Patrick Collison：成功以后怎么办

主持人 Okay, Patrick. Thanks so much for being here. Welcome to Startup School. 好，Patrick。非常感谢你来到这里。欢迎来到 Startup School。

嘉宾 Great to be here. Harj and I first met 20 years ago and um uh he um we started a company together. I was going to give away the introduction. 很高兴来到这里。Harj 和我二十年前第一次见面，我们一起创办过一家公司。我是不是把开场介绍抢了。

主持人 Yeah, I I thought this was my interview, but keep going. You're doing a good job. 是啊，我还以为这是我来主持采访，不过你继续，你做得很好。

嘉宾 Well, we started a company together many years ago and uh I learned a huge amount from Harj. So it's a it's really fun to do this. 好吧，很多年前我们一起创办过一家公司，我从 Harj 那里学到非常多。所以这次对谈真的很有意思。

主持人 All right, let's um Well, actually I mean speaking of that. So when I think when I first met you 20 something years ago at the time your most impressive achievement I would argue was Chroma, your dialect of Lisp. 好，那我们其实说到这个。我第一次见到你大概二十多年前，当时你最让人佩服的成就，我会说是 Croma，你写的那个 Lisp 方言。

嘉宾 Any Lisp programmers here? Oh, wow. Okay, that was um I think I heard one whoop, which is more than I expected. Um but uh yeah, I I really liked Lisp when I was in high school. 这里有 Lisp 程序员吗？哦，哇。好，我好像听到一声欢呼，比我预期的还多。不过，是的，我高中时非常喜欢 Lisp。

主持人 Yeah, so what I was going to ask is um a prolific 16-year-old today could presumably just like prompt Claude to write their their Lisp dialect. Would you would you advise them to not do that and still still do it? Is there any value in such things? 对，所以我本来想问的是，今天一个高产的 16 岁少年，大概可以。直接让 Claude 写自己的 Lisp 方言。你会建议他们不要那样做，还是自己动手做吗？这类事情还有没有价值？

嘉宾 I don't know. I wonder a lot. Um Yeah, like I was saying on the one hand uh it used to be really fun to write all this assembly and machine code and to optimize your instructions and make layout in memory and everything and now we don't have to do that anymore. Compilers do it for us. We don't mourn it too much. And so maybe in the same way we shouldn't mourn source code. We should just transcend the plane of uh instructions to Claude at all, but um but emotionally I miss it. 我不知道。我想过很多次。一方面，以前自己写汇编和机器码、优化指令、安排内存布局，这些都很有乐趣，现在我们不必再做了。编译器替我们做。我们并没有太怀念。所以也许同样地，我们也不该怀念源代码。我们应该直接超越指令这一层，把事情交给 Claude 这类模型。但情感上，我还是会想念。

主持人 Um How about I you think just like as I've been hanging out here um with these students like they're so like maybe the question behind it is many of them are just wondering what should they be learning at college? Like what is sort of in this sort of AI world like how much should they be trying to learn and derive from first principles and how much should they just outsource to the AI? 那换个角度。我在这里和学生们相处，他们很多人其实在想：在大学里到底该学什么？在这个 AI 世界里，他们应该花多少力气去学并从第一性原理推导，又该把多少事情外包给 AI？

嘉宾 Right. Um, I mean, my model of this is, um, is cache. Um, you know, the c h not an s h, where Jeff Dean has this, uh, famous set of numbers that every programmer should know, uh, bandwidths and latencies and just kind of relevant constants you should have a reason about as you as you build systems. 对。我的模型是 cache，是 c-h 那个 cache，不是 cash。 Jeff Dean 有一套每个程序员都该知道的著名数字：带宽、延迟，以及构建系统时应当用来推理的相关常数。

And obviously, you know,thinking of building any system or distributed system or whatever, like, all lookups and all, you know, relevant bandwidths between different, um, components are are are very different, right? Uh, and you know, retrieving something from L1 cache is very different from retrieving from RAM is very different from retrieving across the network or whatever. And I think it's like that with knowledge. 显然，你在构建任何系统或分布式系统时，不同组件之间的查找和相关带宽差异非常大。从 L1 cache 取数据，和从 RAM 取数据，和跨网络取数据，完全不是一回事。

Well, fine, yes, you can ask the agent or something to compute something for you or to look something up for you or whatever. That's a hell of a lot slower than knowing it in cognitive L1 cache. And you can have way more round trips in your brain than you can, you know, muttering through, you know, super whisper or typing it out or whatever. 我认为知识也是这样。当然，你可以让 agent 替你计算或查找。但这比你自己知道它在认知 L1 cache 里要慢得多。你脑子里能做的往返次数，远多于对着 Superwhisper 嘀咕或打字。

And so, I think, even granting the full capabilities of the of the models, I feel I still think there's a a pretty, like, I think for for a long time to come, uh, neuronal lookups will be will be much faster. Um, and then, you look if you look in revealed preference, uh, at what uh, companies themselves are doing, whether they're companies like Stripe or the labs or what have you, um, there still seems to be an enormous premium on cognitive ability. 所以，即便承认模型已经具备全部能力，我仍然认为，在很长一段时间里，神经元查找都会快得多。然后，如果你看显示性偏好，看公司自己在做什么，无论是 Stripe 还是那些 lab，认知能力仍然有巨大溢价。

And so, I wouldn't I I I I think, um, renouncing that before there's evidence that we've saturated, uh, those benefits would be premature. 所以，在还没有证据表明这些收益已经饱和之前，就放弃这一点，我认为为时过早。

主持人 Um, I mean, are there are there specific things that maybe you personally, either personally or as uh, CEO of Stripe, um, you still you purposely choose to sort of do yourself and like retrieve from your own cache, um, even though like the agents would probably do a reasonably good job. Um I still I still write myself. Like I I um I don't I I both philosophically but also uh specifically, substantively, uh dislike the writing of the models. 那有没有？一些具体的事情，。无论是你个人，还是作为 Stripe 的 CEO，你仍然有意自己做、从自己的 cache 里取出来，即使 agent 大概也能做得不错？我仍然自己写。我既出于理念，也在具体内容上，不喜欢模型写出来的文字。

I mean, it's very interesting, right? Because these can prove the Jacobian conjecture, you know, whatever. Uh and so clearly they're capable of these monumental feats. Um but somehow I still haven't read the LLM essay that I found super compelling. Now, maybe it's just very hard to like RL limit that domain because the you know, the utility function or something is kind of hard to define. 这很有意思，对吧？因为它们能证明 Jacobian conjecture 之类的东西，显然有能力完成这些了不起的壮举。但不知为何，我还没读到过一篇让我觉得特别有说服力的 LLM 文章。也许只是很难用 RL 去约束那个领域，因为效用函数之类的东西很难定义。

Um but yeah. Um I I think writing is a pretty I interpersonal communication and writing I think are so very fundamental and so being able to reason sensibly in the multi-dimensional space of reality. And in some kind of indescribable way, I feel like the model is still kind of deficient at that. 不过，我认为写作是相当… …人际沟通和写作都非常根本，也就是能在现实的多维空间里合理推理。某种难以描述的意义上，我觉得模型在这方面仍然有欠缺。

And so I've never I've yet to send, you know, every tool is now trying to prompt me with, you know, pre-written uh suggestions, whether it's, you know, Gmail or uh apparently WhatsApp just rolled this out. Um and I think I've still sent zero of those in my life. No. 所以我还从未发出过——现在每个工具都在向我推预写好的建议，无论是 Gmail 还是显然 WhatsApp 刚推出这个功能。我想我这辈子发出去的条数仍然是零。没有。

嘉宾 Um How about so if you talk talk about the Stripe story, uh the early days in particular a little bit, uh you were at MIT, then you left to start Stripe. How did you think about that decision? And obviously we're in a stadium full of college students. How should they think about it? How do you How do they know if it's the right decision for them to uh leave college early and go start a company versus stay? 那我们谈谈 Stripe 的故事，尤其是早期。你当时在 MIT，然后离开去创办 Stripe。你当时怎么看待这个决定？我们现在坐在满是大学生的场馆里。他们该怎么想？他们怎么知道，提前离开大学去创办公司，对他们来说是不是正确决定，还是该留下来？

Yeah, well, I I think I have the slightly unusual distinction of having dropped out of college twice to start a company. So, um so maybe one thing to know is that it's not totally trapdoor. Uh you can you can drop out and and in fact return. So I dropped out after my freshman semester to start this company with with Harj. That was super fun. And then after a couple years of that, went back, did another year at MIT and then dropped out again to to start Stripe. 是啊，我有一个稍微不寻常的记录：为了创办公司，我退学过两次。所以也许该知道的一点是，这并不是单向闸门。你可以退学，事实上也可以回来。我在大一上学期结束后退学，和 Harj 一起创办那家公司。非常有意思。然后做了几年之后，我又回去，在 MIT 再读了一年，然后再次退学去创办 Stripe。

Um and you know, I am when I went to college, probably like a lot of people here, I um I had this vision of my life and involving becoming an academic and I really like physics and I thought, you know, I'll do all this physics stuff. It's so cool. I'd read all the Feynman books, all of this. 我上大学时，大概和这里很多人一样，想象自己的人生会成为学者。我很喜欢物理，想着我要做所有这些物理的事，太酷了。我读过所有 Feynman 的书，诸如此类。

And I guess I am Well, growing up in Ireland, I hadn't realized I hadn't thought much about the possibility of startups. Hello to the other Irish folks here. And um And I mean, way back then in the sort of you know, pre-Cambrian era, startups were definitely much less you know, well-known even on campus and so forth. You know, when I was dropping dropping out, people thought it was super weird. 在爱尔兰长大时，我没怎么想过创业这件事。向在场其他爱尔兰的朋友问好。那时候还像前寒武纪，startup 即使在校园里也远没有那么广为人知。我退学时，人们觉得这非常奇怪。

Um I think um You know, overall um if you enjoy college, I would actually you know, I I I think there's no harm in in finishing. I I I felt this real sense of urgency, which I think in hindsight was a bit unnecessary. Um if you but if you don't enjoy college, just you know, whatever, it's not your your thing. It's not what captivates you. You don't really want to learn all the physics things or whatever. 总体来说，如果你享受大学，读完其实没有坏处。我当时有一种很强的紧迫感，事后看有点没必要。但如果你不享受大学，它不是你的事，不能抓住你，你也并不真想学那些物理之类的东西，那很多家长觉得退学风险很大，会损害你一辈子的名声，诸如此类。

Uh there You know, I think a lot of parents think that dropping out is very risky and impune your reputation for the rest of your life and so forth. And as far as I can tell, nobody has ever cared. So I I both think you don't need to but also the cost of doing so are de minimis. What what was the urgency you were feeling? The urgency? Yeah, to to go out and do do something. I don't know. Life is short, right? Um and I I I all I mean, it was a general kind of haste. 就我所见，从来没有人在意过。所以我既认为你不必退学，也认为退学的代价微不足道。你当时感到的紧迫感是什么？紧迫感？对，那种要出去做点什么的感觉。我不知道。生命很短，对吧。

Uh I think, you know, a lot of us um I'm sure I'm sure many of the people here you you you you kind of get into this mode of speed running high school and then, you know, once you get to college it's like, obviously I want to speed run that as well and do all the things. So, a bit of that. A bit of um Marc Andreessen also talks about a version of this. I thought that a bunch of the opportunities uh in startups in Silicon Valley and so forth were ephemeral and fleeting. 那是一种整体上的匆忙。我们很多人，我相信在场很多人，会进入一种速通高中的模式，到了大学又觉得显然也要把大学速通，把所有事情做完。有一点是这个。还有一点是 Marc Andreessen 也谈过类似的版本。我当时觉得，startup 和硅谷里的许多机会是短暂易逝的。

And if we didn't build it then, but, you know, it wouldn't be possible to do it in three or four years. And maybe all the opportunities will be gone. You know, in hindsight, I think that um that was a a poor intuition. Uh it's been pretty robustly and reliably the case over many decades in Silicon Valley has a surfeit of opportunities. Um yeah, I think it was mainly those two things. 如果我们当时不去做，过三四年就不可能再做了，也许所有机会都会消失。事后看，我认为那是一个糟糕的直觉。几十年来相当稳健、相当可靠的事实是：硅谷的机会一直很充裕。是的，我想主要就是这两点。

主持人 think it's um I mean, this is a very common thing that we hear when we talk to students now is that they part of the reason they want to drop out en masse, it seems, at this point is they're worried that actually now is the moment that they're sort of I think the meme going around is that if you don't sort of uh drop out and start a company and make lots of money, you're going to be trapped in the permanent underclass. 我们现在和学生谈话时，经常听到一件事：他们之。所以看起来想大规模退学，部分原因是担心现在就是那个时刻。我觉得现在流传的 meme 是：如果你不。退学、创办公司、赚很多钱，就会被困在永久底层。

So, is that um should everyone here be worried about being stuck in the permanent underclass? I guess is the question. 所以，在场每个人都该担心自己会卡在永久底层吗？我想这就是问题。

嘉宾 Um I think um humanity has always had um a an affinity for these millenarian sort of models of how uh everything is um you know, everything will soon come to an end uh and be this this sort of permanent transformation of society and so forth. Actually, there's a great book, The Winged Gospel. 我认为，人类一直对这些末世论式的模型有亲和力：一切很快就会终结，然后进入某种。对社会的永久改造，诸如此类。其实有一本很好的书，叫 The Winged Gospel。

People thought that after the the invention of aviation, that it was just like civilization was just entering humanity as a species were entering a new era and nothing is going to be the same. I mean, obviously aviation was was a pretty big deal, but uh I I I don't think it was sort of quite the um the sociological rewriting that some of the you know excitable proponents at the time imagined. 人们曾以为，航空发明之后，文明、人类这个物种正在进入一个新时代，一切都不会再一样。航空当然是一件大事，但我认为它并没有达到当时一些兴奋的鼓吹者所想象的那种社会学意义上的重写。

So I am you know it's it's hard to predict anything especially the future but I would I would take the under on this being the last couple of years to get a company going. 很难预测任何事情，尤其是未来，但我愿意赌这并不是创办公司的最后几年。

主持人 Fair enough. So going back to the Stripe story Stripe ostensibly seems like a good idea. Like even on day one it's the internet's a big deal money's a big deal like combine those two things. Presumably is that how it went when you went to tell people you wanted to start Stripe and everyone just say hey this is a great this is an obviously a good idea. 说得通。回到 Stripe 的故事。Stripe 表面上似乎是个好主意。即使在第一天，互联网是大事，钱是大事，把这两件事合在一起。你去告诉别人你想创办Stripe 时，是不是每个人都说：嘿，这太棒了，这显然是个好主意？

嘉宾 It was kind of funny it was um it was so so something we learned from YC uh was that the importance of focusing on very concrete easy to explain customer problems. Like it's it's very easy to hallucinate or to you know imagine some customer problem that's not actually something viscerally felt by a person who would pay money. 挺好笑的。我们从 YC 学到的一件事是：要聚焦非常具体、容易讲清楚的客户问题。人很容易幻觉出、或想象出一个客户问题，但那并不是某个愿意付钱的人真正从心里感到的问题。

And so over the course of in part working on automatic together we have encountered this issue of it being really annoying to deal with movement of money or payments whatever on the internet. 所以，部分是在一起做 Auctomatic 的过程中，我们遇到了。这个问题：在互联网上处理资金流动或支付非常烦人。

Um and on the one hand it seemed like a an obviously good idea in the sense that nobody liked the existing ways of doing so and they were broadly extremely unpopular and kind of antiquated and legacy and you had to like fill out all this paperwork and go to the bank in person and the paperwork was in Latin and just like it was all bad. 一方面，它看起来显然是个好主意，因为没有人喜欢当时的做法，那些方式普遍极不受欢迎，陈旧、遗留，你得填一堆文件，亲自去银行，文件还像是用拉丁文写的，总之都很糟。

Um but then the flip side is it just seems kind of ridiculous that two kids would start a financial services business and fintech didn't exist as a sector at the time like the word literally didn't exist and so it's just kind of you know we felt like the proverbial squirrels you know in a trench coat trying to masquerade as a real business or as you know serious adults but obviously knowing nothing coming in about the space and and certainly a lot of people we met and pitched or banks or partners or whatever that we talked to, I mean you didn't literally laugh us out of the room, but I you kind of see them looking for the button to like call security under the desk to have them haul us out cuz it just seemed so improbable. 但另一面是，两个孩子去创办一家金融服务公司，看起来又相当荒谬。当时 fintech 还不存在，这个词本身都不存在。所以我们觉得自己像谚语里那两只穿着风衣、想伪装成正经生意或正经大人的松鼠，但显然对这个领域一无所知。我们见到、去 pitch 的很多人，银行、合作伙伴之类的，他们没有真的把我们笑出房间，但你能看出他们在找桌子底下叫保安的按钮，想把我们拖出去，因为这看起来太不可能了。

So, anyway, I'd say it like it both seemed like an obviously good idea in that people really wanted this, but also a bad idea in that nobody took it seriously. Um but I I think that I think the fact that it was ultimately the fact that it was grounded in such a concrete actual real user problem saved us. 所以我会说，它既像一个显然的好主意，因为人们真的想要这个，也像一个坏主意，因为没有人当回事。但我认为，最终救了。我们的，是它扎根于。一个如此具体、真实存在的用户问题。

主持人 Um you actually speaking of that, how did you you had to in order to actually build the product, you had to get banking partner and do things that a typical software company did not have to do. As two young founders, like how did you manage to convince a bank to trust you in the end? 说到这个，为了真正做出产品，你们必须找到银行合作伙伴，做典型软件公司不必做的事。作为两个年轻创始人，你们最后是怎么说服银行信任你们的？

嘉宾 Yeah, um well, actually this is not an answer to your question. But um just a thing that strikes me as I sit here is the reason we decided to start Stripe is because so John and I were in college together. He was in his freshman year and we went to Startup School in 2009, which was held in Berkeley. And we thought it was pretty cool. 是啊。其实这并没有回答你的问题。但是我坐在这里突然想到的是，我们决定创办 Stripe 的原因是：John 和我当时一起在上大学。他大一，我们去了 2009 年在 Berkeley 举办的 Startup School。

Um and so we went to we got sushi afterwards in Potrero and we were walking back from sushi and we're like, you know, we'd kind of been kicking around this idea for um a payment thing or like we've been thinking about the space. And it was walking back that evening after Startup School that we decided to start Stripe. 我们觉得挺酷。后来我们去 Potrero 吃了寿司，从寿司店走回来的路上，我们一直在转这个支付相关的想法，或者说一直在想这个领域。就是那天晚上 Startup School 结束后走回去的路上，我们决定创办 Stripe。

I remember literally where we were in the road and I remember what we said to each other, which was, "Yeah, you know, we might as well because it probably won't be that hard." Okay. So, moral of the story is go get sushi in Potrero tonight and you might start the next Stripe. Um and yes, be beware of sort of these these ultimate yak shaves. We thought we could do it on the side while in college, you know, take a couple months, and that was almost 17 years ago. 我还记得当时在路上的确切位置，也记得我们对彼此说的话：对，不妨做做看，因为这大概不会太难。好，所以故事的寓意是：今晚去 Potrero 吃寿司，你也许会创办下一家 Stripe。 [笑声]还有，要当心这类。终极 yak shave。我们以为可以在大学期间兼职做，花几个月就行。那已经是将近 17 年前了。

主持人 Um at the time I remember you were also unusual in that you took sort of longer to do a big public launch. And especially within the YC world, the motto is very much sort of launch early, launch quickly, be out there and iterate. Um could you maybe just talk us through a little bit about that? So, why did you do it that way? 我记得当时你们也比较特别，花了更长时间才做大规模公开发布。尤其在 YC 的世界里，口号很明确：尽早发布、尽快发布、走出去、再迭代。你能讲讲为什么要那样做吗？

嘉宾 Yeah, so um we started working on Stripe um kind of seriously in the uh the well, we started working the week after that's our school, but um we're going to college wasn't full-time. We started working full-time the summer of 2010. We launched publicly September 2011. So, almost uh 2 years after like the first lines of code after the repo was started. 是的。我们认真开始做 Stripe，是 Startup School 结束后的那一周，但当时还在上大学，不是全职。我们从 2010 年夏天开始全职做。 2011 年 9 月公开上线。

And yeah, waiting 2 years to launch seems I mean I you know, I've heard if we're going to YC meetings, you know, every every week, I think we'd have been, you know, bludgeoned on the head. Um I think um I'm looking in many domains that probably is the wrong thing to do. Um in our domain, to answer your last question, because we had to do so much stuff around security and partners and money movement and infrastructure and reliability and you know, all the things. 所以，从写下第一行代码、从 repo 建起来，差不多过了两年。等两年再上线，如果每周都去开 YC 的会，我想我们会被当头一棒。我认为，在很多领域，这大概是错的。但在我们这个领域，回答你刚才的问题：因为我们必须做大量安全、合作伙伴、资金流动、基础设施、可靠性之类的事。

We just we didn't feel like we could scale a really good self-serve experience without getting a lot of the kind of the preconditions um and the infrastructure in place. 我们觉得，如果没有把很多前提条件和基础设施准备好，就无法把真正好的自助服务体验做大规模。

Um the I think the the thing that saved us um and meant that it wasn't a total walk in the wilderness is we had production users almost from the very beginning. So, first lines of code um in uh fall of '09, we got our first live production user uh in um in January of 2010. So, like 2 months into working on whatever. And it did very little. Like it was very larval and incomplete. Uh and uh our first production customer was uh Ross Boucher at a company called uh Twilio North. 我认为救了我们、让这件事没有完全变成在荒野里瞎走的，是我们几乎从一开始就有生产环境用户。 2009 年秋天写下第一行代码，2010 年 1 月就有了第一个真正的生产环境用户。大约两个月开始做之后。它能做的事很少，非常幼体、非常不完整。

Um and all it could do was charge a card. Uh and so, you know, Ross would charge the card. Uh and you know, then he would ask some very reasonable question like, you know, how do I How can I look at all my charges? And like, reasonable request. And so, you know, let's code up a little dashboard here. And then he'd be like, well, I want to refund a payment. And you know, we're like, all right, we'll build refund support. 我们第一个生产环境客户是 Ross Boucher，当时在一家叫 280 North 的公司。它当时只能刷一张卡。所以 Ross 会刷卡，然后问一个很合理的问题：我怎么能看到所有扣款？合理要求。于是我们就写一个小 dashboard。然后他又说，我想退一笔款。我们就说，好，我们来做退款。

And then, you know, after a couple of weeks, he was like, so you know, at some point, do I get my money? And we're like, also a reasonable request. So, let's let's build that functionality. So, it was very kind of just-in-time development. Anyway, so we had a production customer from very early, and then we did increase So, in private beta, we increased the number of customers every single month, you know, all the way to that public launch. 过了几周，他又说，那到某个时候，钱会到我手里吗？我们也觉得，这也是合理要求。那就做这个功能。所以这是非常 just-in-time 的开发。总之，我们很早就有生产环境客户，然后在 private beta 里，每个月都在增加客户数量，一直到公开上线。

And so, every, you know, every week, we had actual customer feedback, requests, new users coming in. We're learning things from reality as opposed to our own kind of hypothesized or extrapolated conception of it. And I I think if you have, you know, a significant stream like that of of um of grounding, I think it's probably okay to not be like, launch launch. When do you I mean, you're you're an expert YC partner. Do you agree? 所以每周我们都有真实的客户反馈、需求、新用户进来。我们是从现实中学习，而不是从自己假设或外推的构想中学习。我认为，如果你有这样一条足够强的接地线索，大概就可以不必一直喊 launch、launch。你是资深 YC partner。你同意吗？

主持人 That's a good question. Um Yeah, I mean, it is This is the the issue with advice in general is it's sort of so generalized. And like, they especially in startups, the exception proves the rule, right? So, I think those are Yeah, certainly certainly if um you know, your the cost of failure is high, um then it almost certainly you have to sort of take longer to like build. [笑声]这是个好问题。建议的问题就在于它往往太笼统。尤其在 startup 里，例外恰恰证明了规则，对吧。所以，当然，如果失败的代价很高，你几乎肯定需要花更长时间去构建。

Um You may be a very slight tangent, but something I'm curious about related to this, though, is you know, we we were talking like with these coding agents, the ability to just like build and produce software cheaply and quickly, um I I wonder, should people be taking more of this path? Like, should people be more ambitious in general with what the version one of the thing that they launch is? 稍微岔开一点，和这个相关、我好奇的是：有了这些 coding agent，能够又便宜又快地构建和产出软件，人们是否应该更多地走这条路？人们是否应该对第一版上线的东西更有野心？

Um Or you know, or is it still fundamentally good product design to start like narrow and focused and then expand out once you know what people want. 还是说，好的产品设计根本上仍然是先做窄、做聚焦，等知道人们要什么再扩展？

嘉宾 Yeah. Um Um It's a good question. Um I think probably in the era of AI, I mean I I don't know. And you know, to some extent YC will be I think the expert here, but um you know, there's the whole kind of traditional lean startup doctrine of exactly what you say, like start out by buying the Google Ads or something and uh identify this crevice or whatever and and aggressively expand out from that. 是啊。这是个好问题。在 AI 时代，我也不确定。某种程度上 YC 会是这方面的专家。传统 lean startup 教义正是你说的那样：先买 Google Ads 之类的，找到一条缝隙，然后从那里积极向外扩展。

I think you can certainly imagine that becomes much more competitive and much more um you know, aggressively tilled and it's kind of hard to find those those little niches. 可以想见，这条路会变得更竞争、被耕得更彻底，那些小 niche 会更难找。

The internet's a much bigger place than it was 20 years ago when some of those ideas emerged, whereas taking these really divergent starting points where nobody else uh is uh is uh trying to um occupy that territory is is maybe a more like basically maybe you have to more aggressively decorrelate uh in the era of AI, and I think it is interesting to think about, you know, many of the companies that were most successful over the last 10 years, so many of them are very anti-lean startup, right? 互联网比 20 年前这些想法出现时大得多。而选择那些真正分叉的起点，没有别人试图占领那片领地，也许更有价值。基本上，在 AI 时代，你可能必须更积极地去相关。想想过去十年最成功的许多公司，其中很多都非常反 lean startup，对吧？

Uh whether it's, you know, the labs themselves or Anduril or um yeah, you you you you can go down the list. A lot of them have this characteristic. 无论是那些 lab 本身，还是 Anduril，你可以顺着名单往下数。

So, I um yeah, I think maybe maybe a better way of saying it is 20 20 years ago that whole lean startup thing was uh was almost the only thing to do because of capital available and you didn't have AI that made, I don't know, spinning up an organization with many different potentialities and capabilities so much easier, whereas now I think you can start these much more aggressive and ambitious things up front. 很多都有这个特征。也许更好的说法是：20 年前，整个 lean startup 那一套几乎是唯一能做的事，因为当时的资本条件如此，也没有 AI 让你更容易拉起一个具备多种潜力和能力的组织。而现在，我认为你可以一开始就做更进取、更有野心的事。

主持人 Um within sort of YC and probably startup world at this point, you're famous for the at least the program term schlepp blindness, this Stripe um uh at least on the surface was not like, you know, involved a lot of schleps, like things I presume you weren't like the um, intellectually most interesting things uh, to work on. 在 YC、大概也在整个 startup 世界里，你因。至少因 PG 那个词 schlep blindness 而出名。 Stripe 至少表面上涉及大量 schlep，那些大概不是智力上最有趣的工作。

主持人 Um, and I always found that especially interesting for you because you just mentioned you you had academic interests in physics and um, you're just like clearly like, you know, a deep intellectual and have very many things that you're interested in. As Stripe has sort of grown into this in this big company in what ways sort of, you know, in what ways um, are there sort of like intellectual um, rewards that you've you've given up and which ones have you gained? 我对你这一点一直特别感兴趣，因为你刚才提到自己对物理有学术兴趣，你显然是一个很深的智识型的人，兴趣也很多。随着 Stripe 成长为这样一家大公司，你放弃了哪些智识上的回报，又获得了哪些？

嘉宾 Yeah, I am I mean, look, in any company there's a bunch of stuff that's um, not that rewarding or in and of itself all that interesting. Like so setting up payroll, no one sort of starts a company so that uh, you can you can set up payroll. Uh, and certainly building business financial services there's all sorts of, you know, more arcane and extensive uh, versions of that. Um, I think that um, I actually feel extremely lucky with Stripe um, and in this respect. 你看，任何公司里都有一堆本身并不那么有回报、也并不那么有趣的事。比如做 payroll，没有人是为了做 payroll 才创办公司。做企业金融服务，当然还有各种更冷僻、更庞大的版本。在这一点上，我对 Stripe 其实感到极其幸运。这件事不一定要在一开始就想很多，但我认为至少在你融到一大笔钱之前要想一想。

And uh, I think this is something I don't know if you need to think about it that much up front, but I think once you think about it maybe before you raise a significant amount of money, um, you know, you always worry naturally about possibility of failure and you know,what will happen if you fail and how to mitigate and avoid failure and all those things. I think you need to ask the uh, the sort of converse of that, uh, what if you succeed? 你总会自然地担心失败的可能，失败了会怎样，如何减轻和避免失败，诸如此类。我认为你还需要问这个问题的反面：如果你成功了呢？你融到钱，有了客户，有了员工，整套东西都起来了。你会享受那个吗？你会想在那上面做 10 年、17 年、30 年吗？

And you know, you raise money and you've customers and you've employees and a whole thing. Like are you going to be are you going to enjoy that? Are you going to want to work on that for 10 years, for 17 years, for 30 years? Uh, I mean, Larry Ellison at Oracle is going for I mean, I I I guess it'll be a half century soon, right? Um, so so, you know, what if you succeed? Larry Ellison 在 Oracle 已经做到，我想很快就要半个世纪了，对吧。所以，如果你成功了呢？就 Stripe 而言，我非常喜欢，因为我们在和世界上最有意思、最有创新力的公司共事。

And in the case of Stripe, I really love it because you know, we're working with the world's most interesting and innovative companies. Uh like we're uh, uh 25% of all Delaware corporations are started with Stripe uh via Atlas. 大约 25% 的 Delaware 公司是通过 Stripe 的 Atlas 创办的。

And then we get to partner with them and work with them and hear from them and get their feedback and get their requests and everything, you know,through the entirety of the journey up to being the Shopifys and the OpenAIs and the, you know, all all the um uh the uh the standout successes. Um oh and actually speaking of Atlas, uh we're giving free Atlas incorporation to everybody at Startup School. 然后我们能和它们合作、一起工作、听它们说话、拿到反馈和需求，贯穿整段旅程，直到它们成为 Shopify、OpenAI 那样的突出成功者。对了，说到 Atlas，我们向 Startup School 的每个人提供免费 Atlas 注册。

So, um if you are at struck by the uh the urge to found something uh you know, over dinner this evening as we were, uh just email startupschool@stripe.com and we will get you your link uh for free Atlas. Um but uh but yeah, I I you know, I think PG latched onto something where yeah, there are all these kind of menial tasks, but but in the kind of totality of Stripe, I find it so interesting. 所以，如果你今晚吃饭时突然有创办什么的冲动，就像我们当年那样，发邮件到 startupschool@stripe.com，我们会给你免费 Atlas 的链接。不过，我认为 PG 抓住了一点：是的，有各种琐碎事务，但就 Stripe 的整体而言，我觉得它非常有意思。

Like every business is a kind of applied theory on how some aspect of the world works or how some market works or how some you know, how if the new company with a new um the new model, it's kind of a contrarian thesis on some counterfactual. But yeah, just like it's it's I've never met a Stripe customer and thought that's boring. Um so so it's actually the business as a whole has been the opposite of uh of the Schlep Blindness um instinct. 每家企业都是一种应用理论，关于世界某一方面如何运转，或某个市场如何运转。一家带着新模型的新公司，某种程度上是对某种反事实情形的逆向命题。我从未见过一个 Stripe 客户，然后觉得这很无聊。所以，这家生意作为整体，其实和 schlep blindness 那种本能正好相反。

主持人 And you have a particularly unique in um perspective on this cuz you work with the big model um providers, the big lab companies, and you work with all of the fast-growing AI startups on the ground. Uh something that came up a lot here yesterday, uh honestly comes up within the batches, too, is people are just worried about um is my idea going to get sort of trampled by the the big uh lab providers? 你在这一点上视角特别独特，因为你既和大模型提供方、那些大 lab。公司合作，也和地面上所有快速增长的 AI startup 合作。昨天这里谈得很多、batch 里其实也常出现的一个担心是：我的想法会不会被那些大 lab 提供方踩过去？

And I'm giving your perspective, I'm just curious like how how should people think about that? 我想听听你的视角，人们该怎么看待这件事？

嘉宾 Yeah. Um Yeah, again, predictions are hard and certainly the labs are very competent,capable organizations. Um And maybe you should separate a little bit. Will rapidly improving AI capabilities do this or will the labs specifically themselves do this? Um I think in general the track record of like no organization if we go back 20 years, you know, there's some of the sense with Google. 是啊。预测很难，而这些 lab 当然非常有能力、很能干的组织。也许该稍微分开看：是快速提升的 AI 能力会这样做，还是 lab 自己会这样做？总体来看，这类记录——如果回到 20 年前，对 Google 就有这种感觉。

嘉宾 Like, you know, when we were doing automatic, the question was always for our company and every other company, you know, what if Google does this? And Google seemed kind of omnipotent and had this immense number of incredibly talented people and essentially infinite access to capital and server and just all the things. 我们做 Auctomatic 时，对自己的公司、对其他每家公司，问题总是：如果 Google 做这件事怎么办？ Google 当时看起来近乎全能，有海量极其有才华的人，几乎无限的资本和服务器，什么都有。

And just human organizations are complicated and it's very hard to have um to manage to aggressively prosecute 100 different priorities and to deal with all the issues and interference that arises among them and so forth. And so, you know, Google has done incredibly well in a bunch of specific places, but it's not like Google has done all the things even if in some kind of basic material sense, uh Google maybe, you know, had that ability. 但人类组织是复杂的，很难同时大力推进一百项优先事项，并处理它们之间出现的各种问题和相互干扰。所以 Google 在许多具体领域做得极其出色，但并不是 Google 把所有事情都做了，即便从某种基本物质条件上说，Google 也许具备那种能力。

So, I'd say that the kind of the track record of that is um is uh is checkered. And in general, I think that fear has been overstated. Now, I think there is a more specific thing of just like models themselves. Forget the labs. 所以我会说，这类记录是好坏参半的。总体而言，我认为那种恐惧被夸大了。现在有一个更具体的问题，就是模型本身。

Even even if the labs aren't specific particularly ambitious about expanding their scope, just like literally at length, uh will will obviate a bunch of or agentic capabilities will obviate a bunch of uh of you know, specific verticals or tasks or something. You know, hard to say, obviously contingent on one's forecast of the model capabilities themselves, uh but, you know, in certain cases, I'm sure that will happen. And you know, in certain domains, it has already happened. 先忘掉 lab。即便 lab 对扩大自己的范围并没有特别大的野心，仅仅是上下文长度，或者说 agent 能力，会不会让一批具体垂直领域或任务过时。很难说，显然取决于你对模型能力本身的预测，但在某些情况下，我确信会发生。在某些领域，这已经发生了。

Looking at the Stripe data, one thing I will say that I think is germane to people here, um there are many more businesses getting started now than there were a year ago, like as little as a year ago. Um, way, way more than we're getting started, you know, 5 years ago. Uh, and actually the relative change between last year and this year is pretty much the largest relative change we've seen in any given year. 看 Stripe 的数据，有一件我认为和在场的人相关的事：现在新创办的企业，比一年前多得多，仅仅一年前。比五年前更是多得多。去年到今年的相对变化，几乎是我们见过的任何一年里最大的相对变化。例如，从 2019 年到 2020 年，我们看到一次大跳跃，COVID 期间可以理解。

So, for example, from 19 from 2019 to 2020, we saw a big jump, you know, understandable during COVID. So, you know, um, February to April of 2020 or whatever. Uh, you know, I I I think the growth rate inflected to maybe 50% or thereabouts, uh, year-over-year in terms of new businesses getting started. 比如 2 月到 2020 年 4 月左右。新创办企业的同比增速大概拐到了 50% 上下。

Um, as I speak, the number of new businesses starting on Stripe is up around a bit under, but around 2x year-over-year, um, which again is the largest relative jump, uh, we've seen. Um, and you might think, okay, fine, you know, there's way more vibe-coded, kind of lightweight slop, you know, whatever. Like, maybe fine, there's more things, but like, are they actually succeeding? Um, but actually the median business, uh, is doing better this year than a year ago. 就在我说话的此刻，在 Stripe 上新创办的企业数量同比大约接近、但大约是 2 倍，这再次是我们见过的最大相对跳跃。你可能会想，好吧，现在有更多 vibe-coded、轻量、质量一般的东西。东西多了，但它们真的在成功吗？实际上，中位数企业今年比一年前做得更好。

Um, and so and then if we kind of, um, stratify and look at the probability that any given business will reach some revenue threshold, a million dollars, five million dollars, 10 million dollars,whatever, um, those all seem to be getting better. Uh, business are uh, the time to revenue for new companies incorporated with Atlas is declining. And so, by all the kind of objective metrics we can look at, uh, it seems to be a better time than ever to start a business. 如果我们分层看，任意一家企业达到某个收入门槛的概率——100 万美元、500 万美元、1000 万美元，无论哪个，这些看起来都在变好。用 Atlas 注册的新公司，从创办到产生收入的时间在缩短。所以，就我们能看到的所有客观指标而言，现在似乎是创办企业最好的时候。当然，事情会变。我不知道五年后世界会是什么样。

Then again, things can change. I don't know what the world's going to look like in 5 years, but, you know, speaking today on July 26th or whatever it is, uh, of of '26, um, I think it is the Stripe data would suggest it's there's never been a better time. Um, I mean, we see the exact same thing in the YC batches. Companies are just able to grow faster than ever. Um, 但就今天，7 月 26 日左右，2026 年来说，我认为 Stripe 的数据会表明，从未有过比现在更好的时候。我们在 YC 的 batch 里看到完全一样的事。公司比以往任何时候都能更快增长。

主持人 Certainly within the batch. 至少在 batch 里是这样。

嘉宾 It used when you know, back in again the old days when Arge and I were first starting out, like getting to a million dollars of revenue like running revenue was a big deal. Like people would know about that company. They'd be like, you know, I heard that X company got to a million dollars of revenue. And now, I mean I don't That's 以前，Harj 和我刚起步的那些年，做到 100 万美元收入、也就是 running revenue，是件大事。人们会知道那家公司，会说我听说 X 公司做到了 100 万美元收入。而现在，我不知道那是——。

主持人 Yeah, that's actually you should be Well, your first month it feels like. 是啊，感觉应该是第一个月就该做到。

嘉宾 You should um that's an exaggeration for everyone here. Um but I mean I certainly within sort of like sort of like the YC uh part of the life cycle like day zero to 90, it's really being driven by I would say enterprises willing to buy from startups, which is the new thing. So, you can sign these new contracts um within like the batch. Um you have the data as the companies keep growing. 对在场所有人来说，这是夸张。但至少在 YC 生命周期这一段，从第 0 天到第 90 天，驱动力我认为是企业愿意向 startup 采购，这是新现象。所以你能在 batch 期间签下这些新合同。

I'm curious, are there other factors that are driving these sort of um uh inflected growth curves from like one to 10 and 10 to 100? 公司继续成长时你有数据。我好奇，还有没有其他因素在驱动这些从 1 到 10、从 10 到 100 的拐点增长曲线？

主持人 I I think it's really the dynamic you just mentioned, uh which is businesses uh businesses everywhere are more um spring-loaded uh to adapt and to try new things. And they have a real terror of being left behind with archaic and antiquated ways of operating. 我认为真正起作用的就是你刚才说的那个动态：到处的企业都更蓄势待发，更愿意适应、尝试新事物。它们非常害怕被落在陈旧过时的运作方式里。

And so, in normal times, you're a new startup, you have you have some mechanism for doing whatever, and you pitch the CIO or the CTO or the whoever at some company, and they kind of don't want to talk to you because, you know, your thing is not validated. Maybe you won't be around in 2 years. You know, all all the kind of obvious objections. But now, people know that,well, the risk of the status quo is actually extremely high. 所以在正常时期，你是一家新 startup，有某种做事机制，去向某家公司的 CIO、CTO 或谁 pitch，他们不太想和你谈，因为你的东西还没被验证，也许两年后你就不在了，诸如此类明显的反对理由。但现在，人们知道，维持现状的风险其实极高。

And so, even if there's risk in doing all the new things, well, this path also looks pretty dangerous. And so, I really think there's never been a better time for startups to to sell um and to have their products get adopted at, you know, pretty meaningful scale right out of the gate. Uh a lot of YC companies in recent times have demonstrated this, but uh I think it's a really pervasive dynamic. 即便做所有这些新事情有风险，这条路看起来也相当危险。所以我真的认为，从未有过比现在更好的时候，让 startup 去销售，并让产品从一开始就以相当可观的规模被采用。

And there's a bit of it I think also, I mean Stripe is not a consumer company, obviously, but you know, I think there's some version of this on the consumer side where I think consumers, I mean, are also pretty, I mean, consumers have complicated views on AI and maybe they don't want the data centers, but people are very intrigued by the products and I think there is a kind of they're kind of beguiled by them and there's a a predisposition and an openness to experimenting with the new. 最近很多 YC 公司已经证明了这一点，我认为这是一个非常普遍的动态。 Stripe 显然不是消费公司，但我认为消费侧也有一点类似的情况：消费者对 AI 的看法也很复杂，他们也许不想要那些数据中心，但人们对产品非常感兴趣。我认为他们被这些产品吸引，有一种倾向和开放态度，愿意去试验新东西。

嘉宾 Um maybe just more broadly something I'm curious about is again with with this the data you have at Stripe, um has anything you've seen in that data stream um changed a belief you have about AI broadly say over the like the last 12 months? 再更宽一点，我好奇的是，就你在 Stripe 看到的这些数据而言，过去大约 12 个月里，有没有？什么。改变了你对 AI 总体上的某个看法？

主持人 I mean, there's a fear uh that AI is going to be this um hegemonic, centralizing, totalizing force where a small number of companies gobble up a very large share of the economy. And many companies at the forefront of AI um have done incredibly well and I think we'll continue to do incredibly well, for sure. 有一种恐惧是：AI 会成为霸权的、集中化的、包揽一切的力量，少数公司吞掉经济中非常大的份额。许多处于 AI 最前沿的公司确实做得极其出色，我认为它们会继续极其出色。

But based on what we can see at Stripe, the hunger and the intensity with which other companies are either getting started, taking advantage of these new capabilities, or existing companies are retooling, I don't worry about the centralization in the same way. Uh I think there I think there are going to be many thousands of winners. 但根据我们在 Stripe 看到的，其他公司创办、利用这些新能力的饥饿和强度，以及现有公司重新装备自己的力度，我不再以同样的方式担心集中化。我认为会有成千上万的赢家。

Um and again, we try not to offer any definitive prognostications cuz the future is not predetermined, but based on the the trend lines we can see, I think we are heading towards a um a more decentralized world and one with more broad-based prosperity. 我们尽量不做任何确定的预言，因为未来并非预先决定。但根据我们能看到的趋势线，我认为我们正走向一个更去中心化、有更广泛繁荣的世界。

嘉宾 Yeah, cool. All right, well, I think that is all we have time for today. So thanks so much Patrick for me. 好，酷。好，今天时间差不多了。所以非常感谢 Patrick。

主持人 Thank you for having me and um It would be remiss of me not to say that Stripe would not exist without YC. 谢谢邀请我。如果不说一句，就太失职了：没有 YC，就不会有 Stripe。

嘉宾 All right, cool. All right, see you so much. 好，酷。好，非常感谢，再见。