从 Spotify 到 Playbit：Rasmus Andersson 谈设计、工程与构建操作系统

坐在我旁边的这位是 Rasmus Andersson，我认为他是一位技术专家、创意人和建造者，同时也是我多年的朋友和同事。Rasmus 和我认识快 20 年了，时间过得真快。

Next to me right here is Rasmus Andersson, who I would consider to be a technologist, creative, and a builder, and also a long-standing friend and colleague. Rasmus and I have known each other for almost 20 years now. It's getting up there.

很久了，我们都老了。

Long time. We're old men.

很久了，我们都老了。我很幸运能和他一起在一系列了不起的公司里共事。现在，想象一下，如果你的简历里有以下任何一项：如果你是 Spotify 的创始设计师，如果你是 GraphQL 的共同创造者之一，如果你是 Figma 的首批设计师之一，如果你是流行字体 Inter 的创造者，那你的 LinkedIn 个人资料将会多么惊人。而 Rasmus 做到了所有这些，甚至更多。我们稍后会深入探讨。此外，我们还会聊聊他的最新创业项目 Playbit。那么，闲话少说，请大家热烈欢迎 Rasmus Andersson。

Long time. We're old guys. And I've been really fortunate to have worked alongside him across a whole suite of amazing companies. Now, imagine if your CV contained any of the following. Imagine if you were the founding designer of Spotify. If you were one of the co-creators of GraphQL. If you were one of the first designers of Figma. If you were the creator of the popular font Inter. That would be an incredible thing to have on your LinkedIn profile. In this case, Rasmus has done all of these things and much more. And we'll get to dive into that. In addition, get to talk to him a little bit about his newest venture called Playbit. And so, without much further ado, please give a warm hand to Rasmus Andersson.

谢谢你，Soleio。也感谢大家来到这里。希望我们能聊些有趣的话题。

Thank you, Soleio. And thank you everyone for showing up here. I hope we can talk about something interesting.

是的，我们稍后会有问答时间，但我想先聊聊“minus one”这个概念。在 South Park Commons 的语境里，“minus one”指的是探索下一步该做什么，而不是急于投入第一个想法，而是真正保持实验性和主动性，去思考一系列问题：我该如何发挥自己？我接下来该做什么？你最近刚创办了一家新公司，我想从 Playbit 的“minus one”阶段开始聊起。在它成为 Playbit 之前，在你脑海中形成清晰愿景之前，你是在什么背景下开始这个新事业的？

Yeah. So, we'll have some time for Q&A, but I want to kick things off with this idea of minus one. So, minus one in South Park Commons parlance is this idea of exploring what's next and not committing to the first idea, but really being really experimental and active in navigating a whole set of questions around how should I apply myself? What should I do next? And you very recently started a new company, and I wanted to start off with the minus one phase for Playbit. Before it was Playbit, before it was a crystallizing vision in your head, what was the context in which you got started on this new venture?

是的，我喜欢这个问题。我和 Soleio 之前聊过“minus one 到 zero”这个普遍概念，它在很多方面都非常迷人。但对于 Playbit，我们正在构建一个操作系统，或者说，我们现在还在做操作系统吗？也许我稍后会谈到这个。对我来说，这一切大概始于六年前。我开始意识到自己对我们使用的工具感到多么不满。我从小就是苹果生态的粉丝，大概从 90 年代我十几岁的时候就开始了。我最早的一份设计师工作，有一张电子表格，我会打印出来贴在墙上，毕竟那是 90 年代。表格上精确记录着我赚了多少钱，以便我能买第一台 Mac，因为它们非常贵。总之，我花了好几年。我是苹果的忠实粉丝，但几年前我觉得，那个曾经深深打动我的公司和那些产品，已经不再打动我了。这就是促使我去探索内心那个东西的动力。那是什么？那种情绪没有画面，没有形状，没有声音，除了日益增长的感觉之外没有任何表现形式。这就是我的起点。

Yeah, I love this. And Soleio and I were talking a little bit about just the general idea of minus one to zero, which is so fascinating in so many ways. But for Playbit, and we're kind of building an operating system, or are we anymore? Maybe I'll get into that in a moment, but for me it started probably about six years ago or something like that. And I just started realizing how unhappy I was myself with the tools that we were using. And I've been sort of like a fan of the whole Apple sphere since I was kind of a teenager, you know, like '90s or something like that. One of my earliest real jobs as a designer, I had a spreadsheet that I would print out and tape up on the wall. This is the '90s after all. That would track exactly how many monies I was making so I can buy my first Mac because they're very expensive. Anyhow, so took me several years. Anyhow, I was a big fan and I felt a bunch of years ago that that company and those products that have been speaking to me so much have no longer speaking to me. So, that was kind of the impetus for me to just go and start figuring out what is this like thing inside me? What is this emotion that I have that I it didn't have a picture, it didn't have like a shape or sound, it didn't have any manifestation beyond a like a growing feeling. And so that's that's kind of where it started for me.

那你实际上是怎么开始的？比如，你如何回答早期的问题，比如“好吧，我有这种感觉。我知道世界上缺少什么样的公司、产品或品牌”，但你又是如何思考它最终会采取什么形式的呢？

And then how did you actually start it? Like what were the ways in which you answered the early questions around like well, okay, I've got this feeling. I know what shape of company or product or brand is missing out there in the world, but how did you go about thinking about the form that it would ultimately take?

我做的第一件事，就是很多人给我的建议：更深入地了解自己，了解那些感受，了解那到底是什么。让自己心里更清楚。但除此之外，当我开始意识到这关乎我与电脑的体验、我编写软件的体验、以及那种日益增长的复杂性像污泥一样令人窒息时，所有这些都变得更加具体。然后我开始尝试各种东西，像孩子一样玩耍。就像你在树林里找到一根棍子，然后说“现在这是一头牛，哞，哞”，我就是用这种心态去对待眼前的软件。所以，大概花了几个月，也许将近一年的时间，我一直在摆弄各种东西，试图弄清楚自己的感受。

The first thing I did is what, you know, been given this advice many times in my life is just like understand more about myself and you know, about those feelings and about what is that thing, right? Just making more concrete just for myself in my own mind. But beyond that, when I started realizing that it was about like the experience I have with computer, the experience I have writing software, the growing tar of complexity that just feels like sludge. All of these kind of like things that became more concrete. Then I started like experimenting with stuff, like playing with things. Like a kid plays with like, you know, like something in front of you, you find a stick in the woods and you're like, "There's a cow now. Moo. Moo." You know? That sort of mentality with like the software in front of me. So, it was just like, I don't know. Months, maybe closer year of just like playing around with stuff, just like trying to figure out what I was feeling.

最近流行一个概念叫“设计工程师”，很大程度上是因为我们手头有了这些新的人工智能工具，让我们可以从截图、文本提示或两者的结合直接生成可用的软件。但早在我们有 Claude 和 Cursor 这类工具之前，我一直认为你是一位设计技术专家，一位软件制造者。我觉得你也是这么塑造自己的。这个角色仍然出奇地罕见。当你思考如何将设计和工程融合在你所做的工作中时，你发现自己是怎样在两种模式之间切换（如果有的话），来探索机会空间，或者创造出一些东西，然后展示给别人，并决定“你知道吗？我对此越来越有信心了。”或者“实际上，这并没有完全按照我想要的方式运作。”作为设计师和工程师，你是如何塑造自己制作产品的方法的？

And one of the things that's come into vogue of late is this idea of like a design engineer, in large part because of these new AI-powered tools that we have at our disposal that allow us to go from, you know, screenshot or text prompt or a combination of the two into living usable software. But far before we had tools like Claude and Cursor and the such, I always thought of you as a design technologist, as a software maker. I think you've even built yourself in that manner. And it's a role that's still surprisingly rare. When you think about the way in which hybridizing the design and engineer in the work that you do, what are you finding has been like the way which you sort of tug between those two modes, if at all, to kind of navigate a space of opportunity or to create something that you then show to somebody else and decide, "You know what? I'm building conviction around this." Or like, "Actually, this doesn't work out in quite the way that I wanted to." Like, how has being a designer and engineer shaped the way that you've approached making products?

我喜欢这个问题，而且这是个很大的问题，很深奥。我们可能可以聊一整晚，对吧？但我觉得关键在于，当我做最好的工作时，我是被一个目标驱动的，工作只是达到那个目标的手段，你明白吗？而当我做最差的工作时，是因为我太专注于工作本身了。比如，如果我太专注于“哦，我要做图标”之类的，我总是拿一个很简单的例子来说，我会迷失在追求完美图标的过程中，结果往往做得很糟。但如果我是被某个目标驱动，比如我真正写的第一个软件，不是为了玩闹或在学校开玩笑，而是一个网站。那是在互联网刚刚兴起的时代，有很多东西需要我去摸索。我对此有很强的信念。我认识的人里没有谁懂网络。我在图书馆的书架上找到一本写着“Perl”的书，诸如此类。你以前听过这个故事。

I love the question and it's a big question. It's a deep question. We can probably talk all evening about the question, right? But I think the gist of it is when I do my best work, I'm driven by like a means like an end, right? And the work is a means to that end, if that makes sense. So, when I do my worst work, it's like when I'm too focused on the work itself, if that makes sense. So, like if I'm too focused on like, oh, I'm going to make like for whatever reason like I need to make like icons or something. I always take a very simple example of something, right? And I get kind of like lost in just like making perfect icons. I tend to just do a bad job. But if I'm driven on something, for example, like my very first software that I wrote for real, not for like playing around and, you know, making jokes in school, was like this website. And this was like a kind of at the dawn of the, you know, the web sort of thing. So, it was a lot of things I had to like figure out. So, I had a lot of conviction behind it. No one I knew knew anything about the web. I found a book in the bookshelves in the library that said pearl on it. And, you know, that sort of thing. You've heard that story before.

而且我当时就有一种强烈的信念，就像我想做一本我在学校复印的那种杂志。我想把这种杂志做成网页，因为那感觉就像魔法一样。我想要那种感觉，你知道吗？所以，那驱使我既去学习如何编程做网站，又要搞清楚各种事情，比如你得寄实体邮件去注册域名。

And um I had just this strong conviction and by like I want to make this like magazine that I was xeroxing in school. I want to make this magazine like on this webpage because that feels like magical. I want that jet, you know? And so, that was the driver for me to both learn how to like program this website, figuring out all the things stuff like you had to send like physical post mail to register the main name.

而且当然，还有设计方面的东西，你知道，我之前就对艺术、绘画之类的东西很感兴趣。所以，对我来说，至少，跨越两者或者模糊界限，甚至消除界限的关键驱动力，不是把它看作一种模式或者一种技能，而更像是一种“学会如何学习”的挑战。就像我需要，我想在后院建个棚子。有很多选择，对吧？你可以花钱请人把棚子建好，对吧？或者你可以今天就开始自己建，但很可能它会塌掉，至少如果是我建的话。或者你可以从某个地方开始。你可以说：“好，我需要什么来建棚子？我需要许可证吗？许可证到底是什么，对吧？”你开始逐步解开问题的图景。我通常就是这样做的。

And um and of course like the design aspects of it, you know, I was very interested in like, you know, art and drawing and stuff like that before. So, yeah, for me at least, the key driver for sort of like straddling both or straddling the line or erasing the line really for me is like not to think about it as like being in a mode or thinking about it as like having a skill set, but more of like the learning to learn sort of challenge. Like I need to like I I want to shed in my backyard. There are many options, right? You can like pay someone money is put a shed there, right? Or you can like start building a shed today and it's probably going to fall apart, at least if I built it. Or you can sort of like start somewhere. You can like, "Okay, what do I need to build a shed? Do I need Do I need a permit? What is even a permit, right?" You kind of start resolving the picture of questions. That's generally how I approach it.

我的版本是，我正在做第四个版本的鸡舍。

My version of this is I'm on my fourth version of a chicken coop.

我的第一个不太好。它关住了鸡。

My first was not very good. I contained chickens.

那些狐狸是聪明狡猾的狐狸。

Those foxes there are the smart cunning foxes.

结果发现是土狼。

Coyotes, as it turns out.

嗯，我喜欢你提到的这个“初学者心态”的想法，因为从某些方面来说，Playbit 似乎是为那些可能以初学者心态来使用产品的人服务的。嗯，请解释一下 Playbit 旨在为现代软件创作者提供什么。当你思考当前的产品体验和你对 Playbit 的愿景时，这种去学习如何制作东西的经历是如何融入这家公司和产品背后的理念的？

Um the um the I like that you brought up this idea of like the beginner's mindset because in some ways um Playbit seems to serve people who might be approaching the product with a beginner's mindset. Um explain a little bit about like what what Playbit seeks to provide the modern software creator. Like when you think about like the current product experience and your vision for Playbit, um how does that experience of going and like learning how to make something feed into the philosophy behind this company and product?

是的，我觉得这个问题很难回答，如果不让它听起来很混乱的话，但我会试试。如今，制作软件面临着巨大的复杂性，而且这是有充分理由的，对吧？大约 15 年，也许 20 年来，我们整个行业一直高度关注 Scaling（规模扩张），因为这是一种前所未有的经济演进，对吧？所以我们一直在用共享软件之类的概念，以及简单性和易用性，来换取扩展能力，以及让大规模的东西真正运行而不崩溃的能力，这是合理的，对吧？但在这一切之后，这在很多方面都很棒，我们却放弃了我列出的这些东西，我觉得，至少我和许多像我一样试图构建这个东西的人，喜欢在较小的规模上制作软件。

Yeah, it's a it's a tough question to answer, I think, without it sounding confusing, but I will try. Uh Today there's just this like towering complexity of making software and for a very good reason, right? For like 15, maybe 20 years by now, our industry as a whole has been like hyper-focused on like scale because it's just been like an economic evolution that's been like out of this world, right? So it makes sense that we've been trading off and trading away things like shareware, you know, concepts like that and things like, you know, simplicity and ease for the ability to scale and for the ability to things at scale to actually work and not break apart, right? But in the wake of all of that, which is great in so many ways, we have, you know, given up these things that I listed and I feel like, at least me and and many people like me and who are sort of, you know, are are trying to build this thing, um enjoy making software at a smaller scale.

有一个比喻可能很有帮助，想象一下你的房间、公寓、房子，无论什么，你的住所。它可能和你旁边的人不一样。而且我们不会出去买一个“苹果公寓”，所有家具都在那里，一切完美，我们只能换地毯，就这样，对吧？那太荒谬了。没人会那样做。然而人们对待软件就是这样，对吧？我们拿到这个什么对象，对吧？我们中的一些人完全疯了，去构建自己的 Linux 之类的东西，看起来疯狂，没人能用，而且每个星期二都会崩溃，还有驱动之类的问题。而大多数人只是拿起一台苹果笔记本电脑或别的什么，然后你会说，是的，这东西很烂，但你知道，就是这样。我就将就着用吧。

It's like a metaphor that I think can be helpful is imagine your like room, apartment, house, whatever, your sort of dwelling place. Uh it's probably different from the person next to you. Um and it's not so that like we go out and we buy the Apple apartment and all the furniture is there and everything is perfect and we can change the carpet and that's about it, right? Like that's ridiculous. Like no one would do that. Yet that's what people do with software, right? Like we get this whatever object, right? And some of us go totally bananas and you know going to like build your own sort of like Linux thing and it looks crazy and no one else can use it and you know breaks every Tuesday, you know, and drivers and stuff like that. And and most other people just like pick up a Apple laptop or whatever it is and you sort of like, yep, this thing sucks but you know, that's how it is. I'm just going to live with it that way.

嗯，所以回到软件，就像制作软件，我在构建软件时感到巨大的快乐，有时只是为了构建而构建，有时是为了朋友或家人而构建，但可能不是为了全世界。而今天这样做真的很难。所以我们的最终目标，我们用作北极星或指路明灯之一的是 Flash，Macromedia Flash，大概是 2008 年左右的，你知道。

Um and so looping that back to software, like making software, I feel great joy in building software sometimes for the purpose of just building it, sometimes for the purpose for building it for friends or for family, but like not for the world maybe. And doing that today is like really hard. And so our final piece is something that we use a play but as like a one of our kind of North Stars or sort of guiding guiding lights is Flash, Macromedia Flash sort of like 2008 or something like that, you know.

是的，是的。

Yeah, yeah.

Flash 的文化影响是惊人的。那可能就像，你怎么创造一种文化？我不知道。那很难。软件本身，我觉得它给你的感觉非常有趣，所以我们希望我们能让你有同样的感觉，就像，是的，它不完美，但我可以做出一些非常有趣的东西，我今天就能做出来。我不需要，你知道，像七天时间才能把它发布到应用商店。

It was the cultural impact of Flash was like amazing. That's probably like, how do you create a culture? I don't know. That's hard. The software itself, I think the the way it made you feel was very interesting and so we hope that we can make you feel that same way of like Yeah, it's not perfect but like I can make something very interesting and I make something today. I don't need, you know, like seven days to like publish it on an app store.

而且你们公司是在 GPT 变成 ChatGPT 的时候成立的，现在整个行业，乃至整个世界，都开始吸收前沿模型不断增强的能力，对吧？我离能够快速生成大量软件并分享给别人，只差一个 Claude Code 提示词。嗯，在这个我们正经历的巨大转变中，你们的北极星是如何演变的？

And you got this company started around the time that, you know, GPT turned into chat GPT and now the entire industry and and really the world is is starting to absorb the ever increasing capabilities of frontier models, right? Where I'm a Claude Code prompt away from being able to spin up a lot of software that I can then share with other people. Um how has the North Star for you guys evolved through this big transition that we're in the middle of?

我的意思是，我们一开始就很清楚，大约在 2020 年我们开始做这个的时候。抱歉。

I mean it was clear to us like right off the bat, 20202020 or so when we kind of started working on this. Excuse me.

那就是有什么事情正在发生，对吧？当时很不清楚，现在对我来说仍然有点不清楚发生了什么，但是

That this like something was happening, right? It was very unclear, it's still kind of unclear to me what's happening, but

嗯，所以，你知道，我们构建的第一个产品是一个新的操作系统。它就像 Android 是 Linux 一样，也是 Linux，你知道，我们使用 Linux 内核，但仅此而已。其他一切都是自研的。在这个过程中，我们不得不问自己几个问题，其中之一是，正在发生的这个 AI 事情是什么？它会如何影响我们？所以，我们构建我们的桌面方式，你可以把它想象成几乎像一个主导的网页浏览器，但整个屏幕上的所有东西都是一个结构。任何在那个工作区运行的东西都可以查看那个结构。你可以在中间放一个智能体。所以，这可能是我们最接近某种预见的东西了。

um so, you know, we built the first product that we built was like a new operating system. It's like as much Linux as as Android is Linux, you know, we use the Linux kernel, but that's about it. Everything else is like home in the whole thing. And in doing so, we sort of had to uh to ask ourselves a few questions, and one of them was like, what is this like AI thing that's happening? How's that going to affect us? And so, we just built our desktop in such a way that it's just this kind of you can think of it as like almost like a dominant web browser, but the entire like everything on your screen is like a structure. And anything running in that sort of workspace can just look at that structure. You can put an agent in between. So, that's maybe the the closest to any sort of foresight that we had.

嗯，然后我们现在正在构建的产品是那个的衍生品。我们的早期用户说：“这很酷，但我想制作我的朋友能用的软件。”我们说：“好的，跟我们多说说。”所以，现在 Playbit 专注于平台方面。操作系统仍然在，你知道，那仍然是我们大约十年后的事情。是的。

Um and then the product we're building right now today is sort of a spin-off of that. Our early users, they were like, "This is pretty cool, but like I want to make software that like my friends can use." And we were like, "Okay, you know, tell us more." And so, now Playbit is like focused on the platform aspect. The operating system is still in the you know, that's still our sort of like 10 10 years from now kind of thing. Yeah.

作为设计师，我一直很钦佩你的一点，从 Spotify 那时候就开始了。Spotify 刚出来的时候是个不可思议的产品，我记得花了很多时间研究它。连 404 页面都让人觉得背后有一种结构，有制作者的精神在里面。所以终于见到你，联系你，把你带到加州，第一次见到你，就像一场盛大的揭幕。我当时想：‘天哪，这就是做出我热爱之物的人。’从 Spotify 到你在 Dropbox 的工作，再到 Figma，我都喜欢。在你很多最有影响力的作品背后，都有一种不可思议的概念基础，甚至 Inter 字体也是。当你纵观你引以为傲的全部作品时，你觉得哪种设计哲学最能代表你的工作方式？你觉得什么是一以贯之的？你会怎么描述我多年前就直觉感受到的那种精神？

One of the things I've always admired about you as a designer, from as far back as Spotify, was that Spotify was an incredible product when it came out. I remember spending time just studying the product. Even the 404 pages felt like there was a structure that sat behind it and the spirit of the person who made it. So meeting you finally, reaching out, bringing you to California, getting to meet you for the first time, was like a huge unveil. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the person who made this thing that I love.' I love that from Spotify all the way through the work you did at Dropbox and then at Figma. There's an incredible conceptual grounding behind a lot of your most influential work, even Inter as a font. When you look across the whole canvas of the work that you're proudest of, what is the design philosophy that you feel is most representative of how you approach your work? What do you think is self-consistent across all of it? How would you describe that spirit that I intuited years and years ago?

有意思。我自己其实没这么想过。你这么说很有意思。可能因为我是个挺技术的人。如果要说我童年有什么背景，那就是被技术性的东西吸引，喜欢造机械之类的东西。所以我觉得我的很多作品里都有机械原理。几乎每样东西背后都有底层机制，至少在我心里是这样，你知道吗？比如像 Inter 这样的字体，或者一套图标之类的。我觉得它们都有共同点——甚至软件编程语言也是，很多例子都是——如果你剥开一层层洋葱皮，你会发现里面是同样的东西，就是一套原始机制，然后影响其他所有东西。所以我觉得这是其中一面。另一面是，如果厨房里有很多厨师，最后端出来的菜就不成体系，对吧？你去一家餐厅，有时候你能感觉到，有人在那个餐厅吃饭时会想：‘哦，这里有一个人真正有愿景，这一整套菜或这顿饭成了一种体验，对吧？’有时候正好相反，不管餐厅档次如何，对吧？我觉得好产品也是这样。这不一定意味着总有一个独裁者，对吧？可能是一个团队，但有一种魔力，就是有一条红线贯穿始终。所以对我来说，拥有这些底层机制就像一张作弊小抄，或者一个技巧，能让我达到那种状态，无论是和别人合作还是自己做事。

That's interesting. I haven't actually thought of that myself. It's very interesting that you say that. Probably, I'm a pretty technical person. I would say if I have any sort of background from my childhood, it's being drawn toward technical things and building mechanical things and stuff. So I think in a lot of my things there's mechanics. There are underlying mechanics in almost everything, at least in my mind it is, you know? Like a typeface like Inter, or a set of icons, or something like that. I think they all share this—or even software programming language, just like many examples—that if you peel away the layers of onion skin, you kind of find the same thing inside, which is this set of primitive mechanics that then influence all the other things. So I think that's one aspect. I think the other aspect is, if you have a lot of chefs in the kitchen, you end up with a non-cohesive meal experience, right? You go to a restaurant, and sometimes you can almost feel that someone is eating at that restaurant and think, 'Oh, there was one person here who really had a vision, and this whole set of plates or this meal came to an experience, right?' And sometimes it's the opposite, regardless of the level of the restaurant, right? And I feel like good products are like that too. It doesn't mean there's always one person who's a dictator, right? It could be a whole team, but there's that magic of a red thread going through it. So for me, having these underlying mechanics is kind of a cheat sheet or a trick for getting to that place, both with other people or something you do by yourself.

我喜欢你提到这一点，因为某种程度上我一直在思考设计在 AI 新时代的角色。它越来越让我想到剧集主理人的角色，对吧？我们都看过一些电视剧，我们仿佛生活在那些宇宙里。在我们最喜欢的剧集背后，有一个主理人从头到尾守护着愿景，但更重要的是，围绕那个创意愿景动员极其复杂的团队。这很了不起。有些剧集真的是边播边拍，整个团队在实时播出时协调不同环节的制作。剧集主理人的某些方面让我想起做软件。当你思考设计师进入这个巨大范式转变的角色时，你觉得哪些方面会持久，尽管 AI 会以各种方式自动化我们在软件制作实践和工艺中的工作？

I love that you mentioned that, because in some respects I've been thinking a lot about the role of design in this new age of AI. It increasingly reminds me of the role of the showrunner, right? All of us have seen TV shows that we've sort of lived within those universes. Behind some of our favorite shows there exists a showrunner who shepherds the vision from start to finish, but more importantly mobilizes extraordinarily complex teams around that creative vision. It's remarkable. You'll have shows that are literally being filmed as they're airing in real time, and an entire orchestration of people doing different facets of the production in real time as it's out in market. There are aspects to showrunning that remind me of making software. When you think about the role of the designer going into this huge paradigm shift, what are the aspects that you think will endure in spite of all the ways AI is going to automate the work we do in the practice and craft of software making?

我觉得一切都会在一定程度上持久。工艺，还有，你知道，新颖性，不管那意味着什么，对吧？

I think everything will endure to some degree. Craft as well as, you know, novelty, whatever that means, right?

我想说点个人看法。顺便说一句，我希望以后有机会和你们所有人多聊聊。所以我有点——不是冒充者综合征，但就是那种感觉，你知道吗？我觉得周围发生了很多非常有趣的事情。今天早到了一点，感觉这里大概有 20 个人在做我想投身进去的东西。外面有太多东西了。总之，我绝不敢说我知道你们都不知道的事。所以这纯粹是个人观点。我觉得正在发生的是，一切都只是音量被调大了。所以关心质量的人现在有能力做得更深入。关心功能多的人现在可以有更多功能。想更快发布的人可以更快发布，等等。所以我觉得这基本上是对所有这些事情的倍增器。不过我很惊讶，软件行业有多少人在拿这个新超能力去应用于——那叫什么？什么词？数量。对吧？似乎，是的。你同意吗？

I think this is my two cents. And by the way, I would love to have more of a conversation at some point with all of you. So I feel a little bit—not impostor syndrome, but that type of feeling, you know? I feel like a lot of very interesting stuff is happening all around me. Just being here a little early today and getting the feeling that there are probably 20 people here building stuff that I would just want to dive myself into. So much stuff out there. Anyhow. So by no means do I know anything that you all don't already know. So it's purely an opinion. I think that what's happening is that everything is just having the volume turned up. So someone who cares about quality now has the ability to take that even further. Someone who cares about a multitude of features can now have even more features. Someone who wants to ship something faster can ship it faster, and so on. So I think it's a multiplier on all of these things across the board, pretty much. I am surprised though, how many people in the software industry are taking this new superpower and applying it to—what is it called? What's the word? Quantity. Right? There seems to be, yeah. Do you agree with that?

什么一样？你说的数量是什么意思？比如产生更多代码、更多数据，什么？

What's the same one? What do you mean by quantity? Like as in producing more code, producing more data, what?

对对对。生产。不一定更多代码。我是说，那是另一个问题，但我敢肯定下周这个时候我们就能解决。但不是，更像是你看一些软件，他们说：‘哦，AI，酷。’你知道，是好的方面。那你拿这个超能力做什么？嗯，你出去就建更多功能，或者进入新市场，或者你周二发布而不是下个月，你知道。但似乎很少有公司拿这个超能力，保持以前的速度，但另一端产出极其好的东西。就像我打开一个网页——现在几乎所有东西都在网上——但几乎所有东西仍然有 bug，很卡顿。我是说，我非常尊重 Notion，但我们在 Playbit 每天用 Notion，基础功能还是有 bug，对吧？而 Notion 又是，他们做得很好。

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Producing. Not necessarily more code. I mean, that's a different problem, but it's one I'm sure we'll solve by this time next week. But no, more like you look at some software and they're like, 'Oh, AI, cool.' Like, you know, in a good way. And what do you do with that superpower? Well, you go out and you just build more features, or you enter new markets, or you ship something on Tuesday instead of next month, you know. But there seem to be very few companies that take the superpower and move at the same speed as they've done before, but ship incredibly good stuff out the other end. It's like I go to a webpage—and almost everything is on the web these days—and almost everything is still buggy and janky. I mean, I have a huge respect for Notion, but we use Notion every day at Playbit, and the fundamental stuff is still buggy, right? And Notion is, again, they're doing a great job.

这几乎证明了在一家公司工作有多难，就像面临红药丸或蓝药丸的选择，你知道吗？我是要在这里全力追求质量，然后我周围的人，销售团队，他们会拿出鞭子，然后说‘你怎么了？’还是我要吃下蓝药丸，就像我一直在做的那样，发布一堆东西，即使有 bug 我也无所谓。我觉得这最终是一个哲学问题。

It's almost a testament to how hard it must be to work at a company and have this like the red pill or the blue pill, you know? Am I going to go full bananas on quality here and everyone around me, are you just going to the sales team, are you just going to take out the whips and they're going to be like, 'What's wrong with you?' Or am I going to take the blue pill and just be like, you know, shipping a bunch of stuff out there as I've been doing, and things are buggy and I'm fine with that. Like, it's a philosophical thing, I think, where you end up.

在你目前作为联合创始人、首席设计师、高管的角色中，回顾你的职业生涯，你在 Figma、Facebook、Dropbox、Spotify 学到的哪些东西，你觉得对日常的工作出奇地相关？因为这个房间里有技术人员、创意人员和建设者，其中一些人将要创业或正在创业。他们应该回顾哪些事情或经验，对作为初创公司联合创始人的角色极其相关？

When in your current role as co-founder, as chief designer, an exec, when you look back on your career, what were the things that you learned at Figma, at Facebook, at Dropbox, at Spotify that you feel like it's surprisingly relevant to the work that you do day in and day out? Because this room consists of technologists, creatives, and builders, some of whom are going to start new ventures or are in the process of it. What should they look back on in terms of things or experiences that are extremely relevant to the role of being a co-founder of a startup?

是的。从哪儿开始呢？嗯，我相信的一点是，不到万不得已不要创业。这是我的哲学。比如，如果你觉得你需要在这个世界上做出改变，无论为了自己还是别人，先穷尽所有可能的解决方案，最后一项才是去创业，因为这是大量的工作，大量的承诺，不仅是时间和金钱，还有情感上的投入，你要对自己、对同事、对投资者负责，有很多事情。所以，我肯定会说，Playbit 是我的第二家公司。我的第一家公司是我很年轻的时候创办的。我犯了很多错误，也从中学到了一些。嗯，是的。但我认为你应该去做。尤其是那些来自设计行业的人。我没看到很多设计师说‘管他呢，我要创业’。你知道吗，去做吧。先穷尽清单，对吧？不需要花一年时间，可能一个周末就能穷尽，但然后就去尝试。我觉得我们现在所在的 South Park Commons 是一个很棒的地方，可以深入探索这个。你有一种感觉，但说不清楚是什么。那时候你需要找到方法去挖掘它，理解发生了什么，这很重要。

Yeah. It's... where do we start? Well, one aspect that I believe is like, don't start a company until it's the last resort. That's my philosophy. Like, if you feel that you need to make a change in this world, right? For yourself or other people, whatever, like go through the list of possible solutions, an exhausted list, and the last item is like go and start the company because it's a lot of work, it's a lot of commitment, not just like time and money, but also emotionally you're going to commit yourself, you got to commit to your co-workers, to if you have investors, like there's just a lot of things. So, I would say, yeah, for sure. Playbit is my second company. My first company I started when I was very young. And I made many mistakes and I learned from some of them. Yeah. I think you should do it, though. Especially people from the sign line of professions. I don't see a lot of designers going and saying like, 'Fuck it, I'm going to start a company.' Like, you know, do it. Exhaust the list first, right? It doesn't have to take like a year. It could take a weekend to exhaust the list, but like do it and then just try it, you know? I think South Park Commons, where we are right now, is like an amazing ground for just tapping into that, right? You have this feeling you can't quite figure out what it is. Like that's the time when you need to find a way to tap into that and dig into that and understand what's going on, you know? So important.

你职业生涯的很大一部分是在 Figma 做的工作，Figma 对设计领域产生了巨大的影响，对吧？它向同行开放了设计师的工作。它改变了我们在软件上协作的方式。它加速了整个领域。展望未来，你希望设计师从 Figma 的经验中学到什么？你希望设计工具未来如何发展？比如，当你自己构建软件时，你日复一日看到哪些事情或差距？你希望设计领域在哪些方面达成共识？

A big part of your career was the work that you did at Figma, and Figma had such an enormous influence on the field of design, right? It opened up the work that designers do to their counterparts. It changed the way in which we can kind of collaborate on software. It accelerated the whole field. Looking forward, what do you hope designers kind of take away from the lesson of Figma, and where do you want design tooling to evolve going forward? Like what are the things or gaps that you see day in and day out as you're kind of building software on your own? Like what are the things that you're hoping that the design field converges on?

首先，当时在 Figma 工作最棒的一点是，有一种把事情做得不同的文化，你知道吗？那太棒了。和我一起工作的每一个人，如果那个人现在去创业并拉上我，我会去的。每个人都是这样，每个人都有一些令人兴奋的观点。另一件我认为，我知道这不是你问的，但当时 Figma 做事的方式非常迷人，那就是对每件事都有深刻的意图，并且行动缓慢。但缓慢地并行推进很多事情，像错开一样。所以从外部看，Figma 每个月都会发布一些东西，甚至更频繁，但在内部，一个人会在一件事上工作一年。有时一年结束时，这件事会被扔进垃圾桶，永远不会发布。所以我觉得从内部看到这些，对外部产生非常不同的影响，真的很酷。所以我不知道这是否算是对你问题的部分回答。

I mean, first off, something that was just amazing about working at Figma at the time was that there was just this culture of doing things differently, you know? That was amazing. And every single individual who I worked with were just like, if that person went to start a company now and they pulled me with it, I'll come, you know? Like every person was like that, right? Like every person had an opinion about something that was really exciting. Another thing that I think was, and I know this is not exactly the question you asked, but another thing that I think was so fascinating about how things were done at the time at Figma was this deep intention around everything and moving slow. But moving slow with many things in parallel like staggered, right? So from the outside Figma would ship something every month, maybe even more often than that, but internally a person would work on one thing for like one year. And sometimes at the end of that one year it would just go into the bin and never ship. So I think that was really cool to just see from the inside and then having a very different effect on the outside. So I don't know if that is some sort of scratch on the question of yours.

你有没有觉得我们现在面临的风险是，设计速度太快了，以至于我们像是在竞速产出。结果我们只是做事，而没有真正想清楚？

Do you have like the risk that we're running into now is that we're kind of speeding up design too fast that it's like okay, we're racing to output now. And so as a consequence we're just doing stuff without actually thinking it through?

是的，所以我认为这几乎是第二个问题，就是‘现在怎么办’，对吧？以及今天之后和未来，我们是否仍然有这种带画布的台式电脑，我们点击按钮之类的？我不知道。但我认为几乎所有的数字生产方面不会消失，但会变得极其便宜，对吧？从一千单位价值降到零点零零一单位价值。这不仅仅是 10 倍，而是许多数量级，对吧？就像一夜之间的事。我认为这是好事。我认为像 Figma 这样的工具需要弄清楚如何不过度关注生产，五年前生产是件大事，因为你就是那样。所以像 Figma 这样的工具，甚至之前的 Sketch 和 Illustrator 等，很多功能都集中在生产上。所以这正在消失。但剩下的是设计中真正困难的部分，对吧？那就是背后的意图是什么？是什么最初让你做出这个设计？我觉得，我想 Susan Kare，她来过这里吗？她在几个地方和你聊过，对吧？她是一个工具和工作方式本身就迷人的人，但当我们想到像 Susan Kare 这样的人和她的影响时，我们往往不会想到她的笔记本，她如何绘制像素，以及必须将其转换为内存地址。

Yeah, so I think that this kind of almost like the second question, what is that about like, you know, what now, right? And what is the beyond like today and then to the future, like do we still have this desktop computer with a canvas on it and we click on buttons and stuff? I don't know. But I think it's definitely so that the production aspect of almost everything that's digital is not going away, but it's getting brutally cheaper, right? It goes from like a thousand units of value to like point zero zero one units of value. It's not just like a 10x, it's like many orders of magnitude, right? It's like overnight sort of thing. And I think that's a good thing, right? And I think tools like Figma need to figure out how to not focus so much on the production, which five years ago production was like a huge deal, right? Because you just so. And so a lot of the functionality in tools like Figma and even tools that came before it like Sketch and Illustrator and stuff, it's all focused on production. So that's going away. But what's left is what's actually hard about design, right? So that's going to be just like what is the intention behind it? Like what brought you to this design in the first place, you know? Like, I feel like, I think Susan Kare, has she been here? Has she? You've been talking with her in a couple of different places, right? She's a person who, her tools and the way she works, fascinating by itself, but when we think about someone like Susan Kare and her influence, we don't tend to think about, you know, her new notebooks with how she painted the pixels and had to translate that into memory addresses.

我觉得我们想到苏珊时，会把她看作一个看到比特、然后必须思考如何用 12×12 的网格、只用 0 和 1、没有灰度来表示一个比特的人，而她做到了，你知道吗？对我来说，那才是设计中有趣的部分，也许某一天 AI 会找到加速这个过程的方法。也许它就像一个治疗师，你知道吗？有点像设计界的 Eliza，帮你回答问题，你懂吗？

I think we think about Susan as like someone who saw a bit and had to think, how do I represent a bit in 12 by 12 just ones and zeros, no grayscale, and she did it, you know? That part to me feels like the interesting part of design, and maybe at some point AI will find a way to accelerate that. Maybe it's a therapist, you know? Sort of helping you answer like an Eliza for design, you know?

是的。你提到她，我真的很高兴，因为我一直钦佩苏珊·凯尔的一点，是她能贴近底层，不断演进自己的实践，并交付符合时代需求的作品。比如，我们在 Facebook 认识了苏珊·凯尔，因为她当时在做虚拟礼物，因为那在当时看起来是一件很酷的事。我当时很惊讶我们居然能雇到她，更不用说能和她并肩工作了。而最近，你知道，旧金山到处有人戴着 ClawCon 的帽子，她又出现了，为这个地区最新的社区驱动项目设计 logo。

Yeah. I'm really glad you brought her up because what I've admired about Susan Kare is her ability to stay close to the metal, continue to evolve her own practice, and ship work that meets the moment of its time. Like, we met Susan Kare at Facebook because she worked on virtual gifts because it seemed like a really cool thing to do at the time. I was astonished that we even were able to hire her, let alone get to work side by side. And more recently, you know, people are running around San Francisco wearing ClawCon hats, and there she is again, designing the logo for the latest kind of community-driven initiative springing from this area.

而她让我不禁想问，从你的视角来看，这些年来你如何看待自己的演变？什么是一直不变的，但现在的 Rasmus 作为联合创始人，与过去的 Rasmus 有什么不同？你发现自己的设计实践和做软件的方法是如何演进的？

And she leads me to wonder, from your vantage point, how have you seen yourself evolve through the years? What has remained persistent, but what is different about Rasmus now in the role of a co-founder from the Rasmuses of years past? How have you found yourself evolving in your own design practice and your own approach to making software?

嗯，我每天仍然感到迷茫。不是那种坏的迷茫，而是有点像在草地上迷路，你知道，那种探索式的迷茫。所以，我觉得这一点其实没变。只是日复一日，主要是我个人层面有些变化。这些可能不太值得聊，比如管理之类的事情，对吧？没什么大不了的，不太有趣。我觉得当我回看自己过去的作品时，有时会想：“天哪，那真的很好。”然后我会紧张，因为那让我觉得，我不知道，我并不是很把自己当回事，但你知道，我回看时会想：“哦，那真的很好。那是我巅峰时期，大概是 2005 年什么的。”但接着我又想：“不，那很好，但那是在某个时间点的真空里很好。”然后我还是觉得：“好吧。”所以对我来说，这是一种持续的评估：我有没有在进步？我有没有在学新东西？我没有太多空闲时间，同时要照顾小孩、经营公司等等，但午餐时我通常会听播客，内容什么都行，就是不听科技类的。这能帮我思考其他事情。比如我听一些关于苏格兰某个岛屿的节目，或者一些随机的东西，你知道，吃海带的羊。

Well, I still feel lost on a daily basis. Not in a bad way, but like kind of lost in a meadow, you know, sort of exploring type of lost. So, I don't think that has changed really. It's just that day-to-day, mostly there's been changes for myself personally. It's probably not that interesting to talk about, like management type of things, right? It's not a big deal. Not too interesting. I think when I look back at my old work, sometimes I'm like, "Holy, that was really good." And then I get nervous because that kind of makes me feel, I don't know, I don't take myself very seriously, but you know, I look back and I'm like, "Oh, that was really good. That was like peak me, like 2005 or something." But then I'm like, "No, that was good, but that was good in a vacuum at a point in time," and I'm still like, "Okay." And so, for me it's this constant evaluation of: am I progressing? Am I learning new things? I don't have a lot of spare time, having a little kid and a company and all of these things at the same time, but during lunch I usually listen to podcasts about everything except technology. That just helps me to think about other things. Say I listen to something about some island in Scotland or something random, you know, sheep that eats kelp.

我喜欢这个。我一直很钦佩你在 Inter 上的工作，因为我对你说过很多次，我觉得它有一天可能会出现在火星上，对吧？这是一个你一旦介绍给世界就不会消失的东西。软件来了又走，字体却永远活着。那么，制作像 Inter 这样的字体，教会了你什么，让你觉得它已经成为一种可复用的知识块，可以应用到排版以外的其他领域？

I love that. I've always admired you for the work that you've done on Inter, because as I've said to you many times, I think it's a thing that could appear on Mars one day, right? It's a thing that now that you've introduced it to the world, it will not go away. Software comes and goes. Typefaces just live forever. And what did making a typeface like Inter teach you that you feel like has become a reusable block of knowledge applied to other areas outside of typography?

哦，就像你其他那些很棒的问题一样，老兄。这真是个大宝库。但有一件事是肯定的，那就是找到影响和努力之间的正确比例。我觉得 Inter 就是其中之一。当然，我花了大概 10 年时间在它上面，谁知道我投入了多少时间，对吧？但背后有很多努力。但我觉得它是那种努力与影响极不成比例的项目。例如，我们在 Facebook 聊天时，我做了一个 Mac 应用，基本上就是 Facebook Messenger 的网页视图。我周围很多人说：“我想用 Facebook Messenger，但不想在浏览器里用。”所以我做了那个应用，它获得了数百万次安装。我想第一个版本我花了 45 分钟。就像新项目，写个代码网页视图，你知道吧？基本上就是这样，再加一个图标。它产生了极其不成比例的影响。然后我可以列举一些我花了数千小时做的项目，你从未听说过，因为它们毫无影响，我可以列举一整晚让你无聊死。所以，我觉得这是我在开始做 Inter 时完全没有看到的东西，但事后看来，它就是那种项目。不过我得说，做字体有一件很棒的事：它几乎就像在设计领域，你可能会把汽车看作一种独特的设计对象。因为它既有点像建筑，也有点像那样。它不是严格意义上的道路标志设计，对吧？它非常技术性。它也不是像海报那样的平面设计，通过艺术表达自我。它神奇地介于两者之间，而且它不是工业设计，或者你知道，它有点像那种最好用的车。一辆车的最佳设计，是在那个时间点上，针对那 12 个维度之类的东西，对吧？所以，是的，字体有点像那样。首先，它是在数字世界中至少有点接近永恒的东西，对吧？就像软件一般来说是不存在的，对吧？软件就像一本书，对吧？你写的代码就像你的电子书的一个印刷版本，对吧？翻译成冰岛语，对吧？那本书，那个特定的印刷版本，用那种特定的语言、特定的文字流，不是你的书，也不是你的故事。所以，软件就是那样。但字体不是。这有点奇怪，你知道吗？另一个很酷的方面是，你可以这里投入 10 分钟，那里投入 10 小时，它们会随着时间累积，我觉得其他软件不是这样，因为任何常规软件的衰减率都非常高，对吧？比如 2 周是我的截止点。如果我有 2 周没碰某个东西，我就会扔掉它重新开始。但对于字体，衰减率极低，有时甚至为零。所以，超级有趣。如果你还没做过字体，去做一个吧。没那么难。我保证。我这么说不是为了显得自己很牛什么的。真的没那么难。你一个周末就能学会。

Oh, as many of your other awesome questions, man. It's like so much drum box. But one thing for sure is finding the right ratio between impact and effort. I think Inter is one of those things. Sure, I've spent like 10 years on it and who knows how much of my time on it, right? But there's a lot of effort behind it. But I think it's one of those types of efforts that has a very disproportionate impact from the effort. For example, something I did when we were at Facebook chat: I put together a Mac app that was basically just a web view for Facebook Messenger. A bunch of people around me were like, "I want to use Facebook Messenger but not in my web browser." So I did that and it got like millions of installs. I spent 45 minutes on the first version, I think. Like new project, make code web view, you know? Basically that's it and an icon. And it had this insanely disproportionate effect. And then I can list for the remainder of the evening to bore you to death projects that I made, spent thousands of hours on, you never heard of them because they had no impact at all. So that I think is something that I didn't see at all when I started working on Inter, but in hindsight has been one of those projects. I got to say though, something that is amazing about working on typefaces: it's almost like in the field of design, you might think about cars as a unique type of thing to design. Because it's both like architecture, a little bit like that too. It's not strictly design as in signage for roads, right? It's very technical. And it's not design as in expressing myself through art like graphic design like a poster. It's somewhere magically in between, and it's not industrial design or like, you know, it's sort of like the car that works the best. The best design for a car is at the point in time for those like 12 dimensions of things, right? So, yeah, a typeface is a little bit like that. It's like first off, it's something that has at least some remote resemblance to permanence in the digital world, right? Like software in general doesn't exist, right? Software is like a book, right? The code that you write is like an edition printed on paper of your e-book, right? Translated to like Icelandic, right? That book, that particular print with a particular flow of text in that particular language is not your book or your story. So, that's kind of software. But typefaces aren't like that. It's kind of weird, you know? And another aspect of it that's kind of cool is that you can put in 10 minutes here and 10 hours there and they add up over time, which I don't think is true with other software because the rate of decay of any type of regular software is very high, right? Like 2 weeks is my cutoff. If I have not worked on something for 2 weeks, I trash it and I start over. But with a typeface, that decay is extremely low, in some cases zero. So, super fun. If you haven't made a typeface, make one. It's not that hard. I promise you. I don't say that to sound like a dick or something. It's legitimately not that hard. You can learn it in a weekend.

像你和我们的前同事 Aaron 都给了我最好的理由，说明为什么每个设计师都应该做一张海报设计、设计一个网站、做一个应用，然后再设计一款字体。所以，我会响应这个号召，把我的烂字体发给你。

Like you and our former colleague Aaron have both given me the best arguments for why every designer should do a poster design, design a website, make an app, and then design a typeface. So, I will answer this call to arms and I'll send you my shitty typeface.

你是否还有其他类似性质的项目，希望在未来的某个时候去追求？也许不是今年，也不是明年，但我感觉作为创意人和技术专家，最神奇的一点是，当你做了一件事，你会想：“哦，那并不难。”然后你又做另一件事，“哦，那也不难。”突然间，它开始打开画布，就像，如果我有时间和精力，我还能做什么？你未来有没有其他想开始的项目？

Are there other projects of this nature that you're interested in pursuing at some point over time? Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but I feel as though one of the things that's so amazing about being a creative and a technologist is when you do one thing, you're like, "Oh, that wasn't that hard." And then you do another thing, "Oh, that's not that hard either." Then all of a sudden it starts to open up the canvas of like, what else could I do if I had time and energy? Are there other projects that you would love to embark on down the road?

哦，太多了。太多了。一方面，我觉得有些事情需要有人去做。比如，我们正在把这个星球搞得一团糟。那里有太多事情了。我有一种驱动力，想要投身其中，至少做出一些积极的影响。然后还有我个人生活的另一个方面：我有很多技能，但大多是技术性的。而我很少有能通过我的技能送给你什么的技能。

Oh, so many. So many. There's like, on one hand, there are things that I feel like someone needs to work on. Like, we're messing up this planet. There's just so much there. And there's a drive for me to want to apply myself to at least make some positive impact there. And then there's another aspect of my personal life: I have a lot of these skills, they're mostly technical. And I have very few skills where I can gift you something through my skills.

嗯。

Yeah.

所以，我的意思是像演奏音乐或烹饪食物。我正在努力提高烹饪水平，但你不会想听我演奏音乐。而且，我有一个邻居，他烤面包。他烤面包不是完全专业的，算是半专业。他有点退休了，烤面包是为了乐趣，还在杂货店卖。所以，你知道，是认真的面包师。有时候我们邻居会一起闲逛，他会带面包来，还会送给我一块他做的面包。我就觉得，天哪，David，谢谢你的面包。几天后我在街上遇到他，我会告诉他面包的事。那是我很想涉足的领域。我不知道软件能不能做到那样，或者别的什么。最后，我想建造实体东西。不是因为我关心永恒，一点也不。我死后，烧了我，忘了我。我一点也不在乎。但只是因为有形的东西。在我的生活中，我想尽可能少用电脑。作为软件人这么说可能有点奇怪，但如果我有一辆车，我想要一辆屏幕和电脑尽可能少的车。我不想要家里有任何智能家电。那些都不要。所以，我追求一种更平静、更物质的生活。所以，对我来说就是这三个领域。

So, what I mean is like play music or cooking food. I'm trying to be better at cooking food, but you don't want to hear me play music. And so, I have this neighbor, and he bakes bread. He bakes bread not fully professional, kind of semi-professional. He's kind of retired, bakes bread for fun, sells it in a grocery store. So, you know, serious bread maker. And sometimes we neighbors just hang out and he'll bring bread and he'll gift a little piece of loaf that he made for me. And I feel like, oh my god, David, thank you for your bread. And I speak with him on the street a few days later and I'll tell him about the bread and stuff. That is something I would love to tap into. I don't know if software can be that or something else. And then finally, I want to build physical things. Not because I care about permanence, not at all. When I'm dead, burn me and forget about me. I don't care about that at all. But just the fact of something tangible. In my life, I want to have as few computers as possible. Maybe it's weird to say as a software person, but if I have a car, I want a car with as few screens and computers as possible. I don't want any smart appliances at home. None of that stuff. So, I seek a life that is calmer and more physical, I think. So, those are three areas for me.

所以，你是一个相对较新的父亲。你就像是大二学生。

So, you are a relatively new father. You're like a sophomore in your sophomore year.

完全不知道自己在做什么。

No idea what I'm doing.

我也不禁想谈谈你的这个转变，因为我发现至少对我来说，为人父母是一次重大的重新定位练习，关于我在这地球上要做什么。这段经历如何塑造了你每天的生活方式？它如何塑造了你对未来世界的看法？

I can't help but want to talk a little bit about that transition for you, too, because I find that at least for me, parenthood was a major reframing exercise in what it is that I'm going to do on this planet. How has that experience shaped the way you approach every single day? How has it shaped the way you think about the world to come?

我想它可能已经以我尚未意识到的方式改变了我。主要是因为我的孩子刚过两岁，所以对我来说是全新的。一个方面非常实际。你最终几乎没有自己的时间，所以如果你以前一天做十件事，现在你只有时间做一件事，你会更加有意识地利用那段时间。我的意思是，还有那些超越技术或任何东西的显而易见的事情。就是你和最亲密的朋友建立的情感联系。那太神奇了。我不知道这是否以任何方式影响了我的工作，除了实际方面。

I think it probably has changed me in ways that I haven't realized yet. Mainly since my kid is just over 2 years, so it's brand new for me. One aspect is very practical. You just end up with very little time for yourself, so you kind of have to if you did 10 things in a day before, you have time to do maybe one thing and you're more intentional about what I'm doing with that time. I mean, there's just the obvious things that go beyond technology or anything. Just the emotional connection that you make with someone who's like your closest buddy. That's pretty amazing. I don't know if that influences my work in any way, though, beyond just practical aspects.

我喜欢这个。对于那些正在考虑开始新事业的人，听到这个想法，即这是一种自我认知的练习，你谈到回顾过去的工作，然后说：“天哪，我在那里做得太棒了。我做了了不起的工作。”你给他们什么建议，让他们真正有意识地找到自己最锋利的部分，那个最终可能成为他们作为创业者成功决定性因素的部分？你对他们有什么建议？

I love that. For folks that are thinking about starting something new and sort of hear this idea that it's an exercise in self-knowledge, you were talking about looking back on your past work and being like, "Man, I crushed it there. I did amazing work." What advice do you give to them in being really intentional about finding that sharp part of themselves, that part that could ultimately be the decisive factor in their success as an entrepreneur? What advice do you have for them?

我会提供这个模型。如果生命没有从外到内决定的意义，那么生命作为一个概念就是无意义的。因此，你可以自由地定义自己的人生目标。所以现在，如果你仔细想想，那是一件令人毛骨悚然的惊人事情。就像，“天哪，我在宇宙中没有义务。”就像没有什么。如果我只是去坐在那个角落里什么都不做，宇宙也不会改变。对我来说，这是一件非常自由的事情。我想对一些人来说，这很可怕，但也可能两者兼有。我认为在这种心态下，然后弄清楚我想用什么来填补那个空白？参数和约束是什么，有点像设计思维？我想为自己设定什么约束？也许只是我想优化净幸福，或者我想在死的那天感觉我对当地社会产生了积极影响，不管是什么。那可以成为路标，就像山顶上的旗帜。然后你就去做点什么。我认为你能做的最糟糕的事情就是光想而不做。做点什么比想着做点什么要好得多。也许这听起来很蠢，但真的，我遇到的很多人，我相信你们也遇到这样的人，会讲故事说：“哦，我有那个想法。他们刚做了那个东西。我有那个想法。”或者“是啊，但一个想法一文不值。”你做了或者没做。就这么简单。所以你就去做点什么，我想。

I'll offer this model. If life has no determined meaning from the outside in, therefore life is meaningless as a concept. Therefore, you are free to define your own purpose in life. And so now, that's an amazing, hair-raising thing if you think about it. Like, "Oh my god, I have no obligations in the universe." It's like there's nothing. If I just go and sit in that corner and do nothing, the universe will not change. For me, that's a very freeing thing. I think for some people it's terrifying, but it can be both, too. I think in the mindset then figure out what would I like to fill that void with? What are the parameters and the constraints, kind of like a design mindset? What are the constraints I want to set up for myself? Maybe it's just I want to optimize for net happiness, or I want the day I die to feel like I had a positive impact on my local society, whatever it is. That can become the guidepost, like the flag on the mountain top. And then you just do something. I think the worst thing you can possibly do is to think about it and not do something. It's much better to do something than to think about doing something. Maybe it sounds like a really dumb thing, but legit, so many people who I meet, and I'm sure you all meet people like this too, will tell stories like, "Oh, I had that idea. They just made that thing. I had that idea." Or like, "Yeah, but an idea is worth nothing." You make it or you don't make it. It's as simple as that. So you just make something, I think.

然后这是一个有点自私的问题。你曾在当今一些最具影响力的公司工作过，对吧？几乎是接连不断。你曾在这些文化中工作，这些文化后来催生了新的企业、新的创业者、新的软件制作方式、新产品类型。

And then this is kind of a selfish question. You've gotten to work at some of the most consequential companies of our age, right? In almost rapid succession. You've gotten to work in these cultures that went on to spawn new businesses, new entrepreneurs, new ways of making software, new kinds of products.

当你回顾这些经历时，它们教会了你什么关于打造文化、赢得胜利、找到自己的道路？它们之间有没有一条主线？有没有什么东西让你回想起来时会说：“你知道吗？这就是我想在自己的公司、自己的工作中捕捉的东西。”这些公司教会了你什么？因为这是一个非常独特的视角。比如，我没在 Spotify 工作过。对吧？我没有像你那样在 Figma 工作多年，然后从零开始帮助打造那项业务。这些公司教会了你什么关于创业和人生成功的道理？

When you look across that set, what have they taught you about building culture, winning, finding your path? Is there a through-line in any of them? Is there something when you reflect back on it that you're like, "You know what? This is what I want to capture in my own company, in my own work." What did those companies teach you? Because it's such a unique vantage. Like, I didn't work at Spotify. Yeah. Right? I didn't work at Figma for years and then kind of help build that business from scratch in the way that you did. What did all these companies teach you about startups and about success in life?

我认为绝对最重要的事情就是，那些有强烈观点的人，他们真正在乎，不管那意味着什么，对吧？我觉得这通常有点老生常谈，但就是人，你知道，成就了公司之类的东西。这真的很真实。我觉得在这些经历中，这一点非常真实。我经历过不少这样的公司，但我绝不能说，你知道，我能和其他人的经历相比，所以我知道什么呢？但就看看那些公司，以及是什么导致了某种程度的成功，无论是对我个人内部而言，还是对公司作为企业而言，对吧？我认为主要就是那些人的毅力，你知道。而且我认为有很多品质，比如毅力，都源于强烈的观点和热情，对吧？你想想看。比如，一个人可以被外部因素激励，比如名声、金钱、某种权力欲望之类的，对吧？但那只能走这么远。它只能让你达到——我希望现在不会冒犯任何人——但它有点像让你达到亚马逊的质量水平，你知道？就是东西好到可以用，人们不再抱怨了，但不会比那更好。对吧？当你的激励因素不是内在的，比如“我只是想做出我能做的最好的假机器人植物”之类的，你就会达到那个水平，你知道。

I think the absolutely most important thing is just that people with very strong opinions, so really care, whatever that means, right? I think usually it's a bit of a cliché, but like it's the people, you know, that makes the company kind of thing. And that's really true. I think that's the thing that has been so true with these experiences. And I've had quite a few of these, but by no means could I say that, you know, I can measure with other people's experiences, so what do I know? But just looking at those companies and like what led to some measure of success like internally for myself or for like the company as a business, right? I think it was that really mainly, perseverance, you know, of those people. And I think there's so many qualities like perseverance that comes out of strong opinions and passion, right? If you think about it. Like, someone who can be externally motivated by things like, you know, fame or money or some sort of desire of power or whatever, right? But that only goes so far. It only gets you—I hope I don't offend anyone now—but like it kind of gets you to the Amazon level of quality, you know? Like, where things are good enough to use, people are not complaining anymore, but it's not better than that. Right? That's where you get when you have motivators that are not intrinsic, like, I just want to make the best fake robot plant I can or whatever it is, you know.

Rasmus，感谢你过来和我们聊天，伙计。我们非常期待看到 Playbit 会变成什么样。对于那些对 Playbit 感兴趣的人，你会建议他们今晚在电脑前做些什么？他们可以注册吗？

Rasmus, thank you for coming and hanging out, man. We're really excited to see what Playbit becomes. For folks who are interested in Playbit, what would you recommend they do this evening in front of the computers? Can they sign up?

是的，你只要去我们的网站，就可以下载。目前它只支持 Mac。如果你想试试我们大约一年前发布的操作系统，你可以下载。它几乎可以在任何地方运行。但如果你有 Mac，我们为你准备了非常好的体验。就像把一个东西放下来，点击一下就行。如果你想试试我们几个月前发布的新东西，它还很早期，也很粗糙，你知道，就像它应该的那样，对它现在的样子感到非常不好意思。你只要去网站，点击一个大大的下载按钮。再说一次，目前那个只支持 Mac，但很快就会支持其他平台。是的。然后你可以构建一些小东西。你可以制作一些很酷的小游戏之类的。我们有一个随附的规模。完整的编译器工具等等。你不需要打开终端或任何类似的东西。这个东西就是能用。是的，你可以构建东西，很快你就可以和朋友分享，他们可以在平台层面进行多人游戏。

Yeah, you can just go to our website and you can download. Right now, it's like for Mac only. You can grab if you want to try the operating system that we released about a year ago. You can run that on pretty much anywhere. But if you have a Mac, we have a very nice experience for you. That's just like plop a thing down and click it. If you want to try the new thing that we released just a few months ago, it's like very early and very janky as it should be, you know, very embarrassed of what it is. Like you can just go to the website, click a big download button. Again, that one is Mac only right now, but it will soon be other platforms. Yeah. And then you can build little things. You can make little cool games and stuff. We have just a scale that just comes with it. Full compiler tools and everything. You don't need to open a terminal or anything like that. The thing just works. Yeah, you can build things and very soon you can like just share them with a friend and they can just do multiplayer on sort of the platform level.

我想代表处于职业生涯各个阶段的人们，你在如何赋予我们力量、如何将快乐注入你创造的一切、以及所有塑造我们生活的不同产品方面，一直是如此鼓舞人心。所以，代表 South Park Commons 和在场的每个人，谢谢你。非常感谢。

I think on behalf of folks at all stages of their careers, you've been such an inspiration in terms of how you've empowered us, how you've injected joy into everything you created, and all the different products that have shaped our lives. So, on behalf of South Park Commons and everyone here, thank you. Thank you so much.