How Pieter Levels Hit $67k MRR in 3 Weeks

大家好，最近怎么样？

What's up, everyone?

我是Alex，Founder's Journal的主持人。

This is Alex, the host of Founder's Journal.

你们可能知道，我从大四开始创办Morning Brew，一直到2020年把公司卖掉。

As you may know, I built Morning Brew from my senior year of college until we sold the business in 2020.

现在我在不同领域、不同阶段创办各种企业。

And now I'm building a variety of businesses in different spaces and different stages.

基本上我每年都会创办一到两家新公司，正因为如此，我有机会测试大量不同的产品和服务，最终形成了一套核心软件组合，每当我启动新公司时，它就像我的商业操作系统一样。

I'm basically averaging one to two new businesses per year, and because of that, I have had the opportunity to test a ton of different products and services, ultimately landing on a core software stack that serves as my business operating system whenever I start a new company.

我有自己常用的银行服务。

I have my go to banking service.

我有自己常用的公司注册服务。

I have my go to formation service.

我有自己常用的域名托管服务。

I have my go to domain hosting service.

但其中最重要的可能还是我的人力资源服务，Gusto。

But probably the most important of them all is my HR service, Gusto.

如果你是《创始人日志》的老听众，你应该知道我在商业中多么重视人。

If you're a longtime Founder's Journal listener, you know how much I think about people in the context of business.

没有员工，企业什么都不是，所以一个能帮我管理和照顾员工的平台是无价的。

A business is nothing without its people, which means a platform that helps me manage and take care of my people is invaluable.

这意味着我试遍了市面上所有的人力资源平台，始终带着同样的目标。

And that means I've tried every HR platform under the sun, always with the same exact goals in mind.

首先，我想要一个直观又好用的产品。

First, I want a product that's intuitive and delightful to use.

作为非人力资源专业人士，我觉得工资、福利、税务、合规和报销这些细节很让人头疼。

As a non HR person, I find the intricacies of payroll, benefits, taxes, compliance, and expenses to be painful.

所以我只想要一个能让我生活更轻松的东西。

So I just want something that makes my life easier.

其次，我希望它价格实惠。

Second, I want it to be affordable.

我骨子里就是个白手起家的人。

I'm a bootstrapper at heart.

我创办Morning Brew时一分钱没花，创办storyarb时也是零成本，这意味着我没有无限的资金去砸在SaaS产品上。

I started Morning Brew with zero dollars and I started storyarb with $0 as well, which means I don't have infinite dollars to drop on SaaS products.

第三，我想要一个平台，能一站式搞定所有跟人相关的事。

And third, I want a platform that acts as my one stop shop for all things people.

我希望它能处理工资、福利、招聘、入职和税务，同时还能和我业务中使用的其他工具无缝集成，比如QuickBooks、Slack或Google Workspace。

I want it to handle payroll, benefits, hiring, onboarding, and taxes, all while integrating with all of the other tools in my business stack, whether it be QuickBooks, Slack, or Google Workspace.

Gusto正好满足了我所有的需求，所以我成了它的客户，并且我的每一家公司都在用它。

Well, Gusto hit the trifecta, which is why I am a customer and use it for every single one of my businesses.

是的，这是Gusto优秀团队的付费赞助，但即使他们不付钱，我也会由衷地夸赞他们。

Yes, this is a paid sponsorship by the amazing team at Gusto, but I would sing their praises even if I wasn't being paid to do so.

所以，如果你正在寻找一个能让你摆脱工资、福利和HR烦恼的平台，我强烈推荐你去看看Gusto。

So if you're looking for a platform that takes the pain out of payroll, benefits, and HR, I highly recommend you check out Gusto.

如果你通过gusto.com/alex注册，就能免费使用前三个月。

And if you sign up at gusto.com/alex, you will get your first three months free.

现在进入正题。

Now on to the episode.

大家好，最近怎么样？

What's up, everyone?

我是Alex，创始人日志又回来了。

This is Alex, and Founder's Journal is back.

对于长期收听创始人日志的听众，欢迎回来。

For those who are longtime Founder's Journal listeners, welcome back.

对于新听众，简单介绍一下。

For those who are new to the show, here's the deal.

创始人日志是我公开的音频日记，分享给全世界。

Founder's Journal is my audio diary made public for the world.

我的目标是通过分享我在创业过程中经历的故事、教训和策略，提高你作为创业者的成功几率。

My goal is to increase your odds of success as an entrepreneur by sharing the stories, lessons, and tactics that I experience as I build my businesses.

你可以在周一和周三收听播客，每集时长不超过二十分钟。

You can expect the podcast Monday and Wednesday with episodes that are under twenty minutes in length.

如果你想在新一集发布时收到通知，记得在你收听的地方订阅。

And if you wanna get notified when a new episode comes out, make sure to subscribe wherever you listen.

那我们现在就开始吧。

Now, let's get into it.

Pieter Levels，一个在推特上很有名的互联网创业者，发布了一款用AI编写的飞行游戏，短短三周就达到了每月6.7万美元的收入。

Pieter Levels, a well known Internet entrepreneur on Twitter, launched an AI coded flying game that has gotten to 67,000 in monthly revenue in just three weeks.

我一直密切关注着Levels打造这个新业务的过程，我觉得这对任何创业者来说都值得深入研究。

I have been watching closely as Levels has been building this new business, and I think it is worth further examination for any entrepreneur.

我会带你回顾过去几周发生的事情，为什么Levels在互联网上引起了从赞美到愤怒的各种反应，以及你作为创业者能从中借鉴并应用到你自己业务中的东西。

I'm gonna take you through what's happened over the last few weeks, why Levels has gotten a mix of reactions from the Internet ranging from praise to rage, and what you as a builder can steal and apply to your own business.

我们先从发生了什么开始讲。

Let's start with what happened.

2月22日，Pieter Levels制作并发布了一款3D飞行游戏。

On February 22, Pieter Levels built and launched a three d flying game.

顺便说一下，这不是Levels第一次公开推出业务了。

For context, this isn't the first business that Levels has publicly launched.

从2014年开始，他一年内做了12个生意，从那以后，Levels每年都会开发和发布多个软件产品，然后把这些产品分享给他的观众。

Since 2014, when he built 12 businesses in twelve months, Levels has been building and launching multiple software products per year and then sharing these products with his audience.

截至2021年，Levels已经发布了70个软件产品，其中很多都没什么起色，但有5%取得了不同程度的成功。

As of 2021, Levels has launched 70 software products, many of which went nowhere, but 5% of which have had varying levels of success.

他现在所有生意加起来每月收入大约18.4万美元，其中飞行游戏是目前收入最高的项目。

He's now doing roughly a $184,000 in monthly revenue across his businesses, with his flying game being his highest revenue project at the moment.

那我们来聊聊这个游戏。

So let's talk about the game.

Levels从想法到做出一个最小可行产品只用了30分钟，就是靠提示Cursor——这是一个AI编程助手，年收入不到一年就达到了1亿美元，最近还以100亿美元的估值完成了融资。

Levels went from idea to MVP in thirty minutes simply by prompting Cursor, which is an AI coding assistant that got to a $100,000,000 in annual revenue in less than a year and just raised at a $10,000,000,000 valuation.

顺便说一句，如果你还不知道Cursor，或者还没试过这个产品，那你真得去试试，如果你想认真对待AI领域正在发生的事情的话。

Side note, if you don't know about Cursor or you haven't tested the product, you need to if you want to actually take what's happening in AI seriously.

Pieter的游戏一开始是一个非常简陋的单人飞行模拟器，用户只能开着一架卡通飞机在地图上飞，地图上有跑道、陆地、悬崖和海滩。

Pieter's game started as a very crude single player flight simulator where the user could just fly a cartoon plane around a map that had a runway, land, a cliff, and a beach.

现在，这个游戏依然很简陋，但已经支持多人玩了。

Today, the game is still very analog, but it is multiplayer.

游戏里可以朝其他飞机发射导弹，通过广告和道具来赚钱。

It involves shooting missiles at other planes, and it is monetized with ads and power ups.

尽管游戏很简单，但仅仅三周的数据就非常惊人。

Now despite how simple the game is, the numbers in just three weeks are staggering.

上线以来，已经有24.3万次页面浏览，21.4万独立访客。

Since launch, it has had 243,000 page views and 214,000 unique visitors.

任何时候都有20到50人在玩，每天有1.5万名独立玩家飞行。

20 to 50 people are playing the game at all times with 15,000 unique flyers playing per day.

这个游戏现在每月收入6.7万美元，绝大部分来自广告，只有很小一部分来自游戏内购买。

The game is now doing $67,000 in monthly revenue with the vast majority coming from advertising and a very small sliver coming from in game purchases.

像Bolt、Synthflow、CodeRabbit以及其他AI初创公司，每月支付高达1万美元来赞助游戏里的跑道、飞艇和木星等元素。

Companies like Bolt, Synthflow, CodeRabbit, and other AI startups are paying up to $10,000 a month to sponsor things like the runway, blimps, and Jupiter in the game.

还有一小部分用户花了29.99美元购买更快、更强大的飞机。

And then a small group of users have paid $29.99 for faster, more powerful planes.

埃隆·马斯克转发了这个游戏。

Elon Musk retweeted the game.

Stripe的联合创始人帕特里克·科里森也玩了这款游戏，还分享了一些想法和反馈。

Patrick Collison, the cofounder of Stripe, played the game and shared ideas and feedback.

这款游戏还登上了Reddit，并且被404 Media报道过。

The game made it onto Reddit and was written up about by four zero four Media.

关于这款游戏的讨论不仅非常热烈，而且从赞美到极度愤怒，各种声音都有。

And the conversation around the game is not only intense, but it ranges from praise to absolute rage.

我觉得，当任何东西能这么快地增长，并且在互联网上占据这么多注意力时，都值得去研究和学习，所以这就是我们要做的。

I believe when anything grows this fast and owns attention on the Internet this much, it is worth studying and learning from, so that's what we're gonna do.

我们先来聊聊，为什么五年前非技术人员根本不可能做出来的东西，现在完全有可能了。

Let's start by talking about how something that would have been impossible for a nontechnical person to build five years ago is completely possible now.

如果几年前我想做一款游戏，我得懂一些编程语言，比如C、C++、Python、JavaScript、Rust等等。

If I wanted to build a game a few years ago, I would have had to know some combination of coding languages like c, c plus plus, Python, JavaScript, Rust, and others.

而且我还得熟练使用像Unity或虚幻引擎这样的游戏引擎。

And I would have needed to be proficient in using a gaming engine like Unity or Unreal Engine.

就在写这个脚本之前，我直接去问了Claude，做了一个密歇根主题的吃豆人，里面的幽灵是俄亥俄州立大学的七叶树吉祥物，而这只是现在AI能做到的冰山一角。

Right before writing the script, I literally went to Claude and built a Michigan themed version of Pac Man where the ghosts are Ohio State Buckeyes, and this is literally level one of what you can do with AI now.

但现在有了AI，不懂技术的人也能突然做出技术产品，而技术高手则能拥有整个团队的产出能力。

But now with AI, nontechnical people can all of a sudden build technical things, and talented technical people can have the output of a full team.

这对游戏和非游戏领域都有影响。

This has implications for both gaming and nongaming.

在游戏领域，正如Greg Eisenberg指出的，传统游戏的经济模式非常残酷。

In gaming, as Greg Eisenberg pointed out, traditional game economics are brutal.

AAA级游戏制作成本高达一亿美元。

AAA games cost a $100,000,000 to build.

独立游戏则是一百万美元。

Indie games, a 100,000.

手机游戏需要25万美元和10名开发者，并且每月还要投入10万美元的营销费用。

Mobile games take 250 k plus 10 developers to build and require a $100,000 in monthly marketing.

当然，这并不是说你可以直接用AI工具做出《堡垒之夜》，而是说，善于利用AI的优秀游戏开发者，很可能以极低的成本制作出高质量的游戏，因为AI工具能提供相当于初级员工的支持，就像现在软件工程团队正在经历的那样。

Now the suggestion isn't that you can just use AI tools to create Fortnite, but it is to suggest that great game developers leveraging AI will likely be able to create high quality games at a fraction of the cost because AI tools will offer junior employee caliber support similar to what's happening with software engineering teams right now.

所以这一切都进一步验证了像Cursor这样的工具，正在把创建简单软件或游戏所需的技能门槛降到零。

So this is all just further validation that tools like Cursor are bringing down the skill level required to create simple software or games to zero.

而对于更高质量、更复杂的产品，这些工具实际上给高技能创作者配备了一支初级员工团队，他们能听从指令，全天候工作。

And for higher quality, more complex products, these tools simply give high skilled builders effectively a junior team of employees that follow directions and work twenty four seven.

整个故事中另一个最明显的启示，就是可信分发的巨大价值。

The next most obvious takeaway from this whole story is the insane value of trusted distribution.

Levels 在 X 平台上有 62.8 万粉丝，这是他花了十年积累起来的，他可以用这些粉丝来分享这款游戏和他的其他项目。

Levels has 628,000 x followers that he has accumulated over ten years that he was able to share this game and his other projects with.

在产品制作成本大幅下降、而营销成本持续上升的时期，拥有可信分发渠道就变得越来越有优势。

At a time when the cost of building products dropped significantly, while the cost of marketing continues to rise, having trusted distribution becomes more and more of an advantage.

我想弄清楚这个优势对 Levels 的这款游戏到底有多大，所以我统计了他从 2 月 22 日以来所有关于这个项目的帖子，结果如下。

I wanted to understand just how significant that advantage has been for levels with this game, so I added up all of his posts about the project since February 22, and here is what I found.

过去三周里，他发了 104 条关于这款游戏的帖子。

He has posted about the game 104 times in the last three weeks.

这 104 条帖子带来了 7400 万次曝光，简直不可思议。

These a 104 posts generated 74,000,000 impressions, which is insane.

如果你没有粉丝，想花钱买这么多曝光，那在不同社交平台上大概要花这么多钱。

And if you had no audience and wanted to spend money on paid marketing to get that many impressions, here's what it would cost you on the different social platforms.

在X上，要花47.9万。

On X, it would cost 479,000.

在Meta上，60.5万。

On Meta, 605,000.

在TikTok上，22万。

On TikTok, 220,000.

YouTube上，16万。

YouTube, 160,000.

Snap上，47.7万。

Snap, 477,000.

还有Pinterest，44.7万。

And Pinterest, 447,000.

但这个成本还没算上信任的价值。

But that cost also doesn't account for trust.

如果你花这么多钱在付费社交媒体上，看到你广告的大部分人要么不知道你的公司或游戏是什么，要么就算知道，也还没有建立信任。

You spend that much money on paid social, most of the eyeballs that are seeing your ad either don't know what your company or game is, or if they do, they don't have established trust.

对于Levels来说，你得假设那些曝光真正转化为去试玩他游戏的转化率要高得多，因为看到他帖子的人很可能认识他并且信任他。

With levels, you have to assume the conversion rate of those impressions actually going and trying his game is way higher because people seeing his posts likely know and trust him.

我刚才描述的一切，只是拥有一个深度信任你的受众最显而易见的好处。

Everything I just described is the most obvious part of having an audience that trusts you deeply.

这是一个巨大的优势，能降低你的用户获取成本，提高你业务的成功几率，并加快你达到有意义规模的时间表。

It is a huge advantage, lowers your user acquisition cost, increases your business's odds of success, and speeds up your timeline to get to meaningful scale.

但除此之外，拥有受众还带来了许多其他不那么明显的好处，这些好处更有趣。

But then there are so many other less obvious benefits created by having an audience that are far more interesting.

拥有受众为所有机会创造了空间，而人们往往只关注营销方面。

Having an audience creates surface area for all opportunities, and people tend to just focus on the marketing side.

我会分享几个来自Levels飞行游戏的例子。

I'll share just a few examples from Levels flying game.

第一个是获得二级分发的机会。

The first is access to second order distribution.

当你拥有受众时，你增加了其他拥有大量受众的人看到你内容的机会，从而将你的影响力扩展到他们的受众中。

When you have an audience, you increase the odds that someone else with a large audience will see your stuff and expand your reach to their audience.

当Levels宣布游戏支持多人模式的更新时，埃隆·马斯克转发了那条帖子，结果给Levels的帖子带来了900万次曝光，差不多占他到目前为止总曝光的38%。

When levels announced an update that is game supported multiplayer, Elon Musk, quote, retweeted the post, which drove 9,000,000 impressions to Levels post or roughly 38% of the impressions he has gotten so far.

还有Stripe的联合创始人帕特里克·科里森，他看到Levels宣布游戏后，回复说他很喜欢，还会再玩，并提出了一些功能建议。

Or Patrick Collison, the cofounder of Stripe, seeing Levels announce the game and responding that he loved it would fly again, and he offered a number of feature requests.

这一切让帕特里克的粉丝也能看到Levels的内容，否则他们可能根本不会看到。

All of that opened Patrick's own audience to see levels as content, which they may not have otherwise seen.

第二个好处是能接触到客户洞察。

The second is access to customer insights.

对于传统企业来说，了解客户需求的过程相当费时费力。

With a traditional business, the process of understanding your customers' needs is quite manual and slow.

你只能在季度业务回顾时得到反馈。

You get feedback during a quarterly business review.

你决定做客户研究时才能获得想法。

You get ideas when you decide to do customer research.

你还要发冷邮件，请潜在客户抽三十分钟跟你通个电话。

And you send cold emails asking potential customers to hop on a thirty minute call with you.

有了受众，客户发现和反馈的流程就顺畅多了，相当于你随时都有一个焦点小组。

An audience streamlines the customer discovery and feedback process and offers you an always on focus group.

这个优势怎么强调都不为过，这也是Levels能这么快迭代这个游戏的原因之一，因为他能很快收到想法和反馈。

It's hard to overstate how much of an advantage that is, and it's one of the reasons that Levels has evolved this game so quickly because he has received ideas and feedback so quickly.

他之前不知道怎么实现多人游戏，就去问他的受众，结果一位在X工作的工程师给了他答案，他不到24小时就搞定了。

He couldn't figure out how to get the game to multiplayer, so he asked his audience and got a response from an engineer at x that gave him the answer, which he implemented in less than twenty four hours.

那位工程师还建议通过出售更快或更好的飞机来变现，这个功能几个小时内就上线了。

That same engineer shared the idea of selling faster or better planes as a way of monetizing the game, and it was up and running in the game within hours.

另外，Levels想知道怎么给用户设置飞行控制，就在X上发了个投票，收到了3655个回复，然后根据结果做了应用。

Also, levels wanted to know how we should set up flight controls for users, so he ran a poll on x, got 3,655 responses, and built the app according to the results.

第三点是非客户机会，这些机会能加速你的业务发展。

The third is non customer opportunities that accelerate your business.

比如招聘，也就是说你能更快地招到更多候选人。

This can be hiring, meaning your ability to recruit more candidates faster.

比如渠道合作伙伴，也就是那些没有你的受众你就接触不到的营销渠道。

This can be channel partners, meaning marketing channels you wouldn't have had access to without your audience.

这还可以是零成本合作者，意思是那些因为你的受众给他们带来的价值，而愿意免费为你的业务做贡献或提供东西的人。

And this can also be no cost collaborators, meaning people who will contribute to your business or offer you things for free because of the value your audience provides to them.

Levels的例子就是，Cursor的一位工程师——再次说明，Cursor是他用来开发游戏的编程软件——免费做了一个雷达，让你能看到所有正在玩这个游戏的其他玩家。

The example of levels is an engineer from cursor, which again is the coding software he used to build the game, built a radar for free that allows you to see all of the other players playing the game.

你可能会想，为什么这位工程师要免费做这个呢？

You may be wondering, why did this engineer build it for free?

很可能是因为他觉得对这个项目有投入感，而且做起来很有趣，但同时也是因为这是一个非常低成本的途径，能让Cursor公司搭上这个游戏现在获得的巨大热度和曝光。

Very possibly because he feels invested in the story and it was fun, but also it was a very low lift way to be able to get Cursor as a company to latch on to the insane momentum and impressions that the game is getting right now.

所以，这就是受众如何让Levels在各方面都占据优势。

So those are all of the ways in which an audience stacks the deck in Levels favor.

现在你可能会想，天哪，如果我没有这样的受众，我该怎么办？

Now you may be thinking, damn, what do I do if I don't have an audience like this?

有三点。

Three things.

第一，即使一开始没有分发渠道，仍然有可能建立一个伟大的业务。

First, it is still possible to build a great business without distribution at the start.

只是更难了，而且可能会延长达到规模化所需的时间。

It is just harder, and it likely extends the timeline of getting to scale.

第二，这应该让你更明白建立受众群体有多重要。

Second, this should just reinforce for you how important building an audience is.

如果你愿意的话，开始建立受众群体的最佳时机是昨天。

And if you're open to it, the best time to start building one was yesterday.

第三，如果你不想建立受众群体，但你能为某个企业提供其他价值，那么与分销商或拥有可信受众的人合作，我认为未来几年我们会看到更多这样的做法。

And third, if you don't want to build an audience, but you offer something else to a business, partnering with a distributor or someone that does have a trusted audience is something that I think we'll see way more over the next few years.

所以这就是分销。

So that's distribution.

现在我们来谈谈氛围营销，这是每个创造者都应该并且可以做的事情。

Now let's talk about Vibe marketing, something that any builder can and should be doing.

现在大家都在讨论氛围编程这个概念，这是安德烈·卡帕西提出的，他创立了OpenAI，并在特斯拉负责AI。

Everyone right now is talking about this idea of Vibe coding, which was coined by Andrej Karpathy, who founded OpenAI, and he ran AI at Tesla.

基本上就是用自然语言提示AI工具来构建软件，而不是实际输入代码。

And it basically just means building software through prompting AI tools with natural language versus actually having to type code.

所以基本上，Vibe coding 就是通过对话来构建东西，而不是真正写代码。

So basically, Vibe coding is building stuff through conversation rather than actual coding.

另外，顺便提一下，如果你想更深入地了解人工智能和大语言模型的工作原理，你一定要去看看 Andrej 的 YouTube 频道。

Also, as a quick side note, if you wanna understand how AI and large language models work more deeply, you should 100% check out Andrej's YouTube channel.

那个频道非常棒，我会在节目说明里放上链接。

It is incredible, and I'm gonna link to it in the show notes.

现在，我觉得还有一个同样重要的概念，值得大家思考并在自己的业务中加以利用，那就是 Vibe marketing。

Now, I think an equally important concept for people to think about and consider leveraging in their business is Vibe marketing.

Vibe marketing 遵循一个非常简单的流程。

Vibe marketing follows a very simple sequence.

第一步，不断感知你的受众或客户的氛围和情绪。

Step one, constantly read the vibes of your audience or your customers.

向他们征求对产品的反馈，收集他们对新功能的想法，关注对他们来说最重要的事情。

Ask for their feedback on your product, collect their ideas for new features, keep an eye on what's most important to them.

然后第二步，以优先考虑受众氛围和情绪的方式来构建你的公司和产品。

Then step two, build your company and your product in a way that prioritizes your audience's vibes.

当人们在使用产品时遇到问题，就在社交媒体上回复他们。

When people have issues with the product, reply to them on social.

你应该考虑专注于客户或受众最常要求的功能或改进。

You should think about focusing on features or improvements that are most requested from your customers or your audience.

然后第三步，在了解了大家的感受并据此进行建设之后，就是分享所有更新，无论是新功能、产品改进还是修复漏洞，都要告诉你的客户或潜在客户。

And then step three, after you've gotten a sense of the vibes and then you've built according to the vibes, is sharing all updates, whether it's new features, product improvements, or bug fixes with your customers or prospective customers.

公开分享你业务的更新是一个多用途的步骤。

Publicly sharing updates on your business is a multipurpose step.

这表明你一直在倾听客户的声音。

It shows that you're constantly listening to your customer.

这会营造一种持续前进的感觉，让人觉得你快速交付并迭代你的业务。

It creates this feeling of constant momentum that you ship and iterate your business quickly.

同时，它还能教育你的受众和客户如何以新的方式使用产品，这不仅能提高现有客户的留存率，还能推动潜在客户最终完成转化。

And it educates your audience and customers on new ways to use the product, which can either drive retention for existing customers, but also get prospective customers across the finish line to finally convert.

Levels 在 Vibe 营销方面做得非常出色。

Levels is exceptional at Vibe marketing.

而且我觉得现在最优秀的创始人营销者，他们也都是很棒的Vibe营销者。

And when I think about the best founder marketers today, they're also all great Vibe marketers.

埃隆用Vibe营销来推广SpaceX的发射和产品改进。

Elon, Vibe market SpaceX launches and product improvements.

Shopify的Harley用Vibe营销来推广Shopify的产品路线图。

Harley from Shopify, Vibe market Shopify's product roadmap.

Tyler Dink对Beehive也是这么做的。

And Tyler Dink does the same thing with Beehive.

总结一下Vibe营销，我觉得随着时间推移它会变得越来越重要，因为顾客比以往任何时候都更期待速度和即时性，而且AI让企业能把从顾客想法到想法实现的距离缩短到前所未有的接近零。

To put a bow on Vibe marketing, I think it only gets more important as time goes on, given customers expect speed and immediacy more than ever before, and as AI gives businesses the ability to shorten the distance between customer idea and idea being implemented as close to zero as it's ever been.

现在我想最后聊聊网上对这个游戏的愤怒，以及这能教给我们什么关于商业和人们思考方式的东西。

Now I just wanna finish by talking about some of the Internet rage towards the game and what that can teach us about business and also how people think.

我读并关注了所有与这个业务和Pieter的飞行游戏项目相关的内容，我发现了人们提出的三个主要批评。

I've read and followed everything related to this business and Pieter's flying game project, and I've identified three major critiques that people have.

那我们就一个一个来看吧。

So let's go through each of them.

第一，这是个很烂的游戏。

Number one, it is a horrible game.

我猜如果你问Levels，他会说这是一个业余的简单游戏，是某个有点子的人做的，而不是一个想打造3A大作的专业游戏开发者。

My guess is if you asked levels, he would say this is a simple amateur game built by someone who just had an idea, and it's not a killer game developer who was trying to build a triple a game.

所以没人会幻想这个游戏设计得多好或者做得多么精良，这反而引出了一个更有趣的问题：尽管游戏很简单，为什么它却这么成功？

So there's no delusion that the game isn't unbelievably designed or built, which to me begs a far more interesting question, which is in spite of the game being very simple, why is it doing so well?

显而易见的答案是Levels的粉丝基础，但我觉得不那么明显的答案是他构建游戏的方式。

Now the obvious answer is levels' distribution, but I think the less obvious answer is the way in which he is building the game.

Levels做这个飞行游戏的方式，就像它是一个由互联网上成千上万人共同开发的开源项目，而他只是首席产品经理，收集所有请求，按重要性和工作量排序，然后把这些想法实现到游戏里。

The way that Levels is building his flying game is as if it is an open source game built by thousands of people on the Internet, and he is simply the lead product manager, taking in all requests, prioritizing them by importance and effort, and then implementing them into the game.

说到底，重点不在于这是个烂游戏。

All of this to say the story here isn't about it being a horrible game.

重点在于Levels是如何和观众一起构建这个游戏的，以及这对未来游戏行业，尤其是对有才华的游戏设计师意味着什么。

It's about the way in which Levels is building the game with his audience and what it means for gaming moving forward, especially for talented game designers.

第二个批评是，Levels之所以能成功，只是因为他有粉丝基础。

The second critique, levels only succeeded with this because he has an audience.

我觉得人们这么说挺好笑的，好像这是什么坏事一样。

I find it hilarious when people say this as if it's a bad thing.

就算这是真的，Levels 只是因为有了观众才成功。

Let's just say this is true, that levels only succeeded because he has an audience.

对我来说，这反而更说明你应该努力去建立自己的观众群，而不是去批评那些已经为此付出努力的人。

To me, that is just further validation that you should feel motivated to build an audience versus critique someone that has put in the work to build one for themselves.

我也觉得 Levels 很清楚自己观众的力量，以及这对建立生意意味着什么。

I also think Levels is acutely aware of the power of his audience and what it means for building a business.

观众是你最好的第一个营销渠道。

An audience is your best first marketing channel.

但要想让生意长久，你需要一个能从根本上解决痛点问题的好产品，而且最终你还需要找到自己之外的有效的营销渠道。

But for a business to have staying power, you need a great product that solves a painful problem in a fundamentally different way, and you need to find effective marketing channels outside of your own eventually.

Epic Gardening 的 Kevin Espiritu 对此总是有个最好的比喻，那就是带着观众创业就像发射火箭。

Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening always had the best analogy for this, which is that launching a business with an audience is like launching a rocket ship.

火箭发射时，有助推器加速它升入太空。

When a rocket launches, it has boosters that accelerate its ascent into outer space.

这就是你自带的那批观众。

This is your built in audience.

一旦火箭达到某个轨道，助推器就会脱落，不再需要，也不再有用。

Once the rocket reaches a certain trajectory, your boosters break off and are no longer needed or valuable.

火箭剩下的旅程就靠它自身的稳定性和内部推进器了。

The rest of the rocket's journey is dependent on its own stability and its internal boosters.

这正是有初始分发渠道的生意应该运作的方式。

This is exactly how a business that has initial distribution should work.

第三个也是最后一个批评，说在游戏里卖东西是骗人的。

The third and final critique, selling in game planes is scammy.

这个说法简直太荒谬了。

This one is just ridiculous.

游戏内购其实就是全球最大的游戏赚取绝大部分收入的方式，我觉得这正好说明了大家对Levels和他现在这个项目的批评背后更大的问题，Greg Eisenberg对此描述得非常好。

In game purchases are literally how the biggest games in the world make the vast majority of their money, which I think speaks to a bigger point about everyone's critique of levels and his current project, which Greg Eisenberg described very well.

Greg说，很多人就是看不得别人成功。

Greg said, so many people are feeling bad that someone else is winning.

这种受害者心态现在在科技圈到处都是。

This victim mentality is everywhere in tech now.

人们看到别人成功，不是受到激励，而是立刻找理由去否定它。

Instead of being inspired by someone else's success, people immediately look for a reason to dismiss it.

他有我没有的优势。

He had advantages I don't have.

或者，对，如果我是上莱克斯·弗里德曼的节目，我的游戏也会火。

Or, yeah, if I was on Lex Friedman, my game would go viral too.

或者时机刚好。

Or the timing was perfect.

或者他本来就出名。

Or he's already famous.

我觉得内心深处，是因为在AI时代，当你看到有人用大家都能用的工具成功了，你不得不问自己，为什么不是我？

Deep down, I think it's because in an AI world, when you see someone succeed with tools everyone has access to, you're forced to ask yourself, why wasn't that me?

事实是，本来可以是你，现在也仍然可以。

The truth, it could have been, and it still can be.

工具只会越来越好。

The tools are only getting better.

门槛每天都在降低。

The barriers are falling daily.

机会就在那里。

The opportunity is there.

不过，我理解。

But hey, I get it.

解释别人为什么成功不算数，比你自己动手做出点什么要容易得多。

It's easier to explain why someone else's success doesn't count than to ship something yourself.

我完全同意格雷格的说法。

And I couldn't agree more with Greg.

我们生活的这个时代，创作和执行的成本一天比一天接近零，这意味着，你或我为什么还没开始做那些我们一直想做的东西，借口比以往任何时候都少。

We live in an age where the cost of building and executing gets closer to zero with each passing day, which means that there are fewer excuses than ever before for why you or I didn't build that thing that we have been thinking about starting for a long period of time.

互联网比以往任何时候都更会奖励那些有好点子、行动力强、对有效的实验加倍投入、把失败的实验放到一边、并建立起一个信任自己的受众群体——这个群体就是他们最好的第一营销渠道——的人。

More than ever before, the Internet will reward people who have great ideas, who bias to action, who triple down on experiments that work, who kick failed experiments to side, and who build a trusted audience that acts as their first best marketing channel.

今天的《创始人日志》就到这里。

That is it for today's Founder's Journal.

老样子，感谢大家收听本期播客，如果还没订阅的话，记得订阅一下。

As always, thank you for listening to the pod, and make sure to subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so.

最后，给我发封邮件到alex@storyarb.com，介绍一下你自己，告诉我你希望《创始人日志》以后带来什么内容。

Finally, shoot me an email to alex@storyarb.com to introduce yourself and let me know what you'd like to see from Founder's Journal moving forward.

我很喜欢了解我的听众，所以你发消息给我的话，我一定会回复。

I love getting to know my listeners, so I will 100% reply to you if you send me a note.

再说一遍，邮箱是alex@storyarb.com。

Again, that is Alex@storyarb.com.

再次感谢，我们下期见。

Thanks again, and I'll catch you next episode.