桑吉特·比斯瓦斯（Samsara）——创造现实世界的影响力

欢迎大家来到斯坦福大学创业思想领袖研讨会。本次创业思想研讨会是为有抱负的创业者举办的斯坦福专场活动，由斯坦福科技创业项目(STVP)和斯坦福创业学生商业协会(BASIS)联合主办。我是拉维·巴拉尼，斯坦福管理科学与工程系讲师。今天我们非常荣幸地邀请到Samsara公司CEO兼联合创始人桑吉特·比斯瓦斯作为主讲嘉宾。有多少人听说过Samsara？

Welcome, everybody, to the entrepreneurial thought leader seminar at Stanford. The entrepreneurial thought seminar is seminar is the Stanford seminar for aspiring entrepreneurs, and it is brought to you by STVP, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and BASIS, the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students. The I am Ravi Balani, a lecturer in the management science and engineering department at Stanford. And today, we are thrilled to have as our etail keynote keynote, Sanjit Biswas, the CEO and cofounder of Samsara. How many people have heard of Samsara?

好的。如果没听说过，今天你们将会了解更多。Samsara是一家市值200亿美元的上市公司，正通过物联网(IoT)的力量彻底改变多个行业。桑吉特延续了本季度斯坦福工程学院百年庆典的传统，因为他确实是工程学院的杰出校友代表。事实上，他当年就上过这门课。

Okay. Well, if you haven't, you're gonna know more about it today. Samsara is a $20,000,000,000 publicly tradable company which is really transforming industries using the power of the Internet of Things or IoT. Sanjeet is continuing the tradition this quarter of the Stanford School of Engineering centennial, the hundred year celebration of the School of Engineering, because he's truly one of the School of Engineering's owns. In fact, he literally took this class.

二十多年前，他也曾是一名学生，就坐在你们现在的位置。他获得了计算机科学与工程学士学位。在场有多少人是计算机专业？有多少人是电子工程专业？

He was a student a little over twenty years ago. He was in your seat. He graduated with a bachelor's in computer science and engineering. How many people are are CS majors? How many people are double e?

没错，桑吉特当年就坐在你们的座位上。不仅如此，他还是斯坦福周边社区的毕业生。他在斯坦福附近的林布鲁克读完高中，随后在斯坦福获得计算机系统工程学士学位。

Okay. So Sanjit was literally in your seats. And in fact, even more than that, he's a graduate of the community around Stanford. He grew up and went to high school nearby Stanford at Limbruck. He graduates from Stanford with a bachelor's in computer systems engineering.

之后他前往麻省理工学院攻读电子工程与计算机科学硕士。在MIT期间，他曾考虑继续攻读博士学位，但最终选择与同事将无线网状网络的研究成果商业化，创立了Meraki公司。几年后Meraki被思科以12亿美元收购。桑吉特随后在思科担任副总裁一段时间，接着创立了新公司Samsara，致力于实现物理资产的数字化和优化。

He then goes to MIT to get a master's in computer science in double E. And while he's at MIT and he even continues on a little bit, he flirts with getting a PhD, he stops out and commercializes with some of his colleagues research on wireless mesh networking that becomes a company called Meraki. And Meraki gets acquired by Cisco a few years later for $1,200,000,000. Okay? Sanjeet then goes and becomes was a VP at Cisco for a stint, and then he starts his new company, which is Samsara, with really the mission of digitizing and optimizing physical assets.

Samsara的核心就是通过数据与硬件的数字化，实现物理世界中软件与硬件的融合。他获得的荣誉不胜枚举：世界经济论坛技术先锋、高盛最具魅力企业家、SaaS领域TOP50 CEO。但对我们而言最重要的是，学生成为老师的时刻弥足珍贵。在座各位都是学生，

So think about everything around digitizing data and hardware and the intersection of software and hardware in the physical world is what Samsara is all about. He has more accolades than I have time to do justice for. He is a World Economic Forum technology pioneer, one of Goldman Sachs' most intriguing entrepreneurs, a top 50 SaaS CEO. But what he what matters the most to us is that there are rare moments when we have students who become the teachers. All of you are students.

二十年后，你们也可能受邀回来做主旨演讲。那将是一个特别圆满的时刻。现在，请大家和我一起热烈欢迎桑吉特。

And in twenty years, you may be invited to get keynote back. When that happens, it's a particularly special full circle moment for us. So with that, please join me in giving a warm ETL welcome to Sanjeet.

在我们准备的时候，能举个手吗？你们中有多少人是本科生？好的，研究生呢？很好。工程类专业的同学呢？

Can I get a show of hands while we're setting up? How many of you are undergrads? Okay, and how about grad students? Cool. And engineering ish majors?

好的，看来大部分都是。非常棒。正如拉维所说，不久前——或许也不算太近——我也曾坐在你们的位置上，穿着你们的鞋子。接下来我会简单介绍一下背景，然后我们会深入探讨两家初创公司。如拉维提到的，我主修计算机系统工程，那算是计算机科学和电子工程的结合。

Okay, most of the room. Very cool. So as Ravi said, I was very much like in your seats, in your shoes not too long ago or maybe kind of long ago. And what I'll do is kind of just give you the quick backstory and then we'll dive into both the startup companies. So as Ravi said, I majored in computer systems engineering, that's kind of the mix of CS and Double E.

我甚至不确定这个专业现在是否还存在。但它完全关乎技术。这是我从高中到本科阶段一直热衷的领域。我对技术及其对世界的影响极为着迷。我在这里读本科时，谷歌刚刚起步，现在回想起来真是令人难以置信。

I don't even know if it's around anymore as a major. But it's very much it's all about technology. And this is something I was always passionate about whether I was in high school or when I was an undergrad here. I was super fascinated by technologies and how they had impact in the world. And when I was an undergrad here, Google was getting started, which is kind of mind blowing to think about.

我的孩子们会问：竟然有过没有谷歌的时代？确实如此。而它正是从这里起步的。这完美展示了创意能产生多大的影响力。我刚入学时，它还叫BackRub，只是个校园内部系统。

My kids are like, there was a time before Google? And it's true. And it started here. And it was an example of how much impact an idea could have. So when I started as a freshman, it was still called BackRub, or was like an on campus only system.

到我毕业时，它已成为全球现象。无论我去世界哪个角落，人们都在用谷歌搜索。这深深激励了我——开发新技术并将其推广能带来巨大影响。所以我今天演讲的主题就是创造真实世界的影响力。拉维在介绍中也提到，我从这里本科毕业后去了研究生院。

And then by the time I graduated, it was like a global phenomenon. Anywhere I traveled in the world, people were doing Google queries and all kinds of stuff. And so for me, that's what motivated me, this idea that you could have massive impact from developing these new technologies and getting them out there. So that's kind of the theme for my talk today is just having a real world impact. And Ravi also mentioned in the bio, I went from being an undergrad here to grad school.

我想深入研究并理解构建和研发新技术是怎样的体验。我申请了博士项目，被MIT录取后横跨美国搬了过去，我认为故事真正开始于我研究生第一学期。因为对技术和研究的热情，到MIT后我立即全力投入，想开展大量研究、发表论文，迅速产生影响。那是个激动人心的时期。

So I wanted to go really deep and understand what is it like to build and research new technologies. I applied to PhD programs, I got into the program at MIT and moved cross country, and that's really I think where this story begins, which is right around the first semester of grad school for me. So because I was so excited about technology and research, when I got to MIT the first thing I did was just try to go as full immersion as possible. And I wanted to do tons of research, write tons of papers, and go have that impact instantly. And this was an exciting time.

那是大约二十年前。分布式系统和P2P技术正在兴起，人们首次构建大型网络系统，新型芯片架构不断涌现。有太多可研究的领域，我记得刚到那里时就想着：好，我得全力以赴了。

This was like twenty years ago. There was distributed system stuff and peer to peer happening. People were building really big web systems for the first time. There were new chip architectures that were coming out. So there was a lot to work on, and I remember getting there and thinking like, Okay, I've to get in gear.

为了进入这个项目，我真的付出了很多努力。我需要开始发表论文。所以我当时很狂热，同时在做很多事情，直到某天我的博士生导师罗伯特·莫里斯拦住我说：听着，提醒一下，你可能会在这里待很久。计算机科学的博士通常要读五年以上，你不需要立刻发表论文。与其试图做所有事，不如专注做好一件事如何？

I've worked really hard to get into this program. I need to start publishing papers. So I was frenetic, I was working on lots of things, and at some point my PhD advisor Robert Morris stopped me and said, Hey, just FYI, you're probably going to be here a while. PhDs take over five years in computer science, you don't need to publish papers instantly. So instead of trying to work on everything, why don't you just work on something?

这个建议非常棒，因为我当时正疯狂地试图研究所有有趣的问题。他的建议是：选择一个宏大而有意义的领域深入研究，在这个过程中你自然会发现值得发表的真知灼见，论文成果也会水到渠成。有点像相信过程本身，但问题选择确实至关重要。他建议我和另一位同期入学的博士生约翰·比克特组队。

And that was really great advice because I was sort of in a frenzy trying to just work on all the interesting problems. And his suggestion was work on something big and meaningful, an area where you can really go deep, and in the process of that you'll probably find something interesting, you'll find some insights that you can publish on, that's where you'll get your papers from and so on. So kind of just like trust the process, but the problem that you work on is really important, the problem selection. And what he suggested is that I team up with another new PhD student who'd started at the same time as me, and his name was John Bickett. He joined the lab, same research group, same year and everything.

他说约翰也是新生，你们何不一起做这个项目？罗伯特了解我的背景——我在本科主修CS和AA，专攻网络方向。所以他提议：也许你能帮上忙，约翰正在搭建一个大型无线网络。

And he said, John's a new student too. Why don't you guys work together on this project? And Robert knew my background, was in CS and AA, knew about networking, that's what I'd worked on here as an undergrad. So he said, maybe you can help him out. He's building this big wireless network.

于是我和约翰成了搭档。后来他成为我两家公司的联合创始人。我们最终构建的系统叫MIT RoofNet，就是幻灯片上这个——它曾是我们的实验平台。

So I paired up with John. John's now been my co founder across both these companies. And we ended up building a system called the MIT RoofNet. And that's what you see on the slide here. This was like our experimental platform.

RoofNet的核心构想是为MIT和哈佛所在的剑桥市提供免费WiFi覆盖。二十年前这可是大事，那时还没有4G/5G。宽带网络相当昂贵，我们觉得这个点子很酷：既能给同学们提供免费网络，又能借此搭建无线网络实验平台进行研究。

And the basic idea behind RoofNet was we wanted to try to cover the entire city of Cambridge, where MIT and Harvard are, with basically free Wi Fi, with wireless internet access. And twenty years ago, this was a big deal because this is before four gs and five gs and all that stuff. Broadband internet was pretty expensive, and we thought this would be kind of cool. We could give our fellow grad students something of value, like get them internet access, do it for free, and in the process build a really interesting wireless networking test bed and go do research on it. So that's what RoofNet was.

右侧可以看到当时的设备：黑箱里装着运行所有软件的硬件，电缆连接屋顶天线组成网状网络——左边这张图展示的就是这个大型无线网络。

On the right hand side, can see what that equipment looked like. So there's a black box in there that had our hardware, ran all of our software. There was this cable that went up to the roof and an antenna, and it formed a mesh network. And that's what this image here on the left is. So it's a big wireless network.

头两年我们投入了海量工作：开发全部软件、实际运维网络。这有点像创业——我们有用户群体，但团队很小，必须确保系统在断电后能自动恢复并完成自我配置。

And for the first couple of years, this ended up just being a ton of work. We were building all the software. We were actually running the network. So this is kind of like a startup in the sense that we had customers, these users. We weren't a very big team, so we had to make the system just kind of always land on its feet after a power outage and how it configure itself.

我们当时正在进行研究，试图弄清楚如何才能让这个网络真正运作起来。那时候，WiFi还是一项非常新兴的技术。有些人客厅里装了WiFi，但远未普及。所以我们正在挑战技术可能性的极限。

And we were doing research to figure out, well, how can you make this network really work? And at that point in time, Wi Fi was a super nascent technology. Some people had it in their living rooms. It wasn't really widespread. So we were pushing the limits of what was possible.

在这个过程中，我们学到了很多。在网络方面，我们研究了流量路由技术。而在用户端，有数百名学生正在使用它。于是我们开始思考：当高峰时段所有人都在下载大量内容时，该如何应对？

And in the process of that, we learned a ton. So on the networking side, networks. We learned about routing traffic. And then on the user side we had hundreds of students using it. So we started to figure out, Okay, what do you do when it's peak time and everyone's downloading a bunch of stuff?

流媒体技术开始兴起。面对如此巨大的网络负载该怎么办？这就产生了许多有趣的研究课题。正如罗伯特预测的那样，大约三年后，我们开始就这些课题发表大量研究成果。这些研究很快引起了广泛关注。

Streaming was starting to happen. So what do you do with all that network load? So lots of interesting research problems. And true to Robert's prediction, about three years in we just started publishing lots of interesting work about all those topics. And the research started getting really picked up.

成果进入了顶级会议，赢得了多项大奖，这非常棒。看到这些成就令人兴奋。在构建系统的同时，我们还有个想法：如果能帮助其他人搭建大型WiFi网络该多好？我们认为这项技术非常酷，毕竟每个人都想接入互联网。

So it got into the top conferences, won a bunch of awards, and that was great. It was really fun to see that. As we were building this, we also had this idea of wouldn't it be amazing if we could enable other people to build big Wi Fi networks? So we just thought this was super cool technology. Everyone's going to want internet access.

于是我们将其开源。我们把所有资料发布在研究网站上，包括工作原理的论文，甚至提供了物料清单和自助组网指南。但现实是大多数人并非计算机专业研究生，也没有足够预算。

So we open sourced it. We put it on our research website. We'd publish all the papers about how it worked. We even put a bill of materials and basically how to assemble that kit for yourself and set up networks. But the reality was not a lot of people were computer science grad students, they didn't have the budget.

顺便说，那个路由器每个造价约3000美元，相当昂贵。对普通人来说下载代码并完成配置并不现实。但我们始终坚信'人人都该有WiFi'这个理念——那可是2000年代初，对我们来说这是必然趋势。至于Meraki的创立，其实并非我们最初计划。

That box, by the way, cost about $3,000 per router, so it was pretty expensive, and it wasn't practical for them to download the code and set it all up. But this was an idea that was in our minds of everyone should have Wi Fi. This was again early 2000s. It just felt inevitable to us. And just in terms of how we got started with Meraki, it wasn't actually a thing that we wanted to do.

并不是说'好，我们现在就去开公司吧'。我们只是单纯希望这项技术能改变世界。于是我们想到：可以把所有技术浓缩到一块廉价的小电路板上，让别人也能实现组网。唯一的问题是我们没有启动资金，根本没钱创办公司。

It wasn't like, Okay, let's go start a company now. We just simply wanted to see this technology go have impact in the world. So the connection here is we had this idea that we could take all of that technology and shrink it down and get it to run on like a little tiny circuit board, inexpensive, and enable other people to do it. But the only problem was we didn't have money to go do that. We didn't have money to start a company.

当时我们还是研究生，没有自己的资金支持。这基本上还是个研究项目，但这个想法一直萦绕在我们脑海中，我们非常想把它实现。

We were grad students. We had no funding of our own. And it was kind of still a research project. But this idea was in our heads. We really wanted to make it happen.

恰逢学术研究积累了一定影响力，我们开始受邀去演讲。记得2005年来斯坦福大学时，正好收到谷歌邀请，去山景城总部做技术分享。他们对无线网络也很感兴趣——那时安卓项目刚起步，谷歌希望看到更多免费网络，这对他们的业务有利。

And it so happens that academic research had been getting enough momentum that we started getting invited to give talks. So I think I came here to Stanford in 2005, and right around that time I got invited to go down street to Google and give a talk there as well down in Mountain View. And they were really interested in wireless networks too. They were just starting with the Android project at the time. They wanted to see a lot of free internet because it was good for their usage.

我们展示了路由协议等之前提到的技术。谷歌特别喜欢天马行空的大规模构想，于是我在最后一页幻灯片放上了我们的创意：一块电路板，这就是我们疯狂的核心构想。

And so we presented on the routing protocols and all the stuff I talked about earlier. And at Google they loved crazy ideas, big, large scale ideas. So I presented a slide that had our idea. And this was the last slide of the presentation. We showed this circuit board, and this was our concept or big crazy idea.

本质上就是把之前展示的设备微型化，成本能控制在100美元以内。我们相信只要实现这个，就能让RoofNet遍地开花。令人惊喜的是，谷歌团队听完演讲后主动表示：'我们喜欢这个疯狂点子，想帮你们实现——怎么才能拿到这些电路板？'我不得不解释这张图是PS的概念效果，但凭借电子工程背景，我们做出了逼真的技术渲染图。他们当即决定：'我们下订单生产这些电路板，协助你们部署如何？'

And it was basically all that equipment that you saw on the previous one but shrunk down. This thing would cost less than $100 to make way less than $100 And we felt like if we could make this, we could make RoofNet possible anywhere. So what was cool was the Google folks, they were really receptive, they listened to the talk, and a team came up at the end of the talk and said, hey, we loved your crazy idea, we want to make it happen, how do we get those boards? And I had to explain one thing I forgot to mention, this is Photoshop. This was a concept, it was really like we wanted to see it through, and because we had that technical background and knew about all the EE of it, we were able to make a photorealistic rendering of how this could work, and they said, well okay, we're happy to help you make this happen, why don't we put down an order for these circuit boards and you guys can make them and we'll help deploy them?

2005年那场演讲后，我们意外获得了约2000台设备的订单，这成为关键的启动火花。不过当时RoofNet还不是公司，我拿着谷歌采购单回MIT咨询：'该怎么兑现？这些电路板要怎么生产？'

So I basically came back from that talk at the 2005 with a commitment or an order for about 2,000, I think, of these units, which is really exciting. And that was what we felt like was the spark that we needed to get the stuff out there. At this point it still wasn't a company though, this was still just RoofNet. And I remember going to MIT and I had this basically purchase order from Google and I went to the institute and I said, how do I cash this? I need to make these boards, how do we do that?

校方答复说研究机构只能接受拨款和捐赠，无法处理商业订单。第二天我换了个思路问：'如果我们成立公司来承接订单并搭载软件呢？'他们欣然同意：'你们的研究本就是开源项目，完全可行。'

And at MIT they looked at me funding, they said, we're a research institution, we can take grants, we can take donations, can't take purchase orders. And I said, okay, got it. And then I think I went back the next day and was like, Well if we started a company could we set that up to fulfill this and we'll put our software on it? And they said, Yeah, that makes sense. You guys have done this all in the public domain, it's all open source, go for it.

这就是Meraki公司的起源。但还有个障碍：电路板量产问题。我们联系了行业头部制造商，要实现目标价位，必须依靠亚洲的大规模生产基地。

And so that's actually what prompted us to start Meraki. And you may think, Okay, now we're off and running. There was one snag which was we still need to get these circuit boards made. So we figured out who the largest manufacturers were of this kind of stuff. In order to get the price point to where it needed to be, it had to be made in Asia at scale.

碰巧我们实验室的一个赞助商是Delta Networks公司——MIT实验室的赞助商之一就是Delta Networks，他们为Netgear、思科等公司大量生产这类设备。于是我们向他们推介，他们看到了电路板，而他们正是这些产品的制造商。我记得一位工程副总裁仔细研究后说，你们做得不错，只是有个部件装反了。他说，好吧，我们可以做这个。但条件是必须达到最低订单量，即至少生产5000台。

And it just so happened that one of our lab sponsors was this company Delta Networks lab sponsors at MIT was Delta Networks, and they made a lot of these for Netgear and Cisco and other companies. So we ended up pitching them, they saw the circuit board and they're the manufacturers of millions of these things. I remember an engineering VP studied it really closely and he looked at it he's like, you did a good job except that one part's backwards. And he said, okay, we can do this. But the catch was they needed to do a minimum order quantity or minimum run of 5,000 units.

当时我们从谷歌拿到了约2000台的订单，这有点像众筹模式了。我们不得不四处奔走，寻找是否还有其他人愿意帮我们完成生产。这就是真正的自举过程。最终我们找到了一些想为低收入社区提供免费WiFi的非营利组织，还有一些对商业街WiFi等项目感兴趣的人。

So we had like 2,000 from Google and at that point it became kind of a Kickstarter. And we had to go shop around and figure out, could we find other people who wanted to help us get these made? So that was really the bootstrap. We ended up finding a bunch of nonprofits that want to do free Wi Fi and low income housing. We found some other people interested in Wi Fi for main streets and things like that.

我们把这些订单拼凑起来，通过大幅折扣获得预付款后终于完成了生产。那时我们成立了第一家初创公司Meraki，但完全是自力更生——换句话说，我们仅靠客户资金运作，没有任何外部融资。

And we were able to scrape all these orders together. We did a big discount in order to get the prepayment, and we got these things made. And at that point we did start the first startup company Meraki, but it was totally bootstrapped. In other words, we were just customer funded. We had no outside financing of our own.

所以起步相当简陋。我们的真实目标更像是个暑期项目。背景是约翰和我同期开始攻读博士，当时已读到第四年。那时我们的导师罗伯特说要休假六个月——他妻子要去非洲做研究。他说你们有半年时间自由发挥这个项目，我们就把这当作实验机会，Meraki本质上就是场大型实验。

And so it was pretty modest, beginnings. And our real goal is it was almost like a summer project. And the other context here is John and I, we both started the PhDs at the same time. I think we were about four years into it. And at that point, Robert, our advisor said he was going to go on a sabbatical for like six months.

我们招募了研究生时期实验室的同学，还找了一两个本科好友。左上角那位摩根就是我本科时的无线实验室搭档。我们最初只想完成那批订单，于是开发了所有软件，装好设备发给谷歌。这是租的小办公室，离谷歌不算近但能步行到达，我们常去蹭免费食物带回办公室边吃边搞开发。

His wife was going to do some research in Africa. So he said, you guys have six months, do what you want with this project, we'll see where it goes, and so we took that as like, okay, we can do this as an experiment, and so that's what Meraki was, was basically a big experiment. We recruited our friends from grad school that had been in our research lab. I recruited one or two of my friends from undergrad as well. The guy on the top left is Morgan, who's my WL lab partner as an undergrad.

回想起来这段经历超级有趣。我们非常幸运能结识这么多才华横溢的本科和研究生同学，他们就像晶种一样孕育了Meraki公司。交付首批几千台设备后，我们开始真正验证这个实验：能否帮他人搭建大型WiFi网络？用预付款多生产的几千台设备，我们放上官网想看看会不会有人购买——最酷的是客户居然主动找到了我们。

And we basically wanted to fulfill that initial order. So we went, wrote all the software, got it on the devices, got them out to Google. This is like a little tiny office space that we rented. It was like not quite walking distance, but it was like a long walk to Google. So we'd like raid their free food, bring it back to the office and just like hack and work on this stuff.

（注：此处原文与第六段内容重复，根据输入输出1:1原则保留空翻译项）

And this is super fun. Looking back on it, we were just super fortunate to have met so many incredibly talented people as both undergrads and grad students that this was the beginning of the seed crystal really of our company Meraki. So we got those couple thousand units out there and then we got to really run the experiment, which was like could we enable other people to build big Wi Fi networks? With the dollars we got for the prepayment, we were able to get a couple thousand units made extra and we put them on our website and just wanted to see would anyone buy these things instead of networks. And the coolest part was they somehow found us.

我不确定这些数据是来自我们的研究还是谷歌搜索，亦或其他渠道，但到了夏末，我想是秋季时，我们得到了一张这样的网络部署地图。虽然密密麻麻的红色标记让人难以辨认，但前六个月我们协助搭建了约1000个网络。这款产品确实奏效了——这些设备插电即用，能组建超大WiFi网络，自动平衡流量，人们将其用于公寓楼群和主街区的无线覆盖。地图边缘没完全显示，但我们甚至在智利最南端的小渔村也有部署，这实在太酷了。

I don't know if it was from our research or Google searches or who knows what, but by the end of the summer, I think by the fall, we had a network deployment map that looked like this. And you can't quite make it out from all the red markers, but there were about 1,000 networks that we helped set up in the first six months. So the product really worked. You could just plug these things in anywhere, they could form a really big Wi Fi network, they would balance all the traffic, and folks were using it for Wi Fi in apartment complexes, on main streets. It cuts off the tip of the map, but we had a deployment at this little tiny fishing village at the Southern tip of Chile, It was really, really cool.

随后我们面临抉择：接下来该何去何从？这原本是个实验，约定只做六个月。如今成功了，我们必须决定是回波士顿完成博士学位，还是将这件事坚持到底？

And then we had a decision to make, which is well, what do we want to do? It was an experiment. We said let's try this for six months. It had been successful and we had to make a decision of do we go back to Boston, go finish our Ph. PhDs or do we see this thing through?

经过集体讨论，我们一致认为这项目太酷太有趣，必须看到它的发展。此前我们没融过资，一直自力更生摸索前行，但意识到若要认真推进、雇佣朋友们，就需要支付薪资和医保等开支。于是我们决定寻求风投，红杉资本领投了A轮融资，这标志着我们第一年的结束。就这样，我们从学术研究概念走向了初期产品，首年销售额约百万美元——我想正是这点引起了投资者注意。

So we all kind of talked about it and we said this is like too cool, this is too interesting, we have to see where this goes. And up until this point we hadn't raised any money and we were just kind of like trying to figure out how to bootstrap this thing, but we realized if we were going to do this in earnest and we were going to hire all of our friends, we'd need to pay for salaries and healthcare and all that kind of stuff, and at that point we did decide to raise venture capital. We raised Series A from Sequoia who became the lead investor, and that was like the end of our first year. So that kind of gives you a sense of how we went from like academia and a research concept to an initial product. We ended up selling about a million dollars of the product the first year, and I think that's actually what got investors attention.

重点不在于我们做的是网络设备——2000年代中期网络技术已趋成熟，属于80-90年代的浪潮。但投资人惊叹于我们在零销售、零营销、无大额种子资金的情况下取得如此成绩。这只是Meraki征程的起点。虽无法详述全过程，但随后几年确实精彩。2007年尤其令人振奋，产品开始遍地开花。

It wasn't so much that we were doing networking, at that point in the mid-2000s networking had kind of been done, it was like a really 1980s and 1990s wave, but they just thought it was amazing that we got to this point without any sales or marketing, without any big seed funding or any of that stuff. So this was again the very beginning of the journey at Meraki. Unfortunately, I don't have time to tell you the entire story and how it all played out, but there were a couple of years that were just amazing. After 2006, 2007 was really fun. We got this stuff out there.

我们开发了多款产品，用户规模持续扩大。然而2008年全球金融危机爆发，原先建设大型免费WiFi网络的热情骤然消退。面对这类挑战，我们以创业初期的意志力寻求转型，最终转向企业网络市场。产品开始进驻校园和企业——有趣的是，经济衰退迫使这些机构精简网络团队，因此易部署、易操作的网络方案正合需求，这成为第二波增长点。

We got to make lots of different products and people were just continuing to scale this stuff. And then 2008, which was the year of the global financial crisis hit, and all of a sudden all of our interests that we had in putting a big free Wi Fi networks went away. So there were a number of challenges like that that came along the way, but we had that same sense of willpower and determination that we did when we started the company trying to get it made and basically found ways to pivot. So we ended up pivoting to enterprise networks, the product started getting used on campuses like this, in companies, and the interesting thing there was they went from basically having really big networking teams to actually being really lean because there was a recession. And so easy to use, easy to deploy networking was super relevant to them, them, and that was the second wave.

同期恰逢iPad、iPhone和廉价笔电兴起，多种因素神奇地形成合力。我们实现连年收入翻番，且资本效率极高。当时风投极度谨慎，融资环境严峻，但我们仍做到1亿美元营收规模。此时新抉择浮现：是否让公司上市？

This was also around the time that the iPad and the iPhone and inexpensive laptops were coming out. So there was an interesting confluence of things going on that lucked out for us. So we managed to double revenue every year, and then we did it very capital efficiently. There wasn't a lot of funding out there either, so it was a very different time where basically venture capitalists were very, very conservative, and we got to the point where we were doing about $100,000,000 in revenue. And then we had a new decision to make, was like, Okay, do we take this company public?

这原是我们的计划。临近IPO时，行业巨头思科突然提出以三倍于上轮估值的价格收购我们。当时十亿美元级收购案凤毛麟角，这提议引发轰动。经过激烈讨论，我们视之为新实验契机：若给产品贴上思科标签，借助其全球销售网络会怎样？于是收购成为下一段旅程——我记得还留有当时的照片。

And that was the plan. We were about to go public when our largest competitor at the time, which was Cisco, the big networking company, showed up and they offered us basically three times the valuation of the previous funding round to buy the company out, which was a huge number. There had not been many billion dollar acquisitions at the time, so that definitely got everyone's attention and we had a big discussion about it, but it actually was an opportunity to run another experiment, which is what would happen if you could take this product, a Cisco logo on it, and then sell it through all of Cisco's salespeople and reseller partners. So that's what the next leg of the journey became. We went through the acquisition, I think I got a picture of that.

这是我的联合创始人，左边这位是汉斯·罗伯逊，右边是约翰。这张照片拍摄于Meraki刚并入思科不久的时候，这些产品确实被印上了思科的标志。当时我们的销售额已经在飞速增长。

These are my co founders, this is Hans Robertson on the left. That's John on the right. So this is right around the time that Meraki became part of Cisco. Those products did get the Cisco logo put on them. And then our sales were already growing really fast.

之后增速更是进一步加快。接下来几年间，年营收规模基本达到了十亿美元级别。如今这些产品的年销售额已达数十亿，最奇妙的是——如果你有机会抬头看看天花板（因为这就是我们当年的工作），比如在星巴克买南瓜拿铁时，你实际看到的就是我们的产品。现在我在孩子学校、机场和拜访的企业里仍能看到它们。

They accelerated even further. So over the next couple of years it got to basically a billion dollar run rate. I think these products are now sold in the many billions a year, and it's really cool because if you get a chance I look up often at ceilings because this was what we did. And if you are in a Starbucks getting your pumpkin spice latte or whatever, if you look up you'll actually see our product. And I still see the product at my kids' schools and airports and at companies we visit.

看到我们当初的构想——'人们会需要大规模WiFi网络'成为现实，这种感觉非常棒。虽然全面铺开花了些时间，这种规模的影响力需要多年积累，但见证整个历程从研究构想、学术论文、原型机、首批客户到如今数百万台设备投入使用，实在令人振奋。这是第一段旅程，对大多数人来说这已是毕生成就，对我们亦是如此。我们在短时间内积累了极其丰富的经验。

So it's really neat to see that that idea that we had, that other people were going to want to build big Wi Fi networks came true. It took a while to roll it all the way out. This kind of scale of impact has to compound over many, many years, but it was neat to see this whole thing from that research idea to all the academic papers to the prototype to the first couple of customers to millions and millions of these units out there. So that's leg of the journey number one, and for most people that's the journey of a lifetime, and it really was. We just learned so, so much and crammed so much experience into a short period of time.

但到了2014、2015年左右，我们意识到：'对Meraki的使命已经完成，该贡献的都已贡献，或许是时候开启新篇章了。'于是我们离开思科时完全没有后续计划，这在人生阶段中算是比较罕见的早发空窗期。我们心想：'退休为时尚早，这么多精力该投向何处？'我当时甚至考虑回去完成那个 technically 休学中的博士学位。

But at this point, this is right around 2014, 2015, we realized, Okay, our work with Meraki is done. We've contributed what we can, and it's probably time for us to go and do something else. So at that point we basically left Cisco without any plan of what to do next, and it was a little bit of an unknown time because not a lot of people end up at that point in life so early, and so we're like, well, we have way too much energy to be retired, what should we do? And I was thinking, well I technically took a leave of absence from grad school, maybe I should go back and finish that PhD. So I actually thought I was going to go back to grad school.

我的联合创始人约翰比我聪明得多，他说：'这行不通。你慢慢想吧，我要去打游戏了。'结果他真的打了一个月游戏——事实证明他是对的。

John, my co founder, is way smarter than me. He's like, that's not going to work. I'm going to go play video games while you figure this out. So he played video games for like a month. And he was right.

当我重新投入学术研究后，发现其反馈周期远慢于商业世界的节奏。于是退后一步思考：'我热爱钻研有趣技术，也追求影响力，现在能做些什么？'这让我回想起在斯坦福的另一个重要时刻。

I started doing the academic research thing again, and I realized the feedback loops were way slower than what I was used to in the commercial world. And so I took a step back and said, Okay, love working on interesting technologies. I want to have impact. What can I do? And this actually brings me back to another Stanford moment.

我翻出了本科时的一本书。当年为了高效满足毕业要求（同时抵充文化研究、宗教等三门学分），我选了门叫'禅宗佛教'的课，当时纯粹抱着'应付完事'的心态。

I picked up this book that I'd had. When I was an undergrad here, there was a class called Zen Buddhism that fulfilled three requirements at once. And I think as an engineering undergrad I was like, what's the most efficient way for me to meet my graduation requirements? There's cultural studies, religion, and something else. So I took this class sort of like, okay, I'm just going to get through this.

有趣的是，二十多年后，这依然是我记忆最深刻的课程之一。那些教材至今仍跟随着我辗转各地。我偶然读到一本名为《禅者的初心》的书，正如书名所示，它讲述了清空思维、以初学者般新鲜视角看待事物的重要性。还有个有趣的小细节——这本书确实是我本科时期就拥有的。

And interestingly, twenty something years later, this is like one of the classes I remember the best. And I still have the textbooks, they've kind of moved around with me over the years. And I picked up this book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And as you can guess from the title, it's all about the importance of being able to clear your mind and see things the way that a beginner would, like fresh eyes. And kind of fun bit of trivia, this is literally the book that I had from an undergrad.

书脊上还贴着斯坦福书店的标签，它至今仍具有现实意义这点很酷。我每年仍会重读，但这次它提醒我重置心态、放下过多预期的重要性——这与十年前罗伯特给我的‘静心’建议异曲同工。对我而言，这正是所需的一切。于是我开始追随兴趣，迷上了太空与卫星领域。当时想着：能否把屋顶网络搬到天上？后来我们意识到这需要巨额成本，还得涉及火箭发射等复杂技术。

That label is from the Stanford bookstore, so it's cool that it's still relevant. I still read it once a year, but this reminded me importance of just hitting reset and not having a ton of expectations, almost similar to the advice Robert gave me ten years before of just calm your mind. And for me, this was everything that I needed. So I started just doing following my interest and got interested in I think space and satellites. I was like, could you do roof net but from the sky, which we realized would be very, very expensive and you needed to launch rockets and all kinds of stuff.

我们开始研究能源体系与电网运作原理，当时太阳能产业刚兴起，我们就专注于此。我们不断沉浸在各类专业书籍中，我和约翰经常互换读物。有次我们互相推荐说‘老兄你得看看这本’，书名是——

We started reading about energy and how does the electrical grid work and solar was starting to take off, so we're researching that. And over and over we found ourselves in all these books. And John and I were swapping books all the time. And at some point we were like, dude, you got to check out this book. What's it called?

《基础设施》。当时只有我们在买这类书，旁人对此毫无兴趣。但我们着迷地发现：天然的好奇心正将我们引向能产生实际影响的领域。能源设施、物流系统、道路桥梁的运作机制——这些都是构成地球共享基础设施的组成部分。

Infrastructure. And we were the only people that were buying these books. Nobody else cared about this stuff. But this was absolutely fascinating to us because what we realized is our natural curiosity interest was driving us towards areas where we could be relevant and have an impact. And infrastructure like energy utilities, logistics, the way the roads and the bridges work, it's all part of the shared infrastructure of our planet.

我们意识到周围没人对这些感兴趣，这反而暗示着：这可能是值得探索的问题领域，因为我们可以创造影响。我们能将技术背景带入基建运维领域发挥作用——这正是我们需要的。作为工程师，我们热爱建造与修复，但更热爱做有意义的事。

And what we realized about it was that we didn't know anybody else that was interested in this stuff. And that was a sign to us that this might be an interesting problem space for us to work on because we could have an impact. We could bring our technology background to this world of operations and infrastructure and be useful. And that's kind of what we needed. As engineers, we love building things, we love fixing things, but really we love doing things that are useful.

这就是我们创立Semsara的契机。时间快进到2015年（十年前），我简要说明以便进入问答环节，不过很乐意详谈这个过程。我们沿用了Meraki时期的成功经验，因为意识到成功不只靠创意与激情，更需要优秀团队。于是我们再次召集了本科同学、研究生同窗和Meraki同事，氛围似曾相识。不同的是，上次做网络项目时我们全是网络专业的博士生，

And so this was the spark that led us to Semsara. And this is like about ten years ago, 2015, and I'm going fairly quickly here so we can get to the questions, but happy to spend more time on this process. We ran a similar playbook to what we did with Meraki because we realized the reason that Meraki was successful wasn't just idea and excitement, it was also you needed a great team. So we ended up recruiting a bunch of our friends again, people that we'd worked with in undergrad, in grad school, at Meraki, and it was a similar feel. Except this time, the last time we were doing networking, we were all like PhD students in networking.

堪称领域专家。而这次我们对运维和基建一窍不通，完全以‘初心者’心态面对陡峭的学习曲线。但我们深知如何打造产品——这也正是你们看到我们在做的事情。

So we were like domain experts. This time none of us knew the first thing about operations or infrastructure. So we were completely beginner's mind in a really fundamental way, steep learning curve. What we did know how to do however was build product. So that's what you see us doing there.

我们懂得如何构建硬件、软件和云服务。于是我们打造了能想象到的最简单的传感器——温度传感器，并将其联网。然后我们说，太好了，让这些设备走向世界吧。

We knew how to build hardware, software, cloud services. So we built the simplest possible sensors and connected sensors that we could imagine. These were temperature sensors. Then we said, Okay, great. Let's get these out in the world.

我们开始与客户合作。最终将这些传感器部署到食品饮料行业和旧金山周边的医药供应链企业——那里正是我们初创公司所在地。这很棒，因为我们再次投入产品研发并推向市场。唯一的挑战是，由于缺乏运营经验，我们没意识到温度传感器其实用处不大。产品推出后，我们期待能像Meraki那样热销数千台，结果第一周无人问津，这才明白奇迹不会重复发生。

Let's start working with customers. And we ended up getting these sensors out into, I think it was the food and beverage industry and the pharmaceutical supply chain folks that were in and around San Francisco, which is where we were starting the company. And it was great because we were building products again, we were getting the stuff out again. The only challenge, however, was that because we didn't know anything about operations, we didn't realize that temperature sensors weren't that useful. So we got the stuff out there and we were expecting, hey, this is going to be just like Meraki, people are going to get thousands of units, the company will take off, and it was crickets for the first week, and then we realized, oh, maybe magic just doesn't happen twice.

但我们决心要解决这个问题，坚信自己能创造价值。后来发现价值不在于生产大量温度传感器，而是帮客户实现运营可视化。那些试用温度传感器的公司最终把设备装在送货车辆上，由此我们找到了首个真实用例——GPS追踪和远程信息处理。这种灵活转型的能力至关重要。

But we had this determination of like, we want to figure this out. We know we can be useful here. And it turns out the way that we could be useful was not necessarily by making lots of temperature sensors, but it actually getting them visibility into their operations. So those same companies that were trying out the temperature sensors ended up taking these products, sticking them on their delivery vans and trucks, and that's how we found our way to our first real use case, which was around GPS tracking and telematics. So that ability to pivot and be nimble was really important.

很庆幸我们没有固执地死守温度传感器，而是保持探索精神。接着我们租了几辆卡车（当时公司没有大型车辆），打开笔记本开始研究：如何解决实时追踪、货物监控等实际运营难题。

I think I'm really glad that we didn't have the stubbornness of we're just going to make temperature sensors, but we were willing to just figure it out. So the next thing we did was we got some trucks. We didn't have any big trucks. We had to rent them. And then we got our laptops out, we started figuring out, well, Okay, what can we do here to help solve some of these operational problems of real time tracking and knowing what's on the truck and all kinds of stuff.

这就是我们打开笔记本，从基本原理出发解决问题的过程。独特之处在于，我们的产品构建方式完全不同于市场同类。推出的首批GPS追踪产品具有现代性——能实时显示车辆状态、传感器数据等各种信息，惊艳了所有客户。演示效果令人赞叹，我们由此打开了市场。

So this is us cracking open our laptops, just figuring this stuff out from first principles. And what was cool about it is the way we built our product was unlike any other product in this market. So we got the first GPS tracking products out there, and they were modern, so they were real time, they could show you all kinds of stuff about the truck and about the sensors and all kinds of things. And what was amazing is knocked people's socks off. So our demo started wowing people, and that's how we found traction.

再次从零开始了解行业，我们深入现场与客户建立反馈循环，由此学习到物流、食品饮料分销等知识，后来更扩展到其他领域。这种客户反馈机制是我们历来的工作方法——在RoofNet时与研究生讨论网络使用，在Meraki时研究WiFi应用场景。

So again, not knowing anything about the industry, we spent time in the field, we spent time with these customers running a feedback loop, and that's how we learned about logistics and food and beverage distribution. Eventually, it's how we learned about other industries. But this idea of being able to run a customer feedback loop, it's what we've done in all of our past lives. Like at RoofNet, we were talking to grad students about how they're using the network. At Meraki, it was about Wi Fi and how they to use it.

这次则是学习运营管理。始终保持学习状态的有趣之处在于，正如Ravi先前所说，运营管理横跨众多行业。现在我们的产品能让我们深入各行各业的幕后场景。

Here it was about learning about operations. So always kind of in learning mode. And what's been really fun about this is that it didn't just stop with one industry. Operations, as Ravi was saying earlier, it spans many, many different industries. So we get a chance to go behind the scenes now with our products.

左上角的照片拍摄于一两周前。我们与北美最大的校车公司合作，这家公司名为First Student。他们正在将我们的产品安装到约46,000辆校车上。他们每天运送的孩子数量比航空公司运送的乘客还多。

The top left picture is just from a week or two ago. We partnered with the largest school bus company in North America. It's a company called First Student. So they're putting our products in like 46,000 school buses. They move more kids every day than the airlines move people.

这堪称超大规模运营，值得深入了解。中间的Nutrien是全球最大的农业零售商。还有一些拥有巨型卡车的大型建筑公司。我们有机会与航空公司共事，这些都是常规渠道无法接触的领域。书本里学不到这些，而我们热爱这些挑战——因为存在无数待解决的问题，让我们能持续运行这个迭代反馈循环。

So like super large scale operation, got to learn about that. Nutrien in the middle, this is a very large agriculture or it's the largest largest ag retailer in the world. Some big construction companies with really, really big trucks and things like that. We get to spend time with the airlines and this is part of the world that you don't get to explore. You can't learn about it from our book and we love it because there's so many problems, so many interesting challenges for us to solve that we can keep running this iterative feedback loop over and over.

我再次将二十年的经验浓缩在二十分钟内。虽然快速过了一遍，但希望你们能抓住主线。对我而言有三个关键收获：首先是问题选择的重要性——你想解决什么问题？

So I crammed again like twenty years of experience into about twenty minutes. I wanted to go through this quickly, but hopefully this gives you a sense of the sort of through line here. And for me there's really been three big takeaways. The first is again the importance of problem selection. What do you want to work on?

你如何产生影响并发挥作用？这往往需要大量时间和耐心。因此要选对问题并深入钻研。其次是团队的重要性——你们看到的照片里，是我能想象到最优秀的团队。

How could you have an impact there and be useful? And that tends to take a lot of time and patience. So picking the right problem and kind of going deep on it. The second was the importance of team. You saw the pictures there, but these are some of the best teams I've ever had a chance I could ever imagine working with.

他们非凡卓越。其中许多人是我学生时代或研究生院结识的队友。所以给你们的启示是：你们正身处人才密度最高的环境，现在结识的人将对未来产生深远影响。最后同样重要的是运行反馈循环的能力——倾听客户，洞察现实挑战，然后构建真正实用的解决方案。对我们而言，这短短时间浓缩了太多历史。

They're just extraordinary. Many of them were team members I met as a student here or in grad school, so maybe a takeaway for you all is you're in some of the most talent rich, hounds dense environments ever, so who you meet and who you spend time with could have huge implications later on. And then last but not least is the importance of being able to run feedback loops. Listen to customers, figure out what their real world challenges are, and then build them stuff that's just practical and useful. And for us, again, this was a lot of history in a very short period of time.

每年都有新挑战，需要不断学习新事物，但这非常有趣。这是你们将经历的最宏大的工程项目。好了，快速过完这些内容，现在我想留出时间回答问题。

There's challenges every single year. You're always figuring out new stuff, but it's really fun. It's the biggest engineering project you'll ever do. Okay. So with that, that was a little bit of a speed run, but I wanted to make sure we got to questions.

我们就直接进入互动环节吧。

We're just gonna we're just gonna make it interactive.

我们开始吧。

Let's do it.

CJ，踢球

CJ, kick

开球。

us off.

好的。嗨，Sanji。感谢你能来。你之前提到过，当你处在我们的位置时，你受到了.com泡沫的启发，特别是John Doors的ETL讲座。我的问题是，现在或今天，那堂课中有什么特别让你印象深刻的东西吗？

Yeah. Hi, Sanji. Thank you for being here. You mentioned earlier how when you were in our shoes, you were inspired by the .com bubble and specifically John Doors' ETL lecture. My question is, is there anything that sticks out sticks with you now or today from that class?

是的。也许简单回顾一下历史。当我在这里的时候，正值.com繁荣期，随后是.com泡沫破裂。当时并不一定感觉像是泡沫，实际上更像是创意的爆发。

Yeah. Maybe a quick bit of history. When I was here, it was the .com boom and then a little bit of the .com bust. And it wasn't necessarily that it felt like a bubble. Was actually it felt like this explosion of ideas.

关于John Doerr的ETL讲座，我至今记忆犹新的一点是，他作为一位非常知名的风险投资家，帮助Kleiner Perkins发展成为一家大型风投公司。听到人们追求了多少不同的想法以及他们如何将这些想法落地生根，这非常棒，因为其中许多想法实际上始于这个校园。对我来说，听到像我这样的工程学生的故事——他们可能从未销售过任何东西或大规模构建过什么，却最终找到了方法——这非常鼓舞人心。我至今仍记得他讲座中这一点让我深受触动。是的。

So what I loved about John Doerr's ETL lecture, which I still remember, he's a venture capitalist, very well known, helped build Kleiner Perkins into this massive venture firm. It was awesome to hear how many different ideas people had pursued and how they got them off the ground because many of them actually started here on campus. So for me it was inspiring just to hear stories of people like myself who had been engineering students who maybe had never sold anything or built anything at scale figured it out. And I still remember loving that about his lecture. Yeah.

谢谢。

Thanks.

谢谢你的提问。

Thank you for the question.

你有哪些实用的习惯或管理主题？后续问题是，你认为人们现在会在哪些方面妥协以找到正确的方向？

What's one useful habit, management topic that you have? And then a follow-up question would be, where do you think people that will compromise by find the right now?

一个不寻常的管理习惯。这很有趣，因为很难知道自己身上有什么不寻常之处。但有人告诉我，虽然对大多数创始人来说可能不算特别，但能同时兼顾广度与深度确实有些不同。公司有许多不同职能，销售、工程等等。

Unusual management habit. It's funny. It's hard to know what's unusual about yourself. But I've been told something that is somewhat unusual, but maybe not for most founders, is the ability to go broad and deep at the same time. So the company has many different functions, sales, engineering, all that stuff.

我发现这些都很有趣。现在是季度末，所以我深度参与交易和某些销售事务。重大产品发布前，我会参与演示并调试问题。这种只有创始人才能做到的事我真的很喜欢。说它不寻常，是因为通常大公司里创始人已退居二线或由专业管理团队运营。而我们仍保持着创始人的运营精神。

I find them all really interesting, and so it's the end of our quarter, so I'll be really involved in deals and certain sales things. Before big product launch, I'm in the demos and we're debugging stuff. So I actually love that from something that only founders can do. I think it's unusual in the sense that typically in large companies, founders have moved on or there's a professional management team. We bring that founder spirit to how we run.

有人告诉我，和工程师一起排查故障是挺少见的。但你不可能永远这样，所以必须找到可持续的介入与抽身方式。

And I've been told it's kind of unusual to just be hanging out with the engineers figuring out the bug. But you can't do that forever, so you have to be able to bounce in and out in a sustainable way.

接着这个问题，对于那些从学术界直接创业的人——因为你从未有过其他工作经历，直接从学术界成为了创始人——作为CEO，你发现哪些具体策略或方法特别有价值？

Following up on that, for all the people that are academics that are going to start startups, because you never had a job. You you went straight from academia to Yeah. A founder. Are are there any tactical specific strategies or or things that you found to be incredibly valuable as a CEO?

有很多。回想我们在研究生院时，那就像是创业预演，必须自己摸索一切。这种'我们总能解决问题'的精神非常重要。还有能够逆向思考，从第一性原理出发推理的能力。

You There there's there's a lot. When I think about what we were doing in grad school, it was kinda like start up zero and, like, we were having to figure it all out. That spirit is really important of, we can just figure it out. Right? And and being able to kinda work backwards and reason from first principles.

所以我想说，如果你能让那颗种子保持活力，那将带来巨大的改变。

So I would say that if you can like keep that seed alive, it makes a big difference.

太棒了。

That's terrific.

我知道还有第二个问题

And I know there was a second

对，关于

Yeah, about

AI的防御性？是的。你是否在想，有这么多公司都在做类似的事情？

AI defensibility? Yeah. And is there like, you're kind of thinking like there's so many companies working on things?

是否存在技术上的防御性，或是分销渠道优势，还是说根本没有任何防御性可言？

Is there any technological defensibility or is there a distribution or is there any defensibility at all?

哦，我明白了。我很难一概而论，但一般来说，我会考虑的不只是某个时间点的防御性，而是整个发展曲线。对吧？有些公司起步于竞争极其激烈的环境。比如Samsara实际上有30多个竞争对手，但通过持续迭代，我们已成为行业内的领军企业。

Oh, I see. It's hard for me to generalize, but like in general, the kinds of things I would think about are not just like moment in time defensibility, but like the curve. Right? So for some companies, they start out in hyper competitive environments. Like we actually have like 30 something competitors at Samsara, but we've grown to be the largest in our industry by iterating.

对吧？通过真正专注于客户，通过构建创新技术。我认为在AI领域也是如此。所以尽管起跑线上可能有三十、四十甚至五十家公司，但你的执行方式、倾听客户需求并打造与之连接的产品方式会带来巨大差异。通常你会看到一些公司脱颖而出。

Right? By like really staying focused on the customers, by building new innovative technologies. I think the same thing applies in AI. So even though the starting line may have, like, thirty, forty, 50 companies, the way you execute and the way you listen to customers and, like, build products to connect with them makes a big difference. And usually, you see some companies emerge.

一旦它们脱颖而出，往往会获得复合优势。它们能获得更多收入用于再投资，可以训练更大的模型，拥有更多数据，可能还有销售团队和更大的品牌影响力。

Once they emerge, they tend to end up with a compounding advantage. They end up with more revenue to be able to reinvest. They can train bigger models. They have more data. They probably have salespeople, a bigger brand.

所以最终往往会出现一个或几个遥遥领先的赢家。这样讲清楚吗？对，对。

So that's where there there ends up being kind of like a runaway winner or maybe set of winners. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

谢谢。太棒了。感谢你的提问。

Thank you. Awesome. Thank you for the question.

回答得很好。我们继续。耿，如果你们能把交谈控制在最低限度，我们就能听清你们说的每个字。所以请尽量保持安静。谢谢。

Great answer. We'll keep going. Geng, if you can keep the conversations to a minimum, we can actually really hear every word that you say. So please try to keep them to a minimum. Thanks.

下一个问题。

Next question.

非常感谢。我对物流非常感兴趣，我认为这是最优化且定义最对称的领域之一

Thanks so much. I'm really interested in logistics. I think it's, it's one of those most optimized and, well defined symmetrically

嗯。

Mhmm.

全球各行业。所以我的问题大致是这样的，鉴于它已经优化到极致，所有操作都高度指标化。你有没有发现物流领域中哪些部分目前仍极度缺乏优化，因为直到AI时代之前技术根本不存在？如果有，你觉得是专门针对这些垂直领域构建更好，还是更倾向于像PantoFoundry那样横向构建模块，试图打造一个生态系统，锁定这些大客户并开发那些模块，再将这些模块销售给其他供应商？

Industries in the world. And so my question is sort of this, given it's so incredibly optimized already, all the operations are very highly metricalized. Do you see any you know, did you see any parts of logistics which are incredibly under optimized right now because technology just simply has not existed until the age of AI? Yeah. And if so, you know, is is it a better better place to sort of build specifically for those verticals, or do you go more horizontal build modules like PantoFoundry and basically try and create an ecosystem, lock these big customers in and build those modules, sell those modules to other vendors?

是的。我会具体谈谈物流，但总体上讲运营。人们可能会认为这些行业存在了一百多年，肯定已经超级优化了，但我要说它们只是运营密集，远未优化。举个例子：如果你随机拦下100辆商用车辆检查，会发现只有约50%装有连接云端的GPS追踪。GPS技术从1990年代就有了，真的非常久了。

Yeah. So I'll talk about logistics specifically, but operations generally. I think there would be an assumption that these industries have been around one hundred plus years, like they must be hyper optimized, and I would say they're operationally intensive, but they're not yet optimized, and I'll give you some specifics. If you just stop 100 commercial vehicles on the road and crack them open, you'll see only about 50% of them have GPS tracking that's connected to the cloud. GPS tracking has been around since the 1990s, like a really, really long time.

所以，如果你连GPS追踪器都没有，谈何优化运营？这意味着他们还在靠打电话或猜测来定位车辆。实际上这些系统有很大改进空间。但问题在于：为什么不用GPS？这项技术明明存在很久了。

And so the idea that you've optimized your operation, if you don't have GPS trackers, how would you even start? So that means that are just making phone calls to figure out where people are or best guess stuff. So there tends to actually be a lot of room to improve these systems. The reality though is, well, why do they not have GPS trackers? These things have been around for a long time.

因为他们太忙了。这些运营公司没有额外时间，通常也没有庞大的IT团队来解决这些问题。这正是我们入局的原因——如何帮助校车公司优化路线或维护？你提到Palantir Foundry这类技术很酷，但关键是要先把数据上传云端。我们评估现状后发现，这里才是当前最大的缺口。

It's because they're busy, Like these operations companies don't have a lot of extra time and they don't tend to have a big IT team to go figure this stuff out. So that was like one of the reasons we got into it is like, how can we help everyone, like the school bus company optimize their routes and things like that? How do we help them optimize maintenance? So I think you mentioned like Palantir Foundry, like there's a lot of cool technologies out there, but fundamentally you've got to get the data into the cloud. And so we ended up kind of like assessing the landscape and we're like this is the place where there's the biggest gap right now.

这种情况可能会改变。或许十年后所有设备都接入云端，重点转向算法。但目前物流业的优化程度比你想象的低。了解现状的最佳方式就是实地走访，与从业者深入交流。

And that may change, right? Like in ten years maybe everything is connect to the cloud, and it becomes about algorithms. But right now in logistics, it's less optimized than you might think. And the best way to find this out is just kinda go knock on some doors and spend time with people.

好的，非常感谢。

Yeah. Thanks so much.

是的。很好的问题。

Yeah. Great questions.

你好。非常感谢你今天的演讲。我想知道当你迭代硬件产品时，在进行客户试点部署时你会追踪哪些信号或指标？另外，你们会建立战略合作伙伴关系吗？以及，如果你要构建跨不同垂直领域的技术，如何从零开始实现最终目标？

Hi. Thanks so much for your talk today. I was wondering when you're iterating your hardware product, what sort of signals or metrics do you track when doing pilot deployments with customers? And also, do you take on strategic partnerships? And how do you get from zero to end if you're building technology across different verticals like

所以让我先谈谈硬件部分，然后再讨论在多垂直领域工作时如何扩展。硬件这个词本身就包含了'困难'，实际上确实非常具有挑战性，第一个最困难的事情就是让产品能够可靠地工作。可能你们中很多人如果上过电子工程课程就知道，可以临时拼凑让它工作一会儿，但让它持续工作本身就是个挑战，因为电路必须稳健，固件必须正常运行，不能有漏洞。如果不能升级，产品在实地就会失效。

you So are let me talk about the hardware part first and then how do you scale it when you're working with multiple verticals. Hardware, it's got the word hard embedded in it. It's actually really challenging, and the first most difficult thing is actually just getting the thing to work reliably. And one thing probably many of you, if you've taken electrical engineering classes, you know you can cobble it together and make it work for a little while, but making it like stay working is its own challenge because the circuits have to be robust, the firmware has to work, it has to not have bugs. If it can't upgrade it like kind of dies in the field.

所以这实际上是个相当高的门槛。你可以通过练习来掌握，最好的方法就是实践，比如构建一个简单的东西，发布它，让它面世之类的。这是关于硬件的基本建议，你会看到很多硬件公司都在这么做。你可以选择适合你的方式。不过第二部分是多行业、多垂直领域的问题。

So that's actually like a pretty high bar. You can get good at it and the best way to do it is by practicing, like build something simple, ship it, get it out there kind of thing. So that's kind of like base level advice on hardware, and you see many hardware companies doing this. You can take your pick. The second part of it though is multi industry, multi vertical.

我们的做法是寻找八二法则，即这些行业垂直领域之间的共性。我们在Samsara意识到的一个事实是，跨行业的每个人——建筑、电力服务、废物管理、校车——他们实际上都在使用相同类型的车辆。它们要么是大型柴油卡车，要么是F-150小型卡车，但都来自相同的制造商，行驶在相同的道路上，许多公司都从相同的劳动力市场招聘。所以我们寻找共性，然后尝试解决这个共同问题，而对于废物管理行业特有的需求等内容，我们会寻找合作伙伴。我认为寻找80/20的共性一直是我们获得的洞见。我有个后续问题。

And so what we do is we look for kind of the eightytwenty, like what's common across these industry verticals. And one thing we realized at Samsara was actually everyone across industries, construction, electrical services, waste management, school buses, they all actually use the same kinds of vehicles. They're big diesel large trucks or F-one 150 small trucks, but they're from the same manufacturers, they drive on the same roads, many of these companies are hiring from the same labor pool, so we looked for what's common and then tried to solve that common problem, and then we partner for the things that are specific to the waste management industry or something like that. So looking for the 8020, I think, has been the the insight. I have a follow-up question.

等等。就一个问题。抱歉。

Wait. Just one question. Sorry.

因为我们有个

Because we have a

长长的一行。不过还是谢谢你。

long long line. Thank you, though.

你好，我是来自东京的奇拉。

Hi. I'm Chira from Tokyo.

你能把麦克风朝你的方向移一下吗？谢谢。

Can you move the mic towards your okay. Thank you.

我有两个问题。第一个是，为什么你最初会选择专注于网络领域？

So I have two questions. One is, why did you choose to focus on networks in the first place?

为什么是网络？

Why networks?

而且只提一个问题。

And give only one question.

抱歉。只是因为我们不会再经历一次了。嗯，是的，这是个有趣的问题。我试着回忆一下。在90年代末和2000年代初，当我在这里的时候，构建网络确实还是一个令人兴奋的时期。

Sorry. Just because we have we're not gonna get through it again. Well, yeah, that that's an interesting one. I'm trying to remember. So networks back in, like, the late nineties and early two thousands when I was here, it was actually still an exciting time to build networks.

比如，互联网建设当时正蓬勃发展，因此存在许多有趣的问题，比如如何让这些技术变得可访问？而无线网络在我看来简直酷到爆炸，因为它就像凭空变出的魔法连接。所以可能只是对它的着迷。再加上这是计算机科学与电子工程的结合，拥有硬件背景的我，觉得网络是基础支撑，但如何用软件构建系统才是关键。我喜欢这些元素的交汇，我想纯粹是个人兴趣使然。

Like, the Internet build out was really happening, and so there were lots of interesting problems of like how do you make these things accessible? And then wireless networks I thought were like mind blowingly cool because like you could just get it was like magic connection out of thin air. So it was maybe just like fascination with it. And then it was this blend of CS and EE, like where having a hardware background, it was like the fundamental underpinnings of network, but how you build systems out of those software. So I like the confluence of those things, and I think it was just personal interest.

我...我不确定今天是否还会选择网络领域。也许我会对人工智能或生物领域感兴趣，但当时就是那个抓住了我的注意力。嗯。

I I don't I don't know that I would do networking again today. Maybe I'd be interested in AI or bio or something else, but that was just what caught my attention, I guess. Mhmm.

好的。谢谢。抱歉。我们打算每人只问一个问题。是的。对。

Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. We're just gonna do one question per Yep. Yes.

当你创立Samsara时，你进入了一个原本并不熟悉的行业，却依然发现了许多该领域专家忽视的机遇。对于在陌生行业中识别机会，你有什么方法？

So when you started Samsara, you were entering an industry that you were otherwise pretty unfamiliar with, and still you managed to see an opportunity that a lot of experts in the field missed. So what is your approach to seeing openings even in industries that you may not be familiar with?

是的。我认为存在那种天然的着迷，就像对网络那样，我对基础设施充满好奇。或许更多是出于直觉——感觉这个领域似乎尚未现代化。正是这种直觉推动我们踏入这个领域去探索。但真正与一线人员共处，比如仓库和配送中心的员工，才是我们验证想法的方式：没错，这是真实存在的需求。

Yeah. So I think there was that kind of natural fascination, like with networking, I was just like fascinated by infrastructure. And maybe it was more of like, there was a gut feeling element to it of like, hey, this area feels like it hasn't been modernized yet. And that was the gut instinct to get us in the door to go explore it. But then actually spending time with the frontline, with the people in the warehouses and in the distribution centers, that was the way we validated like, no, this is real.

那种感受非常直观。你会看到他们的系统还在运行1980、1990年代的软件，绿色屏幕系统或纸质打印件。我心想：这二三十年来都没见过这种东西。这时你就明白这是个服务不足的市场，而了解这点的最佳方式就是实地考察。

And it was visceral. You would see their systems and they were running software from the 1980s and 1990s. It was green screen systems or printouts. I was like, I haven't seen something like this for twenty or thirty years. So that's when you knew that it was an underserved market, and the best way to figure that out is just get out there.

你会惊讶于有多少人愿意帮助你。只要礼貌询问、亲自到场并尝试为他们提供价值——我们当时就是用首个产品带给他们价值。他们很慷慨地花一小时接待我们，讲解业务运作。他们对自己的工作充满自豪。我的建议就是：深入现场，亲身体验。

And you'd be surprised how many people are willing to help you out. If you just ask nicely and show up and try to bring some value to them, we were bringing them value with that first product. And they were gracious enough to entertain us for an hour and say, yeah, this is how this business works. They were very proud of their work. I would just say get in there and try it.

谢谢。是的。

Thank you. Yep.

你好。随着你们转向更多平台化运营并拓展到更多用例，如何确保在一个人们高度专注的领域保持竞争力？比如，我知道你们在这方面有些历史，但以Motive为例，

Hi. How would you so as you move into more of a platform play and expand to additional use cases, how do you make sure that you remain competitive in a place where people are hyper focused? Like, I know you have some history there, but with Motive, for example, like

嗯。

Mhmm.

如何保持热度，你懂的，就是在扩展的同时保持对主要垂直领域的掌控？

How do you remain hype you know, just keeping control of your primary vertical while expanding?

是的，关键在于我们实际上从一开始就是一家跨行业公司。我提到过卡车运输和物流，这大约占我们业务的20%多。我们还服务于其他行业，如现场服务、废物管理、化学品分销等。所以对我们来说，关键还是那个二八法则——如何确保我们与市场接轨？大多数人需要什么？

Yeah, well, key for us is we actually are a multi industry company to begin with. So I mentioned trucking and logistics, that's like 20 something percent of our business. We serve all these other industries like field services and waste management and chemicals distributors and so on. So the key for us is again that eightytwenty of like how do we make sure we're connecting with the market? Like what do most people need?

然后我们发现，他们往往不只需求一个产品，而是有许多问题需要解决。所以如果你能很好地解决第一个问题，他们会回头找你，问‘嘿，这个能帮忙吗？’比如我们做了GPS追踪，之后他们问能否在安全方面帮忙，因为事故频发，于是我们开发了摄像头产品和辅导产品。这些客户中我们还发现他们有很多设备。

And then what we discovered is that they tend not to just need one product, they have many, many problems to solve. So if you solve the first problem well, they'll invite you back and be like, hey, can you help with this? So we did GPS tracking, then they said, can you help us on safety? We're seeing a lot of accidents, so we built a camera product and coaching product. Those same customers we found had a lot of equipment.

所以能帮我们追踪拖车和发电机，并告诉我们设备是否在非工作时间被使用吗？之后需求就像滚雪球一样增长。所以我们总是在寻找那些能跨行业解决的共性问题。同时，你还必须做得非常出色，不能只是泛泛而谈，要确保投入足够资源做到极致。

So could you help us track the trailers and the generators and tell us if stuff's being used off hours? And then from there it just keeps compounding. So we're always looking for what are those common problems that we can solve across different industry verticals. And then within that, you have to still do a great job. You can't just be super broad, so making sure that we're investing enough to just nail it.

客户们很欣赏这一点，他们通常不希望分散在12个不同的系统中。他们喜欢有供应商花时间陪伴他们、理解他们，并打造真正实用的产品。非常感谢。是的，谢谢。

And the customers appreciate that they tend not to want to be in 12 different systems. They like it when there's a vendor who's spending time with them, gets them, and is building products that really, really work. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you.

这将是最后一个问题。抱歉。我们接下来还有大约四十秒。

This will be the final question. Sorry. And we we have about forty seconds next.

我是丹尼尔，我对Samsara非常感兴趣。我有个问题：在未来五年内，你们预计会在哪些领域、以何种方式扩展业务？

Is Daniel, and I was very interested in Samsara. I just had a question. Where where and how do you see it expanding, and what fields do you see it expanding into in the next five years, say?

是的。我们有很多关于未来发展的构想。但首先要确保我们充分挖掘现有机会，因此我们正深入这些行业。虽然我们已成为行业最大的公司，但市场份额可能仅占15%，所以我们还有很大增长空间。

Yeah. So we have a lot of sort of ideas of what else we can do. The first thing, though, is to make sure that we unlock, like, what's in front of us, and so we're going deeper in these industries. We've become a fairly large company. We're the largest in our sector, but we're still only maybe 15% of the market, so we could see just getting much bigger there.

在这个过程中，我相信我们会发现更多应用场景，因此我们始终在同步推进业务广度和深度

And in that process, I think we will understand even more use cases, So we're always kind of going broader and deeper at

的拓展。

the same time.

比如哪些具体领域呢？

Like what what specific areas?

哦，就像，你知道的，我提到过其中一些行业。比如航空业虽然在我们收入中占比不大，但存在许多有趣的运营问题。你可以把这些经验应用到刚才看到的任何案例中

Oh, like, you know, I talked about some of those industries. Like, aviation is not a huge part of our revenue, but there's a lot of interesting operation problems. You you can kind of apply that to any of the ones you saw on the

明白了

Got it.

谢谢。多谢

Thank you. Thanks.

说到这里，我不得不结束本次ETL研讨会。请大家和我一起感谢Siji。也谢谢Ravi。演讲非常精彩。你可以在stvp.stanford.edu或stvpecorner网站上找到本次演讲和其他讲座内容

And with that, I have to draw this ETL to a close. Join me in thanking Siji. Thank Ravi. That was awesome. You can find this talk and other talks on the website at stvp.stanford.edu or stvpecorner.

下周我们将邀请Embrace的Jane Chen做客，欢迎大家继续参加

And join us next week when we're gonna have Jane Chen from Embrace.

哦，当然

Oh, sure.

没错。作为主题演讲嘉宾

Yeah. As a keynote.