Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing

频道: Invest Like The Best
视频: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlWX7RltfDE
原文语言: en
统计: 共 170 轮 · Patrick 56 · Moritz 71

[0:00] Patrick

The episode with Jobs and Time was so fascinating in your history and I'm sure frustrating for you.

你和 Jobs、和《时代》周刊之间的那段往事，在你的经历里真是精彩极了，我猜当时也让你挺懊恼的。

[0:06] Moritz

You know, sadly as a result of that really never repaired the relationship with Steve.

很遗憾，也正因为那件事，我和 Steve 的关系再也没能真正修复。

[0:12] Patrick

Were you in awe of him?

你当时对他心存敬畏吗？

[0:14] Moritz

No.

没有。

[0:15] Patrick

Have you ever been in awe of anyone?

那你这辈子有没有敬畏过谁？

[0:18]

You know, the people that I've known who have done incredible, remarkable things are also flawed individuals. And if you get to know them well, you also see that aspect of it. So seeing that up close makes it difficult to hold anybody in awe because you see the flaws as well as all of their accomplishments and virtues. When I was reading your book, one of the lines or the ideas that has really stuck with me ever since is where does one person end and the next person begin? And this deep dive that you took into the impact of one's history, family history, heritage on who a person is. I'm interested in this from so many angles. as a parent, as a person interested in history, as a person interested in genetics, nature versus nurture, if I were to sum up the book in that question, what what is your answer to that? Like where do you think what did you come away thinking after this deep study of your own family's history?

Moritz： 我认识的那些做成过惊人、非凡之事的人，本身也都是有缺陷的人。你跟他们处熟了，就会看到这一面。近距离看到这些之后，就很难再对谁心存敬畏了——因为你看到的不只是他们的种种成就和美德，还有他们的缺点。

Patrick： 读你这本书的时候，有一句话、或者说一个想法，从那以后一直萦绕在我心里：一个人止于何处，下一个人又从何处开始？还有你深入挖掘的那个问题——一个人的过往、家族史和血脉传承，如何塑造了他成为什么样的人。我从很多角度都对这件事感兴趣：作为家长，作为一个对历史感兴趣的人，作为一个对遗传学、对「先天与后天」之争感兴趣的人。如果要用这个问题来概括整本书，你的答案是什么？就是说，深入研究了自己的家族史之后，你最终得出了什么结论？

[1:30] Moritz

One of the things that came out of the book uh which I didn't really expect was discovering who I am and why I became whatever it is that I've become. Um, and that was an sort of unexpected gift of of the writing and it came from an exploration of this exploration of my family's past in particular my parents and um going back and excavating the deep memories of childhood and the sort of atmosphere in in our home and in the general melar in which I grew up helped me understand a lot about why I am who I am and react to certain things in in the fashion that I do because unwittingly obviously every parent uh leaves an imprint uh on a child and I think that's Um, obviously especially true during the formative years, whatever the formative years are. I'm no sort of child um um um specialist or scientist, but those uh you know before you turn 12, 13, 14 years old, those imprints that you've absorbed in some manner, consciously or unconsciously, those remain with you. and uh both the um angels and demons I think that you deal with for the rest of your life.

这本书带给我一个完全没料到的收获：我发现了自己是谁，以及我为什么会成为今天这个样子。这算是写作送给我的一份意外之礼。它来自我对家族过往的探索，尤其是对我父母的探索。回过头去挖掘童年深处的记忆，挖掘我们家里的那种氛围、我成长的整个环境，帮我理解了很多事：我为什么是现在这个我，为什么会以我这种方式对某些事情做出反应。因为显然，每个父母都会在不知不觉中给孩子留下印记，而且我觉得在成长的关键期尤其如此——不管关键期具体指哪几年。我不是什么儿童专家或科学家，但大概在你满 12、13、14 岁之前，你以某种方式吸收的那些印记，不管是有意识还是无意识的，都会一直留在你身上——既有天使也有魔鬼，我觉得你这辈子都得跟它们打交道。

[3:17]

What were yours? So I'm so curious that you're performing on yourself the exercise that you're famous for doing with others that you invested in or hired focusing on these first 14 years? What what new understanding of yourself came out of this exercise? Well, I I grew up as as you know and as the as the book talks about in this um family of uh refugees from Nazi Germany and Wales and uh refugees by definition are a minority. U Jewish refugees in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s were a further minority. And I think if you grow although even if pe you know people look at me today and they think oh here's this old white man um he's not a minority but and and I can understand that but it's how an individual feels rather than how other people might might look at you. Um but I think it touched me in a variety of ways. Um my parents had gone through these although they were never in the camps they got out they got out of Germany in the 1930s and they were loathd to use the word survivor because they always felt the word survivor denoted somebody who actually had survived the camps but they were refugees and in their own way had survived and that uh motive to survive no matter what the odds were even though the odds that I faced growing up weren't like my parents I think the uh the need to survive and when when you think about surviving you're thinking about to some extent living by your wits being very suspicious of the motives of others wondering where and how bad things will occur and happen and guard guard against them. Um I think gives you uh well certainly g gave me in retrospect I didn't understand it at the time um a sort of drive and and grit that I wouldn't have had uh without that uh particular atmospheric backdrop. When you study it and you think about your own childhood, how did that transfer from your parents to you? Was it the stories they told?

Patrick： 那你的天使和魔鬼是什么？我特别好奇的是，你出了名的会对别人做一件事——对你投资过的人、招进来的人，专门去看他们人生的头 14 年——现在你把这套功课用在了自己身上。做完之后，你对自己有了什么新的认识？

Moritz： 你也知道，书里也写到了，我是在威尔士、在一个逃离纳粹德国的难民家庭里长大的。难民天然就是少数群体，而 1960 和 1970 年代威尔士的犹太难民，更是少数中的少数。我想，就算今天大家看到我会觉得「这不就是个白人老头嘛，算不上什么少数群体」——我也能理解——但重要的是一个人自己的感受，而不是别人怎么看你。我觉得这件事从很多方面影响了我。我父母经历过那些——虽然他们从没进过集中营，他们在 1930 年代就逃出了德国——他们一直不愿用「幸存者」这个词，因为他们总觉得「幸存者」指的是真正从集中营里活下来的人。但他们是难民，以他们自己的方式也算是活了下来。那种不管胜算多渺茫都要活下去的动力——虽然我成长中面对的处境根本没法跟我父母比——我觉得那种求生的需要……当你想到「活下去」，某种程度上你想的就是：靠自己的机灵过活，对别人的动机高度怀疑，时刻琢磨坏事会在哪里、以什么方式发生，并提前防着。我觉得这给了你——至少回头看确实给了我，虽然当时我并不明白——一种干劲和韧劲；要不是有那种特殊的氛围作底色，我是不会有的。

Patrick： 你研究这些、回想自己童年的时候，这种东西是怎么从你父母传到你身上的？是通过他们讲的故事吗？

[5:56] Moritz

It was definitely not the stories they told because they didn't tell the stories and I didn't really get to know the stories until I sat down and began work on this book. What I did know was the general arc of history obviously and the world you know this miserable ferocious catastrophic whirlwind in which they and millions of others were um caught up but they they didn't talk about the past in the real detail that I much later when I said you know when I was thinking about the book became uh interested in it was just broad sweeps. So um I think it was much more the daily behavior, the reaction to events, the reaction to things, the sense that uh the doom was not very far away. Um and uh the fact that um if horrors had occurred in the past um uh there was a real need to be vigilant and wary about um navigating daily life.

肯定不是靠他们讲的故事，因为他们根本不讲。直到我坐下来开始写这本书，才真正了解那些故事。我当然知道大的历史脉络，知道那个世界——那场悲惨、凶残、带来灭顶之灾的旋风，他们和其他几百万人都被卷了进去。但他们从不细谈过去，远没有细到我很久以后构思这本书时想知道的程度，只是些粗线条的轮廓。所以我觉得，更多是通过日常的言行举止：他们对事件的反应、对各种事情的反应，那种厄运离得并不远的感觉。还有就是，既然过去发生过那样的惨剧，那日常过日子就真的必须时刻警觉、处处提防。

[7:08] Patrick

There was a couple stories in the book, one in particular where you talk about two separate people, one who decided to stay in Germany and one who decided to leave. It's quite a poignant and interesting on this topic of survivor, you know, outsider early instinct when things are changing to take notice and not not double down and stick around. What maybe tell that story and and explain what you learned from that.

书里有几个故事，尤其是其中一个：你写了两个人，一个决定留在德国，一个决定离开。放在「幸存者」这个话题下，这个故事既令人心酸又很耐人寻味——就是那种局外人的早期直觉：局势一变就能察觉，不会一条道走到黑、硬赖着不走。要不你讲讲这个故事，再说说你从中学到了什么？

[7:31] Moritz

Well, the two the two individuals, Patrick, that you uh referred to were my um grandfathers, my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandfather. I'll start with my paternal grandfather who was a civil servant. He was a sort of lower level judge in the judiciary in Bavaria province in uh in southern Germany. He had um fought in World War I. He had uh somehow or other survived the horror of Verdon. He had been given his um iron cross um and he was um I think a great believer in the German state and uh in the security that the state offered and then much later in 1933 he he lost his job. Uh but somehow I think because this is my assessment of the situation because he was um a civil servant. He was by nature conservative by nature somewhat cautious but also had this great belief that in the state and the endurance of the state and the durability of the state and that eventually the storm would blow over. And he also had a pension and the pension was very important to him as a as a means for survival. And so I think it was a combination of all of those things that he wasn't oblivious obviously to what was happening around him. But it did make him more reluctant to leave Germany I think until it was until it was too late. And people forget there are there were any even if you decided to somebody had decided to leave Germany there are all sorts of obstacles in the way. You had to find a place elsewhere that would accept you. You had to pay big um um taxes to uh the Nazi government in order to be able to secure your exit visas. So they're all all these sorts of obstacles. So that was my paternal grandfather and he and his wife eventually uh were shipped off east and disappeared from history. And my maternal uh grandfather was cut from a different cloth. And he he was um again I was too callow as a youth to really understand this, but I knew him as a as a he died when I was about 16. And um he had been

Patrick，你说的这两个人是我的外公和我的爷爷。我先说爷爷，他是个公务员，在德国南部巴伐利亚的司法系统里当一名基层法官。他打过第一次世界大战，不知怎么的从凡尔登战役的惨烈中活了下来，还获得过铁十字勋章。我觉得他非常信奉德意志国家，信奉国家提供的安全保障。后来到了 1933 年，他丢了工作。但我觉得——这是我自己对当时情况的判断——因为他是公务员，天性保守，也天性有些谨慎，同时又对国家深信不疑，相信国家会长久、会稳固，相信这场风暴终究会过去。他还有一份退休金，这份退休金对他来说是赖以生存的重要保障。所以我认为是这些因素叠加在一起……他显然不是对身边发生的事一无所知，但这些确实让他更不愿意离开德国，我想，一直拖到为时已晚。而且大家容易忘了，就算有人下定决心要离开德国，前面也横着各种各样的障碍：你得在别处找到一个愿意接收你的地方；你得向纳粹政府缴一大笔税，才能拿到出境签证。障碍就是这么多。这就是我爷爷，他和他妻子最终被押送往东方，从此消失在历史中。我外公则是完全不同的一类人。他……同样，我年少时太稚嫩，没能真正理解这一点，但我认识的他……他在我大约 16 岁时去世了。他早年是

[10:08]

a um cattle trader, which was one of the the occupations that Jews were really permitted u to do in in Germany. But he he was almost blind as a young man and completely blind by the time uh that I met him. But somehow or other had been able to carve out a comfortable living for himself and his family by trading in cattle in a rural village in northwestern Germany. My assessment of him was again in retrospect was that he was more street wise. He was more in entrepreneurial. He didn't wasn't burdened by the need to remain and collect a state pension because he had always been able to sustain himself and you know look out for his future. and he got out with his wife, my grandmother, but they got out by the by the skin of their teeth. They got out um 72 hours before war broke out. So 72 hours later, they too would have perished. Ramp is the only platform built to make your finance team leaner, faster, and better, saving businesses 5% annually on average, so you can stay focused on growth. RAMP just opened for business in the United Kingdom. So if you're running a business in the UK, you can now use RAMP's AI powered finance platform to manage cards, expenses, bills, approvals, and accounting all in one place. I run my business on RAMP, and so should you. Learn more at ramp.com/invest.

Moritz： 一名贩牛商人——这是当时在德国犹太人真正被允许从事的职业之一。他年轻时就几乎失明了，到我见到他的时候已经完全看不见了。可不知怎么的，他硬是在德国西北部的一个乡村靠做牛买卖，给自己和家人挣出了一份宽裕的生活。我对他的判断——同样是事后回头看——是他更精明、更懂世道，也更有企业家精神。他没有「得留下来领国家退休金」这个包袱，因为他向来都能自己养活自己、为自己的将来打算。他带着妻子，也就是我外婆，逃了出来，但真是千钧一发：他们在战争爆发前 72 小时逃了出来。再晚 72 小时，他们也会遇难。

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[11:47] Patrick

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[13:01]

What do you take from that? Like, what is the big lesson from that instinct, how does that instinct imprinted on you and on the people you you've backed throughout your life and career written about? I'm not sure that it's all that relevant to uh um the people I I've encountered in in this journey through life, but it certainly has had consequences for me, particularly in times like the ones that we are living through at the moment and the atmosphere that is prevalent to some extent in the US and also um in Western Europe. Um, I think the uh necessity for always feeling that you have a bolt hole, that you have someplace to go if the fire gets too hot. Um, that's the lesson that I took away from my family history saying um that you can never have enough passports.

Patrick： 你从中得到了什么？就是说，那种直觉带给你的最大教训是什么？这种直觉是怎样烙印在你身上的，又怎样体现在你这一生、这一路职业生涯里投资过、写过的那些人身上？

Moritz： 我不确定这跟我人生路上遇到的那些人有多大关系，但它对我本人肯定是有影响的，尤其是在我们眼下正在经历的这种时期，在某种程度上弥漫于美国、也弥漫于西欧的这种氛围里。我觉得就是：永远要觉得自己有条退路，火烧得太旺的时候有个地方可去。这就是我从家族史里得到的教训，一句话：护照永远不嫌多。

[13:56] Patrick

Do you feel that especially true now?

你觉得现在尤其如此吗？

[13:58] Moritz

Yes.

是的。

[13:59]

Say say a bit about the state of the world, how you perceive the state of the world. It's an uncomfortable place for minorities, the United States and Western Europe at large. Um, it doesn't matter whether you're Asian or Muslim or or um, black or Jewish. Um, and you know, I understand understand the reasons and I want to be careful as well. I am not whining about anti-semitism. I'm not complaining about it. I long ago came to terms with the fact that it's just a fact of life. It's been around for 2500 years. It's not going to disappear in 2026 or 2030. It's always going to be with us. And in fact, as we were talking about a few minutes ago, I think the fact that anti-semitism was around and has been around and it's been something I've been conscious of um all my life or all my sentient life um it's it's made me stronger. But I think uh it's disquing if you're living in a society where you know in America I think my my simplistic way of thinking about who feels safe in America is I think the the contingent of Americans who feel safe are white Christians who own guns. Everybody else feels a degree of insecurity whether you're pursued by ICE or you go to a house of prayer that um has to be guarded by police to ensure that that that's safe. And that exists in America.

Patrick： 那你聊聊世界的现状吧，你怎么看眼下的世界？

Moritz： 对少数群体来说，美国和整个西欧都是让人不太舒服的地方。不管你是亚裔、穆斯林、黑人还是犹太人，都一样。我理解背后的原因，而且我也想说得谨慎一点：我不是在为反犹主义诉苦，也不是在抱怨。我很早以前就接受了这个事实：它就是生活的一部分。它已经存在了 2500 年，不会在 2026 年或 2030 年消失，会一直伴随着我们。事实上，就像我们几分钟前聊到的，我觉得反犹主义过去一直存在、现在也还在，而且我这辈子——或者说从我懂事起——一直都意识到它的存在，这反而让我变得更强大了。但我觉得，生活在这样一个社会里是让人不安的。在美国——我对「在美国谁有安全感」有个很简单化的看法——我觉得有安全感的那部分美国人，是拥有枪支的白人基督徒。其他所有人都有某种程度的不安全感，不管你是被 ICE（美国移民与海关执法局）追捕的人，还是要去一个得靠警察守着才能确保安全的礼拜场所。这种情况在美国确实存在。

[15:45] Moritz

uh it exists in the United Kingdom, in France, in other countries around Europe where far-right governments have um have come to the four and obviously everybody has read about the recent elections in in Germany of a farright party in in the Saxony province and I think in times of economic distress where you have millions of people who've been tens of millions of people who feel they've been left behind. That feeling of um despair um can easily be whipped up into a um horrendous stew by leaders with uh authoritarian impulses.

呃，这种情况在英国、在法国、在欧洲其他一些国家都存在，那些地方的极右翼政府已经走到了台前。当然，大家也都读到了德国最近的选举，萨克森州选出了一个极右翼政党。我觉得在经济困顿的时期，当有几百万人——几千万人——觉得自己被甩在了后面，那种绝望感很容易被有威权冲动的领导人煽动起来，搅成一锅骇人的浑汤。

[16:31]

If I force you to put on your optimistic or hopeful hat and thinking about the future as it relates to this problem. Well, Victor Orin was booted from office and he was riding high a couple of years ago. I think uh in in some places there clearly are pushes to the center which would be uh I think very consoling for people and a return to some modicum of civility uh in the various societies in which you know people like us uh uh us travel. So here in America, uh clearly the midterms in the next uh and the 18 months or after that are really going to shape how we're going to live in the next decade because the last decade has been there's been the imprint of one person on the last decade in America. I think in uh in Britain, the person who's identified with the far right, Nigel Farage, may well have had his best day and his best day may well be behind him. I think it's different in France with Marie Le Pen and the elections next year. It's different in Spain and uh it's potentially different in Germany.

Patrick： 如果我硬要你戴上乐观、或者说怀抱希望的那顶帽子，想一想这个问题接下来会怎么走呢？

Moritz： 嗯，Viktor Orbán 已经被赶下台了，而就在几年前他还风头正劲。我觉得在有些地方，明显出现了向中间靠拢的势头，我想这会让人很宽慰，也意味着在我们这类人往来穿行的各个社会里，能重新找回一点起码的文明与体面。那么在美国这里，显然接下来的中期选举，以及之后 18 个月左右的时间，真的会决定我们未来十年怎么过，因为过去这十年——美国的过去十年一直打着一个人的烙印。在英国，我觉得那个被视为极右翼代表人物的 Nigel Farage，很可能已经过了他最风光的时候，他最好的日子很可能已经过去了。法国的情况就不一样了，有 Marine Le Pen，明年还有大选。西班牙也不一样，德国也可能不一样。

[17:44] Patrick

Do you think that the internet fundamentally changes the potential for civility and political moderation because it so rewards extremes in in attention?

你觉得互联网是不是从根本上改变了保持文明对话、保持政治温和的可能性？因为在争夺注意力这件事上，它实在太奖励极端了。

[17:54]

And I think the three-letter answer is yes. I think it's been true of every form of new media that um from the beginning of the printing press. Uh but obviously the internet and mobile telefanany uh has made it far easier to spread false memes and uh innuendo. Uh but um it's a much larger more um um much more amplified version of what um occurred in Germany when radio took off during the 1930s and where the radio waves were dominated uh by extreme um propaganda and racist views and loud lies told frequently. M going back to your family's history, one of my favorite topics is this idea that you can learn so much about a person from what happens in their first 12, 13, 14 years. As you said, Carl Young had this great idea of studying the unlived life of the parent. Another way of framing it would be this is a little trit, but you should be like who your father was supposed to be. Like you should live the life that he was unable to or or didn't quite. And that there's a part of that imprinting is um children observing their parents what they're not going after, the risks they're not taking. And maybe running in that direction is a is a great way to explore.

Moritz： 我觉得答案就三个字母：yes。我认为从印刷机问世开始，每一种新媒体都是如此。但显然，互联网和移动通信让传播虚假的 meme 和含沙射影的暗示变得容易得多。不过说到底，它是 1930 年代德国那一幕的放大版——规模大得多、声量也被放大得多。当年广播兴起，电波被极端的宣传、种族主义论调，还有被一遍遍高声重复的谎言所占据。

Patrick： 嗯。回到你的家族史。我最喜欢聊的话题之一，就是一个人前 12、13、14 年经历了什么，能让你对这个人了解得非常多。就像你说的，Carl Jung 有个很棒的想法：去研究父母「未曾活出的人生」。换个说法——这么说有点老套——你应该成为你父亲本该成为的那个人，去活出他没能活出、或者没完全活出的那种人生。而这种烙印里有一部分，就是孩子在观察父母：他们没去追求什么、没去冒哪些险。也许朝那个方向跑，就是一种很好的探索方式。

[19:24]

And back to the point about where does one person end and the next begin like the break from the parents is really important. And so I'm curious how you arrived at this method of yours, this first 14-year interrogation method, like when you first did it and and why you find it so how you do it, like what the method is and and why you find it just so impactful in understanding a new person. I suppose I first came across it um oddly in Detroit when I was a correspondent for Time magazine and uh with a colleague um I wrote a book about the Chrysler Corporation but more importantly the person who turned around Chrysler at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s and a man who was for a time uh the best known business figure in America even though Today most people struggle to pronounce his last name but he was uh uh a gentleman called Liia Koka. He was the uh son of Italian immigrants. Um, and in writing this book, we spent a fair amount of time interviewing Ayakoko. And what came through loud and clear was how much as the son of Italian immigrants who'd grown up in Pennsylvania, uh Lee grew up in Pennsylvania, he felt like an outsider and he worked in the automobile industry and obviously in the upper echelons of the automobile industry where I think uh he was always viewed with suspicion by um most notably when he w worked at the Ford Motor Company by Henry Ford II and the other uh uh people who obviously everybody had im immigrated but who were at some point in their family's history but who were uh much more members of the establishment and Ayakoka never felt like a member of the establishment and became very clear that all of that stem from his childhood and Um then um I think uh uh as the years went by he began to interpret many of the slights that then fell upon him including not getting the top job at Ford uh to the fact that he was seen as um as an Italian immigrant.

Patrick： 再回到那个问题：一个人在哪里结束、下一个人从哪里开始——和父母分开的那一步真的很重要。所以我很好奇，你是怎么摸索出你这套方法的，就是追问一个人前 14 年的这套方法：你最早是什么时候这么做的，具体怎么做、方法是什么，以及为什么你觉得它对了解一个新认识的人这么有效。

Moritz： 我想我第一次接触到它，说来也怪，是在底特律。那时我是《时代》周刊的驻地记者，和一位同事合写了一本书，写的是 Chrysler 公司，但更重要的是写那个在 1970 年代末、1980 年代初让 Chrysler 起死回生的人。他一度是全美最知名的商界人物，尽管如今大多数人连他的姓都念不利索——他就是 Lee Iacocca（艾柯卡）。他是意大利移民的儿子。写这本书的时候，我们花了相当多的时间采访 Iacocca。有一点再清楚不过：作为在宾夕法尼亚长大的意大利移民之子——Lee 是在宾夕法尼亚长大的——他一直觉得自己是个局外人。他在汽车行业工作，而且显然是在汽车业的最高层，我觉得在那里他始终被人用怀疑的眼光看待，最明显的是他在 Ford 汽车公司的时候，来自 Henry Ford II 和其他那些人——当然，每个人的家族在历史上某个时刻都是移民过来的，但那些人要更像是建制圈子里的人。Iacocca 从来不觉得自己属于那个建制圈子，而且后来变得非常清楚：这一切都源于他的童年。然后我觉得，随着时间推移，他开始把后来落到他头上的很多轻慢——包括没拿到 Ford 的一把手位置——都归因于别人把他看作意大利移民。

[22:01]

If you think about the people who have harnessed that outsider energy, a lot of whom you've backed with great success. Have you seen people graduate out of it? And and when they do, is their drive and motiv does their drive and motivation go away or suffer? Well, I want to answer the previous question a little bit as well about, you know, you asked why I when I've met various people and various founders over the years, spend so much time on their on their backgrounds. Um, many of these people are only, you know, 20 years old or 21 years old.

Patrick： 想想那些驾驭了这股局外人能量的人，其中很多是你投过、而且投得非常成功的。你见过有人从这种状态里「毕业」吗？一旦毕业了，他们的干劲和动力会消失、或者打折扣吗？

Moritz： 嗯，我也想再稍微回答一下上一个问题。你问的是，这些年我见各种人、各种创始人的时候，为什么要花那么多时间去了解他们的背景。这些人里很多才，你知道，20 岁或者 21 岁。

[22:35] Moritz

You're covering a big percentage. you're not exactly going to be able to ask them about their life in their 50s. So, uh, so it's just natural. It's, uh, uh, to try to understand that. I don't think people grow out of it. I think what happens is that people work with a certain intensity in their late teens and their 20s and maybe their early 30s. And that intensity for a whole variety of reasons diminishes over time. I think that's what changes. The inner being doesn't change. The outward intensity changes.

那已经覆盖了他们人生的很大一部分。你总不能去问他们 50 多岁时过得怎么样吧。所以想去了解那一段，是很自然的事。我不认为人会随着长大就摆脱它。我觉得实际发生的是：人在十八九岁、二十多岁，也许到三十出头，会带着某种强度去拼；而出于各种各样的原因，这种强度会随着时间慢慢减弱。我觉得变的是这个。内在的那个人不会变，变的是外在的强度。

[23:13] Patrick

When you were asking these questions, was there any one thing or set of things that you tended to be looking for? Was it was it you coming away feeling as though someone had extreme drive and you were

你问这些问题的时候，有没有某一样、或者某几样东西，是你通常会去找的？是不是说，你聊完之后觉得这个人有极强的驱动力，然后你就——

[23:25] Moritz

No, I I think it's I try to paint when I have some time and I'm not a good painter, but I I I really enjoy it. And when you can when at least the way that I paint, you make marks in different parts of the canvas and the marks seem unrelated and you know, maybe it's a color blue here and a color brown there and and uh you're putting these marks and dots on the canvas and there doesn't seem to be any composition there whatsoever. And then eventually in my case the picture comes out and it's bad but there's a picture at the end of it

不是，我觉得……我有空的时候会画画，我画得不好，但我真的很享受。至少按我的画法，你会在画布的不同地方落下笔触，这些笔触看起来彼此毫不相干，你知道，可能这里一抹蓝、那里一抹棕，你就这样在画布上落下一个个笔触、一个个色点，看上去完全谈不上什么构图。然后到最后，就我而言，画是出来了，画得很烂，但到头来总归是有了一幅画

[24:12] Moritz

and it's the the um accumulation of all these different marks and I think that's what happens when you're talking to people about their backgrounds. You're looking for these little dots here and then eventually you put together this uh portrait for yourself of the individual.

而这幅画就是所有这些不同笔触累积起来的结果。我觉得跟人聊他们的背景时，发生的也是这回事：你在这儿找一个小点、那儿找一个小点，最终在自己心里拼出这个人的一幅肖像。

[24:29]

In searching for those dots did you come to favorite questions that you always found yourself asking? There's one that comes to mind which um I've always found quite invariably found quite revealing is to ask somebody if they think back and had a chance to do one thing differently, one action differently, what is it that they would do? And I remember one person we interviewed for Sequoia um who burst into tears when I asked that question. And um it turned out that he had grown up as the as the son of an immigrant here in America. um he was um Hispanic and his father was a you know very proud to have made it here and that his child was bright, his son was bright and he was getting good marks at school. And this fell probably when he was 12 or so had gone down to a corner grocery store with a pal of his and stolen some candy. And the shopkeeper who knew his father complained to his father and his father took him by the ear, took him back down to the candy store, made him apologize, made him empty uh uh empty his pockets, and uh the man I interviewed was so chasened, so embarrassed um by um bringing shame upon his family and his father just burst into tears. H what's your answer to the question? What would you have done differently?

Patrick： 在找这些点的过程中，你有没有形成一些自己最爱问、总会问到的问题？

Moritz： 我想到一个，我一直觉得它几乎每次都特别能说明问题：问一个人，如果回头看，有机会把某一件事、某一个举动换种做法，他会怎么做？我记得有一个我们为红杉（Sequoia）面试过的人，我一问这个问题，他当场就哭了。原来他是在美国这里长大的移民之子。他是拉美裔，他父亲，你知道，非常自豪自己在这里闯出了一片天，也为孩子聪明而自豪——他儿子很聪明，在学校成绩很好。事情大概发生在他 12 岁左右，他和一个小伙伴跑到街角的杂货店，偷了些糖果。店主认识他父亲，就去跟他父亲告了状。他父亲揪着他的耳朵，把他押回那家糖果店，让他道歉，让他把口袋掏空。我面试的这个人，因为给家里、给父亲蒙了羞，那种愧疚、那种难堪太深了，一下子就哭了出来。

Patrick： 那你对这个问题的答案是什么？你会把哪件事换种做法？

[26:21]

You're a good interviewer. People don't listen to answers very often when they uh when they uh uh interview people. I think I would have and you know I think every every child of parents feels this in one way or another and I I felt it as I was writing the book that I was embarrassed and if I could erase one thing it would be some of my uh interactions and dealings with my parents which uh I feel ashamed about today. Uh but there's uh but there's no going back you know I was um you know and I spent the first 16 17 years of my life with them. Um but there were many things probably that I wish and and also when I was a younger man and just encounters with them that I wished had gone differently because I didn't really understand who they were and so be it. Do you think that was mostly a a natural drive to create your own independence like every child goes through with their parents?

Moritz： 你是个很会采访的人。很多人采访别人的时候，其实不怎么听对方的回答。我想我会……你知道，我觉得每个为人子女的人都会以这样或那样的方式有这种感受，我写这本书的时候也感觉到了：我很惭愧。如果能抹掉一件事，那会是我和父母之间的一些相处和往来，直到今天我都为此感到羞愧。但已经回不去了，你知道，我……我人生的头 16、17 年是和他们一起度过的。可能有很多事我都希望……还有我年轻一些的时候，跟他们之间的一些交集，我都希望当时能是另一个样子，因为那时我并不真正明白他们是什么样的人。事已至此，也只能这样了。

Patrick： 你觉得那主要是一种想要独立的自然冲动吗？就像每个孩子跟父母之间都会经历的那样？

[27:30] Moritz

I'm sure that was I'm sure that was some of it. Um, arrogance was probably another part of fail of comprehension of what they themselves had experienced and what had made them who they were, which I didn't understand.

我敢肯定有一部分是这个原因。傲慢大概是另一部分；还有就是没能理解他们自己经历过什么、是什么造就了他们——这些我当时都不懂。

[27:48] Patrick

There's this notion of very small deeds in the book. I think the character's name was Anna. Um

书里有个关于「非常微小的善举」的说法。我记得那个人物的名字叫 Anna。嗯……

[27:52] Moritz

yes.

对。

[27:53] Patrick

Can can you talk about what you learned about the impact of small deeds?

能聊聊你从中体会到的、微小的善举能产生怎样的影响吗？

[27:58] Moritz

Well, it was more than small deeds. So, um this lady that you referred to whom I knew as a child, uh her name was her first name was Anna. And uh when my father and uh uncle were growing up in Munich in the 1920s and the early 1930s, every sort of you know middle class, lower middle class household had a u a family servant. Um you know these were the days before washing machines and vacuum cleaners and all the rest of it. those individuals um in these households when children were born invariably became nannies as well. And uh for my father and my uncle, this lady Anna who was that person in my grandfather's house, she became a surrogate. Uh oh. She was a a nanny and um she was Roman Catholic and eventually um left the employment of my uh grandparents and she married a railway worker uh in Bavaria uh who was also a Roman Catholic. They built their own house with their own hands and she and her husband offered uh they never forgot the Moritz family. They in the 1930s opened their house to my grandparents and my uncle and and father at a time when um it became very unpopular to um have Jews come stay in in in rural Bavaria for their holidays. But they did it for as long as possible. They were horrified by the the children, these two. They were horrified by the the Nazis. They did everything possible to help uh my grandparents and and my my father and and uncle. And then after the war, my because the feelings were so intense between my father and my uncle and this lady Anna, they went back to Bavaria very soon after the end of the war.

嗯，那可远不止是微小的善举。你提到的这位女士，我小时候就认识她，她的名字叫 Anna。我父亲和叔叔在 1920 年代到 1930 年代初在慕尼黑长大的时候，差不多每个中产、中下阶层的家庭都有一个家庭佣人。你知道，那是还没有洗衣机、吸尘器这些东西的年代。这些家庭里有孩子出生时，这些佣人几乎无一例外也会成为保姆。对我父亲和叔叔来说，Anna 这位女士就是我祖父家里的那个人，她成了他们的代理母亲。呃……她是个保姆，是罗马天主教徒，后来离开了我祖父母家，嫁给了巴伐利亚一个同样信罗马天主教的铁路工人。他们亲手盖起了自己的房子，她和她丈夫提供了……他们从来没有忘记 Moritz 一家。1930 年代，当让犹太人到巴伐利亚乡下来度假小住已经变得非常犯忌讳的时候，他们向我的祖父母、我叔叔和我父亲敞开了家门，而且尽可能地一直坚持了下去。他们对……孩子们，这两个……他们对纳粹深恶痛绝。他们竭尽所能地帮助我的祖父母、我父亲和叔叔。然后战后，我……因为我父亲、我叔叔和 Anna 之间的感情太深了，战争一结束，他们很快就回了巴伐利亚。

[30:28]

and um developed this very strong connection with her until she eventually died. And I remember going and staying in her house and the house and the story of this house features in the book as well as a young boy and surrounded by the specters of the uh of the Nazi past. But this lady um was I think you know what they they say at Yad Vashem um when they um bestow acknowledgements on all the people who help um Jews and others during World War II. She was one of the righteous and had this ethical compass um that she wouldn't allow anyone else to alter. What did you learn with from these categories of people? I think you called them the resistors, the silent, and the collabos.

Moritz： 并且和她一直保持着非常紧密的联系，直到她去世。我记得小时候去她家住过——这栋房子和它的故事在书里也写到了——那时我还是个小男孩，四周萦绕着纳粹过往的幽灵。但这位女士，我觉得，就像 Yad Vashem（以色列大屠杀纪念馆）在表彰二战期间所有帮助过犹太人和其他人的人时所说的那样：她是「义人」之一，心里有一个道德罗盘，绝不容许任何人去改变它。

Patrick： 你从这几类人身上学到了什么？我记得你把他们分成抵抗者、沉默者和「collabo」（法语，指通敌者）。

[31:24] Moritz

Yes. Well, I watched this. This is a spectacular um series that came out maybe 12 years ago, shot in France. Maybe it's a a six series tale about life in a French village um during uh World War II. and how some people resisted the occupation for as long as possible. Most people remained silent and some became active collaborators uh with the Nazis. And during COVID when we were all on these um long Zoom calls with lots of little pictures of you know 10 other participants that were in the Zoom room. Um, I always used to look at each individual whom I knew on the whole and I kept asking myself, well, if these people had been living in the French village in the 1940s, who would have stayed silent, who would have resisted and who would have been collaborating exercise. I didn't tell anybody else about it at the time, obviously, but I could I I knew everybody on these calls well enough to know who had the sort of backbone that this lady that we were just talking about had. And they were always in the minority.

是的。嗯，我看过这部剧。那是一部非常精彩的剧集，大概 12 年前出的，在法国拍摄，好像一共有六季，讲的是二战期间一个法国村庄里的生活：有些人尽可能久地抵抗占领，大多数人保持沉默，还有些人成了积极跟纳粹合作的通敌者。新冠疫情期间，我们都在开那种冗长的 Zoom 会议，屏幕上一格格小画面，是会议室里另外 10 个参会者。我总会挨个打量每一个人——大体上我都认识——然后不停地问自己：要是这些人生活在 1940 年代的那个法国村庄，谁会保持沉默，谁会抵抗，谁又会去通敌……就是这么一个练习。当然，我当时没跟任何人说过这事，但这些会上的每个人我都足够了解，知道谁有我们刚才聊到的那位女士那样的骨气。而这样的人永远是少数。

[33:02]

How rare is it? Is it 1% the resistors of the out of a 100 people? Like, how rare do you think that expression is? I think it's very rare because bad things happen in countries when most people stay silent. Very few actively resist.

Patrick： 这种人有多罕见？一百个人里，抵抗者只占 1% 吗？你觉得这种表现有多罕见？

Moritz： 我觉得非常罕见——一个国家之所以会出坏事，就是因为大多数人都保持沉默。真正主动抵抗的人寥寥无几。

[33:22] Patrick

Do you think that most of the people that you've back in your career would be resistors?

你觉得你职业生涯里投过的那些人，大多数会是抵抗者吗？

[33:28] Moritz

I'd have to think about that.

这我得想一想。

[33:30] Moritz

I'd like to think so, but I'm not sure.

我希望是，但我不确定。

[33:34] Patrick

Can you talk about the role that Bill Deeds played in your life? And I'm always interested in these early moments of activation. And I'm curious when you first felt in life, whether it was with him or or or other at some other time, when you first felt you were really good at something.

能聊聊 Bill Deedes 在你人生中扮演的角色吗？我一直对人早年那些被点燃的时刻很感兴趣。我也很好奇，你人生中第一次觉得自己真的很擅长某件事是什么时候——不管是跟他有关，还是在别的什么时候。

[33:50] Moritz

I've never felt I'm really good at something. That's not false modesty on my part.

我从来没觉得自己真的擅长什么。这可不是我假谦虚。

[33:55] Patrick

Really?

真的吗？

[33:55]

To this day?

到现在都还是这样？

[33:56]

How can that be in face of the evidence? Well, I think everybody is plagued by doubts and um maybe competitiveness and uh no, I've and everything that I may have done I I uh and it's a failing on my part. I have a very difficult time celebrating good things and uh and celebrating success. But anyway, back to

Patrick： 明明证据都摆在那儿，怎么会这样？

Moritz： 嗯，我觉得每个人都饱受自我怀疑之苦，也许还有好胜心在作祟。不，我……我做过的每一件事，我……这算是我的一个毛病吧：我很难为好事庆祝，很难为成功庆祝。不过总之，回到……

[34:26] Patrick

I want to know why that is. Like why do you given that you're self-aware about it, have you ever tried to

我想知道这是为什么。比如说，你为什么……既然你自己也意识到了这一点，你有没有试过去……

[34:33] Moritz

I think it's heritage. I think it's uh it's the fact that my mother always felt that disaster was always around the corner and doom was always around the corner. I mean, she died a few weeks before CO and this, you know, my my mother was the predictor of doom and I remember as a kid growing up, she would have listened to the radio and uh and uh inevitably the talk uh when we're having breakfast would be about some natural disaster that had occurred or um a plane crash or something dreadful around the world. So um in a way she died a few weeks before CO and that was the one of the great disaster I I felt sorry for her in a way that she missed COVID because this was the disaster that uh she'd been predicting or one of the natural disasters that she'd been predicting all her life. So she was uh she was cheated out of uh out of co but I think it's the that sort of sense of uh being one step away from the precipice.

我觉得是家传的。我觉得是因为我母亲总觉得灾难就在拐角处，厄运随时会降临。她是在新冠前几周去世的。你知道，我母亲就是个末日预言家。我记得小时候，她总会听收音机，我们吃早饭时的话题免不了是哪里刚发生了自然灾害、哪里有飞机失事，或者世界上又出了什么可怕的事。所以某种程度上，她在新冠前几周去世——那可是一场大灾难——我还有点替她惋惜，她错过了新冠，因为这正是她预言了一辈子的那种灾难，或者说是她一辈子都在预言的那些自然灾害之一。所以说，她算是被命运摆了一道，没赶上新冠。但我觉得根子就在那种感觉上：你永远离悬崖只有一步之遥。

[35:42] Patrick

Have you ever though been proud of a piece of work that you've done or created or fel felt that pride like the emotion of it?

不过，你有没有为自己做过或创造过的某件作品骄傲过？真正体会过那种骄傲的情绪？

[35:51] Moritz

I think I've always felt everything is unfinished and uh could be improved. and none of it's ever been perfect. So, never a satisfied moment. Sometimes when I paint and compare a painting to what I might have been able to paint 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So I see a road to improvement, but then you go to MoMA or the Met and you uh

我想，我一直觉得所有东西都没完成、都还能改进，没有一样是完美的。所以从来没有满意的时刻。有时候我画画，会把一幅画跟我 10 年前或 15 年前可能画得出来的东西比一比，能看到一条进步的路。可接着你去一趟 MoMA 或者大都会博物馆，你就……

[36:28]

you're diminished a

你就一下子被比下去了——

[36:30] Moritz

and you're reduced to being an insignificant spec.

而且会沦为一粒微不足道的尘埃。

[36:33] Patrick

What about feeling of pride for someone else, not so much for yourself? I mean, you've backed some of the most extraordinary people in business history for sure. You've written about some of the most extraordinary leaders, Alex Ferguson, others. Have you felt proud of them?

那为别人感到骄傲呢？不是为你自己。我是说，你投过的一些人绝对称得上是商业史上最非凡的人物，你也写过一些最非凡的领导者，比如 Alex Ferguson（曼联传奇主帅）等等。你为他们感到骄傲过吗？

[36:50]

No, not necessarily. I think I've because I the relationship is different. Um, and so those have been uh voyages of of curiosity where um they're the people who should feel proud of their accomplishments. Uh, not me as a bystander. I'm so curious about how for someone that's been involved in so many fascinating things, unlikely things, what jumps out as like the highest energy moments for you? Like what what what was what were the things along the whole journey that gave you the most energy? I know you're a deeply curious person, so maybe it's something there. I think it's family and children and all the moments associated with, you know, and I have Harriet, my wife and I, we have two sons and they're now in their 30s and one of them's got a couple of grandkid. I think it's deeply personal stuff.

Moritz： 没有，不一定。我觉得是因为关系不一样。所以那些更像是一趟趟好奇心之旅——该为自己的成就骄傲的是他们，而不是我这个旁观者。

Patrick： 我特别好奇，对一个参与过这么多精彩的、看似不可能的事情的人来说，哪些时刻会跳出来，成为你能量最高的时刻？就是说，这一路走来，是哪些事给了你最多的能量？我知道你是个好奇心极强的人，所以答案也许就在这里面。

Moritz： 我觉得是家庭、孩子，还有和他们有关的所有时刻。你知道，我和我妻子 Harriet 有两个儿子，他们现在都三十多岁了，其中一个已经让我们有了两个孙辈。我觉得是非常私人的东西。

[37:55] Patrick

Back to Bill Deeds. I lost my train of thought there for a minute. I'm curious the impact that he had on you and I'm always interested in early impact on that people have on others.

回到 Bill Deedes。我刚才思路断了一下。我很好奇他对你产生了什么影响——我一直对人在早年受到他人影响的经历很感兴趣。

[38:05] Moritz

Uh so I bet better give a bit of context to you. to build in I grew up in I grew up uh as you know in Britain and when I left college I I really wanted to be a journalist and my goal was to work on one of the big at that point what were called the Fleet Street newspapers that uh this is a long time ago it's 50 years ago that uh everybody read um and there were papers for you know different sections of uh different sections of the population and I wanted to work on one of the biggest big really well- reggarded newspapers. But there were um trade union rules because the unions had a big clamp on the way in down on the on the on the way in which they held the operators of these newspapers in a in a straight jacket. And one of the consequences was that the newspaper um editors, they weren't allowed to hire college graduates directly from college because um the fear of the unions was that it would impede their ability, interfere with their ability to hire 16 year olds uh straight out of high school. So the result was that if I'd wanted to go and work on the Times or the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, one of those papers, I would have had to go and spend two or three years working on a small provincial newspaper. And I just didn't really want to do it. I thought it, you know, I was impatient, I was ambitious and all all that sort of stuff. And I met this fellow Bill Deeds who was the editor of the Daily Telegraph and was a revered figure in uh in British journalism and had actually in an earlier life been the figure on which Eivelyn War had modeled one of the characters in his very sort of famous satirical novel called Scoop. Anyway, uh, Bill Deeds very kindly responded to a letter that I'd written to him applying for a job at the Daily Telegraph and he gave me half an hour in his office in Fleet Street. And I remember it. It was it was in the it was in the winter. It was raining and um he

呃，我最好先给你交代一点背景。你知道，我是在英国长大的。大学毕业时，我一心想当记者，目标是进一家大报——就是当时所谓的「舰队街报纸」（Fleet Street，英国全国性大报的代称）。那是很久以前的事了，50 年前，那时候人人都看报，不同的报纸面向不同的人群，而我想进的是最大、口碑最好的那几家之一。但当时有工会规定——工会势力很大，把这些报纸的经营者管得死死的，就像给他们套上了约束衣。后果之一就是，报社编辑不许直接招大学应届毕业生，因为工会担心这会妨碍、干扰招收刚从高中毕业的 16 岁年轻人。结果就是，如果我想去《泰晤士报》《金融时报》《每日电讯报》这类报纸工作，就得先去一家地方小报干上两三年。我实在不想那么干。你知道，我那时没耐心、野心勃勃，诸如此类。后来我见到了 Bill Deedes 这个人，他是《每日电讯报》的主编，在英国新闻界德高望重，而且其实早年还是 Evelyn Waugh 那部非常有名的讽刺小说《独家新闻》（Scoop）里一个角色的原型。总之，我给他写信申请《每日电讯报》的工作，Bill Deedes 很客气地回了信，还在他舰队街的办公室里给了我半小时。我记得很清楚，那是冬天，下着雨，他

[40:19]

told me I asked him for advice and he told me that he what he had wished he had done as a young man was go to America and he encouraged me to move to America and I think that was the most salient I think that really helped propel me um head in this direction. Mhm. So when you arrived here, what was the first big break or big big move that you made that kicked off this?

Moritz： 告诉我——我向他请教，他说他年轻时真希望自己去了美国。他鼓励我搬去美国。我觉得那是最关键的一点，真的推着我朝这个方向走了。

Patrick： 嗯。那你来到美国之后，开启这一切的第一个大突破、或者说第一步大动作是什么？

[40:50] Moritz

Well, I got very lucky. I got hired by time,

嗯，我运气非常好，被《时代》周刊录用了，

[40:52] Moritz

right? and um straight out of school and uh without any work experience and they were as an organization again 50 years or so ago they were very willing to take a risk on a 22y old or 23 year old without any real prior experience

对吧？而且是刚出校门，没有任何工作经验。那时候——也是大约 50 年前了——《时代》作为一家机构，非常愿意在一个 22 岁或 23 岁、之前没有任何真正工作经验的年轻人身上冒险，

[41:15] Moritz

and that was my f first big break

那就是我的第一次大机会。

[41:17] Patrick

the episode with jobs and time was so fascinating in your history and I'm sure frust frustrating for you. What did you learn? What happened? And what did you learn through that episode?

你和 Jobs、和《时代》周刊之间的那段往事，在你的经历里真是精彩极了，我猜当时也让你挺懊恼的。你学到了什么？当时发生了什么？你从那件事里学到了什么？

[41:28] Moritz

Uh it's a painful part of the past. Um I had this is a maybe two three years after I joined time. I'd taken a leave of absence. By then I was working in San Francisco in the in the bureau there and had taken a leave of absence to write a book about Apple and for a variety of reasons because um the the magazine didn't have room enough to tell the tale of the private days of Apple which is what I was really interested in doing. And then I was on this leave and I got a call from Time asking me to contribute to a profile of Steve um that they wanted to run in what became a very famous edition of Time which was the computer of the year and uh and I think it was the only time in Time's history where they had picked an inanimate object to celebrate uh for their big annual issue. So I worked on this profile of Steve. Steve was convinced that he was going to be named man of the year. Um even though nobody had told him that, confirmed it. Yes or no. But worst of all, the profile which he hated for very good reason, I might say, in his defense, and I was appalled by uh for different reasons. um severed my relationship with with Steve back then at time these things went through an editorial combine harvester. So what came out in the bail at the end probably didn't resemble very much of the straw that got fed in. And so the whole tone of the piece was uh was malicious and and and nasty and underhanded. And as I said uh Steve disliked it and it was one of the reasons I left time and uh I felt very very disenchanted by by the treatment of it all. And um you know sadly as a result of that really never repaired the relationship with Steve.

呃，那是一段痛苦的往事。那大概是我进《时代》两三年后的事。当时我已经在旧金山分社工作，请了一段长假去写一本关于 Apple 的书——原因有好几个，主要是杂志没有足够的篇幅去讲 Apple 上市前那些年的故事，而那正是我真正想写的。我正休着假，接到《时代》的电话，让我为他们准备刊登的一篇 Steve 人物特写供稿。那一期后来非常有名，就是「年度电脑」那一期。我记得那是《时代》历史上唯一一次在年度大刊上选了一件无生命的物品来致敬。于是我参与写了这篇 Steve 的特写。Steve 深信自己会被评为「年度风云人物」，尽管从来没有人这么告诉过他，也没人跟他确认过，是或不是都没有。但最糟的是，那篇特写——他恨透了，而且替他说句公道话，他恨得很有道理；我也对它感到震惊，只是原因不同——就此断送了我和 Steve 的关系。那时候在《时代》，稿子都要过一遍编辑部的「联合收割机」，所以最后打出来的那捆草，跟当初喂进去的秸秆恐怕已经没多少相像了。结果整篇文章的调子充满恶意，刻薄又阴损。就像我说的，Steve 很不喜欢它，这也是我离开《时代》的原因之一——整件事被处理成那样，让我非常非常幻灭。很遗憾，也正因为那件事，我和 Steve 的关系再也没能真正修复。

[43:41] Patrick

Were you in awe of him?

你当时对他心存敬畏吗？

[43:43] Moritz

No.

没有。

[43:44]

Have you ever been in awe of anyone? That's a difficult question and I I think it's tilted to uh I'd really have to think about that, Patrick, to get to give you a really considered answer. You know, the people that I've known who have done incredible, remarkable things are also flawed individuals. And if you get to know them well, you also see that aspect of it. So seeing that up close makes it difficult to hold anybody in awe because you see the flaws as well as all of their accomplishments and virtues.

Patrick： 那你这辈子有没有敬畏过谁？

Moritz： 这是个很难的问题，我觉得它有点偏向……我真得好好想一想，Patrick，才能给你一个深思熟虑的回答。你知道，我认识的那些做成过惊人、非凡之事的人，本身也都是有缺陷的人。你跟他们处熟了，也会看到这一面。所以近距离看到这些之后，就很难再对谁心存敬畏了，因为你看到的不只是他们的种种成就和美德，还有他们的缺点。

[44:31] Patrick

Why were you not in awe of Steve? It seems like he's the person that the most people in our world were in awe of in living memory.

那你为什么不敬畏 Steve？在我们这个圈子里，他似乎是有生之年最受众人敬畏的那个人。

[44:39]

I think I was I I want to be careful here because I respected him. I admired him tremendously. Uh I was well aware of the fact that he had achieved things uh later obviously as well that I couldn't ever possibly have accomplishment. But I think I I knew some of the um darker shades of him which made it difficult to hold him up as a as an object of unaloyed admiration, but but I you know I he's a heroic figure obviously. What's the role of monomomania in all of these character studies? And I'm curious to tie it back to this idea of the outsider, you know, the

Moritz： 我想我当时……这里我想说得谨慎一点，因为我尊重他，也极其钦佩他。我很清楚，他取得了——当然也包括后来取得的——那些我这辈子都不可能做到的成就。但我想，我见识过他性格里一些比较阴暗的面向，这让我很难把他当成一个可以毫无保留去仰慕的对象。不过，你知道，他显然是个英雄式的人物。

Patrick： 在你所有这些人物研究里，偏执（monomania）扮演着什么角色？我也想把它跟「局外人」这个概念联系起来，你知道，那种……

[45:33]

well survivor.

或者说，幸存者。

[45:36] Moritz

You you see it now I and this this goes in generations. Um the monoomania when it I think when it comes to creating anything of value, it could be a piece of music, it could be a book, it could be a painting, it could be a company, complete obsession with the topic at hand and locking out the rest of the world and eliminating every unnecessary distraction I think is uh what uh and I think those are and again there are downsides to this people get hurt along the way uh there isn't enough time for families or others or friends uh because of the monomomania that you refer to and uh but then great things sometimes come out of it

这种现象你现在也看得到，而且代代都有。说到偏执——我觉得，只要是创造任何有价值的东西，不管是一首曲子、一本书、一幅画，还是一家公司，都需要对手头的事彻底着魔，把外面的世界关在门外，排除一切不必要的干扰，我觉得这就是……当然，这也有坏处：一路上会有人受伤，没有足够的时间留给家人、朋友或其他人——都是因为你说的这种偏执。但话说回来，伟大的东西有时正是这样诞生的。

[46:32] Patrick

is the primary cost of monomomania relationships typically

偏执最主要的代价，通常是人际关系吗？

[46:37] Moritz

I suspect the the answer is yes. Or maybe for some of these people feeling that um they may have like lived life differently if they had to live it over again because there were consequences to this to this monomomania. But yes, clearly uh relationships. Elyn War this you know people don't really know him today but a very famous um author British author um who was capable of writing 10,000 words a week with ease um which 10,000 good words not rubbish. Uh he said the um the greatest enemy to to good art is the sight of the pram the stroller in today's parliament is the sight of the stroller uh in the hallway.

我想答案是肯定的。或者对其中一些人来说，他们会觉得，要是人生能重来一遍，也许会换一种活法，因为这种偏执是有后果的。但没错，显然是人际关系。Evelyn Waugh——你知道，今天已经没多少人真正了解他了，但他是一位非常有名的英国作家，一周能轻轻松松写一万字，而且是一万个好字，不是垃圾——他说过，好艺术最大的敌人，就是看见门厅里的婴儿车（pram）——用今天的说法叫 stroller——就是看见走廊里停着一辆婴儿车。

[47:35] Patrick

What about Frank? Is it our painter?

那 Frank 呢？那位画家？

[47:37] Moritz

Mhm.

嗯。

[47:38] Patrick

Was he a mono maniacal?

他算是那种偏执狂吗？

[47:40] Moritz

Frank Frankach has never got the recognition in this country that he deserves. although there's a retrospective of him coming here in the next two years to uh and to very significant museums around the country here. So he was a um a refugee uh from uh Nazi Germany. Um he died maybe 5 years or so ago and I didn't know him well uh but I got to know him a little bit and he was a complete um obsessive completely uh completely obsessed with his art painted every day except he treated himself to a day one holiday for many many years he treated himself to one day off a year and every year he'd go to Brighton where there's a famous pier, it's on the south coast of England, and take the day off on Christmas Day. Every other day of the year, he he worked. And I remember once talking to him, his wife had uh a house out on the English coast. And I I asked him once at a dinner. I said, "So, do you ever go out and visit Julia, your wife?" He said, "I've never been to the house." And then now this is probably 10 years ago. We we were chatting and I you know he was asking me where and we were talking about New York came up and he said I love New York City. I just love it. It's so bustling with energy and going to Time Square and all the rest of it.

Frank Auerbach 在美国一直没得到他应得的认可，不过未来两年，他的回顾展会来到这边，在美国两家非常重要的博物馆展出。他是从纳粹德国逃出来的难民，大概五年前去世。我跟他不算熟，但也打过一些交道。他是个彻头彻尾的偏执狂，完完全全痴迷于他的艺术，每天都画，只给自己放一天假——很多很多年里，他每年只给自己放一天假。每年这一天他都会去布莱顿，那儿有座有名的栈桥，在英格兰南部海岸，他就在圣诞节那天休息。一年里其余的每一天，他都在工作。我记得有一次跟他聊天——他太太在英格兰海边有栋房子——那回是在一次晚饭上，我问他：「你会去那边看看你太太 Julia 吗？」他说：「那栋房子我一次都没去过。」还有一次，大概是十年前了，我们在聊天，他问我在哪儿……聊着聊着就说到了纽约，他说：「我爱纽约，就是爱它。那儿热热闹闹的，充满活力，还能去时代广场逛逛什么的。」

[49:24]

And so this conversation was maybe in 2012, 2013. And so I said, "Oh, Frank, when was the last time you were in were you just in New York when?" Because Oh, yeah. I went there in 1967 and he had this routine where he had and I knew some of these people who posed for him or know some of these people that actually I think that all of his subjects are still alive. They posed for him once a week. He had this regular codery of sitters and he painted these same individuals uh for his figurative work over the course of 30 40 years. And there's one of the subjects who lived in venice of all places who once a week flew to London for his session with Frank because I think the sitters found it like therapy uh sitting for Frank. uh but he'd go into an utter meltdown if the if the sitter was late. And then similarly with his landscape paintings, he painted the same landscape over and over and over again interpreting it. But he he lived for art and really there was no time for he had a son Jake um but there was no time for anything else. Do you get more energy from monoomaniacs? You spend a lot of time around them. Do you prefer being with them over dilons like yourself? It's nice to have a mixture of friends and acquaintances, some of whom have tied themselves to a particular mast, others who are prepared to wander around and live life more casually. But I've always found it difficult more difficult to be around people who and I like them and enjoy being with them but who appear to be doing nothing. Vanta automates compliance so your team can spend less time on security reviews and more time getting customers. Vanta cuts audit prep by 82% and gives you instant up-to-date proof of trust without all the manual work so you can close deals faster and with less friction. Customers report a 526% return on investment and more than 16,000 companies use Vanta, including Ramp, Harvey, and Snowflake.

Moritz： 所以那次聊天大概是在 2012、2013 年。我就问他：「哦，Frank，你上次去纽约是什么时候？你是刚去过吗？」结果他说：「哦，对啊，我 1967 年去过。」他有一套雷打不动的惯例……我认识一些给他当过模特的人，或者说现在还认识——其实我觉得他画过的人应该都还在世。他们每周给他当一次模特。他有一小圈固定的模特，三四十年来，他的人物画一直在画同一批人。其中有一位模特，偏偏住在威尼斯，每周都要飞一趟伦敦，到 Frank 那儿坐上一回，因为我觉得这些模特把给 Frank 当模特当成了某种心理治疗。可要是模特迟到了，他会彻底崩溃。他的风景画也一样，同一片风景画了一遍又一遍、又一遍，不断重新诠释。他就是为艺术而活的，真的没有时间留给……他有个儿子叫 Jake，但他再没有时间留给别的任何事。

Patrick： 你会从这些偏执狂身上获得更多能量吗？你花了很多时间跟他们打交道。比起跟像你这样样样都沾一点的「杂家」在一起，你更喜欢跟他们待在一起吗？

Moritz： 身边的朋友和熟人各种类型都有，挺好的：有些人把自己牢牢绑在某一根桅杆上，另一些人则乐意四处转转，活得更随性一些。但我一直觉得，跟那种看上去什么事都不做的人待在一起更难——虽然我也喜欢他们，也享受跟他们相处。

Patrick： Vanta 把合规工作自动化，让你的团队少花时间在安全审查上，多花时间去拿下客户。Vanta 能把审计准备工作减少 82%，还能即时提供最新的信任证明，省掉所有手工活，让你成交更快、阻力更小。客户反馈的投资回报率达到 526%，超过 16,000 家公司在用 Vanta，包括 Ramp、Harvey 和 Snowflake。

[51:48]

Get started with $1,000 off at vanta.com/invest. Ridgeline is the first endto-end system of record with embedded AI for investment management firms running portfolio accounting, reconciliation, reporting, trading, and compliance on one unified platform. Firms are moving off legacy technology and onto Ridgeline because of how far ahead Ridgeline's AI features are compared to anything else in investment management software. I've been hearing from a lot of investment managers about AI and they fall roughly into two camps with some unsure where to even start and others convinced they can build their own order management system over a weekend. The reality is that running an investment firm will always require governance, controls, and a single source of truth for your data. And no amount of AI enthusiasm changes that requirement. Ridgeline is built on exactly that foundation, which is why I believe that the firms that come out ahead in the AI era will be the ones running on Ridgeline's unified platform. If you're serious about your firm's AI strategy, Ridgeline should be part of that conversation. And you can request a demo at ridgeline.ai. What did Don Valentine see in you and what did you see in him? So Don was the uh founder of Sequoia and um he took a risk on me uh in the around 1985 and um hired me to join Sequoia when Sequoia was a very small firm. I mean, uh, we're sitting around this, uh, this table here in in in your studio and, uh, it's probably large enough to accommodate, uh, all of the people who work for Seoia at that point and I was a journalist, had been a journalist and but wanted to get into the venture business because I'd become interested by it and had met some of the people who were running these firms, all of which were very small at the time, and uh, had written to five of them. This was in the days when you didn't send emails, you actually wrote letters and uh had gone

Patrick： 现在去 vanta.com/invest 开始使用，立减 1,000 美元。Ridgeline 是首个内嵌 AI 的端到端记录系统（system of record），专为投资管理机构打造，把投资组合会计、对账、报告、交易和合规都放在同一个统一平台上运行。各家机构正纷纷弃用老旧系统、转投 Ridgeline，因为 Ridgeline 的 AI 功能比投资管理软件领域里的任何其他产品都领先一大截。我听很多投资经理聊过 AI，他们大致分成两派：一派还不知道该从哪儿下手，另一派则坚信自己一个周末就能搭出一套订单管理系统。现实是，经营一家投资机构永远离不开治理、管控，以及一个统一的唯一可信数据源，再多的 AI 热情也改变不了这个要求。Ridgeline 恰恰建立在这个基础之上，所以我相信，AI 时代胜出的机构，会是那些用 Ridgeline 统一平台的机构。如果你对自家机构的 AI 战略是认真的，Ridgeline 就应该在你的讨论之列。你可以去 ridgeline.ai 预约演示。

Patrick： Don Valentine 当年看中了你什么？你又看中了他什么？

Moritz： Don 是红杉的创始人，大概在 1985 年前后，他在我身上冒了个险，雇我加入红杉，那时的红杉还是一家很小的机构。我是说，我们现在围坐在你录音棚里的这张桌子，大概就坐得下当时红杉的所有人。我那时是个记者，一直在当记者，但我想进风投这一行，因为我对它产生了兴趣，也见过一些在经营这类机构的人——那时候这些机构都很小——我给其中五家写了信。那还是不发邮件、真要动笔写信的年代。然后我又

[53:48] Moritz

to see each of them. They were kind enough to give me some time. All saved on said uh we don't really know what to do with you because you don't have a technical background. You you know, you didn't you don't have an engineering degree of any sort. Um you don't really have any technical knowledge. uh you don't have any work experience in a in a Silicon Valley kind of company and you know you've been a journalist um so maybe you should go and find a role in public relations or marketing or something like that which was not exactly what I wanted to do and um and Don was more willing to take a risk and the reason was uh fairly straightforward because he had seen uh people that he expected because they had big uh uh um operating backgrounds in technology companies. A few of them come into the venture business and not be very successful. And then he was aware of some who had carved out very successful lives as investors. There was a fellow called Tommy Davis, I think, who started a fund called the Mayfield fund. There was um another guy who'd been an insurance accurate actuary, but the the one that um Don pointed to more than anybody else was a gentleman called Arthur Rock who just celebrated his 100th birthday. And Arthur had organized he was um banker, commercial banker or investment banker at a small boutique here in New York called Hayden Stone.

挨个登门拜访了他们。他们都挺客气，肯抽时间见我。除了 Don，其他几家都说：呃，我们真不知道该拿你怎么办，因为你没有技术背景。你知道，你没有任何工程类学位，也谈不上懂什么技术；你没在硅谷那类公司工作过；而且你一直是做记者的，所以你也许该去找个公关或市场之类的岗位。这可不太是我想干的。而 Don 更愿意冒这个险，原因其实挺简单：他见过一些人，本来他对他们期望很高，因为他们在科技公司有深厚的运营背景，结果其中有几位进了风投这行，却并不怎么成功。另一方面，他也知道有些人当投资人当得非常成功，闯出了自己的一片天。有个叫 Tommy Davis 的，我没记错的话，他创办了一只叫 Mayfield Fund 的基金。还有一位以前是保险精算师。但 Don 最常拿来举例的，是一位叫 Arthur Rock 的先生，他刚过完 100 岁生日。Arthur 当年组织了……他是个银行家，商业银行家还是投资银行家来着，就在纽约这边一家叫 Hayden Stone 的小型精品投行。

[55:26] Moritz

This is back in the 1950s. He had had the moxy to organize the original breakout and financing of Fairchild Semiconductor. And then in the 1960s, people won't know the names anymore, but um he had helped finance Taladine um scientific

那还是 1950 年代的事。他有胆识牵头张罗了当年那次出走，以及 Fairchild Semiconductor（仙童半导体）最初的融资。然后到了 1960 年代——现在的人大概都不知道这些名字了——他帮着融过资的有 Teledyne，呃，还有 Scientific……

[55:47] Patrick

Henry Singleton, right?

Henry Singleton，对吧？

[55:48] Moritz

Huh?

啊？

[55:48] Moritz

Henry Singleton. Henry Singleton and scientific Henry Singleton who later became one of the early board members at first board members at Apple um uh scientific data systems and then became the chairman and original investor in Intel day one and then a few years later backed Apple and Don said look there's nothing in his background that would have suggested he'd be successful and uh so that was the That was the main reason.

Henry Singleton。Henry Singleton，还有 Scientific……Henry Singleton，他后来成了 Apple 最早的几位董事之一。呃，还有 Scientific Data Systems。然后他（指 Arthur Rock）从第一天起就当上了 Intel 的董事长，也是 Intel 最早的投资人，几年后又投了 Apple。Don 说：你看，他的背景里没有任何东西能预示他会成功。所以，这就是主要原因。

[56:20] Patrick

And what did you see in him in the early days? Like what

那你早年又从他身上看到了什么？比如——

[56:23] Moritz

a job.

一份工作呗。

[56:26] Patrick

What did he teach you?

他教会了你什么？

[56:29] Moritz

Um John uh Don didn't believe in teaching. Uh he he he believed in throwing people into he had a survivalist instinct. Uh so he just uh believed in uh tossing people into the deep end and and and see if they drowned. But um I learned a lot by observation and listening and um good things and bad things. And uh uh there was another gentleman at SEOA uh named Pierre Lamond who was a very formative who was a uh played a huge role in the rise of the semiconductor industry. Um, and he too was uh was something of an influence, but it was being in the middle of that meure and watching good things happen and bad things happen and gradually trying to form my own opinions about things.

嗯……Don，呃，Don 不信「教」这一套。他信的是把人扔进……他有种生存主义者的本能，所以他就是把人直接扔进深水区，看你会不会淹死。不过我靠观察和倾听学到了很多东西，好的坏的都有。红杉还有另一位先生，叫 Pierre Lamond，他是个很关键的……他在半导体产业的崛起中扮演了极其重要的角色。他对我也算有些影响。但最主要的，还是身处那个圈子的正中央，看着好事发生、坏事也发生，然后一点点试着形成我自己对各种事情的看法。

[57:30]

What do you think it teaches us about early stage investing that a journalist with no technical ability and no work experience can be one of the best investors of that type ever? Well, the venture business that I got into way back when is very different from the venture business today. There aren't many parallels.

Patrick： 一个没有技术能力、也没有工作经验的记者，竟然能成为这类投资有史以来最出色的投资人之一——你觉得这说明了早期投资的什么道理？

Moritz： 嗯，我当年入行时的风投业，跟今天的风投业非常不一样，两者没有太多可比之处。

[57:52] Moritz

I don't know that I would flourish in today's venture business. It's for a whole variety of

我不确定自己在今天的风投业还能不能如鱼得水。这是出于各种各样的……

[57:57] Patrick

Why not?

为什么？

[57:59] Moritz

I think it's become much more much more difficult. um we had a lot of or we had a variety of um benefits um back in the 80s and '9s I think that began to dissipate maybe 15 16 years ago that don't exist today uh one of them being uh imperfect information so the pre- internet unless you were very close to things you didn't know what was happening today because the internet and some of the stuff that we were talking about earlier, everybody around the world knows exactly what's happening. Everybody's got access to the same information on, you know, more or less the same information.

我觉得现在难多了，难太多了。我们在 80 年代和 90 年代享有各种各样的优势，我觉得这些优势大概从十五六年前就开始消散，到今天已经不复存在。其中之一是信息不完全。在前互联网时代，除非你离得非常近，否则你根本不知道正在发生什么。而今天，因为有了互联网，还有我们前面聊到的那些东西，全世界每个人都清清楚楚地知道正在发生什么。每个人都能拿到同样的信息，你知道，差不多同样的信息。

[58:42] Moritz

So, that's number one. Number two, um there just so many more entities of all stripes, individuals, two or three people banding together in a small firm at the other end of it, huge mutual funds pouring money into it. that the very early stage private market is is very very different. And so 40 years ago, 30 years ago, it was possible if you were an individual to form a relationship, a real relationship, close relationship with the people that you were getting into business with. That doesn't exist today. Um uh particularly for uh for a venture film, there just too many intermediaries in between. And so I I'm not sure that um the luck that I had back then and I was also catapulted right into the middle of the one place in the world where all of this stuff was happening. And so that's a huge competitive uh advantage too. So I'm not sure that any of that uh translates today. I think uh you know moderately intelligent 14 16 year old uh who had his or her wits about him would have been able to succeed in the venture business in the mid80s.

这是第一点。第二点，现在形形色色的参与者多了太多：有单干的个人，有两三个人凑在一起的小机构，另一头还有大型共同基金往里砸钱，所以非常早期的私募市场已经大不一样了。40 年前、30 年前，如果你是个人，还有可能跟你要一起做生意的人建立起一段关系——真正的关系、紧密的关系。今天这已经不存在了，尤其对一家风投机构来说，中间隔着的中间人实在太多了。所以我不确定……我当年的运气，还有我一下子被弹射到了全世界唯一一个所有这些事都在发生的地方的正中心，这本身也是巨大的竞争优势。所以我不确定这些放到今天还成不成立。我觉得，你知道，在 80 年代中期，一个中等聪明、脑子够灵光的 14、16 岁孩子，都能在风投这行做成。

[1:00:01] Patrick

Do you think the ecosystem is healthy today?

你觉得今天这个生态健康吗？

[1:00:04] Moritz

I think it is if you're a founder

如果你是创始人的话，我觉得是健康的。

[1:00:07]

pretty good. I like the quote that you've said often that your favorite investment was.

挺好的。

Patrick： 我很喜欢你常说的那句话，说你最喜欢的一笔投资是……

[1:00:12]

What was going through your head as you took it over? not to screw it up. And you know, the sequoia that was around in 1995 was very different from the one that was around when I sort of stepped down in 2012, 2013. Number one was not to screw it up. Number two was um to ensure that everybody who worked there felt that our we're only as good as our next investment and that we couldn't rest on the laurels of the past. Uh and then number three um you know take advantage of the new market opportunities that uh that began to occur. And so whether it was um eventually you know going overseas as um as Silicon Valley's share of startup activity though still obviously the best place to be uh became smaller. So first of all we went to Israel then we went to most notably to China and then uh started another business called Sequoia Heritage which is a very different business and

Patrick： 你接手红杉的时候，脑子里在想什么？

Moritz： 别把它搞砸。你知道，1995 年那会儿的红杉，跟我 2012、2013 年前后差不多卸任时的红杉非常不一样。第一条是别搞砸。第二条是确保在那儿工作的每个人都明白：我们好不好，只看下一笔投资，不能躺在过去的功劳簿上。第三条，嗯，抓住那些开始冒出来的新市场机会。所以不管是后来出海——随着硅谷在创业活动里的占比变小，虽然它显然仍是最好的地方——我们先去了以色列，然后最值得一提的是去了中国，再后来又创办了另一项业务，叫 Sequoia Heritage，那是一门非常不一样的生意，而且……

[1:01:35] Patrick

I know Kevin well he's an incredible talent.

我跟 Kevin 很熟，他是个了不起的人才。

[1:01:38]

Yes. Yeah. Very much so. And Keith and our small and mighty heroic investment team there. Um but number one was uh and and I think the other thing that I I don't want to sound like Jon of Arc here. I felt doing right by our investors was really important and most of our investments and investors were not for profits and I think making sure that we perform well for them and if we didn't perform we I didn't want to be in a in a business where if we didn't perform perform well. We still got paid very handsomely. I just I think that's part of the problem with a lot of the aspects of the financial service providers of all sorts of different forms and it has been for a long time which is that the firm that provided as well but their clients may not you know may as may have done as well just investing in an index fund. When I did this with Doug, he told me the story of that one fund that you fought so hard to get back to par over 10 years or something like this.

Moritz： 是的，没错，确实如此。还有 Keith，以及我们在那边那支人不多、却很能打、堪称英雄的投资团队。不过第一条是……还有，我觉得另一件事是——我可不想在这儿把自己说得像圣女贞德似的——我觉得对得起我们的投资人真的非常重要。我们的投资人大多是非营利机构，我觉得要确保我们为他们交出好业绩；如果我们业绩不好……我不想待在这样一种生意里：业绩不好，我们照样拿丰厚的报酬。我只是觉得，这正是各种形式的金融服务机构普遍存在的问题之一，而且由来已久：提供服务的机构自己赚得不错，可他们的客户却未必——你知道，客户要是直接买指数基金，说不定收益也一样。

Patrick： 我之前跟 Doug 录这档节目的时候，他给我讲过那只基金的故事——你们花了十年左右，拼了老命才把它拉回本。

[1:03:02]

Right. Right. And we we could have said to investors, well, um, look, you've had a lot of good times with us and you've just got to uh accept the fact that you've got a fund here that isn't going to make any money. And, you know, I certainly wasn't wired like that. It was a matter of pride. What did you learn about working with someone like Doug that was so different than you, but you had such a fruitful partnership?

Moritz： 对，对。我们本来也可以跟投资人说：嗯，你们看，你们跟着我们过了不少好日子，现在这只基金就是赚不到钱了，你们得接受这个事实。可你知道，我天生就不是那样的人。这关乎自尊。

Patrick： Doug 跟你截然不同，你们俩的合作却又那么卓有成效——和这样一个人共事，你学到了什么？

[1:03:32] Moritz

Tolerance anymore.

宽容。……

[1:03:37] Moritz

I think you have to adjust to other, you know, when you're trying to work in a team, you have to try to understand what the other people around you need. what's important to them and feed that need um with people who are wired as as you said very very differently and uh I think I think uh I think that's the most important thing I've learned about you know building a team or leading a team uh is to and I think today I'd be much better at it than I was 25 years ago, 30 years ago. Uh but and I learned a lot of that actually from the way that um I did this book maybe 10 11 years ago with a famous soccer manager.

我觉得你得去适应别人。你知道，当你想在一个团队里共事，你就得努力去理解身边的人需要什么、什么对他们重要，然后去满足这种需要——尤其是面对那些像你说的、天性跟你非常非常不一样的人。我觉得……我觉得这是我在组建团队、带领团队这件事上学到的最重要的一点，就是要……而且我觉得，今天的我在这方面会比 25 年前、30 年前强得多。不过，这里面很多东西，其实是我大概 10 年、11 年前和一位著名足球主帅合写一本书的时候学到的。

[1:04:39] Patrick

I was just going to ask about Alex,

我正想问问 Alex 的事，

[1:04:40] Moritz

Alex Ferguson. And I think one of his great skills was the ability to understand what motivated each of his individual players.

Alex Ferguson。我认为他最了不起的本事之一，就是能弄明白他手下每一个球员各自是被什么驱动的。

[1:04:52] Patrick

How did you see him do that? I know he was famous for preferring players with tough upbringings.

你看到他是怎么做到这一点的？我知道他出了名地偏爱那些苦出身的球员。

[1:05:00] Moritz

I think I think he he knew I think he and he's got this reputation which is an unfair reputation of being very hard and harsh. That was certainly an aspect of the way that he he managed. But he was a man who didn't want to be loved. He didn't want to be feared. He wanted to be respected by the individuals who who played for him. So, he was there for them, which people don't understand. In their bleak, dark times when they needed support, when they were feeling lower than a snake's belly, he was there for them. None of that really gets written about. Um and uh there was an incident I remember I forget which year it was but David Beckham had been playing for England uh in a World Cup competition where he got sent off and and the British press was merciless about u Beckham's perceived stupidity and Alex went to meet him at the airport

我觉得……我觉得他心里清楚……他有个名声，一个不公平的名声，说他非常强硬、严厉。那确实是他管理方式的一个侧面。但他这个人，既不求被爱，也不求被怕，他要的是替他踢球的每一个人都尊重他。所以他会一直站在球员身边，这一点外人并不理解。在他们需要支持的至暗时刻，在他们消沉到比蛇肚皮还低的时候，他都在他们身边。这些事几乎从来没人写。嗯，我记得有一件事，忘了是哪一年，David Beckham 代表英格兰踢世界杯，比赛里被红牌罚下，英国媒体揪着 Beckham 所谓的犯蠢骂得毫不留情，Alex 就亲自去机场接他

[1:06:08] Moritz

uh because he knew he needed an arm around his shoulder. uh those sorts of things, little things that happen out of sight. People aren't aware of them. There are no cameras around.

因为他知道，这时候 Beckham 需要有人搂着他的肩膀安慰一下。就是这类事——那些发生在看不见的地方的小事。大家都不知道，周围也没有摄像机。

[1:06:20] Patrick

Do you think you were so interested in him for almost like autobiographical reasons? That description kind of sounds like you.

你觉得自己对他这么感兴趣，是不是几乎带点自传性质的原因？你刚才那段描述，听着有点像在说你自己。

[1:06:27] Moritz

The the reason No, I think he's much he was much more skillful at it than I was. Um the reason the book came together was this that you know um people for whatever reason had been badgering me to write a book about Silicon Valley and I was always very interested through the Sequoia lens of what it took to build two things. One of which was an inter a business that endured for ourselves for Sequoia because there are all these tales of venture firms that had a a period in the limelight and then blew up for whatever reason. the founders killed each other or the you know the partners killed each other and they all split up and it all became ugly and then um also the byproduct of it uh being what it took to have an enduring standalone company that a firm like Sequoia could invest in and I didn't want to do that through a Silicon Valley lens and there are enough books about Silicon Valley and but so I was casting around for a company that had or for organization that had flourished over the course of multiple decades. And um I'd been a bit of a fan of Manchester United Football Club um since I was a kid. And here was this manager who took them over I think in 1986 and retired in 2013. and he took them over when they're in bad shape and then established a record over multiple seasons, 26 seasons of astonishing success that'll be almost impossible for anybody to duplicate. And so we had a PR guy who wor or communications guy who worked for Sequoia and I'd shown him at that point when I finished the book and I showed him a draft of the book and he said well I can't tell because I ghosted the book and Ghost wrote the book and this fellow said to me you know I can't tell what's you and what's Sir Alex and I said precisely

原因是……不，我觉得他在这方面比我高明得多，他当年比我高明得多。嗯，这本书之所以会写成，是这么回事：不知道为什么，一直有人缠着我，要我写一本关于硅谷的书。而我一直很感兴趣的，是透过红杉的视角去看：打造两样东西各需要什么。其一是一家能长久延续的企业——对我们自己、对红杉而言。因为有太多风投机构的故事，风光过一阵子，然后不知为什么就垮了：创始人自相残杀，或者说合伙人自相残杀，最后全都散伙，闹得很难看。其二，作为它的副产品，是怎样才能造就一家能长久独立存续、让红杉这样的机构愿意投资的公司。但我不想透过硅谷的视角来写这个，关于硅谷的书已经够多了。所以我当时就四处物色一家公司——或者说一个组织——一个几十年来一直兴盛不衰的组织。嗯，我从小就算是 Manchester United（曼联）足球俱乐部的球迷。而这位主帅，我记得是 1986 年接手、2013 年退休。他接手时球队状况很糟，之后在很多个赛季、整整 26 个赛季里，创下了惊人的成功纪录，几乎不可能有人能复制。后来，我们有个在红杉做公关的——或者说做传播的——同事，书写完的时候我给他看过，给他看了一版书稿，他说：嗯，我分不清……因为这本书是我代笔的，是我替他捉刀写的——这位老兄就跟我说：你知道吗，我分不清哪些是你、哪些是 Sir Alex。我说：这就对了。

[1:08:29]

do you believe in the great man theory of history and I'm asking this question because I'm very interested by institutions that endure and what you've learned about how the ones that have endured have pulled that off like SEOA and I'm also pulled to people of course like Elon who you were an early backer and and and partnered to and X.com how they shape history and it seems like we might have a few world historic figures alive and operating today. What do you think is the balance of shaping history between the indiv these world historic people great great men and women and enduring institutions? The the short answer to the question is I'm a great believer in the great the great person theory. all these people that we've talked about whether you just referred to Elon or we were talking about Leia Koker or Steve Jobs or you go into the political realm or the field of battle. It is about great leaders. Great leaders. And obviously there are some terrible authoritarian figures that have cast black shadows over over tens of millions of people and over multiple decades in different countries around the world for hundreds of years. And so for good and bad I think the individual has an enormous impact on uh on what is around uh him or her. and uh capable of on the good side of it, not the dark side of it. Uh persuading others to achieve what's perceived as impossible. U yeah I'm a huge acolyte of that theory.

Patrick： 你相信「伟人史观」（great man theory of history）吗？我问这个，是因为我对那些能长久延续的机构很感兴趣，也想知道你从中学到了什么——那些延续下来的机构是怎么做到的，比如红杉；同时我当然也会被 Elon 这样的人吸引——你是他的早期支持者，还在 X.com 跟他搭档过——想知道他们是怎样塑造历史的。而且看起来，今天可能就有那么几位世界历史级的人物还在世、还在做事。在塑造历史这件事上，个人——这些世界历史级的人物、伟大的男男女女——和能长久延续的机构，你觉得两者的分量怎么平衡？

Moritz： 简短的回答是：我非常信奉「伟人」……「伟大人物」理论。我们聊过的所有这些人，不管是你刚提到的 Elon，还是我们之前聊到的 Lee Iacocca、Steve Jobs，或者你再把目光转向政治领域、转向战场，说到底都在于伟大的领导者。伟大的领导者。当然，也有一些可怕的威权人物，几百年来在世界各国，给数以千万计的人投下了长达几十年的黑色阴影。所以不论好坏，我认为个人对他或她周围的一切都有着巨大的影响；而且在好的那一面——不是黑暗的那一面——他们有能力说服别人去实现被认为不可能的事。所以，是的，我是这个理论的铁杆信徒。

[1:10:23]

Do you think Elon is the great exemplar of that today? Yes, he may well be the greatest industrialist in the history of America.

Patrick： 你觉得 Elon 是当今这方面最伟大的典范吗？

Moritz： 是的，他很可能是美国历史上最伟大的实业家。

[1:10:34] Patrick

What would you say about him?

你会怎么评价他？

[1:10:36]

I don't know that I have anything to add uh other than it's impossible. Anyway, uh it's impossible for me to understand how one individual has been able to achieve what and I know he's a controversial figure, but I I'm just looking at him through the lens of um through the lens of history and through an investor's lens. And I'm just uh they have this phrase in in Britain called gobsmacked. And uh I I I'm completely gobsmacked uh by the scale of his achievements in uh a variety of different industries which is the thing that sets him apart from others. What do you make of today's prevailing technology environment and how this changes all the things we've talked about? Like it seems as though uh one of the other PayPal founders told me recently that he thinks people like Elon and other great entrepreneurs will probably do more things, more than one company, expand out of Monomomania because all these tools give them so much leverage. Do you think that this is like a a true tear in history that we now have intelligence? I I don't know the um if you go to China, you will find that founders of companies or if you go to I think probably South Korea, which I know far less about, you will find that the creators of one company have really imperial ambitions and the creator of a company is along the way or they take their one company and convert it into look at Xiaomi um that manufactures is these cars today that exceed the quality and performance and other attributes of Porsches but began in 2010 as a phone maker. There's an Android licency I think. So yeah, I think creative people or these rare rare people armed with this extraordinary selection of of power in the tools that are at their fingertips or at the fingertips of the people who work for them, they're going to be able to do a lot more in the future than somebody might have been able to do in the past. What is your model of this technology like as a

Moritz： 我不知道自己还有什么可补充的，只能说：这不可能。总之，我实在无法理解，一个人怎么能取得那样的……我知道他是个有争议的人物，但我只是从……从历史的视角、从投资人的视角去看他。英国有个说法叫 gobsmacked（惊掉下巴）。他在好几个不同行业里取得的成就规模，让我彻底惊掉了下巴——这正是他与众不同的地方。

Patrick： 你怎么看今天主流的技术环境？它会怎样改变我们刚才聊的这一切？好像……另一位 PayPal 创始人最近跟我说，他觉得像 Elon 这样的人、还有其他伟大的创业者，很可能会做更多的事、不止一家公司，从只盯一件事的偏执（monomania）里向外扩张，因为这些工具给了他们巨大的杠杆。你觉得这是不是历史上一次真正的断裂——我们如今有了智能？

Moritz： 我不知道……如果你去中国看，你会发现公司的创始人……或者去韩国——我想大概也一样，不过韩国我了解得少得多——你会发现，创办了一家公司的人往往怀有真正帝国式的野心，一家公司的创始人一路走下来……或者说他们会把自己那一家公司变成……你看小米（Xiaomi），它如今造的汽车，在品质、性能和其他各项指标上都超过了 Porsche，可它 2010 年起家时只是个手机厂商。我记得它是 Android 的授权厂商。所以，是的，我认为有创造力的人，或者说这些极其罕见的人，手握这一整套非同寻常、威力巨大的工具——工具就在他们自己或者手下员工的指尖——将来能做成的事，会比过去的人多得多。

Patrick： 你对这项技术的认知模型是什么样的——比如作为一个

[1:12:58] Patrick

observer of it and I'm sure interested observer how do you tell your family about it and what it will mean?

旁观者，而且我相信是个很上心的旁观者，你会怎么跟家人讲它、讲它将意味着什么？

[1:13:04] Moritz

Well, we don't talk about it.

嗯，我们不聊这个。

[1:13:06] Moritz

Well, not very much. I mean people people will always ask me but I'm not a technologist. I'm not a AI sus.

嗯，聊得不多。我是说，别人总会来问我，但我不是搞技术的，也不是什么 AI 行家。

[1:13:14] Patrick

But you were so good at seeing what was going to play out. Like if I think about so many of your investments, the thing seemed small, but it was then something that became like infrastructure that the, you know, Instacart or something that the world was built on.

可你一直很擅长看出事情会如何演变。我想到你的那么多笔投资，东西一开始看着都很小，后来却变成了类似基础设施的存在——比如 Instacart 之类的——整个世界都搭建在它上面。

[1:13:28] Moritz

Yeah. You're being too generous. Um,

是啊。你太抬举我了。嗯，

[1:13:33] Moritz

a lot of data points. I I didn't I didn't think now I think a lot of other people didn't think it as well, but I had uh very little sense that a company could grow at the rate that some of these artificial intelligence companies have grown at today. I mean, it's beyond beyond comprehension. uh I remember u many years ago you know this was at the dawn of the internet or probably after the dawn of the internet and Tom Seel who started well-known entrepreneur and um had been seen as a very successful entrepreneur I remember him um wistfully saying one day um well and you know his company had sold for whatever it was $10 billion and he said very wisfully that was back when 10 billion ion dollar was worth a lot of money. And today you look back and you say whether it was Facebook's IPO or or Google or that was back when a hundred billion dollars was worth a lot of money. I think the idea that you can have a six-year-old company worth trillions of dollars. Nobody would have imagined that.

数据点是不少。我没……我当时没想到——现在看来很多人当时也没想到——我几乎完全没料到，一家公司能以今天某些人工智能公司那样的速度增长。我是说，这完全超出了理解范围。我记得很多年前——那是互联网刚起步的时候，也可能是起步之后不久——Tom Seel，他创办了……一位知名的创业者，一直被视为非常成功的创业者，我记得有一天他颇为感慨地说……他的公司当时卖了——具体多少来着——100 亿美元，他很感慨地说：那还是 100 亿美元很值钱的年代。而今天你回头看，不管是 Facebook 的 IPO 还是 Google，你都会说：那还是 1000 亿美元很值钱的年代。一家成立才 6 年的公司能值好几万亿美元——这种事谁也想象不到。

[1:14:45]

Are you mostly excited about this technology or scared or both? I don't spend a lot of, you know, I read read what everybody else reads and uh have heard the boogyman of pine and uh I think I'm probably a bit more hopeful than than others. Um if you go back to and I don't mean to again I'm not an expert. I don't mean to diminish the dark side of what may or may not happen with AI. I do take some solace in the fact that Armageddon was predicted or a form of Armageddon was predicted when the first nuclear bomb was exploded. And fortunately, here we are almost a century later, close to a century later, and that hasn't occurred. Or if you think about the if you read all the stuff from the mid 1970s about the genetic revolution and how um uh there were going to be scientists creating legions of uh uh individuals um that they deemed suitable to walk on the face of the earth. That hasn't occurred either. So, and today even though I I'm absolutely certain that there's going to be enormous disruption uh in particular job sectors caused by AI, I think that um it's going to create more jobs than are going to be uh going to be lost. And uh there hasn't been and again everyone can say that this time is different but there hasn't been a huge improvement in technology that has in the last two or three centuries led to um lower employment in the long term. I mean there've been depressions and uh massive disruptions in sectors but overall employment has grown and so so I'm a little more optimistic. I think there'll be a lot of jobs that get created that we uh we couldn't categorize today because AI produces prodigious amounts of new text and writing so easily. I think the value of extraordinary writing is going up. That can cut through the sea of slop.

Patrick： 对这项技术，你主要是兴奋，还是害怕，还是两者都有？

Moritz： 我没花太多……你知道，我读的也就是大家都在读的那些东西，也听过那些吓唬人的说法，我想我大概比别人更乐观一些。嗯，如果你回头看——我不是想……还是那句话，我不是专家，我无意淡化 AI 可能会、也可能不会带来的黑暗面。但让我多少感到宽慰的是：第一颗原子弹爆炸的时候，人们就预言过世界末日，或者某种形式的末日。而幸运的是，快一个世纪过去了——将近一个世纪了——末日并没有到来。又或者你想想——如果你去读 1970 年代中期那些关于基因革命的文章，说什么会有科学家造出成群结队的人，都是他们认定「配」在这地球上行走的人——这也没有发生。所以今天，尽管我非常确定 AI 会在某些特定的就业领域造成巨大冲击，但我认为它创造的工作会比消失的更多。而且——当然，谁都可以说「这次不一样」——过去两三百年里，还没有哪一次重大的技术进步从长期看导致了就业减少。我是说，经济萧条有过，一些行业的剧烈动荡也有过，但总体就业一直在增长，所以我要更乐观一些。我认为会有很多新工作被创造出来，是我们今天都没法归类的。因为 AI 能如此轻松地产出海量的新文字、新文章，我觉得真正出色的写作的价值在上升——那种能穿透垃圾内容（slop）汪洋的写作。

[1:17:13] Patrick

How would you define extraordinary writing having done quite a bit of it yourself?

你自己写过不少东西，你会怎么定义出色的写作？

[1:17:18] Moritz

Well, again, you're too flattering and kind about that on that on that particular topic.

嗯，还是那句话，在这个话题上你太抬举我、太客气了。

[1:17:25] Moritz

It's hearing the unmistakable voice of the author.

是能听到作者那独一无二、绝不会被认错的声音。

[1:17:31]

How do you do that as a writer? I think it's the same with the journey through life toughest thing I think for an individual is to be whether it's guiding them through what it is they want to do in life or what they want to put on paper. It's lit. It's being in touch enough with your inner feelings and inner voice to allow those to conquer the pressures of the expectations of others.

Patrick： 作为写作者，你是怎么做到的？

Moritz： 我觉得这和人生旅程是一回事。我认为对一个人来说最难的……不管是指引他们弄清自己这辈子想做什么，还是想往纸上写下什么——就是……就是要足够贴近自己内心的感受和内心的声音，让它们压过别人期待带来的压力。

[1:18:14] Patrick

Joseph Campbell said, "The privilege of a lifetime is becoming who you are, but also that that's the hardest thing to do."

Joseph Campbell 说过：「人生最大的荣幸，就是成为你自己。」但他也说，这恰恰是最难做到的事。

[1:18:20] Moritz

I wish I'd been clever enough to say that. I completely agree. I think that's the struggle everybody has. And it's also the struggle when you um put things down on paper.

我要是有那么聪明、能说出这句话就好了。我完全同意。我觉得这是每个人都要经历的挣扎。而当你要把东西落到纸面上的时候，也是同样的挣扎。

[1:18:32] Patrick

Is there a moment in your own life that was the most important in becoming who you were? Like the hardest part of doing it if it's so valuable to do and it's so hard to do. It makes me wonder about what the hardest part was for you.

在你自己的人生里，有没有哪个时刻，对你成为你自己最为关键？比如说其中最难的那一关——既然这件事这么值得做，又这么难做，我就很好奇，对你来说最难的是什么。

[1:18:47] Moritz

I don't think I've done it.

我觉得我还没做到。

[1:18:48]

Why not? What's the barrier that's left between you and who you are? Oh, I think I'm I always have been. It's one of my weakness, one of my many weaknesses. I've always uh been too prone to um live up to the pressures or expectations from the outside or from others than to um let myself run free.

Patrick： 为什么？在你和真正的你之间，还剩下什么障碍？

Moritz： 哦，我觉得我……我一直都是这样。这是我的弱点之一，我众多弱点中的一个。我总是太容易去迎合外界、迎合别人的压力和期待，而不是放手让自己自由自在地活。

[1:19:15] Patrick

Is it a goal of your the remainder of your life to do so?

在你余下的人生里，这会是你的目标吗？

[1:19:18]

I'll try. I'm so struck by how like unbelievably self-aware you seem, but then you sort of have like uh you're giving yourself poor grades that seem like objectively wrong. What What is that? I'm just still struggling to understand.

Moritz： 我会试试。

Patrick： 让我特别触动的是，你的自我觉察清醒得不可思议，可你又好像在给自己打很低的分，而这些分数客观上看明显是错的。这是怎么回事？我到现在还是没想明白。

[1:19:39] Moritz

I I don't know. Maybe it's the Maybe it's the spectre of my mother.

我……我也不知道。也许是……也许是我母亲留下的阴影吧。

[1:19:44]

Can you say more about her? We didn't talk too much about her other than her doom prophecies. Uh she she was you know I owe like everybody does I owe her many things and she aroused my interest in art and variety of things but um she would always find fault and no matter how good things or what I had done um she would invariably. Uh, you know, she was convinced. I remember there was some newspaper coverage years ago in Britain when Yahoo became public and somehow, you know, I got a I there were some stories about me in the British press. I mean, she was convinced I was a crook. She was absolutely convinced that the police should come for me because there was no possible way that I could have participated in anything like this um that could possibly be legal.

Patrick： 能多讲讲她吗？除了她那些末日预言，我们没怎么聊到她。

Moritz： 呃，她……她是，你知道，我欠她——像每个人一样——我欠她很多。是她激发了我对艺术和各种东西的兴趣。但是，嗯，她总爱挑毛病，不管事情做得多好、不管我做成了什么，嗯，她总是会……呃，你知道，她就是认定了。我记得很多年前，Yahoo 上市的时候，英国报纸上有一些报道，不知怎么的，你知道，我上了……英国媒体上有几篇写我的报道。我是说，她认定我是个骗子。她百分之百认定警察应该来抓我，因为在她看来，我参与了这样的事，还能是合法的——这根本不可能。

[1:20:56] Patrick

Does that hurt? Did that hurt?

那让你难受吗？当时难受吗？

[1:20:59] Moritz

No, it was uh by that point I was more amused by it than anything else. So

不，那是……呃，到那个时候，我更多是觉得好笑，而不是别的。所以……

[1:21:06] Patrick

early did it hurt that that nothing you did was you know satisfied

那早些年呢？不管你做什么，你知道，都没法让她满意，那会让你难受吗？

[1:21:11] Moritz

because it was it was just a fact of life

因为那……那不过是生活的常态。

[1:21:14] Patrick

and yet it seems to have you know echoed.

可它好像，你知道，一直都有回响。

[1:21:17] Moritz

Yeah. Yeah. Well as you never get the boy out of the man.

是啊，是啊。嗯，男人心里的那个小男孩，是永远拿不走的。

[1:21:23]

What is the experience of stepping back from Sequoia because you were sick been like? Like what has that taught you? Well, it's allowed me to do well, first of all, I think I don't think uh leaders should stick around. I think uh if they have decided for whatever reason not to lead, they've got to get out of the way.

Patrick： 因为生病从红杉退下来，这段经历是什么感受？它教会了你什么？

Moritz： 嗯，它让我可以去做……嗯，首先，我觉得，我不认为领导者应该恋栈不去。我觉得，如果他们出于某种原因决定不再领导了，那就得让开，别挡道。

[1:21:44] Moritz

So, I went cold turkey even though people didn't think, you know, I tried to help Seco in what ways I could and was involved with a variety of companies, but it was as a individual contributor. Uh but it was not as leadership. I got out of there as quickly as possible because I didn't think it was fair for um someone to linger in the those sorts of meetings. I'd lived through that myself and uh and and so it's allowed me to do things that um I wouldn't have had I wouldn't have I mean when I was running Sequoia it was talk about monomomania and obsessions. I mean that was it. It was everything every single day of the week. And uh so it allowed me to do things and you know I I I could write I could uh uh and my wife and I started well we started it about 25 years ago we started a foundation so we spent more time on that. In recent years, I spent u more time on um trying to help um San Francisco, which is where I've lived, you know, pushing 50 years, not quite, but uh to turn around and and flourish and along with a wonderful co-founder, Griff Gaffne, um I started a media business there as well, uh which is fun and um I hope contributes to the the life of the city called the San Francisco Standard and and then I'm involved with what used to be called Sequoia Heritage in a sort of advisory capacity. So there's plenty of stuff to do and um which is fulfilling and unfulfilling at the same time because while there are whole variety of things, it's not the obsessive monomaniacal focus on one thing.

所以我是一刀切、彻底抽身的，尽管大家未必这么想——你知道，我尽我所能去帮红杉，也参与了不少公司的事，但那是以个人贡献者的身份，而不是以领导者的身份。我以最快的速度退了出来，因为我觉得，一个人一直赖在那种会议上不走，是不公平的。我自己就亲身经历过那种情况。所以，这让我能去做一些我原本不会……原本没法做的事。我是说，我执掌红杉的时候，那可真叫偏执、真叫痴迷。我是说，那就是全部，一周七天，天天都是它。所以这让我能去做别的事，你知道，我……我可以写作，我可以，呃……还有我和我太太创办了——嗯，其实大约 25 年前就创办了——一个基金会，所以我们在那上面花了更多时间。最近几年，我花了更多时间去帮旧金山——我在那儿住了快 50 年了，还差一点——帮它扭转局面、重新繁荣起来。我还和一位很棒的联合创始人 Griff Gaffney 一起，在那儿创办了一家媒体公司，叫 San Francisco Standard，做起来很有意思，我也希望它能为这座城市的生活出一份力。然后，我还以某种顾问的身份，参与以前叫 Sequoia Heritage 的那家机构。所以要做的事有很多，这既让人充实，又让人不那么满足——因为虽然事情五花八门，但已经不再是那种偏执地、一门心思扑在一件事上的专注了。

[1:23:34]

Do you miss it? Yeah, there are aspects of it, but it's all I miss aspects of it, but I know full well that I would not want to return to that way of life.

Patrick： 你会怀念吗？

Moritz： 会，有些方面会，但总的来说……我怀念其中某些方面，但我心里很清楚，我不会想回到那种生活方式。

[1:23:45] Patrick

Is it the flow state of it that you miss the the feeling of total immersion and sort of like forgetting yourself?

你怀念的是其中的心流状态吗？那种全然沉浸、有点忘我的感觉？

[1:23:51] Moritz

Maybe I get that when I'm painting. It's simpler. It's a simpler life. You don't have to make decisions about how you allocate your time because your calendar is commanded by some other force.

这种感觉，也许我画画的时候会有。那样更简单，是一种更简单的生活。你不用去决定怎么分配自己的时间，因为你的日程由另一股力量主宰着。

[1:24:06] Moritz

Uh the difference between having your com calendar dictated by others and being in complete control of your calendar yourself, it's night and day.

呃，日程被别人支配，跟日程完全由自己掌控，这两者简直是天壤之别。

[1:24:17]

What's your hope for the standard? What are the principles that guide it? Griff and I didn't set it up as a not for-p profofit because what we one of the things that we wanted to do was to show that local journalism can be a profitable business. Number one. Number two, it's to have a vibrant um interesting diverting uh but reliable uh source of information for people in San Francisco and the great the greater bay bay area uh for people who care about um um that sort of stuff. And number three, I've been very clear from day one that um you know, news coverage um there's no proprietatorial thumb on the scale when it comes to news coverage. If you know I've been in some of the stories in the standard, I've been mentioned and referred to in ways that I wouldn't you know necessarily write myself, but so that's fair game. But in the ideas and opinions area, it's center of right of center. And that's that's what this um this is. And that's a much needed voice in San Francisco.

Patrick： 你对 Standard 有什么期望？指导它的原则是什么？

Moritz： 我和 Griff 没有把它办成非营利机构，因为我们想做的事情之一，就是证明地方新闻可以是一门赚钱的生意。这是第一。第二，是给旧金山和整个湾区关心这类事情的人，提供一个有活力、有意思、读着解闷，但又靠得住的信息来源。第三，我从第一天起就说得很清楚：在新闻报道上，东家绝不会暗中拉偏架。你知道，Standard 的一些报道里写到过我，提到我、描述我的方式，未必是我自己会写的样子，但那也无可厚非。不过在观点与评论板块，它的立场是中间或中间偏右。这就是它的定位。在旧金山，这正是一个非常需要的声音。

[1:25:33] Patrick

As I as I think back to the book

当我……当我回想这本书，

[1:25:36] Patrick

and I put it down and and wondered about okay, what what's going to last in me having read this, the thing I keep coming back to, it's obviously selfish and context dependent is parenting. And you know, I have two young kids who are in their zone of they're 12 and 10.

合上书，琢磨着：好，读完之后，有什么会在我心里留下来？我反复想到的——这显然是出于私心，也跟我自己的处境有关——是养育孩子。你知道，我有两个还小的孩子，正处在那个阶段，一个 12 岁，一个 10 岁。

[1:25:51] Moritz

Yeah.

嗯。

[1:25:52] Patrick

Um so that you know, they're approaching that end of that window where uh you know, you describe them as being

嗯，所以你知道，他们正走到那个窗口期的尾声——用你书里的话说，孩子到这时候就会被

[1:25:57]

imprinted and the damage they're impaired for life.

打上烙印，伤害也就此落下，一辈子都会受影响。

[1:26:03]

I So I wonder if you turn the whole exercise of exploring your own history and your family's history into how to think about the role of parenting. I'm curious what comes to mind. I think it's to arm the children with confidence.

Patrick： 所以我在想，如果把你探索自己历史、家族历史的这一整趟功课，转过来用在思考父母该扮演什么角色上，你会想到什么？我很好奇。

Moritz： 我觉得就是用自信去武装孩子。

[1:26:19] Moritz

Simple as that.

就这么简单。

[1:26:23] Patrick

By doing what?

具体要怎么做呢？

[1:26:25]

I don't know. I've I'd have to think hard about the handbook of parenting. Uh but I think it's to instill that feeling of self self-confidence and freedom. and to try as a parent not to be sensorious. Do you think also thinking about the book that an important lesson is that we cannot take progress for granted, positive progress? History is littered with examples of u terrible things that happened over periods of time uh for millions of people all around the world uh Russia, China, Iran, um Africa, uh India. There have been terrible things that have happened over the last thousand years and I think there's very little that separates the human from the beast and it's remaining human and not becoming the beast that is everybody's challenge. How do you think you were most changed by the exercise of studying your family and writing the book?

Moritz： 我不知道。关于育儿手册该怎么写，我得好好想一想。呃，但我觉得，就是要给孩子灌注那种自信、那种自由的感觉。还有，作为父母，要尽量不去苛责挑剔。

Patrick： 再想想这本书，你是不是也觉得，其中一个重要的教训是：我们不能把进步——正向的进步——视为理所当然？

Moritz： 历史上到处都是这样的例子：在各个时期，世界各地数以百万计的人遭遇了可怕的事——俄罗斯、中国、伊朗，还有非洲、印度。过去一千年里发生过许多可怕的事。我觉得，人和野兽之间只有一线之隔；保持人性、不沦为野兽，是每个人都要面对的挑战。

Patrick： 研究自己的家族、写这本书，这一趟下来，你觉得自己最大的改变是什么？

[1:27:58] Moritz

Understanding myself a little better.

让我对自己多了一点了解。

[1:27:59] Patrick

A little better. And in the final analysis, what matters?

多了一点了解。那归根结底，什么才是重要的？

[1:28:04] Moritz

I think it's two things. I think it's relationships with the people that you care about and knowing that we're all completely insignificant no matter what the individual has accomplished. trying to leave things a little better uh than uh than they were um before we got before any of us got engaged with it.

我觉得是两件事。我觉得是和你在乎的人之间的关系，以及明白——无论个人取得了什么成就——我们所有人都完全微不足道。努力让事情比我们……比我们任何人参与其中之前，变得好那么一点。

[1:28:34] Patrick

If you had to write a next book, what topic piques your curiosity?

如果要写下一本书，什么题目最能勾起你的好奇心？

[1:28:40] Moritz

I've been playing around with this idea, which I don't know if I'll ever actually get around to writing, but I've been reading about it a fair amount. I'm very interested, weirdly, uh, in Iran, Persia of the 1940s and the collision of individuals from inside and outside Iran. That explains so much about the world we live in today. And I think what I've been thinking about is not non-fiction, but a blend of fiction and non-fiction. Now, as I said, I don't know if I'll ever get the um narrative and the structure and the composition right, but it's the I think what happened my view of what happened has happened in Iran is it's this collision of personalities from very different backgrounds in different parts of the world that have failed to understand each other. And it's pretty fascinating.

我一直在琢磨一个想法，不知道最后会不会真的动笔去写，但相关的东西我读了不少。说来奇怪，我对伊朗非常感兴趣——1940 年代的波斯，以及来自伊朗内外的各色人物之间的碰撞。这能解释我们今天所处世界的很多事情。我在考虑的不是纯粹的非虚构，而是虚构与非虚构的混合。当然，就像我说的，我不知道自己能不能把叙事、结构和章法都处理好。但我认为，伊朗发生的事——在我看来伊朗发生过的事——就是来自世界不同地方、背景迥异的一群人彼此碰撞，却始终没能理解对方。这真的非常引人入胜。

[1:30:01] Patrick

One of the great things about your thinking and writing was how short some of the very famous memos and things were. Your what could go right understanding for a company like Stripe where I understand the memo is was quite short. If you were to write I'm curious about that notion of compression and the power of compression. But if you were to sort of write something like that about the state of the world and give it to your grandson or something today, you seem so good at identifying like the things that matter that will determine where things will go.

你的思考和写作有个特别了不起的地方：一些非常有名的备忘录之类的东西，篇幅都很短。比如你对 Stripe 这种公司「最好能走到哪一步」（what could go right）的判断——据我所知，那份备忘录就相当短。如果你要写……我对「压缩」这个概念、对压缩的力量很好奇。不过，如果今天让你写一份类似的东西，讲讲当今世界的状况，交给你的孙子之类的人——你好像特别擅长找出那些真正要紧、会决定事情走向的因素。

[1:30:30] Patrick

I know that's a big question, but

我知道这个问题很大，不过……

[1:30:31] Moritz

again, you're too kind. Um, for me being able to boil and and I don't have a good answer to that question, Patrick. I'm I'm sorry. Um, but for me being able to, and it's part of the training as a journalist, it's part of what I learned at college, uh, being able to distill things to their essence, uh, and keep it very short, um, I think, uh, has stood me in goodstead over the years.

你又过奖了。嗯，对我来说，能够把东西浓缩……而且这个问题我没有好答案，Patrick，我……我很抱歉。嗯，但对我来说，能够——这是记者训练的一部分，也是我在大学里学到的——能够把事情提炼到本质，呃，并且写得非常短，嗯，我觉得这些年来让我受益匪浅。

[1:31:13] Patrick

Can that be taught? Seems like more valuable than ever. so much information and bombardment.

这能教会吗？如今这种能力似乎比以往任何时候都更有价值——信息太多，狂轰滥炸。

[1:31:19] Moritz

I don't know. I think it depends a lot on reading and um I listen to I I think it's it's hard when people are fed a diet of a limited vocabulary and uh not not to single well I suppos I am singling him out but if you do these studies of the vocabulary of presidents of the United States. Trump's vocabulary is by far the lowest. And I think he's got a vocabulary of about 2400 words. Obama was maybe 4,500 words, common vocabulary. And I think having a huge vocabulary at your fingertips that you can select from allows you to express complicated ideas in a simple manner.

我不知道。我觉得这很大程度上取决于阅读。嗯，我听……我觉得，当人们长期被喂以有限的词汇时，就很难做到。呃，我不是要单独点……好吧，我想我确实是在点他的名。但如果你去看那些关于美国历任总统词汇量的研究，Trump 的词汇量是最低的，而且低出一大截。我记得他的词汇量大约是 2400 个词，Obama 大概是 4500 个词，指的是常用词汇。我觉得，手边有海量的词汇可供挑选，能让你用简单的方式表达复杂的想法。

[1:32:22]

I love the book. I loved our conversation. I've loved all your writing. Oh, you're uh you're far too kind and flattering and gracious and um the questions have been, as you can tell, thoughtprovoking and wonderful.

Patrick： 我很喜欢这本书，很喜欢我们这次的对话，你写的所有东西我都很喜欢。

Moritz： 哦，你实在太客气、太抬举我了，也太有风度了。而且你也看得出来，这些问题都发人深省，非常精彩。

[1:32:39] Patrick

I ask one final question every time I interview someone. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?

每次采访，我都会问一个最后的问题：别人为你做过的最善意的一件事是什么？

[1:32:46] Moritz

Marry me.

嫁给了我。

[1:32:50] Patrick

So beautiful. Simple. What have you learned from your wife?

太美了。很简单。你从你太太身上学到了什么？

[1:32:55] Moritz

Tolerance.

包容。

[1:32:57] Patrick

Common theme. Mike, thanks so much for your time.

这是个常见的主题。Mike，非常感谢你抽出时间。

[1:32:59] Moritz

Thank you.

谢谢。

[1:33:04] Patrick

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