克里斯·迪克森谈如何构建网络、运动及AI原生产品

无论你是投资者还是创业者，最重要的是先去寻找这些力量，这些指数级的力量。你可以做各种战术层面的产品工作，其他一切，但这些力量会压倒你，无论好坏。

Whether you're an investor or entrepreneur, the most important thing to start with is to look for these forces, to look for these exponential forces. You can do all sorts of tactical product things, everything else, but these forces are gonna overwhelm you, for for better or worse. How

你认为作为创始人在构建时，需要有多强的目的性？你正在构建一个工具。你是否必须优先考虑网络，还是网络可以自然涌现？因为在 AI 领域到目前为止，我们看到了很多工具，却没有看到很多网络。你的直觉是什么？

intentional do you think you have to be as a founder about building like, you're building a tool. Do you have to be sort of thinking about the network a priority, or can the network sort of emerge? Because in AI so far, we've seen a lot of tools and not a lot of networks. What's your instinct?

为什么一些消费产品会突然爆发成重塑互联网的网络，而另一些却逐渐消失？在今天的播客中，a16z 的普通合伙人 Anish Acharya 和 Chris Dixon 将探讨这个问题。Anish 投资于 AI 原生消费产品和下一波消费科技。Chris 以他在 Web3 和网络经济方面的工作而闻名，他也领导了 a16z 一些最大的消费投资。他们回顾了消费网络的历史与力量、塑造其增长的要素，以及这一切对 AI 时代创业者意味着什么。让我们开始吧。

Do some consumer products suddenly explode into networks that reshape the Internet while others fade away? Today on the podcast, a sixteen g general partners Anish Acharya and Chris Dixon take on that Anish invests in AI native consumer products and the next wave of consumer tech. Chris is best known for his work in Web three point and network economies, and he's also led some of a16z's biggest consumer bets. They cover the history and power of consumer networks, the forces that shape how they grow, and what all this means for founders building in the age of AI. Let's get into it.

欢迎收听 a16z 消费播客。我非常兴奋也很荣幸今天有我的合伙人 Chris Dixon 做客。Chris，你最近可能以 Web3 和网络经济方面的工作而闻名。但大家可能不知道的是，你在 Andreessen Horowitz 领导了许多最重要的消费投资，此前你还创办过两家消费公司。我觉得一个有趣的开场话题是网络——这好像是你最初真正崭露头角的领域。

Welcome to the a sixteen z consumer pod. I'm super excited and honored to have my partner Chris Dixon here today. You know, Chris, you're probably best known for your work in web three and network economies recently. But what folks may not know is that you've led a lot of the most important consumer investments at Andreessen Horowitz and prior, you also founded two consumer companies. I thought a fun place to start would be networks that feels like the first place you really cut your teeth.

所以也许谈谈你在 Stack Overflow、Pinterest、Instagram 上的投资，以及你通常如何看待消费网络。

So maybe talk about your investments in Stack Overflow, Pinterest, Instagram, and how you generally think about consumer networks.

许多最重要的互联网服务都是网络。回顾早期互联网，电子邮件和万维网——它们今天仍然存在且非常重要——就是网络。它们是网络，因为随着更多人使用，这项服务变得更有价值。对吧？如果只有你一个人用电子邮件，它就没多大价值。

Many of the most important internet services are networks right. Going back to the early internet email and the World Wide Web which are still of course around and really important are networks right. And they're networks in the sense that the service gets more valuable as more people use the network. Right? If you were the only one on email, it wouldn't be particularly valuable.

在九十年代到二千年初互联网崛起期间，出现了 YouTube、Facebook，后来还有 Instagram 以及许多其他重要网络。如果你在那个时期是创业者或投资者，这些公司往往非常有价值。它们很难打造，我们可以稍后讨论，有不同的策略和战术。我的背景是，我创办了两家公司。

During the, you know, the kind of the rise of the Internet in the nineties and February, that's when you had things like YouTube and Facebook and later on Instagram and a whole bunch of other really important networks. If you're an entrepreneur or an investor during that period, they tend to be very valuable companies. They're very hard to build, and we can talk about that later. There's different kind of tactics and strategies for doing that. And so, my background, I started two companies.

第一家是消费安全公司，第二家是消费 AI 公司，之后我个人做天使投资，联合创办了种子基金 Founder Collective，投资了 Uber、Venmo、Stack Overflow 等项目，随着互联网的发展，我参与了众多网络。我认为要真正讨论网络，需要退一步。对我来说，科技的一个根本问题是：为什么科技行业里会突然冒出一些公司，最终影响巨大，拥有数亿甚至数十亿用户，价值极高，而在其他行业你通常看不到这种现象？科技到底有什么根本不同？

The first was a consumer security company, and the second was a consumer AI company, and then was a personal investor. I co founded a seed fund called Founder Collective, which was an investor in things like Uber and Venmo and Stack Overflow, as you mentioned, and just sort of revolved in a bunch of these networks as the internet evolved. I think to really talk about networks, though, it's important to kind of step back. The way I think about the kind of fundamental to me, a foundational question in tech is, you know, why in tech do you have these companies come out of nowhere and end up being very impactful, having hundreds of millions or billions of users, being very valuable in a way that you typically don't see that in other industries, right? What's fundamentally different about tech?

我认为答案是，在科技领域存在一些非常强的指数级、超线性力量。最著名的例子就是摩尔定律。对吧？摩尔定律大致是说，每两年或十八个月，半导体性能翻倍。这是个粗略的近似，但基本属实。

And I think the answer is that in tech you have some very strong kind of exponential super linear forces. So the most famous example of that is Moore's Law. Right? So Moore's Law is the idea that sort of every roughly two years or eighteen months the performance of semiconductors doubles. It's a rough approximation, but it's basically been true.

你看到处理器性能的这种复合式提升。我认为还有更广泛的“摩尔定律”：存储、网络等所有计算资源都变得更好，这就是为什么有了智能手机。对吧？如果你回到 iPhone 之前，手机功能很差，性能有限，没有触摸屏，表现糟糕。而史蒂夫·乔布斯和苹果的伟大洞见是，实际上——顺便说，我也是第一天就买了第一部 iPhone 的人之一。

You've seen this compounding improvement in processor performance. I think there's also kind of a broader Moore's Law, which is storage, networking, like all the kind of computing resources just gotten much better, which is why you have things like mobile phones. Right? So if you go back and look pre iPhone, mobile phones were pretty junky and limited in capability and didn't have touch screens and had poor performance. And what, you know, Steve Jobs and Apple's great insight was was that actually, by the way, first iPhone also, I think it was one of the people that bought it the first day.

它的能力也相当有限。但他们的高明之处在于，他们看到了这条曲线，对吧？他们看到了这条指数曲线，并顺势而上。所以摩尔定律是一条非常重要的指数曲线。

It also was quite limited. But part of their brilliance was they saw this curve. Right? They saw this exponential curve, and they rode that curve. So Moore's law is a very important exponential curve.

但另外我想说，在软件领域还有两条真正重要的指数曲线。其中之一我称之为可组合性。我认为可组合性正是开源软件崛起的原因。你知道，Linux 怎么就从 90 年代的一个业余项目变成了今天全球主导的操作系统？答案很大程度上在于可组合性。

But the other kind of I'd say there's two other really important exponential curves in software. One is what I call composability. Composability is really I think what's accounted for the rise of open source software. You know, why did Linux go from a hobby project in the '90s to the dominant operating system in the world today? Answer The a lot of it is composability.

可组合性意味着软件是开源的，任何人都可以贡献代码，更重要的是，你可以利用整个互联网的集体智慧，而不是封闭起来，只依赖自己的员工，对吧？世界上任何人都可以——正如那句名言所说，只要有足够多的眼睛，所有 bug 都显而易见。而且非常关键的一点是，开源软件就像乐高积木，任何人都可以拿一块去复用。于是你就得到了这种复合的、指数级的改进增长。

Composability means the software is open source, anyone can contribute to it, and you can very importantly sort of harness the collective intelligence of the internet as opposed to locking up, you know, only relying on your employees. Right? Anyone in the world can, you know, as the famous phrase, all bugs are shallow with enough eyeballs. And really importantly, with open source software becomes like LEGO bricks where anyone can take a piece and reuse it. And so you get this kind of compounding exponential kind of improvement growth.

科技领域第三个真正重要的指数力量是我们刚才谈到的网络效应，这也是网络为何如此重要。对吧？它们一开始往往非常有限，Facebook 最初只在哈佛，本质上就是一所学校学生的实时“年鉴”之类的东西。当然，后来它像踩着荷叶一样跳到其他学校、高中，最终达到今天这种全球统治地位。

And then the third really important exponential force in tech is network effects as we were talking about, which is why networks are so important. Right? So they start off often quite limited. Facebook was just at Harvard, and it was essentially a real time kind of yearbook or whatever for students at one school. And of course, you know, then kind of hopped by lily pads to other schools and high schools and eventually to kind of global domination that we have today.

所以马克·扎克伯格和他的团队看到了网络效应的力量，并顺势利用这种效应。因此，克莱·克里斯坦森把这叫作颠覆性技术。这有点像谜题：为什么在科技领域，那些看似强大的老牌巨头会错过——我觉得今天你可以讲一个类似的故事，也许是英特尔和英伟达，或者英特尔之类的。

And so they saw, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and the team saw this power of network effects and kind of rode those network effects. And so that's kind of why Clay Christensen calls this disruptive technologies. It's this kind of puzzle in a way of why in tech you have these very strong incumbents who seem to miss, you know, and I think you could tell the story today about maybe Intel and Nvidia or something like Intel.

甚至 ChatGPT 和谷歌也是。你知道，我刚读到，ChatGPT 作为一个

Or even ChatGPT and Google. You know, was just reading it. ChatGPT as a

绝佳例子，没错，十年前神经网络还只是玩具，对吧？没错。它们很酷，我想很多人看到了它们的潜力。但现实是，它们当时确实不太好用，对吧？

great example, yes, is that neural networks ten years ago work on the toys, right? Yes. And I mean, were cool. And I think a bunch of people saw the potential of them. But the reality is they just didn't work that well, right?

我记得 2016 年左右有个聊天机器人相关的 VC 活动，不知道你还记不记得。也许是的。

I mean, I remember there was a chatbot kind of VC thing in, I want to say, like 2016 or something. Don't know you remember that. Maybe were yeah.

那时候聊天机器人确实火过一阵。

Chatbots had a moment back then.

对，它们火过。但现实是，它们当时并不怎么样，根本干不了活。当然，后来它们变得强多了，OpenAI 和其他先驱的天才之处就在于押注这一趋势，对吧？

Yeah, they had a moment. But the reality is they weren't that good. They just couldn't do the job. But of course they got much better and the genius of OpenAI and other pioneers in the space was to make that bet, right?

没错。

That's right.

所以如今谷歌就处在一个相当尴尬的位置，对吧？因为他们有一个庞大的既有业务依赖于赞助链接，同时他们又试图叠加人工智能等功能。但你知道，从某些方面来说，这并非凭空出现，但它的发展速度和改进速度甚至超过了最乐观者的预期。因此，这里最大的启示是，我认为无论你是投资者还是创业者，最重要的起点就是去寻找这些力量，这些指数级力量。我在职业生涯中学到的一课是，你可以做各种战术层面的产品工作，其他一切，但这些力量会以好或坏的方式压倒你。首先要理解的是这些力量的格局，它们的动向，以及你如何希望能站在它们有利的一边。

And then Google today is in kind of an awkward position, right, because they have this huge incumbent business that depends on the sponsored links and they're trying to layer in AI and do things like that. But you know, in some ways it didn't come out of nowhere, but it grew I think faster than even some of the optimists predicted and improved faster. And so the big takeaway here is I think whether you're an investor or entrepreneur, the most important thing to start with is to look for these forces, to look for these exponential forces. And one of the lessons I learned in my career was you can do all sorts of tactical product things, everything else, but these forces are gonna overwhelm you for better or worse. And that the first thing to understand is that kind of landscape of these forces and how they're moving and how you can hopefully be on the right side of them.

Chris，你认为作为创始人，在打造工具时需要多刻意？你是否必须优先考虑网络？还是网络可以自然涌现？因为在人工智能领域，到目前为止我们看到的更多是工具而非网络。当然，事后看来，每个人似乎都是从第零天就在设计网络。

Chris, how intentional do you think you have to be as a founder about building like you're building a tool? Do you have to be sort of thinking about the network a priority? Can Or the network sort of emerge? Because in AI so far, we've seen a lot of tools and not a lot of networks. And then of course, in hindsight, everybody was designing a network from day zero.

你的直觉是什么？

What's your instinct?

这是个好问题。我多年前写过一篇博客文章，叫《因工具而来，为网络而留》。这个想法是我观察到创业者中的一种战术模式。我以 Instagram 为例。年轻人可能不记得了。

That's a great question. So like I wrote a blog post years ago called Come for the Tools, Stay for the Network. And the idea was what I observed as sort of a tactical pattern among entrepreneurs. I cited Instagram as an example. So young people won't remember this.

但 Instagram 最初其网络并不是产品的主要部分。它有一个按钮可以让你在 Instagram 上分享，但你为什么要这么做，因为上面没人。所以他们做了两件事。第一，他们有这些很酷的滤镜，当时其他服务要收费，他们却免费提供。就像特效或镜头，随便你怎么叫。

But Instagram actually kind of initially its network, Instagram's network, was not a big part of the product. It had a button where you could share on Instagram, but why would you do that because Zoom was on it? And so what you would do is I think two things. One is they had these cool filters which at the time you had to pay for and other services and they gave them away for free. So kind of just effects or lenses or whatever you want to call them.

其次，他们借用了其他网络。你会分享到 Twitter，然后一两年后 Twitter 封了他们，这整件事。你今天可能在 Substack 上看到类似情况。Substack 一开始也是借用电子邮件网络和 Twitter。我不是我们公司的投资人。

And then secondly, they piggybacked off other networks. So you would share to Twitter and then I think a year or two later, Twitter blocked them, and there's a whole kind of thing. You see that today maybe with Substack. Substack starts off, right, piggybacking on the email network on Twitter. My I'm not per the firm's investor.

我个人也没有参与。我的感觉是他们现在自己的网络也开始有起色了。你会去 Substack 应用，对吧？所以我觉得这是一种类似的策略。你可以看到一些“因工具而来，为网络而留”的情况。

I'm not personally involved. My sense is they're now getting traction with their own network. You go to the Substack app, right? And so I think it's kind of a similar tactic. I think you can see some of this kind of come for the tool stay for the network.

这个我让你来补充，因为我了解得没那么新，但像现代生产力工具，比如 Figma 和 Notion 这类，它们单人使用就有价值。对吧？你可以直接打开 Notion，它是一个很好的文档编辑器，或者 Figma 做设计。但它们也有社交功能，我觉得这些功能变得至关重要。这些都是程度问题。

And I'll defer to you on this because I'm not as up to date, but like modern productivity tools, like maybe like Figma and Notion, things like this, where they're useful single player. Right? You can just go to Notion, it's a really nice way to edit a document or Figma to kind of do design. But also there are social features that I think become essential. These things are all degrees.

对吧？Google Docs。我很喜欢 Google Docs。我用它。我也用它的社交功能。

Right? Google Docs. I love Google Docs. I use it. I use the social features.

现实是，它真的算是一个网络吗？我大概可以换平台，然后直接跟别人分享链接。但社交功能会叠加。其他一些产品，比如 Instagram，就变得不可或缺了，对吧？

The reality is, is it really a network? Like, I could probably switch and then just share links with somebody else. But the social features layer on. Other some products, like Instagram, it becomes essential. Right?

就像，如果你有一批粉丝，又想保住这批粉丝，你根本离不开 Instagram。所以这其实因使用场景而异。顺便说一句，我觉得现在 Stripe 推出的 Link 支付产品、Shopify 的 Shop 应用，都能看到这种趋势，这些体验真的很不错。

Like, it's just you simply can't leave Instagram if you have a following and you wanna keep that following. So it kinda varies by use case. But by the way, I think you see some of this now in Stripe doing the link product, which is a payment app. I think Shopify and the shop product. I think those are really nice user experiences.

我不用再输一遍信用卡号。现在它有点像网络了。Shopify 最初只是一个工具，没错。

I don't have to type in my credit card again. Now there's kind of a network. Shopify originally was just kind of a tool for That's right.

给线上卖家的。

Sellers online.

帮助商家上线。没错。所以我觉得这是个很厉害的策略，对吧？因为网络效应是双刃剑。拥有的时候很棒，但初期非常难。

Merchant to get online. That's right. So I think it's a really powerful tactic, right? Because network effects cut both ways. Because network effects are great when you have them, but they're really hard in the beginning.

没人愿意上一个只有两个人的交友网站，对吧？所以，怎么让产品从第一天就有用？但单人模式的问题在于，很难防守，对吧？我觉得今天的 AI 领域就能看到这点。

No one wants to be on a dating site with two people, right? I mean, or something. And so like, how do you make these things useful from day one? But then the problem with single player, right, is it's just hard to defend them, right? Think I you're seeing this in AI now today.

你更清楚。现在确实出现了很多很酷的工具，因为技术本身惊人。但就像换脸应用之类的，然后呢？怎么摆脱昙花一现？怎么让用户长期留下来？

You know much better. But you're seeing a lot of, like, really cool tools because it's an amazing technology. But then it's like, Okay, you can change your face app or whatever. But then how does it sort of move beyond fattishness, right? How does it move to something that really engages people over a long period of time?

消费级产品给出的答案往往是网络。于是你得把网络叠加上去。挑战当然在于，不能为了加而加，得真的有用。所以我想听听你的看法。

And often the answer in consumer products is networks. And so then you have to layer in a network. The challenge is, of course, you don't want to just layer it in for the sake of it. You need to actually be useful. So I'd love to hear from you.

你在这一领域观察到了什么？

What are you seeing in that area?

嗯，有意思。大平台现在对“新网络借它们的网络起步”这件事变得极度敏感。我觉得十年前的 Twitter 对 Substack 这种威胁会更迟钝，他们当时已经很警惕了。Facebook 也下架了一大堆他们认为可能这么做的公司，Instagram 也一样。

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's actually interesting because it feels like the big networks have become hypersensitized to this idea of new networks emerging that were bootstrapped on their networks. So I think Twitter of ten years ago would have, you know, been a lot more asleep at the wheel to the threat of a substack. And they were pretty aware of this potentially happening. And of course, Facebook has deep platformed a ton of companies that they thought were going to do this and Insta and others.

首先，我认为网络本身更加敏感。然后在工具端，实际上，因为工具一直在各自的方向上专业化，一部分是产品功能，但另一部分甚至对一些多模态工具来说是审美。你知道，Mid Journey 的审美就和 Ideogram 不一样，所以它们可以共存，而不是直接竞争。因此，尽管这些工具看似替代品，到目前为止我们还没有看到那种此消彼长，它们都在增长。也许这只是我们目前所处的产品周期阶段。

So one, I think the networks are more sensitive. And then on the tool side, actually, because the tools have been specializing in their own directions, and part of it is sort of product features, but part of it even for some of the multimodal tools is aesthetics. You know, mid journey just has a different aesthetic than ideogram, so they can both coexist and they're not directly competing. So even though the tools are seemingly substitutes, so far, we haven't seen that trade off and they're all working. Maybe that's just where we are in the product cycle.

但我确实认为这对很多 AI 创始人来说是一个话题，也就是这些工具周围并没有一个明显的网络可以构建，以及应该预先设计多少， versus 继续推进技术边界，让网络自然涌现。

But I do think it's sort of a topic for a lot of AI founders, which is there's not an obvious network to build around a lot of these tools and how much of that should be sort of predesigned versus let's just keep pushing the edge and the network will emerge.

而且它会以两种方式显现，对吧？一种是使用量。你可能会看到某些工具使用频率下降，但另一种是定价，对吧？是的。即使你切出了一个细分市场，人们愿意为这个小众功能比竞争对手多付多少钱？

And also the it will show up in two ways, right? Like one would be in the usage. Like, you might see some of these tools not get used as much, but the other is in pricing, right? Yeah. Even if you carve out a niche, how much more are people willing to pay for that niche versus those competitors?

对的，所以是的。

Right. So yes.

是的。实际上，有趣的是价格一直在上涨。比如谷歌的最高档套餐是每月 250 美元，Grox 是每月 300 美元。我想我们从未见过消费者愿意支付这种价位的时代。

Yeah. And actually, prices have been going up interestingly. Like Google's top SKU is two fifty a month. Grox is 300 a month. I don't think we've ever seen a time where consumers were paying those kinds of prices.

我的意思是，我们一个相对极端的观点是，未来消费者的可支配收入将花在食物、房租、软件上。而软件将会吞噬今天许多其他可支配支出领域。

I mean, one of our sort of extreme views here is that the future of consumer disposable income will be like food, rent, software. And then software is going to subsume a lot of the other areas of discretionary spend today.

也有可能，我一直怀疑在科技、在硅谷，我们低估了品牌和消费者惯性的力量。我觉得你今天在 ChatGPT 身上就能看到这一点，它几乎一夜之间就成了家喻户晓的名字，即使从严格的技术意义上说它可能没有网络效应。我的意思是，它有记忆等功能，但那些更多属于粘性，而不是网络效应。但品牌效应实在太强大了，对吧？你会变得众所周知，Cursor 就被认为是最好的 vibe coding 平台之类的。

It's also possible I've always suspected in tech, in Silicon Valley, of we underestimate the power of just kind of brands and consumer inertia. And I think you're sort of seeing that today with ChatGPT of just like such a household name, like overnight almost, that even though it doesn't have in this sort of technical sense maybe network effects. Mean, I have memory and things, but I mean, it's not that's more stickiness network effects. But just the brand effects are so powerful, right? And you become kind of known and the cursor is known as the best vibe coding platform or whatever.

没错。是的，克里斯，我正想问你这个。当然，网络效应是可防御性的黄金标准。你或许也稍微谈过品牌被低估了。

That's right. Yeah. She was gonna ask you about that, Chris. You know, of course, network effect is a gold standard for defensibility. You know, you've maybe talked a little bit about how brand is underappreciated.

你刚刚提到了。你觉得成为一个高 NPS、高日活的产品，这本身够护城河吗？还是你认为我们真的必须围绕这些复利力量去构建？

You just mentioned it. Do you think being a high NPS DAU product, is that enough of a moat? Or do you think that like we really have to push for building around these compounding forces?

是的，这是个非常有趣的问题。我的论点是互联网。我觉得有一个不错的观点。实际上，我们有一次在合伙人团建时就在讨论这个——不是争论，而是讨论——也许很多网络效应已经被外部化到互联网本身了，对吧？所以想法是，你是 Cursor，然后突然它就流行起来，或者说 Mid Journey，举个例子，对吧？

Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I mean, argument would be the Internet. I think there's a decent argument. I was actually having this argument at one of our partner off sites, not argument but discussion, is that maybe a lot of the network effect has been externalized to the internet, right? And so the idea being, you know, you're a cursor and then suddenly, you know, it becomes popular or mid journey, let's say, right?

然后你会看到所有这些 Midjourney 网红、YouTube 视频、网站、操作指南。所以从某种意义上说，你仍然拥有网络效应，只是这种网络效应并不在产品内部，而是被外化到了整个互联网上，对吧？也许这就是现在的区别。我所说的那个时代是互联网正在建设的时代。

And then you get all these mid journey influencers, YouTube videos, websites, how to guides. And so you still in some sense have a network effect, but it's just not a network effect that's in the product itself. It's sort of externalized to the internet, right? And maybe that's a difference now. Like the era I'm discussing was the era when the internet was being built.

从某些角度看，互联网现在已经建好了。我的意思是，它肯定还会改进和变化，但基础设施已经搭好了，对吧？它有五十亿用户，也许规则已经变了。也许现在，你周围所有这些相邻网络所带来的效应，某种意义上也算一种网络效应。你努力在搜索里排第一，ChatGPT 推荐你，算法把你推成热门，当然还有一种软性的品牌感。

In some ways the internet is built now. I mean, I'm sure it'll hopefully improve and change, but it's built, right? I mean, it's built and it's 5,000,000,000 users and maybe the rules are different now. Maybe now that effect of getting sort of all of those different adjacent networks around you gives you in a sense a network effect. You try to show up top in search, ChatGPT recommends you, you know, the algorithms feature you like, you know, and there's, of course, there's a soft sense of, like, a brand.

人们听说过你。但它也是一整套庞大的系统，对吧？所有这些互相连接的网络可能极大地偏爱这些产品。然后这就变成了一个时机问题，对吧？你早早入局。时机似乎非常关键，比如第一个在品类里占据“梗”并启动那种效应。

People have heard of you. But it's also this whole giant kind of system, right, with all of these different interconnecting networks might strongly favor those products. And then it becomes sort of a timing thing, right? You get in early. The timing seems quite important, like getting in, being the first to kind of own the meme in the category and get that effect going.

然后通过产品迭代速度、高质量和其他一切手段来维持它，这非常不容易，尤其在 AI 领域，你告诉我，要始终站在前沿。成本很高，需要大量资本。顺便提一句，AI 里的资本效应：你做得好，就能融到最多钱。我猜那些融到十亿的人已经证明了很多东西，到了某个阶段，资本本身就成了护城河，对吧？

And then maintaining it through product velocity and high quality and everything else, which is nontrivial, is very hard to do, think, particularly in AI, you tell me, but to always stay on the cutting edge. It's expensive, a lot of capital. That's another thing, by way, the capital effects in AI. You do well, you raise the most money. You know, I assume the people raising a billion have already proven a bunch of things and at some point the capital becomes a moat, right?

完全同意。是的，这很有意思，因为即使在软件领域也出现了“杠铃化”：巨头越来越大，但我们同时也看到单人公司做到一亿年营收的情况出现，或者已经存在。但毫无疑问，巨头在变大，资本是其中一部分原因。

A 100%. Yeah. No, it's very interesting because there's this barbelling that's happening even in software where the bigs are getting bigger, but we're also seeing sort of like single person, 100,000,000 run rate company is coming. Or maybe it's already here. But certainly the bigs are getting bigger and capital is a part of that.

也许市场实在太大了，答案就是“两者都对”。可能就是像你说的，软件正变成像食物和房租一样，超出所谓的“软件预算”范畴。

And maybe maybe the market's just so big that the answer is both. All of the above may just be that, as you said, it becomes like food and rent and it just software is moving beyond kind of the quote unquote software budget.

到目前为止，它真的不是零和博弈，令人震惊：价格都在涨，但一切似乎都在运转。也许回头看我们会说那是信号，但目前为止一切良好。Chris，既然你提到了“vibe coding”，我们不妨聊聊“运动”这个话题。

It really hasn't been zero sum so far. It's been shocking, like prices are going up and everything feels like it's working. So maybe we'll look back and say that was a sign. But but so far so good. You know, Chris, I thought actually since you mentioned vibe coding, it would be fun to talk about movements.

感觉你很早就参与了不少运动，像 Coinbase、MakerBot 这些产品，它们在你开始关注时还只是互联网上的小圈子。你怎么看待投资“运动”，以及如何在“这是玩具吗？”“这是结构性变化吗？”“它持久还是短暂？”这些疑问中围绕它们做建设？说说你的想法。

You know, it feels like you've been early to a bunch of movements, products like Coinbase, of course, and MakerBot. Those felt like niche communities on the Internet when you started paying attention to them. How do you think about investing in movements and how do you think about building around them when there's sort of questions around, is this a toy? Is this something sort of structural? Is it durable, ephemeral?

多聊聊这个吧。

Maybe talk a bit about that.

好的。某种程度上呼应你刚才说的网络被外化。大概十年前到十五年前，我花了很多时间泡在 Reddit 的小众社区里，部分是出于兴趣，部分是因为我觉得它们非常强大，对吧？如果你看 Wikipedia、Stack Overflow，这些有趣的运动或社区网站，往往也就两万人左右，规模并不大。

Yeah. Yeah, mean, a little bit to the point where you're talking about the networks becoming externalized. I used to spend a lot of time, I don't know, ten to fifteen years ago, just like on subreddits in kind of niche communities, partly because I'm interested in that stuff and partly because I think they're very powerful, right? If you look at Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, like a lot of these kind of interesting kind of movements, like community sites, like they're they're often like 20,000 people. Like, they aren't that many.

他们并不是你想象的那种数以百万计。可能有几百万人在零零散散地做一点。但我只是觉得，你们懂的，如果你看看开源软件和加密项目，就像很多那些逐渐流行起来的运动，其实是由相对较小——我是说，相对于互联网规模而言——的一群核心狂热者推动的，他们非常聪明，往往技术背景很强。所以，你知道，有句著名的老话，我觉得是威廉·吉布森说的，未来已经在这里了。

They they aren't the millions that you might think. There are millions maybe doing a little bit here and there. But I just think a lot of you know? And if you look at open source software and crypto projects, like, just a lot of things that that that that have been kind of, you know, popular movements that grew were really led by a relatively small I mean, I'm saying on the Internet scale, relatively small sort of hardcore enthusiasts who are really smart, often technical. And so, you know and it's sort of this, you know, famous old quote, I think Williams Gibson, that the future's already here.

只是分布得还不均匀。我一直相信这一点。我觉得如果你回顾历史，情况就是这样。比如我们现在在谈神经网络，那东西从1943年左右就开始了，一直有一群人——包括今天领导各大实验室的很多人——十五年前还被视为比较边缘。要知道，神经网络当时并不是主流方法。

It's just not evenly distributed. Like, I've I've always believed that. I think if you just go back historically, that's that's the case that, like, you know, we're talking about neural networks. Like, that's been going on for since 1943 or something, and there's been, you know, communities of people, including, like, the people lot of people that lead the labs today who, you know, fifteen years ago were seen as kind of niche more niche or something. Know, neural networks weren't the dominant approach.

所以，带着这个论点，如果你想找到下一个大事件，一种方法就是四处看看，找到那些我称之为极度热情、有时甚至有点邪教气质的小圈子：他们有自己的语言、自己的规范，有圈内圈外的分别。我很早就开始关注这类群体，最初就是这样接触到比特币的——我就是跟着那些人。我发现这种事一开始听起来挺傻，但越深入了解越觉得有趣。这总是一个有趣的信号，对吧？

And so, you know, with that thesis, sort of you want to sort of find the next thing, then the next big thing, like one way to do it is to look around and see where these kind of, you know, I would describe it as sort of hyper enthusiastic, sometimes cultish, you know, they have their own language, their own norms, you know, kind of a sense of insider outsiders. And so I got into that kind of a while ago, and that's how I got into originally, like, into Bitcoin, you know, as I just followed those people. And I found it was one of those things where it sounded kind of silly at first, and then as you learn more about it, it seemed a lot more interesting. Like, that's always an interesting feature. Right?

有些东西你越了解越觉得没意思；有些东西确实挺傻。比如月球、地球是平的这类阴谋论，我有一天花了一小时去看，就觉得这纯属疯了，或者各种阴谋论。而当你深挖这些领域时，你不必全盘同意，但确实有很多聪明人，而且非常有趣。

There's some things you learn more about, they aren't they aren't that interesting. Some things, you know, they are kind of silly. You know, the moon, the conspiracy theories that the earth is flat or something like I went one day hour looking at that stuff. And it's like, this stuff is just crazy or something or the conspiracies or whatever. Whereas, you know, you dig into this stuff and you don't have to agree with everything, but there's smart people and it's very interesting.

所以对我来说，3D打印让我投资了Oculus；Coinbase也是基于这个逻辑——VR方面，我看到开发者和Kickstarter社区对帕尔默·拉奇最初做的东西那种热情。还有，我后来接触到益智药，于是投资了Soylent这类项目；2013年我加入基金那会儿，无人机也很火，我们做了几笔相关投资。总之就是观察这些有趣的爱好者社区。之所以觉得这种视角有价值，一个原因是这些人正是创造新事物的人——如果你有2万个有趣的技术人员，他们往往会真的把东西做出来，对吧？

So, know, for like for me, was like three d printing, this led to my investment in Oculus and Coinbase really, we're both from that, you know, from that thesis sort of VR seeing the developers and the kind of you know, Kickstarter community enthusiasm around, you know, when Palmer Lucky was first creating that. The it also, know, I got into kind of new tropics and that led to an investment in things like Soylent and got into back then it was like, this is like when I joined the firm 2013, like drones, we did a few investments around that. And, you know, just sort of looking at these interesting kind of hobby community. And the hobby communities, mean, there's a bunch of reasons why I think it's an interesting way to look at it is, one is those are the people that create these things. I mean, you have 20,000 hard, you know, interesting technologists, often build things, right?

所以他们要打造一些有趣的产品。这也像是一台很棒的营销引擎，对吧？他们就在那里。他们通常在互联网上拥有不成比例的影响力。他们有粉丝。

And so they're to build some interesting products. It's also like a great kind of marketing engine, right? They're out there. They often have sort of outsized influence on the internet. They have followings.

你知道，他们帮忙点燃热情、打造东西、做推广。这不是万无一失的，而且很难，因为很多这类事情最终只是小众，或者没有——我觉得这又回到了指数力量上。就像，你吃益智药，那东西还在，但据我所知它并没有催生出一家大型科技公司。我想部分原因是它只有线性力量，而不是指数力量，对吧？

You know, they help kind of get the energy energy going and build things and kind of market them. It's not like it's not foolproof and you have it's hard, you know, because a lot of these things just end up kind of being niche or don't have, I think it's going back to the exponential forces. Like Yeah. You take Nootropics, like, that's still a thing that's around, but I don't think it's, you know, it hasn't created a big tech company as far as I know. But and I think it's partly because it's just got linear forces, not exponential forces behind it, right?

只是没有某种引擎在指数级地推动它做出越来越好的产品。

There's only there's not sort of some engine exponentially driving it to have better and better products.

不过也许其实，你看看 Function Health 这样的公司，它可以说是这场巨大的消费者健康与量化自我运动的催化剂。而益智药算是它的前身。所以某种意义上，存在一种缓慢的指数增长，然后突然快速普及。我觉得时机在这里很有意思，因为这些运动你不知道它们会花一百年还是一百天展开。

Maybe actually, though, if you look at a company like Function Health, you know, Function Health is sort of the catalyst for this huge movement, consumer movement around health and quantified self. And, you know, nootropics was a bit of the predecessor to that. So in a sense, there is this sort of slow exponential maybe and then very rapid uptake. And I think timing is a really interesting question here because with these movements you don't know if they're gonna play out over you know one hundred years or one hundred days sometimes.

是啊，所以我对 Function Health 了解不多，但我知道你稍微了解一点，这很有意思。你说得对，3D 打印就是个好例子——它还在，只是没像大家当初希望的那样爆发。我当年投了 MakerBot，它曾是领头羊，后来被收购了。现在仍是爱好者玩的东西，挺有趣的。

That's yeah and so I don't know that you know much more about I know you know a little bit about function health but that's interesting yeah and you're right like it make it could just be that three d printing is a good example where, you know, it's still around. It didn't kind of get as big as people had hoped. You know, I had an investment in MakerBot back then, which was kind of a leader and got acquired. And, you know, it's still a hobbyist thing. It's interesting.

我觉得限制在于它处在物理世界，没有类似摩尔定律那样的推动力。话虽如此，我预计大概五十年内，它会变得越来越重要。你说得对，你说得对，可能只是个时机问题。

I think the limiting thing is it's in the physical world, there isn't kind of a Moore's Law driving it. That said, I expect that over, you know, fifty years or something, it will become a more important thing. You're right. You're right. It could just be a timing thing.

对对。回到“vibe coding”那件事，感觉像是一种不可逆的消费级现象，大家也许还不算真正在编程，但确实在以十年前没有的方式创造软件。你把这看作一种去中心化的力量吗？你之前谈过软件经济学与生产资料的关系。

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the vibe coding thing to come back to that, that feels like this sort of irreversible consumer phenomenon, you know, where everybody is maybe not quite programming, but, you know, creating software in a way that they weren't ten years ago. How you do think of that as a sort of decentralizing force? You know, you've talked about the economics of software versus the means of production.

生产资料正通过 Replit、Cursor 这类新工具被分散，这足以带来开放网络的复兴吗？或者说，人人编程的第二阶影响会是什么？

The means of production are sort of getting decentralized through these new tools like Replit and, you know, and others, Cursor. Is that like sufficient to lead to a renaissance in the open web? Or what do you think are the second order implications of everybody programming?

这是个好问题。互联网确实越来越集中了。我写过一本关于区块链的书，开篇就谈到互联网如何被集中。只要看收入、流量这些指标，95% 以上都……

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, thing with the Internet and the consolidation, I mean, Internet has become increasingly consolidated. If you just look at and, you know, I wrote a book about blockchains, and this was a kind of core theme in the beginning of the book was talking about sort of what happened with the Internet getting consolidated. It's just if you look at metrics like the amount of money revenue generated, the traffic, right? I mean, it's more and more, it's like 95% plus of that.

这两项指标现在掌握在五到十家公司手里。AI 的出现让情况更复杂：数据显示，很多 AI 直接给出答案，用户不再点进网站。最近有报告说，一批旅游站点的 SEO 流量骤降，我觉得这不可避免。

Both of those metrics are, you know, now in five to 10 companies' hands. You can make an argument either way. Like with AI, you know, look, with AI, mean, we're already seeing this in the data. A lot of AI obviates the need to click through and go to a website, right? And so and I think we just saw I think we just saw report out that, like, a bunch of, like, travel sites and others were kind of seeing some alarming drops in SEO, which I think is kind of inevitable if, you know, like, I mean, it's a mixed thing.

一方面，作为 ChatGPT 用户，直接得到答案太爽了，不用翻来翻去。但这也形成恶性循环：网站流量下滑，就更疯狂地弹广告，体验更差。这个负面飞轮已经转了十年。

Like, on the one hand, I'm a user of ChatGPT, and it's amazing to just get an answer, right? Not have to go and, like, searching again after you, you know, and go through all these websites. It's sort of this vicious cycle thing where like the websites lose traffic and they get more desperate and then they put up pop up ads and other things. And so it becomes even a worse experiment. This has been going on for like ten years as this kind of of negative flywheel I think that's been going on.

所以，对消费者是好事。反过来看，我们投资的 Stack Overflow 被收购后，流量因 vibe coding 大跌；很可能它的训练数据就来自 Stack Overflow 和 GitHub，然后模型变得更强。

So look, on the one hand, it's great for consumers. You get an anti vibe coding and a lot of you know, we were investors in Stack Overflow which you know got acquired. But I think their traffic has dropped a lot because of vibe coding. And you know, it's this thing where vibe coding I think probably some of the training data came from Stack Overflow and GitHub at places. But then it becomes better.

我用 Cursor 做过些小项目，工具强得离谱，显然对世界有益，只是对那些网站来说很惨。问题确实棘手。

And like, you know, like I I use I've used Cursor to do some fun projects. It's an unbelievable tool. I think it's clearly good for the world. You know, it is bad for those websites. It's a great question.

我希望我们正迎来一场复兴：出现一批付费软件公司，它们不必成为 Facebook 那样的巨头，也能做到数亿美元收入。从创业者角度看，现在极其令人兴奋，消费者也能享受很多好产品。

I think, you know, I hope what we're seeing is a renaissance of it seems like we're seeing a paid software of sort of businesses that they don't need to dominate the internet and be Facebook, but they can get to hundreds of millions in revenue. I mean, I think we're seeing this right. And so I think from an entrepreneur's perspective, it's a very, very exciting time. I think we can see a lot of great products. I think it's a great time for consumers.

当然，未来也许会变，可能他们还是得加广告，激励变得对用户不友好。但就眼下而言，我喜欢这些 AI 产品，它们真的跟用户站在同一边，专心把产品做好，然后收费。

You're, you know, you're you're maybe that will change over time. Maybe they'll need to layer in ads and the incentives will shift and do, you know, kind of things that are more adversarial towards consumers. I think right now, I like the AI products and that they feel very aligned with users. Like they're really just genuinely trying to create great products and and charge for them. Exactly.

嗯。

Yeah.

是的，我们有点把它称作“窄型初创公司”的兴起：它们收高价，却交付超乎寻常的价值。也许现在一句有争议的话是：根本不存在“营销问题”，只有“产品问题”，因为技术让你可以代表客户大胆设想。而成本反而促成了更好的商业模式——消费级创始人必须早早考虑变现，否则就只能去做 toB。所以确实感觉一场付费软件的复兴正在发生，让创业比五年前更有趣。

Yeah, we sort of call it this like emergence of narrow startups where they charge high prices and deliver, you know, exceptional value. And maybe a controversial statement right now is that there are no marketing problems, only product problems, because the technology allows you to be so ambitious on behalf of your customer. And then the costs actually, ironically, lead to better business models because consumer founders need to think about monetizing early. Otherwise, they're just going to go to business. So there's it does feel like there's a renaissance in paid software that's happening that makes it a more fun time to build than five years ago.

你觉得随着时间推移，这种情况会改变吗？也许大家会发现“低垂果实”已被摘完，要触达其余人群就得叠加不同的商业模式，增加 toB 收入等等？

Do you think that over time that that will shift potentially because people will realize that maybe the kind of low hanging fruit is picked, the higher paying consumers and to get the rest, you need to layer in different business models, add business models and so forth?

我不知道。感觉还有大量消费者需求可以被技术以非常显著的方式解决。你其实可以极度专业化、做得非常深。比如，有通用的 AI 心理治疗，然后有专门针对 ADHD 患者的 AI 治疗，再往下还有针对处于特定人生阶段、希望以某种方式互动的 ADHD 患者的产品。你可以无限深入。

I don't know. I mean, it feels like there's so many more consumer needs that are addressable, and they're addressable in such a significant way by the technology. You can actually specialize and go very, very deep. Like there, you know, there's AI therapy generally, then there's AI therapy for people that have ADHD, and then there's people who have ADHD that are in a certain life stage that perhaps want to interact in a certain way. You can just go extraordinarily deep.

所以我不知道最终会不会走向整合，还是说你继续细分，为极少数人成为他们的“首选”——这倒可能引出一个好话题：Chris，你多次谈到平台更迭，你围绕它投资、预测它。这次平台更迭有趣的是，它的特性是“涌现”出来的，不像当年 iOS 那样由苹果明确定义，而是创始人们、甚至训练模型的人一起发现的。

So I don't know if it leads to consolidation over time or or, you know, or if you can continue to specialize and you know, for a small number of people be their primary. That actually might lead to a good topic around the idea may is, you know, Chris, you've talked a bunch about platform shifts, you've invested around platform shifts, you predicted them. You know, one of the interesting things about this platform shift is that the properties of the platform are sort of emergent. They're not explicitly defined by Apple as iOS was. They're things that founders, you know, and even the people training the models are discovering.

这会不会改变你对平台更迭的心智模型？它跟 Web3 相比，相似还是不同？

Does that sort of change your mental model around platform shift? And maybe how similar or dissimilar is that to Web3?

嗯，Idea Maze 这个概念最初来自我们的朋友 Balaji Srinivasan，我早前写过。我的理解是：过去创业圈老争论“点子重要还是执行重要？”而 Idea Maze 的意思是：两者都重要——进哪个迷宫很重要。我进的是医疗 AI 迷宫，还是图像生成 AI 迷宫，显然初始产品点子很重要。

Yeah, mean, the IdeaMaze concept, this originally came from our friend Balaji Chernobhassan, and I wrote about it a while ago. The idea the way I think about the idea is that is that there was this old debate of like, with startups, are the ideas more important or are they execution? Right? And sort of, I think with the idea maze, the way I think about it is it says they're both important in the sense that it matters which maze you enter. I'm entering the AI maze for, you know, health care, or I'm entering the AI maze for image generation or whatever.

但它也是“迷宫”，意味着动态变化，世界会转弯，你没法提前预知。

Like clearly the idea and you go in with an initial product idea. And clearly that matters. But it also matters that, you know, it's a maze, meaning it's dynamic. The world will shift. Like, you can't predict it.

我脑子里最经典的例子就是 Netflix。它最初靠邮寄光盘起家，假设是：互联网改变了人们看电影的方式，人们会愿意订阅。但当时只能邮寄。

So, you know, the canonical example in my mind is Netflix. Right? Netflix started off, you know, mailing CDs, right? So, the hypothesis is that movies will become, you know, the Internet has changed the way people consume movies. People will subscribe to them.

后来他们转向数字分发，再后来内容方反制，他们又转向自制内容。可以说经历了两次几乎彻底的公司转型，但他们选的那个“迷宫”是对的。

But today, we need to send them by mail. And then over time, they pivoted to digital distribution. And then they pivoted to and then they started getting pushed back from the content providers, and they pivoted to original content, right? So they really did two almost complete company pivots. But their core maze was right, right?

他们的核心迷宫概念就像互联网会在某种程度上向订阅电影倾斜一样，在大方向上是正确的。但他们在具体执行上极其敏捷，对吧？所以对我来说，这就是迷宫概念的核心——你作为投资人和创始人要问自己：我愿意在这个迷宫里待十年吗？

Their core maze was like the internet will bleed to subscription movies in some broad sense was correct. But then they were extremely agile with respect to the implementation of that, right? And so I think to me that's, you know, that's the idea of maze concept. You sort of, you're entering a maze. As an investor and as a founder, you need to think, am I a person who wants to be in this maze for ten years?

我是否愿意保持敏捷，在艰难时期坚持下去？这不仅是智力挑战，更是情感上的考验。这就是创业生活。谈到AI，我们有一个非常清晰的大趋势——AI就是智能，是极其广泛且关键的技术。

Am I willing to be, you know, agile and often, you know, persevere through difficult periods. It's often emotionally challenging, I think, but not just intellectually challenging. And so that's kind of the life of a startup. And when you think about AI, look, we have a very clear megatrend of these, you know, of AI being, you know, it's intelligence. It's a very broad and important technology.

显然大家都知道这点。其次，这些扩展定律看起来非常强大——模型正在快速进步。需要区分的是：像LLM预训练这类具体扩展路径，人们可能会争论何时出现边际收益递减，也许我们已经接近那个点。

Obviously, I think everyone knows that. And then secondly, you have these scaling laws, which seem to be, you know, which seem to be quite powerful, right? It's the models are getting much better. And then I think important distinction there would be there's specific scaling things like LLM pre training or something, which I think people may have debates about, you know, at what point do you have diminishing returns? Maybe we're hitting that.

我不确定，还是听专家的。但除了具体过程，还有个元过程——就是AI整体领域。

I don't know. Defer to the experts. But then there's that sort of a process. But then there's the meta process. And the meta process is AI overall, right?

有人在研究强化学习，肯定有上百种技术路线。AI这个元过程现在已经是经济现象：大量聪明人、商业模式、资金支持...不是单一路径，而是众多并行探索的过程。

There's people working on whatever reinforcement learning and I'm sure 100 different techniques. Now AI, the sort of meta process, which means like it's at this point really an economic phenomenon, which is there's all of these smart people there. There's business models behind it. There's funding, right? There's not just one process.

这让我想起摩尔定律——外行看来半导体每两年神奇升级，但看过相关书籍就知道：某种工艺遇到瓶颈时他们会恐慌，直到其他实验室的天才提出新方案。

There's many processes being explored. Kind of reminding me Moore's Law like from the outside Moore's Law I think like naively, I'm not a semiconductor person is like wow, these semiconductors magically get better every two years. If you read books about it, read a few books about it. From their perspective, they run, you know, some fabrication technique hits a wall, they freak out. And then some brilliant person from another lab comes up with a new fabrication technique, right?

每个具体工艺都会逐渐触及天花板，但整个产业的元飞轮却保持了平滑增长。我觉得AI现在就像当年的半导体——这个元过程很可能会持续指数级增长很久，这给创业者创造巨大机会，也是巨大挑战。

And so it was always each process would run, you know, and have diminishing returns asymptote at some point, you know. But the meta process, the sort of the bigger industry flywheel did not, you know, led to this smooth growth. Think my sense is AI is in that kind of, you know, semiconductor like place where you have this meta process that's very likely to continue scaling exponentially for a very long time. And that creates a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs. It's also a challenge, right?

机会在于你能用不断增强的能力构建新事物，挑战在于：现有模型会不会变成通吃一切的'上帝模型'？你如何定位自己？

I mean, the opportunity obviously is you can build things with the capabilities will grow. There'll be all these new opportunities and so forth. The challenge is, you know, are the incumbent models going to be sort of God models that subsume your use cases? And how do you kind of play that? Right?

所以现在你会看到人们说：我要在某个垂直领域钻得足够深，这就是我的护城河——无论主流模型怎么发展，我凭借领域知识、品牌认知、用户基础或销售网络总能保持优势。回顾历史，就像克莱顿·克里斯坦森《创新者的窘境》里硬盘制造商的案例，那是场果蝇般的达尔文式厮杀——数千家公司，极短的生命周期。

And so, you know, I think what you're seeing, right, is that you see people say, well, I'm going go so deep on a domain that that will be my edge. You know, I know everything about this specific domain. And know that, you know, no matter what the, you know, incumbent models do, I'll always be able to have an edge in my product or I'll have such a good brand recognition or strong user base or reference selling or whatever it might be, right? So I think that's the both kind of threat. Mean, if you go back in the history, like with the semiconductor analogy I mentioned, like, you know, the canonical case study in Clay Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma book is, you know, the hard the PC industry, the hard drive makers, you know, and it was just very like kind of fruit fly Darwinian struggle where you just had like thousands of companies and very short life cycles for a lot of the companies.

但也诞生了很多伟大企业。所以对创业者来说，这个过程可能很残酷——竞争激烈，聪明人扎堆，动态变化的创意迷宫——但机会也是史诗级的。

But you know, but then a lot of very successful companies. So, you know, it's going to be it may be a very kind of brutal process for entrepreneurs in the sense of just like a lot of competition, a lot of other smart people, you know, very dynamic idea maze, but also massive opportunity.

Chris，在这种背景下，你怎么看原生技术与拟物技术？一切都在变化，尤其是当你面向消费者做产品时。当消费者接触到这些神奇的新技术时，他们的偏好会改变吗？或者说，原生技术的出现是否也依赖于消费者偏好的变化，以及受到AI等外部力量的影响？

How do you think, Chris, about native versus geomorphic technologies in that context? You know, everything is changing, especially when you're building for consumer. Does the consumer change their preferences when they get, you know, this magical new technologies invented? Or in a sense, does the emergence of the native technologies also dependent on sort of consumer preferences changing and being informed by these external forces about things like AI?

嗯，好问题。我先给这个词下个定义。所谓“拟物原生”，拟物这个词是乔布斯当年在谈设计时常用的，比如最早iPhone上的书架应用，背景有木纹质感；或者电脑桌面上的垃圾桶图标，对吧？它是在向另一种形态致敬。

Yeah, great question. So just maybe I'll define the term for it. So skeuomorphic native, what skeuomorphic is term Steve Jobs used to use with respect to design to talk about how he likes some design like the original bookshelf app, book app on the iPhone had like grainy grainy stuff on the background. Design that kind of took or the trash can on the on the, you know, on the desktop, computer desktop sort of, you know, right? It harkens back to a to a different form factor.

技术与媒体里有个常见模式：当新平台或新媒介出现时，人们一开始会模仿旧媒介。早期电影就像把舞台剧搬上镜头，只是多了更好的发行方式；后来才发展出电影自己的语法，比如特写、建立镜头等。90年代的互联网也类似，把商品目录或宣传册直接搬到网上，直到十多年后才出现YouTube、现代社交网络这些真正只有互联网才能诞生的东西。

A common pattern in technology and media is when you have a new platform or media form develop is that people start off kind of imitating prior media forms. So early films, you know, were shot sort of like plays with a camera and a better distribution model. And then people kind of invented the native grammar of film and, you know, close ups and establishing shots and all those kinds of things. Early internet, a lot of the 90s internet looked like, you know, you take a catalog, you know, a commerce catalog and put it online or a brochure and put it online. And it took ten to fifteen years before you had things like YouTube and, you know, modern social networking and things that really just couldn't have existed prior to the internet, you know, user generated anyone can upload a video and things.

其中一部分是技术本身，比如没有广泛宽带就谈不上YouTube。YouTube刚上线时也不过是搞笑病毒视频和大量侵权内容，过了一阵子才出现真正的原生YouTuber、内容创作者。

So I think some of it is some of this is technology like YouTube, you couldn't have had until you had really wide broadband penetration, right? So some of it's the underlying technology takes a while to kind of get there. YouTube also, you know, when it started off, it was just like funny viral videos. A lot of it was copyright violations. It took a while to develop kind of native YouTubers, right, content creators.

这往往是一代人的事。新一代人把技术视为机会而非威胁，于是开始探索。创业者也得在“想法迷宫”里摸索，搞清楚大家到底想要什么。

So that's often just like a generational thing, think. I think it literally is a new generation sometimes, right? People that just that don't look at the technology as a threat but as an opportunity. And so that, you know, that was a big part of it. And then part of it is the entrepreneurs just have to figure out the it's the idea maze thing.

对吧？他们得弄明白人们到底要什么。当年围绕YouTube有很多争论：是不是只要把橄榄球、NFL比赛搬到网上直播就行？很多公司都在干这个。

Right? They just have to figure it out. Like, what do people want? Like, lot of people there was a lot of debates around YouTube's time as do people want just take football and, you know, take NFL and stream it to the web. There are lot of companies doing that.

大家的口味不会变，谁会愿意看别人瞎闹呢？有人拿它类比脱口秀电台，但其实就是没看懂。所以我不觉得人性会突变，当然新一代会有新想法。

Tastes aren't gonna change. Why would people wanna watch, you know, people joke around or something, right? Maybe there were analogs like is that like talk radio or is that this, but it just they really just didn't understand. So, you know, I don't think human nature championed. Mean, obviously there's a new generation with different ideas.

我的意思是，人类在更深层意义上并没有根本改变，但得理解技术的能力、伴随的文化变迁以及网络效应。所以我觉得AI现在很可能就处在拟物阶段。对吧？

I mean, I don't think fundamentally humans changed, you know, in a deeper sense. But, you know, it was understanding the capabilities of technology, the cultural shifts around it, the network effect around it. And so I personally think with AI, a really interesting question, and I'm sure you've thought much more deeply about it than I have. It does, I mean, most likely we're in a skeuomorphic phase right now. That's right.

那原生阶段会长什么样？通常我更喜欢原生阶段，因为它更疯狂、更有趣。拿图像生成来说，现在不过是把插画师干的事搬过来。但摄影刚出现时，人们觉得它威胁写实绘画，于是艺术转向抽象来避开冲突。回头看，当时很多人忧心忡忡，担心这会贬低艺术。

What is the native phase gonna look like? Like what is, I think it's going to be, and usually that for me at least personally, I like the native phase better because it's kind of crazier and more interesting. And, know, so what would, know, if you look at image generation, they're kind of just basically taking what illustrators do. But one thing I would mention is, like, a cool thing with photography, I think, is that when it first came along, it seemed like a threat to representative painting. And you saw kind of art move to more abstract art to kind of get away from that.

但有趣的事发生了：一种新艺术形式诞生了——电影。所以照片只是相机的拟物“应用”，而电影才是原生应用，对吧？

And I think, you know, you go back and read stuff at the time and there was a lot of kind of hand wringing around that. Like, is this gonna, you know, kind of cheapen this art form? But an interesting thing happened, right, which is a new art form emerged, which is film, right? So you took, you took, it wasn't just you copying. So in some sense, like photographs were the skeuomorphic kind of quote unquote app of cameras, but film was a native one, right?

你拥有了一种新的艺术形式。我对AI也有类似的疑问。就像现在这种图像生成，它有点像，你知道的，把人类可能做的事自动化，还有电影生成以及我们在网上看到的其他视频。但会不会有一种全新的媒介，比如说，还没出现？会不会是，也许是虚拟世界之类的，你大概能想到一堆可能的假设。

You had a new art form. And I wonder about that with AI. Like right now you have the kind of image generation, which is kind of, you know, taking what a human might do and automating it and movie generation and the other kind of videos we see online. But is there a new medium, for example, that hasn't emerged yet? Is it, know, maybe it's a virtual worlds or something, you there's probably a bunch of hypotheses of what it could be.

但我的经验是，它常常出人意料，很难预测。可正是这些地方，才冒出最酷、最有创意、最有趣的东西。也许还得再等一代人，或者说，五到十年，让一群真正AI原生的小孩长大。

But my experience has been as often as surprising and it's hard to predict. But that's where a lot of the cool, creative, interesting stuff comes in. It may it may take another generation or, you know, five to ten years for like a new set of AI native kind of kids to grow up.

没错。是啊。其实特别有趣，因为我们某种意义上正处在AI的“命令行时代”。有些东西，你知道的，你能用语言说清楚。但如果我问你，比如说，你喜欢什么样的音乐？

That's right. Yeah. It's actually really interesting because we're in a sense, we're in the command line era of AI. And there's some things that, you know, you can articulate well with words. But if I describe to you, like, what kind of music do you like?

这很难讲，我们没那个词汇。大多数人只能说，嗯，我喜欢某种声音，某种审美，有点情绪化但又不太阴郁，110拍每分钟。多数人缺乏语言去描述他们热爱的艺术。所以连“提示生成媒体”这个想法都显得拟物化，肯定存在一种更原生的探索方式。我还不知道那长什么样，但长期看，如果还是靠提示，我会很惊讶。

It's hard to say, you know, we don't have the language for it. Most people to say, well, I like a certain sound with a certain sort of aesthetic and it's moody, but not too moody and it's 110 beats per minute. Like, most people lack the language to articulate the art that they love. So even the idea of prompt to media feels skeuomorphic, and there's got to be like a more native way to explore it. I don't know what that looks like yet, but I'd be surprised if it's prompts in the long term.

提示，现在有人开始叫“上下文工程”，而不是“提示工程”，我觉得这是个不错的重新命名，或者说有人在这么叫，对吧？因为这确实就是你在做的事，对吧？你把我在现实世界里做的这一切ChatGPT看不到的东西，都总结起来，把那些它看不见的隐藏知识、上下文，塞进去，对吧？

Prompt like I guess people are now calling it context engineering, not prompt engineering, which I think is a nice or some people are, right? Which is I think is a nice rephrasing. Because that is kind of what you're doing, right? You're taking the fact that all of this stuff I do in the real world that ChatGPT isn't able to see, right? And I'm trying to summarize all that knowledge that's hidden to it, the context, and put it in there, right?

而这确实像是一件该被自动化的事。是啊。告诉机器。我想人们做的那些可能的新型环境设备，大概就是在干这个。

And that does feel like something that should be automated. Yeah. Tell the machines. I think that's what people I assume that's what they're doing with these potentially new ambient devices people are creating.

是啊。哦，我是说，即使在媒体这件事上，你知道，我的Spotify曲库大概比我能说出来的话，更能生成我喜欢的音乐。

Yeah. Oh, I mean, even in the media case, you know, like my Spotify library is probably much more useful for generating music that I like versus my articulation of it.

没错。我觉得我们现在处在一个不同的时代了。我已经开始相信，我们像是进入了一个新的纪元，就像互联网已经建好了，我们刚才也说了，互联网建好了，而这只是一个不同的，也许，你知道，也许这就是为什么我刚才说，一些像网络效应这样的东西，现在可能没那么重要了，因为它已经被内嵌在网络本身里，被外部化了。也许我们这些创业者或投资者过去二十年信奉的一些教条，实际上正在改变。

That's right. I think we're in a different era now. Like, I think the AI I I kind of have come to believe that we're sort of in a different epoch epic or epoch, like in the sense that the Internet is built, we were saying earlier, the Internet's built and this is just a different and maybe like, you know, some of these that's why I was saying earlier, like some of these things like network effects, maybe they're less important now because it's in the network itself. It's externalized. And maybe that some of these kind of dogmas that people like I have, you know, as entrepreneurs or investors have believed for twenty years are changing actually and different.

所以在这个意义上，是啊，经验反而可能变成阻碍。

And so in that sense, yeah, I think in that sense, experience can be a hindrance.

你在另一个播客里提到，如果要在AI世界里选一个问题让你投入热情，那就是开源和开源AI。你愿意展开说说吗？

You'd mentioned in another pod that, you know, if you had one one sort of issue to get passionate about in the world of AI was open source and open source AI. Do you do you wanna speak to that for a moment?

我们之前聊到网络的民主化，或者说互联网、科技被集中到什么程度。我觉得——很多人也会同意——开源软件是让技术民主化的关键力量，对吧？你能花70块买到一部安卓手机、低成本上网，核心原因就是软件几乎全免费。想象一下，如果没有开源，操作系统厂商收700块授权费，你买设备得付，后端也得付。

Well, we were talking earlier about the democratization of the web or how kind of consolidated the Internet is or technology is. You know, I think I would argue, and I think a lot of people would argue, that open source software has been an incredibly important force for democratizing technology. Right? I mean, reason that you can get a an Android phone for $10 and can get on the Internet so cheaply, right, is your is that basically all the software is free. I mean, imagine if there was an open source and, you know, operating system providers used to charge $100 and you'd be paying that on clients and maybe on the back end.

还有一整层软件栈都要收费。可现实是，绝大多数网络流量跑的都是开源代码。这也成就了创业公司：我们投个初创团队，他们花几十万甚至更少，就能上线极具竞争力的产品。

And there's a whole other set of stack of software that you'd be paying for. And instead, you're not. Most internet users are, you know, the vast majority of the kind of bits being hit are open source. It also is what makes, you know, startups exist, right? We can fund startups and they can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and, you know, or even less sometimes and be up and running with, you know, really competitive, great software.

这就是开源的功劳。因此，我们常从政策层面呼吁保护开源、保持竞争。第一步，别禁它——有些法案，尤其是州级提案，虽非明文禁止，却等于事实封杀。比如加州曾有一案，要给软件开发者无限下游责任，那基本就扼杀了开源。

And that's because of open source, right? So we, you know, I think about a lot and I think, you know, on a policy side as a firm, we've been big advocates for, you know, making sure open source is around and competitive. And, you know, first that means not banning it, which there are bills out there, particularly at the state level that want to put in, you know, not explicit bans, but de facto bans. So like, for example, California had a bill that would have created unlimited downstream liability for software developers, which would have effectively killed open source. So that's step number one.

第二步，得有激励让人愿意做开源。我看过一段Dorkish采访微软Satya，他说企业客户总要求至少有一个开源选项，于是他们会出资，这就解释了为何总有“专有+开源”并存的局面。

And then I think step number two is, you know, are the incentives there to create open source? I think I watched a interview, I think it was a dorkish interview with Satya from Microsoft recently who had a really good interview. He argued that open source will always exist because enterprise customers always demand at least one kind of open source alternative. Like, they'll just they'll they'll end up Okay. Funding And that's why you always see kind of this proprietary open source, you know, combo.

但再看Meta的Llama，不知他们能否坚持；一些初创也在做；中国对开源非常积极，可能算国家战略。也许初期为了吸引目光、做营销先开源，后面就关源。

But then you have, you know, Facebook is doing with Llama. I don't know if they'll continue to do that. There are some startups doing it. You know, China has been very into open source. Maybe that's a kind of a national strategy.

AI和操作系统不同：后者找群程序员就能写；前者得砸巨额资本训练模型。所以长期有没有稳定的开源资金模式，仍是未知数。我觉得一种可能且不错的结果是：开源始终稍落后半步，就像OpenAI现在放出的旧模型。

Maybe that changes some. Maybe you do it at first to kind of create attention and kind of marketing, and then you change it. I wish there were more you know, it's just the thing with AI that's different than operating systems. Like with operating systems and databases, you just needed a bunch of coders sitting around. With AI, you need massive capital expenditure to train the models.

我认为这结果可以接受。对创业公司和消费者而言，五年前的“次顶级”模型大概率够用——比如便宜地获得医疗咨询。真正顶尖的能力，你再去付费。

So I just don't know long I think it's an unknown question long term. Are there good steady state funding models for open source? I think a possible outcome, which I think is a pretty good outcome, is open source is just always a little bit behind, like, the way OpenAI is now releasing older models. Yeah. Yeah.

也许这就是一种不错的均衡状态。我希望能朝这个方向发展。最糟的情形是，只剩四家巨头掌握远胜他人的闭源技术，向消费者和初创公司收租。

And I think that's probably a fine outcome. Like, for startups to exist for consume you know, we want consumers to get inexpensive health care advice. You know, the next best model in five years will probably be good enough. Most startups, it will probably be good enough. And then for the, you know, super high end stuff, you pay for it.

也许这就是一种不错的均衡状态。我希望能朝这个方向发展。最糟的情形是，只剩四家巨头掌握远胜他人的闭源技术，向消费者和初创公司收租。

Maybe that's a good outcome, a good kind of equilibrium state. Maybe that's where we're headed. I hope so. I think it would just be a bad outcome if you had four companies that had, you know, just vastly better closed source technology and could effectively, you know, kind of charge rent to consumers and startups.

是啊，很有意思。我常回想安卓早期的开放理念，跟谷歌“开放网络”思维很契合；后来眼看iOS靠封闭生态碾压，安卓也变得越来越封闭，开始学iOS那套。且看Meta和Llama会不会重演这一幕。

Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's interesting. I think a lot about the early ethos of Android, felt like it matched Google's sort of open web mindset. And then when it became clear that iOS was beating their pants off by being a closed ecosystem, Android became very closed and started to mimic the sort of closed iOS strategies. So we'll see what happens with Meta and Llama if they sort of replicate that.

但这是一个令人担忧的动态。我认为更乐观的情况是，我们还没有看到那种应用平台反馈循环以及基础模型带来的锁定效应。所以，你知道，某种程度上可以说，它们有理由继续发布下一个最好的模型，而且到目前为止，这些模型之间多少可以互相替代。

But that's a worrying dynamic. I think that the more optimistic case is that we haven't yet seen the same sort of app platform feedback loop and the lock in that you get from the foundation models. So, you know, there is sort of a case for them to continue to release the next best model and for the models to be somewhat substitutes for each other so far.

是的，Android 的例子是一个很好的警示故事，对吧？因为我觉得也许从某些技术层面来说，部分代码是开源的，但实际上并不是。所有的服务、其他一切，你知道，信息等等。而且这是一个他们曾经做出很多开放姿态的案例。所以，是的，那会是令人担忧的地方。

Yeah, the Android case is a good kind of, I think, cautionary tale, right? Because I think maybe in some technical sense, some of the code is open source, but it de facto isn't right. All the services, everything else like you know, information. And it was one where, yeah, where they kind of made lots of overtures that way. So that would be yeah, that would be the worry.

但确实感觉，我觉得比三年前或者中国开源相关的事情要好多了。政策方面也更好。我们看到，比如 OpenAI 开放旧模型。看起来我们在开源方面处于一个更好的位置。我觉得部分原因也是那种“聊天机器人会杀人”之类的恐慌宣传。

But it does seem I think it feels a lot better than it did three years ago or something with the China, the China open source stuff. The policy stuff is better. We're seeing, you know, the fact that OpenAI is doing older models. Like, it seems like we're in a better spot for open source. I think some of that's also the scaremongering that like a chatbot's gonna murder everyone or something.

据我所知，到目前为止 literally 没有人因为 ChatGPT 死亡，你知道，就是整个……所以我想也许人们开始冷静下来了。感觉我们处于一个更好的位置。我持谨慎乐观态度。

Literally zero people have died from ChatGPT so far as far as, know, it's just the whole, you know, so I think that maybe people are chilling out on. It feels like we're in a much better spot. I'm cautiously optimistic.

是的，两年前大家讨论的很多是，如果 OpenAI 是唯一的玩家，随着时间推移，他们会拿走所有互补品的经济价值，但现在看起来并没有发生，这正如你在那本关于膨胀的精彩书中提到的，感觉这也是大家对收购 ID 感兴趣的原因，因为他们明白，如果基础模型开始变得更加可互换，他们就必须向上游移动，去掌控面向用户的经济价值。太棒了。Chris，非常感谢你。能听到你谈论消费者和 AI 以及所有影响真是太好了，我们非常感激你在我们事务所。

Yeah, two years ago the conversation was a lot about, you know, if OpenAI is the only game in town, over time they take all the economics of the complements and it doesn't feel like that's happened, which is, you know, to your point in the amazing book about ballooning, feels like that's why there's a lot of interest in acquiring IDs because they understand that, like, if the foundation models start to become more interchangeable, they're gonna have to move upstream and own, you know, user facing economics. Amazing. Well, Chris, thank you so much. It's great to hear you talk about sort of consumer and AI and and all the implications, and we're we're super thankful to have you at the firm.

非常感谢。这很有趣。

Well, thank you. Thank you. This was fun.

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