2025-06-01 Acquired.The Steve Ballmer Interview

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

Ben: David, Steve gave us the signed Clippers jersey with the name Acquired on it. There’s only one jersey. What are we going to do about this?

Ben：David，Steve送了我们一件签名的快船球衣，球衣上写着“Acquired”。这可是独一无二的一件球衣。我们该怎么分配？

David: Should we rock paper scissors for it? You know what? You keep it. There’s no Seattle basketball team. Keep it there up north.

David：我们猜拳决定？算了，还是你留着吧。西雅图现在都没有篮球队了，就让它留在北边吧。

Ben: All right. It’ll go in the Acquired museum north.

Ben：好，那它就放进“Acquired北方博物馆”。

David: Great.

David：太好了。

Ben: Perfect. All right, let’s do it.

Ben：太棒了。好，我们开始吧。

David: Let’s do it.

David：开始吧。

Ben: Welcome to episode one of the Summer 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I’m Ben Gilbert.

Ben：欢迎来到《Acquired》2025年夏季新一季的第一集，这是一个关于伟大公司及其背后故事与战略的播客。我是Ben Gilbert。

David: I’m David Rosenthal.

David：我是David Rosenthal。

Ben: And we are your hosts.

Ben：我们是你们的主持人。

Steve Ballmer is, among other things, arguably the very best investor of the last 20 years. It sounds a little funny to frame it that way, but here are the numbers. In 2014 when Steve left Microsoft, his net worth was \$20 billion, almost entirely comprised of Microsoft stock. Today, 11 years later, it is a staggering \$130 billion according to Forbes.

Steve Ballmer除了其他身份之外，可以说是过去二十年来最出色的投资者。这么说听起来有些奇怪，但看看这些数字就知道了。2014年，Steve离开微软时，他的净资产为200亿美元，几乎全部是微软股票。11年后的今天，根据《福布斯》数据，这个数字已经惊人地达到1300亿美元。

It is incredibly rare to reach this stratospheric level when you are: (a) not the founder of the company, and (b) no longer CEO or even employed by the company. And all of this comes from just one investment decision. Just keep holding substantially all of his Microsoft stock.

如果你既不是公司创始人，也早已不是CEO甚至不再受雇于公司，却能达到如此天价的财富水平，这是极其罕见的。而这一切仅仅来自一个投资决定：继续持有几乎全部的微软股票。

David: Incredible. We chatted about it with him in the conversation to come.

David：太不可思议了。接下来的访谈中，我们会和他聊到这件事。

Ben: Now, as most of you know, we did a big two-part Microsoft series last year on the history of the company up through when Steve transitioned the CEO role to Satya Nadella. Steve listened to those episodes and he had some thoughts that he wanted to share with his recollection of how things went down. Things like what made Microsoft so fabulously successful, what his missteps were as CEO.

Ben：如你们大多数人所知，我们去年做了一个微软历史的两集特别节目，讲述了公司从创立到Steve将CEO职位交给Satya Nadella的全过程。Steve听了那几集，他有一些想法和回忆想要分享，比如微软为何能如此成功，以及他作为CEO时犯下的错误。

We wanted to share that as a recorded conversation with all of you, so we set up our cameras and our mics at his philanthropy office, Ballmer Group, in Bellevue, Washington, and we pressed record. We’ll go into everything from the misses on mobile, search, social, the huge wins in enterprise and cloud.

我们想把这段对话录下来分享给大家，于是我们在他位于华盛顿州贝尔维尤的慈善机构Ballmer Group办公室架好了摄像机和麦克风，然后按下了录音键。我们会深入讨论从移动端、搜索、社交等领域的失误，到企业级和云计算的重大成功。

Steve also reflects on his business lessons learned, he goes into why he stepped down as CEO when he did, and he talks about his relationship with Bill Gates over the years. Of course, we had to talk with him a little bit about the Clippers and the new arena that Steve built and personally owns too.

Steve还反思了他从商界中学到的教训，解释了他当年为何选择卸任CEO，并谈到了他多年来与Bill Gates的关系。当然，我们也和他聊了一点关于快船队以及他亲自出资建设并拥有的新球馆。

David: Intuit Dome, incredible place. A cathedral of basketball as Steve would put it.

David：Intuit Dome，真是个不可思议的地方。用Steve的话来说，那是篮球的“圣殿”。

Ben: Listeners, if you want to know every time an episode drops, check out our email list. It’s the only place where we will share a hint of what our next episode will be. We’ll share episode corrections, updates, and little tidbits that we learn from all of you about previous episodes.

Ben：各位听众，如果你们想在每次新节目发布时第一时间知道，可以订阅我们的邮件列表。那是唯一能提前获得下集节目线索的地方。我们还会分享节目的更正、更新，以及从你们那里学到的关于往期节目的有趣小知识。

Come join the Slack to talk about this with us and the whole Acquired community, that is acquired.fm/slack, and the email list is acquired.fm/email. If you want more Acquired between our monthly episodes, check out ACQ2. We just released one with Zach Perret, the co-founder and CEO of Plaid.

欢迎加入我们的Slack社区，与我们和整个Acquired社区一起讨论节目内容，网址是acquired.fm/slack；想订阅邮件请前往acquired.fm/email。如果你想在我们的每月主节目之间获得更多内容，请收听我们的副栏目ACQ2。我们刚发布了一期与Plaid联合创始人兼CEO Zach Perret的访谈。

David: And we’ve got some banger ACQ2 episodes coming up.

David：我们接下来还有一些非常精彩的ACQ2节目即将推出。

Ben: Yes, we do. Well, as most of you know, we are doing a massive, massive live show at the 6000-seat Radio City Music hall in New York City on July 15th with our friends at J.P. Morgan Payments. There are just a few seats left, so get yours before they are gone at acquired.fm/nyc. The lineup for the night is going to be something very special and we cannot wait to see you there.

Ben：没错。正如你们很多人知道的，我们将在7月15日与J.P. Morgan Payments合作，在纽约市可容纳6000人的无线电城音乐厅举办一场盛大的现场节目。目前只剩少量座位了，请务必尽快在acquired.fm/nyc预订。那晚的嘉宾阵容将非常特别，我们已经迫不及待想在那里见到你们了。

David: And speaking of, just like how we say every company has a story, every company story is powered by payments, and J.P. Morgan payments is a part of so many of their journeys from seed to IPO and beyond.

David：顺便说一句，就像我们常说的，每家公司都有它的故事，而每个公司故事的背后都有支付系统的支撑，J.P. Morgan Payments正是许多公司从种子轮到IPO甚至更远阶段的重要伙伴。

Ben: So with that, this show is not investment advice, David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Onto our conversation with Steve Ballmer.

Ben：因此，我们要提醒大家，本节目不构成投资建议。David和我可能持有节目中提到的部分公司的股份。节目的目的是提供信息和娱乐内容。接下来，请收听我们与Steve Ballmer的对话。

Well, Steve, first of all, I noticed you prepared some printed materials here for us. Listeners should know, we didn’t ask for this in any way, but at 10:00 PM last night, you sent us a PowerPoint deck and said, I made you some slides. Sorry it got here so late. David and I are looking at each other like we didn’t ask you to prepare for this. Thank you for the materials.

Steve，首先我注意到你为我们准备了一些打印材料。听众朋友们要知道，这完全不是我们要求的。但昨晚10点你发给我们一份PPT，说你做了一些幻灯片，抱歉发晚了。David和我互相看了一眼，心想我们根本没请你准备这些。谢谢你带来的材料。

Steve: Oh, it’s just some stuff that I’ve used with thoughts about how businesses work. I think of this as a time to reflect on things I’ve learned primarily at Microsoft, but also the Clippers about business. I figured, eh, I’ll send them to you. And they’re PowerPoint.

Steve：哦，这只是一些我用来整理关于企业运作思考的材料。我觉得这次对话是一个反思我在微软，当然还有快船队时期所学商业经验的机会。我想，嗯，不如发给你们一份吧。而且是PowerPoint格式的。

Ben: You mixed a few different templates.

Ben：你混用了好几个不同的模板啊。

Steve: Promotional opportunity.

Steve：宣传的好机会嘛。

David: Yeah, yeah.

David：哈哈，没错。

Ben: Always a cheerleader.

Ben：永远都是个啦啦队长。

David: Always.

David：永远如此。

Steve: There you go.

Steve：没错，说得对。

David: I think the word cheerleader is actually in the PowerPoint deck.

David：我记得“啦啦队长”这个词好像真的出现在你的PPT里了。

Ben: Yes, great.

Ben：对，太棒了。

David: Well, Steve, speaking of reflecting, we sit here today, Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world, almost \$3.5 trillion in market cap. I think everybody would agree it’s an enterprise company, and that’s largely thanks to you.

David：说到反思，我们现在坐在这里，微软如今是全球市值最高的公司，市值接近3.5万亿美元。我想大家都会认同它是一家企业级公司，而这在很大程度上要归功于你。

Ben: It’s reasonable to call you the founder of Microsoft’s enterprise business. That is not a narrative that is often discussed. We wanted to ask you, how do you feel about the fact that it basically defines the business today?

Ben：称你是微软企业业务的奠基人，这个说法很有道理。这个叙述并不常见，我们想问问你，对今天微软基本上就是一家企业型公司这一事实，你的感受如何？

Steve: Interesting. Very kind. Fathering something, I feel good about that. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Of course, there are many fathers to the enterprise business at Microsoft, and I feel both good and bad about it.

Steve：有意思，也很客气。能被称为某个事物的“父亲”，我当然感到荣幸。我认为这确实有一定道理。当然，微软的企业业务有很多“父亲”，我对此既感到自豪，也有些遗憾。

The truth is, Microsoft started out as a consumer company. We built a very important consumer business. That success translated into the opening to go build an enterprise business. One of my regrets is we lost the consumer muscle along the way. I think the ability to be ultra, ultra.

事实上，微软最初是一家面向消费者的公司。我们建立了一个非常重要的消费类业务。正是那份成功为我们打开了进军企业市场的大门。我的一个遗憾是，我们在这个过程中逐渐失去了消费者领域的能力。我认为拥有极强、极强的——

We’re a great company. Microsoft’s a great company. But to have both of those muscles totally firing, if I’d been able to sustain that consumer muscle, and I had some ideas about why that didn’t happen, but the enterprise muscle, muy macho. It got very big and very strong. So I’m very proud of that.

我们是一家伟大的公司，微软是一家伟大的公司。但如果我们能同时保持这两方面的“肌肉”都强劲运作，如果我能让消费者业务持续强劲，我对为何没能做到这一点也有些想法。不过企业业务的“肌肉”是真的强壮，muy macho——非常有力，发展得又大又强。所以我对这点感到非常自豪。

It’s also funny when you say consumer and enterprise. What does it mean really to say enterprise? Sometimes it can sound just like backend stuff. The truth of the matter is, Microsoft Office/M365, whatever exactly it’s called today, is super important. It was the foundation for having permission to be in the enterprise, and yet it’s a product that sits right there in front of users.

说到“消费者”和“企业”，这两个词其实挺有意思的。说“企业”，到底是什么意思？有时候听起来就像是后台系统之类的东西。但事实是，Microsoft Office/M365——现在具体叫什么已经不重要了——它极其重要。它是我们获得进入企业市场“通行证”的基础，但它又是直接面向用户的产品。

The question is, do you think about users or consumer, and do you think about enterprise or do you think about IT? And then there are developers that span both. That’s my mental model. You have products that appeal to consumers that IT can handle, and a platform that lets developers build around those and based around those, whether they’re building for users, users and IT, or in some instances just for IT people, because there are a lot of tools that are just for IT people.

关键是，你是在思考“用户”还是“消费者”？你说“企业”，那你是在想“企业”还是“IT”？而且还有开发者，他们横跨这两者。这是我的思维模型：你会有一些吸引消费者的产品，IT部门也能管理它们；你还有一个平台，让开发者围绕这些产品进行构建——无论他们是为最终用户、用户与IT共同服务，还是仅仅为IT人员而构建，因为确实有很多工具是专门给IT人员用的。

Ben: Well, to contextualize all this, we want to go back almost all the way to the beginning, right around the time you joined Microsoft, and talk about Microsoft’s relationship with IBM.

Ben：为了让大家更好地理解这一切，我们想几乎回到最初的时刻，也就是你刚加入微软的时候，来聊聊微软与IBM的关系。

Before the IBM PC and before DOS, can you catch listeners up who weren’t around at that time, what was IBM in that era?

在IBM PC和DOS诞生之前，那些没有经历过那个时代的听众可能不了解，IBM当时是什么样的存在？

David: I think you called it to us, and when we were talking to you for research, the sun, the moon, and the stars.

David：我记得你在我们做研究时跟我们说过，IBM在那个时代就像是“太阳、月亮和星星”一样的存在。

Steve: Yeah, I did, I think. Well, it’s 1980 when I got here. The company started obviously in 1975. There were IBM computers and a couple of others. But literally, people would say there’s IBM and the bunch. The bunch was Burroughs’ UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell. But they were just the bunch.

Steve：对，我想我说过这些。我是在1980年加入微软的，公司当然是在1975年创立的。那时候有IBM电脑，也有其他一些公司。但人们常说，“有IBM，还有‘一帮’其他厂商。”那“一帮”是指Burroughs、UNIVAC、NCR、Control Data和Honeywell。但他们真的就是“一帮而已”。

IBM did the mainframe, and it did the software, and it did the service. It did everything in computing. Everything. Everything. Then you had this little upstart try again called Digital Equipment, very important in our story because Dave Cutler, who was the father of Windows NT, came from Digital Equipment. They were fighting, they were scrappy, they were mini computers, so smaller than a room, but definitely bigger than a PC, if you will.

IBM做大型机，也做软件，也做服务。他们在计算领域无所不包。全部，全部都做。然后你有一个叫Digital Equipment的小型挑战者，他们在我们的故事中非常重要，因为Windows NT之父Dave Cutler就来自那家公司。他们非常有战斗力，很有拼劲，做的是“迷你电脑”——比一个房间小，但绝对比个人电脑大得多。

All the initial Microsoft software was developed actually on DEC computers. Digital Equipment equals DEC, and DEC had a nice business, but it was a lot smaller than IBM. If IBM breathed, that was the direction the computer industry would go.

微软最初所有的软件其实都是在DEC（Digital Equipment）电脑上开发的。DEC做得不错，但比IBM小很多。如果IBM“呼吸”一下，那就是整个计算机行业的风向。

IBM was the subject of an antitrust lawsuit, shockingly in 1969, that didn’t actually get settled (I think) to shortly after I got here in the term of Reagan. So 11 years they’d been living because they were that big and bad and mighty.

IBM在1969年就因反垄断被起诉，这点其实令人震惊。这个案子一直拖到我加入微软之后、也就是里根政府时期才解决。所以IBM被监管盯了整整11年，原因很简单：他们太大、太强、太强势。

Ben: And what was the result of that antitrust action? What did they have to do?

Ben：那场反垄断案最后结果如何？IBM被要求做了什么？

Steve: I don’t remember. It may be when they had to unbundle. In fact, I think it was when they had to unbundle the operating system from the mainframe hardware, so people could build IBM-compatible mainframes.

Steve：我不太记得了。我猜可能是他们被迫进行业务拆分。事实上，我想那就是他们必须将操作系统和主机硬件解耦的那个时候，这样其他公司就可以构建IBM兼容的大型机。

Then one day, shortly after I got here, some guys from IBM call and they say, hey, can we come see you? You’re going to have to sign an agreement that says you can use nothing we tell you, anything you tell us we can use.

然后有一天，就在我刚加入微软不久，IBM的人打电话来说，“嘿，我们能来见你们吗？”但你们得先签个协议：我们告诉你们的东西你们一个都不能用，你们告诉我们的东西我们全都可以用。

These guys showed up, and they told us after we signed their agreement that they wanted to build a PC. They were hoping to get the operating system and some of our language software for it.

这些人来了，我们签完协议之后，他们才告诉我们他们想造一台个人电脑。他们希望能拿到操作系统，以及我们的一些语言软件。

David: And they were coming to you for the language software?

David：他们是来找你们要语言软件的？

Steve: No, they came to us for the operating system. Now why, you’d say. We weren’t in the operating system business. We had a card called the CP/M SoftCard or the SoftCard for the Apple II. It was a card that plugged into an Apple II, that ran CP/M, not our operating system.

Steve：不是，他们来找我们要的是操作系统。你可能会问：为什么找我们？我们当时根本不做操作系统。我们有一个产品叫CP/M SoftCard，或简称SoftCard，是为Apple II电脑设计的插卡，用来运行CP/M系统——不是我们自己的操作系统。

David: Gary Kildall.

David：Gary Kildall（CP/M的创始人）。

Steve: Gary Kildall, Digital Research was the name of the company, but we had licensed it to put on this card that plugged in the Apple II. Somehow, IBM thought they could license CP/M. Even though it wasn’t our product, they thought they could license it from us.

Steve：Gary Kildall，他的公司叫Digital Research，但我们从他们那里获得了授权，把他们的CP/M系统装在插入Apple II的扩展卡上。不知怎么地，IBM以为他们可以从我们这里获得CP/M的授权。虽然那根本不是我们的产品，但他们却认为可以找我们授权。

We said, no, no, no, but you can license our language software. But there’re these guys down in Pacific Grove, California. Bill called Gary Kildall and said, there are some guys, they want to talk to you, they’re important. Gary went down there and didn’t sign the non-disclosure agreement. In the meantime, there was a company here in Seattle called Seattle Computer Products that had a little CP/M clone.

我们说，不行不行，但你们可以授权我们的语言软件。不过加州Pacific Grove那边有家公司。Bill给Gary Kildall打电话，说有些人想找你谈谈，很重要。Gary去了，但没有签保密协议。与此同时，西雅图这边有一家叫Seattle Computer Products的公司，他们做了一个CP/M的克隆版。

Ben: So the licensing of Microsoft DOS, which didn’t even exist when IBM approached you about licensing some things, is the single greatest business deal in history. The licensing of that software—

Ben：所以说，微软DOS的授权——IBM来找你们谈授权时这个系统甚至还不存在——这是商业史上最伟大的交易之一。这个软件授权——

David: We made that contention on our episodes.

David：我们在节目中就提出过这个观点。

Ben: Well, I just think you look \$3.5 trillion later at Microsoft’s market cap. This kickstarted it all.

Ben：你看看现在微软市值3.5万亿美元，一切都从这儿开始。

Steve: It was pretty good. Literally good. There was a company that happened to be here in town, Paul Allen and I went down there, and we met with the founder who later came to work in Microsoft, a guy named Tim Patterson. I think we paid \$45,000 or \$49,000 for this operating system, because we told IBM no, no. We can take care of it.

Steve：这事真的很不错。非常不错。那家公司就在我们本地，Paul Allen和我去了那里，见到了创始人Tim Patterson，后来他加入了微软。我记得我们当时为这个操作系统支付了大约45,000或49,000美元，因为我们跟IBM说，别担心，我们来搞定。

There was a famous meeting amongst me, Paul, Bill, and this guy Kazuhiko Nishi, who ran our affiliate in Japan, where we were talking about this. There was a lot of, let’s just say, four letter words thrown around. Screw them. Screw them is five letters, but you get the drift. Screw them. Let’s just go get this operating system. Screw them. We can do this. Let’s go. That was the theme.

我们当时开了一个很有名的会议，参加的人有我、Paul、Bill，还有Kazuhiko Nishi——他是我们在日本的合伙人。我们在会上讨论这事，过程中有很多，嗯，四个字母的粗话。比如“Screw them”（去他们的）。虽然“Screw”是五个字母，但你懂意思。就是那种态度——不管他们，咱们就去拿下这个操作系统。我们可以搞定这个。出发吧！这就是当时的主旋律。

David: Kazu was a cowboy.

David：Kazu简直就是个牛仔。

Steve: He was, yeah. Nishi, absolutely a cowboy. So we sold it to him, half of what we paid for it. We said, we can do this 10–20 times. Twenty times \$21,000, \$400,000 against \$50,000 we paid for it. Pretty good deal. It was a little better than that as you said.

Steve：对，他确实是。Nishi绝对是个牛仔。所以我们第一次卖的时候，卖给IBM的是我们花的一半——我们对自己说，这种事可以做10到20次。20次21,000美元就是42万美元，对比我们投入的5万，不错的买卖。就像你说的，后来结果还更好。

David: Talk us through the structure and how you guys thought about this. Because you did not make a lot of money directly from this deal.

David：给我们讲讲这笔交易的结构和你们当时是怎么思考的。因为你们并没有从这笔交易本身直接赚很多钱。

Steve: Nope, we did not. Remember, the key thing was we didn’t charge for the operating system on an ongoing basis. We charged for it one time. If you got a new version, we charged another time. We did the same thing for BASIC and everything else, because at the time you could think we were like a substitute for an R\&D department, which means we were fixed price. It was only (I don’t know) four or five years later that we actually switched to licensing per unit as opposed to just fixed fee—here it is, pay us once, and we’re done.

Steve：没错，我们确实没有。要记住，关键在于我们当时不是按持续使用来收费的。我们是一次性收费。如果你要一个新版本，再付一次钱。我们对BASIC等其他产品也是这样做的，因为那时候你可以把我们看作是研发部门的“外包”，也就是说是固定价格。直到大概四五年后，我们才真正转向按每台机器授权收费，而不是一次付清——“这是软件，付一次钱就结束”。

David: But the ultimate thing that you guys negotiated was a non-exclusive deal. You could sell this operating system and your language interpreters, but also mainly the operating system to other manufacturers. This is IBM we’re talking about here. How on earth did you—

David：但你们最终谈成的关键在于这是一个非独家的协议。你们可以把这个操作系统和你们的语言解释器卖给其他制造商，尤其是操作系统。这可是IBM啊，你们怎么会——

Steve: But IBM wanted this. IBM were experimenting with a different approach. They had said, look. Instead of us building everything all custom, we want to use some industry standard parts, components because that’ll let us be more agile, et cetera.

Steve：但这是IBM自己想要的。他们当时正在尝试一种不同的做法。他们说，“我们不想再什么都定制开发，我们想使用一些行业标准的零部件和组件，这样可以让我们更灵活，等等。”

They didn’t come in, loath to any of this. They knew that was our business. They know that was Digital Research’s business. They wanted to use an Intel part versus their own proprietary part. They didn’t ask Intel to do them a custom part either.

他们一开始就没反对这一切。他们知道这正是我们的业务，也是Digital Research的业务。他们决定使用Intel的处理器，而不是他们自家专有的处理器。他们也没让Intel为他们定制芯片。

The notion was, we’ll move fast. We’ll get away from the IBM bureaucracy by taking this approach. I wouldn’t say that was the hardest convincing, if you will in the story.

他们的想法是：我们要加快速度。用这种方式可以摆脱IBM内部官僚主义的束缚。所以我不会说这部分是整个故事中最难说服他们的部分。

Ben: But what ended up happening after all these years—I imagine it only took a few years to see it play out—was IBM sold a ton of IBM PCs, and DOS was the operation system, and then everybody else adopted DOS because all the application makers, all the software vendors were targeting DOS as the platform. So Microsoft accrued a huge amount of benefit.

Ben：但最终的结果是——我想这结果很快就显现了——IBM卖出了大量的IBM PC，操作系统是DOS，然后所有人都开始采用DOS，因为所有应用开发者和软件厂商都将DOS作为目标平台。于是微软获得了巨大的利益。

Steve: You became the point of integration.

Steve：你就变成了整个生态的整合点。

Ben: Yeah, and the old world IBM would’ve accrued that platform benefit. Did they see the—

Ben：是啊，而在旧时代，这种平台收益本来会被IBM自己拿走。他们有没有意识到——

Steve: Well they were selling a lot of computers and making profit also. They would’ve been making more profit than we were at the time just the way pricing worked.

Steve：他们确实卖了很多电脑，也赚了钱。按照当时的定价方式，他们的利润一度比我们高。

There was a little twisty in here though I should throw at you if you’re curious. These things had something called the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), which was the lowest, lowest layer firmware, first level software built into the hardware. IBM had its own BIOS, and some applications became BIOS-dependent.

但里面还有一个小转折，如果你们感兴趣的话我可以说说。那时候的PC都有一个叫BIOS（基本输入输出系统）的东西，它是嵌入硬件中的最低层固件，也就是第一层软件。IBM有自己的BIOS，而一些应用开始依赖这个BIOS。

Then the question is, who was going to do an IBM-compatible BIOS? We weren’t going to get into that game. We didn’t want to have that intellectual property, other arguments, but there were people then, that was important.

于是问题来了，谁去做一个IBM兼容的BIOS？我们可不想碰这个。我们不想涉及那些知识产权问题，或其他法律纠纷。但当时确实有人做了，这一点非常关键。

David: Compaq ultimately became the big company.

David：最后Compaq成了这个领域的大公司。

Steve: Compaq became the big company. I don’t remember whether they wrote their own IBM-compatible BIOS, but they were the first one to be IBM-compatible. There were plenty of people who ran MS-DOS who were actually not IBM-compatible because they didn’t do a compatible BIOS.

Steve：Compaq确实做大了。我不记得他们是不是自己写了IBM兼容的BIOS，但他们是第一个做到IBM兼容的公司。其实当时有很多人在运行MS-DOS，但他们的机器并不兼容IBM，因为他们没有做出兼容的BIOS。

Ben: I see. IBM thought, oh we’ve got some protection from Microsoft, disintermediating us from all the developers and all the potential customers, because targeting our BIOS is going to be important and unreplicable.

Ben：我明白了。IBM当时的想法可能是：我们从微软那里得到了某种保护，不会被微软从开发者和潜在客户之间“切断”，因为大家要针对我们的BIOS做开发，而这将是很难复制的壁垒。

Steve: The one thing you have to remember is we live in the modern world now. When you say all the developers, that wasn’t a long list. Remember, there was no software industry to speak of when we got started.

Steve：有一件事你得记住：我们现在活在现代世界里。你说“所有开发者”，但那时候这个名单并不长。要记住，我们刚起步时，根本称不上有什么“软件行业”。

David: This is the creation of the software industry.

David：这就是软件行业的起点。

Steve: There were a couple of software companies that made packages for IBM mainframes, but almost everything was custom. Really, I would say we—few other companies, but I would say we—defined what a modern software business looked like. The notion that there could be lots of developers and yeah, there were some, but it’s not like we think today. There were developers doing lots of standard applications. No. There was no licensing model, no business model. Nothing. VisiCalc was around.

Steve：那时候确实有一些软件公司在为IBM大型机做软件包，但几乎所有东西都是定制开发的。说实话，我觉得我们——当然还有其他几家公司——但主要是我们，定义了现代软件商业的样子。那种“有很多开发者”的概念，确实有一些，但远不像今天这样。有很多开发者在做标准化应用？不，那时候没有授权模式，没有商业模式，什么都没有。只有像VisiCalc那样的孤例。

Ben: So it would’ve been counterintuitive or required too many mental hops to think, we’re IBM. Wait, are we giving away the future by allowing someone to distribute a wide operating system that ends up being the target that everyone standardizes on? Which eventually created all of modern Microsoft.

Ben：所以对于当时的IBM来说，若要意识到——等等，我们是不是正在把未来拱手让人？因为我们允许别人分发一个通用的操作系统，最后大家都以它为标准平台——这简直太反直觉了，脑子得转好几个弯才行。但这个决定最终造就了整个现代微软。

Steve: Exactly. You can’t blame them because there was nothing to build off of, but yeah. One of the things my little PowerPoint here says is luck is important in the creation of great companies. It is. A lot of people always say we’re masters of the universe. We figure everything out. We never have any luck. It’s because we’re so talented. Sure, they’re talented people and hardworking people. But most people have a little luck in their story, and this was our big luck.

Steve：完全正确。你不能怪IBM，因为当时根本没有什么先例可循。但正如我PPT里写的，伟大公司的诞生，运气很重要。这是真的。很多人总喜欢说自己是“宇宙主宰者”，一切尽在掌握，全靠聪明才智，从不靠运气。是的，有些人确实聪明又勤奋，但说实话，大多数成功故事里都有一点运气，而这就是我们的巨大幸运。

David: Clearly, but when you were negotiating this, signing it, and then those first couple of years before the clone market really took off, did you think that this could happen?

David：显然如此。但在你们谈判、签约，直到克隆市场真正爆发之前的那几年，你有没有预想到这种局面会发生？

Steve: No. I can’t remember what year it would’ve been, but Andy Grove who was running Intel at the time said, yeah, pretty soon we’ll be selling 100 million PCs a year. I don’t know. Sometime in the 80s. I think it might have even been in the 90s. Bill and I laughed and said, ah, that’s not going to happen.

Steve：没有。我记不得是哪一年了，但Intel当时的CEO Andy Grove说，“很快我们每年就能卖出一亿台PC。”也许是80年代的某个时候，甚至可能是90年代。Bill和我听了都笑了，说，这怎么可能。

We invested big time and if it did happen, we said that’s great, we’re not going to underinvest. But we thought, ah, he’s crazy. This market will never grow like that. I would say we classically underforecast, that was our tendency.

当然我们还是投入了很多，因为我们觉得万一他说对了，那太棒了，我们绝不能投资不足。但我们心里觉得，他疯了，这个市场根本不会长成那样。我得说，我们的风格是典型的“保守预测”，这就是我们的倾向。

Ben: So the deal gets signed with IBM, you end up shipping DOS, it goes on the IBM PC, it’s selling like gangbusters. When did you start to realize, whoa, what we have here is actually leverage over the ecosystem. We actually are becoming the important layer that ties this whole computing world together with the operating system?

Ben：所以协议签了，DOS也开始出货，搭载在IBM PC上，销售火爆。你们是什么时候开始意识到，“哇，我们手里掌握的，其实是整个生态系统的杠杆”？我们实际上正在成为连接整个计算世界的关键层——就是操作系统？

David: The personal computing layer.

David：个人计算层。

Steve: Oh, I think by the mid- to late-80s. You make it sound very strong. No, we didn’t feel very strong. There was IBM man. IBM was still the sun, the moon, and the stars. That didn’t change.

Steve：哦，我觉得大概是在80年代中后期吧。你说得好像我们当时已经很有掌控力，其实并没有。还有IBM在啊。IBM仍然是“太阳、月亮和星星”，这一点从没变过。

I would say we didn’t drop that theory well. Well, into the 2000s. Into the 2000s, Lotus Notes was coming for us, and that was mid-90s and and beyond. But maybe you could say late, but we weren’t an enterprise company. If you looked at the enterprise, the enterprise was still…

我得说，我们对那个“IBM主导论”的想法一直没有真正放下，直到2000年代。进入2000年代，Lotus Notes开始挑战我们，那其实是90年代中期以后了。你或许可以说比较晚了，但我们还不能算是企业级公司。如果你当时看看整个企业市场，它仍然是……

David: IBM.

David：IBM主导。

Steve: IBM. We used to say we had to hang on to IBM, that if we ever let go they might trample us. We called them the bear.

Steve：IBM。我们常说，得紧紧抱住IBM，如果一松手，它可能会把我们踩扁。我们称他们为“那头熊”。

David: It’s called this riding the bear, yeah.

David：这就叫“骑熊”，对吧。

Steve: Ride the bear. You had to stay on. Then of course graphical user interface. It’s coming out of Xerox Park at the time, Apple’s doing their thing, and that’s another disruption, could blow everything up. I would say no sense of confidence about controlling the ecosystem well into the 90s before I think any of that, or at least for me.

Steve：对，“骑熊”，你必须牢牢骑住它。然后，图形用户界面（GUI）出现了，是从施乐PARC实验室出来的，Apple也在搞自己的GUI，那是另一种颠覆，可能会把一切都打乱。在我看来，直到90年代之前，我都没有那种“我们正在主导整个生态”的信心，至少我是这样。

Ben: When did you start to feel like we’re getting out from under the thumb of IBM? And maybe walk us through a little bit the OS/2-Windows world.

Ben：你什么时候开始感觉到，我们正在摆脱IBM的“压制”？也能不能跟我们讲讲OS/2与Windows之间的那段历史？

Steve: We’ve been staying with IBM, they decided they wanted to build something that was sort of their operating system and sort of not. This is 1982–1983. We and they would collectively build part of it. We would be able to license it to others. They would build a value add layer that was a database and a 3270 emulator. Crazy, just saying now.

Steve：我们当时还在跟IBM合作，他们决定要做一个既是他们操作系统又不是的东西。那是1982到1983年。我们和他们共同开发一部分内容，我们可以授权这套系统给别人使用，而他们会做一个所谓的“增值层”，包括数据库和3270终端模拟器。现在回头看，真是疯狂。

We were going to work on the operating system and what was called Presentation Manager, called that the graphical user interface, and they were going to have rights equivalent to ownership in the code we wrote.

我们负责操作系统部分，还有叫做Presentation Manager的东西，也就是图形用户界面部分。而他们将拥有我们所写代码的类似“所有权”的权利。

Ben: This sounds so convoluted.

Ben：听起来太复杂了。

Steve: It was so convoluted. Man, there was a time when I made 16 trips to the East Coast in 16 weeks, most of them to South Florida, a couple of them to New York, leave on the red-eye, the Delta DASH flight at around 11:00 PM, get into Atlanta around 5:00 AM, get the flight to West Palm Beach at about 7:00 AM, get in and be able to be at a meeting at 9:00 AM at IBM, and then work all day, catch the 7:00 PM flight home, be here about 10:30 PM or 11:00 PM. Twenty-four hours, down and back.

Steve：真的非常复杂。有段时间我连续16周飞了16次东海岸，大多数去的是佛罗里达南部，有几次是纽约。晚上11点左右搭乘Delta的夜航，凌晨5点到亚特兰大，再赶7点的班机到西棕榈滩，9点准时参加IBM的会议，然后整天开会，晚上7点搭机回程，晚上10点半或11点到家。来回就是24小时。

If you’re building something together, remember there’s no real email at the time. We were literally shipping disks back and forth. And then they decided they were going to do the Presentation Manager piece in England. There were also then a lot of flights to England. And then Texas is where the database and communication \[...].

那时候一起开发产品，还没有真正意义上的电子邮件。我们真的就是互相邮寄软盘。他们后来决定在英国开发Presentation Manager这部分，所以我又得频繁飞英国。而数据库和通信那部分是在德州……

David: This sounds so IBM.

David：这听起来太IBM了。

Ben: This sounds like Boeing.

Ben：这听起来像波音的风格。

Steve: It was the joint development agreement. It was the price of staying involved with IBM, and it was convoluted. For speed of action, we kept going on Windows, which we had started.

Steve：那是一个联合开发协议。那是我们继续和IBM合作所要付出的代价，确实很复杂。为了动作更快，我们还是继续推进了我们已经开始的Windows项目。

David: For listeners, everything we’re talking about is OS/2, the operating system that basically never comes to.

David：给听众解释一下，我们现在谈的全是OS/2，一个最终基本上没落地的操作系统。

Steve: OS/2 and there was OS/2 Extended Edition or something, which it had their edition.

Steve：对，OS/2，还有一个什么“扩展版”，OS/2 Extended Edition之类的，那是IBM自己的版本。

David: And Windows was your Plan B. It was like your side.

David：而Windows是你们的备选方案，相当于是你们自己这边的项目。

Steve: No, Windows was our plan. They wanted to do this new operating system. We convinced them, you got to have a graphical user interface. We tried to sell them Windows and they were resisting.

Steve：不，Windows就是我们的主计划。他们想做一个全新的操作系统，我们说服他们必须有图形用户界面。我们试图把Windows卖给他们，但他们抵触。

Ben: Okay, so it almost seems like you’re humoring IBM at this point with yeah, let’s do OS/2 together. We really think the future’s Windows.

Ben：所以听起来，你们当时对IBM就像是在敷衍：“好啊好啊，我们一起搞OS/2”，但你们其实真心认为未来属于Windows。

Steve: Humor.

Steve：敷衍，没错。

Ben: It’s more than lip service.

Ben：可这也不是光说说而已吧？

Steve: My job was managing (by then) system software. I’d shipped when I’d been the development manager for Windows 1.0.

Steve：那时我负责管理系统软件。我曾经担任Windows 1.0的开发经理，把它成功发布出来了。

David: Oh, the great videos of you from the Windows 1.0 launch are so good.

David：哦，当年你在Windows 1.0发布会上的视频太经典了。

Steve: But no, that’s the sales side. I actually managed the engineers because the guy who was doing it wasn’t being successful, and we had to ship the thing. That’s when I learned some about engineering management from the engineers, basically, had to teach me to be effective.

Steve：但那些是销售方面的镜头。实际上我是在管理工程师，因为原本负责的人搞不定，而我们又必须把它做出来。那时我从工程师那儿学会了一些工程管理的知识，说白了，是他们教我怎么才能做得有效。

We’re trying to keep with OS/2, Bill’s very frustrated with IBM. I’m frustrated, but I know my job is to ride the bear. Bill’s pushing Windows hard, but we still suspected OS/2 could be the winner because it came from IBM. But we couldn’t just stop for three or four years. We couldn’t make the mistake we made in the thing that became Vista.

我们那时一边维持着对OS/2的投入，Bill对IBM已经非常失望。我也很沮丧，但我知道我的职责是“骑住那头熊”。Bill在大力推进Windows，但我们仍然怀疑OS/2可能会赢，因为它出自IBM。但我们不能停三四年什么都不做。我们不能重蹈后来Vista那样的错误。

We kept going with Windows, we kept going with OS/2, and then May 1990, they come along and shoot us. I was out running with my wife. I stopped.

我们继续推进Windows，也继续做OS/2。然后在1990年5月，IBM过来“一枪打死了我们”。那天我正和我妻子跑步，我一下就停住了。

David: Wait, IBM shot you?

David：等等，IBM“开枪”了？

Steve: Yeah, they divorced us. They threw us out.

Steve：是的，他们和我们“离婚”了。他们把我们踢出局了。

David: I thought the story was Windows was gathering strength, and you all thought maybe we can step out from the little brother.

David：我原以为的故事是，Windows那时正逐渐强大，你们也开始觉得，也许我们可以不再当“小兄弟”了。

Steve: No.

Steve：不是那样的。

David: They came after you?

David：是他们主动对你们下手的？

Steve: They had a new leader by then, a guy named Jim Cannavino. He was getting frustrated with us because we were still selling Windows. We were still promoting Windows.

Steve：那时他们已经换了领导人，是个叫Jim Cannavino的人。他对我们越来越不满，因为我们仍然在销售Windows，仍然在推广Windows。

This was our first antitrust problem. I don’t know if you guys know this. The FTC at the time thought we and IBM were working to divide the market because we had done some positioning—what’s Windows good for, what’s OS/2 good for. We and IBM had done that, and then they said, no, you guys are colluding. That’s when we first got attention from antitrust authority.

这也是我们第一次遇到反垄断问题。我不知道你们知不知道，当时美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）认为我们和IBM在试图瓜分市场，因为我们当时做了一些定位——Windows适合干什么，OS/2适合干什么。这是我们和IBM一起制定的市场策略，结果他们说，不行，你们这是串通。那就是我们第一次受到反垄断监管部门的关注。

Ben: This is even before the per processor licensing issue.

Ben：这比后来“按处理器授权”的那个反垄断案还早吧。

Steve: Yeah. That came later. That came with the DOJ. This was an FTC case and they started it in (I think) 1990, maybe 1989, as we were getting our divorce. My wife and I were remodeling our house. We were living in a condo. We stopped on a run, used a restroom or something. I pick up the Wall Street Journal and I read that IBM’s divorcing us.

Steve：对，那是后来的事，和司法部（DOJ）有关。而这个是FTC的案子，我记得是1990年，也可能是1989年，就在我们“分手”的时候。我和我太太那时在装修房子，暂时住在一间公寓里。有天我们外出跑步，途中停下来上洗手间，我随手拿起一份《华尔街日报》，一看——IBM要和我们“离婚”了。

David: All right. Listeners, now is a great time to thank our friends at J.P. Morgan Payments. You almost certainly have seen Steve’s famous 1999 ‘developers, developers, developers’ chant, which we will talk about with him later in the episode. The ethos, though, of focusing on developers was valid when he said it in 1999 and still holds true today.

David：好了，各位听众，现在是个感谢我们朋友J.P. Morgan Payments的好时机。你们很可能都看过Steve在1999年那段著名的“开发者、开发者、开发者”呐喊，我们稍后也会在节目中聊到这件事。事实上，他当年强调“以开发者为中心”的理念在今天依然非常适用。

Ben: Like Steve, J.P. Morgan Payments recognizes that supporting developers is a long-term investment. We’ve talked about the \$17 billion that J.P. Morgan invests in technology and R\&D, and for payments. That means dedicated teams focused on making developers’ lives easier.

Ben：就像Steve一样，J.P. Morgan Payments也明白，支持开发者是一项长期投资。他们每年在技术和研发上投入170亿美元，其中支付相关部分也包括在内。这代表他们有专门的团队致力于让开发者的工作变得更轻松。

Ben: Last year, we discussed J.P. Morgan payments developer portal. At a high level, their platform essentially empowers developers to operate securely while abstracting away the complexities of global payments.

Ben：去年我们曾介绍过J.P. Morgan Payments的开发者门户。从整体上看，他们的平台可以让开发者在确保安全的同时，免去应对全球支付复杂性的麻烦。

If you look at the suite of tools available on that platform, the takeaway is J.P. Morgan has continued to roll out more and more technical solutions to effectively accept, manage, and send payments on a global scale. Their APIs come with all the technical documentation you’d expect with detailed testing guides and explaining payments concepts to build your application as you scale your business.

如果你看看他们平台上提供的工具套件，你会发现J.P. Morgan一直在不断推出各种技术解决方案，帮助开发者在全球范围内高效地接收、管理和发送支付。他们的API配有完善的技术文档、详细的测试指南和支付概念解释，让你在扩展业务时构建应用更轻松。

David: Let’s say you work at (say) an e-commerce company, for example. You need to restock your products, but your vendor is based in another country. Before any transaction happens, you’d want to use the validation services API to verify account ownership, and ensure that your payment is directed to the correct vendor. Then you’ve got to pay them in their local currency and you don’t have time to evaluate multiple solutions and stitch together various APIs. So J.P. Morgan’s single global payments API can help you take care of all that, including multiple payment rails and methods easily.

David：举个例子，假设你在一家电商公司工作，你需要补货，但供应商在另一个国家。在交易发生之前，你可能会先使用验证服务API确认账户归属，确保付款发往正确的供应商账户。接着，你需要用对方的本地货币付款，而你又没时间评估各种方案、整合多个API。这时，J.P. Morgan的全球支付单一API就能帮你解决这些问题，轻松支持多种支付轨道和方式。

Ben: And that’s just one use case. Developers across industries traditionally had to choose between the innovation and flexibility of a FinTech, and the security and scale of a global bank. J.P. Morgan Payments is on a mission to eliminate that choice and offer you both.

Ben：而这只是其中一个应用场景。过去，不同行业的开发者通常需要在金融科技的创新与灵活性，和全球银行的安全性与规模之间做出选择。J.P. Morgan Payments的使命就是消除这种二选一的困境，同时为你提供两者。

If you’re a developer working within a FinTech or looking to embed payments within your software, head on over to jpmorgan.com/acquired to learn more about their ever-growing list of APIs.

如果你是一位在金融科技公司工作的开发者，或是想在自己的软件中嵌入支付功能，请访问 jpmorgan.com/acquired，了解他们不断扩展的API产品组合。

If any listeners remember the meetup that we did after our Chase Center show, we’re actually going to do it again. We’re planning another meetup the day after Radio City on the 16th. We will share more details soon in the Slack community, but wanted to give folks a heads up in case you were planning for travel, evening of July 16th. A great meetup with our friends at J.P. Morgan Payments.

如果有听众还记得我们在Chase Center演出后的那场线下聚会，我们这次又要再办一场。这次计划是在Radio City演出后的第二天，也就是7月16日。我们会很快在Slack社区中公布更多细节，但现在就先告诉大家一声，以便你们安排旅行计划。7月16日晚，与J.P. Morgan Payments的朋友们一起参加一次精彩的聚会。

Steve: I pick up the Wall Street Journal and they read that IBM’s divorcing us.

Steve：我拿起《华尔街日报》，上面写着IBM要和我们“离婚”。

Ben: What does that mean? Walking away from OS/2 collaboration?

Ben：这是什么意思？是说他们退出了与微软的OS/2合作吗？

Steve: Yes.

Steve：是的。

David: Basically they kick you out, kick Microsoft out, said we’re taking OS/2 in-house.

David：本质上就是把你们踢出局，微软被踢了出去，他们说要把OS/2完全内部化运营。

Steve: Exactly.

Steve：完全正确。

Ben: So you’re sitting there. Windows isn’t powerful Windows yet. Windows is this fledgling idea.

Ben：那时你坐在那里，Windows还不是后来那个强大的Windows，它只是一个初出茅庐的概念。

Steve: We still had something called the 640K barrier. You couldn’t speak to more than 640K of memory. We didn’t break the 640K barrier until (I think) Windows 3.1, which I want to say was 1991 or 1992.

Steve：我们那时还受限于所谓的“640K内存障碍”。你不能访问超过640K的内存。直到Windows 3.1发布，我记得是1991年或1992年，我们才突破这个障碍。

Ben: So you’re on this run, you see IBM is divorcing us. You don’t really have confidence in Windows yet. What are you feeling and what do you think the pass is possible?

Ben：所以你当时正跑着步，看到IBM要和你们分手，而你对Windows还没有真正的信心。你当时是什么感受？你觉得未来会是怎样？

Steve: Mr. Wizard. Whoa. Shoot. Oh my God. We were so, you could say energized if you like. Scared also works. It’s like, oh my God. Now we have to confront the bear.

Steve：天呐，简直像是“神奇先生”时刻。哇。完了。我的天哪。我们那时确实——你可以说我们充满干劲，也可以说吓坏了。就是那种“天啊，我们现在得直面那头熊了”的感觉。

David: You’re already a billion-dollar-business at this point. You end 1992 at \$2.8 billion in revenue.

David：不过你们当时已经是十亿美元级别的企业了。到1992年底，营收有28亿美元。

Steve: Now IBM, but still.

Steve：没错，但IBM还是在那里啊。

David: But you’re still a pipsqueak.

David：但你们在IBM面前还是个“小不点”。

Steve: We’re still pipsqueak to IBM. And remember, we have no enterprise presence. IBM has all dominant enterprise presence.

Steve：在IBM面前我们还是个小不点。别忘了，那时候我们在企业市场毫无存在感，而IBM在企业市场几乎是完全主导地位。

Ben: Who’s using Windows and how are you selling to them at this point?

Ben：那时是谁在使用Windows？你们又是怎么把它卖出去的？

Steve: Interesting. Single copies. Some hobbyists and end users. Somebody who says, hey, I really want to use a spreadsheet. And a lot of users in enterprises. It wasn’t going through IT. You’d have a user that would buy a PC on the expense account, probably for the department, buy a copy of Windows, buy a copy of Excel, at an Egghead Software—was a software retailer at the time—bring them in and use them.

Steve：挺有意思的，主要是单个用户在买。有一些技术爱好者和终端用户。比如某个人说，“我真的想用电子表格。”还有很多企业内部用户，但并不是通过IT部门来买的。通常是某个员工用部门经费买一台PC，再去Egghead Software——那时候一家软件零售商——买一份Windows，再买一份Excel，然后自己带回公司用。

Then IT started to get nervous about that. We knew most of the copies, not most, but many of the copies were winding up in businesses. What the hell? IBM’s going to stomp us like a bug.

然后IT部门开始对这种行为感到不安了。我们知道这些拷贝，大多数——也许不能说“多数”，但“很多”——最终都进了企业。我们心想：天啊，IBM会像踩虫子一样把我们碾碎。

David: Given an assumption that if IBM wants to stomp out this happening, it’s going to happen. If we want a future, we got to play with them.

David：换句话说，只要IBM想阻止这种情况，他们绝对能办到。如果我们想要有未来，就必须和他们合作。

Steve: Yeah. That’s why we were “riding the bear” the whole time because they’d stomp us out and they divorce us in 1990. Then we say, oh my God.

Steve：没错。这就是为什么我们一直说要“骑着那头熊”，因为他们随时可以把我们干掉。然后1990年，他们“和我们离婚”了，我们就说：“天啊。”

David: So at this point, your business, even though it’s a billion-plus scale, it’s selling to retailers to sell copies of software—DOS, Windows, languages, apps.

David：所以在这个阶段，尽管你们业务规模已超十亿美元，本质上还是通过零售渠道卖软件副本——比如DOS、Windows、语言工具、应用程序等。

Steve: Not DOS. DOS was always sold to…

Steve：不是DOS。DOS一直是卖给……

David: OEM?

David：OEM厂商？

Steve: Yeah. Not always, but so much the lion’s share, it’s worth saying it, was only sold because you needed a BIOS, remember? You needed a BIOS, so you had to have the hardware vendor build the BIOS into the machine basically.

Steve：对。不能说完全是，但绝大部分都是。说到底，要运行DOS你得有BIOS，对吧？你需要一个BIOS，所以基本上得由硬件厂商把BIOS烧进机器里。

David: So you’ve got that. The OEM business, which was already—

David：所以你们有OEM这块业务，那时候这块已经——

Steve: The OEM business was the biggest part of the business. Then we had this retail business, and there was no notion of enterprise licensing.

Steve：OEM业务是我们最大的业务。然后我们还有零售业务，但那时候根本没有所谓的企业授权（Enterprise Licensing）这个概念。

David: You’ve got no CIO relationships, no enterprise agreement.

David：你们当时也没有CIO的关系网，也没有企业协议。

Steve: We had a couple of CIO relationships. The Air Force was the first big Windows customer.

Steve：我们当时有几个CIO的关系。美国空军是第一个大规模采购Windows的客户。

Ben: Your first enterprise customer was government?

Ben：你们第一个企业级客户居然是政府？

Steve: Our first big Windows customer, at least as I remember it, was the US Air Force, and they were buying single copies of Windows. When you say government, there are really two governments in this country. There’s government and there’s the military. The military is a much more disciplined, advanced user of IT. They’re just better. They’re more professionally run than most parts of government. So yeah, it was the Air Force.

Steve：我印象中，我们第一个大的Windows客户就是美国空军，而且他们也是买单个版本的Windows。说到“政府”，其实在美国有两种“政府”：一个是文职政府，另一个是军方。军方在IT方面更有纪律，也更先进。他们就是更专业，运营得比大多数政府部门都好。所以没错，是空军。

David: You’ve got a little bit, but…

David：你们那时候在企业领域多少有点基础，但……

Steve: Yeah, we had one or two customers just to prove we could actually serve big customers.

Steve：是的，我们有一两个客户，主要是为了证明我们确实有能力服务大型客户。

David: As we understand it, you had this realization at this point. Once the divorce happens, well I’m going to go figure out how to do what IBM does. You personally.

David：据我们了解，你在那时候意识到一件事：IBM“离婚”之后，你亲自决定——我要去弄清楚IBM是怎么做企业业务的。

Ben: To put a finer point on it, the thing that we said on our episode, and I’m curious if it’s true or not, is this was not Bill’s passion area, and you raised your hand and said, I’ll go figure out enterprise sales.

Ben：更明确地说，我们在节目里提到一件事，我也很好奇是不是真的：这块业务并不是Bill特别感兴趣的领域，然后你举手说，“我来搞清楚怎么做企业销售”。

Steve: Oh yeah. That’s for sure true. Bill had passions a lot of places, but he’d say the apps group and what Windows could deliver to the apps quite appropriately, I’d say that’s where a lot of Bill’s brain cycles went.

Steve：哦，没错。这完全是真的。Bill有很多热情所在，但他比较关注应用组，还有Windows如何为这些应用提供支持。我觉得Bill的大脑资源很多都花在那上面了。

I had also hired Dave Cutler. Dave Cutler had been the architect of the VMS Operating System for Digital Equipment, we had DOS and Windows, and when we were talking to Cutler about coming here, he says, I don’t want to work any toy operating systems. I had to say to Dave, good thing, because we have a toy operating system.

我当时也招了Dave Cutler。他是Digital Equipment公司VMS操作系统的架构师。而我们那时只有DOS和Windows。当我们在跟Cutler谈加入微软的时候，他说：“我不想再搞玩具操作系统了。”我只能对他说：“那太好了，因为我们现在正是个玩具系统。”

But Dave is the key to getting us there. We said, look. You got to build an operating system whose API looks like Windows and whose user interface looks like Windows.

但Dave是带我们走向企业级系统的关键。我们告诉他：“你要打造一个操作系统，它的API看起来得像Windows，用户界面也得像Windows。”

Ben: So developers are can be familiar with it and write apps for it.

Ben：这样开发者才会觉得熟悉，才会愿意为它开发应用。

Steve: Yeah. You might make some changes because you have to, but it’s got to be a robust operating system. It’s got to have a secure kernel. It’s got to have all of these things.

Steve：没错。你可能得做些调整，那是必要的，但它必须是一个健壮的操作系统，必须有安全的内核，必须具备所有这些关键特性。

Ben: The product set that you had wasn’t really enterprise grade yet.

Ben：当时你们的产品组合其实还称不上“企业级”。

Steve: No, we had a joint development agreement, a joint agreement on LAN manager with a company called 3Com. It wasn’t all our stuff. We had a development agreement with a company called Sybase to do the SQL database, because we were trying to figure out all these pieces IBM would have, and we didn’t have any of that.

Steve：不是的。我们当时有一个联合开发协议，和一家叫3Com的公司一起合作开发LAN Manager。并不都是我们自己的东西。我们还和一家叫Sybase的公司签了开发协议，合作开发SQL数据库。因为我们当时试图弄清楚IBM都有哪些组件，而我们一个都没有。

Ben: An operating system alone is not going to do it. You need all these other components.

Ben：光有操作系统是不够的。你还需要其他所有这些组件。

Steve: And you want to have backend infrastructure. We started scrambling on that in the 80s. We had all these infrastructure pieces that we had to build if we wanted to sell to (I’ll say) business customers. When you say enterprises, sometimes people think very large companies, but we couldn’t sell to companies of 20 people without some of this stuff, or 50 people.

Steve：你还得有后端基础设施。我们在80年代就开始为此忙活了。如果我们想卖给所谓的“商业客户”，我们就得构建这些基础设施模块。你一说“企业”，人们可能会想到特别大的公司，但实际上，就算是只有20人、50人的公司，没有这些组件我们也卖不进去。

David: You talk a lot now about this management concept of building muscle. Is this where this came from of you should always be, you used the phrase in the weight room, building muscle ahead of what you need. Were you and Bill thinking this way in the 80s of, hey, we need to be building up this muscle across all parts of computing and business computing?

David：你现在经常讲一个管理理念：锻炼肌肉，也就是你说的“在重量训练室里”提前锻炼出你还用不上的能力。你和Bill在80年代时就是这么想的吗？也就是说，我们要在计算和商业计算的所有领域都提前练出“肌肉”？

Steve: Well, Paul Allen, Paul’s the key. Paul is the one who said Bill said we’re never going to be a hardware company. When the Altair came out, the first real microprocessor-based computer, Paul says, okay, let’s write all the software that these things will ever need.

Steve：说起来，Paul Allen才是真正的关键。Paul当时就说——Bill也同意——我们永远不会是一家硬件公司。当Altair问世，也就是第一台基于微处理器的真正电脑，Paul说：“好，我们就来写这些机器可能会用到的所有软件。”

Bill and I had a lot of the execution around that, but that was the push. Paul was cracking on me in the early 80s to start building an apps group. Come on, Steve. Come on, Steve.

Bill和我主要负责具体执行，但那个理念是Paul推动的。80年代初，Paul就一直催我组建应用团队。“快点啊，Steve，快点啊，Steve。”

Ben: It’s not just systems. We need to have applications also. Any code that executes on a microprocessor, we should have a player in that market.

Ben：不只是系统软件，我们还得有应用软件。只要是能在微处理器上运行的代码，我们都应该在那个市场里占一席之地。

Steve: And there was a VisiCalc spreadsheet. Come on, Steve, Word Processor. Come on, come on, come on. Let’s get the talent. Let’s get going. We were doing mostly college hiring at the time, so okay. Then we met this guy Simonyi, who’d been at Xerox PARC.

Steve：当时市面上有VisiCalc这个电子表格软件。Paul就说，“快点啊，Steve，文字处理器！快搞起来！”我们那时候主要靠从大学招人。后来我们遇到了一个人——Simonyi，他之前在施乐PARC工作。

Ben: Charles Simonyi.

Ben：Charles Simonyi。

Steve: Charles Simonyi, exactly. We met him through a mutual friend at 3Com corporation who’d been at PARC, and he really was the first leader of the apps business. But we licensed. We worked with other people the way IBM worked with us.

Steve：对，就是Charles Simonyi。我们是通过一个在3Com工作的朋友认识他的，那位朋友也曾在PARC工作过。Charles是真正意义上第一个带领我们应用业务的人。我们也学IBM的方式，通过授权，与其他公司合作。

We went to Sybase and 3Com and let’s work together. It wasn’t exactly a JDA (joint development agreement), but we worked with those guys. The analogy now is a little bit Microsoft working with OpenAI. When the big company works with the new company, how does that all play out over time? But I took over system software in 1984, so that’s when we’re starting all this stuff. You could say I was a little bit more enterprisey.

我们去找了Sybase、3Com这些公司，一起合作。虽然不完全是联合开发协议（JDA），但我们确实跟他们一起干。现在你可以类比为微软和OpenAI之间的合作：大公司和新公司合作，随着时间推移会演变出什么关系？我是在1984年接管系统软件业务的，也就是从那时开始，我们才真正启动这些事情。你可以说我当时就已经更偏“企业型”了。

Ben: I’m looking at your chart here that you made for us. You’ve got 1992–1998 titled lift-off, and that’s after the era where you talk about enterprise start.

Ben：我在看你为我们做的这张图。你把1992到1998这段时间命名为“起飞期”，那是在你所谓“企业起步”之后。

David: And you have your role switching from your role as OS division in the previous era to sales.

David：而且你自己在这张图上也把自己的角色，从之前的操作系统负责人变成了销售负责人。

Steve: The lift-off there though is mostly on Windows and applications. The lift-off isn’t really enterprise. It was not until the late-2000s. People would say that—you guys might find this funny or maybe you even know it. Customers say you’re not an enterprise company. You’re not an enterprise company.

Steve：但那个“起飞”，主要还是靠Windows和应用程序，不是真正的企业市场起飞。直到2000年代后期，我们才真正起飞。你们可能会觉得好笑，或者你们可能也听说过——那时候客户会说：“你们不是一家企业级公司，不是企业公司。”

Ben: As late as when?

Ben：到什么时候都还有人这么说？

Steve: Oh, late 2000s.

Steve：2000年代末。

Ben: Really?

Ben：真的吗？

Steve: Absolutely. You’re not enterprise-grade, you’re not enterprise-ready. Oh, I heard that so much.

Steve：完全是真的。“你们达不到企业级标准”、“你们没准备好服务企业”——我听过太多次这样的话。

Ben: And in 2005.

Ben：就算是在2005年。

Steve: You had Oracle out there. Remember, there were still mainframes and mini computers. Those things were enterprise-ready. IBM had product, still. You didn’t have enterprise support. Our licensing, we had to evolve in the early 90s and then again in the late 90s. No, we didn’t have those things. So no, we weren’t an enterprise software company.

Steve：那时候Oracle还在，主机和小型机也还存在，那些才是企业级产品。IBM也还有产品。我们那时候根本没有企业级支持。我们的授权模式也是90年代初进化了一次，90年代末又进化了一次。我们没有那些东西。所以不，我们那时候根本称不上是一家企业软件公司。

Ben: That’s so interesting.

Ben：这太有意思了。

Steve: Until it was late 2000s. Certainly, it wasn’t before 2005. It wasn’t at the beginning of my tenure. We were still trying to prove that we were an enterprise company. Now, I just find it cuckoo that all Microsoft is characterized as an enterprise company, which I’m not.

Steve：直到2000年代末，才算真正开始。肯定不是2005年之前，更不是我刚当CEO的时候。我们那时还在努力证明自己是家企业公司。而现在，大家却一口咬定微软是“企业公司”，我觉得这真是太荒谬了——因为我自己并不是。

I think it’s more complicated than that, but I’m not going to say that that’s not the primary muscle. For sure it is, but me, the company, I was hell bent and determined to prove we were an enterprise company.

我觉得事情比这复杂得多，但我不会否认“企业能力”确实成了我们的主力肌肉。毫无疑问是这样。不过我个人，以及整家公司，真的曾经拼了命地想要证明我们是家企业公司。

Ben: Why was that? Let’s call it 1992, 1993, 1994. Why did you feel it’s so important for us to attack that market?

Ben：那你为什么那么执着呢？比如说1992、1993、1994年，那时候你为什么觉得我们必须要攻进那个市场？

Steve: Easy. Because that’s where IBM could squish us like a bug. If we couldn’t sell our stuff to businesses, only to consumers, we knew that by then we’d only get so far because enterprises wanted some features. Enterprise don’t like, okay you can go to computer land and buy a few copies.

Steve：很简单，因为IBM可以在那个市场把我们像虫子一样踩扁。如果我们只能把产品卖给消费者，不能卖给企业，那我们的路也就走到头了，因为企业客户需要的是某些特定功能。企业可不喜欢“去电脑城买几份软件”这种方式。

David: And the consumer market, we’re pre-mobile. So pre-mobile, the consumer market, pre-internet, it’s big, but it’s nowhere near IBM’s market in the enterprise market.

David：而那时候的消费市场还没进入移动时代。在移动互联网出现之前，虽然消费市场不小，但跟IBM在企业市场的规模完全不是一个量级。

Steve: By revenue. No, for sure not.

Steve：从营收来看，那当然差远了。

Ben: We’ve talked a lot about the products. Let’s talk about the go-to market motion and this invention of the enterprise agreement. What are the key pillars that you came up with for the enterprise agreement and why did they exist?

Ben：我们已经聊了很多产品的事了。现在来说说市场推进策略，特别是你们后来发明的“企业协议”。你当初设计这个企业协议的关键支柱是什么？为什么要这么做？

Steve: Our first software pricing packaging model for the enterprise was not the enterprise agreement. First it was we sold you disks. Second, we came up with this notion of what we called select licensing. You could make your own copies. You just report how many copies you sold.

Steve：我们最初的企业软件定价模式并不是企业协议。最开始是卖你光盘。然后我们想出了一个叫“Select许可”的东西。你可以自己复制，只要告诉我们你复制了多少份。

David: Sounds rife with challenges here.

David：听起来问题很多啊。

Steve: You tell us how many copies, and just pay us what you did.

Steve：你告诉我们你用了多少份，然后按那个数量付款。

David: The enterprise honor system.

David：这简直就是“企业荣誉制度”。

Ben: Astonishing. And that’s of Windows, that’s of Office.

Ben：太让人吃惊了。这些是Windows和Office的软件？

Steve: Windows, typically, by then, came with the hardware.

Steve：Windows那时候通常是随硬件一起提供的。

Ben: You were mostly using the OEM channel.

Ben：你们主要是通过OEM渠道销售。

Steve: For Windows? Yeah. Even to this day, upgrades and stuff are sold direct to enterprises, but basic computer that comes to an enterprise would have the operating system license to the OEM. We were on, you can call it the honor system, but we just couldn’t make people buy disks from us or CDs. Enterprises didn’t like that, so we had this thing called select.

Steve：Windows的话？对，至今如此。升级版这些东西是直接卖给企业的，但企业买来的基本电脑操作系统都是OEM预装的。我们只能靠所谓的“荣誉制度”，因为我们没法逼着企业来我们这买光盘或CD。企业不喜欢这样，所以我们搞了“Select许可”。

Select had two problems with it. Number one, very hard to \[track] copies of software you print. And number two problem, we were selling upgrades and new licenses. Upgrades were less than half the price of new licenses. What does that mean? The company was headed to a world where its revenue was half of its existing revenue.

Select许可有两个问题。第一，很难追踪你复制了多少份软件。第二，我们在卖的是升级版和新许可证，而升级版的价格只有新许可证的一半还不到。这意味着什么？意味着公司会走向一个营收只有原来一半的世界。

Ben: Unless you’re growing new customers, new logos, a phenomenal clip.

Ben：除非你以惊人的速度获得大量新客户、新logo。

Steve: So it was a real problem-looking thing. Bill and I, we’d always dream of this thing where you get some recurring revenue, and then we came up to say, okay, well why don’t we just do a license that you didn’t have to count the number of licenses you printed? Just the number of computers. Made life simpler.

Steve：所以这个问题看起来真的很严重。Bill和我一直梦想着能有种模式能带来经常性收入。后来我们就说，好吧，为什么不弄个授权方式，你不用去数你复制了多少份软件，只需要按电脑数量算就行？这样事情简单多了。

We said, instead of doing sell you a new license and then God knows when we would sell you another upgrade or whatever, we’ll do something that just says, hey look. You sign up for three years, you pay us per machine, and you just pay us the same amount of money each year for three years.

我们说，与其现在卖你一个新许可证，然后天知道什么时候才能再卖你个升级版，不如我们来这么搞：你签一个三年期的协议，按每台机器付费，每年给我们一样的钱，持续三年。

It let us jimmy-up the price of the upgrade. We solved the upgrade price problem, and we solved the difficulty of administration problem. And that was the enterprise agreement.

这让我们可以提升升级的价格。我们解决了升级价格的问题，也解决了管理复杂性的问题。这就是“企业协议”的诞生。

David: Was it from the beginning of you get everything?

David：一开始就是“全包”模式吗？就是你买了企业协议就什么都有了？

Steve: No, that was a special enterprise agreement. You got all the upgrades during that three year period to the products you licensed.

Steve：不是，那是后来的特殊版本企业协议。你在三年期间可以获得你所授权产品的所有升级。

David: But you were still picking and choosing, oh I want Excel. Oh I want Server.

David：但客户那时还是可以挑着买，比如说“我只要Excel”或者“我要Server”？

Steve: You could. We were encouraging you to buy Office. But we also had this all-you-can-eat license. I can’t remember what we called that, but basically then I think you counted the number of employees and you could use any of our software for anybody.

Steve：可以。我们当然是鼓励你买整套Office。但我们后来也有那种“无限量使用”式的授权。我记不清我们当时叫什么了，但大致意思就是按员工人数计费，然后你可以让公司里的任何人用我们的任意软件。

We just tried to go simpler and simpler and simpler in the administration. Recurring revenue that didn’t decline over time. As much as you wanted to eat, the upgrades, everything. We did want essentially what we have now, which is a recurring services business. But we didn’t have the cloud. We weren’t delivering things. But we’re already on that path. I think we started the Energizer. You guys mentioned what we do with Energizer, which is where we wanted to run their IT department.

我们就是想让管理流程越来越简单。目标是建立一个不会随着时间而下滑的经常性收入模型——想用多少用多少，升级也都包括在内。我们本质上是想做成今天这样的“订阅式服务业务”。但那时候我们还没有云，没有在线交付。但我们已经走在那条路上了。我记得我们是从Energizer开始的，你们也提到了我们跟Energizer做的事——那是我们第一次尝试去运营别人的IT部门。

Ben: They were a pilot customer for this concept.

Ben：所以Energizer是你们这个概念的试点客户？

Steve: Yeah, they were the first customer. I talked them into it. This is beyond the enterprise agreement. This is where we actually want to run their stuff because we did want to get to this recurring revenue thing.

Steve：对，他们是第一个。我是亲自说服他们的。这已经超出了企业协议的范畴，我们是真的想运营他们的系统，因为我们确实想实现经常性收入的模式。

Ben: And David was referring to this concept earlier. We talked about it a lot in our Microsoft episode and then on our Epic episode. This genius idea of you will get included in your license, a whole bunch of software, even if you’re not ready to use it yet.

Ben：David之前提到过这个概念，我们在微软那期节目里讲过很多，在Epic那期也提过。这种天才般的做法是——你购买了微软的企业授权，即使你现在还没准备好使用，我们也会把一整套软件都打包进授权里。

If at any point you’re considering buying this different software package from this other vendor who just make this one thing, then they look in their paperwork and they’re like, oh wait, actually we get that from Microsoft for free as a part of the thing we’re already doing. Let’s just do that.

哪天你突然考虑要买另一个厂商的单一功能软件时，你一查文档发现：哎，我们其实已经在微软的授权里免费拿到了这个东西。那我们就直接用微软的吧。

As long as you’re developing a lot of software every year, you can indefinitely just make more and more and more stuff so that your customers don’t need to look elsewhere as they expand their software needs. How did that come about?

只要你每年持续开发更多新软件，你就可以无限地扩充你的产品线，让客户在未来的需求扩展中根本不需要去别处找。这个策略是怎么形成的？

Steve: Let’s start with Office. When we’re selling Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and then we put these things together, people would complain. We didn’t always sell Office because people say our users don’t use Excel. We don’t want Excel included. Okay, we had a licensing option for you.

Steve：我们从Office说起吧。当我们在卖Excel、Word、PowerPoint的时候，后来把它们打包起来变成Office，人们会抱怨：我们的用户不用Excel，我们不想买包含Excel的套装。好吧，那我们也提供了相应的授权选项。

But it became easier and easier. People then—departments. Departments always, were in-running IT at the time. Still now, I think. We did sell you things that you might not be using. But it also, if you’re trying the departments, we already got it all for you. You may want something different than this department, but we got it all for you. That was an attractive thing for people.

但后来情况变得越来越简单。很多时候其实是部门在主导IT采购——那时候如此，现在也还是这样。我们确实卖了一些客户暂时不会用到的东西。但如果你从部门视角来看，我们已经把所有东西都打包给你了。你这个部门可能要A软件，另一个要B，但我们统统给你备好了。对很多人来说，这是很有吸引力的。

There’s an insurance aspect that I learned that IT people really want. They want peace of mind. That’s part of what it means to be an enterprise. I want to make sure everything’s secure. I want to make sure that everything is well-managed. I want to make sure everything is well paid for. I want to make sure there’s somebody to call if things go wrong. I want to make sure I bought everything. I don’t want to look bad because either I paid too much or I have holes in what I bought for people.

我后来意识到，有一种“保险”心理是IT人员真正想要的。他们要的是“安心”。这正是“企业级”意味着什么的一部分。我想确保一切都安全、都可控、都已付费。我希望一出问题就有人可以找。我不想因为花多了冤枉钱，或者我没给员工配齐工具而显得不专业。

I view this, and I probably evolved my view to this over time, when you sell the enterprise, you have to provide peace of mind, which is like an insurance policy. Buying more than you might be using or some users are using. It’s an insurance policy.

我现在是这么看的——当然这个想法也是我多年下来逐渐形成的——卖给企业，就是要给他们“安心感”。这就像买保险一样。哪怕买得多于现在的使用量，或某些用户根本不用，也是买了份保险。

Ben: And software has zero marginal cost and zero distribution cost. So we’re happy to mail you a few more discs if you need them.

Ben：而且软件的边际成本和分发成本都是零。你需要多几个光盘，我们寄就是了。

Steve: But we weren’t even mailing discs by then, because we had the enterprise agreement in place.

Steve：但那时候我们连光盘都不用寄了，因为企业协议已经生效了。

David: At a certain point along the way, you get to, well I want to say the holy trinity, but I think there are more than three pieces of this. But the real killer suite in enterprises, which is Windows, Windows Server, Active Directory, Exchange, Office, and all of these pieces of software, all work in orchestration to run your enterprise. Your users, they do their email on Outlook, which is part of Office which runs on Windows, which uses Exchange, which uses Active Directory, which is a—

David：到了某个时间点，你们基本上形成了一个“圣三位一体”——当然其实不止三个组成部分——就是你们在企业市场中的王牌套件：Windows、Windows Server、Active Directory、Exchange、Office。这些软件互相协同，一起构成了企业运行的系统。你的用户用Outlook发邮件，它是Office的一部分，运行在Windows上，调用Exchange，再通过Active Directory验证，最终还连接着……

Ben: SQL Server.

Ben：SQL Server。

David: All these things. How long did it take to get to that point? To my mind, that’s when the enterprise is firing on all cylinders here.

David：这些要素都齐了。你们花了多久才走到这一步？在我看来，这才是微软在企业市场“火力全开”的时刻。

Steve: That really comes with email boom. Email boom is late 90s/beginning of 2000s.

Steve：真正的转折点是“电邮热潮”。那是在90年代末、2000年代初。

Ben: Because email is the cart that pulled the whole thing.

Ben：因为电邮是那个拉动整个系统的马车。

Steve: Oh yeah. No, it’s the locomotive.

Steve：不，是火车头才对。

Ben: Enterprises wanted email.

Ben：企业要的是电邮。

电邮在中国的变种是微信，从一开始就是杀手级的应用。

Steve: Yeah. When Accenture became a company, we started a joint venture called Avanade to help do essentially the holy trinity to help install. We needed support infrastructure and partners who knew how to set up the servers, provision email, put all that in. We needed partners and we didn’t have enough capacity. That’s why we started this thing, Avanade, which is big, big company at this stage, with Accenture, and that was in the 2000s. I went on the board of Accenture.

Steve：没错。当埃森哲独立出来成为一家公司时，我们跟他们成立了一个合资企业，叫Avanade，就是为了部署这“圣三位一体”——帮企业搭建整个系统。我们需要配套的服务基础设施和合作伙伴，来搭服务器、开邮箱、把整套系统架起来。当时我们自己的人手还不够，所以才启动了Avanade这个项目。现在Avanade已经是家非常大的公司了。那是2000年代的事，我还加入了埃森哲的董事会。

Ben: But all this to say, the way you could pitch an enterprise is rather than any of these other value propositions—David listed off a whole bunch of software—you could say you guys want some email. We have the most reliable, robust way for your enterprise to adopt email, and it’s going to come with all this other great stuff.

Ben：所以总结一下，当时你们向企业推销产品，不用说太多复杂的价值主张——David刚才列了一大堆软件——你只需要说：“你们想用电邮？我们这有最稳定、最强大的电邮解决方案”，而且还附送一整套其他优秀软件。

Steve: And everything was nicely integrated because remember, you needed Active Directory to manage file shares, to manage printers. It was used for a lot of different things. It really did all come together as the integrated proposition. You guys made fun of the notion that we called all that stuff the BackOffice as if that was \[...]. No, no, no. It’s so wrong. So wrong about that.

Steve：而且一切都集成得很好。别忘了，Active Directory不仅是用户身份系统，还用于管理文件共享、打印机等等，非常多的用途。整个系统就是一个完整的集成方案。你们还笑我们把这些叫“BackOffice”，好像是个不重要的名字。不是的，不是的。那真是误解，完全错误。

David: We took that as a signal that Bill just didn’t care about this stuff.

David：我们以前以为，把它叫“BackOffice”是因为比尔对这些企业系统其实不感兴趣。

Steve: Oh, completely not right. I wanted to call it the BackOffice because you needed to buy the Office in the BackOffice. The user, the consumer saw the Office and the BackOffice were the things that were in the server rooms/data centers. But a lot of them were server rooms. It’s the same thing these days. but cloudized.

Steve：完全不是那回事。我当时想叫它“BackOffice”是因为企业买了Office之后，还需要买在后端运行的那些东西。用户、普通人看到的是Office套件，但BackOffice才是放在机房或数据中心的那些东西——其实那时候还都是机房，现在也一样，只是变成“云”了而已。

Ben: All right. As we were preparing for this, there are a bunch of big questions that we just desperately want your take on. A big one is around one of your most iconic moments. 1999, the developers, developers, developers speech.

Ben：好，我们准备这期节目的时候，其实积攒了好多大问题特别想问你。一个最经典的，就是你最有标志性的时刻之一：1999年那场“开发者！开发者！开发者！”的演讲。

I’ve probably watched this clip 20–30 times, almost everyone listening has seen this clip. What is missing from this clip is all the context around Microsoft and what’s going on in the world at this time, and what you need to accomplish as a leader of this company. Help us set that stage and then understand why you went on stage that way.

我大概看过这个片段二三十次了，几乎所有听众也都看过。但视频里没有体现的是当时的时代背景——当时微软正处于什么局面，整个行业正发生什么，而你作为公司领导人想要完成什么目标。能不能帮我们还原一下背景，让我们理解你为何要以那种方式走上舞台？

Steve: Well remember, by this time we’re not through our IBM competition, and we got Linux competition now on the docket because Linux is competing with Windows Server. Linux is competing with Windows, and there’s a thing called OpenOffice, open source software for office that’s competing with Office. We have all these things going on. We haven’t beat Lotus Notes yet.

Steve：要记住，那时我们还没彻底摆脱与IBM的竞争。而且新的对手也冒出来了——Linux开始跟Windows Server竞争，也在和Windows竞争；还有一个叫OpenOffice的开源办公软件，开始挑战我们的Office套件。这些都在同时发生。甚至我们当时还没打赢Lotus Notes呢。

David: And you’ve got antitrust count.

David：而且你们还身陷反垄断诉讼。

Steve: We have antitrust issues (of course) by then.

Steve：到那个时候我们已经有反垄断问题了（当然）。

Ben: The culmination of the DOJ suit is happening within 12 months of this moment.

Ben：美国司法部对你们的诉讼，在这个时点之后12个月内就到了高潮。

Steve: Correct. But it’s clear in all these competitions, the thing you need are third-parties that reinforce what you’ve got—add value around what you’ve got. I could say run on your platform, but I’ll come to that later if you want to what a platform is and isn’t, if you want to do that. It’s interesting, I think.

Steve：没错。但在所有这些竞争中，有一点是明确的：你需要第三方围绕你已有的东西提供增值服务，强化你的产品。我可以说这些东西“运行在你的平台上”，但如果你们想聊什么是平台、什么不是平台，我可以稍后再讲。我觉得那还挺有意思的。

Ben: Yeah, let’s do it.

Ben：好啊，我们聊聊这个。

Steve: Particularly since everything’s called a platform these days. But anyway.

Steve：尤其是现在什么东西都被叫“平台”。不过总之——

Ben: Let’s take an aside here. Give us your definition of a platform.

Ben：我们稍微岔开一下话题。你来给我们定义一下，什么是平台。

Steve: You could call it anything that is extensible, and it’s the extensibility that “makes it a platform,” because you’re going to get people to extend the value you add.

Steve：可以说，任何“可扩展”的东西都可以称为平台。而真正让一个东西成为“平台”的，是它的可扩展性，因为这意味着其他人可以在你的基础上继续增加价值。

The question and the reason that’s important is that applications are platforms too. Not just developer platforms. When people say that they might mean Azure, AWS, or in the old days, Windows or Windows Server or Unix then Linux. Yes, those are platforms. You extend them.

关键在于，应用程序本身其实也是平台。不只是开发者平台。当人们说“平台”时，可能指的是Azure、AWS，或者以前的Windows、Windows Server，甚至Unix、Linux。没错，它们是平台，大家可以在上面扩展。

But you also extend Office. You add value partners plug in. They write applications. They use the file formats. All of this stuff is platform.

但Office同样也是平台。你可以添加增值合作伙伴的插件，他们可以写应用程序，使用你的文件格式。所有这些，都是平台的体现。

Part of the issue (I think) for Microsoft is if you see yourself as just a platform company, platforms need apps. You want to have the top first-party app that runs on your platform. Otherwise your platform can’t get good.

微软当时的问题之一，我认为是：如果你只把自己当作“平台公司”，那你必须意识到平台也需要应用程序。你得有在你平台上跑的最好的第一方应用。不然你的平台也做不起来。

Office was the best first-party app on Windows, and that’s how things get good. Outlook was the best first-party app on exchange. There were other clients at one point, by the way.

Office就是Windows上最好的第一方应用，这是整个体系能成功的原因。Outlook是Exchange上最好的第一方客户端——当然，当时还有别的客户端。

So you really do want extensibility in your apps in addition to your “platform.” You want to make sure you own first-party app in addition to “platform.”

所以说，除了“平台”要可扩展之外，你的应用程序本身也要有可扩展性。而且你得确保你拥有关键的第一方应用。

I think you can get stuck in the mud if you say we’re just a platform company. I think we got it into our corporate mindset that we were “a platform company” far more than I ever intended.

如果你老是说“我们只是个平台公司”，你可能会陷进去动弹不得。我觉得我们公司当时就陷入了这种思维，比我原先设想的还要严重。

There were people telling me in the mid- to late-2000s, well we can’t do that. We’re a platform company. I said, yes, we can do that. By 2010, I was just frustrated with myself and my inability to get people out of the, we’re-just-a-platform company.

到2000年代中后期，很多人跟我说：“我们不能做那个，我们是个平台公司。”我说：“我们当然可以做。”到了2010年，我对自己很失望，因为我没法把大家从“我们只是个平台”的思想框里拉出来。

I think to this day you have to think app with platform. You have to think extensibility of the app and the “platform.”

直到今天我都认为，你必须把“应用”与“平台”一起思考。你得同时考虑应用程序和平台的可扩展性。

I think we got caught on that. Maybe I got caught on it for a while, and I certainly got caught in my inability to tell people what the company needed to do because people had such a culture then of saying we’re a platform company. We’re a platform.

我觉得我们曾经被这种思维框住了。也许我自己也曾一度陷进这个思维里。我也确实没法清晰地告诉大家公司该怎么走，因为那时候内部文化里太多人在说：“我们是平台公司，我们是个平台。”

Now I go back to, developers, developers, developers. I’m trying to tell people at that time that third-parties really mattered. You got different opinions inside Microsoft.

所以我才会回过头来喊出那句“开发者！开发者！开发者！”我当时想让大家明白：第三方真的很重要。而在微软内部，并不是每个人都认同这一点。

Ben: And what event was this at?

Ben：那你当时是在什么场合说出这番话的？

Steve: The developer conference, I think.

Steve：我记得是开发者大会。

Ben: So it’s for external developers?

Ben：是对外部开发者说的？

Steve: External developers. Who’s Windows’ number one client? Is it Office or is it all developers? You ask the Windows team, it’s all developers. You ask the Office team, come on, you got to do for us what we need to do. You have to be able to communicate that you really care about developers who are not your own. That you really want these things because they may think, oh, it’s all about running Microsoft Office. We just had to tell people, we want you, we want you, we want you, we want you.

Steve：对，外部开发者。谁才是Windows的头号客户？是Office，还是所有开发者？你问Windows团队，他们会说是所有开发者。你问Office团队，他们会说：“拜托，你得优先满足我们。”所以我们必须向外界传达出一个讯息：我们真的很重视那些不是我们自己内部的开发者。我们真的需要这些人参与，不然外界可能会以为一切都是为了跑微软Office。我们必须让大家知道：我们需要你们，我们需要你们，我们需要你们，我们需要你们！

I think we got caught in thinking it’s all about third-parties and not also about our first-party apps. That’s where you say, are you a, the word ‘consumer’ sounds unserious. Are you for users and for enterprises? Which really means IT departments. Or are you for users and not IT departments? And do you allow both all aspects of what you do to be extended by developers?

我觉得我们曾经陷入了一种思维误区，以为一切都靠第三方，而忽视了我们自己的第一方应用。这时候你就得思考：你是服务于用户和企业的吗？“消费者”这个词听起来不够严肃。你到底是为了用户和企业（尤其是IT部门）？还是你只是面向用户，而不关心IT部门？而你是否允许你所做的一切，都能被开发者扩展？

That’s the frame I believe in. We had some issues over the course of where we went in the 2000. We can talk about that if you want to. But go back to 1999, come on, we need you guys on Windows. IBM still selling OS/2. Linux is right there on the horizon. It’s coming like a freight train.

这是我所认同的思维框架。我们在2000年代的发展过程中也确实遇到了一些问题，如果你们想聊我们可以再深入。但回到1999年，当时我们的立场是：“拜托，我们需要你们加入Windows阵营！”IBM还在卖OS/2，Linux已经出现在地平线上了，像一列高速列车直冲过来。

Ben: Is the web starting to enter your psyche at all?

Ben：那时候互联网有没有开始进入你们的视野？

Steve: The web’s part of that. We’re trying to get people to write for Windows Server, good point. We’re trying to get them to extend ActiveX controls, I think. We’re the part of the browser. We were trying to get our browser to be a platform, embrace and extend I think is what we said. We’ll embrace the Internet and we’ll extend with these ActiveX controls. We need developers to do ActiveX, we need them to do Windows Server.

Steve：互联网当然也是其中一部分。你提得好，那时候我们正努力让开发者为Windows Server开发应用。我记得我们还在推动大家使用ActiveX控件。我们也在推动浏览器，我们试图把浏览器变成一个平台。当时我们的口号是“embrace and extend”（拥抱并扩展）。我们要拥抱互联网，然后用ActiveX控件进行扩展。我们需要开发者来做ActiveX，也需要他们做Windows Server。

We’re just getting ready on .NET. I have my own wild style. How do you end a speech? You tell people you love them, that you want them. That’s the call to action. That’s where I think the developers, developers, developers thing came. Before that one, there was a different video that people characterize it.

我们那时候刚在准备.NET。我自己的风格比较狂热。你要怎么结束一场演讲？你要告诉人们你爱他们、你需要他们。这才是号召力。我想这就是“developers, developers, developers”那段演讲的来源。其实在那之前，还有一段别的视频被大家提起。

Ben: I love this company?

Ben：是你说“I love this company”的那段吗？

Steve: No, it was my Windows video. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that.

Steve：不是，是我那段Windows的视频。我不知道你有没有看过。

Ben: Oh, of course, but wasn’t that a parody? Don’t people misunderstand?

Ben：当然看过啊，但那不是一个恶搞视频吗？很多人误会了吧？

Steve: It was for fun. It was just a fun thing. It was not a real speech.

Steve：对，那就是为了好玩。只是个娱乐视频，不是什么正式演讲。

Ben: And it was for internal consumption where you were saying, for this low, low price.

Ben：而且那是给内部看的，你还在里面说什么“仅需超低价”。

Steve: Yeah. There’s a lot of little nuances in there. We’re trying to get our people pumped up about Windows.

Steve：对啊，里面有很多小梗。我们就是想让员工为Windows打气。

Ben: What I was looking for there is the developers, developers, developers speech is one where you feel like we haven’t really won the last battle yet. We’re still in this death grip for enterprise developers or this death fight against IBM, and yet there’s now Linux and the web for these more independent or platform-of-the-future–looking developers. In some ways, were desperate to sell, to win, to say, hey, we have a great platform here. You need to come use our stuff.

Ben：我其实想说的是，“developers, developers, developers”这段演讲，听起来像是你们那时候还没有打赢上一场仗。你们还在跟IBM争抢企业开发者，还在死磕。而现在又冒出Linux和互联网，它们吸引了那些更独立、追求未来平台的开发者。从某种意义上说，你们是带着一点绝望在推销、在求胜，在说：“嘿，我们这儿有一个很棒的平台，你们得来用我们的东西。”

Steve: Exactly. I can’t remember whether we’re pre-LAMP or LAMP by then. But I don’t remember. There’s some infrastructure on top of Linux that people are using to write, let’s say they’re backends not their user-facing code. We had tons of competition.

Steve：没错。我已经记不清那时我们是在LAMP之前还是LAMP时期了。但我记得当时有一些运行在Linux之上的基础架构，人们用来开发后端系统，而不是用户界面的代码。我们面对大量竞争。

The interesting thing is people say, only think about your customer. Never think about your competitor. I actually think you have to think about both. Ironically, we were pretty consumed with our competitor, which (I think) was essential, and we were pretty consumed about doing new things. But the competitor thing wound up being very important.

有趣的是，人们常说只要想着客户，永远不要想着竞争对手。但我其实认为两者都必须考虑。讽刺的是，我们当时确实非常专注于竞争对手，我觉得这是必须的；同时我们也在努力推动新事物。但竞争对手这个因素最终确实变得非常重要。

We have no business. We’re not in the enterprise. We could lose Windows on the client. The company weren’t really self-confident. The DOJ was really self-confident that we were a lock and there was no competition, and life was easy. That’s not where our heads were.

我们那时候在企业市场基本没有业务，客户端的Windows也有可能失守。公司内部其实并没有什么自信。而司法部（DOJ）却非常自信，觉得我们已经垄断，没有竞争，生活很轻松。但我们当时的想法完全不是那样。

Now, there is some time in the 2000s where we think extending. We did a slide once called Windows everywhere. We used to use this on all these devices. We became too wed to extending what we had versus jumping to something new because in a sense, we were too confident if we only Windows-ized something.

后来到了2000年代的某个时候，我们开始思考扩展的问题。我们曾经做过一张幻灯片，标题是“Windows无处不在”，当时我们真的想把Windows装进所有设备里。我们变得太依赖于扩展现有的东西，而不是跳跃到全新的事物上。从某种意义上讲，我们太有信心，觉得只要把什么都“Windows化”就可以。

You guys make a point in your episode on us. You guys call it sticking with Windows too long. That may be it, but I don’t think we stuck with Windows too long. I think what we did is we tried to put Windows in places that it didn’t naturally go, and we tried to be too Windows-ey both in the API and the UI in some things.

你们在播客里说过我们“坚持Windows太久”。这可能有道理，但我不觉得我们坚持Windows太久。我认为我们的问题在于试图把Windows塞进它本不适合的地方，而且我们在API和UI层面都太过于“Windows化”。

Ben: Mobile being an obvious.

Ben：移动设备就是个明显例子。

Steve: Windows Mobile, exactly.

Steve：Windows Mobile，没错。

Ben: And the car.

Ben：还有车载系统。

Steve: We did a layer on Windows that when you hooked your PC up to the TV, it had a simplified user interface on your TV.

Steve：我们还在Windows上做了一个界面层，你把电脑接到电视上时，电视上会显示一个简化的用户界面。

David: Oh, yeah. I remember this.

David：哦对，我记得这个。

Ben: It wasn’t just Media Center, right? It was some…

Ben：不只是Media Center，对吧？还有其他……

Steve: Media Center, exactly right. We became convinced to some degree paranoia and some degree confidence. Well our birthright here comes from Windows. That’s our permission to enter the area. But then we also, in some areas, it just wasn’t going to be extensible. There was both a fear and an overstated confidence in trying to take Windows everywhere.

Steve：就是Media Center。我们当时出于某种程度的偏执和某种程度的自信而信奉一个观念：我们的“出身”是Windows，这给了我们进军新领域的“通行证”。但在某些领域，Windows根本就不具备可扩展性。我们一方面害怕被落下，另一方面又过度自信地试图让Windows无处不在。

Ben: All right, listeners. It’s time to talk about another one of our favorite companies, Statsig. Since you last heard from us about Statsig, they have a very exciting update. They raised their Series C valuing them at \$1.1 billion.

Ben：好了，听众朋友们，是时候聊聊我们最喜欢的公司之一——Statsig。自从我们上次提到Statsig以来，他们有了一个非常令人兴奋的消息：他们完成了C轮融资，估值达到了11亿美元。

David: Huge milestone. Congrats to the team. Timing is interesting because the experimentation space is really heating up.

David：这是个巨大里程碑。祝贺这个团队！而且这个时间点也很有意思，因为产品实验领域正变得越来越火热。

Ben: So why do investors value Statsig saying at over a billion dollars? It’s because experimentation has become a critical part of the product stack for the world’s best product teams.

Ben：那为什么投资者会给Statsig超过10亿美元的估值呢？因为“实验”已经成为世界一流产品团队在产品架构中不可或缺的一环。

David: This trend started with Web 2.0 companies like Facebook, Netflix, and Airbnb. Those companies faced a problem. How do you maintain a fast, decentralized product and engineering culture while also scaling up to thousands of employees?

David：这个趋势始于Facebook、Netflix和Airbnb这些Web 2.0公司。这些公司面临一个问题：如何在快速、去中心化的产品和工程文化中，同时扩展到成千上万名员工？

Experimentation systems were a huge part of that answer. These systems gave everyone at those companies access to a global set of product metrics from page views, to watch time, to performance. Then every time a team released a new feature or product, they could measure the impact of that feature on those metrics.

实验系统就是其中的重要解法之一。这些系统让公司里的每一个人都能接触到统一的产品指标——从页面浏览量，到观看时间，再到性能表现。然后，每当某个团队推出一个新功能或产品时，他们就能衡量这个功能对这些指标的具体影响。

Ben: So Facebook could set a company-wide goal, like increasing time in-app, and let individual teams go and figure out how to achieve it. Multiply this across thousands of engineers and PMs, and boom, you get exponential growth. It’s no wonder that experimentation is now seen as essential infrastructure.

Ben：这样一来，Facebook就能设定一个全公司的目标，比如“提升用户在App内的停留时间”，然后让每个团队自己想办法去实现它。把这种做法放大到数千名工程师和产品经理身上，增长自然就爆发了。难怪现在“实验平台”会被视为基础设施的一部分。

David: Today’s best product teams like Notion, OpenAI, Rippling, and Figma are equally reliant on experimentation. But instead of building it in-house, they just use Statsig. And they don’t just use Statsig for experimentation. Over the last few years, Statsig has added all the tools that fast product teams need, like feature flags, product analytics, session replays and more.

David：如今最顶尖的产品团队，比如Notion、OpenAI、Rippling和Figma，同样依赖于实验。但他们不再自己搭建这些系统，而是直接使用Statsig。而且他们用Statsig不只是为了做实验——过去几年里，Statsig已经增加了所有快节奏产品团队所需的工具，比如功能开关（feature flags）、产品分析、会话回放等等。

Ben: So if you would like to help your teams, engineers, and PMs figure out how to build faster and make smarter decisions, go to statsig.com/acquired, or click the link in the show notes. They have a super generous free tier, a \$50,000 startup program, and affordable enterprise contracts for large companies. Just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

Ben：所以如果你想帮助你的团队、工程师和产品经理更快地构建产品、做出更聪明的决策，就去 statsig.com/acquired，或者点击节目说明里的链接。他们有一个非常慷慨的免费方案，一个5万美元的创业项目资助，还有适合大型公司的企业级合同。只需要告诉他们，是Ben和David推荐你来的就可以了。

Let’s jump to this point, but what is the generalizable lesson here? You have Windows, this amazing piece of software with this tremendous multi-sided network effect around it. The logical thing to do is to continue to try and extend it and say, geez, wouldn’t it be nice if the next great technology wave was also Windows?

我们来聊聊这个关键点——这里有什么可以被广泛借鉴的教训？你们有Windows，这是一个了不起的软件，围绕它形成了巨大的多边网络效应。逻辑上最自然的做法就是继续扩展它，并想：“天哪，要是下一波科技浪潮也是基于Windows，那该多好啊。”

Steve: And that worked for us on Windows Server. It’s not like we didn’t have an existence proof that the thing could work. But if you’re going to, in my little deck I gave you.

Steve：这在Windows Server上确实奏效了。我们也不是没有过“这事能成”的例子。但如果你要——在我给你们的那份小幻灯片里讲过……

Ben: Yes, please.

Ben：对，我们想听听。

Steve: If you’re trying to skate to where the puck is, if you’re trying to recognize, what did I call this about capabilities, if you’re a startup in something, there’s an ongoing business, you just keep enhancing your products. There’s a line extension. Okay, we’re going to add networking to Windows. No problem. You still call it Windows. It’s related.

Steve：如果你是想“滑向冰球将要去的地方”（比喻走在趋势前沿），如果你是想识别……我当时怎么说的来着……关于能力的事情，如果你在某个方向上像是个初创公司，那这就不是一个持续迭代的老业务了，而是产品的延伸线。比如我们说：好吧，我们要给Windows加网络功能——没问题，这仍然叫Windows，是相关的。

But new, SQL Server for example, was that for a while. It was related because we had a backend platform. Dynamics, somewhat related, our accounting, et cetera stuff. Because there was some enterprisey sales, but it was really new.

但如果是全新的——比如SQL Server，当时就算是全新。它和我们后端平台相关联。Dynamics也是有些关联的，比如我们的会计软件等等。虽然有些“企业级销售”的成分，但本质上是全新的东西。

It turned out the phone was more like a startup, recognizing and thinking about things, and then asking yourself, what capabilities do you need? I say get in the weight room. You’ve got to develop capability. Take a look at a capability we developed that is now essential. We didn’t build it for this reason.

而后来事实证明，手机业务更像是一家创业公司：你得识别机会、思考方向，然后问自己：我们需要什么能力？我说过，“得进健身房练力量”。你得发展能力。看看我们当时打造的一个现在至关重要的能力——虽然我们当初并不是为了这个目的而去做的。

Hardware design. Microsoft’s a major hardware design company now. I started it out mostly to help client-side devices—Xbox, Surface, phone. And guess what? They use that mostly now in Azure data centers. I think the guy who actually runs hardware design used to be on Xbox. The backend hardware design for the data center—the chip, et cetera, infrastructure—I’m pretty sure there were a lot of talent we brought in.

硬件设计。微软现在是一家重要的硬件设计公司。而最初我做这块，主要是为了支持客户端设备——Xbox、Surface、手机。结果你猜怎么着？现在这些设计能力主要被用在Azure的数据中心了。我记得现在负责硬件设计的那个人原来是在Xbox的。数据中心的后端硬件设计——芯片、基础设施等等——我很确定我们当年引进了很多人才。

Building capabilities is important. We built some capability, but we didn’t build enough capability. We didn’t see things as different enough. Okay, let’s try to keep the comfortable Windows user interface because people understand it. It wasn’t right for the phone. I don’t even remember what processors we started out on, but I’m pretty sure we started out on Intel. Of course that wasn’t right. We tried to keep too much consistency, both out of a fear that this was our permission to exist and out of a self-confidence that we had to put Windows everywhere.

发展“能力”是关键。我们当时确实开发了一些能力，但还远远不够。我们没有把一些事看得足够不同。比如说，好吧，我们继续沿用熟悉的Windows用户界面，因为大家已经习惯了。但这对手机来说并不合适。我都不记得我们一开始用的是什么处理器了，但我很确定我们是从Intel开始的——当然这也不对。我们试图保持过多的一致性，一方面是出于一种“这是我们存在的许可”的恐惧，另一方面则是一种过度自信：我们必须让Windows无处不在。

大部分转型都是一片漆黑的。

Ben: So when should a company that has an existing fantastic business say, no, no, no. We cannot extend our existing franchise to this new world. This new world is going to be dominated by some new paradigm where we have no advantage. How do you play that?

Ben：那么，对于一家已经拥有极其成功现有业务的公司来说，应该在什么时候对自己说：“不不不，我们不能把现有的业务扩展到这个新世界里去了”？因为这个新世界将由一种我们不具优势的新范式主导。该怎么应对？

Steve: And then do we choose to get in?

Steve：那接下来就是，我们选择是否进入这个新世界？

Ben: Exactly.

Ben：对，正是这个问题。

Steve: Then you have to choose to get in. I would say two things were true at the time for us.

Steve：那你就得决定要不要进。我觉得当时对我们来说，有两件事是真的。

Ben: And this is specifically about mobile.

Ben：你是说关于移动端的这个问题？

Steve: It’s also about something else. It’s a little bit about search too. There were two things that are true. Number one, you have to be focusing consciously on the issue. It’s easy to get caught up, there’s innovator’s dilemma. It’s a little different, but you get caught up in what you have, you get caught up in what you get caught up in the capabilities, and that’s why I say to myself, you explicitly have to think about it. If we hadn’t developed a bunch of capabilities we had, AI, if we hadn’t built Bing, company wouldn’t have capabilities.

Steve：不只是移动端，也包括搜索。这里有两点是成立的。第一，你必须有意识地去聚焦这个问题。很容易陷入一种状态——这和“创新者的窘境”有点像——你会被现有的一切困住，被你已经拥有的能力困住。所以我常对自己说，你必须明确地去思考这个问题。如果我们当时没有发展出一些关键能力，比如AI，如果我们没有打造Bing，这家公司就不会拥有这些能力。

David: You built some capabilities in online services that will… we’ll come back to that.

David：你们确实在在线服务领域构建了一些能力……这个我们待会儿还会讲。

Steve: We built some important capabilities, but we didn’t realize the businesses were enough different to harness those in the new ways. I’m proud of the capabilities we built. Didn’t apply them the way we should have. Where did we learn to build internet-scale infrastructure?

Steve：我们确实构建了一些重要能力，但我们当时没有意识到这些新业务在本质上足够不同，以至于需要用不同的方式来运用这些能力。我对我们构建出的那些能力感到骄傲，但我们没有以应有的方式加以运用。那我们是从哪里学会构建互联网级基础设施的呢？

Well, some with Azure, some even more than Azure, being even more than Azure to get started. The Office. What’s now in M365? The Office backend, because that got critical mass as a cloud infrastructure before Azure did. Even more so with Bing. We developed the capabilities, but then you look at the product and what was our strategy for Bing? Well, there’s too much based upon Windows integration. You have to say this is a separate part.

嗯，有一部分是靠Azure，还有比Azure更早起步的——Office。现在的M365是怎么来的？是Office的后端，它在Azure之前就已经作为一套云基础设施获得了关键规模。还有更甚者是Bing。我们的确开发了那些能力，但你再看产品本身——我们当时的Bing战略是什么？过于依赖Windows的集成。你必须认识到，这其实是一个独立的业务领域。

David: Before the Bing rebrand, it was Windows Live Search. You’re not going to be Google with Windows Live.

David：在Bing改名之前，它叫Windows Live Search。你是不可能用一个叫Windows Live的产品去挑战Google的。

Steve: Everything was Windows Live. It’s now OneDrive. But the file sharing. Google’s done the same thing. You got to ask where do you run out of gas?

Steve：当时一切都叫Windows Live。现在是OneDrive了，但那时候是文件共享。Google也做了同样的事情。你得问自己，在哪个点上你会“油尽灯枯”？

Ben: Because you could make the counter argument, shoot, Google is running away with the market. It’s very good technology. They’ve perfected the user experience. They have scale. You need scale in this business. Uh-oh, it’s a runaway train that we’re never going to catch.

Ben：因为你也可以反过来说，天哪，Google正在把市场远远甩开。他们的技术非常强大，用户体验已经做到了极致。他们有规模——这个领域你就是需要规模。啊哦，这列火车已经脱轨了，我们永远追不上了。

Thank God we have Windows to be able to have some way we can attack them from the side. With Windows integration, maybe that gives us a fighting chance. That didn’t end up being true, but you can paint that narrative at least. We can’t fight Google head on.

还好我们还有Windows，能从侧翼进攻他们。依靠Windows的集成，或许我们还有一线生机。虽然最后并没有成功，但至少这个叙事是合理的。我们没法正面硬刚Google。

Steve: No, I need to tell you something. Look, how late were we to search? The answer is when did Google start? 1998–1999?

Steve：不，我得跟你讲讲。你看，我们进入搜索领域有多晚？Google是什么时候开始的？1998年还是1999年？

David: 1998.

David：1998年。

Steve: Okay. And we jumped in in 2003, I think we pushed. Now you’d say five years is a lot, or you could say five years isn’t that much. You could say we had no birthright. It’s just a completely separate thing. We had no capability. We had nobody who’d grown up in that world.

Steve：好吧。而我们是2003年才真正开始投入的。你可以说五年是很长的时间，也可以说其实不算太晚。但问题是，我们没有天然的优势。那是一个完全不同的领域。我们没有那方面的能力，也没有人在那个世界里成长起来。

We had some guys in Microsoft Research who could start getting us there. We took talent that was doing other things in Microsoft. It’s hard to go get new talent because search is brand new. There were people from Inktomi, Google had sucked them up. So it took us a while to get off the ground.

我们在Microsoft Research有些人可以开始引导我们进入这个领域。我们还从公司内部其他业务抽调了一些人才。但很难招到外部新人才，因为搜索是个全新的领域。Inktomi那些人都被Google挖走了。所以我们花了不少时间才起步。

It took us a while even, to be fair, I think this is something both Bill and I debated, not just with each other, but just we kicked around too much, how much “the verticals” in online services would be important versus search and portal is generic. So search and portal is generic.

我们花了一段时间，坦白说，这点我和Bill都曾争论过——不仅是彼此之间，也是各自内部思考太久——关于在线服务中的“垂直领域”到底有多重要，相对于更通用的搜索和门户。搜索和门户是通用的。

But remember, we had a thing called Expedia. We built a travel site. We built a local information site called Sidewalk. We had a car shopping site. What did we call that thing? CarPoint. How much would the verticals be worth?

但你要记得，我们当时有个产品叫Expedia。我们建了一个旅游网站，还有一个本地信息平台叫Sidewalk。我们还有一个汽车购物网站，叫什么来着？CarPoint。我们在想，这些垂直领域到底值多少钱？

There was one vertical that mattered, except it wasn’t really vertical. It’s called all shopping. There was all information and all shopping, doing all these detailed specific things. Remember we did a portal. We did that. Then eventually, we did search a few years later. We were just off. We had the wrong thing.

只有一个“垂直领域”真正重要，实际上它也不算垂直领域——那就是“所有购物”。所有信息和所有购物，我们在做这些具体、细分的东西。记得我们还做了个门户网站。然后几年后我们才开始做搜索。我们当时就是方向错了。做错了东西。

Stack ranked in the wrong way, my opinion, with 20/20 hindsight. We were spread too thin. He said, when should you get into a new thing? Well, you probably shouldn’t get into five new things if you really only have the talent for one to two new things. That’s number one.

事后看来，我们的优先级排序错了。我们摊得太薄。你问，什么时候该进入一个新领域？我的答案是，如果你只具备一到两个新业务所需的人才和能力，那你就不该同时进五个新业务。这是第一点。

真正缺少的是洞察力。

Scott McNeely of Sun used to have this expression used, “We got to get all our wood behind one arrow.” It’s nice to try. I was listening to you guys talk about Amazon and how they, okay, we’re going to try small things, but they also put in small cost structure. We put in big cost structure because we were already all in when we got into something.

Sun公司的Scott McNeely有句老话：“我们得把所有的木头都集中在一支箭上。”这是种很好的理念。我听你们讲Amazon的例子，他们会尝试一些小项目，但他们的成本结构也很小。而我们一旦进一个领域，就是all-in，全力投入，成本结构很大。

In this particular case, a few years later, and then what do you do? You get stuck. We have permission to come from behind in a certain way here because we’ve got Windows, to your point. Exactly your point.

而在这种情况下，几年后你就陷进去了。我们某种意义上确实有“后发制人”的许可权，因为我们有Windows，正如你刚才所说。你说得完全正确。

There are lessons to be learned, but for a company that’s got an established business, being able to get all the way outside of yourself and say, is this really like what we’re doing? Because you really want it to be. You really want it to be. Or does this really require a different approach that all doesn’t totally ignore, but doesn’t take into account what you own any more than the person starting it afresh.

我们从中学到了一些教训。对于一家已经建立起成功业务的公司来说，你必须能够跳出自我，问一句：这个新东西，真的跟我们已有的东西一样吗？因为你很容易希望它一样——你真的很希望。但也许它其实需要一种完全不同的方法。这种方法不会完全忽视你原来的东西，但也不会比一个从零开始的人更依赖你已有的资产。

Can you hire new capability or how do you build new capability? Because if it’s not like what you’re already doing, it must require new capability. If it’s exactly like what you’re doing, then you’d be doing it.

你能不能招到新能力，或者怎么去构建这些能力？因为如果它不是你已有业务的延续，那它就必须需要新能力。如果它真的和你现在做的一样，那你早就已经在做它了。

这一点非常好，新的创新往往需要全新的能力。

Ben: And you should be great at it.

Ben：而且你们本应该在这个领域表现出色。

Steve: And you’d be great at it. Just look. Two models worked in phone. Build the hardware, capture the profit, have a backend monetization system that even lets you pay the phone manufacturer. That worked. Android/Google.

Steve：而且你会在这个领域表现出色。你看，在手机领域有两种模式成功了。一种是自己制造硬件、获取利润，再搭配一个后端的变现系统，甚至可以反过来补贴手机制造商。这种模式行得通——就是Android/Google的模式。

Two things worked. That’s it. And we weren’t in either one. We needed new capability. We needed a new idea. We couldn’t use the Windows user interface. There were a bunch of things, but you have to go all the way. Yet we had a Windows everywhere slide.

就这两个模式成功了，仅此而已。而我们两个都不在其中。我们需要新的能力，新的理念。我们不能继续使用Windows的用户界面。还有很多别的因素——但关键是你得彻底转型。而我们当时还在展示“Windows无处不在”的幻灯片。

Ben: It was on the slide. I don’t understand why it didn’t work.

Ben：对啊，幻灯片上就写着。我就是不明白为什么这个策略行不通。

Steve: I wrote this thing down here. You get locked in your model. We’re a platform company. No, we’re an app and platform company.

Steve：我在这里写过一句话：你会被自己的模式锁死。我们说我们是一个平台公司。不对，我们其实是一个“应用+平台”的公司。

Ben: On our episode, we threw out the idea that Microsoft’s competitor, like the truest form that it should have taken on mobile was not actually Apple. The iPhone is not the bogey. It’s a pretty different thing. At that point, you were not a hardware company.

Ben：我们在节目中曾提出一个观点：微软在移动领域真正的竞争对手其实并不是Apple。iPhone并不是你们真正要对抗的对象。它是一个完全不同的东西。那时候你们也还不是一家硬件公司。

The bogey was Android. They were monetizing it a different way through advertising and through giving away for free. Microsoft always monetized through licensing revenue. It seems like until Android took off, Microsoft actually did have an opening to become the second mobile.

你们真正的对手是Android。他们通过广告变现、免费分发来赚钱。而微软始终靠授权收入赚钱。看起来在Android真正腾飞之前，微软其实是有机会成为移动领域的“第二极”的。

Steve: What year Christmas was this? There was the Christmas of blah-blah-blah year. It was being on time with the stuff we needed for Verizon. There was a Verizon design win because Verizon by now is really feeling it’s getting its ass kicked.

Steve：是哪一年圣诞来着？那年圣诞我们必须要及时交付Verizon所需的东西。我们在Verizon那里赢得了一个设计合作机会，因为那时候Verizon真的感觉自己被打得很惨。

David: iPhone launch is on AT\&T.

David：iPhone 是在 AT\&T 网络上推出的。

Ben: July of 2007.

Ben：2007 年 7 月。

Steve: It might’ve been Christmas even 2008.

Steve：可能是 2008 年圣诞节。

Ben: Yeah, because the App Store launch next year.

Ben：对，因为 App Store 是第二年推出的。

Steve: I think Christmas 2008. Possibly even 2009. But I think 2008.

Steve：我觉得是 2008 年圣诞节，可能甚至是 2009 年。但我倾向于说是 2008 年。

Ben: Mobile was this when it started.

Ben：移动领域也正是在这时起飞的。

Steve: It could have even been 2009. But Verizon, the empire had to strike back against AT\&T, and there was a window.

Steve：也可能是 2009 年。但那时候 Verizon，这个“帝国”必须对 AT\&T 反击，而那时确实有一个窗口期。

David: And they went with Troy.

David：然后他们选择了 Troy（代号或项目名）。

Steve: We didn’t have our stuff. Look, they would’ve taken our stuff because they could put pressure back on the manufacturers, but we didn’t have the stuff they wanted at the right time. They went Android. Then we kept pushing because I believe in staying hardcore, and then learning and fixing. The problem was we were so locked into our model, it was hard to, to say, hey, we’re going to learn and fix.

Steve：我们当时没有准备好。你看，他们本来是愿意用我们的东西的，因为他们可以借此向制造商施压。但我们没能在正确的时间点提供他们需要的产品。他们就转向了 Android。之后我们还在坚持推进，因为我相信要坚持到底、边做边学边改进。但问题是，我们太固守自己的模式了，很难说“好吧，我们要学、要改”。

I don’t know where we would’ve gone with things on phone if I had stuck around. But I probably would’ve stayed at it. Maybe it would be an Android phone at this stage. Who knows? And maybe not.

我不知道如果我当时还在公司，我们在手机领域会走到哪一步。但我可能会一直坚持做下去。到现在说不定我们做的是一款 Android 手机，谁知道呢？也可能不是。

If you think of yourself as just a platform company, you say we can’t do that. If you can think of yourself as an app and platform company with apps that are extensible, ah, then you can say, hey, we actually have a pretty cool user experience that can also leverage some things that we do and can leverage our software skills.

如果你只把自己看作一个平台公司，你会说“我们做不了那个”。但如果你把自己看作一家“应用+平台”公司，拥有可扩展的应用程序，那你就可以说：“嘿，我们其实可以提供一个很酷的用户体验，而且还能利用我们已有的能力和软件技术。”

It’s okay to embrace that competitor and extend. But there are so many technologies that are hard to not just popularize, but even get good at unless you have a phone these days.

去“拥抱竞争对手”并加以扩展，这并没有问题。但如今有太多技术，如果你没有手机端的存在，别说普及了，连掌握都很难。

Just take voice. If you want to really be good at voice, you got to get enough signal and you’ll get the signal off the phone. You can’t say, talking to my PC is sufficient. If you want to get good at maps, there are so many things where being on phones and there are some things even you can make happen by being on cars.

比如语音。如果你真想在语音技术上做得好，你就必须收集足够的用户语音数据，而这些信号来自手机。你不能说“用PC来说话就够了”。如果你想在地图服务上做得好，那也离不开手机——甚至在汽车端也可以做到一些事情。

I think Tesla gets good at certain things in software because it is a different form of mobile, so they get good at different things. But we missed. Should the company have kept after it? I don’t know. Satya knows and Amy and company, they know where they were.

我认为 Tesla 能在某些软件领域做得好，是因为它代表了另一种形式的“移动终端”，所以他们擅长的事情也不一样。但我们错过了。公司是否该坚持做下去？我不知道。Satya 和 Amy 他们知道自己当时身处什么位置。

But to your original question, big companies deciding, well, it’s not always a mistake to build off what you got, but it can be. Try to get outside of yourself. If you get in, do you have the ability from the top to shake the system and say, no, we started with our old model, but it’s not going to work.

但回到你最初的问题，大公司决定要不要在现有基础上延展业务，这并不总是错误，但有可能是错的。你必须跳出自己的框架。如果你决定进入一个新领域，你是否具备高层级别的推动力来动摇整个体系，说：“我们是从老模式出发的，但这行不通了。”

That’s what I did with Surface. I didn’t wind up. It hasn’t played out partly. I didn’t have as much time with it. There were no high-end PCs that would really compete with Mac. I decided the only way we were going to get there, we couldn’t sit there with our OEM model and have it work, if we’re going to have high-end PCs that appealed to users because I wanted us to be a consumer/user company, not just an IT company.

我当初在 Surface 项目上就是这么干的。虽然最终没有完全实现预期，部分原因是我没有太多时间继续推动。但当时市面上没有能真正和 Mac 竞争的高端PC。我决定：我们不可能继续靠OEM模式坐等成功。要想做出吸引用户的高端PC，我们必须亲自上阵。因为我希望微软成为一家面向消费者和用户的公司，而不仅仅是IT企业。

Thinkpad had IBM. By then, Lenovo had some higher-end computers. But you never saw them in schools. You never saw them in coffee shops. We needed a high-end PC, and the economics, marketing, and romancing it was not going to be an option for our OEMs. I said we got to go do Surface. Again, would we have tweaked things, done things a little bit better? Part of that, iPad, sure. But the model was not going to work.

IBM 有 ThinkPad。那时联想也有一些高端电脑。但你从没在学校里见过它们，也没在咖啡店里见过它们。我们需要一款真正的高端PC，而经济模型、市场营销、用户塑造这些事，我们的OEM伙伴是做不到的。我说，我们得自己做 Surface。当然了，我们是不是还可以做得更好些，比如像 iPad 那样做些调整？或许吧。但可以肯定的是，旧的模式根本行不通。

Ben: We’ve spent a lot of time talking about all these bets that sound very reasonable to make in mobile, in search. We didn’t talk about social, but in social and all the dancing you did with Mark Zuckerberg over the years, in Yahoo, in all these things that ended up not panning out, and these were trillion-dollar companies that were built not inside of Microsoft.

Ben：我们已经花了很多时间讨论在移动、搜索领域这些听起来非常合理的押注。我们还没谈到社交，但你在这方面也做了很多尝试，比如和马克·扎克伯格多年来的“共舞”，还有 Yahoo 等等，最终这些都没成，而这些领域却孕育出了不在微软内部诞生的万亿美元级公司。

We talked about one multi-trillion dollar thing that did work with the enterprise. There’s another one with Azure. Can you tell us the story of how Azure really got started?

我们讲过一个确实在企业市场成功了的万亿级业务，还有另一个，那就是 Azure。你能讲讲 Azure 是如何真正起步的吗？

Steve: We are in probably 2005–2006. AWS has a little lift off. I think AWS comes to market around then. It’s not like the cloud is some surprise to us. The Energizer, if you go all the way back to that Energizer thing from the mid-90s, it’s all about the cloud. It’s before it was called the cloud. It’s before all the infrastructure that becomes the cloud.

Steve：大概是在 2005 到 2006 年。当时 AWS 刚有一点起色。我记得 AWS 就是那时候推出的。云计算对我们来说并不是什么突然冒出来的东西。如果你回到 90 年代中期我们做 Energizer 的时候，那项目其实就是关于云的，只不过当时还没人叫它“云”。那时还没有后来构成云计算的各种基础设施。

It’s not like we say, oh, woke up one day, it’s oh, there’s AWS. We didn’t wake up one day and say, oh there are backends to applications too. We’ve been doing that with Windows Server and SQL Server. We’ve been in the cloud, blah-blah-blah. But at that point, I think we might have already had Exchange in the cloud as a standard product. Which you have to remember is super important because I really want to give you my sense of what Microsoft’s businesses are.

并不是说我们哪天一觉醒来才发现：“哦，居然有个 AWS。”我们也不是突然才意识到：“哦，原来应用程序还有后台服务。”我们早就在做这些了，用的是 Windows Server 和 SQL Server。我们也早就“在云里”了，诸如此类。当时我记得我们可能已经把 Exchange 放在云上作为标准产品了。你得记住这点非常重要，因为我很想让你明白微软的业务构成到底是什么。

But we didn’t have a platform. So I said, we got to do one. Let’s go get Cutler. I say, okay, we got to get Cutler on it. Cutler and I have a great relationship. To this day, we have a great relationship. He’s a personal friend.

但我们那时还没有一个真正的平台。所以我说，我们必须做一个。我们得找 Cutler。我说，好，我们得让 Cutler 来做这事。我和 Cutler 的关系非常好，直到今天我们仍然是非常好的朋友。他是我个人的朋友。

Ben: He’s still writing code at Microsoft.

Ben：他现在还在微软写代码。

Steve: He’s still writing code at Microsoft.

Steve：他现在还在微软写代码。

Ben: Unbelievable.

Ben：简直难以置信。

Steve: Cutler and I have been to a basketball game together. We’ve played golf a number of times. We’ve done golf trips together. Cutler’s a hard ass at work. If he doesn’t want to do something, he’ll tell you. If he thinks you are wrong, he’ll tell you. If he thinks somebody else in the organization is bad, he’ll tell you.

Steve：我和 Cutler 一起看过篮球比赛，也一起打过好几次高尔夫，还一起去过高尔夫旅行。他在工作上是个硬骨头。如果他不想干某件事，他会直接告诉你。如果他觉得你错了，他会告诉你。如果他认为公司里某人不行，他也会告诉你。

David: He’s like a thoroughbred horse.

David：他就像一匹纯种赛马。

Steve: He’s very blunt.

Steve：他非常直接。

David: You can run really fast, but you got to get him.

David：他可以跑得非常快，但你得先把他驾驭好。

Steve: He’s very blunt, was a great athlete in college. Two sports. I think he played maybe three even in college. But anyway, so I get Cutler, and there’s a guy working in MSR who I think is underutilized too. This guy Amitabh Srivastava, you guys talk about. I thought he was underutilized doing what he is doing. So grab him, grab Cutler, bring them both onto this project. Is Billy still with the company?

Steve：他非常直率，大学时是个很棒的运动员，至少打过两种体育项目，我记得可能还打过三种。总之，我找来了 Cutler，还有微软研究院里有个我觉得被埋没的人，Amitabh Srivastava，你们也提到过他。我觉得他当时的工作没能充分发挥他的能力。所以我把他和 Cutler 一起拉到这个项目上。那时候 Billy 还在公司吗？

David: He’s about to transition out.

David：他差不多就要离开了。

Steve: He’s about to leave, I think.

Steve：我记得他那时候正要离职。

David: Yeah. I think he had probably told you that he was going to leave.

David：是的，我想他当时可能已经告诉你他打算离开了。

Steve: He had told me but hadn’t left yet. He was involved until he left. Even then, different nature of involvement. But anyway, I get Cutler and Amitabh to go do this thing. Then Cutler brings some of his (I’ll call) gang, his favorite guys. He brings them over because he’s a magnet for talent, and we get started.

Steve：他跟我说过要离开，但那时候还没走。他一直有参与，直到离开。虽然那时候他的参与性质已经变了。但总之，我让 Cutler 和 Amitabh 去做这件事。然后 Cutler 带来了一些他最喜欢、最信任的人——我姑且称他们为他的“帮派”。他把他们带过来，因为他就是个吸引人才的磁铁，于是我们就开始干了。

We made an explicit decision. I guess you could say it’s also a function of thinking Windows first. I think you guys may have talked about this in your episode. We say we’re going to build Platform as a Service because it’s a Windows platform.

我们当时做了一个明确的决定。我想你们节目里可能也讲过，这个决定多少也受“Windows 优先”的思维影响。我们说要打造平台即服务（PaaS），因为我们有 Windows 这个平台。

Infrastructure as a service a little bit, if you think about it. You are by nature accepting everybody’s infrastructure. It’s “by nature,” “multi-platform.” You become a different kind of a platform because you’re running other people’s Linux and whatever.

如果你考虑基础设施即服务（IaaS），那就意味着你本质上要接受各种各样的基础设施。它“天生”就是“多平台”的，因为你得运行别人的 Linux 或其他操作系统。这会让你成为另一种类型的平台。

Ben: It doesn’t leverage Microsoft’s strength of owning the Windows franchise if you’re just going to be infrastructure.

Ben：如果只是做基础设施，那就无法发挥微软拥有 Windows 特许经营权的优势。

Steve: No, it doesn’t leverage our strengths in the sense that we’ve got great low-level operating system people. We have all the talent to go do it, and it was explicit we wanted to do Platform as a Service. We said: (a) they’re doing it, (b) it’s all about the developers. If it’s all about the developers, then you got to have Platform as a Service, not just Infrastructure as a Service.

Steve：是的，那样就没法发挥我们的优势，比如我们在底层操作系统方面的人才。我们拥有去做这件事的一切人才资源，我们也非常明确地要做平台即服务。我们的逻辑是：（a）别人已经在做，（b）一切都是为了开发者。如果一切都围绕开发者，那你就得做 PaaS，而不仅仅是 IaaS。

Ben: Well that assumes that the developers targeting Windows Server are still a big, strong, important, relevant developer group.

Ben：那也就意味着，面向 Windows Server 的开发者群体仍然是庞大、强大、重要且有实际影响力的。

Steve: Which they were and they weren’t. Windows Server had a strong developer group. Unix had a strong developer group. On the front end, Windows was definitely stronger. On the backend, Unix was definitely stronger.

Steve：这既对也不对。Windows Server 的确有一批强大的开发者群体，Unix 也一样。在前端，Windows 明显更强；但在后端，Unix 更强。

Ben: But on the front end, by 2006–2007, the web was clearly the emerging developer platform of choice.

Ben：但到了 2006–2007 年，在前端领域，Web 显然已经成为开发者新宠的崛起平台。

Steve: Absolutely emerging. Not fully emerged. Emerging.

Steve：确实正在崛起，但还没有完全取代其他。是“正在崛起”。

Ben: I would challenge you to say, in 2006 what amazing Windows apps were coming out that would sweep the world and go get a hundred million users because they were great apps?

Ben：那我就要挑战一下了——2006 年有什么惊艳的 Windows 应用发布，让全球为之疯狂、用户破亿，仅仅因为它们是好应用？

Steve: Hard for me to remember. I think if you go to the field of productivity, the answer is yes there were still. The problem is if you left the areas of productivity and gaming, I think the answer was no.

Steve：我一时也记不清了。但如果你看的是生产力领域，那答案是肯定的，还有一些不错的应用。但如果你离开了生产力和游戏这两个领域，那答案应该是否定的。

The web wasn’t good for a number of things for IT because people didn’t feel like they could count on the connectivity. Either the amount of bandwidth or latency or just it’s very existence. We are still at that point. I’m not saying fair. We were right in the way we thought about. Not saying that. But I’m also saying there was still a great Windows developer ecosystem. It didn’t go from a lot 1999 to nothing by 2005.

Web 在很多 IT 应用场景下并不好用，因为当时大家还不觉得可以信任网络连接——要么是带宽不够，要么是延迟太高，甚至连网络本身是否可用都无法保证。我们当时仍处于那个阶段。我不是说这样很合理，也不是说我们的想法一定正确。但我想说的是，当时 Windows 的开发者生态仍然很强。它并不是从 1999 年的辉煌一下子在 2005 年就彻底消失了。

Ben: Totally fair.

Ben：完全同意。

Steve: And then on Windows Server, Unix was stronger on the backend. Of course, we’re trying to make Windows strong and we’re trying to get to the cloud. Then we’re learning more things about the cloud from both Exchange in the cloud and Azure in the cloud.

Steve：然后在 Windows Server 上，Unix 在后端领域更强。当然，我们一直在努力让 Windows 更强，也在努力进军云计算。我们通过 Exchange 云服务和 Azure 云平台在不断学习关于云的更多内容。

How do you make it easy to provision? What’s the speed of provisioning? What do you do to serve developers? The notion that you give them a set of free usage and then let them embrace.

比如，如何简化资源配置流程？配置速度要多快？你该如何为开发者提供服务？你要提供一定额度的免费使用，然后让他们逐步接纳平台，这是一个重要理念。

Developers have two aspects too. There are developers who are not part of enterprises and they’re developers who are. The developers who are not part of enterprises need a whole different sales motion.

开发者也分两类：一类是属于企业的开发者，一类是不属于企业的。对后者，你需要完全不同的销售方式。

You can call them consumer developers, not developers of consumer apps. They’re not like big corporations in terms of the way they use. Students are an example, but there are plenty of others who are trying to do startups and blah-blah-blah.

你可以称他们为“个人开发者”，不是“开发消费级应用的开发者”，而是说他们的使用方式不像大型企业那样。有些是学生，但也有很多人是搞创业的等等。

In any event, we get going. We’re learning how to do the things. We’re building capability for sure in the cloud through both products. By the time I leave, we have some momentum with Azure, but some momentum. The big momentum really is in the last 11 years since I left.

不管怎样，我们开始做了。我们在学习怎么做这些事，并且确实通过这两个产品在云端建立了能力。到我离开微软的时候，Azure 已经开始有些起势，但只是“开始”。真正的爆发式增长，其实是在我离开后的这 11 年里发生的。

David: Well, I think you’re bypassing and underselling here. It really struck me as you were describing the challenges around with a big company like Microsoft, and attacking wildly different vectors like mobile, search, hardware. Azure was that. The cloud was extremely disruptive. The server and tools, what you were doing.

David：我觉得你这段话有点谦虚了。在你描述微软这类大公司在面对移动、搜索、硬件等完全不同方向时所遇到的挑战时，我被触动了。Azure 其实就是其中之一。云计算本质上是极具颠覆性的。而你们当时在服务器和工具那块所做的事情……

Steve: It was extremely disruptive, but it wasn’t. Yes and no. The things we understood were translatable. Now, getting the company, people get locked into a model.

Steve：云确实是极具颠覆性的，但也不完全是。我们了解的一些东西是可以迁移应用的。问题是，让整个公司接受这点并不容易，因为人们很容易被既有模式所束缚。

David: Well you had to replace server and tools. Leadership to make this happen.

David：但你们必须要更新服务器和工具这块的业务。而这背后需要的是领导力来推动转型。

Steve: Well IT accept things that run in the cloud. That was not obvious back in 2008–2009. It’s not like Amazon was an enterprise company at the time. It was mostly for startups. That’s who was using AWS at the time, so no. I do agree with you. We had to shake up our internal culture.

Steve：IT 部门是否会接受云端运行的系统？在 2008–2009 年时，这一点可并不明显。那个时候的亚马逊还不是一家企业级公司，AWS 基本上就是给创业公司用的。所以不，确实如你所说，我们当时必须要撼动公司的内部文化。

This was my basic message. God dang it. This is our future. We can preserve and enhance these businesses. We can take more value out of the system because the customers don’t have to set up their servers anymore. They don’t have to do all this work. Essentially, money that would’ve been spent on people and hardware will get spent with us. Come on, we’re going to do this.

我当时传达的核心信息就是：天啊，这就是我们的未来。我们可以保住并提升这些业务。我们可以从整个系统中获得更多价值，因为客户不用再自己部署服务器了，不用再做那么多杂活。换句话说，本来花在人力和硬件上的钱，现在可以花到我们这里来了。加油，我们必须干成这事！

It was hard for me even telling our people there was still La Résistance, as they say, and that’s why I did the speech at UDub, where we talked about the fact that we’re all in on the cloud. It was partly a reminder to people, get with it or get out of it. Get out of the way.

即便是对我们自己员工说这番话也很难，因为还存在所谓的“抵抗运动”（La Résistance），这也是我为什么要在华盛顿大学（UDub）发表那次演讲，明确告诉大家我们要全力投入云计算。这也是一种提醒：要么跟上，要么退出，别挡路。

Ben: Making an external speech to communicate something to your internal employees.

Ben：你是在用一场对外的演讲，来传达你想让内部员工知道的信息。

Steve: In a big company, man, I’ll tell you. Some of what you have to do because people believe the newspaper more than they’ll believe an internal email.

Steve：在大公司里啊，我得告诉你，有些事你非得这样做不可，因为人们宁愿相信报纸，也不愿相信一封内部邮件。

Ben: People always talk about how the think different campaign that Steve Jobs did was for Apple employees as much as it (in fact) way more than for the general public. Going back to the core initial start of Azure, I find it very interesting that Microsoft had a business called server and tools business, and that is not where Azure started. Azure started as an incubation by Ray Ozzie with a completely separate team than your existing actual product group selling server and tools.

Ben：人们总说 Steve Jobs 当年的 “Think Different” 广告其实更多是做给苹果员工看的，而不是给公众的。回到 Azure 起步的核心，我觉得很有意思的是，微软当时已经有一个叫“服务器与工具”的业务部门，但 Azure 并不是从那里开始的，而是由 Ray Ozzie 领导的一个完全独立的团队孵化出来的，和你们现有卖服务器工具的产品组完全不同。

Steve: But that’s a classic thing. It shouldn’t be mind-blowing. Windows and Windows NT were in different groups, too. Sometimes in order to protect the baby while it grows up, you can’t put it with the thing that’s established.

Steve：但这其实是很常见的事，没什么好大惊小怪的。Windows 和 Windows NT 当年也是在不同的团队。有时候，要保护一个还在成长的“婴儿”，你就不能把它放进一个已经成型的体系里。

You could say it’s part of the issue with Windows, when we tried to use Windows on things for which we probably should have started.

你也可以说，这就是我们当初在 Windows 上犯的错之一——我们试图把 Windows 强行用在一些其实应该从头做起的东西上。

David: I was going to ask you, would it have played out differently if you’d taken this approach with mobile?

David：我正想问你，如果当初你们在移动端也采取这种做法，结果会不会不同？

Steve: We did break it out, but we constrained it with Windows. We broke Windows NT out and constrained it with Windows. It worked fine because Windows belong. How you do those incubations, in this case I just said, look. It’ll get probably subsumed. I don’t know.

Steve：我们确实把它独立出来了，但又用 Windows 把它框住了。我们当初是把 Windows NT 独立出来的，但还是受限于 Windows，那时候还行，因为 Windows 本来就适合。孵化新东西的方式很关键，在 Azure 的案例中我就说：它最后可能会被整合进去，我也不确定。

Partly, Ray wanted some operating control over the thing, and putting it under \[...] would’ve made it harder for Ray. Obviously, it was less palatable. I’m not sure Cutler would’ve gone to work on it if it was all server tools. But it was the right thing to do even though it was “part of the future of server.” It was the future of server and tools, essentially.

部分原因是 Ray 想要对这个项目有一定的运营掌控权，如果当初把它归到现有组织下，他的权限就会受限。显然那样不太可行。我也不确定，如果是整个服务器工具部门的项目，Cutler 会不会愿意加入。但我们当时的决定是对的，虽然说 Azure 是“服务器未来的一部分”，但本质上它就是服务器与工具的未来。

Ben: And so this is pretty lost in the common narrative. If this is 2006, that is 7–8 years before you left Microsoft.

Ben：而这些内容其实在主流叙事中是被忽略的。如果这是发生在 2006 年，那可是你离开微软前整整七八年的事了。

Steve: Yeah, eight years. We’d been working on the cloud since Energizer. We’d been working on Azure for eight years. People think everything in tech gets popular in 10 minutes.

Steve：是的，八年了。我们从 Energizer 项目开始就在搞云计算，Azure 也是做了整整八年。人们总以为科技行业的事十分钟就能火起来。

Ben: People think Acquired was founded two years ago.

Ben：人们还以为 Acquired 是两年前才创办的。

Steve: Good point.

Steve：说得对。

David: Different scale.

David：只是规模不同而已。

Steve: When was OpenAI actually founded?

Steve：OpenAI 是哪年创办的来着？

David: 2016, I think.

David：我记得是 2016 年。

Steve: So seven or eight years after it really became something. Fair to say. I give them all the credit in the world, seven or eight years. Most things take a while. Even things that are “oh, they just burst on the scene.” People have been sweating blood, sweat, and tears for years before these things get lift-off, as I call it my little deck here. We were starting to get lift-off, but yeah, eight years. We had more in on Exchange. Most businesses are zero trick ponies.

Steve：那也是过了七八年之后才真正成事。这个说法没错。我完全认可他们的努力——七八年。大多数事情都需要时间。即便看起来是“突然爆红”，背后其实也是多年流血流汗的结果，我在我的小 PPT 里把这叫做“起飞”。我们那时也才刚刚开始起飞，但确实搞了八年。我们在 Exchange 上花得还更多。绝大多数业务其实都是“一招鲜吃遍天”的——甚至连一招都没有。

Ben: You never create a billion dollar business.

Ben：大多数人终其一生都没法创造一个十亿美元的业务。

Steve: Yeah. You might create something that goes nowhere. You might create what’s essentially a feature for somebody else’s business and get acquired. You might. I call that zero tricks. Then you get a one-trick pony. One-trick ponies are amazing. People should be in awe of one-trick ponies.

Steve：是啊，你也可能搞出个什么东西，最后毫无建树。也可能你做出来的本质上只是别人业务的一个小功能，然后被收购了。我把这种叫“零绝技”。接下来是“一招鲜”。一招鲜已经了不起了，人们应该敬佩那些一招鲜的公司。

David: One-trick ponies are \$50–\$100 billion market cap companies.

David：一招鲜公司都能做到五百亿到一千亿美元市值。

Steve: Or it could be more.

Steve：甚至可以更高。

David: Yeah, or more. They’re not many one-trick ponies.

David：是啊，可能更多。这种公司并不多。

Steve: I might argue that Google’s a one to one-and-a-half–trick pony. Still, if you just look at its revenue…

Steve：我可能会说谷歌算是一招半鲜。看看它的收入结构……

Ben: 80% search ad revenue, something like that.

Ben：大概 80% 来自搜索广告吧。

Steve: YouTube’s half a trick you can call it a psychic trick, but it’s, it’s not clearly a second trick. And they’re huge. They have great market cap.

Steve：YouTube 算半招，可以说是“精神胜利法”，但它还算不上完整的第二招。但谷歌依然是个超级巨头，市值惊人。

TSMC. You did an episode on them. They’re a one-trick pony. A very successful one-trick pony. Nvidia is a one-trick pony.

台积电，你们做过一期节目。他们是一招鲜公司，非常成功。英伟达也是一招鲜。

Ben: Well, gaming and AI.

Ben：他们有游戏和 AI。

Steve: Okay, I’ll give them two tricks.

Steve：好吧，那我勉强给他们算两招。

David: Two-trick pony but the first trick was not that big.

David：两招鲜，但第一招其实没那么大。

Steve: You can decide whether to call it a trick or not, but I’m not taking anything away from Nvidia, and I should know the company better. But, so you say one-trick ponies. They’re amazing. Everybody should be in awe of a one-trick pony. Now, two-trick ponies, ooh la la. Those people tend to go down in business history, especially those tricks stay alive for a long time. IBM was a one-trick pony. Microsoft two to two-and-a-half tricks.

Steve：你们可以决定那算不算一招，我不是在贬低英伟达，我应该更了解这家公司。不过说回正题，一招鲜公司就已经了不起，值得敬佩。而两招鲜？哇哦，那些公司往往会被写进商业史，特别是如果这两招能长时间维持下去。IBM 是一招鲜，微软大概算是两招到两招半。

David: All right, give us your trick accounting.

David：好吧，说说你怎么数微软的这几招。

Steve: Okay, you could do it a little differently. I’m going to call the desktop business, which I include Windows and Office, and the server/enterprise business, BackOffice. Two tricks.

Steve：好，我们可以换种方式来看。我把桌面业务（包括 Windows 和 Office）算作一招，把服务器/企业业务（BackOffice）算作另一招，一共两招。

Now, both tricks could have died if they didn’t get moved to the cloud, and I knew they could die. But they’re two tricks. Two different revenue models, two different licensing models, essentially different sales motions. Even the way Microsoft sells those stuff. I don’t know about today, but when I left, they were different muscles.

不过这两招如果没迁移到云上，都可能会死掉，我当时很清楚这一点。但它们的确是两招。两个不同的营收模式、不同的授权模式、本质上是不同的销售方式。甚至微软销售这些产品的方法也不同。我不知道现在是不是还这样，但我离开时，它们是用两套“肌肉”在运作。

One account manager, two different muscles. Because one you’re selling applications, and one you’re just selling, hey, this is to serve your users. You need an AD account, an Exchange account. It’s exactly Windows. That’s what you need. This is what M365, you could call the modern translation of those two things are the Windows OEM business and M365, and Azure.

一个客户经理，同时运用两种“肌肉”。因为一方面你在卖应用程序，另一方面你是在卖基础服务，比如说：“嘿，这个是为了服务你的用户。你需要一个 AD 账号，一个 Exchange 账号，就是 Windows，正是你所需。”你可以把 M365 看作是这两者在现代的延续，也就是 Windows OEM 业务、M365 和 Azure。

Then you could say, is gaming its own trick? I call it a half a trick. Just like you two. It’s half a trick.

然后你可以问，游戏算不算一招？我把它叫做半招，就像你们两个说的，它算是半招。

Ben: This is an update since we last talked. I feel like we had a conversation at one point were we both landed in unclear how profitable that business is for Microsoft relative to other.

Ben：这是我们上次谈话之后的新观点。我记得我们当时讨论过，我们俩都不太确定这个游戏业务对微软来说到底有多盈利，相较于其他业务来说。

Steve: I could call it a half trick, or you could say it could be a trick. Look, I would say Microsoft is optimistic it’ll be a full-on trick. I ran into Phil Spencer at the golf course and he’s a real optimistic guy. It could be.

Steve：我可以继续叫它半招，也可以说它未来可能成为完整的一招。微软是乐观的，希望它能成为一整招。我在高尔夫球场遇到 Phil Spencer，他是个非常乐观的人。也许真能成。

David: I’ll give you this. If we call NVIDIA’s first trick a full trick, then Xbox is a full trick. There we go.

David：我同意你。如果我们把英伟达的第一招算作完整的一招，那 Xbox 也可以算作完整的一招。行，那就这么说吧。

Steve: Whatever you want to call it. You said it’s a small trick and I think that’s probably right. That’s amazing. Amazon’s a two-tricker. AWS and the store, they’re two-tricker. Apple’s two-tricks.

Steve：你想怎么叫都行。你们说它是小招，我觉得这可能确实是对的。很了不起。亚马逊是“两招公司”，AWS 和电商平台。苹果也是“两招”。

Ben: What’s your trick accounting there?

Ben：那你怎么给苹果算“几招”的？

Steve: Mac and mobile, if you want to say it’s high power consumption and low power consumption.

Steve：Mac 和移动设备吧，如果你愿意这么分的话，可以说是高功耗设备和低功耗设备。

Ben: Is it fair to call services a third? By my estimates, their profit dollars from services have now eclipsed iPhone hardware profit.

Ben：那服务算不算第三招？据我估算，他们的服务利润现在已经超过了 iPhone 硬件的利润。

Steve: I consider it just part of the trick.

Steve：我觉得那只是同一招的一部分。

David: If you go by your platform definition, it’s part of the platform.

David：如果照你对“平台”的定义，那它是平台的一部分。

Steve: I call really a trick, they’ve just monetized it. It’s like us adding things to Office and redoing the EA.

Steve：我所谓的一招，指的是他们只是把已有的东西变现了。这就像我们给 Office 加新功能，重做企业协议（EA）一样。

Ben: It’s a monetization model.

Ben：这就是一种变现模式。

Steve: It’s an additional monetization model, but it’s not a new locomotive. A locomotive is the business that can pull the cabooses, and the locomotive remains the phone. The services business go away pretty quick if the phone volume fell apart. It’s additional, very important…

Steve：这是一种额外的变现方式，但它不是一台“新火车头”。所谓火车头，是能拉动整列车厢的核心业务，而火车头仍然是 iPhone。要是 iPhone 的出货量垮了，服务业务也会迅速垮掉。它是额外的，非常重要的……

Ben: But not uncorrelated the way that AWS and—

Ben：但不像 AWS 那样是独立的不相关业务——

Steve: No. And I think Mac versus everything iOS is also uncorrelated.

Steve：没错。我也觉得 Mac 和整个 iOS 体系之间是彼此独立的。

David: Yeah. I get the sense you really wanted three tricks.

David：对。我感觉你是真的很想有第三招。

Steve: Abso-fricking-lutely.

Steve：那是当然，太对了。

Ben: What’s the one that eats you up inside? Which one do you think you were closest to getting that you didn’t get?

Ben：那你心里最放不下的是哪一个？你觉得哪一个是你最接近成功却最终没做到的？

Steve: Not social. Forget social.

Steve：不是社交。社交别提了。

Ben: Doesn’t feel Microsoft-ey.

Ben：确实不太像微软会擅长的领域。

David: You wanted to buy Facebook.

David：但你当初想买 Facebook。

Steve: I’m going to tell you why. We’re still on the Paul Allen strategy. We’ve got to do all the software that these things will ever need. It was still of the mindset that said, and there’s an arrogance to that and there’s a hunger to that that says there’s just nothing we shouldn’t do. I don’t think that was a good mindset by the time I took over, and yet it was still baked in with Bill, baked in with me, and I think that was a mistake not focusing.

Steve：我来告诉你为什么。我们当时还在沿用保罗·艾伦那一套战略：我们必须开发这些设备未来可能需要的所有软件。那种思维方式仍然存在，带着一种傲慢，也有一种饥渴感，认为没有什么是我们不该做的。我觉得这种心态在我接手时已经不适用了，但它依然深深植根在比尔心里，也在我心里。我认为那种不聚焦的思维是个错误。

This is like asking me to pick between negative children. I don’t know. But the phone because it was a client-side device, or search because it was a productivity tool. Both of those were Microsoft big businesses. The desktop, the phone, or office, client-side devices, we had done well with a certain model. Client-side devices, our mind should have been able to wrap around, but we had to tell ourselves it didn’t look the same. Technology didn’t look the same, nor did business model.

这就像让我在“失败的孩子”中选一个一样。我也不知道。但如果要说，手机是一个客户端设备，搜索是一个生产力工具，这两个都是微软的核心业务。桌面、手机、Office，这些客户端设备我们曾经用一套模式做得很好。客户端设备，我们本应该能理解得过来，但我们得告诉自己，它们看起来已经不一样了。技术不一样，商业模式也不一样。

Ben: Then business model astonishingly for search. Advertising, call it 2005. I think Google was making more money off of a PC user than Microsoft was because their business model generated more search revenue.

Ben：而且搜索的商业模式真让人吃惊。2005 年左右，广告变现已经非常成功。我觉得谷歌那时从每个 PC 用户身上赚的钱可能比微软还多，因为它们的商业模式让搜索收入暴增。

Steve: By 2005, I don’t think so. Not later on, I think so. But not by 2005. I would suspect not. You can go check that.

Steve：2005 年，我觉得还没有。再晚一点也许有，但 2005 年应该还没有。我不这么认为，你可以去查一查。

Ben: But isn’t that astonishing? That of the pie.

Ben：但这不也挺震撼的吗？从整个蛋糕分布上看。

Steve: And for enterprise PCs, PCs bought by businesses, it certainly wouldn’t have been the case. For consumer PC, it could well have already been the case. It actually is a notable difference because of everything else.

Steve：对于企业用的 PC，绝对不是这样的。但对消费级 PC，这种情况可能已经发生了。这其实是个非常显著的分界点，和其他一切都有关。

Our post sales monetization was with applications. We’re with ads, but it was a new productivity app. We put Office on the back by then. We would’ve had to put productivity elsewhere, in the sense that we missed a major productivity area. We were in the productivity business and in the client area, and we missed a client device. Those are the two. Nothing else we met, we “missed.”

我们后续的变现方式是通过应用。广告也算一种，但那是个新的“生产力应用”。我们当时的后端是 Office。如果你这么看，我们应该把生产力放在别的地方——也就是说我们错过了一个关键的生产力领域。我们原本是做生产力和客户端设备的，却错过了一个客户端设备。这两个地方我们错失了机会。其他的，我们没有真正“错过”。

David: You had an opportunity for four-tricks, and you got two.

David：你本有机会拿下“四招”，但最终只拿到了两招。

Steve: Yeah. Part of the problem was particularly, we didn’t see mobile as a different trick. We thought of it as underneath the Windows trick, if you will. But it means you can go through. I don’t know that I could come up with a three-trick pony for you.

Steve：对。问题部分在于我们当时没有把移动设备看作一招独立的业务。我们以为它只是“Windows 这招”的一部分。但那也说明了什么。我现在都不确定我能不能给你举个三招公司的例子。

It’s possible that at the Elon level, the Musk empire could have three tricks—cars, connectivity, and…

可能在马斯克那个层级，他的商业帝国或许算得上三招——汽车、连接性，还有……

Ben: In finance, you can do it.

Ben：在金融领域，倒是有可能做到三招。

Steve: Finance, I don’t think there are multiple tricks. You could say asset management versus the…

Steve：金融嘛，我不认为能有那么多招。你可以说资产管理和……

Ben: Investment banking is different.

Ben：投行是完全不同的一招。

Steve: Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not convinced. But I hear you. Possible.

Steve：也许吧。我不知道。我还没被说服。但我听懂你的意思了，是有可能的。

David: Well, I think this makes sense because Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world with two. So if anybody have three—

David：嗯，我觉得这也说得通，因为微软只靠两招就成了全球最有价值的公司。如果真有人能有三招……

Steve: If you look at the most valuables, you’re not going to find threes.

Steve：你去看那些最值钱的公司，你很难看到三招公司。

Ben: That’s a good point. Sony is nowhere near the market cap of these companies, but it’s pretty evenly diversified across their five segments, from gaming to consumer electronics.

Ben：这倒是个好观点。索尼的市值远不及这些公司，但它在游戏、消费电子等五大板块之间分布得非常均衡。

David: Movies, music, finance.

David：还有电影、音乐、金融。

Ben: Yeah. They have a remarkable diversified.

Ben：对，他们的业务多元化确实很惊人。

Steve: They bought businesses in multiple areas, but I can’t call Sony Pictures a trick. It’s just not big enough. What you can acquire to start a trick, that part there’s no pride. Pride in having a trick that starts with something small.

Steve：他们在多个领域收购了业务，但我不能把索尼影业称为“一招”。它还不够大。你可以靠收购开始一招，这没什么好自豪的。真正值得骄傲的是一招从小做起，自己干出来。

David: Android’s a good example. Google bought Android, but that’s a trick for them.

David：安卓是个好例子。谷歌收购了安卓，但它现在确实成了他们的一招。

Steve: Well, Android’s not a trick. You highlighted it. Android is a piece of the search trick.

Steve：不，安卓不算一招。你其实已经点到了——安卓只是搜索那一招的一部分。

Ben: It’s a lead gen.

Ben：它是一个引流工具。

Steve: Exactly. Lead generation for search. Yeah, that’s right.

Steve：没错，是为了搜索做引流。对，正是这样。

Ben: Okay. Listeners, now is a great time to thank one of our longtime friends of the show, but actually first time sponsor, Vercel.

Ben：好了，各位听众，现在是感谢我们节目的老朋友、但却是第一次赞助的公司——Vercel——的好时机。

David: Vercel is an awesome company. Over the past few years, they’ve become the infrastructure backbone that powers modern web development. If you visited a fast, responsive website lately, there’s a good chance it was built and deployed on Vercel.

David：Vercel 是一家非常出色的公司。过去几年里，他们已经成为现代网页开发背后的基础设施支柱。你最近访问的那些快速、响应迅速的网站，很有可能就是通过 Vercel 搭建和部署的。

Ben: The reason for this is Vercel has completely reimagined the entire web developer experience. In the old world before Vercel, if you were a web developer, you basically had two completely different jobs you had to do. One was write code, and then you had to deploy the code to your production infrastructure, which (a) was not a simple task and distracted you from what you were really good at, and (b) usually introduced all sorts of bugs and reliability or latency issues that you had to iron out.

Ben：原因在于 Vercel 彻底重新定义了整个网页开发者的体验。在 Vercel 出现之前，作为一名网页开发者，你实际上要做两份完全不同的工作：一是写代码，二是将代码部署到生产环境，而部署（a）并不是一件简单的事，会让你分心、远离你的核心能力；（b）还常常会引入各种 bug 和可靠性或延迟问题，需要你花时间修复。

David: Vercel did away with this distinction entirely. They built what they call the complete platform for the web, which is a framework to find infrastructure that transforms your code into live, globally distributed production applications automatically. For developers, there’s no more wrestling with deployment nonsense. You just push your code and it runs, fast.

David：Vercel 完全消除了这种割裂。他们构建了所谓的“完整网络平台”，这是一种将代码自动转化为在线、全球分发的生产级应用的框架化基础设施。对于开发者而言，不再需要和部署的繁琐问题纠缠，只需提交代码，它就能立即运行，而且速度极快。

Ben: It’s a pretty incredible technical infrastructure, which is no surprise because Vercel’s founder, Guillermo Rauch, is himself a pioneering web developer in the modern era. He started Next.js, which is one of the world’s most popular open source frameworks used by folks like Walmart, the Verge, Nike, Hulu, Anthropic, Claude, the list goes on.

Ben：这是一个令人惊叹的技术基础设施，这并不令人意外，因为 Vercel 的创始人 Guillermo Rauch 本身就是现代网页开发领域的先驱。他创建了 Next.js，这是全球最受欢迎的开源框架之一，被沃尔玛、The Verge、耐克、Hulu、Anthropic、Claude 等众多公司使用。

David: We did an ACQ2 episode with Guillermo back in February. Go check it out. You can’t listen to that and not walk away going, wow, this guy and this company are unbelievably compelling.

David：我们在今年二月做了一期与 Guillermo 的 ACQ2 节目。一定要去听一听。你听完之后一定会说：“哇，这个人和这家公司太令人惊艳了。”

Ben: We’ll be talking about Vercel all season, including their newest product that is just blowing up called V0, which is an actual AI web developer that you can just ask in plain English to build websites for you.

Ben：这一季我们都会持续聊到 Vercel，包括他们最新爆红的产品 V0。这是一位真正的 AI 网页开发者，你只需要用普通英语告诉它，它就能帮你构建网站。

David: It’s wild. Go listen to the ACQ2 episode and it’ll become obvious why Guillermo and Vercel didn’t stop at just, oh, let’s eliminate deployment as a barrier to people building fast websites. Let’s also now go eliminate writing code as a barrier as well.

David：这太疯狂了。去听听那期 ACQ2 节目，你就会明白，为什么 Guillermo 和 Vercel 不满足于仅仅消除“部署”这一障碍，让人们能更快地构建网站——他们还在努力连“写代码”这个障碍都一起消除掉。

Ben: In some cases. Well, if you want to learn more about what Vercel can do for web development at your company and join customers like OpenAI, Granola, Runway, Supreme, Chick-fil-A, Ramp, PayPal, Under Armour, and NerdWallet—gosh, that is a lot—head on over to vercel.com/acquired, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

Ben：在某些情况下确实如此。如果你想了解 Vercel 能为你们公司的网页开发做些什么，并加入 OpenAI、Granola、Runway、Supreme、Chick-fil-A、Ramp、PayPal、Under Armour 和 NerdWallet 等客户的行列——天哪，真的好多公司——那就访问 vercel.com/acquired，告诉他们是 Ben 和 David 推荐的。

Okay. We’ve been dwelling here in the products and reflecting back on big wins and misses. During your tenure as CEO, can you reflect back on your non-product wins and mistakes?

好了，我们刚才一直在讨论产品，回顾了一些重大的成功和失误。在你担任 CEO 期间，能否谈谈你在非产品方面的成败得失？

Steve: My biggest hit from my time running sales to president to CEO is establishing us with IT departments, IT professionals—you can call that the enterprise, if you will—putting in the framework from a sales and marketing perspective, the staff, It’s a capability we had to develop. Nobody developed that software model but us. We invented essentially how you do that.

Steve：我从负责销售到后来担任总裁再到 CEO，期间最重要的成就，就是我们成功建立了与 IT 部门、IT 专业人士的联系——你可以称之为企业市场。从销售和市场的角度建立了完整的架构、团队，这是我们必须开发的一种能力。没有其他人建立那种软件销售模式，只有我们自己发明了该怎么做。

Oracle had done some invention, but we came on and did our own invention. We took it to the cloud. We were able to successfully navigate that. From sales, there are product parts to that that let you highlight, but that’s a big deal and I feel very, very proud about that.

Oracle 曾经也有一些创新，但我们后来做出了自己的发明。我们将它带入了云端，我们成功实现了转型。虽然其中有一部分是产品方面的，但从销售的角度来说，这是一件大事，我对此感到非常自豪。

From a financial standpoint, everybody likes to say we about tripled revenue and about tripled profit. The truth is, we dramatically increased profit more than a triple. People forget there was a major change that came along early in my tenure. That’s the move to have to expense stock options.

从财务角度来看，大家常说我们把收入提高了大约三倍，利润也差不多三倍。其实，利润的增长远不止三倍。大家往往忽略了我任期初期发生的一个重大变化：我们开始将股票期权计入费用。

If you had restated our books to the time I actually took over, stock option expense would have reduced profits notably. Stock options were unaccounted for. If you look at what starting profitability would’ve looked like if stock options had, it would’ve been lower, and the multiple over my tenure would’ve been much more than three.

如果你把账目重新调整到我刚上任时的标准，把股票期权费用算进去，那利润会显著减少。那时股票期权是不计入账面的。如果你用包含股票期权的方式来算起始利润，那起点就低了，那么整个任期内利润的增长倍数就远远不止三倍。

Ben: Okay, so three plus times in revenue.

Ben：好的，所以收入是三倍多。

Steve: I think you might say three in revenue and probably closer to four plus, five maybe even on profit.

Steve：我觉得收入大概是三倍，而利润更可能是四倍多，甚至可能是五倍。

About the same time the dot-com bubble busts. You have two problems. Number one, now we’re showing our books all this expense for stock options. Okay. But people don’t value those things what we have to expense. And the stock is flat, so they value them even less.

这和互联网泡沫破裂的时期差不多。你面临两个问题：第一，现在我们账面上都要显示股票期权的费用。好吧，但投资人并不把这些我们必须列支的项目当回事。而且当时股价横盘，人们对这些股票期权的价值评估就更低了。

David: This is a really insidious problem.

David：这是一个非常棘手的问题。

Steve: You got to get rid of stock options. We transition then from stock options to stock awards, which if you notice, I think we were the first to make that as a major transition, but everybody’s made the same transition with the exception of a few senior executives, options are not the primary form of compensation. Little different in startups. But when you look at larger companies, everybody’s,

Steve：你必须得淘汰股票期权。我们后来从股票期权转向股票授予（Stock Awards），如果你注意到的话，我认为我们是最早完成这一重大转变的公司之一，除了少数高级管理层之外，股票期权已经不再是主要的薪酬形式。初创公司会略有不同。但你看看大公司，现在基本都是这样。

David: Even startups are now doing RSUs.

David：甚至连一些初创公司现在都在发放限制性股票单位（RSUs）了。

大企业的成长有限，现在技术最好的都想去OpenAI，或者更小的企业。

Steve: RSUs, and we had to start that.

Steve：对，RSUs，而我们是这方面的开创者之一。

David: I didn’t realize that Microsoft started that.

David：我之前没意识到是微软带头开始的。

Steve: You can check, but I know we moved before most of the tech companies.

Steve：你可以查一下，但我确定我们比大多数科技公司更早转型。

Ben: It’s a tough thing to have to inherit right at the beginning of your tenure, coming off of an already all-time high multiple of the stock price.

Ben：你一上任就遇到这种情况确实很难应对，当时的股价已经处于历史最高估值水平。

Steve: The dot-com bubble bursting meant our stock price burst into—

Steve：互联网泡沫破裂意味着我们的股价也随之崩塌——

David: But I think to your point, what you’re saying is this became an employee motivation cultural issue. It’s not just stock price.

David：但我觉得你想表达的是，这不仅仅是股价的问题，它演变成了员工激励和公司文化的问题。

Steve: No. We had two problems. Before the dot-com bubble burst, you have everybody saying, oh, maybe we should go to a dot-com company because we’re going to make a lot more money. Then the bubble burst and everybody says, I’m certain you guys \[...] see the movie Oklahoma, but there’s a song, Pore Jud is daid.

Steve：没错。我们当时面临两个问题。泡沫破裂之前，大家都在说，“哦，也许我们应该去一家 dot-com 公司，那样能赚更多钱。”泡沫破裂之后，大家又说，我敢肯定你们看过那部电影《俄克拉荷马》，里面有首歌叫《Pore Jud is Daid》（可怜的贾德死了）。

Ben: Poor Jud is Dead, absolutely.

Ben：对，《可怜的贾德死了》，当然记得。

Steve: A candle lights his haid. That was the way people felt about stock compensation. And not just at our place. People were down because everybody thought they had a ton and then they thought they had less.

Steve：他头上点着蜡烛。这就是当时人们对股票薪酬的感受。不只是我们公司的人，大家都感到沮丧，因为原本以为自己拥有很多，后来却发现价值大大缩水。

It was a real employee morale issue in the early 2000s. We had to really sell the stuff in. That’s a big thing I had to work on. Obviously the antitrust issues.

这是2000年代初期一个真正影响员工士气的大问题。我们必须重新去宣传和推行新的激励机制。这是我必须重点处理的一件大事。当然，还有反垄断问题。

David: When you took over as CEO, what we said in our episode was that was actually your number one priority, was just end this.

David：你刚接任CEO时，我们在节目中说，这其实是你最优先处理的事情——把反垄断案彻底解决。

Steve: It was right up there, yeah. It was up there. I think when I took over, I’m not even sure we saw a path to resolution, but having it an overhang.

Steve：没错，确实是最重要的事情之一。我刚接手时，我们甚至都看不到解决的路径，但它像个阴影一样笼罩着公司。

I’ll give you a story because it was after I took over as CEO. We had an executive retreat. We did it down in Bend, Oregon. I can’t remember the name of the lodge. Sun River, I think. We all fly down there. We rented a plane to fly everybody down there. I don’t know how many people by then, it was probably 80–90, something like that.

我给你讲个故事，那是在我接任CEO之后。我们搞了一个高管闭门会议，地点在俄勒冈州的本德市。我记不得旅馆名字了，好像叫Sun River。我们包了一架飞机把所有人带过去。那时候有多少人？大概八九十个吧。

The first session was supposed to be a report—we did this—from the field. What are people seeing out there? What’s the environment? And this guy, Orlando Ayala, was running sales at the time. He gets up—this is probably 2002-ish, 2001–2002; we’re still in the throes of the thing—my name is Orlando Ayala. I’m a proud Colombian. I am not a proud Microsoftee today. Our integrity is under assault. My personal integrity feels like it’s under assault.

第一场会议原本是要做一个来自一线的汇报——我们一直这么做——看看外部情况如何。当时主管销售的是Orlando Ayala。他站起来——那大概是2002年左右，2001到2002年，我们还处在反垄断漩涡中——他说：“我叫Orlando Ayala，我是一个自豪的哥伦比亚人，但今天我并不为自己是微软人感到自豪。我们的诚信正受到攻击，我个人的诚信也感到受到了质疑。”

Now, he didn’t blame us for having behaved badly, but he highlighted the thing that’s on everybody’s mind, which is it wasn’t just a business issue that needed to be taken care of. It was a culture issue. It was bothering people, particularly senior people, very personally.

他并没有指责我们行为不端，但他指出了所有人心中的痛点：这不仅仅是一个需要解决的商业问题，它更是一个文化问题。这件事深深困扰着大家，尤其是高管们，很多人感到这是对自己人格的质疑。

I had this whole agenda, had to blow the thing up and reorient to address that elephant in the room. It was not where I was going with this thing. Completely remap, change the breakout sessions, focus in on this issue. Bill was not happy with the whole thing.

我原本排好了整套会议议程，但我不得不把它全盘推翻，重新聚焦到这个“房间里的大象”上。这完全不是我原计划想谈的主题。我们重新规划，改变分组讨论的内容，集中解决这个问题。比尔（盖茨）对整个事情很不高兴。

Bill bore the weight of the antitrust thing very hard because for him, I think it also felt like a personal attack. Everybody took it personally. Bill took it even more personally because he was the face of vilification, if you will for this. But it’s a reminder that it was a cultural issue to take care of, not just a market issue.

比尔背负了巨大的反垄断压力，因为我觉得对他来说，这感觉就像是一次人身攻击。所有人都很介意，但比尔尤其在意，因为他成了公众眼中的“罪人代表”。这再次提醒我们，这更是一个文化问题，而不仅仅是一个市场层面的问题。

People focus in on the, oh, were you moving slowly? Yeah, there was some of that too. People say, oh, I wonder if we can do this. That was an issue. The cultural issue I think was even bigger. He said, yeah, we got to get this thing resolved. Then there was the order to break us up. I forget what year that was.

大家关注的是：“你们是不是动作太慢了？”是的，确实有这种问题。也有人在想：“我们还能不能继续做这些事？”这是一个挑战。但我觉得文化问题更加严重。他（比尔）也说：“我们必须解决这个问题。”之后法院还下了命令要拆分我们公司。我记不清是哪一年了。

David: You were going to run one company and Bill was going to run the other company.

David：那时候的安排是你来运营一家公司，比尔来运营另一家。

Steve: We never really got to the point of really planning that through.

Steve：我们其实从未真正细致地规划过这个事情。

David: But that’s what the federal government ordered.

David：但这是联邦政府的裁决。

Steve: They ordered it split. They didn’t say who had to run which company.

Steve：他们的命令是拆分公司，但并没有说谁必须掌管哪一部分。

Ben: I think it was just that you couldn’t be at the same.

Ben：我记得命令只是说你们俩不能在同一家公司。

David: You couldn’t be at the same company.

David：对，你们俩不能在同一家公司工作。

Steve: I think it was, I would run operating systems and Bill would take applications. It just gives you a sense of where each of us were associated within the mind of the company.

Steve：我记得当时的设想是我负责操作系统，比尔负责应用软件。这也反映了在公司内部大家如何看待我们各自的角色分工。

Ben: So that’s your starting place as you’re taking over as CEO. The dot-com bubbles bursting, antitrust is dominating the company’s culture and the external narrative. You have this big accounting headache that you now have to deal with that affects the way your profitability has shown. But then there’s a decade after that where you triple the business, but the stock price is flat. Why didn’t Wall Street get?

Ben：所以这就是你接任CEO时的出发点。互联网泡沫破裂，反垄断阴影主导了公司的文化和外部叙事，你还得应对一个巨大的会计难题，这影响了利润的呈现。但接下来的十年里，你让公司业绩增长了三倍，可股价却基本持平。华尔街为什么不买账？

Steve: I’m going to give you three reasons.

Steve：我来讲三个原因。

Reason number one, and it’s material. Bill and I, and then me and Bill when I became CEO, we always were trying to tell people, don’t get our stock price too high. Don’t have too big expectations for us. We never wanted people to feel like they got cheated buying our stock.

第一个原因，而且很关键。无论是我和比尔共事时期，还是我接任CEO之后，我们始终试图告诉投资人，不要把微软的股价炒得太高，不要对我们期望太高。我们从不希望让人觉得买了微软股票是吃亏了。

Partly, probably we’re trying to lower the expectations on ourselves. I never thought of it that way. I don’t think Bill did. But essentially that was part of it. So we do this financial analyst meeting every July, and we’d always warn people don’t get too excited. That’s one.

某种程度上，这可能也是我们在给自己降压。虽然我从没这么看待过，比尔也大概没有，但本质上确实是这么回事。我们每年七月都会召开一次金融分析师会议，总是提醒大家不要太激动。这是第一个原因。

As part of that whole theme, Bill never went to a quarterly analyst call, and I never went to a quarterly analyst call. If you really think about it, part of morale is the stock price. It is. It took me a while to realize that, but I then never broke my pattern.

也正是在这种基调下，比尔从未参加季度财报电话会议，我也从不参加。说真的，员工士气的一部分确实跟股价挂钩。我是过了一段时间才意识到这一点的，但我后来依然没改变自己的风格。

It’s like going to the newspaper every day. You don’t sell stock every day, so you really should only care what the stock price is when you sell stock. But people go every day and it’s like, oh, did my team win last night? It’s like going to the sports section, say how did the Clips do last night?

就像每天翻报纸一样。你不会每天卖股票，所以其实你真正该关心股价的是你打算卖股票的时候。但人们每天都去看，像是在查球队比赛结果一样：“昨晚快船赢了吗？”就是这种心理。

So talking more regularly to investors and talking not pie-eyed but a realistic view. We gave no guidance. I had to fight people. They wanted to give guidance and I didn’t want to give guidance. Why? Just deliver the results you get? There was a bit of a Buffet style thing going on, because Bill and Warren were very good friends and Warren didn’t go to quarterly calls, I don’t think. But he’s warned.

所以与其定期和投资者沟通，与其讲得天花乱坠，不如给出现实主义的观点。我们不提供业绩指引，我当时还为此和内部团队争执过。他们想给指引，我不想。为什么？你就交出你真正的业绩就好。这其实有点像巴菲特的风格——比尔和沃伦是好朋友，我记得沃伦也从不参加季度电话会。不过他早就提醒过人们。

David: I don’t even know if they do quarterly calls. I don’t think they do.

David：我甚至不确定他们是否有季度财报电话会。我想是没有的。

Steve: If they do the annual meeting, obviously. Let’s call that a first reason.

Steve：他们当然会开年度股东大会。我们把这作为第一个原因吧。

A second reason is yes, I did take over when the stock was ridiculously too highly priced.

第二个原因是，我接任CEO的时候，微软的股价确实被高估得离谱。

Ben: But that normalized within a year or two.

Ben：但这个问题一两年后不是就回归正常了吗？

Steve: The bubble burst. It normalizes some, but it creates another narrative about things.

Steve：泡沫破裂后，股价确实有所回调，但这又带来了另一个负面叙事。

Next, I was hardcore about telling people I’m going to spend to do the things we need to do to succeed.

再来，我非常明确地告诉大家，我要花钱去做我们成功所必须做的事情。

David: That’s not what Wall Street likes to hear.

David：这可不是华尔街愿意听到的话。

Steve: No, but I was viewed as a spender, and I was much louder on this than Satya is on anything financial, because it’s how I’m programmed. He’s programmed a little differently. And Amy is more balanced. She’ll talk about balance, and I would say we’re going to win with Surface, whatever it is.

Steve：不是的，但外界就是把我看成一个大手大脚的人，而且我在这方面表达得比Satya对任何财务问题都要激烈，因为这就是我的“默认设定”。而Satya的设定不一样，Amy则更平衡一些。她会谈论“平衡”，而我则会说，“我们会在Surface上赢，不管代价多大”。

Ben: If I could paraphrase my view of it, you were willing to say, we’re going to spend whatever it takes. Amy goes and says, I’m going to account for every dollar of spend real tight and make sure that every dollar demands a return.

Ben：如果我可以换一种说法来表达我的看法，那就是：你会说“我们不惜一切代价投入”，而Amy则会说“我要严格核算每一美元的支出，并确保每一美元都能带来回报”。

Steve: Yeah. I had no credibility in terms of what some investors wanted to hear. And my actions were consistent with that. It’s not like they were inconsistent.

Steve：对。对于一些投资者想听的话，我根本没有公信力。而我的行为也确实配得上这种评价——我确实是那样做的，并没有前后不一。

Then lastly, people did worry about the future of a couple of our franchises, most notably Windows. You get all these things, narrative, transition from high price, some issue about franchises, and me being a big spender, no wonder the stock stayed flat. By the end of my tenure, it was even bothering me.

最后，人们确实担心我们几个关键业务线的未来，尤其是Windows。你把这些因素都加在一起：舆论风向、从高估值回调、业务线前景存疑、我又是个花钱大手大脚的CEO，股票不涨也就不奇怪了。到了我任期快结束的时候，这事也开始困扰我了。

David: When did it start to bothering you?

David：你是什么时候开始被这事困扰的？

Steve: Towards the end. At some point I just got too tired. But by then, it was also probably hard for me to reset that dialogue, for me to go to investors and say, aha, I’m a changed man. I’m not going to spend anymore. Nobody was going to believe that shit. They just wouldn’t have believed it. You can’t come in and say, well, I’ve been a certain way for about 30 years, but hey, I’m a new man. I’m reformed. That doesn’t work that way if you’re a spender.

Steve：快结束的时候。有那么一阵子我真的很累了。但到了那个阶段，我已经很难再去扭转和投资者之间的对话模式了。我总不能跑去说：“看啊，我变了，我不再乱花钱了。”谁会信这种鬼话？没人会信的。你不能当了三十年的“老花钱”，然后突然跑来讲自己“脱胎换骨”，不花钱了。这不现实。

David: I worship at the altar of capital allocation now.

David：我现在已经皈依资本配置之道了。

Steve: If you’re a spender, you’re a spender. If you’re not good with investors, they’re not going to buy in overnight that you’ve changed. I didn’t intend it that way, but there’s a certain disrespect by not going to quarterly calls.

Steve：如果你是个大手大脚的人，那你就是个大手大脚的人。如果你不擅长和投资者打交道，他们不会一夜之间相信你已经变了。我并不是有意要这样，但不参加季度财报电话会，在某种程度上确实也显得对投资人不够尊重。

With hindsight, people aren’t going to say, oh, he is showing up. He’s a changed man. He used to tell us the stock price was too high or worry about it. Now he’s going to tell us, no, the stock should be okay. It should be higher. No. There was no way to reset the investor view of me.

事后来看，没人会说：“哦，他现在露脸了，他变了。”过去你总告诉我们股价太高，叫我们别太兴奋。你现在再出来说：“股价该涨了”，没有人会买账。没有办法重塑投资人对我的印象。

Ben: You need a full rebrand, full clean slate. Some new—

Ben：你得彻底换个品牌形象，完全翻篇，来点新的——

Steve: Well, you probably need a full new CEO. When I wrote my letter of goodbye to the board, I did say, hey, look. This is a unique opportunity. There are a lot of things in our brand, in our image that would only be able to be reset by having a new CEO. People don’t walk in and say, oh yeah guys are changing. It’s hard to change the narrative without the change.

Steve：其实你大概需要的是一位全新的CEO。我写给董事会的告别信里确实说过，“这是一个独特的机会。有很多关于我们品牌和形象的东西，只有换了CEO之后才能真正重塑。”人们不会轻易相信“哦，他们变了”。没有人事变动，要想改写叙事太难了。

Now I’m not saying that means CEO should go every time there’s a bad narrative. That’s not really my point. But it just gets harder. I may have only been CEO since 2000, but it’s not like I wasn’t—

我不是说每次遇到负面舆论CEO就应该辞职，我的意思不是这个。但这确实会越来越难。我虽然是从2000年才开始当CEO的，但这不代表我之前——

David: Been there since 1980.

David：你可是从1980年就在那儿了。

Steve: Yeah, I was there since 1980. Essentially, I’d been the second voice of the company for 20 years. Then for 14, I was the first voice, theoretically. Although that had some complexity too.

Steve：对，我是从1980年开始的。基本上，我做了微软20年的“第二个声音”。然后又当了14年的“第一个声音”，理论上是如此吧——虽然这其中也有些复杂性。

Ben: I get the sense by the end it wasn’t fun for you anymore too.

Ben：我感觉到，到最后这工作对你来说也没什么意思了，对吧？

Steve: That’s not true.

Steve：不对。

Ben: No?

Ben：不是吗？

Steve: No. The toughest time was probably the ship of Vista. That was probably the toughest time, that in the early 2000s when I took over. My little sheet here, I highlight that 1998 to 2004 were tough years, plus Xbox. Because that’s the antitrust. That’s where I moved back to be president of the company and then CEO. Bill and I went through a year where we didn’t speak.

Steve：不是。最难的时候应该是Vista发布的时候，那大概是最艰难的一段时期。还有我刚接任CEO的早期2000年代。我这张小纸条上写着：1998年到2004年是最难熬的几年，加上Xbox。那时正是反垄断案最激烈的时候，我也重新回去做总裁，后来才当了CEO。我和Bill那时候有整整一年都没说过话。

Ben: Really?

Ben：真的吗？

Steve: Yeah. I think it was basically from some time in about March or April of 2000–2001. Literally, we weren’t speaking. I didn’t know what it meant to be his boss, and he didn’t know what it meant to work for me. I knew he was struggling with the DOJ and all this.

Steve：真的。我记得大概是从2000年三四月份起，到2001年那段时间，我们真的一句话都没说过。我不知道作为他的老板应该怎么做，他也不知道怎么当我的下属。我知道他正因为司法部的事（反垄断案）焦头烂额。

When he asked me to be CEO, I said, do you really want me to be CEO or do you just want me to be a figurehead? He said, no, I want you to be real CEO. Okay. That meant something to me. I would probably have said yes even if he’d said be a figurehead. But he said what he wanted and probably him saying to himself, hey, I’ve got to have a transition path. So I said, okay. I’ll do that.

当他请我出任CEO时，我问他：“你是真的希望我做CEO，还是只是想让我当个挂名的？”他说：“不，我希望你做真正的CEO。”好，这对我来说意义重大。即使他说的是“挂名的”，我可能也会答应。但他清楚地说出自己的想法，也可能是他对自己说，“我得安排好一个交接的路径。”所以我说，好，那我就做。

Well, he didn’t know how to show me a different kind of respect. I didn’t know how to show him a different kind of respect. There were things where I just disagreed with him, and now I expected it to go the other way. I was always happy. I was happy being a number two guy. I was fine. Salute. I don’t like the decision. I either salute or I’d body punch and then salute, or body punch and he’d agree with me. Body punch means it’s a slower process.

问题是，他不知道如何用不同的方式来尊重我，我也不知道怎么以不同的方式来尊重他。有些事情我就是不同意他的做法，而我又希望这次能听我的。过去我当“二把手”时我很满足，我很开心。对决策不认同时，我会“敬礼”（照做），或者“先肘击一下再敬礼”，有时候“肘击”一下，他会听我的。所谓“肘击”，就是一个更慢的博弈过程。

Then we didn’t know how to do that. We just didn’t know how to do that. After a year, we started talking again. Basically our wives were the ones who pushed us back together. We had a very awkward dinner at a health club down the street here, but we get back together. But we never really got the right mojo. Bill’s chief software architect, and I was very deferential then to product direction from Bill.

但后来我们不会再像以前那样沟通了，我们真的不知道怎么做。一年后我们才重新开始说话。其实是我们的太太们把我们撮合回来的。我们在街角的健身俱乐部吃了一顿非常尴尬的晚餐，之后就和好了。但我们从来没有恢复那种“默契”。Bill 是首席软件架构师，我在产品方向上始终对他非常尊重。

Ben: He’s working on Longhorn at this point because it’s post XP.

Ben：这时候他在做 Longhorn（Vista的前身），因为是XP之后的时期。

Steve: Which was a mistake. Longhorn was a big mistake. I have to take accountability. I was a CEO, Bill’s got to take a lot of accountability. It was the mistake of mistakes. Between the company, Bill and I disagreed about whether we should do hardware. That was a big one. We did. Surface was a big disagreement. Phone, big disagreement. HoloLens, big disagreement.

Steve：那是个错误。Longhorn 是个大错误。我必须承担责任，我是CEO，Bill 也得承担不少责任。这是错上加错。在微软内部，Bill 和我在是否该做硬件这件事上有过重大分歧。我们最终还是做了。Surface 是个大分歧；手机（业务）是个大分歧；HoloLens 也是大分歧。

缺少平常心=缺少整合在一起的使命，大家都能认可的东西，说到底都是性格的问题，性格扭曲的意思是从开始出发的地方偏离的太多、太远。

David: What about Azure? Were you aligned?

David：那 Azure 呢？你们在这方面有共识吗？

Steve: Bill was fine with Azure. The cloud Bill and I had agreed on in the 90s. Energizer, Energizer. I think Energizer could have been Bill’s idea, not mine. Pretty sure it was Bill’s idea, not mine. I executed, but Bill’s idea, not mine. But we never hit it. There were places there should have been more contention. Maybe even during the late 90s. I don’t know. But there were certainly places where there should have been more contention.

Steve：Bill 对 Azure 没有意见。我们在90年代就对云计算达成了共识。Energizer，Energizer 项目，我记得可能是 Bill 提出来的，不是我。应该说很可能是 Bill 的主意，不是我的。我是执行的人，但想法是他的。不过我们没真正做到位。有些地方本该有更多的争论，也许在90年代末的时候，我不确定。但肯定有些事情上我们该争而没争。

My gut, these are the smart technical guys, Bill, and I’m trusting…

我当时的直觉是——这些人很聪明，Bill 也很懂技术，我就信任他们……

Ben: Vista.

Ben：Vista。

Steve: I’m beginning to have a pit in my stomach. But we didn’t have the right contention. This is not directed at Bill personally, it’s directed at all of this. We had an emperor that had no clothes. That was in Longhorn. It was the emperor that had no clothes. Partly, it was the centrality of Windows and the notion that Windows would stay central, therefore people would all want this new stuff.

Steve：我开始心里隐隐有些不安。但我们没有充分的争论。这不是对 Bill 个人的指责，是对整个过程的反思。我们当时是在做“皇帝的新衣”。Longhorn 就是“皇帝的新衣”。部分原因是我们太迷信 Windows 的中心地位，认为它会一直是核心，所以大家自然会想要这些新功能。

Partly there was too much change all at one time. We didn’t do a new operating system, but we were doing a new operating system. It may not have sold it all, but we probably would’ve done better.

另一方面，我们一次性改变的东西太多。我们表面上没有推出一个“新操作系统”，但实际上是在造一个全新的系统。也许它最终没能成功卖出去，但我们应该能做得更好。

Ben: Just not calling Windows.

Ben：也许干脆别叫它 Windows。

Steve: Well, no. Forget what we called it. Just starting from scratch. Maybe keeping parts of the kernel, but otherwise starting from scratch and throw out all the scruff. Now, I don’t think we would’ve popularized it. If we’d looked at it that way, we probably wouldn’t have built it.

Steve：不，不要管我们当时叫什么名字。就是应该从头开始，也许保留内核的一部分，其它的全部推倒重来，把那些冗余杂乱的东西都扔掉。但我不觉得我们当时能把它做得流行。如果我们当时是以这种方式看待它的，可能我们根本不会动手去做。

But by then we were a little cocky about Windows and it was our thing. I don’t think we had the right grind in our system there in the early 2000s. Between Bill and I, did we make some good decisions? Yeah, we did make a good decision to do Xbox. Were we doing too many things? Yeah, we were doing too many things.

但那个时候我们有点自负了，对 Windows 很有信心，毕竟那是我们的王牌。我觉得我们在 2000 年代初的系统里，缺乏应有的打磨和锻炼。我和 Bill 有做出一些好的决策吗？是的，比如做 Xbox 是一个好决定。但我们是不是做了太多事？是的，我们的确做了太多事。

I would say there was probably a voraciousness misplaced by Bill and me. Maybe I had to be deal with some of the pragmatics of hiring people and stuff, so I didn’t push back on it. But I probably felt the pain a little bit more in terms of trying to hire people.

我觉得我和 Bill 都有一种不该有的贪婪。也许因为我负责更实际的事务，比如招人，所以我没能反对那个节奏。但在招聘人才方面的难处，我感受得可能比他更深。

So that’s 2000–2004. Then by 2004, Bill was already started talking to me about wanting to be able to go. Then in 2006, we announced that he was going to go in 2008. I also think we screwed that up. You can’t have a long goodbye. Long goodbyes are not helpful.

那是 2000 到 2004 年。到 2004 年的时候，Bill 就开始跟我谈他想离开。2006 年我们宣布他将在 2008 年离开。我觉得我们搞砸了。你不能搞“长别离”。“长别离”对任何人都没有帮助。

David: Yours was short.

David：你的离任就很短促。

Steve: Yeah, it was goodbye. I stayed on the board for one more board meeting after I left. That was it. But a long goodbye, nobody knows their role.

Steve：对，我就直接说再见了。离开之后，我只参加了一次董事会会议。就这样。但如果是那种拖很久的告别，大家就都不知道自己的角色了。

I think I did some of my very best work after Bill left. If you ask me when do I think I did my best work, when I started, and when I was running sales and evolving this enterprise business. Some when I ran system software, and then the last six years I was there. That’s cloud, that’s surface, that’s some of the improvements in Windows. I feel really good about my last six years.

我认为 Bill 离开之后，我做出了一些最好的成绩。如果你问我什么时候是我表现最好的阶段，那就是我刚上任那会儿，我负责销售、发展企业业务那会儿，还有负责系统软件的时候，然后就是我在公司的最后六年。那是云业务、Surface，还有 Windows 的一些改进。我对那六年感到非常满意。

犹豫、妥协总没好事。

Bing. I think that’s when we hired Qi Lu. Do you guys know the story of Qi Lu at Microsoft? Qi Lu’s one of the most pivotal things at Microsoft? Why?

还有 Bing。那也是我们招了陆奇的时候。你们知道陆奇在微软的故事吗？陆奇是微软最关键的一个人物之一。为什么呢？

David: I knew he was important, but tell us the story.

David：我知道他很重要，但请说说他的故事。

Steve: Pivotal in a way you may not even know. First of all, brilliant guy. Great guy. Qi’s talking about leaving Yahoo. He’s at Yahoo at the time. Qi (I think) went to graduate school with Harry Shum, who had been in Microsoft Research. Harry was now working on search, and he was working for Satya who was running Bing.

Steve：他的关键性，可能超出你们的认知。首先，他是个聪明的人，人也很好。那时候他正打算离开雅虎。当时他还在雅虎。我记得陆奇是和沈向洋（Harry Shum）一起念研究生的，沈向洋当时在微软研究院，现在已经在做搜索了，隶属于 Satya，而 Satya 当时负责的是 Bing。

Ben: That’s an amazing sentence all in itself. Oh, Satya the guy who was running Bing.

Ben：这句话本身就挺神奇的。哦，Satya，当时负责 Bing 的那个人。

Steve: He was running Bing. Harry says, Qi’s a genius. We’ve got to hire Qi. I don’t know if Qi really wants to work for. Well, we got to pick Qi’s brain. We just have to learn from Qi Lu.

Steve：他当时负责 Bing。Harry（沈向洋）说，陆奇是个天才，我们一定要把他招进来。我还不确定陆奇是否真愿意来，但我们必须向他取经，得从陆奇那里学到东西。

Okay. Satya, me, Harry, fly down to California and we meet with Qi Lu. We talk to Qi. Qi’s brilliant and we’re learning all this stuff about Qi. Qi leaves the room. God, there’s a lot. I don’t know who throws the idea out at first, maybe Satya. We should hire Qi and I should work for him.

于是 Satya、我和 Harry 一起飞到加州，去见陆奇。我们和陆奇聊了聊，他真的非常聪明，我们从他身上学到了很多。陆奇离开房间之后，我们都觉得收获巨大。我不记得是谁先提出的这个主意，也许是 Satya，说我们应该聘请陆奇，我（Satya）来向他汇报。

Ben: Whoa.

Ben：哇哦。

Steve: So Harry was all in. Harry worked for Satya who worked for Qi. Now we flipped it around.

Steve：Harry 完全支持。原本是 Harry 向 Satya 汇报，而 Satya 向陆奇汇报。现在我们整个汇报链条反过来了。

David: You flipped the whole reporting structure to hire Qi in the room.

David：你们当场就为聘陆奇，重组了整个汇报结构。

Steve: After Qi walked, we talked for about 15 minutes. Then Harry calls Qi and said, do you mind coming back?

Steve：陆奇走出房间后，我们大概聊了十五分钟。然后 Harry 就给陆奇打电话说，你介意回来一下吗？

David: Wow.

David：哇。

Steve: I forget where Qi was thinking he’d take his next job. He had a next job in mind. Maybe it was with Baidu. I can’t remember. Someplace.

Steve：我记不清陆奇当时考虑的下一个工作是哪了。他心里已经有目标了，也许是百度，我记不清了，反正是某个地方。

David: Then what did he do at Microsoft that made him so impactful?

David：那他在微软做了什么，为什么影响这么大？

Steve: It’s the story I just told you. It’s what it told me about Satya. I love Satya. We were giving him more and more responsibilities anyway. But he told me this guy will do the right thing for the company. He’ll prioritize that. He doesn’t have an ego that gets in the way. And Qi did great work. Qi knew about search. He was an old pro at it.

Steve：这就是我刚才说的故事的意义所在，它让我看清了 Satya 的格局。我很欣赏 Satya，我们本来就越来越多地把责任交给他。而这个举动告诉我，这人会以公司利益为先，他不会让自我阻碍决策。而陆奇真的干得非常好。他对搜索业务非常了解，是个老手。

Ben: And it started cash flowing billions of dollars eventually.

Ben：而后来这块业务开始带来数十亿美元的现金流。

Steve: Eventually. Satya’s not an engineer by training. Qi’s an engineer. He’s a PhD in computer science. He had a lot to bring. Satya’s been great at managing product development, that’s for sure, but Qi’s digging the bits and bytes kind of thing. But the meeting is the thing that was important. Qi was important, sure, but what Satya and Harry did that day where they just found a guy and said, please Steve, go hire him as our boss.

Steve：最终确实如此。Satya 并不是工程师出身，而陆奇是。他是计算机科学博士，有很多技术上的贡献可以带来。Satya 在产品管理上做得很棒，这点毫无疑问，但陆奇是真的在字节层面挖掘问题。不过最关键的是那次会议。陆奇当然很重要，但那天 Satya 和 Harry 的所作所为才真正说明问题——他们找到一个人，然后说：“Steve，请你把他招进来当我们的老板。”

一个人行不行？一个点就决定了。

Ben: You don’t hear that very often.

Ben：这可不是常听到的事。

Steve: No.

Steve：确实不是。

Ben: What year was that?

Ben：那是哪一年？

David: It was after Yahoo, 2008–2009.

David：那是在 Yahoo 之后，大概是 2008 到 2009 年。

Ben: Six years before Satya became CEO for five years.

Ben：那是在 Satya 成为 CEO 的六年前。

Steve: 2009, yeah. And that let me then be able to also say, now I can give Satya more responsibility doing something else.

Steve：是的，2009 年。那让我也能说，好，现在我可以让 Satya 去承担更多其他方面的责任了。

Ben: Why did you move him to server and tools?

Ben：你为什么把他调去负责服务器和工具部门？

Steve: We had Qi, so we could probably move him. I thought it would be important to give him other experiences, to try to get him to be able to be CEO. He was on a list of three or four internals at that time, who he said he’d been on a list of guys we had been talking about because we did an annual succession plan thing.

Steve：我们有了陆奇，所以就可以考虑调动 Satya。我觉得让他有更多不同的经验很重要，目标是让他有可能成为 CEO。他当时是在我们内部讨论的三四个接班人选名单上的人之一，因为我们每年都会做接班计划。

The succession plan has two candidates. It’s what happens if you get hit by a bus and what happens if you get served to term, whatever term feels like. And they’re different people. If Satya gets hit by a bus, if Satya serves another five years, it’s probably a different person. I think that’s true in most companies. You got to think about it differently.

接班计划里通常有两种人选：一种是“万一你被公交车撞了”的紧急情况替代者，另一种是“你正常完成任期”时的接班人。这是两种不同的人选。如果 Satya 明天出了事，和他再干五年后由谁接任，那可能是完全不同的人。在多数公司里这都是常态，你得用不同角度去思考。

Anyway I said, hey, get him another experience. He hasn’t worked in apps, hasn’t worked in server and tools, and it was a good time to switch things around. Bob wound up obviously being super successful because. Bob was running server and tools at the time. I love Bob. Bob’s, one of my favorite guys I’ve ever worked with.

总之我当时说，好，给他一次新历练。他没有做过应用业务，也没有在服务器和工具部门待过，而那正是调整角色的好时机。后来 Bob 显然也非常成功，因为当时是 Bob 负责服务器和工具业务。我很喜欢 Bob，他是我合作过最喜欢的同事之一。

Ben: Went on to be CEO of Snowflake.

Ben：后来去当了 Snowflake 的 CEO。

David: Snowflake, yeah.

David：对，Snowflake。

Steve: Absolutely.

Steve：没错。

David: Worked out for everybody.

David：对每个人来说结果都挺好。

Steve: He’s done fantastically well, but we moved Satya into that job. He was on a great path, and Qi’s hire made search as stronger, showed just how right Satya was. We talk about this in basketball. Is it all about team first or not? All about team first, which is essential. We were able to give them the additional experiences, which were super helpful in terms of him then taking over as CEO.

Steve：他做得非常出色，而我们也把 Satya 调去了那份工作。他当时的成长路径非常顺利，而聘请陆奇也让搜索业务更加强大，印证了 Satya 的眼光是多么正确。我们在篮球中常说：是否一切都以团队为先？当然是一切以团队为先，这是最根本的。我们给他们提供了额外的历练机会，对他后来接任 CEO 的发展非常关键。

David: That’s why Azure was turbocharging.

David：这也是为什么 Azure 能够迅速加速发展的原因。

Ben: All right. Listeners, we want to thank our newest sponsor and friend of the show that we are very excited about, Anthropic.

Ben：好了，听众朋友们，我们要感谢本节目的新赞助商，也是我们非常期待的合作伙伴——Anthropic。

David: Anthropic is the team behind Claude. Whether you’re running a business today or flying solo, Claude isn’t just another AI tool. It’s becoming the central operating system for how forward-thinking companies work.

David：Anthropic 是 Claude 背后的团队。无论你是经营一家企业还是独立工作者，Claude 都不仅仅是一个普通的 AI 工具。它正逐渐成为前瞻性公司运作的核心操作系统。

Ben: Listeners, there’s something you should know. Claude actually helped us create this sponsor read. We fed it a few past sponsor reads as examples, and it came back with basically this before a little bit of tweaking from David and I.

Ben：各位听众，有件事你们应该知道。这段赞助商文案其实是 Claude 帮我们写的。我们给它输入了几段过往的文案作为参考，它几乎一口气就生成了这段内容，然后我和 David 稍作润色。

David: This itself is a pretty great demonstration of how Claude can be useful and took less time than running upstairs from my studio to grab coffee.

David：这本身就很好地展示了 Claude 有多实用，用的时间比我从录音室跑楼上去拿杯咖啡还少。

Ben: What makes Claude different is the quality. It handles the hard stuff, writing and debugging code to build software, analyzing 100-page documents, managing complex multi-step projects, but more importantly, it does them well. Claude is designed to be more accurate, more trustworthy, and tasteful than any AI you’ve ever tried.

Ben：Claude 的不同之处在于它的质量。它能处理那些棘手的任务，比如编写和调试代码来开发软件、分析长达 100 页的文档、管理复杂的多步骤项目，更重要的是，它能做得非常出色。Claude 的设计理念是比你用过的任何 AI 都更准确、更可信、更得体。

David: Think of Claude as that impossibly organized coworker, who knows every project, has read every document, and can find that email from six months ago.

David：你可以把 Claude 想象成那个超级有条理的同事，了解每一个项目，读过每一份文件，还能找到六个月前的那封邮件。

Ben: But here’s the game changer. Claude connects to everything—your CRM, calendar, email, project tools, internal docs. Claude unifies them all into one place through something called MCP (Model Context Protocol), which everyone seems to be talking about this week.

Ben：但真正颠覆的是这一点：Claude 能连接你所有的工具——CRM、日历、邮件、项目管理工具、内部文档。它通过一种叫做 MCP（模型上下文协议）的机制将一切整合到一个地方，这正是大家本周热议的话题。

Claude can build any MCP connection you need. You just have to ask. Instead of juggling tools, Claude becomes your command center, pulling data from everywhere, spotting patterns across all your software, and surfacing insights that you would never find manually.

Claude 可以构建你需要的任何 MCP 连接。你只需提出需求。与其在多个工具之间来回切换，不如让 Claude 成为你的指挥中心，从各处提取数据，识别你软件系统中的模式，并提供你无法手动发现的洞察。

David: It’s super cool. Major companies are already seeing results from connecting all their systems. Snowflake uses Claude to answer key business questions with just English instead of writing SQL. Zoom feeds their meeting recordings into Claude to automatically create summaries and action items, turning hour-long calls into clear next steps.

David：这太酷了。许多大公司已经通过整合系统见到了成果。Snowflake 用 Claude 来用英文回答关键业务问题，无需写 SQL。Zoom 把会议录音输入 Claude，自动生成会议摘要和行动项，把一小时的会议转化为清晰的下一步计划。

Ben: If you’re ready to stop switching between tools and start using AI as your business hub, get started at claud.ai/acquired, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

Ben：如果你也想停止工具之间的切换，让 AI 成为你的业务中枢，那就访问 claud.ai/acquired，告诉他们是 Ben 和 David 推荐的就行。

We want to talk a little bit about your post-Microsoft term, but let’s leave Microsoft with a final question of why did you resign?

我们接下来会谈一些你在微软之后的事情，但在结束微软的话题前，我们想问一个最后的问题：你为什么辞职？

Steve: Two or three things. Number one, the phone was very on my brain. When you said, are you having fun? That was the thing that was eating at me the most, was the phone. I decided we needed to flip the model around. Your episode’s pretty good about all that happened, so I’m not going to go through all that.

Steve：原因有两三个。第一，手机问题一直萦绕在我脑海。当你们问我“你还在享受这份工作吗？”的时候，说实话，手机是最让我焦虑的事。我当时觉得我们必须改变整个模式。你们那集节目对那段历史讲得已经很不错了，我就不赘述了。

I knew we had to do hardware. I knew it. There was just no question. We weren’t going to be able to play this Android/search game because we just didn’t have the power of monetization that they did. Apple’s Apple, but they’re going to be two phones. It’s not like there’d only be one phone that was popular in the world. This is something you guys didn’t put in the episode.

我知道我们必须做硬件。这一点毫无疑问。我们无法参与 Android/搜索这场游戏，因为我们没有他们那样的变现能力。苹果是苹果，但这个世界上会有两个主流手机品牌，不会只有一个。你们节目中没提到这一点。

I had talked about buying a phone company for a number of years before the Nokia deal. I forget what year it was. I flew to Taiwan and we were looking at buying HTC. They were the biggest Windows phone OEM at the time. Nokia wasn’t signed up.

在诺基亚交易之前，我已经谈论收购一家手机公司的事很多年了。我记不得是哪一年了，我飞去台湾，考虑收购 HTC。当时他们是最大的 Windows Phone 代工厂，诺基亚还没有签约。

I finally just decided, Terry Myers and I, we had 3–4 trips to Taiwan to talk to Peter, look at the organization. I just decided it would be too tough to buy a Taiwanese company, that I would worry too much about the integration. I liked Peter Chou who ran HTC. I don’t know if that name means anything to you guys…

最终，我和 Terry Myers 去了台湾三四次，去跟 Peter（周永明）谈，看看他们的组织架构。我最后决定收购一家台湾公司会太困难，我会太担心整合问题。我挺喜欢 HTC 的 CEO 周永明的，不知道你们对这个名字有没有印象……

David: Yeah, of course.

David：当然记得。

Steve: …but I’d been looking at that thing for two or three years maybe before. Bill and I continued to have all the tension we had about anything that had hardware in it. It’s not like our relationship was calm. It’s clear. It had always been bumpy. Even back to the beginning, I almost quit after four weeks because we were in it. Five weeks, maybe. It’s not like it had ever been—

Steve：……但我其实在那之前已经关注这件事两三年了。关于涉及硬件的任何事情，我和比尔之间一直有很多摩擦。我们的关系从来都不算平静。这很明显。从一开始就坎坷。我刚加入公司四五周时就差点辞职了，因为我们已经争执上了。我们的关系从来都不是—

David: That would’ve been a very poor economic decision.

David：那可真是个糟糕透顶的经济决策。

Steve: It had never been linear. We had another big fight a year after about financial stuff. It had never been linear. It had helped build Microsoft, but that didn’t mean it had always been easy for him or me.

Steve：我们的关系从来不是线性的。一年后我们又因为财务问题大吵了一架。是的，这段关系确实有助于建立微软，但并不意味着这段过程对他或我来说都很轻松。

The hardware thing was exacerbating our relationship. I thought we really needed to do a phone. Then the board said, no, we don’t want to do a phone. I was very transparent with everybody. We brought the manager, you got this right. We brought the management team in. I don’t know if it was more wanted to buy or didn’t want, but I let everybody speak. It’s a big decision to be in the phone hardware business.

硬件问题让我们之间的关系更加紧张。我坚信我们必须做手机。但董事会却说不，我们不想做手机。我对所有人都非常坦率。我们把高管团队都请进来讨论，是的，你记得没错。我们召集管理团队开会。我不确定是多数人想买还是不想买，但我让每个人都畅所欲言。进入手机硬件业务是一项重大的决策。

We do the presentation, and the process from there to the time the board says no, I didn’t find very respectful. The board didn’t ask me to leave. I just didn’t find the process very respectful. I probably won’t go into the detail of that. And a lot of it has to do again with my relationship with Bill.

我们做了汇报，但从那之后直到董事会说“不”这一过程，我觉得不太尊重人。董事会没有让我辞职，我只是觉得整个过程不够尊重我。这点我可能不会细说，其中很大一部分还是和我和比尔的关系有关。

I knew Bill didn’t love the idea, and I was willing to accept whatever the board decided. I was, no question about that, but the process wasn’t very good. I was not happy with the process, but they wanted me to stay.

我知道比尔并不喜欢这个想法，我也愿意接受董事会的决定，这点毫无疑问。但整个过程处理得不太好。我对这个过程并不满意，尽管他们希望我留下来。

I just decided two things. If we’re not going to buy a phone, that’s my best shot for a consumer future for the company. Right now, that’s my best shot. I tried to fire the Yahoo shot, the phone shot. Those were my two things, remember? Mobile and search.

我当时下定了两个决心。如果我们不买手机，那就是我在消费者业务上为公司争取未来的最佳机会了。此刻，这是我最好的赌注。我试过打出 Yahoo 这一枪，也试过手机这一枪。这两件事你们还记得吧？移动和搜索。

I said, look. This might be the right time. We can’t make my play here, not out of peak. It’s just, hey, I’d thought about this in advance and said, look. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If the board doesn’t want to do it, fine. So I said, this is a good time.

我说，好吧，也许现在就是时候了。既然我无法执行我想做的事情，不是出于情绪而是事先就考虑过的，如果这事做不成，那就做不成；如果董事会不想做，也没问题。所以我说，这就是一个合适的时机。

It’s also a good time because the cloud’s just coming on. I’m saying to myself, look. We’re going to have to build new capabilities. Even the way we’re moving to a gross margin to something below 100% gross margin business. We have whole new capabilities. We need to build up around that. I even think of it through the lens of the accounting system.

同时这也是好时候，因为云计算正刚刚兴起。我对自己说，我们得建设全新的能力。我们正在进入一个毛利率低于 100% 的新业务模式，这意味着我们得围绕它建立起全新的能力。我甚至从会计系统的角度来思考这个问题。

We had these revenue and cost reports. They have to change in the world of the cloud because you really have to get tight on gross margin not on revenue. I don’t really pay much attention to Microsoft’s revenue. I pay attention to the gross margin growth.

我们过去是用收入和成本报表来看业务。但在云时代，这必须改变。你真正要关注的是毛利，而不是收入。我现在其实并不太关注微软的收入，我关注的是毛利增长。

Ben: These days, you’re saying.

Ben：你是说现在，对吧？

Steve: Those days. When I said the move to the cloud, I used to say this to analysts, you should expect us, you want us to have lower gross margins going forward, but we’ll make it up in volume. That is the whole process of the cloud. Lower gross margins. It’s like Walmart’s an okay company even though that margin’s, whatever, 1.5%–2%. You just got to make it up in volume.

Steve：我是说当年的那些时候。当时我在讲向云转型这件事，我常常对分析师说，你们应该期望我们未来的毛利率会下降，你们也应该希望如此，但我们会靠规模弥补。这就是云的本质——毛利率更低。这就像沃尔玛一样，哪怕它的利润率只有1.5%-2%，它仍然是一家不错的公司，因为它靠规模弥补。

I knew it was a good time to let the new person build from what we had to the next generation of all the machinery that would have to happen to make cloud happen. I never lost my desire to be an end user company. I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t keep us focused on being an end user company/consumer. It killed me. You don’t just, ah, I want to be a consumer company. No, you got to find the locomotives, not just a bunch of cabooses.

我知道那是一个合适的时机，让接班人从我们现有的基础上构建出下一代、支撑云计算所需的全部架构。我从未放弃过成为一家面向终端用户的公司的梦想。我为自己没能让公司继续聚焦在消费者身上而感到遗憾。这件事真的让我心碎。你不能只是说：“啊，我想成为一家消费品公司。”不行，你得找到“火车头”，而不是一堆“车尾车厢”。

At the end of the day, Zune was a caboose. A lot of the things we invested in were cabooses. We had to find the locomotive. There were only two possible locomotives that made any sense. I didn’t have a play that I thought was going to break through anytime soon in search.

归根结底，Zune就是个“车尾车厢”。我们投资的很多东西都是“车尾”。我们必须要找到“火车头”。只有两个真正有意义的“火车头”。而在搜索方面，我当时手上并没有一个我认为能在短期内突破的战略。

Mobile was going to be really hard. But I knew in my heart of hearts that without physical hardware, we weren’t going to break through there either because of search. Board said no. I said, okay. Bill and I are, it’s not really the board being disrespectful. Maybe it is, but it’s mostly me and Bill grinding. And that’s never fun when we grind.

移动业务真的很难。但我心里非常清楚，如果没有自己的硬件，我们在移动搜索领域是无法突围的。董事会说“不”。我说，好吧。比尔和我之间，其实与其说是董事会不尊重我，倒不如说更多是我和比尔之间在“较劲”。而我们“较劲”的时候，绝对不会轻松。

I say, okay, we’re grinding. I know it’s frustrating for him. It’s frustrating for me. We’re grinding. Here goes my idea. Oh, by the way, this is a great juncture point. I said, okay, I’ll pass. Then the board changed its mind.

我心想，好吧，我们就是在较劲。我知道他很烦，我也很烦。就在我们还在较劲的时候，我的想法就此作罢。顺便说一句，那其实是一个很好的节点。所以我说，好，我退了。然后董事会反悔了。

Ben: So why did they end up buying Nokia then after your decision was final? You were out.

Ben：那为什么你决定退出之后，他们最终又收购了诺基亚呢？你那时已经离开了。

Steve: Oh, I don’t know.

Steve：哦，我不知道。

Ben: Maybe you don’t know.

Ben：也许你真的不知道。

Steve: I don’t really know. I’m not sure they really understood, but I had told them about we had a deep partnership with Nokia and I’m not really sure maybe guys really understood. I hadn’t done a good job explaining how close the partnership was. There was really no, go back to Nokia and see if we can have a bigger partnership.

Steve：我真的不知道。我不确定他们是否真正理解，但我之前告诉他们我们和诺基亚有着深入的合作关系，我不确定大家是否真正明白了这一点。也许我没有把这种合作有多紧密讲清楚。当时其实并没有“回过头去看看能不能跟诺基亚建立更深层合作”这样的选项。

The problem with the partnership with Nokia is they didn’t have the money to invest in marketing. We did. They did not have the ability to go deep pockets. We did. But if we didn’t have the monetization capability back through the phone, we weren’t going to be able to make it work as a partnership because we had to put in the cash and therefore we had to get the return, and it wasn’t going to work.

和诺基亚合作的问题是：他们没有足够的资金投入市场营销，我们有。他们没有雄厚的财力支撑，我们有。但如果我们无法通过手机实现货币化能力，那这场合作是无法运转的——因为我们得投入真金白银，因此也必须要能获得回报，否则是行不通的。

David: It reached to a point where you had to buy the company or just cut bait totally on the whole thing.

David：事情发展到了一个地步，你们要么收购这家公司，要么就彻底放弃整个项目。

Steve: Yeah, just because the math wouldn’t work. What we had to do to be successful was beyond their financial capacity. But if we were going to do what it took to be successful, we couldn’t do it on \$4 \[...]

Steve：是的，因为这笔账根本算不过来。为了成功，我们必须要做的那些事情，超出了诺基亚的财务承受能力。但如果我们真的要全力以赴去做，就不可能靠每台设备4美元的利润来支撑……

Ben: You needed the margin dollars from the hardware too.

Ben：你们也需要来自硬件的利润收入。

Steve: Exactly.

Steve：没错。

David: So you left. You did a pretty incredible thing, or really you didn’t do an incredible thing. You held everything. You’re still the largest individual shareholder in Microsoft.

David：所以你离开了，但你做了一件非常了不起的事，或者说，准确地说你是没做什么——你保留了全部股份。你仍然是微软最大的个人股东。

Steve: I think I might be. Other than index funds, the largest institutional investor too.

Steve：我想我可能是。除了指数基金之外，我可能也是最大的机构投资者之一。

David: And basically besides Vanguard.

David：基本上除了先锋基金之外。

Steve: I’m not sure about that part, but yeah, it could be.

Steve：那部分我不太确定，但有可能。

David: On the one hand I imagine it was very simple and you’ve given reasons on other interviews in the past, you’re a loyal guy, et cetera. Just talk us through the emotions thinking about that. I imagine that was not so simple.

David：一方面我觉得你留下全部股份这件事看起来很简单，你在其他采访里也提到过原因，比如你是个忠诚的人之类的。但能不能谈谈当时你真正的情感历程？我猜那并不简单。

Steve: No. I leave, then what does it mean to emotionally detach? Because if you’re not there, you have to emotionally detach. You can’t say because you don’t, you can’t control anything anymore. It’s hard. You don’t want to stay quite that emotionally attached because it’s like, oh, I got to get back in and fix everything.

Steve：没错。我离开之后，接下来意味着什么？就是情感上的脱离。因为你已经不在那里了，你就必须在情感上脱离。你不能说你还像以前那样，因为你已经无法控制任何事情了。这很难。你不想自己还那么情绪牵挂着一切，因为那种感觉就像“哦，我得回去把一切修好”。

But I said, I’m going to be the best investor. We’re going to know everything about this company. I’m going to read everything just like I used to. We’re going to go to conferences just like we used to.

但我告诉自己：我要成为最了解微软的投资人。我们要像以前那样了解公司的所有事，我会像以前那样读每一份报告，参加每一场会议。

I went to one shareholder meeting and I was a dick in my opinion. Literally one of the shareholder meetings. I was too emotionally attached. Took me about a year to say I just have to emotionally detach. It took some work, but I was able to get there. But I’m still loyal. Didn’t want to sell.

我参加了一次股东大会，说实话我自己觉得我那时候有点混账。真的，就是那一场股东大会，我太情绪化了。过了差不多一年我才说服自己必须情感抽离。这过程需要下点功夫，但我最终做到了。但我还是忠诚的，不想卖出股份。

There’s one. Then we get our philanthropy started and then I do need to do something. We do need some of the asset value to give away. I went through a bit where we gave some away, i.e., we put it into our donor advised fund. I also sold a little bit at the time and I was thinking—

这是一个阶段。然后我们开始做慈善，我确实得做点什么。我们需要变现一部分资产价值来捐出去。我经历过一段时间，我们确实捐出了一些，比如转入了我们的捐赠者建议基金（DAF）。我当时也卖出了一小部分，然后我在思考——

Ben: This is 2015-ish?

Ben：这是大约2015年？

Steve: Yeah. It might have been even 2016, something like that. Then because our philanthropy was just ramping up. Connie had been giving away money, but the dollar value was ramping up. Then I said, maybe I should just sell it all. Full emotional detachment. Let’s do full emotional detachment. Because look. It was my baby. It’s my baby.

Steve：对，可能甚至是2016年左右。那时我们的慈善事业刚刚开始发展。Connie 一直在捐钱，但金额开始上升了。然后我就想，也许我该把全部股份都卖掉。完全情感抽离。来个彻底的情感抽离。因为你想啊，这家公司是我的孩子，是我一手带大的。

I’m not a founder, but I think of myself as a founder. I was there so early and I hired basically everybody. Everybody was a senior leader I’d recruited. It’s not true anymore. Now things have changed. It’s probably only 10% of the people who were there now were there when I was there or something. Higher at the senior levels. I can go through the math and why that’s true.

我虽然不是创始人，但我一直把自己当成创始人。我在公司非常早期就加入了，几乎所有人都是我招的。所有高管都是我挖来的。当然，现在已经不是这样了。现在情况变了，现在还在的人可能只有10%是在我任期内加入的。高层比例会高一些。我可以解释为什么是这样。

David: But that would’ve been a very understandable decision of, you know? It’s time to just put it all away.

David：但如果你当时真的那么做了，那是完全可以理解的。就是说，该放下就放下。

Steve: Just emotional detachment. It had nothing to do with money. My only thought process was emotional detachment. I was wrestling.

Steve：就是为了情感上的抽离。跟钱无关。我当时的唯一想法就是情感抽离。我在挣扎。

David: You’re ready to hit the button. You’re ready to hit the—

David：你已经准备好要按那个按钮了——准备清仓了。

Steve: It was wrestling. I was wrestling. Then the lady who works here, ex-Microsoftee who works here in finance, who’s the woman who really charts what’s going on financially at Microsoft, she and her boss, who’s another ex-Microsoftee who used to work with me most closely on the financial stuff, but she says, you can’t sell. You can’t sell. This is going to be worth a lot more. You can’t sell. You can’t.

Steve：我当时真的很挣扎。然后，有位女士是前微软员工，现在在我这里做财务，她一直密切跟踪微软的财务状况。她和她的上司也是前微软人，曾是我在财务方面最亲密的搭档。她对我说：你不能卖，绝对不能卖。这股以后会更值钱。你不能卖，真的不能。

Ben: So she effectively made a Microsoft stock pick.

Ben：所以她等于是做了一次微软股票的投资判断。

Steve: And she was recommending. She has some loyalty too. It’s not like we have a bunch of Microsoftees here, and it’s not like they lack loyalty either, but it was a little bit loyalty and a lot a pick. I said, look. My loyalty trumps my emotional attachment. I can get through my emotional attachment, but my loyalty. And look. I think of the thing as like a two-headed hydra. I thought about this the whole way. Things could go to nothing or things could explode.

Steve：她确实是在推荐。她也有点忠诚成分。当然我们这儿并不是聚了一堆前微软员工，但他们也都很忠诚。她的推荐有点情怀成分，但更多是基于判断。我说，听着，我的忠诚胜过我的情感牵挂。我可以克服情绪问题，但忠诚是根本。而且我一直把微软这家公司想象成一条双头蛇——它可能归零，也可能腾飞。

That’s partly why we tamped on the stock, because we always saw the possibility for either of two radically different outcomes. Then finally I say, look. I’m not going to sweat whether we’re going to get the downside or the upside. I’m just going to be loyal and I’m going to be enough emotionally detached for this to be okay.

我们当年在股价上保持谨慎也是因为这个原因——我们总是看到结果可能完全两极化。最终我对自己说，我不再纠结是会亏损还是暴涨。我就保持忠诚，同时情感上抽离到一个可以接受的程度。这样就够了。

Ben: Because for you it doesn’t matter. There’s not a downside that could be so bad that actually—

Ben：因为对你来说，这已经无所谓了。不会有哪种下跌会糟糕到真的——

Steve: No, I had enough money off the table that ah, it’s not like my family’s going to—

Steve：不会的，我已经套现了足够的钱，不至于让我的家人——

Ben: Could still run one of the best philanthropies of all time, even if the stock—

Ben：就算股价跌了，你们还是可以运营世界上最好的慈善机构之一。

Steve: Connie would’ve been okay with it. She finds it difficult to give away as much money as we have. She wouldn’t have mind a smaller problem to start with. She would’ve been okay.

Steve：Connie 也会接受的。她一直觉得把我们拥有的这么多钱捐出去挺困难的。她可能还希望一开始这个问题小一点。她会没问题的。

Ben: I’ve been charting it over the last three years. You guys are giving away almost somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year.

Ben：我这几年一直在跟踪数据。你们每年捐赠的金额差不多接近十亿美元。

Steve: Cash out the door.

Steve：真金白银地捐出去的。

Ben: But your net worth is ballooning every year way faster than you can give money away because of the Microsoft hold.

Ben：但你们的净资产还是年年飙升，远比你们捐出去的增长得快，因为你还持有微软的股份。

Steve: Yeah, Microsoft hold, but you may be missing one thing on the Microsoft hold that’s important. And that’s the size of the dividend check.

Steve：对，是因为持有微软股份，但你可能忽略了一个很关键的点，那就是微软分红的金额。

Ben: Ah.

Ben：啊，原来如此。

Steve: Between Microsoft and the other stuff I own, the dividend checks are pretty close to what we give away. You can look at the appreciation, but we’re just above the dividend checks now.

Steve：微软和我持有的其他资产的分红，加起来和我们捐出去的钱差不多。你可以关注股价增值，但实际上我们现在捐的只是略高于收到的分红。

David: You’re just trying to shovel the money that is coming in the door, out the door.

David：你们就是在不停地把进来的钱，用铲子铲出去。

Ben: So you can fund the whole philanthropy without selling additional shares.

Ben：所以你们完全可以不卖股份就支撑整个慈善事业的运作。

Steve: Well, there are two things that are going on. One, the dividend checks are pretty good. And number two, I do have stuff that’s not in Microsoft.

Steve：嗯，有两件事。一是分红确实很可观；二是我也有不少资产并不在微软。

Ben: So you hold, I think mostly index funds outside of the Clippers, is that right?

Ben：所以你除了快船队，大部分资产都投资在指数基金里，对吧？

Steve: Yeah, Clippers/Arena index funds. I have one business I invested in with a guy who I went to college with who worked at Microsoft. It’s called Stagwell Media. It’s a marketing services company. Call it a modern day ad agency, but it’s not really an ad agency. A guy named Mark Penn. I do have some money that’s not in index funds, but mostly I’m in index funds.

Steve：对，快船队/球馆，还有指数基金。我有投资一家我和微软一位同事、也是我大学同学一起投的公司，叫 Stagwell Media，是一家营销服务公司。你可以把它叫做现代广告公司，但它其实又不完全是广告公司。创始人是 Mark Penn。我确实有一些钱没投在指数基金里，但主要还是放在指数基金。

David: Which that anybody else in the same couple of top pages of lists that you’re on, you must be the only one that operates like this. Everybody else, huge family offices, lots of investments, private equity funds.

David：在你这种身家排名靠前的人里，你应该是唯一一个这样操作的吧？其他人都是设立庞大的家族办公室，搞各种投资、私募基金。

Steve: Yeah, but I would say probably would find that Zuckerberg is pretty concentrated. I don’t know this, but I’m going to guess you would find, I don’t know about Ellison, but obviously some of the guys who own more privately-held businesses pretty concentrated.

Steve：是啊，但我猜扎克伯格的资产可能也比较集中。我不确定，但可以猜猜。Ellison 我就不知道了，不过那些拥有大量私营企业的人显然也是比较集中的。

Ben: Required to be concentrated.

Ben：他们是被动集中，没得选。

Steve: Yeah. Who else? The Google guys I imagine are concentrated, but I don’t know that, I can’t speak for anybody else. Obviously, Bloomberg is concentrated.

Steve：对。还有谁？Google 那几位我猜也很集中，但我不清楚，不能替别人说话。Bloomberg 显然是非常集中的。

David: Well, I think in practice it all works out the same way of, there’s one thing that is everything.

David：其实说到底，这些人都有一个“核心资产”，其它都只是配角。

Steve: Yeah. And look. If you sell it, you’re just going to pay capital gains taxes. If you’re really just being a financial monster about it, you got to decide, will Microsoft underperform the index by enough to offset the capital gains taxes.

Steve：没错。而且你如果卖掉这些资产，就得交资本利得税。如果你真的是个冷酷无情的理财机器，你就得评估微软是否会跑输大盘，而且跑输幅度要能抵得上你交的资本利得税。

I don’t need the money. I got plenty to live on without selling anything. That’s number one. Financially, where’s that money going to go? Some will go to my kids, but most of it’s going to go to the government or to philanthropy. Why would I sell, so we have less to give to philanthropy someday, unless I really think Microsoft’s going to underperform the market by essentially the capital gains rate.

我又不需要用那笔钱。我现在的生活绰绰有余，根本用不着卖股。这是第一点。再说，那笔钱未来会去哪？一部分留给孩子，更多还是捐给政府或慈善。如果我不是真的确信微软会长期跑输大盘，输得连资本利得税都抵不过，那我为什么要卖？卖了就意味着以后能捐出去的钱更少。

Ben: I feel like I’m watching a live USA facts video right here.

Ben：我感觉这就像在看一段“美国事实”项目的现场直播。

Steve: I got this question once. I’m a member of a country club in LA, and one of the things country clubs do sometimes is they’ll do Q\&A with members to entertain. I did a Q\&A with a friend of mine at the club who’d been president of the club, actually, and also as a knows Charlie Munger pretty well. Charlie Munger’s there as well. Charlie Munger comes up to him beforehand. And to me. I know Charlie through Bill and Warren, and says, if you call on me, I have a question,

Steve：我以前还真被问过这类问题。我是洛杉矶一家乡村俱乐部的会员，那种俱乐部有时候会安排会员之间做一些Q\&A当作娱乐活动。我和一位曾经当过俱乐部主席的朋友做了一个Q\&A，他也和查理·芒格很熟。那次芒格也在场。他会前走过来对我朋友说，对我也说，我是通过比尔和沃伦认识查理的，他说，如果你现场叫我发言，我有个问题要问你——

David: As only Charlie can.

David：这话只有查理才说得出来。

Steve: You did a Charlie episode. We do our panel thing, the two of us, and then Q\&A. Charlie gets up to the mic, he’s not moving super well, but he gets up to the mic and, oh, Charlie. We can call on you. Charlie says, Steve, I’m wondering why you held onto your Microsoft stock when your partners over there didn’t. I know you’re not that smart.

Steve：你们做过一期讲查理的节目。我们两个做了个小型圆桌对谈，然后是Q\&A环节。查理走到麦克风前，他行动不是很灵便了，但还是起来了，我们就说，哦，查理，我们可以让你发言。查理说：“Steve，我想知道为什么你一直持有微软的股票，而你那几个合伙人却没有。我知道你没那么聪明。”

Steve: I said, no, Charlie, but I’m not loyal. I don’t know why Paul and Bill didn’t hang on. I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. But for me it’s from the heart thing. And I think it’d be fine. It’s not going to screw anything up financially. What’s the worst thing that happens? Microsoft goes to zero? Probably not, but even if Microsoft goes to zero, me and my family, we can live, we can give away money, it’s not going to go to zero. And I’m okay any way it goes. I’m fine.

Steve：我说，不是的，查理。我也许不聪明，但我很忠诚。我不知道为什么Paul和Bill没有坚持持有，你得去问他们。但对我来说，这是一件出于内心的事情。我觉得这也没什么问题，不会搞砸什么财务安排。最坏的情况是什么？微软股价归零？可能性不大，但就算真的归零，我和我家人也还能生活、还能捐钱。它不会归零。无论它怎么走，我都可以接受。真的没问题。

Ben: And are the Clippers and the Intuit Dome fully paid off at this point?

Ben：那快船队和Intuit Dome现在都已经还清了吗？

Steve: The Clippers are fully paid off. I paid them off the day I bought them. That’s not true. I didn’t want to sell stocks at the time, so I borrowed some money, which is long paid off.

Steve：快船那边已经完全还清了。我买下来的那天就付清了。啊，说得不太准确。我那时候不想卖股票，所以借了一点钱买的，但早就还完了。

Intuit Dome, we borrowed some money against Intuit Dome. I don’t owe any money on it. Oh, that’s not true. I owe some. I have some margin debt that I use to, but again, it’s just a timing thing. I didn’t want to sell stock, so took some margin debt, which as dividends come in, I’m reducing the margin debt.

至于 Intuit Dome，我们确实抵押了一些借款。我自己没有欠那边的钱。哦，这也不太准确。我确实还有一点保证金贷款，但那只是时间上的安排问题。当时我不想卖股票，就用了些保证金贷款。随着股息进来，我也在逐步偿还这些贷款。

But the building itself has debt on it. Why? Because to sell the building, let’s say something was to happen to me and Connie (my wife) had to sell, the buyer would have to come up with less cash because it has debt on it.

不过建筑本身是有负债的。为什么？如果我和我太太Connie出了什么事，不得不出售大楼，有债务在身反而让买家所需现金少一些。

Call it worth X billion and it’s got Y billion on debt on it. You’re only selling it for X minus Y. You’re not selling it for X. Meaning the universe of buyers is bigger because it has debt on it. Oh, by the way, I happen to get the debt at a very good time, at a very good rate. It’s a double value to a future buyer.

比如说它值X十亿美元，但有Y十亿的债务。那你出售的时候只是以X减Y的净值出售，而不是全价X。也就是说因为有债务的存在，潜在买家的数量更大。哦，顺便说一句，我拿这笔债的时候正好赶上时机好，利率也很低。对未来买家来说，是双重利好。

That’s the reason we put that on the building. The margin debt was just a timing issue, if you will.

所以我们才给大楼加上了这笔债务。至于保证金贷款，那纯粹是时间点问题。

Ben: I feel like we’ve done you a great disservice by going into the Clippers and Intuit Dome through—

Ben：我感觉我们用“财务角度”来讨论快船和Intuit Dome，简直是对你的一种冒犯。

Steve: The financial lens.

Steve：从金融角度来看待这事儿。

Steve: Now, that I do not own the financial purposes. And I will also tell you, unlike Microsoft, it cannot go to zero.

Steve：这些资产我可不是为了财务目的而拥有的。而且我告诉你，它们和微软不同，它们不会归零。

David: Like the asset value?

David：你是说它们的资产价值？

Steve: Not a chance. It is far more secure than Microsoft. Why?

Steve：完全不可能。它比微软还要稳妥得多。为什么？

David: Not making more of them.

David：因为这类资产无法再复制。

Steve: They’re not making more of them, and as long as anybody in the world’s getting richer, the buyer pool will only go up. People don’t buy them for their earnings. I wish we had more earnings, but at the end of the day, people are buying them because almost more like a piece of art.

Steve：这种东西是不会再多造一份的，只要这个世界上还有人在变得更富有，潜在买家就只会越来越多。人们买它不是为了它的盈利能力。我当然希望我们能赚得更多，但归根结底，人们买的是一种类似艺术品的存在。

Some people don’t like negative cash flow, blah-blah-blah, but at the end of the day, I have the Clippers, we have the best market in the world. If you want to want to own a basketball team, other than maybe Miami, the only place players want to play is LA.

有些人不喜欢负现金流，巴拉巴拉，但说到底，我拥有的是快船队，我们所在的是世界上最好的市场。如果你想拥有一支NBA球队，除了迈阿密，大概就只有洛杉矶是球员真正愿意去打球的地方了。

If you’re a buyer, where do you want to go if you don’t live in LA? Where do you want to go? Well, you want to go to LA or you want to go to Miami. You don’t want to go to New York in the wintertime. If you’re a foreign buyer, potentially, you want to go to LA.

如果你是一个买家，但你不是住在洛杉矶，你会想去哪？无非就是洛杉矶或迈阿密。冬天你不会想去纽约。作为一个潜在的国际买家，你多半会想去洛杉矶。

That asset value—we should get onto something other asset value—I’m not selling the thing. My estate may sell it. I don’t know what Connie and the kids will want, but at the end of the day, that one does not have a lot of volatility.

那个资产的价值——我们可以换个资产类别来聊聊——我自己是不会卖它的。我的遗产继承人也许会卖，我不知道Connie和孩子们会怎么决定，但说到底，那是个波动性非常低的资产。

David: It’s a nice retirement fund. What’s been the most surprising thing in your Clippers journey?

David：这算是一个很不错的退休基金了。那你在快船这段经历中，最让你惊讶的是什么？

Steve: I’ll give you two parts of the answer. First is how I relate to that business versus the businesses I’ve known. Number one, there are more similarities than I ever thought. We do version upgrades just like you do. What’s a version upgrade? You do major version upgrades over the summer. That’s the draft and free agency and trades. And you do a minor version upgrade at the time of the trade deadline. It’s very simple.

Steve：我来分两部分回答。第一是我如何看待这门生意和我以前所熟悉的生意之间的关系。首先，它们之间的相似点比我想象的还要多。我们也做“版本升级”。什么叫版本升级？夏天做重大版本升级，那就是选秀、自由球员签约和交易；交易截止日前则做一个小版本升级。就是这么简单。

David: You got a six month ship cycle.

David：你是六个月一轮的“产品发布周期”。

Ben: Your service pack.

Ben：你还有“补丁包”。

Steve: A major pack, minor release every year.

Steve：每年都有一个大版本和一个小更新。

David: SP1 and SP2.

David：SP1 和 SP2（指Windows系统的补丁版本）。

Steve: And oh, by the way, how people like agile now development, guess what? That’s called changing the game plan per the coaches are always modifying in that sense. It’s a little bit similar. Ah, I never thought about that. The business is just like Microsoft. We sell both advertising and that’s called sponsorship. We sell tickets.

Steve：顺便说一句，现在大家都喜欢敏捷开发，对吧？其实那就像教练不断调整比赛战术一样，本质上是类似的。啊，我以前还真没这么想过。整个业务其实和微软很像。我们既卖广告，那叫“赞助”，也卖票。

David: Software licenses.

David：就像软件授权许可一样。

Steve: Oh, no. That’s only software licenses. We have an OEM business that’s called broadcast revenue. It’s 100%.

Steve：哦不止是软件许可，我们还有点像OEM业务，那就是转播收入。它占了我们的大头。

David: Remarkably similar.

David：确实非常相似。

Steve: Just the terms of business model. We do have a union. That’s very different. What that means in terms of the complexity through the collective bargaining agreement, it also covers things like what’s max salary, what trades can you make, all that very different. You actually really are business partners with your competitors. That’s different. You actually get together and talk to them. I never did that when I was at Microsoft. You’re get together and you talk to them, but you’re trying to compete.

Steve：单就商业模式的术语来说，我们确实有一个工会。这就非常不同了。因为有集体谈判协议，事情就复杂得多，这份协议还涵盖了诸如工资上限、可以进行哪些交易等等方面。这些都很不一样。你实际上和你的竞争对手是商业伙伴，这也不同。你们真的会坐在一起交流。我在微软时从没干过这种事。你得和他们一起坐下来交流，但你们又是在竞争。

If you have somebody who wants to advance through their career, oftentimes the best way for them to advance, they have to go to another team. We have a president of basketball. It’s not an open job. I don’t plan for it to be an open job. I don’t want to lose anybody. But if a lot of the career moves people make would be to other organizations. We don’t like that. But we want to have the talent. Everybody loves.

如果你有一个人想在职业生涯中晋升，很多时候他们唯一的办法就是去另一支球队。我们有一个篮球运营总裁的位置。这不是一个空缺岗位，我也不打算让它成为空缺。我不想失去任何人。但现实是，很多人的晋升路径都是跳槽到其他组织去。我们不喜欢这样，但我们也想留住人人都喜欢的优秀人才。

David: Microsoft, your domain is always growing.

David：在微软，你的业务领域一直在扩张。

Steve: The domain is growing, or number of people, you can move people. Oh, you’re an engineer. You’re bored. You’ve worked on X. We’ll move you to work on a different product, for example. It’s different the way you think about people, primarily because of the union, but also there are only 30 head coaching jobs. There just are. If somebody wants to be a head coach and they’re not our head coach, they have to find a job someplace else.

Steve：业务在扩张，或者人员规模也在扩张，你可以调动人手。比如说，你是个工程师，你厌倦了手头的项目X，我们可以把你调去另一个产品。这种对待人才的思维方式是不同的，主要是因为工会的存在，但也因为主教练的职位全联盟就30个。如果有人想当主教练，而我们这的职位不空缺，那他们就只能去别的球队找机会。

Again, not what we want, but the reality is we don’t want people held back in their career. It’s not like Microsoft where I felt like I could always find a job that somebody should want. That’s different.

这当然不是我们希望看到的，但现实就是如此。我们不希望妨碍别人的职业发展。这跟微软不一样，在微软我总觉得我能给人安排一个他们愿意干的岗位。这点是不同的。

I’ll give you another one to think about. Business likes to say, oh, we’re accountable, we’re agile, we’re this, we’re that. Sports is so much more accountable than business. It’s like a joke. I’m being a bit extreme for fun. But every 24 seconds, you get a report card. Basketball shot clock every 48 minutes.

我再给你一个值得思考的点。商业圈总喜欢说，“我们有责任感，我们很敏捷，我们怎样怎样。”但体育的责任感比商业要强太多了，说出来都像开玩笑。我有点夸张，但图个乐呵。篮球每24秒就给你一次成绩单——那就是进攻时间限制，整场比赛只有48分钟。

You can’t say, I’m going to make it up next quarter. We missed, but I got it next quarter. No. You lost that game, that game is on, you lost comp for the rest of the season. You cannot dig yourself out of that one game loss hole. You can’t. It’s gone.

你不能说，“我下个季度补回来。我们这次搞砸了，但下季度我能追回来。”不行。你输了一场比赛，那就是铁定的事实，这场比赛已经打完了，你可能整季都无法追回那场失利带来的影响。你没法把那场败仗“补回来”。它已经过去了。

David: And you can probably also be reasonably confident about each individual’s contribution to that win or loss.

David：而且你们大概还能相当确定每个人对胜负的具体贡献。

Steve: Now let me get to that. Your customers know everything you know. It’s not like you could say back in the lab, you wait until you see what we got in the lab. No. Every statistic we have, our customers have.

Steve：我来讲讲这个。你的客户知道你知道的所有东西。你不能说，“等着瞧，我们实验室还有更厉害的东西。”不行。我们掌握的每一项数据，客户也都有。

You want to know how many miles James Harden ran last game? Comes out of the statistical systems. You can find that out. If you want to know how many pick and rolls we ran of a certain type, how they were guarded, and how we did scoring against them? Don’t worry, you can read about it.

你想知道詹姆斯·哈登上一场跑了多少英里？数据系统里就有。你想知道我们打了多少次某种类型的挡拆，对手是怎么防的，我们在这些战术下得了多少分？不用担心，网上都查得到。

You want to look and see what the dynamics look like on the sidelines? You can just sit there and watch our players and say, oh, I don’t know everything. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can see their body language. Oh, so and so seemed severely charged up. Oh, that’s great. So and so cheers for their teammates. So and so seemed down. There’s almost nothing. We get to watch practice, our fans don’t. But the level of accountability is so high. The speed is high.

你想看看场边的氛围？你就坐那儿看球员，你会说，“哦，我不是全都了解他们在说什么，但我能看出他们的肢体语言。”某某球员看起来非常激动，很好；某某球员为队友加油；某某球员显得情绪低落。几乎没有任何细节是隐藏的。我们可以看训练，球迷不行。但整体而言，责任感极强，节奏极快。

Think of teamwork. Teamwork, man. It’s all on display. Not only is it on display, but you absolutely know you need teamwork. One star can’t bail you out. You may have one star, but then the pieces have to fit around the star. It’s just the way it is.

再想想团队合作。团队合作啊，全都摊开在明面上。不只是摆在那里让人看，更是你清楚地知道你必须依靠团队合作。一个明星球员救不了场。你可能有一个明星，但其他人得围绕他契合地运作。就是这么回事。

You know how businesses, you say, okay. Everybody wants to talk about teamwork. In a lot of places that would mean, hey Ben, I don’t know. We could work better on this. Then Ben can say, your team’s doing things wrong. Then we can get back together and talk a little more. Then a month later we can talk about it some more. Probably you’ve seen this in some organizations.

你知道在企业里大家都在说什么团队合作。很多时候这意味着，“嘿，Ben，我不知道，我们在这方面或许能合作得更好。”然后Ben说，“你团队做得不对。”接着我们可以再聊一聊，一个月后再继续聊一聊。你大概在一些组织里也见过这种情况吧。

Ben: And then at some point, we’ll talk about it as if it were a great collaboration between our two teams.

Ben：然后到某个时候，我们就会把这说成是我们两个团队之间一次伟大的合作。

Steve: And what has to happen in our business?

Steve：但在我们这行，会发生什么呢？

David: You actually got to pass the ball.

David：你真的得把球传出去。

Steve: You have to actually say it, pass the ball. Or hey, this isn’t working. You got to do X. You got to give real time feedback. You can’t lolly gag. Ah, well let’s rub each other’s belly. No. If you want that team to be better, you have to hold one another accountable. Not just the coach.

Steve：你真的得说出来，把球传出去。或者说，“嘿，这不行了，你得去做X。”你得给出实时反馈。你不能磨磨蹭蹭地拖延着，“啊，不如我们互相拍拍背安慰一下。”不行。要让这个团队变得更好，大家得互相负责。不只是教练负责。

The best teams, the players hold each other accountable, and not just the best player holds everybody else accountable. Everybody’s got to hold everybody accountable, which really means give the feedback.

最好的团队，是球员之间互相负责，而不是最好的球员来督促其他人。每个人都得对每个人负责，这实际上就是要及时反馈。

In Microsoft, we got rid of the value called teamwork. I didn’t want that one. I said open and respectful and dedicated to making others better, because teamwork could sound like a treat. Everybody nice, nice. Open? Yes. Got to say what’s on your mind. Respectful? Yes. But number one, dedicated to making each other better, which I think is what the purpose of teamwork is, as opposed to the word teamwork.

在微软，我们砍掉了“团队合作”这个价值观。我不想要这个。我说的是“开放、尊重，并致力于让他人变得更好”，因为“团队合作”听起来就像是个好听词，大家都得和和气气。开放？对，得说出你的真实想法。尊重？当然。但最重要的是——致力于让彼此变得更好。我认为这才是团队合作真正的目的，而不是那个词本身。

Ben: Oh, that’s interesting. Teamwork is an implementation detail, but that’s not actually the goal. We don’t seek to have an organization full of teamwork. It’s teamwork because we want some output.

Ben：哦，这很有意思。团队合作只是实现手段，而不是最终目标。我们追求的并不是一个充满“团队合作”的组织。我们要的是产出，而团队合作只是为了达成它。

Steve: Exactly. I think back to the old HP, I’m okay, you’re okay. Let’s all be nice to each other. There’s a little bit of that that’s come back into the general narrative of culture today, generations much younger than me. But at the end of the day, if you want to succeed, you’re right. The goal is succeeding. Play well together. In the NBA team, you’re going to know in 2½ hours or so, 2 hours, you’re going to know.

Steve：完全正确。我想到老惠普那种“我挺好，你也挺好，大家都要和气”的文化。现在的年轻一代里，这种叙事又有点回潮。但说到底，如果你想成功，你说得对，目标是成功。得配合好打球。在NBA里，你打完一场球，大概两个半小时内你就知道结果了。

David: It’s interesting. Professional sports is maybe like the last bastion of there’s not room for the I’m okay, you’re okay, let’s talk this out. Oh, your team’s talk to my team. It’s extreme accountability.

David：有意思的是，职业体育可能是最后一个容不下“我挺好你也挺好，我们慢慢谈”这种态度的地方。不存在“你的团队和我的团队先沟通一下”，这里就是极致的责任制。

Steve: Extreme accountability, extreme teamwork. I learned some things that would’ve been very helpful for me to understand at Microsoft.

Steve：极致的责任制，极致的团队合作。我从中学到了一些在微软时要是早点明白就好了的东西。

I’ll give you another one. Reference checking. Everybody does reference checking. How good is the reference checking in most businesses?

我再说一个例子，背景调查。每家公司都做背景调查。但大多数企业的背景调查做得怎么样？

David: Not good.

David：很差。

Ben: Most people call front of sheet references, which has never made sense to me.

Ben：大多数人打的都是那种候选人自己列在简历上的推荐人电话，这对我来说一直都很奇怪。

Steve: Or you call somebody who probably doesn’t feel like they can give you an honest answer because they don’t want to get sued or blah-blah-blah. Basketball? You should see the amount of reference material we have on a guy before we draft them. People have talked to their old coaches, they’ve talked to their teammates. That’s what scouts do. They’ve watched them play, they’ve been to practices, they know what they’ve talked to references about work at.

Steve：或者你打电话给一个可能不敢给你诚实答案的人，因为他们怕被告之类的。在篮球界？你应该看看我们在选秀前对一个球员掌握了多少背景资料。人们已经和他们以前的教练聊过，和他们的队友聊过。这就是球探的工作。他们看过他们打球，去过他们的训练场，他们知道自己在和推荐人聊什么。

Ben: Imagine if you could scout your future employees. You could just go hang out at their current job.

Ben：想象一下如果你也能像这样考察未来员工。你可以直接去他们现在的工作单位观察他们。

Steve: Or you talk to their parents. There are so many things.

Steve：或者你直接和他们父母谈。可以了解的事情太多了。

David: The draft choices are such a crucible decision because free agency, you mostly know what you’re getting. They have a body of work.

David：选秀真的是一种大考验，因为自由球员市场里，你大致知道你会得到什么。他们已经有过硬的履历了。

Steve: You can see the body of work. You may know what happens behind the scenes. You may not.

Steve：你可以看到他们的过往表现。至于幕后发生了什么，你可能知道，也可能不知道。

David: So there’s some risk to it, but there’s a body of work. A draft, you get two choices every year.

David：所以虽然有点风险，但还是有迹可循。而选秀呢，你每年只有两个选择。

Steve: Well, we traded some away, but yes.

Steve：嗯，我们有些选秀权已经交易出去了，但总体上是这样。

David: But in theory. In aggregate, every team gets two choices every year, and you could choose to deal those choices. And that’s hugely, hugely impactful.

David：但从理论上讲，每支球队每年都有两个选秀权，你可以选择如何处理这些权利。而这会产生极其巨大的影响。

Steve: And you’re dealing with one other thing—my wife reminds me—boys’ brains don’t fully develop until they’re what, 25? We’re drafting guys who are 19, 20, 21. You’re also having to say by everything I know, what do I project that guy looks like? You could say you enter your prime around 27, what do you start looking at though? You’re going to look pretty good or not by 23, 24, 25. You have to have a progression of what you think happens to the young man when you draft him.

Steve：还有一件事——是我妻子提醒我的——男孩的大脑在25岁之前还没有完全发育。我们选秀的时候，选的是19、20、21岁的年轻人。你必须根据你所知道的一切来预测这个人未来会变成什么样子。你可以说27岁左右是巅峰期，但你得看他在23、24、25岁时是否已经显现出潜力。你得对这个年轻人在选中之后的成长轨迹有一个判断。

The more reference checking, much bigger deal I found. People say, oh, well it’s simple. It’s sports. The strategy decks I get, 35 PowerPoints, 40 PowerPoints, easily to go through. Okay, here’s our strategies. What about this? What if? What about this. What do we do here? We have a PhD physicist who is a key part of our analytics group, focuses on our analytics systems. It’s not like this stuff’s not complicated. It is.

我发现，越是详细的背景调查越重要。人们总说体育很简单。可我拿到的战略简报一拿就是三四十页PPT。内容是：我们的策略是什么？这个情况怎么办？那个怎么办？这时候我们该怎么做？我们有一位物理学博士，是我们数据分析团队的核心成员，专注于我们的分析系统。这些东西一点也不简单，真的很复杂。

Ben: Analytics has become this really big buzzword in sports. Where do you see real alpha actually happening in data science and sports, versus what’s just table stakes at this point?

Ben：数据分析现在已经成了体育界的热门词。在你看来，数据科学在哪些地方还能真正创造超额收益，而哪些已经变成基本门槛了？

Steve: There are two ways to use analytics. One is for game planning. Literally, what does this tell us about the best way to guard Anthony Edwards in this situation or these situations? Very helpful for that.

Steve：数据分析有两种主要用途。一是用于比赛策略的制定。比如，这能告诉我们在某种情况下如何最有效地防守Anthony Edwards。这方面数据真的很有帮助。

I’d say the data is probably table stakes, honestly. The way you use it, not so much do you ask the right questions? Maybe not. Does coach really understand and embrace? Are the analytics people really able to mind meld with coach so that coaches get the insights they can for game planning?

说实话，现在这些数据基本已经成为门槛了。真正重要的是你怎么使用这些数据——你是否能提出正确的问题？教练是否真的理解并接受这些数据？数据分析团队能否和教练思想同步，把洞察转化为比赛策略？

The second is, what about for drafting and trading? Analytics are actually a little less important in that instance. Because they don’t really tell you how, if you mix Charlie with Harry, it’s different than if you mix Charlie with Bobby. And Charlie and Harry haven’t played together before. So it’s a little different, and they are helpful.

第二个用途是用于选秀和交易。这时候数据分析其实就没那么重要了。因为它无法告诉你：如果Charlie和Harry配合是一个效果，Charlie和Bobby配合又是另一个效果。Charlie和Harry还从没一起打过球。这个变量不同，虽然数据分析依然有帮助。

We have analytics, for example, and all the kids we’re going to draft, less valuable than on pros because you’re playing against a different level of competition. Do people have differential data? Not much. The same cameras in the ceiling are recording the same games. Most of the analytics data now gets processed through standard software packages that get licensed to everybody.

比如我们也有针对选秀球员的分析数据，但这些数据比职业球员的数据价值要低，因为他们面对的是不同层级的对手。各队的数据差异也不大。天花板上的摄像机记录的是同一场比赛。现在大部分数据都是用标准的软件包来处理，所有球队都买了这些软件的授权。

There’s a company called Hawkeye Second Spectrum. Basically, they’ve built machine learning layers on top of the raw motion data, et cetera, so every team winds up with the same tools. Doesn’t mean you don’t need smart guys. It doesn’t mean you don’t do analysis on top of it.

有家公司叫Hawkeye Second Spectrum。他们在原始的动作数据之上建立了机器学习模型。所以每支球队最后用的工具其实差不多。这并不意味着你不需要聪明人，也不意味着你不能在这些工具之上继续做分析。

Ben: Has anyone had a breakthrough form of measurement? Is there an example in the last five years of a team that’s had a great data source emerge?

Ben：有没有球队在数据测量方式上实现了突破？过去五年有没有哪支球队找到过一个全新的、很棒的数据来源？

Steve: A different data source than other people have? No, I don’t think so at all. It’s the things people emphasize in terms of what they look at could be different (I think) very much by teams. They’re teams at the draft who just have you take a psychological test, you get to interview a set of kids and they might just have you take a test.

Steve：有哪支球队用的数据源和其他人完全不同？我认为完全没有。不同的只是各支球队在分析重点上可能不一样。我见过有些球队在选秀时，会让球员做心理测试，会安排一组人轮流面试这些年轻人，有些球队可能就只是给你做一个测试而已。

Other teams, it’s all about the interview. Some people, I don’t know if they see psychologists. I don’t know. But people will use different techniques to try to do some of that. It’s a little different from analytics, but it gives you the sense of how do you assess what’s important.

其他球队可能完全依赖面试。我不确定是否有球队找心理学家来评估。我不知道。但球队们会用不同的方法去做这些评估。虽然这不属于数据分析范畴，但它同样体现出你如何判断哪些东西重要。

Ben: Fascinating,

Ben：太有意思了，

David: Interesting. How does Intuit Dome fit into all this?

David：很有意思。那 Intuit Dome 在这一切里扮演什么角色？

Steve: I love Intuit Dome. Since we talked a lot about products, and I’ve been involved in (I’ll say) the visioning—I call myself a visionary—what should this product look like, particularly a number of them, both Windows but also certainly on the backend products—backend meaning they’re not customer visible—I’d say Intuit Dome’s probably the product for which I had the clearest vision I’ve ever had. I knew what I wanted. It evolved some because we went and looked at a bunch of other arenas. But I had a point of view. I know what user I wanted to make happy.

Steve：我太喜欢 Intuit Dome 了。我们刚才聊了很多关于产品的事情，我以前参与过很多产品的“构想阶段”——我自称是个“构想者”——决定一个产品该长成什么样，尤其是一些像 Windows 这样的产品，还有后端产品——后端指的是用户看不到的系统产品。如果说我对哪个产品的愿景最清晰，那就是 Intuit Dome。我清楚知道我想要什么。虽然过程中我们也去看了很多别的球馆，愿景也有些演变，但我始终有自己的观点。我知道我要取悦的是哪类用户。

Ben: So I bet a lot of people aren’t familiar what is the thesis behind Intuit Dome?

Ben：我猜很多人其实并不了解 Intuit Dome 背后的理念是什么？

Steve: I wanted to make Intuit Dome the best place for the hardcore basketball fan.

Steve：我想让 Intuit Dome 成为铁杆篮球迷最喜欢的地方。

Ben: And particularly the hardcore Clippers fan, right?

Ben：尤其是洛杉矶快船队的铁杆球迷，对吧？

Steve: Sure, of course, because we’re the only team that plays there.

Steve：当然了，毫无疑问，因为我们是唯一在那里打球的球队。

David: You’ve got another team who plays there every night. You’re visiting team, but not trying to help them.

David：你们每晚还有另一支队来打比赛，那是客队，但你们可不是去帮他们的。

Steve: Yes, Clipper fans, but we’re going to have the Olympics. We’ll have every Olympic basketball game. And Intuit, I want it to be great for those environments. We have some college games or high school games in there. Basketball, basketball, basketball.

Steve：对，快船的球迷是我们的重点，但我们还要办奥运会。每一场奥运篮球比赛都会在那里举行。我希望 Intuit Dome 在这种环境下也能发挥极致表现。我们还会在那里办一些大学或高中篮球赛。就是篮球、篮球、还是篮球。

You sit in there and you’re a fan. It’s a live event. Got to have energy, got to have intensity. If you’re a basketball fan, come on, let’s go. So you want it tight. You want to have it reverberating with people who are cheering.

你坐在那儿当个球迷，这是现场比赛，必须要有能量，有强烈气氛。你是篮球迷？那就来吧！所以你想让它更紧凑，想要让球馆里充满呐喊声的回响。

Essentially, a whole side of the building is structured more like a college gym. Long and steep, there are no suites on the side. We even built a student section right in the middle. It’s standing room only. You must stand. That’s what you have to agree to if you’re going to be there. You have to agree to stand. You have to agree to cheer. If you don’t, we’ll find you another place in the building to sit.

整整一侧的看台设计得像大学体育馆一样——长而陡，没有包厢。我们甚至在正中间设了一个学生区，全是站票。你必须站着。这是你来这里的前提。你必须同意站着，必须同意呐喊助威。如果你不这样，我们会给你换个座位，换到别处去。

You can’t wear visiting gear paraphernalia on that whole side. Four thousand seats. Will move you if otherwise. It’s small. Not the number of seats is a little small, but the way we pulled it together, there’s no hockey. I didn’t want hockey. Not that hockey’s not a great sport, but—

在那一整侧你不能穿客队的衣服或装备。那边有四千个座位。如果穿了我们会让你换座位。这块区域相对小，不是说座位数量少，而是我们有意这样设计的。而且这里没有冰球比赛。我不希望有冰球——不是说冰球不好——

David: Compromises you’d have to make to the arena.

David：而是因为那样的话就得对球馆设计做出妥协。

Steve: You have to spread it out. You have to spread people out because the rink is bigger than the court. Very different. We have an acre of scoreboard.

Steve：你必须把场馆拉大，观众也得分散开来，因为冰场比篮球场大得多。这完全不一样。我们有一英亩的记分屏。

David: The halo board is unreal.

David：那个环形屏幕太震撼了。

Steve: More statistics. We went 4K from the start.

Steve：更多的数据展示。我们一开始就是4K画质。

David: I didn’t realize it’s an acre. You have an acre of scoreboard.

David：我都没意识到那是整整一英亩的记分屏。

Steve: Between the inside and the outside, it’s almost an acre.

Steve：内外加起来，差不多有一英亩。

Ben: It’s the largest indoor screen in the world.

Ben：这是全世界最大的室内显示屏。

Steve: For sure.

Steve：毫无疑问。

Ben: And what you were describing before is the wall. For any fans or listeners who haven’t seen a game there or seen anything—we’ve done interviews about this—it’s an unbroken—

Ben：你刚刚描述的是那面墙。对于那些没在那里看过比赛或没见过画面的球迷或听众——我们之前做过一些采访——那是一整片连续的看台——

Steve: Fifty-one rows, unbroken all the way up. I call it the student section. We call it the swell, Clippers, waves, get it? Swell. The swell is right in the middle. They do a chant before the game starts. They’re chanting, they’re making noise, a bunch will find weird things they want to bring to games. Funny posters. You basically sign up, first-come-first-serve. If you’re not there early, you’re not in the swell, that game.

Steve：51排座位，从底到顶没有中断。我叫它“学生区”。我们把它叫做 “The Swell”，和快船（Clippers）、海浪（waves）呼应，懂了吗？“Swell”。“Swell”就在正中间。他们在比赛前会一起喊口号，制造噪音，有些人还会带一些稀奇古怪的东西来，比如搞笑海报。你得提前报名，先到先得。如果你来得不早，那场比赛你就进不了 “Swell”。

We oversell the section. It’s \$1000 for the year, which is only \$25 a game. Hell of a price. You’re expected to deliver the goods. You have to deliver.

我们这个区域是超额售票的。一年只要1000美元，平均一场才25块。这价格太划算了。但你必须拿出表现来。你必须尽职尽责。

David: You got to bring the value.

David：你得带来价值。

Steve: You got to bring the value.

Steve：你得带来价值。

Ben: And the thesis behind the wall, if I’m understanding correctly, is it should be easy to be a Clipper player, but hard to be an opposing player.

Ben：我理解的“那堵墙”的理念是——要让快船球员在主场打得轻松，但让客队球员打得艰难。

Steve: We put it right on top of the visitor side, so it makes noise right into the visitor’s huddle. We put the swell right behind the backboard, so basically when you’re shooting free throws on that end, you’re looking right at the swell.

Steve：我们把它建在了客队那一侧的正上方，这样噪音可以直接灌进他们的战术讨论区。我们把“Swell”区放在篮板正后方，所以当你在那一头罚球时，你正好面对着“Swell”。

David: And it makes a difference.

David：这确实起作用了。

Ben: I saw data that said that the—

Ben：我看到一组数据显示——

Steve: Lowest free throw shooting percentage of the league for the visiting team is against the wall. It worked. That’s what I wanted.

Steve：联盟客队在我们主场的罚球命中率是最低的。“那堵墙”起作用了。这正是我想要的。

David: What did the other owners think about this?

David：其他球队老板怎么看这个设计？

Steve: We’ve had a bunch of people come through and look at the building. Would I be surprised if a number of the new arenas get built don’t have a wall. No, I would be, or at least, student section.

Steve：已经有不少人来参观过我们的球馆。如果将来新建的球馆里都没有类似的“墙”或学生区，我会很惊讶。

David: You’ve got a duration of your advantage because not every other team can build or remodel an arena.

David：你这算是有“时间上的领先优势”，因为不是所有球队都有机会重建或改造球馆。

Steve: But you also have to remember, I took some financial hits on this. We have fewer suites, less revenue, and we only charge \$1000 for a season ticket that gets you pretty close to the floor.

Steve：但你也得记住，我在这上面是有些财务上的牺牲的。我们的包厢更少、收入也更少，而且那个靠近球场的季票一年才卖1000美元。

Ben: And you didn’t have any public funding for it, so in terms of the cash out—

Ben：而且你没有拿到任何公共资金支持，这就意味着现金投入全是你出的——

Steve: Yeah. California, you can’t have public funding for arenas. That’s why we don’t.

Steve：是的。在加州，球馆是不允许用公共资金的。这就是我们没有公共资金的原因。

Ben: You paid for the whole arena and you’re going to have slower payback on that because you have less revenue opportunity.

Ben：你自己掏钱建了整座球馆，但因为放弃了一部分营收机会，回本的速度会更慢。

Steve: But we took a revenue. Definitely we could have made more revenue on that side if we’d done things a little bit differently. But it’s about basketball. We have a lot of toilets.

Steve：但我们确实为了设计牺牲了一部分营收。如果我们当初换个方式来做，肯定能赚更多。但这座球馆是为了篮球而建的。哦对，我们有很多厕所。

Ben: Three times the average or something like that.

Ben：大概是平均球馆的三倍吧，好像是。

Steve: Something like that. Why? It’s about basketball. Get out and get back into your seat. Don’t miss the action. We started out with a lot more concession stands, and then we said, no, no. Let’s just do this completely frictionless. If you register your face, you just walk in, grab what you want and leave. If not, you could just tap your phone on the way in, grab your stuff and leave.

Steve：差不多是这样。为什么？因为这是为篮球打造的。你出去再回来，不能错过比赛。我们最初设计了很多卖品摊位，后来想，不不，我们应该把它做成完全无摩擦的。如果你注册了面部信息，只需走进去，拿上你要的东西，然后直接离开。如果没有注册，也可以在进门时刷一下手机，拿好东西就走。

There’s no checkout. We don’t serve eclectic food. Little everything. Same thing everywhere. Why? We don’t want you walking around having to look for your favorite food. No, you’re going to get the same great stuff everywhere.

没有收银环节。我们不提供五花八门的食物。各个摊位提供的都是一样的。为什么？我们不希望你绕场半天去找你最爱的食物。不用找，在哪儿都能买到一样的好东西。

It turns out 85% of what gets bought is in five items anyway. It’s a hamburger, it’s a hot dog, it’s nachos, chicken tenders. I’m not remembering off the top of my head.

事实证明，85%的销售都集中在五种食品上。汉堡、热狗、玉米片、炸鸡柳……我现在一下想不起来第五个是什么。

David: Is part of the calculus of this for attracting players too?

David：这其中是不是也有吸引球员的考量？

Steve: Sure. If you look at our backend spaces, like our practice facility, ooh la la.

Steve：当然。如果你看我们后台的设施，比如训练场，那可真是“哇哦”。

David: But I’m thinking even if your opponent’s going to have a lower free throw shooting percentage in your home arena…

David：但我在想，就算对手在你们主场的罚球命中率会降低……

Steve: Sure. Players have said they think it’s really cool. And that’s good. That’s good. Players’ offices are also good, i.e., the training area, the practice area, our outdoor pool, sauna, and cold plunge, our weight room, our sports performance center. That stuff, all I would say, are pretty good as well. Very good.

Steve：当然。球员们都说他们觉得这个主场真的很酷。那很好，很棒。球员们的“办公室”也很棒，比如训练区、练习场、我们的室外泳池、桑拿房和冰水池、健身房、运动表现中心。这些我觉得都相当不错，真的非常棒。

We’ve done a bunch of things. We have the best refs room (I think) in the league. We called the refs union and said, what do you guys need? The media area, we said, look. If we’re going to build a new arena, our visiting locker room’s the best in the league. Best weight room.

我们做了很多事情。我觉得我们拥有全联盟最好的裁判休息室。我们打电话给裁判工会，问他们需要什么。媒体区也是，我们说，既然要建一个新球馆，那客队更衣室就要做到全联盟最好的。健身房也是最好的。

David: That’s your sales pitch to visiting stars.

David：这正好是你吸引客队球星的卖点。

Steve: Exactly. We say, hey, we care, and we care about everybody. Then we make it about the basketball, in and out. Oh, what’s our artwork? We have public art that is required, some of which is basketball-oriented. But our major piece of public art is a clipper ship whose masks are replicas of basketballs from around the world. Basketball, basketball, basketball.

Steve：没错。我们想表达的是，“嘿，我们很在乎，而且我们在乎每一个人。”然后一切都围绕篮球展开。我们的艺术装饰呢？我们有政府规定要放的公共艺术品，其中一些是以篮球为主题的。但我们主要的公共艺术品是一艘快船帆船，它的桅杆是世界各地篮球的复制品。篮球、篮球、还是篮球。

Our art inside the building? We have a high school basketball jersey from every high school in the state of California. It looks like art almost because It’s nice colors on the wall. Basketball, man. It’s about the basketball.

球馆内部的艺术装饰？我们收集了加州每一所高中的篮球队球衣。挂在墙上，颜色丰富，看起来就像艺术一样。篮球，兄弟，一切都是为了篮球。

Ben: This building feels like your personality into a physical structure, the competitiveness, the loyalty, the fixation on what matters—

Ben：这栋球馆简直像是你性格的实体化——竞争性、忠诚，还有对真正重要的事物的执着——

David: On the customer?

David：对球迷的执着？

Steve: Yeah, it is. Look, you know how oftentimes startups come about because the founder is in love with some topic and builds the product they wanted to use? I think that happens a lot. I don’t think people start back and look at the market, they say, oh, I think… I think Zuckerberg did that, Bill did that, programming, everybody does it. That’s what you did.

Steve：是的，没错。你知道吗，很多创业公司诞生是因为创始人对某个主题充满热情，然后打造出自己想用的产品？我觉得这种情况很多。我不觉得大家一开始就去研究市场，然后说，“我觉得……”我觉得扎克伯格就是那样，盖茨也是，写程序的人，大家都是这么来的。你们也是。

I didn’t try to go out and survey. We could have designed for the, let me call it the contemporary audience. We would’ve had more lounge space. We could have designed for what I’d call traditional, long-term. That’s how I think about it. We could have designed in a lot of ways.

我没有做什么市场调查。我们本可以设计成更迎合“当代观众”的样子——有更多休息区。我们也可以为那种“传统型、长期支持者”设计。这是我的思路。其实我们可以有很多种设计方式。

I designed for me. In some large measure, guys like me. It turns out Clipper fans are a little bit like me, because some of them are long suffering. The team wasn’t good there for a number of years. People are diehard, come up to you and say, I’m 89, which really means they bought their season tickets in 1989. They’ve been there and now we’ve exploded in the last, whatever, 14 years. We haven’t had a losing season.

但我设计的是我自己喜欢的，也在很大程度上是为像我这样的人设计的。事实证明，快船球迷确实有点像我，因为他们很多人是长期忍受低谷期的。球队有很多年表现不好。有些球迷是铁杆的，会跑过来跟你说，“我89”，其实意思是他们从1989年就买了季票。他们一直在，那现在我们这十四年来表现很棒，已经没有输掉一个赛季了。

Ben: Hopefully a championship here at some point.

Ben：希望某天能拿到总冠军。

David: When are you going to overtake the Lakers?

David：你们什么时候能超越湖人？

Steve: There are battles in tech where you just have to be patient and long-term. It’s weird to have a town with two teams. Our goal is to be long-term grinders on that. We want to beat them every time on the court.

Steve：在科技行业也有那种必须耐心、长期投入的较量。而一个城市里有两支球队确实挺奇怪的。我们的目标就是在这方面长期坚持、不断努力。我们希望每次在场上都能击败他们。

It’s okay to have two popular teams. Los Angeles County, for gosh sakes, has the same number of people as the state of Ohio, pretty much. There are plenty of people to be fans. We don’t want to be “little brother.” We don’t want to be the team with a nice 20% market share. No. We want to get our fair share. We’re never going to get 100%.

拥有两支受欢迎的球队没什么不好。老天，洛杉矶县的人口差不多跟整个俄亥俄州一样多。球迷多的是。我们不想做“老二”，我们不想只做一个有着20%市场份额的“还不错的”球队。不是的，我们要拿到我们应得的份额。虽然我们不可能拿到100%，

The Lakers have tradition just like at Microsoft. Patient, long-term, hardcore approach. If we don’t do that, no. The Lakers have the position. They’ve earned it. They got a lot of championships. That don’t mean we’re not going to keep coming and coming and coming.

湖人有传统，就像微软一样。我们得靠耐心、长期投入、全力以赴的方式。如果我们不这样做，就没戏。湖人有他们的地位，那是他们赢来的。他们拿过很多冠军。但这并不意味着我们不会持续不断地追赶、冲击。

Ben: Steve, thank you so much.

Ben：Steve，非常感谢你。

Steve: Thanks, man. Thanks, David.

Steve：谢啦兄弟，谢谢你，David。

David: Thanks, Steve.

David：谢谢你，Steve。

Ben: Appreciate it. Ooh, David, that was fun.

Ben：非常感激。哇，David，这真是太有意思了。

David: Yes, it was.

David：没错，确实如此。

Ben: I’ve always wanted to interview Steve Ballmer. In fact, when I was at Microsoft, I wasn’t a podcaster then, but at the time I was such a junior employee. But man, there was a complicated landscape that Steve was navigating between the product set, between developer relevance, between the shifting landscape underneath him, and will Windows be the interesting bet to make going forward? personnel stuff, board stuff, eventually CEO transition. That is not a job I want.

Ben：我一直很想采访Steve Ballmer。事实上，我以前在微软工作时还不是播客主持人，但那时候我是个非常基层的员工。可当时，Steve要应对的局势非常复杂——产品组合、开发者生态的相关性、整个行业环境的变化，以及Windows未来是否仍然值得下注，再加上人事问题、董事会事务，最后还有CEO的交接。这种工作我可不想干。

David: It’s fun for us as a show, too. Obviously this is meaningful for you personally, but when we started the show in Seattle in 2015, the Microsoft transition, Steve, Satya, this is what was in the water. This is what we all talked about at Madrona or Seattle in the tech ecosystem.

David：这对我们这个节目来说也非常有趣。显然对你个人意义重大，但我们2015年在西雅图开播时，正是微软转型时期，Steve和Satya的话题充斥着整个城市。这正是我们在Madrona或整个西雅图科技生态圈讨论最多的内容。

Ben: And it’s not clear that Microsoft was going to be this amazing juggernaut that it turned into. Obviously, Steve had planted some seeds in enterprise and what would become the juggernaut of Azure, but we were early in Satya’s tenure when we started this show. Everyone had high hopes, he had started to transform the culture, but it’s come a long way.

Ben：那时还没人能确定微软会变成现在这样令人敬畏的巨头。显然，Steve在企业服务方面播下了一些种子，最终发展成了如今的Azure帝国。但当我们开始这个节目的时候，还处于Satya上任初期。大家对他寄予厚望，他也确实开始转变公司文化，但这一路走来真是经历了很多。

David: Steve knew how great Azure was going to be, but the rest of the world didn’t yet.

David：Steve早就知道Azure会有多伟大，但当时外界还没意识到。

Ben: Yup. So fun.

Ben：是啊，太精彩了。

All right. Well listeners, a few things before we wrap. One, New York City. We would love to see you at Radio City Music Hall. acquired.fm/nyc is where you can get all of the information, tickets, et cetera about that. And it’s going to be quite a night to remember.

好了，听众朋友们，在结束前还有几件事要说。第一，纽约市。我们非常希望能在无线电城音乐厅见到你们。你可以在 acquired.fm/nyc 上获取所有相关信息、门票等。这将会是一个难忘的夜晚。

David: Yes, it will be. Can’t wait.

David：绝对如此。迫不及待了。

Ben: Can’t wait. Well thank you to our partners this season. J.P. Morgan Payments, trusted, reliable payments infrastructure for your business, no matter the scale. Statsig, the best way to do experimentation and many more things as a product team. Vercel your complete platform for web development, and Anthropic, the makers of Claude. You can click the links in the show notes to learn more about any of these great companies.

Ben：等不及了。非常感谢本季我们的合作伙伴：摩根大通支付（J.P. Morgan Payments），为任何规模的企业提供值得信赖的支付基础设施；Statsig，是产品团队进行实验和更多操作的最佳工具；Vercel，一个全面的网页开发平台；以及Claude的开发商Anthropic。你可以点击节目备注中的链接，了解这些优秀公司的更多信息。

If you like this episode, go check out our two big episodes on the history of Microsoft. Part one is basically the era where Bill Gates was CEO. Part two is basically the era where Steve was CEO.

如果你喜欢本期内容，不妨去听听我们关于微软历史的两期特别节目。第一部分主要是比尔·盖茨担任CEO的时代，第二部分则是Steve执掌公司时期的内容。

If you want more Acquired between the monthly episodes, check out ACQ2, our interview show where we talk with founders building their businesses today, often in spaces that we’ve covered on the show.

如果你希望在每月正片之间获取更多Acquired内容，可以收听我们的访谈节目ACQ2，我们会与当下正在创业的创始人们对话，讨论的领域也常常是我们节目中涉及过的主题。

If you want to know more every time an episode drops, check out our email list that’s acquired.fm/email. Get updates, get corrections, get hints at what the next episode will be. We announce all kinds of cool stuff in there.

如果你想第一时间了解我们每期节目的发布情况，可以订阅我们的邮件列表，网址是acquired.fm/email。你会收到更新、更正信息，以及下一期节目的预告，我们还会在里面发布各种有趣的内容。

When you finish this episode, come discuss it with the other smart members of the Acquired community at acquired.fm/slack. And with that, listeners, we’ll see you next time.

听完本期节目后，欢迎你加入Acquired社区，与其他聪明的听众们一起讨论，地址是acquired.fm/slack。好了，听众朋友们，我们下期再见。

David: We’ll see you next time.

David：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的主持人和嘉宾可能持有节目中提到的资产。本播客并非投资建议，仅供信息分享和娱乐用途。在考虑任何金融交易时，你应进行自主调研，并作出独立判断。

2025-06-01 Acquired.The Steve Ballmer Interview

2025-06-01 Acquired.The Steve Ballmer Interview

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