Curate People

Recruiting is the most important thing because you need creativity; you need motivated people.

招聘是最重要的事,因为你需要创造力,需要有内在驱动力的人。

Ideally, the early people are all geniuses. They're self-managing, low-ego, hardworking, highly competent, builders, technical—maybe one or two sellers—but you can't watch everything. You can't micromanage everything.

最理想的情况是,早期员工全是天才。他们自我管理、低自我、勤奋、能力极强,是 builder、是技术派——也许里面有一两个 seller——因为你不可能盯着每件事,不可能微管一切。

The early people are the DNA of the company. When you outsource recruiting, when you have other people hiring and interviewing and making hiring decisions without your direct involvement and veto, that's a sad day. That's the day that the company's no longer being driven directly by you.

早期员工就是公司的 DNA。当你把招聘外包出去——让别人去招、去面试、去做雇佣决策,创始人没有直接参与和否决权——那就是悲哀的一天。那是公司不再由你直接驱动的一天。

There's now a fly-by-wire element in between. There's some mechanical linkage going through another human, often at a distance. And other people are not going to have the same level of selectivity that you will as a founder.

中间出现了一道 fly-by-wire 的机械传动,经由另外一个人,往往隔得很远。而其他人不会有创始人那种挑剔程度。

The important size at which a company starts changing is not some arbitrary number, like 20 or 30 or 40. It's the point at which the founder is not directly recruiting and managing everyone.

公司开始变质的关键规模,不是 20、30、40 这种武断的数字。它是创始人不再直接招聘和管理所有人的那一刻。

The moment that there are middle layers of management, then you are somewhat disconnected from the company, and your ability to directly drive a product team that can take the company from zero to one goes away.

一旦出现了中层,你跟公司就有了一层隔阂,你直接驱动一支能把公司做到 zero to one 的产品团队的能力就消失了。

So we really cannot outsource recruiting. People think you can. They hire recruiters, for example. Maybe you can outsource a little bit of sourcing, but I would even argue that's difficult.

所以招聘真的没法外包。大家以为可以,会去雇 recruiter。也许 sourcing 可以外包一点点,但我甚至觉得连这一点都很难。

The reason recruiting is so, so, so important—and a lot of it is obvious, I'll skip the obvious reasons—but one non-obvious reason is that the best people truly only want to work with the best people.

招聘之所以重要到不能再重要——很多原因显而易见,跳过——但有一个不太明显的原因:顶级人才真的只想和顶级人才共事。

Working with anyone who's not at their level is a cognitive load upon them. And the more people they're surrounded by who are not as good as they are, the more keenly they're aware that they belong somewhere else, or they should be doing their own thing.

跟任何不到他们水平的人共事,对他们来说都是一种认知负担。周围比他们差的人越多,他们越会敏锐地意识到——自己应该在别处,或者应该自己出来做事。

The best teams are mutually motivated. They reinforce each other. Everyone's trying to impress each other.

最好的团队是相互激励、相互强化的,每个人都想给彼此留下深刻印象。

One good test is when you're recruiting a new person, you should be able to say to them, "Walk into that room where the rest of the team is sitting. Take anyone you want—pick them at random—pull them aside for 30 minutes, and interview them. And if you aren't impressed by them, don't join."

有一个好的测试:招新人的时候,你应该敢对他说:"走进团队那间屋子,随便挑一个人——随机挑——拉到一边面试 30 分钟,如果你不觉得 impressed,就别加入。"

When you do that test, you will instinctively flinch at the idea of them interviewing randomly a certain person that's kind of in the back of your mind. That's the person you need to let go.

做这个测试时,你脑子里会本能地缩一下——"万一他真的面到某某怎么办"。那个"某某"就是你应该开掉的人。

Because that's the person keeping you from having this high-functioning team that all wants to impress each other. That's the bar you have to keep, especially for all the people you're going to directly manage—the first 20, the first 30, the first 40, the first 10—whatever that number is.

因为正是那个人在阻止你拥有一支彼此较劲的高效团队。这就是你必须守住的水准——尤其是你要直接管理的前 10、20、30、40 个人,无论那个数字是多少。

In those early people that you're going to directly manage, what are you looking for?

在你要直接管理的那些早期员工身上,你到底在找什么?

There's the old Warren Buffett line of "Intelligence, energy, integrity." I would add "low ego." Low-ego people are just much easier to manage. They tend to engage less in interpersonal conflict. They care more about the work than about politicking or fighting for credit.

Warren Buffett 有句老话:"智力、精力、正直。" 我会再加一条——"低自我"。低自我的人好管太多。他们更少卷入人际冲突,更在意工作本身,而不是搞政治或争功。

You just scale better. You'll be able to manage 30 or 40 low-ego people when you might only be able to manage five high-ego people, because you're always massaging their egos.

你的管理半径就大得多。低自我的人你能管 30、40 个;高自我的人你可能只能管 5 个,因为你得不停地哄他们的自尊心。

So I think Vinod's phrase is absolutely correct: the team you build is the company you build, especially for the first N people that you are directly managing—they're the DNA of the company.

所以我觉得 Vinod 那句话完全正确:你打造的团队就是你打造的公司,尤其是你直接管理的前 N 个人——他们是公司的 DNA。

Back to the tweet: You can't outsource fundraising because investors are betting on you. If you're outsourcing fundraising, whoever you're outsourcing to is really the person running the company.

回到那条推文:你不能外包融资,因为投资人是在赌你这个人。如果融资被你外包出去,那真正在跑这家公司的其实是你外包给的那个人。

Good investors, certainly, are not going to back a company where there's a proxy fundraiser, which is why companies that raise money through bankers are always starting off on the wrong foot.

好的投资人肯定不会投一家"代理融资"的公司,这也是为什么靠 banker 融到资的公司,起步就走错了路。

You shouldn't need a banker to raise money for you. Now, in later rounds it's a little different because you're reaching money that's outside of the normal venture market. But especially in early stage, if you're engaging a banker, that's symptomatic of a deeper problem.

你不应该需要一个 banker 来替你融资。后期轮次会稍微不同,因为你要去够到正常风险投资市场之外的钱。但早期阶段,如果你雇 banker,那就是某个更深层问题的症状。

Strategy: You have to set and communicate the strategy.

战略:你必须自己制定并传达战略。

Product vision: This is the one that's up for debate. There are some founders who outsource product vision, but I would argue that because your job here is to take the best team you can find and distill their energy into a perfect product—to instantiate their knowledge and creativity into a product—you need to unify the product vision.

产品愿景:这一项是有争议的。确实有一些创始人把产品愿景外包出去,但我会说——你的工作是找到你能找到的最好团队,把他们的能量蒸馏进一个完美的产品里,把他们的知识和创造力实例化成一个产品,所以你必须自己统一产品愿景。

One person needs to hold any complex product entirely in their head. And this is where it helps to have more than one founder, because it's rare that someone can fundraise and recruit and hold product vision entirely in their head.

任何复杂产品都必须有一个人能把它整个装在脑子里。这也是为什么"超过一位创始人"会有帮助——能同时融资、招聘、又把产品愿景装进脑子的人非常罕见。

Steve Jobs was one of these people. Elon Musk is probably another one. But usually you see a two-person team: one person who's better at selling—although it helps if they have some builder background so they know what they're talking about—and one person who's better at building, but it helps if they have a little bit of a seller bone because they're probably going to be recruiting the other builders.

Steve Jobs 是这种人,Elon Musk 大概也是。但一般你见到的是两人组合:一个更擅长 sell——但最好他有点 builder 背景,这样他知道自己在说什么——另一个更擅长 build,但最好他也有一点 seller 的基因,因为多半要靠他来招募其他 builder。

I don't think you can outsource any of those four.

这四件事,我觉得没有一件能外包。

There are cases where product vision has been outsourced—there's some brilliant person underneath who's driving the product vision—but those are rare. Usually all four are handled by the core founding team.

也有产品愿景被外包出去的案例——下面有个很厉害的人在驱动产品方向——但很罕见。通常这四件事都由核心创始团队来扛。

Right. People say, "Hire people who are better than you." I don't think that really works. People who are better than you don't want to work for you for long.

没错。大家常说:"招比你强的人。"我觉得这话其实不成立。比你强的人不会愿意为你长期工作。

Now, it may be different down the road when you've built a huge enterprise and there's a network effect and an amazing product. Then maybe you can hire people who are better than you because you're bringing a lot more than just you. But early on, all you're bringing to the startup is you. And for people to want to work for you, you have to be at least on their level.

等到后期,你已经做出了庞大的企业、有了网络效应、有了出色的产品,情况可能不一样——那时候你能招到比自己更好的人,因为你提供的远不止"你这个人"。但早期,你唯一能给到 startup 的就是你自己。要让人愿意为你工作,你至少得跟他们在一个段位上。

This is why I think early-stage investors judge the founding team so heavily. They don't even care about early progress—at least the good ones don't—or about partnerships or domain expertise. They just want to see how good you are. And the clearest way you can show how good you are is by recruiting great people.

这也是为什么早期投资人会非常重地评估创始团队。他们甚至不太关心早期进展(至少好的投资人不太关心),也不关心合作伙伴或领域经验。他们只想看你这个人有多强。而你能最直接证明自己有多强的方式,就是招到一群优秀的人。

So don't take the fact that you don't know anything about recruiting as a negative. Absolutely. In my own most recent company, I think I've recruited the best team I've ever worked with by far, and I've broken so many rules.

所以,别把"我不懂招聘"当缺点。完全相反。在我最近这家公司,我自认为招到了我职业生涯里最好的一支团队,而且我打破了无数条规则。

Every single hire, we had to break some core rule of recruiting. I won't go into all of them because some of those are still tricks that are valid in the environment. Some of those are probably pushing boundaries.

每一个 hire,我们都必须打破某条招聘的核心规则。我不会都说出来,因为有些 trick 现在还在用、还有效;有些可能已经在踩边界了。

But we break every rule.

但我们打破每一条规则。

We break all the objections around commuting.

关于通勤的反对意见,我们都打破。

We'll break the objections around "Oh, I'm having a kid."

"我要有孩子了"——这种反对意见我们也打破。

We'll break the objections around "Oh, I can't afford to exercise these options."

"我没钱行权"——这种我们也打破。

We'll break the objections around "Oh, but I'm at a university."

"可是我还在大学里"——这种我们也打破。

We'll even break the objections around people who may have goals, like, "Oh, I want to be surrounded by the best scientists," or, "I want to work in a different kind of environment."

甚至有人提出更具体的诉求——"我想被最好的科学家围绕"、"我想要另一种工作环境"——这些我们也都能想办法解决。

In the 2025 environment, everyone is trying so hard to recruit AI people and engineers. The demand for top-level engineers is higher than ever because they're so leveraged through the new tools, and you can just see that in the salary offers that are going out to the top people. You just have to be incredibly creative. You just have to break rules.

在 2025 年这种行情里,所有人都在拼命抢 AI 人才和工程师。顶级工程师的需求前所未有,因为新工具让他们的杠杆变得极高——你看一下顶尖人才的 offer 数字就明白了。你必须极有创造力,必须打破规则。

This is another reason why you can't outsource recruiting. Because when you outsource it, you are outsourcing to someone else who doesn't know what rules they can break and what they can't—they're HR, or they're afraid that they'll break some rule that you're not going to be happy with them breaking.

这也是为什么招聘没法外包——你外包给的那个人不知道哪些规则可以打破、哪些不能,他们是 HR,或者他们怕打破了某条你不愿被打破的规则。

But as a founder, you can break rules around the cap table. You might be giving a certain amount of stock to each employee, but one might come along for whom you have to break the rules—or you have to convince them why you can't break the rules for them—or you have to structure their stock compensation a different way, or their salary in a certain way, or their start date, or their hours, or their location, or their title, or who they're working with, or who they're reporting to.

但作为创始人,你可以打破cap table 的规则。你可能给每个员工某个固定额度的股权,但某个人来了,你就必须为他打破规则——或者你必须说服他为什么这次不能破例——或者你必须用另一种方式给他股权、设计薪资、敲定入职日期、工作时长、地点、职级、合作对象、汇报关系。

Or what their office is like, or who they get to hire, or what say they get to have in what part of the product, or in what part of the company, or how they get to straddle roles across different parts of the company.

还可能是办公室是什么样的、他们能招谁、他们对产品的哪一部分有发言权、对公司哪一部分有发言权、能不能跨在公司不同部分扮演几个角色。

You're going to have to break rules to get the best people because the best people are not cogs in a machine. They don't fit into a neat and comfortable place. They're multidisciplinary, and they have to temporarily don an identity of, "Oh, I'm an electrical engineer," "I'm a software engineer," "I'm a marketer," "I'm a product manager," whatever. But the great people are capable of anything. They chose to specialize in a particular thing, but their input is valuable everywhere.

你必须打破规则才能拿到顶级人才,因为顶级人才不是机器里的齿轮。他们没法整齐地装进一个舒服的格子里。他们是多面手,只是临时套上"我是电子工程师"、"我是软件工程师"、"我是市场"、"我是产品经理"之类的身份。但真正厉害的人是无所不能的。他们只是选择在某个领域深耕,但他们在任何地方的输入都有价值。

And they're respected by a group of peers. My co-founder has a phrase he likes to use from Latin: primus inter pares—first among equals—where they're all peers. But each person, given their expertise and their particular know-how, is acknowledged by the others as being the first among equals in a given domain.

他们被一群同侪尊重。我的联合创始人喜欢用一个拉丁词——primus inter pares(同侪之首)——大家是平等的同侪,但每个人凭借自己的专业和具体能力,在他擅长的领域被其他人公认为"同侪之首"。

So one person might be better at naming and branding. One person might be better at industrial design. Another person might be better at electrical engineering or software engineering, or have taste in a different domain. But a great team will have multidisciplinary people who are each capable of doing many jobs, but are specialized and have extreme taste and judgment in particular areas.

于是一个人可能更擅长命名和品牌,一个人更擅长工业设计,另一个人更擅长电子工程或软件工程,或者在某个领域有独到的品味。一支好的团队就是这样的多面手集合——每个人都能干很多活,但各自有专长,在特定领域有极致的品味和判断。

And their peers are smart enough to recognize where they have that taste and will confer upon them the ability to make decisions in that area.

而他们的同伴足够聪明,能识别他们在哪里有那种品味,并把那个领域的决策权交给他们。

You have to break the rules not just on recruiting, but also in operating the company and how it's structured. Every good company is idiosyncratic. Its culture is unique to it.

你不只要在招聘上打破规则,还要在公司运营方式和组织结构上打破规则。每家好公司都是独一份的,它的文化是它独有的。

You can't just transplant it.

你没法把它直接移植到别的地方。

To give you an example at my latest company, we don't use Slack, which is one of these group chat platforms. And especially in a small company, Slack just becomes a hangout spot.

举个例子,在我最新这家公司,我们不用 Slack 这种群聊平台。尤其在小公司里,Slack 会直接退化成一个"闲聊场"。

It's kind of like email. In email, it's too easy to generate tasks for large groups of other people. I can fire off an email with 20 to-dos for other people and it takes me five seconds to generate that email, and then it takes up the day of the other people trying to respond to it. It creates this asymmetric ability to waste other people's time.

它有点像 email。email 里你太容易给一大群人生成任务了。我五秒钟写一封带 20 条 to-do 的邮件,然后另一边的人要花一整天回复。这就形成了一种"不对称地浪费他人时间"的能力。

Over time, email has degenerated into a medium where there is very low signal and a lot of noise—AKA spam—even well-meaning spam from friends, family, and coworkers.

久而久之,email 已经退化成一个低信号、高噪音的媒介——也就是垃圾邮件,哪怕是来自朋友、家人、同事的"善意垃圾邮件"。

So we all switched to text messaging, where we understand the barrier to entry is higher. Like, "If you're going to text me, it'd better be important." And if you're texting me a lot and it's not that important, I'm probably going to mute you. Or if you're in a group text and someone starts messaging too much, you exit the group text, which is why these large group texts die out over time—because the good people mute them and leave.

于是大家都转向了短信——大家心照不宣地知道短信的门槛更高。"你要给我发短信,那这事儿最好挺重要。" 如果你天天给我发短信、又不是什么大事,我大概率会把你静音。或者你在一个群短信里、某个人发太多了,你就会退群——所以这些大群短信会逐渐死掉,因为好的人都把它静音、然后退出。

Slack and group messaging platforms have a similar dynamic where over time they degenerate into a combination of people asking random questions into thin air, people prognosticating, people politicking, people bickering, people talking about stuff that is not germane to the work. And they become largely entertainment platforms for group culture building—which is fine—with a high noise-to-signal ratio.

Slack 和群消息平台是同一套动力学:久而久之退化成一锅大杂烩——有人对着空气问问题、有人在那儿装预言家、有人在搞政治、有人在吵架、还有人在聊跟工作毫不相干的事。它基本变成了"团队文化建设"的娱乐平台——这本身没问题——但噪音信号比极高。

Whereas if you don't have Slack, if you have a question you have to really think about it and try to solve it yourself. And if you can't, you have to figure out who in the company might have an answer to that question, and you have to track that person down, which is highly interruptive, and you have to figure out how to approach them properly.

而如果你没有 Slack,你有问题就得自己认真想一想、自己先尝试解决。如果实在解决不了,你得想清楚公司里谁可能有答案,然后亲自去找那个人——这个动作的打扰成本很高,而且你得想清楚怎么得体地去找他。

You could argue that communication overhead is too high. This limits your ability to scale as a company.

你可以辩称这种沟通成本太高了。它限制了公司扩张的能力。

Which is exactly the point.

这正是我们想要的。

When you have a small number of brilliant people working together to try to take a product from zero to one, the last thing you want is scale. Scale is your enemy.

当你只有一小群极聪明的人在一起、要把一个产品从 zero to one,你最不需要的就是规模。规模是你的敌人。

It just takes a small group of people to create something great.

造出伟大的东西,只需要一小群人。

Every good founder knows this. One of the reasons Steve Jobs implemented secrecy at Apple was to prevent teams from cross-pollinating too much and being in each other's business and trying to take credit for each other's work. It's also why he moved the Macintosh team into a separate building from the Apple II team. Elon Musk encourages people to walk out of meetings and do standing meetings only. Jeff Bezos limits teams to two-pizza teams. These are all attempts by founders to unscale the company—to break it down into smaller components so people can actually get work done instead of spending all their time in meetings and politicking.

每个好的创始人都明白这一点。Steve Jobs 在 Apple 推行严格保密的一个原因,就是防止各团队过度互相渗透、互相插手、互相抢功。这也是他为什么把 Macintosh 团队挪到跟 Apple II 团队不同的楼。Elon Musk 鼓励人从会议里直接走出去、只开站立会。Jeff Bezos 把团队限定为两个 pizza 喂得饱的团队。这些都是创始人在尝试给公司"反规模化"——把它拆成更小的组件,让人能真的做事,而不是把时间全花在开会和搞政治上。

Slack breaks those boundaries. It allows 50 people to be in a group at once and waste each other's time. If you force people to be thoughtful about their interactions, you move from a meeting schedule to a maker's schedule. Then people can have uninterrupted free time to be creative. And creativity is all that matters because we do live in the age of infinite leverage, and AI and robotics are making that more clear every day.

Slack 打碎了这些边界。它让 50 个人可以同时在一个群里浪费彼此的时间。如果你强迫大家在每次互动前都想清楚再发,你就从"会议时间表"转到了 maker's schedule(造物者时间表)。这样人才能有不被打断的自由时间去搞创造。而创造力是唯一重要的事情,因为我们确实生活在"无限杠杆"的时代,AI 和机器人每天都在让这件事更显而易见。

You need to let your people be bored rather than busy. Always keeping them busy with make-work is not effective. You need to give them maker's time—builder's time—which means large amounts of uninterrupted free time to do deep creative work.

你需要让你的人无聊,而不是繁忙。一直用"装忙的活"把他们填满,是无效的。你必须给他们 maker's time——builder's time——也就是大段不被打断的自由时间,让他们做深度的创造性工作。

And then when they stick their heads out of that and they're bored, they can go for a run or they can spend time with their family, or they can even go surf TikTok—no one's judging—but they get to manage their time better. Whereas Slack takes the disease of meetings and makes it pervasive: 24/7.

然后当他们从中抬起头、感到无聊的时候,他们可以去跑步、去陪家人、甚至去刷 TikTok ——没人评判——但他们能更好地管理自己的时间。而 Slack 是把"会议"这个疾病变成无处不在、24/7 的存在。

So now on top of checking your email inbox, you have to check your Slack inbox. And it has that TikTok-like insidious addiction loop where there's a lot of slop in there, but once in a while there's a nugget. So you're constantly now running through this pile of slop to find that nugget. People can asymmetrically waste each other's time by sending one message that then 50 other people have to sift through and figure out if it's slop or not.

所以现在你除了要查 email 收件箱,还要查 Slack 收件箱。而且 Slack 有一种 TikTok 式的、阴险的成瘾回路——里面大部分是 slop(垃圾),但偶尔有一颗金子。于是你不停地在 slop 堆里翻找那颗金子。一个人发一条消息,就能让另外 50 个人去筛——这是不对称地浪费他人时间。

So, especially in a small team, one-on-one communications are much better. And by limiting the use of Slack, especially early on, you can force the team to stay small. And when a team is small, people who aren't pulling their weight can't hide. You can curate it much better as a leader. You can manage them directly, or work with them directly, and you can actually deliver world-changing products.

所以,尤其在小团队里,一对一沟通要好太多。通过限制 Slack 的使用——尤其是在早期——你能强迫团队保持精简。团队一精简,不出力的人就藏不住。作为 leader 你能更好地"策展"团队,可以直接管理或直接合作,真的造出能改变世界的产品。

Obviously the product vision is there. Obviously you have to find talent. The key is "undiscovered." That's the part that we haven't talked about and that I think a lot of people miss.

"产品愿景"显然要在,"找到人才"显然要做。关键是那个 "undiscovered"(未被发现)。这是我们之前没聊到、很多人也错过的部分。

If you can identify the talent from afar easily, so can everybody else. You have to find them before other people do. How do you do this? Elon is probably the modern master of this. Although Jobs, Altman, and a few other people have also done extremely well in this regard. The playbook that Elon uses is interesting.

如果你能轻松地远远地识别出天才,那别人也一样能。你必须比别人更早找到他们。怎么做呢?Elon 大概是这件事的现代大师。当然 Jobs、Altman 和其他几个人在这方面也做得极好。Elon 的 playbook 很有意思。

First, you pick a mission that's extremely audacious. There's only so many hours in a day. You're going to work anyway. You might as well work on something big. The best people know that deep down. They want to work on something big.

第一,挑一个极度大胆的使命。一天只有那么多小时,你反正要工作,不如做点大的。最优秀的人内心深处明白这一点。他们想做大事。

For example, I think the best people don't want to build video games or slop entertainment that's wasting people's lives. They don't want to build a crypto casino. The best people want to do meaningful work because deep down they're aware of their potential. And so when they see an opportunity to express themselves as engineers, as artists—hopefully as both, because I think the great engineers are often great artists as well—they're going to be drawn to a big mission.

比如,最优秀的人不想去做浪费别人生命的视频游戏或 slop entertainment。他们不想做加密赌场。他们想做有意义的工作,因为内心深处他们对自己的潜力是有数的。所以当他们看到一个能让自己作为工程师、作为艺术家(最好两者兼备,因为我认为伟大的工程师常常也是伟大的艺术家)表达自己的机会,他们会被一个大使命吸引过去。

So the first thing Elon does across the board is he picks a big mission and he frames it in the largest way possible:

所以 Elon 一直做的第一件事,就是挑一个大使命,并用最宏大的方式去 framing:

"We're not going into space; we're not going to the moon; we're going to Mars."

"我们不是要去太空;我们不是要去月球;我们要去火星。"

That's a big mission.

这是个大使命。

Similarly, Sam Altman stays true to "We're not just building Sora 2 video feeds; we're not just building chatbots; we're building AGI." He's not wavering from that. He wants to build AGI.

同样,Sam Altman 一直坚持:"我们不只是在做 Sora 2 视频流;我们不只是在做 chatbot;我们要做 AGI。" 他从不在这件事上动摇。他要造 AGI。

Elon doesn't want to stop at just electric cars. He doesn't even want to stop at self-driving cars. He wants robots. He wants an army of a hundred million robots. Tesla is going all the way. So these are inspiring. These attract the best people.

Elon 不满足于电动车。甚至也不满足于自动驾驶。他要机器人。他要一支一亿台机器人的军团。Tesla 是要一路走到底的。这些都很激动人心,这些就能吸引到最优秀的人。

Second, you're early. You lay out these missions and you do it before everybody else does. So Elon did SpaceX long before space was cool. People thought it was impossible, and so he managed to attract the best engineers out of NASA and Boeing and Lockheed and universities before everybody else did.

第二,你要早。你比所有人更早把这种使命摆出来。Elon 做 SpaceX 远早于太空变酷之前。当时大家觉得这事儿不可能,所以他能在所有人之前,从 NASA、Boeing、Lockheed 和高校里挖到最顶尖的工程师。

Now, if you're in a more crowded space, you need to get creative and find the undiscovered talent in that space. By the time someone's famous on Twitter, it's too late to recruit them. Everybody knows. Even by the time someone is pedigreed—they've won all the awards and the papers—very hard to recruit. You're going to have to hack your way to them.

如果你在的赛道已经拥挤,你就需要更有创造力,去那个赛道里找未被发现的天才。等一个人在 Twitter 上出名的时候,招他已经太迟了——所有人都知道他。哪怕一个人已经"血统纯正"——奖项拿遍了、论文也都发了——也很难招。你必须 hack 出一条接近他们的路径。

So to be a great recruiter, you have to first be a great sourcer, and a great sourcer is a good hunter of undiscovered talent, which means you have to have taste, and you have to have interest in other people, and you have to put in the time.

所以要成为一个出色的招聘者,你首先得是一个出色的 sourcer,而出色的 sourcer 就是"未被发现天才的猎人"——这意味着你必须有品味,必须对他人感兴趣,必须愿意为之投入时间。

For example, my co-founder loves to find tinkerers. He loves to find weird projects—not mainstream projects, not the obvious stuff. He's not looking at who's training a better AI model. That's too obvious.

比如,我的联合创始人很喜欢找 tinkerer(摆弄者)。他喜欢找奇奇怪怪的项目——不是主流项目,不是显眼的东西。他不看"谁在训练一个更好的 AI 模型",那太显眼了。

Instead, he might be looking at something adjacent like, "Who's really into using weird ML algorithms for micro-weather forecasting?" Then he'll spend a day or two going through their GitHub or going through their paper and really understanding it. And then he'll go off and he'll think deeply about it.

他更可能盯一些邻近的东西,比如:"谁在用奇怪的 ML 算法做微观天气预报?" 然后他会花一两天去翻这个人的 GitHub、或者读他的论文,真正搞懂它,再回去深度思考。

And then he'll come back with a tweak or a modification and he'll email that person and say, "Hey, I saw your code. I saw what you've done. I thought it's really interesting. I wrote a little bit of code that I think you may want to incorporate or plug in."

然后他会带着一个改进或修改方案回来,给那个人发 email:"嘿,我看了你的代码,看了你做的事,觉得真的很有意思。我写了一小段代码,你可能想把它合进去或者作为插件。"

Or, "I have a question," and usually it's a good question—it's a considered question. And the person responds well because here they are off tinkering on the side and somebody has spotted their tinkering and has a good question about it.

或者:"我有个问题。" 通常是个好问题——一个经过深思的问题。对方回应很积极,因为他们正一个人在边上摆弄,突然有人注意到了他们的小项目,还问了一个好问题。

And the best part is he's not doing this to recruit people—he's doing this because that's just what he does for fun. He's genuinely interested. So he finds these weird loners tinkering at the edge, and then I get to go in and recruit them. Most of the time it fails and sometimes it succeeds. But you find really interesting people.

最妙的是,他做这件事不是为了招人——他做这件事是因为这就是他的爱好。他是真的感兴趣。所以他找到这些在边缘摆弄的怪咖独行侠,然后我再进去招他们。大多数时候招不来,有时候能招来。但你能找到真正有意思的人。

That's an example of how his taste allows him to source a particular category of people.

这就是一个例子——他的品味让他能 source 到某一类特定的人。

So you do have to look for talent in undiscovered places.

所以你确实必须去未被发现的地方找天才。

We recently hired an assistant at the company—an office-manager-type person—and it was just someone I ran into at a restaurant who was incredibly hospitable, and had never worked a day in their life at a tech company.

我们最近在公司招了一个助理——办公室主任那种角色——其实就是我在一家餐厅遇到的一个人,招待极其周到,他这辈子一天科技公司都没待过。

But you could just tell this person was good at everything they did. Everything they touched was quality and stylish, and they cared. We recruited them; we took a chance.

但你一眼就能看出来,这个人做什么都做得好。他经手的每件事都有质感、有 style,而且他在乎。我们就把他招了过来——我们赌了一把。

So it's about finding undiscovered talent, not the obvious talent. And this is another problem with outsourcing recruiting, which is you hand it to a recruiter, you hand it to HR—they can't bring you weird people. It's too high risk. They don't have the taste themselves. Makers have taste in other makers. Builders have taste in other builders. Engineers have taste in other engineers. Good salespeople have taste in other salespeople. Copywriters have taste in other copywriters. So it's very hard to outsource that.

所以核心是找未被发现的天才,不是显眼的那种。这又是外包招聘的另一个问题——你把它交给 recruiter、交给 HR,他们没法给你带来怪人。风险太高,而且他们自己也没有那种品味。Maker 才能品出 maker,builder 才能品出 builder,工程师才能品出工程师,好销售才能品出好销售,copywriter 才能品出 copywriter。这件事非常难外包。

As a related aside, one of my pet peeves is hiring marketing and PR people who have no evidence of being able to market themselves.

顺带一句:我的一个 pet peeve 是——招那种没有任何"自我营销"实绩的市场或 PR 人。

For example, if you want to hire someone to do your social media, they'd better have a great social media account for themselves. They should be playing their own social media game at the top of the game.

举个例子,你要招一个人做你的社交媒体,他自己最好有一个很厉害的社交媒体账号。他自己就应该是在这个游戏顶端玩的人。

And in fact, I would argue the best social media people are not even hireable. You have to discover them when they're very raw, when their accounts are small and young and up-and-coming. Or you have to contract with them because they know that their real opportunity is to build a channel around themselves uniquely, and they'll briefly rent you their channel rather than hand it over to you completely.

事实上,最好的社交媒体人根本就不是"可被招聘"的。你必须在他们还很 raw 的时候、账号还小、还年轻、刚冒头的时候发现他们。或者你只能跟他们签合作——因为他们清楚自己真正的机会是在自己身上建一个独一份的频道,他们顶多把自己频道短租给你,而不会整个交给你。

And I would go one level further. I think you should open a cafe like that, not because you want to recruit people, but just because you like hanging around founders and you like having a cafe. That's going to be a lot more genuine and authentic and won't feel like work and you'll do a better job and then there'll be ancillary benefits to it.

我会再往前推一步。我觉得你开这种咖啡店,不应该是因为你想招人,而应该是因为你喜欢跟创始人混在一起,你喜欢开一家咖啡店。这样会更真实、更纯粹,不会感觉像在工作,你也会做得更好,顺带产生招聘上的附带收益。

I know this experientially, but let's also talk about what art is. My definition of art is much broader than a conventional definition.

这件事我从经验上就感受到。但我们也聊聊"艺术"是什么。我对艺术的定义比常规定义宽得多。

I characterize art as something that is done for its own sake, and done well, and often creates a sense of beauty or some strong emotion.

我把艺术定义为:为它自身而做(for its own sake),做到极致,而且常常能引发一种美感或某种强烈的情感。

And a lot of engineers are introverts.

很多工程师是内向的。

As an aside, I hate the term "incel." It's just a way of putting introverts down. It's the new "nerd," if you will. If someone says that somebody is an incel, I'm more likely to want to interview them. So let's move away from the slurs.

顺带一句,我讨厌 "incel" 这个词。它就是用来贬低内向者的。它是新版的 "nerd"。如果有人说某人是 incel,我反而更想去面试这个被骂的人。所以,别用这种 slur 了。

But introverts tend to want to express themselves through other things rather than going out and expressing themselves directly. So what are they going to do? They're going to express themselves through their craft. They're going to create art.

但内向者往往倾向于通过别的东西来表达自己,而不是直接出去表达。那他们怎么做呢?他们会通过自己的手艺来表达。他们会创造艺术。

In my current company, at least half the engineers have serious artwork they've done on the side. World-class artwork—everything from elegant mathematical proofs to beautiful computer art, to literally sculpting things with clay, designing clothing, designing doorknobs, water bottles. There's one who's done incredible music videos, really good stuff. And I see a lot of the better engineers tinker with the AI art products, much more so than even so-called artists do. I think a lot of artists are scared by AI art products saying, "This is going to replace me." Whereas someone who doesn't have that identity of an artist and doesn't feel threatened by it—it's just a tool and they try it out to see what it can create.

在我现在这家公司,至少一半的工程师在私下里有正经的副业艺术作品。世界级的作品——从优雅的数学证明,到漂亮的计算机艺术,到真的用粘土雕刻、设计服装、设计门把手、设计水瓶。有一个人做了非常出色的音乐视频,真的好。而我看到很多更厉害的工程师在玩 AI 艺术产品,比所谓的"艺术家"玩得还多。我觉得很多艺术家被 AI 艺术产品吓到——"这要把我替代掉了。" 而那些不背着"我是艺术家"这个身份、不感到威胁的人,只把它当工具,就拿来试试看能造出什么。

Anything done for its own sake and done as well as one possibly can is art. And great engineers are also artists. They're capable of anything. It's just they've chosen to be engineers and focused on building things because engineering is the ability to turn your ideas and your art into things that actually work, that do something useful, that embody some knowledge in a way that it can be repeated and people can get utility out of it. But that doesn't mean that it can't be beautiful.

任何为它自身而做、并尽可能做到最好的事,都是艺术。而伟大的工程师也是艺术家。他们什么都能做,只是他们选择了去做工程师、去专注造东西。因为工程的能力,就是把你的想法和你的艺术转化成能真正工作、能做有用的事、能把某种知识具象化以便复用、让别人从中获益的东西。但这并不妨碍它同时是美的。

Again, I'm channeling my co-founder, but if you ask him what is the best form of art—painting, music, literature, etc.—for him, it's industrial design.

我又在替我的联合创始人代言了——但如果你问他最好的艺术形式是什么(绘画、音乐、文学等等),对他来说,是工业设计。

For example, if you look at the AirPods—the way they're sculpted aerodynamically, and still have to be manufacturable on a machine at a certain price point by someone in China, according to a spec.

比如你看 AirPods——它的形状是流体力学雕塑出来的,但还必须在某个价位下由中国某条产线、按一份规格书制造出来。

The way they satisfyingly click into the little resting places in their case with magnets.

它放回充电盒时,被磁铁"咔哒"一声吸到位的那种满足感。

The way they pioneered that whole charging case with the Find My AirPods product built in.

它开创性地把整个充电盒做出来,还内置 Find My AirPods 这个产品。

The way they hid all the extra buttons.

它把所有多余的按键都藏掉。

The way they made it carry spare batteries.

它让充电盒自己带备用电量。

The way they fit inside your ear with the replaceable tips.

它通过可替换耳塞 fit 进你的耳朵。

That is a marvel of art and engineering.

这是艺术与工程的一个奇迹。

It took incredible artistry to figure out how to design it so it fits—sculpted—into the human ear, which is a beautiful and natural form, while still being mass-producible at a certain price point and making all of the little elements work together.

把它设计成"雕塑"般贴合进人耳——人耳本身就是一个美丽、自然的形态——同时还要在某个价位下大规模生产、让所有小零件协同工作,这需要极高的艺术性。

When you close the lid on the AirPods, it makes a very satisfying snap. The way the curves around it—those are G3 curves. Those are hand-sculpted and then scanned in—computers can't generate those.

当你合上 AirPods 盖子的时候,会有一种非常令人满足的"咔哒"声。它周围的那些曲线——那是 G3 曲线。它们是手工雕刻出来再扫描进电脑的——计算机本身造不出这种曲线。

The way it feels in your hand: it feels like a smooth, polished pebble that fell from the sky.

它握在手里的感觉:像一颗从天上掉下来、光滑而抛过光的鹅卵石。

It's a thing of beauty. It's a work of art; and I think people intrinsically know that, which is why they flock to Apple products over various Android products because they are sculpted like works of art. The care goes in there and you can feel it. Apple triumphed as a company of people who genuinely, deeply cared—of engineer artists.

这是一件美丽之物,是一件艺术品。我觉得人内心是知道这一点的,这也是为什么大家蜂拥到 Apple 产品而不是各种 Android 产品——因为它们像艺术品一样被雕琢。那份"在乎"是嵌在里面的,你能感觉到。Apple 之所以胜出,是因为它是一家真正、深刻在乎产品的人组成的公司——一群"工程师艺术家"。

That's why to this day, even all the other founders, even ones who might have built more market cap recently than Apple has, they still all look up to Apple.

这也是为什么至今,所有其他创始人——哪怕他们最近创造的市值已经超过了 Apple——他们仍然都仰望 Apple。

Every entrepreneur from my generation, and I think many subsequent generations, looks up to Steve Jobs and his team more than any other because they were truly artists, not just engineers.

我这一代,以及之后好几代的创业者,所有人都比任何其他对象更仰望 Steve Jobs 和他的团队,因为他们是真正的艺术家,不只是工程师。

I think that's right, and it's telling that when you talked about automation, you left out automating through process or people—that's the worst form of automation, because then that adds non-technical or non-creative people into the process. And those people aren't going to be happy in those jobs for long because they're cogs in the machine and will eventually be replaced by some piece of technology.

我同意。值得注意的是,你说自动化的时候,没提"用流程或人来自动化"——那是最差的一种自动化,因为这种做法会把非技术、非创造性的人加入到流程里。而这些人在那种工作里待不久,因为他们是机器里的齿轮,迟早会被某种技术替换掉。

It also changes the environment because humans are social animals. If you start mixing them together, they're always going to want to accommodate the other people. And so the level of conversation will shift.

它还会改变整个环境,因为人是社会性动物。一旦你把不同种类的人混在一起,他们总会本能地去迁就别人。于是对话的水准会被向下拉。

For example, if you have a bunch of politicians in a room and a bunch of engineers, you're not going to be talking engineering for long.

举个例子,屋里一堆政客加一堆工程师,聊不了多久就聊不下去工程了。

Eventually you will drift into common topics. And in a large enough group, the common topics are always travel and food because they're non-threatening topics. People always degenerate to that.

最后大家会漂移到公共话题。一群人足够大的时候,公共话题永远是"旅游和美食",因为这些话题不冒犯人。人总是退化到那里。

If you really want to have a strong culture of people who are mission-oriented, you can't mix too many different kinds of people.

如果你真的想要一种"使命驱动"的强文化,你不能把太多种类的人混在一起。

That's where the "cult" in culture comes from. Early teams do look like cults. They are monomaniacal; they are weird; but they're all kind of weird in a similar way. And if you start mixing too many different kinds of people, you're just going to get a bland average, which is not how you're going to build a great company or product. It's a regression to the mean problem.

这就是 "culture" 里那个 "cult"(邪教)的来源。早期团队看起来真的像邪教——他们偏执、怪异,但他们怪得"风格相近"。如果你把太多种类的人混进来,你最后只会得到一个平庸的平均值。那不是造伟大公司或伟大产品的方法。这是一个 regression to the mean(向均值回归)问题。

Founders want to be popular like everybody else, so externally, they'll try to project this image that they're consensus-driven, and sometimes they're even stupid enough to fall for it. But every great founder I've seen up close, or even from afar, is highly opinionated and they're almost dictatorial in how they run things.

创始人跟所有人一样都想被大家喜欢,所以对外他们会试图营造一种"我是 consensus-driven(共识驱动)"的形象,有时候甚至自己都信了。但我近距离观察过、或者远观过的每一位伟大创始人,都极度有主见、运营公司的方式几乎是独裁的。

Also, early-stage teams are opinionated. And the products they build are opinionated. Opinionated means they have a strong vision for what it should and should not do.

而且,早期团队是有主见的;他们做出来的产品也是有主见的。"有主见"的意思是:他们对这个产品该做什么、不该做什么,有强烈的愿景。

If you don't have a strong vision of what it should and should not do, then you end up with a giant mess of competing features.

如果你对它"该做什么、不该做什么"没有强烈的愿景,你最后只会得到一堆互相打架的功能、一锅大乱炖。

Jack Dorsey has a great phrase: "Limit the number of details and make every detail perfect." And that's especially important in consumer products. You have to be extremely opinionated. All the best products in consumer-land get there through simplicity.

Jack Dorsey 有一句很好的话:"限制细节的数量,把每一个细节都做到完美。" 这在消费产品里尤其重要。你必须极度有主见。消费领域里所有最好的产品,都是通过"简单"做到极致的。

You could argue the recent success of ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots is because they're even simpler than Google.

你甚至可以说,ChatGPT 和类似的 AI chatbot 之所以成功,是因为它们比 Google 还要简单。

Google looked like the simplest product you could possibly build. It was just a box. But even that box had limitations in what you could do.

Google 看起来像是你能造的最简单的产品——就是一个搜索框。但即使是那个框,使用上也有不少限制。

You were trained not to talk to it conversationally. You would enter keywords and you had to be careful with those keywords. You couldn't just ask a question outright and get a sensible answer. It wouldn't do proper synonym matching, and then it would spit you back a whole bunch of results. That was complicated. You'd have to sift through and figure out which ones were ads, which ones were real, were they sorted correctly, and then you'd have to click through and read it.

你被训练成不要用对话的方式跟它说话。你输入关键词,而且对这些关键词要小心翼翼。你不能直接问一个问题就拿到合理的答案。它不会做合适的同义词匹配,然后丢给你一大堆结果。这是很复杂的——你得自己筛,搞清楚哪些是广告、哪些是真的、排序对不对、然后点进去读。

ChatGPT and the chatbot simplified that even further. You just talk to it like a human—use your voice or you type and it gives you back a straight answer.

ChatGPT 和这种 chatbot 把这件事进一步简化了。你直接像跟人讲话一样——用语音或者打字——它直接给你一个答案。

It might not always be right, but it's good enough, and it gives you back a straight answer in text or voice or images or whatever you prefer.

不一定每次都对,但够好了,并且它会用文本、语音、图片——你喜欢的任何形式——直接把答案给你。

So it simplifies what we looked at as the simplest product on the Internet, which was formerly Google, and makes it even simpler. And you just cannot make a product that's simple enough.

所以它把我们曾经认为是互联网上最简单的产品(Google)又简化了一层。一个产品,你怎么简化都不算过分。

To be simple, you have to be extremely opinionated. You have to remove everything that doesn't match your opinion of what the product should be doing. You have to meticulously remove every single click, every single extra button, every single setting.

要做到简单,你必须极度有主见。你必须把任何不符合你"产品该做什么"立场的东西都拿掉。你必须一丝不苟地去掉每一次多余的点击、每一个多余的按钮、每一个多余的设置项。

In fact, things in the settings menu are an indication that you've abdicated your responsibility to the user. Choices for the user are an abdication of your responsibility. Maybe for legal or important reasons, you can have a few of these, but you should struggle and resist against every single choice the user has to make.

事实上,settings 菜单里的每一项,都是你把责任甩给用户的标志。给用户选择,就是你在让渡自己的责任。出于法律或其他重要原因,你也许可以保留几个,但你应该对用户必须做出的每一个选择都全力抗拒。

In the age of TikTok and ChatGPT, that's more obvious than ever. People don't want to make choices. They don't want the cognitive load. They want you to figure out what the right defaults are and what they should be doing and looking at, and they want you to present it to them.

在 TikTok 和 ChatGPT 的时代,这件事比以往任何时候都明显。人不想做选择。他们不想要那种认知负担。他们要你替他们想清楚什么是合适的默认值、他们应该做什么、应该看什么,然后呈现给他们。

I think that's correct, and people may get unhappy saying, "Well, you're calling these people robots," but I don't think anybody wants to do the same thing over and over. Everybody wants to do new, unique, and creative things.

我同意。可能有人会不开心:"你这是把人叫做机器人。" 但我不觉得有任何人愿意天天重复同一件事。每个人都想做新的、独特的、创造性的事。

Everyone can be an artist. Not in the sense of grabbing a paintbrush and painting—but in the sense of creating new knowledge and enjoying that process. It may just be in different domains. Even figuring out how to hack Twitter or YouTube to get your word out is a form of creating new knowledge.

每个人都可以是艺术家。不是说每个人都要拿起画笔——而是说每个人都可以去创造新知识,并享受这个过程,只是领域不同。哪怕你在搞清楚怎么 hack Twitter 或 YouTube 把自己的话传出去——那本身也是一种新知识的创造。

For example, a couple of years ago the way to get the word out was probably writing blog posts. Now it might be X plus Substack, or going viral on TikTok, or doing a great startup launch video. The target is always moving and people are always trying to apply creativity to hack that system—even fundraising.

比如几年前,把话传出去的方式可能是写 blog;现在可能是 X 加 Substack、TikTok 上爆红、或者拍一个出色的 startup launch 视频。目标在不停移动,大家都在用创造力 hack 这个系统——连融资都是这样。

Rather than going and meeting VCs one by one, today I would argue you're better served, if your product shows well, to build a killer launch video and a great demo of the product and try to get it to go viral online—to have a personality and stand out from the noise.

与其一个一个去见 VC,我会说今天更好的方法是——如果你的产品 demo 起来很出彩——拍一个杀手级的 launch 视频、做一段漂亮的产品演示,让它在网上裂变;有自己的人格、从噪音里脱颖而出。

So creativity can be applied anywhere.

所以创造力可以被应用到任何地方。

The other thing I look for in people is being self-motivated. So you don't have to tell them what to do. You don't have to push them.

我在人身上找的另一样东西是"自驱"。你不必告诉他们做什么,你不必推他们。

"Hey, what did you get done this week?" That's a famous Elon question, and I think it's a great one. But it is fundamentally still a management question. It's a manager's question. It's not a leader's question. With leadership, you motivate people.

"嘿,你这周搞定了什么?" ——这是 Elon 那条著名的问题,我觉得是个好问题。但这本质上还是一个管理问题,是一个 manager 在问,不是 leader 在问。Leadership 是激励人。

You give them the place to march to, but they're relatively self-motivated. Once they know what direction you're all headed in, they're going to figure out how best to get there and to contribute to the team getting there. And if they have to be told when to march and they have to be pushed along and flogged, then they don't belong in an early-stage startup.

你告诉他们要往哪儿走,但他们相对自驱。一旦他们知道大家在往哪个方向走,他们自己就会想清楚怎么以最好的方式到达那里,并为团队抵达那里贡献。如果一个人需要被告知"什么时候开走"、需要被推着、被鞭策——那他不属于一家早期 startup。

So I think being self-motivated is really important. And as I mentioned earlier, low ego is also very important. And these are pretty rare combinations, but high-ego people can just destroy the functioning of a team.

所以我觉得自驱很重要。前面也说过,"低自我"也非常重要。这两点同时具备的人很罕见,但高自我的人能直接摧毁一个团队的运作。

A lot of these principles are very difficult to adopt once the company's past a certain size.

这些原则,公司一旦过了某个规模就很难再贯彻。

For example, you could have the criteria saying, "I'm only going to work with self-motivated people. I'm only going to work with people who don't need a lot of direction, so I can work with as many of them as possible, and I don't have to look over their shoulder all the time."

比如,你可以有一条原则:"我只跟自驱的人合作。我只跟不需要大量指示的人合作,这样我能合作得尽量多,不用一直盯着他们。"

But if you already have 40 or 50 people in the company, odds are you've already hired a bunch of these people. Now what are you going to do—a mass layoff? Based on what—some fuzzy feeling about motivation? How much conviction do you have? Probably not enough.

但如果你公司已经有 40、50 个人了,那大概率你已经招过一堆"非自驱"的人。你现在要怎么办——大规模裁员吗?基于什么——一种模糊的"动机感觉"?你有多少 conviction?多半不够。

So it's not only that the team you build is the company you build, literally—the founder's personality is the company because your principles and your non-negotiables and your values dictate who you're going to hire.

所以不只是"你打造的团队就是你打造的公司"——更准确地说,创始人的人格就是这家公司本身,因为你的原则、你的不可妥协项、你的价值观,直接决定了你会招进什么样的人。

The best founders have extreme taste in people and in products. They are extremely judgy. For example, in my current company, I have extreme taste about investors. I won't take money from any VC. I don't respect most VCs—they're just money managers pushing money around. A lot of them like taking credit for other people's work. I've had bad encounters with VCs in the past. There's no VC who's going to sit on my board and give me advice, which I probably haven't already heard.

最好的创始人对人和产品都有极致的品味。他们极度 judgy。比如我现在这家公司,我对投资人有极致的品味——我不接任何 VC 的钱。我不尊重大多数 VC——他们只是把钱挪来挪去的 money manager,很多人喜欢蹭别人成果的功劳。我以前跟 VC 有过糟糕的经历。没有一个 VC 能进我的董事会、给我提供我没听过的建议。

So what am I going to recruit a VC for? I'm going to have very extreme taste about a VC.

那我招个 VC 进来干什么?我对 VC 的品味就要非常极致。

My co-founder has extreme taste about builders. I have extreme taste about marketers and sellers and copywriting. I'm never going to hire a marketing person who can't outwrite me, and that's a rare person.

我的联合创始人对 builder 有极致的品味。我对市场人、销售、文案有极致的品味。我永远不会招一个写得没我好的市场人——而那是个稀缺的人。

It helps to be very judgy. You do want to be very opinionated. Anyone who tells you to listen to others and build consensus and gather feedback is implying that you're weak, you're not good enough at what you do, or that you have the wrong approach.

极度 judgy 是有用的。你确实应该极度有主见。任何告诉你"多听别人意见、建立共识、广泛收集反馈"的人,都是在暗示你软弱、你不够强、或者你的方法是错的。

Good founders are incredibly opinionated. The problem is the bad founders are very opinionated too.

好的创始人极度有主见。麻烦的是,差的创始人也极度有主见。

Thiel's famous question about a secret is really, from an investor's perspective, where he's hunting for the unique bet that the business is making, because he doesn't want competition. As he says, "Competition is for losers."

Thiel 那道关于"秘密"的著名问题,从投资人的视角看,其实是他在猎"这家公司在下的那个独一无二的赌注",因为他不想有竞争。他自己说过:"竞争是给 losers 的。"

As we learn in basic microeconomics, competition reduces profits to zero, and he wants to make a unique bet. Or as Mike Maples, early AngelList investor, likes to say, "non-consensus and right." But that's for investing.

基础微观经济学告诉我们,竞争会把利润压到零,而他想做一个独一无二的赌注。或者用 Mike Maples(AngelList 早期投资人)的话说:"非共识且对" (non-consensus and right)。但这是投资的视角。

I think in everyday work you want to work with people who are very good at distilling the insight from their work on a constant basis.

我觉得在日常工作里,你想合作的是那种持续不断从自己工作里"蒸馏出洞察"能力很强的人。

Malcolm Gladwell popularized 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours is directionally correct, but it's not exactly correct. It implies that if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you get mastery. Let's put aside whether 10,000 is the right number or not.

Malcolm Gladwell 把"一万小时"这个概念普及开了。一万小时这个方向是对的,但不完全准确。它暗示你花一万小时做一件事就能精通。先不管一万这个数字对不对。

It's not just hours put in—it's iterations.

关键不是投入了多少小时——而是迭代了多少次。

How many learning loops do you have that drive the learning curve?

你有多少能驱动学习曲线的"学习回路"?

What is an iteration? An iteration is when you do something and then you look at the result; you test the result somehow—ideally against a free market, nature, or physics. Then you ask, "Did this work or not? What part of this experiment worked or not?"

什么叫一次迭代?一次迭代就是:你做一件事,看结果,以某种方式测试它——最好放到自由市场、自然或物理规律里去测。然后你问:"这个 work 还是不 work?这次实验里哪一部分 work、哪一部分不 work?"

And then based on that, you make a new creative guess on how to improve that thing, and you do it again.

然后基于这个,你做一次新的、有创造力的猜测——怎么改进它——再做一次。

The number of times you can do that rotation, that iteration, the faster you're going to learn. That's the curve you want to be on.

你能完成这种循环、这种迭代的次数越多,你学得越快。那才是你想踩的曲线。

Great people will distill insights from every iteration.

优秀的人会从每一次迭代里蒸馏出洞察。

So it's not as simple as finding one secret. Yes, every company makes a secret bet. They have a theory as to how the world is going to work out that other people don't necessarily have en masse, or it's not conventional wisdom yet.

所以这件事不是"找一个秘密"那么简单。是的,每家公司都下一个秘密赌注——他们有一套关于世界会如何演变的理论,这套理论别人还没大规模认同,或者还没成为 conventional wisdom。

But along the way, they're going to discover thousands of insights, and each one will build upon the last, and that's all going to be driven by the number of iterations they can do.

但在路上,他们会发现成千上万个洞察,每一个都建立在上一个之上,这一切都靠他们能完成的迭代次数来驱动。

One of the problems you run into when scaling a startup is you hire someone who hires someone, and then that person is used to a well-defined job at a larger company. They're used to getting credit for their work.

公司扩张时会遇到一个问题:你招了一个人,他又招了一个人,而后者习惯了大公司里那种"职责定义清晰"的工作,习惯了自己的工作能拿到 credit。

They're divorced enough from the end outcome that all they have to do is kind of impress their manager—the principal-agent problem.

他们离最终结果已经远到一个程度——他们要做的全部就是让自己的 manager 满意——这就是委托代理问题。

So now what they want is for their work to not be thrown away. A common objection you get when your company scales beyond 20, 30, 40, 50 people is "We don't want to try this because it's probably not going to work."

于是他们想要的是——自己的工作不要被丢掉。公司一旦扩到 20、30、40、50 人之后,你常常听到的反对意见就是:"我们不想试这个,因为多半不会 work。"

It's actually probably the number one thing a founder will struggle with as a company scales—that they'll come up with more ideas than their organization can execute upon, and there'll be internal resistance to doing things because nine out of 10 ideas are half-baked.

这其实可能是创始人在公司扩张时遇到的头号难题——他们冒出的想法比组织能执行的多得多,而且组织内部会本能地抵触行动,因为十个想法里有九个是没成熟的半成品。

But really, you're in a search process; you're in a learning process; you're in a discovery process. You're trying to find the thing that works, and you do have to try a lot of things, and a good founder will have the ability to iterate on many things, and throw away the things that didn't work, because learning necessarily involves failure.

但其实你在做的是一个搜索过程、一个学习过程、一个探索过程。你在尝试找到那件能 work 的事,而你必须试很多东西。一个好的创始人有能力对很多事做迭代,并扔掉那些不 work 的——因为学习必然包含失败。

Remember: All new information starts as misinformation. It starts as not being obviously true, and so it's accused of being misinformation. Eventually, over time, it's proven right or wrong. If it's right then it's information you can then build upon.

记住:所有新信息一开始都以"假信息"的样子出现。它一开始并不明显是真的,所以会被指控为 misinformation。随着时间,它最终被证明是对的或错的。如果对,那就是你可以在上面继续搭建的信息。

A good founder will struggle with exactly this.

一个好的创始人会恰好在这一点上挣扎。

My advice would be: Power through it. Figure out what is your organizational capacity to get things done. Get people comfortable with the idea that most of their work is going to be thrown away—it's all experimentation and it's fine for it to be thrown away—and get comfortable with repeated, small failure as long as you distill the insights along the way.

我的建议是:硬顶过去。搞清楚你的组织能完成事情的容量是多少。让大家接受这件事——他们做的大部分工作都会被扔掉,这都是实验,被扔掉是可以的——并且接受"反复的小失败",只要你在路上把洞察蒸馏出来。

Balaji Srinivasan has another way of putting this, which is wandering through the "idea maze." You're taking left turns and right turns and backtracking, figuring out what works and what doesn't. It might be in the rough direction where you started out, although it's an ego trip to think that you're always going to be moving in the right direction.

Balaji Srinivasan 用另一种方式来表达这件事——你是在"想法迷宫"里游走。你在左转右转、回头、再转,搞清楚什么 work、什么不 work。最终方向可能跟你起步时差不多,但要相信"自己永远在朝对的方向走"是一种自我膨胀。

The biggest impediment here is pride. People stay locked into their original vision and they don't properly navigate the idea maze.

这里最大的障碍是骄傲。人们死死锁定在自己最初的愿景里,无法在 idea maze 里正确导航。

It's about taking lots and lots of repeated steps and backtracks and side turns until you find your way through the maze.

这件事的本质是大量、反复的小步、回头、走岔路,直到你找到穿过迷宫的那条路。

This is why, even though from the outside it looks like what a company has done is trivial and it's going to be easy for competitors to catch up to them—and it's a common thing to see a startup break out and then you say, "Well, that big company's just going to crush it."

这也是为什么——尽管从外面看,一家公司做的事好像很 trivial、好像竞争对手很容易追上来,常见的情况是一家 startup 突然冒出来,大家会说:"那家大公司分分钟能碾压它。"

No, as long as that startup keeps wandering through the idea maze, they're actually much deeper down through the maze than the big company is. Even if the big company copies them, by the time it gets to where the startup is, the startup has moved way ahead. It's in a different part of the maze. The big company can't resist the urge to explore side hallways that the startup has already explored years ago and knows are dead ends.

并不是这样。只要这家 startup 还在 idea maze 里游走,他们其实在迷宫里走得比大公司深得多。哪怕大公司抄袭它,当大公司走到 startup 当时所在的位置时,startup 已经远远在前面了——它在迷宫的另一个部分。大公司忍不住要去探那几条侧巷,而 startup 几年前就走过、知道是死胡同。

It's this ability to iterate very quickly and to learn from it, and constantly generate new insights and secrets, that is the secret to success.

正是这种"快速迭代、从中学习、不断生成新洞察和新秘密"的能力,才是成功的秘诀。

It's not just the one simple secret where you ask the founder, "What is the thing you believe that nobody else does?" It's literally every single day you figure out something new that builds upon something old, and you realize, "Oh, things don't work like I thought they would. They actually work a different way."

不是简单地问创始人"你相信什么别人不相信"那一个秘密。而是每一天你都搞明白一件新东西,它建立在旧东西之上,然后你意识到:"原来事情不是我以为的那样运作的,它其实是按另一种方式工作的。"

My co-founder and I have a new criterion in our company: "Geniuses only."

我和我的联合创始人在公司里立了一条新标准:"只招天才。"

It's a harsh word, but it sets a very high bar. You can just look around for who's not a genius. The only way you're going to attract geniuses, whatever that term means to you, is by having a company full of geniuses.

这是一个挺刺耳的词,但它设了一个非常高的标准。你只需要环顾四周看谁不是天才。要吸引到天才——不管"天才"对你来说意味着什么——唯一的办法就是公司里全是天才。

And if someone's not a genius, then either you're transitioning into the phase where you can no longer hire geniuses and you just need to scale up for whatever reason, or you can just show that person the door because you hired them prematurely for the kind of company you're trying to build.

如果某人不是天才,那要么你正在过渡到那个"不能再只招天才、必须为了某些原因 scale up"的阶段;要么你可以直接送这个人出门,因为你过早地招了他,他不属于你想造的那种公司。

Now, this is very difficult.

这件事非常难。

You're lucky if you can hire one genius a month. You as a founder have to identify them and do whatever it takes to recruit them and motivate them. So it's inherently self-limiting. Given that a person probably isn't going to stick around your company for more than three, four, five years—although in some great companies, people stick around for decades—at that attrition rate you're talking about a 30 to 50 person company.

能一个月招到一个天才,你已经很幸运了。作为创始人,你必须自己识别他们,并不惜一切代价招他们、激励他们。所以这本身就是自我限制的——考虑到一个人在你公司可能也就待 3、4、5 年(当然在某些伟大公司,人会待几十年),按这个流失率算,这是一家 30 到 50 人的公司。

But if you can even assemble a team of 10 geniuses, you're way ahead of everybody else. At most companies—the successful ones—the founders, and maybe a few early people are at the genius level. But in the urge and the rush to scale, that gets drowned out too quickly.

但只要你能凑齐一支 10 个天才的团队,你已经远远领先其他人。大多数(成功的)公司里,只有创始人、加上几个早期员工是"天才"级别。但在赶着 scale 的冲动里,这一点很快就被稀释掉了。

As an investor, also, I have an unfair advantage. I've often worked with people where it hasn't worked out in a company and I have to let them go, but I've gotten to know them well enough that I recognize their zone of genius, and I can say, "This is not where you're operating in your zone of genius, but if you ever end up doing this other thing, let me know, because I'll probably want to invest."

作为投资人,我也有一个不公平的优势。我经常跟一些人合作,但在公司里没成、不得不让他们走;但因为认识得足够久,我能识别出他们的 zone of genius,然后我可以说:"你目前做的事不在你的天才区里,但如果你哪天去做某件别的事,告诉我,我大概率想投。"

And that has actually worked out reasonably well in a couple of cases. So you're right that people often just need to be in the right environment.

这套做法在几个案例里效果挺好。所以你说得对——人很多时候只是需要待在合适的环境里。

The thing you can't fix is motivation. If someone's just unmotivated, if they don't want to apply themselves fully, if they have other things going on in their life, then you just have to cut them off at this point.

唯一你修不了的东西是 motivation(动机)。如果一个人就是没动机、不想全力投入、生活里有别的事在牵扯——那这个时候你就只能把他切掉。

One of the things that's less talked about is often you'll meet the right person at the wrong time. They just have internal problems—life problems, home problems, health problems, things that are going on—that make them not capable of functioning at the level that you need.

很少有人聊到这一点:你常常会在错的时间遇到对的人。他们有自己的内部问题——生活问题、家庭问题、健康问题——这些让他们无法在你需要的水平上运转。

And that's a sad situation, but it happens all the time.

这很无奈,但一直在发生。

On a related note: People say, "Oh, I'm burned out. I need to take a break for a month or two and recharge."

顺带说一句:大家会说"我 burned out 了,我得休一两个月充充电。"

In my experience, that's largely not true. Usually burnout is a sign you're working on something that either isn't working or you don't enjoy the work fundamentally. Just taking time off won't fix it.

以我的经验,这话基本上不成立。Burnout 通常是一个信号——要么你做的事根本不 work,要么你从根本上就不享受这份工作。光休假修不好这件事。

If you're really enjoying what you do, generally that'll give you more energy and more motivation.

如果你真的享受你正在做的事,它一般会给你更多能量、更多动力。

There are rare cases—like I know Elon is famous for flogging his teams until four in the morning and calling staff meetings at odd hours of the night and doing crazy death marches. That's the culture that he sets and builds—that's fine. In those situations, I could see certain people burning out.

当然有少数情况——比如 Elon 出了名地把团队鞭策到凌晨四点、半夜召开员工会、搞各种疯狂的 death march。这是他营造的文化——没问题。在那种情境里,某些人确实会 burn out。

But even there, what they're saying is, "I cannot sustain this workload in the future." So even there, taking time off doesn't work because when you come back, he's going to put you to task the same way as earlier.

但即使在那种情境里,他们其实是在说:"我未来无法维持这种工作量。" 所以哪怕在那里,休假也修不了——因为你回来,他还是会按之前的方式继续压你。

So generally when someone says, "I'm burned out," I just read that as, "I want to quit."

所以通常当一个人说"我 burned out 了",我直接把它读作"我想离职。"

Even if they don't necessarily realize that themselves.

哪怕他们自己未必意识到这一点。

David Deutsch would say something like, "When you're having fun, you're learning at the edge of your capability to learn."

David Deutsch 会这样说:"当你觉得有趣的时候,你正在你能学的能力的边缘上学习。"

If you are not having fun, what does that mean? You're not getting anything new; you're not learning.

如果你不觉得有趣,那是什么意思?你没学到任何新东西;你没在学习。

If it's anxiety-inducing, what does that mean? That means it's beyond your capability.

如果它让你焦虑,那是什么意思?意思是它已经超出了你的能力。

So if you're operating at the edge of your capability, you're in flow. You're learning; you're doing—you're being stressed enough for it to be interesting, but not so stressed that you're anxious—and it's fun.

所以,如果你在自己能力的边缘上运转,你就处于 flow。你在学、你在做——压力大到让你觉得有意思,但又没大到让你焦虑——然后它就是有趣的。

It may not be fun moment-to-moment, but when you look back day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, it is fun. What else would you rather be doing than practicing your craft at the highest level of capability—at your edge?

它不一定每一刻都好玩,但你按天、按周、按月回头看,它是有趣的。除了在自己能力的最高点、在你的"边缘"上磨练手艺,你还能想做什么呢?

So I do think the fun criterion applies to business and to jobs.

所以我确实认为"是否有趣"这个标准对生意和工作都成立。

For example, at my most recent company, the designers are obsessed with design to the point where we are getting a new office space—it's not their job to design it. Nobody asked them to design it; we probably didn't even want them to design it. They can't help but design it down to a T. It's meticulous.

比如在我最近这家公司,设计师们对设计痴迷到这种程度——我们正在拿一个新办公空间,设计这件事不在他们的职责里。没人让他们设计、我们甚至可能并不希望他们去设计。但他们就是忍不住要把它设计到一丝不苟。

Similarly, I asked them for a book in which we could just collect various checkpoints along the way of the work that we're doing—the people that we have. They're designing their own book binding. They got their own printer to print it on a special paper. They're obsessive; they can't 80% design something.

同样,我让他们做一本书,用来收集我们工作过程中各个时间点的物件——和我们团队里的人。他们自己设计书的装订方式,自己找印厂用特殊纸印。他们是强迫症;他们做不到只做到 80% 就放手。

Warren Buffett famously refused to put a bet on a golf game because he doesn't bet—he doesn't take risks. He only does sure things. That's his whole model.

Warren Buffett 拒绝在一场高尔夫上下注,因为他不赌——他不冒险,他只做"基本必然"的事。这就是他全部的模型。

The same way, a good engineer will not let themselves write a shoddy piece of code. And I know you want to be practical and you want to cut corners and you want to get things out the door. But a truly great engineer is not going to create something shoddy. A great designer is not going to halfway design something.

同样地,一个好工程师不会允许自己写出一段烂代码。我知道你想 practical、想抄近路、想把东西先发出去。但真正伟大的工程师不会做出粗劣的东西。真正伟大的设计师也不会"做到一半"就交差。

I will delete tweets that have 10,000 likes on them because I catch a grammar or spelling error, or I think of a better way to formulate it. I'll just kill it. I don't care about the views because I want it to be done just right. People make fun of me on Twitter sometimes because I'll put out a tweet, then I'll change my mind and I'll delete it after it's gotten a lot of traction, and I'll reverse the order of two words or I'll change one word. Then I'll wake up the next morning, past the edit window, and I decide I like the original one and I'll post the original one back up. And I've lost all the virality and all the momentum, but I don't care.

我会把已经拿到一万赞的推文删掉,因为我看到一个语法或拼写错误,或者我想到一个更好的表达。我直接把它砍掉。我不在乎流量,因为我希望它做对。Twitter 上有时候有人嘲笑我——我发一条推、改了主意、在它已经火了之后把它删掉,把两个词的顺序换一下、或者改一个词。然后第二天早上,我醒了、过了 edit window,我又觉得原版更好,就把原版重新发上去——所有 virality 和势头都没了,但我不在乎。

I don't want to be associated with a slipshod statement. It has to be correct and incompressible; it has to say something true to me in an interesting way.

我不想跟一句潦草的表述捆绑在一起。它必须是对的、无可压缩的(incompressible),必须用一种有趣的方式说出对我而言为真的东西。

And that's more important—that the art is correct than that it's popular.

这件事更重要——艺术正确,比艺术受欢迎重要。

It's high-agency people—founder mode, whatever you want to call it—but it's people who take responsibility for doing the job the best way possible.

这就是高 agency 的人——叫 founder mode 或者你喜欢的别的名字都行——这种人把"用最好的方式把这件事做完"当成自己的责任。

You just have to communicate to them what it is that you think needs to be done. And it's not just communication—communication is a management thing—it's a leadership thing. So you also have to motivate them—not in some cheesy rah-rah way, but to help them understand the insight you have as to why you think it's so important.

你只需要把"你认为这件事需要被做"这件事传达给他们。这不只是沟通——沟通是管理层面的事——这是领导力层面的事。你还得激励他们——不是那种廉价的口号式激励,而是让他们理解你看到的洞察,让他们明白你为什么觉得它如此重要。

And if you think it's really important, then it's your job to either convince them equally that it's important or to be talked out of it yourself because you might have made a mistake. And then once they're convinced it's important, they're high-agency enough that they will just go and do it in the absolute best way possible. And to your point about creativity, they'll come up with new knowledge and new creativity along the way to figure out how to solve the problem, and they'll solve it in a way you didn't even know.

而如果你觉得它真的重要,那你的工作就是要么把他们说服到同样的程度,要么被他们说服反过来——因为你可能错了。一旦他们也信了它的重要性,他们就足够高 agency,会以绝对最好的方式去把它做完。回到创造力那一点——他们会一路上生成新的知识和新的创造力来想办法解决问题,而且会用你都不知道的方式把它解决掉。

Sometimes you're in a conversation with someone and a disingenuous person is going to latch onto the exact words you said and jump on you. Whereas a smart person is going to understand the intention of what you're actually trying to say, and a highly intelligent person will often answer the question, not that you asked, but the question you really wanted to ask or you meant to ask.

有时候你在跟人对话——一个不真诚的人会死死抓住你说出的字面词句,跳起来攻击你;而一个聪明人会理解你真正想说的意图;一个非常聪明的人,常常会回答的不是你问出来的那个问题,而是你真正想问、或者你本来想问的那个问题。

I would summarize it in two words: Curate people. And the philosophy that I have going forward in my current company and all subsequent ones is that I only want to work with geniuses.

我会用两个词来总结:Curate people(像策展人一样选人)。我在现在这家公司、以及之后所有公司的哲学就是——我只想跟天才合作。

I only want to work with self-motivated people. I only want to work with low-ego people. I only want to work with people who are builders and engineers and artists, and are at the top of their craft, and that's all there is to it. You just have to be willing to curate people.

我只想跟自驱的人合作。我只想跟低自我的人合作。我只想跟那种 builder、工程师、艺术家、并且站在自己手艺顶端的人合作——就这么简单。你只需要愿意去 curate people。

We haven't talked about firing, by the way, but that's the other side of it.

顺便一提,我们还没聊到 firing(解雇),但这是同一件事的另一面。

You'll always make mistakes. Sourcing is hard. Recruiting is hard. Leadership is hard. I don't like the word management because great people don't need to be managed. But firing and letting go of people is hard too. But you have to do it. You're never going to have a 100% hit rate, not even close to it.

你总会犯错。Sourcing 难,招聘难,leadership 难。我不喜欢"管理"这个词,因为伟大的人不需要被管理。但 firing 和放走一个人也很难。可你必须做。你永远不会有 100% 的命中率,甚至连接近都谈不上。

If you're not firing, it means that you're deluding yourself. So you do need to let people go who don't match up. Otherwise, you're only going to recruit people who are weaker than them, and your company will slowly deteriorate.

如果你不开人,意味着你在骗自己。所以你必须放走那些不匹配的人。否则,你能招到的只会是比他们还更弱的人,你的公司就会慢慢退化。

One other side note on hiring geniuses: Only hire geniuses (that's the current motto—obviously aspirational), but you're not trying to fill slots. You're not trying to fill roles. That is a common trap you fall into: "Well, I need to fill a marketing role, so I'm just going to interview a bunch of marketing people and then I'll hire the best one out of that set."

关于"只招天才"再补一句:只招天才(这是现在的座右铭,显然偏理想主义),但你不是在填位子,不是在填岗位。这是一个常见的陷阱:"好,我要填一个市场岗,那我就面一堆市场人,从这一组里挑最好的那个。"

Nope. If they're not a genius, don't hire them. Just be aware as a founder of what are the rough capabilities you need, and then look for geniuses who can fill those capabilities. And you find a genius who doesn't fill any of those capabilities, but is somehow hireable, hire them right away.

不行。如果他不是天才,就不要招。作为创始人,你只需要清楚自己大致需要哪些能力,然后去找能填进这些能力的天才。如果你遇到一个天才——他根本不对应你需要的任何一种能力,但恰好能招——立刻招进来。

So collect geniuses. Warehouse them. You'll never regret it.

所以,收集天才。把他们"仓储"起来。你永远不会后悔。

Your challenge may be to keep them interested because you may not have the right fit for them. But great people have a way of identifying whatever the problem is and getting involved even if it's not their quote-unquote job. So when you find someone who's truly great, you just hire them anyway if you can, regardless of whether you have a slot or not.

你的挑战可能是怎么持续吸引他们,因为你也许没有完全合他们的位置。但真正伟大的人有办法看出哪里是问题、然后参与进去,哪怕这件事不在他们所谓的"工作"范围里。所以当你遇到一个真正伟大的人,只要能招,就先招——不管你有没有岗位。

It's a mistake to try and fit great people into pegs and squares and triangles and holes. The real geniuses are incredibly idiosyncratic. They don't resemble each other. You cannot fit them into a box. By trying to fill a role, you're inherently trying to fit somebody into a box.

把伟大的人塞进圆桩、方桩、三角桩和洞里,本身就是一个错误。真正的天才极度奇特。他们彼此不相像。你没法把他们装进一个盒子里。而你"想填一个岗位"的动作,本身就是在试图把某人塞进盒子。

So I don't even think you necessarily want to hire for roles. Yes, you want people to have skillsets that matter for your company, but good people are much more flexible than these artificial rigid boxes that we make out, which are more of a function of HR and large companies.

所以我甚至觉得你不一定要"按岗位招人"。你确实希望人具备对公司重要的技能集,但好的人比我们造出来的那些人造的、僵硬的盒子要灵活得多——那些盒子更多是 HR 和大公司的产物。

Small companies should not be applying large company practices that come from multi-hundred or multi-thousand-person companies—things like HR and roles and compensation brackets and things of that nature.

小公司不应该套用源自几百人、几千人公司的做法——比如 HR、岗位、薪资带宽这一类东西。

As a founder, you're always hacking the system, so you always have to be incredibly flexible on your feet, and when you recognize genius, just recruit them.

作为创始人,你一直在 hack 这个系统,所以你必须一直随时极度灵活——当你认出一个天才,直接招了再说。