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本期节目由 Engine 赞助播出。
Support for the show comes from Engine.
经营小企业意味着每一分钱都要花在刀刃上，但如果你的团队还在用老办法订旅行，那花的钱可比你想象的多。
Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard, but if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think.
Engine 是全国增长最快的差旅和支出管理平台，专门为像你这样的企业打造。
Engine is the fastest-growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours.
最快两分半钟就能订好行程，酒店消费最高可返现 10%，而且在 2025 年，Engine 客户在差旅上节省了超过 3 亿美元，没有预订费，没有合同，也没有任何套路。
Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels, and in 2025, Engine customers saved more than 300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS.
每个月有超过 1000 家企业加入 Engine。
More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month.
加入他们，你的企业注册并开始使用差旅服务，就能在 engine.com/founders 获得 500 美元。
Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/founders.
嘿，大家好，我是 Ed。
Hey, guys, it's Ed.
顺便说一下，我们上周在 Substack 上直播了这段对话，如果你想赶上下一场直播，实时参与，就去 profgmedia.com 订阅吧，我们下次直播见。
Just so you know, we recorded this conversation live on Substack last week, so if you would like to catch the next live stream and tune in in real time, make sure to head over to profgmedia.com where you can subscribe, and I'll see you on the next live stream.
欢迎收听ProfG Markets创始人系列节目。
Welcome to the ProfG Markets Founder Series.
如果你有一家曾经家喻户晓、但现在陷入困境的软件公司，你会怎么做？
What do you do with a software company that was once a household name but has fallen on hard times?
我们下一位嘉宾就是围绕回答这个问题建立起了自己的事业。
Our next guest has built a business around answering that question.
他的公司收购像Vimeo、AOL、Airtable和Eventbrite这样陷入困境的企业，目标是彻底改革它们的运营方式，削减成本，让它们重新盈利。
His company acquires struggling businesses like Vimeo, like AOL, Airtable, and Eventbrite, with the goal of overhauling how they operate, cutting costs, and making them profitable again.
今年夏天，这家公司在纳斯达克上市，估值超过180亿美元，上市首日股价就上涨了40%。
And over the summer, this company went public on the NASDAQ at a valuation of more than $18 billion, with the stock jumping 40% on its first day of trading.
这次IPO让一家原本相对默默无闻的意大利公司，一下子成了全球投资者关注的公开市场焦点。
That IPO turned what was once a relatively obscure Italian company into a public market story that investors around the world were suddenly paying attention to.
所以我们想了解这个模式到底是怎么运作的，这家公司是如何让陷入困境的软件企业起死回生的，以及把策略从私营公司带到上市公司是什么感觉。
So we wanted to understand how this model actually works, what the company does to turn struggling software businesses around, and what it's like to take a strategy from a private company to a public one.
这是我和Luca Ferrari的对话，他是Bending Spoons的联合创始人兼CEO。
This is my conversation with Luca Ferrari, the co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons.
Luca，非常感谢你参加我们这期ProfG Markets创始人系列节目。
Luca, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the ProfG Markets Founders Series.
我想从最开始聊起，2013年，你其实不在意大利，而是在丹麦的哥本哈根，Bending Spoons就是在那儿起步的。
I'd like to start at the very beginning, in 2013, where you're not actually in Italy, you're actually in Copenhagen, you're in Denmark, and that's where Bending Spoons begins.
给我们讲讲这家公司的起源故事吧。
Tell us the origin story of this company.
很少有人知道，我和我的联合创始人，几乎是同一批人，在2010年也在哥本哈根创立了一家初创公司。
Very few people know this, but with my co-founders, almost the same people, we launched a startup in 2010, also in Copenhagen.
我们当时用人工智能，显然太早了，来帮人们自动写日记。
We were using AI, clearly too early, to automatically write diaries for people.
我们做了三年，筹集了一百万美元，但最终惨败，没能扩大规模。
And we did that for three years, raised a million dollars, and failed miserably, couldn't make it scale.
虽然我对我们做的产品挺自豪的，但有时候光有产品是不够的。
Although I'm pretty proud of the product we built, but sometimes that's not enough.
所以在那家公司的废墟上，我们只剩下大约四万美元。
And so on the ashes of that company, we were left with about $40,000.
当时给我们投资的那家风投，基本上以象征性的一美元把他们的股份卖回给了我们。他们显然很欣赏我们工作努力、为人诚实，也不想走清算流程，最后我们自己把公司清算了，基本上把那四万美元都拿回来了，几乎一分不少。
The VC, who had given us the money, basically sold their shares back to us for a nominal $1, and they apparently appreciated we'd worked hard and been honest, and they didn't want to go through the liquidation process, and we ended up liquidating the company ourselves and basically got those $40,000 out of it, almost completely.
那就是Bending Spoons的启动资金。
And that was the seed capital for Bending Spoons.
所以那是2013年，还是在哥本哈根。
So that's 2013, again, Copenhagen.
大约一年后我们把公司搬到了意大利，但当时我们就在那里。
Moved the company to Italy about a year later, but that's where we were at the time.
我们现在还在用的策略以及背后的关键洞察，大部分都源于那次失败。
And the strategy we're still running these days and the key insights behind it, for the most part, had originated from that failure.
显然，随着时间推移你会变得更聪明，但大部分东西当时就已经定下来了。
Obviously, you get smarter in time, but most of it was in place back then.
所以你们有一家科技公司，你说是一家AI公司，我猜那时候他们应该叫机器学习。
So you had a tech company, you say an AI company, I would assume that they were calling it machine learning back then.
我猜那时候这个领域没什么热度。
I assume that there was not a lot of hype around that sector.
这显然已经变了。
That's obviously changed.
那行不通。
It doesn't work.
然后你剩下四万美元，用这笔钱创办了另一家公司，叫Bending Spoons。
Then you have $40,000 left over, which you take out of that to start this other company called Bending Spoons.
Bending Spoons背后的想法到底是什么？
What actually was the idea behind Bending Spoons?
还有，我觉得大家可能也想知道，为什么叫Bending Spoons这个名字？
And also, I think people will probably want to know what's with this name, Bending Spoons?
在那家失败创业公司的头三年里，我们在工程、营销、产品设计方面的技能提升得非常快。
So over those first three years of that failed startup, we saw our skills in engineering, marketing, product design, improve tremendously.
当然，我们觉得自己离世界级水平还差得远，但肯定比之前好多了，所以我们想，如果我们继续磨练这些技能，再加上其他相关能力，打造自己的工具，总有一天能达到世界级水平。
Obviously, we didn't feel we were anywhere near world-class, but certainly much better, and so we thought, okay, if we work on this skill set and other relevant skills and build our own tools, we should be able to get to world-class levels at some point.
同时，我们也发现，找到产品市场契合点，也就是从零到一的过程，似乎需要很多条件同时满足，因为我们遇到很多创业团队，他们工作非常努力，我们觉得他们很聪明，但依然没能成功，而有些情况下，却成功了。
And at the same time, we saw that finding product-market fit, going from zero to one, so to say, seemed to require a lot of stars to align because we met so many startup teams where people worked really hard and we thought they were brilliant and still couldn't make it work, and sometimes in other cases, it did work.
所以我们想，应该能找到那些可能厌倦了经营公司，或者没有能力把业务从一做到十的人，他们会愿意把公司卖给我们。
And so we figured we should be able to find people who are maybe tired of running a business or maybe they don't have the skills to go from one to 10, who will sell to us.
如果我们真的非常擅长这件事，我们应该能给出一个对他们有吸引力的价格，同时还能创造足够的价值，带来可观的回报，并且高效地积累资本。
And if we're really, really good at doing this, we should be able to pay a price that's appealing to them and still be able to create enough value to generate strong returns and be able to compound capital efficiently.
所以，这就是我们当时比较简单的想法。
So those were the relatively simplistic ideas we had back then.
因为我们知道我们要建立一个庞大的、多样化的产品组合，所以我们必须给公司起一个和具体产品无关的名字。
And because we knew we were going to grow a vast, hopefully vast portfolio, diversified portfolio of different products, we had to find a name for the company that wasn't related to the particular product.
然后我的一个联合创始人马特奥，他是电影《黑客帝国》的超级粉丝，我觉得他前一天晚上刚看过，第二天早上他特别兴奋地跑来说，我们应该把公司叫做Bending Spoons，灵感来自电影里一个小男孩用意念弯曲勺子的场景。
And so one of my co-founders, Matteo, he's a big fan of the movie "The Matrix," and I think he had watched it the night prior or something, and in the morning he came all excited and said we should call the company Bending Spoons, inspired by, there is this scene in the movie of a little guy bending a spoon with his mind, supposedly.
我们喜欢这个名字，因为它提醒我们，思想的力量很强大。
And we liked it because it reminds us of the mind is powerful.
如果你下定决心去做某件事，也许你就能做到看似不可能的事情。
If you set your mind to something, maybe you can do the seemingly impossible.
所以我们觉得这个名字挺鼓舞人心的。
So we just found it kind of inspirational.
我们喜欢自嘲一下，开点自己的玩笑，不把自己太当回事，所以在我们看来这也是个很酷的名字，而且一直用到现在。
We liked the idea of making a little bit of fun, of poking a bit of fun of ourselves, and not taking ourselves too seriously, so that was also a cool name in our view, and it stuck
那我们接下来会聊到你们现在做的事情，基本上就是收购很多不同的软件公司，这个我们稍后再谈。
So we'll get to what you guys do today, which is you are essentially buying a lot of these different software companies, and we'll get to that.
但据我了解，早期你们是在做工具，做软件产品。
But in the early days, my understanding is you guys are building tools, you're building software products.
早期你们有点像是一个应用工作室。
You're kind of like an app studio in the early days.
跟我们讲讲你们当时到底在做什么，以及这怎么最终演变成了现在这个看起来有点不同的商业模式——你们现在是用钱去收购公司，但那时候，我猜四万美元也买不了什么吧。
Tell us a little bit about what you were actually building back then, and how it eventually led to this seemingly slightly different business model, where you're actually going out and buying companies with money that now you have, but back then, I assume $40,000 is not much you can buy with that.
我们其实一直都在收购公司。
We've always acquired companies.
第一次收购发生得很快，我觉得。
The first acquisition happened very quickly, I think.
我们是在2013年夏天创办Bending Spoons的。
So we started Bending Spoons in the summer of 2013.
第一次收购是在2014年。
The first acquisition was in 2014.
从那时起，我觉得没有哪一年我们少于90%的收入是来自收购来的业务。
I don't think from that point onward, there's ever been one year where less than 90% of our revenue came from businesses we had acquired.
所以我不太清楚那个工作室的说法是从哪来的。
So I'm not sure where the studio thing comes from.
但我觉得可能是因为我们第一次被大家熟知的收购是2023年的Evernote，所以大家就以为我们之前做的都是从头开始的产品。
But I think it's just that the first acquisition we did that people recognized was Evernote in 2023, so people just assumed that what we were doing before was launched from scratch.
但实际上，过去13年里我们几乎做的都是收购现有业务，而且我觉得我们让这些业务变得更好、更成功了。
But nearly all we have done over the past 13 years was acquire existing businesses, and I'd like to think make them better and more successful.
偶尔我们也会从零开始推出产品，尤其是在早期，因为那时候我们没钱，所以这既是唯一能做的事，也更容易产生大的影响。
Occasionally, we have launched products from scratch, more so in the early days because we had no money, and so it was both the only thing we could do, but also it was more likely to move the needle.
现在我们的年收入运行率差不多有40亿美元了。
At this point, we're at a run rate in terms of revenue of almost $4 billion.
要推出一个能真正产生大影响的东西就更难了。
It's more difficult to launch something that can reasonably move the needle.
但第一次收购，就像我说的，发生得很早，我们只花了一万美元，所以规模非常小。
But the first acquisition happened, like I said, very early, and we paid $10,000 for it, so very small.
但复利的力量就在于，它把10变成了20，然后20变成了40。
But the power of compounding is such that it turned 10 into 20, and then 20 into 40.
13年过去了，我们就到了现在这个位置。
Fast-forward 13 years, we are where we are.
实际上，我们的股权注入非常有限，除了几个月前的IPO，我们在2025年底获得了大约2.5亿美元的大额股权注入。
We actually had very modest injections of equity, mostly other than the IPO a few months ago, we had a significant injection of equity, about a quarter of a billion dollars toward the end of 2025.
所以，在那之前，大部分增长都是通过自由现金流的再投资和债务实现的，债务我们用了将近10年。
So really, up to that point in time, most of the growth was through the reinvestment of our free cash flows and then debt, which we have used for almost 10 years at this point.
那跟我们讲讲第一次收购的情况吧。
So tell us a little bit about that first acquisition.
你是怎么找到这家价值一万美元的公司的？这个数目很多人可能就用来买辆车了。你又是怎么把它扭亏为盈的？
How did you identify this company that was worth $10,000 the same amount of money that a lot of people would pay for a car, and what did you do with this company to turn it around?
你当时带来了什么资源或能力？
What were you bringing to the table?
那次比现在容易多了，因为那其实根本算不上是一家公司。
That one was a lot easier than things today because it wasn't even a company, really.
那是一个iOS手机应用。
This was a mobile app for iOS.
我还记得很清楚，那是一个可以个性化定制iPhone键盘的应用。
I still remember quite distinctly that it was an app to personalize your iPhone's keyboard.
我都不知道现在还有没有这种应用。
I don't even know if such apps exist these days.
但大概在2014年，或者差不多那个时候，苹果开放了相关API，然后涌现了一堆这样的应用。我们看到了这个应用，它有不少用户，我们觉得它既有潜力又有问题。
But in 2014, I think, or around that time, Apple opened up APIs to be able to do that, and a bunch of apps came out, and we saw this one, and it had a bunch of users, and we thought it could be both.
产品本身做得并不好。
The product was not that good.
它之所以有用户，可能是因为它是最早进入市场的，而且在App Store上占据了不错的位置。
Maybe it had users because it was a first mover and had achieved a good positioning on the App Store.
我们相信我们可以改善用户体验。
We believed we could improve the user experience.
当时几乎没有任何盈利模式，所以我们就把它买了下来。
Monetization was almost nonexistent, and so we bought it.
我们完全重写了软件，重新设计了界面，并且引入了盈利方式。
We rewrote the software completely, redesigned the UI, and introduced monetization.
这个应用是由一个独立开发者开发的，所以操作上有点业余。
The app had been developed by a single developer, so kind of an amateurish operation.
当然，现在我们会收购那些拥有专业管理团队和机构投资者的大公司。
Obviously, these days, we buy sizable companies with professional management teams and institutional investors.
但核心原则是，在运营该业务所需的关键职能专长上，要比卖给你的人更胜一筹。
But the key principle is trying to be superior at the key functional expertise necessary to run that business, superior relative to whoever is selling it to you stood.
显然，现在要做得更强的门槛高得多，但思路基本是一样的。
Obviously, the bar to be stronger today is much higher, but the idea is pretty much the same.
这就触及了Bending Spoons到底是什么的核心问题，我觉得很多人对这个公司感到困惑。
So this gets to the heart of what Bending Spoons actually is, and I think there's a lot of confusion as to what this company is.
因为一方面，你们有软件背景，使用AI，你们不是硅谷文化，但肯定是创业文化。
Because on the one hand, there's this software element where you guys are using AI, you have this software background, you kind of come from this not Silicon Valley culture, but certainly a startup culture.
但同时，你们也在做许多资产管理公司和私募股权公司几十年来一直在做的事情，那就是寻找公司、收购它们、获取大量股权，然后战略性地入股并扭转这些公司的局面。
But at the same time, you're doing what many other asset management firms and private equity firms have done for decades, which is you're finding companies, you're buying them, you're acquiring them, you're taking up large positions, and then you're taking up a strategic stake in the company and then turning those companies around.
这是投资者几十年来一直在做的事情。
This is what investors have been doing for decades.
这确实存在。
This exists.
这是一个完整的行业，我想可以称之为私募股权。
This is an entire industry, which I think I would call it private equity.
那么在你看来，Bending Spoons 到底是什么？
So in your mind, what actually is Bending Spoons?
因为在我看来，归根结底，它就像一家资产管理公司。
Because to me, it seems like at the end of the day, it's an asset management firm.
可以说，我们业务中的投资部分绝对重要。
Let's say the investment part of what we do is absolutely important.
显然，我们主要通过收购来实现增长。
Clearly, we grow primarily through acquisitions.
我们是一家连续收购型公司。
We're a serial acquirer.
要说我们和任何一家私募股权公司的区别，我觉得有三个非常重要的不同点。第一，我们不是基金。
The part that would distinguish us from any private equity I've seen, I would say there are three very important differences, and one is that we are not a fund.
我们收购不是为了出售。
We don't buy to sell.
我们从未出售过任何重要业务，所以我们收购是为了长期持有并经营。
We've never sold a material business, so we buy to hold and operate forever.
第二个可能更重要的区别是，当我们收购一家公司时，至少据我所知，私募股权公司通常会介入管理。
The second perhaps more important difference is that when we acquire a company, at least the private equities I'm aware of or I've seen operate, they do intervene.
显然，他们可能会削减成本，或者干预盈利模式。
Obviously, they may cut costs, maybe intervene on monetization.
他们可能会更换高管团队。
They may change the executive team.
但他们的干预相对表面化，从私募股权公司的团队就能看出来。
But the interventions are relatively superficial, and you can tell by looking at the team at private equity firms.
主要是由一小群金融专业人士组成的团队。
It's mostly small teams of financial professionals.
Bending Spoons 走的是不同的路线。
Bending Spoons takes a different route.
我们也做那些事情，但我们的不同之处在于，我们经常完全或大部分重建组织。
We do those things as well, but we take a different route in that we rebuild the org often completely or in large part.
我们可能会彻底重新设计云基础设施，重写大部分代码库，加速产品开发，从零开始重新构想变现方式和营销。
We may re-architect the cloud infrastructure completely, rewrite big chunks of the code base, accelerate product development, reimagine monetization from the ground up, marketing.
所以这是一种更深层次的转型，有时候我们几乎就像买了一个品牌、客户群和用户群，然后试图非常深入地改造其他一切。
So it's a much, much deeper transformation to the point that sometimes it's almost like we buy a brand, customer base, user base, and try to overhaul everything else very deeply.
而且，这在我们团队中也有所体现，即使只看核心团队，先不考虑收购来的团队，大约有800人，其中绝大多数是软件工程师、数据科学家、产品经理和产品设计师。
And, again, that's represented in the team we have, which is, even if you look just at the core team, forget for a second the acquired teams, that's roughly 800 people, and overwhelmingly, they're software engineers, data scientists, product managers, product designers.
所以自然，我们做的大部分工作就是这类工作。
So naturally, most of the work we do is that sort of work.
我们也有自己的金融专业人士团队，因为我们也需要这些，但还有额外的部分。
We also have our own team of financial professionals because we need that too, but there's this additional piece.
第三个大的不同点是，虽然几乎所有私募股权公司都会收购企业，然后让它们独立运营，以便日后出售，有时会把几家有协同效应的公司放在一起，但也就到此为止了。
And the third big difference is that while pretty much all private equities buy businesses and they keep them separate to sell them down the line, sometimes they put a couple of synergistic businesses together, but that's the extent to which they put things together.
而我们把所有东西都深度整合到同一个平台上。
We integrate everything super deeply onto the same platform.
之前有个投资者告诉我，在对Bending Spoons进行尽职调查后，他们发现我们几乎就像是买下公司，然后把它们拆解成一个安装在共享操作系统上的产品。
An investor some time ago told me that after due diligence in Bending Spoons, that they found that it's almost like we buy companies, and then they get stripped down to a product installed on a shared operating system.
我觉得这个比喻有点简单化，但确实有道理。
And I think it's a bit of a simplistic metaphor, but there is truth to it.
所以如果你看我们做事的方式，通常在收购完成后的几个月内，我们就会把整个技术基础换掉。
So if you look at how we do things, generally within a few months from the moment the acquisition closes, we swap out the entire, let's say, technological foundation.
我们开发了几十种专有技术，比如AI编排、数据处理、A/B测试、招聘、支付管理、凭证管理等。
We've built dozens of proprietary technologies, whether it's AI orchestration, data processing, A/B testing, recruiting, payment management, credentials management.
基本上，运营数字业务的每一个环节，我们都在内部构建并原生集成，然后替换掉企业正在使用的任何第三方供应商的东西。
Basically every component of running a digital business, we've built in-house, natively integrated, and that's swapped out for whatever third-party vendor things the business is using.
我们有一个核心的中央团队，负责研发、行政和市场营销，我们会非常灵活地调配他们到各个业务中，去抓住研发机会。
We have this core centralized team for R&D, G&A, marketing, who we redeploy very fluidly across all of our businesses to go after R&D opportunities.
当这些资源用尽时，我们再补充，这样能保持成本效益。
And when they're exhausted, we draw them, so we keep cost efficient.
所以，即使我们想卖掉其中一家公司，也几乎是不可能的。
So to the point that it would be almost impossible to sell one of our businesses even if we wanted to.
这就是我们模式的一个缺点。
So that's a downside of our model.
所以，我们和私募股权有一些相似之处。
So there are similarities with private equities.
首先，最明显的就是专注于收购。
First and foremost, the focus on acquisitions.
但我认为，在日常运营、整合和转型的方法上，我们有很大的不同。
But I think the day-to-day operational approach in integration and transformation is quite different.
所以，可以说这是一种混合模式。
So it's a bit of a hybrid, I'd say.
关于私募股权策略，有一个老生常谈但也很真实的现象，就是你收购一家公司后，会大幅削减成本，这通常表现为裁员。
One of the clichés, but it's also true about the private equity strategy, is that you buy a company and then you dramatically cut the costs of the company, which usually comes in the form of layoffs.
这一点你们也证明了。
And that is something that you guys have demonstrated as well.
这个模式在你们收购的公司里相当一致。
This is a pattern that is pretty consistent across the companies that you acquire.
这也是我觉得有些人批评你们的地方，不管对不对。
It's also something I think that some people criticize you guys for, rightly or wrongly.
但看看你们做的一些战略决策，比如WeTransfer的员工，收购两个月后，75%的员工就被裁掉了。
But when you look at some of the strategic decisions you've made, like WeTransfer staff, for example, two months after you bought it, 75% of the employees had been cut.
裁员在你们的战略中占多大比重？而且，这听起来确实很像私募股权的模式，另外，对于人们可能批评你们裁员这一点，你怎么看？
How central is headcount reduction to the strategy, and what do you make of, one, the fact that that does sound also very similar to the private equity model, and two, the criticisms that people might have that, well, you're cutting headcount.
如果这是道德判断，如果有人认为尽量让企业成功是坏事，那我没什么好辩解的。
If it's a moral judgment, if someone thinks that trying to make a business as successful as possible is bad, I don't have any defense against that.
这完全是一种合理的观点。
It's a completely valid point of view.
当然我不同意，否则我也不会这么做。
I disagree, obviously, or I wouldn't do it.
我觉得总的来说，世界会运转得更好。
I think in general, the world tends to work better.
如果企业运营得非常出色，经济这块蛋糕通常会变得更大。
The economic pie tends to grow larger if businesses are run at an excellent level.
但我尊重有人在这个问题上不同意我的看法。
But I respect the fact that someone would disagree with me on that point.
我们几乎每次都是这么做的，所以这确实已经成了一种模式。
We have done it almost every single time, so it's definitely been a pattern.
我想说，总的来说，成本效率大约占我们整体价值创造的50%。
I would say that in general, cost efficiencies have been approximately 50% of our value creation overall.
在那50%里面，组织优化这部分可能稍微超过一半。
And within that 50%, probably the org part, it's probably roughly a little over half.
所以，如果把我们100%的价值创造算作100%，那大概有30%到35%是来自组织优化。
So maybe I would say of 100% of our value creation, let's say maybe 30, 35% has been about optimizing organizations.
有一件事我觉得大家误解了，就是人们往往认为我们裁员只是为了削减成本。
One thing we do that's, I believe, misunderstood is people tend to think that we end up reducing headcount simply because we want to cut costs.
虽然优化成本显然是一个重要的驱动因素，但实际上，对我们来说同样重要的是，让那个组织更好地定位，以便长期表现出色。
And while optimizing cost is obviously a significant driver, we actually try, I'd say just as important for us, is that we make that org far better positioned to kick ass for a long time.
在我看来，有些人有一个错误的假设，认为公司的人数几乎决定了公司是否能生产出优秀的产品，是否能快速创新。
The, in my view, flawed assumption some people have is that the number of people you have in a company is almost definitively going to determine whether the company produces great product, it innovates quickly.
我们认为，如果员工人数与创新或优化客户体验和变现能力之间存在相关性，那这种相关性最多也是微弱的。
We are of the opinion that if there is a correlation between headcount and, say, innovation or the ability to optimize customer experience monetization, that's a weak correlation at best.
真正推动这些良性结果的，主要是人才密度，人们是否使用强大的工具，文化是否理性、高效，是否有大量繁文缛节，还是给人们足够的空间。
And that what drives those virtuous outcomes, for the most part, is talent density, whether people use powerful tools, whether the culture is one of rationality, high performance, whether or not you have a lot of red tape, or you actually give people plenty of space.
所以我们试图做的是让这些公司回到我所说的创业模式，即由极其优秀的人才组成的小团队。
So what we try to do is bring these companies back to what I would call startup mode, small teams of supremely talented people.
我们放手让他们去做，给他们非常广泛的授权，以及非常强大的技术，我之前简单提到过这些。
We get out of the way, give them plenty of very wide mandate, very powerful technologies, I mentioned them quickly earlier.
我们一贯看到的是，尽管员工人数可能减少了80%，有时甚至更多，但奇迹依然发生，这是有目共睹的，我们在各种博客或品牌上发布了很多这样的内容。
And what we see consistently is that magic happens despite going down in headcount maybe 80%, sometimes more, demonstrably, and we publish a lot of this stuff on the various blogs or brands.
但显而易见的是，我们修复错误、减少技术事故或推出新功能的速度提高了，有时甚至大幅提高。
But demonstrably, the rate at which we fix bugs, reduce, say, technical incidents, or ... launch new features goes up, sometimes dramatically.
所以是的，我们确实一直在裁员，这一点毫无疑问，有时候幅度还很大。
So yes, we have absolutely consistently cut headcount, no doubt about it, sometimes dramatically so.
我们这么做，毫无疑问，也是为了成本效率。
We do so also, no doubt about it, for cost efficiency.
但同样，通过同样的方式，我们也让这些企业在产品质量和创新速度上变得更有竞争力。
But equally, we have been able, through the same means, to make these businesses a lot more competitive from the point of view of product quality and the pace of innovation.
所以对我们来说，这真的是双赢，但我也理解这对相关人员来说很痛苦。
So for us, it's really a win-win, but I understand that it's painful for those involved.
我们尽量去减轻被裁掉这种不可避免的痛苦，这确实很糟糕。
We try to mitigate the unavoidable, I think, pain of being laid off, which sucks.
经历这件事真的很难。
It's a very tough thing to go through.
通过保持透明、提供市场上最好的离职补偿方案、表现出同理心和灵活性，但这并不能让这个过渡变得毫无痛苦。
By being transparent, by offering top-of-market separation packages, by being empathetic and flexible, but that doesn't make that transition painless.
它只是让痛苦减轻一点，如果我们能在没有这个客观上不好的因素的情况下完成我们的工作，我们当然会非常乐意避免它。
It makes it a little bit less painful, and if we could do what we do without that objectively bad element, we will certainly be very happy to avoid it.
我们谁都不喜欢做这部分工作，这是肯定的。
None of us enjoys that part of our jobs, for sure.
我还了解到，你们专门找那些经营困难的公司。
My understanding is also that you are specifically finding companies that are struggling.
这些公司在几乎所有指标上都很挣扎，盈利困难，商业模式也有问题，否则它们本来也会停滞不前，甚至可能早就裁员了。
Struggling on basically every metric, struggling with their profitability, struggling with their business model, and these are companies that otherwise would have been stagnating and perhaps would have done the layoffs anyway.
我想这就引出了下一个问题：你们怎么判断哪家公司适合你们的商业模式，适合与你们的软件产品和团队整合？
I guess this gets to the next question, which is how do you identify what company is the right company for your business model, for integration with your software products and your software team?
什么样的公司才值得收购？
What makes a company acquirable?
我觉得你说得在很多方面都对。
I think you're right in many ways.
我得说，我们收购的公司中，有很大一部分都是经营困难的。
I would say a big percentage of our acquisitions have been struggling companies.
但不是全部。
Not all.
我们也收购过一些发展得不错的公司。
We have acquired several companies that were growing nicely.
比如Komoot、Airtable，最近我们还分享了它们的增长率。
I'm thinking Komoot, Airtable, recently we shared the growth rate.
但确实，在我们收购的公司组合里，经营困难的公司占比比大多数收购方要高。
But yes, we have a bigger percentage of companies in our acquisition portfolio, let's say, that were struggling than, say, most acquirers.
我觉得大体上这个说法是成立的。
That's, I think, broadly speaking, a valid characterization.
有时候，高管团队自己也会跟我们说：‘你看，如果非要我做艰难的决定，我宁愿你们来做。’
And sometimes, yes, the executive teams themselves tell us that, "Look, if I say I need to take difficult decisions, in a way, I'd rather you do it."
所以这种情况确实发生过。
So, it's happened.
不能说经常发生，但偶尔会有。
I wouldn't say it's happened often, but sometimes it's happened.
所以我们看重的，从定性角度来说，有三点。
So what we look for is, on a qualitative level, three things.
我们喜欢收购相对于我们当前规模来说比较大的公司，原因是我之前描述过我们如何进行这些极其深入的转型和整合。
We like to acquire large businesses relative to our current size, and the reason is I described how we conduct these extremely deep transformations and integrations.
这些工作需要投入大量的时间和精力。
Those take a massive amount of time and effort.
好消息是，我们发现完成这些转型所需的人数和时间并不会随着业务规模的增长而显著增加，至少不是线性增长。
The good news is we've found that we don't need, the number of people, the amount of time we need to complete those transformations does not seem to scale really, at least not linearly, with the scale of the business.
所以，我们更倾向于收购较少的公司，把资源投入到那些能带来显著影响的转型上，而不是收购一百家公司，结果却没有时间把任何一件事做好。
And so we're better off acquiring fewer companies and deploying those resources toward our transformations that move the needle as opposed to acquiring 100 companies but then not having the time to do anything really well.
所以我们喜欢每年收购大约五家左右的大型公司。
So we like to buy, say, five companies a year, give or take, that are large.
第二点，我们希望有信心能够预测这些公司未来至少五到六年的表现。
The second thing is we want to feel confident we can predict their performance at least five or six years out with confidence.
这涉及一整套科学的讨论，但总的来说，这是我们决定是否出手之前需要得到的答案。
And that's an entire whole discussion of science, but on a high level, that's the answer we need before we decide to pull the trigger.
第三个重要标准是，我们需要相信我们能够大幅改善这些业务，包括产品、技术、组织、变现、营销，最终提升收入和降低成本。
And the third big criterion is we need to believe we can greatly improve those businesses, hopefully the product, the tech, the org, monetization, marketing, ultimately revenue and cost.
说到底，这还是一个盈利的游戏。
It's an earnings game at the end of the day.
所以，这就是三大标准。
So those are the three big criteria.
至于怎么得出这些答案，那就要经过很多步骤，而且相当复杂。
Then how we get to those answers, that's many steps, and it's quite complex.
嗯，除了规模之外，规模是很明显的。
Well, other than the scale, the scale is very obvious.
一旦这三个条件都满足了，那就归结到回报率的计算上了。
And once those are three checks, then it boils down to the math of returns.
在那些满足所有三个条件的公司中，我们会寻找能带来最高回报的投资，这样我们就能尽快实现复利增长。
Among the companies that check all three boxes, then we look for the investments that will yield the highest returns so we can compound as fast as we can.
我们马上回来。
We'll be right back.
本期节目的支持来自Engine。
Support for the show comes from Engine.
现在赢的公司不是不差旅，而是订得更聪明。
The companies winning right now aren't cutting travel, they're booking smarter.
现实是这样的：普通商务旅客在传统平台上订一次行程平均要花45分钟。
Here's the reality: The average business traveler spends 45 minutes booking a single trip on a legacy platform.
用Engine，订票时间能缩短到只要两分半钟。
With Engine, that booking time drops to as little as two and a half minutes.
而且它的人工智能个性化功能用得越多，速度就越快。
And its AI-powered personalization gets faster the more you use it.
把这个效率乘以你的团队，每一次出行，每一年。
Multiply that across your team, every trip, every year.
这可不是什么福利，这是竞争优势。
That's not a perk, that's a competitive advantage.
去年，Engine客户在差旅上节省了超过3亿美元。
Last year, Engine customers saved more than $300 million on travel.
而且用Engine X卡，任何酒店预订都能享受最高10%的返现。
And with the Engine X Card, get up to 10% back on any hotel booking.
已经有33000家企业加入了。
33,000 businesses have joined.
现在轮到你了。
Now it's your turn.
你的企业注册并开始使用旅行服务，就能获得500美元，详情请访问engine.com/founders。
Get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/founders.
Engine X Visa商务卡由Fifth Third Bank, N.A.发行，FDIC成员。
Engine X Visa commercial cards are issued by Fifth Third Bank, N.A., Member FDIC.
符合条件的Engine旅行消费最高可获得10%的积分返还。
Earn up to 10% back in points on eligible Engine travel purchases.
实际奖励率因购买类别而异，并可能发生变化。
Actual reward rates vary by purchase category and may change.
积分无现金价值，可通过我们的计划兑换奖励。
Points have no cash value and are redeemable for rewards through our program.
详情请参阅完整的奖励条款。
See full rewards terms for details.
请访问engine.com/x/rewards-terms。
Go to engine.com/x/rewards-terms.
欢迎回到节目，今天我们请到的是Luca Ferrari。
We're back with Luca Ferrari.
我们看你收购的那些公司，特别是像AOL和Vimeo，这些曾经是伟大的公司，或者曾经家喻户晓、被科技行业视为宠儿的公司，但现在可以说已经过时了。
When we look at some of the names of the companies you've acquired, especially like AOL and Vimeo, these are sort of once great companies or once companies that were previously known to everyone, sort of darlings of the tech industry, that have gone out of fashion, I would say.
收购这些曾经的大品牌并让它们转型，这是你们策略的一部分，还是纯属巧合？
Is that part of the strategy is taking these once big name brands and transitioning them, or is that just a coincidence?
我觉得这主要是副产品。
I think it's mostly a byproduct.
我们内部其实没有给并购团队制定什么指导方针，说要找那些过气时代的品牌之类的。
We don't actually have internally guidelines for our M&A team look for brands from a bygone era or anything like that.
更多是因为，至少从历史上看，过去五年或十年，也许未来会不一样。
It's more that I think At least historically, at least in the last five or 10 years, maybe the future will be different.
我们发现市场往往低估了那些不那么光鲜的东西——
We found that the market tended to undervalue the unsexy things-
对
Yes
……而且在我们看来，市场高估了那些新潮、吸引眼球的东西，有时候甚至高估得离谱。
... and, in our view, overvalue the new and sexy, sometimes to a fault, in a major way.
所以当我们努力做理性的经营者时，这一点永远无法被证明。
And so as we try to be rational operators, you can never prove it.
我希望我们是在理性地分配资本和经营。
I'd like to think we're being rational capital allocators and operators.
当我们做完定性筛选和计算后，会比较投资像AOL这样的公司能带来的回报，或者不说具体名字，就说那些更光鲜、更新潮、更吸引人的东西。
When we're comparing, after having done the qualitative screening and done the math, we were comparing the returns we would get from the AOLs of the world, or I'm not going to name names, but let's say flashier, newer, sexier things.
我们发现后者总是给我们带来差得多的回报，而且我们没理由仅仅因为人们喜欢就去做。
We found that the latter would consistently give us much worse returns, and we saw no reason to do it simply because people liked it.
所以，AOL其实是一门非常好的生意。
So, AOL is actually a very good business.
显然，它不会再有大的发展，但有3000万人在使用它。
Obviously, it's not going places, but 30 million people use it.
很多人把它当作自己的主邮箱，而且一直在用，这些人完全没问题——他们作为人、作为客户，并不比那些因为喜欢某个小巧花哨的新邮箱客户端的人低一等。
For many of these as their main email, and they use it all the time, and these are perfectly-- They're not less, no less valuable as human beings or as customers, as people using the small, flashy, new email client simply because they like AOL.
所以我们很乐意服务这些人，就像我们也很乐意服务那些更酷的早期用户一样。
So we are happy to serve those people, just as we'd be happy to serve the cooler early adopter.
看起来很多投资者更喜欢追逐酷炫的东西，而我们很乐意接手那些不那么性感的东西。
And it seems that many investors prefer to go toward cool and sexy, and we're happy to take the less sexy things.
这就是为什么我对你的业务这么着迷的原因之一，也是我们节目的一大主题——最好的投资往往是不性感的投资。
This is one of the reasons I'm fascinated by your business, and it's a big theme on our show, which is that the best investments are the unsexy investments.
当所有人因为各种愚蠢的理由，把某家公司、某只股票或某个投资机会一笔勾销的时候，你就要抓住机会。
You want to capitalize when everyone has, for various stupid reasons, written some company or some stock or some investment off.
看起来你正是在利用这种动态。
It seems like you are capitalizing on that dynamic.
这是一种非常有投资头脑的策略，而你本身是搞创业、做软件产品出身的。
That is a very investment-minded strategy, and you are someone who comes from, you were building companies, you were building software products.
你在投资和财务估值方面的背景是怎样的？
What is your background in investment, in financial valuation?
因为这看起来确实很像——在很多方面，这正是经典价值投资者所做的，而你似乎就属于那一派。
Because it does seem like a very-- In a lot of ways it's what classic value investors have done, and you seem to be in that camp.
考虑到你其实更多是软件背景，是什么让你走到这一步的？
What got you to this point, given the fact that you kind of had more of a software background?
我和我的联合创始人学的都是很相似的东西，工程、物理。
My co-founders and I studied very similar things, engineering, physics.
我觉得那才是我们真正的背景，也许驱动力就是技术和科学。
I think that's really our background and maybe driving passion is technology and science.
我们只是觉得把技术应用到商业上会很有意思，因为商业其实提供了很多有挑战性的智力问题。
We just felt that applying that to business would be fascinating because actually business offers a lot of challenging intellectual problems.
而且经济回报也很可观。
It's also rewarding financially.
所以我们决定走这条路。
So we decided to go down that route.
但我相信，我们保留了工程师和科学家的思维方式，并尽可能把它融入到组织中，融入到我们所做的一切中，甚至包括人才方面。
But we have, I believe, retained that engineering and scientist mindset, and try to embed it as much as possible in the organization, in everything we do, even talent.
我的意思是，我们现在招人的方式完全是科学化的。
I mean, the way we recruit is completely scientific at this point.
而且我觉得我们是一群充满好奇心的人。
And then I'd like to think we're curious people.
我们研究过，有很多——我觉得更难，这么说吧，学量子物理比算IRR难多了。
We have studied, there's plenty of-- I think it's more difficult, let me put it that way, it's more difficult to learn quantum physics than how to calculate an IRR.
所以我觉得最好还是学STEM，这通常能考验你的智力水平，给你更好的解决问题的工具。
So I think it's better to have studied STEM, and that generally tests your intellectual capacity and gives you better problem-solving tools.
然后你只要肯下功夫，其他东西都能学会。
You can then learn other things if you put in the effort.
所以关于金融和经济学的书有很多，我们非常欣赏像沃伦·巴菲特、汤姆·墨菲、哈里·辛格尔顿、本杰明·格雷厄姆这样的人。
So there's plenty of books on finance and economics, and we're big fans of people like Warren Buffett or Tom Murphy or Harry Singleton, Benjamin Graham.
有很多书可以读。
There's plenty you can read.
这又不是什么高深莫测的事。
It's not rocket science.
如果你试着向那些聪明且有过成功经验的人学习，当然，不要盲目照搬，而是要理解他们当时所处的条件和你现在面临的条件。
If you try to learn from people who are smart and have done it before, and then of course, try not to copy-paste blindly, but understand the boundary conditions they had and the boundary conditions that apply to you.
这样可以避免很多错误。
There's a lot of mistakes you can avoid.
所以是的，我们追求价值，但不一定非得是那种已经过了巅峰期的企业。
So yes, we try to be value, not necessarily in the way that it has to be, again, a business that's past its prime, necessarily.
对我们来说，这就像做数学题。
For us, it's math.
只是市场给那些处于巅峰期的企业估值太高，所以我们最终买入了更多过了巅峰期的企业。
It just happens that the market values the in-their-prime businesses so highly that we end up buying more of the past-their-prime businesses.
但归根结底，我们只是想要高效地复利增长。
But ultimately, we just try to compound efficiently.
这就是我们想做的全部。
That's all we're trying to do.
你提到了沃伦·巴菲特，这正是我想说的，因为这里似乎有很多相似之处。
You mentioned Warren Buffett, and that's exactly who I was going to bring up, because there seem to be a lot of parallels here.
你说你们不是倒卖公司，也不是交易公司，而是买入公司，并且打算永远持有。
You talk about you're not flipping companies, you're not trading companies, you're buying companies, and the plan is to hold them forever.
我得说，提到这种商业模式，我第一个想到的就是伯克希尔·哈撒韦。
And I have to say, I mean, the first company that comes to mind when I think about this business model is Berkshire Hathaway.
我看沃伦·巴菲特是怎么做的，他从非常非常小的公司开始。
And I look at what Warren Buffett did, starting with very, very small companies.
听起来，我觉得他在很多公司里并没有采取战略性的持股。
Sounds like, I think he took a less strategic position in a lot of those companies.
但他也确实在一些公司里采取了战略性的持股。
But he still took some strategic positions as well.
但这听起来和你们做的很相似，只不过你们是在科技和软件驱动的世界里做这件事。
But it sounds like that's quite similar to what you're doing, but you're doing it in a tech and software-enabled world.
这是不是Bending Spoons的愿景，还是你觉得这个比较很贴切？
Is that kind of the vision for Bending Spoons, or do you think that is an apt comparison?
我是巴菲特和他的同事泰德·韦施勒的超级粉丝。
I'm a big fan of Buffett and his colleagues, Ted Weschler.
我觉得他们非常了不起。
I think they're amazing.
所以我觉得在比较的时候要小心，因为这几乎就像你在问一个想成为——
So I think you always want to be careful with comparing, because it's almost like you're asking an aspiring-
跟迈克尔·乔丹比。
Comparing to Michael Jordan.
没错。
Exactly.
就是说，当然，显然，是的，那会很棒，但同时，我们需要保持谦虚，承认我们只做了他们做的百分之一。
It's like, sure, obviously, yes, it'd be great, but at the same time, we need to stay humble and acknowledge that we have done 1% of what they did.
但总的来说，我觉得这个比较很恰当，那种永远持有的心态，理性的投资，尽量不让当下的潮流影响你，除非有充分的理由。
But broadly speaking, I think it's an apt comparison, that forever ownership mindset, rational investing, trying not to let the trends of the moment sway you unless there's a good reason for it.
我觉得一个很大的不同是，伯克希尔历来是一个更被动的收购者。
I think a huge difference would be that Berkshire has historically been a more passive acquirer.
比如，他们非常擅长挑选合适的公司，然后让它们继续运营，做更多同样的事情。
Like, they try to be very good at selecting the right companies and then letting them operate, doing more of the same.
但在那个特定方面，我们几乎处于完全相反的一端。我们喜欢那些我们能够做出重大改变的公司，并且深度融入我们的技术和人才平台能带来显著差异。
Where on that particular dimension, we're almost at the exact opposite end of the spectrum, where we like companies where our ability to make big changes and the very integration into our technological and people platform will make a difference.
不过，是的，如果能建立一家那样规模、几乎成为机构的企业，那将是一个梦想。
But yes, it would be a dream to be able to build a company that's almost an institution of that scale.
我们拭目以待。
We'll see.
我们当然会努力尝试。
We're certainly here to try.
所以你们从哥本哈根起步，然后搬到米兰。
So you start in Copenhagen, then you move to Milan.
你们在意大利。
You are in Italy.
我觉得这次IPO让意大利在商业新闻中崭露头角。
I think that this IPO put Italy on the map in terms of business news.
除非是豪华汽车或传奇品牌，否则我们很少听到意大利公司的消息。
We rarely hear about Italian companies unless we're talking about luxury cars or storied brand names.
在欧洲经营对你的业务有多大影响？
To what extent does being in Europe play a role in your business?
很多欧洲公司都决定搬到美国，因为这里机会更多。
There are a lot of European companies that have decided we're going to move to the US because there's more opportunity here.
我最近采访了Solonis的CEO，他试图把很多业务搬到美国。
I had the CEO of Solonis on recently who tried to move a lot of his operations to America.
跟我们聊聊在欧洲经营的情况，以及这对你的业务和战略有什么影响。
Tell us a little bit about operating in Europe and the extent that it has impacted your business and your strategy.
首先，目前我们的总部在意大利米兰，但大部分员工，实际上超过50%的团队在美国，60%的收入来自美国，而且我们收购的大多数公司也在美国。
First of all, currently, yes, we're headquartered in Milan, Italy, but most of our people, and actually more than 50% of our team is in the US, and 60% of our revenue, and most of the businesses we acquire are in the US.
所以我们绝对是非常国际化的，在美国有巨大的业务，但我们仍然是一家欧洲公司，至少形式上如此，而且我们的研发和总部有很大一部分也在欧洲。
So we're definitely very international with a huge US footprint, but we continue to be a European company, let's say at least formally, and certainly a big chunk of our R&D and our headquarters.
我们特意选择在意大利创建公司，这是经过深思熟虑的。
We decided to build a company in Italy specifically, quite consciously.
根据我的经验，很多初创公司都是出于惯性而成立的，比如我们刚好在这里毕业，那就创办一家公司吧。
A lot of startups, in my experience, are built out of inertia, like we happen to graduate here, let's launch a startup.
我们之前那个失败的AI初创公司，或者叫机器学习公司，随便怎么叫吧，就是这么搞起来的。
That's what we did with the failed AI startup, or machine learning, or whatever we want to call it.
当我们决定在哥本哈根创办Bending Spoons的时候，我们认真考虑过应该在哪里建公司，最后特意选了意大利米兰，有两个原因。
Once we decided to start Bending Spoons in Copenhagen, we put some thought into where we should be building a company and chose Milan, Italy, quite consciously for two reasons.
第一个是出于商业上的私心，意大利有六千万人口。
One was just a commercial, selfish reason, and that was Italy, 60 million people.
而且教育水平其实不错。
Good education, actually.
很多人心里都憋着一股劲，想证明自己不比别人笨，能力也不比别人差。
Lots of people with a chip on their shoulder to prove that we're not less intelligent or less capable.
但好的工作机会却很少。
But very few great job opportunities.
我们觉得能找到很多有才华的人，他们加入一个雄心勃勃的项目，将来有希望成为大公司，这对他们来说是双赢。
We thought we could find a lot of capable talent, and it would be a win-win for them to join an ambitious project that hopefully would be a huge company one day.
对我们来说，我们也能和优秀的人在一起，组建强大的团队，这样成功的几率也会更大。
And for us, we'd be able to surround ourselves with great people, create strong teams, and hopefully have better chances of succeeding.
所以这是其中一个原因。
So that was one reason.
另一个原因是，我们当时有个想法，我现在依然这么认为，那就是如果知识、机会和财富分配得更均匀，世界会变得更好。
The other reason was we just had this idea that, and I still have it, the world is a better place if knowledge, opportunity, wealth is better distributed.
我觉得有一两个地方这些资源特别集中，这完全没问题。
I think it's totally fine that you have one or two hubs where those are off the charts.
比如硅谷，你永远不可能做到均匀分布，这没关系。
Silicon Valley, you're never going to have a uniform distribution, and that's okay.
但如果差距巨大，而且还在不断扩大，那我觉得这个世界就不稳定，最终对谁都没好处。
But I think if you have just a gigantic gap and a growing gap, I don't think that's a stable world, a world where ultimately anybody wins.
我们想证明，你能在像意大利这样不太可能的地方，打造一家全球级别的、在科技领域非常厉害的公司，这可以是葡萄牙或者希腊。
And we wanted to prove that you could build a company of global caliber, an absolutely kind of kickass company in technology, which was our passion, with roots in an unlikely place like Italy, but it could have been Portugal or Greece.
只是恰好是意大利，对我们来说也更容易，再加上我刚才说的那个原因。
It just happened to be Italy, and it was easier for us, plus the other thing I just told you.
所以我们搬到了那里，在那里创业，我觉得有好有坏。
So we moved there and built it there, and I think it's been good and bad.
你看，好的方面就是我刚才说的人才优势。
Look, the good part is the talent part I just described.
不好的方面是，欧洲的监管确实极其严格，让人喘不过气来。
The bad part is Europe has truly incredibly high levels of oppressing regulation.
我不是自由主义者或类似的人，这点我要说清楚。
I'm not a libertarian or anything like that, I want to be clear.
其实我非常支持一个慷慨、有保障的福利国家，一个帮助人的社会。
I'm actually a fan of an extremely generous, supportive welfare state, a society that helps people.
我只是觉得，通过给企业施加巨大负担来实现这一点并不是好办法。
I just don't think that a good way to do it is by imposing massive encumbrances on companies.
我想说的是，让我们多交税，帮助别人，但不要让我们连建个东西的许可都拿不到，或者因为想招个更优秀的人而没法解雇员工。
I would say have us pay lots of taxes and help people, but don't make getting a permit for building something impossible, being able to fire a team member because you can hire someone with higher performance impossible.
应该让项目容易启动、容易部署，资源分配高效，然后用税收为那些落后的人提供基本保障。
Make it easy to deploy, to launch projects, and allocate resources efficiently, and then use taxes to provide a general safety net for those who are left behind.
我其实支持对富人征收财富税和更高的税。
I'm actually in favor of wealth taxes and more taxes for rich people.
我只是觉得我们现在的做法不对。
I just think we're doing it the wrong way.
欧洲是不错，但如果在这方面有所改变，我觉得可以好得多。
But Europe is good, but it could be a lot better if, I think, changed in this regard.
我正想问你，你觉得美国创业和欧洲创业之间的差距在哪里，这差距可是巨大的。
I was going to ask you what you think the gap is between US entrepreneurship and European entrepreneurship, and there is a gigantic gap.
而且在生产力、GDP、整体财富创造方面，差距也是巨大的。
And there is a gigantic gap in productivity, in GDP, in overall wealth creation.
我猜你认为这主要是欧洲过于繁重的监管造成的，还是说还有其他原因？
I assume you believe it is a result of overly burdensome regulation in Europe, or is there anything else?
不，还有其他因素。
No, there's more.
那样说就太简单了。
That would be reductive.
我觉得那是一个很重要的原因。
I think that's a very big reason.
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其中一个主要原因，我觉得另一个大原因就是文化。
One of the main reasons, I'd say another big reason is culture.
我觉得欧洲历来如此，而且各国情况不同。
I think Europe has historically, and this changes by country.
去过欧洲并在那里待过很长时间的人都知道，欧洲各国差异很大。
People who have traveled to Europe and spent a lot of time in Europe, it's quite a heterogeneous country.
人们可能非常不同。
The people can be quite different.
但我觉得平均来看，相比我对美国的了解——我觉得我现在对美国了解得还算透彻——欧洲人更容易害怕失败、批评失败。
But I think on average, compared to my understanding of the US, which I think I know reasonably well at this point, there is a greater tendency to fear and criticize failure.
失败的人可能会被污名化，而成功的人又常常因为太有野心而受到批评，也许有一种默认的怀疑态度。
People can be stigmatized for failing, and when they succeed, they're often criticized for being too ambitious and maybe there's a sort of, the default is to be suspicious.
也许有人帮了他们太多，或者他们只是运气好，这显然不利于——你仍然可以成为成功的创业者，但这没有帮助。
Maybe someone helped them too much, or they got lucky, which obviously doesn't breed-- You can still be a successful entrepreneur, but it doesn't help.
然后我觉得另一个因素是市场，尤其是历史上，市场更加碎片化，而美国在统一市场方面做得非常出色，所以赢家能更快地变大，在全球化的世界里，这是一个巨大的优势。
And then I think another factor is the market has especially historically been more fragmented, whereas the US has done a fantastic job at basically unifying the market, and so winners got bigger faster, and in a global world, that's a huge advantage.
这些事情本身都不是什么大问题。
None of these things is huge in and of itself.
它们都只是些边缘性的小摩擦。
They're all marginal frictions.
但在我看来，经济的运作方式是这样的：当某个地方，比如这里，哪怕只是吸引力高出20%，资源就会开始从吸引力较低的地方流向那个地方，无论是人力资源还是资本资源，而且随着时间的推移，这种优势会在那个更有吸引力的地方积累起来，可能会变得非常巨大。
But the way, in my opinion, the economy works is that when a certain location, in this case, is even 20% more appealing, resources start trickling from the less appealing location to the other location, whether it's human resources, capital resources, and over time, that builds an advantage in the more appealing location that can be massive.
而且我认为今天的美国，据我估计，如果我每年从意大利最好的大学毕业生中挑出1000人……或者我们干脆挑前100名。
And I think the US today, in my estimation, if I take 1,000 of the best graduates from Italian universities every year ... or let's actually take the top 100.
我们真的挑那些最顶尖中的顶尖，或者那些往往在研发上有突破或创办成功公司的人。
Let's really go at the top of the best of the best, or really the people who tend to have breakthroughs in R&D or launch successful companies.
我的估计是，大概四分之三的人最终会去美国，而且往往在毕业前就去了。
My estimation is that probably a good three out of four end up in the US, and early, often even before graduating.
这在统计数据中很难体现，但五年或十年后，这就会累积成意大利或欧洲的一个重大劣势，而且这种情况已经持续了几十年了。
And that's difficult to capture in the statistics, but down the line, five or 10 years, that compounds to a major disadvantage to Italy or Europe, and that's been going on for decades at this point.
那么，如果意大利和欧洲的人才都被吸走，全都去了美国，在硅谷和旧金山的人工智能公司工作，你该怎么应对这个问题呢？
So how do you deal with that issue if the talent in Italy and in Europe is being sucked out of Europe, and they're all going sent over to the US, and they're working at AI companies in Silicon Valley and San Francisco?
那你怎么应对这个问题？
How do you deal with that?
这对你的生意有影响吗？
Is that a problem for your business?
对我们来说影响不大，因为首先，我们经常把人带回来。
Not so much for us because first of all, we bring people back quite a bit.
有很多人原本是欧洲人，他们喜欢美国，但他们的家人、亲人可能都在欧洲，他们一直盼着回来，只是之前机会不多。
There are a lot of people who are originally European, and they like the US, but maybe their family, their dear ones, are in Europe, and they've been looking forward to coming back, and they haven't had that many opportunities.
所以他们把Bending Spoons看作一个绝佳的机会，既能回国，又不用放弃那种野心、高薪、快速的职业发展等等。
So they see Bending Spoons as a great opportunity now to be able to come back and yet not give up that level of ambition, high compensation, fast career growth, and whatnot.
另外，我们通常也会招聘那些即将毕业或还在读书的学生，他们本来可能打算出国，但最后留了下来，并且发展得非常好。
Also, generally, we hire people who are graduating or when they're students who would've gone abroad, and they stay, and they have a fantastic career.
而且我们明年会在美国开设办公室。
And we'll be opening offices in the States next year.
所以这其实不是Bending Spoons本身的问题，但我觉得对欧洲社会来说，这是个很大的问题。
So it's not really a Bending Spoons problem per se, but it's a massive problem for society here in Europe, I think.
说实话，怎么解决这个问题，我也不知道。
How to solve it, frankly, I don't know.
我没有什么灵丹妙药。
I don't have a silver bullet.
我觉得需要根本性的改革，肯定要在监管上大力干预。
I think you need fundamental reform, certainly massive intervention on regulation.
但说实话，就算这么做了，也不可能一夜之间解决。
But frankly, if you did that, it wouldn't solve it overnight.
这需要很长一段时间慢慢积累。
It's something that would have to build up over a long period of time.
说实话，我不确定能不能逆转几十年来累积的问题，至少在不合理的时间范围内很难。
I don't know that you can reverse the compounding that's gone on for decades, to be honest, not in any reasonable timeframe.
在我看来，这确实挺让人担忧的。
It is quite worrisome in my view.
甚至说实话，在很多方面，对美国自己也是如此，因为再说一遍，如果美国人比其他人富十倍，我不确定那是一个稳定的世界，一个人们可以安全旅行、普遍快乐的世界。
Even frankly, in many ways, even for the US themselves, because, again, a world where people in the US are 10 times richer than everybody else, I don't know that's a stable world, a world where people can travel safely and be generally happy and go.
我觉得我们需要一个平衡。
I think we need a level.
你可以有一个国家很强大，生活水平也高得多，但如果差距变得——现在还不是这种情况，但AI可能会加速这种分化——如果差距变得非常大，那这个世界就很难居住了，我觉得，对所有人来说，真的，即使是超级富豪和超级成功的人，至少在我看来是这样。
You can have a country that's dominant and substantially better off, but if the gap becomes, and it's not today's situation, but with AI potentially accelerating the divide, if the divide becomes just massive, it's a difficult Earth to inhabit, I think, for all, really, even the ultra-rich and ultra-successful, in my view, at least.
我们马上回来。
We'll be right back.
本期节目的支持来自Engine。
Support for the show comes from Engine.
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我们请回了Luca Ferrari。
We're back with Luca Ferrari.
你成功做到了不让这件事影响你的业务，我认为这是创始人们面临的大问题之一，或者说需要解决的大难题是：我该如何吸引优秀人才加入我的公司？
You were able to not let this affect your business, and I think this is one of the big questions for founders, or the big problems to solve is, how do I recruit talented people to my business?
尤其是当你从零开始的时候，这更加困难。
And especially it's difficult if you're starting from scratch.
关于如何打造一个优秀的品牌，让世界级的学生和工程师愿意加入并为它工作，你学到了什么？
What did you learn about how to build an excellent brand that world-class students and engineers want to come to and want to come to work for?
因为在我看来，当你创业时，人几乎就是一切，你需要让他们相信他们会成功，会赢。
Because to me, I think that when you're building a business, the people are almost everything, and you need to convince them that they're going to succeed, and that they're going to win.
你是怎么做到的？
How did you do that?
根据我的经验，很多人嘴上说人很重要，但实际行动却跟不上。
A lot of people, in my experience, tell you that they believe people are important, but then they don't walk the talk.
他们实际上并没有投入与这些话相匹配的时间和精力。
So they actually don't put in the time or effort into that as those words would warrant.
所以在Bending Spoons，我们努力提醒自己，我们提供的工作是我们最重要的产品，比任何面向客户的产品都重要。
So at Bending Spoons, we try to remind ourselves that the jobs we offer are our most important product, more important than any customer-facing product we have.
所以我们尽量让这些工作变得尽可能好。
So we try to make those jobs as great as possible.
然后口碑会帮你很多。
Then word of mouth will help you a lot.
你招到两个非常开心、非常满意的员工，他们就会告诉大学里的其他朋友：“这里真的很棒。”
You hire two people that are absolutely happy and satisfied, and they will tell their other friends from university, "It's actually fantastic here.
“你应该来。”
You should join."
我们很多员工都是这样招来的。
We have hired so many people that way.
我们可以聊聊我们是怎么努力让这里的工作变得很棒的。
And we can discuss how we've tried to make jobs here amazing.
其实这并不难，只要你停下来想一想，作为创始人或CEO，你处在一个特殊的位置，视角也很独特，要真正站在团队成员的角度去考虑。
It's actually not that difficult if you stop for a second, remember that as a founder or CEO, you are in an unusual position and in an awful vantage point, actually trying to stand in the shoes of team members.
找到你想招的那种人会看重什么，其实并不难。
And it's not that difficult to find what the type of person you want to hire would appreciate.
当然，包括好的薪酬，还有自主权、信任和尊重。
Whether it's, of course, good pay, but then autonomy, trust, respect.
很多时候，管理团队有点傲慢，他们觉得员工就应该喜欢和他们一起工作，仅仅因为他们希望如此。
A lot of times, management teams are a little bit arrogant in expecting that people should love it to work with them simply because they want it to be that way.
所以你要努力把产品做好，然后还得花力气去推广这个产品。
So you try to work hard to make it a great product, and then you need to put in an effort to promote that product.
所以当Bending Spoons只有50人的时候，我们已经有大概三四个专门负责招聘的人了。
So when we were 50 people at Bending Spoons, we already have something like ... three or four people doing recruiting alone.
就像投入很大，光是参加招聘会、发招聘广告、打电话、发邮件联系候选人。
Like a massive investment, just going to recruiting events, posting job ads, calling people, emailing people.
一开始，你得说服别人。
At the beginning, you need to persuade people.
我花了很多时间说服别人加入我们，这时候，一个好的创始人需要提供一个可信的愿景，以及足够的精力和热情，去打动那些能被说服的人。
I spent so much time persuading people to join us, and there, a good founder needs to provide a vision that's credible, and the energy and passion that would convince those who are convincible.
所以基本上，你要超水平发挥。
So you punch above your weight, basically.
你要招到比你正常情况下能招到的人更优秀的人才。
You hire slightly better people than you should be able to.
如果你做对了，希望就能点燃一个良性循环，让你能提供越来越好的工作机会。
And then if you do that right, hopefully, a virtuous cycle is ignited where you offer better and better jobs.
随着公司越来越成功，你能支付的薪水也会越来越高。
You can pay more and more as the company becomes more successful.
而且过往的成绩本身就说明了一切。
And the track record speaks for itself.
一开始，更像是你得相信我。
At the beginning, it's more like you have to believe me.
但现在，你可以去Glassdoor上看，或者找在这里工作的50个人聊聊。
But now, go read on Glassdoor or go talk to 50 people who work here.
你很容易就能验证事实。
You can establish the truth pretty easily.
所以这需要付出很多努力。
So that's a lot of effort.
然后你还要在申请者中好好筛选。
And then you want to select well among anyone who applies.
我相信这是一门科学，我们也一直在努力把它变成科学。
And I believe that's a question of science, and we have tried to make it that.
我们有数据科学家和人工智能研究员。
We have data scientists and AI researchers.
我们投入了大量精力，去识别申请材料中能预示工作表现的信号，并且不断迭代改进。
We put in a lot of effort to detect signals in someone's application that predict performance, and we keep iterating and improving.
我觉得这跟量化交易员用算法在市场中寻找信号，判断哪只股票可能涨、哪只可能跌，没什么两样。
Not unlike, I think, a quantitative trader would with algorithms, trying to find signals in the market to tell them which stock is likely to go up and which stock to go down.
我们试图对人做同样的事情，找到那些只要给予足够机会和指导就能表现出色的人。
We try to do the same thing with people, and find people who will be amazing if provided with enough opportunity and coaching.
这种更科学的招聘方法具体是什么样的？
What does that look like, that more scientific approach to hiring?
首先你得确定一个目标函数，也就是你想优化什么。
You need to first establish an objective function, what you want to optimize for.
我们发现，在我们目前这个阶段，这个目标就是员工入职12个月后同事对其表现的评分。
We found that in our case, at this stage, that's performance as rated by one's colleagues after 12 months on the job.
你招的人越多，就能在漏斗中走得越深，同时还能保持统计显著性。
The more people you hire, the deeper you can go into the funnel while still retaining statistical significance.
我们现在每年要招几百人，所以可以深入挖掘。
We are currently hiring several hundred people a year, so we can go fairly deep.
一年的时间通常就挺有参考价值了。
One year tends to be pretty good.
所以这就是你的目标函数。
So that's your objective function.
接下来要做的就是尽可能从一个人的资料里找出更多信号，甚至不局限于申请本身。
And then what you do is you need to identify as many signals as you can in someone's profile, even beyond the pure application.
然后严格追踪这些信号，看看哪些组合最能预测目标函数层面的结果。
And then you rigorously track them and see what combinations of signals best predict that outcome at the objective function level.
这其实不是个难题。
And that's not a difficult problem.
这在统计学里已经很成熟了。
That's pretty well established in statistics.
问题在于，要可靠地捕捉一年后的那个结果，而且每次都用同样的方式，结构要很清晰。
The problem is, of course, capturing that outcome at one year in a way that's reliable, always in the same way, pretty structured.
而那些信号。
And those signals.
信号才是关键。
The signals are really the key.
有些信号很明显。
Some are pretty obvious.
比如，GPA。
For example, GPA.
它不是完美的预测指标。
It's not a perfect predictor.
它只是一个中等程度的预测指标，但如果某人在大学里表现很好，那么他们更有可能在Bending Spoons表现出色。
It's only a mild predictor, but if someone has done really well in university, they're more likely than not to do well, at least at Bending Spoons.
大多数人会认为这有帮助。
Most people would believe that helps.
如果某人上了一所竞争更激烈、选拔更严格的大学，这也是一个预测指标。
If someone has gone to a more competitive selective university, it's a predictor, too.
一个弱的信号——
A weak one-
我同意
I agree
……出乎意料地。
... surprisingly.
人们会想：“哦，某人去了麻省理工，那他一定是个天才。”
People think, "Oh, someone went to MIT, they must be a genius."
实际上，它的预测性比你想的要低得多，但还是有一点预测性的。
Actually, it's much less predictive than you would think, but it is predictive a little bit.
有些信号挺有意思的，但预测性却很强。
Some other are quite amusing and yet quite predictive.
比如，我们发现，如果一个人十几岁时对政治很积极，但二十几岁就不再参与了，这非常能预测一个人的干劲、主动性和创业精神，而这些正是我们在Bending Spoons非常看重的。
For example, we found that if someone was politically active when they were a teenager, but stopped being politically active when they were in their 20s, that's a very good predictor of drive, of agency, entrepreneurship, which at least we definitely want at Bending Spoons.
这我完全没想到。
It would have never occurred to me.
我们基本上是用人工智能发现的。
We spotted it with AI, basically.
但事后可以这样解释：如果一个人16岁时不满足于只做个好学生，而是想改变周围的世界，那说明他有主动性、有行动力，还有适度的不满足感，这些都是好迹象。
But then you can rationalize it by saying, if someone is 16 and they're not content enough with being a good student, they're looking for ways to change the world around them, that's a good sign of, again, proactivity, agency, a healthy level of dissatisfaction.
如果24岁还在做这件事，那当然很好，但这可能更像是他的人生使命，工作可能会退居其次。
If they're still doing it when they're 24, it's great, but it's probably more of a life mission, and their job probably takes a backseat to it.
所以，相比那些把工作放在第一位的人，他们更有可能表现得非常出色。
And so they're likely to do super well relative to people who prioritize their job.
类似这样的信号，我们有几百个。
So, hundreds of signals like that.
我们还在不断发现新的。
We keep finding new ones.
很多是通过测试得出的。
Many we generate through tests.
我们会让候选人参加一些实际操作的测试。
We have people go through practical tests.
但我们还会看人们写邮件的内容，以及他们使用的语气。
But we look at what people write in their emails, what tone they use.
他们如何与没有权力的人互动？
How do they interact with people who are not in a position of power?
我们发现，人们给我们的支持人员发邮件的方式——这些支持人员只是帮他们处理申请流程，显然不是决定他们是否被录用的人——是预测他们是否是善于合作、谦逊的团队成员的一个很好的指标，而不是——因为人们通常在面试后期对面试官很客气，因为他们知道录用与否取决于那次面试。
We found that how people email our support agents, who help them just with the logistics of their application, and clearly are not the person deciding whether they get hired, is a very good predictor of whether they are a collaborative, humble team member as opposed to-- Because they're always nice to people late in the funnel when they know that the offer depends on that interview.
但那些在生活中就是混蛋的人，他们往往也会对被认为没有权力的人表现出混蛋的一面。
But those who are assholes in life, they will show up as assholes more often than not with people who are not perceived to be in a position of power.
所以这样的信号有几百个。
So hundreds of those.
单个信号预测力不强，但当你把它们全部结合起来，我们现在的预测力已经相当强了。
None is very predictive, but when you put them all together, we're pretty predictive at this point.
这听起来和雷·达里奥在桥水基金多年使用的策略很相似。
It sounds quite similar to the strategy that Ray Dalio used at Bridgewater for many years.
他想追踪一切。
He wanted to track everything.
他想记录每一次会议、每一次互动，把所有人都放到一个社交图谱上，我觉得这在很多方面可能确实有效。
He wanted to track every meeting, every interaction, put everyone on a social graph, which I think in a lot of ways probably worked.
但同时也招来了很多批评，很多人不喜欢这样，因为在那样的文化里，很多员工感觉被监视，每一次互动都像是一场考验。
But also, he got a lot of criticism for it, and a lot of people did not like it because it felt like to a lot of the workers in that culture that they were being surveilled, and that every interaction was a test.
听起来，按照你们采用的这种追踪程度，在很多方面可能也会遇到类似的问题。
And it sounds like in a lot of ways, with the level of tracking that you find that you are employing, that you might run into potentially similar issues.
我想问，你怎么看待这个问题？
I guess, how do you think about that issue?
你有考虑过这个问题吗？
And do you think about it?
你觉得这可能是个潜在的问题吗？
Do you think of it as a potential issue?
我没在桥水工作过。
I didn't work at Bridgewater.
我读过一些相关的资料，所以对它稍微有点了解。
I've read a few things about it, so I'm Slightly familiar with it.
我刚才说的那些只适用于你被录用之前。
What I just described only applies before you get hired.
好的。
Okay.
在工作岗位上，我们其实不做任何——只是年底有一次评估，基于同事们的反馈。
On the job, we actually don't do any-- There's just a review at the end of the year, which is based on input from your colleagues.
我们真的不追踪工作时间，也不追踪其他任何东西。
We don't do any tracking of working hours, of anything, really.
所以，正是因为你提到的那个原因，我们坚信大多数人被信任时会表现得很好。
So, precisely for what you mentioned, B, we are staunch believers in the fact that most people react really well to being trusted.
所以我们尽量雇佣我们认为优秀或者只要给足够时间就能变得优秀的人，然后给他们高得让人有点不适的信任和自由。
And so we try to hire people we believe are amazing or can be amazing, given enough time, and then we give them uncomfortably high levels of trust and freedom.
以至于有时候我们反而被批评，因为有时候我们收购了一家公司，然后任命一个27岁的人当总经理，有时候被收购的团队成员会问我们：“你疯了吗？”
To the point that sometimes we've been criticized quite the opposite because sometimes we've had these situations where we acquired a business and then we establish, as a general manager, someone who's 27 years old, and sometimes acquired team members tell us, "Are you crazy?
这个人，你怎么能相信她能胜任这份工作？”
This person, how can you trust she can do the job?"
而且说实话，她确实做到了。
And historically, she has, by the way.
但我觉得如果我们去监控或者盯着员工，那真的会毁掉这种信任，而信任正是大家愿意来上班并全力以赴的动力。
But I think if we were to monitor or surveil people, that would really destroy that trust that's such a motivating factor for people to come to work and do their best.
我觉得有道理。
I guess it makes sense.
就像你在招聘前非常挑剔，一旦招进来就非常信任，我觉得这很有道理。
It's like you're extremely discerning before they're hired and then extremely trusting once they're hired, which I think makes a lot of sense.
这可能是正确的策略。
It's probably the right strategy.
随着时间推移，你会在各种情况下评估员工的表现。
Over time, you assess people's outcomes over a range of scenarios.
你不需要盯着他们是怎么做到的。
You don't need to surveil how they got there.
如果一个人一直都能稳定地、快速地交付高质量的工作，我真的不在乎你是怎么完成的。
If someone is consistently delivering, delivering quickly, high-quality work, I don't care to know really how you got it done.
不管你有没有用AI，也不管你有没有加班。
If you used AI or didn't use AI, did you work late or you didn't.
说到底，我们想和高效的人共事。
Ultimately, we want to work with people who are effective.
所以我们可以通过长期的项目贡献来衡量。
And so we can just measure how we contribute to projects over time.
说实话，我觉得监控员工并不会带来多少好处，甚至可能一点好处都没有。
And I don't think surveilling people would add in very much, if anything, to be honest.
但在招聘之前，你没有任何信息。
But pre-hire, you don't have any information.
你得把每个角落都翻个遍，才能判断出是否值得发录用通知。
You need to look at in every niche and cranny to be able to figure out whether extending an offer makes sense.
你业务的一个大主题就是利用AI和现代计算机科学，并把这些融入传统行业。
One of the big themes with your business is sort of using AI and using modern computer science and infusing it into these businesses.
具体是怎么做的呢？
What does that look like?
像Eventbrite这样的公司，加上所谓的Bending Spoons的AI魔法，会是什么样子？
What does it look like to take a company like Eventbrite and then give it whatever the AI Bending Spoons magic actually is?
你们到底给这些企业带来了什么？
What are you attaching onto these businesses?
我觉得我们大致用AI做两件事。
So I think we try to use AI, broadly speaking, for two things.
第一，有些功能是现在因为AI才能给客户做的，以前可能根本做不到。
One is there are some times features you can build for customers that are only possible, say, today, thanks to AI, that were maybe not possible in the past.
你刚才提到了Eventbrite。
You mentioned Eventbrite, I think.
我们还没开始做呢。
We haven't done it yet.
现在还很早，但我觉得AI能让Eventbrite变得更好的一个方式，就是大大改进推荐系统。
It's very early, but I think one of the ways AI could help make Eventbrite better is by greatly enhancing the recommender systems.
你去Eventbrite的时候，每个月大概有八千万人上去找附近有意思的活动。
When you go to Eventbrite, there's roughly 80 million people who go there monthly to find interesting events near them.
你给他们推荐什么，直接决定了他们满不满意，也决定了主办方能不能卖出票。
What you show them as a recommendation makes a huge difference on whether they are satisfied and whether organizers sell tickets.
所以这真的是双赢。
So it's really a win-win.
而且这个问题很难，尤其是因为你没有像Meta那样多的数据。
And that's a difficult problem, especially because you don't have the data that Meta does.
你的数据非常有限，很明显，因为人们只是去那里参加活动。
You have very limited data, clearly, because the people only go there for the events.
我们相信，AI在改进这一点上会很有帮助，哪怕推荐系统只有一点点改进，对市场双方来说都非常有价值。
And AI, we believe, could be quite helpful in making that better, and even marginal improvements in that recommender system can be quite valuable for both parties of the marketplace.
当然，这完全是针对产品本身的。
And that's completely bespoke to the product, obviously.
然后还有更通用的方面，几乎适用于任何使用AI和前沿技术的企业，让它们在运营上更高效、更有效。
And then there is something much more, let's say, general purpose that applies to almost any business that's using AI and technology, more generally, cutting-edge technology to be operationally much more effective and efficient.
比如，我之前说过，我们有很多专有技术。
For instance, again, I told you we have dozens of proprietary technologies.
这些大多基于人工智能，尤其是现在，如果你不用AI，你可能会错失很多价值。
Most of these are based on AI, especially these days, where if you don't use AI, you're probably leaving a lot of value on the table.
但有些确实是AI核心的。
But some are really AI-centric.
比如，我们有一个叫“替代斯普纳”的东西，Alt，A-L-T斯普纳。
For instance, we've got something called Alternative Spooner, Alt, A-L-T Spooner.
顺便说一下，我们每个斯普纳成员，基本上都是这个核心团队的成员，选拔过程非常严格，而且人员会在我们的各个业务之间灵活调动。
Each one of us, as Spooners, by the way, are basically the members of this core team, highly selective recruiting process, and people will move around our businesses fluidly.
不过我们现在正在努力把这技术推广到所有团队成员。
But we are working now to extend this technology, by the way, to all team members.
这需要多花点功夫。
It takes a little bit more work.
但你会有个个人助理，就在Slack里。
But you have this personal assistant that lives in Slack.
我们用Slack沟通，它能自动获得和你一样的权限，访问我们所有的工具。
We use Slack for communication, and it automatically has exactly the same level of access you do across all of our toolkit.
你只要跟这个助手说一声，让它帮你做几乎任何事情。
And you just talk to this agent, and you ask it to do pretty much anything.
比如说，你可以说——我其实亲眼见过，当时我在Slack的一个频道里，大家在那里反馈关于Evernote的意见，改进产品的想法。
For example, you could say-- I actually saw this live as I was in a channel on Slack where we post feedback on Evernote, ideas to improve the product.
我正写一个我发现的bug，然后我看到我们的Evernote总经理，她写说她遇到了一个bug，让她的Alternative Spooner先去调查一下，用我们建的那个收集和分类客户支持工单的工具，看看这个bug在客户中是不是普遍存在，还是只是她遇到的个例。
I was just writing about a bug I found, and I saw our general manager for Evernote, she wrote that she had experienced a bug and asked her Alternative Spooner to first of all investigate it by going to this tool we built to collect and categorize customer support tickets and check whether that bug was prevalent among customers or was just something she was a corner case.
然后让它进入代码库，找出根本原因，写修复代码，然后给那个项目的技术负责人Marco发消息，让他审查拉取请求，如果没问题，基本上就批准了，这样修复就能上线，惠及所有客户。
And then go into the code base, identify the root cause, code a fix, and then message the technical lead for that project, Marco, so that he could review the pull request and if fine, basically approve it so that that fix would go and benefit all customers.
她做这些，我不知道，不到五分钟。
And she did that in, I don't know, less than five minutes.
然后那个助手就去做了。
And the agent went off and did it.
那个bug第二天就修好了，因为Marco那天显然没时间审查，但可能花了，我不知道，一个人30分钟的时间，去做一件两年前乐观估计要十小时的事情。
The bug was fixed the day after because Marco apparently didn't have time to review it the same day, but probably took, I don't know, 30 minutes of a person's time to do something that would have taken optimistically ten hours, even just two years ago.
但实际上，我们可能永远不会解决那个bug，因为它可能永远不会达到我们愿意花成本去处理的优先级。
But actually, we would probably never have solved that bug because it would never probably have reached a level of priority that we would go after it with the cost.
所以这只是一个例子。
So this is just one example.
有趣的是，这项技术，你甚至不能选择所使用的模型。
And interestingly, that technology, you don't even get to choose the model that's being used.
所以有一个网关。
So there is a gateway.
这个框架是内部用开源组件搭建的，网关也是内部开发的。
The harness is built in-house of open source components, and then the gateway is also built in-house.
所以当任务进来时，我们有一个算法来决定用哪个模型或哪些模型的组合来执行任务，力求在质量和成本之间取得最佳平衡。
So then when a task comes in, we have an algorithm that will determine the best model to, or combination of models to implement the task Trying to optimize for quality and cost.
当然，我们能够访问前沿模型的API，同时我们也自托管了大概15个左右不同的开源权重模型以及它们的组合。
So we have, of course, access to the APIs for the frontier models, but also we have self-hosted over probably 15 or something different open-weight models and combinations thereof.
而且对于99%的任务，我们实际上用的是开源权重模型，几乎不花什么钱。
And for 99% of the tasks, we actually go open-weight, spend almost nothing.
就像我说的，我们目前的净收入运行率接近40亿美元。
We're currently, like I said, close to $4 billion in run rate net revenue.
据我所知，我们是所有公司里AI使用最激进的公司之一，94%的代码都是用AI写的，几乎所有的数据分析、几乎所有的设计也都是用AI做的。
We are, as far as I can tell, one of the most aggressive users of AI of any company, writing 94% of our code with AI, almost all of our data analysis, almost all of our design.
按年化运行率来算，我们在AI相关的总支出是1515万美元，因为几乎都是用超高效的开源权重模型来完成的。
And on a run rate annualized basis, we're spending $15.15 million in all AI-related spend because it's almost all done with super efficient open-weight stuff.
前沿模型只用于监督，这非常便宜。
And the frontier models are used only for supervision, which is super cheap.
就像你让一个资深工程师去监督10个初级工程师，只是看看，不亲自干活，那成本就低多了。
It's like if you have a senior engineer just overseeing 10 junior engineers and just taking a look but not doing the work themselves, that's way cheaper.
然后对于一些超级关键的任务，才会用到前沿模型，但这种情况相当少见。
And then for some super critical tasks, but those are quite rare.
所以当你把这种方法带到被收购的团队时，能极大地提高工作效率。
So when you bring this to an acquired team, it can make a massive difference in the efficiency with which things get done.
这不仅仅是削减成本，你还能推出更多功能。
And it's not just you cut costs, but also you just launch more features.
你还能做更多的变现实验。
You can run more experiments in monetization.
这一切都是一个良性循环，随着时间推移不断累积，效果非常强大，尤其是如果你能把它应用到新的收购中，因为这样你就能在构建这些工具上投入更多，因为你可以在不断增长的收入基础上分摊成本。
It's all a virtuous cycle of compounding over time, which is quite powerful, especially if you can deploy it across new acquisitions, because then you can invest more in building these tools because you amortize across a growing base of revenue.
这确实很好地证明了AI能让企业更高效。
It is a really good endorsement of how AI can make businesses more efficient.
同时，也证明了开源模型的价值，它们更便宜，而且你并不会损失太多，只要你策略性地决定何时以及如何使用它们，我认为这将是未来几年AI领域的一个巨大转变。
Also, an endorsement of the value of the open-source models, which is that they're cheaper and you're not losing that much, so long as you're strategic about when and how to use them, which I think is going to be a huge shift in the AI landscape over the next few years.
但这也某种程度上证明了“AI会取代你的工作”的说法，因为你使用AI，让业务更高效，而且在很多情况下，你也在大幅减少员工人数。
But also, it is kind of an endorsement of the AI will take your job story because you're using AI, it's making the business more efficient, and you're also reducing headcount pretty dramatically in a lot of cases.
看起来AI正在做很多原本由人类在效率较低的系统中完成的工作。
And it seems like AI is doing a lot of the business work that humans would have been doing in a, yes, less efficient system.
但如果我担心AI会取代我的工作，我会拿Bending Spoons作为例子。
But I think if I were worried about AI taking my job, I would point to Bending Spoons as an example.
你对此担心吗？
Are you concerned about that?
你对这个问题怎么看？
What do you think about this issue?
是的，非常担心。
Yeah, very much so.
我同意你的说法。
I agree with what you're saying.
我也觉得，答案不应该是告诉公司：'好吧，尽量做得差一点，因为我们……'
I also think that I don't believe the answer is telling companies, "Well, try to be worse than you could be because we..."
我觉得这终究不是长久之计。
I think ultimately that's not a lasting solution.
但从社会层面来看，这可能是个大问题。
But I think societally, this could be a big problem.
直到几个月前，我对这件事还相当悲观。
Up until a few months ago, I was quite pessimistic about this.
我真的觉得，哪怕再过十年，人们也很难有工作，至少大部分人是这样。
I really thought I couldn't see a way for people to be employed even in 10 years, at least the bulk of the population, I guess.
我现在稍微乐观了一点。
I've gotten a little bit more positive about it.
我读过一位经济学家写的文章，我忘了他的名字了，很多人都跟我说过，'别担心，AI会创造更多工作机会。'
I've read an article by an economist, I forget his name now, plenty of people who everybody I've heard say, "Don't worry, AI will create more jobs."
他们的观点是，AI最终不可能在所有事情上都比人类做得更好。
Their claim was, ultimately, AI cannot do everything humans can, better than humans can.
我觉得这个论点很蠢。
And I think that's a dumb argument.
我觉得今天确实是这样，但说到底，我们的大脑也是由分子和电磁信号组成的。
I think it's true today, but our brains are ultimately molecules and electromagnetic signals.
你看，我们迟早会达到那个水平的，可能明年，也可能20年后。
Look, we're going to get there, maybe next year, maybe in 20 years.
这是一个困难但绝对并非不可逾越的技术问题。
It's a difficult but definitely not insurmountable technological problem.
而且，谁能解决这个问题，回报会非常巨大，所以肯定会有人去解决它。
And the upside for whoever solves it is so massive that someone is going to solve it.
也许不是大语言模型。
Maybe it's not LLMs.
也许我们需要一些架构上的突破，但我们最终会做到的。
Maybe we need some breakthroughs architecturally that we-- But we'll get there.
所以我觉得那个论点很蠢。
So I think that's a dumb argument.
但这位经济学家提出的论点我觉得非常精彩，就像比较优势或机会成本之类的概念。
But this economist made an argument that I think is brilliant and is like the concept of comparative advantage or opportunity cost or what you will.
你或公司里的任何人，很可能在很多任务上比某些正在做这些任务的同事更擅长，但你的时间是有限的，所以最终更高效的做法是专注于某些你更擅长或更有价值的事情，而其他事情由其他人来做。
You or anyone at a company is probably much better at a range of tasks than some colleagues who are doing those very tasks, but your time is limited, and so it's ultimately more efficient for you to focus on certain things, other things you're better at, or they're more value-adding, and other people will do the other things.
而AI最终，尽管它的能力可能比人类高出几个数量级，但它终究会受到某些限制，比如能源、芯片或其他什么。
And AI ultimately, although the capacity it can have can be orders of magnitude greater than that of a human, ultimately it's limited by something, whether it's energy or chips or...
它永远不会是无限的。
It's never going to be infinite.
所以总会有些事情AI做不了，因为用那些有限的资源让AI去做那些事情是愚蠢的。
And so there will be things that AI cannot do because it would be stupid to use those limited resources for AI to do those things.
而人类很可能就是次优选择。
And humans will very likely be the next best option.
在一个因为AI带来的生产力提升而经济大幅增长的世界里，也许我们做这些事能赚到多得多的钱，因为钱多了，那些分到AI这块大蛋糕的人，愿意付给保姆的钱可能是现在的100倍。
And in a world where the economy has grown massively because of productivity gains through AI, maybe we get paid so much more for those things simply because there's so much more money to go around that whoever is enjoying part of that share of the AI pie, so to say, is willing to pay a nanny 100 times more than they're paying her today.
我觉得护士现在的收入比100年前高很多，也是类似的原因。
And I think nurses are paid a lot more today than they were paid 100 years ago for very similar reasons.
所以我现在变得更乐观了。
So I've gotten more optimistic.
但还有一种情况，某种程度上几乎像是人间天堂，也许真正的人间天堂是我们根本不需要工作，因为我们找到了分配财富的方法，大家都可以去追求自己的爱好什么的。
But there's this scenario, which could be almost heaven on Earth in some ways, and maybe heaven on Earth is we wouldn't even need to work because we found a way to distribute that wealth and we can all pursue our hobbies and whatever.
但这算是半个人间天堂。
But this is a semi-heaven on Earth.
我挺喜欢这种状态的，但我也很担心，如果AI强大到一定程度，而资源有限，比如能源，那就可能变成一个滑坡，一旦我们失去对AI的控制，那为什么还要养着人类呢？
I quite like it, but I also got pretty worried that if the point AI is so powerful and there's this limiting factor, say energy, it's a slippery slope where if we lose control of AI, then why are we feeding humans?
因为那是在消耗能源，而这些能源本可以给AI多提供0.1%的能力，让它做得更多。
Because that's taking away energy that could be fed to give an AI that extra 0.1% to do even more.
如果我们把AI推到那个极限，有什么能阻止那些控制AI的人或者AI本身，把这一切变成一个大反乌托邦，就像典型的回形针反乌托邦那样。
If we're pushing AI to that limit, what prevents those who control it or AI itself from turning this into a massive dystopia, a bit like the paperclip typical dystopia.
所以我变得更乐观了，但我也觉得这个情景会引发更多担忧，甚至是一些极其糟糕的情况，比人们失业那种情况还要糟糕得多。
So I've gotten more optimistic, but also this scenario I think opens up even more concerns on some truly extraordinarily bad scenarios, a lot worse than people are unemployed kind of scenarios.
所以我对AI感到兴奋，因为我本质上是个技术爱好者，觉得它很迷人，但我也非常害怕它可能给社会带来的一些影响。
So I'm I'm excited by AI because ultimately I'm a technologist and I think it's fascinating, but I'm also extremely scared about some of the implications it could bring to society.
看来很多事情都取决于过渡期。
It seems that so much rests on the transition period.
我们如何过渡到那个未来，需要做出哪些决定？
How do we transition into that future, and what decisions do we need to make?
而且看起来我们确实需要做出一些非常重要的决定。
And it seems like we do need to make some pretty important decisions.
我们时间不多了。
We are out of time.
我想最后再问你一个问题。
I want to just wrap up with a final question for you.
你已经处于非常成功的位置了。
You have found yourself in extremely successful position.
你既在做人工智能，又在做投资。
You are working in AI, you're also working in investment.
你见过很多世面。
You've seen a lot of things.
作为创始人，你会给那些正在听这个播客、对创业感兴趣、可能想在一个更人工智能化的世界里生活并取得成功的人什么建议？
As a founder, what advice would you give to anyone who's listening to this podcast who's interested in being entrepreneurial, maybe thinking about living in a more AI-enabled world and how to succeed in that world?
你会给出什么建议？
What advice would you give?
试着寻找能创造价值的方式，在很少有人关注的地方创造价值。
Try to look for ways to be valuable, create value where few people are looking.
我觉得如果你只是因为在某个领域排名第28，就有一个风投因为投不起大品牌而愿意给你500万美元，那你可能是在浪费时间。
I think if you're building the harness number 28 simply because someone like a VC who's not been able to finance the bigger brands is willing to give you $5 million, I think you're probably wasting your time.
所以试着找一个有点隐蔽、不显眼、不那么吸引人的地方，并且一定要问自己，人工智能能怎样让它变得更好或更成功。
So try to find a place that's a little bit concealed, unseen, unsexy, and by all means, ask yourself the question, what AI could do to make it better or more successful.
但不要往大家都看的地方去，因为特别是如果你指望我给你答案，那你可能不是埃隆·马斯克，所以我觉得在别人已经砸了数十亿、拼命努力的地方，你几乎没有胜算。
But don't look where everybody's looking because especially if you're looking at me to give you the answer, you're probably not Elon Musk, and so you have no chance of winning, I think, where everybody else is already pouring billions and trying hard.
这是其中一点。
That's one thing.
但我觉得，那就放手去做吧。
But then go for it, I guess.
我很少听到有人说——这有点像生孩子。
I've heard very few people-- It's a bit like having children.
几乎所有选择要孩子的人都不会后悔。
Almost everybody who chooses to have children does not regret it.
有时候，选择不要孩子的人反而会后悔。
Sometimes people who choose not to later regret it.
创业其实也差不多。
With entrepreneurship, it's quite similar.
我很少遇到哪个创业者后来会说：“哎呀，我真希望当初没试过。”
I've rarely found an entrepreneur who's later like, "Oh, I wish I never tried."
即使失败了，他们几乎都珍惜那段经历。
Even if they fail, they almost all cherish the experience.
所以，去试试吧。
So, give it a shot.
别太固执。
Don't be stubborn.
如果反复失败，到某个时候就去找份工作，但还是要试一试。
If you fail time and again, at some point, get a job, but give it a shot.
Luca Ferrari是Bending Spoons的联合创始人兼CEO。
Luca Ferrari is the co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons.
Luca，我们非常感谢你。
Luca, we really appreciate it.
感谢你来做客，也感谢观众们的收看。
Thank you for joining us, and to our audience, thank you for tuning in live.
我们下次再见。
We will see you next time.
谢谢你们的邀请。
Thank you for having me.
本期节目由艾莉森·韦斯制作，本杰明·斯宾塞负责音频工程。
This episode was produced by Allison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
我们的研究助理是丹·查隆和克里斯汀·奥多诺霍，资深制作人是克莱尔·米勒。
Our research associates are Dan Chalon and Kristen O'Donoghue, and our senior producer is Claire Miller.
感谢收听ProfG Markets创始人系列节目。
Thank you for listening to the ProfG Markets Founder Series.
下个月我们将带来另一位创始人的故事，到时候见。
We'll see you next month with another founder's story.
本期节目的支持来自Engine。
Support for the show comes from Engine.
现实情况是：普通商务旅客在传统平台上预订一次行程平均要花45分钟。
Here's the reality: the average business traveler spends 45 minutes booking a single trip on a legacy platform.
但现在赢的公司并不是在削减差旅，而是在更聪明地预订。
But the companies winning right now aren't cutting travel, they're booking smarter.
使用Engine，预订时间可以缩短到仅两分半钟，而且它的AI个性化功能用得越多就越快。
With Engine, that booking time drops to as little as two and a half minutes, and its AI-powered personalization gets faster the more you use it.
把这个时间乘以你的整个团队，每次出差，每年都是如此。
Multiply that across your team every trip, every year.
这不仅仅是福利，而是竞争优势。
That's not a perk, that's a competitive advantage.
已有37000家企业加入了Engine。
37,000 businesses have joined Engine.
现在轮到你了。
Now it's your turn.
你的企业注册并开始使用Engine出行，就能获得500美元，详情请访问engine.com/founders。
Get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/founders.
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