紧急事件催生的创业灵感

I kind of landed into technology and startups just by seeing that emergency happen in my community as a kid.

我之所以踏入科技和创业领域，是因为我小时候亲身经历了社区发生的一次紧急事件。

A second student has died from Monday's school shooting in Chardan, Ohio. All schools in Chardan are closed today. The seven...

俄亥俄州查丹市周一发生的校园枪击案，第二名学生不幸身亡。查丹市所有学校今天停课。七名…

It was an active shooter event when I was 12. I was in third grade, I think. And yeah, someone came on site and brought a weapon, shot students, and I think there were four people that passed away. My town borders the town where the emergency happened. My school locked down because it was so close. And as a young kid, I was 12 when this happened. And so you just recognize safety is something that's not a given.

那是我12岁的时候，当时我大概上三年级，发生了一起活跃枪手事件。有人持枪进入校园，射杀了学生，我想有四人不幸遇难。我所在的城镇与发生紧急事件的城镇相邻，我的学校因为离得很近而实行了封锁。作为一个12岁的孩子，我当时就意识到，安全并非理所当然。

Prepared：用AI革新公共安全

I'm Michael Chime. I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO. Prepared (Prepared: 一家开发AI辅助911呼叫系统的公司) is an AI assistant for 911 calls (AI辅助911呼叫系统: 利用人工智能技术帮助911调度员更高效处理紧急呼叫的系统) that helps them process the calls better, faster, with higher quality. We are in all but one state, I think, so 49 states. We cover about 100 million in population.

我是Michael Chime，Prepared的联合创始人兼首席执行官。Prepared是一款AI辅助911呼叫系统，能帮助调度员更好、更快、更高质量地处理呼叫。我们目前已覆盖除一个州之外的所有州，也就是49个州，服务大约1亿人口。

Technology all around us is moving really rapidly, but it's not in public safety. Somebody calling 911 and having a really bad experience, that's happening everywhere. I was an undergrad at Yale, of all things, so people are like, "Why are you building in public safety? That's a unique life choice." I actually don't know if I'll be successful, but I think I'll regret not having tried.

我们周围的技术发展日新月异，但在公共安全领域却并非如此。人们拨打911却获得糟糕体验的情况随处可见。我大学是在耶鲁读的，所以人们会问：“你为什么选择在公共安全领域创业？这真是一个独特的选择。”我其实不知道自己是否会成功，但我认为如果我不尝试，我一定会后悔。

个人经历与使命感

So I grew up in a small town outside of Cleveland. I think I wanted to play sports after college. I was always naturally drawn towards things that were challenging to do and felt important, and so sports was the best way for me to do that. I probably would have played sports or just taken a typical job after school. That's probably what I would have done. I don't think prior to that event I ever really thought about safety or the idea that I wouldn't be safe. And as a kid, you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is not a drill." And the teachers are actually nervous. It comes real quickly that you're not always safe. Seeing that happen in a place where you actually knew the people, I think it really hit home. Emergencies could happen and they could impact people you actually know or you. That was in the back of my head. It was a thought that I had all throughout my childhood.

我从小在克利夫兰郊区的一个小镇长大。大学毕业后，我原以为我会去从事体育运动。我总是自然而然地被那些具有挑战性且感觉重要的事情所吸引，而体育就是我实现这一目标的最佳方式。我可能毕业后会去从事体育或者找一份普通工作，那大概就是我原本的计划。在那次事件之前，我从未真正思考过安全问题，或者我可能不安全这个念头。而作为一个孩子，你会想：“天哪，这不是演习。”老师们也确实很紧张。你很快就会意识到，你并非总是安全的。亲眼看到这种事发生在认识的人身上，我觉得这真的让我感触很深。紧急情况可能发生，而且可能影响到你认识的人，甚至是你自己。这个想法一直萦绕在我脑海中，贯穿了我的整个童年。

And then when I went to high school and was thinking about these things more, Marshall lives at its peak. And so our generation was really starting to take a stand and say, "Hey, this is not so great. We should change things here." And that was compelling and exciting to me. When I went to college, I met two classmates that turned out to be co-founders later, Dylan and Neil. They grew up in a very similar environment. The town over from them was Sandy Hook. And so I think just generally speaking, we thought about it more as kids. And we didn't think we would build a company. We just thought we would build this simple tool schools would use in college, and then we would go off and do whatever our jobs, etc., after.

后来我上高中，开始更多地思考这些事情时，马歇尔定律达到了顶峰。我们这一代人真的开始站出来说：“嘿，这不太好。我们应该改变现状。”这对我来说既引人注目又令人兴奋。上大学时，我遇到了两位同学，他们后来成了我的联合创始人——迪伦和尼尔。他们成长在一个非常相似的环境中，他们隔壁的城镇就是桑迪胡克。所以，我想总的来说，我们小时候就更多地思考过这些问题。我们当时并没有想过要创立一家公司，只是觉得要开发一个简单的工具，供大学里的学校使用，然后我们就会去做各自的工作等等。

从校园应用到911系统：发现痛点

So our first product was an app for schools, and we had a couple hundred schools across the country launch that solution, and that's how we got into 911. Schools would say they were running a drill, right? They would take a picture of something on site and then they'd want to share it to 911, because 911 would respond to that situation. In doing that work, we'd want to share data to 911 centers (911中心: 处理紧急电话的调度中心). But what I realized is that that simple idea, sharing a picture to somebody in emergency, that the current 911 systems weren't set up to do that. I don't think many people know this, but still today, most of the 911 centers are using technology built on the assumption those calls are landline (陆线电话: 传统固定电话). So the first problem we attempted to solve was that: How do we make sure that when we call, the systems are intelligent enough to take that information in? I think we can hold the line and say, "Okay, when somebody has that situation, how do we hold a really high bar and make sure that we use whatever technology possible to try to make that the best possible response?"

所以我们第一个产品是针对学校的应用，全国有几百所学校采用了这个解决方案，这就是我们进入911领域的方式。学校会说他们在进行演习，对吧？他们会在现场拍下一些东西，然后想分享给911，因为911会响应这种紧急情况。在做这项工作时，我们希望将数据分享给911中心。但我意识到，这个简单的想法——向紧急救援人员分享图片——当前的911系统并没有为此做好准备。我想很多人都不知道这一点，但即使是今天，大多数911中心使用的技术，其构建基础仍然是假设这些呼叫来自陆线电话。所以我们试图解决的第一个问题是：如何确保当我们拨打电话时，系统足够智能，能够接收这些信息？我认为我们可以坚持一个标准，即当有人遇到紧急情况时，我们如何设定一个非常高的门槛，并确保我们使用一切可能的技术，努力提供最佳的响应？

What was going to be my senior class at Yale, I was taking the year off school. So I'm like, "Okay, I guess I'll do that, too." And I took the year off. That's when I applied and did the Teal Fellowship (Teal奖学金: 一项由PayPal联合创始人Peter Thiel发起的奖学金项目，鼓励年轻人辍学创业). The pitch to my parents who did not like the idea of me doing the fellowship at all. My mom actually hated it. So both parents are like, "Michael, you're one year away from graduating. Why not just finish up? Like why not just go all the way through?" And this was, it was nonobvious that we were going to have any success. It was like our first office was an apartment, and the master was the office, and it was just folding tables with monitors. And so I was like, "Mom and Dad, I'm going to go and live here and I'm going to work on this thing." So it was a hard pitch. I said to them what I said here, which I really believe, is just like, "Mom, Dad, the problem that we're talking about here, somebody calling 911 and having a really bad experience, that's happening everywhere. I actually don't know if I'll be successful, but I think I'll regret not having tried." And they let me do it.

我本该在耶鲁读大四，但我休学了一年。于是我想：“好吧，我也休学吧。”我就休学了。那时我申请并参加了Teal奖学金。我向父母解释，他们根本不喜欢我参加这个奖学金的想法。我妈妈甚至非常讨厌。所以父母都说：“Michael，你再一年就毕业了。为什么不直接读完呢？为什么不坚持到底呢？”而且我们当时是否会成功，这根本不明显。我们的第一个办公室就是一间公寓，主卧就是办公室，里面只有几张折叠桌放着显示器。所以我就对他们说：“爸爸妈妈，我要住在这里，我要做这件事。”所以这是一个很难的游说。我对他们说了我在这里说的，也是我真正相信的，那就是：“妈妈，爸爸，我们现在谈论的这个问题——有人拨打911却获得非常糟糕的体验，这种情况随处可见。我其实不知道自己是否会成功，但我认为如果我不尝试，我一定会后悔。”他们最终让我去做了。

And so this is when I just started knocking on the door of 911 centers, and then they walked me through the center. I remember that moment walking through a 911 center for the first time really vividly. It was like, I again, I had come in with this assumption that I was about to walk in and see the coolest technology I've ever seen. I was about to see the best technology in the world. And I saw the complete inverse. I remember the first time I sat next to a call taker and they were doing their best work, but the guy, he's taking a call. Someone was very urgent. He kind of had the headset on his ear. He's typing as fast as he can every single detail that this person's trying to describe. Clearly missing stuff, and anybody would; I would miss stuff if I was in that same seat. But that stream of consciousness of notes is what someone was going to run into a burning building with, and my mind was blown.

于是我开始敲911中心的大门，然后他们带我参观了中心。我清楚地记得第一次走进911中心时的情景。我当时带着一种假设，以为我会看到我从未见过的最酷的技术，世界上最好的技术。但我看到的却是完全相反的景象。我记得第一次坐在一个接线员旁边，他们正在尽力工作，但那个人，他正在接听一个非常紧急的电话。他戴着耳机，尽力快速打出对方描述的每一个细节。显然，他遗漏了一些信息，任何人都会遗漏，如果我在那个位置上，我也会。但是，那些像意识流一样的笔记，却是人们冲进着火的建筑物时所依赖的信息，这让我大为震惊。

用户至上：围绕现有系统进行创新

It's very daunting to rip out their current technology. If you rip out a center and you miss one single call, that's a really big deal. And so what we had to do was architect, "Okay, how do we fit within the systems?" We sit there and we say, "Hey, I can appreciate why the technology is that way. It's very hard. It's difficult to switch systems. How do we actually build our solution around your concerns, which are valid?" And I don't think any vendor's done that or any technology company has done that before. They've just said, "Well, why is that so bad? Let's just rip it out." And I think that you need something more thoughtful than that to see real change. We should solve it today. We shouldn't wait 10 years to go and solve that problem. So we thought the best, most speedy way to start making progress was integrating with the systems as opposed to ripping them out.

替换他们现有的技术是非常艰巨的任务。如果你替换掉一个中心的技术，却漏接了一个电话，那将是件非常严重的事情。所以我们必须设计：“我们如何才能融入现有系统？”我们坐下来，说：“嘿，我能理解为什么技术会是这样。它非常困难，切换系统也很麻烦。我们如何才能真正围绕你们合理的需求来构建我们的解决方案？”我认为以前没有任何供应商或科技公司这样做过。他们只会说：“那有什么不好？直接把它淘汰掉不就行了。”但我认为，要看到真正的改变，你需要比这更周到的考虑。我们今天就应该解决这个问题，而不是等待10年。所以我们认为，开始取得进展的最佳、最快捷的方式是与现有系统集成，而不是将其彻底替换。

The Orlando Fire Department is upgrading its dispatch center with new software that allows callers to live stream videos and pictures.

奥兰多消防局正在升级其调度中心，采用新软件，允许来电者实时传输视频和图片。

I remember when we first turned on our product for 911 centers. Within our first week, people used it to save a life. I think it was a CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: 心肺复苏术，一种紧急医疗技术) call. So someone calls in, they're with their friend and they pass somebody on the street that was passed out, and they were like, "Okay, we're going to initiate. We're going to do CPR." But they had no idea how to do CPR. They had never done it before. And the call taker was trying to walk them through it over the phone, but couldn't understand where their hands were placed, if they were breathing at the right time. And they remembered, "Oh, I have Prepared," and they turned on live stream. And so the friends started streaming CPR with the phone on speaker, and the call taker saw it and was able to coach them through live, and the guy comes back to life. So that was in our first week of deploying the technology, and you're like, "Okay, that's pretty cool." So I think early on that was a real driver and motivator. And now, I mean, we are on track this year to process well over 30 million calls every day. You just get stories of how people are using it to save lives.

我记得当我们第一次为911中心启用我们的产品时，在第一周内，就有人用它挽救了一条生命。我想那是一个心肺复苏的电话。有人打电话进来，他们和朋友一起，看到街上有人昏倒了，他们说：“好的，我们要开始做心肺复苏。”但他们完全不知道如何做心肺复苏，他们以前从未做过。接线员试图通过电话指导他们，但无法理解他们的手放在哪里，是否在正确的时间进行呼吸。然后他们想起来：“哦，我有Prepared！”他们打开了直播功能。于是朋友们用免提电话直播心肺复苏过程，接线员看到了，并能够实时指导他们，最终那个人苏醒了。这仅仅是我们部署这项技术的第一周，你会觉得：“哇，这太酷了。”所以我想，早期这真的是一个巨大的驱动力和激励。而现在，我们今年有望每天处理超过3000万个电话。你总能听到人们如何利用它来挽救生命的故事。

以用户需求为导向的产品迭代

One way to make sure that we internalize the weight of what we're doing is spend time with the centers. You go into a center and you see somebody take a call and just feel the weight and the pain of not being able to handle that call because they're sitting on language line (语言热线: 提供电话翻译服务的系统) or they miss a key detail. And so the impacts of those things are life-changing. Every new product that you've seen us launch has been sitting next to a center who's actually using it, and we just watch them have a problem and then we go and solve it.

确保我们深刻理解我们工作重要性的一种方式，就是花时间与911中心待在一起。你走进一个中心，看到有人接听电话，感受他们因依赖语言热线或遗漏关键细节而无法处理好电话时的沉重和痛苦。这些事情的影响是改变生命的。我们推出的每一个新产品，都是通过坐在实际使用我们产品的中心旁边，观察他们遇到的问题，然后我们再去解决。

In our first month where we launched the very first version of our product, which was again, you could send a link to a citizen and they could live stream and share pictures, videos, etc. Our first month, we had like 350 incidents go through the platform. Shortly thereafter, three months later, we had 60,000 monthly messages going through the platform. We saw a huge uptick in emergencies. And so you had this large amount of data that you can go in and talk to customers, "Hey, why are you using it this way?" One of the things that became clear was if you had bad information go into 911, that was actually worse than no information at all. Language translation is an example. Initially, we would see people text back that link in Spanish. And we literally have centers go into our platform, get that text in Spanish, copy and paste it into Google Translate, translate it, and then go back to us. They were toggling between these two screens. And we're like, "Oh my goodness, we'll just bring that in." And so our first paid product was this language translation over text, and centers used it.

在我们的第一个月，我们推出了产品最初的版本，也就是你可以向市民发送一个链接，他们可以进行直播并分享图片、视频等。第一个月，我们平台处理了大约350起事件。此后不久，三个月后，我们平台每月的消息量达到了6万条。我们看到了紧急情况的巨大增长。因此，你有了大量数据，可以去与客户沟通：“嘿，你们为什么这样使用它？”其中一个明确的问题是，如果糟糕的信息进入911系统，那实际上比完全没有信息更糟糕。语言翻译就是一个例子。最初，我们会看到人们用西班牙语回复那个链接。而我们中心的工作人员，真的是进入我们的平台，获取西班牙语文本，复制粘贴到谷歌翻译，翻译，然后再回到我们的平台。他们在这两个屏幕之间来回切换。我们当时想：“天哪，我们直接把这个功能整合进来吧。”所以我们的第一个付费产品就是这个通过文本进行的语言翻译功能，中心们都在使用它。

The next evolution of our product was, "Oh wait, why even text them at all if they don't speak English? Why can't we just translate it right on the call?" And so our next product was, could we plug in, pull out the audio and start translating on the audio as opposed to moving them to text? And then yeah, we launched that product, and centers across the country started using that transcription and translation. And then now this last year, we started launching new versions of our or new modules on top of our product because we saw new problems. We started processing millions of calls a month. And you just look at those calls and you see, "Oh my goodness, one, we have hold times on non-emergency calls. And two, when emergency calls come in, I'm rushing between call to call." Why do we have the critical resource, a human agent, focused on noise complaints or parking tickets? AI could do that job. And so we launched a voice agent that could handle non-emergency calls. And now some of the biggest cities in the country are fully offloading those calls to us.

我们产品的下一个演进是：“等等，如果他们不说英语，为什么还要发短信给他们呢？我们为什么不能直接在通话中进行翻译呢？”所以我们的下一个产品是，我们能否接入系统，提取音频，并开始在音频上进行翻译，而不是让他们转到文本？然后，是的，我们推出了那个产品，全国各地的中心开始使用那种转录和翻译功能。接着在去年，我们开始在产品之上推出新版本或新模块，因为我们发现了新的问题。我们开始每月处理数百万个电话。你只需查看那些电话，就会发现：“天哪，第一，我们在非紧急电话上存在等待时间。第二，当紧急电话打进来时，我必须在各个电话之间匆忙切换。”为什么我们把关键资源——人工座席——集中在处理噪音投诉或停车罚单上？AI可以完成这项工作。所以我们推出了一个可以处理非紧急电话的语音代理。现在，全国一些最大的城市正在将这些电话完全卸载给我们。

But we've just consistently looked at the usage in our system and then gone and solved problems now. And so we've just really gotten focused on how are they using the system and then what new problems are coming up that they're trying to use the system to solve, and then how we just actually solve those. What I've learned is that often the centers are telling you exactly what you should build and the problems that they have. And if you just stay really tight to them and build those things quickly, you'll probably have a lot of success. Now I spend a lot of time in centers just sitting next to them. I think even as we've gotten big, I've tried to spend a week or two weeks a month in centers, sitting next to them, and it's just been such an advantage for us, is that how are they actually using it? And you'd be surprised how many founders or companies don't do that, just don't sit next to the centers and say how are they actually using it, that a lot of the decisions get made in rooms like this, totally away from anybody that's actually using the technology. And so it's something that we've tried to stick to as we've gotten bigger.

但我们一直持续关注系统中的使用情况，然后立即着手解决问题。因此，我们真正专注于他们如何使用系统，以及他们试图利用系统解决哪些新问题，然后我们如何实际解决这些问题。我学到的是，中心通常会准确地告诉你应该开发什么以及他们遇到的问题。如果你能紧密地与他们合作并迅速开发出这些东西，你很可能会取得巨大的成功。现在，我花很多时间待在中心里，就坐在他们旁边。我认为，即使我们公司规模变大，我也努力每个月花一到两周时间待在中心里，坐在他们旁边，这对于我们来说是一个巨大的优势，因为我们能了解他们实际如何使用产品。你可能会惊讶，有多少创始人和公司不做这件事，他们根本不坐在中心旁边，不问他们实际如何使用产品，很多决策都是在像这样的房间里做出的，完全脱离了实际使用技术的人。所以，随着公司规模的扩大，我们一直努力坚持这一点。

“自下而上”的策略：打破政府采购壁垒

I remember when we were first starting and we were pitching investors, they would tell me, "Don't work in government. Don't work in 911." One, it's very hard to do, very hard to see change, which is certainly true. But also, there's not much money in 911. It's not a big enough market. And I remember that advice of starting small and focusing on something niche was actually a good thing. And so I stuck to that and it worked out. One of the things that had blocked innovation was this long, arduous process to even get in working with the center. There were startups that in other markets that had faced similar two decades ago selling to the Fortune 500 (财富500强: 指美国营业收入最高的500家公司) companies. For a startup, it was very difficult. Normally that was just Oracle or Salesforce or any other big company was able to actually punch at that weight. And the reason was, you had these large systems IT units in public companies. They would block everything. They would say, "No, you can't work with the startup. We're going to work with the big guy." And then naturally the big companies didn't face any pressure. So the technology got really decayed. And so you had Fortune 500 companies with really antiquated tools.

我记得我们刚开始创业向投资者推介时，他们会告诉我：“不要涉足政府领域。不要涉足911领域。”一方面，这很难做，很难看到改变，这确实如此。但另一方面，911领域也没有多少钱，市场不够大。我记得那个建议——从小处着手，专注于一个利基市场——实际上是件好事。所以我坚持了这一点，并且成功了。阻碍创新的其中一件事是，要进入并与中心合作，需要漫长而艰巨的采购流程 (procurement: 政府或大型机构购买产品或服务的流程)。其他市场上的初创公司在二十年前也面临过类似的问题，当时它们试图向财富500强公司销售产品。对于一家初创公司来说，这非常困难。通常只有像甲骨文或Salesforce这样的大公司才能真正达到那个分量。原因在于，这些上市公司内部有庞大的IT系统部门。他们会阻挠一切，他们会说：“不，你不能和初创公司合作。我们要和那些大公司合作。”然后，大公司自然就没有面临任何压力，所以技术变得非常陈旧。因此，财富500强公司使用的工具都非常过时。

So startups started to change their model. So companies like a Slack or a Yammer started to give their product to end employees. And at the time that was very controversial. They're like, "Wait, you can't just give your technology to the end employees. You got to go through IT first. You got to do all these things." And they did it, and it worked. And bottoms up (自下而上: 一种通过从最终用户开始推广产品来颠覆传统销售模式的策略) was born. This idea of starting with the end employees, then going back to the processes of the big company. But at least now you have the users at your back. You've already shown them they have something better. And the reason that was really innovative was now the large companies could no longer just defend on process. They had to actually defend on technology because you were getting in. Our idea was that government was the same thing, or that procurement was the systems IT equivalent in government, and that if we could get our technology in the hands of end users and make the discussion about technology and not procurement, that we would win.

所以初创公司开始改变他们的模式。像Slack或Yammer这样的公司开始将他们的产品直接提供给最终员工。当时这非常有争议。他们会说：“等等，你不能直接把技术给最终员工。你必须先通过IT部门。你必须做所有这些事情。”但他们做到了，而且成功了。于是，“自下而上”的模式诞生了。这种模式的核心是从最终员工开始，然后再回到大公司的流程。但至少现在你有了用户的支持。你已经向他们展示了有更好的东西。这种模式之所以具有真正的创新性，是因为现在大公司不能再仅仅依靠流程来防御了。他们必须真正依靠技术来防御，因为你已经进入了市场。我们的想法是，政府也是如此，或者说政府的采购流程相当于系统IT部门，如果我们能将技术交到最终用户手中，并将讨论的重点放在技术而非采购上，我们就能赢。

And so that was a big part of our initial strategy. So our first product was no cost for centers, and the only goal was to get our technology in, build the best solutions, show them that there was a better way. And then we thought that if we did do that, we'd be able to expand from there. And so our first roughly thousand cities – and we have over a thousand cities now across the country that use us – paid us nothing, but they saw like, "Oh my goodness, there is a better way," and that was a big part of our initial strategy.

所以这是我们初期战略的重要组成部分。我们的第一个产品对中心是免费的，唯一的目标就是让我们的技术进入市场，构建最好的解决方案，向他们展示有更好的方法。然后我们认为，如果能做到这一点，我们就能在此基础上进行扩展。所以，我们最初的大约一千个城市——现在全国有超过一千个城市使用我们的产品——没有向我们支付任何费用，但他们看到了：“天哪，确实有更好的方法。”这是我们初期战略的重要组成部分。

持续成长的挑战与核心使命

Startups should really think first, principally, about what is the reason the thing that they think should happen has not happened. Every good company starts with a vision of a better future, right? And to you it's clear that that future should come to pass, but it hasn't, right? So it's really sitting on the question, "Why it hasn't come to pass?" So in our space, there were a lot of companies that had actually built better technology, but nobody used it. The real constraint for us was nobody had hacked distribution. Most times the hard problem with government is actually getting in. And so again, counterintuitive idea because a business should make money, but if my goal is to get the technology side by side, what should you do? Give it for free. Remove all the barriers and all the friction needed to get your technology next to theirs. Sometimes it's not obvious. It's not just build a better system.

初创公司首先应该主要思考的是，为什么他们认为应该发生的事情却没有发生。每家优秀的公司都始于对美好未来的愿景，对吧？对你来说，那个未来显然应该实现，但它却没有，对吗？所以，关键在于思考“为什么它没有实现？”在我们的领域，有很多公司实际上已经开发出了更好的技术，但没有人使用。对我们来说真正的限制是，没有人破解了分销难题。大多数时候，与政府合作的难题实际上是如何进入。所以，这又是一个反直觉的想法，因为企业应该赚钱，但如果我的目标是让技术并驾齐驱，那么你应该怎么做？免费提供。移除所有障碍和摩擦，让你的技术与他们的技术并存。有时这并不明显。它不仅仅是建立一个更好的系统。

I think the hardest thing is especially at the rate that we've grown. We were in that apartment office only three and a half, four years ago, and now here we're plus 100 people, might double in the next year. I think the hardest thing is the job is changing every month or every day. So when we first started, first customers, I was selling. I was going out and having the conversations with them very quickly. We need to scale that and grow that, and I was no longer selling, and now it was about managing people that are going and having those conversations, now selling it actually and managing people who are selling it. Very different jobs, doing it versus managing it. And the hard things for me were letting go of the past job and getting good at the new job, because it's not so fun. You feel like, "Oh, I'm just starting to get good at this selling thing, and now I got to go and do something I've never done before, and that's uncomfortable." And you're not so good at it initially. And I learned, "How can I get good at communicating why I would do it this way, working through whether their way is actually right, agreeing on some solution, and then them taking it." It's like your baby and you want to do it. Now, as we have very professional managers on the team, it's really about building a culture. We don't really compromise on, "Are we customer obsessed?" I think it's incredibly important that even as we get to a thousand people, that we're still sitting next to customers. We're not going to budge on that. But there's certain things we absolutely need to budge on and change because the company's changing so much. So how do you do that at scale across a lot of people is very different than management, which was the last job. Letting go of the last job, being like, "Okay, this is the new job," and being okay with learning against it and the uncomfort that comes with learning. And I think that's where a lot of founders get tripped up, is they just keep doing their last job even though the company needs them to do their new job. And sometimes it's really hard because the people want you to keep doing your old job. But if I spent my whole day with one-on-ones with every team member, I probably wouldn't talk to customers very much. I probably wouldn't make very many decisions that are important. And so it's difficult to let go of the last job.

我认为最困难的事情，尤其是在我们这样的增长速度下。三年半、四年前我们还在那间公寓办公室里，现在我们已经有100多人了，明年可能还会翻倍。我认为最困难的是工作内容每个月甚至每天都在变化。所以当我们刚开始的时候，面对第一批客户，我在做销售。我很快就出去和他们交流。我们需要扩大规模和发展，于是我不再做销售了，现在的工作变成了管理那些正在与客户交流的人，以及管理那些真正销售产品的人。做和管理是非常不同的工作。对我来说，最困难的是放下过去的工作，并擅长新的工作，因为这并不有趣。你会觉得：“哦，我刚开始擅长销售，现在我必须去做一些我以前从未做过的事情，这让我很不舒服。”而且你一开始并不擅长。我学会了：“我如何才能擅长沟通我为什么会这样做，如何判断他们的方式是否正确，达成某种解决方案，然后让他们去执行。”这就像你的孩子，你希望自己来做。现在，由于我们团队中有很多专业的经理人，工作重心就变成了建立一种文化。我们不会在“我们是否以客户为中心”这个问题上妥协。我认为，即使我们达到一千人的规模，我们仍然与客户紧密合作，这一点至关重要。我们不会在这方面让步。但有些事情我们绝对需要让步和改变，因为公司变化太大了。所以，如何在大规模人群中做到这一点，与我之前的管理工作截然不同。放下过去的工作，接受“这是新的工作”，并乐于在学习中面对不适。我认为很多创始人都在这里栽了跟头，他们只是继续做他们上一份工作，尽管公司需要他们去做新的工作。有时这真的很难，因为人们希望你继续做你的老本行。但如果我把一整天都花在与每个团队成员进行一对一交流上，我可能就没时间与客户交流了。我可能也无法做出很多重要的决定。所以，放下上一份工作是很困难的。

I think it's actually easier to build a hard company than an easy one, if that makes sense. There's this thing in the world that nobody's done yet, and us, a group of kind of ragtag people you put together, we're going to change it. That's an inherently confident, maybe arrogant thing to say. Yet, it's very easy to get people rallied around that, right? So when you say something like, "Our mission is to ensure that every time somebody calls in an emergency, they get the perfect response, they get the best possible help," people get excited about that. Very, very hard, very, very difficult, we can't take that lightly, but people get excited. So you attract better talent. You attract people that are willing to work harder towards that thing. It's much easier to get the right talent necessary for a startup if you do the ambitious thing.

我认为，如果说得通的话，建立一家“困难”的公司实际上比建立一家“容易”的公司更容易。世界上有这样一件事，没有人做过，而我们，一群你召集起来的乌合之众，将要改变它。这本身就是一种自信，甚至可能有些傲慢的说法。然而，围绕这个目标，很容易就能把人们团结起来，对吧？所以当你提出这样的愿景：“我们的使命是确保每次有人拨打紧急电话时，他们都能得到完美的响应，得到最好的帮助。”人们会为此感到兴奋。这非常非常困难，我们不能掉以轻心，但人们确实会因此而兴奋。所以你就能吸引到更优秀的人才。你吸引到那些愿意为此目标更努力工作的人。如果你做的是雄心勃勃的事情，那么为初创公司找到合适的人才就会容易得多。

So people are like, "Why are you building in public safety? That's a unique life choice." I don't know if I ever thought it had to be me. I guess I still think it doesn't necessarily have to be me. I think that one of the most compelling reasons to work on the company is we legitimately believe if we didn't do the work, it wouldn't get done. And I would say most days it feels quite uncomfortable. I did not come out of a dorm room ready to build a company. And so most of the day is doing things that you haven't done before, but you have to do quickly. You have to learn really, really fast. And so a lot of days I think, "Oh my goodness, why me?" But it does seem true that if we just stopped tomorrow, the world would be less safe. That the technology would likely kind of fall back into the status quo and being okay with decay, being okay with antiquation. And the result of that would mean everyday lost life. And I don't feel okay with that. Our work seems to be raising the temperature of the space. And so as we go out and launch new things that the space hasn't seen before, so too are the big companies, which is also great, right? I tell the team a lot too that, "Look, if we build things and then they get mass distributed by somebody else and it saves millions of lives, that's freaking great, too, right?" And our work will be super successful even if somebody else does it on our backs. That's amazing for the world. It just feels like we have to do it, less that it has to be me.

所以人们会说：“你为什么要在公共安全领域创业？这是一个独特的选择。”我不知道我是否曾认为非我不可。我想我仍然认为不一定非我不可。我认为，致力于这家公司最令人信服的原因之一是，我们真诚地相信，如果我们不去做这项工作，它就不会完成。而且，我想说，大多数时候都会感到相当不舒服。我并非从宿舍里出来就准备好创立一家公司的。所以一天中的大部分时间都在做你以前从未做过的事情，但你必须迅速完成。你必须学得非常非常快。所以很多时候我都会想：“天哪，为什么是我？”但事实似乎是，如果我们明天就停止，世界就会变得不那么安全。技术很可能会回到现状，安于陈旧和衰落。而其结果将意味着每天都有生命逝去。对此我无法接受。我们的工作似乎正在提升这个领域的关注度。所以，当我们推出该领域前所未有的新事物时，大公司也在这样做，这也很棒，对吧？我也经常告诉团队：“看，如果我们创造了东西，然后被其他人大规模推广，并挽救了数百万人的生命，那也太棒了，对吧？”即使是别人在我们的基础上做成了这件事，我们的工作也算是取得了巨大的成功。这对世界来说是件了不起的事。只是觉得我们必须去做，而不是非我不可。