本集简介
双语字幕
仅展示文本字幕，不包含中文音频；想边听边看，请使用 Bayt 播客 App。
嘿，简单说一下。
Hey, just a quick message.
如果你现在正在创业，想象一下能收到Tarte化妆品、Airbnb，甚至理查德·布兰森爵士或马克·库班的创业建议。
If you're building a business right now, imagine getting advice from the founder of Tarte Cosmetics or Airbnb or even Sir Richard Branson or Mark Cuban.
其实，你真的可以得到这些建议。
Well, you can get that advice.
每周四，我们都会发布一期《我是如何打造的》咨询专线。
Every Thursday, we drop an episode of the How I Built This Advice Line.
在这期节目里，我会请回之前曾做客过的一位创始人。
It's where I bring back a previous founder we featured on a past episode.
我们一起帮助真实的创业者——卖护肤品的、卖狗玩具的、做陶器的、做食品的，不管做什么的。
And together, we help real entrepreneurs, people selling skin care, dog toys, pottery, food, whatever.
帮他们解决眼下遇到的难题。
We help them work through the challenges they're facing right now.
最棒的是，这种世界级、实战检验过的建议，完全免费。
And the best part, this kind of advice world class battle tested is completely free.
你只需要拨打1804331298这个号码。
All you have to do is call 1804331298.
用不到一分钟的时间告诉我们你在做什么项目，说不定你就能成为下一位接受咨询的嘉宾。
Tell us what you're building in under a minute and might be the next guest on the advice line.
所以，欢迎给我们打电话，或者发送语音备忘录到hibt@id.wondery.com，告诉我们你需要什么样的帮助。
So give us a call or send us a voice memo to hibt@id.Wondery.com and tell us how we can help you.
如果你参加过风险投资人的路演，你会发现那场面其实挺奇怪的，因为基本上投资人是在防守，而创业者在进攻。
If you've ever been a VC pitch, they're really weird things because they're basically the VCs are up there playing defense.
他们就像守门员一样。
They're like goalies.
而那些创业者，也就是那些来推销的人，只是在对他们撒谎。
And the entrepreneurs, the people who are pitching are just lying to them.
没错。
Right.
现在他们开始说一些真话了。
Now they're telling some truths.
这是我们这里的增长曲线。
This is our hockey stick growth here.
对。
Yeah.
这是我们的预测，接下来第二年和第五年我们要做的，没错。
This is our projections, and this is what we're gonna do in year two and five and yep.
他们根本摸不着头脑。
They have no idea.
所以这就像一场攻防战。
So the game is sort of attack and defend.
你在进攻，他们在防守。
You're attacking, they're defending.
我们一开口就说：看，这些是我们自己也不清楚的地方。
We change the entire tenor of the room by saying, look, here's all the stuff that we don't know.
这些都可能让我们彻底翻车。
Here's all the stuff that might blow up our face.
这里有一些正当的理由，说明为什么不要投资这家企业。
Here are legitimate reasons to not invest in this business.
欢迎收听《我是如何打造这一切的》，一档讲述创新者、创业者、理想主义者，以及他们所开创的事业背后故事的节目。
Welcome to how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
我是盖伊·拉兹，今天我们要讲的是吉姆·麦凯弗如何与他从前的实习生联手，用Square彻底改变了信用卡支付方式。
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Jim McKelvey joined forces with his former intern and revolutionized credit card payments with Square.
如今，这已是一家价值数十亿美元的企业。
Today, a multibillion dollar business.
很多人以为，那些让经营甚至创办企业变得令人沮丧的法规，是反商业的政客制定的。
A lot of people think that regulations that make it frustrating to run or even start a business are put in place by anti business politicians.
在某些情况下，这确实可能是真的。
And in some cases, that may be true.
但很多法规之所以存在，是因为大企业想保护自己的垄断地位。
But a lot of regulations exist because, well, big businesses want to protect their monopoly.
经济学家有时把这种现象称为监管俘获。
Economists sometimes call this regulatory capture.
你在食品、医疗领域都能看到这种现象，而今天的故事里，这种现象也出现在银行业。
You see it in food, in health care, and as you'll hear in today's story, in banking.
每当你刷信用卡，交易都会经过好几道中间环节：收单机构、支付处理商、商户的银行、卡组织，最后到发卡行。
Whenever you use your credit card, it goes through several middlemen, the point of sale provider, the payment processor, the merchant's bank, the card network, and then the issuing bank.
这个流程极其复杂，也受到严格监管，正因如此，商家每次收款都要被收取高达3.5%的手续费。
It's a highly complex and highly regulated transaction, And it's also why stores end up paying up to three and a half percent in fees every time you buy something.
顺便说一句，这些费用最终都会转嫁到你身上，体现在你买东西的价格里。
Those fees, by the way, are passed back to you in the price you pay for the thing you're buying.
现在，想象一下，你要想挤进这一整条中间链条，有多难。
Now imagine trying to get into that chain of middlemen.
既然已经有人垄断了市场，他们凭什么允许你来分一杯羹？
Why would anyone with a monopoly allow you to take a piece of the action?
2009年，Square的创始人正是面临这样的难题，当时他们想简化整个流程。
This was the exact challenge that the founders of Square faced back in 2009 when they had the idea to simplify the process.
那时候，吉姆·麦凯弗——一会儿你会听到他的讲述——在圣路易斯是一名小有成就的玻璃艺术家。
At the time, Jim McKelvey, who you'll hear from in a moment, was a moderately successful glassblower in Saint Louis.
他之前创办过一家早期的互联网公司，主要做网页和出版工具，有点像早期版的Adobe Acrobat。
He had previously founded an early Internet business that was focused on web and publishing tools, sort of like an early version of Adobe Acrobat.
上世纪九十年代，吉姆在创办这家公司时，雇过一位本地实习生，是个青少年，后来成了推特的联合创始人，他就是杰克·多西。
Back in the nineteen nineties, when Jim was building that company, he hired a local intern, a teenager who would later go on to cofound Twitter, and that would be Jack Dorsey.
多年后，当杰克·多西在2008年被踢出推特CEO位置时，吉姆主动联系了他，提出了一个想法。
And when Jack Dorsey was fired as CEO of Twitter many years later in 2008, Jim reached out with an idea.
这个想法和我们这档节目里常听到的很多创意一样，源于他个人的烦恼。
That idea came to him like so many ideas we've had on this show from a personal frustration.
吉姆卖玻璃艺术品时，没法接受所有信用卡付款。
Jim couldn't accept all credit cards for the glass art he sold.
于是两人一起想出了一个全新的东西——不只是一个支付系统，而是一个能插进手机音频接口的物理读卡器。
So together, the two of them came up with something completely new, not just a payment system, but a physical reader that you plugged into your smartphone's audio jack.
那为什么选音频接口呢？
And why the audio jack?
这个我们待会儿再说。
Well, we'll get there.
Square的成长之路并非一帆风顺，它曾面临来自信用卡行业、科技公司，甚至还有竞争对手在2014年试图将其彻底击垮的巨大压力。
Square's rise was not without huge challenges from the credit card industry, from tech companies, and even from a major competitor that tried to put it out of business in 2,014.
但如今，Square的母公司Block已经成为一个庞然大物，去年的毛利润超过了100亿美元。
But today, Square's parent company, Block, is a behemoth with gross profits of over $10,000,000,000 last year.
Square不仅存活下来，还蓬勃发展，很大程度上要归功于吉姆·麦凯维那停不下来的进取心。
A big part of how Square not only survived but thrived is because of Jim McKelvey's restlessness.
他那种毫不犹豫投身解决问题的劲头，部分源于他二十多岁时遭遇的一场个人悲剧。
His relentless willingness to just dive into problems stems in part from a personal tragedy that struck when he was in his mid twenties.
正如你将听到的，这场经历让他变得无法袖手旁观，只要觉得该做点什么，他就坐不住。
As you'll hear, it turned him into someone who has a hard time just standing by when he feels like there's something he should do.
吉姆在二十世纪六七十年代长大的圣路易斯郊区。
Jim grew up in the suburbs of Saint Louis in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
他父亲是华盛顿大学的教授，母亲原本是记者，后来成了全职家庭主妇。
His dad was a professor at Washington University, and his mom was a journalist turned stay at home mom.
吉姆在华盛顿大学主修经济学和计算机科学，还在一个意想不到的年轻年纪就发表了论文。
Jim studied economics and computer science also at WashU, where he actually got published at an unexpectedly young age.
我选了一门计算机入门课，授课的教授正好是这门课教材的作者。
I took a beginning computer science class, and it was taught by a professor who wrote the book for the class.
那本书写得一塌糊涂，但他就是想靠它赚钱。
And the book was terrible, but it was this it was the book that he wanted to sell.
他把书卖得特别贵，学生们不得不买。
And he sold it at a high price to these students who were forced to buy it.
我特别不服气，忍不住抱怨，我这个人一向管不住嘴。
I was indignant about that, and I was mouthing off because I've always sort of, I'm a hard guy to shut up.
我就说，这种垃圾玩意儿，我都能写得比它强，结果我一个朋友说：那你咋不写一个？
So, I was saying that, you know, I could write a better book than this piece of crap, and, one of my buddies said, Well, why don't you?
大一那年，我就是赌气，写了一本纯粹为了泄愤的书。
So freshman year, out of stubbornness, I wrote what was basically a spite book.
我从学生角度重写了整个计算机导论教材，没想到这本书还挺受欢迎，还真的有出版社找上门来。
I rewrote the textbook for my intro to computer science class from the perspective of a student, And that book turned out to be pretty popular and actually got me a publisher.
这本书叫《调试者手册》。
And this was a book, it was called The Debugger's Handbook.
是的
Yeah.
对
Yeah.
这些早期语言的问题在于实现得很差，产品里藏着一大堆坑。
The problem with these early languages was that they were poorly implemented, and the products had a lot of gotchas.
错误特别多，如果你碰上了其中一个，又不懂那种小技巧，那就彻底卡住了。我花了无数小时白白卡着，因为没人告诉我这些技巧，你必须认识懂的人，他们才能帮你解决。我觉得这太荒唐了，应该有人把这些技巧都写下来，我的书就是这么来的。
They had a lot of mistakes, and if you would encounter one of these, unless you knew this sort of trick, well, you were stuck, and so I spent many hours unnecessarily stuck because nobody would explain these tricks to me, and you just had to know somebody who knew the trick, you know, and they could fix it, and I thought, this is stupid, somebody should write down all these tricks, and that was my book.
我的书其实不是教你怎么编程，而是教你怎么解决你马上就要遇到的每一个错误。
I mean, it wasn't so much a how to program, it was how to fix every mistake that you're about to encounter.
这可是早期的文字处理软件啊。
I mean, this is early word processing.
你是不是用点阵打印机打出来，再复印的？
Did you, like, print it out on a dot matrix printer and photocopy it?
我是说，你第一版到底是怎么弄出来的？
I mean, how did you even make the first version of it?
是的。
Yes.
事实上，当时第一代激光打印机刚刚问世。
In fact, the first laser printers had just come out.
对，而且特别贵，价格高得离谱。
Right, and they were expensive, it was very expensive.
天哪，那会儿一页纸要十美分，计算机系只有一台，只有资深教授每天才能打五页。我有一位教授甚至把他的打印权限密码给了我，让我用这台神奇的机器打印我的书，打出来跟正式出版的书一模一样。
Oh, they were insane, it was like 10¢ a page, and it was this thing that the computer science department had one of, and if you were a senior professor, you could print five pages a day, And one of my professors actually gave me his passcode so I could print my book on this magic device that made it look like a book.
看起来完全不像我亲手打出来的。
Like, it didn't look like I'd typed it out.
它看上去就像出版社印出来的，但实际上，我最初几轮都是自己印的，直到找到正规出版社。
It looked like some publisher had published it, whereas in fact, I was publishing it myself for the first rounds until I got a real publisher.
明白了。
Alright.
后来这本书就在大学和高中里广泛使用了。
So this ends up being used on college campuses and high schools.
你觉得你靠出这本书赚了多少钱？
How much how much money do you think you made from from publishing this book?
我赚了上千美元。
I made thousands.
说实话，我当时根本不知道
Mean, it was I didn't know
自己在做什么。
what I was doing.
超过一万美元？两万？
Like, more than $10,000, 20,000?
可能不到两万。
Probably less than 20.
我对出版社来说是个真正的香饽饽，你知道的，我才19岁。
I was a real deal for the publisher, you know, I was 19.
所以，很明显，你是个很早熟的学生，1987年就毕业了。
So, I mean, clearly, you were a, like, precocious student, and you graduated in '87.
不过当时有没有猎头来找你，就是主动挖你那种？
But were you did you get recruiters sort of seeking you out saying, hey.
邀请你去他们的电脑公司上班，就放在1987年那个背景下，你懂的，当时的电脑公司都那样。
Come work at our computer company, you know, whatever that meant in 1987?
不是的。
No.
真不是。
No.
出版这本书后，有一个挺有意思的副作用。
I There was one interesting side effect because I was published.
我莫名其妙地背上了一个并不配得上的名声，被当成是个好程序员、好工程师。
I ended up having a reputation that I didn't really deserve as a good programmer, as a good engineer.
所以我学到的教训是，只要我少说话，总是跟那些真正比我强的人混在一起，我就能混在那些超级优秀的人群里，把自己藏起来。
So what I learned was that as long as I shut up and always associated with people who were actually better than me, I could sort of hide in this crowd of super achievers.
这大概是我在大学里学到的最重要的一课：我可以加入一群比我厉害的人，然后帮他们提高效率。
And that's probably the thing I learned best in college, which was I can go into a group of people who are way better than me, and I can make them more productive.
是的
Yeah.
这可是个特别重要的超能力。
Which is a hugely important superpower.
对吧？
Right?
等我们 later 谈到这些的时候，这个问题还会冒出来——因为在你后来一些最知名的企业里，你承认自己根本不是程序员。
And and this will come up later when we're gonna talk about this because later on in some of your best known businesses, you admit you're not, You didn't were not the programmer.
你根本没写过这些代码。
You were not coding this stuff.
这根本不是你搞的。
This was not your
我擅长解释东西，因为我的脑子比较简单，太复杂的东西我反而搞不懂。
I'm good at explaining stuff because I have a pretty simple brain, and I don't understand things that that are too complex.
不过回到你最初的问题，就是毕业后有没有人找你找工作？
But to your original question, which was, you know, did I have any job offers after school?
我当时其实有机会去一家大型会计咨询公司上班，但一想，这简直像等死。
So, I actually had a job possibly working for a giant accounting consulting firm, and I thought about it, I was like, Oh, this is like death.
因为他们有个叫‘方法一’的东西，是一整套厚厚的多卷本手册，教你怎么解决所有问题。
Because they had this thing called Method One, which was this massive, multi ring binder tome of how to solve every problem.
你根本不用动脑，只要照着‘方法一’做就行。
And it was like, you didn't have to think, you just had to go to method one.
我当时就想着，这种活我干不了。
And I was like, I can't do that.
我虽然有计算机科学学位，但那时候根本没人招程序员。
Know, I had this computer science degree, but nobody was hiring programmers at the time.
所以我根本没法随便找份工作，但我有吹玻璃的本事。
So I I I didn't really have the ability to just go out and get a job, but I had this glassblowing skill.
我就想，也许我可以卖自己的作品。
And I thought, well, maybe I could sell my work.
于是我就当了个玻璃工匠。
I became a glassblower, basically.
是的。
Yeah.
这挺有意思的，因为我对这件事有很多疑问。
So this is interesting because I I have a lot of questions about this.
我猜你在大四那年，在华盛顿大学选了玻璃吹制课。
I guess in your senior year, you took a glassblowing class at WashU.
那是什么吸引你去接触玻璃的呢？
And I what drew you to glass?
因为一想到玻璃吹制，尤其是在八十年代末你上课的那个时候，我就觉得，那不就是去文艺复兴集市上看到的那种东西吗？
Because when I think of glassblowing, certainly, like, in the late eight or sort of the mid to late eighties when you took it, I'm thinking, like, the people who would go to Renaissance Fairs or right?
就像你在那种复刻的十五世纪英国村庄里才会见到的玩意儿。
Like, it is a it's like something you would see at, like, ye olde, you know, right, like, reconstructed, you know, English village from the fifteenth century.
那到底是什么让你对玻璃吹制感兴趣的？
Like, what was it about glassblowing?
你当时就是觉得，这听起来挺酷的？
Were you just like, this sounds cool.
让我着迷的是玻璃本身的材质。
The thing that captivated me about glass was the material itself.
这是一种非常神奇的材料。
It is this amazing material.
尤其是它加热的时候，简直像有生命一样。
And especially when it's hot, it's it's like it's alive.
吹玻璃有点像跳舞，但这是一种技术性很强的舞蹈，你得控制温度，还得掌握各种技巧。但当时让我觉得特别有意思的是，根本没人这么做——因为那些大型工业熔炉从不许艺术家进去随便玩玻璃。
So the glassblowing is sort of like dance, except it's this technical dance where you have to manage heat and you gotta manage but what was also super interesting about glass at the time that I got into it was that nobody was doing it because glass factories, which are these big industrial furnaces, did not let artists come in and just play with the stuff.
这就好比你走进福特汽车工厂，说：嘿。
This was like, you know, going into Ford Motor Company and saying, hey.
我能借一下流水线吗？
Can I borrow the assembly line?
我想造辆车，但自己也不清楚到底要造啥。
You know, wanna make some car and I don't know what it is.
直到俄亥俄州的两个家伙造出了一个小熔炉，这种情况才开始改变。
You know, so there was none of that until, these two guys in Ohio basically created this small furnace.
我们在华盛顿大学倒是有一台，但那是个破破烂烂的小炉子，所以根本没人干这行。
And we had one at Wash U, but it was this little junky furnace, and so nobody was doing that.
那是个完全空白的领域，压根儿没什么竞争。
It was a completely open field, which means there was no competition.
所以我卖作品根本没问题。
So I could sell work Yeah.
就算我的作品很烂，但画廊里就我一个人做玻璃，别无选择。
Because even if my work was garbage, it was the only glass in the in the gallery.
你当时都做些什么？
What what were you making?
比如碗啊，
Like bowls and
碗啊、花瓶啊，什么好卖就做什么。
Bowls and vases and anything that would sell.
后来运气不错，我居然进了IBM工作。
And then through luck, I actually got a job at IBM.
在圣
In St.
路易斯？
Louis?
对。
Yeah.
嗯，不对。
Well, no.
是在洛杉矶的IBM。
It was IBM in Los Angeles.
所以这算是最早的远程办公了。
So this was the original remote work.
我在华盛顿大学认识的一些人知道我的书，他们当时在IBM需要人写点东西。
I'd met some people at WashU who knew about my book, and they needed some writing done at IBM.
所以他们临时聘用了我，在洛杉矶的IBM工作。
So they hired me temporarily at IBM in Los Angeles.
但我当时住在圣路易斯。
But I was living in St.
对。
Louis.
他们觉得我表现不错，就说，嘿，你能不能留下来继续跟我们合作？
And I impressed them enough that they said, Hey, can you just stay on and keep working with us?
然后我很快发现，IBM根本不知道我什么时候干活。
And then I quickly realized that IBM didn't know when I did the work.
所以我白天可以在玻璃工作室工作，晚上再处理IBM的活儿。
So I could work in the glass studio during the day and then do my IBM work at night.
真不错。
Nice.
我猜后来他们开始派你去全国各地出差，这样你就能跟不同城市的画廊建立联系，把你的作品卖出去了。
And I guess, eventually, they started to send you to do work around the country, and and you were able to actually connect with galleries in different cities and sell your work.
对吧？
Right?
是的。
Oh, yeah.
所以我很好奇，这个生意到底赚不赚钱？
So I'm just curious, like, how lucrative was this business?
比如，这些画廊一个花瓶能卖多少钱？
Like, how much would these galleries sell a vase, for example?
500美元已经算挺不错的价格了。
I mean, $500 was a pretty good price.
我通常能拿到一半。
I'd get half of that typically.
那你收入还挺可观的。
But you were you were making a decent living.
我的意思是，一件作品卖500美元，你拿一半，又在好几家画廊有展，你当时肯定是靠这个补贴IBM的收入。
I mean, if you're selling a piece for $500 and you're getting half of that and you're in a couple of galleries and, you know, you you were probably subsidizing your income from IBM.
我当时的日薪是一千美元。
My role was a thousand dollars a day.
我每天在工作室工作，就能赚一千美元。
Every day I work in the studio, I make a thousand dollars.
天哪。
Wow.
一件产品就卖一千美元。
Thousand dollars a product.
明白了。
Okay.
那时候这笔钱可真不少。
That's a lot of money for that time.
是的。
Yeah.
这让我有资本去创办其他公司。
Well, I mean, I that's allowed me to start my other companies.
对。
Right.
我的风险投资都是从工作室里挣出来的。
My venture capital came out of the studio.
我想问你一件事，但不知道该怎么开口，因为这对你来说是个很难熬的时刻。
I I wanna ask you about don't even know how to approach this because it's a difficult moment in your life.
你才24岁，圣诞节前妈妈就去世了，我记得是这样吧。
You're 24 and your mom passes away just before Christmas, I think.
她是圣诞节前自杀的。
Well, she committed suicide just before Christmas.
是的，没错。
So, I mean, yes.
那是1989年12月18日。
That was 12/18/1989.
从那天起，我的世界彻底崩塌了。
That was my world exploded.
是的。
Yeah.
你妈妈在你记忆里，是不是一直都在和抑郁作斗争？
Did you had your mom had she struggled with depression for as long as you knew?
算是吧，也不完全是。
Yes and no.
是的，她确实长期受这个困扰。
Yes.
她一直都在与抑郁抗争。
She had struggled with it.
但我完全不知道情况有多严重。
I did not know the severity.
她生我弟弟之后就没缓过来，一直受折磨，还做过电休克治疗，那么多沉重的事，我一点都不知道。
She never got over the postpartum with my brother and struggled with it, electroconvulsive therapy, like a lot of heavy stuff that I had no idea was happening.
妈妈把这一切藏得特别好。
Mom hid it very, very well.
因为你小时候过得挺幸福的。
Because you had a happy childhood.
你是个童子军鹰级勋章获得者。
You're an Eagle Scout.
我有一份很棒的工作。
I had a great job.
我完全没察觉妈妈有问题。
I never knew anything was wrong with my mom.
你知道的。
You know?
后来她经历了一段抑郁期，但最终挺过来了。
And then towards the end, she had been through a bout of depression, which she had sort of fought through.
不是那种我妈妈试图自杀却没成功的状况。
Like, was not a situation where my mother, you know, attempted suicide and failed.
我妈妈的自杀计划得非常周密，根本没人能拦得住她，她一点迹象都没露出来。
My mother's suicide was so well planned that nobody could have caught her or stopped it, and she did not telegraph her punch at all.
她早就计划好了，但爸爸和我完全没想到会这样。
She planned it, but dad and I were just caught by total surprise.
这件事彻底摧毁了我的世界。
And and it just it just destroyed my world.
我们大多数人也不愿谈这个，因为背后牵扯太多复杂的东西。
And most most of us don't wanna talk about that also because there's all kinds of, you know, baggage connected to that.
是的。
Yeah.
对。
Yeah.
确实如此。
It is.
但失去妈妈，让我真正完成了成长。
But it's I mean, it's losing my mom completed my education.
也许不能说完全完成，但真的让我彻底明白了。
Maybe didn't complete it, but it boy, did it.
如果不是因为妈妈突然离世，我根本不会懂这么多事。
It was there was so much that I would not know but for having to deal with the sudden death of my mom.
我的大部分精力，其实都来自想到自己本可以救妈妈时涌上心头的那些情绪。
I mean, it's a lot of the energy that I have comes from the feelings that are stirred up when I think about what I could have done to save my mother.
我心里其实知道妈妈当时有麻烦，我本可以做得更多，但我什么都没做。
Part of me knew that mom was in trouble and that I could have done more, and I didn't.
我甚至只要每天晚上回家陪妈妈散个步，也许就能救回她的命。
Hell, I could have just gone home and taken a walk with my mother every night.
那真的可能救了她的命。
That could have saved her life.
可我根本没这么做。
I didn't do that.
直到今天，我依然为自己的无所作为感到后悔。
To this day, I regret the inaction.
所以现在，只要我觉得有什么事该做，我就不会再等，想着‘别人可能会去处理’。
And so when I find myself in a situation where I think something needs to be done, I no longer sit there and say, Well, someone else will probably do it.
我的想法是：你必须亲自站出来做点什么。
My attitude is like, you gotta be the one to do something.
你知道的，这很正常。
You know, it's natural.
我们本能地就会想，我还能做点什么更好的呢？
It's instinctive for us to say, what could I have done more?
但其实很多情况下，那已经超出了我们的能力范围。
When in fact, in many cases, it's beyond anything that we could do.
是的。
Yeah.
对。
Yeah.
我的意思是，这事儿吧，你真说不准。
I mean, that's but that's like, you don't know.
对吧？
Right?
对我来说，只要你努力了，结果不好也没关系，至少你试过了。
To me, if you try and it doesn't work, well, you tried.
但如果你根本不试，那似乎就不对劲。
But if you don't try, well, that seems wrong.
如果我真在乎某件事，却不去努力改善，我就会怀疑自己是不是真的在乎。
If I care about something and I don't try to fix it, then I question whether or not I really cared.
你还记得吗，那时候你才24岁，这么年轻。
Do you remember how long it took you before I mean, you're 24 you're so young.
对吧？
Right?
我的意思是，
I mean, it's
我当时还是个孩子。
I was a kid.
是的。
Yeah.
你还记得，你花了多久才终于能重新站起来吗？
Do you remember how long it took you before you were able to just even pick yourself up?
我是说，我真没法想象要面对这么严重的创伤，比如……
I mean, I I can't imagine dealing with something so traumatic, like
我是说，这得看你什么叫‘爬起来’。
I mean, depends what you mean by pick yourself up.
这件事让我接触到了一个我完全不了解的世界。
What it did was it put me in touch with this entire world that I didn't know.
那时候我还以为自己过着无忧无虑的生活，什么烦恼都没有。
So here I am thinking I've got this idyllic existence with no problems.
我连蛀牙都没长过。
I've never even had a cavity.
明白吗？
Okay?
我从来没补过牙。
I've never even had a tooth filled.
真的。
Okay.
我的生活就是这么简单轻松。
That's how easy my life was.
对。
Yeah.
然后突然之间，发生了这种事，我失去了我的妈妈。
And then all of a sudden, this happens, and I lose my mom.
我的意思是，一切发生得就像突然有人在酒店房间里打开了黑光灯，然后你就能看到床单上那些原本看不见的污渍一样。
And, I mean, it was all of a sudden as if, you know, somebody turned on black light on the hotel room, and you see what stuff on the bedspread.
抱歉，刚才那个比喻可能不太恰当。
Sorry about the analogy, guy.
没有的事。
No.
这个比喻挺好的。
It's good analogy.
我的意思是，它让我彻底清醒了。
Point is it just woke me up.
突然间，我开始注意到身边人的痛苦，连我朋友身上我都看得到。
And all of a sudden, I started seeing pain in people, like pain in my friends.
我想用尽全力去贴近那些正在受苦的人，弥补过去二十四年的麻木不仁。
I was trying to make up for twenty four years of obliviousness by just being in touch with people who are suffering.
天哪，这种人到处都是。
And my god, they're everywhere.
我们每个人都是。
We are everywhere.
不是他们，是别人。
It's not they.
是我们所有人。
It's a we.
所以
So
就在这个时候，我想你当时还在经营另一项生意。
in sort of the midst of this, I mean, I think around this time, you had been working on another business.
你当时在做玻璃吹制，对IBM并没什么兴趣。
You've been doing glassblowing work, and IBM wasn't that interesting to you.
我想你那时候开始考虑创办自己的公司，就是后来的Mira公司。
And I guess you started to think about starting your own company, which would become a company called Mira.
那是一家文档影像公司。
It was a a document imaging company.
能说说这个想法是怎么来的吗？
Tell me a little bit about how that came about that idea came about.
其实我那时候已经有一家公司了。
So I already had my own company.
我开了一家做CD存储柜的公司。
I had a company that built CD storage cabinets.
类似于木工活？
Like carpentry?
对。
Yes.
木工活。
Carpentry.
虽然我找工厂生产，但主要做的是市场和销售。
Although I had a factory do these things, it was mostly marketing and sales.
我。
I
明白了。
see.
我们当时在一些高端目录里做推广。
You know, we were in premium catalogs and whatnot.
我们应该跟大家说清楚，以前人们确实会像放书一样把光盘摆在架子上。
We should explain to people that there was a time where people would store their CDs like books on a shelf.
是的。
Yes.
没错。
This is correct.
而且赚了钱，但那是个平平无奇的生意。
And it made money, but it was a mediocre business.
我当玻璃匠也一般，当IBM员工也一样普通。
And I was a mediocre glassblower, and I was a mediocre IBM employee.
后来我妈去世了，我才意识到，她这一生看到的，全是儿子的平庸。
And then my mom dies, and I realize that my mother has seen nothing but mediocrity out of her son.
我不清楚。
I don't know.
你有三家生意，才24岁。
You have three businesses, and you're 24.
我觉得这可不叫平庸。
I don't that doesn't sound mediocre to me.
我有三家生意，但都做得不怎么样。
I have three businesses, but they all kinda suck.
是的。
Yeah.
我是说，你是个特别有干劲的24岁年轻人。
I mean, you're you're super motivated 24 year old.
说你平庸，这说法有点儿站不住脚吧。
I mean, that seems like a little bit of a stretch to say that you're mediocre.
那时候自己创业可没现在这么酷。
So so so having your own business was not as cool then as it is now.
对。
Right.
没错。
Right.
我想到我妈看到的是什么，她觉得儿子是个平平无奇、有点怪的人。
And I looked at what my mother got to see, and she saw her son as this kind of mediocre weirdo.
至少我是这么看的。
At least that's how I saw it.
后来我就想，这可不是我想成为的样子。
And then I thought, well, this is not who I wanna be.
所以我离开了IBM。
So I quit IBM.
我关掉了CD生意，也停了吹玻璃的活儿。
I closed my, CD business, and I stopped glassblowing.
我就下定决心，专心做一件事。
I just I said, I'm gonna focus.
那我到底该专注什么呢？
And what am I gonna focus on?
我想，还是得选能创造财富的事，比如计算机，毕竟我有计算机学位。
Well, I'm gonna focus on the thing that that creates fortunes, you know, computers, because I've got a computer degree.
于是我和朋友一起创办了一家公司，叫MIRA。
So my friend and I started a company called MIRA.
那时候的产品，就是后来Adobe Acrobat那种东西。
And this was it was like what Adobe Acrobat would become.
一个文档阅读器。
It was a document reader.
没错。
Exactly.
对。
Yes.
你知道吗，当时我觉得图形界面在电脑上一定会变得特别重要，电脑不可能只停留在文字界面。
You know, it seemed like this visual thing was gonna be important on computers, that they weren't gonna be just text.
所以我们开始做了一个跟Adobe Acrobat非常相似的东西，但后来Adobe Acrobat一出来，我们的产品就完全被碾压了。
So we started building this thing that was very similar to Adobe Acrobat, except that there was then Adobe Acrobat, which kind of wiped the floor with our product.
我想问问你关于那件事，
I wanna ask you about that a
就在那之前不久，因为我觉得应该是在你们推出后第一年或第二年就发生了吧？
second before that happened, because I think it happened in, what, in the first year or two after you you launched?
是的。
Yeah.
大概是91年到92年左右。
It'd be about 9192.
那时候之前你赚到钱了吗？
Did you make any money before that time?
赚得很少。
Very little.
确实很少。
Very little.
明白了。
Okay.
据我了解，你和你之前靠在IBM和吹玻璃的工作赚了点钱，才撑起了这个项目。
So you and you had and you had been able, from what I understand, to fund this because you had made money from working at IBM and glassblowing.
我是说，1989年或者1990年，你才25岁，这事儿听起来有点疯狂。
Like, you actually I mean, this kinda nuts in in 1990 or '89, you're 25.
你那时候身上只有50美元。
You had $50.
我的意思是，你攒下这么多钱，真不容易。
I mean, that's a ton of cash that you saved up.
我存了不少钱。
I saved a lot of money.
是的。
Yeah.
你大概可以雇几个人来帮忙，
Presumably, you could hire you could bring some people on and hire them and
我确实雇了。
I did.
对。
Yeah.
我有资金，但光有资金还不够。
I had the capital, but it it it was more than just the capital.
我还挺节俭的。
It would I'm also cheap.
我甚至能靠喝风过日子。
Like, I I can live on air.
我每周的预算只有二十五美元。
My budget was $25 a week.
吃饭、穿衣和交通，全靠这个。
Food, clothing, and transport.
我就是靠这点钱过日子的。
That was what I lived on.
明白了。
Alright.
你当时在做这个产品，但Adobe推出了Acrobat Reader，他们规模大得多，实力也强得多，这一下子就把你的商业模式给打乱了。
So you're working on this product, but actually Adobe, which is a much more powerful, much bigger business, they come out with the Acrobat Reader, and that just kind of syncs your entire business model.
是啊。
Yep.
所以你们不得不调整方向。
So you guys have to change what you do.
那你们后来是怎么做的？
So what what do you do?
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我的意思是，你这就完了。
I mean, you're that's it.
Mira 这家公司那时候已经没了。
You're Mira's dead at this point.
所以 Mira 虽然没了，但我们当时还是参加过一场展会，手里有产品。
So Mira's dead, but we had attended one trade show when we had a product.
那个展会叫图像与信息管理协会。
The the trade show was the Association for Image and Information Management.
我不确定他们现在还在不在，但他们当时是影像行业的专业展会。
I don't know if they're still around, but they they were the trade show for imaging.
好的。
K.
我当时就觉得特别讽刺，人们从影像展出来，手里提着一堆宣传资料，讲的是怎么实现无纸化办公。
And I was struck by the irony of people leaving the imaging trade show with bags of literature on how to have a paperless office.
纸质的宣传资料。
Physical literature.
这些公司发的纸质资料，讲的都是怎么实现无纸化办公。
Physical From these companies about how how to have a paperless office.
是的。
Yeah.
好吧。
Okay.
于是我想到一个点子。
So I came up with this idea.
我想把所有竞争对手的产品都收进来，让他们付钱把宣传册放到我的软件里。
What I wanted to do was take all my competitors' products and charge them to put their brochures on my software.
我们确实用我的软件制作了第一个影像行业展会的CD-ROM。
So we did use my software to create the first CD ROM for the imaging trade show.
简单说，你解释一下。
Basically, meaning explain.
你会把扫描的
You would take scans of
我们会扫描他们所有的资料，每页收他们十美元，放到我们的软件里。
We would take scans of all their literature, and we charge them $10 a page to put it on our software.
哦，所以你的核心想法是，嘿。
Oh, so the base of the pitch was, hey.
我们会给参加这个展会的每个人发一张CD-ROM。
We're gonna give a CD ROM to everybody going to this trade show.
你想不想上这个光盘？
Do you wanna be on it?
当然想。
Yes.
这就像怕错过的心态。
It's like FOMO.
大家都会觉得必须得上，不然就落伍了，所以他们愿意付钱把资料放上CD-ROM。
Like, you have to and and so every everybody will wanna be on it, so they'd have to pay you to have their literature on the CD rom.
没错。
Correct.
后来那个行业协会试图阻止我这么做，他们说，这是我们的行业展会。
And then the trade association tried to stop me from doing it because they said, well, this is our trade show.
你不准这么做。
You can't do it.
对。
Right.
我就跟他们说，我命硬得很，你拦不住我。
And I was like, well, I'm hard to kill and you can't stop me.
所以他们派律师来找我，但我根本不在乎，心想你们能拿我怎么样？
And so then they sent the lawyers after me, but I laughed at them because what are you gonna do?
抢我的车吗？
Take my car?
祝你们好运，看能不能把车发动起来。
Like, good luck trying to start it.
但真正的问题在于，我把竞争对手的资料放进我的光盘里，赚了不少钱。
So but the problem guy was that I made so much money putting my competitor's literature on my CD.
我当时就想，我干嘛还费劲卖软件啊，一张展会光盘就赚了七万块呢？
I was like, why am I trying to sell software when I just made $70 producing a trade show CD?
是的。
Yeah.
我的意思是，那会儿简直跟印钞票一样，真的太夸张了。
I mean, it's it's an amazing I I mean, at the time, it sounds like printing money.
就像当时拥有一份分类广告报纸一样。
It's like owning a classified newspaper, right, at the time.
那会儿真是好得不得了。
Oh, like, it was great.
那你是怎么把光盘发给每个参展商或者每个参会者的呢？
And then you would have to how would you distribute the CD to every every exhibitor or every attendee?
第一次参加展会时，因为我们被禁止入场，只能找那些想多吸引展位访客的公司来帮我们分发。
Well, in the first trade show, since we were prohibited from attending it ourselves, we had to get companies who wanted more booth traffic to distribute it.
所以我让所有大公司都帮我发光盘。
So I got all the major companies to distribute for me.
他们就在桌上堆了一大摞。
They just have a stack of them on their tables.
原来如此。
Okay.
是啊。
Oh, yeah.
这成了吸引人去他们展台的理由。
It was a reason to go to their booth.
我的意思是，这简直太棒了。
I mean, it was the best thing.
而且，我还向他们收了费。
They they and and, again, I charged them for that.
我们靠这个赚了不少钱。
Like, we made so much money on that.
那时候我觉得这真是个好生意，毕竟一年有成千上万场展会。
I mean, there was a period of time where I could imagine this was a great business because how many trade shows you know, thousands of trade shows a year.
一共有五千场贸易展。
There are 5,000 trade shows.
我第一次参加，赚了七万美元。
And the first one I did, I made $70.
就靠一个产品，一张光盘？
On one product, on one CD?
净赚七万美元？
On one With $70 profit.
七万美元的利润，而且那时候贸易协会还在起诉我，想阻止我。
$70,000 of profit, and that was with the trade association actively suing me and trying to stop me.
要是我们和贸易协会合作，你能想象能赚多少吗？
So imagine how much I could make if we cooperated with the trade associations.
是的。
Yeah.
接下来两年，我们就这样做了。
Which is what we did for the next two years.
我们交到了朋友。
We made we made friends.
我的意思是，我并不想惹麻烦。
I mean, I'm not gonna pick a fight.
于是我们就参加了所有其他的贸易展会。
So we did all the other trade shows.
我想插一句，因为据我了解，这段时间你正从一家图像软件公司转型为CD-ROM文献公司。
I wanna just break into this story for a moment because from what I understand, something happens during this time where you're transitioning from being a imaging software company to a CD ROM literature company.
而在这期间，你遇到了一个人，这个人后来在你的生活中占据了非常重要的位置，故事始于圣路易斯的一家咖啡馆。
And that is you would meet somebody who would who would factor very prominently in your life, and it starts with a coffee shop in Saint Louis.
所以跟我说说这家咖啡馆，它为什么跟你当时做的事有关。
So tell me this about this coffee shop and why it was relevant to what you were doing.
有一位叫玛莎·多尔西的女士，她开了一家叫“谢南多厄咖啡”的店。
There was a lady named Marsha Dorsey, who owned a coffee shop called Shenandoah Coffee.
当时我们正在制作一个展会用的光盘，结果搞砸了，不得不紧急重做，大概要重新干两百个小时的活。
And we were building a trade show disc and had screwed it up so badly that we were in a fire drill to redo, you know, probably two hundred hours of work.
当时有多少人和你们一起干？
How many people were working with you?
大概十个吗？
Like, 10?
平时大概十个人，但那个周末可能有二十个。
I was probably 10, but that weekend it was probably 20.
能找的人都找来了。
It was everyone we could find.
对。
Yep.
我有个同事去买了些巧克力裹的咖啡豆，好让大家提神，Marsha就问：你们平时都干啥？
And one of my colleagues went in to buy some chocolate covered espresso beans to keep the workers awake, and Marsha said, well, what do guys do?
他回答说：我们搞电脑，她就说：我儿子特别喜欢电脑，他又问：那你们想不想挣五十美元，但得费点劲？
And he's like, oh, we work with computers, and she's like, oh, my son loves computers, and he's like, well, how do you like to make $50 the hard way?
于是这个十五岁的孩子下午就过来了，自我介绍叫Jack，那天他跟我们熬了一整夜。
So this 15 year old kid comes over, middle of the afternoon, and he introduces himself, and he's like, hi, I'm Jack, and Jack pulled an all nighter with us that first day.
杰克，就是这个杰克。
Jack, This is Jack.
杰克·多西。
Jack Dorsey.
多西。
Dorsey.
对。
Yeah.
他当时才十五岁，但懂不少电脑知识，能帮我们解决CD-ROM的问题。
And he's a 15 year old kid, and he knew enough about computers that he could help you guys fix the CD ROM problem.
他可不是在写程序。
I mean, he wasn't doing a program.
他只是在操作扫描仪。
He was running a scanner.
就是拿这张纸，扫一下，正确地命名文件，然后做好就行。
It was take this page, scan it, save you know, type this file name correctly, and do it Right.
连续三千次。
3,000 times in a row.
但我很快注意到，杰克后来就来我们这儿上班了。
But what I quickly noticed was Jack came to work for us then afterwards.
我是说，他跟妈妈闹完矛盾之后。
I mean, after he got out of trouble with his mom.
他为啥跟妈妈闹矛盾？
Got out trouble because?
我们凌晨五点左右把他送回家了。
We sent him home at 5AM or something.
原来如此。
I see.
明白了。
Okay.
后来我发现，只要我交给杰克一个任务，他总能做得比我预期的还好。
And then what I discovered was that whenever I gave Jack a project, he would always do it better than I was expecting.
我很好奇这条河到底有多深，于是就不断给他越来越难的项目。
And I got curious about how deep that river ran, so I kept giving him harder and harder projects.
而他每次都顺利完成。
And he kept delivering every one of them.
我当时就想，天哪。
And I was like, oh my god.
这孩子到底能做什么？
What can this kid do?
说说他16岁的时候吧。
Tell me about him at 16.
他是不是那种天才儿童？
Was he was he, like, a savant?
我的意思是，他是不是编程天才？
I mean, was he, like, a programming genius?
不是。
No.
他非常出色。
He was very good.
我们叫他‘天才杰克’。
We called him Jack the Genius.
那是他的外号。
That was his nickname.
但他其实并不是什么天才。
But, you know, he was not a genius.
他只是特别优秀。
He was just very good.
是的。
Yeah.
所以最后，我们开始一起做一些更认真的项目。
And so finally, we started doing some, you know, more serious work together.
然后我意识到，一场席卷公司的浪潮——互联网，就要来了。
And then I saw the train coming to hit the company, which was the Internet.
那是九十年代，我清楚地意识到，万维网会彻底取代光盘展销会这一行。
So this was '90 It was absolutely clear to me that the World Wide Web was gonna wipe out the CD ROM trade show business.
于是我跟整个公司说：咱们得转型做会议出版，用我们现有的工具，但不再做展销资料，而是搞那些枯燥的技术论文。
And so I told the whole company, well, look, we need to pivot into conference publishing, you know, using the same tools that we have, but instead of publishing trade show literature, we're gonna do, know, boring technical papers.
大家都说：好的，吉姆。
And everyone was like, yes, Jim.
对。
Yes.
对。
Yes.
对。
Yes.
他们全都答应了。
And they all said yes.
但没人真去行动。
But none of them did anything different.
当时唯一愿意听我说话的，只有杰克·多西。
And so the only person who would listen to me was Jack Dorsey.
所以在他来MIRA的第二个夏天，我把杰克拉到一边，跟他说：其他人都撑不了六个月。
So his second summer at MIRA, I took Jack aside and I said, look, None of these other people are gonna be here in six months.
你和我得赶紧想办法救公司。
You and I have to go off and save the company in the meantime.
明白了。
Okay.
你早就看出苗头了。
So you are seeing the handwriting on the wall.
你知道大多数公司迟早会自己建网站，就用不着你们的服务了。
You know that most companies are gonna start making their own websites, and they will not need your services anymore.
于是你们决定从贸易展会转向学术会议。
And so you guys decide to pivot away from trade conferences to, I guess, academic conferences.
你们搞了个平台，专门发布人们在会议上发表的研究论文？
Like, you launch a a publishing platform for for research papers that people would present at these conferences?
是的
Yeah.
我们把那些厚得要命的书，做成了小得要命的CD。
We took large boring books and made them into small boring CDs.
所以你们本质上还是在做光盘业务。
So you basically you you're still in the CD ROM business.
对。
Yeah.
你们只是转到了学术会议这边，没错。
It was just you shifted to academic conferences Yes.
因为在那里，你们看到了更多机会，至少能撑得久一点，毕竟互联网迟早也会终结这个生意。
Where you saw more opportunity, at least for a longer period of time, because the Internet would have killed that business too.
其实啊，互联网兴起后，这个生意到现在还在继续。
Oh, actually, the Internet is I mean, that business is still going today.
哦，真的吗？
Oh, wow.
是的。
Yeah.
对。
Yeah.
没错。
Yeah.
Mirror 现在还在赚钱呢。
Mirror still makes money.
但不用光盘了吗？
But not on CD ROMs?
我的意思是，不用了。
I mean, no.
现在是通过网络发布，但核心流程还是那些：收集论文、审核、评审、排序，然后发布，对。
It's it's web publishing, but I mean, like, the core tech is still you gotta collect these papers and verify them and jury them and rank them and publish them and yeah.
明白了。
Okay.
所以你们在产品里面又做了一个子产品，结果反而帮公司省了不少钱
So you guys have this product within a product, and that ends up kind of prolong saving
帮公司省了钱。
Saves the company.
是的。
Yeah.
对。
Yeah.
有了孩子杰克之后，你有没有跟他们说过，别上大学了。
And when, you know, having this kid, Jack, I mean, did you say to them, hey.
别去上大学了。
You know, don't bother going to college.
直接来这儿上班就行。
Just come work come work here.
没有。
No.
没有。
No.
没这回事。
No.
我不是
I'm not
会去跟人谈上不上大学这事。
gonna talk to somebody about going to college.
我的父亲就是。
I mean, my father was a Yeah.
教授。
Professor.
他是工程学院的院长。
He's a dean of the engineering school.
上大学是我们家的传统。
College is that's the family business.
这倒也合理。
Fair enough.
好吧。
Alright.
行吧。
Alright.
所以杰克·多西离开了。
So Jack Dorsey goes away.
他渐渐从你的生活中消失了，对吧？
He kind of leaves your world.
对。
Right?
是的。
Yeah.
然后他就去上大学了。
And he goes on to college.
我觉得他退学了。
I think he drops out.
对。
Yeah.
是的。
Yeah.
他上过大学，后来我们去了不同的学校，然后他退学了。
He went to college, then we did different college, and then he drops out.
明白了。
Okay.
但你一直把Mira经营到九十年代，直到2001年才退出。
But you and you continue to run Mira into through the nineties, and then you step away in 2001.
对。
Yeah.
但那时候你已经有钱了。
But you had enough money.
我是说，你居然能在圣路易斯建起一个玻璃吹制工作室。
I mean, you were able to build a glassblowing studio in Saint Louis.
对。
Yes.
对。
Yes.
在圣路易斯建了一个世界级的玻璃工作室。
Built a world class glass studio in Saint Louis.
你当时就是做这个的？
This is what you were doing?
对。
Yeah.
全职。
Full time.
是的。
Yeah.
吹玻璃，当然我也做了一些别的事。
Blowing glass and I mean, I did some other stuff.
你知道的，我还盖了几栋公寓。
You know, I built some apartments.
但我已经不再全职在Meera工作了。
I but I was not full time at Meera anymore.
Meera还在给我发工资，但我已经不是老板了。
Meera was still paying me, but I wasn't the boss.
明白了。
Alright.
你和杰克·多尔西一直保持联系，他回圣路易斯的时候，后来还一起创办了推特。
You have been keeping in touch with Jack Dorsey when he comes back to Saint Louis, and he would go on to cofound Twitter.
对吧？
Right?
是的。
And Yes.
然后当上了首席执行官。
And become the CEO.
很多人知道这个故事的大致脉络，我们之前请伊芙琳·威廉姆斯来做客时也讲过一部分。
Many people know the basic outline of the story, and we told some of it when we had Evelyn Williams on.
但基本情节是，他当时年纪很轻就当上了CEO，由于各种原因，被董事会赶下了台。
But the basic story is he was a very young CEO, and for a variety of reasons, he was pushed out by the board.
两年后就被赶走了，是的。
They pushed him out after two years Yeah.
那是2008年。
In 2008.
那时候Twitter还非常新。
And Twitter at that time was still very new.
简直可以说是小众到极点。
It was, like, really niche.
用的人不多，但还是上了一些新闻。
Not that many people were using it, but it still made some news.
我记得他是在2008年圣诞节前后回来的，那时候你们又重新联系上了。
And you had he I guess he had come back around Christmas in 2008, and you guys reconnect at that time.
是的。
Yeah.
据我了解，你们开始聊起要不要一起做点什么。
From what I understand, you start talking about maybe doing something together.
你当时已经有了一份不错的工作和生活，为什么还对这件事感兴趣呢？
Tell me why that was interesting to you in 2008 when you had this really nice business and life.
听起来你当时有点坐不住了，想换个新方向。
Like, what it sounds like had some you had itchy feet.
你就是想试试新的东西。
You wanted to do something something new.
说实话，我有点无聊了。
I mean, I was a little bored.
明白了。
Got it.
我过得挺安稳，但说真的，并没有全身心投入。
I was comfortable, but not, you know, fully engaged.
他们对杰克做的事，在我看来很不地道。
And what they did to Jack seemed wrong to me.
他们不仅把他踢出了推特，还试图从历史上抹去他的存在。
They not only kicked him out of Twitter, they tried to write him out of the history.
我很清楚这一点，因为当时我一直在看相关报道，里面总会提到比兹和伊夫。对。
And I know this very well because I was reading at the time the reports, and they would mention Biz and they would mention Ev Yeah.
作为 Twitter 的创始人。
As the founders of Twitter.
他们把杰克给漏掉了，还漏掉了另一个叫诺尔·格拉斯的家伙，我想是叫这个名字。
And they would omit Jack, and they would omit another guy, Noel Glass, I think.
对。
Yeah.
我得说句公道话，埃文·威廉姆斯在我们的采访里可没这么干。
I will say to his credit, Ev Williams did not do that in our interview.
他确实给了杰克·多西应得的肯定，毕竟真是他发明了推特。
He certainly gave Jack Dorsey credit what credit was due because he really did invent Twitter.
说到底，是他写的代码，也是他想出这个点子的。
I mean, he was the one who coded this thing and who came up with this thing.
要是你在2009年问埃文这个问题，我不知道他会怎么回答。
Well, had you asked Ev that question in 2009, I wonder what kind of answer you would have gotten.
没错。
Right.
那时候情况完全不一样。
It was a different story.
是啊。
Yeah.
他们现在都成熟了。
They've all grown up.
对吧？
Right?
但你觉得这不公平。
But you felt like it was unfair.
好吧。
Okay.
我明白你的意思。
I get that.
但一想到创业，你就坐不住了。
But the idea of starting a business, you had itchy feet.
你说你感到无聊。
You were bored, as you say.
而这位你认识很久的人，让你突然想到：等等，这或许是个和他一起做点什么的好机会。
And here was this guy that you knew for a long time and what you thought, wait a minute, this could be a cool opportunity to do something with him.
不是的。
No.
根本不是这么回事。
That wasn't it.
创办公司是杰克的主意。
It was Jack's idea to start the company.
我原本的想法是，干脆去加州，跟推特那帮人较较劲。
Because my original idea was let's just go out to California and make, you know, make war on the Twitter guys.
等等。
Wait.
不好意思。
Sorry.
你这话是什么意思？
What do you mean?
你到底是什么意思？
You you you what did that mean?
就是出于赌气。
It was spite.
你懂的。
You know?
我不知道我们接下来该做什么。
I don't know what we're gonna do.
哇哦。
Wow.
回头想想，这确实挺奇怪的。
In hindsight, it seems very unusual.
我的意思是，这简直是浪费时间。
I mean, it's like, a great use of your time.
所以，盖伊，说真的，那个想法在我脑子里可能就持续了三十秒。
So, Guy, in point of fact, that was probably an idea in my head for thirty seconds.
对。
Right.
明白了。
Okay.
那根本不是认真的。
And that was not fully serious.
那并不是完全认真的，呃，我就是那么说的。
It was not fully, I Well, that was what I said.
然后杰克说，咱们为什么不做个全新的东西呢？
And then Jack said, well, why don't we build something new?
但绝对不能跟社交媒体沾边。
It just can't involve social media.
我就说，行吧。
And I was like, okay.
可即便如此，我们还是得想清楚很多事。
Well, that still leaves a lot of stuff we had to figure it out.
所以我们决定做点跟手机相关的东西，毕竟那时候iPhone刚出来，大家都很关注。
So, we decided that we wanted to do something with mobile phones, because mobile phones are just, you know, the iPhone had just come out.
对。
Right.
我们就琢磨着能拿它干点啥，然后跑去加州 brainstorm，之后聘了特里斯坦·奥蒂尔尼——iPhone的第一个工程师，他几周后才入职，可那时候我们对iPhone到底该做什么还没个明确方向。
Let's figure out what to do with it, and then off to California to come up with ideas, and then we hired Tristan O'Tierney, the, first iPhone engineer, and he was gonna be starting in a couple of weeks, and we didn't have a really good idea to do with this iPhone.
但特里斯坦就要入职了，所以我们得赶紧想个主意。
But Tristan was starting, so we had to come up with something.
你去了旧金山。
You go to San Francisco.
你雇了这位曾经参与过iPhone开发的工程师。
You hired this guy who had been an engineer on the iPhone.
是的。
Yeah.
杰克当时在推特已经有点名气了，而你也有经验。
Obviously, Jack had a reputation already being in at Twitter, and and you had experience.
但在湾区，你可能没那么出名。
You probably weren't as well known in the Bay Area.
我当时是个无名小卒，杰克也差不多。
I was nobody, and Jack was somewhat nobody.
对。
Right.
但你当时雇了这个人，其实还不清楚具体要做什么，这在当时很常见。
But you had hired this guy without exactly knowing what you were gonna do, which is very typical.
我是说，那时候是这样，现在也还是这样。
I mean, it was then, it still is now.
是的。
Yeah.
我当时也在琢磨别的点子，但都没想出来，后来就回了圣路易斯。
And I was fishing for other ideas, but hadn't come up with anything, and then I went back to St.
去收拾一下行李。
Louis to sort of pack up my stuff.
好吧，我要搬去加州，带上我的未婚妻，你看我有多认真。
Okay, I'm going to move to California, and take my fiance with me, and like that's how committed I was.
我在工作室里想卖一件玻璃制品，就在那儿，突然接到一个来自巴拿马的女人的电话，她说想买我做的那个怪东西——一个玻璃做的浴室水龙头。
And I was in my studio trying to sell a piece of glass, I mean, there, and I got this phone call from this lady in Panama who wants to buy this ridiculous thing that I'd made, it was a glass bathroom faucet.
两千美元，丑得不行。
$2,000, ugly as can be.
这东西在架子上放了好几年了。
It's been sitting on the shelf for years.
但我真的很需要这笔两千块，能帮上我的现金流和搬家的事儿。
But I need the $2, like $2,000 is really gonna help me, you know, with the cash flow and moving out.
结果我丢了这笔生意，因为我收不了美国运通卡。
And I lost the sale because I couldn't take an Amex card.
你只接受维萨和万事达卡？
You only accepted Visa and Mastercard?
是的。
Yeah.
对。
Yeah.
现在这种做法很少见了，但在2008、2009年的时候特别普遍。
Which was very less common today, but it was super common in 2008, 2009.
是的。
Yeah.
美国运通收费太高了，所以我工作室不收这个卡。
Amex charged too much, so we didn't take it at my studio.
我们一直都能让顾客用Visa或Mastercard付款，但这位女士偏偏没有。
We'd always successfully been able to get people to have a Visa or Mastercard, but this lady didn't have one.
我当时正用iPhone跟这位女士通话，看着手机，我心里觉得这玩意儿应该是万能的——想变什么就能变什么。
And I am sitting there talking to this lady on my iPhone, and I look at my iPhone, and my attitude towards the iPhone was it was this magic device that should become anything I wanted it to.
它能当书、当电视、当地图、当手电筒、当电话，这才对得起它的身份。
It turns into a book or a TV or a map or a flashlight or a phone or like, that's what this device is supposed to do.
可它偏偏不能当刷卡机。
And it didn't turn into a credit card reader.
我当时就想，这事儿我们真该做。
And I thought, well, that's what we should do.
我们应该让iPhone变成一个刷卡机。
We should make the iPhone turn into a credit card reader.
稍后回来时，吉姆会联系投资人，列出140条理由，说明他这个激动人心的新点子为啥可能彻底失败。
When we come back in just a moment, Jim reaches out to investors with a 140 reasons why his exciting new idea just might fail.
请继续收看。
Stay with us.
我是Guy Raz，您正在收听的是《How I Built This》。
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.
嘿。
Hey.
欢迎回到《How I Built This》。
Welcome back to How I Built This.
我是Kai Raz。
I'm Kai Raz.
时间大概是2008或2009年，Jim McKelvey有个想法，可能成为小企业领域的颠覆性创新，就是用iPhone来读取信用卡。
So it's around 2008, 2009, and Jim McKelvey has an idea that could be a game changer for small business, using an iPhone to help read credit cards.
他找到的第一批咨询对象之一就是Jack Dorsey。
And one of the first people he runs us by is Jack Dorsey.
Jack说这主意挺有意思。
He said that's interesting.
他就是这么说的。
Those were his exact words.
然后他就没再说话了。
And he said nothing else.
对。
Yeah.
我想直接切入这个话题。
I wanna jump into this.
对吧？
Right?
那时候，人们用的都是那种像盒子一样的设备，得连上互联网，再接在收银系统上，刷卡得把卡插进去刷一遍。
Seems like a pretty great idea because, you know, at the time, people would have these, like, credit card, like like, these sort of boxes that were plugged into the Internet and connected to a register, and you would swipe the card through this thing.
对吧？
Right?
但那东西又大又重。
But it was big and heavy.
跟砖头一样重。
Was like a brick.
是的。
Yeah.
而且还很贵。
And expensive.
一套要一千美元。
They were a thousand bucks.
所以你说，咱们做个能插在iPhone上的设备吧。
And so you're you were saying, let's make something that works with an iPhone that we can plug into the iPhone.
对。
Yeah.
毕竟硬件是我提的，杰克只想做软件，完全靠手机，但我不同意。
I mean, hardware was my idea because Jack wanted to do software only and just use the phone, and I'm like, no.
我们得有个硬件设备。
We need a piece of hardware.
没错。
Right.
然后我们很快意识到，处理卡片有两种方式。
And then we quickly realized that there are two ways to process a card.
一种叫有卡交易，另一种叫无卡交易。
One is called card present and the other is called card not present.
无卡交易对商家来说贵得多，风险也大得多。
And card not present is way more expensive and more way more risky for the merchant.
所以你得尽量做有卡交易。
So you wanna do card present.
你要能证明买东西的人确实就在现场，并且手里有信用卡。
You wanna prove that the person buying the thing is there and has a credit card.
不然的话，随时都可能被拒付。
Otherwise, you're vulnerable to a chargeback anytime.
这样商家就完全没有保障了。
So, it's no protection for the merchant.
所以商家必须使用刷卡交易。
So, the merchant needs card present.
而当时唯一能实现刷卡的方式，就是读取磁条。
And the only way to get card present was to read the magnetic stripe.
我对杰克说：我们需要读取磁条。
And I said, Jack, we need to read the mag stripe.
杰克却说：你疯了吧。
And Jack said, no, you're crazy.
我们应该用iPhone上本来就有的摄像头来识别卡号。
We need to read the number using the camera that's already on the iPhone.
我们直接扫描卡号就行。
We just scan the number.
这样不是更合理吗？
That seems to make more sense, right?
因为那样还得再配一个额外的设备。
Because then you have to have another device connected to it.
嗯，没错。
Well, yes.
他的办法听起来更合理，就是行不通。
His way makes more sense except for the fact that it doesn't work.
你想想，你总不能让整个信用卡行业接受一张照片吧？毕竟，我拍张照寄到新加坡，难道卡就跑到新加坡去了？
You know, like, you can't just tell the credit card industry to accept an image because, think about it, I can take a picture and mail it to Singapore.
那卡岂不是在新加坡了？
Does that mean my credit card's in Singapore?
对啊。
Right.
你可以扫描卡片，但那就得不到实体刷卡的保护了。
So you can scan your card, but you don't get card present protection.
我。
I
明白了。
see.
你只是省了手动输入16位数字的功夫。
All you've done is save yourself typing 16 digits.
所以你知道，必须通过磁条读取，这个方式才能生效？
So you knew that it had to be read by the magnetic strip in order for it to work?
是的。
Yes.
我当时觉得，别指望信用卡巨头会主动改变。
My attitude was that we're not gonna get the credit card monopolies to change.
对。
Yeah.
他们明文规定，禁止我们这种做法，再加上州和地方层面一堆其他法规，也都拦着我们。
They had rules specifically preventing exactly what we were trying to do, among a bunch of other laws at the state and local level that were preventing what we were trying to do.
也就是说，咱们先捋一捋。
Which meant that and just let's just break it down for a minute.
这些法规禁止商家在现有系统之外接受信用卡支付。
The the laws prevented a merchant from accepting a credit card payment outside of this existing system.
没错。
Correct.
所以如果整个系统由支付方掌控，Visa、MasterCard这些公司控制着整个体系，那当他们既是规则制定者，又拥有这些企业、还定下所有商业规矩的时候，你怎么可能改变这个系统呢？
So then if the system controls who pays for credit cards, Visa, MasterCardynamics control the system, how do you change that system if they are the rule makers and, you know, they own the businesses and they actually make the rules about the business?
你得让他们自己愿意去改这些规则。
Well, you have to get them excited to change their rules.
我的意思是，第一天就很清楚了，对。
I mean, it was clear in the first day Yeah.
我数了数，一共有17条。
That there were I counted 17.
可能还不止，但我数到17条就停了，这些是我们当时在不同程度上违反的规则或规定。
There were probably more, but I stopped counting at 17 rules or various regulations that we were breaking in some way.
有些是法律，有些是网络平台的规则，还有一些像OFAC、KYC，比如你必须了解你的客户。
Some of them were laws, some of them were network rules, some like, OFAC, KYC, like, you have to know your customer.
这些我们后来慢慢都能解决。
Well, we could figure that out eventually.
那是银行的规定，但早期我们确实违反了。
That's a banking regulation, but we were certainly in violation of that in the early days.
但我想知道，他们有什么动力去改呢？
But I guess the question I have is, what what would their incentive be to do it?
我是说，2000年的时候，你看信用卡交易这个市场，那时候有多少小企业能用？
I mean, like, when you looked at this world of credit card transactions, in 2000, let's say, eight, were most small businesses accepted?
我猜应该没有小企业能用。
I'm assuming no small businesses.
没错。
No.
对，没有。
No.
他们该改规则的原因是我们能给他们带来数百万的新商户。
What the reason they should change their rules is that we would bring them millions of new merchants.
为什么这个系统能吸引更多的商户呢？
Why would this system bring in more merchants?
如果你的年营业额不到十万美元，他们根本不会让你用信用卡。
Basically, if you didn't have a $100,000 of business, you would not take credit cards.
那时候的门槛就是这样，因为成本太高了。
That was sort of the cutoff because it was too expensive.
你得找一家银行做担保。
You had to have a sponsoring bank.
还得有规范的财务记录。
You had to have a certain level of accounting.
必须有实体店面。
You had to have a physical location.
你的生意还得有点儿规模和名气。
You had to have a business that had a certain stature.
小商户根本达不到这些要求。
Like, none of the small businesses could make those requirements.
那像农贸市场里的摊贩，就只能收现金了？
So if you're like a farmer's market business, you just take cash?
是的。
Yeah.
别提了。
Forget it.
这套系统本来就是为年交易额达到十万美元以上的商家设计的。
The system was built for merchants who had a a $100,000 or more in transactions.
根本没打算照顾小本生意。
It was never designed to serve a little guy.
他们没什么议价能力，只能一个个被宰。
Basically, they didn't have very good negotiating positions, so they would get screwed individually.
像沃尔玛、塔吉特这样的大公司，有专门的法务团队，能替他们谈条件，手续费自然低得多。
And companies like Walmart and Target who had big, you know, departments of lawyers and lots of ability to, you know, sort of negotiate on their behalf paid lower fees.
所以如果你是个小商家，每笔交易的手续费加起来，可能要吃掉你6%的销售额。
So if you were a small business owner, you're gonna be paying all kinds of transaction fees that could eat in, like, 6% of the sale.
没错。
Oh, yeah.
费用高得离谱，还藏着各种套路。
Tremendous amounts of fees and hidden fees like tricks.
简直太黑心了。
It was just vile.
所以我回到之前的问题：如果信用卡公司从小企业交易里赚7%，按理说他们应该会想方设法阻止你们的做法才对。
So this is I go back to my question, which is if a credit card company is making 7% on a small business transaction, I would think they would have an incentive to try and block what you were trying
没错。
to do.
我们其实是告诉他们：把市场打开，让那些你们还没来得及榨取的人也进来。
Well, what we were doing was we were telling them, basically, open up the market to all these people you don't get to exploit yet.
我们没说得这么直白，但意思就是——你们从这些小商户身上赚得太狠了。
You know, we didn't say it like that, but they were I mean, if if if you know, the the the understanding was you guys are making so much off these little merchants.
我给你们带来更多这样的客户。
I'll bring you even more of them.
对。
Mhmm.
你明白吧？
You know?
我们从不反对网络手续费。
And I we never argued with the network fees.
维萨和万事达的费用其实挺透明的。
So remember the Visa and Mastercard fees, they're fairly straightforward.
真正疯狂的剥削，发生在这些交易里的中间环节。
Where the crazy abuse is is all the middlemen in those transactions.
维萨和万事达本身并不怎么坑商家，问题出在它们的合作伙伴身上。
So Visa and Mastercard, they don't really abuse the merchant, but the abuse happens with all their partners.
比如那些为银行、为维萨和万事达工作的独立销售组织。
Like, the the independent sales organizations that work for the banks, that work for Visa and Mastercard.
这一串链条上，每个人都在从小微商家身上狠狠抽一刀。
You know, there's there's this chain of people, and in that chain, everyone takes a huge cut of the little merchant.
维萨和万事达，掌握着规则的人。
So Visa, Mastercard were the guys who had the rules.
他们不会因为Square的任何举措而受到负面影响。
They weren't negatively impacted by anything that Square was gonna do.
所以要说服他们做出改变就容易多了。
So it was easier to convince them to change it.
我记得当时是这样。
And there was I remember.
即使是小企业，也有了自己处理信用卡支付的机会。
I mean, even small business like, there was it was an opportunity for even a small business person to do credit card processing.
我知道有些人自己做生意，同时还兼着别的活儿。
Like, I know I know of people who had businesses but, like, had a side hustle
对。
Yeah.
他们靠做信用卡支付，每年就能赚上几百块。
Where they would do credit card processing and make, like, a few $100 a year just from that business.
对。
Yeah.
是的。
Yeah.
对。
Yeah.
再回过头说说信用卡公司吧，我能理解他们为什么感兴趣，因为你实际上是在说，我们能让更多企业进入信用卡交易领域，数量级都能提升，没错。
And going back to the credit card companies for a sec, I mean, I understand why they would be interested because you're you're basically saying we can bring in an order of magnitude more businesses into the world of credit card transactions because Yes.
如果我们能降低费用、去掉中间商，你们就能赚更多钱，而Square这家公司，就能成为唯一的中介。
If we can reduce the fees, cut out the middlemen, you guys make more money, and basically square this company.
我们就是唯一的中间人。
We will be the only middleman.
没错。
Correct.
我接下来想问的是，为什么信用卡公司不干脆自己来做这件事呢？
And I guess my next question is why wouldn't the credit card companies just think, well, why don't we just do this ourselves?
那根本不是他们的主业。
Well, that's not what they do.
他们不处理信用卡网络的事。
They don't deal with the credit card networks.
你说的是信用卡公司。
You say credit card companies.
准确的说法是网络机构。
The technical term is networks.
他们的工作是维护品牌、制定规则。
And what they do is maintain the brand, write the rules.
所以你说的是美国运通、维萨这些？
So we're talking about Amex, Visa?
对。
Yes.
美国运通、维萨、万事达、发现卡。
Amex, Visa, Mastercard, Discover.
还有银联、JCB这些。
You know, Dynascal, JCB.
随便你说出哪个信用卡系统，它们都是制定规则的品牌机构。
Like, you name any credit card system, and they are a rulemaking brand body.
它们的工作不是对接商家，不是承担任何风险，也不是处理任何文书，它们的任务就是让整个系统正常运转。
Their job is not to deal with merchants, their job is not to take any risks, their job is not to push any paperwork, their job is to keep the system running.
它们从沃尔玛或Square的每笔交易中抽取百分之零点二五或百分之零点一五的费用。
They're taking 25 basis points or 15 basis points off a Walmart transaction or a Square transaction.
所以，不管怎样，它们都能赚钱。
So they're getting paid either way.
所以，它们其实是有动力希望这件事成功的。
So they were incentivized actually to see this work.
哦，
Oh,
是的。
yeah.
因为你们基本上就是在说：我们来替你们把事情办了。
Because you you guys are basically saying, look, we're gonna do the work for you.
从实际角度看，我们会负责注册流程，也就是开店或商铺的那部分。
For all intents and purpose, we're gonna be the the sign up, you know, a store or shop.
他们只需要跟我们打交道就行。
They're just gonna deal with us.
是的。
Yeah.
我们会付钱给你们。
And we'll pay you guys.
其他所有事情都由我们来处理。
We'll handle everything else.
对。
Yeah.
我们会按你们的挂牌价付款。
We'll pay your rack rates.
整个链条上其实有这么多环节。
So there were all these there's all these things along the chain.
好的。
Okay.
所以这算是一个挑战。
So this is this is one challenge.
第二个挑战是硬件。
The second challenge is the hardware.
对吧？
Right?
你得开发一个能扫描或读取Stripe的设备，还要能连上iPhone。
You've gotta build something that is going to scan or read a Stripe and somehow connect to an iPhone.
但iPhone是封闭的系统。
But the iPhone is proprietary.
你需要苹果公司同意，让你接入iPhone，让设备能正常工作。
Like, you need Apple Yes.
没错。
To agree to let you plug into the iPhone to let the thing work.
没错，你确实需要苹果的授权。
Well, yes, you did need Apple's permission.
这就是当初设计充电接口的用意。
That was the thought of the dock connector.
他们在手机底部设了一个小接口。
They had this little port at the bottom.
现在还是这样。
They still do.
对。
Right.
那时候，那个接口可大得多。
And at the time, it was this big port at the bottom.
你要想用这个接口，就得向苹果付钱。
And you had to pay Apple for access to that port.
还得花钱买苹果的专用芯片，才能做你的硬件。
You had to pay Apple for a special chip that allowed you to build your hardware.
然后你还得说服他们同意你这么做。
And then you had to convince them to let you do it.
那时候，iPhone的电池表现很差。
And at the time, the iPhone had a terrible battery.
所以他们不允许任何会耗电的外设，因为那会让电池更不经用。
And so they wouldn't let you do anything that sucked power from the device because that just made the battery performance worse.
因此，我们几乎不可能获得苹果的许可，把信用卡读卡器连到他们的设备上。
So there was almost zero chance of us getting permission from Apple to connect a credit card reader to their device.
如果你打算把iPhone当主要工具用，这显然是个大问题。
So that seems like a pretty big problem if you wanna use the iPhone as as the main tool.
是的。
Yeah.
幸运的是，我是个技术迷。
So fortunately, I'm a nerd.
有一本叫《Make》的杂志。
There's a there's a magazine called Make Magazine.
是的。
Yeah.
如果你翻开《Make》杂志的第一期，就会看到有个人把手机改装了，通过麦克风接口接入了一个信用卡读卡器。
And if you open up the first issue of Make Magazine, there's this dude who hacked a cell phone and put a credit card reader in through the microphone jack.
于是我想到，我们也可以做个读卡器，通过耳机接口来实现。
So I'm thinking, oh, well we can read, we can build a reader and go through the headphone jack.
我有个朋友在圣路易斯，
And I had a friend in St.
是当地大学的一位教授，之前做过信用卡处理和安全系统相关的工作。
Louis who was a professor at the university who actually had done work processing credit cards and doing sort of security systems for credit cards.
于是我给他打了电话，说：嘿，
So I called him and I was like, hey.
你能帮我做个这个读卡器吗？
Can you help me build this card reader?
他回答说：哦，咱们直接用耳机接口就行。
He was like, oh, we'll just go for the headphone jack.
我当时就说，嘿，这主意不错。
I was like, oh, hey.
好主意。
Good idea.
所以耳机接口可以成为进入iPhone的途径，但你们不需要苹果的许可就能用吗？
So the headphone jack could be the way into the iPhone, but you didn't need permission from Apple to use that?
说需要也行，说不需要也行。
Well, you did and you didn't.
他们本来完全可以把我们从App Store里封掉。
They could have easily blocked us from the App Store.
苹果本来可以阻止我们的。
Apple could have stopped us.
如果我们惹恼了他们，或者让他们觉得受到威胁，他们肯定会直接封了我们。
And if we had offended them or made them felt threatened in any way, they they would have shut us down.
明白了。
Alright.
那你们是怎么一步步应对这些困难的？
So what was your process to, like, walk through those raindrops?
让史蒂夫·乔布斯来帮我们一把。
Oh, get Steve Jobs to bail us out.
听起来挺简单的。
Sounds really easy.
是的。
Yeah.
杰克给史蒂夫发了封邮件。
So, Jack emailed Steve.
史蒂夫是推特的粉丝。
Steve was a fan of Twitter.
杰克约到了和史蒂夫见面，但因为他的健康问题，会面取消了。
Jack got a meeting with Steve, which was canceled because of Steve's health.
你得明白，史蒂夫在苹果就是个传奇人物。
And you gotta understand Steve was this larger than life deity at Apple.
所以，只要史蒂夫感兴趣的东西，苹果的高层管理也会跟着感兴趣。
So, anything that Steve was interested in, the upper management at Apple was also interested in.
我觉得，史蒂夫愿意跟我们见面，哪怕最后没见成，可能也让他们的法务部门没找麻烦。
So, I think the fact that Steve was willing to meet with us even though the meeting didn't happen may have kept their lawyers at bay.
那你本来打算在那次见面里给他展示什么呢？
And what were you gonna show him if you had that meeting?
我们得给他看硬件，这让我特别紧张，因为他是个出了名的设计挑剔鬼。比尔·盖茨曾经想给他展示微软的Zoom，结果他连碰都不肯碰，说那玩意儿太丑了。
So we had to show him hardware, which terrified me because he is a notorious design snob, so much that when Bill Gates tried to show him the Microsoft Zoom, he refused to touch it because it was too ugly.
对。
Right.
所以我手里拿着一个特别丑的信用卡读卡器，马上要站在乔布斯面前。
So I've got this really ugly credit card reader, and I'm about to go in front of Steve Jobs.
我心里想，天哪。
I'm like, oh my god.
我得赶紧做出点好看的东西，而且速度要快。
I need to build something pretty, and I need to do it fast.
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