Paul Graham 谈创业、雄心与卓越创始人

简要描述Brief Description

Paul Graham 反思了什么因素能让初创公司和创始人卓有成效，涵盖经久不变的创业基本原则、雄心、主动性，以及值得攻克的问题类型。这段对话结合 Y Combinator 的经验，让这些建议更加具体。Paul Graham reflects on what makes startups and founders effective, from enduring startup fundamentals to ambition, agency, and the kinds of problems worth pursuing. The conversation uses Y Combinator’s experience to make the advice concrete.

目录Table of Contents

• 始终不变的创业基本原则
  Startup fundamentals that stay constant
• 雄心壮志与严重问题
  Ambition and serious problems
• 杰出创始人的独特之处
  What distinguishes great founders
• 创始人如何取得进展
  How founders make progress
• 建议、判断与长远眼光
  Advice, judgment, and the long view

始终不变的创业基本原则Startup fundamentals that stay constant

所以，我们今天在山景城，和 PG 本人一起待在最初的办公室里，听你给 YC 这一期创业公司的演讲。我查了一下，这其实是 YC 的第 47 期。你知道，我一直在试着算这个数字，但不太确定到底是多少。难怪我对这场演讲没那么紧张。我已经讲过这么多次了。内容会有点变化。是的，今年也是 YC 成立的第 21 年。你知道，奇怪的是，我每次都会从头准备这场演讲。真的吗？我大概总是在反复讲同样的内容，但我总觉得自己应该……我会想，天哪，你知道，我会提前几个小时想一想。糟了，我要去给 YC 做演讲了，最好提前想想要说些什么。于是我打开一个文本文件，开始打字。一直都是这样。So, we're here in Mountain View today with PG himself at the original offices doing your talk that you do for the YC batch. I looked it up. This is actually the 47th YC batch. You know, I've been trying to calculate that number and I wasn't sure exactly what it was. No wonder I'm not too worried about this talk. I've done it that many times. It changes a little bit. Yes, it's the 21st year also of YC. You know, the weird thing is I make the talk from scratch every time. Really? I probably say the same things over and over, but I always feel like I should like I think, oh my god, I you you know think a couple hours beforehand. Oops, I better I'm going talking to YC. I better think in advance a little bit about what to say. And so I open up a text file and start typing things. And that's how it always is.

今天有什么冬天以来的新鲜事吗？没有，创业这件事的大部分内容——尤其是在这里创业——其实都差不多。这是个挺有意思的点。创业的大部分内容都是一样的。创业的大部分内容一直都一样，对吧？无论是微处理器、人工智能，还是内燃机，事情总是大同小异。很好。那我们就来聊几个问题吧。好。嗯，你最近发帖说，YC 现在资助的创业公司，比所谓的美好旧时光里的那些要认真得多。是吗？你这话是什么意思？嗯，我说所谓的美好旧时光，是因为人们总在说 YC 已经走下坡路了，你知道的。我记得人们大概是从 2008 年左右开始这么说的，对吧？总有人说，YC 曾经很棒，但现在已经不如从前了，对吧？因为他们不能说 YC 一直都很糟糕。他们得承认它曾经很出色。所以，如果他们想抨击它，就只能说它衰落了，对吧？它以前很好，但现在不行了。Any tidbits from today that are new from winter? No, most of the things most of starting a startup here, this is an actually interesting point. Most of starting a startup is the same. Most of starting a startup is always the same, right? in, you know, microprocessors or AI or like in the internal combustion engine, it's always the same stuff. Good. Well, in that case, let's run through some questions. Okay. Um, so you recently posted that the startups YC funds now are much more serious than they were in the supposedly good old days. Yeah. What did you mean by that? Well, what I meant by supposedly good old days is people are always saying that YC has jumped the shark, you know, and like I remember when people started saying this, which is in about like 2008, right? YC is always this thing that was great, but now it's not what it was, right? Because they can't say it was always terrible. They have to admit it was once great. So, if they want to attack it, they have to say it's fallen, right? It was good, but now it's not.

一直都是这样。总归是不再好了。嗯，所以我说所谓的美好旧时光，指的就是人们声称过去曾经很美好的那些日子。不过，旧时光里也有很多东西，比如 Reddit，对吧？它固然很有价值，但也算不上洲际弹道货运导弹，对吧？我最近还和做这个的团队开了办公时间。这个点子怎么样？就像一枚洲际弹道导弹，只不过它不会爆炸，而是会着陆。挺有野心的。然后把东西卸下来。对，这可真够厉害的，对吧？没什么比洲际弹道货运导弹更厉害了。对。还有哪些其他厉害的项目？嗯，治愈癌症。[哼笑] 没错。这一批里有一家初创公司。我是说，治愈癌症的方法有各种各样，我觉得应该给很多种方法都投钱，因为只要有一种奏效就很好了。比如，治疗癌症的一种方法就是疫苗。It's always been. It's always not good anymore. Um, and so that's what I meant by the supposedly good old days because the old days are what people claim used to be good. But like in the old days there was a lot of things like Reddit, right? Which valuable as it is, is not exactly intercontinental ballistic cargo, right? Which I did office hours with recently. How about that for an idea? Like it's like an ICBM except instead of exploding, it lands. It's ambitious. And drops stuff off. Yeah, that's a that's serious, right? You don't get much more serious than an an intercontinental ballistic cargo. Yeah. What what were some of the other serious ones? Well, curing cancer. [snorts] Yes. There's a startup in this batch. I mean, and there's all sorts of different approaches to curing cancer and I say fund many of them because like any one working would be good. So, like one way to approach curing cancer is vaccines.

这是一个极端，对吧？另一端则是治疗，对吧？所以这一期有一家初创公司，基本上是在为癌症患者按需开展研究。嗯，我喜欢他们的一点是，他们仿佛在用千刀万剐的方式对付癌症，而这或许正是战胜癌症的方法，因为众所周知，癌症并不是那种你只要想出一种疗法就能治愈的疾病。我的意思是，如果这些疫苗有效，也许真的能做到。也许吧，对吧？但也可能，对付它的办法就是千刀万剐。他们确实很有意思，因为他们还帮助过另一位 YC 校友。对吧？这也是整个 YC 社群的一部分。他们帮助了 GitLab 的 Sid 应对癌症，而他成功地战胜了癌症。我的意思是，他把这件事当成一家初创公司来做，对吧？而这些人实际上就是那家事实上的初创公司里的联合创始人。有意思的是，我记得那之后我就在想，你知道，我一直在琢磨什么会是个不错的创业点子，对吧？我记得当时我说，有人应该创办一家初创公司，为所有人做 Sid 为自己做过的事。而现在，不仅这样的初创公司真的出现了，创办它的还是当初真正帮助 Sid 的那些人。That's one end, right? The opposite end is therapies, right? And so there's a startup in this batch that is basically doing on demand research for people with cancer, you know. Um, and what I like about it is they're sort of inflicting on cancer the death of a thousand cuts, which may be the way to defeat it because, you know, it's notoriously not the sort of thing where you just like come up with a cure for cancer. I mean, maybe you do if these vaccines work. Maybe the maybe you do, right? But maybe or maybe the way you fight it is the death of a thousand cuts. And they're actually really interesting because they helped another YC. Yeah. Right. It's part of the whole YC community. In they helped Sid from GitLab deal with his cancer which he has done very successfully. I mean he approached it like a startup, right? And these were essentially his co-founders in that de facto startup. And it's funny because I remember thinking after that, you know, I'm all I always had this process going of what would be a good startup idea, right? And I remember after that saying, you know, somebody should start a startup to do for everyone what Sid did for himself. And now, not only is this startup happening, it's the people who actually did it for Sid.

雄心壮志与严峻问题Ambition and serious problems

所以，这再好不过了。我意识到这件事正在发生时，特别高兴。是啊。我觉得，他那篇文章里说自己在对抗癌症时进入了创始人模式，这确实非常贴切地描述了他的做法。是啊，他用另一个 YC 术语来对抗癌症。嗯，顺着这个话题，我又读了一遍你 2012 年写的那篇文章，你在里面创造了“令人望而生畏的雄心勃勃的想法”这个说法。那里面有不少想法后来真的实现了。“比如哪些？”比如，做一个新的 Google。那是其中一个，对吧？结果你看，我算是预见到了，对吧？要做一个新的 Google，不能正面硬刚。得等到环境发生巨大变化，让他们的模式过时，那时你才能做到。而 OpenAI 就是这样，对吧？我很早就意识到这一点了——用过 OpenAI 之后，我就想，哇，我已经不用 Google 了。我也不用搜索了。我真正想从搜索中得到的不是网页，而是信息。那为什么不直接问 AI 要信息呢？对吧？我相信现在大家都体验过这种感觉了。So, it couldn't be better. I was so delighted when I realized that one was happening. Yeah. And I think his essay that I went founder mode on my cancer, that's a very good way of describing what he did. Yeah. using another YC term to attack his cancer. Um, so along that vein, I was rereading the essay you wrote in 2012 where you coined the term frighteningly ambitious. ideas. A lot of those ideas have actually gotten done since then. Well, like which ones? Well, a new Google. That was one of them, right? And it turns out, look, the I I sort of predicted this, right? that um the way you make a new Google is not by attacking them head-on. You have to wait for things to change so much that their model is is obsolete and that's when you can do it. And that's what Open AI is, right? Like I realized very early on like after using OpenAI like whoa, I don't use Google anymore. I don't use searches that what I really wanted from searches was not web pages. I wanted information. Why not just ask the AI for the information, right? And I'm sure everyone's now had this experience.

而且它是在 YC 孵化的。对。对。对。对。这是 Sam 众多副业项目之一。是的。嗯，说到“有抱负”这个词，我很好奇：你是什么时候意识到，为什么创始人不能只是技术能力或其他方面异于常人的优秀，还必须非常有抱负？我是什么时候意识到创始人必须非常有抱负的？我想，在我们创办 YC 之前，我就已经知道了，因为创办 YC 时，我们已经有了自己创业的经验，对吧？所以我们知道创业有多艰苦，也知道你需要一些动力，才能撑过重重障碍。说实话，光有聪明才智是不够的。那些障碍太可怕了，仅凭聪明才智是无法克服的。所以你必须有某种驱动力，而你把它称为抱负。And it was incubated at YC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of Sam's many side projects. Yes. Um and so along the same veins of around ambitious as a term, I am curious when you figured out why a founder needs to be not just unusually talented in technical ability or something else, but they actually have to be really ambitious as well. When did I figure out that founders had to be really ambitious? I think um I already knew that before we started YC because when we started YC we already had all this experience of doing a startup ourselves, right? And so we knew that it was grueling and you need you need something to drive you through all those obstacles and honestly being beautiful is not enough. The obstacles are too fearsome for mere beautifulness to do it. So there's got to be something driving you and you you call it ambition.

而且我想，雄心的一部分就是希望有一天成为亿万富翁。其实你会很惊讶的。多跟我说说。你知道究竟是什么在日复一日地激励创始人吗？是对失败的恐惧。尽管他们做的事情一旦成功，就能让他们变得超级富有。嗯，这确实也会激励他们。但在任何一个当下真正激励他们的，是那种对灾难的恐惧，害怕出丑，害怕服务器崩溃，对吧？比如说，你在运营某个在线服务，服务器崩溃了，你不会想着：“我得处理这个问题，因为只要处理好了，我就能成为亿万富翁。”你想的是：“噢不，服务器要崩溃了，这会是一场灾难。”你知道吗？就像我模型火车的引擎正从桌边掉下去，我得赶紧去救它，对吧？你在任何一个当下想的就是这些。你只是不想让自己的模型火车坏掉。你埋头捣鼓这套模型火车，干了10年，然后抬起头来，心想：“天哪，如果我把所有股份的价值按最近一轮融资的估值加起来，我已经是亿万富翁了。”但事情真正发生时，人们还是会感到意外。And part of ambition, I assume, is wanting to be a billionaire someday. You'd be surprised actually. Tell me more. You know what actually motivates founders dayto-day? The fear of failure. Even though they're doing this thing that if they succeed, they'll be super rich. um that does motivate them. But the thing that motivates them at that at any given moment is the fear of like disaster, looking like a fool, the server crashing, right? Like if you're running some online service and your server's crashing, you're not thinking, I got to deal with this because if I deal with it, I'll become a billionaire. You're thinking, oh no, the server is crashing. It will be a disaster. You know what? My the engine of my model train set is falling off the edge of the table. I need to go and save it, right? That's what you're thinking at any given time. You just don't want your model train set to break. You put your head down and work on the model train set for 10 years and then you lift your head up and like, holy the like if I add up the value the value of all my shares at the current the last round valuation, I'm a billionaire. But it takes people by surprise when it happens.

是啊，太棒了。有时候还是我先告诉他们。比如我会算一下，然后说：“等等，按照你们上一轮融资后的估值，你们已经是亿万富翁了。”他们就会说：“哦，是啊，我是。我们想要的就是这样。”嗯，我很好奇，你能不能讲讲某位创始人的故事：他们加入 YC 时可能还不够有野心，但在这期项目期间变得非常有野心？这种故事很少见，因为这种特质大多是天生的。你知道，萨姆·奥特曼很有名的一点是，我第一次见到他时——那时我们甚至还没决定录取他——他就已经极具魄力了。这种情况才是常态，而不是例外。所以，你会看到的那种情况，并不是创始人缺乏野心，而更像是他们被训练得不敢表现出来。因为你年轻的时候，往往会处在一些要求你顺从的环境里。你不该随心所欲地做自己想做的事，而是应该听从别人的安排。也许你的父母很强势，总是要你照他们的意思做，对吧？所以你从来没有真正放开过自己。只有这种情况是例外。Yeah, that's great. Sometimes I'm the first to tell them. Like I do the math. I'm like, "Wait, according to your last round, you're a billionaire." And like, "Oh, yeah, I am. That's the way we want it." Um, and I'm curious, can you tell me a story about a founder where when they started YC, they were maybe not ambitious enough and then they became very ambitious during the batch? Those stories are rare because most of this quality is inborn. And so like you know Sam Alman famously was extremely formidable the first time I met him before we even accepted him. Um and that's more the rule than the exception. So the one case where you see founders it's not that they lack ambition. It's more like they've been trained not to show it. Because when you're young you're often in situations where you're supposed to be obedient. You're not supposed to like go off and do what you want. You're supposed to do what people tell you. Maybe you have pushy parents who tell you to do what they want, right? And so you've never you've never let yourself go. That's the one case.

但即便如此，我还是会说，这个人是有野心的，只是他们被训练得不去表现出来。对。其实这是个很好的观点，因为我觉得现在很多人把创业想成简历上又一个该去收集的徽章。呃，只有失败了才算。如果成功了，那就是你毕生的事业。你就没有别的徽章可拿了，对吧？那创业失败算什么徽章呢？也不是什么了不起的徽章。我觉得如果有人这么想，那他们根本没想透，对吧？说真的，YC发展早期，人们就开始为了名望申请YC了，对吧？就像他们申请哈佛，希望自己能被录取。但问题是，如果你申请哈佛而且被录取了，你就该去，因为无论你多么愚笨，都有一些容易的专业可以选，混一混就能毕业。你会拿到哈佛学位，人人都会对你刮目相看。但创业可没有什么容易的专业，对吧？这就像申请哈佛，却被迫去学理论物理，对吧？如果你不够勤奋、聪明和坚定，那真的会很艰难。But even then, I would argue that the person was ambitious. They just been trained not to show it. Yeah. Actually, that's a good point because I think nowadays a lot of people think about startups like another badge that they should collect along the resume. Um only if it fails. If it works, it's like your life's work. you don't you don't have any more badges, right? And so what kind of badge is a failed startup? Not much of a badge. I think if people think that, they're not thinking it through, right? Like honestly, we would get it was quite early on in YC's history when people started applying to YC for the prestige, right? Like they would apply to Harvard hoping they would get in. But the thing is, if you apply to Harvard and get in, you should do it because no matter how stupid you are, there's easy majors you can choose and sort of slide through. You'll get a Harvard degree and everybody will be impressed with you. With startups, there's no easy major, right? It's like applying to Harvard and being forced to study theoretical physics, right? It's really rough if you're not very hardworking and clever and determined.

伟大的创始人有何过人之处What distinguishes great founders

所以，这些想拿到 YC、想把 YC 当作一种资历的人，根本不知道自己在要求什么。他们没意识到，这根本不是……这真的是一种非常非常不合适的资历。有很多更容易获得资历的方式。是啊。如果你想显得很酷，创业大概是效率最低的办法之一。是啊。这事难得要命。没错。嗯，而且在经历多年残酷的艰难之后，才会有人觉得你很酷。完全正确。你刚才描述一些创始人时，用了“令人敬畏”这个词。是啊。能不能再多跟我们讲讲这个词是怎么来的，以及它对你来说意味着什么？嗯，Y Combinator 里的很多说法，其实都是 Maya 和 Jessica 的私下用语，对吧？所以我们在创办 YC 之前，就已经用这个词来形容某一类人了。我还在一篇文章里描述过这种人。And so these people trying to get Y trying to do YC as a credential, they had no idea what they were asking for. They didn't realize like this is not this is a really really unsuitable credential. There are many easier ways to get credentials. Yeah. If you want to seem cool, like starting a startup is just about the least efficient way to do it. Yeah. It's brutally hard. Yep. Um and you won't seem cool for years of brutal hardness before anyone will think you're cool. 100%. when you were describing some of the founders before you used the word formidable. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that word came to be, what it means to you as well? um, a lot of the language of Y Combinator is is Maya and Jessica's private language, right? And so, we already had this word before we started YC like for a certain a certain kind of person. And I described it in an essay.

我说，我觉得那就是一个能得到自己想要的东西的人。这就是检验标准，对吧？你能得到自己想要的东西吗？因为如果你得不到想要的东西，又怎么称得上厉害呢，对吧？嗯，所以那就是一个在任何情况下都能得到自己想要的东西的人。你投资了他们，持有他们公司的股份，而他们也持有这家公司的股份，那你们的利益就是一致的。他们得到自己想要的，你也就得到了自己想要的。所以投资者才想找厉害的人。挺不错的。是啊，因为他们能分到创始人所得的一部分。 那么稍微换个话题，在创业学校，帕特里克·科里森最近说，精益创业可能已经过时了。他这么说了吗？其中一个原因是，他说如今融资真的很容易。AI 让你可以并行做很多事情。你可以，呃，启动一大堆智能体，同时做一大堆事情。你同意他的看法吗？还是会反驳他？ 嗯，我一直不太明白什么叫精益创业。我的意思是，我们在 YC 资助的创业公司本来就有那么一类，也许和《精益创业》这本书里描述的模式有很多重合之处，但我其实没读过这本书。所以，我干吗要读呢，对吧？托尔金也没读过别人写的那些奇幻小说。I said, I think that it's someone who gets what they want. That's that's the test, right? Do you get what you want? Because how formidable are you if you don't get what you want, right? Um, so it's someone who gets what they want in any situation. And so if you invest in them and you have stock in their company and they have stock in this company, your interests are aligned. If they get what they want, you get what you want. So that's why investors want people who are formidable. Pretty good. Yeah. Because they get a part of what the founder gets. So, changing tracks a little bit at startup school, Patrick Collison recently said that lean startups may be dead. Did he? And part of that is because he says, you know, it's really easy to raise money these days. AI lets you work on many things in parallel. You could, you know, spin out a bunch of agents and work on a bunch of things. Do you agree with him or would you have a rebuttal? Um, I've never really been clear what what a lean startup is. I mean, we already had a kind of startup that we funded in YC and maybe it has a lot of overlap with what was described in this book, The Lean Startup, but I haven't actually read it. And so, I mean, why would I, right? Tolken didn't read all those other fantasy books people wrote.

嗯，所以我不太清楚什么是精益创业，不过如果你告诉我你觉得哪些特质可能已经过时了，也许我能回答。比如说，从很少的资金起步，专注于一个很小的领域。你的意思是，从很少的资金起步这种方式可能已经行不通了？嗯哼。我不这么认为。我觉得有很多事情都可以低成本完成。我的意思是，目前 token 的价格确实很高，但那只是因为 GPU 短缺。Token 价格肯定会下降——也就是说，在任何给定的推理水平下，推理成本都会大幅下降，比如一年降到原来的三十分之一左右。所以，单看 token 价格多少有点误导，因为随着时间推移，你能获得质量更高的 token。所以，我觉得不是，技术总是会变得更便宜。我认为，用不了多少钱，你仍然可以创办一家初创公司。Um, and so I don't exactly know what a lean startup is, but if you tell me what qualities you might think might be obsolete, maybe I could answer that. Let's say starting with just a little bit of money on a very focused area. You mean it might be dead starting with a little bit of money? Mhm. I don't think so. I think there's a lot of things you can do for cheap. I mean, tokens are very expensive at the moment, but that's just because there's a shortage of GPUs. Token prices will certainly inference prices at any given level of inference go down dramatically like 30x a year or something like that. So, even token prices are somewhat misleading because they're you're getting higher quality tokens over time. So I think no everything technology always gets cheaper. I don't think I think you can still start a startup on not much money.

即使是火箭初创公司——或者说，任何……没钱创办火箭初创公司很难，甚至更难。不过，即便是火箭初创公司，没多少钱也能起步，因为你要做的就是根据手头有多少钱来调整计划。比如，你没法造出一枚真正的火箭，但你可以设计一枚火箭，把设计方案展示出来，还可以进行模拟，对吧？或者拿给专家看。如果方案足够有说服力，你就可以去找投资人，筹到一点钱来做下一个阶段。你总是可以再融一轮资，对吧？所以，你就用手头的钱尽可能把事情往前推进。只要能达到某个里程碑，就能说服投资人给你更多钱。是啊，我记得 StarCloud 的 Philip 说，他们基本上只是写了份白皮书、预订了一次发射，然后就为 StarCloud 融到了钱。是啊，没有什么比预订发射更有说服力了，对吧？既然你已经预订了发射，那这事就非得成不可。不过，他在自己从事的领域可是位非常有名的专家，对吧？所以他自带公信力，对吧？Even if it's a rocket startup or any of the it's hard to it's harder to start a rocket startup on no money. But even a rocket startup you can start on not much money because what you do is you adjust for how much money you've got. Like you can't build an actual rocket. What you can build is you can build a design for a rocket and show that to and you can simulate it, right? or show it to experts. If it's convincing enough, you can go to investors and get a bit of money to do the new the next stage. You're always able to raise another round, right? So, you just do what you can on the money you got. As long as you can get to some kind of milestone, then you can convince investors to give you more. Yeah. I think uh Philip from StarCloud was saying that they basically just wrote a white paper and booked a launch and they raised the money for StarCloud. Yeah. Nothing as convincing as booking a launch, right? It's got to happen if you booked a launch. But he's a huge famous expert in the stuff he works on, right? So he comes with automatic cred, right?

创始人如何取得进展How founders make progress

他做这件事比刚大学毕业的孩子要容易一些。那么我们来聊聊更广泛意义上的 AI 吧。我想知道，AI 有什么让你感到意外的地方？ 嗯，我在 20 世纪 80 年代就开始研究 AI 了。那是一种截然不同的 AI，根本不可能奏效。我的意思是，那简直是个笑话。所以我一直在想这件事，也花了很多时间琢磨 AI 最终会是什么样子。我们当时设想的整个发展过程是这样的：一开始，你有一只完美的苍蝇，对吧？你知道，它做不了多少事。它就像一只苍蝇，像苍蝇的大脑，对吧？它只能做苍蝇会做的事，但做得和苍蝇一样好，对吧？然后你逐步从苍蝇发展到老鼠，再到猫，最后是猴子，然后是人，对吧？但在每个阶段，它都很完美，能把对应生物擅长的事做好。 然而，我们得到的却基本上是一个完整的人类，只是满是……对吧？最早的 AI，也就是 ChatGPT 的最初版本，就像一个本科生试图硬凑出一篇论文：说得似乎有那么点道理，都是完整的人类水平的东西，根本不是苍蝇那种程度，却糟糕透顶，对吧？所以，发展路径不是从完美开始，再逐步进化到人类；而是从人类开始，再朝着完美迈进。也就是说，最终被优化出来的特质，恰恰和原先设想的相反。没人预料到这一点。It's easier for him to do that than some kid who just graduated from college. So let's transition to talk a little bit about AI more broadly. Um I'm curious what surprised you about AI. Well, I was studying AI back in the 1980s. A very different kind of AI that would never have worked. I mean, it was a joke. So, I've been thinking about this a lot and I had a lot I spent a lot of time thinking about what AI would eventually be like. And the way we thought it was all going to play out was you start out with like a perfect fly, right? You know, it doesn't do much. It's like a fly, like a fly's brain, right? It can only do what a fly does, but it does it as well as a fly, right? And then you work your way up from flies to mice, you know, to cats and eventually you get monkeys and then humans, right? But at every point you're perfect. You're doing what they do well. And instead, what we got was basically a full-on human but full of right? Like the first the first AIS, the first versions of Chat GPT were like an undergrad trying to his way through a paper. something plausible sounding, full human stuff, like not even this fly stuff, full human but like terrible, right? And so you start and so instead of starting with perfect and then working your way up to human, you start with human and then work your way towards perfect. So it's sort of the opposite the opposite quality ended up being the one that got optimized. That nobody expected that.

没人想到，第一个看起来像那么回事的 AI 出现时，居然会像个满嘴胡扯的本科生，对吧？简直就是个老虎机。是啊。它现在还是有那种味道，对吧？是的。我听说各种故事，说 AI 正在解决数学领域著名的未解难题，可我连让它回答餐馆什么时候营业都办不到。[笑声] 这就叫“锯齿状前沿”。没错。是啊。他们肯定知道一些我不知道的东西。或者他们用的是研究版本。也许它们能查出餐馆什么时候营业。 还有一件事，你向来很擅长把复杂的话题讲得特别简单。那么，PG 对 AGI 的官方定义是什么？嗯，说实话，我是说，你能给出比图灵测试更好的定义吗？我觉得图灵测试挺不错的，对吧？我知道我们快要实现 AGI 的原因之一，就是我居然得去查图灵测试的定义。这本身就是一种证据：图灵测试到底是什么来着？我们已经到了吗？ 我觉得现在的情况是，当年我们以为 AI 就像一道终点线，而 AGI 会是那道终点线。我们跨过去，一切就会非常清楚。但当你站在终点线上时，你会发现它是有宽度的。从 20 世纪 80 年代的视角看，它就像地平线上一条横贯的线。可现在你会发现，好吧，AI 的某些部分早就跨过终点线了；有些部分可能还在中间。谁知道这条线居然有维度呢？终点线实际上是一片模糊的区域。我觉得最好的说法就是：我们正处在这片模糊区域里。原来它是一片模糊区域，而我们就在其中。Nobody expected when the first plausible AI turned out turned up it would be like a bullshitting undergraduate, right? Just a slot slot machine. Yeah. And it still you it still has a lot of that flavor, doesn't it? Yes. I hear all these stories about how AI is solving famous open problems in math and I can't even get it to answer questions [laughter] about when restaurants are open. That's what's called the jagged frontier. Yes. Yeah. They must know things I don't know. Or they have research versions. Maybe they can find out when restaurants are open. The other thing you are you are famously very good at taking complex topics and making them sound very simple. So what is the official PG definition of AGI? Oh well honestly I mean could you do better than the Turing test? The Turing I think Turing was pretty good right? One of the reasons one of the ways I knew we were getting close to AGI was I actually had to go and look up the definition of the Turing test. That in itself is a piece of evidence like what was the touring test again? Are we there already? I think what's happened now is we thought back in the day that AI would be sort of like this finish line and we a agi would be this finish line. We cross it. It would be very clear. But when you're standing on the finish line, you realize it has width. From back in the 1980s, it looks like it's just a line going across the horizon. But here you realize, okay, some bits of AI are way across the finish line. Some bits are like maybe in the middle of it. Who knew the line had dimension? The finish line is actually this sort of smear. And I think the best answer you can give is like we're on the smear. It turns out to be a smear and we're on it.

所以这就是为什么你拿不到餐馆的时间。对。因为它们处在涂抹区域里不太好的部分。而莱曼假说嘛，也许我们已经到了那个阶段。好。换个话题，回来说说初创公司。嗯，你还说过，衡量一家初创公司能否成功，最好的预测指标就是它推出新东西的速度。对。有了 AI，这一点会变吗？你觉得会出现新的指标吗？不会。不会，我是说，我们现在有这些强大的 AI 工具，但这一批初创公司里仍然有很多推出产品的速度不够快。所以，显然，推出速度是有差异的。关键不只是你能产出东西的速度。你得先想到这些点子，对吧？大家总是问我，AI 发展到这个地步，还有什么东西是不变的吗？目前为止，答案是几乎一切都完全没变。唯一奇怪的新情况是，公司背上了巨额的 AI 账单。以前初创公司的大笔开销就是工资。真正重要的开销就是工资，对吧？相比之下，其他一切都很便宜，因为无非就是笔记本电脑和员工。而现在，你突然得花钱买 GPU，你知道的，费用高得惊人——我的意思是，每天要花上几万美元买 tokens。And that's why you can't get your restaurant times. Yeah. Cuz they're in a bad part of the smear. Whereas the Ryman hypothesis maybe we're already there. Okay. Ch changing back to talk about startups. So um the other thing you've said is that the best predictor of success for a startup is the pace that they ship new stuff. Yeah. with AI. Does that change? Do you think there's a new metric? No. No, there's I mean, we have all these powerful AI tools and there's still a lot of startups in this batch that are not shipping fast enough. And so, obviously, there's variation in shipping speed. It's not just the rate at which you can produce things. You have to think of these ideas first, right? Everyone always asks me like with all this AI, is anything still the same? And the answer is so far almost everything is exactly the same. The only weird the only weird new thing is the companies have had these giant AI bills. It used to be startups big bill big cost was salaries. That was all that mattered salaries, right? Everything else was cheap guy by comparison because it was just laptops and people. And now suddenly you got to pay for GPUs, you know, giant giant I mean tens of thousands of dollars a day in tokens.

我也很好奇，加入像 YC 这样的创业营，会给创始人带来什么优势？原因有很多。首先，创办初创公司通常是一件非常孤独的事。你知道自己拥有巨大的上行空间，也完全掌控着自己做的事情。缺点是你没有同事。所以这就像是在一间办公室里工作，身边有一群同事，只不过大家都在经营自己的初创公司。这样一来，你就有了同伴。你还可以向同期其他创业公司学习。比如你遇到了某个技术难题，同期很可能有人也遇到过。你可以直接问他们是怎么解决的，对吧？另一个优势是我们所说的 YC GDP：你要是有某种产品，就可以卖给同期的创业公司——几乎不管是什么产品，你总能找到一些潜在客户。而且他们正是你想要的那类用户：能快速做决定的早期采用者，对吧？他们多少也得听你介绍一下产品。I'm also curious, how does being in a batch like YC give founders an advantage? There's a bunch of reasons. One is starting a startup is normally a very lonely business. What you know you have all this upside. You have complete control over what you're doing. The downside is you don't have any colleagues and so this is like working in an office with all these colleagues except you're all working on your own startup. So there's that you have colleagues. You can also learn from what the other startups are doing at the same time you are. So you have some technical problem. Probably somebody in the batch had that problem. You can just ask them how they solved it. Right? And another advantage is what we call the YC GDP which is you have some sort of product you can sell it to the startups in your batch no almost no matter what it is you can find some and they're the exact kind of users you want early adopters who decide quickly right and they sort of have to at least listen to your pitch.

你们是怎么想到 YC 这个点子的？嗯，是逐渐形成的。最初我们的想法只是……我们当时还没想到要做创业营。我们一开始想做的是一家天使投资公司，因为那时候有些风投公司会做金额巨大的后期融资，也有天使投资人——就是用自己的钱投资的个人——但当时没有天使投资公司。这就是最初的想法：像风投公司一样，但更早期地投入小额资金，并使用标准化的文件。决定这么做之后，我们想，好吧，既然我们不知道怎么做投资人，就得学学怎么做。那我们不如一次性资助一大批初创公司。于是我们就想，很多大学生都会去微软打暑期工。他们难道不更愿意去初创公司吗？我们就来创造一种替代暑期工作的选择。How did you come up with the idea for YC? uh gradually um initially the idea was just going to be we were we we didn't have the batch idea at first I the part we had at first was to do was to be an angel firm because at that point there were VC firms who would do these giant latestage round and there were angel investors who were individual people investing their own money but there was no there were no angel firms that was the original idea to be an angel firm like a VC firm but invest small amounts of money earlier and use standardized paperwork. And then having decided that, we thought, all right, we need to learn how to be investors since we don't know how to be investors. We'll just fund a whole bunch of startups all at once. And so we thought to ourselves, well, all these college students get summer jobs working at Microsoft. Wouldn't they like to startups instead? We'll create this alternative to getting a summer job.

建议、判断与长远眼光Advice, judgment, and the long view

这就是为什么这个批次安排在夏天。结果发现时长恰到好处，不过那纯属偶然。于是我们想，我们要资助一大批初创公司，取代暑期工作机会。对象是正在读本科的学生。他们不会——他们不会介意我们不是——如果我们不是真正的投资人，因为他们也不是真正的创始人，对吧？不过是一群大学生而已。结果在这个过程中，我们很快就成了真正的投资人，他们也很快成了真正的创始人。这个批次的模式太棒了。这个我们纯粹偶然发现的做法。我们想：“好吧，我们以后一直都要这样投资。”YC发展壮大以来，有哪些变化，又有哪些没变？其实变化很小。That's why the batch takes place during the summer. It turns out to be the perfect length, but that was just an accident. And so we thought we'll fund a whole bunch of startups. We'll replace summer jobs. It'll be for current undergrads. They won't we they won't mind if we don't if we're not real investors because they're not real founders, right? Just a bunch of college students. And it turned out in the course of that we became real investors and they became real founders very quickly. And this batch thing was so great. This thing that we just discovered by accident. We thought, "All right, we're going to always do investing that way." How has YC changed or not changed since it's grown? It's changed very little.

基本上，嗯，就是同样的事情，只不过规模更大了。你知道，初创公司的那些问题基本都差不多。这样的公司多了很多，不过，嗯，它们各自还是以小团体的形式存在，就像 YC 的一个个独立小块。所以，人们说 YC 已经过了巅峰期时，总会提到的一件事就是：“哦，现在规模太大了。”可早在每期有 40 家初创公司时，人们就这么说了，对吧？他们会说：“哦，得了吧，过去的好日子已经一去不复返了。每期有 40 家初创公司呢，对吧？”人们总是这么说。如果把 YC 拆成一个个小块，每家初创公司都属于一个有 70 家公司的小组，那就跟 2012 年每期有 70 家初创公司时没什么两样了。It's basically um like the same thing but more of it. You know, like the problems the startups have are pretty much the same. There's a lot more of them, but uh but they, you know, they live in small groups that are just like individual bits of YC. So, one of the things people saying Y when people say YC has jumped the shark, one of the things they always say is, "Oh, it's so big now." Well, people used to say that back when we had 40 startups in the batch, right? They would say, "Oh, come on. The old days are gone. There's 40 startups in the batch, right? People are always saying that." And if you if you divide the YC up into little bits where each startup is part of a pod of 70 startups, then it's just like they were back in 2012 when there were 70 startups.

你觉得下一家万亿美元级公司会从哪里诞生？它的创始人会是什么样的人？他们都很了不起。其实，这就是你问题的答案。你问下一家巨头公司会从哪里诞生，答案是：它来自合适的创始人，对吧？并不是什么特定的创意。我的意思是，某些创意大概确实比另一些更有可能。大概不会是遛狗吧，对不对？也许吧，谁知道呢？我的意思是，创业点子其实变化很快，但下一家万亿美元级公司的诞生，归根结底还是要靠那些创始人。至于他们，很可能有不错的点子，对吧？他们在做的事情大概前景不错。你觉得未来的创始人会和过去的很不一样吗？他们会是机器人。[笑声] 我希望不是。不会，不会。创始人嘛，我的意思是，我们现在有20年的数据了。他们看起来还是和20年前一模一样。为什么再过20年就会变呢？Where do you think the next trillion dollar company comes from? What are the founders of it like? The founders of it are formidable. In fact, that is the answer to your question. The answer to your question of where the next giant company comes from is it comes from the right founders, right? It's not some particular idea. I mean, it probably is some idea rather than others. It's probably not dog walking, right? Maybe, who knows? Maybe I mean startups ideas are very mutable, but it it comes from the next trillion dollar founders is where it comes from. And they probably have good ideas, right? Whatever they're working on is probably promising. Do you think the founders in the future are going to look very different from the ones in the past? They're going to be robots. [laughter] I hope not. No, no, no. Founders, they still I mean, we now have 20 years of data. They still look exactly like they used to 20 years ago. Why should they change 20 years from now?

太好了。非常感谢。谢谢。[音乐]Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. [music]