Databricks 的 Ali Ghodsi：从不想当 CEO 到成为最优秀的 CEO 之一

那个周一早上的会议真的有用吗？还是只是作秀？你就不能用一个 Google 文档搞定吗？

And is that Monday morning meeting really useful? Or is it theater? Can't you just have a Google doc and get it done that way?

我们说的是人。如果我从来见不到你，我为什么要喜欢你或信任你？

We're talking about humans. Why should I like you or trust you if I never get to meet you?

嗯。

Mhm.

我不知道你结婚了没有，但你想——你为什么非得见你妻子和孩子？你就不能用一个 Google 文档吗？

I don't know if you're married, but do you want— Why do you have to meet your wife at all and their kids? Can't you just have a Google doc?

我们就把你想写的东西写下来，比如你想教孩子什么，就放进那个该死的 Google 文档里。也许你甚至不需要回复那个 Google 文档。

We just write down the stuff you want to like if there's something you want to teach your kids of, put it in the goddamn Google doc. Maybe you don't even need to respond to the Google Doc.

Cloud cam。大家好。今天我们的播客请到了 Ali Ghodsi。他是 Data Bricks 的创始人兼 CEO。我想请他上节目已经有一段时间了。几个月前我请了 A16Z 的 Ben Horowitz 来，我问他谁是最好的 CEO，他想都没多想就说 Ali。采访他之后，我有点同意。他真的很敏锐。年轻时的我会很乐意为他工作，向他学习。希望你们喜欢。节目最后我会回来分享我的收获。Ali，欢迎来到 Long Strange Trip。

Cloud cam. Hey everybody. Today we have Alli Goatsy on the podcast. He's the founder and CEO of Data Bricks. I've wanted to have him on for a while now. I had Ben Horowitz from A16Z on a few months ago and I asked him who is the best CEO out there and without thinking much about it, he said Ally. And after interviewing him, I kind of agree. He's really sharp. A younger me would have loved to have worked from for him and learned from him. Hope you like it. I'll be back at the end with my takeaways from the interview. Ali, welcome to Long Strange Trip.

非常感谢。很高兴来到这里。

Thanks so much. Excited to be here.

你成为公司 CEO 的道路很有趣。据我所知，公司成立时 Data Bricks 有七位联合创始人。几年后，公司并没有飞速发展。董事会决定更换 CEO。你能带我们回到那些对话发生的现场吗？我猜他们面试了你，发生了什么？

You had an interesting road to the CEO chair at your company. From what I understand, the company was founded. There were seven co-founders at Data Bricks. And a few years in, it wasn't exactly ripping. The board decided it wanted to make a CEO change. Can you kind of take us into the room when those conversations were happening and I assume they interviewed you like what happened?

是的，我不知道。我想我从传闻中得知他们在面试其他 CEO，我会听到，哦，他们面试了那个人，他们面试了这个人。所以，据我所知，我想他们甚至不会选我。我至少知道两个人的身份。所以，你知道，2015 年对 Data Bricks 来说是动荡的一年，因为我们的开源项目 Apache Spark 取得了巨大成功。呃，我们只是没有商业上的成功。收入，你知道，呃，那年的 GAAP 收入大约是一百五十万。所以，氛围不太好。而且我，我是个半空杯子的人。所以，我想，我可能会离开，我们可能都会离开。所以我实际上，是的。所以我实际上申请了伯克利的教职，

Yeah, I don't know. I think I knew I was hearing from the grape wine that they were like interviewing other CEOs and I would hear, oh, they interviewed that guy and they interviewed this guy. So, as far as I knew, I was like, they're not gonna even pick me. I knew the identity of at least two people. So, you know, it was I mean 2015 was kind of a turbulent year for data bricks because we were having great success with our open source project Apache Spark. Uh we were just not having commercial success. Revenue was, you know, um gap revenue came in at like one and a half million that year. So, the vibe wasn't great. And so, I I kind and I'm like a glass half empty guy. So, I was like, I you know, I'm probably going to leave and we're all probably going to leave. So, I actually like Yeah. So I actually applied for you know a faculty job at Berkeley and

哦

oh

我实际上在最后阶段打算接受那个职位，我有点面临两难：我应该成为 CEO，这是我从未想过的，还是应该回到我成为教授的梦想，这是我一直想做的。

and I was going to take that actually kind of towards the end and I was like kind of facing the dilemma which one should I should become CEO which is I never wanted to be CEO or should I go back to my dream of being a professor which is what I always wanted to do.

太迷人了。呃，他们面试你了吗？

Fascinating. Um did they interview you?

不，没有像嘿，这是 CEO 面试，你的策略是什么？不，没有。也许他们和我有一些一对一的谈话，我知道，好吧，他们是在评估我吗？但这一切都非常保密。实际上，我不被允许知道有这样一个过程在进行。

Not no like hey this is a CEO interview like what's your strat? No not really. Maybe they had some one-on-ones with me that I knew like, okay, are they kind of like filling me out or something, but all this was very hush-hush. Actually, I was not allowed to know that there's like a process going on kind of.

他们选择你的有趣之处在于，我对董事会的问题的理解是公司几乎没有商业成功。你会以为他们会雇佣一个有丰富商业背景的人。你完全没有。你认为这是怎么回事？

The interesting thing about them picking you is my sense of the the problem the board had with the company is it had very little commercial success. You would have thought they would have hired someone with a lot of commercial background. You had negative amounts of that. What do you think was going on with that?

我认为这是 A16Z 和 Ben 的原因。这也是那个时期。我的意思是他们现在还是那样，但他们当时对只选创始人这件事非常虔诚，因为他们自己经历过。记得 Ben 曾经被问到，嘿，你什么时候会请一个真正的 CEO 进你的公司，他感觉——他在书里写过，对吧。所以我认为他不想对我们创始人那样做。所以我认为他真的相信，让我们选一个创始人。他后来又说，嘿，这反正只是一个试验。我们甚至没给你 CEO 的薪水。所以我们真的在测试你。所以，从他的角度，我不知道，你应该问他。他可能会说，是的，我们会试六个月、十二个月。如果我们要找，我们会在六个月左右换另一个人。我知道什么呢？也许他们进行的搜寻结果不太好。也许他们没看到非常好的候选人。所以，

I think it's a 16Z and Ben. This is the period also. I mean they're still that way but they were like religious about like founders only and you know because they had themselves been through it. Remember Ben famously was asked at some point hey when are you going to bring a real CEO into your company and he felt like He wrote about it in his book right uh so I think he didn't want to do that to uh uh you know us founders. So I think he really believed like let's let's let's pick someone that uh is a founder. I he later then said hey this was anyway just a trial. we didn't even give you a CEO salary. So, we were like really testing you out. So, I think from his point of view probably, I don't know, he should you should ask him. He's probably like, "Yeah, we'll try it out for six months, 12 months. If we're going to do a search, we'll, you know, we'll put another guy in place in six months or so." And what do I know? Maybe the search they were doing didn't turn out very great. Maybe they hadn't seen any very good candidates. So,

我明白了。如果你离开回去当教授，你认为你的生活会怎样？你曾经想过吗？

I see. How do you think your life would have turned out if you had left and gone back to be a professor? Like, do you ever think about that?

是的。呃，我的意思是，现在学术界表现不太好，所以呃，那可能是个大错误，但我也在那段时间进行了很多内省，比如我应该选哪个，我的梦想是教授，CEO 这件事我甚至不确定我想做，就像我在商界，我甚至不太尊重它，呃，有点像走向黑暗面，但后来我回顾了我的生活和直到那时所做的决定，我有点意识到一个模式。所以当我还是个孩子时，我从小编程。我想成为一名游戏程序员。我的梦想是从瑞典搬到洛杉矶，为 Electronic Arts 工作，因为他们制作最好的游戏。在高中时，我认识的人提出，嘿，你可以来美国，你可以得到报酬，我想是 8 万，成为一名游戏程序员。所以我想，这就是了。这是我的梦想。那时，我父母说，不，不，不，你要上大学。不可能。我想这就像世界末日。就像他们在毁掉我的——但后来我上了大学，结果我学到了很多东西，我学到了很多计算机科学，实际上我以为我知道计算机科学的一切，但在大学里我学到我一无所知，我只知道一点编程，然后我在 2000 年在一家初创公司实习，我在那家初创公司做得很好，他们邀请我做二号人物，比如辍学做二号，那家初创公司叫 Room 33，实际上我认为是当时欧洲最大的移动初创公司，所以就像哇，这是我生命中的机会。但那时我回到了大学，然后你知道 IT 泡沫破裂，结果这是我生命中最好的决定。然后那所大学，在一个很远的城市，他们甚至没有博士学位就给我提供了教授职位。即使那样，我也在想，哦，我现在接受教授职位，成为正教授，还是去顶尖大学读一个真正的博士学位，那很难进，挑战自己。

Yeah. uh well I mean right now academia is not doing super well so uh it would have probably been a big mistake but also I I introspected a lot during that period like which one should I pick like my dream is professor the CEO thing I'm not even sure I want to do it like I in the business world I don't have that much respect for it even um it's kind of like going to the dark side but then I like looked over my life and the decisions that I had done up until that point and I kind of like realized a pattern. So when I was a kid, I grew up programming. I wanted to be a game programmer. My dream was to move to LA from Sweden and work for Electronic Arts because they were making the best weeks. And in high school, I kind of, you know, someone I knew floated, hey, you can come to the US, you can get paid, I think it was 80K and be a game programmer. So I was like, this is it. This is my dream. At that point, my parents were like, no, no, no, you're going to university. No way. And I thought like this is like end of life. like they're destroying my but then I went to university and it actually turned out I learned a lot of things I learned a lot about computer science actually I thought I knew everything about computer science but then at the university I learn I I didn't know anything I knew a little bit of programming and and then I was a startup in the year 2000 and I was doing an internship and that startup I did really well and they like offered me to be number two guy there like drop out of school be number two the startup was called room 33 it was actually I think Europe's largest like mobile startup at the time so it was like wow this is like opportunity of my life. But then at at that time I went back to university and then you know the IT bubble burst and it turned out to be like the best decision of my life. Then that very university which was kind of like in a city far away they offered me professorship even without a PhD. And that even that I kind of was like oh do I take the professorship now and I'll be a full professor or do I go do an actual PhD at the top university which is very difficult to get into and challenge myself.

我选择了那条更具挑战的路，它再次开阔了我的视野。对我来说它难得多、也艰难得多，但我学到了太多，它也在挑战我。最终我成了那所大学的教授。

And I picked the challenging option, and again it opened my horizons. It was way harder and much more difficult for me, but I learned so much and it challenged me. Eventually I became a professor at that university.

好的。

Okay.

后来某个时候我有了去伯克利的机会，但在伯克利他们不肯聘我做教授——只肯让我做一个不起眼的博士后。所以事情就是这样：我抓住机会去了伯克利，做了博士后，它又一次拓宽了我的视野。于是我面对这个抉择。我想，我大概应该选那个挑战我的选项。我对当 CEO 一无所知。我对商业一无所知。我能做的最具挑战性的事，大概就是接下 CEO 这个担子。回伯克利呢，就有点像我已经知道游戏怎么玩了。我懂学术界。所以我认为那是对的。现在这几乎成了我的一条人生哲学。我想尽可能多地挑战自己，因为，你知道，我们在这颗星球上能有多少年呢？

So then I had the opportunity to come to Berkeley at some point, and at Berkeley they wouldn't take me as a professor—they would only take me as a measly postdoc. So what happened is I took the chance and went to Berkeley and took the postdoc, and it again widened my horizon. So I was facing this decision. I was like, I should probably take the thing that challenges me. I know nothing about being CEO. I know nothing about businesses. Probably the most challenging thing I can do is take on the CEO role. Going back to Berkeley is kind of like I know how the game works. I know academia. So I think that was the right thing. And now it's kind of become a philosophy of mine. I want to challenge myself as much as possible because, you know, how many years do we have on this planet?

是的。好，我很喜欢这个。你显然很成功。某个时候，董事会有没有回来跟你说：“不再是临时了，是全职了。”我先说说我为什么问这个。我是个超级波士顿红袜队球迷。红袜队赛季初糟透了。他们解雇了主教练，请来了临时主教练查德·特雷西，他——他打破了 125 年的连胜纪录。他干得简直太棒了，但他还挂着那个该死的“临时”头衔，就像，他们到底什么时候才肯去掉这个头衔？他们有没有跟你谈过？在那半年、一年的试用期之后，又是什么促成了这件事？

Yeah. Okay. Love that. You were obviously successful. At some point, did the board come back to you and say, "It's not interim anymore. It's full-time." And I'll give you the background on why I'm asking this. I'm a ginormous Boston Red Sox fan. And the Red Sox were terrible at the beginning of the season. They fired their manager and they brought in the interim manager, Chad Tracy, who has—he broke a 125-year record of wins in a row. Like he's just done a fantastic job, but he's still got the darn interim title, and it's like, when are they going to drop the title? Did they have a conversation with you? And what precipitated it after that six-month, one-year trial again?

同样，大概是在一年左右的时候。

Again, it was about one year in.

嗯。

Yeah.

我和 Ben 的一次一对一里——首先，他们给了我一个大得多的股权包。

One of the one-on-ones I had with Ben—first of all, they gave me a much bigger equity package.

嗯。

Yeah.

他们给我加了薪，我们谈了战略上需要做的事。于是事情开始变得清楚：好吧，这不只是一次试跑，也不是临时的。他们有更长远的视角。所以我认为——但他们从未正式说过。那之后几个月，我邀请 Ben 来我们公司的全员大会，他在那儿说：“是啊，我们当时也没觉得他能做成。我们给他的薪水都是临时的。”我上过播客，我问过他，谁是不在 Andreessen 投资组合里的硅谷最佳 CEO，他毫不犹豫——他说是你。我觉得这是相当不错的赞美。其他初次当 CEO 的人能从你身上学到什么——你被按在那把椅子上，对它一无所知。你能教给初次当 CEO 的人什么，让他们走到你今天的位置？

And they bumped my salary, and we talked about the things we strategically need to do. So it started to become clear: okay, this is not just a practice run or temporary. They have a little bit longer-term perspective. So I think—but they never said it officially. Then a couple months after that, I invited Ben to our company All Hands, where he kind of said, "Yeah, we didn't think he was going to do it either. We gave him like a temporary salary." I had been on the pod and I asked him who is the best CEO in Silicon Valley not in the Andreessen portfolio, and he didn't hesitate—he said you. Which I thought was quite a nice compliment. What can other first-time CEOs learn from—you're stuck in the chair, you didn't know anything about it. What can you teach first-time CEOs that led you to where you are today?

嗯，我认为你必须处在这条极端陡峭的学习曲线上。所以它不会轻松。我的意思是，你会每周工作 100 小时。我当时就是这样。我确保自己和最优秀的人建立人脉，向我能找到的每个人学习。我读遍了所有的书。我做所有这些事。但我把第一性原理思维应用到我吸收的一切上。所以我确保做这些事确实有道理。我不是那种“好，这个照抄，那个照抄。哦，那个人这么说，我就那么做”。我有点像李小龙基于各种不同武术创立自己的截拳道那样，基于我从不同地方学到的各种原料，打造我自己的 CEO 打法。那样它是自洽的。我认为这是一点。这是我会推荐的一点。第二点，这一路一直伴随着我：我认为公司失败通常是因为一个大问题。也许他们有两三个大问题，但通常是一个巨大的瓶颈。我认为那时你应该识别出那个巨大的瓶颈是什么，然后把整个公司和你的全部注意力几乎以极端的方式聚焦——数量级级别的注意力和专注，全都投到这一个问题上。如果你做过头了，在那一个问题上走得太极端、太过火，那很好。

Well, I think that you have to be on this extreme learning curve. So it's not going to be easy. I mean, you're going to be working 100-hour weeks. That's what I was doing. I was making sure I was networking with all the best and learning from everyone I could find. I was reading all the books. I was doing all these kinds of things. But I was applying first-principles thinking to everything I was sucking in. So I was making sure that it actually made sense to do these things. I wasn't just like, "Okay, let's copy this. Let's copy that. Oh, that person said this, I'm going to do it that way." I was kind of building my own—like Bruce Lee built his own Jeet Kune Do based on all the different martial arts—I was building my own CEO playbook based on all the ingredients I was learning from different places. And that way it was self-consistent. I think that was one thing. That's one thing I would recommend. The second thing that's kind of been with me this whole time is I think typically companies are failing because of one major problem. Maybe they have two or three major problems, but usually it's one giant bottleneck. And I think you should at that point identify what that giant bottleneck is and then focus the whole company and all your attention almost to an extreme—like orders of magnitude of attention and focus should just go to this one issue. And if you overdo it and go too extreme, overboard on that one issue, that's great.

嗯。

Yeah.

问题在于，你很可能无法真正疏通或移除这个瓶颈，所以你就应该把全部注意力都转向它。所以对我当时来说，就是开源项目——搞定，超级成功，技术超级棒，但没有商业成功。所以把全部注意力放在搞清楚怎么让这台商业引擎轰鸣起来。那就是激光般的专注。我动员了整个公司。我在每次全员大会上都在讲这个。我只想这一个问题。所以我认为这是一种有用的经营公司的方式。我现在仍然那样经营公司。我试着识别当时的主要瓶颈是什么，然后试着专注于疏通它，因为每天你有太多其他事要做——招人、有各种闹剧、有人辞职、董事会这个那个、法务部门、客户、营收没达标——每天有上百万件事朝你涌来。你根本没有时间在任何事上推动进展，所以就聚焦那个主要瓶颈。

The problem is, because you most likely won't be able to actually unclog or remove this bottleneck, you should just turn all your attention to that. So for me at that time, it was, you know, open-source project—check, super successful, tech super awesome, no commercial success. So put all the attention on figuring out how do we get this commercial engine humming. So that was laser attention. I was getting the whole company mobilized. I was talking at every All Hands about this. I was thinking only about this one issue. And so I think that's a useful way of operating a company. I still operate the company that way. I try to identify what the main bottleneck is at the time and I try to just focus on unclogging that, because there's so much other stuff you have to do every day—to hire people, there's drama, people are quitting, the board this and that, legal department, customers, revenue missing this—there's a million things coming your way every day. You don't have any time to move the needle on anything, so focus on that main bottleneck.

好，那通常——你激光般聚焦在那个瓶颈上——它的周期是怎样的？你一年攻克一个瓶颈，还是每三年一个，还是每三个月一个？大概周期是怎样的？

Okay, and typically—so you're laser focused on that bottleneck—like what is the cycle on that? There's one bottleneck a year you're tackling, or one every three years, or one every three months? Like kind of what is the cycle?

是的，是更长的周期。我会说，如果答案是几个月或几周，那其实正是每个人每天都在做的事。我认为所有 CEO 都是这样——因为灾难砸到你膝盖上，你必须放下其他一切，你得修好那件事。那不是战略焦点，那只是战术性的事。所以我会说一年、两年，有时三年。比如创建 lakehouse 这个品类，我想花了好几年。你知道，当我们宣布 lakehouse 品类时，我们在网上被嘲笑。但走到 lakehouse 发布是一段漫长的旅程，因为内部以及来自顾问之类的阻力太大了。然后当我们终于发布它时，人们在笑话我们。所以你得给事情几年时间。你不能立刻放弃。所以我认为你应该——就是这样，非常重要的是你要非常清晰地识别那个焦点，因为如果你选错了东西，还聚焦它两三年，不用说，你哪儿也去不了。

Yeah, it's a longer cycle. So like I would say if the answer to that would have been months or weeks, then actually that's what everybody's doing every day. I think that's all the CEOs—like, you know, because disaster lands in your knees, you have to drop everything else, you got to fix that thing. That is not a strategic focus; that's just tactical stuff. So I would say a year, two years, sometimes three. Like creating the lakehouse category took, I think, multiple years. You know, when we announced the lakehouse category, we were ridiculed online. But it was a long journey to get to the launch of the lakehouse because there was so much resistance internally and from consultants and whatnot. Then when we finally launched it, people were laughing at us. So you got to give things a few years. You can't just give up immediately. So I think you should—that's it, it's really important that you identify that focus really clearly, because if you pick the wrong thing and you're focusing on it for two, three years, needless to say, you're not going to go anywhere.

好。非常有帮助。

Okay. Super helpful.

我读到的是，你针对那个瓶颈做的第一件事，就是出去招了——我忘了，13 个那种有经验的企业销售代表。第一，这是真的吗？第二，你当时怎么知道该怎么面试他们？你怎么知道谁厉害？我合作的很多 CEO 都在经历这个过程。你是怎么做到的？

What I read was that one of the first things you did on that bottleneck was you went out and hired, I forget, 13 kind of been-there-done-that enterprise sales reps. First, is that correct? And second, how did you even know how to interview them? How did you know who was good? So many of the CEOs I'm working with are going through this process. How did you do that?

实际上，我做的第一件事差不多是把整个高管团队都换掉了。所以大概一年、一年半之后，运营公司的高管团队和我接手时的那批人已经完全不一样了。所以我会说，那是我知道必须改变的一件事，因为它不起作用。比如工程和产品，我把它交给了一位联合创始人，然后基本上两年都没管。我把注意力放在其他所有事情上，去建立公司其他方面的能力。所以那是第一件事。我们一直在做 PLG 这件事，我们想要产品驱动增长。我们喜欢 AWS 那种刷信用卡的模式，我们不想要任何销售人员。所以这被写进了公司的精神和文化里：我们不要销售。我们招了一些销售工程师，他们实际上就是销售部门。我们有几个 AE，但很明显，PLG 行不通。实际上在 2015 年，在我成为 CEO 之前，有一小段时间我们做了一个叫零接触的实验，就是我们甚至永远不应该和客户交谈，一切都应该是自动化漏斗，因为这是 PLG。而实际上你可以看到，在那之前收入一直在上升，当我们开始这么做时，它连续两个季度持平。所以你知道，在 150 万收入的时候，你知道销售 AE 在大多数公司有大约一两百万的配额。你会想，天哪，如果我们只招一个 AE，那个人干得特别出色，那就会是我们过去几年做的全部事情。所以我们可能应该——其他所有选项都说不通。我们应该加倍投入招聘销售人员。好。但我们应该招什么样的销售人员呢？

Actually, the first thing I did was more or less revamp the whole executive staff. So I would say a year, year and a half later, the executive staff that was running the company was completely different from the one that I inherited. So I would say that's like the one thing that I knew we got to change, because it's not working. Like engineering a product, I handed it off to a co-founder and I basically ignored it for two years. I focused my attention on everything else, building up the rest of the muscle of the company. So that was the first one. We had been doing this PLG thing, so we wanted product-led growth. We loved AWS people swipe a credit card. We didn't want to have any sales people. So that was codified into the ethos and culture of the company: we don't want sales. And we had hired sort of sales engineers, and they were actually the sales department. We had a couple of AEs, but it became clear that look, PLG is not working. And actually in 2015, before I became CEO, for a little while we ran an experiment called zero touch, which was we shouldn't even ever talk to a customer, it should all be automated funnel, because it's PLG. And actually you could see that before that revenue was going up and it just flatlined for two quarters when we started doing that. So you know, at one and a half million revenue, and you know that sales AEs have a quota of like a million or two million in most companies. You're like, gosh, if we just get one AE and that guy or that gal crushes it, that would be the whole thing that we've done for the last few years. So we should probably—that's all the other options make no sense. We should just double down on hiring sales people. Okay. But what kind of sales people should we hire?

对。那你怎么知道面试时该问什么问题呢？

Yes. And how did you know even what questions to ask in the interview?

好。我在脑子里做了个小实验：让我们看看那些在这方面做得好的公司。最好的销售人员是技术型的吗？超级技术、超级聪明。他们有博士学位吗？就像那种技术博士，你知道，那些孩子是最好的销售？不，绝对不是。所以我从中学到了两件事。第一，那可能不是主要因素。第二，它甚至可能没有任何优势，因为如果它有优势，那么一些既是伟大销售又碰巧有博士学位的卖家就会名列前茅，赚得最多——但没有，你一个都没找到。

Okay. Well, I ran this little experiment in my head, which was: let's look at companies where this is working. Are the best salespeople technical? Super technical, super smart. Do they have PhDs? Like the PhD technical, you know, kids are the best sales guys? And no, like absolutely not. So then I learned two things from that. It's like, okay, so probably that's not the main thing. And secondly, it probably doesn't even have any advantage, because if it had an advantage, there would be some of these sellers that were great salespeople who also happen to have a PhD would be at the top making all—but no, you found none of those guys.

我觉得有博士学位不仅不是优势，反而是劣势。

I don't think it's not only not an advantage, it's a disadvantage to have a PhD.

这就对了。这就对了。所以很明显，我们招聘 AE 的方式应该改变。我们之前测试他们有多技术，因为他们有多聪明？但我看了最优秀的，没有一个是最技术的。所以我们到底在干什么？所以我们必须改变，彻底改造我们现在招的人。我们还招了一位很棒的销售负责人，Ron Grisco，他知道优秀是什么样子。所以我们和他一起工作，销售方面发生的事情 99% 的功劳应该归他。但很明显，我们不能只招技术型的人。开始变得清楚的是，销售人员还有其他技能，你应该去追求那些。其中之一是，我认为优秀的技术人员往往更内向。我在这里泛化一下，他们可能不是那种最具侵略性、最有主见、喜欢踩别人脚的人。但我很快了解到，最好的销售人员实际上有点侵略性。

There you go. There you go. So it became pretty clear that okay, the way we are hiring AEs is like we should change that. Like we were testing them on how technical they were, because how smart are they? But I just looked at the best and none of the best are technical. So what are we even doing here, you know? So we have to change, revamp who we're hiring now. We also had an amazing sales leader that we hired, Ron Grisco, who knew what great looked like. So we worked with him and you know he should get 99% of the credit for what happened on the sales side. But it was pretty clear that we don't just get only the technical people. It started becoming clear that there's other skills that sales people have that you should probably go after those. One of them is, you know, I think great technical people tend to be kind of more introverted. I'm generalizing here, and they're sort of maybe not the most aggressive, opinionated people that are just like toe-stepping and so on. But I learned quickly that the best sales people actually, they're kind of aggressive.

非常具有侵略性。

Very aggressive.

是的。Ron 招的第一批 AE 之一，Dave，帮我们争取到了一个我们本来见不到的客户的会议。在会议上，给我们安排会议的那位高管说，那个 AE，让他出去。我再也不想见到那个人。你知道，他给我老板、其他所有人都发了邮件。这简直不可接受。所以，把 Dave 弄走。我根本不想见他。然后我说：“嘿 Dave，你把客户惹毛了。”他说：“嗯，到底怎么回事？”他说：“Ron 告诉我进到楼里去。想办法进去。”没人回邮件。所以我走遍了每一扇门，我不得不打破玻璃。我帮你争取到了会议。你抱怨什么？所以突然就清楚了，他们需要有职业上的侵略性，否则你知道，有点像是会哭的孩子有奶吃。所以这本身对工程师来说其实有点反直觉，你知道，来自教授世界的人，那种，所以那是一个。但还有另一次会议，和早期的一个 AE，我记得 Keith，我们在房间里，客户不知怎么被这家伙惹毛了，对他说，嘿，你到底是谁，你在说什么，你应该，你知道，我当时觉得那很糟糕。然后他突然开始问她一些奇怪的问题。他说，好吧，你的团队在做什么？我以为我们应该做销售。他在干什么？我长话短说。会议结束时，她拥抱了他，说：“我很抱歉说了那些话。”你知道，所以我说：“哦，哇。你在里面做了什么？”他说：“嗯，我注意到她情绪激动，所以我想把话题带到一个她舒服的领域。每个人都乐于谈论自己的团队成员在做什么。”所以我把话题转移到了那个领域。所以我学到了，这些人，他们处理非常困难的对话时有着非常非常惊人的情商，你知道，那些让人非常不舒服的对话。你知道，他们是那种很难被忽视的人。如果他们给你发邮件，你就得回复他们。所以开始变得清楚，有一个标准。他们需要有点职业上的侵略性。他们需要有惊人的情商。他们需要那种掌控全场的能力。然后最终我开始了解到，真正聪明的人，他们实际上能弄清楚所谓的公司权力基础，比如高层决策是如何做出的。这实际上很复杂。没有一个人会说我要花 1 亿美元买这个。

Yeah. And the first one of the first ads that Ron had hired, Dave, got us a meeting with a customer that we couldn't get a meeting with. And in the meeting, the exec that had gotten us the meeting said that AE, get him out of here. I don't want to see that guy ever again. You know, he's emailed my boss, everybody else. This is like unacceptable. So like, got Dave guy. I don't want to see him at all. So then after I'm like, "Hey Dave, you've like pissed off the customer." Like, "Well, what the hell is going on?" He's like, "Ron told me get in into the building. Figure out some way of getting in." Nobody was responding to an email. So I went through every door I could and I had to break glass. I got you the meeting. You know, what are you complaining about? So it suddenly became clear that okay, they need to be professionally aggressive, otherwise you know, so it's kind of a little bit the squeaky wheel gets all the grease. So that itself is actually kind of counterintuitive for engineers, you know, from professor land, that those are the kind of, you know, so that was one. But also there was another meeting with one of the early ones, I remember Keith, we were in the room and the customer somehow got pissed at this guy and kind of told him like, hey who the hell are you, what are you even telling you like you should, you know, I was like that's pretty bad. Then he suddenly just started asking her these weird questions. He's like, okay so what is your team working on? I thought we're supposed to do sales. What does he do? I'll shorten the story. At the end of the meeting, she was hugging him saying, "I'm so sorry for saying that." And you know, so I was like, "Oh, wow. What did you do in there?" Like, he's like, "Well, I noticed she was emotional, so I wanted to bring it to subject that she's comfortable with. Everybody's comfortable talking about what their team members are working on." So I moved the subject to an area. So I learned, okay, these guys, they're just like really really amazing EQ of handling really difficult conversations, you know, that get really uncomfortable. You know, they're the kind of people that it's kind of hard to ignore them. You got to like if they email you, you got to respond back to them. So it started becoming clear that there's like a rubric. They need to be a little bit professionally aggressive. They need to have amazing EQ. They need to be the kind of, you know, command of the room. And then eventually I started learning that okay, the really smart ones, they actually figure out what's called the power base of the company, like how decisions get made high up in an organization. It's actually complicated. Not a single person will say I'm going to buy this for $100 million.

这是一个由影响者和客户内部人员组成的复杂网络，他们共同做出决定。所以他们必须搞定这个权力基础。所以很明显，这是一门艺术，而且与我成长过程中所做的事情非常不同，我们应该直接雇佣专业人士。而且由于它非常依赖人际互动——销售人员是在与人打交道——我们学到的很多关于如何处理计算机、数学、逻辑和物理的东西，在这里并不适用。而人性没有改变，所以很可能他们过去 30 年学到的这些技巧，我们应该信任他们。所以这就是我们经历的过程，我们以这种方式重组了销售团队。其中很多是我从 Ron 那里学到的。我一开始反对，我们有过各种争论，但最终证明他是对的，我们确定了这个模式。

It's a complicated web of influencers and people inside the customer that make this decision. So they have to work that power base. So it became clear that this is an art and it's a very different art from what I grew up doing, and we should just hire the pros. And since it's so humanly intensive—salespeople are dealing with other humans—a lot of the things we learned about how to deal with computers and math and logic and physics, it doesn't apply over here. And humans haven't changed, so probably these techniques that they've learned over the last 30 years, we should trust them. So that was kind of the journey we went through, and we revamped our sales team that way. And a lot of this I learned from Ron. I pushed back and we had all these arguments, but eventually it turned out he's right, and we landed this model.

好的。我合作的很多 CEO 都在为此挣扎。他们有 PLG，他们应该转向企业级，然后他们就说，‘我需要我的 Ron。’你是怎么找到你的 Ron 的？谈谈早期的 Ron 吧，因为似乎每个人都在寻找他们的 Ron。

Okay. So many of the CEOs I'm working with are struggling with this. They have PLG, they should go to enterprise, then they're like, 'I need my Ron.' How did you find your Ron? And talk about the early Ron, because it seems like everybody's looking for their Ron.

是的。首先，我认为他很独特，因为他是一个经典的销售人员。就像那种经典的——他们称之为吃肉、做俯卧撑的——你知道，他是那种经典的，他们称之为 PTC、BMC 风格的销售。

Yeah. Well, first of all, I think he was unique because he's a classic salesperson. Like he's the classic—they call them meat-eating, doing push-ups—you know, he's the classic, they call him PTC, BMC style school seller.

顺便说一句，我是 PT，我在 PTC 长大。

By the way, I'm a PT, I grew up at PTC.

好的，那么，你知道，他一直在销售 FTP，这是免费的，并且通过销售免费的 FTP 赚了很多钱。

Okay, so then, you know, he had been selling FTP, which is free, and making a lot of money on selling free FTP.

非常难卖。

Very hard to sell.

卖免费的东西很难。所以他很擅长这个——他是个非凡的销售。但 Ron 很特别。Ron 恰好也有工程学位。他实际上有工程本科学位，然后在斯坦福读 GSB 学位时，他还顺便拿了个工程硕士，只是为了好玩，因为他有精力要消耗。所以我认为他可以反驳我们，他可以用我们的语言交谈，你知道，但他确实来自那个品种，但能说我们的语言，我们可以互相交谈，他会配合。所以不像油和水那样不相容。

It's hard to sell free stuff. So he was good at this—he's a phenomenal sales guy. But Ron was special. Ron also happened to have an engineering degree. He actually had an undergrad engineering degree and then when he was at Stanford doing his GSB degree, he also got an engineering master's just for fun because he had cycles to burn. So I think he could push back on us and he could talk in our language, you know, but he was really from that breed, but could speak our language and we could talk to each other and he would entertain. So it wasn't like oil and water.

是的。

Yeah.

呃，所以他很聪明。他很聪明。

Uh so he was smart. He was smart.

他很聪明，但也有那种聪明。你知道我们已经讨论过其他类型的聪明，可能工程师没有，但他两种聪明都有。

He's smart but also are kind of smart. You know we've already covered now other types of smart that maybe an engineer won't have but he had both types of smart.

顺便说一句，那些人非常非常罕见，他们不仅有工程本科，还有斯坦福 GSB 的工程硕士。

By the way those people are very very rare that they not only have an engineering undergrad but they have masters in engineering with Stanford GSB.

正确。我寻找的第二件事是，你知道，这又回到了他们能建造它吗？我喜欢把它想象成他们能建造机器，还是只能运行别人的机器？

Correct. The second thing I looked for is um you know and this comes back to you know can they build it? I like to think of it as can they build the machine or can they just run somebody else's machine?

是的。我的笑话有点像，你知道，你有驾照吗？你是个好司机吗？好的，你能为我造辆车吗？

Yeah. My joke is kind of like, you know, do you have a driver's license? Are you a good driver? Okay, can you build the car for me?

是的，完全正确。

Yeah, totally.

你知道，非常不同，对吧？嗯，但 Ron 曾在一家叫 Cyclone 的初创公司，我想他们从 0 做到了大约 5000 万美元的 ARR。所以，他见证了从 0 到 50 的旅程。然后公司最终卖给了 Axway，在那里他见证了增长直到数亿美元。

You know, very different, right? Um, but Ron had been in a startup called Cyclone and I think they went from 0 to 50 million AR-ish. So, he had seen that journey from 0 to 50. Then company eventually sold I think to Axway and there he had seen the growth up until hundreds of million.

好的。所以他真的见证了从 0 到 50，50 到 100 左右，你知道，所以他非常详细地理解了那个规模，而且他非常理性。所以你可以真正弄清楚他要么是能造车的人，要么只是随大流，是个好司机。呃，但不，他知道如何造车，你可以和他争论，比如嘿，我们为什么不把引擎放在后面，或者我们为什么不这样改变设计，我们可以，但那样会破坏这个，那没有意义。所以呃，他有第三点，他在这两家公司待了 11 年，基本上没换公司。所以这意味着他有持久力，因为很多人会再次失败，如果你在做战略性的工作，比如确定市场进入策略，需要两三四年的时间。所以如果那个人在两年后就失败了，你就得重置并开始推翻组织。所以他待了很长时间。所以我知道他会忠诚。所以如果事情变得艰难，他不会一开始就退出，这也意味着我可能可以相当严厉地管理他。比如我可以相当强势，他不会离开。我们可以有巨大的争吵，他不会离开，因为他没有从那个坑里离开，你知道，这就是我的感觉。呃，所以他不会从这个坑里离开。呃，你知道，好的。呃，这被证明是至关重要的，因为，你知道，经典的 PTC 销售人员，他们很难管理。他们咄咄逼人。呃，你知道，他们是一群难管理的人。他们非常非常难管理。呃，Ron 很了不起，他创建了我们的，你知道，从 100 万到 70 亿美元 ARR 的引擎。

Okay. So he had really seen 0 to 50, 50 to 100ish, you know, so he understood that scale very in in sort of very detailed way and he was very cerebral. So you could kind of really figure out can he he's either a guy that can build the the car or you know he just he's along for the ride and he's a great driver. Uh but no, he he he knew how to build the car and you could like argue with him like hey why don't we put the engine on the back or why don't we change the design this way like we could but then that would break over this that wouldn't make any sense. So uh he had that third he had been in these two company like basically not changed company for 11 years. So it meant he had longevity because a lot of these folks will just bomb out again back to if you're doing something strategic like figuring out go to market motion it's going to take you two three four years. So if the guy or gal is like bombing out after two years it's you got to reset and start overturns the organization. So he'd been there a long time. So I knew that he's going to kind of be loyal. So like if the going gets rough, he's not going to quit in the first instance, which also meant that I can probably be pretty rough like managing him. Like I can be pretty aggressive and he's not going to leave. Like we can we can have huge fights and he's not going to leave cuz he didn't leave from that, you know, hole is kind of how I felt. Uh so then he's not going to leave from this hole. Uh you know, okay. Uh that turned out to be crucial because, you know, the classic PTC sellers, they're hard to manage. They're aggressive. uh you know they're they're they're a handful to manage. They're very very difficult to manage. Uh Ron as amazing is and he's created our like you know 1 million to 7 billion ARR engine.

好的。所以 Ron 还在负责销售。

Okay. So Ron is still running sales.

是的。CRO。是的。我们有总裁，但 Ron 是 CRO。

He is. Yeah. CRO. Yeah. We have a president but yeah Ron is CRO.

这非常罕见。

That's very rare.

事实上，如今我会说销售副总裁，因为这些公司增长得比以前快得多。他们每两三年就换一批，他们说，‘好吧，他们无法扩展。他们没有见过规模。’嗯，所以祝贺你和 Ron。这真是罕见的事情。好的。你建立了你的高管团队。你能谈谈吗？然后同样的事情，你有没有换人？有没有招聘失误？有没有人无法扩展？就像我合作的每个人都在为此挣扎。

It's very in fact these days I would say VPs of sales because these companies are growing so much faster than they used to. They're churning through them every like two or three years and they say, 'Well, they can't scale. They haven't seen the scale.' Um, so that is congratulations on you and Ron. That is a really rare thing. Okay. You built out your exec team. Can you talk about that? And then same thing like did you turn people over? Did you miss hires? Did people not scale? Like everyone's struggling with this uh that I work with.

是的。看，我认为当你意识到需要招聘高管时，已经太晚了。而且存在一种权衡。如果你给我无限的时间，我会雇佣最好的人。你知道，我能找到最好的人。如果你给我五六年，我能找到一个非凡的人。但如果你给我很短的时间，我也可以快速雇佣某人，但质量就不会很好。所以，我所做的是尝试提前招聘。所以，在我们需要之前，这样给我更多时间，以便我可以进行更长时间的搜索。我可以增加假阴性并减少假阳性。

Yeah. Look, I think that uh by the time you know that you need to hire some an exec, it's too late. And there's sort of a trade-off. If you give me infinite time, I'll hire the best person. You know, I can find the best person. If you give me like five, six years, I can find an phenomenal person. But if you give me a very short amount of time, I can also hire someone quickly, but then the quality will uh not be great. So, what I did is I tried to hire ahead of the curve. So, like before we needed it, that would give me more time so that I could run the search for a longer period of time. And I could sort of increase false negatives and decrease false positives.

等等，你是怎么做到的？

Wait, how did you do that?

假阳性意味着你雇佣了一个你认为会很棒的人，但他们并不棒。你犯了一个错误。现在你必须解雇他们。

False positives means that you hired someone that you thought was going to be great and they're not great. You made a mistake. Now you have to fire them.

你知道，你需要一年才能发现他们并不棒。我的意思是，你可能在六个月后知道，但你不会在六个月内解雇你的高管。所以，你会说，哦，那，你知道，还不清楚。

You know, it's going to take you a year to figure out that they're not great. I mean, you might know after six months, but you're not going to fire your executive for six months. So, you're going to say that, oh, that's h you know, it's not clear.

所以，你打算再给他六个月。然后，一年之后，如果你有胆量，你会告诉他们这行不通。你知道，可能就到此为止。也可能再拖六个月。现在他们走了，你得重新招聘。你现在就在招聘。你因为上次搞砸了而变得畏首畏尾。所以现在你犹豫不决。你可能会选择一个折中的候选人，既没有优点也没有缺点。然后你还得让新人上手。这样你就损失了两年、两年半。所以尽量避免这种情况。

So, you're going to give it another six months. Then, after a year, if you have the guts, you're going to tell them it's not working out. You know, that might end there. It might take another six months. Now once they've left, you got to do the search again. You're doing the search now. You're gun-shy because last time you screwed up. So now you're hesitating. You might go for a compromised candidate which doesn't have any strengths but also no weaknesses. And then you have to ramp that new person. And so like you lost two, two and a half years. So try to avoid that whole thing.

那你怎么做到呢？听起来很明显。

So how do you do that then? I mean it sounds obvious.

嗯，要非常非常挑剔。所以跳过很多可能很出色的候选人。在 Databricks，我跳过并拒绝了一些非常优秀的人，他们后来做出了伟大的成就，他们对我有点怨气。他们会说，我简直不敢相信你没雇我。看看我后来做了什么。就像你犯了个错误。我说，是啊，但我的策略就是极度挑剔。花足够的时间，尽早开始，而且大多数跟我一起的男男女女都跟了我十年左右。

Well be really really picky. So skip on a lot of candidates who could be great. So at Databricks I've skipped and said no to phenomenal people who've gone on and done great things and they have like a chip on their shoulder with respect to me. They're like I can't believe you didn't hire me. Look at what I've done since then. Like a picked mistake by you. I was like yeah but my playbook was err on the side of being just extremely picky. Take decent amount of time start early and most of those guys that have been with me and gals have been with me like a decade.

好的。所以你没有看到这些人的流失？

Okay. So you haven't seen the turnover in these?

我见过。我，你知道，我大概会说有两个案例我犯了错。呃，也许更多，但有两个真的印象深刻。

I have. I am, you know, I probably I think I would say two cases where I made a mistake. Uh maybe more, but two like really come to mind.

然后你说给自己一些时间。是 3 个月、6 个月、9 个月来挑剔吗？

And then you said give yourself some time. Is that 3 months, 6 months, nine months to be picky?

我认为至少需要六个月才能做好一次招聘，也许更长，可能一年。我们有过花一年的招聘，对吧？呃，继续找。人们会妥协，你知道，人们会妥协然后说，看，我看了所有人。这是我们能得到的最好的了。你知道，这个职位已经很久没人了。你知道，先找个人坐这个位置吧。这就是问题所在。

I think it takes at least six months to do a good search, maybe longer, could take a year. We have had searches that took a year, right? Uh keep looking. People settle, you know, people settle and they say, "Look, I looked at everybody. This is the best we can get. you know, we haven't had a person in this role now forever. You know, just get someone in the seat right now. And that's the problem.

好的。所以，你知道，那两个没成的。当我回顾我招聘那两个人的过程时，所有信号都在。你知道，甚至在面试过程中，他们告诉我的事情有点离谱。我知道那很离谱，但我想，嗯，是的，我猜这个人和那个人大吵过。不关我的事。但等等，我可能是下一个人。所以当我回顾并做事后分析时，我总是看到，嘿，所有迹象都在，我当时在干什么？或者你知道，在其中一个案例中，我匆忙招聘，看起来不错，你知道，我很快，然后我认为背景调查非常关键，就像做大量的背景调查。

Okay. So, you knew like look, the two that didn't work out. When I looked back at the process I ran to hire those two, all the signals were there. You know, even in the interview process, they told me stuff that kind of was outrageous. And I knew it was outrageous, but I was like, well, yeah, I guess this person had a big fight with that person. None of my business. It's like, wait, I could be that person next. So I when I look back and I do a postmortem I always see like hey all the signs were there like what what was I doing or you know in one of those cases I rushed through the hire like I hired it looked good they like you know I went fast and then I think that back doors are phenomenal like do just do a insane amount of back doors.

是的

Yeah

如果你和他们过去所有的经理谈谈，你就能获得一个非凡的 360 度视角。就去和他们所有的经理谈谈。嗯，也要做所有的前台调查。我会说大约 10% 到 20% 的前台调查最终是真实的。80% 是

you you get like a phenomenal 360 view of a person if you just talk to all of their managers in their past. Just go talk to all of their managers. Um do also all the front doors. I would say like 10 20% of the front doors end up actually being truthful. 80% are

Ali，我想换个话题。你显然和 Snowflake 有过竞争。随着时间的推移，这是一场有趣的竞争，我的感觉是你曾经远远落后，至少从营收角度来看，你已经超过了他们。我记得在 HubSpot 时，我们很久以前选择 Snowflake 时曾比较过这两家。相对于他们，哪些棋招奏效了？我有个论点，那就是他们是一家非常销售驱动的公司。嗯，CEO 是个销售出身。他实际上给我打过冷电话，而你们是产品驱动的。在给创始人 and CEO 提供这类建议时，你有什么想法？

Ally, I want to switch topics on you. You had a rivalry obviously with Snowflake. It was an interesting rivalry over time and my sense is you were pretty far behind and at least from a revenue standpoint, you've passed them. And I just remember uh at HubSpot we were looking at the two when we picked Snowflake Snowflake way back when. What was the chess moves that worked relative to them? And I guess I have a thesis that that was a very sales-driven company. Um the CEO was a sales guy. He cold called me actually and you folks were product driven. Any thoughts on that in advising founders and CEOs about that kind of thing?

是的，当时大家的共识是这两家公司就是那样。呃，我当时觉得，说这些话的人那样说对我们不公平，因为我认为有 Ron 和所有人，我们有一个很棒的团队，然后我们让 Andy 来这里建立了一个了不起的疯狂机器，嗯，你知道，就像一支军队。所以当时他们那样说，我觉得不公平。但确实，我们的营收只有他们的一半，而且增长更慢。所以要加速营收增长，你知道，以至于你能超越一个营收是你两倍的公司，你知道，绕过他们，我们知道这需要几年时间。回到，你知道，好的策略需要多年。你不可能一夜之间完成。所以，你知道，仔细研究你的敌人，了解他们的弱点，把你的优势应用到他们的弱点上。这是一家伟大的公司。他们打造了一个了不起的产品。这是一个改变游戏规则的产品，颠覆了所有超大规模厂商的数据仓库。所以超大规模厂商被 Snowflake 摧毁，因为它是如此伟大的创新，如此伟大的产品。所以这不是像嘿，这是一家 PTC 那样的公司，你知道，不，这就像硬核的，但他们有几个弱点，一个是它是专有的，因为那些人来自 Oracle，所以它是一个完全专有的技术栈，直到今天所有数据都存储在他们的专有格式中。他们现在添加了开源的东西，但那只是他们所做的一小部分。我们接触的大多数客户，他们有这个专有格式，人们不想被锁定。所以那是一个弱点。呃，第二个弱点是他们对 AI 没有支持，或者他们会说他们有，但我们知道那很弱。所以第二件事我们想非常非常努力地推动，嗯，你知道，这两个加上第三个，它相当昂贵。现在，公平地说，它昂贵可能是因为它是一个伟大的产品，他们可以从中提取大量利润。所以你知道，赢家会这样做，你知道，他们有伟大的产品。所以我们正是针对这三点。我们说，嘿，开放的湖仓意味着你拥有自己的数据。它完全开放。不要把它锁在那里。嗯，你可以在上面做 AI，因为我们的根源是 AI。我们从 2009 年就开始做机器学习和 AI。所以这就是我们的来源。所以就像应用那个优势。顺便说一句，当时并不清楚这是否会奏效，因为 AI 在 2019 年、2020 年还不是大事。但我们知道那是一个弱点。我们推动，继续推动那个弱点。然后是成本。所以让我们确保 TCO 是三分之一，直到今天 TCO 通常会在 TCO 上获胜。所以然后我们只是一个账户接一个账户地极其积极地敲打。我们有一个非常仔细的策略，策略不是像让我们出去说 Snowflake 很烂之类的。它是强调，找出阿喀琉斯之踵，然后施压。不要只是说嘿，拆掉 Snowflake。这是一个共存策略。进去看看哪些工作负载可以适用于机器学习。把它们拉出来，把格式移到开源。

Yeah, that was the consensus at the time that that the companies were like that. Uh I felt like at the time people would saying that were saying that I thought that was unfair to us cuz I thought with Ron and everybody we had like an amazing team and then we had Andy come here and build up like an amazing crazy machine um that you know it's like an army. So I I thought that was unfair at the time when they were saying that. But it is true that we were half the revenue and we were growing slower. So to accelerate the revenue, you know, so much that you can sort of overtake someone that's got double your revenue and, you know, bypass them, we knew it's going to take several years. Back to the, you know, good strategies take multiple years. You can't do them overnight. So, you know, study your enemy carefully, understand their weaknesses, and apply your strength to their weaknesses. This was a great company. They had built an amazing product. It was a game-changing product that disrupted all the data warehouses of all the hyperscalers. So the hyperscalers were getting destroyed by Snowflake because it was such a great innovation, such a great product. So it's this is not like hey it's a PTC like company and you know like no this is like hardcore but they had a few weaknesses one was that uh it was proprietary cuz the folks came from Oracle h so it's a fully proprietary stack and still today all the data gets stored inside of their proprietary format. They've now added open source stuff but that's just small fraction of what they do. Most of the customers we bump to they have this proprietary and people didn't want to get locked in. So that was one weakness. Uh second weakness they had was that they had no support for AI or they would say that they they would but we knew that that was pretty weak. So the second thing that we we wanted to push really really hard on um and um you know those two combined with third it was pretty expensive. Now it was expensive to be fair probably because it was a great product and they could extract a lot of margin out of it. So you know winners do that you know they have great product. So we went exactly for those three. So we said, "Hey, open lakehouse means you own your own data. It's completely open. Don't lock it up over there. Um, you can do AI on it because we were like our roots were AI. We'd been doing machine learning and AI since 2009. So that's where we came from. So like apply that strength. And by the way, at the time it wasn't clear that was going to work because AI was not a big thing in 2019, 2020. But we knew that that's a weakness. We push keep pushing on that weakness. And then cost. So let's make sure that the TCO is a third and still today TCO is just would typically win on TCO. So and then we just hammered that extremely aggressively in account after account. We had very careful playbook and the playbook were you know it wasn't just like let's just go out and say that Snowflake sucks or anything like that. It was emphasize identify the Achilles heel and press on those. Don't just go say hey rip out Snowflake. It was a coexist strategy. Go in there look at the exact workloads that could be amendable to machine learning. pull those out, move the format to open source.

所以我们有一套非常清晰、简洁的打法，这多少反驳了“我们销售会很差”或者“他们擅长销售”的说法，因为销售在 Databricks 就是按这套打法执行的。他们一个客户一个客户地去推。所以，我想说——这花了好几年——而且我们还有一个品类很好地体现了这套打法。这个品类就是湖仓一体（lakehouse）。所以我们有一个三年、四年的战略来创建湖仓一体这个品类，顺便说一句，这当时是有争议的。人们不相信它，但最终这个品类起飞了。现在每个人都声称自己有湖仓一体——连我们也会这么说——他们还说有开放格式等等。所以，我想说的就是：研究你的敌人，仔细研究你的竞争对手，然后针对那些弱点发起攻击。

So we have a very clear, concise playbook, and this kind of contradicts the idea that our sales would suck or that they would be good at sales, because sales executed this playbook at Databricks. They went account by account and did that. So, you know, I would say—and then it took multiple years—and we also had a category that sort of exemplified this playbook. The category was lakehouse. So we had a three-year, four-year strategy to create this category of lakehouse, which by the way was controversial. People didn't believe in it, but eventually the category took off. Now everybody says they have a lakehouse—even we will say that—and they say they have open format and so on. So yeah, that's what I would say: study your enemy, study your competition carefully, and then go after those weaknesses.

我有一位教授，Arnaldo Hacks，Arnaldo 是那种人——他没有双下巴，他差不多有四层下巴——他总是说一句话：关注竞争，但永远不要跟随竞争。他说这话时——他的下巴还会再晃上一分钟。

I had a professor, Arnaldo Hacks, and Arnaldo was one of those guys—he didn't have a double chin, he had like a quadruple chin—and he always had a line: watch the competition but never follow the competition. He'd do it—his chin would wag for another minute.

所以第二部分真的很重要。有些公司不是以客户为中心。我觉得那是个——你知道，他们不是以竞争为中心。我认为那是个错误。你必须研究竞争。如果——你知道，从《孙子兵法》来说，他们说所有 CEO 都应该读——就像《孙子兵法》讲的全是研究你的敌人，对吧？他们的位置：是高还是低？他们是不是有更多的兵力等等。所以你必须研究你的部队、你的竞争。但还有些公司实际上对你的竞争对手痴迷。就像他们绝对痴迷。我们现在就有一些公司对我们痴迷。

So that second part is really important. Some companies are not customer obsessed. I think that's a—you know, they're not competition obsessed. I think that's a mistake. You have to study the competition. If—you know, from The Art of War, which they say all the CEOs should read—like The Art of War is all about studying your enemy, right? Their position: is it high, low? Do they have, you know, more troops and so on. So you've got to study your troops, your competition. But then there are the companies that actually are obsessed with your competition. Like they're absolutely obsessed. And we have some companies right now that are obsessed by us.

是的。

Yeah.

所以他们做的就是直接复制竞争对手。他们总是试图追赶竞争对手做了什么能力或定位，然后直接复制。我认为这是最常见的失败模式。我觉得有一本书讲得很好——是本好书，不是《创新者的窘境》，而是《创新者的解答》——它谈到了解决方案，谈到产品经理往往只是构建与竞争对手相同的功能。所以这是我看到很多 CEO 陷入的第二个陷阱：要么你不痴迷于竞争，要么你痴迷并直接复制他们。所以在我们这里，我们不是直接去构建一个数据仓库然后说，嘿，我们有一个比 Snowflake 的数据仓库更好的数据仓库。没人会相信我们。他们只会说，你在说什么？他们是这个领域的领导者。他们创造了这个品类。你到底在说什么？所以我们必须说，不不不不，这是不同的东西，而且它在多个长期趋势上不同。所以我们实际上在产品侧也实现了超越式创新。所以你也必须这样做，而不仅仅是复制。

So then what they do is they just copy the competition. So they're just always trying to chase what capabilities or what positioning did the competition do, and they're just copying that. I think this is the most common failure mode. I think it's covered really well in a book—great book, not Innovator's Dilemma but Innovative Solution—it talks about the solution and it talks about how product managers tend to just build the same features as the competition. So this is the second pitfall that I see a lot of CEOs fall into: either you don't obsess by the competition, or you obsess and just copy them. So in our case, we didn't just go and build a data warehouse and say, hey, we have a data warehouse that's better than Snowflake's data warehouse. No one would have believed us. They would have just said, what are you talking about? They're the leaders in this. They created this category. What are you even talking about? So we had to say, no no no no, this is a different thing, and it's different in multiple secular sort of trends. So we actually out-innovated there on the product side as well. So you've got to do that as well and not just copy.

好的。那么湖仓一体的想法是怎么来的？是你的主意吗？是在你脑子里盘旋的吗？你是怎么在内部推销它的？你是怎么把它设立为一个倡议的？是核心团队做的吗？你是从公司里分出一个团队吗？我合作的很多 CEO 都在做第二幕，你知道有些真的在这上面挣扎。你们是怎么做到的？你们做对了什么？做错了什么？

Okay. So how did the idea for Lakehouse come? Was it your idea? Was it kicking around in your head? How did you sell it internally? And how did you set it up as an initiative? Did the core team do it? Did you break a team off company? A lot of the CEOs I'm working with are working on second acts and you know some are really struggling with it. How did you guys do that? What did you do right? What did you do wrong?

是的。这在内部是一个有争议的决定。

Yeah. It was a controversial decision internally.

是的。

Yeah.

你知道很多资深的人都说不要做。这个词很滑稽。它是个——你知道，它是技术性的。湖在房子里是什么？就像湖边的一栋房子。那和我们做的事有什么关系？就像有点滑稽，这有点荒谬。我们想成为一家企业级公司。我们要和高管谈，而你却要谈在湖边弄栋房子。但后来——所以我们去找了战略咨询公司，外面的战略公司也说——他们实际上对人做了调查，他们说，是的，确实行不通。

And you know a lot of the seasoned folks were saying don't do it. It's a funny word. It's a—you know it's technical. What is a lake in a house? It's like a house in front of a lake. What does that have to do with what we do? Like it's kind of funny, like this is kind of ridiculous. We're trying to be an enterprise company. We're going to talk to execs and you're going to talk about getting a house on a lake. But then—so we went to strategy firms and strategy firms outside also said—they did actually surveys with people and they said yeah indeed it doesn't work.

所以他们给我们想了一些平淡无奇的品类名称。我想“统一数据科学平台”是他们的提议。

So they came up with like bland category names for us. I think unifi data science platform was their proposal.

然后我们拿给内部的一些销售人员看，他们说，是的，这说不通。太技术了。不如——然后他们会提出类似你知道的。所以我们不得不，你知道，有点强行推进，并且要有很大的信念，这并不容易，因为你知道，就像嘿，你在冒险——你有一家相当成功的公司，你想冒一切风险去做这件奇怪的事。但我们还是做了，起初所有说不要做的人都被证明是对的，因为人们在嘲笑它，说它太——他们编了各种哈哈的数据急流穿过数据河之类的。所以，人们玩得很开心，但我认为这也属于“任何公关都是好公关”的范畴。所以，从大局来看，那还不算太糟。但我们真的动员了整个公司来支持它。

And then we ran it by some of our sales folks internally and they're like yeah this doesn't make any sense. It's too technical. How about—and then they will propose something like you know. So we had to kind of put, you know, kind of march ahead and have a lot of conviction and that was not easy because you know there's like hey you're risking—you have a company that's pretty successful, you want to risk it all and going on this weird thing. Um but we did and initially all those people that said don't do it were vindicated because people were ridiculing it and saying it's such—they were making all these haha data rapids going through the data river data you know so on. So, uh, people are having a lot of fun with that, but I think it was also in the category of any PR is good PR. So, it wasn't that bad in the big scheme of things. Um, but we really did mobilize the whole company behind it.

好的。这不是一个单独的团队。是整个公司。

Okay. It wasn't a separate team. It was the whole company.

它变成了整个公司。而且真的是，你知道，我们会全面推行。比如，哦，有一篇关于 brakes 的文章。太棒了。它说了关于我们的好话。我们却说，不，不，等等，等等。文章里没有提到湖仓一体。

It became the whole company. And it was really, you know, we would do it across the board. Like, oh, there's an article about the brakes. Amazing. It said great things about us. And we were like, no, no, wait, wait. They didn't mention lakehouse in the article.

我明白了。

I see.

这太糟糕了。你能去联系记者吗？你到底在干什么？你知道，哦，我们在这里取得了一个大胜利。这是一个客户胜利。这是客户说的话。嘿，但客户没有提到湖仓一体。搞什么鬼，你知道？所以，它变成了整个公司完全——像疯狂地、宗教般地全面推行。你知道，必须是湖仓一体，否则就是失败。我不在乎，你知道。而且，你知道，我想我在某个时候看到了 Databricks 在 Facebook 上发给我的很棒广告。我当时想，这些广告没有提到湖仓一体。搞什么鬼？然后，你知道，我的营销主管说，是的，你知道在广告里放“湖仓一体”这个词的投资回报率有多好吗？Spark 是我们知名的东西。比如，这是转化率。你是搞数据的人。看看转化率。Spark 能卖。你那个奇怪滑稽的东西卖不出去。我说，我不在乎。把所有那些你知道能起作用的广告都撤掉，用这个不起作用的广告。所以，这需要整个公司持续多年的共同努力。

This is horrible. Can you go contact the reporter? What are you even doing? You know, oh, we got a big win here. Here's a customer win. Here's what the customer said. Hey, but the customer didn't mention lakehouse. What the hell, you know? So, it became like a completely—like maniacally, religiously across the board in the company. You know, it's got to be a lakehouse, otherwise it's a loss. I don't care, you know. And, you know, I think I saw at some point great ads from Databricks that I was receiving on Facebook. I was like, these are not mentioning lakehouse. What the hell? And, you know, my head of marketing said, yeah, you know how well the ROI is on putting a word lakehouse in an ad. Spark is the thing we're known for. Like, here's the conversion rates. You're a data guy. Look at the conversion rates. Spark sells. This other weird funny thing you have doesn't sell. I said, I don't care. Get rid of all those ads that, you know, work and use this ad that doesn't work. So, it took, you know, concerted effort by the whole company uh for multiple multiple years.

我确信销售代表是受他们的薪酬计划激励的，而且销售核心产品更容易。你们是如何激励销售湖仓一体的？

I'm sure sales reps are motivated by their comp plan and it was easier to sell the core product. How did you incent selling lakehouse?

薪酬计划一直是我们痴迷的事情。我个人一直对它很痴迷。所以总是会有乘数和额外的奖励，以及在薪酬计划之上的额外好处之类的东西。

Complans was always a thing we were obsessed with. I always personally obsessed with it. So there would be always uh multipliers and you know extra spiffs and gravy on top of the comp plan and things of that nature.

每年我们都会确保薪酬计划会确保——不要和销售争论，那很蠢。把它放进他们的薪酬计划里。如果销售不想做某件事，那就把它放进薪酬计划里让他们去做。

Every year we would make sure that the comp plan would make sure — don't argue with sales, that's dumb. Put it in their comp plan. If sales doesn't want to do something, then put it in the comp plan to do that thing.

如果你相信这是正确的事，对吧？你可能是错的，但这是世界上最容易的事。

If you believe it's the right thing, right? You might be wrong, but it's the easiest thing in the world.

所以我不太参与那些争论。我会试着弄清楚他们是否正确。但如果我确信，我就把它放进薪酬计划里，停止争论，争论立刻停止。

So I don't really engage in those debates. I'll try to figure out if they're right about it or not. But if I'm convicted, I put it in a comp plan and stop the debate, and the debate immediately stops.

好的。在你们公司的历史上，有几次你决定退一步，希望前进十步。这是一个。我的感觉也是从 PLG 转向企业级，真正做 AI。有几次你退一步以便走得更快。我看到很多 CEO 害怕退这一步。担心如果短期收入放缓，投资者会说什么。给那些 CEO 或一般太胆小的 CEO 的建议。

Okay. A couple of times in your history at the company, you decided to take a step back in hopes that you would take 10 steps forward. This is one. My sense is also moving from PLG to enterprise, really doing AI. There's been a few points where you take that step back so you can go faster. I see a lot of CEOs nervous to take that step back. Nervous what the investors are going to say if revenue slows down in the short term. Advice to those CEOs or CEOs generally too timid.

嗯，我的意思是，首先，我不知道你指的是上市公司 CEO 还是私营公司 CEO？

Well, I mean, first of all, I don't know if those CEOs you're referring to are public company CEOs or private company CEOs?

私营。

Private.

是的。好的。有趣。我会说在私营方面，你有更多的自由度。我很贪婪，我对 Databricks 的期望比我们当时更大。我很失望。所以此时当我们做 Lakehouse 时，2018、19 年，我们有数亿美元的 ARR，所以嗯，从某些指标来看我们是一家成功的公司，但我很不开心，我希望公司更大、更有影响力，当时我们和投资者交谈，我告诉投资者——我说的是上市公司投资者，我们和他们交谈，他们试图理解 Databricks 是做什么的，我会向他们描绘我希望 Databricks 做的大愿景。会后我对自己诚实地说：“哇，我们没在做那个。”就像我描绘的画面很棒。但那不是我们正在做的。我们现在只是在卖 Spark。所以它来自一个地方，像是：“嘿，我们想成为那个大东西吗？”对我来说，就像是：“好吧，我不想做这份工作。”记住，我甚至不想当 CEO。所以如果我要做这份工作，我们想成为那个，你知道，那个惊人的愿景。如果你想实现那个惊人的愿景，我们必须转型。否则，我们就会卡住。我在研究公司时看到硅谷发生的是，那些最终成为一招鲜的公司，它们是了不起的公司，了不起的创新。Splunk 这个惊人的可观测性安全 sim，但它就像一招鲜，但亚马逊、谷歌、微软他们有很多很多产品，你不能用“哦，他们只做那个”来定义他们，那太简单化了。那么我们如何成为其中之一？所以如果那是你的目标，你必须开始下大赌注，你知道你可能不会成功。然后我很固执。所以我继续那些赌注几年，然后最终开始看到成功。它真的来自那里。所以我不满足。我不想成为单一产品公司。我想拥有多个多元化的产品组合，每个都成功。你在 Hopspot 也做了同样的事。

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I would say on the private side, you have more latitude. I was greedy and I had bigger hopes for Databricks than when we were at. I was disappointed. So at this point when we did Lakehouse right 2018 19 we were you know multiple hundreds of millions of dollars of ARR and so um we were a successful company by some metrics but I was pretty unhappy and I wanted the company to be much much much bigger and much much more impactful at the time and we were talking to investors and I was telling investors uh you know I'm talking public company investors we were talking to who were trying to understand what databics does and I would paint them this big vision of what I want databicks to do one And I was being truth seeeking with myself after the meeting and saying, "Wow, we're not doing that." Like this picture that I'm painting is amazing. But that's not what we're doing. We're just selling Spark right now. So it came from a place of like, "Hey, do we want to be that big thing or not?" And for me it was like, "Okay, I don't want to do this job." Remember, I didn't even want to be CEO. So if I'm going to do this job, we want to be that that, you know, that amazing vision. If you want to do that amazing vision, we got to transform ourselves. Otherwise, we just get stuck. What I saw happening in Silicon Valley when I was studying companies was that these companies that end up being one trick ponies they're amazing companies amazing innovation. Splunk this amazing observability security sim but it's like one trick but Amazon Google Microsoft they had many many products and you couldn't define them by saying oh they just do that that's too simplistic. So how do we become one of those? So if that's what your target is, you have to start taking the big bets and you know you might not succeed with them. And then I was stubborn. So I kept going with those bets a few years more you know and then eventually started to see the success out of those. It really came from that. So like I was not content. I didn't want to have a single product company. I wanted to have multiple diversified product portfolio that each of them were successful. You did the same right at Hopspot.

我们做了同样的事。我们是一家营销应用公司。我们成为了 CRM 平台。我们退了一大步，以便前进十步，我们向公共投资者大力推销，但他们根本不在乎大愿景，直到新产品的收入开始出现。对你来说类似吗？

We did the same. We were marketing app company. We became a CRM platform. We took a massive step back so we could take 10 steps forward and we sold it hard to the public investors and they didn't give a crap about the big vision until the revenue started showing up for the new products. Was is that kind of similar for you?

是的，我认为公开市场有点，你知道，听起来很棒。我们在财报电话会议上听到了太多废话。

Yeah, I think that public markets are kind of, you know, sounds great. We've heard so much BS on earnings calls.

是的。

Yeah.

就像那些圆滑、你知道，油嘴滑舌的 CEO 们，每次财报电话会议都在胡扯。就像你听他们说话，就像我们有些人看着它就像，“哦，我的天。”我的意思是，我受不了超过 2 分钟。他们在每次财报电话会议上都听到这些。所以，我认为他们只是对所有这些打折，说：“给我看钱。”所以，是的，需要多年时间，人们才开始关注那些会带来回报的事情。我一次又一次地看到这一点，对吧？就像 Databricks 是仅云 AI，没人关心。就像 onrem 是所有业务所在，你应该转向那个，直到它起飞。然后突然就像，“哦，我的天，你们怎么这么快做到的？”就像，“是的，我们已经做了 5 年了。”所以，是的，你必须有耐力。你必须做你相信的事情。你知道，它必须是非共识的，但你也必须是对的。你必须做四五年。然后到那时，人们开始关注它。顺便说一句，人们的反应会像是，哦，我的天，这怎么发生得这么快？你怎么建立所有这些产品的？你去哪儿了，Brian？我不敢相信你们建立了所有这些。你说，这是一家完全不同的公司。就像，你怎么这么快做到的？你说，实际上，我们已经做了五年了。你没注意。

Like the slick, you know, smooth operator CEOs who are like BSing every earnings call. Like you listen to them, it's like some of us look at it's like, "Oh my god." I mean, I can't stand this more than 2 minutes. They've heard that all the time on every earnings call. So, I think they're just like discounting all of that and saying, "Show me the money." So, yeah, it takes multiple years until people start paying attention to the thing that's going to pay off. I I've seen this again and again again, right? Like data bricks was cloud only AI and no one gave a damn. It was like onrem is where all the business like is at you should move to that until it took off. Then suddenly was like, "Oh my god, how did you guys do it so fast?" Like, "Yeah, we've been at it for 5 years." So yeah, you you do have to have stamina. You have to do the thing you believe in. You know, it has to be non-conensus, but you also have to be right. And you have to do it for four or five years. Then at that point, people start looking at it. And by the way, people's reaction will be like, oh my god, how did this happen so fast? How did you build all these products? Where have you been, Brian? I can't believe you guys build all these things. And you're like, it's completely different company. Like, how did you do it so quickly? You're like, actually, we've been doing it for five years. You didn't pay attention.

这让我想起了一些事。

That rings a bell for me.

是的。

Yeah.

嗯，Ali，我和很多与你共事或为你工作过的人谈过，我得到的一个引述是：“他是个杀手。他打得比你想象的更激进。”我听到这个。一个温和的计算机科学教授如何变成一个极其激进的杀手？这从何而来？

Um, Ali, I spoke to a bunch of people who have worked with you or worked for you, and one of the quotes I got is, "He's a killer. He plays more aggressive than you think is possible." And I'm hearing I'm hearing this come out. How does a mild-mannered computer science professor turn into a killer that's incredibly aggressive? Where's this come from?

你知道，我认为我有点自卑感。嗯，我，你知道，老实说，我认为在瑞典作为移民长大，你知道，换学校和环境，你知道，就像你知道，有这种你必须拥有这种侵略性才能成功，你知道，可能有很多艰难的愤怒多年来积累。美国让我软化了很多，你知道，因为对我来说这是一个快乐的地方，就像好吧，这是一种和谐。我知道听起来，但是的，我想你知道，可能欧洲的移民给了我很多自卑感和很多要向自己和世界证明的事情。所以，嗯，可能来自那里，我猜，或者可能只是遗传。谁知道？嗯，但作为 CEO，你很快学到，可能对 CEO 来说最糟糕的特质是如果他们回避冲突。嗯，所以我很快学到，回避冲突的 CEO 是最糟糕的。没有比这更糟的了。我不是说他们是坏人。他们是好人。

You know, I think I have a chip on my shoulder, you know. Um I you know honestly I think growing up in Sweden as an immigrant and you know switching schools environments you know it's like you know there's there is this you have to have this kind of aggression to succeed and you know there's probably a lot of kind of tough anger that piles up over the years. Uh United States has softened me a lot you know uh because this is like a happy place for me like it's like okay this is kind of harmony. I know it sounds but yeah I thought you know probably immigrant in Europe gave me a lot of uh chips on my shoulders and a lot of things to prove to myself and the world. So uh it's probably comes from there I would guess or maybe it's just genetic. Who knows? Um but as a CEO you learn very quickly that probably the number one trait that is terrible for a CEO is if they're conflict averse. Uh, so I learned that very quickly that conflict averse CEOs is like the worst thing possible. It's nothing worse than that. I'm not saying they're bad people. They're wonderful people.

In fact, maybe the most wonderful people in the world are conflict averse, right? But the CEO job, you have to be crystal clear. And the reason is, I think everybody's pushing you, right? Everybody wants to get something from you. Can you do this? Can you prove that? Can we do this? If you're conflict averse, you're just going to say yes to them, or you're gonna lie to them, or you're gonna try to avoid the subject. You got to be crystal clear. We don't do that here. No, we're not going to do that. No, I'm not going to prove it because you caught me in the hallway here. Go through the formal processes. Just because you're chit-chatting with me in the elevator and I'm being nice and you're being nice back, and now you're trying to jam in approval for something — that's really sneaky of you. So let's go through the proper process for this. So all this push all the time — if you don't do it, the company starts going in all kinds of directions instead of laser focusing all that energy on that one bottleneck that you wanted to solve, right? I also think that it helps you be more consistent and clear so everybody kind of gets the message. People don't understand nuance. "I think Ali meant this." No, no, no. "I think he meant that." No, no. "I think you're totally misunderstanding." No, let's be crystal clear. Then let's make it black and white so that there's no doubt, so everybody knows. Let's give them the cheat sheet. So you got to be aggressive with that. And then you start getting people that are more like-minded, and you kind of start growing in the same direction. I feel like big companies otherwise — we're 12,000 employees — it's like they start canceling each other out. B atoms bouncing off of each other, you know, strategies that don't make sense. I saw it in big companies. So I'm trying to avoid that.

I have a thesis, and I think you agree with it, that a pivot point in a lot of startups is when you get to 150 employees — Dunbar's number — and things start to really slow down. You guys hit 150, and then, you know, you're 12,000 today. Do you agree with that? So many of the companies I work with are ripping by that 150. What is your advice to founders to create some structure and process but not really slow the damn thing down?

Yeah, some slowdown is sort of necessary. The Dunbar number definitely happened. I felt for us it was like 250 or something, but you're right. It was around the time actually we did the CEO transition, right? I think it goes from being everybody knows everyone, and you as a CEO know everything that's going on. So in some sense you can run the company kind of like a star — like there's one person that knows everything, or two people that know everything, and then there's a bunch of people around, but every one of them knows everything. So you have to start putting structure in place so that you don't know everything. You just trust that, you know, this part of the go-to-market will take care of itself, this part of... So you have to basically start putting in processes where you're scaling indirectly. It's in a way — I know it sounds funny, because I'm sure you have managers and managers of managers — but really it's the first time the company is going through the transition of having managers of managers. They might have had it before, but those managers of managers didn't matter because the CEO knew everything anyway, so they were just managers of managers in name. But what happens when you actually can't reach down because there's too many people, you actually can't reach down and understand what's going on, and you really have to go through the intermediate layer. You got to put structure in place and make sure that the reviews, KPIs, measure it in a way so you can make sure that the ship is going in the direction you want it to without going and tapping people's shoulders all the time, because there's too many shoulders now. You don't even know the name of everyone anymore.

Yeah. I've also interviewed — I interviewed Jack Dorsey on this podcast, and I read a lot about Brian Armstrong, and they're trying to recreate the CEO model and rethink it. The way Dorsey kind of describes it is the company is an AI and the employees kind of sit around the AI and their main job is to train the AI and give it context over time, and that he wants no more than two layers between himself and the frontline employees. And Brian Armstrong's doing kind of similar things — like not just shrinking the org but really collapsing the number of levels in the org. What is your take? It seems like there's a movement starting around this, and a bunch of the AI-native companies I'm working with are pretty intrigued by that.

Yeah, I think directionally it's correct. We're doing the same, but I think we should separate two things that are sometimes being conflated. Okay, which is: what is the official org chart you want to have in a company, and then what is the way in which your company disseminates information, aggregates information, makes decisions and collects those. We should separate these two. So 10, 20 years ago these were the same thing. There is no way to collect information other than you ask your person, they ask their people — you go up and down the tree structure of the org chart. That's how information disseminates up and down, and decisions go up and down. That's the only way. And now you can do it more broadcast — that's like a top-down company — or you can do bottom-up, but those are the only options you have, or you can just be a random, poorly run company. Today what has happened is that we have extremely smart AI. I keep asking this question every audience I go to, and I ask them, you know, how many of you think that the AI is smarter than most of the people around you most of the time? And I get like 90% of the hands up. Well, I define that as AGI — it's artificial general intelligence. It might not be superintelligence, but it is as good as most of the people around you, right? This is undisputed. Every time I ask this, audiences all agree on that. They don't agree that AGI is here because they have a weird definition of AGI. So we have these models that are super, super smart. Then we look at how AI is being used inside corporations.

And by the way, people complain about them hallucinating, but humans hallucinate too.

I make mistakes all the time.

All the time.

So these things are phenomenal already. And let's just say they're smarter than most of the people around you most of the time — that's what I've gotten from every... By the way, I asked that at Moscone Center to 32,000 people, and I asked them to raise their hands, and almost everybody raised their hand.

但然后你环顾四周，说：“好吧，企业内部发生了什么？AI 是如何被使用的？”他们只是把它们当作愚蠢的聊天机器人。他们去聊天机器人那里，问它问题，然后得到答案。这就是全部。然后他们用它们来编程。所以他们有编程智能体在写代码。总的来说，这有点过于简化。这就是今天企业内部正在发生的事情。所以模型拥有的能力和……你知道，这根本不是真的。我也问过这个问题。你有数百个智能体式同事互相协作，向你提供提案，让你了解最新情况并做这些吗？没有人举手。我从未见过一个人举手。

But then you look around you and say, "Okay, what's happening inside the enterprise? How are AI being used?" And they're just using them as stupid chat bots. They're going to the chatbot, asking it the question, and getting an answer. That's all that's happening. And then they're using them for coding. So they have coding agents that are writing code. By and large, it's a little bit of an oversimplification. This is what's happening inside the enterprise today. So this huge gap between the capabilities the models have and, you know, it is just not true. I asked this question too. Do you have hundreds of agentic co-workers collaborating with each other, providing proposals to you, keeping you up to date and doing that? Nobody raises their hand. I've never had a single person raise their hand on that.

好吧。所以，缺少的是企业上下文。因此，你需要捕获企业上下文，这些上下文存在于人们的头脑中、每天做出的决策、每个被记录的会议中发生的事情、每封发送的电子邮件中。嗯，一切都需要被捕获并成为上下文的一部分，然后喂给 AI。我们称之为本体。所以我们想要捕获本体并将其喂给 AI。所以我们实际上构建了一个产品来做到这一点。它叫做 Genie。对于 DataBricks 来说，这不仅仅是一个产品，买了这个产品你就能解决这个问题，然后你就完成了。不，绝对不是。事实证明，你还必须构建这个本体。在 DataBricks，我们实际上为自己构建了一个非凡的本体。我们注意到我们的客户没有——他们使用相同的产品，但他们没有像我们一样构建本体。所以对我们来说现在这很神奇。所以我们有一个人员组织结构图，他们向上和向下汇报，我们可以决定扇出应该是多少、控制跨度等等。但然后我们有 Genie，Genie 几乎可以回答我在任何会议上关于任何事情的任何问题。它还可以开始为我们自动化任务，让我们，你知道，所以我们都只是坐在手机上，一直使用 Genie 应用来处理所有这些事情，并给它喂更多的上下文，构建更多的上下文，自动化公司中我们发现的越来越多的流程。所以是的，我认为这是真的，我的 Genie 产品做到了这一点，并且它构建了本体。

Okay. So, what's lacking is the enterprise context. So, you need to capture the enterprise context that's in people's heads, decisions that are being made every day, what's happening inside every meeting that's being recorded, every email that's being sent. Uh everything has to be captured and be put part of the context and then fed to the AI. We call this ontology. So we want to capture the ontology and feed it to the AI. So we actually built a product that does that. It's called Genie. And for DataBricks, so it's not just a product, buy this product and you will solve this problem and you're done. No, absolutely not. Turns out you have to also build this ontology. And at DataBricks, we actually have a phenomenal ontology we built for ourselves. We've noticed our customers don't have they use the same product but they haven't built up the ontology the same way we have. So for us now it's magical. So we have an org chart of people they report up and down and we can decide what the fan out should be and spans of control and all of that. But then we have Genie and Genie pretty much answers any question I have in any meeting about anything. And it can also start automating tasks for us and getting us, you know, so we're all just sitting on our phones and using the Genie app all the time on all of these kind of things and feeding more context to it, building up more context, automating more and more processes in the company that we find. So yeah, I think it's true and my the Genie product does this and it builds ontology.

但那么人类呢？

But then what about the humans?

是的。那金字塔形的组织结构图呢？是的，我认为这还有待确定，原因如下。我认为市场上有很多说法我不确定是否正确。所以我认为智能是真实的。所以我在哲学上同意 Jack Dorsey。问题是，这是否也适用于人类的组织结构图？比如我们应该——所以也许我应该只有你知道的一层或两层下属。问题在这里。我看到一些公司说，好的，因此我们转向 25 人的扇出。所以每个经理应该管理 25 人。还应该有球员教练，因为现在我们有 AI 可以为你写代码等等。所以我希望每个经理写代码，将其发布到生产环境，并管理 25 人。我说，好吧，那进展如何？你看看经理们在做什么？嗯，很多都是人的事情。你知道，这个人对职业选择不满意，嗯，你知道，不清楚他们想要做的目标是什么。就像有很多人际互动。你不能让 25 个直接下属向一个人汇报，并且超级快乐、一致并理解他们要做什么等等。而且你还要求经理同时担任球员教练，提交代码，他们应该 80% 的时间在氛围编程，20% 的时间在管理 25 人。

Yeah. What about that pyramid-shaped org chart? Yeah, I think that that is TBD and here's why. Where where I think there's a lot of stuff that's being said in the market that I'm not sure is correct. So I think the intelligence is true. So I agree philosophically with Jack Dorsey. The question is does that apply to the org chart of humans too? Like should we should so maybe I should just have you know one layer below me or two layers. Here's the problem. And I see some companies saying okay so there therefore we're moving to 25 people fan out. So each manager should manage 25 people. There should also be player coaches because now we have AI that can write code for you and so on. So I want every manager to write code, ship it to production and manage 25 people. And I'm like, okay, so how's that going? You look at what are managers doing? Well, a lot of it is like human stuff. You know, this person is unhappy career choices, uh, you know, unclear what the goals are that they want to do. Like there's a lot of human interaction. You can't have 25 direct reports reporting to a person and being super happy and aligned and understand what they're going to do and all of that. And also you're asking the managers to also at the same time being player coach and submit code and be they should be vibe coding 80% of the time and 20% of the time they're like managing 25 people.

你持怀疑态度。

You're skeptical.

是的，我认为这是胡说八道。我认为事情会崩溃。你会得到不快乐。你认为你会有很多不快乐的员工，他们不知道到底发生了什么，因为你知道，他们见不到他们的经理，因为经理大部分时间都在忙着氛围编程，而且你知道有 25 个人。

Yeah, I think it's BS. I think things will break down. You're going to get unhappy. You think you're going a lot of unhappy employees who don't know what the hell is going on because you know there's like they don't meet their manager because the manager is busy vibe coding most of the day and you know there's 25 of them.

嗯。

Mhm.

你知道，还要在这些所有群体之间打破僵局做决策。所以我并不完全认同你如何解决这个问题，你知道，这就像双重打击，你知道，管理更多的人，还要自己工作。有道理。

You know and to tie break just decisions across these all these groups. So I I'm I'm not fully bought in to how you resolve that you know it's like a double whammy of you know manage more people and do I work yourself. Fair enough.

嗯，我在 X 上发布了我邀请你上播客的消息，我收到了一堆有趣的问题，其中一个是你还写代码吗？

Um, I put out on X that I was having you on the pod and I got a bunch of interesting questions and one of which was, do you still code?

我写。嗯，首先，我一直在写代码。所以，我从未停止过写代码。是的。

I do. Well, first of all, I always was coding. So, I I never quit coding. Yeah.

我的意思是，记住我负责产品和工程，对吧？而且我从三年级就开始写代码。所以，我从未停止过写代码。我会在周末写代码只是为了好玩之类的。但去年 11 月，我也开始向生产环境提交东西，只是为了确切了解一路走到生产环境有多难。它始于一个实验，我构建了一个连接器。我花了两天时间构建一个连接器，而我们当前的团队为一个人构建这些连接器需要三个季度。我说，我怎么可能在两天内完成，而你们却需要三个季度？他们说，嗯，你知道，你的东西还没有准备好投入生产。它不安全。它没有彻底——实际上基本上它不能真正工作。你只是有一个概念验证在工作。你无法进入生产环境。所以我真的很想弄清楚他们是对的吗？这个差距是什么？怎么可能核心的东西花了我两天，但所有其他附加的无关紧要的东西却需要三个季度。所以这就是让我踏上这段旅程的原因，嘿，我需要将代码提交到生产环境，面向客户。只有这样我才能感受到这到底是如何运作的。我们学到的东西实际上有点有趣。团队回去了，他们利用了我的推动，然后回来说，你知道，你有点对。AI 非常有效。我们一直没有使用它。我们现在可以压缩所花的时间。所以，我们将把它从三个季度一个人压缩到七个半月一个人。

I mean, remember I ran engineering in product, right? And I I've been coding since third grade. So, like I never stopped coding. I would code on the weekends just for fun and stuff. But November last year, I started also like committing stuff to production like just to get understand exactly how hard is it to go all the way into production. It started with an experiment where I built something uh a connector. It took me two days to build a connector and uh our current teams were taking three quarters to build those connectors for one person. I was like how can I do it in two days and it's taking you guys three quarters and they said well you know your thing is not production ready. It's not secure. It hasn't thoroughly actually basically it doesn't really work. You got like a proof of concept working. You can't get into production. So I really wanted to figure out are they right? Like what's this gap? How how can it be that the core thing took me two days but all the kind of other extraneous stuff on top that takes three quarters. So that's kind of what got me into the journey of like hey I need to get commit code into production that goes and faces the customers. only then can I have a feel for how this really works. And what we learned is actually it was kind of interesting. The team went back, they used my kind of push and they came back and they said, you know, you kind of were right. AI is very effective. We haven't been using it. We can now compress the time it took. So, we're going to compress it down from three quarters one person um to seven and a half months, one person.

好的。

Okay.

等一下。这怎么可能？是的。

Wait a minute. Like, how's that even possible? Yeah.

嗯，所以，呃，所以是的，他们说，看，它还没有准备好投入生产。它不安全。它不是那个。

Um, so, uh, so yeah, they were like, look, it's not production ready. It's not secure. It's not that.

然后我们得到了，你知道，我去找了一个人。就像，我们有一个人，你知道，他有点不会——他他不会忍受所有这些废话。他加入后，团队一起努力改进流程。所以，在我们插入这个人之后，他是一个全职员工，然后，你知道，三个季度后，他们回来说，你知道，我们可以在一个季度内完成七个连接器。

Then we got, you know, I went and I found a person. It's like, we have a person that's, you know, he's kind of not going to he he's he's not going to stand all this BS. He went in and together the team worked hard to revamp the process. So, after we inserted this person and it was an FTE and after, you know, three quarters, they came back and they said, you know, we can do seven connectors in one quarter.

更好。

Better.

我说，好吧，呃，发生了什么？然后就像，哦，你知道，是的，技术变得更好了，模型变得更好了。

And I was like, okay, uh, what happened? And like, oh, you know, yeah, technology got better, models got better.

我把他们拉到一边，说：“嘿，能告诉我到底发生了什么吗？为什么会这样？”我说：“听着，事情是这样的。你说得对，代码可以写得非常快。但首先，要构建这些连接器，我们得去和客户沟通。收集反馈和写 PRD 要花一个季度。而且我们写的 PRD 非常好，我们有非常熟练的产品经理。那个季度，整个流程都停滞了。那个季度什么都没写。然后我们还得设置要连接的系统——Salesforce、Workday、NetSuite。我们不知道怎么做，我们不是这方面的专家。那些公司可能也不愿意帮我们设置。我们讨厌这部分工作。那要花很长时间，而且容易出错。我们找到了顾问，他们可以帮我们做这些。现在我们可以做得超快。PRD 那个季度，获取需求——我们一周内搞定。快速写进一个 MD 文件，如果不够好，没关系，我们可以 later 修。然后测试，我们本来会在最后花一个季度测试。好吧，我们把它提前。让我们用 AI 端到端地做。这样他们就能压缩流程。而且不是一个人负责一个连接器，而是七个人负责七个连接器。这样如果有人生病、休假、产假、度假……所以我们必须重新设计整个流程。这让我开始编程，去理解需要哪些流程，以及是什么瓶颈让它这么慢。这也影响了我现在的观点，我已经持有一段时间了。我从今年年初、去年年底就一直说：人类至少需要十年才能吸收和扩散 AI，因为我在一家科技公司刚刚经历的事情，那里有超级聪明的人想要 AI。他们都说，基本上你得重新设计地球上所有组织的流程。所以这需要很长时间。这就是让我重新开始编程的原因。我还在做，但不像今年早些时候那么多了。

I pulled them aside and I said, hey, can you tell me the real inside scoop of what's happening? Why was it so? And I said, look, here's the thing. You're right that the code can be written very quickly. But first of all, to build these connectors, we would go talk to customers. It would take us one quarter to collect feedback and write the PRD. And we write very good PRDs. We have very skilled PMs. That quarter, the whole pipeline is stalled. There's nothing being written that quarter. Then we have to set up the systems that we connect to—Salesforce, Workday, NetSuite. We don't know how to do that. We're not experts at that. Those companies maybe don't want to help us set that up. We hate that part of the work. That takes a very long time. It's error-prone. We found consultants that can just do that for us. And now we can do that super fast. The quarter of PRD, getting the requirements—let's do that in one week. Quickly snap right down in an MD file, and if it's not great, it's okay. We can fix it later. And then the testing, we would do one quarter of testing at the end. Well, let's just move that up front. Let's do this end to end with AI. And that way they were able to compress things. And instead of having one person per connector, let's have seven people, seven connectors. So if one person gets sick, they go on PTO, mat leave, vacation... So we had to re-engineer the whole process. So that kind of got me into coding to understand what are all the processes that are needed and what are all the bottlenecks that are making it so slow. And that kind of informed my view now that I've had for a while. I've been saying this since the beginning of the year, end of last year: it's going to take humanity a decade at least to absorb and diffuse AI because of what I just experienced in a tech company with super smart people who want AI. And they're all like, you have to basically re-engineer the process of all organizations on the planet. So that's going to take a long while. And so that's what got me back into coding. I'm still doing it, but not as much as I did earlier this year.

所以你在做一些编程。Ali 的一天是怎样的？比如今天是周一。我在这个播客里占用了你一个半小时。你的节奏是怎样的？你早上什么时候起床？吃什么？有哪些会议？你怎么安排会议？比如周一有固定安排，周二呢？你个人的操作系统是怎样的？

So you're doing some coding. What is a day in the life of Ali? Like it's Monday. I'm eating up an hour and a half of your time in this podcast. Like what is your cadence? Like when do you get up in the morning? What do you eat? What are your meetings? How do you schedule your meetings? Do you have like Monday is a certain thing, Tuesdays? Like what is your operating system for yourself?

是的，其实我认为这不是一成不变的。它一年中会变化。你会有一些爆发期，比如董事会会议、战略、年度峰会。所以不是全年都一样。但我把它看作三件事。一是我痴迷的主要瓶颈。我想为此腾出大量时间。我稍后会谈到，但那是我的主要焦点。我想解开那个我认为能让我们增长 10 倍的大问题。而且我认为只有我会去做，因为其他人都忙于让火车准时运行。所以没人在想我们需要做的下一件大事。所以那是首要的。我会回到这一点。然后作为 CEO 有一大堆事情要做。不用我告诉你们，所有 CEO 都在做。你知道是什么吗？就是每天涌向你的所有事情。它让你的日历排得满满当当。你必须做这些。所以我尽量做这些。我尽量压缩，这样不会占用我太多时间。但我做这些。然后我是一个产品型 CEO。所以我尽量把剩余时间花在关注产品内部发生的事情上。我们在构建什么？有哪些功能？客户对产品功能有什么反馈？所以我尽量跟上我们产品端到端的所有技术细节。现在有 3500 名工程师，产品组合相当大。所以我花很多时间在那上面。剩下的时间我回到第一件事。所以周末早上我早起时，我会思考如何解开那个主要问题。如果我们解开它，公司价值可以增加 10 倍。

Yeah, I actually think that it's not like one consistent thing. It changes throughout the year. You have bursts of like, okay, board meeting, strategy, our big summit in the year. So it's not the same thing throughout. But I see it as kind of three things. One is the main bottleneck that I'm obsessed with. I want to carve out a lot of time for that. So I'll get to that in a second, but that's like my main focal point. I want to unblock that big thing that I think is the thing that's going to get us 10x. And I think only I will do it because everyone else is busy running their trains on time. So nobody's thinking about this next big thing that we need to do. So that's the front. I'll come back to this one. Then there's a whole bunch of stuff you have to do as CEOs. I don't need to tell you guys. Everybody, all the CEOs are doing it. You know what it is? It's all the stuff that comes at you every day. It's the thing that packs your calendar back to back. You got to do those. So I try to do those. I try to compress that as much as I can so it doesn't take too much of my time. But I do that. Then I'm a product CEO. So I try to spend as much of the remaining time looking at what's happening inside the product. What are we building? What are the features? What are customers saying about the product features? So I try to keep up to speed with all the technical details of our product end to end. And it's a pretty big portfolio now with 3,500 engineers. So the portfolio has gone pretty big. So I spend a lot of my time on that. The remainder of the time I go back to the first thing I want to do. So on the weekends in the morning when I wake up early, I try to think through how can I unblock that main thing. If we unblock that, then the company can be worth 10x more.

你真的会在日历上安排思考时间吗？还是说这是晚上和周末的次要事项？你是怎么做的？你会居家办公一天来处理这类事情吗？

And do you actually go in your calendar and say, do you create think time to think about that kind of thing or it's nights and weekends back burner? Like how do you do that? Do you work from home a day to like work on things like that?

我尽量压缩日历。我的意思是尽量不在日历上放东西。但最终还是会排满，不过有很多空闲时段，我可以回到那个主要事情上。我想如果我早上 8 点开始一个接一个地开会到下午 5-6 点，我认为那些天我只是日历的奴隶。我只是在为日历工作。所以我只是在代表……这很好。这是我的工作。

I try to compress the calendar. What I mean by that is I try to keep it like try to put nothing on the calendar. It ends up being packed anyway, but there are many blocks that are free where I can go back to this main thing. I think if I do the 8 am back to back to back to back to back to 5-6 PM, I consider those days I've just been a slave to my calendar. I'm just working for my calendar. So I've been just working on behalf of... It's good. It's my job.

你在为别人的优先事项工作。

You're working on everybody else's priorities.

没错。猴子背在我身上，对吧？所以我如何真正腾出时间？我会告诉我的 CEO 办公室团队，你知道，这一天太糟糕了。我什么都没做成。我们今天什么都没做。我告诉他们，我今天没有为公司做出任何进展。我没有做任何 CEO 该做的事。我只是做了些块决策、协作、这个那个。随机杂事涌向我。我们需要时间去真正攻克大瓶颈。那才是我想要的。

Exactly. Monkeys on my back, right? So how do I actually carve out time? So I will tell my CEO office team like, you know, this day is terrible. I get nothing done. We've done nothing today. I told them I've done nothing for the company today in terms of progress. Like I've done no CEO thing. I've just done block decisions, collaborating, this and that. The random crap that comes my way. We need time to really go after the big bottlenecks. That's what I want to do.

好的。组织的节奏是怎样的？有每周员工会议吗？你和所有直接下属有一对一吗？多久进行一次异地会议？这些如何运作？像你们这样的大公司如何运作，保持火车准时运行并推进那个大计划？

Okay. What is the cadence of the organization? Are you weekly staff meetings? Do you have one-on-ones with all your directs? How often do you do offsites? How do those work? Like how does a big company like yours operate, keep the trains on time and work on that big initiative?

首先，有很多信任。所以很多人在这里超过 10 年，对吧？你了解他们的弱点和优势。所以我知道，比如那个人负责这个，但他们会在某个方面搞砸，但在其他三个方面会很出色。所以我知道他们是什么样的人。这很有帮助。背景和历史很有帮助。但我们周一有员工会议，一小时到一小时半，聚焦于最高优先事项。

First of all, there's a lot of trust. So a lot of people have been here 10 years plus, right? And you know the weaknesses and strengths. So I know this is like that person is responsible for this, but they will screw it up in this way, but they'll be great at these other three ways. So I know what they're like. So that helps a lot. The context and history helps a lot. But we do staff meeting Mondays, an hour, an hour and a half, focus on top priorities.

我们会过一遍最高优先级事项的 KPI。每年我们有一到三个目标。这些目标就像——又回到以前那样——好吧，一年你有一个。HubSpot 每年我们有三个。我说，不能超过三个。对，我希望更少。所以今年我们有两个。

So we kind of go through the KPIs of the top priorities. Every year we have one or two or three goals. And those are like the thing — again, back to it used to be like — okay, so in a year you'll have one. HubSpot every year we had three. I was like, can't be more than three. Yeah, I wanted it to be less. So this year we had two.

好。

Okay.

两个目标。我其实想只留一个，但变成了两个。因为你知道，否则就什么都成了目标。

Two goals. And I actually wanted it to be one, but it became two. So you know, because otherwise it just becomes everything.

那周一早上的会议真的有用，还是作秀？是不是——你就不能搞个 Google Doc 把事办了？

And is that Monday morning meeting really useful, or is it theater? Is it — can't you just have a Google Doc and get it done that way?

好。这又回到——我们能不能就用 AI，杰克·多西那套。我们说的是人。如果我从来见不到你，我为什么要喜欢你、信任你？

Okay. This goes back to — can we just have an AI, the Jack Dorsey thing. We're talking about humans. Why should I like you or trust you if I never get to meet you?

你知道，为什么——我不知道你结没结婚，但你想——为什么你——你为什么非得见你妻子和孩子？你就不能搞个 Google Doc 吗？

You know, why — I don't know if you're married, but do you want — why do you — why do you have to meet your wife at all, and your kids? Can't you just have a Google Doc?

我们就把想说的写下来——比如你想教孩子什么，就写进那该死的 Google Doc 里。也许你甚至不用回复那个 Google Doc。Claude 可以。所以，我的团队每周开三次会。周三、周五也开。周三和周五是早上 30 分钟。大概早上 8 点，30 分钟。

We just write down the stuff you want to — like if there's something you want to teach your kids, put it in the goddamn Google Doc. Maybe you don't even need to respond to the Google Doc. Claude can. So, my staff meets three times a week. Also Wednesdays, also Fridays. Wednesdays and Fridays are 30 minutes in the morning. So like 8 a.m., 30 minutes.

那周三早上 8 点到 8 点半，你们聊什么？

And what are you talking about on Wednesday 8 a.m. to 30 minutes?

你看，很多时候就是，好吧，现在最大的瓶颈是什么？最主要的事是什么？会是突然冒出来、所有人都在想的事。我们现在就得做这个。有时候我们就是轮流说一圈。就是 30 分钟，把一天启动起来。很多时候我们就是开玩笑、找乐子，聊最大的事——比如昨天新闻里有什么大事，可能跟工作无关。我们就扯扯那个。这只是启动一天的方式，有些人会打电话进来，有些不会，有些人不来。但如果你想让你的高管团队紧密团结，想让他们把彼此看得比自己的第二团队——也就是向他们汇报的人——更重要，注意，所有向他们汇报的人都一样——所有销售都向 Ron 汇报，或者所有法务都向 John 汇报——那么自然的引力就是你在部门之间筑起高墙，他们互相不喜欢，还硬顶着你：“我得关季度，别挡道。”“不行，法律上不可能。”或者“不行，市场部得做……”那你怎么改变这一点，让我们为公司做正确的事，让公司的优先级排第一？我们得确保这些人觉得自己是一个团队。如果这些人觉得自己是一个团队，他们就得待在一起。如果他们从不交谈，只是写 Google Doc，那不会发生。所以，是的，我们每周开三次会，我们做这些——我们每季度有 QBR。

Look, a lot of it is just like, okay, what's the main bottleneck right now? What's the main thing? It'll be something that's popped up that's top of mind for everyone. We got to do this right now. Sometimes we just go around the horn. It's just 30 minutes to get the day started. A lot of them we're just joking around and having fun and talking about the biggest thing — like if there's something big in the news yesterday, it could be unrelated. We could shoot the shit about that. It's just a way to get the day started, and some people will be on the phone, some people will not, some people will not come. But if you want your e-staff to be tightly knit and you want them to prioritize each other over their second team, which is the people that report to them — mind you, all the people that report to them are of the same — all salespeople reporting to Ron, or they're all legal people reporting to John — so the natural gravity is that you build up walls between departments and they don't like each other, and they're butting hard against you: "I need to close the quarter, get out of my way." "No, this is not legally possible." Or "No, marketing needs to do..." So how do you change that so that we're doing the right thing for the company, so that the company's priorities are first? Well, we got to make sure that these people feel like they're a team. If those people feel like they're a team, they have to hang out. If they never talk to each other and they're just writing Google Docs, it's not going to happen. So yeah, we do meet three times a week, and we do these — we have QBRs every quarter.

那是一天？还是一周？

Is that a day? Is that a week?

两三天。现在公司里有多种 QBR。产品 QBR、上市 QBR。但我们确保每个——这就是 Scaling（规模扩张）的部分，对吧？所以你得确保所有地区、所有部门、所有产品都在发生该发生的事。这必须这样发生。如果某个产品停止交付或者跑偏了，或者某个地区停止销售，或者销售领导层不行，不管是什么，你怎么发现？所以你得有这些 QBR。在 QBR 里，一切都会被梳理出来，你制定行动计划，比如，好吧，我们要改这个，我们得在这上面做改变，我们搞错了，我们造错了东西——所有这些都发生在那些会上。我的直属团队很多人就是负责跑所有这些会，确保这些都正常运转。

Two, three days. There are multiple types of QBRs now at companies. Product QBR, go-to-market QBR. But we make sure that every — this is the scaling part, right? So you got to make sure that everything is happening across all the regions, all the departments, all the products. This has to happen like this. That's if some product stops delivering or is veering off, or some region is stopping to sell, or sales leadership is bad, whatever it is, how do you detect that? So you have to have these QBRs. In the QBRs as well, it all gets sussed out, and you take action plans on like, okay, we're going to change this, we got to make change on this, we got this thing wrong, we built the wrong thing — all that happens in those. And a lot of my exact team is the ones running all of these and making sure all those are running right.

你们做战略外出会议吗？就是那种仰望星空或者盯着自己肚脐眼沉思的。

Do you do off-site strategy off-sites where you gaze at the stars or gaze at your navel?

对，我们做。我们聚焦最大的瓶颈。对，我们刚做过一次。

Yeah, we do. And we focus on the top bottlenecks. Yeah, we just did one.

一年一次，还是一季度一次？

Once a year, once a quarter?

每季度至少一次。我明白。你知道，可能会稍微聚焦某个部门。但绝对有。是的。

There's definitely at least one per quarter. I see. You know, they might be a little bit focused for a department. But absolutely. Yes.

好。X 上有人让我问你，你为什么想上市？估值往往低于私募市场。审查也不怎么样。股价每天变来变去，对员工来说挺奇怪的。私募市场流动性也很充足。为什么？

Okay. I had someone on X ask me to ask you, why do you want to go public? The valuations tend to be less than the private markets. The scrutiny is not great. Like stock price changes every day is kind of weird for employees. There's plenty of liquidity out there in the private markets. Why?

对。首先，我认为如果 Databricks 今天上市，我认为我们会更值钱。

Yeah. So, first of all, I think that if Databricks was public today, I think we'd be worth more.

好。

Okay.

这个答案可能随时间变化。有些时候我知道我们作为私营公司比上市公司更值钱。但现在，如果我们上市，我认为我们会值钱得多得多，实际上。我知道在上一轮融资，我们接近 15——你有 Thrive 和那些大机构在里面。

Now, that answer might vary over time. There are times at which I knew we're worth more as a private company than we are as a public. But right now, if we're public, I think we would be worth much, much more, actually. And I know that at the last fundraise, you know, we had close to 15 — you had Thrive and the big guys in there.

对，但我们融了 5 亿，而意向是 200 亿。

Yeah, but we raised five and the interest was 20 billion.

对。所以我知道，基于供需曲线，如果我们想，我们本可以把价格定得高得多得多，但这不是我们优化的目标。我确实认为市场有时对我们来说变化无常。我们基本上是在为员工每年获得流动性而促成一个大市场。

Yeah. So, I just know that, you know, based on the supply-demand curve, we could have set the price much, much, much higher if we wanted to, but that's not what we're optimizing for. I do think that markets tend to sometimes be fickle for us. We're basically facilitating a big marketplace for the employees to get liquidity every year.

你不必上市也能做到这一点。这是一项复杂的操作，你知道，横跨大概近 100 个国家，你得确保每个国家的税法都被考虑进去。你得为——如果我们有 12,000 人，我们也为前员工做这件事，这样他们也能参与我们做的这些招标——那大概有 15,000 人。所以你得——这是一项大工程。你在促成一个大市场。你基本上是在私募市场里模拟纳斯达克。到了某个时候，我认为上市来做这件事就是合理的，而且我不认为那会太遥远。我只是不想在我们经历这场巨大疯狂转型的时候上市。如果我们正在经历一场巨大疯狂的转型，你希望在私募市场做。公司自己经历大转型时，比如从永久许可证转向 SaaS 许可证时，他们会私有化。他们先私有化，然后做那件事，然后再上市。所以当世界正在经历这场疯狂的 AI 转型时，你说——现在想上市？这对我来说毫无道理。现在 Anthropic、OpenAI 是另一回事。

You don't have to be public to do that. It's a complicated operation, you know, across probably close to 100 countries and you have to make sure that the tax laws of every country is kind of taken into account. You got to facilitate this for, you know, if we're 12,000 people, we do it for ex-employees, too, so they can participate in these tenders that we do — that's probably 15,000 people. So, you have to like — it's a big undertaking. You're facilitating a marketplace. You're basically emulating a NASDAQ in a private market. And at some point I think that it just makes sense to be public to do that and I don't think that will be too far into the future. I just don't want to go during this time where we're going through this big crazy transition. If we're going through a big crazy transition, you want to do it in private markets. Companies when they go through big transitions themselves, like when they went from perpetual licenses to SaaS licenses, they go private. They take them private, then they do the thing and then they go back out. So as the world is going through this crazy AI transformation, you're like — want to be public right now? That makes no sense to me. Now Anthropic, OpenAI is a different story.

他们需要大量资本。他们有巨大的资本需求。我们自由现金流已经打平。所以我们不需要资本。所以我认为现在这样更好。等我觉得水面更平静的时候，也就是有更多可预测性的时候，我们再上市。就像这种胡说八道——所有 SaaS 公司都——SaaS 末日会摧毁所有 AI 公司。天哪。哦，上一家财报很好。所有 SaaS 都很棒。我们应该买 SaaS。这是错的。哦，我们应该把所有钱押在半导体上，因为你知道，半导体，未来是瓶颈。我们就去那里。不，不，不。半导体在那边。全卖了吧。好吧，那家大基金要完蛋了，就像，你知道，就是不想去应付这种疯狂的反复。公开市场似乎也不太擅长处理世界正在经历的这场大变革。

They need a lot of capital. They have huge capital needs. We're free cash flow break-even. So we don't need the capital. So I think it's just better right now. We will go when I think the waters are more calm, like when there's a little bit more predictability. Like this nonsense of all SaaS companies are — and the SaaS apocalypse is going to destroy all AI companies. Oh my god. Oh, the last one had a great earnings. All SaaS is great. We should buy SaaS. There's a wrong. Oh, we should put all our money on semis because, you know, semiconductors, the future is a bottleneck. We just go there. No, no, no. The semis over there. Let's sell it all. Okay, that big fund is going under and like, you know, it's like just don't want to have to deal with this crazy back and forth. It seems public markets also are not very good at handling this big revolutionary transition that the world is going through.

他们也很难理解这一点。他们更擅长处理正常情况。而面对这种大转型，他们搞不明白。

They're also having a hard time wrapping their heads around that. They're much better at the normal. Whereas this big transformation, they can't figure it out.

你知道，软件——软件的价值是零吗？哦，等等。也许不是，但为什么营收在增长？哦，营收在加速。哦，这应该很高。所以，我们只是想避免这种情况。我认为一年左右事情会稳定下来。

You know, software — is the value of software zero? Oh, wait. Maybe it's like, no, but why is revenue going? Oh, revenue is accelerating. Oh, this should be high. So, we just want to avoid that. I think things will settle in in a year or so.

你多次用了“BS 探测器”这个词，还谈到要对冲突感到自在。假设你并不习惯冲突，你是个正常的智人，你成了 CEO，公司开始 Scaling（规模扩张）。你如何培养并使用那个 BS 探测器？你如何习惯这种冲突？因为对大多数人来说这很不自然。

You've used the word BS detector a bunch and you talked about being comfortable with conflict. Let's just say you're not comfortable with conflict and you're a normal homo sapiens and you become a CEO and it's starting to scale. How do you develop that BS detector and use it and how do you get used to this conflict because it's unnatural for most people.

是的。嗯，不要对自己撒谎，这是最重要的。我觉得很多人对自己撒谎。他们不告诉自己公司出了什么问题，自己出了什么问题——当他们找借口时，自我防御机制就会作祟，他们说，嗯，你知道，他们找借口。所以，开始看清真相：个人、公司或你的战略到底哪里出了问题。如果你想将求真推向极致，你就不能回避冲突。你必须直面并挑战那个差距、那个不一致。不要——不要咽下去。就去追它。要积极主动，逼自己一把。就像，好吧，嘿 Ali，你并不回避冲突。有些人回避冲突。嗯，这有点像说，哦，你知道，有些人不喜欢去健身房锻炼，因为太烦人了。但其他人，他们似乎就是有这种基因让他们去锻炼。不，对每个人来说都很难。去健身房锻炼、吃健康食品或做这些事情，对每个人来说都很糟糕。然而，我们现在都在逼自己。也许稍微容易一点。也许有些人更有动力。更容易逼自己。也许有些人有天赋。也许对某些人来说更难。但我认为我把它归入这一类：你应该，你知道，吃你的蔬菜，你应该过健康的生活。而自然的事情就是吃一堆糖，然后，你知道，就坐着什么都不做。

Yeah. Well, don't lie to yourself, you know, is the most important thing. I feel like a lot of people lie to themselves. They don't tell themselves what's wrong with the company, what's wrong with their — when they come up with excuses, self-defense mechanisms get in the way and they say, well, you know, they find excuses. So, start seeing the truth of what's actually not working with individuals or the company or your strategy. And if you want to take truth-seeking to its extreme, you can't be conflict-averse about it. You kind of have to face the — and challenge that, you know, that gap, that discrepancy head on. Don't — don't swallow that. Just go after it. Like be aggressive about it and push yourself. It's like, okay, hey Ali, you're not conflict-averse. Some people are conflict-averse. Well, it's kind of like saying, oh, you know, some people they don't like to go to the gym and work out 'cause it's like too annoying. But other people, they just seem to have this gene that makes them work out. No, it's hard for everyone. It sucks for everyone to go to the gym and work out or eat healthy or do these things. Yet, we push ourselves right now. Maybe it's slightly easier. Maybe some people have more motivation. It's easier to push themselves. Maybe some people have an act for it. Maybe for some people it's harder. But I think I put it in that category that you should, you know, eat your vegetables and you should live a healthy life. And that the natural thing is just to eat a bunch of sugar and like, you know, just sit back and do nothing.

好吧。所以如果你——如果你回避冲突，别那么自以为是。

Okay. So if you're — if you're conflict-averse, get over yourself.

是的。克服它。就像如果你想当 CEO，你就不想当 CEO。如果你想当 CEO，别说我回避冲突——改变它。别说，“嘿，我想当运动员，但我是那种不锻炼的运动员。”因为你知道在我家我们不锻炼。所以我们不练习。我们不锻炼。结果不太好，但我不是那种锻炼、健康、吃健康食品的人。我是另一种。不，那不行——如果你想参与这项运动，这就是游戏规则。你必须对人们非常清楚。你必须正面解决冲突。我不喜欢冲突。谁喜欢冲突？我会说讨厌冲突是人之常情。你知道，这就像，它令人不快。你知道，冲突意味着有人反驳。他们不高兴。他们——他们可能会反过来批评你。这不愉快。没人喜欢那样。不喜欢冲突是人之常情。现在，有些人真的回避它。有些人回避得少一些。但如果你是 CEO，就克服它。

Yeah. Get over it. Like if you want to be CEO, you do not want to be a CEO. If you want to be CEO, don't say I'm a conflict — Change that. Like don't say, "Hey, I want to be an athlete, but I'm the kind of athlete that doesn't work out." Because you know in my family we don't work out. So we don't practice. We don't work out. The results are not great but I'm not the kind that works out and is healthy and eats healthy food. I'm the other kind. No, that doesn't — If you want to be in the sport, this is the name of the game. Like you got to be crystal clear with people. And you have to tackle the conflicts head on. I don't love the conflicts. Who likes a conflict? I would say it's human to hate conflict. You know, it's like it's unpleasant. You know, it's — it's a conflict means someone pushes back. They're unhappy. They're — they might criticize you back. It's not pleasant. Nobody likes that. It's a human thing to not like conflict. Now, some people really avoid it. Some people avoid it less. But get over it if you're a CEO.

Ali，感谢你来。祝贺你所有的成功。你太棒了。感谢你分享的所有智慧。

Ali, thanks for coming on. Congratulations on all your success. You were fantastic. Appreciate all the wisdom you dropped down the crab.

哦，同样。很高兴和你交谈，看到你在 HubSpot 做过类似的事情。所以，感谢你邀请我。

Oh, likewise. Pleasure to talk to you and saw you do similar things at HubSpot. So, thanks for having me on.

不客气。希望大家都喜欢对 Ali 的采访。我觉得他很棒。我的一些收获。首先是一种氛围上的收获。就像“别当懦夫”算是——算是他 CEO 建议的一部分，他让我想起很多——我采访过 Palo Alto 的 Nikesh Arora。就像他们不容忍任何废话。他们有很强的 BS 探测器。他们使用那些 BS 探测器。他们都认为回避冲突是 CEO 的癌症。我怀疑他们是对的。而且他们都不太在意被人喜欢。当我担任 HubSpot 的 CEO 时，我——我觉得我太在意这个了。我们当年赢得了所有那些 Glassdoor 奖项。我不确定这与长期成功相关。我们长期表现不错，但我认为我太在意这个了。你看看像史蒂夫·乔布斯这些人，他们绝对不。说到不当懦夫，你必须对自己的信念有勇气，并且必须对那个信念有持久力。你知道，没有持久力的信念就像一月份的一时兴起节食。它就是没用。而最好的信念是——有句老话说，你需要在所有人都认为你错了的事情上是对的。如果那恰好是真的，而且你有信念并耐心对待它，那就是巨大成果的来源。现在很多人谈论围绕创始理念的信念。我发现，因为我主要与规模化 CEO 合作，围绕第二幕的信念甚至比围绕第一个想法的信念更重要。Ali 做过几次，但他谈得最多的是他几年前推出的一款产品叫 Lakehouse，那是一种，你知道，大型竞争性产品。它在市场上是独一无二的。所有人都认为他错了，包括他的大多数员工，而他真的、真的坚持了下来。他对它有很强的信念和耐心，并在很长一段时间内得到了回报。我昨天和我的一位 CEO 开了董事会，他们有一个应用程序。业务正在飞速发展，但他们需要转向更像平台。这将是一个非常困难的转变。他会遇到很多阻力。他的销售组织真的不会想卖它。我给他的建议有点像我在 HubSpot 给自己的建议。

My pleasure. Hope everyone liked that interview with Ali. I think he's fantastic. A couple of my takeaways. First is kind of a vibe takeaway. Like don't be a wuss is sort of — sort of a piece of his CEO advice and he reminds me a lot — I interviewed Nikesh Arora from Palo Alto. Like they don't put up with any BS. They have strong BS detectors. They use those BS detectors. They both believe that conflict aversion is kind of cancer in a CEO. And I suspect they're right about that. And neither overindexes on being liked. When I was CEO of HubSpot, I — I think I did overindex on it. We won the, you know, all those Glassdoor prizes back in the day. I'm not sure that's correlated with long-term success. We did pretty well long-term, but I think I overindexed on it. And you look at like Steve Jobs and these guys, they definitely don't. Speaking of not being a wuss, you have to have the courage of your convictions and you have to have staying power on that conviction. You know, conviction without staying power is like a fad diet in January. It just doesn't work. And the best conviction is kind of — there's an old saying, you need to be right about something that everyone thinks you're wrong about. And if that happens to be true and you are convicted and patient with it, that's where the big big outcomes come from. Now a lot of people talk about conviction around the founding idea. I found because I mostly work with scale-up CEOs that conviction around second acts is even more important than conviction around the first idea. And Ali did this a couple times, but he talked the most about a product he launched a few years called Lakehouse, which was sort of, you know, a big competitive offering. It was unique in the market. Everyone thought he was wrong about it, including most of his employees, and he really, really just stuck to it. He had a lot of conviction and patience with it, and it paid off over a long period of time. I was in a board meeting yesterday with one of my CEOs, and they've got an application. The business is ripping, but they need to move to more of a platform. It's going to be a very difficult shift. He's going to get a lot of pushback. His sales organization is really not going to want to sell it. And the advice I gave him is sort of the advice I gave myself at HubSpot.

在规模化的阶段，面对那些第二幕，你需要把钟摆完全甩到另一边，让整个公司都聚焦在第二幕上。就是要过度倾斜，因为如果你停在中间，人们就会固守原来的第一幕。我看到他正是这么做的。我喜欢他做法的一点是，他一年只聚焦一两个重点领域。他非常专注。他盯住瓶颈。听起来他年度计划里连续两三年的头号重点就是那个 lakehouse 产品。所以，对你想要改变的那件事要过度倾斜。公司越大，改变就越难，因此过度倾斜非常重要。

At scale, with those second acts, you need to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side and get the whole darn company focused on the second act. Just overindex on it, because if you're in the middle, people will stick with that old first act. And I see him doing that. What I liked about what he did was he only had one or two focus areas a year. He's very focused. He focused on the bottleneck. It sounded like his number one focus for two or three years on his annual plan was that lakehouse product. So overindex on the thing you want to change. Changing is harder as you get bigger, and so overindexing is really important.

希望你们喜欢。我非常享受这次访谈。如果你想收听所有那些漫长又奇妙的节目、听到许许多多了不起的 CEO，就关注我们吧。呃，下次见。

I hope you liked it. I really enjoyed the interview. Follow us here if you want to tune in to all the long, strange episodes with lots and lots of great CEOs. Uh, see you next time.