从完整出发：Clay CEO Kareem 谈重塑成功

我当时想，我在做我觉得有意思的事，也希望这跟让 Clay 成功的方向一致。我对那件事感兴趣，但其实我想让这些人成功。他们感受到了那份真诚。我们还干过特别疯狂的事——你知道，Verun，我想他在 WhatsApp 上跟一个人聊天，那人搞不定 Client 上的某个东西。他说，‘我现在就去你家。’那人说，‘别来。’他说，‘不，我来。’结果他们成了特别好的朋友。我们就像陪着他们走了那段路。真的，今天我们的嘉宾是 Kareem，Clay 的创始人兼 CEO。Clay 现在势如破竹，他干得很漂亮。他是个很有意思的人，接下来你就知道了。他有点像哲学家式的、僧侣型 CEO，而且他的思路非常跳出框框。我想你会喜欢的。我做了很多功课来准备，但最好的准备是，我有机会跟 Verun——你的市场负责人——聊了聊，他说他聊到了你们打 padel 的事，说你们经常打 padel，而且他说他完全碾压你。

I was like, I'm doing what I think is interesting and I hope that aligns with what makes Clay successful. I'm interested in that, but actually I want to make these people successful. And they felt that genuineness. We did really crazy—you know, Verun, I think he was talking to someone on WhatsApp and the person was having trouble fixing something on Client. He was like, 'I'm coming over to your house right now.' And the guy was like, 'Don't come.' He was like, 'No, I'm coming.' And they became really good friends. And we were just kind of on that journey with them. Truly, everybody—we have Kareem, the founder CEO of Clay, on today. Clay is ripping. He's doing a nice job there. He is a very interesting cat. You're about to find out. He's kind of a philosopher monk-like CEO, and he's coloring way outside the lines. I think you're going to like it. I did a bunch of work to prep, but the best prep was I got a little chance to engage with Verun, your head of go-to-market, and he said he talked about your padel game—that you guys play a lot of padel—and he says he absolutely crushes you.

他输得挺多的。

He loses quite a bit.

他还说，‘你不知疲倦、非常积极，没有人比你更努力。’这是从哪儿来的？

And he said, 'You're relentless and positive and no one tries harder.' Where does that come from?

在继续之前，我想先更正一下记录。

I just want to correct the record before we move on.

我要替他喊一声‘胡说’。

I'm going to call BS on his behalf.

对。我有一段视频，他真的躺在地上，脚踝差点断了，因为他以为球会往一边走，结果球去了另一边。这让他心态崩了。而且——

Yeah. I have a video of him lying on the floor, literally with his ankle almost broken, because he thought the ball was going one way and it went the other. And it just messed with his mind. And—

他说你们会打赌，赌注越来越大，然后你总是说，‘再来一次，再来一次。’

He said you guys wager and the wagers increase, and that you're like, 'Let's go again. Let's go again.'

嗯，我觉得——对，他说的可能是我——尤其是在体育这类事情上，有人赢了我，我会自动变得更兴奋而不是泄气。有时候我跟 Verun 一队打别人，如果我们输了，他就想换队，这让我特别困惑。好。其实——这真的让我很在意，因为当我输了，我会想——你知道，尤其是在一场你只差一两分的比赛里，你几乎能看到球往你这边走。我能看到我们离胜利有多近，下次怎么做到。而他却觉得这样没那么好玩，觉得我们应该换队。

Well, I think—yeah, I think maybe what he's talking about is that I—especially in sports or things like that, when someone beats me, I automatically get charged up rather than charged down. Sometimes I'm playing actually with Verun against someone else, and if we lose, he wants to change teams, which really baffles me. Okay. It actually—that actually really gets to me, because when I lose I'm like—you know, especially in a game where you're losing by just one or two points and you can almost see it going your way. I can see that difference and how close we were and how we can get there next time. Whereas he thinks it's less fun and like we should switch teams.

小 Kareem，这是从哪儿来的？你怎么变得这么好胜？这股劲头是从哪来的？

Where does that come from, little Kareem? Where did you get so competitive? Where does the drive come from?

哇，这问得真深。好，来吧。你真是问到底了。

Wow, that's a deep cut. Yeah, let's go. You really went there.

是啊。

Yeah.

嗯。

Um.

我算是在研究 CEO，我有点像看看他们有什么共同模式。

I'm kind of studying CEOs, and I kind of want to see like what are the patterns?

对，

Yeah,

很多 CEO 都是移民。这是不是某种移民优势？

A lot of CEOs are immigrants. Is it sort of an immigrant edge?

我就说说我思考或分析之后得到的结论吧。听起来有点老生常谈，但我觉得我的童年不太寻常。简单说吧——父母离婚，两位都是很好的父母，只是离婚闹得很大——然后你知道，我在不同国家之间奔波，生活很喧闹，发生了很多事。我的内省结果是：这种野心来自——你知道，如果从一个很简单的东西说，对吧？就像，如果你能做成一件很大的事，那你就会被爱，对吧？实际上，在创建公司的过程中，我逐渐理解、也化解和平静下来的一件事是——我确实跟同事讲过——很多人觉得你应该从匮乏出发去创业，或者说你心里憋着一股劲，你需要证明什么。你当然可以用那种方式做出伟大的东西，但我觉得一路上会造很多伤害。对我来说，我决定从完整出发去创造。所以我想，我不需要什么，我不想证明什么，我已经被自己和他人爱着。所以对我来说，这其实更像一场游戏。这也是为什么我经常说要有趣，或者说怎么享受过程，因为这其实是你的人生。否则，你就活在自己脑袋里的那种噩梦场景里，拼命想证明什么，在世界上做很多事。

I'll tell you kind of like where I've gotten to after thinking about that or analyzing it. It sounds a bit banal, but I think I had an unusual childhood. Let's just say—parents divorced, both really great parents, just big divorce—and you know, traveling across different countries, very loud, lots of things happening. And my introspection is that the ambition comes from—you know, if you want a really simple thing, right? Like, if you can do something really big, then you'll be loved, right? And a big part—actually, while building the company, I feel like I've come to understand but also resolve and calm down—is that one thing that I've actually told people at work is that a lot of people think you should build from a place of lack, or like you have a chip on your shoulder, you need to prove something. And you can definitely build great things that way, but I think you create a lot of damage along the way. And to me, I've decided to create from a place of wholeness. So I'm like, I don't need anything. I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm already loved by myself and others. So to me it's actually more of a game, and that's why I often talk about having fun or how to enjoy the process, because it's actually your life. Otherwise, you're in this nightmare scenario in your head trying to prove something and doing so many things in the world.

你是怎么走出来的？

How did you get over that?

嗯，有很多洞察。听起来像我认识的去霍夫曼（Hoffman）的人。

Um, there are many insights. Sounds like people I know who go to Hoffman.

对。

Yeah.

你去过霍夫曼吗？

Did you go to Hoffman?

没有。

No.

好吧。你听起来像霍夫曼的校友。

Okay. You sound like a Hoffman alum.

对。嗯，我觉得如果你反复去探究，你就会看到——好，你知道，我记得第一次融资，我们融的第一大轮，我开始想象未来会是什么样。比如说，现在公司真的非常成功了，对吧？或者我有了几亿美元。那会是什么感觉？我觉得感觉很空虚。所以我有点意识到，在终点、在成功的那一头，什么都没有。没有我在追逐的某个东西，而实际上就只有当下。就像，我现在感觉如何？为什么我在做——你知道，每一步——如果我并不享受，到了最后你发现整个过程你都没享受，对吧？所以把这个往前推演，我意识到，好吧，如果我决定现在就享受自己呢？而且我也冒了一个险：那可能最终会导致野心消失，或者不再做我原本想做的事，但我愿意冒这个险，因为那对我而言更诚实。我觉得我的最高承诺是现实——这对创业者来说是个有用的承诺。你需要看清生活实际上是什么样的，真正在发生什么。我承诺于这一点，然后我想，不管那条路通向哪里，我都走。关于现实这一点，我多讲一个小点——因为我经常跟人聊，他们会说，‘嘿，我没收到任何反馈。’我会说，‘生活就是反馈。你一直在接收到多得惊人的反馈。我可以帮你调整、帮你理解，但如果一直是我在给你反馈，那不行。你知道，这就是反馈。’我觉得人类要么活在过去，要么活在现在，要么活在未来。创业者往往活在未来，他们会为此焦虑——

Yeah. Well, I think it's just if you investigate that over and over again and you see—okay, you know, I remember raising funding the first time—the first large round of funding that we raised—and I started to imagine what that would look like in the future. Well, let's say now the company is really successful, right? Or I have hundreds of millions of dollars. How does it feel? And I think it felt empty. So I kind of realized that at the end there's nothing at the end of success. There's nothing on that other side that I'm chasing, and that it actually is just right now. Like how do I feel right now? Why am I doing—you know, every step of the way—if I wasn't enjoying it, at the end you get to the end and you didn't enjoy it, right? And so playing that forward, I realized, okay, what if I decide to enjoy myself right now? And I also took the risk of saying that may end up leading to the ambition disappearing or not doing whatever I wanted to, but I was willing to take that risk because it felt more honest to me. I think my top commitment is to reality, which I think is a helpful commitment if you're an entrepreneur. You need to see what life is actually like and what is actually happening. And I committed to that, and I was like, I'll go wherever that path goes. Just a small note actually on the reality thing—because I often talk to people and they're like, 'Hey, I'm not getting any feedback.' And I'm like, 'Life is feedback. You're constantly getting an unbelievable amount of feedback. I can help you tweak it, understand it, but if I'm the one who's giving you feedback all the time, it's not going to work. You know, this is the feedback.' I feel like humans either live in the past, live in the present, live in the future. Founders tend to live in the future and they're anxious about it—

对吧？

right?

我觉得大多数创业者可能都是很焦虑的人。

I think most founders are probably anxious anxious folks.

现在特别焦虑。

Very anxious right now.

嗯，你不是。

Um, you're not.

嗯，我不是。不，至少不是在这种具体层面上的焦虑。我的焦虑更偏向存在层面的。

Um, I'm not. No, I at least not in this particular way. My anxiousness is more existential.

跟我说说这个。

Tell me about that.

嗯，但我会给你讲一个我关于活在未来这个问题的洞察。

Um, but I'll give you an insight that I had about living in the future.

我参加了一个静修营，期间发生了很多疯狂的事，我有了一些大彻大悟。在十天的第七天，我心想：‘真等不及回家把这些觉悟都告诉所有人。’我当时只是在想象那个画面，完全脱离了当下的地方。然后我意识到，每次你在想象未来、活在未来，其实只是在加速消耗自己在这里的时间，加速奔向死亡。所以对我来说，这有点像弗洛伊德说的死亡本能——你总是想象着一个不存在于此、未来才会发生的事情，而你永远活在那里。

I was on a silent retreat, and crazy things happened, and I had these big realizations. On day seven out of ten, I was like, 'Oh, I can't wait to go back home and tell everybody about all these things that I realized.' And I was just imagining it, completely letting go of the place that I was at. Then I realized every time you're picturing the future or living in the future, you're just accelerating your own time that you've got here, and you're accelerating towards death. So to me, that kind of feels like the Freudian death wish, where you're just imagining something that is not here, that is going to happen in the future, and you're always there.

然后我瞬间有了一种切身的体验。

And then I instantly had this felt experience.

这是非常佛教的想法。

It's a very Buddhist thought.

这确实是非常佛教的想法。让自己平静下来。

It is a very Buddhist thought. Be calm with yourself.

我敢打赌，除了你，没有哪个 CEO 会这样。

I bet no CEOs are like that except for you.

我确实这么觉得。有意思的是——

I actually think so. The funny thing is—

杰克·多尔西可能算一个。

Jack Dorsey probably.

是啊，很多 CEO 都会在不同时刻产生这些想法，只是要看他们什么时候想到而已。顺便说一句，有些人是在卖掉公司之后才想到，或者你懂的，很多明星运动员、奥运选手，在退役之后回头才认识到这一点。但我确实觉得，很多人其实都有某种形式的这种念头。这并不意味着你……而是意味着你对野心、对未来的思考有清晰的头脑。但我当时体验到的，是一种真正活在当下的切身感受，然后对无聊充满感激。我当时想：‘哇，我好感激能感到无聊，因为我就在这里。’然后我试着把这种状态带在身边。我觉得它确实能让你做出更好的决定，不那么仓促，不那么困惑于事情的本质。

Yeah, there are a lot of CEOs that come to these thoughts at different moments. It just depends when they come to it. By the way, sometimes people come to it after they sell their company, or you know, you have a lot of star athletes, Olympic athletes, who, after they're done, come back and recognize this. But I do think a lot of people actually have some form of these thoughts. It doesn't mean you—it means you have clarity of mind for the ambition, for the future thinking. But what I experienced then was a felt experience of what it's like to actually be there, and then being really grateful for the boredom, where I'm like, 'Oh, wow, I'm so grateful to be bored because I'm here.' And then I try to carry that with me. I think it actually leads you to make better decisions that are less rushed, less confused about the nature of what's happening.

你会重新进入这种状态吗？你冥想吗？你每天都练习吗？

Do you dip back into this? Do you meditate? You have a practice every day?

不会。这就是有意思的地方。以前事情更难的时候，我确实每天都会练习。

No. So that's the interesting thing. I used to have a practice every day when things were more challenging.

我们待会儿再聊这个。

We'll get into that.

是啊。我发现我会进进出出这种状态，但你知道，我想到的一些念头是——最终的目标其实是把它融入你的日常生活。所以所谓的练习，就是在你本该焦虑、或者事情出错的时候想起它。于是我会想：‘好，我现在就在练习。’而真正让我喜欢这些传统的一点是，它们最后会说：‘这里有所有这些工具。’然后最后又说：‘放下这些工具。没有道路。你懂吗，我没有办法教你这样或那样。你必须通过生活本身去体会。’

Yeah. I find that I come in and out of it, but, you know, again, some of the thoughts that I've come to are like—the end goal of that is to really merge it into your day-to-day life. And so the practice is remembering it when you should be anxious or when something is going wrong. So I'm like, 'Okay, I'm practicing it right now.' And the goal—what I really like about some of these traditions is that at the end they're like, 'Here are all these tools.' And then at the end they're like, 'Drop the tools. There is no path. You know, I can't teach you one way or another. You just have to see what it's like by living.'

我见过你几次，但我当时在红杉资本团队。我跟你说说我的反应。

I've met with you a few times, but I was on the Sequoia team. I'll tell you my reaction.

好啊，请讲。

Yeah, please.

我当时是不看好的。对。我心想，卡里姆没有动力，他太懒散了，他没有什么好胜心。红杉的阿尔弗雷德·林到现在还为这个笑我。显然我当初搞错了。你觉得是不是有很多人会这样误读你？你的故事，正好和我心目中成功科技创始人的刻板印象完全相反。

I was negative on it. Yeah. And I was like, Kareem's not motivated. He's too laidback. He doesn't have a chip on his shoulder. And Alfred Lin at Sequoia gives me crap for this still. I had obviously had it wrong. Do you think a lot of people read you wrong that way? You had a narrative that just flies in the face of the narrative I had about what a successful tech founder looks like.

我觉得我是故意的。我就直说吧。这倒不是为了让别人反感，或者硬要把想法塞到别人脸上。但第一，这可能就是我的天性，有点反主流。比如我发现当所有人都在做同一件事时，这件事就不再吸引我了。我可能更像独立音乐人，而不是流行歌手。但另外——有一段时间我也担心过这个问题。我会想，我是不是只是在试图制造关注？但当我遇到一些我真的和别人的看法一致的情况时，我也能坦然接受。所以我向自己证明了，这不仅仅是一种人设。

I think I'm doing it on purpose. I mean, I'll just say it. It's—I, but it's not to rub people the wrong way or to push it in their face. But one, it's probably just my nature is a little bit contrarian. Like I find when everybody's doing one thing, it stops being appealing. I'm like an indie person probably versus a pop person. But also—and I was worried about that for a while. I'm just like, am I just trying to—is that just a way of generating being noticed? But when I've been in situations where I felt kind of aligned with what people were saying, I've actually been okay with it. So I've proven to myself that it's not just a bit.

但多少还是有点人设吧。

There's a little bit of a bit though.

确实有一点。就像，任何事都不是非此即彼。确实有一点人设。当我太享受其中时，我会尽量提醒自己，把它拉回来。但确实有一部分我乐在其中。我觉得关于如何做事情的主流叙事——第一，并不能真正吸引我。我不认为那是唯一的道路。我还觉得它制造了很多不被看见的伤害。然后就会想：这对世界而言真的更好吗？这是……

There for sure. Like, nothing is one thing or another. There's a little bit of a bit. I try to catch myself when I'm enjoying it too much and rein it back in. But there's a little bit of a part that has fun with it. I think that the dominant narrative around how to build things—one, doesn't really appeal to me. I don't think it's the only way. I also think it creates a lot of damage that isn't being seen around. And it's just like, is this actually better for the world? Is this...

你所说的‘伤害’是什么意思？你已经提了两次了。

What do you mean by that, the damage? You brought that up twice.

基本上就是，比如有人觉得唯一的创业方式就是 996，诸如此类，对吧。然后这对那些只看到这种说法的人会有什么影响？那些根本不知道什么有效什么无效的新人，只会去模仿别人说的东西。而且顺便说一句，你确实需要非常努力，事实上我也一直在极其努力地工作，持续了很长时间。我只是更看重持续稳定，而我发现那更有用。我还发现，你需要讲一个真正忠于自己处境和需求的故事。有时候你确实需要 996，但对我来说，那是因为你还没有护城河，或者你需要做出某种非凡的事情，才需要你和你身边所有人付出那样的牺牲。但很多时候这只是表演性的。那对这种处境中的人会有什么影响？他们强迫员工做什么？然后又传递给下一代创业者，影响他们如何做事。我们刚才在看一个案例研究，这些都是比较粗糙、不加修饰的想法。但你看一个企业，比如说你看苹果……

Like basically take something like, hey, the only way to build is 996, blah blah blah, right. And it's like what does that do to people who only see that? And new people who have no idea what works and what doesn't are just copying whatever other people are saying. And by the way, you need to work extremely hard, and in fact I've been working extremely hard for extremely long. And I just value consistency, for example, and what I found is more useful. And I found that you need to tell a story that is actually honest to where you're at and what you need to do. And sometimes you do need to work 996, but to me that was like, well, maybe you don't have a moat, or maybe you need to do something so extraordinary, right, that it requires that sacrifice from you and everybody around you. But a lot of the times it's just performative. And what does it do to the people that are in this situation, right? And what they force their employees to do, and then what they pass on to the next generation of founders and how they build. We were just looking at this case study, and these are kind of like rough, unfiltered thoughts, but when you look at a business, let's say you look at Apple...

其实我觉得你来到波士顿很有意思，因为你在哈佛商学院参加麦肯锡的两天深度研讨，主题是……

I actually think it's interesting you're here in Boston because you're at Harvard Business School for McKinsey two-day deep dive for...

对，没错。

Right, yeah.

关于 Scaling（规模扩张）公司的。我觉得有意思的是，你从日程里抽出了两天来做这件事。

Scaling companies. I think it's interesting you took two days out of your schedule to do that.

是啊，我也觉得挺有意思的。

Yeah, I thought that was interesting too.

为什么？感觉你手头也应该有不少事在忙。

Why? It's like you don't have a lot going on.

瓦伦把所有事都管了。他非常棒，是啊，干脆让他当 CEO 好了。大家注意，我几年前和瓦伦在斯坦福也参加过一次。一开始我们非常怀疑，但结果对我们来说非常有启发性，主要就是两个人一起花时间。偶尔，第一，我碰碰运气；第二，我发现当我一个人待着、接收信息的时候，我会有很多想法。所以这主要是为了我自己。

Varun's doing everything. He's amazing, yeah. Let's make him CEO. Um, everyone. So, I did one at Stanford a couple of years ago with Varun, and initially we were super skeptical, but it was super generative actually for us, mainly just taking the time together. And occasionally, one, I roll the dice, but two, I find that when I'm in a space alone and being fed information, then I get a lot of ideas. So it's mainly for me.

而且尤其是，我独自待在一个小房间里，你知道的，没有干扰。我觉得现在是关键时刻，需要想清楚，尤其是你的价值主张是什么。你真正在做的是什么？

And it especially... I'm in a little room alone, you know, there's no distractions. I think it's an important time right now to think clearly, especially about what is your value prop. Like, what are you really doing?

我觉得有趣的是，很多时候你以为自己在做的事情，实际上并不是你真正在做的，也不是客户看重的。比如以 Duolingo 为例。对吧？它真的在教你学一门语言吗？我没见过多少人是通过 Duolingo 彻底学会一门语言的。它是不是更像一个寓教于乐的游戏？或者它可能是一种激励工具，让你记起你确实想学这个东西？又或者它能帮你缓解焦虑。我见过很多人只是需要通过做这个来让自己平静下来。但如果你公司认为自己真的在教语言，那你做出的选择，就会和把它当成一个让你对学习新东西燃起兴趣的基础工具时不一样。总之，我觉得你应该非常清楚，你的公司实际上在做什么，与你希望它做什么、或认为它应该做什么，以及你的客户真正从它身上获得的价值是什么，这三者必须对齐。

I think it's kind of funny to me that a lot of times what you think you're doing is not actually what you're doing or what customers value. Like, for example, take Duolingo. Right? Is it really teaching you how to learn a language? I don't know many people that have fully learned the language from Duolingo. Or is it kind of like an edutainment game? Or is it maybe a motivational thing that helps you remember that you want to learn this? Or maybe it helps you stop being anxious. I've seen a lot of people just needing to do it to calm themselves down. But if your company thinks that they're really teaching a language, then you would make certain choices that are different than if you think it is a tool to get you excited about learning some new material at a basic level. Anyway, I think you should be really clear about what your company actually is doing versus what you want it to do or think that it should do versus what your customers actually are getting value from. And those things need to align.

我待会儿会回到你说的这些哲学理念——你对我来说有点像一位 CEO 僧侣。但为了让观众有些背景：你走过了一段不寻常的旅程。人们称之为七年磨一剑的一夜成名。你像在沙漠里徘徊了很长很长时间，然后找到了产品市场契合点，然后真的爆发了。有很多创始人正在经历那段沙漠期。姑且称之：你花了五年。

I'm going to come back to some of this, your philosophies—and you're kind of like a CEO monk to me. But just to give the audience some context: you've had an unusual journey. People call it a seven-year overnight success. You kind of wandered through the desert for a long, long time, and then you found product-market fit, and it really ripped. There are a lot of founders who are going through that desert. Let's call it: you did it for five years.

是啊。

Yeah.

那段日子是什么样的？你为什么没有放弃？

What was that like? Why didn't you give up?

嗯，你之前听我说过：我这个人不会放弃。但是——

Well, you heard earlier: I'm incapable of giving up. But—

我确实听你说过，但你之前也卖掉过公司。

I did, but you've sold businesses before.

对。嗯，我想——我是说，没错，但我那时……那只是我的第一次尝试。我觉得我明白了那是一次错误。不想再那样做了。

Yeah. Well, I thought—I mean, that's right, but I was much... that was just like my first attempt. And I think I learned that one was a mistake. Wouldn't want to do that.

好吧。

Okay.

第二，我觉得你需要对某件事持续投入，才能真正……你知道，嗯，你不该一直重复同样的事情。那通常意味着门就在你旁边。但我其实在公司里也遇到过这个问题，就是当你做一件事一两年后，突然觉得无聊了，或者觉得自己已经掌握了，又或者你会想‘我该去另一家公司去领导这件事’，但你其实正处于即将进入真正有趣阶段的关口。

And number two, I think you need to keep going at something to really... you know, well, you shouldn't keep repeating the same things. That's usually the door is right next to you. Um, but I have this issue actually even with people at the company where you know you're doing something for a year or two, suddenly it gets boring, for example, or you think you've mastered it, or you're like, 'I should go to this other company and lead this thing,' but you're just at the cusp of actually getting to the point where it gets interesting.

或者你并没有。

Or you're not.

或者你并没有。但这两者之间的区别非常难判断。是的。你往往需要努力熬过去。难点在于你觉得自己开始厌倦，或者你觉得，因为你会给自己很多……我实际上把这称为——这又说到你的僧侣理念了——魔鬼是会变形的，你知道吗？就好像有个东西在你耳边低语：‘嘿，其实是你的董事会，或者这件事和你的利益不一致，或者你应该做这个做那个。’这些都是拖延的不同方式，都是在逃避面对困难。所以第一：你需要给它足够的时间，让自己确定——这真的……

Or you're not. But the difference between those two things is very hard to tell. Yeah. And you need to often push through that. The hard part is the part where you think you're getting bored, or you think, you know, because you give yourself a lot of... I actually called it like—this feeds into your monk idea—but like the devil is a shape shifter, you know? So it's kind of like the thing that's whispering in your ear like, 'Hey, it's actually your board, or this thing isn't aligned with your interests, or you should do this or that.' Those are all different ways of procrastinating and not facing the hard thing. So one: you need to give it enough time to tell yourself for sure—was it actually...

五年是很长的时间。

Five years is a long time.

哦对。所以，嗯，回到那五年——不是说——我觉得那五年其实是我们一起的历程。那是一场精神之旅。我喜欢你称之为漫长而奇特的旅程。一段漫长而奇特的旅程。

Oh yeah. So, well, back to the five years—not that—there was—I think the five years was a combination, really, of us. It was a spiritual journey. I like that you call it the long, strange trip. A long, strange trip.

你确实有过一段非常漫长而奇特的旅程。

You've had a very long, strange trip.

是的。这确实是一段漫长而奇特的旅程，但对我来说，它实际上主要是围绕决定和承诺去建设什么。我们有很多真正的好点子。我们每种都做了一点，其中很多后来都变成了公司，我和这些公司的创始人成了朋友，我们对它们的分析也都是正确的。我们会说：‘事情会这样发展。它会停在这一点，因为这样的原因。’但后来你会进入一种状态，你会想，好吧，尤其是做风投的时候，你会想，我能做的最大的一件事是什么？我能做的最有影响力的一件事是什么？我觉得如果你的野心真的很大，这就是你可能掉进去的一个陷阱——我和我的联合创始人当时就想，不，我们要做我们能做的最大的一件事。于是我们不断改变方向，想着，如果我们指向这里，那会更大。与此同时，市场也在发生变化，技术也在变化。所以我们总在说：‘哦，现在我们可以做这个更大的事了。’到某个时刻，我意识到：‘这其实不重要。我不是非要去做最大的事。我只需要做眼前当下能做的事，然后无论结果如何都全力以赴。’所以你看，是的，确实花了五年，但其实里面有两年我们在建设，两年我们有点迷茫，然后我们做了决定，重建了一些东西，并承诺下来，紧接着我们就开始看到结果。只是其他人过了一段时间才听说而已。但一旦我们承诺了，事情几乎就立刻成了。我把一切想成：你一路前行，会经历一个低谷，然后你会从另一边走出来，对吧？

Yes. It is a very long, strange trip, but for me it was actually mostly around deciding and committing to what we're building. We had a lot of really good ideas. We did a little bit of each, and a lot of them have actually become companies, and I'm friends with the people whose companies they've become, and all of our analysis of them was correct. We're like, 'This is what's going to happen. It'll stop at this point because of this.' But then you get into a place where you're like, okay, what's—especially with venture capital—you're like, what's the biggest thing that I can do? What is the most impactful thing that I can do? And I think if your ambition is really big, this is one of the pitfalls that you can fall into, where my co-founder and I were like, no, we're trying to do the biggest thing that we can do. And so we would keep changing it to be like, well, if we pointed here, it would be even bigger. Meanwhile, stuff is happening in the market, so technology is changing. So we keep being like, 'Oh, now we could do this even bigger thing.' And at some point, I was like, 'It doesn't actually matter. I'm not trying to do the biggest thing. I'm just going to do what is available right now in front of me and commit regardless of where that goes.' And so, you know, yes, it's five years, but really there was like two years of us building, two years of us kind of being confused, and then we kind of decided and rebuilt a few things and committed, and then we started seeing kind of the results immediately. It just took some time for everybody else to hear about it. But once we committed, it almost worked instantaneously. I kind of think of everything as like you're going along, you're making a—it's a dip—and then you come out the other side, right?

但有时候不是低谷。有时候就是一路往下走，对吧？你有没有怀疑过它可能会一直往下走？而且你身边的人有没有说过：‘你在干什么？你很有才华，你可以做很多别的事情。’

But sometimes not a dip. Sometimes it just keeps going, right? Did you have doubts that it might keep going? And did people around you say, like, 'What are you doing? You're really talented. You could be doing any number of things.'

呃，是的，当然有过巨大的怀疑。我觉得人们确实——是的，会有人这么说。但是，你知道，我想说，人们通常，尤其是像我、还有我的联合创始人 Nikolai，他们都认为我们算是他们里比较聪明的朋友，对吧？并且觉得我们应该能做任何想做的事。所以当我们陷入那个循环时，也很痛苦，因为我们想，嘿，我们知道我们本该能做到。其他人也都这么告诉我们。事实上，我们有很多信号：我们融到了钱，我们和客户交流时他们都很佩服，那真正的问题到底是什么？为什么就是不行？那需要大量的自我反省。但我也觉得，在某个时刻，我们找到了问题所在，那就是关于承诺和决定去做某件事。我在别的地方也说过，我觉得我意识到，好吧，在创建公司的过程中，有很多事情人们不会说出来，他们只会说‘这很难’。

Uh, yeah, tremendous doubt, for sure. I think people were—yes, people would say that. But, you know, I would say that people typically, especially like me and my co-founder Nikolai, were like—they thought we were some of their smarter friends, right? And felt like we should be able to do whatever we want. And so when we were in that loop, it was also painful because we're like, hey, we know that we should be able to do this. Everybody else is telling us that. And in fact, we have a lot of signals: we raised money, we have—when we talk to customers they're really impressed—so what is the actual problem? Like, why isn't it working? And that took a lot of introspection. But I also think that at some point, I feel like we identified what the issue is around commitment and deciding to do something. And I've said it in other places like, I think I realized, okay, there's a lot of stuff that people don't talk about in building a company; they just say it's hard.

但真正难的是什么？在这种情况里，难的其实是让那些被视为某种人、或者被认为很聪明的人，有勇气说：‘嘿，我们就选这个。我不在乎它听起来多傻。我不在乎公开失败了会不会丢脸。我也不在乎你怎么看。’事实上，当我决定投入的时候，我就不听任何人的了。我心想，我不听你的。我也不听我客户的——顺便说一句，客户对他们想要什么往往是错的。因为如果你在一个想法还很小的阶段去听错误的人，你会扼杀它。

But what is actually hard? Like in this case, what was hard was having the courage—for people that are perceived to be a certain way or smart or whatever—to be like, 'Hey, we're just going to pick this thing. I don't care how silly it sounds. I don't care about the shame if it fails publicly. I don't care actually what you think about it.' In fact, when I decided to commit, I stopped listening to everybody. I was like, I'm not listening to you. I'm not listening to my customers, by the way, who are wrong about what they want. Because if you listen to the wrong people at the time when it's like a small idea, you kill it.

头七年我们根本不听客户的。我自己就是客户。我们完全屏蔽掉他们想要的东西。我们做的是我想要的，然后我们把它翻转过来，变成了一家精华液公司，现在我们非常以客户为中心。

We didn't listen to customers for the first seven years. I was the customer. We just blocked out what they wanted. We built what I wanted, and then we flipped it and it became a serum company, and we're very customer-centric now.

我觉得公司的创始人总是在说只要聚焦客户。

I think companies' founders are always talking about just focusing on the customer.

我认为在创业早期，很多时候这不对。嗯，我觉得就像——因为谁都能做到。

I don't think that's right a lot of the time in the early days of a startup. Well, I think it's like—because everyone can do that.

是啊。嗯，我跟你说说我对这个的看法。这就像——你知道，就像计算机科学里的爬山算法，对吧？你得选对山，然后听客户就是在做微调。是的。

Yeah. Well, let me tell you what I think about this. It's like—you know, it's like hill climbing in computer science, right? You need to pick the right hill, and then listening to customers is kind of fine-tuning it. Yeah.

但我也觉得，人们之所以这么常谈听客户——我猜是因为随着公司变大，你会有自己内部的一些动态。它是一个提醒：嘿，重点不是——你知道，我跟大家说，重点不是 Kareem 想要什么，因为我不想你们听我的。我想你们做对的事，对吧？所以我告诉你的东西，只是我认为正确做法的一个代理。但如果我让你去做一个功能，而那个功能是错的，你也觉得它是错的，而且你知道什么才是对的功能，那么我要的是 Clay 成功。我不想你照着 Kareem 说的做。所以你要知道，人们必须被提醒：你不能拿‘Kareem 跟我说过 X’当作做某件事的理由，除非只有极少数时候，我会 100% 告诉你，这就是我需要你做的。

But also, I think the reason people talk about listening to customers so much—my sense is as the company grows, you start to have your own kind of dynamics. And it's a reminder: hey, it's not about what—you know, I tell people it's not about what Kareem wants, because I don't want you to listen to me. I want you to do the right thing. Right? So what I'm telling you is a proxy for what I think is the right thing. But if I tell you to build a feature, and it's the wrong feature, and you think it's the wrong feature, and you know what the right feature is, then what I want is Clay to succeed. I don't want you to do what Kareem says. So you know, people had to be reminded: you can't use 'Kareem told me X' as an argument to do something, unless there are only very few times where I will tell you 100% this is what I need you to do.

好。我去听过一次 Elon 的演讲，他做了一件事：他画了好多向量，大小不一，指向也不同。他说：‘我公司背后的魔法，就是我把这些该死的向量对齐，对吧？用我能找到的最强的几个，当它们完美对齐时，一切就嗡嗡作响。’在你的世界里，你怎么让这些该死的向量对齐？还是说你并没有那么在意这件事？

Okay. I went to a presentation that Elon gave once, and he did this thing where he drew all these vectors up, and they were all different sizes and they were pointing in different directions. He's like, 'The magic behind my companies is I just get the darn vectors aligned, right? Have the strongest ones I can, and when they're perfectly aligned, things hum.' How in your world do you get the darn vectors to align? Or you don't care that much about it?

不，我觉得这总体上是正确的想法，但我认为建公司有很多很多不同的方式，对吧？而且这取决于你在做什么，以及你对那件事有多大的信念，对吧？所以在很多公司里，有时候会有一个总计划：这就是我们要到的地方，这是第一步，把空白填上，对吧？然后我们在这里对齐。嗯，我觉得很多时候你是在建造的过程中发现东西的。所以对我来说，我觉得有两种不同的时期。有一个时期我们并不完全清楚发生了什么，离问题最近的人可能更有感觉。然后当你从他们那里听到——对我来说，我会说我的超能力之一是，当你告诉我一件我认为是铁一般真相的事，我听见了，它就留住了，你知道。

No, I think that is generally the right sentiment, but I think there are many, many different ways to build a company, right? And it depends on what it is that you're building and the conviction that you have in that, right? So sometimes in a lot of these companies there's like a master plan, and it's like here's where we're getting to, here's step one, fill in the blanks, right? And then we're aligned here. Um, I think a lot of times you discover things as you're building. So for me, I think there are two different time periods. There's a period where we don't know exactly what's going on, and the people closest to the problem might have more of a sense. And then when you hear it from them—for me, I would say one of my superpowers is when you tell me something that I think is capital-T Truth, I hear it and it sticks, you know.

它很响亮。

It's loud.

是的，它很响亮。然后当我把它复述给别人，他们会记住。我们就在那里了。所以一旦发生这种情况，我们就把所有东西朝那个方向对齐，而且我们超级清晰。所以会有那种完全对齐的时期，每个人都往同一个方向推。这是唯一的目标。而在另一些时期，你需要一些松弛。你需要给人们做选择的空间。而且你需要知道自己处在哪个时期。

Yeah, it's loud. And then when I repeat it to other people, they remember it. We're there. So once that happens, then we align everything towards that, and we're super clear. So there are periods of like total alignment, everybody's pushing in the same direction. This is the singular goal. And there are other periods where you need some slack. You need some ability for people to make choices. And you need to know which one you're in.

好，让我在这个问题上停一下。Verun 讲到过你如何在灰色情境、模糊和不确定性中运作得很好，而且你也很看重员工的这种能力。我发现的是，当 HubSpot 内部非常灰的时候，事情就慢下来了，对吧？然后人们会说：‘你需要把雾拨开。’他们真的这么跟我说。我就会说：‘好吧，我们必须……有四个决定要做。’或者通常有一个大决定需要我们做。比如：‘Brian，你得做关键决定了，这样我们才能打破所有僵局，继续前进。’所以我也是有一点——我会说，我让它变灰，但老兄，黑白分明真的帮我们往前走了。

Okay, let me just stick on this for a second. Verun talked about how you operate very well in gray situations, ambiguity, uncertainty, and you value that in employees. What I found is when things were very gray inside of HubSpot, things slowed down, right? And people would say, 'You need to clear the fog.' They literally say that to me. And I'd be like, 'Okay, we have to—there's four decisions that need to be made.' Or typically there's one big decision we need to make. Like, 'Brian, you need to make damn decisions so we can break all these ties and move.' So I was a little bit more—I was like, I let it get gray, but man, the black and white really helped us move.

我其实同意你。嗯，我非常看重细微差别——我觉得他想说的就是这个。所以，你知道，有时候有一个决定，你知道该做什么决定，但你没有去做，你需要勇气去做。或者你信息不够。或者有时候不做决定才是正确的决定。

I actually agree with you. Um, I really value nuance—that's what I think he's trying to say. And so, you know, sometimes there's a decision, and you know the decision but you're not making it, and you need the courage to make it. Or you don't have enough information. Or sometimes not making a decision is the correct decision.

但更重要的是你自己的清晰度。如果你知道该怎么选，却只是在回避，或者那真的是个很难的决定，你不想做艰难的取舍。是的，艰难的取舍。你不想做，对吧？

But it's more about the clarity of you. If you know what that is and you're just avoiding it, or maybe it's a really hard call and you don't want to make tough trade-offs. Yes, tough trade-offs. You don't want to do it, right?

所以，我觉得如果你知道这一点，那你需要清晰，并且你需要让它实现。这有点像我跟大家说的——我们都在创造，我们都爱创业公司。它们在做新东西，然后当它变成大公司，我们又讨厌大公司。但它变成大公司的方式，就是通过这条——你知道，某种程度上是通往清晰的路。生成阶段是混乱的。所以我会说，我能承受那种混乱，而且——

So, I think if you know that, then you need clarity and you need to make it happen. This is kind of like what I tell people around this is we all create, we all love startups. They're doing new things, and then as it becomes a big company, now we hate the big company. But the way it becomes a big company is through this—you know, somewhat of a path of clarity. The generative phase is messy. So I'd say that I am capable of holding that mess and—

两个矛盾的想法在你脑子里。

Two contradictory ideas in your head.

而且不是每个人都能做到。我会请人们去这样做，他们做一小段时间，然后就会说：‘我不想再这样了。’

And not everyone can. I would ask people to do it, and they'd do it for a little while and be like, 'I don't want to do that anymore.'

因为这极其痛苦。

Because it's extremely painful.

这会让他们头疼。是的，会让他们头疼。这很难。它需要困难的对话。所以我不认为每个人都能做到，但我确实觉得，你越是信任别人去承担这个，其中一部分人就会珍惜这一点。我记得我自己做员工的时候，我就会珍惜这个。

It hurts their head. Yes, it hurts their head. It's difficult. It requires difficult conversations. So, I don't think everybody can do it, but I do think that the more you trust people with that, some segment of them will value that. And I remember being an employee, and I would have valued that.

是啊。好。回到你的七年——在沙漠里的五年——在你创业的两年里，某个时刻你说你有一个非常广阔的愿景，然后你又说：‘这一个用例会成功的。’

Yeah. Okay. Just going back to your seven years—five years through the desert—in your two years, at some point you said you had a very broad vision, and then you were like, 'This one use case is going to work.'

对。

Yeah.

你选了它：外向销售、市场营销，随便你怎么叫——Go-to-Market 工程师。最后，这件事有没有反过来伤害你？你本来有个又大又宽的平台型产品，然后我们真的开始收窄。

And you picked it: outbound sales, marketing, whatever you want to call it—go-to-market engineer. Eventually, did that kind of hurt you, that you had this big, broad, platform-y thing and then, like, we're going to really narrow?

对，这非常非常难。我想说——好吧，我说两件事。第一，你知道，有趣的是你对我有这种印象，或者说，以前人们也这样看我。我过去的朋友确实觉得我极其好斗、非常强势，现在人们根本想象不到那一点。

Yeah, that was very, very difficult. And I'd say—well, I'll say two things. One is that, you know, it's interesting that you perceive me as this—or, like, people perceived me as this before. My friends actually in the past perceived me as extremely aggressive, really intense, and people can't even imagine that right now.

我觉得你很强势。

I find you intense.

这一点我仍然是，但它是被收拢的、有方向的，而且希望更像是——你知道，一种在必要时才打开的东西。但说到选方向：我想说，其实是我的联合创始人 Nikolai 发现了这个细分市场和用例，而我当时觉得很难下决心投入。我觉得他也是，因为我会想，这和我们想给更多人编程能力有什么关系？这种想法仍然延续到现在：我们把它叫做 Go-to-Market 工程，以及所有功能都以那种独特的方式构建，给你最大的功能和灵活性。但我们一直在摇摆：一边是“最大功能和灵活性”，一边是“嘿，它应该开箱即用，简单”。到了某个时刻，我们就说，好吧，就定下来吧。

Which I still am, but it's like contained, and directed, and hopefully more—you know, something that I'd like to open up when necessary. But on the point of picking: I would say that it was actually my co-founder Nikolai who identified this segment and use case, and I was finding it very challenging to commit to this. And I think he was too, because I'm like, how is this related to—you know, we wanted to give the power of programming to more people? And that still lives on in the fact that we called it go-to-market engineering, and in the idiosyncratic way in which all the features are built to give you that maximum power and flexibility. But we would yo-yo between kind of "maximum power and flexibility" and "hey, it should just work out of the box—simplicity." And at some point we're like, okay, let's just commit.

强大与灵活。

Power and flexibility.

我们就押注强大与灵活，而这恰恰与所有人认为可行的方向相反，也和客户说的相反。比如说，你看，所有人都抄了这个瀑布式数据补充的概念，对吧？但你知道吗？你问客户，他们会说：“听着，我只想知道一家公司有多少人。我不在乎你从哪拿到的。我只想挥一挥魔杖就搞定。”而我的论点一直是：一旦技术做到那一步，我们就会那么做。但眼下，最好的技术是把所有东西整合起来，给你透明度，并加速这个过程。那才是真正解决问题的办法。你可以说“我想一小时从纽约到伦敦”，但我做不到。那退而求其次是什么？

And to the power and flexibility, which was the exact opposite of what everybody believed would work and what customers said. Like, I'll give you—people, everybody has copied this waterfall enrichment concept, right? But you know what? If you talk to customers, they're like, "Listen, I just want the number of people that work at a company. I don't care where you're getting it from. I just want to wave a magic wand and do that." And my argument has been: once the technology is there for that, we will do that. But at the moment, the best technology is to put everything together, give you transparency, and speed up that process. That's what actually solves the problem. You can say like, "I want to go from New York to London in one hour," but I can't do that for you. So what's the next best thing?

对，我们两家公司之间有一些共同点。很早期的时候，我们就说我们要开创一个叫 MM 营销的品类，结果真的成功了。你用 Go-to-Market 工程师做了同样的事，看起来也很有效。

Yeah, we have a couple things in common between the companies. Very early on, we said we're going to create this category called MM marketing. It really worked. You've done the same thing with go-to-market engineer. It appears to be really working.

是啊。

Yeah.

所有人都来问我怎么创造品类，这背后其实有点魔法。

Everybody and their brother asked me how to create a category, and there's a little bit of magic in it.

没错。

Right.

你能讲讲你是怎么做的吗？怎么决定这个名字，怎么推广它？给那些想这么做的创始人一些建议。

Can you talk about how you did it—the decision on the name, how you propagated it? Advice for so many founders who want to do this.

你知道，关于这种事最常见的建议是“别这么做”，对吧？确实非常难，事实如此。我觉得你不一定能创造一个品类。你能做的是把一件正在发生的事命名出来。

You know, the common advice about this is "don't do it," right? And it's very challenging, which it is. I think you can't necessarily create a category. You can take something that is happening and name it.

我们就是这么做的。

That's what we did.

对。然后给它——比如，画一个圈。就比如“来，给它一些模糊的边界”，这很重要。然后让一件已经在发生的事自然生长。它有点像一股浪潮，你说，好，我要给这股浪潮命名。我要赋予它可信度。但对我们来说，我们的做法是：第一，我们开始注意到，在最前沿的组织里——也就是那些会采用我们的组织——人们用 GTM 而不是销售这个词。于是我们决定用它。然后我们想，那他们在做什么？我们以前有个词叫“客户工程师”，它有点像前场部署工程师。然后我们想，如果……其实，我觉得最好的品类就是把两个词粘在一起。因为我觉得语言是在演化的。想象一下，如果你有一个 Roomba，在发明吸尘器之前你会叫它什么？那会非常难命名。

Right. And then give it—like, put a circle around it. Be like here, give it some fuzzy boundaries, which is important. And then allow something that's already happening. It's kind of like a wave, and you're like, okay, I'm going to name this wave. I'm going to give it credibility. But for us, the way we did it was: one, we started noticing people use the term GTM instead of sales in the most forward-looking organizations—and the ones that would adopt us. So we decided to use that. And then we were like, well, what are they doing there? We used to have like a term called "customer engineer"—it's kind of like forward-deployed engineer. And we're like, what if—actually, the best categories, I think, are like two words stuck together, right? Because I think language is evolving. Imagine if you had like a Roomba—what would you call it before you invented the vacuum? You know, it would be really hard to name it.

对。这个名字是谁想出来的？当你们想到它时，你们是觉得“我们要围绕它创造一个品类”，还是它只是自然而然地发生了？

Yeah. Who came up with the name? And when you came up with it, were you like, "We're going to create a category around it," or did it just sort of start happening?

不是。所以 Verun 和我当时在聊，我们应该怎么称呼我们自己那些帮助客户找到……的人。然后我说，就叫他们 Go-to-Market 工程师吧。而不是像现在这样，他们可能会叫前场部署工程师。

No. So Verun and I were chatting about what we should call our own people who are helping customers find... And then I was like, let's just call them go-to-market engineers. As opposed to—they might have called it forward-deployed engineer.

对。

Yeah.

或者客户工程师。但我们想让它成为我们独有的东西。而且说实话，这要归功于我们的早期投资人 Mike Rol。我和他见面时，他总是说“我们应该拥有一个头衔”。我就想，我们怎么才能做到呢？然后我们在讨论这个的时候，就觉得，好，就是 Go-to-Market 工程师，把我们的团队叫 Go-to-Market 工程师吧，因为他们是在帮你系统地思考你的上市策略。

Or customer engineer. But we wanted it to be unique to our thing. And actually, credit to Mike Rol, one of our early investors. I would meet with him, and he'd be like, "We should own a title." And I was like, "Well, how are we going to do that?" And so when we were talking about this, we're like, okay, it's go-to-market engineer. Let's call our own team go-to-market engineers, because they're helping you think about your go-to-market in a systematic way.

所以基本上，我觉得它需要与你产品的核心假设联系起来。比如你想想 Clay，顺便说，大多数决定都很明显。所以这里清晰度很重要。我想人们听到我说“你应该活在模糊之中”这种话时会很困惑。确实有些事情需要非常清晰，而活在模糊之中能让你某天达到清晰。所以对我们来说，一些非常重要的决定是：我们要面向技术型用户，我们称他们为 Go-to-Market 工程师，我们要做最强大、最灵活的，我们不拥有数据，我们要做一个数据市场，而且我们要按使用量收费，而不是按席位。

So basically, I think it needs to connect to some of the core assumptions about your product. So if you think about Clay, by the way, most of the decisions are obvious. So this is where the clarity is important. I think people get really confused when they hear me say you should live in ambiguity, all that stuff. There are certain things that need to be super clear, and living in the ambiguity allows you to one day get to the clarity. So for us, some of the decisions that we made that are super important: we are going to be for a technical user. We're going to call them the go-to-market engineer. We're going to be the most powerful and the most flexible. We're not going to own the data. We're going to be a data marketplace, and we're going to charge in usage and not seats.

清楚。

Clear.

这些决定目前没有变，也从来没变过。而且实际上，如果你去看产品，所有决定都非常清晰。如果你回到那个准则，我们会问：它更强大吗？它更灵活吗？优先于简单。我们的原则之一是强大与灵活优先于简单。不是因为我们不想要简单，而是当两者冲突时，我们给你强大，因为用户是技术型用户。而且我们也能用特定的方式销售它。顺便说，对我来说，做成 PLG 非常重要。这也是为什么花了这么久，因为这是一个很难做到易用的产品，而 PLG 通常不契合。

Right now those decisions do not change and have not changed. And actually, if you look at the product, all the decisions are super clear. If you go back to that, we're like, hey, does it make it more powerful? Does it make it more flexible? Over simplicity. One of our things is power and flexibility over simplicity. Not because we don't want it to be simple, but when they conflict, we give you power, because it's a technical user. Now we can also sell it to you in a particular way. And it was super important for me for it to be PLG, by the way. That's another reason why it took so long, because this is a very difficult product to make usable, and PLG typically don't fit.

对。

Right.

或者说，不是易用，而是强大。

Or not hard to use, but powerful.

强大。对。

Powerful. Yeah.

所以它需要一种用户，能拿起来就自己折腾。然后按使用量收费的模式意味着——我很喜欢很久以前读到的东西，关于黑格尔的正题、反题，然后是合题。所以这有点像一种历史理论。

And so it needed to be a type of customer who can pick it up and hack around with it. And then the usage-based model meant—I really like this thing that I read a long time ago, around Hegel's idea of thesis and antithesis and then synthesis. So that's how it's like a theory of history.

然后还有一位哲学家，费尔巴哈，他也在讲。他基本上把整个论点反转了过来。你知道，黑格尔的说法是我们正走向上帝或绝对精神，而费尔巴哈说，其实我们已经就是那个完满的存在了，所谓上帝的概念只不过是我们把自己内心的缺失之类的东西投射出去罢了。

And then there was this philosopher, Feuerbach, who was also talking. He kind of flipped his whole thesis around. You know, Hegel's thing is that we're going toward God or the Absolute, and Feuerbach was like, actually, we're already the complete thing, and the idea of God is like our own projection of our own misgivings and things like that.

等等，这跟市场推广有什么关系？

Wait, what's this got to do with go to marketing?

那我把它拉回来。不过你看——欢迎来到我的脑内世界。好吧，我喜欢。所以对我来说有意思的点——这更多是一个我觉得挺有意思的事实——是：把一个东西彻底倒过来，是创新的好方法，然后顺着这个思路推到它自然的结论。所以你知道，在哲学里你会去研究这两个理论家，看他们的思想，但这里是同样的道理。比如，如果把每个人都告诉我的事情倒过来——大家都说做市场推广就应该卖给销售，而且必须超级简单、按席位来——把所有这些东西反转，你就有了一个新产品。那么，它是不是比上一代产品更好？你还需要围绕这个有一个论点，我们有。但我认为这就是我当时采取的思路，它让我们后面所有的决定都变得容易了。

So let me bring it back for you. But this—welcome to my mind. Okay, I like it. So to me the interesting thing—this is more of a fact that I think is interesting—is that taking something and flipping it on its head is a great technique for innovation, and then taking that thing to its natural conclusion. So you know, in philosophy you would study these two theorists and look at their ideas, but it's the same thing here. Like, what if we took—everybody told me that if you're in go-to-market, you should sell to salespeople, and it needs to be super simple and seat-based. Flip everything around, you have a new product. Now, is this a better product than the old generation of products? You have to have a thesis around that as well, which we do. But I think that's kind of the approach I took at the time, and it helped us make all of the other decisions later easy.

就这么掉出来了？好——那这个名字是怎么传播开来的？

Fell out of it? Yes—the name, how did it propagate?

所以你们把自己的团队叫作 GTM 工程师？

So you called your folks GTM engineers?

对。所以 go-to-market 工程师——这非常细微也非常棘手，对吧？因为如果你往外走——我觉得你们做的是另一种方式，你们就是走出去，到处讲。我们也做过很类似的事情，比如那时候有 SEO、博客这些，我们管那叫入站营销。而且顺便说，这里面有个好处的关键在于有一个敌人。没人喜欢出站营销，而且出站营销是一个已有的词，入站营销不是。

Yeah. So the go-to-market engineers—that's very subtle and very tricky, right? Because if you go out—I think you guys did a different thing, where you were like, we're going to go out and talk about this. And we did something very similar, like there was SEO and blogging and all that stuff, and we said that's inbound marketing. And by the way, what was good about it was there was an enemy. No one liked outbound marketing, and outbound marketing was a word. Inbound wasn't.

对。

Right.

但我们就一直使劲推，我们写了书，写了文章，还办了大会。

But we just flogged it—we wrote a book, we wrote articles, we did a conference.

所以我们采取了完全相反的做法。而且，是的，就是说——我是说，有些人甚至都不知道这是我们提出来的，对吧？

So we took the exact opposite approach. And again, yeah, which is like—I mean, some people don't even know that we came up with this, right?

这有点像你需要把它想成是同心圆，它会逐渐扩散。所以我们去找那些已经在做这事的代理商，跟他们讲我们自己的团队叫 go-to-market 工程师。他们就开始采用这个词，因为这听起来很酷，还会出现在他们的领英上。然后我们基本上给他们提供了所有信息、所有能让他们更成功、看起来更专业的东西，因为他们需要业务。所以这里有一个大——

It's kind of like you need to think of concentric circles that it's going to evolve. So we talked to agencies who are already doing this work, and we started talking about how our own team is called go-to-market engineers. They started adopting it because it was a cool term and it showed up on their LinkedIn. And then we basically empowered them with all the information, all the things to make them more successful and look good, and because they needed business. So here's a big—

这跟我们一样，我们也培训他们，给他们所需要的一切，让他们能开一个入站营销代理公司。对。

This is the same as us—we educated and gave them everything they needed to create an inbound marketing agency. Yes.

正是如此。唯一的不同是，我们尽量不去居功，也不介入这个话题，我们让对话开放。这可能是那种模糊性的一部分。所以我们不会说‘go-to-market 工程师就是这样的’，而是让市场自己演进，而且它实际上在不断扩大，正如它应该的那样。你知道，如果你在用 Claude，你就是 go-to-market 工程师。Go-to-market 工程——我之所以认为它成为一个品类，是因为它是一种看待世界的视角，不是一项技术。它就像是：你如何运营你的 go-to-market 团队，在其中搭建工具、测试假设，而 AI 让这一切都容易得多，因为代码很便宜，对吧？所以先是代理商，但你需要——再说一次，你显然知道这个——因为代理商需要业务，所以他们会——如果你直接面向公司，没人愿意告诉你他们是怎么增长的。事实上，你知道，我们 Clay 内部新的口号是‘go-to-market 基础设施，让你以竞争对手无法复制的方式增长。’这就是全部的重点。就像，你怎么做一件事，让别人没法抄袭，对吧？

Exactly. And the only part is that we try not to take credit for it or be involved in the conversation, and we leave the conversation open. And this may be part of the ambiguity thing. So we're not like, here's what a go-to-market engineer is. We're letting the market evolve, and it's actually broadening as it should. You know, if you're using Claude, you're a go-to-market engineer. Go-to-market engineering, and why I think the category is a category, is that it's a point of view on the world. It's not a technology. It's like, how do you run your go-to-market team where you build tools, where you test hypotheses, and then with AI it makes all of that much, much easier, since code is cheap, right? So first the agencies, but you needed—and again, obviously you know this—because agencies need the work, so they're going to be—if you were targeting companies, no one wants to tell you how they grew. In fact, you know, our new internal tagline for Clay is 'go-to-market infrastructure to grow in ways your competitors can't.' That's the whole point of it. It's like, how do you do something that no one can copy, right?

事实证明，人都是跟风的。

Turns out people are followers,

对吧？但问题是，这就是为什么你需要建立一个能快速更新的系统，因为别人抄袭你的路径会很快。而且你需要足够了解自己的业务，才能提出下一个假设，或者 AI 需要足够了解你的业务。

Right? But the thing is, that's why you need to build a system that you can update quickly, because the path to people copying you is going to be fast. And you need to understand your business well enough to come up with the next hypothesis, or AI needs to understand your business well enough.

好。所以你们起了一个聪明的名字，对吧？你们这么叫自己人，然后开始向代理商们推广。他们喜欢这个名字，开始使用它，然后就这么慢慢传开了。你们就是这么做的吗？

Okay. So you come up with a clever name, right? You called your people that, you started educating the agencies on it. They like the name, and they started using it, and it just sort of slowly spread. Is that kind of how you did it?

我会说它在某些领域传播得很快，然后我们在周围加了一些支撑——比如我们发了几篇文章，但我们尽量留在幕后。

I would say it quickly spread in certain areas, and then we provided some scaffolding around it—like we published a couple of articles, but we tried to stay in the background of this.

嗯。

Yeah.

嗯——我们没有——当时我们在跟内容营销竞争。

Um—we did not—we were competing with content marketing at the time.

对。

Yeah.

所以我们当时很激进。我们不想丢掉那个——这是有道理的。嗯。

And so we were aggressive with it. We didn't want to lose that—that makes sense. Yeah.

嗯。我觉得最主要的是，我们想出了一个——我不知道你们是把它当作一个头衔还是一个品类。我们把它当作一个头衔，而且我知道总有一天它会成为一个品类。

Yeah. Um, I think the main thing is that we came up with a—I don't know if you guys thought about it as a title or a category. We thought about it as a title, and I knew that one day it would be the category.

我们当时不是那么想的。我们把它想成一种新的做法，一种新的营销方式。

We didn't think of it that way. We thought of it as like a new way to go, a new way to market,

对吧？所以，所以那个——你们的更像一个头衔。这不一样。

Right? So, so that—yours was more a title. It was different.

对。所以我们把它当作一个头衔，我们希望人们这样自称。所以我们专注于这一点。然后的想法是，我们赢得称它为品类的权利。而且，我觉得在这些事情里，时机真的很重要。这就是叙事。如果你太早开始讲故事，事实上，人们会抵触你。所以你需要挑一个有很多人已经投入进来的时刻。你知道，我们有自己的社区轮。所以有这样一群我们已经证明了的人。而且顺便说，我们还做了另一件非常重要的事——我们在地球上 80 多个地方搞了 Clay 俱乐部。

Yeah. So we thought about it as a title, and we wanted the people to call themselves that. So we were focused on that. And then the idea was that we earn the right to call it a category. And by the way, I think time really matters in all these things. It's the storytelling. So if you go too early and start telling the story, in fact, people push back against you. So you need to pick the moment where there are so many people who are invested in this. You know, we had our own community round. So there are people who we've proven. And by the way, we have organic—the other thing that we did that's super important, by the way, is we have Clay clubs in over like 80 places in the world.

我们也玩过这些同样的游戏。它们有效。这些东西有效。就是要帮他们。

We played these same games. They worked. These things worked. Just help them.

嗯，但围绕这件事的关键是，现在人们真的从中赚了很多钱，也对他们有帮助。

Um, but the key thing around that is like now that people have actually made a lot of money from it and that it's helpful to them,

你称它为品类，而且重要的是品类比你大。我觉得这是在最后一环，非常清晰，而且还在持续演化。对。你们和 HubSpot 另一个共同点是，整个代理模式就是种子。我们一开始是做直销的。

You call it the category, and it's important that the category is bigger than you. That's I think the last piece that's super clear and continues to evolve. Right. Another thing you have in common with HubSpot is the whole agency thing was the seed. We started as direct.

是的。

Yes.

而且我是第一个销售。坦白说，我们做得挺不错的。然后我们有一个销售代表，叫 Pete Capuda。

And I was the first salesman. And we were quite good at it, actually. And then we had this one sales rep named Pete Capuda.

然后——

And—

好名字。

Great name.

是啊。

Yeah.

他和我都收到了很多代理机构的合作意向。我记得大概两三年后，我心里想：这产品还没准备好交给别人去卖，还不够成熟。意思是，先别联系他们。但我们也有像周末这样的时间，或者下班后，你可以做任何想做的事，有点像谷歌的 20% 时间。然后有一个周末，他开始给这些代理机构打电话。你看那一堆数字的直方图，通常是个钟形曲线，但他下个月收入直接变成 4 倍。我当时想：Pete 是对的。然后我们就开始搭建一整个计划，几乎像一个独立公司，专门去连接和服务这些人。

And he and we had a lot of agencies interested. And I remember it was like two, three years in; I was like, 'The product's not ready for someone else to sell it. It's not mature enough. It's like, don't call on them.' But we also had, like, a weekend where you could do anything you wanted, on the weekends or after hours. It's kind of like Google's 20% time. And one weekend, he started calling on them. And you can just look at the histogram of the numbers—it's typically a bell curve—but he was like 4x the next month in revenue. I was like, I guess Pete was right. And then we started building a whole program, almost like a separate company, to engage with these people and take care of them.

嗯，这是怎么发生的？对于想再搭一条渠道的人，你有什么建议？很多人跑来跟我说想开第二条渠道，但非常难。

Yeah. How did that happen? And advice for people who want to create an alternate? So many people come to me wanting to create a second channel, and it's very hard.

是的，非常难。我的意思是，我们……你知道，我不敢说我们完全找到了解法，但我觉得……我想说 Verun 也占了很大一部分。我们和很多代理机构的老板在 WhatsApp 群里。我觉得大家可能不想听的答案是：没有现成打法。我们只是坦诚、真实。使命是怎么帮公司成长，我们说：不管怎样我们都会帮你成长。回到我之前的一些做事方式——我并没有在经营什么，也许你读到的理解是对的——我不是那种‘我要让 Clay 成功’的人。我是‘我在做我觉得有意思的事，我希望这件事和 Clay 成功的方向一致’。我对此感兴趣。但说到底，我想让这些人成功，他们也感受到了那份真诚。我们还做了很多疯狂的事。你知道，Verun 在 WhatsApp 上跟一个人聊天，那个人在 Clay 上有个问题搞不定，Verun 就说：‘我现在就去你家。’那人说：‘别来。’他说：‘不，我就来。’后来他们成了很好的朋友。所以我们就和很多人建立了真诚、真实的友谊，有些人辞掉工作去开 Clay 代理公司。对，我们真的就是在他们身边，陪着走这一段。

Yeah, it's very hard. I mean, we... you know, I don't know that we've fully cracked that, but I think that... I would say a big part of this was Verun as well. Like, we were in WhatsApp groups with people who own agencies. I feel like the answer that people don't really want to know is that there's no playbook. We were being honest and genuinely authentic. The mission is, how do we help companies grow, and we're like, we're going to help you grow no matter what. Back to some of my pieces around how I was operating: I was not operating—and maybe you were reading this correctly—I'm not like, 'I am trying to make Clay successful.' I was like, 'I'm doing what I think is interesting, and I hope that is aligned with what makes Clay successful.' I'm interested in that. But actually, I want to make these people successful, and they felt that genuineness. And we did really crazy stuff. You know, Verun—I think he was talking to someone on WhatsApp, and the person was having trouble fixing something on Clay. He was like, 'I'm coming over to your house right now.' The guy was like, 'Don't come.' He was like, 'No, I'm coming.' And they became really good friends. So we built genuine, authentic friendships with a lot of the people, and some people left their jobs to start Clay agencies. Yeah, and we were just kind of on that journey with them, truly.

嗯。

Yeah.

我觉得如果我们脑子里想的只是：嘿，我们要创造这个品类，我们需要他们做 X、Y、Z 这些事情——顺便说一句，人很会读人，他们能看出你的意图。就像风险投资人，对吧？他们的头号本事就是读出你的意图。所以如果你去那边假装自信，那是行不通的。你需要真正相信自己手握独门秘方。

I think if in our heads we were thinking, hey, we're trying to create this category, and we need them to do X, Y, and Z. People are very good people readers, by the way, and they can read your intention. Um, similar to VCs, right? That's their top thing: they can read your intention. So if you're going to go there and fake confidence, that's not going to work. You need to truly believe that you have the magic sauce.

另一件大家都来问我的是定价。你们宣布了调价，因此挨了不少骂，而你的回应方式很有意思。所有 CEO 好像都会经历被市场当面打一拳的时刻，你刚才也算是挨了一拳。其实我本人对定价本身没多在意。讲讲那次反弹吧，说说你做了什么，以及你背后的理念。

Another thing that everyone's coming to me asking about is pricing, and you guys announced a pricing change. You caught a bunch of heat for it, and you responded in an interesting way. All CEOs seem to go through like getting punched in the face by the market, and you just kind of got punched. I don't actually care that much about the pricing. Talk about the backlash to it and talk about what you did and your philosophy around it.

我会说反弹其实很小——至少在我们感知里很小。对吧？我们对这些事做了一堆分析，比如情绪分析，结果大概是 70% 中性，有一些负面的人。而且我觉得所有特别负面或特别大声的人都多多少少有自己的利益。你知道，他们手里握着某些东西，这件事不成才对他们有利。我们也没看到那种负面情绪体现在数据里。所以这是我知道的另一个方式。但我们的处理方式……

I would say the backlash is minimal—or at least we perceive it to be minimal. Right? I think we did a bunch of analysis, like sentiment analysis, on some of these things, and we found it was like 70% neutral, with some negative people. And I think all the people who were quite negative or loud about it had some self-interest. So, you know, they owned something where it would benefit them for this not to work. We haven't seen that negativity show up in the numbers, so that's another way in which I know. But the way that we dealt with it...

我觉得那才是最有意思的部分。

I think that's the interesting part.

对。而且你看，我不知道，法拉利那款新电动车型也遭遇了巨大反弹。顺便说一句，我读到过他们出 SUV 的时候也有很大反弹——他们不叫 SUV，叫 FUV 或什么的——但现在已经全部售罄。

Yeah. And you know, I don't know—there's like a huge backlash against Ferrari's new electric thing. And by the way, I was reading there was a huge backlash when they had their SUV, which they don't call an SUV. It's an FUV or whatever, but now it's completely sold out.

好吧。

Okay.

嗯，总之回到我们的调价。能帮我们扛住这类事情的东西，第一是我们在思考上的信念，对吧？所以我们想：嘿，我们把积分、积分成本、数据，以及一切我们提供价值的东西捆绑起来。当时我们已经足够大，也觉得我们足够有名，可以把它拆成两个维度，然后让每一笔支出都清清楚楚，同时还更便宜。

Um, so anyway, back to our pricing change. The things that help us withstand something like that is, one, what is our conviction in our thinking, right? So we're like, hey, we bundled credits, credit costs, data, and whatever we provide value on. And we were big enough at this point—and thought that we were well known enough—that we can break it up into two axes, and then make it so that it's clear where you're paying for what, and also make it cheaper.

把算力和数据分开。

Splitting compute and splitting the data.

对，完全没错。所以现在我们有了算力和数据，我们相信客户足够成熟，最终会理解这一点，也会明白这真的对他们有利。我们算过，然后觉得：短期来看这对你们更便宜，长期来看我们大家都能赚更多钱，对吧？但另一件事是，我们在文档里绝对透明——不可能更透明了。它几乎逐字就是我们内部会议里的原话。这在我们做事方式里很常见，但我觉得对外人来说可能会显得不寻常、让人意外。

Right. Exactly. Got it. And so now that we have compute and data, we trusted the sophistication of our customers to eventually understand that, and also understand that it's truly in their benefit. Like, we calculated it, and we're like, this will be cheaper for you in the short term, and in the long term we should all make more money, right? But the other thing is that we were absolutely transparent in our document—it couldn't be more transparent. It literally was word for word what we were saying internally in our meetings. And that's a common thing for us in the way that we operate, and I think maybe unusual and surprising to people.

是啊，这会让对方放下戒备。

Yeah. It disarms them.

对。这又回到这里——

Yeah. And it goes back to this—

等于信任。它甚至不是相关，而是就是等于信任。

Equals trust. It's not even correlated with it—it's like equals it.

它等于信任。要做到这一点，你需要对的渠道，你需要和对的人对话。否则，透明反而可能伤害你。但我觉得那种细微之处就在这里——要相信细微差别。即使每个人都想让你用短平快的方式说话，我们也会说：“嘿，我们会把全部工作展示出来，哪怕它很长。”然后自然会有其他人真正去读、去消化。

It equals trust. And in order to do that, you need the right channel. You need to be talking to the right people. Otherwise, the transparency could actually be damaging to you. But I think that's like where the nuance is—believing in nuance. And even though everybody wants you to speak in bite-sized pieces, we're like, 'Hey, we're going to actually show all of our work even though it's long.' And then other people will actually read it and digest it.

嗯，我觉得你处理得非常好。我想把话题转到你作为 CEO 的日常。你的一天是怎么过的？

Yeah. I thought that was very well handled. I want to kind of shift to you as CEO. What's your day like?

嗯，我对此有两个说法。第一，我是个势头侦探，对吧？所以我就是到处逛公司，我很喜欢这样。对，我发现势头一旦失去就很难再拿回来。所以任何时候你看到公司某个板块开始失去势头，那就是你该聚焦的地方，因为有时候你只需要给它上点油，它就会继续跑起来。

Um, I have like two terms for it. One is I'm a momentum detective, right? And so I just go around the company, and I love this. Yeah, I find momentum is so hard to get if you lose it. And so anytime you see an area of the company losing momentum, that's where your focus should be, because sometimes you just need to grease it and then it keeps going.

哦，所以你并不是去势头正热的地方插手，而是在它开始减弱的时候介入。

Oh. So you don't hop on where the momentum's hot, you hop on when it's starting to wane.

是的。嗯，其实是两者都有，对吧？你需要知道哪些地方很热，但那些地方往往不需要你。

Yes. So, well, it's both, right? You want to know the places where it's hot, but often those places don't need you.

作为 CEO，你能做的独特的事情是什么，对吧？

What is the unique thing that you can do as a CEO, right?

我给你举几个例子，比如我做过的一些事情，它们创造了势头，也有些地方我把势头保持住了。比方说 go-to-market 工程，对吧？把这个做对，然后让 Mishi 和 Verun 写了那篇文章，把这件事确定下来，告诉大家‘这就是我们在做的事’，然后全力推下去。后来我们想出了‘go-to-market alpha’这个概念。我跟一个朋友聊，我们就说：‘嘿，就用这个词。’然后我回来又跟几个人聊了聊，他们也有共鸣，我们就说：‘就是它了。’现在我们所有的……都这么用。你知道，一开始大家的反应是：‘Alpha？听起来好极客哦。’

I'll give you a couple of examples of things that, for example, I've done that created momentum, and then places where I've kept the momentum going. But you know, the go-to-market engineering, right? Getting that right, and then having Mishi and Verun write that article, and getting that and putting 'this is what we're doing' and pushing through with it. And then we came up with this concept of 'go-to-market alpha.' I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were like, 'Hey, this is the term.' Then I went back and talked to a couple of people, it resonated with them, and we were like, 'This is it.' Now we use this in all of our... And you know, people initially were like, 'Alpha? That sounds really nerdy.'

客户本来就是极客嘛。

The customers are nerdy.

对，但——或者说他们觉得太金融化了？而我会说，搞金融的人一看就懂，你不用解释。我一说这个词，大家就‘哦对，你要有某种竞争优势’。所以它是一个更好的说法。我们还有好几件这样的事——偶尔就会有一个想法能带动势头。我再举一个例子。我们需要一个功能，我们叫它‘audiences’（受众），它让你能在产品里建立一家公司或一个人的概念，从而把关于它的信号聚合起来。它背后有一个 CRM 做支撑。我们不是要做一个 CRM，只是用它做底层。但要推动这件事在公司里落地，是特别难的。大家会说：‘那我们的表格怎么办？’我们就是不希望它受表格限制，没有行数限制，没有单元格大小限制——我们移除掉了许多限制。所以我得换个方式来激励大家。它一开始没什么进展，这也挺有意思。后来我换了个说法：‘我们需要信号。’我们已经有数据了，我们需要的是随时间变化的数据，所以我们来构建信号。大家接受了这个说法。然后我们开始卖信号，我们击败了那些只卖跳槽者信号的公司。接着团队自己意识到了：‘那如果你有五个信号，你要把它们聚合到哪里？’这就需要‘audiences’这个概念——就是我们之前说的那个。所以我觉得这又回到了讲故事本身——我其实早就该讲这个故事。引导团队，让他们自己相信、让他们有势头，这跟直接下命令说‘你要做这个功能’是完全两回事。所以我觉得作为 CEO，你会意识到自己有时候会远远走在所有人前面，因为你从太多地方获取信息。不是因为你更聪明还是怎样，而是你的视野更大，而且你整天想的都是这些。你有一种随着时间积累出来的直觉，因为我在各个地方犯过很多很多错，但我做这件事也做了很久了。

Right, but—or it's too fin? And I'm like, people will get it from finance—you don't even need to know. As soon as I say it, people are like, 'Oh yeah, you need to have some competitive advantage.' But it's a better word for it. So we have a couple of these things where, every once in a while, there's one idea that generates momentum. I'll give you another idea. We needed a feature that we call 'audiences,' which allows you to have a concept of a company or a person in the product so that you can aggregate signals on it. And it's backed by a CRM. We're not building a CRM—it's backed by that. But getting that going in the company was incredibly challenging. People were like, 'What about our tables?' Well, we don't want this to have table limits, no row limits, no cell size limit—we just remove a lot of the limits. So I had to motivate it in a different way. It wasn't getting traction, which is kind of interesting. But I had to motivate it by saying, 'Okay, we need signals.' We already have data; we need data changing over time. So let's build signals. That was okay, people got that. And then we were selling signals, and we started beating companies that only sold job-changer signals. Then the team themselves realized, 'Well, what if you have five signals? What are you going to aggregate them in?' Well, you need this concept of audiences, which we were talking about before. And that, again, I think is about storytelling—I should have been telling that story before. But leading the team so that they believe themselves and they have the momentum is very different from me being like, 'You need to build this feature.' So one of the things I think you realize as CEO is that you are sometimes way ahead of everybody else because you're getting input from so many places. Not just because you're smarter or whatever, but you're just getting—your purview is larger, and that's all you're thinking about all day. You have an intuition for this that you've built over time because I've made a huge number of mistakes everywhere, but I've also been doing this for so long.

没错。势头侦探，我喜欢这个说法。对吧。顺便说一句，你很擅长起名字。

Yeah. Momentum detective. I love that. Right. You're good at branding, by the way.

好像是吧。

Apparently,

你那些客户啊什么的，都看得出来。你在这方面非常有一套。而且你大概有两种模式。

All your clients, all that stuff. You're very clever at it. You've got kind of two modes.

嗯，有一种是那样。还有一种，其实主要是当人们陷入某种低落状态，我就帮他们走出来。

Yeah, I think there's that one. And then there's really—it really is mainly around people being in some kind of funk, and I remove that.

对其他 CEO，怎么做到这一点，有什么建议吗？

Advice on how to do that for other CEOs?

嗯，其实我的人事负责人告诉我，她是第一次遇到像我这样会道歉的 CEO。我想说，这是一个非常有效的技巧。比如，有个人告诉我，他们有一堆问题，对吧？看起来有好多个问题都像是问题本身。但很多时候，如果你愿意听，道歉并不一定意味着整个组织都错了。也可能是我们没有倾听你，或者我们没有用一种让你感到被尊重的方式对待你。一旦对方的情绪平复下来，我们才能去处理真正的问题。而人们对这一点是非常敏感的。

Um, so actually my head of people told me that I'm the only CEO she's worked with that has apologized. And I would say that's one very helpful technique. Like, someone was telling me, for example, they had a bunch of problems, right? And it was like—there are many problems that seem like they're the problem. But often, if you listen, apologizing doesn't necessarily mean that the whole organization is wrong. It might be that we didn't listen to you, or we didn't treat you in a way that made you feel respected. And once that calms down, we can then deal with the actual problem. And people are very sensitive to that.

从具体操作上说，比如你的一天：你会留很多空白时间用来‘冲浪势头’吗？还是每半小时都排满？

Just very tactically, like your day: do you leave a lot of open time to momentum surf? Are you packed every half hour?

嗯，这是分阶段的。很长一段时间里，我的大部分时间都是排满的——每 30 分钟一个会，每 20 分钟一个，完全是在不停切换上下文。内容有招聘、产品决策、听人说话、解决问题、薪资问题、跟合作伙伴聊，这些……

Um, it goes in phases. So most of my days for a very long time were packed—every 30 minutes, every 20 minutes—and it's complete context switching. So it's recruiting, product decision-making, listening to someone, removing a problem, comp issues, talking to partners, those...

就那些事。

All the things.

没错，就那些事。然后如果我这样持续一段时间——如果连续太多周都这样——我就得停一下，把日程清空，留出大量的空间。我更喜欢我们用即时决策（just-in-time decision-making）来运营公司。所以我们会有一些不太常规的做法，以后会公开，但现在还没有：我们没有高管团队例会，我觉得很多人会觉得奇怪。那怎么保持一致？我们的做法是开放空间：‘随时给我打电话。’然后当场解决。否则大家就会等例会，你知道的。所以我觉得开放空间是我的偏好。而另一种排得满满的方式也有效，只不过那通常意味着人们没有足够的信息去做分布式决策，我必须控制一切才能让事情运转。但那样太累了，你只能撑一段时间——有时候它是必要的，但你最多只能连续几个月那么干。

All the things. And then once I do that for some period of time—typically if that happens too many weeks in a row—I need to stop, delete everything, and leave a ton of space. I prefer—we run the company with just-in-time decision-making. So some unusual things that we do, which we will eventually introduce but not yet, is we don't have an exec team meeting, which I think people find bizarre. 'How do you stay aligned?' All that stuff—we have open space: 'Call me whenever.' And then we resolve it. Otherwise people wait for the meeting, as you know. But yeah, I think the open space is my preference. And the other way, where everything is packed, works but typically means people don't have the information for them to make distributed decisions, and I need to control everything in order to make things work. But it's exhausting, and you can only do it—sometimes it's necessary, but you can only do it for months at a time.

那你的思考时间是从哪来的？或者说，比如我很想深入研究某个东西，给自己做一个智能体。你怎么安排出时间？是放在周末还是……？

And where do you get your think time in? Or like, I want to go really deep on something and build an agent for myself. Like, how do you fit that in? Is that weekends or...?

那基本上只能放在下班后、周末什么的。但我也觉得我比较特别的地方在于，我的思考方式——比如，我会跟朋友出去跳舞，一边跳一边想，还会跟他们聊这些问题。所以我其实喜欢动来动去，或者边做事情边想，或者去徒步——这些都挺有帮助。但还有一点，我有时候觉得——这可能是反直觉的——你直接盯着一个东西反而不一定能看清它，你可能要眯着眼看，因为它信息量太大了。所以我通常是通过别人来获取信息，然后再去消化，最后做出决定。而不是只依赖自己的一手经验——比如，产品和联合创始人最初做了很多，所以我对它记忆犹新。但我现在做决定时，尽量不需要那样：如果别人告诉我某个功能有问题，我可以在脑子里模拟一下，不需要真的去操作。再比如说，摆弄大语言模型这件事，有太多人在做实验，我要尽量吸收这些。一手知识是有限的。

It kind of has to be after work, weekends, etc. But I also—I would say I'm unusual in that my thinking—like, for example, I go out dancing with my friends and I'm thinking, and I'm also talking to them about it. So I tend to like movement actually, and doing things, or being on a hike—those are helpful. But again, sometimes I actually think—this is maybe counterintuitive—but you don't want to look at something directly to see it; you might want to squint at it because it's too much. So I get information through other people and then process that and come up with a decision. Rather than relying on your firsthand experience—like, I built a lot of the initial product with my co-founder, so I remember everything about it. But I try to make decisions now without needing to: if someone tells me there's an issue with a feature, I can simulate it in my head. I don't need to play around with it. And with, let's say, playing around with LLMs—there's so many people experimenting, I try to soak that in. Firsthand knowledge is limited.

你会做一对一会议吗，还是你会说，嗯，你觉得怎么样？你有多少直接下属是需要做一对一会议的？

Do you have one-on-ones, or are you like, yeah, what do you think about that? How many direct reports do you do one-on-ones with?

这些问题都是人们总爱问我的战术性小事。目前我大概有七个直接下属。我一直在控制……我也反复调整过。现在我正试着把大家放进同一个会议里，然后每月做一次一对一。但再说一次，我们头五年就是这么做的。对，回到准时制流程，如果你需要什么，直接来找我是最省事的。但我确实管理过整个工程团队，规模达到六七十人。

So these are just tactical things people ask me all the time. Right now I probably have seven direct reports. I've been limiting... I've gone back and forth. I'm trying to put everybody in the same meeting and have one-on-ones once a month. But again, we did exactly that for our first five years. Yeah. Go back to just-in-time processing. Just if you need something, come to me is the easiest way. But I did manage the whole engineering team up to 60 or 70 people.

我明白了。

I see.

呃，直到去年九月之前都没有工程负责人。

Um, without a head of engineering until last September.

好，那真是不容易。

Okay, that was a lot.

是啊，所以我倾向于通过经理们来管理，但我几乎和所有工程师都保持着直接关系，因为我想保持那种贴近一线的状态。

Yeah. So I tend to just go through the managers, but I had pretty much a direct relationship with almost all the engineers because I wanted to keep that, stay close to it.

我很长时间都不做一对一会议，后来我每周都做一次。我真希望我没那么做过。

I didn't do one-on-ones for the longest time, and then I did one-on-ones every week. I really wish I didn't.

没错，

Yes,

是有点……它们确实很耗神。

It's a little... they can be draining.

非常耗神。那你现在怎么看？

Very draining. Where are you on that?

我觉得那很耗神。我已经取消了常规的一对一。我现在的新一对一是和那些不向我汇报的人，因为对我而言他们是公司的最高优先级。所以我会和销售负责人做一对一，因为我觉得我们需要保持一致，对吧？如果有新项目要展开，我更愿意和那个项目的人做一对一。所以我其实是在我觉得需要的地方做。我和销售负责人做一对一的原因是，我们的销售团队增长得非常快，而我是传递文化的人，我想确保我们保持对齐，而且任何问题都能快速提出并解决。但我不需要那种固定每周的一对一。

I think that it's draining. I've removed one-on-ones. My new one-on-ones are with people that are not reporting to me, where I'm like these are top priorities for the company. So I have a one-on-one with our head of sales because I'm like, we need to stay aligned, right? If there's a thing where we're doing some new project, I'd rather have one-on-ones with that person. So I'm trying to do it actually in places where I feel like... the reason I have it with our head of sales is our sales team is growing so tremendously, and I'm the person who's communicating the culture. I want to make sure we stay aligned, and then any issues can be brought up and dealt with quickly. But I don't need that with standing weekly one-on-ones.

我要把所有那些都删掉。明白了。

I'm deleting all of those. You got it.

我们聊聊信任吧。以前总有人跟我抱怨，说我太信任那少数几个人，太依赖他们的意见。听起来你是那种会从很多地方获取信息的人，但也许不太信任……我的信任圈子很小，大家都对此有意见。

Let's just talk about trust. People used to complain to me that I trusted a handful of people and really overindexed on their input. And sounds like you're a person that gets a lot of input from a lot of places. But then maybe didn't trust... my trust circle was small. People complained about that.

有意思。是啊，类似。

Interesting. Yeah. Similar.

那么，当别人跟你提这事儿时，你做出改变了吗？

So did you change that as people talked to you about it?

我试过，但没有。说实话，没什么用。信任对我来说很难建立。

I tried to. It didn't. Honestly, it didn't really work. Trust is hard to build with me.

嗯，我也有类似的情况。我不是……我肯定有信任问题。

Yeah. I think that I have a similar thing. I'm not... I have trust issues for sure.

对。

Yeah.

但情况不太一样。我的意思是，信任有不同的层级。所以我和少数几个人之间是真正的信任。

But it's like different. I mean, there's different levels of trust. So there's real trust which I have with a handful of people.

我说的就是这个。

That's what I'm talking about.

对，别人对我说的是，我太容易原谅别人了。

Yeah. That's what people have said to me is that I'm too forgiving.

我想说我有一个正在试图改变的点：就是一直原谅、原谅、原谅，然后突然爆发，对吧？因为我一直非常恼火，觉得自己付出太多了。所以我正试着，怎么说呢，给你很多……我现在其实很生气，我很烦……久而久之。

So I'd say I have one kind of thing that I'm trying to change: being forgiving, forgiving, forgiving and then explode, right? Because I've been super annoyed and feel like I've given too much. So I'm trying to, you know, give you tons of... I'm actually angry right now. I'm annoyed... over time.

你会把不合适的人留得太久吗？

Do you hold on to people too long?

呃，绝对会。但有时确实能成。我总听到人们说“从来没成过”。我想说的是，作为一家组织，我们相信你。我们希望它成功，而且我们不断假设对方有最好的意图。有时是因为问题出在人身上，有时是出在环境上，对吧？如果你给错了环境，你就会把人最差的一面逼出来。所以有些情况是，某件事看起来完全不对劲，而我选择听这个人的，做了和大家建议完全相反的事。我给你举个例子，听起来很离谱。对吧？有人做错了事，细节不重要，但我给他们涨了工资。

Uh, definitely. But it has worked out sometimes. I keep hearing people are like, "It's never worked out." I would say that we as an organization, we believe in you. We want it to work out, and we're constantly assuming the best intentions. Sometimes because it's sometimes the person, sometimes the context, right? So you can get the wrong context. You get the worst out of someone. So there have been situations where something seemed completely off, and I listened to this person, did the exact opposite of what everybody... I'll give you an example that would seem absurd. Right? Someone did something wrong. It doesn't matter what the details are, but I gave them an increase in salary.

为什么？

Why?

现在看起来确实很疯狂，因为我……

Right now, that seems crazy because I...

听起来像是一个反常规的 CEO 会做的事。

Seems like something a contrarian CEO.

现在那个人是公司里表现最好的人之一，对吧？原因是我意识到那是……结构性因素阻碍了他们。部分原因也在于，他们的薪酬给得不对。

Now that person is one of the best performing people in the company, right? And the reason is I realized it was out of... structural things held them back. And it was out of, partially, the fact that they were not being paid correctly.

好吧，行。所以你本可以说，“哇，这个人真是……”然后你会说，“哈哈，不该在别人做错事时奖励他。”但实际上，有时候你可以修复。好。我听说……也许每个人都会这样告诉我，公司会放大创始人的特质。你希望公司放大你的哪些特质？又有哪些特质是你希望它别放大的？

Okay, fine. So, but you could have been like, "Wow, this person is really..." and you're just like, "Ha, you shouldn't reward something when someone does the wrong thing." But actually, sometimes you can fix it. Okay. I heard... or maybe everyone told me that a company exaggerates a founder's traits. What traits are you happy it's exaggerating of yours? And what traits are you like, I wish it wouldn't.

对，这个问题问得好。是的，我跟他说过。我觉得它是一幅……

Right. That's good. Yeah, I told him that. I feel like it's a...

顺便说一句，我同意。

I, by the way, I agree.

通常这是让我感到惊讶的地方。我确实觉得人们看起来很开放，喜欢一起工作，而且——至少这是我们不断听到的反馈——人们很快乐。有时他们会……是的，他们会说，公司有一种荒诞感。感觉就像，怎么说呢，像一幅后现代画作。你知道，里面有各种元素，然后每样东西都有它的反题。你只需要意识到它是什么。而且我确实很看重耐心，从五年这件事就能看出来。但我觉得有时候我们对不对的事情太过耐心了。

Usually it's like where I get surprised by people. So I do feel like people seem really open and enjoy working together, and it's very—at least that's the feedback that we constantly hear—that people are having fun. And sometimes they... yeah, they're like, you know, there's an absurdist kind of feeling to the company. It feels like, I don't know, it's like a postmodern painting. You know, there's stuff, and then everything has its counterpoint. You just need to be conscious of what it is. And I do think I really value patience, as can be seen by the five-year thing. And I think sometimes we are too patient with things that are not right.

这不是暂时的下滑，它会一直持续下去。

It's not a dip. It's going to keep going.

对，这样还不够好。而且我觉得我标准很高，同时我又非常宽容。所以我觉得……

Yeah. It's not good enough. And I think I have very high standards and at the same time I'm very forgiving. So I think that...

这从何而来？

Where does that come from?

非常宽容的部分，

The very forgiving part,

高标准，但那是来自妈妈还是爸爸？那是哪来的？

High standards, but is that mom? Is that dad? Where's that?

嗯，我觉得高标准就像品味一样。我的父母标准很高。我的……但宽容这部分……

Yeah, I think the high standards I feel like it's like taste. My parents have high standards. My... but the forgiving part...

嗯，可能确实是这样。我父亲很宽容，但我觉得这又回到了我们为什么要做这件事的问题上——我不确定每个人都会在后来想到这一点。我在工作中与人互动的方式——我一直在想的一件事，我也在公司里讲过：如果你不能原谅同事的某种过失、或他们随口说的一句话、或你们之间那种小小的竞争，那我们在这个世界上到底要怎么真正原谅别人？我们怎么让它运转起来？这就是一个缩影。你个人生活中遇到的每一个问题，工作里很可能也在发生。只不过在工作中我们可以给你反馈，而且在某些方面风险可能更低。所以我们才会提供心理治疗和教练辅导——我们给非管理岗的人也配教练，因为往往就是那些个人贡献者在经历这些事。有时候，人们会因为我在旁边随口说了句话，或有人对他们说了点什么，就走入一种疯狂的情绪循环，然后就一直在脑子里转。我们到底花了多少时间来耗这些，而不是做有意义的工作？所以你可以说：‘嘿，我们是一家要最大化股东价值、要称霸世界、要赚尽可能多钱的公司。’但如果你不去处理人们因为鸡毛蒜皮的事产生的情绪，你很可能是在浪费一大笔钱。而且还在延续——这是我很私人的一个理论——很少有人能走到公司的这个阶段。当你在其中时，你拼命想踩在成功的那条线上，不想去尝试太多疯狂的事。你要专注于产品和你的独特之处。所以你从那些做成过的人那里得到些经验。这有点像我们说的‘沙发智慧’。它不是严肃研究出来的。就是这个人事先做过，于是他们给你建议，你照着做，结果遇到和他们一模一样的问题。所以有时候我们会尝试不同的方法。有人跟我说：‘你应该快招快炒。’那样做会带来一系列特定问题。

Yeah, it probably is. And my dad is very forgiving, but I think it also ties back to why we're doing this, which I don't think everyone is thinking about until later. The way I interact with people at work—one of the things I think about, and I've talked about this at the company, is: if you can't forgive a coworker for some infraction, or something random they said to you, or some small competitive thing going on, how are we going to actually forgive people in the world? How are we going to make this work? This is a microcosm. Everything that happens as a problem in your personal life probably happens at work too. It's just that at work we can give feedback, and the stakes might be lower in some ways. That's why we cover therapy and coaching—we give coaching to people who aren't leaders, because often it's the individual contributors who go through these things. Sometimes people go through crazy emotional cycles because I made some random comment in passing, or someone said something to them, and then it really gets in their head. How much time are we wasting on that versus doing productive work? So on the one hand, you could say, 'We're a company trying to maximize shareholder value, dominate the world, and make as much money as possible.' But you're probably wasting a ton of money by not dealing with people's emotions around very silly things. And also by perpetuating—this is a pet theory of mine—very few people get to this stage of a company. When you're in it, you're trying to stay exactly on the line of success. You don't want to try too many crazy things. You want to focus on your product and what's unique about you. So you get wisdom from other people who've done it. It's kind of like what we call 'couch wisdom.' It's not really studied. It's just that this person did something before, so they give advice, and you follow it—and you get the exact same problems they had. So sometimes we try different things. People tell me, 'Hey, you should hire fast, fire fast.' Well, that has a specific set of problems.

慢招快炒。

Hire slow, fire fast.

对，慢招快炒。

Yeah, hire slow, fire fast.

你并不信这一套。

You don't believe in that.

我——

I—

你显然不信。你刚才自己都说了‘炒’的部分。

You obviously don't. You just said the fire part.

对，对。我也觉得有很多时候我们应该更快做决定，但我就是不相信这些经验法则。因为在某个时刻你会从内心封闭起来，不再去思考实际的情况，只是照着规则走。

Yeah. Yeah. I also think there are a lot of moments where we should make decisions faster on that, but I just don't believe in these rules of thumb. At some point you shut down internally. You stop thinking about the situation. You're just following the rule.

你觉得还有哪些 CEO 的通病很蠢？

What other CEO-isms do you think are stupid?

很多。

A lot.

比如说？

Like?

我觉得拼命压榨员工而不去关心——我举个例子。有人过来说：‘AI 会带来巨大的生产力，我们应该裁掉 20% 的人，’却根本不知道你到底在做什么。这就是为什么普通员工会觉得高管很蠢，对吧？因为他们一起去开会，听说别人这么干了，你就直接照做。而且对团队极度缺乏同理心。我自己有时候也能感觉到这一点。这就像管理中的‘委托-代理问题’——管理层和员工之间——你会想：‘为什么这些人不好好思考？为什么他们不采取行动？为什么他们不承担责任？’其实是因为激励机制没有对齐。

I think driving people really hard without paying attention—let me give you an example. People come in and say, 'AI is going to create a ton of productivity. We should lay off 20% of the team,' without knowing what you're actually doing. That's what makes individual contributors think execs are dumb, right? Because they go to meetings, they hear that some other person did this, and they just go and do it. There's a huge lack of empathy for the team. And I feel it sometimes too. It's like management—you know, the principal-agent problem—management versus workers, where you think, 'Why aren't people thinking correctly? Why aren't they taking action? Why aren't they owning this?' Well, the incentives aren't aligned for that.

总之，我还想——说到工作，这对我来说是个大问题。我对‘有趣’的定义很宽泛。‘第二类乐趣’对我来说也是乐趣，攀岩是乐趣。但我觉得只靠贪婪、恐惧或纪律来激励人，不一定是最优的。你需要整套工具。‘纪律’也可以换个词——

Anyway, I also think—when I think about work, this is a big one for me. My definition of fun is very broad. Type two fun is fun for me. Climbing something is fun. But I think motivating people through just greed, fear, or discipline is not always optimal. You need the whole toolkit. Another word for discipline could be—

恐惧和贪婪这套。那些就是——

The fear and greed thing. Those are the—

顺便说一句，这些都是杠杆。对。

Those are all levers, by the way. Yes.

你怎么看这件事？

How do you think about that?

我相信事物的完整光谱。投入和纪律一样重要。你不能只用其中一些工具，而不理解你需要既激励团队去赢，也创造一个你真正愿意待的地方。

I believe in the full spectrum of things. Devotion is as good as discipline. You can't just use some of these tools without understanding that you need to both motivate your team to win and create a place you actually want to be in.

所以我的观点是，商业中有一种东西——这又是我自己的一个想法——让人觉得你只是想把球传到下一个人手里。就像抢椅子游戏。最好的生意——我在最开始也说过——比如苹果，问题是谁在真正做所有的事情？是富士康。这个漂亮的生意，所有数字都很好看，但那是因为我可以这样挤压供应商。然后我就不用想那个供应商了。这有点像把垃圾扔到别处，然后说：‘那是在中国，或者在那里。’但我现在想的是：‘嘿，我们一起活在这个世界上。如果我赢了但你输了，会怎么样？’我想，你也许可以直接跳下去，也许不会被抓住，也没人会为你担心。但我不想那样做，因为我不想用这种方式跟自己相处。

So my point is that there's something about business—this is again one of my own—that feels like you're trying to take this thing and hand it to someone else. It's like a musical chairs thing. The best businesses—I said this at the beginning—like Apple, it's like, who's actually doing all the stuff? It's Foxconn. Here's this beautiful business with all the numbers going right, but that's because I can squeeze my suppliers in this way. And I don't have to think about that supplier. It's kind of like throwing your rubbish somewhere else and saying, 'That's in China, or that's over there.' But I'm thinking, 'Hey, we live in the world together. What happens if I win but you lose?' I guess you can just jump off, and maybe you won't get caught, and no one will worry about it. But I don't want to do that, because I don't want to live with myself in this way.

好。几周前我采访了杰克·多西。他是个原创的思想者，不是那种典型 CEO。他裁掉了很大一部分员工，但我觉得他真的改造了公司的运作方式。他把 AI 放在中心，把许多决策下放给中心，而人都在外围。他重新思考了组织架构、薪酬方式——他相当于在重新想象这一切。我猜你在关注这件事。你怎么看？

Okay. I had Jack Dorsey on a few weeks ago. He's an original thinker, not central casting for CEOs. He's laid off a big chunk of his employees, but I think he's really retooled the way the company works. He's put AI at the center, delegating a lot of decisions to the center, with the people on the outside. He's rethought his org chart, its compensation—he's sort of reimagining it. I assume you're following some of that. What's your take?

我觉得上市公司也有难处，因为你得问：叙事是什么，现实又是什么？我确实认为有时候你需要改造公司。也许你招了太多人，或者事情在变化。而且总体上，我们没有特别好的方式去说真话，而不会——这又回到了委托-代理问题。你说什么都会被解读：你真是这么说的，还是别有他意？你是不是在掩盖什么？

I think it's hard with public companies too, because you have to ask: what's the narrative versus what's reality? I do think sometimes you do need to retool the company. Maybe you hired too many people, or things are changing. And in general, we don't have really good ways to speak the truth without—again, this is the principal-agent problem. Whatever you say is parsed: 'Is that what you really said, or does it mean something else? Are you covering something up?'

我不觉得他在掩盖什么。

I don't think he was covering it up.

对。所以这就是我的意思。我觉得你可以按表面意思来理解，然后说：‘这其实就是——’

Yeah. So that's what I mean. I think you could take it at face value and say, 'This is actually what—'

我觉得他确实是在做这件事。

I think he's actually doing the thing.

是啊。

Yeah.

而且我觉得那大概是对的。

And I think that's probably right.

那你觉得他走在正确的轨道上吗？

And do you think he's on the right track?

嗯……他有好几层。像是个很疯狂的人。他有一个大团队在努力让他的所有系统变得可读——把所有东西都纳入那个可读的系统中。他的团队成员确实负责让那个系统尽可能可读，然后在上面构建智能体，并且随着时间推移把更多决策权交给那个他称之为“智能”的东西。

Um... he's got two layers. Like, he's a crazy guy. He's got a big team working on trying to make all his systems legible—get everything into that legible system. His people are really responsible for making that system as legible as it can be, then building agents on top of it, and just turning over a lot more of the decision-making over time to what he calls 'the intelligence.'

是啊，这对我来说真的很难评价，因为我还没有深入思考过这个问题。

Yeah, it's a really hard thing for me to comment on just because I haven't actually thought about it deeply enough.

好，接下来还有几个问题，把你拉回到哲人王这个话题。你有一句话：“房间里没有大象，大象在你心里。”我简直不敢相信他对你说了那句话。那么这怎么应用到做 CEO 上呢？

Yeah. Okay. I got a couple more just bringing you back to the philosopher king. You've got a line: 'There's no elephant in the room. The elephant is in your mind.' I can't believe he told you that. How does that apply to being a CEO?

那是我一时脱口而出的话。但如果我没记错的话，我每周都会做一次问答。以前是每周一次，现在是隔周一次，而且是自愿参加，大家来聊任何话题。我觉得我的领导风格或者沟通风格，总体来说就是把你可能在想的事情直接说出来，并且假设你是个聪明人，而不是绕弯子。所以我们通常在这些会上做的就是，把你们可能担心的事全部摆出来。其实每周在我们的全员会上，我会不断和团队里的人聊天，听他们讲公司里发生的事、文化在怎么变化或没变化，然后我努力把这些事提出来，这样我们都能意识到。所以有一件事就是——把它们说出来——对，把它们说出来，比如“嘿，大家觉得我们好像在互相踩脚趾”，我就会说“好，那我们讨论一下。这具体是怎么体现的？我们想要什么？我们想要什么样的行为？”

That was an off-the-cuff comment. But if I remember correctly, I have, you know, like a Q&A every week. It used to be every week, now it's every other week, and it's optional, and people show up and we talk about anything. I think my leadership style or communication style in general is to call the thing out that you might be wondering and assume that you are a smart person, and not kind of dance around it. So typically what we do in these meetings is just be like, here are all the things that you might be worried about. Well, every week actually in our all hands, I talk to people on the team constantly, and I hear various things from them about what's happening in the company, how's the culture changing or not changing, and I try to bring these things up so that we can all be aware of them. You know, so one of the things—calling them out—yeah, calling them out, like 'Hey, people feel like we're stepping on each other's toes,' and I'm like 'Okay, let's discuss that. How does that manifest? What do we want? What behavior do we want?'

所以你是在直接点破房间里的大象。那房间里的大象呢？

So you're calling the elephant in the room out. What about the elephant in the room?

没错。很多时候其实什么都没发生，只是你对问题的预期。或者有时候我们管这叫：你从另一家公司带来的包袱，你在那里经历过一些事，然后你就觉得“嘿，我还不信任你们。”于是你反而制造了问题，因为你看到的是你脑海里的东西，而现实里根本没有发生。所以我会说：“告诉我们到底发生了什么，这样你就不会基于一个根本不真实的、你所感知的现实来工作。”

Right. So a lot of the times nothing is happening and it's just your anticipation of the problem. Or sometimes we call this like you're bringing baggage from another company where something happened to you and then you're like 'Hey, I don't trust you guys yet.' And so you're creating the problem because you're seeing this thing in your head that isn't even happening in reality. So I'm just like, 'Tell us what's actually going on so that you don't work based on some perceived reality that isn't even real.'

等你像我一样老了、头发白了，你想做什么？你接下来想做什么？

What do you want to do when you're old and gray like me? What's next for you?

很难说未来会怎样。但我恰好接受过电气工程师的训练，而且最近我也在更多地玩音乐。所以我想做很多生成式氛围音乐。我已经在做一些类似的事了。好吧，我也不太确定。就是关于创造音景、进入那种境界——你知道，你不能真的……我的意思是，音乐就是要预测下一个声音。但我真的很喜欢这个想法：如果你无法预测它，但它仍然好听，那你就是在拓展你的声音词汇。

It's hard to think about the future. But I happen to be an electrical engineer by training, and I have also been playing more music recently. So I want to be doing a lot of generative ambient music. I've been doing a bunch of stuff like that already. Okay. I don't know. There's something around like creating soundscapes and getting into that place where—you know, you can't really—I mean, music is all about predicting the next sound. But I've really been enjoying this idea that if you can't predict it and it's still good, then you're expanding your sound vocabulary.

嗯。

Yeah.

感谢你来做客。这是一次很棒的对话。祝贺你取得的所有成功。

I appreciate you coming on. It was a wonderful conversation. Congrats on all your success.

谢谢，谢谢。

Thank you. Thank you.

嘿，各位，希望你们喜欢这期和 Kareem 的节目。我真的很享受这次对话。我有很多收获。我给你们讲其中三点，再讲几个我自己的相关故事。呃，两天前我和 Kareem、高盛的 David Solomon 以及 Kshi 的 CEO TK 一起吃了顿饭。我晚餐最大的感受是：“天哪，这三个智人差别也太大了，而且他们的 CEO 打法也完全不同。”这让我想起一句老话，我觉得是：“做你自己，其他人已经有人做了。”我想是王尔德说的。我把这句话留给你们。希望你们能做自己，因为其他人已经有人做了。做 CEO 有很多种方式。我总在找那唯一的方式。事实是做 CEO 成功的路径有很多。嗯，第二点是，他有点像哲学家——他让我想起了一些我一直在思考的东西。人们说，活在过去的人倾向于抑郁，活在未来的人倾向于焦虑，活在当下的人会稍微快乐一点。我自己倾向于活在未来，所以有点焦虑。我记得我焦虑最严重的时候——这可能也正发生在你身上，所以我分享一下。我记得有一次开全员会，大概 100 到 150 名员工，我看着台下，心想：天哪，有这么多人依赖我做出正确的决策。他们要养孩子，要还房贷，很多时候还要照顾父母。实际上我焦虑的增长不是在最初艰难的时候，而是当我们真的在 Scaling（规模扩张）、开始做得很好的时候。总之，如果你也是这样，那就提醒一下自己：活在当下是一个好的状态。嗯，我也在努力这么做。Kareem 真的提醒了我这一点。第三点是，我喜欢他说的“奉献 vs 纪律”。如果没有员工真正的奉献，你很难 Scaling（规模扩张）一家创业公司。你的愿景和故事必须非常有说服力。如果没有，你应该去打磨它。你自己本身也要非常有说服力。你需要激发别人追随你。你要让人愿意为你踩着碎玻璃走过来。还有，你的公司墙上可能挂着一些东西，你知道的，那些口号、你想出来的东西、你的文化准则之类。极其重要的是，你不能只是说说而已，而是要真正做到那些墙上的口号。我就跟你们分享这三点。希望你们喜欢。我真的很喜欢他。下次见。

Hey everybody, I hope you like that episode with Kareem. I really enjoyed the conversation. I have a lot of takeaways. I'm going to give you my three and I'm going to give you a couple stories of my own that tie in. Uh, two nights ago I had dinner with Kareem and David Solomon from Goldman Sachs and TK, the CEO of Kshi. And my takeaway from the dinner was, 'Holy crap, are these three homo sapiens different and holy crap is their CEO playbook different.' And it reminds me of an old quote, you know, I think it goes, 'Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.' I think it was Oscar Wilde who said it. I leave that with you. I hope you can be yourself because everyone else is taken. There's a lot of ways to do this. I'm trying to look for the one way. The truth is there's a lot of ways to be successful as a CEO. Um, the second thing—he's sort of a philosopher—and he reminded me of something I've been working on. And people say, folks who live in the past tend to be depressed, and folks who live in the future tend to be anxious, and folks who live in today tend to be a little bit happier. I myself tend to live in the future and I'm kind of anxious. And I remember when my anxiety peaked—and this may be happening to you, so I relay it. I remember doing a company meeting around 100-150 employees and just looking out and seeing, oh my gosh, there's so many people relying on me to make really good decisions. They're taking care of their kids. They're paying their mortgages. They're taking care of their parents in a lot of cases. It wasn't actually in the tough times at the beginning. It was when we were actually scaling and starting to do pretty well that my anxiety increased. Anyway, if that's you, this is just a reminder. Living in the present is a good place to be. Um, I'm trying to do more of that myself. Kareem gave me a really good reminder of that. The third thing is I like his line, devotion versus discipline. It's really hard to scale a startup without real devotion from your employees. And your vision and your story has to be really compelling. And if it's not, you should work on that. You yourself need to be really compelling. You need to inspire followership. You want people to want to kind of walk across broken glass to work for you. And like your company probably has stuff hanging on the walls, you know, slogans and things you come up with—your culture code stuff. It's incredibly important that you don't just talk to talk, but actually walk the walk on those slogans on the wall. I'll leave you those three. Hope you liked it. I really enjoyed him. See you next time.