Attacked, and Accelerating

they're still out there trying to pump bots onto our account.

到现在还有人往我们账号上刷机器人。

Who commissioned this attack?

这场攻击背后是谁下的单?

Even now I'm still getting a lot of offers from all over the world to sell off part of the stake.

到今天我还在收到世界各地的报价,想买走我手里的一部分股份。

You're not planning to sell?

您不打算卖?

I invested specifically in Yerzat.

我投的就是 Yerzat 这个人。

Now we're scaling up to a decacorn.

现在我们要往十角兽规模化。

How many employees already hold shares in Higgsfield?

已经有多少员工手里握着 Higgsfield 的股份?

Kazakhstan is a place where talent grows and unicorns grow.

哈萨克斯坦这片土地,长人才,也长独角兽。

Good afternoon, this is Venera Gaifutdinova and Forbes Kazakhstan.

大家好,我是 Venera Gaifutdinova,这里是 Forbes Kazakhstan。

Today we've invited to the show the co-founder of the Higgsfield platform, Yerzat Dulat, and, well, one of the first investors,

今天我们请到了 Higgsfield 平台的联合创始人 Yerzat Dulat,以及最早的投资人之一——

the very first investor in this platform, Murat Abdrakhmanov.

应该说是这个平台的第一位投资人,Murat Abdrakhmanov。

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

两位好。

Hello.

你好。

Good afternoon.

你好。

First of all I wanted to say thank you — we'd been wanting to meet with you for a long time, on a more positive news hook.

首先要谢谢两位,我们早就想跟你们坐下来聊,本来盼着是个更正面的由头。

Well, that's just how it worked out.

结果就赶上了这么个局面。

The news hook changed a little, right, and of course we can't not start with it.

由头稍微变了点,那我们当然不能不从这儿说起。

Uh, it's that criticism that was directed at Higgsfield in mid-February.

就是 2 月中旬冲着 Higgsfield 来的那波批评。

And so my very first question, uh, is this: how did that actually affect a startup growing this fast?

我的第一个问题就是:这件事对一家跑得这么快的创业公司,到底有什么影响?

Did you see any cancellations, and what was going on inside the team generally?

有没有出现退订?团队内部当时又是什么状况?

Yeah, good question.

好问题。

It's probably telling, so people get a sense of the scale, because in the Kazakhstani space it really did look like some big noisy story, but even so it had no effect whatsoever on customer churn.

这事儿其实挺说明问题的,能让大家对量级有个概念:在哈萨克斯坦这个舆论场里,它看着确实是个闹得很响的新闻,但对客户流失一点影响都没有。

Quite the opposite — if you look at the churn rate metric, that's, well, customer churn specifically, our numbers are better than the benchmark.

恰恰相反,看 churn 这个指标,也就是客户流失率,我们的数据比基准还好。

And for the benchmark we take companies like Cursor and Lovable.

我们拿来对标的是 Cursor、Lovable 这类公司。

And right now our churn numbers are much better than theirs.

目前我们的流失率数据比它们好很多。

In February we're running at 40% ⟨?month-over-month⟩ growth.

2 月我们的增长跑在 40%⟨?环比⟩。

We've literally accelerated the company's growth rate even further.

公司的增长速度不降反升,又快了一档。

And if we're talking numbers,

要是拿数字说话——

in February we broke through 300 million in run rate.

2 月我们的 run rate 突破了 3 亿。

For example, the closest competitor that raised recently is ElevenLabs.

比如说,最接近的竞争对手、最近刚融过资的,是 ElevenLabs。

They're at 350, and they raised at an 11 billion dollar valuation.

他们是 3.5 亿,融资估值 110 亿美元。

I mean, ElevenLabs is a company that's something like four or five years old.

而 ElevenLabs 这家公司成立差不多四五年了。

Whereas ours is only 2 years old.

我们才 2 年。

Murat, how did you react to this situation?

Murat,您当时是什么反应?

Right.

明白。

At first I wanted to get to the bottom of it, and I did in fact dig into the details and figure it out.

一开始我想把事情弄清楚,后来我确实一条条钻进去看,弄明白了。

Of course, investors always have concerns about the company.

当然,投资人对公司永远都是有担心的。

And personally I worry a great deal — about Yerzat, about the team, and about the money too.

我个人操心得很:操心 Yerzat,操心团队,钱也操心。

Which is normal?

这很正常吧?

Yes, that's normal.

对,这很正常。

Overall the picture then became clear, sort of, and I understood that the company is still growing, right, like, there were mistakes, sure, but they're being fixed actively and intensively.

后来整体画面清楚了,我明白公司仍然在往前走。确实有过失误,但正在被高强度地一件件纠正。

And in general this incredible — I'd say unprecedented — growth, right, that they've had, right, it just can't happen without mistakes.

再说了,这种不可思议的、我甚至想说是前所未有的增长,不可能一个错都不犯。

And on top of that, some of the, well, operations, the moves Higgsfield makes, they're kind of pioneering, both in the field generally and in distribution in particular.

何况 Higgsfield 的一些做法本身就是开路的,在整个行业是这样,在分发这块尤其是。

And so, like, mistakes there are probably inevitable.

那犯错大概就是免不了的。

Those are, well, growing pains and the procedures that come with growth.

这些属于成长的烦恼,以及增长带来的流程问题。

The company, the team has grown enormously, right — they grew almost 10x in half a year.

公司、团队扩张得非常猛,半年差不多涨了 10 倍。

So, like, I think the main thing is to draw the right conclusions — which, frankly, the company has already done — and then fix things and keep moving forward.

所以我觉得最要紧的是把该吸取的教训吸取到,这一点公司其实已经做到了,然后就是改,然后继续往前走。

Yerzat, what conclusions did you personally draw?

Yerzat,那您本人吸取了什么教训?

We introduced a number of changes to the company's operational process.

我们在公司的运营流程上做了一系列改动。

First of all, we hired several senior people who had hands-on experience with exactly this kind of issue at Snapchat.

第一,我们招了几位资深的人,他们在 Snapchat 处理过同类问题,是一线经验。

And operationally we set up a kind of multi-stage review, for marketing material, for example.

运营上我们做了一套分级审核,比如营销素材就走这套流程。

You just have to understand that over the 11 months the product has existed, something like 110,000 pieces of media were created — some of it made inside Higgsfield, some of it made by outside creators.

你得知道,产品上线 11 个月,一共产出了大约 11 万条媒体素材:一部分是 Higgsfield 内部做的,一部分是外部创作者做的。

Obviously, some share of that material carried values that the company doesn't share.

显然,其中有一部分素材传达的价值观,并不是公司认同的。

For us that's a new challenge too, because the company was growing fast, and for us it's also a new experience of scaling — first to a unicorn, and now we're scaling to a decacorn.

这对我们也是新挑战,公司长得太快;规模化本身也是全新的经验——先是做到独角兽,现在要往十角兽走。

Either way, it was important for us to become a reasonably mature company by now and rebuild our processes.

不管怎样,到这个阶段我们必须成为一家足够成熟的公司,把流程重搭一遍。

Speedrun is right now, at this moment, the best accelerator in the startup world.

Speedrun 是目前创业圈里最好的加速器。

An acquaintance of mine went through that accelerator, and he says there's a separate lesson there, a whole separate chapter, where they study Higgsfield's marketing.

我一个熟人上过这个加速器,他说里面专门有一课、整整一章,讲的就是 Higgsfield 的营销。

So it's already a benchmark for the new generation of startups on how you should launch and build distribution in the GenAI market.

也就是说,它已经成了新一代创业公司的基准:在 GenAI 市场怎么冷启动、怎么搭分发。

And now we're simply at a new stage of the company's development.

而我们现在只是走到了公司成长的一个新阶段。

This stage is interesting to us as well.

这个阶段我们同样觉得有意思。

We also don't want to be stuck at the early-stage startup phase forever.

我们也不想永远停在早期创业公司这个身份上。

We are, naturally, building a big, major company.

我们要做的当然是一家大公司。

We have very big, ambitious plans for that.

围绕这个目标,我们的计划非常大、也非常有野心。

And in the future, if the company goes public, that raises the responsibility even further for how the processes inside are set up.

将来公司一旦上市,内部流程怎么搭这件事,责任只会更重。

Basically, we've taken all of that on board.

这些我们都已经着手在做了。

Well, look, you touched a little on one of the areas where there were questions about your platform — that's marketing.

你刚才碰到了外界质疑你们平台的一个方向:营销。

Right.

对。

And there was this thing where some videos were unacceptable given today's reality, right?

当时的情况是,有些视频放在今天的现实里是不能接受的,对吧?

So did I understand correctly that this was stuff your users were uploading to the platform?

我理解得对吗——这些是你们用户上传到平台上的东西?

Besides the fact that ⟨?users⟩ upload things, they also generate them, and we have a large number of users, so naturally we can't control everything.

⟨?用户⟩ 除了上传,还会自己生成;我们用户量很大,不可能什么都管得住。

And that filter wasn't there.

当时这道过滤是缺的。

And now you've built that filter.

现在你们把它补上了。

The filter was there, but broadly speaking, if you look at it, American society is very polarized.

过滤本来就有。但放大了看,美国社会本身就极度两极分化。

For example, what young people like — say, the audience on Instagram and TikTok — may not appeal to the audience on Twitter, where the audience is older,

比如年轻人喜欢的东西——Instagram 和 TikTok 上那批受众——Twitter 上的人可能就不买账,那边年龄更大,

more conservative.

也更保守。

Yes, more conservative — given that Elon Musk bought the social network and the liberal-leaning crowd left Twitter, they left the platform and what stayed was that conservative, older audience, so of course it's hard to sit on all the chairs at once, but it's a new challenge and we find it interesting to work with.

对,更保守。Elon Musk 买下这家社交平台之后,偏自由派的那批人离开了 Twitter,留下的就是偏保守、年纪更大的受众。要两头讨好当然很难,但这是个新挑战,我们做起来觉得有意思。

As for the marketing materials specifically.

具体说到营销素材。

Some of the material we make in-house, and there, obviously, there's tighter control.

一部分素材是公司内部做的,那部分管控当然更严。

And some of the material is made by outside influencers we work with.

另一部分是我们合作的外部 influencer 做的。

And we work with tens of thousands of influencers at the same time.

而我们同时在跟数万名 influencer 合作。

There we really weren't able to control everything, and there was no effective operational process — at the start it was effective, because the process was small, I mean the company was small, but it grew several times over in a very short span of time.

那一块我们确实没能全管住,也没有一套有效的运营流程——一开始是有效的,因为盘子小、公司小;可它在很短时间里翻了好几倍。

If we're talking specifically about what the user generates on our side, then we have one of the strictest moderation systems on the market.

如果说的是用户在我们这儿生成的内容,那我们的内容审核系统是市场上最严的之一。

Basically, for instance, the users who want more controversial content — they're precisely the ones who don't use Higgsfield, because Higgsfield has a reputation that our content moderation inside the service itself is quite strict.

举个例子:想要更有争议内容的那批用户,恰恰不用 Higgsfield,因为 Higgsfield 在外面的名声就是——服务内部的内容审核相当严。

And did you change the marketing strategy?

那营销策略你们改了吗?

First and foremost we strengthened, specifically, the content review process.

首先加强的是内容审核这道流程。

We want to move into professional ⟨?use cases⟩, so we have several new initiatives.

我们想往专业 ⟨?场景⟩ 走,所以有几项新动作。

We're launching the Higgsfield Academy — meaning we want to grow the next generation.

我们要办 Higgsfield 学院,目标是培养下一代人。

They're called neuro-creators.

这批人叫神经创作者。

It's essentially a new profession — people who can make money and do creative work with the help of artificial intelligence.

这本质上是一种新职业:靠人工智能挣钱、做创作的人。

Murat, as an investor, what would you advise startups to do?

Murat,作为投资人,你会建议创业公司怎么做?

To do these sort of ambiguous ad campaigns and run a provocative marketing strategy, but get attention — because there's a lot going on in the world, and attention is what absolutely everyone is fighting for.

是做这种有争议的广告、走挑衅式的营销路线,把注意力抢过来?毕竟世界上发生的事太多了,而注意力是所有人都在抢的东西。

Or to stick to a more conservative, safe path.

还是走更保守、更安全的那条路?

What actually made Higgsfield unique, right, and drove this success and growth, is three things.

让 Higgsfield 与众不同、也撑起这一轮成功和增长的,其实是三件事。

First of all, it's their own product, Soul.

首先是自研产品 Soul。

Yeah, and now Soul 2 has come out, their own neural network.

现在 Soul 2 也出来了,自家的神经网络模型。

Second is, of course, the incredible distribution, sort of, right, which became a benchmark in the market.

第二,当然是那套惊人的分发,它已经成了市场上的基准。

And third, the speed of change.

第三,变化的速度。

And if we come back to marketing again, right, then I can say that this territory, it's kind of, well, not so much uncharted, right, I mean it's stretching the boundaries of what's allowed a little, maybe, right, it's what is actually going to happen, right, I mean today it's already sort of, well, it'll apparently become an industry standard.

如果再回到营销这块,我想说,这片地带谈不上从没人踏足过,而是把可接受的边界往外推了一点——这其实是迟早要发生的事,今天已经在发生,往后多半会变成行业标准。

It's another matter that when you step into that kind of territory, of course, the guys make mistakes there, and the one who doesn't make mistakes is the one who doesn't do anything.

另一回事是,踏进这种地带,那帮年轻人当然会犯错,而不犯错的只有什么都不干的人。

You also have to keep in mind that the team there is 24-25 years old, young guys, very liberal, progressive.

还得考虑到,那边团队才 24-25 岁,一帮年轻人,观念非常开放、非常前卫。

Higgsfield's senior specialists regularly get, uh, offers from the biggest American tech companies.

Higgsfield 的资深专家经常收到美国头部科技公司的 offer。

Yeah, well, that's the world, right, that's how it works.

世界就是这样,它就是这么运转的。

Of course, this kind of marketing, I think it will continue, precisely with greater control, so that genuinely wrong things like the ones that were done there don't slip through.

当然,这类营销我认为还会继续下去,但一定是在更强的管控之下,免得再漏出那边那些确实做错的事。

But still, risk is a noble thing.

不过话说回来,富贵险中求嘛。

When you're moving forward and you're the market leader, risks like that are always present, they always exist.

当你一路往前冲、又是市场领跑者,这类风险永远都在,躲不掉。

It's another matter, I'll say it again, that the company has unprecedented growth.

另一回事是,我再说一遍,这家公司的增长是前所未有的。

So you have to manage to both hire the team and onboard them.

所以既得来得及把团队招进来,又得来得及让他们上手。

And obviously the guys maybe didn't get to everything, but all of that is being fixed.

显然这帮年轻人可能没能样样都顾上,但这些都在一点点补回来。

Another area, right, where there were questions for Higgsfield is that subscriptions had been signed up for, and then some people say the speed slowed down, and some couldn't get into their account at all.

还有一个方面,大家对 Higgsfield 也有疑问——订阅是办了,可后来有人说速度变慢了,有人干脆连自己的账号都进不去。

So what was the problem here?

这里的问题到底出在哪?

those subscriptions were bought bypassing the official channel, meaning not directly from Higgsfield — there's a large number of reseller services that buy subscriptions around us.

那些订阅是绕开官方渠道买的,不是直接从 Higgsfield 买的。市面上有大量转售商服务,专门绕开我们买订阅。

And we had to block those reseller services, because, well, the financial monitoring systems at Visa and Mastercard simply started contacting us saying you've got a large volume of payments going through.

这些转售商服务我们不得不封掉,因为 Visa 和 Mastercard 的风控系统直接找上门,说你们这边有大量支付在走。

often these are stolen cards belonging to people from EU countries, so by law we're obligated to block that, unfortunately.

这里面很多是盗刷的卡,持卡人是欧盟国家的用户,所以我们依法必须封,很遗憾。

Yes, people got hurt by it.

确实,有用户跟着遭殃了。

And there's also probably the fact that we didn't realize we were such a big product in the CIS too, because we were always focused on the US.

另外还有一点:我们没意识到自己在独联体也是这么大的一个产品,因为我们一直盯着美国。

I mean, our number one country by count and by volume is the US.

我们数量和体量排第一的国家是美国。

In second place we have England, then the EU, Japan and South Korea.

第二是英国,然后是欧盟、日本和韩国。

If you look at it by city rather than by country, our number one city overall by users is Seoul.

如果不按国家、而按城市看,用户量第一的城市是首尔。

We have a lot of Korean investors.

我们有不少韩国投资人。

And basically we're a big brand in Korea.

在韩国,我们基本上算是个大牌子。

The fact that in Russia, well, and in the CIS, people use us actively too.

至于俄罗斯,还有整个独联体,用我们的人也很活跃。

That was a surprise for us, because we never did any marketing aimed at the Russian-speaking world.

这让我们很意外,因为我们从来没在俄语区做过营销。

I mean, obviously we do some communication for hiring, because we operate in that region, well, in the Russian-speaking space, right, but the product itself we, uh, never communicated at all.

招聘方面当然有一些对外沟通,因为我们在这个地区、在俄语区有业务;但产品本身,我们一点都没传播过。

And maybe that was a mistake on our part too, so we're fixing that now as well.

这可能也是我们的一个失误,所以现在也在补。

We're setting up a Telegram channel where we also want to educate users, explain how all this works.

我们正在建一个 Telegram 频道,想给用户做科普,讲清楚这些事到底是怎么回事。

Because the industry itself is new.

因为这个行业本身就是新的。

As I said earlier, neuro-creators are a completely new profession — new people, new users.

我前面说过,神经创作者是一个全新的职业:新的人群,新的用户。

And not everyone understands how the whole thing is set up on a global level.

也不是所有人都清楚这套东西在全球是怎么运转的。

So, yeah.

就是这样。

Although, for example, Midjourney earlier blocked far more users than we did.

不过打个比方,之前 Midjourney 封的用户比我们多得多。

And that was all discussed too.

当时这些也都被讨论过。

The second factor is that the market itself is set up in an interesting way — ChatGPT, for example, is fighting the same thing right now: there are services that wrap around platforms, uh, automatically, and then resell them.

第二个因素是这个市场的构造本身很有意思——比如 ChatGPT 现在也在跟同样的东西较劲:有些服务把别人的平台套个壳,自动调用,然后再转卖出去。

A person thinks they're using some other service, say some Telegram bot, but under the hood that Telegram bot goes to ⟨?Higgsfield⟩ and makes the requests.

用户以为自己用的是另一个服务,比如某个 Telegram 机器人,可底层是这个机器人在调 ⟨?Higgsfield⟩ 发请求。

And a large number of users like that showed up on the platform too.

平台上这类用户也冒出来一大批。

And they also, well, violate our company's terms of use.

他们同样违反了我们公司的 terms of use。

We rent compute capacity, and it's limited.

我们的算力是租来的,总量有限。

When we rent it, we plan ahead — like, this many hundreds of thousands of subscriptions were purchased, and, uh, they require this much compute.

租的时候我们要提前测算:卖出去了几十万份订阅,这些订阅需要多少算力。

And if some automated agent shows up that loads them up, it can put hundreds of times more load on the service than a normal person using it honestly — then all the other users start suffering and the quality of service degrades.

一旦冒出某个自动化 agent 去压这些算力,它给服务带来的负载可能是老实用户的几百倍,其他所有用户就跟着遭殃,服务质量随之下降。

That has been fixed as well.

这个问题我们也已经修掉了。

And overall, if you look across our competitors, we actually have one of the most reliable services, which is why users buy a subscription to Higgsfield, and why, uh, current users don't unsubscribe.

整体看,跟同行比,我们反而是最可靠的服务之一——所以用户才买 Higgsfield 的订阅,现有用户也不退订。

Let me maybe rephrase for our listeners and viewers what was actually happening, like this.

我给听众和观众换个说法,把实际发生的事复述一遍。

I rented an apartment from you, roughly speaking, for a year, and then started renting it out to other people by the day without your knowledge.

相当于我从你手里租了一套房,租期一年,然后背着你按天转租给别人。

Yes, you put that well, in a single sentence,

对,您这一句话概括得很到位,

honestly.

说实话。

Well yeah, it's that kind of, well, violation.

对,这就属于违规了。

But in any case, uh, another important point you mentioned is that people from the EU started contacting you, right?

不管怎么说,您还提到一个重要的点:欧盟那边开始找你们了,对吧?

Did that start before this wave of media coverage or after?

这是在这波舆论之前开始的,还是之后?

Already—

早就——

it started back in the autumn, so long before that.

秋天就开始了,远在那之前。

And we thought that at our scale it was normal, that globally across SaaS products and subscription models there's this whole big industry of users' cards getting stolen, of third parties paying for the service somehow.

我们当时觉得以我们的体量这很正常:全球的 SaaS 产品、订阅模式那边本来就有一整个产业——盗用户的卡,由第三方替人把服务费付掉。

It kept growing gradually.

这个量一点点变大。

And when we started digging into it and when Visa and Mastercard reached out to us, we realized that yes, there really is a big problem.

等我们开始查,加上 Visa、Mastercard 找上门,我们才明白:确实有个大问题。

Well, as I said earlier, in the end we had to, I mean, deal with the issue.

像我前面说的,最后还是得把这个问题解决掉。

Murat, did the team tell you that there were inquiries from giants like Visa and Mastercard?

Murat,团队有没有跟您通报过,Visa、Mastercard 这种巨头找上门了?

No, because that's operational stuff, and as an investor I basically don't get into operations.

不会,因为那属于运营层面,原则上我作为投资人不插手运营。

But when that whole wave of hate started, well, of course I called Yerzat, asked what was going on there, and he says: "Yes, we were forced to do it, because a warning came in from Visa that there was this use of illegal funds, payments.

但那波黑潮起来之后,我当然给 Yerzat 打了电话,问那边到底出了什么事,他说:「对,我们是被迫这么做的,因为 Visa 发来了预警,说有人在用非法资金、非法支付。

After that, well, we were watching and trying to track, well, that situation.

再往后,我们就一直在看,试着盯住这个局面。

It was clear that the company hadn't built up direct communications with its users, right, those channels were clearly lacking when it came to explaining things.

很明显,公司跟用户之间没有建好直接沟通,对吧,真要解释清楚的时候,这些渠道明显不够用。

I mean, you still needed to warn people somehow, right?

毕竟总得用某种方式先跟大家打个招呼,对吧?

I mean, well, in the end, what's done is done.

反正到头来,做都做了。

Now, I think, well, the situation has already been fixed, and I hope something like that won't happen again.

我觉得现在情况已经纠正过来了,希望这种事不会再发生。

And, if I may, actually the team commented quite actively on what happened, right, and commented on all the complaints.

容我插一句,其实团队对发生的事回应得挺积极,对所有质疑也都做了回应。

I'd like to read this out for our viewers and listeners, right — the project's co-founder Alex Mashrabov, he publicly apologized, citing growing pains.

我想给我们的观众和听众念一下——项目的联合创始人 Alex Mashrabov 公开道了歉,把原因归为成长的烦恼。

And he said it was all down to the fact that the team is growing very fast.

他说这一切都是因为团队增长得太快。

And here I'll read out his exact words.

我把他的原话念一下。

"We acknowledge that our internal processes and external communications haven't always kept pace with our values, and we made mistakes.

「我们承认,我们的内部流程和对外沟通并不总能跟上我们的价值观,我们犯了错。

We take full responsibility and we are actively correcting course."

我们承担全部责任,并且正在积极纠偏。」

And at the same time the platform's co-founder ⟨?Mahida Silva⟩ said the following: "We fully acknowledge that we are pushing the boundaries of what's allowed.

而与此同时,平台的另一位联合创始人 ⟨?Mahida Silva⟩ 是这么说的:「我们完全承认,我们确实在把可接受的边界往外推。

We learn from what works on platforms like X — that's the former Twitter.

我们在学 X 这类平台上什么管用——X 就是以前的 Twitter。

And it's completely obvious that more controversial content draws attention."

而且很显然,越有争议的内容越能吸引注意力。」

And so, Yerzat, you took a somewhat different line entirely, right?

那么 Yerzat,你们的口径稍微、其实是完全不同的方向,对吧?

You said that there was a coordinated attack on you.

你说的是,你们遭到了一场有组织的攻击。

Alex was more sort of apologizing, which is basically pretty standard practice in communications, right — when a crisis hits, every comms person, every PR person advises: "Go out there, apologize, admit the mistake."

Alex 更多是在道歉,这在传播上其实是相当通行的做法,对吧——一出危机,所有做传播的、做公关的都会建议:「出面,道歉,承认错误。」

So what was behind that?

这背后是什么原因?

Because people reading this get a bit of an impression that opinions were pointing in different directions, that attitudes toward the situation inside the team diverged.

因为读到这些的人多少会有一种印象:团队内部的看法是分岔的,对这件事的态度也是分岔的。

Basically, we're in full alignment.

其实我们内部口径完全一致。

Why exactly did we, well, call it an attack?

为什么我们偏偏把它叫作攻击?

Because that day, and for several days in a row, there really was a DDoS attack on our service.

因为那天,以及连着好几天,我们的服务确实遭到了 DDoS 攻击。

I mean, they were trying to take the service down.

就是有人想把服务打瘫。

That's, well, just a fact.

这就是事实。

They tried to hack our social accounts, and those are, well, pretty big.

他们还试图黑掉我们的社交账号,而这些账号体量不小。

On Instagram it's 700,000 followers.

Instagram 上有 70 万粉丝。

We're still in touch with Meta support, because they're still trying to pump bots onto our account, so this pressure is constant.

到现在我们还在跟 Meta 的支持团队对接,因为到现在还有人往我们账号上刷机器人,这种施压是持续不断的。

That's why we have to use a word like attack, because there really was, well, a DDoS attack on the service several days in a row.

所以我们只能用「攻击」这个词,因为服务确实连着好几天在挨 DDoS。

And luckily we have really good infrastructure engineers who built such a stable system that the service didn't go down.

好在我们的基础设施工程师非常强,系统搭得很稳,服务一直没倒。

And did you figure out who ordered that attack?

那你们弄清楚这场攻击是谁指使的了吗?

The market is very competitive, and we see that basically a lot of competitors consolidated against us, but there are big players from whom we took a large chunk of the market.

市场竞争非常激烈,我们看得出来,很多竞对基本上是联合起来对付我们,而其中有几家大玩家的市场被我们抢走了一大块。

And we roughly understand who it is.

是谁,我们大致心里有数。

We also did a bit of an investigation and saw that it had been planned in advance.

我们也做了点小范围的调查,看得出来这事是提前策划好的。

Are you going to take this into the legal arena?

这件事你们会走法律途径吗?

That's, yeah, that's a good question.

这个,对,这问题问得好。

Well, first and foremost, we need to beat our competitors, and that happens in the market.

首先,我们得赢过竞争对手,而胜负是在市场上分的。

I mean, first of all, we've already taken a large share of the market from them.

第一,我们已经从他们手里拿走了很大一块市场份额。

Services that are older than us, they have more resources, more money, more capital than we do.

那些比我们资历更老的服务,资源比我们多,钱和资本也比我们多。

And it's precisely through a better product, better operational efficiency, speed, that we squeezed part of the market away from them.

我们正是靠更好的产品、更高的运营效率和速度,把他们的一部分市场硬挤了过来。

And we also plan to hold on to that lead.

而且我们打算把这个领先守住。

That's what we keep our focus on first and foremost.

这才是我们首先聚焦的事。

Usually the winner takes all.

通常是赢家通吃。

And, well, if we win and take 100% of the market, then, well, the other companies just won't exist.

如果我们赢下并拿走 100% 的市场,那其他公司就根本不会存在了。

Murat, would you recommend that startups in cases like this file, right, file formal complaints so that the government authorities look into it?

Murat,遇到这种情况,你会建议创业公司去正式报案、递交材料,让国家机关来查吗?

Because I'll tell you, right, when you look at this situation from the outside and you see a statement, we were attacked, that we understand there are issues there, competitors don't want to hand us the market, which is normal, and they use various methods.

说实话,当你从外部看这件事,看到一份声明说我们遭到了攻击、说我们清楚里面有问题、竞争对手不愿意把市场让出来——这很正常——他们会用各种手段。

It just looks, well, like words.

这看上去就只是一句话而已。

Startups usually have, well, very few resources, both cash and financial, and you always have to understand how to deploy them properly.

创业公司通常资源都很少,钱也好、财力也好,所以永远得想清楚怎么把它们用在刀刃上。

You can, of course, start suing someone, but that's a long story, right, with an outcome that isn't always clear.

当然可以去打官司,但那是一场持久战,对吧,结果还未必明朗。

I mean, you can spend a huge amount of effort and, well, basically get nothing much in return.

可能耗掉大量精力,最后基本什么也换不回来。

So that's why it maybe makes sense to just focus more on the work, that is, not to lose focus.

所以也许更值得的,是把精力放回业务上,别把焦点丢了。

I'll even say from my own experience, when we have startups that shut down, and they don't always shut down simply because things didn't work out.

拿我自己的经历说,我们也有创业公司关掉,而它们关掉并不总是单纯因为没做成。

Sometimes there's abuse on the founders' side.

有时候是创始人那边有滥用行为。

For us too the question comes up: maybe it makes sense to file a complaint?

我们同样会面临这个问题:是不是该去报案?

Very often we don't do it, because that energy we have, and the resources, we'd rather channel them somewhere else, we'll make far more money there, let's put it that way, right?

我们经常不这么做,因为手里的这股劲儿和这些资源,我们宁可投到别处去,在那边能赚回来多得多,这么说吧,对吧?

I mean, everything is looked at quite pragmatically.

所有事情都是用相当务实的眼光在看。

I'd also like to say that, well, a lot of accusations were made against Higgsfield, but most of them are not substantiated.

我还想说,针对 Higgsfield 的指控确实不少,但其中大部分站不住脚。

I mean, there physically can't be any fraud or scam there, because the company uses Stripe, and it's just technically impossible.

那里根本不可能存在什么欺诈或骗局,因为公司用的是 Stripe,这在技术上就做不到。

But nevertheless, yes, that is, speaking as a venture investor, as an investor in this project, what I want to say is that the project is developing, we believe in it.

但不管怎么说,作为一个风险投资人、作为这个项目的投资人,我想讲的是:项目在往前走,我们相信它。

To this day I keep getting a lot of offers from all over the world to sell part of my stake, yes, and mine is one of the biggest.

我到现在还不断收到来自世界各地的报价,想买走我一部分股份,而我这份是最大的几份之一。

The second largest in the company.

公司里第二大的一份。

And I think the company is going to be just fine.

我觉得这家公司会一切都好。

No.

不卖。

Well, when a company is growing 40% month over month, right, at those kinds of volumes, well I don't know, uh, you'd lose sleep later if they grow to 20 billion and you sold at four.

一家公司月环比涨 40%,对吧,还是在这种体量上,那我说不好,以后你觉都睡不着 —— 万一它涨到 200 亿,你却在 40 亿的时候就卖了。

So there.

就这样。

And I think that the ceiling, which isn't a ceiling — rather the goals the company is setting for itself even this year, they're very ambitious.

而且我觉得所谓天花板 —— 那不是天花板,而是公司哪怕只看今年给自己定的目标,都非常有野心。

The company wants to become a decacorn.

公司想成为十角兽。

I think that's entirely realistic — just to give you a bit of a sense of how fast the company is growing, of the scale.

我认为这完全做得到 —— 稍微给你个概念,这家公司长得有多快、是什么量级。

I mean, by the end of the year the company will most likely be bigger by market cap than Halyk Bank.

到年底,公司的市值很可能会超过 Halyk Bank。

And in a year it might match Kaspi.kz, right?

再过一年,它可能就追平 Kaspi.kz 了,对吧?

I mean, incredible pace.

这速度快得不可思议。

So there.

就这样。

And on top of that the company is going to keep growing.

而且在这之上,公司还会继续长。

What limits it — so far we don't see anything limiting it.

说到什么在限制它 —— 目前我们看不到有什么东西在限制它。

I mean, the market is very big.

市场非常大。

And right now the company is already taking a professional look at expanding its product line, at moving into a more professional market, that is, into B2B sales, into the market for producing advertising material.

现在公司已经在很专业地考虑扩充产品线、进入更专业的那个市场,也就是 B2B 销售,进入广告物料制作这块市场。

In your interview with Elizaveta Osetinskaya you said that the US market — even though you're based in Kazakhstan, you're still an American company — that you can stumble there and then never get back up.

你在接受 Elizaveta Osetinskaya 采访时说过,美国市场 —— 尽管你们大本营在哈萨克斯坦,但终究是一家美国公司 —— 在那儿绊一跤,可能就再也爬不起来。

That's the kind of crisis that happens.

这种危机是会发生的。

So when this first crisis of yours started, were you afraid that this was exactly the thing you'd told Osetinskaya about, that you had stumbled?

那么你们这第一场危机刚开始的时候,你有没有害怕过:这就是你跟 Osetinskaya 讲过的那一跤,你们绊了?

This situation, definitely not, because, as I said earlier, it didn't affect real users in any way.

这次肯定不是,因为像我前面说的,它完全没有波及到真实用户。

I mean, on the contrary, the product is growing, it's accelerating.

反过来,产品在增长,而且在加速。

That's definitely not that kind of situation, honestly.

说实话,这真的不是那种情况。

Well, it did sting a bit that it was specifically the Kazakh media that whipped up the hate.

只是有点难受的是,偏偏是哈萨克斯坦的媒体把这波恨意炒了起来。

After all, I'm — I'm constantly trying to

毕竟我、我一直都在努力

to prove that from Kazakhstan you can build a big tech giant.

证明从哈萨克斯坦也能做出一家大的科技巨头。

And people were telling me, back when there were five of us, that we'd never scale to 30 people, that that's it, you have to start hiring in the US already and everybody has to relocate.

我们才五个人的时候,就有人跟我说,你们扩不到 30 人的,到此为止了,你们得赶紧在美国招人、全员搬过去。

Then we scaled up to 30 people.

后来我们扩到了 30 人。

Then they'd tell us: "Well, that's it, time to relocate.

他们又说:「行了,该搬走了。

You'll never scale to 100 people.

你们扩不到 100 人的。

And there just aren't that many specialists."

哪有那么多专业人才。」

Now we've scaled to 100 people.

现在我们已经扩到 100 人了。

Now they're telling us again: "Well, now you need to scale to 500, to 1,000."

现在他们又说:「那你们得扩到 500 人、1000 人。」

You won't be able to do that in Kazakhstan.

这个你们在哈萨克斯坦做不到。

And for me it's, well, a matter of principle to prove that from Kazakhstan you can scale a company to several thousand people too.

而对我来说,证明从哈萨克斯坦也能把公司扩到几千人,是一件原则性的事。

And that's my personal motivation — to prove to the whole world that you can build a tech giant out of Kazakhstan.

这就是我个人的动力——向全世界证明,科技巨头可以从哈萨克斯坦做出来。

It may not be the most rational thing, because of course it's easier to build companies like Higgsfield in more developed markets.

这可能不是最理性的选择,因为在更成熟的市场里做 Higgsfield 这样的公司当然更容易。

Uh, and here it comes from personal motivation, mine, and from the early engineers, who are also, well, trying to prove to the whole world that it's possible.

这件事来自我个人的动力,也来自早期那批工程师——他们同样想向全世界证明这是可能的。

We raise investment from the largest American and international funds, and a big chunk of that investment goes straight into Kazakhstan.

我们从美国和国际上最大的基金那里融资,其中很大一部分资金直接进入哈萨克斯坦。

We channel it here — unlike, say, I don't know, investment into mining some deposits, where yes, the investment does come into Kazakhstan, but it comes so that afterwards they can extract even more resources and money out of Kazakhstan; here, well, it's a completely different situation.

我们把钱投到这里——这跟比如矿产开采的投资完全不同,那种投资确实也进哈萨克斯坦,但它进来是为了之后从哈萨克斯坦抽走更多的资源和金钱;而这里,情况完全不一样。

That didn't affect me at all in the long run, because I'm still convinced that you can build a tech giant out of Kazakhstan.

长期来看,这件事对我没有任何影响,因为我依然确信,科技巨头可以从哈萨克斯坦做出来。

I think if we manage to pull it off — that is, to build a huge company, and I really do root for Kazakhstan's economy — then a huge number of other founders will follow our example and build companies for international, global markets out of Kazakhstan.

我想,如果我们真做成了——做出一家巨型公司,我是真心希望哈萨克斯坦经济好——那之后会有大量创始人跟着我们的例子走,从哈萨克斯坦做面向国际、面向全球市场的公司。

And in the future that will become some significant share of the economy's GDP.

未来这会成为经济 GDP 里相当可观的一块。

For example, ⟨?tomorrow⟩ our investors from Accel are coming — that's one of the biggest funds, with billions of dollars of investment under management.

比如说,⟨?明天⟩我们 Accel 的投资人就要来了——那是最大的基金之一,管理着数十亿美元的投资。

And the partners are just, well, coming to Almaty to look at the market, to see how everything works here.

合伙人就是来阿拉木图看看市场,看看这边是怎么运转的。

They came to believe that there's technically strong talent in the region.

他们相信了这个地区有技术很强的人才。

They came to believe that it can be scaled.

他们也相信了这批人才可以规模化。

Our last investment round was raised precisely for scaling the team.

我们上一轮融资,正是为了扩张团队。

Uh, in Central Asia

在中亚。

we're seeing, uh, the Higgsfield effect, right, you could call it that, on our ecosystem.

我们看到了 Higgsfield 效应——可以这么叫——它作用在我们整个生态上。

And it's really direct.

而且是非常直接的。

when Kazakhstan appeared on the map of the tech venture world, right, that has a direct impact.

当哈萨克斯坦出现在全球科技风投的地图上,这是会直接产生影响的。

I was even talking with colleagues, with Marat Talibayev, I talked with him not long ago.

我前不久还跟同行聊过,跟 Marat Talibayev 聊过。

Murad says, "Of course," he says, before that, he says, they'd been trying to raise money from European, uh, partners, right, and, he says, the moment Higgsfield showed up, right, everything immediately started moving, that is, interest in coming here appeared.

Murad 说:「那当然」,他说,在那之前他们一直想从欧洲的合作方那里融资,他说,Higgsfield 一出来,一切立刻就动起来了,大家开始对这边有兴趣了。

GITEX is coming, the biggest one, right?

GITEX 要来了,最大的那个,是吧?

That is, people are starting to talk to us, everyone gets it: "Aha, Kazakhstan is a place where talent grows and unicorns grow."

人家开始跟我们对话了,所有人都明白:「哦,哈萨克斯坦是个长人才、也长独角兽的地方。」

You see, that's a completely different story.

你明白吗,这完全是另一回事了。

It's such an enormous help both to all the venture investors in the country and to all the startups, right, when people look at them with different eyes.

这对全国的风险投资人、对所有创业公司都是巨大的帮助——别人看他们的眼光变了。

Because before, you'd come to America — where are you from? From Kazakhstan. From where? From where? Where is that and what is that, right?

因为以前你到美国去,人家问你从哪儿来?哈萨克斯坦。哪儿?哪儿?那在哪儿、那是什么东西,对吧?

So actually now that's it, nobody asks questions like that, everyone knows, everyone already knows, sort of, right, and it really does open doors and people look at them in a completely different way.

而现在这类问题没人问了,大家都知道,都已经知道了,这确实打开了门,看他们的眼光也完全不一样了。

Honestly, Yerzat, you have such a noble goal, right, to bring glory to your country, our Kazakhstan — it's very cool and ambitious.

说真的,Yerzat,你这个目标很高尚——让自己的国家、让我们哈萨克斯坦扬名,特别酷,也特别有野心。

But don't you think that a moment will come anyway when you'll have to relocate?

但你不觉得,终究会有那么一天,是非搬不可的吗?

And don't you feel like you're, well, a little bit far away from that IT world?

你有没有觉得,自己离那个 IT 世界稍微有点远?

Well, we're building a global company, so naturally Higgsfield will have offices in all the biggest cities in the world in the future.

我们做的是一家全球公司,Higgsfield 将来自然会在全世界最大的那些城市都设办公室。

That is, there'll be, well, offices in London, in Tokyo, in Paris and so on.

也就是会有伦敦、东京、巴黎等等的办公室。

But in New York — and right now we have two offices.

还有纽约——而我们现在有两个办公室。

That is, we have the San Francisco office, which is also growing fast.

一个是旧金山办公室,那边也在快速扩张。

We definitely don't, well, see ourselves as being on some periphery, because right now we're the market leaders in our category.

我们绝对不觉得自己在什么边缘地带,因为我们现在就是这个品类的市场领导者。

literally.

字面意义上的。

That is, we're sitting right at the frontier.

我们恰恰就站在最前沿。

So you personally are still planning to stay in Kazakhstan.

那你自己还是打算留在哈萨克斯坦。

I'd want Kazakhstan, and Central Asia too, to be precisely a source of talent, right, and even if down the road we relocate some of our specialists to various cities, I'd still want the company's DNA to be built here.

我希望哈萨克斯坦、还有整个中亚,能成为人才的源头。哪怕将来我们把一些专家外派到别的城市,我也希望公司的 DNA 是在这里长出来的。

Well, it's basically already being built.

而事实上,它已经在这样成形了。

I mean, the whole founding team is from Kazakhstan.

整个创始团队都来自哈萨克斯坦。

And the founding team is exactly what the company's DNA is.

而创始团队恰恰就是公司的 DNA。

I mean, those are the first engineers, the first specialists, and also the company's first shareholders.

他们是最早的一批工程师、最早的专家,也是公司最早的股东。

That's, well, something you can't undo.

这一点已经抹不掉了。

You have to understand that there's already a fairly liquid ⟨?secondary⟩ market.

要知道,现在的⟨?二级⟩市场已经相当有流动性了。

Basically, ⟨?that's true⟩ for Higgsfield as well.

基本上,⟨?这一点⟩对 Higgsfield 也成立。

And already, as Murat said earlier, Murat constantly gets, uh, offers to buy out his stake.

而且正像 Murat 刚才说的,不断有人找上 Murat,要收购他手里的股份。

And the same goes for our employees.

我们的员工也一样。

They get offers to buy out their stake, the shares that have, uh, vested for them.

有人来找他们收购股份,收购他们已经 vest 出来的那部分。

Right, they're the first engineers.

毕竟他们是最早的一批工程师。

And our first engineers have had millions of dollars vest.

我们最早那批工程师手里,已经 vest 了数百万美元。

That's exactly what shows the, well, the impact, that the company's DNA really is, uh, well, Kazakh.

这恰恰说明了影响力所在——公司的 DNA 确实是哈萨克斯坦的。

There have been a lot of ⟨?insinuations⟩ around this lately.

最近围绕这件事有不少⟨?影射⟩。

Like, is it a unicorn, is it not a unicorn, right, and what's it even worth, nobody knows.

一会儿说它是独角兽,一会儿说不是,到底值多少钱,谁也说不清。

What I want to say is, there's this thing called liquidity.

我想说的是,有个东西叫流动性。

There you go.

就是这样。

And investors, and anyone who runs a business, will get it: "Try selling an ordinary business right now."

投资人也好,做生意的人也好,一听就懂:「你现在去卖一门普通生意试试。」

For that matter, try selling even an apartment.

就算是卖套房子,你也试试看。

It's not that simple, a month minimum, and to sell a business, maybe a year.

没那么容易,最少一个月;要卖掉一门生意,可能得一年。

Whereas Higgsfield shares, a stake, you can sell within a few days.

而 Higgsfield 的股票、股份,几天之内就能出手。

2-3 days, the liquidity is just there, and at valuations, at exactly these multi-billion valuations.

2-3 天,流动性就是这么好,而且是按估值成交,就是按这种数十亿级别的估值。

And this story is actually going to keep going.

而且这个故事其实还会继续下去。

I also wanted to say that the Higgsfield example is contagious for our other companies.

我还想说,Higgsfield 这个样板对我们其他公司很有感染力。

Other companies come to us, our portfolio ones, which are also building a big story in the Valley, and they're now opening offices in Kazakhstan again, because the talent is here, and, uh, keeping them here is, uh, well, cheaper.

有别的公司来找我们——都是我们投的,同样在硅谷做大事的——他们现在又开始在哈萨克斯坦开办公室了,因为这里有人才,而且在这里养团队更便宜。

There you go.

就是这样。

And honestly, it's also easier to retain them here, right, because after all this headhunting, right, the kind you get in the Valley, it's very aggressive, and holding a team together there is hard.

而且坦白讲,人在这里更容易留住,因为硅谷那边的挖人实在太凶,在那儿想把团队守住很难。

Have foreign companies started poaching your employees?

国外公司开始挖你们的员工了吗?

Oh yes, that happens constantly.

这倒是,一直在发生。

Basically the hottest players in GenAI are constantly trying to poach employees from us.

GenAI 里最热的那几家玩家,一直在试图从我们这儿挖人。

And it makes no difference to them that the employees are, well, based in Almaty, they're ready to relocate them anywhere in the world, to London, to San Francisco, because, well, specialists who've had the experience of scaling to a billion dollars in under a year are worth their weight in gold.

人在阿拉木图对他们来说根本不是问题,愿意把人搬到世界上任何地方,伦敦、旧金山,因为不到一年就把规模做到十亿美元的人,千金难求。

And our employees are in enormous demand.

外面对我们员工的需求大得惊人。

The employees are very loyal to the company.

员工对公司非常忠诚。

Obviously that's thanks to our corporate culture, but also thanks to the fact that, uh, the employees are shareholders in the company, they hold large blocks of stock, and they can, as Murat said, sell them.

这当然靠我们的企业文化,但也靠另一点:员工同时是公司股东,手里持有大笔股票,而且像 Murat 说的,随时能卖掉。

It would literally take an early employee 3 days to sell millions of dollars' worth of Higgsfield stock on the market and go work at some other hot startup.

一个早期员工要在市场上卖掉价值数百万美元的 Higgsfield 股票,前后也就 3 天,然后就能去别的热门创业公司上班。

But the guys don't do that, because, well, everyone shares the mission overall, to build tech giants out of Kazakhstan.

但大家没这么干,因为所有人都认同这个大目标:从哈萨克斯坦做出科技巨头。

Well, I hope, yeah, that we'll pull it off.

我希望我们真能做到。

And now, for instance, since we've raised more investment, we no longer, I can't say that we pay less in Kazakhstan than the global market rate.

而且现在,因为我们又融了更多钱,已经不能说我们在哈萨克斯坦付的薪水低于全球市场水平了。

Our salaries are already comparable to international salaries, even though the cost of living in Kazakhstan is much lower.

我们的薪资已经和国际水平相当,而哈萨克斯坦的生活成本要低得多。

So it's even better for people to earn, uh, international salaries, very large ones, while staying in Kazakhstan, that's, well, super advantageous financially.

也就是说,拿着很高的国际薪水、人却留在哈萨克斯坦,从财务上看太划算了。

I'm also, yeah, glad overall, because our specialists now have no incentive to move abroad somewhere when they can make the same kind of money in Kazakhstan.

我整体上也很高兴,因为我们的专家现在没有动力再往国外搬了——同样的钱在哈萨克斯坦就能拿到。

For example, our latest hire, we hired a senior engineer from Uber.

比如我们最近这一个 offer,从 Uber 挖来一位资深工程师。

I mean, he's moving back to Almaty from Uber in Europe, because we gave him better terms, that is, we gave him a bigger salary.

他从 Uber 欧洲搬回阿拉木图,因为我们给的条件更好,薪水更高。

So on every count the offer from Higgsfield wins.

也就是说,Higgsfield 的报价在各方面都更胜一筹。

It's not worth it for him to work abroad, it's worth it for him to come back here and work out of Almaty.

在国外干对他不划算,回来在阿拉木图干才划算。

…of the company Higgsfield?

……Higgsfield 公司的?

Our policy is that practically everyone has them.

我们的政策是,几乎人人都有。

The policy is the same as at other international startups.

政策跟其他国际创业公司一样。

Meaning the package stays as long as the employee remains an employee.

也就是说,只要人还在公司,这份股权包就一直保留。

Yes, we, we work off a benchmark.

对,我们是按基准来做的。

That is, we look at, for example, how much equity in the company an employee of a given specialization, of a given grade, holds at a given percentile.

就是去看,某个专业方向、某个职级的员工,在某个百分位上持有多少公司股票。

And we take top startups, like Cursor, for instance.

我们拿顶级创业公司做参照,比如 Cursor。

I mean, that's a startup that grew to 20 billion dollars in 3 years.

这家公司 3 年就长到了 200 亿美元。

And we literally look at how they've set it up and map it onto ourselves.

我们就照着看他们是怎么设计的,再映射到自己身上。

There's this practice, well, usually running a three-year vesting, right?

业内的惯例通常是做三年 vesting,对吧?

What's yours?

你们是几年?

4 years.

4 年。

A three-to-four-year vesting.

三到四年的 vesting。

And, uh, those stakes accrue proportionally for each year, subject to meeting certain ⟨?conditions⟩, right?

这些股份按年份逐年等比归属,前提是达成某些 ⟨?条件⟩,对吧?

So, standard international practice.

就是国际上的标准做法。

There's no need to reinvent the wheel here.

这里没必要重新发明轮子。

Well —

而且——

the company is already something like ⟨?two and a half⟩ years old.

公司到现在已经有 ⟨?两年半⟩ 了。

And so, well, there are employees whose shares have mostly vested already.

所以有些员工手里的大部分股份早就归属完了。

Meaning they have the right to, uh, sell their shares, and we can't control that.

也就是说,他们有权卖掉自己的股份,我们控制不了。

It's their private property.

那是他们的私人财产。

They can do whatever they want with those shares.

这些股份他们想怎么处置都行。

How did you even come across this startup in the first place, and why did you decide to invest in it?

您当初是怎么注意到这家创业公司的,又为什么决定投它?

The first meeting with Yerzat, sort of, right?

第一次见 Yerzat 那回,对吧?

I mean, he used a whole lot of technical terms, half of which I didn't understand, but there was actually a guy sitting there specially, right, who translated from Russian into Russian, you know, explained things.

他一口气讲了一大堆技术名词,我有一半没听懂,但旁边还专门坐了个人,对吧,专门把俄语翻译成俄语,给我解释。

So there you go.

就是这么回事。

But I did some checking, I simply, uh, uh, ran references on Yerzat.

但我去打听了一下,就是做了一下 Yerzat 的背景调查。

And those references, like, impressed me a whole lot.

打听回来的结果让我印象极深。

He's not just the best expert in the country or in the region.

他不只是国内、或者说本地区最好的专家。

He's one of the best experts in the world, actually, yeah.

他其实是全世界最顶尖的专家之一,真的。

I mean, he has his own library on GitHub, and ⟨?OpenAI⟩ invited him to come work for them.

他自己在 GitHub 上有开源库,⟨?OpenAI⟩ 还邀请过他去上班。

So, like, uh, I understood that the times are what they are now and specialists like that — he's a unique specialist, right, with unique expertise.

所以我当时就明白,眼下是这么个时代,这种人才——他是独一无二的专家,对吧,能力也是独一无二的。

And I invested specifically in Yerzat, in him as a person.

所以我投的就是 Yerzat 这个人。

And is Higgsfield your most successful investment?

那 Higgsfield 是您最成功的一笔投资吗?

Yes.

是。

Yes.

是的。

I have, well, you can't say I have a whole lot of them, well, I do have a lot of good investments, but with an effect like this — of course, yes, it's the most successful investment.

我手上倒不能说有特别特别多,好的投资我有不少,但能做出这种效果的,那当然,这是最成功的一笔。

Usually, uh, any venture investor dreams of an investment like this.

这样的投资,是每个风险投资人都梦寐以求的。

Honestly, I'm very grateful to Yerzat and the team for such a magnificent project.

说实话,我非常感谢 Yerzat 和整个团队做出这么漂亮的项目。

So there it is.

就是这样。

Of course, I support them in every way, yes, with all my resources, with whatever I can, and I'm extremely proud of them.

当然,我会想尽办法支持他们,对,动用我所有的资源,能帮的都帮,也特别为他们骄傲。

To be honest, it really inspires me that our guys built a product like this, right, at a world-class level, and it lets us take pride in our country.

坦白讲,咱们自己的小伙子能做出这样一个世界级的产品,这让我特别振奋,也让人为我们这个国家自豪。

Well, it's just great.

真的太棒了。

And in our school, yes, RFMSh ⟨?the Republican Physics and Mathematics School⟩.

也为我们的母校自豪,对,RFMSh ⟨?共和国物理数学学校⟩。

I think that's such a positive note for us to

我觉得这是个很正面的调子,我们可以就此

wrap up on.

收尾了。

Thank you so much for giving us your time, that you ⟨?⟩, despite being under the weather, came in and answered our questions.

非常感谢二位抽出时间,⟨?⟩ 身体不舒服还是来了,回答了我们的问题。

Thank you.

谢谢你们。

Yes, thank you very much for giving us the platform.

是,非常感谢你们提供这个平台。

Thank you,

谢谢,

yes, to get across, well, our opinion, our view of the current situation, to answer a lot of questions.

让我们把自己的看法、对当下这件事的判断讲出来,也回答了很多问题。

And if you still have any questions, leave them in the comments.

如果各位还有什么问题,欢迎留言。