Name: 支持了 40 家獨角獸企業的投資者的建議 l Elad Gil (Advice from investor who backed 40 Unicorns l Elad Gil)
Uploaded: 2025-02-02T00:33:12.000Z
Duration: 29 min 9 s

分詞構句

I've spent the last 20 years in Silicon Valley where I've worked as a operator running different companies, starting companies, and as an investor.

在過去的 20 年裡，我一直在硅谷工作，擔任過不同公司的運營者、創業者和投資者。

And I first ran a company that had about 120 people, it grew to 150, and then it shrank to 13 people in five rounds of layoffs.

我最初經營的公司大約有 120 人，後來發展到 150 人，又經過五輪裁員縮減到 13 人。

It was a telecom equipment company that was backed by Sequoia and Matrix.

這是一家電信設備公司，得到了紅杉和經緯的支持。

After that, I ended up joining Google and then left to start my first company, which is a data infrastructure company, which Twitter bought back in 2009.

之後，我加入了谷歌，然後離開谷歌創辦了我的第一家公司，這是一家數據基礎設施公司，Twitter 在 2009 年收購了這家公司。

At the time that Twitter bought my company, Twitter was about 90 people, and I helped scale it to 1,500 people over two and a half years.

在 Twitter 收購我的公司時，Twitter 大約只有 90 人，在我的幫助下，Twitter 在兩年半的時間裡發展到了 1500 人。

I started off running different product areas like Search, which again was very AI-centric, with Geo, and then moved over to effectively become a company fixer.

我一開始負責不同的產品領域，比如搜索，這也是非常以人工智能為中心的領域，還有 Geo，然後轉而成為公司的固定人員。

As an investor, I've backed about 40 companies worth a billion dollars or more each, 30-something at the seed or Series A.

作為一名投資者，我已經支持了約 40 家公司，每家公司的價值都在 10 億美元或以上，其中有 30 多家是種子公司或 A 輪公司。

So that's things like Airbnb, Airtable, Coinbase, Figma, Besto, Instacart, Stripe, Square, Dior, Rippling, Notion, and others.

這些公司包括 Airbnb、Airtable、Coinbase、Figma、Besto、Instacart、Stripe、Square、Dior、Rippling、Notion 等。

And then I also started investing in generative AI quite early, in part because I'd been doing AI and machine learning for so long.

我很早就開始投資生成式人工智能，部分原因是我從事人工智能和機器學習的時間太長了。

And so I was an early investor in companies like Perplexity, Hardy, Character, Mistral, Pica, and others.

是以，我是 Perplexity、Hardy、Character、Mistral、Pica 等公司的早期投資者。

我在麻省理工學院獲得了博士學位。

Before that, I'd studied mathematics and biology.

在此之前，我學過數學和生物學。

I moved out to Silicon Valley because I thought it was the best way to potentially have a about doing things that are useful.

我搬到硅谷，是因為我認為這是最好的方式，讓我有可能做一些有用的事情。

And so the reason I got a PhD, for example, was I thought initially that I'd be an academic and I'd really be focused on human disease and computational understanding of disease and other things like that.

是以，舉例來說，我獲得博士學位的原因是，我最初以為我會成為一名學者，真正專注於人類疾病和對疾病的計算理解，以及其他類似的東西。

I couldn't realize or felt that any one individual in the field of biology can have that big of an impact.

我無法意識到或感受到生物學領域的任何一個人都能產生如此大的影響。

I'd already done a background in mathematics for undergrad and had already done some CS-related things.

我在大學階段已經學習了數學，並做過一些與計算機科學有關的事情。

And so I moved out to Silicon Valley to work on companies with the hope that I could do something useful through the context of technology and company formation.

於是，我來到硅谷為公司工作，希望能通過技術和公司組建做些有用的事情。

Google in 2004 was growing extremely fast.

So when I joined, there was about 1500 or so people.

所以我加入時，大約有 1500 人左右。

It grew to 15,000 or so over three years, three and a half years.

在三年或三年半的時間裡，它增加到了 15 000 人左右。

And so the company was doubling every, I don't know, six to 12 months.

是以，公司每隔 6 到 12 個月就會翻一番。

And so they added 13,000 people in three years, which is amazing.

是以，他們在三年內增加了 1.3 萬人，這是令人驚歎的。

And I think in a good way, but also it's quite chaotic.

我認為這是好事，但也很混亂。

Every six months or so, there'd be a big reorg where they change the organizational structure because it was growing so fast that if you had 1500 and then 3000 and then 6000 and then 12,000 people, it was a different organization every year.

每隔六個月左右，公司就會進行一次大的重組，改變組織結構，因為公司發展太快了，如果你有 1500 人，然後是 3000 人，然後是 6000 人，然後是 12000 人，每年的組織結構都不一樣。

And so that needed a different org structure.

是以，需要一個不同的組織結構。

And so suddenly the person that was working for you became your boss's boss and they'd switch divisions and things would change so rapidly.

於是，為你工作的人突然成了你上司的上司，他們交換了部門，事情變化得如此之快。

And when I joined, Larry Page had just gotten rid of all the middle managers.

我加入的時候，拉里-佩奇剛剛把所有的中層管理人員都辭退了。

And so every director of engineering had somewhere between 50 and 100 people working for them, which meant that there was a big gray market for talent.

是以，每個工程總監都有 50 到 100 名員工為其工作，這意味著存在著一個巨大的人才灰色市場。

A lot of managers didn't know what their employees were doing because they had too many employees working for them directly.

很多經理不知道員工在做什麼，因為他們有太多的員工直接為他們工作。

是以，他們無法進行足夠的一對一訓練。

If you have a hundred people working for you, you can't see them that often individually.

如果有上百人為你工作，你不可能經常單獨見他們。

And so a lot of people lost track of who was working for them, which meant there was an enormous gray market for talent.

是以，很多人都不知道誰在為他們工作，這意味著有一個巨大的人才灰色市場。

And so one of the ways I helped start up a lot of the mobile efforts is I convinced people to work on mobile when their managers didn't know about it.

是以，我幫助啟動許多移動工作的方法之一，就是在人們的經理還不瞭解移動工作時，說服他們從事移動工作。

And so that was how a lot of the early mobile team got running.

是以，很多早期的移動團隊就是這樣開始運作的。

I think there's sort of personal lessons and there's professional lessons and maybe they're the same thing.

我認為，有個人的教訓，也有專業的教訓，也許它們是一回事。

I think one big lesson was that networks in Silicon Valley really matter and small groups of people who are really at different companies go on to achieve amazing things together.

我認為一個重要的教訓是，硅谷的人際網絡真的很重要，真正在不同公司工作的一小群人在一起會取得驚人的成就。

And so the famous example of that may be PayPal.

Peter Thiel started Palantir and Founders Fund and all these things.

彼得-蒂爾創辦了 Palantir 和 Founders Fund 等公司。

Keith Rupp always started multiple companies as well as became a prominent investor.

基思-魯普總是創辦多家公司，併成為著名的投資者。

Elon Musk, of course, went and did so many things between Tesla and SpaceX and et cetera.

當然，埃隆-馬斯克在特斯拉和 SpaceX 等公司之間做了很多事情。

There's a small group of people that were at the core of PayPal that did all these things.

PayPal的核心團隊中有一小群人做了所有這些事情。

Similarly, the early Google network both went off to start a lot of different companies, Pinterest and Instagram and a variety of other things like that, but they also ended up as very prominent operators in Silicon Valley.

同樣，早期的谷歌網絡都去創辦了很多不同的公司，如 Pinterest、Instagram 和其他類似的公司，但他們最終也成為了硅谷非常傑出的經營者。

So a lot of the COOs in Silicon Valley for the next generation of companies came out of Google.

是以，硅谷新一代公司的許多首席運營官都來自谷歌。

That's Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, Dennis Woodside, the CEO of Dropbox, the COOs of Stripe and Gusto and all sorts of companies came out of Google.

這就是 Facebook 首席執行官雪莉-桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg）、Dropbox 首席執行官丹尼斯-伍德賽德（Dennis Woodside）、Stripe 和 Gusto 的首席運營官以及從谷歌走出來的各種公司。

And so you similarly see this sort of dispersion of talent, but everybody knew each other.

是以，你同樣可以看到這種人才分散的現象，但每個人都互相認識。

And so it created a lot of collaboration across companies because of that.

正因為如此，公司之間產生了很多合作。

And so number one is just these small pockets of people who work together repeatedly really matter.

是以，第一條就是這些小範圍的人一起努力，反覆合作，這才是真正重要的。

I think the second takeaway was really the power of ambition.

我認為第二個啟示是野心的力量。

The main reason Larry Page or Sergey Brin would get upset with you or Eric Schmidt, they kind of ran the company together, would get upset with you is either number one, you weren't thinking big enough.

拉里-佩奇（Larry Page）或謝爾蓋-布林（Sergey Brin）或埃裡克-施密特（Eric Schmidt）會對你不滿的主要原因是：第一，你想得不夠遠大。

You'd go into a product review and you'd say, I have this idea for this hundred million dollar market.

你在做產品評論時會說，我對這個價值一億美元的市場有一個想法。

And they'd say, why is it in a $10 billion market?

他們會說，為什麼是在一個 100 億美元的市場？

Like literally they would say that, you know, they'd always push you on thinking bigger.

就像字面上的意思一樣，他們會說，你知道，他們總是鼓勵你想得更遠。

Or why are you happy with a million people using it?

或者說，為什麼你對一百萬人使用它感到高興？

Why isn't it a hundred million people using it?

And then number two is they pushed very hard on the innovation and what makes the thing that you're working on very special or different.

其次，他們非常注重創新，以及是什麼讓你所從事的工作非常特別或與眾不同。

It really forced some very clear product thinking and some very big thinking and ambitious thinking.

這確實迫使我們進行一些非常清晰的產品思考，以及一些非常宏大和雄心勃勃的思考。

And then the third is when you're an employee at a hyper-growth startup or a company, things will generally work out and you shouldn't worry too much about yourself.

第三，當你是一家高速成長的初創企業或公司的員工時，一般情況下事情都會迎刃而解，你不應該太擔心自己。

And if your boss suddenly, if your coworker suddenly becomes your boss's boss, then all these things shift.

如果你的老闆突然變成了你的同事，如果你的同事突然變成了你老闆的老闆，那麼所有這些事情都會發生變化。

A lot of people start to worry about themselves.

What about my career and what will happen to me?

That the company's growing and changing so rapidly that there's lots of opportunity.

公司的發展和變化如此之快，機會很多。

And something that was sort of my third takeaway.

And so going into Google, I thought someday I'll start a company.

所以在進入谷歌之前，我就想有一天我會開一家公司。

And so you couldn't just apply and show up and get money and start working on things.

是以，你不能只是提出申請，然後拿著錢就開始工作。

And there weren't a lot of online resources.

And so it was really hard to actually find information about how to start a company.

是以，要找到如何創辦公司的資訊真的很難。

And that there weren't very many angel funds, operators with side funds, operators investing.

天使基金、擁有副基金的經營者、投資經營者並不多。

The venture ecosystem was very constrained.

And so there was a small number of firms that you could raise money from.

是以，你只能從少數幾家公司籌集資金。

And then there were some people pioneering, you know, angel funds or what were then called super angels.

還有一些人開創了天使基金或當時所謂的超級天使。

So that was Naval Robicont and Mike Maples and Michael Deering and a few other folks.

這就是海軍羅比康特、邁克-梅普爾斯、邁克爾-迪林和其他一些人。

But the reality was there just wasn't that much money either.

但現實情況是，也沒有那麼多錢。

It was hard to get money and it was hard to get going.

I think today it's actually dramatically easier to start a company and there's a lot more information about how to do it.

我認為，如今創辦一家公司實際上要容易得多，關於如何創辦公司的資訊也多得多。

So I went to Google in part because I thought it'd be a great place to transition, meet some people and maybe start something with them.

所以我去了谷歌，部分原因是我認為這是一個過渡的好地方，可以認識一些人，也許還能和他們一起做些什麼。

We started off with a site focused on location related information.

我們最初建立的網站主要提供與地點相關的資訊。

And then that morphed into an API focused on location information.

後來，它演變成了一個以位置資訊為重點的應用程序接口。

And we ended up eventually building one of the really early developer centric products.

我們最終打造了一款真正以開發者為中心的早期產品。

So at the time there wasn't a lot happening in terms of developer first products or product like growth or all these things that are very common now.

是以，在開發者首創產品、產品增長或所有這些現在非常普遍的事情方面，當時還沒有發生很多事情。

There are very few API centric products like Stripe or things like that.

像 Stripe 這樣以應用程序接口為中心的產品很少。

The only one I think that really existed and was taking off when we started was Twilio.

我認為，在我們開始創業時，唯一真正存在並正在起飛的是 Twilio。

And so building like a product as an API was kind of a radical concept in those days.

是以，將產品作為應用程序接口來構建，在當時是一種激進的概念。

And so we were one of the really early people building that.

是以，我們是較早建立該系統的公司之一。

And basically we for people to sort of interact with geodata in really rich ways, generate their own custom index and search over it, annotate location related data sets and things like that.

基本上，我們可以讓人們以非常豐富的方式與地理數據進行交互，生成自己的自定義索引並對其進行搜索，註釋與位置相關的數據集等。

So initially when we started the company, it was a team of ex-Google people, seven or eight employees.

是以，公司成立之初，我們的團隊只有七八名前谷歌員工。

We had all of them had worked at Google except for one person or something, or maybe two people.

我們所有的人都曾在谷歌工作過，除了一個人或其他什麼人，或許是兩個人。

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支持了 40 家獨角獸企業的投資者的建議 l Elad Gil (Advice from investor who backed 40 Unicorns l Elad Gil)

sort

scale

negative

convince