Twitch联合创始人埃米特·希尔

我是杰西卡·利文斯顿，和卡罗琳·利维共同担任社交雷达的角色。在这档播客中，我们与硅谷一些最成功的创始人畅谈他们的创业历程。近二十年来，卡罗琳和我一直在Y Combinator携手帮助数千家初创公司。欢迎旁听我们与创始人的对谈，了解他们真实的故事。今天我们邀请到了埃米特·希尔。

I'm Jessica Livingston, and Carolyn Levy and I are the social radars. In this podcast, we talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it. Carolyn and I have been working together to help thousands of startups at Y Combinator for almost twenty years. Come be a fly on the wall as we talk to founders and learn their true stories. We are here today with Emmett Sheer.

当然，大家认识埃米特是因为他作为Twitch的创始人兼CEO。没错。但他现在还是Y Combinator的兼职合伙人。太棒了。我超级期待。

And, of course, you know Emmett from being the founder and CEO of Twitch. Yep. But he is now a part time partner at Y Combinator. Yay. And I am so excited.

埃米特，挽起袖子准备开聊吧。欢迎你。

Emmett, roll up your sleeves. We're getting into things. Welcome.

好的，谢谢。这会很有趣的。

Alright. Thank you. It's gonna be fun.

确实会很有趣。回忆一下，你在2000年最早的那批申请者中就加入了YC。那时候还没人听说过Y Combinator。说说你记得的事吧。

It is gonna be fun. Reminiscing, you applied to YC in the very first batch in 2000 Yeah. Five before anyone had even heard of Y Combinator. Tell me of what you remember.

是的。大学时我是保罗文章的忠实读者，除了花大量时间泡在网上，我读遍了他所有的文章。嗯。

Yeah. I was a big fan of Paul's essays in college. I read was reading his essays just along with spending just vastly too much time on the Internet in general. Mhmm. But I read all of his essays.

另外，我和贾斯汀、马特·方当时决定要创业。就是有种模糊的想法——如果要创业就该趁现在。我们觉得这时候损失最小，也最容易找到联合创始人。其实我们的逻辑挺合理的。

And, unrelatedly, me and Justin and and Matt Fong had decided we should start a company. Just sort of generically, like, it would be a if we're gonna start a company, we should do it now. Like, we're like, we have the least to lose. We have the most access to bet cofounders. Actually, like, our logic was pretty sound.

毕业之际正是创业的好时机。

Like, now would be a good time to start a company as we graduate.

因为你们当时都是耶鲁大学的大四学生。

Because you were all seniors at Yale University.

我们全是耶鲁的大四生，同届同学。正当我们开始寻找创业点子时，Gmail刚问世。我前一个暑假还在微软的Hotmail团队工作过，那简直是一团乱麻。倒不是他们的错...

We're all seniors at Yale. We're all seniors at Yale together. And we should have started looking around for a startup idea, and Gmail had just come out. I had been working at Microsoft this previous summer on the Hotmail team, which was a hot mess. Like like, totally like like, it just it wasn't their fault.

当时微软决定只用大约六个人的团队来支撑整个Hotmail服务，面对一亿用户。这产品根本不可能有任何发展空间，因为微软收购了这个邮件业务后就放任不管了。他们直接停止了对它的资金投入。

It's just Microsoft had decided to fund all of Hotmail with a team of, like, six people for, like, a 100,000,000 users. There there was no possible way that product could have gone anywhere because it was under it was just Microsoft decided, well, we bought this email thing. It didn't really go anywhere. Whatever. And they just stopped funding it.

哦，我当时...不，我是他们团队里负责处理垃圾邮件问题的实习生。什么？对。

Oh. Like, I was Oh, no. I was their I was their person working on the spam problem, the in summer intern. What? Yeah.

那就是我的工作。

That was that was my job.

对抗垃圾邮件。

Was combating spam.

老兄，我就是那个专门对付垃圾邮件的人。我在整合一个供应商的方案，并不是让我真正去开发反垃圾邮件引擎，而是整合这个反垃圾邮件供应商的产品。

Guy. I was the spam guy. I was integrating a vendor. So, like, it wasn't like I was actually trying to, like they weren't making me, like, write a anti spam engine. But, like, I'm integrating the the the this anti spam vendor.

这就能看出团队当时的状态有多糟糕。我至今仍怀念我的队友们，但当时的情况确实毫无希望。

This this tells you what state the team was in. That was really it was really not in a good place. I still think fondly of my teammates. I just it was it was hopeless. Yeah.

现在回想起来，他们曾经拥有巨大的领先优势。那年夏天Gmail问世后，我拿到邀请码，试图向团队所有人展示并强调这将是重大变革，但没人感兴趣。

That was, like, one of those those like, in retrospect, they they had, like, this huge lead. Anyway, so Gmail had come out that summer, and I I got an invite that summer. I tried to show everyone else on the team Gmail and be like, guys, this is, like, a big deal. This is coming. And no one was interested.

根本没人关注Gmail。但我非常着迷，返校使用Gmail时我就想：这需要配套日历功能——谷歌虽然做出了邮箱客户端，但他们没意识到这点。

No one was interested in Gmail at all. Oh, no. But I was really interested in Gmail. And so when I was back at school using Gmail, I was like, this needs a calendar. Like, there's an obvious so they made it they made the email client, but Google doesn't understand this.

他们需要为此开发配套日历。当然，后来发现谷歌早已开发完成日历功能，只是尚未公开发布。

They they need a calendar that goes with this. Yeah. And, of course, it turns out Google had already built the calendar. They just hadn't launched it publicly yet.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但当时我们并不知道这一点。于是我们开始着手实现我们的想法——本质上是要打造一个Google日历的竞品，尽管那时Google日历还不存在。我们正埋头开发时，朋友们都知道我们在做这个。然后我收到了一条消息，是计算机科学项目里的谁来着？

But we did not know this at the time. And so we started working on that was our idea. We were gonna go build a Google Calendar competitor effectively, but Google Calendar didn't exist yet. And and we're working on this, and our friends know we're working on this. And so I get a message from who was it in the computer science program?

我想应该是吉姆·特里，他发消息说：嘿，你喜欢保罗的文章对吧？而且你们正在创业。看到那个公告了吗？

I think it I think it was Jim Terry, basically being like, hey. You like Paul's essays. Right? Like and you're starting a startup. Did you see this announcement?

他在搞一个创业资助计划。我当时反应是：天哪，完全没注意到，居然错过了。哇哦。

He's doing a startup funding thing. And I was like, oh, no. I didn't see that. I totally missed it. Oh, wow.

对啊对啊，我们应该申请这个。于是我们就申请了。记得我还试图向贾斯汀解释这是个好主意，他当时就说：太棒了。

Oh, yeah. Oh, we should apply for that. And so we did. And I remember, you know, trying explaining to Justin, this is this is a good idea. And he was like, oh, this is great.

他们会给我们钱。你瞧，我被说服了。

They're gonna give us money. You I'm sold.

整整1.2万美金呢。

Big fat $12,000.

没错。我们当时面临的选择是：要不要就在父母的车库里起步？我们既没有资金，也不懂融资。

Yeah. Yeah. We were facing, like, should we just start this in our parents' garages? We don't have any money. We don't know how to raise money.

所以1.5万美元对我们来说简直是巨款。保罗·斯塔尔说得对——这笔钱足够让我们在毕业时辍学创业，而不是去找工作。

So it was, like $15,000 was, like, a big deal. That was enough to let us it was Paul Stear was correct. That was enough to let us leave school, like, on graduation, do this instead of getting a job.

嗯，明白了。

Yeah. Okay.

马特是澳大利亚人，他直接退学去高盛工作了，因为那边能保证给他签证。对他来说连澳大利亚人的签证都很棘手，这个创业计划风险确实太大了。

And Matt's from Australia, so he dropped out and went to go work for, I think, Goldman instead because they could get him a guaranteed visa. Like, I think it was a little too risky for him to even Australians, the visa situation's hard. Yeah.

是啊，移民从头到尾都不容易。

Yeah. Immigration's hard all the way around.

所以那时候就只剩我和贾斯汀了。我们去了花园街办公室面试。记得我们住在啦啦啦昆特拉旅馆，然后打了辆出租车去花园街那边，那边环境好多了。我们本该住得离花园街更近些的，真不知道当时为什么选那里。

And so it was just me and Justin at that point. And we came up and we interviewed at the Garden Street office. I remember we stayed in La La La Quintera Inn, and we we, like, got in a a taxi to go over to the Garden Street place, which is much nicer. We should have stayed closer to Garden Street. Like, I don't know why we stayed.

我们就是想省钱，因为当时是穷学生，什么都得精打细算。

We just were trying to save money because we were trying to save money on everything because we were broke college kids,

确实。

which Right.

现在回想起来，那其实是对的。很多事我现在绝不会那么决定，但当时那么做确实没错。

In retrospect, actually, that was the right act. Like, I look back at a bunch of things where I'm like, now I would never make that decision, but, like, that was the right that was the right call at the time.

如果没记错的话，你们一期时住在波士顿某个不太好的区域，离剑桥镇挺远的？

And if I remember correctly, you lived in some sort of not great part of Boston, not near Cambridge when you did one.

噢，没错。

Oh, yeah.

具体是哪儿来着？

Correct? Where was it?

对，是这样。贾斯汀妈妈好像通过教会认识个住在罗克斯伯里的朋友，给我们在那儿深处找了间没空调的房子。在波士顿没空调可是大问题。那时候我才真正明白什么叫食物荒漠——

Yeah. Yeah. So Justin's mom had a friend, I think, through church, who lived in Roxbury. And so she got us she got us a place in in like, deep in Roxbury, in this house with no AC, which in Boston is like a no AC in Boston is a big problem. And I never understood, like, the whole the full food desert thing.

我们住的地方就是食物荒漠。最近的杂货店什么的都特别远，要么得走老半天，要么得打车。不过我们有车，所以经常开车去好市多采购。

We were in a food desert. Like, the the closest, like, you know, groceries and stuff were, like, quite far away from us. So you had to, you know, you had to either walk her the long way or, like, take a taxi or something. I think we we have my car, though, so we could drive for it. So I think that was we went to Costco a lot in the car.

但回想起来，我们当时不知道为什么觉得那是个好主意。它确实便宜，既有空间又实惠。

But yeah. In retrospect, we didn't we I don't know why we thought that was a good idea. It was it was cheap. It was cheap and it had space and

我敢打赌确实如此。

I bet it was.

你懂吧？

You know?

是啊，刚毕业没收入时便宜就是王道。话说回面试周末，你们带着Kiko——那个类谷歌日历的创意申请YC...

Yeah. Cheap is good when when you've just graduated and you you don't have any income. So back to the interview weekend though, you Yeah. So you apply to YC with the idea of of Kiko, the sort of

对。

Yeah.

我们邀请你们来面试时，你们已经做出些成果了吧？来面试时还没完成吗？

Google Calendar. And we invite you to interview, and you had built something at that point. Had you not when you came in to interview?

我们当时在赶制演示版。我是保罗的信徒，那时他总强调'运行中的代码才是关键，先做出演示版，把东西搞出来'。

We've been stretching towards a demo. I was a Paul disciple. And at the time, Paul's big thing was, like, you need to build a like, running code is the key. Build a demo. Get make something.

让它跑起来，再从实践中学习。我们就这样做出了拖拽演示功能——那可能是我第一次见到浏览器里实现拖拽操作。

Get it going. Start learning from there. And so that's what we did. And we had the drag and drop demo running. I think it was the first time I'd ever seen drag and drop work in a browser.

之前从没做过。每个日程只能拖动一次，第二次就不行了，但你能把任何日程拖到日历其他位置，效果很酷。

I'd never done that before. And you could you could one time for each appointment. You couldn't move it a second time, but once you could pick up any appointment and move it to another point place in the calendar and it would work.

这确实震撼到我们了，那个演示至今印象深刻。

Well, it impressed us. I'll I do remember very impressive demo.

你们在面试中允许他们做演示了吗？

Did you allow them to do a demo in the interview?

我们当时有四十分钟。

Had we had forty minutes.

四十分钟？我们确实有四十分钟。你看，也许我们本可以允许他们做任何事。问题是

Forty minutes? We had forty minutes. See, maybe we would have allowed them to do anything. What are

你打算怎么利用这段时间？四十分钟简直像永恒一样漫长。我就想，你究竟要如何利用这些时间？是啊。

you gonna do with the time? Forty minutes, it's like it's like an eternity. I'm like, what are you gonna do with the time? Yeah.

不用说，埃米特，我们把下次面试的四十分钟缩短到了十五分钟左右。对吧。

Needless to say, Emmett, we changed the forty minutes for the next interview session down to like fifteen. Right.

哦，是的。

Oh, yeah.

所以，是的，我们当时还在学习。我是说，这对我们来说都是全新的，所以我们以为需要四十分钟。

So, yeah, we we were just learning. I mean, we were this was all new for us, so we thought you need forty minutes.

而且相比常规投资流程，我们居然要在四十分钟的会议后做出全部决定，然后直接给出是否投资的答案。这听起来就已经荒谬地简化了。是啊。通常要经历多次会议和项目路演。作为创业者，我感觉自己简直占了便宜。

Well, and compared to a normal investment process, we're gonna make our entire decision on a forty minute meeting, and then we're just gonna, like, say yes or no. It just sounded already absurdly, like, shortened. Yeah. Like, the comparison is, like, multiple meetings and, like, pitch decks. And I felt like on the on the founder side, I was getting away with something.

就像，我只需要进来和你们聊四十分钟，展示我的演示，然后要么拿到钱要么没有。这交易太划算了。比那些路演流程好太多了。我甚至不知道怎么为融资做正式路演。

Like, I I just get to come in and, like, talk to you for forty minutes and show you my demo, then I either get money or I don't. This is a great deal. Like, it's so much better than, like, pitch. I don't even know how to pitch for money.

其实我们的核心洞察之一就是要做即时决策。这本来就是计划的一部分。不过我们当晚就会通知你们结果。我记得对你们两位来说几乎不用犹豫。你们是优秀的创始人，而且已经做出了产品。

Well, this was one of our insights was to make immediate decisions. So that was always the plan. We were gonna let you though know that night. And I remember it was pretty much a no brainer for you two. We're like, you know, great founders, and they built something.

好主意。对吧？你知道吗？我们来做吧。

Great idea. Right. You know? We Let's do it.

你确实告诉过我们，但说实话，我们不确定你的想法真的那么好。什么？没关系。嗯。嗯。

You did tell us that you did tell us, like, we're not sure your idea is really that good. What? It's okay. Yeah. Yeah.

公平地说，那确实不是个好主意。

Which, to be fair, it wasn't a good idea.

如果谷歌没有推出的话，本来会是个好主意的

It would've been if Google hadn't launched

对。在谷歌日历出现前，那会是个好主意。嗯。但我觉得谷歌迟早会推出谷歌日历的。我当时...我就记得走出会议室时心想，天哪。

Right. In the Google Calendar, it would've been a good idea. Yeah. But I think I think Google was always gonna launch Google Calendar. But I I so so I just remember walking out of the meeting and being like, holy shit.

那是...那是罗伯特·莫里斯。贾斯汀还问：谁啊？我说：我...我觉得那是罗伯特·莫里斯。我是个...你知道的，计算机专业的学生。对。

That was that was Robert Morris. And Justin was like, who? I was like, I I think that was Robert Morris. I was a I was a, you know, CS kid. Yeah.

我知道...我知道RTM。我知道那个蠕虫病毒的事。我当时就想：天，我们刚被...我都不记得是谁面试了。完全不记得房间里还有谁或发生了什么。因为我满脑子都是：那是罗伯特·莫里斯。

I knew I knew I knew RTM. Like, I knew I knew about the worm. I knew about, like I was like, oh, we just got interviewed by like, I don't even remember. I don't remember what else was in the anyone else in the room or anything that happened. Because I was like, that was Robert Morris.

我的天。你们有和...我想我当时憋住了没说。

Oh my god. Did you guys talk to your I think I held it.

没人互相介绍之类的，那倒没有

No one introduced each like, that didn't

哦，他们介绍过，但贾斯汀没...我没反应过来。好吧。贾斯汀说：这位是罗伯特·莫里斯。你知道的，他是MIT教授。贾斯汀就：哦。

Oh, they we introduced it, but Justin didn't that didn't register for me. Okay. Justin's like, oh, this is Robert Morris. Just you know, he's he's a professor at MIT. Justin's like, yeah.

是啊。酷哦。嗯，对。随便啦。没错。

Yeah. Cool. Oh, yeah. Whatever. Yeah.

那家伙。当时我后来回想起来完全就是追星族的状态，贾斯汀还一脸懵地问我们在聊什么。因为除非你是计算机专业科班出身，否则根本不会接触到这些。你得是那种沉迷互联网程序员黑客历史的人，才能明白他为什么这么厉害。不过，确实。

That guy. Like and and I was trying to I remember afterwards just being totally starstruck and Justin being like, what are we talking about? Like because he just if you aren't if you aren't a literal CS major, you're not gonna learn about it. Like, you have be really into kind of Internet programmer hacker history to to know, like, to know why he's so impressive. But, like yeah.

结果就是，我其实几乎记不清了。我的大部分记忆都是后来拼凑的。杰西卡，我知道你在场，但我想不起你当时的样子。特雷弗可能也在，但我不确定你还记不记得他。

I as a result, I actually I barely remember. Like, I can't the all my I think most of my memories of the rest of it are kind of reconstructed. Like, I know you were there, Jessica, but I can't remember you being there. I can't remember I think Trevor was probably there. I don't think you don't remember him.

我连保罗都记不太清了。

I barely remember Paul.

哇。真的吗？天啊。

Wow. Really? Oh my god.

怎么了？因为我当时满脑子都是'天啊RTF RTF'。这可是重大面试现场啊。太他妈搞笑了。

What? Because I was just like, oh my god. RTF RTF. This is I can't live in big interview by yeah. That's so fucking hilarious.

他甚至都没提任何实质性问题。

He even ask that he didn't even ask any real questions.

我得说，他采访中本来就不太爱说话，所以这确实很搞笑。不。

I I can say, like, he doesn't he's not super talkative in interviews, so that is hilarious. No.

我的天哪。

Oh my gosh.

我确实记得你在场，杰西卡。只是记不清他的样子了，就像记忆闪回一样。但特雷弗，老实说完全不记得有他这个人，真的很抱歉，特雷弗。

I I do remember you I remember you being there. Like, I remember you being there, Jessica. I just don't remember him. Like, it's like, it's just a flash of it. But Trevor, I honestly don't don't remember his presence, and it really, and I'm sorry, Trevor.

就像，我只是觉得，如果没有读保罗的文章，我可能也不会记得他。哇，天哪。我大概只会对他有个模糊的印象，仅此而已。

Like, I I just think, like and and Paul, if I didn't if I wasn't reading Paul's essays, I don't think I would have remembered him either. Wow. Oh my gosh. Like, I would have the same, like, kind of flash of a per person, but that's it.

好的，没关系。那么，那天晚上我们打电话告诉你保罗肯定联系过你，说‘你入选了’时，接受这个投资是毫不犹豫的决定吗？

K. That's okay. Well, when when we called you that night and said Paul must have called you and said, you're in, was it a no brainer to take the deal?

噢，当然。我们当时超级兴奋。我们根本没有备选方案——我们的全部计划就是拿到YC投资，这就是全部计划。

Oh, yeah. I mean, there was it was we were so excited. We didn't we didn't have a backup plan. Our plan was get YC. That was the whole that was the whole plan.

如果没被选中，我真不知道我们会怎么办。说实话，贾斯汀当时有份工作，他连签约奖金都拿了，后来获得YC投资后，他居然把奖金退回去了。

If we hadn't gotten it, I don't know what we would have done. I mean, to be honest, Justin had a job that he hadn't he took the signing bonus from, and had and then after he got YC, he, like, returned the signing bonus.

哇，真的假的。

Oh, wow.

因为回想起来，我其实也没有备选方案。我觉得贾斯汀根本不会真去华盛顿做那份能源咨询工作——他应该不会喜欢。那可能只是为了安抚他妈妈，类似‘别担心，我有正经计划’之类的说辞。

Because, like, I think in retrospect, I think I was kind of I did not have a backup plan. I don't think Paul Justin was actually gonna take his energy consulting job in DC. I don't think Justin would have actually liked that, and I think he was I think that was sort of, like, to appease his mother or something. Like, don't worry. I have a I have a a real plan.

但我们绝对没有‘如果YC不投钱就用其他方式创业’的预案。毫不夸张地说，没有YC就不会有Kiko。我们可能会尝试一下，但估计很快就会放弃。

But we didn't we definitely did not have a, like, oh, if we don't raise money from YC, we'll go start this startup some other way. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say we would not have started Kiko without YC. We would have, like, tried a little bit, but I think we would have given up quite quickly.

如果还记得的话，我很想听听你对YC第一个夏天、第一期项目的回忆，还有Kiko的故事里那些我可能不知道的细节。

So tell if you can remember, I'd love to hear your memories from that first summer and that very first session of YC and what happened with Kiko and what what I might not know about.

嗯，我印象最深的就是在罗克斯伯里那间闷热得要命的公寓里，没空调，穿着内衣写代码，感觉特别孤独抑郁。毕竟我刚从大学朋友圈——人生中最棒的社交环境里出来，突然就只剩我和贾斯汀了。我爱贾斯汀，但他替代不了整个社交圈。

Yeah. I mean, I mostly remember sitting in our very, very hot, like, sweltering Roxbury apartment with no AC, like, in her underwear programming, and just feeling so alone and so depressed. Aw. Because I'd just come out of being, like, in the best social environment of my entire life with all of my college friends, and that was me and Justin. I love Justin, but, like, he's not an entire social circle.

整栋房子就我们两个人，在这座城市谁也不认识，感觉再也见不到朋友们了。当时他们基本都在纽约，虽然有些在旧金山，但大部分都在纽约。

And it's just me and Justin in this house. We don't know anyone in the city. It feels like we're never gonna be near our friends. And our friends are all in New York, basically. Like, some of them are in San Francisco, but, like, most of them are in New York at this point.

他们都过得很开心。比如，他们都在高盛第一年工作，和其他毕业的朋友一起，或者在咨询公司，或者其他地方。或者他们去了法学院或医学院，过得非常棒。而我们却在这个，像罗克斯伯里这样的地方。这太让人沮丧和难过了。

And they're all having a great time. Like, they're all, like, working their first year at Goldman and all with all their other friends who graduated or, you know, at consulting firms or, you know, wherever else. Or they went to law school or med school, and they're having an awesome time. And we're in this, like, Roxbury. It it was so depressing and so sad.

而且，我有几周时间感觉特别黑暗，觉得我的生活再也不会有趣了。哦，不。哦。每周唯一的光亮点就是周二晚餐。

And, like, I was I had, like, a couple weeks of just, like, dark, like, my life is never gonna be fun again. Oh, no. Oh. And the one the one bright spot every week was Tuesday dinners.

我正想问你，你是不是就靠周二晚餐活着？

I was gonna ask you, did you just live for Tuesday night dinners?

是啊。晚餐是我们唯一的社交活动。回想起来，如果我们住在戴维斯广场之类的地方，可能就会好很多。这完全是个乌龙球。那里明明有一大堆大学生。

Yeah. Night dinner was the only social contact we had of any kind. In retrospect, if we just lived at, like, Davis Square or something, we would have been, like, fine. Like, it was it was this totally it's totally owned goal. Like, there's a bunch of college kids, like, right there.

剑桥到处都是我们的朋友和大学生。

It's like, Cambridge is full of of our friends and college.

有很多活动。是啊。完全就是20岁的生活。

Like Things happening. Yeah. Totally. 20 year old.

是啊。是啊。但我们却选择了住在罗克斯伯里，我也不知道为什么。这不太明智。好吧。

Yeah. Yeah. But we just instead we decided to live in Roxbury, I don't know. It was it was not very smart. Okay.

从某些方面来说，这很糟糕。但从另一些方面来说，也有好处，因为我们完全不会被分心。是啊。我们全身心投入到创业中，虽然这很悲哀和压抑，但也正因为如此，我们只专注于创业。没有任何其他干扰。

Well, in some ways, was terrible. In some ways, it was good because we definitely weren't distracted. Yeah. Like, it was full on, like, we were doing nothing but the startup, which was which was sad and depressing, but also, like, we were doing nothing but the startup. There was no competing anything.

我开车横穿全国回来，当时我女朋友想和我一起回波士顿。现在回想起来，我觉得这可能是个坏主意，不是因为我们的关系不好，而是从实际角度来看，她搬来波士顿，进入这个环境——我当时已经很抑郁，没有社交圈，她也没有。现在想想，如果我们想让这段关系成功，或许应该等到我至少搬到戴维斯广场之后。是啊，那样可能会更好。

And I drove out across the country, and my girlfriend wanted to I got back to there with my girlfriend, which, in retrospect, you know, I feel like that that was probably a bad idea, not because we weren't it's just, like, practically, her moving to Boston like, into this environment where we I was already depressed and didn't have a social network, and she also wouldn't, was, like, not a rest like, in retrospect, if we wanted that to work, we probably should have waited until I at least moved to Davis Square. Yeah. Like, would have been a better idea.

搬进公寓？

Move into the apartment?

对。对。对。完全同意。百分百。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. 100%.

那这有没有造成一点紧张？我知道你和贾斯汀是多年的朋友，但我试着...嗯...

And did that cause a little tension? I know you and Justin have been friends forever, but I'm trying to Yeah.

确实造成了一点紧张。但我觉得更多是...那种荒谬感，比如你干嘛带个女孩来，干嘛凭空制造这些额外麻烦。嗯。我们还得处理这些。嗯。不过他和克里斯汀也是在罗克斯伯里公寓那会儿好上的。

It caused it caused a little bit of tension. I think more but more just the the insanity of, like, why would you bring a girl like, why would you generate this extra stuff Mhmm. That we have to deal with. Mhmm. But he got together with Christine while we were in the Roxbury apartment too.

所以我觉得他...我们当时我们俩都复合了

So I think he we were we both got back

同时交往女友。她们是在波士顿认识的？不是吧。

together girlfriends. They met in Boston? No.

他们...他们是在大学认识的。但后来分手又复合了。我确定应该是在我们还住罗克斯伯里公寓的时候。那会儿我们吃了好多好市多的千层面，我经常做鸡肉春蔬沙拉，还有洛林咸派。

They they met in in college. But they they they they'd broken up, they got back together. Well, I think I'm I'm pretty sure while we were still in the Roxbury apartment. And, yeah, we we ate a lot of Costco lasagna. I made a lot of chicken and spring mix salads, and and then it was quiche Lorraine's.

我会烤一整个洛林咸派。

I would, like, bake a whole quiche Lorraine.

是那种迷你版的还是呆萌型的？还是...

The the little mini or dork kind? Or

不是。我会...我会先做个派皮

No. No. Like, I would I would make a a pie crust

噢，不错。

Oh, nice.

然后往里面放，大概一打鸡蛋吧。

And fill it with, like, you know, a dozen eggs.

哇哦。

Oh, wow.

这样我就能吃上四天了。

And then I would eat that for four days.

好吧。

Okay.

其实法式咸派是最容易做的，因为如果你会做派皮或者直接买现成的，只要打一打鸡蛋进去，加点奶油、火腿和其他你想放的料，然后放进烤箱。切成几块后，你就有了吃不完的食物。感觉所有步骤都很省时。高效补充大量蛋白质。

Quiche is, like, the easiest thing to make, actually, because it's like if you just if if you can make a pie crust where you buy one, you just crack a dozen eggs into it and some cream and ham and whatever else you wanna put in, and then you put it in the oven. And you cut it into a bunch of slices, you have infinite food. Just think everything seems like time efficient. Time efficient for for a lot of protein.

没错。这是个好建议。夏末的时候你们有展示日对吧？还记得当时来了大概15个人吗？

Yeah. That's a good tip. At the end of the summer, you you had demo day. Do you remember that there were, like, 15 people there?

噢，我我清楚记得整个夏天。记得Paul Buchheit来给我们讲Gmail时，我简直惊呆了。那才是真正的工程师。当时我根本不懂工程是什么。还记得我跟Steve说你没法访问它。

Oh, I I remember the whole the whole summer. I remember Paul Buchheit coming in and giving us talk on Gmail and just being like, holy shit. That's a real engineer. I didn't understand what engineering was. And, like, I remember telling Steve that you couldn't access it.

太尴尬了。我当时可能说了类似没有Java就访问不了数据库的话。其实我想表达的是没有服务器端的东西就访问不了数据库。但那时我完全不懂编程原理。可能让你误以为我是个优秀程序员，毕竟我经历过耶鲁计算机科学课程——那个非常严苛的...

It's so embarrassing. You could I I think something like you couldn't access a database without without Java. And what I meant was you couldn't access database without, like like, a server side, like, thing. But I didn't really understand how programming worked. Like, what I think you I fooled you because I was a good programmer because I'd I'd been in the Yale computer science curriculum, which is a very intense Yeah.

抽象理论课程，但他们不教任何实操。我完全不了解技术实现。那本质上是个计算机科学抽象理论项目。所以数据库怎么运作？怎么把服务器上运行的程序连到数据库？

Abstract curriculum, but they don't teach you how to do anything. Like, I didn't know how any technology actually worked. It was it's really a, like, computer science as abstract theory program. And so, like, how does a database work? Like, what how do you connect a a a program that runs on a a server to a database?

我隐约知道能实现，但具体怎么做？从没实操过。因为那是肮脏的实践工作，而耶鲁不认可任何形式的实践。

I have this vague idea you can do that, but, like, what would that look like? I've never done it before. Because that's dirty practical work, and Yale doesn't believe in practical work of any kind.

哇。好吧，感谢上帝YC确实如此，你可能学到了相当深刻的一课。

Woah. Well, YC does, thank god, and you probably got quite the lesson.

事实证明耶鲁的态度是对的——他们认为你会自己搞定。那部分很简单。他们会专注于真正困难的内容，而当你需要为Python程序安装数据库驱动时，你会没事的。既然你能进入这个项目，你就能解决。他们是对的。

Turns out Yale is actually right, which is their attitude is, you'll figure it out. That part's easy. Like, we're gonna focus on the really hard stuff, and when you have to figure out how to install a database driver for your Python program, you'll it's fine. You if you you got to this program, you'll figure it out. And they were right.

确实如此。我花了大概六周时间弄明白很多事情的运作方式。不过要真正熟练掌握可能花了两三年。这很正常。我很庆幸他们专注于更严谨的部分，因为那些知识如果不在学校里学，接下来两三年我可能根本掌握不了。

It was. It would took me all of, you know, six weeks to figure out how a lot of that stuff worked. Although, it took me probably two or three years to get, like, good at it. That's fine. Like, I'm glad they focused on the more rigorous components because that stuff, I would not have learned over the next two or three years if I hadn't gotten it in school.

还有，我记得夏季原型日的场景。当时拼命赶工做出个东西。后来演示日我们基本就做了个日历。我想我们甚至已经上线了，还有些用户。我记得我们展示了半小时左右，但没人...（思考状）

Also, from the summer, I remember prototype day Mhmm. And sort of sprinting to have something. And then I remember demo day, and we basically built a calendar. I think we I think we'd even launched, and we had some users. And I I remember no one, I think we we presented for, again, for, like, half an hour or something.

那些演示通常多长时间？

How long were were those presentations?

我觉得大概十五分钟吧，或者更...

I think that they were maybe fifteen minutes or pretty They

其实挺长的。是正经的演示，有幻灯片，有时还有现场演示——毕竟是演示日。记得我们引起了Stephen Wolfram的兴趣，还去给他做了路演。他最终没投资，因为他认为我们那个创业项目没前途。印象最深的是他七岁的儿子当时也在会议室里。

were long. They were, like, they were, like, real presentations with, like, slide decks and, like, demos sometimes because it was demo day. And I remember we got an interest from Stephen Wolfram, and we got to go pitch him. He did not wanna invest, because he did he did at the end of the day, did not actually correctly did not think that was we were going anywhere on that startup. I just remember, I think it was his, like, seven year old son was in the meeting.

Steven是不是所有会都...我想是的。实际上那孩子好像参加了Steven所有的会议，虽然演示日那天不在，但确实参加了我们的路演会议。我觉得这特别可爱。

Was Steven in all of well, Steven's I think so. And he was there in all of Steven's meetings, actually, I think. I don't think he was at the demo day, but he was he was in our pitch meeting with them. And Okay. I thought it was really charming.

这让我想等儿子Lucas长大后也带他参加会议。说实话那孩子问了两三个问题——因为Steven鼓励他提问。他的问题比普通风投助理提得更好，可能比半数合伙人的问题都到位。都是切中要害、逻辑连贯的好问题。

It makes me wanna take Lucas, my my son, into when he's old enough into into meetings. Like, he to be honest, he asked, like, two or three questions because Steven gave him a like, was like, hey. Do do you wanna ask him some questions? His questions were better than better than the average VC associate and probably better than half of all the, like, half of all the partner questions I've gotten. They were real he asked good questions that were on point, that made sense, that followed.

哇。毕竟是个聪明的孩子，而且那时可能已经观察父亲在会议中提了一年的聪明问题。他知道该问什么，完全是在模仿。他的提问让我觉得...这反而让我感觉更好了。

Wow. Because he's he's obviously a smart kid, and he's been watching his dad ask smart questions in the meetings for probably a year at that point. So he knows what to ask. He's gonna just pattern match it. And he asked I was like, oh, this is that that that actually made me feel better about it.

比如，当他只是坐在会议里时，我就觉得挺奇怪的。但当他开始提问时，一开始我还想，这个大概七岁的小孩要问我什么？或者也许是九岁？记不太清了。虽然具体问题我忘了，但当时就觉得，哦，好吧。

Like, when when he was just sitting in the meeting, I thought it was weird. But then when he got to ask questions, at first, I was like, oh, what what is what is this, like, seven year old gonna ask me? Or maybe he was nine. I don't remember exactly. But, like, and I can't remember exactly what it was, but just thinking like, oh, yeah.

这完全是个合情合理的问题。

That's a that's a totally sensible, reasonable thing to ask.

太有趣了。

That's so funny.

你提到了史蒂夫——为听众说明下，这是Reddit的史蒂夫·霍夫曼，他也是首批成员之一，上过这个播客。你们和Reddit的史蒂夫、亚历克西斯关系很好。

You mentioned Steve, which is Steve Huffman from Reddit, for our listeners, who is also in that first batch, who's been on this podcast. You guys were good friends with the Reddits, Steve and Alexis.

不是在夏天的时候？真的吗？就夏天那会儿。好吧。对。

What Not during not during the summer. Really? Like the summer. Okay. Yeah.

夏天我们在罗克斯伯里，几乎没见过人。我和史蒂夫、亚历克西斯处得来，还有亚伦·斯沃茨，我们这群人互相吸引。还有Memmap的扎克、克里斯他们。萨姆总在外奔波创业，和我们聚得少。

During the summer, we were in Roxbury, and we didn't see anybody. We barely like, we I like Steve, and I liked Alexis, and I we we were drawn to them as sort of the other them them and Aaron Schwartz, I think. We we the the that that set of us. And I guess the and the the Memmap guys, Zach and Zach and Chris Yeah. We all kind of, like, I think like, Sam was off pitching all the time, like, was just not didn't hang out with us that much because he was working on a startup.

对他来说，那意味着交易。

For him, that meant, like, deals.

嗯。

Yep.

我们这群人既认真创业，也想社交玩乐。大概占同期三分之二吧。项目结束后我们才意识到：接下来怎么办？如果不主动联系，就再也见不到人了。

And we were sort of the that group was sort of the set of people who I think were both very serious about their startup, but also, like, wanted to have like, hang out and, like, talk and have some amount of fun as well. Yeah. So which I guess is like that was two thirds of the batch or something. But that group, we all sort of hung out quite a bit, and I remember really being drawn to them, being particularly drawn to Steven Alexis. But it wasn't until after the batch ended when we were like, oh, now what do we do?

那时才明白，如果不主动约人见面，就真的会失去联系。

And then if we had to be proactive, if we didn't reach out to someone to try to hang out with them, we were never gonna see anybody.

你们当时都在Y Combinator的剑桥办公室一起工作。是的。

You, like, all worked together in Y Combinator's Cambridge office. Yeah.

对，对。不是我们允许你们这么做的吗？在那之后，是的。批次结束后。

Yeah. Yeah. Didn't we let you do that? Over that, Yeah. After the batch.

不是批次期间，我们没有。但批次结束后，我们都去花园街工作，因为那里比我们住的地方舒服多了。我想你是可怜我们，因为纽约给你们，你知道的，50万美元之类的。所以你们能负担得起一套像样的公寓来工作。但拿着1.4万，你们真的得精打细算。

Not during the batch, we didn't. But after the batch, we we we all worked at we would go to Garden Street and work because it was just so much more pleasant where we lived. And I think you took pity on us because the NYC gives you, you know, $500,000 or whatever. So if you you can you can afford to get an apartment that's, like, decent to work out of. Then with, 14 k, you're really trying to stretch it.

就像，好吧。行吧。你们可以用我们的办公室。但没错。

Like, yeah. Okay. Fine. You can run out of our out of our office. But yeah.

所以我们后来在办公室工作，那真是增进感情的事。不过我们也更主动地聚会，比如每周见一次，周五喝点啤酒什么的。我们后来真的走得很近。特别是卖掉Kiko后——大概十五个月后我们在eBay上卖了Kiko。之后我们没什么事做，整个夏天基本上都在打扰Reddit团队，比如下午三点带着中餐和啤酒去他们家打游戏。

So we worked out of the office the other That was that that was a big bonding thing. But also, we just were proact a little more proactive about hanging out and, like, meeting up once a week, like, getting beers on a Friday or something. And we really connected later. I really once we sold Kiko like, we about fifteen months in, we sold Kiko on eBay. And after we sold Kiko, we didn't really have that much to do, and so we spent a summer basically distracting the Reddits, like, by at, like we we would, at, like, 3PM, go over to their house with, you know, Chinese food and beer and start playing video games.

而且——不，不是疯玩。那段时光很棒，故事太精彩了。后来Steve报复回来——他在那之后大概六七个月就把Reddit卖了。

And, like No. And Not nuts. It was that was great. That story was amazing. And which is Steve had his revenge, Then he sold Reddit, like, you know, six months or nine months after that.

所以当我们刚开始做Justin TV搬到旧金山时，Steve搬进了我们楼。每天五点他就带着六罐啤酒出现，我们开始打游戏。他这是把当初我们打扰他们的三个月还了回来——就是我们刚开始做Justin TV的时候。所以，我们...我不确定我们总是对彼此有完全积极的影响，但最终确实互相成就了对方。因为创业最难的就是坚持。

So when we were starting Justin TV back in and we moved to San Francisco, Steve moved into our building. And every day at, like, five, Steve would show up with a six pack of beer, and we'd start playing video games. It's like, he got his he had he had three months of doing that to us back, like, at the when when we were starting to start dressing TV. So, you know, we we I don't know if we were always a good a totally good influence on each other, but we were the the we were ultimately a very good influence on each other. Because I think the the number one thing that's, like, hard when you're running a startup is, man, it is is hard to keep going.

如果创业不快乐，如果你不开心，真的很难保持信念继续前进。Reddit那帮人——Steve和Alexis——我觉得他们是我们保持动力的重要原因。

If if doing a startup isn't fun, if you're not enjoying yourself, it's just so hard to to keep the faith and keep moving ahead. The Reddits, they're like, that way Steve and Alexis, I think, were a big part of why we had the the momentum.

我正想说，基于第一批的互动经历，那正是激励我们保持批次模式的原因。那本来只是个实验性的天使投资夏季项目，之后我们打算只做异步投资。但我们发现创始人们喜欢聚在一起，互相帮助，所以才延续下来。

Well, I was gonna say, based on the interaction that we saw in that first batch, that's what inspired us to keep it as a batch. It was that was just an experimental, like, let's learn to angel invest summer, and then we were gonna just do asynchronous investing. But we thought, you know, the batch is like they the the the founders like to come together. They help each other out. So that's why we kept doing it.

很高兴看到那些友谊凝聚起来。

So I'm glad that those friendships coalesced.

是的。我是说，回想起来，我觉得那1.4万美元本可以从其他渠道筹集。比如，如果我们东拼西凑，本可以从亲友那里筹到一小笔钱，但绝对凑不齐那个批次的规模。我是说，关键不是钱。我认为我们真正获得的价值在于——那些同批次的伙伴们。

Yeah. I mean, I think those things were like if I looking back at it, I could have gotten the $14,000 from other places. Like, if we just scrabbled, we could have put together a tiny round of money from friends and family, but we couldn't have put together that batch. I mean, not the batch. I don't think we would have, like, that the the batch mates and, like, that was the that was the actually valuable thing we got.

没错。那远比金钱重要得多。

Yeah. That was the the the much more so than the money.

我有个小问题。杰西卡，你为什么没给他们送台空调？

I have a quick question. Jessica, why didn't you deliver these guys an air conditioner?

天啊，你这个问题让我太尴尬了！因为刚才埃米特提到罗克斯伯里有多热的时候，我其实...我几乎给其他所有团队都送了空调，但他们主要在剑桥区活动。

Oh, I'm so mortified you just asked that because as as Emmett was talking about how hot it was and they were in Roxbury, I honestly, I I delivered them to almost every other group, but they're mostly in the Cambridge area.

我正想说你的慷慨是有地域限制的。真让人伤心。

I was just gonna say your generosity had geographical limits. That's so sad.

我知道。但我本可以主动提出...比如给他们买台空调的。

I know. But I could have offered to, like, give them. I would have bought them an air conditioner.

我们压根没想到要开口。当时觉得居住环境就这样了——后来我们确实自己买了Costco的空调，毕竟也不算太贵。

Didn't even occur to us to ask. Like, we the thought that we could fix our situate living situation. No. Like, this is just this is just how it is. I think at some point, we did buy ourselves our own, like, Costco air conditioners because they're that expensive.

那段日子很压抑。虽然当时我并不怎么享受，但我还是会推荐这种经历——当然不必像我们住罗克斯伯里那么极端。创业很艰难，需要每周留些放松时间，但初期最好保持每周六七天的工作状态。

It was depressing. And at the time, I don't think I, like, was, like, that enjoyed it that much. But I wouldn't like, I liked that we it was I would recommend to most people, maybe not to go quite too extreme as, like, go live in Roxbury, but, like, moving somewhere where you aren't right with your friends and you're not like, startups are hard, and they it's good to have the outlet of, like, every Tuesday or every Friday or whatever. But, like, you would it would be better if you were working, like, seven days a week in the beginning. Like, at least six Yeah.

至少持续一段时间。当然，如果你年纪较大或有经验可能另当别论。但我们当时毫无经验，只有用不完的精力——把这些能量全投入创业才是正道。

For a while. As I mean, maybe not if you're, like, if you're older and you have, like, experience, but we we didn't have experience. We had no idea what we were doing. All we had was, like, relentless energy. And so, like, the more we channeled that into the startup, the better off we were.

现在我想回到你提到的某件事——你在eBay上以25.8万美元出售了Kiko。卡罗琳，你能相信吗？快讲讲这个故事。

Now, you mentioned something I just wanna go back to because I don't want it to be lost on this audience here. You sold Kiko for $258,000 on eBay. Like, tell that story. Carolyn, can you believe

这个？

this?

其实当他提到eBay时，我暗自思忖，心想等等，在eBay上？对，你得讲讲那个故事。快讲讲。

I was actually thinking to myself when he said on eBay, I was like, hang on. On eBay? Like, yeah, you gotta tell that story. Tell that story.

所以我们继续推出Google Calendar。起初我们觉得他们奈何不了我们，我们胜券在握。后来逐渐意识到...我们根本没胜算。实际上我们毫无头绪。

So so we keep Google Calendar launched. At first, we're like, that they can't take us. We've got them. And then we, like, increasingly realized we we don't got them. We actually have we have no ideas.

我们甚至不知道——我们其实不用日历，除了配合Gmail的日历外毫无想法。所以当谷歌推出Gmail日历时，我们完全不知所措。而且——杰西卡不知道你清不清楚——那15个月里我们患上了严重的创业多动症。除了开发Kiko，我们还做了You Look Familiar，一个家庭社交网络。

We don't even know we didn't actually use calendars, and we didn't actually have any idea other than the calendar that goes with Gmail. And so when Google launched the calendar that went with Gmail, just we didn't know what to do. And we had we also this is I don't if you know this, Jessica. We had real startup ADHD over those fifteen months. So in addition to building Kiko, we built You Look Familiar, a social network for families.

我们做了个声音应用，类似SoundCloud，可以上传歌曲并添加时间戳注释。这个项目我们没真正上线，内部代号叫'秘密项目'，算是某种结合体...

We built a sounds app, which is basically with SoundCloud, which where you could upload songs, and they had a little thing where it would play, you could leave notes on it. We built this thing. We didn't actually launch it. We think it's called secret project. Was sort of a combination.

有点像现在的Replit，但更像是Replit加GitHub的混合体。当时MySpace是主流社交平台，我们还做了个MySpace影响力计算器。

It's sort of like Replit today, but, like Oh. It's, like, sort of like Replit plus GitHub, but we, like, came up on that. We didn't even get to get to launch. Myspace was the big social network at the time, so we built a sort of a clout for Myspace.

哇哦。

Oh, wow.

我们做了网络爬虫程序——这个也没发布。计算了一堆影响力分数后失去热情就搁置了。当然还有Kiko。

We built a spider. We also didn't launch that one. We built a spider. We, like, we calculated a bunch of clout scores, and we lost enthusiasm and didn't launch it. And we built Keiko.

现在回想，我们不断折腾这些项目（顺便说，其中大多后来都成了估值数亿甚至百亿的公司），根本原因是心底明白日历软件做不大——至今也没有百亿级日历应用。其实我们一直在逃避，又不得不回来面对，因为觉得应该专注主业，但还没准备好彻底转型。

And in retrospect, like, the reason we kept building these other things and these other ideas, all almost all of which, by the way, are at least, like, multi $100,000,000 companies, if not billion dollar companies Yeah. In retrospect, is because we we knew at some level what our hearts that this calendar thing no one has built a billion dollar calendar yet. Like, the calendar thing really wasn't a good idea, actually. And and so I we kept we kept sort of running away from it, but then going back to it because, like, no. We're supposed to work on the thing that we're the real thing we're doing, and we weren't ready to actually pivot the whole company.

顺便说You Look Familiar——基本就是Ancestry.com的雏形。设想是让家人加入，但立刻收到用户反馈：'我想添加已故亲属'。我们本应意识到用户要的不是活人家谱，而是完整的家族树——这正是Ancestry.com的模式。

And you look familiar, by the way. It's I the it's like answersee.com, basically. Like, the whole idea was you could, like, get your family into it. And what we'd immediately started getting is feedback from your customers if we'd been if we'd understood how to do it is, like, I wanna add my dead family members too. I wanna, like, not just build the family tree of the living people, but everyone who I know, which is, the that's what ancestry.com is.

这是一个包含逝者的社交网络。对，就像科尔马是个社交网络。我们基本上当时想，好吧，我们真的要放弃Kiko了。

It's a social network that includes dead people. Yeah. It's It's like Colma is a social network. And the it's we're we basically were like, okay. We're actually gonna give up on Kiko.

那这东西怎么处理？我们花了这么多时间开发它。总该有人为此付钱——这是我们的想法。它是个日历，功能正常。

Well, what do we do with it? Well, we we've spent all this time building it. Somebody should pay us for this was sort of the idea. We should be like, it's a calendar. It works.

这是个能用的JavaScript日历。肯定有人需要可运行的JavaScript日历吧？但谁知道谁会需要呢？我们通常需要银行家做的事——找出潜在买家，向一群人展示并组织拍卖——这次全靠自己瞎猜。

It's a JavaScript calendar that does work. Surely, someone wants a working JavaScript calendar. Who wants that? We I have no idea who would want that. And we sort of intuited the thing you need a banker for normally, which is, like, to figure out who wants it, to go show it to a bunch of people and run an auction.

但整个售价都不够支付银行家的启动费用。那怎么让更多人看到呢？我们想，本质上需要营销手段。如果挂到eBay上会很有趣，而且我打赌TechCrunch会报道这事。

But, like, the entire price wouldn't pay a banker's fees to get started. So, like, how do we get a bunch of people to see it? And we're like, well, we basically, we need marketing. And so, well, if we list it on eBay, that's funny. And I bet we can get TechCrunch to write a story about it.

这就是我们的逻辑。结果我们猜对了——把日历挂上eBay后，TechCrunch果然报道了，连带引发其他媒体跟进。这意味着所有可能想买JavaScript日历的人都知道了我们在出售。

That was the reasoning. And and we were right. We we we listed it on eBay, and TechCrunch did write a story about it. And but that caused a bunch other people to write stories about it. And that meant that everyone who might conceivably want to buy a JavaScript calendar heard about the fact we were selling it.

因为那时候只要登上TechCrunch和Techmeme等聚合平台，就绝对能触达买家。多伦多的TwoCows公司就是这样联系到我们并最终完成收购的。你们没

Because, like, if you got a story in TechCrunch at that time and on, you know, Techmeme and all the other, like, aggregators, you would absolutely reach the buyers. And that's how we reached TwoCows, which is based in Toronto, and who wound up actually buying it. You didn't

付银行中介费。

have to pay a banking fee.

没错，我们只付了eBay约2%的佣金。

Nope. We just paid we paid eBay there at, like, 2%.

太有意思了，哇哦。

That's so funny. Wow.

你那些大学毕业后去高盛的银行家朋友肯定一脸懵：这什么操作？

All your banker friends who went to Goldman after college are like, what's going on there?

而且，02月22日那笔钱数目相当可观。

And, like, that's a fine chunk of change for 02/22.

哦，没错。我们当时必须偿还天使投资人，因为他们享有1倍优先清算权，这很合理。投资人是Alex Lewin和Linda公主——唯二真正相信我们并愿意投资的人。我可不是随便叫她Linda公主，这是她自我介绍时的称呼。

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now we we had to pay back our angel investors because they had 1x preferences, basically, which makes sense, which was Alex Lewin and Princess Linda, who are the only two people who who believed in us enough to to invest in us. And I'm not just calling her Princess Linda. That's what how she introduced herself to me.

这就是我对她的记忆。他们...她当时...

Like, that's that's that's my memory of her. Like, they like, she was

是Paul认识的那位早期雅虎员工。好吧，又是我们认识并邀请来演示日充场子的少数几个富人之一，就为了填满那15个座位。对，没错。

the early Yahoo employee that Paul knew. Okay. Again, one of the, like, few handful of rich people that we knew and invited to demo day to fill the 15 seats. Right. Right.

好吧。但她确实投资了。是的。

Okay. But she invested. Yeah.

Alex最初在Veoweb工作，后来去了雅虎。我至今还和Alex保持联系。太棒了。扣除这部分后，YC虽然没回本，但总算收回了点小钱。

And Alex was a employee, I think, at Veoweb and then and then at Yahoo. I'm still friends with Alex to this day. Oh. Awesome. The best so so you you take you take that out, and then we have to pay we y c didn't make its money back, but made you know, got some side some bit of like, a tiny some tiny check.

然后我们还得为此缴税，因为是资产出售。这个决策很明智——我们选择资产出售有两个原因：一是能降低买方风险，毕竟初创公司的企业结构对买家来说像黑箱。

And then we had to pay taxes on it because we did it as an asset sale. And that was smart. We structured it as an asset sale because two reasons. One is we knew it we knew that it would reduce the liability. Like, if you're the buyer, you don't know what's in this corporate start up thing.

要是现在说我们是YC公司就简单了，买家会觉得'反正用标准YC合同没问题'。但当时作为无名初创公司，尽调律师费可能比交易额还高。

Like, now if it's we're like, oh, we're a YC company. That wouldn't be a big deal because buyers would be like, oh, okay. You use the standard YC paperwork. You have all the standard contracts. This will be fine.

采用资产出售还能抬高报价，让拍卖听起来更吸引人。毕竟外行分不清企业出售和资产出售的区别——虽然税是我们付，但买家知情后反而愿意出更高价。

But, like, at the time, like, you're some startup. How they gonna diligence that? It's gonna cost more in lawyer fees than the, again, than than the thing is worth. To instruct you to do that sale, it also meant that we could pump the price up more, which made it a more exciting auction to talk about. Because people don't know the difference between your doing a corporate sale and an asset sale.

所以最终成交价是25.8万而不是15万。作为谈资，'四分之一百万'可比'十五万'好听多了。扣除所有费用后，我们实际净赚了35美元。

Now that means we pay the taxes instead of them, which, you know but, like, that that's that they they know that, so they they're willing to bid more in the case where they they're doing the asset sale. So it actually worked out really well. Like, the reason it's a $258,000 sale instead of a, you know, what would be probably like a like a $150,000 sale is because we did an assets asset sale. And it's a better story if it's a quarter million dollars instead of a 150 can. So at the end of the day, we actually went up in pocket, like, $35.

一份？

A piece?

比如每人一份？对。一份。实际上想想看，大学毕业第一年，在十五个月的工作后，税后能存下3.5万美元，那时我们在职业生涯的起点上比同龄人宽裕得多。

Like, each? Yeah. A piece. That's Which is, like actually, if you think about it for, like, fifteen months of work, post taxes, having saved over fifteen months as a first year out of college $35, we were we were way better off than any of our compatriots at that point in their careers.

我喜欢这故事。

I love it.

这其实很重要——当我们创办Justin TV时，曾一度筹不到天使资金，公司眼看就要耗尽现金，不仅发不出工资，连供应商都付不起，Justin TV濒临倒闭。我和Justin各自从Kiko项目的积蓄里拿出1.5万美元借给公司，撑了两个月才等到天使轮融资到位。

And that's import that's important actually, because when we started Justin TV, there was a point where we we couldn't raise angel money, and the startup was like, we were gonna run out of cash to, like, make not just make payroll, but to, like, pay our vendors and our suppliers, and Justin D. Was gonna die. And Justin and I both lent Justin TV $15 each of of that Kiko money to float the company for, like, two months until we could close our angel round.

真难以置信。

No kidding.

我们最终凑齐了天使轮。真的，如果没有那笔钱，Justin TV可能就夭折了。那笔钱就是救命稻草。

We could put together and close an angel round. Yeah. It's like, if we'd had that money, we would not have like, Justin TV might have died. That was the that was the the bridge. No.

否则我们大概只能求你和Paul帮忙，喊着'救救我们'。但能自己开支票投资自己的感觉很棒。我常被应届生或Twitch实习生问到建议——我的首要建议是：若你渴望人生选择自由，务必拼命存钱。

What we probably would have done is come to you you and Paul and be like, please help us. We're gonna die. But, like Yeah. But it was nice that we could just, like, write the check and, like, you know, invest in ourselves. Like, I I think it's a piece of advice people ask me sometimes when they're coming out of college or, like, in internships at Twitch, like, what is my recommendation?

毕业后头十五个月，甚至前三年我们都过得极其节俭。住在罗克斯伯里区，能省则省。后来搬走也没租高档公寓。银行里有3.5万美元（虽然企业财务角度看不算多，但对个人而言是笔巨款）意味着自由——你能大胆行动，比如投资自己。

And my my biggest, like, post college recommendation is that if you care about, like, sort of freedom and being able to, like, make bold choices in your life, save as much money as humanly possible. Like, we did not live richly for the first fifteen months or for the first, like, three years. We lived very, very frugally, and we spent as little money we were living in Roxbury. We spent as little money as possible. And even when moved out of Roxbury, we did not get a nice apartment.

应届生常低估现金储备的价值。建议毕业后头一两年拼命攒钱，等有2-3万美元积蓄后，你就能更灵活——目标不是永远节俭，而是积累能让你辞职或冒险时支撑数月开销的底气。

And and that meant when you have $35 in the bank, which is a lot of money, like, it's not it's not a lot of money from, like, a corporate finance perspective, but from an individual perspective, it's a lot of money. Yeah. You you have freedom. You can make bold moves like investing in yourself, and you should I think that it's a that's something that keep people right out of college sort of underestimate is how valuable it is to to build a cash cushion, like, immediately. Like, just save as much as you humanly can for the first year, year and a year or two years, and then you can start spending more because actually once you have $20, $30 saved up, you don't need to keep the goal is not to save money forever.

关键是你有能力在需要时暂渡难关。

The goal is that you can quit your job or make a, you know, make a bet, and you have can bridge a couple months of expenses.

它能给你选择。我给年轻人的建议完全一样，比如存钱作为缓冲。对。好的。Justin TV，我想深入了解这个。

It gives you options. I give young people the exact same advice, like, money so you have a cushion. Yeah. Okay. Justin TV, I wanna get into this.

那么告诉我Justin TV是如何诞生的故事。

So tell me the story of how Justin TV started.

当时我们卖掉Kiko后，整个夏天都在Reddit上消磨时间。但其实那段时间我们一边刷Reddit打游戏，一边在思考下一个创业项目。我们并不特别着急，因为手头有些积蓄，过得去。但我们知道自己还想再创业。

So we were trying we knew we wanted start we sold Kiko, and then we spent the summer a summer distracting the Reddits. But we were really doing that during that time while we were distracting them and, like, playing video games is trying to figure out what what our next startup would be. And we weren't in a in a blistering hurry because we had we had some money. We were we were okay. But we, like, we wanted to we knew we wanted to start something else.

我们的第一个点子是把Flickr页面或博客变成实体相册书。

And so we we had this our first idea was it was like turn any Flickr page or blog into a coffee table book.

你在开玩笑吧。

You're kidding.

一键生成那种，按需印刷。我们最初的创意总是很糟糕，第二个点子就会好很多，这很神奇。

Like like, one click. That was the that was the idea. Like, print on demand. Our our first ideas are always terrible, and then the second ideas are much better. It's weird.

就像那些我们羞于启齿的假想项目，我都不好意思跟人说的秘密企划。纯粹是自私的幻想，因为我自己喜欢那个点子。

Like, they once we are fake ideas that we would, like, we were embarrassed to pitch, that we wouldn't tell people about, like secret project. I wouldn't tell anyone about secret project because I was so embarrassed. It was just for me. Like, it was purely selfish. Like, I liked the idea.

比如我一直想要个在线版的GitHub代码仓库，但那不算正经创业。正经创业应该是博客印刷服务，不过...

Like, replet I always wanted, like, a replet GitHub, like, thing that I could just build stuff online with, but it wasn't a serious startup. That was, like the serious startup is like a print on demand service for blogs. But

你被自己的烂点子逗乐了。

You're cracking yourself up with your bad idea.

天啊，太糟糕了。我们去向Paul推销时，他直接拒绝了。

Oh my god. It's so bad. It's so bad. So we go in to pitch Paul, and he's like, no. Thank thank you.

幸好。他直接表示，绝对不行。那是个糟糕的主意。我们就说，好吧，随你。

Thankfully. He's like, absolutely not. That's a terrible idea. We're like, okay. Fine.

你可能是对的。他接着问，还有什么点子？我们只好说，好吧，其实我们还有另一个想法——当时硅谷的热门话题就像如今OpenAI和埃隆的讨论一样，大家都在问雅虎该怎么办。因为雅虎那时显然已经迷失方向，缺乏战略。

You're probably right. He's like, what else you got? And we were like, okay. We do have this one other idea, which we'd we'd come up with because we were, like, having, at the time, the canonical topic in Silicon Valley, the way that, like, OpenAI and Elon is today, the default topic was what should Yahoo do? Because Yahoo was was already then, like, obviously lost, and they just didn't have a strategy.

于是所有人都扮演起事后诸葛亮的角色：如果我来运营雅虎会怎么做？我们觉得这类讨论很有趣，现在回想起来确实如此。当时我们本可以像普通人那样直接开个播客。

And so there's this everyone would play kind of armchair quarterback. If I was running Yahoo, what would I do? And we were like, our conversations about this are interesting. And I actually think in retrospect, they they were. We're sort of like, we we we could have done what a normal person would do is just, like, start a podcast.

对'我们很有趣'的正常反应本该如此。虽然那时已有播客，但我们觉得录制播客听起来太费劲了。

That's the normal response to, we are interesting. Podcasts existed then, but we were like, ah, recording a podcast sounds like a lot of work.

是啊。因为Odeo。对，就是那个做播客的Odeo。

Yeah. Because Odeo. Evel Yeah. Used to the Odeo podcasting Right. Idea.

没错。

Yeah.

那时正是2006年2月，播客已经兴起。iTunes应该已经上线，毕竟iPod很普及——这也是'播客(podcast)'名字的由来，就是用iPod听广播(iPod+broadcast)。

And it was it was it was in the air at the time. It was, like, 02/2006. Podcasts were a thing. You could I think iTunes was out, like because iPods were around. That's why they're called podcasts because iPod they were like you'd listen to them on pod on your iPod.

虽然播客已经存在，但我们坚持认为：不不不，那太麻烦了，录制播客听起来就很困难。

And and so podcasts were around, and but we were like, no. No. No. That's too much work. Recording a podcast sounds hard.

我们当时异想天开：不如24小时录制所有对话，然后剪辑精彩片段上传；既然要全天候录制，干脆直接直播到网上；既然要直播对话，何不加上视频流？那时EVDO网卡刚面世，移动互联网才出现不久，技术上确实可行。

Instead, we should just record all of our conversations twenty four seven, and then and then we'll just cut out the the interesting bits and upload those. And then we're like, well, if we're gonna record all our conversations twenty four seven, we should just, like, stream them live to the Internet. Well, if we're gonna stream our conversations live to the Internet twenty four seven, why don't we just have a full video feed too? That's possible now. Like, the EVDO cards had just come out, so, like, mobile Internet was had just exit came into existence.

我们自嘲说：哈，这想法真滑稽，我们才不会真这么做呢。最后这个计划就不了了之了。

Like, we could do that. And we're like, yeah. That's funny. We're never gonna do that. It was and then we sort of gave up with the idea.

但是，我们不断回来是因为它很有趣。我记得OMG Pop的Chuck Foreman。贾斯汀在一个派对上告诉他，哦，是的，我们的创业点子是要直播我的生活20%，因为在我和贾斯汀之间，谁戴摄像头从来不是问题。显然会是贾斯汀戴摄像头。

But, like, we we kept coming back because it was, like, funny. I remember I remember Chuck Foreman from OMG Pop. Justin told him at a party, oh, yeah. Our startup idea is we're gonna, like, stream my life 20% because it was between me and Justin, was never a question which one of us would wear the camera. It was obviously Justin was gonna wear the camera.

等等，但为什么？说说原因。

Wait. But why? Like, say why.

哦，贾斯汀喜欢出名。嗯。

Oh, Justin Justin likes being famous. Mhmm.

好吧。

Okay.

贾斯汀一直有个目标是有点名气。我不太喜欢出名。对。对。好吧。

Justin's always had a goal of being somewhat famous. I don't particularly like being famous. Right. Right. Okay.

对我来说，出名更像是副作用。别人听说你，对我来说是负面效果，不是正面的。对。好吧。而对贾斯汀来说，这是正面的。

I it's it's 's more of a side effect. People hearing about you, for me, is like a negative side effect, not a positive one. Right. Okay. Whereas for Justin, it's a positive one.

总之，Chuck对贾斯汀说，你满嘴胡扯。你永远不会那么做。我想那实际上是我们更可能做Justin TV的时刻。我们甚至还没...我当时不在那个对话中。我是后来听说的，但怨恨是最强大的动力之一。

Anyway, so Chuck said to Justin, you're full of shit. You're never gonna do that. And I think that was actually the moment that we were became much much more likely to do Justin TV. We hadn't even like, I I wasn't actually in that conversation. I just heard about it afterwards, but, like, spite is one of the most powerful motivators there is.

某种程度上，Justin TV就像我们在演一出戏，Chuck。我们去向Paul推销，他问，你们还有什么？我们说，贾斯汀说有个点子是我应该24/7戴着这个摄像头。我们要叫它Justin TV，因为...它是Justin TV吗？像是直播，也叫Justin TV？

In some ways, Justin TV was like we're like, we're we're in a show, Chuck. Which which we go to pitch Paul, and he's like, what else you got got? And we're like, well, we do Justin says, we have this idea that I should wear this camera twenty four seven. And we're gonna call it Justin TV, which because it was was it Justin TV? Like, it's, like, live and, like, also Justin TV?

我们觉得这是个聪明的双关。

We thought it was, like, a clever pun.

是啊，最好围绕它开个创业公司。

Yeah. Better start a startup around it.

是啊。给名字起个聪明的双关语，而且域名还能用，这多好。你能相信吗？保罗立刻就看出来了，哦，你可以想象，这可以成为一种新型的真人秀。最终你也可以让其他人也这么做。

Yeah. Better a clever pun for a name and the domains available. Could you believe it? And so and Paul saw immediately, oh, you could like, this could be a new kind of reality TV. You could have a bunch of other people do this eventually also.

我们就说，是啊，完全同意。我们之前还真没想过这点，但绝对可以。我们完全可以这么做。于是保罗给我们开了张5万美元的支票支持这个新项目。

And we're like, yeah. Totally. We have not we hadn't really thought of that, but, absolutely. We could totally do that. And and so Paul wrote us a $50,000 check for the new thing.

我觉得，那时候应该是，投资这个新创公司。

Like, I think I think then, like, to invest in the new in the new startup.

我记得我走进厨房时保罗说，嘿杰西卡，猜怎么着？Kikos团队现在要搞这个，你还提过这个点子。我记得当时我说，这主意听起来太荒谬了。谢天谢地你没听我的。

And I think I walked into the kitchen and Paul's like, hey, Jessica. Guess what? The Kikos are now doing, and you've mentioned your idea. And I remember saying, this sounds ridiculous, this idea. Thank god you didn't listen to me.

确实很荒谬。我是说，我们内部给这个项目的标语就是'一系列荒谬的噱头'。我们受到Kiko事件的启发，意识到为你想要做的事情获得营销和关注的好方法，就是在公众面前表现得有点荒唐。整个节目差不多就是这种风格。

It was ridiculous. It was I mean, we we literally our our internal tagline for the project was a series of ridiculous stunts. We'd been inspired by the Kiko thing. We'd realized, like, one really good way to get marketing and attention for things you wanted to do is just be a little bit absurd in public. And the the whole show was kind of that.

全天候直播这个主意本身就是个荒谬的噱头，我们心知肚明。我们就是刻意为之，这就是整个概念的核心。

It was the whole idea of being live twenty four seven was an absurd stunt, and we kind of knew it. Like, we milked it. That was the that was the concept.

所以听众们会觉得，这听起来太无聊了。贾斯汀会把摄像机绑在头上直播他一整天。对吧，埃米特？

So for listeners, they like, it sounds so boring. Justin would strap a camera to his head and live cast his whole day. Yep. Right, Emmett?

没错。听起来无聊是因为它确实无聊。无聊透顶。

It was yeah. It's sounds boring because it was boring. Was extremely boring.

我当时

I was

哦，是啊。

Oh, yeah.

参与其中一些。

Involved in some of them.

那是

It was

你知道，曾经有

You know, there was

一天中有十五分钟到两小时挺有趣的。对，然后剩下的时间就超级、超级无聊。直播视频的问题在于，一天只有十五分钟到两小时有趣，这简直糟透了。这意味着你的节目几乎总是很糟糕。

a interesting it was interesting for fifteen minutes to two hours a day. Like Yeah. And then the rest of the time, it was super, super boring. And the problem with live video is being interesting for fifteen to two hours minutes to two hours a day is, like, terrible. That's like that means almost always your show is horrible.

而且，如果你每天能为YouTube制作十五分钟的好内容，那很棒。但对于直播服务，你必须一直保持有趣，这几乎是不可能的。这就是为什么真人秀节目不直播的原因。真的，有一个非常根本的好理由——你不可能二十四小时都保持有趣。

And, like, if you can produce fifteen minutes of good content a day for YouTube, that's great. But for a live service, you have be interesting all the time, and it's, like, it's almost impossible. Like, there's a reason why live why, like, reality TV shows aren't live. Right. There's a really fundamental good good reason that's you can't be interesting twenty four seven.

嗯，我对Justin TV有很多疑问，继续这个话题。你们做了什么来应对Justin生活缺乏趣味性的问题？

Well, I have a lot of questions about Justin TV, pull on that thread. Yeah. What did you do to combat the lack of interestingness of Justin's life?

首先，我们试图规划他的整个生活，让它变得有趣。所以我们花了大约一个半月的时间，试图让Justin的生活变得有趣。这对Justin来说压力很大。我们总是说，Justin，你现在不够有趣，别做无聊的事。

First, we tried to program his whole life to make it interesting. So you had about a couple a month and a half where we were like, we're gonna make Justin's life interesting. We're and it was I think it was really stressful for Justin. We're like, Justin, you're not being interesting. Don't do interesting stuff.

每当他试图放松或坐下时，我们会因为觉得他无聊而吼他。我们会让人安排各种活动，比如Justin，去上钢琴课；Justin，去做这个。所以他就像个被操控的玩偶。

And whenever you, like, keep trying to relax or sit down, we would yell at him for being boring. And we'd have, like, people, like, organizing things like, Justin, go try our p's lessons. Justin, go do this. You know? So he's like this analyst.

我们发现了几件关键的事情。和观众互动总是既有趣又轻松，这是Twitch后来建立的关键洞察。我们还把Xbox连到摄像头前玩《使命召唤》。对，那很有趣。

We discovered a couple of really key things. Talking to the audience was always interesting and easy, which is a key insight that Twitch built on. And we we hooked up an Xbox to the camera and played Call of Duty. Yeah. And that was interesting.

大家也很喜欢。实际上，如果我们当时更专注观察哪些内容有趣，就会发现两个简单易行的有趣方式：对着摄像头直播聊天和打游戏。我们本可以只做这两件事。答案就在眼前，但我们没注意到，因为我们痴迷于移动直播的概念。

People liked that too. And so we actually did if we've been paying attention, we note we if we've been focused on what are the things that are interesting, Well, the two easy things to do that are interesting are, like, stream yourself talking to the camera and playing video games. Can we just talk to the camera and play video games? It was right there. It was right there, but we we didn't we didn't notice because we had we were obsessed with the idea of it being mobile.

我们正在做的一件很酷且真正新颖的事，就是在户外走动。这正是难点所在。我们投入大量精力打造这台摄像机，结果却要让人们重新回到电脑前。

We're like, the cool thing we're doing that's actually new is walking around outside. That's what was hard about this. We spent all this effort building this camera. You're really gonna Yeah. Put people, like, in back at their computer.

但回想起来，我们只是太超前了。当时的手机性能不足以支持直播，移动端直播技术极其困难。实际上，就连家用电脑的直播功能也刚普及，市面上根本没有成熟的移动直播服务。

But in retrospect, we were just way ahead of our times. Like like, the phones were not good enough to do live. Like, the the the live streaming on the mobile thing was just super hard. And, actually, even streaming from your home PC, it only just become available. There wasn't another good service to live stream from anywhere, let alone mobile live streaming.

事实上那是最困难的部分。保罗说过直播是他们做过最棘手的事，而你们为此构建了极其复杂的基础设施和技术对吧？

And in fact, that was the hardest thing. Paul said, like, the live streaming was the hardest thing that they did, and you guys built really complicated infrastructure and technology for this. Right?

没错。起初我们只用CDN，但很快发现它要么功能不足要么成本太高。真正的问题是视频部分成本——我们决定不再自建视频系统时，凯尔立刻主动请缨负责这块，成为了视频系统负责人。而我主管所有非视频系统的编程技术。他零视频经验却迎难而上的样子令人印象深刻。

Yeah. I mean, in the beginning, we were just using CDN, but very quickly, like, it didn't have the features we wanted or it was too expensive. The real thing was too expensive because we weren't gonna do the video part anymore. Kyle immediately, like, raised his hand to to do the video system part and became the head of the, you know, the sort of I was head of all non video system technology print programming, and Kyle was head of the video system. And I it was it was very impressive the way he tackled that because, like, he didn't know anything about video at all.

初期我们的系统并不完善，但逐渐改进。他最先开发的是个小型代理程序，部署在摄像机和CDN之间，能实时保存流媒体副本。

And in the beginning, our system was did not was not very good, but it got better. You know, we started from the very first thing he built was a little proxy that would sit in between the camera and the CDN and save a copy of the stream as it went by.

我想为观众插叙一下，这里出现了两位关键人物——凯尔·沃格特和迈克尔·塞贝尔。能否回溯下他们是如何加入的？

I just wanna do a quick aside for our audience because there's the introduction of two key Right. Players in the scene. Yeah. One is Kyle Vogt and the other is Michael Seibel. Can you just back up and say how they came on So

我们准备在旧金山创业时还在东海岸。贾斯汀大学时认识迈克尔，觉得团队需要个'定海神针'——我和贾斯汀虽然充满激情但情绪起伏较大，而塞贝尔一旦确立方向就坚定不移。贾斯汀主导了招募工作，第一步就是说服他参与我们横穿美国的公路旅行。

we were starting the company, and we knew we were gonna start it in San Francisco, but we were still over on the East Coast. And Justin knew Michael from college and was like, effectively, we need an adult, was sort of the theory. Right? We need someone who's more steady than Justin and I are very I think can be very inspiring. We also have, like, kind of a little bit of up and down energy.

所谓公路旅行，其实是四天不间歇地从纽约开到旧金山。

And Cybill is a force, and he is, like he's not so easily moved from a direction once he's, like, set on it. And so Justin intuited correctly, like, we need someone like Cybill on the team to make this team function, and so we recruited him. Really, Justin did most of that work because he knew Sibel better in in college. And we convinced him as step one in our recruiting process, we convinced him to drive across the country. We'll do a road trip across the country.

看看埃米特那副欢天喜地的样子

And by road trip across the country, we meant four days nonstop driving from New York to San Francisco. Yeah. Be like Look how gleeful

。

Emmett is.

一开始我是这样的

The beginning of I'm like

我知道。埃米特，你为什么笑得这么厉害？

I know. Why are you laughing so hard, Emmett?

最初就是无数次地，比如，给迈克尔设套，像是说‘迈克尔，我们要来一场横穿全国的公路旅行’，然后开玩笑说‘其实我们会不停车，只在大盐湖停留十五分钟拍个照就继续赶路。哦，我们到旧金山了’。

The beginning of just so many times of just, like, setting Michael up with, like, like, Michael, we're gonna do a road trip across the country. Just kidding. We're gonna we're gonna drive nonstop and, like, pause for fifteen minutes in the Great Salt Lakes for a photo op and then keep going. Oh. We arrived in San Francisco.

比如‘你刚和我们一起创业，会很有趣的。我们要让它成真。我们要搬去纽约。某种程度上这会是个真人秀’。

Like, we're gonna you just started a startup with us. It's gonna be fun. We're gonna make it's gonna make real world. We're gonna move to New York. It's gonna be somewhat it's gonna be a reality TV show.

开玩笑的，其实是科技创业。我们不去纽约。这只是一连串的‘撤毯子’恶作剧。不过我觉得他喜欢和我们共事。

Just kidding. It's a tech startup. We're not moving to New York. It's just it's an endless series of just, like, rug pulls. And I think he liked working with us.

反正我觉得他玩得挺开心。天啊。然后迈克尔出现了，我们正处得不错，正在创办公司。我们就对基斯说‘你应该加入我们，你已经是团队核心了’。

I think he had a good time anyways. Oh my god. And so Michael shows up, and he's we're we're having a pretty good time, and we're, like, we're starting the company. And, like, we Keith and we're, you should do this with us. Like, you you you're we're you're already a key part of the team.

‘没有你我们根本找不到公寓’——虽然我不确定这话真假，但当时说得跟真的一样。我们雇凯文也是同样套路：先让他们免费干活，等他们投入后反问‘是不是该付我们工资了？’然后才正式雇佣。

We never could have found an apartment without you, which, like, I don't if that was true. We made it feel like it was true. And and we basically we did the the same way we hired Kevin was the same the same move, which is we just started giving them work without paying them. And then and then they'd get into the work, and then they'd be like, oh, well, shouldn't we be paying you for this? And then we'd, like, hire them.

你知道，一旦他们开始合作，就会很享受。创业最大的回报就是能和朋友们做有趣的事还不用听老板指挥——这个卖点其实很棒，但人们往往事后才懂。所以我给创业者的招人建议是：先让你朋友免费帮你干活。

Like like, you know, what the once they were working with us, they had a really good time. Like, I think the the key is that startups is what's the biggest reward is you get to do interesting work without a boss with your friends. That's a pretty good pitch, But people don't understand it. Like, it's one of those pitches that's, like, way better if they start doing it first. And so I one of my startup hiring tips for for people is, like, just make your friends start working with you.

别付钱。让你聪明的朋友先参与进来，等他们已经在干活了再雇佣会容易得多。

Don't pay them. You want your smart friends to work with you, like, it's much easier to hire them from there. Already doing the job.

是啊。

Yeah.

于是我们意识到，就在你们招募迈克尔的同时，我们也需要有人来搭建硬件进行直播——虽然这个想法后来被证明是错误的，但幸好有这个错觉，因为它促使我们给MIT黑客名单发了邮件（我绝不推荐这种招聘方式）。这招能成功纯粹是因为我们创业起步早，当时YC也刚起步，还没那么多二次创业者。我们作为二次创业者在eBay上卖过公司，却再次创业时给MIT黑客名单发邮件——这就是凯尔加入的原因。

And so then we we realized, like, we were right at the same time as you were recruiting Michael. We're like, we need someone to build we thought we needed hardware to do the livestreaming. And that was wrong, but thank god we had this delusion because it caused us to e email the MIT hacker list, which I would never recommend as a way of hiring someone. Like, our our it only worked because we were so early in the startup, like, cycle, And YC was just getting getting started, and there weren't that many startups yet that, like, second time entrepreneurs second time entrepreneurs, we told our startup on eBay. But, like, we were second time entrepreneurs starting a starting a startup, emailing the MIT hacker list, which is that is why Kyle's joined up.

他当时的反应是：'哇，这些人知道自己在干什么'。

He's like, oh, these guys know what they're doing.

天啊

Oh my

重申下，我们可是二次创业者。双方其实互相唬住了——凯尔发来的26页CAD图纸PDF让我们惊为天人（虽然内行人看来没那么神），但这成功打动了当时也不懂行的迈克尔，我们就这样招到了他。

god. Again, second time entrepreneurs. And we both fooled each other because Kyle sent us this, like, this 26 page PDF CAD drawing thing that really impressed us that was not actually that like, it was impressive, but it was, like, only to people who didn't really know what they were doing. Like, it was it was cool, but it's not that cool. But it was super impressive to Michael, we used to hire Michael.

接着我们玩起了'石头汤'策略——用已加入者来制造FOMO（错失恐惧症）吸引其他人。就这样哄来了MIT大二辍学生凯尔。后来我才知道，他当时差点因翘课搞发明被MIT开除。

And then we used the fact that we'd like, it was this, like, very stone soup, like, using everyone else joining to FOMO the other people into joining. And we got Kyle, who was a MIT sophomore dropout, to come join us. And what Kyle did not reveal at the time that I learned later is, like, he was on the verge of getting kicked out of MIT because he wasn't doing his classes. He was just building stuff and hacking on stuff all the time Oh. Which I did not know until later.

这也解释了他为何加入我们。但当时我们觉得自己中大奖了——凯尔是个天才。这整件事里最幸运的就是这点。通常人们会招募大学里的聪明朋友，这很常规。

So it also makes sense why he joined us, but, like, we were like we felt like we hit the jackpot because we had because Kyle's, like, brilliant. Yeah. And I think that was one of the most lucky things about the whole thing. Like, everything else was sort of like, oh, you, like, you recruit your smart friend from college. That's, a pretty standard thing we tell people to do.

但通过MIT黑客名单招到19岁天才辍学生？这简直是彩票头奖级别的操作。人生总得走运一次——虽然我们其实配不上这运气。后来这位本该造自动驾驶汽车的工程师，被我们拉来做视频系统了。

Email the MIT hacker list and get some brilliant 19 year old college dropout to join your company is not a that's a win the lottery ticket kind of move. You gotta get a lucky break sometime. Yeah. But we didn't really deserve that one. And so Kyle was a, you know, brilliant engineer, wound up to go in to build a self driving car company, and we got him to go make our, you know, video system.

为留住他，我们给了联合创始人级别的股份。当时还担心：'难道每个员工都要给这么多？'但凯尔确实配得上。他加入时我们一无所有，就这样四人成团——虽然这通常也是我们告诫别人别做的事。

And when we convinced him to stay, we gave him an equal share of the company because we felt he really was a cofounder with us. And I think back to that, I remember thinking, like, are we gonna get are we just gonna give every employee that we hire a new like, a cofounder share? But but Kyle really deserved it, and I think we he was joining at this point where we just said, no. We didn't really have anything. And so that became a team of four, which is also something we generally tell people not to do.

但这个四人团队异常稳定。我想是因为我和贾斯汀关系铁定会坚持，而大学同学迈克尔也从未动摇过。

Yeah. But our team of four was very stable. I don't quite know why. I think it's because me and Justin were very close, and we're clearly just gonna keep going. And then Michael, we went to college with, and, like, Michael is very he also he just he never had any doubt.

他是全身心投入的。凯尔看到我们三个都这么拼，心想'那我也拼吧'。当团队核心成员都豁出去时，就会产生雪球效应——从我和贾斯汀开始，带动迈克尔，再到凯尔。这才是大团队运作的关键：如果能找到七个百分百投入的成员，那就是完美的创始团队了。

He was, like, all in on the he was fully all in. And then I guess Kyle saw the three of us being like, well, I guess they're fully all in. And once you get a critical mass of people who are just totally all in, Kyle was like, well, I guess if they're all against that, I guess I am too. And it sort of like we sort of like we snowballed it from me and Justin being fully all in on what was going on to getting Michael to be and then and that's really the that's really what makes a bigger team work. If you could get seven people to all be fully, 100% all in in the start up, that would be a great founding team.

只是我觉得一般来说你做不到那样。我认为要聚集那么多人太难了。是啊。开始有人跟随。两个或两个，也许三个就是极限了，真的。

It's just I don't think that I don't think you can generally do that. I think that it's it's hard to get that many people. Yeah. Starts to follow. Two or two, maybe three is like the max, really.

但对我们来说却成功了。

But it worked out for us.

是啊。卡罗琳，你之前有个问题被我打断了，是什么来着？

Yeah. Carolyn, did you have a question that I had interrupted you on?

没有。其实我只是在想，如果当初向保罗推销Justin TV时提到那些秘密项目，发展轨迹会有多么不同。你肯定偶尔会思考这个问题吧。比如，如果我们当初坚持推进某个秘密项目会怎样？比如On Replit。

No. I was actually just wondering what the how different the trajectory would have been if you had mentioned some of the secret projects to Paul when you were pitching him on Justin TV. You must think about that every now and then. Like, if what if I what if we'd just gone on and on, like, that secret project? Like On Replit.

关于Replit那个项目。差别会非常大。

On the Replit thing. Like, so different.

是啊。说来奇怪，那时我们已经放弃那些项目了，所以它们不再令人兴奋。你说得对。为什么在Justin TV阶段我们不推销那些呢？

Yeah. Yeah. Weirdly, we'd already given up on them, so they were no longer exciting. You're right. Why didn't we pitch those at the Justin TV stage?

对啊。

Yeah.

这是因为我们产生创业想法的方式有点像是狂热驱动的，而不是，怎么说，不是通过任何理性的方式。就是当时我们对什么有热情就做什么。回想起来，我们确实有过一堆点子。有些甚至做到一半。我记得当时还说，我们只有这两个想法：按需打印视频博客和直播真人秀。

And it's because the way we came up with startup ideas was sort of mania driven, not, like, like, in any kind of intelligent way. It's like whatever we were enthusiastic about at the time. And in retrospect, we did have a bunch of ideas. We even built half built a bunch of them. And I remember going in and being like, well, we only have these two ideas, print on demand vlogs and a live streaming reality show.

我们就只有这些点子。

Those are our only ideas.

不过保罗说过，Justin TV的想法刚好处于疯狂的合理边界，而且很难预测它会如何发展。事实上后来确实如此，它最终走向了Twitch的方向。

Paul said though that the Justin TV idea was just on the right side of crazy, and it, like, was sort of hard to predict what way it could go. And and in fact, that's what happened. It went in the direction of Twitch.

不，我...我并不后悔做那个真人秀。那个...做真人秀的点子是最有娱乐性的选择，是最有趣、最疯狂的事，我甚至有点庆幸我们这么做了。而且显然，它成功了。说实话，我从未思考过这个问题。

No. I I don't I don't regret doing the reality the the doing the reality TV show idea was the most entertaining option. It was the most, like, interesting, crazy thing we could do, and I'm I'm kinda glad we did it. Like, and, obviously, it worked out. You know, I've actually never wondered that question.

现在你提起来，那本可以是个更好的创业项目。但...但我们可能就不会招募凯尔了。对吧？谁知道呢，也许那样会更成功。

Now that you've mentioned it, that would have been a much better start up. But but we would not have recruited Kyle for that one. Right. I don't know. Maybe it would have been more successful.

也可能更失败。很难说。因为在创业中我反复学到的是——创意的优劣几乎从来不是公司的关键因素。重要的是创始人。

Maybe it have been less successful. It's hard to say. Yeah. Like because the idea is one thing I've definitely learned in startups over and over again is, like, the strength of the idea is almost never the important thing about the company. Like Oh, it's the founders.

创始人。

The founders.

而Justin TV这个点子让我们能招募到迈克尔，因为我们要在纽约搞真人实境秀；也让我们能招募凯尔，因为我们要搭建酷炫的直播冗余硬件系统。所以或许这正是最合适的创意——因为它让我们组建了最佳团队，尽管作为商业模式它并不理想。

And the Justin TV idea, like, let us recruit Michael because it was we're because we were gonna be real world in New York, and it lets us recruit Kyle because we were gonna build cool livestreaming redundant hardware. And and so maybe it was exactly the right idea because it let us recruit the best team Right. Even though it was not the best idea as a business.

我还在想...Justin TV最初计划如何盈利？哦抱歉，这问题有点蠢。

I was also wondering how what was the idea for how Justin TV was ultimately gonna make money? Oh, sorry. Silly question.

盈利？盈利？！直到2008年金融危机前我们根本没考虑过这个。当时我们才惊觉：完蛋，好日子要结束了。谢天谢地，我们在经济崩盘前两个月从斯图尔特·阿尔索普那里融到了A轮续投资金。

Make money. Make money. We didn't we didn't think about making money until the two thousand eight financial crisis when we were like, oh, shit. The gravy train is about to stop. We we we managed to raise, thank god, a series a extension from Stuart Alsop, like, two months before the hammer came down.

因为当时我们B轮融资失败了——对现在的听众说明下，那时候的B轮指的是500万到700万美元规模的融资。

And, like because we'd failed. We tried to raise our series b our series b. Just at the time, for people listening now, series b meant a, like, 5,000,000 to $7,000,000 wrap.

嗯，没错。

Mhmm. Right.

是啊，完全不同的时代。现在的B轮...按现在的标准，我们当年说的B轮相当于现在的C轮融资了。

Yeah. That was not Different world. Series b is not a different world. Think think what would be now we have series a. Now that we would say, we raised our series c.

我们当时正试图进行A轮融资，但失败了。我认为Stuart信任我们，我们是他投资组合中最看好的项目。因此他决定加码，继续投资我们，最终我们从他那里获得了A轮扩展融资，外加硅谷银行提供的200万美元风险债务。真是谢天谢地。

We're trying to raise a series a. We failed to raise a series a. I think Stuart believed in us, and we were the best thing in his portfolio. And so he doubled down and and invested in us anyway, and we got a series a a extension from him plus $2,000,000 of venture debt from SVB. Thank God.

因为两个月后，我们就什么都得不到了。真的。那时我们会资金耗尽而倒闭。Justin TV经历过好几次这样的濒死时刻，只能说我们运气好——当然我们也够聪明，知道要立即拿钱。

Because two months later, we were not gonna get anything. Right. And we were gonna run out of money and die. Justin TV has several, like, near death moments like that where it's just like we we got lucky, and we well, lucky, we're also smart. We we knew, take the money now.

对，就是在资金枯竭前赶紧拿钱。

Yeah. Like, before you run out, like, take the money now.

嗯。

Yeah.

然后危机降临，我们意识到必须开始盈利了。那时我们才真正严肃地思考资金问题。不过...

And then the hammer came down, we're like, oh, we better start we better get profitable. And then we started thinking about money in a really serious way. But, like So what did

你们采取了什么行动？后来怎么做？

you do? What did you then do?

2008年危机爆发后四周，我们彻底转向了资金运作。这是公司历史上首次认真建立流程和指标体系，真正规范化管理。这其实对我们很有利。我们每月都会审核这种奇怪的混合损益表——既包含现金基准又包含权责发生制的财务报表。

The hammer comes down 2008. Four weeks later, we're we've pivoted completely to working on money. We we actually got serious for the first time in our company's history about, like, having process and metrics, and, like, we actually manage the company in a real way. It was really healthy for us, actually. We sat down every month with the p and l, which was this weird hybrid cash p and l slash actual income statement p and l.

我们称之为'迈克尔算法'。因为Mike想要的是现金流分析，但由于广告收入延迟到账，实际利润很难测算。所以我们采用成本按现金制、收入按权责制的混合方式——现在回想反而是正确的。嗯，就这样我们每月对着这个非标准会计准则的损益表...

Right? Because Mike we we called it Michael Math. What what Michael really wanted was a was a cash burn thing, but, like, the cash but our cash burn was so far from the because you get paid on advertising so much later, it was really hard to tell how much money you were actually making, and so we did this hybrid thing where our costs were on a cash basis, but our revenue was on a, like, accrual basis, which is, like was weird, but, actually, I think in retrospect, it was the right way to look at the company. Mhmm. You know, so we sit down with this weird, fucked up, non GAAP p and l.

每月例会时，我们会逐项审查这个'迈克尔算法'损益表：每个成本项都问'必须花吗？能减少吗？'可削减的立即执行或列入待办。收入项起初不多，我们就追问'如何提升？缺什么条件？'

Until we so we sit down with this this weird Michael Math p and l every month, and we'd go down every single cost line item, and we'd ask, do we need to spend this money? How could we spend less money on this? And if we thought we could do something to spend less, we would either cut it right away or we would, like, make an action item to go cut. And then we'd go down every revenue item, which in the beginning wasn't very many, and we'd ask, can we make this go higher? What what what is missing from making this go higher?

接着逐页分析网站：'这个页面/流程能否创造更多收益？'最后通常会列出27项待办任务分配执行。

What are the what are the best ideas to make this go up? And then we'd we'd go through every page on the website, and we'd ask, can we extract more money in some way from this web page that we are currently extracting and from this flow than we are currently extracting? And then that would turn into a list of, like, you know, 27 action items, and then we would distribute them to people, and then that would be then we'd go get them done.

那是

That's

相当有趣的管理系统。对，对。然后接下来一个月我们会回来，发现——哦，我们甚至绝望到不再对员工微观管理，转而直接寻求他们的帮助，这其实是个重大转变。

pretty interesting. The management system. Yeah. Yeah. And, like and then we'd come back then over the next month, and we would get oh, we also got desperate enough that we stopped micromanaging our employees, and we just started asking for their help, which was, like, also a big move.

我们还做了——我们从第一分钟就对员工完全透明。比如一开始就说：听着，银行里只剩14个月的现金储备，之后我们就完蛋了。这是烧钱速度。公司现在的目标就是扭转颓势，我们一定能做到。因为我们毫不怀疑——就像墙上有末日时钟在倒计时，但我们充满信心。

We did we we were oh, the other thing we did, we were super transparent with the employees from, like, minute one. We were like, so we have you know, at the beginning, in you know, we have fourteen months of cash in the bank, and then we're dead. Like, here's the burn rate. Our goal as a company is to pull out of this dive, and we're gonna do it. And because we didn't have any doubt, we we we're like, there's a doomsday clock on the wall, but, like, we were utterly confident.

不是说'我们完蛋了'，而是'这就是新目标，我们要这么做'。这过程中没人离职。我听说过有人陷入恶性循环，但我觉得关键在于——如果创始人慌了，员工会察觉，就像老鼠逃离沉船。

It wasn't like we're screwed. It's like, this is the new goal. This is what we're going to do. We didn't lose anyone through it. I I've heard of people who, like, enter a a downward spiral, but I think what happens is if the founders are scared, the employees see that, and it's rats leaving a sinking ship.

就在谷底时，我们成功扭转了局面，当时大概只剩8周资金周转期。就是从9周降到8周，然后又从8周回升到9周、10周...那就是触底反弹点。员工都看得见，因为衰退速度从每周1周降到半周，再到四分之一周，就像滴答滴答的时钟。

Right. At the bottom of the dive, we pulled out of the dive with, like, I think, two months of runway eight weeks of runway left. When the when the that's when it it went it went, you know, from nine weeks to eight weeks, and then from eight weeks back up to nine weeks to ten weeks to, like and that's that was we hit the bottom. And but the employees could see that because the rate of decline had gone from a week per week to half a week to week per week to a quarter of a week per week. Like, it was like tick tick tick.

你会看到我们最终用透明方式管理公司，目标非常清晰，并且动员大家共同实现。员工开始主动创新，为公司开发产品。比如我们有个付费墙的构想——在非英语国家无法通过广告盈利，就让用户观看5分钟预览后付费。最初版本很糟糕，但Tim主动接手进行首次A/B测试，都没和我们商量就直接行动——幸亏如此，要是经过我们讨论可能反而会搞砸。

You'd see us sort of like, and we finally were managing the company in a transparent way where it was very obvious what our goals were, and it was we were enlisting people in doing the goals. Employees started, like, inventing stuff and, like, building things for the company. Like, We had this idea for this product that basically was a paywall, where if you weren't in an English speaking country where we could monetize on advertising, we just made you pay for the service, after a five minute preview. And that product was not very good when we first launched it, and Tim just sort of took it upon himself to run our first AB tests and actually experiment with the thing, and just didn't really talk to us about it, just went and did it, thankfully. Because if we talked to us about it, we probably would have screwed it up.

本质上我们终于开始解决问题。像JustinTV这类消费互联网产品，如何实现增长并非科学过程。如果你是Facebook，拥有超高黏性产品，可以组建专门的增长团队往漏斗顶端引流。但我们产品黏性不足，如何增长...说实话我也不知道。

And, And basically, we got we were finally work the problem with products like Justin TV and in general consumer Internet is, like, how do you make something like that grow is not a scientific process. Like, it it is if you're Facebook and you have an incredibly sticky product, and you can have a growth team whose whole job is to, like, put people on top of the funnel. Yeah. But we were not an incredibly sticky product. And so how do you make us grow was, like, a really it I don't know.

只能不断试错，有些方法有效有些无效。这是个反馈极慢的环境。而财务问题最终让我们像运营真正的企业那样运作——可以设定目标并实现，下个月又能达成新目标，就像家正规公司。

You just try stuff, and some stuff works, some stuff doesn't. It was, like, very it's it's very it's very low feedback environment. Whereas, like, the money thing, finally, it was like running running an enterprise company, like like you're running a real company. Like, you could set goals and then achieve them, and then the next month, you could achieve the next goals you set, like like a real company.

难以想象。

Imagine that.

是啊，这对我们非常有益。接下来18个月我们实现了盈利，太棒了。这为Twitch奠定了基础——Twitch几乎完全靠JustinTV的现金流提供资金。

Yeah. And so it was, like, really healthy for us. You know, so we got profitable over the next, like, eighteen months. Amazing. And that really set the stage for Twitch because the way we funded Twitch was Twitch was funded almost entirely out of cash flow off of Justin TV.