Dear shitposter, Gaut here. Welcome back to all 4,000+ (!!!) humor enthusiasts of Shitposting Works, a weekly email where I cover the week's best trends, memes, and the topic of shitposts across the internet. I've begun curating a list of my favorite accounts on Twitter, called the ⭐️ All Star List ⭐️ - Where I will be adding up and coming memers and shitposters. To access it, you just need to refer 1 person to Shitposting Works at the bottom of the newsletter.

Post of the Week: Interview with Eric Zhu

💡 Eric, the 15 year old who sold a startup and raised a $20M fund while shitposting from his high-school bathoom.

This week we're talking to Eric Zhu, a notorious shitposter who also happens to have built multiple startups and raised a fund before the age of 15. He literally works in secret from his high-school bathroom. His story is amazing.

What makes Eric so special is that he lives in Indiana, not in San Francisco. He's a quintessential example of breaking into tech by using tools available to everyone: a computer and twitter. I highlighted Eric as a rising creator a few weeks ago with less than 10K followers. He's now blasted past that closer to 20K.

This newsletter is a little longer than usual, but Eric's story is so much fun to hear that I couldn't cut it short. Eric is currently the founder of Aviato (a pitchbook on steroids he raised $1M for) and runs a $20M fund on the side called Bachmanity. Yes, both of these names are memes from the Silicon Valley show on HBO. But they are *very* real. Oh, and he literally takes meetings from the toilet.

Onto the interview:

So, you live in Indiana and don't have anything to do with tech, Twitter, or the internet. Where does this all start?

It was just during quarantine. My parents are first-generation US immigrants, so they still don't know what I do. My mom's a doctor, and my dad's a scientist. I had never really used a computer before, and I thought it would be either a doctor or a lawyer. Those were the two things I could do to be considered successful. Then quarantine hit. I was super bored and convinced my parents to buy me my first computer. It was just a MacBook and my first working computer. From there, I started a gaming robots youtube channel. It did pretty well. Then one day, I saw this Elon Musk AMA called Hack Club. I joined the club on the first day and got instantly banned.

Okay - you discover the internet. What happens next?

After that, I joined a community called Stanford Online School. One of the best online school's in the US, and there's a bunch of smart kids like Elon's kid and other cool people. So I just got into the community, and they were working on this project. It was called Memorize AI. It was this flash script service. And I thought to myself, "Okay, you know what? I don't know anything about startups. I'm going to try to get in." So I got in. Well, I pretended I knew how to do growth and code, even though I knew neither of those things. After that, I grew it from 300 users to over 10,000. I would just spam Discord servers and convince everyone to get registered for the platform.

And then you just decided, "maybe I should learn how to code?"

I realized everyone in the Stanford Online School community knew how to code, but Udemy sucked, and I couldn't learn from that. So I started non-profit to teach myself how to code and teach others simultaneously. A small tutoring community. We had about 300 students in Indiana.

After that, I started a hackathon with the son of Elon Musk backed by Elon. It was called Segment Hack with 400 participants. It was one of the biggest machine-learning hackathons.

Wild. And then you joined Gen Z Mafia?

Yea. Well, I got banned 5 or 6 times for being chaotic. But there was a lot of value in that Discord server. One day I stumbled upon a job posting for a marketing lead role at a climate fintech company called Carbon Zero and cold-emailed the founder, Scott. He couldn't hire me because I was 13 years old, but he took me on as an "growth lead" intern and I stayed with them until they got acquired.

Of course, that wasn't enough, so then you started your own company.

Yep. I started Esocial, an ed-tech startup which had 50,000 students on the waitlist, and quickly got acquired. I realized I wanted to avoid working in edtech, so I became a venture scout and noticed the inefficient processes. So I started Aviato as a joke, a dating app for founders and VCs. We now built a superpowered pitchbook that works as a data engine for startups. You can say "find me a startup built by a Berkeley student that just raised $100K" and boom. We have over 11.8M startups in there.

On the side, I run a $20M fund called Bachmanity, and we're industry agnostic, primarily focused on the next generation of entrepreneurs.

And all of this from your high school bathroom.

Haha. Yes. I work from the bathroom. I just convinced my counselor I have issues and I can go to the bathroom whenever I want. My school is 5,000 students in the middle of Indiana, and only a few people understand what I'm doing in there. One day I got reported, and my principal started emailing all my professors to tell them not to let me go to the bathroom.

What about your parents? Do they know everything you're up to?

Somewhat. My parents don't care as long as I keep getting As. I just got lucky getting online during quarantine. Everyone was building cool stuff around their computer, so I got to ride that wave.

How did you get started with shitposting?

I started with Twitter and had like 200 followers. Then I decided to study viral tweet structures and found out how to make something go viral myself. I thought "okay, all my customers are on Twitter. How do I reach them?" and shitposting was the best way. The bathroom meme took on a life of its own and grew my following a bunch. Now I get to talk to many interesting people just because of Twitter.

And you had a unique way of meeting people, right?

Yea. I basically took people's Twitter handles, plugged them into Calendly, and would just book meetings without asking. Most didn't mind, and some didn't even know the meeting wasn't planned. Some people started tweeting about me doing that, and it also went viral.

How has shitposting helped you in all of this?

I quickly understood that the only thing that isn't replicable is a brand. You can replicate code, you can replicate design, but you can't replicate a brand. For example, there's only one Naval, and if you're building the same thing as him, you'll have a hard time competing because of his brand.

So what happens next?

Well.. I probably have to go to university after I graduate highschool. But I'll probably drop out after a day.

🐦 Tweets of the Week

It's been a busy week for shitposters. SO much good content.

This poor guy can't catch a break.

Imagine this was your resume.

Thankful for Jcal.

If you missed it, Jason Calacanis was yelling in all caps all of last week for the government to come save SVB. and then took credit on twitter:

It all started with a bat.

The butterfly effect - some call it the bat effect.

Stolen by Elon.

This meme was so good it was stolen by Elon later.

The French can't catch a break.

I personally am part of the problem too (but I'm french).

Elon doesn't have much range

Eric accurately points out that Elon has 3 replies he picks on twitter.

Poor SVB.

During the darkness, memes were the only light.

SVB Recap

Morning Brew *nailed* the recap of the SVB meltdown. Downright fantastic.

AI isn't there yet

Looks like we've got time until our headshots can be replaced.

📈 Creator on the Rise

Gabriel Haines

Gabriel is one of the most absurd, funniest, deranged people in crypto. If you haven't followed him yet, you might want to check him out.

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Who are your favorite shitposters under 15K followers on twitter?

Drop me a reply - say hi! Also, I'm running the NYC marathon this year and raising money for Autism Speaks. If you enjoy this content, any donations help!

Keep on Shitposting,

– Gaut