationand more
On teaching
“Yuzheng shares more than tools. He teaches a philosophy of thinking—the rarest and most valuable thing in the AI era.”
Liu JiaChair Professor, Tsinghua University · Cognitive neuroscientistOn the community
“Yuzheng has built an AI education community that is carefully curated, practical, and unusually useful for people doing real work.”
Wei ManfrediSenior Vice President, AI & Architecture · IHG Hotels & ResortsOn Growth Data Analytics Playbook
“Yuzheng distills years of product growth wisdom into actionable insight—helping data scientists surface decisive signals, PMs turn numbers into strategy…”
Vijaye RajiFounder, Statsig · CTO of Applications, OpenAIOn AI practice
“Yuzheng is a true AI-native pioneer.”
Dai YusenPartner, ZhenFund
Work I’ll keep
standing behind.
A show six years in the making, two books, and the city below, still being built. Each one is a judgment that left my head and met real readers, learners, and markets.
With Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal of Acquired · Significance Summit200+ conversations
Asking people who built consequential things what they actually got right.
See the conversations →
Growth Data Analytics Playbook
A practical guide to product-market fit, growth, and experimentation. With Mengying Li and Joe Kumar.
View on Amazon →
真本事
A Chinese book on capability, agency, and income: what you can still do once the credential, title, and company name are taken away.
About the book →We’re building a city.
AI is a flood, and people need to learn to swim and build boats. It is also a second Renaissance, and a Renaissance needs its Florence. Superlinear Academy is trying to do both.
20,000+ members learn, share, and discuss here.
What did the people who built it actually get right?
Since 2020 I’ve hosted 200+ long conversations with researchers, founders, and investors: what they saw, why they were willing to bet, and how reality rewrote the answer.
Yuandong TianFormer Research Director, Meta FAIR
Shuchao BiCo-founder, YouTube Shorts · Former Multimodal Post-Training Lead, OpenAI
Reynold XinCo-founder & Chief Architect, Databricks
Vijaye RajiCTO of Applications, OpenAI · Founder, Statsig
Gergely OroszFounder, The Pragmatic Engineer
Mike VernalPartner, Conviction · Former Sequoia partner & Facebook VP
Ethan EvansFormer Amazon VP · Executive coach
Wei ManfrediSVP, AI & Architecture, IHG Hotels & Resorts
Liu JiaChair Professor, Tsinghua University
Kevin ChenAssociate Professor, MIT EECS
Yang YingNeuroscience PhD · Serial entrepreneur
Nan ZhouSilicon Valley tech investor · Early investor in Cerebras
Write the call down.
Let time check it.
Right or wrong, every call stays where I made it, with the original record attached.
- 2021.04
Where the last generation of AI hit its ceiling
Systems that learn mappings from labeled data can automate narrow settings well without gaining a general understanding of the world. Useful AI applications should be chosen from the mechanism and the task, not from benchmark spectacle.
- 2023.02Written before GPT-4
The five most important questions about ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a natural-language computer, close to the ideal way for people to call on data and compute.
Reasoned forward from the mechanism to much cheaper inference, memory and personalization, tool-connected workflows, direct delivery of results, and systems rebuilt around ChatGPT. Written in Chinese and widely shared there, then rewritten in English on Substack and given as a tech talk at Statsig.
- 2025.01
In 2025, the biggest opportunity in AI is agents
Agentic AI is the most important near-term shift, with a window of roughly 10 to 18 months for early movers starting in early 2025.
Original record - 2025.03
MCP has structural flaws
The hype around MCP exceeds what the protocol can reliably deliver; it has major structural problems.
Original record - 2026.03
Why OpenClaw is bound to fail, and why I still recommend trying it
The product category will not last, but trying it yourself is a good way to understand this round of capability change.
Original record - 2026.09How to judge hype
Jev and the AI Narrative Trap
To tell whether a new technology is hype, find the real benchmark: its best actual alternative.
A new technology can win every comparison you are shown and still be the wrong thing to learn. Five levels of judgment get you out: understand the mechanism, test its limits, choose your own criteria, find the best real alternative, and decide whether the problem deserves your attention.
What I’m thinking about now
Questions that keep coming up in teaching, interviews, and building. English versions of essays first written in Chinese.
The Six Levels of AI Products
Knowing how to build things with AI coding does not mean knowing how to build AI systems.
ReadWhy Everyone Is Learning the Nouns, but the Real Gap Comes from the Verbs
Nouns are parts. Verbs are the ability to assemble.
ReadQuality and AI
AI can only handle “goodness that has already been defined,” while you can feel “goodness that hasn’t yet been defined.”
ReadThe AI Native Organization
The bottleneck is not the tools, but the organization.
Read
Ask Lizheng
Trying to understand an idea, or apply it to your own situation? Ask an AI assistant that finds relevant material in my public essays and videos, then answers with sources.
AI answers, not a live reply from me. The source material and answers are primarily in Chinese. Check the original sources for important decisions.Checking question storage…
Choose a question, then make it yours
The material behind Ask Lizheng is open source on GitHub as Open Context. Essays and video transcripts, with English translations, each carry their source and date, so you can build your own Q&A tool or agent on them.
Three ways into the city.
Start with the free community. For structured learning, take AI Builders; to keep up over the long run, join Stay Superlinear.
Start here
Read in-depth essays, watch public training sessions, share what you’re building, and ask technical questions.
AI Builders
Four courses: AI foundations, hands-on building, checking results, and systems that keep working. Co-taught with Yage.
Stay Superlinear
Guest masterclasses, in-depth analysis, and a monthly live Q&A with Yage and me.
AI training for teamsTeam seats, private cohorts, course customization.Fully custom programs$100,000+
With Yage at Amazon: Build useful things (with AI)
Your defining work
will not arrive finished.
Start with one small thing you can own from judgment to consequence, and that someone else is free to reject.
Visit the shop