仅用英语和AI构建Web应用（与Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch对话）

大家好，Acquired的听众们，欢迎收听ACQ第二季的又一精彩节目。今天，我们请到了创始人、联合创始人兼CEO吉列尔莫·劳施。吉列尔莫，这里该用哪个称谓比较合适？

Hello, Acquired listeners, and welcome to another great episode of ACQ two. Today, we have Guillermo Rausch, the founder, cofounder, and CEO. Guillermo, what's the right terminology here?

以上都是。

All of the above.

全都要。Vercel背后的男人。

Everything. The man behind Vercel.

除了那些光鲜亮丽的数字——估值超过30亿美元、令人惊叹的客户名单等等——我们想问问你，你会如何描述Vercel？

Aside from all the big fancy numbers valued at over $3,000,000,000 and amazing customer list, and blah blah blah, we wanted to turn the question to you and say, how do you describe Vercel?

Vercel是构建和部署现代网络应用的基础设施平台。我个人注入公司理念的是对开发者体验、性能和设计的极致追求。这个平台能让你轻松部署最优秀的网络应用。对普通网民来说，这意味着每次你点击链接时，如果加载迅速、体验愉悦，那很可能就是基于Vercel构建的。

Vercel is the infrastructure platform to build and deploy modern web applications. Something that's personal that is infused into the company is I'm obsessed with developer experience, with performance, and with design. So the platform is a way of deploying the best possible web applications with ease. For the average visitor of the Internet, what it means is that every time you go to a link, if it's fast, if it's delightful, it's likely to be built on Vercel.

太棒了。这真是实力炫耀。

Amazing. That's quite the flex.

没错。我举个实例：回想2024年11月美国大选时，你不断刷新新闻网站想获取最新动态。

Yes. But I'll give you an example. Think back to November 2024, US election, and you're checking out new sites. You're refreshing. You wanna know the latest and greatest.

你需要实时数据。所以无论你是访问《华盛顿邮报》，还是《明尼苏达星论坛报》，或是这个领域的创新者如Polymarket、Perplexity，所有这些都构建在Vercel上。无论是初创公司还是成熟企业，越来越多的人都在利用Vercel构建创新产品。或者像月底的黑色星期五这样的电商活动，你需要扩展能力。

You need real time data. And so whether you're going to Washington Post, whether you're going to, I don't know, Minnesota Star Tribune or the innovators of the space like Polymarket, Perplexity, all of those are built on Vercel. Increasingly, whether it's a startup or whether it's established enterprise, they're leveraging Vercel to build innovative products. Or later in the month, right, like Black Friday, e commerce. You need to scale.

你需要应对巨大的流量。你需要提供极佳的用户体验。像Bose、Fanatics、Supreme这样的家喻户晓的品牌，以及新兴品牌如Axel Arigateaux或Ragabold，这些公司都在Vercel上构建产品，希望能交付人们喜爱的产品。

You need to serve tons of traffic. You need to have really good experiences. So household names like Bose or Fanatics, Supreme. And the up and comers, the new brands like Axel Arigateaux or Ragabold. So those companies are all building on Vercel and hopefully delivering products that people love.

好的，听起来现在非常成功，广泛部署，大家都认可它是一个了不起的产品和平台，我们应该使用。但情况并非总是如此。带我们回到2015年甚至更早，这一切是如何开始的？

All right, so sounds today very successful, widely deployed, everyone's sort of accepted it's this amazing product and platform that we should use. It was not always that way. So take us all the way back to 2015 or even before, and how did this start?

是的，回顾过去有点疯狂。公司现在已经发展得如此壮大。但最初的想法很简单。当时有无数种方法来构建网站或网络应用。

Yeah. It's kinda crazy to go back in time. The company's grown so much now. But the original idea was simple. So there were a million ways to build a website or a web application.

现在仍然有无数种方法构建网站或网络应用，但没有一种能达到网络巨头的质量标准。Vercel几乎像是一场民主化运动。想想像Meta、Google或Amazon这样的公司，它们构建得非常快，尝试很多东西，进行大量实验，它们的体验高度动态且为每位访客量身定制。但当时的网络实际上非常静态，客户很难保持在线。

There still are a million ways to build a website or web application, but none of them that met the quality bar of the giants of the web. It was almost like Vercel was a democratization effort. If you think about companies like Meta or Google or Amazon, they build really fast, they try lots of things, they experiment a lot, and their experiences are highly dynamic and tailored to every visitor. But the web at the time was actually super static. It was really difficult for customers to stay online.

云计算正在兴起，但使用起来极其困难。感觉你需要一个博士学位，这是我的个人经历，因为当我创办这家公司时，我并没有打算构建你现在看到的东西。我开始尝试构建一个网站，并选择了最新最好的技术。我的抱负非常大胆，非常雄心勃勃。它必须达到Google或Amazon的质量。

The cloud was coming up, but the cloud was exceedingly difficult to use. It felt like you needed a PhD, and this was my personal experience because when I started this company, I didn't set out to build exactly what you see now. I started trying to build a website, and I reached for the latest and greatest. Again, my aspirations were super bold, super ambitious. It has to be, like, Google or Amazon quality.

那么在2014、2015年的时候，你认为什么是最新最好的技术，可能会解决你的问题？

And what is the latest and greatest at this point in twenty fourteen, fifteen that you're you're thinking, oh, this might solve my

问题？是的，当时谷歌刚刚开源了Kubernetes，这是一种极其复杂且先进的部署和管理基础设施的方式。而Meta也开源了React，这是一个UI库，它是驱动用户界面的引擎。

problem? Yeah, so Google had just open sourced Kubernetes, an incredible, sophisticated way of deploying infrastructure and managing it. And Meta had open sourced React, which is a UI library. It's the engine that powers user interfaces.

当时的舆论风向大概是：哇，网络发展真快。有了React，有了Kubernetes。所有这些技术都是开源的，没错，完全开放。

The narrative at this time was like, Oh, the web is fast. There's React, there's Kubernetes. All this stuff is open source, Exactly. It's out

但想想普通开发者，或者正在进行数字化转型的公司。他们会选用什么工具？如果选择那些工具，他们需要花费数月甚至数个季度来配置，将它们组装成自己的平台。而Vercel诞生的初衷就是自动化这一切。我们想要弥合开源技术的可用性与快速发布优质用户体验之间的鸿沟。

But think about the average developer, or think about the company that's going through digital transformation. What tools do they grab for? If they grabbed those tools, they would have to spend months, quarters configuring them, assembling them into their own platforms. But Vercel was born to basically automate all of that. We wanted to bridge that gap between the availability of open source technology and you creating delightful experiences that you could publish really fast.

另一个区别在于我们起初非常通用化。你可以在Vercel上部署任何东西，但就我个人经历而言，真正的DNA在于专注于前端开发。从12、13岁起，多年来我一直痴迷于优化面向客户的应用界面。我构建的平台重点聚焦于此，因此我打造了这套基础设施——它能极速全球交付你的应用，优化程度极高，同时还包含这个框架：Next。

One distinction also was we started out very general. You could deploy anything on Vercel, but where I personally found this true DNA of my own personal journey was focusing on front end development. For many, many years, ever since I was 12 or 13 years old, I became obsessed with refining the side of applications that are customer facing. I built a platform that focused a lot on that, so I built the infra. It delivers your applications globally really fast, really well optimized, but also this framework, Next.

Js，现在拥有130万月活跃开发者。Next.js的核心就是为你提供工具和完美护栏，让你构建惊艳的前端体验。它基于React构建，某种程度上已成为众多开发者打造最快网页应用的标准。举个例子，你使用的任何现代AI工具——无论是ChatGPT、Claude、Sora还是Midjourney——全都建立在Next。

Js, which now has 1,300,000 monthly active developers. And Next. Js is all about giving you the tools and the perfect guardrails to build those awesome front end experiences. It builds on React, so it's sort of the standard now for how a lot of developers build the fastest web applications. In fact, to give you some context, anytime you use any modern AI tool, whether it's ChatGPT operator, Claude, Sora, Midjourney, all of those are built on Next.

Js之上。所以它某种程度上已成为前端开发的黄金标准。

Js. So it's sort of become the gold standard for front end.

Next.js是你创立的吗？是的。你写了第一行代码，当时是个开源项目，而且

And did you start Next. Js? Yes. You wrote the first line of code, it was an open source thing, and

确实如此。说实话，这源于我个人的挫败感。因为，再想想看，未来的技术方向早已被发现，论文已经发表，开源也因谷歌MET等公司的努力而实现。

Absolutely. It was out of personal frustration, to be honest, because, again, think of it this way. The ways of the future had already been discovered. The papers had been published. The open sourcing had happened thanks to Google MET and many other companies.

但要将这些真正付诸实践，感觉就像你必须拥有博士学位。我常对人打的比方是：像React这样的框架如同引擎，而人们需要的是一辆能从A点到B点的车。Next.js和Vercel就成了那辆车，甚至是直通云端的航天飞机——既让开发者欣喜，也让企业受益。因为对企业来说，使用Next.js和Vercel意味着网站更快、盈利更多、转化率更高。

But to actually put that into practice, it felt like you needed a PhD. Sometimes the metaphor that I give people is, look, things like React are like the engine, and people need a car to go from A to B. Next. Js and Vercel became that car or even that space shuttle to the cloud, both delighting developers but also businesses, because for the business, if you use Next. Js and Vercel, the website is faster, it makes you more money, it converts at a higher rate.

回想起来，我认为Vercel的独特之处在于我们兼顾了两者。这就像软件与硬件的垂直整合：我们既为开发者打造工具，又为其构建高度优化的云端基础设施。这在当时颇具争议——那时人们使用云服务的方式是‘好吧，我要么选AWS要么选谷歌云’，而Vercel虽然基于AWS构建，但本质上就像让用户自选应用开发路径的冒险游戏。

And I guess looking back, what made Vercel unique is that we did both. It's like the vertical integration between software and hardware. We built the tools for the developers, and we build the highly optimized infrastructure in the cloud for it, and it was somewhat controversial. The way that people would use the cloud back then was, oh, okay. I'll choose AWS or I'll choose Google Cloud, and Vercel builds on top of AWS, But it was basically like choose your own adventure for how to build the app.

让企业去GitHub上淘开源框架，再花数月时间将其与自身基础设施绑定，这种做法现在想来挺荒谬的。

It's kinda silly that you would tell companies, well, go shopping on GitHub for some open source framework and spend months binding it to your infra.

太有意思了。没错，我记得那时候有些公司会说‘我们来帮你托管Kubernetes’。我在Madrona时还投资过一家这样的公司，虽然最终结果不错，但...

That's so funny. Yeah. I remember back in those days, like, you know, there were companies that were like, oh, we're gonna, you know, host Kubernetes for you. What we we funded one when I was at Madrona. It was actually a great outcome, but, like, great.

‘要为此托管Kubernetes’？比如你是一家电商公司，对方说‘恭喜，你现在拥有Kubernetes了’...

Gonna host Kubernetes for it. Like, what are you gonna do? You know, you're an ecommerce company. Like, thanks. I've got Kubernetes.

这对我有什么帮助？懂我意思吗？

Like, that doesn't help me. You know?

当时，Kubernetes工程师能拿到50万到100万美元的年薪，因为他们极为稀缺且价值连城，所有公司都在想，看来我们必须掌握Kubernetes。

Well, Kubernetes engineers were fetching half a million to a million dollar salaries because they were so rare and so valuable, and all these companies were like, Well, apparently we've gotta figure out Kubernetes.

没错。可以这么理解：Vercel雇用了所有这类人才，所以你们不必再操心。如果你正在开发一款炫酷的网页应用，面临激烈竞争，就必须快速现代化。你得整合AI功能，构建新界面。

Right. One way to think about it is Vercel hired them all so you don't have to. If you're building a cool web application, if you're facing strong competition, right, like, have to modernize really quick. You have to adopt AI features. You have to build new interfaces.

你需要直击重点，而不是管理集群或自建框架。有趣的是，我提到的某些公司甚至还在开发自己的Next.js替代品。

You want to cut to the chase. You don't want to be managing clusters. You don't want to be writing your own frameworks. In fact, some of the companies that I mentioned, it was so interesting, they were developing their own Next. Js's.

我们开发终极框架的初衷，就是让企业不必重复造轮子。当时我常开玩笑说：采用Next.js标准后，你就能共享全球开发者遇到的所有Stack Overflow问答。对企业而言，标准化工具意味着能快速招募熟悉该技术的开源人才，这非常合理。

We kind of developed the last framework so companies would not have to do their own adventure. In fact, the joke I would make at the time was by standardizing on Next. Js, now you have access to all the Stack Overflow questions and answers that every other developer has run into. So for the enterprise, it made a lot of sense. Standardizing tooling, you can recruit talent that is up to speed with the tool, and it's all open source.

如今这个优势更明显——大语言模型已成为Next.js和React专家。这就像加入了全球知识与智慧的浪潮。

And now it's even more so because the LLMs are experts in Next. Js and React. So it's like you're joining this global zeitgeist of knowledge and wisdom.

我特别好奇：为什么每个公司都存在这种机遇？希望这个问题在Web开发领域不算太敏感。但Next.js的机会为何存在？是React在抽象层级设计上失策了吗？

Okay. I'm obsessed with this idea of why did the opportunity for any given company exist, and hopefully this isn't too political of a question in the web development world. But why is it that the opportunity for Next. Js was there? Did React miss the mark in creating the right level of abstraction?

他们是否创造了过于强大、可配置性过高、过于笨重的方案，才需要别人来为大众构建真正可用的接口？

Did they create something way too powerful, way too configurable, way too heavy, and it required someone else to come along and build the actually usable interface for the masses?

这个问题问得好。有几件事情发生了。其中之一是社区突然转向静态应用开发，这让我一直很困惑。我并非自诩为能预见未来的天才，但确实百思不得其解——因为我成长过程中最喜欢做的事，就是逆向解析那些最伟大的互联网产品是如何构建的。记得Gmail刚推出时，我痴迷地研究了几个月它的运作原理。

What a great question. There's a couple of things that happened. One was that the community took this weird detour towards static applications, which always befuddled me. I'm not saying I'm some kind of genius that saw the future, but I was so puzzled because when I grew up, one thing I loved doing was reverse engineer how the greatest things on the Internet were built. I remember when Gmail first came out, I just nerded out for months trying to understand how it works.

所以我提到Vercel的使命就是为你提供

And so I mentioned that Vercel exists to give you the

哦对了，在创立Vercel之前你不是开发过一个WebSockets库吗？

Oh, yeah. Didn't you build, like, a WebSockets library prior to Vercel?

Socket.io。我当时对实时通信着了魔，痴迷于让这些顶级应用的实现原理变得平民化。如果你了解Google的运作方式，知道facebook.com动态消息的工作原理，就会发现它们高度动态化——这正是吸引和留住用户的关键。为什么人们却在为React开发静态框架呢？

Socket.io. I became obsessed with real time communication. I became obsessed with democratizing how these greatest applications worked. If you know how Google works, if you know how facebook.com News Feed works, and they're highly dynamic, that's how they attract and retain users. Why were people building static frameworks for React?

这让我很困惑，因为投资者还在追捧那些框架。我总忍不住想：你们为什么要投资这个？而我则默默构建着这个专注于动态化的Next.js。它的核心是在云端而非设备端进行渲染。

It puzzled me because investors were chasing a lot of those frameworks. I was like, why are you funding that? And I quietly kept building this Next. Js thing that was focused on dynamic. It was focused on rendering in the cloud as opposed to on the device.

而且我非常确信：云端渲染能减轻终端设备访问网站的压力。移动端市场持续爆发式增长，我们必须让用户以最快速度获取内容。我想把所有渲染和计算任务都转移到云端——这是我发现的第一个关键机遇。当所有人都在研究静态方案和臃肿的客户端方案时，我专注于云端和动态化方案，虽然这对当时的我来说困难得多。

And I also knew very firmly that if you rendered in the cloud, you were taking the burden of experiencing a website off of the device. Mobile kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you just want to give people the thing that they want in mobile as fast as possible. I wanted to sort of offload all that rendering and compute to the cloud. That's the first alpha opportunity that I found. Everybody else is focusing on static and sort of the very, very fat client approach, and I focused more on cloud and I focused more on dynamic, which is, by the way, way harder for me.

扩展基础设施、确保安全性、实现多租户架构，这些我们花了数年才完善，是个长期赌注。正如你所说，React本身也非常底层，这反而帮了我们。记得当时与许多大型网站交流，比如Redfin——他们基于React为自身需求创建了很棒的抽象层。因此还存在另一个机遇：弥合鸿沟，提供完整的生产力工具链。

Scaling up the infrastructure and making it secure, making it multi tenant, doing all of that took years to perfect, so it was a very long bet. To your point, React was also very low level, and that also helped us. I remember talking to a lot of really large sites at the time. I think it was Redfin. They were creating really cool abstractions on top of React for their needs, so there was also that opportunity to bridge the gap and give you the complete toolset to actually be productive.

这很有趣。React是否应该内置一个类似Next.js的层级？绝对应该。从一开始就内置。

That's interesting. Should React have had a Next. Js like layer Absolutely. Built in from the

Facebook其实有过。这只是他们实际使用工具的方式，而这正是开源领域常见的情况——论文也常如此。公司会...说真的，他们为人类做了很大贡献。他们会透露部分细节，但某些至关重要的成分却被遗漏，并非故意。想想Facebook实际如何使用React，他们内部有自己的Next。

Facebook actually had it. It was just how they actually used the tool, and this is something that happens in open source, which is It happens a lot with papers. Company will And to their credit, it's doing a great service to humanity. They'll give you some details, and then others that are super important ingredients are left out, not intentionally. If you think about how Facebook actually used React, they had their own Next.

Js系统。维护这类大型开源项目需要大量工作，所以最终市场给出了答案——人们需要的是动态优于静态，需要包含服务端渲染的完整端到端框架，而非仅仅是底层组件。

Js internally. It's a lot of work to actually maintain massive open source projects like this, so yeah, I think ultimately the market spoke, and what they wanted was dynamic over static and a complete end to end framework with server side rendering over just the low level component.

那么你当时是同时构思这两件事的吗？Next.js库和后来成为Vercel的极其复杂的基础设施托管系统？

And so then did you conceive of these two things at the same time, the library of Next. Js and then the very complex infrastructure for hosting it that would become Vercel?

我从基础设施起步，因为我痴迷于一个理念：开发者应该只需推送代码就能获得Web应用。中间任何需要配置、创建集群、向IT部门提工单的环节都是荒谬的。这对我来说是纯粹的机遇。所以基础设施最先诞生。我最初犯的错误是做得太泛用。

I started with the infra because I was obsessed with the idea that all a developer should do is push code, receive web application. Anything that sits in between in the form of configuration, creating clusters, filing tickets with IT was nonsense. It was pure alpha for me to grab. And so first came the infra. The mistake that I made initially was it was too general.

我曾试图部署所有可能的项目。直到我真正践行自己的理念——专注前端吧，Guillermo，这才是你的专长所在。某种程度上，一个网络梗图启发了这个故事。当时流行一个梗：做前端就像解一整黑板数学方程。

I was trying to deploy everything under the sun. And when I actually made it true to my story of like, focus on the front end, Guillermo. That's where your expertise lies. In some way, can credit a meme to the genesis of this story. There was this meme going around that using front end was solving this massive blackboard of math equations.

前端生态圈总喜欢自嘲，所以他们开了很多关于本职工作的玩笑。如果你留意这些梗图，就会发现它们最终都指向Next.js——因为当时要启动这些项目实在太难了。正是这时我突然想到：'嘿，我可以创建一个前端框架，它将与这套基础设施完美配合。'

The frontend ecosystem loves to be very self deprecating, so they make a lot of jokes about their own job, and if you paid attention to the memes, would arrive to Next. Js because it was so difficult to actually get started building these projects. That's when the idea later arrived to like, Hey, I can create a front end framework, and it's gonna play really, really well with this infrastructure.

为了让听众更具体地理解这个关于消除开发流程中繁琐环节的理念——即编写代码、部署代码、获得应用反馈的循环，我在准备本期节目时询问了一位开发者朋友，他在使用Vercel时第一个感到惊艳的体验是什么。他特别提到，当他意识到所有git分支都能自动部署为预览环境时，他可以直接实时测试刚写的代码，而无需手动搭建完整部署环境。能否谈谈这个功能的起源？你们是否预见到它会像用户体验到的那样具有变革性？

To concretize this idea for listeners of the show of just getting some of the crap out of the way, where you write code, you deploy it, you receive application back, I asked a developer friend in prep for this episode what was the first sort of magical experience you had with Vercel, And he said he specifically remembered the moment where he realized all of his git branches were automatically deployed as previews, and he could just go and in real time play with the code he had just written, even though he didn't actually spin up a whole environment and deploy it. Could you tell me about the origin of that feature, and did you conceive that to be as needle moving as he experienced it as a user?

我当时并未意识到，在代码进入生产环境前就提供URL会如此强大。我真正执着的是实现从敲击键盘到实时应用的极致效率，甚至精确到毫秒级的测量——要把我之前工作中需要数周人力沟通的流程，缩短到开发者在终端按下回车或执行git push的瞬间。但我低估了企业更看重的价值：开发者能与组织内其他角色实时协作。当Git分支自动部署并生成URL时，全公司都能参与软件构建过程。

I didn't realize that it was gonna be so powerful to give people URLs even before they hit production. So what I knew for a fact is that obsession of, I told you, keystroke to live application, even down to a mathematical measurement, like how many milliseconds should it take, and I was gonna bring it down from weeks, which I had experienced at my previous job, from weeks in conversations with humans to a developer pressing enter on a terminal or running git push. That was my obsession. What I underestimated, and it's been a wonderful gift for our business, is that companies value even more the ability for their developers to collaborate with other personas in the organization. So when that Git branch gets automatically deployed and you have that URL, now everybody in the company can participate in building software.

这彻底终结了我当开发者时的噩梦场景——‘现在只能在我机器上演示，但我的电脑有点抽风，要不一小时后我捧着笔记本去你工位悬空给你看？’

Oh, it ends that horrible thing that I remember going through when I worked as a developer, you're like, yeah, I can only show you on my machine, and actually my machine is doing something weird right now. Let me come over to your desk in an hour, holding my laptop, hovering over your desk so you can see what I'm talking about.

现在仍存在许多荒唐现象，比如开发者争抢同一台测试机。云端开发测试环境还存在重大安全隐患——那些长期运行的测试机就像不设防的电脑。而Vercel的预览环境（我们对这些URL的称呼）是完全临时且安全的。开发者常要苦等数小时才能演示，自由职业者还得给客户展示。

There's a lot of silly things that still happen, like developers fighting one staging machine. There's a huge security risk, by the way, to dev and test environments in the cloud. They're like computers that are just there with developers running tests in them, whereas Vercel's preview environments, this is what we call these URLs, are completely ephemeral and secure. So you have all these horror stories of developers having to wait for hours in order to show somebody. Sometimes it's the developer shows their client as a freelancer.

有时是企业内部协作。更离谱的是——上周我与某全球顶级银行的CIO交谈，他们居然没有这项技术，而是安排会议：下周协调12个人的日程，让某人屏幕共享演示功能。他们甚至无法在真实环境测试。

Sometimes it's companies cooperating internally, collaborating internally. The other one that's crazy is, you know, I had a conversation last week with a CIO of one of the largest banks in the world, and they don't have this technology. Instead, what they do is they set up meetings. They say, Okay, next week, let's coordinate a calendar of 12 people, and someone will screen share their machine to show the feature they're working on. Yeah, it's nuts, and they don't even get to test it on the real thing that they should be testing on.

这些URL可以放在我手机里，真实模拟终端用户体验——毕竟多数网民使用手机，而开发者却用台式机。我们某大型电商客户说90%流量来自移动端，这些预览URL简直是救星。

You can take these URLs, I can put it on my phone, and now I can experience what the end user will experience, which is most people on the internet are on their phones. Most developers are on their desktop. It's kinda silly. One of our largest e com customers was telling me 90% of my traffic is mobile. Thank God for those URLs.

开发者能在功能发布前用手机加载网站直面现实。我们这群人有时被宠坏了——吃着公司午餐，用着M4/M5芯片的超级Mac，但真正使用你开发的营销页/应用/内部工具的终端用户，大概率用的是手机。Vercel也在解决这个问题。

I can load up the site before it goes out on that phone and have the developers face reality. The developers sometimes are like, we are the most coddled people on the planet sometimes besides the, you know, corporate lunches and whatnot. We have this massive mega computers. You know, the m four, m five power super Mac, and then, okay, are you actually relating to that end user that's gonna visit your campaign, your application, your internal tool, most likely in a mobile device? And Vercel is basically solving that problem as well.

太好了。各位听众，现在正是感谢节目新朋友Koyfin的好时机。有趣的是，虽然他们是新赞助商，但实际上我使用他们的产品已有多年。

That's great. Alright, listeners. Now is a great time to thank a new friend of the show, Koyfin. And it's funny. They're new, but actually, I've been using their product for years.

我每期新收购案例的研究项目都会用到Koyfin。所以当他们联系赞助节目时，我觉得这真是太方便了。确实如此。Koyfin是一款深受个人投资者和财务顾问喜爱的金融研究工具，个人用户可用它进行股票研究、财务图表分析和投资组合追踪，财务顾问则用它构建模型组合和制作客户提案。

My research project for every single new acquired episode involves Koyfin. So when they reached out to sponsor the show, I thought, well, this is convenient. Indeed. So Koyfin is a financial research tool loved by both individual investors and financial advisers. Individuals use it for stock research, graphing financials, and portfolio tracking, and financial advisers use it to build model portfolios and create client proposals.

他们提供实时市场数据和强大的分析工具。

They have live market data and powerful analytics tools.

所以这有点像彭博终端，但没有那么高昂的价格标签对吧？

So it's kinda like a Bloomberg terminal except without the huge price tag. Right?

没错，本质上是的。这是个网页应用，完全自助服务。实际上我最初使用的几年里都没联系过他们公司任何人。所以Koyfin是适合广大市场用户的产品——比如所有《Acquired》节目的听众都能用，而不仅限于华尔街投行人士。

Yes. Essentially. It's a web app, and it's totally self serve. I've actually not talked to anyone at the company for the first few years that I used it. So Koinfin is a product that the broader market, like all acquired listeners, would use, not just Wall Street investment bankers.

我在这里获取每家研究公司的增长率、毛利率、市盈率或收入倍数等数据。你可以通过历史图表纵向比较，或与其他公司横向对比。研究劳力士、玛氏或宜家等非上市公司时，我也常用它查看可比公司来估算这些企业若上市的价值。他们还有个筛选器，能从上万只股票中快速筛选出投资标的。

It's where I pull things like growth rate or gross margins or the PE ratio or revenue multiples for every company we study. And you can compare these things over time with historical graphs or against other companies. It's often what I use when we're studying private companies too, like Rolex or Mars or IKEA, to look at the comparables to estimate what these companies would be worth if they were public. They also have a screener that lets you filter across thousands of stocks so you can quickly surface investment ideas.

对，核心理念就是：如果你习惯与数据打交道，在思考投资时应该随时掌握这些信息。

Yep. So the general idea is if you're someone who's used to living in data, you should have that at your fingertips as you think about investing.

没错。它拥有这些出色的数据可视化图表，围绕机构级数据构建。如果你想了解当前股价中隐含了哪些假设，Koyfin就是为你量身打造的。

Exactly. It's got these great graphs for data visualization wrapped around institutional grade data. If you wanna understand what assumptions are baked into the stock price today, Koyfin is for you.

我正要说Acquired的听众有特别优惠，但其实Koyfin的免费产品已经非常强大了。

I was about to say that acquired listeners have a great offer, but Koyfin's free product is actually already really robust. Which

这正是我多年来一直在使用的。

is what I was using for years.

我知道。但确实，对于Acquired听众和你本人都一样，Ben，如果你访问koyfin.com/acquired并升级到付费版，首年可享8折优惠。

I know. I know. But indeed, for Acquired listeners and also for you, Ben, if you go to koyfin.com/acquired and you end up upgrading to paid, you'll get 20% off your first year.

感谢Koyfin的支持。网址是k0yfin.com/acquired，或点击节目备注中的链接。好了，我们一直沉浸在这段Vercel公司早期历史中。在发展到今天的历程中，总有那么几个神奇时刻，让你从怀疑'这能成吗'转变为'天啊人们太喜欢了，我现在确信这事能成'。

Our thanks to Koyfin. That's k0yfin.com/acquired or click the link in the show notes. Okay. So we've been living in this, like, early Vercel company history land. There's always a few magic moments in a company's history as we move through the progression to today where you really went from feeling like, I don't know if this is going to work, to, oh my god, people love it, and I now believe this is going to work.

对你来说，这个过程中有哪些这样的关键时刻？

What were some of those along the way for you?

我认为至今仍让我震撼的最具先见之明的时刻，是我们发布vZero的时候——那是我们面向网页开发的AI助手。

I think the most prescient one that blows my mind still to this day is the launch of vZero, which is our AI assistant for web development.

在公司成立九年后你才给我举例说明，这真是难以置信。

It's crazy you're giving me an example nine years into the company's history.

是啊，这是什么时候发生的？

Yeah, when did this happen?

没错，vZero确实像是初创公司中的初创公司。事情是这样的，这些大型语言模型在编码方面变得非常出色。正如我提到的，它们对我们的工具运用得炉火纯青。它们接受过我们工具的培训，也学习过Next。

Yeah, so vZero is truly like a startup within a startup. The way that it happened is these large language models became really good at coding. They became really good at our tools, as I mentioned. They've been trained on our tools. They've been trained on Next.

React确实是个福音。但我们看到了一个颠覆网络应用构建方式的机会。vZero能将提示词——也就是英文描述——转化为可运行的应用程序和用户界面。这堪称真正的颠覆，因为它不是代码优先，而是代码置后。任何有想法的人都能动手创造。

React is is truly a blessing. But we saw an opportunity to sort of disrupt how web applications are built. So vZero transforms prompts, so English descriptions, into working applications and user interfaces. And it's a true disruption in that it's not code first, it's code last. Anybody with an idea can cook.

你来到vZero，输入你的需求，烹饪时间就到了。为了让你们了解背景，我们在2023年9月以研究预览版发布。目前还非常早期，因为我们对于语言模型处理代码的能力感到无比兴奋。我们花了十个月达到100万美元的年度经常性收入，接着十四天达到200万，又用二十天突破400万，这种增速持续攀升，其发展轨迹是我生平仅见。我曾参与过像Next这样的成功项目。

You come to vZero, you type in what you want, it's time to cook. And so to give you context on this, we launched it as a research preview in September 23. We're very early because we're so excited about what language models we're able to do with code. It took us ten months to get to 1,000,000 in ARR, and then fourteen days to get to 2,000,000, and then twenty more days to get to 4,000,000, and that pace continues, and the trajectory is just something that I've never seen in my life before. I've been involved with successes like Next.

Js等等。但现在的情况是，我们这家公司让超大规模供应商在他们全球最大区域的GPU产能都告急了，能参与其中实在令人着迷。

Js and whatnot. This is to the point where we are that company that is making the hyperscalers run out of GPU capacity in their world's largest regions, so it's been fascinating to be a part of this.

好吧，那它是如何运作的？为什么你们的GPU会不够用？

Okay, so how does it work? Why are you running out of GPU

容量？换个角度想。创建一个Next.js应用，我们虽然尽可能简化了开发者流程，但仍需要什么？好几个步骤，配置工具等等。

capacity? Think of it this way. To create a Next. Js application, we just made it as easy as possible for developers, but it still takes what? Several steps, setting up tools, whatever.

现在你只需打开一个网站。访问vzero.dev，输入提示词，过去全球仅几百万开发者才能完成的流程，如今触达的是数亿甚至数十亿人群。任何人都能用这个工具创造软件，关键是——这也是我使用时的顿悟时刻。

Now you just open a website. You go to vzero.dev. You type in a prompt, and all of that process that before was reserved to a couple million developers that exist on the planet, Now the top of final is hundreds of millions and billions of people. Anybody can create software with this, and the kicker is this. And this is what was my moment with this tool, by the way.

我从事前端开发的时间久到近乎穿尿布时期。就这么夸张。我在这个竞技场混迹已久，但它生成的代码比我手写的更好。有个瞬间是当我用它重建个人博客时——当然原版是用Next.js写的。

I've been doing front end since I'm almost in diapers. That's how crazy. I've been in the arena for a while. It can create code better than what I can do by hand. One of the moments was I recreated my own personal blog, which, of course, I wrote with Next.

vZero生成的版本更优秀。响应式设计更出色，桌面和移动端表现都更好，还有更完善的无障碍功能。我忘记配置的某些设置、标签和代码，vZero都自然实现了。它知晓并牢记一切。对Vercel而言，应用创建速率可能翻了四倍。

And the output of what vZero created was better. It was better in a responsive way, so it was better in both desktop and mobile, and it had better accessibility capabilities. I had forgotten to set up some configurations and some tags and some code that came naturally to VZero. VZero knows everything and remembers everything. The rate of application creation is something that has maybe like quadrupled for Vercel.

注册量爆增，也因为漏斗顶端是那些过去看不懂Vercel的人。说到底Vercel是基础设施，对开发者极友好，而这个工具对所有人都友好。

Sign ups are through the roof, and it's also because this top of the funnel is people that before couldn't make sense of Vercel. Vercel is infrastructure at the end of the day. It's really great for developers. This is great for everybody.

真有趣。看来Vercel要开启从开发者品牌向消费级品牌的转型之路了。

So funny. So Vercel, you have a corporate journey ahead of you of going from a developer brand to almost like a consumer brand.

我认为开发技能会变得更普及，开发本身也是。就像人类从事后被机器接管的工作，比如翻译。谷歌翻译对我而言是个绝佳案例——首先Transformer架构就源自它有趣的副产品。把阿根廷西班牙语转换成英语不再需要人类专家。很多软件开发流程也是如此。

I think developers will become this more common skill, if you will, development itself. Think of it as anything that was done by humans that then machines took over, like translation. Google Translate is a really good example for me because, first of all, Google Translate sort of originated transformer architecture as an interesting side effect. But taking something in language a, like Argentinian Spanish, and converting it into English no longer requires human specialization. A lot of software processes, software development processes, are like that.

它们就像是将意图转化为可运行代码的翻译器。我认为，开发将从一种职业角色（如同过去的翻译员）转变为一项AI将日益主导的技能。AI在摘要总结、语言翻译和代码编写方面表现出色。真正令人兴奋的是，人类的审美品味、设定的方向以及他们希望vZero解决问题的创造力依然完好无损——这些才是极具价值的部分。

They're like translating intent into working code. My take is that development will go from being a role, like translator was a role, to a skill that AIs will increasingly dominate. AIs are awesome at summarization, translation, and they're awesome at writing code. Now what's really cool too is that the taste of the human being, the direction that the human being sets, and the creativity of the problems that they want vZero to solve, those are still intact. Those are extremely valuable.

我们在Vercel还观察到另一个现象：我们激励了其他公司去追求并创建他们自己的vZero。就在几天前，我听说出现了CAD领域的vZero，现在正在社交媒体上疯传。

And the other thing we're seeing at Vercel is that we've inspired other companies to pursue and create their own vZeros. Literally just a couple days ago, I heard about the vZero for CAD. It's going viral in social right now.

计算机辅助设计。

Computer automated design.

没错。面向建筑师、3D打印等领域。那家公司使用Vercel是因为我们开源了构建vZero的核心技术。所以vZero带来了双重颠覆：一方面它让Vercel变得平易近人，另一方面由于其基础设施组件开源，它正激励其他公司和初创企业去颠覆更多行业。

Correct. So for architects and for three d printing and whatnot. That company's using Vercel because we've open sourced the secret sauce of how we built vZero. So vZero has been this double interesting disruption. On one level, it's making Vercel so approachable to everybody, and on the other hand, because its infrastructure components are open source, it's inspiring other companies and startups to go after the disruption of other industries.

你前几天发推提到eZero（邮件零管理），我看到那条推文时简直热血沸腾。

You tweeted the other day about eZero, email zero, and I saw that tweet, I was like, hell yeah.

邮件领域的vZero、CAD领域的vZero、医疗领域的vZero。实际上有个基于Next.js和Vercel构建的医疗vZero叫Open Evidence。我们开发了名为AI SDK的开源框架——你可以把它视作构建专属vZero的工具集，如果世界都转向这种专家级AI，Vercel将获得巨大收益。

VZero for email, vZero for CAD, vZero for medicine. In fact, there's a vZero for medicine called Open Evidence that is built with Next. Js and Vercel. There's this open source framework that we created called AI SDK. So think of it as the tools to build your own vZeroes, and so it massively benefits Vercel if the world gravitates towards this expert AIs.

顺便说，这不仅仅是某种商业策略。记得Jensen说过大多数公司会自我重构为代币工厂：你的组织拥有专业知识、独特审美和对世界的见解...

And by the way, this is not just business strategy of sorts. I remember when Jensen said most companies will refactor themselves into token factories. You have some expertise. You have some taste. You have some opinion of the world within your organization.

对我们而言，那就是网页开发、设计工程领域，所以我们创造了vZero。未来还会有电子邮件领域的eZero、金融领域的vZero，因此我对当前的发展感到无比兴奋，这不仅是我们的成功，更是整个社区的巨大成功。

For us, that was web development, design engineering, so we created vZero. There's gonna be eZero over email, there's gonna be finance vZero, so I'm really, really excited about what's happening right now, and it's not just our success, it's the sheer success of the community.

vZero是什么？你们开发了自己的基础模型吗？你们的基础设施是怎样的？实际提供的产品到底是什么？

What is vZero? Did you guys create your own foundational model? What is your infrastructure, what actually is the product that you're providing?

是的，多年前我尝试过一个失败的产品，叫做Next.js Live。它的理念是帮助你在网页浏览器内运行整个Next.js开发环境。我的初衷是：既然前端关乎用户所见，我们能否彻底跳过设计流程？

Yeah, so many years ago I tried a product that failed, and it's called Next. Js Live. Next. Js Live was the idea of helping you run the entire development environment of Next. Js inside a web browser, and my aspiration was because front end is all about what the user sees, can we actually cut out the design process?

能否直接用代码进行设计？结果证明效果不佳，因为尽管我们面向视觉导向的用户群体，他们仍需学习大量代码。所以vZero就像我们从过去吸取教训，或者说再次尝试Next.js Live。这就像是我们的牛顿项目，而现在推出的是iPhone，明白吗？

Can we design with code? And it turned out not to work so well because even though we're targeting this persona that is very visual, you still needed to learn a lot of code. So vZero is like us learning from the past or us trying Next. Js live again. It was like our Newton and this is our iPhone, right?

vZero的独特之处在于我们能运行渲染环境。我们可以在网页浏览器内运行Next.js和Vercel的基础架构，并将其与最先进的基础模型相结合，这些模型被我们引导成为网页开发专家。

Part of vZero that's very unique is that we can run the rendering environment. Environment. We We can can run run sort sort of of the the foundations foundations of of Next. Next. Js and Vercel inside the web browser, and we combine that with state of the art foundation models that we steer towards becoming experts in web development.

正如我提到的，它在网页无障碍访问方面很专业。用户反馈vZero具有良好审美，其输出的设计优于常见的粗糙作品。我们通过评估标准、基准测试、提示词和检索增强生成等技术建立防护机制，甚至正在创建专为AI定制的设计系统。

So I mentioned how is an expert in web accessibility. VZero, people tell us, has good taste. The design that it outputs looks better than the average thing that sometimes people go slop. Instead of outputting slop, we created all these guardrails in the form of evals and benchmarks and prompts and rag. We are even creating custom designed systems that are tailored for AI.

顺便说，这预示着框架领域即将发生的变革。十年前诞生的Routge若放在今天可能不会成功，因为我当时是为人类创建框架。而现在，我们正开始为AI构建框架和设计系统。

And by the way, this speaks to the disruption that's gonna happen even in the framework space. Routge, from ten years ago, maybe it wouldn't be so successful today because I was creating frameworks for humans. What we're doing now is starting to create frameworks for AIs, design systems for AIs.

为了确认我的理解是否正确，通过这些规则、评估、提示以及试图记住你所说的其他内容。Rag，你是否在注入Vercel员工的审美偏好，以确保输出始终符合你们公司的品味标准？

Just to make sure I understand, through these rules and evals and prompts and trying to remember everything else you said. Rag, are you imbuing Vercel employees' taste into it to make sure that the output always adheres to the taste level of your company?

当我创建Next并获得巨大成功时，全球几乎每家公司都在恳求我的支持。支持和培训。支持和培训。支持和培训。而我的反应是：伙计们，我在这里构建的是基础设施。

When I created Next and it became so successful, literally every company on the planet was begging me for support. Support and training. Support and training. Support and training. And I was like, guys, I'm creating infrastructure over here.

我想要实现自我扩展。我不想逐个教会每个人如何操作这个东西。多年来这个梦想始终难以实现——我亲自指导每家公司的想法。你可能注意到我仍然参加大量会议，接触许多开发者和企业，但这根本无法规模化。我想派出最优秀的工程师服务客户。

I wanna scale myself. I don't wanna go and teach everybody one by one how to hold this thing. And that dream remained elusive for many years, the idea that I could go myself to every company. And you've probably seen that I still go to a lot of conferences, I meet with a lot of developers, I meet with enterprises, but it just doesn't scale. I wanna send my best engineers to this company.

我们聘用了React的技术负责人，组建了Next.js团队、Svelte团队，所有这些开源项目，可想而知这些人的收件箱总是爆满。他们需要支持数千万开发者。所以你说得完全正确——我们正在注入这些专家认为最优的软件开发方式的偏好数据和示范数据。

We employ the tech lead of React, we employed the Next. Js team, the Svelte team, all these open source projects, and these people have pretty full inboxes, as you could imagine. They support tens of millions of developers. And so you're exactly right. We are imbuing the preference data, the demonstration data of what they think is the best way to build software.

这就是我们对如何规模化、可持续且高效地提供支持、建议、审计和迁移方案的解答。很多人使用vZero，因为它作为涌现属性能出色地将遗留框架迁移到Next.js和现代...哦

So it's our answer to how you actually make support, advice, audits, migrations at scale sustainable and efficient. A lot of you are using vZero because it's really good as an emergent property to migrate from legacy frameworks to Next. Js and modern Oh,

我猜这长期是你们的销售障碍吧？他们确实想迁移，但天啊，就是找不到开发档期把整个系统重建在Vercel上。

which I imagine had to be a sales hurdle for you for a long They really want to, but gosh, they just can't find this dev schedule time to actually rebuild the whole thing on Vercel.

还有个令人震撼的时刻——前几天我让一位同行惊掉了下巴——你可以在一次通话中为客户构建出他们梦寐以求的Web应用。这太疯狂了：我们截取他们当前使用传统技术的网站，扔进vZero，就能输出高性能版本。这原本需要销售演说，需要'信我，兄弟，我们能搞定'的承诺。

Another moment, and I literally made a fellow industry practitioner's jaw drop the other day, is that you can get on a call with a prospect and you can build the web application of their dreams in that call. It's just nuts. We take a screenshot of their current website, build on legacy technology, we throw it into vZero, and out comes the high performance version that otherwise would have been a sales pitch. It would have been a, Trust me, bro. We can do this together.

我们可以引入一家代理机构。实际上，这一切都在通话中发生。因此，Vercel的销售周期正在缩短。客户满意度和信任度正在上升。他们会分享这些链接。

We can bring in an agency. Literally, it's happening within calls. So sales cycles for Vercel are shortening. Customer delight and trust is going up. They share these links.

人们的工作方式正在改变。我们的许多客户现在都在发送这些vZero链接。我的日常就像，如何让人们通过链接而不是文字或文档或其他任何东西来协作？这些vZero链接正是对话发生的方式。哦，你能改一下这个吗？

The way that people work is changing. A lot of our customers are now sending these vZero links. The groundhog day of myself is like, How can I make people collaborate with links instead of words or documents or whatever? These vZero links are how the conversations are happening. Oh, can you change this?

你能改一下那个吗？好的，这是新的vZero链接。对于销售团队、解决方案工程团队以及那些人来说，他们感到非常被赋能。他们觉得自己真的可以动手做，而不是等到安排妥当、合同签署。我们能够更快、更快地进入软件阶段。

Can you change that? Okay, here's the new vZero for this. So for the sales team, solutions engineering team, those people, they feel so empowered. They feel like they can actually cook as opposed to wait until arrangements are made and contracts are signed. We get to software much, much faster.

这对你们公司来说是一个宇宙中非常有趣的分叉点，因为如果LLMs没有在它们发生的时候发生呢？你们仍然会是一个非常成功的公司，但你们的时间会花在不同的地方，公司现在会朝着不同的方向发展。这为你们打开了一个全新的世界。

It's such an interesting fork in the universe of your company, because what if LLMs hadn't happened at the moment that they happened? You guys would still be a plenty successful company, but your time would be spent differently, the company would be moving in a different direction right now. This opened up this whole different world for you.

我认为如果LLMs没有发生，我几乎觉得我们会在所有那些开发者体验的想法上遇到收益递减。所以当你考虑开发者体验时，为了让听众非常清楚，开发者需要非常快速的反馈循环。否则，他们是地球上最ADHD的人。他们会分心。他们会脱离状态。

I think if LLMs hadn't happened, I almost felt like we were gonna hit diminishing returns on all those developer experience ideas that we had. So when you think about developer experience to make it very crisp to listeners, developers need very fast feedback loops. If not, they're the most ADHD people on the planet. They get distracted. They get out of the zone.

他们会失去那种他们喜爱的、神话般的流动状态。因此，Next.js和Vercel痴迷于，好吧，我们可以使用哪些经典的软件工程技术来优化这些流程？例如，我们与AWS的无服务器基础设施团队深度合作。对于那些部署预览，我们不是创建大量冗余的基础设施和集群，花费数百万美元，而是在后台创建无服务器函数。

They lose that flow, mythical flow zone that they love. So Next. Js and Vercel obsessed with, like, okay, what are the classical software engineering techniques that we can use to optimize those processes? For example, we partnered deeply with AWS' serverless infrastructure team. For those deployment previews, instead of creating massive amounts of redundant infrastructure and clusters that cost millions of dollars, we create serverless functions under the hood.

这是一个非常专业的基础设施创新。但在某个时候，我们实际上会达到光速的极限。这就是我们将给开发者反馈的速度。顺便说一下，我们离那还很远。就像，达到那些极限就像我们昨天看到的那架超音速飞机一样。

It's a very specialized infrastructure innovation. But at some point, we're gonna hit the limits literally of the speed of light. That's how fast we're gonna give developers feedback. And we're still far away from that, by the way. Like, hitting those limits is like we saw that supersonic plane yesterday.

达到物理现实的极限是一项艰难的工程。但我看到了未来的趋势，并为此感到非常兴奋，因为就像前几天我和一家尖端数据库公司交谈时发现，他们开发者的反馈循环现在需要六十分钟。而他们正在进行的Vercel概念验证，能将这个时间缩短至两分钟。

It's hard engineering to get to the limits of physical reality. But I saw the writing on the wall, and I was very excited about it, by way, because it was like, I talked to a cutting edge database company the other day. The feedback loops for their developers today are sixty minutes. They're doing a Vercel POC. It cuts them down to two.

因此，为地球上某些最具影响力、收入最高的人群打造如此高速的工具，能为组织带来难以置信的回报。但明显趋势是我们可以将其压缩到两分钟，甚至两秒钟。到那时，限制因素将变成全球有多少人能胜任这项工作。这正是vZero正在革新的领域——我们将让更多人进入软件开发的世界，他们现在可以依托这套经过全球顶尖企业实战检验的基础设施。

So to make something that fast for some of the highest leverage individuals on the planet, best paid individuals on the planet, is incredible returns for the organization, but the writing was on the wall that we can bring it down to two. We can bring it down to two seconds. And then at that point, the limiting factor becomes how many humans on the planet can do this job. And this is what vZero is revolutionizing. We can bring so many more people into the world of building software, and now they can piggyback on this infrastructure that has been battle tested by some of the largest companies on the planet.

这非常令人着迷。

It's fascinating.

我相信我们会再深入讨论vZero AI的诸多内容。不过我想先请教一些关于公司建设的话题，

I'm sure we'll come back to a lot of this vZero AI stuff. I do wanna ask you some company building topics,

比如

sort

对其他创始人的建议。很多工程师都怀揣着双重梦想：既要创建开源项目，又要运营盈利企业。细节决定成败，很多人难以兼顾。对此你有什么成功经验可以分享？

of advice for other founders out there. There's a lot of engineers who have a dream of creating something that is two pronged, an open source project and a for profit corporation. The devil is in the details, and many people fail at doing this well. What would be your advice for people on how to think about doing that well?

我的首要原则是专注做好一件事。我要在某个领域做到世界顶尖，人们称之为'占领细分市场'。当我创立Vercel后专注于打造最快的网站、最快的前端、最快的商店界面时，事情就开始步入正轨。在这个时代，成为万金油式的通才行不通。

My number one priority is to be excellent at one thing. I wanna be world class at one thing. People call it dominating a niche. When I started out Vercel and then I focused on making the fastest websites, the fastest front ends, the fastest storefronts, that's when things started working for me. Being a jack of all trades doesn't work in this world.

无论是开发者还是最挑剔的企业，他们都只想要该类别中最优秀的产品。Vercel成为了前端领域的佼佼者，由此我们可以向外扩展，为开发者提供更多服务。我们称之为从前端云向开发者云的转变。开发者对Vercel提出了更多要求，而我最初的想法其实是本末倒置的——我原以为必须提供一切功能给他们。

Both developers and the most discerning enterprises, they just want the best product in the category. Vercel became that forefront end, and from there we can expand outwards and provide a lot more services to developers. We call it the transition from being a front end cloud to being a developer cloud. Developers are asking themselves for more from Vercel, and I think I had it upside down in the beginning. I thought, Well, I have to give them everything.

实际上，与客户建立良性互动才是更好的方式。先提供足够让他们爱上产品的功能，然后应该由他们来推动产品的延伸。多年来总有开发者询问：能否在Vercel上使用数据库？而我们总是回答：还没准备好。

Instead, it's actually much better to establish a dance with a customer. You give them enough that they love the product, and then they should be the ones pulling product out of you. Developers from many, many years would say, Can I get a database on Vercel? And would say, We're not ready yet. We're not ready yet.

他们问能否在Vercel做更多后端开发？我们总说还没准备好。但现在，我们终于准备好了。

Can I do more backend on Vercel? We're not ready yet. We're not ready yet. And now we're ready.

因为公司成立前六七年里，你们始终认为自身与Next.js深度绑定，对吧？

Because you viewed yourself as very tightly coupled to Next. Js for the first six, seven years of the company, right?

没错。我们长期专注于Next.js及同类形态的前端框架——比如支持罗技、Onvercell等企业的Svelte框架。

Exactly. We focus a lot on Next. Js and front end frameworks that had the same shape, if you will. There's others. For example, we support Svelte that powers companies like Logitech, Onvercell.

宜家等企业也在使用这些框架。虽然不限于Next.js，但这些都是前端导向的框架。而现在开发者开始要求：我想构建更多功能。

It powers companies like IKEA. So there's others. It's not just Next. Js, but these were all front end focused frameworks. And what's happening now is people are saying, Well, I wanna build more.

他们想为结账流程开发更多后端功能，想为SaaS应用构建完整后端，想为AI模型输出的令牌处理搭建后端系统。现在Vercel正在满足这些需求——我们始于专注，而后逐步扩展。这正是许多创业者忽视的关键：他们误以为产品的初始形态必须与最终野心完全匹配。

I wanna build more of the backend for my checkout process. I wanna build the entire backend for my SaaS application. I wanna build the backend for how I process the tokens coming out of the AI models. Now Vercela's giving them that, but we started out focused and then expanded from there. And so that, I think, is something that a lot of entrepreneurs miss, which is they feel like the initial presentation of their product has to match one to one the size of their ambition.

我们的雄心是颠覆所有应用领域，不仅限于网页甚至更广，比如手机上运行的任何程序。但如果我们最初没有从一个世界级的小项目起步，我想今天就不会站在这里。

And our ambition was to disrupt all applications, even not just web and beyond, so anything that runs on a phone, for example. But if we didn't start with something that was world class and small in the beginning, I think we wouldn't be here today.

或许换个角度提问：Vercel有着出色的商业模式，而Next.js开源项目却零收入。你是否考虑过采用不同的方式运作？

And to maybe ask the question a different way, there's a great business model around Vercel, and there's zero revenue generation around the open source project of Next. Js. Did you ever think about doing it differently?

从未。绝对没有。开源始终是我生命的核心。在阿根廷时，开源就像是我通往世界的门票。我一直致力于打造最顶尖的技术。

Never. Absolutely not. So open source for me has always been my life. When I was in Argentina, open source was sort of my ticket out of Argentina and into the world. I always wanted to build the best possible technology.

作为开发者，我无法想象如今要开发应用时，如果框架是专有的——这完全不合逻辑。顺便说，我们正在再次实践这个理念。比如提到的AI SDK，我们看到将构建ChatGPT类应用民主化的机遇。我们知道AI领域绝不会由单一规则主宰。

I couldn't fathom as a developer today, if I'm starting an application, imagine if the framework was proprietary, it just doesn't make sense. And we're doing it again, by the way. So I mentioned the AI SDK. We saw an opportunity to democratize building applications like ChatGPT. We knew that there wasn't gonna be just one AI rule at all, right?

网络的本质是去中心化。它意味着你拥有自己的域名，真正掌握规则的领地。Vercel的使命完全契合——优化网络生态，拓展其触达范围，改进网页部署模式。这种模式无需申请许可，不必向任何人获取授权。网络正是颠覆性变革的沃土。

The web is all about decentralization. It's about you have your own domain name, literally your own domain where you set the rules, and Vercel is so aligned with making the web better, making it reach more places, more surfaces, the deployment model of the web. The deployment model of the web is that you don't have to ask permission. You don't have to ask for a license from anybody. Web is where disruption happens to, right?

ChatGPT就是基于Next.js构建的网站。它本是某人发布的研究预览版。我无比期待继续推进这项工作。AI SDK的数据很能说明问题——从每周10万下载量增长到如今近百万，只用了一年时间。

ChatGPT was a website built with Next. Js. It was a research preview that someone put out into the world. I'm very excited to continue to do this. AI SDK, to give you a context, went from 100,000 downloads a week to now almost a million downloads a week in about a year.

这是继OpenAI之后，将AI接入JavaScript或前端应用的第二大流行方案，也是第二大AI模块——尽管它并没有直接盈利模式。我们追求开发者采用率，渴望他们的反馈，需要社区力量。我们要扩大品牌影响力，向尽可能多的人学习。

It's the second most popular way of getting AI into a JavaScript or front end application after OpenAI, second largest AI module, and there's actually no direct business model for it. We want the developer adoption. We want their feedback. Want their community. We want to get our brand out, we want to learn, we want to learn from as many people as possible.

而当他们决定构建并部署应用时，很可能会选择Vercel，因为他们知道我们已经替他们费心处理了那些他们不关心的基础设施细节。有些人确实关心这些。某种程度上也存在宜家效应——我享受学习的过程。我有时会用一个比喻：你至少得亲手搭建一次基础设施，才能真正理解其中的门道。这就像上学一样。

And then when they decide to build and deploy their application, they'll probably choose Vercel because they know that we have sweated the details of the parts of infrastructure that they don't care about. Some people do. On some level, is an IKEA effect too of like, I enjoy the process of learning. A metaphor that I view sometimes is that you have to do it at least once so that you learn what it's like to create this infrastructure. It's like going to school.

但想想那些与Vercel商业模式相同的成功企业，比如Snowflake、Databricks、Datadog。它们为世界提供的价值在于：基础设施的繁重工作交给它们处理，你只需按使用量付费。如果Vercel上的应用很小，你支付的费用就少；如果应用席卷全球，你支付的费用就多。这对开发者非常公平，他们清楚每一分钱花在哪里。

But if you think about the successful companies out there that share the same business model as Vercel, like Snowflake, like Databricks, like Datadog. The value they give to the world is that you've given them the heavy lifting of infrastructure, and you pay for what you use. If an application on Vercel is small, then you don't pay a lot. If an application takes over the world, you pay more. So it's a very fair deal to developers, and they understand exactly what they're paying for.

好的，顺着这个思路再问一个问题。假设我是个创业者，正在考虑采用这种商业模式。你会不会劝阻我不要走向极端——比如宣称我做的每件事都开源，并且我在基础设施、托管和部署方面是世界顶尖的，所以我可以放心开源所有成果，而不会泄露太多核心机密？

Okay, so one more question along this line. I'm a founder. I'm considering something with this business model. Would you caution me against taking it all the way to the logical extreme where I say every single thing I do is open source, and I'm the best in the world at creating the infrastructure and the hosting and the deployment, so I can just trust that I open source everything that I do, and I'm not giving away too much of the golden goof.

关键在于我刚才提到的部分。世界上大多数公司都想把基础设施负担转嫁给Vercel。如果把这块完全开源，比如教你如何搭建20个全球区域的基础设施，每个区域包含数百个微服务，开源在这里实际上会产生边际效益递减。复杂度会高到令人发指。顺便说一句，其中大部分软件工程属于运维范畴，而非源代码层面。

The bottom line is that part that I just mentioned. Most companies in the world wanna offload the infrastructure burden to Vercel. So having that piece be open source so that we teach you how to set up 20 global regions of infrastructure with hundreds of microservices each, open source actually hits diminishing returns there. It gets so mind bogglingly complex. And most of the software engineering that goes into that, by the way, is operational rather than based on the source code.

重点是监控系统、版本升级、滚动部署、分级技术。说实话，开源在这些领域甚至都不是强项。

It's the monitoring. It's the upgrades. It's the rolling systems. The staging techniques. Actually, would argue that's not where open source even shines for that matter.

开源真正的优势在于提供编程模型。比如Next.js定义和声明了应用程序。Vercel的颠覆性理念在于：基础设施必须是应用程序的产出物。大多数上云的企业都是从基础设施入手的。

Open source shines when it gives you a programming model. So Next. Js defines and declares the application. The way we think about this at Vercel, which is actually quite disruptive, is infrastructure has to be an output of the application. Most companies that reach for the cloud start with the infra.

我们正在颠覆这个模式。我们告诉你：这是Next.js框架，专注于应用开发，你自然就能实现多云部署。

We're inverting that. We tell you, here's the Next. Js framework. Focus on the application. You're gonna be multi cloud.

你将拥有自行托管的能力。或者我们也承担了这份责任，Vercel就是一个现成的选择。Vercel不需要开源。我认为这对目标用户群体并无价值。

You're gonna have the ability to self host it yourself. Or we've also taken that burden, here's Vercel as an option. Vercel doesn't need to be open source. I think it wouldn't bring value to that audience.

当你们设计商业模式时，是否有已臻完善的标杆企业让你们觉得'这就是灵感来源，我们直接效仿就行'？还是说这个模式大部分属于创新？因为开源商业模式过去基本都很糟糕。虽然有成功企业比如红帽，但公司本质上只是卖技术支持服务。

When you were creating the business model, were there any companies that had perfected this that you're like, oh, this is the inspiration, we should just do that, or how much of this was innovative? Because the open source business model basically used to suck. There were successful companies out there, you know, like Red Hat. The company around it is just support. You're just selling support.

这种模式无法规模化。

It doesn't scale.

完全同意。说实话确实缺乏可借鉴的案例。最接近的可能是Databricks或GitHub。GitHub主要围绕协作功能，基于开源的Git组件构建——他们并非创造者，这点很关键。但他们提供代码链接服务，这与我们的模式存在高度相似性。

Totally. There weren't a ton of examples, to be honest. I think the closest thing is probably Databricks or GitHub. GitHub is a lot about collaboration, and it builds on Git as an open source component. They didn't create it, so I think that's a big difference, but they give you these URLs to code, so there is a huge parallel there.

而Vercel提供的是可直接访问的应用链接。我认为随着AI技术发展，代码的重要性会逐渐降低。GitHub在代码托管方面是Vercel的绝佳参照。在基础设施层面，类似Databricks或Snowflake这样的公司——比如Databricks基于开源组件Spark开发，然后在云端为其打造高度优化的计算引擎。虽然用户可以完全自主搭建，但管理全球计算集群是项极其困难的工作。这正是Vercel的核心竞争力：处理应用运行时、服务部署、安全防护、DDoS缓解，确保应用在流量激增时保持稳定。

Instead, Vercel gives you URLs to working applications. I'll argue that code over time will become less important as it becomes a domain of AIs, but GitHub is a phenomenal example of that part of the reproduction side of Vercel. And then on the infrastructure side, companies like Databricks or Snowflake, where in the Databricks case you adopt an open source component like Spark, and then they have a highly optimized compute engine for that component in the cloud. You can totally do the DIY yourself, but scaling global clusters of compute, very difficult job. That's sort of the secret sauce of Vercel for the parts of the application that deal with the runt, the serving, the securing of the application, the DDoS mitigation, the making sure that it stays up during massive spikes of traffic.

这就是Vercel的精妙之处。

That's the beauty of Vercel.

这确实是个绝佳的商业模式。但要使其可行需要完成大量工作，对吧？比如要让企业信任你们成为其基础设施供应商。总不能说'我们只是个初创公司'就指望像Supreme那样被追捧。

It is a beautiful business model. There's actually, like, a lot of stuff you gotta do for this to be viable. Right? Like, for corporations to trust you to be their infrastructure. You can't just be like, oh, I'm a seed stage startup, you know, and, like, hey, Supreme.

来，把你的基础设施交给我信任。就像

Come trust me with your infrastructure. Like

有哪些关键转折点？比如，什么时候你会觉得，哇，我们赢得了一个原本难以信任我们的客户，现在他们信任我们了。

What were inflection points there? Like, when did you feel like, woah. We got a customer that it was hard to get them to trust us, and now they trust us.

我觉得这就像下雨时倾盆大雨，因为现在这种情况经常发生。所有这些银行都在迁移到Vercel。顺便说一句，我认为要归功于加密领域。Vercel的情况是，每当有新技术浪潮出现时——这既是福佑有时也是挑战——任何新颖且颠覆性的事物，人们倾向于在Forsell上构建。为什么？

I feel like it's when it rains, it pours, because it's now happening a lot. There is all these banks that are migrating to Vercel. I think, by the way, I'll give credit to the crypto space. So what happens to Vercel, by the way, is whenever there's a new wave of technology, and this has been a blessing and also sometimes a challenge, anything that's new and disruptive, people tend to build it on Forsell. Why?

因为他们被能够快速将想法实现的动力所驱动。所以如果你在加密或AI领域开发，大多数初创公司都会选择Forsell。不过加密领域特别引人入胜，因为它几乎吸引了互联网上最恶劣、最阴暗的参与者。这迫使我们三倍、四倍甚至十倍地加强安全服务和产品，从人们存储连接数据库和后端或钱包等秘密的保险库的谨慎加密，到这些公司所需的各种加密细节，以及流量管理。互联网和运行基础设施中最困难的部分在于，你必须区分良性流量和恶意流量。

Because they're motivated by the speed at which they can get their idea out. So if you're building on crypto and you're building on AI, most of these startups are choosing Forsell. Crypto, though, was fascinating because it attracted literally the worst, darkest actors the size of the internet. So it really made us triple down, quadruple down, 10x on security services and products from the careful encryption of the vaults of how people store the secrets to connect to their databases and back ends or wallets and all kinds of cryptographic details that these companies need, as well as the traffic. The hardest, most difficult thing about the internet and running infrastructure is that you have to discern between good traffic and bad traffic.

我们决心以Vercel的方式来做安全。Vercel的方式是零配置、默认安全。我们需要默认安全，因为我认为我们与CDN提供商有所不同。举个例子，Vercel内置了通常需要另寻基础设施提供商才能获得的CDN和WAF功能。

And we set out to do security the Vercel way. The Vercel way is that it's zero configuration, it's secure by default. And we needed to be secure by default because I think something is different between us and the CDNs, for example. For context, Vercel builds in the CDN and WAF capabilities that you typically would have to go to another infrastructure provider to get.

Akamai、Cloudflare之类的，等等，

Akamai, Cloudflare, blah, The blah,

与那些非云或云外部的传统服务商（如Akamai、Cloudflare）的区别在于，由于它们不托管应用程序，只是过滤所有流量，有时甚至难以判断它们是否做得好。而Vercel必须即时过滤掉100%的恶意流量。

difference between the legacy ones of the non cloud ones or the outside the cloud ones, like Akamai, Cloudflare, is that because they don't host the application, they filter out all the traffic. It's hard to say if they're even doing a good job sometimes. Whereas Vercel has to filter out 100% of the malicious traffic instantly.

否则，那就是你自己的问题了。没错。但你的动机是要成为一个非常、非常优秀的内容分发网络。

Otherwise, it's your own problem. Correct. But your incentive is aligned to be a really, really good CDN.

没错。加密货币确实让我们历经磨难，说实话我很享受这个过程。回顾过去，比如现在Solana非常火爆。Solana托管了他们所有的网络资产。对于许多优秀的区块链和加密货币公司来说，我们就像是他们从Web2阶段过渡到Web3的桥梁。

Correct. Crypto really put us through the ringer, and I loved it, to be honest. I look back, and so for example, Solana is really hot right now. Solana hosts all of their web properties. We're like the Web2 phase to Web3 for a lot of these great blockchains and crypto companies.

所有大型NFT公司都选择我们进行销售，你可以想象随之而来的流量激增。比如某个迷因币突然爆火，某个NFT突然走红，或者某种新加密货币大热。但这将我们的安全防护能力提升到了行业领先水平，例如在DDoS缓解方面的响应速度。

All of the large NFT companies picked for sale, and you could imagine also just the massive upswings of traffic. Like there is a meme coin that goes hot. There is an NFT that goes hot. There is a new cryptocurrency that goes hot. But it bolstered our security to the point where we have industry leading response times, for example, in DDOS mitigation.

我们能在几秒内完成防护。而我们的竞争对手有时需要几分钟。我们之所以知道这点，是因为有时客户会在我们前面再叠加一个CDN（其实没必要），然后我们看到攻击是从那些CDN发起的，我们就会想：什么？我们才是应该保护客户的那个。这很有趣。

We do it within seconds. Our competitors do it in minutes sometimes. We see this because sometimes customers layer on another CDN in front of our cell, which is not necessary, and so we see the attacks coming from the CDNs, we're like, What? We were supposed to protect the customer. That was fun.

是的，通过经历所有这些，你确实能学到很多。

And, yeah, you learn a lot by being exposed to all of this.

不得不说，这里存在一种绝妙的讽刺：这些财富五百强企业与你签订多年大额企业合同，实质上是在利用Vercel进行数字化转型，改变他们的工作场所和文化，而他们之所以能如此稳健，正是得益于加密货币世界DDoS攻击的锤炼。

I gotta say, there is a delicious irony to the fact that these Fortune five hundreds that are signing these big multiyear enterprise contracts with you and effectively using Vercel for their own digital transformation and changing their workplace and their culture is benefiting from being hardened by DDoS attacks from the crypto world.

但还有另一个奇妙的影响。我们有时能进入大企业的途径是——他们收购了（无意双关）某个播客、某个颠覆者或创新者。如果未来十年加密货币与传统金融出现更多融合，我一点都不会感到惊讶。这种情况在AI领域已经屡见不鲜。接下来...

But there's another fascinating effect. The way that we've gotten into large enterprises sometimes is because they acquire no pun intended, they acquire a podcast they acquired a disruptor, they acquired an innovator. I wouldn't be surprised if there is, in the next ten years, more of a merger between crypto and traditional finance. That's happened a lot with AI. Next.

JavaScript已成为加速并购的通用语言。React在这方面也功不可没。当你收购一家使用Next.js的公司时，整合时间会大幅缩短，大概怎样呢？你只需将一些文件复制粘贴到另一个代码库中。

Js has become the common language that speeds up M and A. I also give credit to React for this. When you acquire a Next. Js powered company, your integration times go down to like, what? You copy and paste some files into another repository.

为什么？因为基础设施是应用程序的产出。实际上，整合公司的工作就变成了整合两个前端。后端服务是可插拔的。越多人标准化使用这些工具，产生的协同效应就越大，我们开始在并购中看到这种现象——初创公司变得极其庞大，令现有竞争对手感到威胁，最终被收购。

Why? Because the infrastructure is an output of the application. Literally, the job of integrating companies becomes integrating the two front ends. The backend services are pluggable. The more people standardize on this tooling, there is this greater than the sum of the parts effect that happens, and we're starting to see it in the form of M and A, where the startups get really, really, really big and intimidating to their incumbent competitors and they get bought.

当然，也有企业意识到必须跟上这趟列车。这是获取人才的方式，是留住人才的方式，也是加速发展的方式。看到我们产生全球影响力，并且与我喜爱的品牌共同实现这一点，真是太棒了。

Of course, there's also enterprises realizing I need to hop on this train. This is how I get talent. This is how I retain talent. This is how I move faster. It's been awesome to see that we have global impact, and it happens with the brands that I love.

我最喜欢的德国汽车公司就使用Vercel，这令人非常愉悦。

My favorite automobile company from Germany uses Vercel, and it's just delightful.

好吧，具体是哪家？

All right, which one?

我想我们没有该品牌的本地授权，但就像...

I think we don't have local rights for that one, but like

我们在《Acquired》节目里报道过它吗？

Have we covered it on Acquired or not?

你或许可以从Vercel的设计风格和品味中推断出来。是的。

You could probably extrapolate from Vercel's sort of design and and taste. Yeah.

这真是太棒了。

That's pretty awesome.

很好。

Great.

没错。

Yeah.

我们不会强迫你进入任何让你不适的领域。最近几期ACQ2节目中我们一直喜欢问的一个问题是：作为领导者、创始人或技术专家，你坚信但其他人可能不认同的信念是什么？

We we won't push you into something uncomfortable there. One question that's been a fun one for us to ask here on ACQ2 the last few episodes is, what is something that you believe as a leader or a founder or a technologist that you have real conviction in and you feel others don't?

是的，对我来说这个问题很简单，因为过去几周的经历再次坚定了我的信念。我认为CEO们，尤其是技术背景的CEO，能够也应该参与业务的每个环节——无论是敲定交易、分析上季度数据并调整销售指标与薪酬、规划未来产品路线图，还是定价讨论。我深度参与公司所有事务，而且

Yeah, I think there's an easy one for me here because I experienced it over the last couple weeks that reaffirm my conviction. I think CEOs, especially technical CEOs, can and should be involved in every aspect of the business, whether it's closing a deal, whether it's looking at the numbers of the last quarter and tuning sales quotas and sales compensation, whether it's informing future product roadmap, whether it's pricing discussions. I'm involved in every aspect of the business and

那你们公司有多少员工？

And how many employees are you?

550. K. 或许还需要补充背景信息，Vercel目前的最新数据是——我们在2024年5月披露的年化收入达到1亿美元，收入同比增长80%，使用Vercel的开发者数量在过去一年翻了一番多。我们正以相当大的规模运营，我认为CEO的角色及其概念正在演变和改变。企业正变得越来越透明。

550. K. Maybe also for context, Vercel is now at about well, last number we disclosed was we hit $100,000,000 in annualized revenue May 2024, growing 80% year over year in revenue, and developers using Vercel more than doubled over the past year. So we're operating at a significant scale, and I think the role of the CEO and the conception of the CEO is evolving and changing. Companies are becoming a lot more transparent.

关键在于优化公司内部的信息流动，而非制造信息孤岛。我们在Vercel的做法有些与众不同。

It's about optimizing the information flow within the company rather than creating silos of information. We're doing it a little bit different here at Vercel.

你是如何保持与550名员工如此紧密联系的？

How do you stay that involved with five fifty employees?

我认为使用自家产品带来了巨大加速。我不需要别人给我做简报，我直接与开发者社区保持联系，与客户对话，一有时间就使用vZero和Vercel。我始终紧贴产品实际状况，所以完全不会浪费时间给高管做简报。

I think using our own product has been a massive acceleration. I don't need to get brought up to speed on things. I am in direct connection with the developer community, I talk to customers, and whenever I find time, I use vZero, I use Vercel. I'm staying very grounded on the reality of the product. So there is just no time being wasted on briefing executives.

我们的期望是每个人都能深刻理解客户和产品。Vercel每个领域的招聘都优先考虑有技术背景、可能的话曾使用过Vercel的人才，因此我们能快速行动。整个产品和平台都围绕研发速度优化，公司的运作方式就是产品的运作方式。当看到某些最知名企业的CIO、CTO、CEO来找我时，他们不是要某项具体技术，而是想学习我们的构建方法。

The expectation is that you understand the customer deeply, understand the product deeply. We try to hire people for every area of Vercel that have a technical background, that have used Vercel in the past if possible, and so we tend to move real fast. We optimize our entire product and platform around product velocity, right? So the way that the company behaves is the way that the product behaves. When I'm seeing success with some of the largest, more established brands, household names, when the CIOs, CTOs, CEOs come to me, they don't want a specific aspect of our technology, they want us to teach them how we build.

他们希望我们输出Vercel的工作模式。他们能看出我们的快速行动力。通过持续让公司和产品形成共生关系、双向通道，这就是我们保持高速和精简的秘诀。

They want us to export how Vercel works. They can tell that we're moving fast. And so by continuing to make the company and the product a sort of symbiote, a two way street, I think this is how we're staying really fast and lean.

有道理。那么外界观察者会说：这里必然存在取舍。你既要最大限度授权高管，又要深度参与，如何平衡这种矛盾？

Makes sense. So an outside observer would then say, There's gotta be some trade off here. How can you possibly hire executives that you wanna empower as much as possible, but you also wanna be extremely involved? How do you deal with that trade off?

我认为快速反馈的交换至关重要。当然，高管是直接对一系列数字、KPI、成果负责的人，无论你怎么称呼这些指标，但我的职责是提供高质量的反馈。这是我的首要任务。从某种意义上说，我是连接现实的桥梁，我将外部世界的客户故事带入内部。

I think the fast exchange of feedback is huge. Of course, the executive is the one that's on the line that is responsible for a set of numbers, KPIs, outcomes, whatever you wanna call it, but I'm involved in giving them high quality feedback. That's my number one job. I'm the bridge to reality in many ways. I bring the customer stories from the outside world.

我会让他们对此负责，将他们置于责任线上。你必须能够使用我们的产品来演示我们的产品。这不是说我要取代他们的工作，而是我能站在相同的高度，深入理解他们应该做的事情的细节。我认为这植根于理解，而非将工作外包。

I hold them accountable to that. I put them on the line. You have to be able to use our product to demo our product. It's not that I take their job, it's that I'm able to get on the same altitude and go into the texture of what they're supposed to do. I think it's rooted in understanding rather than outsourcing the labor.

我在内部经常使用的一个原则是，作为CEO，你必须理解。你不能只是说，‘好吧，基础设施这个领域，我完全不懂它是怎么运作的。去找Johnny吧。’我会花时间去学习，这样我才能提供高质量的反馈，也才能有信心地委派任务。

A principle that I use internally a lot is as a CEO you have to understand. You can't just say, Well, this area of infrastructure, I have no idea how it works. Talk to Johnny. I spend time learning, and that's how I can give high quality feedback, and that's how I can delegate it with confidence.

好的，从某种程度上说，考虑到你们当前的营收规模和客户规模，我会重新表述，‘哇，你们现在只有550人。’十年前，你们的人数可能会多得多。是的。

Okay, so in some ways, for the revenue scale and customer scale you're operating at, I would reframe, Wow, you're five fifty people as You're only five fifty people now. A decade ago, you would've been way more. Yes.

我有一个具体的例子。VZero非常棒。我称之为创业公司中的创业公司，因为我们说VZero将完全是我们团队的全栈。想象一下，另一家公司正在创新，他们只想用Vercel从头到尾构建这个想法。前端、后端、数据库、AI模型采购，一切都在Vercel上进行。

I have a concrete example for that. VZero was amazing. I called it a startup within a startup because we said VZero will be entirely full stack of our cell. Let's imagine that another company is innovating and they only wanna use Vercel to build the idea top to bottom. Front end, back end, database, AI model procurement, everything is happening on Vercel.

所以那个团队非常小。人均收入数字令人震惊。这证明，如果你在Vercel平台上构建，你可以非常精简。你知道我痴迷地监控的一件事是

And so that team is just tiny. The revenue figure per head is astonishing. And it's a proof point that if you build on the Vercel platform, you can be so lean. You know a thing that I monitor obsessively is

哦，等等。抱歉。那个团队使用的所有东西都是Vercel公开可用的产品吗？所以理论上，vZero本可以由外部团队编写？是的。由几个

Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Is everything that that team used a publicly available product from Vercel? So theoretically, vZero could have been written by an outside team Yes. Of a few

团队规模不足10人，但这是当前行业内增长最迅猛的产品之一。因此我极度神经质般监控的是——他们绝不允许作弊。不能跑去基础设施团队说‘哎呀我现在每秒有百万请求，能给我特供些资源吗？’门都没有。

less than 10 people, and it's one of the fastest growing products in the industry right now. And so the thing that I monitor very, very, very neurotically is they're not allowed to cheat. They're not allowed to go to the infra team and say, Oh, I'm having a million requests per second right now. Can you provision some special thing for me? Zero.

这让我确信我们的平台不存在‘毕业风险’。每个试图简化流程的初创企业都畏惧这种幽灵般的威胁。

And that gives me the confidence that our platform has no graduation risk. This is the sort of scary ghost of every startup that tries to simplify things.

没错。噢，你提到这点我太高兴了。

Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you went here.

你知道，总有人说‘我会超越Vercel的极限’。但只要我还活着，就像先前回答中说的，我会深入每个细节——我清楚所有应急方案、所有高级功能，实际上都由平台本身提供。这才使得团队能保持精简。因此我可以预见，未来将有企业诞生于这个平台，事实上已有现成案例。

You know, oh, I'm gonna outgrow Vercel. So for as long as I'm alive, I'm in the details per my previous answer, I know that all of the scape hatches, all of the advanced capabilities, all of that is actually being provided by the platform itself. And that has allowed that team to be just tiny. And so I can project, I can forecast that there's gonna be companies that are gonna be born on this platform. I I already have examples.

以Polymarket为例，这个微型团队在大选期间遭遇的流量足以吓坏基础设施团队——那是需要数十年互联网经验才能应对的流量级别。顺便说，我认为团队规模可能会更小，这是我的预测。当AI能生成大量代码、基础设施被抽象化、做大后无需‘毕业升级’，且能以当前简洁度维持规模时，人力需求必然下降——但不是说开发者会退休去海滩度假那种。

Like to use Polymarket as an example of a tiny team that during the election saw traffic that would scare infrastructure teams. It's traffic that you have to have been around the internet for decades to be able to live up to and to sustain. I think teams are probably gonna get smaller, by the way. I mean, this would be my prediction. If you have AI generating a ton of code and the infrastructure is abstracted away and there's no sort of graduation thing that you need to do when you get big, and if you can stay big with this level of simplicity, then the downward pressure will be on headcount, but not in a sense of like, Oh, people are gonna retire, like, Developers are gonna retire into a beach.

我们将见证更多产品诞生，由更少的人创造，却触达更多用户。

Is that we're gonna see more products, more product creation that reach more people built by fewer people.

发展速度和规模能达到什么程度？

How fast and at what scale?

好的，我来举个绝佳的例子。我记得就在上周，OpenAI的Operator刚发布。短短24小时内，Open Operator就上线了。它是由Vercel的一位客户开发的，他们利用vZero构建了操作界面。

Okay, so I'll give you a really good example. I think it was last week that Operator by OpenAI came out. Within twenty four hours, Open Operator launched. It was built by a Vercel customer. They used vZero to create the interface.

他们运用云端现有的浏览器基础设施，实现了操作员使用网页浏览器的自动化需求，并采用DeepSeek等模型来配置智能体。从构思到落地——比如‘让智能体控制浏览器帮人完成任务’这个新点子——仅用24小时就能推向全球，然后迅速风靡网络。我发推文后，甚至收到中国用户的邮件说‘这太疯狂了，居然真有人做出来了’。

They used browser infrastructure that exists in the cloud to sort of automate the operator needs to use a web browser, and they used models like DeepSeek and others to sort of provision the agent. The fact that you can go from the idea of, okay, so there's this new idea. Agents can control a web browser and solve tasks for people. To put it out into the world, it can be twenty four hours, and that thing took over the Internet. I tweeted about it, I was getting emails from people in China saying, I'm losing my mind that this is a thing.

这一切为何能如此迅速？可能是几小时、几天或几周。当然，持续创新是关键——不能只靠昙花一现的爆款。但软件生产的边际成本趋近于零，这实在太神奇了。

How did this happen so fast? It can be hours, it can be days, it can be weeks. Of course, you have to sustain innovation, right? You can't just launch something that goes viral and then you don't have the thing to follow it with, but it's amazing. Marginal cost of software production goes to zero.

最终会有越来越多人加入这个市场。更多创作者将涌现——但愿Vercel能成为每笔交易的核心枢纽，既服务智能体开发者，也赋能新兴开发者（或者说公民开发者），提供他们所需的一切发布支持。

What ends up happening is more and more people join the market, right? More people are gonna be able to create, hopefully Vercel is in the middle of every transaction, meaning we're facilitating both the agents and the developers, and the new developers, the citizen developers, if you will, with everything they need in order to ship.

好的。我想没有比这更完美的收尾了。Guillermo，非常感谢你今天参与我们的节目。

Alright. Well, I can't imagine a better place to leave it than that. Guillermo, thank you so much for joining us today.

非常愉快，谢谢邀请。

That was super fun. Thank you for having me.

对了，如果想引导听众采取行动，他们可以去哪里关注你？哪里能体验vZero？

Gee, if you wanna direct listeners to any calls to action, where can they check you out? Where can they play with vZero?

若想直接联系我们，只需在X平台、vZero或Vercel上找到我们，发送消息、提供反馈或开始构建。访问vzero.dev网站，输入您的想法，点击提交，即刻启程。

If you want to directly get in contact with us, just find us on x, vZero or Vercel, reach out to us, feedback, start building, head to vzero.dev, put in your idea, press submit, and off you go.

太棒了。非常感谢。

Awesome. Thanks so much.