Sebastian Mallaby on Venture Capital (Ep. 143)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
Today I’m here with Sebastian Mallaby, who is the author of numerous excellent books on economics, politics, and current affairs.
今天我和塞巴斯蒂安·马拉比在一起，他是许多关于经济、政治和时事方面的优秀书籍的作者。
He is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a contributing columnist to the Washington Post, and most importantly, he has a new, excellent, and very well-reviewed book out, called The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.
他是外交关系委员会的高级研究员，也是《华盛顿邮报》的特约专栏作家，最重要的是，他出版了一本优秀且广受好评的新书，名为《幂律：风险投资与新未来的创造》。
Sebastian, welcome.
塞巴斯蒂安，欢迎。
Great to be with you, Tyler.
很高兴和你在一起，泰勒。
Do the observed high returns to venture capital funds constitute a counterexample to the theory of efficient markets?
观察到的风险投资基金的高回报是否构成有效市场理论的反例？
Yes.
是的。
Why does it continue?
为什么会持续下去？
Why doesn’t capital just flow into the sector and bid down the returns?
为什么资本不直接流入该行业并压低回报率？
Well, maybe that’s what we’ve been seeing just in the last three years or so, with enormous amounts of money coming in during the pandemic.
好吧，也许这就是我们在过去三年左右所看到的情况，在大流行期间有大量资金流入。
And quite possibly there will be a correction.
而且很可能会出现修正。
You’re asking, I guess, a more subtle question about whether, on a sustained basis, money would flow in and bid away the returns.
我想，你问的是一个更微妙的问题，即资金是否会持续流入并竞走回报。
I think the point here is that, any time we’re dealing with alternative asset managers — whether it’s hedge funds or venture capital — it’s the skill that you need.
我认为这里的要点是，任何时候我们与另类资产管理公司打交道时——无论是对冲基金还是风险投资——这都是你所需要的技能。
The money may be limitless, but the skills and the connections in Silicon Valley and what have you — that is not unlimited.
金钱可能是无限的，但硅谷的技能和人脉以及你拥有的东西 —— 并不是无限的。
Skill can continue to generate good returns.
技能可以持续产生良好的回报。
In that underlying mental model, the excess returns can stay more or less forever.
在这种基本的心理模型中，超额收益或多或少可以永远保留。
More capital coming in won’t bid down the returns much?
更多的资本进入不会使回报率下降很多吗？
I think that’s right.
我认为这是对的。
The returns have been pretty good, at least for the better venture capital funds.
回报相当不错，至少对于更好的风险投资基金来说是这样。
Here, we may want to come back to that caveat.
在这里，我们可能想回到这个警告。
Going back to the beginning of the story in the ’60s with Arthur Rock, the pioneer of venture capital, right through to today, you do see good returns.
回到60年代风险投资先驱阿瑟·洛克的故事开始，一直到今天，你确实看到了良好的回报。
Sequoia, which I regard as the top venture capital partnership in Silicon Valley, has generated returns of about 12 times investors’ money this century.
红杉资本，我认为是硅谷顶级风险投资合伙企业，本世纪产生的回报约为投资者资金的 12 倍。
That’s 12x.
那是 12 倍。
That’s 1200 percent — pretty good.
那是 1200% ——非常好。
Why isn’t that skill replicable if the returns to replicating it are so high?
如果复制这项技能的回报如此之高，为什么它不能被复制呢？
I think there’s an inefficient-markets thinking.
我认为这是一种低效率的市场思维。
There is a notion that you can assume away skill, and that if skill is good, you can just make more of it.
有一种观念认为，你可以假设技能，如果技能很好，你就可以创造更多技能。
That would mean you would compete the returns down.
这意味着你将降低回报率。
I think some of the skill is so far off in the tail of the distribution that it’s quite hard to replicate it.
我认为有些技能在发行版的尾部还很遥远，很难复制。
A really good venture capitalist combines technical knowledge of what he or she is investing in — whether that’s biotechnology or computer science — plus business feeling, plus the skill of networking with people and putting teams together.
真正优秀的风险投资家将他或她所投资的领域的技术知识（无论是生物技术还是计算机科学）与商业感觉、与人建立联系和组建团队的技能结合起来。
And a phenomenal energy, because you’ve got to be out there getting up in the morning for one breakfast with one potential person you might invest in, and then doing 14 cups of coffee before you go to bed, and being that wired, you still sleep.
还有一种惊人的能量，因为你必须早上起床，和你可能投资的一个潜在的人一起吃一顿早餐，然后在睡觉前喝 14 杯咖啡，尽管如此，你仍然可以睡觉。
It is tough to find enough people like that.
很难找到足够多的这样的人。
Maybe we’re going to discover that the last four or five years of boom have sucked in so much talent that it will be competed away.
也许我们会发现，过去四五年的繁荣吸引了如此多的人才，以至于他们会被竞争走掉。
That could be true, but so far, it hasn’t happened.
这可能是真的，但到目前为止，这还没有发生。
What do you think of the view that in recent years, there’s been a huge consumer retail tech boom?
您如何看待近年来消费零售科技出现巨大繁荣的观点？
Basically FAANG stocks, right?
基本上是FAANG股票，对吧？
And when that is over — it might be over now — the excess returns to VC will go away.
当这一切结束时——“现在可能就结束了”——风险投资的超额回报将会消失。
If you look at venture capital for biotech, which has been hammered lately, as we’re speaking here, late January 2022 — and maybe venture capital is a limited model for one period of time, and otherwise, it just does okay.
如果你看看最近受到重创的生物技术风险投资，正如我们在这里所说的，2022 年 1 月下旬 ——也许风险投资在一段时间内是一种有限的模式，否则，它就表现得还不错。
True or false?
是真是假？
False.
错误的。
I say that because, in a cyclical sense, you might be right, but I think there’s a deep structural shift, which is really important.
我这么说是因为，从周期性的角度来看，你可能是对的，但我认为存在深刻的结构性转变，这非常重要。
That is that intangible capital has become more and more important in our economy.
那就是无形资本在我们的经济中变得越来越重要。
The nature of intangible capital is that it’s hard to measure it in financial reports.
无形资本的本质是难以在财务报告中计量。
To understand whether a particular software investment, for example, is worth a huge amount or, really, nothing, you need to understand what that software development within the company is doing.
例如，要了解某个特定的软件投资是否值得大量投资，或者实际上什么都没有，您需要了解公司内的软件开发正在做什么。
You need to be hands-on.
你需要亲自动手。
You need to have the technical skills to evaluate that software project.
您需要具备评估该软件项目的技术技能。
The more that intangible capital rises as a share of new GDP creation, the more this venture-style hands-on expert investing is going to be valuable.
无形资本在新 GDP 创造中所占的份额上升得越多，这种风险投资风格的实践专家投资就越有价值。
Your explanation — if I understand it — to me seems to suggest that venture capital for biotech won’t work very well.
你的解释 ——如果我理解的话——对我来说似乎表明生物技术的风险投资效果不会很好。
You’re portraying it as something that’s very, very hard to do, a very limited skill, so you’re going to be wrong a lot of times.
你把它描绘成一件非常非常难做的事情，一种非常有限的技能，所以你很多时候都会错。
That means the times you’re right, the product has to be scalable very rapidly.
这意味着在合适的时候，产品必须能够非常快速地扩展。
But in biotech, there are regulators.
但在生物技术领域，有监管机构。
You often need a sales force.
您经常需要一支销售队伍。
It’s not scalable in the way that, say, LinkedIn or Netflix are scalable.
它不像 LinkedIn 或 Netflix 那样具有可扩展性。
Doesn’t that mean VC will just stay limited to a very small area of those things that are super rapidly scalable?
这是否意味着风险投资将仅限于那些可快速扩展的事物中的一小部分？
Or if you think it’s pretty easy to pick winners, then you have to think the rents get exhausted.
或者，如果你认为挑选获胜者很容易，那么你必须认为租金已经耗尽。
Yeah, this is a version of, actually, a wider debate which goes beyond biotech, which is the claim that venture capital is really only good for software projects, that software can be scaled very, very fast; there are network effects once you get product-market fit, and you don’t need much capital.
是的，这实际上是一场超越生物技术的更广泛辩论的一个版本，即风险投资实际上只对软件项目有利，软件可以非常非常快地扩展；一旦产品与市场契合，就会产生网络效应，而且不需要太多资金。
The marginal cost of serving one more customer is pretty much zero once you’ve built the Google search engine.
一旦你建立了谷歌搜索引擎，为多一个客户提供服务的边际成本几乎为零。
People will argue, “Look, that’s all that venture capitalists do.”
人们会争辩说：“看，这就是风险投资家所做的一切。”
That is, for sure, historically inaccurate.
毫无疑问，这在历史上是不准确的。
There’s a long history of venture investing which was more about hardware than software.
风险投资有着悠久的历史，风险投资更多地关注硬件而不是软件。
It was about Apple computer.
这是关于苹果电脑的。
It was about U-Net building the pipes of the internet.
它是关于 U-Net 构建互联网管道的。
It was about compact computers.
这是关于紧凑型计算机的。
It was about semiconductor firms and so forth.
这是关于半导体公司等等的。
We know the software version of this argument — that venture capital only does cheap to-scale software.
我们知道这个论点的软件版本——风险投资只投资廉价的可扩展软件。
That’s just wrong.
那是错误的。
Biotech, I agree, is a tougher example.
我同意，生物技术是一个更难的例子。
It’s more regulated.
它更受监管。
Historically, there have been cases early on, like Genentech, which went public in 1980 with the first artificial insulin.
从历史上看，很早就有这样的案例，比如基因泰克 (Genentech)，该公司于 1980 年上市，推出了第一款人工胰岛素。
Huge, huge venture return really set Kleiner Perkins on the way to dominance over the next two decades in Silicon Valley in terms of venture investing.
巨大的风险投资回报确实让凯鹏华盈在未来二十年里成为硅谷风险投资领域的主导者。
But that’s an outlier, and it’s true that healthcare investing has been tougher and less profitable, and a lot of companies have withdrawn from that.
但这是一个异常值，确实，医疗保健投资变得更加困难且利润较低，许多公司已经退出。
But I think the past isn’t necessarily a guide to the future.
但我认为过去并不一定能指导未来。
The fun thing about venture is that you have to be watching to see where basic science is generating innovation that can be commercialized.
风险投资的有趣之处在于，你必须留意基础科学在哪里产生可以商业化的创新。
The thing that didn’t necessarily do that for a long time might be the thing that does it in the future.
长期不一定这样做的事情可能会在未来这样做。
Now you’ve had a bunch of innovations, from gene sequencing to CRISPR, which makes it faster and easier to develop new drugs.
现在，您已经拥有了从基因测序到 CRISPR 的一系列创新，这使得新药的开发变得更快、更容易。
Those drugs can have huge consequences.
这些药物可能会产生巨大的后果。
The coronavirus vaccine from Moderna is a good example of this.
Moderna 的冠状病毒疫苗就是一个很好的例子。
I think that it would be wrong to rule out the idea that even a pretty capital-intensive, regulation-intensive sector like biotech — I think it might still work.
我认为，排除这样一种想法是错误的：即使是像生物技术这样资本密集、监管密集的行业 ——我认为它可能仍然有效。
What then, in your mental model, does limit the size of venture capital?
那么，在您的心智模型中，是什么限制了风险投资的规模呢？
Because as a percentage of entire capital flows, it’s pretty tiny, much smaller than private equity.
因为它占整个资本流动的比例非常小，比私募股权要小得多。
What, at the margin, makes venture capital not work?
从边际角度看，是什么让风险投资不起作用？
You’re right, it’s small.
你说得对，它很小。
The paradox is that the impact is big.
矛盾的是，影响却很大。
Just a couple of numbers on that: Fewer than 1 percent of companies that get formed every year receive venture capital backing, but if you look at the years since 1995, half of all the companies that go public got venture backing, and three-quarters of the market cap from those companies derived from venture-backed companies.
仅举几个数字即可说明这一点：每年成立的公司中只有不到 1% 获得风险投资支持，但如果你看看 1995 年以来的几年，所有上市公司中有一半获得了风险投资支持，而这些公司的四分之三的市值来自于风险投资支持的公司。
Tiny share get the money — less than 1 percent — but three-quarters of the market cap is the result.
微小的份额获得资金 ——“不到 1%”—— 但结果是市值的四分之三。
That’s the first point.
这是第一点。
Just because it’s small, it doesn’t mean it has low impact.
仅仅因为它很小，并不意味着它的影响力就低。
I think, at the limit, to answer your question directly, there are things which are either so capital-intensive — like building a new semiconductor fab — where you’re really in the billions from the get-go, where that’s .
我认为，在极限情况下，直接回答你的问题，有些事情要么是资本密集型的 ——比如建造一座新的半导体工厂—— 从一开始你就真的需要数十亿美元，就是这样。
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Venture doesn’t do that.
风险投资不会这样做。
It’s about starting —
这是关于开始 —
Why not?
为什么不呢？
Capital is not that scarce, right?
资本并没有那么稀缺，对吧？
Yes.
是的。
Venture’s advantage maybe helps to answer why sometimes it has a disadvantage.
风险投资的优势也许有助于回答为什么它有时会存在劣势。
One of the advantages is the idea of stage-by-stage financing.
优点之一是分阶段融资的理念。
You give the company a bit of money, and then if it fails early, it fails cheaply because you haven’t given it a huge check right from early on.
你给了公司一点钱，然后如果它很早就失败了，那么它的失败代价也很低，因为你没有从一开始就给它巨额支票。
Something which is going to definitely take an enormous amount of money up front — like a new semiconductor fab — is not the right .
那些肯定需要大量资金投入的项目——比如新的半导体工厂——是不正确的。
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In terms of comparative advantage, venture conceivably could raise that amount of money and could conceivably go finance that.
就比较优势而言，风险投资可以筹集到这笔资金，并且可以为其提供融资。
It just wouldn’t be the natural sweet spot, and it would be better to leave that to TSMC or Samsung or some established maker of semiconductors.
它只是不是天然的最佳点，最好将其留给台积电或三星或一些成熟的半导体制造商。
As you know, Sequoia has changed its rules so that it can now hold investments for much longer-term periods than had been the case.
如您所知，红杉资本改变了规则，现在可以比以前更长期地持有投资。
If you extend this to its logical conclusion, you could imagine a future ten, fifteen years from now, where hedge funds, VC firms, a lot of other financial intermediaries are all blended mixes of doing varying combinations of similar things.
如果你将其延伸到其逻辑结论，你可以想象未来十年、十五年后，对冲基金、风险投资公司和许多其他金融中介机构都在做类似事情的不同组合。
Ten to fifteen years from now, what do you think will be the unique feature of venture capital?
十年到十五年后，您认为风险投资的独特之处是什么？
Or do you think everything will be a blend?
或者你认为一切都会混合？
That’s a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
I would say that the useful definition of venture capital is that it is an early-stage venture, an adventure, in fact.
我想说，风险投资的有用定义是，它是一种早期风险投资，实际上是一种冒险。
When you get to investing in companies which are more than about $500 million in market cap, that’s a different thing.
当你投资市值超过 5 亿美元的公司时，情况就不同了。
That’s growth equity.
这就是增长股权。
I don’t call that venture anymore.
我不再称之为冒险了。
The reason I picked $500 million as a number is that when Amazon went public in the late ’90s, its public market cap when it IPO’d was between $400 million and $500 million.
我之所以选择 5 亿美元作为数字，是因为亚马逊在 90 年代末上市时，其 IPO 时的公开市值在 4 亿至 5 亿美元之间。
Now what’s happened is that the IPO point has been delayed because you’ve got this ability to raise late-stage growth capital, and more and more checks have been written — $100 million, $200 million, $300 million — into companies that are worth $1 billion, $2 billion, $10 billion.
现在的情况是，IPO 点被推迟了，因为你有能力筹集后期增长资本，越来越多的支票被开出 —— 1 亿美元、2 亿美元、3 亿美元 ——投入到价值 10 亿美元、20 亿美元、100 亿美元的公司。
That is being grafted into traditional venture partnerships like Sequoia Capital, so I write a lot about Sequoia.
这正在被嫁接到红杉资本这样的传统风险投资伙伴关系中，所以我写了很多关于红杉资本的文章。
One of the amazing things is how much franchise risk they’d be willing to take.
令人惊奇的事情之一是他们愿意承担多少特许经营风险。
They were a traditional early-stage investment shop in 2000, and then they grafted on this growth equity business.
2000年，他们还是一家传统的早期投资公司，后来嫁接了成长型股权业务。
They grafted on a hedge fund business.
他们嫁接了对冲基金业务。
They built an endowment fund on top of that.
他们在此基础上建立了一个捐赠基金。
Now, as you say, they’ve got permanent capital, so they’re going to end up with multiple business lines.
现在，正如你所说，他们拥有永久资本，因此他们最终将拥有多个业务线。
It’s a bit like Goldman Sachs has multiple business lines.
这有点像高盛有多个业务线。
I think the venture capital portion of Sequoia’s business will remain the early-stage part.
我认为红杉业务的风险投资部分仍将处于早期阶段。
Even after the pandemic, it’s striking to me how much venture capital remains concentrated in the Bay Area.
即使在大流行之后，令我震惊的是有多少风险资本仍然集中在湾区。
The major deals are mostly done there.
主要交易大多在那里完成。
What’s your mental model for that?
你的思维模式是什么？
I think the lesson of Silicon Valley is that agglomeration effects and clustering effects are actually even bigger than economics as traditionally explained.
我认为硅谷的教训是，集聚效应和集群效应实际上比传统经济学解释的还要大。
In other words, economics .
换句话说，就是经济学。
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Just reading when I was writing my book about economic geography and that whole literature, the traditional story about why a cluster is a productive thing is that you get better matching between the skills of workers and the needs of companies when you have a very deep labor market.
就在我写关于经济地理学和整个文献的书时，关于为什么集群是一件富有成效的事情的传统故事是，当你拥有非常深入的劳动力市场时，你可以更好地匹配工人的技能和公司的需求。
So, if you’re talking about coding, and a company wants to hire a particular database engineer in a particular database software, in Silicon Valley, there will be the precise type of engineer that you want.
因此，如果您正在谈论编码，并且一家公司想要在特定的数据库软件中雇用特定的数据库工程师，那么在硅谷，将会有您想要的精确类型的工程师。
Whereas if you’re in a less deep pool of labor, you won’t find that.
然而，如果你的劳动力深度不那么深，你就不会发现这一点。
The same argument goes for suppliers.
同样的论点也适用于供应商。
If you want to have a supplier that provides a particular kind of bespoke semiconductor, you’re more likely to find that supplier locally and be able to go visit them if you’re in Silicon Valley than elsewhere.
如果您想要一家提供特定类型定制半导体的供应商，那么您更有可能在当地找到该供应商，并且如果您在硅谷，那么您就可以拜访他们，而不是在其他地方。
That would be why the start-ups are clustered.
这就是初创企业聚集的原因。
Why are the venture capital deals clustered?
风险投资交易为何集中？
Furthermore, in a funny way, they’re anti-clustered.
此外，有趣的是，它们是反集群的。
They’re not all in New York, which is our major financial center by a long ways.
他们并不都在纽约，纽约是我们的主要金融中心。
San Francisco is not that.
旧金山不是那样的。
It’s a mix of anti-clustering and then some extreme clustering for this set of deals that have some particular features.
对于这组具有某些特定功能的交易，它是反集群和一些极端集群的结合。
I think that shows you why venture capital is fundamentally different to the other kinds of capital that are going on on the East Coast and in Greenwich — New York and Greenwich and so forth.
我认为这向你展示了为什么风险投资与东海岸和格林威治（纽约和格林威治等地）发生的其他类型的资本有着根本的不同。
It’s just a totally different thing.
这是完全不同的事情。
I always like to say the postwar, archetypical financial companies on the East Coast — the archetypes were Prudential and Fidelity, and their names tell you a lot about their attitude to risk — they were about stewarding capital and not losing it.
我总是喜欢说东海岸的战后典型金融公司 ——典型的是保诚集团和富达集团，它们的名字可以告诉你很多关于他们对风险的态度 ——他们致力于管理资本而不是失去资本。
This high-risk, power-law return, grand slam business that emerged in venture capital on the West Coast is utterly different.
这种在西海岸风险投资中出现的高风险、幂律回报、大满贯的业务则完全不同。
So, it’s not surprising that we would have an anti-cluster, a different center for that kind of financing.
因此，我们拥有一个反集群、一个不同的此类融资中心也就不足为奇了。
But I think it clusters because this is a business where people syndicate into each other’s deals.
但我认为它是集群性的，因为这是一个人们相互联合进行交易的行业。
One venture capitalist will lead the Series A around financing a company, and then another one will lead the Series B, and another one, the Series C.
一位风险投资家将领导围绕一家公司融资的 A 轮融资，然后另一位风险投资家将领导 B 轮融资，另一位风险投资家将领导 C 轮融资。
Often, a single run, like the Series C, will have multiple investors in it.
通常，单次融资（例如 C 轮融资）就会有多个投资者参与。
It’s just economical for the entrepreneurs to be able to visit a whole bunch of different VCs and pitch to 10 of them without having to get on a plane and fly around.
对于企业家来说，能够拜访一大堆不同的风险投资公司并向其中 10 家进行推介，而无需乘坐飞机到处飞，这非常经济。
I think there are clustering effects.
我认为存在集群效应。
Also, just the circulation of ideas, people, and money within the clusters — which is something that venture capitalists facilitate — works better when it’s concentrated geographically.
此外，集群内的思想、人员和资金的流通——这是风险资本家所促进的——当它在地理上集中时，效果会更好。
That’s why, at least until the last 10 years, when perhaps we’ve gotten to the point with Zoom and remote work and so forth where this is less driven than it used to be.
这就是为什么，至少在过去 10 年里，我们可能已经到了 Zoom 和远程工作等的地步，而这种驱动力已经不如以前了。
I think the agglomeration effects were really very, very powerful, and venture capital needed to be clustered to be most effective.
我认为集聚效应真的非常非常强大，风险投资需要聚集才能最有效。
That’s why you got the Silicon Valley dominance.
这就是为什么你获得了硅谷的主导地位。
When is venture capital more effective versus when is angel investing more effective?
什么时候风险投资更有效，什么时候天使投资更有效？
Angel investing wasn’t really a factor until the mid-late 1990s.
直到 20 世纪 90 年代中后期，天使投资才真正成为一个因素。
Once it became a factor — and that happened because Silicon Valley had reached a point of maturity, where there were enough rich, exited entrepreneurs who had made money starting their own companies, and then wanted to turn around and fund some younger people who looked a bit like them.
一旦它成为一个因素，就会发生这种情况，因为硅谷已经达到了成熟点，那里有足够多的富有的退出企业家，他们通过创办自己的公司赚了钱，然后想转身资助一些看起来有点像他们的年轻人。
That’s what happened with Google.
这就是谷歌发生的事情。
Google could raise $1 million in 1998 before going to any venture capitalists because angels had become a thing.
1998 年，谷歌可以在向任何风险投资家筹集 100 万美元之前筹集到 100 万美元，因为天使投资已经成为一种现象。
One of them was Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and the other was Andy Bechtolsheim, who had started Sun Microsystems some time before.
其中一位是亚马逊的杰夫·贝佐斯，另一位是安迪·贝托谢姆，他之前创立了 Sun Microsystems。
Once you get angels, then I think entrepreneurs are going to want to use them because they’re friendly, they’re typically people who know a lot technically and that you relate to, you look up to when you’re a founder.
一旦你得到了天使投资人，我认为企业家会想要使用他们，因为他们很友好，他们通常是技术上了解很多的人，当你是创始人时，他们是你所关心和尊敬的人。
I think angels are useful for the first round of money, the first amount of mentoring.
我认为天使对于第一轮资金、第一笔指导很有用。
Then when you get a bit further along on your company, you want the Series A, which means more money, more formal company structuring, and a tougher, clearer sense of what your next milestone is that you have to reach — otherwise, you’ll be shut down — then you go to the proper VC.
然后，当你的公司发展得更进一步时，你想要 A 轮融资，这意味着更多的资金、更正式的公司结构，以及对你必须达到的下一个里程碑的更严格、更清晰的认识————否则，你将被关闭——然后你就去找合适的风险投资家。
True or false, good CEOs make good VCs.
无论真假，优秀的首席执行官都会成为优秀的风险投资家。
Not always true.
并不总是如此。
As a generalization, I would say false.
作为概括，我会说错误。
The premise of Andreessen Horowitz, the venture partnership set up in 2009, was that to be a good venture capitalist, you had to be an entrepreneur, and you had to have run a company and understood what a start-up is like from the inside.
2009年成立的风险合伙公司Andreessen Horowitz的前提是，要成为一名优秀的风险投资家，你必须是一名企业家，你必须经营过一家公司，并从内部了解初创企业是什么样的。
That just turned out to be false.
结果证明那是错误的。
Andreessen Horowitz has now given up the rule that to become a partner at the company you have to have been a former founder of a company yourself because it just isn’t the best way, necessarily.
安德森霍洛维茨现在放弃了这样的规则：要成为公司的合伙人，你必须自己是公司的前创始人，因为这不一定是最好的方式。
It’s one way you can choose a good venture capitalist, but it’s not the only way, by any means.
这是选择优秀风险投资家的一种方法，但无论如何它不是唯一的方法。
Why has Mike Moritz been so good at VC?
为什么迈克·莫里茨（Mike Moritz）如此擅长风险投资？
That’s a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
I think he was willing to do two things.
我认为他愿意做两件事。
When it came to company founders, he had the ability to enlarge their sense of themselves.
当谈到公司创始人时，他有能力扩大他们的自我意识。
He could intuit what they were doing.
他能凭直觉知道他们在做什么。
He could get on people’s wavelength and not only understand them, but understand them better than they understood themselves, and see more potential in their project than even they saw when they looked at it.
他能够了解人们的情绪，不仅了解他们，而且比他们自己更了解他们，并在他们的项目中看到比他们看到的更多的潜力。
The first example of this is Yahoo, where Jerry Yang and David Filo were in their port-a-cabin on the Stanford campus.
第一个例子是雅虎，杨致远和大卫·费洛在斯坦福大学校园的小木屋里。
They thought they were building a hobby-type thing, and they were proud of Yahoo as a directory of the emerging internet.
他们认为自己正在构建一个业余爱好类型的东西，他们为雅虎作为新兴互联网的目录而感到自豪。
But Moritz showed up, listened, understood, and said, “This is the new Apple.
但莫里茨出现了，倾听了，理解了，然后说：“这就是新的苹果。
You are going to make something with a quirky name.
你要做的东西有一个奇怪的名字。
Apple was quirky, Yahoo is quirky.
苹果很古怪，雅虎也很古怪。
You’re going to have a brand, and you’re going to be the face of a new phase in tech history.” He enlarged their sense of themselves.
你将拥有一个品牌，你将成为科技历史新阶段的代表。”他扩大了他们的自我意识。
He was just great at delivering that kind of call-to-greatness speech.
他非常擅长发表那种号召伟大的演讲。
He sat down at PayPal with one of the founders of PayPal, who was resisting the idea of a merger with the Elon Musk rival, which was called X.com.
他在 PayPal 与 PayPal 的一位创始人进行了交谈，这位创始人拒绝与埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 的竞争对手 X.com 合并。
He said to him, “Listen, if you do this merger, I will never sell stock in the company, and you will build something that makes history in the Valley.” That call to greatness was inspiring.
他对他说：“听着，如果你进行这次合并，我永远不会出售公司的股票，而你将创造一些在硅谷创造历史的东西。”对伟大的呼唤是鼓舞人心的。
That’s one thing, that EQ to get the best out of people and make them be even more ambitious than they already were.
这是一回事，情商可以让人们发挥出最好的一面，让他们比现在更加雄心勃勃。
The other thing Mike Moritz did is, he risked the franchise of Sequoia.
迈克·莫里茨做的另一件事是，他拿红杉资本的特许经营权冒险。
He did, a bit, what I was talking about before.
他做了一点我之前谈论的事情。
He was willing to go into China, which was a whole different challenge, go through a period when he had to fire the co-founder of Sequoia China because it wasn’t working out, but stick with it.
他愿意进入中国，这是一个完全不同的挑战，经历了一段时期，他不得不解雇红杉中国的联合创始人，因为它没有成功，但坚持下去。
If you ask the question, what is the top venture capital company in China, the answer is Sequoia China.
如果你问中国顶尖的风险投资公司是哪家，答案是红杉中国。
It’s the same as the answer to the question, what’s the top venture capital company in Silicon Valley?
这和问题的答案是一样的，硅谷顶尖的风险投资公司是哪家？
It’s Sequoia.
这是红杉。
Mike Moritz was able —
迈克·莫里茨能够 ——
But that’s a bit anti-clustering, that point, right?
但这有点反集群，对吧？
It is, yes.
是的，是的。
China requires a whole .
中国需要一个整体。
.
。
.
。
and in a way, it’s a confirmation.
在某种程度上，这是一种确认。
You’re going to say I’m twisting the argument here, but China, of course, is its own ecosystem when it comes to technology because the government erects these barriers, which makes it tough for US companies to compete there.
你可能会说我在这里歪曲了论点，但在技术方面，中国当然有自己的生态系统，因为政府设置了这些壁垒，这使得美国公司很难在那里竞争。
So Chinese giants have dominated Chinese tech.
因此，中国巨头主导了中国科技。
They’ve been funded — at least in the early phase of the digital economy in China — almost always by American venture capital companies.
它们的资金来源几乎都是美国风险投资公司，至少在中国数字经济的早期阶段是这样。
Sina, Sogou, NetEase, the early web directories in China — all funded by Americans.
新浪、搜狗、网易，中国早期的网络目录——都是由美国人资助的。
Then you’ve got Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Ctrip.
然后就是百度、阿里巴巴、腾讯、携程。
All of these companies are backed by Western VCs.
所有这些公司都得到了西方风险投资公司的支持。
What it shows you is that, just in the same way that, in Silicon Valley, the VCs came in and built this cluster which had great circulation of ideas and people and money around the ecosystem, so too, they repeated the same trick in China, and they built anew.
它向你展示的是，就像在硅谷，风投们进来建立了这个集群，在生态系统周围有很好的思想、人员和资金的流通，所以他们在中国也重复了同样的伎俩，他们重新建立了。
It’s not really quite as tight of a cluster because it’s split between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and even Hangzhou and Beijing.
它实际上并不是一个紧密的集群，因为它分布在香港和上海，甚至杭州和北京之间。
So, it’s not like Silicon Valley.
所以，它不像硅谷。
It’s multiple cities.
这是多个城市。
It is a China cluster unto itself, but interestingly built with the same Silicon Valley DNA, the same lawyers, incorporation in the Cayman Islands for companies, use of American-style employee stock options, which were just not a thing in China until American Silicon Valley lawyers showed up in China and explained to people how stock options worked.
它本身就是一个中国集群，但有趣的是，它具有相同的硅谷DNA、相同的律师、在开曼群岛注册的公司、使用美国式的员工股票期权，这些在中国都不是问题，直到美国硅谷律师出现在中国并向人们解释股票期权如何运作。
What has made Peter Thiel such a successful venture capitalist and angel investor?
是什么让 Peter Thiel 成为如此成功的风险投资家和天使投资人？
Peter Thiel is fascinating because he articulated more fully the idea of the power law than anybody else before in venture capital.
彼得·泰尔（Peter Thiel）之所以令人着迷，是因为他在风险投资领域比任何人都更全面地阐述了幂律的概念。
The early VCs I studied had the idea.
我研究的早期风险投资家都有这个想法。
They didn’t call it the power law, but they had the idea that one or two bets in a portfolio of ten would make all their money.
他们没有称之为幂律，但他们的想法是，在十个投资组合中，一两个赌注就能赚到所有钱。
Peter Thiel not only articulated it and took it further, but he then actually designed his investing and his company, to even greater extent, around that concept.
彼得·蒂尔不仅阐明并进一步发展了这一概念，而且在更大程度上，他实际上围绕这一概念设计了他的投资和他的公司。
The logic of the power law is that, if all of your money will come from a couple of outlier bets, you better bet on outliers.
幂律的逻辑是，如果你所有的钱都来自几个异常值的赌注，那么你最好赌在异常值上。
It’s no good betting on something that looks normal because then everybody else will be doing a similar thing.
把赌注押在看起来正常的事情上是没有好处的，因为那样其他人都会做类似的事情。
You won’t be differentiated.
你不会被区别对待。
You won’t have a moat around your company, and you won’t make supernormal returns.
你的公司周围不会有护城河，你也不会获得超常的回报。
Thiel’s logic was, if you are looking for those really crazy 20x, 30x, 40x wins, you want to bet on people who are themselves a bit out of the box.
泰尔的逻辑是，如果你正在寻找那些真正疯狂的 20 倍、30 倍、40 倍胜利，你就会想把赌注押在那些本身就有点打破常规的人身上。
He makes a joke and, in fact, he boasts about the fact that the majority of his co-founders at PayPal had made bombs in high school, that Elon Musk one day — when he was driving him along Sand Hill Road on the way to a meeting at Sequoia — trashed his supercar.
他开了个玩笑，事实上，他还夸耀说，他在 PayPal 的大多数联合创始人都在高中时制造过炸弹，有一天，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）开车沿着沙山路（Sand Hill Road）开车去红杉资本开会，把他的超级跑车弄坏了。
I can’t remember if it was a Ferrari or some other fantastically expensive car — spun it around, ruined it, and was laughing his head off because he didn’t have insurance.
我不记得那是一辆法拉利还是其他极其昂贵的汽车——把它旋转、毁坏，然后因为没有保险而笑得前仰后合。
This is risk —
这就是风险 ——
That strategy seems entirely replicable.
这一策略似乎完全可以复制。
Anyone can take a lot of chances on smart eccentrics.
任何人都可以在聪明的怪人身上冒险。
What does Peter have that is not so easily replicable?
彼得有什么是不容易复制的？
The key point is, even when you decide you’re going to bet on out-of-the-box people who look as if they’re in the tail, there’s still a difference between smart bets on the tail and bad bets on the tail.
关键的一点是，即使你决定要押注于那些看起来像是处于尾部的开箱即用的人，明智的尾部押注和糟糕的尾部押注之间仍然存在差异。
To make the smart bets, you do have to have a view and an understanding of where technology is going.
为了做出明智的选择，您必须对技术的发展方向有一个看法和理解。
You’ve got to skate to where the puck will be, which means you have to think forward.
你必须滑到冰球所在的位置，这意味着你必须向前思考。
Just think about Facebook, where Peter Thiel did this famous angel bet that is probably one of the best bets in US venture capital ever.
想想 Facebook，彼得·蒂尔 (Peter Thiel) 在那里做了著名的天使赌注，这可能是美国风险投资史上最好的赌注之一。
How did he do that?
他是怎么做到的？
He, first of all, was not put off by the fact that this was an eccentric 19-year-old Harvard dropout who wouldn’t look you in the eye, and that the business partner of this guy was Sean Parker, who had been fired by VCs from his past two companies.
首先，他并没有因为这是一个古怪的 19 岁哈佛辍学者，不愿直视你的眼睛，而且这个人的商业伙伴是肖恩·帕克 (Sean Parker)，他被他过去两家公司的风险投资人解雇了。
So, he had to look through that stuff, but he also had to understand that, with the ubiquity of the internet, new kinds of communication would happen, and that this idea of social media — which had been tried and failed in other examples, like Friendster — just because it had failed a couple of times in early iterations, social media could still be made to work if you did it right, and that’s what he bet on.
所以，他必须仔细研究这些东西，但他也必须明白，随着互联网的普及，新的交流方式将会出现，而社交媒体的想法——在其他例子中已经尝试过，但失败了，比如 Friendster——只是因为它在早期迭代中失败了几次，如果你做得对，社交媒体仍然可以发挥作用，这就是他所押注的。
It was still a long-shot bet, but it was a very high-outcome bet if it went right.
这仍然是一个风险很小的赌注，但如果正确的话，这将是一个非常高结果的赌注。
Have you ever been tempted to try VC yourself?
您是否曾经想过亲自尝试 VC？
Do you think you’d be good at it?
你认为你会擅长吗？
You’re smart.
你很聪明。
You know the history of venture capital quite well.
您非常了解风险投资的历史。
No, I enjoy what I’m doing.
不，我很享受我正在做的事情。
It’s true that whenever I spend five years on a project, which is how long these books take me, my objective is to get into the cockpit with the people I’m writing about and fly around the landscape and really understand how the world looks through their eyes, to explain their thought process to people.
确实，每当我在一个项目上花费五年时间（也就是这些书花了我多长时间）时，我的目标就是与我所写的人一起进入驾驶舱，在风景中飞翔，真正了解他们眼中的世界，向人们解释他们的思维过程。
I wind up trying to think like them.
我最终尝试像他们一样思考。
My critics would say I write as if I was one of them, and I’m not critical enough of the subjects I’m trying to write.
我的批评者会说我写得好像我是他们中的一员，而且我对我试图写的主题不够挑剔。
But my feeling is there’s enough anger and mistrust in the world.
但我的感觉是，世界上有足够的愤怒和不信任。
I don’t particularly want to add to that, but I would like to add to understanding.
我并不是特别想补充这一点，但我想补充一下理解。
So I’m happy to plead guilty to trying to get into the skin of the people I’m trying to write about, but it doesn’t mean I want to be them.
因此，我很高兴承认自己试图深入了解我要写的人的内心，但这并不意味着我想成为他们。
Ultimately, I’m happy being a writer.
最后，我很高兴成为一名作家。
Well, you’re happy.
嗯，你很高兴。
They might be happy doing something else.
他们可能会很高兴做其他事情。
Mike Moritz was happy writing about soccer.
迈克·莫里茨很高兴撰写有关足球的文章。
He has a book about Alex Ferguson.
他有一本关于亚历克斯·弗格森的书。
But what’s the nonreplicable feature that they have, and you think you don’t have?
但他们有哪些不可复制的功能，而你认为你没有呢？
I think it would be helpful to be more technical than I am.
I think it would be helpful to be more technical than I am.
Most VCs have an engineering degree or something.
Most VCs have an engineering degree or something.
Or if they don’t have that, they know —
或者即使他们没有，他们也知道 ——
But Peter Thiel is not very technical in that sense, and he’s one of the very best.
但从这个意义上来说，彼得·蒂尔的技术水平并不高，但他是最好的之一。
That’s true.
这是真的。
Michael Moritz also fits that model.
迈克尔·莫里茨也适合这种模式。
There are clearly exceptions.
显然也有例外。
Peter Thiel had started PayPal before he became a venture capitalist, and I think that was important.
Peter Thiel 在成为风险投资家之前就创立了 PayPal，我认为这很重要。
He’s also somebody who was deeply in that network.
他也是那个深陷这个网络的人。
He just so happened to come from Stanford, Silicon Valley.
他恰好来自硅谷斯坦福。
That was his roots, so he was embedded in the network with people, and that’s a very valuable thing.
那是他的根，所以他与人们一起融入网络，这是一件非常有价值的事情。
The PayPal Mafia tells you a lot.
贝宝黑手党告诉你很多。
Some of his returns come from the experience of having been deep in the trenches with people who were technical and backing them repeatedly.
他的一些回报来自于与技术人员深入合作并反复支持他们的经历。
Elon Musk was his business partner at PayPal — also, his business rival at PayPal.
埃隆·马斯克是他在 PayPal 的商业伙伴，也是他在 PayPal 的商业竞争对手。
They would fight each other.
他们会互相争斗。
There was a famous coup when Elon went on honeymoon, and he was fired from being CEO, and Thiel was put in his stead.
埃隆度蜜月时发生了一场著名的政变，他被解雇了首席执行官，蒂尔接替了他的位置。
It wasn’t all love and roses.
这并不全是爱和玫瑰。
Nonetheless, Peter Thiel backed SpaceX when Elon Musk needed capital.
尽管如此，当埃隆·马斯克需要资金时，彼得·蒂尔还是支持了 SpaceX。
That embeddedness in the network, I don’t have, although I spent five years embedding myself enough to write this book.
尽管我花了五年的时间来写这本书，但我却没有这种对网络的嵌入。
I don’t have the engineering.
我没有工程学。
I think there are plenty of smart people who can go and be venture capitalists.
我认为有很多聪明人可以成为风险投资家。
I like the idea that I spent five years getting to know one kind of business or financial specialty after another, and I’m a perpetual outside writer-cum-tourist.
我喜欢这样的想法：我花了五年的时间来了解一种又一种商业或金融专业，而且我是一个永远的外部作家兼游客。
What are the cultural factors that limit the success of venture capital in South England?
限制南英格兰风险投资成功的文化因素有哪些？
It has not developed a comparable network.
它尚未开发出可比的网络。
It’s fantastic for science.
It’s fantastic for science.
It has London, financial center, at least two incredible universities, other academic contributors, yet it hasn’t really taken off.
它拥有伦敦金融中心、至少两所令人难以置信的大学和其他学术贡献者，但它还没有真正起飞。
Why not?
为什么不呢？
My theory about this is that the lacking thing has been, historically, venture capital because you’re right, Oxford and Cambridge both have world-class science faculties in addition to strength in human sciences.
我对此的理论是，从历史上看，缺乏的是风险投资，因为你是对的，牛津和剑桥除了人文科学方面的实力外，都拥有世界一流的科学学院。
Europe as a whole, actually — that’s true as well.
整个欧洲，实际上 —— 这也是事实。
ETH in Zurich is very strong, and there are more trained computer coders in Europe than there are in the United States.
苏黎世的 ETH 非常强大，欧洲训练有素的计算机程序员比美国还多。
And Europe is a big, rich consumer market.
欧洲是一个庞大而丰富的消费市场。
So, there are a lot of strengths in Europe.
所以，欧洲有很多优势。
What it’s lacked traditionally .
传统上它所缺乏的。
.
。
.
。
Traditional lines are always cultural.
传统的线条总是有文化的。
People don’t take risk in Europe.
人们在欧洲不会冒险。
They’re too keen on working for a big, safe institution.
他们太热衷于为一个大的、安全的机构工作。
My view is that, when you get venture investors added to the mix that are willing to underwrite the risk of small start-ups, all of a sudden people are willing to start them because the risk is paid for.
我的观点是，当风险投资者加入到愿意承担小型初创企业风险的投资组合中时，人们突然愿意创办它们，因为风险已经得到了支付。
You can take the risk as an entrepreneur with somebody else’s money.
作为一名企业家，你可以用别人的钱来承担风险。
And if it fails, you’ll have burnt up your energy and time, and that’s not to be sniffed at, but it will be somebody else’s capital that underwrote it.
如果失败了，你就会耗尽你的精力和时间，这不值得嗤之以鼻，但会是别人的资本来支持它。
Furthermore, you will be helped to hire good people to help you because a venture capitalist will be on your cap table and will use its brand to bring in good people.
此外，你将被帮助聘请优秀的人才来帮助你，因为风险投资家将出现在你的股权结构表上，并会利用其品牌来引进优秀的人才。
I’m always struck by the story that Eric Schmidt told me about why he joined Google as chief executive, which was a very risky move.
I’m always struck by the story that Eric Schmidt told me about why he joined Google as chief executive, which was a very risky move.
Schmidt had been chief executive of another company, Intuit, and he was joining Google that was controlled by these two grad students who were notoriously ordering him, controlling him, might fire him, and didn’t particularly like people who were over the age of 30.
施密特曾担任另一家公司 Intuit 的首席执行官，他加入的谷歌由这两名研究生控制，这两名研究生臭名昭著地命令他、控制他、可能解雇他，而且不太喜欢 30 岁以上的人。
Eric Schmidt knew that, going into Google, he might get fired, but he did it because the venture capitalist involved — John Doerr — said to him, “Look, if they bounce you out, I’ll find you another great job somewhere else.”
埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）知道，进入谷歌，他可能会被解雇，但他这样做是因为参与其中的风险投资家——约翰·杜尔（John Doerr）对他说，“听着，如果他们把你赶出去，我会在其他地方为你找到另一份好工作。”
That cultural thing about, why is there this risk appetite in Silicon Valley — it’s not something you drink in the water.
That cultural thing about, why is there this risk appetite in Silicon Valley — it’s not something you drink in the water.
It’s not something in the air that you breathe.
It’s not something in the air that you breathe.
It’s venture capital that is de-risking entrepreneurship and the business of joining tech start-ups.
It’s venture capital that is de-risking entrepreneurship and the business of joining tech start-ups.
Venture capital is mobile.
风险资本是流动的。
You would think it could all spread to South England, which is not a backwater by any stretch of the imagination.
你可能会认为这一切可能会蔓延到英格兰南部，无论怎么想，这里都不是一潭死水。
Very rarely —
很少 —
Correct, and it’s happening.
Correct, and it’s happening.
You’re asking the right question, and the answer is, it should happen and, by the way, it is happening.
You’re asking the right question, and the answer is, it should happen and, by the way, it is happening.
Sequoia has recently opened an office in London.
Sequoia has recently opened an office in London.
General Catalyst and Lightspeed, two rather well-known American VC firms, have also recently set up offices.
General Catalyst and Lightspeed, two rather well-known American VC firms, have also recently set up offices.
You’ve got Index Ventures, which is big in San Francisco, also big in London.
You’ve got Index Ventures, which is big in San Francisco, also big in London.
You’ve got Accel, ditto — big in London as well as big in California.
你有 Accel，同上——伦敦很大，加州也很大。
This is happening.
这正在发生。
The ecosystem is growing.
The ecosystem is growing.
The number of unicorns in Europe is growing exponentially, and I predict that in the next 10 years, Europe will grow a lot faster than the US tech ecosystem.
欧洲独角兽的数量正在呈指数级增长，我预测未来10年，欧洲的增长速度将比美国科技生态系统快得多。
Geographically, what’s the most underrated venture scene?
Geographically, what’s the most underrated venture scene?
Where would you place it?
你会把它放在哪里？
Well, it might be Europe, as I just said.
Well, it might be Europe, as I just said.
Would you say it’s South England?
Would you say it’s South England?
Or is it Berlin, or where exactly?
Or is it Berlin, or where exactly?
Do you think people underrate .
Do you think people underrate .
.
。
.
。
What do they think about Sweden?
What do they think about Sweden?
Because that’s surprisingly hot, right?
Because that’s surprisingly hot, right?
You’ve got Spotify based in Stockholm, and all the spinoffs from Spotify, which are bound to come in.
You’ve got Spotify based in Stockholm, and all the spinoffs from Spotify, which are bound to come in.
Once you’ve got a unicorn which is worth $50, 60 billion — like Spotify is — what that’s telling you is that there’s a whole cadre of people who have experienced dramatic, intoxicating growth from the inside.
一旦你拥有了一家价值 50、600 亿美元的独角兽——就像 Spotify 那样——这告诉你的是，有一整群人从内部经历了戏剧性的、令人陶醉的成长。
They are now wealthy.
他们现在很富有。
They can start their own new companies.
They can start their own new companies.
They can become venture capitalists, or they can just become angel advisers to new start-ups.
他们可以成为风险投资家，也可以成为新初创企业的天使顾问。
I would say Sweden is going to set up just like Seattle has, based off of Microsoft and Amazon.
I would say Sweden is going to set up just like Seattle has, based off of Microsoft and Amazon.
I think the Spotify halo effect in Stockholm will be pretty big.
I think the Spotify halo effect in Stockholm will be pretty big.
It’s not just that it’s properly rated; you think it’s underrated?
It’s not just that it’s properly rated; you think it’s underrated?
Isn’t Sweden, Stockholm too small to be such a big venture scene if network effects are so important, if clustering is so important?
Isn’t Sweden, Stockholm too small to be such a big venture scene if network effects are so important, if clustering is so important?
Doesn’t it then have to be London, South England?
那么不是一定是英格兰南部的伦敦吗？
Or maybe Berlin?
或者柏林？
I think I would say South England, actually, is the most underrated.
我想我会说南英格兰实际上是最被低估的。
Precisely because Spotify is visible, Sweden is doing just fine, but it seems to me properly rated.
Precisely because Spotify is visible, Sweden is doing just fine, but it seems to me properly rated.
Going on what you say about Sweden already being pretty highly rated — if that’s right, I’m happy to agree with you.
Going on what you say about Sweden already being pretty highly rated — if that’s right, I’m happy to agree with you.
Maybe South England is the most underrated.
Maybe South England is the most underrated.
Graphcore is a great story.
Graphcore is a great story.
This is a semiconductor design company.
This is a semiconductor design company.
There was a moment, I think about 2017, five years ago, when Sequoia decided that AI semiconductor chips were going to need to take a leap to a next-generation product.
我想起五年前的 2017 年，当时红杉决定人工智能半导体芯片需要飞跃到下一代产品。
All the AI companies that Sequoia dealt with were saying the hardware that they were buying was just not up to scratch.
与红杉打交道的所有人工智能公司都表示，他们购买的硬件根本达不到标准。
Nvidia was good, but it wasn’t good enough.
Nvidia was good, but it wasn’t good enough.
So Sequoia told one of its partners to do a worldwide search for the best emerging semiconductor company that was going to knock it out of the park on AI semiconductor design.
因此，红杉资本告诉其合作伙伴之一，在全球范围内寻找最好的新兴半导体公司，以期在人工智能半导体设计领域脱颖而出。
The partner, who lived in Los Altos, California, in Silicon Valley, began by looking at a company that, guess what, was based in Los Altos, California.
这位住在硅谷加利福尼亚州洛斯阿尔托斯的合伙人首先考察了一家总部位于加利福尼亚州洛斯阿尔托斯的公司。
But he ended up recommending an investment in a company in Bristol, South England, called Graphcore.
但他最终建议投资位于英格兰南部布里斯托尔的一家名为 Graphcore 的公司。
That company is now doing terrifically well.
That company is now doing terrifically well.
That experience is one reason why Sequoia decided to open an office in London in 2020.
这一经历是红杉资本决定 2020 年在伦敦开设办事处的原因之一。
I have some questions about other topics.
I have some questions about other topics.
You have some highly regarded books about hedge funds and about the Fed.
您有一些关于对冲基金和美联储的备受推崇的书籍。
In the late ’90s, the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management — was that a kind of original sin that just set us on a path of bailing more things out at higher and higher price tags?
90年代末，对长期资本管理公司的救助——这是否是一种原罪，让我们走上了一条以越来越高的价格救助更多东西的道路？
Should we have just let LTCM fall?
Should we have just let LTCM fall?
No, I think the original sin was Continental Illinois, much earlier in 1986, I believe, when the Fed bailed out this bank which it thought was too big to fail.
不，我认为原罪是伊利诺伊州大陆银行，我相信早在 1986 年，当时美联储就救助了这家它认为太大而不能倒闭的银行。
I’m not sure it really was too big to fail, but it was a moment when the Latin American debt crisis was still casting a shadow, when the banking system was perceived to be fragile, and the Fed just wasn’t willing to let it go.
我不确定它是否真的太大而不能倒，但当时拉美债务危机仍然笼罩着阴影，银行体系被认为很脆弱，美联储只是不愿意放手。
That was the original sin because taxpayer money was used to bail it out.
这是原罪，因为纳税人的钱被用来纾困。
The interesting thing about Long-Term Capital Management, which people forget, is that the Fed convened the creditors of Long-Term Capital Management at the Fed offices in New York, but it refused to provide any taxpayer money whatsoever to backstop Long-Term Capital Management.
关于长期资本管理公司的一个有趣的事情是，人们忘记了，美联储在纽约的美联储办公室召集了长期资本管理公司的债权人，但拒绝提供任何纳税人的钱来支持长期资本管理公司。
That was salutary.
这是有益的。
I think, if you look at what happened in the 2008 crisis, actually, hedge funds were not driving the crisis because the prime brokers who extend leverage to hedge funds learned the lessons from LTCM, and they didn’t extend loans without taking good collateral.
我认为，如果你看看2008年危机中发生的事情，实际上，对冲基金并没有推动这场危机，因为向对冲基金提供杠杆的主要经纪商吸取了长期资本管理公司的教训，他们不会在没有优质抵押品的情况下发放贷款。
In actual fact, hedge funds turned out to be the relatively more stable part of the system in 2008, which was a time when insurance companies and investment banks and money market funds and commercial banks and all of these other players cost the taxpayers billions, and hedge funds didn’t.
事实上，2008年，对冲基金被证明是体系中相对更稳定的部分，当时保险公司、投资银行、货币市场基金和商业银行以及所有其他参与者让纳税人损失了数十亿美元，而对冲基金却没有。
What is it you understand about Alan Greenspan — having written a whole book about him — that other intelligent, educated people do not?
你对艾伦·格林斯潘的理解是什么——“你写了一本关于他的书”——而其他聪明、受过教育的人却没有理解？
Behind the title I chose for the book, The Man Who Knew, the key thing was that Alan Greenspan had written a PhD thesis mostly comprised of papers he read in the 1950s.
我为这本书选择的标题《知情人》背后的关键是艾伦·格林斯潘写了一篇博士论文，主要由他在 20 世纪 50 年代读过的论文组成。
Nobody had found that thesis until I found it.
Nobody had found that thesis until I found it.
When I read it, what it told me is that in the ’50s — in other words, right at the beginning of his professional career — Greenspan’s obsession was with stock market bubbles.
当我读到它时，它告诉我的是，在 50 年代 ——换句话说，就在他职业生涯的开始阶段—— 格林斯潘对股市泡沫的痴迷。
He was really preoccupied with the way that bubbles could drive recessions in the real economy.
他真正关注的是泡沫如何导致实体经济衰退。
Balance-sheet effects were at the core of his PhD work.
资产负债表效应是他博士研究的核心。
Now, once you understand that, it tells you that Greenspan failed in his own tenure at the Fed to prevent the mortgage bubble from inflating.
现在，一旦你理解了这一点，它就会告诉你，格林斯潘在美联储任职期间未能阻止抵押贷款泡沫的膨胀。
He failed not because he didn’t understand about balance-sheet effects.
他失败并不是因为他不了解资产负债表的影响。
He knew about balance-sheet effects.
He knew about balance-sheet effects.
He was the man who knew.
他是那个知道的人。
He knew more about them than most of the critics who suddenly discovered in ’08, “Oh, balance-sheet effects.
他比大多数 08 年突然发现的批评家更了解它们，“哦，资产负债表效应。
Gee, we better go read Hyman Minsky.
Gee, we better go read Hyman Minsky.
This is a big deal.” Greenspan knew about them, and yet he let the bubble go wrong.
这是一件大事。”格林斯潘知道这些，但他却让泡沫出了问题。
What does that tell us?
这告诉我们什么？
It tells us that the institution of the Fed was sort of trapped into a position where inflation targeting had become irresistible, and they just targeted inflation and paid no attention to asset bubbles.
它告诉我们，美联储这个机构有点陷入了通胀目标制已经不可抗拒的境地，他们只瞄准通胀，不关注资产泡沫。
I think that was a big mistake.
I think that was a big mistake.
How is Jerome Powell doing?
How is Jerome Powell doing?
I think Jerome Powell is about to face a huge test as he tightens rates, starting next month.
我认为杰罗姆·鲍威尔将从下个月开始收紧利率，他将面临巨大的考验。
History will, of course, tell us whether he manages to stabilize inflation without causing a major recession.
当然，历史将告诉我们他是否能够在不引发严重衰退的情况下稳定通胀。
That’ll determine how he’s going to go down.
That’ll determine how he’s going to go down.
Here’s how I would frame it, having acknowledged that it’s a risky thing to stick my neck out here, but here’s how I would frame it.
我是这样描述它的，虽然我承认在这里冒险是一件冒险的事情，但我是这样描述它的。
I would say that COVID was this humongous shock to both supply and demand.
我想说，新冠疫情对供给和需求都造成了巨大冲击。
Unprecedented.
空前的。
The Fed responded in an unprecedented way with a stimulus, which, as you know, was multiples of what was delivered in 2008.
美联储以前所未有的方式采取了刺激措施，正如你所知，这一刺激措施是 2008 年的数倍。
That did get us through the COVID downturn with remarkably little economic privations for Americans.
这确实帮助我们度过了新冠疫情带来的低迷时期，并且美国人的经济困难非常少。
That is an amazing achievement.
That is an amazing achievement.
COVID was tough in many ways in health terms, in mental health terms, but actually, balance sheets of households did very well.
从健康角度和心理健康角度来看，新冠疫情在很多方面都很艰难，但实际上，家庭的资产负债表表现非常好。
Now, that is a huge achievement.
Now, that is a huge achievement.
You couldn’t achieve that without accepting some risks that you would overshoot.
如果不接受一些可能会超出预期的风险，你就无法实现这一目标。
How do you target the right amount of stimulus when you are in that completely uncharted water, and you don’t even understand the trajectory of the pandemic, let alone the pandemic’s effect on the real economy?
当你处于一个完全未知的领域，你甚至不了解大流行的轨迹，更不用说大流行对实体经济的影响时，你如何瞄准适量的刺激措施？
They took a risk.
他们冒了风险。
They may have overshot and overstimulated it.
They may have overshot and overstimulated it.
We’ll see if they exit without causing a big recession.
我们将看看他们退出时是否不会造成严重衰退。
I think they will.
我想他们会的。
I think that history will judge Jerome Powell to have been a very brave risk-taker and actually a success, but I have to admit that I could be wrong.
我认为历史会评价杰罗姆·鲍威尔是一位非常勇敢的冒险家，而且实际上是成功的，但我必须承认我可能是错的。
Do you think the Fed was excessively intimidated by the fiscal authority?
您认为美联储是否过度受到财政当局的恐吓？
There’s a joint effort going on, and the monetary authority, fiscal authority — they often want different things.
这是一项共同的努力，货币当局、财政当局 ——他们经常想要不同的东西。
Do you think it’s the case the Fed exactly understood the calculus, or was shocked that inflation came in at almost 7 percent?
您认为美联储是完全理解了这一计算，还是对通胀率接近 7% 感到震惊？
Or even an alternative is, they secretly welcomed it being that high, or they would’ve preferred it only had been at 4 percent, but the fiscal authority had more power?
或者甚至还有一种选择是，他们私下里欢迎这么高的税率，或者他们更希望只有4%，但财政当局有更大的权力？
What’s your mental model of what went on in the government as a whole?
您对整个政府所发生的事情有何看法？
There was overshooting, but how does the Fed fit into your exact story?
确实存在过度调整，但美联储如何适应你的具体故事呢？
My strong feeling is that the story of Fed captured by the fiscal authority, or in other words, the president, is wrong.
我强烈的感觉是，美联储被财政当局（或者换句话说，总统）俘获的故事是错误的。
That ever since Paul Volcker — the mental model of the Fed — everybody who works there, including and especially the chairman, is that Paul Volcker was a hero.
自从保罗·沃尔克（Paul Volcker）——“美联储的心智模型”——开始，在那里工作的每个人，包括特别是主席，都认为保罗·沃尔克是一位英雄。
He got inflation under control.
He got inflation under control.
Antihero is Arthur Burns in the 1970s.
Antihero is Arthur Burns in the 1970s.
He let inflation get out of control.
他让通货膨胀失控。
You don’t want to go down in history like Arthur Burns.
你不想像阿瑟伯恩斯一样载入史册。
You want to go down in history like Paul Volcker.
你想像保罗·沃尔克一样载入史册。
At threshold level, that is still a dominant instinct.
在阈值水平上，这仍然是一种主导本能。
Yes, we’ve been, since around the early 2000s, through this kind of zero-lower-bound, oh, inflation-is-too-low worry, and so that encouraged some risk-taking with the amount of stimulus, and now we’ve overshot.
是的，自 2000 年代初左右以来，我们一直在经历这种零下限、哦、通胀太低的担忧，因此鼓励了一些刺激措施的冒险行为，但现在我们已经过度了。
I still think the dominant mental model is, don’t be Arthur Burns, be Paul Volcker, and no amount of pressure from the executive branch would wipe that out, especially when you look at the executive branch and you ask, “Okay, so who is the chief economist in this fiscal authority that we’re talking about?” Is it Janet Yellen, the former Fed chair herself?
我仍然认为占主导地位的思维模式是，不要成为阿瑟·伯恩斯，而要成为保罗·沃尔克，来自行政部门的任何压力都无法消除这一点，尤其是当你看到行政部门并问：“好吧，那么我们正在谈论的这个财政机构的首席经济学家是谁？”是前美联储主席珍妮特·耶伦本人吗？
Do I think she was trying to subjugate Fed independence?
我是否认为她试图压制美联储的独立性？
Of course I don’t.
我当然不知道。
I think it’s a preposterous slander.
I think it’s a preposterous slander.
I really think that the Fed allowed overshooting not because they were being bullied by the president or by the Treasury, but simply because inflation surprised them on the outside.
我真的认为美联储允许超调并不是因为他们受到总统或财政部的欺凌，而仅仅是因为通货膨胀让他们感到惊讶。
Here’s a very easy question.
这是一个非常简单的问题。
Adjusting for risk, do hedge funds even yield supernormal positive returns on net?
调整风险后，对冲基金是否会产生超常的正净回报？
It depends on the period you look at.
这取决于您查看的时期。
The best way to think about supernormal positive returns is, I think, simply to say uncorrelated returns.
我认为，考虑超常正回报的最好方法就是简单地说不相关的回报。
An uncorrelated return which isn’t driven by just the market going up is pretty hard to come by.
不只是由市场上涨驱动的不相关回报是很难获得的。
A normal return, I think, is zero, if you’re trying to do that.
我认为，如果你想这样做的话，正常回报为零。
Any positive return which isn’t correlated with the stock market benchmark, or whatever other benchmark you’re choosing, is good and, in terms of a big, diversified pension fund or endowment portfolio, will help your Sharpe ratio because it’s giving you some extra juice to your return without adding to risk because it’s not a correlated position.
任何与股市基准或您选择的任何其他基准不相关的正回报都是好的，并且就大型、多元化的养老基金或捐赠投资组合而言，将有助于您的夏普比率，因为它可以为您的回报提供额外的动力，而不会增加风险，因为它不是相关头寸。
So, when you net out the volatility of your hedge fund exposure with all your other exposures, it’s actually volatility dampening.
因此，当你用所有其他风险敞口扣除对冲基金风险敞口的波动性时，这实际上是波动性抑制。
That’s the idea.
这就是这个想法。
Do they produce offer, is the question.
问题是他们是否提供报价。
When I published my book in 2010 about hedge funds, the best research at the time said that, net of fees, there was positive offer and it was 3 percent a year between 1995 and the late 2000s.
当我在 2010 年出版关于对冲基金的书时，当时最好的研究表明，扣除费用后，报价是积极的，从 1995 年到 2000 年代末，每年的报价为 3%。
That was a pretty strong positive number.
这是一个相当强劲的正数。
I think since 2010, the positive number has declined to be much, much smaller and maybe even to disappear in some time periods.
我认为自2010年以来，正数已经下降了很多很多，甚至在某些时期甚至消失。
I think that happened because of quantitative easing.
我认为这是由于量化宽松而发生的。
If you think about hedge funds, what is it that they do?
如果您考虑对冲基金，它们是做什么的？
They get paid to assess risk and price it.
他们通过评估风险并为其定价而获得报酬。
If risk spreads are being squeezed and compressed and reduced to almost nothing by the central bank through quantitative easing, then hedge funds are going to be paid less for doing their work.
如果央行通过量化宽松政策挤压风险利差并使其几乎为零，那么对冲基金的工作报酬将会减少。
I think that’s why supernormal positive returns — to use your language, Tyler — have diminished.
我认为这就是为什么超常的正回报 ——用你的语言来说，泰勒 ——已经减少。
I think they may now come back because of the end of quantitative easing and the raising of interest rates in the face of inflation.
我认为，由于量化宽松政策的结束和面对通胀而加息，它们现在可能会卷土重来。
To ask the same question we discussed with venture capital, what is the non-replicable asset held by the very good hedge funds?
问我们与风险投资讨论的同一个问题，优秀的对冲基金持有的不可复制资产是什么？
Otherwise, more capital comes in and competes that excess return away, right?
否则，更多的资本会进来并竞争掉超额回报，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
Again, I think the answer to your question is partly that capital does come in and compete excess returns away as strategies are discovered.
同样，我认为你的问题的部分答案是，随着策略的发现，资本确实会进来并争夺超额回报。
As you look at the history of hedge funds, there keep on being new strategies that get invented, or maybe new areas of finance where old strategies can be applied.
当你回顾对冲基金的历史时，你会发现不断有新的策略被发明出来，或者可能是可以应用旧策略的新金融领域。
Now we’re in a world of big data, which means that new datasets become available to investors.
现在我们处于大数据的世界，这意味着投资者可以使用新的数据集。
You can crunch new sets of numbers, using new AI algorithms, and develop new insights about patterns that appear to repeat themselves in defiance of efficient market logic, and you can invest on those.
您可以使用新的人工智能算法来处理新的数据集，并对那些似乎违背有效市场逻辑的重复出现的模式形成新的见解，并且您可以对这些模式进行投资。
The first people to do that will get supernormal returns.
第一个这样做的人将获得超常的回报。
Then, after a bit, that technique may become understood by enough people that more capital comes in, and the returns get competed away.
然后，过了一会儿，这种技术可能会被足够多的人理解，更多的资本就会进来，回报就会被竞争掉。
But this is a dynamic Darwinian evolutionary industry, and new methods and techniques will be invented as the old ones cease to be profitable.
但这是一个充满活力的达尔文进化产业，随着旧方法和技术不再有利可图，新的方法和技术将会被发明。
Let’s say there are some hedge funds that are quite special, but it seems a lot, the large numbers are not.
假设有一些对冲基金很特别，但看起来很多，但数量很多却不是。
Yet they’re still doing some version of 2 and 20 fee structure.
然而他们仍在采用某种版本的 2 和 20 费用结构。
How is that sustainable if a large class of hedge funds don’t really offer the promise of beating the market?
如果一大批对冲基金不能真正提供跑赢市场的承诺，那么这种情况如何可持续？
Well, look, the famous case here is mutual funds, where actively managed mutual funds, last time I looked at the data, had a negative return.
好吧，看，这里著名的案例是共同基金，主动管理的共同基金，我上次看数据时，回报率为负。
Because the skill that’s being purportedly provided is less than the fee, even though the fee is just a 1 percent of assets under management.
因为据称提供的技能低于费用，尽管费用仅为所管理资产的 1%。
There you’ve got negative alpha.
在那里你得到了负阿尔法。
Why do people continue to buy exposure in these money-losing, actively managed mutual funds is because hope springs eternal, and people always think that they are investing in the top quintile of clever managers who are going to defy what the average does.
人们为什么继续购买这些亏损的、积极管理的共同基金，是因为希望永远存在，人们总是认为他们投资的是顶尖五分之一的聪明经理人，他们将挑战平均水平。
People go to Las Vegas and gamble, even though they know that the house has better odds than they do as the punters.
人们去拉斯维加斯赌博，尽管他们知道赌场的赔率比他们作为赌客的赔率要高。
I think at a basic level, it’s not so surprising that people continue to invest in actively managed hedge funds because they’re a better option than actively managed mutual funds.
我认为从根本上讲，人们继续投资主动管理的对冲基金并不奇怪，因为它们是比主动管理的共同基金更好的选择。
The same would be true of actively managed venture capital, by the way.
顺便说一句，积极管理的风险投资也是如此。
That’s part of the answer.
这是答案的一部分。
The other odd part is that, as I was saying, over a long stretch of time, hedge funds have produced positive uncorrelated returns, which are good for a portfolio.
另一个奇怪的部分是，正如我所说，在很长一段时间内，对冲基金产生了正的不相关回报，这对投资组合有利。
The common way that this gets reported in newspapers, which is to say, “Look, the S&P went up 15 percent last year, and hedge funds only returned 4 percent, so hedge funds are a bunch of losers” — that is financially illiterate because you’re not comparing apples with apples.
报纸上报道这种情况的常见方式是，“看，标准普尔指数去年上涨了 15%，而对冲基金只回报了 4%，所以对冲基金是一群失败者” ——这是金融文盲，因为你没有将苹果与苹果进行比较。
You need to compare what the alpha was in the two sets of strategy.
您需要比较两组策略中的阿尔法值。
By definition, the alpha in the S&P 500, the S&P 500 is the benchmark, so it’s a correlated return when the alpha was zero.
根据定义，标准普尔500指数中的阿尔法，标准普尔500指数是基准，所以它是阿尔法为零时的相关回报。
What’s interesting is to get some uncorrelated return that then dampens your volatility in the rest of your portfolio because much of your portfolio will be correlated with the benchmark.
有趣的是获得一些不相关的回报，然后抑制投资组合其余部分的波动性，因为您的投资组合的大部分将与基准相关。
If you can get this uncorrelated return, that will dampen the rest of your volatility, improve your risk-adjusted return in your total portfolio, and make your portfolio better.
如果您可以获得这种不相关的回报，这将抑制您的其余波动性，提高总投资组合中的风险调整回报，并使您的投资组合变得更好。
How did Ray Dalio become so rich?
雷·达里奥是如何变得如此富有的？
Between us…
我们之间……
I know this is a podcast, but I’ll answer your question anyway.
我知道这是一个播客，但无论如何我都会回答你的问题。
Between us, Ray Dalio the man — in my estimation, you can’t answer that question.
在我们之间，雷·达里奥这个人 ——在我看来，你无法回答这个问题。
I feel sometimes when I listen to him that half of what he says is obvious, and the other half is nonsense to the point where it becomes a parlor game to look at Ray Dalio’s principles and say, “Gee, if you see an open door, walk through it.” Was that the way you built the company?
有时，当我听他讲话时，我觉得他所说的一半是显而易见的，另一半则是无稽之谈，以至于看着雷·达里奥的原则就变成了一场室内游戏，然后说：“哎呀，如果你看到一扇敞开的门，那就走进去吧。”这就是你建立公司的方式吗？
I don’t think so.
我不这么认为。
I think if you want to understand why Bridgewater did well for a long time, although it’s done less well recently, it’s not about him.
我想如果你想了解桥水为什么长期以来做得很好，虽然最近做得不太好，那与他无关。
It’s not about the man.
这与男人无关。
It’s about the machine he built.
这是关于他制造的机器。
The machine.
机器。
Just patiently built a research organization that carefully built its own model of how markets work by scraping data, producing very precise, clear studies of relationships — one variable does this, the other one will do that.
只是耐心地建立了一个研究组织，通过抓取数据、进行非常精确、清晰的关系研究来仔细建立自己的市场运作模型——一个变量可以做到这一点，另一个变量可以做到这一点。
When you aggregate that knowledge base over time, you build an investment black box that really did work for quite a stretch.
当你随着时间的推移汇总该知识库时，你就构建了一个投资黑匣子，该黑匣子确实在相当长的时间内发挥了作用。
Based on my conversations with people who work for Ray Dalio, I come away a lot more impressed, frankly, than I do by the public relations shtick I’ve heard from him in the last 5 or 10 years.
坦率地说，根据我与雷·达里奥 (Ray Dalio) 工作人员的交谈，我对他在过去 5 到 10 年里听到的公关技巧印象深刻。
As a writer, which topics in finance and investing do you think are under-covered?
作为一名作家，您认为哪些金融和投资主题未被充分报道？
I think, actually, that investing — if you go at it from the perspective of, how does this really make money?
我认为，实际上，投资 ——如果你从这个角度来看，这真的能赚钱吗？
What is the source of alpha?
阿尔法的来源是什么？
I think that in general is a bit under-covered.
我认为总的来说，这有点被低估了。
The starting point amongst a lot of academics — as your questions, in a way, have been telling us — is there shouldn’t be any returns.
许多学者的出发点是——正如你的问题在某种程度上告诉我们的那样——不应该有任何回报。
Alpha should be impossible to generate.
Alpha 应该是不可能生成的。
I think to understand how it is generated is difficult.
我认为理解它是如何生成的很困难。
It requires a lot of getting close to the subject, getting close to the people who work for the subject, sorting through the nonsense, as I’ve just tried to do in my answer about Bridgewater.
它需要大量地接近主题，接近为该主题工作的人，整理废话，就像我在关于桥水基金的回答中试图做的那样。
I don’t think that many people, frankly, have the time to spend five years on one topic and try to provide an answer.
坦白说，我认为没有多少人有时间在一个主题上花费五年时间并尝试提供答案。
That’s how I’ve tried to differentiate, is to make five years of time to go look at a specialty.
这就是我试图与众不同的方式，就是花五年的时间去研究一个专业。
And I hope that is an under-covered thing and, therefore, that I’m adding value to the books which are on the bookshelf.
我希望这是一件未被掩盖的事情，因此，我正在为书架上的书籍增加价值。
Putting aside family connections, your wife being editor of The Economist, but what is it in media or journalism you’re especially bullish on?
抛开家庭关系不谈，你的妻子是《经济学人》的编辑，但你特别看好媒体或新闻业的什么？
Is it Substack?
是子栈吗？
Is it old-style MSM ?
这是老式的MSM吗？
Is it…
难道是……
whatever?
无论如何？
I’m a big admirer of The Information, which is a Silicon Valley media start-up.
我非常崇拜 The Information，这是一家硅谷媒体初创公司。
It’s been going about 10 years.
已经过去了大约10年。
The reason I’m a fan is that I think that’s the right model for media start-ups.
我之所以成为它的粉丝，是因为我认为这对于媒体初创企业来说是正确的模式。
I think Substack, where it’s a lone writer doing a newsletter, can be excellent when you’ve got an unbelievably talented and energetic and exceptional person.
我认为 Substack 是由一个孤独的作家撰写时事通讯的，当你拥有一个才华横溢、精力充沛且杰出的人时，它会非常出色。
You interviewed, Tyler, Andrew Sullivan not so long ago.
泰勒，安德鲁·沙利文，您不久前采访过。
I would put him in that category of just an exceptional person.
我会把他归入一个杰出人物的类别。
If he wants to do Substack, fantastic.
如果他想做 Substack，那就太棒了。
He’s exceptional.
他很出色。
I think most of the time, somebody can be great at a Substack for three years, possibly five years, but it’s pretty hard to sustain that level of focus and energy.
我认为大多数时候，某人可以在 Substack 上表现出色三年，甚至五年，但要保持这种程度的专注和精力是相当困难的。
If you don’t sustain it, you’ve built a brand over three to five years, and then you throw it away because you stop, or you just go off the boil.
如果你不维持它，你已经在三到五年内建立了一个品牌，然后你会因为停下来而扔掉它，或者你只是失去了活力。
Therefore, it’s more sensible to create a collective journalistic effort.
因此，建立集体新闻工作更为明智。
That’s what The Information is doing.
这就是 The Information 正在做的事情。
It’s going at a particular area, which is tech.
它发生在一个特定的领域，那就是科技。
It only covers tech.
它仅涵盖技术。
It hires good people who know what they’re doing.
它雇用了知道自己在做什么的优秀人才。
It’s got a team, and it’s building that team, and I think that’s terrific.
它有一个团队，并且正在建设这个团队，我认为这非常棒。
As a journalist, you covered Japan for years.
作为一名记者，您多年来一直报道日本。
What do you see as the economic future of Japan?
您如何看待日本的经济未来？
They seem to have a shrinking population, fairly low growth.
他们的人口似乎在减少，增长率相当低。
Not much appears to change.
似乎没有太大变化。
Is that just going to continue forever, and there’ll be a tiny Japan with hardly any people in it?
难道这种情况会永远持续下去，最终会出现一个几乎无人居住的小日本吗？
Or what’s going to change?
或者说会发生什么变化？
I think Japan has areas of innovation that remain interesting.
我认为日本的创新领域仍然很有趣。
It’s been a while since I lived there.
我已经有一段时间没住在那里了。
I was there in the mid-1990s.
我在 20 世纪 90 年代中期在那里。
My sense is that, in areas like innovation around provision for old age — that’s an obvious area where Japan has a lot of old people, and they’re doing quite a lot of things to make that work for society.
我的感觉是，在围绕老年服务的创新等领域，日本有很多老年人，他们正在做很多事情来使其为社会服务。
The silver economy, as it’s called, is something to look at in Japan.
日本的白银经济值得关注。
It remains highly educated, sophisticated, both in terms of the visual, aesthetic side of engineering and the technical side of engineering.
无论是在工程的视觉、美学方面还是在工程技术方面，它仍然是受过高等教育的、复杂的。
Although the macro in Japan often looks underwhelming because, with a declining population and restrictive immigration policies, you’re going to get a negative path in terms of macro growth, nonetheless there’re some interesting things there.
尽管日本的宏观经济往往看起来平淡无奇，因为随着人口减少和限制性移民政策，宏观经济增长将会走上一条消极的道路，尽管如此，那里还是有一些有趣的事情。
If you think about the role of Japanese culture in possibly discouraging risk-taking — is that like South England where you think venture capital can step in and get people to take the risk?
如果你考虑一下日本文化在可能阻止冒险方面所扮演的角色——你认为风险资本可以介入并让人们承担风险吗？
Or just there’s no way through that barrier?
或者只是没有办法跨越这个障碍？
Because there don’t seem to be that many new truly excellent Japanese companies at a large scale.
因为日本真正大规模的新的优秀企业似乎并不多。
Sony mostly sells insurance at this point.
索尼目前主要销售保险。
What’s gone wrong with risk-taking in Japan?
日本的冒险行为出了什么问题？
Masayoshi Son, of course, is Japanese.
孙正义当然是日本人。
Now, you’ll point out correctly that he’s Korean-Japanese, and that might make all the difference.
现在，你会正确地指出他是韩日混血，这可能会让一切变得不同。
He felt marginalized growing up because he was Korean.
由于他是韩国人，他在成长过程中感到被边缘化。
Because he felt marginalized, he left Japan in his teens and got a degree from UC Berkeley, so he is a different kind of Japanese person.
因为感到被边缘化，他在十几岁的时候就离开了日本，并在加州大学伯克利分校获得了学位，所以他是一个不同类型的日本人。
But he did go back to Japan and built this huge software distributor called SoftBank, and then he parlayed that into this tech-investing holding company.
但他确实回到了日本，建立了一家名为软银的大型软件分销商，然后他将其投资于这家科技投资控股公司。
It shows that entrepreneurship is not entirely impossible in Japan.
这说明创业在日本并非完全不可能。
I think it could happen, can happen.
我认为这可能发生，可能发生。
I’m not close enough to it to understand why more of it hasn’t happened.
我离它还不够近，无法理解为什么更多的事情没有发生。
Who’s the greatest living British historian?
谁是在世的最伟大的英国历史学家？
Oh, gosh, that is a great question.
哦，天哪，这是一个很好的问题。
I would say the most entertaining is Niall Ferguson.
我想说最有趣的是尼尔·弗格森。
There are historians of early modern Europe who .
有近代早期欧洲的历史学家。
.
。
.
。
I think I’m going to say Peter Goodwin.
我想我会说彼得·古德温。
The fact that I’m blanking on his name shows you that I’m not hugely confident about the answer, so I’ll stick with Niall Ferguson.
事实上，我对他的名字空白，这表明我对答案不是很有信心，所以我会坚持尼尔·弗格森。
He’s always a wonderful writer and provocative to read.
他始终是一位出色的作家，读起来充满启发性。
What’s the economic future of the World Bank once China stops borrowing from it, which, of course, at some level, has to make no sense?
一旦中国停止向世界银行借款，世界银行的经济未来会怎样？当然，在某种程度上，这毫无意义？
Yes.
是的。
China, for a while — let’s say between 1990 and 2005 — generated just a vast amount of the World Bank’s success, both because it reduced poverty hugely, and that made the global statistics in poverty reduction look good, which made the World Bank look good, and because it just borrowed money and paid it back unfailingly, and that was great for business.
有一段时间——比如1990年至2005年——中国为世界银行的成功做出了巨大贡献，一方面是因为它极大地减少了贫困，另一方面让全球减贫统计数据看起来不错，这让世界银行看起来不错，还因为它借了钱并无条件偿还，这对商业来说是件好事。
You’re right that, with China graduating, it creates a problem.
你是对的，随着中国的毕业，这会产生一个问题。
Also, it’s a problem because China as a shareholder is problematic.
此外，这也是一个问题，因为中国作为股东存在问题。
Part of the reason why the World Bank and IMF worked well for a long time, relative to other multinational institutions, is that you had this lead shareholder in the form of the United States, which basically called the shots.
相对于其他跨国机构，世界银行和国际货币基金组织之所以长期运作良好，部分原因在于美国是主要股东，而美国基本上是发号施令的。
That provided some clarity and strategic direction for both the Bank and the Fund.
这为世行和基金组织提供了一些明确的战略方向。
I think now, with China being pretty big and influential within the World Bank, it can disagree with the United States on something, like where China should be ranked in the Doing Business report that the World Bank produces.
我认为，现在，由于中国在世界银行中的规模和影响力都相当大，它可能会在某些事情上与美国产生分歧，比如中国在世界银行发布的《营商环境报告》中应该排在什么位置。
This was a famous case where China seems to have put pressure on the World Bank president, and as a result, or indirectly or something — we don’t exactly know — China got re-ranked in that ranking of where to do business.
这是一个著名的案例，中国似乎向世界银行行长施加压力，结果，或者是间接的或者某种原因——“我们不太清楚”——“中国在营商地点排名中被重新排名。”
That’s the kind of thing that undermines the World Bank credibility.
这就是损害世界银行信誉的事情。
China is problematic, both because it’s graduated and because it’s a tricky shareholder, and I think that it needs to find its way.
中国是有问题的，既因为它已经毕业，也因为它是一个棘手的股东，我认为它需要找到自己的出路。
Until the US-China economic relationship goes better at a macro level, the World Bank risks becoming the UN Security Council, where the P5, the veto-wielding big powers, were at loggerheads on great-power politics and, therefore, just froze the UN and couldn’t agree on things.
在中美经济关系在宏观层面改善之前，世界银行有可能成为联合国安理会，拥有否决权的五常在大国政治上陷入争执，因此只能冻结联合国，无法就事情达成一致。
If you could pick someone now to head the World Bank unconstrained, whom would you pick and why?
如果你现在可以不受限制地挑选某人来领导世界银行，你会选择谁，为什么？
That’s another great question.
这是另一个很好的问题。
I think you need somebody who would be good at this great-power politics.
我认为你需要一个擅长大国政治的人。
I think Bob Zoellick, when he was head of the World Bank a few years back, was a good choice because he was an American, but he was also close to China and understood China.
我认为鲍勃·佐利克几年前担任世界银行行长是一个不错的选择，因为他是美国人，但他也与中国关系密切，了解中国。
If you had to pick somebody now, I guess you would go down the list of Americans who have been ambassador in China or maybe vice versa.
如果你现在必须选择一个人，我想你会选择曾担任驻华大使的美国人，或者反之亦然。
I think it would take somebody like that who has the stature.
我认为需要有这样的地位的人。
I don’t have a name that pops into my head, but that’s —
我的脑海里没有浮现出一个名字，但那就是 ——
A young Bob Zoellick is what you want?
你想要年轻的鲍勃·佐利克吗？
A young Bob Zoellick, yes.
年轻的鲍勃·佐利克，是的。
Why does classical liberalism seem to be dwindling today?
为什么古典自由主义如今似乎日渐式微？
Admittedly, you may choose to challenge the premise, but many countries are going in reverse.
诚然，你可能会选择挑战这个前提，但许多国家正在走相反的道路。
Democracy is not more popular.
民主并没有更受欢迎。
There seems to be less tolerance of other people’s ideas.
对他人想法的容忍度似乎较低。
What’s going on?
这是怎么回事？
What’s your most fundamental account of that?
您对此最根本的解释是什么？
I think there are lots of strands to this debate, and I would just highlight two of them to set up my answer.
我认为这场辩论有很多线索，我只想强调其中两个来建立我的答案。
I think the fact is that liberal capitalism has declined in popularity enormously since the 1990s when we thought that it had won.
我认为事实上，自 20 世纪 90 年代以来，自由资本主义的受欢迎程度已经大幅下降，当时我们认为它已经获胜。
Fukuyama’s statement was blunter than other people’s when he said history was ending, but it wasn’t different to most people’s.
福山说历史即将终结时，他的说法比其他人更直白，但与大多数人并没有什么不同。
It really did feel as though other countries were converging around that model.
确实感觉其他国家正在向这种模式靠拢。
Now, you poll young Americans, and they prefer — or they say they prefer — what they call socialism.
现在，你对美国年轻人进行民意调查，他们更喜欢——或者他们说他们更喜欢他们所谓的社会主义。
What they quite mean by that is another debate.
他们的真正意思是另一场争论。
Anyway, liberal capitalism is clearly falling out of favor.
无论如何，自由资本主义显然正在失宠。
Now, is that because capitalism wasn’t as great as we thought it was in the 1990s, and now we’re spotting the flaws?
现在，这是因为资本主义在 20 世纪 90 年代并不像我们想象的那么伟大，而现在我们正在发现其中的缺陷吗？
Or is it because it was great but now it’s gone wrong?
还是因为它曾经很棒，但现在却出了问题？
I think there’s some truth to the second, that it was great, but we’ve allowed some things to go wrong.
我认为第二个有一定道理，它很棒，但我们允许一些事情出错。
In particular, we need more competition to prevent both monopoly and monopsony.
特别是，我们需要更多的竞争来防止垄断和垄断。
We need to do more about state capture by lobbies.
我们需要对游说团体的国家捕获采取更多行动。
We need to do more about inequality because it’s all very well, saying you only care about equal opportunity, but income and wealth inequality is okay.
我们需要在不平等问题上做更多的事情，因为这一切都很好，说你只关心机会平等，但收入和财富不平等也没关系。
But we know that the latter, the income inequality, bleeds into the former.
但我们知道，后者，即收入不平等，会渗透到前者中。
Once you’ve got really severe inequalities of wealth, people can transfer that advantage to their kids.
一旦出现严重的财富不平等，人们就可以将这种优势转移给他们的孩子。
Things that happened in the 2000s, like the virtual elimination of the estate tax, are a really, really bad thing, and we need to undo that.
2000 年代发生的事情，比如实际上取消遗产税，是一件非常非常糟糕的事情，我们需要消除这种情况。
It’s one thing to say we want strong incentives for entrepreneurship, and I’m all for that because I’ve just written this book about venture capital, and I believe in disruption in the economy, and I believe in risk-taking, and I believe people should be compensated for taking those risks.
说我们希望对创业有强有力的激励是一回事，我完全赞成这一点，因为我刚刚写了这本关于风险投资的书，我相信经济会受到破坏，我相信冒险，而且我相信人们应该因承担这些风险而得到补偿。
But at the same time, you need to reset to safeguard some equality of opportunity, and I think things like the estate tax ought to bite, and that’s really important.
但与此同时，你需要重新调整以保障一定程度的机会平等，我认为遗产税之类的事情应该发挥作用，这非常重要。
Last question: what’s your favorite movie and why?
最后一个问题：你最喜欢的电影是什么？为什么？
Let’s see.
让我们来看看。
I think The Grand Budapest Hotel has a kind of zany, surrealistic charm that is irresistible, so I’m going to pick that as my favorite movie.
我认为《布达佩斯大饭店》有一种滑稽、超现实的魅力，令人无法抗拒，所以我会选它作为我最喜欢的电影。
That is an example of venture capital also, right?
这也是风险投资的一个例子，对吧？
Yes, that’s right.
是的，没错。
Sebastian Mallaby, thank you very much.
塞巴斯蒂安·马拉比，非常感谢你。
Again, I’m very happy to recommend to you all Sebastian’s new book — all of his old books as well, but the new book is The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.
再次，我很高兴向你们推荐塞巴斯蒂安的所有新书——以及他所有的旧书，但新书是《幂律：风险投资与新未来的创造》。
Thank you, Tyler.
谢谢你，泰勒。
That was a lot of fun.
那很有趣。
Thumbnail photo credit: David Levenson
缩略图照片来源：David Levenson