Behind the founder | Drew Houston (Dropbox)

创始人背后|德鲁·休斯顿 (Dropbox)

2025-01-09 · Lenny's Podcast · 原文

Lenny Rachitsky: People just don't realize the wild journey that you have been on over the past 18 years building this company.

Lenny Rachitsky：人们只是没有意识到您在过去 18 年里创建这家公司所经历的疯狂旅程。

It feels like there's almost been these three eras of Dropbox.

感觉 Dropbox 几乎经历了这三个时代。

The first era of you're killing it.

你的第一个时代正在杀死它。

Drew Houston: For the first several years, it was doubling, 10-xing every year.

德鲁·休斯顿：在最初的几年里，它每年都翻倍，即 10 倍。

Taping user counts that we printed out to the wall, and then running out of space on the wall.

将我们打印出来的用户计数粘贴到墙上，然后墙上的空间就用完了。

Having to put 100,000 users, 200,000, 500,000, 1,000,000, 10,000,000 on the ceiling.

必须将 100,000 个用户、200,000 个、500,000 个、1,000,000 个、10,000,000 个用户置于上限。

Lenny Rachitsky: And there's the second era, which I'll just say, everyone's trying to kill you.

Lenny Rachitsky：还有第二个时代，我只想说，每个人都想杀了你。

Drew Houston: We started getting all the incumbents.

德鲁·休斯顿：我们开始任命所有现任者。

Apple, Microsoft, Google.

苹果、微软、谷歌。

All of them launched competing products, but weirdly, it was sort of like you see the videos where there's the mushroom cloud in the distance.

他们都推出了竞争产品，但奇怪的是，这有点像你看到视频中远处有蘑菇云。

You see it.

你看到了。

But you don't hear, or notice it.

但你听不到，也没有注意到。

It was also clear that winter was coming.

也很明显冬天即将来临。

Lenny Rachitsky: It feels like the year 2015 was a pivotal year where things started to shift.

Lenny Rachitsky：感觉 2015 年是关键的一年，事情开始发生变化。

Drew Houston: I'd start to hear a louder set of critics inside, and outside the company.

德鲁·休斯顿：我开始听到公司内外更响亮的批评声。

Less than a year later, Google Photos launches.

不到一年后，Google Photos 推出。

And not only does it provide a lot of the same value, but they also gave you free unlimited storage for life.

它不仅提供许多相同的价值，而且还为您提供终身免费的无限存储空间。

And so, they just totally nuked our business model.

所以，他们完全摧毁了我们的商业模式。

Lenny Rachitsky: You end up fighting wars on three or four fronts against the big kahunas that have infinite cash, and can do whatever they want.

莱尼·拉奇茨基（Lenny Rachitsky）：你最终会在三到四个战线上与拥有无限现金并且可以为所欲为的大魔王进行战争。

Drew Houston: So it killed Carousel, killed Mailbox, went all-in on productivity.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以它杀死了 Carousel，杀死了 Mailbox，全力提高生产力。

And I wish I could say, "Then, everything got better." It was the opposite, actually.

我希望我能说：“然后，一切都变得更好了。”事实上，事实恰恰相反。

The narrative completely flipped on the company.

这种说法完全颠覆了公司。

Suddenly, your employees don't want to wear your T-shirt anymore.

突然间，您的员工不想再穿您的 T 恤了。

Everybody's looking to you, and is wondering, "How the hell did you get us in this situation?"

每个人都看着你，并想知道，“你到底是怎么让我们陷入这种境地的？”

Lenny Rachitsky: Today, my guest is Drew Houston.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：今天，我的客人是德鲁·休斯顿。

This may be the most interesting, and most useful episode of my podcast so far.

这可能是迄今为止我的播客中最有趣、最有用的一集。

Especially if you're a founder, or if you someday want to be a founder.

特别是如果您是创始人，或者您有一天想成为创始人。

Drew shares the very real talk story of what it's been like to build Dropbox over the past 18 years.

Drew 分享了过去 18 年来构建 Dropbox 的真实故事。

Including the ups, and especially the downs.

包括顺境，尤其是逆境。

He shares stories that he's never shared before, the struggles he's been through that very few people know about, what it's like to compete with big tech, how he's thinking about the future of the company.

他分享了他以前从未分享过的故事，他经历过的很少有人知道的挣扎，与大型科技公司竞争的感觉，以及他如何思考公司的未来。

And also, what he's learned about himself throughout the journey.

而且，他在整个旅程中对自己的了解。

Lenny Rachitsky: This is a very special episode that I suspect founders will be studying for years to come.A big thank you to Drew for sharing these stories and lessons with us.

Lenny Rachitsky：这是一个非常特别的情节，我怀疑创始人将在未来几年进行研究。非常感谢 Drew 与我们分享这些故事和教训。

If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app, or YouTube.

如果您喜欢这个播客，请不要忘记订阅并在您最喜欢的播客应用程序或 YouTube 中关注它。

It's the best way to avoid missing feature episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.

这是避免错过专题节目的最佳方式，并且对播客有很大帮助。

With that, I bring you Drew Houston.

接下来，我为您带来德鲁·休斯顿。

This episode is brought to you by Paragon.

本集由 Paragon 为您带来。

The integration infrastructure for B2B SaaS companies.

B2B SaaS 公司的集成基础架构。

Lenny Rachitsky: Is AI on your 2025 product roadmap?

Lenny Rachitsky：人工智能是否在你们 2025 年的产品路线图上？

Whether you need to enable RAG with your user's external data like Google Drive files, Gong transcripts, or Jira tickets, or build AI agents that can automate work across your users' other tools.

无论您需要使用用户的外部数据（例如 Google Drive 文件、Gong 成绩单或 Jira 票据）启用 RAG，还是构建可以跨用户的其他工具自动化工作的 AI 代理。

Integrations are the foundation, but building all these integrations in-house will cost you years of engineering.

集成是基础，但在内部构建所有这些集成将花费您数年的工程时间。

Time you don't have given the fast pace of AI.

是时候你还没有意识到人工智能的快节奏了。

That's where Paragon's all-in-one integration platform comes in.

这就是 Paragon 一体化集成平台的用武之地。

Build scalable workflows to ingest all of your users' external data into your RAG pipelines.

构建可扩展的工作流程，将所有用户的外部数据提取到 RAG 管道中。

Lenny Rachitsky: And leverage ActionKit, their latest product, to instantly give your AI agents access to over 100 integrations, and 1,000s of third-party actions with a single API call.

Lenny Rachitsky：利用他们的最新产品 ActionKit，您的 AI 代理可以通过一次 API 调用立即访问 100 多个集成以及 1,000 个第三方操作。

Leading AI companies like AI21, You.com, 11x, and Coffee.ai are already shipping new integrations seven times faster with Paragon.

AI21、You.com、11x 和 Coffee.ai 等领先的人工智能公司已经通过 Paragon 将新集成的交付速度提高了七倍。

Keeping their engineers focused on core product development.

让工程师专注于核心产品开发。

Ready to accelerate your AI roadmap this year?

准备好今年加速您的人工智能路线图了吗？

Visit useparagon.com/Lenny to get a free MVP of your next product integration.

请访问 useparagon.com/Lenny，获取下一个产品集成的免费 MVP。

Lenny Rachitsky: This episode is brought to you by Explo.

Lenny Rachitsky：本集由 Explo 为您带来。

A game changer for customer-facing analytics, and data reporting.

面向客户的分析和数据报告的游戏规则改变者。

Are your users craving more dashboards, reports, and analytics within your product?

您的用户是否渴望在您的产品中提供更多仪表板、报告和分析？

Are you tired of trying to build it yourself?

您是否厌倦了尝试自己构建它？

As a product leader, you probably have these requests in your roadmap, but the struggle to prioritize them is real.

作为产品领导者，您的路线图中可能有这些请求，但确定它们的优先级的困难是真实存在的。

Building analytics from scratch can be time-consuming, expensive, and a really challenging process.

从头开始构建分析可能非常耗时、昂贵，而且是一个非常具有挑战性的过程。

Enter, Explo.

输入，爆炸。

Explo is a fully white-labeled embedded analytics solution designed entirely with your user in mind.

Explo 是一款完全白标的嵌入式分析解决方案，其设计完全考虑到您的用户。

Getting started is easy.

入门很容易。

Lenny Rachitsky: Explo connects to any relational database, or warehouse.

Lenny Rachitsky：Explo 连接到任何关系数据库或仓库。

And with its low-code functionality, you can build and style dashboards in minutes.

凭借其低代码功能，您可以在几分钟内构建和设计仪表板。

Once you're ready, simply embed the dashboard, or report into your application with a tiny code snippet.

准备就绪后，只需嵌入仪表板，或使用微小的代码片段将报告报告到您的应用程序中即可。

The best part?

最好的部分？

Your end users can use Explo's AI features for their own report, and dashboard generation.

您的最终用户可以使用 Explo 的 AI 功能来生成自己的报告和仪表板。

Eliminating customer data requests for your support team.

消除对支持团队的客户数据请求。

Build, and embed a fully white-labeled analytics experience in days.

在几天内构建并嵌入完全白标的分析体验。

Try it for free at explo.co/Lenny.

请访问 explo.co/Lenny 免费试用。

That's E-X-P-L-O dot C-O slash Lenny.

这是 E-X-P-L-O 点 C-O 斜线 Lenny。

Drew, thank you so much for being here.

德鲁，非常感谢你来到这里。

Welcome to the podcast.

欢迎来到播客。

Drew Houston: Oh, thank you, Lenny.

德鲁·休斯顿：哦，谢谢你，莱尼。

It's great to be here.

很高兴来到这里。

Lenny Rachitsky: I have been so looking forward to this conversation for so many reasons.

Lenny Rachitsky：出于多种原因，我一直非常期待这次对话。

One, is I feel like people just don't realize the wild journey that you have been on over the past 18 years building this company.

第一，我觉得人们只是没有意识到你在过去 18 年里创建这家公司所经历的疯狂旅程。

You told me a few of these stories when we had dinner recently, and I was just like, "You need to come on the podcast, and tell this stuff.

最近我们吃晚饭时，你给我讲了一些这样的故事，我当时就想，“你需要参加播客，讲述这些事情。

I think it'll be really useful to a lot of people."

我认为这对很多人来说都非常有用。”

Lenny Rachitsky: And then also, I feel like you're just a very real talk founder that isn't afraid to share what's really going on.

Lenny Rachitsky：而且，我觉得你是一位非常真实的谈话创始人，不害怕分享真正发生的事情。

I think a lot of founders don't actually tell you the things they're going through.

我认为很多创始人实际上并没有告诉你他们正在经历的事情。

It's always, "Killing it.

总是说：“杀了它。”

We're killing it all the time." So for all those reasons, I'm really excited to have this chat, and this opportunity to stand with you and hear these stories.

我们一直在杀死它。”因此，出于所有这些原因，我真的很高兴能进行这次谈话，并有机会与你们站在一起聆听这些故事。

So thank you again for doing this.

再次感谢您所做的事情。

Drew Houston: Me too, and I've been a big fan of the podcast.

德鲁·休斯顿：我也是，我一直是播客的忠实粉丝。

Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, wow.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：哦，哇。

I appreciate that.

我很欣赏这一点。

The way I'm thinking we structure this conversation is, as an outsider, it feels like there's almost been these three eras of Dropbox.

我认为我们构建这次对话的方式是，作为一个局外人，感觉 Dropbox 几乎已经经历了这三个时代。

And tell me if I am missing something, but essentially, it feels like there's the first era of you're killing it.

如果我错过了什么，请告诉我，但本质上，感觉就像是你正在杀死它的第一个时代。

Just up and to the right killing it.

就向右上方杀死它。

Dropbox is on fire.

Dropbox 着火了。

Lenny Rachitsky: And then, there's the second era that I think fewer people know about, which I'll just say, everyone was trying to kill you.

Lenny Rachitsky：然后，我认为很少有人知道第二个时代，我只想说，每个人都想杀了你。

All the incumbents are coming after you.

所有现任者都在追随你。

I like that it leads you to sigh.

我喜欢它让你叹息。

This is going to be good.

这会很好。

And then, there's the current era.

然后，就是当前的时代。

I'll say the third era of just rethinking what Dropbox could be.

我想说的是第三个时代，重新思考 Dropbox 的未来。

Does that sound roughly right?

这听起来大致正确吗？

That's a good way to think about that?

这是一个很好的思考方式吗？

Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, awesome.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：好的，太棒了。

So let's start with this first era, and spend some time here.

那么让我们从第一个时代开始，在这里度过一些时间。

Which is, I think, the era most people know you for.

我认为，这是大多数人认识你的时代。

There's the big Hacker News launch, the demo video of the thumb drive you're always losing, the referral program everyone's always studying.

有大型的黑客新闻发布会、你总是丢失的拇指驱动器的演示视频、每个人都在研究的推荐计划。

You're almost the epitome of viral growth.

你几乎就是病毒式增长的缩影。

And so, let's just talk about just things here that maybe people don't know about.

因此，我们在这里只讨论一些人们可能不知道的事情。

Maybe some moments that are really important to you, memories that stand out to you.

也许有些时刻对你来说非常重要，一些记忆对你来说很突出。

So maybe just start wherever you want to start about this time of the history of Dropbox.

因此，也许您可以从 Dropbox 这段历史中您想开始的地方开始。

Drew Houston: I mean, I started Dropbox more out of just personal frustration, and it really felt like something that only I was super interested in as far as file syncing.

Drew Houston：我的意思是，我创建 Dropbox 更多的是出于个人挫败感，就文件同步而言，感觉真的只有我对它非常感兴趣。

And focusing on one customer, which is myself.

并专注于一位客户，那就是我自己。

And then there's the story of me forgetting my thumb drive on a trip to New York, and things like that, and coding.

然后是我在去纽约旅行时忘记带拇指驱动器之类的事情以及编码的故事。

I won't get into all that.

我不会谈论这一切。

I had a lot of friends who were in Y Combinator, and many friends who had moved from Boston where I was living out to California.

我有很多在 Y Combinator 的朋友，还有很多朋友从我居住的波士顿搬到了加利福尼亚州。

And doing that whole pilgrimage, or kind of maybe one-way pilgrimage.

进行整个朝圣，或者可能是单程朝圣。

Drew Houston: And feeling a little bit left out, but then also having this idea for Dropbox.

Drew Houston：感觉有点被冷落，但同时也有了 Dropbox 的想法。

And then I think some of the most memorable things were the moments where Dropbox really felt like it was taking on a life of its own, or maybe it belonged to the internet, and not so much to me anymore.

然后我认为最令人难忘的事情是 Dropbox 真正感觉它正在拥有自己的生命的时刻，或者也许它属于互联网，而不再属于我了。

So for example, we had a lot of success with these demo videos.

例如，我们在这些演示视频上取得了很大的成功。

First, was just getting into Y Combinator.

首先，我刚刚进入 Y Combinator。

It sort of worked backwards from thinking about, "What does Paul Graham do all day?" And my hypothesis was that he just hits refresh on Hacker News like everyone else.

它有点倒退地思考“保罗·格雷厄姆整天都做什么？”我的假设是，他就像其他人一样，只是点击“黑客新闻”的刷新按钮。

Like me, like everyone else.

和我一样，和其他人一样。

Lenny Rachitsky: This was you trying to figure out how to get Paul Graham's attention?

Lenny Rachitsky：你是想弄清楚如何引起 Paul Graham 的注意吗？

Lenny Rachitsky: I love that.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：我喜欢这个。

"What does Paul Graham do all day?" Okay.

“保罗·格雷厄姆整天都在做什么？”好的。

Drew Houston: Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的。

Well, my first company was doing online SAT prep, and I was 21 when I started that.

嗯，我的第一家公司是做在线 SAT 准备的，我开始做这件事的时候我才 21 岁。

But in the world, there's a lot that Y Combinator has in common with college admissions.

但在现实世界中，Y Combinator 与大学招生有很多共同点。

You have 1,000,000 people applying for very few spots.

有 1,000,000 人申请很少的名额。

And the more you can get some kind of hook, or find some kind of side door.

而且越能得到某种钩子，或者找到某种侧门。

That was the thinking, and I was like, "All right.

这就是我的想法，我当时想，“好吧。

Well, if I can create some kind of viral video, put it on Hacker News, get Paul's attention, that'd be one way to do it."

好吧，如果我可以制作某种病毒式视频，将其放在黑客新闻上，引起保罗的注意，这将是一种方法。”

Drew Houston: And that was inspired by a book called Guerrilla Marketing that I had read, which is basically how to do marketing if you have no money.

德鲁·休斯顿：这受到我读过的一本名为《游击营销》的书的启发，这本书基本上是在没有钱的情况下如何进行营销的。

Which was a good fit for where we were.

这很适合我们所处的位置。

I say, "We." It was just me at the time.

我说：“我们。”当时只有我一个人。

And sure enough, I made this video that was basically a pretty straightforward screencast of Dropbox.

果然，我制作的这个视频基本上是 Dropbox 的一个非常简单的截屏视频。

Showing it working on my computer, and then it hit the top of Hacker News for two days.

展示它在我的计算机上运行，然后它登上了黑客新闻的榜首两天。

I don't think it can really happen anymore, but sure enough, we got a note from Paul saying, "Hey, this is interesting, but you need a co-founder."

我认为这不会再发生了，但果然，我们收到了保罗的一张便条，上面写着：“嘿，这很有趣，但你需要一位联合创始人。”

Drew Houston: Which was a problem because it's clear that the YC application deadline for the next cycle was maybe a week or two away.

Drew Houston：这是一个问题，因为很明显，距离下一个周期的 YC 申请截止日期可能还有一两周。

So Paul was basically sending me a helpful note that, "I know you're not dating anyone, but you need to be married in the next two weeks if you want to get into YC." So I ended up finding my co-founder, Arash, and there's just story after story like that in the early days.

所以保罗基本上是给我发了一条有用的信息，“我知道你没有和任何人约会，但如果你想进入 YC，你需要在接下来的两周内结婚。”所以我最终找到了我的联合创始人阿拉什，早期这样的故事层出不穷。

So I'd say the first chapter was characterized by just feels like one moment I'm sort of paddling in the ocean alone on a little board.

所以我想说，第一章的特点是感觉就像是我独自一人在小木板上划船的那一刻。

The next, I'm just like a hundred feet off the ground on this tidal wave trying to stay on.

接下来，我就像离地一百英尺一样，在这股浪潮中试图继续前进。

Lenny Rachitsky: How long does this period last of just Hacker News to something starts to change?

Lenny Rachitsky：从《黑客新闻》到某些事情开始发生变化的这段时期会持续多久？

How long is this up and to the right period?

这是多久才算正确的时期？

Drew Houston: It was the first several years.

德鲁·休斯顿：那是头几年。

So I started the company back in 2007.

所以我在 2007 年创办了这家公司。

I might have been 24 at the time, moved to California.

当时我可能 24 岁，搬到了加利福尼亚州。

And so, I'd say it was first probably seven years from 2007 to 2014 were really that crazy fever dream .com experience where it's a blur.

所以，我想说，从 2007 年到 2014 年，大概有七年时间， .com 经历了疯狂的狂热梦想，但它却变得模糊。

I mean, basically, get into Y Combinator.

我的意思是，基本上，进入 Y Combinator。

After we finish Y Combinator, that culminates in Demo Day, and getting your first investors.

当我们完成 Y Combinator 后，演示日将达到高潮，并吸引第一批投资者。

At Demo Day was this guy named Pejman Nozad who is an angel investor who also owned a rug store in Palo Alto.

参加演示日的是一个名叫佩吉曼·诺扎德 (Pejman Nozad) 的人，他是一位天使投资人，还在帕洛阿尔托拥有一家地毯店。

He runs Pear there.

他在那里经营Pear。

Drew Houston: Yeah, and he runs Pear now.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的，他现在经营 Pear。

He introduced us to Sequoia.

他向我们介绍了红杉。

He came with us to the pitch, which I learned later it was unusual.

他和我们一起来到了球场，后来我才知道这很不寻常。

And that was on a Friday, and then Saturday Mike Moritz is in our apartment.

那是在星期五，然后星期六迈克·莫里茨就在我们的公寓里。

But anyway, so we raised money from Sequoia, and that was a seed round in 2007.

但无论如何，我们从红杉资本筹集了资金，那是 2007 年的种子轮融资。

So right after we finished Y Combinator.

就在我们完成 Y Combinator 之后。

And then, basically, you start with a pretty narrow circle of what you're working on.

然后，基本上，你会从你正在做的事情的一个相当狭窄的范围开始。

Drew Houston: I mean, right in the beginning it's just really just coding, and talking to customers.

德鲁·休斯顿：我的意思是，一开始只是编码，并与客户交谈。

But that circle kept expanding pretty rapidly.

但这个圈子一直在快速扩张。

So in 2007, we were just building the first prototype of the product.

所以在 2007 年，我们刚刚构建了该产品的第一个原型。

It was in closed beta for about a year.

它进行了大约一年的内测。

And in end of 2008, we launched at what's now TechCrunch Disrupt.

2008 年底，我们推出了现在的 TechCrunch Disrupt。

Our demo totally failed.

我们的演示完全失败了。

The wifi wasn't working on stage, so a live demo is quite underwhelming.

无线网络在舞台上无法使用，所以现场演示相当平淡。

So that took a few years off my life, but fortunately, we had accumulated this big beta waiting list from basically doing another version of that Hacker News video.

这让我的生命缩短了几年，但幸运的是，我们基本上是通过制作黑客新闻视频的另一个版本而积累了这个大的测试等待名单。

Drew Houston: Engineered to be even more viral, and have all these memes, and things in it.

德鲁·休斯顿：经过精心设计，更具病毒性，并且包含所有这些模因以及其中的内容。

But similarly, a few minute demo video of, "What's Dropbox?

但同样，还有一段几分钟的演示视频，“什么是 Dropbox？

And here's moving stuff between a Windows PC, and a Mac.

这里是在 Windows PC 和 Mac 之间移动东西。

And here's all these little Easter eggs about the HD DVD encryption key, or who was one of the first YouTubers.

这里有关于 HD DVD 加密密钥的所有这些小复活节彩蛋，或者谁是第一批 YouTuber 之一。

Tom Cruise jumping on a couch in Scientology." This was a long time ago.

汤姆·克鲁斯在山达基教的沙发上跳来跳去。”这是很久以前的事了。

15 years ago, or something.

15年前，或者什么的。

But we put this video on Dig, and Reddit.

但我们把这个视频放到了 Dig 和 Reddit 上。

And our beta waiting list went from 5,000 to 85,000 people overnight.

我们的 Beta 等待名单一夜之间从 5,000 人增加到 85,000 人。

Drew Houston: So we got this initial seed audience by chasing that early adopter set.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以我们通过追逐早期采用者群体获得了最初的种子观众。

And then, we also figured out these viral motions around our referral program, and shared folders.

然后，我们还发现了围绕我们的推荐计划和共享文件夹的病毒式传播。

And so Dropbox started expanding virally for the first several years.

因此，Dropbox 在最初几年开始病毒式扩张。

And then a lot of the engineering that we applied to the product of Dropbox can't have a bad day when it comes to your wedding photos, and tax returns, and all the things people put in Dropbox.

然后，我们应用于 Dropbox 产品的许多工程对于您的婚纱照、纳税申报表以及人们放入 Dropbox 的所有内容来说不会有糟糕的一天。

So we took a while to get the beta right before we felt comfortable opening up to the broader public.

因此，我们花了一段时间才完成测试版，然后才放心地向更广泛的公众开放。

Drew Houston: But then, we applied that same engineering mentality to these viral loops.

德鲁·休斯顿：但是，我们将同样的工程思维应用于这些病毒循环。

And this was all the era when social media was exploding, and Facebook, and Facebook platform.

这是社交媒体、Facebook 和 Facebook 平台爆炸式增长的时代。

All these startups were setting new land speed records for fastest to 1,000,000 users, or 10,000,000 users.

所有这些初创公司都创下了最快 1,000,000 名用户或 10,000,000 名用户的陆地速度记录。

Things like Zynga.

像Zynga这样的东西。

And all of this was built on this emerging playbook of virality, which in turn came from epidemiology.

所有这一切都建立在这个新兴的病毒式传播策略之上，而病毒式传播又来自流行病学。

The study of the spread of viruses turned out to be a good parallel for the consumer internet.

事实证明，对病毒传播的研究与消费互联网有很好的相似之处。

Draw your own conclusions.

得出你自己的结论。

Drew Houston: And then we were like, "Oh, there's no reason this wouldn't work for Dropbox." And some of our early investors, Hadi and Ali Partovi, talked to us about how Facebook thought about growth.

Drew Houston：然后我们就想，“哦，这没有理由不适用于 Dropbox。”我们的一些早期投资者 Hadi 和 Ali Partovi 向我们讲述了 Facebook 如何看待增长。

And then there were a lot of great people in the early days who had really fine-tuned, and mastered a lot of that.

早期有很多伟大的人确实进行了微调，并掌握了很多内容。

We tried many things.

我们尝试了很多事情。

Conventional, and unconventional.

有常规的，也有非常规的。

But the things around virality, and the referral program really worked.

但病毒式传播和推荐计划确实有效。

Drew Houston: And so for the first several years, it was just doubling, 10-xing every year.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以在最初的几年里，它只是每年翻一番，即 10 星。

Taping user counts that we printed out to the wall, and then running out of space on the wall.

将我们打印出来的用户计数粘贴到墙上，然后墙上的空间就用完了。

Having to put a 100,000, 200,000, 500,000, 1,000,000, 10,000,000 on the ceiling.

必须在上限上加上100,000、200,000、500,000、1,000,000、10,000,000。

So it was wild.

所以它很疯狂。

And it was super fun, but it was also super stressful.

这非常有趣，但压力也很大。

But going from maybe $6,000,000 valuation in 2007, to $27,000,000 in 2008, to then $4,000,000,000 valuation in 2011, being on magazine covers.

但从 2007 年的 6,000,000 美元估值，到 2008 年的 27,000,000 美元，再到 2011 年的 4,0 亿美元估值，登上了杂志封面。

Just that whole experience was wild.

整个经历都很疯狂。

Lenny Rachitsky: The visual of the user numbers extending onto the ceiling is such a good one.

Lenny Rachitsky：用户数量延伸到天花板的视觉效果非常好。

Of just how quickly things grew.

事情发展得有多快。

Okay.

好的。

So let's transition to the second era.

那么让我们过渡到第二个时代。

So things have been going great, keeps growing.

所以事情一直进展顺利，不断增长。

Obviously, challenges along the way, but it feels like it's just grow, grow, grow.

显然，一路上充满挑战，但感觉就像是在成长、成长、成长。

It feels like the year 2015 was a pivotal year where things started to shift.

感觉2015年是关键的一年，事情开始发生变化。

Does that sound right?

听起来对吗？

Lenny Rachitsky: Okay.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：好的。

Yeah.

是的。

Let's talk about that.

我们来谈谈这个吧。

Drew Houston: Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的。

Maybe the end of the first era, the start of our teenage years, would've been around 2013, or 2014.

也许第一个时代的结束，我们青少年时代的开始，会在 2013 年或 2014 年左右。

And maybe before that.

也许在那之前。

2011, 2012, we started getting all the incumbents, or all the big platform companies.

2011年、2012年，我们开始收购所有现有企业，或者所有大型平台公司。

Apple, Microsoft, Google.

苹果、微软、谷歌。

All of them launched competing products in one form, or another.

他们都以一种或另一种形式推出了竞争产品。

But weirdly, it was like you see the videos where there's the mushroom cloud in the distance.

但奇怪的是，就像你看到视频中远处有蘑菇云一样。

You see it.

你看到了。

But you don't hear, or notice it.

但你听不到，也没有注意到。

So it mostly just seemed like nothing happened.

所以大部分时候就好像什么都没发生一样。

Drew Houston: When Steve Jobs was on stage in 2011 announcing iCloud, calling out Dropbox by name as something that will be viewed as archaic.

德鲁·休斯顿：2011 年，史蒂夫·乔布斯 (Steve Jobs) 在台上宣布 iCloud 时，直呼 Dropbox 的名字会被视为过时的东西。

And similarly, we always felt like we were in the shadow of the hammer of Google launching Google Drive, which had been rumored long before we even started the company.

同样，我们总是感觉自己处于谷歌推出 Google Drive 的阴影之下，早在我们创办公司之前就已经有传言了。

For the first several years, we were just sort of quivering, waiting for the shoe to drop.

在最初的几年里，我们只是颤抖着，等待着鞋子落地。

And the product's launched, but you would never be able to look at our numbers and see when that happened.

产品已经推出，但你永远无法查看我们的数据并了解这是什么时候发生的。

And the press often writes about competition like, "Oh, it's a shotgun blast."

媒体经常这样描述竞争：“哦，这是一场霰弹枪爆炸。”

Drew Houston: When, later, I would learn it's more of a boa constrictor.

德鲁·休斯顿：后来我才知道它更像是一条蟒蛇。

But the end of that first chapter really culminated in us recognizing that we experienced a lot of benefits of being this kind of product for everyone.

但第一章的结尾确实让我们认识到，我们体验到了这种适合每个人的产品的很多好处。

And in fact, it would be kind of hard for me to describe in the early days who Dropbox is for, or what it does.

事实上，我在早期很难描述 Dropbox 是为谁服务的，或者它是做什么的。

It was similar to what's a phone for, or what's a computer for?

这类似于电话的用途或计算机的用途？

And in the beginning, that was a blessing.

一开始，这是一种祝福。

It meant that those viral loops would really work.

这意味着这些病毒循环确实有效。

Pretty much everybody you would hit would have a need for something like Dropbox.

几乎每个你遇到的人都会需要像 Dropbox 这样的东西。

Either a personal need, or a work need, or both.

要么是个人需要，要么是工作需要，或者两者兼而有之。

Drew Houston: But we recognized even back then before competition that, "Hey, people are using us primarily for things like backup, backing up their devices, or storage.

德鲁·休斯顿：但我们甚至在比赛之前就认识到，“嘿，人们主要使用我们来进行备份、备份他们的设备或存储之类的事情。

People are using us for photo sharing.

人们利用我们来分享照片。

People are using us as a collaborative space at work, and often, in huge companies." And then, we felt that there was a lot of tension between these use cases.

人们将我们用作工作中的协作空间，而且通常是在大公司中。”然后，我们觉得这些用例之间存在很大的紧张关系。

So for example, the ideal file server replacement for an IT admin is going to look quite different from the ideal consumer photo sharing app.

例如，IT 管理员理想的文件服务器替代品看起来与理想的消费者照片共享应用程序有很大不同。

And we also recognize things like, "Well, we're going to be competing in many cases with the device, or the operating system."

我们还认识到，“嗯，在很多情况下我们将与设备或操作系统竞争。”

Drew Houston: When you look at something like iCloud, it's like, "Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：当你看到像 iCloud 这样的东西时，你会觉得，“是的。

When you turn on your iPhone for the first time, it's probably not going to give you an ad for Dropbox." So we're like, "Hey, we need to address some of these issues," and expanded to some new areas to diversify.

当您第一次打开 iPhone 时，它可能不会向您显示 Dropbox 的广告。”所以我们就像，“嘿，我们需要解决其中一些问题”，并扩展到一些新领域以实现多元化。

The first two things we did were, after getting enough complaints from IT administrators asking us what the hell these photo sharing features were for, we pulled all the photo sharing functionality out into a separate and new app we called Carousel.

我们做的前两件事是，在 IT 管理员收到足够多的投诉后，询问我们这些照片共享功能到底是做什么用的，我们将所有照片共享功能提取到一个单独的新应用程序中，我们称之为 Carousel。

Where the basic value prop was phones, to that point, were limited in their storage by the amount of physical storage on the device.

到目前为止，基本价值支柱是手机，其存储空间受到设备上物理存储量的限制。

Drew Houston: We're like, "This is silly.

德鲁·休斯顿：我们的反应是，“这太愚蠢了。

You should be able to have your whole life in your pocket." So be able to store everything in the cloud, but have the experience be as if everything were locally there through a lot of caching, and sleight of hand, and thumbnails, and things like that.

你应该能够把你的一生都装在你的口袋里。”因此，能够将所有内容存储在云中，但通过大量缓存、技巧、缩略图等，体验就好像所有内容都在本地一样。

So there's much engineering there.

所以那里有很多工程。

And then, secondly, we saw people were using us at work, and we're like, "Well, there's a lot of different adjacent workflows." And there was a startup called Mailbox that built the first great mobile email client.

其次，我们看到人们在工作中使用我们，我们就像是，“嗯，有很多不同的相邻工作流程。”有一家名为 Mailbox 的初创公司开发了第一个出色的移动电子邮件客户端。

Had a lot of funny parallels.

有很多有趣的相似之处。

They had a -

他们有一个——

Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, that's right.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：哦，没错。

They're famous for that waitlist.

他们因等候名单而闻名。

Drew Houston: And so we're like, "I don't know.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以我们就像，“我不知道。

Maybe this is going to be our Instagram," and so we bought those guys.

也许这将成为我们的 Instagram，”所以我们买下了这些人。

And then 2014, I'm on stage painting this picture of Dropbox's future.

然后到了 2014 年，我在舞台上描绘了 Dropbox 的未来。

I'm like, "We're going to help be the way that you remember your life.

我想，“我们将帮助你记住你的生活。

We're going to be your productivity.

我们将成为您的生产力。

The new productivity suite on your phone," and all these things.

手机上的新生产力套件”以及所有这些东西。

But then it was this dissonance where there were so many things that were going right, and certainly the numbers, user numbers, revenue numbers.

但正是这种不和谐，让很多事情都进展顺利，当然还有数字、用户数量、收入数字。

We were sort of accidentally cash flow positive maybe a year after launching.

大约在推出一年后，我们意外地出现了正现金流。

Drew Houston: It was also clear that winter was coming, or that things weren't exactly as they seemed.

德鲁·休斯顿：很明显冬天即将来临，或者事情并不完全像看上去的那样。

Then the start of the second chapter, 2015, I'd start to hear a louder set of critics inside, and outside the company.

然后第二章开始，2015 年，我开始听到公司内外更响亮的批评声。

And I'd been thinking for a long time like, "All right, man, we're really fighting wars on all these very disparate fronts." We're with storage.

我很长一段时间都在想，“好吧，伙计，我们真的是在所有这些截然不同的战线上打仗。”我们有存储。

We're competing with the device to back up the device with photo sharing, or competing with Facebook, Snap, Instagram, Google, Apple.

我们正在与支持照片共享的设备竞争，或者与 Facebook、Snap、Instagram、Google、Apple 竞争。

Drew Houston: On productivity, we're competing with Microsoft, and Google.

德鲁·休斯顿：在生产力方面，我们正在与微软和谷歌竞争。

And then, there's a whole new cohort of companies like Slack.

然后，出现了像 Slack 这样的全新公司群体。

And then, there's this experience of one day I am standing on stage talking about how Carousel, and Mailbox, and everything are the future of the company.

然后，有这样的经历：有一天，我站在讲台上谈论 Carousel、Mailbox 以及一切如何成为公司的未来。

Less than a year later, Google Photos launches.

不到一年后，Google Photos 推出。

And not only does it provide a lot of the same value, and in many ways very inspired by what we had done, but they also gave you free unlimited storage for life.

它不仅提供了很多相同的价值，并且在很多方面都受到我们所做的事情的启发，而且它们还为您提供终身免费的无限存储空间。

Not just photos, but video.

不仅仅是照片，还有视频。

Drew Houston: And so they just totally nuked our business model in ways that were bad enough in terms of just their obvious impact, but even worse because it was so easily anticipated.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以他们完全摧毁了我们的商业模式，就其明显的影响而言，这些方式已经足够糟糕了，但更糟糕的是，因为它是如此容易被预期。

So this became a very public, and personal embarrassment for me.

所以这对我来说是一个非常公开的、个人的尴尬。

How could we not have predicted that, or been out in front of that?

我们怎么可能没有预见到这一点，或者走在前面呢？

And then, that started this period.

然后，就开始了这个时期。

I'd say that was the beginning of chapter two where it was we went from the company that could do no wrong to the company that could do no right, which was a big flip.

我想说那是第二章的开始，我们从一家不会做错事的公司变成了一家不会做错事的公司，这是一个很大的转变。

It was probably early summer, maybe late spring, when Google Photos launched.

Google Photos 推出时可能是初夏，也可能是春末。

Drew Houston: At first, I'm just thinking like, "Okay.

德鲁·休斯顿：一开始，我只是想，“好吧。

This was a big miss on my part.

这对我来说是一个很大的遗憾。

How do we get out of this?

我们如何摆脱这个困境？

We need to tackle some of these competitive issues much more ahead on." And then, what's the problem?

我们需要进一步解决其中一些竞争问题。”那么，问题出在哪里呢？

Well, the problem is that every incumbent is going to copy your product.

好吧，问题是每个现任者都会复制你的产品。

They're going to bundle it with our platforms, and then they're going to kill the economics.

他们会将其与我们的平台捆绑在一起，然后他们就会扼杀经济。

And that was clear what was going to happen with Google Photos.

谷歌照片将会发生什么，这是显而易见的。

It was very similar product experience bundled with Android, bundled with all of Google's different touch points, and then free.

这是与 Android 捆绑在一起的非常相似的产品体验，与 Google 所有不同的接触点捆绑在一起，然后是免费的。

Drew Houston: So that was problematic enough for Carousel, but I'm like, "Wait, this is going to happen with everything that we're doing.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以这对于 Carousel 来说已经是个问题了，但我想，“等等，我们所做的一切都会发生这种情况。

Same thing with Mailbox." I had even pitch the founders to join Dropbox by saying, "Look, you're going to wake up tomorrow, and Gmail, and Apple Mail, and everything is just going to have these swipes and snoozes.

邮箱也一样。”我什至劝说创始人加入 Dropbox，“听着，你明天就会醒来，Gmail、Apple Mail，一切都会有这些滑动和暂停。

The UI, it's not a durable source of advantage.

用户界面，它不是持久的优势来源。

We'll buy that problem from you."

我们会从你那里购买这个问题。”

Drew Houston: And that's exactly what happened.

德鲁·休斯顿：这正是发生的事情。

So I'm like, "All right.

所以我想，“好吧。

Even in theory, how do we deal with this?" And I'd gotten the criticism over the years that Dropbox is a commodity, and investors in the early days would be like, "Hey, this is kind a graveyard of a space, and DOA." And I thought, "Well, how do other companies deal with this kind of competition, and commodities?" So there's a great book by AG Lafley and Roger Martin called Playing to Win.

即使在理论上，我们该如何处理这个问题？”多年来，我一直受到批评，认为 Dropbox 是一种商品，早期的投资者会说，“嘿，这有点像一个墓地，DOA。”我想，“那么，其他公司如何应对这种竞争和商品呢？” AG Lafley 和 Roger Martin 写了一本很棒的书，名为《Playing to Win》。

Drew Houston: Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的。

I'm a huge fan of Roger's.

我是罗杰的超级粉丝。

And I was like, "All right.

我当时想，“好吧。

Well, if we think we're selling a commodity, try literally selling paper towels." Which is what AG, and Procter & Gamble, and a lot of CPG companies do.

好吧，如果我们认为我们正在销售一种商品，那就尝试真正销售纸巾。” AG、宝洁公司以及许多消费品公司就是这样做的。

And AG was the CEO of Procter & Gamble at the time.

而AG当时是宝洁公司的首席执行官。

And basically, he and Roger did this download of how they think about competition, and markets, and advantage.

基本上，他和罗杰下载了他们如何看待竞争、市场和优势。

And a lot of it's thinking really critically about where do you play, and how do you win?

其中很多都在认真思考你在哪里玩，以及如何获胜？

Drew Houston: So being very selective about the markets you're in, and only being in markets where you can have a leadership position.

德鲁·休斯顿：因此，对您所在的市场非常有选择性，并且只在您可以拥有领导地位的市场中。

And then, being really crisp about what is your leadership position?

然后，明确说明您的领导地位是什么？

And so that was a very timely thing to read in terms of, "All right.

所以这是一个非常及时的读物，“好吧。

Dropbox looks like one product, but it's really participating in many different markets.

Dropbox 看起来像是一款产品，但它实际上参与了许多不同的市场。

And our big risk might be that we're the number two best thing in each of those markets, which would be a bad situation."

我们面临的最大风险可能是，我们在每个市场中都是第二名，这将是一个糟糕的情况。”

Drew Houston: Another really influential book was Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove, and I'd been a big fan of Andy's.

德鲁·休斯顿：另一本真正有影响力的书是安迪·格罗夫的《只有偏执狂才能生存》，我一直是安迪的忠实粉丝。

High Output Management is another great book of his, which was my introduction to management.

高产出管理是他的另一本伟大的书，这是我对管理的介绍。

At least, his theory of management.

至少，他的管理理论。

So just loved that book.

所以很喜欢那本书。

And then Only the Paranoid Survive talks about Intel's experience where they actually had something like this happen that I wasn't aware of, and we all know Intel as the microprocessor company, Intel Inside.

然后只有偏执狂才能生存谈论英特尔的经历，他们实际上发生了我不知道的事情，我们都知道英特尔是微处理器公司，Intel Inside。

At least in the 80s, 90s.

至少在80、90年代是这样。

Drew Houston: But before, they were in microprocessors.

德鲁·休斯顿：但在此之前，它们是在微处理器中。

They sold memory, RAM.

他们出售内存、RAM。

In the 70s, they were running into a situation where they were really high growth, successful business selling memory.

在 70 年代，他们遇到了这样的情况：他们是真正高增长、成功的内存销售企业。

But then, they had these Japanese competitors that were just building memory faster, better, cheaper.

但当时，他们的日本竞争对手只是在更快、更好、更便宜地构建内存。

Just on every dimension.

就在每个维度上。

And potentially, also, things like anti-competitive things where the government might be subsidizing these manufacturers.

还有可能是政府可能补贴这些制造商的反竞争行为。

This feeling not only they might just be better at the game, but there's also not a level playing field.

这种感觉不仅是他们在比赛中可能表现得更好，而且还没有一个公平的竞争环境。

Drew Houston: But meanwhile, you wouldn't see it in their numbers.

德鲁·休斯顿：但与此同时，你不会在他们的数据中看到这一点。

They're still growing.

他们还在成长。

And just that there were these weird dissonant experiences where salespeople just suddenly have problems selling into accounts that used to be a slam dunk, or things that used to work just stop working.

只是有一些奇怪的、不和谐的经历，销售人员突然在向曾经成功的客户销售产品时遇到问题，或者过去有效的东西突然失效了。

And this happens.

这发生了。

Blackberry's, and Nokia's best sales years happened in the years after launching the iPhone.

黑莓和诺基亚的最佳销售年份发生在推出 iPhone 后的几年。

So these things don't actually change immediately.

所以这些事情实际上并不会立即改变。

And so Andy labeled these moments strategic inflection points for a company, and I'm like, "Yeah.

因此，安迪将这些时刻标记为公司的战略转折点，我说，“是的。

Then, we're definitely in a strategic inflection point."

那么，我们肯定正处于一个战略转折点。”

Drew Houston: But they were dealing with, "Oka., our whole business is memory.

德鲁·休斯顿：但他们正在处理，“好吧，我们的整个业务就是内存。

How do we deal with this competition?" And there's this little vignette where he and Gordon Moore, one of the other co-founders of Intel, said, "Hey, let's pretend we're consultants to ourselves.

我们该如何应对这场竞争？”有一个小插曲，他和英特尔的另一位联合创始人戈登摩尔说：“嘿，让我们假装我们是自己的顾问。

What would we do?" And what they immediately decided was, "Oh, well, we clearly get out of the memory business, and put all of our chips on this sketchy little microprocessor thing that was much smaller.

我们该怎么办？”他们立即决定，“哦，好吧，我们显然退出了内存业务，并将所有芯片放在这个小得多的粗略小型微处理器上。

But very high growth, and potentially big market." And then they're like, "Well, why don't we do that?"

但增长速度非常快，而且市场潜力巨大。”然后他们会说，“好吧，我们为什么不这样做呢？”

Drew Houston: Only problem with that is it's like Google saying, "Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：唯一的问题是谷歌说：“是的。

Let's get out of search, and go all in on Gmail, or something, or YouTube." So it just seemed insane.

让我们摆脱搜索，全力投入 Gmail 之类的东西，或者 YouTube。”所以这看起来很疯狂。

Andy cautions in the book that, "Look, most of the time CEOs want options.

安迪在书中警告说：“看，大多数时候首席执行官都想要选择。

They want to hedge their bets, but what you really want to do in these strategic inflection points is go all in one thing." Or as Mark Twain put it, "Put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket." And I was like, "All right.

他们想要对冲自己的赌注，但在这些战略拐点上你真正想做的是全力以赴做一件事。”或者正如马克·吐温所说，“把所有的鸡蛋放在一个篮子里，然后看好那个篮子。”我当时想，“好吧。

This makes sense to me, but man, this is going to be painful." So we go away for 4th of July.

这对我来说是有道理的，但是伙计，这会很痛苦。”所以我们7月4日离开。

I'm with my family in New Hampshire.

我和我的家人在新罕布什尔州。

I reread the book, I come back.

我又看了一遍书，回来了。

All right.

好的。

I'm like, "Well, we really got to do it." Then, I just killed Carousel, killed Mailbox.

我想，“好吧，我们真的必须这么做。”然后，我就杀掉了Carousel，杀掉了Mailbox。

Went all in on productivity...

全力以赴提高生产力...

Drew Houston: Killed mailbox, went all in on productivity.

德鲁·休斯顿：消灭邮箱，全力提高生产力。

To some extent, that was a relatively easy decision because most of our subscribers, 80% of people paying for Dropbox were using it at work.

从某种程度上来说，这是一个相对容易的决定，因为我们的大多数订阅者（80% 为 Dropbox 付费的人）都是在工作中使用它。

But that meant foreclosing on photo sharing and consumer and storage and all these things that Dropbox had become synonymous with and to this day are some of the things that we're most recognized for.

但这意味着取消照片共享、消费者和存储以及所有这些 Dropbox 已成为代名词的东西，直到今天，它们仍然是我们最受认可的一些东西。

And I wish I could say then everything got better.

我希望我能说一切都变得更好了。

It was the opposite, actually, the narrative completely flipped on the company.

事实上，事实恰恰相反，公司的情况完全相反。

The press started, we killed these new products, and then internally and externally, the narrative became super negative.

媒体开始报道，我们扼杀了这些新产品，然后在内部和外部，叙述变得非常负面。

Articles would come out every week or two, like, oh, Dropbox could be the first dead deck of corn.

每隔一两周就会出现一些文章，比如，哦，Dropbox 可能是第一批死掉的玉米。

And then sometimes we've all seen this in tech companies get in this washing machine of self-perpetuating negative press.

有时我们都看到科技公司陷入了自我延续的负面新闻洗衣机中。

And if it goes deep enough, I mean, Uber had this for a while later, Meta's had this over their history, lots of companies where you just can't get the monkey off your back.

如果它足够深入的话，我的意思是，Uber 后来有一段时间也有这种情况，Meta 在他们的历史上也有这种情况，很多公司都让你无法摆脱猴子的困扰。

Drew Houston: And then because what the reporters end up doing is they basically park their metaphorical van behind your office.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后因为记者最终所做的就是他们基本上将他们的隐喻货车停在你的办公室后面。

They interview all the people that you just fired and then print everything that they say anonymously as if it were facts.

他们采访所有你刚刚解雇的人，然后匿名打印他们所说的一切，就好像它们是事实一样。

And there's a lot of truth to what the press were saying, so I can't really blame them or saying they were being unfair, but it immediately put recruiting into this deep freeze.

媒体所说的有很多事实，所以我不能真正责怪他们或说他们不公平，但这立即使招聘陷入了深度冻结。

You're just in the situation.

你只是处于这种情况。

You've started this company, it's been super successful, and then suddenly your employees don't want to wear your T-shirt anymore.

您创办了这家公司，非常成功，然后突然您的员工不想再穿您的 T 恤了。

And frankly, you don't even want to wear your T-shirt anymore.

坦白说，你甚至不想再穿你的 T 恤了。

It's just your pride in your own company takes a big hit.

只是你对自己公司的自豪感受到了很大的打击。

Drew Houston: And meanwhile, I've talked mostly about the external market competitive forces, but inside the company was a mess too.

德鲁·休斯顿：同时，我主要谈论的是外部市场竞争力量，但公司内部也很混乱。

The business's revenue had scaled so much faster than our ability to hire and build the right infrastructure and operations internally.

该业务的收入增长速度远远快于我们在内部雇用和构建合适的基础设施和运营的能力。

And so everybody's just panicking and being like, "All right, well good, Drew, we're not doing Carousel, we're not doing Mailbox.

所以每个人都惊慌失措，然后说：“好吧，好吧，德鲁，我们不做轮播，我们不做邮箱。

What are we doing?" And the truth was like, if I knew the answer to that, we would be doing it, but it's just this is going to take some time to figure out.

我们在做什么？”事实是，如果我知道答案，我们就会这样做，但这只是需要一些时间才能弄清楚。

So it was pretty tough when everybody's looking to you as the founder and CEO looking for quick fixes and answers, and also just wondering, how the hell did you get us in this situation?

因此，当每个人都指望你作为创始人和首席执行官寻求快速解决方案和答案时，这是相当困难的，并且只是想知道，你到底是如何让我们陷入这种境地的？

Lenny Rachitsky: Wow.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：哇。

So we're going to talk about how you're actually turning things around and the work you're doing now, learning from this experience.

因此，我们将讨论您如何真正扭转局面，以及您现在正在做的工作，并从这次经验中学习。

But I have a lot of questions about this part of the journey.

但我对这段旅程有很多疑问。

Lenny Rachitsky: Just to almost summarize the journey, it's like launch, killing it, viral, find all these opportunities, find all these big markets.

Lenny Rachitsky：概括一下整个旅程，就像发布、杀死它、病毒式传播一样，找到所有这些机会，找到所有这些大市场。

You start three different product lines.

您开始了三个不同的产品线。

There's the enterprise use case, there's the consumer file storage use case, there's photo sharing, there's productivity, and then basically every big incumbent's like, okay, great, we're going to come eat your lunch.

有企业用例，有消费者文件存储用例，有照片共享，有生产力，然后基本上每个大的现任者都会说，好吧，太好了，我们要来吃你的午餐。

And you end up fighting wars on three or four fronts against the big kahunas that have infinite cash and can do whatever they want.

最终你会在三四个战线上与那些拥有无限现金并且可以为所欲为的大魔王进行战争。

It's interesting the way you described the Apple launch of just like it was this mushroom cloud you didn't quite see for a while, but the Google Photos launch was like, okay, that was more clear of like, okay, this is bad news.

有趣的是，你描述苹果发布的方式就像是你有一段时间没有看到的蘑菇云，但谷歌照片的发布就像，好吧，这更清楚，好吧，这是个坏消息。

I know it's always easy in hindsight of like, oh, I should have done something different when Apple launched this thing.

我知道事后看来总是很容易，哦，当苹果推出这个东西时，我应该做一些不同的事情。

But is there anything maybe you could have done, or was it even possible to have adjusted course at that point?

但有什么是你可以做的，或者甚至有可能在那时调整路线吗？

Or was it like, okay, this is tough and we need time to figure it out?

或者是，好吧，这很困难，我们需要时间来解决这个问题？

Drew Houston: Well, we panicked about the Apple thing too, because that also, that created a much smaller version of the tempest in a teapot that the Google Photos did.

德鲁·休斯顿：嗯，我们也对苹果的事情感到恐慌，因为这也创造了一个比谷歌照片小得多的茶壶里的暴风雨。

It was just much less public.

只是公开程度要低得多。

Or it was just less obvious that we would be so out position.

或者说我们的处境不太明显。

And actually we were more surprised to the upside when it's Google Drive launches, iCloud launches, OneDrive launches.

事实上，当 Google Drive 发布、iCloud 发布、OneDrive 发布时，我们对它的优势更加惊讶。

And even as they build version two that we just didn't really notice that much of a problem.

即使他们构建了第二版，我们也没有真正注意到那么大的问题。

And I also studied over the years what happened in Netscape and companies like MySpace or these other cautionary tales.

多年来我还研究了 Netscape 和 MySpace 等公司或其他警示故事中发生的事情。

And interestingly, Internet Explorer was a thing that eventually undermined Netscape enough to permanently throw it into a negative trajectory.

有趣的是，Internet Explorer 最终对 Netscape 造成了巨大的损害，使其永久陷入负面轨道。

But Internet Explorer 1.0, 2.0, even maybe 3.0 just weren't that good and didn't really do anything but Internet Explorer 4.0, 5.0 and all the bundling, that really made a big difference, or big negative difference.

但是 Internet Explorer 1.0、2.0，甚至可能是 3.0 只是没有那么好，除了 Internet Explorer 4.0、5.0 和所有捆绑产品之外，没有真正做任何事情，这确实产生了很大的差异，或者说很大的负面差异。

Drew Houston: And then another thing that was interesting was, so there's a big time lag where between when these products launch and when they actually have an impact, because often it's not so much the existence of the product or it's availability, it's the constant bundling or the constant iteration, or it's the boa constrictor, in any given second, it's not much tighter, but over the following day, you're in a bad place.

德鲁·休斯顿：另一件有趣的事情是，这些产品推出和真正产生影响之间存在很大的时间滞后，因为通常不是产品的存在或可用性，而是不断的捆绑或不断的迭代，或者是蟒蛇，在任何给定的秒内，它并没有变得更紧，但在第二天，你的处境就很糟糕。

Drew Houston: But another thing that was interesting was one cool thing that we got to do and moving to California is you get to actually meet people who had been at these companies.

德鲁·休斯顿：但另一件有趣的事情是我们必须做的一件很酷的事情，搬到加利福尼亚州是你可以真正见到曾经在这些公司工作过的人。

And one of those people was a guy named Bill Campbell who was at Netscape during that whole period, and I had asked him, I'm like, "Man, that's really unfair.

其中一个名叫比尔·坎贝尔（Bill Campbell）的人在那段时间一直在网景工作，我问他，我想，“伙计，这真的不公平。

That sucks what happened with Microsoft and bundling with Windows and all these things and the antitrust and this and that." And he's looked at me, he laughed at and snorted and he's like, "Microsoft did not kill us.

微软发生的事情以及与 Windows 的捆绑以及所有这些事情以及反垄断以及这样那样的事情真是太糟糕了。”他看着我，嘲笑我，哼了一声，他说：“微软并没有杀了我们。

We killed ourselves." And so that was the other half of what was the problem within Dropbox was a lot of our wounds were self-inflicted in that we were struggling to keep scaling and launching all these products.

我们自杀了。”这就是 Dropbox 内部问题的另一半，我们的很多伤害都是我们自己造成的，因为我们在努力继续扩展和推出所有这些产品。

And the Dropbox products had stagnated.

Dropbox 产品也停滞不前。

Drew Houston: And I started to learn the hard way that, okay, yeah, I now understand what Bill is talking about, because we were hiring all these smart people, but the things we would do as a company would seem really stupid.

德鲁·休斯顿：我开始通过艰难的方式了解到，好吧，是的，我现在明白比尔在说什么，因为我们雇用了所有这些聪明的人，但我们作为一家公司所做的事情似乎非常愚蠢。

And then some of these things were me personally, like yeah, I knew about from reading all these different things, but for whatever reason, I guess we just kept going anyhow.

其中一些事情是我个人的，是的，我通过阅读所有这些不同的事情而知道，但无论出于何种原因，我想我们无论如何都会继续前进。

We were just too confident in our ability to respond, or we got lulled into this complacency, we were like, " Oh, well." Because it hasn't been a problem, it won't be a problem in the future.

我们对自己的反应能力过于自信，或者我们陷入了这种自满情绪，我们就像，“哦，好吧。”因为以前不是问题，以后也不会是问题。

Drew Houston: But I'd say there's something about the Google Photos launch that just really set things off kilter.

德鲁·休斯顿：但我想说的是，谷歌照片的推出确实让事情变得不那么顺利。

And then also for me personally, I think, I'd go from feeling good but stressed out all the time to mostly feeling bad all the time.

对于我个人来说，我想，我会从感觉良好但一直压力很大，变成一直感觉很糟糕。

And I just remember leaving, really trying to get away from the office for a little bit during this period, picked my teeth up off the ground.

我只记得离开时，在这段时间里我真的很想离开办公室一会儿，把地上的牙齿捡起来。

And the good news, I bought a place in Hawaii, so I was doing that in Hawaii, but didn't feel very good in any way.

好消息是，我在夏威夷买了一个地方，所以我在夏威夷这样做，但感觉不太好。

Drew Houston: And then I learned.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后我就知道了。

I had to really figure out a lot of different things for myself to be the leader that could get us through this.

我必须真正为自己想出很多不同的事情，才能成为能够帮助我们度过难关的领导者。

Because mostly what I felt was like, man, I felt like we'd been doing such a good job, but now, man, if I really screw this up, or maybe I don't know what I'm doing.

因为我主要的感觉是，伙计，我觉得我们做得很好，但现在，伙计，如果我真的把事情搞砸了，或者也许我不知道自己在做什么。

And then I had to really reset on a number of fronts.

然后我必须在很多方面进行真正的重置。

One is I just remember thinking my 18-year-old self would be like, what the hell are you complaining about?

一是我只记得我18岁时的自己会是什么样子，你到底在抱怨什么？

You did it.

你做到了。

This is so great, and yet I felt so bad about things.

这真是太棒了，但我却感觉很糟糕。

And so I'm like, yeah, both of those things are true.

所以我想，是的，这两件事都是真的。

How do I navigate that?

我该如何导航？

And I think one part that was really helpful is getting a sense of equanimity basically, and doing a lot around mindfulness and meditation to distance...

我认为真正有用的一部分是基本上获得一种平静感，并围绕正念和冥想进行大量工作以保持距离......

One thing that happens when you're a founder and your company succeeds is your identity is fused with the company.

当您作为创始人并且您的公司取得成功时，会发生的一件事是您的身份与公司融合在一起。

And so it's easy to get into a situation where you only feel good if the company's...

因此，很容易陷入这样一种情况：只有当公司......

Or how you feel is how the company is doing, and you need to separate that a little bit.

或者你的感受就是公司的表现，你需要将其分开一点。

So what that looked like for me is recognizing, yeah, there's really not an easy button that keeps things up and to the right forever.

所以对我来说，这就是认识到，是的，确实没有一个简单的按钮可以让事情永远保持正确。

And most of the entrepreneurs that are my heroes had various periods of wandering in the desert.

大多数我心目中的英雄企业家都曾经历过不同时期的沙漠漂泊。

Those things instead of just being problems were probably the crucible that forged the people that they became.

这些事情不仅仅是问题，很可能是锻造他们成为这样的人的熔炉。

So the presence of badness is not necessarily you are bad.

所以坏的存在并不一定意味着你是坏的。

And it's like, yeah, now you're just getting your stripes as an entrepreneur.

就好像，是的，现在你刚刚获得了企业家的资格。

Drew Houston: And people were really helpful during that period.

德鲁·休斯顿：在那段时期人们真的很有帮助。

So I mentioned Bill Campbell.

所以我提到了比尔·坎贝尔。

He was nice enough that we just stayed in touch and he would take me out to dinner every now and then.

他很好，我们一直保持联系，他时不时带我出去吃饭。

And I would be freaking out, but I was always surprised he'd never seemed to be freaking out.

我会吓坏了，但我总是很惊讶他似乎从来没有吓坏过。

And mostly he'd just be saying like, all right, he'd dust you off and smack you and say, get your ass back out there.

大多数时候他只是说，好吧，他会掸掉你身上的灰尘，然后打你一巴掌，然后说，滚回去。

And he was literally a coach of the Columbia football team in addition to being a great technology executive and advisor to many of the great founders that I looked up to.

他实际上是哥伦比亚橄榄球队的教练，同时也是一位出色的技术主管和我尊敬的许多伟大创始人的顾问。

He was really helpful because he helped me believe in myself even when I wouldn't believe in myself.

他真的很有帮助，因为即使我不相信自己，他也帮助我相信自己。

And then people like Andy Grove who had written all these books, I'm like, well, at least I'm having this problem.

然后像安迪·格罗夫这样写了所有这些书的人，我想，好吧，至少我遇到了这个问题。

But yeah, then that raised a question for me.

但是，是的，这给我提出了一个问题。

I'm like, okay, I've been through this chapter one where everything's up and to the right, but I ran out of merit badges or Xbox achievements to collect.

我想，好吧，我已经完成了第一章，一切都正常，但我已经没有任何荣誉徽章或 Xbox 成就可供收集了。

I was like, we did it.

我当时想，我们做到了。

We got the product to this many users, we got it to where we got this valuation, or let me back up.

我们把产品提供给了这么多用户，我们把它带到了我们得到这个估值的地方，或者让我支持一下。

So my whole life, or it's common, I think for a lot of founders, especially if you get good grades and stuff, you follow pretty linear path from childhood, from first get the right test scores, then get into the right college, get into the right college, take the right classes, get the right internship, get the right job.

所以我的一生，或者说这是很常见的，我认为对于很多创始人来说，特别是如果你取得了好成绩之类的东西，你从童年起就遵循着相当线性的道路，从首先获得正确的考试成绩，然后进入正确的大学，进入正确的大学，参加正确的课程，获得正确的实习，找到正确的工作。

And early startup life is like that a lot.

早期的创业生活也经常如此。

It's like, okay, have an idea.

就像，好吧，有一个想法。

Find a co-founder, get into Y Combinator, get funding from Sequoia.

找到联合创始人，进入 Y Combinator，获得红杉资本的资金。

Drew Houston: Watch an MVP just in 10 million, a hundred million, billion valuation.

德鲁·休斯顿：看看 MVP 的估值只有 1000 万、1 亿、10 亿。

And I felt like we'd cleared all that.

我觉得我们已经清除了所有这些。

And so actually one of the other problems was, I don't even know what Dropbox needs to be and I don't even know what I need that I want to be in the world.

事实上，其他问题之一是，我什至不知道 Dropbox 需要什么，我什至不知道我想要进入这个世界需要什么。

And so part of this was also reconnecting to some kind of sense of purpose, because if I was really honest with myself, I was like, well, I'm just checking boxes and advancing and leveling up like a video game or something, but now I'm here.

因此，其中一部分也是重新连接到某种目的感，因为如果我真的对自己诚实，我会想，好吧，我只是像电子游戏或其他东西一样勾选框并前进和升级，但现在我在这里。

I'm like, all right, is it just big numbers bigger?

我想，好吧，只是数字更大吗？

It's also not that fun to just launch something that you put your soul into and then just have it get crushed with these competitors.

仅仅推出一些你投入了全部精力的东西，然后就被这些竞争对手压垮，这也不是那么有趣。

It's even worse when you're bringing all these hundred other people who worked on that thing through that meat grinder too.

更糟糕的是，当你把所有其他数百人也通过绞肉机从事这件事时，情况会更糟。

Drew Houston: So are we just inventing things 10 minutes before Google and Apple do?

德鲁·休斯顿：那么我们只是比谷歌和苹果早 10 分钟发明东西吗？

If not, what are we doing?

如果没有，我们在做什么？

And then if we're really, really honest with ourselves, I think it's hard to argue that no one would've invented cloud photo gallery that wasn't constrained to your local storage.

然后，如果我们对自己真的非常诚实，我认为很难说没有人会发明不受本地存储限制的云照片库。

So I had to really rethink what does the company need to do.

所以我必须真正重新思考公司需要做什么。

That actually took a longer time to answer than I wanted, but then also just what do I want to do?

这实际上花了比我想要的更长的时间来回答，但我到底想做什么？

And I was like, well, you know what?

我当时想，好吧，你知道吗？

I'm going to do this.

我要做这个。

Drew Houston: What I ended up settling on was like, look, coming back to my 18-year-old self, I was like, all right, stop complaining.

德鲁·休斯顿：我最终决定，看，回到 18 岁的自己，我想，好吧，别抱怨了。

This is a pretty good situation.

这是一个非常好的情况。

You wanted something where the learning curve would be steep.

你想要一些学习曲线陡峭的东西。

Here it is.

这里是。

You get to do this really meaningful work to build things for millions of people, work with awesome teammates.

你可以做这项真正有意义的工作，为数百万人构建东西，与优秀的队友一起工作。

There's always good things about it, and you've chosen this life, so stop complaining about the burdens because it's really dangerous if you start to resent the job or feel like a victim because that's just corrosive to everything else that you can get in this spin cycle.

工作总是有好处的，而且你选择了这种生活，所以不要再抱怨负担了，因为如果你开始怨恨这份工作或感觉自己像个受害者，那真的很危险，因为这只会腐蚀你在这个旋转周期中所能得到的一切。

Lenny Rachitsky: What helped you come to that place?

Lenny Rachitsky：是什么帮助你来到这个地方的？

Because that sounds like a very hard place to get to and a very important place.

因为那听起来像是一个非常难以到达的地方，但却是一个非常重要的地方。

Was that Bill Campbell advice?

这是比尔·坎贝尔的建议吗？

How long did it take you to go from this is not going well and life sucks to, okay, let's look at it this way?

你花了多长时间才从不顺利、生活糟糕到“好吧，让我们这样看”？

Drew Houston: I think there were a couple unlocks that were pretty fast, but I think again, this was not like, oh, then I felt better and we lived happily ever after at all.

德鲁·休斯顿：我认为有几个解锁速度相当快，但我再次想，这并不是，哦，然后我感觉好多了，我们从此过上了幸福的生活。

There were some moments of recognition where I was able to, I always try to get away from the mayhem or the whirlwind and recenter myself and do think weeks and things like that.

有一些我能够认识到的时刻，我总是试图摆脱混乱或旋风，重新审视自己，并确实思考几周之类的事情。

And so those were really helpful because I felt when I diagnosed, well, when I'm on this treadmill and just firefighting or how did I miss this important thing?

所以这些真的很有帮助，因为当我诊断时，我感觉，嗯，当我在跑步机上救火时，或者我怎么错过了这件重要的事情？

It's like, well, basically the root causes of being on the treadmills, I was too busy firing to aim, and then I thought I would do my aiming on vacations and things like that.

这就像，嗯，基本上是在跑步机上的根本原因，我太忙于射击而无法瞄准，然后我想我应该在假期之类的事情上瞄准。

But no, I need to get off the treadmill every now and then and make the space to really address some of these bigger questions.

但不，我需要时不时地离开跑步机，腾出空间来真正解决一些更大的问题。

Drew Houston: Because it's not like I didn't forget about them.

德鲁·休斯顿：因为我并不是没有忘记他们。

They just were always below the fold on my to-do list to deal with.

它们总是位于我要处理的待办事项列表的下方。

And then until a few years go by and you're like, wait.

然后直到几年过去，你就会想，等等。

Yeah, we really were just strategically out of position.

是的，我们确实只是在战略上失位了。

The other way I came to some of these conclusions is a combination of things.

我得出其中一些结论的另一种方式是综合多种因素。

So I think picking up a meditation or mindfulness practice, having therapists personally, having coaches, having friends and mentors, other founder friends.

所以我认为进行冥想或正念练习，有个人治疗师，有教练，有朋友和导师，还有其他创始人朋友。

And so I wouldn't say it was any one thing, but I think you have to build this whole ecosystem of support around yourself and recognize no one's going to do that for you.

所以我不会说这是任何一件事，但我认为你必须围绕自己建立整个支持生态系统，并认识到没有人会为你做这件事。

And it's super important.

这非常重要。

Drew Houston: And then to Bill's other point, he was like, yeah, Microsoft wasn't killing us, we were killing ourselves, I think having to ask some hard questions to myself of, yeah, some of these wounds were self-inflicted.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后对于比尔的另一点，他说，是的，微软没有杀死我们，我们正在自杀，我认为必须向自己问一些棘手的问题，是的，其中一些伤口是我们自己造成的。

As much as there might be, I could look at this and say, oh, Microsoft is mean, or Google was mean, or Apple was mean, but I'm like, I drove the ship towards these rocks.

尽管有可能，我可以看着这个说，哦，微软很卑鄙，或者谷歌很卑鄙，或者苹果很卑鄙，但我想，我把船开向这些岩石。

So that's one downside of being founder, CEO.

这就是身为创始人兼首席执行官的缺点之一。

You can't blame the last guy.

你不能责怪最后一个人。

I think one of the big questions every founder has to figure out is not just, how do I have equanimity?

我认为每个创始人必须弄清楚的大问题之一不仅仅是，我如何保持平静？

What's my purpose?

我的目的是什么？

But then also, what am I doing that is destroying the company?

但话又说回来，我做了什么会毁掉公司的事情呢？

Drew Houston: Because everybody's got strengths and weaknesses, but as CEO, both your strengths and your weaknesses are massively amplified and a lot of blind spots in your personality can become huge cultural dysfunctions in the company.

德鲁·休斯顿：因为每个人都有优点和缺点，但作为首席执行官，你的优点和缺点都会被大大放大，你性格中的许多盲点可能会成为公司巨大的文化障碍。

And so step one to dealing with that is building awareness.

因此，解决这个问题的第一步就是建立意识。

And one thing that floated around the company for a while was the Enneagram, which on the surface is a personality typing thing like Myers-Briggs.

公司里流行了一段时间的九型人格，从表面上看，它是一种类似于迈尔斯-布里格斯的性格类型。

I often describe it as it's like Myers-Briggs, but actually useful.

我经常将其描述为类似于 Myers-Briggs，但实际上很有用。

The way it works is it's a personality typing system.

它的工作原理是它是一个个性输入系统。

You get a number from one through nine that's your dominant...

你会得到一个从一到九的数字，这是你的主导......

Or there's nine types that are numbered.

或者有九种类型被编号。

It's similar to Myers-Briggs in that Myers-Briggs has 16 types of letters like ENFJ or different things.

它与 Myers-Briggs 类似，Myers-Briggs 有 16 种字母，例如 ENFJ 或不同的东西。

But I find that Myers-Briggs is more descriptive.

So it tells you, okay, you're an introvert, not an extrovert or vice versa.

所以它告诉你，好吧，你是一个内向的人，而不是一个外向的人，反之亦然。

You're judging instead of perceiving.

你在判断而不是感知。

But I could never really work out what that meant.

但我永远无法真正理解这意味着什么。

And so it's descriptive versus predictive or causal.

因此，它是描述性的，而不是预测性的或因果性的。

Drew Houston: Enneagram I find is the theory that is really about your fundamental motivations.

What are you running towards and what are you running away from?

你在奔向什么，又在逃避什么？

And the theory goes through some combination of your wiring from your genetics and your early childhood.

这个理论将你的遗传基因和你的童年时期的联系结合起来。

Your autopilot is fixed after your childhood in that you just have instinctive responses to things.

你的自动驾驶仪在你童年之后就固定下来了，因为你对事物只有本能的反应。

Now it's autopilot.

It doesn't mean it's your destiny.

这并不意味着这是你的命运。

You could override it, but it's super important to become aware of what are you running from and towards.

你可以忽略它，但了解你正在逃避什么和奔向什么是非常重要的。

And the Enneagram gives you a really good map to do that.

九型人格为你提供了一张非常好的地图来做到这一点。

Drew Houston: And so I'm reading this book and it starts by you type yourself, and I'm rolling my eyes.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以我正在读这本书，它从你自己打字开始，我翻白眼。

I'm like, okay, I'm a seven.

我想，好吧，我是七岁。

What's a seven?

什么是七？

And then you read, each type has its own chapter and you read the chapter and I was like, oh my God, this completely describes who I am down to my core.

然后你读到，每种类型都有自己的章节，当你读到这一章时，我就想，天哪，这完全描述了我的核心。

And I was almost looking over my shoulder.

我几乎要回头看。

Who the hell did this?

这到底是谁干的？

I thought I was a special snowflake, but apparently not.

Okay, I'm listening.

好的，我在听。

And with a lot of my early coaching experiences, which are, you do a 360, your coach sits you down, they're like, here are your strengths.

In my case, it would be things like, oh, you're really creative and you like new ideas.

就我而言，这会是这样的事情，哦，你真的很有创意，而且你喜欢新想法。

That's okay.

没关系。

And second, you really love people.

其次，你真的很爱别人。

You build great relationships with people.

您与人们建立了良好的关系。

I'm like, okay.

我想，好吧。

Uh-huh.

嗯嗯。

Third, you're really comfortable in chaos and resilient.

I was like, this coaching thing is great.

我当时想，这种教练的事情很棒。

See, yeah, that was my first coach.

看，是的，那是我的第一位教练。

And then you flip to your development areas because no one calls them weaknesses.

Drew Houston: It's like, all right, one is you're bored by routine and really undisciplined.

Second is you're really conflict avoidant.

其次，你真的很回避冲突。

And third is you're intuitive, but you're also pretty chaotic and don't create enough structure for people so they're mostly confused.

And when you pair the two together, you're like, oh, wait.

Yeah, I'm creative and like new ideas, but I'm bored by routine and I'm a bit of a space cadet.

All right, you love good relationships with people, but you don't want to make them unhappy so you don't tell them the truth basically about things that are difficult to hear.

好吧，你喜欢与人建立良好的关系，但你不想让他们不高兴，所以你基本上不会告诉他们一些难以听到的事情的真相。

And it's going to be a similar map of things depending on your personality type or circumstances.

But the Enneagram was that map for me to be like, okay, I've got these things that are genuinely great, but I need to address these downsides of the company's conflict avoidant, so we're not telling the truth and then making a bunch of predictable mistakes, or I'm creating this really chaotic environment where people don't know what they're supposed to be doing.

但九型人格对我来说是一张地图，好吧，我已经拥有了这些真正很棒的东西，但我需要解决公司避免冲突的缺点，所以我们不会说实话，然后犯下一堆可预见的错误，或者我正在创造一个非常混乱的环境，人们不知道他们应该做什么。

Drew Houston: That's a problem.

德鲁·休斯顿：这是一个问题。

My personality is quite directly, I'm going to torpedo the company unless I do something about it.

The same is true for any founder.

对于任何创始人来说都是如此。

And I'm a type seven, it's the enthusiast.

我是七类人，是狂热者。

It's like, again, central casting is like a lot of new things and creative and love just interesting things.

But then a space cadet, FOMO, some of the shadow side of it, and every type has a thing like that.

So really understanding, okay then, I was also just frustrated in the day-to-day of my work, I'm like, yeah, I'm not really getting to do these creative things where I'm too busy firing to aim.

所以真的理解，好吧，我也只是在日常工作中感到沮丧，我想，是的，我并没有真正去做这些创造性的事情，因为我太忙于射击而无法瞄准。

I'm missing these bigger picture things that are really taking the ship way too close to the rocks.

Okay.

好的。

Then I need to then understand what those things are and either work on myself or hire the right people who don't have those issues or one way or another, just make it so the company is not so exposed to my personal dysfunction.

然后我需要了解这些事情是什么，要么自己解决，要么雇用没有这些问题的合适人选，或者以某种方式，这样公司就不会那么容易受到我个人功能障碍的影响。

Drew Houston: And so yeah, it was a whole constellation of things like that where it's like, all right, we have to get...

I mean, after this whole tailspin, we got to work.

我的意思是，在这整个混乱之后，我们开始工作了。

I'm like, all right, first business issues.

我想，好吧，首先是业务问题。

The most urgent issues were just blowing all this cash.

最紧迫的问题就是花掉所有这些现金。

We need to get the P&L to look a lot better and get out of this land grab mode or fighting with Google on giving more free storage away or just being in these fundamentally unprofitable things.

我们需要让损益表看起来更好，摆脱这种土地掠夺模式，或者与谷歌争夺更多免费存储空间，或者只是从事这些根本上无利可图的事情。

And so we did that.

所以我们就这么做了。

We cut the unprofitable parts of the business.

我们削减了业务中不盈利的部分。

We turned cash flow positive in 2016, maybe several months after this reckoning, and that set the tracks for getting into a billion run rate in 2017, going public in 2018.

2016 年，我们的现金流转为正数，可能是在这次清算之后几个月，这为 2017 年进入 10 亿美元的运行速度、2018 年上市奠定了基础。

Drew Houston: We had to come up with a new vision and mission for the company, which I'll maybe save for chapter three.

德鲁·休斯顿：我们必须为公司提出新的愿景和使命，我可能会将其保留到第三章。

And then I was also just trying to do things that helped sustain me through the difficult things.

然后我也只是尝试做一些能够帮助我度过困难的事情。

I'm like, well, I am an engineer.

我想，好吧，我是一名工程师。

As a little kid, I was coding since childhood.

作为一个小孩子，我从小就开始编码。

I knew I wanted be a founder.

我知道我想成为一名创始人。

I didn't know I wanted be a CEO, so I backed into being a CEO.

我不知道自己想成为一名首席执行官，所以我选择了成为一名首席执行官。

And then, so I'm like, man, there's a lot of tedious things about being an executive.

So I was like, I'm going to find ways to automate tedious parts of my job and learn machine learning in 2016 and '17, and that ended up being really important later on.

所以我想，我将在 2016 年和 17 年找到方法来自动化工作中乏味的部分并学习机器学习，这在后来变得非常重要。

But then also it's just coming to terms with my job and what I wanted to do from a personal perspective, which included things like, oh, I'm lucky in that being a CEO is, I always wanted a steep learning curve.

但从个人角度来看，这只是接受我的工作和我想做的事情，其中包括诸如，哦，我很幸运，作为一名首席执行官，我一直想要一个陡峭的学习曲线。

Drew Houston: In a lot of professions like in sports or math or chess or certain academic fields, you peak in your twenties or thirties.

德鲁·休斯顿：在很多职业中，比如体育、数学、国际象棋或某些学术领域，你的巅峰时期是二三十岁。

CEO's not like that.

CEO不是这样的。

You can go your whole life and still not be a master.

你可以走一辈子，但仍然成不了大师。

So I'm like, for better or worse, it's pretty cool that I can do this kind of work.

所以我想，无论好坏，我能做这种工作真是太酷了。

And then I don't really get that much out of just chasing bigger numbers.

然后，仅仅追求更大的数字我并没有真正得到那么多。

The thing that is my favorite thing about Dropbox is looking over someone's shoulder in Starbucks and seeing if the little Dropbox icon is there.

关于 Dropbox，我最喜欢的一点是在星巴克里从某人的肩膀上看是否有 Dropbox 小图标。

Building something that becomes a verb, taking some of the pain out of technology, things like that.

构建一些可以成为动词的东西，减轻技术带来的一些痛苦，诸如此类。

So really reorienting.

所以真的要重新定位。

Yeah, it's not about just the external scoreboard just much.

是的，这不仅仅是外部记分牌的问题。

It's more about the craft of being a great CEO and building things I'm really proud of or really making a difference.

更多的是关于成为一名伟大首席执行官的技巧，以及打造令我真正引以为豪或真正有所作为的事物。

And so those kinds of things, none of them all coalesce.

所以这些事情，没有一个能够全部结合起来。

It's like this lens that slowly and stubbornly comes into focus, but making the time to have some of that reflection was super important.

就像这个镜头缓慢而顽固地聚焦一样，但花时间进行一些反思是非常重要的。

Lenny Rachitsky: So much of what you're describing makes me think about founder mode in a lot of different ways.

Lenny Rachitsky：你所描述的很多内容让我从很多不同的角度思考创始人模式。

One is your point about how you didn't have a lot of time to think about where things might be going and how the markets are shifting, and that has to happen, basically, no one else is going to do that if it's not you.

一是你的观点是，你没有太多时间思考事情可能会走向何方以及市场如何变化，而这必须发生，基本上，如果不是你，没有其他人会这样做。

Also, just this idea of how much of the solution was you understanding yourself better, reflecting on where you have strengths and weaknesses.

另外，这个解决方案的想法是让你更好地了解自己，反思你的优势和劣势。

Also, I'll mention, so before I had Brian Chesky on the podcast, I asked you, "What should I ask Brian?" And you asked me to ask him basically about founder mode, which was the first time I think you talked about it, and now it's like this whole thing.

Also, I'll mention, so before I had Brian Chesky on the podcast, I asked you, "What should I ask Brian?"你让我问他关于创始人模式的问题，我认为这是你第一次谈论它，现在就像整个事情一样。

So you've been in the middle of all that for a long time.

I guess just any thoughts on the importance of that and how you think about that as a founder?

Drew Houston: So founder mode means a lot of things to a lot of people.

So it's a bit of a Rorschach test, but I think parts of it that really resonate with me are, there's this evolution you go on as a founder where you don't know what you're doing and everything is new and unfamiliar.

所以这有点像罗夏墨迹测试，但我认为真正引起我共鸣的部分是，作为创始人，你会经历这种演变，你不知道自己在做什么，一切都是新的和陌生的。

And then you're also very involved in all the details because there's no one else to be involved in the details.

It's not like someone else is coding for you if you're just in your room at home.

But then over time, you have to, there's this, Ben Horowitz calls it the Product-CEO Paradox, where the first way that companies die is from founders not letting go.

但随着时间的推移，你必须这样做，本·霍洛维茨（Ben Horowitz）称之为“产品-首席执行官悖论”，即公司死亡的第一个原因是创始人不放手。

And so you need to learn to scale yourself and hand off your responsibilities and operate at a higher level of abstraction.

But then the second way that companies kill themselves is the founders get too far away.

Drew Houston: And I felt like I had done that.

德鲁·休斯顿：我觉得我已经做到了。

That's a big part of the problem that led to a lot of this chaos at the end of chapter two, where I was like, oh, man, I'm on this treadmill.

I'm doing stuff, but I'm clearly not setting the right direction.

Or people are confused or it's not working, and I was too distant from the product.

And then there's all kinds of issues you can get into as you hire an executive team and get that to function well.

当你雇佣一个管理团队并让其运作良好时，你可能会遇到各种各样的问题。

And so I think there's a debate to what extent founder mode is a mindset or a destination.

To me, I think the destination part is pretty important.

I think it's like after that learning journey, suddenly you have this conviction from actually knowing, from having lived experience and navigating a lot of these things where suddenly it's a lot clearer.

我认为，就像在那次学习之旅之后，突然间你有了这种信念，因为你真正了解了，从生活经验中获得了这种信念，并驾驭了很多这样的事情，突然间它变得更加清晰了。

Drew Houston: You don't have the same kind of confusion or learning curve problem.

And then if you start out being too far leaned in, then you lean out too far.

And I think a lot of that founder mode flip is when you're like, hey, this is not the company I want to be running.

我认为创始人模式的转变很大程度上是因为你会想，嘿，这不是我想经营的公司。

I need to be more involved.

我需要更多地参与。

I need to stop making excuses.

我需要停止找借口。

And basically, I also don't want to apologize or negotiate all the time for the kind of company that I want to be part of and run.

基本上，我也不想一直为我想加入和经营的公司道歉或谈判。

So I had that too over time, maybe more towards a chapter three, some of those elements of...

所以随着时间的推移，我也有了这个，也许更多的是第三章，其中一些元素......

And I don't know if there's a way to get to this destination without some level of pain.

我不知道是否有一种方法可以在没有一定程度痛苦的情况下到达这个目的地。

Certainly the Elons and Steve Jobs of the world had big spans of wandering in the desert where they were not as cool as they are-

当然，世界上的埃隆斯和史蒂夫·乔布斯都曾在沙漠中徘徊过很长一段时间，在那里他们并不像现在那么酷——

Drew Houston: ...

德鲁·休斯顿：...

spans of wandering in the desert where they were not as cool as they are today.

曾经在沙漠里流浪过一段时间，那里的他们并不像今天那么酷。

The things they were doing weren't working, and they managed things very differently in that sort of post wandering phase.

他们所做的事情并没有发挥作用，而且在那种徘徊后的阶段，他们的管理方式也非常不同。

Suddenly had this level of conviction, and intuition that they might not have had before, or they sanded down some of their more counterproductive instincts.

突然间他们有了以前可能没有的信念和直觉，或者他们磨掉了一些适得其反的本能。

Again, there's a lot of surface area.

同样，有很大的表面积。

Drew Houston: I don't know if anybody has a common definition of founder mode, but certainly that evolution, the way I think about is it is very difficult.

德鲁·休斯顿：我不知道是否有人对创始人模式有一个共同的定义，但我认为这种演变肯定是非常困难的。

One of the hardest things when you're running a company is that you're hiring all these execs who the only thing you know is they know a lot more about the subject matter than you do.

当你经营一家公司时，最困难的事情之一就是你要雇用所有这些高管，你唯一知道的是他们对主题的了解比你多得多。

What does it even mean to bring someone in, bring an exec who had managed a double-digit billion dollar P&L at Google, and what am I supposed to tell him how sales works or marketing?

引入某人，引入一位曾在谷歌管理过数十亿美元损益的高管意味着什么？我应该告诉他销售或营销是如何运作的？

It's easy to be too leaned out there where you're not really setting a clear direction.

当你没有真正设定明确的方向时，很容易变得过于专注。

Each founder is going to have their own things that are easy, things that are harder.

每个创始人都会有自己的容易的事情和困难的事情。

Step one is being aware of them, and then being intentional about, how do I offset those things?

第一步是意识到它们，然后有意识地思考，我如何抵消这些事情？

Then you eventually get to a point where the learning curve flattens out.

然后你最终会达到学习曲线趋于平坦的程度。

You actually do have some experience, and you can have a lot more conviction about what the company should do, and where you want it to go.

你实际上确实有一些经验，并且你可以对公司应该做什么以及你希望它走向何方有更多的信念。

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：太棒了。

The way you described it to me, which has really stuck with me, is as a founder, as you said, you're in there leaning in, doing, on top of everything, micromanaging.

你向我描述的方式，让我印象深刻的是，正如你所说，作为一名创始人，你要全身心投入，在一切之上进行微观管理。

Then you lead out, and hire execs that you think are smarter than you, and delegate more.

然后你带头，聘请你认为比你更聪明的高管，并授权更多。

Then it's like, "Oh, things aren't going great," and come right back into it.

然后就好像，“哦，事情进展不太顺利”，然后又回到正题。

Drew Houston: Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的。

Specifically, it's often well-intended or it's often even not conscious, but as you hire these execs, and then you also build up an HR function, you get coaches, and things like that, and then the things are not going well, one thing that can happen is you start collecting all this feedback.

具体来说，这通常是出于好意，甚至常常是无意识的，但当你雇佣这些高管，然后你还建立了人力资源职能，你得到了教练，诸如此类的事情，然后事情进展不顺利，可能发生的一件事就是你开始收集所有这些反馈。

People are like, "Wait, if I can give Drew some negative feedback, then maybe I can displace some of the ..." It's sort of easy to get into a situation where you're sort of being my to-do list of problems, just weaknesses, and flaws I needed to work on was super long, way longer than anyone else's.

人们会说，“等等，如果我能给德鲁一些负面反馈，那么也许我可以取代一些……”很容易陷入这样一种情况：你是我的待办事项清单，里面列出了问题、弱点和缺陷，我需要解决的问题非常长，比其他人的要长得多。

On the one hand I'm like, "Yes, I am wholly accountable, and responsible for everything in the company as its CEO." That's not wrong.

一方面，我会说：“是的，作为首席执行官，我对公司的一切负有全部责任。”这并没有错。

But you can end up just carrying too much of the water, so a lot of it ended up having to be this pushing back a bit.

但你最终可能会携带太多的水，所以很多水最终不得不向后推一点。

Be like, "All right, yes, there are things I need to work on, but that can't be an excuse for my execs to somehow evade accountability."

就像，“好吧，是的，有些事情我需要做，但这不能成为我的高管以某种方式逃避责任的借口。”

Drew Houston: There's these sorts of systemic things that can creep in for sure.

德鲁·休斯顿：肯定会出现一些系统性的事情。

Then you get this feedback, and you're like, "Now, I'm doing all this behavior," or, "Now, I'm behaving in ways that I don't think are really right." Or I'm like, "Everything is just negotiated compromise with everyone on the roadmap or on how we behave or strategy." At some point you end up blowing that up as a founder, and that was certainly my experience.

然后你得到这样的反馈，你会说，“现在，我正在做所有这些行为”，或者，“现在，我的行为方式我认为并不真正正确。”或者我想，“一切都只是与路线图上的每个人协商妥协，或者我们的行为或策略。”在某些时候，作为创始人，你最终会毁掉它，这当然是我的经验。

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访问vanta.com/lenny，可享受 Vanta 立减 1,000 美元的优惠。

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Lenny Rachitsky: I think this is a great segue to get into chapter three.

Lenny Rachitsky：我认为这是进入第三章的一个很好的延续。

Basically, what I understand from what you're going through right now is you're rebooting the team, you're rebooting the core business, you're rebooting the product.

基本上，我从你现在经历的事情中了解到，你正在重新启动团队，你正在重新启动核心业务，你正在重新启动产品。

I think it might be good to start with the team.

我认为从团队开始可能会很好。

You talked a few times about just how you feel like you got to a point where the team wasn't shipping as much as you thought you would, as much as you think they should.

你曾多次谈到，你感觉团队的交付量没有你想象的那么多，也没有你认为他们应该交付的那么多。

Talk about maybe that part of it, of just realizing, "Hey, this part of the business needs to change.

谈论其中的一部分，只是意识到，“嘿，这部分业务需要改变。

Then we can talk about the product, and the direction you've discovered."

然后我们可以讨论产品，以及你发现的方向。”

Drew Houston: My playbook as an entrepreneur is to get really frustrated by something, and then try to solve that personally.

德鲁·休斯顿：作为一名企业家，我的策略是对某些事情感到非常沮丧，然后尝试亲自解决它。

I'll cover the team, and what direction we ended up choosing together.

我将介绍团队以及我们最终共同选择的方向。

My first frustration was forgetting a thumb drive, and then wanting to never have that problem again.

我的第一个挫败感是忘记了拇指驱动器，然后希望再也不会遇到这个问题。

Drew Houston: But my second big frustration was like, "Man, this scaling this company was way harder than it should have been." Thank God I had people like Bill, Andy, friends, mentors to guide me along.

德鲁·休斯顿：但我的第二个重大挫折是，“伙计，扩大公司规模比应有的要困难得多。”感谢上帝，我有像比尔、安迪、朋友、导师这样的人来指导我。

A lot of people don't have access to that.

很多人无法访问它。

But I feel like I could have written myself postcards that would've made this a little bit easier.

但我觉得我可以给自己写明信片，这样会让事情变得更容易一些。

Or, there are just some things that don't make sense about how you scale a company.

或者，有些事情对于如何扩展公司规模来说是没有意义的。

There seem to be things that are really broken about the way we work in general.

我们的工作方式似乎确实存在一些问题。

Drew Houston: As I was piecing through a lot of the challenges, I'm like, "All right, what should Dropbox do?" We should probably not do things that would've been invented by everybody else 10 minutes later.

Drew Houston：当我应对许多挑战时，我想，“好吧，Dropbox 应该做什么？”我们可能不应该做其他人十分钟后发明的事情。

Where are the problems that are not solving themselves?

那些无法自行解决的问题在哪里？

One problem I felt like was not solving itself was this problem of being just on this treadmill where I'm like, "I'm working really hard.

我觉得自己无法解决的一个问题是，当我在跑步机上时，我会想：“我真的很努力。

I'm in meetings all day, emails all night.

我整天都在开会，整夜都在发电子邮件。

Is this it?"

是这个吗？”

Drew Houston: First of all problem, no complaints.

德鲁·休斯顿：首先是问题，没有抱怨。

But I'm like, "This is so weird.

但我想，“这太奇怪了。

Yeah, I'm making huge strategic mistakes, because I'm too busy firing the aim, and I'm upset at myself about a lot of these things." But then I look left, look right, I'm like, "Wait, everybody is too busy firing the aim." Everybody is on the same treadmill.

是的，我犯了巨大的战略错误，因为我太忙于瞄准目标，而且我对自己的很多事情感到不安。”但然后我向左看看，向右看看，我想，“等等，每个人都忙着瞄准。”每个人都在同一个跑步机上。

Drew Houston: I'm like, "This is bizarre.

德鲁·休斯顿：我想，“这很奇怪。

Who's winning here?" It's like if I was working hard, and the company is benefiting, then no problem.

这里谁赢了？”就好像如果我努力工作，公司受益的话，那就没问题了。

But I'm very busy, but I'm not really productive.

但我很忙，但效率并不高。

I'm not putting in a lot of creative input.

我没有投入很多创意投入。

Then the company's not getting a lot of creative output.

那么公司就不会获得大量的创意产出。

It just seems like lose, lose, lose all around.

似乎到处都输了、输了、输了。

Drew Houston: I'm like, "Why are we on this treadmill?" We know from brain science that people are most happy, most productive, fulfilled, engaged, kind of everything you want, where we'd rattle off the same list, like when people are focused, when there's some kind of flow state, when they've had enough sleep, when they have a sense of purpose.

德鲁·休斯顿：我想，“我们为什么要在跑步机上？”我们从脑科学中知道，人们是最快乐的，最有生产力的，最满足的，最投入的，你想要的一切，我们会快速列出相同的清单，比如当人们集中注意力时，当存在某种心流状态时，当他们有足够的睡眠时，当他们有目标感时。

We know all that.

我们知道这一切。

Yet we go to work, and it's like this cage fight of who's busiest, who's gotten the least sleep, who's most inbox zero.

然而我们去上班，就像一场笼子里的斗争，谁最忙，谁睡得最少，谁的收件箱最多为零。

Then you look at the environment on our screens, now, especially after COVID, we live with that.

然后你看看我们屏幕上的环境，现在，尤其是在新冠疫情之后，我们已经忍受了。

Drew Houston: That's where we work.

德鲁·休斯顿：那是我们工作的地方。

We don't work in an office, no matter what flavor of hybrid you are, you're working on a screen.

我们不在办公室工作，无论你是哪种类型的混合体，你都是在屏幕上工作。

COVID relocated us from offices to screens.

新冠疫情将我们从办公室转移到了屏幕上。

You look what's on that screen, it's like, "Yeah, if you wanted to design a working environment that made it impossible to ever focus, ever get into a flow state, bombard you with just constant interruptions, distractions, and busy work, then yeah, you can squint and see me even before COVID, but definitely after.

你看看屏幕上的内容，就像是，“是的，如果你想设计一个工作环境，让你无法集中注意力，无法进入心流状态，用不断的打扰、分心和忙碌的工作轰炸你，那么，是的，你甚至可以在新冠疫情之前眯着眼睛看到我，但绝对是在新冠疫情之后。

Drew Houston: But that people are like, "Yeah, I'm really not feeling great." I'm not feeling super engaged because half of my work is bullshit, the other half I'm just distracted to death.

德鲁·休斯顿：但是人们会说，“是的，我真的感觉不太好。”我并没有感到非常投入，因为我的工作一半是废话，另一半我只是心烦意乱。

I'm like, "Why is this this?

我想，“这是为什么？

All right.

好的。

Maybe Dropbox doesn't have to exist.

也许 Dropbox 不一定存在。

Maybe we did the thing.

也许我们做了那件事。

Maybe I should go." Maybe I'm ready for the tech bro ascendancy.

也许我应该走。”也许我已经准备好迎接科技兄弟的崛起了。

Maybe I should be flying cars, space, cancer, climate ...

也许我应该关注飞行汽车、太空、癌症、气候……

Drew Houston: Yeah, right.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的，没错。

But then I would talk to people who were actually working on those things, and they were on the same treadmill.

但后来我会和那些真正在做这些事情的人交谈，他们在同一个跑步机上。

I interviewed this director of engineering at SpaceX.

我采访了这位 SpaceX 的工程总监。

I was like, "Oh my God, you're actually going to Mars.

我当时想，“天啊，你真的要去火星了。

This is so cool.

这太酷了。

How do you guys work together?

你们如何一起工作？

How are you going to get to Mars?" He's like, "I don't really understand the question."

你要怎么去火星？”他说，“我不太明白这个问题。”

Drew Houston: I'm like, "What tools do you use?

德鲁·休斯顿：我想，“你使用什么工具？

How do you work together?

你们如何一起工作？

How are we going to get to Mars?" The answer was basically, "We're going to get to Mars through a lot of emails, and a lot of files." I was like, "Oh, my God." Most of the time, we correctly think about technology as just like force multiplier, like the amplifier of our abilities.

我们如何到达火星？”答案基本上是，“我们将通过大量电子邮件和大量文件到达火星。”我当时想，“哦，我的上帝。”大多数时候，我们正确地认为技术就像力量倍增器，就像我们能力的放大器。

But from another perspective, we're only as good as organizations as our tools, or tools can become the limiting factor.

但从另一个角度来看，我们的组织取决于我们的工具，否则工具可能成为限制因素。

It's really a problem when the mechanism through which we were getting work done has gone from being a force multiplier, and amplifier to a suppressor.

当我们完成工作的机制从力量倍增器、放大器变成了抑制器时，这确实是一个问题。

We are the frogs in the boiling water where this kind happen one day at a time.

我们就像温水中的青蛙，这样的事情一天一天发生。

Drew Houston: All the people working on those things, and there are many others, they're all dealing with the same issues of, "I can't focus my tools.

德鲁·休斯顿：所有从事这些工作的人，还有许多其他人，他们都在处理同样的问题，“我无法集中我的工具。

I'm fighting with my tools." Somehow the tools went from helping us get the work done to becoming the work, as we layer.

我正在与我的工具作斗争。”不知何故，当我们分层时，工具从帮助我们完成工作变成了工作。

It went from 5 of them, to 10 of them, to 500 of them.

从 5 个，到 10 个，再到 500 个。

Drew Houston: Yeah.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的。

I'm like, "All right.

我想，“好吧。

If Einstein were alive today, what would his day be like?" He would wake up.

如果爱因斯坦今天还活着，他的一天会怎样？”他会醒来。

He'd have to delete a bunch of LinkedIn notifications.

他必须删除一堆 LinkedIn 通知。

He'd get down to work, start writing equations, and then someone would Slack him, and interrupt him.

他会开始工作，开始写方程式，然后有人会放松他，并打断他。

Then he'd get back to work.

然后他就会回去工作。

Would we still understand relativity if Einstein were living in that kind of working environment?

如果爱因斯坦生活在那样的工作环境中，我们还能理解相对论吗？

Probably not.

可能不会。

Drew Houston: Even just visiting my dad at work when I was a kid, a lot of things were the same.

德鲁·休斯顿：即使是小时候去上班的父亲那里，很多事情都是一样的。

He had a phone, a PC and an office, but he could turn his phone off.

他有一部电话、一台电脑和一间办公室，但他可以关闭手机。

He got 5 emails a day, not 500.

他每天收到 5 封电子邮件，而不是 500 封。

He would literally come home from work with a briefcase, put it down, and stop thinking about work.

他真的会提着公文包下班回家，放下它，不再思考工作。

Then when he would be in the office, he could close the door, and actually get stuff done.

然后，当他进入办公室时，他可以关上门，真正完成工作。

Drew Houston: I'm not saying we should go back to the early 90's, but I'm saying it wasn't always like this.

德鲁·休斯顿：我并不是说我们应该回到 90 年代初，但我是说事情并不总是这样。

The whole frontier of productivity at the time felt like it was just taking us in the wrong direction.

当时的整个生产力前沿感觉就像是把我们引向了错误的方向。

Things like Slack, which are wonderful tools, also chop up your day into little fragments, and make you cognitively diabetic.

像 Slack 这样很棒的工具，也会把你的一天分成小片段，让你患上认知糖尿病。

There's a lot of empty carbs in our collaboration, and our collaboration tools.

我们的协作和协作工具中有很多空的碳水化合物。

Drew Houston: I'm like, "Okay, here is a problem that's not solving itself.

德鲁·休斯顿：我想，“好吧，这是一个无法自行解决的问题。

Actually, none of our competitors even are framing the problem correctly.

事实上，我们的竞争对手都没有正确地描述这个问题。

What we should be recognizing is that our ultimate non-renewable resource is our time, our attention, mostly our brain power, our creative energy.

我们应该认识到，我们最终的不可再生资源是我们的时间、我们的注意力，主要是我们的脑力、我们的创造力。

I think as a civilization, we're going to, hopefully in 5 or 10 years be like, "Man, we took this crazy detour where we basically hooked up that brain power to this thing that was just burning off half of it as friction with our tools." That was dumb.

我认为作为一个文明，我们希望在 5 到 10 年内会像这样，“伙计，我们走了这个疯狂的弯路，我们基本上将脑力连接到这个东西上，而这个东西只是因为与我们的工具的摩擦而烧掉了一半。”那太愚蠢了。

Yet no company was even talking about this, let alone fixing it.

然而没有一家公司谈论这个问题，更不用说修复它了。

Drew Houston: Then we came up with a new Dropbox mission.

Drew Houston：然后我们提出了一个新的 Dropbox 使命。

It became Dropbox is designing a more enlightened way of working, because the way we were working is unenlightened, unexamined.

Dropbox 正在设计一种更加开明的工作方式，因为我们的工作方式是不开明的、未经审视的。

Meanwhile, we were patient zero as the company.

与此同时，我们作为公司是零号病人。

No one was doing a lot of thinking.

没有人做很多思考。

Everybody's kind of busy.

每个人都有点忙。

Everybody's bumping into each other.

每个人都在互相碰撞。

There were a lot of cultural problems.

存在很多文化问题。

Like that we were faster.

这样我们就更快了。

Your company grows, and rises, the easier it is for new people in the company to think they hit a home run instead of starting on third base.

你的公司成长、崛起，公司的新人就越容易认为他们打出了本垒打，而不是从三垒开始。

A lot of complacency, entitlement, and preoccupation with things other than our customers or other than our products set in.

人们对除我们的客户或我们的产品以外的事情产生了很多自满、权利和关注。

Drew Houston: It wasn't all bad.

德鲁·休斯顿：这并不全是坏事。

I think there were a lot of good things we had to pay attention to.

我认为有很多好的事情我们必须关注。

We were scaling up the business financially.

我们正在财务上扩大业务规模。

We were getting ready to go public.

我们正准备上市。

We had to mature a lot of things, but we lost sight of the place that money is coming from is from our customers, and the thing they really want is a great experience.

我们必须让很多事情变得成熟，但我们忽视了钱的来源是我们的客户，而他们真正想要的是很棒的体验。

Drew Houston: We've been tackling this in a lot of different ways.

德鲁·休斯顿：我们一直在用很多不同的方式来解决这个问题。

First is just things like after COVID hit, suddenly the world is working in a completely different way.

首先，就像新冠疫情爆发后，世界突然以完全不同的方式运转。

We saw this as a big opportunity, not just a crisis.

我们认为这是一个巨大的机遇，而不仅仅是一场危机。

Or once you got past the crisis part of COVID, there was a big opportunity.

或者一旦你度过了新冠疫情的危机部分，就会有一个巨大的机会。

COVID kind of wrecked everything, but we didn't have to put the floorboards back down in the same places.

新冠病毒有点破坏了一切，但我们不必把地板放回原来的地方。

I'm a big fan of people like Peter Drucker, and lots of people who think about the nature of work, and this idea of we're finally decoupling work from our physical location.

我是彼得·德鲁克（Peter Drucker）等人的忠实粉丝，也是许多思考工作本质的人，以及我们最终将工作与物理位置脱钩的想法。

It's a big deal.

这是一件大事。

It's probably one of the biggest changes to knowledge work in our lifetimes.

这可能是我们一生中知识工作最大的变化之一。

Or even since Drucker coined that term knowledge work in 1959.

或者甚至从德鲁克 1959 年创造知识工作这个术语开始。

Drew Houston: It's like, "Cool.

德鲁·休斯顿：就像，“酷。

For the first time, we can actually design how we work in ways that our parents couldn't, or the way that most of us just receive how we work from our parents." But like, "Hey, we can actually do things completely differently." We came up with this whole virtual first model where we're 90% remote, but then most importantly, we're trying to rebuild the new product stack for distributed work.

我们第一次真正能够以父母无法做到的方式设计我们的工作方式，或者我们大多数人只是从父母那里接受我们的工作方式。”但就像，“嘿，我们实际上可以完全不同地做事情。”我们提出了整个虚拟第一模型，其中 90% 是远程的，但最重要的是，我们正在尝试为分布式工作重建新的产品堆栈。

I'll talk a little bit about where the new things we're doing, and then I'll come back to how we're rebooting some of the core.

我会谈谈我们正在做的新事情，然后我会回到我们如何重新启动一些核心。

Drew Houston: But initially, after COVID, we studied a lot of how other remote first companies had worked.

德鲁·休斯顿：但最初，在新冠疫情之后，我们研究了很多其他远程优先公司的运作方式。

We synthesized with a lot of primary research of other companies like GitLab, Automattic, and others who had been doing this for a long time.

我们综合了 GitLab、Automattic 等其他公司的大量初步研究，以及其他长期从事这方面工作的公司。

We collated all that, synthesized a common playbook, open sourced it.

我们整理了所有这些，综合了一个通用的剧本，并将其开源。

If anybody's curious about this, you could find Dropbox.

如果有人对此感到好奇，您可以找到 Dropbox。

We've open sourced our virtual first toolkit.

我们已经开源了我们的虚拟第一个工具包。

Then since COVID, designing a working model very in line with our new mission with a lot of benefits.

自新冠疫情以来，设计了一个非常符合我们新使命的工作模型，并带来了很多好处。

It really works.

它确实有效。

The employee retention, satisfaction, engagement or offer separates all the things we care about have been significantly up since COVID.

自新冠疫情以来，我们关心的所有员工保留率、满意度、敬业度或工作机会都显着上升。

There's many factors to that, but there's a lot that's working about the model.

造成这种情况的因素有很多，但该模型还有很多工作要做。

But really, we're approaching it from a product standpoint.

但实际上，我们是从产品的角度来处理这个问题的。

Drew Houston: In deciding to turn Dropbox into this lab for distributed work, we're like, "Okay, when you open up your laptop in 2025, 2030, what do you see?" Hopefully, there's some new stuff or some things that are different on there.

Drew Houston：在决定将 Dropbox 变成这个用于分布式工作的实验室时，我们会想，“好吧，当你在 2025 年、2030 年打开你的笔记本电脑时，你会看到什么？”希望那里有一些新的东西或一些不同的东西。

What are those things, and how do we bring them back?

这些东西是什么？我们如何把它们带回来？

Drew Houston: One of the first things you lose when you go distributed is context.

德鲁·休斯顿：当你进行分布式时，你首先失去的东西之一就是上下文。

We get a lot.

我们得到很多。

You get a lot for free from osmosis.

你可以通过渗透免费获得很多东西。

Just, "Oh, hey, how are you doing?

只是，“哦，嘿，你好吗？

How's this?" Or, "Oh, do you have that thing?" But then when you're remote, then a lot of that gets replaced with endless video meetings, and lots of Slack messages, which is super inefficient.

这怎么样？”或者，“哦，你有那个东西吗？”但当你处于远程状态时，很多事情就会被无休止的视频会议和大量的 Slack 消息所取代，这是非常低效的。

Drew Houston: Also, one thing that was clear across the board from all the successful remote first companies was you have to be more documented, but then you have a lot more documents.

德鲁·休斯顿：此外，所有成功的远程第一家公司都清楚地看到一件事，那就是你必须有更多的文件记录，但随后你就会有更多的文件。

This started turning up very obvious problems, which is like, "Wait, why do I have 1 search box at home, and 10 search boxes at work?

这开始出现非常明显的问题，就像，“等等，为什么我家里有 1 个搜索框，而工作中有 10 个搜索框？

Why is it easier to search all of human knowledge than my company's knowledge?

为什么搜索所有人类知识比搜索我公司的知识更容易？

Why is this problem getting worse not better every year?" If you think about it, we've got 10 search boxes that you search 10% of our stuff.

为什么这个问题一年比一年严重而不是好转？”如果您想一想，我们有 10 个搜索框，您可以搜索我们 10% 的内容。

I'm like, "We should just fix this."

我想，“我们应该解决这个问题。”

Drew Houston: Again, even just as a frustrated user, maybe 2018, 2019, I'm having this problem myself.

德鲁·休斯顿：再说一遍，即使只是作为一个沮丧的用户，也许在 2018 年、2019 年，我自己也遇到了这个问题。

I'm like, "It's really hard to find stuff." Plus there's always cool vector search stuff, and deep learning stuff happening.

我想，“找东西真的很难。”另外，总是有很酷的矢量搜索和深度学习的事情发生。

Even for ChatGPT, I'm going to make a personal search engine that takes us, so I shouldn't have to, right?

即使对于 ChatGPT，我也会制作一个带我们的个人搜索引擎，所以我不必这样做，对吗？

If I search for strategy, and the title of the document is plan, it should get it right, and the matching should be fuzzy.

如果我搜索策略，并且文档的标题是计划，它应该是正确的，并且匹配应该是模糊的。

Then I built something like this.

然后我建立了这样的东西。

I'm like, "Oh my God, it completely works."

我想，“天哪，它完全有效。”

Lenny Rachitsky: You built this yourself, you're saying?

Lenny Rachitsky：你是说这是你自己建造的？

Drew Houston: Yeah, it went nowhere for a couple of years, but then after COVID, and after we're dealing with all these information problems, I'm like, "Yeah, we should be the company that helps you get the right information at the right time to the right person." I built that little hacked up search engine thing that I made, might be an ingredient to this.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的，几年来毫无进展，但在新冠疫情之后，在我们处理所有这些信息问题之后，我想，“是的，我们应该成为一家帮助您在正确的时间向正确的人提供正确信息的公司。”我建立了我自己做的那个小小的破解搜索引擎，可能是这个的一个组成部分。

Drew Houston: We bought a little company called Command E that was doing universal search, and we created this new product called Dropbox Dash.

Drew Houston：我们收购了一家名为 Command E 的小公司，该公司从事通用搜索，我们创建了这款名为 Dropbox Dash 的新产品。

Basically, Dash connects to all your different apps.

基本上，Dash 连接到所有不同的应用程序。

It gives you universal search.

它为您提供通用搜索。

Then obviously after ChatGPT, not only can you do conventional search, but you can ask questions in natural language, and answer a lot of the questions that ChatGPT can't because it's not connected to your stuff.

那么显然在ChatGPT之后，你不仅可以进行常规搜索，还可以用自然语言提出问题，并回答很多ChatGPT无法回答的问题，因为它与你的东西没有连接。

If you ask ChatGPT like, "When does my lease expire?

如果您问 ChatGPT，“我的租约什么时候到期？

Where's that slide from last year's product launch," can't tell you because it's not personalized.

去年产品发布会的那张幻灯片在哪里，”无法告诉您，因为它不是个性化的。

Because it's not connected to your information.

因为它与您的信息无关。

We did all of that for this whole connector platform where we index the known universe of SaaS apps, have this kind of intelligence engine that brings all of it into a common representation, and lets you do conventional search, natural language search.

我们为整个连接器平台完成了所有这些工作，在该平台上，我们对已知的 SaaS 应用程序进行索引，拥有这种智能引擎，可以将所有内容纳入通用表示中，并允许您进行传统搜索、自然语言搜索。

Drew Houston: Then more than that, we want to organize your working life for you.

德鲁·休斯顿：更重要的是，我们希望为您安排您的工作生活。

Stepping back even further, often it happens that a company likes to starts solving a problem, and that problem is never permanently solved.

退一步说，通常情况下，一家公司喜欢开始解决一个问题，但这个问题永远不会得到永久解决。

In a lot of ways, Dash is the biggest, best embodiment of solving the same kinds of problems I started Dropbox to begin with.

从很多方面来说，Dash 都是解决我创办 Dropbox 时遇到的同类问题的最大、最好的体现。

Because on the one hand, I was talking about thumb drive, but I wasn't, really.

因为一方面，我在谈论拇指驱动器，但实际上我不是。

If you think about the higher level job to be done, I was like, "No, the real issue is that it's super hard to find my stuff, organize my stuff, share my stuff, and secure my stuff."

如果你考虑要完成的更高级别的工作，我会说，“不，真正的问题是找到我的东西、整理我的东西、分享我的东西和保护我的东西非常困难。”

Drew Houston: In the beginning that was like my stuff was my files, and the scattering was across devices.

德鲁·休斯顿：一开始，我的东西就像是我的文件，并且分散在不同的设备上。

Now, the stuff is tabs in my browser, and cloud tools.

现在，这些东西是我的浏览器中的选项卡和云工具。

But it's a lot of the same problems.

但同样的问题还有很多。

We've talked a lot about search, but then organize is still a big problem.

我们已经谈论了很多关于搜索的内容，但组织仍然是一个大问题。

There's no desktop folder or desktop as in the physical realm, when you're in your browser.

当您使用浏览器时，没有物理领域中的桌面文件夹或桌面。

It's just this ocean of content that washes by you.

这就是内容的海洋冲刷着你。

Then you get tired.

然后你就会累了。

You nuke the whole environment.

你用核武器摧毁了整个环境。

But there's nothing to come back to.

但已经没有什么可回去的了。

There's no collection concept.

没有集合的概念。

Files have folders, songs have playlists, links have ...

文件有文件夹，歌曲有播放列表，链接有......

If you're getting ready for board meeting or remodeling a house, there's no common container.

如果您正准备召开董事会会议或改造房屋，则没有通用的容器。

If you have a Google doc, and a 10 gig, 4K video, and an air table, this is a new problem.

如果你有一个 Google 文档、一个 10 gig、4K 视频和一个空中表，这就是一个新问题。

Drew Houston: Dash also has this thing called Stacks, and has basically smart collections that helps make sharing a lot easier.

德鲁·休斯顿：达世币还有一个叫做 Stacks 的东西，并且基本上有智能收藏，有助于使共享变得更加容易。

But again, a lot of this was an intersection of like, "Yeah, how has work changed since COVID?

但同样，很多事情都是这样的交叉点，“是的，自新冠疫情以来，工作发生了怎样的变化？

What crazy little science projects have I done?

我做过哪些疯狂的小科学项目？

Then how should one find, organize, and share their information in the cloud era?

那么在云时代，人们应该如何查找、整理和共享信息呢？

If I were to build Dropbox today, what would it look like?" Dash is first part of the answer.

如果我今天要构建 Dropbox，它会是什么样子？”达世币是答案的第一部分。

We're super excited.

我们非常兴奋。

But we just launched it two months ago, and signed up our first customers.

但我们两个月前才推出它，并签约了我们的第一批客户。

Then I can come back to just rebooting the core business too.

然后我也可以重新启动核心业务。

I think one of the big challenges or lessons from this whole period is that one, is as part of the problem we had with competition, and this chapter two was external, but a lot of it was internal, where we couldn't organize ourselves effectively.

我认为整个时期的重大挑战或教训之一是，第一，是我们在竞争中遇到的问题的一部分，第二章是外部的，但很多是内部的，我们无法有效地组织自己。

The business has scaled so much faster than our ability to manage it.

业务的扩展速度远远超出了我们的管理能力。

First is to recognize this is not an unusual problem.

首先要认识到这并不是一个不寻常的问题。

Many companies, not all, but certainly many, and actually many in SaaS productivity have this sophomore slump where you have the super successful first product, but then it's challenging to build the next platinum album.

许多公司（不是全部，但肯定有很多，实际上很多 SaaS 生产力）都在第二年出现了低迷，你拥有超级成功的第一个产品，但接下来制作下一张白金专辑却充满挑战。

Dropbox has fallen into that category.

Dropbox 就属于这一类。

You could say Zoom, Slack, others.

你可以说 Zoom、Slack 等等。

Drew Houston: First, it's easy to feel bad about it yourself, but no, you're not.

德鲁·休斯顿：首先，你自己很容易感到难过，但不，你不是。

This is actually a very common problem.

这实际上是一个非常普遍的问题。

Then there's a lot of solutions.

然后就有很多解决办法。

People devise lots of solutions to this.

人们为此设计了很多解决方案。

Part of it's structural.

部分是结构性的。

Your company has to go from a pretty fun, and stable state of a functional organization where you have engineering in product design, there's one product, and there's one customer.

您的公司必须从一个非常有趣且稳定的职能组织状态转变为一个产品设计工程，有一种产品，并且有一个客户。

Everybody's working, we are all in the same direction for the same team to then when you have multiple products, then you have all these conflicts.

每个人都在工作，我们都在同一个团队的同一个方向上，然后当你有多个产品时，你就会遇到所有这些冲突。

How much should we invest in the core business versus the new thing?

与新事物相比，我们应该在核心业务上投资多少？

Who should have authority in the company?

谁应该在公司拥有权力？

You try to build multiple products in a functional org, but then you lose accountability.

您尝试在一个职能组织中构建多种产品，但随后您就失去了责任。

Drew Houston: People are like, "I'm spending a lot.

德鲁·休斯顿：人们会说，“我花了很多钱。

I'm trying to make Dropbox work.

我正在努力让 Dropbox 正常运行。

I'm trying to make mailbox work.

我正在努力让邮箱正常工作。

I'm trying to make paperwork, and all these things." Then you respond by breaking up into groups or business units.

我正在努力制作文书工作以及所有这些事情。”然后你通过分成小组或业务部门来做出回应。

We have a product business unit, product GM structure.

我们有一个产品业务部门、产品总经理结构。

Then you have to refactor things to have a common technical platform, and all the GNA functions.

然后你必须重构事物以拥有一个通用的技术平台和所有 GNA 功能。

There's this metamorphosis, and maturation you need to go through that is mega obvious to experienced people.

你需要经历这种蜕变和成熟，这对于有经验的人来说是非常明显的。

That you're just totally blindsided by this if you're solving it by trial and error.

如果你通过反复试验来解决这个问题，你会完全被这个问题弄得措手不及。

There's a great book, Zone to Win, that talks about some of this, what needs to happen internally by Geoffrey Moore.

杰弗里·摩尔（Geoffrey Moore）有一本很棒的书，《Zone to Win》，讨论了其中的一些内容，以及内部需要发生的事情。

Drew Houston: Then there's a lot of cultural problems that set in.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后就出现了很多文化问题。

We just touched on some of them at a high level.

我们刚刚在高层触及了其中的一些。

But whether you're in a company or an empire, a civilization, what gets you to the top turns out to be pretty similar things.

但无论你在一家公司还是一个帝国、一个文明中，让你登上顶峰的东西其实都是非常相似的。

You have this outsider, challenger mentality where you have to eat what you kill, and the odds are against you.

你有一种局外人、挑战者的心态，你必须吃你杀的东西，而机会对你不利。

Through hard work, learning, and grinding, you start moving up the curve faster.

通过努力工作、学习和磨练，你会开始更快地进步。

But then once you're successful, then there's a temptation to take the foot off the gas or enjoy the finer things in life or just focus on other things, be it other than what got you there.

但一旦你成功了，你就会忍不住停下脚步，享受生活中美好的事物，或者只专注于其他事情，无论是不是让你成功的事情。

I think what we experienced, many other companies experienced, Bill Campbell experienced in Netscape, the success plants, the seeds of failure in terms of complacency, entitlements, or taking your eye off of what got you to be successful in the first place, yeah, I went from earning a lot of the early stage startup founder merit badges to earning the stagnation, and irrelevance merit badge.

我认为我们所经历的，许多其他公司所经历的，比尔坎贝尔在网景所经历的，成功的工厂，失败的种子，在自满，权利，或者把你的注意力从一开始就成功的因素上移开，是的，我从获得很多早期初创公司创始人的荣誉徽章到获得停滞和无关紧要的荣誉徽章。

Now, the turnaround merit badge.

现在，扭亏为盈徽章。

Part of that is the turnaround playbook.

其中一部分就是扭转局面。

Drew Houston: Okay, first, it's just getting out of this delusional state where you think you're great, just splashing cold water on everyone, and be like, "Look, we haven't shipped any.

德鲁·休斯顿：好吧，首先，只是摆脱这种你认为自己很棒的妄想状态，只是向每个人泼冷水，然后说，“看，我们还没有发货。

Last three years, the only thing our customers have really meaningfully seen from our product is a price increase.

过去三年，我们的客户从我们的产品中看到的唯一真正有意义的事情就是价格上涨。

What the hell are we doing?"

我们到底在做什么？”

Drew Houston: A lot of it is getting back to like, "Hey, we have to focus on craft.

德鲁·休斯顿：很多时候都是回到这样的状态，“嘿，我们必须专注于工艺。

We have to embrace a growth mindset and learning.

我们必须拥抱成长心态和学习。

We have to stop blaming external factors or displacing blame.

我们必须停止指责外部因素或推卸责任。

We have to be a high agency culture." There's a cultural transformation that you have to personally embody, and be clear about.

我们必须形成一种高水平的代理文化。”这是一种文化转变，你必须亲自体现并清楚地认识到这一点。

Drew Houston: Then in our case, we had to reboot the whole exec team.

德鲁·休斯顿：那么就我们而言，我们必须重新启动整个执行团队。

We've had all the time getting the right kind of leadership team in place for the end of chapter two and three.

我们一直在为第二章和第三章的结尾组建合适的领导团队。

Part of what happens in conjunction with a lot of the cultural stuff I just talked about, is also you can have this as the talent flywheels flying forward, and flies in reverse.

与我刚才谈到的许多文化内容相关的部分内容是，你也可以将其视为人才飞轮向前飞行和反向飞行。

You have a new set of issues where you get all these amazing people in the company, but they want to work for Facebook, not MySpace.

你遇到了一系列新问题，公司里有这么多出色的人，但他们想为 Facebook 工作，而不是 MySpace。

You start having retention problems when the narrative goes negative.

当叙述变得消极时，你就会开始遇到保留问题。

We start bleeding talents, and then it's also really hard to hire people for the same reasons.

我们开始流失人才，然后出于同样的原因也很难雇用人才。

Especially, as I think about where the big lessons from chapter two that we've addressed in chapter three, the seniority gap is something that can accumulate because much of the talent can fly to the next shiny thing.

特别是，当我想到我们在第三章中讨论的第二章中的重要教训时，资历差距是可以积累的，因为许多人才可以飞向下一个闪亮的事物。

What you do in response typically is, you promote a lot of people internally, which is good for them.

作为回应，你通常会在内部提拔很多人，这对他们有好处。

It seems good for them in the short term, because they're just getting a lot more authority, and responsibility quickly.

从短期来看，这对他们来说似乎是件好事，因为他们很快就获得了更多的权力和责任。

People like that on day one.

人们在第一天就喜欢这样。

But it's a problem because suddenly people are solving problems through trial and error.

但这是一个问题，因为人们突然通过反复试验来解决问题。

Things may be new to them that are not new to the industry, and suddenly no knowns to the industry are unknown and knowns to those leaders.

事情对他们来说可能是新的，但对行业来说并不新鲜，突然之间，行业中的一切对这些领导者来说都是未知和已知的。

Then usually you can get around that by hiring a layer of experienced execs or having enough of them in the company.

然后，通常你可以通过聘请一批经验丰富的高管或在公司中拥有足够多的高管来解决这个问题。

But in the talent wars of the late teens, we were in the situation as were many companies where, any exec you talked to with any experience had five offers from fan companies for three times the comp, and a third of the workload, or 10 offers from pre-IPO startups, and C-level roles.

但在二十世纪末的人才大战中，我们和许多公司一样，遇到任何有经验的高管，都会收到来自粉丝公司的五份工作邀请，报酬是三倍，工作量是三分之一，或者是 IPO 前初创公司的 10 份工作邀请，以及 C 级职位。

These are offers in hand.

这些是手中的优惠。

The only thing that really worked to even just keep the lights on was basically giving people double promotions so that they could justify someone who's a director at company X, making him a VP at Dropbox.

唯一真正能维持公司运转的办法就是给人们双倍晋升的机会，这样他们就可以证明 X 公司的董事身份，让他成为 Dropbox 的副总裁。

Then you had to do that because they literally had offers in hand of many millions of dollars a year.

然后你就必须这样做，因为他们每年确实手上有数百万美元的报价。

Otherwise, you'd just hire no one.

否则，你就不会雇佣任何人。

That cooled off a lot after the correction in SaaS, after we got more of our vision straight, and certainly after we've been working on things like Dash.

在 SaaS 的修正之后，在我们更加明确我们的愿景之后，当然在我们一直致力于 Dash 之类的事情之后，这种情况冷却了很多。

Drew Houston: But that seniority gap is really rough.

德鲁·休斯顿：但是资历差距确实很大。

Where ...

哪里...

Drew Houston: Seniority gap is really rough where you need to have enough experienced people in the company who can then train your high potential people.

德鲁·休斯顿：资历差距非常大，公司需要有足够的经验丰富的人员来培训高潜力人才。

And again, that sounds obvious, but it's very difficult to do that in an environment where the talent flywheel is going in your direction and then starts flying away from you really quickly.

再说一次，这听起来很明显，但在一个人才飞轮朝你的方向发展，然后很快就开始飞离你的环境中，做到这一点是非常困难的。

And then through the battlefield promotions and these double promotions on hiring, you can end up a situation where there's a huge voltage drop in terms of people's matching between what your company needs and what they know how to do.

然后，通过战场晋升和招聘上的双重晋升，你最终可能会遇到这样一种情况：人们在公司需要的东西和他们知道如何做的事情之间的匹配度会出现巨大的电压下降。

And that also doesn't mean hire only experienced people either because then you're splicing in a lot of outside DNA into your organism.

这也不意味着只雇用有经验的人，因为那样你就会将大量外部 DNA 拼接到你的有机体中。

But what you want is to keep it roughly in balance.

但你想要的是保持大致平衡。

I mean 60-40, 40-60, 50-50, whatever.

我的意思是 60-40、40-60、50-50，等等。

But your high potential people also lose out if they don't have experienced people learning from.

但如果你的高潜力人才没有向有经验的人学习，他们也会失败。

Drew Houston: So that's a little bit, I think that it was a big part of the stagnation.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以这只是一点点，我认为这是停滞的一个重要部分。

Again, it's not because the people, but this was something that I was doing to my team.

再说一次，这不是因为人，而是因为我对我的团队所做的事情。

So it's not them or certainly on my watch, but I think it's a dynamic you have to be careful of like do we have the right balance of people who are super high potential and talented, but doing their thing for the first time?

所以这不是他们的问题，也不是我的职责，但我认为这是一个你必须小心的动态，比如我们是否在具有超高潜力和才华的人之间取得了适当的平衡，但他们是第一次做他们的事情？

Are they paired with people who have been there, done that, this is not the biggest job of their life, and that they can help those people up the learning curve faster such that the aggregate learning curve or the aggregate learning rate of your company is what it needs to be.

他们是否与去过那里的人配对，完成了这件事，这不是他们一生中最重要的工作，他们可以帮助这些人更快地提高学习曲线，从而使公司的总学习曲线或总学习率达到所需的水平。

Lenny Rachitsky: Man, I feel like there's a book here of lessons for founders, things that you never hear about until-

Lenny Rachitsky：伙计，我觉得这里有一本为创始人提供教训的书，一些你从未听说过的事情，直到——

Lenny Rachitsky: That's one of so many.

Lenny Rachitsky：这只是其中之一。

People think about becoming founders, they start companies, "Oh, I'm going to start a company, there we go." And then, they think about that first part of the journey that you talked about.

人们考虑成为创始人，他们创办公司，“哦，我要创办一家公司，就这样吧。”然后，他们会思考你谈到的旅程的第一部分。

And most people don't even get that part.

大多数人甚至不明白那部分。

And the best case scenario is you experience a ton of growth.

最好的情况是你经历了巨大的成长。

And then, the way you described it to me previously is you hit the final bosses where showing all the success and they're like, "Oh, I see there's a big market here.

然后，你之前向我描述的方式是，你遇到了最终的老板，展示了所有的成功，他们就像，“哦，我看到这里有一个很大的市场。

Let's go after it." And you're battling Apple and Google and Microsoft and Meta, and a lot of people don't think about that and how that's the future if you do well.

我们去追它吧。”你正在与苹果、谷歌、微软和 Meta 作斗争，很多人都没有想到这一点，也没有想到如果你做得好的话，未来会怎样。

Drew Houston: Yeah, every time you move up a league, your reward is a stronger and better opponent and potentially more unlevel playing field.

德鲁·休斯顿：是的，每次你提升一个联赛，你的奖励就是一个更强大、更好的对手，以及可能更加不公平的竞争环境。

And that's just the way it is.

事情就是这样。

You can't control that.

你无法控制这一点。

All you can control is how you respond.

你所能控制的就是你如何回应。

And so, you want your company's response to embrace that challenge and use it as a mechanism to get stronger.

因此，您希望您的公司能够应对这一挑战，并将其作为变得更强大的机制。

Easy to say, hard to do.

说起来容易，做起来难。

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：是的。

So maybe just to start reflecting on some of the lessons from this journey, because there's a lot here.

所以也许只是开始反思这次旅程的一些教训，因为这里有很多教训。

One question people may be wondering is, should I even be a founder?

人们可能想知道的一个问题是，我是否应该成为一名创始人？

Should I start a company?

我应该创办一家公司吗？

A lot of people, there's a lot of pain that you've been sharing of the challenge of starting companies.

很多人，你们都经历过创办公司的挑战带来的很多痛苦。

What do you tell people that are asking you like, "Hey, should I start a company?

当人们问你“嘿，我应该创办一家公司吗？”之类的问题时，你会告诉他们什么？

Am I right to be a founder?" Is there any advice there that you could share?

我作为创始人合适吗？”您有什么建议可以分享吗？

Drew Houston: I don't know what made me want to be a founder.

德鲁·休斯顿：我不知道是什么让我想成为一名创始人。

I just showed up that way.

我就是这样出现的。

And so, there's probably some chemical imbalance of some form that causes people to do it, but I had a lot of insecurity about should I be a CEO?

因此，可能存在某种形式的化学不平衡导致人们这样做，但我对于我是否应该成为首席执行官有很多不安全感？

Because coming from the technical side, because I was like, I can do the engineering and technology, but all I know about being a CEO is I do not know how to do all of those things that CEOs do, and I do not look like that, I do not talk like that, it's intimidating.

因为来自技术方面，因为我当时想，我可以做工程和技术，但我对作为首席执行官的了解是，我不知道如何做首席执行官所做的所有这些事情，而且我看起来不是那样，我不是那样说话的，这很吓人。

Drew Houston: So I think first is it doesn't have to be an all or nothing decision.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以我认为首先这不一定是一个全有或全无的决定。

I mean, obviously it's all encompassing decision to become, to start a company, but you'll have many points along the way where you can keep calibrating.

我的意思是，很明显，这是一个包罗万象的决定，要成为、创办一家公司，但一路上你会有很多点可以不断校准。

And I think the biggest thing is, or advice I got from one of the founders of a company where I worked was I was like, oh, should I be CEO?

我认为最重要的是，或者我从我工作过的公司的创始人之一那里得到的建议是，哦，我应该担任首席执行官吗？

Should I not be CEO?

我不应该当CEO吗？

Should I be CTO?

我应该担任首席技术官吗？

He's like, "Look, just try it, be CEO, see how it goes."

他说，“看，试试吧，担任首席执行官，看看进展如何。”

Drew Houston: Initially, I thought I was like, all right, well I'm going to get the company to 100 million valuation and the trend will just be going faster, faster and faster, faster.

德鲁·休斯顿：最初，我想，好吧，我会让公司估值达到 1 亿美元，而且趋势会变得越来越快、越来越快、越来越快。

And instead of just getting thrown off of it, I'll just hit stop and retire.

我不会就此放弃，而是停下来退休。

And I thought that sounded like a great plan.

我认为这听起来是一个很棒的计划。

But then, moving to the Bay Area, you suddenly meet, you throw a rock and hit 10 people who've done that.

但后来，搬到湾区，你突然遇到了，你扔了一块石头，砸中了 10 个这样做过的人。

And what do you learn?

你学到了什么？

This was just shocking to me because I talked to one of the advisors I mentioned earlier.

这让我感到震惊，因为我和我之前提到的一位顾问交谈过。

He's like, "Yeah, the day I sold my company was the saddest day of my life." I'm like, "What?" As a 24-year-old, and he's like, "Yeah.

他说，“是的，我卖掉公司的那一天是我一生中最悲伤的一天。”我想，“什么？”作为一个 24 岁的人，他说：“是的。

Well, I just felt like the company had drifted away from what it was supposed to be and I just didn't like it." I think they're certain in the founder mode trough where you're like, wait, things are screwed up and it's on my watch, but I'm not really sure what happened and what do I do about it?

嗯，我只是觉得这家公司已经偏离了它应有的样子，我就是不喜欢它。”我认为他们在创始人模式下很确定，你会说，等等，事情搞砸了，这是我的职责，但我不太确定发生了什么以及我该怎么办？

So I think burnout is the biggest thing that will kill you.

所以我认为倦怠是最能杀死你的事情。

And so, I think that's why these coping methods and getting your own head is important, but if you do that, then it's also this amazing experience.

所以，我认为这就是为什么这些应对方法和保持自己的头脑很重要，但如果你这样做，那么这也是一次令人惊奇的经历。

And then often so many founders go back and start another company and another company.

然后经常有很多创始人回去创办另一家公司和另一家公司。

And you don't have to, but there's a reason that people do that because there's just a lot of rewarding aspects of it, building great things with great people that impact huge populations.

你不必这样做，但人们这样做是有原因的，因为这样做有很多回报，与伟大的人一起创造伟大的事物，影响大量的人口。

Drew Houston: What I found is that founders keep doing this because they love it in some way, or at least have a love-hate relationship with it or can't imagine something else that they would otherwise be doing and I'm probably the same way.

德鲁·休斯顿：我发现创始人一直这样做是因为他们在某种程度上喜欢它，或者至少对此又爱又恨，或者无法想象他们会做的其他事情，我可能也是这样。

But I think to get through that, you have to, Ben Horowitz also said the hardest thing for a CEO is to manage your own psychology.

但我认为要解决这个问题，你必须这样做，本·霍洛维茨也说过，对于首席执行官来说，最难的事情就是管理自己的心理。

And we've talked a lot about, yeah, first you have to be aware of what your psychology is, and then how do you make sure you're not resenting or hating your company or yourself and view...

我们已经讨论了很多，是的，首先你必须意识到你的心理是什么，然后你如何确保你不会怨恨或讨厌你的公司或你自己以及观点......

Drew Houston: I think the hardest thing for a founder, challenge is not optional.

德鲁·休斯顿：我认为对于创始人来说最难的事情是挑战是不可选择的。

You're going to be challenged, but the suffering is optional.

你会受到挑战，但痛苦是可选的。

You don't actually have to suffer.

其实你不必受苦。

I mean, look, there's crunch periods or times where it's taxing, but it doesn't have to be this experience of suffering all the way or burning out or being really angry and sad all the time.

我的意思是，你看，有些时候是很辛苦的，但并不一定是这种一路受苦、精疲力竭或一直感到愤怒和悲伤的经历。

Although certainly, in my experience that I did get in periods where I was just sad and angry all the time.

当然，根据我的经验，我确实经历过一直感到悲伤和愤怒的时期。

So you need to figure out how do you work your way out of that.

所以你需要弄清楚如何摆脱这种情况。

Lenny Rachitsky: So along those lines, I'm curious, so you've shared a few things that have helped you level up as a leader and push through that.

Lenny Rachitsky：沿着这些思路，我很好奇，所以你分享了一些帮助你提升领导者水平并推动这一目标的事情。

You mentioned meditation, Bill Campbell, a coach.

你提到了冥想，比尔·坎贝尔，一位教练。

You mentioned a few books.

你提到了几本书。

What has helped you continue to level up and stay ahead of where the company needs you?

是什么帮助你不断提升并在公司需要你的地方保持领先地位？

Sometimes you fell behind, sometimes you're ahead.

有时你落后，有时你领先。

What are some tips for founders that are trying to stay ahead of where things are going?

对于那些试图保持领先地位的创始人来说，有哪些建议？

Drew Houston: Well, I think first thing is I think a theme that's carried throughout a lot of these different chapters is you have to figure out what game you're playing and what the rules are when the game keeps changing.

德鲁·休斯顿：嗯，我认为第一件事是，我认为贯穿许多不同章节的一个主题是，你必须弄清楚你正在玩什么游戏，以及当游戏不断变化时规则是什么。

So I like in addition to the Enneagram or coding, I also like a long time video game player and there's a great game called, everybody's familiar with StarCraft.

所以我除了喜欢九型人格或者编码之外，我还喜欢一个长期的电子游戏玩家，有一个很棒的游戏叫做，大家都熟悉的星际争霸。

It's an awesome game.

这是一场很棒的游戏。

I think it has many lessons and riddles for an aspiring entrepreneur, many parallels with running a company.

我认为对于有抱负的企业家来说，它有很多教训和谜团，与经营公司有很多相似之处。

I'll save that for another one.

我会把它留到另一件事上。

Drew Houston: But this idea, Mindshare is a big resource.

德鲁·休斯顿：但对于这个想法，Mindshare 是一个很大的资源。

It's not actually how much money or economy or land or whatever or-

实际上并不是有多少金钱、经济、土地或其他什么——

Drew Houston: Military.

德鲁·休斯顿：军事。

Yeah, it's like you can only do so much or think about so much, your attention, but that's actually not the big lesson.

是的，就像你只能做这么多或想这么多，你的注意力，但这实际上不是重要的教训。

In StarCraft and other games, there's this concept of there's a micro and macro, and I would add to that, there's also the meta game.

在《星际争霸》和其他游戏中，有一个微观和宏观的概念，我想补充一点，还有元游戏。

Okay, so what's that?

好吧，那是什么？

Micro in these games, something like StarCraft is like, all right, can you click really fast and move your people and build things really quickly?

在这些游戏中，像《星际争霸》这样的微观游戏就像是，好吧，你能快速点击并移动你的人员并快速构建东西吗？

And it's like the mechanics.

这就像机械师一样。

Every second, how many hundreds of things are you doing per minute or how many things are you doing per second?

每一秒，你每分钟正在做多少件事情，或者你每秒正在做多少件事情？

And that's like a conditioning and practice and one kind of thing.

这就像一种调节和练习，是一种东西。

Drew Houston: Then, there's the macro game.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后是宏观游戏。

Well, could come back to the micro, in a product context or in a startup context, that might be things like, all right, how do I, often the stuff around product design and technology and distribution.

好吧，可以回到微观，在产品环境或初创企业环境中，这可能是这样的事情，好吧，我如何做，通常是围绕产品设计、技术和分销的事情。

So early founders especially are going to be totally fixated on here's how I make this great design and here's how the engineering works and here's how we get users and here's how our sales motion works, or here's how our viral loop works or things like that.

因此，早期的创始人尤其会完全专注于我如何做出这个伟大的设计，这是工程的工作原理，这是我们如何获得用户，这是我们的销售动作的工作原理，或者这是我们的病毒循环的工作原理或类似的东西。

And it's very in the details.

这非常体现在细节上。

Drew Houston: And then, there's the macro game.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后是宏观游戏。

In StarCraft, that might be things like, well, clicking a lot is important, but overall you're really managing your economy.

在《星际争霸》中，这可能是这样的，嗯，点击很多很重要，但总的来说，你实际上是在管理你的经济。

So do you have more expansions and resources than the other player?

那么你是否比其他玩家拥有更多的扩展和资源？

Are you building up your military?

你正在建设你的军队吗？

Are you getting your balance of the investment in economy and military?

经济和军事的投资平衡了吗？

Are you scouting?

你在侦察吗？

Do you know what the other person's doing?

你知道对方在做什么吗？

It's more strategic and conceptual.

它更具战略性和概念性。

So things in the startup realm that would feel more like that are more like, all right, not just the mechanics of how does this feature work, but more like, all right, what's the business model?

因此，在创业领域，感觉更像是，好吧，不仅仅是这个功能如何工作的机制，而是更像，好吧，商业模式是什么？

What's the market?

市场是什么？

Who are my competitors?

谁是我的竞争对手？

How do I differentiate myself?

我如何让自己与众不同？

How's this all going to evolve over time as the category goes from super high growth to more mature, things like that?

随着该类别从超高增长走向更加成熟，诸如此类的事情，这一切将如何随着时间的推移而演变？

And you respond, okay, we got to go from one product to multiple products, so then we have to reorganize the company that way and we blah, blah, blah.

你回答说，好吧，我们必须从一种产品转向多种产品，所以我们必须以这种方式重组公司，我们等等等等。

Drew Houston: And then I'd say there's also this, the meta game, which in gaming is a pretty specific thing.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后我想说还有一个，元游戏，在游戏中是一个非常具体的东西。

It's like some combination of the game itself gets updated so that as the creators, they make this unit stronger and this area unit is stronger, and this ground unit weaker and try to keep this big system in balance.

就像游戏本身的某些组合得到更新一样，作为创造者，他们使这个单位更强，这个区域单位更强，而这个地面单位更弱，并试图保持这个大系统的平衡。

And then, also as this community of players figures out new strategies and this big repeated game of rock paper, scissors, people figure out, okay, this one strategy is now categorically better.

然后，当这个玩家社区想出新策略以及这种石头剪刀布的大型重复游戏时，人们会发现，好吧，这个策略现在绝对更好。

And it's always this adversarial thing that's always shifting.

而且这种对抗性的事物总是在变化。

And so, playing StarCraft in 2020 is pretty different from playing StarCraft in 2015 or 2010 because everything, both the players are shifting and the game itself is shifting.

因此，2020 年玩《星际争霸》与 2015 年或 2010 年玩《星际争霸》有很大不同，因为一切，玩家都在变化，游戏本身也在变化。

And the game, it's usually not shifting a lot.

而游戏，通常不会发生太大变化。

So it's really more of an ecological effect.

所以这实际上更多的是一种生态效应。

Drew Houston: So I think it's super important.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以我认为这非常重要。

And then, in a startup context, what's the meta game?

然后，在初创公司的背景下，元游戏是什么？

Well, I'd say some of it is just business cycles.

嗯，我想说其中一些只是商业周期。

So I think you'll have, as you see, there's this boom in the late teens in SaaS and in tech.

所以我认为，正如您所看到的，SaaS 和技术领域在青少年后期会出现繁荣。

There's a bit of an AI boom happening right now.

现在人工智能正在蓬勃发展。

It's not that different from what, or parts of it are not that different from what happened with the dotcom era in '99, 2000 or the web 2.0 era in 2007 or others.

这与 99 年、2000 年的网络泡沫时代或 2007 年的 Web 2.0 时代或其他时代所发生的情况没有太大不同，或者说部分没有太大不同。

And then, you have these bust times like 2008 and 2000, 2001, et cetera.

然后，就会出现 2008 年、2000 年、2001 年等萧条时期。

So there's a market cycle thing that often creates similar dynamics where it's like five years ago every tech company was hiring the maximal number of people that it could.

因此，市场周期经常会产生类似的动态，就像五年前，每家科技公司都在招聘尽可能多的员工。

And then, that created one talent dynamic.

然后，这就创造了一种人才动态。

Now, it's a lot of companies are keeping high comp flat or negative, so that's just a very different thing.

现在，很多公司都保持高薪酬持平或负增长，所以这是一个非常不同的事情。

But even those are cyclical.

但即使这些也是周期性的。

Drew Houston: Then, you want to identify how is this game of business actually fundamentally permanently changing?

德鲁·休斯顿：那么，您想确定这种商业游戏实际上是如何从根本上永久改变的？

So for example, we launched Dash, we usually do a press thing, conventional press, tech press, we got almost no coverage for it.

例如，我们推出了 Dash，我们通常会做新闻报道，传统媒体，科技媒体，我们几乎没有报道。

And yet all the stuff we did on social or going direct was way, way, way more impactful.

然而，我们在社交或直接营销方面所做的所有事情都更具影响力。

And it's not just Dropbox or in tech, but it's also presidential election.

这不仅是 Dropbox 或科技领域的事，也是总统选举的事。

All the candidates are on podcasts.

所有候选人都在播客上。

Yes, they're on CNN too, but not really.

是的，他们也在 CNN 上，但不是真的。

So that's just a new thing.

所以这只是一个新事物。

How do you manage the brand of your company or launch products, things like that.

您如何管理公司品牌或推出产品之类的事情。

The nature of marketing is changing.

营销的本质正在发生变化。

And that changed when, in 2007 too, instead of hiring PR firms and buying AdWords and stuff, we were creating these viral videos and we were using math from epidemiology to create these viral loops.

2007 年，情况也发生了变化，我们不再聘请公关公司和购买 AdWords 之类的东西，而是制作这些病毒式视频，并使用流行病学的数学来创建这些病毒式循环。

In a lot of ways, Dropbox took that, transplanted that consumer internet playbook into business software.

在很多方面，Dropbox 都借鉴了这一点，将消费者互联网手册移植到了商业软件中。

Drew Houston: But the thing is you need to understand what game you're playing and you need to get good at the micro.

德鲁·休斯顿：但问题是你需要了解你在玩什么游戏，并且你需要擅长微观。

It's not that the meta is more important than the micro, it's like you need to do all three at the same time.

这并不是说元比微观更重要，而是你需要同时做这三件事。

And so, that's really the hard part.

所以，这确实是最困难的部分。

And then, when things are shifting.

然后，当事情发生变化时。

And the way you know what game you're playing is to be systematic about training yourself and probably the single most useful, or at least important to me piece of advice I could give is you have to figure out how to keep your personal growth curve ahead of the company's growth curve.

你知道自己在玩什么游戏的方法是系统地培训自己，我可以给出的最有用的、或者至少对我来说最重要的建议是，你必须弄清楚如何保持个人成长曲线领先于公司的成长曲线。

The single most important impactful thing for me has been reading because talk about this micro, macro, meta games or abstractions, this is the kind of stuff you can learn from history.

对我来说最重要的有影响力的事情就是阅读，因为谈论微观、宏观、元游戏或抽象，这是你可以从历史中学到的东西。

Drew Houston: Learning what happened in Netscape ended up being pretty important to what happened at Dropbox in 2014.

Drew Houston：了解 Netscape 发生的事情对于 2014 年 Dropbox 发生的事情非常重要。

Learning what happened to Procter & Gamble and selling makeup ended up actually being pretty relevant.

了解宝洁公司发生的事情和销售化妆品实际上非常相关。

So I think having a broad information diet is really important.

所以我认为拥有广泛的信息饮食非常重要。

And I've collated a list of books that were really impactful to me.

我整理了一份对我真正有影响的书籍清单。

You can find a way to share that.

您可以找到一种方法来分享。

All right, I'd be happy to share that.

好吧，我很乐意分享这一点。

Drew Houston: But in a lot of ways, as a CEO, you have to be right about a lot of things, especially and including things you haven't done before.

德鲁·休斯顿：但在很多方面，作为首席执行官，你必须在很多事情上都是正确的，尤其是包括你以前没有做过的事情。

And I think from that perspective at least, I'd say there's things that are challenging for your head and things that are challenging for your heart.

我认为至少从这个角度来看，我想说有些事情对你的头脑有挑战，有些事情对你的心有挑战。

The head challenge is one that's more like, all right, how do I cultivate wisdom really quickly?

头脑挑战更像是，好吧，我如何真正快速地培养智慧？

And so, in addition to a lot of technical books about here's how you do marketing or product or management or things like that.

因此，除了很多关于如何进行营销、产品或管理或类似事情的技术书籍之外。

So it could be around higher level, almost philosophical when it's things like Buffett or Munger or Bezos would be more on that end of the spectrum.

所以它可能是更高层次的，几乎是哲学的，而像巴菲特、芒格或贝索斯这样的人则更属于这一范围。

But it's not just reading.

但这不仅仅是阅读。

I think having a community of people that you can learn from is really important.

我认为拥有一个可以向您学习的社区非常重要。

And I've also found it's interesting, you learn having stable of people that are at the same stage as you, couple people, a couple stages ahead, 2 years ahead, 5 years ahead, 20 years ahead.

我还发现这很有趣，你会学到有稳定的人与你处于同一阶段，情侣，领先几个阶段，领先2年，领先5年，领先20年。

Lenny Rachitsky: And this is founders, other CEOs?

Lenny Rachitsky：这是创始人，其他首席执行官？

Drew Houston: Other founders, founders and CEOs, exactly, because you'll learn different things from them.

德鲁·休斯顿：确切地说，是其他创始人、创始人和首席执行官，因为你会从他们身上学到不同的东西。

So first of all, when you're in the early innings, you'll actually get more useful advice often from your peers because they're going through the same thing.

因此，首先，当您处于早期局时，您实际上会经常从同事那里得到更有用的建议，因为他们正在经历同样的事情。

So it's like, how do I raise a seed round?

所以这就像是，我如何筹集种子轮资金？

You're going to get a lot more out of someone who did that a year ago or is doing that now.

你将从一年前这样做或现在正在这样做的人那里得到更多。

Then if I asked the doc, "How do you raise a seed round?" He'd be like, "I don't remember.

然后，如果我问医生：“你如何筹集种子轮资金？”他会说：“我不记得了。

Just build a good company."

只是建立一家好公司。”

Drew Houston: And you'll see that as you talk to people at different phases.

德鲁·休斯顿：当你与处于不同阶段的人交谈时，你会看到这一点。

I think again, early stage it's more about the micro, about the product and distribution, then there's this continuum.

我再次认为，早期阶段更多的是关于微观、关于产品和分销，然后就是这个连续体。

So then it's about your business model and monetization and the financials, then it's about defensibility and maintaining that advantage.

那么这就是你的商业模式、货币化和财务状况，然后就是防御性和保持这种优势。

And as you talk to, as I talked to my peers would be more about the product.

当你和我和我的同事交谈时，更多的是关于产品。

That was the scaffold I would see over founders.

这就是我所看到的对创始人的脚手架。

Drew Houston: And then, people that were further out, actually they still knew all the micro stuff and had feelings about it, but they're almost philosophical in nature like philosophers and just very broad intellectually and drawing lots of distinctions from lots of different things and knew a lot about a lot.

德鲁·休斯顿：然后，那些更远的人，实际上他们仍然知道所有微观的东西并且对此有感觉，但他们本质上几乎像哲学家一样具有哲学性，并且在智力上非常广泛，并且从许多不同的事物中得出了很多区别，并且了解了很多东西。

And I think most of the tenured founders that I'm, most of the founder CEOs who've been at it for 10, 20 years plus, I'm at 17, almost all of them read voraciously.

我想大多数像我这样的终身创始人，大多数已经在这行工作了 10 年、20 年以上的创始人 CEO，我现在 17 岁了，几乎所有人都如饥似渴地读书。

So I think combination of reading and community are the most important things.

所以我认为阅读和社区的结合是最重要的。

Drew Houston: But then, the last thing is being systematic about it.

德鲁·休斯顿：但是，最后一件事是系统化。

So in line with what does it mean to keep your personal growth curve ahead of the company's growth curve?

那么保持个人成长曲线领先于公司成长曲线意味着什么？

I think one way to do that exercise is think about is always be working back from, in one year from now, what will I wish I had been learning today?

我认为进行这项练习的一种方法是思考，从现在开始一年后，我希望我今天学到了什么？

Two years, five years?

两年，五年？

And often, those to-do lists are pretty different.

通常，这些待办事项列表是非常不同的。

Drew Houston: So in 2008, I would've been focused on just getting users for Dropbox, but then looking ahead to a year later, I would've been building the first business functions in the company, and then five years later, it would be thinking about how do we fight with Google and Microsoft and all these other things.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以在 2008 年，我会专注于为 Dropbox 获取用户，但展望一年后，我会在公司建立第一个业务功能，然后五年后，我们会考虑如何与谷歌和微软以及所有其他事物竞争。

And then, for my own skills, it would be like 2008 where like how do I raise a scale to venture round and what do all these terms mean and things like that.

然后，就我自己的技能而言，就像 2008 年那样，我如何提高风险投资的规模以及所有这些术语的含义以及类似的事情。

But then, how do I be a great leader, great manager, comfortable speaking publicly, things like that.

但是，我如何才能成为一名出色的领导者、出色的经理、能够轻松地公开演讲等等。

And the things that are further out are often the most intimidating, but you also have the most time to learn and you often can psych yourself out in terms of like, oh, this is just new and uncomfortable.

更远的事情往往是最令人生畏的，但你也有最多的时间来学习，你常常可以让自己感到兴奋，比如，哦，这只是新的和不舒服的。

And I did say this is one of the hard challenges.

我确实说过这是艰巨的挑战之一。

You're always going to have that feeling of discomfort.

你总会有那种不舒服的感觉。

And instinctively, what you're going to want to do is run away from it because you're human.

本能地，你想做的就是逃离它，因为你是人类。

It's uncomfortable to feel like to confront these things that you're not good at or might be embarrassing or threatening.

想要面对这些你不擅长或可能令人尴尬或威胁的事情会让你感到不舒服。

And so, I think an important part of being a founder is learning to run towards that feeling not away from it.

因此，我认为作为创始人的一个重要部分是学会朝着这种感觉前进，而不是远离它。

That's a big part of your learning rate is the extent to which you're pushing yourself beyond discomfort.

学习率的一个重要部分是你在多大程度上推动自己超越不适。

Drew Houston: And so having that list of a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, what can I start learning today?

德鲁·休斯顿：所以有了一年后、两年后、五年后的清单，我今天可以开始学习什么？

And then, recognizing these things, they're all trainable.

然后，认识到这些东西，它们都是可以训练的。

So in five weeks you're not going to be a great guitar player or surgeon or manager, leader, but in five years you can put a pretty big dent in those problems.

因此，在五周内，你不会成为一名出色的吉他手、外科医生或经理、领导者，但在五年内，你可以对这些问题产生相当大的影响。

And people who enter college and leave college often have a lot more relevant knowledge after those four years.

进入大学和离开大学的人通常在这四年之后拥有更多的相关知识。

So just having that growth mindset.

所以只要有成长心态。

Drew Houston: And I'd say the last piece of it that is also tricky in addition to going from a heart or mindset perspective going towards discomfort and in addition to a lot of the other stuff we talked about being like how do you have a sense of equanimity, you're not burning out and finding a sustainable pace.

德鲁·休斯顿：我想说的最后一点也很棘手，除了从内心或心态的角度走向不适之外，除了我们讨论的许多其他内容之外，比如你如何拥有平静感，你不会精疲力尽并找到可持续的节奏。

I think the other thing is often smart people have more trouble learning than otherwise.

我认为另一件事是聪明人在学习上往往比其他人更困难。

And there's this great article that I, it's probably my most handed out articles probably from the '70s or '80s or something called Teaching Smart People How to Learn.

我有一篇很棒的文章，它可能是我分发最多的文章，可能来自 70 年代或 80 年代，或者叫做《教聪明人如何学习》的文章。

Because what ends up happening is the more book smart you are or the more you were identified as gifted or intelligent as a kid, the more not knowing something or being wrong, it's not just not knowing something or being wrong, it's like an assault on your identity.

因为最终发生的情况是，你的书本知识越多，或者你小时候越被认为有天赋或聪明，你就越不知道某事或犯错，这不仅仅是不知道某事或犯错，这就像对你的身份的攻击。

Drew Houston: And so, I found that one of the best predictors of an exact continuity of this scale, it's not just what they know or what they can do, but the extent to which they can actually be aware of their failures and not blame or dismiss things because smart people have a really fast rationalization hamster.

德鲁·休斯顿：所以，我发现，这种规模的精确连续性的最佳预测因素之一，不仅仅是他们知道什么或他们能做什么，而是他们能够在多大程度上真正意识到自己的失败，而不是责备或忽视事情，因为聪明的人有一个非常快速的合理化仓鼠。

They can convince themselves that, well, here's how they were technically right even though clearly they were wrong or clearly the thing didn't work out and they let themselves off the hook.

他们可以说服自己，好吧，这就是他们在技术上是正确的，尽管显然他们错了，或者显然事情没有成功，他们让自己摆脱了困境。

And all of this happens unconsciously as a protective mechanism.

所有这一切都是作为一种保护机制在不知不觉中发生的。

Drew Houston: So I think finding ways to take responsibility or always have a mindset of what if I were a hundred percent responsible for this?

德鲁·休斯顿：所以我想找到承担责任的方法，或者总是有一种心态：如果我对此负有百分百的责任怎么办？

What if it was no one else's fault?

如果这不是别人的错怎么办？

What if it's entirely in my control?

如果这完全在我的掌控之中怎么办？

And those things are never true, but that's always...

这些事情从来都不是真的，但那总是......

Or with perfect hindsight, what would I have done differently?

或者事后看来，我会采取什么不同的做法？

And just owning things ends up being more painful in the short run, but then some painful hours can save painful years.

从短期来看，仅仅拥有东西最终会变得更加痛苦，但随后一些痛苦的时光可以挽救痛苦的岁月。

And there's a great book on that mindset stuff, the 15 Principles of Conscious Leadership, Diana Chapman and some co-authors, and she's been a coach and friend of mine.

有一本关于心态问题的好书，《自觉领导力的 15 条原则》，由戴安娜·查普曼 (Diana Chapman) 和一些合著者撰写，她是我的教练和朋友。

She's amazing and it has really helped me on that front.

她太棒了，这在这方面给了我很大帮助。

But really, how do you train your head and train your heart?

但实际上，你如何训练你的头脑和训练你的心呢？

There's different things you do for each, but all in service of keeping your personal growth curve ahead of the company's growth curve.

你为每个人做不同的事情，但所有这些都是为了保持你的个人成长曲线领先于公司的成长曲线。

Lenny Rachitsky: I love how tactically your advice is.

Lenny Rachitsky：我喜欢你的建议很有策略性。

There's this piece of advice of think what do I need to know a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, this reading list, this idea of having staggered staged founders in a community to help you along this journey, this article about how smart people learn and how to get past this block.

有一条建议，思考一年后、两年后、五年后我需要知道什么，这个阅读清单，这个在社区中分阶段安排创始人来帮助你完成这一旅程的想法，这篇关于聪明人如何学习以及如何克服这个障碍的文章。

So I love just how concrete a lot of this stuff is.

所以我喜欢这些东西的具体性。

So then, just zooming out and maybe final reflections on this journey, as you described this, it's basically the epitome of the hero's journey that you've been on here.

那么，缩小范围，也许是对这段旅程的最终反思，正如你所描述的，它基本上是你在这里经历的英雄旅程的缩影。

Things are good, trouble appears, you enter this other land of everyone coming at you trying to squash you in every direction, battling them, and then emerging now into this new land with all the things you've learned, coming back to the original idea of what Dropbox could have been.

一切都很好，麻烦也出现了，你进入了另一个世界，每个人都在试图从各个方向压垮你，与他们战斗，然后带着你学到的所有东西进入这个新世界，回到 Dropbox 原本的想法。

So I think that's partly why it's so interesting is it's the epitome of-

所以我认为这就是它如此有趣的部分原因，因为它是-

Drew Houston: But we still got to make it fully out of the, we're on our way up, we're clawing our way back up.

德鲁·休斯顿：但我们仍然必须完全摆脱困境，我们正在上升，我们正在努力恢复。

Lenny Rachitsky: The dragon's still out there.

Lenny Rachitsky：龙仍然在那里。

The incumbents still exist.

现任者仍然存在。

Drew Houston: And by the way, it will always be like that.

德鲁·休斯顿：顺便说一句，事情永远都是这样。

You're never done with that.

你永远不会完成这个。

It's not like you reach the A-top or you don't have to if you don't want it.

这并不是说你达到了 A 顶，或者如果你不想的话你也不必达到。

Lenny Rachitsky: And it makes me think about, as you're talking, people think about product market fit and something, a lesson from this journey is just like product market fit is not a binary.

Lenny Rachitsky：这让我想到，正如你所说，人们会考虑产品市场契合度之类的问题，从这次旅程中得到的教训是，产品市场契合度并不是二元对立的。

You will have it now.

你现在就会拥有它。

You've got it and you have it and will last forever.

你已经拥有了它，你已经拥有了它，并且将永远持续下去。

It's constantly being broken by other people or if there's something you've discovered that is a big market.

它不断地被其他人打破，或者如果你发现了一些东西，那是一个很大的市场。

And maybe final reflection on the story you've shared things that might be helpful to people, just the journey you've been on that might be helpful to founders who are going through this right now or will probably go through this.

也许对你分享的故事的最终反思可能对人们有帮助，只是你所经历的旅程可能对现在正在经历这个或可能会经历这个的创始人有帮助。

Drew Houston: I think it's important to remember we're all really lucky to be able to do this kind of work.

德鲁·休斯顿：我认为重要的是要记住我们都很幸运能够从事这种工作。

And the things that I got out of...

还有我从中得到的东西...

When I was 18, the things I thought I would get out of starting company would've been the things you would think.

当我 18 岁的时候，我以为我能从创办公司中得到的东西就是你会想到的东西。

It'd be like, oh, I'll be really well-known or really rich or build these awesome things.

就像，哦，我会变得非常出名，或者非常富有，或者建造这些很棒的东西。

I think there's benefits to that, but what I've grown to appreciate a lot more is over time is this thing or the experience and the journey of starting a company can really be of forge for a better character or there's transfer.

我认为这样做有好处，但随着时间的推移，我越来越欣赏的是，这件事或创办公司的经历和旅程确实可以塑造出更好的性格，或者有转移。

A lot of what you learn here is transferable in many different domains.

您在这里学到的很多知识都可以转移到许多不同的领域。

Drew Houston: I just had a little kid, Charlie, he's one-year-old, so I know we're both in new dad mode, but I'm like, it's made me a better husband, it'll make me a better father, made me a better person.

德鲁·休斯顿：我刚刚有了一个小孩，查理，他一岁了，所以我知道我们都处于新爸爸模式，但我想，这让我成为一个更好的丈夫，它会让我成为一个更好的父亲，让我成为一个更好的人。

And then, I just say, listen, there's no easy button where things are just up to the right and so don't look for one and don't feel bad if things are difficult.

然后，我只是说，听着，没有简单的按钮可以让事情顺利进行，所以不要寻找一个按钮，如果事情很困难，也不要感到难过。

But ultimately, one of the biggest surprises about being able to spend time with all these interesting people and founder CEOs who've created these iconic companies is at the end of the day, they do it because they love it.

但最终，能够与所有这些有趣的人和创建这些标志性公司的创始人首席执行官共度时光的最大惊喜之一是，他们这样做是因为他们喜欢它。

Drew Houston: And so, I think learning to decouple...

德鲁·休斯顿：所以，我认为学习脱钩......

That doesn't mean they're always having a good time at all.

这并不意味着他们总是玩得很开心。

Most of them use metaphors like Jensen or Eli, like chewing broken glass, staring into the abyss, and yet for a lot of these people, there's at the end of the day, nothing they'd rather do.

他们中的大多数人都使用像詹森或伊莱这样的比喻，比如咀嚼碎玻璃、凝视深渊，但对于很多人来说，到了最后，他们什么也不想做。

So I think finding the gun in that.

所以我想在那里找到枪。

Lenny Rachitsky: I'm very excited to follow the next chapter of your journey.

Lenny Rachitsky：我很高兴能够关注您旅程的下一章。

I am really thankful that you shared these stories.

我真的很感谢你分享这些故事。

I think this is going to be helpful to a lot of people.

我认为这会对很多人有帮助。

I think this is a story that people study for a long time because it's common and not talked about much.

我认为这是一个人们研究了很长时间的故事，因为它很常见并且很少被谈论。

Drew, thank you so much for being here.

德鲁，非常感谢你来到这里。

For folks that want to maybe check out what you're building, anything you want to share, where should they go?

对于那些想要查看您正在构建的内容、您想要分享的任何内容的人来说，他们应该去哪里？

Drew Houston: I'm just Drew Houston on all the socials and then we got our new product, Dropbox Dash, dropbox.com/dash.

Drew Houston：在所有社交活动中我只是 Drew Houston，然后我们推出了新产品 Dropbox Dash，dropbox.com/dash。

Right now, it's for companies.

现在，它是针对公司的。

We'll have a downloadable version.

我们将有一个可下载的版本。

You could just get on your phone or your computer soon.

您很快就可以使用手机或计算机。

But Lenny, this is awesome, super fun, really big fan of what you do.

但是莱尼，这太棒了，超级有趣，非常喜欢你所做的事情。

Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：太棒了。

Same.

相同的。

Drew, thank you so much for being here.

德鲁，非常感谢你来到这里。

Lenny Rachitsky: Bye everyone.

莱尼·拉奇茨基：大家再见。

Thank you so much for listening.

非常感谢您的聆听。

If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

如果您发现这很有价值，您可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或您最喜欢的播客应用程序上订阅该节目。

Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

另外，请考虑给我们评分或留下评论，因为这确实有助于其他听众找到播客。

You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com.

您可以在 lennyspodcast.com 上找到所有过去的剧集或了解有关该节目的更多信息。

See you in the next episode.

下一集见。

中文为机器翻译，仅供参考。