我们如何为AI重组Airtable整个组织 | Howie Liu（联合创始人兼CEO）

如果你要从零开始创立一家具有相同使命的新公司，你会如何采用完全基于AI原生方式来实现这一使命？如果做不到，那就寻找买家。如果你真心在乎这个使命，那就去开启它的下一个篇章。

If you were literally founding a new company from scratch with the same mission, how would you execute on that mission using a fully AI native approach? If you can't, then you find a buyer. And then if you really care about this mission, like, go and start the next carnation of it.

对于为你工作的员工，你如何调整对他们的期望以帮助他们取得成功？

For people that work for you, how have you adjusted what you expect of them to help them be successful?

如果你想取消所有会议，比如一天或整整一周，去试用每一款你认为可能与Airtable相关的AI产品，那就去做吧。

If you wanna cancel all your meetings for, like, a day or for an entire week and just go play around with every AI product that you think could be relevant to Airtable, go do it.

在产品团队的不同职能中，产品经理、工程师、设计师，谁在使用这些工具提升生产力方面最为成功？

Of the different functions on a product team, PM, engineering design, who has had the most success being more productive with these tools?

这确实更取决于个人态度。能够跨界涉足另外两个职能的任一角色都会拥有巨大优势。作为产品经理，你需要开始更像一个兼具设计敏感性的混合型产品原型师。

It really does become more about individual attitude. There's a strong advantage to any of those three roles who can kind of cross over into the other two. As PM, you need to start looking more like a hybrid PM prototyper who has some good design sensibilities.

你认为这些角色中有哪一个比其他角色面临更大危机吗？今天我的嘉宾是Howie Liu，Airtable的联合创始人兼CEO。在本期播客中，我将与多位创始人对话，他们正在AI时代重塑经营十余年的企业，以帮助大家应对当前每家公司产品都在经历的这一生存转型。Howie和Airtable的历程堪称典范，本次对话中他的分享蕴含无数值得学习之处。

Do you see one of these roles being more in trouble than others? Today, my guest is Howie Liu. Howie is the cofounder and CEO of Airtable. I'm having a bunch of conversations on this podcast with founders who are reinventing their decade plus old business in this AI era to help you navigate this existential transition that every company and product is going through right now. Howie and Airtable's journey is an incredible example of this, and there's so much to learn from what Howie shares in this conversation.

我们讨论了一个我注意到的有趣趋势——Howie本人就是典型例证——CEO们几乎重新成为个体贡献者，亲自参与编码、构建产品、主导计划。我们称之为'IC型CEO'。他还分享了产品经理、产品负责人以及工程师和设计师在这个新时代必须具备的具体技能，以及他如何将公司重组为'快速思考组'和'深度思考组'，从而显著加速AI投资。如果你正苦于如何在AI新时代取得成功，本期内容正是为你准备。

We talk about a very interesting trend that I've noticed that Howie is very much an example of, of COs almost becoming individual contributors again, getting into the code, building things, leading initiatives themselves. The something that we call the IC CEO. We also talk about the very specific skills that he believes product managers and product leaders, also engineers and designers, need to build to do well in this new world that we're in. Also, how he restructured his company into two groups, a fast thinking group and a slow thinking group, which allowed their AI investments to significantly accelerate. If you're struggling to figure out how to be successful in this new AI era, this episode for you.

若喜欢本播客，别忘了在常用播客应用或YouTube订阅关注。成为我通讯录的年度订阅用户，还可免费获得15款卓越产品的年费使用权，包括Lovable、N8N、Linear、Superhuman、Descript、WhisperFlow、Gamma、Perplexity、Warp、Granolah、Magic Patterns、Raycast、Chepier和Mobbit。访问lenny'snewsletter.com点击产品通行证查看。现在有请Howie Lou。本期由协作存储平台LucidLink赞助播出。

If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of 15 incredible products, including lovable, N8N, Linear, Superhuman, Descript, WhisperFlow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granolah, Magic Patterns, Raycast, Chepier, and Mobbit. Check it out lenny'snewsletter.com and click product pass. With that, I bring you Howie Lou. This episode is brought to you by LucidLink, the storage collaboration platform.

你打造了优秀产品，但通过视频、设计和故事呈现才能赋予其生命力。如果团队需要处理大型媒体文件、视频、设计素材、分层项目文件，定会理解跨地域协作的混乱——文件散落各处，不断确认'这是最新版本吗？'，文件传输等待导致创作流程停滞。

You've built a great product, but how you show it through video, design, and storytelling is what brings it to life. If your team works with large media files, videos, design assets, layered project files, you know how painful it can be to stay organized across locations. Files live in different places. You're constantly asking, is this the latest version? CreativeWork slows down while people wait for files to transfer.

LucidLink解决了这些问题。它为团队提供云端共享空间，操作如同本地驱动器。文件可即时从任何位置访问，无需下载同步，始终保持最新状态。这意味着制片人、剪辑师、设计师和营销人员能直接通过原生应用打开海量文件，云端实时协作，随时随地保持同步。

LucidLink fixes this. It gives your team a shared space in the cloud that works like a local drive. Files are instantly accessible from anywhere. No downloading, no syncing, and always up to date. That means producers, editors, designers, and marketers can open massive files in their native apps, work directly from the cloud, and stay aligned wherever they are.

Adobe、Shopify及顶尖创意机构的团队都使用Lucid Link来保持其内容引擎快速平稳运行。免费试用请访问lucidlink.com/lenny。重复一遍：lucidlink.com/lenny。本期节目由DX赞助播出——这款由顶尖研究者设计的开发者智能平台。要在AI时代蓬勃发展，组织必须快速适应。

Teams at Adobe, Shopify, and top creative agencies use Lucid Link to keep their content engine running fast and smooth. Try it for free at lucidlink.com/lenny. That's lucidlink.com/lenny. Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. To thrive in the AI era, organizations need to adapt quickly.

但许多组织领导者难以回答紧迫问题：哪些工具有效？它们如何被使用？真正创造价值的是什么？DX提供了领导者应对这一转型所需的数据与洞察。通过DX，Dropbox、booking.com、Adyen和Intercom等公司能深入理解AI如何为开发者创造价值，以及AI对工程生产力的实际影响。

But many organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions like which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? DX provides the data and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift. With DX, companies like Dropbox, booking.com, Adyen, and Intercom get a deep understanding of how AI is providing value to their developers and what impact AI is having on engineering productivity.

了解更多信息，请访问DX官网getdx.com/lenny。再次强调：getdx.com/lenny。Howie，非常感谢你的到来，欢迎参加播客节目。

To learn more, visit DX's web website at getdx.com/lenny. That's getdx.com/lenny. Howie, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.

我太激动了。谢谢你Lenny。其实我作为听众关注这个节目已经很久了。

I'm so excited. Thank you, Lenny. I've I've been a listener from afar for a while now.

听你这么说我真的很荣幸。我也非常兴奋。你这十三年——或许更久？——的经历可谓波澜壮阔。

I'm I'm really flattered to hear that. I'm also very excited. You've been on quite a journey over the last is it thirteen years? Is it is it longer?

对，差不多十三年。

Like, right yeah. Right about thirteen.

十三年啊。想必经历了不少起伏。我想聊聊这些经历，以及你一路收获的经验教训。首先从Airtable历史上一个想必令人意外的低谷说起——

Thirteen years. Imagine there have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs. I wanna talk about all those things. I wanna talk about a lot of the lessons that you've learned along the way. I wanna start with what I imagine was a a very surprising down moment in the history of Airtable.

这件事不幸成为了我——可能其他人也是——想到Airtable时的第一印象。大概几年前有条病毒式传播的推文，有人晒出数据宣称'Airtable已死：融资额远超实际价值，收入无法支撑估值'。

This is something that unfortunately, something I think about when I think of Airtable. I feel other people maybe feel this way is there's this tweet that went super viral maybe a couple years ago at this point where someone just shared all this data and they're like, Airtable is dead. They've raised way more money than they're worth. They're not making enough to get from an underwater. Yeah.

推文最后还写着'Airtable安息吧'。当时实际情况如何？那些说法有多少真实性？后来又是怎么...

Airtable RIP. What happened there? How much of that was true? How did that Yeah.

其实基本都不属实。最让我惊讶的是这条推文竟能病毒式传播——我后来翻看发布者的历史推文，发现他在CB Insights工作。讽刺的是，这家公司的业务核心本应是提供优质的私营公司数据，但他给出的收入规模和增长率等关键数据却存在严重偏差。让我稍感安慰的是，发现他之前也用类似方式'唱衰'过Flexport等其他公司。

So very I mean, basically, none of it was true. And, I mean, the surprising thing to me was how viral this tweet went when, frankly, like, I I actually looked back at this person's, other tweets. I think they they, they worked at CB Insights, and the irony is, like, the the whole point of that business is to have, like, good data, good data quality around private company data. And they just, like, literally had incorrect numbers by, like, a a strong multiple on, like, what our revenue scale was, what our growth rate was, like you know? And and if it gave me some consolation, I looked back and, like, this person had also tweeted about other companies like Flexport was the last, like, kind of takedown tweet.

他们之前说，哦，Flexport完蛋了。而且，你知道，他们的估值太高了，诸如此类的。所以我觉得更令人惊讶的是，这个人一直在发一堆没有真实或正确数据支持的辛辣观点，然而这条推文却特别火。这让我感到困惑。然后我认为真正让它持续发酵的是《All In》播客，这个节目显然非常受欢迎，我也在听。

They they had, oh, Flexport's dead. And, like, you know, their their, you know, their valuation is is, you know, too high and blah blah blah. And so I think that the more surprising thing was just like this person has been tweeting a bunch of, like, spicy takes that are not substantiated by real data or correct data, and yet, like, this particular tweet went super viral. And that was the perplexing part to me. And then I think actually, I think what what, really gave it legs was, on the All In podcast, which is, like, obviously super popular, you know, and I listened to it.

你知道，他们讨论了这件事。他们说，哦，这周的最新消息，关于Airtable的这条推文。我们怎么看？我觉得这几乎成了讨论这一代高估值公司（可能是十角兽公司）在新环境下命运的一个更广泛话题的引子，当时对公开和私募市场来说都是一个关键时刻。不过他们后来也发布了更正。

Like, you know, they they covered it. They were like, oh, like, you know, latest on on, this week's news, like, you know, this tweet about Airtable. What do we think about this? And it almost, I think, became, like, a way to talk about a broader theme of what happens to this last generation of highly valued companies, maybe Decacorn companies in this new and at that point, it was, kind of the recent moment for both public and private markets. They did also issue a correction though.

《All In》几周后做了一期后续节目，说，嘿，我们把数字搞错了。我们要修正对Airtable的看法和案例。

All in did a follow-up episode a few few, I think weeks later saying like, hey, like, you know, we got the numbers wrong. Like, you know, we we're revising our case and and kind of a a view on Airtable.

有句话怎么说来着，谎言绕地球多少圈的时候，真相还没起床？

What's that line about how, a lie gets around the world some number of times before truth has even this time to get out of bed?

是啊，是啊。嗯，我觉得在那次经历中很快学到了关于网络迷因和道德的东西。虽然我不太擅长社交媒体，但确实学到了一些。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I think I learned about, memes and morality very quickly in, in that experience. Not a very good social media person, but, I think I learned a little more.

是啊，太难了。推特上的激励机制太扭曲了。人们只想分享他们想分享的内容，而不是真相。特别是...

Yeah. It's tough. Twitter is such an the incentives are so misaligned. It's just I need I tweet something people want to share, not truth. Well, mean, especially, like

我是说，有很多值得喜欢的。总的来说，我更喜欢埃隆接手后的推特，因为它更大胆了。你知道，我真的很欣赏那种不满足于现状的大胆产品执行。他们做了很多改变，但我觉得我的信息流里总是被注入很多煽动性内容。而且这招对我有效，我忍不住会去点击和互动。

I mean, I I there's a lot to like. I would say, net net, I like the post Elon Twitter more than the pre Elon Twitter because it's it's just bolder and, like, I, you know, I guess I I really admire bold product execution where you're not just kinda stuck to, like, the current laurels. And they made so many changes, but, like, I do feel like I get injected into my feed very sensational content all the time. And, I mean, it works on me. I'm like, know, like, I can't help but to, like, click on it and engage with it.

你知道吧？但这确实会导致这类内容真的传播开来。

I'm like you know? But it it does I think it does result in, like, this kind of content, like, really spread.

是啊。现在尼基塔在掌舵。不知道你看到没有，有个新功能——截屏推文时右上角会有个巨大的x.com水印。

Yeah. Now Nikita running the show. I don't I don't know if you saw this. There's a new we don't need to keep talking about Twitter, but there's a new feature where you take a screenshot of a tweet and it has, a huge x.com logo watermark in the top right. Yeah.

就是为了，你知道，人们总是在分享这些推文。

Just to like, you know, people are sharing these tweets all the time.

是啊。是啊。是啊。哦，老兄。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.

那边永远不缺热闹。

Never a dull moment over there.

确实。

For sure.

好的。我想换个完全不同的话题。有件事我特别想和你探讨，就是我注意到的一个新兴趋势——首席运营官重新回归一线执行者的角色。我看到越来越多的COO又开始亲自动手，重新参与构建、深入细节、甚至写代码。我感觉你正是这股潮流的先锋。

Okay. I wanna go in a completely different direction. Something that I'm really excited to talk to you about, which is this very emerging trend that I've noticed that I feel like you're at the forefront of of COs becoming ICs again. It's kind of this move of I see COs, COs getting their hands dirty again, building again, getting in the weeds, coding again. I feel like you're again at the forefront of this.

聊聊你为何这么做？为什么认为这很重要？以及对你而言，现在每天的工作状态与几年前相比有什么不同？

Talk about just why you've done this, why you think this is important and just what that looks like day to day to you versus what your life was like a few years ago.

这种转变的根本原因，至少对我来说，在于创业初期我们完全处于这种模式。我当时既在编写后端代码，思考平台的实时数据架构，也在设计前端用户体验。我认为在寻找初始产品市场契合点时——尤其是像我们这样纯粹做软件产品的公司（不像运营密集型业务比如宠物代遛平台，技术只是附属品）——技术本身就是产品。

The underlying reason for the shift, at least for me, is that as we started the company, was very much in this mode, right? I was literally writing code both on the back end, thinking about the real time data architecture of our platform, also the front end, the UX. And I would argue that in that founding moment, like the initial product market fit finding, and especially for a product that is like pure software, right? Like we weren't building like a operationally heavy business, like a dog walking marketplace where the tech is only an afterthought, like the tech was the product. Right?

更深层地说，Airtable是供他人构建应用的平台。所以核心就在于技术实现——无论是架构设计还是产品UX选择，这些细节本身就是产品的价值主张，二者不可分割。

And in a very meta sense, like Airtable is the platform for other people to build their own apps. Right? So like it's all about the attack. Like the very intimate design decisions, again, both architecturally on the front end and the product UX choices, that is the product's value prop. You can't separate those two.

你不能说：'我研究过用户需求，这是工作流程，然后随便找个工程师实现就行'。正是那些细微决策——既要突破浏览器端的可能性边界，又要构建实时数据架构——才造就了这个产品。

You can't say like, okay, I researched the jobs to be done. Here's the workflow. Here's the process. And then like, okay, some engineer can just build it as an afterthought. Like it's those like little decisions and really be able to like be at the bleeding edge of what's possible both in the browser and with like, you know, kind of the real time data architecture that made the product what it was.

Figma也遵循同样的规律（和我们发展时间线高度平行：同期创立，都花了两年半亲手打磨产品才发布）。从创业初期到现在生成式AI时代，SaaS行业和Airtable都经历了成熟期——随着团队规模扩大，当你需要构建组织体系时，就不可避免地远离了产品细节。

Right? I think the same is true for Figma, which, you know, actually, like, had a very parallel timeline to us. Like, both were founded around the same time, both spent two and a half years building the product, like hands on, you know, that early team before launching. And, you know, when I think now to like both the era in between that founding moment and then now, as well as like now the the new kind of Gen AI moment, like I think there was a maturing era of both SaaS overall and Airtable specifically where, as you scale up and you kind of learn how to build teams and organizations and you have to kind of like scale up stuff that's not actually those intimate details, but process and people and so on, you kind of get by default further and further away from those details. Right?

对某些企业来说这没问题，因为重点已不再是寻找创造产品奇迹的细节，而是规模化现有模式——用更'钝'的工具来放大成功。

And maybe for some businesses that's fine because like no longer is it about finding like the details that make for a magical new product market fit. And it is really just about scaling up an existing thing that works. Right? And using what I would call like more blunt instruments to kind of scale it up. Right?

就像需要一个更直白的路线图，一种更直接的上市执行策略。无论如何，我认为现在我们正进入这样一个时刻——在我看来，几乎每个软件产品都必须重新定位，因为AI是一场范式转变。这甚至不像从桌面转向移动端或从本地部署转向云端那样，那些变化更像是单次且某种程度上可预测的形态调整。我认为AI的进化速度如此之快，每次进化——每个新模型发布、每种新能力的推出——实际上都意味着需要发明新的形态和用户体验模式，以充分利用这些能力。因此，要在这个时代持续保持相关性并优化产品市场契合度，我认为必须深入细节。

Like a more blunt roadmap, a more blunt kind of go to market execution strategy. Regardless, I think that now we're entering this moment where like every, certainly every software product in my opinion has to be refounded because AI is such a paradigm shift. It's not even like, just like the shift from desktop to mobile or on prem to cloud, where that was more like a very one time and somewhat predictable change in form factor. Like I think AI is so rapidly evolving that with every evolution, like every new model release and every new type of like capability that's released, it actually implies novel form factors and novel like UX patterns to be invented, to fully capitalize on those capabilities. And so like to be continuous, continuously relevant and kind of refine product market fit in this era, I think you have to be of the details.

这不像站在万米高空俯瞰然后说‘哦，我们只要投入大量人力就能解决’。实际上需要理解什么是正确的产品体验、支撑它的正确商业模式，以及所有其他配套要素来驱动这个引擎，从而在我们的产品领域发挥这些能力的优势。

Like there is no, looking at it from 10,000 foot view and saying, oh, we're just gonna throw a bunch of people at this problem. It's actually understanding like what is the right product experience and the right business model that backs it up and the right, everything else to support that engine to take advantage of the capabilities in our product domain.

你之前提到过‘首席品味决策者’这个概念。要做到这一点，就必须践行你刚才描述的方式。

You had this phrase somewhere where you talk about being the chief taste maker. And to do that, you have to do exactly what you're describing.

没错。我想说的是，现在如果不参与至少部分‘汤’的烹制过程，就很难真正品鉴这锅汤。面对AI时，你可以看着最终产品说‘这个感觉对或不对’，或者‘我们是否足够大胆地产品化了这些新能力’。但要真正理解可能的解决方案空间，你必须深入细节。我的意思是，你不能只是看看产品功能的截图或预录视频——AI是需要亲手把玩的东西。

That's right. I mean, I think that and like, I would also say like, it's actually now also hard to taste the soup without participating in at least some part of creating the soup. Meeting with AI, you can kind of look at the final product and say, okay, this feels right or not, or it feels like we're being bold enough and we're properly productizing these new capabilities. But I think like to really understand the solution space of what's possible, you kind of have to be in the details, right? I mean, like you can't just look at, you know, kind of screenshots or like a prerecorded video of like a new product feature, like AI is something you have to play with.

理想情况下，你既要体验打包好的应用程序或解决方案，也要直接摆弄底层基础组件。无论是通过API还是聊天界面使用模型，你都要真正把它们推到极限。因为只有这样，你才能真正理解这些新‘食材’——就像厨师突然获得了奇妙的新食材，但必须实际熟悉它们才能烹制出新菜品。

And ideally you're playing with both the like kind of packaged up, you know, app or solution that you've built with it, but you're also playing around directly with the underlying primitives. You're using the models either via API or via a chat interface. You're really pushing them to the boundaries. Because that's the only way that you really understand what these new ingredients it's like as a chef, you just gained access to, like, amazing new ingredients, but you have to, like, actually kinda get comfortable with them to put them into a new dish.

我们曾邀请Dan Shipper上播客。他运营着一个名为Every的新闻通讯和播客公司，帮助企业更好地应用AI。我问他：‘企业成功采用AI并实现生产力飞跃的信号是什么？’他说：‘看CEO是否每天使用ChatGPT或Claude。’

And we had, Dan Shipper on the podcast. He runs, this newsletter and podcast to put out a company called Every. And they work with companies to help them become more AI successful and adopt AI and all that stuff. I asked him, What's the signal that a company will have success adopting AI and seeing huge productivity gains? And he said it's, does the CEO use ChatGPT or Claude daily?

感觉你描述的正是这个标准。

I feel like you're describing exactly.

对吧？每小时都用。字面意义上的每小时。你甚至可以用推理成本来衡量——相当于底层推理计算周期的消耗量。

Right? Hourly. Literally hourly, like, or, you know, you could even, like, have a measure of, like, inference, like, costs. Right? Like, the equivalent underlying, like, inference compute cycles.

对，看他们用了多少token？

Right? How many tokens they use?

没错。我自豪地说——我最近刚确认过——我绝对是Airtable AI推理成本最高的用户，不仅在公司内部，很长一段时间在全球客户中也是。我刻意保持‘浪费’：比如花费数百美元实际推理成本，对销售通话长文本进行大量LLM调用以提取各类洞察，识别产品适用场景或生成摘要等。我们现在还有一个类似LLM Map Reduce的能力。

Yeah. I mean, I I'm proud to say, like, I am I'm I'm pretty sure I'm still the I I just checked this recently, but, I take pride in being the number one most expensive in inference cost user of Airtable AI, not just within our own company, but I think for a long time I was globally across all our customers as well. I'm extremely intentionally wasteful in the sense of I'll do something that costs maybe hundreds of dollars of actual inference costs, right? Like for instance, doing a lot of LLM calls against like long kind of transcripts of let's say sales calls to extract different types of insights, here's the product apps identify or here's summaries, etcetera. And we also have now a capability that's basically like an LLM map reduce.

实际上，即便你无法将所有内容一次性塞进大语言模型的调用中——由于上下文窗口限制，系统会将这些内容分割成块，对每块进行模型调用，最后再对结果进行聚合调用。这成本极高，对吧？因为你本质上是在对海量数据运行一个极其昂贵的模型，然后还要对聚合结果再运行一次。但对我而言，相比获得更优质战略洞察的潜在价值，为此花费数百美元简直微不足道。这就像有一位极其聪明的幕僚长通读了我们过去一年的每一份销售电话记录，为我提供敏锐的产品洞见、营销策略、定位思路和细分市场分析——这种价值无法估量。

Effectively, even if you can't fit the entire corpus of content into one LLM call because the context window limitations will map through all of this content and break it up into chunks and then perform an LLM call on each one and then perform an aggregation LLM call on those chunks. Very expensive, right? Because you're basically running a highly expensive model against a lot of data and then running it again on the aggregates of that. But like for me, you know, like hundreds of dollars spent on this exercise is trivial compared to the potential strategic value of having better insights. It's as if a really, really smart chief of staff has gone through and read every single sales call transcript that we've had in the past year and giving me very astute product insights, marketing insights, kind of positioning insights and segmentation insights, that's invaluable.

要获得同等质量的工作成果，你可能需要支付咨询公司数百万美元。因此在我看来，当人工智能被贪婪却明智地运用时，其价值与实际成本的比例依然惊人。应该有更多人积极地将算力投入到这些高价值问题上。

You could pay a consulting firm literally millions of dollars to get that quality of work. So to me, I still think the value versus the actual cost of AI when applied greedily but smartly. Like, it's just it's it's it's a crazy ratio. And, like, more people should be, like, aggressively throwing compute cycles at these very high value problems.

直到有人在推特上爆料说你们挥霍公司资金在AI算力上，搞得公司快破产了——

Until somebody tweets how you're eating, costing the company so much on on AI compute and you guys are gonna be underwater and

我差点就...开玩笑的。就像我们曾经亲手搞垮...没错，就是企业的现金流。

I'm pretty Just kidding. It's like how we have personally taken down That's right. The the cash flow, through flat of the business.

那么，听到这些的CEO和创始人们大概会想：我该开始这么做了。具体要怎么实施？你肯定还有其他事务要处理——一对一会议、各种事务...你的日常工作方式实际上发生了哪些改变？

So okay. So CEOs, founders hearing this, they're probably like, okay, I I should probably start doing this. What does this actually look like? I imagine you still have a lot of other stuff. You got one on ones, you got all these like, do you actually how have you changed your day to day to do this?

是的，我默认缩减了一对一会议安排。这并非不愿与员工交流，而是发现固定的例会反而会阻碍我及时处理紧要议题。我认为最佳会议类型应该由紧迫性驱动——比如当你发现某个新洞见时，或是与某家初创公司交流后，从他们的产品或方法中获得启发，想要将其融入我们对Airtable新功能的思考，或是向产品研发团队播下思想种子。我希望大多数会议都能基于真实的高价值洞察。

Yeah. So I actually cut my one on one roster by default. And the idea is not that I don't wanna spend time one on one with people, but rather that I found that the Just like having more standing one on ones actually precludes me from, you know, engaging in more timely topics, right? Like I like to think of, you know, the best types of meetings as like very, urgency driven And, like, you know, there's some timely topic. Like, you know, you've you've discovered some insight.

此外，当面交流时我会特意留出非结构化时间——不是每周例行的形式化会议，而是每月一两次的长时间午餐或咖啡漫步。这就像杠铃策略：自由交流时要保证高质量，而常规会议则聚焦具体议题。比如我们现在每周都有AI项目进度会，目前公司近半数研发力量都在推进AI能力建设。

Maybe I talked to some new startup. Right? And, you know, I learned something from from their product or their approach. I wanna bring that into how we're thinking about, like, a new feature at Airtable or even just, like, plant the seed with, like, you know, some different, like, pro you know, EPD people within Airtable. Like, I wanna make most meetings, very timely and very informed by, like, real alpha.

关键在于始终自问：像Cursor或Windsurf这些AI原生公司会如何行动？我们是否和他们一样快速迭代并充分利用新技术？这种紧迫感和执行强度，正是我调整时间分配的核心转变。

Right? There's gotta be some kind of value and insight, to seed that with. Now in addition to that, I'll supplement with, like, you know, when I'm in person, you know, with someone, like, I wanna carve out time for, like, a, you know, a proper, like, catch up and, like, less structured, less less, like, timely and just more of, like, you know, building a relationship with a human. But I actually find that, like, you know, having that com it's almost a barbell approach where it's, you know, if you're gonna spend time with somebody in a free form way, like, actually doing a high quality, not, like, forced weekly ritual way, like, go for a longer lunch or coffee walk or whatever, in person when you can. Maybe that's, like, a once every month or two kinda thing.

现在我们的AI执行会议已成为固定安排——近半数研发团队都在全力推进AI能力建设。我们追求极速交付，始终在思考：真正的AI原生公司会如何运作？我们是否具备同等的执行速度和新技术应用能力？这种强度与紧迫感重塑了我的时间管理方式。

And then, like, the the in betweens are either topical. So we do have standing meetings for, like now we have a weekly basically sprint check-in on all of our AI execution stuff, which now is like half the company or half the EPD org is working on AI capabilities. We're trying to ship very quickly. Like, you know, I basically want to always ask the question, like, how would an AI native company like a Cursor or Windsurf, etcetera, like, how would they execute? Right?

将这种紧迫感和执行强度注入我的时间管理，是最大的转变。

And are we executing as fast as them and taking advantage of like all the new stuff as well as them. So like bringing that level of like kind of intensity and urgency to like how I spend my time within, that's been the main, the biggest shift for me.

你做了哪些改变来帮助公司加快步伐，匹配这种节奏？

What's the change you've made to help the company move faster and match that sort of pace?

是的，我们确实对EP组织进行了重组。过去四年里，我们经历了多次不同类型的重组。最初的状态是，我们默认或渐进式地设立了许多小组，每个小组负责一个功能或一个领域。比如有个小组负责表格内搜索，另一个负责移动端体验等等。这种模式有其优势。

Yeah, so, I mean, we did do a reorg of the EP org. So before we had, we've gone through a few different kind of reorgs over the past, call it four years, the kind of original state as we just kind of proliferated, I think by default or incrementally was that we had a bunch of groups that were each responsible for like a feature or a surface area. So there was a group responsible for search within our table and there was a group responsible for like mobile experience and so on and so forth. Right? And that has its benefits.

显然，这样的团队可以深入掌握代码库的特定部分和产品模块，但缺点是当每个人的职责仅限于渐进式改进某个功能时，思维容易局限在增量优化上，而不是考虑整体使命或结果目标。后者可能需要跨多个领域协调重大变革。所以我们最初重组为不同的业务单元，类似Airbnb从职能制转向总经理负责制。我们更强调企业业务的扩展性。

Obviously like that team can go and get really ramped up on that part of the code base, that part of the product, but it has the disadvantage of you tend to think incrementally when everyone's remit is actually like a feature that they incrementally improve by definition, as opposed to thinking about like a mission or like a outcome goal, right? That might need to coordinate dramatic changes across a wider set of surface areas instead of just like each one kind of incrementally improving. And so we reorged initially to basically different business units effectively. So I know Airbnb has done the functional to GM, back, etcetera. This was more like saying, look, we have an enterprise business and the MO there is more about scalability.

我们能否支持更大规模的数据集和使用场景？是否具备向一万或两万用户推送应用的核心能力？这涉及大量架构和扩展性工作。我们设立了Teams支柱（侧重自助服务、产品用户体验、易用性等基础功能）、AI支柱和基础设施支柱。但发现这种模式下，虽然能做出更全局性的决策——比如Teams支柱可以统筹整个用户引导体验——但在AI领域执行时仍感觉不够敏捷。

Can we support like the larger scale data sets and use cases? Do you have the core capabilities needed to be able to like push out an app to maybe 10,000 seats or 20,000 seats for product operations? So a lot of architecture, a lot of scale, that kind of work. We would have what we call the Teams pillar, which is more about self serve, like kind of the product UX, like how easy it is to adopt the product, onboard, share, do all the kind of like basic functionality, an AI pillar, pillar and basically infra. And what we found though with that approach is that there was still, there was more kind of holistic bets being made.

作为一家AI原生公司，我们无法像Cursor那样每周发布重大更新。之前各业务组有独立路线图，而现在我们需要打造一个以惊人速度迭代的连贯产品。因此最近我们成立了'快速思维组'（官方称AI平台组），目标是每周推出令人惊艳的新功能。

So like the Teams pillar could think not just about one feature, but like the overall onboarding experience. We're like really thinking about NUCs in a way that touched multiple parts of the product. But it still felt like it wasn't especially as as we started to execute more on AI stuff, like it wasn't allowing us to aggressively and quickly move as a AI native company would. Right? I mean, when you look at the cursors of the world, they're shipping major new stuff every week.

这些新功能应该让用户惊叹'InnerTable的这个新能力太棒了'。同时设立'慢速思维组'——这不是优劣之分，就像人类需要快慢两种思维模式协同运作。

And you know, it's not like, oh, well, we have like this separate, you know, kind of roadmap for enterprise. We have this roadmap for for, this group. And, you know, it just feels like one, one cohesive product that's shipping at a breakneck pace. So we did this recent reorg where now we have the what I call, like, the fast thinking group, which officially is called AI platform. But it really means, like, we wanna just ship a bunch of new capabilities on a near weekly basis, And each of them should be like truly awesome value.

就像我身后那本书说的（我很喜欢那本书），慢速思维是另一种规划和执行模式，需要更审慎的决策。比如我们不可能在一周内草率推出像HyperDB这样能处理数亿条记录的新数据存储架构。

Right? Like you should drop your jaw at like how awesome it is to use this new capability in InnerTable. And then separately, have the slow thinking group. And that's not meant meant to be like better or worse. Like it's it's literally, like, you need fast and slow thinking in the common sense, to operate.

现在公司这两部分形成了很好的互补：快速执行的AI组创造市场热度，激发新用例和新用户（包括大企业）；慢速思维组则夯实基础。

Right? Like, as human. That book behind me. Yeah. I love that book.

（笑）对，就像人类需要快慢思维协同那样。

But, but slow thinking is, like, it's just a different mode of planning and executing. Right? It's, like, more deliberate bets that require more premeditation, right? Like we can't just like ship a new piece of infrastructure that has a lot of like data complexity, like our data store, HyperDB, that now can handle like multi 100,000,000 record data sets. Like That's not something you ship in a week, right, in a hacky prototype.

这两部分现在配合得非常好——快速迭代的AI功能创造市场兴奋点，吸引包括大型企业在内的新用户；而稳健的基础设施支持则让这些创新得以持续。

So we now have these two separate parts of the company. And I actually think what's really cool is like, they actually complement each other very well, right? Because like the fast execution, the AI stuff, you know, that creates the top of funnel excitement. That that also, you know, kind of inspires new use cases and new users coming to Airtable, including in large enterprise. Right?

要知道，企业同样可以利用这些技术，这不仅仅是中小企业的专利。但慢思考模式能让最初的应用种子萌芽，逐渐发展成更大规模的部署。而据我观察，许多原生AI公司面临的挑战在于，它们可能拥有庞大的漏斗顶端——吸引大量AI尝鲜者流量，获得高度关注和初期使用。但真正的难题在于，如何将这些转化为更持久的增长，让每颗应用种子能够留存并随时间扩展。

Like, you know, enterprises can use this stuff too. It's not just like a SMB thing. But, like, the slow thinking basically allows those initial seeds of adoption to sprout and grow into much larger deployments. Whereas I think a lot of the challenge for many of the AI native companies I've seen is that they could have, like, a very wide top of funnel, like, get all of this AI tourist traffic, you know, a lot of interest, a lot of, like, kind of, like, you know, early usage. But then, you know, sometimes the the challenge is how do you, like, turn that into more durable, you know, growth and and get each of those adoption seeds to retain and expand over time.

这太酷了！我从没听过这种团队构建方式——快思考与慢思考，就像卡尼曼的理论。快思考团队里，你是否发现某些特定类型的人更容易成功？是需要大量引进不囿于我们现有工作模式的新人吗？

That is super cool. I've never heard of this way of structuring teams, the fast thinking thinking fast, thinking slow, the Kahneman. It's so interesting. For the fast thinking team, do you find there specific archetypes of people that are successful there? Is it a lot of like bringing in new people that are not just used to the way of working at our table?

你有什么发现？

What do you find?

我们采取混合策略。说实话，公司从未停止招聘——即使在两次裁员大幅缩减规模时（当时业务扩张过快），我们仍在每个主要部门持续招人，尤其是工程产品开发部。因为我始终认为，声称'现有团队已满足所有需求'是种傲慢。

We we have a mix. So, you know, we've run-in, I mean, we're we're always hiring, right? Like, there was never a point in, in the company's life where we stopped hiring. And that, you know, candidly, even when we had to do, two RIFs, right, that that significantly, you know, kind of reduced our headcount, you know, we had just, like, way too quickly grown and overscaled the business at a certain point. But even when we did our RIFs, we were still actively recruiting and hiring in every major department, but especially in EPD because it's always been my belief that it would be arrogant to say that we have all the people we ever need already in in the, rosters day.

我们永远需要新鲜视角和技能组合。随着经验积累，我们逐渐明晰理想人选的标准，也通过收购获得人才并从中学习。

Right? Like, we're always gonna need to find new fresh perspectives, new skill sets, etcetera. And so, you know, we we've continued to hire. I think we've learned as we've gone along of like, what is the ideal type of hire? And we've done some Aqua hires and learned from that as well.

快思考团队需要高度自主的创业者型人才——未必是前创始人（虽然像Rippling会直接收购创始人团队），我们也发现有些非收购人才同样具备全栈思维，能统筹用户体验与技术实现。

But I think the fast thinking part, it really just requires a lot of like, somebody who's able to operate with a lot of autonomy, right? Like, who's entrepreneurial in nature. Now it doesn't mean like they have to literally be a former founder. I know some companies are like Rippling, for instance, does a lot of actual acquisitions and gets actual founders into the company. Like we found that you know, that that's great and we've done some of that as well.

比如我们即将推出的新功能：用户不仅能描述想构建的应用，通过对话代理Omni迭代开发（基于Airtable现有平台），还能通过代码生成扩展定制化功能/视觉——例如要求生成特定热力图标注的交互式地图视图。

But like also there are some really, really capable people who like we didn't literally have to like acquire in and yet they're just able to like think full stack about the problem and like the user experience. Problem not just meaning the technical layers of the problem, but also what is the wow factor we're trying to create. So tangibly, we're doing this new thing that's about to ship where not only can you describe the app you wanna build and then iterate on it with kind of our conversational agent Omni, but and it builds it with like the existing Airtable platform capabilities. But we're also giving it the ability to actually do CodeGen to extend those apps with really final mile, very bespoke functionality or visuals. So you could say like, hey, generate me a very, very specific type of map view with this kind of heat mapping and this kind of icons.

这类功能存在大量设计决策模糊地带，需要平衡设计思维与AI模型的技术限制——当模型无法一步到位时，如何嵌入人工审核流程进行重新提示？这涉及极其复杂的设计决策网络。

And when you click it, do this. And that's a capability that there's so much ambiguity in some of the design decisions around it. And you have to blend that design thinking with some of the technical constraints of what can the AI models actually one shot effectively? And if not, like, how do you add in, like, the right human workflow for approval and review and then re prompting and so on? So just so many different, like, design decisions.

我们需要真正享受这种开放性的全栈产品思考者，他们不会被复杂局面压垮，反而乐在其中。

And you need somebody who can like really think full stack about that kind of product and is not overwhelmed by that, you know, kind of open evidence, but like relishes in it.

聊天前我试用了这个功能，做了个超可爱的初创企业CRM系统。

I was actually playing with it, before we started chatting. Made a really cute startup CRM.

哦，那太棒了。

Oh, that's awesome.

是啊。开始在这里谈论Omni。那些色彩美得惊人，这是此刻最吸引我的地方。

Yeah. Started talking Omni over here. It's like the colors are beautiful. That's what's standing out to me right now.

但我想说的是，作为一个核心观点，我认为自己本质上是个产品用户体验专家，对吧？这是我的热情所在，而为了运营这家公司所学的一切，几乎像是旅程中必经的部分。但我真正的热情在于思考产品用户体验，我认为用户体验不仅仅是表面的设计，或是你能在Framer这类工具里做出的原型。我认为它本质上关乎这个产品应该做什么，以及它应该如何为用户呈现和运作——在我看来，这才是产品的本质。

But it is, I will say like, just as a note, you know, I consider myself like at my core, like a product UX person, right? Like that's my passion and everything else I've had to learn to kind of run this company is almost like what was a necessary part of the journey, But like my real passion is thinking about product UX, right? And I think of UX in a deeper sense than just like the cosmetic design, what you could put into a framer kind of prototype. I think of it as literally what should this product do and how should it represent that and behave for the user? That is the product in my opinion.

当然，之后你还得从技术上考虑什么是可行的以及如何实现。但我觉得，当前AI产品领域里很多功能被严重低估了——AI有这么多惊人的能力，但大多数都未能充分商品化，用户在视觉或其他隐喻、功能提示方面得到的帮助非常有限，难以理解这些底层能力到底是什么。比如ChatGPT，显然是非常成功的产品，我完全没有贬低的意思。但默认情况下，你打开它只能看到一个完全空白的聊天框。

And of course, then you have to figure out technically what's possible and how to implement it. But like, I think to me, what's under, executed today in the world of AI products is, like, there's so many awesome capabilities of AI and most of them are really under merchandise and there's, like, very poor actually visual or otherwise metaphors or affordances given to users to help represent or understand like what those underlying capabilities are. Right? Like, I mean, Chatuchu tea, obviously, like, you know, extremely successful products, so not knocking it at all. But, you come in and you just get this, like, completely blank chat box, right, by default.

现在他们会在下面添加建议之类的功能。但作为一个关注产品用户体验的人，我渴望更多视觉隐喻、色彩运用，或是利用网页界面的画布和丰富的交互可能性，来更好地展现底层模型能实现的各种功能。这正是我们在Airtable中尝试做的——通过不同状态展示和色彩强化来呈现多样性。

And now they have suggestions underneath and and so on. But, like, you know, the product UX part of me is just like craving more visual metaphors or colors or some kind of like use the canvas of a web interface and all the richness of interaction you create there to better represent or or show all the different things that you can do with, you know, with with the underlying model. Right? And so that's something we've tried to do with Airtable is like show like all of the different states and like use colors even to play those up.

有趣的是，这与我刚在播客采访OpenAI的ChatGPT负责人Nick Turley时的观点高度契合。他有两个深刻见解与你描述的完全共鸣：一是他始终在问‘这件事是否被最大化加速了？如何更快推进？如果这事重要，什么能让我们更快行动？’

It's interesting how much of this connects with I just had Nick Turley on the podcast. He's head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, and he had these two really interesting insights that resonate, directly with what you're describing. One is he has this concept of whenever something is being worked on, he's always asking, is this maximally accelerated? How do we move faster? Is that if this is important, what would allow us to move faster?

没错。我很喜欢你谈话中浮现的这个主题——创造强烈的速度感，你甚至称之为‘快思维团队’，就是要快速行动。另一点是，对于AI，你往往只有在产品发布后才知道它能做什么、人们想用它做什么。

Yeah. And I love that that's one of the themes that's coming up as you talk is just this creating this very clear sense of speed, and you even call it the fast thinking team. You're gonna move fast. Yeah. And then the other one is just this insight that with AI, you often don't know what what it can do and what people want to do with it until it's out.

所以必须尽快发布，市场反馈会告诉你产品应该成为什么样子。

So there's this need to get it out and that'll tell you what it should be.

我完全同意这两点，尤其是第二点。有意思的是，有些公司既成功实践了产品驱动增长(PLG)，又通过销售主导模式分发AI产品。比如Palantir的AIP部署显然是销售主导的——你不可能通过PLG方式让用户自发用上Palantir。

I I couldn't agree more with with both of those. And particularly on the second point, you know, I think it's interesting, like, clearly there have been companies that have both been successful in PLG and, like, kind of more sales led, you know, kind of distribution for AI products. Like, you know, the the most notable ones I can think of are, like, Palantir with their AIP deployments. Like, that's obviously very sales led. You're not PLG ing into a, Palantir deployment.

即便是像Harvey这样的公司，据我了解也主要通过销售驱动。律师事务所不会自助开通Harvey实例。但在我看来，让用户通过实际体验获取AI价值才是最佳途径。

But even, you know, like companies like Harvey and and, and so on, like, you know, they're doing very well. And, like, it's primarily from what I understand, like, sales led. Right? You're not self serving into a Harvey instance at a law firm. And yet, like, to me, the the best way to get AI value out there is experientially.

对吧？所以在销售过程中你可以这样操作。你可以展示一个演示，也许可以做概念验证。但当你直接敞开大门说任何想试用这个产品的人都可以来注册试用时，效果会强大得多。对吧？

Right? And so you can kind of get that in a sales motion. You can show a demo, maybe you can do a POC. But it's so much more powerful when you just open up the doors and say anyone who wants to come and sign up and trial this product like can. Right?

我认为，对我来说，这就像一个真正的证明点，ChatGPT可以说是史上最成功的产品驱动增长（PLG）产品，对吧？单就用户规模而言，他们宣布有7亿月活跃用户，我想

And I think, to me, it's like kind of a real proof point that like ChatGPT is arguably like the most successful, you know, kind of PLG product of all time, right? Just in terms of like sheer scale of users, like they announced 700,000,000, like MAUs or we, I think

是周活跃用户，地球上10%的人类每周都在使用。

it's Weekly active users, 10% of humans on earth use that weekly.

这太疯狂了。用了多少年？就几年时间。

That's insane. In like how many years, right? Like a few years.

三年，不到三年。

Three years, under three years.

是啊。所以我的意思是，这简直是最疯狂的增速曲线。我认为如果他们不让你直接进来试用产品，是不可能达到这个规模的。这有点反驳我之前的观点——我觉得ChatGPT现在做得并不多。甚至早期，他们在展示产品多种用途方面做得更少，但他们让试用变得如此无摩擦，作为用户你可以直接进来问它任何问题，看看它的表现。

Yeah. And so like, I mean, literally that is just like the most insane ramp curve. And I don't think they would've gotten there if like you couldn't just come in and literally try the product out. And kind of as a little bit of a rebuttal of the point I made earlier where I think ChatuchPutty doesn't do a ton right now. And even earlier, they did even less to expose all the different ways you could use but they just made it so frictionless to just try it for yourself that you as a user could come in and just literally ask it anything and see how it did.

当然，早期人们试图难倒它，展示说'看吧，它没那么聪明，回答不了这个难题'。但显然，它那种神奇的吸引力还是足够打动你。每个人都在用它。所以我认为，我们确实经历了整个PLG的发展弧线。

Of course, people in the early days tried to stump it and showed like, oh, look, see, it's not that smart. It doesn't answer this hard question really well. But, like, clearly, the magical, like, you know, kind of nature of it still appeal to you enough. You're you you everybody used it. And so I think, you know, I I do have a view like, we've gone through that whole, you know, kind of arc of we started PLG.

我愿意认为Airtable是我们这个时代的PLG宠儿之一。后来我们开始向上游市场发展，做更多销售执行，尽管企业内通常仍以PLG为基础。但我们确实做了越来越多的销售执行，这对我们的业务仍然非常重要。

I'd like to think Airtable was one of the kind of PLG darlings of our era. Anyway, it kind of started moving up market and doing more sales execution, although that was still always on top of usually PLG within an enterprise. But we started doing more and more sales execution. We still have that. That's still really important for our business.

但我个人认为，我的目标之一是将注意力重新转向建设者主导的采用方式，真正通过产品体验展示（而不是用PPT讲述）AI和Airtable能带来的价值。这非常关键，它不仅是新用户引导，更是要考虑整个产品体验本身。在我们的案例中，我们把整个产品体验都变成了以AI为核心。

But I also think me personally, one of my goals is to shift my attention back into that kind of builder led adoption and literally showing in the product experientially, not telling in a deck the value that you can get from AI and Airtable. I think that's so key and it's NUCs, but it's also more than that. It's not just like literally how you onboard somebody into the product. It's like literally thinking about the entire product experience itself, right? And in our case, like we just like made the entire product experience AI centric, right?

过去我们有个次要功能——你可以向侧边栏助手提问。现在我们把AI代理设为Airtable中所有操作的默认方式。如今的Airtable应用几乎就像是由这个代理操纵和使用的工具。

It used to be that we had kind of this secondary thing that you could ask questions to, the assistant sidebar. We now made our agent the default way of doing everything in Airtable. And now the Airtable app as you know it is almost like an artifact that's manipulated by, you know, and and kind of like can be tool used by the agent.

让我顺着这个话题继续。如果你今天访问airtable.com，它看起来基本上和其他所有AI应用构建网站一样。现在它只是问你想构建什么。对于这种大家都在开始做的事情，你觉得接下来会怎样发展？

Let me follow that thread. So if you go to airtable.com today, it looks it looks like basically all the other AI app building sites. Now it's just tell me what you wanna build. Thoughts on that as just like a thing everyone's starting to do is there. What do you think comes next?

这种方式效果好吗？

Is this does is it working well?

显然，用AI进行氛围编程和应用构建有着不可思议的魔力，对吧？这实际上完美诠释了我们刚才讨论的概念——随着底层模型能力的演进，产品形态和用户体验也需要同步进化。最早的模型，比如最初的ChatGPT、GPT-3.5时代的模型，远没有现在的模型这么智能。

There's clearly an incredible magic to vibe coding and app building with AI, right? And this is actually, you know, like a prime illustration in my view of that concept we talked about a second ago, which is, you know, as capabilities of these underlying models evolve, the form factor and the product UX also needs to evolve with it. Right? And so like the earliest models, like the kind of original Chachi T, like GPT 3.5, you know, kind of era models were were not nearly as smart as the current models. Right?

所以当时你无法要求它一次性生成复杂代码段，更别说完整全栈应用。因此在软件开发场景中，GitHub Copilot这类逐行代码自动补全工具是最合适的形态。

And so, like, you couldn't really ask it to one shot a more complicated chunk of code or or certainly not like a full stack app and expect it to work. And so the right form factor for leveraging those models in a software creation context was GitHub Copilot. Right? It's like autocomplete a few lines of code at a time. Right?

但你不能通过对话让它从头构建整个应用。随着模型越来越强，新形态应运而生。比如Cursor率先采用更智能的代理模式处理复杂任务，生成更大规模代码。现在通过Composer，你可以在Cursor里直接从头创建应用。

But, you know, you you couldn't chat to it and tell it, like, build me this entire app from scratch. Right? And I think that like as the models got better and better, you saw that the new form factors emerge. Like I think Cursor did a great job of like being an early pioneer of this more agentic way of leveraging the models to do more complex things and generate more kind of larger chunks of code. Now with Composer, can literally just go into Cursor and build an app from scratch.

比如让它从头构建3D射击游戏，看着它创建所有文件并填充内容，有时甚至能直接运行。这就是未来趋势——模型越来越智能。而Airtable最初的愿景始终是 democratizing self creation（民主化自主创造）。

Like build me a three d shooter game from scratch and just watch it go and create all the files and fill out each file. Then the thing actually runs some of the time. And so to me, this is where the world is going. The models are clearly getting smarter. And if you think about the original vision of Airtable, it was always about democratizing self creation.

我们坚信使用应用的人数远超过能自主构建或定制软件的人数。

Like we just strongly believed that the number of people who use apps far outweighs the number of people who can actually build their own or manipulate apps and harness custom software to their advantage.

这听起来很耳熟，

That sounds very familiar,

如今确实耳熟能详。这其实是殊途同归，我们必须拥抱这个趋势——如果现在创立Airtable，我们肯定会全力投入AI。我们的优势在于...作为生成式AI出现前就存在的公司，必须清醒认识到：不能自欺欺人地只在官网加些AI噱头就完事。

very familiar these days then. Yeah, exactly. And so I think this is like, it's a different means to the same end. And so it's almost like we have to lean into this because if we started Airtable today, like, this is what we would be all in on. Now I think that the advantage that that we have, and, like, I do think you have to be realistic to yourself, especially as as a as a company that predates GenAI and now has to kinda find your new footing in the AI landscape, like, can't fool yourself and just say, like, okay.

必须彻底重新思考：如果用完全AI原生的方式践行使命，会如何操作？现有产品和业务中哪些构件是可用的？还是说这些历史资产反而成了负担？

I'm gonna throw in some AI stuff on the landing on the marketing site, you know, put in a couple AI features and call it a day. Like, I think you actually have to take a clean slate, approach to saying, like, how would our mission best be expressed? If you were literally founding a new company from scratch with the same mission, how would you execute on that mission using a fully AI native approach? Then by the way, do you have useful building blocks that you can leverage from your existing product and your existing business? Or are you literally worse off having this legacy asset versus starting something from scratch?

而且我认为答案并非总是非黑即白。我觉得这取决于具体产品。如果你无法真正内省并承认——看，我认为利用现有业务和产品的资源来做这件事更有利，那么我认为你应该出售。对吧？你应该为公司找到买家，然后如果你真心在乎这个使命，就去开启它的下一个迭代版本。

And I don't think the answer is always yes or no. I think it just depends on the product. And if you can't really introspect and say like, look, I think I'm better off doing this with the pieces that I have for my existing business and product, then I think you should sell. Right? You should find a buyer for that company and then go and if you really care about this mission, go and start the next carnation of it.

对吧？就我而言，我深思熟虑后强烈认为，我们拥有的这些无代码组件构建模块，实际上比从零开始更能帮助我们实现这个愿景。这意味着Vibe编程的问题，尤其是在构建商业应用时。需要说明的是，我们想 democratize（普及）软件创造，但特别专注于商业应用。我们并不想成为开发病毒式消费级游戏的平台。

Right? In my case, I thought about this and really feel strongly that the building blocks that we have, these no code components, actually do allow us to execute better on this vision than if I had to start from scratch. Meaning the problem with Vibe coding, especially for building business apps. So I should clarify that we wanna democratize software creation, but specifically we are focused on business apps. We're not trying to be the platform where you create like a cool viral consumer game.

这适用于你的CRM系统。或者如果你是小餐馆想建库存管理系统，或是律师想搭建案件管理系统——这才是我们一直专注的领域。在这个AI原生的时代，显然你应该能通过智能体生成这些应用。但如果需要一个智能体从零开始用代码生成应用的每个细节，这将非常不可靠，会出现各种漏洞。

This is for like your CRM. Or if you wanna build an inventory management system as a small restaurant or a lawyer trying to build like a case management system, That's what we've always been focused on. And I think in this AI native world, clearly you should be able to generate those apps agentically. And yet if you have an agent that has to generate every single bit of that app from scratch, from code, it's gonna be very unreliable. There's gonna be bugs.

还会出现数据和安全隐患。随着应用越来越复杂，你会面临语境崩溃——它基本上无法管理自己编写的所有代码。而我们实际拥有的是这些基础模块，智能体可以操作使用它们，而无需从零编写代码来呈现——比如数据层之上精美的CRUD界面。我们的系统是实时协作的，功能丰富且支持多人协作。

There's gonna be data and security issues. And then you're also gonna have a context collapse as it just cannot manage all of the code that it's written basically as the app gets more and more complex. And what we actually have are basically these primitives that the agent can manipulate and use without having to like literally write the code from scratch to represent like, here's a beautiful CRUD interface on top of the data layer. Right? Like ours is real time collaborative and really rich and has collaboration on it.

顺便说，还有所有这些其他视图类型、自定义界面布局引擎。对吧？以及自动化和业务逻辑。这就像编程术语中——如今我们乐高积木般的Airtable模块，可以被智能体当作更具表现力的DSL（领域特定语言）来构建商业应用，而不必逐行编写SQL、HTML和JavaScript来从零搭建每个部分。如果我们能结合两者的优势——既拥有这些可靠的高质量乐高模块...

And by the way, here's all these other view types and a layout engine for a custom interface, a layout. Right? Or automations and business logic. And so it's almost like in programming terms, like the Airtable pieces in our Lego kit today can be used by this agent as almost like a more expressive DSL, like a domain specific language to build business apps instead of literally having to write everything down to like the SQL and HTML and JavaScript to build every part of that app from scratch. And so like if we can combine the best of both worlds, like we have these very reliable high quality Lego pieces.

现在智能体可以替你组装它们，而不再需要你通过GUI操作。另外，如果你想退回使用GUI，对非技术用户仍有很好的方式理解和参与其中。但如果是v零、Lovable或Revlon构建的应用，非技术人员根本无法检查底层代码——对你来说那基本是不透明的。

Now an agent can go and like assemble them for you instead of you just using the GUI to do that. And by the way, if you do wanna fall back to the GUI, there's a really great, you know, kind of way for the nontechnical user to still understand and participate in what's going on. Whereas if you're not technical, you can't inspect the code underneath a v zero or Lovable or Revlon app. Right? Like, it's just kind of opaque to you.

如果你无法通过重新提示来获得想要的效果，就会陷入困境。这更像开发者使用Cursor——可以生成大量代码，但仍能退回IDE编辑调整至最终生产就绪状态。这就是我们正在打的牌。如果我不是完全确信现有产品能更好地实现目标，我今天就不会以这种形式运营公司了。

And if you can't re prompt it to get what you want, you're kind of stuck. This is much more akin to like a developer using Cursor can generate lots of code, but then can still drop back to the IDE to edit and manipulate it to the final kind of production ready state. So like that's that's kind of the the play that we're making. And if I didn't fully and truly believe, you know, we have a better shot at doing it with our existing product, like, I wouldn't be running this company in its form today.

我接触过很多与你经历相似的创始人：运营了十年的业务遭遇AI浪潮，必须找到更优解决方案。我试图提炼这些旅程中的共性成功要素，因为许多公司都在摸索。你刚提到的关键点是：如果今天从零开始会怎么做？过去积累的优势能否成为我们的护城河？

I'm talking to a lot of founders that are going through the journey you're going on, which is we've had a business for a decade, AI emerged, wow, we gotta figure out something that works, that could work even better. And so I'm trying to pull out the threads that are consistently working across these journeys, because I think a lot of companies are trying to figure this out. So one that you just touched on is just, if you were to start today, what would you do? Like, what would that business be? Plus, can do we have an unfair advantage with the thing we've done in the past?

这似乎是个重要因素。另外回到你分享的内容——创造紧迫感和节奏感，让人们理解AI领域的演进速度，组建快速反应的团队，这个比喻和框架很棒。还有你作为创始人坚持与AI对话的习惯，就像CEO真正与AI协作的典范。能否具体描述下日常场景？比如你整天与Omni对话来探索可能性并迭代？

That feels like an important ingredient. And then the other, circling back to stuff you've shared already, there's just like creating a sense of urgency and pace and getting people to understand this is how things move in AI, and we need to create this fast thinking team, I love that metaphor and framing. And then there's the point you made about just talking to AI regularly as the founder feels like an important element just like truly be this I see CEO talking to AI working with AI regularly. Just on that note, little bit more what just to give people a sense of what this looks like day to day. So you're talking to Omni all day trying to under flex the power of what you can do and iterate on it.

你日常还会做哪些事来明确业务方向？

Is there anything else you're doing day to day that helps you figure out what to do for the business?

第一，我尽可能多地尝试使用各种不同的AI产品，不仅限于Airtable。既是为了追求新鲜感，也是因为每当有酷炫的新演示发布——比如Runway推出的沉浸式世界引擎——我都会第一时间去体验。

One, I try to use as many different AI products, including not Airtable, right, like as I can. And both literally for the novelty factor and just like, you know, new cool demo comes out, like a runway release their like immersive world, you know, kinda engine. Right? And and so, like, I'm gonna go try try it out. Right?

比如当Sesame AI发布他们那个交互式语音聊天演示时，虽然我们短期内并不需要高度拟真且可打断的语音模式——这并非我们的核心需求——但我还是试用了。我就是想全面了解行业动态。为此我甚至会虚构些小项目来创造使用场景：比如尝试用AI生成搞笑剧本，再结合HeyGen的虚拟形象制作短视频。

Like, when, Sesame AI put out their, like, cool, like, kind of interactive voice voice chat, you know, you know, demo, I tried that out. Because even though we don't have a direct and near term kind of need for really realistic and interruptible voice mode, where it's not as core to our capabilities, I just want to understand and get a feel for everything that's out there. And I try to invent little almost side projects of my own to have a real reason to use these products. Oh, cool. What if I were to try to create a funny video short, using a combination of like, hey, gen avatars with a comical script generated by AI.

可能还会选个有趣的主题，用ChatGPT做深度调研，整合结果后让它生成些...你该不会真这么做了吧？

Right? And maybe it'll be on like an interesting topic. So I'll do like deep research on the topic with Chatcha Patti and pull together the results, have it compose like, you know, kind of a a little Did you actually do

这个？是有个成品吗？

this? Is there something Yeah.

这完全就是个周末消遣项目的例子。说实话，熟练后这些操作一小时就能搞定——现在AI产品都太易用了。比如做深度调研：输入查询指令，泡杯咖啡，二十分钟后回来看结果就行。

Like that's literally an example of something like, you know, a fun weekend project. Like, to be honest, like these things only take you like an hour, right? If you become kind of pretty proficient with using the products, like they're all so easy to use. Like you can literally do the deep research thing, you know, kickoff query, make a coffee, come back in twenty minutes. Okay.

接着手动生成对话脚本（虽然NotebookLM能自动完成），把脚本导入HeyGen做成虚拟形象视频，最后导出播放——整个过程就像玩乐高。

Like, let me let me prompt it to, like, generate me some dialogue. It's a little bit like what NotebookLM does for you out of the box, but sometimes I like to just, like, do it myself. Right? And then, okay. Let me take the script and, like, cut it up and, like, you know, turn it into a HeyGen avatar and then download the video and and, like, play it.

纯粹图个开心，并非真要发展成YouTube频道。但设计这些周末项目能强迫我深度体验产品，而不只是随便点点鼠标。

Right? Like, and just for fun. Right? I'm not like trying to make make that into an actual, like, you know, kind of YouTube, like video business. But but I think like coming up with like these different, like fun weekend projects is a really useful construct to like force myself to actually try these products in a more than just like a Twitch click way.

这样做不仅能理解模型本身（比如昨天刚发布的GDV5，我就在各种场景测试过），更重要的是理解产品形态——当模型被结构化应用时，当采用不同于ChatGPT默认配置的工具调用时，当构建智能体工作流时，你会真正领悟到这些新模型的潜力边界。

And what it gives me is like, A, like it's not just understanding the models, which is also very, very important, right? Like GDV5 came out yesterday and like playing around with it a bunch, just on like a variety of different, like personal use cases. You know, but like there's a difference between just understanding the model, but then also understanding like the product form factors in which they can be placed, right? Meaning like, you know, when you apply the model in a more structured way, right? You know, when you apply the model with different tool calling than maybe what Chachapi has in its kind of like out of the box form, you know, when you apply it with like, you know, kind of a more agentic workflow, again, that might be different from like what Chat Chateauty gives you out of the box.

而且说实话这过程充满乐趣。AI的魅力就在于它的不可预测性——你永远不知道会得到什么结果，就像拆盲盒。更让人震撼的是：五年前这些技术根本不存在，那时AI还停留在预测分析阶段，和现在的形态天壤之别。

Like, that's when you kinda learn, like, you know, you you really get to inspire yourself on like what are the products form factors that these new models can take. So like and and plus, by the way, like, I find it to be really fun. Like, there is a to me, like, a delight and entertainment value to just using AI period because, like, a, it's it's it's not it's not, like, perfectly predictable. So I think the element of, like, you're not quite sure what you're gonna get. You know?

就像一盒巧克力（笑）。每次使用都让我惊叹：五年前我们只有些高级回归分析，现在却能玩转这么多神奇的产品——这本身就是件超级有趣的事。

It's like a box of chocolates, you know? And and b, like, it always blows my mind just to think about like, wow, like, you know, five years ago, we didn't have any of this stuff, right? Like, you know, AI was like, okay, like, it's like, we can do predictive analytics. It's like, you know, there there's some, like, basically very advanced, you know, kind of regressions that we could run with with AI, but, like, it looked nothing like this, right, in its in its current form. And it's just, like, actually super fun, in my opinion, to get to play around with all the different types of products that come out.

所以我认为这是很重要的一部分。因为在AI领域，世界变化的速度比其他任何领域都快得多。在成熟的SaaS时代，研究竞争对手很重要。如果你要创办一家SaaS公司，不每年关注Salesforce发布的主要产品或ServiceNow等公司，那简直是疯了。现在的情况类似，但每周都有重要的新版本和产品发布，对吧？

So I think that is a big part of it. Because on the point about the pace of the world moving so much faster in AI than any other landscape, in the mature SaaS era, it was important to study your competition. If you were building a SaaS company, you'd be crazy not to follow Salesforce every year and see what the major releases they're putting out are or ServiceNow or so on. This is the equivalent of that, but there's major new releases and products and and so on, like every week. Right?

不再是每年一次。因此我认为你必须紧跟所有动态。结合我们之前说的，很多内容需要亲身体验，不能只是阅读。你不能只读TechCrunch的文章，甚至不能只看关于新功能的推文。你必须亲自尝试才能真正理解它是什么。

Not like every year. And so I just think you have to stay abreast of all, of it all. And combining this with our point earlier of like, a lot this has to be experienced, not just like read. Like you can't just read, like, the write up on TechCrunch or or, you know, even a tweet about, like, a new capability. Like, you kinda have to try it to really get a sense of, like, what it is.

今天的节目由Anthropic赞助，他们是Claude背后的团队。我每天至少使用Claude十次。我用它研究播客嘉宾，为播客和通讯稿构思标题，获取写作反馈，以及处理各种事务。就在上周，我在准备采访一位重要嘉宾时，让Claude告诉我其他播客主持人问过这位嘉宾的所有问题，这样我就不会重复提问。你每周花多少时间综合用户研究见解、支持工单、销售电话、实验结果和竞争情报？

Today's episode is brought to you by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. I use Claude at least 10 times a day. I use it for researching my podcast guests, for brainstorming title ideas for both my podcast and my newsletter, for getting feedback on my writing, and all kinds of stuff. Just last week, I was preparing for an interview with a very fancy guest, and I had Claude tell me what are all the questions that other podcast hosts have asked this guest so that I don't ask them these questions. How much time do you spend every week trying to synthesize all of your user research insights, support tickets, sales calls, experiment results, and competitive intel.

Claude能处理极其复杂的多步骤工作。你可以扔给它一份100页的战略文件并要求见解，或者导入所有用户研究让它寻找模式。有了Claude 4和新集成，包括世界上最好的编码模型Claude 4 Opus，你可以进行语音对话、高级研究、直接与Google Workspace集成，现在还能通过MCP连接到你的自定义工具和数据源。Claude将成为你工作流程的一部分。想试试吗？请访问claude.ai/lenny。

Cloud can handle incredibly complex multi step work. You can throw a 100 page strategy document at it and ask it for insights, or you can dump all your user research and ask it to find patterns. With Claude four and the new integrations, including Claude four Opus, the world's best coding model, you get voice conversations, advanced research capabilities, direct Google Workspace integration, and now MCP connections to your custom tools and data sources. Claude just becomes part of your workflow. If you wanna try it out, get started at claude.ai/lenny.

通过这个链接，你可以在前三个月享受专业版五折优惠。网址是claude.ai/lenny。对于你的团队成员，比如产品团队、产品经理、工程师、设计师等，你如何调整对他们的期望，以帮助他们在新世界中取得成功？

And using this link, you get an incredible 50% off your first three months of the pro plan. That's claude.ai/lenny. For people that work for you across Airtable, say the product team, PMs, maybe engineers, designers, how have you adjusted what you expect of them to help them be successful in this new world?

第一，我真的很强调去尝试这些东西。我说的“尝试”是真正意义上的“玩”，心理学意义上的那种。当你只是完成任务时，和你带着好奇心去探索时，感觉是不一样的。后者不仅更有趣、更有活力，而且我认为你能学到更多。所以我非常强调尝试这些AI产品的价值。

One is, you know, really, really, really stressing this idea of like, go play with this stuff. And I mean, when I say play, I really mean play like in in the psychological sense of like, you know, it's, there's a difference when like you go in and you're kind of just trying to check the box and like get a job done, right? There's a difference when like you come in with a curiosity and like, you know, you're kind of like exploring, right? And it's both more fun and energizing, but also I think you learn more through that. And so I've really tried to stress the value of play with these AI products.

我以身作则，直接分享我在这些产品中做的链接或截图。比如，我会用某个原型工具展示：“嘿，我为我们要发布的新功能做了一个营销落地页。”比如我在Replit里创建了一个落地页，然后分享这个链接，而不是像过去那样写一份文档再分享。我会直接展示一个有视觉效果的真实落地页。

And I try to lead by example by literally going and sharing out links or screenshots of the things that I'm doing in these various products. So as an example, I will go into one of the prototyping tools and show like, hey, built a marketing landing page for this new capability we're launching. I kind of created like a landing page for it in Replit, let's say. And now I'm sharing that link instead of what typically we would have done in the past is like, okay, we're gonna write a doc about it and then share the doc. I'm just gonna show you an actual landing page with visuals and everything in there.

或者我会分享深度研究报告的实际链接，而不是写一份完美的备忘录。我会通过提示词生成一个聊天输出，涵盖我关心的所有内容，甚至让它总结成一份备忘录式的输出，然后故意分享这个，而不是隐藏我使用AI的事实。我会展示我是如何提示的，这样你们也可以跟着做。我真的很鼓励大家去尝试这些产品。我甚至说过，如果有人想专门花一天甚至一周时间来做这件事，完全可以用我当借口。

Or I'll share like, you know, the actual link to my deep research reports or like instead of me writing a perfect memo on a topic, like I'll actually just like prompt my way into getting like a chat thread, or a chat output that basically covers all the content that I care about and maybe even like ask it to like, okay, summarize this all into like a final kind of like memo output and then intentionally share that rather than expose the fact that like, I'm using AI in this way and here's literally how I'm prompting it so you could follow along as well. But really trying to encourage everyone to like go and just play with these products. And I've even said, look, if anyone wants to just literally block out a day or frankly even a week and like like, have the ultimate, excuse. Like, you can use like you know, you you could say that I told you to do it. Right?

如果你想取消一天或一周的所有会议，去尝试你能找到的所有可能与Airtable相关的AI产品，那就去吧。句号。所以我认为最重要的是这种尝试和实验。我认为在执行方式上还有很多其他变化，比如我更看重交互式演示而不是幻灯片。因为在幻灯片或PRD中，你可以说我们要让Omni擅长处理某种应用构建。

Like, if you wanna cancel all your meetings for, a day or for an entire week and just go play around with every product AI product that you can find that you think could be relevant to Airtable, go do it. Like, period. So I think that's the most important thing is this play, this experimentation. I think there's also a lot of other kind of shifts in how we execute prototypes over Decks. I wanna see actual interactive demos because again, it's hard to in a deck or in a PRD, you could say, okay, well, we're gonna make Omni really good at handling this kind of app building.

但这些只是空话。真正的证明在于实际尝试一些我能想象的现实提示。在真实的原型演示中，你可以立即尝试非理想化的场景，看看效果如何。

Okay. Those are just words. The real proof is in the pudding of, okay. Let me try it out on a few, like, realistic prompts that I can imagine. And in a demo, in a real prototype, you can, like, instantly, you know, try it out on unrealistic rather than golden pathy scenarios, and see how it feels too.

比如，它是否感觉太慢了？我们是否需要更多地展示幕后发生的推理或步骤，创建一个进度条之类的东西？但除了一个真正以开放式方式使用AI的功能原型外，很难通过其他方式获得产品的这种感觉，即无论你输入什么，AI都能处理。所以我认为这更像是一个实验性的游乐场，感觉我们需要如何执行，而过去有时感觉更像是一种确定性的资源分配和时间线执行视角。对吧？

Like, is it Does it feel too slow? Do we need to expose more of the reasoning or steps that are happening behind the scenes, create a progress bar or something like that? But it's really hard to get that feel of the product with anything but a functional prototype that really does in an open end way, like use the AI to do whatever you put in. So I think it's more like experimentation playground, it feels like, how we need to execute versus I think in the past, it sometimes felt like a more, like, deterministic resourcing and and, like, kinda timelines view of execution. Right?

比如，我们会安排这么多人解决这个问题，这是八周时间到这个里程碑，我们将在下一个季度发布。而现在，整个事情更像是基于大量实验和迭代驱动的。

Like, we're gonna put this many people on this problem, and this is the eight week timeline to this milestone, and we're gonna ship in a quarter from now. And, like, I think now the whole thing is just, a lot more experimentation and iteration driven.

在产品团队的不同职能中，产品经理、工程师、设计师，谁在使用这些工具时效率提升最明显？你认为随着时间的推移，这将如何影响这三个职能？

Of the different functions on a product team, PM, engineering design, who has had the most success being more productive with these tools? And how do you think this will impact each of these three functions over time?

我发现这实际上更多取决于个人态度和一些多学科能力。在这三个角色中，能够跨界到其他两个领域的人有很强的优势，对吧？就像那种混合型的独角兽人才。所以如果你是一个设计师，能够掌握足够的技术知识，理解这些模型如何工作、工具调用如何运作等等，那么你实际上可以设计甚至用这些原型工具实现一个比静态设计概念更有趣、更现实的概念。因为我认为设计必须更具交互性。

What I found is that it really does become more about individual attitude and maybe some polymathism. There's a strong advantage to any of those three roles who can kind of cross over into the other two, right? Like kind of the hybrid unicorn types, right? So if you're a designer who can be just technical enough to kind of be dangerous and understand a little bit of like how these models work and how does tool calling work and all of this stuff, like then you can actually design a concept or even prototype a concept including in these prototyping tools that's much more interesting and maybe realistic than if you're just stuck in kind of the flat, let me put something in a static design concept. Because I think designs have to be more interactive.

产品的价值和功能在于它的交互性。对吧？比如，想想Chateappity的设计，它可能是你能想象的最基本的设计。真正的设计实际上是在幕后如何响应不同的查询，以及在你发出提示后会发生什么。

The value of the product and the product functionality is in the interaction of it. Right? Like, you know, think about the design of Chateappity. Again, it's like, you know, it's the most basic design you could possibly imagine. The real design actually is happening underneath the hood in how it responds to different queries, right, and what happens after you fire off a prompt, right?

所以我认为，在这些职能中都有这样的人：有些工程师非常擅长思考产品和体验，可以原型化整个东西；有些设计师即使不会编码，也能用原型工具实现类似的效果。我认为AI工具正在给那些能以这种方式思考的人更多优势，让他们不必经历学习计算机科学的漫长过程。产品经理也是如此，有些产品经理正在深入研究技术细节，了解这些东西如何运作并实际动手，而不是把角色局限于写文档和产品需求文档。

So I think like I found that there are people within each of these functions, like there are engineers who are very good at thinking about product and experience and like kind of can go and prototype out like the whole thing. There are designers who can kind of do the same, even if they can't literally code, they can prototype something out like literally using a prototyping tool. And I think that's where like AI tooling is also giving more advantage to people who can think in this way by equipping them with an alternative to actually having to go through the long hoops of learning CS, right? And the PMs as well, I think like there are some PMs who are like really getting into the technical details and studying up on like, you know, how does this stuff work and actually getting hands on rather than seeing the role as, you know, kind of writing documents, writing PRDs.

你认为这些角色中哪一个可能比其他角色更危险？比如未来可能不需要这么多这样的人？

Do you see one of these roles, I don't know, being more in trouble than others? Just like you need fewer of these people in the future potentially?

我认为总体上可以用更少的人完成更多的工作。这并不是说我们想让团队变小，而是对我们和许多其他公司来说，真正酷的是，从产品角度来看，你并不是有一个固定的任务清单需要执行。现在你可以用十分之一的人完成这些任务。在很多情况下确实可以。但对我们来说，也许还因为我们的产品非常元。

I think overall you can get more done with fewer people. And that's not to say we wanna go and make the team smaller, but rather the really cool thing for us and I think a lot of other companies is it's not like you have a finite set of things you need to do and execute on from a product standpoint. Okay, now I can do that with a tenth of people. I mean, you could do that in a lot of cases. But for us, maybe it's also because we're a very meta product, right?

我们是那个可以让你用AI构建任何AI应用的平台，对吧？这些应用本身在运行时利用AI能力，无论是为创意生产流程生成图像，还是利用深度研究或基于AI的网络爬虫搜索符合特定标准的公司用于你的交易流应用。我们可以有效地利用所有这些AI能力，因为从定义上讲，我们让客户能够构建具有广泛AI能力的应用。但正因为如此，我们几乎有无限的可能AI能力可以执行。我总是告诉团队，好消息是我们有这么多果树，而且有很多唾手可得的果实。

Like we are the app platform with which you can build now any AI app with AI, right? The apps themselves leverage AI capabilities at runtime, whether it's to generate imagery for a creative production workflow or kind of leveraging deep research or AI based kind of crawling of the web to search for companies that match a certain criteria for your deal flow app, right, or something like that. Like, We can effectively leverage all of these of our AI capabilities in this kind of app platform because by definition, we're enabling our customers to build apps that have this wide range of AI capabilities. But because of that, it's like we have a kind of almost infinite set of possible AI capabilities that we could execute on. And I'm always telling the team, look, the great news is like, we have it's like we have all these fruit trees and, there's so many crazy low hanging fruit.

对吧？比如，你甚至可以看到巨大的西瓜就放在地上。你只需要走20英尺去捡起来，而不必爬上50英尺高的椰子树去摘一个硬椰子。所以地上有这么多西瓜。

Right? Like and you got literally, like, massive watermelons, like, literally sitting on the ground. Right? And all you have to do is, kinda walk over 20 feet and pick it up instead of having to climb the really tall coconut tree to grab, like, a hard coconut from, like, 50 feet up. And so, like, there's so many watermelons on the ground.

直接出去寻找最大的目标并攻克它们，对吧？这意味着如果我们能建立这种文化——我确实认为这是一种可习得的工作方式——我坚信每个人都有成长潜力。拥有成长型思维至关重要，这也是我们最核心的价值观之一。只要你真正具备这种思维，特别是愿意投入夜晚和周末的时间（就我而言，我甚至会建议人们专门腾出整天或整周来学习），你就能更熟练地掌握这种方法。

Just go out and, like, start finding the biggest ones and attacking those. Right? And, like, and what that means is that like, if we can build this culture and I do think like it's a learnable way of operating, like I, I, I really like to believe in like the, like the growth potential of like any human, right? Like, and, any individual, like, I think if you really have a growth mindset, that's why one of our most important core values is growth mindset, right? If you really have that growth mindset, I think especially if you're willing to put in the nights and weekends hours, or in my case, I'm literally telling people take a full day off, take a full week off and learn this stuff, you can become more fluent in this way.

我认为这样我们就能打造一支能以更高杠杆效率和更快速度处理更多事务的团队。愿意搭上这班列车的人会变得越来越高效。这并不意味着产品经理的角色会变得完全无关紧要，绝对不是。

And I think then what we get is a team that can just go and work on more things in a much more leveraged and fast way. So I like to think like, you know, people who are willing to jump on the train are just gonna become more and more effective. And it's not like, oh, like as a PM, my role is becoming entirely irrelevant. Right? Like, no.

这意味着产品经理需要转型为兼具原型设计能力、具备良好设计审美的复合型人才。事实上，过去几十年来最优秀的新一代产品管理和设计文化本质上都是跨学科的。比如谷歌最初的产品经理技能栈就要求他们具备技术理解力，才能认知产品设计中的工程限制，同时还要有设计思维。

It means that as a PM, need to start looking more like a hybrid PM prototyper who has some good design sensibilities. And by the way, like, I think some of the best NG PM and design cultures respectively over the past even few decades have always been multidisciplinary in nature, right? Like the original PM stack at Google required the PMs to actually be somewhat technical so they could understand the engineering kind of limitations of like the product designs they wanted to make. They had to be kind of design y. Right?

我记得我的联合创始人Andrew在参与APM项目时，就经常研读视觉设计和色彩理论之类的书籍。同样，苹果最优秀的设计师（包括硬件设计师）都需要理解技术实现原理。而顶尖工程师——比如Stripe一直倡导的工程文化——也需要具备产品和商业需求思维。

Like, I remember my co founder Andrew, when he was in the APM program was always reading books about design. Even down to visual design and color theory and that kind of thing. Right? And so I think it's just a reminder that designers as well, some of the best designers, if you're a designer at Apple, including hardware designer, you have to understand some of the technical capabilities of how this stuff works. And if you're an engineer, I think some of the best engineers and maybe Stripe always had a very good engineering culture of engineers who could think about the product and business requirements.

实际上在Stripe的任何一个产品组里，据我所知直接负责人（DRI）并不总是产品经理。不同于传统三角架构，有时候是由工程师主导产品方向，决定我们需要构建什么。

In fact, like, you know, on any given product group, at Stripe, my understanding is that like, you know, the DRI isn't always the PM, right? Like as is traditionally the case in, in kind of that, that triangle, it's like, you know, sometimes it's actually the engineer who's taking the product lead and saying like, this is what we need to build.

所以你的意思是，产品、工程、设计这三个职能都需要至少精通另一项职能？理想状态是全能，但最起码要掌握一项附加技能——比如产品经理提升设计能力，工程师增强产品管理思维。

So what I'm hearing is essentially if you wanna like the trend across product engineering design is each of those functions needs to get good at one of the other functions at least. Yeah. Ideally, can do them all, but if you can just do one additional, so PM becomes better design and engineer becomes better at product management.

其实我认为应该更进一步——

Well, would actually go further and say like, I

你觉得必须

think you need to

在这三个领域都达到基本合格水平。无论你担任哪个角色，都需要对另外两项有基础认知，然后再深耕自己的专业领域。比如设计师可以专精UX交互设计，同时对技术可行性和产品功能叙事有基本判断力。

get like decently good at all three. Like there's just a minimum baseline of like, if you're any one of those roles, you need to be like minimally good at the other two. And then you can go deeper into your own kind of specialty. Right? Like, you know, you could be a designer who's really good at thinking about UX and interaction design, And then just like good enough to be dangerous on thinking about like what's technically possible and like what is the product, you know, kind of, you know, kind of story around this this feature.

这个观点很棒。要实现这点，你反复强调的一个建议就是：持续使用工具来探索可能性边界，这本身就是最好的学习方式。

I love that. And to do that, one piece of advice that comes up again, again, in what you're what you've been describing is using use the tools constantly to see what's possible. And that will teach you a lot of these things.

我认为善用工具能让你了解什么是可能的。对吧？这有点像，如果你想成为一名优秀的工业设计师，比如说，椅子就像是工业设计界的‘Hello World’，是最经典的设计对象。

I think use well, use the tools gives you exposure to what's possible. Right? It's kind of like, if you wanted to be a great industrial designer and let's say, like, mean, the chair is kind of the ultimate, like, hello world of, like, industrial design. Right? It's like the the, like, canonical design object.

你不会在真空中凭空想象，对可用材料（如胶合板、钢材等）或现有椅子形态一无所知就试图发明世界上最好的椅子。对吧？你应该先去研究当今市面上所有优秀的椅子，比如体验一把伊姆斯椅，坐下来仔细研究，尝试逆向工程它的制作过程，了解这类产品的现有设计成果。

Like, wouldn't just sit there in a vacuum and with no familiarity with, like, the materials that you can use, plywood, steel, whatever, or, like, existing form factors of cherries trying to invent the world's best cher in a vacuum. Right? Like, you should go and first do a study of, like, all of the best cherries out there today. Like, go look at an Eads chair, sit in it, try to examine it to reverse engineer how it was made. And just look at the prior art for that type of product.

这就是我建议去实际体验这些产品的方式。同时我认为真正动手设计或实现才是最佳实践。不能只停留在观摩别人的作品，最终你必须尝试建造自己的作品，然后不断迭代改进。我打磨产品用户体验感知力的过程也是如此——当年我在学校学习时，根本没有什么好的UX课程体系。

That's how I see the go out and play with these products. And also I think actually going and designing or implementing or executing is the best practice. So you can't just only go and look at other people's shares. Eventually you have to go and actually try building your own and then try building another one and another one and another one. And so I think that's where When I think about how I honed my own product UX sensibilities, never And at that time that I was in school and then kind of learning about this stuff, there wasn't really any good curriculum for UX.

那时候不像现在有优秀的大学UX课程。即便是计算机科学也非常学术化，不像现在有应用软件工程（比如开发应用）。可能斯坦福、MIT等学校现在开设了UX相关课程，但对大多数人来说仍很罕见。所以我所有的产品感知力都是通过试错，以及使用研究其他产品获得的。

It's not like there were great you know, college classes to learn product UX. I mean, even CS was, like, very academic in nature at that time. It wasn't applied software engineering, like, build an app or whatever. Maybe now at, like, some of the schools like Stanford, MIT, they have, like, actually UX y type courses, but it's it's still a rarity for most people to have access to that. And so like the way I learned, like all of my product sensibilities was just like trial and error and like also using and studying other products.

对吧？然后我会尝试构建自己的周末项目。比如想开发一个类似Yelp的应用，要有地图视图和列表视图，当地图平移时列表能自动更新。我可以在现有基础上做UX改进，同时测试技术能力——哪些部分实现困难？如何解决？如何通过设计调整来匹配技术可能性？

Right? And then going and trying to build like my own weekend project ideas. Right? Oh, I wanna build like a Yelp style app with a map view and then also a list view. And I want it so that when you pan around to the map for it to automatically update the list view and maybe there's some UX improvements I can make on top of that, but I can also like test my technical skills to to figure out like which parts of this are hard to implement and like how do you make it work and what are some of the design changes or affordances that you can use to kind of like map to like the technical possibilities.

为此，我特别赞同你的建议

To do that, I loved your piece

——虽然我忘了重点强调这点——但确实非常实用：最好的建议是找些既对你有用又有趣的东西来构建。选个让你觉得‘做这个会很有趣’的项目，解决一个能推动你实际行动的问题。

of advice, which I forgot to double down on, which I also find really powerful. The best tip there is find something to actually build that is useful to you and fun. Like pick a project that's like, okay, this would be fun to do. Have like a problem you're solving that forces you to actually do this thing.

当然。这种项目可以是业余时间的，也可以是工作内的。比如我现在就告诉AI平台团队的成员：

For sure. And look, I think that can be like night and weekend projects. It can also be like the daytime job projects. Right? I mean, like, I am basically telling our teams on the AI platform group, especially, like, look.

用‘低垂果实’的比喻来说，我不会规定你们该摘哪个西瓜。虽然我们团队有不同的分组，比如负责应用内代理的‘现场特工组’——这些代理不是构建应用的，而是代表客户进行网络调研或文档分析的。

Like, you know, in that that low hanging fruit metaphor, it's like, I'm not being prescriptive with you on, like, which watermelons you should pick. But, like, you should go and, like and and we do have different, like, pods within that group. But one of them, for instance, is what we call the field agents team. And they are responsible for the agents that work within your app. So this is not the agent that builds your app, but these agents that run on a customer's behalf to do web research on your customers, or they can go and analyze a document.

未来它们或许还能根据产品需求文档生成功能原型。我告诉他们：你们能给这些现场代理赋予几乎无限的能力。我不会具体指示做什么（当然可以征求我的意见），你们应该尝试不同方向的实验原型。比如开发深度调研功能，让用户能批量对数据行（比如播客嘉宾）点击按钮，就能通过Chop Cheapity的深度调研获取所有嘉宾资料并并排展示在表格中。

And like in the future, maybe do things like actually generate a prototype of a feature from a PRD or from like a feature idea. And I'm telling them, look, there's a almost infinite number of things you could superpowers you can give these field agents. I'm not gonna tell you which specifically to do. Now you can ask me to weigh in for sure, but you should go and just experiment and prototype a few different versions of it, a few different directions we could go. What if you prototyped what it would look like to have a deep research implementation in field agents so that like, for any given row of data, let's say in your case, it's podcast guests, you can just click a button or click a button on mass across the entire like, every speaker you have lined up to do deep research, like, powered by Chop Cheapity's own deep research on each of the speakers and have them all laid out side by side in this table.

对吧？比如，去原型设计一下，看看感觉和效果如何。所以我觉得有些东西也可以在白天的工作中尝试，特别是当你的工作就是去构建AI功能的时候。

Right? Like, go prototype that and see how, like, you know, see how it feels and looks like. And so I think some of the stuff can also be, like, in your daytime job, especially if that daytime job is literally to go and build AI functionality.

我其实尝试过这么做。但遇到的问题，我在想是不是因为还没有ChatGPT深度研究的API。

I actually tried to do exactly that. The problem I ran into, I wonder if it's in change because there's no API for ChatGPT deep research yet.

现在有了。现在已经有了。

Is now. There is now.

有了。这就对了。

There is. There we go.

结果发现，我觉得他们最近才开放这个功能。每次研究调用的费用大概是一美元多，这

It ends up being, and I think they only recently exposed it. It ends up being like something on the order of like a dollar plus per research call, which

真划算。

What a deal.

我是说，确实如此。有些人可能会说，天哪，这太贵了。如果你用了50次，一个月就花了50美元。但我觉得，这其实帮你省下了人工研究的几个小时。

Like, I mean, to again, exactly. I mean, some people would say, my god, that's so expensive. And you rack up 50 of those, you've you've cost $50 a month. I think it's like, well, it just saved you, like, hours of research by human.

不仅如此。我其实还雇了一个研究员，他帮我做嘉宾背景调查，每次要花400或500美元。相比之下，一美元听起来太棒了。而且我之前一直是手动做这些。

Like Not only that. I I actually have a researcher that I pay to he'll give me background on guests that was, like, 4 or $500. And the dollar sounds great. And I I've I've been this manually.

他很聪明。他会用深度研究的。我觉得他们就是靠这个赚钱的。

He's smart. He'll be using deep research. Think they just collected the money.

可能就是这样。哦，天哪。好吧。我还想快速讨论一个技能，这在我们的对话中经常提到，就是评估。

They might just be. Oh, man. Okay. There's one more, skill I wanted to talk about real quick. This comes up a lot in these conversations is evals.

精通评估的力量。知道你非常重视这一点。谈谈为什么你认为这是人们需要掌握的重要技能。

The power of getting good at evals. Know that's something you value highly. Talk about just why you think this is something people need to get good at.

是的，我听过你和Mike讨论这个话题的播客。有趣的是，OpenAI和Anthropic的负责人都在这一点上达成了共识。不过我想补充一个略有不同的观点：对于完全创新的产品或形态，你其实不该从评估开始，而应该从感觉入手。也就是说，你需要用更开放的方式去测试。

Yeah, I mean, and I listened to your episodes with and Mike who talk about this. Think it's like interesting that like both heads of OpenAI and Anthropic, have converged on this point. I mean, look, I think, I would add like a slightly different or additive take though, which is like, I think for a completely novel product experience or form factor, you should actually not start with evals and you should start with vibes. Right? Meaning like, you know, you need to go and just kind of test in a much more open ended way.

比如这个功能在大方向上是否可行？以我们的自定义代码生成功能为例，与其定义可重复测试的评估标准——比如调整提示词、模型或生成输出的智能体工作流，并预先定义什么是好的结果——我会先采用更开放、更随性的方式，就像把东西往墙上扔看看哪些能粘住，尝试不同的方案观察效果。在我看来，评估更适合在你确定了产品基本框架，明确想要优化的使用场景之后。

Like Like does this even work in kind of like a broad sense? So as an example, for our custom code generation capability, instead of defining evals that get repeatably tested, you know, as you vary, like, the prompt or the model or, like, the the agentic workflow used to generate the these outputs, and you have to define, like, you know, what does good look like, right, by definition for the eval. Like, I would first start with a much more open ended and, like, ad hoc style of, like, just throw stuff against the wall, like try different props and see how well it does. And to me, evals are more useful, a, once you've converged on the kind of, like, basic scaffold of the form factor and you kinda know what are the use cases you want it to work well for and what you want to test against it. Whereas in the early days, especially if if your product market fit finding either for an entirely new company or for a new a pretty dramatically new or bold new capability that doesn't really have it's not an incremental improvement on something that exists in Airtable today.

举个例子：我们正在开发的新功能是一个长期运行的AI爬虫代理，它能针对特定类型的对象或实体进行网络调研。这和深度研究类似但不同——它输出的不是报告，而是编译清单。这个清单可以是公司、人物或任何实体。

I think you have to just be a little bit more creative initially and throwing stuff at it, seeing what works to understand, okay, let's use an example. We're implementing this new capability that can use basically a long running AI crawler agent that goes and researches the web for a specific type of object or entity. So it's a little bit different from deep research. It's similar to deep research, but what it actually does is instead of outputting like kind of a report, it's actually going and compiling a list of things. The things could be companies or people, or or anything else.

比如：找出所有漫威电影，所有DC漫画的衍生剧系列。

Right? Like, find me every Marvel movie, right, ever made. Find me every, like, you know, kinda DC Comics, like, spin off. Right? Like, series.

任何东西都可以。初期你需要尝试各种随机案例，用自己的大脑思考可以测试的使用场景范围。当获得结果后，你会发现：'显然这类搜索效果特别好——比如具有特定参数的人物和公司。'

Right? Literally anything. And, you have to go in at first just try out a bunch of random Use your own brain to think of what are all the What's the range of use cases I can test this against, right? And then you get back some results and you're like, Okay, well it's clear that where it does really well are these types of searches, right? People and companies with this kind of parameter.

我认为评估的真正价值在于：当你明确了核心使用场景集群后，就可以系统性地衡量改进措施的效果。但到那时，产品范围可能已经确定——比如在Airtable中，我们不会将其作为完全开放的功能推出，而是限定为可调研X类实体（包括人物和公司），甚至提供明确的筛选条件来指导搜索。

And I think to me, evals are useful once you have a sense of what is that cluster of useful use cases? You can start then more programmatically measuring the changes that you're making to improve output for that, right? But by that point, you've probably already scoped the product and maybe the way we would merchandise it in Airtable is not like a completely open ended capability, but hey, here's a specific capability that can research one of these x number of entity types, including people and companies. And here's even like the filter conditions or criteria that are more explicit that you can define to give it the prompting to search for that thing. Right?

我觉得评估更适合作为迭代改进的工具。当你有像Anthropic或OpenAI这样的规模时，可以AB测试所有方案。但早期阶段，你处于更开放的探索过程中，没有这种奢侈条件。

But I kind of think it's more useful as a way to iterate your way to improvement. And you can start really testing stuff like empirically, right? You can AB test, especially if you have the scale of a really large product like Anthropica or OpenAI, you can like just test everything and see like, oh, this model actually performs better than this one. This prop performs better than this one. But I think early on, like, you don't have that luxury and you're in a much more open ended discovery process.

非常睿智。过早评估可能限制发展。这让我想到双钻设计模型——先发散再收敛的框架。

That is very wise. Evals could constrain you too early. I think about just the double diamond, I don't know, IDO kind of framework of like be divergent first and then converge

没错，正是如此。虽然我第一次听说这个模型，但完全共鸣。

and then maybe this Yeah, the last exactly. I hadn't heard that before, but that completely resonates.

好的。让我试着总结一下我听到的关于如何让公司在这个新世界中取得成功的建议。看看我是否遗漏了你们认为真正重要的部分。首先，有一种观点是重新设定对节奏和紧迫感的预期，帮助人们理解在AI领域事情发展极快，这就是我们需要的工作方式。

Okay. Let me try to reflect back some of the advice I've been hearing about how to shift a company to be successful in this new world. And let me see if I'm missing anything that you think is really important. So one is there's this sense of just like reset the expectations on pace and urgency, and help people understand in AI things move incredibly fast. This is how we need to operate.

其次是要尽快推出产品，这样才能了解人们如何使用它以及它的潜力，而不是无休止地打磨。几乎要强迫人们——不确定'强迫'是否准确——鼓励人们尝试最新技术，比如给他们放假、清空日历、取消会议，就为了跟上最新动态。就像你提到的'玩耍'概念，然后分享所学，感受可能性。还有一种思路是重新思考：如果今天在这个世界重新开始，我们会如何实现既定的使命目标？

Then there's also a piece of get stuff out so that you can learn how people use it and what it's capable of versus polishing it endlessly. Forcing people almost, I don't know if forcing is the right word, but encouraging people to play with the latest stuff and like giving them chance to take days off to block out calendars, cancel meetings, just like stay on top of the stuff. Yeah. To play as you talked about it and then sharing things they've learned, get the vibes of what's possible. There's also this idea of just rethink, okay, if we were to start today in this world, what would we do to achieve the same mission we have achieved, we are trying to achieve?

理想情况下，要充分利用我们长期积累的不公平优势。还有就是每小时都要和AI交流，对，每小时多次。使用频率正在上升。

And ideally, leverages this unfair advantage we have with things we've been working on for a long time. And then there's just like talk to AI constantly every hour. Yeah, multiple times an hour. Multiple times an hour. It's going up.

我是否遗漏了什么你们认为必须做到才能有机会成功的关键点？

Is there anything else that I missed there that you're like, is you need to do this to, to be really to have a chance?

我认为关键是要彻底打破角色壁垒。这对EPND（典型的EPD三角结构）确实如此，但我认为对非产品角色也同样适用，比如市场营销。我正在营销领域大力推动的是：如果能独立完成所有环节就去做。传统营销团队可能是专人负责绩效营销部分，但现在我们营销团队正在实践的是——

I think just to really, really try to break down role silos. Like, and I think that's true certainly for EPND in the typical like, you know, EPD triangle, but I also think it's, it's probably true even for like non product roles, right? Like I think it's true in marketing, right? Like I'm seeing something I'm really pushing for in marketing. I think our marketing team is like really leaning into actually is like, if you can just do all of the thing yourself, like traditionally how a marketing team might operate is like, okay, have one person who's kind of responsible for executing the performance marketing kind of part of a campaign, right?

他们实际上会进入Google AdWords界面，调整目标定位、预算和转化跟踪等参数。然后另一个人负责撰写具体的广告文案，对吧？还有其他人负责制定种子内容或定位指南，比如由产品营销经理编写的，这些内容会输入到广告创意中，依此类推。对吧？

Like they literally go into the Google AdWords interface and they're tweaking the parameters of targeting and budget and kind of conversion tracking, etcetera. And then somebody else is actually responsible for coming up with the specific ad copy. Right? And somebody else yet was responsible for coming up with the seed content or positioning guide, like written by a PMM that feeds into the ad creative and so on and so forth. Right?

也许他们在推广一些新的演示素材，对吧，这些素材又是其他人创建的。我只是觉得，就像在EPD（工程、产品、设计）中你可以合并角色一样，理想的人选可能在某个维度上非常专业深入，比如工程，但在其他两个维度上也足够全面，能够有所作为。我认为这在几乎所有其他职能中都是成立的。对吧？比如销售也是如此。

Like maybe they're promoting some new demo asset, right, that somebody else yet created. And I just think that, like, you know, in the same way that you can collapse the roles in EPD and, like, the ideal person, maybe they're they're very specially, you know, specialized and deep in one dimension like engineering, but they're well rounded enough to kind of, like, be dangerous on the other two. Like, I think that's kinda true in almost every other function. Right? Like, you know, like, sales as well.

我认为你应该开始能够扮演更多的售前工程师（SE）角色。传统上，销售人员不一定非常了解产品，而是依赖SE来充当产品专家。但现在，我认为如果不真正精通产品并能演示产品，就很难销售任何类型的AI产品，对吧？所以客户经理（AE）也需要像SE一样精通产品。因此，我认为这种合并角色的概念，每个人都必须变得更全面，才能更注重结果。

Like, I think you should, you start to be able to play more of an SE role. Like traditionally salespeople didn't necessarily know the product that well and kind of relied on the SE to come in and be the product experts. Like I think it's really hard to sell any kind of AI product now without actually being fluent in the product and be able to demo the product, right? So like AEs need to be like SE fluent as well. So I just think that that concept of like collapsing roles, everybody needs to become more full stack to do the being more outcome oriented.

作为客户经理（AE），结果就是让客户相信你产品的价值并达成交易，对吧？好的。为了做到这一点，你过去依赖于市场营销创建的素材和SE帮助你演示。你能减少这些依赖吗？这样在必要时，你可以自己完成所有这些工作？

Outcome as an AE is to convince customers of the value of your product and close deals. Right? Okay. Well, in order to do that, you used to have dependencies on having assets created by marketing and an SE to help you demo. Can you collapse more of those dependencies so that if you had to, you could do it all yourself?

对吧？我认为这是一种新的方式，对所有AI原生公司或希望在这个新领域竞争的公司来说，这是一种全新的运营思维。

Right? And I just think that's a new way, like it's a new operating mentality overall for every AI native company or company that wants to compete in this new arena.

这是个极好的补充。这几乎让人感觉回到了初创时期，那时每个人都在处理一堆事务。没有明确的产品负责人或工程主管之分，我们就是一股脑儿把事情搞定。完全正确。这些都是必须要做的。

That is a great addition. It almost feels like you go back to startup times when everyone's doing a bunch of stuff. There's no like, here's the head of product, here's the head of engineers, we're just doing stuff. Totally. Needs to be done.

完全同意。我将其视为一个倒T型结构——你在某个领域特别擅长，然后正如你描述的，至少需要掌握工程设计或销售工程（SE，顺便说下这是销售工程的缩写）的基础能力。这些相邻角色都需要建立基准线。随着大家对彼此领域理解加深，所有人的维恩图正在逐渐重叠。正是如此。

Totally. Yeah, I'm kind of seeing it as this is like upside down T where there's like the thing you're really strong at and then you just have to, as you describe the minimum of being good at engineering design or an SE by the way, sales engineering imagine is what that stands for. That you just like, they're adjacent roles, need to start having a baseline. The baseline is increasing of how much you need to understand that everyone's Venn diagrams are kind of converging. Exactly.

太棒了。让我退后一步，纵观你过去十余年的历程。直接问吧：在构建Airtable、创建公司和组建团队过程中，你学到的最反直觉、违背常规创业智慧的经验是什么？

Amazing. Okay, let me take a step back and kind of zoom out and think about the broader journey you've been on over the past decade plus. Let me just ask you this. What's what's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned about building Airtable building and company building teams that maybe goes against common startup wisdom?

我听过你对Brian Chesky的采访，以及后来在YC retreat中谈到的创始人模式。那些观点真的深深触动了我。虽然表达可能没那么精炼，但通过自身经历我也悟出了些相似原则——当你在扩大规模时（这也关联到我们之前讨论的创业初期），你需要深入细节寻找产品市场匹配，必须像个多面手：从技术决策到设计，甚至商业模型比如免费增值模式该如何设计？

I've heard your interview with Brian Chesky and then later you talk about Founder Mode in that YC retreat. And the points there really, really resonated with me. You know? And I I feel like, maybe less eloquently, kind of, like, deduced, you know, some of the same principles just just in my own experience, which is, like, I think, when you're scaling up and this relates also to what we talked about before around like the early days of building a company, you're like in the details, you're finding product market fit, you kind of have to be like, you know, pretty versatile, right? Like, you know, all these decisions from a technical standpoint to design, to even commercial and like, what's the freemium model gonna be like?

还有产品营销策略？官网该长什么样？这些全都紧密交织，无法割裂处理然后像工厂流水线般批量生产。它们本质上就是相互关联的。

And like, know, how are we gonna market this product? What does the website look like? Like, they're all very intertwined, right? You can't like compartmentalize and then like, you know, almost, like, factory produce, you know, kinda each of these things separately. Like, you they're all intertwined.

对吧？你需要一个精干的小团队用全栈思维统揽全局。在我看来，这才是创造神奇产品市场匹配的唯一途径。而当你扩大规模时，运营专家和大公司投资者的常规建议往往是：你需要将这一切工业化——就像从手工定制服装转向工厂批量生产。

Right? And you have a very small tight knit meme that's, like, a tight knit team that's thinking full stack about all of this combined. And obviously, that's the only way, in my opinion, to create that magical product market fit in the first place. And then I think as you scale up, the default guidance that you often get from operational experts and kind of larger scale company investors is like, okay, you gotta kind of industrialize the process of all of this stuff. It's kind of going from a bespoke artisanal, one person made an entire item of clothing to we got to factory produce this thing.

在组织层面这意味着划分不同领地，聘请高管各自管理独立业务线，各板块间耦合度降低。销售、市场、产品各自为政，甚至产品内部也分化成不同小组专注各自领域。用工厂比喻的话，这种模式确实能提升各业务线的量产效率。

And what that means in a organizational context is you then create these different fiefdoms, you hire all these execs and each exec just manages their own swim lane. And there's relatively looser coupling between all of those different groups. So you've got sales kind of executing on its own thing, marketing is executing on its own thing, products executing on its own thing, rather even within product, there's different product groups and surface areas that are each kind of executing on their own thing. And using the factory metaphor, there's an argument that that's actually kind of an efficient way to scale up production for each of these different swim lanes. Right?

每个部门都能更自主地专注于规模扩张——比如某个产品组专攻搜索优化，他们就持续迭代这个单点。所以这种建议并非全无道理。但代价是失去了全局思维带来的魔法般整合价值。

Like each one can kinda operate, you know, like in a in a, more autonomous and like, you know, purely, like scale up, you know, focused kind of, wait, how do we produce more of this thing? If the thing happens to be within one product group improving search, that's our main focus. We're just gonna go and ship, ship, ship more stuff to improve search. And so it's not completely crazy why people give this advice. But I think what you lose is the magical integrated value of holistic thinking.

以及做出宏观战略决策的能力。Brian在和你对谈中重点提过：真正重视产品的公司，CEO必须兼任CPO角色。产品才是根本，不能永远依赖市场扩张。产品必须持续创新——而最佳创新方式不是分散到各个小功能区块渐进改进，而是要有阶梯式的突破性愿景：产品需要实现怎样的跨越？下一个重大篇章是什么？

Right? And making the bigger picture bets. Right? And I think Brian talked a lot about this on his episode with you, which is like, look, like in a company that is really serious about product, first of all, like, I really liked his point about the CEO has to play a CPO role. You have to care about the product.

究竟是开发新功能？还是彻底重构产品？

Ultimately, the product is the thing. And you can't just coast on scaling up go to market around the product forever. You got to keep innovating in the product. And by the way, the best way to innovate on the product is not incrementally split over all these different little service areas, but actually to have like a bigger, kind of more step function vision of how this product needs to make a leap, right? Or what's the next big either act of the product or new capability of the product or reinvention of the product.

因此我认为，若你真正关心从产品执行角度实现这一目标，并近乎定期重新寻找产品市场契合点，这必然要求整个组织采用完全不同的运营和领导模式。我们刚才讨论的所有关于如何在AI原生时代运作的内容，实际上与这种持续重新寻找产品市场契合状态所需的运作方式完全相同。所以我完全赞同这一理念：既要雄心勃勃地思考，推动组织整体向这些更大成果迈进，同时在这个时代也要更多地进行发布、学习和实验。而从以上所有内容中，我获得的元认知或许是：那些具体建议显然类似于‘按这种方式扩大规模’或‘招聘这类有经验的操作者等人’。这些建议当然有一定道理，对吧？

And so I think if you really care about doing that from a product execution standpoint and almost like refinding new product market fit on a regular basis, I think it necessitates a completely different operating and leadership model throughout the organization. And all of the stuff we just talked about in terms of how to operate in the AI native era, I think it's actually exactly the same as how you need to operate in this constant product market refinding of fit state. So I could not agree more with that concept of, you gotta think ambitiously and move the organization holistically towards these bigger outcomes, but also ship and learn and experiment a lot more in this era. And then maybe the meta learning I had from all of the above is that the specific advice obviously was like, okay, go scale up in this way or go hire these types of people, experience operators, etcetera. Obviously, there's some truth to that, right?

给出这些建议的人并非无能之辈。他们提出建议自有其依据，在某些情境下这确实是正确做法。但我的元认知是：仅仅信任来自众多人士的‘这是你应采取的行动’这类推荐是不够的，因为每个人的先验认知都不同。这几乎就像我们每个人都是自己的人工智能模型。

People giving this advice are not incompetent. You know, they they had some reason for getting it, and in certain context, it that is the right thing to do. But I think, like, my meta learning is, you know, it's it's not, enough to just, like, trust the recommendation. Like, here's the action you should take from a lot of people because everybody has different priors. And it's almost like we're all our own LMs.

对吧？就像我们各自接受不同数据集的训练，这些数据源自我们独特的经历。或许你接受的是类似ServiceNow或Oracle那样的训练数据集，而这个人接受的是Facebook数据集，我则受训于类似Airtable的数据集。

Right? And, like, we all have different training from a different corpus of data informed by our own experiences. And maybe you're trained on, like, the, like, you know, kind of ServiceNow or the, you know, kind of a Oracle, you know, kind of, you know, training corpus. Right? And, you know, this person's trained on the Facebook corpus and I'm trained on like, you know, the Airtable one.

对吧？我越来越倾向于采取的做法不是直接忽视聪明人的建议——这显然不是正确答案，而是像在大型语言模型中那样，通过推理模型实际检视其思维链条。

Right? And I think what I've tried to do more and more is not to just ignore advice from smart people. Obviously, that's not the right answer. But to take their it's almost like in an LLM, you can now, with a reasoning model, actually inspect inspect the the chain chain of of thought. Thought, right?

观察它是如何思考的：为何会得出这个答案？对我而言，这个‘你为何推荐此方案’的思维过程，比单纯的‘照此执行’建议更具信息量。答案可能是：‘在某公司，我们就是这样完全取消PM职位的。’比如布莱恩在Airbnb的做法就有其合理性——他们不再保留传统形式的PM。

And see how it's thinking, why did it come up with this answer, right? And to me that chain of thought, why did you recommend this, is actually more informative than the actual just do this recommendation. The answer might be like, hey, at so and so company, this is how we eliminated the PM role entirely. For Brian, like at Airbnb, made sense. We're no longer having PMs in their traditional form.

现在我们有的是项目经理和产品营销人员。但比具体决策更重要的是——因为我认为这不是放之四海皆准的方案——你当时为何要那样做？

Now we have program managers and product marketers. And but, like, more than the actual decision, because I don't think it's a one size fits all. Like, everybody should do the same. Why did you do that? Right?

而这个‘为何’本身极具启发性，然后据此思考：‘我该如何应用？’或许会产生不同结果，但其中的推理过程确实富含洞见。

And the why actually was very informative and then be able to take that and say, okay. Like, how would I apply that? And maybe it yields a different outcome, but the reasoning actually is very, informative.

有趣的是，这种‘创始人模式’与你关注的‘IC CEO趋势’并无太大差异，而且

It's interesting how this idea founder mode is not so different from this IC CEO trend that you're following and it's

确实如此。

For sure.

没错。这就像亲力亲为、深入细节、亲自尝试，而非将事务委派给高管。

Yeah. Yeah. It's like being in the weeds, being in the details, trying things yourself, not delegating to execs.

是的。要知道，我认为任何事走向极端都会出问题，对吧？比如有种情况是你过分纠结每个细节，本质上就是在微观管理，这就成了那种情况的委婉说法。但这根本不是创始人模式的本意，对吧？

Yeah. You know, and like, I think anything taken to an extreme can be problematic, right? So like there is a world where like, you know, you are so in the details and in every detail that you're basically just micromanaging and you're you're you're kinda creating like, you know, kind of the euphemism for that. And that's not really what founder mode is about. Right?

布莱恩构想的创始人模式绝不是要事无巨细地管控一切、不信任任何人。我认为更关键的是找到平衡——毫不掩饰地关注真正重要的细节，因为只有跨部门串联细节才能带来非渐进式的成果。否则每个人只会优化自己的一亩三分地，永远无法触及全局最大值或突破性进展。

Like, that's not like the the Brian conception of founder mode is to, like, micromanage everything and, like, not trust anyone. But I think it's more about, like, finding that right balance of being unabashed about caring about the details that do matter and where the tying together of details across different groups or departments actually is the only way to yield a non incremental outcome. Because otherwise each person is just optimizing within their own domain. Right? But you'll never get to the global maxima or the global breakthrough.

我认为CEO或领导者深入细节最酷的地方在于，对合适的人选来说，这样其实更有趣。说实话，当我强迫自己抽离细节时（因为觉得AtScale CEO就该如此），反而感到与公司实质最脱节。有些著名CEO说过'我做的决策越少越好'，'接触的细节越少越好'，只想在顶层审视业务运行。

And I think the really cool thing about CEOs as ICs and frankly, any leader playing more of an IC like role and being in the details is I think for the right type of person, it's actually more fun that way. Be honest, for me, the times where I felt most disintermediated from what I felt was the substance of this company was when I thought that was almost forcing myself to step away from the details because I thought that's what AtScale CEO was supposed to do. There's some famous CEOs who have talked about like the less decisions I could make, the better, right? Like the less details I'm exposed to, the better, right? Like I just wanna inspect at the topmost layer how this business is running.

如果底层一切顺利，我确实可以这样操作。但这可能只适用于某些非常成熟的业务。即便在宝洁这样的消费品公司，难道CEO不该亲自尝汤试产品、查看创新管线的细节、考察货架体验吗？我越来越怀疑那种完全放手、只做流程管理的CEO模式是否真的有效。

And if everything underneath it is going smoothly, then I'm able to do that, right? And everything looks good. And I just think that's a Maybe again, it works in a certain type of very mature type of business. Even then though, I can't imagine that at a CPG company like in Procter and Gamble, you wouldn't want to have a CEO who still actually goes and tastes the soup and like tries the products and sees like literally the details of like what the new product innovation pipeline looks like, as well as like how it's being experienced on the shelves and so on. So I don't know, guess I'm just more and more skeptical that that like hands off pure delegation and process management role ever works as a CEO.

或许业务长期平稳时没人会察觉问题。但对我而言，扮演深入细节的角色更令人振奋。我敬佩的那些实干型领导者，正是这点让工作有趣——他们不愿让领导角色变成被自动化替代的存在。

Maybe you just like, you go through a long enough period of like where the business is coasting that like nobody notices. But I gotta say like for me, like it's just much more invigorating to get to play that role. I think for the types of operators and leaders that I most admire, like, it's it's like, that's what makes the job interesting. Like, they don't wanna have, a automated away, you know, kind of role as a leader.

如果能回到十年前，你会对当时的自己说什么来避免这十年的痛苦经历？

If you could go back in time and whisper something in decade ago, Howie's ear, that would have saved you a lot of pain and suffering over the last decade, what would that be?

别放弃你热爱的细节。如果产品构建与设计是你的激情所在，即便公司需要扩展市场、运营、管理庞大团队（这些本身就会催生新职责），作为CEO你当然要承担部分工作，但别丢失让产品诞生的本质。

Don't step away from the details that both you love. Like, I mean, first of all, like, if your passion is like building product and product design, even if it feels like at times the company needs to do all this other stuff, like scale up, go to market and operations and just have a large people organization that itself creates a lot of, you know, kind of, you know, need to to do things and manage and like, there there becomes a new job invented just to, like, manage a larger group of people. Right? And, obviously you're gonna have to do some of that. You can't just completely askew all your responsibility as an upscale CEO.

永远确保那仍是你首要关注点，即便其他事务不得不加入你的职责清单。许多基于神奇产品市场洞察创立的公司，创始人都不能离这个根本太远。

But don't lose essence of the thing that you love doing and that really made this product happen and gives this company as many companies that were founded on a magical product market finding insight, don't like step too far away from that. Right. And always make sure that is still your like number one, even if like other stuff has to also add to your plate.

这点人们谈论得太少——创业者最初因某个兴奋的创意起家，却被长期束缚其中，甚至被迫走向不热衷的方向。所以牢记初心至关重要，这才是持久经营之道。

I think people don't talk enough about this, how someone starts a company, it's an idea they have they're excited about, it takes off and then you're stuck on that for a long time, and then even if things are pushed in a direction you're not as excited about. And so this point about just remembering what you actually love about it and coming back to that, so important because that's the only way to keep doing this for a long time.

太对了。这就是热爱产品/业务建设的创业者，与纯粹追逐商业/财务机会者的本质区别。当然，后者在某些纯阿尔法生成的行业（如私募股权）完全合理，但前者才能长久保持热情。

I think that's so true. And to me, that's why there's always been a difference between entrepreneurs who love the act of building a product or the business too versus those who saw just purely business or financial opportunity that they felt like they couldn't pass up exploiting or going after. And look, no knock on people who are more of the latter and there's entire industries where it's all just about alpha generation. You could go into private equity business and so on. And it's just purely, it's rationally about how do I find the alpha?

我认为一些最优秀的公司，尤其是以产品为中心的公司，至少在我看来，是由那些真正热爱产品的人运营的。从像Sam这样的AI公司就能感受到这一点，他是真心热爱研究AI。对吧？如果他能把所有时间都花在贴近AI和研究上，他绝对愿意，他自己也这么说过。

And I think that some of the best companies, product centric companies, least in my opinion, are run by those people who actually just love the product. I think you get a feel for that from some of the AI companies like Sam, think genuinely just loves, like, working on AI. Right? Like, if he could spend a 100% of his time on, like, just being close to the AI and the research, I mean, he won, and he's even said as much. Right?

比如Airbnb的Brian，很明显这类人的动机并非金钱。Airbnb的创立绝不是因为‘天啊我们要靠酒店差价赚大钱’这种想法。

Like, you know, but but ranging to, the Brian's with Airbnb, like like, it's pretty clear, you know, that, you know, people like this are not motivated. Like, Airbnb was not founded because, like, oh my god. We we wanna make a lot of money off this, like, arbitrage opportunity against hotels.

他们当时只是为了付房租。

They just needed to pay their rent.

没错。但除此之外，我认为他们深爱这个产品，也热爱打造产品的方式。那种设计至上的产品理念和公司文化，正是让人能长期乐此不疲地耕耘同一家公司的原因。

Yeah. Well, that that and, like, I think they loved the the product, product and and I I think think they they also also loved loved the the way in which they built the product. Right? Like, you know, the design centric nature of that product and company and culture, you know, and and that's what gives you like the continued joy of of, working on, you know, what could be the same company for a very long time.

Howie，在我们进入激动人心的快问快答环节前，你还有什么想补充或留给听众的吗？

Howie, is there anything else that you wanted to touch on or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

我想特别对担任EP或D角色，尤其是P角色的听众强调：AI时代所需的技能并非天生就有，但每个人都该立即行动起来补足短板。即便是编程，我相信只要愿意，人人都能成为软件工程师。当然，就像不是所有作家都能成为海明威那样...

I I just wanna reiterate, you know, especially for for listeners here who who, are in, you know, an EP or D role and especially in the P role, like, I really do believe that this is not a, like you either have or you don't, like in terms of the skill set needed to be relevant and AI needed. But I do think like it's a call to action to go and bolster your skill sets where they may be less refined right now. Right? Like I think everyone like even programming, I really believe everyone could learn how to be a software engineer if they wanted to. Now like obviously some people just as with, like, great writers are never gonna be, like, you know, a published author, right?

但若真心想学，通过编程训练营或业余编码练习，人人都能掌握足够的软件工程能力。问题在于我们常把这些技能视为‘要么有要么无’——如果职业生涯过半还不是工程师或设计师，就觉得自己永远没机会了。

Or like, you know, the the Hemingway, right? But, like, everyone can gain a good enough proficiency of software engineering if they really wanted to. You could take that boot camp. You could do like some, like, you know, coding, you know, kind of exercises on on the side, etcetera. And the point there is that, like, you know, sometimes I think we treat these disciplines like, you know, hard, hard skills that, like, if you're not already if you're already halfway into your career and you're not already an engineer, if you're not already a designer, like, okay.

但人类大脑具有可塑性，现在有大量优质课程资源。正如我说的，关键是要通过试错和项目实践来学习，哪怕是利用夜间周末时间。在AI原生时代，人人都能成为全能型产品工程师/设计师的混合体人才。

Well, you can never be one. And I just think, like, you know, our brains are malleable. I think there's a lot of great curriculum out there to learn. And and, you know, a lot of it, like I said, just comes down to also like trial and error and like building projects, maybe nights and weekends projects, even to learn this stuff. But like everyone can learn how to be a versatile kind of unicorn, like product engineer designer hybrid in the AI native era.

唯一阻碍你的，就是没有立即付诸行动。

And and like the only thing stopping you is like just going out and doing it.

这个结尾太鼓舞人心了。我要再强调一次：现在学习这些技能的门槛比以往任何时候都低。

That is a really empowering way to end it. And I just to double down on that, it's never been easier to learn these things.

就像是，对啊。

Like Yeah.

现在有超级智能可以对话，它们能像正在建设中的助手一样帮你学习很多东西。

There are super intelligences that you can talk to that do a lot like, as they're building can help you learn.

我是说，我真的会去Chateappetees问它，比如‘嘿，你会怎么构建这个应用？’就像，我纯粹好奇，比如‘你会怎么构建Manus？对吧？’

I mean, I literally I mean, I go into Chateappetees sometimes and I ask it, you know, just like, hey. Like, how would you build this app? Like, where you know, like, I'm just curious. I'm like, like, would you build Manus? Right?

就像那个开放式代理机器人。真的，你会怎么构建它？你可以问我问题，就像拥有一位出色的软件架构师、工程师、产品经理、设计师和导师，没有愚蠢的问题，它们有无限耐心，全天候在线。

Like the the agent, open ended agent bot. Like, literally, how would you build it? You can ask me questions and it's like having like an amazing, brilliant software architect, software engineer, product manager, designer, expert tutor that you can literally, like there's no dumb question. They have infinite patience. They're literally on and awake like 20 fourseven.

就像你说的，现在是最不可思议的学习时代。还有交互工具让你真正动手构建——任何人都能下载Cursor，让Composer生成代码，然后研究代码功能。回想我早期构建应用的经历，先学C++，再学PHP和JavaScript，甚至在2008到2010年做单页应用时，那简直是门黑暗艺术。

Like it is the most incredible time to like learn this stuff to your point. And then of course like the interactive tools to go and actually build stuff like anyone can download Cursor and just start like asking Composer to generate some code for you and then looking at the code and trying to figure out what it does. To your point, like when I think back to the earliest era that I experienced of building apps, first I learned C plus plus then I learned PHP and JavaScript. And even building kind of JavaScript, single page apps in the early days, like 'eight through 2010. It was a dark, dark art.

那时候你得自己摸索，没有好教程，要逆向工程某些东西。比如想要圆角UI，得用Photoshop做出像素级圆角，切成图片再精准定位到页面边框。

I mean, there were some, you just had to go and learn some of these things. There wasn't great tutorials for it. You had to reverse engineer certain things. There were just, like, weird things. Like, if you wanted rounded corners in your UI, you literally took Photoshop, opened it up, created, like, a rounded corner in pixels, and then cut that pixel up into an image that you dropped onto the page at exactly the right position to be at the edge of, like, a box.

疯狂吧，对吧？

Like, crazy stuff. Right?

我是说，当时一切都

I mean, everything was

比现在晦涩得多。如今感觉流畅又易用，那些构建产品必须穿越的技术迷雾已被极大淡化。你和理想成果之间的抽象层被压缩到最小，作为创造者，没有比现在更令人兴奋的时代了。

like so much more arcane at the time and now it's just it feels so much more fluid and accessible and like the gap between the arcane tech that you have to wade through to build something has just been minimized so much. It's like the the effort and, like, abstraction between you and, like, the magical, delightful, actual building of the thing that you want has been so minimized. So it's never been a more exciting time to be a builder.

还记得spacer.gif吗？永远记得。对啊，那时候要弄个线条什么的就得...我懂。

You remember spacer.gif? Always. Yeah. Yeah. It's like to create, like, the line stuff you just I know.

我记得。对，就是那种隐形的一像素小玩意，你可以随便贴在任何地方。

I remember. Yeah. Invisible one pixel thing that you just stick in places.

对。不。我我...天啊。

Yeah. No. I I Oh my god.

活在当下真是奇妙。豪伊，说到这里，我们进入激动人心的快问快答环节。我有五个问题要问你，准备好了吗？

What a time to be alive. Howie, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

准备好了。

Yes.

好，开始吧。你最常向别人推荐的两三本书是什么？我最近...

Here here we go. What are two or three books you find yourself recommending most to other people? I've been trying

尝试多读小说部分是因为我觉得这是很好的精神调剂。我要推荐《自由的身体问题》，没读过的人一定要看，这是本开拓思维的书。我喜欢那种能打开你脑洞的科幻小说。虽然有点作弊，但这其实是个三部曲，三本都是佳作。

to read fiction more partly because I think it's just a really nice mental reset. I will say like Free Body Problem, like for anyone who hasn't read it, it's a mind expanding book. Like I like sci fi and fiction that like kind of opens your brain. So this is my cheat card, but, you know, it's a three book series. Those are those are three great books.

我超爱这个系列！我的建议是：坚持读到第一本半之后就会渐入佳境。那时候你就会觉得，哇，值得。

I love that series. And my tip there is it gets good. One and a half books in is my tip. So just keep reading. That's where it's like, okay.

现在我...

Now I'm

我连第一本都喜欢。不过确实感觉像《盗梦空间》，每本新书都像又坠入一层梦境，懂吗？

I like even the first one. Okay. But I do like, it I felt like it was like inception where every book every subsequent book was like you dropped into another like, you you incepted into like another layer. Right?

太棒了。好的，最近有什么特别喜欢的电影或电视剧吗？

Awesome. Okay. What's a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?

电视剧，我刚开始看《工作室》。就是那个，赛斯·罗根演的？罗根？

TV show, I just started watching the studio. The it's, like, the Seth Rogen Rogen? Rogen?

是啊，压力太大了。

Yeah. So stressful.

没错，确实很压抑。就像《硅谷》刚播出时让我感觉太真实了，看得我尴尬癌都犯了。《工作室》倒是挺有意思，因为它有点像好莱坞内部运作的揭秘，反正我又不在好莱坞混，就当娱乐看。

Yeah. It is very stressful. And I just kinda like I mean, Silicon Valley was like too close to home when it came out. So like I watched it, but it was like just cringey. The studio is kinda fun to watch because like it's a little bit about like inside baseball of Hollywood and yet, like, I'm not in Hollywood, so it's, like, entertaining to watch.

而且我觉得这部剧既机智又幽默。毕竟我在洛杉矶和旧金山两头跑，感觉剧情特别真实——街上随便就能碰到和剧中如出一辙的角色原型。

And, it's just, you know, it's it's I thought smart and, funny show. And, you know, because I split time between LA and SF, like, I also feel like it's it's very real to me. I see a lot of the, like, literal characters out there in the world that, it's characterizing.

最近有什么让你爱不释手的新产品吗？可以是APP、小工具或者服饰。

Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered they really love? Could be an app. Could be gadget. Could be a clothing.

好吧我得说两个——先说软件产品。我是Runway的死忠粉，他们前两天刚发布的新模型能更精准控制视频场景生成，现在连照片级真实感都能做到了。

So, okay. So I'll give two, because I feel like I have to say some kind of software product. Mean, I'm a really big fan of Runway, the product and the company. I just think like, you know, every, like, new model they come out with, they just came out with with a new one just I think like two days ago that gives even more, like, controls and refinement on, like, creating exactly the video scene that you want. And so, like, I think just the photorealism, in in what you can generate now.

他们还做了个沉浸式世界生成器的酷炫演示。虽然谷歌有VO3，OpenAI也虎视眈眈，但这个不足百人的小公司还能做出惊艳的视频体验，这种逆袭故事我最买单。

And, like, they also built this, like, cool demo thing that's, like, an immersive world generator I mentioned before. I think, it's just cool to see. I also like the underdog story. I'm, like, clearly, like, Google's gunning gunning in the space, has v o three and so on and, like, you know, as is OpenAI. But, like, I love the underdog story of this, like, sub 100 person company still punching above their weight and building, like, really awesome, you know, video experiences.

再说个特别geek的实体产品——我最近迷上了日本小作坊用百年老织机手工制作的服饰。对，就是那种复古工业风的制作方式。

Right? So that's the software one. And then a very, very, kinda nerdy, real world, answer on product is I kinda just recently got into, like, this whole, cottage industry of artisanally produced, you know, basically clothing, you know, by, like, small scale, like, Japanese manufacturers that use, like like, literally, like, 100 year old looms to to make clothes, like, the old fashioned way, like you know? Or or the old fashioned industrial way. Right?

他们用loop wheeler织机慢工出细活，从量产角度看完全不现实。但我就喜欢这种T恤的质感。在这个五年就技术迭代的时代，有些老物件反而更值得珍惜。

Like, they have these, like, loop wheeler machines and they spin the the cloth in, a very slow pace. So it's completely impractical from, a production scale standpoint. But, know, I just like, I've gotten, like, some of these t shirts and they, like, I just love the, no. I guess, Ed, you know, in a world where it feels like everything is becoming so much, faster moving and, like, you know, even tech from five years ago is obsolete. Like, I love a little bit of the throwback to, like, you know, old things sometimes can be even more cherishable in this new era.

可能这样显得我很文艺，但我确实越来越爱复古风的东西了。

Right? So, like, maybe that makes me a hipster, but, like, I I love the, you know, the the vintage, the retro, increasingly these days.

我觉得任何标榜'日本手工小批量精制'的东西都会很棒。有没有哪个品牌你想推荐？还是说你想保密，保持神秘感？

I feel like anything that starts with artisanal small batch Japanese is gonna be really good stuff. Is there is there a brand you wanna share that is that or is this, like because you wanna keep it Yeah. For the radar.

其实Self Edge——他们的主店就在旧金山瓦伦西亚街——专门经营这类商品。他们精选了很多优质独立制作人的产品，比如牛仔裤、T恤之类。有个牌子叫Studio Dartizan就很典型。

Actually, so Self Edge, which, actually has a a storefront like, main storefront is, on Valencia Street in SF. They carry a lot of these items. Like, that's kind of their whole MO, and they have, like, jeans and, like, T shirts. So I've gotten a lot I mean, they they basically curate a really good selection of different actual makers. Like, one of them is called Studio Dartazan.

还有个很酷的品牌，母公司叫Toyo（TOYO）制造，听起来像大型集团，其实是家小规模日本复古服装厂。他们收购了战后美国一个类似Hanes的内衣品牌Whitesville——

Another one's called, actually, it's cool. There's this company, called, I think the the umbrella company is actually just Toyo, t o y o, manufacturing, which sounds like it's a big, like, kind of, like, large scale conglomerate, but it's anything bought. It's like a really small scale Japanese, you know, kind of like vintage manufacturer of clothing. And but they have a few sub brands. They actually bought the rights to this, like, American postwar brand that was kinda like Hanes, like one of the, like, big, like, four or five, like, you know, kind of, menswear, like, you know, kind of undershirts and athletic wear, brands called Whitesville.

不知这名字由来，总之就是生产基础款T恤等。这家日本独立公司买下这个没落品牌后，现在完全复刻当年的版型和包装设计。想想挺有意思：用日本小作坊的方式重现美国战后风格。

I don't know where the name came from, but, you know, it it, it basically it's a bunch of, like, basic clothing, like T shirts, etcetera. And, and they this Japanese indie company, they bought the, like, defunct, you know, basically name, you know, and and now, like, is reproducing clothes almost made to the exact shape and stack. And even with, like, the exact recreation of, like, the graphic packaging on these, tees, but, like, you know, today. Right? So I just think there's something really funny and ironic about, like, you know, they've taken, like, an American postwar aesthetic and literal brand, but, like, it's actually, like, a indie, you know, small scale Japanese manufacturing, approach to to, to making those clothes.

感觉我们能另开一档服装工艺主题播客了，不过现在还是先——

I feel like we just tapped into what could be a whole other podcast conversation about clothing and craftsmanship, but let's I'm gonna pull

就此打住吧，留给下个播客系列。

us out of that. The the next podcast franchise.

或者专门做档霍伊和伦尼的服装对谈。最后两个问题：你有什么人生信条常与亲友分享吗？

Or just Howie and Lenny talking about clothing. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a life motto that you often find useful in working your life share with friends or family?

偶然接触到心理学家保罗·康蒂（可能是医学博士）的学说。他在与安德鲁·休伯曼的长播客中，从神经科学角度探讨人生观。有个观点令我印象深刻：

I stumbled on this guy, Paul Conte, who I think is an MD, but also like a psychologist. And, he has a book, you know, but also like he did this long form podcast with, with Andrew Huberman. And, you know, he actually ends up talking a lot about like, just how to think about like your life outlook and like kind of your framework for thinking about life, but grounded in a kind of like scientific and like, you know, kind of neurological, and cognitive science, basis. And, you know, I found one particular point really, really powerful. It stuck with me, which is like, you know, if you live your life in a way that's, you know, foundationally built around humility and gratitude, right?

虽然各人境遇不同——比如我家境清寒但庆幸生在美国，能接触电脑网络获取免费资源——但若以谦卑感恩之心面对世界，反而会吸引更多机遇。这种心态会形成良性循环。

And look, like, you know, everybody has different circumstances. Like, you know, I think, like, I I fully own that, like, you know, even though, you know, I didn't come for money, like, my family was was very, very financially modest, growing up. Like, I still had an incredible resources and opportunities afforded to me, even just by virtue of growing up in The US where I'd be born in and growing up in The US, but also having access to a computer and the internet and even all the free resources I could then access and learn about from there. But, you know, like, I I still feel like, you know, whatever you have or don't have to start with, like, if you kind of approach the world and and, you know, kind of the future with a spirit of humility and gratitude rather than, I guess, the opposite of that, I think I felt like it kind of like becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, right? You're open minded, you're kind of grateful.

即使遇到困难——比如今天不得不解雇员工，或丢了客户订单——仍以谦卑感恩的视角看待全局。这种心态会渗透到全天甚至整个人生，改变一切。

And then, like, more opportunities actually come your way, right? And maybe it's because of the energy you're putting out into the world and, you know, and other people and, you're kind of attracting, like, you know, good opportunities and and good people and good things. But I, you know, I I think like, you know, there's a lot of other parts of, like, his framework, but, like, the one that, you know, is easiest to remember is just like, how do I approach each day even if, like, I'm going through a tough moment and, you know, maybe we had to, like, you know, I had to fire somebody today or maybe, like, I got disappointed because we lost a customer deal or something broke or whatever. But like to still try to look at the entire situation from an overall feeling of humility and gratitude. Think just really does shift your like, it spills over into everything else for that day and maybe even for like the whole lifetime.

这让我深有共鸣。这真是非常有力的建议。虽然难以内化，但很重要。

That super resonates. That is really powerful advice. That's hard to internalize, but important.

是啊。说起来容易做起来难。

Yeah. It's easily said hard to, practice.

大家在哪里可以找到你？关于Airtable他们应该了解什么？听众们怎样才能帮到你？

Where can folks find you? What should they know about Airtable and how can listeners be useful to you?

好的。我在Twitter上的账号是Howie TL。我不常发帖，但经常潜水浏览。你可以随时在那里私信我，也可以直接发邮件到howie@airtable.com，有任何想法或反馈都欢迎。

Okay. So, I am on Twitter, Howie TL. I don't post that much, but I am a I'm a lurker. So I listen, and and watch, and you can always DM me there. You can also email me directly howie@airtable.com anytime if you have ideas, feedback, etcetera.

关于Airtable，直接去试用就对了。我们就是想打造一个注重体验的产品，所以特别强调产品驱动增长的理念。就像官网上写的——现在就开始创建吧。

You know, on Airtable, like, just go try it. Like, the whole point is we wanna make this an experiential product. Right? Like, you know, that's why we're we're really leaning into the PLG roots. We talked about, like, the home page literally says, like, just start building right now.

你想构建什么？马上开始。产品会引导你操作。请使用它并给我反馈。如果你有自己的创意想探讨——尤其是AI时代的产品用户体验相关——即使只是概念碰撞，我也非常乐意交流，这既能让我学习也能精进自己的技能。

What do you wanna build? Go. Like, it starts building. And so use the product, give me feedback. And, you know, if you have ideas of your own and and you wanna rip on them, like, I I love because my passion is thinking of a product and, like, product UX, especially in the AI era, if you're working on or inch you know, thinking about something interesting in that space, like, and even if it's just purely to, like, riff on a concept, like, that's that's something I enjoy doing and maybe I get to learn and and sharpen my own skill set from.

欢迎随时联系。对了，也请推荐亲朋好友试试Airtable，这是最重要的。

So feel free to reach out. And, and, yeah, I mean, tell your friends and family to try Airtable as well. That's the main thing.

听起来你是在寻找能激发你技术热情的人。Howie，非常感谢你参与节目。

Sounds like you're looking for people to nerd snipe you and Howie, thank you so much for being here.

太棒了。谢谢你Lenny。

Awesome. Thank you, Lenny.

大家再见。感谢收听。如果觉得有价值，可以在苹果播客、Spotify或其他播客平台订阅节目。也请考虑给我们评分或留言，这能帮助其他听众发现本节目。访问lennyspodcast.com可查看往期内容或了解更多信息。

Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com.

下期节目再见。

See you in the next episode.