#365 尼克·斯利普的信件：游牧投资合伙企业致合伙人的完整信件合集

Costco 是我们能找到的最典型的例子——把规模效率带来的好处分享出去。

Costco is the best example we can find of one of them: scale efficiencies shared.

大多数公司追求规模效率，但很少有人愿意分享。

Most companies pursue scale efficiencies few share them.

真正让这个模式如此强大的，正是这种分享。

It's the sharing that makes the model so powerful.

这家公司通过回馈客户实现增长。

The company grows by giving back.

这就是为什么很难跟 Costco 竞争的原因。

That is why competing with Costco is so hard to do.

这家公司并不只盯着眼前的成绩和表现。

The firm is not interested in today's static assessment and performance.

它是在为长期成功提升可能性而经营业务。

It is managing the business as to raise the probability of long term success.

当 Costco 不断把成本节约的好处回馈给消费者时，它其实是在降低失败的概率。

When Costco continues to recycle cost savings to the consumer, it is lowering the probability of failure.

在我念下一句话之前，你要记住，他写这段话的时候是2004年。

And before I read this next sentence to you, remember it is 2004 when he is writing this.

亚马逊可能也在走同样的路。

Amazon.com may be following this path as well.

于是他开始试着解释清楚。

And so then he tries to reconcile.

这个商业模式对我们来说是说得通的。

Like, this business model makes sense to us.

对顾客来说这简直太棒了，可为什么股价会被低估呢？

This is phenomenal if you're a customer, but why are the shares mispriced?

为什么这么便宜？

Why is this so cheap?

所以他列出了当时人们对好市多的一些批评意见。

And so he lists what some criticisms that Costco gets at the time.

这家公司的利润率很低。

The company has low margins.

有意思的是，他这时候同时提到了好市多和亚马逊，别忘了杰夫·贝佐斯有一句特别有名的话：你的利润率就是我的机会。

And it's funny that he's mentioning both Costco and Amazon at this time, because remember, one of Jeff Bezos' most famous quotes is that your margin is my opportunity.

所以人们会说，我们不想买这只股票，因为好市多的利润率太低了。

So people are like, well, we don't want to buy the stock because Costco has low margins.

尼克·斯利普说，没错，但这正是关键所在。

And Nick Sleep says true, but that's the point.

这家公司现在选择推迟盈利，为的是延长品牌的生命期。

The firm is deferring profits today in order to extend the life of the franchise.

当他继续分析好市多时，他提出了一个有趣的问题。

And so as he continues to analyze Costco, he says there s an interesting question.

什么样的公司特质，能让它成为全世界最有价值的企业？

What characteristics could one bestow on a company that would make it the most valuable in the world?

它应该是什么样子的？

What would it look like?

他说，这样的企业会拥有一个规模庞大的市场，带来巨大的体量。

And he says such a firm would have a huge marketplace that would offer size.

它们会拥有很高的进入壁垒，带来持久性，同时资本投入极低，从而产生充沛的自由现金流。

They would have high barriers to entry, which would offer longevity, and very low levels of capital employed, which would offer free cash flow.

Costco 拥有其中一些特质。

Costco has some of these attributes.

它比同行更轻资产，但还不是最轻的。

It is also more asset light than its peers, but it's not the lightest of them all.

要找最轻的，还得看互联网公司。

For that, one must turn to the Internet.

在读下一句之前，我先停一下，因为我敢保证，你绝对猜不到下一句是什么。

I'm going to pause here before I read the next sentence because I promise you, you're not gonna be able to guess what the next sentence is.

我们刚讲完 Costco 的优势。

We just got going through the benefits of Costco.

他们提到了亚马逊。

They mentioned Amazon.

他们说能理解的商业模式没几个，而这个就是其中之一。

They mentioned they can only understand a few business models, and this is one of them.

Costco确实不错，但你想想，要是把Costco搬到网上会怎么样？

Costco is great, but imagine if you had Costco on the internet.

考虑到这些因素，我们接下来要转向一个有点意外的方向。

And given all that, we take this strange turn right here.

因为他们说，要找那种模式，你就得看互联网。

Because they said, well, for that one, you gotta turn to the Internet.

所以，在我们看来，像eBay这样的公司可能是世界上最有价值的公司。

So, and in our opinion, a business such as eBay could be the most valuable in the world.

当然，Costco也不是完美的。

So no, Costco is not perfect.

也许我们也该考虑持有eBay。

Perhaps we should own eBay as well.

不。

No.

我刚才写的是下一页的内容。

I I wrote on the this is the next page.

所以这些内容你可以免费在线阅读。

So you can read these for free online.

如果你像我一样喜欢看纸质材料，也可以打印出来。

And I'd if you like reading physical things like I do, you can print them out.

我现在看到第52页了。

So I'm on page 52.

在第51页，他们谈到了好市多的好处。

On 51, on page 51, they're talking about, you know, the benefits of Costco.

他们提到，迈克尔·戴尔也采用了这种模式，通过控制成本，把规模优势回馈给购买他电脑的顾客，而亚马逊可能也在走同样的路。

They talk that the fact that Michael Dell is also using this model by keeping costs low and passing back scale benefits to the buyer of his PCs, and that amazon.com might be following this path as well.

到了第52页，他们说，这听起来不错，但如果这一切发生在互联网上呢？

On page 52, it's like, well, would be great, but what if it was on the internet?

所以，也许答案就是eBay。

So maybe it's eBay.

我在页边用巨大的字写着：答案在上一页。

And I wrote in giant letters in the margin, the answer was on the previous page.

答案就是亚马逊。

The answer is Amazon.

他们自己还没意识到而已。

They just don't know it yet.

现在他们终于要明白了。

Now they will arrive at that.

我觉得他们赚的那两百亿里，大部分应该都是亚马逊贡献的，如果我没记错的话。

I think that the majority of that $2,000,000,000 that they made, I think the single company that contributed most of that, if I'm not mistaken, is Amazon.

想想这些话写出来的时候，世界是什么样子，总是很有帮助的。

And it is always helpful to think about what was going on when these words were written.

所以我特意去查了当年的情况，毕竟你读早期亚马逊的故事，也不可能把每本书都翻遍。

So if you go, I went and looked up like what it'd be, because you read about early days of Amazon, you never read every single book I can find.

很长一段时间里，我都觉得贝佐斯根本斗不过eBay。

And for the longest time, thought that Bezos has no chance against eBay.

想想看，到2004年底，当尼克·斯利普发现这个秘密时，亚马逊的市值已经高达180亿美元。

And think about this, in the end of two thousand and four, the market cap of Amazon, when Nick Sleep is discovering this earned secret was $18,000,000,000.18000000000.

同一时期，eBay的市值是770亿美元。

The market cap in that same time for eBay was 77,000,000,000.

在今天这个年代，听起来很荒谬，但回到2000年初，那时候到处都在说亚马逊根本不可能赢过eBay。

In today's world we're living in, that sounds silly, but if you go back to the early 2000s, there was a ton of stuff written on the fact that Amazon stands no chance against eBay.

接下来的一页，他总结了自己对好市多的看法。

And so on the next page, he gives us his summary of thoughts on Costco.

我们认为，好市多是一家成本控制严格、思维诚实、产品品质卓越、持续运转的公司，而且当前价格还低于其真实价值。

In our judgment, Costco is a cost disciplined, intellectually honest, high product integrity, perpetual motion machine trading at a discount to value.

我觉得我们肯定会做得不错。

I think we will do quite well.

你的经理在投资好市多时，第一个错误就是买得太少了。

Your manager has already made his first mistake in investing in Costco from not buying enough.

在他合伙信的末尾，尼克·斯利普写了一段非常精彩的话。

Towards the end of his partnership letters, Nick Sleep writes something that's excellent.

那些今天有效的投资理念，过去也有效，未来也必将成就新的商业帝国。

The fact that, you know, these ideas that work today, they worked in the past, and they will build empires in the future too.

所以我才读了这十一万字。

That is why I read 110,000 of these words.

这就是我在和你们交流时，特意选择聚焦的内容。

This is what I'm choosing to focus on as I speak to you.

让我真正对尼克·斯利普产生兴趣的，不是他的投资业绩，而是他在下面这段话里提出的观察。

The one, the first thing that got me really interested in Nick Sleep is not his investment performance, it's his observation that he lays out in the following quote.

他说，最优秀的投资者根本算不上投资者。

He says, The best investors aren't investors at all.

他们其实是从未套现的创业者。

They're entrepreneurs who never sold.

既然尼克是个投资者，他就在琢磨：为什么这些创业者选择不卖？

And since Nick is an investor, he's trying to learn from that, from learning that why these entrepreneurs not sell.

他认为，投资者能犯的最大错误，就是卖掉一只后来涨了十倍的股票，而不是持有了破产的公司。

He says the biggest mistake an investor can make is to sell a stock that goes on to rise tenfold, not from owning something into bankruptcy.

但大家普遍都这么想，至少从客户常问的问题来看就是这样。

But that's what everyone thinks, at least judging by the questions that we get from our clients.

我们收到的提问更多是关于持有西北航空的股票，而不是今年早些时候卖掉了苹果。

We got questions about our holding in Northwest Airlines rather than the sale of Apple earlier this year.

但其实，卖掉苹果给我们造成的损失更大。

But selling Apple has cost us more.

所以，这再次印证了尼克所说的——这件事有多难。

So again, that speaks to Nick's own point about how difficult this was.

当他提到上世纪五十年代卖掉IBM、七十年代卖掉沃尔玛的公司时，并不是在说：‘瞧这些傻子。’

When he's talking about that firm that sells IBM in the 50s and Walmart in the 70s, he's not like, Hey, look at these idiots.

他们太蠢了。

They're so stupid.

他的意思是，纵观历史，这种错误一再重复发生。

He's making the point that that mistake is repeated over and over and over again when you look through history.

觉得自己不会犯同样的错，这种想法未免太自大了。

It's arrogant to think that you're not capable of making the same mistake.

那我们该怎么避免呢？

So how do we avoid that?

我觉得我们稍后会聊这个，但万一我忘了，有个观点是，最优秀的投资者其实根本不是投资者。

And I think we'll talk about this later, but just in case I forget, the idea that the best investors aren't investors at all.

他们是那些从未套现的创业者。

They're entrepreneurs who never sold.

这跟创业者对自己所创造的事业那份深厚的感情有关。

That has to do with the love that an entrepreneur feels for the business that they're making, that they're creating.

山姆·沃尔顿从不会盯着沃尔玛的股票，想着怎么让银行账户里的钱最大化。

Sam Walton is not looking at his stock in Walmart and maximizing for the best return on the most dollars in his bank account.

他一心一意要打造一个能长期服务他人的伟大企业。

He was focusing on building something great that served other people over a very long period of time.

换句话说，有时候，最明智的财务决策，根本就不是一个财务决策。

In other words, sometimes it turns out that the best financial decision is not a financial decision at all.

到了2006年，他们终于意识到，天啊，这根本不是eBay。

Now we get to 2006 and they start to realize, Oh my god, it's not eBay.

他并没有直接这么说。

He doesn't say that.

这不是eBay，这是亚马逊。

It's not eBay, it's Amazon.

不过在他深入分析亚马逊之前，我觉得他提到了一个非常有趣、相关的观点。

Before he gets into analyzing Amazon though, I think he hits on something that's very fascinating that is related.

这个观点出现在他谈亚马逊之前的那一页，但我认为它和他对亚马逊的思考方式密切相关。

It's on the page before he gets into Amazon, but I think it's related to how he thinks about Amazon.

他说，我们在教经济学时，有个特别奇怪的地方。

And he's like, you know, this is a really weird thing in how we teach economics.

他指出，经济学研究的主流方法有一个盲点：总是基于短期观察，仿佛因果关系是叠加在一起的。

He says there's a blind spot as the overwhelming methodology for research and economics has been to take observations over a short period of time, as if cause and effect sit on top of each other.

记住这句话，等我们看到杰夫·贝佐斯的股东信时，你会发现尼克·斯利普的合伙信里大量引用了它。

Remember that line for when we get to Jeff Bezos' own shareholder letters, are quoted heavily in Nick Sleep's partnership letters.

明白吗？

Okay?

这真是个很特别的现象。

It's this really weird thing.

我们默认观察都是在短时间内完成的，好像因果关系是叠在一起的。

We're assuming that, you know, observations happen over a short period of time as if cause and effect sit on top of each other.

而这其实都指向他核心的观点：拥有更长远的视角，能带来巨大的优势。

And really this all ties to his main point of why having a longer a longer term view can be just a massive advantage.

他指出，当时好市多和亚马逊都因为把规模带来的效率红利大量让利给消费者，而被资本市场惩罚。

And he makes the point that both Costco and Amazon at this time, they're penalized by the public markets because they're giving so much of their scale efficiencies back to the consumer.

于是他问：那我们该怎么看待这个问题呢？

And so he goes, Okay, well how should we think about this?

他把这种做法叫做‘让利定价’。

He calls them price givebacks.

杰夫·贝佐斯在去年的年报里说过：我们决定，只要效率和规模允许，就持续大幅降低顾客的价格。

Here's what Jeff Bezos had to say in his last year's annual report: We have made a decision to continuously and significantly lower prices customers year after year as our efficiency and scale make it possible.

这是一个非常重要的决策，无法用数学模型来推导。

This is an example of a very important decision that cannot be made in a math based way.

当我们降价时，其实是在违背常理——因为数学模型总是说，聪明的做法是提价。

When we lower prices we go against the math, which always says that the smart move is to raise prices.

我们有大量的数据关于价格弹性。

We have significant data related to price elasticity.

我们可以比较准确地预测，价格降低一定百分比，会带来销量相应比例的上升。

With fair accuracy, we can predict that a price reduction of a certain percentage will result in an increase in units sold of a certain percentage.

在短期内，销量的增长几乎从来都不足以弥补价格的下降。

With rare exceptions, the volume increase in the short term is never enough to pay for the price decrease.

不过，我们对价格弹性的量化理解只限于短期。

However, our quantitative understanding of elasticity is short term.

我们可以估算这次降价在本周或本季度会带来什么影响，但没法预测持续降价五年、十年后对公司整体会产生什么后果。

We can estimate what a price reduction will do this week in this quarter, but we cannot estimate the effect that consistently lowering prices will have on our business over five or ten years.

这正是尼克之前说的，学者和经济学家常犯的错误：他们以为因果关系是瞬间叠加的。

It's exactly what Nick was saying on the other the mistake that academics and economics make: they act like cause and effect sit on top of each other.

杰夫的意思是，没错，你确实能算出这次降价本周或本季度会怎样，但你没法说它五年、十年后会对业务产生什么影响。

Jeff is saying, Yeah, okay, you can quantitatively understanding what this price reduction will do this week or this quarter, But you can't say what effect it'll have on the business for five or ten years.

这就是为什么我特别喜欢这句话，来描述创始人的真正角色：创始人是公司灵魂的守护者。

This is why one of my favorite lines about what the role of the founder actually is: The founder is the guardian of the company's soul.

这就是一个例子：我们相信，持续把效率提升和规模经济的好处以更低价格的形式让给客户，能形成一个良性循环，长期来看会带来远超以往的自由现金流，也让亚马逊变得更有价值。

This is an example of that: Our judgment is that relentlessly returning efficiency improvements and scale economies to customers in the form of lower prices create a virtuous cycle that leads over the long term to a much larger dollar amount of free cash flow, and thereby to a much more valuable Amazon.

我们在免费超级省运和亚马逊Prime上也做过类似的判断——这两项服务短期成本很高，但我们认为，从长远看它们至关重要且价值巨大。

We have made similar judgments around free Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime, both of which are expensive in the short term and, we believe, important and valuable in the long term.

杰夫写这段话的时间，以及尼克评论这段话的时间，非常关键。

The timing in which Jeff is writing this, and which Nick is commenting on it, is really important.

那时候，几乎没人看好亚马逊。

This is a time when few people are buying Amazon.

尼克和扎克拥有了他们共同的洞察。

Nick and Zak have their earned secret.

他们已经合作了五年多。

They are half a decade into their partnership.

所以尼克写道：这其实就是我们多年前在分析好市多时详细讨论过的规模与效率共享模式，如今已被好市多、戴尔、亚马逊和伯克希尔这些公司广泛应用，而好市多正是他的重仓股。

And so Nick writes, This is a summary of the scale efficiency shared model that we dealt with in detail in our analysis of Costco years before, and is deployed by companies which have now come to dominate Nomad, which is his holding in Costco, Dell, Amazon, and Berkshire.

如果股价只由那些盯着下一个数据点的人决定，那他们就不可能同时关注长期价值。

If the share price is being set by those with an eye on the next data point, then they can't also be looking out for the long term value.

很少有交易员会反对贝佐斯创造价值的方式，但他们觉得这些成效还不会马上体现在数字上。

There are few traders that disagree with Bezos' value creation process, but they don't think it'll show up in the numbers just yet.

交易员们有很多小点子，而我们只有一个大主意。

The traders have many small ideas, and we have one big idea.

祝他们好运。

Good luck to them.

这并不是一个纯粹靠数学推导的公式，投资支出也未必总能见效。

It is not strictly a math based equation and there's no guarantee that investment spending will always work.

他还再次引用贝佐斯的话：基于数学的决策容易达成共识，而基于判断的决策则必然引发争议，至少在付诸实践并得到验证之前是这样。

And he quotes Bezos again: Math based decisions command wide agreement, whereas judgment based decisions are rightly debated and often controversial, at least until put into practice and demonstrated.

任何不愿承受争议的机构，都只能局限于做第一类决策。

Any institution unwilling to endure controversy must limit itself to decisions of the first type.

在我们看来，这么做不仅会减少争议，更会严重限制创新和长期价值的创造。

In our view, doing so would not only limit controversy, it would also significantly limit innovation and long term value creation.

贝佐斯的这段话就说到这里。

That is the end of Bezos' quote.

这是尼克的简短回应：没错。

This is Nick's one word response: Amen.

接下来他说：我觉得贝索斯会是个出色的基金经理，而这正是关键所在。

And the next sentence he says: I think Bezos would run a good investment fund, but that is the point.

好的投资和好的商业决策本质上是一回事。

Good investing and good business decisions are synonymous.

在2007年的一封致合伙人的信中，他谈到了亚马逊如何能变得更好。

And so in one of the 2,007 partnership letters, he talks about how and why Amazon can get even better.

请注意，第二年他还不知道，但就在那一年，你就能以35美元的价格买到亚马逊股票。

Now keep in mind, the following year he doesn't know this yet the following year, you're going be able to buy Amazon stock for $35 Okay?

所以他提出一个问题：我们怎么知道一家公司能从小小的老鼠成长为庞大的大象？

So he's asking the question, how do we know that a business will actually grow from a mouse to an elephant?

他指出了与好市多在现实中具备的相同特质，而这些特质还能通过互联网得到极大增强。

And he identifies the same traits that in the physical world that Costco has, and then it can be super powered by the internet.

所以，有几件事非常重要。

So, you know, several things are important.

一家公司应该能够靠自身盈利来支持增长。

A business ought to be able to self fund its own growth.

其次，进入门槛应该随着规模扩大而提高。

Second, barriers to entry should increase with size.

这样，公司随着发展，护城河也会越来越宽。

That way the company's moat is widened as the firm grows.

亚马逊相比好市多最大的优势在于，互联网世界里的幂律效应非常显著。

And then the giant advantage that Amazon has over Costco is that on the internet, power law is very high.

这意味着像亚马逊这样的企业，有机会比实体行业的同类公司成长得更快、规模更大、利润更高，更何况它还是由一位以客户为中心的创始人领导的。

And this implies that businesses like Amazon have a shot at being far bigger, quicker, and more profitable than their physical world equivalents, and the fact that it's led by a customer centric founder.

这种组合让我们觉得，我们可能正面对一只能长成大象的老鼠。

This combination makes us think that we may have a mouse that can turn into an elephant.

对于那些说亚马逊已经够大的人，我们想问两个问题：你觉得电子商务在未来会占到美国零售总额的多少？

To those who argue that Amazon is large already, we ask you two questions: What do you think e commerce will be as a proportion of U.

美国零售总额的多少？

S.

十年后的零售业会是什么样子？

Retailing in ten years time?

那去年的情况你觉得如何？

And what do you think it was last year?

所以第二个问题的答案是：2006年，所有零售额中有3.1%是在线完成的。

So the answer to that second question is: 3.1% of all retail sales happened online in the year 2006.

于是他又回到了这个尚未解决的问题上。

And so then he goes back to this unresolved problem.

别人都在分散投资，这在我们看来没什么道理。

It's like everybody else is diversified, that doesn't make a lot of sense to us.

我们该怎么看待这个问题？

How should we be thinking about this?

这真的很难搞。

This is very difficult.

自从他们买了亚马逊之后，股价就涨了两倍。

And so since they had bought Amazon, it went up twice.

所以股价翻倍之后，扎克和我很容易就会觉得赢了，击个掌，然后把亚马逊的股票卖了。

So it said after the doubling of the share price, it'd be easy for Zak and me to claim victory, high five, and sell our shares in Amazon.

在之前的《游牧者》信件里，我们一直认为，投资者最大的错误就是在沃尔玛或微软早期成长阶段就把股票卖了。

In previous Nomad letters, we have argued that the biggest error an investor can make is the sale of Walmart or Microsoft in the early stages of the company's growth.

我们不禁想，今天卖掉亚马逊，是不是就像1980年卖掉沃尔玛那样犯了同样的错误？

We wonder, would selling Amazon today be the equivalent mistake of selling Walmart in 1980?

于是他提到，不如反过来想。

And so he talks about, let's invert.

让我们倒过来构建投资组合。

Let's invert the way to construct a portfolio.

另一种和别人不一样的构建方式，就是从100%观望开始，再逐步减少。

The other way to construct a portfolio that's different from how other people do it is to invert and start at 100% waiting and work down.

这正是创业者的做法。

This is what founders do.

他其实没明说，但意思很清楚：如果你像创业者那样投资，会怎么样？

He's really saying, without saying, what if you invested like founders invest?

对吧？

Right?

完全是百分之百。

It's a 100%.

山姆·沃尔顿把全部身家都投在了自己的公司里。

Sam Walton, a 100% of his net worth was in his company.

他说，我们并不是建议把所有资金都押在亚马逊上。

And he says, now we are not advocating all the fund in Amazon.

至少现在还不行。

Well, just not yet, at least.

最疯狂的是这一点。

And here's the crazy thing.

如果你已经把钱投进去了，那么这反而是他们最明智的决定。

That would have been their best performing decision, assuming you're gonna put all your money into what you've already invested in.

他们当时当然不知道，但最成功的做法，其实就是这么干。

They didn't know it then, obviously, but they the best performing decision would have to do just that.

把全部资金都投到亚马逊。

Allocate the entire fund to Amazon.

他讲了一个特别精彩的故事，解释为什么这事儿这么难，简直太逗了。

And he tells a wonderful story why this is so difficult, and this is hilarious.

他提到，最近有报道称，石油不是在地球偏远角落发现的，而是在埃克森公司位于德克萨斯州欧文的总部地下发现的，而且还不是埃克森自己发现的。

He says, It was recently reported that oil had been found not in the far flung reaches of the globe, but under the headquarters of Exxon in Irving, Texas, and not by Exxon.

有时候，你找的东西其实就在你眼前。

Sometimes what you are looking for is right in front of you.

连埃克森都会犯这种错，我们谁都可能。

If Exxon can make that mistake, we all can.

现在我们来到了2008年那场巨大的金融危机。

So now we're in the great financial crisis of two thousand and eight.

记得吗？尼克说过，历史上最伟大的投资演讲，根本不是讲投资的。

Remember, Nick said that the greatest speech on investment wasn't about investment.

讲的是人类判断失误的心理学。

It was about the psychology of human misjudgment.

他在说，大家都慌了神。

And he's talking about, you know, everybody's panicking.

觉得今年年底股价可能跌到百分之四十，甚至四十五？

Think they're going to wind up being down like 40% this year, 45% the at the end of the year?

但他早在事情发生前的信里就提到，这次他最多只跌了百分之二十。

And he says in the letters before this even happens, I think he's only down to 20% this time.

他说，虽然看起来不像，但我向你保证，现在正是当投资者最好的时机。

Goes, I know it doesn't seem like it, but I promise you this is the best possible time to be an investor.

他在关注亚马逊的基本面。

And he's looking at the underlying strength of Amazon.

这和股价完全没关系，他简直不敢相信。

It's completely uncorrelated to stock price, and he cannot believe it.

接下来这一部分写了好几十页。

This next section goes over many, many pages.

这是我读过他所有信件里最喜爱的部分之一。

It's one of my favorite parts of his entire letters.

所以他要用亚马逊作为例子说明，顾客和所有人一样，会对激励做出反应，而亚马逊将规模带来的好处分享给客户，会让它的增长空间远超预期。

And so he's about to make the point using Amazon as an example that, hey, customers respond to incentives, like all people do, and Amazon's sharing of these benefits of its scale will make them grow much farther from here.

你甚至能在2008年这场金融危机最严重的时候，看到亚马逊的实际表现有多强。

And you can see it with how they're actually performing in the middle of this great financial crisis that's happening in 2008.

他把亚马逊的韧性，和普通零售商的疲软做了对比。

And so he's comparing Amazon's strength with the lack of strength that normal retailers have.

他管那些零售商叫‘高低价’模式。

So he calls them high low.

就是那种靠大幅打折吸引顾客进店，拿亏本商品当诱饵，指望你进店后买点利润更高的东西的策略。

Know, people that say, Hey, you know, they get you in the door by essentially heavily discounting, having like a loss leader in the hopes that once you're in the store, you're going to buy something that they have a higher margin on.

所以他把这类公司称为‘主街同行’。

So he's going to call them high street peers.

明白吗？

Okay?

亚马逊的这些主街同行，就算把产品定价压到刚好保本，也根本没法在价格或利润上跟亚马逊竞争。

Amazon's high street peers could price their products at net income breakeven and still not undercut Amazon's prices or profitability.

对这些传统零售商来说，游戏已经结束了。

For these high street competitors, the game is over.

他写这篇文章的时候是2008年，人人都在恐慌。

He's writing this in 2008 when everybody's panicking.

尼克非常理性，看得异常透彻。

Nick is thinking very rationally and seeing things unbelievably clearly.

顾客会被持续低价和便利的吸引力吸引，转而支持更高效的竞争对手，导致这些传统零售商收入流失。

They will leak revenues to more efficient rivals as customers respond to the incentives of consistently low prices and convenience.

规模经济在经济低迷时同样有效，甚至更明显。

Scale economics works well in bad economic times as well as good.

今年圣诞节前最繁忙的一天，亚马逊的订单量比去年高出16%，而整个零售行业却下降了10%。

On the busiest day in the run up to Christmas this year in 2,008, order volumes at Amazon were 16% higher than the previous year compared to the overall retail industry, which are down 10%.

过去几个月，市场一直把它的股价压得低低的，仿佛它未来不会再增长，尽管它的增长前景堪称绝佳。

In the last few months, has been priced in the market as if it would not grow in the future, despite some of the best growth prospects we can imagine.

这种组合非常罕见。

That is a very rare combination.

这时候有个特别搞笑的例证，说明尼克说得对。

There's a hilarious illustration at this point that Nick's right.

规模经济在经济低迷时和繁荣时同样有效。

Scale economics works well in bad economic times as well as good.

这事发生在2008年。

This happened in 2008.

上世纪90年代初经济衰退时，沃尔顿被问到如何看待这场衰退，他说：我考虑过了，决定不参与。

Back when there was a recession in the early 1990s, Walton was asked about the recession that was happening, and he said, I've thought about it, and I've decided not to participate.

当亚马逊的订单量在半个世纪以来最严重的金融危机期间仍同比增长16%时，这其实就是杰夫·贝佐斯在说：我考虑过了，我不参与。

When you have order volumes at Amazon growing 16% year over year in one of the worst financial crises in half a century or whatever the timeframe was, that's Jeff Bezos saying, Yeah, I thought about it, I'm not going to participate.

在我们看来，人生中真正值得尊敬的事情寥寥无几。

In our opinion, just a few things in life are noble.

正因如此，诺马德的投资组合也只聚焦于少数几项。

And it is because just a few things are noble that Nomad has just a few investments.

多元化被当成一种保险，以防某个想法出错。

The Church of Diversification is seen as an insurance against any one idea being wrong.

我们认为，如果知识能创造价值，而真正能确定的事情又少之又少，那么逻辑上讲，持股越多，风险反而越大。

We would propose that if knowledge is a source of value add, and few things can be known for sure, then it logically follows that owning more stocks does not lower risk but raises it.

山姆·沃尔顿不是靠分散投资赚到钱的，比尔·盖茨、安德鲁·卡内基和约翰·D·洛克菲勒也不是。

Sam Walton did not make his money through diversifying his holdings, nor did Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, or John D.

洛克菲勒。

Rockefeller.

伟大的企业从来都不是这样建起来的。

Great businesses are not built that way.

这些人的投资组合几乎全部集中在一家公司，但他们自己也清楚这很冒险。

The portfolios of these men were more or less 100% in one company, and they did consider it risky.

再回头看看那句话。

Go back to that quote.

有史以来最出色的投资者，根本算不上投资者。

The best investors of all time are not investors at all.

他们是从未套现的创业者。

They're entrepreneurs who never sold.

所以他问了一个问题：为什么只有沃尔顿家族的创始成员，一路持有沃尔玛的股票？

And so he's asking the question, why is it that no one but the founding Walton family owned Walmart all the way through?

扎克和我听过一个故事，特别有意思，或许能帮我们说明这一点。

Zak and I were told a story which we enjoyed enormously, and might help illustrate this point.

上世纪70年代初，一家规模很大的成功基金管理公司复盘自己的投资组合，发现三十年前卖掉IBM股票是个重大疏漏。

In the early 1970s, a large successful fund management company analyzed its portfolio and discovered that their sale of IBM thirty years earlier had been a huge error of omission.

如果当年他们没卖，而是一直持有IBM的股票，光这一笔投资，现在价值就超过公司当时管理的全部资产。

If they had instead kept their IBM shares for the last thirty years, that stake alone would have been larger than the total funds under management.

他们一致同意要从这个错误中吸取教训，但和往常一样，回到办公桌后，又照常过日子，好像什么都没发生过。

They all agreed to learn from that particular mistake, and as so often happens, went back to their desks and got on with life before as if nothing had happened.

就在他们意识到这个错误的同时，他们还决定卖掉沃尔玛的股份——而三十年后，这笔股份的价值将超过他们当时管理的全部资产。

Around the same time that they realized their mistake, they also made the decision to sell their stake in Walmart, which thirty years later would be worth more than their then to be funds under management.

从错失的收益金额来看，这很可能是这家公司历史上最大的一次投资失误。

In terms of dollars of opportunity loss, it is likely to be the biggest single error that firm will make.

所以他在几页之后又强调了一点：你不能只盯着结果看。

And so then he makes a point a few pages later: You cannot just focus on the outputs.

如果你这么想，迟早会卖掉的。

If you do, you're going to sell.

你必须真正理解成功的根本动力。

You have to really understand the central engine of success.

你得深入理解这家企业的运作方式。

You have to understand that business deeply.

这就是为什么他说，真正能确定的事情其实少之又少。

This is why he says so few things can actually be known.

如果你只能搞懂几件事，那自然就得集中火力，下重注。

And if you can only know a few things well, then of course you need to be heavily concentrated and bet heavily.

有人可能会说，沃尔玛能连续四十年增长，得有太多条件刚好凑在一起。

It could be argued that lots of things had to go right for Walmart to grow for forty years.

这当然没错，但归根结底，真正关键的就那么几件简单的事。

That is certainly true, but at its heart, a very few simple things really mattered.

在我们看来，沃尔玛成功的根本动力，就在于一种极致的节俭文化——低成本、零浪费，把省下来的钱直接让利给顾客。

In our opinion, the central engine of success at Walmart was a thrift orientation so low cost, low waste, fueling growth with the savings shared with the customer.

这才是商业的深层真相。

That is the deep reality of the business.

如果你对投资感兴趣，不妨在这里停一停。

And so you could pause there if you're interested in investing.

想想看，现在谁在做这件事？

Say, Okay, so who's doing this now?

今天谁才是当年的沃尔玛？

Who today is the Walmart of the 1970s?

或者你可以问问自己：我该怎么把这用到自己的生意上，让现在的生意也能持续增长几十年？

Or you can ask yourself, Okay, how do I apply this to my own business so my business, the one I'm running today, can compound for decades?

他最后总结得特别精彩，因为他们研究沃尔玛、花大力气分析好市多，归根结底就是想问：亚马逊和沃尔玛，到底谁更像？

And he wraps this up beautifully because they're asking essentially the reason they're studying the Walmart and the reason they did all the work on Costco is they're like, is Amazon or Walmart?

我特别喜欢这一段，因为它直接点出了我们过去几周一直在聊的核心问题。

And I absolutely love this section because it really comes to what you and I've been talking about the past few weeks.

努力和机会成本。

Effort and opportunity costs.

芒格说，聪明人做决定，靠的是机会成本和投入精力。

Munger says that all wise people, the way wise people make decisions is through opportunity costs and then effort.

所以他说：过去十八个月，我和扎克翻遍了股市，读了一千份年报，走访并访谈了三百家公司。

So it says: When Zak and I trawled through the stock market these last eighteen months, we read 1,000 annual reports and visited and interviewed 300 companies.

我们当时有四个主要选择：第一，

We had four main choices: one.

可以在现有持仓基础上加码；第二，

We can add to our existing holdings two.

投资新企业；第三，投资成长型公司；

We can invest in new businesses Three, we can invest in growth businesses.

或者第四，买一些廉价的烟蒂股。

Or four, we can invest in cigar butts.

我们绝大多数时候，都更倾向于继续持有现有的企业，而不是考虑其他选项。

Overwhelmingly, we have preferred our existing businesses to the alternatives.

我们并不是在说亚马逊会成为下一个沃尔玛。

We are not saying that Amazon is the next Walmart.

这方面还得时间来证明。

Time will tell on this front.

但我们还是得问一句：万一真是这样呢？

But we are asking the question, what if it is?

如果答案是肯定的，那答案就在下一页。

And if the answer is yes, then the answer is on the next page.

书中提到了投资者塞思·克拉曼，他写过《安全边际》，有人曾质疑巴菲特的投资纪录是否具有统计意义，毕竟他交易次数那么少，克拉曼回应说，巴菲特每天选择什么都不做，其实也是一种决策。

It talks about the investor Seth Klarman, who wrote Margin of Safety, was once challenged on whether Buffett s track record was statistically significant since he traded so little, to which Klarman answered that each day Buffett chose not to do anything was a decision taken too.

我读到这儿的时候，就觉得尼克一定在自己身上看到了影子。

When I read that, I assume that Nick is seeing himself in that story.

2008年那时候，他心想：我有好市多。

Right now in 2008, he's like, I got Costco.

我有伯克希尔。

I got Berkshire.

我有亚马逊。

I got Amazon.

关键是别把这事搞砸了。

The key is to not mess that up.

关键就是别打断这些真正能持续复利的机器，而这种不作为本身也是一种决定——每天都要做出的不作为的决定。

He the key is to not interrupt this these honest compounding machines, Which in itself is a decision, a daily decision not to do anything.

这 arguably 比采取行动更难，因为我觉得我们天生就倾向于做点什么，总想动手干点啥。

And arguably more difficult than to do something because I think we're naturally wired to do something, to take action.

正是这个想法让我想花时间去研究尼克·斯利普、扎克、露露和贝佐斯，还有其他所有人。

And what made me want to spend time studying Nick Sleep and Zak and Lulu and Bezos and everybody else because of this idea.

还记得露露被人问到的时候是怎么说的吗？

Remember what Lulu said when he was asked?

人家就问：‘你的投资方式跟那些没你成功的投资者有什么不同？’

He's just like, Well, how is your approach different than other investors that are less successful than you?

他回答说：‘我从不花时间去操心别的投资者在干嘛。’

He's like, I don't spend any time worrying about what other investors do.

我所有的时间都用来研究优秀的企业和优秀的行业。

I spend all my time studying great companies and studying great industries.

如果尼克和扎克当时还在担心其他投资者在做什么，他们就不会有今天的成绩。

If Nick and Zak were worried about what other investors were doing at this time, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.

他们根本不会去投资亚马逊。

They wouldn't have been buying Amazon.

也不会整天谈论好市多。

They wouldn't have been talking about Costco.

有一位匿名创始人，管理着诺马德旗下的一家被投公司，在一次私下会议中说了这么一段话。

And so there's this unnamed founder that is running one of Nomad's investments that said this in a private meeting.

我猜，这肯定说的是贝佐斯。

I'm I this has got to be Bezos.

他们没明说是贝佐斯，但你听这句话。

They don't say it's Bezos, but listen to this.

我觉得，咱们就假设这人真是贝佐斯吧。

And I think, again, let's let's just assume this is Bezos.

贝佐斯就是这样经营他的公司的。

Bezos is running his business this way.

我认为李录就是这样经营企业的，尼克和扎克也是这么做的。

I would argue that Li Lu ran his business this way, and that Nick and Zak were running their business this way.

如果你想成功——我们确实想——那就得准备好被人误解。

If you want to be successful, and we do, then you have to be willing to be misunderstood.

这可是过去一个月里反复提到的核心观点。

Come on, this has been a main theme in the last month.

去做那些大多数人觉得不靠谱的事。

And do things that do not seem sensible to most people.

比如，如果你作为员工每天早上进办公室，想的都是怎么超越行业里前三名，那这家公司根本不适合你。

For example, if you, the employees, come into the office in the morning thinking how are you going to beat one, two, and three in the industry, then our business is the wrong place for you.

我们从客户出发，倒推一切决策。

We start with the customer and work backwards.

他还说，与其拿别人的做法当标准，不如对现状保持一种近乎本能的不满，这种不满让我们不敢松懈，推动企业不断进步，不管竞争对手在做什么。

He continued that rather than set your standards by what others do, the business benefited from a divine discontent with the status quo, which kept us on our toes and the business improving irrespective of what the competition was doing.

换句话说，他的公司有自己的内在指南针，真正的方向始终指向对客户最有利的选择。

In other words, his company had an internal compass with True North pointing to what was right for the customer.

这听起来跟吉姆·西内加尔早期的做法很像。

Sounds a lot like what Jim Sinegal did at the beginning.

他说：‘我们这批设计师牛仔裤进价太划算了。’

Was like, Hey, we got such a good deal on these designer jeans.

多加十美元没人会发现的。

We can mark them up another $10 no one will notice.

但他却说：‘我不干，这违背了我的内心准则——永远为客户做对的事。’

And he's like, no, I'm not gonna do that because that violates my internal compass, which which points to always doing what's right for the customer.

吉姆·西内加尔的这种想法，深受他导师索尔·普赖斯的影响。

And Jim Sinegal's thinking on this was heavily, heavily influenced by his mentor, Soul Price.

我做过两期关于索尔·普赖斯的节目。

I've done two episodes on Soul Price.

如果你还没听，那是第304期。

If you haven't listened to them yet, it's episode three zero four.

索尔·普赖斯，这位培养了吉姆·西内加尔、山姆·沃尔顿、杰夫·贝佐斯和伯尼·马库斯的导师。

Soul Price, the founder who taught Jim Sinegal, Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos, Bernie Marcus.

这本书是根据他儿子写的传记改编的。

It's based on a biography written by his son.

他儿子听了那期节目后，给我发了一封非常暖心的邮件。

His son listened to that episode and sent me a very, very kind email.

所以，扎克和吉姆——不对，应该是尼克和扎克——去见吉姆时，他突然在说话中途停了下来。

So, Zak and Jim or Nick and Zak, rather, are meeting with Jim, and he says, Jim suddenly stopped in mid sentence.

他脸上一下子亮了起来。

His face lit up.

我得给你看看这个，他说。

I must show you this, he said.

他转身走进了文件柜里。

He disappeared into a filing cabinet.

他拿着一份索尔·普赖斯在1967年写的备忘录走了出来，还送了对方一份副本。

He emerged with a memo from 1967 written by Sol Price, and he gave him a copy.

他们把这份备忘录装裱起来，挂在了办公室的墙上。

They framed it and hung it on the office wall.

备忘录上写着：

The memo says this.

这是索尔·普赖斯说的话。

This is Sol Price.

吉姆觉得特别重要的一点是：虽然我们都关心利润，但绝不能以牺牲我们的理念为代价。

This is what Jim thought was super important: Although we are all interested in margin, it must never be done at the expense of our philosophy.

利润应该通过更聪明的采购、专注于销售我们想卖的好商品、提升运营效率、减少降价和加快周转来实现。

Margin must be obtained by better buying, emphasis on selling the right kinds of goods we want to sell, operating efficiencies, lower markdowns, greater turnover.

单纯提高零售价，还说自己依然有竞争力，这种做法很危险，很多公司都已经吃过亏了。

Increasing the retail prices and justifying it on the basis that we are still competitive could lead to a rude awakening as it has with so many.

我们该多想想怎么把东西便宜地送到顾客手上，而不是盯着顾客能承受多少价格。

Let us concentrate on how cheap we can bring things to the people, rather than how traffic how much the traffic will bear.

等比赛结束的时候，联邦百货依然会在那里。

And when the race is over, FedMart will be there.

这是尼克的点评。

This is Nick's commentary.

这是我们见过的对规模经济商业逻辑最精辟的总结。

That is the best summary of the business case for scale economics shared that we have come across.

四十三年后，好市多成了全球最有价值的同类零售商。

Forty three years later, Costco is the most valuable retailer of its type in the world.

那种时刻关注细节的文化很难建立，杰夫·贝佐斯认为，如果不在公司初创时就奠定基础，几乎不可能做到。

Cultures that care about the little things all the time are very hard to create, and in the opinion of Jeff Bezos, almost impossible to create if not put in place at the firm's genesis.

最后，我想点出这一集的核心观点：这些理念历久弥新，完全可以应用到我们的工作中。

And then I want to end on what I think is the main point and the main idea behind this episode that these ideas are timeless and are transferable to our work.

当我们研究真正优秀的企业时，往往会发现，它们的成功往往源于一些简单却关键的人性特质。

When we study truly great businesses, we find that very often it has been simple human attributes that have led to their success.

喝可乐和喝无名可乐的感觉不一样，你对总是低价打压对手的商家，或者主动上门取回退货的快递服务，感受也会不同。

You feel differently drinking a Coke than a no brand cola, or you may feel differently towards a business that consistently undercuts the competition and price, or a delivery service that literally goes the extra mile and picks up returned items.

你产生这些感受的原因，以及触发它们的刺激因素，几千年来几乎没变过。

And the reason you have these feelings and the stimuli that produce them have hardly changed in millennia.

有意思的是，一百年前造就福特帝国的商业模式，和七十年代山姆·沃尔顿、九十年代赫布·凯莱赫，以及今天杰夫·贝佐斯所用的，本质上是一样的。

It is interesting to note that the business model that built the Ford empire one hundred years ago is the same that built Sam Walton's in the 1970s, Herb Kelleher's in the 1990s, or Jeff Bezos' today.

未来，它还会继续造就新的商业帝国。

And it will build empires in the future, too.

关于这个完整的故事，我就先说到这里。

And that is where I'll leave it for the full story.

我强烈建议你读一读所有的股东信。

Highly recommend reading the shareholder letters, all of them.

这些信件都可以在尼克的慈善网站上免费获取。

They're available for free on Nick's charity website.

我会在下方附上链接。

I will leave a link down below.

如果你不想读完全部两百一十八到两百一十九页的股东信，我特别推荐你买威廉·格林的那本书，就是我上周讲过、专门写尼克和扎克那一章的那本。

And then if you don't want to read all two eighteen, two nineteen pages of the shareholder letters, I would heavily recommend buying William Green's book, the one I covered that did the chapter last week on Nick and Zak.

这本书叫《更富有、更睿智、更快乐：世界顶尖投资者如何在市场与生活中取胜》。

The book is called Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life.

作者威廉·格林听了这期节目，非常喜欢。

The author William Green listened to the episode and he loved it.

这周有不少朋友买了这本书。

A bunch of my friends have bought that book this week.

我会在下方放个链接。

I will leave a link down below.

如果你通过这个链接买书，也是在支持这个播客。

If you buy the book using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.

目前已经卖出了3.65本书，还差1000本，我再跟你们聊。

That is $3.65 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

我读这些信的时候很清楚，吉姆·西尼格尔和好市多的核心执着，就是始终坚持每日低价策略。

When I was reading these letters and it was very clear that Jim Sinegal and Costco's obsession was this total commitment to this everyday low price strategy that they had.

他们所有的行动，都是为了实现这一个目标。

Everything they were doing was serving that one goal.

当你读到或听到这些时，就会开始想：我所在组织的目标是什么？

And when you read that or when you listen to that, you start to think, okay, what is my organization's goal?

我的目标，我唯一的目标，也是我整个事业的核心原则，就是帮助别人从历史上最伟大的企业家身上学习。

So my goal, my one goal, the central organizing principle of my entire life's work is that I want to help other people learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs.

我想比世界上任何人都做得更好。

And I want to do that better than anybody else in the world.

为了制作这个播客，我必须收集并提炼历史上最伟大企业家们的集体智慧，这成了副产品。

And so as a byproduct of making this podcast to, in order to make the podcast, I have to collect and distill the knowledge, the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

然后我通过播客把这些知识广泛传播，因为我真的相信，这些传记、致股东的信、自传，都能让别人受益于他人长达四五年甚至六十年的创业经验。

And then I use the podcast to spread that knowledge far and wide because I really do think these biographies, these shareholder letters, these autobiographies, I really do think it is an act of service that other people can benefit from a, you know, four, five, six decade long career.

这种执着最终体现为一个播客，但现在我开发了一个工具，确保我永远不会忘记这些教训，需要时随时能调出来。

And so this obsession takes form of a podcast, but now I've made a tool to make sure that I never forget the lessons and that I can pull them up on demand when I need them.

这个工具叫‘创始人笔记’，现在你也能使用它了。

And that tool is Founders Notes, which you can now get access to that tool as well.

‘创始人笔记’让你能随时获取历史上最伟大企业家们的集体智慧，方式非常简单——过去六年，我把为播客读过的所有内容的笔记和重点都存进了一个庞大的可搜索数据库，现在你可以直接使用。

Founders Notes lets you tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand, and it's a very simple way because for the last six years, I've been putting all of my notes and highlights for everything that I read for the podcast into a giant searchable database that you can now tap into.

即使你之前没听说过这个工具，你也会在播客里不断听到它被使用——每次我提到过去的想法、过去的节目或书籍，比如讲杰夫·贝佐斯，或者这期提到的沃尔特·迪士尼、山姆·沃尔顿、芒格、巴菲特，这些内容都是我从‘创始人笔记’里查出来的。

And even if you didn't know about this tool, you hear me use it over and over again because every time you listen to the podcast and I'm referencing past ideas from past episodes from past books, like when I brought up Jeff Bezos, when I was talking about Walt Disney in this episode, or Sam Walton or Munger or Buffett or all of this, that is me searching through Founders Notes and pulling up those ideas.

这一点非常重要，你一定要明白。

And that is a really important point to get across what you see.

如果你订阅了Founders Notes，用的就是我本人一直在用的同一个工具。

If you subscribe to Founders Notes, that is the same tool that I use.

你看到的，完全是我每天在用的界面和内容。

You see the exact same thing that I use.

这个工具最初是我为自己做的，早在考虑让别人用之前，我已经用了好几年了。

It is a tool that I made for myself and I had for years before I even thought about making it a tool that other people can get access to.

现有的Founders Notes用户，已经用它来解决公司里的各种问题，比如招聘、营销、领导力，甚至准备董事会会议和销售演示。

Existing subscribers to Founders Notes have been using it to help them think through issues they're having from anything in their company from hiring to recruiting to marketing to leadership to preparing for board meetings to preparing sales presentations.

如果你已经在经营一家成功的公司，那投资这个工具根本不用犹豫。

If you are already running a successful company, think it's a no brainer to invest in this tool.

你可以随时访问历代创业者的集体智慧，去foundersnotes.com就行。

You can tap into the collective knowledge of history based founders on demand by going to foundersnotes.com.

网址是foundersnotes.com，和播客名字一样，记得是Founders加s，现在就订阅吧。

That is Founders with an s, just like the podcast, foundersnotes.com, and subscribing today.

感谢你的支持。

Thanks for the extra support.

谢谢收听，我很快再和你聊。

Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.