2016-12-31 Acquired.The Amazon IPO with original Amazon Board Member Tom Alberg
Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)
Ben: Welcome to Episode 28 of Acquired, the podcast where we talk about technology acquisitions and IPOs. I’m Ben Gilbert.
本：欢迎收听《Acquired》第 28 期节目，这是一档我们专门讨论科技收购和 IPO 的播客。我是本·吉尔伯特。
David: I’m David Rosenthal.
大卫：我是大卫·罗森塔尔。
Ben: And we are your hosts. Today’s episode is on the Amazon IPO, and we have an incredibly special guest with us today, Tom Alberg.
本：我们是这档节目的主持人。今天这期节目我们来聊亚马逊的 IPO，我们还请到了一位非常特别的嘉宾，汤姆·阿尔伯格。
David: So Tom, we know very well, because he was one of the cofounders of Madrona which actually brought Ben and me together, and none of us would be here if it weren’t for Tom. But in addition to being a cofounder of Madrona, he has had had another very special role over the last 20+ years which is board member of Amazon.com. Tom was the first investor and the first and, I guess other than Jeff, longest serving board member of Amazon.
大卫：我们和汤姆非常熟悉，因为他是 Madrona 的联合创始人之一，正是 Madrona 让我们和本走到了一起，可以说没有汤姆就没有我们。但除了是 Madrona 的联合创始人之外，在过去的 20 多年里，他还有一个非常特殊的身份，那就是 Amazon.com 的董事会成员。汤姆是亚马逊的第一位投资者，也是除了杰夫之外，任期最长的董事会成员。
Tom: Right.
汤姆：是的。
David: So we thought it would be fun, we will get through the whole IPO story here but to read Tom’s bio from the S-1 that Amazon filed in advance of going public.
大卫：所以我们觉得，在讲述整个 IPO 故事之前，先来读一读亚马逊在上市前提交的 S-1 文件中汤姆的个人简介，这会很有趣。
So “Mr. Alberg has been a director of the Company (Amazon) since June 1996. Mr. Alberg has been a principal in Madrona Investment Group, LLC, a ‘private merchant banking firm,’ since January 1996. From April 1991 to October 1995, he was the President and director of LIN Brodcasting Corporation, and from July 1990 to October 1995, he was Executive Vice President of McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc.; both companies were providers of cellular telephone services and are now part of AT&T Corp. Prior to 1990, Mr. Alberg was a partner of the law firm Perkins Coie, where has also served as Chairman of the firm’s Executive Committee. He is also a director of Active Voice Corporation, Emeritus Corporation, Mosaix Inc., Teledesic Corporation and Visio Corporation. Mr. Alberg received his B.A. from Harvard University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School.”
“自 1996 年 6 月起，阿尔伯格先生一直担任本公司（亚马逊）的董事。自 1996 年 1 月起，阿尔伯格先生一直是 Madrona Investment Group, LLC 这家‘私人商业银行公司’的主要合伙人。从 1991 年 4 月到 1995 年 10 月，他担任 LIN Broadcasting Corporation 的总裁兼董事；从 1990 年 7 月到 1995 年 10 月，他担任 McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc. 的执行副总裁；这两家公司都曾是蜂窝电话服务提供商，现已并入 AT&T Corp。在 1990 年之前，阿尔伯格先生是 Perkins Coie 律师事务所的合伙人，并曾担任该事务所执行委员会的主席。他还是 Active Voice Corporation、Emeritus Corporation、Mosaix Inc.、Teledesic Corporation 和 Visio Corporation 的董事。阿尔伯格先生获得了哈佛大学的文学学士学位和哥伦比亚法学院的法律博士学位。”
So, are any of those other companies still in business except for Amazon?
那么，除了亚马逊，这些公司还有在运营的吗？
Tom: No. I think, well, Visio was acquired for a good price by Microsoft. I think over a billion dollars. But you also left out, for example, that I learned the multiplication table since third grade and probably was class president in fifth grade. I mean, how can you miss these things?
汤姆：没有了。我想想，嗯，Visio 被微软以一个好价钱收购了，我记得超过了十亿美元。但你还漏掉了一些事，比如我从三年级就学会了乘法表，五年级可能还当过班长。我的意思是，你怎么能把这些给忘了呢？
David: At Ballard High School, right? Here in Seattle.
大卫：是在巴拉德高中，对吧？就在西雅图这里。
Tom: Right. Ballard High School eventually, right.
汤姆：没错。最终是在巴拉德高中，是的。
David: Once again, thanks to Tom for joining us. We’re super honored to have him on the show. Let’s start with the Amazon story. So, I expect most listeners are familiar with the lore of how Amazon came to be, but we’ll retell it briefly here leading it up to the IPO and ask Tom some fun questions along the way.
David：再次感谢Tom的加入。我们非常荣幸他能来参加我们的节目。让我们从亚马逊的故事开始。我想大多数听众应该都熟悉亚马逊的创业传说，但我们还是会简要回顾一下，从它的创立讲到IPO，并在过程中问Tom一些有趣的问题。
So, Amazon was founded in the summer of 1994 but actually started the idea a little bit before that when Jeff Bezos as the vice-president at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. in New York. And David Shaw, the founder of D.E. Shaw, assigned Jeff to think about business opportunities enabled by this new thing called the internet. Jeff went off and did a bunch of research, and as legend has it, he came across this one report about the growth of the internet that projected that it would grow 2300% annually for the next decade or so. He kind of read that and decided, “That’s it. I got to be a part of this. I don’t want to miss this boat.”
亚马逊成立于1994年夏天，但其实它的创意早在那之前就已萌芽。当时，Jeff Bezos 是对冲基金 D.E. Shaw & Co. 在纽约的副总裁。D.E. Shaw 的创始人 David Shaw 指派 Jeff 去思考互联网这种新事物可能带来的商业机会。Jeff 做了大量研究，传说中他看到一份关于互联网增长的报告，预测未来十年互联网每年将增长2300%。他看完之后的反应是：“就是它了。我必须参与进来。我不能错过这趟船。”
So he and his wife MacKenzie who he also worked with at D.E. Shaw, they quit their jobs and they road tripped across country to the west coast with no particular destination in mind other than starting a company at the end of it. Jeff writes the business plan for what would become Amazon along the way and they end up here in Seattle where they start Amazon on July 5,1994 in a garage in Bellevue.
于是他和他的妻子MacKenzie——她也在D.E. Shaw工作——双双辞去了工作，驾车横穿美国前往西海岸，途中并没有具体的目的地，只知道他们最终要创办一家公司。Jeff在路途中写下了日后成为亚马逊的商业计划书，最后他们抵达了西雅图，并于1994年7月5日，在贝尔维尤的一间车库里创办了亚马逊。
Speaking later about this journey, Jeff would come to talk a bunch about what he terms the “regret minimization framework”. And this is a quote, there’s a great piece in Wired magazine I think from 1999 interviewing Jeff and asked him about why decided to leave and start Amazon, and he said, “When I’m 80, am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing a chance to be here at the beginning of the internet? Yes.”
后来在谈到这段经历时，Jeff经常提到一个他称之为“最小化遗憾框架”的理念。有一段引语来自一篇出色的《Wired》杂志文章，我记得是1999年的一次采访，记者问他为什么决定离开华尔街、创办亚马逊，他说：“等我80岁时，我会后悔离开华尔街吗？不会。我会后悔错过参与互联网起点的机会吗？会。”
So even in those early days, Jeff’s kind of long-term thinking is evident there. I’m curious, for Tom, is the regret minimization framework something that Jeff talks about in the context of Amazon? What’s your experience with that been?
所以即使在创业初期，Jeff的长期思维就已经显现出来了。我很好奇，Tom，对于你来说，Jeff有没有在亚马逊的经营中谈到过“最小化遗憾框架”？你在这方面的观察和体验是怎样的？
Tom: Well, Jeff, yeah, he’s a big picture, long-term thinker. So I don’t think we’ve really focused so much on that. I mean, I think it was important for him in terms of that decision. But maybe it underlies a lot of his feeling on “let’s try things and we can only regret that we didn’t try something. We can never regret that we tried something even it fails.” So he’s very much in the mode of “failure is okay. Not trying things is not okay.”
Tom：是的，Jeff确实是一个看重全局、注重长期的人。所以我们其实并没有特别强调这个“最小化遗憾框架”。我认为这对他当初做出决定时确实很重要。但也许这个框架潜移默化地影响了他对待事情的态度——“我们唯一会后悔的就是没尝试过，而不会后悔尝试了即便失败。”他确实是那种认为“失败没关系，不尝试才是不行”的人。
Ben: Awesome. Along those lines of thinking about the origin of the idea frame is on dotcom, as I was reading The Everything Store, it says that Jeff and David were on a walk through Central Park when Jeff told him he was going to leave and –
Ben：太棒了。关于点燃这个点com创业想法的起点，我在读《一网打尽》的时候看到，说Jeff和David一起在中央公园散步时，Jeff告诉他自己要辞职，然后——
David: It’s David Shaw, the founder of D.E. Shaw who Jeff worked for.
David：是David Shaw，他是D.E. Shaw的创始人，Jeff曾在他手下工作。
Ben: Yes. Thank you, David.
Ben：对的，谢谢你澄清，David。
David: Not me. Although that would have been awesome.
David：不是我。虽然如果是我就太酷了。
Ben: It occurred to me the intellectual property and all this original research that had been done for Amazon would have been done at D.E. Shaw. What did that look like and was that ever sort of a concern that D.E. Shaw would come back later with any sort of claim to the idea for Amazon.com?
Ben：我突然想到，亚马逊最初的一些研究和知识产权其实可能是在D.E. Shaw那边做的。那当时情况是怎样的？有没有担心过D.E. Shaw日后会提出他们对Amazon.com想法的某种主张？
Tom: Well, Jeff had signed a non-compete and a non-solicitation agreement. I don’t remember actually worrying about the non-compete, which in retrospect is kind of interesting. Actually, Shaw did start a couple of early internet companies that Jeff was not a part of. They even had an email company that developed and then went public in the late ‘90s and merged with somebody.
Tom：Jeff当时确实签了竞业禁止和禁止挖角的协议。我倒是不记得我们真的担心过竞业禁止问题，这回头看还挺有意思的。实际上，Shaw确实创办过几家早期的互联网公司，Jeff并没有参与其中。他们甚至还创办过一家电邮公司，后来在90年代末上市并与其他公司合并了。
But we did talk about and Jeff paid strict attention to the non-solicitation of employees, and it was a two-year limit. So there were people at D.E. Shaw, at least one person who really wanted to desperately come with Jeff and really –
不过我们确实讨论过，而且Jeff非常严格地遵守了不挖角条款，该条款期限是两年。当时D.E. Shaw里确实有些人，至少有一位，非常想跟Jeff一起离开，真的——
David: Was it Jeff Holden?
David：那个人是Jeff Holden吗？
Tom: Well, Jeff Holden might have been. It might have been Jeff Holden. Jeff was at D.E. Shaw. I mean, the story is that –
Tom：嗯，也许是Jeff Holden，也许真的是他。Jeff确实曾在D.E. Shaw工作。就是说，事情的经过是——
David: And I think Jeff is now, I think, SVP of product at Uber?
David：我记得Jeff现在是Uber的产品高级副总裁，对吧？
Tom: Yes, I think so. Holden has had an interesting career and we once looked at investing Madrona at a company he had started. The valuation was only about pre-money at $80 million or something. So, we passed on that one.
Tom：对，我想是的。Holden的职业生涯确实挺有意思的。我们Madrona基金曾考虑投资他创办的一家公司。当时的估值只有8000万美元左右的pre-money，所以我们没投。
But the story is that when the two years expired, Jeff Bezos immediately called Jeff Holden and said, “Pack your bags and come to Seattle,” which he did. Then several other people from D.E. Shaw followed.
不过这个故事是这样的：两年期限一到，Jeff Bezos立刻打电话给Jeff Holden说：“收拾行李，来西雅图吧。”于是他真的来了。后来还有几位D.E. Shaw的人也陆续跟来了。
David: So in the early days, the company before – It was obvious Amazon was doing well and could recruit all these former coworkers of Jeff from D.E. Shaw, they spend a whole year actually building the site. So from the summer of ’94 until the summer of ‘95, they build a site and then they launched Amazon.com almost exactly a year later in July 1995. Along the way, Amazon raises its first seed investment and Tom, you led the first round of Angels that invested in Amazon. How did that come together? How did you meet Jeff and end up deciding to do this?
David：所以在早期，还没有人意识到亚马逊会成功、也还不能从D.E. Shaw招回Jeff的前同事时，公司其实花了一整年时间在建网站。从1994年夏天到1995年夏天，他们一直在开发，Amazon.com差不多就在一年后的1995年7月上线。在这个过程中，亚马逊也筹得了第一笔种子轮投资。Tom，你是带头参与亚马逊天使轮融资的人之一。这是怎么促成的？你是怎么认识Jeff，又为什么决定参与投资的？
Tom: Well, the short part of the story is that Jeff was out raising that first million dollars and began in kind of early 1995. He was calling on people and a lawyer friend of mine, older lawyer called me and said his investment group, he had a little Angel investment group, that they had met with Jeff and they didn’t really understand this new internet thing, and when I meet with Jeff and give them advice as to whether this was for real.
Tom：这个故事简短来说就是，Jeff在1995年初开始筹集他第一笔100万美元的资金。他四处联系潜在投资人。有一天，我一位年长的律师朋友打电话给我，说他所在的一个小型天使投资小组和Jeff见过面，但他们对这个所谓的“互联网”完全不懂。他就问我能不能去和Jeff谈谈，帮他们判断一下这是不是一个靠谱的项目。
David: And your background was in the cellular industry.
David：而你当时的背景是在移动通信行业，对吧？
Tom: Yeah. I was at that time wrapping up, selling McCaw Cellular and Lin Broadcasting to AT&T. But I did know something about the internet. But this was very beginning. Netscape went public I think in like September, that fall of ’95. Three of the key employees at McCaw had been recruited by Netscape – the president, the CFO, and his general counsel. I was intrigued by it. But anyway, you never always say “no, I don’t know anything about it.” You say “sure.”
Tom：是的。我当时刚好在处理McCaw Cellular 和 Lin Broadcasting 出售给AT&T的事。但我对互联网多少有些了解——虽然那时还非常早期。我记得Netscape是在1995年秋天，也就是9月上市的。我们McCaw公司的三位核心员工后来也都被Netscape挖走了——总裁、首席财务官，还有总法律顾问。我对这件事很感兴趣。但不管怎样，遇到这种事你永远不能说“我不懂这个”，你要说“好，我来看看”。
David: That sounds like a very Bezos-like approach to things.
David：这听起来很有贝索斯风格。
Tom: Yeah. Well, it was a good thing I said “sure.” Anyway, Jeff then called me and I met with him, and he laid out what he was planning to do.
Tom：是啊，我当时说“好”确实是个正确的决定。后来Jeff给我打了电话，我们见了面，他就详细讲了他打算做什么。
David: The website hadn’t launched at this point, right?
David：那时网站还没上线，对吗？
Tom: No. This was like in May of ’95 and the website launching in July. So, I was impressed by Jeff. To say that I foresaw what Amazon was going to become would be not true. I don’t think anybody, including Jeff probably didn’t fully – I’m sure he did not foresee what it became. I mean, he was excited about the growth of the internet. He had done a lot of research. He had focused on books because he had this ability to have this enormous catalog of books that no single bookstore could afford to carry.
Tom：对，那是在1995年5月，网站是7月才上线的。我当时对Jeff印象非常深刻。要说我预见了亚马逊将来会变成什么样，那是不真实的。我觉得没有人，包括Jeff自己，可能也完全没有预料到——我可以肯定他当时并没有预见后来的规模。他只是对互联网的增长趋势很兴奋。他做了大量研究，选择从图书入手，因为他能打造出一个拥有海量图书目录的电商平台，这是任何一家实体书店都无法做到的。
So I reported back to my friend and said, “I think it's for real. It’s very risky, but – and Jeff is for real. He’s obviously a smart guy. He’s very passionate about it.” So then my friend who had referred it to me, a couple of weeks later he called me back and he said, “Well, we called Jeff then after we talked to you and we told him that the $6 million pre-money valuation was too high and asked him to lower it to $5 million, and he was unwilling to do it.”
于是我回头跟我那位朋友说：“我觉得这是真的。风险很高，但这个项目是真的，而且Jeff也是认真的。他显然是个聪明人，而且非常有热情。”结果几周后我朋友又打电话跟我说：“我们听了你的意见后又找了Jeff，说他600万美元的投前估值太高了，能不能降到500万。结果他不愿意。”
Ben: Oh, my God.
Ben：哦，我的天啊。
David: So, he passed.
David：所以他说不投。
Tom: So, he passed. So years afterwards, and really a wonderful guy, years afterward he would give me a hard time.
Tom：对，他最终没投。但多年以后——他其实是个很棒的人——他经常拿这件事来打趣我。
Ben: I bet.
Ben：我敢打赌他一定后悔死了。
David: About the huge price that he gave.
David：因为他当年嫌估值高。
Tom: So the point of it is, they took Jeff almost 12 months. So he didn’t close until December of ’95, this million dollars. Part of it came from his family and lots of people passed on it, which is not surprising. There were a couple of kind of small venture firms at that time in Seattle. They passed on it. It was too risky in their mind and they had a lot of risk.
Tom：所以重点是，Jeff花了将近12个月时间才把这笔100万美元筹集到手。他直到1995年12月才最终完成融资。其中一部分来自他家人。很多人都拒绝了投资，也不令人意外。当时西雅图也有几家小型风投公司，他们也都没投。他们认为风险太大了，他们本身也承担着很多风险。
Ben: So Tom, you've seen thousands of startup pitches and met with countless entrepreneurs over the years. Was Jeff like head and shoulders above any other pitch? Or was his super different? Or was it like, “Yeah, you know, I meet with a lot of really talented people with great ideas, and some work and some don’t.”
Ben：Tom，你这些年肯定看过成千上万次创业融资路演，也见过无数创始人。那Jeff是不是一下子就比其他人高出一大截？他的pitch特别不一样吗？还是说，“对啊，我见过很多有才华、有想法的人，有些成功了，有些没成功”这种感觉？
Tom: I think looking back it’s a little hard but I don’t think he stood out as the only great entrepreneur I ever met, but certainly in the top 20 or 10 percent. But it was a combination. You know like a lot of venture, we tend to think the person is very important. But also, kind of what they’re doing. I mean, it’s not always exactly the business plan and the financial model, although that’s important. It’s often are they in the right kind of technology and the right growth area. Because you could come up with lots of reasons why this was not going to succeed. But the internet was growing, some commerce was probably going to work.
Tom：回头看可能有点难判断，我并不觉得他是我遇到过唯一一个伟大的创业者，但他肯定是在前10%或前20%里。其实这是多方面因素的结合。很多时候做风投，我们认为人很重要，但也要看他们在做什么。不光是商业计划书和财务模型，虽然那些也很关键，更重要的是他们是否在正确的技术方向上，是否处于一个高速增长的市场。你完全可以找到一堆理由说这个项目不会成功，但互联网正在迅猛增长，总会有某种形式的电子商务能跑出来。
David: At 2300% a year apparently, right? You know, it strikes me, one of the things – we talk about this a lot on this show about the importance of the market and targeting large markets. It struck me reading Jeff’s early writing about Amazon and particularly which we’ll get to later, the first letter to shareholders after they went public. He really focuses on the market and illustrates how large the market is even for just books but then everything Amazon expanded into is. When you’re operating in a large market, a lot can still go wrong and can go wrong, and you’ll still be successful.
David：年增长率高达2300%，对吧？你知道吗，我一直觉得很有意思的一点是——我们在节目里经常聊到市场的重要性，尤其是面向大市场。读Jeff早期写给投资者的文章，特别是我们之后会谈到的上市后的第一封股东信时，我意识到他真的非常重视市场的大小。他不仅说明了光是图书市场就有多大，还说明了亚马逊后来扩展到的其他领域有多广。当你在一个足够大的市场里创业，即使过程中犯了很多错，你还是有成功的机会。
So, that was 1995 and when the website finally launched in the summer – it’s funny, you know, we work at Madrona with Tom and many, many startups, and Ben and me several as well, it actually was an overnight success when by the – this is actually, Tom, a quote from you in that same Wired article. “By the second or third week, there was $6,000 or $10,000 in sales, and by the end of September,” they just launched in July, Amazon was doing $20,000 in revenue a week. And this is Tom. “It was clear there was a trend here.”
所以那是1995年，网站终于在夏天上线了——很有意思的是，你知道我们和Tom在Madrona基金合作，也投了很多创业公司，Ben和我也都有参与，其实亚马逊几乎可以说是一夜成名。Tom，你在那篇《Wired》的文章中有一句名言：“上线后第二或第三周，销售额就达到了6000或1万美元。到了9月底，”要知道网站才7月刚上线，亚马逊的每周营收就达到2万美元了。你当时说：“很明显，这里有一股趋势在形成。”
Tom: Good understatement.
Tom：说“趋势”确实是保守说法了。
David: Yeah. Understatement of the century. As that became clear later into 1995 and 1996, lots of VC firms came calling. Amazon and Jeff eventually decided to raise a larger venture round that Kleiner Perkins led in 1996, and John Doerr joined the board. How did that come together?
David：是啊，可能是世纪最保守的说法。到了1995年底和1996年，事情已经很明朗，很多风投都开始主动找上门。最后亚马逊和Jeff决定进行更大一轮的融资，由Kleiner Perkins领投，时间是1996年，John Doerr加入了董事会。这事是怎么促成的？
Tom: Well, Jeff had formed a small advisory board of himself and three other Seattle investors including myself.
Tom：当时Jeff组建了一个小型的顾问委员会，成员是他自己和另外三位西雅图投资人，包括我在内。
David: So there wasn’t a formal company board at this point.
David：所以那个时候公司还没有正式的董事会？
Tom: No, the formal company board was Jeff. But he wasn’t ready for a board, but he was ready for an advisory board. So we would talk about, you know – like a board in the sense of what do we need to do. “Gee, it’s growing very fast. We got to improve the website. We need to do other things.” And so it was becoming clearer that it was growing fast that it was going to take more money than the million dollars partly just to satisfy growth. Venture capital firms around the country were calling.
Tom：对，正式的董事会就只有Jeff一个人。但他当时还不准备设立完整的董事会，不过他已经准备好要一个顾问委员会了。所以我们就像董事会一样讨论问题，比如“天啊，增长太快了，我们得改进网站，还需要做很多事。”情况越来越明显，就是公司增长太快，一百万美元不够用了，特别是在应对增长需求方面。全国各地的风投开始找上门来了。
So I came home one night after work at 6:00 or something, and my wife said, “Do you know some guy named John Doerr?” I said, “Well, actually I do.”
有一天我晚上六点左右下班回家，我太太问我：“你认识一个叫John Doerr的人吗？”我说：“其实我认识。”
David: “I’ve heard of him.”
David：“我听说过这个人。”
Tom: When I was on the Envisio board, one of his partners was on that board and I guess in, a couple of different ways, I had met John. She said, “Well, he calls every 15 minutes,” and he needs to talk to you now. It was one of John’s great strengths which is his persistence. Tells you something about how to sell yourself, show your interest.
Tom：我之前在Envisio公司担任董事时，他的一位合伙人也在那个董事会里，所以我通过几种不同的场合见过John。我太太接着说：“他每十五分钟就打一次电话。”他说他现在就得找你。这也展现了John的一大强项——锲而不舍。这说明了怎么推销自己、如何表达自己的兴趣。
David: A critical trait for a successful venture capitalist.
David：这是一个成功的风投必须具备的特质。
Tom: We don’t always follow that enough probably. So I talked to John and he said, “Well, I’m going to meet with Jeff. I really want to be in this deal. I hope you can help me,” etc. So, that was sort of partly the introduction.
Tom：我们其他人可能还没有学会这种执着。后来我跟John通了电话，他说：“我准备见Jeff。我真的很想参与这个项目。希望你能帮我一把。”这也算是他参与这轮融资的一个开端。
So they were really eager. Another firm that was very eager was General Atlantic which is an east coast firm. Kind of one interesting point out of it, I think, is that there was some negotiation on price and both firms were eager, both were outstanding firms. General Atlantic proposed a complicated pricing because we’re starting to talk $80 million pre-money in. Although that area was starting to get hot, it was a reasonably high pre-money for a first venture round. But they proposed sort of a complicated thing. It would be a $90 million pre-money if it went public. But if it didn’t go public within two years at a certain valuation, then it was $50 million, and Kleiner came in, it was sort of like a straight $60 million at some point. I think we all kind of favored Kleiner Perkins anyway, but I picked Kleiner Perkins partly though on pricing complication.
他们真的非常积极。还有一家同样非常积极的公司是General Atlantic，一家东海岸的风投。我觉得其中一个有趣的点是，两家公司都很优秀也都很积极，但他们在估值上的提案不同，谈判了一些时间。那时候谈的是8000万美元的投前估值，虽然市场热度在上升，但这对第一轮风投来说已经算是相当高了。General Atlantic提出了一个很复杂的结构：如果公司成功上市，则按9000万估值；但如果两年内没上市，且没达到某个估值目标，那就只值5000万。而Kleiner的方案则是比较直接的，某个时点下就是6000万的投前估值。我想我们本来就更倾向Kleiner Perkins，而我最后选择Kleiner也有一部分是因为不想面对那个复杂的定价方案。
Ben: So when that round closed, is that when the formal board of directors was established with you, John, and Jeff?
Ben：那轮融资完成之后，是不是就正式组建了董事会，由你、John和Jeff组成？
Tom: Yeah. And a little bit of story there that I think came out before, but Kleiner Perkins, John actually said, “Well, I love you but I’m so busy, I’m on all these other boards.” He was on the Netscape board I think at that time. “I really don’t have time. But here I’ve got a great partner here in the board.” Jeff sort of said, “Well, that’s too bad, it’s your thing. Talk to us.” And we said, “Well, why don’t you just tell them that Kleiner can only invest if John comes on the board?” So Jeff of course did, and John joined the board, which was good for Amazon and good for Kleiner and John, obviously.
Tom：是的，这里还有一个小故事，应该之前有提过。当时Kleiner Perkins的John说：“我很想参与，但我太忙了，我已经在很多公司担任董事。”我记得他那时候是Netscape的董事之一。他说：“我真的没时间，但我有一位很棒的合伙人可以加入董事会。”Jeff就有点意思是，“那太可惜了，但这是你的案子，你来谈。”我们就建议说：“要不你就告诉他们，Kleiner只有在John本人加入董事会的前提下才可以投资。”于是Jeff照做了，John也就加入了董事会。这对亚马逊、对Kleiner、也对John本人来说，当然都是好事。
David: Yeah. I’m curious on that. So, in The Everything Store, he talks about how, I don’t know how much of this is causal but after that Kleiner invested and John joined the board, that Jeff kind of adopted as a mantra a “get big fast.” How did that come together? In truth, Amazon did get very big very fast. Was that associated with investment? What drove that mindset change for John?
David：是啊，我想追问一下。在《一网打尽》这本书里提到，虽然不清楚因果关系有多强，但在Kleiner投资、John加入董事会之后，Jeff就把“快速做大”当成一种信条。这个理念是怎么形成的？亚马逊确实后来变得非常大、非常快。这和融资有关吗？这种思维转变是怎么发生的？
Tom: I think part of it just came from the fact that we were growing fast. The original business plan back when he was raising the million dollars was he had kind of a moderate growth and a fast growth but nothing like what he was achieving. The plan actually said he would break even in year 2. And again, unfortunately that didn’t happen.
Tom：我觉得这在某种程度上就是因为公司本身增长很快。他当初筹集那第一笔100万美元的时候，商业计划里写了一个中速增长方案和一个快速增长方案，但都远不及实际的增长速度。那个计划还写着第二年就会盈亏平衡。当然，后来没有实现。
David: He meant at year 20.
David：他其实是说第20年才盈亏平衡吧。
Tom: Right. But it was growing fast. Jeff also had one of his sort of thesis is sometimes there’s in launching a new business, there’s a land rush. You want to be first and get into the lead and stay there. Other times, this is true in launching new projects in Amazon. Sometimes he feels there’s a land rush and sometimes not. So, you really double down. Then the financial markets were really willing. I mean we were in a hot –
Tom：对（笑）。但确实公司增长非常快。Jeff自己有一个理论是，有时候在开创一个新业务时就像是在“抢地”，你要做第一个进入市场的，并且保持领先。这在亚马逊后来推出新项目时也体现得很明显——他会判断当前是不是“抢地”阶段，如果是，就要加倍投入。再加上那时候资本市场也很积极，我们正处于一个热潮中——
恐惧->洞察力缺失。
David: Robust.
David：市场非常活跃。
Tom: Already the financial markets were bidding up other companies, and so he realized that could raise a lot of money. So, let’s grow fast and we had the specter of Barnes & Noble sort of saying they’re going to get in the internet. So there was a reason then to really step on the accelerator.
Tom：当时资本市场已经在抬高其他公司的估值，Jeff意识到这意味着他也能融到更多的钱。于是我们就决定要快速扩张。而且那时Barnes & Noble也在放话说他们要进军互联网，所以我们确实有理由踩下油门，全速前进。
David: And you and Jeff did. So in 1995, which is the first half year of operations, Amazon did about 500,000 in revenue. Then in 1996 and it was the summer when Kleiner invested, so only half a year with this extra capital to grow, Amazon did just a hair under $16 million in revenue which is, what’s that, a 20… that’s a large amount of growth. It’s so large I can’t even calculate it in my brain. Even today, we don’t see companies do that.
David：而你和Jeff确实这么做了。1995年是亚马逊正式运营的第一个半年，公司营收大约是50万美元。而到了1996年——那年夏天Kleiner投资进来了，后面仅仅半年时间——亚马逊的年营收就接近1600万美元。这增长是……20倍？这个增速太夸张了，我脑子都算不过来了。即使放到今天，也很少有公司能做到这样。
Tom: No, not in the first year.
Tom：是的，特别是在创业第一年，几乎不可能看到这种情况。
Ben: At this point, we were still in the era of Amazon.com was only a bookstore. When Jeff was putting together kind of the pitch deck for that $60 million round and showing around, was there any inkling that it was going to be more than books at this point? Did they start to foreshadow those other categories?
Ben：那时Amazon.com还是一家纯粹的在线书店。当Jeff为那轮6000万美元融资制作融资简报、到处展示时，有没有任何迹象表明他们计划扩展到图书以外的品类？有没有暗示未来要进军其他领域？
Tom: Jeff in those early years was very focused on books. I mean, he declined to even talk about other things for the first 2 or 3 years. I think that was including through the IPOs, I remember. Partly it was “let’s do books well, and books is big.” But other people were starting to ask and talk about, “Well, what about other products?” I suspect Jeff was thinking about that, but it was good I think in the beginning, just let’s get this one right. I can’t remember when but it was probably ’98 or so that really launched music and started to launch some other things.
Tom：Jeff在最初几年里确实非常专注于图书。他在最开始的两三年几乎拒绝谈任何其他品类的可能性。我记得甚至到IPO时也是如此。部分原因是，“我们要先把图书这一块做好，图书市场本身就很大”。但当时已经有人开始提问，“那其他产品怎么办？”我猜Jeff当时心里已经在考虑扩展，但我觉得一开始专注于图书是正确的策略。我不记得具体时间了，大概是1998年前后，才真正开始进军音乐类产品，也开始扩展到其他领域。
David: And movies. So at the end of ’96, just on $16 million in revenue, Amazon hires Joy Covey as CFO who plays a central role in The Everything Store. The company makes the decision and the board makes the decision that they wanted to prepare for an IPO and go public in 1997 which – So at this point, we are two years into the life of Amazon as a company, one year into it being a publicly available website. You’ve talked a little bit about the financial markets being open. But how did those discussions – I mean, the board was you, John Doerr, and Jeff. Did Jeff come to you and say, “Hey, I think we’re ready to go public?”
David：还有电影产品。到了1996年底，亚马逊营收才1600万美元，公司就聘请了Joy Covey担任首席财务官，她后来在《一网打尽》一书中是个核心人物。公司和董事会随后决定开始筹备上市，计划在1997年IPO。此时亚马逊刚成立两年，网站公开运营也才一年。你刚才提到资本市场当时很开放，但具体来说这些上市讨论是怎么开始的？当时董事会成员只有你、John Doerr和Jeff。Jeff是怎么跟你们提说“我们准备上市了”的？
Tom: Well, I think pretty quickly investment bankers were even calling. Once something starts to get hot, whether there’s substance in these companies or not, there’s sort of this investment banker. And that was particularly true in the ’95 to 2000 era. People were going public and being worth $30 billion and really didn’t have much.
Tom：其实很快投行就开始打电话来了。一旦某家公司变“热门”，不管它基本面怎么样，总会吸引投行来找你。特别是在1995到2000年这段时期，很多公司刚起步就能上市，市值高达300亿美元，实际上业务还没多少。
It didn’t quite happen that way with Amazon because even though there was interest – And I think one of Jeff’s motivations, I think the idea that we could raise money at hopefully good valuations and then use that money to grow further was attractive, he also felt that because it was kind of a small, relatively unknown retail company that it would help the brand to get better known. I think that’s true on some consumer-oriented companies. It actually can be true even on enterprise startups. We have one, Impinj that went public this year. They were not widely known among CEOs. The CIO knew them but once you get public, you start to get picked up more on the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times – certainly happened to Amazon after it went public.
亚马逊的情况并没有那么极端，虽然确实引起了市场兴趣。我觉得Jeff当时一个主要动机是，如果能以不错的估值上市，就能融到更多钱，用于后续扩张，这很有吸引力。他也觉得亚马逊当时还很小，知名度也不高，上市能帮助品牌更广为人知。我认为这是很多面向消费者的公司共有的情况，甚至对企业服务类初创公司也适用。我们有一家公司Impinj今年刚刚上市，以前他们在CEO圈子里并不知名，只有CIO们了解他们。但一旦上市，就开始频繁出现在《华尔街日报》和《纽约时报》上——这对亚马逊来说也确实是上市后才发生的变化。
David: What was the preparation process like? In particular, I’m curious, so the lead-left bank on the Amazon IPO was Deutsche Bank. Not Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. We covered the Facebook IPO a few episodes ago and talked about the jockeying between the two of those firms for the Facebook IPO. These are the gold-plated Wall Street firms that everyone wants one of them to be their lead book runner for the IPO. But Amazon went with Deutsche bank and in particular, the lead banker, Frank Quattrone, and the lead analyst, Bill Gurley who obviously is now a partner at Benchmark. How did that relationship come together?
David：那准备上市的过程是什么样的？我特别好奇的一点是，亚马逊IPO的主承销行是德意志银行（Deutsche Bank），而不是高盛（Goldman Sachs）或摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）。我们前几期节目聊Facebook IPO时还提到过，这两家投行当时为了争夺Facebook案子争得头破血流。这些是华尔街的黄金级投行，大家都想让他们担任主承销。但亚马逊选择了德意志银行，特别是主银行家Frank Quattrone，以及首席分析师Bill Gurley——他现在是Benchmark的合伙人。你们之间的关系是怎么建立起来的？
Tom: If you’ve met and know Quattrone and Gurley, the answer is quite Quattrone and Gurley. A broader answer is I think Jeff always had the view and we had the view that big name companies aren’t always the best. Goldman and Morgan Stanley have been the top two then and today. There’s a lot of merit in going with them. But it didn’t mean that others weren’t as good or potentially better and often it is the people directly working a deal. So I think they made a good impression and we thought they could do the job.
Tom：如果你认识Quattrone和Gurley，那你就会明白答案其实就是——因为他们俩。更广义地说，Jeff一直有个看法，我们也认同：大品牌公司不一定总是最好的。高盛和摩根士丹利当时是顶级投行，现在也是，选择他们确实有很多优势。但这并不意味着其他投行就不如他们，甚至有时候可能更适合。而真正关键的，往往是具体负责你这个案子的那几个人。所以我们觉得Quattrone和Gurley给我们留下了很好的印象，我们相信他们能把这事办好。
David: There’s a great story told in The Everything Store that after the IPO, they organized a retreat in Hawaii, right?
David：在《一网打尽》里有个很棒的故事，说是亚马逊IPO之后，他们组织了一次在夏威夷的团建，对吧？
Tom: Mexico, I think.
Tom：我记得是在墨西哥。
David: Oh, Mexico. That’s right. I think it was Cabo. They had an associate working on the deal who was Jeff Blackburn. Blackburn came along on this retreat and I’m sure had interacted with Jeff – there’s so many Jeff’s at Amazon – with Bezos and the company and the board beforehand. But the net of that was that Blackburn ended up joining Amazon, and they still have the company today, and a member of the senior team there.
David：哦，对，是墨西哥，我想应该是Cabo。当时负责这笔交易的一个副手是Jeff Blackburn。他也去了这次团建，我想他在此之前肯定已经和Jeff——亚马逊有太多叫Jeff的人了（笑）——就是Bezos，以及公司高层有过接触。最终的结果是，Blackburn加入了亚马逊，并且至今仍在公司，是高管团队的一员。
Tom: Right. One of the top executives.
Tom：是的，他是亚马逊的核心高管之一。
Ben: Yeah. So, one of the biggest things that people who have studied Amazon look at now and is quite well known, is their ability to spin the flywheel, to add fuel at any given point and increased the momentum of other parts of the businesses in a very almost perpetual motion way. So that superior selection drives a better customer experience which increases more traffic, which brings more sellers to marketplace and on and on and on.
Ben：没错。现在研究亚马逊的人都很熟悉、也最钦佩的一点，就是他们能持续推动“飞轮效应”——在任何一个点上加油，就能带动整个系统其他部分的加速，就像是一个几乎不会停下来的永动机一样。比如更丰富的商品选择带来更好的客户体验，进而带来更多流量，再吸引更多卖家入驻平台，如此循环往复。
David: Which lowers prices and increases selection. It’s a recursive loop.
David：这又反过来进一步降低价格、扩大商品选择，是一个递归式的循环。
Ben: It is. This early in the company before the IPO, was this something that was frequently talked about? Was this a thing on investors’ minds when they were thinking about investing in the IPO?
Ben：确实如此。那么在公司早期、还没上市的时候，这个“飞轮”概念是大家常常讨论的吗？在投资人考虑IPO投资时，他们是否已经意识到这个机制的存在？
Tom: So the actual flywheel concept developed in like 2001 or 2002 rose out of a board meeting and meeting with an outside consultant. But some of the basis of that, I mean, Jeff from the very beginning was very focused on customer experience. He talked in the meeting with me about we’re going to have the world’s best customer experience. It was hard to do in those days because the web wasn’t very good. When we launched, it was a black and white website. There was no publication date on the book so if you wanted to buy a – we’re not complaining about this – if you wanted to buy a travel book, you didn’t know if it was published 20 years ago or 6 months ago, and on a travel book, it’s very important.
Tom：实际上，“飞轮”这个概念是在2001或2002年才正式形成的，是在一次董事会和与外部顾问的会议上提出来的。但它的一些基础，其实从一开始Jeff就已经体现出来了。他从第一天起就非常注重客户体验。他在跟我开会时就说过：“我们要打造世界上最好的客户体验。”这在当时其实很难做到，因为网络环境还很差。我们上线的时候网站是黑白的，书籍没有出版日期——比如你要买一本旅游书，你根本不知道它是20年前出版的还是6个月前的，而这对旅游书来说非常关键。当然我们不是在抱怨，只是说明当时的局限性。
But nonetheless, it was like it was genetic, that customer experience. And then so how do you do that? Well, prices, inventory. So it was in the background certainly and focused some of those elements. The flywheel metaphor became useful later, I think.
但不管怎样，客户体验这件事对Jeff来说就像是写进基因里的。那你怎么做到好的客户体验？就要靠价格、库存等多个环节。所以这些因素在早期就已经存在于公司的思考之中，只是“飞轮”这个比喻是后来才成为一个明确的、实用的框架。
David: Hearing you talk about that, one – as long-time listeners of this show know, we are great admirers of Ben Thompson and his Aggregation Theory. But one of the core tenets of that is that superior customer experience is “win” in a world where your accessible customer base is infinite and distribution costs are low, which is the internet. Really interesting to hear that even in those early days when the internet was so poorly understood by so many people, Jeff got that at his core that providing the superior customer experience would lead to winning the market.
David：听你这么说，我想到一件事——我们的听众都知道，我们非常欣赏Ben Thompson的“聚合理论”（Aggregation Theory）。其中一个核心观点就是，在一个客户基数无限、分销成本极低的互联网世界里，谁能提供更好的客户体验，谁就能赢得市场。很有意思的是，即使在那个互联网还被很多人误解的早期阶段，Jeff已经从本质上理解了这一点：提供卓越的客户体验才是赢得市场的关键。
Tom: And not all companies get that. I mean, partly they’re focused on short-term. Partly, yeah, they will squeeze another two cents out of the customer. “Gee. We cut out this product and we saved money.”
Tom：但不是所有公司都能理解这一点。有些公司只关注短期利益。他们可能会想着，“嘿，我们把这个产品砍掉就能省两分钱。”是的，成本是省了，但客户体验被牺牲了。
David: So all of this happens, Quattrone and Gurley win the business, lead the IPO and on May 15, 1997, so less than three years after the company was founded and less than 2 years after the product launch – I mean we’re talking last week about how Snapchat is to be lauded for going public, having the courage to go public four years after company founding, this was less than 3 years – Amazon prices its IPO at $18 a share, raises $54 million at an initial market cap of $438 million, which is thinking back today – well, we’ll wrap up at the end of the show with where the market cap is today. But it trades up on the first day, closes at $23.50. But then for the first couple of months, it actually trades down. It’s not until the company reports its Q2 revenue numbers later that summer that the shares, when they reported that they did $28 million in revenue in Q2 of 1997, which was more than – Well, much more than Q1 and more than they did in all of 1996, then the shares rise again.
David：这一切发生之后，Quattrone 和 Gurley 拿下了这个案子，主导了IPO。1997年5月15日，亚马逊正式上市，距离公司成立不到三年，距离产品上线甚至还不到两年——我们上周才在节目里夸Snapchat敢于在成立四年后上市，而亚马逊只用了不到三年。IPO定价为每股18美元，募集资金5400万美元，初始市值为4.38亿美元。回头看今天的市值当然是另一回事了（我们节目结尾会提到）。股票在上市首日上涨，收盘价为23.50美元。但在随后的几个月内其实走势下跌。直到那个夏天，公司公布了1997年第二季度营收——达到2800万美元，比第一季度多很多，也超过了1996年全年的营收——股票才再次开始上涨。
What was it like in those first couple of months after the company went public and the stock traded down?
公司上市后的头几个月里，股价下跌，那段时间是什么感受？
Tom: You’re right. It didn’t have this enormous pop at the beginning and yeah, I think, I remember some of this, that it was pretty flat until the release came out. Even by the end of the second quarter, so late June I think it was, so the equivalent to today, there’s been three or four splits which are equivalent for 12 for 1. So if you divide 18 x 12, you get to a $1.50. And so, it was trading at about $1.50 in late June. Then, just a couple of other key points because you can do this endlessly but by the end of the year it was like $5 and then it went to $100 over three years or so in today’s numbers.
Tom：你说得对，亚马逊IPO时并没有出现那种“暴涨”。我记得很清楚，一直到财报发布之前股价都相当平淡。即使到第二季度末，大概是6月底吧，按照今天的分拆比例——亚马逊后来经历了三到四次拆股，累计相当于12比1——你拿18除以12，大概就是每股1.50美元。所以当时股价在6月底还在1.50美元左右。然后，有几个关键的节点——这类分析可以讲一整天（笑）——但到了年底股价涨到了5美元，再过三年左右就涨到相当于今天的100美元。
David: Yup. And then the stocks split multiple times after that.
David：没错，之后股价经历了多次拆分。
Tom: But by 2001, when you had the recession and all the crashes, it was back down to like $6. There were moments when you could have bought in good prices and everybody, you know – it shows partly that the market is not perfect at valuation but on the other hand, the country was in a recession by 2001 and –
Tom：但到了2001年，经济衰退来袭，加上互联网泡沫破裂，股价又跌回到6美元左右。有那么几个时刻，你确实可以用很好的价格买进。这一方面说明市场在估值方面并不完美，但另一方面也反映了当时整个国家正处在衰退中——
David: And Amazon was a retailer.
David：而亚马逊当时还是一家零售公司。
Tom: And it was losing a lot of money. Many people were predicting even then that it was going to die. But yeah, it’s fascinating to go back over those numbers.
Tom：而且还在亏很多钱。当时有很多人预测它会完蛋。但现在回头看那些数字真的非常有意思。
Ben: Oh yeah, I bet. One of the things we talk about a lot on this show is we try to assess whether an acquisition or an IPO was a good move and how successful was it. One of the measures that we use for that with IPOs is what going public enabled that company to do that they would not otherwise have been able to do. So, what in the kind of near-term those next few years after the IPO did they plough that new influx of capital into?
Ben：我相信你有很多故事可以讲。我们在节目中经常讨论的一个主题是：怎样判断一次IPO是否成功？其中一个衡量标准就是——上市之后，公司得以做哪些原本无法实现的事情。那么就亚马逊而言，在IPO后的前几年里，他们把这笔新注入的资金主要投入到了哪里？
Tom: I think Amazon has been rightly known for not making any money and being willing to invest and to the extent that the financial markets allow you to. So, I think if it had been in the hands of let’s say an acquiring party, you would not have seen this kind of growth and innovation and expansion. So, Jeff has had a unique ability to think long-term and make it clear that he’s thinking long term so that the investors understand that this is a long-term investment. He likes to say that “you get the investors you ask for.” Meaning that if you focus on two cents more profit per quarter, then you get investors who’d focus on that. It takes you a while I think to get the right kind of investors, but if you say long-term cash flow is how we measure the business, pretty soon you get investors who are willing to invest on that basis. I mean, it’s possible if you don’t grow, they aren’t going to like your message itself but you end up with fewer short-term investors and more long-term. I think that’s helped Amazon a lot.
Tom：亚马逊之所以广为人知，很大程度上是因为它长期不赚钱却敢于持续投资——只要资本市场还愿意支持它。如果当初亚马逊被某家公司收购了，那我们今天看到的这种增长、创新和扩张很可能都不会发生。Jeff有一种独特的能力：他能以真正长期的眼光看问题，并且能够清晰地向投资者传达他的长期战略。他常说：“你会吸引你想要的投资人。”意思是说，如果你关注的是每季度多两分钱利润，那你吸引到的就是也只关心这个的投资人。但如果你从一开始就说我们以长期自由现金流来衡量业务表现，那很快你就会吸引到愿意以这个标准投资你的人。当然，如果你增长停滞，投资人可能也不会买账，但最终你会减少短期投资者，增加长期投资者——我认为这对亚马逊帮助非常大。
David: I’m super curious on this. We were chatting a little bit before the show and this is the perfect place in the story, too. So at the end of 1997, Amazon wraps up the year with 148 million in revenue, up from 16 the year before. Incredible growth. But I think, to my mind, the most incredible thing that happens at the end of 1997 is Jeff publishes his first annual letter to shareholders. So the company has been public for 7 or 8 months at this point and Jeff writes this amazing letter that is included in the annual report and he’s included every year since with his then current year letter as well. The document is a masterpiece of long-term thinking. How did that document come together? Did Jeff just walk into a board meeting one day and said, “Hey, I think I’m going to write a letter to all of our shareholders”?
David：我对这个特别好奇。我们在节目开始前就聊过这个话题，现在正好讲到这里。1997年底，亚马逊全年营收达到1.48亿美元，上一年才只有1600万，增长惊人。但我认为1997年底最了不起的一件事是——Jeff发布了他写给股东的第一封年度信。这时公司刚上市7、8个月，Jeff写了这封非常精彩的信，被纳入年度报告中。从那以后，每年他都会附上当年的股东信，并一并重印这封1997年的信。这封信堪称长期主义的典范。这封信是怎么诞生的？Jeff是某天走进董事会说：“嘿，我打算写封信给所有股东”吗？
Tom: Well, I didn’t help him write it unfortunately. I wish I was a coauthor. But I think one of the key people in those early days was this Joy Covey who had been recruited as the CFO. Thinking back a little bit on that, when we started talking about going public, John Doerr said, “Well I’m going to vote against going public unless you bring in some more senior management. You can’t go public with you and a couple of technical people.”
Tom：很遗憾我没有帮他写这封信，我真希望我当时能是共同作者（笑）。但我认为早期的一个关键人物是CFO Joy Covey。回想起来，在我们开始讨论是否上市的时候，John Doerr曾说过一句话：“如果你不引进更多高级管理人才，我就投票反对上市。你不能只带着你自己和几个技术人员就去上市。”
Ben: Oh, wow.
Ben：哇，这么直接啊。
Tom: I mean, it’s been a rule that sometimes we violate but it’s a very good rule that you need – being private is different than going public. Even if you’re growing pretty well, you need a really first class CFO. You need some more marketing power. It’s when David Risher was recruited from Microsoft who was a very important, strong senior executive in those days. We brought in, hired some more. Rick Dalzell – he was actually at Walmart and Jeff started trying to recruit him in January of ’97 before the IPO. He didn’t get him until after the IPO. I think Jeff wasn’t reluctant on that either but it was really John in a lot of ways saying, “you’ve got to have a better, stronger team to go public.” And I think it’s a good lesson for lots of people.
Tom：这其实是一个大家都认同的原则，虽然有时候会被打破，但它确实很重要——私营公司和上市公司完全不同。即使你增长很快，也必须配备一流的CFO和更强的市场能力。我们当时从微软挖来了David Risher——他在当时是非常重要的一位高管。我们也招聘了更多人手。比如Rick Dalzell——他当时在沃尔玛工作，Jeff早在1997年1月，也就是IPO之前就开始尝试挖他，直到上市后才成功。我想Jeff自己并不排斥加强管理团队，但很多时候还是John在强调：“你要有一个更强的团队才能上市。”我觉得这是一个很多创业者都值得吸取的经验。
Joy was unusual. She was very smart. She hadn’t graduated from high school. She ended up graduating from Harvard Business School. She came in second in the nation on the national accounting exam. So, clearly she was smart and somehow –
Joy很特别。她非常聪明，居然没上完高中，却最后从哈佛商学院毕业，而且在全美注册会计师考试中考了全国第二。所以她无疑非常聪明，而且——
David: She was an amazing woman, yeah.
David：她真是一位了不起的女性，没错。
Tom: Yeah. All she had done, in some ways she had taken – she had been CFO of a small company in the East Coast that had gone public.
Tom：是的。她之前的经历之一，是在东海岸一家小公司担任CFO，并带领那家公司成功上市。
David: I believe she was in her early 30s when she joined Amazon.
David：我记得她加入亚马逊时才三十出头。
Tom: Right. Very young. Jeff is a very tough interviewer in the sense that he will interview a whole bunch of people until he finds somebody that he likes and thinks can do the job. He talks about setting the bar very high. He had a great lunch with her. He was impressed with her. And she’s very smart, nicely aggressive, personable. So she really drove the IPO in a lot of ways and I like to say we set a record for start of the IPO to finish. But she was also involved in that letter I think.
Tom：对，非常年轻。Jeff在招聘上是非常严格的那种类型，他会面试很多人，直到找到他真正认可、并相信能胜任的人。他常说要“把门槛设得很高”。他和Joy一起吃过一次午餐，对她印象深刻。她非常聪明，有点强势但又很有亲和力。所以在很多方面，是她主导了亚马逊的IPO。我喜欢说我们当时从启动到完成IPO的速度可以算创纪录了。而且我想她也参与了那封股东信的撰写。
Ben: Wow. Speaking of the IPO start to finish, was that hard for the company in an era where they had been doing so much PR and so much marketing, and Jeff had been doing all these public appearances to endure that quiet period?
Ben：哇。说到IPO从启动到完成，那段时间公司是不是很难熬？毕竟之前亚马逊一直在做大量公关和市场宣传，Jeff也频频公开露面。突然进入“静默期”（quiet period），公司能适应吗？
Tom: Yeah. It was an era when, yes, the company was starting to get a lot of attention. I don’t know that that quiet period made a lot of difference. We did get some criticism then and even today on how much we disclosed beyond what the securities laws in New York, you know, the NASDAQ requires that you disclose everything you have to. But there’s always this sort of area of, “well, what’s the cost of a customer? And how many customers do you have? How fast does books grow versus video?” Amazon’s always felt that that’s proprietary. They don’t want to let their customers know. So, don’t want people focusing on whether in some ways short-term small things and it will work out in the long term. I think maybe bricks and mortar retailers, do they release monthly sales numbers or something? You at least see them.
Tom：是的，那时亚马逊开始受到越来越多关注。但我不觉得“静默期”造成了很大困扰。我们当时确实收到一些批评，甚至到今天也有人批评我们披露信息不够全面——因为按纽约的证券法，或纳斯达克的要求，公司需要披露所有必须披露的信息。但总会有人问，“一个客户的获客成本是多少？你有多少客户？图书增长有多快？跟视频相比怎么样？”亚马逊一直认为这些数据属于商业机密，不希望被披露。因为公司不想让大家关注这些短期、小尺度的指标，而是希望专注于长期成效。比如传统实体零售商，会不会每月公布销售数据？至少那类数据是能看到的。
David: Yeah. Same store, month-to-month growth.
David：对，比如“同店销售”的月度增长。
Tom: That’s an example then of something. So there’s always been a little bit of tension with the endless wanting more and feeling. Well, you know, it’s only going to help our competitor. So I think that was going on even then. It was sort of like, “Who are you to tell us these things?”
Tom：这就是个很典型的例子。投资人或媒体总是想要更多数据，但公司觉得那样做只会帮到竞争对手。所以这在当时就已经存在一种紧张关系：你为什么非要我们披露这些？
Ben: It’s interesting in thinking about company creation from the earliest stages. You get so focused on that cost to acquire a customer number and making that go down and increasing your lifetime customer value. In Amazon’s life as a public company, they’re so reserved about releasing that information. Have you ever experienced in other private companies, someone who felt that that was proprietary and that was not something they would divulge in their pitch decks or anything like that?
Ben：从公司创办初期开始，大家都非常关注获客成本（CAC）这个数字，希望它不断下降，同时提升客户的生命周期价值（LTV）。但亚马逊上市之后却很谨慎，不愿披露这些数据。你在其他私营公司里有没有遇到过类似的情况？有没有人也认为这些数据是机密，不愿在融资简报或其他材料中透露？
Tom: I don’t know about that specific piece. I mean, I do think sometimes it also comes up. Well, another one for some of our companies that have gone public has been backlog. Backlog often if – some companies have backlog and some don’t in different ways. That wasn’t really an issue with Amazon because it was sort of instantaneous sales from any day. But a lot of companies don’t want to disclose it because it’s misleading sometimes and maybe it tells things –
Tom：关于获客成本这个问题我不太确定。但确实有类似的例子，比如我们有些已经上市的公司会在“订单积压”（backlog）这块上遇到类似情况。有些公司有明确的backlog，有些则没有。但这在亚马逊不是问题，因为它是即时销售，每天都有销售额。但对于很多其他公司来说，他们不想披露backlog，是因为这些数据有时具有误导性，可能会泄露出一些——
David: The computers.
David：电脑这些东西。
Tom: So I think a lot of companies refuse to do that and analysts would love to have it. It also relates to predicting a range for next quarter or next year. Some of our companies give you next year’s kind of general expectation and some won’t. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of variation.
Tom：所以我觉得很多公司都不愿披露这些数据，而分析师们当然是很想要的。这也和你愿不愿意提供下一季度、甚至下一年的预测区间有关。有些公司会给出大致预期，有些则完全不会。这类情况其实差异非常大。
David: So one more. We’re now post IPO and we’ll wrap up the IPO story in a minute with some fun stats. But one topic that happened a couple years later that I want to ask you about, Tom, is in 1999 so 2 years after the IPO, Amazon did a convertible debt offering and raised a billion and a quarter dollars in the debt markets. I’m curious in that and then that ended up being I believe the last money into the company through the internet bubble. Getting that large capitalization at that point, did that help the company survive the crash that came thereafter? How did it dig itself out of – you mentioned the stock price went back down to $5 at that point.
David：最后还有一个问题。我们现在讲到IPO之后了，马上会用一些有趣的数据来收尾。但我想请你聊一个发生在几年后的事件。1999年，也就是IPO两年后，亚马逊发行了一笔可转换债券，筹集了12.5亿美元的资金。我想知道这件事的来龙去脉——我记得那是互联网泡沫时期公司最后一笔融资。那个时候能拿到这么大一笔资金，是否帮助亚马逊撑过了后来的泡沫崩盘？你刚才提到那时股价跌回到5美元，公司是怎么挺过来的？
Tom: Money was available. We’re growing rapidly. Let’s take advantage of the fact that the interest rates were at 5%.
Tom：当时市场上钱还很多，我们也在快速增长。所以我们决定要利用这个机会，当时利率才5%。
David: I think it was 4.75 I believe or around there.
David：我记得是4.75%左右，对吧？
Tom: Which today is sort of where maybe interest rates are. But given the 20-year history, those were low interest rates. I think we ended up, we did two or three debt deals totaling a couple, maybe $2 billion. So on the one hand, it did give us money to grow. Sometimes for companies, having a lot of money lead to bad habits. You acquire maybe some companies who wouldn’t have acquire that were marginal or you overbilled and so forth.
Tom：现在来看这可能跟今天的利率差不多，但如果你回顾过去20年的利率水平，那时候算是很低的了。我记得我们最后做了两到三笔债券融资，总共大概有20亿美元左右。这确实让我们获得了发展资金。但有时候，公司手头太宽裕也会带来一些不良习惯，比如去收购一些本来不值得收的边缘企业，或者在基础建设上投资过度等等。
So, Amazon was increasingly losing money when that recession hit and I don’t think we were any better predicting recessions that anybody else or the peak of the market. But it was probably taking advantage of the fact that money was available and then when the recession hit and we’re losing a lot of money – because I remember some of the terms of some these debts had no interest for several years and then the interest kicked in.
所以，当那次衰退来袭时，亚马逊的亏损情况也在加剧。我并不觉得我们比别人更擅长预测衰退或市场顶部。只是当时我们抓住了“钱还容易拿”的机会。而等经济衰退真正到来时，我们确实在大幅亏损。我记得当时一些债券的条款规定，前几年是不付利息的，但几年后利息开始生效。
David: Then it kicked in.
David：然后利息就开始计提了。
Tom: So we’re facing more interest payments. The debt holders, the value of the debt had gone down. There was a lot of pressure from the debt holders. So really in 2001 or so, the decision – Jeff and board felt we need to cut cost and expenses. I think we barely did it in time in some ways. We waited quite a while and because we’re hoping to kind of grow out of it and at some point said, “No, we really need to.” There were lots of Wall Street people calling it Amazon dot toast, all these famous –
Tom：是的，我们开始要支付大量利息，而债券价格也下跌，债权人开始给我们施加很大压力。到了2001年左右，Jeff和董事会决定，我们必须削减成本和支出。我觉得我们某种程度上是勉强及时做出了这个决定。我们当时其实等了很久，希望能靠增长把问题扛过去，但最后终于承认：“不行，我们得动手了。”那时华尔街有很多人说亚马逊完了，叫它“Amazon dot toast”（亚马逊已烤焦），还有很多类似的调侃……
David: Yeah, famously.
David：对啊，当时很有名。
Tom: You know, we’re going to go out of business. So we cut costs and there was this famous saying, “cut the crap.” Which meant they were shipping bags of dog food was a great example. Twenty-pound bag of dog food and charging $3 for shipping and losing a lot of money. Well, let’s stop selling –
Tom：很多人都觉得我们快倒闭了。所以我们开始削减成本，当时公司内部有一句著名的口号叫“cut the crap”（砍掉废物）。比如说，有一次我们寄出一袋狗粮——20磅的，只收3美元运费，结果每卖一袋都在大幅亏钱。于是我们就说，别卖了——
David: Which is amazing because I now get dog food for my dog from Amazon.
David：这太有意思了，因为我现在都是在亚马逊上给我的狗买狗粮的。
Tom: Well, we cut it out for a while.
Tom：嗯，我们那时候是有一段时间把它下架了。
David: I assume Amazon has figured out how to do it profitably now.
David：我猜现在亚马逊已经找到办法把这件事做得有利润了吧。
Tom: Again, so it isn’t blind all speed ahead. It is when you need to, you cut back.
Tom：是的，所以重点是，并不是一味地盲目前进，而是在需要的时候懂得收缩。
Ben: It’s interesting to think about the fact that the pressure from that debt holders forced cost cutting which was ahead of the rest of companies who had to go to immediate emergency cost cutting mode, and most of them didn’t make it. What other factors do you think played into Amazon making it through –
Ben：很有意思的一点是，亚马逊因为债权人的压力提前进行了成本控制，而其他很多公司则是被迫在紧急状态下砍成本，大多数都没能撑过去。你觉得除了这一点，还有哪些因素帮助亚马逊熬过了那段危机？
David: Survival.
David：是啊，熬过去。
Ben: Yeah. Surviving the burst when so many other companies didn’t?
Ben：在那么多公司都没挺过去的情况下，亚马逊为什么能存活下来？
Tom: Well, it’s easy sometimes to look at these and think, “Boy, they’re just following crazy strategies.” But I don’t think that’s true. It was true even then at Amazon. They were still focused on customers and they were getting a lot of orders. Their leverage was concern or the problem. But underlying economics were not bad. So, I think that helped a lot. And I think having good management that stuck out and was then able to focus down on cost controls.
Tom：有时候你看这些故事会觉得，“哇，他们是不是在搞疯狂的战略？”但我不这么认为。即便在当时，亚马逊依然是以客户为中心的，而且订单量很大。真正的问题是财务杠杆太高。但从根本经济模型来看，其实并不差。我认为这点帮了大忙。另外，能有一支坚韧的管理团队并在关键时刻专注于控制成本，这也至关重要。
David: There are great stories in The Everything Store about those years at Amazon and the impact it had on the culture. I think after those years, did Jeff put a moratorium on M&A because they’ve acquired so many companies? It wasn’t marketing?
David：《一网打尽》里关于那几年亚马逊经历和文化影响的故事非常精彩。我记得那些年之后，Jeff是不是下达了一个“暂停收购”的指令？因为他们那阵子收购了太多公司？当时不是市场部门的问题吧？
Tom: Amazon’s not famous for overspending on –
Tom：亚马逊一向不是那种挥金如土的公司——
Ben: That’s one way to put it.
Ben：你这说法真委婉（笑）。
David: We’ve talked about that on this show. We won’t ask you about it.
David：我们节目里已经讨论过这个话题了，我们就不为难你啦（笑）。
Tom: Okay, good.
Tom：好，谢谢你们。
David: So to wrap up, this has been an incredible story and having Tom join us for it has been special. So today, we’re seeing here in December 2016, as of this morning, Amazon’s market capitalization was $363 billion up. Not quite a thousand X from the IPO when it was $438 million market cap but a pretty healthy return. Let’s see. I was in middle school when Amazon IPO’d. So I really wish I had put my bank account into Amazon at that point in time. I was buying Amazon products but anyway, an incredible journey and super cool to relive this moment in history.
David：最后总结一下，这真是一个令人难以置信的故事，非常感谢Tom今天能和我们一起回顾。现在是2016年12月，今天早上的数据显示，亚马逊的市值达到3630亿美元，虽然还没有达到从IPO时的4.38亿美元涨到1000倍，但这回报已经非常惊人了。我IPO那年还在读初中，真希望当时把我所有积蓄都投进亚马逊股票里。虽然我当时确实是在亚马逊上购物，但没想到这是这么伟大的一段历程。能一起回顾这个历史时刻真的非常棒。
Let’s move to talking about what would have happened otherwise. We touched on this a little bit but had Amazon not gone public at that moment, where would we be? I guess in particular, I’m curious, was a path of being acquired by somebody in those early days, did it ever come up? Were people seriously interested?
接下来我们聊聊“如果当时没有上市”的情境。我们之前略微提到过这一点，但如果亚马逊当年没有上市，今天会是什么样？我特别想知道的是，在公司早期，有没有人提出过收购亚马逊？有没有出现过真正认真的并购意向？
Ben: Even if not, it sounds like, from our conversation so far and just knowing the lore of Jeff’s mission that very unlikely that he wanted to sell to someone. Was it ever on the table to raise more private capital or wait it out longer?
Ben：即使没有收购意向，从我们刚才的谈话，以及大家对Jeff的使命感的了解来看，他应该也不太可能想把公司卖掉。但有没有考虑过再多筹点私募资金，或者干脆多等一等再上市？
Tom: I think it would have been slower growth because you couldn’t have afforded. If you didn’t have access to capital and particularly when we began to broaden the product mix. When we started, we would get an order for a book and then we would contact the distributor and have him ship us the book and then we’d reship it. So we didn’t even really have inventory. So once you start buying product, building warehouses to put it in, you do need capital. So, obtaining capital in different ways has been, yeah, very important for Amazon. So I think it would have constrained growth.
Tom：我觉得如果那样做，公司增长肯定会更慢。因为你负担不起。尤其是当我们开始拓展产品品类时，资金就变得更关键。最开始我们收到订单之后，是去联系图书分销商让他们把书寄过来，然后我们再发货出去——我们连库存都没有。但一旦你开始自己采购产品、建仓储中心来存放这些东西，你就必须得有资金。所以，以各种方式获取资金对亚马逊来说一直都非常重要。我认为如果当时不上市，增长就会受到很大限制。
I mean, I know a lot of companies these days, they want to stay private as long as they can and it does depend on their business model. If you've got a business model that doesn’t require a lot of capital, then that’s a viable thing. But Amazon’s business model particularly as a group did require cap.
我知道现在很多公司希望尽可能晚一些上市，这取决于他们的商业模式。如果你的模式不需要很多资本，那确实可以一直私有。但像亚马逊这种模式，尤其是集团层面，是非常依赖资金的。
Ben: Makes sense. I feel like Amazon exhausted all the options.
Ben：说得通。我感觉亚马逊把所有的可能性都试过了。
David: Yeah.
David：没错。
Tom: We did two kind of events relating to that financing and so forth. One, we had the famous meeting with Barnes & Noble back in pre-IPO where the Riggio brothers came to Seattle and wanted to do some kind of a joint deal with Amazon. They weren’t actually offering to acquire but they said, “Well, you can build our website and your own, and we can both have websites or we can do it jointly. We can jointly own it.” Jeff I think rightly decided he didn’t want to do that. Then they filed a lawsuit three days before the IPO because we were using the phrase “the world’s biggest bookstore.”
Tom：我们在融资方面其实经历了两件比较关键的事件。第一件就是IPO前与Barnes & Noble的著名会面，当时Riggio兄弟来西雅图找我们，希望和亚马逊做点什么联合合作。他们并没有明确提出收购，但他们说：“你可以帮我们建网站，也建你自己的，我们可以分别运营，也可以联合运营，甚至共同拥有。”我认为Jeff很正确地拒绝了这个提议。结果他们在IPO前三天提起了诉讼，说我们使用了“the world’s biggest bookstore”（全球最大的书店）这个说法。
So there are lessons in all of that for anybody who wanted to go public that your competitors sometimes do try to take it. But really, neither they nor anyone else really made a run at us and partly because I think a lot of traditional companies always thought we were overvalued. So it was actually a benefit. Now, why nobody tried it when we were $5 in 2001, that’s when they should have tried. I’m not sure they would have succeeded but people, you know, everybody becomes pessimistic at the same time, everybody become optimistic at the same time.
所以这里面有个教训，尤其是给那些准备上市的人：你的竞争对手有时候确实会试图阻击你。但说到底，无论是Barnes & Noble还是其他公司，都没有真正尝试要收购我们，一部分原因是很多传统公司始终觉得我们估值过高。反过来说，这反倒成了我们的优势。话说回来，2001年我们股价跌到5美元的时候，反倒没人出手——其实那时候才是他们最该出手的时候。我也不确定他们能不能成功，但市场就是这样，大家悲观时一起悲观，乐观时也一窝蜂地乐观。
David: It’s interesting that Amazon obviously, it would be a shocker if anybody would buy Amazon today. I seriously doubt that’s even possible. But Amazon as an acquirer, it feels like has kind of internalized those lessons and I think about the Zappos acquisition during the 2008 recession, 2008–2009. Or the Quidsi acquisition, both of which are written about extensively in The Everything Store. It almost feels like Jeff and the company taking that lesson to heart, that when there are good businesses targeting large markets and for whatever reason are out of favor or in the midst of a recession, that’s the time to go shopping.
David：现在再想想，如果有人要收购亚马逊，那绝对是震惊全球的大事——我几乎不认为那是可能的。但作为买方的亚马逊，好像真的从早年的那些经历中吸取了深刻的教训。我想到2008年金融危机期间收购Zappos，还有收购Quidsi，这些都在《一网打尽》中有详尽描述。感觉Jeff和亚马逊的团队真的理解了一个道理：当你发现一个优秀的企业、它面向的是大市场、但因为某些原因被低估或正处在衰退期，那正是你出手收购的大好时机。
Tom: You don’t always have the luxury but it will be nice if you could.
Tom：你并不总有那样的运气和条件，但如果有，那当然是再好不过的事了。
David: Yeah. Should we move on to tech themes?
David：是啊。那我们要不要进入下一个环节，聊聊技术主题？
Ben: Let’s do it.
Ben：好啊，开始吧。
David: Ben, you want to kick it off?
David：Ben，你要不要先来开个头？
Ben: Sure. This part of the show is where we analyze specifically looking at the IPO or acquisition that we’re talking about what tech themes can we extrapolate either from a true technology perspective or sort of from an investment and technology perspective. There’s a few here. I think the biggest one that we’ve already touched on is the flywheel. When I think about Amazon, it’s just like the canonical colloquial example of how to build the world’s best flywheel business where so many things feed into so many other things and fuel the business.
Ben：当然可以。节目这一部分，我们会专门分析围绕这个IPO或收购案例可以总结出哪些技术主题，这些可以是纯技术角度的，也可以是技术与投资结合的角度。在亚马逊这个故事里，有几个主题，但我觉得最重要的一个，我们其实已经提到过，那就是“飞轮效应”。每当我想到亚马逊，它就是那种“教科书级别”的飞轮商业模型——各种因素相互作用、相互增强，不断驱动整个业务前进。
But that wasn’t really part of the IPO, as Tom told us earlier, that that didn’t really get formalized until 2001. So, as we think about lessons learned from the IPO, it’s a lot about timing company creation correctly around new waves. I mean, the internet was… you have to believe that something is going to be a wave and be a little more contrarian than other people. I think that’s evidenced by the investors that passed in the earliest stages thinking that it was too risky. But the big thing for me is yeah, you have to believe wholeheartedly that you’re on the precipice of a wave and it’s not possible to create a top 10 world in the business without being on –
但正如Tom之前告诉我们的，“飞轮”并不是IPO时的正式概念，它是直到2001年左右才被明确提出的。所以如果我们从IPO中总结经验教训，最重要的一点就是：你必须在正确的时间点创建公司，踩准一波大的浪潮。比如互联网——你得相信这将是一股大潮流，并且要比其他人更有逆向思维。这一点从早期投资人因为“太冒险”而放弃亚马逊就能看出来。对我来说，最重要的领悟是，你必须全身心相信自己正站在下一波浪潮的边缘。如果不是借着这样一股巨浪，你几乎不可能打造出一个全球Top 10级别的企业——
David: Without riding a massive wave. I think for me the flipside of that coin that I think really shines through in reading about and reading this history of Amazon at that time is the long-term thinking that Jeff and the company and the board had. Even in those early days, if you believe you've identified a wave like that, if it truly will become as big as you think it will, it’s going to take a long time, decades. Jeff is, you know – and I don’t know if this was when he introduced the phrase but in that shareholder letter in 1997, he said, “It’s day one for the internet and for Amazon.” That perspective is really rare. Lots of people say they have it but to actually behave that way and make investments accordingly is quite impressive.
David：对，没有搭上巨浪是做不到的。而对我来说，这枚硬币的另一面、在阅读亚马逊历史时让我印象深刻的，是Jeff以及整个公司、董事会所展现出的长期主义思维。即使在最早期，如果你相信自己抓住了一波浪潮，那就必须认识到这股浪潮的成型会花很长时间，可能是几十年。Jeff在1997年的股东信中写道：“今天是互联网的第一天，也是亚马逊的第一天。”我不知道他是不是第一次用这句话，但这种视角非常罕见。很多人嘴上说自己有长期思维，但真正能按这种思维去投资、去行动的人非常少。
Tom: It also applies even today when you talk about new projects or initiatives at Amazon or other companies. I know Jeff likes to say it often takes 10 years to prove it. So after you go public, it’s equally important to, one, continue to innovate. Don’t stop innovating just because you feel like you’re at the top of the mountain. You’re not going to survive if you don’t keep innovating and the others maintain that long-term thinking. An IPO gives you the opportunity to do that because you then have the money to do it, you have to somewhat ignore what the market is doing though. That’s another important part after you go public, I think.
Tom：其实这套理念放在今天也同样适用，无论是亚马逊还是其他公司在推出新项目、新业务时，Jeff常说的一句话就是：一个想法往往需要十年时间才能被验证。所以公司上市之后也同样要持续创新。你不能因为觉得自己已经登顶了就停止创新。如果不继续创新，你活不下去。而且，你也必须保持长期思维。IPO其实给了你这个机会，因为你有了资金去投入，但你也要学会适度忽视市场的短期波动。我认为这是公司上市后非常重要的一课。
Ben: It’s interesting you bring up Amazon today as a – Just an observation from the outside. One trend that I think we can observe from Amazon is actually doing corporate innovation well. I’ve long held this belief that every really great company has one multibillion dollar innovation in them, and it’s usually their founding insight. They build that business and they try desperately to build other ancillary businesses around it. Some are bigger and some are smaller. Sometimes you get a Microsoft that has an office and the windows but usually –
Ben：你提到现在的亚马逊挺有意思的——我从外部观察有个想法，我认为亚马逊其实在“企业内部创新”这件事上做得非常出色。我一直坚信，一个伟大的公司通常会有一个数十亿美元规模的创新，而这个创新往往来自它创立之初的核心洞见。它们围绕这个洞见构建起主要业务，然后拼命地在其周围发展其他相关业务，有的做大，有的小一些。有时候你会遇到像微软那样同时拥有Office和Windows的公司，但通常情况下——
David: Google. Not that there aren’t great businesses within Google, but it’s search.
David：就像Google。虽然Google内部也有其他不错的业务，但归根到底，它的核心仍然是搜索。
Ben: Yeah. I mean, it’s 90% on Google display ads or search ads, that’s the most of the revenue. So the thing that’s amazing to observe in Amazon is an incredible DNA for experimentation and small teams and doing things in a lean way. As we’ve observed, there’s already been one business that’s on the scale of Amazon’s original retail business with AWS.
Ben：对，Google 90%的营收还是来自搜索广告和展示广告。所以观察亚马逊的时候，你会发现他们体内有一种令人惊叹的“实验”DNA——小团队，精益创新。我们已经看到，他们通过AWS又打造了一个和原始零售业务同量级的巨型业务。
David: Or bigger perhaps.
David：甚至可能更大。
Ben: Yeah, yeah. It will be fascinating to continue to watch the company and see what else.
Ben：对对，很期待继续观察亚马逊，看看他们还能做出什么。
David: I wanted to ask quickly. Obviously, this happened much later than the IPO story, but about AWS, the listeners to our show might also listen to Ben Thompson and James Allworth’s podcast, Exponent. On one of their recent shows, they were talking about platform mentality and the importance of that at Amazon and perhaps how much DNA came from Microsoft into Amazon in terms of thinking about AWS as a true platform. Ben showed you, they posit this great Bill Gates quote that a platform is when other participants on top of you realize the vast majority of the economics in the industry and you only collect a small percentage. It’s not like a high margin Google-like business. How much thinking on that level happened at Amazon during that creation?
David：我想快速插个问题。这显然是IPO之后很多年才发生的事，但我想问关于AWS的事。我们节目的听众中也有很多人听Ben Thompson和James Allworth的播客《Exponent》。在他们最近一期节目中，他们聊到“平台思维”在亚马逊中的重要性，以及亚马逊在打造AWS时，是否继承了微软的一些DNA。他们引用了比尔·盖茨的一句话：“一个真正的平台，是当其他生态系统中的参与者赚走了大部分利润，而你只抽取其中一小部分。”这跟Google那种高利润业务不同。那么，在AWS创建初期，亚马逊是否在这个层面上有过类似的思考？
Tom: I don’t think we thought we were kind of falling in a Microsoft model although I think from the beginning, everybody in Amazon recognized that Microsoft had the potential in the cloud to be the most important competitor in that as they have become. But the difference in a way was platforms were somewhat considered static in the sense that you built a platform and then every couple of years you revised it or you sent out new software or machines. Internet was so much constant iteration. I have never heard this from Jeff earlier, but it seems to me with AWS the difference in a lot of ways, why it succeeded and had been able to take this lead and keep it partly was being first when others held back. But the constant iteration of AWS, it’s like revising your internet site. They had 600 new features this year or something. Well, in the old days, platforms didn’t do that. You came out with Windows 8 or 10 but it was 2 or 3 years of massive coding. So, I think the world even on that has changed a lot.
Tom：我不觉得我们当时有意识地模仿微软的模式，虽然从一开始，亚马逊内部就意识到微软在云计算方面有潜力成为最强劲的竞争对手——后来他们也确实成为了。但不同之处在于，传统意义上的平台更像是“静态”的，你搭建一个平台，每隔几年升级一次，发布新软件或新硬件。而互联网世界是持续迭代的。我没有听Jeff明确说过，但在我看来，AWS之所以成功并能保持领先，一方面当然是先发优势，其他人当时还在观望，另一方面更关键的是它不断迭代。AWS就像你不断更新自己的网站一样，据说今年发布了600个新功能。在过去的传统平台时代，是不会这样的。你可能要等两三年才发布一个Windows 8或10，经过大规模编码才能发布新版。所以我觉得，整个世界对“平台”的理解也在不断演变。
AWS的出现更多的跟原来的商业模式有关，是在既定道路上很可能出现的东西。
Ben: Right. That’s a great point. One other question before we move out of trends and themes is, as you’re looking at companies that are pitching Madrona for investment in recent history, what are things that you learned from Amazon being so successful that you sort of look for at other companies as a pattern matching based on Amazon?
Ben：没错，说得非常好。我们在进入下一个环节之前我还想问一个问题：你现在在Madrona听创业公司路演时，有没有从亚马逊成功的经验中学到什么？有没有哪些亚马逊的模式或者特质，你会特别留意在其他公司中寻找？
David: Well, you know, every company isn’t going to go public and every company isn’t in it probably for the long term. But I really do prefer founders who have a long-term vision and at least in the beginning say they’re going to stick with it. I think it’s almost genetic though and you don’t know it until it happens. There’s lots of reasons to sell your company and your market didn’t turn out quite what you thought but you’re going to get a good price But what I really hope is that a founder, if he’s riding the wave as you say or has other reasons doesn’t sell out when he could be in it for the long term.
David：你知道，并不是每个公司都能最终上市，也不是每个公司都会走长期路线。但我确实偏好那些有长期愿景的创始人，至少在最初阶段愿意承诺会坚持下去。我觉得这几乎是一种“基因”，在事情发展前你其实很难知道。有很多理由会让人卖掉公司，比如市场发展不如预期，但价格还不错。但我真心希望创始人如果确实踩中了浪潮，或有其他理由的话，不要轻易卖掉，而是走一条长期路线。
Again, it’s somewhat personality and I think I was very fortunate that Jeff was in this for the long-term and so, even at moments when he could have gone out and sold the company, he wasn’t interested. He wanted to build something for the long term. When you think about a lot of the great companies, they've had founders who really wanted to accomplish something kind of beyond making the profit. We’re going to change how people think about software. We’re going to change how people do search. So, I think that isn’t guaranteed a successful company but I’ve always liked that longer term – they’re thinking about it and hopefully going to seek it.
这当然也和个性有关，我觉得我很幸运遇到了Jeff——他是真的想做长期的事情。即使在某些时候他有机会把公司卖掉，他也没兴趣，他想打造一件长久存在的事业。当你回顾那些伟大的公司时，你会发现它们的创始人往往都不仅仅是想赚钱，而是想真正改变一些东西，比如改变人们如何看待软件，如何进行搜索。所以这并不是说有这种想法就一定成功，但我总是更倾向于那些有长远眼光、愿意追求长期目标的创始人。
Ben: Cool. Thanks.
Ben：太棒了，谢谢你。
David: Should we wrap up?
David：我们要总结一下吗？
Ben: Yeah. You want to grade it?
Ben：好啊，要打个分吗？
David: Yeah. In some ways, this is tough. I’m thinking of the end, the quote to The Everything Store which is Joy Covey and the email that she wrote to Brad Stone. She was one of the key sources for the book. After having done all the interviews and just reflecting back on her time at Amazon and then the experience of talking about the story, she said, “You know, Jeff and the company, kind of like he knew in the very beginning exactly where he was going.”
David：好啊。这其实有点难打分。我想到《一网打尽》这本书的结尾，Joy Covey写给Brad Stone的那封邮件。她是那本书最关键的采访对象之一。在做完所有采访、回顾她在亚马逊的岁月之后，她说：“你知道吗，Jeff和这家公司，好像从一开始就知道自己要去哪里。”
In so many ways we talk about on this show. So many startup stories and IPO stories and M&A stories, or twists and turns and wild rides. It feels inevitable that the company went public when it did especially just hearing the story now. It was completely rational. It made sense and it gave the company the scale and the capital and the visibility that it needed to grow and outpace competitors.
我们节目中经常讲各种创业故事、IPO故事、并购故事，里面充满了波折、意外和冒险。但说到亚马逊，尤其是听完这个故事后，你会觉得他们在当时选择上市几乎是一种“必然”。这个决定非常理性、合理，为公司提供了发展所需的规模、资本和市场认知度，也让他们能够超越竞争对手。
So, in some ways, I think I’d give it an A. I do give it an A. But this might be like the least controversial or thought-provoking decision that we’ve had so far on this show for me.
所以，我会给这次IPO打A。我确实给它A。对我来说，这可能是我们节目中最没有争议、也最理所当然的一个案例。
Ben: It’s funny. I was just thinking the same thing. There’s actually not a lot of analysis that needs to go into it. I mean, you look at the scale of Amazon today and even the scale in the years shortly after the IPO. The only way that they could have achieved the outcome that they did was by going public. I think that one reason why we had so much trouble in that earlier section of what would have happened otherwise is it just doesn’t seem like there was a lot of choice.
Ben：真有趣，我刚刚也在想这件事。其实不需要太多分析，你看看今天亚马逊的规模，甚至IPO之后几年内的规模，他们能够实现这一切的唯一方式就是上市。我觉得我们在之前那个“如果没上市会怎样”的讨论环节那么难讲清楚，原因就是这根本没什么选择的余地。
David: It feels like unnatural to think about an alternative history here.
David：在这个案例中去假设一个“另一个历史版本”，真的感觉很不自然。
Ben: Right. As someone who works on early-stage startups, a lot of the time there’s all this like really vague questions around, “Okay. We think we have an idea in this space and we’re learning as we’re going.” Should we be a platform provider or should we the business that sits on top of it? Should it all be combined or should we be a horizontal or a vertical business in this space?
Ben：对。我作为一个专注早期创业公司的投资人，经常会遇到那种模糊的探索期，比如，“好，我们觉得在这个领域有点想法，但还在边干边学。”那到底是要做平台提供商？还是要做平台上面的业务？是要横向整合？还是垂直一体化？
You even go back and forth long after you've started the business kind of playing both sides there. It just doesn’t seem like Amazon had any ambiguity over what the long-term vision of the company was, at least the retail business.
即使业务已经开始运营了，也常常会左右摇摆。但亚马逊好像从来没有在长期愿景上有过这种模糊，至少在零售业务方面是这样。
David: So Tom, hearing that, do you agree or are you laughing at us saying like, “easy to say from this vantage point”?
David：那Tom，你听我们这么说，是觉得认同，还是觉得我们站在今天说风凉话？
Tom: Well, on the one hand I don’t think any of us really did understand what Amazon would become. But I think the fact that Jeff and several of us thought the internet was going to be a very big deal and there was lots of potential and who knew where this could take you. I think that often happens with technology where you realize that something is going to be very big but knowing the details that today, AWS would have come out of that, there was no way to predict that or think about that in those days.
Tom：一方面，我不认为当时我们任何人真的知道亚马逊会变成今天这样。但当时Jeff和我们几个人都很确信互联网将会成为一件大事，它有巨大的潜力，但它最终会把我们带到哪里，我们不知道。我觉得技术发展常常如此——你能意识到它将变得很重要，但你没办法预见细节。比如说今天的AWS会从中诞生，我们当年根本没法预料。
But again, it fits very well when you look back and say what the assets of Amazon were but also what the technology developments. So I think Joy is right in the sense that it was in some ways inevitable. I’m just not sure we knew how inevitable it was. But it took fabulous commitment to innovation and really hiring good people. So you should not neglect that for inevitability.
但现在回头看，无论是亚马逊当时的资源，还是技术的演进，AWS的诞生其实顺理成章。所以我觉得Joy说得对，从某种意义上说这是“不可避免的”。只不过我们当时并不知道它有多么“不可避免”。而且它之所以能成为现实，是因为亚马逊一直在不断创新，也不断招募优秀的人才。所以你不能只是说这是“命中注定”，就忽略了背后的努力。
Ben: Right.
Ben：没错。
David: Okay. With that, Carve Outs. It will be interesting to think how many of our Carve Outs will be available on or in some ways served to you by Amazon.
David：好，那我们来到了Carve Outs环节。有趣的是，我们要推荐的这些内容，很可能其中很多都可以通过亚马逊获取，或者说某种程度上是亚马逊服务的一部分。
Ben: I’m sure Amazon is in delivery there somewhere, either way.
Ben：不管怎样，亚马逊肯定在配送链条里的某个环节。
David: No matter what your Carve Out is, Amazon is involved in it.
David：不管你推荐什么内容，亚马逊总能插上一脚。
Ben: That would be interesting to look back at our previous Carve Outs and figure out are there any that are not served to you either on AWS or be able to be shipped to you. We’d have to pick something that’s basically not a physical good. A physical good that’s on some very, very stubborn retailer that retails only on their own sites. I don’t know.
Ben：回头看看我们以前推荐的那些Carve Outs，真挺有意思的——有没有哪个不是通过AWS提供的，或者不能被亚马逊送到你手上的？可能只能挑那种不是实体商品的东西，或者是那种超级“固执”的零售商，他们只在自己的网站上卖东西。我也说不好。
David: A site that’s not hosted on AWS.
David：比如一个不是托管在AWS上的网站。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：对。
David: Or uses technologies as part of the site that are not hosted by AWS. It would practically be impossible.
David：或者说使用的技术栈完全没用AWS的。那几乎不可能了。
Ben: Yeah. I guess that’s why Amazon deserves that A that we mentioned a few minutes ago. So my Carve Out is a band called The Album Leaf. I actually went to their show last night here in Seattle. I’ve been a long-time fan of the band there. Some of the best working music that you can imagine. It’s a lot of percussion, it’s a lot of very like mellow synth but it’s got a little punch to it. It’s kind of hard to describe but check out The Album Leaf. They’re on Spotify. I’m sure they’re on Amazon. Great band.
Ben：对啊，我想这也就是为什么亚马逊值得我们几分钟前给出的“A级”评价。我的Carve Out是一支叫做The Album Leaf的乐队。我昨晚还在西雅图看了他们的演出。我是他们多年的粉丝了。他们的音乐非常适合工作时听，有很多打击乐，还有那种柔和但有劲道的合成器音效。挺难形容的，但真的推荐去听听The Album Leaf。他们在Spotify上有，在亚马逊上估计也有。非常棒的乐队。
David: Cool I’ll do a quick side Carve Out then. Made me think. Jenny and I went to the Stevie Nicks show this weekend in Seattle. She was awesome. Her 24 Karat Gold Tour, so great. Some of her hits, some of Fleetwood Mac’s hits. But mostly and what I enjoyed the most was just songs from the vault, as she called them, that people don’t know. Super great.
David：太棒了，那我也来一个简短的Carve Out。刚刚你这么一说让我想起来了。我和Jenny这个周末也在西雅图看了Stevie Nicks的演唱会。她太棒了，是她的“24 Karat Gold”巡演。演唱了一些她的经典曲目，也唱了Fleetwood Mac的几首歌。但我最喜欢的是她说的那些“vault里的歌”——也就是那些不太为人所知的作品。超级赞。
My office Carve Out though is there’s a great article that we’ll link to in the show notes. Very fun. There’s a seminal paper in Harvard Business Review from the mid-90’s right around when Amazon was being started. By Brian Arthur and it’s called Increasing Returns and the New World of Business. It’s somewhat academic in topic but the thesis is that in an internet world where distributions costs are very low and your accessible market is everyone, you can actually – this old economic theory of diminishing returns that the bigger you got, the classic example is coffee plantations. The more coffee you produce, you’re going to worse and worse, less and less fertile ground and your coffee is going to get worse and worse, and so you get diminishing returns.
不过我真正要推荐的，是一篇非常棒的文章，我们会在show notes里放链接。这是一篇发表在《哈佛商业评论》上的经典论文，写于90年代中期，正是亚马逊刚起步的时候。作者是Brian Arthur，题目叫《Increasing Returns and the New World of Business》（《递增收益与商业新世界》）。虽然内容有点偏学术，但它的核心观点是，在互联网时代，分发成本非常低、市场潜力无限，在这样的条件下，传统的“规模越大，收益递减”的经济理论不再成立。比如传统理论的经典例子是咖啡种植园——种得越多，你用的土地越差，咖啡品质也越差，最后收益递减。
On the internet, you actually get increasing returns. That the bigger you are, the bigger you get and the better that your customer experience becomes. That contributes to sort of the spiritual antecedent to aggregation theory and Amazon and many of the things that have happened. Super fun thing that came out is, turns out, that Cormac McCarthy, the author/the novelist who wrote All the Pretty Horses, and No Country for Old Men, and many others; Pulitzer Prize winning author. Brian Arthur, the economist who wrote the article, he went to Cormac McCarthy for help writing this piece. So Cormac, like, basically dismantled the whole piece, they reassembled it together and when you read it, it reads extremely cogently. Not like a typical economic, academic paper. This story came out recently. Very fun.
而在互联网上，你反而能获得“递增收益”——你越大，做得越好，客户体验越强，然后你就会变得更大。这个理论其实算是后来“聚合理论”的前身，也解释了亚马逊和其他许多公司的成长逻辑。有趣的是，最近有个冷知识被曝光了：原来写这篇文章的经济学家Brian Arthur，当年是找小说家Cormac McCarthy帮他润色这篇文章的。McCarthy就是写《美丽的尘埃》和《老无所依》的那位普利策奖得主。他几乎把文章拆了重写了一遍。所以你读这篇论文的时候，会觉得结构非常清晰、有逻辑，跟一般枯燥的经济学论文完全不同。这个幕后故事最近被挖出来了，非常有趣。
Tom: Oh well, I should appropriately say that on my Amazon Christmas gift list that I’ve actually given to my wife, is The Undoing Project book by Michael Lewis. I think a lot of us, you know – I like to read books on new technologies. Machine learning is a popular subject around Madrona and we’ve been reading books on things like that. But here’s one that’s not particularly focused on numbers or technologies. Well, a different kind of technology which is the psychology of people, which again, is super important in business. I think I look forward to reading it.
Tom：对了，我应该提一下，我已经把Michael Lewis写的《The Undoing Project》列入了我的亚马逊圣诞愿望清单，也告诉了我太太。我想我们很多人都喜欢读关于新技术的书。在Madrona，机器学习是一个热门话题，我们一直在看相关的书。不过这本书并不是专注于数字或技术，而是另一种“技术”——人类心理学，而这在商业中同样非常重要。我很期待读这本书。
David: Yeah. I haven’t read it yet either but I can’t wait. The book’s about Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, Nobel Prize winners for basically developing behavioral economics. And Daniel Kahneman was and is now an emeritus professor at Princeton and Michael Lewis is an esteemed Princeton alum as well. I took Kahneman’s course when I was in school there and sadly, it was the first year that he had retired and he didn’t teach it, so somebody else did but I took his course and it had a huge impact on me. And looking forward to reading the book.
David：是啊，我也还没看这本书，但已经迫不及待了。这本书讲的是Daniel Kahneman和Amos Tversky，他们因为开创行为经济学而获得了诺贝尔奖。Kahneman现在是普林斯顿的荣休教授，而Michael Lewis本人也是普林斯顿杰出的校友。我上大学时选过Kahneman的课，但可惜那正好是他退休的第一年，他没亲自教，换了别人来授课。不过我还是受益匪浅。这本书我很期待。
Ben: Great. Well, that’s all we’ve got. If you aren’t subscribed and want to hear more, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast client. If you feel so inclined and you’re a long-time listener of the show or if you’re new and just joining us for this episode, we would love, love, love a review on iTunes or if you share it on social media with your friends. So, thanks so much for listening and have a great day.
Ben：太棒了。我们今天的内容就到这里。如果你还没有订阅但想听更多内容，可以在你喜欢的播客平台上订阅我们的节目。如果你愿意的话，不管你是老听众还是新加入的朋友，我们都非常非常希望你能在iTunes上给我们写个评论，或者在社交媒体上分享给你的朋友们。非常感谢大家的收听，祝你今天愉快！
David: Thank you to Tom for joining us.
David：谢谢Tom今天的加入。
Tom: Thank you. That was fun.
Tom：谢谢你们，我很开心。
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
注：Acquired播客的主持人和嘉宾可能持有本期节目中讨论的相关资产。本播客并非投资建议，仅供信息参考和娱乐用途。在考虑任何金融交易时，请自行进行研究并做出独立判断。
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