Growth Is a Trust Problem Now

"I have a couple of ways that I think it's changing. Thing number one is that software creation is becoming democratized — functionality is becoming available to anyone to build, whether you buy it from somebody or build it yourself. Honestly, it doesn't matter anymore."

"我觉得有几个变化。第一件，是软件的创造正在被民主化——你想要的功能，可以买、可以自己拼，从哪儿来其实已经不重要了。"

"If you want to actually sell software and grow your business, growth is a trust problem now. Who do I trust to actually purchase it from? Who do I trust to use it from? Do I believe in the team that is building behind it? Because otherwise, I'm just going to go create my own — if I don't believe they're going to continue to worry about my needs and continue evolving it."

"所以如果你真要卖软件、要把生意做大，增长现在就是一个信任问题。我相信谁卖给我？我相信谁能让我用得起来？我信不信背后这个团队？不信的话——我自己撸一个就完了。我要是不信你会一直关心我的需求、一直把它做下去，那这事儿就吹了。"

"So to me, there's just so much behind not just tactics — growth tactics, growth hacking, channel optimizations. It's literally winning the trust of your consumer to have them vouch for you, to have them believe in you, to stand behind you as you're building your business."

"所以对我来说，现在比拼的不只是 growth tactics、growth hacking、各种渠道优化——是真真切切地把消费者的信任赢回来：让他们替你说话、相信你，在你做生意的时候站在你这边。"

"And the second thing — which kind of goes along with the trust thing — is that it's no longer about the software functionality that you're trying to grow. You're really trying to create what I call minimum lovable product out of every single little thing that you touch."

"第二件，跟信任那件事是连着的：现在你拼增长，拼的已经不是软件功能本身了。你要做的，是把你碰到的每一个小东西都做成我说的 minimum lovable product。"

"Because software is now almost being judged by the emotion that it can invoke with a human as opposed to just core basic functionality that it can do."

"因为现在大家几乎是按'软件能在人身上唤起什么情感'来评判它的，而不是只看它能跑哪些基本功能。"

"I almost compare it to Maslow's pyramid of needs. The bottom layer is just like 'okay, it works. Okay, I can kind of believe that it'll do security and all of the other pieces.' Now I need to be able to connect to it. And we as humans always want to connect with something — we don't like utilities, we don't like tools."

"我经常拿马斯洛需求金字塔来对照。最底层就是'OK 它能跑，安全那些我也大概信得过'。再往上一层，我得能跟它产生连接。人本来就想跟某个东西产生连接——我们不喜欢冷冰冰的 utility，也不喜欢冷冰冰的工具。"

"And the more software starts to have actually some sort of personality that helps us trust it — it's almost becoming a minimum bar in order to even kickstart the growth."

"所以软件越往后越得带点'人格'，让人愿意相信它——这几乎是能不能启动增长的最低门槛。"

"And then the last thing — in terms of growth tactics themselves — all of the performance marketing or the optimizations are just becoming something that's getting automated pretty quickly. It's actually fascinating to watch."

"第三件，是增长的具体打法本身在变。所有 performance marketing、各种优化，现在正以肉眼可见的速度被自动化掉——挺好看的过程。"

"So to me, growth work now is trying something new, trying to be innovative, creating these really once-in-a-lifetime campaigns to try to win the eyeballs and trust of your customers. That's all I'm doing — by coding all day long and trying to find the ways to really capture the hearts and minds of our customers, not just optimizing pricing page into oblivion."

"所以在我这儿，现在的 growth 工作就是去试新东西、去创新、去做那种'一辈子就这么一次'的 campaign，把用户的眼球和信任抓回来。我现在干的就是这个——每天写代码，琢磨怎么把客户的心和脑都抓住，而不是把 pricing page 反复优化到死。"

"What becomes more important is your product as a channel — where you actually earn that trust that drives that word of mouth, that drives that likability. And what becomes less important is something across marketing, sales — more old traditional techniques that we would use to try to drive growth."

"更重要的，是把'产品本身'当成一条渠道——你在产品里赚到的信任，会反过来变成口碑、变成喜爱度。变得不那么重要的，是 marketing、sales 那些更老派的招数——以前我们靠它们推增长，现在不行了。"

"Yeah, there's decline, but you have to understand — it's so enormous. Even if it's dying, it will take years for it to die. I'm not going to make a prediction of whether SEO is dying. It's declining. The habits are changing, absolutely."

"对，是在掉，但你得明白它整个盘子太大了——就算真在死，也要好几年才死得透。我不想押注 SEO 到底死没死。它确实在下滑，用户习惯肯定也在变。"

"But is SEO still fruitful? Abso-fuckingly. You still have to invest in SEO if you want to have the baseline of growth. But is SEO going to be the reason that you're going to win in your business? I don't think so. It's just something that you have to do. This is not going to be the reason why you're going to stand out and win."

"可 SEO 现在还吃不吃香？简直他妈的吃香。你想要一条增长的基线，就还是得砸 SEO。但 SEO 会不会让你赢？我觉得不会。它就是你必须做的一件事，但不是你脱颖而出、能赢的理由。"

"I think Lovable is where it is right now because of the founder socials that Anton has really leaned into and has done at the beginning. How important is his brand right now to existing success? Less important — because we've diversified away from it and we have other channels we're growing. Our users are very active. Our community is very strong. We have a lot of user-generated content."

"我觉得 Lovable 能跑到今天这一步，就是因为早期 Anton 自己 all in 在 founder socials 上。那他的品牌对现在的状态还有多重要？没那么关键了——我们已经从单一依赖里跳出来，跑出了别的渠道。用户很活跃、社区很强，还有大量的 user-generated content。"

"But at the beginning, was he the reason that Lovable spiked and got to the traction that allowed it to scale where it is right now? I think so. I have no way to prove it, but looking at the data and the early traction — that was it."

"但要说一开始把 Lovable 拱起来、让它跑到今天这个体量的根本原因，我觉得就是他。我没法严格证明，但看早期数据和早期 traction——就是这个。"

"When I say diversify from Anton, that's not to say Anton is not a meaningful channel anymore. I'm saying we have other channels running in parallel. He's not the only one anymore. He's still growing his channel, it's still very important — we're just not relying on it as the only single failure point."

"我说'从 Anton 分散'，不是说 Anton 这条线不重要了——是说我们现在有别的渠道并行在跑。他不再是唯一一根。他自己的盘子还在长，还是很关键——只不过我们不再让它当成单点故障源。"

"If I was any company, I would heavily invest in social — but not in the traditional sense of posting from your company account or hiring an intern as your social media manager who posts puns on Twitter here and there. I really mean where you start building in public, you encourage your employees to build in public and grow their social followings, and really reach your customer through your own team's voices."

"我要是经营任何一家公司，我都会重砸 social——但不是老套那种'公司账号每天发个段子'，也不是雇个实习生当 social media manager 在 Twitter 上撒一堆冷笑话。我说的是真正的 build in public：鼓励员工 build in public、做大他们的 social following，让团队自己的声音去触达客户。"

"I think that is the channel that so many companies underestimate — how important and how powerful it is, how much trust it builds, how much it unites people behind your mission, because they see the people that build the company and they want to connect to other people."

"这条渠道被绝大多数公司严重低估了——它有多重要、有多强，能积累多少信任，能把多少人聚到你的 mission 后面。因为他们看到的是真真切切在做这家公司的人，而人天然就想跟其他人产生连接。"

"If you think your employees are so easily swayed to go somewhere else just because they get reached out by the right company — what are you doing? There are some really bad cultural issues in your company. Look at your recruiting practices if that's actually your worry."

"如果你觉得你的员工被对的公司一勾就走——那你这公司是怎么搞的？文化里肯定出了大问题。要是真的担心这个，先回去看看你的招聘流程。"

"And second — if you can use your company to help people build a better social presence that they can use to do marketing for your company, then who cares if they build a personal brand in the meantime? They become your biggest marketing agent — the most powerful marketing agent."

"第二，如果你能借公司这个平台帮员工把 social 影响力做起来，他们再反过来用这个影响力替你做 marketing，那他们顺带建了个人品牌又怎么了？他们就是你最大、最强的 marketing 代理人。"

"By the way, you get two for the price of one. You get an engineer and a marketer at the same time. Who wouldn't want that? People are very multifunctional, we can do multiple things — and a little bit of encouragement and obviously leading by example goes really far."

"顺便你还赚到了——一份工资买两个人。你同时拿到了一个 engineer 和一个 marketer，谁不想要？人本来就是多面手，能干好几件事——稍微鼓励一下、再以身作则一下，效果就出来了。"

"There's a massive blurring of lines, and that's been happening for a long time. Every product manager had to do their own analytics for the last decade. Every marketer was expected to build some landing pages and do some no-code solutions for the last decade too. We've been going in this direction for a long time — but the speed of the blur is accelerating."

"职能边界正在大面积模糊化，这事已经发生很久了。过去十年里，每个 PM 都得自己跑数据；每个 marketer 也都被默认要会搭 landing page、会用一点 no-code。这条路我们一直在走——只是现在模糊化的速度在加快。"

"For example, I now ship code to production. I have never done that before. But I also go and ship my own apps and run my own campaigns completely without anybody's support. I build apps, I go out there, I create noise around it, I drive engagement to it. It's part of all of the growth works to me."

"比如说我现在自己 ship 代码上线——以前我从来没干过。同时我还能完全不靠别人，自己做 app、自己跑 campaign。我搭 app、我去外面造声量、我自己把 engagement 拉起来。这些在我看来都属于 growth 工作。"

"I write copy. I make prototypes for our engineering team that builds it. Sometimes design shits all over it. Sometimes they say, 'good job, you can push it through.' All I'm saying is — I'm doing all of this myself now, versus 10 years ago I would say I was very specialized and on a more narrow lane."

"文案我自己写，原型我自己搭，搭完丢给工程团队去实现。设计那边有时候把它喷得狗血淋头，有时候才点个头说'行，过了，可以推下去'。我想说的就是：这些活我现在全是自己干——倒回去十年，我属于专精类、跑窄道那种人。"

"It's a great question. I do think it's very much an advantage that is available to startups. The world of very large complexity, compliance, security-driven enterprises will be at major disadvantage in this future."

"这是个好问题。我觉得这就是 startup 才能吃到的红利。那种巨复杂、合规重、安全压顶的大公司——未来的牌局里会处于很大的劣势。"

"I have a reasonable LinkedIn following and I've been penalized for it in larger companies. They were like, 'absolutely no, don't post. Delete the post. We want to approve anything you post on social.' It just felt suffocating — it almost was held against me that I had it. Lovable is honestly one of the first companies that's leaning into it: 'go post more, can you talk about this?'"

"我自己 LinkedIn 上有个还算像样的 following，结果在大公司里因此被反复敲打。他们的态度是'不行，别发，把帖子删掉，你以后发任何东西我们都要先审'。窒息得不行——我有这个号反倒像是个负资产。Lovable 是我待过的第一家反过来推我多发的：'再发点，能不能也聊聊这个？'"

"The biggest mistake is that they treat community as just their support outlet. 'Our support team cannot get through the queue — let's create a community for it to be a community-support, so people can help each other.' And it just becomes a dumping ground of negative sentiment."

"最大的坑：他们把 community 当成 support 的减压阀来用。'我们 support 工单堵了——那建个社区吧，让用户互相帮忙。'结果它直接变成了负面情绪的垃圾场。"

"Because when people cannot get in touch with you through support channels, they go to community to vent about their issues. So it becomes a very negative place — not filled with inspiration, not filled with positivity and accomplishment. It's literally filled with problems."

"因为用户走 support 通道找不到人，就跑到社区里发泄。整个空间就变得很负面——既没有 inspiration，也没有正能量、没有'我搞成了什么'的成就感。整页都是问题。"

"And then in order to solve for that, companies start going after tooling — they start creating these community platforms and forums, basically trying to almost replicate what Microsoft has created or something like core. It just becomes cold, non-connecting support forums that are then indexed by SEO for all of the negativity that's being shared within it. It's not a community — it's like a..."

"然后为了解决这个，公司又跑去买工具，建一堆 community platform、forum，差不多就是在复刻 Microsoft 老论坛那种东西。结果产出的就是一个冰冷的、没人在乎彼此的 support forum，里面所有负面言论还会被 SEO 全部索引出去。这根本不是社区——这就是一个……"

"But that is a community. It's an outlet for negativity that hasn't been addressed by your support team. That's literally nine out of ten communities, because they're not spawned from a place of connection — they're spawned from a place of 'hey, there needs to be an additional way for people to solve their problems.'"

"但市面上的 community 就是这副样子。它就是一个'你们 support 没接住、用户拿来发泄的地方'。十个社区里九个都是这样——因为它们不是为了'人和人产生连接'而存在的，是为了'再开一条让用户自助解决问题的小通道'而存在的。"

"You can seed it, but I think what you need to find is your early super-users and super-adopters — those people that are really excited about your product. You should pull them in to be your community managers, your community ambassadors. You should deploy them to be your biggest advocates and have them start bringing other people around them because of their excitement for the product."

"可以 seed，但你真正要做的是找出你那批早期的 super-user 和 super-adopter——就是对产品发自内心兴奋的那群人。把他们拉进来当 community manager、当 community ambassador。让他们去当你最大的 advocate，把他们身边因为这份兴奋被吸引来的人一波一波带进来。"

"You do need to identify them very early and build community around them. That is the right way to do it, because then they will bring the positivity into it as opposed to it being just a support outlet."

"关键是要在很早的阶段就识别出这群人，然后围着他们去搭社区——这才是正确的姿势。这样社区里来的就是正向能量，而不是 support 减压阀里溢出来的负面情绪。"

"You can obsess about it. You can get upset by it. You can try to match it — or you can say: our growth strategy is completely different. Our growth strategy is through organic word of mouth and delighting people and showing them that we're actually better, as opposed to trying to pay for their attention."

"你可以纠结、可以生气、可以硬刚——也可以直接说：我们的 growth 路线就跟他们不一样。我们走的是 organic 口碑、是把用户取悦得离不开你、是用产品说话——而不是花钱去买注意力。"

"So do we look at it? Yes, absolutely. I watched Super Bowl ads, I took notes, we discussed it the day after — did we think we should have been in Super Bowl? We decided we shouldn't have been. After we saw the ads, we were happy with our decision not to be."

"我们看不看对手？必须看。Super Bowl 广告我每支都看了，做了笔记，第二天还跟团队复盘——我们是不是该上 Super Bowl？最后我们决定不上。看完之后，我们更确认这个决定是对的。"

"Because we're going after the latent majority now, not just the early pioneers that are looking for a solution. We want to educate the rest of the market — what is possible and the capabilities that technology now has, that they should be taking advantage of. There's a really short window of opportunity where people can really get ahead, because otherwise they're going to be left behind. And I think a lot of businesses will be disrupted if they're left behind."

"因为我们现在要打的是 latent majority——不再只是那些自己跑出来找解决方案的早期 pioneer。我们想给市场剩下那一大块人补课：现在的技术能做什么、他们应该用起来。早入场的窗口期很短——不抓的话就被甩在后面。如果被甩在后面，很多生意都会被颠覆掉。"

"So we feel we need to start educating larger masses, which is why we went into billboard / subway advertising. But this is also very short in the timeline period from Lovable's perspective. I would never recommend a company to do it this quickly — but Lovable is not a normal company, because we're already well past $300M in ARR even though we're only a year and a couple of months old."

"所以我们觉得有必要去给更大的人群上一课——这就是我们上 billboard、上地铁广告的原因。但从 Lovable 的角度看，这一步上得已经非常早了。换一家公司我绝不会建议这么快上——但 Lovable 不是一家普通公司，我们一年多一点点就跑过 $300M ARR 了。"

"All I'm saying is: that's not our primary strategy of how we're going to drive growth. This is just branding awareness. We want to play in the field, drive awareness across the masses, because we believe our product is very relevant for them. Our ICP is very broad — ideal customer profile is very broad — so we can go after billboard advertising and feel like we appeal to most of the eyeballs that land on us."

"我想强调的是：这不是我们推动增长的主路径。这只是品牌认知。我们要在场——给大众做铺垫——因为我们相信产品对他们都成立。我们的 ICP 很宽——ideal customer profile 很宽——所以上 billboard 这种广覆盖的玩法不算浪费，扫到的眼球大多数都对得上。"

"For any founder, in the first year, investing in paid as the means of growth is a death trap. Until you actually figure out your true stable product market fit, and until you are able to drive growth in some sort of organic way — whether it's organic socials, organic search, whatever — investing into paid is a really horrible idea."

"对任何一个创始人来说，第一年把 paid 当成主要的增长手段——就是死路一条。在你真正找到稳定的 product market fit 之前、在你还没用任何 organic 方式（organic socials、organic search 都行）把增长跑起来之前——往 paid 里砸钱就是个糟透的主意。"

"You haven't even optimized or really learned all of your funnels. You haven't grabbed people who are already looking for your solution in organic ways. So pouring money on top of the funnel when the experience is not even optimized for those who are looking for you — is just like lighting cash on fire."

"你连自己的 funnel 都没打磨明白，连那些主动在找解决方案的人都还没接住——这种状态下往 funnel 顶上砸钱，跟拿钱点火没区别。"

"So I would say less than 10% should be paid. In a more scaled mature company it can be 30 to 40%. But anywhere over 50%, I would be very uncomfortable on a reliance on paid — because I'm now competing with everybody else on third-party platforms for the attention, as opposed to relying on my organic pool and my product itself to drive growth."

"所以我的看法是：早期 paid 占比要 < 10%。规模化、成熟之后，30%-40% 可以。一旦超过 50% 还在依赖 paid——我会很不舒服。因为这意味着你在跟所有人在第三方平台上抢同一个用户的注意力，而不是靠你自己的 organic 池子、靠你的产品来推动增长。"

"Yeah. The problem is — yes, it might be working out now. First of all, even if you're going to do paid, at least make sure that the paid payback cycle is really quick. The biggest issue I see with paid is people look at it as just a cap to LTV. None of the small companies know their LTV. So you're literally just looking at CAC and kind of trying to guess what it's actually going to be."

"对，关键就在这——'现在'跑得出来不代表后面也行。我先说一句：就算你要做 paid，也至少把 paid 的 payback 周期压短。我看到 paid 上最大的坑，是大家把它当成'用 LTV 反推 CAC 上限'来算。小公司根本不知道自己的 LTV。 所以你实际上只能盯着 CAC，剩下全靠猜未来 LTV 大概是多少。"

"Think about actually when you recoup your investment. How fast — if you put $100 into your system, can you recuperate that $100 out of the system back? If it's under three months, fine. Maybe a little bit better. Put it into the system, have it regenerate for you really quickly. So it's a self-contained system that keeps on giving and paying for itself."

"真正要算的是回本周期。你扔 $100 进去，多久能从系统里把这 $100 拿回来？三个月以内，OK，甚至再短点更好。这样你扔进去的钱很快就能再生出来——这个系统是自循环的、自己养自己的。"

"But anytime that goes anywhere close to 8 or 9 months, even a year — it's a sink of money. You need to constantly put back into the system more and more, you're going to constantly have to raise to do it."

"一旦回本周期靠近 8、9 个月、甚至一年——它就是个无底洞了。你得不停往里加水，外面也得不停融钱来加水。"

"And the problem is — if Google doesn't hit their earnings, what are they going to do? 'Hey, let's go to AdWords and jack up all of the CPCs by 20% so we can hit our earnings.' That's coming out of your budget so they can hit Wall Street numbers. You have to be really careful — you're literally at the mercy of other super-giants needing to hit business performance on the market, and you are paying for it."

"还有个大问题——Google 哪季财报没达标，他们会怎么做？'走 AdWords，把所有 CPC 拉高 20%，把数字凑出来。'最后那 20% 是从你的预算里出的，让他们去对付华尔街。你得格外小心——你是在替这些超级巨头给市场的业绩表现兜底，掏钱的是你。"

"It's absolutely irrelevant. You don't know your LTV. Unless you've been in the business for 5 years plus, you do not know your LTV. Period."

"完全没意义。你根本不知道自己的 LTV。除非你这门生意已经做了 5 年以上，否则你不知道你的 LTV——就这一句。"

"Paid marketing to me is — it's actually the most expensive way out. It's not competitively defensible at all, and it's not sustainable. You're paying somebody else to generate demand for you. If you haven't figured out your unique, competitively defensible, sustainable way to generate demand without relying on another platform — then you are just buying time in the market before the collapse is imminent."

"在我眼里，paid marketing 才是最贵的那条出路。竞争上根本没有壁垒，也撑不下去。你是在花钱让别人替你制造需求。如果你还没搞清楚自己那条不靠任何平台、有壁垒、可持续的需求生成路径——那你只是在用钱拖时间，崩盘已经在路上了。"

"I live in a world where not everybody who uses your product is a paid customer. And I live in a world where every single customer has other value besides just paying you directly. At Lovable we have a ton of free users. A lot of our costs are within our freemium — not with our paid marketing, not with employees, not with marketing or sales budgets. It's with freemium, because we view freemium as actually a marketing channel."

"我活在一个不是所有用产品的人都付费的世界里。我也活在一个'每个用户除了付钱给你之外，还能给你别的价值'的世界里。Lovable 有海量的免费用户。我们成本的大头是在 freemium 上——不是 paid marketing、不是员工工资、不是 marketing/sales 预算——是 freemium。因为在我们看来，freemium 本质上是一条 marketing 渠道。"

"What I mean is — a free user comes in, gets delighted by what they accomplish for free, then goes and does marketing on our behalf. They go talk across socials, they refer to friends. We very carefully measure — we have such a thing called the Lovable score, where we measure how often people actually refer us to somebody else. We keep a really close eye on it, because that is an earned channel that you cannot buy, that you cannot compete with, and that we own."

"我说的意思是——免费用户进来、被他自己做出来的东西取悦到了，然后他就替你出去 marketing 了。他在 social 上发帖、把朋友拉进来。这个我们盯得很死，专门有一个指标叫 Lovable score，量化用户主动推荐我们的频率。我们死盯这个数——因为这是一条买不来、对手抄不去、完全在我们手里的渠道。"

"Back to your activation question — to me it's purely engagement-based. That has nothing to do with monetization whatsoever. So: what is your aha moment with the product? What are the steps to set up to get to that aha moment? And what are the first habit loops that you're going to start falling into to use the product on an ongoing basis? It's purely product engagement-based — and that is an incredible signal for both monetization and long-term retention."

"回到你的 activation 问题——在我这儿，activation 完全是 engagement 维度的事，跟付费一毛钱关系都没有。要看的是：用户的 aha moment 是什么？走到那个 aha moment 之前要踩哪几步？接下来他会陷入哪些 habit loop、让产品成为日常？纯产品 engagement 维度的事——而这恰恰是预测付费和长期留存最厉害的信号。"

"I think about it on multiple vectors. There's intensity of engagement — how deep do I go, how much time do I spend, how complicated of a task am I trying to accomplish? You're right — intensity is very powerful for social platforms, because the more intense you are on them, the better user you are for them. For simple productivity tools, intensity is almost an anti-tric — because intensity means 'I'm getting stuck. I'm doing too much, where this is actually supposed to be easy.'"

"我看几个维度。一个是 intensity（强度）——我陷得多深？花了多少时间？任务有多复杂？你说得对——intensity 对社交平台来说是好事，越沉迷你这条用户对平台越值钱。但对简单的生产力工具，intensity 几乎是反指标——它意味着'我卡住了。本来应该轻松的事我做得太重了。'"

"However, there's also frequency. How often do I come back and do it? Frequency is a big one — you always want to be in the habitual zone for our minds, which is daily or weekly. Anytime you move into being monthly, you're in the forgettable zone. I don't remember what I did last month — the world is moving too quickly. I don't even remember if I tried some software last month."

"但还有一个 frequency（频率）——隔多久我会回来再做一次？这是大数。你想留在'习惯区'——大脑认这件事的频率是 daily 或 weekly。一旦掉到 monthly，你就进了'遗忘区'。我根本记不得上个月干过什么——世界跑得太快了，连'上个月有没有试过某款软件'我都记不清。"

"On top of that, you look at what actions are meaningful. The worst thing is when you create frequency of engagement based on login. That's a vanity metric — everybody can log in, that doesn't mean they get value. So set up that frequency engagement on something a little bit more meaningful."

"再往上一层，要看动作本身有没有意义。最烂的做法是把 engagement 频率挂在'登录'上——这就是个虚荣指标。谁都会登录，但登录不等于他拿到价值。频率这事得绑在更有意义的动作上。"

"For us, it's either building an app in Lovable — so you're prompting changes — or receiving traffic on the app you already published. So you're on either side of the engagement coin: still editing, or now reaping the benefits of what you've already published. Both are counted as engagement signals, and we count frequency to see how many of them are active on a daily basis — which we call active builders."

"在 Lovable，这个动作要么是'你在 Lovable 里搭一个 app'——也就是你在 prompt 让它改东西——要么是'你已经发布出去的 app 在收流量'。这两面都算：你还在编辑，或者你已经在收割发布出来的红利。两者都算 engagement 信号，然后我们再叠上 frequency，看每天有多少人是活跃的——这群人我们叫 active builders。"

"It's an okay thing. If it's live and functioning and getting traffic — you're getting value out of it. That's great for us, so we count it as engagement. Some people will have apps they're still building, some are just in the consumption state. Both are good — there's no preference for us of one versus the other value. We just measure and watch for proportions, just to make sure there's a good enough amount of apps that are getting traffic and receiving value that way."

"挺 OK 的事。它在线、在跑、在收流量——你就在从它身上拿到价值。对我们来说也很好，我们把这个算成 engagement。有人会一直在搭，有人只是在'消费阶段'。两种我们都欢迎，不偏向其中一种。我们就盯着比例——确保'已经发出去并在收流量的 app'占比足够健康。"

"Lesson number one: do not — and I mean do not — lock people in subscription as the only way to monetize you. I know we all love our annual recurring revenue, and our multiples are decided by ARR. But if your product is anything like bursty usage — where it's not super consistent, where creativity strikes or a project strikes and I need to do a lot of work in it, and then I might have periods of more downtime or much lighter usage — allowing flexibility in your monetization model for ad-hoc purchases can mean the world of incrementality for your overall monetization potential."

"第一条：不要——我说的是真的不要——把订阅当成你唯一的收钱方式。我知道我们都爱 ARR，估值倍数也都是按 ARR 给的。但如果你的产品有点 bursty——用量不那么稳定，灵感来了或项目来了我就得猛干一票，然后又有一段时间用得很少——给定价模型留出 ad-hoc 购买（按需购买）的口子，对整体收钱潜力来说是天和地的差别。"

"We just introduced top-ups at Lovable and it's been absolutely wild. In every other job I've ever held, I've always thought about something like an ad-hoc purchase on top of the subscription, and I always shut it down or was too nervous to move it forward because of the scares of affecting that treasured ARR. That's not true. It's a complete fallacy. You should do both, and it adds on incrementally — your ARR only continues growing and your retention improves."

"我们刚在 Lovable 上线了 top-up，效果疯狂。我以前每份工作都想过'订阅之上再加一个按需购买'这种事，但每一次都被自己劝退、或者被'怕动了 ARR'吓住了。那种担心是假的，纯属误会。这两件事完全可以同时做——加上去之后是 incremental 的，ARR 还是涨、retention 反而变好。"

"And the second lesson — your monetization model right now is not the correct one for every single AI company out there. We just fundamentally have not found how to best monetize AI, because we're all just passing through highly expensive LLM costs to our users. But when LLM costs collapse — and they will collapse eventually — our monetization models will have to evolve. Whoever evolves their monetization model to be more outcome-based first is going to be the winner in the market."

"第二条——你现在用的这套定价模型，对绝大多数 AI 公司来说都不会是终局。我们其实根本没真正搞懂 AI 怎么收钱，大家无非是把巨贵的 LLM 成本透传给用户。但 LLM 成本必然会崩——它早晚会崩。一旦崩了，定价模型必须跟着进化。谁先把定价模型转成 outcome-based，谁就赢。"

"You better set up the right infrastructure and the right team around it to be able to change your monetization model and test it really rapidly — as opposed to leaving it as something that's not touched for years and years. For most businesses pricing is a taboo subject that cannot be adjusted, because it feels so complicated."

"所以你最好提前把基础设施和团队搭好——让你能够快速改定价、快速测——而不是把它供在那儿好几年都不碰。在大多数公司里，定价是个'神主牌'，没人敢碰，因为感觉太复杂。"

"Why would OpenAI sell the LLM under cost? Yes, it's a market grab for sure, but I fundamentally believe they think LLM costs are going to come down to the point where they're not going to have to raise prices — but they're going to start getting the margins to make those prices make sense, and potentially lower it even further. Because LLM is going to be a commoditized feature very soon. It doesn't feel so right now, but it will be like access to internet or access to the cloud — commoditized, cheap."

"OpenAI 凭什么贴本卖 LLM？有抢市场的成分，没错；但我根本上相信他们认定 LLM 成本会一路压下去，压到他们不必涨价就能赚钱、甚至还能继续往下打——因为 LLM 很快就会变成商品化的'地基功能'。现在感觉还不是，但它会变得跟'连上网'、'连上云'一样——彻底商品化，便宜得像水。"

"Once it becomes completely commoditized, you cannot monetize on it anymore. You have to start moving towards monetization of outcomes. And again, whoever evolves their monetization models first will win."

"一旦它彻底商品化，你就再也没法靠它本身收钱了。你必须把收钱的口子从'卖能力'移到'卖结果'。再说一次——谁先把定价模型迁过去，谁赢。"

"This is where brand comes in, where trust comes in. You have to rely on people believing in you and your team — because, like I said, all of the SaaS functionality is getting commoditized and democratized. Anybody can do everything now."

"这就是 brand 派上用场的地方，trust 派上用场的地方。你必须靠'用户相信你和你团队'撑住——因为 SaaS 功能全部在被商品化、被民主化，谁现在都能做出来。"

"Listen, I'm terrified of the fact that I'm becoming a brand marketer, because I'm just like — it's becoming so much more about brand. People will follow the brand because of its promise, because of its relation, because functionality is going to be available everywhere."

"听着——我自己都被'我居然在变成 brand marketer 这件事'吓得不行，但事情就是越来越往那边走。人会跟着 brand 走——因为 brand 的承诺、因为 brand 的关系——因为功能本身随处可得。"

"I don't know what else can differentiate you besides creating an absolutely delightful experience, stressing about the most littlest pieces of friction in your product, being really fast on innovation, being on the forefront — even if you're not the leader. But it's that relationship that you develop with your customer that is everything."

"我不知道还能靠什么把你区分出来——除了把体验做得特别愉悦、对最最细微的产品摩擦死磕、在创新速度上快到没人能甩开你、保持在最前沿（就算不是领跑也得在第一梯队）。但归根到底——你和用户之间那段关系，才是真正决定一切的东西。"

"A couple tactical things come to mind. I would still do out-of-home advertisement — that is coming back in spades because that's where eyeballs are at. I would go very heavily into video and talking, not just visual ads — because then you can explain things so much easier. I'd go after Amazon Prime videos, Spotify, all of those — there's just not a lot of competition. I would go after creator economy so hard — every newsletter, every podcast, my ad on it, just box out everybody else."

"我脑子里冒出来几个具体的动作。第一，户外广告我还是会做——它正在以几何速度回潮，因为眼球都在那儿。第二，我会重砸视频 + 有人讲话的内容，不只是静态视觉广告——因为视频能把事情解释得清楚多了。我会去 Amazon Prime Video、Spotify 这些地方——竞争还少得很。第三，我会把 creator economy 砸到死——每一个 newsletter、每一档 podcast 上都挂上我的广告，把对手挤出去。"

"And then I would send every single one of my customers my own t-shirt with a hat, and just have them being my walking billboards all over the place. They would be top quality — the things they actually would want to wear, that they would feel are absolute kick-ass things to have. So I would just deploy as much as possible at the end of my customers and where they're already spending eyes and eyeballs at, to have my brand all around it."

"然后给每一个用户都寄一件自己家的 T-shirt 加帽子，让他们到处帮我做'行走的广告牌'。质量必须顶——是他们真的愿意穿出门、觉得穿上这件 T-shirt 倍儿酷的东西。我就是要把品牌铺到用户身上、铺到他们眼球本来就在的地方。"

"Yes — you can be a lot more creative with billboards. Everybody constantly thinks San Francisco 101: 'where am I going to be in the AI slop of billboards on that freeway?' But you can do it so much smarter — with movie theaters, with taxis, with subway systems, with buses. Go back to the bus stops, go back to the basics — you can do some real cool shit there."

"对——billboard 这事完全可以更聪明。所有人脑子里只有 SF 101 公路：'我要怎么在 101 那一长串 AI 烂广告里挤出来？'其实你可以走得聪明得多——电影院、出租车、地铁、公交。回到公交站、回到最朴素的形态——那里能玩出真他妈酷的东西。"

"It needs to be funny and have character. It cannot just have your tone-deaf AI marketing slogan — 'collaborative platform on cloud with AI for transformation' — those words cannot be used. Yes, you will not appeal to everybody, and it doesn't matter — just appeal to people that will have a smile, a chuckle, that will have a memory from it, that will want to talk about it."

"必须好笑、必须有性格。不能只是又一句完全感觉不到温度的 AI 营销废话——'基于云的 AI 协作平台帮你完成数字化转型'——这种词从今天开始全部禁用。对，你不会讨好所有人，没关系——你只要让看到的人会心一笑、会有一个记忆点、会想跟别人聊起这件事——就够了。"

"We are in the era where we need to start taking more risks in marketing. People just need to get out of their boxed minds of how we've been trained for the last 20 years on what good creative and good copy looks like. We live in a different world — and if you want to capture people's attention, you have to think outside of the box."

"现在这个时代，做 marketing 必须更敢冒险。大家得从过去二十年训练出来的那套'什么叫好创意、什么叫好文案'里走出来。我们已经在另一个世界了——你想抢到注意力，就得跳出那个框。"

"On video — AI-generated video is the future. I was just playing with a video platform: I uploaded a still photo and it created a full thing of me moving my hands, doing the full ad with back-and-forth transitions and an app screen. There will still be a place for manual video creation — those will always be like artisan videos, handcrafted. But for advertising needs, AI is where videos and any creatives are going to be at."

"视频这一块——AI 生成视频就是未来。我前两天玩了一个平台：传一张静态照片进去，它就给我生成了一段完整广告——里面我在动手、有镜头切换、有 app 截屏，全套都齐了。手工视频还是会有一席之地——它们会变成像手工艺品那种 artisan video。但要做广告——AI 就是视频和所有 creative 的归宿。"

"On creator economy — every creator has their audience. You need to find creators that align with your ideal customer profile audience the most. You cannot look at it as one-and-done — 'I'm doing one ad placement and I need to see performance.' It's somewhere between performance and most definitely brand awareness. Consistency matters — you have to be in it for the long haul. Coverage matters — you cannot just be one newsletter, you have to go across multiples."

"creator economy——每个 creator 都有他自己的 audience。你要做的是找出和你 ICP 对齐度最高的那一批。你不能用'one and done'的心态做——'我投一次就要看 performance'，那是错的。它介于 performance 和 brand awareness 之间，但更偏 brand。一致性很重要——必须长期投。覆盖面也很重要——别只投一份 newsletter，要铺到一批上。"

"Some of those slots are super cheap too — people are not educated how much to charge. You can get thousands of impressions for next to nothing. I don't know why more people don't do that. Most of the time they think 'oh, what's going to be my click-through rate through my ad?' But it's not an SEM, not an AdWords ad. People underestimate the association of their brand with that creator and their ability to target a very specific audience."

"而且这些位子有的便宜得离谱——很多 creator 自己都不懂应该收多少钱。几千次曝光基本等于不要钱。我也不懂为啥更多人不抓这块。多数人脑子里还在算'我这个广告 click-through rate 是多少'——但这玩意儿不是 SEM、不是 AdWords。大家严重低估了'你的品牌挂在那个 creator 名字旁边'这种联想价值，以及对方那批高度精准的受众。"

"I truly believe in — using your product to give it away for free for people to try, as the biggest portion of your marketing budget, has to always be the case. If you look at your overall marketing spend, your free giveaways — whether part of your premium, discount codes, whatnot — has to be bigger than your paid marketing spend. Because if you're not using your product to acquire customers in some sort of offers way, you're just giving too much money away to Google's, Meta's of the world, and not putting enough pressure on your product to wow people."

"我真心相信一件事——用自家产品本身免费送给用户试用，应该永远占你 marketing 预算最大的一块。看一眼你的 marketing 总盘子——你的免费赠送（不管是 premium 加量、是 discount code、还是别的形式）必须大于你 paid marketing 的花费。因为如果你不是用产品本身去拉新，那你就是在把钱拱手送给 Google、Meta 这帮平台——同时也是在让自家产品偷懒，没逼它做到惊艳。"

"Ask me after Women's Day — we'll see how much it actually leads to conversion. Lovable has had a couple of free weekends before. The first free weekend was quite good from acquisition perspective — early 2025, the brand was only a couple months old. The second free weekend was summer last year — about 7 months in, after we'd just about hit $100M in ARR. That one was incredible for re-engagement and resurrection of existing users, deepening their use cases. So it was more of a retention play than acquisition play, interestingly enough."

"等 Women's Day 之后再问我——具体能转化多少要看结果。Lovable 之前做过几次 free weekend。第一次是 2025 年初——品牌才几个月——拉新效果非常好。第二次是去年夏天，做了大概 7 个月、刚撞到 $100M ARR 那阵子。那一次对沉默用户复活、用户加深使用场景特别猛——所以变成了 retention play 而不是 acquisition play，挺有意思的。"

"This time for Women's Day — maybe the algorithm is boxing me out, but all I see is people talking about Lovable Free Day. The social impact of just people being so excited about it — product going to be completely free for a day — to me that is something you cannot pay for. A marketing campaign bigger than that would cost us millions of dollars to execute on, and our users are doing all of the marketing for us, grabbing everybody around them to bring into Lovable."

"这次 Women's Day——可能算法在偏心我——我刷到的几乎全是大家在聊 Lovable Free Day。这种'用户自己很兴奋——产品要免费一整天'带来的 social 冲击——这种东西是花钱买不来的。一场比这影响力大的 marketing campaign 要花我们几百万美金；现在用户在替我们做所有 marketing，把身边的人一波一波拉进 Lovable。"

"The way product launches are done at Lovable is very different than any other company I've seen. Most of the time your product launch is maybe once a month if you're lucky — most likely once every three months. In the larger company it's semi-annual or annual. It's very slow cadences, and you try to create big moments around it, because that is your time to make buzz."

"Lovable 做 launch 的方式跟我见过的所有公司都不一样。大多数公司一个月最多发一次——运气好；多数其实是季度一次。大公司更慢——半年甚至一年。节奏非常慢，每次都得使劲造大动静——因为这是你为数不多能造 buzz 的窗口。"

"At Lovable, we are committed to launching every day. There's ongoing buzz that's happening. It's almost like a chaotic Lovable evolving every single day — every single day it's getting better, something is improving. That's very important for us to stay relevant in the category. And then on top of it — every one to two months we make big tier-one launches, which bundle a bunch of functionality with a story behind it, where there's a step function change."

"Lovable 的承诺是——每天都 launch。所以一直处在持续噪音里。看起来就是一个混乱的、天天在进化的 Lovable——每一天都在变好，每一天都有东西在迭代。这一点对我们在品类里保持存在感至关重要。在这之上——每 1-2 个月我们做一次大的 tier-one launch，把一批功能打包，背后有一个完整的故事，是一次明显的 step function 跃迁。"

"It's a really interesting strategy of constant noise in the market and then big spikes in what we're actually launching. That constant noise is part of our retention strategy — it drives a lot of resurrection too, because people feel like it's a living, breathing thing constantly growing and evolving. They always want to come back and try it again, as opposed to us getting into the forgettable zone for a month, three months, and seeing competitors launch."

"这个组合特别有意思——持续噪音 + 阶段性大尖峰。那个持续噪音其实就是我们 retention 战略的一部分——它也带来大量的'复活'，因为用户会觉得这是个活的、还在长大的东西，会想回来再试一次。而不是让我们在他脑海里掉进遗忘区一个月、三个月——然后转头看到对手在 launch。"

"We're not vocal about every single thing — our marketing team does not get involved in every single day's launches. Maybe I should call them releases. Our engineering releases multiple things every single day that improve customer experience. Not just bugs — actual changes in product based on frustrations, lack of capacity, lack of capability."

"我们其实不是每件小事都吼——marketing 团队不会介入每天的 launch。也许更准确叫 release。我们工程团队每天都会上线好几个改善体验的东西——不只是 bug，是真真切切针对用户痛点、能力空缺、容量限制做的产品改动。"

"Then we encourage them to go post it on social. We have a channel called beeswarming at Lovable — they post their post and we all go beeswarming on that post to try to get it more amplification. We try to make a marketer out of every single engineer. So it's an employee-led marketing for these releases. Then marketing comes in and puts all of its firepower behind tier-one or partner launches that are really meant to tell the story to the customer."

"我们会鼓励工程师把自己做的事发到 social 上。Lovable 有一个叫 beeswarming（蜜蜂群拥） 的频道——他们把自己的帖子链接丢进来，全员涌过去转评赞，把它顶起来。我们想把每个工程师都顺便培养成 marketer。所以这些 release 走的是员工驱动的 marketing。marketing 团队的火力则集中在 tier-one launch 或者合作伙伴联动 launch 上——那是给用户讲故事的时刻。"

"I can't say that at Lovable we're doing it right either — we do it on a one-off basis. It took us a while even to get the swag to all of our own employees, because we wanted it top quality. We didn't want to outsource it and get another shitty t-shirt that falls apart after the first wash."

"我也没法说 Lovable 把这事做对了——我们是一波一波做。就连给自家员工配齐 swag 都花了好长时间，因为我们想要顶级品质。我们不愿意随便外包，然后整出一堆洗一次就散架的烂 T-shirt。"

"It's actually a pretty big friction in the market right now — how to do this at scale. It's quite expensive to do it right, and it's really hard to find partners that can scale the operations. I just know that if your customer wears your t-shirt, that is the best thing you can possibly do."

"市面上其实没人很顺手地解决这个问题——大规模做高质量 swag 这件事卡得死。一是成本高得吓人，二是很难找到能撑住规模化运营的合作方。但我知道一件事——如果你的客户主动把你家的 T-shirt 穿出门，那就是你能做到的最棒的事。"

"For example — when we did the She Built hackathon the first two times, we sent t-shirts to every single participant. People posted about it on LinkedIn: 'oh my gosh, I got a Lovable t-shirt, I'll wear it all the time.' There's an element early on where it's a hot brand and people want to be affiliated with it. You need to lean into that. There's a time and place for that strategy — and it's mostly when you're hot and growing really fast and people want to feel that affiliation with your brand."

"举个例子——我们做 She Built 黑客松前两届的时候，给每一个参赛者寄了 T-shirt。大家在 LinkedIn 发帖：'天啊我居然拿到了一件 Lovable 的 T-shirt，我以后天天穿。'品牌正在变热的早期阶段，大家想跟你产生关联——你必须把这个势能用起来。这套打法是有窗口期的——窗口就是你在热、你在快速增长、大家想被'盖上你的章'的那一段时间。"

"That every month at Lovable feels like a year in a normal company in terms of how much change it goes through, and how much my role evolves, and how many priority shifts we have in a given month."

"——Lovable 这边的一个月，相当于普通公司的一年。每个月的变化量、我自己角色的进化幅度、我们在一个月里换了多少次 priority——都跟普通公司一年的体量差不多。"

"And one more thing I would really tell myself: I'd be in awe at what I'd be doing six months from starting the job — completely different from anything I've done in the last 20 years of my career."

"还有一句一定要跟自己讲：入职后第六个月，看一眼自己在干的事，你会被自己惊到——它跟你过去 20 年的职业生涯做的所有事情都不一样。"

"It's about agency. It's about people's autonomy. It's about people's drive and willingness to explore how this world is changing with AI. I do still think Sarahs matter — I consider myself a Sarah. I've been there for 20 years, deeply written in patterns and frameworks of how things used to be done, because that's been my entire professional career. I do have a lot of patterns that will help a company not trip up over obvious things."

"重点是 agency，是 autonomy（自主性），是人的内驱力——还有他对 AI 正在如何改变这个世界的好奇和探索欲。我还是觉得 Sarah 这种人有用——我自己就是一个 Sarah。我做了 20 年，对各种 pattern、各种 framework、各种'以前是怎么干的'刻得很深，因为那就是我整个职业生涯。我手里有一堆模式，能帮公司不在明显的低级错误上摔跟头。"

"But I also need to be paired with people that are not burdened with those decades of knowledge — that can open my horizons, teach me the new ways. Every single thing I do, I still rely on 'how did I do it before? Let me do it now.' I'm constantly pressed by everybody at Lovable — 'no, this is the way to do it.' At first my mind breaks: 'I've never done this before, this is not how you do it.' I have to constantly try their way."

"但我必须跟另一种人搭档——不被这几十年知识负担压住的人——他们能给我开天花板、教我新方法。我做每件事还是靠'我以前怎么干的——那就照着干呗'的路径。结果在 Lovable 整天被同事按着头说'不是这样、是这样'。一开始我脑子是炸的——'我从没这么干过、这不是正确做法'——但我得逼自己反复试他们那套。"

"I think both of us together — almost like 'old guard' of Sarahs and 'new guard' of employees that don't have that context, don't have that baggage — is what creates a perfect harmony that pushes the company forward. You can prevent stupid mistakes from happening with Sarah, but you can push into AI nativeness with the new guard that's not burdened by those patterns and history."

"两种人合在一起才有戏——一边是 Sarah 这帮老兵，一边是没有上下文、没有包袱的新人——这才是推得动公司的那种'完美和声'。Sarah 防止低级错误，新兵把你顶进真正的 AI native——他们不被那些 pattern 和 history 拖住。"

"Step number one — try to have premortems about what would happen if your numbers start to go down. So you have an action plan at the earliest time of noticing those numbers — you're not reacting to it, you already have a 'go to war' plan when something goes wrong. This should be happening before any big release, any big launch, before end of the year."

"第一步——做 premortem（事前死亡推演）：先把'万一数据掉下来会发生什么'想清楚。这样你在数据刚露苗头的时候就已经有动作了——不是被动反应，而是早就有了一份'我们要打仗了'的预案。这件事应该在每次大 release、大 launch、年终之前都做一次。"

"Number two — knowing the key predictive indicators that will lead you into the decline. Not just looking at revenue, because the moment revenue starts declining, it's already too fucking late. You need to know beforehand: what will warn me of that decline, so I have at least a couple of months — maybe six months — to react before actual revenue impact gets hit."

"第二步——把那些会先于下滑出现的预警指标找出来。别盯着 revenue 看——等 revenue 开始掉，已经他妈晚了。你得提前知道：什么信号会先告诉我下滑要来了？这样至少给自己留几个月、最好六个月，在真正打到 revenue 之前就开始应对。"

"Number three — accept that some people don't do good with negativity. They are not going to be the ones that stand up and try to reverse it. Look at your culture: there will be people passionate about what they do and the product, who are up for the challenge — and people who are not. I'm not going to change those who are not. So I need to invest in people that will lead the change."

"第三步——承认有些人就是扛不住负面状态。他们不会是站出来想办法把局势翻回来的人。看一下你的文化——有些人发自内心喜欢这件事、喜欢产品、愿意接挑战；有些人不是。我没法改造那些不是的人。我得把资源押在那些会带头扭转的人身上。"

"I think you have to keep an eye on competitors. The question is what do you define as worry? You have to watch your competitors very carefully and know what they're doing, because you need to know what you're playing against. But do you obsess about your competitors and let them dictate your roadmap and your growth and marketing activities? I don't think so."

"对手必须看。问题是'看'到什么程度叫'担心'。你得仔细观察对手、知道他们在做什么——因为得知道这场仗你跟谁在打。但你要不要痴迷地盯着他们、让他们决定你的 roadmap、growth、marketing？我觉得不要。"

"You have to look at it through the lens of: what works for them may not work for us. Do we have an alternative way to do it and capture the market? When functionality was very expensive to produce, we could afford to obsess about competitors a little bit more. With the functionality and the speed of development happening so much faster now — it almost paves the way for you to just have a very opinionated point of view of where you need to go, pull all efforts behind that hypothesis, and pray and hope that it plays out. You cannot just copy your competitors and win anymore — it's going to be a sum game."

"你看对手的角度应该是：'对他们 work 的东西在我们这儿不一定 work——我们有没有另一条更好的路径去抢市场？'以前功能很贵的时候，盯着对手抄是负担得起的。今天功能便宜、迭代飞快——这反而把你逼到一条新路上：要敢把一个'非常 opinionated 的判断'摆出来，把所有资源压上去，然后祈祷它跑通。光抄对手作业是赢不了的——这变成零和的死局。"

"There's always going to be tools for vertical use cases for specific specialties — for now. However, can you design beautiful prototypes in Lovable without Figma? Yes. And AI is only going to get better at design. So I still very much see time and place for Figma for specific workflows. There's no question about that."

"在某些垂直场景、某些专精领域里，永远会有专用工具——至少眼下是这样。但是——能不能不用 Figma，光用 Lovable 就做出好看的原型？能。而且 AI 在设计上的能力只会越来越强。所以我还是觉得 Figma 在某些 workflow 里有它的位置——这一点没问题。"

"My bigger worry for Figma is — what will happen a year from now when AI is going to be so good it'll be able to do all of the little changes — even outside of software design, like CAD files, 3D designs? What if it'll be able to do all of that? Why would you need design software at that point, where it can shortcut all of those stages for you?"

"我对 Figma 更大的担忧是——一年之后 AI 好到可以处理所有的细节修改怎么办？甚至跨出软件设计——CAD 文件、3D 模型，它要是都能干呢？到那个时候你为什么还需要专门的设计软件？AI 已经把所有那些中间环节都跳过去了。"

"Most of the non-technical users don't start with Figma. There are designers that start in Figma — and Figma Make makes a lot of sense for them. But product managers, analysts, marketers, sales, even engineers, ops people, HR people — all of those people, they never live in Figma. They start with Lovable, because that's an easier way and we build specifically for their persona."

"绝大多数非技术用户根本不从 Figma 开始。设计师会从 Figma 开始——Figma Make 对他们也很合适。但 PM、分析师、marketer、sales、甚至工程师、ops、HR 这些人——他们从来不待在 Figma 里。他们从 Lovable 开始，因为它更简单，而且我们就是按这些角色的 persona 在做。"

"I always worry about the big boys and girls in the world. So OpenAI's, Anthropic, Google's, Apples — more so than competitors that spring up from the bottom or from sideways. The reason I worry about them more — and I think everybody should be worried about them more — they just have the distribution hold in the market that is unparalleled."

"我担心的永远是头部巨头。OpenAI、Anthropic、Google、Apple——这种比从下面或侧面冒出来的对手更让我紧张。原因——我觉得所有人都该更紧张这一点——他们手里握着的市场分发渠道是无可匹敌的。"

"In the world where product functionality becomes more commoditized, distribution and growth becomes the reason to win. So whoever has the best distribution that is earned, that is competitively defensible, that is sustainable, that is predictable — is going to be the winner in the market. So I worry about the companies that have that figured out."

"在功能越来越商品化的世界里，分发和增长成了赢的理由。谁拥有最强、自己赚到的、有壁垒、可持续、可预期的分发——谁就赢。我担心的是那些已经把分发跑通的公司。"

"Big-picture answer — we live in the AI bubble as tech workers. We're taking advantage of it, pushing each other forward, challenging each other. But there's a whole world out there that hasn't even tried AI. How far behind they're going to be left if they don't get on the train — it creates such a huge disparity between people. It will create a really big set of concentrated winners and a very large mass of losers, so to speak, behind this technology change."

"先给一个大画面的答案——作为科技从业者，我们活在 AI 的小泡泡里。我们享受它、互相推动、互相挑战。但泡泡外面还有一整个世界——他们连 AI 都还没试过。如果他们不上车，会被甩开多远？这会在人和人之间造出巨大的鸿沟。这场技术变化会留下两边——一小撮高度集中的赢家，和一大片输家。"

"What worries me the most is that we're not going to bring everybody along with us. Because all of the companies, all of the startups, all of the AI technology is so heavily focused on the pioneer — and not the average person who would benefit the most out of it. I just worry what that's going to do to our society as a whole."

"最让我担心的，是我们没把所有人带上车。因为所有公司、所有 startup、所有 AI 技术都把火力对准了 pioneer——而不是真正能从中受益最大的那个普通人。我担心这件事最后会对整个社会造成什么。"

"Be AI-first in everything. Make AI do so much work for them that otherwise they would have expected to learn somewhere else. And start a side hustle right now. The world is prime for everybody to have a meaningful side hustle they can monetize, and the window of opportunity is pretty short. If you have a founder profile on you, you're going to be more likely to be hired by a company too."

"凡事都把 AI 当成第一选择。让 AI 替你干掉大量过去要去别的地方学才能学会的东西。现在就开始一个 side hustle。这是个所有人都能有一个能挣钱的 side hustle 的好窗口——而且窗口期不长。退一万步——身上有 founder profile 这件事本身，会让你被公司录用的概率更高。"

"There's so much money in creator economy and so much money in just being a solopreneur right now. I truly believe there's going to be a billion-dollar company running solo by somebody. I would challenge my kids to be that solopreneur with a billion-dollar company."

"现在 creator economy 里钱多到吓人，光做 solopreneur 也能赚到吓人。我真心相信，未来会有一家 billion-dollar 的公司是一个人撑起来的。我会怂恿我的孩子去当那个独自跑出 billion-dollar 公司的 solopreneur。"

"Granola has done a wonderful job. From a product perspective, I see Whisper Flow also spreading like fire across many people. It's mostly people talking about it so much — customers being the biggest marketing agents. I think it's genius."

"Granola 做得好极了。产品维度上，Whisper Flow 也在像野火一样在人群里扩散。基本就是用户自己在替他们传——客户成了最大的 marketing 代理人。我觉得这一招太聪明了。"

"Apple still has Siri and Siri is dumb as a doornob. My kids try to talk to Siri sometimes and I'm like, 'oh my god, how is this still live and functioning, how is this not been deprecated by now?'"

"Apple 那边还在养着 Siri——蠢得跟门把手一样。我家孩子偶尔跟 Siri 说话，我心想：'天啊，这玩意儿怎么还在线、怎么还能用——怎么还没被砍掉？'"

"Meta. Just very little incrementality. A bunch of pass-through views that don't materialize into anything. I still do influencers through social platforms — but not just full-on Meta ads. I haven't seen them work in a little while."

"Meta。基本没有 incremental 价值。就是一堆走过场的曝光，最后什么都落不下来。social 平台上的 influencer 我还会做——但纯粹的 Meta 广告——已经很久没看到它出效果了。"

"Get ready to drop 80% of what you know and lean into the new way of working and growing a company."

"准备好把你已经会的 80% 扔掉，然后扎进做事和做增长的新方式里。"

"It's also super exciting. I've been bored in the space for the last 5 years thinking everything looks and feels the same. And now I actually see a rapid change in how things are being done. I think it's the most exciting thing in the world."

"但同时也无比 exciting。过去 5 年我对这块挺无聊的——什么都长一个样。现在终于看到做事的方式正在快速变化——我觉得这是世界上最让人兴奋的一件事。"

"What I'm most excited for in the next 5 to 10 years — AI advancing our medical research quite a bit faster, fixing some of the human imperfections we've always dealt with and never had cures for. Because we're so incentivized on medicine and not actually prevention or cure of diseases — medicine makes more money than the actual cure for our economy. I'm really hoping AI can change and just eradicate a bunch of diseases and disformities and issues with human bodies, to make our life more comfortable."

"未来 5 到 10 年我最期待的——AI 让医疗研究的速度提一大截，把那些一直没解决、根本没治愈方案的人体小毛病一个一个修掉。因为整个体系一直把激励压在'药'上、而不是'预防'或'治愈'上——卖药比卖治愈赚得多。我真心希望 AI 能改写这件事，把一堆疾病、畸形、身体问题都直接消掉，让我们的生活舒服一点。"