为工业打造物理 AI

我想从 Adams 开始聊。你们网站上有一句我很喜欢的话，特别棒。它说：“物理世界的自主性需要面向物理世界的 AI。这种智能需要我们在效率上尚未发明的算力，以及我们尚无法理解的深度学习模型，来理解和作用于物理世界，而这些模型目前还不存在。”跟我们说说你在做什么。

I want to start with Adams. You have this great line on the website that I actually love. It's this awesome sentence. It says, "Physical world autonomy requires AI for the physical world. This kind of intelligence requires computation we haven't invented at an efficiency we can't yet fathom with deep learning models to understand and act in the physical world that don't yet exist." Tell us what you're building.

我们先从使命说起，这样更容易。物理自动化，去变革各个行业。从那里开始。你可以像苏格拉底式地追问：那是什么意思？用今天人们的话说，就是物理 AI 和机器人技术来变革行业。然后你会说，好吧，那是人形机器人吗？不，不是。我不是说我是反人形机器人的，只是我们做的不是那个。我们做的是专用机器人，不是我们造了机器人谁都能用。更像是机器人和 AI 去逐个攻克一个行业。在我们认为能带来巨大变革的行业里。一旦我们站稳脚跟，就去下一个，再下一个。如果你做得非常好，我喜欢说，我们想象力的唯一限制就是管理能力。

Let's start at the mission. It's easier that way. Physical automation to transform industries. So you start there. You can sort of go it's almost socratic like what does that mean? And sort of in the terms that people use today is physical AI and robotics to transform industry and you go okay well so what is it a humanoid? And no it's not. It's not it's I I wouldn't call myself anti-humanoid. It's just what we're doing is not that. It's specialized robotics that it's not like we make robotics and anybody can have some. It's more like robotics and AI that go after an industry one industry at a time. And in the industries we think it makes massive moves, big moves. And once we get our sea legs, we go to the next and the next. If you're doing it really well, I I like to say that um the only constraint on our imagination is management capacity.

那是什么意思？

What does that mean?

我们每天都在解决问题。如果我因为手下管理能力不足而不得不解决大量琐碎问题，那我们就做不了多少事。我的想象力能变成现实的部分就会受限。但如果你有大量的管理能力，大量的解决问题的能力，那些限制就会解除。

We're solving problems every day. If I have to solve lots of small problems because I don't have a lot of management capacity under me, we're not going to do very much. I'm going to be constrained in what portion of my imagination can become possible like real. But if you have lots of management capacity, lots of problem solving capacity then those constraints unwind.

那你如何拓宽和扩大你拥有的管理能力呢？

So how do you broaden and expand the management capacity you have?

好。那我们退一步，聊聊这个。我有很多这类框架。其中一个我称之为“元问题”。想象你有这样一个方程：问题解决对时间的导数，必须始终大于或等于问题产生对时间的导数。如果这个不等式不成立，你就有大麻烦了。我称之为“元问题”。也就是说，如果你制造问题的速度超过你解决的速度，那你就完蛋了。但当你制造问题，比如在 Uber 的语境下，就是“我们去中国吧”，那是在制造问题。现在我对问题的看法不是负面的。我像数学教授那样看待问题。一个没有有趣问题可解的数学教授是悲哀的数学教授。所以这是好事。你想要创造有趣的东西去解决。你想要创造问题去解决。你必须很好地预测问题的性质以及你解决它的能力和容量。你今天制造一个问题，你可能还不了解你将要进行的解决问题的性质。你必须预测它。那些问题会在大概 6 个月后真正沉重地涌来，甚至更久。所以你必须善于预测问题的性质，然后说，好吧，我解决它的管理能力是什么。如果那个方程失衡了，你就必须停止制造问题，同时加快解决，这样你才不会被淹没。

Okay. So why don't we step back and talk a little bit about like I have a lot of uh frameworks for this kind of stuff. One of them I I call the meta problem. Imagine if you had this equation which is uh the derivative of problem solving dt uh must always be greater than or equal to the derivative of problem creation dt. And if that's ever not true, you have a real problem. I call that the meta problem. So what's happening is is that if you are creating problems faster than you can solve them then you're kind of effed. But when you create problems like in an Uber context would be like let's go to China. That's creating a problem. Right now the way I think about problems I don't think about them in a negative way. I think about problems the way like a math professor would think about a problem. is a math professor without interesting problems to solve as a sad math professor. Yeah. So it's like a good thing. So you want to create interesting things to solve. You want to create problems to solve. You have to predict well the nature of the problem and your ability and capacity to solve it. You create a problem today. You may not understand the nature of the problem solving you're going to have to do. You have to predict it. And those problems start coming ashore in like 6 months in like a real heavy way and maybe even longer. And so you have to be good at predicting what it's the nature of that problem and saying okay well what is my management capacity to solve it. If that equation gets out of balance then you have to stop problem creation while you get the solving going so that you're not drowning anymore.

对。

Right.

那你能否给我们讲讲在中国发生了什么？我的意思是，中国很了不起，但非常艰难，而且在某些方面无法预测。

Can you give us an example of what happened in China then? I mean, China was like amazing, but very difficult and in some ways impossible to predict.

我们去中国吧。听起来很有趣。那是一次超级棒的冒险，因为当时我想：“听起来不错。”那大概是 2013 年或 2013 年初。Uber 是 2010 年成立的，所以还是早期团队。我召集了一帮人，都是超级元老，我们住在中国的一间公寓里，待了一两周，一周半、两周这样，见了所有能见的人。实际上那是我第一次见到 Juan Shing，在 Muan。他告诉我我疯了，别做。

Let's go to China. Sounds like fun. It was a It was a a super awesome adventure because what happened was is I was like, "Sounds cool." And I got it was 201 probably 2013 or early 13. Uber started in 2010, so it was still early crew. And I got a crew of folks, like super OG guys, and we stayed in an apartment in China for a week or two, a week and a half, two weeks, something like that, and met with everybody we could. It's actually when I first met Juan Shing, uh, at Muan actually. Um, and he told me I was crazy. Don't do it.

那是最糟糕的主意。

It's the worst idea ever.

当别人说你疯了、这行不通时，你的反应是什么？

What was your response when people tell you you're crazy, it's not going to work?

那简直是最好的事情。好。我的意思是，这里有很多线索。我们已经在探索了。我们要去所有地方。

Like that's the best thing ever. Okay. So I mean we're there's many threads here. We're already poking through. We're gonna go everywhere.

好。在工程学里我们称之为 BFS，广度优先搜索。所以我不能深入。我们是在深入之前先描绘树的广度。在 Uber 我们有这样的文化价值观，我也把它带入了我新公司的价值观体系。它叫“超级兴奋”，就是对困难的事情有感染力的热情。事情越难、越奇怪、越棘手，不管用什么词，不管加什么最高级，解决它就越是了不起。

Okay. So in engineering we call this BFS, breath first search. So I'm not able to go deep. We're like we're painting the breath of the tree before we're going deep. So uh we have a cultural value for that at Uber and I've pulled it into our new value system at into my value system at my current company. Uh, but it's called super pumped, which is about infectious enthusiasm about the hard things. The harder it is, the more weird, gnarly, whatever words, whatever superlative you want to put in front of it, the more awesome it would be to solve it.

嗯。

Mhm.

我就越兴奋。而更值得解决的那些问题，是那些人们认为不可能解决的问题。有时人们认为某件事不可能，他们那样认为，但它非常可能，而且其实很容易。还有一些人们认为不可能的事，超级困难，但可能。你现在就是这么看待 Adams 的，对吧？当我听你说起它，当我读到相关的内容，你就像在说：“这会超级困难，但它是可能的。”

The more excited I get. And the problems that are more awesome to solve are the ones that people think are are impossible to solve. Sometimes people think something is impossible. They perceive it that way, but it's very possible, but it's actually easy. And there's other ones that people think are impossible that are super difficult, but possible. That's how you think about Adams now, right? When I hear you speak about it, and when I read about it, you're like, "This is going to be super difficult, but it is possible."

所以 Adams 是我公司的名字。我们刚这么命名。它来自一个疯狂晦涩的名字，是故意取的。我们基本上处于超级隐身状态。但真正的问题是，从 Uber 出来后，下一件事是什么，为什么？那就是 Adams。我们现在才开始这么叫它。我渴望或者说对超级困难、超级复杂的事情有一种偏爱。

So Adams is the name of my company. We just named it this. It came from a a a crazy obscure name that was done on purpose. We basically went ultra stealth. But the real question is is coming out of Uber. What was the next thing and why? And it is Adams. We just started calling it that now. I was yearning or had a pension for an affinity for something that's super hard, super complicated.

你一直是这样，还是 Uber 的经历让你意识到这有多重要？这种渴望是什么时候开始的？

Have you always been like that, or was the experience of Uber that crystallized how important that was? When did this desire...

一直如此。我觉得你问到这里很有意思，因为就像有人告诉你某件事不可能，你会想“是吗？”然后我说“看我的”。我一直有这种劲头。小时候，当有人说某件事不可能时，我眼里就会闪着光，想要去做。

It's always been this way. And I think it's funny how you got there because it's like that feeling when somebody tells you something that is impossible and you're like, 'Is that right?' And I'm like, 'Watch this.' I've always had that. When I was a kid, I'd always have a sparkle in my eye to do something somebody said was impossible.

你开始做的时候，知道它有多难吗？还是你觉得“这是个棘手的问题，我要去攻克它”？

Did you know when you started it how difficult it was, or did you think, 'This is a hairy problem, I'm going to fight it'?

它本身的复杂性就是吸引力的一部分。

There's a complexity to it that was part of the attraction.

好，你从一开始就看到了这一点？

Okay, and you saw that from the first spot?

是的，从很早的时候我就知道它很复杂，但我不完全明白它复杂在哪里。

Yeah, from the very early days I knew it was complicated. I didn't understand exactly how it was complicated.

我对你说的很感兴趣，也很有意思：你在制造所有这些麻烦，而其中一些麻烦不会“上岸”，我记得你用了这个词。

I'm very curious about what you said, which was very interesting: you're creating all these problems, and some of the problems you're creating are not coming ashore, I think is the word you used.

要过一段时间才能看清你制造的问题的本质。

It takes time to see what the nature of the problem is that you created.

那么你能举个例子吗，比如你在中国起步时制造的一个问题，它多久会“上岸”，以及“上岸”后会发生什么？

So can you give an example of a problem you're creating when you start in China, how long it takes to come ashore, and what happens when it does?

好的。当你去中国做我们做过的事，你会学到：把业务带到中国，你必须从头开始。很多人以为可以把业务搬到别处。顺便说一句，Uber 几乎把这一点变成了标志——如果有这么回事的话——我们让城市和国家变得无关紧要，我们创造了一个不可避免的系统。但中国不同，因为那个国家的运作方式不一样。一切都不同，这意味着你必须从零开始。哪怕像手机或地图 GPS 这样简单的东西。

Okay. So what you learn when you go and do what we did in China is that when you take your business to China, you have to start over. So many people think you can take your business and take it somewhere. By the way, Uber kind of trademarked that—if there's such a thing—we made it a thing where cities and countries didn't matter; we created a system that was inevitable. But China was different because of how that country works. Everything's different, and that means you have to start from scratch. It's something as simple as the phones or, let's say, maps GPS.

嗯。

Mhm.

中国的 GPS 系统和这里不一样。

There's a different GPS system in China than there is here.

那意味着什么？

What does that mean?

嗯，就是不同。所以如果我想了解汽车如何在空间中移动，我必须更换我的 GPS 系统才能做到。

Well, it's different. So if I want to understand how cars are moving through space, I have to change my GPS system so I can do that.

我明白了。而这只是中国一百个不同点之一，这意味着你必须从头开始。所以是的，把业务带到中国，你就是在创办一家新公司。你必须非常开放，比如“我要在这个非常不同的地方学习如何用不同的方式做事”，并对这种差异感到兴奋和好奇。而大多数去中国的西方企业家，几乎没有人成功。

So I understand. And that's like one of a hundred things that are different in China, which means you have to start over. And so yeah, you're starting a new business when you take it to China. And you have to be very receptive—like, 'I am going to learn how to do things differently in this very different place'—and be excited and interested in how different it is. Whereas most Western entrepreneurs that go to China almost none succeed.

当时有谁成功了吗？比如苹果？

Have any succeeded at the time? Like Apple?

我会说，在我们这个领域，你能想到的两个——还有其他人，但在我们这个圈子里，你会说“好吧，埃隆肯定成功了”，对，苹果也肯定成功了。蒂姆·苹果和埃隆，对吧？就是这两位。

I'd say the two that you would come up with in our area, in our neck of the woods—there are others, but in our neck of the woods, you're like, 'Okay, Elon definitely did.' Right. And Apple definitely did. Tim Apple and Elon, right? Those are the two guys.

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所以你开始和滴滴开战。除了它还有别人吗？是不是有多个竞争对手？

So you start getting in this war with DD. Was there anybody else besides? Was there multiple competitors?

我们最终推出了。所以 Uber Black 是一回事，比滴滴那种小得多。还有一家叫 Quaid 的公司。

We eventually rolled out. So Uber Black was one thing, much smaller than like a DD thing. There was another company called Quaid.

嗯。

Mhm.

而我们就在这个角落里做一个小众的事情，在中国是超高端的东西，非常小众，对吧？那时候中国的 S 级车非常稀少。我的意思是，我们在增长。这很有趣，但很单薄。但我想是 2014 年，我相信是 14 年。是的，我相信是 14 年。那一定是我们基本上说“好吧，我们要在中国做拼车”的时候。之前没人做过。滴滴是出租车。如果你用过出租车应用，问题是你就像二等公民。意思是出租车司机希望人们招手拦车。他们不想从应用接单，因为那样他们必须把收入的一部分给中间人。那不是他们想要的。

And we were just in this corner sort of doing a niche thing, which is a super high-end thing in China, which is like so niche, right? An S-class in China at that time is like very thin. I mean, we're growing. It was fun, but it was thin. But I think it was 2014, I believe it was 14. Yeah, I believe it was 14. That must have been where we basically said, 'Okay, we're going to do ride sharing in China.' Nobody had done that. DiDi was taxis. And if anybody who's used a taxi app with taxis, the problem is you're a second-class citizen. Meaning taxis want people to wave them down. They don't want to take rides from an app where they have to give a percentage of the revenue to some middleman. That's not a thing.

所以它只是填补空白，但不是他们的主业。

So it sort of fills in the gaps, but it's not their main jam.

但我们转向了全面的拼车，就像点对点拼车，任何开车的人都可以为城市里的市民提供搭车服务。

But we went to full ride share, which is like peer-to-peer ride sharing where anybody driving a car could offer a ride to a citizen in the city.

而这在中国之前根本不存在。

Which before you did not exist at all in China.

当然也没有通过应用来协调。

Certainly not coordinated by an app.

这就是现在的拼车，当时叫点对点拼车。有些人会想到 Lyft 或 Uber X 这类美国的东西。但我们当时叫它“人民优步”。打开应用，里面是红色的车。

This is now a ride sharing, what was at the time called peer-to-peer ride sharing. Some people would think of Lyft or Uber X, this kind of thing in the US context. But what we called it was the people's Uber. So in the app, you'd open it up and it was red cars.

嗯。

Mhm.

但我们变得中国化了。我们在那里建立了非常棒的品牌，因为我们关心用户、关心客户，这是其他公司做不到的。但有意思的是，滴滴那边的情况是，我们在发明、在创新，而他们在抄袭。这些家伙抄袭太厉害了，几乎成了一种艺术。能像他们那样快速而猛烈地抄袭，本身就是一种战士心态。

But we became Chinese. We had a massive awesome brand there because we cared and we were passionate about the user, the customer, in ways that these other companies just weren't. But what was interesting about what was going on with Didi was that while we were inventing and innovating, they were copying. And these guys were so good at copying, it was almost an art form. To be able to copy as quickly and fiercely as they did was like warrior mentality in its own right.

但我想说的是，理想的状态就像《勇敢的心》里那样，是“战士诗人”。这些家伙只是纯粹的战士，没有诗意。他们不是在创造新东西，他们是在抄袭。

But it's like I like to say, the place to be is like a brave heart, which is like the warrior poet. These guys were just pure warriors. There was no poetry. They weren't creating the new thing. They were copying.

但他们的抄袭能力和速度几乎达到了诗意的水平。

But almost to a level of poetry in their ability to copy and the speed at which they were able to do it.

对。

Right.

但就在他们准备抄袭的时候，那是一种非常狂野的、半技术半监管套利的状态。非常大胆。他们花了一段时间才抄过来。而就在那期间，我们的业务垂直飙升。

But while they were getting ready copying it, it was a very wild sort of half technology, half regulatory arbitrage. Very bold. It took them a while to copy. And while that happened, it went vertical.

优步做到了。

Uber did.

是的，优步做到了。而且我可以说，垂直得几乎向左倾斜了。曲线几乎向左弯了。

Yeah, Uber did. And I'd say so vertical it almost leaned to the left. Like it almost started bending. The curve almost bent to the left.

好吧。

Okay.

情况就是这样。机会巨大，到某个时候，我们排名前十的城市可能全都是中国的城市。

And that was what it was. The opportunity was massive where we would basically at some point probably our top 10 cities were all Chinese cities.

太疯狂了。在订单量上。

That's wild. In rides.

是的。不是收入，因为订单不像我那时候的 13 美元、15 美元，而是两三美元那种，对吧？

Yeah. Not in revenue because the rides instead of like in my day 13 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever, they were these were like three bucks, two bucks type stuff, right?

我记得我们在中国做这轮融资。我们不得不在中国融资，因为我们……

I remember we were doing this fund raise in China. We had to raise money in China because we...

我的意思是，那是巨大的。我们烧掉了大量的钱。

I mean it was huge. I mean it was just pulling a huge amount of money.

你是说你们烧了很多钱？

You mean you were burning a ton of money?

我们确实烧了很多钱，但我们也需要一个合作伙伴。当我们第一次去中国时，所有人都告诉我们，我们需要一个合作伙伴。

We were burning a lot of money, but also we needed a partner. When we first went to China, everybody told us that we needed a partner.

他们就会这么告诉你。我们问：“什么是合作伙伴？”他们说：“就是那个人或实体拥有你公司在中国 50% 的股份。”我说：“为什么这是法律？”他们说：“不，但如果你不这么做，你就完蛋了。”我一直没搞懂。没人能告诉我为什么。为什么我必须这么做。我就说：“我要试试。管他呢。”这就像苹果、特斯拉，这些家伙说“管他呢”，然后就做了。我们最终确实找到了合作伙伴，但放弃的不是 50%，而是 7%。

And they'll just tell you that. We're like, "What is a partner?" They're like, "Well, that person or that entity has like 50% of your company in China." I go, "Why is this a law?" They're like, "No, but if you don't do it, you're totally screwed." And I just never got it. Nobody could tell me why. And why I had to. I just said, "I'm going to try. Screw it." Which is like again Apple, Tesla, these guys said screw it and they just did it right now and we eventually did get a partner but instead of giving up 50% we gave up I think it was 7%.

那是为了滴滴，但也是因为我们承受着巨大的监管压力，只要身边有合作伙伴，我们就能中国化。

And it was to buy do but it was because we were getting massive regulatory heat and as long as we had a partner by our side we could be Chinese.

嗯。

Yeah.

对。就像当你开始会见中国的部长们，你知道，最高层级的，你必须得到中国某人的担保，否则事情就开始变得奇怪。

Right. And like this is like when you start meeting with ministers in China, you know, like at the top at the highest level, you have to be vouched for by somebody in China or things get start to get weird.

这就是那 7% 的用途。

And that's what the 7% is for.

这就是那 7% 的用途。我们本质上需要一个在中国内部受信任的合作伙伴。

That's what the 7% was for. We needed a partner inside China that was trusted essentially.

但我记得，就在我们找到那个合作伙伴的时候，当然，我们正在做这件事，然后发生了一场罢工，一场泛欧罢工，所有欧洲城市的出租车都参与了。我记得大概是 2015 年 7 月。你知道，巴黎有车辆被点燃，但几乎每个大城市都试图关闭我们。

But like I remember, you know, right about the time that we got that partner, you know, we of course were doing this and there was a strike, a pan-European strike for all taxis in all European cities. And at some point, I think there were like I think this is 15, I believe, 2015, July, I think. You know, there were vehicles being lit on fire in Paris, you know, but it was like every major city in they just tried to shut the down.

他们在抗议什么？

What are they protesting?

进步。

Progress.

所以我去见中国的交通部长，他扔下三份报纸，西方报纸，头版头条，老式报纸，对吧？还记得那些吗？因为上面有所有这些城市混乱的图片，他说：“这是个问题，这不是我们能接受的。”我说：“为什么？”显然，我知道他会说什么。我说：“但这些都是西方民主国家。”我说：“在西方民主中，我们知道这是一场人气竞赛。这意味着政客靠受欢迎而成功。当进步来临时，他不会成功。在民主国家，只有当他受到威胁时，那个寻求受欢迎的政客才会推动进步。当存在颠覆或不稳定的威胁时，你才能在西方民主中获得进步。”我说：“但那又怎样？我们在中国，情况完全不同。”他说：“你什么意思？”我说：“在中国，我只有在稳定与进步和谐时才能获得进步。”或者说，进步和稳定必须和谐。你只有在进步与稳定和谐时才能获得进步。我就是这么说的，就那三个词。那非常中国化，你知道，完全不同。我说，如果我们给中国带来任何不稳定的迹象，我们会被立即关闭。但只要我们创造稳定的基础，进步就非常受欢迎。进步必须与稳定和谐，完全不同。

So I'm going and meeting with the transportation minister in China and he throws down three newspapers, western newspapers that top of the fold old school newspapers, right? Remember those because pictures of this chaos across all these cities and he's like this is a problem and this is not going to you know this is not something we're okay with and I said why and you know there's obvious I knew what I you know I knew what he was going to say and I said but this is all western democracies And I'm like in western democracy is we know is it's a popularity contest. Um and what that means is that the the politician succeeds by being popular. He doesn't succeed when progress comes. And the only way to get progress in a democracy is for that for that politician who seeks to be popular when he's under threat. When there is a threat of disruption or instability is the only time you'll get progress in Western democracy. And I'm like, "But so what? We're here in China and it's totally different." He goes, "What do you mean?" And I'm like, "Well, the only time I get I'm able to get progress in China is when uh stability is in harmony with progress." So or or let's say progress those two must be harmonized. You will only get progress when it is in harmony with stability. And I said it in that way, those three words. And that was very Chinese, you know, and totally different. It's like I'm like, if there was ever any hint of instability that we were to bring to China, we would be shut down immediately. But as long as we create a foundation of stability, progress is super welcome. Progress must be in harmony with stability and totally different.

那么他们什么时候认为优步在向他们的城市或地区注入不稳定？

So when did they take the viewpoint if they took the viewpoint that Uber is injecting instability into their city or area?

他们从来没有。

They never did.

嗯。

Yeah.

但他们某个时候觉得我们可能会赢。而且并没有真正看到严重的问题，我们大部分情况下在城市里受到了公平对待。不是完全公平，但大部分是。但发生的是，我当时会说，中国战争全球化了。所以，我们每个月花几千万美元在所有城市与滴滴作战。战斗是这样的，我需要补贴订单来获得市场份额。当我获得市场份额时，就有网络效应，因为我更大，我的系统就更高效。如果我比他们高效，他们就必须比我补贴更多才能与我竞争。那么我如何补贴，在哪里、何时、如何获得效率优势，那种网络效应的效率优势，让我比他们补贴更少？这就是为什么，你知道，Lyft 比 Uber 小，因为我们在这一部分做得更好，人们不知道这就是关键。但如何获得效率优势？效率优势从有人下载应用并注册时就开始了。如果在一个平台上注册比另一个更容易，你就有了效率优势。

But they at some point felt like we were we may win. And instead of really seeing super problems at the we didn't for the most part we were treated fairly at the cities for the most part. Not completely but for the most part. But what happened was the what I would what I'd say at the time is that the China war went global. So, we were spending, let's say, tens of millions of dollars a month fighting DD in all these cities. And the fight was like, uh, I needed to subsidize rides to gain market share. When I gain market share, there's network effect because if I'm bigger, then my system is more efficient. And if I'm more efficient than them, they have to subsidize more than I do to compete with me. So how do I subsidize where, when, how to get that efficiency edge, that network effect efficiency edge so that I subsidize less than them? This is why, you know, like Lyft is smaller than Uber because we were better at this part of this the thing and people don't really know that's what it takes. It's but like how do you get efficiency edge? Efficiency edge starts when somebody even downloads the app and signs up. If it's easier to sign up on one versus the other, you have an efficiency edge.

如果叫车更容易、更顺利地把车送到你面前，你就有了效率优势，因为你需要更少的客服支持，完成率也会更高。如果汽车能跟着需求走，因为司机端应用有很好的方式引导司机去正确的地方，那就意味着接驾时间更短。效率优势意味着你能更快做大。更快做大意味着你有更大的司机网络，这意味着无论你在城市的哪个位置，都能更快叫到车。而且会更便宜，因为如果司机接你的路上空驶时间更少，而他通常又在优化每小时收入，那么整个系统就会开始运转得更好。这就是网络效应。

If it's easier to call a vehicle and get it to you without problems, you have an efficiency edge because you'll have less support. You'll have higher completion rates. If the cars are moving to where the demand is because the driver app has good ways to point drivers to the right place, that means you have shorter pickup time. Efficiency edge means you get bigger faster. You get bigger faster means you have a bigger network of drivers, which means wherever you are in the city, you are going to get a faster pickup. And it will be cheaper because if there's less dead time for the driver to pick you up, then if he's generally trying to optimize for dollars per hour, then the whole thing just starts working better. That's the network effect.

所以你会想，那我怎么变大呢？好吧，我把车费定得很便宜。这是一种办法。如果你的车费比他们便宜，那么突然之间你的网络就变大了。你的网络给你效率，这又意味着你能在没有补贴的情况下达到更低的价位，而竞争对手仍然必须补贴。

So you're like, okay, how do I get bigger? Well, I'll make the rides really cheap. That's one way of doing it. And if your rides are cheaper than them, then all of a sudden your network gets bigger. Your network gives you efficiency, which then means you can get to a lower price point without subsidies that the competitor still has to subsidize.

你会在他们亏损的地方盈利。那些强盗大亨们都懂这个道理，比如卡内基。

You'd make a profit at a place where they would make a loss. And the Robber Barons all understood this, like Carnegie.

是啊。你说话的时候，我就想，这就是洛克菲勒。

Yeah. When you're talking, I'm like, this is Rockefeller.

完全就是。所以我读了，我想是切尔诺的传记。

It totally is. So I read, I think it was a Chernow biography.

《泰坦》。

Titan.

对。

Yes.

好吧，其实还有一本更好的，我要发给你。

Okay, there's actually a better one I'm going to send you.

是什么？

And what is it?

是 1970 年大卫·弗里曼·霍克写的那本书，叫《洛克菲勒：奠基之父》——约翰·D.，洛克菲勒家族的奠基人。

It's this book from 1970 by David Freeman Hawke, called 'Rockefeller: The Founding Father'—John D., the founding father of the Rockefellers.

《泰坦》有 800 页，里面很多是他的家族史。这本大概有 250 页讲他如何建立标准石油，正是你描述的那种。

Titan is 800 pages and you got a lot about his family history. This is like 250 pages of how he built Standard Oil, and it's exactly what you're describing.

我想打断你一下，然后你再回到那个话题。我现在的问题是，我每个月在 Uber 上花几千美元，而且我只用 Uber 的黑色 SUV 车型。这太疯狂了。在我使用 Uber 的这些美国大城市成熟市场里，Uber 的网络效应会被如何逆转？

I want to interrupt you one second before you go back to that. My question to you now is, I spend thousands of dollars a month on Uber, and I only use Uber Black SUV. It's insane. What in a mature market in the United States, in these big cities that I'm using Uber, how would the network effects of Uber be reversed?

好的，有几件事。首先，一个与 Uber 竞争的小玩家有某些优势。假设一个小玩家说：“我的车费会比大玩家便宜。”好吧，小玩家，假设规模只有十分之一。我们就说他们的补贴绝对值大约是对方的十分之一。所以如果我是小玩家，我去补贴车费，我就会获得市场份额，除非大玩家花 10 倍于我的钱。而效率优势可以把 10 倍变成 7 倍。

Okay, so there's a couple things. First, a small player competing against Uber has certain advantages. Let's say a small player said, 'I'm going to have cheaper rides than the big player.' Okay, the small player, let's say, is one-tenth the size. Let's just say their subsidies on an absolute basis are somewhere around one-tenth as much. So if I am the small guy and I go and subsidize rides, I'm going to gain market share unless the big guy is spending 10 times as much as me. Now the efficiency edge can make it instead of 10x, can make it 7x.

嗯。

Mhm.

好吧。但最终，一个资金充足的竞争对手，你必须在某种程度上让他们成长，让他们感受到自己规模的重量。所以当他们补贴时，这就成了问题。

Okay. But you ultimately, a well-funded competitor, you have to let them grow to some degree so that they have to feel the weight of the size of what they are. So when they're subsidizing, it becomes a problem.

而且对他们伤害更大。

And it hurts them more.

我喜欢谈这样的情况：如果我们有一个竞争对手，我们不太确定发生了什么，因为当你补贴时，你不得不猜测。你必须猜测，我对他们有没有效率优势？你尽量让自己变得高效，但你不知道你是否比他们更高效。所以你需要信号。

I like to talk about situations where if we had a competitor, we weren't exactly sure what was going on, because what happens is you have to guess when you're subsidizing. You have to guess, do I have an efficiency edge on them or not? You try to make yourself as efficient as possible, but you don't know if you are more efficient than them or not. So you need signal.

来确定你是否更优。

To determine whether you're better.

一个完全可行的办法是让竞争对手达到 50% 的份额。所以是 50/50。你们网络规模相同，然后你开始观察，好吧，在维持 50% 市场份额的同时，我的价格是比他们低，还是比他们高？如果我能以更高的价格维持 50% 的市场份额，那我的系统就比他们更高效。

One of the ways you could totally do it is let the competitor get to 50%. So it's 50/50. You have the same network size, then you would start to see, okay, is my price lower than theirs while maintaining a 50% market share, or is my price higher than theirs while maintaining a 50% market share? If I can maintain 50% market share while having a higher price, then my system is more efficient than them.

嗯。

Mhm.

然后我就可以开始调整，因为我知道他们会输。为什么？因为在某个时刻，效率会超过补贴。我的意思是，当你补贴时，你会经历巨大的增长，但到了某个点，你变得太大，无法真正大量补贴。比如你一年做 100 亿次行程，你不可能每次补贴 2 美元。

Then I could start dialing because I know they'll lose. Why? Because at some point, efficiency outstrips subsidy. What I mean by that is when you're subsidizing, you go through huge growth, and at some point you get so big that you can't really subsidize a lot. Like if you're doing 10 billion rides a year, you can't subsidize two bucks a ride.

因为你会没钱。

Because you run out of money.

那就是每年 200 亿美元。没人会资助这个。

Just $20 billion a year. Nobody's going to fund that.

对吧？

Okay? Right?

所以随着你越来越大，你实际能投入的补贴金额越来越小。到了某个点，你实际能投入的补贴金额小于你通过做得更好获得的效率收益。于是效率就超过了补贴。任何市场中的小玩家，如果资金充足，都有天然优势，那就是你能很快获得市场份额，并迫使大玩家烧钱。

And so as you get bigger and bigger, the amount of subsidy you can actually put to it is smaller and smaller. And at some point, the amount of subsidy you can put to it realistically is smaller than your efficiency gain by just being better. And so then efficiency outstrips subsidy. Anybody who's a small player in a market has a natural advantage if they're well-funded, in that you can gain market share very quickly and you can force the big guy to burn money.

但为什么大玩家不能更快地淹死小竞争对手呢？

But why wouldn't the big guy be able to drown the smaller competitor faster?

嗯，有办法逆转。比如，另一种不对称的方式是招募司机。例如，如果我是大玩家，我可以给司机补贴。我可以给司机补贴，比如加入 Uber 并在第一周完成 100 次行程，就给你 1000 美元。

Well, there are ways to reverse it. So, for instance, the other way where there's asymmetry going the other way is recruiting drivers. So, for instance, I could give subsidies to drivers if I'm the big guy. I can give subsidies to drivers that are like $1,000 if you join Uber and you do 100 trips in that first week.

嗯。

Mhm.

我可以吸走那部分供给。他们能留住那些司机的唯一办法，就是必须补贴他们所有的司机，即使我只是挖走了一小部分。

I could suck up that supply. The only way they're going to be able to keep those drivers is they're going to have to subsidize across all of their drivers, even though I just took a small number of them.

嗯。

Mhm.

所以我会吸走他们所有的司机，除非他们保卫自己的司机基础。

So I'm going to suck up all of their drivers unless they defend their driver base.

像这样的小事有很多，我几乎是在回忆——我做这些已经 10 年了——但我试图记住所有不对称的方式，一个方向对另一个方向。

There's like a lot of little things like this, and I'm almost like remembering—it's been 10 years since I did any of this—but I'm trying to remember all the ways where it's asymmetric one way versus the other way.

是的，我觉得你说到点子上了。就是关注每一个小细节。比如你刚才说的，甚至注册流程、车来得有多快、输入信用卡信息有多容易，等等。

Yeah, I think you hit on it. It's this paying attention to every single little detail. So like when you were speaking about even the sign-up flow and how fast the ride comes and how easy to put in your credit card information, everything else.

我坐在这里想的，不一定是你和 Uber 和中国。我想的是洛克菲勒走过来说：“嘿，你们在这些桶上滴 50 滴焊料，你们这么做是因为你们认为 50 滴就不会漏。试试 48 滴。”他们试了 48 滴。这是《泰坦》里的。他们试了 48 滴，漏了。那 49 滴呢？

What I'm sitting here thinking is not necessarily about you and Uber and China. I'm thinking about Rockefeller walking by and saying, 'Hey, you guys are putting 50 drops of solder on these barrels, and you're doing that because you think it's 50 so it doesn't leak. Try 48.' They try 48. This is in Titan. They try 48, it leaks. What about 49?

49 滴不漏。

49 doesn't leak.

他说第一年那一滴只省了 2500 美元，因为当时我们还很小。现在那是几十万美元。他用一千种不同的事情做了同样的事。所以等他达到那个规模时，你根本没法竞争。不可能。

And he says the first year that only saved us $2,500 a year because that one drop, but we were tiny. Now it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he did that with a thousand different things. So by the time he got to his scale, you're not competing at all. It's impossible.

所以这非常重要。我是在 Uber 之后才读《泰坦》的。

And so that's super important. Now I read Titan after Uber.

我读的时候就想，“天哪，这家伙也太硬核了。”但原因是我在 Uber 有反垄断律师，他们非常明确地告诉我，有些事情能做，有些事情不能做。他们一直在培训我、教育我反垄断法。

And I'm reading him going, "Holy, this dude was way more hardcore." But the reason why is because I got an anti like there we had antitrust attorneys at Uber and they're like very making it very clear. Like there's certain things you can do, certain things you can't. They're like training me and educating me on antitrust law.

嗯。

Yeah.

一开始你听到这个，你只是个创业的小年轻，你会想，反垄断法？那是什么？你巴不得有这种问题，你知道吗？

Now, at first when you hear that and you're just a startup kid, like literally just get you're like antitrust law. That's like what are you can't wait to have that problem, you know?

呃，但显然这最终变得非常重要。

Uh, but it ends up being obviously very important.

嗯，但洛克菲勒没有这个。

Um, but Rockefeller didn't have that.

不，法律是因为他才通过的，当然。

No, he the laws passed because of him, of course.

但就像他是超级……人们用 OG 这个词，用错了。它的意思是“原始黑帮”。他才是 OG。OG。

But it's like he's the super like people use OG, they use it the wrong way. It means original gangster. He's the OG. OG.

我在读《从 0 到 1》时发现了我最喜欢的一句名言：“我注意到的唯一最强大的模式是，成功的人会在意想不到的地方发现价值。他们通过从第一性原理而非公式来思考商业。”这正是 Apploven 对其广告平台所做的。Apploven 让你在手机游戏内接触到超过 10 亿的潜在新客户。Apploven 让你捕获全神贯注的注意力。Apploven 广告是全屏视频广告，平均观看时长达 35 秒。这种留存率让其他广告平台望尘莫及。你可以在几分钟内就在 Apploven 上启动。你设定目标，Apploven 实现它。无需复杂设置，无需专业知识。而且 Apploven 扩展迅速。他们可以把你的广告展示给超过 10 亿的潜在客户。其他企业已经看到了立竿见影的效果，日消费额达到数十万美元，收入增加了数百万。所以你想在竞争对手都进入 Apploven 之前快速开始。你可以访问 apploven.com 来实现。那就是 apploven.com。

I found one of my all-time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places. And they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas." That is exactly what Apploven has done with their advertising platform. Apploven connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. Apploving allows you to capture undivided attention. Apploving ads are full screen video ads that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. And you can launch on Apploven in minutes. You set the goal and Apploven achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed. And Apploven scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increased their revenue by millions. So you want to get started quickly before all of your competitors are on Apploven. And you can do that by going to apploven.com. That's apploven.com.

我认为关于垄断的另一件事是，有不同的方式，有不同的情况，因为有时垄断的出现是因为公司非常有竞争力。有时垄断的出现是因为公司反竞争，它们是不同的。

I think the other thing about monopolies too is there are different ways, there are different things because sometimes the monopoly emerges because the company is so competitive. Sometimes the monopoly emerges because the company is anti-competitive and they're different.

这很有趣。再多说一点。

That's interesting. Say more about this.

是的。嗯，我在 Uber 的最终体会是，基本上口号更像是“服务客户最好的人赢得所有客户”。

Yeah. Well, where I ended up at Uber was it basically sort of the motto was more like the one who serves the customer best gets all the customers.

非常贝索斯。

Very Bezos.

我们最终就是这样。所以，你可以非常有竞争力。听着，我们在 Uber 从未通过任何伤害竞争对手的法规。我们绝不会那样做。那不是我们的风格。我们从未为通过某项法案而捐款给竞选活动。

That's where we ended up. So, you can be highly competitive. And look, we had never at Uber, we never got a regulation passed that would hurt a competitor. We never would do that. That's just not how we rolled. We never donated to a campaign ever to try to get something passed.

你想赢是因为你提供了最好的服务。

You wanted to win because you built the best service.

没错。

That's right.

我现在正在读这本传记。它出版于 1975 年。讲的是本田的创始人在日本竞争。他 1948 年创立本田。日本当时一片废墟。

I'm reading this biography right now. It was published in 1975. It's on the founder of Honda who's competing in Japan. He founds Honda 1948. Japan's in ruins.

嗯。

Yeah.

当时日本的技术真的很落后。所以他手下那些造摩托车和汽车的人都说，“我们联合起来，向政府请愿，不允许进口。”而他，他是唯一一个投反对票的人。他说，“不不不。”他说，“获胜的方式是打造更先进的技术。”

And they're the technology in Japan is really low at the time. And so all these all of his the people that are building motorcycles and cars, they're like, "Let's b uh let's get together and petition the government to not allow imports." And he's like, and he was the only one that voted against it. He goes, "No, no, no." He goes, "The way to win is to build the superior technology."

嗯。

Yeah.

因为如果我们有最好的产品，那个产品就会走向世界，它不仅会在日本盈利，还会传播到全世界。

Cuz if we have the best product, that product will go, it won't just be profitable in Japan, it'll spread throughout the entire world.

这很像你在这里说的。就像，“不，我不想要保护主义。我想赢是因为我打造了最好的产品，客户选择了我。”还要记住，我们做我们所做的事情所克服的是一个完全反竞争的系统。

Very much like what you're saying here. It's like, "No, I don't want protectionism. I want to win because I built the best product and customers are choosing me." And also remember what we were overcoming to do what we do was a system that was perfectly anti-competitive.

你能解释一下政府纵容的垄断或政府纵容的卡特尔，叫做出租车吗？人们不明白这一点。你能解释一下你创办 Uber 时的环境吗？

Can you explain a government condoned monopoly or a government condoned cartel called taxi? People don't understand this. Can you explain the environment in which you started Uber?

我们先从什么是出租车开始。好的。什么是出租车？嗯，我们用纽约来举例，因为这是最好的讲述方式。在 1900 年代初期，有人会载需要穿越城市的其他市民，并为此收费。最终，城市决定，嘿，看，我们希望对此进行许可和某种控制，或者当然，道路规则，只是道路规则。所以，你会得到许可证，但任何人都可以得到许可证。你可以免费获得许可证，他们会确保你不是重罪犯之类的，你会说，“听起来不错。好主意。”但任何人都可以免费获得纽约的出租车许可证。最终，这个数字达到了，我不知道，大约 13,000 个。然后这 13,000 个拥有许可证的人，现在大概是 1920 年代、1930 年代，决定游说城市不再发放许可证。城市和他们做了一些交易。谁知道呢，你知道，那个时代的纽约，你知道那是怎么发生的，但不再发放许可证。当然，这对拥有许可证的人来说是好事，因为随着城市的发展，穿越城市的需求越来越大，但许可证数量是固定的，只有这些人被允许这样做。然后出租车司机去市议会，他们再次游说。下一轮游说是，我们希望能够把许可证卖给其他人。所以现在我有这个东西了。它被称为“牌照”。现在我可以……这是一种人为的稀缺。嗯，我可以把它卖给其他想要获得现金流的人，这是一种人为的高现金流，因为基本上没有人被允许竞争。然后他们又去了一次市议会，他们说，“我们希望能够把这个许可证按天或按周租给个人。”这就是今天的现代出租车系统。当 Uber 进入纽约时，司机每周工作 7 天，每班 12 小时，但每天有两个 12 小时的班次。每个司机每年支付 40,000 美元来租一辆车，只租一半的时间。

Let's start with what is a taxi. Okay. What is a taxi? Um, we'll do New York cuz it's the best it's the best way to tell it. In the early 1900s, there were people that were picking up other citizens uh that needed a ride across town and charging them for it. And um eventually the city decided, hey, look, we want to have this to be licensed and controlled in some way or like certainly rules of the road, just rules of the road. So, you'd get a license, but anybody could get a license. You'd get that license for free and they would make sure like you weren't like a felon and like different things like this, which you'd go, "That sounds great. Good idea." But anybody could get a license and get it for free, a taxi license in New York. And eventually that number got to, I don't know, somewhere around 13,000. And then those 13,000 people who had licenses, this is now like, let's call it the 1920s, the 1930s, decided that they would lobby the city to give no more licenses out. And the city, they they did some deals. Who knows, you know, that era in New York, you know, how that went down, but no more licenses. And of course that was great for the people who had them because as the city was growing there's more and more demand to get across town but there are a fixed number of licenses people who could do it who are allowed to do it. Then the taxi guys go to city council and they they lobby again. And the next version of the lobbying is we want to be able to sell the license to somebody else. So now I have this thing now. It's known as a medallion. Now I can I can it's it's sort of artificial scarcity. Um and I can sell it to somebody else who wants to get a cash flow that's an artificially high cash flow because nobody's allowed to compete essentially. And then they went to city council one more time and they said, "We want to be able to lease out this license to an individual on a daily or weekly basis." And that is the modern taxi system today. When Uber rolled into New York, uh the driver was getting a 12-hour shift 7 days a week, but there are two 12-hour shifts. Each of those drivers was paying $40,000 a year to rent a car for half time.

疯狂。

Insane.

这意味着那个拥有许可证的人，他爷爷是免费得到的。好的。好吧。那个拥有许可证的人，他爷爷免费得到它，现在每年靠把车租给出租车司机赚 80,000 美元。而那个出租车司机每年支付 40,000 美元，每天 12 小时。他每年花 40,000 美元租一辆车。为了这个特权，他变得贫困。这就是出租车系统。而且它们已经存在一百多年了。

Which means the guy who had the license, whose grandpa got it for free. Okay. All right. The guy who has a license, whose grandpa got it for free, is getting $80,000 a year renting a car to a taxi driver. And that taxi driver who's paying $40,000 a year for 12 hours a day. He's renting a car for $40,000 a year. For that privilege, he gets to be impoverished. That is the taxi system. And they are over a hundred years.

所以这就像斯德哥尔摩综合征，或者说监管俘获如此紧密，以至于监管者和出租车公司之间的区别几乎无法分辨。

So it's like Stockholm syndrome or regulatory capture is so freaking tight that the difference between the regulator and the taxi company is almost indistinguishable.

你走进一个你刚刚描述的腐败系统，一定很震惊吧。

And it had to be jarring for you to walk into a system where you just described you're just describing corruption.

这不是合法化的腐败。记住，出租车系统是什么？它是一个政府纵容的卡特尔，将竞争定为非法。

It is not legalized corruption. So remember, what is a taxi system? It is a government-condoned cartel that outlaws competition.

但这一定让你很震惊，因为你带着更好、更便宜、顾客喜爱的产品进来。你在 2010 年或任何时候在纽约开业时抓住了我，从那时起你就一直留住我。我从未打开过另一个应用，大概 16、17 年，不管多久了。我选择这样做，然后政府却说，不，不，这种合法化的腐败是好的。你 Travis 和 Uber，滚出去。

But it must be jarring for you because then you come in with a better product at a cheaper price that customers love. You've caught me in 2010 or whenever you opened up in New York, you've kept me since then. I've never opened up another app like 16, 17 years, however long it's been. It's like I'm choosing to do that, and then the governments are like, no, no, this legalized corruption is good. You Travis and Uber, get the hell out of here.

所以发生的是，在美国，反竞争是非法的，除非你让政府官员或监管者替你这样做，那就合法了。相当有趣。

So what happens is, being anti-competitive is illegal in the United States unless you get a government official or regulator to do it for you, then it's legal. Pretty interesting.

我们在开始录制前谈到了资本主义，他对它有一些有趣的想法和描述方式。我还想说，你知道，这个节目是对资本主义的情书。它非常支持创业。我是古巴移民的儿子。我从小遇到那些乘木筏过来的人。从 9 岁起，我就知道我显然出生在一个非常特别的地方。如果这些人冒着生命危险来到这里，以及这个国家创造的财富。我认为还必须指出的是这种裙带资本主义，就像你不，我喜欢世界上的本田，就像不，不，我想赢是因为我是最好的，而不是因为我给了你一堆钱，你关闭了我的竞争对手。那应该被指出来。

We were talking before we started recording about capitalism, and he has some interesting thoughts and ways to describe it. I would also say like, you know, this show is a love letter to capitalism. It's very pro-entrepreneurship. I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant. I grew up meeting people that came over here in rafts. From the time I was 9 years old, I knew I'm obviously born into a very special place. If these people risk their lives to get here and the wealth that this country has created. What I think also has to be called out is this crony capitalism where it's like you don't, I like the Hondas of the world where it's like no, no, I want to win because I'm the best, not because I gave you a bunch of money and you shut down my competitors. That should be called out.

所以这非常有趣，因为你说好吧，在这种情况下，Uber 在许多方面是超级资本主义的象征，就像它拥抱了资本主义的所有价值观和原则，但它始于最重要的，即个人有权在不同的商品或服务供应商之间选择。这就像支持竞争的事情。消费者有权在不同的产品之间选择。另一方面，个人可以创业提供该服务或产品。所以你说好吧。所以资本主义的基础是有人可以创办合法企业，比如制造产品或服务并提供给人们，人们有权选择使用哪一个。这就是资本主义。那么问题是什么是反资本主义？反资本主义是限制人们创业或选择职业，和/或个人无权选择他们购买的服务或产品。核心就是这样。现在，人们会困惑。有时他们认为某物是资本主义，其实不是。很明显，你知道，任何人看到关于出租车的对话的任何部分，都很清楚出租车绝对不是资本主义。

So it's super interesting because you go okay, well in this case Uber was the symbol of hyper capitalism in many ways, like it was embracing all of the values and principles of capitalism, but it started with the most important, which is an individual has a right to choose between different suppliers of a good or service. It's like a pro-competition thing. The consumer has a right to choose between different offerings. The other side of that is an individual can start a business to provide that service or offering. So you go okay. So capitalism at its foundation is somebody can start a legal business, like make a product or a service and offer it to people, and the people have the right to choose which one they use. That's capitalism. So the question is what's anti-capitalism? Anti-capitalism is the constraint on people being able to start a business or have a vocation that they choose, and/or individuals not having the right to choose which service or product that they buy. At the core, that's what it is. Now, people get confused. Sometimes they think something is capitalism that is not. It's pretty obvious, you know, anybody watching any part of this conversation on taxis, it's super clear that taxis are definitely not capitalism.

嗯。

Mhm.

但这就是为什么它们不太好，为什么它们比需要的更贵。如果人们今天在纽约乘坐 Uber，想知道为什么这么贵，为什么越来越不可靠，那是因为在我离开 Uber 后，他们开始通过一系列法律，把 Uber 变成出租车系统。

But it's why they are not very good and it's why they are more expensive than they need to be. And if people are taking Ubers today in New York and wondering why it's so expensive and why it's getting more unreliable, it's because after I left Uber, they started passing a bunch of laws that are turning Uber into the taxi system.

我不知道这个。

I didn't know this.

是的。他们对 Uber 上的司机数量有限制。他们把它变成了一个不可交易的牌照系统。随着人们退休不再开车，Uber 的数量，我相信，我可能记错了，但大约是固定的或正在减少。这就是为什么价格上涨，服务下降。但 Uber 被认为是资本主义的东西，但实际上政府正在限制它。这是……为什么？因为出租车车主希望他们的牌照价格回升。

Yeah. They have a limit on the number of drivers that can be on Uber. They've turned it into a medallion system that cannot be traded. And as people retire out of driving, the number of Ubers, I believe, I may have this wrong, but it's something, it's either fixed or shrinking right now. And that is why the prices are going up and the service is going down. But Uber's thought of as a capitalist thing, but actually the government is constraining it. This is a... And why? Because of the taxi owners who want their medallion prices to go back up.

这太疯狂了。你读过《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》吗？

This is madness. Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged?

当然。是的。

Of course. Yeah.

我的意思是很多人觉得现在发生的事情就像那本书里的场景。

I mean a lot of people are like what's happening now feels like the scenario, you know, the scenes from that book.

我没读过。它被推荐给我一百万次了。节目里有很多嘉宾私下跟我谈过它，最后我想，好吧，第 12 个推荐的人，我终于读了。然后我去查了一下，我想，等等，这是从 1946 年到 1956 年写的，我想她写了 10 年。我想，这听起来像这本书里的人正是今天那种人。

I haven't. It was recommended to me a million times. There's a bunch of guests that have been on the show that have talked to me about it in private, and finally I was like, all right, the 12th person that recommended, I finally read it. And then I went and looked up, I was like, wait, this was written from like 1946 to 1956, I think the 10-year period she was writing. I was like, this sounds like the people in this book are exactly the same kind of person today.

是的。是的。当然。我同意。

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I agree with that.

整本书就像我们有这些推动者，然后我们有这些人只是试图限制他们的竞争。我喜欢你说的，他们在抗议什么？

The whole book is like we have these prime movers and then we have these people that are just trying to restrain their competition. And I love what you said, like what are they protesting?

进步。

Progress.

是的。

Yeah.

但是当推动进步的人罢工时会发生什么？这是贯穿全书的一个非常迷人的主题。

But what happens when the people building the progress then go on strike? That's very fascinating like theme throughout the book.

是的。我的意思是，这类事情我们会到达一些相当有趣的地方。

Yeah. I mean we get to some pretty interesting places with this kind of thing.

在你的职业生涯中，你只在 Uber 遇到过这种政府腐败吗？你有没有遇到过……我知道你创办了城市存储系统，云厨房在城市存储系统里。现在你把它改名为 Adams。你有没有遇到过，因为你整个事情，我喜欢你的是就像所有物理世界。我想你说过这是一种召唤。数字化物理世界。我喜欢你用“召唤”这个词。我认为这非常重要。你有没有遇到过其他形式的……

In your career, did you only run into this government corruption in Uber? Have you run into any... I know you started city storage systems, cloud kitchens was in city storage systems. Now you renamed it at Adams. Have you run into because your whole thing, what I love about you is just like all physical world. I think you said it's a calling. To digitize the physical world. I love that you use the word calling though. I think that's really important. Have you run into other forms of...

它无处不在，但税收是迄今为止最激烈的。字面上，我们谈论反竞争的事情和反垄断法以及洛克菲勒之类的东西。不，不，不。出租车，竞争是非法的。但他们为什么仍然有权力？他们通过游说、捐款、合法化的腐败俘获了监管者。这并不是唯一存在这种情况的行业。你知道，显然还有许多其他行业，但就我所见，竞争被取缔了。

It's everywhere, but taxes is by far the most intense. Literally, we talk about anti-competitive things and antitrust law and Rockefeller and things like this. No, no, no. Taxis, competition is illegal. But why do they still have power? They've captured the regulators through lobbying, through donations, through legalized corruption. And it's not like the only industry where this exists. You know, there are obviously many other industries, but in terms of what I've seen, competition is outlawed.

中国滴滴和 Uber 的故事如何结束？政府是否插手并偏袒滴滴而不是 Uber？

How does the China Diddy Uber story end? Did the government put the hand on the scale and favored Diddy over Uber?

所以，他们最终这样做了。发生的是中国战争全球化，发生的是中国的主权财富基金开始向我在不同地区的竞争对手 Uber 的竞争对手投入数十亿美元，这样他们就会在这些地区补贴并耗尽我的资源。

So, they ultimately did. What happened was the China war went global, and what happened is the sovereign wealth funds in China started pouring billions of dollars into my competitors Uber's competitors in different regions, so that they would subsidize in those regions and drain my resources.

等等，在你说下去之前，告诉我当你意识到他们在玩的游戏时的心态。

Wait, before you go there, take me your mindset when you realize the game that they're playing.

是的。我的意思是，你会想，天哪，这是真的。

Yeah. I mean, you're like, damn, that's real.

你是不是不睡觉，还是你……

What are you like not sleeping or are you like...

嗯，我的意思是，整个 Uber 的事情就像缺觉一样，你知道吧？所以这并不是什么新的缺觉问题。只是……我的意思是这是新的事情，但缺觉总体来说一直存在，因为我有一个全球业务，非常紧张，而且就像我描述的那样，非常博弈论导向，这意味着它总是处于开启状态，而且晚上车里会发生疯狂奇怪的事情。比如我第一次半夜被叫醒，是因为有人从一辆 Uber 里开枪射击。你懂我的意思吗？那可不是好事。问题是，城市里发生的事，也会发生在 Uber 里。

Well, I mean, the entire Uber thing was like a lack of sleep, you know? So it wasn't like this was a new lack of sleep thing. It was just... I mean it was a new thing but lack of sleep generally was a thing just because I had a global business that was really intense and very game theory oriented in the ways that I'm describing, which meant it was always on and crazy weird things happen in cars at night. So like the first time I got woken up in the middle of the night because there was a drive-by shooting from an Uber. You know what I mean? Like that's not good. The thing is that what happens in a city happens in an Uber.

所以你接触到了人类行为的所有反复无常。

So you're exposed to all the vagaries of human behavior.

是的。道路是城市的心血管系统。城市里发生的任何事情，道路都会触及。你知道，人就是人。他们会做不该做的事。我们的目标是让 Uber 成为城市里最安全的地方。我认为我们做到了。我们非常接近这个目标。而且我知道他们今天仍然非常重视这一点。

Yeah. The roads are the cardiovascular system for the city. There's nothing that happens in a city that roads don't touch. You know, people are people. They do things they shouldn't do. Our goal was to make Uber the safest place in a city. And I think we accomplished that. We got pretty close to that. And I know they take it pretty seriously today.

但回到压力。你是想要压力的，对吧？

But go back to the stress. Like you wanted the stress, right?

那很有趣。

It was fun.

好的。那么，赫布·凯莱赫，你知道他是谁吗？

Okay. So, Herb Kelleher, do you know who that is?

西南航空的创始人，历史上最成功的航空公司，连续 40 年盈利。是的。

Founder of Southwest Airlines, most successful airline in history, 40 straight years of profitability. Yeah.

而且你知道，他是个硬汉，对吧？每天喝五分之一瓶波本威士忌，在飞机上抽烟，而且他是个直言不讳的人。我真希望他还活着。他会是我最想对话的顶级嘉宾之一。而且我喜欢他有一次接受采访。他们问：“你承受了很多压力。你怎么应对？”他说：“我不应对。我喜欢它。”

And you know, he was a gangster, right? Drank a fifth of bourbon every day, smoked cigarettes on the planes, and he was an unfiltered guy. I would love if he was still alive. He'd be like one of my top guests I want to talk to. And I love that he was giving an interview one time. They're like, "You undergo a lot of stress. How do you handle it?" And he goes, "I don't handle it. I like it."

是的。

Yeah.

我从你身上也感受到同样的气质。

I get that same vibe from you.

企业家的生活方式，我认为其核心——还有其他一些东西，但这是一个棱镜，是它的一部分，是它的一个支柱——是我能比其他人承受更多痛苦，而且我会证明这一点。一旦你接受了那种生活方式，我的意思是这是真实的事情。不仅仅是我选择接受它。这是我所做事情的本质。然后你就在不断面对逆境并克服它。一旦你总是看到逆境并克服它，它就变得正常了。它的缺点是你会习惯逆境。它变得非常正常。

The lifestyle of an entrepreneur, I believe at its core—there are a couple other things, but this is one prism, one part of it, one pillar of it—is I can take more pain than the other guy and I'll prove it. Once you take on that lifestyle, I mean it's a real thing. It's not just that I choose to take it on. It is the nature of the thing that I am doing. Then you are taking on a life of adversity and overcoming all the time. And once you are seeing adversity all the time and overcoming it, it just becomes normal. The downside of it is you can get used to adversity. It just becomes very normal.

为什么那是缺点？

Why is that a downside?

因为你几乎开始接受它。你不喜欢坏事发生，但你甚至不会生气。

Because you almost start accepting it. You don't like something bad happens, you don't even get mad.

你会想，“这很有趣。”

You're like, "That's interesting."

但那样镇定自若不是有好处吗，在那里……

But wouldn't it be beneficial to be like unruffled like that where...

有好处，但你需要确保自己不会太习惯，以至于它甚至不再困扰你。

There are benefits, but you need to make sure you don't get so used to it that it doesn't even bother you.

你可以变得如此禅意，以至于不受困扰。

You can get so zen you're unbothered.

现在，你仍然会行动，但被困扰、对错误的事情感到不安，这种额外的猛烈有特别之处。是的。错误的事情。什么是逆境？通常逆境是发生了不该发生的坏事。而且是发生在你身上的。这就是逆境。你懂我的意思吗？比如对农民来说，就像干旱，你知道吧？那很可怕。或者可能是很多事情。可能是有人偷了他的庄稼，可能是害虫，可能是任何东西。所以，呃……

Now, you still act, but there's something special about the extra fierceness of being bothered, being upset about something that is wrong. Yeah. Wrong things. What is adversity? Usually adversity is like some bad went down that shouldn't have. And it was done to you. It's adversity. You know what I mean? Like for a farmer, it's like a drought, you know? It's terrible. Or it could be a lot of things. Could be somebody stole his crops, could be pests, could be anything. So, uh...

你只是对它麻木了吗？你是这个意思吗？比如，有没有一些部分？

Are you just getting numb to it? Is that what you're saying? Like, was there parts?

只是说一旦你完全体现了逆境和克服它的生活方式，你必须小心你走过它的轻松程度，因为被错误的事情困扰有额外的力量。你可能会太习惯错误事情的发生。

Just saying once you fully embody the lifestyle of adversity and overcoming it, you have to be careful of the ease at which you walk through it because there is an extra power in being bothered by something that is wrong. You can get too used to wrong things happening.

你在职业生涯中达到过那个点吗？

Have you reached that point in your career before?

嗯，没有。我会说今天很少有事情真正让我感到压力。

Well, no. I would say today there are very few things that actually stress me out.

你担心那个吗？

Are you worried about that?

当然。所以我记住重要的事情，那就是我通过什么是对的什么是错的来引导猛烈的地方。

Of course. So I remember the things that are important and that's where I channel fierceness through what is right and what is wrong.

你几乎是在告诉我你已经对痛苦免疫了。

You're almost telling me you've been inoculated from pain.

是的。有点像当一个战士战斗了很长时间，可能会发生一种禅意。你会习惯它。

Yeah. Something like there's a zen that can happen when a warrior has fought for a long time. You can get used to it.

是的。但你仍然，至少从外表看，你仍然有这种疯狂——我告诉过你，你是我见过的最紧张的人，而我几乎见过世界上所有顶级创始人。

Yeah. But you still, at least from the outside, you still have this like crazy—I told you you're the most intense person I've ever met and I've met almost all the top founders in the world.

但想象一下内在平静的猛烈。

But imagine fierceness with calm on the inside.

那是你想要的，还是你……

That's what you want or that's what you're...

那就是我拥有的。是的。那就是我现在的状态。

That's what I got. Yeah. That's where I'm at.

是的。

Yeah.

你在建立 Uber 的时候内心并不平静。这就是你说的。

You weren't calm on the inside when you were building Uber. That's what you're saying.

我只是说随着一个人创业时间越来越长，并且做得正确……

I'm just saying as one entrepreneurs longer and longer and does it properly...

我从来没听过它被用作动词。

I've never heard it used as a verb.

你会到达那个地方。你只是到达那个地方。创业时间越来越长——我在用那句话，伙计。

You get to that place. You just get to that place. Entrepreneurs for longer and longer—I'm using that line, man.

你只是到达那个地方。

You just get to that place.

嗯，不过我喜欢你说的关于痛苦的话，因为你知道创业史上有一些我喜欢的格言。比如我认为我们都支持的是试图通过提供最好的服务来获胜。所以我最喜欢的格言之一来自亨利·福特，他说金钱是服务的结果自然而来的。如果你去读他的自传，你会看到他是如何组织福特汽车公司的：我们要提供最大限度的服务，而且我不——如果我让客户满意，钱会自己照顾自己。银行账户会没事的。但我最喜欢的创业史格言是卓越就是承受痛苦的能力。

Well, I love what you said though about the pain because you know there's a bunch of maxims from the history of entrepreneurship that I love. Like I think something that we both support is like trying to win based on providing the best service. So one of my favorite maxims comes from Henry Ford where he says money comes naturally as a result of service. If you go read his autobiography, you see how he organized Ford Motor Company: we're going to provide the maximum amount of service, and I'm not—the money will take care of itself if I'm just delighting the customer. The bank account will be fine. But my favorite maxim from all of history of entrepreneurship is excellence is the capacity to take pain.

哦，这是——哦，我喜欢这个。那是 100% 正确的。所以一旦你说创业就是创业的生活方式，创业的生活方式就是这种自豪感，我能比其他人承受更多痛苦。你会问为什么？嗯，最好的例子就像世界级马拉松运动员在第 21 英里。你见过马拉松吗？你见过第 21 英里的马拉松吗？可能是在电视上。那家伙在笑吗？

Oh, this is—oh, I love that one. That is 100% true. So once you say entrepreneurship is the lifestyle of entrepreneuring, the lifestyle of entrepreneuring is this sort of pride and I can take more pain than the other guy. You go why? Well, the best example is like a world-class marathoner on mile 21. You ever seen a marathon? You ever seen a marathon at mile 21? Probably on TV. Is that dude smiling?

没有。当然没有。为什么？

No. Of course not. Why?

因为如果他在笑，如果他只是感觉不到痛苦，就会有其他人感觉到。感觉痛苦和不感觉痛苦之间的区别是什么？就是那额外的推动。那额外的推动意味着如果他不进入那种痛苦，他就会输。那就是卓越。

Because if he were smiling, if he were just not feeling pain, there's somebody else who will. What is the difference between feeling pain and not feeling pain? Is that extra push. That extra push means he loses if he's not getting into that pain. And that's what excellence is.

卓越就是不断挖掘人类的全部潜能，因为如果你不这么做，别人也会这么做。

Excellence is about pushing into the extent of what a human is capable of, the full potential, because if you don't, somebody else does.

是啊。然后那就成了卓越的标准。人类所有的进步都是通过这种对卓越的追求实现的，那是一种穿越痛苦的推动。如果不痛苦，那显然是你还不够努力。

Yeah. And then that becomes the standard of excellence. And all of human progress is through that push towards excellence. That is a push through pain. If it is not painful, you're clearly not pushing hard enough.

我喜欢你把这一点和“如果你在做容易的事，那你做的事就没价值”联系起来。如果你在做容易的事，它可能有价值，但你很快就会被别人超越。或者它可能没价值，这取决于情况。所以，你知道，容易可以是躺在沙滩上六个月。现在，这对你来说可能有价值，尊重，这都很好。每个人都有那个选择，这都很好。但你没有推动人类进步。然后你会说，那有意思了。所以如果某人在沙滩上躺了六个月，他们就没有参与人类进步。我说，他们怎么可能参与呢？你说，如果他们开始深入思考生活、哲学和社会，产生了很棒的想法呢？我说，他们写下来了吗？我说，“好吧，他写下来了。”所以现在他在沙滩上写下来。

And I love that you've tied this to if you're doing something that's easy, you're doing something that's not valuable. If you're doing something that's easy, it may be valuable, but you're about to get your ass whooped. Or it may not be valuable. It just depends. So, you know, easy could be sitting on the beach for 6 months. Now, it could be valuable to you, respect, and that's all good. Everybody has that choice. That's all good. But you're not bringing human progress. And then you go, well that's interesting. So if somebody sits on the beach for 6 months, they're not participating in human progress. I'm like, well, how could they? You're like, well, what if they start thinking deeply about life and about philosophy and about society and they had really amazing thoughts. I'm like, well, did they write them down? I'm like, "Okay, he wrote them down." So now he's on the beach writing it down.

然后我说，“好吧，但有很多人在做同样的事。如果他想推动进步，他必须比其他人做得更好。”所以现在他真的在认真写下来。他把那些文字打磨到如此完美的程度，在别人想到并做到之前。现在他感到痛苦了。你从离开 Uber——那显然是非常毁灭性、令人心碎的——到投入下一件事，中间隔了多久？你有没有在沙滩上躺一会儿？你实际上做了什么？

And I'm like, "Okay, but there's lots of people doing that. He's got to be better than those other guys if he wants to be about progress." So now he's really writing them down. And he's honing those words to such a degree that it's beautiful and perfect before somebody else has that thought and does it themselves. And now he's in pain. How long did you take from when you left Uber, which obviously had to be devastating, heartbreaking, to jumping into the next thing? Did you sit on the beach for a little bit? Like, what did you actually do?

没有。所以，大概七个月，六七个月，差不多这样。大部分时间都在应对法律战。

No. So, it was like 7 months, six, seven months, something like this. And most of it was fending off lawfare.

等等，法律战是刑事的吗？他们是想……

So, wait, the lawfare was it criminal? Were they trying to like...

民事和刑事都有，肯定的。是的。

It was civil and criminal for sure. Yeah.

嗯。

Yeah.

所以，你一直在应对那些……

So, you're fighting off that for...

是啊。这就像企业版的取消文化、法律战，所有那些企业层面的东西。记得我之前说过，我们之前谈过……

Yeah. It's like a corporate cancel culture, lawfare, like all the things on the corporate side of all of those things. Remember I said, remember earlier we talked about...

商业变成了政治。

Business became politics.

我们在镜头外聊过这个。你现在能谈谈吗？

We were talking about this off camera. Can you talk about this now?

是的。所以，你知道，在 2010 年代，媒体界发生了一些事，那就是商业变成了政治。你只要想想你最喜欢的政客，今天上网看看，你觉得你会看到很多关于你最喜欢的政客的积极内容吗？当然不会。我们知道那是因为政客的本质就是如此。有很多互相抹黑和乱七八糟的东西，其中绝大多数都不是真的。不过我觉得我们今天的某些政客，也许很多是真的，但你知道，那只是狗咬狗的互相抹黑，标题往往不是真的，我想我们在政治领域都知道这一点。我们在 2010 年代不知道的是，或者说那才刚刚开始发生的是，商业正在变成政治。你开始读到的关于商业的标题只是叙事，而且常常是捏造的，严重歪曲事实。

Yeah. So there was, you know, in the 2010s there was something that happened in the media and it was that business became politics. If you just think about your favorite politician and just go on the internet today, do you think you're gonna see a lot of happy-go-lucky stuff about your favorite politician? Like, of course not. We know that because politicians basically just the nature of what it is they do. There's a lot of mudslinging and a lot of stuff and a vast majority of it is just untrue. Though I'd say with some of our politicians today maybe a lot of it is true, but you know it's just a dog-eat-dog mudslinging thing and the headlines are often not true which I think we know that in politics. What we didn't know in the 2010s is that, or that was just starting to happen, was that business was becoming politics. That the headlines you were starting to read about business were just narratives and often fabrications with substantial material perversion of truth.

而你就是这方面的典型例子。

And you were exhibit A for this.

当然。我会这么说。

For sure. I would say so.

是的，我也会这么说。

Yeah, I would say so too.

是的。所以，你知道，跟任何认识我的人聊聊，他们基本上都会说，尤其是如果你谈十年前，公众形象和真实的人之间的差别，简直天壤之别。

Yeah. So, you know, talk to anybody who knows me, they would basically say the difference between, especially if you talk about 10 years ago, the difference between the public persona and the actual person couldn't be more different.

嗯，我可以谈谈这个。我知道在我们开始录制之前，我一直在追着你。我在迈克尔家见到你，顺便说一句，那很有趣，当你走向我们时，我说你还记得我吗？你说记得。我说是时候做这个节目了，你说确实是时候了。

Well, I can speak to this and I know when I, we before started recording and I've been chasing you for a while. And I saw you at Michael's house and everything else, which was funny by the way when you walked up to us and I was like do you remember me? You go yeah. I go it's time to do the show and you go it's time to do the show.

我喜欢这样。但我想说的是，就那些真正了解他们的创始人而言……

I love that. But what I would say is just like in terms of founders that actually know their...

你的名声是……

Your reputation is...

完美的。

Perfect.

极好的。如果你是一个杀手级企业家……

Sterling. Like if you're a killer entrepreneur...

你会说 Travis 的好话。

You say great things about Travis.

我听到的唯一的评价来自投资者。这就是为什么……

It's the only I've ever heard comes from like investors. This is why...

我不一定相信它来自投资者，但是……

I don't necessarily believe it comes from investors, but...

我说的是我听到的。

I'm saying what I hear.

不，这很有趣，因为在我……你知道……

No, it's interesting because where I, you know...

嗯。

Yeah.

很多时候是来自旁观者。现在，有时投资者也属于这一类，但当我去做推介和融资时，我不觉得……

A lot of times it's from the gallery. Now, sometimes investors are in that category, but when I go and do pitches and fundraising, I don't feel like...

你是 Travis C. 拜托，兄弟。我只是说 Tra。当然。你基本上是无限制的。所以这是我给 Daniel E 发短信说我要见你，他想要，他说你得让他谈谈融资，我们一会儿会谈到。我想我们必须谈一件非常重要的事，因为我很喜欢我们晚餐时你直接打断了我，我喜欢这样，因为你确实应该这样做。但我想告诉你，我说，听着，有个奇怪的现象，企业家和创始人消费的所有内容和播客都是风投创造的，然后我想说另一件事，你打断了我。你把手放在我脸上，这很搞笑。你说真正的创始人不会听风投的。我们需要谈谈这个，因为……

You're Travis C. Come on, bro. I'm just saying Tra. Of course. Like you basically unlimited. So this is one I was texting Daniel E about that I was going to see you and he wanted, he's like you got to get him talk about fundraising which we'll get to in a minute. I think we have to hit on something really important because what I loved about our dinner is you just straight interrupted me which I loved because you should have and but I was trying to tell you I was like man listen there's just something weird that all the content and the podcasts that entrepreneurs and founders are consuming are created by VCs and you like and then I went to say another thing and you cut me off. You put like your hand in my face which is hilarious. You're like real founders don't listen to VCs. We need to talk about this because...

当然。

Sure.

如果你和创始人是朋友，你会经常听到投资者可怕的恐怖故事和不良行为，他们不会公开谈论这些，对吧？你经历了最糟糕的情况之一。回顾过去，是不是你在 Uber 的时候，只是你从错误的人那里筹到了钱？你现在怎么看？你会告诉现在必须筹集大量资金的年轻创始人什么？我总是，我得先射出一支箭，那就是你绝对不应该从 Benchmark Capital 融资。必须把这点说出来。然后，好吧，让我们进入正题。嗯，看，我认为从什么地方开始变得奇怪很有趣。我的意思是，基本上在巅峰时期，所以 2017 年是我的问题年，对吧？我的意思是，它一直很难，但这时它升级了。Benchmark 在运营一个作战室。他们是一个不言而喻的激进投资者，每周制造一次危机，但没有……

If you're friends with founders, you hear atrocious horror stories and bad behavior by investors all the time that they will not sit talk about publicly, right? You went through one of the worst of the worst. Like going back, it's like is it just when you're doing Uber, is it just you raised money from the wrong people? What did you, how do you look at it now? And how could you, what would you tell like a young founder now that has to raise a ton of money? I always, I got to do the I got to first shoot the arrow, which is you definitely shouldn't raise from benchmark capital. Got to get that out there. Um and then okay, let's get into the real stuff. Um look, I think it's really interesting to start with what, where did it get weird? I mean, basically at the peak, so 2017 was my problem year, right? I mean, it was always hard, but this is when it got dialed up. And Benchmark was running a war room. They were an unspoken activist investor that was creating a once a week crisis, but without...

针对你。

Against you.

是的。针对我，呃，没有明说。再说一次，有些事情我不知道，但我能看到的最好是他们想要流动性，他们觉得我不会给。

Yeah. Against me, uh, without speaking of it. Again, there's some things I don't know, but the best I can see is that they wanted liquidity and they felt like I wouldn't give it.

我们当时已经在准备 IPO 了，但我没告诉他们。

We were already preparing for an IPO, but I didn't tell them that.

你为什么不告诉他们？

Why didn't you tell them that?

因为我们想确保我们想清楚了、准备好了，这样我们就能直接说：“我们要做，而且我们打算这么做。”比尔·格利有点末日论者，总觉得世界末日要来了。如果你觉得世界总是要完蛋，那就会逼你做出很奇怪的事，包括想把我干掉。所以与其去应付那种末日论，不如直接去把事办了。

Because we wanted to make sure we'd done the right thinking, got prepared, so we could just say, "We're going to do it, and here's how we're going to do it." And Bill Gurley is a bit of a catastrophist. It's always the end of the world. And so that forces you to do really weird things if you think the world is always going to end, including try to take me out. So instead of dealing with that catastrophism, let's just go do the damn thing.

我给你举很多例子。我觉得在 2014 年年中，我们进行了一轮融资。上一轮是 2013 年 8 月，35 亿美元，当时我们引入了谷歌和 TPG。然后 2014 年年中，九个月后，我们又做了一轮。格利坚信世界末日要来了，我们融到了资，他就说“就拿第一份投资意向书，直接签了”。

I give you lots of examples. I think in 2014, mid-2014, we had a fundraise. The last round we did was in August 2013, $3.5 billion, when we brought Google and TPG in. Then mid-2014, nine months later, we did another round. Gurley was convinced it was the end of the world, and we got a raise and just take your first term sheet. Just take it.

而你对这有一套完整的理念，就是如果你想让一轮融资顺利又快速，你必须有一个流程。如果你直接拿第一份投资意向书，实际上完成融资反而会更慢，因为没有备选方案。你没有备选。然后事情就会变得奇怪，VC 会一直推、推、推，要求越来越多，最后变得很奇怪，以至于交易很可能直接泡汤。所以我喜欢说，我从不执着于价格，我执着于流程。那个流程是关于卓越的融资。总之，你能解释一下那个流程吗？

And you have a whole philosophy on this, which is like if you want a round to go well and to go fast, you have to have a process. If you just go take the first term sheet, getting the round done will actually take longer because there's no alternatives. You don't have alternatives. And then it gets weird, and then the VC will just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, getting more and more, and it gets weird to a point where it actually becomes highly likely that the deal just blows up. So I like to say I never get attached to a price. I get attached to a process. That process is about excellence in fundraising. Anyways, can you explain that process though?

我们待会儿会讲到。

We'll get there.

好的。

Okay.

别让我忘了。

Don't let me forget.

我不会忘的。

I won't.

BFS。好吧，我们得在这儿坐 10 个小时才能讲完所有事。但他坚信：“嘿，就拿第一份投资意向书，比如就做 60 亿美元。”他说：“我觉得你现在就能完成 60 亿美元的估值轮。这是 35 亿之后的九个月。直接拿第一份投资意向书，把它搞定。”如果你是创始人听到这个，你会说：“兄弟，我听到了。但就算世界要完蛋了，你能做的最好的事就是有备选方案。而且这样交易反而会更快完成。”所以我们到了那种地步，我就是不跟他说话。如果他联系我，我会跟他谈，但我就是不会主动去接触，因为总是那样。所以埃米尔·迈克尔会处理这部分。他会处理很多投资者关系，尤其是那段关系。

BFS. Okay. We're going to have to sit here for 10 hours to cover everything. But he was convinced like, "Hey, just take the first deal. Like, just do a $6 billion." It was like, "I think you could get a $6 billion round valuation done right now. It's 9 months after the three and a half. Just go take the first term sheet, make it happen." Now, if you're a founder hearing that and you're just like, you're like, "Dude, I hear you. But even if the world is about to end, the best thing you can do is have alternatives. And the deal will actually get done faster." So we got to a place where I just wouldn't talk to him. Not if he reached out to me, I would talk to him, but I just wouldn't try to engage because it was always that. So Emil Michael would handle this part. He would handle a lot of the investor relations, especially that relationship.

向埃米尔·迈克尔致敬。那家伙对你忠诚得不得了。

Shout out Emil Michael. That dude is loyal as hell to you.

嗯，他就是个很棒的人。不是因为忠诚，而是因为他就是个很棒的人。但当然，忠诚也是。他会用真诚、真实的方式去做，比如试着处理那些反对意见之类的。总之，两个月后，我们完成了一轮融资，估值 175 亿美元。

Well, he's just an awesome guy. Not because of loyalty, but because he's just an awesome guy. But of course, that too. And he would do it in a genuine, authentic way, like try to handle the objections or whatever. Anyways, two months later, we got a round done at a 17.5 billion pre.

哇。所以这就是我的观点。所以当你想把事情做对，你就得把事情做对。而 VC 们，不是全部，但很多、大多数，他们只是担心别的事。所以我们当时已经在计划 IPO 了。他们不知道，但他们也从未表达过“嘿，兄弟，你得 IPO”的愿望。从来没人提过。所以这就变成了那种奇怪的末日论，加上如果你觉得世界要完蛋了，而你手里有个值很多钱的东西，你可能会走到一个奇怪的地方。尤其是当你是 VC，你没有任何控制权。你不是在经营什么。所以现在你整个人生的结果都取决于这个人，而你觉得世界要完蛋了，他却觉得不会。你可能会走到一个地步，就是你开一个作战室来毁掉他，而事情差不多就是这样。

Whoa. So that's my point. So when you want to do things right, you got to do things right. And VCs don't, not all, but many, most, they're just worried about other things. So we were already planning IPO stuff. They didn't know it, but they also never expressed the desire to like, "Hey, dude, you got to IPO." It's never brought up. So it was like this weird catastrophism mixed with if you think the world's about to end and you've got this thing that's worth a ton of money, you could get to a weird place. Especially when you're in a VC, you don't have any control. You're not like running anything. So now you're like your entire holy big your outcomes in life are due to this guy and you think the world's about to end and he doesn't. You're like you could get into a place where you're running a war room to destroy him and that's kind of what happened.

如果你从不会那样做的人那里融资，替代方案是什么？比如我随便举个例子，就像 Founders Fund 说他们无论如何都不会罢免创始人。他们不会搞那种针对创始人的作战室。

What's the alternative scenario if you raised from somebody that wouldn't have done that? Like I'm just going to make this up, but like how Founders Fund says they no matter what they'll never remove a founder. Will not do like a warfare war room against them.

嗯，我觉得有两部分。首先我要说，对 VC 来说，一个极高的标准是“不伤害”。有很多原因让这对 VC 来说很难。

Well, I think there's two parts. So first I'd say the most, the actually a super high bar for a VC is do no harm. There's a lot of reasons why that's hard for a VC.

请详细说说。这很重要，兄弟。没人谈这个。

Elaborate, please. This is important, man. No one talks about this.

每个人都想在这世上留下印记。你可能相信这个或那个。你想在世界上留下印记。而我的看法是，一个经营公司的运营者，如果他很优秀，就是国际象棋的大师。

Everybody wants to make a mark on the world. And you might believe one thing or another. You want to make a mark in the world. And the way I think about it is an operator who's running a company, if they're good, is a grandmaster of chess.

嗯。

Mhm.

VC，顺便说一句，那个国际象棋大师，那个运营者创业者，每周花 60 到 80 个小时下这盘棋，真的非常懂这个，能看好多步，能看到别人看不到的东西，而且他们全身心投入。而 VC 是个国际象棋爱好者，他们每三个月来看一次棋局，然后试图在意见上留下印记。他们想留下印记。嘿，你为什么不这样做或那样做？而你会说，你知道，别去跟乔丹说怎么扣篮，更别去跟他说怎么运球。但这很难，因为每个人都有观点，你相信什么，你就真的相信。但如果你没有全身心投入，每天 12 到 16 个小时在这件事上，那就不算回事。但这对大多数不经营公司的人来说很难接受。

The VC, and by the way, that grandmaster of chess, this operator entrepreneur, is playing this chess match somewhere between 60 and 80 hours a week, and is like really knows this thing, and it's like knows many moves ahead and just sees things other people don't see, and they're in it as well. And the VC is a chess enthusiast, and they check in on the chess match once every three months, and they're like trying to make a mark on the opinion. They're trying to make a mark. Hey, why don't you do this or that? And you're like, you know, don't go to Jordan and tell him how to dunk, and definitely don't go to him and tell him how to dribble. But it's hard because everybody has an opinion and you believe whatever you believe, you really believe it. But if you're not in a thing all in, all the way, every day, 12 to 16 hours a day on this game, it ain't a thing. But that's a hard thing for most people to take who aren't running.

你觉得为什么他们很难接受？

Why do you think it's hard for them to take?

因为 VC 被神化了，他们在某种程度上在桌边有一席之地，而且你有某些权力可以留下印记。所以你可以这样想：你在塞伦盖蒂草原上，如果一只羚羊在草原上一瘸一拐，狮子会把它扑倒，即使它不饿。它甚至控制不了。它就是这么做的。而这就是大多数 VC 的本性。本性就是，如果你在塞伦盖蒂草原上一瘸一拐，你就会被吃掉。这就是本性。而狮子甚至不知道为什么。有时候你就像，这就是我做的。

Because VCs are glamorized and they have a seat at the table in some fashion, and there are certain powers you can make a mark. And so it's sort of like the way to think about it is you're on the Serengeti, and if an antelope limps in the Serengeti, the lion will take it down even if it's not hungry. Can't even help it. It's just what it does. And that's kind of the nature of most VCs. The nature of it is they will, if you are on the Serengeti and limping, you will be eaten. It's just the nature of it. And the lion doesn't even know why. Sometimes you're just like, this is what I do.

所以当你跟其他创始人、更年轻的创始人说的时候，你说第一优先级就是找一个“不伤害”的投资者。那会是一个很高的标准。那么大概有多少比例能做到？

So when you're talking to other founders, younger founders, you're saying priority number one is just find an investor that does no harm. That would be a high bar. So achievable what percentage of the time then?

10%。

10%.

然后那 1% 是有帮助的，但这很难。他们到底该怎么帮忙？

And then the 1% is helpful, but it's hard. How the are they supposed to be helpful?

不过，有帮助的时机是不同的。有帮助是在困难时期，是你真正需要实际帮助的时候，对吧？有帮助是在那里，你知道，也许是人事，比如你需要优秀的人，但他们还是很难参与，因为他们没有深入其中。

There's different times to be helpful, though. Helpful is hard times, is when you actually need real help, right? Helpful is there, you know, maybe it's personnel, like you need epic people, but it's still hard for them to participate because they're just not in it that deep.

那么，你能解释一下融资过程中的卓越表现，以及你如何看待它，你为此开发的系统吗？

So, can you explain excellence in the fundraising process and how you think about it, the system you develop for this?

是的，它可能会随着时间变化，但我当然有自己的方法。有趣的是，我刚完成一轮融资，看到世界的变化很有意思。但我认为我们现在看到的部分情况是，我们处于一个超级周期或超级高涨、非常看涨的周期，这意味着会发生与平常不同的事情。在平常时期，讲述一个美丽的故事非常重要，这个故事像数字编织而成的故事。这是一个美丽、有趣、引人入胜的故事，其中穿插着分析性数字。你基本上会达到我所说的 QED，即你把棋局剖析到如此程度，以至于非常清楚需要什么才能获胜，并且你拥有获胜的公式。你到最后会说，这已经被证明了。这甚至不再是问题。这就是 QED。这是正常时期。而在超级周期或无论我们怎么称呼现在的情况，这种严谨性就不那么重要了。如果你在严谨性上走得太远，可能会过犹不及。

Yeah, and it could be changing over time, but I certainly have my approach. It's interesting because I've just finished a fundraise right now, and it's interesting to see the world change. But I think part of what we're seeing right now is we're in a super cycle or a super high, a very bullish cycle right now, which means different things happen than if it's average. When it's average, it's super important to tell a beautiful story that's woven like a story that numbers are woven through. It's a beautiful, entertaining, interesting story with analytical numbers woven through it. And you basically get to what I would call QED, which is you've dissected the chess match to such a degree that it's very clear what it takes to win and that you have the winning formula. And you get to the end of the thing and you're like, it's just proven. It's not even a question anymore. It's QED. That's in normal times. And I think in super cycles or whatever we want to call what's going on right now, that rigor is not as important. And if you go too far on that rigor, it could be too much.

解释一下。

Explain that.

你会听到一些创业者的故事，他们只是围坐在桌子旁，然后有了一个想法，就得到了钱。这与 QED 相反。但如果在超级周期中，你有一个长达 2 小时的演示，达到 QED 的程度，你可能应该把它缩短到 45 分钟。

You hear stories of entrepreneurs that just sit down around a table and then they have an idea and they get money. That's the opposite of QED. But if you have a 2-hour long presentation that goes QED in a super cycle, you probably should shorten that to 45 minutes.

为什么？

Why?

我不知道怎么说。看起来就是太多了。比如，老兄，你为什么要走那么远？

I don't know how to put it. It just looks like too much. Like, why are you going so far, dude?

你会把自己说错？

You'll talk yourself out of the wrong?

是的，你会把自己说偏。

Yeah, you'll talk yourself out of the way.

你为什么这么详细？

Why are you so detailed?

这是一种奇怪的现象。非常有趣。就像，兄弟，这很酷。你知道，也许也是因为你在展望很多年之后。所以，你越处于超级周期，你就越向前，越面向未来。而那个未来不能真的用数字紧密地呈现。

It's this weird dynamic. It's very funny. Like, it's cool, bro. You know, maybe it's also because you're projecting many years out. So, the more super cycle you're in, the more forward you are, the more into the future you are. And that future can't really be presented as tightly with numbers.

是的。所以，当你谈论 2 小时后的未来，你不知道。

Yeah. So, when you're talking 2 hours forward, you don't know.

所以，那就关乎案例的理论。这可能是思考方式，即超级周期加上技术发展的速度，以及可能发生的真正指数级拐点。你谈论的是 3 到 5 年后。今天几乎没有任何一组数字能在这种可能发生的疯狂 100 倍的情况下，对 5 年后的情况做出 QED 证明。

So, then it's about the theory of the case. That's probably the way to think about it is that a mix of super cycle plus the speed at which technology is moving and the sort of true exponential inflection that can occur. You're talking 3 to 5 years out. There's almost no set of numbers today that can QED the 5-year thing at this crazy 100x situation that's probably going to occur.

嗯。

Mhm.

所以，你必须从很多方面谈论它的理论，也许这就是为什么今天有点不同。

So then you have to talk about the theory of it in many ways, and so maybe that's why it's a little bit different today.

在正常周期和你刚刚经历的超级周期中，你的方法有什么共同点？

What's the common in your approach in a normal cycle and the super cycle you just got?

正常周期是 2 小时的 QED。

Normal cycle is 2 hours QED.

在正常或超级周期中，你会用到什么共同的东西？

What is something that you'll use in both whether it's normal or super?

嗯，我仍然会做某种形式的 QED 风格，然后多轮竞价是必须的。正确。所以我会说，QED 是讲故事，然后有一个类似拍卖的过程，你在当下进行时磨练。这必须与你有多少资源来做 QED 以及你有多少交易资源来管理完整的拍卖相衡量。

Well, I still do some version of my style is QED, and then the multiple bids thing is mandatory. Correct. So I would call it, so it's QED is the storytelling, and then there's sort of like an auction process that you hone when you're doing right now. This has to be measured against how many resources you have to do QED and how much deal resources you have to manage a full auction.

给我解释一下那部分。

Explain that part to me.

比如，如果我同时有五个房间在进行，我必须要有那个。那是你五个房间同时进行整整一周的事情。

Like if I have five rooms going at the same time, I have to have that. That's a thing that you five rooms simultaneous for an entire week.

你从哪里得到这个想法的？

Where did you even get that idea?

这只是正确事物的表达。有点像如果你不断在某个东西上增量，并不断让它变得更好，你最终会到达那里。

It was just the expression of the right thing. It's sort of like if you keep incrementing on something and keep making it better and better, you will end up there.

当你运行这种五个房间的过程时，业务的质量如何？

What was the quality of the business when you were running this like five room process?

那是 Uber 的巅峰时期。

That's peak Uber.

巅峰。所以就像你可以把钱投到这个或什么都不投。没有什么能接近。

Peak. So it's like there it's like you can put money to this or nothing. Nothing's even close.

不，还有其他东西，但那是 Uber 的巅峰。但关键是我用 QED 做到了。所以我在原子层面展示了整个系统如何运作，以非常分析性的视角，但也有一点表演艺术，因为你在讲故事。

No, there are other things but it was peak Uber. But the point was I did it QED. So I showed at the atomic level how the whole system works with a very analytical view but also sort of a bit of performance art cuz you're storytelling.

好的。那么解释一下这五个房间里发生了什么。

Okay. Explain what's happening in these five rooms then.

五个房间，12 小时，一周。

Five rooms, 12 hours, one week.

房间里是谁？你不必说出人名。

Who's in the rooms? You don't have to say the people.

不，没关系。所以我在 2.5 亿美元支票或以上的房间。然后有一个 1 亿美元的房间，一个 5000 万美元的房间和一个 2500 万美元的房间。在 2500 万美元的房间里会有一个人，他为一个为我工作的人工作的人工作，对吧？

No, it's okay. So I'm in the $250 million check or over room. Then there's like a $100 million room and a $50 million room and a $25 million room. And there'll be a guy in the $25 million room who's like uh who works for a guy who works for a guy who works for me, right?

你们在这些房间里都在说什么？

And what are you guys saying in all these rooms?

我们在讲故事。

We're telling the story.

嗯。

Mhm.

那个故事是核心。

That story is the core.

现在你让它在四个房间里同时进行。而且这个截止日期价格在上涨。

And now you have it being performed in four rooms at a time. And there's this deadline price is going up.

嗯，不，不是价格上涨。所以，那是误解。

Well, no, it's not prices going up. So, that's the misunderstanding.

好的。

Okay.

正确的做法是从低价开始。

The right way to do it is to start with a low price.

解释一下。

Explain that.

所以，很多创业者他们去说，他们真的记得我说过要依附于过程而不是价格。所以，很多创业者会依附于价格而不是过程。你必须小心。很容易陷入那种情况，你得到一些信号表明应该是一个价格，你依附于它，然后那成为你的价格，但你还没有清理市场。所以你必须非常小心。所以你依附于价格，然后当我抛出一个价格时，你在桌子的另一边，你低于它进来，现在我们谈判，对吧？从我的角度来看，这是一个非常糟糕的位置。你真正想要的是从低价开始，然后说，看，我不知道价格会走向哪里，但我知道至少在这里，如果它低，就像好吧，一旦他们给你那个信号，一旦他们那样向前倾，你就说好吧，我们很好，你有一个投标人，然后你去下一个人。这取决于轮次的性质。如果你在做赢家通吃的轮次，那么你只需去下一个人，然后你说那个人说了什么 x + 5，无论 x + y 在这里。就说 x 加 5。那个人做同样的事情。然后你去下一个人，然后它是 x + 5 + 5。下一个人 x 加 5 加 5 加 5。在所有这一切发生的同时，这是一个赢家通吃的交易。

So, a lot of entrepreneurs they go and they say they really have remember I said attached to a process not a price. So, a lot of entrepreneurs will get attached to the price and not the process. And you have to be careful. It's very easy to get sucked into that where you're like you get some signal that it should be a price and you get attached to it and then that becomes your price but you haven't cleared the market. So you have to be very careful about that. So you get attached to the price and so then when I throw a price out you're on the other side of the table and you like you come in under it and now we negotiate, right? It's a very bad place to be from my perspective. Where you really want to be is you want to start at a low price and say look I don't know where the price is going to go but I know it's at least here and if it's low is like okay now once they give you that read once they lean forward like that you're like okay we're good you have a bidder and then you go to the next guy. It depends on how the nature of the round. If you're doing a winner takes all round, then you would just go to the next guy and you would then say whatever that guy said x + 5 whatever x + y here. Just say x plus 5. And that guy does the same thing. And then you go to the next guy and then it's x + 5 + 5. And the next guy x plus 5 plus 5 plus 5. All the while while that's happening, it's a winner takes all deal.

你回到最初的那个人那里，你说：“老兄，它在涨。它在涨。”你告诉人们它在涨。那是赢家通吃的方法。

You go back to the original guy and you're like, "Dude, it's going up. It's going up." And you're telling people it's going up. That's a winner takes all approach.

然后你有点像“一次，两次”，当价格开始见顶，人们有点紧张，开始出汗时，你就说：“好，一次，两次，成交。”然后你结束拍卖，赢家通吃，他们接受交易。

And then you sort of do a going once, going twice, like when you start to peak out where it's like people are getting a little it's starting to get a little high altitude, sweaty, then you're like, "Okay, going once, going twice, sold." and then you close it down and winner takes all and they take the deal.

但现在大多数大交易不是这样运作的。

But most deals that are big deals today are not working that way.

当你同时面对多个房间时，更像是：在这个价格你愿意投多少？比如，假设 80 亿，你愿意投多少？90 亿呢？100 亿呢？120 亿呢？140 亿呢？填表吧。你决定我们在任何最终价格上你愿意投多少。然后你对每个人都这么做。

When you're doing multiple rooms at a time in something like this, it's more like uh how much would you put in at this price? And how much would you put in, let's call it, I'm just making this up, 8 billion. And how much would you put in at 9? And how much would you put in at 10? How much would you put in at 12? How much would you put in 14? Fill the sheet out. You decide how much you'd put in any any price that we end up at. And you do that across everybody.

你现在就是这么做的吗？

Is that what you're doing now?

等等，慢点，慢点。然后你汇总在每个价格上我有多少需求。所以随着价格升高，需求下降。现在你有了需求曲线，你会说：“好，我想融资 10 亿。”但在很低的价格上，我有 30 亿的需求。在更高的价格上，最终我有 10 亿的需求。然后我说：“好，这就是我现在能成交的价格。”然后你去告诉那些因为出价不够高而被淘汰的人。在这个价格上需求更少，意味着有些人没有在这里出价。你去告诉他们出局了。然后你说：“但如果你想做些调整，可以再填一张表。”所以他们填表，你再次绘制需求曲线，一切稍微向右移动，又有其他人被挤出去。你再做一次，然后清理，就完成了。

Hold on. Slow down. Slow down. Then you aggregate how much demand I have at every price. So as the price gets higher, the demand goes down. You now have your demand curve and you're like, "Okay, I want to raise a billion." So, but at the really low price I have three billion of demand. At the higher price, eventually I have a billion dollars worth of demand. And I go, "Okay, that's the price that I could close at right now." Then you go and tell all the people that that got cut out because they didn't get high enough of a price. There's less demand at this price, which means there's certain people that didn't bid here. You go tell them they're out. And you're like, "But you could fill out another sheet if you want to make some moves." So they fill out the sheet, you do the demand curve again, everything moves a little bit to the right, and there's other guys that now get pushed out. And you do it one more time, and then you clean it, and you're done.

那你现在在做什么？

So what are you doing now?

我正要完成一笔交易。

I'm about to close a deal.

但你想说说你是怎么做的吗？你不说数字，但我不能……我不能那样做。不，

Do you want to say how you did it, though? You don't say numbers, but like I can't I can't do that. No,

我不能那样做。

I can't do that.

好吧，有道理。公平。几个月后再来，

Okay, fair enough. Fair. come back on in a few months and

是啊，就像几年前，这次是这样进行的。

Yeah like yeah a couple years ago here's how this one went.

你得隔一段时间，因为你刚做完一笔交易。你懂我的意思吗？

You got to put time in between cuz it's like you just did a deal. You know what I mean?

但我会说这次我做得略有不同。

But I I would say I did a a slightly different slightly different this time around.

我很好奇你如何保护自己，避免 Benchmark 和 Uber 那样的事情再次发生。所以你选择时，显然只是看价格。看，

I'm very curious how you protect yourself from what happened with Benchmark and Uber from ever happening to you again. So how are you selecting is just obviously the price. Look,

你不是选择出价最高的。那你如何挑选合作伙伴？

You're not taking the highest bidder. Like how are you picking your partners?

对。

Yeah.

你还必须小心，嗯，可能……你必须非常小心，不要陷入受害者心态。我的意思是，在那个动态中，我的角色是什么。你说话时我在想，如果我们能问他们

You have to also be careful like um there can be you got to be really careful not to get into victim mentality and what I mean by that is what was my part in that in that dynamic. I was thinking while you were speaking I was like what if we could ask them

他们会希望你做什么你当时没做的事？也许说“嘿，我们即将 IPO”，那可能救了我。但我也没“吻戒指”，我觉得 Gurley 想和我有那种“家乡”的感觉，但对我来说从来不是“家乡”。不过这和“吻戒指”不同，但类似。好吧，就把它归入那一类，我们不必深究。所以，就是这样。那是我肯定可以做得不同的一件事。会改变一切。嗯，公司内部有些人成了他的合作伙伴来发动政变。那些人不应该在那里。好吧。

What would they want you to do that you weren't doing maybe say hey we're about to IPO that probably would have saved me but also like I didn't kiss the ring I think girly wanted to feel like hometown with me and just never was hometown to me is different than kissing a ring though but it it's similar okay just put it in that category we don't have to go there. So, so that's there's that. That's one thing I could have done differently for sure. Would have changed everything. Um, there are people inside of the company who became his partner to do the coup. Those individuals shouldn't have been there. Okay.

你之前有没有怀疑过他们？

Did you suspect them at all before?

有。

Yes.

哇。

Wow.

我会说，肯定有什么不对劲。好吧，就这么说吧。我在 Uber 做的每一个决定，至今我都捍卫。我不是 100% 正确，但总是出于好意，总是从正确的出发点出发。总的来说，我做了正确的事。是的。我的一个律师是这么说的。他打了个比方，像体育比赛，比如你的鞋上有没有粉笔灰，就像出界或做了不该做的事。我说我鞋上从来没有粉笔灰。但要知道，你需要一台电磁扫描显微镜，用慢动作回放的反向角度来验证鞋上没有粉笔灰。所以问题在于，我在太多情况下跑得太靠近边线，当你又大又重要时，审视和期望是你不能那么靠近边线，即使你是对的。这是我绝对没有理解的一点。这源于我在 Uber 之前做的事，我在做一个非常艰难的创业。前四年没有薪水，几次资金耗尽，超级辛苦，失去所有朋友，一切都很艰难。我喜欢说这是史上最不幸运的创业者旅程。你不能说它不幸，我最终卖掉了，但你绝对不会说它幸运。这是肯定的。但基本上，它太难了，我不得不极其精确和强硬，只是为了付账单和下周去杂货店。那种精确和强度造就了 Uber。但我是在用以为下周会饿死的人的方式经营一家 700 亿美元的公司。

There was definitely something wrong is what I would say. Okay, let's put it that way. Every decision I made at Uber defend to this day. Like I wasn't 100% correct, but always good intentions and always coming from the right place. Generally just did the right thing. Yeah. One of my lawyers put it this way. is like um you know did you if you're like he he sort of made a sporting or like a like a sports analogy which is like do you have chalk on your shoe would be like kind of going out of bounds or doing something you shouldn't have done. I'm like never had chalk on my shoe. But in order to know, you would need an electromagnetic scanning microscope to see with reverse angle of slow-mo replay to verify that there's no chalk on the shoe. So the problem was I ran too close to the line in too many situations that it it when you are big and important the scrutiny and the expectation is that you don't run that close to line even if it's correct and that is a thing I definitely did not understand um and it comes from what I did before Uber which was I was doing a really hard startup. First four years, no salary, ran out of money several times, like super grind, like lose all friends, like everything's it was just the hardest kind of I I like to say the non-luckiest entrepreneur journey of all time. You can't call it unlucky. I eventually sold, but like you definitely would never call it lucky. That's for damn sure. But basically, it was so hard that I had to be sort of epically precise and hardcore just to pay the bills and go to the grocery store next week. And that precision and intensity made Uber what it was. But I was running a $70 billion company the way somebody who thought he was going to starve next week would run it.

这太迷人了。

That is fascinating.

像超级强烈的精确、完美、执着，因为他不确定下周能否付得起杂货账单。你当时理解那是你的方法吗？你当时有那种方法，

Like super intense precision, perfection, obsession because he's not sure that he's going to be able to pay the grocery bill next week. Did you understand you were that was your approach at the time you had that approach

还是你必须离开后回头看才能明白？

Or you had to leave and look back and figure it out?

可能两者都有一点。是的。但我为此感到自豪。当时那是一种全力以赴的自豪，但可能没有像今天这样理解它。我想知道这有多大好处。比如你是历史上最激进的创始人之一。你现在更聪明，更有经验，资源更多，人脉更好。我想知道这个版本的你

It's a little probably a little bit of both. Yeah. But I take pride in that. At the time it was like a pride in going all the way but like not maybe understanding every understanding it the way I understand it today. I wonder how much of that is a benefit. Like you're you're super you're one of those most aggressive founders in history. You're wiser, more experienced now, more access to resources, better network. I wonder if this version of you

能否与那个版本竞争，或者那种激进正是你创造整个品类的原因。

Could compete with that version or that aggressiveness is just what that you you created the entire category.

是的。不，我理解。如果有一个宇宙我能和年轻的自己竞争，那会超级有趣。那太棒了。我会非常喜欢。我会把他打得屁滚尿流。

Yeah. No, I understand. It would be super fun if there was a universe where I could compete with my younger self. That would be awesome. I would love that so much. I would kick his ass.

你还好。现在，他会因为年轻而做某些事情，这有它的道理。记得我谈过对是非的热情，对吧？举个例子，那有它的道理。但我也注意到，今天大多数 10 年前需要我花 x 时间的事情，我现在能在 x/3 时间内完成。不是因为我在那边被“抓”了，对吧？那是另一回事。

You Okay. Now, there'd be certain things he's doing because he's younger, and there's a there's a certain thing to that. Remember I talked about the um the the passion for right and wrong, right? As an example, there's something to that. But also what I noticed today is most of the things that would take me x amount of time 10 years ago, I can do an x divided by three today. And not because I got clawed over there, right? Like that's a whole separate thing.

我只是说，比如，我不知道。你读过我的 Adam 愿景笔记。

I'm just saying, like, I don't know. You read my Adam's vision note.

嗯。

Yeah.

好吧。那在当年可能要花我很久——我甚至不知道当年我能不能写出那样的东西。没那么好。我现在可以一气呵成地写完。那篇的核心部分一个半小时就写完了。

Okay. That would have taken me—I don't even know if I could have written that back in the day. Like, not that good. I can just flow and get it done. The core of that was written in an hour and a half.

嗯。

Mhm.

你知道，就是那种感觉。

You know, that kind of thing.

那是什么让你现在加速了呢？

What is it that caused you to accelerate now, though?

有不同的事情。很多早期创始人都有对失败的恐惧。但这会在进步、在取得进展上造成阻碍，因为你被拖住了。围绕失败恐惧的心理会影响你到达目标的能力。

There's different things. So, a lot of early founders have a fear of failure. But what that does is it creates blockage around progress, around making progress, because you're bogged down. The psyche around fear of failure affects your ability to get there.

嗯，对失败的恐惧要么挡你的路，要么从后面推你，对吧？

Well, the fear of failure could either stand in your way or it could push you from behind, right?

它可以从后面推你，但最终，如果你有对失败的恐惧，你永远不会真正成为世界级。

It can push you from behind, but ultimately you will never be truly world-class if you have a fear of failure.

但你遇到过多少创业者说，对失败的恐惧大于对成功的爱？

But how many entrepreneurs have you met where they said the fear of failure is greater than the love of success?

我理解。我只是说，它能带你走一段，但不会带你走完全程。

I understand that. I'm just saying that it will get you places, but it won't get you all the way.

好吧。在那个版本的 Travis 里，你经营着一家 700 亿美元的公司。

Okay. In that version of Travis where you're running a $70 billion company.

不，不，我会说我在 2017 年底正在从对失败的恐惧中走出来。我们就说不用具体日期。那只是一个谱系。我正在从中走出来，因为记得我来自哪里。

No, no, I would say I was transitioning out of fear of failure towards the end, in 2017. Just let's say we don't have to put a specific date. It's just a spectrum. I'm transitioning out of it, because remember where I came from.

就在之前。所以你正在从对失败的恐惧中走出来。

It's just before. So you're transitioning out of fear of failure.

你创办 Uber 时多大？

How old were you when you started Uber?

33 岁。

33.

33 岁。而且你有几百万美元，对吧？

33. And you had a couple million bucks, right?

是的。我把那一切都投进了我朋友的创业公司。我一无所有。

Yeah. I put all that into all my friends' startups. I had nothing.

好吧。

Okay.

有点好笑。

It was kind of funny.

嗯。

Yeah.

有点好笑。

It was kind of funny.

那成功了吗？

Did that work out?

所以，我是 Expensify 的第一个投资者。还有一家医疗 IT 公司，还没上市。真的很好笑。

So, I was the first investor in Expensify. There's like a healthcare IT company that still hasn't gone public. It's really funny.

好吧。所以，资源不多。还年轻。33 岁还算年轻。所以，你当时有那种感觉是有道理的。

Okay. So, not a lot of resources. Still young. 33 is still young. So, it makes sense why you felt the way you felt.

是的。但这只是关于背景。只是关于之前的经历，而不是关于我的年龄本身。只是关于我刚刚经历过的经验。

Yeah. But it's just about the background. It's just about what the previous experience was, not about my age, per se. It was just about what experience I had just come out of.

所以，我喜欢对话的走向，因为我从你这里听到的是，有一个主题贯穿你这个人，以及你在这些公司中建设公司的方法。所以，我们几乎没有触及你现在在做什么。让我们进入 Adams。

So, I love where the conversation has gone, because what I'm hearing from you is like there's just this theme that runs through you as a person and then your approach to company building throughout these companies. So, we barely touched on what you're doing now. Like, let's get into Adams.

你说过你想从使命开始，上面写着“物理自动化来改造工业，推动世界”。AI 和机器人技术来彻底改造工业，但一次一个行业，并且用专门的机器人来实现。所以举个例子，如果你想每小时做一千个煎饼，你不会用一个人形机器人来做。如果你想移动一辆车，你不会让人形机器人来开。我认为人形机器人有它们的位置，那就是，我们称之为，在为人设计的人类环境中的低规模任务。比如，你在家里，衣服需要叠，但你不是整天都在叠衣服。这是其中一件事，但你不可能花几万美元买一个机器人只是为了叠衣服，因为这个问题不够大。所以你需要一台能在家里做很多不同事情的机器。它需要叠衣服，需要倒垃圾，可能还需要洗碗。有一大堆事情，但那是一个非常通用的东西。它必须能做很多不同的事情。而且它在一个非常人类的环境中。最好的形态是人形机器人。但他们又会提起每小时一千个煎饼。想象一个人形机器人做煎饼。它会像人一样做。它会像，‘好吧，顺便说一句，如果你只是每周日在家做一次煎饼，因为你需要一个能做很多不同事情的机器，包括做煎饼，那没问题。但如果你需要每小时做一千个，你可能需要，我不知道，一百个人形机器人排成一排来做，对吧？而一个非常简单的铁制装置，面糊被推进去，它已经热了，每几分钟就能推出大概一百个煎饼。你懂我的意思吗？所以专门的机器人——专门为手头任务设计的机器——是我看待我们所做的事情的方式。所以在工业规模上，通过自动化整个事情来真正改变一个行业。所以你心想，好吧，我在食品领域已经有很多事情了。这个想法是，你能不能得到一份准备和配送都如此高效的餐食，以至于它开始接近去杂货店购物的成本？如果你能做到，那太棒了。当然，它必须是一顿高质量的餐食。但那个问号，‘你能不能’，要求你拥有我所说的食品电商的工业房地产。我所说的食品电商是什么意思？我们知道电商是什么。它到处都有亚马逊仓库，或者像主要枢纽，像大型配送中心。但食品电商有点不同。它是一种仓库类型。你需要从那里做物流，但你也需要做制造。在亚马逊仓库没有制造发生，因为所有东西都在别处制造，然后送到这个大仓库，再从那里出去。但对于食品，它有 30 分钟的半衰期。所以制造和物流必须在同一个地方发生，而且它必须始终离你 15 分钟。所以现在你有一个非常不同的情况，你在城市和郊区环境中拥有房地产，总是离任何人 15 分钟。所以你在一个城市里有一个城市物流网络、生产和物流网络，那就是：我有房地产，然后我有机器人，机器人食品生产，因为那样我就把劳动力成本去掉了，然后我有机器人物流，因为现在你那碗 15 美元的饭，送到你手里不知怎么就变成了 30 美元。

And you said you wanted to start with the mission, where it says physical automation to transform industry and move the world. AI and robotics to totally transform industries, but one industry at a time, and specialized robotics to do so. So for instance, if you want to make a thousand pancakes an hour, you wouldn't have a humanoid do it. If you wanted to get a car to move down the street, you wouldn't have a humanoid drive it. I think humanoids have their place, which is, let's call it, low-scale tasks in human-designed environments designed for humans. So example, you're in a house, clothes need to be folded, but it's not like you're folding clothes all day long. It's one of the things, but there's no way you'd buy a robot for tens of thousands of dollars to just fold clothes, because it's just not big enough of a problem. So now you need a machine that can do many different types of things in the home. So it needs to fold clothes. It needs to take out the trash. Probably needs to wash dishes. There's like a bunch of things, but that's a very generalized thing. It has to be able to do a lot of different things. And it's in a very human environment. The best form factor is a humanoid for this thing. But they'll bring up the thousand pancakes an hour. Imagine a humanoid making pancakes. Well, it would make it like a human. It would be like, 'Okay, by the way, if you were just making pancakes at home once a week on a Sunday, because you need a machine that can do many different things, including make pancakes, it's all good. But if you needed to do a thousand an hour, you'd probably need, like, I don't know, a hundred humanoids in a row doing this, right? Versus a very simple iron apparatus where the batter gets pushed into it, it's hot already, and it's pushing out like maybe even like a hundred pancakes every few minutes. You know what I mean? So specialized robotics—specialized machines that are specialized for the task at hand—is sort of how I look at what we do. And so industrial scale where there's real change to an industry by automating the whole thing. And so you go, okay, well I've got a lot going on in food already. The idea is, can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store? Pretty awesome if you could. It's got to be a high-quality meal, of course. But the question mark there, 'can you,' requires you to have what I would call industrial real estate for food e-commerce. What do I mean by food e-commerce? We know what e-commerce is. It's got Amazon warehouses everywhere, or like major hubs, like big distribution centers, DCs. But food e-commerce is a little different. It is a warehouse type. You need to do logistics from it, but you also need to do manufacturing. There's no manufacturing happening at an Amazon warehouse, because everything's manufactured somewhere, it gets delivered to this big warehouse, and then it goes from there. But with food, it has a 30-minute half-life. So the manufacturing and the logistics have to happen at the same place, and it always has to be 15 minutes from where you are. So now you have a very different situation where you have real estate in urban and suburban environments that's always 15 minutes from anybody. So you have an urban logistics fabric, production and logistics fabric across a city, which is: I have the real estate, then I have robots, robotic food production, because then I'm taking the labor cost out, and then I have robotic logistics, because right now your $15 bowl that then gets delivered to you somehow became $30.

嗯。

Mhm.

生产当然贵，但每次快递员送一次，又是 12 美元。

It's of course expensive to produce, but every time there's a drop by a courier, that's another 12 bucks.

嗯。

Mhm.

工业房地产、机器人生产、机器人快递员。然后——

Industrial real estate, robotic production, robotic couriers. And then—

但你从食品开始有具体原因吗？

Was there a specific reason you started with food, though?

它只是吸引了我。我的意思是，我没有一个清单。好吧，首先，当然，我做过 Uber Eats，所以我对这方面非常熟悉，但离我刚才描述所需的原子还差得远。你知道，我喜欢说我一直有很多想法。

It just caught me. I mean, like, I don't have a list. Well, first of all, of course, I did Uber Eats, so I'm very familiar with this part of things, but nowhere close to the atoms that are necessary to do what I just described. You know, I like to say I have lots of ideas all the time.

我的意思是，我是个点子工厂，但其他人也有好点子。但就像，一个点子会找上你，或者你碰上它，如果你懂我的意思。我想说，你知道，你和一个点子出去约会，对吧？约会顺利吗？进展如何？你和这个点子相处得怎么样？这很大程度上取决于你是谁，而你是谁将决定哪个点子适合你。

I mean, I'm an idea factory, but other people have great ideas, too. But like an idea comes to you or comes to you, if that makes sense. And I'd like to say, you know, you go out on a date with the idea, right? Was it a good date? Did it go well? Like how did you and the idea get along? And it's very much related to like who you are is going to be a big part of which idea works for you.

你把这称为找到你的运动。

You call this finding your sport.

是的。找到你的运动，或者你的商业灵魂伴侣。

Yeah. Finding your sport or your business soulmate.

嗯。

Mhm.

要了解自己，然后当合适的点子出现时，你自然就知道。你就是知道。

Be in touch with who you are and then when the right idea comes your way, you just know. You just know.

我以为我理解你的想法了。是的。现在，你知道，我们已经聊了几个小时。我觉得我离那更近了一点。但后来我读到你写的东西，你就像说：“嘿，看看周围，伙计。你在城市或文明中看到的一切，要么是生长出来的，要么是开采出来的，要么是制造出来的。”

I thought I understood how you thought. Yeah. And now, you know, we've been talking for several hours. I think I'm getting a little closer there. But then I read what you wrote where you're just like, "Well, look around, dude. Everything that you see in a city in a civilization has either been grown, mined, or manufactured."

所以我就想：“哦，他喜欢细节，就像你之前描述 Uber 注册流程那样，但你却把视角拉得那么远。”是的。所以就像，我要从世界上存在的一切事物的物质构成开始。

And so I'm like, "Oh, he's into details like you were describing the Uber signup flow earlier, but you zoomed all the way out." Yeah. So it's like I'm going to start with the material constituents of everything that exists in the world.

所以当你环顾四周，你周围的一切都是生长、开采、制造和运输出来的，这就是我们看待世界的方式。

So when you look around you, everything around you is grown or mined or manufactured and moved, and that's how we look at the world.

然后你继续想，当你考虑物理 AI，即物理世界中运动和行动的自动化时，你会看到我所说的物理 AI 技术栈。房地产是其中的一部分，原因我之前描述过，与食物有关。如果没有工业规模，我所说的高基础设施、重能源、重型机械系统，因为你需要抽取空气、调节温度再送回去，房地产是很大一部分。什么是矿业公司？它实际上是房地产。所以，将土地转化为生产力进步的能力，本质上是一个被低估且不被理解的事情，而且它绝对是我所说的物理 AI 技术栈的重要组成部分。

And then you go well when you think about physical AI, the automation of movement and action in the physical world, you look at the what I call the physical AI tech stack. Real estate's part of that for the reasons I've described as it relates to food. If you didn't have the industrial scale, what I call high infrastructure, heavy duty energy, heavy duty mechanical systems cuz you're extracting air and then tempering it and pushing it back in. Real estate is a big part. What is a mining company? It's actually real estate. So the ability to take land and turn it into productive progress essentially is an underappreciated and not understood thing, and it is most definitely a big part of the what I would call the physical AI tech stack.

你继续想，看看特斯拉和埃隆在做的一切，很明显房地产是他的拿手好戏，或者至少是他团队的拿手好戏。他不太谈论这个，但这是很重要的一部分。他有一座该死的城市。他正在建一座该死的城市，对吧？你知道，人力资源主管基本上就是他正在建造的城市的市长。你懂我的意思吗？所以这真的很重要。

You go like, look at you know you can look at Tesla and all the things Elon's doing, like it's obvious that real estate is his jam or certainly his team's jam. He doesn't talk about it as much, but it's a big part of what happens. He's got a freaking city. He's starting a freaking city, right? You know, the head of HR is basically the mayor of a city that he's building. You know what I mean? So it's a really important thing.

但更进一步，我们看到的科技领域的一切，很多时候我们谈论超级智能，基本上就是需要能源和矿物，在最底层。大量的能源。我们现在谈论数据中心，单位是吉瓦或兆瓦。你知道，所以我需要能源，我需要矿物，然后有了这两样东西，我最终可以让超级智能努力工作。但能源从哪里来？你会说：“哦，来自太阳。”好吧，但你怎么捕获它？又回到矿物。土地就是一切。所以有一个非常有趣的观点，关于土地在物理自动化未来中扮演的角色。物理 AI 和物理世界中的自主性非常依赖它。这就是为什么矿业如此有趣。

But also when you can go further than that, which is everything we're seeing in technology, you know a lot of times we talk about superintelligence is sort of the function of I need to have energy and I need to have minerals at the very base. Lots of energy. We talk about data centers now in gigawatts or megawatts. You know, so I need to have energy and I need to have the minerals, and then I have those two things and I can get superintelligence eventually working those things hard. But where does the energy come from? You're like, "Oh, it comes from the sun." Okay, but how do you capture it? Goes back to minerals. Like land is the whole damn thing. So there's a really interesting perspective about how land plays a role in the future of physical automation. Physical AI and just autonomy in the physical world is very dependent upon it. And that's why mining is so interesting.

你不是拥有矿山。

You're not owning the mines.

对。你只是用有酬就业的机器人让它们更高效。

Correct. You're just making them more productive with gainfully employed robots.

对。是的。我们称之为有酬就业的机器人，顺便说一句，这很搞笑。

Correct. Yeah. What we call gainfully employed robots, which is hilarious, by the way.

是的。但就像现在，你知道，看，我当然认为人形机器人最终会有酬就业。它们还没到那一步，但会到的。但现在，演示是在跳舞和练武术。你知道，我谈到北京。北京有人形机器人奥运会，它们在进行马拉松。你会说：“好吧，它们还没完全到位。它们会到的。”但我一直在想，天哪，想象一下如果给它们装上轮子，对吧？这又回到了人形机器人擅长某些事情而不擅长其他事情。为任务打造专用机器很重要。

Yes. But it's like because right now, you know, look, I do think of course humanoids are going to be gainfully employed. They're not there yet, but they'll get there. But right now, they're the demos are dancing and martial arts. You know, I talk about the Beijing. There's a humanoid Olympics in Beijing and they're doing a marathon. You're like, "Okay, they're not quite there. They're going to get there." But I kept thinking like, man, imagine if you put wheels on them, right? And this gets back to humanoids being good at certain things and not others. And sort of having a purpose-built machine for the task is important.

等等，你说了两件非常有趣的事。你毕生的工作是数字化物理世界。然后你说对于 Adams，你要一次攻克一个行业。

So wait, you said two very interesting things. Your life's work is digitizing the physical world. And then you're saying for Adams, you're going to attack one industry at a time.

嗯。

Mhm.

物理世界远远超过数字世界。因此，你几乎是偶然发现或选择了，你不是偶然，你选择了一个无限的游戏。所以这家公司可以扩展到什么领域没有限制。

Physical world far outstrips the digital world. Therefore, you almost stumbled into or picked, you didn't stumble into, you picked an infinite game. So there's no limit to what this company can expand into.

看，我对“无限”这个词有点意见，但它确实走得很远。就像梦想，比如，好吧，看，矿业的使命是让矿山更高效，为地球的工业提供动力。因为我们现在可以去一个金矿，去找金矿 CEO，问他是否想要每年多 20% 的黄金。为什么？因为当你自动化时，这就是产出。而且你让去其他地方开采变得更便宜，甚至从那个矿里获得以前得不到的更多黄金。所以，每年获得更多。获得比原来更多的量。而且那个矿的总量，加上因为运营成本低得多，你能去开采更多矿。但如果你增加了原材料，那么你也增加了世界上的整体工业。就这样。然后你还可以去自动化和增强那些工业。对吧？

Look, I have a little bit of an issue with infinite, but like it's a very it goes very far. Like the dream, like okay, look, the mission for mining is more productive mines to power Earth's industries. Because we can go to a gold mine right now, go to a gold mine CEO and ask whether he wants 20% more gold per year. Why? Because when you automate it, that's the output. And you make it cheaper to go to other places and even get more gold out of that mine that you wouldn't even get before. So, it's getting more per year. It's getting more than you otherwise would. And the totality of that mine, plus being able to go and do more mines than you otherwise would because the opex is so much lower. But if you're increasing the raw materials, then you're also increasing overall industry in the world. Period. And then you could then go and automate and enhance those industries as well. Right?

关键是，如果你在矿物、材料和土地方面变得非常擅长，你就擅长自动化让土地变得高效，并用土地推动进步。这有点像撬动世界的杠杆。

The point is that if you get really good at minerals and materials and land, you get good at automating making land productive and powering progress with land. It's sort of the lever that moves the world.

完全正确。

Exactly.

所以如果你自动化了那个撬动世界的杠杆，那就有点像超级杠杆。这挺有趣的。

So if you automate the thing that is the lever that moves the world, it's like the ultra lever. This is kind of fun.

这真的很酷。如果你看到一张图片，一台装载量超过 200 万磅、像建筑物一样大的机器在自主移动，那真的很酷。这个梦想，就像这真的是埃隆的意愿。但有一天他会派任务去小行星采矿。是的，也许我们能在某种程度上帮忙。那会很有趣。

It's just actually cool. If you see a picture of a machine that loaded is over 2 million pounds and it's the size of a building and it's autonomously moving around, it's pretty cool. The dream and like this is like it's really Elon willing really. But like one day he's going to be sending missions to asteroids to mine them. Yeah, maybe we can help out in some way. That'd be a lot of fun.

你有矿业，你有食品，运输，还有我们称之为点火的东西，那就是机器人的轮距。所以如果你有专门的机器在物理世界中行动和移动，那就是我们谋生的方式。你必须有轮距。你必须自动化它们的移动方式。你知道，有些人想到这个时会想到拼车，但有很多事情你没想到。

You have mining, you have food, transport, and the thing we call the ignition there is wheelbase for robots. So if you have specialized machines that act and move in the physical world, that's what we do for a living. You have to have wheelbase. You have to automate how they move. You know, some people think about ride sharing when they think about this, but there's just a lot of things you're not thinking about.

你知道，比如我跟美国一家大型食品供应商聊过。他们给所有餐厅供应食品。他们每年花 30 亿美元在开叉车搬货盘的人工上。这还只是所有物流里的一小部分，对吧？但货运呢？包裹配送呢？外卖呢？所以我们在食品这块聊过这些。一旦我意识到必须进入自动驾驶领域才能讲完食品的故事，Adams 的事情就不仅仅是食品了。

You know, like I was talking to one of the large food suppliers in the US. They supply all the food to the restaurants. They're spending $3 billion a year on the labor that moves the pallets on forklifts. This is just a little drop in the bucket of all the things that are moving, right? But what about freight? What about parcel delivery? What about food delivery? So like we talked about that on the food side. Once I knew I had to get into autonomy to complete the food story, this is when the Adams thing sort of came together beyond just food.

我跟 Daniel Ek 聊过，他觉得你身上最迷人的一点是，你倾向于在一家公司内部打造一大堆独立的公司。你在 Uber 显然就是这么干的。对。你在 Adams 又这么干了。对。这是你的天性吗？这就是你说的那种商业灵魂伴侣吗？就像你不想只做一个产品或一门生意，而是想要一个企业集团。你怎么看这件事？

One of the things that I was talking to Daniel Ek about that he finds most fascinating about you is your propensity to build a ton of separate companies inside of one company. You did this obviously at Uber. Yeah. You're doing it again at Adams. Yeah. Is that just your natural? Is that what you meant? Like your business soulmate. Just like I don't want to work on just one product or one business like you want a conglomerate. How do you think about this?

我的意思是，这要追溯到……不，不是那样的，不是这么运作的。但确实……记住，我们想象力的唯一限制是管理能力。所以问题有两方面：你有没有想象力，以及这个想象力好不好？但如果你有想象力，而且不错，你就会有一些应该去实现的有趣想法。有很多想法可能不应该做，或者应该由别人去做，但也会有很多想法是你应该去做的。

I mean this goes back to... no, you don't... that's not how it works. But it is... remember, the only constraint to our imagination is management capacity. So then the question is twofold. Do you have an imagination and is it any good? But if you do have an imagination, and it's good, you're going to have interesting ideas that should happen. There's many ideas that maybe either shouldn't or somebody else should do, but there's going to be many ideas that you should do.

那么，Adams 内部的实际组织架构是什么样的，有这么多不同的业务？比如，每个业务都有一个 CEO 吗？他们直接向你汇报吗？你是怎么……

So, what does the actual organization inside of Adams look like with all these different businesses? Like, does every business have a CEO? They report directly to you. How did you...

业务单元负责人，甚至可能还有子业务单元负责人。你确实要尽量赋能他们去做自己的事。我把它看作是前期对齐、后端问责。也就是说，我们要达成什么目标，打算怎么达成，我们认为哪些有风险、哪些是明摆着的事，以及过程中怎么问责。然后以我称之为“首席问题解决者”的管理风格来推进，也就是我把时间花在那些尚未被解决的最有影响力的问题上。

Business unit line leader, and then you might even have sub business unit leaders as well. You really try to empower them to do their thing. I sort of look at that as alignment upfront, accountability on the back end. So what are we trying to accomplish, how are we going to try to accomplish it, what do we view as risky and what sort of no-brainer, and how do we do accountability as we go. And then sort of approach it with a management style which I call problem solver in chief, which is I spend my time on the most impactful problems that are not already being solved.

这就是你分配时间的方式。

That's how you dedicate your time.

对。

Yeah.

这是你给所有人的指示吗？

Is that the directive that you give to everybody?

是的。所以我每天有一定的时间，但这只是需要解决的问题中极小的一部分。

Yes. So, I've got a certain number of hours per day, but that's a tiny fraction of the problems that need to be solved.

对。这正是我想弄明白的，比如怎么……

Yeah. That's what I'm trying to figure out like how...

所以，这会往下传导。现在，每个人都有各自的职责范围，比如说。所以他们解决这个领域的问题。就这样层层往下，但他们是各自领域被授权的首席问题解决者，一直到底层。

So, that flows down. Now, everybody's got their remit, let's say. So, they solve problems in this area. So it's flowing down, but they are the problem solver in chief deputized for their area all the way down to the bottom.

你还会强调吗？我以前听你讲过，强调雇佣和赋能年轻人。这个业务和你在 Uber 开拓新城市时有什么不同吗？比如那时你把很多责任交给有冲劲的年轻人。

Do you still put an emphasis? I've heard you speak about this in the past, an emphasis on hiring and empowering young people. Is this business different than like when you were launching new cities in Uber, for example, where you gave a lot of responsibility to, you know, aggressive young people?

嗯，好吧。再说一次，做这件事有很多有趣的方式。我有个概念叫“那条线”，或者说框架就是“找到那条线”。线的一边是秩序，很多结构。抱歉，结构。当你越来越往秩序那边退，你会有很多规则、很多结构、很多流程，最终是很多官僚主义。如果你离那条线太远，你就会变慢，人们也会沮丧。如果你走到线的另一边，也就是混乱，缺乏规则、缺乏流程、缺乏结构，当你越来越深入混乱，你也会到达一个变慢、人们沮丧的地方。所以秩序和混乱之间的那条线，就是高速且大规模创新的位置。每个领导者的工作就是找到那条线。而且它不是二维的，而是像 80 维的，明白吗？最优秀的领导者能够找到它。最通俗的描述方式大概是：用最少的规则，同时避免陷入混乱。但回到 Uber 的开拓，你可以这样想：比如有一群 23 岁的年轻人去开拓城市。一开始，前二三十个城市，我深度参与决定那个城市能不能启动。但实际情况是，有人出去说，嘿，去开拓一个城市，从无到有做出来。那里会有某种手册，但很多是未定义的。但在他们进行定价电话之前，什么都不会真正启动，因为交通领域的定价是所有策略的总和。所以定价电话会涉及：监管是什么？因为监管，你要用什么车型？城市的平均工资是多少？因为那是司机端的，也是成本的一部分。当然，你基本上要过一遍城市里所有与交通相关的方面。出行要多久？人们去哪里？你最终会得出一个价格，但这意味着你必须理解一切。而你如何得出那个价格很重要。所以在最初 20 个城市里，我参与了一些城市的定价电话。天哪，可能会有 8 个定价电话。比如在伦敦上线之前，可能会有 8 到 10 个小时的定价电话。但我从来没有两次解决同一个问题。一旦我们解决了，它就变成手册的一部分，最终到了第 20 个城市，定价电话只需要 5 分钟。我就不再参加了，已经不重要了。但我真正想说的是，你有一个 23 岁的年轻人，然后他可以去开拓一个城市。即使在最初我还参与定价电话的时候，他们在定价电话之前见不到我，但他们知道我会出现在那个定价电话上。唯一的规则是，在我于定价电话上说“行”之前，你不能上线。所以他们会为那个定价电话做好充分准备，他们知道如果没准备好，我会说“不行”，然后他们就惨了。所以他们会把一切都投入到成功上，这意味着他们之前做的所有其他事情都会朝着做对的方向组织，因为他们想赢。所以现在我有一条规则，就是那个定价电话，用最少的规则避免混乱。如果没有那一条规则，你现在就有 23 岁的年轻人到处乱跑，做疯狂的事。

Well, okay. Again, so there's really interesting ways to do it. I sort of have this concept I call the line, or maybe the framework is finding the line. So there's a line on one side is order, lots of structure. Sorry, structure. Like as you pull away further and further back into order, you have lots of rules, lots of structure, lots of process, and eventually lots of bureaucracy. And if you go too far back from that line, you're going slow and people are bummed. And if you go to the other side of the line, which is chaos, lack of rules, lack of process, lack of structure, and as you go deeper and deeper and deeper into chaos, you also get to a place where you're going slow and people are bummed. So that line between order and chaos is innovation at speed and at scale. And the job of every leader is to find that line. And it's not in two dimensions. It's like in 80 dimensions. Okay? And the best leaders are able to find that. And the probably most approachable way to describe this is the fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. But you go back to like launch at Uber, you could think of it as like, okay, there's a bunch of 23 year olds launching cities. What happened was at the beginning, the first 20, 30 cities, I was deeply involved in whether that city was going to get launched. But what happened was somebody would go out, hey, go launch a city, make something out of nothing. And there'd be some kind of playbook there, but a lot of it was undefined. But nothing would actually launch until they got to a pricing call, because pricing in the transportation space is the sum of all strategy. And so the pricing call then goes, well, what's the regulatory? What's the car type that you're going to use because of that regulatory? What is the average wage in the city? Because that's on the driver's side and that's part of the cost. Of course, you basically go through every aspect of the city that relates to transportation. How long does it take to get around? Like where are people going? You ultimately get to a price, but it means you have to understand everything. And how you get to that price matters. So in the first 20 cities, I was on a pricing call in some of those cities. Man, it would be like eight pricing calls. It could be like 8 hours, 10 hours of pricing calls before we launched London, as an example. But I never solved the same problem twice. Once we solved it, then it became part of the playbook, and eventually we get to city 20 and that pricing call takes five minutes. I stopped going to them. Didn't matter anymore. But the key that I was trying to get to is you have a 23-year-old who then can go and launch a city. Even at the beginning when I was still involved in that pricing call, they wouldn't see me till the pricing call, but they knew I was going to be at that pricing call. The one rule was you can't launch until I say yes at that pricing call. So they would come ready to play at that pricing call, and they knew that if they didn't, I'd be like no, and then they suck. And so they would put everything they had into making that successful, which means all the other things that they're doing before are going to be organized towards doing it right, because they want to win. And so now I've got one rule, which is that pricing call, the fewest number of rules while staying out of chaos. That if you didn't have that one rule, you now have 23-year-olds running around doing crazy.

太棒了。这让我想到你在 Adams 网站上写的另一句话，我很喜欢，你说混乱是自然法则，秩序是人类的梦想。

That's awesome. It made me think of another line that I love that you put on Adam's website where he said that chaos was the law of nature and order was the dream of man.

和你聊过之后，我对那句话的理解是，我觉得你是在对物理世界的混乱施加秩序。这正是你们公司试图做的事情。我几乎把它看作是一种负熵，这意味着你可以和某些人展开一场非常有趣、激烈的关于负熵的辩论，但文明就是试图在局部减缓熵增，甚至可能走向负熵。它是对抗自然、对抗混乱而构建的结构。这就是文明。所以 Adams 本质上就是捍卫文明、推动其进步的结构。

My interpretation of that line now having spoken to you about this, it's like I feel that you're imposing order on the chaos of the physical world. That's what your company is trying to do. I almost think of it as negentropic, which means you could get into a very interesting, energetic debate with certain people about negative entropy, but civilization is an attempt to locally slow down entropy and maybe even go negative. It's building structure against nature towards chaos. That's what civilization is. And so Adams is essentially the structure to defend civilization and move it forward into progress.

还有一句话，你说话时，有很多内容让我想起洛克菲勒，在石油精炼行业的早期。他用了那个词，他认为那是一个混乱的行业。在最开始，整个石油行业，老天，就集中在宾夕法尼亚州。他说：“我要对这个混乱施加秩序。”这就是他用的那句话。

There's another line when you speak, there are a lot of things that you say that remind me of Rockefeller in the early days of the oil refining industry. He used that word, he thought it was a chaotic industry. At the very beginning, the entire oil industry was solely concentrated in Pennsylvania, for God's sake. And he goes, 'I'm going to impose order on this chaos.' That's the line he used.

进步在某种意义上就是世界的组织化和结构化，朝着人类的幸福、自由和超越迈进。这就是我在最高层面上对我们所做事情的理解。

Progress is sort of the organization and structuring of the world towards human happiness and liberty and transcendence in some fashion. That's how I view what we're doing at maybe the very highest level.

我觉得在这里结束非常棒。Travis，非常感谢你抽出时间。真的很感激，伙计。谢谢。太好了。

I think that's an awesome place to close. Travis, it really means a lot to me for taking the time. Really appreciate it, man. Thanks. Great.

希望你喜欢本期节目。请记得在你收听的地方订阅并留下评论。也请务必收听我的另一档播客《Founders》。近十年来，我痴迷地阅读了 400 多本历史上最伟大企业家的传记，寻找你可以在工作中使用的想法。你在这档节目中听到的大多数嘉宾，最初都是通过《Founders》找到我的。

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.