This is the personal webpage of Allen Cheng˳ Here are a few things you might be interested in˳
Guides to Non-fiction Books
Over the years, I’ve written a lot of book notes, with summaries and commentary˳ They’re thorough, logical, and coherent, just the way I like them˳
This gave me the idea to start Shortform˳ Our mission is to teach the world’s best ideas and make them more accessible˳ Our ultimate goal is to summarize and contextualize every meaningful idea published everyday, in every form of media (including books, articles, podcasts, and videos)˳
This means you’d be able to:
+ look up a news item or issue you care about and understand every important viewpoint on it, across every political and ideological spectrum
+ explore your favorite ideas to see how they’ve been taught by world experts throughout history
+ make new insights connecting ideas in one book to ideas in other books, building up a rich latticework of ideas in your mind
If this sounds like something you’d like, sign up for Shortform here and sample two free book guides˳
College Advice
Before Shortform, I co-founded PrepScholar and wrote a lot of popular guides (as well as overseeing our best-in-class product and content teams), so a lot of students and parents continue sending me questions about college admissions˳ I’d love to help as many people I can with my limited time˳
The best way I’ve figured out is to publish all the advice I give publicly, on a newsletter and this Q&A page˳ This means when I help one student, I can help thousands˳
What this means for you: if you send me a question, I will publish your question and my answer˳ Before publishing, I’ll anonymize your question, removing all identifying info (your name, email, high school, etc˳), while still preserving enough info for context˳ Everyone wins—you get personal advice and thousands of other students benefit too˳
Submit your question here and sign up for the College Advice Q&A Newsletter here˳
Startup Advice/Founders
I like advising startups and getting to know other founders in The Struggle (as Ben Horowitz calls it)˳ Get in touch if you could use help on a problem or want to bounce ideas around˳
Strategically, I’m most helpful in bootstrapped companies, getting to profitability, scaling from 1 to 100 people (and the management challenges that come with this), consumer products, and career track changes˳ (In contrast, I’m less helpful in raising huge VC rounds and B2B˳)
Topically, I’m particularly interested in behavior change, education, healthcare, AI/NLP, and productivity˳ But I’m a dilettante and love learning about all the industries under the sun˳
Mailing List
I maintain a few popular mailing lists along different topics˳ You can choose which lists you’re interested in, and you can unsubscribe anytime˳
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Background
I’m currently founder at Shortform˳ Our mission is to teach the world’s best ideas and make them more accessible˳ Our ultimate goal is to summarize and contextualize every meaningful idea published everyday, in every form of media (including books, articles, podcasts, and videos)˳
I previously co-founded PrepScholar, an educational technology company˳ PrepScholar creates online learning programs that understand each student’s strengths/weaknesses and learning style, then customizes the learning experience˳ PrepScholar currently focuses on private education and test preparation˳ It’s bootstrapped and happily profitable˳
I graduated from Harvard College with an AB/AM in Chemistry in 2009˳ I joined the MDPhD program at Harvard Medical School and MIT, and withdrew in 2013 to start PrepScholar˳ You can read more about my PhD research here˳
Read about my reasoning and decision to leave medicine here, which my advisor called “a terrible idea˳”
Contact:
Follow @allenxcheng
