Yan Zhang is an Advisor to Point72 Ventures, sourcing and supporting AI investments in Europe and beyond.

Yan Zhang was the Chief Operating Officer at PolyAI, where he helped scale the company from zero to 100+ enterprise deployments over five years. Prior to that, Yan was a 3x founder of consumer businesses in China. Yan began his career as a banker at Lehman Brothers in New York and then as the Head of Random House, Inc. in China.

I believe startup ecosystems flourish when founders and operators give back.

I lived through the growth of startup ecosystems in New York, Beijing, and now London. I believe ecosystems flourish when founders and operators reinvest their ambition, talent, capital, and experience into successive generations of companies. And though the material support is important, the lasting effect, in my view, is that being pro-founder becomes the cultural norm.

My goal in advocating for AI in the Enterprise is getting the customer to see a better version of themselves

When I first started selling AI, I told the prospect how much money they could save. That almost never worked for me. My pitch became more compelling when I started describing the customer experience improvements. Enterprise adoption of new technology carries some risk. In my experience, organizations are more likely to take that risk if they could be a better version of themselves rather than to merely do the same for less. I think the most effective companies and founders make it easy for their customers to picture the best they could be.

Small talk cheat sheet:

Historical recipes. Brompton bikes. Blues guitar.