Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)
David: Hey, Acquired listeners. In the time between when we recorded this episode and now when we're releasing it, longtime Amazon board member and Madrona Venture Group founder, Tom Alberg, sadly passed away. We wanted to—instead of our usual funny, cold opener here—take a moment and dedicate this episode to Tom.
David：嘿，Acquired 的听众们。在我们录制本期节目与现在发布之间的这段时间里，亚马逊长期董事会成员、Madrona Venture Group 创始人 Tom Alberg 不幸离世。我们想——别于往常的幽默冷开场——花点时间，把本期节目献给 Tom。
Ben: Tom had such a huge impact on David's and my careers. Tom also had such a huge impact on Seattle and really the whole technology ecosystem, helping to build the law firm, Perkins Coie, and the telecommunications firms, Western Wireless and McCaw Cellular, that really make up a large part of the infrastructure we all use for our phones today.
Ben：Tom 对我和 David 的职业生涯影响深远。他还极大地影响了西雅图乃至整个科技生态，协助创建了律师事务所 Perkins Coie，以及电信公司 Western Wireless 和 McCaw Cellular，这些企业构成了当今手机通信基础设施的重要部分。
We also were lucky enough to have Tom on Acquired, and it was really wonderful getting to spend the time in person with him four or five years ago now, David?
我们也很幸运曾邀请 Tom 做客 Acquired，大约四五年前吧，David？能与他面对面交流实在美好。
David: Yeah. Tom was the longest-serving Amazon board member other than Jeff himself, I believe 23 years. He was the lead independent director and had a huge impact on the company and of course on us.
David：是的。除 Jeff 本人外，Tom 是亚马逊服务时间最长的董事——我记得有 23 年。他担任首席独立董事，对公司以及我们都产生了巨大的影响。
Ben: We'll all remember Tom. He gave back in so many wonderful ways. This episode is dedicated to you, Tom Alberg. Thank you.
Ben：我们都会铭记 Tom。他以诸多美好方式回馈社会。本期节目献给你，Tom Alberg。谢谢你。
Welcome to Season 11, Episode 2 of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I am the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.
欢迎收听 Acquired 第 11 季第 2 集——一档聚焦伟大科技公司及其幕后故事与策略手册的播客。我是 Ben Gilbert，西雅图 Pioneer Square Labs 及其创投基金 PSL Ventures 的联合创始人兼管理合伙人。
David: And I'm David Rosenthal, and I'm an angel investor based in San Francisco.
David：我是 David Rosenthal，一名常驻旧金山的天使投资人。
Ben: And we are your hosts. Our story today is probably the single most interesting business of the past 30 years. For the longest time, David and I resisted doing an Amazon episode because it almost felt like a trope or that we needed to do something maybe more unexpected.
Ben：我们是今天的主持人。今天的故事或许是过去 30 年里最有趣的商业案例。长期以来，David 和我一直抗拒做一期亚马逊专题，因为那似乎有点老生常谈，我们想做些更出乎意料的内容。
We've tackled bits and pieces like our interview with former board member Tom Alberg in the Amazon IPO episode, the episode with Alfred Lin on Zappos, and of course, by referencing Bezos, his famous 2009 speech about outsourcing anything that does not make your beer taste better over and over and over again. But we decided that no self-respecting technology business historians like ourselves could skip over this incredible, tumultuous, death-defying, and ultimately very, very successful story.
我们零散触及过相关主题，比如在亚马逊 IPO 篇中对前董事 Tom Alberg 的访谈、与 Alfred Lin 聊 Zappos 的那一集，以及多次引用贝索斯 2009 年那句著名演讲——“把任何不能让你的啤酒更好喝的事情外包出去”。但我们还是决定，像我们这样的科技商业史爱好者若跳过这段惊心动魄、曲折离奇却最终极度成功的故事，实在说不过去。
Today, we'll be tackling amazon.com, the website that sells books and now everything else on the World Wide Web. As you know, Amazon is also one of the rare companies that built a completely separate and dominant business in Amazon Web Services. We'll save that for our next episode.
今天，我们将聚焦 amazon.com——这家最初卖书，如今在万维网上销售万物的网站。众所周知，亚马逊还打造了 Amazon Web Services 这一完全独立且占主导地位的业务，我们会在下一期节目中详细探讨。
This story is for longtime students of Amazon and newcomers alike. While you may be familiar with Jeff's flywheel diagram, the famed door-desks, or the Barron's article from the dot-com bust headlined Amazon.bomb, I can tell you from staring at my mountain of notes that there are some details in here that I certainly didn't know and you may not have known either.
这个故事既献给长期研究亚马逊的朋友，也献给初次接触的听众。虽然你可能熟悉 Jeff 的飞轮图、著名的门板办公桌，或互联网泡沫破裂时《巴伦周刊》那篇标题为 “Amazon.bomb” 的文章，但当我翻阅堆积如山的笔记时，仍发现其中有些细节我此前并不知晓，你们或许也未曾听闻。
David: It's just such a good story, too. I'm so glad we did Walmart first. We almost didn't because it just perfectly sets the stage for Amazon.
David：这真是一个好故事。我很高兴我们先做了沃尔玛这一期，我们差点没这么做，因为它为亚马逊完美地铺陈了舞台。
Ben: Oh, yeah. The big thing that we're doing today is we're going to try and answer the question, how did Amazon succeed to such an incredible degree that it has where so many of its dot-com siblings burst into flames?
Ben：没错。我们今天要做的一件大事，就是试图回答这样一个问题：在那么多同期的互联网公司灰飞烟灭的情况下，亚马逊到底是如何取得如此令人难以置信的成功？
First, we have some big, big news here at Acquired world HQ. After seven years of beating back requests, we are finally launching a merch store. We've been holding on to this bit for a while because we can think of no better episode to launch our Internet storefront than here on the Amazon episode.
首先，在 Acquired 总部我们有一条重磅消息。经过七年拒绝各种请求，我们终于要推出周边商店了。我们一直把这个梗憋到现在，因为没有比亚马逊这一期更适合上线我们的网络店铺了。
We're partnering with what I think is the single highest quality merchandise platform on the Internet, Cotton Bureau. They make really nice stuff that I have tons of in my closet. We're launching with men's and women's T-shirts, sweatshirts, tanks, and even onesies. If you like David, have a little one at home.
我们与我认为全网品质最高的周边平台 Cotton Bureau 合作。他们的东西质量非常好，我衣橱里就有不少。我们首先推出男款、女款 T 恤，卫衣，背心，甚至还有婴儿连体衣。如果你像 David 那样家里有小宝宝，可以试试。
If you decide to be first in this first wave of people to sport the fashionable Acquired merch, you should tweet at us @acquiredfm, and we will retweet some of our favorites. The link is in the show notes, or you can go to acquired.fm/store.
如果你想成为首批穿上时尚 Acquired 周边的人，记得在推特上 @acquiredfm，发照片给我们，我们会转发一些最喜欢的。购买链接在节目说明里，或者直接访问 acquired.fm/store。
Ben: After you finish this episode, go check out the LP Show by searching Acquired LP Show in the podcast player of your choice. Our next episode will be an interview with Austin Federa who many, many of you know from the Acquired Slack where he's been a member since 2016.
Ben：听完这一集之后，去你的播客应用搜索 “Acquired LP Show” 收听 LP Show。我们的下一期节目将采访 Austin Federa——很多听众都认识他，他自 2016 年起就是 Acquired Slack 的成员。
Austin is at the Solana Foundation, very deep in the world of Web3 and crypto. He gave us a great primer on the world of Web3 today, so check that out. If you want early access, it's already live for paid Acquired LPS at acquired.fm/lp.
Austin 目前在 Solana Foundation 工作，深耕 Web3 与加密领域。他为我们带来了一场关于当今 Web3 世界的极佳入门课程，大家一定要去听。如果想抢先收听，付费 LP 听众已经可以在 acquired.fm/lp 提前听到。
All right, without any further ado, David, onto our story. Listeners, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments and certainly have investments in the companies we discussed this time. Do your own research. This is for entertainment purposes only.
好了，话不多说，David，我们开始讲故事吧。各位听众，本节目不构成投资建议。David 和我可能——而且确实——持有本期讨论公司的股票。请自行研究，节目仅供娱乐。
David: Oh man, Amazon was not only my idea dinner pick at The Arena show but has been my favorite company, stock, and number one position in my portfolio for more than 10 years now, I think. It's an incredible company.
David：天哪，亚马逊不仅是我在 The Arena 节目中选的理想晚餐话题，而且在过去十多年里，它一直是我最喜欢的公司、股票，也是我投资组合中的第一大持仓。这家公司真是不可思议。
Ben: I had some conversation with you in maybe 2014 about how you basically owned Amazon stock by owning Seattle real estate, and you were doubly long Amazon with your very concentrated holdings in the company and owning your house in Seattle.
Ben：我记得大概 2014 年和你聊过，你通过持有西雅图房地产间接持有了亚马逊股票；你在公司里高度集中持仓，又拥有自己在西雅图的房子，相当于双倍做多亚马逊。
David: The only time I've ever sold any meaningful amount was to buy our first Seattle house because I needed the capital for the down payment. I figured I was essentially getting tracking stock on Amazon.
David：我唯一一次卖出较大额度的股票，是为了买我们在西雅图的第一套房，因为我需要首付款。我当时想，这等于是拿到了亚马逊的跟踪股票。
All right, we start in a very fun place today which is the end of the most recent Acquired episode on Walmart. I realized I could have sworn that we said this on the episode, but I went back and I read the transcript. We didn't.
好，今天我们从一个非常有趣的地方开始——也就是最新一期沃尔玛节目的结尾。我本以为我们在节目里提到过，但我回去读了文字稿，结果并没有。
You tweeted about it, but at the end of Made in America, in 1992, literally as he lays dying, Sam Walton writes at the end of the biography, "Could a Walmart-type story still occur in this day and age? Of course, somewhere out there right now, there’s someone with good enough ideas to go all the way, providing that someone wants it badly enough to do what it takes."
你在推特上提到过这件事：1992 年《Made in America》一书的结尾，也就是萨姆·沃尔顿临终之时，他写道：“在当今时代，还会出现沃尔玛式的传奇吗？当然会。此刻在某个地方，一定有人拥有足够好的创意，只要他有足够强烈的渴望，愿意付出所需的努力，就能走到最后。”
Ben: Such a good quote. He was writing that in 1992 while Jeff Bezos was ideating on what ideas could work on the Internet while working at D. E. Shaw. Oh my God, if he only knew.
Ben：这段引述太棒了。他在 1992 年写下这些话，而当时的杰夫·贝佐斯正身在 D. E. Shaw，构思互联网可以落地哪些创意。天哪，要是他当时知道后来会发生什么就好了。
David: It was like the prophets speaking. He was describing reality in history as it was happening, and he had no idea. Amazing. Speaking of books, we have a big thank you that we owe to Brad Stone and *The Everything Store*.
David：这简直像先知发声。他描述的正是历史正在发生的现实，却毫无所觉。令人惊叹。说到书，我们必须特别感谢 Brad Stone 和《一网打尽》（The Everything Store）。
Brad is just the best. We've done episodes with Brad in the past. *The Everything Store* is the canonical history of the first 20 years of Amazon. We actually talked to Brad the other week when we were preparing for this.
Brad 真是最棒的。过去我们录节目也请过他。《一网打尽》可谓亚马逊前 20 年的权威史书。就在几周前准备本期节目时，我们还与 Brad 通了电话。
Ben: We had to. It was both a question of, okay, with 10 years or whatever it's been of history, what else would you want to say that wasn't in *The Everything Store*, and also give us some context around it.
Ben：我们非聊不可。一来想知道，过去又过了十来年，如今有什么内容是《一网打尽》里没提到、你还想补充的；二来也想请他再给我们一些背景。
David: No doubt in my mind it is one of the best business books written of the last 20 years or of the 2000s for sure.
David：在我心里，这绝对是过去二十年、或者说整个 21 世纪初写得最好的商业书之一。
Ben: It's a thriller, yeah.
Ben：读来像悬疑小说，真的。
David: Brad actually said this when we were talking to him. He's like, there are two reasons to write a business book. One is that it's a thriller. The other is it's a how-to manual. *The Everything Store* is both of those.
David：我们和他聊天时 Brad 也这么说：写商业书有两个理由，要么写成扣人心弦的故事，要么写成操作手册。《一网打尽》两者兼具。
All right, we jump from 1992 in Bentonville, Arkansas to Albuquerque, New Mexico on January 12th, 1964 where one Jeffery Preston Jorgensen is born. Many people listening—especially if you've read Brad's book—know this story, but it's pretty amazing.
好了，我们从 1992 年的阿肯色州本顿维尔穿越到 1964 年 1 月 12 日的新墨西哥州阿尔伯克基，那天 Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen（后来的杰夫·贝佐斯）出生。许多听众——尤其读过 Brad 书的人——都知道这段经历，但依旧令人称奇。
When young Jeffrey's mother became pregnant, she was 16. His father, Ted Jorgensen, was 18. They went to the same high school in Albuquerque, and they were dating at the time. It turns out their fathers actually worked together. This is part of the story. There was a very specific reason why both of their families lived in Albuquerque, and that is because both of their fathers worked together at Sandia National Laboratories.
当年杰弗里的母亲怀孕时只有 16 岁，他的父亲 Ted Jorgensen 则 18 岁。两人就读于阿尔伯克基同一所高中，当时已在交往。更巧的是，两人的父亲在同一单位工作，这是故事的一部分；两家之所以都住在阿尔伯克基，正是因为两位父亲都在桑迪亚国家实验室任职。
Ben: For folks who don't know, that laboratory was established, I think, because it played a huge part in the development of nuclear programs developed for the United States.
Ben：如果有人不知道，这家实验室之所以建立，是因为它在美国核项目的发展中扮演了重要角色。
David: Los Alamos, New Mexico, which I think is an hour-and-a-half north of Albuquerque is where the Manhattan Project happened. That's where the atomic bomb was developed. Quite a while after World War II, the government split the US nuclear program into research—and that was Los Alamos and a bunch of other labs around the country—and then actual management of the weapons. There's nuclear research, nuclear energy, and nuclear weapons.
David：在阿尔伯克基以北约一个半小时车程的新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯，正是曼哈顿计划的所在地——原子弹就在那里研制。二战结束后相当长一段时间里，美国政府把核项目分成两块：一块是研究，由洛斯阿拉莫斯及全国其他实验室承担；另一块是武器管理。于是形成核研究、核能和核武三大体系。
Sandia is the organization developed by the government—and it's actually a private operation now—that manages nuclear weapons. Both Jeff Bezos' biological grandfathers work there together, and Jeff's mom, Jackie, her dad was named Lawrence Preston Gise. He went by Pop Gise. He actually not only worked at Sandia. He was the head of Sandia. He ran the US nuclear weapons program. Before that, he was one of the original members of DARPA. It encourages the development of the ARPANET, the Internet, and the DARPA Challenge. Obviously, that was much after his time, but, man, you can't make this stuff up. That's crazy.
桑迪亚正是政府设立——如今已私营化——负责管理核武器的机构。杰夫·贝佐斯的两位亲外祖父同在此处任职。杰夫的母亲 Jackie 的父亲名叫 Lawrence Preston Gise，人称 Pop Gise。他不仅在桑迪亚工作，还是桑迪亚的负责人，主管整个美国核武项目。在此之前，他还是 DARPA 的创始成员之一——这机构后来推动了 ARPANET（互联网先驱）和 DARPA Challenge 等项目。当然，这些都在他晚年之后发生，但天啊，故事简直传奇。
Their kids managed to get pregnant in high school. Ted and Jackie decide to get married before the baby's born, which they do. The marriage doesn't last though. It's not really set up for success here. When Jeff is about 18 months old, they end up getting divorced. Jackie, Jeff's mom, takes the baby and moves back in with her parents because she's still only 18 or 19 years old at this point.
他们的孩子，也就是 Ted 和 Jackie，高中时就怀孕了。两人决定在孩子出生前结婚，也确实结了。但这段婚姻并未维系太久，条件并不具备成功要素。当杰夫约 18 个月大时，他们离婚了。母亲 Jackie 抱着孩子搬回娘家，因为那时她还只有 18、19 岁。
Eventually, a couple of years later, when Jeff is four, Jackie remarries and moves in with her new husband who is a petroleum engineer for Exxon. Her new husband's name is Miguel Angel Bezos Pérez. Today, he goes by Mike Bezos, Jeff Bezos' adopted father. His story is incredible and actually touches our stories in a very small way.
几年后，杰夫四岁时，Jackie 再婚，搬去与新丈夫同住，对方是埃克森的石油工程师，名叫 Miguel Angel Bezos Pérez，如今大家称他为 Mike Bezos——他就是杰夫·贝佐斯的养父。他的人生也极具传奇，与我们节目也有微妙交集。
Mike is from Cuba. He was a student at an elite private high school in Cuba when the revolution happened and Castro took over. His parents were able to get him out and send him to Miami.
Mike 出生于古巴。革命爆发、卡斯特罗掌权时，他正在古巴一所顶级私立中学就读。父母设法将他送出国，辗转抵达迈阿密。
Ben: Wasn't there some exfiltration program through the church for gifted youngsters?
Ben：那时不是有个教会资助的天才少年撤离计划吗？
David: Mike was part of this. He gets shipped to Miami, doesn't know anybody in America, and doesn't speak English. He ends up—from Miami—getting shipped to Wilmington, Delaware where he lives in a group home. He attends Salesianum High School.
David：Mike 就是其中一员。他被送到迈阿密，人生地不熟，也不会说英语。后来又从迈阿密被转送到特拉华州威明顿，住在集体宿舍，并就读 Salesianum 高中。
That probably doesn't mean anything to you because you didn't do high school in Bloomington like I did. But I played sports against Sales growing up.
你大概没什么概念，因为你不像我在布卢明顿上过高中。但我小时候打比赛经常对阵 Sales。
This is so awesome. He and Jackie last year just gave a \$12 million donation to Salesianum which I think might be the largest single donation to a Catholic high school in America.
这太酷了。他和 Jackie 去年刚向 Salesianum 捐了 1200 万美元，我觉得这可能是美国天主教高中收到的最大单笔捐款。
Ben: Wow, Mike and Jackie must have really made some smart investment decisions at some point in their life to be able to make that kind of investment.
Ben：哇，Mike 和 Jackie 人生某个阶段一定做过非常精明的投资，才能拿出这么大一笔钱。
David: We will get into it.
David：我们待会儿会说到。
Ben: David, how does every single episode have some tie to Southeast Pennsylvania or Delaware?
Ben：David，为啥我们每一集都能扯到宾州东南部或特拉华？
David: I know.
David：我也不知道（笑）。
Ben: I think we're picking favorites here.
Ben：我看咱俩是偏心了。
David: We totally are. Mike is super smart. He quickly learns English. By the next year, when he graduates from Salesianum, he ends up getting a full scholarship to go to the University of Albuquerque to study engineering. While he's there, he pays his living expenses and is working his way through college by working at a local bank where he meets Jackie. They fall in love, they get married, and Mike adopts Jeff as his adopted son. They go on to have two more children. When Mike graduates, he gets the job with Exxon. He would end up working his whole career at Exxon.
David：确实偏心。Mike 特别聪明，很快学会英语。第二年从 Salesianum 毕业后，他拿到全额奖学金去阿尔伯克基大学学工程。在那期间，他在当地银行打工赚生活费，并在那儿认识了 Jackie。两人相爱并结婚，Mike 收养了 Jeff，此后又生了两个孩子。Mike 毕业后进入埃克森工作，并在埃克森度过了整个职业生涯。
Ben: And becoming a pretty senior executive, right?
Ben：而且后来做到很高的职位，对吧？
David: Very senior executive, so he had some capital to invest a few years later which we will get into. They moved the family to Houston. (a) Mike's story is just amazing, (b) Bezos grew up. His dad worked for Exxon, Standard Oil. There's the connection.
David：是的，做到很高层，所以几年后手里有了些可投资的资金，后面还会提到。他们把全家搬到了休斯敦。（a）Mike 的故事太精彩了，（b）贝佐斯是在那儿长大的。他父亲在埃克森，也就是标准石油工作，这就是联系。
Ben: Right, and grew up in Houston around the space program. We're not going to get into Blue Origin on this episode, but I think the last time we would have talked about Jeff's space routes would have been, I think, on the Virgin Galactic episode. We were talking about the development of the X Prize and SEDS, the college organization for students for the exploration and development of space, something like that. But basically, this college space club, Jeff was the head of that club, the president of the one, and maybe the founder of it at Princeton. There's this very clear throughline from spending time during his childhood in Houston through that and obviously Blue Origin.
Ben：没错，他在休斯敦，身边就是航天项目。咱们这集不展开说蓝色起源，但上一次聊到 Jeff 的航天渊源，应该是维珍银河那期。当时谈到 X 奖和 SEDS——大学里的“探索与开发太空学生协会”——之类的事情。事实上，在普林斯顿读书时，Jeff 是那个大学航天社团的负责人，可能还是创始人。从他童年在休斯敦的经历，一路延伸到大学，再到蓝色起源，这条线索非常清晰。
David: I didn't think about that. Definitely, Pop Gise, his grandfather, has a big influence on Jeff—which we'll talk about in one sec—and introduces him to science fiction and space because he was involved in all that at DARPA, but I didn't think about that yet. Jeff grew up in Houston during the Apollo era. This was the heyday of NASA. Super cool.
David：我之前没想到这一点。的确，杰夫的外公 Pop Gise 对他影响很大——我们稍后会谈到——他在 DARPA 工作时接触到科幻和航天，也把这些介绍给了杰夫。我还没意识到的是，杰夫是在阿波罗时代的休斯敦长大的，那可是 NASA 的黄金时期，太酷了。
Jeff goes to a Montessori Preschool in Houston, and he gets put into a new program for gifted young students in the Houston elementary school system. This is crazy. At the time, there was a woman named Julie Ray who was writing a book about this whole new concept of gifted streams in elementary school education. Houston is one of the leading school systems that's doing this.
杰夫在休斯敦上蒙特梭利幼儿园，随后被纳入当地小学体系为天才儿童设立的一项新项目。这太不可思议了。当时有位叫 Julie Ray 的女士正在撰写一本书，探讨小学教育中新推出的天才培养体系，而休斯敦正是这一领域的领头羊学区之一。
She goes to the administration and she's like, hey, is there a student that I could shadow and see how gifted education is working? They're like, we have exactly the student for you, Jeffrey Bezos.
她去找校方，表示想跟踪一名学生，看看天才教育如何开展。校方说，我们正好有合适的人选——杰弗里·贝佐斯。
Ben: There are a number of ways we could highlight how special Jeff was even as a very, very young child, but this is a pretty darn good one. He was the student chosen for the person writing the book on this type of special program in the school selected for special gifted programs. He was one of one of one. He would go on to be valedictorian of many things in his life, but here's the first proxy for that.
Ben：我们有很多方式来说明杰夫在年幼时就非同凡响，但这一点已足够说明。他被选为该项目的观察对象，而这所学校本就是天才项目的示范校。他是万里挑一的那个人。后来他会在人生中多次成为致告别词的第一名，而这是最早的迹象。
David: It's super cool. There's a quote in the book. He has a pseudonym. He's "Tim" in the book.
David：真的很酷。书里还有一句引述，他用了化名，在书中叫“Tim”。
Ben: To protect the identity of a child who can't yet pick if they want publicity, right?
Ben：为了保护一个还不能自己决定是否出名的小孩的身份，对吧？
David: Totally. He's in elementary school. There's this quote in there where Julie, the author, asks Tim's (Jeff's) teacher what grade level he's performing at. He must be in second or third grade at this point. The teacher says, I really can't say, except that there is probably no limit to what he can do given a little guidance.
David：没错，他那时还是小学生。书里有一句话，作者 Julie 问 Tim（也就是杰夫）的老师，他的学业水平相当于几年级。那时他大概二三年级。老师回答：我真的说不上来，只能说只要稍加引导，他的潜力大概没有上限。
Ben: Foreshadowing.
Ben：伏笔啊。
David: Right around the time when the family moves to Houston, Pop retires from Sandia, and he and Jeff's grandmother move back to a big ranch in West Texas. By big ranch, I mean a 24,000-acre ranch in West Texas that is 100 miles from the nearest retail outlet. Starting at this point—Jeff's four when this happens—Jeff spends every summer on the ranch living with his grandparents 100 miles from the nearest store, and he's just hanging out with his grandparents.
David：就在他们搬到休斯敦的那段时间，Pop 从桑迪亚退休，与杰夫的外婆搬回得州西部一处大型牧场。说大型，指的是 2.4 万英亩的牧场，距离最近的零售商店有 100 英里。从那时起——杰夫当时四岁——他每年夏天都在这片牧场度过，与祖父母相伴，距离商店 100 英里。
Ben: That's pretty formative, and in a number of ways. One of which is that his grandpa is remote, so you can't go by anything and you need to be unbelievably self-sufficient, but what an interesting playground for the mind being around his hyper-intelligent grandfather and having just nothing but time and space.
Ben：这段经历相当塑造人生，体现在许多方面。首先是牧场偏远，什么都买不到，你必须学会极度自给自足；而与此同时，和极其聪慧的外公相处，拥有大量时间和广阔空间，对心智而言是多么有趣的“游乐场”。
David: Brad writes about this in the book and Jeff talks about this, too. I think this is one of the most formative experiences of the person that becomes Jeff Bezos because for the months that he's there every summer, they have to do everything. They build their own tools. They perform their own veterinary work. There's a story about performing surgery on one of the bird dogs' tails. It's crazy. They're rebuilding farm equipment when it breaks.
David：Brad 在书里写到了这一点，杰夫自己也谈及过。我认为，这段经历对后来成为杰夫·贝佐斯的那个人影响极深。每年夏天在牧场的几个月里，他们必须亲力亲为一切：自己做工具，自己给牲畜看病。书里甚至有段描述，他们给猎犬做尾巴手术。太疯狂了。农具坏了就自己修。
Ben: We went 250 episodes without a bird dog and we're now coming up with two episodes in a row that mention bird dogs.
Ben：我们做了 250 期节目都没提到猎犬，结果连续两期都出现猎犬的故事。
David: I know. Clearly, there's a connection here.
David：我知道。显然，这里有某种联系。
Ben: Yes, great retailers growing up around bird dogs.
Ben：是的，优秀零售商都是伴着猎犬长大的。
David: But like you said, Ben, it's not like he's just doing manual labor out in the countryside. He's doing it with this guy who ran the nuclear weapons program for America.
David：但就像你说的，Ben，他并不是只是在乡下干体力活。他是跟那个曾经主管美国核武计划的人一起干活。
Ben: Man, it's so hard to do a podcast about Amazon and Jeff Bezos now because the company and Jeff as a person are a symbol for so many different things to so many different people. Of course, I follow Jeff on Instagram and you see him in his cowboy boots with the Blue Origin rocket.
Ben：老伙计，现在要做一期关于亚马逊和杰夫·贝佐斯的播客太难了，因为这家公司和杰夫本人对不同的人意味着太多不同的象征。当然，我在 Instagram 上关注杰夫，你会看到他穿着牛仔靴，站在蓝色起源火箭旁。
I remember when I first saw those before really understanding his past, I was like, that's disingenuous. Tech billionaire guy throws on his cowboy boots and heads to West Texas, and he's acting like I'm one of the locals, but that’s what he grew up doing on the farm.
我记得在真正了解他的过去之前第一次看到那些照片时，我心想，这也太做作了吧。科技亿万富翁穿上牛仔靴跑到得州西部，好像自己是当地人，但那其实正是他小时候在农场干惯的事。
David: Yeah. The ranch in Van Horn, Texas where the old Blue Origins operations are based. That's why it's in West Texas.
David：没错。德州范霍恩的那片牧场就是早期蓝色起源基地所在的地方。这就是它建在得州西部的原因。
Ben: And there's a lot of space, a pretty good place to launch rockets.
Ben：那里空间很大，是个发射火箭的好地方。
David: There is literally space to launch. When Jeff's a teenager in high school, Exxon moves his dad to Florida, first to Pensacola and then to Miami. This is a cool little cap for this episode of Mike's story. He comes back to Miami all these years later as this big-time executive at Exxon, which I think was the largest company in America at that point in time. He literally steps off the plane in Miami and has nothing, and now he brings his family back to Miami with so much. It's so cool.
David：那儿真的是有足够的“空间”来发射。当杰夫还是高中生时，埃克森把他父亲调去了佛罗里达，先到彭萨科拉，后来到迈阿密。这也给了我们这期节目里迈克故事的一个漂亮收尾。多年后，他作为埃克森的高管回到迈阿密——我记得那时埃克森是全美最大的公司。他当年来到迈阿密时身无分文，如今却带着丰厚的财富携家人归来，太酷了。
Jeff, as you said, graduates high school as valedictorian and like all great, talented high school graduates, goes on to Princeton. I'm biased, of course. A few of his fellow Princetonians while he's in college—
正如你所说，杰夫高中以致告别演讲第一名毕业，像所有优秀天赋异禀的毕业生一样，他去了普林斯顿。当然我有点偏袒。与此同时，他在校期间还有几位普林斯顿同窗——
Ben: Is that really how you say it?
Ben：这单词真的是这么说吗？
David: Yes, I'm a Princetonian, or a tiger if we're being less pretentious here. A couple of his fellow tigers, while Jeff is studying computer science at Princeton—Brooke Shields, Michelle Obama, and Jeff Wilkie—are also there at the same time. I don't think they were friends. Jeff was a couple of years behind, but they were there at the same time.
David：是的，我是 Princetonian，如果不想那么矫情可以说 tiger。在杰夫就读普林斯顿学习计算机科学的时候，有几位同样的 tiger——布鲁克·希尔兹、米歇尔·奥巴马、以及杰夫·威尔基——也在校。我不认为他们是朋友，杰夫比他们晚两年，但他们确实同时在那儿。
When Jeff graduates from college in 1986, he does not go into finance right away. He goes and works for a startup. He works for this company called Fitel which had been founded by a couple of Columbia computer science professors and was developing very, very early network technology for high-speed trading applications. I don't know if it was exactly like today. All this stuff is co-located in data centers with the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange, but they're kind of a precursor to that.
当杰夫于 1986 年大学毕业时，他并没有立即进入金融行业，而是去了一家初创公司工作。这家公司叫 Fitel，由几位哥伦比亚大学计算机科学教授创办，正在开发非常早期的用于高速交易的网络技术。我不确定是否跟今天的技术完全一样，如今这些都与纳斯达克和纽约证券交易所的数据中心同地部署，但他们算得上这领域的先驱。
He does that for two years. Then, in 1988, he's like, all right, I'm working for this startup, building infrastructure for this, and then a completely new discipline of finance of quantitative trading in finance, those guys are customers, are actually making a lot more money. Maybe I should go work for them.
他在那里干了两年。然后在 1988 年，他想：好吧，我在这家初创公司为这一全新的量化交易金融学科搭建基础设施，而那些从我们这里买服务的客户实际上赚得更多，也许我应该去给他们打工。
Ben: But it is a great experience at that point in time. Being around early networked computing was pretty beneficial to give him not just the basic understanding of how it works but also what all the numbers mean. When I'm watching bits and bytes fly back and forth, I'm looking at packet counts, what hardware can support, what bandwidth, and what are the practical implications so that you can feel the types of applications you could build using infrastructure of the day.
Ben：但在那个时期，这段经历非常宝贵。亲身接触早期网络计算不仅让他获得了对其运作原理的基本理解，还能弄清楚所有数字代表的含义。当我看着比特和字节来回传输时，我会关注数据包数量、硬件支持能力、带宽大小以及这些在实践中的意义，从而体会在当时的基础设施条件下可以构建哪些应用。
David: The reason we're spending so much time on Jeff's early years and now, we're going to spend a lot of time on this chapter is totally like one of those Steve Jobs things. You can't connect the dots looking forward, but when you look back through Jeff's past—Joy Covey who we'll talk about actually has this quote that she gives to Brad Stone—it's a straight line from birth to Jeff Bezos today. It makes total sense.
David：我们之所以花这么多时间讨论杰夫的早年经历，并且将在本章投入大量篇幅，完全就像史蒂夫·乔布斯说的那样：向前看时无法把点连成线，但回顾过去——Joy Covey（我们稍后会提到她）对 Brad Stone 说过这句话——从出生到今天的杰夫·贝佐斯就是一条直线，一切都说得通。
Ben: It's really hard to cover Amazon as a business without it being a Jeff Bezos biography because in so many ways, Amazon isn't an extension of Jeff Bezos' brain. It really is a company made in his image. That's the case for a lot of these types of people.
Ben：要在不写成杰夫·贝佐斯传记的情况下探讨亚马逊这家公司真的很难，因为在很多方面，亚马逊本质上就是贝佐斯大脑的延伸。它确实是一家按他的形象打造的公司。这类人物的公司往往如此。
If you look at Apple, that was very much the case for Steve Jobs. Also, by the way, an adopted son of immigrants. I've always just found that interesting. In some ways, I'm thinking, okay, cool. Let's get to the Amazon story. But even though it's called Amazon, at least for a very long time—call it its first decade—it really is just Jeff Bezos at scale.
如果你看看苹果，史蒂夫·乔布斯就是非常典型的例子。而且顺便说一句，他也是移民收养的孩子，我一直觉得这点很有意思。从某种意义上说，我在想，好吧，赶快进入亚马逊的故事吧。但即便名字叫亚马逊，至少在很长一段时间——算它的头十年吧——它其实就是放大版的杰夫·贝佐斯。
David: Probably arguably for longer than that until recent times. In 1988, he leaves Fitel (the startup) and he goes to work actually in banking. I believe, almost surely, I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine he's not doing quantitative trading in finance. He's a technical guy. He's a computer science graduate. He had been working in this network operations for early stage quant finance. That's probably what he's doing.
David：严格来说，这种情况可能一直持续到最近。1988 年，他离开 Fitel（那家初创公司），真正进入银行业。我几乎可以肯定，虽然不能百分百确定，但他当时一定在做量化交易。他技术出身，毕业于计算机科学专业，之前在早期量化金融的网络运维领域工作过，这八成就是他的岗位。
He goes to the investment bank, Bankers Trust, which then through a series of mergers, as always happens on Wall Street, becomes part of Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank's going to come back up later in the episode. He's worked at startups and in computer science. He's got this entrepreneurial bug.
随后他加入投资银行 Bankers Trust，该行后来经历了一连串华尔街惯常的合并，最终并入德意志银行。德意志银行稍后还会再次出现。他既在初创公司也在计算机领域干过活，浑身带着创业冲动。
On the side, he becomes friends with a guy named Halsey Minor. Listeners, probably a bunch of bells going off. They almost start a startup together at this point in time. The idea was it was going to be a financial newsletter idea, but they become buddies. That doesn't work out, but Halsey, right around this time after that, goes on to start CNET.
工作之余，他结识了一位名叫 Halsey Minor 的朋友。听众们可能已经会心一笑。他们当时几乎要一起创业，点子是做一份金融通讯，但最终只是成了好友，项目没成。不过就在那之后，Halsey 去创办了 CNET。
Ben: It's crazy. The Internet was so freaking small then. Also, if you were to squint and describe CNET at a really high level, it's distributing the written word over this budding World Wide Web, which is what Amazon did. Ultimately, it distributed them through an abstraction layer where you print the words on paper first and then you ship the paper, but they would go on to start businesses riding the same wave.
Ben：太疯狂了。当时的互联网小得惊人。如果你眯着眼从宏观层面描述 CNET，它就是在这张刚萌芽的万维网上分发文字内容——这正是亚马逊做的事。最终，它们通过一个抽象层来分发：先把文字印在纸上，然后再把纸寄出去，但两家公司都搭上了同一波浪潮。
David: Yup. I think they remain friends certainly for a while, if not still to this day.
David：没错。我想他们后来至少还保持了好一段时间的友谊，甚至可能到今天仍然如此。
Ben: Bezos does always chuckle at that where people would say, wait, you're starting this business that's meant to take advantage of this new piece of technology. The new piece of technology is particularly good at distributing hypertext over a globally available network. The way that you're doing that is specifically not by putting the text in the browser which can read the hypertext directly onto a screen. He does always chuckle about that.
Ben：人们会问：等等，你要创办的这家公司是要利用这项新技术——它擅长在全球网络上传输超文本，可你却不把文本直接放进能显示超文本的浏览器里？贝佐斯总是对这种提问哈哈大笑。
But it is funny. To this day, you still can't really search for books. If you google search something, you're going to get websites. You're not going to get books. Despite Amazon, Google, and everyone trying, the book publishers have very physically DRMed these books such that you cannot search them in a very digitally native Internet way.
不过这确实有趣。直到今天，你依旧无法真正搜索到书的全文。如果你去谷歌搜索某个内容，返回的会是网页而不是书。本来亚马逊、谷歌和其他公司都尝试过，但书籍出版商在实体层面给书加了非常严格的 DRM，以至于你无法用纯数字化、原生互联网的方式进行检索。
David: Yeah, it's funny even today. In 1990, Jeff gets a fateful call from a headhunter—Jeff's happy where he is, he was thinking about starting this startup—and convinces Jeff to go interview at a new financial firm that has been started just a couple of years earlier called D. E. Shaw. Jeff unexpectedly, completely falls in love in many ways at D. E. Shaw.
David：是啊，即便到今天，这件事依旧很有意思。1990 年，一个猎头打来命运般的电话——当时 Jeff 对现状很满意，还在考虑创业——并说服他去面试一家仅成立数年的新金融公司 D. E. Shaw。没想到，Jeff 去了之后，从多个层面彻底爱上了 D. E. Shaw。
Some history on D. E. Shaw for folks that don't know—I didn't know a lot of this—the founder, David E. Shaw, was a Stanford computer science PhD from the '80s who then went on to become a computer science professor at Columbia University, I assume with some of the professors who went on to go found Fitel that Jeff originally worked for. He's a serious academic. He's actually back in academia now. He won the Gordon Bell Prize.
给不了解 D. E. Shaw 的朋友补充一点历史——很多内容我之前也不清楚——其创始人 David E. Shaw 是 1980 年代斯坦福计算机科学博士，随后成为哥伦比亚大学计算机系教授，我猜他和后来创建 Jeff 最早就职公司 Fitel 的几位教授关系密切。他是一位真正的学术大咖，如今又回到学术界，并且获得过 Gordon Bell 奖。
Ben: David Shaw is back in academia?
Ben：David Shaw 又回到学术界了？
David: Yeah. Not at an institution, but he's a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He's the real deal. His stepfather, when he was growing up, was a finance professor at UCLA, so he'd always been interested in finance but had studied computer science and was an academic.
David：对，他不是在具体院校任职，但已是美国国家工程院及国家科学院院士，绝对是真材实料。他继父在他成长期间是 UCLA 的金融学教授，所以他一直对金融感兴趣，但本人主修计算机科学，走的是学术路线。
In 1986, he left Columbia to join Morgan Stanley and then started D. E. Shaw in 1988. I think his model for this was Jim Simons who, in 1982, started Renaissance Technologies (RenTech). I bet actually a lot of people listening don't know. I just said that name and a lot of people are like, oh, what's that? What are these guys talking about?
1986 年，他离开哥伦比亚大学加入摩根士丹利，并于 1988 年创立 D. E. Shaw。我想他的榜样是 Jim Simons——后者在 1982 年创办了 Renaissance Technologies（RenTech）。我猜许多听众可能并不了解，我刚提到这个名字，大家会想，这是什么？他们在说啥？
Ben: It won't hit you as, oh, right, the firm that consistently produces the greatest returns of all time, but they're not taking any more capital, so you can't get your capital in.
Ben：你不一定立刻意识到——对，就是那家长期创造史上最高回报的公司——但他们不再接受外部资金，所以你也投不进去。
David: Dude, RenTech and Simons are unreal. I'm pretty sure they are the best-performing investors of all time, full stop, period. We didn't do an episode on RenTech.
David：伙计，RenTech 和 Simons 简直逆天。我敢说他们是史上表现最好的投资者，没有之一。我们还没做过一期 RenTech 的节目。
Ben: If we can get any information. The interesting thing about RenTech is that it's like a fortress.
Ben：前提是我们能拿到任何资料。RenTech 最有意思的地方在于它就像座堡垒。
David: Supposedly, the core Medallion Fund which is now all private capital of RenTech employees and Simon himself—there are no outside investors—averaged a 66.1% annual return from 1988–2018. Thirty years at 66% compounding. Nobody's ever beaten that.
David：据说 RenTech 的核心基金 Medallion 现已完全由员工和 Simons 自有资金组成——没有外部投资者——在 1988 至 2018 年间年均回报率高达 66.1%。三十年 66% 的复合增速，无人能敌。
Ben: We may need to go regrade our Berkshire Hathaway episode.
Ben：我们或许得重新给伯克希尔·哈撒韦那期打分了。
David: Yes, seriously. But that was the inspiration for D. E. Shaw. D. E. Shaw has not performed that well, but hedge funds today that people can actually invest in D. E. Shaw and a couple of others are the legacy of that.
David：确实。不过这正是 D. E. Shaw 的灵感来源。虽然 D. E. Shaw 没有那么夸张的成绩，但如今市场上真正向外部投资者开放的对冲基金（如 D. E. Shaw 及其他几家）都是这一传统的延续。
Ben: Right. While this was the business model of D. E. Shaw being a quant hedge fund, they always resisted the idea that that's what defined them. They very much thought of themselves as this group of creative artisans who invest in businesses, started businesses, came up with new ideas, and viewed the world through different lenses. Sure, this is how they make money, but D. E. Shaw & Co. was so much more than that.
Ben：没错。虽然 D. E. Shaw 的商业模式是量化对冲基金，但他们始终抗拒被此标签限定。他们更把自己视为一群富有创造力的匠人，投资企业、创办企业、提出新点子，以不同视角观察世界。确实，这是他们赚钱的方式，但 D. E. Shaw & Co. 远不止如此。
David: Totally. I think this is what Jeff falls in love with about the firm and David. Jeff joins, rises through the ranks super quickly, becomes the fourth Senior Vice-President at the firm—the highest level below David—and I assume, by far, the youngest. He's in his mid- to late-20s at this point. He is the future, the rising star at D. E. Shaw. He and David become super close.
David：确实如此。我想这正是吸引杰夫爱上这家公司和 David 本人的原因。杰夫加入后直线上升，迅速成为公司第四位高级副总裁——仅次于 David 的最高级别，而且我想他绝对是最年轻的，当时也就二十多岁。他是公司未来的希望，是 D. E. Shaw 冉冉升起的明星，他和 David 的关系也变得非常亲近。
Now, there are not a lot written about this, which you'll maybe see why in a second, but they were very close. I got to imagine that David saw himself as a mentor to Jeff. Jeff loves it there. He's involved in recruiting and bringing in all these super smart people of all disciplines into D. E. Shaw.
关于此事的文字记录不多，不过你马上就会明白原因，但可以肯定他们关系非常密切。我猜 David 把自己视作杰夫的导师。杰夫很喜欢在那儿工作，他负责招聘，将各行各业的顶尖人才吸引到 D. E. Shaw。
The MO was we just want to find the smartest people in the world. It doesn't matter if they know nothing about business and finance. It's like Bridgewater today. It is the inheritor of this. Just bring them in here and we'll figure out stuff for them to do.
他们的模式就是：只要找到世界上最聪明的人就行，不在乎他们是否懂商业和金融。这和今天的桥水基金很像，算是这种理念的传承。把人招进来，至于做什么我们再想办法。
A bunch of people who become really key early Amazon employees—Jeff Holden—I believe Bezos is involved in recruiting.
很多后来成为亚马逊早期核心员工的人——比如 Jeff Holden——据我所知都是贝佐斯亲自参与招进来的。
Ben: Who would later, of course, join Amazon right around two years after its founding.
Ben：他后来当然在亚马逊创立大约两年后就加入了公司。
David: Amazing how that happens.
David：这件事的发展真是神奇。
Ben: Conspicuously close to two years exactly after Jeff left D. E. Shaw.
Ben：尤其巧的是，正好在杰夫离开 D. E. Shaw 之后大约两年。
David: Yeah. Maybe there's a non-compete or something. Nicholas Lovejoy and another Princeton grad joined the firm, MacKenzie Scott Tuttle. That's what we were referring to of Jeff falling in love at D. E. Shaw in more ways than one. Jeff and MacKenzie would get married. I think technically, MacKenzie was the first Amazon employee.
David：是啊，也许有什么竞业限制之类的条款。尼古拉斯·洛夫乔伊和另一位普林斯顿毕业生麦肯齐·斯科特·塔特尔也加入了公司。我们之前说杰夫在 D. E. Shaw 里“一见钟情”其实就是指这事——杰夫和麦肯齐后来结了婚。我想从严格意义上说，麦肯齐是亚马逊的第一位员工。
Ben: Yes, it's interesting. I don't know technically in terms of literally, was she the first person to become a W-2 employee, but certainly, she was already doing work, particularly in accounting, working with legal, and setting up the operations of the business before Jeff hired Shel Kaphan who was the first engineer, the first full-time hire other than he and MacKenzie.
Ben：没错，这很有意思。我不确定从法律意义上看她是否是第一位正式领工资的员工，但可以肯定的是，在杰夫雇用谢尔·卡潘——首位工程师、除他和麦肯齐之外的第一位全职员工——之前，她已经在做很多工作，尤其是会计、法务以及业务运营方面。
David: Yup. MacKenzie was definitely an employee doing work on the business. Within D. E. Shaw, like you said, they're this quant trading firm—that's how they make their money—but they view themselves as being entrepreneurial, starting these other businesses, and doing stuff.
David：没错，麦肯齐绝对算得上正式员工，确实在为公司操持事务。正如你所说，在 D. E. Shaw 内部，他们虽然是一家量化交易公司——靠这个赚钱——但始终自视为创业者，会去创办其他业务，做各种新尝试。
David has Jeff working on a bunch of this stuff. The first project he leads is building out what they call the third market business. It was an idea to create a separate market from the exchanges where retail investors could trade without paying. At that time, you're paying a lot in commissions to your brokerage house. It's super cool.
David 让杰夫负责不少这样的项目。他领导的第一个项目叫“第三市场业务”，想法是建立一个独立于传统交易所的市场，让散户投资者可以零佣金交易。当时通过券商交易要付高额手续费，这个创意相当酷。
Ben: By the way, this feels like it's probably the predecessor to dark pools. If they're making transactions off the exchange, then batch shipping them to exchanges to get lower fees, and that is the financial world that we live in today where lots of transactions happen off the exchange, then that's the predecessor to payment for order flow. They were the early days of all this stuff.
Ben：顺带一提，这听起来很像暗池（dark pools）的前身。如果他们在场外撮合交易，然后批量送到交易所以降低费用，这就是当今金融市场的运作方式——大量交易发生在场外——也就是日后“订单流支付”的先驱。这些都是这一切的萌芽时期。
David: Robinhood, Citadel, and all that. They definitely were because at the same time, the Internet is so early. We're in early, mosaic Netscape days, 1992–1993. But David and Jeff, given their backgrounds, and David, having done his PhD at Stanford, know all these people that are starting the Internet.
David：对，比如 Robinhood、Citadel 等公司。确实如此，因为当时互联网还处于非常早期阶段——大约 1992–1993 年的 Mosaic、Netscape 时代。但凭借他们的背景，尤其是 David 在斯坦福读博时的人脉，他们认识很多正在投身互联网创业的人。
Ben: And even Bezos himself. When he was (I think) in college, he had used the Internet when it was fully just command-prompt based and there was no GUI. It was just the very basic protocols, a Unix command terminal, and maybe Telnet was around at that point.
Ben：甚至贝佐斯本人，在大学时代（我记得是那会儿）就用过 Internet，那时候完全是命令行界面，没有图形界面，只有最基础的协议、Unix 终端，也许还有 Telnet 之类的工具。
David: There was no World Wide Web. David and Jeff get really excited about this, and David reassigns Jeff as one of the most senior people in the firm. The two of them are going to work together to come up with business plans that they're going to start Internet opportunities within D. E. Shaw.
David：那时还没有万维网。David 和 Jeff 为此异常兴奋，于是 David 将 Jeff 调任为公司最资深的高管之一。他们两人将携手制定商业计划，在 D. E. Shaw 内部启动互联网相关的新业务。
I think the first one that they do is an online retail brokerage for financial trading like E-Trade. It was a competitor to E-Trade. I don't know for sure, but I'm wondering if that may be the third market business that Jeff was working on that might have transformed into this because it makes so much more sense over the Internet.
我想他们做的第一个项目是一家类似 E-Trade 的在线零售券商，与 E-Trade 直接竞争。我不敢确定，但我猜这可能是 Jeff 之前负责的第三市场业务演变而来，因为放到互联网上就更合理了。
Ben: Yeah, I totally agree. They also started Juno which became reasonably successful. I remember seeing commercials and getting CDs for it. That was early email.
Ben：是的，我完全同意。他们还创办了 Juno，后来相当成功。我记得看过它的广告，还收过它的光盘。那是早期的电子邮件服务。
David: Juno was one of the first free email services on the web. Then, they merged with NetZero and became an ISP and an email provider. It was started by Jeff and David within D. E. Shaw, both of these.
David：Juno 是网络上最早的免费邮箱服务之一。后来与 NetZero 合并，成为 ISP 和邮箱服务商。这两个项目都是 Jeff 和 David 在 D. E. Shaw 内部启动的。
That's what they're doing during these years. I think Jeff's main job is the two of them would meet every week, they would brainstorm ideas, Jeff would then go off for the rest of the weekend to research the feasibility of the ideas, work on them with employees within D. E. Shaw, and then they'd launch them. They did this with a couple of businesses.
这些年他们就这么干的。我认为 Jeff 的主要工作是：两人每周碰面头脑风暴，接着 Jeff 用周末时间研究想法的可行性，与 D. E. Shaw 的员工一起推进，随后把项目推向市场。他们已经这样孵化了好几个业务。
Ben: They were the only ones doing this. It's interesting how there were other people who observed the Internet. It was like, okay, cool. This is clearly the next technology wave. We had the PC. What do we do with this thing? Microsoft is one that comes to mind.
Ben：几乎只有他们在这么干。有趣的是，也有其他人注意到互联网，觉得这很酷，这是下一波技术浪潮。我们有了 PC，那该如何利用互联网？微软就是一个例子。
This is the Rich Barton story with Expedia. That was a division of Microsoft looking at the Internet potential businesses and saying, how do we start them?
这就是 Rich Barton 与 Expedia 的故事。那是微软内部的一个部门在研究互联网潜在业务，思考如何把它们孵化出来。
Of course, I think longtime listeners will know that the way Expedia ended up happening is Rich basically said, hey, this online travel agency thing needs to happen. If we keep it in Microsoft too long, it's going to kill it. Let’s get it out brokering that deal.
当然，老听众都知道 Expedia 最终诞生的方式：Rich 基本上说，这个在线旅行社必须做，如果一直放在微软内部会被扼杀，我们得把它拆分出去并促成交易。
D. E. Shaw, I think, was actually before Microsoft in realizing, okay, the Internet is going to be huge in a handful of years, but the thing that led to the dot-com mania was people realizing all at once that oh my God, the tidal wave is coming.
我认为 D. E. Shaw 比微软更早意识到：几年后互联网将势不可挡。后来引发“互联网泡沫狂潮”的，是人们突然集体醒悟——天哪，巨浪来了。
David: They were ahead of the pack, though. There were not many folks that were recognizing this at this point in time. They've done the online trading thing, the E-Trade competitor. That ended up getting acquired by Merrill Lynch. They did Juno, and they're brainstorming all these other ideas. One day, they come up with an idea that they both get pretty excited about. As Brad writes about in the book, the name for the idea is The Everything Store.
David：不过他们的确走在最前面。当时能意识到这一点的人很少。他们做了在线交易平台，E-Trade 的竞争对手，最后被美林收购；他们做了 Juno，也在酝酿其他点子。直到有一天，他们想到一个令双方都激动的创意。正如 Brad 在书里写的，这个创意被命名为“The Everything Store”。
Ben: Which ends up being a pretty great name for a book.
Ben：后来这成了一本书的好名字。
David: The concept was, in one way, amazon.com, exactly. But there was also a pretty fundamental difference in the idea at this point in time. The idea was that you could use the Internet to build a whole new intermediary layer between consumers and manufacturers that would bypass traditional retailers. The discounters, Walmart, Kmart, Sears, and all that physical stuff, you're just going to cut them all out, and this beautiful Internet business is going to be just the algorithmic matchmaker between customers that want to buy stuff and manufacturers who make stuff. That's what Amazon is.
David：从某种意义上说，这个概念就是 amazon.com 本身。但在当时，它还有一个根本性的不同：利用互联网搭建一个全新的中介层，连接消费者和制造商，彻底绕过传统零售商。那些折扣店、沃尔玛、Kmart、Sears 之类的实体渠道统统不再需要，互联网企业只需用算法撮合想买东西的客户和生产商品的制造商。这就是亚马逊的本质所在。
Ben: There's definitely this, well, the Internet is going to change so much that factories will just be able to sell to consumers online. It's rounding away all the messy middle that we talked about on our episode with Jeremy from Vitalik of you've got the manufacturers, you've got the product designers, you've got the distributors, you've got the brand, you've ultimately got retail, and maybe you can own two parts of that, but you're probably not going to own all of it. It was this very low-res picture of the way that the retail landscape worked.
Ben：可以肯定的是——嗯，互联网的变革将大到一个地步：工厂能够直接在线把产品卖给消费者。它抹去了我们和 Vitalik 的 Jeremy 在那期节目里提到的所有“混乱的中间环节”：制造商、产品设计方、分销商、品牌方，最终还有零售商——或许你能掌控其中两环，但很难全盘掌控。这是一幅关于零售格局运作方式的“低分辨率”图景。
David: This totally reeks of a 1999-era MBA business plan. It's like, I'm going to drop out of HBS. I've got this startup idea and a business plan. I'm going to get it funded. To their credit, they were a few years ahead of this and nobody knew at the time. Nobody actually knew how the Internet was going to play out.
David：这看起来完全像 1999 年那种 MBA 创业计划：我要从哈佛商学院辍学，我有个创业点子和一份商业计划书，我要去融资。得承认，他们确实比那个时代早了几年，当时没人知道互联网将如何发展，谁都不清楚。
This seemed maybe plausible. If it would work, it would be beautiful. You wouldn't have to actually do anything. You just sit in the middle and take a tax on transactions. The idea was that the manufacturers would dropship orders directly to customers.
当时这听起来似乎可行；如果成了，那就太美妙了。你几乎什么都不用做，只需坐在中间抽取交易税。设想是让制造商把订单直接“直运”给顾客。
Ben: Right out of their factory, which is totally a core competency.
Ben：直接从工厂发货——可这完全不是他们的核心能力。
David: Yeah, totally. That's going to work.
David：对，完全正确。那肯定能行（笑）。
Ben: But importantly, while Jeff is still at D. E. Shaw and regularly doing this ideating, he starts to dive really deep into what categories could make sense for this as a starting place.
Ben：但关键是，在 Jeff 仍待在 D. E. Shaw、定期进行头脑风暴期间，他开始深入研究：要以哪些品类作为切入点才合理。
David: Yes, the two of them are both very excited about this as they should be.
David：没错，两个人对此都非常兴奋，这也是情理之中。
Ben: Commerce, a pretty big market, huh?
Ben：商业零售，可是个不小的市场，对吧？
David: Yeah, it turns out. Retail in America, other than US real estate, may be the biggest market in the world?
David：确实如此。美国的零售业或许仅次于美国房地产，是全球最大的市场了？
Ben: Yeah. Auto, I think, and maybe food.
Ben：是的。汽车业算一个，也许还有食品。
David: Like you said, Ben, they quickly realize, okay, if we're going to do this. You can't just start with The Everything Store. You need to pick one category, build that, build the consumer brand, the website, and the traffic, and then you can add categories over time on top of that.
David：正如你所说，Ben，他们很快意识到：如果真要干这件事，不能一上来就做“万货商店”。必须先选一个品类深耕，先把消费者品牌、网站和流量做起来，然后再逐步叠加其他品类。
Jeff goes off during his weekly research activities. In his researches, he decides that books are the ideal category for a few reasons. One, they are perfect commodities. A paperback copy of book X is a paperback copy of book X. It doesn't matter where you bought it and how you bought it. To the customer experience, it's basically the same thing.
Jeff 在每周研究期间深入调研，得出结论：图书是理想的切入品类，原因有几个。第一，书是完美的标准化商品；某本书的平装本就是平装本，无论你在哪儿、以何种方式购买，顾客体验基本一样。
Two, there are only two major actual distributors of physical books in America. There are many publishers, but distributors who actually have the inventory of the books are Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
第二，美国实体书只有两家主要分销商。出版社很多，但真正持有图书库存、负责分销的只有 Ingram 和 Baker & Taylor。
Ben: Do you know where Ingram is located?
Ben：你知道 Ingram 在哪儿吗？
David: Oregon, right?
David：在俄勒冈州，对吧？
Ben: Yup, Roseburg, Oregon, a convenient one-day drive or less half-day drive from Seattle.
Ben：没错，俄勒冈州罗斯堡，距离西雅图只需一天车程，甚至半天就到，非常方便。
David: Although Jeff was not thinking about that at the time.
David：不过那时的 Jeff 并没想到这一点。
Ben: No, not yet. That'd be the next step.
Ben：对，还没到那一步。那是下一阶段的事。
David: It's actually pretty easy to enter this market because all you need to do is establish accounts with Ingram and Baker & Taylor, and then you get the vast majority of the market for commercial books. You have access to the inventory.
David：其实，要进入这个市场并不难，因为你只需要与 Ingram 和 Baker & Taylor 开立账户，就能拿到商业图书市场的绝大部分份额，并且获得存货渠道。
Ben: Yup. There are a few other things, too. Books are great because when you compare them with music, there are six different record labels that you'd have to get each of them on board. They can't consider music because obviously, shipping books and shipping CDs is a pretty comparable experience from a weight perspective, packing perspective, and all that. To the extent that it's going to be shipping to people, you have to just look at the industry dynamics of each of those because just like books, CDs are perfect copies, perfect commodities.
Ben：没错，不过还有几点。图书之所以好，是因为与音乐相比，你必须让六大唱片公司全部点头才能做音乐。而且从重量、打包等方面看，寄送图书和寄送 CD 几乎一样。既然要寄给消费者，就得考察各自的行业动态，因为和图书一样，CD 也是完全同质、完美复制的商品。
David: On many dimensions, they're better than books—lighter weight to ship, standardized packaging, et cetera.
David：在很多方面，CD 其实比书更好——更轻、更省运费，包装也标准化，等等。
Ben: Yes. But with books—unlike where music that we talked about in our Taylor Swift episode, there are six labels—there are 4200 book publishers. While you can very quickly get the whole catalog of the two distributors, if you end up actually negotiating with publishers, there are a lot of individual publishers. All these small publishers actually do matter because there are 3 million different books that are active and in print worldwide, and the long tail matters. It's not just that everyone wants to listen to Taylor Swift in books. There are lots of rare or out-of-print books that people totally want.
Ben：是的。但图书——和我们在泰勒·斯威夫特那期里谈到的音乐不一样，音乐只有六大唱片公司——却有 4200 家出版社。虽然你可以靠那两家分销商迅速拿到完整目录，但如果最终要和出版社谈判，就会发现单个出版社很多。所有这些小出版社都很重要，因为全球仍在出版并有库存的书有 300 万种，长尾效应极强。读者并不只是想看“图书界的泰勒·斯威夫特”，还有大量稀有或已绝版的书是人们真正想要的。
David: The genres, and there are niches.
David：题材丰富，还有各种细分市场。
Ben: The status quo is going to Barnes & Noble, special ordering something, and paying a bunch of extra money for that so it can arrive in a month.
Ben：现状是，人们去 Barnes & Noble 下特别订单，多付一大笔费用，然后等一个月才到货。
David: I think David and Jeff considered music and CDs as well. I suspect this is probably the reason they decided to go with books. Actually, Brad quotes Jeff in The Everything Store, "With that huge diversity of products—3 million books in print—you could build a store online that simply could not exist in any other way. You could build a true superstore with exhaustive selection and customer value selection."
David：我认为 David 和 Jeff 也考量过音乐和 CD。我猜这正是他们最终选择图书的原因。Brad 在《一网打尽》中引用了 Jeff 的话：“印刷中的图书有 300 万种之多，你可以在网上建一家别处不可能存在的商店——一家真正的超级商店，提供穷尽式选择和最优价值。”
Borders and Barnes & Noble say they're book superstores, but I think they only stocked 80,000 or so titles, which is a lot, but it's not 3 million.
Borders 和 Barnes & Noble 自称是图书超级商店，但我记得它们的库存只有大约 8 万种——虽然不少，但远非 300 万。
Ben: It's not the infinite shelf space of the Internet. Also worth noting, Barnes & Noble and Borders each only had less than 12% of the retail market each, so it's not like there was somebody who already had 80% market share that you had to go fight. You ostensibly could reasonably quickly become Barnes & Noble or Borders scale.
Ben：互联网的货架空间是无限的。还有一点值得注意：Barnes & Noble 和 Borders 各自的零售份额都不到 12%，所以并不存在一家占有 80% 市场份额的巨头需要你去对抗。理论上，你可以相当快地做到 Barnes & Noble 或 Borders 的规模。
David, you said something important there which is that only with the Internet could you really build this true superstore. Bezos keys on this very quickly in the very first interview that he gave which we'll link to in the sources. It was actually at a conference in Seattle. Someone just interviewed him right outside the conference. I think people have probably seen this video or screenshots of this video. It's worth watching the whole few minutes because it's unbelievably prescient.
David，你刚才说的很重要：只有借助互联网，才能真正打造这种超级商店。贝佐斯在他第一次接受采访时就敏锐地抓住了这一点——我们会在资料中附上链接。那是在西雅图一次会议外的即兴采访。我想很多人都看过那段视频或截图，但非常值得完整看几分钟，因为精准得令人难以置信。
He basically points out that if you can do something in the old paradigm, you should. When there's a new paradigm like the Internet, you basically want to find things that you could not do any other way in order to really exploit the power of the new paradigm.
他基本指出：如果某件事在旧范式下就能做，你就该那样做；而当出现互联网这种新范式时，你必须去寻找那些只能借助新范式才能实现的事，才能真正发挥出新范式的力量。
David: Oh, that's such a great playbook theme that we can highlight here. I'm thinking about Web3. It's so obvious. You can build stuff in Web3 that you can do in Web2. That's fine, but really, you want to find the stuff that you can't do otherwise.
David：哦，这真是一个绝佳的“打法”主题，我们可以在这里重点强调。我在想 Web3。显而易见，你可以在 Web3 上构建那些在 Web2 也能做的东西。这没问题，但真正要做的是那些在旧范式下无法实现的东西。
Ben: Right. Don't create the banner ad, slap it on the Internet, and be like, see, it's like a magazine but on the Internet. Invent the feed format.
Ben：没错。不要只是做个横幅广告扔到互联网上然后说，瞧，它就像一本上网的杂志。去发明信息流格式吧。
David: Totally. That's so good. I hadn't seen that interview. That's awesome.
David：完全同意。太棒了。我之前还没看过那段采访。真是太精彩了。
Jeff, like we've been saying, just keeps getting more and more excited about this the more he digs in. He and a couple of other employees at D. E. Shaw start researching competition because there were other online bookstores at this point in time. There was books.com, and a few local physical bookstores around the country had started up ecommerce Internet storefronts. You could buy a book from XYZ local bookshop around the country and have them ship it to you.
正如我们一直所说，杰夫越深入研究这件事就越兴奋。他和 D. E. Shaw 的另外几名员工开始研究竞争对手，因为当时已经有其他在线书店。比如 books.com，全国也有几家实体书店开始搭建电子商务网站。你可以从美国各地的本地书店购买图书，然后让他们邮寄给你。
They started experimenting with the competition and they realized that nobody got the whole catalog, so to speak, the infinite selection. It's still all in this old-school physical paradigm like, yeah, we'll put up an ecommerce storefront and we'll put up a website, but we're just selling our inventory out of what we got in the back here.
他们开始测试这些竞争对手，发现没有人真正做到完整目录，也就是无限选择。仍然停留在那种老派的实体模式：我们会搭个电商前端，建个网站，但实际上只是把后仓现有库存搬到线上销售而已。
Ben: And importantly, it was basically all static. The notion of a web server was a very new thing. There were HTML pages and you could put those up on a server so that somebody using a browser could hit it and get that static page back, but this notion of code executes when you hit a URL to dynamically generate a page really wasn't happening yet, so all you can ever do is fetch the static sites. It just relied on whatever bookstore put up that page to make sure it was updated with what's actually in the store.
Ben：更重要的是，基本上所有页面都是静态的。Web 服务器的概念当时还很新。你可以把 HTML 页面放到服务器上，让浏览器用户访问并获取这张静态页面，但那种“访问 URL 时执行代码动态生成页面”的想法在当时几乎不存在，所以你能做的只有抓取静态站点。一切都依赖书店自己更新网页，以确保页面内容与店内真实库存一致。
David: Yeah. Jeff is like, this is a big idea. There is a window to go do this right now. Somebody's going to figure this out.
David：是的。杰夫的想法是：这是个大点子，现在就有一个窗口去做这件事。总会有人把它搞成的。
Ben: Do you know the stat on Internet growth?
Ben：你知道互联网增长的数据吗？
David: Yes. He gets it wrong, right?
David：知道。他算错了，对吧？
Ben: I think the stat is that as Jeff looked at two different research reports and basically approximated the middle, what he was analyzing was basically the amount of traffic.
Ben：我记得那个数据是，杰夫查看了两份不同的研究报告，然后取了中值近似，他所分析的主要是流量规模。
David: Yup. The number of web packets sent over the year of 1993.
David：没错。具体是 1993 年全年的网络数据包数量。
Ben: It grew 2300% in that single year.
Ben：那一年增长了 2300%。
David: No, this is the error that Brad writes about in the book. It grew 2300X from January 1st, 1993 to January 1st, 1994.
David：不，这正是 Brad 在书里指出的错误。从 1993 年 1 月 1 日到 1994 年 1 月 1 日，实际上增长了 2300 倍。
Ben: Wait, he was off by 100X?
Ben：等等，他差了 100 倍？
David: Yes, which is 230,000%.
David：对，等于 230,000%。
Ben: What? Somehow, I missed that.
Ben：啥？我竟然错过了这个。
David: Yeah. He would later quote in speeches that he read this report, and he saw the traffic was growing by 2300%. It jolted him out of his complacency and realized this idea is huge. I got to go do this on my own.
David：是的。他后来在演讲中提到自己读到那份报告，看到网络流量增长了 2300%。这一下把他从自满中惊醒，让他意识到这个想法太巨大了——他得亲自去做这件事。
Ben: Holy crap. I was going to make the point of if you see anything growing 2300%, you should start a business on top of it, but I didn't realize that I was with the outdated stat.
Ben：天哪。我本来想说，若是发现某件事增长 2300%，你就该围绕它创业，没想到我引用的是过时的数据。
David: There's a minimum threshold at which you should stop doing whatever you're doing if you see something like this, and go do that. That threshold is below 2300%, but if you see something that's growing 230,000% in one year, you really got to quit your job and go do this.
David：遇到这种情形，有一个最低门槛——当增速达到这个门槛，你就该放下手头的事去做那件事。这个门槛肯定低于 2300%，但若有东西一年里增长 230,000%，那你真的得辞职去干。
Ben: It is crazy. Being in a venture, we looked for, oh, what's the next technology wave? What's the next paradigm? Is it Web3? Is it some form of VR or AR?
Ben：这太疯狂了。做风险投资的我们总在寻找下一波技术浪潮、下一个范式——是 Web3 吗？还是某种 VR 或 AR？
David: You and I have never seen this in our professional lifetimes.
David：在我们的职业生涯里，你我都从未见过这种情况。
Ben: We have never witnessed this, no.
Ben：没错，我们确实从未亲眼目睹过。
David: We have never seen anything within an order of magnitude of this.
David：我们甚至没见过任何接近一个数量级的增速。
Ben: Mobile didn't happen this quickly. There was no single year in mobile that was nearly as fast as the rapidity of Internet adoption. A lot of us in venture and in startup land right now are starting businesses and investing in businesses that are innovating around the edges and innovating on stuff that's pretty mature. There's nothing that is the fish in a barrel opportunity of suddenly, everyone appeared over there using garbage tools and all we have to do is make a pretty good tool, and everyone's already on the thing.
Ben：移动互联网的增长都没这么快；在移动领域，没有哪一年出现过互联网普及那样的爆发速度。如今很多创投和创业者都是在成熟领域边缘做些创新，没有那种“射鱼桶里鱼”的机会——突然所有人都涌到某处，用着糟糕的工具，而我们只要做个还不错的工具就能吃遍天下。
David: I think we should just pause the episode right now and highlight that everything comes from this. All we are doing now is capitalizing on the ripple effects or the aftershocks of this giant earthquake of which we will probably never see another one in our lifetimes. The Internet is it. It's all the Internet. This is the beginning. Everything now is still just derivative of the Internet.
David：我觉得我们现在就该暂停节目，强调一件事：一切都源于那次巨变。如今我们所做的不过是在利用那场巨震的涟漪与余波，而我们此生大概率再也见不到这样的机会。关键就在互联网，一切都是互联网——这只是开始，今天的一切仍只是互联网的衍生品。
Ben: The idea that suddenly, everyone is networked together and can obtain any information very quickly. There wasn't even really an interaction model yet. It was just about obtaining information. There were GET requests, but there weren't POST requests.
Ben：忽然之间，所有人都连入同一个网络，可以极快获取任何信息——核心思想就在这里。当时甚至还没有真正的交互模型，只是信息获取；有 GET 请求，却几乎没有 POST 请求。
I don't know if that's technically true, but one reasonable way to think about it is you could load any web page, but there weren't a whole lot of forums you could type things into to send information back to those companies or those servers.
我不确定技术上是否完全正确，但可以这么理解：那时你能加载任何网页，却很难找到可输入内容、把信息回传给公司或服务器的论坛。
David: In Jeff's head and lived experience, this is all happening at once. He's been working on this Internet stuff and there's this new idea that they're working on that he's probably more excited about than any of the other ideas. He reads these reports, the ultimate of his complacency. He's like, dang, I've got this really cushy job here at D. E. Shaw, but I might need to leave this and go do this on my own.
David：在 Jeff 的思维和切身经历中，这一切正同时发生。他一直在搞互联网，如今又冒出了一个令他比其他点子都更兴奋的新想法。他读到这些报告，彻底击碎了自己的安逸感：天哪，我在 D. E. Shaw 的工作很舒适，但也许我得辞职自己干了。
What happens next is open for debate. Jeff wrestles with this decision for a little bit. He and MacKenzie just got married. They love their life, they love D. E. Shaw, and they love living in New York. Jeff really is the heir apparent to take over D. E. Shaw.
接下来发生的事众说纷纭。Jeff 为此犹豫挣扎了一阵。他和麦肯齐刚结婚，喜欢现在的生活，喜欢 D. E. Shaw，也喜欢住在纽约。Jeff 实际上是 D. E. Shaw 的接班人选。
Actually, like I'd said, just a few years later in 2001, David retires, goes back to computer science research, and leaves the firm in the hands of other people. It's very reasonable that could have been Jeff if he hadn't left.
事实上，正如我说过的，仅仅几年后的 2001 年，David 退休、回归计算机科学研究，把公司交给了其他人。如果 Jeff 当时没离开，接班的极有可能就是他。
Ben: Absolutely.
本: 当然可以。
David: Jeff calls up his parents. He calls up Mike and Jackie. He's like, what should I do? They're like, oh, you should stay at D. E. Shaw.
大卫: 杰夫给父母打电话，打给迈克和杰基，问他们自己该怎么办。他们说，哦，你应该继续留在 D. E. Shaw。
Ben: Of course. It's very successful, you get a great salary, and you're well thought of in your industry.
本: 当然了。那家公司很成功，你收入很高，在行业里也备受赞赏。
David: How many 28-year-old or 30-year-olds have the success and opportunity that you do? Not many. They suggest thinking about what to do.
大卫: 有多少二十八、三十岁的人能像你这样取得成功、拥有这样的机会？没几个。他们劝他再好好想想。
Later, he comes up with this framework for making the decision that he calls the regret minimization framework. It really is such a beautiful way to think about big life decisions like this. I've used it. It's really great.
后来，他想出了一个用来做决定的框架，称之为“后悔最小化框架”。用这种方式来思考人生重大决策真是太棒了。我用过，非常好。
Ben: Absolutely. Me too.
本: 完全同意。我也用过。
David: The framework, for people who don't know, is when I'm 80 years old, I'm looking back on my life, and I look back at this fork in the road here, which path am I going to regret the least? What will cause the least amount of regret when I am 80, I'm looking back, and I'm like, oh, I made that decision. Do I regret it more or less than what the alternative would have been?
大卫: 对于不知道的人来说，这个框架就是：当我 80 岁回顾人生，回望当初这个岔路口，我会对哪条路最不后悔？等我 80 岁回头看，说“哦，我当时做了这个决定”，相比另一条路，我会更后悔还是更少后悔？
When you look at it that way, the answer is just brain-dead obvious. When he's 80 looking back and he's like, well, I could have built Amazon, but I stayed at D. E. Shaw, that's going to be some serious regret.
如果这样来看，答案就显而易见了。等他 80 岁回首往事，想到“我本可以创办亚马逊，却留在 D. E. Shaw”，那可真是难以释怀的遗憾。
Ben: He's just an entrepreneur. It ultimately wasn't really a choice because he wasn't going to take over this thing and be a manager of someone else's vision. That's wholly on Bezos.
本: 他骨子里就是个创业者。最终这根本算不上选择，因为他不可能接手那家公司去执行别人的愿景。这完全是贝佐斯自己的事。
David: Which is funny too. I've actually been coming to think that I've used the regret minimization framework to make decisions. I was thinking about this while preparing for the episode. I would have made all those decisions anyway. It was just a justification. People are going to do what is in their blood to do, I think. You're so right, this was in his blood. He was going to do this.
大卫: 这也挺有意思。我发现自己也用后悔最小化框架来做决定。准备节目时我在想，就算没有这个框架，我也会做出那些决定，它只是一个合理化的说法。我认为，人终究会做自己血液里想做的事。你说得对，这就是他的天性，他一定会去做。
He goes to tell David that he's going to leave. He's going to build The Everything Store on his own.
随后他去告诉大卫，自己要离开了，要独自去打造“万货商店”。
Ben: Yeah, not only am I going to leave to be an entrepreneur to capitalize on the Internet. I'm going to do the exact thing that we've been the most excited about that I've been working on on your dime.
本: 是的，我不仅要离职去当企业家、抓住互联网机会，而且要做的正是我们最兴奋、还在用你的钱研究的那个项目。
David: Yes. This is where the legend is. David's like, let's go for a walk. They go off from the skyscraper office in Midtown Manhattan, go for a walk through Central Park for two or three hours, and talk through it all.
大卫: 没错，传奇就发生在这里。大卫说，我们去散散步吧。于是他们从曼哈顿中城的摩天大楼出发，在中央公园里漫步了两三个小时，把一切都谈了个透。
David supposedly says to Jeff, look, you got a future here. I very much want you to stay and build this within D. E. Shaw. I will compensate you appropriately. It will be worth your time. But I also understand the entrepreneurial impulse. I left Morgan Stanley to start D. E. Shaw. I get it. I've been in your shoes. If you leave and do this on your own, I'll regret it, but you have my blessing.
据说大卫对杰夫说：听着，你在这里有光明前途。我真心希望你留下，在 D. E. Shaw 内部把这个项目做起来，我会给你应得的报酬，你的时间绝对值得。但我也理解创业冲动。我当初也是离开摩根士丹利才创办 D. E. Shaw。我懂你的感受。如果你执意离开自己去做，我会遗憾，但我祝福你。
That's the legend of how it went. Whether that actually is what happened, I genuinely don't know, but it's a very nice legend. Let's put it that way.
这就是流传下来的故事。事情是否真的如此，我并不确定，但这个传说很美好，就这样理解吧。
Ben: You're suggesting that it could be a little bit more adversarial or that there could be a little bit of ill will of, hey, I thought you were working on this under the umbrella of D. E. Shaw.
Ben：你的意思是，这里面可能有点针锋相对，甚至有点不愉快——就像在说，“嘿，我以为你是在 D. E. Shaw 旗下做这件事的”。
David: Jeff goes to raise money for Amazon.
David：杰夫去为亚马逊融资。
Ben: He doesn't raise it from David.
Ben：他没向 David 融钱。
David: Right. That would be an obvious source of capital.
David：是啊，那本应是最显而易见的资金来源。
Ben: And it's not like Jeff magically had a check waiting for him. Jeff ended up taking the better part of a year to raise a measly \$1 million over 60 meetings ultimately from 22 different investors to sell 20 % of the company in order to raise that first \$1 million. If it was an option for him to call David and shortcut that, you would think he would have.
Ben：杰夫可不是凭空就有支票等着他。他花了将近一年的时间，跑了 60 场会议，最终从 22 位投资人那里凑到区区 100 万美元，并且为此卖掉了公司 20% 的股份。如果他可以直接打电话给 David 快速搞定这笔钱，你会觉得他肯定早就这么做了。
David: At the end of the day, none of this matters because I am 100 % convinced. There is no doubt in my mind nor do I think should there be in anybody's that had Jeff stayed at D. E. Shaw, there would be no Amazon. Regardless of it being worth Jeff's time or compensation, this is the beauty of venture capital and the American entrepreneurial system. Usually, building things that are great is hard, and usually, when things are hard, if you are just an employee making a salary and somebody else owns the company—
David：说到底，这些都无关紧要，因为我百分之百确信——毫无疑问，如果杰夫留在 D. E. Shaw，就不会有亚马逊。无论那里的待遇和报酬多么优厚，这就是风险投资和美国创业体系的魅力所在。伟大的事业往往难以缔造，而当事情变得艰难时，如果你只是拿工资的员工、公司属于别人——
Ben: You don't have the level of maniacal progress that Amazon did in its early days.
Ben：你就不可能像亚马逊早期那样疯狂推进。
David: Certainly did. We're going to talk about it. The idea was completely flawed. The business plan was worthless because lots of people had that business plan, and it was completely unrealistic.
David：亚马逊确实做到了。我们稍后会聊这一点。其实当初那个理念完全有缺陷，商业计划根本不值钱，因为很多人都拿着同样的计划，而且根本不切实际。
Ben: It is interesting thinking about who the Internet appealed to at this moment. It appealed to Jeff or it was on Jeff's radar because Jeff is a nerd. He has a CS background. He was really into Star Trek. He loved obscure novels. He loved storytelling. The Internet appealed to technical librarians at this point in history. That's probably the best way to describe the cult following that bootstrapped the original network of the Internet. It was academics and people who loved libraries and programming.
Ben：有意思的是，想想当时互联网吸引的是谁。它吸引杰夫，或者说进入杰夫的视野，是因为杰夫是个极客。他有计算机背景，痴迷《星际迷航》，喜欢冷门小说，热爱讲故事。当时互联网吸引的是“技术图书管理员”这一群体——这大概最能形容那批自发构建最初网络的狂热追随者，他们是学者，也是热爱图书馆和编程的人。
David: It was also the legacy of the counterculture movement which had died down and morphed into this out in California.
David：互联网还继承了已经消退并在加州转型的反文化运动的遗产。
Ben: For sure. This is the thing that put it on Jeff's radar. It's also the thing that really defined who would be willing to join Jeff on this crazy adventure. It wasn't that he was going in recruiting right away the very best and brightest out of the top institutions with the shiniest resumes and who could really do anything. It was people whose hearts burned for I want to make it easier for the world to consume knowledge. I want to make it easier to find rare out-of-print books. That was the seed of the original culture of the people who were attracted to Amazon both as customers and employees.
Ben：没错。正是这一点让互联网进入杰夫的视野，也决定了谁愿意加入他这场疯狂冒险。他并不是一开始就去顶尖院校招那些闪亮履历、能做任何事的精英；而是吸引了一群心中燃烧着火焰、渴望让全世界更容易获取知识、让大家更容易找到稀有绝版书的人。这就是吸引早期亚马逊顾客和员工的原始文化种子。
David: Which was not D. E. Shaw. I think this is also another reason why Jeff really struggled with it because he loved D. E. Shaw. He met his wife there. He loved those people. Eventually, that DNA would come into Amazon, but yeah, let's talk about Shel Kaphan and the first non-MacKenzie employee of Amazon.
David：而这并不是 D. E. Shaw 的文化。我想这也是杰夫当初极度纠结的原因之一——他爱 D. E. Shaw，在那里遇到了妻子，也喜爱那里的同事。最终，这部分 DNA 也会注入亚马逊。但好了，让我们来聊聊 Shel Kaphan——亚马逊首位（麦肯齐之外的）正式员工。
Ben: To move the story along, he decides he's doing this. He decides, okay, I need to incorporate the company. He picks a few candidate cities that he could operate the business in because Manhattan is not a wonderful place to be running a bootstrapped startup at the time.
Ben：为了推进故事，他决定干这件事。他想，好吧，我得给公司注册个实体。于是他挑了几个可供运营业务的候选城市，因为当时的曼哈顿并不是启动自筹资金创业公司的理想之地。
David: By this point in time, I think he had finally figured out that shoot, I might actually have to take delivery of some of these books, and shipping them back out to customers in midtown Manhattan is not a great place for that.
David：到了这个时候，他终于意识到，天哪，我可能真的得先接收一些图书，然后再发货给客户，而曼哈顿中城显然不是做这件事的好地方。
Ben: Right. He starts narrowing it down. There are three cities on the list. Seattle is obviously one of them as a candidate city in part because of its proximity to Roseburg, Oregon. I believe the second candidate city was Boulder. Anyway, they ended up deciding on Seattle. Of course, part of it is that proximity reason. The other part is related to the tax environment of Washington State. As folks know, there is no state income tax in Washington State much like in Florida or Texas.
Ben：没错。他开始缩小范围，名单上有三个城市。西雅图显然是其中之一，部分原因是它靠近俄勒冈州的罗斯堡。我记得第二个候选城市是博尔德。总之，他们最终决定选西雅图。一方面是距离上的便利，另一方面是华盛顿州的税收环境。众所周知，华盛顿州和佛罗里达或德州一样，没有州所得税。
David: But you would think, given Jeff's history, Florida or Texas would make more sense.
David：可如果考虑杰夫的成长背景，佛罗里达或德州似乎更合理。
Ben: Right. But there's another big one, too.
Ben：对，不过还有另一个重要原因。
David: There are two more big ones.
David：其实还有两个重要原因。
Ben: One of them is access to technical talent. Microsoft was just absolutely in its heyday. Jeff respected what Bill Gates and crew had built and thought, you know what, opening up a business right next to Microsoft, if I'm going to be attracting programmers, seems like a good idea. What's the fourth?
Ben：其中之一是便于获取技术人才。当时微软正值巅峰。杰夫很敬佩比尔·盖茨及其团队的成就，觉得要是能在微软旁边办公司，招程序员应该挺不错。那第四个原因是什么？
David: The fourth, you have to rewind a little bit to the recruiting of Shel. Shel, Jeff got introduced to actually through a D. E. Shaw colleague. Shel was an engineer-programmer who lived in Santa Cruz, California and has worked for a bunch of early Silicon Valley startups including Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog.
David：第四个原因要稍微往回说到招聘 Shel 的事。杰夫通过一位 D. E. Shaw 同事认识了 Shel。Shel 是一名住在加州圣克鲁兹的工程师兼程序员，曾在多家早期硅谷初创公司工作，包括 Stewart Brand 的 Whole Earth Catalog。
Ben: Yeah, absolutely.
Ben：没错，完全正确。
David: At the Whole Earth Truck Store in Menlo Park.
David：那是在门洛帕克的 Whole Earth Truck Store。
Ben: Which is a rare books retailer, right?
Ben：那是一家稀有图书零售商，对吧？
David: It was counterculture. It was curiosities that Stewart thought were cool and would be in the Whole Earth Catalog, and then they sold them out of the back of a truck in Menlo Park.
David：更确切地说，它是反主流文化的一部分，出售 Stewart 认为很酷、会收录进 Whole Earth Catalog 的稀奇古玩，然后直接从一辆卡车后面在门洛帕克售卖。
Ben: It's perfect. For listeners who are like Whole Earth Catalog and Stewart Brand, what are you talking about? There's one other element of tech history which will quickly jolt you out of your seat and go, oh, that's what we're talking about here. Steve Jobs who is widely attributed to the "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish," when he originally invoked that, was citing Stewart Brand. It was printed on the inside cover of the Whole Earth Catalog.
Ben：这太妙了。如果有听众不熟悉 Whole Earth Catalog 和 Stewart Brand，那再提起一段科技史就能立刻让你恍然大悟——“求知若饥，虚心若愚”这句话通常归功于史蒂夫·乔布斯，而他最初引用时就是在致敬 Stewart Brand。这句话印在 Whole Earth Catalog 最后一期的封底上。
David: It was at the last issue. When they stopped publishing, the iconic photo of the Earth as seen from outer space and then said "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" was a total inspiration for Steve Jobs.
David：对，那是杂志停刊的最后一期，封底是一张从太空拍摄的地球照片，旁边就是“求知若饥，虚心若愚”。这对乔布斯启发极大。
Shel was working there.
Shel 当时就在那儿工作。
Ben: Which is so cool, because then, Stewart gets woven into the Amazon story in this way, of course. But then Bezos also has reverence for the Whole Earth Catalog and gets to spend time with Stewart Brand and a bunch of those folks down the line, too.
Ben：这太酷了，因为这样一来 Stewart 也以这种方式融入了亚马逊的故事。当然，贝佐斯对 Whole Earth Catalog 也怀有敬意，后来还和 Stewart Brand 以及那帮人共事。
David: Yup. They work on The Clock of the Long Now, the 10,000-year clock.
David：没错，他们一起参与了“长久之钟”的项目——那座一万年时钟。
Ben: Which was an investment from Bezos Expeditions. I think it was one of the earliest projects that he backed when he became individually wealthy.
Ben：那是由 Bezos Expeditions 投资的项目。我认为这是贝佐斯个人富裕后最早支持的项目之一。
David: How did Jeff become individually wealthy? It wasn't necessarily from selling his Amazon shares. We'll get to that. You are not going to believe it when we tell that story.
David：杰夫是怎么个人暴富的？并不完全是靠出售亚马逊股票。我们稍后会聊到这一点。等我们讲完，你们一定会惊讶。
Ben: How Jeff Bezos became a billionaire, and it had nothing to do with amazon.com
Ben：杰夫·贝佐斯是如何成为亿万富翁的，而这与 amazon.com 毫无关系。
David: That would be the clickbait if we were a YouTube-native podcast. That would be the title of the episode.
David：如果我们是 YouTube 原生播客，这绝对是吊人胃口的标题——整集节目就叫这个。
Ben: In fact, maybe we'll clip this into a segment and put it on the Acquired Stories Channel.
Ben：实际上，也许我们会把这段剪出来，放到 Acquired Stories 频道。
David: Maybe do a photo shoot of us in a crazy pose. Like oh my God, no title card.
David：再拍张我们摆出疯狂姿势的照片，像“天哪”，却没有标题卡。
Ben: YouTubers, man. All right, Jeff gets introduced to Shel.
Ben：典型的 YouTuber 行为啊。好了，杰夫认识了 Shel。
David: Shel is part of this deep legacy of everything—Silicon Valley, startups, and what becomes of the Internet. I believe the original intention was Jeff and MacKenzie were going to move out to Santa Cruz and were going to build Amazon in Silicon Valley. Why wouldn't you? Maybe it's a little farther to Oregon than Ingram's but not that much farther. It's fine.
David：Shel 深深植根于硅谷、初创公司以及互联网演进的历史传承。我记得最初杰夫和麦肯齐打算搬到圣克鲁兹，在硅谷打造亚马逊——为什么不呢？那里离俄勒冈的 Ingram 确实远一点，但也没远到哪里去，完全可以。
I didn't realize how recent this had happened at the same time. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled on a decision that retail companies do not have to collect sales tax in states where they don't have a physical presence or operations. It doesn't mean that customers don't have to pay sales tax when they buy items from a retailer that is not physically located in their state.
我当时没意识到这一切发生得多么近。1992 年，最高法院裁定：零售商若在某州没有实体存在或运营，就无需代收该州销售税。但这并不意味着顾客在向境外零售商购买商品时就不用缴纳销售税。
Ben: It means that the burden is on the customer instead of the retailer which, of course, every individual is going out and saying, what purchases did I make last year that I should be paying sales tax on that may not have been charged to me?
Ben：也就是说，税款负担转嫁给了消费者，而不是零售商。当然，没有人会去盘点去年买了哪些商品却没被收税然后主动补缴。
David: Oh my God, it's like crypto taxes.
David：天哪，这跟加密货币的税务状况一模一样。
Ben: Yeah. People will pay taxes if it's easy. They won't if it's hard.
Ben：是啊，如果交税简单，人们就会交；如果很麻烦，就不会交。
David: Jeff finds out and reads about this. He's like, oh, no, we cannot base this company in California. Not New York, not Texas, probably not Florida. What is the Venn diagram of close to a book distributor, has access to technical talent, and enough technical people I can hire but not so much that I'm cutting out a huge swath of my market? Seattle is the obvious choice.
David：杰夫读到这条信息后想：不行，公司绝不能设在加州，也不能在纽约、德州，大概佛罗里达也不行。我要在图书分销商附近、能招到技术人才，且又不会因同州征税而失去大块市场的交集里选城市。西雅图显然最合适。
Ben: Which you wouldn't pick today because of this self-perpetuating thing. Because of Amazon and the ecosystem that they and Microsoft would jointly create here, Seattle's population has been going crazy, especially with people with unbelievably high disposable income. You would not want to—in this day and age—execute this strategy and make that decision about Washington state. But Jeff Bezos hadn't created Amazon yet, therefore, it was a perfect place.
Ben：放在今天你就不会这么选了，因为这个自我强化的现象——由于亚马逊和微软共同塑造的生态，西雅图人口激增，特别是高可支配收入人群暴涨。如今再想复制当年的策略，就不会选华盛顿州。但当时贝佐斯尚未创办亚马逊，因此这里成了绝佳之地。
David: Actually, I could resonate with this my own personal story. Jeff had zero connection to Seattle. He didn't know anybody. I was exactly the same way when I came to Seattle.
David：事实上，这让我想起了自己的经历。Jeff 与西雅图毫无联系，他在那儿一个人都不认识。我当年去西雅图时也是如此。
Ben: Dude, it was the place where you got a VC job offer and you were like, I want to be a VC.
Ben：哥们，那可是你拿到风投工作邀约的地方，你当时就决定要做风险投资。
David: It's the land of opportunity, and it was the land of opportunity for Jeff Bezos. The legend is that he and MacKenzie are driving across the country, they realize this, they veer hard to the right in Texas, and instead of going west to California, they go northwest to Seattle.
David：那里充满机遇，对 Jeff Bezos 来说亦如是。传说他和 MacKenzie 开车横穿美国时突然意识到这一点，于是在得州猛打方向盘，没再向西去加州，而是转向西北驶往西雅图。
Ben: Meanwhile, I think they've been on the phone with a lawyer incorporating the business while they've been driving out. That's the whole thing about the name. That's probably a story worth telling.
Ben：与此同时，我想他们在路上一直与律师通话，为公司办理注册。公司的名字也是在那时敲定的，这其中还有段值得一提的故事。
David: Definitely, the veering to the right while driving didn't happen, but it's a good story.
David：实际上，那个猛打方向盘的情节并未真正发生，但故事听起来很精彩。
Ben: I think the thing that did happen while MacKenzie is driving and Jeff is working on the drive out is Jeff's on the phone with a lawyer. He's like, incorporate the business. I want it to be called Cadabra.
Ben：真正发生的是，当 MacKenzie 开车、Jeff 在副驾驶忙活时，Jeff 拿着电话跟律师说：“把公司注册了，名字叫 Cadabra。”
David: Like, oh, it's magic. I can get whatever I want.
David：意思是，“像变魔术一样，我想要什么都能得到。”
Ben: Anything I want whenever I want. Jeff's like, yeah, Cadabra. He's like, Cadaver? That was the first sign of, this may not be the best name. He would have a series of other potentially bad names too, relentless.com.
Ben：想要什么就有什么。Jeff 说“Cadabra”，律师却听成 “Cadaver（尸体）”？这让人第一次意识到，这名字可能不太妙。后来他还想过一串同样可能糟糕的名字，比如 relentless.com。
David: Which still goes to Amazon.
David：那个网址现在仍然跳转到 Amazon。
Ben: It redirects to Amazon.
Ben：是的，会自动跳到 Amazon。
David: Supposedly, he and MacKenzie both really liked relentless.com. This may be completely false, so don't hold me to this, but I wonder if that's a little subtle dig at D. E. Shaw of, I'm going to go be a relentless entrepreneur. I wouldn't be relentless if I were in a cushy skyscraper in Manhattan.
David：据说他和 MacKenzie 都很喜欢 relentless.com。也许这完全是谣传，请别较真。我在想，这会不会是在暗讽 D. E. Shaw：我要去做一个“锲而不舍”的创业者，如果我继续待在曼哈顿舒适的摩天大楼里，就谈不上 relentless 了。
Ben: It's not a very customer-centric name.
Ben：但这名字可一点也不以客户为中心。
David: No, it's definitely not.
David：的确，一点也不。
Ben: It's very much like I'm going to come at you, competitors.
Ben：给人的感觉就是“我要向竞争对手宣战”。
David: That's what I wonder. Where did that come from?
David：我也纳闷，这想法从哪儿来的？
Ben: Yeah. You would use it to describe Jeff's personality, but it's an odd name for the business.
Ben：对，用来形容 Jeff 的个性倒合适，但作为公司名就怪怪的。
David: Definitely. Eventually, friends convinced them that Relentless sounds sinister. The story goes that Jeff starts looking in the dictionary at A words. I don't know if he was specifically looking at A words. If so, he was very smart because A names are names starting with the letter A.
David：没错。最终朋友们说服他们：Relentless 听起来有点阴森。据说 Jeff 于是开始翻词典找以字母 A 开头的词。我不确定他是不是专找 A 开头的，但如果真是，那就很聪明，因为 A 打头的名字排序靠前。
Ben: He actually was because sites like Yahoo, portal sites, and directory sites list it alphabetically.
本：他确实这么做了，因为像 Yahoo 这样的门户网站和目录站都会按字母顺序列站点。
David: Totally. We've been such a beneficiary of this at Acquired. This is our secret sauce.
大卫：完全正确。我们 Acquired 也一直受益于此，这可是我们的秘诀。
Ben: \[...] the last vestige of the old Internet.
本：\[…] 这是旧互联网最后的残迹。
David: Totally, because things are listed alphabetically what we will talk about, Yahoo. He's looking at A names. He's going through the list, and he sees Amazon. Perfect. Earth's largest river, earth's largest selection on amazon.com, A–Z, how could it be any more perfect?
大卫：没错，比如 Yahoo 等等，条目都是按字母排的。他在找以 A 开头的名字，翻着翻着就看到 Amazon。再完美不过了——地球上最长的河流，amazon.com 上地球上最大的商品选择，从 A 到 Z，还有比这更完美的吗？
Ben: It's so perfect.
本：真的太完美了。
David: They just need one more thing. They've hired Shel at this point. He's moving up to Seattle. They rent a house in Bellevue, famously. You actually biked by it the other day, right?
大卫：他们还差最后一件事。他们已经招了 Shel，他正在搬到西雅图。他们在有名的贝尔维尤租了套房子。你前几天骑车路过那里，对吧？
Ben: I did. I was in the neighborhood. I was listening to a great podcast on the Internet History Podcast with a friend of the show, Brian McCullough. He was interviewing Shel about the house that Jeff and MacKenzie lived in. They have the garage retrofitted to be Amazon's first office. Shel is programming sitting in that garage. I looked at it—it's a few blocks from me—and I was like, I got to ride by.
本：是啊。当时我就在附近，正在听好友 Brian McCullough 主持的 Internet History Podcast。他在采访 Shel，聊 Jeff 和 MacKenzie 住过的那所房子。他们把车库改成了亚马逊的第一个办公室，Shel 就坐在那车库里写代码。我一看离我只有几条街，就想着一定得过去看看。
David: When you texted me the photo, I was so, so jealous.
大卫：你把照片发给我时，我真是羡慕坏了。
Ben: Which felt wrong. Someone lives there and all that, but it is a historical landmark in the world.
本：虽然感觉有点冒失，毕竟现在有人住那里，但那真算得上世界级的历史地标。
David: You didn't go knock on the door. I think that's fine. They just need one more thing which is capital. Jeff and MacKenzie then create a D. E. Shaw. They put in \$95,000 to start. Shel himself puts in \$5,000.
大卫：你又没敲人家门，没事的。他们还缺一样东西——资金。于是 Jeff 和 MacKenzie 先投了 9.5 万美元。Shel 自己又投了 5,000 美元。
Ben: This takes me back to the Walmart episode. It's so smart, having your employees actually invest dollars in the business. Jeff's parents, Mike and Jackie, put in another \$100,000. They have \$200,000. That's enough.
本：这让我想起了沃尔玛那一集。让员工真金白银投资公司太聪明了。Jeff 的父母 Mike 和 Jackie 又投了 10 万美元，总共 20 万，足够启动了。
David: They hire a couple more engineers to work with Shel and start building out the site. Jeff goes and starts working on relationships with Ingram and Baker & Taylor. MacKenzie's doing all the bookkeeping and is the first CFO of the company.
大卫：他们又请了几位工程师和 Shel 一起搭建网站。Jeff 去跟 Ingram、Baker & Taylor 建立关系。MacKenzie 负责全部账目，是公司第一任 CFO。
David: Jeff—this is fun—also echoes off Sam Walton. Did you read about this, how he goes down and takes a course in bookselling down in Portland?
大卫：还有件有趣的事——Jeff 也在学 Sam Walton 的办法。你知道吗，他特地跑到波特兰去上了一门图书零售课程？
Ben: Yes. That was awesome. At the National Bookseller or Book Retailers Association, right?
本：知道，太酷了。是在全国书商协会开的课，对吧？
David: Totally. So smart. I assume that's how he starts to build relationships in the industry and get Baker & Taylor and Ingram to take him seriously. It's so great.
大卫：没错，非常聪明。我想这也是他在业内建立人脉，让 Baker & Taylor 和 Ingram 认真对待他的开端。太厉害了。
Ben: Yup. It's worth pointing out at this point. We glazed over it. All right, Shel gets hired, and he starts programming. There's a very interesting set of technology choices that are made here, and Shel turns out to be the perfect hire.
本：没错，这里值得特别指出。我们刚才一笔带过。好了，Shel 被录用后就开始编程。在这里做出了一系列非常有意思的技术选择，而事实证明 Shel 是再合适不过的雇员。
Jeff got very lucky. I don't think Amazon would exist today if it weren't for Shel. I think that's a widely acknowledged thing among the early team including Jeff, but there's not really a spec.
Jeff 非常走运。如果没有 Shel，我认为今天不会有亚马逊。这一点得到了包括 Jeff 在内的早期团队成员的广泛认可，只是当时并没有一份真正的技术规格说明。
Jeff, I think, coded up the first HTML web page himself. That’s the white one with the A and the Amazon river running through it that predates the logo, but when he starts describing it to Shel, Shel is pretty much like, okay, cool. I know what to build. It's going to be a store. There are not a lot of these yet, but it's a website where you can buy stuff online, great. And he just starts coding.
据我所知，Jeff 亲手写了第一版 HTML 网页——那是一张白底页面，带一个大写 A 和贯穿其间的亚马逊河图案，早于正式 logo 的出现。当他向 Shel 描述这一切时，Shel 基本表示：“好的，明白。我知道该构建什么了——一个商店。现在这种网站还不多，但它能在线购物，太棒了。”于是他就动手写代码。
There are a couple of interesting things here, one of which is the technology choice of databases. Do you know what database they would eventually choose to standardize on because Shel was not a database guy before this?
这里有几件有趣的事，其一是数据库技术的选择。你知道他们最终决定标准化使用哪款数据库吗？毕竟 Shel 之前并不是数据库专家。
David: I'm tempted to say the Oracle.
大卫：我猜是 Oracle。
Ben: Definitely Oracle. It was a bake-off between two, and Shel basically was like, okay, cool. What database software am I going to procure? The choices were Sybase and Oracle. Sybase did not return Shel's call, so he chose Oracle.
本：确实是 Oracle。当时做了两款数据库的比拼，Shel 心想：好吧，我该买哪套数据库软件？可选的只有 Sybase 和 Oracle。结果 Sybase 没回应 Shel 的电话，于是他就选了 Oracle。
David: Talk about foreshadowing here. If you are an enterprise technology company, you ignore startups at your own peril.
大卫：这真是个伏笔。如果你是一家企业技术公司，忽视初创企业就得自己承担后果。
Ben: Absolutely. I love that story. There are a couple of other interesting things here. Anybody who's been a PM or an engineer working on an engineer or PM team, a business guy, or tech guy team all knows this feeling.
本：没错，我很喜欢这个故事。这里还有几件有趣的事。只要你当过产品经理或工程师，参与过技术团队与业务团队的合作，都会了解这种感觉。
Remember, the Internet at this point is very, very pathetic. It's just not the Internet as you think about it today in terms of speed, graphics, interface, trust, or anything, especially trust around credit cards. People were not yet comfortable entering credit cards on the Internet. In fact, more people were comfortable entering credit cards via email even though it was no more secure.
要知道，那时的互联网非常原始。无论速度、图形、界面还是信任度，都远非今日可比，尤其是信用卡信任度。人们还不习惯在网上输入信用卡信息。实际上，尽管安全性并无差别，却有更多人愿意通过电子邮件发送信用卡信息。
They actually got more people emailing them their credit card information. They had a way in which you could do stuff like, enter just five digits of your credit card, call us, and then we would get the rest of it from you and match it up with the five you had entered on your order.
于是，他们收到的信用卡邮件反而更多。他们还想出一种方式：顾客只需在线输入信用卡的前五位数字，再打电话告知其余数字，公司便可将电话中的数字与订单里输入的五位对上号。
But Jeff tells Shel, hey, people are going to want to access this store via two different methods. One of them is the web, which is, of course, up-and-coming, and the other of which is email, which people seem to trust a lot. Build two storefronts. One that's accessible via email and one that's accessible via web.
不过 Jeff 告诉 Shel：人们会希望通过两种方式访问这家商店，一种是正在兴起的 Web，另一种是大家非常信任的电子邮件。做两个前端吧，一个通过邮件访问，一个通过网页访问。
Shel just ignores the email thing. He's like, I'm in this technology a lot. I don't think it's going to be an email-based store. It's a good thing that he started with the web. By the time they had gotten that stood up, it was clear that Jeff had lost interest in the email-based store, but it was almost like a posterist-type approach where they're like, what if you could browse and buy from your email? That's how crappy the web was. It wasn't clear that that was a better form factor than email.
Shel 直接无视了“邮件商店”这一项。他心想：我深知这项技术，我不认为商店会基于电子邮件。幸好他先做了 Web 端。等网页上线时，Jeff 已明显对邮件商店失去兴趣。但当初的思路近乎“后纸质化”：如果你能在邮件里浏览并购买商品呢？当时的 Web 就这么糟糕，以至于没人能确定它是否真比邮件形式更好。
David: In Brad's book, I get the sense that that's very typical of the early-Jeff management style. We got to go do this. Some of them are like, you actually got to do it, and then somebody's like, well, if I ignore this for a little while, we're going to do the right thing here.
David：在布拉德的书里，我感觉这正是早期杰夫的典型管理风格——“必须去做”。有些人会想，既然被要求就得真做；而另一些人会想，先暂时搁置一下，最后我们自然会选对做法。
Ben: It also became clear in listening to a lot of these interviews with early engineers that they use the words front-end engineer and back-end engineer differently than we do today. Today when we say front-end and back-end, it means front-end being client-side, JavaScript, typically stuff that executes in your browser, which of course did not really work or exist then, and back-end meant server-side.
Ben：通过听许多早期工程师的访谈也能发现，他们当时对“前端工程师”和“后端工程师”的用法与今天不同。如今说前端通常指客户端、JavaScript、在浏览器里执行的东西——那时这些几乎不存在；后端指服务器端。
What was clear at Amazon in the early days was front-end meant consumer-facing and back-end meant warehouse-facing technology. It was basically all server-side. In fact, there weren't even cookies yet. Shel had to basically invent this way for users to maintain favorited items or a shopping cart without leaving a cookie.
而早期亚马逊的用法是，前端指面向消费者的技术，后端指面向仓库的技术；两者基本都在服务器端。那时连 Cookie 都没有，Shel 不得不想办法，在不写 Cookie 的情况下，让用户保留收藏或购物车。
How do you do that without cookies or sessions? He invented this really insane engine, basically a rendering engine, called Obidos, which if anybody knows their South American geography...
没有 Cookie、没有 Session，该怎么做？他发明了一个“疯狂”的引擎——本质上是个渲染引擎——叫 Obidos，如果你熟悉南美地理的话……
David: It's a tributary to the Amazon, right?
David：那是亚马逊河的一条支流，对吧？
Ben: Yeah. For people who remember browsing Amazon in the early days, you'd go to amazon.com/exec/obidos/something-something-something.
Ben：没错。早期逛亚马逊的人会看到网址是 amazon.com/exec/obidos/一串字符。
David: I definitely didn't do this. This is awesome.
David：我当时可没注意到，太酷了。
Ben: It was a part of the URLs. What Obidos did was it could append IDs to the URL and pass them through so that the back-end, as we know it in today's parlance of the server, could match up, oh, this customer just added this other thing to their cart, and so dynamically generate a new web page for them that includes that other thing in their cart. Or what would go on to be included you may also like, or similar products, or recommended personalized products.
Ben：那就是 URL 的一部分。Obidos 的作用是把各种 ID 加到 URL 上并一路传递，让服务器端能够匹配——哦，这位顾客刚把某件商品加入购物车——于是动态生成新页面，显示购物车里的新商品，或者后来的“猜你喜欢”“类似商品”“个性化推荐”等等。
David: So cool.
David：太酷了。
Ben: This was the very first thing that allowed Amazon to be like a dynamic web application without the use of cookies, and it was just passing these IDs through the URL. It was all this Obidos dynamic web serving engine that Shel built.
Ben：正是这一技术让亚马逊在没有 Cookie 的情况下成为动态 Web 应用——只靠在 URL 里传递这些 ID。全靠 Shel 搭建的 Obidos 动态页面引擎。
David: I love it. That's so cool. You're so right. He was the right guy for the job. This was a grizzled veteran of building software systems that could work on the Internet. There were not many people who could do that at that point in time.
David：太喜欢这个了，真酷。你说得对，他简直是这份工作的最佳人选。他是那种能在互联网上构建软件系统的老兵，当时能做到这点的人并不多。
Ben: No. In fact, in job postings, I think Bezos put things like experience with websites would be a bonus but not required. There weren't web developers, because there weren't web applications. You would think about it, like, hey, I need someone who can write some C-code and then figure out the glue to make it so that that interfaces with the HTML that gets generated. But that was all brand new at the time.
Ben：的确没有。当时贝佐斯在招聘启事里写的还是“有网站经验更佳，但非必需”。因为压根没有“Web 开发者”这一职业，也没有 Web 应用。你得找会写 C 代码、还得能想办法把生成的 HTML 和后端粘合起来的人——在当时，这些全是全新的领域。
David: Amazing. Shel and the early team of engineers that they bring on working together get a beta bill pretty fast.
David：不可思议。Shel 和早期招来的工程师团队很快就做出了测试版。
Ben: Really fast.
Ben：非常快。
David: It was summer of 1994 when Jeff and MacKenzie left D. E. Shaw, and then it takes a few months to figure all this stuff out in the garage in Bellevue. In April of 1995, they shipped a beta version of the site. They sent out a link to friends and family, like, try it out. You can buy any book you want.
David：1994 年夏天，杰夫和麦肯齐离开 D. E. Shaw，然后花了几个月时间在贝尔维尤的车库里把一切捋顺。1995 年 4 月，他们发布了网站的测试版，给亲朋好友发了链接说：来试试吧，你想买什么书都行。
Shel's friend, John Wainwright makes the first purchase on April 3rd, 1995, a book called Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter. Doug Hofstadter is awesome. He wrote Godel, Escher, Bach. It's super cool. It's all about the nature of consciousness and a carve out for another day. It's super cool and very apt, geeky, first purchase on amazon.com.
Shel 的朋友约翰·韦恩赖特在 1995 年 4 月 3 日完成了首单，买的是道格拉斯·霍夫施塔特的《流体概念与创造性类比》。霍夫施塔特太厉害了，他写过《哥德尔、艾舍尔、巴赫》。那本书探讨意识本质，等会儿再说。能成为 amazon.com 的第一笔极客味十足的订单，真是再合适不过。
Ben: Again, illustrating the types of people who are interested in Amazon and the movement at the time were.
Ben：这再次说明，当时对亚马逊以及这场运动感兴趣的是怎样的一群人。
David: Yup. Then shortly after that, July 16th, 1995, they launched the site to the public. I totally understand now what Marc Andreessen was saying when he was like, I freaking missed it. I guess Marc was part of starting this wave, so he was talking about the previous wave. But me now, looking back, I'm like, we freaking missed it, Ben. I have FOMO.
David：没错。不久之后的 1995 年 7 月 16 日，他们向公众正式上线。我现在完全理解马克·安德森当年说“我彻底错过了”时的感受。马克算是上一波浪潮的发动者，他说的是更早那一波。而现在我回头看，只能对你说，Ben，我们也错过了啊，我好焦虑。
Ben: You have FOMO. Yeah.
Ben：你患上“错失恐惧症”了，哈哈。
David: This would never happen today. They launched it and people came. People loved it. It freaking worked immediately.
David：这种事今天根本不会发生。他们一上线，人们就涌入，大家都喜欢，马上就跑得顺顺当当。
Ben: Yeah, and it went very quickly from a thing that obscure nerds wanted, to this has a good enough user experience where regular people are using it quickly and deriving real value. It's not just like it had growth rates of a bunch of bots interacting with each other, and therefore the volume looks high.
Ben：对，而且它很快就从小众极客的玩意儿，变成了普通人也能迅速上手并获得真正价值的服务。不是那种靠一堆机器人互刷把数据做大的增长。
These are very real people who are one or two clicks out from the early adopters, solving real problems that they had before, and everybody telling their friends. In fact, I think there's a stat. The entire first year after the public launch, they spent zero marketing dollars. It was all word of mouth and inbound media inquiries, because what they were doing was so novel and so useful to the mass market consumer.
这些是真实用户——与早期尝鲜者之间就隔着一两层关系——他们在解决自己以前的痛点，然后口口相传。实际上有个统计数据：上线后的头一年他们在营销上花了 0 美元，全靠口碑传播和媒体主动报道，因为他们做的事既新颖又对大众消费者有用。
David: Oh, inbound media inquiries. Okay, so they launched it. In the first two weeks, they do \$25,000 in revenue. They're just people telling their friends. You can't do that today, \$25,000 in revenue in two weeks. If you launch something today, nobody's going to use it.
David：说到媒体报道——网站上线头两周就做了 2.5 万美元收入，全靠人们互相推荐。现在根本不可能，两周卖 2.5 万？你今天上线个东西，没人用的。
They get an inbound media inquiry two weeks after they launch it from David Filo and Jerry Yang, saying, hey, we heard about your site, Amazon, it looks pretty cool. Do you mind if we feature it on our homepage?
上线两周后，他们接到大卫·费罗和杨致远的采访请求，对方说：嘿，我们听说你们的 Amazon，很酷啊，能不能把你们放到我们的首页推荐？
Ben: And Jeff's like, wait a minute, your homepage, I think a lot of people go to that.
Ben：杰夫心想，等等，你们的首页？那可是很多人都会访问的啊。
David: That was the brand new, at that point, literally brand new, yahoo.com. David and Jerry, of course, had started their Guide to the Web when they were Stanford grad students the year before in 1994. They had just incorporated and raised money from Sequoia Capital, turned it into an actual business, and created Yahoo only in March of 1995.
David：对，那正是当时全新的 yahoo.com。大卫和杰瑞前一年在斯坦福当研究生时搞了个“Web 指南”。1995 年 3 月，他们才刚注册公司、拿到红杉资本投资，把它变成真正的业务，创建了 Yahoo。
Ben: Wow.
Ben：哇哦。
David: It's all happening all at once. Got to assume it was the first place to buy books featured on the front page with the letter A on yahoo.com.
David：这一切真是瞬间发生。可以想见，亚马逊大概是首个以字母 A 打头、被列在 Yahoo 首页、可以在线购书的网站。
Ben: Growth hack.
Ben：直接的增长黑客手段。
David: Apparently, they get the email.
David：显然，他们收到了那封电子邮件。
Ben: Had they raised their seed round, their million-dollar angel round yet?
Ben：他们当时拿到那笔种子轮、一百万美元的天使融资了吗？
David: No. All that context you had on Shel, oh, this makes so much more sense now. I thought he was just being conservative, but he knows what he's doing. They get the email and they're all talking about what to do. And Shel's like, guys, I don't think we're ready for this. I don't think we can handle what's about to happen here.
David：没有。结合你对 Shel 的那些背景介绍，现在一切就更清楚了。我原先以为他只是谨慎，结果发现他心里门清。他们收到邮件后在讨论对策，Shel 说：伙计们，我觉得咱们还没准备好，接下来要发生的事我们可能招架不住。
Ben: Because he's only been at startups that didn't really work.
Ben：因为他以前待的那些初创公司都没有真正做成事。
David: Yes.
David：没错。
Ben: He made stuff functional. He was thinking of a certain scale, but he wasn't thinking like millions scale.
Ben：他能把东西做出来，可他设想的规模有限，没想过会达到百万级别。
David: Of course, Jeff being Jeff is like, damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. We're doing this. We're going to say yes to Yahoo. They did it within the next two weeks. We're just four weeks after launch here. They have sold books to people in all 50 states in the country and 45 countries around the world. By the end of those two weeks, they are doing \$20,000 in sales a week
David：可 Jeff 就是 Jeff，他说：“管他的，全速前进！干！” 于是他们答应了 Yahoo，在接下来的两周内搞定。网站上线才四周，他们已经把书卖到全美 50 个州、全球 45 个国家。两周结束时，他们每周销售额已达 2 万美元。
Ben: On books. These things cost like \$20 or \$30 each.
Ben：而卖的还是书！每本也就二三十美元。
David: And people don't read books. Yeah, there's Barnes & Noble, but people don't read books. They made all their money on DVDs and CDs. Nobody reads books. We—I mean you, me, and the Acquired community—read books, but we're a vast minority.
David：而且大多数人并不读书。是的，有 Barnes & Noble，可人们就是不爱读书。书店真正赚钱的是 DVD 和 CD。没人读书。我们——指你、我以及 Acquired 社群——确实读书，但我们只是极少数。
Ben: Most Americans read one book a year. I think that's the mode of number of books per year per person.
Ben：大多数美国人一年只读一本书，我记得这是一年人均读书量的众数。
David: Totally. That first half year that the site was live to the public, they did half a million dollars in revenue in six months with the \$200,000 and friends and family funding.
David：没错。网站向公众开放的前六个月，他们靠那 20 万美元启动资金和亲友投资，就做了 50 万美元收入。
Ben: The initial insight is a pretty perfect product/market fit right out of the gate. It's one of these situations. It's like an Uber or a Twitter where you have this idea, then you put it up, and then that's exactly the thing that people want.
Ben：最初的洞见就是完美的产品—市场契合，一开始就对上了。这种情况就像 Uber 或 Twitter：你有个想法，把它做出来，结果发现那正是人们想要的。
David: I'm sure there will come an age again like this in some way, shape, or form, but I can't stress enough. This does not happen today. I'm feeling the FOMO.
David：我相信未来某种形式的类似时代还会再来，但我要强调，今天已经很难出现这种事。我现在真是 FOMO 爆棚。
Ben: The question is, David, would you have recognized it?
Ben：问题是，大卫，你当时看得出来吗？
David: That's the thing.
David：这就是关键所在。
Ben: We all have to be intellectually honest with ourselves. Would we be hanging out in these circles with these people and truly believing like they did, not in 1996 that the Internet was going to be a thing, in 1993 that the Internet was going to be a thing?
Ben：我们都得对自己保持理性诚实。若回到当年，我们会和那些人混在一起，并且像他们那样确信——不是 1996 年，而是 1993 年就确信——互联网一定会成为大事吗？
David: Yup. We sorted this a little bit not intentionally with podcasting, I think, in Acquired. A little bit, we got a similar type wave.
David：是啊。我想在 Acquired 做播客时，我们多少也经历了类似的一波浪潮，虽非有意，却有点相似的味道。
Ben: Honestly, now judging by what you and I were doing a few years later, I do actually think we would have had the personality characteristics and the interests if we were not young children at this time to be caught up in all this. In some ways, I'm feeling the massive FOMO of like, God, if I was just born 5 or 10 years earlier.
Ben：说实话，回想我们后来几年所做的事，我真觉得倘若当时我们不是年幼的孩子，我们的性格和兴趣完全会投入那股浪潮。有时候我会强烈地错失焦虑，想：天啊，要是我早出生五到十年该多好。
David: This is who we are, and I imagine many of our listeners are, too.
David：这就是我们的本性，我想很多听众也一样。
Ben: I imagine if you're listening to three-hour podcasts, then you're the type of person who wanted to buy an obscure book from someone on the Internet or you had to call on your credit card number.
Ben：如果你愿意收听三个小时的播客，那你大概也属于那种会在网上买冷门书、甚至愿意打电话报信用卡号的人。
David: The infrastructure is just completely falling apart.
David：可那时的基础设施简直一塌糊涂。
Ben: One thing they did do right in the infrastructure, though, because by the way, very quickly, they became Oracle's largest ever instance by traffic. The Oracle people were like, oh, my God, we can't help you. No one else is seeing this many reads or writes per second, so let us make a new version for you.
Ben：不过在基础设施上有件事他们做对了——顺带说一句，他们很快成了 Oracle 史上流量最大的实例。Oracle 的工程师都惊了，一秒钟这么多读写请求前所未见，只能赶紧为他们做新版。
One thing that was very clear is that Shel and the team were building things at a very low level of abstraction. They were building everything in basically a click off from Assembly. Most of the stuff was in C, some of it was in Perl, but they're not really writing in high-level languages or using high-level frameworks.
很明显，Shel 和团队所用的是非常低抽象级别的开发方式，几乎只比汇编高一个层次：大部分代码用 C，部分用 Perl，没有什么高级语言和框架可言。
Even though the technology at the time sucked—there was no bandwidth, compute was really, really, really hard to come by—you had to be unbelievable efficient as you're starting to roll out things like—and I know we'll get to this—reviews and the collaborative filtering stuff where it was like, you may also like people who bought this also bought.
当时技术条件很差——带宽几乎没有，算力也异常稀缺——可在上线诸如“书评”和协同过滤推荐（“购买此商品的用户还购买了……”）等功能时，你得把效率做到极致。
The algorithms mattered a lot, but the environments that you were writing them in, the low-level languages were really important. They basically can take advantage of these early Internet technologies before the bandwidth and compute was really ready for most people to develop applications for them.
算法固然关键，但编程环境和低级语言同样重要。正是靠这些，他们才在带宽和算力尚未普及之前，充分利用早期互联网技术。
David: Totally right. I guess I meant technology, to some extent, the tech in infrastructure. I meant more like the garage. Here's the kicker of why this never would have worked within D. E. Shaw. It's super clear you can't do drop shipping. Amazon's got to handle the logistics themselves to make this work.
David：说得对。我之前提到的“基础设施”其实更多指那间车库。也正因如此，亚马逊在 D. E. Shaw 体系内绝不可能成功——显然无法做直邮，必须自建物流才能跑得通。
Ben: And the way they were doing that was not to take inventory at the time. They were ordering retail first from other bookstores, then reselling it, and just eating the margin as the proof of concept. But then they were moving to this world where they would just order from the distributor as soon as they got an order. It was taking, obviously, forever to actually get that to the customer.
Ben：他们最初的做法是零库存：先从其他书店按零售价买书，再转卖出去，相当于牺牲利润来验证模式。之后他们转而在收到订单后立刻向分销商订货，这么一来，送到客户手里就要花很久。
David: The distributors had minimum order sizes. They were ordering big boxes of stuff come into the garage.
David：分销商还有最低订货量要求，结果一大箱一大箱的书被送到那个小车库里。
Ben: Do you know the hack? Let's say they ordered a popular book, where pretty quickly you could get to 8 out of 10. Let's say the minimum order size was 10. They'd wait to get two more.
Ben：你知道他们的“黑客”做法吗？比如他们订了一本畅销书，很快就能达到 10 本最低订货量中的 8 本。假设最低订货量是 10 本，他们就会再等两本。
David: I think it was 10.
David：我记得确实是 10 本。
Ben: Yeah, and they could place an order with the distributor. The hack was if it's an obscure book and they know we're never going to get to 10, they would take that one book and they would order nine of a book that they knew was not in stock, the system would let them make the order since 10 books could be shipped out, and then of course, they would get the rejection of, hey, this book’s out of stock. That was their hack to make it so the distributors would actually send them the one copy of the one book that they wanted.
Ben：没错，然后他们就能向分销商下单。诀窍在于，如果那是本冷门书，根本凑不到 10 本，他们就把这一本冷门书连同 9 本确定缺货的书一起下单。系统看到“满 10 本”就让下单，随后分销商会回复“那 9 本缺货”，于是他们就能拿到唯一想要的那一本。
David: The sales levels we're talking about, there are a lot of boxes coming and going out of the garage.
David：在这种销售水平下，车库里每天都有成堆的纸箱进进出出。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：是的。
David: Quickly, they get a warehouse in SoDo, in the industrial neighborhood down by the kingdom at that point in time. They start staffing it up with temp workers. Famously, they tell the staffing agency to "send us your freaks."
David：很快，他们在西雅图南端 SoDo 工业区租了座仓库，并开始用临时工充实人手。最出名的是，他们跟劳务公司说：“把你们那些怪咖都送过来。”
Ben: Which made it through to print in an article, and of course, that was the clickbait thing that everyone anchored on.
Ben：这句话后来被媒体写进文章，自然成了大家眼里的“爆点”标题。
David: This was the era of grunge in Seattle. All these grunge club musicians are working in Amazon warehouses after their gigs. It's super cool.
David：那时正值西雅图垃圾摇滚盛行，各种乐队成员在演出后跑到亚马逊仓库打工，酷毙了。
Famously, Nic Lovejoy from D. E. Shaw, comes up with the idea of packing tables. This becomes Amazon lore. First, they literally just reassembled and did shipping just on their hands and knees on the floor. It was like, we should get some tables to do this up above the floor.
众所周知，来自 D. E. Shaw 的 Nic Lovejoy 想出了“打包工作台”的点子，这成了亚马逊的传奇。最早他们真的跪在地上分拣发货，后来才想：我们得弄几张桌子，把货架高起来操作。
Ben: Yeah. On the send-us-your-freaks thing, there's this great interview with Jane Slade that Brian McCullough did, where she's the one who gave the quote in that interview about send-us-your-freaks. She said that because the temp agency was sending them all these people that were basically professionals. They would expect to use modern tools.
Ben：对了，关于“把怪咖都送来”这件事，Brian McCullough 采访过 Jane Slade，就是她说的那句话。她解释说，临时工公司原本派来的一大堆都是专业人士，想用现代化工具。
On Amazon, the low level software thing wasn't just for their infrastructure. They expected their customer service people to use Unix terminals and write commands, so that it would send right in. They're like, where's my order? Everything's on the command line. Jade's using that to try to articulate to the temp agency. Here's the profile of a person that we need because all these people are useless to us if they expect a bunch of very good tools to do their job.
在亚马逊，低层软件不仅用在基础设施上，连客服都得用 Unix 终端敲命令——“我的订单在哪？”一切都走命令行。Jane 就拿这个告诉劳务公司：我们需要的就是能用这种环境的人，那些等着用高级工具的人在这儿派不上用场。
David: I didn't know that context. That's awesome. What's cool here is these are quaint stories, but this is the beginning of the competitive advantage and the moat that Amazon starts to build. We're going to talk about eBay in a minute here. It's just like the Walmart story in fighting against Kmart and other people.
David：我之前不知道这些背景，真棒。有趣的是，这些听来古怪的故事其实就是亚马逊护城河和竞争优势的起点。一会儿我们还会聊到 eBay，这跟沃尔玛当年对阵 Kmart 一样。
Amazon is now building a native logistics supply chain and distribution for ecommerce that they are going to own and operate, that literally nobody else in the world is doing this. Not Walmart, not Kmart, not Barnes & Noble. They all have their own incredible logistics systems, but they're tuned for, I've got this book superstore that has 80,000 titles, and I've got thousands of them across the country. Amazon's building distribution for, I have millions of customers across the world.
如今亚马逊正在为电商自建一条原生物流供应链和配送体系，全世界没有第二家公司在做这种事。沃尔玛、Kmart、Barnes & Noble 都有强大的物流系统，但它们针对的是“我有 8 万种书、在全美有几千家店”这种场景；亚马逊要服务的是“我有数以百万计的全球客户”。
Ben: And basically, no two orders are the same. I always need to put a unique brand new combination of books into a box every single time. That is a totally different combinatorial problem to solve than the Walmart thing of, hey, we need to make sure that a truck goes from this distribution center to this store once a day with about this stuff and maybe there can be a little variance. It's completely new.
Ben：而且几乎没有两张订单是一样的。我每次都得把全新的、独一无二的图书组合装进箱子。这跟沃尔玛那种“每天要让卡车从这个配送中心去那家店，货大概是什么”完全是不同的组合问题，彻底是新课题。
Amazon needed to fail completely, invent something new tailored to their use case, and then suddenly be the industry leader for the way you do that thing on the Internet. Packing tables is such a great first paradigm of, oh, our warehouses will need these, but other distribution centers in the Walmart land and that old school world don't. That would just happen 10,000 times again, compound, and compound, and compound.
亚马逊必须从零开始，针对自身场景发明全新的东西，然后瞬间成为该领域的行业标杆。打包工作台就是第一个完美示例——我们的仓库需要它，但沃尔玛体系及旧世界的配送中心不需要。类似革新会再发生一万次，层层叠加，复利增长。
David: There are big differences between the Walmart supply chain, and the Barnes & Noble supply chain, and Amazon, but eBay sure as hell isn't building packing tables. They need some more money to capitalize all this. Jeff goes out to raise that first seed round. We did the whole episode with Tom Alberg back in the early Acquired days. Tom is just the best.
David：沃尔玛的供应链、巴诺书店的供应链和亚马逊的供应链差异巨大，但 eBay 可绝不会去造打包工作台。要把这些事情做大，他们还得筹更多资金。杰夫开始到外面募集第一轮种子资金。我们早期在 Acquired 曾经做过一期和汤姆·奥尔伯格的完整节目。汤姆实在太棒了。
Ben: Tom is the best. I re-listened to that episode and I was thinking like, oh, it's going to be terrible because this was very early in Acquired. It's so not. It's very listenable, and most of that is because Tom was an unbelievable guest. He's kind and he also is so earnest, but lived the whole thing. He was an early check in Amazon in that \$1 million on \$5 million post money round and stayed the course with Jeff all the way through the late 2010s as a board member.
Ben：汤姆真的很棒。我又回听了那期节目，原本以为会很糟糕——毕竟那是 Acquired 刚起步时录的——结果完全不是，非常耐听，这多亏汤姆是个难以置信的嘉宾。他友善而真诚，而且亲历了全部过程。他在亚马逊 100 万美元融资、估值 500 万美元那一轮就写了支票，并一直陪着杰夫做董事直到 2010 年代末。
David: Yeah, longest serving board member in Amazon history other than Jeff. It's so cool. They raised that \$1 million round from a bunch of local business folks in Seattle of which Tom is one and one of the most involved in the company.
David：没错，他是除杰夫外亚马逊任期最长的董事，太酷了。他们那 100 万美元就是从一群西雅图当地商界人士那里募到的，汤姆既是其中之一，也是最投入公司事务的人之一。
Ben: Nick Hanauer, a bunch of local business folks here.
Ben：还有尼克·哈瑙尔等一批当地商界人士。
David: In 1996, remember they did half a million in revenue for the half year of 1995 that they're alive. They did \$15.7 million in revenue in 1996. They have a tiger by the tail here. You would have to be accelerating so much to go from whatever the run rate was in December of 1995.
David：1996 年——别忘了，他们 1995 年下半年收入只有 50 万美元，而 1996 年收入就达到 1,570 万美元，简直是抓住了一只猛虎。从 1995 年 12 月的年化营收水平一下跳到这种规模，增速惊人。
Ben: They about 15X'd in their first year, but they 15X'd off a base of 500,000. It's not off of nothing.
Ben：他们第一年增长了约 15 倍，但这 15 倍是从 50 万美元的基数上翻的，不是从零起步。
David: Yeah, they didn't go from 5-100 or something like that.
David：没错，他们可不是从 5 万涨到 100 万那种。
Ben: When I'm looking at SaaS companies, I'm like, oh, my God, you quadrupled? That's nearly unheard of. Good companies triple.
Ben：我在看 SaaS 公司时，如果看到营收翻了四倍都会惊呼：哇，这几乎闻所未闻了。优秀公司也就三倍而已。
David: And then you look at it and it's like you went from \$20,000 ARR to \$100,000 ARR.
David：可仔细一看可能只是从 2 万年经常性收入涨到 10 万。
Ben: Right, and this is yeah, wow, \$500,000 in six months to \$15.7 million the following year. Okay, that's 1996.
Ben：没错，而亚马逊是六个月 50 万到次年 1,570 万，真是惊人。好吧，这就是 1996 年。
David: That's 1996. As this rise is happening, obviously, more and more people start paying attention. Go listen to the whole episode. Tom tells the story on our episode with him. I'll just quote from Tom here. "I come home one night after work at like 6:00 PM or something and my wife says, do you know some guy named John Doerr? I said, well, actually I do. She said, well, he calls every 15 minutes and keeps saying he needs to talk to you now." And then Tom says, "It was one of John's great strengths, which is his persistence. It tells you something about how to sell yourself and show your interest." Of course, that is the legendary John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.
David：就是 1996 年。随着公司腾飞，关注的人越来越多。各位可以去听完整节目，汤姆在那期回忆了这段经历。我引用汤姆的话：“有天晚上大概六点我下班回家，老婆跟我说：‘你认识一个叫约翰·杜尔的人吗？’ 我说，‘其实我认识。’ 她说，‘他每 15 分钟打一次电话，坚持说必须马上跟你谈。’” 然后汤姆说：“约翰最大的优点之一就是这种坚持，这说明了如何推销自己并表达兴趣。” 这里说的当然是传奇投资人、凯鹏华盈的约翰·杜尔。
Ben: It's been many years and there are lots of names of key folks at Sequoia, NetBenchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, that we think of as, wow, these incredible venture capitalists. John Doerr was pretty widely known to be the greatest of all time at this point in history.
Ben：多年过去，如今我们会提到红杉、Benchmark、a16z 的一些大牛——都让人惊叹。但在那个时代，约翰·杜尔几乎被公认为有史以来最伟大的风险投资家。
David: He was like all of today's all stars in venture capital within the industry and among founders. If you aggregate all of those all stars into one single person, that would have been John Doerr at that point in time. This shows you how much clout John had.
David：他就像把今天业内和创业者眼中的所有 VC 超级明星合而为一。如果把所有明星 VC 的光环都集中到一个人身上，那在当时就是约翰·杜尔。这说明了他在当年的影响力有多大。
Hey, just the hustle, the persistence. Even though he was the legendary John Doerr, he's calling Tom every 15 minutes, calling Tom's wife, to get a lead on the deal. Amazon ends up choosing Kleiner to lead their Series A, \$8 million at a \$60 million post money valuation.
看看他的拼劲和毅力吧。即便身为传奇人物，他仍然每 15 分钟给汤姆打一次电话，连汤姆的妻子也不放过，只为抢到这笔投资。最终，亚马逊选择由凯鹏华盈领投 A 轮，融资 800 万美元，投后估值 6,000 万美元。
Ben: I think they were competing against General Atlantic.
Ben：我认为他们当时是在与 General Atlantic 竞争。
David: Many firms, including General Atlantic, which was the first runner up. There was some structure to the deal. The Kleiner term sheet was clean. I don't remember exactly what the structure was, but Tom refers to this on our episode. They were a New York firm—General Atlantic—but they were offering double the valuation, close to double, I think.
David：包括 General Atlantic 在内的很多公司都参与了竞争，General Atlantic 刚好是第二名。那份交易当中有一些结构性的安排，而 Kleiner 的 term sheet 则十分干净。我不记得具体的结构是什么了，但 Tom 在我们那期节目里提到过。General Atlantic 是一家纽约公司——我记得他们给出的估值几乎是 Kleiner 的两倍，接近翻倍。
Amazon and Jeff went with John and Kleiner, because they were John and Kleiner. There's a fun little sidebar of John winning the deal, and this is his playbook at the time. Great, I'm going to be involved, but I got this green associate who I'm going to put on your board, and it's going to be great. VCs still do this today.
Amazon 和 Jeff 最终选择了 John 和 Kleiner，因为那可是 John 和 Kleiner。有个有趣的小插曲讲的是 John 如何赢下这笔交易，这正是他当时的套路：“很好，我会亲自参与，但我有个新人助理，我会把他安排进你们的董事会，这会很棒。”风投至今仍然这么做。
Jeff wasn't too happy about this, so he goes to talk to Tom like, what should I do about this? They brainstormed and they came up with an idea. Jeff calls John back and he's like, I'm really sorry. I really wanted to work with Kleiner Perkins then, but I guess we're going to be going with General Atlantic. If you're not going to join my board, that was really the appeal for me.
Jeff 对此并不太高兴，于是他去找 Tom 商量：“我该怎么办？”他们一起头脑风暴，想出了一个办法。Jeff 给 John 回电话，说：“我真的很抱歉。我原本非常想和 Kleiner Perkins 合作，但看来我们要转向 General Atlantic 了。如果你不上我的董事会，那其实就是我想合作的一大理由没了。”
Ben: And John's like, I don't have the bandwidth. I'm on too many other boards right now. He's got Netscape.
Ben：而 John 的反应是，“我没有精力了。我现在已经在太多董事会里了。”毕竟他还在 Netscape 的董事会。
David: Netscape, Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Intuit. This is before Google. We will definitely talk about Google in a minute, but he's a little busy.
David：Netscape、Compaq、Sun Microsystems、Intuit，这还都是在 Google 之前。我们稍后一定会聊到 Google，但他现在的确相当忙。
Ben: Nothing to sneeze at.
Ben：这可不是小事儿。
David: But this was such a hot deal. Jeff was so persuasive that John made time. I think he's probably glad that he made time to join the board. There is this money from Kleiner. Jeff does two things.
David：但这是一笔极具吸引力的交易，Jeff 的说服力也很强，以至于 John 还是挤出了时间。我想他后来大概也很庆幸自己加入了董事会。拿到 Kleiner 的资金后，Jeff 做了两件事。
Ben: And this was \$7 million?
Ben：这是 700 万美元？
David: \$8 million.
David：800 万美元。
Ben: So far, in the lifetime of the company, he raised \$9 million.
Ben：到目前为止，公司一共融资了 900 万美元。
David: A little more than \$9 million because there were the friends and family money, the Bezos family as a whole.
David：稍微超过 900 万，因为还有来自朋友和家人的资金——整个 Bezos 家族都投了。
Ben: \$9.2 million?
Ben：920 万？
David: It was actually more like \$9.4 million because the Bezos family as a whole, not just Jeff's parents, Jackie and Mike, but also his siblings put a little more money in before the Kleiner round. That was what we were alluding to at the beginning of the show of, gosh, man, Mike and Jackie, they must have done some good investing.
David：实际上更接近 940 万，因为在 Kleiner 轮之前，不只是 Jeff 的父母 Jackie 和 Mike，整个 Bezos 家族，包括他的兄弟姐妹，都又追加了一点资金。我们在节目开头提到的——哇，Mike 和 Jackie 这投资可真赚翻了。
Ben: Which is funny because that's Bezos's siblings having some of the greatest investment returns of all time. It proves venture capital is access, access, access.
Ben：有趣的是，Bezos 的兄弟姐妹因此获得了史上最丰厚的投资回报之一。这也证明了风投的本质就是——渠道、渠道、再渠道。
David: I cannot wait to talk about how Jeff Bezos and McKenzie got wealthy. We got to wait just a little bit longer. We got to wait a little longer.
David：我迫不及待想谈谈 Jeff Bezos 和 MacKenzie 是如何致富的，但我们得再稍微等等，再等等。
Ben: All right.
Ben：好的。
David: Jeff does two things after he raises the round from Kleiner. I didn't write down the quote, but somebody who was involved in the company at that point said something like, Jeff viewed this stamp of imprimatur from Kleiner and John Doerr as a shot of steroids into himself and the company.
David：在完成 Kleiner 那轮融资后，Jeff 做了两件事。我没把原话记下来，但当时公司里的一位相关人士说，大意是 Jeff 把 Kleiner 与 John Doerr 的背书视为给自己和公司注入的一针类固醇强心剂。
Ben: It’s really emboldened his vision. He used this as someone waving the flag of like, go, go go. You should feel free to have a much, much more ambitious plan now.
Ben：这极大地鼓舞了他的愿景。他把这看成有人在挥旗呐喊：“冲啊、冲啊！”——从此可以毫无顾忌地制定更宏大的计划。
David: I don't think Jeff's the kind of person who ever felt like he needed permission. But to the extent, he did feel like he needed permission or that the right thing to do was to get big fast, which is one thing that he does. He makes that the motto.
David：我不觉得 Jeff 是那种需要他人批准的人。但如果说他真的需要某种许可、或者觉得正确的做法就是“迅速做大”，那么他确实身体力行，并把它当成座右铭。
Ben: Which literally became the motto, which printed on t-shirts at the company holiday party. Yeah.
Ben：这句口号后来真的成了座右铭，甚至印在公司节日派对的 T 恤上。
David: Get big, fast. Yup. The Kleiner round and John joining the board was absolutely that for him. He also makes a critical hire, which is the first official professional CFO into the company, Joy Covey, to come on at this time.
David：“Get big, fast（迅速做大）。”没错，对他来说，Kleiner 的融资以及 John 加入董事会正是如此。同时，他还做出一项关键招聘——引入公司首位职业 CFO，Joy Covey。
Ben: Who originally had zero interest. This is another person who is unbelievably accomplished, really brilliant, curious, but she lives in California, she's not going to move to Seattle. She's only marginally interested, but Jeff and she meets, and she's completely turned around. She's like, oh, my God, I have to work with this guy. And oh, my God, this is the best business model of all time.
Ben：她最初完全没兴趣。她本身极其成就斐然、聪慧好奇，但她住在加州，不打算搬到西雅图。她起初只是略感兴趣，可当她和 Jeff 见面后彻底被打动：天哪，我必须跟这个人共事！天哪，这简直是史上最好的商业模式！
David: I'm sure John had something to do with this. My understanding from the history is that one of John's real superpowers was recruiting. It was winning deals, obviously, but helping companies recruit, too.
David：我确信这背后也有 John 的助力。据史料显示，John 的超能力之一就是招聘——不仅能赢得投资，还能帮公司招揽人才。
Joy's story is just amazing. She dropped out of high school and then ended up becoming a CPA. She took the CPA exam in California and got (I think) the second highest score in the history of the exam, and ended up going on to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. She dropped out of high school. Her life was going in one direction. There are so many people like that involved in Amazon that are just these incredible stories of perseverance.
Joy 的经历令人惊叹。她高中辍学，却成为注册会计师；参加加州 CPA 考试，考出史上第二高分；随后先后就读哈佛商学院和哈佛法学院。她曾经的人生轨迹似乎一度偏离，但凭借毅力逆转。亚马逊里有许多这样的人，他们的故事同样展现惊人的坚持。
Ben: As a lot of folks know, we're talking about Joy in the past tense, because she sadly passed away in 2013 in a bicycle accident. A car hit her, so absolutely tragic. A brilliant, kind person who the world lost too early. Just to keep going on Joy a little bit, we're going to talk about the Amazon letter, which many of you have read, that original 1997 letter to shareholders, which she wrote with Jeff.
Ben：众所周知，我们现在用过去式谈论 Joy，因为她在 2013 年骑行时遭遇车祸不幸去世，实在悲痛。她才华横溢、善良温暖，却过早离开了人世。继续说 Joy——我们要谈到许多人读过的亚马逊 1997 年致股东信，那封信是她与 Jeff 共同撰写的。
Of course, as we talk about Amazon, really the playbook of how they got big, we'll talk a lot about them reinvesting every single dollar of profit they had to plow it back in to grow the business. That is, of course, attributable to Jeff, but is in large part of Joy Covey invention, too. She was really the co-architect of that strategy.
当然，在讨论亚马逊做大的“剧本”时，必然要提到他们把每一美元利润都再度投入，用于扩张业务。这固然要归功于 Jeff，但在很大程度上也源于 Joy Covey；她确实是该战略的共同设计者。
David: She spent a lot of time with Brad as he was writing The Everything Store. She wrote him this email right before she had the accident and tragically passed away. Brad publishes the whole thing at the end of the book, and I'll just quote from it here.
David：在 Brad 撰写《一网打尽》期间，她与他长谈良久。就在事故前，她还给 Brad 写了一封邮件；Brad 把全文刊载在书末。我在此引用一段。
Joyce telling Brad, "I think about the early days and the level of clarity, vision, potential, and values that Jeff brought. Then I look at Amazon today," this was in 2013, "and reflect on some conversations I have had with him in the intervening years. It is easy to draw a straight line from the vision he had back then to the Amazon of today. There were a few little wobbles and detours in places, but really I don't know any other company that has created such a juggernaut that is so consistent with the original ideas of the founder. It's almost like he fired an arrow and then followed that arc. I think Jeff is one of the most capable and effective founders ever, and I think the Amazon Juggernaut is still in its early stages."
Joyce 写给 Brad 的信中说：“我回想早期，Jeff 所呈现出的清晰度、愿景、潜力与价值观；再看看今天的亚马逊”（指 2013 年），“并回想这些年与他的一些对话。你可以轻易把当年的愿景与今日的亚马逊连成直线。虽然过程中有些许波折与迂回，但我想不出还有哪家公司能如此忠实于创始人的最初理念，却又成长为如此庞大的巨兽。那感觉就像他射出一支箭，然后自己沿着箭的轨迹前进。我认为 Jeff 是史上最有能力、最高效的创始人之一，而亚马逊这头巨兽仍处在早期阶段。”
Ben: Which she would have been right about in 2013.
Ben：她在 2013 年说这话是正确的。
David: Oh, my God. We're not going to get to 2013 in this episode, but that was a crazy thing to say in 2013. Amazon was a \$120 billion market cap company when she said that. Not many people would have said that.
David：我的天哪。我们这一集还不会讲到 2013 年，但在 2013 年说那番话真是大胆。当时亚马逊市值已达 1200 亿美元，没多少人会那样说。
Ben: Amazon is just this incredible Rorschach test. There is a way to look at it where he shot an arrow and then followed the arrow straight. There's another way to look at it, which is they tried way more things that did not work than ones that did but were unbelievable at learning from the mistakes and quickly following them.
Ben：亚马逊简直是一项惊人的罗夏墨迹测试。有人认为它像射出一支箭后一路追随箭轨；也有人认为，他们失败的尝试远多于成功的，但能从错误中不可思议地迅速学习并立即调整。
The only thing that Amazon launched that had perfect product/market fit right away was amazon.com. It was the original idea, and then everything else was a brute force algorithm for finding your way through a maze, where it's just like, try this pathway, oh, crap, nope. backup, backup, backup, backup, refine, turn. The Amazon brute forced their way to success a lot and just finding out where all the doors were by trying all of them.
亚马逊唯一一次一开始就拥有完美产品/市场契合度的推出是 amazon.com，也就是最初的构想；其余的一切都像用蛮力算法在迷宫里摸路：试这条通道——糟糕，不行——后退、后退、后退、后退，微调然后转弯。亚马逊靠这种蛮力多次闯出成功，通过把所有门都试一遍来找到正确入口。
David: Yup. That is a great way to put it.
David：没错，说得太好了。
Ben: It is worth highlighting at this period of time, this 94-97, this pre going public time. Even though they had the imprimatur, as you put it, David, of Kleiner Perkins, even though they were located in Seattle near Microsoft, even though they had this product/market fit and unbelievable 15X year over year growth in revenue dollars, not like usage revenue, and customer retention was increasing like every single metric of the business was like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, the Internet is going crazy.
Ben：值得强调的是，在 94-97 年，也就是上市之前的这段时期。尽管他们得到了 Kleiner Perkins 的“印记”，尽管公司位于西雅图紧邻微软，尽管他们已有产品/市场契合度且营收同比增长 15 倍（是真金白银的营收，不是使用量），客户留存率也在攀升，业务每一项指标都在疯狂暴涨，所有人都在惊呼：“天哪，互联网要起飞了。”
A bookstore actually doesn't look like an interesting thing on the Internet to most engineers. They actually had a recruiting problem, where talented engineers who were like, oh, my God, this is a really interesting next generation technology that I want to build on, are much more interested in working at other companies who are building web applications. Things like search engines. Even things like you mentioned, eBay, that we'll get to here in a second. In many ways, that’s a much harder computational problem of building a good experience and back-end system for facilitating a real time auction.
然而，对大多数工程师而言，网上书店并不是什么吸引人的互联网项目。他们确实面临招聘难题——优秀工程师更愿意去那些开发 Web 应用的公司，如搜索引擎，甚至像你提到的 eBay（我们马上就会谈到）。在很多方面，为实时拍卖打造优质体验和后台系统是更复杂的计算难题。
David: Marketplace, yeah.
David：是啊，市场平台。
Ben: And countdowns. The online bookstore thing seems boring, so it's remarkably hard for them to recruit.
Ben：还有倒计时机制。网上书店听起来无聊，因此他们招人异常困难。
David: There are a couple of great Eric Schmidt quotes in The Everything Store. Eric Schmidt, of course, the former CEO of Google. This is so good. They're begrudging backhanded compliments to Amazon and Jeff, but one of them is talking about AWS. It was like, oh, the book guys figured out computer science. Of course, we're telling this story like, Jeff freaking new computer science back in the...
David：《一网打尽》里有几句 Eric Schmidt 的精彩评论。Eric Schmidt 是谷歌前 CEO。这些话带着点咬牙切齿的恭维，其中一句谈到 AWS：“哦，这帮卖书的家伙居然搞懂了计算机科学。”当然，我们讲这段历史时得说，Jeff 当年就对计算机科学了如指掌……
Ben: And he was fighting that narrative from day one. He wanted it to be a technology company. Everyone was like, you're a retailer, and even one click down, you're a book retailer. He's like, we are a technology company, and he willed them being a technology company into existence. I don't think anybody now is like, oh, they're a retailer or oh, they are any specific category of retailer. They're like, yeah, they're a dominant technology firm.
Ben：他从第一天起就在对抗这种叙事。他要把公司定位为科技企业，而大家都说你是零售商，甚至进一步说你是图书零售商。他说：“我们是科技公司”，并凭借意志把它变成了科技公司。我想如今没人再说他们是零售商或某种细分零售商了；大家都会说，他们是一家主导性的科技公司。
David: Now he probably wishes that people were like, oh, don't worry about Amazon.
David：现在他大概希望人们会说：“哦，别担心亚马逊。”
Okay, back to the story. Joy joins right at the end of 1996, right after the Kleiner round. Jeff, definitely because he wanted to do it and is consistent with get big fast, maybe it was also this test for his new high potential CFO, like, I'm going to see what she's really made of. He's like, we're going to go public now.
好，我们回到正题。Joy 在 1996 年底、紧接着 Kleiner 轮融资后加入。Jeff 这样做显然出于他本人的意愿，也符合 “Get Big Fast” 的理念；或许这也是他想考验这位潜力巨大的新 CFO 的办法，看看她到底有几分本事。他说：“我们现在就要上市。”
Tom talked about this, too, in our interview with him. Part of it was when the capital markets were opened. The revenue growth was insane, the dot-com mania is just starting to heat up. strength leads to strength, and all of that. Jeff also thought that it would be a great marketing event for the company, and he was totally right. The amount of coverage they got in mainstream media.
Tom 在采访里也谈到过这一点。原因之一是当时资本市场窗口正好打开，公司营收增速疯狂，互联网热潮刚刚升温，强者恒强。Jeff 还认为上市将成为一次极佳的市场宣传机会，而事实也证明他完全正确——主流媒体给予了大量报道。
Even though John Doerr joined the board, an average person didn't give a crap about John Doerr, venture capital, or startups. It was not like today. John Doerr was a legend in Silicon Valley, but that was a very small place. Amazon needed to appeal to millions of people of all types all over the country and the world.
尽管 John Doerr 加入了董事会，但普通大众并不关心 John Doerr、风投或初创企业——那时候跟今天完全不同。John Doerr 在硅谷是传奇人物，但硅谷只是个很小的圈子。Amazon 需要吸引全国乃至全球千百万各类用户的关注。
Ben: And it turned out they did get something right in this notion of longtail books. There are very few people who want one particular book in the longtail, but most people want something in the longtail. Their product/market fit originally came from, we can get you special order books quickly and easily. Your user experience and buying them will be basically the same as buying a Harry Potter book, a best seller.
Ben：事实证明，他们在长尾图书这一理念上确实抓对了。虽然很少有人会只想要长尾里的某一本书，但大多数人都想要长尾里的某些书。他们最初的产品/市场契合点就在于：我们能快速、轻松地帮你订到冷门书，而你的购买体验和买《哈利·波特》这种畅销书几乎一样。
David: This gets alluded to in The Everything Store. A function of amazon.com that was appealing to mainstream America was buying stuff that you wouldn't necessarily want to walk into a store and order yourself in person from your neighbors.
David：《一网打尽》也提到过，amazon.com 对美国大众颇具吸引力的一点在于：你可以买一些并不想当着邻居面走进商店亲自下单的东西。
Ben: Like every new technology.
Ben：和所有新技术一样。
David: Like every new technology, let's just leave it at that.
David：和所有新技术一样，就先说到这儿吧。
Ben: Yes. The other thing to point out about them identifying books is there's this seminal Wall Street Journal piece about the company in 1996 that drives a lot of traffic. It's like the Yahoo event on steroids. They have this really interesting stat, which is in 1995, the web attracted more than 100,000 retailers, which I would not have guessed that happened until Shopify. Apparently, that happened in 1995.
Ben：是的。关于他们选择图书这一点，还得提到《华尔街日报》在 1996 年刊出的一篇重量级文章，为公司带来了大量流量，堪称 “雅虎事件” 的升级版。文中有个有趣数据：1995 年，网页吸引了超过 10 万家零售商——要不是看到这统计，我还以为得等到 Shopify 时代才会发生。显然，1995 年就实现了。
With some spending more than a million dollars each on eye-popping sites, yet worldwide retail sales on the web amounted to just \$324 million last year, which averages out to slightly more than 3000 in sales per retailer. Amazon nailed a category and an operational model, where they were able to be the one dominant ecommerce site. This predates pets.com, this predates cosmo.com, eBay. They were almost the earliest. They were of the first wave and just nailed it on a bunch of vectors.
有些商家在炫目的网页上投入超过百万美元，可全球网络零售额当年也只有 3.24 亿美元，平均每家零售商的销售额仅略高于 3000 美元。Amazon 精准选定了品类和运营模式，一跃成为唯一的电商巨头。这比 pets.com、cosmo.com、eBay 等都更早——他们几乎是第一波浪潮中的公司，并在多个维度上都踩准了节奏。
There's this great quote from Jane Slade, "There were no grown ups that could help us." Every time they would bring in a vendor for customer service software, database software, or anything, the implementation reps will just look at all the numbers and be like, what? Our software actually can't help you. They had to build a lot of this stuff in-house because they were basically the only successful, big retailer of this scale using the Internet.
Jane Slade 有句著名的话：“没有大人能帮我们。”他们每次请客服软件、数据库软件等供应商来实施时，实施顾问看到那些数据都会惊叹：“啥？我们的软件根本帮不上你们。”结果，他们不得不把很多系统自行开发，因为在当时，他们基本上是唯一一家成功且规模庞大的互联网零售商。
David: Like we learned on the Walmart episode. If the infrastructure off the shelf for what you need to do to make your beer doesn't exist and you want to make your beer taste better, you have to build your own infrastructure.
David：正如我们在沃尔玛那一期里了解到的。如果市面上没有现成的基础设施来满足你的酿酒需求，而你又想让啤酒更好喝，那就必须自己动手打造基础设施。
Ben: For sure.
Ben：当然。
David: Okay, Joy joins at the end of 1996. Jeff's like, we're going to go public now. In the spring of 1997, they filed to go public with lead underwriters, not Goldman Sachs, not Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and some might say it's uber bankers, Frank Quattrone and Bill Gurley leading the IPO. It's so cool.
David：好了，Joy 在 1996 年底加入。Jeff 说：“我们现在就要上市。”1997 年春，他们提交了上市申请，首席承销商不是高盛，也不是摩根士丹利，而是德意志银行；有人甚至说是超级银行家 Frank Quattrone 和 Bill Gurley 主导了这次 IPO。太酷了。
We asked Tom on the Amazon IPO episode that we did, why did Jeff and Amazon choose Deutsche Bank over the gold plated, never get fired for choosing Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley? Tom's answer was, well, if you knew Quattrone and Gurley, you would know that the answer is Quattrone and Gurley.
我们在那期亚马逊 IPO 的节目里问过 Tom：为什么 Jeff 和亚马逊选择德意志银行，而不是金光闪闪、选了就永远不会被炒的高盛或摩根士丹利？Tom 的回答是：如果你认识 Quattrone 和 Gurley，你就知道答案就是 Quattrone 和 Gurley。
Ben: Yes. Of course, Frank Quattrone has gone on to do a bunch of very impressive deals at Catalyst and Bill Gurley became future Bill Gurley. Yes, but this is in his banking career.
Ben：没错。当然，Frank Quattrone 之后在 Catalyst 做成了许多令人印象深刻的交易，而 Bill Gurley 也成为后来大名鼎鼎的 Bill Gurley。不过那时他还处于投行生涯阶段。
David: Now, when they filed to go public but before they actually did go public, just like Jeff was envisioning, this attracts a lot of attention. That's mostly a good thing.
David：当他们提交上市申请但尚未真正上市时，就像 Jeff 预想的那样，这吸引了大量关注。这大多是件好事。
Ben: He's correct on the marketing exercise. This is a big way to legitimize them to consumers. It enables many more people to feel comfortable typing their credit card on the Internet, things like that.
Ben：他的市场营销思路非常正确。这是向消费者证明他们身份的重要方式，让更多人放心在网上输入信用卡之类的信息。
David: Everything like that. Also, this other thing, ultimately, is a good thing, too, but not at the time. It attracts the attention of the Riggio brothers, who are the founders and CEO and chairman of Barnes & Noble. They knew about Amazon, but they're like, whatever, Amazon, Internet, we don't need to worry about that. All of a sudden, this little company in Seattle has filed to go public.
David：诸如此类的所有事情。还有另一件事，从长远看同样是好事，但在当时却并非如此：它引起了 Riggio 兄弟——Barnes & Noble 的创始人兼 CEO、董事长——的注意。他们之前知道亚马逊，但态度是：随便啦，亚马逊、互联网，我们不用担心。突然间，这家位于西雅图的小公司递交了上市申请。
Ben: And is claiming to be earth's largest bookstore.
Ben：而且自称是地球上最大的书店。
David: And they’re like, that doesn't sound right to us. I just think of Borders. Barnes & Noble is great, but Borders was the big thing. But now we know from the Walmart episode, Borders was out of the game. Kmart had acquired them, the founders had moved on, Louis Borders had moved on to start a Webvan. It's so great.
David：他们的反应是：这听起来不对劲。我首先想到的是 Borders。Barnes & Noble 很棒，但当时真正的大咖是 Borders。不过我们从沃尔玛那一期知道，Borders 已经退出游戏。Kmart 收购了他们，创始人们离开了，Louis Borders 则去创办 Webvan。太有意思了。
Ben: Isn't that crazy?
Ben：是不是很疯狂？
David: Barnes & Noble was the juggernaut. The Riggio brothers, when Amazon filed for an IPO, fly out to Seattle. They scheduled a dinner with Jeff. Jeff brings along Tom. Tom, in addition to being just a wonderful human, great advice, mentor to both of us, he was a lawyer earlier in his career. He was like a very high profile corporate lawyer. He's got the right set of skills to bring to this dinner.
David：Barnes & Noble 才是真正的巨头。亚马逊提交 IPO 申请后，Riggio 兄弟飞到西雅图。他们约了 Jeff 共进晚餐。Jeff 带上了 Tom。Tom 不仅为人极好、建议到位、也是我们俩的导师，他早年还是一名律师——而且是声名显赫的企业律师。他正好具备这顿饭需要的技能组合。
The Riggio brothers, their father, was a New York City cab driver and a semi-professional boxer who twice defeated Rocky Graziano. Len, the lead of the two of them, I think the older brother, technically did go to NYU. Let's just say they went to the University of Hard Knocks. Their way of doing business is very different.
Riggio 兄弟的父亲曾是纽约市的出租车司机，也是一名半职业拳击手，两次击败过 Rocky Graziano。两兄弟中的长兄 Len 理论上在纽约大学读过书。可以说，他们上的是“社会大学”。他们的做生意方式截然不同。
Also, we got to talk about this. I don't think you have any idea. Do you know, just like we talked about last episode about the whole crazy Borders, Kmart, Webvan, Kiva came out of Webvan, which of course, Amazon acquired and this...
还有，我们得聊聊这件事。我猜你一点儿都不知道。你知道吗，就像上一集我们聊到的那堆疯狂的 Borders、Kmart、Webvan，Kiva 其实出自 Webvan——当然后来被亚马逊收购——以及这……
Ben: Right, Kiva Robotics.
Ben：对，Kiva Robotics。
David: Yup, incredible history. Do you know what the Riggio brothers spun out of Barnes & Noble? I'm not talking about the Nook or barnesandnoble.com. You're never going to guess this.
David：嗯，令人难以置信的历史。你知道 Riggio 兄弟从 Barnes & Noble 分拆出了什么吗？我不是指 Nook 或 barnesandnoble.com。你绝对猜不到。
Ben: No.
Ben：不。
David: It actually makes sense. GameStop.
David：这其实说得通。GameStop。
Ben: No way. Really?
Ben：不可能。真的？
David: I'm dead serious. It was actually Software Etc.
David：我完全是认真的。其实是 Software Etc。
Ben: I got to look at the stock price of both of these.
Ben：我得看看这两家的股价。
David: Gamestop is the merger of Software Etc, which spun out of Barnes & Noble and Babbage's software. Remember Babbage's back in the day?
David：GameStop 是由 Software Etc（从 Barnes & Noble 剥离）与 Babbage's Software 合并而成。还记得当年的 Babbage's 吗？
Ben: Sounds vaguely familiar.
Ben：听着有点印象。
David: They were a video game and computer software retailer. Yeah, GameStop, freaking GameStop.
David：那是一家电子游戏和电脑软件零售商。没错，就是 GameStop，那个 GameStop。
Ben: Oh, my God. Okay, what do you think Barnes & Noble Education Inc is from a market cap perspective today?
Ben：我的天。好吧，你猜 Barnes & Noble Education Inc 目前的市值是多少？
David: Maybe \$500 million?
David：也许 5 亿美元？
Ben: \$143 million.
Ben：1.43 亿美元。
David: Okay, what's GameStop today?
David：好吧，那 GameStop 现在是多少？
Ben: \$10.3 billion.
Ben：103 亿美元。
David: Yeah.
David：嗯。
Ben: Built purely from an intrinsic value model that I have here in front of me.
Ben：完全基于我眼前的内在价值模型得出的。
David: Stonks, baby.
David：Stonks，伙计。
Ben: I assume Barnes & Noble Education Inc is Barnes & Noble, the big company. BNED is their ticker.
Ben：我猜 Barnes & Noble Education Inc 就是 Barnes & Noble 的主体公司，代码 BNED。
David: I think there might have been a bankruptcy there. I'm not sure.
David：我觉得它可能破产过，但不确定。
Ben: Yeah, that makes sense. I don't think you end up cratering this far without some recapitalisation or something happening.
Ben：是的，说得通。如果没有重组之类的事情，不会跌得这么惨。
David: Speaking of Barnes & Noble cratering, this dinner didn't help. These two tough New York guys, they're like, where you came from, business of nerd out in Seattle? Go listen to our episode with Tom. His personality is not blustery, brash New Yorker. I'm sure the Riggios came to this dinner and they were just like, we're going to freaking crush these geeks. Oh, boy, did they not? So they go home after the dinner.
David：说到 Barnes & Noble 的崩盘，那顿饭一点忙也没帮上。这两个纽约硬汉心想：你们这些西雅图书呆子搞什么生意？可以去听听我们和 Tom 的那期节目，他可不是夸夸其谈的咄咄逼人纽约客。我敢肯定 Riggio 兄弟赴宴时的想法是：要把这些极客狠狠碾碎。结果呢？并没有。他们吃完就灰溜溜地回家了。
Ben: The dinner was like a soft we-want-to-buy-you, or was the dinner a soft we're-going-to-run-you-out-of-business?
Ben：那顿饭是在委婉地表达“我们想收购你们”，还是委婉地表示“我们要把你们挤出市场”？
David: It was both. It was, hey, we've heard about you. You know we're Barnes & Noble, right? We've been thinking about doing the Internet. We're going to do it. We could buy you and you could be our internet thing or we could crush you. I think that's how the dinner went.
David：两者都是。他们大概这样说：“嘿，我们听说过你们。你知道我们是 Barnes & Noble 吧？我们一直在考虑做互联网业务，现在要开始行动了。我们可以收购你，让你成为我们的线上部门，也可以碾压你们。”我想那顿饭的基调就是如此。
Ben: By the way, the 1996 Wall Street Journal piece that did wake the world up to this, was titled Wall Street Whiz Finds Niche Selling Books on the Internet. I always think back on the Wall Street whiz for Jeff Bezos.
Ben：顺便说一句，让世人警醒的 1996 年那篇《华尔街日报》文章标题是《华尔街奇才在互联网上卖书找到利基》。我总会想到 Jeff Bezos 的“华尔街奇才”称号。
David: Actually, what the Riggio brothers are saying, this is what everybody thinks when Amazon does go public. It's not a great IPO. On May 15th 1997, they raised \$54 million at a \$438 million market cap, and then they trade down on day one.
David：事实上，Riggio 兄弟的说法正是亚马逊上市时大家的普遍看法——这并不是一场漂亮的 IPO。1997 年 5 月 15 日，他们以 4.38 亿美元市值募资 5400 万美元，但首日股价就下跌。
Ben: It was like \$17 a share that they went public at, and then I think they traded down on day one. They would eventually trade all the way down to like \$5 a share in the dot-com bust.
Ben：发行价大约是每股 17 美元，我记得上市当天就跌了。互联网泡沫破裂时，他们的股价最终一路跌到 5 美元左右。
David: It would rock it back up. They went through the wave and then the fall. The head of Forrester Research, the big research firm, write a note about Amazon and the industry.
David：随后股价又飙升，再经历涨潮与下跌。大型研究公司 Forrester Research 的负责人还写了一份关于亚马逊及行业的报告。
Ben: Called Amazon.toast.
Ben：标题叫做“Amazon.toast”。
David: They titled it Amazon.toast, and it's not because of eBay, it's not because of blah-blah-blah, it's not because of the dot-com crash. It's because they think Barnes & Noble is going to kill them. Oh, boy.
David：他们将报告命名为“Amazon.toast”，原因既不是 eBay，也不是别的什么，更不是互联网泡沫破裂，而是他们认为 Barnes & Noble 会干掉亚马逊。天哪。
Ben: In case there was any confusion.
Ben：以免有人搞不清楚。
David: In case there's any confusion about what the intent of this is, and that they're going to kill Amazon with the new barnesandnoble.com. The other thing they do is sue Amazon. They conveniently for them (or inconveniently for Amazon) announced the lawsuit three days before the IPO prices, hence the Amazon.toast memo. They sued them for, Ben, what you said of Amazon claiming to have earth's largest selection of books. I think the suit is like, well, you don't have a store, you can't go select the books.
David：如果还有人不明白，这个代号就表明他们打算用新版 barnesandnoble.com 干掉亚马逊。他们做的另一件事是起诉亚马逊。他们很“巧合”地在 IPO 定价前三天宣布诉讼（对亚马逊来说则非常不巧），于是就有了“Amazon.toast”备忘录。他们起诉的理由正如你所说——亚马逊宣称拥有“地球上最大全书目”。大意是：你们没有实体店，顾客根本选不到那些书。
Ben: That's so pedantic and annoying.
Ben：这也太迂腐、太烦人了。
David: Like I said, the IPO happens. It's not great. The stock trades off. But a couple of weeks later, Amazon does their first quarterly financial reporting as a public company. They report Q2 1997 earnings of \$28 million. Remember, they only did \$15.7 million the whole year before. They did \$28 million that quarter.
David：正如我说的，IPO 完成了，但表现一般，股价走低。不过几周后，亚马逊作为上市公司首次发布季度财报：1997 年第二季度收入 2800 万美元。要知道他们前一年全年才做了 1570 万美元，该季度就达到 2800 万。
Ben: Unbelievable.
Ben：难以置信。
David: Wall Street reverses course, the stock takes off. For the full year of 1997, they do just a hair under \$150 million in revenue. That's 10X the year before.
David：华尔街态度随之逆转，股价腾飞。1997 全年收入接近 1.5 亿美元，是前一年的 10 倍。
Ben: Oh, my God. 10X-ing on that base, especially right when you're going public. This is the stuff that makes investors go nuts. You can see how this very quickly becomes a darling stock.
Ben：我的天啊，在那个基数上实现 10 倍增长，尤其就在上市当年，这简直让投资者疯狂。难怪亚马逊瞬间成了市场宠儿。
David: When I said that Barnes & Noble was going to launch Book Predator and beat Amazon, I was like, okay. What do I mean by okay? This starts a pattern. It would be hubris of Jeff, Joy, MacKenzie and everybody, and Shel at Amazon to just say okay and not do anything about it. But this is Amazon, and they know this is a problem. They know they can beat them, but they have to go beat them, and they know what the path is. Jeff, Made in America is like his Bible. Yes. He knows the Walmart story.
David：当我说 Barnes & Noble 要推出 “Book Predator” 来击败亚马逊时，我的反应是“好吧”。“好吧”是什么意思？这开启了一种模式。若 Jeff、Joy、MacKenzie 以及 Shel 等人在亚马逊只是说句“好吧”却无动于衷，那就太自负了。但这毕竟是亚马逊，他们知道这是个问题，也知道自己能赢，但必须真正去赢，而且清楚该走的路径。对 Jeff 来说，《Made in America》就像他的圣经。他非常熟悉沃尔玛的故事。
Ben: By the way, listeners, we weren't going to do the Walmart story. We actually were going to do this as the first episode of the season. We got into researching Amazon and realized how much Jeff respected and borrowed from the Walmart strategy. We're like, I guess we got to tell that story first.
Ben：顺便说一下，听众们，我们本来不打算讲沃尔玛的故事，原计划把这一集作为本季的首期。但在研究亚马逊时，我们发现 Jeff 对沃尔玛战略的尊重与借鉴之深，于是想：看来得先把沃尔玛的故事说清楚。
David: There are a couple moments coming up where he interacts with Walmart. He brings along his copy, his scrawled in notes, marked up, and dog-eared copy of Made in America, to show these people who we're going to talk about. They're like, no, Sam is my hero. I'm not just some geek. I understand what we're doing here.
David：接下来他会几次与沃尔玛的人打交道。他带着那本写满批注、折了书角的《Made in America》，给即将见面的人看，意思是：山姆是我的偶像，我不仅是个极客，我明白我们在做什么。
Jeff, because of this, because he's read Made in America, he knows that he can be Barnes & Noble, but the way to do it is through distribution by building native distribution logistics supply chain for ecommerce not for physical stores. It is different enough that just like Walmart could build native distribution for their network of Walmart Supercenters. That was very different than the Kmart coming out of Kresge distribution that they were piggybacking off of.
正因为读过《Made in America》，Jeff 清楚要战胜 Barnes & Noble 的方法在于物流——为电商而非实体门店构建原生配送供应链。这与沃尔玛为其超级中心网络打造自有配送体系类似，与依赖 Kresge 旧网的 Kmart 完全不同。
Jeff's like, we can do the same thing here, but we have to do it. I know we need to do it, but I can't really do it, but I know some people who can.
Jeff 想的是：我们也能做到，而且必须做到。我知道这是必需，但我自己不一定能亲手完成，不过我认识可以做到的人。
In early 1997, he and Joy, together—I think, according to Brad, it was very much a joint effort of both of them, probably John Doerr was involved too—start traveling to Bentonville on recruiting trips.
1997 年初，他和 Joy——据 Brad 说，这是两人的共同努力，可能 John Doerr 也参与其中——开始前往本顿维尔四处招募。
Ben: Canvas and poach.
Ben：地毯式挖人。
David: It was canvas and poach. They zero in on a target.
David：确实是地毯搜罗再挖角。他们锁定了目标。
Ben: Rick Dalzel?
Ben：Rick Dalzel？
David: Their number one draft pick, Rick Dalzel.
David：他们的头号人选，Rick Dalzel。
Ben: I think they had been courting him before the IPO, but he didn't end up joining till after.
Ben：我记得他们在 IPO 之前就开始游说他，但他最终是在之后才加入的。
David: Yes, it was like a year-long recruitment process to get Rick to join. At one point, he actually commits to joining and then backs out. He was really conflicted about this.
David：没错，为邀 Rick 加盟，他们整整招募了一年。有段时间他答应了又反悔，对此非常纠结。
Ben: He's super plugged in in the Bentonville community. He's an important part of Walmart.
Ben：他在本顿维尔社区根基深厚，是沃尔玛的重要成员。
David: Not only was he deeply embedded in the Bentonville community, Rick was technically the number two person in IT at Walmart. As we talked about last episode, you naively might hear that sentence and be like, number two person in IT at Walmart, who's that? No, Walmart was an amazing technology company and especially distribution supply chain logistics. They're the best in the world.
David：Rick 不仅扎根本顿维尔社区，严格来说还是沃尔玛 IT 部门的二号人物。正如我们上一集所说，也许有人会天真地想：“沃尔玛 IT 二把手是谁呀？”但实际上，沃尔玛是一家卓越的科技公司，尤其在配送供应链领域堪称世界顶尖。
Ben: At this point, they had been the largest computerized logistics and distribution company in the world, and operated their own private satellite network to communicate amongst all their stores, and had been doing that for a dozen years. A very impressive back-end technology.
Ben：此时，他们已经是全球最大的计算机化物流与配送公司，并自建私有卫星网络在所有门店之间通讯，并且这一体系已运行十多年。后台技术令人惊叹。
David: They were the first big corporation in America to adopt technology and say, that is going to be the heart of what we do. Rick was the lieutenant who implemented it all. He was the hands-on guy doing it. Jeff, Joy, John, and the board, they were like, if we can get this guy, he's the key.
David：他们是美国首批将科技视作企业核心的大公司。Rick 就是落实这一切的二把手，亲自操刀。Jeff、Joy、John 以及董事会都认为，只要招到他，就抓住了关键。
They go through this year-long recruitment process. Like I said, at one point, they convinced Rick to join, and then he called him back and he's like, no, I'm not going to do it. He calls him back because Lee Scott, Walmart's CEO, the third CEO of Walmart in history, takes Rick aside when he hears this. He's like, Rick, you've got a future here. You could be a future CEO of Walmart. You're making a big mistake.
他们为此展开了一年的招募流程。如前所述，有段时间他们说服了 Rick，但他随后又反悔，原因是沃尔玛第三任 CEO Lee Scott 得知消息后把 Rick 拉到一边，对他说：“Rick，你在这里前途无量，未来可能接任沃尔玛 CEO。你若跳槽就是大错特错。”
He says, you're making a big mistake. He says, which he's totally right on, look, we've studied these Amazon guys, Walmart is no Barnes & Noble. They know what's going on. He's like, we know how they're doing distribution over there. They're going to hit a brick wall when they get to any kind of scale, which clearly they're going to get to this year. It's going to all fall apart over there. You know that, you know how this works. You would be committing career suicide if you go take this job.
他还说：“你会犯大错。我们研究过那些亚马逊家伙，沃尔玛可不是 Barnes & Noble。我们清楚他们的配送体系，一旦规模上去肯定撞墙，今年就会显现，你也懂其中道理。跳槽等于职业自杀。”
Ben: That was the risk. It paid off in a huge, huge way, largely because Rick was very successful at doing what needed to be done, but that is for sure the risk of making the jump.
Ben：风险确实存在，但回报巨大，主要因为 Rick 在该做的事上大获成功。不过，这正是跳槽的风险所在。
David: Eventually, Amazon, Jeff, Joy, and everybody, convinced Rick to make the jump. Right before the IPO in early 1997, he joins. Jeff knows they're going to win at this point.
David：最终，亚马逊这边——Jeff、Joy 等人——成功说服 Rick 跳槽。他在 1997 年初 IPO 前夕加入，Jeff 这时已确信他们会赢。
Brad writes in The Everything Store, "Bezos had predicted that Barnes and Noble would have trouble seriously competing online, and in the end, he was right. The Riggios were reluctant to lose money on a relatively small part of their business, and didn't want to put their most resourceful employees behind an effort that would siphon sales away from the more profitable stores.
Brad 在《一网打尽》中写道：“Bezos 早就预见到 Barnes & Noble 难以在网上认真竞争，最后证明他是对的。Riggio 兄弟不愿意让公司在相对小的业务板块上亏钱，也不想把最能干的员工调去做一项可能蚕食高利润门店销售的业务。
On top of that, their company's distribution operation was well entrenched and geared towards servicing physical stores by sending out large shipments of books to a certain number of locations. The shift from that to mailing small orders to individual customers was long, painful, and full of customer service errors. For Amazon, that was just daily business."
更糟的是，他们的配送体系早已深度绑定实体店模式——大批量发货到固定门店。要转型为给个人顾客寄送小批订单，过程漫长、痛苦且充满客服错误；而对亚马逊来说，这正是日常业务。”
There we go. Rick, he alone joining is huge. He also airlifts about a dozen executives out of Walmart to come join him. When he finally does officially accept the offer, Walmart's like, you're dead to us. He gets escorted out of his office by security and the whole thing, which in retrospect was a mistake by Walmart, because that just makes everybody more curious inside Walmart. Like, dang, Rick, he could have been CEO at this place and he just went to go and be head of IT at this company. I better go find out what they're doing, I want to follow Rick.
就这样，Rick 的加入本身就非同小可，他还从沃尔玛空降了十来位高管随他而来。当他正式签约时，沃尔玛态度强硬，直接让保安护送他离开办公室。事后看来，这是沃尔玛的失策——这只会让内部员工更好奇：天啊，Rick 有望当 CEO 却跑去当那家公司的 IT 主管，我得去看看他们在搞什么，跟着 Rick 可能才有前途。
Ben: At this point, Amazon is well underway from transforming a culture of misfits and geeks who want to be able to ship rare books online to MBA city. This is where they're getting experienced executives. They're really turning on the recruiting engine from top business schools and Walmart.
Ben：此时的亚马逊正从“怪咖极客文化”（希望在线寄 rare 书籍）转型为 “MBA 大本营”。他们开始大举招募经验丰富的高管，重点瞄准商学院和沃尔玛人才。
There are two different ways to look at Amazon. I think on this show, we focus a lot on the business side of it, where there's an unbelievable cash flow dynamic that we'll talk about, there's the whole get the investors you asked for, there's the constant reinvesting in growth.
看待亚马逊有两种截然不同的视角。在本节目里，我们更多聚焦商业层面：令人难以置信的现金流动态、精准匹配的投资者，以及持续不断的再投资增长策略。
But up to this point, when you listen to these interviews with Shel Kaphan, or reading all the stories on Greg Linden's blog who was an early engineer, or all the interviews Glenn Fleishman has given, it really is about adapting technologies that were not really ready yet being the first and biggest and being with misfits on the Internet.
但如果听 Shel Kaphan 的访谈，或阅读早期工程师 Greg Linden 的博客文章、Glenn Fleishman 的采访，你会发现他们讨论的核心在于：如何把尚未成熟的技术加以改造，成为互联网上首个也是最大的玩家，并与一群“异类”并肩作战。
There was a big exiting of the 1994–1997 crowd in 1998 and 1999 as Dalzel, his people, and all the MBAs come in to say, okay, it's working and it's not just about this quest for odd books.
1998～1999 年间，1994–1997 早期那批人大量离开；Dalzel 及其团队与大批 MBA 加入，并宣告：好，模式跑通了，业务早已不止是寻找冷门图书这么简单。
David: Yup. I actually would put Dalzel on the Walmart crew. I think there are three key categories of people that were necessary for Amazon to succeed. There were the technologists—Shel in the early days and the freaks and geeks—but then that evolved into a world class technology organization over time.
大卫：没错。我其实会把 Dalzel 归类为沃尔玛派系。我认为亚马逊要取得成功需要三类关键人物：一是技术人员——早期的 Shel 以及那些怪才极客——随后逐步发展成世界级的技术团队。
There were the MBAs that we're going to talk about in a minute. The Andy Jassys, the Jason Kilars, the Harrison Millers, the Jeff Blackburns. And then there were the Walmart people, the Rick Dalzel. Jeff, he didn't come from Walmart, but he's very much cut from that cloth, the back-end retail logistics distribution people. And you really need a world class, all three of those to make this work.
第二类是 MBA 管理人才，我们马上会谈到：像 Andy Jassy、Jason Kilar、Harrison Miller、Jeff Blackburn 这样的人。第三类就是沃尔玛系，例如 Rick Dalzel。Jeff 虽不出自沃尔玛，但他本质上属于这一路——专攻零售后端物流配送。要让这件事成功，三类世界级人才缺一不可。
On the distribution and supply chain front, more than a dozen Walmart executives come over to Amazon. In late 1998, Walmart sues Amazon for trying to steal trade secrets. The case settles with no damages, but there was damage. It happened. That DNA came right out of Walmart and right into Amazon. To be fair, like we said, it's a different thing than the Walmart supply chain that they're building. It's the Amazon supply chain.
在配送和供应链方面，十几位沃尔玛高管跳槽到了亚马逊。1998 年底，沃尔玛起诉亚马逊窃取商业机密。案件虽以零赔偿和解，但影响已造成：沃尔玛的基因直接注入了亚马逊。公平地说，他们要打造的并非沃尔玛的供应链，而是亚马逊自己的供应链。
Ben: Which they didn't realize enough of that first. There were all sorts of false starts in Amazon getting good at distribution because even though they knew better, they were copying the Walmart playbook. They were doing the classic Amazon thing. They were bruteforcing their way through the maze, learning from mistakes, backing up, turning left, and going the other direction, but they needed to go bump into that wall to do it.
本：他们一开始并未充分意识到这一点。亚马逊在完善配送体系时经历了各种走弯路——尽管心知肚明，却仍照搬沃尔玛剧本，采用典型的“亚马逊式蛮力”在迷宫里闯：犯错、学习、后退、左转、换道——必须撞过那堵墙才能调整。
David: Yup. When Dalzel comes over and all the Walmart folks, they had the warehouse in Seattle. They said, no, no, no, you don't want a warehouse, you want a distribution center. Because a distribution center, that's the Walmart model. That's Walmart with the first distribution centers, you want something more sophisticated.
大卫：没错。Dalzel 他们一到，看到亚马逊在西雅图只有一个仓库，就说：不不不，你们需要的不是仓库，而是“配送中心”。配送中心才是沃尔玛模式——沃尔玛率先建造的那种，更为先进。
In 1998, they go from the one warehouse in Seattle to six distribution centers, the Seattle warehouse becomes one, Delaware, Nevada, Georgia, two in Kentucky. Do you notice they're going to all these states that are close to big population states, but not in the States?
1998 年，他们从西雅图单一仓库扩张到六个配送中心：西雅图一个，特拉华、内华达、乔治亚各一个，肯塔基两个。你注意到选址都靠近人口大州却避开州内吗？
Ben: Yes.
本：注意到了。
David: But then it actually was Wilke later who said, no, we don't want distribution centers, we want fulfillment centers. That's what Amazon is today. There is a fundamental difference of we're not distributing a bunch of goods to stores, we are fulfilling end-customer orders.
大卫：不过后来说“不，我们要的不是配送中心，而是履约中心”的是 Wilke。这就是今天的亚马逊。区别在于：我们不是把大量商品分发到门店，而是履行终端客户订单。
Ben: To end-customers, every single one uniquely, and we need to optimize them to make every single order happen for the very first time it's ever happened in an unpredictable way, predictable en masse, but not on an individual level.
本：面向终端客户，每一张订单都是独一无二的；我们必须优化流程，让首次出现的每个订单都能顺利完成——整体可预测，单笔却不可预测。
David: For years and years, nobody realized this. What Amazon is building up on this side of the business is an enormous, if not the largest part of their moat. Today, Amazon has 185 fulfillment centers around the world. They have 96 airplanes on their own airline. They have a maritime company. They have 200,000 delivery vans. They've got another 100,000 electric delivery vans on order.
大卫：多年里没人意识到这一点。亚马逊在这方面搭建的，其实是其护城河中巨大甚至最大的一环。如今亚马逊在全球拥有 185 座履约中心，自有航空机队 96 架飞机，配备海运公司，拥有 20 万辆配送货车，另有 10 万辆电动货车在订购中。
Ben: The company employs 1.6 million people, most of which do this.
本：公司雇员达 160 万，其中大多数从事这些工作。
David: Yes. Here's the moat. From the viewpoint of the customer, all that is free. Jeff obviously wasn't envisioning that specifically, but this is why they're going to beat Barnes & Noble, and this is why they're going to beat eBay, and this is eventually why they're going to beat Walmart in ecommerce.
大卫：没错，这就是护城河。对顾客而言，这一切都是免费的。Jeff 当初当然未必设想了所有细节，但正因如此，他们能击败 Barnes & Noble，能击败 eBay，最终也将在电商领域战胜沃尔玛。
Ben: Yeah. Tell us about eBay. If you were to pitch me on both of these businesses, put on my venture capitalist hat, and you told me that I can take this really asset-heavy inventory business with an unbelievable amount of capex that needs to be built out with all these fulfillment centers with Amazon, or I could run the high gross-margin asset-light business of eBay, 99 times out of 100 I want to invest in eBay. But Amazon dominated eBay, so how'd that play out?
Ben：好的，跟我们谈谈 eBay。如果你把这两家公司推销给我，让我戴上风投的帽子来看：一边是亚马逊这种资产极重、库存庞大、需要投入惊人资本开设履约中心的业务；一边是 eBay 这种毛利率高、资产轻的模式，一百次里有九十九次我会投 eBay。但最后亚马逊却战胜了 eBay，这是怎么发生的？
David: The competition with eBay, the Barnes & Noble thing. Yeah, that was the first battle that Amazon wins, but it was obvious they were going to win that. eBay was like, this is a real fight.
David：与 eBay 的竞争，与 Barnes & Noble 的那场较量不同。后者是亚马逊赢下的第一战，而且胜负一开始就很明显；但碰到 eBay，才算真正的硬仗。
At first, they're different. eBay is auctions, it's Beanie Babies, it's Pez dispensers, which by the way, that whole legend of Pierre started eBay so his wife could collect Pez dispensers. A PR person made that to humanize the story. That's not what happened.
一开始，两家公司大不相同。eBay 主打拍卖、卖泰迪豆豆娃、卖 Pez 迪士尼糖果机——顺便说一句，关于 “Pierre 创办 eBay 是为了让他妻子收集 Pez 糖果机” 的传说，其实是公关人员编的暖心故事，并非事实。
Ben: AuctionWeb, not eBay.
Ben：当时叫 AuctionWeb，不是 eBay。
David: As all this is happening, you mentioned the MBAs. Jeff and Amazon start hiring Andy Jassy, Jason Kilar, Victoria Pickett, Harrison Miller, Jeff Blackburn and blah-blah-blah. All these people who are coming in, all these MBAs, they're all tasked with adding a new category to Amazon.
David：与此同时，你提到那些 MBA。Jeff 和亚马逊开始招募 Andy Jassy、Jason Kilar、Victoria Pickett、Harrison Miller、Jeff Blackburn 等等。这些 MBA 们加入后，都被分派去为亚马逊新增一个品类。
Music and CDs, that's what Jassy does. Kilar does DVDs, Victoria does boxed software, Harrison Miller does toys, Chris Payne does electronics, Jeff Blackburn leads BD and starts buying all these other internet companies. Pretty quickly, Amazon and eBay are competing much more head to head than people originally thought.
Jassy 负责音乐和 CD，Kilar 做 DVD，Victoria 负责盒装软件，Harrison Miller 管玩具，Chris Payne 做电子产品，Jeff Blackburn 负责商务拓展并开始收购其他互联网公司。很快，亚马逊与 eBay 的竞争比人们原先想的更加针锋相对。
eBay started as AuctionWeb in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar. It didn't turn into a real venture-backed company and changed its name to eBay until 1997 after Amazon was already public. Of course, famously, Benchmark invests \$6.7 million in eBay in the fall of 1997.
eBay 最初由 Pierre Omidyar 于 1995 年创立，名为 AuctionWeb。直到 1997 年、亚马逊已经上市之后，它才真正拿到风投并更名为 eBay。众所周知，Benchmark 在 1997 年秋天向 eBay 投资了 670 万美元。
Ben: Producing one of the greatest venture investments of all time.
Ben：这成就了史上最成功的风险投资之一。
David: That was fall of 1997. I think they own 25% or something, a fair assumption. We'll go tell that whole history soon. eBay goes public in September of 1998 at a \$2 billion market cap.
David：那是 1997 年秋天。我印象中他们大约持有 25% 的股份，大致如此。我们很快会把这段完整历史讲完。eBay 于 1998 年 9 月上市，市值达到 20 亿美元。
Ben: eBay was the winner. At this point in time, everyone just looked at it and it was like, oh, that's the best dot-com business. Also, think about that. Series A in 1997 raising \$7 million, \$2 billion market cap IPO in 1998. Come on. I remember thinking how insane it was when Snap went public after what was it, four years?
Ben：eBay 成为了赢家。当时所有人都认为那就是最好的互联网公司。再想想看：1997 年 A 轮融资 700 万美元，1998 年 IPO 市值 20 亿美元。太夸张了。我记得 Snap 用四年就上市时，我都觉得疯狂。
David: Four years, yeah.
David：四年，对。
Ben: This was an all time insane moment with eBay going public and mania at an all time high.
Ben：eBay 上市那一刻简直疯狂至极，市场热度也达到了历史高点。
David: There are legendary stories of administrative assistants at Benchmark retiring.
David：坊间甚至流传着 Benchmark 的行政助理靠这笔投资就退休的传奇故事。
Ben: The little piece of the carry of the one investment in...
Ben：仅仅是那笔投资分到的一点点收益就……
David: The market cap didn't stop at \$2 billion when eBay went public. By the next year, in 1999, they get a \$25 billion market cap.
David：eBay 上市时 20 亿美元的市值并未止步。到了下一年，也就是 1999 年，他们的市值已增至 250 亿美元。
Ben: That's a big company by today's standards, and we have trillion dollar companies now.
Ben：即便以今天的标准看，这也是家大公司了——尽管如今我们已经见惯了万亿美元公司。
David: And it's effectively four years from AuctionWeb, but it's two years from eBay. That's impressive. As all this is happening, in the summer of 1998, right before the eBay IPO, but as Amazon and eBay are more like, wait a minute, we're going in the same direction here, Meg Whitman and Pierre fly up to Seattle.
David：从 AuctionWeb 算起不过四年，从更名 eBay 起也才两年，真令人惊叹。就在这期间——1998 年夏，eBay IPO 前夕——当亚马逊与 eBay 渐趋同轨时，Meg Whitman 与 Pierre 飞往了西雅图。
Ben: Meg Whitman of Disney strat planning fame.
Ben：Meg Whitman——曾在迪士尼战略规划部大放异彩的那位。
David: Disney, high margin media company. Keep all this in mind. That's the DNA of Meg. They fly up to Seattle to meet with Bezos and Blackburn. Remember, Amazon's the public company at this point, eBay is still this little startup that raised the Series A from Benchmark. They're hot, but they're still startups.
David：迪士尼，高利润的媒体公司。务必记住这一点，这正是 Meg 的基因。他们飞到西雅图与 Bezos 和 Blackburn 会面。别忘了，此时亚马逊已经是上市公司，而 eBay 仍只是从 Benchmark 拿到 A 轮融资的小型初创企业。它们很火，但毕竟还是初创公司。
Jeff and Jeff, take them on a tour of the Seattle Fulfillment Center. Pierre's such an engineer. He's like, oh, this is super cool, and then they sit down to meet. The two Jeff's make it maybe not quite like the Barnes & Noble dinner, but they make an oblique reference of, well, maybe Amazon should acquire you. Supposedly, according to Brad, they float a \$600 million number if such a thing were to happen.
两位 Jeff 带他们参观了西雅图履约中心。Pierre 身为工程师，见到这些直呼“太酷了”，随后大家坐下来会谈。两位 Jeff 话里话外暗示，也许亚马逊应该收购 eBay。据 Brad 说，他们甚至抛出了 6 亿美元的估值。
Meg and Pierre get back to Silicon Valley, and supposedly, according to Brad, Pierre's like, wow, that was really cool. Man, that fulfillment center. They're building something very differentiated. Maybe we should think about that.
Meg 与 Pierre 回到硅谷后，据 Brad 描述，Pierre 颇为感慨：“太酷了，那座履约中心真厉害，他们打造的是完全差异化的东西，也许我们该好好想想。”
Meg supposedly says, and I think this is from an interview with Pierre in the book, this is not a direct quote, I'm paraphrasing, Pierre, warehouses are not cool. We never want to operate warehouses. You know what is cool? High margin internet businesses, that's cool. You don't want to be mucking around with warehouses.
据说 Meg 回应——我这里转述，不是直接引语——“Pierre，仓库一点都不酷，我们绝不想运营仓库。真正酷的是高利润的互联网业务，不要把时间花在仓库上。”
Ben: This is the very, very, very starkest illustration of, what's the best business model over the next few years, and what's the best business to be in long-term? The best business to be in long-term—period—is delighting your customers more than they ever imagined. The best business to be in—certainly for the next few years, maybe even the next decade if you’re eBay—is a high-margin true internet business.
Ben：这再清楚不过地展示了：未来几年最佳的商业模式是什么？而从长远来看最好的业务又是什么？长远来看，最好的生意无疑是让客户惊喜不已；而在接下来几年（如果你是 eBay 甚至可能长达十年）最好的生意就是高利润的纯互联网业务。
But Bezos is thinking in decades. He's thinking, how are we possibly going to be the best place to buy something on the Internet a decade from now? Unless it's extremely reliable shipping times, very short shipping times, we have it in stock, they're buying it from a vendor that they trust, that is secure. All these things require us to either be the merchant or at least be the ones who fulfill it and keep it in a distribution center or a fulfillment center, so they're both right on different timeframes.
但 Bezos 考虑的是未来数十年。他想的是：十年后怎样才能成为互联网上最佳购物场所？必须做到发货可靠、配送迅速、现货充足，并且让用户信赖且安全。要实现这些，我们要么自己当商家，要么至少负责履约并把货物存放在配送或履约中心。于是，两种观点在不同时间尺度上都没错。
My favorite Bezos quote is, and this, I think, comes from that very first interview that I referenced earlier. I've watched every interview Bezos has given in prep for this, but that one has all the highlights in 3–4 minutes and he's still got hair. He says, "Long term, there is never any misalignment between customer interest and shareholder interest."
我最喜欢的一句 Bezos 名言，我想出自我之前提到的那段早期访谈。我为了准备这期节目看遍了所有 Bezos 的采访，而那段 3–4 分钟的视频浓缩了精华，他当时还留着头发。他说：“从长期看，客户利益与股东利益永远不会背离。”
David: It's so true.
David：太正确了。
Ben: And that's such a dramatic statement, because I think a lot of people would argue with that, and he's thinking on an infinite timeframe.
Ben：这句话极具冲击力，许多人可能会反驳，但他考虑的是无限长的时间尺度。
David: What happens after this meeting with Megan Pierre (I think) really illustrates just how special Jeff and Amazon as a company are, because he makes a mental and emotional leap that I don't know many people could have made. He both believes everything you just said. I've read Made in America, I'm building out this advantage, it's going to be my moat, I'm going to delight customers, this is the way.
David：我认为，Meg 和 Pierre 会后发生的事情充分体现了 Jeff 及亚马逊的非凡之处。他在心理和情绪上实现了一次常人难以企及的飞跃。他既相信你刚才说的全部：我读过《Made in America》，我正构筑优势，这将成为我的护城河，我要让客户惊喜，这就是道路。
Ben: And desperately wants to beat eBay at auctions.
Ben：同时他又迫切想在拍卖业务上击败 eBay。
David: Desperately wants to be eBay, but he's like, and eBay is also right. This starts at journey, but Amazon today is that amazing, back-end distribution. Like we were just saying, you can get stuff from Amazon faster, better, and cheaper than just about anywhere else on the Internet.
David：Bezos 拼命想成为 eBay，但他也承认 eBay 做得对。这由此开启了一段征程；而今天的亚马逊凭借惊人的后端配送体系脱颖而出。正如我们刚才说的，你在亚马逊上几乎总能比其他任何网站更快、更好、更便宜地买到东西。
Certainly, an aggregate of everything you can buy, Amazon is head and shoulders above anybody else. And you can buy from other people who are not amazon.com on Amazon, and that is all thanks to that meeting.
在商品综合供给方面，亚马逊遥遥领先于其他任何平台。你甚至可以在亚马逊上向并非 Amazon 自营的卖家购物，而这一切都得益于那次会面。
Ben: Yeah. This is again, Amazon having to run into a wall, back up, try it again. Obviously, they don't buy eBay. Obviously, they naturally do have to do the next thing, which is even though Amazon is focused on the customer, they're also focused on their competition.
Ben：没错。这再次体现了亚马逊那种先撞墙、再后退、再尝试的作风。显然，他们没有收购 eBay，于是自然要做下一步：虽然始终以顾客为中心，但也必须紧盯竞争对手。
David: Of course they are.
David：那是当然。
Ben: Jeff has all these quotes about how the customers, and I think this is in the 1998 letter, maybe the 1999 letter. "We believe that our customers are very loyal up until the moment that there is a better way for them to solve their problems than buying from us."
Ben：Jeff 有很多关于顾客的名言，我记得大概写在 1998 或 1999 年的股东信中：“我们相信，顾客会一直忠于我们，直到出现比在我们这里购买更能解决他们需求的方式。”
That's off the top of my head. It's not exact, but it's close. I think his realization is, okay, if eBay has grown really fast and there's a way to get something rarer, cheaper, or something, we have to be in business doing that, too. This is Amazon's first very expensive failed experiment with Amazon Auctions.
以上是我凭记忆复述，大意如此。他的意识是：如果 eBay 增长飞速，让顾客以更低价或更稀缺的方式买到东西，那我们也必须涉足。于是亚马逊进行了首个代价高昂且失败的尝试——Amazon Auctions。
David: After the meeting, Jeff Bezos turns to Jeff Blackburn and was like, auctions could be the future, we're going to start a secret project to clone eBay within Amazon. It's almost like the Book Predator with Barnes & Noble, except they're actually competent.
David：那次会后，Bezos 对 Jeff Blackburn 说：拍卖也许是未来，我们要秘密启动一个项目，在亚马逊内部复制一个 eBay。这几乎像对付 Barnes & Noble 的 “Book Predator” 计划，只不过这次他们真的有能力。
Ben: It's not like we're going to learn from eBay and apply it to our business, go for a different segment than eBay or do auctions differently. We're going to go directly at eBay doing exactly what they're doing.
Ben：这并不是要借鉴 eBay 再改良，或专攻 eBay 没涉足的细分领域，也不是换种拍卖方式，而是要正面对标 eBay，照搬他们在做的事。
David: Yes. Now, it makes sense why this would be secret. It's also a secret because Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, is on the board of both companies. Amazon starts working on Amazon Auctions, literally exact clone of eBay. Now, eBay did not have PayPal at this point in time. Paying on eBay was this huge source of friction and a huge advantage for Amazon. Amazon has your credit card, blah-blah-blah.
David：没错，因此必须保密；另一原因是 Intuit 创始人 Scott Cook 同时担任两家公司的董事。亚马逊开始研发 Amazon Auctions，几乎是 eBay 的镜像。当时 eBay 还没有 PayPal，付款流程极其繁琐，而亚马逊握有用户信用卡信息，这成了巨大优势。
Amazon finds out that. Of course, Megan Pierre, they're not dumb at eBay. They know this is a problem. They're talking to startups about acquiring startups that could solve payments on eBay. This is summer of 1998. There's no PayPal yet.
亚马逊意识到了这一点。当然，Meg 和 Pierre 也不傻，他们知道支付是短板，便开始洽谈收购能提供支付解决方案的初创公司。这是 1998 年夏，当时还没有 PayPal。
Nfinity, the first kind of \[...], they didn't even get started until the end of 1998, early 1999. ebay is talking to a startup called accept.com and wants to acquire them to handle payments on eBay. Bezos swoops in, and Amazon steals the deal and acquires accept.com, mostly so that eBay doesn't get it.
早期的 Nfinity 等项目要到 1998 年底、1999 年初才起步。当时 eBay 正接洽一家名为 accept.com 的初创公司，希望收购用于支付。Bezos 迅速出手，抢先完成对 accept.com 的并购，主要目的就是不让 eBay 得手。
Ben: And they just went public. Amazon's got all this cash from that, so they're feeling themselves and feeling like they can do stuff like this.
Ben：亚马逊刚上市，手握大量现金，自然底气十足，觉得可以做这种操作。
David: Yeah, eBay can't do this yet. Amazon's got highly valued liquid stock, all this cash, blah-blah-blah. If that had gone otherwise, I don't know about PayPal. There's probably no PayPal. There might not be a PayPal Mafia.
David：是的，eBay 当时还做不到。亚马逊拥有高估值、流动性强的股票和大量现金。如果当初局面不同，PayPal 也许就不存在，更不会有 “PayPal 黑帮”。
Ben: Great point.
Ben：说得好。
David: Silicon Valley totally turns on a knife point at this moment in time. March 1999, Amazon launches Amazon Auctions, clones eBay, competes with eBay. Shocker. If you haven't heard of Amazon Auctions, it's a flop.
David：就在那一刻，硅谷风向骤变。1999 年 3 月，亚马逊推出 Amazon Auctions，完全克隆 eBay，与之正面竞争。结果如何？如果你没听说过 Amazon Auctions，那是因为它彻底失败了。
Ben: Here's an interesting comment on it. Greg Linden writes on his blog. Again, this early engineer who worked on personalization, auctions, and a bunch of other stuff. "When the site launched, it was technically superior to eBay's faster, better search, and several new useful features. The inventory was reasonable, but not large."
Ben：有个有趣的评价来自 Greg Linden 的博客。Linden 是亚马逊早期工程师，负责过个性化、拍卖等项目。他写道：“网站上线时技术上优于 eBay —— 更快、更好的搜索，还有若干新功能；库存尚可，但规模不大。”
Ben: This is one of those things where the flywheel is just already in motion, when you have the network effect of more buyers, attracting more sellers and more sellers attracting more buyers like eBay had, and they were a couple years ahead, it was just already in full swing. Even if you have a more technically superior interface...
Ben：这是典型的飞轮已转动的场景——像 eBay 那样，买家越多吸引越多卖家，卖家越多又吸引更多买家；他们早两年启动，网络效应早已全面展开。即便界面技术更先进……
David: And the advantage of traffic on amazon.com that they could send, it didn't matter. They didn't have the network effect.
David：即便能把 amazon.com 的流量导过去，也无济于事；他们没有那层网络效应。
Ben: Amazon wasn't really prioritizing it. When you go to a product detail page on Amazon, they had invented this pretty amazing thing that really pissed off all the booksellers, which was when you look at a product detail page, you could buy new and used. They're like the same book, so we'll put them both right there.
Ben：亚马逊其实并未把拍卖放在高优先级。你打开亚马逊商品详情页，会看到一个令出版商恼火的创新：同一本书可选择全新或二手版本，它们并排展示。
Ben: Of course, that pisses off the book publishers because they're like, wait, our whole thing is that you want to go buy the new book and you can't buy a used one right next to the new one, that they used books are in this other distribution channel. Amazon's like, we don't care. A customer can choose which they want from one singular unified product detail page, which, flash way forward to third-party sellers, it's the same thing today. You're competing as a third-party seller to be the one that gets the traffic from the product detail page when people click the Buy button. They weren't doing that with Amazon Auctions yet.
Ben：出版商当然气炸：等等，读者应该买新的，你怎么能把旧书放在新书旁边？旧书应在别的渠道啊！亚马逊的态度是：无所谓，顾客想选哪本自己决定。放到今天也是如此——第三方卖家竞争的，就是在商品详情页上争取“购买”按钮的流量。但当时 Amazon Auctions 并未享受到这点。
David: No, it was a separate tab, separate site.
David：没错，它是独立标签、独立网址。
Ben: auctions.amazon.com. It was not getting Amazon's traffic.
Ben：auctions.amazon.com 并没有拿到亚马逊主站的流量。
David: Yeah, it didn't have a network effect. Another reason, people like eBay. They just totally shrugged off Amazon as a competition. A beautiful business model.
David：对，缺乏网络效应；再者，人们喜欢 eBay，根本没把亚马逊当对手。那商业模式太优雅了。
Ben: Their market cap continued to go nuts.
Ben：eBay 的市值继续疯涨。
David: Yup. Jeff acquired accept.com to keep it out of the hands of eBay, but they go start acquiring a lot of companies, a lot of startups in this era, partially, I think to keep them from eBay and other people partially, because I don't know, everybody was drunk back then?
David：没错。Jeff 收购 accept.com，为的是不让 eBay 得手；此后他们开始并购大量公司、初创企业，一方面防备 eBay 等竞争者，另一方面——也许那时大家都被泡沫冲昏了头？
Ben: They were investing in a bunch of them as hedges. They looked at pets.com and they thought, oh, we're not going to get into shipping dog food for a while. In fact, I think they had tried to ship some cat litter at the same shipping rates as everything else and it was super expensive. That's an example that's referred to very often by early Amazon employees as a failed distribution, totally mispricing thing.
Ben：他们投资这些公司算是一种对冲。拿 pets.com 来说，亚马逊当时觉得短期不会开始运送狗粮。实际上，他们试过以普通费率运送猫砂，结果成本高得离谱。早期员工常拿这当例子：配送失败，完全定价错误。
David: But yeah, they sunk a bunch of money into pets.com, Cosmo.
David：不过没错，他们在 pets.com 和 Cosmo 上砸了不少钱。
Ben: I think they owned 40% of it or something at some point.
Ben：我记得他们一度持有大约 40% 的股份。
David: Totally. The craziest of all of these acquisitions just from the story is a company called Junglee.
David：完全正确。而这些收购里最疯狂的案例，要数一家公司——Junglee。
Ben: Yes, which was referenced on the Walmart episode.
Ben：对，我们在那期沃尔玛节目里提到过。
David: Indeed. We're not going to talk about what Junglee actually did. It was a comparison shopping site started by three Stanford computer science PhDs and a business guy from Netscape. What it was doesn't matter. That business guy from Netscape, his name was Ram Shriram. That might sound familiar to some folks.
David：没错。我们暂且不谈 Junglee 具体做什么——它是由三位斯坦福计算机博士和一位来自 Netscape 的商业人士创办的比价网站，细节并不重要。那位 Netscape 出身的商业人士叫 Ram Shriram，听众里有人可能对这个名字耳熟。
Ben: But probably not to most people.
Ben：不过大多数人可能还不熟悉。
David: Amazon acquired this company for \$150 million–\$175 million, something like that. They're in Palo Alto, but Amazon's like, you can't work there anymore. We can't have a tax nexus in California. Remember, this is still in those days. You got to move up to Seattle.
David：亚马逊以大约 1.5 亿到 1.75 亿美元收购了 Junglee。当时团队在帕洛阿尔托，但亚马逊说：“你们不能继续待在那儿；我们不能在加州形成税务联系，得搬到西雅图。”那可是当年的常态。
The Junglee team was like, all right, you just gave us a bunch of money, okay, we’ll move up to Seattle. They hate it. The acquisition doesn't work out. It's ill-conceived from the get-go. Within a few months, they all quit and they moved back to Palo Alto.
Junglee 团队想：好吧，你们刚付了我们一大笔钱，那就搬去西雅图吧。结果他们非常不适应，收购从一开始就想得不周；几个月后，全体辞职，又搬回帕洛阿尔托。
Ben: Which by the way, then they would go on to ultimately start the thing that would be acquired by Walmart, which became Walmart Labs, which became probably the second biggest reason that Walmart is a very real competitor in ecommerce now, second only to Jet and Marc Lore.
Ben：顺便说一下，他们后来创建的项目最终被沃尔玛收购，成了 Walmart Labs——这大概是沃尔玛如今在电商领域能真刀真枪竞争的第二大原因，仅次于 Jet 和 Marc Lore。
David: They're back in Palo Alto. Ram, the business guy from Netscape, I assume through his co-founders, the Stanford CS PhDs, he gets hooked up with two other Stanford computer science PhDs. Two guys named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Junglee have gotten acquired, they made all this money, and Sergey and Larry were like, oh, we want to raise a little money for this thing that we're doing.
David：他们回到帕洛阿尔托后，那位 Netscape 出身的商业人士 Ram 通过那几位斯坦福博士认识了另外两位斯坦福计算机博士——Larry Page 和 Sergey Brin。Junglee 被收购赚了不少钱，Sergey 和 Larry 说：“我们想给正在做的项目融资一点。”
Ben: Also, how crazy is it that we're nearly three hours into the story of Amazon? Amazon's already public and we're talking about Larry and Sergey at Stanford before Google was founded.
Ben：想想看，这故事已经讲了快三个小时，亚马逊都上市了，我们却还在聊谷歌成立前斯坦福的 Larry 和 Sergey，这是不是太疯狂？
David: Ram's like, sure, you guys seem promising. This whole BackRub, PageRank thing, I get it. It's got potential. Great. He invested the first \$250,000 in Google, and he joins the board of Google.
David：Ram 觉得：“好啊，你们看起来很有前途，这个 BackRub、PageRank 我懂，有潜力。”于是给谷歌投下首笔 25 万美元，并加入董事会。
A couple of months go by, about six months to be exact. Jeff and Ram stay in touch. Even though they left Amazon, they're friendly. Jeff hears about Google. He calls up Ram. He's like, hey, I'm going to come meet these guys. Ram's like, sure, come on down to Silicon Valley, I'll host you all at my house.
大约过了几个月，确切说六个月左右，Jeff 和 Ram 一直保持联系。虽然 Ram 早已离开亚马逊，两人仍是好友。Jeff 得知 Google 的事，打电话给 Ram：“嘿，我想见见这两位。”Ram 说：“当然，来硅谷吧，我在家招待你们。”
Ben: Was Jeff interested in search yet? Amazon got obsessed with search and that A9-era of 2004. Do they have any seeds yet?
Ben：那时 Jeff 已经对搜索感兴趣了吗？后来亚马逊在 2004 年进入 A9 时代，对搜索上了瘾。现在有苗头了吗？
David: I think this leads to that.
David：我觉得这正是伏笔。
Ben: Okay.
Ben：好的。
David: Jeff and Mackenzie flew down to Silicon Valley. They all went over to Ram's house. They have a big, nice breakfast, a lot of back-slapping, Ram, Larry, Sergey, Jeff, MacKenzie. After breakfast, Larry and Sergey leave. Jeff takes Ram aside and he's like, hey, I'm going to put some money in these guys, too. Ram was like, dude, the seed closed six months ago. Kleiner, Sequoia, they're circling about doing a Series A. Jeff's like, I don't care.
David：Jeff 和 MacKenzie 飞往硅谷，一行人去了 Ram 家。他们共进丰盛早餐，互相拍着后背寒暄——Ram、Larry、Sergey、Jeff、MacKenzie 都在场。早餐后 Larry 和 Sergey 离开，Jeff 把 Ram 拉到一旁说：“嘿，我也想给这两个家伙投点钱。”Ram 回答：“兄弟，种子轮六个月前就结束了。Kleiner、Sequoia 正在筹划 A 轮。”Jeff 说：“我不在乎。”
上市前两个年轻人自己去找了巴菲特，巴菲特不同意投资。
Ben: Jeff's like, I'm Jeff Bezos.
Ben：Jeff 的态度是——我是 Jeff Bezos。
David: Yes, that means nothing to me. I want in and I want in on the same terms as you. Ram goes to bat for him. He convinces Larry and Sergey to take another \$250,000 of Jeff and MacKenzie's personal money at the seed price.
David：对，他根本不管那些细节：“我要投，而且要与你同样的条款。”Ram 为他出面，说服 Larry 和 Sergey 按种子轮价格再接受 Jeff 与 MacKenzie 的 25 万美元个人投资。
Ben: Which was?
Ben：当时的种子估值是多少？
David: I couldn't figure out what it was. But the Series A that would happen shortly thereafter of Google famously split between John Doerr at Kleiner and Mike Moritz at Sequoia was at \$100 million post money valuation, which was insane for the point in time.
David：我没查到确切数字。不过随后 Google 著名的 A 轮由 Kleiner 的 John Doerr 和 Sequoia 的 Mike Moritz 共同领投，投后估值 1 亿美元——在当时简直疯狂。
Ben: Mike Moritz came in and told Doug Leone, as Doug told that on our interview with him, even after making this investment, he's looking at Google and goes, we've never paid so much for so little.
Ben：Mike Moritz 当时跟 Doug Leone 说——这是 Doug 接受我们采访时回忆的——即便投完后再看 Google，他仍觉得：“从没为这么少的东西付出过这么高的价格。”
David: Yes. That episode with Doug.
David：是的，我们和 Doug 的那期节目。
Ben: Amazing.
Ben：太精彩了。
David: What a highlight.
David：绝对的高光时刻。
Ben: Okay, so that's not at \$100 million. We can say, I'm going to guess somewhere \$20 million, \$25 million?
Ben：所以种子轮肯定不到 1 亿美元。我猜大概在 2000 万到 2500 万美元之间？
David: I don't know. Ram led this. My best guess is \$10 million or maybe even lower post.
David：我也不确定。Ram 主导那轮，我估计投后也就 1000 万美元，甚至更低。
Ben: Seeding, Ram got 10X–20X from the Series A.
Ben：从种子到 A 轮，Ram 的账面回报就有 10–20 倍。
David: I think so. I don't know.
David：差不多，但具体我也不清楚。
Ben: Ram and Jeff, we should say, and MacKenzie.
Ben：Ram、Jeff 以及 MacKenzie 都投了。
David: I think it is probably safe to say that Jeff and MacKenzie owned at least 1% of Google, probably even after dilution from the Series A, because they didn't raise another venture round.
David：可以肯定地说，Jeff 和 MacKenzie 至少持有 Google 1% 的股份，即便被 A 轮稀释后也是如此，因为 Google 之后没再融过风险资本。
Ben: That's right. Google went public just on that series A.
Ben：没错，Google 就凭那笔 A 轮直接上市了。
David: They did.
David：确实如此。
Ben: Google, one of the most immediately cash-generative businesses of all time.
Ben：Google 是史上最快产生现金流的企业之一。
David: Oh, my God. They'd walk in the woods before they found the paid search business model and all that, but oh, my God. He's been asked, he's never commented on whether or not he and MacKenzie sold their Google shares. They wouldn't have even had a chance to sell before the IPO. At a minimum, he held to the IPO, 1%+ of Google. They probably held longer than that, I don't know. That's how Jeff and Mackenzie got wealthy.
David：天哪。在发现付费搜索模式之前，他们就像摸黑在林中前行，但天哪。有人问过他，他从未透露自己和 MacKenzie 是否卖掉了谷歌股票。他们甚至没机会在上市前套现。至少可以确定，他一直持有到 IPO，持股超过 1%。也许更久，我不确定。Jeff 和 MacKenzie 就是这样致富的。
Ben: In 2004, Google IPO'd for \$23 billion market cap. Their shares would have been worth \$230 million at IPO, which was 18 years ago. Since then, over the last 18 years, Google has 65X'd from there.
Ben：2004 年，谷歌以 230 亿美元市值上市。他们的股份在 IPO 时价值 2.3 亿美元，那是 18 年前。从那以后，谷歌市值又增长了 65 倍。
David: That was me laughing there. But listeners, you should just imagine Jeff Bezos laughing there.
David：刚才是我在笑。不过各位听众，不妨想象那是 Jeff Bezos 在笑。
Ben: Even if Bezos wasn't selling any Amazon shares for a while, he had plenty of capital to work with for doing things like investing in crazy, cool...
Ben：即便 Bezos 有一段时间没有抛售亚马逊股票，他依然有充裕资本去投资那些疯狂又酷炫的项目……
David: Clocks, rocket companies, and...
David：比如大钟、航天公司，还有……
Ben: Venture funds.
Ben：风险基金。
David: Yeah, Benchmark.
David：对，Benchmark。
Ben: PSL.
Ben：PSL。
David: Which also, I don't think it was the eBay fund. It couldn't have been the eBay fund. But yeah, then Bezos becomes a large personal investor in Benchmark. In the future, of course, the main backer of eBay. It's also incestuous.
David：此外，我记得那并不是 eBay 那支基金，肯定不是。但后来 Bezos 成为了 Benchmark 的大额个人投资者，而 Benchmark 未来又成了 eBay 的核心支持者。圈子真够“近亲”。
Ben: Think about it this way, too. What if Jeff still owns a percent of Google whether Google Cloud wins or whether AWS wins?
Ben：换个角度想，如果 Jeff 仍然持有谷歌 1% 的股份，那么无论 Google Cloud 还是 AWS 赢，他都能受益。
David: Especially now that Jeff's just a board member of Amazon, Scott Cook was a board member of Amazon and eBay.
David：尤其是如今 Jeff 只是亚马逊董事，正如 Scott Cook 同时曾在亚马逊和 eBay 任董事一样。
Ben: What does he own, 17% of Amazon today or something like that?
Ben：他现在大概持有亚马逊 17% 的股份，对吧？
David: Something like that.
David：差不多。
Ben: He's only 17X more incentivized for Amazon to win than Google won. We're making up numbers here. We're speculating quite a bit on what price he got in and everything. He got access because Amazon bought a company and then they all left, but he maintained the relationship. Life is long.
Ben：这意味着让亚马逊赢，对他的重要性是谷歌赢的 17 倍。我们在这里随口估算，也在猜测他入股的成本价等细节。他之所以有机会入股，是因为亚马逊收购了一家公司后，这些人都离开了，但他保持了关系。人生漫长呀。
David: Amazing. I feel like there's a lesson there, and the lesson is investing Google.
David：不可思议。我觉得这里有个启示：投资谷歌。
Ben: I think, yeah. That's all I can take away, too.
Ben：我想是的。我也只能得出这个结论。
David: Back to Amazon. Despite this unbelievable, bountiful windfall for Jeff and MacKenzie personally, things are pretty bad at Amazon at this point in time. The dot-com euphoria is starting to wane. Some cracks are starting to show. Barron's in spring of 1999 publishes the famous Amazon.bomb article.
David：回到亚马逊。尽管 Jeff 和 MacKenzie 个人赚得盆满钵满，但此时亚马逊的形势并不妙。互联网狂热开始退潮，裂痕初现。1999 年春，《巴伦周刊》发表了著名的 “Amazon.bomb” 文章。
Ben: Amazon.bomb. There were some analysts who were still very, very excited about Amazon at this time. A Morgan Stanley analyst with the name that some people will definitely know from her Kleiner Perkins days and now bond days, Mary Meeker, at the time just at Morgan Stanley as an analyst wrote right around IPO time that Amazon is the leading retailer merchandiser on the Internet.
Ben：Amazon.bomb。当时仍有一些分析师对亚马逊十分、十分看好。摩根士丹利的一位分析师——许多人因她在凯鹏华盈以及后来在 Bond 的经历而熟知——玛丽·米克（Mary Meeker），就在亚马逊 IPO 前后撰文称，亚马逊是互联网上领先的零售商和商品经营者。
She said, “The valuation gives us heartburn of gargantuan proportion.” But she did conclude, “We do not want to miss this one.” A lot of her career at this point would come from trading on the professional capital that came from being extremely right about Amazon, but that doesn't change the dot-com bubble starting to show cracks and then eventually pop.
她说：“这种估值让我们胃痛不已。”但她的结论是：“我们绝不能错过这家公司。” 她此后职业生涯的巨大声望，很大程度上源于对亚马逊的精准判断；然而，这并不能阻止互联网泡沫开始出现裂缝并最终破裂。
David: She would be out in the cold here by herself, because the Amazon.bomb piece comes out. Amazon reports, I think, either Q2 or Q3 earnings in 1999. It's the same story, lots of revenue growth, hugely unprofitable.
David：她很快就成了孤军奋战，因为《Amazon.bomb》文章发表了。亚马逊随后公布了 1999 年第二季度或第三季度财报，依旧是那个故事：收入大幅增长，却严重亏损。
We didn't say, Joy and then her successor, she worked super hard for three years, totally burned out. Her successor, Warren Jenson took over his CFO from Delta Airlines; it's where he came from. Joy first and then Warren too, they orchestrated raising about \$2 billion in convertible debt on the debt markets, which totally saved Amazon's skin.
我们之前没提到，Joy（Covey）辛苦工作三年后彻底耗尽精力，随后由她的继任者沃伦·詹森（Warren Jenson）接任——他来自达美航空，曾任 CFO。Joy 先后与沃伦一起在债券市场筹集了约 20 亿美元的可转换债券，这笔钱彻底挽救了亚马逊。
Ben: And was way more than they raised in the IPO.
Ben：而这比他们 IPO 融的资金多得多。
David: Way more.
David：多得多。
Ben: They only raised \$55 million.
Ben：他们 IPO 只筹了 5500 万美元。
David: Yeah. Sometimes, people are like, oh, Amazon what a great example of capital light. They raised \$10 million in venture, \$55 million in their IPO, and built Amazon, like, no, no, no. There is another \$2 billion and they used it. Amazon would have been Amazon.toast, had it not been for that.
David：对。有人常说，亚马逊是轻资本运营的典范，只融了 1000 万创投资金、5500 万 IPO 资金就成就了今日规模。其实不然——还有那 20 亿美元债务融资，而且他们确实花掉了。如果没有这笔钱，亚马逊早就是 Amazon.toast 了。
In summer of 1999, the stock starts falling. The board gets pretty worried about the company, about Jeff. It's hard to remember this, but this happened. The board asks Jeff to bring in a COO to complement him. It's so painful to read this and go back that this happened. They bring in Bill Campbell, the coach, legendary Bill Campbell.
1999 年夏，亚马逊股价开始下跌。董事会对公司、对 Jeff 感到十分担忧。如今很难想象，但当时确实如此：董事会要求 Jeff 引进一位首席运营官来辅助他。读到这里让人心痛——他们请来了“教练”比尔·坎贝尔（Bill Campbell），那位传奇人物。
Ben: We should say he's legendary. Everyone speaks very highly of him. He was brought in to Twitter and then worked as a pseudo nefarious agent on behalf of the board to oust the CEO. You got to wonder what was going on here, too.
Ben：必须强调，他确实是传奇，人人都对他评价极高。他后来被请到 Twitter，并代表董事会在幕后运作罢免 CEO。你不禁会想，这里到底发生了什么？
David: No, it's not just Twitter. Bill, I think, probably genuinely was amazing. The testimony of so many people to him, even people like Scott Cook, who came in and replace. It wasn't just Twitter. Apple with Steve Jobs, Google with Eric Schmidt, Intuit with Scott Cook.
David：不仅仅是 Twitter。Bill 的确非常厉害，很多人都作证，包括后来接班的 Scott Cook 等人。不只是 Twitter——苹果有乔布斯、谷歌有施密特、Intuit 有 Scott Cook，他都参与其中。
Ben: It's amazing that the thing that he got reputation for was being a coach, when in fact, the thing that he really did repeatedly—
Ben：令人惊讶的是，他以“教练”之名闻名，而他反复做的真正工作却是——
David: It was convinced the founders to move aside and bring in the adult supervision.
David：说服创始人让位，引入“成年人的监管”。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: There's a fact pattern here, for sure. It doesn't mean he probably wasn't amazing and didn't help all those companies, but the Amazon board brings him into Amazon and simultaneously asked Jeff to go find a COO. Supposedly, actually, a leading candidate for the job was Jamie Dimon, if you can believe that. Isn't that crazy?
David：这里确实有一种模式。这并不意味着他可能不出色，也不代表他没帮助那些公司，但亚马逊董事会把他请来，并同时要求 Jeff 去寻找一位 COO。据说，当时这一职位的热门人选居然是杰米·戴蒙，你敢信？是不是很疯狂？
Ben: What could have been?
Ben：要是成真会怎样？
David: They settle on Joe Galli, who had been an executive at Black & Decker. He had actually signed to go take an executive role at Pepsi running the Frito Lay division. What other COO transition to CEO of tech company came from Pepsi?
David：他们最终选定了 Joe Galli，他曾是百得的高管，而且实际上已经签约去百事负责 Frito Lay 事业部。还有哪位 COO 转任科技公司 CEO 是来自百事的？
Ben:. John Sculley?
Ben：约翰·斯卡利？
David: Yeah, it would be John Sculley. There's a Scully situation going on here at Amazon in 1999.
David：是的，就是约翰·斯卡利。1999 年的亚马逊正上演着“斯卡利时刻”。
Ben: Bezos does take this seriously. He reorgs. He has everyone report to the Black & Decker guy, to Joe. He says, my only direct report is now Joe. At the same time, he's also like, you're COO, you're not CEO. Joe, under this impression, probably from talking to Bill Campbell—we don't know for sure, and probably from talking to other board members—I think I'm supposed to do CEO-type stuff.
Ben：Bezos 的确很认真，他进行了重组，让所有人都向这位百得来的家伙 Joe 汇报。他说，现在我唯一的直接下属就是 Joe。与此同时，他也强调，你是 COO，不是 CEO。Joe 可能从 Bill Campbell 或其他董事那听来一些话——我们不能确定——于是产生了“我应该做 CEO 那套事”的印象。
David: And I think I'm supposed to be the CFO for a while and then...
David：而且我觉得我该暂时兼任 CFO，然后……
Ben: Move into this role and do it my way. We're going to do it the way that we did it at Black & Decker and from the world where I came from. Amazon rejects this. Joe starts running Amazon, sort of. He starts trying to get people to start moving to his way of doing things in his style of leadership, by the way, while he's commuting back to the East Coast every single weekend rather than being on the ground in Seattle.
Ben：然后我会接手，用我的方式来做。我们要按百得、按我熟悉的那套来干。亚马逊对此表示拒绝。Joe 算是开始掌管亚马逊，他试图让大家按他的领导风格行事；顺带一提，他每周末都飞回东海岸，而不是常驻西雅图。
David: That wasn't the worst offense.
David：这还不是最糟糕的事。
Ben: The Amazon executives just reject this like a bad organ transplant.
Ben：亚马逊的高管们像排异反应一样彻底排斥这种做法。
David: Everything you need to know about the culture clash here is that Joe was one of those old school executives, who, the way he did email was he had his secretary printed out and read it to him, and then he would tell her what to respond.
David：这场文化冲突最典型的一点在于，Joe 属于那种老派高管，他处理邮件的方式是让秘书打印出来读给他听，然后口述回复内容。
Actually, that sounds pretty awesome. I would love that. I would love to do that. I would do that all day long, or actually for as little time as possible, as in often as possible, as rarely as possible. But yeah, that's not gonna work running Amazon.
说实话，这听起来挺爽，我也想这么干——要么整天这么干，要么尽量少干。但无论如何，这套做法在亚马逊根本行不通。
Ben: So Joe's out.
Ben：于是 Joe 被请出局。
David: Yeah. He does, though, make one absolutely incredible, lasting contribution to Amazon, which is he was a key part of recruiting Jeff Wilke. Jeff and everybody was, too, but that absolves a lot of sense.
David：对。不过他确实为亚马逊留下了一项极其重要且持久的贡献——他在招募 Jeff Wilke 的过程中扮演了关键角色。Jeff 以及其他人也参与其中，但这点意义重大。
Ben: For listeners who are unfamiliar with Jeff Wilke, what did Jeff go on to do with the company?
Ben：对于不熟悉 Jeff Wilke 的听众来说，Jeff 在公司后来担任了什么角色？
David: Jeff basically inherited and then expanded Rick Dalzel's role. Then eventually, when Bezos started to step back and Jassy became CEO of AWS and Bezos was CEO of the whole company, Jassy's counterpart and CEO of Amazon retail was Jeff Wilke.
David：Jeff 基本上接手并扩展了 Rick Dalzel 的职能；后来，随着 Bezos 渐渐退居二线、Jassy 出任 AWS 首席执行官、而 Bezos 仍担任整个集团的 CEO 时，Jeff Wilke 成为了与 Jassy 分庭抗礼、负责亚马逊零售业务的 CEO。
Ben: He's got a little bit of a legacy at Amazon, Joe does as he parts ways.
Ben：Joe 离开时，还是在亚马逊留下了一点遗产。
David: Yup. He would go back to the world he came from. He became CEO of the holding company that makes Hoover and Dirt Devil vacuums. I think he did very well there.
David：是的。他回到了自己熟悉的领域，出任生产 Hoover 和 Dirt Devil 吸尘器的控股公司首席执行官。我觉得他在那里干得非常出色。
Ben: Probably sold a lot of them on Amazon over the years.
Ben：这些年大概在亚马逊上卖出了不少吸尘器。
David: Probably sold a lot of them on Amazon. Yes, indeed.
David：很可能在亚马逊上卖了不少，确实如此。
Ben: All right. Amazon's woes, though, are real. They now have a big debt service to pay based on this big convertible bond offering. In 1999, they're still growing at what is honestly an insane pace. It's not the amount that they were growing before. I think they're about tripling revenue, which to be clear in 1999 is \$600 million–\$1.8 billion. It's unbelievably impressive.
Ben：好吧。不过，亚马逊的困境是真实存在的。他们必须偿付那笔巨额可转债的利息。1999 年，他们依旧以惊人的速度增长——虽然不及之前的倍数，但据我估计，他们的收入大约翻了三倍，也就是从 6 亿美元增长到 18 亿美元，依然令人叹为观止。
Their stock price the previous year from 1998–1999 had 10X'd, so expectations are through the moon for this company. It's not just solid fundamentals that we're valuing it. The way people are valuing Amazon is, sure, there's no net income or GAAP profitability coming out today, but they're growing so fast. They appear to have category leadership. And if the Internet's really going to be the thing that we think it all is, I just want to own a piece. This is, of course, how bubbles happen, then bubbles, of course, pop.
上一年，也就是 1998 到 1999 年间，亚马逊股价暴涨了 10 倍，市场对其寄予厚望。投资者不仅仅看基本面：虽然目前没有净利润或 GAAP 盈利，但增速太快，看似已占据品类领先地位；如果互联网真的像大家预期那样改变一切，我只想分一杯羹。当然，这正是泡沫形成的方式，泡沫随后也会破裂。
David: Oh, my gosh. We wouldn't know anything about this in recent history, would we?
David：天哪，这种情形在近些年的历史里，我们可一点都不陌生，对吧？
Ben: No, not at all. By 2001, it's becoming clear that they got to pull back. In 2001, they lay-off 1300 people. This is almost like, Amazon had been so dominant for so long today that it's hard to even think about the fact that I don't know how close to death they were. They weren't dominant, and that feels weird saying today, remembering a time where it wasn't always succeeding.
Ben：的确如此。到了 2001 年，形势已明显要求他们收缩。当年他们裁员 1300 人。今天的亚马逊早已长期占据主导地位，很难想象当年他们差点走到悬崖边；彼时他们并不强势，这句话放到今天听起来怪怪的，但那时的确如此。
David: I think they were pretty close to death. After the whole Galli incident—let's call it an incident—and Jeff reaffirms, hey, I do want to be CEO here, I'm putting my hands back on the wheel. He changes the motto of the company from Get Big Fast to "Get Our House in Order." I think they also have t-shirts made of that.
David：我认为他们当时离死亡边缘相当近。在那场 Galli 事件——姑且这么称呼——之后，Jeff 重申自己仍要担任 CEO，重新掌舵。他把公司的口号从 “Get Big Fast” 改为 “Get Our House in Order（整顿内务）”，我记得他们甚至为此做了新款 T 恤。
Ben: That reminds me a lot of, what did Facebook change from? It was Move Fast and Break Things. It was like, Move Fast With a Stable Infrastructure or something like that.
Ben：这让我想起 Facebook 当年也改过口号——从 “Move Fast and Break Things” 变成了类似 “Move Fast With a Stable Infrastructure” 的表述。
David: That was so funny. Not quite the same. I don't know how related it was to the whole coach Campbell-Galli thing. Probably it was more just about the competitive dynamic. Shortly after that, I don't know which side initiated it. One side or the other or both came to Scott Cook and were like, dude, you can't be on both of these boards anymore. And tellingly, Scott chooses eBay.
David：那可真有趣，但并不完全一样。我不确定这件事和“教练” Campbell-Galli 事件有多大关联，更多可能只是竞争格局所致。不久之后，不知道是哪一方先开口——或者双方一起——去找了 Scott Cook，说：「老兄，你不能再同时待在这两个董事会了。」耐人寻味的是，Scott 最终选择了 eBay。
He actually has a quote to Brad in The Everything Store. He says, "Up until that point, I had seen Jeff only at one speed, the go-go speed of growth at all costs. I had not seen him drive toward profitability and efficiency. Most execs, particularly first-time CEOs who get good at one thing, can only dance what they know how to dance. Frankly, I didn't think he could do it." Everything about that is telling, but the whole world thinks the same thing, too. They don't think Amazon could do this.
他在《一网打尽》里对 Brad 说过一句话：「在那之前，我只见过 Jeff 以一种速度前进——不惜一切代价的高速增长。我没见过他为盈利和效率而努力。大多数高管，尤其是初次当 CEO 的人，只会跳自己会的那支舞。坦白说，我当时不认为他做得到。」这番话意味深长，而当时整个世界也抱有同样的看法——他们都不相信亚马逊能做到。
Jeff, though, I think he always believed he could do this. He announced his internal company goal that he announced to the whole company, part of the Get Our House in Order mantra, that they will be profitable by the fourth quarter of 2001.
不过我认为 Jeff 一直坚信自己能做到。他向全公司宣布了一项内部目标——作为「整顿内务」口号的一部分——那就是在 2001 年第四季度实现盈利。
They started looking at any possible way to increase cash flow, and necessity being the mother of invention here. they started looking around like, okay, what do we have? What can we do? We've got a pretty good ecommerce website. A lot of people want to have ecommerce websites. What if we start going to other companies who want to have good ecommerce websites and we offer to sell them our website, our infrastructure?
于是他们开始寻找一切可能增加现金流的办法，所谓需求乃发明之母。他们环顾四周：我们拥有什么？我们能做什么？我们有一个相当不错的电商网站，很多公司也想要这样的电商网站。如果我们主动找这些想要好电商网站的公司，把我们的网站和基础设施卖给他们呢？
Ben: Almost like being Shopify.
Ben：这几乎就像 Shopify。
David: Yeah. This is like Shopify, not AWS.
David：对，更像 Shopify，而不是 AWS。
Ben: And they did it in their ludicrously high-touch manner. It's not like we're just going to open up our platform. This whole obsession with interfaces, platforms, and APIs that exists within Amazon today, hasn't really happened yet. They're like, who can we basically do weird one-off partnerships with to create some co-branded website for them using our technology and all of our people to sell the stuff that they have relationships with manufacturers on?
Ben：而他们的做法极度「高接触」。并不是把平台直接开放出去。如今亚马逊对接口、平台和 API 的痴迷，那时还未形成。他们想的是：我们能和谁做一次性、定制化的合作？用我们的技术和团队，为他们打造联名网站，去销售他们与制造商已有关系的商品？
David: And customers and that we can then just get paid like a software fee for?
David：同时吸引顾客，然后我们像收软件费一样收取费用？
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: They do this with Toys R Us, and then they do it with Borders.
David：他们先跟 Toys R Us 合作，随后又跟 Borders 合作。
Ben: I remember the Borders branded Amazon, it was really weird.
Ben：我记得那个带 Borders 品牌的亚马逊站点，真的很奇怪。
David: I remember this. I would get Borders gift cards, and you could put them into the Borders site. But because it was also the same back-end as Amazon, you could then use that on Amazon. I totally remember doing this, and it worked the other direction, too.
David：我也记得。我拿到 Borders 礼品卡，可以在 Borders 站点上充值。但由于它和亚马逊后台相同，我随后就能在亚马逊上用这张卡。我当时真的这么做过，反过来同样奏效。
Ben: The clarity of vision on Amazon seems so clear in hindsight, but there are these weird things that happened along the way where you're like, oh, no, they were just in a corner and did something pretty antithetical to what the drumbeat of the culture and the strategy was. How is this strategic with everything that Bezos has been writing in his letters?
Ben：事后看来，亚马逊的愿景似乎清晰无比，但在发展过程中却出现过一些奇怪的插曲，让人觉得：哎呀，他们被逼到死角时干了些与企业文化和战略节奏相悖的事。这和贝索斯在股东信里写的种种战略究竟怎么契合？
David: It wasn't, but they needed the money. They do it with Target. They literally ran Target's website for years, which ominously, they announced that deal on September 11th, 2001, so rough. They even go pitched the idea to Walmart to do the same thing with Walmart. Walmart was like, yeah, no, thanks, guys. No, nice try.
David：并不契合，但他们需要钱。他们先跟 Target 合作，实际上帮 Target 运营网站好几年——更蹊跷的是，那笔合作在 2001 年 9 月 11 日宣布，可真够刺激。他们甚至跑去游说沃尔玛，说也能帮沃尔玛运营网站，结果沃尔玛直接回绝：“不用了，兄弟们，省省吧。”
Here's the super fun part. Amazon is going around pitching all these other retailers. Let us take over for you, run your website, blah-blah-blah. eBay knows Amazon's in a tight spot. They probably heard about Galli, Campbell, and all this stuff. In the fall of 2000, Meg Whitman and Jeff Jordan fly up to Seattle and they pitch Bezos on the opposite idea.
有意思的是，亚马逊到处跟零售商兜售服务：“把你们网站交给我们运营吧，诸如此类。”eBay 也知道亚马逊正陷入困境，大概听说了 Galli、Campbell 那些事。于是 2000 年秋，Meg Whitman 和 Jeff Jordan 飞到西雅图，向贝索斯提出了截然相反的想法。
eBay takes over the failed Amazon Auctions and all of third-party sellings, so it'd become zShops, which we'll talk about now on Amazon. Just like eBay, we know how to do this. You keep running amazon.com, the retail, and we'll do third-party selling for you with eBay technology. It was like, wow, oh, my gosh. Do you know the Michael Jordan meme of like, I took that personal?
他们提议：eBay 来接管失败的 Amazon Auctions 以及所有第三方销售，把它们改造成 zShops——反正我们 eBay 最懂拍卖和第三方。你们继续经营 amazon.com 零售主站，第三方卖家业务交给我们，用 eBay 技术搞定。听完只想感叹：哇哦！这就像迈克尔·乔丹那句名梗：“我把这事当成了对我的挑衅。”
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: I think it's from The Last Dance. I think Jeff took that personal.
David：那梗出自《最后之舞》。我觉得 Jeff 真的把这当成了挑衅。
Ben: Yes, I agree.
Ben：我同意。
David: Yes, I think he took that very personal. He calls a meeting. Remember, they're just trying to survive, get to profitability, generate cash flow. They're doing this crazy stuff with Target and Toys R Us.
David：没错，他确实觉得被冒犯了。他立刻召集会议。别忘了，他们当时只想活下去、实现盈利、产生现金流，还在跟 Target、Toys “R” Us 折腾那些疯狂合作。
Ben: At this point, they've got over \$2 billion of debt on the balance sheet. I think it actually increased from 2000-2001 and 2001-2002. They're really just making the interest payments here and trying to reduce the debt load and produce some net income profitability, which still hasn't happened.
Ben：当时资产负债表上已有超过 20 亿美元债务，而且 2000–2001、2001–2002 还在继续攀升。他们只能勉强付利息，想办法降负债、实现净利润，但还没成功。
David: No.
David：还没。
Ben: It was intentional for the longest time, but now that they need to do it, they need to grow the muscle to do it.
Ben：过去长期亏损是出于策略，如今真要赚钱，就得培养盈利的肌肉。
David: Yes. Jeff calls an emergency meeting of, at this point, it was the S team. The senior leadership, it was the J team, the Jeff team. Then when Galli took over and everybody reported to Joe, then it became the S team, the senior team.
David：对。Jeff 紧急召集 S Team 会议——当时的高层领导团队。最初叫 J Team（Jeff Team），Galli 接管后改称 S Team（Senior Team）。
Ben: Which it stayed the S team.
Ben：此后一直叫 S Team。
David: Which it stayed. That seems more appropriate than the Jeff team. Anyway, he calls a weekend emergency S team meeting at his house to discuss third-party selling on Amazon. I said zShops, so auctions. I can't remember if that was still alive or not.
David：确实一直沿用，听起来也比 Jeff Team 合适。他在家里召集周末紧急 S Team 会议，专门讨论亚马逊的第三方销售。我提到过 zShops，就是拍卖那摊子；我都记不清当时拍卖业务是不是还活着。
They had tried saying, okay, well maybe auctions don't make sense on Amazon, but we still want to allow other people to sell on Amazon. What if we just do fixed price, like a regular retail type listing? They started this thing called zShops. But again, it was a separate tab website. It wasn't right on the product page of amazon.com.
他们当时想：拍卖在亚马逊可能不合适，但我们仍想让别人来卖东西，要不改成固定价、普通零售式的 listing？于是推出了 zShops。但它依旧是独立标签、独立站点，并不直接显示在 amazon.com 的商品页面上。
Ben: They weren't leveraging the strategic asset that they had, which was traffic and customer loyalty.
Ben：他们并没有充分利用自己手中的战略资产——流量和客户忠诚度。
David: What they realized is one way to look at the real key thing—and I think this is very true today—that differentiates Amazon positively versus eBay and pretty much everywhere else selling on the Internet, is they have an authoritative product catalog. If you are on a product page for amazon.com, you know what that thing is that you're going to buy.
David：他们意识到，一个真正关键的差异化因素——我认为直到今天依然如此——就是亚马逊拥有一套权威的产品目录，这让它优于 eBay 及其他几乎所有互联网卖家。当你进入 amazon.com 的商品页面时，你清楚地知道自己要买的商品到底是什么。
Ben: They invented anybody's ever used against the API. They have ASINs. It's a unique Amazon identifying number for a product that they have an authoritative catalog on everything they sell.
Ben：他们甚至发明了供外界调用的 API，并推出了 ASIN——亚马逊为每件商品分配的唯一识别码，借此在整个权威目录中管理所有在售商品。
David: Anybody who's ever bought something on eBay, you don't really know what you're getting.
David：任何在 eBay 上买过东西的人都会知道，你其实并不真正清楚自己会拿到什么货。
Ben: Right. It's almost like Amazon starting as a bookstore had the benefit of ISBN numbers. It's like they decided, we're going to create a proprietary ISBN system for the world for all products.
Ben：没错。亚马逊最初做图书业务时受益于 ISBN 体系，如今则相当于为全球所有商品再造了一个专属的 “ISBN” 系统。
David: Yes. They came up with this crazy idea in this meeting. There's some backstory that leads to it, which is on the product pages, they had links to zShops listings, and that was the only thing that drove actual converting traffic now. What if we put listings from third-party sellers on our own product pages? That's what eBay wants to do. That's why eBay is interested in talking to us.
David：对。在那次会议上，他们想出了这个疯狂的点子。背景是当时商品页面上仅有 zShops 的链接能带来转化流量。于是他们想到：如果直接把第三方卖家的商品挂到我们的商品页面上会怎样？这恰好是 eBay 想做的事，也是 eBay 愿意与我们洽谈的原因。
What if we just do that and completely revamp how we think about third-party selling on it? But honestly, everything about the product page, and we call it Amazon Marketplace. They launched this in a matter of months. In November of 2000, they launched Marketplace first with books. This is nuts.
如果我们照此办理，彻底革新对第三方销售的认知呢？于是他们将这一切集成到商品页面，并称之为 Amazon Marketplace。几个月后，他们便完成上线。2000 年 11 月，Marketplace 率先上线图书类目，实在疯狂。
People are pissed at Amazon. If you're a Category Manager at Amazon, your competition—and Brad writes about this—just went from being outside the walls of amazon.com, you just let all your competition inside your walls in the castle on your product page.
这让很多人对亚马逊感到愤怒。若你是亚马逊的品类经理，正如 Brad 所写，你的竞争对手从城墙外被直接请进了城堡——他们出现在你管理的商品页面上。
Ben: I don't know exactly how it works. I think it's more sophisticated than this. Basically, if some third-party seller is verifiably selling the same exact product and they're doing it for a cheaper price, then the buy button doesn't come from Amazon. The buy button or guys that are competing vendors, third-party seller's product, you as Category Manager, if you've got a number next to your name, that doesn't accrue to your number.
Ben：我不确定具体规则，也许比我说的更复杂。大体上，如果某个第三方卖家确实在卖同一款产品，且价格更低，那么“购买”按钮就不再指向亚马逊自营，而是指向竞争卖家的商品。作为品类经理，你 KPI 上的销售额就拿不到这部分了。
David: Nope. That goes to a totally different team within Amazon. Just like amazon.com originally, it turns out customers really like competition, paying lower prices, being able to buy more stuff, getting more selection. They launched it in November, even though it launched in the middle of Q4 in 2001.
David：没错，那部分销量会归到亚马逊内部另一个团队。和最初的 amazon.com 一样，事实证明顾客非常喜欢竞争、喜欢低价、喜欢买到更多商品、拥有更多选择。尽管当时已是 2001 年第四季度，他们仍在 11 月上线了这一功能。
Ben: Which is a no-no until this point. You basically don't launch anything going into the Christmas season. You're literally not allowed to push code up until this point in Amazon's history around that time.
Ben：而在此之前，这几乎是大忌——临近圣诞季通常严禁上线任何新功能。当年的亚马逊甚至规定这段时间不能推送代码。
David: It accounts for 15% of all customer orders on amazon.com Marketplace. Wild. Today, Marketplace is over 50%, so over half of everything that is sold on amazon.com is not sold by Amazon.
David：但上线当月，Marketplace 就占到了 amazon.com 总订单量的 15%，非常夸张。如今，Marketplace 占比已超过 50%，也就是说在亚马逊出售的商品中，超过一半并非亚马逊自营。
自我颠覆的勇气，Google也正在经历相似的过程。
Ben: I remember the annual letter in 2018 when it eclipsed it. Jeff proudly proclaimed that third-party sellers are kicking our butt. We're very excited about that.
Ben：我记得 2018 年的年度股东信，当第三方销量超越自营时，Jeff 自豪地说：“第三方卖家把我们打得落花流水，我们对此非常兴奋。”
David: What a Jeff thing to say.
David：太符合 Jeff 的风格了。
Ben: This was when founder leadership becomes really important. They have an immediate organizational design problem, where a whole bunch of people are incentivized and comped against their fiefdom. What you've just done is you've created a brand new business strategy that tells people that the greater good is more important than their fiefdom. In order to rearrange everyone without creating massive infighting and churn to march in this new strategic direction, it's pretty hard to do that as a non-founder.
Ben：这正体现了创始人领导力的重要性。公司出现了组织设计难题：很多人按自己“一亩三分地”拿奖金和绩效，而新战略告诉大家“大局高于小圈子”。要让所有人不内斗、不流失地朝这个新方向前进，非创始人几乎难以做到。
David: I'm so in awe of Bezos doing this, because he almost just got ousted out of his company. He's on thin ice, the company is on thin ice.
David：我对 Bezos 的举动佩服得五体投地，他差点被赶出自己创办的公司，当时他和公司都如履薄冰。
Ben: And this could have blown up the company, too. This is a different business model.
Ben：而这也可能把公司炸掉，因为这是截然不同的商业模式。
David: All of the emotional incentive that I would imagine for somebody in this amount of pressure is the board, the shareholders, everything, and just be like, okay, I got to come back. I got to save. I can't rock the boat. We got to do a cost cut, blah-blah-blah. He's like, nope, we're going to make this radical shift in this dire moment.
David：换作一般人在这种压力下，董事会、股东等多方施压，大概只会想：先稳住、别折腾、削成本。但 Jeff 的反应是：不，我们要在危急时刻做激进转型。
You're totally right. Not only is this something only a founder can do. It's only something that a very special founder would have the confidence to do. Amazingly, it works. Jeff's crazy goal of the company is going to hit profitability Q4 of 2001 that he just plucked out of thin air when he came back after the Galli incident.
你说得对，这不仅是只有创始人才能做的事，更需要极其特别的创始人才有勇气去做。令人惊讶的是，他成功了。Jeff 在 Galli 事件后拍脑袋定下的目标——2001 年第四季度实现盈利——居然达成。
They do it. Marketplace is a big component of this. The website deals with Target and Toys R Us are a big component to this. In Q4 of 2001, they did $1.1 billion of revenue, $59 million of operating income, $35 million of pro forma adjusted net income excluding stock based comp and other non cash expenses, which Wall Street's like, yeah, blah-blah-blah.
他们真的做到了。其中 Marketplace 起了大作用，与 Target、Toys“R”Us 的网站合作也功不可没。2001 年第四季度，他们实现 11 亿美元营收、5900 万美元营业利润、3500 万美元经调整净利（不含股份报酬等非现金费用），华尔街虽对此指指点点，但……
They do $5 million of honest to God, you can touch it, taste it, take it home, put it in your bank account, GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2001. This is huge. They announced results, the stock jumps 25% in one day, which no other internet stocks are jumping up in that moment in time.
他们还实现了 500 万美元的 GAAP 纯利润——真金白银，可以存进银行。这太关键了。财报公布当天，股价暴涨 25%，而同期其他互联网股都在跌。
Ben: Right. People are licking their wounds after 2000 for three years, four years?
Ben：没错。经历 2000 年互联网泡沫后，大家还在舔伤口，整整三四年呢。
David: It was an amazing achievement.
David：这是一项惊人成就。
Ben: Amazon had seen big jumps before, like the Henry Blodget thing during the dot-com era where it was trading below 100 and suddenly jumped to 250 or something. All at once, just on Henry Blodget saying, I think it's going to go to 400. They were no stranger to massive fluctuations in their stock price, but you're right. This is one bright spot in a multi-year dark period for tech.
Ben：亚马逊以前也经历过大涨，比如互联网泡沫时期 Henry Blodget 那事，股价从 100 美元以下瞬间飙到 250 美元，只因 Blodget 说：“我看 400 美元。” 他们对巨幅波动并不陌生。但你说得对，在科技界多年的低迷期里，这是难得的亮点。
David: This is post September 11th. This is like today in the stock market. A year ago, stocks jumped 25% in a day, great. This is like, everybody else are going down and we went up.
David：要知道这是“9·11” 之后，就像今天股市一样——别家都跌，我们却涨 25%。
Ben: Yup. This is the start of where you start to see, oh, Amazon might become bigger than eBay. eBay basically doesn't have a thriving comeback in the post dot-com bubble burst.
Ben：是的。从这儿开始，人们开始意识到：噢，亚马逊可能会超过 eBay。而在互联网泡沫破裂后，eBay 基本没能再蓬勃复兴。
David: No. It would be a long journey, but Amazon stock price tripled in 2007 while eBay's fell by over 50%. During that year for the first time since eBay is IPO, Amazon finally passes eBay in market cap. Today, eBay’s market cap...
David：不。路途漫长，但 2007 年亚马逊股价涨了两倍，而 eBay 下跌超过 50%。就在那一年，自 eBay 上市以来，亚马逊首次在市值上超越 eBay。如今，eBay 的市值……
Ben: It is large. They've done a nice job. It's \$27 billion, even after the big drawdown that we've experienced. It's a little bit weird to look at that number, because it's got the divestiture of PayPal in it, had the acquisition and then divestiture of Skype. There are some wonkiness. Their post-2015 has been pretty good.
Ben：仍然不小，他们表现不错，即便经历大幅回调，现在也有 270 亿美元。看这个数字有点怪，因为期间剥离了 PayPal，又收购后剥离了 Skype，数据有些失真。2015 年后的表现还算不错。
David: Yup. Still, I think we can declare Amazon the winner here in the long run.
David：是的。不过我想，从长远来看可以宣布亚马逊获胜。
Ben: Yes. I can't tell you the last time I bought something on eBay. God, I'm afraid to look at my Amazon total.
Ben：是啊。我都想不起上一次在 eBay 买东西是什么时候了。天哪，我都不敢去看自己在亚马逊花了多少钱。
David: Okay. Few more stories we got to tell about this era of Amazon before we talk about another era of Amazon on the next episode. We talked about Google. As the years go by after the dot-com crash and...
David：好吧，在下一集进入亚马逊的下一个时代之前，还有几个关于这一时期的故事要讲。我们刚谈到谷歌。互联网泡沫破裂后几年里……
Ben: Portals go away and the browse motion on the Internet becomes inefficient, because the Internet's freaking huge and growing really fast. It turns out, search is really important. Amazon's looking at Google, they're like, God, they've got an unbelievable business. It's a monopoly, the gross margins are incredible. Finding things on the Internet seems really important. We should get into that, too.
Ben：门户网站衰落，靠浏览在互联网上找东西效率低下，因为互联网太庞大、增长太快。结果发现搜索极其重要。亚马逊看着谷歌，心想：天啊，他们的生意难以置信，是垄断，毛利惊人。网上找东西这么关键，我们也得涉足。
David: Yup. It's both an opportunity and a problem for us. We want to be the place where people find stuff to buy on the Internet. Honestly, I think this is drawing too broad of a brush, but I think Google killed eBay. The best way to search eBay is Google, it's not eBay.
David：没错，对我们既是机会也是难题。我们想成为人们在网上寻找购买商品的首选之地。说句可能一刀切的话，我觉得谷歌干掉了 eBay。搜索 eBay 最好的方式是用谷歌，而不是 eBay 自己。
Ben: The issue with Amazon for a while was the best way to search Amazon was Google.
Ben：一度，搜索亚马逊最好的方式也是用谷歌。
David: Right. Jeff, of course, through his very direct connection to Google, he saw this problem certainly before eBay, before lots and lots of people. He has a quote on Google from the pretty early days of Amazon dealing with this. He says to folks at Amazon, "Treat Google like a mountain. You can climb the mountain, but you can't move it. You use them, but don't make them smarter, as in like, don't make them smarter about searching our product catalog."
David：对。Jeff 与谷歌有直接联系，他比 eBay 乃至许多人更早看到这个问题。他在亚马逊早期就说过一句关于谷歌的话：“把谷歌当成一座山。你可以爬山，但搬不走它。你可以利用它，但别让它更聪明——尤其别让它更懂得搜索我们的产品目录。”
For the first time, knowing what a strategic priority search is becoming on the Internet, and thus to Amazon, Amazon breaks down and starts a secret subsidiary in California, in Palo Alto. They do a whole bunch of legal gymnastics. They're like, oh, it's a separate subsidiary. It's not Amazon.
第一次意识到搜索在互联网上（进而对亚马逊）变得多么战略关键后，亚马逊破例在加州帕洛阿尔托秘密设立了一家子公司，做了一系列法律操作，声称这只是独立子公司，不是亚马逊本体。
Ben: It doesn't generate any revenue.
Ben：它本身不产生任何收入。
David: But this is the beginning of the end. Eventually, after the financial crisis, a whole bunch of stuff happens. They have to just give in and say, great, we've got operations. We're charging tax everywhere.
David：但这只是开始。金融危机之后发生了很多事，他们最终不得不妥协，承认自己在各地有业务，并开始到处缴税。
Ben: I think it's a misunderstanding of Amazon to say they don't want to pay sales tax because they're being cheap. They view it as a competitive advantage, where shoppers will shop with them because the items can be 5%-10% less because there's no sales tax on them, again, because it's technically putting the onus on the consumer. They're like, well, corporate income tax is a whole separate thing.
Ben：如果说亚马逊不愿意缴销售税只是因为抠门，那就误解了他们。他们把少收销售税当成竞争优势——顾客会选择在亚马逊购物，因为同样的商品能便宜 5%–10%，税负名义上由消费者自行承担。至于企业所得税，那又是另外一回事。
David: This is about attracting customers.
David：这完全是为了吸引顾客。
Ben: We have our own methods of paying the smallest amount of that possible. But yeah, this is purely about beating competitors to get the customer spend.
Ben：我们自有办法把应缴税额压到最低。但说到底，就是为了打败竞争对手、抢夺消费者的钱包。
David: 100% after I graduated from college, and I was living on my own for the first time with my own salary and expenses, a light bulb went off on my head one day. I was like, I'm going to buy everything on Amazon because I don't pay sales tax. Fortunately, I'm in a place where that doesn't matter to me now. It's the Walmart episode. If saving 5%–10% on your groceries, on your item, like, that matters a lot to a lot of people.
David：我大学毕业、第一次靠自己薪水生活时，突然灵光一闪：我要所有东西都在亚马逊买，因为不用交销售税。如今我处境好了，省这点钱对我影响不大。但正如我们讲沃尔玛那集——如果能在日用品上省下 5%–10%，对很多人而言意义重大。
Ben: Totally.
Ben：完全同意。
David: Bezos, Amazon, they see Google. They start a subsidiary in Palo Alto and like, we can try and not make Google smarter and play defense here. We got to play offense, too, and we got to improve our own search capabilities. They started hiring search PhDs, leaders, at the subsidiary in Palo Alto that they call A9 short for algorithms, A plus nine letters, algorithms.
David：Bezos 和亚马逊注意到了谷歌。他们在帕洛阿尔托设立子公司，想办法既不让谷歌更聪明、做好防守，又要主动出击，提升自家搜索能力。于是招募搜索领域博士和专家，在这家名为 A9（algorithm 前缀 A 加 9 个字母）的子公司开展工作。
Like you said, at first, they're like, oh, we should start our own separate search engine and compete with Google. It turns out, there's a network effect in search as well, which is the more data you have on the more searches happening, the better searches you can return. That's a fool's errand. But there is actually one corner of the Internet where Amazon has better data on searches than Google, and that is searches that happen on amazon.com.
正如你所说，他们最初想另起炉灶做搜索引擎，与谷歌竞争。但搜索也有网络效应：数据越多、查询越多，结果越好——硬拼简直痴人说梦。不过互联网上有个角落，亚马逊掌握的搜索数据优于谷歌，那就是 amazon.com 内部的搜索。
Ben: Yup. Because as much as Google can index all of Amazon's product detail pages, they don't have the data on what people are actually searching for on Amazon, the demand data, the intent data.
Ben：没错。谷歌虽然能索引亚马逊的商品页，却拿不到用户在亚马逊上真实的搜索、需求和意图数据。
David: They don't see a conversion. Plus, there's the review system, which we haven't talked about. It was completely genius, huge to Amazon's success.
David：谷歌看不到转化数据。此外，还有评论系统——我们还没提到——那是亚马逊成功的天才之举。
Ben: Did you know Shel wrote that over a weekend in 1996, the original review system?
Ben：你知道吗？最早的评论系统是 Shel 在 1996 年一个周末写出来的。
David: I know, amazing.
David：我知道，太神了。
Ben: One of the first things on amazon.com.
Ben：那是 amazon.com 最早上线的功能之一。
David: Of course, those signals from the review system, the star ratings, the sentiment of the reviews themselves, that becomes a really important factor in waiting search. Today, like, oh, my God, search on Amazon, like, why would you search for products anywhere else? They got Amazon's choice, you've got the rankings, you've got the filtering. It's way better.
David：评论系统里的信号——星级、文本情感——后来成了搜索排序的重要因子。如今在亚马逊上搜索，体验太好了：Amazon's Choice、排名、筛选，全都到位，谁还去别处搜？
This is the beginning of all that. Like we're saying, I think it's also the beginning of the end for eBay because as Google gets better, deep linking from Google into eBay becomes the best way to search the chaotic marketplace of eBay. eBay's paying the Google tax on all that, and Google's the strategic intermediary. Amazon is terrified of the same thing happening to them.
这就是一切的开端。正如我们所言，这也为 eBay 的衰落埋下伏笔：谷歌日益强大后，用户通过谷歌深链到 eBay 成了搜索 eBay 杂乱市场的最佳方式，eBay 因此向谷歌缴“税”，谷歌成为战略中间层。亚马逊害怕同样的事发生在自己身上。
Ben: Meanwhile, over in Google Labs, I loved when Google was a smaller company. I think it was a labs tab and you could click on all these weird little experiments they were doing. It wasn't like Google X, Google moonshot stuff. It was like...
Ben：与此同时，在 Google Labs 里，我很喜欢谷歌还很小的时候。我记得有一个 Labs 标签，你可以点进去看到他们做的那些稀奇古怪的小实验。那可不是 Google X、月球计划那种，而是……
David: Useful stuff.
David：实用的东西。
Ben: Where Google Images came out of, and Gmail, and those sort of things.
Ben：Google Images、Gmail 这些东西都是从那里出来的。
David: Maps.
David：Maps。
Ben: Yeah. One of them was called Froogle. I think it was product search. I think it was what Google Shopping became.
Ben：对。其中有一个叫 Froogle，我觉得那是个产品搜索服务，好像后来成了 Google Shopping。
David: Dude, Froogle, I may be speaking out of turn without researching the full history, but I used to use that all the time, again, as a broke post college student, not as an investment banker, but I was making \$60,000 a year living in Manhattan. Money mattered. I believe Froogle was insanely popular. I think I morphed it and shut it down for antitrust concerns.
David：伙计，Froogle 啊，我没做完整研究可能有点偏颇，但我以前一直用它。当时我刚毕业囊中羞涩，可不是投行精英，只是在曼哈顿年薪 6 万美元，能省钱就省。我记得 Froogle 当时非常火。我听说后来它被改造并因反垄断担忧而关闭。
Ben: Oh, really?
Ben：哦，真的吗？
David: It was my understanding. I think, actually, there was a lot of demand for that product.
David：据我了解，那个产品其实有很大需求。
Ben: Comparison shopping, I think, is ultimately what it was.
Ben：归根到底，它就是比价购物。
David: The other thing, and this is why just Amazon is so good, and we're going to spend a huge portion of the next episode talking about, it's not just that they make search on Amazon better and play defense against Google. They do that. They also play offense. At first, it was like, oh, we're going to make our own search engine, and that was a bad idea.
David：还有一点，这正是亚马逊厉害的原因，我们下一集会花很多时间讲：他们不仅把亚马逊站内搜索做得更好、对谷歌进行防守，他们也会主动进攻。一开始，他们想，哦，我们自己做个搜索引擎吧——事实证明这是个糟主意。
What is the business model of search? It's advertising. What do they realize? We can build an advertising business with search on Amazon. It's just absolutely brilliant.
David：搜索的商业模式是什么？是广告。他们意识到：我们完全可以把亚马逊的搜索做成一门广告生意，简直太聪明了。
Ben: Any web platform of sufficient scale can layer on for free a second business of advertising, because they just have the traffic and they can put stuff in front of people, and they can prioritize it however they see fit. I think Amazon's ad business—I haven't done the research yet for next episode—I think it's somewhere around \$40 billion in revenue now.
Ben：任何规模足够大的网络平台都能免费叠加一门广告业务，因为它们已有流量，能把东西展示在用户面前，并按自己的意愿排序。我没查最新数据，但我觉得亚马逊的广告业务收入可能在 400 亿美元左右。
David: It is a \$30 billion revenue run rate. They don't break out the margins, but it's so jazz.
David：目前年化营收大概 300 亿美元。他们没公布利润率，但那水准可想而知。
Ben: It's basically 100% margin business.
Ben：基本上是 100% 毛利的业务。
David: Yes.
David：没错。
Ben: You already have those customers, there are no customer acquisition costs. You don't have to pay anyone out any amount of that revenue for any reason. It's like a Facebook ad. It's the best gross margin business in history.
Ben：你已经拥有这些客户，没有获客成本；这部分收入也不用分成，跟 Facebook 广告一个道理，是史上最好毛利的生意。
David: The other incredibly impactful thing that comes out of A9 and improving search on the amazon.com website, is one of the catalysts that pushes the company to transition from a monolith software architecture to independent microservices. That is amazing for Amazon playing defense, and that is also amazing for providing web services to other developers out there. You might be able to imagine that.
David：A9 以及对亚马逊站内搜索的改进，还有一个巨大影响：它推动公司从单体式架构转向独立微服务架构。这不仅让亚马逊在防守上更强，也为向其他开发者提供网络服务奠定了基础。你或许能想象成什么。
Ben: Are you leaving us there, David?
Ben：大卫，你要把我们晾在这儿吗？
David: I would leave you there. I would leave you there, but this is a very special episode and a very special company. We've got Acoda.
David：本来我可以就此打住，但这是一期特别的节目，也是一家特别的公司。我们还要讲“乐章”。
Ben: Are we getting into hardware? Is that where we're going here?
Ben：我们要聊硬件了吗？接下来要往那儿走吗？
David: I don't know. We've probably done it more than once. But in my mind, the canonical Acquired episode, Acoda is the PlayStation on the Sony episode.
David：我也不确定，我们或许已不止一次做到这一点。但在我心中，最经典的“乐章”是索尼那期的 PlayStation 故事。
Ben: Oh, yeah. Where you thought, wow, look at all those 70 years of history, it feels like we're done, and then actually, they create their most successful business unit.
Ben：没错。那时你会想，哇，70 年的历史已经讲完了吧，结果他们却在这时缔造了史上最成功的业务部门。
David: Yes. Regardless of how good you and I did or didn't do on, just the story of Sony, is one of the most incredible of all time
David：是的。抛开我们讲得好不好，单就索尼的故事本身而言，已经够传奇了。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：确实如此。
David: And then the PlayStation.
David：然后是 PlayStation 的诞生。
Ben: And then one engineer in a corner who barely has express written consent from management advice to go build something.
Ben：当时只是角落里的一名工程师，几乎没有获得管理层正式批文，就自己动手做东西。
David: That story is AWS for Amazon. The story we're going to tell is not as impactful from a business standpoint, but the story is just as good. That's the story of the Kindle.
David：对于亚马逊来说，AWS 就是这样的存在。我们接下来要讲的故事，在商业影响上或许没那么震撼，但同样精彩——那就是 Kindle 的故事。
Ben: I'm actually quite curious what the business impact is. I think they don't break it out, but I'm curious if you did any analysis at all. What does Kindle allow them to do that they otherwise might have lost market leadership on or something like that?
Ben：我挺好奇它的商业影响。他们并未单独披露数据，但你有没有做过分析？Kindle 让他们实现了什么，否则可能失去的市场领导地位之类？
David: I didn't do any financial analysis. As we'll talk about in the story, similar to the defense against Google with search, it was defense against Apple and the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. Today, I love Kindle.
David：我没做财务分析。等下讲到就会说，这跟当年用搜索防御谷歌一样，是对苹果的防守——对抗 iPod、iPhone、iPad。如今我很爱 Kindle。
My Kindle is one of my favorite things in the whole world. It's amazing. But I think probably the way most people consume most content on Kindle is apps on other devices, so the Kindle story. This is one of those five people on the Internet and Silicon Valley.
我的 Kindle 是我最喜欢的物品之一，真是太棒了。但多数人现在可能主要通过其他设备上的 Kindle 应用来阅读内容。所以 Kindle 的故事，也算得上硅谷和互联网圈里“五个人就能串起来”的传奇。
Ben: Oh, I could not believe the people's names behind the original Kindle inception. All right, lay it on us.
Ben：我简直不敢相信最初构想 Kindle 的那些人是谁。好吧，告诉我们吧。
David: When I found this out, I texted you. I was just like, oh, my God. Okay. I know you know because we talked about it. But listeners, I bet very few of you know who inspired the idea for Jeff and Amazon to pursue the Kindle.
David：当我得知真相后就给你发了短信，简直惊呆了。我知道你已经知道了，因为我们讨论过。但各位听众，我敢说很少有人知道是谁启发了 Jeff 和亚马逊去做 Kindle。
Ben: Let's give a little bit of hint. When we say inspired, they started an independent company doing Kindle-like things, ereader things, before—
Ben：先给点提示吧。所谓“启发”，是说他们成立了一家独立公司，先于 Kindle 就在做电子阅读器这类事情……
David: Building one of the first few readers.
David：打造了最早的一批电子书阅读器。
Ben: Yes.
Ben：没错。
David: The first successful ereader.
David：首款成功的电子阅读器。
Ben: But long before it would take off, it was not with E Ink, it was with a predecessor technology.
Ben：但在真正起飞之前，它用的并非电子墨水，而是一种更早期的技术。
David: It was with LCD, which was a big problem.
David：当时用的是 LCD，这成了一个大问题。
Ben: With LCD. How else might you know them? They are the founders of something that their name is not associated with, but someone else's name is massively associated with.
Ben：是 LCD。你还可能从哪里认识他们呢？他们创办了一个后来广为人知却很少跟他们名字联系在一起、反而和另一个人紧密相连的公司。
David: They would take the money that they made from this company and roll it into another little company that they would then start after this in 2003 called Tesla Motors. That's right. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning inspired Jeff Bezos and Amazon to build the Kindle.
David：他们把这家公司赚来的钱投入到 2003 年创办的另一家小公司——特斯拉汽车。没错，正是 Martin Eberhard 和 Marc Tarpenning 启发了 Jeff Bezos 和亚马逊去打造 Kindle。
Here's the story. In 1997, Martin and Marc were working in Silicon Valley. Napster was happening, the music industry was getting digitized and eviscerated, and bought all this stuff, mp3s, mp3 players. It was total upheaval. Lots of people—the two of them included—were like, it's only a matter of time until other media categories go through the same thing.
故事是这样的。1997 年，Martin 和 Marc 在硅谷工作。Napster 横空出世，音乐产业被数字化并被撕裂，MP3、MP3 播放器等层出不穷，一片动荡。许多人——包括他们俩——都认为其他媒介品类迟早也会经历同样的变革。
Video is going to take a while because bandwidth and file sizes of video is a lot. Broadband isn't a thing yet for most people, but books are really obvious. Smaller file sizes than mp3s, very easily digitizable, this should be a thing.
视频还需时日，因为带宽和文件体积太大，大多数人家里还没有宽带；但图书就不一样了，文件比 MP3 还小，非常容易数字化，理应率先爆发。
What's holding back the industry? Unlike mp3s where it's pretty good experience downloading them from Napster, playing them on your computer, mp3 players are becoming a thing, there's no equivalent of an mp3 player for a book. You don't want to read a book on your computer, you want to read a book on a book.
行业瓶颈在哪？MP3 可以从 Napster 下载，在电脑上播放，MP3 播放器也开始流行；但书却没有对应的“MP3 播放器”。没人想在电脑屏幕上读整本书，人们想在像书一样的设备上阅读。
They looked around and they talked to a bunch of exploring technology and they're like, we can make the equivalent of an mp3 layer for a book, an ereader. They started a company, they called it Nouveau Media, and they made the Rocketbook. They made a prototype, but it's hardware. They need to bring it to market, they need capital, they need the largest of, just like their future hardware startup Tesla, the largest of a wealthy person who might want to see this happen.
他们调查技术后决定：我们可以做书的“MP3 播放器”——电子阅读器。他们创办了 Nouveau Media，制作了 Rocketbook 原型。但这是硬件，要推向市场就需要资金，需要像之后做特斯拉那样，找到愿意成全此事的富豪。
Ben: Who do they call?
Ben：那他们找谁？
David: They fly up to Seattle and they meet with Jeff Bezos. This is in the bubble era. Bezos was really interested.
David：他们飞到西雅图，会见 Jeff Bezos。当时正值互联网泡沫期，Bezos 对此非常感兴趣。
Ben: I think Amazon's public at this point.
Ben：那时亚马逊已经上市了吧。
David: Yes, Amazon had just gone public, Jeff totally gets it. He's like, but our business is selling books. We're an internet company. I see what's happening with Napster.
David：是的，亚马逊刚上市。Jeff 完全明白，但他说：我们的业务是卖书，我们是一家互联网公司。我看到了 Napster 的冲击。
Ben: This has happened at some point in some way.
Ben：某种意义上，这必然会发生。
David: This is for sure happening at some point in some way. This is the first time I've seen this. I'm very interested. They negotiated for three weeks. They wanted Amazon to sell books. You need books to sell, ebooks. You need relationships with publishers, they want Amazon to become the store or A-store.
David：这事迟早会以某种方式发生。我第一次看到这种情况，非常感兴趣。他们谈判了三周。他们希望亚马逊来卖书——要卖书就得有电子书，还需要与出版社的关系，他们想让亚马逊成为这家店，也就是所谓的 A-store。
This is the sticking point, A-store for the Rocketbook. Bezos also wants to do it, but he’s like, look. If we’re going to do it, we want exclusivity. I don’t want you going and doing the same deal with Barnes & Noble or anybody else.
这就是关键点：为 Rocketbook 打造 A-store。贝索斯也想做，但他说，如果要做，我们必须独家合作。我不希望你们再去和 Barnes & Noble 或其他任何人签同样的协议。
Ben: Right. Why would we fund the development of this and all the customer acquisition for you if we’re not going to be the exclusive provider?
Ben：没错。如果我们不能成为独家提供方，为什么还要给你们出钱开发、替你们获取客户？
David: Like any good entrepreneurs, when they hear this, they’re like, all right, well, Martin and Mark, they fly to New York and they talked to the Riggio brothers. They’re like, hey, we’re talking to Jeff.
David：像所有优秀的创业者一样，他们听到这话后就说，好吧。于是 Martin 和 Mark 飞到纽约，与 Riggio 兄弟洽谈，说：嘿，我们正在跟 Jeff 谈呢。
Ben: I love that these guys are back in the story.
Ben：太棒了，这俩人又回到故事里来了。
David: I know, they’re back in the story. Of course, Barnes & Noble wants to crush Amazon at this point. They’re like, great, we’ll do the deal with you. We don’t need exclusivity, but we’ll invest in the company. We’ll bring Bertelsmann, the German media company in as well. You’ll get your publisher relationships, you’ll get your store, we’ll do this, and we know Jeff won’t do the deal.
David：没错，他们又出现了。当然，此时 Barnes & Noble 一心想干掉亚马逊，于是说：太好了，我们跟你们合作。不需要独家，但我们会投资你们的公司，还会拉德国媒体巨头贝塔斯曼一起进来。你们能拿到出版社关系，也能有自己的商店，我们会推动这事，而我们知道 Jeff 不会再跟你们签。
Eventually Cisco invests as well. In 1999, the device launches to the public. It’s too early, but Oprah makes it one of our 10 favorite things for the year. It’s a hit. Ultimately, Gemstar-TV Guide, pretty quickly after, acquires the company for almost \$200 million. Martin and Marc, they got pretty wealthy.
最后思科也投资了。1999 年，这款设备面世。虽然时机尚早，但奥普拉把它列为当年十大最爱之一，一炮而红。不久之后，Gemstar-TV Guide 以近 2 亿美元收购了这家公司，Martin 和 Marc 由此发了财。
Ben: These guys are flushing with some cash.
Ben：这俩人现在手头可真宽裕。
David: That literally leads to Tesla. It’s freaking crazy. Also just wild that if Amazon and Bezos hadn’t acquired accept.com, probably no PayPal, which means Elon doesn’t have the money, which means…
David：这笔钱直接促成了特斯拉，太疯狂了。更疯狂的是，如果当年亚马逊和贝索斯没收购 accept.com，大概就不会有 PayPal，那么埃隆也就没有那笔钱，那就……
Ben: Interesting.
Ben：真有意思。
David: The tangled web here is amazing. Jeff and Eberhard remained friends through all this and just like, all right, no hard feelings. There are plenty of other stuff going on at Amazon. As the years progress, they stay in touch. Jeff is always asking Martin like, hey, when do you think the technology, we’re thinking about this, when do you think it might be ready?
David：这错综复杂的关系网太精彩了。Jeff 和 Eberhard 在这一切之后仍是朋友，两边都没怨气。亚马逊还有很多别的事情在发生。几年过去，他们保持联系。Jeff 总问 Martin：嘿，我们正考虑这项技术，你觉得什么时候能成熟？
Apple and Steve Jobs, in 2001, they launched iTunes and the iPod. It’s amazing, people love it. Okay, but it’s Apple. Tiny market share, you have to have a Mac to use iTunes, to use the iPod. Great for students, but not changing the world here.
2001 年，苹果和 Steve Jobs 推出了 iTunes 和 iPod。产品惊艳，广受喜爱。但别忘了，那时的苹果市场份额很小，必须有 Mac 才能用 iTunes、用 iPod。对学生来说不错，但还谈不上改变世界。
Ben: Yes, not the Apple we know of today.
Ben：没错，那时的苹果可不是今天的苹果。
David: In 2003—it was so fun going back and remembering this—they launched iTunes for Windows. That was such a huge moment for Apple, and Steve Jobs knew it. He totally freaking knew it.
David：在 2003 年——回想起来真有趣——他们为 Windows 推出了 iTunes。对苹果来说，这是划时代的时刻，而 Steve Jobs 心知肚明，他完全明白这一点。
Bezos and a couple of other folks went down to meet with Jobs after iTunes for Windows launches, because they're like, we sell a lot of CDs on Amazon. Jobs is like, yeah, you sell a lot of CDs on Amazon. Good luck with that.
iTunes for Windows 发布后，Bezos 和几个人去见了 Jobs，因为他们说：我们在亚马逊卖了很多 CD。Jobs 回应：是啊，你们在亚马逊卖了很多 CD。祝你们好运吧。
By the way, we're not just thinking about CDs and music here. There's now a new threat to not just any business within Amazon, but the original core books is immediately what they're thinking about.
顺便说一句，我们考虑的不只是 CD 和音乐。现在出现的新威胁不仅影响亚马逊的任何业务，更直接威胁到他们最初的核心——图书。
Ben: Which is still a huge part of their sales at this point. Or at least media, books, CDs, DVDs. That's a huge part of Amazon's business.
Ben：这些品类此时仍占亚马逊销售的大头。至少媒体类、书籍、CD、DVD 这些，是亚马逊业务的重要组成部分。
David: Totally. There's now some urgency in Amazon to deal with this, so Jeff calls Martin back up. They've already started Tesla at this point. He's like, yeah, we got to do this now. Martin's like, okay, well, the LCD screen that we used on the Rocketbook, it had a whole bunch of problems with it. I talked to these guys at the MIT Media Lab about this technology they were developing called E Ink. It wasn't quite ready yet, but you might want to go check them out and see if it's ready now.
David：没错。亚马逊感到了紧迫，Jeff 又联系了 Martin。那时他们已经创办了特斯拉。Jeff 说：我们得马上行动。Martin 回应：好的，不过 Rocketbook 上用的 LCD 屏有很多问题。我和 MIT Media Lab 的人聊过，他们在开发一种叫 E Ink 的技术，之前还不成熟，但你们可以去看看现在是否可行。
Ben: In particular, the LCD uses too much battery, it's bright so it's not good for night reading necessarily. You can't really read in the sun.
Ben：尤其是 LCD 耗电太大，亮度高，夜间阅读并不好用，阳光下也几乎看不清。
David: What do you want to do with a book? You want to take it to the beach. You want to read it outside, you want to read it in bed, all these things that LCD screens, especially at the time, are not good for.
David：读书要干什么？你想带到海滩，想在户外阅读，想躺在床上看，而这些场景当时的 LCD 屏都无法胜任。
This is such a priority. This was after A9, so they already had the one subsidiary in Palo Alto. They set up a second subsidiary in Palo Alto called Lab126 with the secret mission of make an iPod-like ereader device.
这件事优先级极高。当时 A9 已成立，他们在帕洛阿尔托已设有一家子公司；随后又在同地成立第二家子公司 Lab126，秘密任务就是打造一款类似 iPod 的电子阅读器。
Ben: It took them a while.
Ben：这花了不少时间。
David: Years.
David：足足几年。
Ben: Two full years, and then they slip the release date by a full year. It was supposed to be out for one holiday season. It didn't come out until the next. But when it came out, it was earth-shattering.
Ben：整整两年开发，又把发布日期推迟了一年，本该赶一个圣诞季，结果延到下一个。但一问世就惊艳四座。
Not only is it shocking that Amazon is doing hardware, because that is not a thing that they've ever done before, and that's not what we expect out of them, and there are only a few big successful companies that make consumer computing hardware, that sort of thing, but it really was the introduction of E Ink as a viable technology. People really hadn't seen it before in consumer devices.
令人震惊的不仅在于亚马逊竟然做硬件——他们之前从未涉足，我们也不指望他们做，而且能成功做消费电子硬件的大公司屈指可数——更在于这是 E Ink 首次作为可行技术进入消费市场，大家以前几乎没在终端设备上见过它。
David: Now we're going back and looking at photos of some of the sources of that original Kindle that launched. It took till 2007.
David：现在我们回头看首款 Kindle 的照片和资料，它直到 2007 年才推出。
Ben: It had that keyboard on it.
Ben：它还带着那个键盘。
David: Yeah, it had the keyboard. It had a wonky scroll wheel, because Bezos was like, I've got a scroll wheel on my Blackberry, and I want a scroll wheel on my Kindle.
David：是的，它带有键盘，还有一个怪怪的滚轮，因为贝索斯说：“我的黑莓手机上有滚轮，我也想让 Kindle 也有滚轮。”
Ben: Yeah. He was constantly fighting with the design firm that they had hired to produce it, and putting his own beliefs about how it should be, even though they're the designers. They would come back and they would have him put on the business model and he's like, you're going to take my design advice and you're definitely not giving me Jeff Bezos' business model advice.
Ben：没错。他不断跟外聘的设计公司争论，坚持自己的想法——虽然对方才是设计师。设计公司回来谈商业模式，他就说：“你们要听我的设计意见，但绝对别跟我这个 Jeff Bezos 提商业模式建议。”
David: That's the thing. The device nailed a couple things, E Ink, technology, actually wireless, which was a Bezos thing, because Wi-Fi still wasn't quite everywhere.
David：关键就在这。那台设备有几样东西做得特别好，比如电子墨水技术，还有真正的无线连接——这是贝索斯坚持的，因为那时候 Wi-Fi 还远未普及。
Ben: Whispersync, I think was the name of the...
Ben：我记得那个叫 Whispersync……
David: Whispersync, yup.
David：对，Whispersync。
Ben: Or Whispernet?
Ben：还是 Whispernet？
David: There were obviously things wrong with it, like the keyboard, the scroll wheel. But the device was good enough to have a book-like experience. Then on the business side, you can buy any book ever made for \$10. Now it's just unbelievable. It completely changed the industry.
大卫：它显然也有问题，比如键盘、滚轮都很别扭。但整体体验足够接近纸书。在商业模式上，你能以 10 美元买到任何一本书。现在想来简直不可思议，这完全改写了整个行业。
Ben: Gosh, there's too much to get into on this episode, but that would be the seed of massive amounts of unrest and lawsuits in the entire book publishing industry involving Amazon, Apple, all the big publishers, allegations of collusion. This was the thing that violently shook the book industry. Amazon did by launching and by aggregating so much of the power, but then the thing that really upended and truly disrupted the industry was this, we're launching at consumers at \$10.
本：天哪，我们这一集讲不完的细节——正是这件事埋下了出版业巨震的种子，引发了亚马逊、苹果和各大出版社之间的大量诉讼和串谋指控。Kindle 的推出集中了巨大的力量，震撼了图书行业，而真正颠覆行业的，就是向消费者推出 10 美元定价。
David: Which is funny. It wasn't piracy. It wasn't like the music industry. It was \$10 for an ebook. The Kindle itself, incredible story, but then that leads to Fire Tablets, Echos, the lady who lives in your Echo, Fire TV, Prime Video, Ring, Era, all this stuff, and freaking Audible.
大卫：有意思的是，这并不是盗版，和音乐行业的遭遇不同——这是真正的 10 美元正版电子书。Kindle 的故事本身就很精彩，但后来又衍生出了 Fire 平板、Echo 智能音箱、Alexa、Fire TV、Prime Video、Ring、Eero，甚至还有 Audible。
David: Oh, my God. Right after the Kindle launch, Amazon buys audible for \$300 million. Today, Audible has a 40%+ market share of audiobooks, which is a \$5 billion industry growing 25% every year. I tweeted about this. This is going to be one of my most liked tweets ever. I cannot believe it. Audible would be a \$10 billion company on its own, more? I don't know.
大卫：天哪，Kindle 刚发布，亚马逊就以 3 亿美元收购了 Audible。如今 Audible 占据有声书市场 40% 以上份额——这是一个 50 亿美元、每年增长 25% 的行业。我还为此发了推文，大概是我点赞最多的之一。不可思议，单拎出来 Audible 可能都值 100 亿美元，甚至更高。
Ben: It's crazy. Yeah, you're right. In some ways, the on-its-own thing is the caveat there, because so much of their demand comes from being on the product detail page of a book when you go to checkout and me having the trust and everything that comes guaranteed from using my Amazon account for it.
本：确实疯狂。没错，说“单拎出来”要打个引号，因为 Audible 的大量需求来自于亚马逊图书详情页的导流，以及用户对自己亚马逊账号的信任和便利。
Ben: All right, that's audible. We've got Kindle, we've got Audible. There's a lot more to talk about here before we get into AWS. I really want to dig into Prime, but let's save that for playbook, because I feel like that's going to be a good place to hit what's going on there.
本：好了，Audible 就讲到这儿。我们已经有 Kindle、有 Audible。AWS 之前还有很多内容要聊。我特别想深入探讨 Prime，但留到“实战手册”环节吧，那里更合适。
David: Great.
大卫：好主意。
Ben: David, let's talk about power. Of course, this is us referencing the Hamilton Helmer book, Seven Powers. The core idea is really investigating what it is that enables a business to achieve persistent differential returns or basically be more profitable than their closest competitor and do so sustainably.
本：大卫，我们聊聊“护城河”。这里指的是汉密尔顿·赫尔默的《七种力量》。核心思想是研究一家企业如何持续地获得超额收益，也就是长期保持比最接近的竞争对手更高的盈利能力。
Ben: The seven options, the seven powers that Hamilton identifies are counter-positioning, scale economies, switching costs, network economies, process power, branding, and cornered resource. David, as I was preparing for this episode, again—I mentioned this earlier—I tried to watch literally every Jeff Bezos talk, especially from the early days. There's this amazing one that he gives at Stanford, at GSB, literally the week that Amazon Prime first launched.
本：赫尔默提出的七种护城河分别是：反向定位、规模经济、转换成本、网络效应、流程能力、品牌力和稀缺资源。大卫，在准备这一集时——我之前也说过——我几乎看遍了贝索斯早期的所有演讲。其中有一场特别精彩：就在 Amazon Prime 首次上线的那一周，他在斯坦福商学院做的演讲。
David: Oh, so cool.
David：太酷了。
Ben: He's talking about it as this brand new thing. It's \$79 a year. He's observing this really fascinating thing about the business, where he wants to transform customer experience from a variable cost into a fixed cost. He's describing what if you could shift all of that to a really, really big fixed cost, basically, to get operating leverage on it.
Ben：他把这件事当作一种全新的模式来谈论——每年 79 美元。他观察到业务中一个非常有趣的现象：他想把客户体验的可变成本转变为固定成本。他设想，如果能把所有这些花费都转成一项很大的固定成本， essentially 就能在其上获得经营杠杆。
One example that he talks about is that they have this great feature, and everybody's experienced this, I'm sure. When you go to buy something on Amazon, there's a little banner that tells you, you already bought this if you already bought it.
他举的一个例子是——我相信大家都体验过——在亚马逊购物时，如果你曾购买过某件商品，页面上会出现一个小提示，告诉你“你已经买过了”。
While that may seem like it can diminish short term revenue, his view is it builds trust with the customer for the long term because you say, oh, thanks, Amazon, maybe I already have this in my house, or maybe there is a chance you wanted to buy the same thing and you just get that delightful customer experience, that reassurance that this is indeed the exact same ASIN or an Amazon identifier of a specific product that you are looking for.
虽然表面上这似乎会减少短期收入，但他的观点是，这能在长期建立起客户信任。你会想：哦，谢谢你，亚马逊；也许我家里已经有这东西。或者当你可能要重复购买时，这种体验让人愉悦，并确保你看到的确实是同一个 ASIN，也就是亚马逊用来标识特定商品的编号。
He points out, this would cost us the exact same amount to build this thing that provides customer confidence whether we had a million customers or 70 million customers. What he's describing is the most perfect, vivid example of scale economies, where once they get all these customers and once they acquire them all to Prime so they are all loyal, subscribed, guaranteed-to-shop-here customers, then you can amortize every new investment in every new feature across a massive customer base.
他指出，无论我们有 100 万用户还是 7000 万用户，开发这一功能所需成本完全相同。他所描述的正是规模经济最完美、最生动的例子：当你把所有用户都发展为 Prime 会员——忠诚、订阅、确定会在此购物——每一项新投资、新功能都能摊薄到庞大的用户基础上。
How could anyone build as good of an experience as you can, because they have to fund it with revenue from fewer customers? I'm not saying that Amazon only has this as one of the powers that enables them to achieve persistent differential returns versus competitors, but Jeff was writing that part of the book as he was giving the speech. It just sent alarm bells off of my ears.
其他公司要用更少的客户收入来支撑同样体验，怎么能做得跟你一样好？我并不是说亚马逊只凭这一点就能长期取得超额收益，但 Jeff 在演讲时已经把这部分“护城河”写进了“教科书”，这让我耳朵瞬间警铃大作。
David: That's awesome. Maybe now actually is the right place to talk a little bit about Prime and this dynamic. Yes, so true. Now, as you say, Amazon isn't necessarily the only company that this is true for. You could say similar things of Walmart, especially now that they have Walmart+.
David：太棒了。也许现在正好可以聊聊 Prime 及其动态。没错，如你所说，这并非亚马逊独有。沃尔玛也有类似优势，尤其是现在推出了 Walmart+。
You could very certainly say the same thing of another one of our favorite companies that we have not covered on Acquired that we have to now after these first two episodes of the season. That would be Costco, Seattle Hometown Heroes.
另外一家我们至今还没在 Acquired 覆盖、却非常喜欢的公司也同样如此——那就是 Costco，西雅图的本土英雄。
You mentioned Prime. We skipped over this in history and facts, but I think let's talk about it a little bit here. Jim Senegal and Jeff are buds. They're tight, at least they were.
你提到了 Prime。我们在历史与事实部分略过了它，不过我想现在可以谈一谈。吉姆·西纳格尔和 Jeff 是好朋友，他们关系很铁，至少当时是这样。
Ben: And at least Jeff credits a particular lunch with Jim from teaching him a lot of lessons. In particular, the one I think you're referencing, which is customer loyalty is the thing that matters. In particular, because as we all know, Jeff is absolutely laser-focused on not gross margin percentage, but the absolute dollar amount of margin dollars over a full customer lifetime, that you can get.
Ben：Jeff 至少提到过与吉姆共进的一次午餐，从中学到很多，尤其是一点：客户忠诚度才最关键。众所周知，Jeff 的极致关注并非毛利率百分比，而是单个客户整个生命周期里可获取的绝对毛利金额。
David: Which is a such a lesson from Costco. It was not a lunch. It was very famously a coffee in the Starbucks of the Bellevue Barnes & Noble, which Jeff will go to great lengths at any point in time to talk about how he was doing business meetings in the early Amazon days. Literally in his competitor’s coffee shops. Not that he's a competitor-focused or anything. No, definitely not.
David：这件事堪称来自 Costco 的经典教训。当时并不是正式的午餐，而是在贝尔维尤 Barnes & Noble 里的 Starbucks 喝咖啡，这段轶事非常有名。Jeff 总喜欢强调，亚马逊早期他就是这样在竞争对手的咖啡店里开商务会议的。当然，他可不是对竞争对手过分关注——绝对不是。
This coffee where they meet for the first time, Jim from Costco is just like, ah, I've never met him, but he must just be such a mensch. He's old school. He's got the Sol Price DNA, worked for Sol Price, new Sam Walton. His whole thing, he talks about this later.
这是他们第一次见面的那杯咖啡。Costco 的 Jim 心想：啊，我从没见过他，但他肯定是个大好人。他属于老派零售人，身上有 Sol Price 的基因，曾为 Sol Price 工作，认识 Sam Walton。对此他后来也提到过。
The reporter asked him. I don't think it was Brad, I think it was somebody else. You gave a lot of key information to Jeff Bezos, who you became friends with, and then he's certainly one of your biggest competitors. Jim's response is just like, this is retail, you shop your competitors. Sam did this, I did this, we all did this. We all shamelessly steal good ideas from each other. This is how it works.
有记者问他——好像不是 Brad，换了个人——你把那么多关键信息给了 Jeff Bezos，还和他成了朋友，但他显然是你最大的竞争对手之一。Jim 回答说：零售业就是这样，你得去竞争对手那里“购物”。Sam 这么干，我也这么干，大家都这么干，我们毫不羞愧地互相借鉴好点子，行业就是这么运转的。
Ben: Jim famously has said that some of his highest performing Costcos are across the parking lot from Sam's Clubs. He relishes competition.
Ben：Jim 说过，他业绩最好的几家 Costco 就在 Sam's Club 的停车场对面。他喜欢竞争。
David: Yeah. Actually, the purpose of the meeting was that Jeff wanted to pitch Jim. This was early days when they were expanding the categories on Amazon. There was a bunch of products that they couldn't get yet. They didn't have relationships with suppliers. Jeff wanted to pitch Jim on Costco selling on Amazon for the products that Amazon didn't carry yet. That didn't go too far.
David：对。实际上那次会面的目的，是 Jeff 想向 Jim 推销合作。当时亚马逊正处于扩品类的早期阶段，有不少商品拿不到供货，和供应商也没建立关系。Jeff 想游说 Jim 让 Costco 把亚马逊尚未销售的产品放到亚马逊上卖。但这事儿并没谈成。
Jim gives him this masterclass on the Costco model. It sounds insane if you're not familiar with it from the outside, but then it makes total sense if you realize you're focused on gross margin dollars over the life of a customer, not percentage. The Costco model is more complicated than this. But essentially, they make 0% operating margin on their retail operations. They sell at such a low price.
Jim 随后给他上了一堂 Costco 商业模式的大课。乍听之下这模式近乎疯狂，但如果你把重点放在单个客户生命周期的毛利“金额”而不是毛利“率”上，就完全说得通。Costco 的模式比这更复杂，不过核心是零售业务做到 0% 经营利润——他们把价格压得极低。
Ben: I think I looked into this when we were working on the Walmart episode, something like 5%–7% gross margin business.
Ben：我在做沃尔玛那期时查过，大概只有 5%–7% 的毛利率。
David: I think it's a little higher than that, but is basically set such that that when you take out the cost of running both the back end logistics and the warehouses themselves, they are making no profits on the actual retail business. All of the profits of the company come from the memberships, the annual memberships.
David：可能稍微高一点，但设定的目标就是：扣除后端物流和仓储门店成本后，零售本身不赚钱。公司的全部利润都来自会员费——每年的会籍收入。
Ben: The merchandise just needs to provide you enough value to then renew your membership for the next year.
Ben：商品只需要让你感到物超所值，好让你明年继续续费会员。
David: Right. The beauty is, it perfectly plays on customer psychology. Ordinarily, you'd be like, why would anybody pay money for the right to shop? You can just walk into a Walmart, you don't have to pay Sam any money to shop there.
David：没错。巧妙之处在于，这正好利用了顾客心理。正常人会想：为什么要花钱买购物资格？去沃尔玛购物谁也不用掏钱给 Sam。
Once you've done that and you've made that sunk cost, if you then believe that you are going to get the lowest prices absolutely anywhere as a result of having that membership, you get this insane combination of the sunk costs effect plus the endowment effect, and you become crazy loyal. You're like, I have paid the money for this membership, I need to get the return on the membership, and I feel like I'm part of this club. I have this guarantee that I'm going to get this benefit that nobody else who aren't members gets. I'm now going to do all of my shopping at Costco.
可一旦你付了会员费，形成“沉没成本”，又深信凭此会员身份能买到全网最低价，就会叠加“沉没成本效应”和“赋值效应”，从而极度忠诚。你会想：我都花钱买了会员，得把这钱赚回来；而且我属于这个“俱乐部”，享有非会员得不到的好处。于是以后所有购物都跑去 Costco。
Ben: Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Ben：是啊，真是太妙了。
David: You get these loyal customers that stay with you for a long time, spend tons of money, not that you're making profit on that money, but that then helps drive the scale to get prices even lower. It also means you don't have to advertise. Costco does basically no traditional advertising because it's all word of mouth, because the customers are so insanely loyal about their memberships.
David：你会获得那些长期跟随你的忠诚顾客，他们会花很多钱，虽然你未必直接从这些钱上获利，但这反过来能拉动规模、进一步压低价格。同时，这意味着你几乎不用做广告。Costco 基本没有传统广告，全靠口碑，因为会员对他们的会籍忠诚度惊人。
Ben: Yup. What Jeff Bezos chose to do here was a little bit different, because I don't think he's running a breakeven retail business and just making money on Prime. I think he realized one of the effects you were talking about, which is, once you've made your deposit, your \$79 a year to Prime, you're going to keep shopping on Amazon. He almost flipped it and he's like, oh, I want to use that same psychology, but I don't need to make \$0 running the business and make everything on Prime.
Ben：没错。不过贝索斯的做法稍微不同，我不认为他是零利润卖货、只靠 Prime 赚钱。他意识到你提到的那个效应：一旦用户先缴了 79 美元年费，他们就会持续在亚马逊购物。他几乎把逻辑倒了过来：我要利用同样的心理，但不必把零售业务做到 0 利润、全部靠 Prime 赚钱。
Part of the reason he had this perspective that he could make money in both ways, was because the way that prime came about was actually the legacy of a couple of other shipping programs they had tried.
之所以认为两条路都能赚钱，部分原因在于 Prime 的诞生其实沿袭了亚马逊此前尝试过的几种免运费方案。
David: Supersaver, right?
David：Super Saver，对吧？
Ben: Exactly. If you spent enough, then you'd get free shipping. Or if you were willing to wait for your goods for a while and get them batched up, you could get free shipping. This idea was really somebody inside the company pitching.
Ben：没错。花到一定金额就免运费；或者愿意等更久、等货物凑批也能免运费。这个想法最初是公司内部有人提出来的。
David: Who was an engineer named Charlie Ward, I believe, submitted it as an idea.
David：我记得是名叫 Charlie Ward 的工程师提出的。
Ben: He's thinking about we're getting better and better at fulfillment. What would we need to charge customers in order to guarantee two-day shipping on everything they ordered basically no matter what? Really lean into that convenience part of the retail holy trinity of price, convenience, and selection.
Ben：他在想：我们的履约能力越来越强，如果要保证所有订单都能两日达，我们该向顾客收多少钱？这是真正把零售“价格-便利-选择”三位一体里的“便利”做到极致。
It was this really interesting dual collision path of, okay, how much do we have to charge people in order to give them two-day shipping? And then this Jeff realization from Jim Senegal at Costco of, wait a minute, if we charge people anything, they'll actually be more loyal, which is the ultimate thing that we care about.
这就形成了两条思路的碰撞：一是我们要收多少费用才能做到两日达；二是贝索斯从 Costco 的 Jim Sinegal 那儿悟到——只要向顾客收费，他们反而会更忠诚，而忠诚才是我们最看重的。
David: Totally. Again, demonstrates Jeff and everybody at Amazon thinking through like, what is the nature of their business? What is the nature of ecommerce? In physical commerce, those dimensions of the holy trinity or at least maybe the aspects of what matter of the retail holy trinity, are different.
David：完全正确。这再次说明贝索斯和亚马逊团队会深入思考：自己的业务本质是什么？电商的本质是什么？在实体零售里，“三位一体”的权重或表现形式和线上并不一样。
Convenience is different in physical. It's a little less convenient to shop at Costco versus Walmart of, maybe you got to reach up higher on the warehouse shelves, but it's not really that different. Whereas shopping online, getting your stuff in two days, next day, or same day, that's a big difference than getting your stuff two weeks from now. That's a really important difference.
实体购物的“便利”差异没那么大：Costco 可能比 Walmart 货架更高、取货不便，但差距有限；而线上购物，两日达、次日达、当日达，与两周后到货的体验天差地别，这差异就极其关键。
Ben: Totally. All that said, even though we're saying, hey, Amazon is not fully saying we just want to make a bunch of money on Prime, I think they do make over \$20 billion in revenue per year on just Prime subscriptions.
Ben：没错。尽管我们说亚马逊并非单靠 Prime 赚钱，但仅 Prime 订阅一年就给他们带来 200 多亿美元收入。
David: Wow.
David：哇哦。
Ben: I'm pretty sure they lose money on just Prime if I'm thinking about my own habit. For the amount of stuff that I ordered from Amazon, if I actually had to pay shipping, would I be paying more than \$129 in shipping? Absolutely. What about all that stuff that I watch on Prime Video? Absolutely. There's definitely an element to it, where you're like, wow, yeah, it's worth over \$20 billion to them in revenue, but I'd be fascinated to see the internal Amazon accounting on how they choose to justify the cost.
Ben：如果按我自己的习惯算，亚马逊在 Prime 本身上可能是亏钱的。我一年下单那么多，要是自付运费肯定超过 129 美元；再加上我在 Prime Video 上看的内容，肯定不止。显然 Prime 给他们带来 200 多亿美元收入，但我很好奇亚马逊内部是如何在账面上平衡这些成本的。
David: That \$20 billion, whether they're making any actual profits out of that or not—debatable—this is where this ties so tightly into the Amazon flywheel, which is another key piece we didn't discuss in history and facts. They do a management off-site in 2001 with Jim Collins, author of *Good to Great*, where he writes about the flywheel. It's actually before *Good to Great* came out.
David：那 200 亿美元，不管他们最终有没有真正赚到利润——这一点尚有争议——都和亚马逊的“飞轮”紧密相连，这是我们在历史与事实部分尚未讨论的关键要素。2001 年，他们与《基业长青》作者吉姆·柯林斯举行了一次管理层外部研讨会，柯林斯在会上提出了“飞轮”概念，这甚至发生在《基业长青》正式出版之前。
Ben: Didn't they get a little preview of it?
Ben：他们算是提前体验了一下这个概念？
David: Yeah, a little preview. Because of Prime, and this guarantee to all these people who signed up for Prime that you're going to get a two-day shipping, that upfront funds, Amazon's investment, in better distribution and logistics, everything we talked about on the whole episode.
David：没错，算是提前预览。得益于 Prime，以及向所有 Prime 会员承诺的“两日达”服务，亚马逊拿到了那笔预付资金，用来投入更完善的配送与物流，这正是我们整期节目反复提到的。
The more capital that they get to fund that and the more customers they get that are using that, the more leverage they get, and the better they can perform in Optimizely. Nobody else has their own airline with 96 planes. Walmart doesn't have their own airline with 96 planes.
他们获得的资金越多、使用该服务的客户越多，杠杆效应就越大，他们在效率优化上的表现就越好。没有其他公司自家运营 96 架飞机的航空队，沃尔玛也没有。
Ben: They have more predictability, they have more loyalty, so they have longer customer lifetimes, so they have more absolute margin dollars from purchases coming in. A thing we haven't talked about, which is another just amazing insight, is the cash-flow dynamic of this.
Ben：他们拥有更高的可预测性、更强的用户忠诚度，因此客户生命周期更长，带来的绝对毛利也就更多。还有一点我们没细说——而且非常精彩——就是现金流动态。
Amazon charges me \$129 at the beginning of the year before I make any purchases on their website, and they get to do stuff with that cash. It is an incredible form of float on top of many other forms of float that they have going on in their business.
亚马逊在一年伊始就向我收取 129 美元年费，还没下单他们就拿到了现金，并可以支配这笔钱。这种“浮存金”形式令人难以置信，而且只是他们众多浮存金来源之一。
David: Just to complete the flywheel, Amazon through having all of this leverage that we just talked about in their operation, this operating leverage, float, and all these wonderful things, they can work on charging even lower prices providing even more vendor selection and even better convenience. All three on the holy trinity, they get better at that.
David：为了让飞轮完整运转，亚马逊凭借上述运营杠杆、浮存金等诸多优势，可以进一步压低价格、扩大商品选择、提升便利性——零售“三位一体”的三大要素他们样样精进。
That attracts more customers, more customers then attract more sellers and suppliers on the platform. That allows Amazon to get more operating leverage, and then the cycle just repeats itself over, and over, and over, then drives itself around many, many, many times a year.
这会吸引更多顾客，顾客增多又吸引更多卖家和供应商入驻，从而让亚马逊获得更大的运营杠杆；如此循环往复，每年飞轮自转无数次。
I could be wrong on this. I believe Amazon's inventory turns per year are something like 16 or something insanely high. Probably not as high like a Costco, but for the complexity of Amazon's operations and the breadth of items that are sold in the store to get that kind of inventory.
也许我记错了，但我记得亚马逊的年库存周转次数大约有 16 次，惊人地高。或许不及 Costco，但以亚马逊业务的复杂度和商品广度来说，这样的周转速度已非常可观。
Ben: And that's just the first party. Fifty-seven percent of Amazon sales right now are from third-party sellers, where Amazon's just collecting margin dollars and holding no inventory.
Ben：而这还只是自营部分。目前亚马逊有 57% 的销售来自第三方卖家，亚马逊只收毛利，不持有库存。
David: Yes, scale economies. They got that one.
David：没错，规模经济，他们拿捏得死死的。
Ben: Absolutely.
Ben：绝对如此。
David: I don't think that's the only one that they have.
David：而且这还不是他们唯一的护城河。
Ben: No.
Ben：确实不是。
David: I think they definitely have brand. No doubt in my mind that they have brand. The definition of brand power is you would buy a commodity at a higher price from brand with power over a brand that doesn't have power.
David：我认为他们绝对拥有品牌力，这一点毫无疑问。所谓品牌护城河，就是消费者愿意为强势品牌支付更高价格而不是去买弱势品牌的同质商品。
Ben: I absolutely do this.
Ben：我就是这么做的。
David: 100%. Amazon exploits this. This is part of the legacy of search and all the algorithms in the company. Very smart pricing and dynamic pricing on the website. I'm sure I could buy stuff cheaper, most things, and then I'd get them on Amazon. But I don't even look, because I'd have to wait two weeks, I'd have to go find it, or I wouldn't have the smooth customer experience. Of course, I'm just going to go to Amazon.
David：确实如此。亚马逊充分利用了这一点，这也得益于他们在搜索及算法方面的积淀。网站上的定价非常聪明且动态。我敢说大多数商品我都能找到更便宜的，但我还是在亚马逊下单。因为如果去别处买，我可能得等上两周，还得费力寻找，而且体验不如亚马逊顺畅。所以我当然会直接去亚马逊。
Ben: For a while, I remember my development over the course of being an Amazon customer here. So think 2008–2012 timeframe when I was in college. I would comparison shop for sure. Amazon versus everything else. I would do that and I would do that. Amazon would win so consistently, because they do the Walmart thing, where they would go out and scrape every other site, create a bot, and make sure that they can be the lowest price anywhere of any reputable retailer.
Ben：有段时间，我作为亚马逊用户的心路历程挺有意思。大概 2008–2012 年我上大学时，我一定会货比三家——亚马逊对比其他所有网站。每次比较下来都是亚马逊赢，因为他们像沃尔玛那样，到处抓取其他网站的价格，用爬虫确保自己始终是所有正规零售商中最低价。
Ben: Enough times that happened where I got conditioned to just stop looking, because they were the lowest price anywhere. I think about five more years went by. Whenever I would comparison shop, if I really spent 10 or 15 minutes, I could always find somewhere selling it cheaper, but something was worse, to your point.
Ben：这种情况发生多了，我就被“训练”得不再比较价格，因为反正亚马逊最便宜。再过五年，每当我真花 10 到 15 分钟去比价，确实能找到更便宜的，但总有别的地方做得更差，就像你说的那样。
Ben: I didn't recognize the brand name of the seller, so there's a branding power there that's very clearly being demonstrated, or the shipping, or I wouldn't be confident that I could return it, or there are just all these little things about Amazon.
Ben：要么我不认识那个卖家的品牌——这就体现了品牌力量——要么运费不划算，要么退货没保障，还有很多亚马逊才有的小细节。
Ben: Then it became this interesting, explicit choice where I now know, I probably could find this somewhere else cheaper, and I still don't comparison shop. That is an incredible, incredible brand power that they've built.
Ben：结果就形成了一个有趣且明确的选择：我知道别处也许更便宜，但我就是不比价。这就是他们打造出的惊人品牌力。
David: There's then a third hop of, I don't even comparison shop anymore because it's not worth my time to do that.
David：再往后是第三阶段：我干脆连比价都不比了，因为这不值得我花时间。
Ben: Right, because I know that I'm gonna find something potentially marginally cheaper and still not pull the trigger.
Ben：对，因为我知道就算找到了便宜一点，我也不会下单。
David: Again, this is the difference versus when we were broke post college students. What are you going to save? On stuff, are you going to save \$10? You're going to spend half an hour to save \$10. For a lot of people, that makes a lot of sense.
David：这跟我们刚毕业囊中羞涩时的情况不同。你能省多少？省 10 美元？要花半小时去省这 10 美元。对很多人来说这很合理。
Ben: And then have potential headache. One out of every 10 things that I buy in that way from a merchant that is not Amazon, I will have some headache with. Therefore, if you probability adjust the amount of dollars that I'm saving in terms of potential time cost later in headache, it's just not worth it.
Ben：而且还可能惹麻烦。我在非亚马逊商家这样买的 10 件东西里，总有一件会出问题。如果把日后可能付出的时间成本算进去，省下的那点钱根本不值。
David: Totally, especially I got a baby now. I ain't got time for that. Hell no. Amazon.
David：完全同意，尤其是我现在有孩子，哪有时间折腾？绝对不行，直接亚马逊。
Ben: That's scale economies, that's branding.
Ben：这就是规模经济，也是品牌力。
David: Network effect, for sure, at this point. Originally, Amazon didn't, because Jeff Bezos took it personal.
David：现在肯定还有网络效应。最初亚马逊没有，因为 Jeff Bezos 把这事当成了私人恩怨。
Ben: With third-party sellers, you're talking about?
Ben：你是说第三方卖家这块？
David: With third-party sellers.
David：是的，第三方卖家。
Ben: Yes. With marketplace, absolutely. More customers drives it being more attractive for the sellers to come on, which attracts more customers. There's that network economies. Interestingly, there are no supply to supply side or demand to demand side network economies.
Ben：没错，Marketplace 就是这样。顾客越多，对卖家吸引力越大，卖家越多又吸引更多顾客，这就是网络经济。有趣的是，并不存在供应到供应端或需求到需求端的网络效应。
David: Yeah, I think that's right.
David：对，我也这么认为。
Ben: The fact that you're an Amazon customer and Amazon customer, I don't care. I don't benefit from that at all. It's interesting, they've never really leaned into that at all.
本：你是不是亚马逊的顾客对我丝毫没有影响，我一点好处也得不到。有意思的是，他们从没真正利用过这一点。
David: Yeah, it's interesting. This is scale economies. I was going to say maybe a little bit on the seller side, because more scale for Amazon lets them do Fulfillment by Amazon, but that's scale economies. That's not network effects. But definitely, that's two-sided network effects.
大卫：没错，这很有趣。这就是规模经济。我本来想说卖家这边也有点效应，因为规模越大亚马逊越能做 FBA，但那仍是规模经济，不是网络效应。当然，这背后确实存在双边网络效应。
You see that power with, just run a couple Google searches and lots of Amazon sellers are unhappy with Amazon. It got too much leverage, there's competition, blah-blah-blah. They'd go do their first party brands. They don't leave. Why don't they leave? Because you need that Amazon sales juice. Where else are you going to sell that much online?
只要在 Google 搜几下就能看到：很多亚马逊卖家对平台不满，觉得亚马逊议价能力太强、竞争激烈等等，于是去做自有品牌。但他们并不会离开。为什么？因为离开亚马逊就没有那样的销量，网上还有哪儿能卖这么多？
Ben: Absolutely.
本：完全正确。
David: Do we think they have any others?
大卫：他们还有别的护城河吗？
Ben: Maybe some lightweight process power. Process power is always so hard to actually put your finger on that I hesitate to name it here.
本：也许还有一点轻量级的流程能力。流程护城河总是难以精确界定，所以我有点犹豫要不要算上它。
David: Switching costs, not really. I can buy this stuff on walmart.com. We're not talking about AWS here, we're talking about Amazon retail.
大卫：转换成本？并不明显。我完全可以去 walmart.com 买这些东西。我们这里谈的不是 AWS，而是亚马逊零售。
Ben: There's counter positioning in the era that we're talking about Barnes & Noble and subsequently, Walmart, because those folks would have to invest so much and did. Walmart did, at least, to completely reinvent the way that they do distribution and all their distribution centers to be fulfillment centers, and actually go directly to consumers by not letting people shop in big stores, and not having to have infrastructure for that. Amazon counter-positioned against everyone whose cost structure was set up to do that.
本：在我们提到的 Barnes & Noble 时代乃至后来的沃尔玛时代，确实存在反向定位。因为那些公司如果想效仿必须投入巨资——沃尔玛至少就这么干了——彻底重造配送体系，把配送中心改成履约中心，让货直接到消费者手里，而不是让顾客去大卖场，也就不需要相应基建。亚马逊正是针对这些成本结构既定的企业进行了反向定位。
David: We talked at the end of the Walmart episode about how Walmart is currently closing down Sam's Clubs and turning them into online walmart.com fulfillment centers. That tells you everything you need to know right there.
大卫：我们在沃尔玛那集结尾提到，沃尔玛正关停部分山姆会员店，把它们改造成 walmart.com 的履约中心。这已经说明了一切。
Ben: Absolutely.
本：确实如此。
David: Certainly, counter position versus Barnes & Noble, the Brad Stone quote we read earlier in the episode of, "Barnes & Noble wasn't going to go all in on this because their distribution network was not tuned for ecommerce. They would have had to redo it." To do that, they would have had to majorly prioritize it within the company, put all their best executives on it, it be less profitable for them. They would lose money in the short run versus the hugely profitable stores. All the incentives were not to do it.
大卫：当然，相对于 Barnes & Noble 也属于反向定位。我们之前引用布拉德·斯通的话：“Barnes & Noble 不可能全情投入，因为他们的配送网络不是为电商设计的，得彻底重做。”要做到这点，就得在公司内部将其列为头等优先事项，派出最优秀的高管，还得忍受短期利润下降，相比高盈利的门店反而亏钱。所有激励都让他们不去做。
Ben: Absolutely.
本：完全正确。
David: Today, you can say they still have counter positioning.
大卫：放到今天，你仍然可以说亚马逊保持着反向定位优势。
Ben: No, that was just a take-off phase thing. I have been just frothing at the mouth to do playbook on this one.
本：不，那只是腾飞阶段的事。我早就迫不及待想做这一段“实战手册”了。
David: All right, let's get into it.
大卫：好，那我们开始吧。
Ben: All right. I want to open with a quote from the very first 1997 letter to shareholders, which I always think is fascinating. This is such a ubiquitous letter at this point that if you google in incognito mode, 1997 letter, this letter from Jeff Bezos comes up.
Ben：好的。我想先引用 1997 年的第一封致股东信中的一句话，我一直觉得这封信很有意思。如今这封信已经非常出名，以至于你在隐身模式下搜索“1997 letter”，跳出来的就是 Jeff Bezos 写的这封信。
David: Also, we got to do a shout out to our friend and longtime Acquired community member, Preet Anand, who absolutely made a podcast feed reading the shareholder letters.
David：另外，我们得向我们的朋友、长期 Acquired 社区成员 Preet Anand 致敬，他专门把这些股东信做成了播客节目。
Ben: You're taking the words right out of my mouth. Thank you, Preet. I listened to him while I was doing some work in the yard yesterday.
Ben：你把我想说的话都说了。谢谢你，Preet。我昨天在院子里干活时还在听他的节目。
The quote is, and there are many great quotes in here that really highlight the idea that you get the shareholders that you ask for, "When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows." I thought this line by Joy Covey and Jeff is so incredibly prescient that he really is focused on the absolute dollars of free cash flow metric.
引用内容是——这封信里有很多金句都强调“你会得到你所期望的股东”这一理念——“当我们被迫在改善 GAAP 财报表现和最大化未来现金流现值之间做选择时，我们会选择现金流。” 我觉得 Joy Covey 和 Jeff 写的这句话极具前瞻性，说明他真正关注的是自由现金流的绝对金额。
I think there's this misconception that people have about Amazon, that they're trading off growth for margin percentage. I don't think that's ever actually what was happening. People often look at startups today and they're like, profitability or growth? I think the way that Jeff always thought about it was, well, we care about free cash flow in the long run.
我认为外界对亚马逊有一个误解，觉得他们在用增长换取利润率。我觉得这从未真正发生过。如今人们常看着初创公司问：盈利还是增长？而 Jeff 始终的想法是：长期来看，我们关心的是自由现金流。
David: Right, in the long run.
David：没错，从长期来看。
Ben: That is the way that every business is measured. The keywords here are maximizing the present value of future cash flows, which necessitates building a brand around your stock, which I think Elon is the king of today. When you're talking about the present value of future cash flows, since future cash flows are unknown, you do have to build religion around your company today if your goal is to really get investors on board with your long, long, long term vision.
所有企业都是这样被衡量的。关键词是“最大化未来现金流的现值”，这需要围绕你的股票打造品牌，我觉得如今马斯克就是这方面的王者。当谈到未来现金流的现值时，既然未来现金流未知，你今天就必须为公司建立一种“信仰”，如果你想让投资者真正支持你极其长期的愿景。
Amazon got thrown in with all these other dot-com companies when you read that Barron's article, Amazon.bomb. A lot of those companies, cosmo.com, for no shipping, you could order a pack of gum to be delivered to your house and it would arrive in an hour. You're like, clearly, they're losing money on this, and I'm not necessarily a loyal subscriber to this. Amazon always was gross margin profitable. They always had solid unit economics, but they would choose to super aggressively reinvest in something.
在《巴伦周刊》的“Amazon.bomb”文章里，亚马逊被归为一类和其他互联网公司一起。很多公司，比如 cosmo.com，免运费，你甚至能下单买一包口香糖，一个小时就送到家。显然他们在亏钱，我也不一定会忠诚订阅这种服务。亚马逊则始终保持毛利为正，单件经济模型稳固，但他们会选择极度激进地再投资某些领域。
As we were preparing for this episode among the number of people we pinned in addition to Brad Stone and some of the other folks that we were chatting with were early, early Amazon or around the company, we reached out to a friend of the show, Michael Mauboussin, to see if he had any materials from this time. He's had more than a spidey sense that he would have strong opinions about Amazon at this time.
在准备这一集时，除了和 Brad Stone 以及其他一些早期亚马逊人士交流外，我们还联系了节目的朋友 Michael Mauboussin，看看他是否有那段时期的材料。他对当时的亚马逊颇有敏锐见解。
David: Our episode with Michael, I think it's the seventh most listened to Acquired episode of all time.
David：我们和 Michael 的那期节目，好像是 Acquired 收听量排名第七的节目。
Ben: Yes, it's very widely listened to.
Ben：是的，非常受欢迎。
David: Which is amazing.
David：这很了不起。
Ben: He's your favorite investor's favorite investor. He's the ultimate finance professor.
Ben：他是你最喜欢的投资者最喜欢的投资者，是终极金融教授。
David: If you haven't listened to that, go listen to it.
David：如果你还没听过，赶紧去听。
Ben: Yes. He made this presentation at Amazon in 1999, really advocating for exactly the strategy that they were running and just starting to articulate it and put it into a framework form, we have the deck here. One really fascinating observation he makes is that it's really about the weighted average cost of capital, the WACC. You don't need to be a finance professor like Michael to understand this.
Ben：没错。他在 1999 年为亚马逊做了一场演讲，极力主张他们当时实行的策略，并开始将其框架化，我们手头就有那份演示文稿。他提出的一个很有趣的观点是，一切都关乎加权平均资本成本，也就是 WACC。不需要像 Michael 那样做金融教授也能理解。
Here's how it works. Suppose you want to invest in building a new distribution center so you can either expand the reach of shipping goods and say a new country or decrease the ship time for existing customers. This is Bezos' insight of, how do I turn customer experience into a fixed cost?
具体运作如下：假设你想投资建设一座新的配送中心，这样可以把货运范围扩大到某个新国家，或缩短现有客户的配送时间。这正是 Bezos 的洞见——如何把客户体验转化为固定成本？
Let's say you have no cash in your bank account, you have to raise capital. Either you can sell part of your company with an equity financing like their IPO to get it or you could raise debt and pay some percent of interest, say 10% a year.
假设你账上没有现金，就得融资。你可以像他们 IPO 那样出售公司部分股权来筹资，也可以举债并支付年息，比如 10%。
David: Which they did.
David：他们确实这么做了。
Ben: Which they did that, too, to the tune of close to \$2 billion. That capital has a cost to it. The investments that you make in this distribution center need to outrun your costs to obtain that capital for it to be profitable. But let's say you have a pile of cash in your bank account that you've got as profits from selling goods, that cash is effectively free for you to use.
Ben：他们也确实这么干了，总额接近20亿美元。这些资本都是有成本的。你在这个配送中心上的投资，必须产生超过融资成本的回报，才算盈利。但如果你账上堆着一大笔因销售商品而赚来的现金，那么这些现金对你来说就等于“免费”可用。
If you have a competitor who's financing the growth with debt and you can do it purely with those profit dollars, you can beat them in the long term. Even better—and we'll put the slide up on the video format here for Michael's presentation—if you have all the dollars from selling goods, not just the margin dollars, and you don't have to pay your suppliers for like a month after the customer bought it from you...
如果你的竞争对手靠举债扩张，而你可以完全用利润资金来做同样的事，你长期来看就能击败他们。更妙的是——我们会在视频里放出 Michael 演示中的那张幻灯片——如果你能动用全部销售货款，而不仅是利润部分，而且在客户下单后一个月内都不用付货款给供应商……
David: Or two months, or three months, or four months...
David：甚至两个月、三个月、四个月都不用付……
Ben: Yes, you can invest heavily into this new distribution center with many, many more dollars, not just the margin dollars. As long as you're confident that that growth will continue and you'll have even more cash on hand at the date that you need to pay the supplier for the thing that you sold months ago that you now owe them for, that works really well.
Ben：没错，你就可以用远超利润部分的资金、大举投入新配送中心。只要你确信增长会持续，并且在付款日之前还能收进更多现金来支付几个月前售出的那批货款，这套模式就非常奏效。
David: Yes. Oh, boy. Ben, you're saying it's almost like another large operation we may or may not have talked about for 10 hours on Acquired, where they write insurance premiums and re-insurance premiums. They write the policies and they get those premiums from those policies in, and then they don't have to pay the money out until a disaster actually happens. They get to use all that money in between. You're saying it's like float.
David：没错。天哪，Ben，你的意思是，这几乎就像我们在 Acquired 用十小时聊过的另一家大型企业：他们先收保险费和再保险费，拿到保费后直到真的发生赔付事件才需要付钱，在此期间可以自由运用这笔钱。你说的其实就是“浮存金”。
Ben: Yes. Amazon today is a \$1.5 trillion company that has not raised any material capital since that debt offering that they paid off in 2004 or 2005-ish. They are financing the business entirely with float until, of course, we'll get to AWS, and now they can actually finance it a lot more with just straight up operating income.
Ben：对。如今的亚马逊市值1.5万亿美元，自2004/2005年左右还清那次债券融资后，就几乎没再外部融资。他们完全靠“浮存金”为业务提供资金——当然，后来有了 AWS，他们更多地可以直接靠经营现金流来融资。
David: Actually, that, we should say. I think strictly speaking, that is not a true statement. They have been issuing debt, but I think that is not for financing the business. I think it's like a treasury capital management.
David：严格来说，这话不太准确。他们之后确实还是会发债，但那更多是财务层面的资本管理，并非真正用于业务融资。
Ben: Okay. All right, fine.
Ben：好吧，那也行。
David: It's not like the debt they issued in the early days.
David：那跟他们早期那种“救命”式发债可不一样。
Ben: Yes, very much not. As you can see in putting this slide up, Michael cheekily calls amazon.com cashflow\.com, as if it's really pioneering this new model, where in the old school businesses, something would enter your inventory, you'd pay the supplier three months after it enters your inventory, and then it has to sit on your shelf for a while. Finally, a customer buys your book, and then the payment ends up being received.
Ben：对，完全不同。正如幻灯片所示，Michael 调侃地把 amazon.com 称作“cashflow\.com”，仿佛它开创了一个新模式：在传统企业中，商品进库后要过三个月才付供应商货款，货在仓库里又要放一阵子，直到顾客买走，企业才能真正收到钱。
这样的脑残除了整理材料外基本没什么用，巴菲特写的商业原则的第一条是以角色互换的方式对待他人。
They're a few months between when you have to pay your supplier and when you get paid, whereas what Amazon's doing is completely flipping on the head. The book can enter your inventory, the customer buys the book, you then receive their payment pretty soon after that or immediately after that, just after some credit card days, and then you can have a month or two before you need to pay your supplier. The internet business model and ecommerce totally flips it on its head because of the completely different way that the distribution works and that inventory works.
在传统模式下，从付款到收款之间相隔几个月；而亚马逊完全把这一切倒了过来：书一进库，顾客就下单购买，你很快——甚至几天内信用卡结算后——就能收到货款，然后还有一两个月的时间才需要付钱给供应商。互联网商业模式和电子商务彻底颠覆了传统，因为它们的物流和库存运作方式截然不同。
David: Yup. Even further adds depth of understanding to this point of the larger the scale of Amazon's operations in the flywheel, the more capital dollars, cashflow dollars, that they're able to get out of it to continue to fund building out the larger scale of their operations.
David：没错。这一点更能加深我们对亚马逊飞轮效应的理解：运营规模越大，就能从中释放出越多的资金和现金流，再反哺去扩张更大的运营规模。
Ben: It's this killer insight, that cost of capital and having a negative cash conversion cycle, are directly related or I suppose, inversely related.
Ben：这是一个惊人的洞见：资本成本与负现金转换周期之间，其实是直接——或者说反向——相关的。
David: Yeah, think about it. Yeah, capital as a cost, but here, they're getting paid to use the capital that has a negative cost. It's amazing.
David：对，想想看。资本通常是成本，但在这里，他们反而“收钱”来使用这笔负成本的资本，简直不可思议。
Ben: That's where Prime is really this on steroids.
Ben：这就是 Prime 催化剂发挥强大作用的地方。
David: Yes.
David：没错。
Ben: I'm paying Amazon \$129 at the beginning of the year and asking for zero in return. In fact, I'm giving them my loyalty in addition to paying them and they're going to do interesting stuff with my cash in the meantime, is really genius.
Ben：我年初付给亚马逊 129 美元，却不要求任何直接回报。实际上，我不仅付费，还贡献了忠诚度；而亚马逊则在这期间善用我的现金，这简直是天才之举。
David: All right, what else do you have?
David：好吧，你还有什么？
Ben: Another one is from another early Bezos interview that I was watching, where he had to do a lot of fighting of stock analysts in the early days who were saying, yeah, lipstick on a pig, you're just a retailer. I don't understand how your cost structure is really any different. Sure, you sell it on the Internet, but you're just a razor-thin retailer. Why is this an interesting business?
Ben：我还想起早期贝索斯接受采访时，他必须不断跟华尔街分析师辩论。那些分析师说：这不过是“给猪涂口红”，你就是一家零售商，我看不出你的成本结构有何不同。你把东西搬到网上卖，本质上还是毛利极薄的零售，这有啥看头？
David: What's the line that people always say, whenever Wall Street becomes disillusioned with Amazon, they say it's a charity being run for the benefit of the American consumer?
David：华尔街一旦对亚马逊失望，就常说一句话：这家公司简直是为美国消费者利益而办的慈善机构。
Ben: Yes. A lot of people are laughing all the way to the bank on the other side of that bet. He makes this great point, which is, okay, let's say we are just a retailer with a retail business model. There are a few things that are pretty different. A gigantic cost in the retailing business is your rent. If you are in a retail space—it's funny when he's saying this—it's much less expensive than it is now in a Prime place in a city. He cites, it could be like \$7 a foot for a great retail space.
Ben：是的，在这种论调的另一端，有不少人正笑着把钱存进银行。他提出一个很棒的观点：好，就算我们是传统零售商，零售模式也有几个关键差别。零售业的大头成本是租金。在当时——他说这话时很有趣——一处黄金地段的零售店面每平方英尺可能只要 7 美元，远低于今天的价格。
David: Oh, you're killing me. I'm thinking about San Francisco real estate.
David：哎呀，你要了我的命。我脑子里想到的是旧金山的房价。
Ben: Whereas if you're running a warehouse, somewhere where it really makes sense for us to have a distribution center, it's like 30¢ a foot, which is such a valuable point. Stores have to store all of their inventory or a lot of their inventory in very expensive real estate. Amazon totally does not.
Ben：而如果你运营的是仓库——也就是我们理应建设配送中心的地方——租金大约只要每平方英尺 0.3 美元。这一点价值巨大：实体店必须把全部或大部分库存放在昂贵的核心商圈，而亚马逊完全不需要。
David: Man, that is such a good point. That's such a good point.
David：天哪，这真是绝佳的观点，太到位了。
Ben: I'd actually ever heard this argument before doing this research.
Ben：在做这次研究之前，我其实从未听过这种论点。
David: That's a fantastic point. Even Walmart, where Walmart stores are not in multi hundred dollar a square foot primo urban real estate, it's still a higher cost of real estate than where Amazon fulfillment centers are.
David：这观点太棒了。即便是沃尔玛，他们的门店并非坐落在每平方英尺数百美元的核心地段，但那里的成本仍高于亚马逊履约中心选址的土地成本。
Ben: Absolutely. It's one of these things where it was interesting reading all the bear cases on Amazon. There are plenty of little quips where it would be fun to tweet them out and be like, this person was so freaking wrong, but a lot of the criticisms were reasonable. This particular one isn't reasonable, the one that we just pushed back on with the cost per square foot.
Ben：当然。读亚马逊的唱空报告时有很多趣事。有不少犀利的段子，发推怼一句“这人错得离谱”会很解气，但也有很多批评其实相当合理。我们刚刚回击的那个“每平方英尺成本”论点就不合理。
There's another one that wasn't really reasonable, which was this is a money losing business just like all the other dot-coms, because they actually were profitable if they weren't continuing to reinvest in growth, which would give them this unbelievably durable moat around consumer experience.
还有一个同样站不住脚的观点是：亚马逊跟其他互联网公司一样在亏钱。事实上，如果他们不把所有收益继续回投增长，本来是能盈利的，而持续回投又为其消费者体验筑起了难以置信的持久护城河。
The one that is always an interesting thought experiment to me is people would ask, what do you own when you own a share of Amazon? Because much like a lot of stocks over the last couple of years, the price in 1998–1999 was completely disconnected from the reality of the underlying fundamentals.
我总觉得很有意思的一个思想实验是：当你持有一股亚马逊股票时，你到底拥有什么？就像近几年很多股票一样，1998–1999 年的股价与公司基本面完全脱节。
You had a business that was growing massively, that was generating no GAAP income, and was doing things like reinvesting the float 100% of the revenue dollars they were getting in, so they needed to keep growing in order to ever pay their suppliers back. If the music ever stopped and they didn't keep growing, this isn't just magical, free money with no cost. The cost is if the party ends, you're screwed.
当时这家公司高速增长，却没有 GAAP 利润，把拿到的全部营收“浮存金”再投入，所以必须持续扩张才能付得起供应商。如果音乐停止、增长停滞，钱就不是白来的；代价是派对一散，你就完了。
David: It's musical chairs.
David：这就是“大风吹”游戏。
Ben: Yes. The reason why Amazon wasn't totally screwed is because they were right in their bet that this was a gigantic market that they could basically grow into forever. Sure, they had a couple of tough years and had to raise some debt capital to get through it, but the naysayers were right if it wasn't a crazy high growth business for three decades. It just so happened that Jeff was right about that.
Ben：没错。亚马逊之所以没有完蛋，是因为他们赌对了：这是一个巨大的市场，几乎可以无限成长。当然，他们经历过几年的艰难时期，也不得不举债度日；如果接下来三十年不是超高速增长，唱衰者就说对了。但事实证明 Jeff 判断正确。
David: Are you saying he was right about it being day one for the Internet?
David：你的意思是他说“互联网仍处于第一天”是对的？
Ben: I am saying that if it wasn't day one for the Internet, it would have been a Ponzi scheme. Let me put a finer point on that. It would have been like me going and opening up a credit card to pay off other credit cards that I owe debt on. That is the type of thing we were talking about with the float situation.
Ben：我的意思是，如果那时候互联网并非“第一天”，那亚马逊就成了庞氏骗局。更直白地说，就像我刷一张信用卡来还另一张卡的欠款——这正是我们谈到的“浮存金”模式，如果增长停了，就会出事。
David: This is a little bit of a sidebar here. Through the probably two months at this point since we decided we were going to do this episode that we've been researching, I just had in the back of my mind. I'm like, I wouldn't have even thought about this a couple years ago, but magic of compounding acquired. Here we are.
David：题外话——自从两个月前决定做这一期节目开始研究，我脑子里一直在想这事。要是放在几年前我可能压根不会想到，但复利的魔力让我们走到了今天。
If by some miracle at some point, we get to interview Jeff, I think that's the biggest question I want to ask him. You stepped back? Forget Amazon, let's just talking about the Internet. What coach Campbell thought you might want to do in 1999, 2000 of step back, pursue your other interests, you decided no, wait, it's still day one here. Is it still day one now?
如果有天我们能奇迹般地采访 Jeff，我最想问的大问题就是：你当初有没有想过退居二线？别谈亚马逊，只说互联网。Campbell 教练在 1999、2000 年觉得你或许该后撤、去做别的事，但你却说“等等，这里仍是第一天”。现在还是第一天吗？
Ben: That is a phenomenal, phenomenal question. Okay. To your point on that, is it still day one for the Internet? I love this question in particular.
Ben：这个问题太棒了。好，既然提到这里——互联网现在还是“第一天”吗？我特别喜欢这个问题。
Here is a quote from the 1999 letter to shareholders. The thing to note here is he's justifying why they're investing so much money in technology to reduce costs, like just keeps reinvesting, pocketing money back in. He ends with, "We still believe that some 15% of retail commerce may ultimately move online."
以下引自 1999 年致股东信。要注意的是，他在阐释为什么要投入巨额资金于技术降本，不断再投资、滚存资金。信的结尾写道：“我们依然相信，最终约有 15% 的零售交易将转移到线上。”
David: Who may? Ultimately.
David：多久？最终。
Ben: Guess what ecommerce penetration is right now.
Ben：猜猜现在电商渗透率是多少？
David: Fifteen percent?
David：15%？
Ben: Fifteen percent. It went from 12% to 17% during Covid, and is falling a little bit right now, and is hovering right around 15%. If what he says is we believe that it may move online to the tune of 15%, maybe it's no longer day one for the Internet.
Ben：15%。疫情期间从 12% 升到 17%，现在略有回落，徘徊在 15% 左右。如果他当年预测的是 15%，那也许互联网已不再是“第一天”。
David: It's a good question.
David：这是个好问题。
Ben: It's certainly not day one for ecommerce.
Ben：电商显然已不是“第一天”。
David: I personally am definitely not ready to say it's day two, but I'm just very curious. What does Jeff genuinely think?
David：我还不敢说是“第二天”，但我很好奇 Jeff 怎么看。
Ben: These things are so object a definition, too. How many days is it out of? Is this an innings situation? Is this a 365 days? Is it God created the earth in seven days situation, or is it out of seven? What's the denominator?
Ben：这完全取决于你如何定义“天”。总共多少天？像棒球的局数，还是一年 365 天，或者“上帝七天创造世界”的七分之几？分母是什么？
The other thing that I keep thinking about is, how could I possibly spend more money online? I'm not sure more of my spend or my time could move on the Internet. Internet penetration got to be in the 90%+ in America and getting up there for the rest of the world, too. If you just look at, we're running out of hours in a day and we're running at a household spend to spend on things you could buy over the Internet, so…
另一个我一直在想的问题是：我还能在网上花更多钱吗？我的支出或时间还能更多转到线上吗？美国互联网普及率已超 90%，全球也在逼近。如果一天只有 24 小时、家庭可支配消费有限，那么……
David: I think, really, this is the question harking back to what we talked about towards the beginning of the episode. You and I have, fortunately, in our lifetimes when we were kids. But in our professional careers, we have never experienced anything like 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, where traffic on the Internet was growing 230,000% a year. We've never experienced that. We're benefiting from the aftershocks of that still.
David：我觉得这又回到节目开头提到的问题。小时候我们赶上过，但在职业生涯中，我们从未经历过 1992–1995 那种互联网流量年增 230,000% 的爆发。我们至今仍在享受那场巨变的余波。
I think that's the question. Where are we in the aftershocks of that? Or is there going to be another event like that in our lifetime? I think everything in our time that we've thought of as that is mobile, cloud, Web3, VR, it's all still just the Internet. Those are aftershocks. That's not the event.
问题在于：我们现在处于余波的哪一段？我们这辈子还会再遇到类似的事件吗？当下我们认为巨变的移动、云、Web3、VR，其实都仍是互联网的余波，而非那场“主震”。
Ben: Going back to this credit card game, Ponzi, or Peter to pay Paul, this mental model of borrowing against something in the future like paying your suppliers in order to do interesting things with the dollars today, I think giving that a little bit more thought since I threw it out, I think the reason why it all worked out is that the Internet ultimately provided a ton of consumer value on an ongoing basis, even when the bubble burst.
Ben：回到“信用卡拆东墙补西墙”或“庞氏”心智模型——用未来资金（如应付供应商的款）去做当下的事。我想之所以行得通，是因为互联网持续为消费者创造了巨大价值，即便泡沫破裂时也是如此。
If you look at traffic during 2000, 2001, 2002, people kept adopting the Internet. These tech stocks, equity investors ran away from backing them, because people got so ahead of their skis investing on clicks and not even revenue like clicks and eyeballs, let alone gross margin dollars, and hopefully, eventually free cash flow.
看看 2000–2002 年的流量，互联网用户仍在持续增长。科技股的股权投资者却撤资，因为此前大家投的只是点击量甚至眼球，而非收入、更别提毛利或自由现金流。
The fact of the matter is, even though investors got scared, it provided an incredible amount of consumer value. The fact that people kept doing it meant that Amazon kept growing their customer base, the customer loyalty, and the number of transactions. There was a there there. They could survive the bubble because ultimately, more consumers kept getting more value so the party could keep going over at cashflow.com.
事实是，尽管投资者恐慌，互联网为消费者创造的价值仍巨大，人们继续上网，这让亚马逊的客户基数、忠诚度和交易量不断增长。价值真实存在，因此他们挺过了泡沫；消费者持续获益，cashflow.com 的派对就能继续。
David: Yes. It's interesting. I'm thinking back on my personal experience living during that time. I'm curious for you. Did you have any awareness of the tech bubble and or the tech bubble burst?
David：是啊，很有意思。我在回想自己当时的亲身经历。我想知道，你有没有察觉到科技泡沫及其破裂？
Ben: No. I was 10 in 1999. I remember September 11th, but I don't remember that it came after a bubble bursting.
Ben：没有。我 1999 年才 10 岁。我记得 9·11，但不记得它发生在泡沫破裂之后。
David: Right, but you probably remember your experience of the Internet and it growing in your life, right?
David：对，不过你大概记得互联网在你生活中的发展历程，对吧？
Ben: For sure. It sort of grew with me growing up. I remember like, oh, now I'm old enough to have a computer in my room, and oh, now I'm old enough for it to be on our AppleTalk network, and old enough for it to be connected to the actual internet so I can use things like AIM.
Ben：当然。它几乎伴随我一起成长。我记得，啊，我终于大到可以在房间里放一台电脑了；然后电脑能加入我们家的 AppleTalk 网络；再后来能真正连上互联网，用 AIM 之类的东西。
I always thought those things were like, if I really think back in rites of passage for someone growing up, and I don't think I realized at the time, these are becoming things exactly at the pace that I'm growing up.
我一直觉得那就像成长过程中的一个个里程碑。现在回想才意识到，这些事物的出现正好与我成长的步伐同步。
David: Totally. It's so funny when you're younger. Now, there's no difference in our age. I think I'm four years, five years older than you.
David：确实。年轻时这种感觉很奇妙。现在我们几乎没什么年龄差距。我好像比你大四五岁。
Ben: Four, I think. Yeah.
Ben：四岁左右，嗯。
David: Four, I think. Yeah. I was probably just a little bit ahead. I was aware of stuff going on with stocks related to tech companies. I knew that was happening, but I didn't think about it in relation to what I was doing. I just think back, the percentage of my time and mental energy directed at and on the Internet just grew, and grew, and grew exponentially during that time.
David：对，大约四岁。我那时稍微早一点接触。我知道科技股的事，知道那些事情在发生，但没把它和自己的经历联系起来。回想起来，那段时间我投入在互联网的时间和精力成倍激增。
Ben: It turns out, having the entire world of information at your fingertips is unbelievably valuable and it just permeated everything.
Ben：事实证明，指尖可及全球信息的价值难以置信，它渗透到生活的方方面面。
David: Yeah.
David：没错。
Ben: Okay, I have more.
Ben：好，我还有别的要说。
David: Yeah, go for it. I've got two I want to share. Save me room for two.
David：说吧。我也有两点想分享，给我留点时间。
Ben: I will. Here's the thing we really didn't talk about, but it is very important to understand about Amazon. They were ludicrously, ludicrously private. They never broke AWS out as a segment. They basically had to. They have always kept everything in this gigantic amalgamation of the fewer numbers we can report, the better.
Ben：好。我想谈一件我们之前没怎么提，但理解亚马逊必须知道的事：他们极度、极度保密。他们从未把 AWS 单独拆分成报告板块——后来是迫不得已才拆的。他们一直把所有数据合在一起，能少披露就少披露。
In their S-1, they never said anything about any cohorts, cost to acquire customer, or lifetime value of an Amazon customer. No one in the outside world know 10-Ks, know S-1. Nothing has ever said anything about that information.
在他们的 S-1 里，你找不到任何分群数据、获客成本或客户生命周期价值。外界看 10-K、看 S-1，都找不到这些信息。
Jeff just believes his famous Bezos charts where he's announcing this cool thing for Alexa and he's like, this was the best year ever. You just see an unlabeled axis that's like, oh, it's upper and to the righter. That has served them really well. They're able to do a lot of maneuvering versus competitors, with their suppliers, with third-party sellers, by just never really disclosing any key information.
Jeff 特别相信他那些著名的“贝索斯曲线图”：发布 Alexa 新功能时总说“这是史上最佳一年”，图表的坐标轴甚至不标数值，只是一路向右上。这招对他们大有裨益——凭借几乎不公开关键数据，他们在与竞争对手、供应商、第三方卖家的博弈中游刃有余。
David: Yup, the same story with advertising as with AWS. At a certain point, they're going to have to break out advertising. It's a \$30–\$40 billion run rate business at this point. But for a long time, nobody really knew or understood what was happening inside Amazon with that.
大卫：是的，广告业务和 AWS 的故事一模一样。到了某个阶段，他们肯定得把广告单独拆分出来。现在广告的年化收入已经达到 300–400 亿美元，但很长时间里，外界几乎没人真正了解亚马逊在广告业务里究竟做了什么。
Ben: There's this other one. For listeners who are watching on video, you can see that it's now dark out for David and I. We took a break to go have dinner and then reconvene.
本：还有一件事。正在看视频的观众可以看到，现在外面天已经黑了。我们刚才暂停去吃了晚饭，然后又回来继续录制。
David: Slash put the baby to bed.
大卫：顺便还把孩子哄睡了。
Ben: Yeah. I was thinking of myself over dinner. Man, I don't know if we're doing a good job with this episode. It's not really a cohesive story. I think it hit me that that is the point. Amazon was doing so much stuff so fast, concurrently, and learning from it, that it's a brute force pathfinding algorithm that has a bunch of concurrent stuff going on.
本：是啊。我吃饭的时候在想，天哪，我不知道这期节目做得好不好，它并不是一个连贯的故事。我忽然意识到，这恰恰是关键。亚马逊做事又快又多，而且并行推进、不断学习，像是一种蛮力寻路算法，同时处理大量事务。
It's unbelievably entrepreneurial. It is the most successful scale innovator in the world that has ever existed. The two pizza teams thing, which I'm sure many people are familiar with.
这家公司拥有令人难以置信的创业精神，是世界上最成功的大规模创新者。“两块披萨团队”的做法，想必很多人都耳熟能详。
David: Which I think might have been a Rick Dalzel innovation.
David：我认为那可能是 Rick Dalzel 的一项创新。
Ben: Oh, interesting. The fact that for decades, most of the best entrepreneurial talent in Seattle just stayed at Amazon. The knock on Seattle for so many years was that, thank God, Amazon's a pretty big, bureaucratic company at this point and people are leaving to start companies.
Ben：哦，真有意思。几十年来，西雅图最优秀的大部分创业人才都留在亚马逊。多年来人们对西雅图的批评是：幸好亚马逊如今已经是一家颇具官僚气的大公司，人们正离开去创业。
David: Oh, the best people stayed. Look at Jassy.
David：哦，最顶尖的人才都留下了。看看 Jassy 就知道了。
Ben: Totally. The biggest impediment to the Seattle startup ecosystem was the fact that Amazon facilitated entrepreneurship over, and over, and over again, for people at all stages in their career with all levels of ambition. It's really, really impressive, but doesn't really make for a clean story?
Ben：完全正确。西雅图创业生态最大的障碍在于：亚马逊一次又一次地激发员工创业精神，无论他们处于职业生涯的哪个阶段、抱有何种雄心。这确实令人惊叹，但好像也难以讲述成一个简洁的故事？
Rather than beating myself up over that mid episode here, I was like, I think that's actually the point. Let's do hardware, let's do a subscription business, let's buy a bunch of planes. They started the company and IPO'd within three years. Everything that this company has ever done has been super fast and often concurrent.
与其在节目中间懊恼这一点，我意识到：这恰恰是关键所在。做硬件、做订阅业务、买一大堆飞机——他们创办公司并在三年内上市。亚马逊做的每件事都极其迅速，而且往往是并行推进的。
David: Yup. How did you phrase it? I think you texted me, the surface area of this company is just immense.
David：没错。你是怎么说的来着？我记得你给我发短信说，这家公司的“表面积”简直巨大无比。
Ben: Is just ludicrous. Yes. It's so large. It's impossible to cover. I actually made a list when I was thinking about, okay, is this maze thing the right analogy of things that failed, and then they backed up, turned left, and tried another thing instead and this heat seeking brute force algorithm? It's incredible when you look at Auctions, zShops. We didn't even talk about the Sotheby's partnership, where they were trying to do a border style thing with Sotheby's.
Ben：大得离谱，是真的。它太庞大了，根本难以面面俱到。我列过一张清单，想验证“迷宫”这个比喻是否合适：哪些项目失败了，他们又是如何后退、左转、改做别的，用这种“寻热式蛮力算法”继续探索？拍卖、zShops……我们甚至还没谈到与苏富比的合作——他们当时想和苏富比搞一个类似 Borders 的合作模式。
David: We didn't talk about the Fire Phone.
David：我们还没谈 Fire Phone 呢。
Ben: The Fire Phone, A9 search engine, which was just wildly underfunded relative to Google search engine, Block View, which was the predecessor to what Google figured out with huge investment to make Street View, investing tens of millions of dollars and startups, like homegrocer.com and pets.com. Over, and over, and over again, there are these huge failures, and yet it's the most successful company of our time.
Ben：Fire Phone、A9 搜索引擎——跟谷歌搜索相比资金投入少得可怜；Block View——后来谷歌大举投资做成了 Street View 的前身；还有投入数千万美元的 homegrocer.com、pets.com 等初创公司。一次又一次的大失败，但亚马逊却成了我们这个时代最成功的公司。
There are so many other companies where, compare it to Elon Musk, for example. You look at SpaceX, it worked. Tesla, it worked. PayPal, it worked. Boring Company, we don't know yet, but it seems like it could work. Neuralink, jury's out. It's really early, but it's not a failure.
拿其他公司来对比，比如埃隆·马斯克。SpaceX 成了，Tesla 成了，PayPal 也成了。Boring Company 还不确定，但看起来可能会成功。Neuralink 还言之过早，但也谈不上失败。
He doesn't go start these things that are completely dead ends the way that Amazon did dozens, and dozens, and dozens of times. But Amazon is so damn good at learning. There's this great quote again in the 97 letter, which is, "We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions, where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case."
他不会像亚马逊那样启动几十个彻底死胡同的项目。可是亚马逊在学习方面实在太强了。97 年股东信里有句名言：“在足够可能获得市场领先优势的地方，我们将做出大胆而非谨慎的投资决策。其中一些投资会成功，另一些则不会，但无论结果如何，我们都会学到宝贵的经验。”
My big takeaway is, if you're going to look at Amazon as a straight line, it was a philosophical straight line. It was a strategically squiggly line, but it was a tactically random set of dots that there was just a fact finding algorithm going to figure out.
我的最大收获是：如果把亚马逊看作一条直线，那是一条哲学意义上的直线；在战略层面，它是一条曲折的折线；而在战术层面，它由一连串随机的点组成——正是那种“事实探寻算法”在不断摸索前进。
David: Man, I love that. That is such a good point, but that was the strategy. Jeff says it in the shareholder letters all along.
David：天哪，我太喜欢这个观点了，说得太好了——这正是亚马逊的战略。Jeff 在历年的致股东信里一直这么说。
Ben: Yup, absolutely. All right, what do you got?
Ben：没错，绝对正确。好，你接着说？
David: Okay, my two that I want to highlight. One, the opposite of what Jeff talks about all the time of, we're not competitor-focused or customer-focused, blah-blah-blah. Of course, they're customer-focused. Yes, we've clearly painted the picture that they care about customers, the customer experience-focused, long term customer loyalty is the most important thing, blah-blah-blah.
David：好，我想强调两点。第一点，与 Jeff 常说的“我们不关注竞争对手，只关注客户”恰恰相反。当然，他们确实以客户为中心。我们已经说明，他们非常在乎客户、重视客户体验、重视长期客户忠诚度，等等。
Ben: Isn't it great that there are these Jeffisms that you and I can shorthand because we're pretty sure that our audience knows them at this point, because every interview he's ever done, he says the same things?
Ben：是不是很棒？有这么多“贝索斯语录”，咱俩一提就能省略，因为我们确信听众都耳熟能详——毕竟他每次采访都在重复这些话。
David: Yes. It's so funny. Jeff is also such a part of the lineage of great retail entrepreneurs, starting concurrently and before Sam Walton, but Sol Price, Sam Walton, Jim Senegal, Jeff Bezos. You shop your competitors, and you take their best ideas, and then you refine them and make them even better.
David：是的，太有意思了。Jeff 也属于杰出零售企业家谱系的一部分，和 Sam Walton 同时代甚至更早的还有 Sol Price、Sam Walton、Jim Sinegal、Jeff Bezos。你要去逛竞争对手的店，把他们最好的点子学来，再改良、做得更好。
That Sam Walton quote that I just loved from Made in America, "Go shop, our competitors. Come back. Don't tell me what they're doing wrong, tell me what they're doing right." Amazon did the same thing, like the eBay story.
我最喜欢《Made in America》里 Sam Walton 的一句话：“去逛我们的竞争对手，回来后别告诉我他们做错了什么，而是告诉我他们做对了什么。”亚马逊也这么干，比如对待 eBay 的故事。
Ben: Doesn't Brad Stone have a way that he frames when Amazon is customer-focused versus competitor-focused? I think it's in his second book in Amazon Unbound.
Ben：Brad Stone 不是提出过一种框架，区分亚马逊何时以客户为中心、何时关注竞争对手吗？我记得在他第二本书《Amazon Unbound》里写过。
David: Yeah, that might be in Unbound.
David：对，应该就在《Unbound》里。
Ben: I always thought this was a good way to approach it, where if it's in an emerging market, they're customer-focused because they can afford to be, especially when they're the market leader or they're out ahead.
Ben：我一直觉得这个框架很好：在新兴市场里，他们更能以客户为中心，尤其当他们是市场领先者、走在前面时，他们有余力这么做。
But when they're in a competitive market like what grocery became, because when they were first starting all their grocery efforts, it was one of the leaders in online grocery, Amazon Fresh is this crazy experiment and ultimately, they fell behind, you have to be very competitor-focused when you're in a crowded market where you're behind. I think they like to be in markets where they have the luxury of being purely customer-focused, but that's not always the case.
但在竞争激烈的市场，比如后来演变成激战区的生鲜杂货。当他们最初做线上生鲜时算领先者，可 Amazon Fresh 这个疯狂实验最终被超越，在拥挤而落后的赛道里就得高度关注竞争对手。我认为，他们更喜欢进入能“奢侈”地只关注客户的市场，但并不总能如愿。
David: In some sense, it's a luxury to have great competitors because they figured out good stuff.
David：从某种意义上讲，拥有优秀的对手也是一种奢侈，因为对手会探索出好点子。
Ben: Bezos didn't just steal from other retailers. The other thing about Jeff is he comes from a finance background, whereas a lot of the classic retailers come from a merchandising background or an operations background.
Ben：贝索斯不仅借鉴其他零售商。Jeff 的另一特点是拥有金融背景，而许多传统零售巨头出身于商品经营或运营管理领域。
David: Certainly, internet entrepreneurs, very few came from a finance background.
David：更不用说互联网创业者，很少有人具备金融背景。
Ben: There's a lot of John Malone in here. When you look at their tax strategy, the fact that they're generating all this free cash flow but somehow never reporting a GAAP profit, and they're never paying corporate income tax because they have no corporate income, and yet, somehow, they're a trillion and a half dollar company, and they have started paying more taxes recently because they have started being profitable, blah-blah-blah. But for a long time, they really were running the TCI, John Malone, playbook of try not to ever show your profitability.
本：这里面有很多约翰·马龙的影子。看看他们的税务策略——企业产生了大量自由现金流，却几乎从不报告 GAAP 利润，也就不用缴纳公司所得税，可结果他们成了一家市值 1.5 万亿美元的公司。最近他们开始多交税，是因为终于开始显示利润，等等。但很长一段时间里，他们确实照搬了马龙的 TCI 战术：尽量不展示盈利能力。
David: We got to do that episode.
大卫：我们得做一期节目专门聊这个。
Ben: For sure.
本：肯定要。
David: That's my one of two. Two of two, which was what pushed us over the edge to do this episode now, which is the period of time Amazon got started a little on the early side before the tech bubble, benefited all throughout the tech bubble, and then got hammered arguably harder than any other surviving internet stock when the bubble burst and in the crash.
大卫：这是我想说的第一点。第二点，也是促使我们现在就做这期节目的原因：亚马逊创立得稍早于科网泡沫，整个泡沫期间受益匪浅，泡沫破裂后又遭受重创——可能比任何幸存的互联网股票都更惨。
It was during that nuclear winter leading up to it, not that they weren't doing this all along, but the hard work was done from 2000-2007, where they built out everything they gave them, like the hugely wide moats that we've talked about on this whole episode. That was the time to build and Jeff was completely unafraid to do so. God, it just makes me think so much about it right now. It makes me think about FTX.
在 2000–2007 年那场“寒冬”里，他们完成了最艰巨的建设，筑起了本期节目里谈到的宽广护城河。那正是该下重注的时机，而 Jeff 毫不畏惧。天哪，这让我不禁联想到现在的种种情形，甚至想到 FTX。
Amazon, granted most of it was debt capital, but during the go-go years, they sucked in billions of dollars of capital. Some of it was spent unwisely. But then when the crash came, they invested through it, they built through it, and distanced themselves by miles from their competitors. It's just like a huge lesson.
亚马逊确实通过举债筹到了数十亿美元，在狂飙年代里大把花钱，有些花得并不高明。但当危机来临时，他们依旧持续投资、持续建设，把自己远远甩开竞争对手——这给我们上了宝贵的一课。
Obviously, you got to be smart. You got to be right. You got to have managed your company in a way that you have access to capital during those times. That's the best time to build moats.
当然，你得足够聪明、方向要对，还得把公司管好，好让自己在低谷期依然能拿到资本。那才是筑护城河的最佳时刻。
Ben: Absolutely. How should we grade this one?
本：完全同意。那么，我们该给这期节目打几分？
David: Yeah, grading. We talked before the episode about, maybe we grade Amazon retail here and then we'll grade Amazon Web Services on the next one. But like you said, this is like a tangled octopus of a company. We only got up to 2007–2008 in the history here.
大卫：对，说到评分。节目开始前我们提过，也许这一期只给亚马逊零售打分，下一期再评 AWS。但正如你说的，这家公司像一只纠结的章鱼，我们今天只讲到了 2007–2008 年。
Ben: Right. I don't feel, based on everything we've discussed in this episode, qualified to assess Amazon retail as it is today. I think we should scope it to the time period.
本：没错。就本期讨论内容而言，我觉得我们没资格评价如今的亚马逊零售业务。我们应该把范围限定在那个时期。
David: We didn't talk about Zappos. We didn't talk about diapers.com. We didn't talk about Whole Foods.
大卫：我们还没聊 Zappos、diapers.com、Whole Foods。
Ben: Pill Pack.
本：还有 PillPack。
David: Echo. We mentioned it, but went medical.
大卫：Echo。我们提到过，但没深入。
Ben: Although Echo, to me, falls under AWS. Why not?
Ben：不过在我看来，Echo 应该算在 AWS 下面，不是吗？
David: Oh, that'll be fun to talk about. Clearly, it's both. I think we should grade Amazon from founding until just before the financial crisis.
David：哦，这个话题很有意思。显然它属于两个领域。我觉得我们应该从亚马逊创立开始，一直评估到金融危机前这段时间。
Ben: Okay. It's interesting. If the company were to have ended in 2007, I think they were doing about a billion dollars a year of operating income. This is why it's very interesting to be grading on a timeframe with a company that's thinking in a much longer timeframe. If they're generating a billion-ish dollars of operating income, and I think their market cap at that point was something like \$30 billion, if you're a shareholder, they haven't really realized those future cash flows yet.
Ben：好啊，很有意思。如果这家公司在 2007 年终结，当时它的年营业利润大约是 10 亿美元左右。这就说明为什么以一个拥有长远思维的公司来划定一个阶段去打分，是件很有意思的事。它的营业利润是十亿左右，我记得那时市值大概在 300 亿美元左右。作为股东来说，他们其实还没有真正兑现未来的现金流。
The pedantic way to look at it would be like, well, if the music stopped there, that would have been pretty bad. But, of course, it didn't. Of course, AWS would still come. Their market cap would absolutely explode.
如果你用一个较为拘谨的方式来看，会说：如果音乐在那时停止了，那可就糟糕了。但事实并非如此。AWS 后来出现了，公司的市值也随之大爆发。
They've turned on the ability, especially with AWS, get very profitable in the future. That's probably the wrong way to look at it. What if the company shut down? It's more about, how do they execute to set themselves up for ultimately realizing all that value for shareholders?
他们后来拥有了能力——特别是靠 AWS——在未来变得极具盈利能力。所以，如果我们问“万一公司早早倒闭怎么办”其实不是最合适的思路。关键在于他们执行得如何，为最终兑现对股东的全部价值打下了什么样的基础。
David: Humans are such funny creatures. The hedonic adaptation is crazy. If you go back in time to 2007, what did you say their market cap was? \$30 billion?
David：人类真是种有趣的生物。所谓“享乐适应”现象真让人惊讶。你刚刚说，如果回到 2007 年，那时他们的市值是多少？300 亿美元？
Ben: Ish.
Ben：差不多。
David: That was a big company back then. I remember, when I started in venture a couple years later in 2010, you weren't playing for exits in the tens of billions of dollars. If we said, oh, well, I got to underwrite this investment, do I think what are the odds that this is going to be worth \$30 billion? People would be like, what are you talking about? We need this to be worth a couple \$100 million dollars. That's a huge win. We just hadn't realized yet how big this stuff could get.
David：那在当时已经是家大公司了。我记得我在 2010 年进入风险投资圈，那会儿谁也不指望一个项目最后能卖到上百亿美元。如果你说：“我要投这个项目，那它成为 300 亿美元公司的概率有多大？”人们会说：“你在说什么啊？”我们只希望它能值几亿美元，那已经是大成功了。那时候我们还没意识到这些东西最终能变得多么巨大。
Ben: Which is, in part, why people needed to be more ownership sensitive or certainly they were more funds obsessed with ownership than there are now. I still actually believe pretty strongly in ownership, especially as a lead investor and why that's important in architecting a funding model. But at the time, if what you're playing for is \$300 million–\$400 million outcomes, then it's pretty important for your multi hundred million dollar fund to own a quarter of that company.
Ben：这也是为什么那时候人们更在意“持股比例”，或者说，比现在的基金更执着于“占股”。我至今仍然坚信“持股”很重要，尤其作为领投人时，这对于设计融资模型至关重要。但在当时，如果你的目标只是博一个三到四亿美元的退出，那你的几亿美元基金最好能拥有那家公司四分之一的股份才行。
David: Yes. Certainly, Tom was very happy with their Amazon investment at that point in time. I think we have to give it an A. Especially, as we talked about it, gosh, just incredible execution through that time.
David：是的。可以肯定的是，Tom 在那个时间点对他们投资亚马逊的表现非常满意。我觉得我们得给它一个 A。特别是如我们之前说的，那段时间他们的执行力简直不可思议。
Ben: I do have this fun stat from the IPO. If you had bought 100 shares at the IPO, which I think, did we say \$1700–\$1800?
Ben：我这里有个有趣的数据，是关于 IPO 的。如果你在 IPO 时买了 100 股，我记得我们说的价格大概是 1700 到 1800 美元？
David: Market cap of \$438 million?
David：当时市值是 4.38 亿美元？
Ben: Yeah. If you bought 100 shares for \$1800 of total investment, today, you'd have \$2.6 million and you would have made 1500X, which is bonkers. Then the question becomes, should we grade Tom's investment at Amazon as of 2007?
Ben：对。如果你当初花 1800 美元买了 100 股，现在这些股票就值 260 万美元，回报是 1500 倍，简直疯狂。那么问题是，我们要不要以 2007 年的时点来评估 Tom 投资亚马逊的表现？
David: I love that. Great A. Unless he sold in 2007, in which case, F.
David：我喜欢这个问题。那当然是个 A——除非他在 2007 年卖掉了，那就得是个 F。
Ben: Yeah. 2007, the resolution's pretty low, so it's somewhere between \$30 and \$40 billion. Let's say you're buying in at \$5 million and that goes up to \$40 billion, that's a 10,000X. It is crazy if you really start following the ripples out. Yeah, Seattle's whole startup ecosystem.
Ben：对。2007 年的信息不太清晰，但当时市值大概在 300 到 400 亿美元之间。假设你当时投了 500 万美元，现在涨到 400 亿，那可是 1 万倍的回报。如果你真的去追踪这些连锁反应，结果会非常疯狂。是的，整个西雅图的初创生态系统都受到了影响。
David: Yeah. Of course, there was Microsoft before, too. So many great folks came out of Microsoft to build companies and still, like Nick at Rec Room. Amazon, it's just a juggernaut.
David：是的。当然，在亚马逊之前还有微软。很多优秀的人才从微软出来创建公司，现在仍然有人这么做，比如 Rec Room 的 Nick。亚马逊简直就是一个巨兽。
Ben: Yeah. I don't even know how to apply a letter greater than this than A+. The other thing is surviving the dot-com crash. Basically, no one did. Google did, but Google started right at the tail end of it. Every other retailer, and half of them were things that Amazon was invested in, but drugstore.com, pets.com, and all these completely went under.
Ben：没错。我都不知道有没有比 A+ 更高的评级了。还有一个因素是它挺过了互联网泡沫崩盘。基本上没人能活下来。Google 算一个，但它是在泡沫尾声创立的。其他电商几乎全军覆没，其中一半还是亚马逊投资过的，比如 drugstore.com、pets.com，全都倒闭了。
David: And eBay. I mean, eBay survived. It's around, of course, but it didn't win.
David：还有 eBay。eBay 算是活下来了，当然它还存在，但它并没有胜出。
Ben: Pretty believable to make it through that three-year absolute drought of the availability of capital and a complete souring. You couldn't IPO, so if you weren't already out like Amazon was, there's basically no chance that you were going to. I think Google finally IPO'd in 2004.
Ben：他们能挺过那长达三年的资本干旱期和整体的投资环境转冷，真的非常难得。那时候几乎不可能 IPO，所以除非你像亚马逊那样早就上市了，否则基本没戏。我记得 Google 是在 2004 年才最终 IPO 的。
David: 2004, yeah. Even then, that wasn't like it opened the floodgates.
David：对，2004 年。即便如此，那也并没有带来融资热潮的全面回归。
Ben: Right.
Ben：没错。
David: All right, we got to go A+.
David：好吧，那我们必须给它一个 A+。
Ben: A+ execution.
Ben：A+ 级的执行力。
David: Great. We'll do the whole thing on our next episode. If I were to predict a grade for Amazon Web Services, I would predict an A+.
David：太棒了。我们下期再做关于 AWS 的完整一期。如果让我现在预测 AWS 的评分，我会说 A+。
Ben: Why even listen to the episode, David?
Ben：那你这么一说，大家还听下一集干嘛呢，David？
David: Right. I think it'll be worth listening to the episode.
David：哈哈。听完下一集，还是很值得的。
Ben: By the way, I've been saying \$2 trillion this whole time. I finally just looked it up. Amazon was a \$1.9 trillion company, and today is a \$1 trillion company. It is crazy what has happened over the last two years.
Ben：顺便说一句，我之前一直说亚马逊市值是 2 万亿美元。我刚刚查了一下，亚马逊的市值曾经是 1.9 万亿美元，而现在是 1 万亿美元。这两年发生的事情太疯狂了。
David: They just reported Q2 earnings and the market liked it.
David：他们刚发布了第二季度财报，市场反应挺好。
Ben: It popped 15%.
Ben：股价暴涨了 15%。
David: I bet it's closer. Who knows? If we could predict the future, we wouldn't be fans of NZS. By the time this comes out, it's probably fair to say, ballpark, \$1.5 trillion-ish. Who knows?
David：我猜它现在可能已经更接近（前高）了。谁知道呢？如果我们能预测未来，我们就不是 NZS 的粉丝了。等这一集播出时，大概说个 1.5 万亿美元左右应该不离谱。谁知道呢？
Ben: We'll see. All right, great episode. Should we do some quick carve outs?
Ben：我们拭目以待吧。好啦，这集很棒。要不要来几个快速推荐（carve outs）？
David: Let's do carve outs. What you got?
David：来吧。你有什么推荐的？
Ben: I have a carve out. I can't remember if you recommended this to me privately or if it was a previous carve out of yours, and that's how I heard it. I just listened to the Rick Rubin episode of the Lex Friedman podcast, and my God, is that a good interview.
Ben：我这次的推荐是这样，我记不清是你私下推荐给我的，还是你之前在节目里推荐过。总之我刚听了 Rick Rubin 上 Lex Friedman 播客的那一集，天啊，那真是一场精彩的访谈。
David: It's so good.
David：那真的太棒了。
Ben: Do you think it's a good interview at the beginning? You get 90 minutes in and you're like, this is a really good interview. I think that happens a lot on the Lex Friedman podcast.
Ben：你一开始会觉得是个不错的访谈，但听到 90 分钟的时候你会觉得，这实在太棒了。我觉得 Lex 的节目经常有这种感觉。
David: Yeah, it's so good. Lex is such a good interviewer. His skill as an interviewer is just top notch.
David：是啊，真的是。他是个很棒的访谈者，他的访谈技巧简直是顶级的。
Ben: There's a level of intimacy that he gets with people where it's uncommon to have a level of intimacy. I don't think it's because he previously knows them. I think it's because everybody knows that's what you bring when you're on the Lex Friedman show.
Ben：他和嘉宾之间能达到一种很少见的亲密感。我不觉得那是因为他和嘉宾事先就认识，而是因为每个嘉宾都知道上 Lex Friedman 的节目就得带上这种开放真诚的心态。
If it's anywhere in your sort of, oh, I should listen to that sometime soon, especially if you're a music fan, and especially if you're a heartfelt music fan, like you're someone who really likes to feel and put yourself in the place of maybe the artist or something they were going through, there's just so much. In particular, the way he goes into the Johnny Cash final album of covers that he did. The Hurt by Trent Reznor.
如果你曾经想过“我应该找时间听听那集”，特别是如果你是个音乐迷，尤其是那种感性派的音乐迷，你喜欢感受艺术家的情绪，设身处地地体验他们的创作背景，那你真的不能错过。特别是他讲到 Johnny Cash 最后一张翻唱专辑那段——那首由 Trent Reznor 创作的《Hurt》。
David: The Trent Reznor Hurt, yeah. Oh, man. The number and breadth of musical history moments that Rick was part of.
David：就是 Trent Reznor 写的那首《Hurt》，对啊。天哪，Rick Rubin 参与的音乐历史时刻数量之多、跨度之广，真让人惊叹。
Ben: Just sitting there, producing for, creating.
Ben：他就坐在那里，为人制作，为人创作。
David: Yeah. Not even just sitting there, creating with the artist.
David：没错，不只是坐在那儿，而是和艺术家一起创作。
Ben: It's like Forrest Gump in real life.
Ben：就像现实生活版的《阿甘正传》。
David: What a legend.
David：真是个传奇人物。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：没错。
David: All right. I was going to do just one, but actually I'm trying to decide what to do. I think it's appropriate to do a potpourri, a suite of different types of media here, given that that's Amazon's DNA. They probably bought or consumed most of this through an Amazon service in one way, shape, or form.
David：好吧，我本来只打算推荐一项，但现在我在犹豫推荐哪一个才好。我觉得既然亚马逊的基因就是多样内容消费，做个综合型的推荐反而更合适。而且这些内容很可能都是通过亚马逊的服务以某种形式购买或消费的。
Books. I have been reading a few books by Ursula Le Guin, a very famous American author. Great, both sci-fi work and fantasy work, both of which I really enjoy. I read her, I think, probably best known sci-fi novel. It's called *The Left Hand of Darkness*. Excellent book, highly recommend. I feel like it was written in the 1960s, maybe 1950s or 1960s. I could be wrong on that, but that era of type of sci-fi. It's a character-driven sci-fi, so less about crazy technology and more about as a setting to explore characters. Great.
书方面，我最近在读美国著名作家 Ursula Le Guin 的几本书。她写的科幻和奇幻作品都非常出色，我两个类型都很喜欢。我读了她最出名的科幻小说之一，应该是《黑暗的左手》（*The Left Hand of Darkness*）。这本书非常棒，我强烈推荐。我记得它写于 1960 年代，或者可能是 1950 或 60 年代的作品。属于那种以人物为主导的科幻小说，不是侧重于酷炫科技设定，而是借助科幻背景来探索人物的内心和互动，非常精彩。
I'm just starting her *Earthsea* fantasy series, which I had no idea. Now I'm like reading it and I'm like, oh, and some of the reviews on Amazon talk about probably part of the inspiration for Harry Potter. It's super cool to go get that little bit of history.
我也刚开始读她的《地海》（*Earthsea*）奇幻系列。我之前完全不了解这个系列，现在开始读了才发现，哇，原来有些亚马逊上的评论说它可能是《哈利·波特》的部分灵感来源。能从这里窥见一点奇幻文学的历史，真的太酷了。
Ben: Harry Potter, by the way, broke a lot of Amazon's algorithms. I was listening to a couple of interviews with early engineers who were saying, you may also like or people who like this also like, basically everyone liked Harry Potter. They would have to either special case it or tune some parameters to make it so it just wasn't always recommending Harry Potter with any other product because any other product had a similarity of buyers with Harry Potter.
Ben：顺带一提，《哈利·波特》曾经让亚马逊的很多算法崩溃。我听过几个亚马逊早期工程师的访谈，他们说类似“你可能也喜欢”或“喜欢这本书的人也喜欢……”这种推荐系统，结果是几乎所有人都喜欢《哈利·波特》。所以他们不得不专门针对它进行特殊处理，或者调整一些参数，不然任何商品都会被推荐《哈利·波特》，因为买过这些商品的人几乎都买过哈利·波特。
David: That's funny.
David：哈哈，那太有趣了。
Ben: It's like the Justin Bieber server at Twitter.
Ben：就像推特那会儿有“贾斯汀·比伯服务器”一样。
David: Late 1990s, early 2000s. Cultural touchstones for the world.
David：90 年代末和 2000 年代初，这些是全球的文化标志。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：没错。
David: Okay, music. I just today was relisting to *My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy* by Kanye.
David：好，说到音乐，我今天刚又重新听了 Kanye 的《My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy》。
Ben: *Dissect*?
Ben：是《Dissect》播客里的那一季吗？
David: Yes, and then it reminded me, I tweeted about this. I think that was your carve out years ago, season two of the *Dissect* podcast. The album is a master work.
David：对，就是那个。我还发过推文说这事。我记得这可能是你几年前推荐的，那是《Dissect》播客的第二季。这张专辑真的是杰作。
Ben: I didn't realize what a masterpiece the album was until listening to the podcast. Just the appreciation you get for Kanye as an artist and every single element, musically and lyrically, of every single song, is just next level.
Ben：我原本没意识到这张专辑有多伟大，直到听了那期播客。你能从中真正理解 Kanye 作为艺术家的才华，每首歌在音乐和歌词上的每个细节，都是顶尖水准。
David: We joked about this. I feel we should do a Kanye episode at some point. It'd be the follow up to the Taylor Swift episode.
David：我们之前还开玩笑说过，感觉我们应该专门做一期 Kanye 的节目，作为泰勒·斯威夫特那期节目的续集。
Ben: The Jedi and the Sith.
Ben：就像绝地武士和西斯的对比。
David: Exactly.
David：没错。
My last piece of media is a throwback to carve out of mine from not that long ago to *Elden Ring*, the video game. I finally beat it months later. If you're doing anything else and if you have a baby, you're talking months to beat this thing. Unreal achievement of a game, so amazing. I got to say that I also tweeted about this.
我最后一个媒体推荐是几个月前我推荐过的电子游戏《艾尔登法环》（*Elden Ring*）。我终于通关了，花了好几个月。如果你还有别的事要做，尤其是你还有个小孩，那要打通这游戏真的是以月为单位来算的。这游戏的成就太惊人了，简直不可思议。我也发了推文说这事。
I was a little disappointed at the end. I think I felt like I lost steam. I can totally forgive it. If old games were running 100 meters dash and then it got to the point where the achievement of making a triple-A game was like running a marathon, this from Software and Miyazaki, who created it, this is like running an ultra marathon. The amount of work and content and just incredibleness that went into this game is on a scale that no other game has ever matched. It's worth playing, worth sinking months of your life into.
结尾部分我有点失望，我觉得自己的动力消耗殆尽了。但我完全可以理解。以前的游戏可能像跑 100 米，而现在制作一款 3A 游戏已经像跑马拉松了，而由 From Software 和宫崎英高做出的这款游戏，已经是“超级马拉松”级别了。投入的工作量、内容之丰富、艺术之高超，前所未有。它绝对值得一玩，也值得你花上几个月的时间去沉浸其中。
Ben: If you have several months, exactly.
Ben：如果你手头有几个月的空闲时间的话，确实值得投入进去。
David: Yeah.
David：没错。
Ben: Awesome. Listeners, thanks for going on the journey with us. Man, I cannot wait to dive into AWS research. I try not to research two episodes at once because it's too hard to hold all this in our heads concurrently. I've been resisting diving into the annual letters from 2007 onward and really trying to understand the landscape of cloud today, but that's going to be a great one.
Ben：太棒了。各位听众，感谢你们陪我们一起踏上这段旅程。天啊，我已经迫不及待想深入研究 AWS 了。我一般不会同时准备两期节目的资料，因为要把所有内容同时记在脑子里实在太难了。我一直强迫自己不要提前去看 2007 年以后的股东信，也还没正式开始研究当今云计算的格局，但那肯定会是一期精彩的节目。
David: This was such a journey, and we're only halfway there. There's more to come.
David：这趟旅程真的令人难忘，而且我们才走到一半，后面还有更多内容等着大家。
Ben: Absolutely. After you finish this episode, come discuss it with all of us at acquired.fm/slack. We got a job board. If you're looking for the next move in your career, go to acquire.fm/jobs.
Ben：没错。听完这期节目之后，欢迎大家来 acquired.fm/slack 和我们一起讨论。我们还有一个招聘板块，如果你在找下一份工作，可以去 acquired.fm/jobs 看看。
Big change in all the things that we're calling to action for. I don't even know if that's the right, calling you toward action upon. How many weird prepositions can I throw? These closing calls to action.
我们现在的结尾行动呼吁内容也有了很大变化。我甚至不知道我有没有用对介词……我到底用了几个奇怪的介词？不管了，总之这些就是我们节目的结尾号召。
Merch, holy crap. It's finally here. Amazon inspired us. Thanks, Jeff Bezos. Your contributions have been many, but you convincing us to start a store on the Internet is perhaps your greatest yet, so thank you for that.
我们有周边了，天呐，终于上线了。是亚马逊给了我们灵感。谢谢你，Jeff Bezos。你对世界的贡献数不胜数，但你让我们下决心在互联网上开个商店，也许是你对我们最大的贡献之一，真的很感谢你。
You can go to acquired.fm/store and find some of the finest t-shirts, hoodies, crewneck sweatshirts. What else is there? Tanks and even onesies available. We'd love your feedback as we consider expanding the store as well.
你可以访问 acquired.fm/store，那里有我们最棒的 T 恤、帽衫、圆领卫衣。还有啥？背心，甚至还有婴儿连体衣可选。我们也非常欢迎你的反馈，帮助我们考虑如何扩展这个商店。
I don't think we have the infrastructure yet for third-party sellers to come on and create their own Acquired Merch, but perhaps we'll explore that if we can get a wide-enough user base to amortize those fixed costs of making a great user experience for you all across. I got to stop. I got to end this. Check out the LP show. You can find it in any podcast player. With that, listeners, we will see you next time.
我们现在还没搞好支持第三方卖家入驻、自主制作 Acquired 周边商品的基础设施，但或许将来会去探索这件事——如果我们能有足够广泛的用户群，把那些为大家提供良好使用体验的固定成本摊薄开来。我得停下来了，我得收尾了。记得也去听听我们的 LP 节目，各大播客平台都能找到。就这样了，各位听众，下次见。
David: We'll see you next time.
David：我们下次见。
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.
备注：Acquired 节目的主持人与嘉宾可能持有本期节目中提到的相关资产。本播客的内容并不构成投资建议，仅供信息参考和娱乐用途。在考虑任何金融交易时，你应自行研究并独立做出决定。