并非所有收入增长都同等重要——一位哈佛研究员识别真正增长的框架

我认识欧洲的一位创始人，他的销售电话是你见过最糟糕的。

There's a a founder in Europe I know who he has the worst sales calls you've ever seen.

他基本上在销售电话里无缘无故地读GDPR法规，但客户还是拼命想买。

He basically reads the GDPR regulation on the sales call for no reason, and customers are desperate to buy regardless.

所以这就是你要找的。

So that's what you're looking for.

你要找的是那些即使不是因为你的推销，也仍然想买的人。

You're looking for people who are trying to buy despite, not because of.

以上是哈佛创新实验室研究员、《拉动力》作者罗伯·斯奈德的观点，他谈到了真正的需求是什么样的，以及为什么它与出色的销售话术无关。

That was Rob Snyder, Harvard Innovation Labs fellow and author of The Power of Pull on what real demand actually looks like and why it has nothing to do with a great sales pitch.

我是Motley Fool的分析师瑞秋·沃伦。

I'm Motley Fool analyst Rachel Warren.

罗伯多年来一直在创办初创公司，并分析了数百家其他公司，以理解为什么有些产品能成功，而有些则不能，即使它们在纸面上的价值主张看起来一模一样。

Rob has spent years building startups and analyzing hundreds of others to understand why some products take off and others don't, even when the value proposition looks identical on paper.

他和我一起讨论了投资者如何利用他的需求框架来区分真正的产品市场契合度和由不断扩大的销售与营销预算所制造的增长，以及AI热潮揭示了哪些公司真正拥有这种契合度。

He joined me to talk about how investors can use his demand framework to spot the differences between genuine product market fit and growth that's being manufactured by an ever expanding sales and marketing budget, and what the AI boom is revealing about which companies actually have it.

希望你喜欢。

We hope you enjoy.

欢迎回到《Motley Fool 对话》。

Welcome back to Motley Fool Conversations.

我是 Motley Fool 的分析师 Rachel Warren。

I'm Motley Fool analyst Rachel Warren.

作为投资者，我们一直在寻找那些有持久长期需求的公司。

As investors, we're constantly looking for companies with durable long term demand.

当一家企业经历爆发式增长时，华尔街往往会认为他们破解了市场的密码。

And when a business experiences explosive growth, Wall Street often assumes that they've cracked the market code.

然而，我们今天的嘉宾认为，传统的经济模型在理解顾客为什么真正购买产品方面有些失灵。

Well, our guest today argues that traditional economic models are somewhat broken when it comes to understanding why customers actually buy things.

事实上，依赖错误的增长信号可能会让投资者陷入危险的陷阱。

And in fact, that relying on the wrong growth signals can lead investors into dangerous traps.

我们的嘉宾是 Rob Snyder，他是一位连续创业的创始人，曾是麦肯锡的顾问，担任过驻场创业者和早期风险投资基金的合伙人，同时也是哈佛创新实验室的研究员。

Our guest is Rob Snyder, a serial startup founder, a former McKinsey consultant, an entrepreneur in residence and venture partner for early stage venture capital funds, and a fellow at the Harvard Innovation Labs.

他把自己多年创建和分析数百家初创公司的经验，浓缩进了他的新书《拉动力》。

He has synthesized his years of building and analyzing hundreds of startups into his new book, The Power of Pull.

Rob，欢迎来到我们的节目。

Rob, welcome to the show.

非常感谢你们的邀请。

Thanks so much for having me.

金融界多年来一直把消费者需求当作电子表格上的数学公式来对待，但你的书，真的很有意思，完全颠覆了这个假设。

The financial world has spent many years treating consumer demand like a mathematical formula on a spreadsheet, but your book, really interesting, completely flips that assumption on its head.

所以，我希望今天一开始，你能带我们了解一下《拉动力》的核心主题，并解释一下是什么启发你写了这本书。

And so I'd love it if maybe to start off today, you could take us inside the core themes of The Power of Pull and explain what inspired you to write it.

这个主题是，当我创办第一家公司时，我以为消费者需求就像你提到的那样运作。

So the theme is that I thought consumer demand worked just like you mentioned when I went and started my first company.

我以为，你知道，你提供明确的价值、明确的投资回报率，你解决一个问题，然后你说服他们购买，他们就会买。

I thought it was, you know, you provide clear value, clear ROI, you solve a problem, and then you convince them to buy and they'll buy it.

然后，我就是这样创办了我的第一家公司，结果我们被现实狠狠打脸了好几年，因为没人愿意买我们的产品。

And, that's how I started my first company, and we just got punched in the face for a couple years when nobody would buy our product.

然后我接到一个餐厅老板的电话，他说，嘿，我完全不知道你想卖给我什么，但我这里需要帮忙。

And then I got a phone call from a restaurant owner who said, hey, I have no idea what you were trying to sell me, but here's where I need help.

这正是我现在专注的地方。

This is specifically where I'm focused right now.

如果你能帮忙，你是搞技术的，也许你能想出办法。

And if you can help, you're a tech guy, maybe you can figure something out.

我会付钱请你帮我解决这个问题。

I will pay you to help me out there.

所以那时候我才意识到，买家不会按照我想要的方式行事。

And so that's when I realized that buyers don't behave like I want them to behave.

他们不会按照我经济学课本里那种合理的方式行事。

They don't behave in a way that kinda, like, made sense in my economic textbooks.

他们的行为方式非常不同，而正是从那时起，我的创业公司开始起飞了。

They behave in a very different way, and that's when my startup started to take off.

我们在两年内从零做到了四百万美元的收入，之后我也帮助了很多其他创业公司去探究顾客到底为什么会买东西。

We went 0 to 4,000,000 in revenue in two years, and I've since helped a bunch of other startups try to uncover why do customers actually buy things?

需求背后到底是什么？

What's really behind demand?

结果发现，这并不像说的那么简单，比如他们选的是回报最高、价值最大或者能解决他们问题的东西。

And it turns out it's not quite as simple as saying, oh, they pick what gives them the most ROI or the most value or what solves their problem.

实际情况有点不一样。

It it works a bit different from that.

也许可以更深入地讲讲这个需求理论或者模型，也帮我们的听众理解一下在这个背景下，拉和推的区别。

And maybe dig a bit more into this theory or or model of demand, and also maybe help our listeners understand the difference between pull versus push in this context.

我觉得这样能让大家更好地理解这个模型在现实生活中是怎么运作的。

I think that that would be a great way to kinda better understand how this model works in real life.

当我试图去卖我觉得市场应该想要的东西时，我发现感觉就像是在推着别人买。

What I found when I tried to go out and sell something that I thought the market should want was that it felt like I was pushing people to buy.

感觉就像是在说服他们。

It felt like I was trying to convince them.

你可以想象成，交易中的所有推动力都是我发起的。

I was initiating all of the force in the transaction you could think of it as.

比如我在销售电话里就会说，你难道没有这个问题吗？

And so when I would be on sales calls, for example, I'd be saying, don't you have this problem?

你不想要这个价值吗？

Don't you want this value?

然后我就得一直跟进。

Then I would have to do all the following up.

这就是所谓的推，就是卖家在说服你。

So think of that as push, seller convincing.

但真正有效的时候，情况完全不是这样。

When it worked, it worked very differently than that.

几乎完全不需要我去推。

It was almost none of me pushing.

我会接到电话，对方说，嘿，我听说你的产品了，我需要买。

I would get phone calls from people saying, hey, I heard about your product and I need to buy it.

这就是拉。

That is all pull.

这就相当于买家基本上是从你手里把产品抢过去。

That is the buyer basically pulling the product out of my hands.

所以这就是“拉式”这个概念的由来。

And so that's where the idea behind pull comes from.

就是由买家主动发起购买行为以及购后的相关动作。

It's the buyer is initiating the purchase action and the post purchase action.

他们买完之后，接下来就是安排安装或设置。

After they bought, they would get set up.

他们会主动把自己准备好。

They would set themselves up.

他们会自己动手去落实产品，而在此之前，我得推着他们、求着他们去用。

They would do all the work to implement the product, where beforehand, I had to push them to use it, beg them to use it.

所以我发现，在‘拉’式需求和需求背后有一些共同的原则。我提出的模型叫作‘拉动框架’，它指出：如果买家手头正有某个项目或优先级任务要完成，而他们现有的解决方案又不够好，他们就会把产品从你手里‘拉’过去。

And so what I found is that there are common principles behind pull, behind demand, which is the model that I came up with is called the pull framework, and it just states that buyers will pull a product out of your hands if they have some sort of a project or a priority they're trying to get done right now, but their existing options for getting that priority done are not good enough.

否则，他们就完不成这项优先任务。

They won't get that priority done.

如果是这种情况，他们就会主动来买你的产品。

If that's the case, they will pull a product out of your hands.

但如果不是这种情况，他们买了反而奇怪。

But if that's not the case, it would be weird if they bought it.

他们要么得放下手头正在忙的事情，要么就得说，你知道吗？

They would have to drop whatever they're prioritizing, or they would have to say, you know what?

我现有的选择已经够好了，但我还是买你的产品吧。

My existing options are good enough, but I'll buy your product anyway.

但现实世界不是这样的，所以“拉动”模型就应运而生了。

And that's not how the world works, And so that's where the model of Pull has come in.

这真的很有意思，因为我觉得很多时候作为投资者，比如我们在Motley Fool这边评估上市公司，当然，这在私营领域也同样适用。

It's really interesting to think about because I think a lot of times as investors, you know, on our side here at The Motley Fool evaluating public companies, but, of course, this also applies in the private space as well.

需求常常被看作图表上的一条线，会按预期移动。

Demand is often treated like, you know, a line on a chart that moves predictably.

而看起来你发现，这个模型在解释实际购买行为时其实并不成立。

And it seems you have found that model actually breaks down when it comes to explaining the actual act of purchasing.

那在实际中，有哪些原因呢？

What are some of the reasons for that in practice?

实际上，如果你把需求看作一条线，你就不会意识到，其实是每个人在做购买决定。

In practice, what happens is if you think that demand is just a kind of line, you don't realize that it's each individual person making a purchase decision.

我们需要理解他们购买决定背后的原因。

And we have to understand what's behind their purchase decision.

并不是因为他们想买。

It's not that they want to buy it.

而是因为他们生活中发生了某些事情，促使他们购买这个产品。

It's that something is happening in their life that is kind of causing them to buy this product.

有时候，你可以观察销售互动和销售对话，看看买家在这些互动中的表现。

Sometimes you can actually watch sales interactions and sales conversations, and you can see how buyers are behaving in those interactions.

你可以看到，他们是被说服了吗？

You can see, are they being convinced?

他们是被打动的吗？

Are they being persuaded?

如果是这样，那公司就是在硬推，这真的很难规模化。

If so, the company is pushing, and that's just really hard to scale.

而且之后也很难留住客户，尤其是对于我们都喜欢的订阅制业务来说。

And it's really hard to retain people after, especially for a recurring revenue business, which we all love.

对吧？

Right?

说服别人买一次就很难，还要说服他们一直用下去，永远不换，那就更难了。

It's hard to convince someone to buy, then convince someone to use and repeat that forever and ever.

你真正要找的是那种主动把产品融入生活的人，用起来就像离不开它一样，好像上瘾了。

What you're actually looking for is somebody who pulls the product into their lives and uses it as if they can't not use it, as if they're addicted.

为什么大多数新产品即使价值主张很明确，最后还是失败了呢？

Why do most new products fail despite a clear value proposition?

我想知道这反映了市场到底是怎么形成的。

And I wonder what that reveals about how markets actually form.

价值主张这东西，我们在商学院和商业书里学到的，或者说至少我感觉学到的，听起来都特别有道理，就是说只要你的价值主张够吸引人，人们就会买。

The value proposition so much of what we've learned, or at least what I feel like I have learned in business school and all the business books sounds so right that if you provide a compelling value proposition, then people will buy.

但有很多情况下，现在有很多价值主张摆在你我面前，我们却没有买。

But there's so many cases where there are so many value propositions that are available to you and I right now that we're not buying.

亚马逊上有六亿个商品条目。

There's 600,000,000 SKUs on Amazon.

对吧？

Right?

它们都有某种吸引人的价值主张，只是现在对我们来说不是。

All of them have some sort of a compelling value proposition, just not to us right now.

所以光有价值主张本身其实没什么用。

So the value proposition alone is kind of irrelevant.

关键还是回到“拉动”这个概念。

It's about again, back to pull.

重要的是这个人优先考虑什么，以及这个价值主张是否与之相关。

It's about what is this person prioritizing and is the value proposition relevant to that?

那才是真正重要的。

That's what really matters.

所以经常发生的情况是，我在哈佛创新实验室经常看到的，就是有很多绝妙的想法，做出很棒的产品，提供客户觉得很有意思的价值主张，他们会说，哇。

And so what tends to happen, what I see all the time, what we see at at Harvard Innovation Labs is there are these brilliant ideas for brilliant products that offer interesting value props that customers see, and they say, wow.

这太棒了。

That is phenomenal.

这正是行业需要的。

That's exactly what the industry needs.

但他们就是不买，因为他们没有把任何相关的事情列为优先。

And then they don't buy it because they're not prioritizing anything related to that.

他们没有这方面的需求。

They don't have pull for it.

所以创业者总是会走上这条路，做出一个完全说得通但没人买的产品。

And so entrepreneurs will always go down this path of a product that makes total sense that nobody buys.

我觉得我们常听到的经典说法是，创业公司之所以能扩张，是因为创始人有天才般的远见，或者靠激进的销售话术。

I think the classic narrative we've heard is that, you know, a startup scales because of a genius founder's vision or an aggressive sales script.

当然，人们希望这是其中的一部分。

Obviously, one would hope that that's part of the equation.

但我想聊聊你作为连续创业者的工作。

But I wanna talk about your work as a serial founder.

当然，还有你在哈佛创新实验室的工作。

Obviously, your work with Harvard Innovation Labs.

你见过公司起飞的情况，这和传统理论有什么矛盾的地方？

What have you seen when a company takes off and how that contradicts, you know, conventional theory?

一个真正能在市场上成功的业务、想法或产品，通常会伴随哪些步骤或标志？

What are some of the steps or hallmarks that tend to accompany a business or an idea or a product that's actually going to succeed once it enters the market?

有趣的是，我以前总觉得，哦，必须得有一个好产品，由一个非常有远见的激进创始人卖得好。

What's been interesting is I always thought it was, oh, it has to be a good product that is sold well by an aggressive founder who has a very big vision.

对。

Okay.

这些听起来都对。

Those those things sound right.

但每次我看到成功的案例，我见过很多公司从零做到一百万、零到一千万、零到五千万，我见过很多公司走这条路，但一开始几乎从来不是这样运作的。

Every time I've seen it work, and I've seen a bunch of companies go 0 to a million, zero to 10,000,000, zero to 50,000,000, like, I've seen I've seen companies on this trajectory, It almost never works like that at the very beginning.

就我而言，我们创业公司真正起飞的时候，其实是靠产品本身之外的很多东西。

In my case, when our startup actually took off, it was kind of despite the state of our product.

我们当时只有三四页的销售演示文稿。

We had a three or four slide sales deck.

最初十万、二十万美元的收入，靠的就是我一个人在电子表格里操作，客户根本登录不进去。

The product for the first 100,000, $200,000 in revenue was me in a spreadsheet that they couldn't log into.

所以按理说，这些都不该成功。

So nothing in that should have worked.

在早期阶段，真正起作用的是那些尝试做某事却受阻的人，他们购买产品，尽管产品本身不完善。

When it works in the early stage, it is always the person who's tried to do something and blocked, they are buying despite the state of the product.

他们购买产品，尽管创始人并不擅长销售。

They are buying despite the fact that the founder is not great at sales.

我认识一位欧洲的创始人，他的销售电话简直糟糕透顶。

There's a a founder in Europe I know who he has the worst sales calls you've ever seen.

他基本上在销售电话里毫无理由地念GDPR法规，但客户还是迫不及待地要买。

He basically reads the GDPR regulation on the sales call for no reason, and customers are desperate to buy regardless.

所以，这就是你要找的。

So that's what you're looking for.

你要找的是那些即使产品不完美也愿意购买的人，而不是因为产品好才买的人。

You're looking for people who are trying to buy despite, not because of.

然后，随着这个开始见效，当你达到500万、1000万的收入时，你会雇佣真正有才华的人来修复那些人们当初因为产品不完美而仍然购买的问题。

And then as that starts to work, as you get to a 5,000,000, 10,000,000, you hire really talented people who fix those things that were wrong that people bought despite.

你会得到正确的定价。

You get the right pricing.

你会有一个更好的销售流程。

You get a better sales process.

你会有一个真正能实现其功能的产品。

You get a product that actually does the thing.

这在初创公司中经常发生，而且它的运作方式和我原本想象的大不相同。

That's what very often happens in startups, and it works totally differently than what I how I thought it worked.

我很好奇，如果投资者用你的需求框架来评估一家上市公司是否真正打开了市场，或者只是用大量的销售和营销支出来掩盖疲软的需求，那会怎样？

I'm curious, you know, if investors were to use your demand framework to say evaluate whether a publicly traded company has genuinely cracked the market or maybe papering over a weak pull with heavy sales and marketing spend.

那这个框架里有哪些要素可以拿来用呢？

What would be some elements of that framework that one could apply?

先把话说清楚，我不是投资人。

And let's just put all the caveats out here of I am not an investor.

我想说的是，不是所有的收入增长都是一样的。

What I would say is that not all revenue growth is created equal.

靠激进的销售和营销推动的收入增长，也就是大量推销的那种，长期来看很难持续。

And revenue growth that is funded by aggressive sales and marketing where it is a lot of push is very hard to sustain over the long term.

你可以看出来，他们是不是在销售和营销上砸了很多钱，而且这个投入一直在往上走。

And you can tell if they are just spending a ton of money on sales and marketing, and that is just going up and up and up.

相反，我发现你要找的是人们在主动购买，主动把产品从公司拉出来，这种情况往往也伴随着大量的销售和营销投入。

And instead, what I found you are looking for is people buying, people pulling the product out of the company, which is often accompanied by a lot of sales and marketing spend.

但我觉得，这种销售和营销的投入是用来转化那些已经有需求的人，而不是去说服人们他们应该产生需求。

But I'd say, like, that sales and marketing spend is dedicated to converting people who already have demand rather than trying to convince people they should have demand.

有没有什么具体的财务指标，你觉得能反映出需求曲线是结构性的还是人为制造的？

Are there any, you know, specific financial signals that you think tend to indicate whether a demand curve is a structural or manufactured?

如果我看的是那种软件B2B领域，我会看留存率，客户留存率。

If I'm looking in kind of like the software b to b kind of space, I look at retention, customer retention.

具体来说，净收入留存率是我们关注的重点之一。

And like, specifically net revenue retention is one of the big things that we look at.

这能反映产品市场契合度，说明我们不只是说服别人购买然后流失，而是真正转化了那些因为需求旺盛而不断使用、不断付费、从中获得越来越多价值的客户，而且这种趋势能持续下去。

That's a signal of kind of product market fit that we're not just convincing people to buy who will churn, that we are actually converting people who, because they have so much demand, they use more and more, they pay more and more, and they get increasing value out of it, and that continues.

所以这是我关心的主要指标。

And so that's the kind of main metric that I care about.

而我可能不太关注的是像NPS客户满意度这类东西。

And the things that I focus less on necessarily are, like, NPS customer satisfaction type things.

那些也可以，但那是表达出来的偏好。

Those are fine, but those are stated preferences.

实际行为偏好在售后使用中体现出来。

Revealed preferences are in the post sale usage.

所以你现在是一家AI云基础设施公司Restek dot dev的联合创始人。

So you're currently the cofounder of an AI cloud infrastructure company, Restek dot dev.

你每天都在评估早期的B2B AI初创公司。

You evaluate early stage b to b AI startups every day.

我很想听听你聊聊在这个领域看到的一些趋势或主题。

I would love if you could talk about what are some of the trends or themes you're seeing in this space?

现在最让你兴奋的是什么？

What excites you the most right now?

就随便说说你的想法吧。

Just hear your thoughts generally.

现在的趋势很明显就是AI。

The trend right now is AI, clearly.

对于任何不是AI实验室的初创公司来说，趋势就是怎么才能不被那些AI实验室碾压。

And for any startup that is not one of the AI labs, the trend is how do we not get run over by one of the AI labs?

所以现在每个买软件的公司都在想，我是不是可以用Claude或Codex自己搞定这件事？

And so the thing that every company who is buying software today is thinking about is can't I just do this myself with Claude or Codex?

而这其实正好符合那个“拉动”框架。

And so that actually fits into the pull framework.

他们现在的选择包括自己动手用 Claude 或 Codex，或者其他类似工具，而这些选项在很多情况下已经足够好用了。

The list of options they have now include do it yourself with Claude or Codex or whatever, and those options are often good enough for a variety of things.

所以对我们创业者以及这个领域的每个人来说，关键问题是：什么时候 Claude Code、Codex 或其他 AI 产品会变得不够好用？

And so the question for us entrepreneurs and for anybody in this space is when is Claude code, Codex, your AI products, when are those not good enough?

它们在哪些方面不够好，以至于下一个模型版本也无法满足需求？

And in what ways are they not good enough that the next model release will also not be good enough for?

这正是我们大家都在努力寻找的答案。

That's what we're all trying to find.

所以我发现初创公司里很常见的一个情况是，他们把重点放在自己尝试动手做的那一步上。

And so one thing that I've seen is very common in startups is you focus on the point at which they have tried to do it themselves.

客户试过用 Claude 或 Codex 自己搞定，进展还不错，但没能彻底完成，最后那一段路怎么也走不通，不管他们到底想实现什么目标。

The customer has tried to do it themselves in quad or codex, and they've gotten pretty far, but they haven't gotten all the way and they can't get the last mile to whatever it is they're trying to do.

当你听到并评估这么多应用时，看到 AI 正在改变各个行业，你最兴奋的是哪些方面？

When you hear and evaluate all of these applications, where do you get most excited when you look at how AI is changing different industries?

你觉得哪些应用场景可能被过度炒作了呢？

And where do you think some of the use cases are perhaps a bit overhyped?

其实我最兴奋的事情，可能比你想的要简单和平凡得多。

The things that I'm actually most excited about are way more kind of, like, simple and mundane than you might expect.

比如说，我们以前每季度都会让市场研究公司给我们一份关于制药行业某个细分领域的报告，而且我们花了很多钱。

It's like the kind of thing where, hey, we had a market research firm give us a report every quarter about some niche of the pharmaceutical industry, and we spent a ton of money on it.

报告还不错，但并不是我们真正需要的。

It was kinda good, but it wasn't actually what we needed.

现在，一家专门为这个领域做AI的初创公司，可以每周甚至每小时给我们提供那份特定的报告。

And now a startup that exclusively focuses on AI for this specific space can get us that specific report every week or every hour or whatever.

这让我们能够获得制药行业一直需要的这种市场研究报告。

It unblocks us to be able to get this kind of market research report that we in pharmaceuticals have needed.

或者，比如说保险行业。

Or, you know, there's an insurance.

对吧？

Right?

在商业保险里，以前每次收到保险公司的报价，我们都要花一周时间整理一份对比表给潜在客户，让他们看清楚不同报价之间的差异。

In commercial insurance, we used to spend a week whenever we get quotes back from the insurers to put together a comparison chart for potential customers so that they can see what's in the different quotes that we get.

好的。

Okay.

现在，一个非常专业的AI，能理解保险里各种不同的报价，几分钟就能帮我们搞定，而以前这得花一个人好几个星期。

Now a very specialized AI that understands all the different kinds of quotes in insurance can do that for us in minutes instead of it taking a person weeks.

所以，就是这些小事，往往是业务里的小环节、小部分，我见过很多初创公司就是从这里起飞的。

And so it's just little things like this that are often little artifacts, little parts of the business where I've seen startups take off.

另一个例子是一家叫Jump的公司，我也帮忙把它做起来了。他们就是给理财顾问用的AI会议记录工具，专门跟他们的CRM系统配合，还符合理财顾问的监管要求。

Another example is a company called Jump that I helped take off, where they're just an AI meeting notetaker for financial advisors that specifically works with their CRM and is compliant with kind of, like, the regulation needs of financial advisors.

一开始就是特别特别简单的一个东西。

It started as this really, really simple thing.

理财顾问以前都是手动记笔记，然后输到CRM里，每天都要花好几个小时。

Financial advisors had always manually taken notes and put them into their CRMs, and that took them hours every single day.

这个工具就是把他们已经在做的事情给省掉了。

This just eliminates that thing they were already doing.

所以，这些就是让我感到兴奋的一些例子。

So these are kind of some examples of places where I'm excited.

当然，那些大型AI实验室的项目也非常令人兴奋。

Obviously, the big AI labs, those things are super exciting too.

我更多关注的是小创业者，那种小东西会火起来。

I'm more on the small guy entrepreneur type thing of what's the little thing that's gonna take off.

对，这就是关键。

Well, and that's the thing.

当你和创始人聊天，看这些AI初创公司时，如果创始人提到他们看到了爆炸性的有机增长，你会问哪些问题来判断这背后是否有持久的推动力，而不仅仅是短期的需求？

When you're, you know, talking with founders, when you're looking at these AI startups and, you know, you have a founder that's talking about the explosive organic growth they've seen, what are the kinds of questions that you ask to determine that there's actually a durable tailwind there, and it's not just, you know, short term demand?

我会关注他们整个销售漏斗的指标，最看重的是客户注册或购买之后发生了什么。

I will focus on their metrics all throughout their funnel with the biggest emphasis on what happens after these customers sign up or buy.

因为我想确保这不只是炒作。

Because what I wanna make sure is that it's not just hype.

不只是我们在X上火了，或者被Y Combinator推荐了，然后我们获得了大量转化，但这些转化并不持久。

It's not just we went viral on x or we were featured by Y Combinator on or whatever, and we got a ton of inbound that we converted but also isn't durable long term.

关于长期持久性的问题，说实话，我们发现现在每个类别里的每个初创公司都在赛跑。

The question about long term durability though is honestly, like, what we've found is that it's just a race right now for every single startup in every single category.

一旦第二个浪潮起来，就会有一堆其他的AI会议记录工具专门给财务顾问用。

The second jump takes off, there are a bunch of other AI meeting note takers for financial advisors.

所以从来不会有停滞的时候。

And so there's never a kind of standstill.

至少在创业公司里，感觉没有机会说，这个能持久。

It doesn't feel, at least in startups, like there is the opportunity to kinda say, this is durable.

AI实验室正在追赶你。

The AI labs are coming for you.

其他所有创业公司也在追赶你。

All the other startups are coming for you.

一旦我们看到这些指标确实不错，那就好。

Once we see these metrics that actually look good, then it's a, okay.

不错。

Cool.

我们现在还得保持领先于其他人。

We also now need to stay ahead of everybody else.

我发现关键就是紧贴客户，想办法帮他们解决卡点，同时完善产品矩阵，让客户更愿意长期留下来。

And what I found is that it's just staying close to customers, figuring out other ways we can unblock them, and extending the product suite so that people want to stay with us longer.

太棒了。

Fantastic.

跟你聊天真的很愉快，Rob。听了你分享的新书，还有现在AI创业圈里发生的种种动态，收获很大。

Well, it's been great to chat with you, Rob, and to hear about your book and all that's happening in the startup space right now in the world of AI startups.

非常感谢你今天抽空来跟我交流。

Really appreciate you coming on to talk with me today.

谢谢，Rachel。

Thanks, Rachel.

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我是Motley Fool隐藏宝石投资团队的Rachel Warren。

For The Motley Fool hidden gems investing team, I'm Rachel Warren.

感谢收听。

Thanks for listening.

我们下次再见。

We'll see you next time.