Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller：将搁浅能源转化为智能

好的，各位。今天我们的嘉宾是 Chase Lochmiller。Crusoe 正在建设众多为智能时代提供动力的数据中心。他是一位非常专业的 CEO，他畅谈了从零起步到刚刚完成 310 亿美元估值的历程。他深入探讨了如何扩展一项运营密集型业务的具体细节。我想你会喜欢的。Chase，欢迎来到 Long Strange Trip。

Okay, everybody. Today we have on Chase Lochmiller. Crusoe's building so many of the data centers that power the age of intelligence. He's a very professional CEO and he talks all about the road from zero beginnings to a $31 billion valuation that he just closed. He gets into the nuts and bolts of scaling a very operationally intensive business. I think you're going to like it. Chase, welcome to the Long Strange Trip.

好的，谢谢邀请。

All right, thanks for having me.

我们称之为“漫长奇异之旅”，因为我作为 CEO 的旅程就是一段非常漫长奇异的旅程。追踪你的职业生涯，你走过了一段漫长、也许不算奇异但很有趣的旅程。比如你原本有望成为教授，后来成了对冲基金交易员，又成了登山者，攀登过珠穆朗玛峰等等。至少在我看来，你最初创业时是一位能源企业家，而现在你是世界上最好的数据中心建设者。Chase，这一切有贯穿始终的主线吗？

We call this the Long Strange Trip because my journey as a CEO was a very long strange trip. Kind of tracking your career, you've had a long, maybe not strange, but interesting trip. Like you were on track to become a professor, you became a hedge fund trader, you became a mountaineer climbing Mount Everest among other things. You're kind of an energy entrepreneur, at least through my lens when you first got going, and now you're the world's best data center builder. Is there a through line in all of this, Chase?

嗯，作为一个人，我一直被试图解决难题所吸引。我认为这就是我职业生涯的主线：接受重大挑战，解决那些让我兴奋和受到启发的难题。

Um as a person, I've always been uh attracted to trying to solve hard problems. That's I think that's been the through line of my career, take on big challenges, solve hard problems that are exciting and inspiring to me.

嗯。一个难题是成为 CEO，而作为 CEO 进行扩展本身就是一个难题。突然之间你成了 CEO，必须建立这家公司，对此你有什么惊讶的？人们对 CEO 之旅有什么误解？

Mhm. One hard problem is becoming a CEO and scaling as a CEO is in and of itself is a hard problem. What has surprised you about you know, all of a sudden you're a CEO and you got to build this company. What is What What do people have wrong about the CEO journey?

有时，仅仅截取一个人深入其中的某个瞬间，就假设那是一条线性路径，可能会产生误导。我实际上和另一位 CEO 讨论过这个问题。你知道，当你作为创始人 CEO 时，你有点受益于——你知道的——温水煮青蛙效应。现在 Crusoe 的情况真的很疯狂，有太多事情发生，一切都发生得很快，规模之大令人疯狂。当人们被空降到 Crusoe 开始工作时，感觉非常紧张，公司上下有太多事情在进行。问题在于，你怎么能把这一切都装在一个人的脑子里？而作为创始人 CEO，你对公司如何走到今天有太多的背景信息。情况并不总是这么疯狂，对吧？比如我们刚开始时，只有我和我的联合创始人，就我们两个人，持续了相当长一段时间。然后我们有了第一个员工，有了第一批 incremental 员工。当我们有 10 个人时，感觉已经很疯狂了，但与今天相比根本不算什么。CEO 的旅程，创始人 CEO 的旅程，就是你必须不断提升自己的水平。如果你想拥有一个规模化的企业，你就必须不断投资于自己，才能扩展。这在某种程度上体现在——你知道，在 Crusoe，我们有一个核心公司价值观，叫做“生活在无限成长循环中”。没有人是成品，对吧？我们在这里做的任何事情都不是成品，一切都在进行中，每个人都在进行中。每一天我们都努力比昨天的自己更好。如果你看看这些持续专注于改进的复利回报，以及你如何真正变得更好，当你把时间拉长到一个月、一年、五年，结果可能会令人震惊。

It can sometimes be misleading to just take a snapshot of someone like deep into it and and just assume it's some linear path on on on how you actually get there. I was actually having this discussion with another CEO. You know, when you're a founder CEO, you sort of have this benefit of uh sort of you know, the the boiling frog syndrome, where you know, right now, things are really crazy at Crusoe. There's just so much happening. Everything's happening very quickly. The scale at which it's happening is crazy. Uh you know, when people get dropped into Crusoe and they start working at Crusoe, it's like it's intense and there's there's just a lot going on across the company. And you know, there's a question of like how do you actually hold that all in one person's head? And you know, when you're the founder CEO, you have so much context of like the history of how you got here. And it wasn't always this crazy, right? Like when we first started, it was just me and my co-founder. It was just the two of us for for for you know, quite a while. And then we, you know, had our first hire and we had our first, you know, incremental hires. And you know, when we were 10 people, it felt crazy, but it's nothing compared to what it is today. And the journey of a CEO is the journey of a founder CEO is like you have to continually be upping your game. You have to be continually investing in yourself to be able to scale if you if you want to have a scaled business. And you know, this is partially reflected like you know, at Crusoe we have a core company value that's like live on the infinite growth loop. Like nobody is Nobody's a finished product, right? Nothing we've done here is a finished product. Everything is a work in progress. Every person is work in progress. And every single day we try to improve on who we were yesterday. And if you look at those compounding returns of those continuous focus on improvements and how how you actually get better, when you zoom back out over, you know, the course of a month, a year, 5 years, the results can be astounding.

嗯。好的，我今天有一个切入点，实际上我今天度过了相当有趣的一天。我为红杉资本运营一个叫做“小孩桌和大人桌”的活动。基本上就是把一群 CEO，全是创始人 CEO，聚在一起，谈论他们的问题，互相帮助度过旅程。我们有几十位 CEO，公司规模在 20 到 2000 名员工之间。他们全都发展迅猛，真的非常迅猛。今天我从一位 CEO 那里得到一句话：“我的业务在我脚下变得令人眼花缭乱地复杂。我到底该怎么跟上？”你今天有这种感觉吗？还是你曾经有过这种感觉？我有过那种感觉。

Mhm. Okay, my I had an entry actually I had a quite an interesting day today. I run something called the kids table and the adults table for Sequoia. And it's basically getting a bunch of CEOs together, all founder CEOs, to kind of talk about their problems and try to help each other with the journey. And we've got a bunch of them between 20 and 2,000 employees. All of them are ripping, like really ripping. And I got a quote from one of the CEOs today. My business becoming dizzyingly complex beneath me. How the hell do I keep up? Did you Do you have that feeling today or did you have that feeling I had that I had that feeling.

如果有人把我从街上拉走，空投到公司，说：“嘿，去经营 Crusoe 这家公司。”我绝对 100% 会有那种令人眼花缭乱、麻痹的焦虑感。嗯，实际上我对 Crusoe 的现状感觉很好，因为我经历了旅程的每一步，并且能够让自己周围环绕着非常有活力和能力的领导者，我可以把很多责任和资源下放并信任他们。你知道，我们的业务很复杂，因为它是垂直整合的，跨越了巨大的不同工作流范围。从能源发电、让电子上线、建设发电厂、与独立电力生产商和公用事业公司合作，到建设数据中心、运营大规模 AI 工厂——从超大规模到非常小规模——再到构建和运营托管 AI 云平台及托管 AI 服务。这是一个非常广泛的员工光谱。我们有工厂为数据中心制造关键电气设备，然后我们有 AI 研究人员，致力于以最佳、最有效的方式服务和托管 AI 模型，管理 KB 缓存，你知道，中间还有一大堆不同的人。所以，让我作为领导者非常可扩展的是，我能够在每个关键垂直领域找到领域专家：能源、数据中心、制造和 AI 云计算。

If someone were to take me off the streets and parachute me in and drop me in and say, "Hey, go run this company Crusoe." I would absolutely 100% have that have that dizzying paralyzing anxiety feeling. Um I actually feel great about where we're at within Crusoe because I've been there for every step of the journey and I've been able to surround myself with incredibly dynamic and capable leaders that I'm able to offload and trust a lot of responsibility and resources to. And you know, we we sort of you know, we have a complex business cuz it's vertically integrated and it spans like a huge scope of different work streams. Everything from you know, energy generation and you know, bringing electrons online, building power plants, working with independent power producers and utilities to building data centers operating at scale, very large scale AI factories to very small scale AI factories and then building and operating a managed AI cloud platform and with managed AI services. It's it's a whole wide spectrum of different employees and you know, we have factories where we're manufacturing critical electrical equipment for data centers and then we have AI researchers that are working on the best most effective ways to serve and host AI models and manage the KB cash and you know, there's there's a whole bunch of different different folks in between. So, what's made me very scalable as a leader is that I have been able to find domain experts in each of these key verticals from energy, data centers, manufacturing, and AI cloud computing.

看看 Crusoe 这里的这些人，我们在这些关键领域各有专长，我个人可以到处走动，和任何一个人都能深入交流，但在我们推进规模扩张的过程中，我非常信任他们能做出正确的决策。而且每个人至少对我们在宏观层面做的事情有一个大致的了解，也了解每一个组成部分、每一位领导者如何为我们正在 Crusoe 打造的更广泛的垂直整合 AI 基础设施平台做出贡献。

And if you look at the folks here at Crusoe, we have these critical areas of domain expertise where individually I can move around and I can go very deep with any individual, but I trust them a lot to be making the right decisions as we're sort of scaling things. And everybody has at least a broad perspective of what we're doing at the macro scale and how each individual component, each individual leader contributes to that broader vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform that we're building here at Crusoe.

信任是个很有意思的词。我们在电话里聊过。其实在这次之前我刚结束一通电话。我跟大家说，你们组织里有多少人是你深深信任、可以说“这件事你是 DRI（直接负责人）”、能横跨整个组织并给予深度信任的？平均大概只有三到四个人。你是天生就信任别人的人吗？还是你不得不学会放手？

Trust is an interesting word. We talked about it on the call. Actually, I had just finished a call before this. I kind of said to everybody like, how many people in your organization do you deeply trust enough to say, you're the DRI in this thing that cuts across the whole org and have deep trust? And it was like three to four people on average. Are you just a naturally trusting fellow? Did you have to learn to let go?

我觉得我的团队不会说我是个天生就很信任别人的人。并不是说我放手不管、说“去吧，想怎么做就怎么做”。那不是我管理的方式。我真正想要的是理解我们在这个垂直领域里在做什么。我们在前进方向上达成一致。我理解它，也理解它如何影响业务的其他部分。然后我让我的团队对执行我们计划中商定的事情负责。

I don't think my team would describe me as a just naturally very trusting person. It's not that I'm hands-off, go for it, go do whatever you want. That's not really my approach to management. It's really I want to understand what we're doing in this vertical. We have alignment on a direction we're headed. I get it and I get how it influences the other pieces of the business. And then I hold my team accountable to go execute on what we agreed upon from a plan perspective.

好，关于 DRI 这个话题，在我看来，随着 CEO 成长，他们有了自己的组织，这些组织越来越大，他们在跨组织推动事情上就会遇到困难。他们到某个时候会说，我们需要 DRI，我们需要信任这些 DRI。组织越大就越难。而你下面有四个不同的大组织。你怎么找到能横跨各组织的人？你怎么拥有很多个“你”？

Okay, on that DRI topic, it seems to me as CEOs grow, like they've got their orgs, those orgs get bigger, they struggle with getting things done across the orgs. They at some point are like, we need DRIs, we need to entrust those DRIs. And the bigger the orgs get, the harder it gets. And you've got like four different major orgs underneath you. How do you get someone that cuts across? How do you have many versions of you?

我们和任何组织一样都会遇到这个问题，对吧？任何时候你想做跨组织的事情，从一个团队抽调资源去和另一个团队的资源合作，就是很复杂。我们确实有一个项目管理职能来帮忙，但很多事情最终由谁负责交付？我发现的方式是，我每周开一次员工会议，很多关键高管和我的直接下属都参加，我们覆盖整个业务的事情，当团队协作出现痛点时，它们会在这些会议上浮现出来。然后我们试着解决它们。但做跨职能或跨组织的事情本身就有内在的张力。不过我们不得不把它搞清楚，作为一家垂直整合的企业，在跨越技术栈的那些层面之间进行协作，我认为如果你想成为一家成功的垂直整合公司，这就是一项必备能力。

We struggle with this problem just like any organization, right? Anytime you're trying to do something that is cross-org, pulling in resources from one team to work with another resource from another team, it just is complicated. We do have a program management function which helps, but who's ultimately accountable for delivery of a lot of these things? The way I find is, I run a staff meeting once a week that has a lot of the key executives and my direct reports in the meeting and we cover things across the whole business and when there are pain points of how teams are working together, they surface in those meetings. And we try to address them. But there is an inherent tension to doing things that are cross-functional or cross-organization. We've sort of had to figure it out though, just being a vertically integrated business, having collaboration between those layers where you're transitioning across the stack, I think is a function if you're going to be successful as a vertically integrated company.

那你从中都学到了什么？你肯定在这上面摔过跟头。除了员工会议之外，还有什么顿悟？

And then like what have you learned about that? Like you must have skinned your knees on it. Any ah-has other than the staff meeting?

我以前一直习惯在更小的团队和更小的组织里工作。如果我说一遍，大家就会听，我们在小团队里工作，一切就自然解决了。我发现，当我自己都听腻了自己说某件事的时候，那才只是刚刚触及表面，我才刚刚达到说足够多遍的那个点。所以整个沟通层面——让人们达成共识、朝同一个方向前进——有时候你要提醒人们我们在做什么、为什么做、谁在做什么，提醒的次数多到令人痛苦。但这大概就是达成一致所需要的。我认为这是经营更大组织的一项挑战，也是为什么初创公司总是有机会——它们可以更灵活，比大公司行动更快。而我们正试图对抗大公司的这种惯性，继续快速前进，抓住当下的机会，因为要在当今的商业时代成功，就需要成为一个有活力的组织。

I was always used to just working in smaller teams and smaller organizations. And if I said something once, people kind of listened and we worked in a small group and it all kind of worked itself out. I found that as soon as I'm sort of getting sick of hearing myself say something, then we're just scratching the surface of when I'm just hitting the point where I'm saying it enough times. And so just that whole communication layer about getting people on the same page to march in the same direction, it's sometimes like painful the amount of times you have to remind people of what we're doing and why we're doing it and who's doing what. But that's sort of what it takes to get alignment. And I think that is one of the challenges of running a bigger organization and it's why there are opportunities always for startups is that they can be more nimble, they can move quicker than bigger companies. And we're trying to fight that inertia of a bigger company to be able to continue to move fast and capture the opportunity at this moment in time when it's sort of required to be a dynamic organization to succeed in today's business age.

是啊，你的业务就是这样，你必须快。你不能慢慢来。大多数 CEO 抱怨说，随着公司变大，他们就慢下来了。你有没有找到保持节奏的方法，还是你也慢下来了？

Yeah, your business is such that you have to go fast. Like you can't take your time. Most CEOs complain that as they get bigger, they slow down. Have you figured out ways to keep the pace up or have you slowed down?

我是说，感觉比以往任何时候都更快、更疯狂。在 Crusoe，每天都有很多大事发生。所以我会说，我们继续以惊人的紧迫感在前进。我觉得 Elon 大概是世界上在这方面最厉害的人，就是努力消除任何特权感，或者消除任何“你应该舒服一点，我们成功了，我们到了，现在可以躺平了”的感觉。Elon 有一种超能力，能同时让人们相信：如果他们成功，他们就会改变世界，会有惊人的财务回报，会有带来巨大影响的惊人成果；同时又通过“我们明天就要倒闭了”的高压让人们承担责任。如果你不以你身体所能达到的最大紧迫感行动，我们就会死。保持这种张力是一种相当了不起的超能力。我会说，在制造“我们明天就要倒闭”和“我们有机会改变世界、这应该激励你努力工作”之间的这种张力上，我没有 Elon 那么极端。但我确实认为，把握好这个平衡，对于驱动一个大组织快速、高度紧迫地行动是极其重要的。

I mean, it feels faster and crazier than it's ever been. At Crusoe, there's a lot of big things happening on a daily basis. So I would say we are continuing to move with incredible urgency. I think Elon's probably the best in the world at this, but just trying to eliminate any sense of entitlement or eliminate any sense of hey, you should be comfortable, like we made it, we're here, now we just have to coast. Elon has this superpower of simultaneously enabling people to believe that if they're successful, they're going to change the world and there will be this incredible financial outcome and this incredible outcome that's driving massive impact, while also holding people accountable through the high pressure of like we're going to go out of business tomorrow. And if you don't act within the greatest degree of urgency that you're physically capable of, we're going to die. And holding that tension is quite a superpower. I would say that I'm not quite as extreme as Elon in driving this tension of we're going to go out of business tomorrow versus hey, the opportunity we have to change the world should inspire you to work hard. But I do think that threading the needle of that is an incredibly important thing to be able to drive a large organization to move quickly and with a high degree of urgency.

好。这是你第一次经营这样一家公司吗？你会研究其他 CEO，试着借鉴他们打法的一部分吗？Elon 是你要大量借鉴的那个人吗？你敬仰谁？

Okay. Is this your first time running a company like this? Do you study other CEOs and try to borrow pieces of their playbook, and is Elon your guy you're trying to borrow big pieces from? Who do you look up to?

说来有点好笑。Crusoe 现在是我工作过的最大的公司，我们最近员工人数超过了 2,000 人。

It's kind of funny. Crusoe's now the largest company I've ever worked for and we recently surpassed 2,000 employees.

我以前会读大量的书，虚构、非虚构，什么感兴趣就读什么——范围很广，从科幻小说和技术类书籍到小说，再到《经济学人》最新最热的那本书。但创办 Crusoe 之后我变了。有一段时间，谁给我推荐一本好的商业书，我就把那些书全都一口气读完。我很幸运，遇到过不少很棒的导师。我有一位很好的教练，真的帮我成长为一名能带领团队的人，因为在创办 Crusoe 之前，我也从没领导过一个大型组织。所以这确实需要下功夫，需要付出努力，才能走到今天这个位置，才明白当一名好的管理者需要什么。这也需要犯错、失败、边干边学，走上我自己的个人旅程、自己的道路，留下很多伤疤，之后才能把这些经验用起来。我确实觉得，有些导师和前辈跟我关系更近。我非常仰慕 Elon 这样的人，我认为他是人类有史以来最伟大的创业者、最伟大的商业构建者、最伟大的远见者之一。

I used to read a ton of books across fiction, non-fiction, whatever I was interested in — wide-ranging things from science fiction and technical books to novels and whatever the latest and greatest Economist book was. But I shifted when I started Crusoe. There was a period where I just binged on every good business book recommendation anybody would give me. I had the fortune of having a number of great mentors. I had a great coach that really helped me grow into becoming a leader of people, because I'd never really been a leader of a big organization before starting Crusoe either. So it definitely took work. It took effort to get to where I'm at in terms of what it takes to be a good manager. And it took making mistakes and failing and learning on the job, going on my own personal journey and my own personal path to embed a lot of scar tissue that I could then leverage in the future. I do think that there are certainly mentors and people that I look up to that I have closer relationships with. I do very much look up to guys like Elon, who I think is just one of the greatest entrepreneurs and greatest business builders and greatest visionaries that humanity's ever had.

如果不介意的话，那些错误具体是哪些？有哪些伤疤是其他 CEO 大概也会犯同样错误的？

If you don't mind, what were some of those mistakes? What's some of that scar tissue that all the other CEOs out there are probably going to make the same mistake on?

早期让我印象很深的一件事是，有时候你作为 CEO，会一门心思扑在把这家公司做起来上，同时盯着市场上发生的事。你刷 X 或者别的新闻源，看到市场上别的事情，你就会想：“嘿，那个团队好像在做的跟我一样的事”，或者“我这个新竞争对手刚融了一大笔钱”，你总是有点回头看。这里面有一点偏执。我早期得到的一条很好的建议是：大多数创业公司死于自杀，而不是他杀。杀死你的不是别的公司，根本上是你自己没有把眼前的事执行好，没有建立正确的文化，没有吸引到对的人，没有聚焦在正确的商业机会上。因为任何真正值得追求的、有意义的商业机会，通常都不会是一个赢家通吃的生意。如果这是个好机会，那大概意味着容得下多个赢家。所以如果别人也在做，你几乎应该把它看作一种赞美，几乎是对这个商业机会的验证。但真正取决于你、取决于你的管理团队、取决于你组建的团队，去真正把这个机会执行出来——而不是担心自己会怎么被竞争干掉。

One of the things that struck me early on was, sometimes when you're a CEO, you're singularly focused on building this business and you're watching what's happening out in the market. You're scrolling X or whatever news sources you have, and you see something else happening in the marketplace, and you're like, "Hey, that other group's kind of doing the same thing that I'm doing," or "I have this new competitor that just raised this big round," and you're always kind of looking over your shoulder. There's a bit of a paranoia. And one of the great pieces of advice that I got early on was: most startups die from suicide, not from homicide. It's not other businesses that kill you. It's fundamentally you not executing on the thing that's in front of you, you not building the right culture, not attracting the right people, not focusing on the right business opportunity. Because any real meaningful business opportunity worth pursuing is not typically going to be a single winner-take-all business. If it's a good business opportunity, it probably means there's room for multiple winners. So if someone else is pursuing it, you should almost view that as a compliment, almost a validation of the business opportunity. But it's really up to you, and it's really up to your management team, and it's really up to the team you put together to really execute against that opportunity — not be worried about how you're going to get killed by the competition.

我的偏执会随时间上下波动，像正弦波一样。我觉得如果我是你，我现在会挺偏执的。你的偏执正弦波现在处在什么位置？

My paranoia would go up and down, sine wave over time. I think if I were in your shoes, I'd be pretty paranoid right now. Where are you on your paranoia sine wave?

我对竞争其实并不怎么偏执。从某些方面说，Crusoe 是一家基础设施公司，对吧？我们不认为这是一个赢家通吃的品类。我们认为这里会成长出很多家伟大的公司。而且我觉得，即便是那些被人描绘成我们竞争对手的团队，我也认为我们合作的方式远远多于对抗的方式。我认为我们这一生最大的机会，是构建智能的基础设施层。再说一次，这不会是一个赢家通吃的机会。我经常做的一个类比是，我把 AI 的算力基础设施层——还有 SI，我猜现在人们这么叫它，也就是超级智能的基础设施层——我觉得它和石油天然气行业有很多有效的类比。如果你看石油天然气行业的价值链，通常分成三个部分。上游业务，是人们真的在地上打井、抽石油和天然气。中游业务，是把那些原材料从井口输送到天然气处理厂或炼油厂。然后是下游业务，是真正加工那些从地下开采出来的原始产物，把它们转化成可用的材料，无论是汽油、航空燃油、塑料还是别的什么，最终再卖到市场上。在这个链条里，各种利润率会随着油价、消费者需求、企业需求上下浮动。对我们来说，我想做的是打造一家 AI 超级巨头，就像埃克森和雪佛龙是石油天然气行业的超级巨头一样。这样一来，你就有了某种内嵌的风险管理：埃克森非常出名地不对冲石油敞口，因为当油价下跌时，他们上游业务在井口的利润率会被压缩，但下游业务在炼油厂的利润率反而会扩大，因为原材料成本下降了。他们天然就有合作与竞争并存的领域：他们和其他上游企业竞争，但当他们在某个地区有管道时，又在服务那些可能与之竞争的其他上游企业。我觉得 Crusoe 在这方面有点类似。我们愿意与在某些情况下可能与我们竞争的企业合作。但再说一次，这又回到那个观点：我就是觉得，我们互相帮助的方式远远多于互相作对的方式。

I'm not really paranoid with competition. In certain regards, Crusoe's an infrastructure business, right? And we don't view it as a winner-take-all category. We think there's going to be a number of great businesses built here. And I think even groups that people would paint as competition to us — I view it as there's far more ways for us to work together than to work against each other. I think the greatest opportunity of our lifetime is building the infrastructure layer of intelligence. And again, it's not going to be a winner-take-all opportunity. One comparison that I've often made is that I kind of view this compute infrastructure layer of AI — and SI, I guess that's what people are calling it now, this infrastructure layer of superintelligence — there's a lot of effective comparisons to the oil and gas industry. If you look at the value chain across the oil and gas industry, it's typically broken down into three components. You have the upstream business, where people are actually drilling holes in the ground and pumping wells of oil and gas. You have the midstream business, which is where you're taking those raw commodities and transporting them from the wellhead to the natural gas processing plant or the oil refinery. And then you have the downstream business, which is actually processing those raw outputs from the earth and converting them into usable materials, whether it's gasoline or jet fuel or plastics or whatever it is, and then you're ultimately selling that into the market. And within that stack, there are all these different margins that move up and down depending on the prices of oil, depending on the demand from consumers, depending on the demand from businesses. For us, I view it as we're trying to build an AI supermajor in the same way that Exxon and Chevron are supermajors in the oil and gas industry. And with that, you sort of have this embedded risk management, where Exxon very famously doesn't hedge their oil exposure because when oil prices come down, their upstream business at the wellhead — those margins actually get compressed, but their downstream business at the refinery — those margins actually expand because the raw input costs go down. They have these natural areas of collaboration versus competition, where they're competing with other upstream businesses, but when they have a pipeline in an area, they're serving other upstream businesses that they may compete with. And I think Crusoe's kind of similar in that regard. We're willing to partner with businesses that we may compete with in other cases. But again, it comes back to this perspective that I just feel like there are so many more ways for us to help each other than for us to work against each other.

我能跟你说件奇怪的事吗？

Can I say something weird to you?

当然，请说。

Yeah, please.

除了我在红杉的工作，我还创办了一只叫 Propeller 的海洋基金。昨天我听了一家公司路演——我不太确定这家公司，也不太确定这个行业——是从海洋里开采稀土金属。

In addition to my Sequoia work, I started an ocean fund called Propeller. And I heard a pitch yesterday from a company — and I'm not sure about this company, or about this industry — it's mining rare earth metals from the ocean.

同样的类比，就像我们要做一个端到端的、要建立一个埃克森。埃克森就是他们所说的那种超级垂直整合的公司。说到这个，我们投资了 Blue Energy，我知道你认识 Blue Energy 的 Jake，他们在海洋中建造核能。你谈谈这个。你在能源方面经历了一段旅程。看起来你一开始只是觉得有浪费的能源，我们要把它利用起来，你还在做这件事。但听起来阿比林设施主要用的是天然气。你现在处于什么阶段？

And same analogy, like we're going to do an end-to-end, we're going to build an Exxon. Exxon was the exact same company that they talked about as a super vertically integrated version. Speaking of that, we invested in Blue Energy and I know you know Jake from Blue Energy building nuclear in the ocean. You talk about that. You've had a kind of a journey with the energy offset. It seems like you started in just like there's wasted energy out there and we're going to put it to work and you're still doing it. But it sounds like the Abilene facility is a lot of just natural gas. Like where are you at this point?

目前，Crusoe 非常专注于为智能激活兆瓦级电力，这需要各种能源资源和各种不同的用例。有时是天然气。我们专注于寻找并催化创新的新能源解决方案。比如 Blue Energy，他们正在尝试新的核能生产技术。我们最近宣布了与 Oklo 的另一项合作，我们试图在爱达荷国家实验室打造首个由小型模块化反应堆（SMR）供电的 AI 工厂。我们还做过表后风电、表后天然气、表后太阳能和电池等项目。我们尝试了许多不同的东西。我们去了冰岛，对吧？冰岛有这种地质现象，它是冰与火之地，有非常丰富低成本的地热能源、非常低成本的水电，人烟稀少，而且冷却成本低且高效。通过计算将电力需求带到那里是我们的理念，这就是我们所说的以能源优先的方式建设计算基础设施。挪威是另一个对我们来说很棒的市场，他们有很多低成本水电未被充分利用，可以建设得比现在更大。所以，我们不认为这是万灵药。我们认为计算基础设施将无处不在，服务于智能的基础设施层，最终推动全球经济发展。因此，你需要在不同情况下使用不同的能源解决方案。我们对行业内发生的许多创新感到非常兴奋。Blue Energy 是另一个很好的例子，我们能否利用天然气发电所需的蒸汽轮机技术，基本上这是天然气发电和核能都需要的，成为天然气和基荷稳定核电之间的桥梁。我们认为所有这些都很棒。我们认为新电池技术的许多发展非常令人兴奋。从 Redwood Materials 等公司重新利用二手电动汽车电池和二手锂离子电池，到 Form Energy 和 Antora 等长时储能解决方案，我们认为这些将成为具有成本效益的 100 小时电池。所以有一系列不同的事物，我们认为我们都需要它们。智能对能源的需求是贪婪的，随着它获得更多能源，它真的会加速人类进步。

At this point, you know, Crusoe's very focused on activating megawatts for intelligence and that requires all sorts of energy resources and all sorts of different use cases. At times it's natural gas. We're focused on trying to find and catalyze innovative new energy solutions. That can be things like Blue Energy. They're trying out new nuclear energy production technologies. We've another partnership with Oklo that we announced recently where we're trying to bring to life the first SMR-powered AI factory at the Idaho National Lab. We've done stuff with behind-the-meter wind, with behind-the-meter gas, with behind-the-meter solar, with batteries. We've tried many different things. We've gone to Iceland, right? Where Iceland's this sort of geological phenomenon that it exists, but it's this land of fire and ice where you have very abundant low-cost geothermal energy, very low-cost hydropower, and not a lot of people and very cheap, efficient cooling. And bringing the demand for power there via compute has been our philosophy and that's really what we mean when we say take an energy-first approach to building compute infrastructure. Norway's another great market for us where they have a lot of low-cost hydropower that's being underutilized and can be built bigger than it is today. And so, we don't think it's a silver bullet. We think compute infrastructure will be ubiquitous to serve the infrastructure layer of intelligence that's ultimately going to power global economic development. And so you need to use different energy solutions in different cases. And so we're really excited about a lot of the innovation taking place in the industry. And blue energy is another great example of like, can we leverage the same steam turbine technology that is needed for gas generation to basically that's needed for both gas generation and nuclear energy to be a sort of bridge between gas and base load firm nuclear power. All of these things we think are great. We think a lot of the development in new battery technology is really exciting. Everything from what's happening with companies like Redwood Materials that are repurposing used electric vehicle batteries and used lithium-ion batteries to long-duration storage solutions like Form Energy and Antora that we think will be cost-effective 100-hour batteries. And so there's like a spectrum of a whole different things and we kind of view it as we sort of need them all. The demand from intelligence for energy is voracious and it's really going to accelerate the human progress as it has more access to energy.

嗯。我觉得你和你的公司令人着迷的一点是，你基本上是从比特币挖矿业起步的，利用搁浅能源。把它利用起来，这是一门非常好的生意。你靠它赚了不少。听起来你从一开始就预见到会有 AI 基础设施的需求，并开始建设它。而且这很合理。在某个时候，你决定我们要卖掉大部分业务，也就是这个比特币挖矿业务。你是什么时候做出那个决定的？你是怎么告诉董事会的？带我们看看幕后，什么时候这个想法在你脑海中成为一个好主意的。那是一个大胆的举动。

Mhm. One of the things I find fascinating about you and your company is you started essentially in the Bitcoin mining industry with stranded energy. Putting that to work and it was a really good business. You were cranking with it. And it sounds like from the beginning you sort of foresaw there's going to be a need for AI infrastructure and you started building it out. And it rhymed. At some point you decided we're going to sell off this most of our business is this Bitcoin mining business. When did you make that decision? How did you tell your board? Take us behind the scenes on when that became a good idea in your head. That was a bold move.

嗯，事情是这样的，我认为外部很多人认为这是我们的一个转型，但内部，如果你和我们的任何投资者或任何在这里工作很久的员工交谈，他们会告诉你，这其实一直是计划的一部分，就是以能源优先的方式进行计算。你知道，我之前作为量化投资组合经理做过 AI 研究，然后我在斯坦福读研究生，从事 AI 工作，做了很多计算机视觉和自然语言处理的工作。我很早就对 AI 非常着迷。比如，我读的东西，对我影响较大的之一是 Tim Urban 的博客《Wait But Why》，他写了这个

Well, so the thing was is that I think externally a lot of people thought this was a pivot for us, but internally and if you talk to any of our investors or any of our employees that have been here for a very long time, they'll tell you that like this was sort of the plan all along was this energy first approach to computing. You know, I had been doing research in AI like as a quant portfolio manager and then, you know, I was at Stanford for grad school in working in AI and doing a lot of work in computer vision and natural language processing. And I was like pretty AI pilled like early days. Like, you know, when you know, I was reading things like like like one of the more influential things on me was actually Tim Urban had this blog called Wait But Why and he wrote this

是的，很棒。太棒了。大家都应该去读读。

Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. Just like everybody should go out and read that.

你知道，但有几篇文章对我影响特别大。有一篇是关于通往超级智能的道路。在其中，他阐述了一个论点，即这些多层神经网络本质上是很好的非线性建模机制，随着它们拥有更多数据和更多算力，它们在建模任何你试图建模的东西时都会越来越好，无论是自然语言还是计算机视觉或其他什么。所以我推演了一下，觉得 AI 是一门元科学，它不会只改善一件事，它会改善一切，对吧？我在斯坦福有一位教授叫 Andrew Ng，他有一句名言，他说 AI 就像电力，对吧？电力不是只对一件事有好处。如果你问某人电力有什么好处？不是像，哦，电力可以开灯。而是，是的，它可以开灯，它也可以给我的电脑和汽车供电，加热我的炉子，以及所有这些我们习以为常的事情。所以，AI 不仅仅对一件事有好处。它对一切都有好处。我很早就对此有高度信念。我觉得如果数据和算力是瓶颈，最终算力会变成一个能源问题。当你推演并大规模思考时。我们实际上已经在比特币挖矿中看到了这一点。

You know, but there were a couple pieces that were particularly influential on me. There was one that was like about the path to superintelligence. And in it, he sort of espoused this thesis that these multi-layer neural networks were essentially really good non-linear modeling mechanisms that as they had more data and more compute, they just got better and better at modeling whatever thing that you're trying to model, whether it's natural language or computer vision or whatever it was. And so, I was sort of playing that out and felt like AI was this meta-science that wasn't going to improve one thing, it was going to improve everything, right? So, I had this professor at Stanford named Andrew Ng and he has this famous saying where he says, AI is like electricity, right? Electricity's not good for one thing, right? If you ask someone what is electricity good for? It's not like, oh, electricity's good to turn on the lights. It's like, yes, it's good at turning on the lights and it's also good at powering my computer and my car and heating my stove and all these different things that we really take for granted with electricity. And so, it's not just like one thing that AI is good for. It's really good for everything. And I had like high conviction of this fairly early days. And I felt like if data and compute were the bottlenecks, ultimately compute becomes an energy problem. And when you sort of play that out and think about that at scale. And we've sort of seen this unfolding actually with Bitcoin mining.

所以，这家公司最初的论点是：去寻找那些未被充分利用的搁浅能源，并通过算力为这些搁浅能源带来市场。与其试图将搁浅能源带到可以买卖的市场，不如将市场带到能源所在地。这就引导我们找到了最初的搁浅能源资源——油田中被燃烧掉的天然气。石油公司在那里钻探石油，天然气作为副产品被产出。然后，由于没有管道，他们就直接点火烧掉。这是一个巨大的环境负担，是一种废物。他们花钱来处理它，这是一场灾难。而且这种情况今天仍在大规模发生。但我们的解决方案是，我们会带来这些小型模块化发电机和小型模块化数据中心。我们基本上会在现场利用这些天然气，用它为算力基础设施供电。我们的第一个变现引擎是比特币挖矿，对吧？这是将能源转化为金钱的最简单方式。我们通过比特币业务创造了这种伟大的飞轮效应。早期确实有很多批评，当我说“嘿，我正在尝试做这个 AI 云平台”时，人们会说：“你在说什么？你为什么要在那上面花费资源？你已经有这么好的业务，你在比特币上赚了这么多钱，你在说什么？你为什么要关注其他事情？”我们尝试了很多东西，也失败了很多次，在建设我们的第一个 AI 集群方面搞砸了很多事情。我们试图弄清楚产品是什么样子，以及我们要服务谁。我打电话给一些在大学做研究的朋友，说：“嘿，你们有没有用到这些 GPU 的需求？我正在用北达科他州巴肯油田中间的天然气为它们供电。”有很多不同的迭代试图让这个业务活起来。但神奇的时刻是 ChatGPT 的发布。2022 年 11 月 30 日，我认为那就是改变一切的时刻，它催生了所有这些新的初创公司，它们需要的确切就是我们一直在建设的算力基础设施，以及我们在存储、计算、网络等方面一直在建设的确切解决方案。我一直觉得比特币和 AI——我现在仍然这么认为——它们实际上非常契合，因为 AI 数据中心消耗能源的方式与比特币挖矿不同。比特币挖矿非常——你几乎可以给它一个固定的电力消耗量，说保持在这个功率水平，就消耗那么多。它会非常平稳。然后你可以根据需求响应和可用能源来上下调整。AI 在整体电力利用率方面有更大的波动性，你会在某些时候看到这一点——当然是在训练大型工作负载进行推理和训练时，但冷却也有季节性。白天你不得不更积极地运行空调和冷水机组时，PUE 往往更高，因为比晚上更热，晚上有更多的自然冷却。根据集群上运行的工作负载，事情会有一些起伏。

And so, the original thesis for the business was to go find stranded energy that is otherwise being underutilized and bring a market to that stranded energy with compute. Instead of trying to bring that stranded energy to a market where it can be bought and sold, bring the market to the energy. And that's what led us to—our initial stranded energy resource was natural gas that was being flared in the oil field, where oil companies were drilling for oil. They produced natural gas as a byproduct. And then, absent having a pipeline, they just light it on fire. And it was this huge environmental liability. It was a waste product. They were paying money to dispose of it. It's a disaster. And it's still happening at scale today. But our solution to that was we would bring these small modular generators and these small modular data centers. And we would basically utilize that gas on site and use it to power compute infrastructure. Which, our first monetization engine of that was Bitcoin mining, right? It was the easiest way to take energy and turn it into money. And we sort of created this great flywheel effect with the Bitcoin business. And there were definitely criticisms early days when I was like, "Hey, I'm trying to do this AI cloud platform." And people were like, "What are you talking about? Like, why are you spending any resources on that? You have this great thing. You're making all this money in Bitcoin. What are you talking about? Why would you focus on anything else?" And we tried a ton of stuff and we failed and we screwed a bunch of stuff up in terms of building out our first AI clusters. And we're trying to figure out what the product looked like and who we were going to serve and I called a bunch of my friends that were researchers at universities and saying, "Hey, do you have a use for these GPUs that I'm powering from this gas in the middle of the Bakken oil field in North Dakota?" And there were just many different iterations of trying to get that business to life. But the magic moment was really the launch of ChatGPT. So, November 30th, 2022, I think that was just the moment that changed everything and it led to all these new startups that were demanding the exact type of compute infrastructure that we had been building and the exact type of solutions that we had been building from a storage, compute, networking, etc. Now, I had always felt that Bitcoin and AI—and I still feel this way—that they actually go together very well because AI data centers do not consume energy in the same way that Bitcoin mining does. Bitcoin mining is very—you can almost give it a fixed draw amount of power and say stay at that power level and just consume that. And it will be very flatline. And then you can move that up and down depending on demand response and what available energy is. AI has a bit more variance in terms of its overall power utilization and you see this in certain—certainly when you're training big workloads for inference and training, but you also have seasonality with cooling. You tend to have higher PUE during the day when you're having to run your air conditioning units and your chillers more aggressively because it's hotter than at night when you have more natural cooling. Depending on workloads that are being run on the clusters, things can ebb and flow a bit.

好的，但我待会儿再问你。所以它——你一直把它看作一家 AI 公司。你决定卖掉一个很好的业务。为什么不直接保留它？你什么时候跟团队提出这个想法的？什么时候在你脑海中成为一个好主意的？你遇到阻力了吗？

Okay, but I'm going to come back to you. So it was—you were thinking of it as an AI company all along. You made a decision to sell off what was a good business. Why don't you just keep it? When did you broach that with the team? When did that become a good idea in your head? Did you get pushed back on it?

部分原因是我们有一个很好的合作伙伴，我们觉得我们建立的这个业务会得到一个很好的归宿，那就是 NYDIG。我真的——Ross Stevens 多年来已经成为我的好朋友，还有那里的 CEO Tejas Shah，我对那个团队非常尊重。我们觉得他们是很好的人，会成为这个业务的好管家。他们在天然气方面有很多经验——Stone Ridge 已经建立了美国最大的天然气业务之一。所以，这些既了解并大规模运营天然气资产、又深度参与比特币生态系统的人，我们觉得他们是那个业务的好合作伙伴。但真正驱使我剥离那个业务的是专注。我们在 Crusoe 做了很多事情，而且越来越多，感觉我们不得不在将资本、资源和注意力分配给比特币业务还是 AI 基础设施业务之间平衡这种紧张关系。我们还从投资者那里得到反馈，说这会让故事在投资者眼中过于复杂，他们会说：“好吧，我喜欢你在 AI 业务上做的事情，但我的公司实际上被禁止进行任何与加密货币相关的投资。”所以，仅仅让业务专注并使其成为垂直整合 AI 基础设施领域的品类定义型公司，而不受任何与比特币相关的事情干扰，就存在挑战。所以，我个人仍然是比特币的大力支持者和持有者，我认为作为一个非国家控制的、去中心化的、数字原生的、开放的货币生态系统，它的存在对世界很重要。但对 Crusoe 来说，全力投入 AI 基础设施是正确的选择。

Part of it was we had a great partner that we felt like this business we built would land in a really good home, which was NYDIG. And I really—Ross Stevens has become a good friend over the years and I—and Tejas Shah, who's the CEO there, just deep amount of respect for that team. And we felt like they were great people that would be great stewards of this business. And they had a lot of experience within natural gas in terms of—Stone Ridge has built out one of the largest natural gas businesses in the United States. And so, this intersection of people that knew and had operated natural gas assets at scale and were deeply involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem, we felt like they were great partners for that business. But really, I think what drove me to divest that business was really focus. And we are doing a lot at Crusoe and increasingly we were doing more, and it felt like we were having to balance this tension between do we allocate capital and resources and attention towards our Bitcoin business or against this AI infrastructure business. And we were also getting feedback from investors where it would make the story too complex in the eye of an investor where they would say, "Okay, I love what you're doing over here on this AI business, but my firm were actually blocked from making any investments that are tied to crypto." So, there were challenges to just making the business focused and making it this category-defining company across vertically integrated AI infrastructure and not having the distraction of being anything related to Bitcoin. And so, I am still personally a huge Bitcoin supporter and holder and I think it's an important thing to exist for the world as a non-state controlled, decentralized, digitally native, open monetary ecosystem. But it was the right thing for Crusoe to go all in on AI infrastructure.

嗯。我注意到你在这个通话中的一点，我也看过你在其他形式中的表现，你非常得体，Chase。大多数 CEO 没有你这种得体程度。这是你一路学来的吗？你说过你有教练。你的教练帮你做到了吗？

Mhm. One thing I'm noticing about you on this call and I watched you in other formats is you're very polished, Chase. Most CEOs don't have your level of polish. Is that something you learned along the way? You said you had a coach. Did your coach help you with that?

我有过教练，而且我们仍然很亲近。我们不像以前那样密切合作了，但 Shane Metcalf，他对我来说是一位非凡的教练。我从他身上学到了很多。公开演讲从来不是我的天性。这是我必须非常非常努力的事情。因为我就是没做过。

I had a coach and I still—we're still quite close. We're not working as closely together as we once did, but Shane Metcalf, he was a phenomenal coach for me. I learned so much from him. Public speaking was never something that came naturally to me. It was something I had to work really really hard at. Because I just wasn't doing it.

比如我在大学做过讲座之类的，但那不是我经常做的事。尤其是量化这个领域，是非常技术性的行业。你身边都是非常聪明的人，但你的工作方式非常保密，对吧？你对队友非常开放，但对外界你什么都不说，生怕泄露了自己的 alpha。所以我从来没有在外面公开演讲过，所以我必须非常非常努力地准备我要说什么、怎么说。我觉得做得够多就熟练了，到某个阶段你就不需要为事情做那么多准备了。现在大多数事情我基本就是临场发挥，因为当然有些事需要大量准备，但我往往即兴发挥更好，因为那正是我思考的方式。我已经练就了一套不错的能力，能把自己脑子里的想法相当清楚地讲给对话的人听。

Like I'd given lectures and things at universities, but it wasn't something I was routinely doing. Especially the quant space is a very technical industry. So you're working with very smart people, but you're doing it in a very secretive way, right? You're very open with your teammates and then you don't tell anything to anybody in the world about what you're doing for fear that you might leak some of your alpha. So I was never out in the world presenting stuff, and so it was something I had to work very, very hard at, just to be prepared for what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. And I think if you do it enough you just get practice, and at some point you just stop having to prepare as much for things. And most things at this point I kind of just wing them, because there are certainly things that require a tremendous amount of preparation, but I think I'm often better off the cuff because that's just how I think through things. And I've developed a good skill set of being able to explain what's in my mind fairly clearly to whoever I'm talking to.

你还学到了什么？首先，我合作的 CEO 是不是都该请个教练？

What else did you learn? First of all, should all the CEOs I work with hire a coach?

是的。

Yes.

好，有意思。你学到了什么？比如 Shane 教了你什么，或者在哪些方面推了你一把？

Yes, okay, interesting. What did you learn? Like what did Shane teach you, or what did he push you on?

我们的一个投资方 Felicis，他们为公司做了一件很酷的事，我还没见过别人这么做。他们有一笔预算，本质上是个人投资。它是用于自我提升的，用于高管教练、外出团建之类的方式，让你作为领导者升级。因为他们的想法是：“看，我们在创始人或 CEO 身上做了这么大的投资，我们赌的是你能变得更好，你不是一个静态的自己，随着业务成长，你确实会变成更好的自己。”我觉得这种投资思路非常周到，尤其是在风投里，投资很大程度上就是投人、投创始人的成长能力。早期的时候，Shane 给我的感觉就是，他总能对我绞尽脑汁的问题给出答案。他对我来说既是教练，也几乎像心理治疗师。

One of our investors, Felicis, they had this really cool thing they do for companies and I haven't seen anybody else do this. They have a budget for personal investment essentially. It's meant for self-improvement. It's meant for things like executive coaching and offsites and just ways of up-leveling yourself as a leader, because they're like, "Look, we're making this big investment in the founder or the CEO, and we're betting on you being able to get better, that you're not a static version of yourself, that you're actually going to be a better version of yourself over the course of time as the business grows." And I just thought that was such a thoughtful approach to the investment, especially in venture, where the investments are so much about the people and the ability of the founder to scale. Shane, like early days, it just felt like Shane was a guy that always had the answer to the problem that I was racking my brain on. And he was as much of a coach as almost like a therapist for me.

我对 CEO 们的感觉，就跟他们对心理治疗师的感觉差不多。

That's how I feel with CEOs as much as they feel with therapists.

确实如此。所以我们真的有一段非常特殊、非常信任的关系，现在依然如此。我觉得这是需要用心经营的，你和一个人建立起这种信任。即使某次谈话感觉没什么进展，你也是在打地基，为那个真正的大事出现时做准备——这个人如此了解你，知道你的盲区在哪，知道你在某种情况下可能怎么反应，知道如何引导你纠偏，让你能应对任何局面。我也说不清。人们都这么说，我可能听起来像在重复老生常谈，但创办公司时的很多问题都是人的问题，对吧？能有效地处理人的一面，就是大部分的挑战。你有一群聪明、有野心、有主见的人，要让所有人一起努力、朝同一个方向划，对事情达成一致，或者即使不一致也承诺走你选的那条路。这永远是最难的事。作为 CEO，我觉得有时候最大的挑战是：我什么时候该继续相信一个人，什么时候该决定“嘿，我们得往前走了，这个岗位需要换个人”。或者，怎么让两个才华横溢但根本意见不合的人一起合作。我发现人是最难的部分，但如果处理得好，也是最大的超能力。

It was. So we really did have a very special relationship that's very trusted, and we still do. And I just felt like it's something you have to work at, and you build this trust with a person. And even if it doesn't feel like you're making progress on any given session, you're laying the groundwork and you're laying this foundation for when that really big thing does pop up, this person knows you so deeply, and they know where your blind spots are, and they know how you might be responding in a certain situation, and they know how to guide you to course correct so you can rise to whatever occasion it is. And I don't know. I mean, people say this, and I may sound like I'm repeating the common folklore, but so many of the problems with building companies are people problems, right? Being able to effectively navigate the people side of this is most of the challenges. You get these smart, ambitious, and opinionated people, getting everybody to work and row in the same direction and agree on things, or if they don't agree, to commit to whatever pathway you're taking. I mean, that is always the hardest thing. And as a CEO, I think sometimes the biggest challenges are, when do I keep believing in someone, and when do I decide, "Hey, we need to move on, and we need a different person in this role." Or how do we get two brilliant people to work together on something when they're fundamentally disagreeing. I've just found the people to be the hardest thing, and also the greatest superpower if you can get it right.

人们总对我说：“招人要慢，开人要快。”我做的正好相反，尤其是在开人这方面。听起来你让一些人离开了。你是不是做得太慢了？你后悔过吗？还是说有些信号把你推到了临界点？

People always said to me, "You should hire slow and fire fast." I did the opposite. Particularly on the fire side. It sounds like you moved some people out. Did you do it too slowly? Did you ever regret it? Or were the signals that kind of push you over the edge?

我觉得几乎总是存在一种偏向，就是你最终开人开得太慢。这像是一种固有的偏向。所以即使你反应很快，我确实认为对大多数 CEO 来说，当你开掉一个人时，你显然已经想了很久了，几乎可以说，你开始想这件事的时候，差不多就是该开他的时候。但这很难——

I think almost always there's a bias towards you just end up firing people too slowly. It's just like there's an inherent bias. So even if you're very responsive, I do think that for most CEOs, when you fire someone, you've clearly been thinking about it for a long time, and it's almost like when you started thinking about it, that was sort of the right time to fire them. But it's hard to—

你在看什么信号？是团队里其他人说这个人不行？还是什么？

What signal are you looking at? Is it other people on the team saying this person's subpar? Is it what is it?

不是那个。那当然是一个数据点。我觉得作为 CEO，我们的工作是解读这幅信息拼图，对吧？你有很多零碎的信息，它们往往来自组织里非常不同的部分，来自非常技术的人，来自更擅长跟人打交道的人，各种不同的东西。你在汇集所有这些不同的信息，然后由你来判断什么是对公司最好的决定。我确实认为——我忘了是谁发布的，我觉得是第一轮资本（First Round Capital）有一个很棒的博客叫《创业公司的物理定律》。它的核心大意是：人只能线性扩展，公司却能指数级扩展。所以你有一家很棒的公司指数级扩张。

It's not that. That is definitely a data point. I think our job as a CEO is you are reading this mosaic of information, right? You have all these little tidbits, and they're often from very different parts of the organization, and they're coming from someone super technical, coming from someone that's more of a people person, all these different things. And you're amassing all these different pieces of information, and it's up to you to make a judgment call around what the best decision is for the company. I do think that—I forget who published it, I think it was First Round Capital has this really great blog called the Startup Laws of Physics. And the crux of it is something along the lines of: people scale linearly, companies scale exponentially. So you sort of have this great company scale exponentially.

所以，你会有这样一种动态：即使你鼓励员工继续成长、继续投资自己，但如果公司真的按照你作为雄心勃勃的领导者的设想发展，很多时候，曾经适合那个职位的人可能无法成长和 Scaling（规模扩张）到两年后公司规模扩大十倍时仍能胜任那个职位。作为领导者，这是一个难以面对的现实，因为你和这些人一起在战壕里，一起熬夜、早起，你看到他们为使命付出一切。当你遇到公司发展超出个人能力的情况时，真的很难受，对吧？因为你在个人层面上非常关心这些人，即使你知道对公司最好的做法是为某个特定职位找新人。总之，回到我过去为什么解雇人的话题，几乎每个案例都像雪花一样独一无二。每一个都不同，最终要由你来判断什么对企业是正确的。

So, you sort of have this dynamic where even if you challenge your people to continue to grow and continue to invest in themselves, if the company really grows in the way that you're sort of setting out as an ambitious leader, often times the person who was the right person for that role at one point in time may not be able to grow and scale to be the person in that role two years later when the company is ten times bigger. And that's a hard reality to face as a leader because you end up in the trenches with these people, you end up working late nights, early mornings, you see these people really giving everything they have to the mission. And when you have those moments where the company outgrows the person, it's just hard, right? Because you care a lot about these people on a personal basis, even if you know the best thing for the company is to find someone new for a specific role. Anyway, coming back to why I fired people in the past, it's almost like every case is a snowflake. Every single one is different and ultimately it's up to you to make the judgment call of what's the right thing for the business.

好的。我最近有两个采访，我采访了 Databricks 的 Ali Ghodsi。

Okay. I have two of my recent interviews, I interviewed Ali Ghodsi from Databricks.

是的。

Yeah.

很棒的人。他基本上同一个管理团队保持了 10 年，只换了一个人。然后是我的朋友 Dev Ittycheria，即将来播客，平均每年换两个人，原因很多。我觉得这很奇怪。他们处于类似的行业，而且他们都很优秀，却又如此不同。

Great guy. And he's basically had the same management team for 10 years with the exception of turned over one person. And then Dev Ittycheria, is friend of mine, and coming on the pod, on average he turned over two per year on the exact team for lots of reasons. I find that odd. They're in kind of similar businesses and it's just so and they're both really good and they're so different.

完全同意。实际上，我现在的 COO 和 CFO 在 MongoDB 与 Dave 共事了大约十年。所以，他不是被换掉的人之一。

Totally. Actually, my current COOs and CFO worked alongside Dave at MongoDB for about a decade. So, he wasn't one of the people that was churned.

嗯，我说的换掉是指有些人离开了。他们只是

Well, by churn I mean some of them leave. They just

不，我完全理解。但你看，我认为没有正确答案，我见过不同的方法都有效。我觉得对我最有效的是，如果有人真的在挣扎，团队会意识到，我们认为团队最终是为了赢。我从小参加竞技体育，如果你带领一支团队，你总是爱你的队友，你们有一种强烈的特殊纽带，来自更衣室和球场，如果有一个队友在挣扎或是薄弱环节，导致团队失败，你知道正确的做法是用别人替换他，而且

No, I totally understand. But look, I don't think there's any right answer and I've seen different things work. I think what I found most effective for me is that if you have someone that's really struggling, the team recognizes it and we view it as the team is ultimately there to win. And I mean, I saw this and I grew up playing competitive sports and if you run a team, you always loved your teammates, you had a strong special bond that came from the locker room down the field, and if you had a teammate that was just struggling or a weak link and led to the team's downfall, it's like you knew that the right thing to do was to replace that person with someone and

听起来你介于两者之间。

It sounds like you're in the middle of those two.

我肯定介于两者之间。

I'm in the middle of the two, for sure.

好的。

Fine.

是的。

Yeah.

说到团队和人，你的企业有一件令人着迷的事，我想到我们在 HubSpot 建立的文化，人们在 HubSpot 押韵，但在你的组织中，你有 AI 研究人员和焊工。你如何在所有人之间创造一种文化？他们是不同的文化吗？你如何给所有人薪酬？这一切如何运作？

Speaking of teams and people, one thing that is fascinating about your business, and I just think about the culture we built at HubSpot, people rhymed at HubSpot, but in your organization, you have AI researchers and you have welders. How do you create a culture across all of them? Are they different cultures? How do you comp people across all of it? How does all that work?

是的，这是一个好问题。我们一直觉得我们拥有极其多元的文化，仅从前来帮助建设的人来看就是如此。我们的核心价值观之一是挖掘集体智慧，对吧？没有人拥有全部领域专业知识来提供我们试图实现的完整解决方案。我们都可以互相学习，我们所有人一起朝着一个 cohesive 解决方案努力，将产生我们任何人都无法单独完成的放大结果。有些关键创新来自电工，他们负责布线，研究人员则从这些具体用例中受益。我们如何思考整个建筑管理系统，如何思考从电子到 token 的操作系统，我认为这是真正让我们与众不同的地方。

Yeah, no, it's a great question. We've always felt like we've had an incredibly diverse culture just from the people that are coming to help build this. And one of our core values is tapping into the collective genius, right? It's like no one person has all the domain expertise to deliver the full solution that we're trying to bring to bear. And we all can learn from one another, and all of us working together towards a cohesive solution is going to result in an amplified result that none of us could have done individually. And there have been critical innovations that people have gotten from people like electricians that are working on wiring things up to the researchers are then benefiting from those specific use cases. And how we think about the whole building management system, how we think about the operating system from the electron to the token, I think is something that really sets us apart.

我在《华尔街日报》上读到一篇关于风险投资家和你们行业的人的文章，他们在会议上演讲时，有人攻击或抗议他们，而你正处于浪潮之中。数据中心成了选举议题。我听过你关于为什么它对社区有益、对 Humanity 有益的说法。你自己是否面临一些严厉的批评，你个人如何应对？你有安保吗？比如，这对你来说有多棘手？

I read an article in the journal about VCs and people in your industry when they're presenting at conferences, like people are attacking them or protesting them, and you're sort of in the middle of a wave. It's an election issue around the data centers. And I've heard your story on why it's good for communities and why it's great for humanity. Are you facing some of that heavy criticism yourself, and how do you deal with it personally? Do you have security? Like, where are How tricky is this for you?

我的思考方式是，当我环顾 Crusoe 的人，他们都是想为世界做善事的人。我在 Crusoe 遇到的没有一个人不想为世界做善事。我从根本上相信，有一种正确的方式让这种基础设施变为现实，让每个人都能受益。从能源、用水、税收、学校和社区的角度，然后从最终用例以及它如何通过我们经历过的最伟大的技术浪潮真正推动人类进步。

The way I think about it is when I look around at the people at Crusoe, these are all people that want to do good for the world. There's not a single person I met at Crusoe that doesn't want to do good for the world. And I believe fundamentally that there is a right way to bring this infrastructure to life where everybody can benefit. You know, energy, from a water usage standpoint, from a tax revenue standpoint, from a school and community standpoint, and then from the end use cases and how it's actually fueling human progress through the greatest technological wave we've ever experienced.

我听过你的解释。你解释得非常好，很有道理。我希望其他 AI 领导者能像你一样解释清楚。但对你来说，你一定承受了很多批评，比如

I've heard you explain it. You explained it extremely well and you make a lot of sense. And I wish the rest of the AI leaders would explain it as well as you did. But like for you, you must be catching a lot of flak in like

嗯，我的主要观点是，我总是尝试采取非常第一性原理的方法。如果我对某件事有高度信念，比如我从一系列地面真相事实中建立起来的，我不介意与别人意见不同。我可以尝试找出为什么我认为别人错了，以及为什么我们试图以正确的方式做事。但我确实觉得，从根本上说，在 Crusoe，文化中渗透着人们想以正确的方式做这件事。人们想把这作为对世界的良好服务。这已经成为一个政治问题，特别是围绕 AI 数据中心。外面有太多错误信息，我经常说，数据中心行业最大的问题是我们有营销问题。我们没能把真相传播出去。对我来说，真相在我们这边。

Well, so my major thing is like I always try to take a very first principled approach to things. And if I have high conviction in something like I've built up from a set of ground truth facts, I have no problem disagreeing with someone. And I can try to poke holes into why someone else I think is wrong and why we're trying to do things the right way. But I do feel like fundamentally at Crusoe like permeates in the culture like people want to do this the right way. People want to do this as a good service to the world. This has become a political issue, particularly around the AI data centers. And there's just so much misinformation around this out there that I've often said that like what the data center industry like their biggest problem is we have a marketing problem. We haven't been able to get the truth out there. And to me, the truth is on our side.

所以，当你解释真相时，我参加过这些会议，你知道，我去这些当地社区，我会见县法官，我会见这些社区里我们正在建设基础设施的人们。当你坐下来，真正向他们解释正在发生什么，而且你不是以一种“嘿，我比你聪明，你得听我的”的态度。而是说“这就是正在发生的事情，这是我们如何尽力让它对你们有利、对我们有利、对世界有利。”我认为当你进行这些对话时，人们是愿意接受的。对吧？与政治无关，政治立场无关，我认为人们愿意接受真实和事实。所以，这就是我们对此的方法。

And so, when you explain the truth, and I've been in these rooms, you know, where I go to these local communities, I meet with the county judge, I meet with folks in these communities where we're building infrastructure. And when you sit down and you really explain to them what's happening, and you're not coming at it from like a hey, I'm smarter than you, you got to listen to me. It's like here's just what's happening and here's how we're trying to do our very best to make it good for you and good for us and good for the world. And I think when you have those conversations, people are receptive to it. Right? Independent of politics, political allegiances, I think people are receptive to authenticity and facts. And so, that's really our approach to this.

现在，从安全角度我担心吗？当然。我们不得不增加安全措施，因为外面有疯狂的人想要制造大新闻。所以，呃，是的。

Now, am I worried from a security standpoint? Sure. We had to increase our security footprint just given there's crazy people out there that want to create a big statement. So, uh yeah.

是的。嗯，所以我假设你走进的一些房间里有歇斯底里的人们。那是什么感觉，你走进的第一个房间，人们对你大喊大叫，好像没有训练能应对这个。

Yeah. Um and so, I assume some of these rooms you're walking into, there's some hysterical people. What is that like the first room you walk into and people are screaming and yelling at you like there's no training for that.

再次，我认为诚实地说，要诉诸他们的人性，理解为什么有人会说他们说的话。我认为倾听事实，我经常有非常强烈的观点，但我总是可以根据新信息和新事实改变它们。所以，我认为重要的是要有这种智力上的灵活性，说：“嘿，我坚信我们做事的方式是正确的。在了解到这个新情况后，我们可能应该以不同的方式做这件事，我们可能可以做得更好。”我认为这是我们公司固有的成长心态，我作为领导者一直试图引导这种心态。比如有能力倾听这些批评，并尝试过滤掉什么是疯狂的、毫无根据的歇斯底里，什么是合理的批评反馈，我们应该利用这些反馈来成为这些社区更好的管理者。

Again, I think honestly like appealing to their humanity and like understanding why someone may be saying what they're saying. I think listening to the facts, I think like I often have very strong opinions, but I can always change them in light of new information and new facts. So, like that's like I think it's important to have that like intellectual flexibility to say like, "Hey, I had high conviction that we were doing things the right way. Upon learning this new thing, we should probably be doing this differently and we could probably doing this better." And I think like that is like an inherent growth mindset that we have here as a company and I've tried to channel as a leader. Like to have the ability to listen to these criticisms and try to filter out like what is crazy hysteria that's unfounded in truth and what's like legitimate critical feedback that we should be using to become a better steward of these communities.

你认为脸皮厚是 CEO 非常重要的特质吗？

Do you think having thick skin is a very important attribute for a CEO?

百分之百。

100%

就像，呃，是的，我的意思是，你的工作就是经常成为坏消息的接收者，然后能够清晰地思考，并根据坏消息做出决定。我认为领导者重要的另一件事是，坦率地说，我一直纠结的是，随着公司成长和变大，我与公司前线个人的距离越来越远。所以试图缩小差距，确保我总是平易近人，让人们能够对权力说真话，对吧？你希望处于一个人们可以表达他们的担忧并被听到的位置，并且在呈现真相的背景下，结合其他一切正在发生的事情，你实际上可以调整你的业务方向。

Like Uh yeah, I mean just your job is to like cons- be the receiver of bad news very frequently and then be able to think with a clear mind and make decisions in light of that bad news. And I think the other thing that is important for a leader is like and frankly something that I'm always struggling with is like as the company grows and the company gets bigger, I'm like further from like a distance from like individuals on the front lines of the company. So trying to like close the gap, making sure that I'm always approachable to like that people can speak truth to power, right? You want to be in a position where people can voice their concerns and be heard and in the light of presenting truth in the context of everything else that's happening that you can actually adjust the direction of your business.

你有什么方法鼓励这一点，确保人们会站出来对抗你？比如，因为第 2000 个你雇佣的人，他们把你放在神坛上。第 20 个人每天在打击你。

Do you have methods to encourage that to make sure people will stand up to you? Like do you have Cuz the 2,000 person you hire, they put you on a pedestal. The 20th person's beating you up day to day.

是的，我的意思是，诚实地说，这就像挖掘它，无情地要求它。我认为当人们看到你接受批评和反馈、回应它、改变主意的例子时，我认为这赋予人们力量，让他们觉得“哦，实际上我的声音应该，我应该表达我的担忧。”我认为人们经常有这种观点，你作为领导者，你作为 CEO，你只想听好消息。一般来说，好消息很棒。我想听，但我对好消息的关心远不如对坏消息的关心。所以试图去发现那些，比如什么出错了？我们不擅长什么？我们如何解决这些问题？问题是什么？我如何去解决那些？我认为这是 CEO 的关键特征，就是愿意去寻找并冲进燃烧的建筑，找出问题，并尝试帮助解决它们。

Yeah, I mean honestly it's like mining for it, just asking for it relentlessly. I think when people see examples of you taking criticism and feedback responding to it, changing your mind, I think it empowers people to be like, "Oh, actually my voice should, I should voice my concern." And I think people often have this perspective that you as the leader, you as the CEO, you only want to hear the good news. Generally like the good news is great. I want to hear it, but I care way less about the good news than I do about the bad news. So like trying to run into those like what's going wrong? Like what are we bad at? Like how do we fix these things? What are the problems? How do I go resolve those? I think that is a critical characteristic of a CEO is like be that willingness to go seek out and like run into the burning buildings, figure out the problems, and go try to help resolve them.

好的，这个问题是给我自己的，我想其他人也会感兴趣。我从未见过攀登珠穆朗玛峰的人。我真的很佩服。那是什么感觉？训练是什么样的？当你到达山顶时感觉如何？

Okay, this question's for me and I would imagine other people are interested. I've never met someone that climbed Mount Everest. And I'm really impressed. What is it like? What is the training like? What does it feel like when you get to the top of that mountain?

在很多方面，公司文化是 CEO 或创始人文化的反映。这就是 Crusoe 发生的事情。我们实际上有一个核心公司价值观是像登山者一样思考，这就像这种文化韧性、准备和计划以及愿意忍受探险的感觉。很多这个价值观和我们为这个价值观写的实践描述了很多攀登珠穆朗玛峰的感觉。所以，实际上我有一个完整的内部演示，关于我各种珠峰之旅，因为我实际上在 2014 年尝试攀登珠穆朗玛峰一次，发生了一场大雪崩，最终在昆布冰川杀死了 15 名夏尔巴人。我做出了这个有意识的决定，我回来时，我妻子说：“哦，谢天谢地那一章结束了，你不再需要这样做了。”我说：“看，这件事困扰着我，我满脑子都是它，我必须回去。”她说：“你疯了。”但如果你要这样做，请在我们有孩子之前做。所以，但当我想到那时，就像当你想到珠穆朗玛峰时，我从南侧攀登，即尼泊尔一侧通过昆布谷。你基本上从大本营开始，然后或者你徒步到大本营，然后你从大本营到一号营地，然后有二号营地、三号营地、四号营地，然后你向顶峰冲刺。嗯，山上两个最危险的区域基本上是从四号营地到顶峰，这经常被称为死亡区。这是你在 8000 米以上的地方。所以，为什么危险非常直观。

In a lot of ways like a company culture is sort of a reflection of the CEO or the founder's culture. And that's really what's happened at Crusoe. Like we actually have a core company value to think like a mountaineer, which is like this sense of cultural resilience and preparation and planning and willingness to endure the expedition. A lot of that value and the practices that we've written about for that value describe a lot of what it's like to climb Mount Everest. And so, there's actually this whole internal presentation I have around the various Everest trips that I had because I actually tried to climb Mount Everest once in 2014 and there was a big avalanche that occurred and it ended up killing 15 Sherpas in the Khumbu Icefall. And I made sort of this conscious decision like, I came back and my wife was like, "Oh, thank god that chapter is done and you don't have to do this anymore." And I was like, "Look, this thing haunts me and it's all I think about and I have to go back." She's like, "You're insane." But like if you're going to do that, please do it before we have kids. So, but when I thought about that, it was like very much like when you think about Mount Everest, and I climbed on the south side, which is the Nepal side through the Khumbu Valley. There's this, you basically start at base camp and then or you trek up to base camp and then you go from base camp to camp one and then there's camp two, camp three, camp four and then you have this push to the summit. Well, the two most dangerous areas on the mountain are basically from camp four to the summit, which is frequently referred to as the death zone. This is where you're above 8,000 m. So, very intuitive why that's dangerous.

你在非常非常高的海拔，人类真的不应该在那里生活。但另一个最危险的区域是基地营和一号营地之间的区域，叫做昆布冰川。所以，这就是 2014 年我在那里时发生灾难的区域。关于昆布冰川的事情是，它是一个正在崩塌的冰川，对吧？所以，这是一个美丽、非常酷的冰上丛林 gym。但有很多事情只是随机风险，对吧？就像这些完全超出你控制的事情，比如冰塔倒下或雪崩发生，然后，你知道，哎呀，你死了。那就是那种风险，我当时想，看，我知道我有办法有意识地训练和准备高海拔，我可以更有效地管理那里的风险，我知道我有意识地承担那个风险。我觉得不太舒服的风险是这种随机风险。传统的珠峰探险涉及从基地营到一号营地，你实际上在山上适应。你去基地营、一号营地，回基地营。基地营、一号营地、二号营地，回基地营。上到三号营地，回基地营。你实际上最终要穿过昆布冰川八次。所以，像典型的商业向导探险，四次往返。为了降低风险，我和我的登山伙伴实际上设计了一种不同的攀登珠峰的方法，就是我们最终去攀登附近的一堆山峰，并在那些山峰的顶峰花费大量时间，以便我们适应而不承担昆布冰川的随机风险。我们实际上只做了一次大的珠峰适应旅行，然后回到基地营。所以，我们最终基本上只穿过昆布冰川四次，而不是八次。我意识到我想要承担的风险。规划、准备，所有那些，我们必须考虑很多事情，大量训练，很多长距离越野跑，以及几次不同的高海拔训练旅行。但我想传达的重点是，有意识的风险承担和密集的规划与准备，真正促成了 2018 年非常成功的珠峰登顶。

You're at very, very high altitude where humans really shouldn't be living. But the other most dangerous area is this area between base camp and Camp 1, which is called the Khumbu Icefall. So, this was the area where the disaster occurred when I was there in 2014. And the thing about the Khumbu Icefall is that it's a glacier that's sort of falling, right? So, it's this beautiful, really cool ice jungle gym. But there's a lot of things that are just like stochastic risk, right? It's like these things that are totally outside of your control where it's like a serac falls or an avalanche occurs and, you know, oops, you die. And that was the type of risk where I was like, look, I know there are ways I can consciously train and prepare for the high elevation, and I can manage my risk up there more effectively, and I know consciously I'm taking that risk. The risk I felt less comfortable with was this stochastic risk. And a traditional Everest expedition involves going from base camp to Camp 1, and you actually acclimatize on the mountains. You go base camp, Camp 1, back to base camp. Base camp, Camp 1, Camp 2, back to base camp. Up to Camp 3, back to base camp. And you actually end up doing eight trips through the Khumbu Icefall. So, like, four round trips on a typical commercially guided expedition. In order to de-risk that, me and my climbing partner actually designed a different approach to climbing Everest, which was we ended up going and climbing a bunch of mountains nearby and spending a lot of time at the summits of those mountains so that we would acclimatize without taking this stochastic risk in the Khumbu Icefall. And we actually only did one big acclimatization trip up Mount Everest and then back to base camp. So, we ended up doing basically four passes through the Khumbu Icefall instead of eight. I was conscious of the risks that I wanted to take. The planning, preparation, all that, we had to think through a ton of stuff, a lot of training, a lot of long-distance trail running, and a couple of different high altitude training trips. But the point I want to get across is conscious risk taking and intense planning and preparation that really went into a very successful Everest summit in 2018.

你如此努力，你如此渴望它。当你到达顶峰时，你内心的感受是什么？

You work so hard at it and you wanted it so badly. What was the feeling inside of you when you got to the top?

就像因为我在这个叫做阳台的区域几乎转身了。它大约 8,600 米。所以顶峰是 8848 米，所以你知道在海拔上离顶峰不太远，但感觉 impossibly 远，而且天还黑着，对吧，所以我们晚上 11 点左右离开四号营地。当我们到达阳台时，天还黑着。你感觉糟糕，就像我在过去 48 小时没吃多少东西，我脱水了。我感觉很糟糕。我的腿抽筋了，而且天黑了。对吧？我的伙伴真的是激励我继续的人。除了那些事情，我感觉还好。所以并不像是我觉得自己在冒险。一旦太阳升起，你开始看到日出，你在山上高处，你只是被周围的环境所启发。这是你精神的提升，给了你肾上腺素，让你能够推动通过最后 250 米。当我到达顶峰时，我想我的感觉真的只是一种纯粹的敬畏。只是对宇宙的敬畏，对在顶峰的敬畏，以及体验我周围整个世界的敬畏。我想那只是一个非常特别的时刻，它让你感到渺小，对吧？我认为有那种感觉非常有趣，就像，我很渺小，我被周围的世界所启发，就像存在的壮丽。那大概就是我在顶峰的经历。很美。我们有一个非常阳光的日子，所以我们在顶峰待了大约一个小时，拍了一堆照片。真的享受这个英雄般的成就时刻。

It was like because I almost turned around at this area called the balcony. It's about 8,600 m. So the summit's 8848 and so you know not too far from the summit in terms of elevation but it felt impossibly far and it was still dark out right so we left camp four at like 11:00 p.m. It was still dark out when we got to the balcony. You feel terrible like I hadn't eaten much in the last 48 hours I was dehydrated. I felt awful. My legs were cramping and it was dark. Right? And my partner was really the person who inspired me to continue. I felt fine apart from those things. So it wasn't like felt like I was putting myself at risk. And once the sun came up and you start seeing the sunrise and you're sort of high up in this mountain you're just inspired by your surroundings. It was this elevation of your spirits and gave you the adrenaline to kind of make the push through that final 250 m. And when I got to the summit I think my feeling was really one of just sheer awe. Just a sense of awe for the universe and an awe for being on the summit and sort of experiencing the whole world around me. I think it was just a really special one and it makes you feel small right? And I think there's something very interesting about having that sense of like, I'm small and I'm inspired by the world around me and just like the magnificence of existence. And that was kind of my experience on the summit. It was beautiful. We had a very sunny day, so we spent about an hour up at the summit and just took a bunch of pictures. Just really enjoyed this heroic moment of achievement.

嗯。祝贺你所有的成功。我支持你。你是一位出色的 CEO。感谢你来参加。

Mhm. Congratulations on all your success. I'm rooting for you. You're a fantastic CEO. Thanks for coming on.

Brian，感谢邀请我。这真的很有趣。

Brian, thanks for having me. This was really fun.

好的，我希望你喜欢那期与 Chase 的节目。他是一位非常靠谱的 CEO，把业务扩展得很好。我会给你几个我的收获。我的第一个收获是关于他的。作为一个人，他是一个真正喜欢艰难挑战的人。就像当我招聘和投资 CEO 时，那绝对是我寻找的品质。我喜欢他谈论 CEO 工作变化有多大。他以前从未做过类似的事情。他进入这个旅程 8 年了，天哪，他是一个学习机器。他读了很多关于它的书。他雇了一个教练。听起来他的教练非常有用。我教练一群红杉资本的 CEO，你知道，其中一些是给他们建议，但很多是获取背景、倾听问题、共情，真的有点像治疗师。所以他从中受益匪浅。他努力的另一件事，听起来是他的公开演讲。他非常流畅，真的很有口才和流畅。听起来那不是他的默认设置。他不得不真正努力。我认为那很重要。就像如果你在你的公司面前，你在投资者面前，我不认为有口才和流畅会有害。我喜欢他谈论竞争的方式。他说了我们以前在 HubSpot 经常说的话，你更可能死于自杀而不是谋杀。这非常符合我们的情况。在我看来，他真的喜欢合作竞争，我认为很多创始人对此不以为然。我们与 salesforce.com 有多年的重大合作竞争。所以，我不会回避那个。我一直做的另一件事是我总是了解我们的竞争对手，因为你永远不知道。所以不要害怕联系你的竞争对手，喝杯咖啡。我喜欢的最后一个收获是，随着组织变大，我在 HubSpot 感受到了这一点，每个人都想给你好消息。你是 CEO，他们期望你想听好消息，而你真正想要的是相反的。你想听坏消息，你想训练组织给你坏消息。所以，几乎是在鼓励人们当你反驳你时，当他们在相当大的场合给你坏消息时。我认为那是 CEO 的一个非常重要的品质。

Okay, I hope you liked that episode with Chase. He is a very legit CEO scaling that business really well. I'll give you a couple of my takeaways. My first takeaway is kind of on him. As a Homo Sapien, he's a person who really likes hard challenges. And like when I recruit and I fund CEOs, that's definitely a quality that I look for. I liked how he talked about just how much the CEO job changed. He had never done anything like that before. He's 8 years into the journey and man, he's a learning machine. He read a lot about it. He hired a coach. It sounds like his coach was really useful. And I coach a bunch of Sequoia CEOs and you know, some of it is giving them advice, but a lot of it is gaining context and listening to the problems and empathizing and really kind of being like a therapist. So, he benefited a lot from that. The other thing he worked hard on, sounds like his public speaking. He's very smooth, like really articulate and smooth. And sounds like that wasn't his default setting. He's had to really work at that and I think that's important. Like if you're up in front of your company, you're up in front of investors, I don't think it hurts to be articulate and smooth. I liked the way he talked about competition. He said something we used to say at HubSpot all the time, you're much more likely to die of suicide than murder. It was very much our case. It sounds to me he's really into co-opetition and I think a lot of founders frown on that. We had major co-opetition over many, many years with salesforce.com. So, I wouldn't shy away from that. The other thing I always did is I always got to know our competitors cuz you never know. And so don't be afraid to reach out to your competitors and have coffee. The last thing I took that I really liked is as the organization gets bigger and I felt this at HubSpot, everyone wants to give you good news. You're the CEO and they expect you want to hear good news and you really want the opposite. You want to hear the bad news and you want to train the organization to give you that bad news. So, almost encouraging people when they push back at you and when they give you bad news inside of a pretty good size setting. I think that's a really important quality in CEOs.

另外一点，我认为这是 CEO 的一项重要品质，我觉得他具备，你可能也具备，就是他观点非常鲜明，你也听到了。但如果事实变了，他愿意改变自己的想法。固执对 CEO 来说是个很麻烦的品质，会让人很难追随你。总之，这些就是我的一些收获。我觉得他很棒。这是一门了不起的生意。他是一位了不起的 CEO。希望你们喜欢这期节目，我们下期 Long Strange Trip 再见。

The other thing that I think is an important CEO quality that I think he does, and you might too, but he has very strong opinions, as you've heard. But if the facts change, he's willing to change his mind. Being stubborn is a really tough quality in a CEO. It makes you quite hard to follow. Anyway, those are some of my takeaways. I thought he was great. It's an amazing business. He's an amazing CEO. I hope you liked it, and I'll see you next time on Long Strange Trip.