#107 - Vinod Khosla and Sam Altman
发布时间 2019-01-09 10:00:00 来源
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Why Competitors Podcast. Today's episode is with Vinod Kostla and Sam Altman. Vinod is the founder of Kostla Ventures, a firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs to build impactful new energy and technology companies. Previously, he was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial risk processors. You can find Vinod on Twitter at VKostla and Sam's on Twitter at SAMA.
嗨，最近怎么样？我是Craig Cannon，欢迎来到Why Competitors播客。今天的节目邀请了Vinod Kostla和Sam Altman。Vinod是Kostla Ventures的创始人，致力于帮助企业家建立有影响力的新能源和技术公司。之前，他曾是Sun Microsystems的创始CEO，开创了开放系统和商业风险处理器。你可以在Twitter上找到Vinod，账号是VKostla，Sam的Twitter账号是SAMA。
All right, here we go. My name is Sam. Today we're talking to Vinod Kostla. Vinod is the founder of Sun Microsystems and Kostla Ventures. He's been involved in the creation of dozens of billion dollar companies. And I think it's one of the most interesting thinkers that I've ever spoken to about how to build an ambitious company and team and everything else you need. So thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.
好的，我们开始了。我的名字是山姆。今天我们来采访Vinod Kostla。Vinod是Sun Microsystems和Kostla Ventures的创始人，他参与了数十个市值达数十亿美元的公司的创建。我认为他是我曾经接触过的最有趣的思想家之一，他可以谈论如何建立野心勃勃的公司和团队以及所需的一切。感谢你今天抽出时间与我们交谈。
Great to talk about it.
很高兴能谈论这件事，让我们畅所欲言吧。
I want to start with the very beginning and how to think about the idea and the mindset for a company. One thing you've said before that I really love is that there's a huge difference between a zero million dollar company and a zero billion dollar company. And maybe you could start with just explaining what you mean by that.
我想从一开始谈起，讲讲如何思考一个公司的概念和心态。你之前提到过一点，我非常喜欢，那就是零百万美元的公司和零十亿美元的公司之间有着巨大的差别。也许你可以从解释这句话开始。
To me, when you set out on a journey, your mindset determines who you bring on board, how you approach it, what you set up, what deals you do, what you invest as you've got. In a zero revenue company, if you think zero million, you're thinking a certain way to tactically achieve a small short term goal. Zero billion dollars, you start building from day one, the company and the people you'll need to build the company.
对我而言，当你开始一段旅程时，你的心态决定了你带上什么人、你如何处理、你设置的内容、你做的交易以及你所投入的资金。在一个零营收公司中，如果你想到零百万美元，你会以战术方式去实现一个小的短期目标。如果想到零十亿美元，你会从一开始就着手构建公司和需要构建公司的人员。
One of the things people seldom realize when they're starting up, you don't ever plan what you're going to do. You build a plan to make to plan. And who helps in that planning as you plan iteratively, as you evolve your strategy and your tactics? That team, which I call the kitchen cabinet of a company, is the essence of what your company will become. And one of my favorite tweets I like tweeting out is a company becomes the people at highers, not the plan it makes. And that's grossly appreciated.
在创业初期，人们很少意识到的一件事情是：你从来没有计划好要做什么。你制定计划是为了制定计划。那么，在你不断演化和调整策略和战术的过程中，谁会帮助你进行这样的规划？这个团队，我称之为公司的“内阁”，是你的公司将要成为的本质。我最喜欢发推文的一条是：“公司变成的是高层管理人员，而不是它制定的计划”。这一点非常受到赞赏。
And is the biggest difference between the zero million and the zero billion dollar company, the initial people you hire in your experience?
零百万美元和零十亿美元公司之间最大的区别是什么？是您在招聘员工方面的经验吗？
It is the initial people you hire, but also how you approach the initial tactics. My other great analogy, if you have a large vision, you're climbing Mount Everest, it's never a straight line. Nobody's climbed Everest in a straight line. You get to base camp, you get to camp one, camp two, camp three, camp four. If you get the right approach, you keep your, your obstinate about your vision, which is Mount Everest, but you're flexible about tactics as things change. As you zig and zag when you pivot, these are all things on the way to staying with the vision.
你雇佣的最初的人员也很重要，但你处理最初的策略方式也很关键。我的另一个伟大比喻是，如果你有一个宏大的愿景，就像攀登珠穆朗玛峰，这不是一条直线，没有人可以直线攀登珠穆朗玛峰。你需要到达大本营，到达第一、第二、第三和第四个营地。如果你采取正确的方法，并始终固执于你的愿景——即珠穆朗玛峰，但也要在策略上灵活应变，随着事物的变化而变化，当你在转向时小心翼翼地迂回前行，这些都是实现愿景的途中的事情。
Now you can also do the same tactics without worrying about the vision. And my big beef with a lot of investors is they want revenue, they want to meet plan as opposed to collect assets for this larger extent to Mount Everest. You can clearly set up base camp where you get revenues, stability, cash flow breaking, and the ability to raise more money in the wrong place. If you're goal is to get to Everest, but you still get the revenue, you might have 20, million, 50, million, 100, million of revenue, but it doesn't help you get to Everest. Or you can take a little longer, a little harder, get to the base camp that lets you get the resources to keep the journey to your vision. There's a huge difference in the team is the biggest difference, but there's also strategy differences.
现在你也可以采用同样的策略而不必担心影响。我对许多投资者的不满是，他们想要收入，想要达成计划，而不是为了攀登到更高的山峰而收集财富。你可以在你的收入、稳定性、现金流、以及能够在正确的地方筹集更多资金的基地营地明确地建立起来。如果你的目标是攀登珠穆朗玛峰，但你仍然获得了收入，你可能会有2000万、5000万、1亿的收入，但这并不能帮助你到达珠穆朗玛峰。或者你可以花更长的时间、更加努力地到达让你获得资源以保持通向你的愿景的基地营地。最大的区别在于团队，但也存在策略上的差异。
By the way, investors in my view matter a lot in this because you make short term versus long term trade-offs. What percent of investors in Silicon Valley do you think are good long term company builders? Because I get in a lot of trouble for saying this.
顺便说一下，在这里，投资者我认为在很大程度上很重要，因为你需要在短期和长期之间权衡。你认为在硅谷有多少投资者是好的长期公司建设者？因为我说这个话，经常会遇到麻烦。
90% of investors add no value.
90%的投资者没有增加任何价值。即90%的投资者对投资项目没有任何贡献。
My assessment 70% of investors add negative value to a company. That means they're advising a company. This is part of team building too for entrepreneurs. They're advising a company when they haven't earned the rise to advice to an entrepreneur. Some of the junior people here when they ask me, hey, at this other firm, young people are going on boards, can I be on a board? I say you haven't earned the right to advise an entrepreneur. So it's unfair to the entrepreneur. Just because you got an MBA and joined a venture firm doesn't mean you're qualified to advise an entrepreneur.
我的评估是，70% 的投资者对公司造成了负面影响。这意味着他们在为公司提供建议。对于企业家来说，这也是培养团队的一部分。他们在没有获得给企业家建议的资格的情况下为企业提供建议。在这里，有些初级员工问我，嘿，在其他公司，年轻的人可以加入董事会，我能加入董事会吗？我会告诉他们，你还没有获得给企业家建议的权利。因此，这对企业家来说是不公平的。只是因为你有MBA学位并加入了一个风险投资公司，并不意味着你有资格为企业家提供建议。
The biggest piece of it not the only way is have you built a large company? Have you gone through how hard it is? Well, uncertain it is how traumatic it is to go through.
其中最重要的部分并不是唯一的途径，而是你是否已经建立了一家大公司？你是否经历了它有多么艰难？不确定经历它有多么创伤性。
I mean, just this morning I was talking to somebody about how many times we almost worried about making payroll at Sun. How many times? What's going bankrupt? Plenty of times. Like more than two? Yeah. And there was a period, there was a three month period where we almost want bankrupt because we had a hardware problem, monitors we were buying from Phillips were breaking every 30 days.
我指的是，今天早上我和一个人谈论了有多少次我们几乎担心过Sun公司的工资单支付。有多少次？破产的风险很高。像超过两次？是的。有一个时期，我们几乎破产了，因为我们有一个硬件问题，从飞利浦购买的监视器每30天就会损坏。
I think there was probably a month or two when the earliest I went home was at 3am and the latest I was back in the office was 7am. It just, you know, unless you've got wrench, you've felt that gut wrenching decision, you can't advise an entrepreneur.
我觉得可能有一个或两个月的时间，我最早回家都是凌晨3点，最晚回到办公室是早上7点。除非你经历过这种内心挣扎的决策，否则你无法为创业者提供建议。
I hate board members who sit in a board meeting and say, oh, can you improve quality? And then five minutes later, can you ship faster and five minutes later spend less money? And they've never gone through really hard trade-offs and how uncertain it is.
我讨厌那些在董事会会议上坐着说，“哦，你能提高质量吗？”然后五分钟后说，“你能更快地发货吗？”再过五分钟就说，“能省点钱吗？”他们从没真正经历过艰难的决策和不确定性。
If you add more people and increase your burn rate, are you going to improve or hurt your chances of getting something out? These are very uncertain, very hard cause. The biggest thing an entrepreneur deals with is rich risk to take one.
如果你增加了更多的人和加速了支出速度，你是会提高还是会减少将来成功的机会呢？这是一个非常不确定的、极其棘手的问题。对于企业家来说，最大的挑战就是承担风险。
When you take a financial risk of running lean, when you take an engineer of marketing risk of a future poor product, when you take rich risk, do you want to take it? It's like whack them all. And ambiguity is so hard to deal with, but it's the essence.
当你冒着经营不足的经济风险，或者冒着未来产品质量不佳的市场工程师风险，或者冒着经济财富风险时，你是否愿意冒险？这就像打“疯狂打地鼠”一样，不确定性非常难以应对，但它是本质。
And frankly, it's one of the areas where entrepreneurs, when they don't think about what they actually need, pick the wrong people. So, if somebody's never dealt with this decision-making under ambiguity and then a big company, they're not qualified to help you.
坦率地说，这是创业家在没有考虑实际需求的情况下，常会挑选错误的人员的领域之一。因此，如果有人从未在模糊不清的情况下做出过决策，也没有在大公司工作过，那么他们不适合帮助你。
One of the things I hate about board members is when you're doing that, making these deciding which risky one and the stressful environment, the thing you most want as an entrepreneur is a board that you feel is calming you down, is supporting you, is not adding the stress.
我讨厌董事会成员的一件事情是，当你在做出那些决定时，冒险选择和应对有压力的环境，作为创业者，你最希望的是能够感到董事会在给你提供安慰，支持你，并且不会给你增加压力的感觉。
And most board members, while you're doing that, just like tell you, oh, you're going to die, like the thing I hate the most is when an old board member of mine used to send me press clippings of competitors all the time to make a point. And you really just want someone who's like, you got to take a hard risk here.
大多数董事会成员在你这么做时，通常会告诉你，哦，你会死的，我最讨厌的事情之一就是我的一个老董事会成员总是发给我竞争对手的新闻剪报以表达观点。而你真正需要的是那些会告诉你：“你必须在这里冒险。”的人。
It's a tough decision. But look, these things are the things you're not qualified to advise an entrepreneur on if you haven't been through on. There is time when panic is the appropriate response in the company.
这是一个艰难的决定。但是看，如果你没有经历过这些事情，你就没有资格给创业者提供建议。在公司中有时候恐慌是适当的反应。
One thing that I think I've noticed entrepreneurs that are working on hard ambitious companies really struggle with is figuring out who to trust for what advice. So how do you think about that?
我认为，那些致力于创造雄心勃勃的公司的企业家们面临的一个困难是如何确定谁是值得信任的顾问。那你又如何看待这个问题呢？
So my big advice and the first piece of advice I gave Joe Krauss when he was starting excite was the single hardest decision you'll make is who's advice to trust on what topic?
因此，我对乔·克劳斯在开始创办Excite时给的最重要的建议是，最难的决定之一是要信任谁在什么主题上给出的建议。
So, you know, if you're 20 years old, do you ask your dad or your friends or if you have a marketing problem, do you ask somebody who's done marketing at IBM? They've never dealt with things where the market isn't established.
如果你20岁，你会问你的爸爸还是朋友，或者如果你有营销问题，会去问在IBM做过营销的人吗？但他们从未处理过市场未建立的事情。
It's incremental year to year, 5% improvement is what they're shooting for. They're not qualified to invent whole new markets, whole new approaches to markets. So those are really hard decisions and that's where nuanced advice of which employee would be better.
逐年递增，他们的目标是提高5%。他们没有资格发明全新的市场，或是全新的市场方法。这些都是非常艰难的决策，需要有细致的建议，来判断哪位员工更适合。
You know, the funny story that's actually not known very much is Scott McNeely when we started Sun, he started as a VP of manufacturing. I did not know that. Almost nobody knows that and one point I said, Scott, you've got to become a VP of sales because of certain types of behaviors. But his background was in manufacturing and you have to make those cut cause. It's a very non-intuitive cut call.
你知道吗，一个有趣的故事其实并不是很被人知晓。在我们创办Sun公司时，Scott McNeely最初担任制造部门的副总裁，我当时并不知道这一点。几乎没有人知道这件事，直到有一次我告诉Scott，你必须成为销售部门的副总裁，因为这就是某些行为所需要的。但他的背景是在制造业，你必须做出非常不直觉的决定。
So you have to make those but back to this issue, who's the advice to trust on what topic is the single hardest decision and onto no mates. It's also where the right investors can really help you.
因此，你必须把它们搬回这个问题，要相信哪一个人的建议在什么主题上是最困难的决定，也是孤独无友的地方。这也是正确的投资者可以真正帮助你的地方。
I had an argument just last week with another co-investor in a healthcare company. They wanted this healthcare person who would never dealt with change beyond 2% a year. And I'm like, experience doesn't matter. The rate of learning matters.
我上周和另一位医疗保健公司的共同投资者发生了争执。他们希望雇用一个从未处理过超过2%年度变化的医疗保健人士。我认为经验并不重要，学习速度才是关键。
This principle is thinking matters, pick for the best athlete, not the person who's the most established, wide receiver who knows how to run one pattern and one pattern only.
这个原则是认为思考很重要，要选择最好的运动员，而不是最有经验的人，只会跑一个规律的宽接手。
There's two things I want to follow up on. So we'll get to the athlete in a second. We'll keep running into things we don't know about. Yeah, we will.
我有两件事想要跟进一下。稍后我们会谈到那个运动员。我们会一直遇到我们不知道的事情。是的，我们会。
I agree, it's really hard to know who's advice to trust. But a 20 year old entrepreneur comes in here, no work experience. You decide to back them. You have to give him a hundred advice and say, here's how to do this. What do you say?
我同意，很难知道谁的建议可信。但一个20岁的企业家走进来，没有工作经验。你决定支持他们。你必须给他们一百个建议，说：“这是如何做到的。”你会说什么？
How do you know who's advice to trust tactically? So I look at not what entrepreneurs saying, and we always have this debate inside of them too, but how they're thinking about the problem. In first principles thinking, if you give them brand new problem, so I'll often say, hey, if you're doing this other startup, how would you approach it? And if they have to think from scratch on the brand new problem, and by the way, this great interview question, that they've never dealt with, they don't have an experience with. How do they approach it? Is probably the best indicator of how fast they will learn. If I pick between lots of experience. Absolutely.
在战术上，你如何知道谁的建议值得信任？所以我不看创业者说了什么，而且他们内部也经常争论这个问题，而是看他们如何思考这个问题。在第一原则思维中，如果你给他们一个全新的问题，我经常会问：如果你做这个创业公司，你会如何处理这个问题？如果他们必须从头开始思考全新的问题——顺便说一下，这是一个非常好的面试问题——而且他们没有经验，他们会如何处理它？这可能是他们学习速度最好的指标。如果我在许多经历之间选择，那么肯定会选经验最多的。
Learning how to trust different people's judgment. Yeah. Including learning who to trust and which people to trust. And so this becomes sort of this nuanced thing. I'm sure you've noticed one of the things we look at YC stuff. In the three months that they've been at YC, what's their rate of change? If we've had multiple points of intercept. That may be a stronger indicator than any other single indicator. That is my number one. That is my number one by far.
学会信任不同人的判断，包括学会信任哪些人和哪些人是可信赖的。这需要一些细致的观察。我相信你也发现了，在 YC 方案中，我们关注的是他们在三个月中的变化率，如果我们有多个拦截点，这可能比其他任何单个指示器更有力。这是我的头等大事，远远超过其他任何事情。
So we obviously have fasted that evolve their plan, change their plan. What's first saying to me with other investors, they say, well stick to your plan. Or are you executing in your plan? And I'm the exact opposite. How fast are you evolving your plan or changing your plan and learning? So my building that team that can, so this brings up a related issue we should talk to. And we'll focus on people when you hire a VP of marketing.
显然，我们必须加快计划的进化和变化。其他投资者向我提出的第一件事是说：坚持你的计划，或者你正在执行你的计划吗？而我则恰好相反。你的计划进化和改变的速度有多快？所以，我正在建立一个能够迅速适应变化的团队。这引出了一个相关的问题，我们应该讨论一下。当你聘请市场营销副总裁时，我们将着重于雇用人才。
And I've said this to you before. One question, the functional question is can you do marketing? But that's not the most important question. If he's one of the top five people in the company, the most important question is what are the questions he will ask? How will he make the CFO better or the VP of engineering better? Through the questions they ask, which then prompt this kind of thinking, which then leads to a better kitchen cabinet. The people you call last around your dining table, when you have a really hard, ambiguous, uncertain decision to make.
我之前曾经跟你说过这个观点。一个问题是功能性问题，那就是你会做市场营销吗？但这并不是最重要的问题。如果他是公司五位最重要的人之一，最重要的问题是他会问哪些问题？他会如何让首席财务官或副总裁工程师变得更好？通过他们所问的问题，这会引发这种思考，从而导致更好的内阁。而那些你在餐桌旁最后才请的人，当你需要做出一个非常艰难模糊、不确定的决策时，他们是最重要的。
And how do you evaluate that in an interview? Your interview in a VP of marketing, you want to know if they're going to make the CFO better? How do you probe that? I'll often say, if you were to say, people often say, here's what happened at my company. And I'll say, if you were CEO, and you had to make a different set of decision, what would you do? Have them think under circumstances, or if you're doing this other startup?
那么在面试中，您如何评估这一点呢？如果您正在面试市场营销副总裁，您想知道他们是否能使财务总监的工作更好，您该如何探究呢？我通常会问：“如果您是CEO，需要做出不同的决策，您会怎么做？”让他们在特定情况下思考，或者如果他们要做另一家创业公司，将会怎样做。
One of my favorite questions in startup world is, if I gave you $10 million today, what startup, three startups would you consider? And what are the reasons I'd invest in? You wouldn't want to invest in those. You suddenly get how they think about a new problem, which is what you face every day in a startup. Yeah, it really is true that the, I think one thing everyone underestimates when I start a startup is just how little of the problem they've already thought about and how much more is going to reveal itself every week.
在创业世界中，我最喜欢的问题之一是：如果我今天给了你1000万美元，你会考虑哪三个初创公司？以及为什么我要投资这些公司？你可能不会想要投资这些公司。但你会突然明白他们如何思考新问题，这是你在创业中每天面临的问题。事实上，每当我创业时，所有人都会低估我已经思考的问题有多少，还有每周将会暴露出多少更多的问题。
So I often tell entrepreneurs, a business plan is completely irrelevant, other than to judge how somebody's thought about a problem, not what they're going to do. Speaking of that, how much do you expect a founder to have figured out early on? And how ambitious should a founder be? Like how ambitious were you when you started son? How much of son had you figured out? How much did that vision stay true to what happened?
因此，我经常告诉创业者，商业计划完全无关紧要，除了用于判断某个人如何思考问题，而不是他们将要做什么。说到这个，你期望创始人在早期就解决了多少问题呢？创始人应该有多大的野心？就像你刚开始创业时有多么有野心一样？你对Son公司计划了多少内容？它的愿景与实际发生的情况有多大程度一致？
So I'd say I was very ambitious. I'd done one other startup before. That was also pretty successful, daisy systems. And they went on to go public in the 80s raised $100 million, which is a huge IP on those days. So, I was very ambitious, but because I was much more passionate and passionate and important in greeting which we talk about, especially in a team. I was passionate about what I wanted to get done, not about the IRR or the returns or, so I like a founders who are very ambitious, mostly because if they're not ambitious, they will hire a team to build a $0 million company. If they're ambitious, they'll hire a team to build a $0 billion company.
我可以说我非常有野心。我之前做过一次创业，并且取得了不错的成功——Daisy Systems（一家电路模拟公司）。该公司在80年代上市，融资达到1亿美元，那是当时的一个巨大数字。所以我非常有野心，但是更重要的是，我非常热情，而且十分珍视在团队中的相处，尤其是在交流中。我对自己想要完成的事情非常有激情，但并不是关注IRR或回报。我喜欢那些非常有野心的创始人，因为如果他们没有野心，他们就会雇佣一支团队来打造一个市值为0的公司；如果他们有野心，他们就会雇佣一支团队来打造一个市值为0亿的公司。
So among the first 15 people at son, 15, 20 people, we hired Eric Schmidt who went on to run Google. I didn't know he was going to be that capable. We hired Carol Bots who ran auto desk and then Yahoo. hired Bill Joy who wasn't part of the initial founding team. We recruited him as a founder after the fact. We hired so many other people, guys like Tom Lyon and Bob Lyon, each of which have started building dollar companies, Larry Gallic, nobody knows now, who started Ramadhi, like this Andy Bechtelshime himself has started so many companies. There was such an incredible talent pool there.
在我们的公司最初的15个人中，有15、20个人，其中我们聘用了埃里克·施密特，他后来成为了谷歌的CEO，我当时并不知道他有这么大的能力。我们还聘用了卡罗尔·博茨，她曾经领导过autodesk和雅虎公司。我们还聘用了比尔·乔伊，他并不是最初的创始团队成员，我们是在事后将他聘为创始人。我们还聘用了很多其他人，像汤姆·里昂和鲍勃·里昂这样的人，他们都创办起了亿万美元的公司。拉里·加里克，现在已经被人遗忘了，他曾经创办了Ramadhi。就连安迪·贝希尔希姆本人也创办了很多公司。那里真的有一个不可思议的人才库。
So this I really want to dig in on. There's only a small handful.
这是我真的很想深入了解的事情。只有很少的一小撮人知道。
By the way, I just want to take one small diversion. When I met Andy, he was in Margaret Jack's hall at Stainford. He said, why don't you license the technology for $10,000? And he had licensed it to six other startups at 10,000, which in the 80s for a graduate student was a shitload of money. In fact, one of those companies, Simblank, was funded by Kleiner Perkins and John Duo was on the board. So but they took the license.
顺便说一下，我想提一个小插曲。我遇到安迪时，他正在马格丽特杰克的斯坦福大学宿舍里。他问我为什么不以1万美元的价格将技术授权出去？在80年代对于一个研究生来说，这是一笔巨额的钱。实际上，其中一家公司Simblank是由Kleiner Perkins和John Duo资助的，John Duo还在董事会上任职。所以他们接受了这个授权。
I said, Andy, I want the goose that laid the golden egg, I don't really care about the golden egg because it will be relevant in a couple of years. I didn't know why, but part of it was I just loved interesting people. But I gave him half the equity just to join. And then I did a sales job in selling his incredible part of being an entrepreneur into dropping his PhD. But best decision I ever made, best decision he ever made. But it was a hard sales job to convince him.
我对安迪说，我想要下金蛋的鹅，我并不在意它产的金蛋，因为它在几年后就不再重要了。我不知道为什么，但一部分原因是我喜欢有趣的人。但我为了让他加入，把公司的一半股权都给了他。然后我又销售他成为一名企业家的优越性，说服他放弃博士学位，这是我做过的最好的决定，也是他做过的最好的决定。但说服他是一项艰难的销售工作。
I started saying recruiting, I know maybe and maybe as a yes. And that's sort of my job. And I get very disappointed when I can't get any yes. How long did it take you to get him from a node of a maybe a yes? A couple of months, but Bill Joy took six months because I also had to convince him to drop his PhD. So two people dropped their PhDs. The very best people I've ever recruited in different places in my career have all taken at least months to recruit. Yeah. It takes weight because they always have something great to walk away.
我开始说招募时，我知道“或许”可能意味着“是的”。这也是我的工作。当我得不到一个肯定的答案时，我会非常失望。你花了多长时间从一开始的“或许”说服他加入团队？大约几个月，但是比尔·乔伊用了六个月，因为我还得说服他放弃博士学位。在我职业生涯的不同领域招募的最佳人才，全都需要至少几个月的时间。是的，这需要耐心，因为他们总是有很多优秀的离开方式。
Yeah. The people who don't have something great to walk away are probably the people you don't want. Absolutely. You know, and especially when you're thinking beyond this functional in the people who do job acts well, whether it's marketing or database architecture or whatever, are thinking linearly. If they're broad thinkers, which is what's key to that kitchen cabinet that helps you evolve a plan, you need people who are so full of ideas that always triaging down to the thing they can do. And people like that always have great opportunities. So it's hard to get them to join as an employee because they can start their own. And you chase them forever.
是的。那些没有什么好处的人可能不是你想要的人。完全正确。尤其是当你考虑到在工作中表现出色的人，无论是在营销、数据库架构还是其他方面，他们都在线性思考。如果他们是广泛思考的人，这是帮助你制定计划的厨房内阁所必需的，你需要那些充满想法的人，他们总是试图将这些想法缩减到他们可以实现的事情上。而像这样的人总是有很多好机会。因此，很难让他们成为员工，因为他们可以自己创业。你会一直追逐他们。
So this is actually what I wanted to go to next. There's a handful of companies that have been able to get those people in the early 10, 20, 30 employees that could go start their own company and that go on to later. PayPal's a famous example, Sun's another one.
这实际上是我接下来想要谈论的。有几家企业能够招募到最早期的10、20、30名员工，他们中的一些人之后就离开创办了自己的公司。PayPal是一个著名的例子，Sun是另一个。
What did you do at Sun and what has happened at other companies where you've seen this, where people build this phenomenal early team that goes on to be wildly successful? Well, it's always about entrepreneurship is a funny thing because vision is impractical. If you're reasonable, you won't do unreasonable things. It's just by definition. And so if you have great managers, good process people, they will work against allowing the company to become great. They'll take a great idea and turn it into a good one and execute a decent idea at lower risk that's more reasonable, more sensible. If you're trying, and that's a okay goal to have, if that's your goal. If your goal is something unreasonable, something ambitious, really visionary, something changed the world, then you have to take the other approach, get this think tank of unreasonable people together and below that, layer the reasonable people who micro optimize within the macro ideas that the kitchen cabinet comes up with.
在Sun（Sun Microsystems公司）你做过什么？同时，在你所看到的其他公司，那些建立了一支出色的初创团队并取得了极大成功的公司，都发生了什么？嗯，创业总是有点有趣，因为愿景是不切实际的。如果你很理性，你就不会去做不合理的事情。这就是定义。因此，如果你有很好的经理、好的流程人员，他们会阻止公司变成优秀的状态。他们会把一个伟大的想法变成一个好想法，以较低的风险进行合理、明智的执行。如果你试图做一些不切实际、雄心勃勃、真正具有远见的事情，改变世界，那么你必须采取另一种方法，把这些不合理的人才组建在一起，然后层层安排合理的人才进行微观优化，服务于厨房里想出的宏观想法。
What do you think about the equity that it takes to attract these kinds of people? So I see this as a major problem nowadays. People aren't allocating equity widely enough. I think among the first three or four founders at Sun, we kept less than half of the common, which was just the total was something like 25 to 27% for the founders. And equal a slightly larger chunk for everybody else, we would hire. And then investors had a minority, but a significant minority. So it was like 40% for investors after the era, something like that. In retrospect, that was a very good idea. So when last year my son started his company, I said, keep 15% for yourself instead of 45. I would have done either number, try and hire one or two people at 15%. Even though they're coming later, even though they didn't come up with the idea, but that would be incredible resources, especially magnets to attract other people or bring essential skills.
你认为吸引这些人所需的公平分配是怎样的？我认为这是一个现在的主要问题。人们没有广泛地分配公平分配。我认为在Sun的前三或四位创始人中，我们仅占用了不到一半的普通股，仅有25至27％。我们还为每个被雇佣的人分配了相对较大的股份。然后投资者有少数股权，但是还是相当重要的。所以在这个时代，对于投资者占40％左右。回过头来看，这是个好主意。所以去年我儿子开始创立他的公司时，我说，只保留15％给自己，而不是45％。我可能会雇用1或2个人来分配15％的份额。即使他们是后来才加入的，即使他们没有想出这个主意，但他们将是不可或缺的资源，特别吸引其他人或拥有基本技能。
Can you say what you mean by a magnet to attract other people? So if you believe a company becomes the people at higher, then your key task becomes attracting the people. There's also using them productively, that's a management skill. But attracting people becomes who finds you attractive and selling depends on magnets. Your build joy was an incredible magnet, even back then. And even though open source didn't exist the way it does today, people wanted to work with Bill and Andy. And even if Bill didn't do a day of work, he was more than worth it because he helped attract Eric Schmidt.
你能说一下你所说的吸引他人的磁铁是什么意思吗？如果你相信一家公司是由高素质人员组成的，那么你的主要任务就是吸引这些人才。当然，如何让他们高效地工作，这是一个管理技能。但是吸引人的能力取决于吸引力和销售技巧。你的建立愉悦感就像一个不可思议的磁铁，就算是在早年，人们也想要和比尔和安迪一起工作。即使比尔没有做过任何一天的工作，他也是非常有价值的，因为他帮助吸引了艾瑞克·施密特。
I don't think Eric would have come work for me as a 25-year-old, other than I did have self-convincing power of why this was going to be large. We discarded, for example, the notion that which most investors said, why don't you be a graphics add-on terminal to deck vaxes? And that was established, known market, there was no graphics terminal, there was a company in Utah, Evans and Sutherland that built graphics terminals, it was easy. You wouldn't do distributed computing and nobody had heard of the town. And we released NFS, there was no distributed file system in the wall. And we opened source it and people first said, one, who needs distributed computing and the second question was, if it's important why you're giving away all your intellectual property? So thinking non, the specifics don't matter.
我不认为25岁的Eric会来为我工作，除非我对这个项目的巨大潜力有足够的自我信服力。例如，我们放弃了大多数投资者都认为的想法，为Deck Vax开发一个图形附加终端。虽然已经有一个已知的市场，但是那里没有图形终端，在犹他州有一家叫做Evans and Sutherland的公司建造图形终端，而且这并不困难。我们也没有去做分布式计算，因为当时还没有人听说过这个技术。我们发行了NFS，当时还没有分布式文件系统。我们还公开源代码，但是有人提出了两个问题：第一，谁需要分布式计算？第二，如果它这么重要，为什么你要放弃所有的知识产权？所以，具体的事情并不重要，重要的是我们考虑了不同的切入点和可能性。
Thinking non-linearly about it is what matters and that's what the team enabled. And so full circle back to equity, as much as leaving 30% of the pool to non-founders. So Neil took 15%, he recruited in his other startup, Kira. He kept 15%, hired 15%, a co-founder for 15%, and then left the rest to hire great employees. Now, it is dependent on the area you're working in, he was working in AI. He wanted the people who were all making million dollar salaries at Google and Uber and other places as engineers. So you had to give them 3, 4, 5% each.
重要的是非线性地思考，这是团队的一个优势。最后回到股权问题，即把30％的份额留给非创始人。因此，尼尔拿了15％，招募了他的另一家初创公司Kira的员工。他保留了15％的股份，雇用了15％的员工，给合作创始人拿了15％的股份，剩下的则用来雇佣优秀的员工。这取决于你所从事的领域，尼尔从事人工智能领域。他想雇佣那些在谷歌、优步和其他公司作为工程师赚取数百万美元薪水的人才。因此，你必须给他们3％、4％、5％的股份。
And you'd normally not think about it, but if you're competing in an AI startup, you're not going to get the best talent without, and especially if this issue we talked about earlier, if somebody can do their own startup, they will. So they're not comparing them to some, your job, you're comparing them to them starting their own company. And so, and if you don't do that, you're including only the people who couldn't start their own company who won't help you evolve your plan. I think that I hear a lot as, you know, I can hire an engineer for expert basis points. So why would I ever pay like 5x or 10x?
通常你可能没有考虑到这一点，但如果你正在竞争一个人工智能创业公司，如果没有以下问题，你将无法招聘到最好的人才，特别是如果有人能够创办自己的公司，他们就会这样做。所以他们不是在比较你们的工作和别人的工作，而是在比较你们的工作和他们自己创业公司的工作。如果你不这样做，那么你只能吸引那些无法创办自己公司的人，这些人将无法帮助你发展你的计划。我经常听到这样的话，就是有人会说，我可以雇佣一个专家工程师，为什么要花5倍或10倍的价格去支付呢？
And then I would say like, wait, in two years, ask me again if that was the right decision. But the quality of people you can get if you're super generous of equity. I think this is the shape of things to come, I think that. By the way, this is my single biggest beef with YC, not enough option pools. Not enough option pools, not enough focus on recruiting the right co-founders. And I was fortunate Neil trusted me so I could shepherd him into sort of a very different approach.
然后我会说，等两年后再问我是否做了正确的决定。但是，如果你非常慷慨，愿意分享股权，你可以得到高质量的人才。我认为这是未来的趋势。顺便说一下，这是我对YC最大的不满，他们的股票期权池不够。他们也没有足够关注招募正确的联合创始人。我很幸运Neil信任我，让我引导他走向一种截然不同的方式。
I think he may have had the highest option pool in his batch. Yeah, look, I think it's great. I have found that it's harder to convince founders that this than I would have expected. Because it's not intuitive. Well, also, most investors say make the option pool as small as you can. Yeah. Because neither investors nor founders want to, they like the one as much as possible. And it sounds really good. And until you felt it, it's hard to convince them. But they don't like to own the higher percentage, but the pie is much smaller. And if you sort of say I'm maximizing the size of the pie plus, then it doesn't matter what percentage you own.
我认为他可能是他那一届中期权池最大的人。是的，我认为这很棒。但我发现，比我预期的更难说服创始人这一点。因为这不是一件直观的事情。而且，大多数投资者都会说尽可能把期权池做得小一些。是的，因为既不投资者也不创始人想要拥有太多份额，而且听起来真是太好了。在你真正感受到它之前，很难说服他们。但他们不喜欢拥有更高的比例，而是喜欢份额更小的馅饼。如果你说我正在最大化馅饼的份额，那你拥有多少比例就无所谓了。
Look, I think this is the most important piece of advice that we've talked about. I'm many important things today. I think being super generous with early employee equity and getting founder quality people is the first 10 employees. I think all the evidence is on the side of doing this. And yet almost no one does. So there's like a huge edge if you're willing to do it. And absolutely, 100% agree that this ends up being the single most important thing in the first six months of a company. And it's incredibly important.
看，我认为这是我们所谈论的最重要的建议。我今天说了很多重要的事情。我认为在前十个员工中非常慷慨地分配早期员工股权并招募创始人质量的人才是最重要的。我认为所有的证据都证明这样做是正确的。然而几乎没有人这样做。所以如果你愿意这么做，就会有很大的优势。我完全100%地同意这是公司成立后前六个月中最重要的一件事情。这是非常重要的。
In fact, I've written two pieces on. One went once you're doing a startup. How do you engineer the gene pool of a company? And there's an important part. You sort of have to have a process. I find it silly to advise people to hire the best team because everybody says that. It's not actionable. But when you follow this process, I call gene pool engineering, you are trying to maximize your chances of success and you're minimizing the risks you're taking on by virtue of the team you're building. And that's one part of it. And that's sort of more mechanical.
实际上，我写了两篇关于这个话题的文章。其中一篇是关于在创业时如何打造一个公司团队。其中一个重要环节是需要有一个过程。我发现建议人们雇用最好的团队是愚蠢的，因为每个人都这么说，这是没有可操作性的。但是当您遵循这个我称之为“基因池工程”的过程时，您正在尽可能地增加成功的机会，并通过构建团队来减少您所承担的风险。那是其中的一部分，而且比较机械化。
The other part is instead of functional hiring, hire a VP of engineering, hire a VP of marketing, hire a CFO, hire a VP of customer support, you do hiring for this non-linear stuff. How does your VP of marketing improve the quality of your VP of engineering make them think harder? This sort of non-linear thinking is, and I've written a different piece called, I think, the labor of love, the art of hiring, something like that on our website.
另一部分就是不要只招聘功能性人才，而是招聘一位工程副总裁、一位市场副总裁、一位CFO、一位客户支持副总裁，你需要招聘这些非线性的人才。例如，你的市场副总裁如何能够提高你的工程副总裁的质量，使他们更加努力思考？这种非线性思维就是我在我们网站上写的一篇叫做“热爱的劳动，招聘的艺术”之类的文章。
That's a long piece about this. And both these were a couple of years ago in TechCrunch also. I think the essential reading front of those in my view, even if they don't follow that vice, it'll change how they think about the problem. We will add the link to our website.
这是一篇关于此事的长篇文章。这些内容都在几年前发布在 TechCrunch 上。我认为这些是必读的，即使他们不遵循相应的原则，也会改变他们对问题的思考方式。我们将在我们的网站上添加链接。
One final question, one area to wrap up on, you'll start to lie about how to pick your employees, your team members. I think it's almost as important to pick your investors, well. So how do you advise founders if they're trying to build a significant company that's going to do something very disruptive, be around for decades? How should they think about their investors? So I think every piece of equity you do, the money you get is the smaller part of what you get, advice, and the right approach is the much more important part.
最后一个问题，一个需要总结的范畴，你将开始谎报如何挑选你的员工、你的团队成员。我认为选择你的投资者也几乎同样重要。那么如果创始人试图建立一个将要对某个领域造成极大冲击并且能够存在数十年的重要公司，你会如何建议他们考虑他们的投资者呢？我认为每一份股权的意义并不仅仅在于所得到的金钱，更重要的是所获得的建议和正确的方法。
It's a simple thing, there's investors who are happy with three times their money, in fact, want to sell as soon as they can and make three X, four X, and people who care about your vision. Or people who understand the technical, logical approach you're taking and will be much more tolerant as things go wrong. So those are the factors I suggest people optimize for.
这是一个简单的事情，有些投资者满意于三倍的回报，事实上，希望尽早出售并获得3倍或4倍的收益，还有一些人关心你的愿景。或者，了解你采取的技术和逻辑方法，将在事情出错时更加宽容。因此，我建议人们优化这些因素。
And how do you tell? How do you know if an investor truly cares about your vision? Talk to other founders, especially founders who've gone through a large promise, large vision, and had hiccups along the way. When things go wrong, a wrong and ambitious path is when you can actually judge an investor. How do they think about hiring? Look back and retrospect a couple of years later or talk to founders who can and say, what worked and what didn't? Those are the key questions.
那么你如何分辨一个投资者是否真正关心你的愿景呢？可以与其他创始人交谈，特别是那些承诺大、愿景大，但在路上遇到过挫折的创始人。当事情出了差错，当一个错误的、雄心勃勃的道路出现时，你就可以真正评判一个投资者了。他们如何考虑招聘？几年后回顾一下，或者与那些创始人谈话并问问他们，哪些方面做得好，哪些方面做得不好？这些是关键问题。
I think an investor is an employee who you can't fire. And that's how you should think about it. Otherwise all the same principles apply. I get very frustrated with investors because they mostly detract from value. But most investors are negative value add to a company that's trying to be ambitious. If they're just trying to get to liquidity as soon as possible, then there's plenty of investors who do that well.
我认为投资者是一位你无法开除的雇员，你应该这样去思考。除此之外，所有的原则都适用。我对投资者感到非常沮丧，因为他们大多数时候会削减价值。但是，对于那些有远大抱负的公司来说，大多数投资者都是负面的价值。如果他们只是试图尽快达成流动性，那么有很多投资者能够胜任。
When you had founders who come to you and say, that's too ambitious. I've never had that happen. I have had the following conversation. That's ambitious. That's awesome. Build the team for it. Now what is step one, two, and three? And let's be thoughtful about how you discover the risks on the path to the vision.
当创始人向你表示：“这个计划太过宏大了。”我从未遇到过这种情况。我经常会遇到下面这种对话：“这个计划够大胆，很赞。我们要为此建立一个团队。现在，请问有哪些步骤是一、二、三？同时，让我们谨慎地思考如何发现通往愿景的风险。”
Because frankly, achieving a large vision is first about discovering what's hard, what the problems are, what else influences success along that path. Once you've found the problem and which you can only discover by doing things, then you can, the only recipe I've ever seen work for making really impactful companies is both a giant vision and a good step one, two, and three. You have to have both. And neither without the other will work.
说实话，实现一个大愿景首先需要发现其中的难点，遇到的问题，以及路径上的其他影响成功的因素。一旦你找到了问题（只有做事情才能发现），那么唯一我见过能够制造具有真正影响力的公司的方案就是既有一个宏大的愿景，又有良好的一、二、三步骤。你必须同时拥有这两个东西，否则单独的一个是行不通的。
By the related thing, I often tweet this. I hate pontificators. So easy to do studies. So easy to point on things. I love Doors versus Pontificators. And Nassim Thala has written Skin in the Game. But also not so much Black Swan, but his second book after that. So Skin in the Game is about Doors versus Pontificators. And then he has another book about the right kinds of asymmetric risks to take that he wrote after the Black Swan that I feel is more important than Black Swan.
关于相关的事情，我经常发推文。我讨厌那些自以为是的人。研究如此容易，指责他人也如此容易。我喜欢对抗自以为是者的人，门派对自以为是者。纳西姆·塔勒写了《押注大师：以真金换真切的行动》。除了《黑天鹅》之外，他的第二本书也很好。所以，《押注大师》关于门派对自以为是者。他写了《黑天鹅》之后，还有一本书是关于采取正确类型的非对称风险，我觉得这本书比《黑天鹅》更重要。
One thing that just worked for me again and again in my career is I happen to like, I love Doors and I don't love talkers and I just got lucky because I bias the people I surround myself with so far in that direction. It's been great.
我在职业生涯中一再发现一个成功的关键就是我喜欢Doors乐队，而不喜欢那些张嘴就说的人。我真幸运，因为我成功地偏向了我所周围的人的这个方向。这一点非常有益。
Final question. What do you most, what do you hope to get down to the next 10 years? What are you most excited about doing now? So I'm 63. I actually at 60 defined what I want to work on for 20 years. I wrote a piece called Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology. It's about a 50 page document.
最后一个问题是，您在未来十年中最想做什么？您现在最兴奋的事情是什么？我已经63岁了。实际上，在我60岁的时候，我定义了我未来20年想要从事的工作。我写了一篇名为“用技术重新发明社会基础设施”的文章，大约50页。
And it was the following exercise. And I won't go into the details because we don't have enough time. I said, if I took the US GDP, what parts of the non-governmental GDP could I reinvent personally with technology? And I expected I'd come up with a small part of the GDP that was open to working on. Turns out there's no part of non-governmental US GDP that one can't innovate on. In ways that are not 5, 10% improvements but are 100 to a thousand percent improvements in resource insurance.
接下来是一个练习。由于时间有限，我不会详细讲解。我的问题是，如果我拿美国国内生产总值（GDP）作为基础，哪些非政府部门的GDP能够通过技术创新重塑？起初，我认为只有一小部分的GDP可供创新。但事实证明，在美国非政府部门的GDP中，没有任何一个部分是无法革新的。这种革新不仅能改善资源利用率达到5%、10%的程度，还能实现资源保障性改善100%-1000%的质的飞跃。
So I sort of decided if 7 billion people on the planet want the lifestyle that's 700 million people that top 10% have and that 10% has an energy rich lifestyle, a healthcare rich style, education rich lifestyle, transportation rich, you get the idea. The very rich lifestyles. Without destroying the planet could we get 7 billion people to 7, that lifestyle of the 700 million people? Then without destroying the planet and without needing 10 necks of everything, could you do it? And I could think of a way to do it in every major part personally. Only thing I'm sure is entrepreneurs. And so I subtitled this document, a call to entrepreneurs.
我有一种想法，如果地球上70亿人都想要10%的、拥有富足能源、医疗、教育和交通等方面的财富的生活方式，那么这700百万人的生活方式可以被7倍，达到全世界70亿人；同时这样不会对地球造成破坏，也不需要10个颈椎，你觉得可行吗？个人认为，我能想到每一个重要的部分方法。唯一y确定的是创业家。因此，我给这个文档起了一个副标题，叫做“呼唤创业家”。
It's amazing because no part of the GDP's immune to innovation. I mean, 5, 6 years ago when Pat Brown said he wanted to eliminate animal husbandry, became very clear. We could change how most of this planet's usable land area is used. Most of the land on this planet and that's Pat's mission. And I think I said yes to him in our very first meeting. We didn't vast. I didn't even need to know the details. It was just a vision too big to not attempt.
这很惊人，因为GDP的任何部分都不会免于创新的影响。我是说，5、6年前，当Pat Brown说他想消除畜牧业的时候，情况非常明朗。我们可以改变这个星球可用土地面积的使用方式。这个星球上大多数的土地都是如此，这是Pat的使命。我在我们的第一次会议上就同意了他的想法，我们没有考虑太多。我甚至不需要知道细节，因为这个愿景太宏大，不尝试一下就太可惜了。
So hamburgers, rocket labs, doing rockets which we did about the same time to my new passion. Could you build buildings with 80% less material? That's why I'm so excited about 3D printed buildings. But there's nothing from food to building to construction to rockets to or everything competition enables from AI to it's really exciting.
所以，汉堡，火箭实验室，以及我们同时进行的火箭研究已经成为我的新热情。你能用少80%的材料建造建筑吗？这就是我对3D印刷建筑如此兴奋的原因。但是，从食品到建筑，再到建筑至火箭，或者一切竞争中产生的东西，都可以通过AI实现。这真是太令人激动了。
And I feel like 20 years not going to be enough. I hope I stay healthy. I hope you do too. I'm sure you will. That's a great place to leave it. People can read that document and call you up. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks, Sam. This is fun.
我觉得20年时间不够，希望我能保持健康，也希望你保持健康。我相信你会的，这是一个很好的结束。人们可以读这个文档并打电话给你。非常感谢你，谢谢你，Sam。这很有趣。
All right. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
好的，谢谢您的倾听。下次见。