SaaS流失率：10万注册用户，仅有100名活跃用户

我们能不能先做一款产品——甚至不用做多人版本，只要做一个能让用户每天都用的单人版本就行。

Can we get can we just build a product, you know, not even a multiplayer version, just a single player version that people use day in, day out.

而且我们当时就清楚，迟早我们会实现盈利，盈利方式就是把面向管理者的版本卖给他们。

And, you know, we knew at some point we would monetize and we'd monetize by selling a version that's to a manager.

没错吧？

Right?

那是完全不同的价值主张。

That's like a different value prop.

对吧？

Right?

你得先在团队内部把这个指标跑通。

You wanna roll it out to your team.

但我当时非常有信心：如果我们能先把用户留存率做得很好，接着再把获客能力打磨出色，用户就会主动帮我们引荐其他人——比如在开会的时候用到我们的产品，我们就能搭建出一套非常顺畅的病毒式增长飞轮，最后再在这个基础上做商业化变现。

But I had high confidence that like if we could get to a point where we had really good retention, and then we were really good at acquiring customers, and they got really good at referring other folks because they're in a meeting and our products in the meeting, we build this like really good kind of viral flywheel engine, and then we monetize on top of that.

没错吧？

Right?

我之前已经运营过一家，嗯，营收规模达大几百万美元的SaaS公司了。

I'd already run, you know, you know, kind of a high 7 figure SaaS company.

我其实没太大兴趣再重走一遍老路。

I wasn't super interested in doing that again.

我只有在这家公司能真正突破瓶颈、获得爆发式增长的前提下，才愿意继续做下去。

I only wanted to this company if we could really get escape velocity.

所以我们最先也最核心的着力点就是：先证明我们能为用户打造出绝佳的使用体验。

And so we really just focus first and foremost on let's just prove that we can make a killer experience for folks.

因为我一直坚信，如果你能打造出一款让用户欲罢不能的产品，让他们天天都离不开它，那你几乎总能找到实现盈利的方法。

Because I I've always believed that if you can build a killer experience in folks and they use it day in, day out, you almost always can find a way to monetize it.

要是用户一个月才用一次，那盈利难度就大多了，但如果你能做出一款大家每天都用的产品，情况就不一样了。

You know, they only use it once a month, maybe more challenging, but you can find something people use every day.

我还没见过哪款满足这个条件的产品找不到盈利之道的。

There's not a product I don't know of that doesn't find a way to monetize that.

所以我认同这个思路。

So yeah.

所以我觉得对我们来说，最关键的就是想办法先获取前50个稳定用户。

So I think the killer thing for us is figuring out how do we get those first 50 stable users.

那在让这些用户使用产品、或是完成用户激活的过程中，你遇到过哪些挑战？

And and what were some of the challenges with getting those users using the product or activating them?

我记得早期信任问题是个不小的障碍，对吧？

I know trust was was an issue in the early days, right?

毕竟那时候这款产品完全没人听说过，而且AI类的记录工具也还不太普及。

Because this was this completely unknown product and AI sort of note takers weren't that common.

没错。

Right.

对。

Yeah.

所以我觉得，大多数人都在争取最初的10位用户。

So I think, you know, most of people were getting this first 10 users.

这些用户几乎全都是我主动在领英上联系的人、我的朋友，还有朋友的朋友，就差不多是那种“要不要试试我们这款产品”的邀约。

It was almost all me reaching out to folks on LinkedIn, friends, friends of friends, you know, like, will you try this product sort of thing?

当时的挑战之一就是得确保产品足够稳定，对吧？

One of the challenges was just making sure it was reliable, right?

这点其实和我刚才说的那件事是关联的，我们搭建了反馈机制，而且我们还会付费请用户提供反馈。

So that that feeds back into that, like, you know, having a feedback loop and like I we're really paying people for their feedback.

我们发现用户不会一开始就把这个产品直接用到接下来的会议里。

They were we noticed that people don't just they're not immediately going to bring into their next meeting.

基本上所有人都会说，哦对，我得先测试试用一下这个产品，才敢把它用在和同事、客户、潜在合作方的会面中。

Like they were all basically like, oh, yeah, I want play test this thing first before I expose it to my colleagues, my customers, my prospects.

对吧？

Right?

所以我们从很多反馈里也发现了这类情况，有人会问：你第一次试用的通话顺利吗？

And so we saw that too in a lot of our feedback was like, oh, how's your first call go?

有人就回答说，我刚才自己开了个会，想试试这个产品到底怎么用

Oh, I just met with myself to try to see how this thing would work.

但自己和自己开会的话，这个产品用起来体验不太好，因为你会把自己的麦克风静音掉

And it actually doesn't work that well when you meet with yourself because they mute themselves.

他们都不会和自己搭话。

They wouldn't talk to themselves.

他们的反应大概是，你懂的，这玩意儿只有在特定场景下才管用。

They were kinda like, what's you know, it only really works.

所以我们确实留意到了这个情况，而且我们现在有个机器人会加入会议来完成录制工作。

So we actually noticed this and we, you know, we have a bot that joins meeting to record.

然后我去找我的工程团队，问他们能不能做一个不用来录制、只是加入会议的机器人？

And I went to my engineering team, like, can we have a bot that goes to the meeting instead of recording?

它只会播放一段视频，你能勉强和别人模拟出一场假会议的场景。

It just like plays a video so you can kinda like have like a fake meeting with someone.

然后他们就反应过来说，对，好像是这么回事。

And they're like, thought about it like, yeah, I guess so.

所以我们就搭建了一个挺实用的工具，能让你通过和录制好的内容连线来进行测试通话。

And so we built out this pretty cool apparatus that allowed you to have like a test call if they call with a recording.

我们还把这个功能做得挺有意思的。

And we kind of made it fun.

对吧？

Right?

那效果太逼真了，你会真以为自己在跟一个真实、不会自言自语的人聊天，结果对方只会说‘哦，我只是在录制内容而已’。

It looked you thought you were talking to real human, selfless person talking, and they're like, oh, I'm just recording.

是吧？

Right?

就类似那种有人在语音信箱里恶搞逗你的情况。

When people are, like, kind of, like, you know, mess with you on their voicemails kind of thing.

所以这个方法真的很有用。

And so that really helped.

当时我们就觉得，太好了。

Like, then we saw, oh, great.

现在大家有了体验这款产品的途径，更重要的是，在把它用到和同事或客户的会议之前，他们能先建立信任，了解它的运作方式。

People now have a way to play with this product and again, get the trust to understand how it works before they bring it to a meeting with their colleagues or customers.

你说这个还挺巧的，因为我今天早上刚有过一模一样的经历。当时我在考察另一款软件——具体哪款我就不说了——打算用它来代替我们现在用来录制这类访谈的工具。

It's funny you say that because I had I had an identical experience this morning where I was looking at some software, I won't mention which one, to use instead of what we're using now to record these interviews.

然后我就想，哦，太好了。

And so I was like, oh, great.

我先测试一下就行。

I'll just test it.

于是我接入了这个软件，开始录制，还自言自语了一阵，之后把文件下载下来，我就反应过来，刚才的操作根本没意义，因为另一端根本没有其他人参与。

And so I connected to it, started recording and talking to myself and then sort of downloaded the files and I was like well that was a pointless exercise because I don't have anybody else on the other end.

我完全没法知道它会不会分别录制两个音轨，也没法测试它要怎么分离我和另一个人的音视频，如果当时有个机器人进入这场虚拟会议的话，就能帮上大忙了，所以我完全能理解你说的这点。

I didn't see whether it records two different tracks and how it separates the video and audio between me and the other person and like if I had a bot who had come along to that meeting that would have been super helpful so completely understand that.

你之前提到的另一个问题是，大家得记得要把Fathom用到会议里，对吧？

One of the other challenges you had mentioned was that people had to remember to bring Fathom along to meetings Right?

这具体是怎么一回事呢？

What what what was going on there?

对。

Yeah.

我们以前的应用运行逻辑是这样的：你加入会议后，还得打开我们的应用，手动点击一个按钮。

So the way our app worked is, like, you had to once you join the meeting, you'd have to go to our app and click a button.

他们就会说，好的。

They're like, okay.

不错。

Great.

接下来把Fathom加入会议里。

Now add Fathom to the meeting.

这个流程听起来没什么问题。

And it seems okay.

这操作听着挺简单，但你会发现所有人加入Zoom会议的流程都是先布置好自己的工作界面

That seems a good work, but then you realize every single person, the way they join a Zoom meeting is they set up their workspace first.

把要用的文档都打开摆好

They get their docs in place.

整理好自己的笔记

They got their notes in place.

最后才点开始会议

Then they click start.

他们才会加入会议。

They join the meeting.

而一旦加入会议，他们就不会再打开任何新内容了。

And once they join that meeting, they aren't opening anything.

对吧？

Right?

因为他们已经进入专注状态了，所以我们后来才意识到，糟了，我们碰到了一个大问题。

Because they're now locked in and like, hey, you know, and so we're like, oh crap, we had this huge problem.

大家本来都很想用这个工具，然后也都进行了测试通话。

People were really excited to use that and they do that test call.

他们还会说，哦，我真的很期待用这个。

They're like, oh, I'm really excited to use this.

结果转头就忘了这回事。

And then they forget.

对吧？

Right?

他们本该正常操作的——到预定时间点击Zoom链接进入会议就行。

They should go, I just click the Zoom link at the scheduled time.

所以我们意识到，这对用户激活来说是个大问题。

And so we're like, this is a huge problem for activation.

最后我们干脆开发了一款桌面应用，它能检测到你要开启会议的状态，然后主动提示：我们检测到你即将加入一场会议。

And so we actually end up building a desktop app that would actually, you know, once we can know when you're on a meeting and then be like, hey, so we'll take you about to join the meeting.

你是否要把Fathom接入这场会议？

Do you want to bring Fathom into that meeting?

更妙的是，我们可以让用户主动选择是否同意开启Fathom，只要他们进入会议，Fathom就会自动加入。

And even better, we could just have them say, like, here, do an opt in just to have Fathom join when you join.

这就是那种能让数据指标提升十倍的关键改动。

And that was like one of those things that like, you know, took, you know, was like a 10 x metric improvement.

情况一下子就逆转了，之前没人激活这个功能，后来有60%的用户都会主动激活了。

Like, oh, all of a sudden we had no one activating till we had 60% of people activating.

所以这给了我们一个很好的提醒：得真正去了解用户在实际使用你的软件时，真实的操作习惯是怎样的。

And so just good reminder, it's like, you know, to really understand how people actually operate when they're when they're using your software.

开发SaaS产品或AI智能体最难的问题之一，就是没有技术联合创始人或首席技术官来为各项决策提供指引。

One of the hardest things about building a SaaS product or an AI agent is not having a technical co founder or CTO to guide the decisions.

而Gearhart正是为解决这个问题而来的。

That's where Gearhart comes in.

他们可以担任你的兼职首席技术官，同时为你提供全套技术团队支持。

They can act as your fractional CTO and technical team.

他们的团队拥有曾参与Meta和谷歌项目的人工智能专业人才，还在硅谷拥有广泛的人脉资源，和诸多创始人、风险投资家都有紧密联系。

They bring AI expertise from projects from Meta and Google, and they have strong Silicon Valley connections with founders and VCs.

而且这家公司创立于乌克兰，在旧金山和伦敦都设有办事处，你能以离岸外包的定价模式享受到资深级别的人才服务。

And since they're a Ukrainian born company with offices in San Francisco and London, you get senior level talent at an offshore pricing model.

现在，他们为我们的听众提供前20小时的免费开发服务。

Right now, they're giving our listeners the first twenty hours of development for free.

访问gearheart.io预约通话吧。

Go to gearheart.io to book a call.

网址是gearheart.io。

That's gearheart.io.

白手起家打造一家SaaS公司绝非易事。

Building a SaaS company from the ground up is tough.

但保护数据、筑牢自身环境的安全防线本不该如此棘手。

Protecting your data and securing your environment shouldn't be.

借助ThreatLocker，你可以在几天到几周内部署应用控制功能，无需耗时数月甚至数年；它还能让你的IT团队精准界定允许运行的程序，默认拦截所有未授权程序。

With ThreatLocker, you can deploy application control in days to weeks, not months to years, and enable your IT team to decide exactly what's allowed to run and deny everything else by default.

在不干扰正常运营的前提下锁定你的环境，放心开展业务。

Lock down your environment without disrupting operations and operate with confidence.

告别盲目猜测，告别被动应对，只拥有真正主动的掌控权。

No guesswork, no reactive solutions, just true proactive control.

ThreatLocker是一款零信任平台，能够降低停机、声誉受损以及包括勒索软件和零日漏洞在内的网络攻击带来的风险。

ThreatLocker is a zero trust platform that mitigates the risk of downtime, reputational damage, and cyber attacks, including ransomware and zero day exploits.

如果你想获得更强大的安全防护和更严格的管控，请访问threatlocker.com。

If you want stronger security and tighter control, visit threatlocker.com.

再次提醒一下，网址是threatlocker.com。

That's threatlocker.com.

所以说，当初始的那10位用户之后，随着你开始扩张规模，口碑渐渐传开，你这边的用户就越来越多了。

So beyond those initial 10 users as you started to scale the word is getting out, you're getting more and more users here.

那时候都发生了什么？

What was going on?

产品的表现怎么样？

How did the product hold up?

那都是什么样的人注册使用Fathom呢？

What what what was like, what type of people were signing up for for Fathom?

对。

Yeah.

所以我记得我们花了差不多一年的时间，才推出第一个版本，当时我们攒了50位稳定用户，你懂吧？

So I think it took us about almost a year to get to like a first version where we had like 50 stable users, right?

这些用户都是我们的核心用户，一直长期留用我们的产品。

Like that were one core that just continues it over and over.

当时我就觉得，太好了，谢天谢地。

And I was like, okay, thank God.

就在同一时期，我们即将发布产品，而作为初创公司，你知道，关键是要有方向正确的良好假设。

And right around the same time, we were about to launch and we'd actually, you know, think in startups like the key things you gotta have like good hypotheses that are directionally correct.

然后还得在某些时机上碰上好运。

And then you gotta get lucky on the timing of some things.

我们幸运的一点是，Zoom 正在推出一个市场平台。

And one the things we got lucky on was Zoom was launching a marketplace.

于是我们就发了封邮件，冷邮件给了负责这个项目的人。

And so we kind of, you know, kind of like my email to to kick it back in the eye cold emailed the the person running that program.

邮件里说：嘿，我觉得你们应该把我们纳入其中，我们是个很棒的初创公司。

It was like, Hey, I think you should include us in it We're this great startup.

我们在开发一个很酷的产品。

We're building this cool product.

我觉得我们非常适合你们的 Zoom 市场平台，或者我们想独家在 Zoom 上发布等等。

I think the perfect fit for your Zoom marketplace or we want to launch exclusively on Zoom, etcetera.

于是我们和大约 50 家成熟公司一起，在平台上线第一天就同步发布了。

And so it was like us and like 50 established companies launching on day one in the marketplace.

而且，我们很快登上了榜单首位，也许是因为列表是按字母顺序排列的，所以我们把应用名称从Fathom改成了AI笔记助手 by Fathom。

And, you know, we quickly got to the number, the top of the list, maybe because it was alphabetically sorted and we changed our app name to AI notetaker by Fathom instead of Fathom.

也许吧。

Maybe.

我不知道。

I don't know.

但我觉得，我们一直有个观点：在规模化之后，人们会在会议中使用Fathom。

But, you know, I think we always have the thesis that at scale, you know, you're gonna bring Fathom in your meetings.

人们会看到它。

People are gonna see it.

他们不得不解释它为什么在那里，然后就会产生一种自然的口碑传播效应。

They're gonna you have to explain why it's there, and they'll be like this kind of natural kind of word-of-mouth virality.

但这类业务的挑战在于：如何获取前一万用户？

But the challenge with all this kind of business, like how do get the first 10,000 users?

而我们恰好得到了一个简单的解决方案，对吧？

And that we kind of got gifted kind of like, here's a simple solution to that, right?

你将加入这个新市场，而Zoom会把你推给成千上万、甚至上百万的人。

You're gonna join this new marketplace and Zoom's gonna put you in front of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.

这确实是事实。

And that was true.

所以我们非常兴奋。

And so we got really excited.

我们上线了。

We launched.

我想我们第一个月就获得了大约十万次注册。

I think we got up, you know, I think about a 100,000 sign ups in the first month.

但在第一个月结束时，我们的日活跃用户只有100人。

And then at the end of the first month, we had 100 DAU.

于是我们陷入了真正的恐慌，开始想：我们哪里做错了？

And so and so we had this real kind of panic moment of like, what do we get wrong here?

我们简直要崩溃了，当时我就说：天啊，我们根本没做成一个生意，对吧？

And we're gonna freak out like, you know, I was I said at this point, it's like, oh, we don't have a business, right?

明明有80万人注册，结果只有我们自己内部的人在用这个产品。

Like, 800,000 sign ups and only our people were using it.

于是我们回头梳理数据，分析过程中发现，用户要使用Fathom的话，首先得绑定自己的日历，这是使用步骤之一。

And we went back through the data and we kind of were like, analyzing one of the things you do to set a Fathom is you connect your calendar.

只有这样我们才能知道你正在参加哪场会议。

That way we know what meeting you're on.

而绑定日历这个步骤，对整个系统的正常运作来说是很重要的。

And so that's, you know, important to, you know, system to run.

于是我们立刻开展了这项分析。

And we just ran this analysis.

这些人里到底有多少，就说，谁知道呢，会正常参加Zoom会议的？

How many of these people actually have, like, you know, I don't know, a normal number of Zoom meetings?

然后我们发现，哦，大概只有0.1%的人是这样的。

And we're like, oh, like point 1%.

其余99%的人日程表里根本没有安排任何会议。

99% of these people had no meetings on their calendar.

然后你得记住，这是2021年年中。

And then you have to remember, this is middle this is mid twenty twenty one.

这正是疫情最严重的时候。

This is, like, deep in the pandemic.

Zoom被用于各种非商业用途。

Zoom is being used for all sorts of things, not business related.

Zoom最初只向他们的免费用户开放了这个市场。

Zoom And initially opened up this marketplace to their, like, free users only.

所以他们基本上把频率最低的用户推给了我们。

And so they basically sent us the worst users they have from, a frequency perspective.

因此，我们很快就意识到了这一点。

And so obviously, we learned this.

我们对此已经有所准备。

We're a little hardened.

明白了。

Okay.

我们在这方面没想象中那么糟糕。

We're not as bad at this as we thought.

最后，这实际上成了一个意外的转机，因为它让我们意识到我们的引导流程并不好。

And in the end, it actually, I think end up being a silver lining because it basically gave us a lot like well, we also learned our onboarding process wasn't very good.

对吧？

Right?

即使那些用户也不是最好的用户。

Even those users are not the best users.

我们的引导流程确实不够好。

Our onboarding process is not very good.

所以我们花了很多时间——我几乎整天和一位工程师绑在一起，持续了三个月，每天早上醒来我们就想，太好了。

And so we spent you know, I basically stapled myself to one of our engineers for three months, and every day we woke up and we're just like, great.

我们能做哪三件事来改进引导流程？

What are the top three things we can do to improve the onboarding process?

这通常对Sharp来说很难，因为通常你只在最初几次注册时获得反馈。

And usually, it's a hard thing for Sharp to do because usually, you're only getting in the beginning couple sign ups.

我们很难得到任何具有统计意义的数据，比如这个流程到底优化得怎么样了？

It's it's hard to get any statistical significance of, like, how good is this process getting?

幸运的是，那段时间我们每天都能收到上千份注册申请。

Thankfully, we were getting thousand sign ups a day just to happen.

这些注册的用户质量确实比较低，都是些不算优质的用户，但他们还是实实在在地走完了注册流程。

They're pretty low, like, low quality because they're people that aren't very, you know, very good, but they're still earnestly going through the sign up process.

所以我们还算走运，因为这三个月里有大量用户可以帮我们真正打磨好这个新用户引导流程。

And so we kind of got fortunate because now we got three months with a lot of users to really hone in this onboarding process.

我们把它的成功率从大概——对，我记得是从25%提升到了75%。

We took it from like a yeah, I think it was like 25% success rate to like a seventy five percent success rate.

而且这为我们后续的发展打好了基础，后来我们开始迎来更优质的用户，Zoom也逐渐向越来越多的人开放了这个平台。

And, you know, that really service going forward once we started getting better users, Zoom sort of open up the platform to more and more folks.

那段经历真的像一场严酷的考验，帮我们想通了很多事，我们本来都以为要撑不下去了，结果根本不是那么回事。

But that was kind of like a real crucible way to go through of like figuring out, oh gosh, thought we're dead to no, no, no.

问题只是出在用户质量上，而且我们完全可以从这件事里收获积极的成果。

This is just the quality of the users and we can, you know, get something positive out of this.

所以你们是否需要做些调整来吸引不同类型的用户，还是只是Zoom改变了他们在应用商店中的展示方式？

So did you have to change anything to get different types of users or reaching different types of users or was it just Zoom kind of changed the way they were exposing the App Store?

我们基本上一直在游说Zoom，比如，那时候Zoom因为各种原因非常保守，尤其是在安全方面，他们并没有对最优质的用户开放SaaS平台，但随着时间推移，他们确实逐渐开放了。

We basically have lobbying Zoom to like, okay, like, you know, Zoom at this point was very conservative for a bunch of different reasons and so around security and so they weren't weren't they open SaaS for their best users, but they did over time.

所以再次说明，结果还算不错，因为回过头看，他们实际上给我们送来了十万名优质用户，而我们成功引导了其中至少三分之一完成注册。

And so again, it kind of worked out because in retrospect, they'd actually sent us 100,000 good users and we had onboarded, you know, even a third of them.

如果真有那么多用户涌进来，我们可能根本撑不住——这正是我们当时最担心的事情。

We would have fallen over like they were like those are the things we were scared of.

我们根本不知道该如何对系统进行压力测试，从50个用户突然增长到5万用户，一个月内完成，那简直不可能。

It's like we don't know how to load test this thing for for going from 50 users to 50,000 in a month that would have worked.

所以这就像一种很疯狂的情况——宇宙恰好给了你刚好需要的东西。

So it's kind of one of these crazy kind of like the universe gives you just what you need kind of thing situations.

是的。

Yeah.

当时感觉糟透了，但回头一看，才发现那其实是一件好事。

It it feels shitty at the time, but then you look back and go, oh, that was a good thing.

对。

Yeah.

完全没错。

Exactly.

而且大概也是在那段时间，我记得是2022年左右，你们被迫提前启动了商业化，比原计划早了很多。

And and also sort of around that time, I think somewhere in 2022, you you were kind of forced to start monetizing ahead of plan.

当时是出了什么状况吗？

What what was going on?

所以我刚才也提到了，我不太喜欢按部就班地串行推进事情，也不喜欢只会盯着单一指标做事。

So I mentioned, like, I don't like, you know, like to do things in serial and, you know, the metric.

我们之前已经解决了用户留存的问题，也摸透了用户引导和激活的流程，然后在2022年初，我们全身心投入去研究该如何提升产品的传播性。

So we had fear retention, you know, we'd figure out onboarding kind of activation, and we're really focused now in early twenty twenty two on like, how do we kind of ramp up virality?

研究怎么才能让大家更方便地把Fathom分享给其他人。

How do I make it easier for people to, you know, share Fathom with other folks?

结果就在那个时候，融资市场的环境彻底急转直下了。

And that's when the kind of the bottom dropped out of the market, if you will, on on funding.

说实话，我们此前的融资策略相当激进，这可能是二次创业的创始人会有的自负心态，毕竟我成长在整个历史上融资环境最狂热的时期。

And we had had a pretty honestly, probably pretty aggressive fundraising strategy as maybe the the hubris of a second time founder that grew up in probably the most bubbly period ever.

对吧？

Right?

2020年、2021年那阵子。

2020, 2021.

你也知道，那时候的人能拿着非常松散的业务数据，就融到数目惊人的融资。

Like, you know, people were raising crazy rounds with, you know, very loose metrics at that time.

所以最初的计划是我们至少再过一年才会启动商业化，

And so original plan was we're not gonna monetize for at least another year.

我们原本打算一直专注于发展增长业务，

We're gonna keep focusing on just on growth.

对吧？

Right?

我们当时只想全力把这款免费产品推出去，尽可能积累最多的用户。

We just wanna focus on getting this free product out there, get as many as possible.

在某个时候，我们会推出面向管理者销售的团队产品。

And at some point, we'll build out kind of our team product that we sell to managers.

这才是我们的盈利点。

That's where we're going to monetize.

而且这部分是因为我每六到九个月就进行一次融资。

And and part of that is like I was fundraising every six to nine months.

我认为我们从未有意保留超过十二个月的现金储备。

I don't think we have ever had more than twelve months of runway kind of intentionally.

我们对自己所做的事情充满信心。

Just had such confidence in what we're doing.

我也知道，只有在压力下我才能发挥得最好，所以我不想让我们拥有四年的资金缓冲。

And I also know that I only work well under pressure, so I didn't want us to have four years of runway sort of thing.

但随后市场突然崩盘，情况很快就变得明朗了。

But then the bottom falls out of the market, and it's very clear very quickly.

除非你能证明收入，否则你再也融不到资了，对吧？

You will never fundraise again unless you can prove revenue, right?

除非你能证明你真的能将这个产品变现，这真的让人很沮丧。

Unless you can show you can actually monetize this, which is really frustrating.

我的意思是，你看，这些用户每天都使用我们的产品。

It's like, I'm like, look, these people are using this day in, day out.

即使我们不从这些用户身上变现，目标市场规模也巨大，但这都不重要了。

Like, there's, you know, even if we don't monetize these users, the TAM is huge, but, it doesn't matter.

对吧？

Right?

投资者的集体思维已经转变，现在每个人都说，是的，他们以前谈论的是增长、增长、增长，然后是盈利、盈利、盈利。

The the the hive mind of investors has shifted and now everyone is like, yeah, they were talking about growth, growth, growth to profitability, profitability, profitability.

对吧？

Right?

所以我们不得不迅速调整方向，开始思考如何实现变现。

And so we had to very quickly pivot and start figuring out how to monetize.

我认为这其中最大的挑战是如何平衡增长与变现。

And I think the biggest challenge there was just like balancing growth versus monetization.

是的，是的，我们来谈谈这个，因为现在你突然陷入了一种情况，之前情况其实非常明确。

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that because now suddenly you're in this situation where it was it was kind of very clear cut.

我们之前专注于产品增长，但现在 monetization 突然间变得极其重要。

We're focused on great product growth and then now monetization suddenly almost overnight has become super important.

第一，你们是不是一下子就把开关打开了？

One, did you sort of flip the switch?

发生了什么？

What happened?

然后我很好奇，这是否减缓了增长？

And then I'm kind of curious what did that do to did it slow down growth?

嗯，这正是我最担心的事情。

Well, and this is the thing I was most afraid of.

你知道，我在上一家公司 UserVoice 的时候，第一年也是完全免费的。

Like, you know, one of the things I saw at UserVoice my previous company is we were free for the first year as well, completely free.

我们发现，业务本身其实有一种天然的病毒式传播特性。

And we saw we actually similarly had kind of a natural inbuilt virality to the business.

我记得那天用户上传了定价页面，我们也上线了自己的定价页面。

I remember the day user was who put up a pricing page and we put our pricing page.

我们失去了半数的注册用户，尽管免费产品仍然可以正常使用。

We lost half our sign ups, even though the same free product was still available.

仅仅是展示有付费计划，我们就失去了半数的注册用户。

Now, just even showing that there are paid plans, we lost half our sign ups.

所以这次，我想着：好吧，我要从那次经历中吸取教训。

And so this time around, was like, okay, I don't I want to learn from that.

因此，我一直在纠结，该如何在不破坏我们原有增长引擎的前提下实现盈利。

And so I really struggle with, you know, how do we monetize this without kind of like, you know, ruining that growth, that growth lever that we had.

幸运的是，我们一直有一个相关的计划，那就是：我们不会向个人用户收费，即使他们表示愿意付费——确实有很多人说他们愿意为这个产品付费，我认为这其实是个很好的信号。

Thankfully, we always had kind of a plan around this, and the plan was always like, we're not gonna try to monetize individuals, even if they say they will pay for it, which we did have a lot of people saying like, oh, I'll be happy to pay for this, which is I think a really good sign.

我们一直很清楚，我们不想向销售代表、客户服务人员或自由职业者收费。

We always knew, no, we don't wanna charge the sales rep or the, you know, CS person or the freelancer.

我们希望向那些身为创始人或高管、并希望为整个团队设置角色权限、同时想了解团队会议情况的人收费。

We want to charge folks when it's a a founder and executive that saying, want a role set for my entire team, and I want visibility in what's happening on my team's meetings.

而好消息是，这带来了不同的价值主张。

And because the good new the nice thing about that is like it's a different value prop.

它保持了你的增长引擎和盈利方式之间的清晰界限。

It doesn't, you know, it kinda keeps this clean separation between like your growth engine and where you monetize.

这样做的缺点是，这成了一个全新的产品。

The downside to that is it's a whole new product.

对吧？

Right?

它需要一套全新的功能和特性。

It's a whole new set of feature functionalities.

并不是简单地回头对现有用户说：‘哦，顺便说一下，现在所有功能每月收费10美元’之类的话。

It's not just going back to existing folks and say, oh, by the way, now everything costs $10 a month sort of thing.

但我认为这是正确的选择，因为我知道，如果我们直接对免费产品收费，就会破坏其病毒传播性。

But I felt it was the right thing to do because I knew if we just started charging money for the free product, it would ruin virality.

它会毁掉所有的增长。

It would ruin all the growth.

所以我们开始销售这个产品。

So we started basically selling this product.

问题是，我想应该是五月或六月，我们意识到我们需要真正的销售人才。

The problem is, you know, I think it was like June, May or June, we realized like we need bona ties.

我给团队下达了指令：必须在六十天内开始卖出东西。

And I gave the team like, have to start selling something in sixty days.

幸运的是，我之前有远见地做了一件事，那就是已经招聘了人。

Thankfully, one of the things I did with some foresight was I'd hired already.

我团队里已经有三位非常出色的销售人员。

I already had three really good salespeople on the team.

而且，我觉得这得益于我之前像打电子游戏一样快速试错——在我回到UserVoice最好的销售团队之前，大约一年半前我就这么做了。

And again, I think it's the benefit of like speed running a video game before I I went back to my best salespeople from UserVoice about a year, year and a half before this moment.

我对他们说：‘现在我还没东西可卖，但将来某一天，我们会切换开关，开始销售另一个产品。’

And I said, hey, I don't have anything to sell today, but at some point in the future, we're gonna flip a switch and we're selling this other product.

我希望你们现在就加入。

I'd love for you to join now.

先主要负责客户成功的工作，熟悉我们的客户，了解产品，成为真正的产品专家。

Basically play the role of customer success, get to know our customers, get to know the product, become a real product expert.

这样等我们启动开关、宣布可以开始销售新产品的时候，你们就能立刻上手推进工作。

And so when we flip that switch and say, great, it's time to sell something, you'll be ready with the ground running.

我还记得后来去找他们说，情况比我原本计划的要早一些，但现在我们要启动开关了，你们得开始卖产品了。

And I remember coming to them like and be like, okay, it's a little earlier than I planned, but it's time for us to flip that switch when you start selling something.

而且当时我们的销售流程还完全不成熟，拥有一支销售团队至关重要，因为我们当时卖的基本还只是产品路线规划。

And, you know, we had a 100% sales process, and it was important to have a sales team because we are mostly selling the roadmap.

我们这款团队协作产品当时规划了大概12个功能，我们觉得用户会愿意买单。

We had about 12 features in this team mission product that we thought people would want to buy.

但我们只做出来了其中两个，可我们又必须拿出营收成绩。

We only built two of those, but we knew we had to show revenue.

所以我就说，那太好了，你们都上点心，去向客户推销我们这款产品的未来发展规划，让他们尽早入局，享受优惠的早鸟价格，诸如此类的销售话术。

And so I was like, great, you guys get on there and, you know, pitch to sell them on where we're going with this and they're going to get in early and walk in good early pricing, etcetera, etcetera.

而且这个法子居然还挺管用。

And it kind of worked.

我们实际上在第一个月就获得了10万美元的年经常性收入，之后就逐渐增长了。

We actually got, you know, 100 ks ARR in the first month and it kind of just grew from there.

我们在大约十一个月内达到了100万美元的收入，同时一边销售一边逐步完善了这个产品。

We got to 1,000,000 in revenue and I think about eleven months, you know, and you know, eventually built out that product while we're selling it sort of thing.

但确实，这个转型非常艰难。

But yeah, it was a very difficult pivot.

所以你们的外向型销售模式比原计划更早地启动了。

So you had this outbound, sales motion kind of kicking in earlier than plan.

那之后你们还在提供吗？

And then were you still offering?

那时候有没有一个高级计划，让免费用户可以升级？

Was there a premium plan at that point where a free user could switch over?

没有。

No.

后来也没有推出过个人付费计划。

So there's no individual paid plan that came later.

那时候基本上只有团队套餐。

There was just basically this team plan.

这其实算不上是主动外拓的销售模式。

It wasn't really outbound.

它更像是一种客户经营的模式。

Was actually like it's more like farming.

说白了就是主动去对接客户。

It was basically going to people.

我们当时基本就是在现有应用里投放广告，内容大概是‘嘿，我们推出了这款名为Team Mission的新产品，可以注册试用哦’。

We were putting kind of basically ads in the existing app saying like, hey, we've got this new product, team mission sign up for a trial for it.

所以说实话，我觉得我们最初那10万美元的年度经常性收入里，甚至可能我们卖出的前50万美元收入里，大部分都来自那些非常支持Fathom的用户。

And so, you know, I honestly think most of that first 100 ks, probably even most of the first half million we sold was really the people that were just huge advocates of Fathom.

他们特别喜欢这款产品。

They like love the product.

他们都是我们的忠实粉丝。

They were big fans.

他们说：你看，功能可能不值我们付给你的这些钱，但我们就是想支持你们，类似这样的意思。

They're like, look, you know, the features probably don't warrant what we're gonna pay you for this, but like we wanna support you, that sort of thing.

所以，这一切都来自现有的免费用户群体。

And so, it was all inbound, in the existing kind of free user base.

我记得我第一次接触到Fathom时，心想：哦，说是永久免费。

So I remember when I first came across Fathom and I was like, okay, says like free forever.

我当时想：哪有什么东西是永久免费的。

And I was like, nothing's free forever.

我到处查找，试图找到更多信息。

I'm like digging around, trying to find more information.

其中让我印象深刻的是，免费版看起来如此慷慨，我心想肯定有陷阱。

And one of the things that struck me was how generous the free plan appeared to be and I was like there's got be a catch.

你知道，你们会永久存储这些数据，说实话，当时我根本没发现任何可疑之处。

You know you're going to store this stuff forever and know and honestly I couldn't really find anything that kind of raised any alarm bells at the time.

所以我觉得，你们至今仍能这样坚持，真的很有意思，因为大多数人根本不会这么做。

So I think it's really interesting that you still most people would not have done that.

大多数人会说，我们已经有了这个用户群体。

Most people would have said we've got this user base.

最简单的事情就是推出一个付费计划，把其中一些人转化成付费用户。

The easiest thing in the world would be to offer a paid plan and just convert some of those people.

但你们选择了另一条路，开始直接销售。

But you went down a different route and you started selling.

而且，你们在还没有团队版产品的时候就开始卖团队版了，对吧？

Also, you were selling Teams plan before you had a team plan, which is slides, right?

是的。

Yeah.

我们有一些功能，但还没有完全把产品做出来。

We had a couple of the features, but we didn't have really the full product built out.

对吧？

Right?

这就是关键所在。

And that was the thing.

那时候的情况大概是，我们只做了一页演示文稿。

Was like, we had a slide.

上面列着团队版的10项功能。

Here's the 10 features of the team plan.

其中有8项都标注着类似“即将推出”的字样。

It's like eight of these say, like, coming soon sort of thing.

没错吧？

Right?

所以那时候我们的产品确实有点“画饼”的成分在，这点我得承认。

So it was a little vapor wary for sure.

这么说的话，Zoom当时差不多算是你们最大的获客渠道了，至少在用户获取方面是这样。

So, Zoom, you know, was kinda like your big, acquisition channel at least for users.

除此之外你们还尝试过什么别的方法吗？

What else were were you sort trying?

有哪些方法是真的做出成效了的？

What were you able to get to work?

哪些方法没奏效呢？

What didn't work?

其实在那个阶段，除了Zoom之外，我们的增长大多来自病毒式传播。

I mean, at this point, you know, Zoom and then it was a lot of that virality.

而且你刚才提到会怀疑我们的免费服务能否一直维持下去，这点说起来挺有意思的。

And it's funny you mentioned the thing about like being skeptical about it being free forever.

这实际上是我们当时遇到的最大难题之一。

That was actually one of the biggest challenge we had.

大家都会觉得，这好得让人不敢相信。

People would be like, this is too good to be true.

你们的方案太慷慨了，不现实。

This is too generous.

你们到底在搞什么名堂？

What are you doing?

你们是不是在倒卖我们的数据？

Are you selling our data?

我们当时不得不专门在官网上挂一个说明。

We actually had to put a thing on the homepage.

上面写着，没错，这个产品确实是免费的。

It's like, yes, it's free.

这里给大家说明一下我们的运营模式。

Here's how.

而且就像你说的，那个说明至今还挂在我们的官网上。

And like you it's still on our homepage this day.

你可以点击它。

You can click it.

我们也会专门讲解我们的商业模式是如何运转的。

And we actually explain here's how our business model works.

对吧？

Right?

事实就是这样的：没错，我们清楚迟早会有一部分用户升级到我们的团队套餐。

And it's like, no, no, we know at some point, some of our users will convert this team plan.

他们会付费的。

They'll pay money.

我们不会出售你们的数据。

We're not selling your data.

我们不会做任何不道德的勾当。

We're not doing anything nefarious.

而且要知道，我们的成本控制得非常合理优化。

The, know, we've got really good optimized cost.

所以当时的情况很离谱，对，我想想，这十年来软件公司推出的免费计划一直都是那种“好得过分的东西肯定有猫腻”的路数，我们的免费计划刚出来时也被这么误会了。

So it was crazy that like, yeah, it was like a, I think, ten years of, software companies put out free plans that are when they're too good to be true, they really are too good to be true sort of thing.

我们必须得扭转大家的这种固有印象。

We had to really overcome that.

不过对，在那个阶段，你懂的，我们95%的流量仍然还是来自Zoom的应用市场。

But yeah, so I think during this era, you know, we were 95% of our traffic was coming in still from that Zoom at marketplace.

正是那波流量帮我们真正起步了。

That was really what got us off the ground.

后来流量来源才慢慢发生转变，更多是我们的用户在会议中主动介绍Fathom，把它推荐给其他人，还一个劲地夸赞这款产品。

And then it started shifting over time to being driven more by our users bringing Fathom in a meeting and telling other folks about it and raving about it.

这也正是免费方案对我们而言如此重要的原因之一：我们明白，只有为用户提供了足够高的价值，才能收获这样狂热的支持，让大家真心实意地帮我们宣传推广，对吧？

And again, part of that's why the free play was so important to us because we knew you only get that kind of rabid kind of fandom and like people really spreading the gospel of your thing when you provide them a lot of value, right?

我们就是要给用户提供这款超好用的产品，而且还永久免费。

By giving them, you know, we're we're going to give you this really good product and we're going to for free forever.

这里面没有任何套路陷阱。

There's no catches to it.

对吧？

Right?

而且直到今天，我们的大多数用户都还在使用免费版，我们对此完全没问题，因为我们从中获得了营销价值，对吧？

And I still to this day, majority of our users are on free, and we're totally fine with that because the value we get is marketing, right?

你会把我们的产品介绍给你身边的人。

You're telling your your folks about it.

所以我们一路走来看到的情况是，起初流量100%来自Zoom，之后随着我们逐渐用自有引荐流量替代从Zoom marketplace获取的流量，情况慢慢发生了变化。

So what we saw over time was kind of you know, Zoom started like 100% and then slowly as we start replacing our resume traffic with our own kind of referral traffic.

大概在那段时期，我们还在早期入驻了Product Hunt平台。

Around this time, we also do like product hunt early on as well.

这件事给我们带来了很不错的效果，帮我们吸引到了一批非常优质的早期用户。

And that was something that like worked really well for us in terms of getting like really good early adopter users.

另外，我觉得我们还在借助G2落地社交 proof这块做了很多工作。

And we also, I think did a lot with like operationalizing kinda like social proof with like g two.

我们在G2上投入了大量精力，这个平台就相当于软件领域的Yelp。

We really invested a lot g two, which is like Yelp for software.

这款产品购置成本不低，但我们不希望用户在做购买决策前，还得像烘烤测试那样，同时试用三款同类产品反复比对。

It's an expensive product to buy, but we wanted people to not have to feel like they had to do a bake off and try three of these products before they bought one.

所以现在我们拥有一大批热爱这款产品的用户。

So like what's we have a lot of people that love this product.

那不如请这些用户为我们撰写评价，这样我们就能积累大量优质好评了。

Let's ask them if they'll write reviews for us because we get a lot of good reviews.

我们确信这能缩短销售周期，因为用户看到这些评价后会直接觉得：‘行，我本身就喜欢这款产品，而且看起来好多其他人也都很认可它。’

We bet that shortens the sales cycle, and so people would just be like, oh, okay, I love this product and looks like a lot of other people do too.

很好。

Great.

我的意思是，我觉得这效果相当不错，不仅帮助我们缩短了销售周期，我们还做得特别出色，以至于它本身变成了我们另一个重要的流量来源，因为我们迅速成为了G2上用户满意度排名第一的应用程序。

Like, I don't you know, and I think that worked pretty well, and it turned into, like, not only did it help us shorten the sales cycle, we we got so good at that that like it actually became another significant like traffic source for us because we became quickly like the number one actually app on g two in terms of like user satisfaction.

这挺酷的。

So it's pretty cool.

所以我猜，当你刚开始的时候，市场上还没有多少AI笔记工具，但等到你达到百万美元年经常性收入时，这个市场可能已经非常饱和了，对吧？

So I'm guessing when you started, there weren't a lot of AI note takers around around by the time you get to a million ARR, the market was probably pretty flooded by that time, I'm guessing.

是的。

Yeah.

我的意思是，你提到过我们的两个核心假设：语音转文字会变得免费，而人工智能会变得非常强大。

I mean, I think you mentioned like our two core hypotheses were transcription's gonna become free and AI's gonna get really good.

而我们由此推导出的结论是：如果等到这两点都实现后再进入这个领域，你就会晚两到三年，因为到时候这会成为一个显而易见的创业方向，所有人都会蜂拥而入。

And our corollary to those two was if you wait till those two things are true, you're like two to three years too late to build this business because it'll be an obvious thing to build and everyone will rush it.

而我们看到的情况正是如此。

And that's exactly what we saw.

大概是在2023年末，GPT-4推出的时候，也就是所谓的第二个阶段，从那时候起人工智能就已经能够独立撰写笔记了。

It was like kind of late twenty twenty three when you get to GPT four, and that's when in like called two, and that's when AI can now write notes.

所以我之前提到的那些技术瓶颈就不复存在了，现在我们可以在自己搭建的这套高度可靠的录制基础设施和转录架构之上，接入由人工智能生成的高质量会议纪要。

And so like the highway stuff I talked about kind of goes away, and it's like great now we get to drop in really great meeting summaries written by AI on top of that really reliable recording infrastructure and transcription architecture we've built.

但也恰恰是在这个节点，所有同行都盯上了这个方向。

And but it's also the point at which everyone else looked at that.

在某种程度上，这都快成了创始人圈子里的新版‘入门级应用’了——所有人都在琢磨，我能用人工智能做些什么产品？

It's like, it's in some ways became like the new Hello World app, I think for founders to go like, what can I do with AI?

现在我拿到一份转录文本，就能从里面提炼出一份摘要。

Oh, I can take a transcript and I can like make a summary out of it.

对吧？

Right?

对，这些我们都清楚。

Yeah, we we know.

所以呢，没错，当时我们就开始看到一大批初创公司冒了出来。

And so, yeah, so we started seeing a lot of startups pop up.

我们其实并没有太担心这件事，因为还是那句话，我们一直有一个很坚定的核心判断：这是一门依托传播效应的生意。

We really don't worry about it too much because again, we had this strong thesis that like it's a it's a virality based business.

所以要击败一家已经在这个领域深耕多年的公司，难度是很大的。

And so you're tough to beat a company that's already been building that.

对的。

Yeah.

而我们的飞轮已经持续运转了两三年时间了。

That flywheel has been spinning for two, three years like ours had.

那Zoom本身呢？

What about Zoom itself?

毕竟他们后来也推出了自带的会议记录工具之类的功能，相当于成了我们的竞争对手，对吧？

Because then they be kind of became a competitor, right, with their own kind of built in meeting note takers and stuff like that.

这给你们带来了哪些改变？

How did that change things for you?

是的，我们头两年是Zoom的独家合作伙伴，这其中一部分原因和市场推广有关——我们希望绑定我们目标客群心中的行业领跑者。

Yeah, mean, we were exclusive to Zoom for the first two years and part of that was, you know, marketing related, like, you know, we wanted to tie ourselves to what we thought was the market reader for the people we're going after.

我觉得这效果非常好。

And I think that worked really well.

他们是我们绝佳的合作伙伴。

They were a great partner for us.

显然，他们为我们带来了最初的那一百万用户乃至更多。

Obviously, they got us those first, know, 1,000,000 users and beyond.

我怎么夸他们都不为过。

You know, I can't say enough good things about them.

我们也知道，迟早会有两件事发生。

We also knew at some point two things would be true.

他们显然会进入这个领域，而我们也显然希望拓展到Zoom平台之外。

They would obviously get into this game, and we would obviously want to spread beyond the Zoom platform.

我们不只依赖Zoom的另一个原因是，它让我能够控制解决方案的复杂性。

The other reason we didn't zoom only is because of the it allowed me to constrain the complexity of the solution.

对吧？

Right?

就像我提到的，让这个功能在Zoom上运行起来是最困难的部分。

Like, as I mentioned, getting this to work on Zoom was the hardest part about this.

要让它稳定运行，对吧？

Getting to work reliably, right?

因为Zoom的使用方式多种多样。

Because of all the different ways you could run a Zoom.

Google Meet和Microsoft Teams也是如此。

Same is true for Google Meet Microsoft Teams.

每一个平台都需要从零开始，面对一座巨大的复杂性高山。

Each one of these things is starting from scratch with like a huge complexity mountain to climb.

所以我并不想让我们的工程团队一开始就同时去攻克这三座高山，我们先专注于Zoom。

And so I didn't want our engineering team to try to climb all three of those mountains and at once in the beginning, we're just gonna focus on Zoom.

等我们把Zoom做得非常完善后，再转向Microsoft Teams和Meet。

And then once we feel we get Zoom really dialed in, we'll then move on to Microsoft Teams and meet.

我们早期就知道，可以通过分析用户提供的日历数据，发现这种跨平台使用率其实非常高。

And one of the things we knew early on is that we can look at all this aggregated calendar data from our users and see that kind of cross platform usage is really high.

但在微软Teams生态系统里这种情况可能没那么多——如果你是世界500强企业或者大型企业的员工，那所有工具全都是微软的。

Maybe not as much within the Microsoft teams ecosystem, like if you're in fortune 500 or if you're in enterprise, everything's Microsoft.

可对我们大多数人来说，大家都处在所谓的“免费互联网”环境里，用着Slack、Salesforce、HubSpot这类工具，我们会在Google Meet和Zoom之间切换使用，就跟你切换Netflix和 Hulu这类流媒体平台一样。

But for most of us that, you know, live in the what do call the the free Internet or you've got Slack and Salesforce, HubSpot and all these things, we kind of flip between Google Meet and, you know, and Zoom the way, you know, you flip between kind of Netflix and Hulu type of thing.

所以我们其实早就在某个节点想明白了，我们肯定要把Zoom的功能打磨到位。

And so we kind of knew at some point that, yes, we know Zoom will get into space.

我们也清楚，Zoom基本不可能去开发一套能在它的竞争平台上也能用的解决方案。

We also know that Zoom is unlikely to build a solution that works also on their competitive competing platform.

而且当时呢，这些平台也和我们存在竞争关系，所以情况就比较特殊。

And so that was kind of, you know, at the same time they were kind of compete with us.

我们当时就觉得，很好，是时候推进脚步，开始支持其他平台了——这也是用户最希望我们做的事。

We started saying like, Okay, great, it's time for us to move on and start supporting other platforms, which is the number one thing our users want us to do.

那目前公司的年度经常性收入（ARR）已经达到八位数了对吧？而且你在2024年刚取得了非常迅猛的增长，是这样吗？

So the business is doing 8 figures in ARR currently, but you had some huge growth in like just 2024, right?

我记得过去半年里收入差不多翻了十倍。

I think like revenue like 10x in like the last six months.

那是什么推动了这样的增长？

Like what what drove that?

在我们把人工智能真正融入这款产品的核心之前，我们的业务就已经很不错了，而当我们把这项技术落地后，我们就能做到精准自动识别出所有的待办事项。

Before we put really AI into the core of this product, we had a really good business and when we drop that in, then we could say we can now automatically detect all your action items accurately.

我们还能生成出色的会议记录。

We can write amazing meeting notes.

我们发现业务里的每一项指标都提升了约20%，不管是用户激活率还是留存率，所有数据都在上涨。

We saw every single metric we had in the business go up by about 20%, whether that was activation or retention, everything went up.

所以啊，这个转折点在2023年12月就降临到我们头上了。

And so, you know, that moment happened for us about December 2023.

从那之后，我记得没过多久业务就实现了十倍的增长。

And from that point, you know, I think forward it was about, you know, like a 10 x increase very quickly.

我想想，我们花了一年时间从1做到了1000万，而且原本还得花一年时间从起点再推进……

You know, I think it took us about a year to get from one to 10,000,000 and took us a year to get from one.

啊不对，抱歉，是我们先花了一年时间从0做到了1。

Sorry, sorry, it took us a year to get from zero to one.

我们又用了一年时间从一增长到十。

It took us another year to get from one to 10.

然后，它就继续在这个基础上加速发展。

And so and then it just continue to accelerate beyond that.

所以我认为，其中一件事是我们原本就有很多不错的东西，当我们加入这些功能后，把一个好产品变成了伟大的产品。

So I think it was one of the things where like we had a lot of good stuff in there and we took a good product and made it great when we kind of added that functionality in.

我们应该结束这个快速问答环节了。

We should wrap up this kind of lightning round.

我还有一个问题想问你。

I've just got one question for you.

我刚刚突然意识到，你显然是个产品专家，你通过UserVoice和现在的Fathom打造了成功的企业。

Like it just kind of hit me that, you're clearly a product guy and you've built a successful business with UserVoice and now with Fathom.

但我觉得，很大程度上是因为你似乎就是一个看到问题就忍不住想去解决的人，这并不一定是由商业或赚钱的动机驱动的，就像我们之前聊到的你的背景，还有你之前做过的一些其他项目，我们甚至都没来得及谈。

But I think a lot of it is just driven by you just seem to be this guy who just sees problems and is just driven to build a solution and it's not necessarily kind of driven by, you know, a kind of business or making money and kind of like we talked about your background or these little there was a bunch of other things that you'd built that we didn't even talk about.

那这种感觉究竟是怎样的？

Just what is it like?

你是怎么处理这些问题的？因为你可能时刻都在发现问题，也忍不住想去解决它们，但专注于手头正在做的事也很重要。不过我觉得，始终保持这种会琢磨着怎么解决问题、搭建小型解决方案的心态真的很不错。我就是想稍微了解一下你的思路，因为这对那些还处于起步阶段、不知道该怎么着手的人来说可能会很有帮助。

How do you kind of approach things because you're probably seeing problems all the time and you're probably feeling like you want to go and solve them and there's this one thing about being focused on what you're doing but I think it's really also really healthy to have that kind of mindset where you're always thinking about how to solve problems or build tiny solutions and I just want to try and get inside your head a little bit because I think that might be helpful for people who are at sort of the super early stages and not really sure about how to kind of get started.

对。

Yeah.

再者，我觉得自己非常幸运，能有幸结识一群非常优秀的创业者。

Again, I think I was very fortunate that I kind of fell into this group of like amazing entrepreneurs.

对吧？

Right?

比如说，你知道的，Reddit、Twitch、Cruise、Dropbox，这些你能叫得出名字的公司都是如此。

Like, you know, Reddit, Twitch, Cruise, Dropbox, you name all these.

所有这些团队都是在我搬去旧金山、加入Y Combinator创业社区的那段时间里陆续发展起来的。

All these folks were kind of coming up around the same time I was moved out to San Francisco as part of the Y Combiner kind of community.

而且我发现，无一例外，他们所有人都专注于解决问题、打造产品，同时也很在意外界的认可。

And I think to a person, what I noticed is that all of them cared about solving problems and building things and like external validation.

我常说，那种渴望获得用户的外界认可的心情，几乎都快成了一种负担。

I always say like, you know, almost a problematic desire for external validation from users.

我几乎从没听任何人谈论过收入、销售成本、毛利率之类的。

And I almost never heard anyone talk about revenue, COGS, gross margin, whatnot.

对吧？

Right?

这些事情都是后来才出现的，但每个人都痴迷于打造产品。

Like, that stuff all came later, but everyone was just obsessed with building something.

你知道的，这都写在T恤上了。

You know, it's the the, you know, it's on the t shirt.

对吧？

Right?

做出人们想要的东西。

Make something people want.

对吧？

Right?

就像Y Combinator的T恤上写的那样。

It's like the y comedy t t shirt.

我觉得这正是那个圈子最核心的精神内核，而且我认为这种状态非常健康——所有人都只顾着钻研什么是有意思的难题，以及要怎么把它解决掉。

I think it's that's like the core ethos I think of that whole community that I think is really healthy that everyone just focus on what's an interesting problem and like, how can I solve it?

你懂的，有些时候你碰到的难题，全世界可能也就另外十多个人会遇到。

You know, sometimes you get problems that there's only 10 other people that have this.

对吧？

Right?

这就是走这条路会遇到的典型问题了。

That's the that's the problem of that route.

但我觉得这种发展路径要合理健康得多。

But I think that's a much healthier route.

要是有人一上来就说‘我做这门生意的目标就是做到年入百万’，

When I see people that come in and say, oh, my goal here is to get this business to a million.

我只会觉得，我当初从来没想过要把公司做到百万规模。

It's like, I never thought about getting us to a million.

我当时满脑子想的是，要怎么才能让50%的用户成为我们的忠实回头客，每周都来用我们的产品，差不多是这个方向。

I thought about getting us to how do we get 50% of people to, you know, use us week in week out sort of thing.

对吧？

Right?

所以我一直以来都是这么想这件事的。

And so I think that's just kind of the the way I think about it.

就是说，我也说不清

It's like, I don't know.

听到有人说‘我特别喜欢用这个产品’的时候，我就会很兴奋。

I get excited about hearing people say, I love using this product.

对吧？

Right?

而且我觉得这种模式非常有可持续性，比一味追求下一个收入目标要可持续得多。

And I think that's a it's a very sustainable, much more sustainable resource than like hitting the next revenue milestone.

说得太好啦。

Love it.

好的。

All right.

我们进入快速问答环节吧。

Let's go into the lightning round.

我这里有七个快速问题要问你。

I've got seven quick fire questions for you.

你收到过的最好的商业建议是什么？

What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

这算不上建议，但第一反应是，早年在UserVoice时，一位天使投资人曾挑战我，说我作为CEO不够有活力。

Not really advice, but the first thing pops to my mind is I had an angel investor early on challenge me when I was at at UserVoice and they said, you're not dynamic enough as a CEO.

她所谓的‘不够有活力’，我认为是指我太专注于一件事，而让其他事情都掉在地上了。

And what she meant by that, I think, was that like I was really focused on one thing and letting other balls kind of fall on the floor.

我当时没有像早期CEO该做的那样兼顾多项任务，那是十五年前的事了，那时公司收入还远没达到如今的数百万美元，但至今想起有人说我‘不够有竞争力’，我仍感到刺痛。

I wasn't kind of juggling all the things you need to as early stage CEO, and that was fifteen years ago and many, many millions of dollars revenue ago, and it still burns me to my soul that someone tells me, like, I'm so competitive.

所以我常常反思这一点。

And so I think about that constantly.

今天我够有活力吗？

Am I being dynamic enough today?

我有没有在关注所有我应该关注的事情？

Am I like keeping on top of all the things I should keep on top of?

有些话就是会一直留在心里，真有意思，对吧？

It's funny how some of those things just stick, don't they?

你会推荐哪本书给我们的观众？为什么？

What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

我特别喜欢《分数自会照顾自己》这本书，作者是比尔·沃尔什，他是八十年代旧金山49人队的橄榄球教练。

I love The Score Takes Care of Itself, which is a book by Bill Walsh, who is the football coach of the 49ers in the eighties.

这本书讲的正是我刚才说的那种理念。

It kind of speaks to what I was just saying.

他的整个思维方式是，根本不在乎比分牌。

It's like his whole mentality, one of big mentality is like, doesn't care about the scoreboard.

也不在乎，在我们这里就是收入。

Doesn't and in our case, revenue.

他在乎的是团队是否把每一件小事都做对。

He cares about the team doing all the little things right.

所以我们把每件小事都做对了，成绩自然就会好。

So we do all the little things right, the score takes care of itself.

在你看来，成功创业者最重要的一个特质或特点是什么？

What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

我想还是回到我之前说的，我觉得那种对外界认可的渴望，已经到了有点不正常的地步。

I guess I'll refer back to what I said, which is like, I think it's like a need for external validation that kinda borderlines unproblematic.

你最喜欢的个人效率工具或习惯是什么？

What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

现在的话，是我的Whoop设备。

Right now, it'd be my whoop.

某种程度上说，也许这并不完全符合你对效率的定义，但我一旦休息不好，效率就特别差。

Kind of, I guess, you know, maybe not exactly what you think of productivity, but I'm terrible when I'm not well rested.

比如，只要我稍微有点累，我的工作效率就会大打折扣。

Like, I'm like, if I'm slightly tired, I'm a shell of myself productivity wise.

所以我用它，就像那句话说的，只有被衡量的，才能被管理。

So I use it, it's like, you know, what gets measured gets managed.

所以通过每天监测我的睡眠还有他们说的身体恢复状况，我的效率比以前高了很多。

And so like by measuring basically my my sleep and what they call my recovery every day, I get a lot, I'm a lot more productive than I used to be.

对，我也是。

Yeah, me too.

我昨天四点半就醒了，我从来不会起这么早，结果一整天都干了好多特别蠢的事。

I woke up at like 04:30 yesterday, never wake up that early and oh my God, I was just doing the dumbest things throughout the day.

到了下午我还非得睡个午觉才行，就是这么个情况。

It was just like, like I had to take a nap in the afternoon, but that's a yeah.

如果有时间，你有什么新奇或是天马行空的商业想法想要去实现吗？

What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

可能你会觉得意外，因为我一直只做To B的产品，但我非常想打造一个出色的VR多人共享体验，能让你和朋友们一起参与其中。

This might be surprising as someone who's only ever done kind of B2B products, but I really want to build a really great VR experience that is communal for you and your friends.

我觉得VR本身很有魔力，但它至今都没普及开来，这点挺让人意外的。

I don't think that I think VR is magical, and it's kind of surprising that it hasn't really got widespread adoption.

我想做的其实是——你可以把它想象成我们小时候会一起去 club、一起听歌那种场景的线上替代方案。

But I really want to make kind of like a, you know, imagine alternative to what used to be as a kid, you go to the club together or something, you listen music together.

打造一个类似的时间同步体验，你和朋友们在同一时间上线，共同享受一种沉浸式体验，即使你们有了孩子，身处世界各个角落也没关系。

Build something like that that's almost time based where you and your friends get on at the same time and have kind of a shared experience when even when you've got kids and you're all in different parts of the world sort of thing.

很酷。

Cool.

有什么关于你的有趣或好玩的事实是大多数人不知道的吗？

What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

我想也许现在很多人已经知道了，因为我经常提到，但我特别喜欢用电子游戏来做类比。

I guess maybe I maybe it's people do know now because I tend to do a lot, but I love to do analogies to video games.

我会用单人模式、多人模式来描述Fathom，比如我们在Fathom里有一个积分系统。

I talk about Fathom in terms of like single player mode, multiplayer, like, you know, we have a point system in Fathom.

是的。

Yeah.

我做过我的《我的世界》类比。

I did my Minecraft analogy.

你知道的，我是个资深游戏迷。

There's a I you know, I'm a big video game guy.

其实我现在玩的游戏已经没有以前多了。

I actually don't play as many as I used to.

我现在会在YouTube上看很多游戏视频当替代，这样我就不会总忍不住想去玩游戏，毕竟我根本没时间玩。

I actually watch a lot of video games on YouTube as like a methadone, so I don't feel compelled to play them because I don't have time for it.

而且我觉得，在新用户引导这块，真的没有哪个行业做得比电子游戏更好了。

But I feel like I learn no one does onboarding better than video games.

用户体验这块，也没有谁能做得比电子游戏更出色。

No one does like user experience better than video games.

而且我觉得，光是潜心学习优秀的电子游戏是如何制作的，我就收获了超多东西。

And I feel like I learned so much from just being a student of of how video great video games are crafted.

我之前在微软工作的时候，曾和一位出身Xbox的产品经理共事，能遇到那样一个人真的太妙了。

I I once worked with, when I was at Microsoft, a PM who came from, Xbox, and it was just so amazing to see this guy.

当时我们在开发网站相关的项目，他总能把这种游戏思维带到工作里。

We're building this web stuff and he would just bring this gaming mentality to it.

比如一些小事：他会问，为什么点击那个按钮的时候，没有弹出任何提示音来确认操作已经成功执行了呢？

Little things like he said, well how come when you click that it doesn't make some sort of sound just to register that you did that?

就是那些细微的方面，视频游戏里做的那些小细节，带来了一种完全不同的沉浸式体验。

Was like but it was those tiny things like that that they they do with video games that it just is a completely different immersive experience.

我的意思是，你最喜欢的游戏，比如《塞尔达》这类，尤其是现代的，它们的界面极其复杂。

I mean, your your favorite video games, so you think about like Zelda and stuff like this, especially the more modern ones, they're incredibly complex interfaces.

里面的内容太多了。

There's so much to them.

它们的复杂程度甚至超过了一般的软件，但你却感觉不到复杂，因为玩家被逐步引导，比如在《塞尔达》里，他们设计了一个完整的教学区域，让你一次只解锁一个按钮。

There's complex, even more complex than your average, you know, piece of software, and yet it doesn't feel complex because of yet for the put into that and because like, you know, in Zelda, they have the whole like tutorial zone where you unlock like one basically button at a time.

你有没有听说过哪种软件是让你一次只解锁一个按钮的？

Have you ever heard of software where you unlock, one button at a time?

没有。

No.

对吧？

Right?

相比之下，我们在这方面真的做得不够好。

Like, we're just not that good at it compared to that.

他们在这方面是大师级的。

They're masters at it.

那最后想问问，工作之外，你最看重的爱好是什么？

And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

我对滑雪上瘾了。

I am addicted to skiing.

我也说不清楚。

I don't know.

那种投入极少精力却能进展得飞快的状态，简直太戳我了。

It's something about putting very little effort and going very, very fast just like speaks to my soul.

我太懂这种感觉了。

Love it.

理查德，说得太棒了。

Richard, awesome.

非常感谢你今天来和我聊天。

Thank you so much for joining me.