创始人模式：布莱恩·切斯基，Airbnb创始人兼首席执行官

卡罗琳，今天我们与Airbnb的创始人兼首席执行官布莱恩·切斯基一同在此。非常激动能在今早与您探讨一个特别话题——创始人模式。去年此时，您参加了YC校友聚会，并做了一场令在场所有人铭记的奠基性演讲，正是那场演讲定义了后来广为人知的‘创始人模式’。那简直充满魔力，我想深入聊聊这个话题。

Carolyn, we are here with Brian Chesky, the founder and CEO of Airbnb. We are so excited to be talking to you this morning on a special topic, founder mode. Last year, at this very time, you came to the YC Alumni Retreat, and you gave a seminal talk that everyone in that room remembers, where you just described what then became known as founder mode. And it was magical. And I want to talk more about that.

请和我们分享那场演讲的故事。

Tell us about that talk.

说实话那场演讲挺疯狂的，因为我原本根本没打算来。我告诉加里我从外地过来，可能赶不上。结果演讲前一晚，罗恩·康威——他可是个极具说服力的人——

I mean, the talk was like pretty crazy because I wasn't even planning to come. I told Gary, I'm coming from out of town. I don't think I can make it. And then the night before the talk, Ron Conway sends me and Ron Conway is a very persuasive person.

他给我发信息

He sends me

我记得是全大写字母写的：‘你必须来支持创业者们，他们需要听你要讲的内容’。我就想，好吧。

a text message. I think it was in all caps. Like, you have to come support founders. Like, they have to hear what you're going to say. And I'm like, Okay.

当时活动日程已经印好了，史蒂夫·霍夫曼那场是他的收官演讲。我对加里说行吧我来。记得我开车赶过去时已经特别晚了——

And I think the schedule was already printed. And like Steve Hoffman, this was his last talk. And I told Gary, Okay, I'll come. And I remember driving. I think it was like I got there so late.

天都黑了，大概九点或九点半。我上台后原本只该讲二三十分钟，其实完全没想好要说什么，只是经常在YC活动演讲。

It was like dark. It was like nine or 09:30. I get on. And I'm only supposed to go on for like twenty, thirty minutes. I don't even really know what I'm going to say except I speak a lot of Y Combinator.

我就讲述了创始故事。后来意识到，这更像是‘二次创业’的故事——从疫情爆发至今的历程。我觉得必须讲出来，而且YC有种独特的凝聚力。

And I speak out the founding story. And I thought, well, there's almost like a refounding story. There is this thing that happened from the pandemic to today. I needed to tell this story. And I thought there was something about YC where there's a sense of togetherness.

加入YC前我根本不懂创业，还以为需要商业计划书。PG（保罗·格雷厄姆）告诉我们‘做无法规模化的事，创造人们想要的东西’。我们掌握了这套方法论，找到了前行之路。

Before YC, I didn't know what I was doing. I thought we needed business plans. PG was like, do things that don't scale and make something people want. And we had this methodology. And there was this way to do something.

我们践行了，成功了。还有其他创始人朋友，我们互相交流，共同成长。

And we did it. And it worked. And we had other founder friends. And we talked to each other. And they did things.

它成功了。然后突然间，你登上了火箭飞船。在那艘火箭飞船里，你孤身一人。那种孤独感如此强烈。因为首先，你的联合创始人开始为你工作。

And it worked. And then suddenly, you go on a rocket ship. And you're alone in that rocket ship. And in that rocket ship, it is so lonely. Because number one, your co founders start working for you.

于是突然间，作为CEO的你不再完全平等。接着你开始聘用这些高管。他们通常比你年长，经验丰富得多，像是成年人。

And so suddenly you're not totally equal if you're the CEO. And then you start hiring these executives. And these executives are typically older than you. And they're much more experienced. And they're like adults.

而你却像个青少年。至少我是这么感觉的。我想很多人都有同感。你不知道该怎么做。我们也没有相同的社群支持。

And you're like an adolescent. That's at least what I felt like. I think a lot of people feel the way. And you don't know quite what to do. And we didn't have the same community.

所以给我们建议的人不是保罗·格雷厄姆，不是其他YC创始人，也不是YC校友。而是我们雇佣的人或董事会成员，他们或许出于好意，但教我们的是如何用职业CEO管理大公司。可我们根本不是那种公司。他们告诉你：雇佣优秀人才并信任他们。这话谁能反驳呢？

And so the people telling us what to do or giving us advice weren't Paul Graham, weren't other YC founders, weren't other YC alum. It's the people we hired or the people on our board who have maybe good intentions, but they're telling us how to run a big company with a professional CEO. And that is not who we were. And so they're telling you things hire great people and trust them to do their job. And that how could you disagree with that?

对吧？谁不想雇佣优秀人才并信任他们？我照做了，结果却致命——因为我误解了「雇佣他们并放手」的意思，没有核查他们的工作。几年后你可能会发现，他们或许不是合适人选，做的事也不对。

Right. Who doesn't want to hire great people and trust them to do their job? And I did it, and it was incredibly fatal because I misunderstood for hire them and let them do their thing without auditing what they were doing. And suddenly, you might find out a couple of years later they maybe weren't the right people. They weren't doing the right thing.

他们组建了错误的团队。结果呢？他们离职后，你得花五年收拾残局。这种情况会反复发生。创办爱彼迎初期，我们完全按自己的意愿运营公司。

They hired the wrong team. And guess what? They'll leave and you have to now fix it for like five years. And this can happen over and over and over and over again. And I kind of felt like when we started Airbnb, we ran the company that we wanted to run.

是啊。

Yeah.

后来我们雇佣了人，同样是出于善意。但我天生有点讨好型人格，很多创始人都是这样。我们希望被喜欢，希望员工享受为我们工作。

And then we hired people. And again, people with good intentions. But I naturally, I think was a little bit of a people pleaser. I think a lot of founders, we're a little bit we can be people pleasers. We want to be liked.

于是我们倾听他们的意见，询问他们希望如何被领导。最终你做的，是在善意驱使下，试图在自己想运营公司的方式与他们期望的领导风格间寻找折中点——可每个人都有不同观点。

We want these people to work for us to like working for us. And so we listen to them. And we ask them like kind of how they want to be led and what we should do. And what you end up doing is with good intentions. You basically try to find some negotiations, some midpoint between how you want to run the company and how they want to be led, except each of them have their own perspectives.

没人能达成共识。你就像在和一群朝不同方向使劲的人谈判，他们彼此竞争。像我这样经营公司十七年，你会经历多轮这样的循环：人们说「让我放手干」，他们带着团队干完就走，最后你接管他们的团队。

No one agrees on anything. So you're kind of negotiating with everyone who's going in every different direction and they're competing with each other. And many of them, if you're doing this as long as I am, seventeen years, what you end up doing is going through many generations of this where people say, let me do my thing. They do their thing with their team leave. And then you inherit their team.

而你必须让他们继续做自己的事。但接着你雇了另一个人，他想做不同的事，不是他们原本尝试的方向。你要同时应对20个不同团队这样的情况

And you have to keep doing their thing. But then you hire someone else who wants to do a different thing, not that thing that they were trying to do. And do this with 20 different groups

我真是

I'm so

全都朝着不同方向前进。突然间你就想更亲力亲为。你必须修正问题。你在说：好，现在我们要这么做。而人们会质疑：你为什么不信任我？

all gooing in different directions. And so suddenly, you start to want to get more hands on. You have to fix things. You're saying, okay, now we're going to do this. And people are like, why aren't you trusting me?

为什么不给我授权？你在干涉，你在微观管理。所有这些术语都是负面的。

Why aren't you empowering me? You're like, you're you're you're meddling. Like, you're micromanaging me. There's all these terms. They're all negative.

这些都源于一种观念：你不知道自己在做什么。你不是个好领导。你不相信自己。你开始听取所有人的意见，唯独忽略内心声音。这时你就变成了经理人，而非创始人。

They all come from this notion that you don't know what you're doing. You're not a good leader. You don't trust yourself. You start listening to everyone but your inner voice. And that's when you become a manager, not a founder.

我开始觉得自己疯了。公司规模越大、越成功，我反而越失去信心。按理说应该更有信心才对。但正因为业务超出我的掌控范围，我不知该如何应对，信心就逐渐流失。

And I just like I started thinking I was crazy. And the bigger we got and the more successful we got, the more I lost my confidence. You'd think I would have gained my confidence. Yeah. But I started losing my confidence because the thing was out scaling me and I didn't quite know what to do.

我当时不断寻求建议，其实应该听从自己内心想如何经营公司。正确的方法只有一种，那就是你选择的方式。因为有些人会留下，但更多人会来来去去。我们总在讨论产品市场契合度。

And I was basically seeking advice and I should have listened to myself how I want to run the company. Because the right way is one way. And that's the only way. And the way is the way you want to do it because people, some people will stick with you, but many will come and go. We talk about this thing, product market fit.

还有创始人市场契合度这个概念。你想如何运营公司？你是最适合这家公司的创始人，必须以正确方式组建团队。去年我讲过这个疯狂的故事——

There's also this thing called founder market fit. How do you want to run the company? You are the right founder for the right company and you need to build your team the right way. So basically, I went last year. I told this crazy story.

我说感觉自己失去了对公司控制权，不是被投资人，而是被员工。我们就像朝着千百个不同方向狂奔。我不知所措，开始四处求教。后来遇到几位苹果前员工，他们告诉我——

I basically said, like, I felt like I lost control of my company, not from the investors, but from the employees. Like, I just we were all going in thousand different directions. And I didn't know what to do. I started basically seeking out advice. I discovered again, a couple people came in my life that were former Apple employees.

史蒂夫·乔布斯如何回归苹果。当时公司距破产只剩90天。他把这个处于经理人模式的公司重新带回创始人模式。我心想：真希望我也能这样做。但我们即将上市...

They told me how Steve Jobs basically came back to Apple. He was like ninety days from bankruptcy. And he basically took what was basically a manager mode company and got it into founder mode. And I put that in my head and I said, I wish I had permission to do that. But we're about to go public.

但老兄，我真希望能像在Y Combinator时期那样运营这家公司。如果我们能像一家巨型初创企业那样运作会怎样？如果我们能保持小规模会怎样？如果我们能精简高效会怎样？如果每个经理都能深入工作细节会怎样？

But man, I wish I could run this company like during Y Combinator. What if we could run like a giant startup? What if we could be small? What if we could be lean? What if every manager was also like in the details of the works?

他们清楚自己在管理什么。如果人们不专注于升职会怎样？如果他们专注于做出卓越工作会怎样？如果CEO仍兼任首席产品官会怎样？我曾深入参与工作细节。

They knew what they were managing. What if people weren't focused on promotions? What if they're focused on doing great work? What if the CEO was still the chief product officer? I was in the details of the work.

如果我审核所有工作并告诉人们优劣所在，而不是只说'我信任你，随你怎么做'会怎样？因为我们是一个品牌，必须有所坚持。如果我们都同意朝一个方向划桨会怎样？而且是由我这个创始人兼CEO设定的方向。

What if I reviewed all the work and told people what good and bad was rather than just saying, I trust you. You do whatever you want because we're one brand. We must stand for something. What if we all agreed to row in one direction? And it was my direction that I set because I was this founder and I was the CEO.

那是个美好的构想。但实现它意味着我基本上要重建公司，某种程度上要推倒重来。当时我缺乏动力。然后疫情爆发了。

That was a beautiful idea. Except to do that, I had to basically rebuild the company and kind of blow it up. So I had no impetus. And then the pandemic happens.

这就是你的动力。

There's your impetus.

作为旅游公司，我记得三月十五日疫情爆发那晚，我的董事会成员肯·陈纳德——他曾在911和2008年2月期间担任美国运通CEO（运通也是大型旅游企业）——对我说：'我经历过911'。

And when you're a travel company I remember the night of the pan the Ides of March, March 15, Ken Chenault, board member of mine, he was CEO of Amex during 09/11 and 02/2008. Wow. So Amex did travel. You know, they were a big travel company. And he said, I dealt with nine eleven.

'作为CEO我挺过了2008年金融危机，那是我作为领导者的决定性时刻。总有一天，你也会经历自己的911，面对自己的2008年危机，它会在你任期内发生。'

I dealt with 2008 as a CEO. They were my defining moments as a leader. Sometime, at some point, you're gonna have your 09/11. You're gonna deal with your 02/2008. It's gonna happen on your watch.

世界总会发生些事，那将成为你作为领导者的决定性时刻。3月15日那天，肯·陈纳德打电话给我说：'记得我们谈过的911吗？这次疫情相当于十次911。'

Something in the world's gonna happen, and it'll be your defining moment as a leader. And that day, on March 15, Ken Chenal calls me and he said, remember that conversation I had about a nine eleven? This pandemic is 10 of them.

天啊，太震撼了。

Oh, wow. Wow.

这相当于十次911的规模，事实确实如此。对旅游业的影响就是十次911的量级。他说：'这是你作为领导者的决定性时刻。'这时我想起安迪·格鲁夫的名言：'糟糕的公司被危机摧毁。'

This is the size of ten nine elevens, and it was. It was the size of ten nine elevens. That was the impact I had on travel. He said, this is your defining moment as a leader. And I I thought about this Andy Grove quote, bad companies destroyed by a crisis.

优秀的企业能在危机中生存，而伟大的企业则因危机而被定义。我说过，他说得对，这将是我们定义性的时刻。幸运的是，我们已有蓝图，那个蓝图我们现在称之为‘创始人机动模式’。

Good companies, you know, survive a crisis, but great companies are defined by a crisis. And I said this is this is he's right. This is gonna be our defining moment. And luckily, had a blueprint. And that blueprint we now call Founder Mobile.

我当时没给它命名，只是说，这是一家能搞定事情的公司。而且我不必和每个人争论我们要做什么。团队虽小，但个个都是精兵强将。

I didn't have a name for it. I just said, like, it's a company that just gets shit done. And it's and I'm not like, I'm not arguing with everyone about what we're doing. It's a small team. Everyone's really good.

我们朝这个方向前进，直接行动。我的参与方式不是微观管理——我不指挥他们具体怎么做，而是和他们共处一室，就像我当初创业时那样。我们互相碰撞想法。

We go in this direction. We just do it. And my involvement I'm not micromanaging people because I'm not telling them what to do, but I'm in the room with them. Like when I was a founder. And we're back and forth.

我们在头脑风暴。这不是说‘我给你空间做你的事’，也不是‘杰西卡，往右走还是往左走’的问题。

We're brainstorming. It's not about I'm giving you space to do your job. It's not about Jessica. Go right. Go left.

作为领导者，关键在于我们大体朝着这个方向前进。但你认为我们该如何实现？很好，那这样呢？那样呢？

It's about as a leader, we're all generally going this way. But how do you think we can get there? Great. Well, what about this? What about that?

这就像三位创始人共同打造产品时的创意流动，为何要中断？正是这种创造性流程让我们得以彻底重塑公司。我们从一家被预言即将倒闭的企业——《连线》杂志甚至发问‘这是Airbnb的终结吗？’

It's a creative flow like three founders building a product. Why does it ever have to stop? And that was the creative process that allowed us to basically rebuild the company from the ground up. We went from a company that people said was going to go out of business. Wired magazine, is this the end of Airbnb?

是啊。

Yeah.

突然实现了千亿美元市值的IPO。

To suddenly having an IPO at a $100,000,000,000 market cap.

当时没有反对意见吗？或者说因为你们在为生存而战，所以阻力更小？

And was there no pushback or or less pushback because you were literally fighting for your life?

很有趣的是，若非疫情，本会一片混乱，阻力必然存在。但我要再次强调，团队都是极其优秀、心怀善意的人——这才是关键。

It was so funny. If this wasn't the pandemic, there would have been pandemonium. There would have been pushback. Again, I always say really great, wonderful, well intentioned people. That's the key.

并不是我雇用了这些糟糕的人。他们行为不端。组织就是这样运作的。你可以面试并聘用那些你想共事的优秀人才，但如果你领导不当，领导力在于在场而非缺席。

It wasn't like I hired these horrible people. They're misbehaving. This is how organizations are. You can hire incredible people that you interviewed, that you want to work with. But if you don't lead correctly and you just leadership is presence, not absence.

事实就是如此。因此，如果你失去对公司的控制，往往是因为你没有给予人们方向。我原本没有领导公司的权限，也不认为自己有。当疫情多年来首次爆发时，所有人都看向我问道：我们该怎么办？

That's what it is. And so if you lose control of your company, it's often from people where you're not giving direction. I did not have permission to lead the company. I didn't think I did. When the pandemic happened for the first time in many years, everyone looks to me and they said, what do we do?

是的，形势好的时候他们可不会这么问。那时他们说让我按自己的方式做事。突然之间，当我们的业务面临危机，每个人都问：我们该怎么办？而我说，哦，看来我终于可以按一直想要的方式运营了。

Yeah. Now they didn't say that when it was good. Said, let me do my thing. Suddenly, now that we located present our business, everyone's like, what do we do? And I said, oh, I guess I have permission to operate in the way I've always wanted to do.

于是我挺身而出接管公司，基本上进入了PG Coin创始人模式。危机结束后，有些人虽未明说，但暗示道：什么时候能恢复原状？而答案是永远不会恢复。大多数人对此感到高兴。

And so I'm gonna step up, took control of the company, went into basically what we I think PG coin founder mode. I went into that mode. And once the crisis is over, a few people kind of they didn't say it this way, but they said, like, okay, when do we go back to the way things were? And they go ever back to the way things were. And most of them were happy about that.

少数人不满并离开。但这没关系。我毫不愧疚。如果有人看了说不想在这种公司工作，要知道99.999%的工作岗位都不在Airbnb，你们有无数其他选择。

Some were unhappy and left. But that's Okay. Like, I am unapologetic. And if people watching say, I don't want to work for a company like that, then like, well, ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of jobs aren't at Airbnb. So you got like many other flavors.

我不会为公司运营方式道歉。这本来就不适合所有人。最重要的是CEO和招聘者要如实告知工作环境，让人们自行决定是否加入。我个人认为在AI时代，速度和敏捷性至关重要。

Like, I'm not apologizing for how we run the company. And it's not for everyone. And the the most important thing is CEOs and recruiters are honest about what it's like to work there, and then people decide if they want to be a part of that. Now I'm biased. I think in the age of AI, AI is all about speed and velocity.

速度与敏捷就像小团队全体向右转的协同性。我认为创始人模式的公司更可能在AI时代蓬勃发展甚至存活，因为AI意味着每家公司都必须自我革新。

I think speed and velocity is like a small team all being like we're going right and everyone goes right. I think that's those so I think founder mode companies are much more likely to thrive or even survive the age of AI because AI means every company has to reinvent itself.

没错，你们确实实现了自我革新。你演讲中让我印象深刻的一点——昨晚在Y Combinator创始人模式 retreat 上又提到的——现在这个概念已经被彻底颠覆了。

Yeah. And you did reinvent yourself. One thing that stuck out for me from the talk, and then you mentioned it again last night in your talk at the Y Combinator founder mode retreat, Which as it's so now messed up.

关于越级会议的想法

The idea about the skip level meetings

哦，还有

Oh, and

这个概念有多重要。

how important that concept is.

我曾被告知一种过于简单化的经营大公司的观点。对吧？就像经营小公司那样。我认为保罗写过很多关于这方面的文章。关于如何经营小公司，确实有很多正确的知识被记录下来。

I was told, like, this overly simplistic view of how to run a big company. Right? Like there's how to run a small company. And I think Paul has written many essays about it. And I think there's a lot of knowledge that's correct written about how to run a small company.

但在回答这个问题之前，作为创始人的关键在于直觉。尽管有些反直觉的事情，比如做那些无法规模化的事情，以及一些非常简单的原则，比如创造人们想要的东西——意思是不要担心如何赚钱。如果你创造了人们想要的东西，你很可能赚大钱。我们确实如此，因为人们需要我们的产品。我认为成为创始人是一种直觉。

But the thing about being a founder, before I answer this question, is it's intuitive. Like, notwithstanding some unintuitive things like do things that don't scale and like kind of really simple principles like make something people want, as in don't worry about like how you're going to make money. If you make something people want, you'll probably make a lot of money. And we do because people want what we make. I think being a founder was intuitive.

我认为成为CEO不是直觉的。我不认为你的直觉会起作用。换句话说，我认为有些人天生就是优秀的创始人。他们天生就是好的创始人。但我不认为有人天生就是优秀的CEO。

I think being a CEO is not intuitive. I don't think your intuition works. Said differently, I think people are kind of born good as founders. They're innately good founders. I don't think people are innately good CEOs.

我认为很多优秀的CEO一开始都是糟糕的CEO。杰夫·贝索斯说过他一开始是个糟糕的CEO。史蒂夫·乔布斯，我是说，他第一次被赶出了苹果公司。所以我认为即使是伟大的CEO一开始也不是伟大的CEO，因为这不是一个靠直觉的工作。人们所说的，我认为并不是创始人会采取的方式。

I think many of the good CEOs start as bad CEOs. I think Jeff Bezos say he started as a bad CEO. Steve Jobs, I mean, he got kicked out of Apple for the first time. So I think even the great CEOs started out as not great CEOs because it's not an intuitive job. And what people say, again, I think it's kind of not the way that a founder would operate.

所以他们说的一件事是，CEO的工作是雇佣一个优秀的高管团队，然后让他们基本上运营公司。对我来说，这绝对不是你应该做的。你需要做的是尽可能与公司里的更多人建立关系。你需要尽可能接近那些实际工作的人。在一个理想的世界里，如果你有无限的时间，所有一千个人都会向你汇报。

So one of the things they say is the job of a CEO is to hire a great executive team and let them basically run their company. And that to me is absolutely not what you should do. What you need to do is you need to have relationships with as many people as possible in the company. You need to be as close to the people doing the work as possible. In an imaginary world, if you had infinite time, all thousand people would report to you.

现在这是不可能的，但在理论世界里，不会有管理层。理论上你可以与每个工作的人直接合作。但当然，这是不可能的。人们需要方向，需要协调，而你不是每个专业领域的专家，你的时间也有限。所以你创造了这个管理层。

Now that's not possible, but in a theoretical world, there would be no management. Like, you could theoretically work with everyone doing the work. But of course, that's not possible. People need direction, they need alignment, and you're not an expert in every specialty of what everyone's doing and you have limited time. So you create this like management layer.

管理是必要的。也许有一天一个人可以管理一千个机器人。我甚至认为在这种结构下，他们仍然需要一个管理结构。我认为即使你管理的是AI，你仍然需要一个管理结构，因为你无法跟踪一千个机器人。

And management is necessary. Maybe one day one person can manage a thousand bots. I even think in that structure, they'll need a management structure. I even think like you'll need to you're you're gonna get you're not gonna be able to track a thousand bots. You're still gonna have a management structure even if you're thinking you're managing AIs.

我向你保证，这就像管理人类一样。但我确实认为你需要尽可能与更多人建立关系。唯一的方法是跨级沟通。这就是他们所说的。比如，如果是CTO或工程高级副总裁，你需要与他们下属的人交谈。

I guarantee you it's gonna be just like people. But I do think that you need to have relationships with as many people as possible. The only way to do that is to skip level. This is what they call it. It's like you talk to if it's a CTO or SVP of engineering, you got to talk to the people reporting to them.

很多高管不喜欢这样。我不是说所有高管。很多高管会问，你为什么和我的下属谈话？或者他们可能不会指责你什么，但会问，一切都好吗？或者当你跨级沟通时，人们一开始不愿意告诉你一切，因为他们害怕。

A lot of executives don't like that. I'm not saying all executives. A lot of executives like, why are you talking to my people? Or they might not accuse you of anything but like, is everything okay? Or people initially when you skip a level they don't want to tell you everything because they're afraid.

人们会变得非常焦虑。或者他们会说，嘿，我需要和大家保持一致。我不知道你在向我的团队传达什么。所以人们出于好意——好意的表现可能是‘你告诉了我团队的方向，我却不知情’；或者出于不安——坏意的表现则是‘我缺乏安全感’。

And people get really anxious. Or they're like, hey, like I need to be on the same page. I don't know what you're telling my team. So people, for good intentions, good intentions are like you told my team direction, I didn't know about it. Or bad intentions, I'm insecure.

顺便说一句，他们并不喜欢这样。不过有负责任的解决方式。我做的第一件事就是声明：首先，他们不是你的人，他们是公司的人，或者说是我的人。因为如果高管认为这些人是自己的下属，而他们离职了，猜猜团队归谁管？是你。

By the way, they don't like it. There's a responsible way of doing it though. The first thing I do is I say, first of all, they're not your people, they're the company's people or they're my people. Like, there were because if the executive thinks that they are people and they leave, well guess who has the team? You.

这种情况已经反复发生无数次了。首先，我希望与他们建立关系。其次，如果你不进行越级沟通，怎么知道高管是否称职？当然，高管们可能不喜欢这样。但如果他们做得很好，我会希望他们接受越级沟通。

And this has happened over and over and over and over again. So first of all, I wanna have a relationship with them. Second of all, how do you know if the executive is doing a good good job if you're not skip leveling? Of course, the executives might not like that. But if they're doing a good job, I would want them to skip level.

他们清楚我做得有多出色。

They know how good of a job I'm doing.

没错。

Right.

对吧？所以这某种程度上像是一种——你知道的——对好坏情况的确认偏误。但同时，你也希望贴近愿景。创始人的职责是什么？很多人认为创始人的职责是制定愿景。

Right? So this is only kind of a this is kind of like a like a you know, this is kind of like a confirmation bias towards the good or the bad. And then but also, like, you want to be close to the vision. Like, what is the what is the job of a founder? I think a lot of people think the job of a founder is to, set the vision.

而我总在想，‘制定愿景’到底是什么意思？或许换种说法是每天都要重塑愿景。是设定公司的发展节奏，是日复一日地塑造它。不是我们凭空想象出某个目标，

And I'm like, what does that even mean, set the vision? I think it's to set maybe another way of saying it is to set the vision every day. It's to set the pace of the company. It's to shape it every single day. It's not like we just dream up something.

告诉一群人然后让他们去执行。我们需要每天都共同踏上这段旅程。愿景每天都在微妙变化——虽然山顶始终是同一个，但登顶的路径每天都在调整。你必须参与其中。

We tell a bunch of people and they do it. Every single day, we need to be on the journey together. And the vision changes a little bit every single day. I mean, it's the same mountaintop, but like the tip of the mountaintop, the way you get up it, it changes every single day. And you need to be on that journey.

所以我把自己想象成同心圆。我的直属下属，下属的下属。我把下属的直属下属也视为我的直属团队。这样形成的同心圆大约有40到50人，我都将他们当作直接管理对象。我进行越级沟通，参与他们的招聘，

So I think of myself as concentric circles. So my directs, my directs, directs. And I treat the directs to my of my directs as my directs. So it's a concentric circle of like 40 or 50 people, and I treat them all as my directs. I skip level, I co hire them, and I make decisions on whether or not working out and leave the company.

并共同决定人员去留——包括聘用、解雇、晋升和管理。这些决策我都与高管们协作完成。

Like hire, fire, promote, and manage. I co do it with my executives.

工作量很大。

It's a lot of work.

是啊，但这是必要的。现在英伟达的黄仁勋更进一步，他连高管团队都没有。我相信他直接管理着四五十个人。

Yeah. But it's necessary. Now Jensen at NVIDIA took it up further. He didn't even have an executive team. I believe he has 40 or 50 directs.

他就说：'我不打算分权，我要亲自管理所有人。'理论上可行的话，这种做法或许有效。他毕竟是位资深CEO，有三十年经验。但对大多数人来说会难以驾驭。

He just said, I don't I'm just gonna manage them all. I think that's like, if you can theoretically do it, it might work. I and he's such a seasoned CEO. He's been doing it for thirty years. I think that will be unwieldy for most people.

即便对我来说也够呛。公司里行政事务太多了。我不想被琐事困住。但反过来说，你必须有能力...我有时会跳过三四级直接沟通。

Even for me, that's unwieldy. That's just a lot of administration in a company. Yeah. And I I don't wanna get too bogged down. But the inverse is like you have to be able to and I sometimes skip level four four layers.

因为归根结底，你要和一线员工共同解决问题。顺便说，为什么创始人能这样做而经理不行？因为创始人通常更懂技术，他们实际知道怎么做，所以能直接参与工作。

Because ultimately, you want to work with the people doing the work and solve the problem. And by the way, why do founders do this, not managers? Because founders are usually more technical. They actually know usually how to do the thing. So they can sit with the people doing the thing.

原因在于他们在雇人做这件事之前，自己就做过这件事。

And the reason why is because they did the thing before they hired the person to do the thing.

因为当时没人能做

Because there was no one else to do

没错。作为创始人，公司里每个岗位我都做过。虽然我会说'我做得比你差，所以才请你来做'。但正因创始人做过所有工作，他们才能跨级管理——本质上是在重操旧业。

the Right. So every job in the company I've done as a founder. Now, I'd like to tell people I did it worse than you. That's why you're doing it. But every single job in the company the founder did so they can skip level because they're just doing your old job.

而经理人往往来自某个垂直领域，对其他20个平行领域都不熟悉。他们更在意层级地位。

Yeah. If you're a manager, they came up some silo. So every other of the 20 silos are unfamiliar domains that were parallel to something they've done. They don't know about it. And they're they're just a little more wired for status.

知道吗？就像些小事——创始人不介意弄脏手。比如洗手间有纸巾掉地上，创始人会捡起来扔垃圾桶。

You know? Like, it's just little things. Like, founders get their hands dirty. Like, if you're in the bathroom, there's like a paper towel. A founder will pick it up and put it in the toilet the trash.

一个经理会想，为什么那里有张纸巾？这是件小事。是的。因为创始人刚开始创业时发现，如果他们不把纸巾扔掉，就没人会处理。

A manager will like, why is there a paper towel there? It's like a little thing. Yep. Because the founder was starting an apartment where if they didn't take the paper towel, throw it out, no one did. Yeah.

所以这就像刻在你骨子里一样。这是个比喻。但这个比喻适用于所有事情。是的。因此我不认为所有创始人都应该或有能力运营大公司。

So it's just like it's ingrained in you. And that's a metaphor. But that metaphor is true of everything. Yeah. And so I don't think all founders should or are capable of running giant companies.

但我确实认为最好的公司是那些创始人规模运作得当的。这在数据中一目了然。看看全球最有价值的公司，要么由创始人运营，要么创始人给了它们巨大动力，比如亚马逊。或者像萨提亚那样，他们非常接近创始人特质并实现自我革新。

But I do think the best companies are when it works in the founder scale. It's unmistakable. Unmistakable in the data. And you look at the most valuable companies in world, they're either run by founders or they have the founders gave them a ton of momentum like Amazon. Or in the case of Satya, they are very close and characteristic to a founder to reinvent themselves.

他的行为接近创始人。他不是创始人，但在自我革新方面表现得像创始人。是的。我认为这种情况很少有例外。也许谷歌算一个，但即便如此，拉里、谢尔盖和埃里克也长期保持着这种特质。

He acts close to a founder. He's not a founder, but he's acting close to a founder in the way of reinventing himself. Yeah. And I think there's very few exceptions to this. I mean, maybe kind of Google, but even then, Larry Sergei and Eric were kind of a charm for it for a very, very long time.

然后他们建立了搜索垄断。但这真的很少有例外。懂吗？我的意思是，一旦达到逃逸速度，像蒂姆·库克就能把史上最成功的产品卖出惊人成绩长达十三年。但如果史蒂夫在2005年去世，他们还会推出iPhone吗？

And then they have a kind of a search monopoly. But there's really not a lot of exceptions to this. Know? I mean, once you get escape velocity, like Tim Cook was able to take the most successful product of all time and just sell the hell out of it for thirteen years. But if Steve died in 02/2005, would they have come out with the iPhone?

我认为不会。

I don't think so.

不会。你有没有想过，如果疫情没发生，爱彼迎现在会是什么样子？

No. Do you ever think about what where Airbnb would be right now if the pandemic hadn't happened?

疫情发生在三月。我彻底改造了公司。我在三个月内做出了相当于五年的决策。我担心如果疫情没发生，可能现在还在做这些五年期的决策。实际上七个月完成了五年的工作。

I think we would have the pandemic happened in March. I transformed the company. I made, like I made what felt like five years decisions in three months. And I worry that if the pandemic hadn't happened, I might still be making five years worth decisions. It's been seven, three months in five years.

是的。所以过去五年我完成的事，可能原本需要五到十年。我可能会精疲力尽，眼下挂着黑眼圈。

Yeah. And so maybe everything I've done in last five years, it would take me another five or ten years to do. And I'd probably be tired. I'd be exhausted. I'd have bags under my eyes.

我会非常沮丧。甚至不知道现在会跟你说什么。可能领悟了同样的教训，但带着更多挫败感和更少成果。有句老话：危机是绝不能浪费的良机。而这次确实是个机会。

I'd be really frustrated. I don't even know what I'd be telling you. I'd probably have have all the same lessons but with a lot more frustration and a lot less to show for it. There's an old saying, a crisis is a terrible opportunity to waste. And man was an opportunity.

我本不会主动要求这样。我希望观看的人们不需要经历一代人一遇的疫情。正因如此，我才想做这件事——我想帮助创始人们保持对公司的掌控权。而保持掌控权不是针对投资者，而是针对你自己的团队。

I wouldn't have never asked for it. And I hope that people watching don't need a once in a generation pandemic. And so that's why I wanted to do this because I want to help founders keep control of their company. And keep control of their company is not vis a vis investors. It's vis a vis your own team.

顺便说一句，你的员工们大多会更快乐。事实证明我曾害怕领导他人，我以为自己会显得专横，以为人们不喜欢被指挥。实际上人们确实需要方向指引。他们或许不需要被具体告知如何工作，但公司规模越大，人们就越渴望方向感。

And by the way, your employees are mostly all be happier. It turns out I was afraid to lead. I thought I would be bossy and I thought people don't want to be told what to do. It turns out people do want direction. They may not only told exactly how to do their job, but the bigger the company the more you're yearning for direction.

因为缺乏方向会导致办公室政治、官僚主义，以及所有人们不愿在大公司工作的原因。

Cause without direction, you have politics, you have bureaucracy, you've got all the reasons why people don't want to work at a big company.

说得太好了。我觉得我们可以在这里结束。

I love it. I think we should end there.

好的，太棒了。

Alright. Great.

这是个极其重要的理念。感谢你如此坦诚地分享——哦，非常感谢。因为你将激励无数创业者。

This is such an important concept. Thank you for being so open and sharing it Oh, thank very much. Because you are going to inspire a lot of founders out there.

希望能继续和你、Carolyn、PG还有Gary一起做这件事。我热爱持续探讨这个话题，因为我认为这实质上是YC孵化器的第二部分——当你离开YC之后，该怎么办？

Well, I hope to keep doing this with you and Carolyn, PG, and Gary. And I love to keep talking about this because I think it's going to it's really the part two to Y Combinator. Like, you leave Y Combinator, now what?

没错，正是如此。

Yeah. Exactly.

我认为核心观点是：我们希望人们能保持创始人状态，而不必经历危机。如果你提供所有工具和内容，他们就不需要经历疫情这样的灾难。

I think the punchline here is, like, we want people to be in founder mode without having to have a crisis. So if you give them all the tools and all the content, like, they won't need a pandemic.

保持创始人状态。

Stay in founder mode.

好的，谢谢

Well, thanks for

参与节目，社交雷达。再见。

coming on, Social Radars. Bye.

再见。再见。

Bye. Bye.