Harj Taggar，Y Combinator合伙人

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。在本期播客中，我们将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企业。欢迎成为我们的隐形听众，一起聆听创始人们的真实故事。卡罗琳，我简直无法形容对今天这期节目的期待。

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. Carolyn, I cannot tell you how excited I am for today's show.

因为今天节目嘉宾是哈吉·塔加尔。他不仅是Y Combinator的合伙人，我们认识哈吉几乎从YC创立之初就开始了——2007年2月他和表弟卡尔弗一起申请入驻，我们当时就投资了他们。

That is because today we have Hajj Taggar on the show. He is a partner at Y Combinator, but we have known Harge forever, practically since YC got started. Great. He applied with his cousin, Culver, in 02/2007. We funded him.

但我有太多问题了，光是想到要开始采访就兴奋不已。欢迎你哈吉，热烈欢迎！

But I have so many questions. I'm already getting excited to just get started. So welcome, Harge. Welcome, Harge.

谢谢，非常感谢邀请我。

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

说起来挺有意思的哈吉，我就在想——你大学毕业后的整个职业生涯，某种程度上始终围绕着Y Combinator运转。所以我们有很多内容要聊呢。

So, Harge, it's kind of funny. I was thinking, basically, your entire professional career, you know, post college has been in the orbit of Y Combinator somehow. So we have a we have a lot to cover.

基本上整个成年人生都和双鱼座（注：此处'Pisces'应为'YC'的口误）纠缠在一起了。

Basically, entire adult life has been intertwined with Pisces.

你有没有想象过——如果没有YC会怎样？比如你会从事什么非YC相关的工作？

Do Do you ever do you ever wonder what it's like what it would be like if you didn't have it? Like, what what you will do non YC?

我甚至...根本无法...

I can't I can't even can't

理解...或者说设想...

fathom even catch

我很少这样评价别人，但我觉得哈吉比现在的我更懂Y Combinator。既然我们的渊源要追溯到那么久以前——就从最初说起吧，2007年冬天你和后来创办了YC系公司Zeus的卡尔弗来剑桥面试时，我们就相识了。

up with say this about many people, but I think Harge knows why why Combinator better than I do. Certainly at this point. You know? So because we we're gonna start at the very beginning because we go back so so long ago. I met you when you came to Cambridge to interview for the winter o seven batch with Culver, who went on to also found another YC startup called Zeus.

你们是通过一家叫Bozo的公司申请的，网址是b0s0.com。

And you guys applied with a company called Bozo, b0s0.com.

这名字太糟了。我需要那个名字。

Terrible name. I need that name.

但问题是，我得向收听这期播客的年轻听众解释，对Carolyn和我来说，Bozo指的是小丑波佐（Bozo the clown），拼写是b-o-z-o。

But the thing is I I have to explain for the younger people who listen to this podcast that Bozo for Carolyn me and me means bozo the clown, b o z o.

好吧。但让我打断一下。是bozo。Bozo。哦，是bozo。

Okay. But let let me stop you there. It's bozo. Bozo. Oh, it's bozo.

旧金山机场的移民官也以为是小丑波佐。他们并不觉得这有什么了不起。

The immigration officers at SFO Airport also thought it was Bozo the clown. They weren't impressed.

他们怎么...那正是我想问的问题之一。我现在就直接问你吧，当你说出这个名字时，移民官有什么反应？

What did they what did they that was one of my questions. So I'm just gonna ask you now. What did the immigration officers say when you said that?

我们当初觉得...这个想法最初是Corvio和我在大学时的副业项目。我们想，学校里没有一个让学生之间买卖教材或其他物品的平台。这在大学生中是个挺常见的点子。我们还自以为很聪明，因为b-o-s-o是'在线买卖'（buy or sell online）的缩写。而在英国，Bozo the clown并没有像在美国那样的负面含义。

So so we we thought that well, like, the the whole idea started as Corvio and I's side project in college. It was, oh, like, there's no way for us to, like, buy and sell, textbooks or things to other college students. They're pretty, it's a quite common college student idea. And we thought we were gonna be really smart because, b o s o was an acronym for buy or sell online. And Bozo the clown didn't have the same connotations in England as it does in The US.

所以我们当时很高兴能拿到bozo.com这个域名，就直接用它作为公司名。后来我们搬到美国时——我有点跳讲了——2007年1月我们搬到UIC时，其实还没有签证，只是用旅游签证待了三个月。移民官问：'你们来干什么？'我们说就是来开些会议，学习如何创业。

And so we're really happy that we were able to get, like, bozo.com and just call that our call that our company name. And then when we moved, I was jumping ahead a little bit, but, like, when we moved out to UIC in January 2007, we didn't actually have a visa. So we were just there for three months on the tourist visa. And the immigration officer says, hey, like, right, like, what are you doing here? And we're like, oh, we're like, we're just here to have some meetings and, like, learn about how to do startups.

对方问：'你们有公司吗？'我们说有的。问叫什么名字，回答'Bozo'。然后他们立刻就把我们带到了二次审查区。

Like, oh, like, do you have a company? We're like, yep. What's it called? Bozo. And they sent us there immediately to the second three.

你确定是因为这个名字，而不是因为他有家公司？

You sure it's because of the name and not the he had a company?

我确信肯定有一大堆因素，但我不认为名字起了好作用。哦

I'm sure I'm sure there were a bunch of factors, but I don't think the name helped. Oh

天哪。太搞笑了。但如果你不认识小丑波扎，你可能不会觉得这好笑。他真的很烦人。总之，你当时是先飞去面试的。

my gosh. It's so funny. But you wouldn't really think it's funny if you didn't know Boza the Clown. He's, like, so annoying. Anyway, so you first, though, flew to interview.

你还记得在花园街办公室的面试吗？

Do you remember your interview at the Garden Street office?

记得。那是很久以前的事了。大概是在2006年11月左右吧。当时我们在波士顿，面试前一晚，所有参加面试的人都聚在一起吃了晚饭。

I do. Well, it's as long. This was so this would have been, like, probably around like November 2006, something like that. Yeah. And we were in Boston and we the night before, a bunch of the people who were interviewing all got together for dinner.

我清楚地记得那次聚会。那是我第一次见到Weebly的创始人们。

I definitely remember that. So, that's where I met the Weebly founders for the first time.

大卫·里森科上过节目。对。

David Rysenko was on the show. Yeah.

哦，酷。太棒了。戴夫当时在场，还有克里斯、丹。

Oh, cool. Awesome. Yeah. Dave was there. Chris, Dan.

实际上，甚至在面试前，那真是个很棒的团队。那是我们第一次和整桌的初创公司创始人共进晚餐，每个人都很有趣且充满热情。感觉就像，嘿，即使我们进不了YC，光是认识这么多其他创始人就已经很值了，毕竟我们之前认识的不多。至于面试本身，是的，我记得。

It was actually just, I mean, even before the interview, was actually just a really cool group. It was our first time being around, like, an entire dinner table of startup founders, and everyone was just, like, very interesting and really into it. And it just felt like, hey. Like, even if we don't get into YC, this was, like, really worth it just to meet a bunch of other startup founders, which we didn't know many of. And then the interview itself, yes, I remember.

我隐约记得地点是...花园广场？

I remember sort of what's the it's it's Garden Square?

花园街。在

Garden Street. In

花园街。就是那里。

Garden Street. That's it.

在剑桥。对。

In Cambridge. Yeah.

我记得，对，我记得当时进来时的情形。我记得你、保罗、特雷弗、罗伯特。YC面试最让我们印象深刻的是——我刚大学毕业，科维奥毕业也才六个月。在英国时，我们习惯了没人把我们当回事。

I remember, yeah, I remember coming in. I remember, yeah, you, Paul, Trevor, Robert. I I think that really stood out to us about the YC interview is we were like, mean, I had just graduated college. Corvio was, like, six months out of college, and we were really used to in England. Everybody nobody actually taking us seriously.

每次我们说'嘿我们有这个创业项目'时，无论是寻求投资还是找客户，都没人认真对待，就像对待小孩一样。他们会说'哦，我很乐意指导你们'或者'我有个咨询业务，如果你们能凑点零钱，可以按月付现金买我的咨询服务'。那会儿真的很糟糕。而YC面试是第一次让我们感觉自己被当作成年人对待，大家真的对我们的想法和后续发展充满热情。

Like anytime we were trying to say, hey, we've got this startup and either we were trying to look for investment or we're trying to get customers, no one would take us very seriously and just sort of treat us like children Yeah. And say, oh, like, know, I'd be happy to mentor you if you'd like or just I I have like a a advisory business that I if, you know, if you guys can scrape together some pennies and I'll put the you know, I'll you can pay me monthly in cash for my advisory services. It was just like it was pretty grim. And the YC interview is the first time it just felt like we were treated like adults. And, actually, there was just excitement around the idea and building on the idea.

这对我们完全是新体验。我记得保罗当时说'嘿，你们这个——如果能让所有学生都上你们的交易网站，等他们毕业后还继续使用，那你们就是在干掉eBay啊'。

Was a totally new experience for us. Like, I I just remember Paul being like, oh, hey. Like, this is not like you know, you guys are gonna kill eBay. Like, if you if you get all the students on your trading website, then, like, you keep them when they graduate. And then, like, the next thing you know, you're eBay.

就像'你们要干掉eBay了'。这是我们第一次听到有人用振奋人心的方式讨论我们的事业，而不是被轻视或当成小孩。

Like, you're killing eBay. And it was just the first time we'd have, like, an energizing conversation about what we're working on versus, like, sort of being belittled or or treated like kids.

面试时有人对品牌名提过意见吗？

Did anyone in the interview say anything about the name?

现在记不清了。应该没有吧。毕竟只有十分钟时间，可能...

I can't remember now. I I don't think so. I feel like maybe there's there's only ten minutes, so maybe

可能没来得及说。

Maybe there's no time.

没机会提这个。

To pass something.

我们当时可没工夫开玩笑。

We we had no time for jokes.

没时间开玩笑。

No time for jokes.

我自己现在住在英国，简直无法想象2006年2月的初创企业圈是什么样子。说实话，那时候应该几乎不存在这种生态。

Living in England now myself, I cannot even imagine what the start up scene was like in 02/2006. It must have been practically nonexistent, frankly.

是啊。

Yep.

对。所以我们接纳了你，现在你们要过来了。我是说——如果我说错了请纠正——你来自一个相当极端的移民家庭背景对吧？父母牺牲了很多。嗯。你去了牛津，学的是法律。

Yeah. So we accept you, and now you guys are coming over. I I mean, I think correct me if I'm wrong, but you came from a pretty extreme version of, like, the immigrant parent scenario, right, where they sacrificed a lot. Yep. You went to Oxford, you were you studied law.

当你告诉父母'我们要搬去加州三个月，为我和科尔创立的这家初创公司工作'时，他们怎么想的？

When you said we are moving to California for three months to work on this startup that Cole and I have, What did your parents think?

那时候我们其实不怎么说话了，挺尴尬的因为我还住在家里。背景就像你说的，我父母是移民，两人都没上过大学。

At this point, they weren't really like, we weren't really on speaking terms. I think it was, which is awkward because I was living with them. But the yeah. The back backdrops where you said where, yeah. My parents were by the immigrants and they both like, they didn't have like college educations.

他们搬到英国后做着最低工资的工作。他们把全部希望都寄托在我和妹妹身上，指望我们上大学，在安全稳定体面的公司获得高薪工作。这就是他们对我毕业后的期待。

They moved to England. They worked minimum wage jobs. Like, it was, and, like, all their hopes and dreams were that my sister and I would go to college and get, like, well paying jobs at, like, safe, stable, respectable companies. Yeah. And so, that's really what they wanted for me when I graduated.

创业这件事从来不是个深思熟虑的决定，不是那种'我就是要当创始人不要高薪工作'的宣言。事情就这么一步步发展，YC成了最后的催化剂——我们真该试试，横跨半个地球去看看能不能成事。但在父母眼里，我那段时间在家就是整天抱着电脑无所事事。

And when I like, the startup thing had never it was never like a deliberate decision of, hey. I I really wanna be like a startup founder and not get, a really well paying job. It just kept kind of going and going, and then y c was, like, the final catalyst of, hey. Like, this is something we should really give a shot at and and move halfway across the world, to see if we can make it something real. But my parents at this point, I think I've been at I was at home, like, from their perspective not doing much because I was just on my laptop a lot at home.

所以我觉得...实际上告诉他们西蒙要给我们投资（虽然钱不多）而且我们要出发了，这件事给了他们某种可信度认证。至少我不再是赖在家里了。既然地球另一端有人愿意投资，或许这事真有搞头。

Yeah. And so I think they will I I think actually telling them that Simone was about to give us money even though it wasn't very much, but, like, just giving money and that we're going somewhere. Like, it it gave sort of, some stamp of credibility to it. Well, at least he's not, like, at home. And if someone halfway across the world is willing to invest, then maybe there's something here.

所以我觉得他们其实有点欣慰，因为这感觉像是某种进步。对他们来说，肯定比待在家里无所事事要好得多。

So I think they were actually kind of pleased that it it it felt like some form of progress. To them, definitely better, than kinda be being at home not seeming to be doing much.

所以我脑补科尔父母打电话给哈贾父母，然后他们都会说'你儿子在毁了我儿子'。然后对方回'不，是你儿子在毁了我儿子'。当时有这种情况吗？

So I'm imagining Cole's parents calling up Harja's parents and then they all be like, your son is ruining my son. And it's like, no. Your son's ruining my son. Was there any of that?

呃，我很久没想这些事了。公平地说，科维兹的妈妈自己有点...她开了家旅行社，比较有创业精神。我父母也开过婴儿服装店——说来好笑——但完全没成功，最后负债累累还了好多年。所以他们特别反对创业这回事。

Well, it's like I haven't thought about this stuff for a long time. I think there was a little bit I mean, to be fair, I think Corviz's mom herself was sort of like she started like a travel agency business, and she had a little bit more of an entrepreneurial streak. My parents had started a, like, baby clothes store, funnily enough, at some point, and it hadn't gone well at all. Like, it end they'd end up in debt and, like, spent years paying it back. So that's why they were very anti the whole idea of starting a business.

天啊。

Oh my gosh.

但科维尔妈妈更开明些。实际情况是科维尔妈妈在劝说我父母：'让他们试试吧，尝试新事物很酷，失败了随时可以回来找工作'。

Yeah. But Corvier's mom, I think was a little bit more surprising. So if anything, the dynamic was Corvier's mom sort of talking my parents. This is like, let them like, let them have a shot at it. It's cool that they're gonna try something and if it doesn't work, they can always like come back and get jobs.

哇，我完全不知道。所以你们是临时搬去加州...不该说搬，你们拿的是旅游签证？所以是去...

Wow. I did not know that. So you you moved to California temporary I shouldn't say moved. You were on a tourist visa. So you visited

那不是旅游签证。

That's not a tourist visa.

加州，而你父母对这情况最多算不冷不热。后来夏天进展顺利，你们做出了产品，Bozo的演示日很成功对吧？

California, and your parents were sort of lukewarm at best on the situation. So the summer went well. You built the product and demo day was a success for Bozo. Right?

对，算是成功的Octomatic。我们在项目期间转型了——那时候'转型'这词还没流行起来。

Yep. Kind so it was a successful Octomatic. We ended up pivoting during the batch. I mean, before pivoting, think was really a a popular term.

等等，我知道你们改名叫Octomatic，但具体发生了什么？

Wait a second. I know that you changed your name to Octomatic, but wait. What happened?

最初，我们申请YC时的构想本质上是一个面向英国大学生的学生交易平台。实际上在申请时我们已经取得了一些进展——比如开始在英格兰部分顶尖高校小有名气，人们也开始使用它。这在当时对YC来说可能很罕见，毕竟我们确实已经把这个产品推出去了。

So originally, the idea we applied to YC with was essentially a student marketplace for college students in England. And we actually had some traction when we applied to YC with that. It's like we'd started getting known at some, like, some of the top colleges in England and people were sort of using it. So, which I'm probably gonna guess for YC back then was unusual. Like, we did we did actually have this thing launched.

人们确实在使用它。但正如我在面试时所说，真正令人兴奋的是——这可能会成为eBay的竞争对手。当我们参加YC晚宴时，仅仅是周围的环境就让我们的个人野心膨胀了许多。我们遇到各种初创公司创始人，偶遇Facebook早期员工，听他们谈论'Facebook将征服世界'的言论。

People were were using it. But, like like I said, during the interview, the thing that was really exciting was, hey. Like, this could be a competitor to eBay. And I when we came out and started doing the YC dinners, just our own personal level of ambition went up a lot just being around. Like, we were meeting all these, like, startup founders and, like, bump into, like, early employees at Facebook and just hearing them talk about, oh, yeah.

在2007年说'全世界都会用Facebook'听起来很疯狂，但这种氛围极大提升了我们的野心。我记得和Paul进行办公时间时，我们说：'我们一直在思考这个问题，对打造能与eBay竞争的产品充满热情，想构建真正宏大的事物。但让我们担忧的是，目前我们只是英国大学生的专属平台。'

Like, we're just, like, this thing's gonna just Facebook's gonna take over the world. Everyone in the world's gonna be using Facebook, which in, like, 2007 sounded, like, insane to say, but it was just like this level of ambition went up. So I remember we did office hours with Paul, we said, hey. Like, we've just been thinking about this a lot, and we are really excited about trying to build something that could compete with eBay and just generally build something that's really big. What worries us is that we're a thing for college students in The UK.

仅英国市场本身可能不够大。我们热爱美国，想在这里发展——这里是一切的核心。但美国大学生交易平台的概念已经存在，很多人都在做这个。

The UK probably by itself is not like a a big enough market. We love being in America. We wanna be in America. Like, this is where the center everything is, and we wanna build something for this market. But the idea of, like, a trading site for college students in The US, like, already existed.

已经有一大批人在做类似业务。所以我们很困惑：是继续发展现有模式（但担心会局限为英国学生的小众产品），还是趁在硅谷的机会追求更宏大的构想？那次办公时间得出的结论是：与其直接做交易平台，不如先做前端工具——让线上销售变得极其简单。

There were, like, a bunch of, a bunch of people already doing that. And so we were a little bit like, what do we do? Like, we had this idea which, like, could keep running with, but we worry it's just gonna be like, it's gonna be like a a niche UK student thing or, and what we wanna do now that we're out here in the valley is, like, kind of build something more ambitious. And the the idea that came out of that, the office hours before, was, well, what if, like, we were just instead of trying to be a marketplace right now, we were like a a front end. Like, we we really made it easy for people to sell things online.

已有企业联系我们想入驻平台，但因非学生身份被拒绝。我们突然想到：如果为所有中小企业打造极简的在线销售工具呢？从这些企业的咨询中，我们已经积累了大量相关认知。

And businesses had already been approaching us to, like, hey. We wanna sell on your marketplace, and we turned them away because they weren't students. We were like, oh, what, like, what if we actually just made it really easy for any small business to sell anything online? And we already knew a lot about that from these businesses coming and telling us how they might wanna sell things. Mhmm.

如果能先让企业使用我们的工具，未来就能构建交易平台吸引买家。这虽是个宏观构想，但契合我们当时的资源。最终我们进行了'微转型'——保持构建大型交易平台的愿景，但不再局限于英国学生市场。

And if we could get all the businesses using our tool, eventually, could build a marketplace and let anyone come and buy those things. So it's it's a bit of it was like a a high level thought, but it sort of it mapped onto what we had at the time. And so we ended up doing it like a I'd call it like a mini pivot. Like, we were still fundamentally the same vision of how we wanna build this really big marketplace. But when it's not gonna be just for UK students.

我们将专注于打造卓越的在线销售体验，开始在硅谷寻找企业用户。YC期间我们大量接触eBay大卖家——有趣的是同期学员Wayne Crosby的亲戚就是资深卖家。

We're just gonna focus on a really cool experience for anyone to sell stuff online, we'll start trying to find businesses in the like, in The US, in the Valley to start using our software. And so that's what we did a lot of during YCE. We went and we found anyone who was already, like, an eBay power seller. Funny enough, some of our batchmates had, like, I think, like, Wayne Crosby center. I I I remember, like, his uncle or aunt or some relative.

我们与她深入交流，她抱怨在eBay多商品销售的困难：'如果能简化或自动化流程，我能达成更多交易。'于是YC期间我们密集访谈各类线上卖家，同时将品牌从Bozo更名为Auktomatic（自动拍卖的缩写）。

He was in our batch. And, like, he was, like, a really hardcore eBay seller. And so we we spoke to her, and she had all these, like, things. She was really up. Like, she's always so hard to sell multiple things on eBay, and, like, it's so frustrating.

其实这个名字本身还行，但我的英国口音让它听起来特别拗口。

And if you could, like, make this easier for me or automate this for me, I I could make so many more sales. And so we just started doing a lot of that during YT, like talking to any small business that was selling stuff online. We changed the name from Bozo to Auktomatic, which is also another terrible name. It was it's supposed to stand for automatic auctions. I mean, actually, I mean, would have been an okay name if I didn't have an English accent, but like in an English accent, it's just like incredibly like awkward for me to pronounce.

所以这段历史并不怎么光彩。

So the the the the history wasn't great.

说自动的。

Say automatic.

自动的。所以大家都认为这是自动的，WordPress与自动竞拍平台的自动功能对比。

Automatic. And so everyone thinks it's the and everyone would think it's automatic, the WordPress WordPress thing versus automatic for automatic auctions.

我很好奇你们在演示日那天融了多少钱，还记得吗？

I wanna I was curious how much you guys raised at demo day. Do you remember?

不多。两位天使投资人Paul Buhide和Chris Saka投了我们。加上YC的钱，总共大概25万美元左右吧。

Not very much. Like, so it's like the I the two angels who invested were Paul Buhide and Chris Saka. And so, I think we probably between them, raised like a couple of 100 k. So I think between, like, the YC money and those two, maybe, like, $250,000, like, something something like that in total.

但早期这些钱也够用了对吧，Harge？

But that's all you need early early on, though, Harge. Right?

是啊，我们开销很小。就我们几个人，工资也开得低，基本没什么成本。

Yeah. Like, you don't need very much. It was just us. We weren't paying ourselves very much. We didn't really have any costs.

那时候几十万美金就算大钱了。不像现在种子轮动不动就几百万，当年能融个几十万已经很了不起了。

So yeah. And I think I think back then, that was like a decent chunk of money. Like, the the seed rounds weren't big like they are now. So even raising, like, a few $100,000 was kind of like a a big deal.

没错，我记得那时候就是这样。既然我记不清了，提醒下我Collison兄弟是怎么加入的？

Yeah. That's how I remember things back in those days. How remind me then since I clearly don't remember this story very well. How did the young Collison brothers get involved?

就像我说的，我们把点子转型成『为小企业打造线上销售软件』。当时eBay是最大平台，我们通过对接eBay API帮卖家轻松上架商品，但最终目标是让用户因为操作简便而选择我们。

So like I said, so we changed our idea into, hey. Like, we're just gonna build really good software for any small business to sell anything online. And, like, in particular, at that point, eBay is the big marketplace. EBay had an API. We'd connect to the eBay API to make it really easy for eBay sellers to post stuff onto eBay at first, but we had this dream that one day it would just be like, we'll get them because it's easy to post onto eBay.

但等我们规模足够大时，我们只需要在那里设置一个按钮，点击就能发布到我们的市场平台，然后就能获取所有库存。这就是常规思路。后来我们完成了YC孵化。不过我想这个故事的另一部分是，面试时我和科尔其实都不是程序员。我记得当时YC从未投资过非程序员背景的创始人。

But once we're once we're big enough, we'll just have like a button there to click on to, like, post to, like, our marketplace, and we'll just get all the inventories. So this is like the usual idea. And then we finish YC. Oh, but I think so the other I guess the other part of this story is when you interviewed us, neither Cole and I were really programmers. And so I remember at the time, like, YC, I never funded anyone that wasn't a programmer.

我...我曾获得过高中物理竞赛奖项。所以记得保罗说，你物理这么好，应该能学会编程。于是投资我们的条件就变成了——我必须学会编程。

I I I'd won something like high school physics prizes. And so I remember Paul saying, like, like, you're good at Yeah. He's like, you're good at physics. You can probably figure out how to program. And so, like, the condition of funding us was like, I had to learn to program.

所以我们的YC经历是创业和学编程的双线作战。有趣的是，保罗介绍我认识的另一位YC校友斯里尼——这个名字有点模糊了——

And so that's a our YC experience was a, like, a combination of trying to do a start up and me learning to program, which, funny enough, another YC alumni that Paul had introduced me to, do Srini? This is total, like like, Srini Yes. Like, blurry.

我记得。他们后来做了个公司，名字类似'婚礼什么的'？他们当时具体做什么项目来着？

I do. They did a company that ultimately was called, like, the wedding something. What what was the company that they did?

你们当初投资他们的项目叫UOS。他们2007年真的在浏览器里开发操作系统，三个硬核工程师做这个疯狂的项目。后来不知怎么转型成了婚礼策划网站。

The the idea you funded them with, I think, was called UOS. They were literally UOS. They were building an operating system in a browser. Like, there were three really hardcore engineers in 2007 building a whole operating system in a browser, which was crazy. For some reason, they pivoted into a wedding planning site, but that came off.

这转折真有意思。

That's funny. That's funny. But

对，他们编程实力超强，我记得。

Yeah. They were super duper programmers. I remember that.

后来斯里尼主动当我编程导师。我记得花了很多时间跟他学写代码建网站。到演示日时我们好歹做出了能运行的软件，还有用户数据。

Yeah. So Srini Srini offered to be, like, my programming tutor. And so I just remembered, like, spending a lot of time with Srini teaching me how to code and build a a site. But and we had enough that we had something. We had users, and by demo day, we could we could show that we could build software.

但我清楚如果要加速发展，我们需要顶级程序员。跟斯里尼学习后我明白自己短期内达不到专业水平。YC结束后我发邮件说：'你们可能需要更好的程序员。你们的愿景是吸引买家到固定佣金的市场平台，而刚好有个厉害程序员申请了下期YC——'

But I always knew that, like, if we were really gonna pick up the pace, we probably needed, like, like, a a great programmer. And, from Srini teaching media programmer, I was like, there's it's gonna take me years before I am as good as anyone. This and so Paul, the after YC was over, I remember sending an email saying, hey. Like, you guys both, like, kinda could probably use, a better programmer, and your idea is to one day, like, have all of the buyers come to your marketplace because you have the set aside fixed. Well, this other person just applied to the next YC batch, and they're a really good programmer.

他们的项目像是维基百科+eBay，让社区编辑商品信息提高准确性，优化评价系统。团队就他和16岁的弟弟。保罗建议我们聊聊看能否合并，因为双方刚好互补所需。

And their idea is, like, Wikipedia meets eBay where it's, like, all of the product listings you get on eBay, but, like, it lets a community of people edit them for, like, accuracy and with, like, better reviews. And it's just him and his, like, 16 year old brother. Maybe you should talk to them and just see if you guys have anything in common and if you wanna, like like, I I think Paul suggested merging. We were just like, why don't you just, like, chat and see if you have in common? Because it seems like you both have something the other person needs.

显然，那会儿是帕特里克和约翰·科里森。对。这应该是2007年。为了重置我们的签证，我回到了伦敦。帕特里克和约翰在爱尔兰，帕特里克飞过来和科尔还有我在伦敦度周末，就是为了聊聊。

And so and that was obviously Patrick and John Collison. And so Yeah. And this is what this must be 2007. And so to reset our visa, and I had gone back to London. Patrick and John were in Ireland, and Patrick flew to meet Cole and I in London for a weekend to just talk.

那时候的约翰·约翰，我记得他大概才16岁。他在YC的申请名单上，但我不认为约翰真的打算辍学去创业。对吧？我觉得约翰尼更像是把YC当作暑期项目，但帕特里克确实需要一个真正的联合创始人，让整件事看起来更靠谱。于是我们在伦敦和帕特里克度过了一个周末，讨论他做的东西和我们做的东西。

John John at this point was I think he was, like, literally 16. And so he was, like, on the YC application, but I don't think John was John wasn't, like, serious about dropping out of high school to do the start up. Right? And so I think Johnny was more like a he would have done YC as a summer project, but Patrick really needed, like, a real cofounder to sort of make make the whole thing seem more real. And so we spent the weekend in London with Patrick just talking about what he'd built and what we'd built.

我们相处得特别好。我是说，即便才18岁，他显然已经才华横溢了。奇怪的是，我们俩都有个宏大的愿景——觉得eBay糟透了，我们真心想打造一个能与之竞争的平台。我们有个叫Automatic的项目，能让任何小企业或想在线卖东西的人轻松实现。而帕特里克的项目叫Shopper，就是那种……嘿。

We just got along really well. Like, I mean, was clearly, like, even at 18, was clearly brilliant. And bizarrely, like, we both actually had this, like, big picture vision of eBay sucks, and we really wanna, like, build something that competes with eBay. And it's like, he we have this automatic thing, which is a way for any small business or anyone who wants to sell lots of stuff online to do that really easily. And Patrick's thing was called Shopper, which was, oh, hey.

它能让人们用超酷的方式创建产品列表，详细展示产品亮点。我们当时就觉得，这两样东西完全可以融合。我们仨相处融洽，都想回旧金山发展。那为什么不干脆一起干呢？

Like, it's just like a really cool way for people to create, like, product listings and, like, have lots of detail about, like, why it's a really interesting product. And we're like, oh, yeah. These two things could totally merge at some point, We get along pretty well. All three of us wanna go back to San Francisco and be there. So why don't we just, like, do it together and work on this thing together?

于是我们三人就这么组队了，后来成了Automatic。帕特里克算是Automatic的第三位联合创始人。约翰来度过了夏天，但后来还是回学校了，这完全可以理解。

And so the three of us sort of just teamed up that became, like, Automatic. Like, Patrick was, like, the third cofounder of Automatic. John came out for the summer, but then went back to school, understandably.

我们后来在兄弟俩上《社交雷达》节目时问过这事，我最爱听的就是他穿着条纹袜配短裤扮未成年，以无人陪伴的未成年人身份坐飞机的故事。那肯定是为了做Octomatic的工作。

He we asked him about this when the brothers were on the social radars, and that's my favorite story about how he dressed with, like, striped socks and wore short, like, shorts so he looked like a minor. And Flew was an unaccompanied minor. That must have been to do his work with Octomatic.

是啊。哦，那只是好玩

Yeah. I Oh, that was just a fun

好玩 当时

fun Were

你们是不是搞邪教啊？居然让16岁孩子在公司干活？什么情况？

you in a cult ever like, what? We have a 16 year old working on our company. What's happening?

是有点...天啊，这都多久以前的事了。但你知道，帕特里克实在太出类拔萃了，所以我们觉得他弟弟大概率也不简单。对。没错。

It was a little oh, man. This is so long ago, but I you know, the thing was Patrick was just so clearly exceptional in every way that we were sort of it wasn't too much of a leap to believe that his brother would probably be exceptional. Yeah. Yes. No.

遗憾的是，我们第一次见到约翰时，心想，哦，我们以为他16岁，而不是12岁。但当他开始交谈时，很明显这两兄弟非常特别。

Sadly, we first saw John, were like, oh, well, we thought he was 16, not 12. Yeah. Like but I I as soon as he started talking to him, it was clear that they the the two brothers were pretty special.

哇，好吧。那后来Octomatic怎么样了？

Wow. Okay. So then what happened to Octomatic?

我想我们大概有六个月的时间，过得非常开心。软件在逐步完善，用户也在增加。虽然没有爆发式增长，但确实在稳步前进。

I think we kind of had I think for about six months, we had a lot of like, it was it was just fun. Like, the software was coming along. It was building. We were getting more users. Like, it it was never exploding, but it was sort of it was making progress.

从根本上说，我们完全沉浸在创业体验中。住在这个小公寓里工作生活，虽然不太整洁，但感觉很有趣。到了年底，我们意识到增长并不快，而且我们开发的软件是面向在线销售大量商品的用户，但这并不适用于我们任何人。

I think fundamentally, we just, like, like, it it was, like, the full on startup experience. We're, like, living and working in this like tiny apartment. It wasn't super clean, but it was just like it just felt like fun. I think towards the end of the year, there was just sort of an aspect of weed. We weren't growing really that fast, and we'd sort of realized that we were building this software for people who sold lots of stuff online, which didn't actually apply to any of us.

我们中没有人是eBay的强力卖家，也没有人经营在线销售业务。因此，为了决定开发什么功能，我们总是依赖他人。我们会花时间开发一些东西，然后去询问这些商家是否符合他们的需求。

None of us were actually like eBay power sellers. None of us have like a business selling things online. And so to figure out what to build, we were always relying on other people. Like, we'd always have to be like, okay, like, we'll we'll spend like some time building something and then we'd go and talk to, like, one of these businesses and be like, oh, hey. Like, is this what you wanted?

大多数时候，他们会说差不多，但不完全符合。然后我们会问他们真正想要什么，再回去开发，反复这个过程。到了年底，我们意识到，虽然我们对此充满热情，但这并不是为我们自己开发的产品。

And most of the time, they'd be like, kind of, but not quite. And then we'd be like, oh, okay. Like, tell us what it is that you actually want, and then we'd go back and build that and come back and just kind of repeat the same process. And I think that as we got towards the end of that year, I think it decided, Dawning, I was like, we're super excited about this. Like, this wasn't really something we were building for ourselves.

对。

Right.

这有点令人沮丧，因为我们无法完全信任自己的直觉来决定开发什么，总是需要去询问别人。我们的士气和能量开始下降。帕特里克已经从MIT请假，他开始考虑是否应该回去，因为项目没有增长，他对继续工作也不太兴奋。

And it was a little frustrating to feel like we couldn't really trust our instincts on what to build, that we always have to go and ask other people what it is that they wanted. And I think our energy, morale was starting to get a bit low. I think Patrick had the like Patrick has sort taken a leave of absence from MIT. I think he was starting to think about, like, maybe I should go go back to MIT. Like, this thing's not really growing and I'm not that excited about working on it.

我和Cool开始考虑其他事情。当时Facebook平台刚刚推出，社交是热门话题。每次我们尝试与投资者讨论我们的项目，没人感兴趣，因为电子商务和赚钱的业务并不吸引人。

Cool. And I were like, like, we started thinking about other stuff. I think, like, at the Facebook platform have launched, like, social was, like, the big thing. So anytime we try and talk to any investors about what we're doing, no one cared because ecommerce and and making like, businesses that made money were just not interesting. It was Yeah.

大家都在问，你们的病毒系数是多少？这个项目如何实现病毒式增长？我们的能量水平很低，但通过一系列巧合事件，我们收到了收购要约。现在这被称为收购雇佣，但那时这个词还没发明。我们收到了一家加拿大公司的收购要约，他们拥有许多电子商务域名，专门寻找帮助在线销售的工具，以便整合到他们已有的市场中。

Like, consumer social things. Everyone just asks us, so what's your, like, what's your, like, viral coefficient or how is this gonna be, like, consumer thing or, like, where's it, like, how's this get viral growth? And I our energy level was low and through like a bunch of very like serendipitous events, we end up getting sort of like acquisition offers for the company. Like, mean, really now they would be called like acqui hires, but back then, like, the the term hadn't been invented. And so we we got an acquisition offer from a, bizarrely, a a Canadian company that owned lots of ecommerce domains that was specifically looking for, like, a a tool to help businesses sell online so they could just plug that into all of these marketplaces they already owned.

那是一个收购要约。另一个是来自一家叫Facebook的公司。

So that was one acquisition offer. The other one was from this, like, company called Facebook.

不会吧。

No way.

我不知道这事。

I didn't know that.

2007年。

2,007.

哈吉，我真不知道这个。

Harge, I did not know this.

是啊是啊。完整故事是这样的——那时候快到年底了，我们感觉团队士气有点下滑。但同时又觉得应该去进行A轮融资。

Yeah. Yeah. The full story in this is so okay. So around this time, so towards the end of the year, like, we felt like, our morale was probably, like, dropping a little bit. But at the same time, we felt like the thing we were supposed to do is go out and raise a series a.

我们当时想：好吧，创业快一年了，种子轮已经完成，按流程该去融A轮了，得找投资人谈谈。

Like, we were like, okay. Like, you've been working on a start up for almost a year now. You raise a seed round. You're supposed to go out and raise an a. We should go and talk to investors about an a.

其中有个投资人现在很出名，当时还不算——Facebook高管查马斯。梅菲尔德基金给我们开了个条件：欣赏团队但不喜欢当前项目，愿意投A轮，前提是我们得做他们指定的新项目。

And one of the investors we spoke to is this guy, he's all famous now. He wasn't then, Chamath, the Facebook exec. By the time he was at Mayfield, and Mayfield had offered us this deal where they're like, we like you as a team. We don't like this idea. We would fund you for a series a, but on the condition that, like, you work on an idea that we pick for you.

所以...呃，挺奇怪的。他们让我们去办公室待几个月，一起头脑风暴，等确定新想法就拨款，本质上就是想投资我们这个团队。

And so Oh. Weird. Yeah. It was, like, it's unusual, but they were they were, like, just come and, like, you would come and be in our offices for a few months. Like, we we, you know, we brainstorm together, but, like, basically, we'd give you the a funding, like, on like, once we agreed on the idea, but we definitely wanna fund you as a team.

这个提案有点非主流，但我们拒绝了。

So it was just a it was a bit unusual, but we we said no to that.

但他们很聪明，意识到这会是一个多么优秀的团队。

But clever on their part recognizing what a good team it would be.

是啊。我觉得这就是他们看到的。他们确实看到了。他们看出这是个强大的团队。他们看出我对那个他们并不热衷的构想的态度。

Yeah. I think that's what they saw. They saw yeah. They saw it was a strong team. They saw that the I like, the idea they weren't excited about.

所以我认为这对他们来说基本上是个可选项。没错。现在了解风投的运作方式后，他们其实就是在给自己一个免费选择权——万一我们提出了他们喜欢的点子，他们就可以进行A轮投资。

And so I think it was basically an option for them. Yeah. And understanding how VCs work now, they were just trying to basically they were giving themselves a free option on doing an a in case we came up with an idea that they liked.

正是如此。

Exactly.

当然，如果我们没提出他们中意的点子，他们也不会承诺实际投资。就这样——这就是我们认识他的经过。然后快进六个月，当我们收到加拿大公司的收购要约时，我们征求了他的意见：嘿，我们刚收到这个收购要约，对并购一窍不通。

Of course, they weren't committed to actually funding us if we didn't come up with an idea that they like. And so that but that, like, that was, like, how we met him. And then fast forward, like, six months when we got this acquisition offer from this Canadian company, we ran it by him as, hey. Like, we just got this acquisition offer. Like, we don't know anything about acquisitions.

你对这事有什么看法吗？他说：哦，如果你们有兴趣出售，我现在在Facebook工作，我们完全可以收购你们。不如来公司见见团队聊聊？于是我们去了，见到了马特·科拉等几位Facebook高管。

Like, do you have any, like, opinions on this? And he said, oh, like, well, if you guys are interested in selling, I'm now at Facebook. We would totally acquire you guys. So why don't you come in and meet the team and and talk to us? And so we came here, we met by Matt Cola, a bunch of the Facebook execs.

虽然没见到扎克，但他们基本上给了回复——这一切其实发生在圣诞节期间，让我们非常惊讶，因为他们居然都在圣诞节加班。他们回复说：当然愿意收购你们。当时加拿大公司出价约500万美元，半现金半股票。

I don't think we met Zach, but they they basically came back to us. This was all actually over Christmas, which was very surprising to us, like the fact they were all just like working over Christmas essentially. And they just came back us, oh, yeah. We would totally buy you guys. And like the Canadian company had offered us about like $5,000,000, which is about like half cash, half stock.

那时他们是上市公司，所以我们觉得：好吧，反正都是流通股。而Facebook说：我们会匹配报价，但不会给现金，全用股票支付。

At the time, they were a public company. So we're like, oh, okay. It's all kind of like liquid. And Facebook like, yeah, we'll match that, but like, we're not gonna do cash. It's gonna be all stock.

哦，这样啊。

Oh, Yeah.

唉，心塞。

Oh, heart.

所以情况是这样的，嗯，有趣的是我们当时觉得，哦好吧。那时候，你知道的，科里和我真的身无分文。我们没钱，从来就没钱过。所以想到那个叫Live Car Media的加拿大公司时——

So here's like, well, here's what's interesting about it is that we were like, oh, okay. At the time, like like, you know, Corrie and I, like, totally broke. We had no money. Like, we never had any money. And so the thought about, like, the company was called Live Car Media, the Canadian company.

我们就想，好吧。我们知道这不是能改变人生的金额，没法靠这个退休。但它能帮我偿还学生贷款，基本上能让我拥有从未有过的财务缓冲。

We're like, okay. We know this is not like a life changing amount of money. We're not gonna, like, retire on it. But, like, it, like, helps me pay back by student debt. Like, I basically will have, some amount of financial cushion that I never had before.

所以这笔现金实际上意义重大。

And so like that, the cash actually means a lot.

确实。

Yes.

对我而言。然后我们咨询了些人，比如我问了...对，我们咨询了克里斯·萨卡，因为他是天使投资人。我问他怎么看Facebook那笔交易？

To me. And then we ask some people like we ask like I I see. Yeah. We ask Chris Saka since he was like a a angel. I'm like, what did he think of the Facebook deal?

他直接告诉我们那是个糟糕的交易，因为Facebook股票被严重高估了——这在2007年底其实是普遍看法。当时Facebook理论估值150亿美元，但这个估值源于微软按这个价码投资，换取Facebook承诺的广告支出。所以大家都说这是虚假估值，微软只是为了广告收入，抬高了Facebook估值，不必当真。

And he just he told us it was like a really bad deal because Facebook stock was massively overvalued, which was not an unreach like, which was actually the conventional wisdom in, late two thousand and seven. Because what had happened is Facebook was valued at $15,000,000,000 in theory, but that valuation came from Microsoft investing in them at that valuation in exchange for Facebook guaranteeing an ad spend, like a guaranteed ad spend. And so everyone told us, oh, like, it's a fake valuation. Microsoft just did it because they want the ad revenue. It inflates Facebook's valuation, but you shouldn't take it very seriously.

他们说这股票可能永远不值这个总价。于是我们比较了下：这边是笔虽不能退休但能显著改善生活的现金，那边是全股票交易，可所有聪明人都说股票被高估了，且至少要十年才能变现。所以我们拒绝了Facebook，接受了Live Current的报价。现在回头看，Facebook如今市值约1.5万亿美元，相当于当时估值涨了100倍。

And so this stock, like, might not ever be worth, like, it this much in total. And so we sort of compared seemed like, oh, we've got, this one thing which is, not like a retirement amount of money, but certainly will make a meaningful impact on our lives. And then we've got this other deal, which is all stock, but like everyone smarts telling us that the stocks probably overvalued and it's gonna be like ten years before it's liquid anyway. And so we decided to turn down the Facebook offer and take the live current offer. Obviously, in hindsight now, I mean, what was like Facebook is what, like, think it was is probably like a 100 x from that because it's it's like 1,500,000,000,000.0 now.

这么算的话，理论上那本该是笔50亿美元的收购。

So I guess that would actually have been like a $5,000,000,000 acquisition in theory.

天啊。别算了兄弟，别想这个。

My god. Don't do that, dude. If you don't do that, don't think.

就是，别算了别算了。

Yeah. No. No. No.

不对。不是这样的。不。错了。抱歉。

That's wrong. That's no. No. That's wrong. Sorry.

没关系。我算错多少来着？应该是大约5亿美元，而不是500万美元。

That's alright. I got the math off by what? It would be like $500,000,000, not $5,000,000.

所以我记得和你做过那笔实时交易，哈什。

So I I remember doing the live current deal with you, Harsh.

是的。

And Yes.

我记得当时在想，这公司也太冷门了，但我不记得为什么会有这印象。好像是因为他们还经营香水品牌之类的，特别小众。

I remember thinking, like, this is the most random company, and I don't remember why I think this. But there was something about, like, they also had perfume brands or something, like, so obscure.

Perfume.com。

Perfume.com.

他们拥有perfume.com，

They own perfume.com,

对。还有Beauty.com

Yes. Beauty.com

bonnie.com，他们这些乱七八糟的

bonnie.com, bloody all they these

cricket.com？

cricket.com?

Cricket.com，一大堆乱七八糟的东西。

Cricket.com, a whole bunch of random things.

是啊是啊。我很喜欢我记得

Yeah. Yeah. I love that I remember

那些域名，但其他什么都不记得了。这这让我非常惊讶。

the domain names, but nothing else was. That's that's super surprising to me.

还行吧。那是个奇怪的公司。

It was Okay. It was a weird company.

但你知道吗？接受一个能对你人生产生重大影响的交易并不可耻，它确实在你那个年纪做到了，你还偿还了一些学生贷款。所以是的，让我们为那个情况设想一个非常圆满的结局。就像罗恩加入时那样平稳过渡。

But you know what? There's no shame in taking a deal that's gonna have a meaningful impact on your life, which it did at your age, and you paid off some of your student debts. So Yep. Let's let's think very happy happy ending for for that situate. Saw nice soft landing as Ron comes on.

明白吗？

Okay?

就是这样。

There you go.

没错。所以哈吉，你完成了那次收购，然后你成为了——我们Y Combinator当时需要稍微扩展团队，因为那时候实际上只有保罗和我全职工作。于是我们找你谈了担任风险合伙人的事。从你被收购到加入YC成为我们真正意义上的第一个员工，中间隔了多久？

Yep. So, Hajj, you have this acquisition, and then you became we we at Y Combinator had a need to expand a little bit, have some more support on the team between because it was really at that time just Paul and I full time. And so we talked to you about coming on as a venture partner. How long was that between when you got acquired and when you came to YC to work be our really our first employee?

是的。我在LiveCurrent待了一年，因为我们需要待满一年才能拿到最终款项。离开LiveCurrent后到加入YC工作之间，大概隔了三个月左右。我记得当时的情况——我本来铁了心要再创业。

Yeah. So I stayed at LiveCurrent for a year because that's how long, like, we need to stay for a year to get the final payout. And then between me leaving LiveCurrent and coming to work at YC, I think it was about three months, something like that. And I remember what happened. I was really set on doing another company.

我当时想，好吧，Automatic是段不错的经历，我学到了很多，而且我们运气不错平稳着陆了。但确实没有发展成让我引以为豪的事业。所以我其实是想再来一次创业的，当时还专门来找你商量。

I was like, okay. Like, you know, automatic was a cool experience. I learned a lot, but and we were, like, lucky we got a soft landing. But, yeah, it wasn't really like a big it didn't really, like, turn into anything that I was proud of. And so I I wanted to do another start up and I'd actually come to see you.

你可能不记得了，但我曾去帕洛阿尔托找你和保罗，因为我在申请绿卡。我需要签字的推荐信。获得绿卡对我来说是件大事，这样我就能真正专注于创业，不用再担心签证问题。当时你和保罗问我，接下来有什么打算？

You probably don't remember this, but I've come to see you and Paul in Palo Alto because I was applying for my green card. I needed reference letters at sign. And so like a green card would be a big deal because then I could just like really work on a start without having to worry about the visa stuff. And Yeah. And you and Paul asked me like, oh, like, know, what are you gonna do next?

我说，嗯，快到年底了，我打算先回英国过圣诞节，新年后再回来开始行动。我想创办一家公司，准备先和潜在的联合创始人聊聊，确定要做什么项目。你们俩都说听起来不错。

I'm like, hey. Well, I'm gonna it was towards the end of the year. Like, well, I'm gonna go back home for Christmas to England and then I'm gonna come back out in the new year and start playing. I wanna start a company and I'm gonna start talking to potential cofounders and start figuring out what I wanna work on. And you both like, yeah, sounds cool.

你们说保持联系，让我随时告知进展。大约两周后，我收到保罗的邮件说，他和杰西卡讨论过，YC需要发展壮大，这意味着除了他们俩之外还需要其他人参与。既然我一月份本来就要来湾区，要不要试试在YC工作一个批次？就是跟着他处理办公时间，了解运作方式。

Well, let us, like, let us, like, just stay in touch with us, know what you do. And then I think, like, two weeks later, I got an email from Paul saying, actually, like, Jessica and I were talking about it. We need YC needs to grow, like and that would involve having someone other than the two of us working on it. If you're gonna come out to the Bay Area in January anyway, do you want to just, like, try, like, working at YC for one batch? Just like, you know, follow me around for office hours and see how things work.

这对我们是个实验，看看有其他人加入是否可行。如果你不喜欢，随时可以去创业。我觉得这个提议简直完美。于是我就参加了2010年冬季批次的工作。我记得头衔好像是风险顾问...

It'll be an experiment for us to figure out if, like, it even works having someone else around. And if you don't like it, then just like go and do a startup. And we're like, okay, that was said that sounds pretty that sounds perfect. And so I came out for the winter two thousand and ten batch. I think I think I have the title venture.

说实话我都不确定当时有没有正式头衔。

I don't even know if I had a title, honestly.

不给你头衔确实像我们的作风。

It would it would seem like us not to give you a title.

是啊。

Yeah.

就像随口说'哈吉现在在这儿工作'那样。

Like, oh, Harge is working here now.

你知道我...你知道我...

You know what I you know where I

觉得你...

think you

伙计们明白了吗？我觉得你们得到那个头衔是因为当时他的文件上——因为我看到的是——你们在法律文件上被称为风险合伙人，但我确定在YC没人这么称呼你。

guys got that? I think you guys got that title because at the time the paperwork for him, because I saw this, was you were called a a venture partner just in terms of, like, the legal paperwork, but I'm sure nobody called you that, like, around YC.

不。我实际的非正式称呼该怎么说？

No. My actual informal what do you say?

不。你说，哈什，我们实际上是怎么叫他的。

No. You say, Harsh, what is act what we actually called him.

我正式的职称是巴士检查员。对吧。

My actual formal title was bus inspector. Right.

对。

Right.

给听众解释下为什么。

Say why for the listeners.

但更像是被扔出去的巴士检查员，你知道，这个词指的是检查巴士的人，而在YC文化中，把某人扔上巴士意味着让他们去和别人开会。

But so more like a bus inspector being like thrown out like, know, the phrase for someone that like inspects the bus and in in YC culture, like throwing someone on the bus meant making them do a meeting with someone.

好吧，我来解释一下。保罗和我与罗恩·康威完全相反，他喜欢见人，喜欢建立联系。保罗对会议很抵触，我也不太擅长开会。

Well, okay. Let me explain. Paul and I are the opposite of Ron Conway who loves meeting people and loves connecting. Paul Paul, like, bristles at meetings. I'm I'm not very good with meetings.

我们就是不想见人。到了2010年冬天，很多人，尤其是投资者，开始约我们喝咖啡，想增进了解，探讨如何更紧密合作。而我和保罗的回应总是：如果你想和YC更紧密合作，投资我们的初创公司就行了。就这么简单。

We just didn't wanna have to meet people. And by winter ten, we were having people, a lot of investors and things like, let's let's grab coffee and get to know each other and see how we could work more closely together. And, of course, Paul and I my answer is always, if you wanna work more closely with Y Combinator, fund our startups. That's all you have to do. Simple.

我们不需要喝咖啡。所以哈什加入后，我们说：好吧，你是这里资历最浅的，我们要把你扔去应付所有这些咖啡会议，这会是你职责的一部分。

We don't need to have coffee. And so when Harch came on, we said, okay. You're a low person on the totem pole here. We're gonna throw you under the bus to take all these grab coffee meetings. That's gonna be part of your responsibilities.

你知道吗？比如打扫厕所、和人会面。无意冒犯任何人。我相信很多会议对YC很重要，我们稍后会谈到一个特别重要的。但既然说要把他推下公交车，后来就演变成了公交车检查员这个梗。

You know? Like, clean the toilets and meet with people. No offense to anyone. I'm sure a lot of those meetings were, like, important to YC, and we'll get to one very important one later. But so we've said we're gonna throw him under the bus, and then that morphed into the bus inspector.

所以哈吉一直亲切地被称为公交车检查员。但你可能喜欢这个角色，然后就留下来了。

So Harge has always affectionately been known as the bus inspector. But do you you might you liked it, and then you stayed on.

是的。我记得很清楚。刚加入时，你们主要想让我分担批处理期间与公司对接的工作，协助筛选公司这类事务。因为YC当时明显越来越受欢迎，创始人申请量已经超出你们两人能处理的范畴。

Yeah. I did. I will say here's the I remember this. So when I first came on, I think the main thing you both wanted me to do was to help on some of the workload of, know, like working with the companies during the batch and then helping pick companies and just, like, that aspect of it. Because I think, like, why is it just clearly becoming popular and it was just, like, the, like, the the the interest from founders was becoming more than just the two of you, I think, could work on by yourself.

没错。没错。

Yes. Yes.

但公交车检查员这个梗的衍生意义在于，当时感觉投资者对YC关注度不够。不像现在这样他们几乎过度关注。我记得保罗说过，如果有优秀投资者，我们需要他们来花时间参与，需要他们参加演示日，需要了解外界对YC的评价。

But, like, I the sort of the offshoot of the bus inspector stuff was that back then, it felt like investors that there was some there was some concern that, like, in we needed more invest like, investors needed to pay more attention to YC. Like, it's certainly, like, not how it is today where it's, like, almost, like, the opposite where, like, to some extent, they're always too interested in it. But, like, I remember Paul saying to me, if anyone's a good investor, we need them to come and, like, spend some time. And we need them to come to Demo Day. We need to know what people are saying about YC and that kind of stuff.

于是我开始更多地与投资者交流，鼓励他们参加演示日，提高对YC的关注度。

And so I started, like, just doing more like, oh, hey. Like, you know, talking to investors about YC and encourage them to come to Demo Day and and just pay more attention.

你说得完全正确，哈吉。我之前是在开玩笑，但确实需要培养与投资者的关系。就像你说的，07年冬天我们只融到几十万美元，需要更多投资者来演示日。每批资助的公司增多，我们需要更多人脉。

You're totally right, Harj. I was joking around about it earlier, but it it is absolutely true that we really did need to cultivate relationships with investors because as you mentioned, back in, you know, winter o seven, you only raised a couple $100,000. We needed more investors to come to demo day. We were funding more companies each batch. We needed just more connections.

所以我们确实说过由你负责发展这些关系，邀请他们来演示日。如果对方优秀，就安排晚餐之类的。虽然是玩笑话，但这确实是重要工作。

And so we really did say, you're gonna be in charge of developing these relationships and inviting them to demo day. And if they're good, let's bring them to a dinner or something like that. So I had been joking around, but it was an important thing.

因为我想传达的是，2010年2月我重返YC时的感受——相比2007年2月那会儿，当时基本都是大学生在尝试些短期项目，有些人可能会融点资。我甚至记得我们那批有人中途就消失了，氛围比现在随意得多。但2010年我回来时，发现这里都是极其认真的人，他们非常严肃地想要创建公司。

Because the the thing that I was trying to communicate back then is, what I felt actually coming back to YC in 02/2010, which is going through it in 02/2007, it was really just a largely bunch of college students sort of trying something out for a few months, like, maybe some of them would raise some money. I mean, I I actually just remember even during our batch, like, people just disappear. Like, some people just stopped coming because it was sort of just, very it felt more informal than, like, certainly YC is today. But by 2010, when I came back just to hang out for that batch, so I was like, there were people here who were, like, very serious. Like, they're, like, very serious intense personalities who are very serious about trying to, like, build companies.

而外界似乎还没意识到这点。当时普遍认知是：YC聚集了聪明工程师，但他们未必认真融资或创业，可能有些酷技术，但投资者不确定这里能诞生下一个Facebook。

And it's it felt like the wider world hadn't quite got that yet. Like, I feel like there was still a perception of YC as these are there's always really smart engineers there. Like, they're not always the most serious about raising money or building companies. Like, there'll be some cool technology, but I don't know as an investor if it's where I'm gonna find, like, the next Facebook. That seemed to be, like, the the general conception.

而我刚刚感觉自己正在回归。所以，不。这里人们的热情程度远超2007年。每次有人真正来到YC，无论是谁，任何投资者只要亲自在YC待上一段时间，他们都会被震撼到，哦，是的。这和我几年前想象中的完全不一样。

And I had just sort of felt myself coming back. So, no. This is like the the intensity of people here is way, way up from, like, 2,007. And it just seemed like every time anyone actually came to y c like, anyone anytime any investor just spent some time at y c in person, they were also just blown away by, oh, yeah. This is not the thing that I have pictured it was from, like, like, a few years ago.

比如，这些这些是，像是

Like, these these are, like, some

是啊。

Yeah.

非常认真且专注的创始人，我们之前并未将他们与YC联系在一起。

Very serious intense founders who we didn't associate with with YCE.

是啊。然后有一位新入场的投资者，你和他会面了，他提出了一个非常有趣的提议。你能讲讲那个故事吗？

Yeah. Then there was one investor who was new to the scene who you took a meeting with, who had a very interesting proposition. Will you tell that story?

好的，好的。我当时正在考察的一位投资者是尤里·米尔纳，你知道的，俄罗斯亿万富翁，DST的创始人，我想现在DST已经投资了几乎所有大公司，比如Facebook和Airbnb。但那是2012年的事了。他发邮件说，嘿。

Yeah. Yeah. So one of the buses I was inspecting is Yuri Milner, like the, you know, Russian billionaire, like founder of DST, which is, I think, now invested in, like, pretty pretty much all the huge companies like Facebook and Airbnb. But, yeah, I think he had he had a this is 2012 now, I guess. And so he he'd emailed in saying, hey.

我非常想见见Y Combinator的人，然后他被转介给了我。他来到YC在山景城的办公室。他的二把手叫菲利克斯，我相信你一定记得。

I'd really like to meet Y Combinator, and he got redirected to me. And he came into the YC Mountain View office. It's sort of like his his number two person's guy called Felix, I'm sure sure you remember.

哦，是的。每个人都记得菲利克斯。

Oh, yeah. Everybody remembers Felix.

是啊。所以尤里想见面。他来到YC山景城办公室，我就说，很高兴见到你。有什么可以帮你的？他立刻就说，我想投资所有的初创公司。

Yeah. So Yuri wants to meet. He comes to the YC Mountain View office and I just I'm like, nice to meet you. Like, how can I help? And he just immediately says, I want to invest in all the startups.

用他那俄罗斯口音说。我真的不明白他的意思。我说，你是什么意思？他说，我我我想投资你们所有的初创公司。我当时就想，他说的是现在吗？

Like, just in his, like, Russian accent. I really didn't know what he meant. Like, what do you mean? He's like, I I I want to invest in all of your startups. And I was like, like, he's like, you like, right now?

然后他就这么直接进行了。他说，对，我是认真的。他表示想投资这一批所有的公司。还说不管什么条件，就给他们同等金额的投资。

And he actually just sort of proceeded. He was like, yeah. I'm serious. He was like, he wanted to invest in all of the companies in the batch. And he was like, whatever terms they want, like, just was like, give them the same amount of money.

就是那种，我就这么干。为什么不呢？多投点就是了。所以这个

Like like, I'll just do it. Like, why not? Like, just invest in more. So This

太疯狂了，也太棒了。

is so crazy and so awesome.

我知道。当时保罗躲在芒廷维尤办公室后面做办公时间，就是想避开我，因为他担心会被拉去和人见面。但我不得不去找他说，嘿，这次你真的该过来看看。这个确实挺有意思的。

I know. And then Paul was out in like the back of the Mountain View office doing office hours just trying to avoid where I was because he is, like, worried about getting sucked into, like, having to meet with someone. But I I had to go out and get him and say, hey. Like, this is one of the like, you should actually come in for this bus. Like, this one's actually, like, quite interesting.

于是他进来了，然后他们发现尤里是认真的。我记得卡罗琳和约翰可能周末还加班了两天把文件都搞定。接下来那周我们做了个神秘预告，说周六晚上要办个晚餐会宣布重大消息。结果宣布的是所有人都获得投资了。

And so he came in and they just, yeah, like, realized Yuri was really serious. And I think, you know, I think then, like, basically, I remember Caroline and John came in on the weekend maybe two to get that all, like, papered and done. And then the following week, we just did this, you know, mystery announcement to the back saying, hey. Like, on we're doing like a Saturday evening dinner or something to make a big surprise announcement. And the announcement was that everyone's getting funded.

具体金额我忘了，大概是10万到12万左右。

It like, I forget that place. Probably like a 100,000, 120,000.

是10万。

It's a 100.

是10万。

It was a 100.

这很了不起，因为YT自己那时候平均投资额可能才2万左右。对吧？所以

Which is a big deal because, like, YT itself was probably averaging, like, 20,000 at that point. Right? So

没错。确实是大事。超级大的事。其实我们节目请过好几位那批的创业者呢。

Yeah. It was a huge deal. Huge. And, actually, we've had several guests on the show who were in that batch. Oh.

就像GOAT的Eddie Liu说的，我儿子出生时我都没哭，但

Like Eddie Liu of GOAT said, I didn't even cry when my son was born, but

当他们宣布那个消息时我哭了

I cried when that when they made

那个公告。我们还聊到尤里是怎么加入的，或者我跟你说过尤里是如何通过轮式机器人和机器人项目加入的。

that announcement. And we talked about how how Yuri came in or I talked with you about how Yuri had come in on the wheeling and on the robot.

是啊。因为尤里必须离开对吧？他来了，扔下这颗炸弹，然后就走了。结果宣布时他都没法在场。

Yeah. Because Yuri had to leave. Right? He came in, drops this bomb, and then to just, like, heads out. And then for the announcement, he couldn't be there.

不过没错，他当时在双机器人上。机器人。就是那个双机器人。当时在场。

But, yeah, he was on the The double bot. Bot. Like, The the the double bot. Was there.

对。对。挺有意思的。好吧，等不及了。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny. Well, can wait.

哈什，简单问下。你们后来去了莫斯科是吧？那是为了别的事吧？因为莫斯科的故事也挺搞笑的。

So, Harsh, really quick. You guys went to Moscow, but was that later? That was, like, for some other thing because the Moscow story is kinda funny too.

那完全是另一场闹剧。

That was a total that was like a totally different boondoggle.

好吧。好吧。

Okay. Okay.

那次是...对，当时有我、Gary、Paul Buhay，还有当时的合伙人Aaron Iber。我是说那件事和尤里完全没关系。不过我们在那儿碰巧遇见了他。那其实是俄罗斯政府为了某种原因想搞创业科技会议。

Well, that was yeah. That was me, Gary, Paul Buhay, and Aaron Iber, who was a partner at the time. I mean, that was just like a that was totally separate to any of Yuri stuff, I think. But he is we we happened to meet him while we were there. But, yeah, that was that was something that was like the Russian government for reasons trying to get into startups and tech conference.

哦，好的。好的。好的。好的。

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

那是趟有趣的旅程。非常有趣的旅程。虽然确实非常诡异，但你看，最诡异的是我们一开始并不清楚是他在组织这件事。随着深入参与，我们越发意识到其中与普京的关联比预期要多得多。后来我们甚至被牵扯进去——美国驻俄罗斯大使突然毫无征兆地表示要见我们。

It was a fun trip. It was a very fun trip. It was definitely definitely bizarre, but, like well, look, the bizarre thing was it wasn't clear, like, he was organizing it. And then the I think the the deeper we got into it, the more we realized that there were more connections to Putin in the than we than we had anticipated. And then we got pulled in to, like, the the The US ambassador to Russia just out of nowhere, just said that they wanted to meet us.

于是我们去了那栋房子，他们问了一大堆问题：我们到底来干什么，是谁邀请的我们。他们表现得极其好奇。

And so then we went to the house, and they just, like, asked us a bunch of questions about what exactly we're doing here and who had invited us. And, like, they were just very, very curious.

天啊。这简直...

Oh my gosh. This is

我只记得...

I all I remember

你们回来后一直在说'那地方完全疯了'。

was that you guys came back and were like, that was totally wacko.

确实疯了。

It was definitely wacko.

现在我要谈谈我们生活中的伤感时刻，哈吉。因为某一年——具体年份你得提醒我——你说想离开YC去创业。

So I'm gonna talk about a sad moment in in our lives, Hajj, because at one point, and I don't you'll have to remind me what year it was. You said you wanted to leave YC to start a startup.

是的。那是...

Yes. That was

我们为你高兴，但同时也因你要离开YC而心碎。能说说当时的情况吗？还记得离开的原因吗？

And and we we were happy for you. We were just devastated that you were leaving YC. Can you tell us about that? Like, do you remember why you left?

是的。我想我肯定记得原因。我的意思是，非常具体地说，我当时就是想创业。我后来反思了很多次为什么——比如我在还没完全想清楚要创什么业时就离职了。

Yeah. I think I definitely remember why. I mean, the the very the it was very specifically I wanted to do a a startup and I think I've reflected a lot on this that why. Like I I left before I knew exactly what startup I wanted to start.

我记得这个。我记得。是的。就是...

I remember this. I remember this. Yeah. Which is

现在回想起来这是个错误决定。我绝不会建议任何人仅仅因为想创业就去创业。对我来说——我加入YC时可能年纪异常小，大概25岁，和当时我们投资的大部分创始人同龄。

in hindsight like was the wrong decision. I would never advise anyone to just, like, do a start up because they wanna do a start up. I think for me, like, it was I started working at YC at probably, like, just an unusually young age. I think it was, like, 25. And I think I was the same age as like most of the people we were funding.

所以我的社交圈完全和YC及被投公司交织在一起。有段时间我突然发现，所有朋友都在运营公司。真正激励我的是看着他们随公司成长——公司起飞后，他们获得了从零构建、发展、扩张的全套经历。我当时觉得：哇，这旅程太令人向往了。

And so my social life was just like very intertwined with YC and everyone we were funding. And I just felt like all of my friends I sort of had this point where, like, all of my friends were, like, running companies. And I actually think a big motivator for me was I was seeing them, like, grow with their companies. Like, it was just the companies just start taking off and then they themselves were just like they have all the experiences from, like, building these things and growing and scaling. And I was like, oh, that's just, like, an exciting journey to be on.

而且这事可能不适合等到40岁再做（虽然有人这么做）。我当时想：如果要做就该现在做，免得将来后悔'当初有机会时没创业'。这就是主要动机——那时我在YC快四年了，远超原计划。年龄焦虑让我渴望再次打造属于自己的东西。

And it's probably not something I wanna do when I'm, like, 40. Not that you can't, but people do, but just like I was like, this seems like something that if I'm going to do, I should do now and not sort of have regrets later about, oh, like, I really wish that I'd that I'd I'd started a a company when I had the chance to or when it was easy to do. And so that was that was the main motivating that to me. It was like, I feel I'd be NYC probably, like, coming up to four years at that point, which was way longer than I'd ever intended to stay. And I just felt like, again, I was getting older and I wanted to, like, go and build something and take a shot at building something again.

这决定确实非常艰难，因为我太爱YC了——无论是共事的伙伴，还是YC本身。它正以超出所有人预料的速度，成长为一个举足轻重的机构。

It was definitely very it was a it was really hard because I love being at YC, both everyone that I got to work with and also, just YC itself was, like, clearly, like, growing and becoming, like, a a serious institution in a way that, I don't think anyone would have predicted.

这是哪一年？2014年？

What year was this? 2014?

2014年。对。2014年。我花时间构思过几个方向，其中一个想法是...

2014. Yes. 2014. I spent some time thinking I I was playing around different ideas. One of the ideas yeah.

有个血液检测相关的构想：让人们能轻松预约全面血液检查和健康评估，并获取个性化健康建议——这是当时的构思之一。

One of the idea was sort of a blood testing idea. So basically it's be like making easy for people to order like a comprehensive blood tests and the health checkup and have people and kind of get like personalised health advice was like just one was one of the ideas.

类似Insta Labs那种？

Kind of like Insta Labs?

是的。实际上，确实如此。Dora现在正在做这个。

Yeah. Actually, exactly. Dora is working on right now.

这正是我在想的。

That's what I was thinking.

基本上就是那样。基本上就是那个想法。但没错，这并不是我最终选择创业的那个点子。

Essentially that Yeah. Essentially that idea. But yeah, it wasn't the one that I landed on to start a company around.

对，对。你是怎么想到Triplebyte的？给听众讲讲它是什么吧。

Right. Right. How did you land on Triplebyte and tell the listeners what it was?

好的。我在FYC待了一段时间，思考了一些我可能感兴趣的领域，医疗健康绝对是其中之一。但我意识到更重要的是找到合适的合作伙伴和联合创始人。我通过YC圈子认识了两个人——Armen和Guillaume，他们曾与现在也是YC合伙人的Michael Seibel一起创办了Socialcam。

Yeah. So I spent a little bit of time in FYC and I spent a bit of like what are just some of like areas of things I might be interested, in working on and healthcare was definitely one of them. But I I realized that the thing that was actually more more important was to find, like, people to work with and, like, have cofounders. And so I had two people I had met sort of through the YC universe. Of course, Armen and Guillaume who had started Socialcam with Michael Seibel who's now also a a partner at YC.

他们卖掉了Socialcam，即将结束股权锁定期，也想再创办一家公司。于是我们三人花时间讨论各种想法，医疗健康是其中之一。但TrueWhite的创意源于我们想做一个自己熟悉的领域，知道如何快速获取客户和用户，验证想法是否可行。嗯。

And they had sold Socialcam and was coming up to, like, the end of their vest, and they wanted start to another company too. And so the three of us just spent some time like, hey. Like, let's talk about ideas and, the health care idea was one of those. But the idea for TrueWhite came out of, like, we were just we wanted to work on something that we felt we would just, like, knew something about and we knew how to go out and get, customers and users and test quickly if it was a good idea or not. Mhmm.

TrueBite的灵感来自：我们认识的所有创业者，尤其是公司经营者，他们最大的问题就是寻找优秀工程师。招聘工程师是每家初创公司或科技公司的头号难题。而现行招聘方式中，人人都想招MIT工程师，几乎痴迷于此。

And the idea for TrueBite was, hey. Like, everybody we know, like, who's especially running companies, like, their number one problem is finding good engineers. Like, hiring engineers is the number one problem that every startup or tech company has. Yeah. And that the the way hiring works is everybody wants to hire like the MIT engineer and is sort of obsessed with hiring the MIT engineer.

所以如果你是MIT工程师，根本不愁工作机会。但对其他人来说，很难分辨工程师的水平。简历看不出来，招聘官自己也不懂技术。他们无法判断那些没有光鲜学历的人是否真的优秀。

So if you're an MIT engineer, like, have no issues getting job offers. But for everyone else, it's really hard to figure out, like, who's a good engineer and who's a bad engineer. Like, you can't really tell from the resume and recruiters aren't technical themselves. And so they don't really know how to tell the difference between someone who's not like a who hasn't got the right credentials. Like, how do you know if they're good or not?

于是我们想：能不能用软件解决这个问题？用软件评估工程师水平，把数据给招聘方，帮助他们找到简历上没有MIT学历但实际优秀的人才。这很有价值——我们知道猎头公司很赚钱，如果能解决这个痛点，客户会愿意付高价。

And so we felt like, well, what if you could just, like, use software to do that? Like, what if you use software to tell if someone was a good engineer or not and give that data to the recruiters so they could hopefully find good engineers to hire that don't necessarily have like the MIT credential on their resume. And this this was just like, we're like, well, if you could do that, that would also be really valuable because we know recruiting firms make lots of money. Like they make like, feel like it's such a hard it's such a valuable problem to solve that people pay you lots of money if you help them hire good engineers. And so that was like yeah.

对吧？所以我们觉得：这是我们的专长领域，我们知道如何评估工程师水平，而且客户需求已经摆在那里了。

Right? So that was like they were like, okay. This is something we know a lot about. We know how to, like, we know, like, how to tell if someone's a good engineer. We know we have all the customers lined up for it already.

基本上我们认识的每个经营公司或在硅谷开发软件的人都需要招聘更多工程师。所以，Triplebyte就像是...对，如果我们启动这个项目，我们会从一个非常简单的在线测试开始，让工程师们参与。然后我们自己会手动审核这些测试结果。我们面试了成百上千的工程师，但宏观目标是最终实现全自动化处理。

Like, pretty much everybody that we know who's running a company or anyone who's in Silicon Valley building software needs to hire more engineers. And so, like, Triplebyte was like the yeah. Like, if we start this and the way we would start it is like a very simple test online that we will, like, have engineers do. And we ourselves will manually just, like, review the results of this test. Like, we just interviewed hundreds and hundreds of engineers, but the the big picture goal was we're gonna do this all manually.

这非常符合YC'做那些无法规模化的事情'的理念。我们打算进行大量人工面试，并记录所有面试数据，目标是通过软件实现面试自动化。最终——虽然不确定具体时间，可能在两三年后——我们甚至不需要人类参与面试。软件将能像人类一样准确判断工程师的能力。

This was very much YCs do things that don't scale. We're like, we're just gonna do lots of manual interviews, and we're logging everything that's coming out of these interviews with the goal of building software to just automate these interviews. So, eventually, like, we didn't know exactly when, maybe in, like, two, three years time, we wouldn't even have to have humans doing these interviews. Like, we would just, like, have software that was as good as a human at telling if someone was a a good engineer or not.

没错。我记得当时对优秀程序员的需求极大，比如Facebook为了招揽程序员而进行各种收购。这确实是个令人兴奋的想法。

Yeah. I remember I mean, there was such a need for good programmers, and I mean, Facebook was an example doing all these acquires just for the programmers. Yeah. So this was an a very exciting idea.

是的。另一个背景是'软件吞噬世界'的概念盛行，每家公司都在转型为软件公司。连银行都开始招聘软件工程师来开发有竞争力的移动应用。我们意识到这将成为趋势。

Yep. And then the other aspect of it was just like, there was like this whole concept like software eats the world where like every company was basically becoming a software company. So you have like banks who are starting to hire software engineers because they needed like good mobile apps to compete. We was like, okay. Like, this is gonna become a thing.

软件工程是增长最快的职业之一。我们既熟悉这个领域，又意识到它已是当前难题，未来会更严峻。

Like in software engineering, it's just one of the like fastest growing, like, professions you can be in. And so it just felt like a a thing we knew a lot about that was, like, already a big problem that would become a bigger problem in the future.

可以说你们的初创公司处于这些企业程序员招聘的核心环节。你们学到了什么？

Arguably, your startup was kind of at the heart of the, like, intake of programmers for for these companies. What did you learn?

我们发现要持续判断企业想招聘什么样的程序员极其困难——因为企业自身对招聘标准也很模糊。实际上很大程度取决于软技能：你的表现方式，是否具备团队协作性。我们原以为编程岗位可能不太看重这些。

Okay. Well, we what we learned is that it's actually incredibly hard to consistently figure out what a who like, which programmers, which people, frankly, any company wants to hire because companies themselves have a very fuzzy picture of who they're hiring. And, actually, a lot of it often depends on, like, the the softer skills, just like how do you come across. Are you someone that you wanna that you wanna work with? And we felt for, like, programming, maybe that's not as important.

编程是硬技能，评估硬技能似乎是核心。但后来明白企业非常重视那些难以量化的特质，很难持续输送他们真正想要的人才。这比我们想象的复杂得多——远不止判断某人是否擅长编程。

Like, there's, like, this hard skill. And if you just evaluate the hard skill, that's probably, like, the core piece of it. But we would learn that actually, like, companies, like, care a lot about this intangible factor that's hard to reduce into data and, like, consistently, like, deliver them people that they actually want to hire. So I was like, this is just like a much harder problem than we had thought. Like, there's more to it than just, like, telling if someone's, like, a a proficient programmer or not.

企业还有其他考量。甚至同一公司不同面试官偏好也不同。我们想实现的理想体验是：通过Triplebyte测试的匹配人选几乎必定会被录用，但实际操作中极难实现。

There's, other stuff people care about. And then also just, like, companies themselves with, like, different people at the same company wanted to hire different people. Like, it was it was a very hard problem to deliver this pro like, the prod the experience we wanted to deliver was, hey. You could just, like, you know that if triple byte someone passes a triple byte, like, test and that they matched with you, like, that that's someone that you're almost certainly gonna wanna hire. And I was, like, in practice, like, very, very hard to deliver.

在YC工作时获得的启示是：像Stripe、Gusto、Rippling、PagerDuty这些大型YC公司，都是通过服务其他初创公司成长起来的。我们意识到如果能开发出所有初创公司都使用的招聘软件，就能实现巨大增长——毕竟招聘是个普遍难题。

And I think what we learned was, like, one thing I was inspired by working at YC is if you look at some of the really big YC companies like Stripe or Gusto, Rippling, PagerDuty. Like, a bunch of these companies have grown by, like, servicing other startups. And we're like, okay. Like, if you can build, a a software that every other startup uses, like, you can just grow you can grow really big like that. And so we're like, oh, hiring is this big problem.

他们都需要招聘软件工程师这类软性人才。比如，你的自行车可以成为帮助他们实现这些功能的软件。但我们发现，像发工资这样的事更具确定性，完全可以交由软件处理，支付流程也是如此。

They all need to hire soft, like, software engineers. Like, your bike can just be the, like, the software that helps them do all of that. But I think just what we found was that, like, running payroll is, like, a more deterministic thing. Like, it just you can put that into software or processing payments. You can put that into software.

但招聘人才是每家公司身份认同的核心部分，他们对此有强烈的主见。将这种职能像处理工资或支付那样外包出去，比我们预想的要困难得多。

But, like, hiring people is something that's very core to the identity of every company, and they have very strong opinions on it. And just outsourcing that in the way that they do, like running payroll or or processing payments, which is much harder than we expected.

好的，Harjit。我想请教一个可能有争议的话题，或许现在我们可以坦诚讨论。Paul告诉我你注意到一个现象：有些公司最初会根据数据和测试来评估候选人，但最终几乎都降低了测试标准以获得更多元化的候选人。

Okay, Harjit. I'm gonna ask you about a controversial topic that maybe maybe now we can talk candidly about. You tell me. Paul told me that you noticed a trend with companies, that some companies would start out sort of judging candidates based on the data and the tests. But, ultimately, almost all of them sort of lowered their standards on the test to get more diverse candidates.

哦，这确实有争议。

Oh, controversial.

是的。我...好吧。我从未公开谈论过这件事。

Yes. I would. I okay. Yeah. I've never spoken about this publicly.

其实我一直想谈。坦白说，这很大程度上是我运营Triplebyte四年后辞去CEO职位的原因——我精疲力尽了。真正让我耗尽热情的正是：我创办Triplebyte是源于'通过提供机会平等改变世界'的使命，这就像个清晰的公平竞争平台。

I've always I've always wanted to actually As I would happily talk about it. And this is actually like to be to be, like, very candid, a big part of the reason I so, I mean, I ran triple by it for four years and then I stepped back from being the CEO frankly, because I was burnt out. And this was the single thing that really burnt me out is that, basically, I started Triplebyte because I was really excited about this sort of mission of, hey. Like, just giving people access to opportunity is just, like, really good for the world. Like, I think that's a really clear leveling field.

这也是我对YC如此认同的原因——它就像终极的机会平等器。作为英国移民家庭的孩子，我通过YC接触到惊人的网络，彻底改变了人生。我想为Triplebyte的求职者复制这种奇迹。

That's and that's why why I have such an attachment to YC is that I think, like, YC is, like, this ultimate, like, thing that just equalizes up access to opportunity. Like, I was, like, immigrant family in England and, like, got access to this, like, incredible network. It's totally changed my life. YC did that for so many start up founders. And so I was really excited about doing that for trip buyers.

如果我们能客观评估技能，就能帮人们进入原本不可能被聘用的公司。我们确实有过成功案例：记得有个在仓库理货的人被Instacart聘用，那甚至是他第一次当面见到其他软件工程师。

Like, hey. Like, if we can actually just, like, figure out who's good and I have a more objective measure of skill, like, you should, like you could, like, get people hired at companies that they would never have otherwise get hired. And and we had some really good success stories like this. So we had I remember this guy got hired by Instacart who was working in like a warehouse, like stacking shelves. And his Instacart interview was his first time meeting another software engineer in person.

从仓库理货到获得Instacart上市前股票——我认为这对世界是积极的。回到你的问题...

And like, I said to go from like, you know, like stacking shelves in some warehouse to like getting like pre IPO Instacart stock like five years ago. Like, I think that's like pretty good for the world. Yeah. But like, I'll kinda coming back to your actual question. Around, like yeah.

现在可以讨论这个话题了。2016-2017年左右，科技界的文化战争随着多元化议题爆发而升级。但Triplebyte的困境在于：每家公司都在为不理想的多元化数据寻找替罪羊，而非真正解决问题。

Like, I think we can talk about this stuff now. But, yeah, like, around 02/2016, 2017 is where I felt like the culture wars really started taking off with diversity in tech, like, rightly became a really, really important issue. But the thing that was really tricky for Triplebyte is that it felt like every company was looking for who to blame for their diversity numbers not being what they wanted them to be. Like, as opposed to trying to, like, really go in and, like, be like, hey. Like, what is this?

就是，到底是什么，比如，我们怎样才能吸引更多申请者？感觉很多指责都集中在，好吧，是我们面试流程有偏见的问题，或者说我们使用的招聘渠道本身就有倾向性。所以我们收到了招聘团队很多压力，说，嘿，你们得给我们输送更多元化的候选人。

Like, what is it that's, like, like, how do we get more applicants? It felt like a lot of blaming of, okay. It's it's it's the fault of, like, our interviewing processes are biased or, like, one like, the the sources we're using are biased. And so we got a lot of heat from recruiting teams that, hey. Like, you need to send us more diverse candidates.

我们就回应说，我们根本不关注人口统计信息啊。任何人都可以注册。我们做的只是根据测试分数筛选人才，然后推送出去。这就像个平台。但总收到招聘团队含糊其辞的反馈，说什么，嘿...

And we're like, well, we just, we don't pay any attention to demographic stuff. Like, we just, anyone can sign up. We do all of, like, the all we do is just, like, select people based on the test scores, and we, like, send them out. It's like a plat it's a platform. And we would just get a lot of, like, very ambiguous messages coming back from recruiting teams about, hey.

对，也不对。我们当然只想要达到这个分数的人。我们只想要测试顶尖的人选，但也不是不能破例。最后就变成，好吧...

Yes. No. We absolutely only want people who score this much. Like, we only want, like, the top people on your tests, but, like, we could always make exceptions. And it just sort of like it was like, okay.

所以我觉得你们真正想要的是我们推送更多元化的候选人，这没问题。我们可以这么做。但这样就要有所取舍，因为我们现在要加入一个我们从未测试过的因素。我们的筛选和匹配算法里原本没考虑这点。如果你们要求，我们可以调整。

So I think what you actually want is for us to send you more diverse candidates, which is fine. Like, we'll do that. But then, like, there's gonna be like, there's just gonna be a trade off there because we're now incorporating in, like, a factor that we we don't test. Like, we don't incorporate this in our, like, screening or our matching algorithm. And if you want us to do that, that's fine.

但没人愿意明确承认这就是他们想要的。所以整个过程充满了艰难的对话。最激烈的时候，你们记得詹姆斯·达莫尔吗？知道...

But, like, no one would actually want to explicitly say that's what they would they wanted. So it just felt like a lot of, like, very difficult conversations. And then, like, the peak of it was, like, do remember James Damore? Do know

哦，记得。

Oh, yes.

谷歌那个。当然记得。

Google. Of course. I remember that.

这个詹姆斯·达莫尔写了那份备忘录后被谷歌开除，基本上找不到工作。后来他注册了Triplebyte，这在公司内部引发巨大争议——他注册考试，成绩优异，确实是个出色的工程师。

So what so James James Demore wrote that memo, got kicked out of Google, and was basically just unhirable. And so he signs up for Triplebyte, and it was, like, very controversial, like, internally at the company where, like, he signs up. He does a test. He does great. He's a great engineer.

按照Triplebyte的流程，通过测试后系统会自动生成资料库，用人单位可以直接联系候选人。但当系统显示詹姆斯完成测试时，公司近半员工立即表示：如果允许他入驻平台我们就辞职。

And so, like, the way it worked for Trupal Byte was if you did the test and if you pass the test, like, then, like, we just sort of, like, also create a profile for you and you were just, like, on TripByte and now employees could, like, reach out to you. Right? Like and be like, you scored really well in this. Like, we wanna hire you. As soon as, like, it popped up that James had, like, completed the trip bike test, we had, like, half of the company was like, we absolutely cannot, like we're gonna quit.

基本上，公司一半人——虽然不分性别——都威胁要离职，认为允许他入驻大错特错；而另一半人则表示如果不让他入驻就辞职，认为我们不该根据政治立场等因素筛选人才。

But, basically, half the company this includes, like, the wasn't actually broken down by gender demographics. Was just like half the company was like, we're gonna quit if, like, James is allowed on the platform because this is, like, totally wrong. He shouldn't we should not let him on. And then the other half was like, we're gonna quit if you don't let him on. Like, because, like, it's not our job to, like, pick people based on, their political or whatever.

就是说，如果没人想雇佣他，他们自然不会雇佣他。

Like, we should just, if no one wants to hire him, they won't hire him.

对。

Right.

但是，对吧？我们不该插手这类事情，比如

But, like Right. We shouldn't be in the business of, like

筛选。

Screening.

审查对象。对，基于这类标准进行筛选。这让我非常困扰。嗯。说实话，真正帮到我们的是公司里一位女员工。

Censoring who yeah. Screening, like, based on this kind of stuff. And, yeah, that was just, very difficult for me. Mhmm. And I actually just really remember I mean, just to be frank, like, it like, what really helped is one of our female employees.

她直接站出来表明立场，说个人认为这样做不对。她可能不认同他的观点，但这不意味着我们该禁止他在Triplebyte建立档案。如果没人想雇佣他，自然就不会雇佣他。最后我们采纳了这个建议。

She really just, stood up and took a stand and just said, like, I personally, like, think this is wrong. Like, I don't agree with I maybe I don't agree with his views, but like, that doesn't mean we shouldn't let him, like, have a profile on Triplebyte. And if people don't want to hire him, then, like, they won't hire him. Right. And so we did that.

我们允许他注册后，立刻有招聘方看到他的资料后打电话给我。有人甚至在电话里崩溃地说，这相当于允许杀人犯入驻平台，说我们毫无道德底线，指责我是明显的厌女者，声称要不遗余力搞垮公司，确保再没人使用我们服务。他们认为这是个重大错误，反应极其激烈。

We let him on. And then I immediately started getting called by recruiters who saw his profile. And I have people just, like, break down on the phone to me saying that, like, this was the equivalent of letting murderers on the platform, that, like, we have no morals, that, like, yeah, that, like, I was clearly a misogynist and that that, like, they were gonna go out of their way to, like, completely destroy the company and make sure no one ever used us again. And and that this was just, a huge mistake. And it was, like, a very a very, very intense reaction.

我觉得这某种程度上反映了当时的舆论环境。

They I think it was just sort of like that's sort like just what the think that was what the climate was like back then.

我也这么认为。坦白说，当时确实有些非理性。确实。

I think so too. It was it was a bit irrational, frankly. Yeah. Yeah.

让我沮丧的是，我看到不少Triplebyte的竞争对手跟风涌入多元化招聘领域。虽然这是市场需求，但我不认为他们真正解决了问题。没人去深究为什么男性程序员比女性多这类根源性问题，也没人思考该如何解决。

And I think what frustrated me is, like, I saw a bunch of trip bike competitors who sort of just started, like, jumping into diversity hiring as, like, the the bandwagon for it. Like, it was certainly what people wanted, but I didn't feel like they were actually solving the problem in any way. Like, I didn't think anyone was trying to look at it as a, okay. Like, what are the actual, like, root causes of why there are, like, more male programmers and female programmers? Like, how do we solve that?

我记得有一次对一位记者说过类似的话，当时她正在和我们讨论这个问题。我大概表达了这样的意思：问题的根源可能更上游，可能始于教育和人们的兴趣培养。结果她立刻表示要转为非正式谈话。

And I I I remember once saying to, like, a journalist who was talking to us about it. Like, I I said something in the direction of, like, I mean, like, it might start further upstream. It might start with just, like, education and interests that people have. And she was she was like, okay. I'm gonna go off the record here.

这种话题根本不该碰。你不能说这是漏斗顶端的问题，你只能归咎于所有人都有偏见和性别歧视，所以才导致行业性别失衡。

Like, you should never talk about anything like that. Like, you're gonna make you like, you cannot say this is a top of funnel problem. Like, you basically just have to say that everyone's biased and sexist, and that's why it's like there's a gender imbalance in

天啊。

Oh my god.

但我觉得实际情况并非如此。根据Tripwire的经验，公司其实极度渴望多元化人才，他们正拼命扩大人才漏斗入口。我不认为面试阶段存在偏见——事实上，女性程序员只要能进入这些公司的面试环节，获得offer的几率非常高，因为企业真的很想聘用她们。

Industry. And I was like but, like, I don't think that's what I'm seeing. Like, I actually think that from what the day of Tripwire has is that companies are so hungry for diverse candidates that they are going like, they're trying to get as many of them in their funnel as possible. And I actually don't think that they're biased against them at the interviewing, like, stage. I actually think that once you get a a a female programmer into the interviewing stage at many of these companies, like, they're very likely to get an offer because people really wanna hire them.

我觉得

Like, I

确实。

didn't Yeah.

问题症结不在这里。真正的问题是基数不足——没有足够多的女性进入工程团队，自然无法实现性别平衡。

Think that's where the problem is. The problem is there's just not enough of them, like, to get in to get to, like, a a balanced gender demographic on an engineering team.

唉，我深有同感。你知道我过去做了很多鼓励女性创业的工作，但后来我不再公开谈论这个话题。因为我认为根本解决方案是让更多女孩从小学习编程，这样才能扩大Y Combinator女性创始人的申请基数，我们才能资助更多女性创业者。

Harch, I mean, I can relate to this. I kind of I, as you know, did a lot to try to encourage more women to start startups and and help them. But I sort of stopped talking about it because I would say I think, in my opinion, the problem is more women need to start programming at a young learn to program at a younger age. Then that will increase the funnel for Y Combinator female founder applicants. Then we will fund more.

这明明是非常合理的观点，但以前根本不能说——不过现在或许可以了？

I mean, it just seems so reasonable to me, but I you can't say that, but maybe I can now.

确实。现在说这个容易多了。但在当时的环境下，你总觉得如履薄冰——说错一句话就可能被舆论毁灭，就像发生在詹姆斯身上的事。他只是真诚地分享了自己的观点，也许有错，但那确实是他真实的想法。

I felt yes. I think, like, I think people are it's easy to say that now. And I just think that in that particular climate, it just it felt like you were constantly walk walking on eggshells because if you if you said the wrong thing, you would just get destroyed and canceled immediately. Or, like like, kinda like happened to James the more, like, just I think the guy just shared his like, what he sort of genuinely believed. And he may have, like, yeah, maybe he was wrong, but, like, he was just sharing what he thought.

而且我认为他并未意识到这会让他付出整个职业生涯的代价，当他分享这件事时。那感觉就像是一段非常非常紧张的时期。

And I don't think he realized it would cost him his, like, entire career in, like, in sharing it. And it just felt like a very a very, like, intense time.

Triplebyte的员工是因为你公开了他的简历而辞职的吗？

Did employees at Triplebyte quit because you posted his resume?

没有。最终实际上没人辞职。真正激烈的时刻是——这件事起初并非性别问题。它始于公司内部的一种意识形态分歧，大约一半人认为我们这样筛选或过滤不公平，另一半人则认为让他留在平台上是不对的。

No. In the end, no one actually quit. The the real heated moment was just it really like, it did it started off as not a gender thing. It started off internal to provide, like, an ideological divide between, like, half the company. Was like, like, it's not fair for us to sort of, like, sense or filter this way and half the company being like, it's wrong to have him on there.

但后来这确实演变成了性别问题，许多女性员工——尤其是几位优秀的女性员工——站出来表示‘我们代表Triplebyte的女性发声，认为这绝对错误’。而之前提到的那位女员工则说‘实际上我是女性，你无权代表我，这是我的观点’。这很大程度上化解了紧张局势，最终没人辞职。而他也没被录用，因为...你知道，我大概心里有数。

But then it did basically become a gender thing where I think, like, a lot of the female like, was a decent female employees who sort of took on the, like, we speak for the women at Triplebyte, we think this is absolutely wrong. And the female employee I mentioned before was the one who was like, actually, I'm a woman, and you don't speak for me, and this is my opinion. And, like, I think that just, like, that just really sort of, like, diffused the situation a lot. And so no one ended up quitting. And, like, ultimately, he didn't get hired because, like, you know, I kinda knew.

是的。事后看来，我知道他被录用的可能性微乎其微。只是...我只是强烈认为不让他留在平台上是错误的决定。我们本来也没打算录用他。

Yeah. I mean, I knew in hindsight that it was very unlikely anyone was gonna hire him. It just I just didn't want to yeah. I I I just felt very strongly it was, like, the wrong move to, like, not, like, have him on the platform. It was not like we were gonna hire him.

这就像...如果我当时做了错误决定，之后事情就会逐渐平息。所以...

It was it was just like a if if I wanted the wrong thing, and then I it just sort of fizzled after that. So

我知道我们时间不多了，但还有些内容要讨论。我想再问两个相关问题。Triplebyte的业务是评估候选人资质，首先，你们是否有跟踪他们在入职公司的表现？接着我想请教你关于评估候选人与评估创始人的区别，以及这是否对你有帮助。

I I kinda I know we're running low on time here, but we still have some stuff to cover. I wanted to ask two more related questions. You know, in your business at Triplebyte, your business was to know how good the candidates were. So first, like, did you have a cycle where you tested how they performed at the company that they got hired at? Because then I'm gonna ask you about sort of judging candidates versus judging founders and if it helped you.

Trisha，Triplebyte的宏观愿景确实是：我们不仅要预测企业想聘用谁，更要预测谁能在企业表现出色。这需要持续追踪他们在公司的表现数据。但现实是我们从未实现这步。

See, Trisha, I think the the big picture vision for TripByte was definitely, hey. We're not just gonna predict who you wanna hire. We're gonna predict who actually does well at your company. And so that would require getting information back on how you perform at the company over a period of time. The reality is we never got there.

我认为未能实现是因为初创公司的日常就是追逐增长和生存。我们最终真正专注的是如何准确预测候选人通过企业面试的表现——虽然这也不能完全预测其未来表现。这就是我们打造的产品，但始终没来得及构建下一阶段：追踪他们在公司的实际表现。主要是因为我们发现，仅准确预测面试表现就已足够困难，需要多年完善才能推进下一步。

I think we just we didn't get there because the like, day to day in a start up, you're just, like, chasing growth and, like, survival. And I think the thing that we really ended up doing was really being focused on how do we predict accurately who's gonna do what are the interviews at these companies, which is also not perfectly predictive of how will they go on and do. But that's just like that's the product that we built, and I think we just never got around to building the, like, next step of that of, like, how do they actually perform in these companies during the time. I think it's really because we found that just accurately predicting how well someone does at the interview at a company was already hard enough and was actually gonna take, like, years to do well before we could add in, like, the next piece.

好的。所以你决定离开Triplebyte了？

K. So you've decided to leave Triple Bite?

是的。所以我再次提到，我们之前聊过，大约四年后，公司完成了B轮融资。坦白说，我意识到Triple White正处于一场文化战争的漩涡中，运营公司涉及的许多事情其实并非我创业时预想的，这些也未能给我带来动力。我开始思考：好吧，我还有精力再坚持五年吗？

Yep. So I so, again, like, tell me we were talking about, like, the we were sort of, like, four years in, had raised a series b. And, yeah, just frankly, I realized that Triple White was just in the middle of a culture war, and there was a lot of stuff about running the company that I actually just hadn't really signed up for when I started the company, and I wasn't necessarily finding it very energizing. And I kinda need to think about, okay. Well, do I have, like, another, like, five years in me?

另一个关键因素是，我们需要彻底调整商业模式。我们原本按每雇佣一人收费，但这种模式无法扩展——客户会因费用过高而流失。细节决定成败：我们大刀阔斧改革了商业模式。当时我已有些倦怠，也清楚至少还需五年才能让公司步入理想轨道。而我的联合创始人Armon对此却充满热情。

And there was another aspect of it was actually we needed to, like, reset our business model. Like, we we built this business that charged a fee per hire, but it wasn't scaling because companies would churn off because it got too expensive. The details that matter here so much is, we did a big reset on our business model. I was feeling a little bit burned out from it, and I knew that it probably needed, like, at least another, like, five years to get to, like, an interesting place. My cofounder, Armon, he was actually just a lot more excited.

我认为他主要对担任CEO运营公司这个机会感到兴奋。他个人更关注公司规模化过程中的挑战。经过多次讨论，我们决定：我将退居二线保留董事席位担任顾问，而他接任公司CEO。

Well, I think one excited about the opportunity to, like, just run a company being the CEO position. And so he was actually personally more interested in just, the the issues in scaling the company. And so we just, like, after, like, a series of conversations, we decided I would just step back, stay on the board, and be involved as, an adviser, and he would step into being, the CEO of the company.

明白了。那么请说说你是如何回到这个领域的——

Okay. So then tell us how you came back to the nest of what I

回到原点？其实那时我已确定不想再创业，甚至无法想象再次创业。就像：好吧，那股劲头已经释放完了。

see. Back to the nest. Well, I knew well, at this point, I knew I didn't really wanna do another start up, or I can even imagine doing another start up. I was like, alright. Got that out of my system.

然后我...是的。我花了一些时间思考，嗯，我给自己放了个假。主要是处理些私事，比如我结婚了，你知道的，个人生活步入正轨后。接着在考虑下一步时，我很清楚自己不想创业，但我就是热爱初创企业。

And then I I yeah. I I spent a bit of time thinking about well, I took some time out. It was like personal stuff. I got married, like, just like, you know, personal life was in a better place. And then deciding what I wanted to do next, I knew that I just I didn't wanna start a company, but I just like I love startups.

我特别喜欢帮助别人创办公司，感觉自己在这方面懂得不少。说实话，当我确定这就是想做的事后，选择YC作为平台并不难——其他选择无非是加入传统风投机构、成立基金，或者扮演更常规的投资人角色。而我认识足够多这个圈子的人，深知那可能不适合我。坦率说，传统投资人更像是个销售岗位。

I love helping people start companies. I felt like I knew lots about that. I think I really honestly, once I knew that's what I wanted to do, it wasn't that hard to figure out that YCUs where I'd want to do it because the other options were to go join a traditional VC firm, start a fund, like, just do probably a more traditional investor role. And I knew enough people in that field to know it wasn't probably wasn't really for me. Like, being a traditional investor is a little bit more of a a sales role, frankly.

你得不断说服LP给你资金，还得争取让创始人接受你的投资，因为大家都在抢热门项目。但YC给我的感觉完全不同——你不需要那样做。在这里你不是在追逐风口项目。

Like, you're you're trying to convince you're trying to convince LPs to give you money. You're trying to Right. You're trying to convince founders to take your money, like, because you're trying to invest in, the hot deals. Whereas YC has always felt a lot more like you don't have to do that. Like, you you're not trying to invest in the hot deals.

你更像是在沙里淘金，而且创业者会真心感激你愿意投资。你更像是导师和教练，而非单纯的投资人，与创始人的目标也更一致。对...总之这就是为什么我觉得：如果YC愿意重新接纳我，在外漂泊六个月后我很乐意回来。

You're trying to like find the diamonds in the rough and like they're really happy that you actually want to give them money and you get to be more of like a teacher and like a a coach than you do like a investor and you're just more aligned with the founders. And so that Right. Yep. Anyway, that that was all that was the reason why I was like, okay. Like, well, if YT would have me back, then I would love to come back after about, like, six months out.

所以

So