2020-03-30 Acquired.Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (with Roelof Botha)

Refer To：《Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (with Roelof Botha)》。

Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)

Ben: Welcome to Episode Two of Adapting by Acquired.

Ben：欢迎收听《Acquired 适应篇》第 2 集。

David: Now you've got it.

David：你终于说对了。

Ben: I rehearsed. For those keeping track at home, Season Six, Episode Five. We are continuing our series to bring you the stories of great companies and great leaders who are adapting to a world that's changing in real time. Today, we are covering the story behind the memo read around the world, Sequoia Capital’s Black Swan memo, Amazingly published only 20 days ago as we record this.

Ben：我练习过的。给在家做笔记的朋友们，我们现在是第六季第五集。我们继续为你讲述那些在瞬息万变世界中不断适应的伟大公司和领导者的故事。今天我们要讲的是那封震动全球的备忘录背后的故事——红杉资本的《黑天鹅》备忘录。令人惊讶的是，这封备忘录在我们录音时才刚刚发布 20 天。

David: Feels like 20 lifetimes ago.

David：感觉像是 20 个世纪前的事了。

Ben: I know. We are joined by the best person in the world to tell us about it. Long time Sequoia partner, Roelof Botha. Today's episode is different from last week's episode with Canlis. We are going much closer to Acquired’s bread and butter of technology and venture capital.

Ben：我懂。这期节目我们请来了最合适的人来讲述这段故事——红杉资本的资深合伙人 Roelof Botha。今天的节目和我们上周关于 Canlis 的那期很不一样，我们将回归《Acquired》的核心主题：科技和风险投资。

This conversation is particularly interesting not just to hear the story behind the Black Swan memo, but also to get a real time look at how Sequoia themselves are thinking about adapting during this time along with their portfolio companies.

这段对话特别有意思，不只是因为我们会听到《黑天鹅》备忘录背后的故事，更因为我们能实时了解红杉以及他们的投资公司在这个时期是如何思考“适应”这件事的。

David: Before we jump in, if you haven't already, we want to strongly encourage you to join the Acquired Slack community. I honestly think at this point, it's probably the best community on the internet for people focused on building and investing in great companies. We really mean that and that's a testament to you all.

David：在我们正式开始之前，如果你还没加入的话，我们强烈鼓励你加入《Acquired》的 Slack 社区。说实话，我觉得它现在可能是互联网上最好的社区之一，聚集了一群专注于创业和投资伟大公司的朋友。我们真心这么认为，这一切都归功于你们大家。

The quality of people that listen to this show. It's been pretty awesome especially for the last week or so just seeing how we're all supporting each other in there and helping everybody get through at this time. You can find the link on our website to get an invite. You should definitely sign up.

听这个节目的听众素质都非常高。特别是过去这一两周，真的很棒，看到大家在社区中互相支持、共同度过这段特殊时期。你可以在我们网站上找到邀请链接，真的非常推荐你加入。

The other thing we want to tell you about is as we announced in the last episode, we are adding something big to the limited partner program that we're really excited about. We're going to be hosting monthly calls on Zoom for all LPs which we're calling, appropriately enough, LP calls.

还有一件事我们想提醒你们——就像我们上一集节目中宣布的，我们给《Acquired》的 LP（有限合伙人）计划增加了一个非常令人兴奋的新内容：我们会每月为所有 LP 举办一次 Zoom 线上会议，我们称之为“LP 通话”。

Ben: Very original, David.

Ben：David，真有创意的名字啊。

David: Yes, super original. We're big in the branding here at Acquired. When you sign up for the limited partner program, you get both our LP episodes, which go deeper on nitty gritty company building topics, and access to the monthly LP calls to the both of us. You can sign up by clicking the links on the show notes or going to glow\.fm/acquired.

David：是的，非常有创意。《Acquired》对品牌命名可是很讲究的。一旦你注册成为我们的 LP（有限合伙人）计划成员，你就能收听我们专属的 LP 节目，这些节目会深入探讨公司建设的方方面面，并且可以参与我们每月一次的 LP Zoom 通话，与我们两位互动。你可以点击节目说明里的链接，或者直接访问 glow\.fm/acquired 注册。

Ben: As always, we want to thank our sponsor for all of Season Six, and Adapting, Silicon Valley Bank. Innovation happens when the status quo just won't do. As the world fights COVID-19, Silicon Valley Bank pays tribute to all of the innovators, health care providers and scientists, social workers, take out chefs, policy makers, and philanthropists. Generous driven individuals working around the clock to keep people alive, find a cure, and help the world cope with the unimaginable.

Ben：一如既往地，我们要感谢本季《Acquired》第六季和《Adapting》系列节目的赞助商——硅谷银行（Silicon Valley Bank）。当现状无法满足需求时，创新就会发生。在全球与新冠疫情抗争的过程中，硅谷银行向所有的创新者、医护人员、科学家、社工、外卖厨师、政策制定者和慈善家致敬——这些富有同情心、充满干劲的人们正在日以继夜地努力，挽救生命、寻找治愈之道，并帮助世界应对这场前所未有的挑战。

SVB supports innovative companies and their investors and have for more than 35 years. It knows that innovation requires adaptability, flexibility, and unrelenting passion for finding solutions.

SVB 支持创新型公司及其投资者已有 35 年之久。它深知，创新需要适应能力、灵活性以及对解决问题永不止息的热情。

Today, more than ever, SVB salutes innovators everywhere. You can learn more at svb.com/next, thanks to SVB. With that, David, we will dive in with our interview with Roelof.

在今天这样一个时刻，SVB 向世界各地的创新者致以最崇高的敬意。你可以访问 svb.com/next 了解更多。感谢 SVB 的支持。好了，David，现在我们进入与 Roelof 的访谈环节。

David: We are super lucky to have Roelof with us today. Roelof has been a partner at Sequoia since 2003 and led early investments in some of the most important companies that we've covered on this show. Companies like Instagram, YouTube, and Square. He currently leads the firm's US business as one of Sequioa's three stewards along with Doug Leone and Neil Shen.

David：我们今天非常幸运地请到了 Roelof。自 2003 年以来，Roelof 一直是红杉资本的合伙人，并主导了多个我们节目中曾经重点讲述过的重要公司早期投资案，比如 Instagram、YouTube 和 Square。目前，他与 Doug Leone 和沈南鹏（Neil Shen）一起担任红杉全球三位“守门人”之一，负责美国业务的领导工作。

Prior to joining Sequoia, Roelof was the CFO of PayPal which is particularly relevant to our conversation today, having helped navigate them through the dot-com crash, their subsequent IPO, and ultimately sold Ebay for \$1.5 billion. Welcome, Roelof, and thanks for joining us in these interesting times.

在加入红杉之前，Roelof 曾是 PayPal 的首席财务官，这一点与我们今天的对话尤为相关——他曾带领 PayPal 安然度过互联网泡沫破裂的时期，完成 IPO，并最终以 15 亿美元将其出售给 eBay。欢迎你，Roelof，感谢你在这样一个特别时期加入我们。

Roelof: Thank you. I wish the circumstances were different, but I'm glad to be here.

Roelof：谢谢你们。我也希望我们是在不同的背景下展开这次对话，但我很高兴能来到这里。

David: Us too, we're glad to have you. Let's jump right into it. On March 5th, you guys did something that now seems obvious in hindsight but definitely did not seem obvious on March 5th.

David：我们也一样，很高兴你在这里。那我们直接进入正题吧。3 月 5 日那天，你们做了一件现在看起来再明显不过的事，但在当时却完全不是显而易见的。

Ben: I think March 5th was two years ago at this point.

Ben：感觉 3 月 5 日已经是两年前的事了。

David: It feels like there's a Lennon quote that people have been saying about some decades nothing happens, and some weeks decades happen. It's been about two decades. You guys released publicly, both simultaneously, emailed all your portfolio CEOs and posted on Medium what you called the Black Swan Memo. I'm sure most of our listeners have read it probably a multiple times at this point.

David：这感觉就像列侬说的那句话：“有些十年什么都不会发生，而有些几周却像过了几十年。”这次就是几十年。你们在那时对外公开发布了《黑天鹅备忘录》，同时发邮件给了你们所有的被投公司 CEO，并在 Medium 上发布。我相信我们的听众大多数都已经读过这封备忘录，甚至不止一次。

I just want to point out, I just want to highlight one quote from it that again probably everyone's read, but it's such a stark difference between what you guys said and what so many other investors and people were saying at the moment. You said, “Having weathered every business downturn for nearly 50 years, we've learned an important lesson. Nobody ever regrets making fast, decisive adjustments to changing circumstances. In downturns, revenue, and cash levels always fall faster than expenses. In some ways, business mirrors biology. As Darwin surmised, those who survive are not the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to change.” Can you walk us through as you were writing this and getting ready to hit publish, what were you feeling internally?

我想特别引用《黑天鹅备忘录》里的一句话，大家可能也都已经熟悉，但它和当时许多投资人说的话形成了强烈反差。你们写道：“在经历了近 50 年的商业低谷之后，我们学到了一个重要的教训：从未有人后悔在环境变化时快速果断地做出调整。在下行期，营收和现金储备总是下降得比成本更快。从某种意义上说，商业就像生物学，正如达尔文所总结的，能活下来的不是最强或最聪明的，而是最能适应变化的。”你能分享一下，当你们准备发布这篇备忘录时，内心的感受是什么样的吗？

Roelof: The sense of nervousness that the world wasn't really paying attention to the reality that we were facing. We have the benefit of being a global partnership so we were seeing what was happening in China with our business, and with our partners, and what it was like to be under a lockdown. We've been through many business cycles that took way. We've been around for 48 years. We've been through so many of these cycles and we've seen this movie before, and our sense was that people hadn't quite realized what was about to happen. It was like watching an accident happen in slow motion. You can just see it and we felt a duty and obligation to do something about it.

Roelof：我们当时感到担忧，因为我们觉得外界并没有真正意识到我们正面临的现实。我们红杉是一家全球性合伙制机构，这让我们能从中国的业务和合作伙伴那边看到疫情的进展，看到封锁期间的真实情况。我们已经成立了 48 年，经历过许多轮商业周期，可以说我们看过这场电影很多次了。而我们的感觉是，很多人还没意识到即将到来的情况。这就像你眼睁睁看着一场车祸慢动作发生一样，我们觉得自己有责任，也有义务采取行动。

Ben: Let's set the stage for folks. This was six days before the NBA announcement came out, so it was a week before the general American consciousness woke up and said, “Oh my god, this is a huge deal.” Did you worry at all that you were jumping the gun? And as a related question, Sequoia is such a force in our ecosystem. Did you think about the risk of, “Gosh do we incite something by releasing something like this?”

Ben：我们来给大家铺垫一下背景。当时距离 NBA 宣布停赛还有 6 天，也就是说，美国大众意识到这件事的严重性还差一整周。在那个时间点，你们是否担心自己“行动太早”？再进一步问，红杉在整个创业生态中具有举足轻重的影响力，你们是否担心发布这样的内容会引发某种恐慌？

Roelof: We do, which is why we do this very infrequently. The last time we did something comparable was at the end of 2008 with the RIP Good Times memo which wasn't intended to be published. It was really intended just for our founders because we wanted them to understand what was happening, and it comes at a risk. I heard from people back in 2008 that we were the reason the crash happened, as if we had that kind of power.

Roelof：确实有这个担忧，所以我们极少这样做。上一次类似的举动是在 2008 年底，我们发布了一份名为《RIP Good Times》的备忘录，但当时并不是打算公开发布的，而只是想发给我们被投公司的创始人们，让他们了解当下正在发生的情况。但这确实是冒风险的。我记得 2008 年有人说是因为我们发布了那份备忘录才导致了金融崩盘，好像我们有那么大的影响力一样。

I heard people complain we were being alarmists and things like that. We really felt a duty that maybe people are going to be uncomfortable with us saying these sort of things, but we have an obligation to tell people what we see coming around the corner. Someone challenged me and said, “Well what if it doesn't turn out to be that bad?” And I said, “If that's the case, I'd be so thankful and I will eat humble pie for having published this.” There's so much more important for us to put the word of warning out.

也有人批评我们危言耸听、散布恐慌。但我们真心觉得这是我们必须承担的责任——尽管我们说的话可能让人不舒服，我们也有义务告诉大家我们看到了什么。有一次有人质疑我说：“那如果结果没那么糟怎么办？”我说：“如果真是那样，我会感激不尽，并为这篇文章真诚地认错。”但更重要的是把警告传达出去。

Often when you're in the trenches as a company, you have a slightly different perspective on things, especially if you haven't been through previous cycles. I remember when I was there in PayPal, and I joined in March of 2000, the NASDAQ saw it slide in April. I remember being at a board meeting with Michael Moritz from Sequoia in June, and he told us he wanted us to focus on runway because the financing environment has changed forever. I think honestly, for all of us as first timers if you will in the company, we didn't quite fathom that. We thought that what we'd experienced for the last two years would continue, and he really rang the bell and we paid attention. That month, we really started to sharpen our pencils to make sure that we had enough runway to make it to the other side.

很多时候，当你身处一家公司内部时，你对形势的看法会有偏差，尤其是当你没经历过过去的周期。我还记得当年我在 PayPal，2000 年 3 月刚加入公司，结果 4 月份 NASDAQ 就开始暴跌。我还记得 6 月我们与红杉的 Michael Moritz 开董事会时，他提醒我们要专注于“跑道长度”，因为融资环境已经发生了根本性变化。说实话，对于当时公司里的我们这些“第一次创业者”来说，我们并没有完全理解他的意思。我们以为过去两年的好光景还会继续。但他敲响了警钟，我们听进去了。从那个月开始，我们就开始认真规划财务，确保能撑到寒冬过去的那一天。

David: I'm super curious. You've talked about this a bunch and obviously a CFO, you were right there at the helm doing this. What were the things you did? You were I believe the first technology company to go public after the crash then had this wonderful exit. What were the actual things that you did to save the company and to stay on a growth trajectory even through all this carnage?

David：我特别好奇，你之前也多次提到这些，作为当时的 CFO，你亲自在前线指挥应对。你们是那次崩盘后第一家上市的科技公司，最后还实现了非常出色的退出。你们到底做了哪些具体的事，才能在如此惨烈的环境中保住公司并维持增长轨迹？

Roelof: This is obviously a team effort. I was one of many people in the company that rallied together and I think that's one of the things that you see in this unfortunate humanitarian crisis. I think the thing that's different about this by the way is it's a health crisis in addition to an economic crisis at a global scale. That makes it so different from any of these other incidents we've seen. That's awful on many levels, but I do think it's very different from what we had back then.

Roelof：这显然是一个团队的努力。我只是当时公司里许多齐心协力的成员之一。我觉得这次疫情危机中也体现出这种精神。不过，这次危机与过去不同的是，它不仅是经济危机，还是一场全球性的公共卫生危机。这让它与我们过去经历的任何危机都截然不同。从很多层面来说都非常严峻，但它确实是一种全新的局面。

But we rallied as a team and we looked through the P\&L. I remember literally going through line by line on every single thing on which we were spending money to figure out what was truly essential to helping us build a successful business. On the expense line, the things that you can control.

但我们团队齐心协力，重新梳理了整个利润与损失表（P\&L）。我记得我们真的逐行检查每一项支出，搞清楚哪些是对我们打造成功业务真正必要的。也就是从成本支出入手，先管住我们能控制的部分。

We tried furiously to raise more money to extend our runway, and we got religion about our business model. Up until I think June 10 or June 20 2000, PayPal didn't charge for its service. At that point, we realized if we wanted to keep going, we had to figure out a business model and make it a great business model. That's exactly the kind of focus that we got because the external environment changed so dramatically.

我们当时拼命尝试再融资，以延长我们的“跑道”（资金存活期）。而且我们对商业模式也“信仰觉醒”了。记得直到 2000 年 6 月 10 日或 20 日之前，PayPal 的服务都是免费的。那时候我们意识到，如果想要活下去，就必须设计出一个有效、优秀的商业模式。正是因为外部环境剧烈变化，我们才专注地重新思考了这个问题。

韧性缺失。

Constraints enable you to come up with creative new solutions. I think you're going to find an incredible array of entrepreneurs coming up with wonderful solutions in the midst of this terrible crisis.

资源受限，反而能激发创新性的解决方案。我相信在这场可怕的危机中，会有许多创业者想出令人惊艳的创新方案。

David: To go back for a sec to the Black Swan memo, can you talk a little bit about what it was over the preceding weeks before March 5th that you were seeing in China? And obviously through your unique perspective that gave you confidence that, “Hey this is a lot more serious than people are realizing in the US and elsewhere?”

David：回到《黑天鹅备忘录》这件事，你能谈谈在3月5日之前的几周里，你们在中国看到了什么情况？通过你们独特的视角，是什么让你们确信，“嘿，这事比美国和其他地方的人意识到的严重得多”？

Roelof: I think we saw our team in China immediately had to go into a full lockdown. A dramatic change at a national level with over a billion people, and not just in the province that was affected, but everywhere. They were taking it seriously. Clearly the people at the frontlines had seen that this was a virus unlike others that were spreading a lot faster and had higher mortality rate than a typical seasonal flu. That just felt very, very different.

Roelof：我觉得我们看到的是，中国团队立刻进入了全面封锁状态。这是一场在全国范围内、超过十亿人口中的剧烈变化，而且不仅仅是在疫区，而是整个国家都非常严肃地对待它。显然，一线人员已经意识到这是一个与以往不同的病毒，它的传播速度更快，致死率也比一般的季节性流感更高。那种感觉非常不一样。

I think it was pretty obvious that by then there were cases showing up in the US. Even though there was a travel ban at one point, it was just too porous. People could have come in from mainland China, they could have gone to other parts of the world and come into the US. It was quite likely that there's a bigger problem today in the US than we realized, and this is the unfortunate thing about the absence of testing infrastructure right now in the country.

那时，美国也已经有病例出现了，这是很明显的。尽管曾实施过旅行禁令，但漏洞太多了。人们可能从中国大陆入境，也可能从其他国家中转进入美国。我们觉得，美国当下的问题很可能比大家意识到的要严重得多，而不幸的是，美国当时缺乏检测基础设施。

I have a friend in New York who had it for 11 days before he was confirmed positive last week. My brother in San Francisco, I think he has it but he can't get tested. He literally can't get tested because he is not in a high risk group. I think that we just had a sense that the problem was actually a lot bigger.

我在纽约有位朋友，他感染11天之后才在上周确诊。我在旧金山的弟弟，我认为他可能也感染了，但他根本无法接受检测。真的就是无法检测，因为他不属于高风险人群。我觉得我们那时已经有种直觉——问题实际上比人们看到的大得多。

There's the parable of the wheat or the rice and the chessboard where the person wants to get compensated one, two, four etc. and it's obviously a great thing for people to study computer science. But teach to the bar and become a very large number as gross and things that grow exponentially, we just don't understand it.

有一个寓言讲的是大米或麦子和棋盘的故事：一个人请求的报酬是第一格放一粒，第二格放两粒，第三格放四粒……以此类推。这是计算机科学中经常提到的例子。但我们在现实中对这种指数增长的事情往往缺乏直觉理解，不容易意识到它会变成多么庞大的数字。

Something that looked trivial 12 days ago but it's doubling every six days suddenly looks dramatically different. Just two weeks later and I think we saw that this was at the cusp of happening in America. We felt this obligation, like I said earlier, to make sure that people paid attention and acted now.

一个看起来在12天前还无关紧要的事，如果每6天翻一倍，突然之间就变得完全不同了。也就是仅仅两周后，我们意识到美国正处在这种事情爆发的边缘。就像我之前说的，我们感到有义务提醒大家，要立刻重视并采取行动。

Ben: That's a great lead into something that David and I talk about a lot. David, I don't think I have shared this with you, but I look up to you a lot in the way that you think about playing defense, and playing offense, and being very careful about when is the time for defense and when is the time for our offense. Doing both at the same time, you just have to be careful what actions are for which thing and rule off.

Ben：这正好引出我和 David 经常讨论的一个话题。David，我可能没和你说过，但我真的很佩服你对“防守”和“进攻”的思考方式，以及你非常精准地判断什么时候该防守、什么时候该进攻。在这两者并行的情况下，你必须非常清楚每一个动作到底是为了哪一方面。

白痴。

I want to dive in on defense right now. You guys have been putting out a reasonable amount of content compared to Sequoia of old, and one of the pieces that you publish for entrepreneurs is this decision matrix. I would think about this as defense. How should entrepreneurs use that? And then I'm curious to ask you some questions about offense.

我现在想先深入谈谈“防守”。相比以往，红杉最近发布了不少内容，其中有一篇是给创业者的决策矩阵。我觉得这是非常典型的“防守”策略。你们希望创业者如何使用它？等你讲完，我还想问你关于“进攻”的问题。

Roelof: I want to give credit to one of our CFOs in the portfolio. He doesn't want to be singled out to name but he developed this for a portfolio company where I happened to be on the board for Sequoia. I thought it was an incredible structure. In that case the company had seven main scenarios with a couple of sub scenarios, and I just thought it's a wonderful framework to address the challenge you face because we don't know the state of the world.

Roelof：我要特别感谢我们投资组合中一位CFO的贡献。他不希望被点名，但他为我担任董事的红杉被投公司开发了这个框架。我觉得这是一个非常出色的结构。当时这家公司列出了七种主要情景，每种下面又有一些子情景，我觉得这为应对眼下的挑战提供了很棒的思维框架，因为我们现在根本不知道世界会变成什么样子。

There's so much uncertainty right now but are we actually going to reopen in 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 10 weeks? Is there going to be a second wave? Are there going to be five waves? Is the world going to be in \[...]? We don't know.

现在的不确定性太多了。我们会在3周、4周、10周内重新开放吗？会不会有第二波疫情？还是会有五波？这个世界会不会进入……某种状态？我们一无所知。

I thought it was a wonderful way to think about what are the various scenarios that may play out? What are the strategies you could pursue? And what does it do for your resulting cash balance at some future date that is important? Your end is as good as any I guess at this point. Because companies need to survive.

我觉得这个方法特别好，它能帮你系统地思考：可能发生哪些情景？你能采取哪些策略？到了某个关键的未来时点，这些策略对你的现金余额会产生什么影响？目前来说，年底是一个不错的假设节点。因为企业首先要活下来。

Cash is the most important thing companies have to focus on right now because if you don't survive, obviously there's no chance for you to build an enduring business. That's the reason I thought it was a fabulous framework. Again, we felt we wanted it to be shared with as many people as possible, and we did actually. On Friday we had a Q\&A session with over 100 portfolio companies. Several of our partners hosted this call. We shared with those companies and we just told them that we wanted to share with everybody.

现金是企业此刻最应该关注的事情。如果你活不下来，那么显然就没有机会去打造一家基业长青的公司。这也是我为什么认为这个框架非常出色的原因。同样，我们也觉得应该让更多人看到它，我们确实做到了。上周五我们举行了一场问答会，有100多家被投公司参与，我们的几位合伙人主持了这场电话会。我们把这个框架分享给了这些公司，并明确告诉他们，我们希望将它分享给所有人。

Ben: To ask the question on offense, this time is incredibly challenging for a lot of people and we should in no way gloss over that. I'm sure it's challenging for you, it's challenging for me. Yet, you can squint and find ways to actually turn it into something positive, and find perhaps a dislocation in a market, or an opportunity that's emerged that was never a need from people before. I’d just love to get your perspective on how people can be proactive and turn this into a positive?

Ben：关于“进攻”这个话题，我想提个问题。眼下这段时间对很多人来说极具挑战，我们绝不能轻描淡写地看待这一点。我相信这对你来说也很艰难，对我也一样。然而，如果你用心观察，确实可以从中找到一些积极的转机，或许是某个市场出现了错位机会，或许是用户产生了前所未有的新需求。我很想听听你对“如何积极应对，并将其转化为正面机会”的看法。

Roelof: There are a couple of companies obviously that benefit from us all having to work from home and things like that. The product we're using, Zoom, is obviously benefiting companies, like Loom in our portfolio that are benefiting. The delivery companies are an essential service in my mind to make sure that we get food and get delivery of basic necessities. There's a class of companies that are benefiting. You may not be one of those companies so that doesn't really help you.

Roelof：有一些公司确实从“我们都必须在家工作”这样的现实中受益了。比如我们现在用的 Zoom，显然就是受益者。我们投资组合中的 Loom 也是。还有一些送货公司，我认为它们是重要的基础服务，确保我们能够获得食物和基本生活必需品。确实存在这样一个受益的公司群体。但你可能并不属于其中，因此这并不能直接帮到你。

The thing that I think really everybody can focus on at this time is product development. Keep on investing in your product. Sales and marketing by definition are going to be challenged over the next few months because people are going to shift their consumption behavior. Face to face selling if you're an enterprise company is going to be hampered. Marketing channels may be flooded by the things, and it may seem insensitive candidly for you to peddle certain types of products right now. It's just not the right time.

在我看来，此刻所有公司都可以专注做的一件事是产品开发。继续投入于你的产品。未来几个月销售和市场营销天然就会面临挑战，因为人们的消费行为正在发生变化。如果你是一家 To B 公司，面对面销售会被阻断。营销渠道可能被其它内容淹没，而你此刻去推广某些产品，坦率说可能会显得很不合时宜，现在并不是推销的好时机。

Hunker down and focus on product development. Build that truly differentiated product that if you can survive, gives you a huge advantage when you come out the other side. Part of what happens here and I'll use the analogy of us namesake Sequoia tree, forest fires have been a part of the landscape in the US for a long time and it'll often clear the brush. The sequoia trees that survive end up thriving disproportionately once the fire has cleared, because there's more sunlight and there's more space for those that survive. You've got to wait your time out and make sure that you can pounce with a truly differentiated product, because the competitive landscape is probably going to be clear for you after that.

耐心蛰伏，专注于产品开发。打造真正差异化的产品——只要你能活下来，在未来就能获得巨大优势。我打个比方：我们“红杉”的名字来自于红杉树。在美国，森林大火在自然生态中存在已久，它们会清理灌木丛。而那些能在火灾中存活下来的红杉，最终会获得远超其他植物的繁茂成长，因为火灾过后，它们能获得更多阳光和更广阔的生长空间。你需要熬过当下，等待时机，以真正有差异化的产品迎接未来，因为那时的竞争格局可能会为你打开局面。

I think the other thing to do before is to look for a community. It's a lot of what we've been doing. Trying to get our founders together not only with the sort of weekly call that we're doing now but founding communities together. There's so much ingenuity and so much good advice and tips that they can share with each other, and also just kindred spirits where they can share some of the suffering candidly that's happening right now. Lean into community, lean into your product.

另一件可以做的事情是寻找社群。这也是我们一直在做的——我们努力将创始人们聚集在一起，不仅通过现在的每周例会，还通过组建社群来连接彼此。在这些社群中，他们可以分享很多独特的想法、实用的建议和技巧，也可以与志同道合的人坦诚地分享眼下的痛苦。紧紧依靠你的社群，专注打磨你的产品。

David: I know you guys have done some innovative things for creating spaces right now for your portfolio companies. How are you doing that? How are you interacting with them, and then with each other?

David：我知道你们最近为投资组合公司打造了很多新的互动空间，非常有创新性。你们是怎么做到的？你们是如何与这些公司互动的？彼此之间又是怎么保持联系的？

Roelof: At an individual level, obviously board members are in frequent contact with their companies as we try to share best practices. In addition to the Matrix which we shared publicly, there are a couple of other things that we've prepared for companies, for the unfortunate company that may need to go through a reduction in force for example.

Roelof：在个体层面，董事会成员当然会与各自的公司保持频繁沟通，努力分享最佳实践。除了我们已公开分享的“情境决策矩阵”之外，我们还为一些公司准备了其他资料，比如说对那些可能不得不裁员的公司，我们准备了相关的最佳做法建议。

We've actually prepared some best practices that we've seen to share with people and just help them for some of the challenges that lie ahead. We've created the Q\&A with us as a group so we get over a hundred companies to get together with Sequoia partners and we have a few prepared remarks, things that we're seeing and we open it up for questions.

我们确实整理了一些我们认为非常实用的经验，供大家参考，帮助他们应对即将面临的挑战。我们还组织了群体问答环节，让超过 100 家投资组合公司能与红杉的合伙人直接对话，我们会先分享一些我们观察到的现象，然后开放提问。

We're arranging founder to founder sessions. Sequoia people present industries that are relevant where they can share best practices. We're also doing that for CFOs. We think a lot of the CFO across the portfolio are dealing with similar challenges. What do they do about potential rent abatement? What will they do to renegotiate debt? What happened to that financing that was supposed to close? Things like that where they can also get together and help each other.

我们还组织了“创始人对创始人”的交流会，让红杉的成员根据不同行业背景介绍一些可分享的实践经验。我们也为各公司的 CFO 设立了类似的分享场，他们很多人都面临类似的问题：比如租金减免怎么谈？债务能否重新协商？原本预计要完成的融资怎么办？这些问题他们可以互相支持、互相学习。

If anything this has also accelerated our desire to build even more digital products around our community. We've prided ourselves in the community things we do with activities like Basecamp, and other programs we have. Obviously those are halted right now. What can we do to recreate as much of that as possible online is something we're working on.

某种程度上，这也加速了我们围绕红杉社群打造更多数字化工具的动力。我们一直以像 Basecamp 那样的社区活动为傲，但这些线下活动现在显然都暂停了。我们正在思考如何将这些社区体验尽可能在线上重建起来。

David: Can we circle back real quick before we get off playing offense for portfolio companies. I want to come back to your time at PayPal. It struck me that I didn't realize that PayPal didn't have a business model or at least a viable business model until after the crash. As I think about the hierarchy of impacts of change you can have as a startup, they're at the bottom of sales and marketing and then nothing sales marketing. Then at the mid-level as a product but actually the highest level I always think is changing a business model. Now is a really good opportunity to do that. What did you guys think about, there was the necessity of, “Okay you need to make revenue now,” but how did you figure out that business model so quickly during that time of PayPal?

David：我们在谈“进攻”策略之前，我想回到你在 PayPal 的那段经历。我之前不知道 PayPal 在互联网泡沫破裂前其实还没有一个可持续的商业模式。作为一家初创公司，从“改变营销”、“优化产品”到“重塑商业模式”，我一直觉得商业模式的转变是影响最深远的。而现在，其实就是个非常适合思考商业模式的时机。你们当时是怎么判断“我们必须开始赚钱了”，又是如何迅速找到那个商业模式的？

Roelof: Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't think it was that difficult to figure out that as a payments company, there were so many precedents of charging transaction based fees. I think there were some other nuances where we figured out how to get bank account funding so that we had a much higher gross margin than traditional credit card processors did. There's some other things we did.

Roelof：需求是创新之母。我们当时作为一家支付公司，要探索商业模式其实并不难，因为业界早就有很多基于交易的收费模式可以借鉴。当然也有一些细节创新，比如我们找到了从银行账户直接扣款的方式，使得我们的毛利远远高于传统信用卡支付服务商。我们还做了一些其他调整。

We also had to figure out solutions to online fraud which took down many of our competitors and was a very expensive thing for us as well. We lost millions of dollars in 2000 to scalable online fraud. Part of what we talked about at the company was at the end of the day, if we can't keep the company alive because people are willing to pay for the service we provide. We don't really have a reason to exist. But we need to deliver enough value so that whatever we charge leaves enough of a gap of value capture to the customer where they're happy to pay for the service we have.

我们还必须应对网络欺诈的问题，这也是当时压垮很多竞争对手、让我们也付出惨重代价的因素。2000 年我们因为可规模化的欺诈损失了数百万美元。我们在公司内部讲得很清楚：如果我们不能靠客户愿意为我们的服务付费而存活下去，那我们根本没有存在的意义。但我们必须交付足够的价值，让客户在付费之后还能获得明显高于费用的价值回报，从而愿意留下来使用我们的服务。

I think many companies may face that type of a crucible moment over the next six months if they've been free services or if their business model hasn't really been refined properly, but it's clarifying at some level.

我想，未来六个月内，很多公司如果本身是免费服务，或商业模式尚未清晰，也会面临类似的“炼狱时刻”。但从另一个角度说，这种时刻也能带来“澄清”——帮你真正看清你存在的意义和价值。

Ben: Were you really forced to show up in a way that says, “Hey I am delivering enough value here to charge for it.” What's the quote about, is it a Warren Buffett quote? ‘Who has their shorts on when the tide goes out.’

Ben：你们当时是否真的被逼到了一个非得证明“我确实提供了值得付费的价值”的时刻？那句名言怎么说来着，是巴菲特说的吗？“只有潮水退去，才知道谁在裸泳。”

David: I think it might be Howard Marks actually.

David：我记得那可能是霍华德·马克斯说的。

Ben: Is it? Okay.

Ben：是吗？好吧。

Roelof: I'll give you another one that we used actually this week in a partnership which is, “Calm seas never made a good sailor.”

Roelof：我再给你们一句，这周我们合伙人会议上刚提过的：“平静的海洋造不出优秀的水手。”

David: And we've got a long period of calm seas.

David：而我们已经经历了一段很长时间的“平静海面”了。

Roelof: We have and this is going to be a time where I think you're really going to see people differentiate themselves and how they deal with the crisis. Who steps up? Who provides leadership? Who reminds a company of the mission of the company, the purpose that they have beyond just delivering a product? Those are the companies that I think can really excel in a time of crisis.

Roelof：确实如此。而我认为，在接下来的时间里，你将真正看到人与人之间的分化：谁挺身而出？谁展现出领导力？谁能提醒公司它的使命，不只是交付一个产品，而是更大的目标？在我看来，那些能做到这些的公司，才有可能在危机中脱颖而出。

Ben: I want to move us along to a section here that we're doing in Adapting called Adapting, and really talk about Sequoia itself and how you're adapting. I remember when we interviewed Doug, he spoke of the war room days of managing the 1999 fund after the dot-com crash. What does the Sequoia war room of March 2020 look like, especially as you literally can't be in a war room?

Ben：我想把话题推进到我们《Adapting》系列中的一个环节，就叫“Adapting”，聊一聊红杉资本自身是如何适应变化的。我记得我们采访Doug的时候，他提到在互联网泡沫破裂后，他们如何在“战情室”里应对1999年的基金。那到了2020年3月，在你们连实体“战情室”都无法使用的情况下，红杉的“战情室”是什么样的？

Roelof: The virtual war room. The other thing which is challenging is we have our by-annual LP meeting next week. Just for context, it was originally supposed to be in India, and then in January we started to worry given what we were seeing in China. We actually moved it in January from India to California because we thought there were going to be issues in this early April late March timeframe.

Roelof：现在是“虚拟战情室”。另一件比较有挑战的事是，我们下周要召开半年一度的LP大会。作为背景补充，原本这场会议计划在印度举行，但因为我们在一月时就开始关注到中国的情况，所以在那时我们就决定把会议从印度转移到加州——我们判断三月底四月初会有麻烦。

Just concretely, we took action and then obviously having it in California started to not look feasible so we moved it to a virtual LP meeting. In the midst of preparing for a very important event for us. Our LPs are our customers and we want to have a great show for them in some sense, and provide candid feedback, and reporting on our funds. At the same time we're running around like crazy looking after our portfolio companies.

我们采取了实际行动。但很快，在加州举办这场会议也变得不可行，于是我们又改成了线上LP大会。我们要筹备这个对我们来说非常重要的活动——LP是我们的客户，我们希望为他们呈现一场高质量的汇报会，能够坦诚地反馈和汇报我们的基金表现。与此同时，我们还在到处奔忙，照看我们的投资组合公司。

The most important thing we've focused on over the last two weeks is our companies. Sequoia, as a business we've been around for almost five decades. We're not in a tough spot fortunately but some of our companies really do face challenges. We've really oriented everything towards what is best for our companies. We've built a bunch of online tools. We have resources where we can all look at things. We have daily stand ups using Zoom so that we can already stay in touch. We understand what the prioritization is.

过去两周我们最关注的就是这些公司。红杉作为一家企业已经存在了将近五十年，幸运的是我们自身并不处于困境，但我们投资的一些公司确实面临很大挑战。因此我们把一切工作都围绕着“对被投公司最有利”来展开。我们开发了一套在线工具，有各种资源共享平台，内部每天通过Zoom举行晨会，确保彼此保持联系，也明确哪些事情是最优先的。

Ben: And that's among the partnership?

Ben：这是你们合伙人之间的事吗？

Roelof: Within the partnership. As a team, what do you do to mimic the effect of being in an office together. We just stay in touch a little bit more frequently, and we've created these online resources, and probably the most important thing we've done is to do a very thorough analysis of the portfolio health. Literally company by company across every single company in the US, we've gone down to figure out, “Okay at your end in December, what was the expected run by based on cash? And by then what do we think it is now given the changed circumstances? And which are the two, three dozen companies we really need to spend most of our attention?”

Roelof：对，是我们合伙人团队内部做的。我们也在思考，既然不能在办公室里并肩作战，那要如何复制那种高效协作的效果？我们就加强了沟通频率，构建了这些线上资源。可能我们做得最重要的一件事是对整个投资组合进行全面的健康状况分析——我们一个个地梳理了在美国投资的每一家企业，具体到：去年12月底时，根据账上现金它们的预期运营时间是多少？在当下的环境变化下，这一数据变成了多少？然后我们识别出二三十家最需要我们重点支持的公司。

Some companies are early stage six people product development. In some sense they're unaffected. They're just building the product and hope to launch next year. Then there are other companies that are really affected significantly and so as a team we try to figure out how do we rally around them? How do we bring resources to bear to help them navigate through this tricky period?

有些公司还处于早期阶段，比如只有六人的产品开发团队，从某种意义上来说还没受到太大影响，他们就是在做产品，计划明年推出。而另一些公司则受到了严重冲击。所以我们作为团队要去思考，如何调动所有力量来支援他们？如何整合资源来帮助他们渡过这个艰难时期？

Ben: As you frame that up around the portfolio companies, it sounds obvious that of course you would spend time with your portfolio companies. What are the things that you're not doing as much of that you would normally be spending your days doing? And how has this time forced you to change that?

Ben：你刚才谈到你们花了很多时间在投资组合公司上，这当然听起来是很自然的事情。那么，有哪些你过去每天会做、但现在做得没那么多的事情？这段时间又是如何迫使你改变习惯的？

Roelof: Seems like we're doing more of everything now. Honestly, no less of that too. Interviews are still going on. We're just doing them all as virtual interviews. I do think there are probably one or two hires somewhere where you're going to wait to meet the person in person before you make a formal final hiring decision. But for us we're onboarding people remotely.

Roelof：说实话，现在感觉我们每件事都做得比以前更多了，连那些原来做得少的事也一样。面试还在继续，只是都改成了远程进行。我确实觉得在个别情况下，有一两个关键岗位我们可能还是会等见到候选人本人之后才会最终拍板。但就我们来说，也在远程进行新员工入职。

We did this on Monday. We had a person who joined first virtual onboarding for us as our portfolio companies are doing. I was on a call earlier today with a company and they onboarded 21 people on Monday, remotely. People are going to keep hiring. They're going to keep building products. I think a lot of those things stay the same. We continue to make investments. We formally approved two new series of investments last week and those meetings were virtual meetings. The business continues.

我们周一刚做过一次这样的事。有人加入了我们，进行了红杉历史上的第一次远程入职培训，我们的一些被投公司也在做类似的事。我今天早些时候和一家公司的电话会上得知，他们周一一次性远程为21名员工办理了入职。人们会继续招聘，也会继续开发产品，这些事情大体上并没有改变。我们也还在继续做投资——上周我们正式批准了两个新一轮的投资案，全部通过虚拟会议进行。业务照常运转。

Ben: Has something changed in what you look for in companies compared to call it two, three months ago?

Ben：你们在评估公司时看重的标准，和两三个月前相比有什么变化吗？

Roelof: In some sense no, and certainly not at the Series A stage. I think that those companies, they're at such an early stage that product needs to be so differentiated and really solve the problem that would transcend the current market. Obviously, the US is shut down indefinitely, that's a different situation. But these companies will have a sound value proposition and once things are a little bit more normal, even if the economy goes through a recession we believe in these businesses because they're really solving really important problems. We have confidence in them.

Roelof：从某种意义上说，并没有变化，尤其是对于A轮阶段的公司。这个阶段的公司处于非常早期，最关键的是它们的产品要有真正的差异化，能够解决一个穿越周期的问题。的确，美国现在进入了一个不确定期，但如果这些公司有清晰的价值主张，一旦局势恢复一些正常——即使整体经济处在衰退中——我们依然相信这些公司，因为它们解决的是非常重要的问题，我们对它们有信心。

We have asked people how they plan to respond to a change in circumstance. A little bit of a test on whether they are nimble, or they're flexible, or they just tone deaf to the reality of the world we're in right now. That clearly is a question we're asking that's different.

我们现在确实会多问一句：“你们打算如何应对当前环境的变化？”这其实是对创始人或团队的一个小测试——看他们是否足够灵活、应变能力强，还是完全脱离现实、对当前世界的变化毫无反应。这显然是我们现在会额外去问的问题。

We're also spending time thinking about what new categories may be unfairly favored post Corona-pocalyse. Do you end up with digital health companies, online education, a bunch of things may change and are we forced into a behavior change through this environment we're in now that sticks? I think it's a really interesting question. A lot of people are thinking about this. I think it's a really interesting thing to try to conjecture.

我们也花了时间去思考，在“疫情末日”之后，会不会出现一些被“非理性青睐”的新赛道？比如数字医疗、在线教育等等。很多事都可能发生变化，而且我们眼下所处的环境会不会“强迫”人们做出某些行为转变，而这些改变可能会长期存在？我觉得这是一个非常有趣的问题，现在很多人都在思考这个方向，我也觉得这是件值得大胆猜想和推演的事。

David: That's the perfect transition to the topic we wanted to wrap up with you on. I was thinking about it when you mentioned your LP meeting next week which man, I feel for you. I know how important those are having done them, attended them, and everything.

David：这正好过渡到我们想和你结束这次对话的主题。我刚才在你提到下周的LP会议时就想到这点了——哇，我真的理解你的感受。我也曾经做过、参加过那种会议，知道它们有多重要。

It was interesting. Just yesterday I attended one virtually and it was amazing that it was actually better. These tend to be pretty dry affairs. This is a small example but either through the LP meeting or more broadly, have you guys started to think about what kind of permanent changes to Sequoia might come out of this?

很有意思的是，我昨天刚刚参加了一个远程的LP会议，结果竟然比以往更好。这类会议通常都很枯燥无趣。这只是个小例子啦，但更广泛地讲，你们有没有开始思考，这场危机会给红杉带来哪些可能的“永久性变化”？

Roelof: We really see a trend where companies are becoming more distributed partly because the cost of living in the Bay Area is so high, and the cost of hiring engineers is just so high. We've already seen a trend where companies are willing to tolerate remote work by individuals or multiple remote development offices.

Roelof：我们确实看到一个趋势，那就是公司正越来越趋向分布式运作，这部分原因是湾区的生活成本太高了，雇佣工程师的成本也极高。其实早就有一些公司开始接受个别员工远程办公，甚至设立多个远程开发办公室，这已经是一个趋势了。

I think that trend is going to gather steam. I think it’s going to run this experiment that's actually measurable on how people perform in this kind of an environment. I think that just objectively is going to change the debate because I think it's so easy.

我认为这个趋势会加速发展。现在大家实际上正在进行一场“可测量的实验”，看看在这种环境下人们的表现如何。我觉得这会从客观上改变关于远程工作的讨论方向，因为实在太直观了。

As humans, we resist behavior change whenever we can, and this is forcing behavior change. I think tolerating businesses that are distributors, learning how to work effectively with distributed teams. I think we're likely to see people start companies in many more places, and again that's a trend that already started.

人类总是本能地抗拒行为改变，而这次危机则强迫我们必须改变行为。我认为，未来大家会更能接受“分布式公司”的存在，并学会如何与分布式团队高效协作。我相信未来会有越来越多的人在各种不同的地方开始创业，这个趋势早就开始了。

Silicon Valley doesn't have a monopoly on idea generation, and I think many more people will start companies elsewhere. We probably need to be more willing to fly, or if not fly given health issues, do online assessments of companies. I think those are clear for management.

硅谷并不垄断创意和创新，我相信会有更多人在其他地方创业。我们也需要更乐于出差飞行，或者如果因为健康问题不能飞，也要更习惯于在线评估公司。我觉得这些对管理方式提出了新的要求。

David: You all are organized and at least have been to this point geographically. For a company, I think it can be a lot more of these like Zappier we've weighed on the show. They have no office. How are you going to think about a company like that in the future? Is that a US investment? Is that a global investor who needs them?

David：你们团队现在的组织方式主要还是以地域为基础。但对于一些公司来说，比如我们节目里谈到的 Zappier，他们甚至没有实体办公室。未来你们会如何看待这类公司？这算是红杉美国的投资对象吗？还是说需要全球团队来评估？

Roelof: Honestly, should we run into a couple of conflicts like this but I don't actually think of them as conflicts. Our team in India is an investor in a fabulous company called Freshworks.

Roelof：说实话，确实我们偶尔会遇到这样的一些“冲突”，但我并不觉得这真的是冲突。比如我们印度团队就投了一家非常优秀的公司，叫 Freshworks。

Most of Freshworks’ customers are in the developed world including the US. My guess is the majority of the revenue comes from the US, but there is an investment out of our India office because that's where the company is based. They have a presence in the US too but we help them.

Freshworks 的大多数客户都在发达国家，包括美国。我猜他们的大部分收入也都来自美国。但我们是通过印度办公室投资的，因为这家公司是从印度起步的。当然他们在美国也有业务，而我们也会在这方面给予支持。

We're one partnership globally. We've done some really clever things behind the scenes to make sure that we feel like a single partnership and how we share knowledge and share compensation and things like that in a way that makes it feel good. That's a great problem to have, honestly.

我们全球是一体的合作伙伴关系。我们在内部也做了一些非常聪明的安排，让整个团队在分享知识、分配激励等方面都保持统一的感觉。这其实是个“很幸福的烦恼”。

Ben: There's a lot of folks talking about the sheer amount of dry powder that has been committed to venture firms in this climate. They're saying the funding won't slow down because, “Oh my gosh, there's just billions and billions and billions that's been promised to venture firms.” Therefore, deployment should continue at the exact same pace. What do you think about that? It's probably too early to tell but have you thought about whether we should slow deployment? Should we change when we want to raise certain funds? Should we change the mix of initial capital deployment versus follow ons? Does a climate affect something like that for you guys?

Ben：现在很多人都在谈论创投圈里承诺的“干火药”资金量之大。他们说融资活动不会放缓，因为“天啊，有成百上千亿资金已经承诺给创投公司”。所以部署资金的节奏应该照旧不变。你怎么看？或许现在下判断还太早，但你们有没有考虑过，是不是要放慢投资部署？是否要改变募集新基金的时间点？要不要调整首轮投资和后续跟投的比例？这种大环境对你们有影响吗？

Roelof: The two questions there, I think the one is what’s the LP behavior, and the other one is what's our behavior? The interesting thing in 2008, not because we have a crystal ball, just because we felt things are a little frothy. Our investment pace had actually slowed down in the first half of 2008 before that happened.

Roelof：这其实是两个问题，一个是LP的行为，一个是我们自己的行为。有趣的是，在2008年那次金融危机中——不是因为我们有水晶球，而是因为当时感觉市场有些泡沫——我们其实早在2008年上半年就已经放慢了投资节奏。

Then we accelerated in 2009. If you've ever done a driving course, but I went to one in a Formula One racing track and the thing that they taught me is you break as hard as you can while the car is going straight before you get to the corner, and then you have to figure out how to accelerate at the right point at the apex out of the corner so you can sprint ahead.

到了2009年，我们又加快了投资节奏。如果你上过驾驶课——我曾经在一级方程式赛道上参加过一次培训——他们教我一个原则：当你直线冲刺接近弯道时，要尽可能地刹车，然后等到了弯道的顶点时再找到加速的正确时机，这样你才能最快地冲出弯道。

This is exactly the analogy that we want to apply for our companies and for ourselves. We slowed down in 2019, not because we had some crystal ball that this was going to happen, things didn't quite feel right. If anything, I wouldn't accelerate out of this. I think it would be a fabulous investment opportunity and great companies to be built. That's what we plan to do.

这正是我们希望自己和被投公司都能做到的——在合适的时候减速，然后在对的时点加速。其实我们早在2019年就开始放慢节奏，不是因为预见到了这场危机，而是市场的感觉不太对劲。而现在，如果真的要加速出弯，那我们认为眼下会是一个非常棒的投资机会，会诞生出许多伟大的公司——这正是我们打算做的。

For our LPS, our clients are almost exclusively these endowments foundations and nonprofits. We're really proud of the great causes represented by our LPS. We actually got an email earlier this week that about 10 of our LPS, people like the Cleveland Clinic, John Hopkins University, The Wellcome Trust Stanford, M.I.T. are all working on either better diagnostics, or potential treatments, or vaccines for Coronavirus.

就我们自己的LP来说，几乎全部都是大学基金会、慈善基金或非营利组织。我们很自豪能为这些伟大使命提供支持。本周我们还收到一封邮件，说我们大约有十家LP正在开展与新冠病毒相关的研发工作，比如克利夫兰诊所、约翰·霍普金斯大学、Wellcome Trust、斯坦福、麻省理工等，他们正在研究更好的检测方法、潜在疗法或疫苗。

We love the fact that our clients are doing these things so when we generate profits, it helps them do these things. I think our clients are relatively well protected, but if you talk about the industry at large, I suspect some LPs are going to end up with cash flow issues just like their many other businesses that are going to end up with cash flow issues that may demargin, lower the amount of venture capital being deployed over the next year or two. But that's total speculation, I don't know.

我们很欣慰我们的客户在做这些重要的事——我们为他们创造的利润最终也会帮助他们实现这些目标。我觉得我们自己的LP整体上是比较有保障的。但如果你从整个行业来看，我猜会有一些LP面临现金流压力，就像其他很多行业的企业一样，这可能会导致他们减少对创投基金的出资，在未来一两年内影响整个行业的资本部署量。但这只是猜测，我也说不准。

David: LPs already allocations to venture and private companies probably had already gone up so much for LPs. Just with the bull run evaluations on the private markets and lack of liquidity over the last 10 years. Now with public markets dropping so much, you can get into a situation as an LP where you aim to have 15% of your assets in private markets total and now you have 40% of your assets in private markets. That can be a scary position.

David：其实对很多LP来说，他们在过去十年中在创投和私募领域的配置比例已经越来越高了。一方面是因为私募市场的估值一路飙升，另一方面是缺乏流动性。现在随着公开市场暴跌，你可能会遇到这样的情形：原本你只打算把15%的资产放在私募市场，但现在这个比例涨到了40%。这对LP来说是很吓人的局面。

Roelof: LPs may also end up with cash flow issues on the run. A part of it we saw in 2008, 2009, where some LPS have ongoing commitments, outflow commitments. If you have an endowment to a university, you probably represent more than half of the expenditure to the university. It may be the donations dry up, or philanthropy shrinks in an environment like this, so they're even more dependent on the endowment being able to continue to pay for teachers and keeping the school hospital going. There are a bunch of cash flow issues that may also then drive people to pull back from venture capital, but it's so early to tell.

Roelof：是的，LP们也可能会出现现金流问题。在2008、2009年那会儿我们就见过这样的情形：有些LP本身还有持续性的支出承诺。比如说，如果你是某所大学的捐赠基金，你可能承担了该校一半以上的运营开支。一旦捐款枯竭，或者公益资金在这种环境下大幅缩减，学校就会更加依赖捐赠基金来继续支付教师薪资、维持教学医院运营等。这种现金流压力也可能导致一些LP减少对创投基金的投入。但现在下定论还太早。

I look at the gyrations everyday in the stock market and like flip a coin, is it plus 10 or minus 10 today? It's so hard to figure out where things land.

我现在每天看股市的波动，感觉就像抛硬币一样——今天是涨10%还是跌10%？实在太难判断未来会怎样了。

David: As we're recording this, it's only been 20 days since you wrote the memo and again, it feels like 20 years.

David：我们现在录音的时间距离你们发布那份备忘录才刚过20天，但感觉就像已经过去了20年。

Roelof, I know this is Adapting and not Acquired, but we have one bonus question that we decided if we ever had you on the show after doing our deep dive on Square and doing the Square IPO. We had to ask you, what was it like navigating the challenging Square IPO and the months afterwards? Knowing what a predictable and good business it was, but just seeing what happened in the public markets after IPO?

Roelof，我知道这是《Adapting》节目，不是《Acquired》，但我们有个加分题。如果我们能请你来节目聊聊Square的IPO，那我们一定要问这个问题：Square明明是一家可预测、优秀的公司，但在上市之后经历了市场的冷遇。作为投资人，你们是怎么应对这个艰难的IPO过程以及之后几个月的？

David: This was like a key moment in Acquired history. We can look back to the Pre Square IPO Episode and the Post Square IPO Episode. It was just such a stark story to us of a company that was a great company that had just, even in the bull market run that we were in when they went public, was so misjudged.

David：这对我们《Acquired》节目来说也是一个关键节点。当时我们有一期是Square IPO前，后面又做了一期IPO之后的节目。对我们来说这真的是一个对比非常鲜明的案例：一家优秀的公司，即使在牛市之中，上市时却被严重低估。

Roelof: It was really difficult and in the run up to the IPO, because you have this quiet period we couldn't really respond. As often it happens with these IPOs is that people just keep on this negative vicious cycle of negative press. It was really painful to deal with that, and then you see the IPO price at \$9. I was arguing the night before that we should price a little bit higher at least so we have more in the balance sheet. To see the way that it popped on the first day, it was still not a great outcome even at the close price on the first day.

Roelof：那段时间真的很难熬。在IPO之前，因为处于静默期，我们没法做出任何回应。而常常发生的就是，一旦市场舆论走向负面，就会形成一种负面新闻的恶性循环。那种感觉真的很痛苦。然后我们看到IPO的定价是9美元，我还记得前一晚我还在争取定价稍微高一些，好让公司账上能多一些资金。但即使第一天股价冲高了一些，收盘价相比之下也仍然不算成功。

But I felt that we left so much money on the table. The way to react in my mind was to rally the team and to talk about just we can't control our stock price, but what we can control is our execution. I think the management team did an incredible job of saying, “Look, it is what it is. We got through it. Let's hunker down and let's just build a great business,” and they did that.

我当时觉得我们在这次IPO中“留了太多钱在桌上”（即低估了价值）。但我认为最好的回应方式是团结团队，对大家说：“我们无法控制股价，但我们能控制的是我们的执行力。”我觉得管理团队做得非常出色。他们说：“事情就是这样，我们熬过去了，现在让我们踏实下来，专注把公司做好。”他们也确实做到了。

Then what we did as an investor is we were patient. We didn't distribute a single square share until four years after the IPO, four years. That meant that we distributed and we still haven't fully distributed by the way, because I have so much faith in this company.

作为投资人，我们的选择是保持耐心。从IPO那一刻起，我们整整四年没有分发一股Square的股票。四年！这意味着我们直到四年后才开始分派，而且到现在为止我们都还没有全部分完，因为我对这家公司有极大的信心。

David: You're still on the board, correct?

David：你现在还在Square的董事会，对吧？

Roelof: I'm still on the board. I love working with the team. I love working with Jack. I love the mission of the company around financial empowerment and the fact that we're able to do that now not only for small businesses, but also for consumers with this great cash up.

Roelof：是的，我还在董事会。我很喜欢和这支团队合作，也很喜欢和Jack（Dorsey）合作。我热爱这家公司的使命——推动金融赋能。而且现在我们不仅能为小企业做到这一点，还能通过Cash App为广大消费者带来这种能力。

I think it's a fabulous company to be associated with from a mission point of view and actual financial results. My partners and myself, we were just really patient. The fact that it was nine dollars a share IPO didn't matter because we distributed shares when it got to 80. At the end of the day, we made a much better return for our limited partners by being patient. I think the team also appreciated us as a really patient investor.

从使命感和财务回报两个角度来说，这都是一家非常值得我们参与的公司。我和我的合伙人都选择了耐心等待。9美元的IPO价格最终并不重要，因为我们是在股价涨到80美元时才开始分派股份。最终我们为LPs带来了更好的回报，也赢得了公司团队对我们“长期耐心投资者”的尊重。

Ben: It's great.

Ben：太棒了。

David: Thank you for sharing. That's a good note to end on with this moment in time like for great companies, they're going to survive. They're going to hunker down and now is not the time to liquidate your shares.

David：谢谢你的分享。这是个很好的结尾提示——对于优秀的公司来说，他们会生存下来，会稳扎稳打，现在不是抛售股份的时候。

Roelof: Yeah, I think it's, focus on the long term. Solve real problems.

Roelof：是的，我认为关键是专注长期，解决真正的问题。

Ben: On that note, Roelof, where can our listeners get in touch with you? With Sequoia? What's the best way?

Ben：说到这里，Roelof，我们的听众如果想联系你或者红杉资本，最好的方式是什么？

Roelof: My first name [roelof@sequoiacap.com](mailto:roelof@sequoiacap.com)

Roelof：可以通过我的邮箱联系我：[roelof@sequoiacap.com](mailto:roelof@sequoiacap.com)。

Ben: Great, are you on Twitter?

Ben：太好了，你在Twitter上有账号吗？

Roelof: Yes, @roelofbotha. Signed up in 2007.

Roelof：有的，@roelofbotha。我2007年就注册了。

Ben: Nice.

Ben：不错。

Roelof: I've been a user for a long, long time.

Roelof：我已经用了很久很久了。

Ben: That's awesome. Thank you for joining us. Listeners, we hope you enjoyed this episode of Adapting. Please send us feedback at [acquiredfm@gmail.com](mailto:acquiredfm@gmail.com) or join our Slack, and we’d love to talk to you there. Roelof, thanks again.

Ben：太棒了。谢谢你今天来参加我们的节目。各位听众，我们希望你们喜欢这一期的《Adapting》。欢迎你们把反馈发到 [acquiredfm@gmail.com](mailto:acquiredfm@gmail.com)，也可以加入我们的Slack社区，我们很愿意在那里与你们交流。再次感谢你，Roelof。

Roelof: Thank you, Ben. Thank you, David.

Roelof：谢谢你们，Ben，谢谢你，David。

‍

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.

附注：《Acquired》的主持人和嘉宾可能持有本期节目中讨论的资产。本播客不构成投资建议，仅用于信息分享和娱乐目的。在考虑任何金融交易时，请自行研究并独立做出决策。

2020-03-30 Acquired.Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (with Roelof Botha)

2020-03-30 Acquired.Sequoia’s Black Swan Memo (with Roelof Botha)

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