Mining asteroids with AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich | E1736

发布时间 2023-05-05 17:13:38 来源

摘要

(0:00) AstroForge’s Matthew Gialich joins Jason (1:11) The purpose of mining asteroids (5:42) Brokkr-1 mission (10:38) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST (12:09) AstroForge’s roadmap (16:07) Unit economics of hardware-based businesses (17:38) Scaling Virgin Orbit and Virgin Galactic (20:51) Pilot - Get 20% off the first 6 months at https://pilot.com/twist (22:20) The evolution of the space economy (30:43) Crowdbotics - Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at http://crowdbotics.com/twist (31:51) How to set up a fundraising process Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Check out AstroForge: https://www.astroforge.io/ FOLLOW Matt: https://twitter.com/MattGialich FOLLOW Kelly: https://twitter.com/KSchricks FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis Thanks to our partners: (10:38) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST (20:51) Pilot - Get 20% off the first 6 months at https://pilot.com/twist (30:43) Crowdbotics - Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at http://crowdbotics.com/twist Listen here: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-startups-audio/id315114957 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ULQ0ewYf5zmsDgBchlkr9 Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes315114957/this-week-in-startups-audio More from us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/twistartups Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twistartups Official site: https://thisweekinstartups.com Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1 Subscribe to TWiST Clips for all the best moments: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS7tJlcUA6PzVHEMo-X7ddg?sub_confirmation=1 #startups #entrepreneurship #investing #angelinvesting #tech #news #business

GPT-4正在为你翻译摘要中......

中英文字稿

And none of this would have been possible if SpaceX hadn't figured out how to do what they do. Absolutely not. Let's be honest about this. Elon led the way here. He showed that, you know, if he got the money for building Falcon 1 through Falcon 9 and Dragon that there was a huge kind of pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. And this really allowed VC to open up to say, holy s**t, these companies can actually exist in their possible.

如果SpaceX没有找到方法去解决这些问题，这一切都不可能实现。说实话，这是完全不可能的。Elon在这里扮演了关键角色，他展示了，如果他获得了建造Falcon 1到Falcon 9和Dragon的资金，那么在那个彩虹的尽头将会有一大笔财富等着他。这实际上使Risk Venture Capital（风险资本）敢于投资这些公司，并且认为这些公司有可能实现。

This week in startups is brought to you by Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Pilot. Grow your business sustainably and operate more effectively.

本周启动企业由 Squarespace 支持。将您的想法变成一个新的网站。访问 squarespace.com/twist 以获取免费试用。当您准备好启动时，请使用优惠码 twist，可节省您首次购买网站或域名的10%。Pilot。可持续地增长您的业务并更有效地运营。

Pilot provides the most reliable accounting, CFO and tax services for startups and small businesses. Head to pilot.com slash twist and get 20% off the first six months and crowdbotics. Great ideas can change the world. And crowdbotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbottakes.com slash twist.

Pilot为初创企业和小型企业提供最可靠的会计、CFO和税务服务。前往pilot.com/twist，获得首六个月20%的优惠以及Crowdbotics。优秀的想法可以改变世界，而Crowdbotics是将这些想法转变为代码的最快途径。在crowdbotics.com/twist上免费获取下一个重要应用程序想法的范围界定会话。

Hey everybody. Welcome back to this week in startups today. Got a really interesting interview. Lineed up view. Today's guest is Matt Gullich and he is with the company called AstroForge. Does AstroForge do? Well, they're using SpaceX's ride sharing program to get into space and launch devices. That will be able to mine asteroids. And just two weeks ago, AstroForge sent its first vehicle into space, the broker one vehicle. Here's what it looks like for those of you watching. Looks like two solar arrays with a box in the middle. And we'll get into what it does in a moment. But first, let's welcome Matt to the program. Hey Matt. Hey Jason, thanks for having me on.

大家好。欢迎来到本周的创业新闻。今天我们有一个非常有意思的采访。今天的嘉宾是马特·古利奇，他来自一家名为AstroForge的公司。AstroForge做什么呢？他们利用SpaceX的共享载人计划进入太空并发射设备。这些设备能够在小行星上进行采矿。就在两周前，AstroForge将其第一辆车辆发射到太空中，这辆车被称为Broker One。对于那些正在观看的观众来说，这是什么样子的呢？它看起来像中间有一个盒子和两个太阳能电池板。我们稍后会介绍它的功能。但首先，让我们欢迎马特来到我们的节目中。嘿，马特。嘿，杰森，谢谢你邀请我来。

All right. Why should we be trying to mine asteroids? What are on asteroids that's not here on planet Earth? What's the point?

好的。为什么我们应该试图采矿小行星？小行星上有什么地球上没有的物质？这有什么意义？

Specifically, we are starting out first with what are called the platinum group metals. So you probably heard of some of these right. There's jewelry that's made out of platinum. But there's six of these elements that are used in all of our industrial applications. I mean, your cell phone is every single one of these metals in it. And we're running out of them both as a nation, but also as a planet. There are limited resource that we're mining and we're destroying our planet as we mine it.

具体来说，我们首先开始研究的是所谓的铂系金属。你可能听说过其中一些，比如白金饰品。但是，这六种元素在我们所有的工业应用中都被用到了。我的意思是，你的手机里面就含有所有这些金属。我们正在国家和全球范围内面临它们的供应短缺。我们所开采的矿物资源是有限的，而且我们在开采过程中破坏了我们的星球。

Well, we have a ton of evidence to suggest that there is very, very high concentrations of these PGM's off-world. And that's what we're doing on Earth. PGM's are called. Yeah. PGM's for platinum group metals. Got it. Aridium, Asmium, Ladium, Platinum, Rodeum, and Ruthenium. If I'm pronouncing any of those correctly.

我们有大量的证据表明，宇宙中存在非常高浓度的白金族金属。这就是我们在地球上所做的事情。白金族金属（PGM）包括铱、钯、铑、铂、罗地卤和钌。如果有发音不正确的地方，请指出来。

You got them all correct. These all come from asteroids or these are found on asteroids, but also found on planet Earth. Yes. In fact, one of the leading theories is the only reason we see them on the crust of the Earth is due to asteroid impacts that have happened, you know, millions of years ago. Ah, fascinating. And these are extremely valuable metals, correct?

你全部回答正确了。这些都来自于小行星，或者说这些元素在小行星上被发现，但在地球上也有发现。是的。事实上，其中一个主要理论是我们之所以在地壳上看到这些元素，是因为数百万年前发生的小行星撞击造成的。啊，有趣。这些都是非常有价值的金属，是吗？

They're extremely valuable. I mean, you can look at the spot prices. These are traded commodities that are, you know, traded on the London spot market. They range anywhere from about $400, announced all the way up to about $20,000 announced. Got it.

它们非常有价值。我的意思是，你可以看看它们的现货价格。这些是交易商品，可以在伦敦现货市场上交易。价格从400美元到20,000美元之间。明白了。

So we see some pictures there of your satellite or vehicle. Would be the prop car vehicle internally, right? It's something that's traveling out there. But yeah, it is a satellite bus or a vehicle that will go out to the asteroid. So I guess the question is how far out into space are these asteroids? How much does it cost to go find one? And has anybody in history ever successfully docked with an asteroid and brought materials back to Earth on an unmanned mission? Is that something we do now?

我们在这里看到一些你的卫星或载具的图片。这个载具是内部有推进的汽车，对吧？它是一个在太空中行进的载具。但它确实是一个卫星总线或载具，将前往小行星。所以问题是这些小行星离太空有多远？找一个小行星需要多少费用？历史上有没有人成功地与小行星对接，并在无人控制的任务中把物质带回地球？现在我们做这样的事情吗？

So all great questions. To answer them, yes, we've done it, right? We have sent as a human species, both NASA and the Japanese space agency have sent craft out to asteroids, docked with them, taken samples, and brought them back to Earth, right? The Japanese space agency, the famous vehicle there was called Hybus II. It went out to an asteroid and took a sample. And then from NASA, we sent out a mission called those Cybershecks. This mission went out to an asteroid called Bennu, took a sample of it. And I believe it's dropping it off this September. So this September will have reentry from a Bennu sample and we'll be studying it on Earth to see what it's made out of. So yes, space agencies have, private companies have not. And we are definitely forging a path here into the future that hasn't been done before.

这些都是非常好的问题。为了回答这些问题，我们已经把它们做到了，对吗？作为人类物种，美国宇航局和日本宇宙航空研究开发机构都已经派遣航天器前往小行星，与其对接，采集样本，并将其带回地球，是吗？日本宇航局的著名航天器是Hybus II。它去到了一颗小行星并采了一个样本。而NASA则发射了一次称为Cybershecks的任务去到了一颗叫Bennu的小行星，采取了它的一个样本。我相信这个样本将在今年的9月份返回地球。所以今年九月份将会有一份来自Bennu的样本进行再入大气，我们将研究它的成分。所以，宇航局已经做到了，私营公司还没有。我们绝对正在开创一个前所未有的未来之路。

These are very, very low cost launches for us. We are taking a lot more risk than a large space agency would take. And that's the only way that the business case really closes here, right? You have to think differently. You have to think cheap. You have to think non-scientific. And that's exactly what we're doing.

对我们来说，这些发射成本非常非常低。我们承担了比大型航天机构更大的风险。这是实现商业成功的唯一途径，对吧？你必须从不同的角度思考，你必须以低成本的方式思考，你必须不考虑科学研究。这正是我们正在做的。

All right. So let's talk about that a little more specifically. It's really affordable to get to space because of the engineers and the progress made at SpaceX. Correct? I mean, space has been on the up for a while. We've seen SpaceX, which was backed off of, you know, the government programs as we've gone forward. But yeah, SpaceX has revolutionized the price to get to space. More specifically, recently, they've revolutionized the price to get to the moon. I mean, think about it. We're launching from the moon.

好的，那我们来更具体地谈谈。因为SpaceX工程师和取得的进展，把太空旅行变得非常实惠，这是正确的吗？我的意思是，太空事业已经有一段时间的蓬勃发展了。随着我们的前进，SpaceX已经独立于政府计划之外，但确实，SpaceX已经彻底颠覆了到达太空的价格。最近，他们更是彻底地改变了到月球的价格。想想看，我们竟然从月球发射！

If I was going to tell you 10 years ago, we were going to fly to the moon. You could have laughed me out of the room. The rocket at that time would have been a delta four and that would have been, you know, around 400 million dollars. We could do a fraction of that cost now, which then allows us to send these very cheap vehicles into space and take a lot more risk. The ride is just that much cheaper.

如果10年前我跟你说我们要飞到月球，你可能会笑话我。那时的火箭可能是Delta IV，需要大约4亿美金。但现在我们能以极低的成本完成这个任务，这使得我们可以将更多的廉价航天载具送入太空，并承担更多的风险。这样做能让我们的航程变得更加划算。

Got it. So you've sent the blocker one up. One of the chances it finds an asteroid. And then I guess subsequently, what's the chances that it comes back?

明白了。所以你已经发射了一枚挡板。它发现小行星的几率有多大？然后我猜接下来它返回的几率有多大？表达意思：你已经发射了一枚阻拦器，那么它能发现小行星的概率是多少呢？接着，当它执行完任务后回来的概率是多少？

So broker one went up to show that we could mine an asteroid in space. It is just in low earth orbit. It is not going outside of Earth's gravity well. It is orbiting the Earth right now and we'll start experimentation with it shortly to show that we can refine what we expect to be one of these asteroids, right? This ball of iron with very high concentrations of PGMs on it. Okay.

所以，经纪人一号上前展示了我们可以在太空中开采小行星的方式。这颗小行星位于低地球轨道上，它没有跑出地球引力范围。它正在绕地球运行，我们很快就会开始实验，以展示我们可以提炼预计的这些小行星之一，对吗？这是一个由高浓度铂族金属组成的铁球。好的。

So there's a low Earth orbit asteroid that we found out that. We brought up our own asteroid. Oh, I got it. So we're just proving that this can work in space. We're proving that we can mine in space. Yep. Nobody has been able to really refine in space, right? And that's a big process of what we need to do. So we want to prove that in a very cheap, easy to use.

我们发现了一颗低地球轨道的小行星。我们自己也拿出了一颗小行星。我理解了，我们只是想证明这个在空间里可以运行。我们想证明我们可以在太空中开采。对吧。迄今为止，没有人能够真正在太空中精炼，对吧？这是我们需要做的一个重要过程。因此，我们希望证明这是一个非常便宜、易于使用的方法。

Six-year cube set, which to be fair, SpaceX still has the transport emissions. That's what we went on. And those are a fraction of the cost that we could have even got to space 10 years ago. So what is that closer to? Well, park to send something up these days. Obviously, we're under NDAs with a lot of companies. We can't talk about, but you can go look on SpaceX's website, right? A ride chair slot is about 1.1 million dollars to send. I believe those are 200 kilogram slots.

六年的立方体设备组合，公平来说，SpaceX仍然有运输排放。这就是我们所关注的。而且这只是十年前我们甚至无法到达太空所花费的一小部分成本。那么这种情况接近什么呢？现在，推送某些东西到太空的成本很高。显然，我们和很多公司签署了保密协议，不能谈论，但是你可以看看SpaceX的网站，对于一个乘车椅位，发送费用大约为110万美元。我相信这些椅位重约200公斤。

Got it. Okay. So their standard ticket price is a million bucks. It's very affordable. We're not talking about tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But the key to your innovation is you're going to do the mining in space.

明白了。好的。所以他们的标准门票价格是一百万美元。非常实惠。我们不是在谈论几十或几百万美元。但你的创新关键在于你将在太空中进行采矿。

So does that mean this, I mean, I'm sorry to be a neophyte here, but does that mean there's like a drill bit on this thing? And it's going to drill in, take a sample and then process it and say, hey, this is dust. Oh, this is platinum. Let the dust flake off and just only bring platinum back.

那是否意味着这个机器上有像钻头一样的工具？它会钻进去，取样，并处理它并说：“嘿，这是灰尘。哦，这是铂金。让灰尘屑飘走，只带回铂金？”不好意思，我在这里是个新手。

So the way we do it is we go out to the asteroid. We dock with the asteroid. Use the right word. They're right. These are very small bodies. They're about 30 meters in diameter. So we're talking very, very small rocks that we're docking with. We use a process of directly heating the surface till it vaporizes. So there is no actual mechanical parts here. This is all done with a laser. We vaporize the surface. We collect that vapor and then we sort it. And this is essentially the experiment we're testing out in low-eth orbit. We've proven it to work in our thermal vacuum chambers on earth. That allows us to sort out platinum from stuff we don't care about, right? Iron, cobalt, other trace minerals in these asteroids. And then we bring back only the platinum group metals.

我们的方法是去到小行星。我们与小行星靠近。务必使用正确的词汇。他们是对的。这些非常小的天体大约有30米的直径。所以，我们正在和非常非常小的岩石对接。我们使用直接加热表面的过程，使其蒸发。所以这里实际上没有机械部件。这一切都是用激光完成的。我们让表面蒸发，收集蒸汽，然后将其分类。这基本上是我们在低地球轨道测试的实验。我们已经证明它在我们地球的热真空室里能够运作。这让我们能够把白金从我们不关心的东西，比如铁、钴、小行星中其他的微量矿物质分离出来。然后，我们只带回铂族金属。

Now the reason for that is bringing back is still expensive and weight in space means a lot. We only want to bring back the stuff that's worked a lot of money. We are kind of limited on what we can bring back. So that's how we do it.

现在的原因是，重新将东西带回地球的成本仍然很高，而在太空中重量意义重大。我们只想带回那些值得一大笔钱的东西。在我们可以带回什么方面有所限制。所以这就是我们的做法。

So the lasers pick out the good stuff, it's just sorted out. Then how does it get back? Because every time I see something come back and burns up, these asteroids burn up before they hit. So how is your vehicle designed so that it can bring back the payload and how many ounces is it going to bring back?

所以激光器挑选出好的东西，把它们分类。那么它们是如何回来的呢？因为每次我看到有东西回来，最后都被烧毁了，这些小行星在撞击之前就烧毁了。那么你的飞行器是如何设计的，可以将载荷带回来，将带回多少盎司的物质？

Yeah. So I mean, our vehicle has a heat shield on it. And the nice thing about our heat shield is we're not bringing back humans, we're not bringing back really experiments. We're bringing back raw commodities, right? This is a block of metal, which means when coming a lot hot and heavier than really any other spacecraft, there's a lot of presidents for doing this before NASA has done deep space return multiple times. So we really understand the physics behind deep space return and it all comes down to sizing the heat shield correctly.

是的，我们的载具上有一个热防护罩。我们的热防护罩的好处在于我们不是将人类带回来，也不是将实验品带回来。我们带回来的是原材料。这是一块金属，意味着相比其他航天器，它会变得非常热和重，但NASA在之前的多次深空回归任务中已经有了很多经验。所以我们真正理解深空回归背后的物理原理，而所有这一切都归结于正确设计热防护罩的尺寸。

Got it. On average, with our projections right now and our trajectories, we can bring back right around a thousand kilograms of platinum group metals per mission. So that's what we're aiming to bring back. What is a thousand kilograms? It's about a ton. It's a metric ton. Wow. GM's permission. You can be able to bring a ton back.

明白了。根据我们现在的预测和轨迹，平均每次任务我们可以带回大约1000公斤铂族金属。所以这就是我们的目标。1000公斤是多少呢？大约相当于一吨。哇，得到了GM的许可，我们可以带一吨回来了。

Okay, so how big is your vehicle? Is it like the size of a car? It's not that big. The vehicles that we will mind with are about 200 kilograms. What's the size of them? She said the asteroids were about a hundred feet wide or something. So the vehicle itself is 10 feet or 20 feet. They're about the size of a mini fridge. It is not a big vehicle when you look at it. Yeah. Well, platinum is very, very dense, right? It's like, quite is very, very high. So we store this metal right behind the heat shield. It's volumetrically actually not that much material that we bring back.

你的车有多大？是像汽车那么大吗？它不是很大。我们使用的车辆大约重200公斤左右。它们的尺寸是多少？她说小行星大约有一百英尺宽。所以车本身的尺寸是10英尺或20英尺。它们约是迷你冰箱的大小。从外观上看，它并不算大型车辆。嗯，白金非常的密集，对吧？它的密度非常高。所以我们会把这种金属存放在热屏蔽板的后面。实际上，我们回收的这种材料在体积上并不算太大。

If you can tell from the podcast lately, we've been doubling and tripling down on founding university launch. In fact, it's basically the future of our venture capital firm. And that's awesome because I'm working with a couple of hundred early stage founders really early and getting to see what tools they use. You know what tool they show up with most? They show up with Squarespace.

如果你最近听了我们的播客，你会发现我们一直在加倍和加三倍地强调成立大学的启动。事实上，它基本上是我们风险投资公司的未来。这非常棒，因为我正在与数百个早期创始人一起工作，早早地看到他们使用的工具。你知道他们最常使用的工具是什么吗？他们最常用的工具是Squarespace。

They put up their first website instantly, quickly with Squarespace. And it's beautiful. And it makes them look like a million bucks. The thing you may not be aware of is that Squarespace beyond the beautiful templates that make your company look like a million bucks. And that work on mobile. It's not just a pretty website. It is a powerful e-commerce platform now. And they have member areas. What's a member area? You know, people like to sell content now and premium content. It's a big business. Well, they have that built-in to Squarespace. And they don't take, you know, double digit percentages of your revenue like those other platforms do. And they'll have appointment scheduling. So, you know, if you're doing a business where you're a consultant, you want to charge for your time. Well, you have scheduling built-in to it as well.

他们使用 Squarespace 很快地就搭建了自己的第一个网站，它既美观又令人印象深刻，为他们赢得了许多好评。但你可能不知道的是，Squarespace 提供的不仅仅是美丽的模板，还有强大的电商平台和可用于移动端的功能。这不只是一个漂亮的网站，它还拥有会员区域。什么是会员区域呢？现在人们喜欢卖内容和付费内容，成为了一个大生意。Squarespace 也内置了这个功能，而且不像其他平台那样抽取你收入的两位数比例。此外，还可以预约时间，适用于那些收费咨询服务的人。所有这些，Squarespace 都可以帮你搞定。

And this is the brilliance of Squarespace. It's going to look beautiful as you know. So here's what I want you to do. Just head to Squarespace.com. So I wish twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code twist. You save an extra 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or a domain with a Squarespace. You know how it is. When you're a technologist, everybody in your family, your friends, your circle, your network come to you and say, hey, I got to get a website up. Can you find me a developer, a designer, a product manager? And you just say, you know what? Yes, I can find you all that. And more at squarespace.com.s.twist.

Squarespace的精华就在于此。正如你所知道的那样，它看起来非常美丽。所以，我想让你做的是，去Squarespace.com进行免费试用申请。当你准备好上线时，请使用优惠码twist。你将在Squarespace购买网站或域名时节省额外10%的费用。你知道怎样，当你是一名技术专家时，你的家人、朋友、圈子和网络中的所有人都会来找你，说：“嘿，我要建立一个网站，你能找到一个开发者、设计师、产品经理吗？”你只需回答：“当然，我可以在squarespace.com.s.twist上找到所有这些，还有更多。”

And so when it comes back, okay, you got the heat shield. I got that. But then how do you catch it? Is it going to have a parachute on it? Does it hit the water? If it hits the earth, I mean, it's just going to be turned to dust. So you got to have some sort of plan for landing. What's the what's the landing plan here?

当它返回时，你会有个热护盾，这个我知道。但是你怎么接住它呢？它会有降落伞吗？它会撞到水上吗？如果它撞到地球上，它只会变成灰尘。所以你必须有一些着陆计划。那么这里的着陆计划是什么？

Yeah, our current plan right now and we're discussions right now is with there is a giant range in Utah and by the Air Force that you can do deep space reentry from. In fact, I believe this is where OSIRIS Rex is landing when they come multiple people use this as a range to return from space on. That's where we'll land. We use very, very small shoots to slow down the vehicle. Right now our mass shows us hitting the earth at about 30 kilometers an hour. So we're not going super slow, but we're not going super fast. But keep in mind, this is just a block of metal. We can take risks with bringing it back at a very different from a human or scientific space flight.

目前我们的计划正在讨论中，我们考虑在犹他州的一个空军大范围内实施深空再进入计划。实际上，当多个人从太空中回来时，他们都会用到这个范围内，包括OSIRIS Rex探测器。我们将在这里着陆。我们将使用非常小的降落伞来减速车辆。目前，我们的质量显示我们以每小时约30公里的速度撞向地球。所以我们不是极慢，但也不是极快。但是请记住，这只是一块金属。我们可以冒更大的风险，真正的人类或科学航天飞行则有所不同。

Got it. Yeah, if the refrigerator gets dented or cracked in half and there's no big deal, you're just going to pick up the pieces and you're all good.

我明白了。如果冰箱凹陷或断成两半了，也没什么大不了的，你只需要拾起残片就好了，一切都会没问题的。

And so when you do a startup like this, how long does it take in your estimation? You guys have raised, you know, over 10 million bucks, you got 15 employees last we checked. Or maybe you've raised 20 million. I've seen two different numbers of pitch book and CNBC. So you raised low tens of millions. How wide of a runway do you need to build a company like this? This seems quite ambitious. How long will it take for you to prove this out and then start generating actual revenue?

当你像这样创办一家初创公司时，你估计需要多长时间呢？你们已经筹集了超过1000万美元的资金，上一次我们查看时你们有15名员工。或者你们已经筹集了2000万美元。我看到了两个不同的数字，来自Pitch Book和CNBC。所以你们筹集了数千万的资金。像这样建立一家公司需要多长时间的时间跑道？这似乎非常雄心勃勃。你需要多长时间来证明并开始产生实际收益？

Yeah, for sure. It's a very ambitious company and these things are very, very high risk. Right. I will say this that with our current funding, we've been able to fund our first two missions that includes going to the asteroid. And that's what we need to do. We need to be able to prove out each one of these milestones so that we can raise additional money and get to our end goal. Right. We have a lot to prove as a new company. I think any deep tech company does. You got to be able to prove you can hit your milestones to raise the next branch of capital.

是的，当然。这是一家雄心勃勃的公司，而这些事情的风险非常非常高。没错，我要说的是，凭借我们目前的资金，我们已经能够资助我们的前两个任务，包括前往小行星。这正是我们需要做的。我们需要能够证明每个里程碑的可行性，以便我们筹集更多资金并实现我们的最终目标。没错，作为一个新公司，我们有很多东西需要证明。我认为任何深度科技公司都需要证明自己能够达成里程碑，以筹集下一轮资金。

For us, we have a very clear plan to do our first to actually bring back our first amount of metal by the end of this decade. And that's what we're holding to on a very kind of crystal clear schedule for us. And if this works, what does the future look like? Are you going to be just sending out dozens of these every day to collect these? I mean, how does it scale? I guess becomes the next question. So if you can pull off this insane mission and actually get a refrigerator full of flattening back to Earth or whatever other one is the most expensive. How do you scale it? And what does that look like?

对我们来说，我们有一个非常清晰的计划，以便在本 decade 结束之前，真正地把我们的第一个金属量带回来。对于我们来说，这是一个非常清晰明确的时间表。如果这个计划成功了，未来会是什么样子？你会每天寄出几十个这样的器具来收集这些东西吗？也就是说，这个计划如何无限扩展？如果你能完成这个疯狂的任务，真的把一整个冰箱的金属带回地球，或者是拿回最昂贵的那种，你如何扩展规模？这将是什么样子？

Yeah, I mean, look, we can start to talk about buying entire Falcon 9 instead of doing ride share anymore and sending out multiple missions per rocket or even going, I mean, I'm sure everybody watched the Starship launch, right? You can see what the future holds for us when we go about this and we talk about sending up hundreds of these vehicles to God into space and mine. One other thing I like to touch on here is while we are starting out with mining the platinum group metals, our refinery can mine really any elemental metal. So as we go out there, we can start to mine other materials, bring them back to Earth as long as the cost reward benefits us permission. It's got to be a profitable endeavor we're going after. And that's how we look at the future. We hope long term to bring all mining off Earth. Mining is a very destructive process. It accounts for a huge amount of the CO2 emissions on Earth.

是的，我的意思是，我们可以开始谈论购买整个猎鹰9号，而不是再选择共享飞行，可以通过一次火箭发送多个任务，或者甚至可以考虑引入太空船。我相信每个人都看过星际发射的视频吧？你可以看到我们的未来在这条路上会怎样，我们谈论着将成百上千的这些太空船送上去，进行采矿。我还想在这里提到的另一件事是，尽管我们现在开始用采矿铂族金属作为起点，但我们的冶炼厂确实能够采矿任何元素的金属。因此，当我们开展采矿，我们可以开始采集其他材料，并将它们带回地球，只要成本和回报许可，我们就能获得利润。这是一个利润可观的事业。我们希望长远来看，所有采矿都在地球以外进行。采矿是一个非常破坏性的过程，它占地球上二氧化碳排放的很大比例。

I don't think we hear about all the time because we don't have open pit mines in our backyard, right? They're not outside of LA or San Francisco, but they're damaging to the Earth and we want to stop that. And I think this is the only way to do that going forward. And yeah, so when you find that like alien goo or stuff like that and biological stuff that will obviously cause like an alien invasion, you just don't be recognized that and don't bring that back. That gets we just we just leave our ship there and we never return at home.

我认为我们听不到所有这些事情的报道，因为我们的后院里没有露天矿井，对吧？虽然它们不在洛杉矶或旧金山之外，但它们对地球造成了破坏，我们想要阻止这种情况。我认为这是未来唯一的方式。当你发现像外星人粘液或其他可能会引发外星人入侵的生物物质时，你不要认出它，也不要将其带回来。我们只需要把它留在那里，永远不再回家。

Good. Okay. Good. I think that's really the big lesson of Sigourney. We have story arc is don't come back to Earth with any of that. Assumance contaminated and do not come home no matter what. In all seriousness, as we think about this, one of the chances we find something out there that we are not aware of when's the last time a space mission found something in space that was a material or an element that was new to us us being human.

好的，好的。我认为这是从席琳妮身上学到的最重要的教训。我们的故事弧是不要带回地球任何这样的东西。因为可能受到污染，无论如何都不要回家。认真地讲，当我们思考这个问题时，我们发现在太空中发现新物质或新元素的机会是存在的。我们作为人类，最后一次有太空任务发现了什么新物质或者元素呢？

Yeah, it's always interesting here. Like when it comes to new elements, we don't find them in space. We do find some new molecules, right? In fact, Lindy, who is running the psyche mission for NASA just had a new material named after her because we find these things as we go out into space. None of them are going to be organic matter or aliens that can really take us over. Some of them may be hazardous. They may be radioactive and small amounts, right? But that'll be cleared out with our refining process. We won't be bringing that back. And those are all things that we'll have to kind of account for as we get there. But right now we have pretty good idea of the asteroid, what we're going after, what it's made out of, what its concentrations are. Well, we can always be surprised to some extent. I think this process will be pretty clean and safe and it's not really a worry to humanity about us bringing it back. Keep in mind, we're going to very small bodies that are blasted by the solar winds and radiation all day long. We're not going to another planet that has an atmosphere that can harbor life.

是的，这里总是充满趣味。例如，当我们发现新元素时，我们并不是在太空中发现它们，而是发现了一些新分子。实际上，为美国国家航空航天局开展精神研究的琳迪最近被命名一种新材料的名称，因为我们在太空中发现了这些物质。它们中没有任何一种是有机物质或外星人，可以真正地占领我们。它们中有些可能是有害物质。它们可能是放射性的，只是少量的。但我们的提炼过程会消除这些物质。我们不会把它们带回来。这些都是我们到达目的地时需要考虑的事情。但现在我们对小行星有了相当深入的了解，我们知道我们要去寻找的东西、它是由什么物质组成的，浓度如何等等。当然，总会有一些惊喜。但我认为这个过程将是相当干净和安全的，对于我们把这些物质带回来，人类无需担心。请记住，我们要去的是受到太阳风和辐射轰击的很小的天体，而不是有大气层可以容纳生命的其他星球。

Yeah, and you've got some experience in crazy hardware-based startups. You worked at Birdsgooders, which had a really rough go of it. They couldn't figure out the Union Economics there. Then you worked at Virgin Orbite and Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbite, couldn't make it work and Virgin Galactic still in the game. So tell me, when you look at those three experiences, what have you learned that you know that we as founders may be making software or apps and things that are less ambitious about this hardware production cycle, the capitalization cycle, and in just in general how to run these companies to get the best chance of success?

是的，你在一些疯狂的基于硬件的初创企业中有一些经验。你曾在Birdsgooders工作过，那里的情况非常艰难。他们无法理解工会经济学。然后你在维京轨道和维京银河工作过，维京轨道无法成功，而维京银河仍在比赛中。那么告诉我，当你看到这三个经历时，你学到了什么，你知道我们作为创始人可能正在制作较少雄心勃勃的软件或应用程序及如何运行这些公司以获取成功的最佳机会？

Yeah, I mean, I think, look, deep tech companies are very different that SaaS companies in some ways and very not different. It's still very important to be very capital-efficient. Think about how you grow the company, not spend money on dumb shit that you don't need to. I mean, we have to really, really counter pennies here because they're so critical to us.

是的，我的意思是，我认为，看起来，深科技公司在某些方面与SaaS公司非常不同，但又非常相似。仍然非常重要的是要非常注重资金效益。考虑如何使公司增长，而不是浪费钱在你不需要的废物上。我的意思是，我们必须非常非常计较每一分钱，因为它们对我们非常关键。

The difference is the time that it takes to get to profitability and really these capital purchases we have to make. Instead of buying a SaaS subscription for 20 bucks to increase my, you know, or a subscription to OpenAI, like I'm buying a Falcon 9 rocket. That costs a lot more than 20 bucks a month. And so planning for that, understanding the, the unit economics and the financing of that are very, very important to think of.

这个不同点在于赚回成本所需的时间，以及我们需要购买的资本项目。与购买20美元的SaaS订阅或OpenAI订阅不同，我是要购买Falcon 9火箭的，它的成本远不止每月20美元。因此，规划，理解单位经济学和融资非常非常重要。

At Virgin Orbite, we learned a lot. You know, we got a lot of money very early at that company. We were able to grow, but, you know, Virgin tried really, really hard. There was a lot of great people there. Explain what Virgin Orbite did because there's some confusion between orbit and galactic. I know galactic is the one Shemaoth took by SPAC, and that was space tourism on that galactic, you know, glider or whatever it is that goes up on top of a plane. What was Virgin Orbite? Because it was a different company.

在维珍轨道(Virgin Orbite)公司，我们学到了很多东西。你知道，我们在那家公司非常早期就获得了很多钱。我们能够成长，但你知道，维珍公司非常非常努力。那里有很多杰出的人才。解释一下维珍轨道公司做了什么，因为现在有一些混淆了。我知道维珍银河(Galactic)是Shemaoth通过SPAC收购的那个公司，那是通过在飞机上方升空的银河滑翔机进行太空旅游。那维珍轨道公司是做什么的？因为它是一家不同的公司。

Yeah, Virgin Orbite, we are launching a rocket off the wing of a 747. So from an engineering perspective, like this is amazing, right? You get a work on a rocket that's going to be dropped off a gigantic aircraft, lightest engines, and try to go to space. It was a ton of fun to develop to think about, to understand how to do it, to go through it. But at the end of the day, it pointed out one really big thing. You still have to have a business that makes sense. And at the end of the day, putting a rocket on a pad and pointing it towards space is a lot better space to start with than off the wing of an aircraft. And I think we saw that in their performance as a business. That was what Virgin missed, kind of the same thing that Bird missed, right? Like you mentioned, the Unite Economics could never get there with the Bird Vehicle.

嗯，维珍轨道公司正在从747的机翼上发射火箭。从工程角度来看，这太令人惊叹了，对吧？你们可以在一枚要从巨型飞机上掉下来的火箭上工作，使用最轻的引擎，试图太空旅行。开发过程非常有趣，考虑、了解如何实现它，度过整个过程。但最终，它指出了一件非常重要的事情。你仍然必须有一个有意义的商业模式。最终，将火箭放在发射台上，指向太空，要比从机翼上发射要好得多。我认为我们在他们的业绩中看到了这一点。这就是维珍和Bird都错过的东西。你提到了Bird，它的运营经济学无法实现。

When we went to Bird, when I went to Bird, and that's where I met my co-founder, Jose, there was explosive growth at that company. We were doing some crazy on-heard of timelines, and it really showed me how fast the company could work when everybody was in sync and really going for it. It was kind of an eye-opener. But it still didn't, you know, it's still needed. It doesn't matter how fast you go or how successful you are, you have to still have a business at the end of the day that makes money. And Bird didn't have that. The Unite Economics didn't work out. It's been a big focus of us here. If this works out, and if we can show that technically we can do everything, we better be able to make a sh** load of money. That's what we're going to do.

当我们去Bird时，当我去Bird时，那里有爆炸性增长，我遇见了我的联合创始人Jose。我们在做一些疯狂的、前所未有的时间表，这真的向我展示了当每个人都同步并真正努力时，公司可以多么快地工作。这是一个很大的启示。但它仍然不够，你知道的，在一天结束时，你仍然需要一个能赚钱的业务。而Bird并没有。它的统一经济并没有得到实现。这一直是我们的大焦点。如果这个工作，如果我们能展示我们能在技术上做到一切，我们应该能赚一大笔钱。这就是我们要做的。

Yeah, you better be able to find, I don't know, some rare metals that are incredibly precious. Exactly. Exactly. If you look at the Bird's Gooder phenomenon, it was loved and remains loved by a certain group of people in certain geographies. But let's be honest, these things cost $200, maybe $200 bucks, those scooters were costing. They got the heck beat out of them. And paying more than five or ten bucks, you're better off jumping in a lift or an Uber or X. So there were better financial solutions out there with Virgin Orbit. It seemed like a clever idea, but it does it just turn out that it's too expensive or it's just actually not a good idea because it doesn't scale because it does seem like 747s can get up to 40,000 feet. Is that just not enough enough of an advantage? It's not enough of an advantage. You have to overbuild that rocket a lot to handle different arrow forces on it. It has to turn 90 degrees to go towards space, which is really, really difficult to do and it introduces a lot of new forces. And at the end of the day, what do people care about in the space world? They care about price per kilowatt. That's all that really matters. How cheap can you get me to space? When we're evaluating missions, that's what we look at. How cheap can it be to get to space? And Virgin wasn't competitive there.

是的，你最好能够找到一些非常珍贵的稀有金属。确切地说，如果你看看鸟类古德夫现象，它在某些地理位置和某些人群中非常受欢迎，但是让我们诚实一点，这些东西花费200美元，也许200美元，那些滑板车都被狠揍了。支付超过五或十美元，你最好跳上Uber或X。因此，通过Virgin Orbit，有更好的财务解决方案。这似乎是一个聪明的想法，但它只是因为它太昂贵或者实际上并不是一个好主意，因为它没有扩展性吗？747能够飞到40,000英尺的高度，难道这不足够优势吗？这不足够的优势。你需要大力建造这个火箭，以处理它上面的不同弯弓力。它必须90度转弯，朝向太空，这是非常困难的，并引入了许多新的力量。最终，人们在太空领域关心什么？他们关心每千瓦价格。这才是真正重要的。你能多便宜地送我去太空？在评估任务时，这是我们看重的。而Virgin在这方面并不具有竞争力。

And then Virgin Galactic, that's actually working. They've done some missions, correct? Virgin Galactic has had a couple flights that have gone up. A couple of one-offs here. I think they're still having a challenge scaling that and getting it to really production for space tourism. So they have some challenging times ahead of them. I think like all space companies do, right? You have to be able to perform and hit those milestones and they've taken a lot longer than I think they would have hoped to get there.

然后是维珍银河公司，他们实际上正在运作中。他们已经完成了一些任务，对吗？维珍银河已经进行了几次飞行，有一两个例外。我认为他们仍然在挑战如何扩大规模并真正生产太空旅游。所以他们面临着一些困难时期。我认为像所有太空公司一样，你必须能够执行并达成里程碑，而且他们花了比他们想象中更长的时间才能到达那里。

Okay. In the early days of a startup, you need to be focused on your product and your customers, right? You build a team, you build a product, and then you embrace a customer base and try to delight them. But you can't forget about getting your accounting dialed in. I see so many accounting horror stories. People are doing cash-based accounting versus a cruel-based accounting. They're forgetting to do their tax returns. Maybe they're like taking a draw and not paying proper payroll taxes. Gosh, you can make so many mistakes. And these mistakes can be really damaging when you go to raise money down the road or you get hit with penalties because you didn't do things properly.

在创业初期，您需要专注于产品和客户，对吗？您建立团队，构建产品，然后拥抱客户群体并努力让他们感到满意。但同时也不能忘记了精打细算会计。我看到很多会计恐怖故事。人们使用现金制会计而不是计算欠款的会计。他们忘记做税单。也许他们领取了支票，但没有支付适当的工资税。哎呀，您可以犯很多错误。当您在未来筹集资金时，这些错误可能会造成严重损害或者您因没有正确操作而遭受处罚。

Well, there's good news. Pilot is an amazing service that provides you all the accounting CFO and tax services you need. And they're focused on startups like you. Any problems you're going to have pilots seen at a hundred times. So they're going to get you books tight from the start and some big news. Pilots annual virtual founder conferences happening on June 8th. And they'd love to have you join them. The vibe is a hundred percent about actionable concrete advice from season operators and investors. And this stuff is really designed to help you run your startup perfectly. And they have an amazing speaker line up. Folks subscribe, Mercury, and Sequoia are all coming. So go to pilot.com/slash summit.

好消息是，Pilot是一个优秀的服务，为你提供所有会计、财务首席执行官和税务服务，而且他们专注于像你这样的初创企业。任何问题，Pilot都见过一百次，所以他们将从一开始就帮助你把账簿管理得井井有条。还有一个大好消息，Pilot的年度虚拟创始人会议将于6月8日举行，他们很希望你能参加。会议的氛围百分之百关注实际可落实的建议，来自有经验的从业人员和投资者，这些都是真正为帮助你完美经营你的创业公司而设计的。而且，Pilot还有一个惊人的演讲嘉宾阵容，包括Folks、Mercury和Sequoia等公司，所以请访问pilot.com/summit。

You want to get 20% off your first six months at pilot? Yeah, very easy. Go to pilot.com/slash twist. So pilot.com/slash summit for their summit. pilot.com/slash twist to get 20% off the first six months.

你想在Pilot的头六个月获得20%的折扣吗？是的，非常容易。请访问pilot.com/slash twist。如果您想参加他们的峰会，请前往pilot.com/slash summit。前往pilot.com/slash twist，可以获得头六个月20%的折扣。

Is venture the right modality funding source for these companies like yours? Or should this be government partnership? Or you know, government's making these investments alongside because you know, it's made it work. But most of these other space companies have not. I don't know if the mortality rate of space companies is actually lower than regular startups or not. I don't have a collection of the, you know, the list of all of them and how many have actually not worked out. But what are your thoughts there?

对于像你们公司这样的公司来说，风险投资是否是正确的资金来源？或者这应该是政府合作？或者你知道，政府可以在这些投资旁边做出一些投资，因为政府已经创造了奇迹，但大多数其他太空公司没有。我不知道太空公司的死亡率是否比普通初创企业低。我没有所有太空公司的列表和实际没有成功的公司数量的集合。但你对此有何想法？

And we would see them our government would have a very big interest in what you're doing for national security reasons. So why don't they just give you a quarter billion dollars and and do some contract with you to make sure this works because if it does work, my lord, this is important for national security. If we don't have these rare earth metals, in our competition with other parties on the planet, it would seem that you're a pretty important project.

我们的政府对于你所从事的事情，出于国家安全的考虑，非常感兴趣。那么，为什么他们不直接给你25亿美元，并与你签订一些合同来确保这一切的顺利进行呢？因为如果这一切真的成功了，我的天啊，这对于国家安全来说非常重要。如果我们没有这些稀土金属，在我们与地球上其他方面竞争的过程中，你似乎是一个非常重要的项目。

I think we can talk about governments and how they work all day long and where the money gets allocated to. At the end of the day, I need to show that I'm a profitable company with or without the government's help. I want to be a commercial space company. And in my opinion, that's what venture is built on, right? Venture is built on taking big risks for big payoffs. And that's what Astroforges. That's what SpaceX was, right? SpaceX just hit and had that big payoff. We hope to do the same thing. I actually think this was venture was founded on.

我认为我们可以整天谈论政府以及他们如何运作以及资金分配到哪里。但是最终，我需要展示我是一家有或没有政府帮助的有盈利的公司。我想成为一家商业太空公司。在我看来，风险投资就是建立在这个基础上的对吧？风险投资就是冒大风险赢得大回报。这就是Astroforges的模式，这就是SpaceX的模式对吧？SpaceX已经取得了巨大的成功，我们也希望能取得同样的成果。我认为这正是风险投资的创始人所坚信的。

I think what we see in venture now where we have a lot of people investing in these kind of monthly gross SaaS models, you can make quite a bit of money there, but they're not going to change the world. Let's be honest about it. These kind of companies that I'm trying to start will change the world if they're successful. And I think that's a different level for us to go after and what we're trying to do. And Venture has been great to work with so far.

我认为目前在风投领域中，很多人都在投资于月收入型SaaS模式的公司，虽然可以赚到不少钱，但这些公司并不能改变世界，这是客观的事实。相比之下，如果我的公司能够成功，它们就有能力改变世界，这是我们所追求的不同层次。至今为止，与风投的合作一直非常顺利。

We have a lot of support from obviously a lot of VC firms that have been huge for us, including, you know, we came out of YC and then around with you. Gary Tant, and Alexis Ohanian. So you got two amazing YC previous founders, Post-Rus, was Gary Tant's company and Reddit was Alexis's company. So you got some really great support there from them. And then now you've just got to get, you got to level up to the next level of scale VC, I guess. Yeah, exactly.

我们得到了很多支持，显然是很多风险投资公司对我们非常重要，包括，您知道，我们是从Y Combinator出来的，然后是Gary Tant和Alexis Ohanian。所以你拥有了两个惊人的YC前创始人，Post-Rus是Gary Tant的公司，而Reddit是Alexis的公司。所以你从他们那里得到了非常好的支持。现在你需要升级到下一级规模的风险投资公司，我想是这样的。是的，确切地说。

And we've had great support from our investors. And as we continue to go forward, we'll see what happens. But again, in these kind of deep tech things, it's all on us right now. We got to hit our milestones to show we can perform and make it to the damn asteroid. And that's what we hope to do the end of this year.

我们得到了投资者的巨大支持。随着我们的持续前进，我们将看到会发生什么。但在这些深度科技领域中，现在一切都取决于我们。我们必须达到里程碑，以证明我们能够执行并到达那颗该死的小行星。这就是我们希望在今年年底完成的目标。

如果 SpaceX 没有掌握他们当前的技术，这一切都不可能发生。毫无疑问。我们必须诚实面对这个问题。埃隆在这里引领了大家。他展示了一个巨大的“彩虹尽头”的目标，如果他为 Falcon 1 到 Falcon 9 和 Dragon 的建造筹集资金，那么就会实现这一目标。

And this really allowed VC to open up to say, holy s**t, these companies can actually exist in their possible. And I mean, again, 20 years ago, I think we would have been laughed out of every room because it just wasn't feasible to do.

这实际上使得风险投资公司可以敞开心扉地说："天哪，这些公司可能真的可以存在。" 我的意思是，再说20年前，我认为我们可能会被嘲笑并被赶出每个会议室，因为这实在是不可行的。

In fact, you saw this, right? Planetary resources and deep space industries that too asteroid mining companies that came before us. Their cost models were just so much higher than ours are now to go try to do the same thing. I mean, both of those founders have been awesome and been very helpful to us. And I think their timing was just off.

实际上，你也看到了吧？行星资源公司和深空工业公司都是比我们更早进入小行星采矿领域的公司。他们的成本模型比我们现在尝试做同样的事情花费的成本要高得多。我的意思是，这两个公司的创始人都非常优秀，对我们非常有帮助。我认为他们的时机就是不对。

I think the timing is now for this to happen due to rideshare and the decrease in launch cost. I mean, planetary resources started in 2009. So they basically started not long after SpaceX. And you're starting three or 12 years later or more than a decade later.

我认为现在是实现这个目标的时机，因为出租车共乘和发射成本的降低。我的意思是，行星资源于2009年成立，所以他们基本上是在SpaceX之后不久开始的。而你现在开始的时间已经晚了三年、十二年甚至更多。

That's actually a huge opportunity for you because it would be like starting. If you look at YouTube, you look at Dropbox, those services, they only worked because of Amazon's cloud computing offering, lowering the cost of storage S1 or S3, whatever it was called back in the day.

这其实对你来说是一个巨大的机会，因为这就像重新开始一样。如果你看看 YouTube、Dropbox 这些服务，它们之所以能够运作起来，是因为亚马逊的云计算服务提供了低成本的存储（S1 或 S3，以前被称为什么）。

I think it's still called S3. You know, those kind of enabling technologies made new services available. That's what you're doing. You're you are a service that's made available because of the cloud platform that is SpaceX SpaceX is cloud.

我认为它仍然叫做S3。你知道，那些能够让新服务提供的启用技术。这就是你正在做的事情。你是一种服务，由于SpaceX是云平台，可以提供这种服务。

And it's not just SpaceX. It is the whole space economy that has really matured to the fact that we can buy satellites. We can buy pretty much everything we want on the map.

这不仅仅是SpaceX的事情，整个太空经济已经成熟到我们可以购买人造卫星，我们可以购买地图上几乎所有我们想要的东西的程度。

Explain that. The components. Yeah. So how much of the components are you making and how much of the components are off the shelf for OEMs, as they say. Yeah. So for this, the broker to mission that we are sending out, we have bought the spacecraft.

可以这样翻译：请解释一下组件的情况。你们生产了多少组件？有多少组件是从OEM厂商买来的呢？就我们将要发射的任务而言，我们已经购买了航天器。

So we are not building the spacecraft. The spacecraft is being built for us. That being said, we work very, very closely with the people building the spacecraft because we still have the program it. We have to teach it where to go.

因此，我们不是在构建宇宙飞船。宇宙飞船是为我们而建造的。话虽如此，我们仍然与建造宇宙飞船的人们非常密切合作，因为我们仍需要对其进行编程。我们必须教它去哪里。

We build the images on it that are going to take pictures of the asteroid. We obviously do a lot of the software that's on these vehicles. So it's not like we just said it and forget it. There's a lot of work that goes into it with the spacecraft.

我们在上面制作了将拍摄小行星照片的影像。我们显然为这些车辆上的软件做了很多工作。因此，我们并没有只是放手不管。在太空航天器上，需要进行大量的工作。

But the fact that I don't have to build solar panels or figure out how reaction wheels work or buy an attitude system or even our propulsion system. That is a huge time saver for me. That's the only reason why we can do this so quickly.

事实上，我不需要建造太阳能面板，弄清楚反作用轮的工作原理、购买姿态控制系统，甚至我们的推进系统。这对我来说是巨大的时间节省。这是我们之所以能够如此迅速地完成任务的唯一原因。

I mean, one of the things we did recently is we came out of we came out of starting the company in 16 months later. We were in space. That's actually not like a good sign on astrophorge. I mean, yeah, we were able to move quick.

我是指，我们最近做的事情之一就是在成立公司后的16个月里离开了太空。这实际上不是一个好的星际旅行迹象。我的意思是，是的，我们能够快速行动。

It's actually a really good sign on the space economy in words at the fact that we could do that that fast right from inception to being in space in less than a year and a half. That's unheard of. And it's all because of that in space or the space economy.

这实际上是太空经济的一个非常好的迹象，因为我们能够在不到一年半的时间内从构想到进入太空。这是前所未有的。而这都是因为太空经济或太空领域的原因。

Well, and if have you ever seen how big starship is like have you seen in a person yet? I have not. I was going to a lot of Falcon 9s in person. Yeah. Not starship. It's wild. I've been inside of one like the cone portion of it like where the payloads go.

你有没有看过宇宙飞船有多大，就像在人的尺寸里看到过吗？我没有。我曾亲眼看到过很多“猎鹰9号”火箭。但是没有看过宇宙飞船，真是不可思议。我曾经进入过其中的锥形部分，就是放载荷的地方。

And it's like looking into the belly of like a giant, you know, the largest yet you've ever seen. And I think you can fit 300 people inside of it if you have like seating. So we can fit whatever luxury, without luxury, like an international and one of those multi-deck you know, airplanes are that you see going, you know, to Asia from SFO. You can fit a lot of people and to our cargo.

这就像是看进一个巨大的肚子，你知道那是你见过的最大的。如果有座位，我认为可以容纳300人。因此，我们可以容纳任何奢华的旅客或普通的国际多层客机，就像你从旧金山飞往亚洲看到的那些。我们还可以装载大量的货物。

And it seems to think he can get two or three more of those out this year. Perhaps more. I think it's going to be pretty crazy how cheap or this is going to get. And you would never been against Elon.

它似乎认为他今年还能推出两三个这样的产品，甚至更多。我认为这款产品的价格会变得非常便宜，会变得相当疯狂。而你也永远不会抵制埃隆。

I think we've all seen that when it comes to space, like he never went against the lot. He has shown so much progress with SpaceX. And obviously, I mean, my co-founder came from SpaceX. We know a lot of people at SpaceX like, yeah, it is great to see what that company has done and what they continue to do.

我认为我们都看到了，在太空领域，他从未逆流而上。他和SpaceX一起取得了如此多的进展。显然，我的联合创始人来自SpaceX。我们认识很多在SpaceX工作的人。是的，看到这家公司所做的和它继续做的事情真是太棒了。

And the fact that they continue to iterate this far into the game, I think really goes to show how awesome of a company it is. And we're really just building a company off the backs of SpaceX. And it's amazing. You can get the satellite and then you only have to build the software, the drill bits, whatever it is, the lasers. That's also amazing.

事实上，他们在游戏中继续进行迭代的事实，我认为真的表明了这是一家多么棒的公司。而我们实际上是在 SpaceX 的基础上建立了一家公司，这太令人惊奇了。你只需要购买卫星，然后只需建立软件、钻头、激光等等，这也是非常棒的。

It's like being able to buy like, I don't know, an ice engine and the transmission and a bunch of other pieces to put into your car. And then, man, you just narrow your focus to what really matters. How many people do you have at the company? We have 17. As of today, we have 17, which would be crazy if I told you, we're going to go mind an asteroid of 17 people. But I think, hopefully, with understanding that most of this can be purchased.

这就像是能够购买到冰发动机、传动系统和其他一些零部件，让你把它们安装到你的车里。这样一来，你就可以将注意力集中到真正重要的事情上了。你们公司有多少人？我们有17个人。今天我们有17个人，如果我告诉你我们要去挖掘一颗拥有17人的小行星，这会听起来很疯狂。但是，我认为大部分事情都可以购买，这一点我们应该能够理解。

We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can do this with a very, very slim down workforce and keep it small. And that's the goal of the company. I'm not going to grow my company via headcount, right? It's important to be very capital efficient. And that's the way we do it. Incredible. I mean, if this was 10 years ago, you probably need 17 people just for the solar arrays on this, right? You probably need 200 people to do this company, but a decade ago. Correct. Now we can buy it all.

我们没有必要重新发明轮子。我们可以通过精简化的工作队伍来完成这个任务，并保持团队的小规模，这也是我们公司的目标。我不会通过增加员工人数来扩展我的公司，很重要的是要非常注重资本效率。这就是我们的做法。难以置信。我是说，如果这是十年前，你可能需要17个人来安装太阳能电池板，对吧？你可能需要200人来运营这家公司，但是现在不同了。没错，现在我们可以全部买进来。

And that's just, it's a game changer for us, Jason. It's totally different than it was a decade ago. And you know, I can't wait to see what happens in another decade. But hopefully, we're on the forefront of showing people this is possible on a totally different regime.

这对我们来说是一个改变游戏规则的机会，Jason。现在与十年前完全不同。我期待着再过十年发生什么。但希望我们能走在前沿，向人们展示在一种完全不同的体系下这是可能的。

All right. Listen, Matt, continue to success. I know you got the 17 people. Any open positions now for these lunatics who want to join you on this insane mission to mind space. It's a noble and insane mission. Do you have any open positions or you're full of?

好的。听着，马特，继续成功。我知道你已经有了17个人。现在有没有任何开放的职位，供那些想要加入你这个前往大脑空间的疯狂任务的疯子们申请？这是一项崇高而疯狂的任务。你是否还有空缺的职位，或者你已经满额了？

We got a couple of open positions that we're always looking for right when it comes to physicists and top engineers. So if you're interested, hit me up on LinkedIn. Okay. Hit you up on LinkedIn. And then the website is astroforge.io. You can find out more about it there in our news articles. All right. Listen, continue success. Thank you for doing this hard work for humanity. And I wish you great success on it. And it sounds like you're going to get it done. So congratulations on this incredibly impressive effort. I really mean that sincerely.

我们一直在寻找物理学家和顶尖工程师的空缺职位。如果您有兴趣，请在领英上联系我。好的。我会在领英上联系你。然后网站是astroforge.io。您可以在我们的新闻文章中了解更多信息。好的。继续成功。感谢您为人类做出的努力。我祝愿您在此方面取得巨大成功。听起来你会成功的。所以恭喜你这个令人印象深刻的努力。我真的是由衷的这么说的。

Awesome. Thank you, Jason. Thanks for having me on. All right. We'll see you next time. Then we'll see you all of you next time on this week in startups. Bye-bye.

太棒了，谢谢你，杰森。感谢邀请我来参加节目。好的，我们下次再见。那么下次见到你们，我们将在本周创业上再见。再见。

Probably the most common challenge I hear from founders is related to building. Either they are in technical and are searching for a technical co-founder or they can code, but they're just spread to then. This is one of the first major obstacles you're going to face. And I know how discouraging it can be, but there is a solution.

我听到创业者最常遇到的挑战之一与构建有关。无论是技术走向创业，寻找技术合伙人，还是能编程但感到力不从心，这都是你将面临的第一个重大障碍。我知道这可能让你感到沮丧，但其实有解决方案。

Do you have a great idea, but you don't have a technical co-founder? Well, crowd-bottaks can be your CTO as a service. But just like that, this means you can focus on building an awesome product and delighting your customers rather than wasting your time on infrastructure planning, architecture, compliance and all that boring stuff. Crowd-bottaks also offers professional scoping to help you flesh out your project at the MVP stage and beyond. So cut out the hassle and get back to building that perfect product for your delighted customers.

你有伟大的想法，但没有技术合伙人吗？别担心，Crowd-bottaks可以作为服务成为你的技术创始人。这意味着你可以专注于构建惊人的产品并让客户感到满意，而不是浪费时间在基础设施规划、架构、合规等无聊的工作上。Crowd-bottaks还提供专业的范围界定，帮助你在MVP阶段及以后完善项目。因此，摆脱烦恼，回到为你的满意客户打造完美产品的道路上来。

When you think crowd-bottaks, I want you to think getting your time back to focus on product. Product drives everything in a startup. So let the folks at Crowd-bottaks show you how it works, schedule a free scoping session and get your detailed build plan at crowdbottaks.com slash twist. That's crowdbottaics.com slash twist.

当你想到Crowd-bottaks时，我希望你把注意力放在产品上，以便节省时间。产品是初创企业中的一切。因此，请让Crowd-bottaks的人向您展示它的工作方式，安排一个免费的范围会议，并在crowdbottaks.com/twist上获得详细的构建计划。那是crowdbottaks.com/twist。

Hey everybody, today on Founder University of the podcast, we're setting up a fundraising process in learning how to prepare for your first investor calls. As someone who's pitched my own startup for funding and now having taken hundreds of founder calls as an investor, these are my best tips for success. Let's go.

大家好，今天在播客的创始人大学节目中，我们要建立一个募资流程，学习如何准备你的第一次投资呼叫。作为一个曾经为自己的创业公司寻求资金的人，现在又作为一位投资者接听了数百个创始人的呼叫，我会分享给大家一些成功的最佳技巧。让我们开始吧。

Today we'll cover setting up a fundraising process. We'll review the funnel and how to stay organized. Then we'll prepare for your first investor meeting and we'll wrap up with how to prepare for your post meeting follow-up.

今天我们将讲解如何建立筹款流程。我们会审视筹款漏斗以及如何保持组织性。接着，我们会为您的第一次投资人会议做准备，并最后讲述如何为会后跟进做准备。

Now we need to understand the fundraising funnel. This is the first step towards success in creating a fundraising process. Just like sales, fundraising is 100% a numbers game. Think of this as a funnel. Here is what it should look like.

我们现在需要理解募资漏斗。这是创建募资流程成功的第一步。和销售一样，募资也是百分之百的数字游戏。将其想象成一个漏斗。以下是它应该看起来的样子。

As you can see, in order to get a term sheet or potentially multiple term sheets in a hot fundraising market, you need to work backwards and ensure you have enough folks in the top of the funnel to get folks downstream at the bottom. So how do we fill the top of this funnel?

正如你看到的，在一个火热的筹资市场中，为了获得一份或者多份资金使用协议，我们需要逆向思考，并确保我们有足够的人才在漏斗的顶部，以使底部的人才流更加顺畅。那么我们该如何填满这个漏斗的顶部呢？

First, you need to start a target list. Here are a few places to start looking for investors. As you're searching, please be mindful that you are targeting the right investors for your business. For example, if you were preceded, it's probably too early to pitch investors who participate at Series Beyond Words. If you have a D to C company, you want to focus on investors who invest in D to C companies. It seems simple, but we see this all the time. Also, note that firms have a thesis.

首先，你需要开始制定一个目标列表。以下是一些寻找投资者的起点。在寻找投资者时，请注意你为自己的企业选择合适的投资者。例如，如果你刚起步，向那些参与“超越语言”融资的投资者提出建议可能为时过早。如果你是一家D至C公司，你需要关注那些为D至C公司投资的投资者。这似乎是很简单的，但我们经常看到这种情况。此外，请注意公司有投资理念。

It's not always public and transparent, but you can usually tell by their previous investments. And while you're doing this research, please triple check that the investors are still at the firm that you found them for and that they still have a focus on the type of businesses that you think. This can be as simple as checking the firm's website, but since folks move around and jobs change, even in VC, this step will save you a lot of time and energy in the long run.

虽然这并不总是公开透明的，但通常可以通过他们先前的投资来判断。在你进行这项研究时，请三思而后行，确定这些投资者仍然在你找到他们的公司工作，并且他们仍然专注于你认为适合的业务类型。这可以很简单地通过查看公司网站来实现，但由于人员会变动和工作会变化，甚至在风险投资领域，这一步将在长远节省你很多时间和精力。

Okay, a couple to point out here that are a little less obvious. You may see funding announcements that list investors and you can pull leads from here for the top of the funnel. Also, founders are a great resource. If they have a connection, they may even be willing to give you a warm intro. Now, while we're talking about warm intros, each investor and firm have different expectations here.

这里有几个不太明显的提示。你可能看到一些关于资金的公告，上面列出了投资者的名字，你可以从这里为漏斗顶端找到潜在客户。此外，创始人是一个很好的资源。如果他们有关系，他们甚至可能愿意给你介绍一个热门的入口。现在，当我们谈论热门入口时，每个投资者和公司在这里的期望都是不同的。

Some will require a warm intro. Others have a complete open door policy, send the cold email. We love to get them and others will require companies to reach out through their site or some other standardized form. Don't wait too far into this, but do reach out in the way that they ask. It's going to help you get there faster. And now for Twitter. Twitter is such a powerful tool.

有些人需要热门介绍，而其他人则采取完全开放的政策，可以发送冷邮件。我们喜欢收到这些邮件，而其他人则要求公司通过其网站或某种标准化表格进行联系。不要等得太晚，但要以他们要求的方式联系。这将有助于您更快地到达目的地。现在来谈谈Twitter。Twitter是如此强大的工具。

You can search for things like active VCs, active investors, and then take that search a step further. You can add stage, for example. So search for active early stage investors or active seed stage investors. You can see on the examples here that these are really recent threads and they also have a ton of replies. In addition to finding lists by stage, you can keep searching even deeper on Twitter.

你可以搜索像活跃的VC、活跃的投资者这样的事物，然后再进一步搜索。例如，你可以添加阶段。所以搜索活跃的早期阶段投资者或活跃的种子阶段投资者。你可以看到这里的例子非常近期，而且他们也有大量的回复。除了按阶段找到列表以外，你还可以在Twitter上深入搜索。

Folks will often do lists and threads like this with specifics for technology, business model, industry. The example here is specifically calling out investors and AI who also do seed stage deals. If this is the type of investor you're looking for, this list is going to literally be a cheat sheet for you. So please take a look at Twitter and see how it might help.

人们通常会使用具体的技术、商业模式和行业创建这样的列表和主题。这个例子具体指出的是投资人和人工智能，他们也会进行种子阶段的交易。如果这是你正在寻找的投资人类型，那么这个列表将成为一个真正的“作弊单"。请看一下Twitter，看看它如何帮助你。

Great. Now you have your list of investors and you'll need to track the outreach of these results. Again, very similar to a sales pipeline. You'll want to have one place not only to keep the contact details for everyone you're reaching out to, but also track the stage of the process you're at with each of these different folks. So this doesn't have to be fancy and you don't need to use an expensive CRM.

很棒。现在你已经有了投资者名单，需要跟进这些结果。与销售管道非常相似。你应该有一个地方不仅用于保存联系人的详细信息，还要跟踪与每个不同的投资者的沟通进展阶段。因此，这不必过于复杂，也不需要使用昂贵的客户关系管理软件。

You can use tools like Google Sheets or Excel. I prefer Strik, which is an in email CRM that's lightweight and has a premium version. You can also use whatever CRM your team is currently using. But again, you don't necessarily have to buy something expensive to run this process. All right, let's talk about a few of the basic fields you'll want to track in your pipeline.

您可以使用Google Sheets或Excel等工具。我更喜欢Strik，它是一个轻量级的邮件CRM，并有高级版本。您也可以使用团队当前正在使用的任何CRM。但是，您不一定需要购买昂贵的东西来运行这个过程。好的，让我们来谈谈您想要在管道中跟踪的一些基本字段。（意思是，您可以选择使用不同的工具来跟踪销售工作流程，其中包括一些收费但有高级版本的CRM软件，但您不必购买昂贵的软件，可以使用不同的工具来管理和跟踪。接下来，本文将介绍在工作流程管理中必要追踪的几个基本方面）

First name, the best practice here is for any CRM that you want to include the first name and the last name in separate columns or fields. And this is so that you can mail merge and use tags to personalize emails without having a lot of manual work later on. You'll want to track email, the firmware company name, check size, do they lead, and how do they prefer to be contacted?

首先，最好的做法是将首名和姓氏分别放在不同的列或字段中，以便于您在以后使用邮件合并和标签来个性化电子邮件时不需要大量的手动工作。您会想要追踪电子邮件、固件公司名称、支票大小、他们是否是潜在客户以及他们希望通过什么方式进行联系？

Again, those Twitter lists probably will tell you all of these details and give you that cheat sheet to fill this in quickly. Then you'll want to track where in the funnel or the pipeline each of these folks are. Here are a few stages to get you started on creating your own pipeline. And please customize this. Make it your own. This isn't the end all be all.

这些Twitter名单可能会告诉你所有这些详细信息，并提供填写速成表的技巧。然后，您需要跟踪这些人在漏斗或流程管道中的位置。以下是一些阶段，可帮助您开始创建自己的管道。请自定义它，将其变为您自己的。这并不是全部结束。

It's just a few that we've seen work well. All right, first step, not yet contacted, pretty self-explanatory. This is when you've just found them, but not actually reached out. Then email or application sent, you know that you actually did your first step and you're waiting to hear back. Next we have conversations started.

我们只看到很少的人做得很好。好的，第一步，还没有联系，相当容易理解。这是当你刚刚找到他们，但还没有真正联系上他们时。然后，发送邮件或申请，你知道你已经完成了第一步，正在等待回复。接下来，我们有开始交谈。

Often there is some back and forth before the actual call is scheduled. So we like to have that broken out and have a specific stage for first call scheduled. Next up, we have post meeting one and two. There will be downtime in between meetings and conversations. So having a stage where they can kind of sit and you know exactly where they're at is going to again help you stay organized.

通常在实际通话之前会有一些来回沟通的过程。所以我们喜欢将这个阶段分开，并设置一个特定的第一次通话安排阶段。接着，我们有第一次会议和第二次会议的后续阶段。在会议和对话之间会有间歇期。因此，设置一个阶段，让他们可以坐下来，你知道他们所处的确切状态，将再次帮助你保持组织。

Great. Now we're into the outcomes. You'll want to keep clear notes here. So when it's time to raise again, you can go back and know exactly where you left off with each one of these without having to dig into old emails. Or remember.

很好，现在我们开始看结果了。你需要保持清晰的记录。这样，当需要再次提出时，你可以回去查看，准确地了解每个结果的进展，而不用翻阅旧的电子邮件或靠记忆。

All right, first step we've got committed. This can also include companies you're in diligence with or you can break those out if you prefer. Next is send monthly updates. This should be a pretty big list. Anyone who passed that may come in at a later date, you'll want to send updates again. Remember investors like to invest in lines, not dots.

好的，第一步已经落实了。这也可以包括你正在进行谨慎调查的公司，或者如果你愿意，可以将它们单独列出来。接下来是发送每月更新。这应该是一个相当大的列表。任何之前未能进入的人，你都需要再次发送更新。记住，投资者喜欢投资于连续的发展，而不是孤立的数据点。

And then these last two categories are probably going to be used sparingly. Not a good fit. We passed is one that I like to use almost as a no-fly list. So this is for folks that you had a bad experience with if that happens unfortunately or firms that may be you're too early for or you know that you're not a great fit for their investment thesis, which again sometimes changes. So use this sparingly. And our last stage is they passed don't add to updates.

然后这最后两个类别可能会很少使用。不是很适合。我们通过了是我喜欢几乎像是“禁飞名单”的使用方式。如果出现不幸的是您与某些人或公司有不愉快的经历，或者您对其投资主题不是很适合，那么就可以使用此功能。但有时投资主题会发生变化。要谨慎使用此功能。最后一个阶段就是他们不通过，不能添加到更新中。

Again, this is going to be very infrequent when you want to use this. But a couple reasons you may want to not include investor on updates are things like they've invested in a very close competitor, which makes you feel uncomfortable or you don't feel strongly that there's a chance for a relationship later on. Otherwise go ahead and include them on your monthly updates. And again, when it's time to raise, you can circle back around with them.

这并不常见，你使用时需要注意。但有几个原因你不想在更新中包括投资者，比如他们已投资于一个与你非常相似的竞争对手，这会让你感到不舒服，或者你不认为以后有机会建立联系。如果不是这样的情况，可以在每月更新中包括他们。等到筹集资金的时候，你可以再次联系他们。

And before we leave here, the last step to creating your fundraising process is to hold yourself accountable. You should set some targets for outreach, investor calls, and even getting to a decision like sales, getting to a know is often hard, but it's better to know that early and redirect the energy. And a huge punch up here is whether you're using a spreadsheet or a CRM, you can actually have it auto calculate how many days since you're less interaction. And then this way you don't get busy and leave a conversation to go cold on accident. Investors have lots of shiny objects. So responding quickly and staying top of mind is going to help you not get lost in the mix.

在我们离开这里之前，创造您的筹款流程的最后一步是对自己负责。您应该设立一些目标，包括达成的目标，投资者的电话，甚至是决策方面的销售。了解情况通常很困难，但最好早日了解情况并重新调整能量。这里的一个重要环节是，无论您是使用电子版表格还是CRM，您实际上都可以自动计算出自上次互动以来的天数。这样，您就不会因忙碌而意外让对话变得冷淡。投资者有许多诱人的选择。因此，尽快回应并保持注意力集中将有助于您不会在混乱中迷失。

Okay, I have to pause here. Also like sales, you have to take the emotion out of the process. I see very often on Twitter, threads, a founders adamant about burning a bridge and never taking money from an investor who passed early on. But I suggest you take a step back. Remember, investors have several factors that they're considering when looking at your business. They have things like, does this fit into their thesis? How much of their fund has been deployed and how much is still available? How many investments are they aiming to make per quarter or per year and where are they at with those targets? And also how well does your business fit into all of this? So you'll never know all the factors for why an investor may have passed and assuming they weren't rude or a really bad fit, I encourage you to reframe your expectations. Don't burn the bridge and instead remember that investors invest in line snuts. Add them to the updates and start building that relationship. You never know what might come of it.

好的，我需要在这里停一下。就像销售一样，你需要把情感从过程中剔除出去。我经常在Twitter上看到创始人很坚定地说要烧掉一座桥、永远不从未能投资的投资人那里拿钱。但我建议你退一步思考。记住，投资者在考虑你的企业时有几个因素。他们会思考一些问题，比如：这能否符合他们的投资策略？他们的资金有多少已经被用掉了，还有多少可用？他们每季或每年打算做多少个投资和他们已经完成了多少目标？另外，你的企业在其中的位置如何？因此，你永远不会知道投资者拒绝的原因有哪些因素，所以我建议你重新调整期望。不要烧掉那座桥，相反要记住投资者是为了利益而投资的。把他们加入更新列表中，开始建立良好的关系，你永远不知道会有什么结果。

Great. Under our second agenda item today, we are figuring out what to do once you get a reply. You've got that interest. They're in your inbox. What do you do to prepare for that meeting? First of all, don't freeze. It may sound simple, but if you've never done this before, it can be super intimidating. So reply to the email, answer any questions that they asked. Use very plain English and just be normal. Also, you don't want to wait too long. Again, when you have their attention, you don't want to lose it. These sees expect founders to move fast and if you take weeks to reply, you failed.

很好。在今天的第二个议程中，我们正在思考收到回复后该怎么办。你已经引起了他们的兴趣，收到了他们的邮件。为那次会议做好哪些准备？首先，不要慌张。虽然听起来很简单，但如果你从未做过这种事，会感到非常恐惧。因此，请回复邮件，回答他们提出的任何问题。使用非常简单的英语，表现出正常的态度。另外，你不想等待太久。再次强调，当你吸引了他们的注意力时，你不想失去它。这些投资者希望创业者行动迅速，如果你需要几个星期才回复邮件，那就失败了。

And next up, we want to do our research on who you're speaking with. So this is going to help take the edge off if you're nervous and also help you prepare. So we've replied to the investor's email. We're getting the conversation scheduled. Now it's time to really prepare for that meeting.

接下来，我们希望研究一下你要和谁交谈。这将有助于缓解你的紧张情绪，也有助于你做好准备。我们已经回复了投资者的电子邮件。我们正在安排谈话时间。现在是真正准备那个会议的时间了。

First step, you want to research the firm you're meeting with. You want to check things like their website and look them up on Twitter, LinkedIn, CrunchFace. Here, you're looking for a few different pieces of information. Things like what type of businesses have they invested in previously, what business models, what stage, and can you get an idea of their check size. Then you'll also want to research the person you're speaking to. It'll come one, make small talk, a lot more comfortable, and two, it'll help you gauge how well they understand your business so you know how deep to go.

第一步，你需要研究你即将见面的公司。你需要查看他们的网站，并在Twitter、LinkedIn和CrunchFace上搜索他们。在这里，你要寻找一些不同的信息。例如他们之前投资过哪些类型的企业、什么商业模式、处于什么阶段以及你能否了解他们的资金规模。然后你还需要研究你要与之交谈的人。这将使得你能够打造更为愉快的小聊天，同时还能帮助你评估对方对你的企业了解程度，这样你就能够掌握讲解的深浅度。

So a couple examples here, I think are really helpful. If you're an e-commerce marketplace and they were a founder of a marketplace, you can assume they're going to understand your business very well. In contrast, if you're building a highly technical product or building in an industry that they don't have deep experience in, you'll want to be mindful of the language you use and how deep you go. So for example, if you are pitching a security startup to an investor who doesn't have experience specifically working in security, you'll want to be mindful of how technical you are, as well as what acronyms you're using.

这里有几个例子可以帮助大家理解。如果你是一个电子商务市场的创始人，你可以假设他们会非常了解你的业务。但是，如果你正在开发一款高度技术含量的产品或是进入一个他们没有深入经验的行业，你就需要注意你使用的语言和深度。例如，如果你要向一个没有具体从事安全领域的投资者推销一家安全创业公司，你需要注意你所使用的技术术语和缩略语。

Our next pre-meeting prep step is to send materials for them to review. Not all investors will have time to read through everything you send, but if they do, you'll be able to start the conversation on second base. Make sure that these materials are easy to access and quick to consume. If it's anything dense, it will probably be ignored. Some of the materials that you may want to send are things like aluminum, which is great. A deck also really helpful.

我们下一个准备会议的步骤是发送资料供投资者审阅。并非所有投资者都有时间阅读你发送的所有内容，但如果他们做到了，你将能够在接下来的谈话中从“第二个垒”开始。确保这些资料易于访问且快速消化，如果太过冗长，可能会被忽略。你可能想发送的一些材料是像铝这样的东西，非常好的。演示文稿也是非常有帮助的。

You can also consider sending materials that overcome key objections you anticipate the investor will have. So for example, you might include a timely article that helps explain your why now, if that's a question you've received several times before and know that they're going to ask. All right, our last step of pre-meeting call prep, you want to have questions prepared. Here are some basic questions you can ask if you're not sure. So things like, what is your investment thesis and how do we fit into it?

你也可以考虑发送一些材料，以克服你预计投资者可能会有的主要反对意见。例如，你可以包括一篇及时的文章，帮助解释为什么现在是合适的时机，如果你之前已经收到了这个问题，并且知道他们会问。好的，我们的预备会议的最后一步，你需要准备好问题。以下是一些基本的问题，如果你不确定，可以问一下。例如：你的投资理论是什么？我们如何符合它？

What size check do you write? Do you lead? And how many investments do you make a year? You can also ask things like, how do you support founders beyond the check? And here's a pointed one. What would it take for you to invest in our round? This last one here is really interesting, especially if you're talking to someone who's a little less senior, understand that they can be a champion for you.

你所写的支票大小是多少？你有领导经验吗？一年中你会做多少个投资？你也可以问一些类似的问题，比如说你是如何支持创始人的？还有一个直接的问题，如果我们希望你投资我们的某个轮次，你要求的条件是什么？如果你在和比较年轻的人交谈，那么这个问题就尤为重要，因为他们可能会成为你的冠军支持者。

You can ask, 'do you need anything for me to help you pitch this internally?' This could be the difference in them asking for what they need and maybe to embarrass to ask alone or them passing because it's not handy and it's not outright clear. Great. Now, our last step of our session today, how do we prep our post-meeting follow-up? As a general rule, you'll want to follow up the same day or next.

你可以问，“你需要我做什么帮助你在公司内部推销吗？” 这可能是他们请求需要的东西和可能因为害羞而不敢单独询问或者因为不方便和不明确而放弃的差别。很好。现在，我们今天的最后一个步骤，我们如何为会后跟进做准备？一般来说，你会想在当天或第二天进行跟进。

So everything you want to send afterwards, you should have prepared in advance so that you're avoiding the fire drill after the call. These are a few of the things that we suggest having prepared in advance. In your follow-up, here's a few things you can send. A deck, a loom, and your requested items they had during the call. And here's the really critical piece to help you stand out.

因此，你想要在通话之后发送的所有内容，都应该提前准备好，以避免在火灾演习之后再忙乱起来。以下是我们建议提前准备的几件事。在跟进时，可以发送几件事情：演示文稿、录屏以及你在通话中提出的需求。而这是真正关键的部分，可以帮助你脱颖而出。

Follow up on any concerns or questions they had on your call, especially if you asked, what would it take for you to invest or do you have any concerns and they outright tell you, go ahead and overcome those in your follow-up email, even if you talked about it on the call. Here's a great example. If they ask about market size and seem skeptical with your response, you can send a bottom-up tam and any supporting links or data to help you explain how the market is actually what you think it is and not what they have made assumptions based on.

在跟进邮件中重点关注他们在通话中提出的任何疑虑或问题，尤其是如果你问过他们，“你需要投资什么或你是否有任何担忧？”而他们坦言了，即使你已经在通话中谈到了这些问题，也要在跟进邮件中进一步解决。以下是一个很好的例子：如果他们问你市场规模，并对你的回答持怀疑态度，你可以发送一个自下而上的市场总量，并附上任何支持链接或数据来帮助你解释市场实际上是你认为的而不是他们所做出假设的那样。

So let's imagine you have your call and you don't hear back. It is okay to follow up and ping them in a week or two. Please note though, every time you ping an investor, you want to have something of substance to share. Not just, hey, floating this to the top. You'll want to include either some update to catch their attention or some new piece of information that will get them re-excited.

那么让我们想象一下，你打了电话但没有收到回复。可以在一两周后跟进，提醒一下他们。但请注意，每次跟进投资者，你需要有实质性的内容。不要只是说：“嘿，再次关注一下。”你需要包括一些更新来引起他们的注意，或者提供一些新信息，让他们重新感到兴奋。

Rather than, hey, floating this to the top, a better option would be just checking in to see if you needed any additional information. Since our meeting, I've signed two new customers and crossed 20,000 in monthly revenue. And if you don't hear back, go ahead, add them to your monthly updates so that you're staying top of mind and hopefully you can convert them over time.

与其把这个问题置顶，更好的选择是查询一下你是否需要额外的信息。自从我们会面以来，我已经签下了两个新客户，并实现了每月2万美元的收入。如果你没有得到回复，可以加入他们到每月更新中，这样你就可以保持关注，并希望随着时间的推移能够转化他们。

There are a few key takeaways from today's discussion. First of all, it's important to have a clear and concise pitch that highlights the problem you're solving and the value your company brings to the table. Secondly, research potential investors and tailor your approach to their specific interests and investment criteria. Thirdly, always be prepared for questions and have a solid understanding of your financial projections and growth plans. And lastly, don't be afraid to follow up and persist in your fundraising efforts. Investing in your business is a long-term commitment, so it's natural for investors to take their time and consider their options.

今天的讨论提出了几个关键点。首先，重要的是要有一个明确简明的演讲，突显出您所解决的问题以及公司所带来的价值。其次，研究潜在的投资者，并根据其具体的兴趣和投资标准来调整您的方法。第三，要时刻做好准备，了解财务预测和增长计划。最后，不要害怕跟进并坚持筹集资金。投资您的企业是一项长期承诺，因此投资者需要时间来考虑自己的选择。

As you move forward in your fundraising process, remember to stay confident and focused. You've put in the work to build a great company, and now it's time to share that passion and vision with the world. Good luck out there, Founders!

随着你们在筹款过程中的前进，要记得保持自信和专注。你们已经辛勤工作建立了一个伟大的公司，现在是时候与世界分享那种激情和愿景了。祝你们好运，创始人们！