硅谷迷思与保险业的发现

So there's a popular belief in Silicon Valley that the best way to find startup ideas is to try to solve your own problems. 硅谷流行着一种观点，认为找到创业想法的最佳方式是尝试解决自身遇到的问题。

But if everyone in the tech industry is following that path, it leads to this saturation of problems for folks in the tech industry. 但如果科技行业的每个人都遵循这条路径，就会导致科技行业内部的问题趋于饱和。

That's what led us to the insurance industry, and we quickly realized there are unsolved problems everywhere. 这正是我们进入保险行业的原因，我们很快意识到这里到处都是尚未解决的问题。

People we reached out to early on in the industry were quite skeptical. 我们早期接触的行业人士都相当 skeptical (怀疑)。

The first thing I heard was, "I just want to tell you, I'm taking this call as a favor, but we don't need your services." 我听到的第一句话是：“我只是想告诉你，我接这个电话是帮个忙，但我们不需要你们的服务。”

"We have solved for this already. We're all set. I'm just trying to do this as a favor." “我们已经解决了这个问题。我们一切就绪。我只是想帮个忙。”

And in retrospect, why would they talk to two random outsiders? 回想起来，他们为什么要和两个素不相识的外来者交谈呢？

People are busy and hear pitches like that all the time. 人们都很忙，而且经常听到这类推销。

We had that quote in our old office on the wall from that formative moment: "We don't need your services." 我们的旧办公室墙上贴着那句具有里程碑意义的话：“我们不需要你们的服务。”

And that company that told us we don't need your services is now one of our largest customers. 而那家告诉我们不需要我们服务的公司，现在是我们最大的客户之一。

Commulate 的使命与成长

Jordan: I'm Jordan. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Commulate. Jordan: 我是 Jordan，Commulate 的联合创始人兼首席执行官。

We're transforming the insurance industry with AI. 我们正在用 AI (Artificial Intelligence: 模拟人类智能的机器系统) 改变保险行业。

Three years ago, it seemed crazy to most folks that we wanted to focus on back-office insurance workflows. 三年前，我们想要专注于保险行业的后台工作流程，这在大多数人看来是件疯狂的事。

When you have two people with no background in doing the thing that they're saying they're going to be able to automate for you, who's going to take those people seriously? 当两个没有任何背景的人说他们能够为你自动化某项工作时，谁会认真对待他们呢？

But since then, we've scaled to over eight figures of ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue: 订阅型业务预测未来年度营收的指标) and we're just getting started. 但自那时以来，我们的 ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue: 订阅型业务预测未来年度营收的指标) 已达到八位数以上，而我们才刚刚开始。

Jordan 的产品管理之路

By the time I was in college, I was starting to try to build software in a software company and spent thousands of hours building one product in particular. 当我还在大学时，我开始尝试在一家软件公司构建软件，并花费数千小时专门构建了一款产品。

In reality, I realized as I was going, I was building a huge dumpster fire. 实际上，我意识到自己在做的是一团糟。

The platform had 500 features, each of them was like 5% built. 那个平台有500个功能，每个功能都只完成了约5%。

Through that, I realized how complex it was to build great software, and I realized I needed to learn how to do that. 通过那次经历，我意识到构建优秀的软件是多么复杂，我意识到我需要学习如何做到这一点。

I wanted to learn how to build great software, and I came across and learned about the role of product management (产品管理: 负责规划、开发、推广和管理产品生命周期的职能). 我想要学习如何构建优秀的软件，于是我接触并了解了产品管理 (产品管理: 负责规划、开发、推广和管理产品生命周期的职能) 的角色。

And I read this book, particularly one called 'Cracking the PM Interview,' that several folks had told me to read. 我读了一本书，尤其是一本叫《破解产品经理面试》的书，很多人都推荐我读。

The author was Jackie, who ran product at Asana. 作者是 Jackie，她在 Asana 负责产品。

About 20 pages into it, I thought, "I need to work for Jackie." 读了大约20页后，我心想：“我必须为 Jackie 工作。”

And that's how I ended up going to Asana with a mission: "I want to learn how to build great products from Jackie." 就这样，我带着“我要向 Jackie 学习如何构建优秀产品”的使命去了 Asana。

I then ended up learning from a lot of other great people there too. 后来我也从那里的许多其他优秀人才那里学到了很多。

I met my co-founder Michael towards the end of college. 我在大学快毕业时遇到了我的联合创始人 Michael。

I was going to work in product at Asana, and Michael reached out because he was interested in understanding what product was like. 我当时正要去 Asana 从事产品工作，Michael 找到我，因为他有兴趣了解产品工作是怎样的。

We met for lunch, and it was one of those truly one-in-a-million conversations where you meet someone and think, "This person is different." 我们共进午餐，那是一次真正百万分之一的对话，你遇到一个人，然后觉得：“这个人与众不同。”

And it sounds pretty crazy, but at that moment, I was actually already thinking, "This might be someone I start a company with." 这听起来可能很疯狂，但那一刻，我实际上已经在想：“这可能是我未来会一起创业的人。”

Unfortunately, I think Michael didn't feel that way about me. 不幸的是，我想 Michael 对我并没有同样的感觉。

He was going to this company that no one knew about called Brex, and he was going to be the 10th hire there. 他要去一家当时无人知晓的公司，叫做 Brex，他将是那里的第十名员工。

Michael 在 Brex 的成长与创业契机

Michael: I'm Michael. I'm the CTO (Chief Technology Officer: 首席技术官，负责公司技术战略和开发) and co-founder of Commulate. Michael: 我是 Michael，Commulate 的CTO (Chief Technology Officer: 首席技术官，负责公司技术战略和开发) 兼联合创始人。

I was an engineer at Brex prior. 我之前是 Brex 的一名工程师。

I joined the company out of college when it was just about 10 people and saw it grow super quickly to over 900 during my time there. 我大学毕业后加入了这家公司，当时只有大约10名员工，在我任职期间，它迅速发展到900多人。

Something the Brex founders were really incredible at, and that I picked up on, is being able to see the business at both a 10,000-foot view and a 10-foot view. Brex 的创始人非常了不起的一点，也是我学到的一点，就是他们能够同时从万英尺高空和十英尺近距离审视业务。

Even from the very beginning, they were thinking about, "How do we scale this to be a $100+ billion company at some point and become the global substrate for financial money movement?" 即使从一开始，他们就在思考：“我们如何才能在某个时候将其扩展成一家市值超过1000亿美元的公司，并成为金融资金流动的全球基础？”

At the same time, they're extremely good at saying, "What growth hacks do we need to do this week to push the company forward?" 同时，他们也非常擅长说：“我们这周需要做哪些增长黑客（growth hacks）来推动公司发展？”

"What next feature do we need to build, and what should be the design and product mocks to do that?" “我们接下来需要开发什么功能，以及应该如何设计和制作产品模型来实现它？”

And those two skill sets are pretty rare to find in the same person. 而这两种技能集很难在同一个人身上找到。

And that's a big part of what I found to be really successful in that early stage: being able to do both. 这就是我在早期阶段发现非常成功的一个重要因素：能够两者兼顾。

It was a pretty incredible first job out of college. 那是我大学毕业后的第一份工作，相当不可思议。

But also, I had always thought about starting a company. 但同时，我也一直有创业的想法。

Jordan and I, as I mentioned, were super good friends, and we had been talking about it more and more over time. Jordan 和我，正如我所说，是非常好的朋友，我们随着时间的推移谈论创业越来越多。

Jordan had just left his job, and it got to a point where we were starting to work on different startup ideas together during nights and weekends. Jordan 刚辞职，我们开始在晚上和周末一起研究不同的创业想法。

All of these factors seemed to come together, indicating, "If there was a moment to do this, now is definitely it." 所有这些因素似乎都汇聚在一起，预示着：“如果有什么时候可以做这件事，那就是现在了。”

So, I left Brex and jumped right into starting a company with Jordan. 所以，我离开了 Brex，直接与 Jordan 一起创业。

深入陌生行业：洞察与挑战

Jordan: When Michael and I decided we were going to do this together, we actually didn't know anything about insurance or accounting. Jordan: 当 Michael 和我决定一起做这件事时，我们实际上对保险或会计一无所知。

From our years at Asana and Brex, we had a few ideas that we were excited about. 在 Asana 和 Brex 的那些年，我们有一些让我们感到兴奋的想法。

But as we went through the early process of validating those — talking to the folks we would try to serve and who would be customers — the problems we thought were worth solving weren't actually that big in practice, and the existing solutions didn't seem as bad as we thought they were. 但当我们经历早期验证这些想法的过程时——与我们试图服务和可能成为客户的人交谈——我们认为值得解决的问题在实践中并没有那么大，而现有的解决方案也没有我们想象的那么糟糕。

And I think Michael and I really got into the idea of wanting to build something that didn't already exist. Michael 和我真的被“想要构建一些尚未存在的东西”这个想法所吸引。

We had started learning about insurance, and we were immediately stunned by the amount of paper, spreadsheets, and time spent copying information from the analog world to the digital world of very legacy software and back. 我们开始学习保险知识，立即被大量的纸质文件、电子表格以及在模拟世界和非常老旧的数字软件之间来回复制信息所花费的时间震惊了。

We were especially fascinated by the accounting workflows. 我们尤其对会计工作流程着迷。

We saw that there were many intermediaries in the value chain, which bubbled up into this observation. 我们看到价值链中存在许多中间环节，这最终形成了这样一个观察。

This whole industry has an additional, extra type of accounting that other industries don't have to deal with, and there are no good solutions that automate that. 整个行业有一种额外的、特殊的会计类型，是其他行业不必处理的，而且目前还没有好的自动化解决方案。

Maybe we can develop that solution, and that ultimately led to the foundation for Commulate. 也许我们可以开发出这种解决方案，这最终为 Commulate 奠定了基础。

突破早期怀疑与建立信任

Jordan: People we reached out to early on in the industry were quite skeptical. Jordan: 我们早期接触的行业人士都相当怀疑。

It was hard initially to talk to people in this industry, and you relied on the few second or third-degree connections you had to get a conversation. 起初很难与这个行业的人交谈，你只能依靠少数二度或三度人脉才能获得对话机会。

And then the first thing I heard was, "I just want to tell you, I'm taking this call as a favor, but we don't need your services. We have solved for this already." 然后我听到的第一句话是：“我只是想告诉你，我接这个电话是帮个忙，但我们不需要你们的服务。我们已经解决了这个问题。”

"We're all set. I'm just trying to do this as a favor." “我们一切就绪。我只是想帮个忙。”

And at the time, that was a massive blow to us. 当时，这对我们来说是一个巨大的打击。

We thought, "Oh wow, this is one of the largest companies in the space. If they don't need this, why would anyone else need it?" 我们心想：“哦，天哪，这是这个领域最大的公司之一。如果他们不需要，那还有谁会需要呢？”

But then, as we started diving into it, talking to more people, we kind of got the sense that he might just not be exposed to this specific problem within his company. 但后来，当我们开始深入研究，与更多人交谈时，我们隐约觉得他可能只是在他的公司内部没有接触到这个具体问题。

And we got more and more evidence that many others actually did need our services. 我们获得了越来越多的证据，表明许多其他公司确实需要我们的服务。

And what we spent a ton of time on in the early days was just on Zoom calls with our customers, really, really deeply understanding what they were doing. 在早期，我们花费大量时间与客户进行 Zoom 通话，非常非常深入地了解他们在做什么。

Michael: And part of what helped us is we weren't salespeople. Michael: 帮助我们的部分原因是，我们不是销售人员。

We were product people trying to solve a problem and build a solution for these folks. 我们是产品人员，努力为这些人解决问题并构建解决方案。

So our questions were usually very deep about their workflows, about edge cases, about why something was done a certain way in the first place. 所以我们的问题通常非常深入，关于他们的工作流程、边缘案例，以及为什么某件事一开始会以某种方式完成。

I remember one of our early customers wrote me a note when they retired – because I was visiting them at retirement – and they had been instrumental in taking a bet on us, forming one of those special relationships. 我记得我们的一位早期客户在他们退休时给我写了一张便条——因为我当时去拜访他们退休——他们对我们下了赌注，发挥了关键作用，形成了那种特殊的关系。

They had said, "After 50 years of working at this company, working with you was the first time someone who's brought in a product has ever felt like they understood us." 他们说：“在这家公司工作了50年，与你们合作是我第一次觉得有产品人员真正理解我们。”

And to me, that indicates the strength of coming in as a product person versus a sales-oriented mind: being able to build trust and the depth of knowledge and domain expertise that makes a customer believe you can actually solve their problem, rather than just making promises. 对我来说，这表明作为产品人员而不是销售导向者进入的优势：能够建立信任，并积累深厚的知识和领域专业知识，让客户相信你确实能解决他们的问题，而不是仅仅做出承诺。

Luckily for us, there were just enough special people at a few companies who saw some potential, spent the time, and were willing to help us build the initial kernel. 对我们来说幸运的是，有几家公司里正好有一些特别的人，他们看到了潜力，投入了时间，并愿意帮助我们构建最初的核心。

It's somewhat luck, finding the right person at the right time, having it resonate on that day, and then that conversation going well. 这有点像运气，在正确的时间找到正确的人，那天产生了共鸣，然后对话进展顺利。

A lot happens through that. 很多事情都是通过这种方式发生的。

Luckily, you don't need that many of those experiences and relationships at this point if you can really develop some real core relationships. 幸运的是，如果你能真正建立一些核心关系，那么在这一点上你并不需要那么多这样的经验和关系。

Jordan: And that company that told us we don't need your services is now one of our largest customers. Jordan: 而那家告诉我们不需要我们服务的公司，现在是我们最大的客户之一。

Even though at the moment it feels like a setback, and you're not sure of the viability of what you're doing or whether it's even worth pursuing anymore, if you just keep on persisting and actually getting more information, building up that bottom-up confidence in what you're working on, it actually led us to persist past that point, and they ended up needing the services. 即使当下感觉像是一个挫折，你不确定你所做的事情的可行性，甚至不确定是否值得继续追求，但如果你只是坚持不懈，并实际获取更多信息，建立起对你所从事工作的自下而上的信心，这实际上会促使我们坚持下去，最终他们也确实需要这些服务。

AI 驱动的范式转变与简化

Many people are thinking about AI in terms of how you can use it to improve existing workflows. 许多人都在思考如何利用 AI 来改进现有工作流程。

This is especially true in traditional industries, where people ask how you can now automate something you couldn't previously automate with the prior generation of tools, or how to augment humans by writing an email or navigating a website. 这在传统行业中尤为明显，人们会问，你现在如何自动化以前无法用上一代工具实现自动化的一些事情，或者如何通过编写电子邮件或导航网站来增强人类的能力。

But I feel that's not actually the most interesting question. 但我认为这并不是最有趣的问题。

I think the real question is about what fundamental constraints created these workflows in the first place, and do those constraints actually still exist? 我认为真正的问题是，最初是什么基本限制创造了这些工作流程，以及这些限制是否真的仍然存在？

If you think about any prior platform shift, like web to mobile in the 2010s, the most successful products were actually rethinking what should be on a mobile app (for example, Instagram), as opposed to many unsuccessful ones that just took a normal website and put it into a mobile app, which wasn't that compelling. 如果你想想之前任何一次平台转变，比如2010年代从网页到移动端的转变，最成功的产品实际上是在重新思考移动应用上应该有什么（例如 Instagram），而不是许多不成功的产品只是将一个普通的网站放到移动应用中，这并没有那么引人注目。

It's because there are actually new things that are possible, right? 因为实际上有新的可能性，对吧？

You can drag, you can multitask, etc. 你可以拖拽，你可以多任务操作等等。

Now with the AI platform shift, it's a similar situation. 现在随着 AI 平台转变，情况也类似。

In this context, it's all based on the foundation of truly understanding the fundamental problems that customers are facing. 在这种背景下，这一切都建立在真正理解客户面临的根本问题这一基础之上。

When customers first come to us, we'll map out their entire process. 当客户第一次来找我们时，我们会绘制出他们整个流程图。

And it often looks like this crazy flowchart with 30 interconnected boxes. 它通常看起来像一个由30个相互连接的方框组成的疯狂流程图。

A big part of what we do is look at that and say, "You can actually simplify this to three or four steps, especially with what software and AI can do. And this is how our product can actually do that." 我们工作的一个重要部分就是审视它，然后说：“实际上，你可以将其简化为三到四个步骤，特别是借助软件和 AI 的能力。而我们的产品就能实现这一点。”

And that step of actual simplification, rather than just trying to fit the crazy complexity into a product, is what actually enables us to rethink and reimagine what's possible. 正是这种实际的简化步骤，而不是仅仅试图将疯狂的复杂性塞进一个产品中，才真正使我们能够重新思考和重新构想可能性。

That's the difference between optimizing what exists today versus reimagining an entire function from scratch. 这就是优化现有事物与从头开始重新构想整个功能之间的区别。

The latter is a completely different opportunity, one that I think the winners of that transition will have in common. 后者是一个完全不同的机会，我认为那些成功实现这一转变的公司将拥有共同的特点。

在无人问津之处发现巨大商机

Michael: A few years ago, when we started the company, building software for vertical industries (垂直行业: 指专门服务于特定行业需求的市场或领域，如保险、医疗等) like automating work in them was not that popular. Michael: 几年前，当我们开始创业时，为垂直行业 (垂直行业: 指专门服务于特定行业需求的市场或领域，如保险、医疗等) 构建软件，比如自动化其中的工作，并不那么流行。

It was a pretty unconventional thing to go into an industry like insurance as outsiders and try to understand and automate a lot of the work happening there. 作为外来者进入像保险这样的行业，并试图理解和自动化其中大量工作，这是一种相当非传统的做法。

But now it's super hot. 但现在它变得非常热门。

For example, about 70% of the most recent YC batch (Y Combinator批次: 知名创业孵化器Y Combinator同期孵化的创业公司批次) is now doing AI agents for X industry. 例如，最近一批 YC batch (Y Combinator批次: 知名创业孵化器Y Combinator同期孵化的创业公司批次) 中约有70%的公司正在为 X 行业开发 AI 代理。

I think a big part of that is because where AI is having the most impact right now are these places that have been pretty untouched by software historically. 我认为这很大程度上是因为目前 AI 产生最大影响的地方，正是那些历史上几乎未受软件触及的领域。

I think the biggest advice I have is: look where others don't want to look. 我认为我最大的建议是：去别人不想去的地方寻找。

There are so many reasons people will give you not to explore a space. 人们会给你很多理由，让你不要探索某个领域。

And frankly, if we had tried to raise our seed round (种子轮融资: 创业公司在早期阶段获得的首次机构融资) without doing any discovery or validation before, we would have never done this because everyone told us it was a bad idea. 坦白说，如果我们没有事先进行任何探索或验证就尝试进行种子轮融资 (种子轮融资: 创业公司在早期阶段获得的首次机构融资)，我们永远不会做这件事，因为所有人都告诉我们这是个坏主意。

But going out into the field and doing what folks have told you is not a good place to play in... 但走到现场，去做那些人们告诉你不是好地方的事情...

Sometimes that's where the opportunity is. ...有时机会就在那里。

And I really think it's important to go on a personal mission to find the truth, because you never really know someone's true understanding or perspective on a problem until you dive in and try to figure it out yourself. 我真的认为，进行一次个人任务去寻找真相很重要，因为在你亲身投入并尝试弄清楚之前，你永远不会真正了解别人对一个问题的真实理解或看法。

So what has me really excited about the future is that there are still hundreds of billions of dollars spent on manual work every year in this space, and AI has opened that up into a massive opportunity, and we're right at the forefront of being able to take advantage of that. 所以，让我对未来感到非常兴奋的是，在这个领域每年仍有数千亿美元花费在人工工作上，而 AI 已经将这转化为一个巨大的机会，我们正处于利用这一机会的最前沿。

Jordan: And to me, that means this is very obviously one of the largest opportunities when you think about the next 10 and 20 years in software. Jordan: 对我来说，这意味着当你思考未来10到20年的软件发展时，这显然是最大的机会之一。

That's super exciting for us. 这对我们来说非常令人兴奋。