创业忠告：极度坚定的信念

My first piece of advice to most people would be: don't start a company. 我给大多数人的第一个建议是：不要创业。

The reason I say that, a lot of people told me that starting a company is really hard. 我之所以这样说，是因为很多人告诉我创业真的很难。

Everyone told me this. I did not believe them. 每个人都这么说。我当时不相信他们。

Everyone says this to every potential founder. I have now said this to many and I could see it in their eyes that they do not believe me, that they think, "Oh, how hard could it be?" 每个人都会对潜在的创始人这么说。我现在也对很多人这么说，我能从他们的眼神中看出他们不相信我，他们会想：“哦，能有多难呢？”

I do believe it genuinely is very, very hard. 我真的相信这非常、非常困难。

I think the most important advice I would give any founder is the level of conviction they should have when deciding this is the problem they're going to work on should be extremely high. 我认为我能给任何创始人最重要的建议是，他们在决定要解决这个问题时，所应持有的信念程度应该极高。

It should be a higher degree of conviction than almost anything else they have ever done in their life to that date. 这种信念应该比他们迄今为止人生中做过的几乎任何事情都要强烈。

I've had kidney stones in my life, which are very painful and very hard. A startup is a whole new type of hard. 我人生中经历过肾结石，那非常痛苦和艰难。创业则是一种全新的、不同类型的艰难。

It's hard over a very long area under the curve. 它是一种在非常漫长的时间跨度内持续的艰难。

If you just want to make money, there are a lot better ways to make money. 如果你只是想赚钱，有很多更好的方法。

You should only start a company when you have such a high degree of conviction that this is the most important problem you should solve in the world, that you are willing to go for decades without getting paid, without being recognized, and potentially being rejected by everyone all around you to work on this problem and nothing but this problem for decades at a time. 你只有在对“这是世界上你最应该解决的问题”抱有极高信念时，才应该创业，这种信念让你愿意为这个问题，且只为这个问题，投入数十年的时间，期间不求回报，不求认可，甚至可能被周围所有人拒绝。

AAN的使命与产品：降低消费者资金成本

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

We announced our Series E fundraising (E轮融资: 指公司在D轮融资之后进行的一轮股权融资), where we raised a little bit over $110 million at a $2.2 billion valuation (估值: 衡量公司市场价值的指标). 我们宣布了我们的E轮融资，筹集了超过1.1亿美元，公司估值达到22亿美元。

This is doubling our valuation from last year. 这使我们的估值比去年翻了一番。

AAN's mission is to reduce the cost of capital (资金成本: 企业或个人筹集和使用资金所需的费用) for consumers. AAN的使命是降低消费者的资金成本。

Today, there's $1 trillion of credit card debt (信用卡债务: 使用信用卡消费但尚未偿还的金额) in the United States. 如今，美国有1万亿美元的信用卡债务。

Consumers today are paying almost $200 billion a year on just interest payments (利息支付: 借款人需额外支付给出借人的费用). Not the principal, just the interest payments on it. 消费者每年仅利息支付就高达近2000亿美元。这不是本金，仅仅是利息。

If we can reduce that by 50%, then we will have saved US consumers $100 billion every single year. 如果我们能将其减少50%，那么我们每年将为美国消费者节省1000亿美元。

Our thesis is very simple. 我们的论点非常简单。

We think that unsecured debt (无抵押债务: 无需资产担保的债务，如信用卡债) in the United States is very expensive but transactionally very efficient to get access to. 我们认为，美国的无抵押债务非常昂贵，但在交易上获取起来非常高效。

On the other hand, we think that secured debt (有抵押债务: 有资产担保的债务，如房贷), debt backed by assets you already own, is much cheaper for consumers but is transactionally quite inefficient. 另一方面，我们认为有抵押债务，即以你已拥有的资产作为担保的债务，对消费者来说便宜得多，但在交易上却相当低效。

Take for example home equity (房屋净值: 房屋市场价值减去未偿还抵押贷款后的价值). It's the largest asset class that US consumers own today. 以房屋净值为例，它是当今美国消费者拥有的最大资产类别。

However, it takes weeks to get access to your home equity. And it costs thousands of dollars in origination fees (贷款发放费: 贷款机构在发放贷款时收取的费用), both for you and for the lender. 然而，获取房屋净值需要数周时间，并且会产生数千美元的贷款发放费，这笔费用对借款人和贷款机构都是如此。

AAN set out to solve this problem. We built our flagship product, the AAN home equity-backed credit card. AAN着手解决这个问题。我们打造了我们的旗舰产品——AAN房屋净值担保信用卡。

A Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC: 房屋净值信用额度，一种以房屋净值为抵押的循环信贷) in the back and a credit card in the front, with a goal that in as fast as 15 minutes, we want to reduce your interest rate by 50%. 它后端是房屋净值信用额度，前端是信用卡，目标是在短短15分钟内，将你的利率降低50%。

AAN isn't stopping there. We're excited to continuously invest in building new and better products that are the lowest cost, most convenient, and most transparent access to capital for homeowners across America. AAN不止于此。我们很高兴能持续投资，开发出更低成本、更便捷、更透明的资金获取产品，服务全美房主。

创业缘起：发现万亿级痛点

About 7 years ago, I retired from Facebook and stepped down. I was taking some time to figure out what I wanted to do next. 大约七年前，我从Facebook退休并辞职。我花了一些时间来思考接下来想做什么。

Retirement was very challenging for me. I've been an engineer and a product manager my whole life. 退休对我来说非常有挑战性。我一生都是工程师和产品经理。

I felt that I wasn't creating much value in society during my retirement. It didn't last very long. 我感觉在退休期间我没有为社会创造太多价值。这并没有持续很长时间。

My wife would claim that I was only retired for 3 months. I would claim I was retired for 6 months. The truth is somewhere in between. 我妻子会说我只退休了3个月。我会说我退休了6个月。所以真相介于两者之间。

But I became excited about this core thesis: I think most people in the world, when they're looking to solve problems, will end up solving problems that are about helping society be healthier or be wealthier. 但我对这个核心论点感到兴奋：我认为世界上大多数人在寻求解决问题时，最终都会解决那些旨在帮助社会更健康或更富裕的问题。

If you want to help society be wealthier, you either want to help people make more money or you want to help people save money. 如果你想帮助社会更富裕，你要么想帮助人们赚更多的钱，要么想帮助人们省钱。

One of the interesting graphs I stumbled upon at this time was actually a publication from the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: 美国消费者金融保护局，负责保护消费者在金融产品和服务方面的权益), which published this graph that to this day is our Northstar graph. 当时我偶然发现了一个有趣的图表，它实际上是美国消费者金融保护局（CFPB）发布的一份报告中的图表，直到今天它仍是我们的“北极星”图表。

It's a graph that shows that the total revolving balance (循环余额: 信用卡账户中未偿还且可以继续循环使用的信用额度) — the total balance on credit cards — since the inception of credit cards, has grown up to a trillion dollars over the last three-quarters of a century. 这张图表显示，自信用卡诞生以来，信用卡的总循环余额——即信用卡上的总欠款——在过去四分之三个世纪里已增长到1万亿美元。

This graph just goes up and to the right, and it doesn't seem like it's decreasing anytime soon. 这张图表一直向上向右延伸，看起来近期内不会下降。

But there's another very fascinating line that was overlaid on this graph. 但这张图表上还叠加了另一条非常引人入胜的线。

This line shows you the interest rate on this credit card revolving debt over the same period. 这条线显示了同期信用卡循环债务的利率。

So over half a century, the interest rate on credit cards has actually hovered between 20% to 25% for this entire period. 因此，在半个多世纪里，信用卡的利率实际上一直徘徊在20%到25%之间。

If you look back in history over this time, we've invented the internet. We've invented all of the modern tech companies we see in Silicon Valley, from Facebook, Google, Nvidia, Amazon. 回顾这段历史，我们发明了互联网。我们发明了硅谷所有现代科技公司，从Facebook、谷歌、英伟达到亚马逊。

But we haven't been able to reduce the cost of interest on a trillion dollars of credit card debt in this period. 但在这段时间里，我们却未能降低万亿美元信用卡债务的利息成本。

At this point, we're inventing entirely new currencies from Bitcoin to Ethereum. But the cost of capital for consumers has really not changed. 此时，我们正在发明全新的货币，从比特币到以太坊。但消费者的资金成本却从未真正改变。

In the pursuit of helping society be wealthier by helping consumers in America save money, we thought that was ridiculous. 为了通过帮助美国消费者省钱来使社会更富裕，我们认为这是荒谬的。

We thought we could build better products for consumers to help them save money. 我们认为我们可以为消费者打造更好的产品来帮助他们省钱。

That's how we started AAN, which is taking the largest asset class that US consumers own — home equity — which is also the most inconvenient to access. 这就是我们创办AAN的方式，我们利用了美国消费者拥有的最大资产类别——房屋净值，它也是最不方便获取的。

It costs thousands of dollars to access home equity, and today it takes about 3 to 4 weeks to get access to your home equity. 获取房屋净值需要花费数千美元，而且目前需要大约3到4周才能获取你的房屋净值。

We decided to make that much more efficient by machining this process for maximum efficiency. 我们决定通过对这个过程进行“机械加工”以实现最大效率，使其变得更加高效。

We were able to bring this down to be almost as fast as 15 minutes, with transactional costs that are orders of magnitude lower than anything else in the market, and put it in a form factor that consumers are comfortable and already familiar with, which is a credit card. 我们能够将这个时间缩短到最快15分钟，交易成本比市场上任何其他产品都要低几个数量级，并将其以消费者感到舒适且已经熟悉的信用卡形式呈现。

And we launched our flagship product, the AAN home equity card. 于是我们推出了我们的旗舰产品——AAN房屋净值卡。

构建精英技术团队的三大要素

Through my time at Microsoft and Facebook, probably the single most important thing I learned is the value of an extremely elite technical team. 在微软和Facebook工作期间，我学到的最重要的一点可能就是拥有一支极其精锐的技术团队的价值。

The differential between the 99th percentile or the 99.9th percentile engineer and the 95th percentile engineer is vast; it's not small, it's a huge amount. 99%或99.9%的顶尖工程师与95%的工程师之间的差距是巨大的；这并非微不足道，而是非常庞大的差异。

The amount of resources you should spend on the acquisition and retention of the absolute best technical talent far surpasses any other investment you should make and can make. 你在获取和留住最顶尖技术人才上应该投入的资源，远远超过你所有其他应该和可以进行的投资。

When we look for the best technical talent, our team's single highest priority is the collection and retention of the absolute best technical talent in the world. 当我们寻找最优秀的技术人才时，我们团队的首要任务是汇聚并留住世界上最顶尖的技术人才。

There are three main things we look for when we look for great technical talent. 我们在寻找优秀的技术人才时，主要关注三件事。

The first is raw intelligence. We are unapologetic about looking for the absolute smartest people we can find in the world. 首先是纯粹的智力。我们毫不掩饰地寻找世界上我们能找到的最聪明的人。

We will ask for SAT scores and other forms of standardized tests. 我们会要求提供SAT成绩和其他形式的标准化考试成绩。

As controversial as that may be sometimes, I will personally review transcripts and look at exactly what grades people got on what classes. 尽管这有时可能引起争议，但我会亲自审查成绩单，仔细查看人们在哪些课程中取得了怎样的成绩。

For engineers specifically, we look for people who've taken courses in operating systems, distributed systems, compilers, game engines — the hardest technical courses one can take. 特别是对于工程师，我们寻找那些上过操作系统、分布式系统、编译器、游戏引擎等课程的人——这些都是一个人能上的最难的技术课程。

And how did they do on them? And importantly, did they attempt the really, really hardest classes that can be taken? 他们表现如何？更重要的是，他们是否尝试过那些真正、真正最难的课程？

Intelligence is massively underrated and how important it actually is in helping build products and companies. 智力被严重低估了，而它在帮助构建产品和公司方面实际上非常重要。

So that is our number one and most important thing we look at in technical talent. 因此，这是我们在技术人才方面首要且最重要的一点。

The second is work ethic. You can have all the intelligence in the world, but if you don't want to apply it, if you do not have the motivation and the endurance to apply that intelligence, you're not going to create much output or much value to society. 第二是职业道德。你可以拥有世界上所有的智慧，但如果你不想运用它，如果你没有运用这种智慧的动力和毅力，你就不会为社会创造太多产出或价值。

So we look for people who have the endurance, the ability to work hard consistently over time. 因此，我们寻找那些具有毅力、能够长期坚持不懈努力工作的人。

At AAN, every Sunday at 6 PM, our entire leadership team meets to identify, finalize, and lock in our road map for the next 7 days. 在AAN，每周日下午6点，我们整个领导团队都会开会，确定、敲定并锁定我们未来7天的路线图。

This allows us to operate with high precision and high velocity. 这使我们能够以高精度和高速度运作。

And it gives us a very important thing, which is we should not be wrong in our road map for more than 7 days because we revisit our road map every 7 days to make sure we're working on the right set of things and the right priority order with the right set of people. 它给我们带来了一个非常重要的好处，那就是我们的路线图不应该错误超过7天，因为我们每7天就会重新审视我们的路线图，以确保我们正在与合适的人一起处理正确的事情，并以正确的优先级顺序进行。

The third thing that's really important in elite talent is an alignment of the mission of the enterprise — in our case, the mission of reducing the cost of capital for consumers — with the ambition level of that person. 精英人才中真正重要的第三点是企业使命——在我们这里是降低消费者资金成本的使命——与个人抱负水平的契合。

Trying to reduce the cost of capital for all of America is an extremely ambitious undertaking. 试图降低全美国消费者的资金成本是一项极其宏伟的事业。

So the person that we need to bring in needs to be super smart, super hardworking, and has to have an alignment with this mission and an alignment with the ambition level of this mission so they can sustainably work on this for a very long time and push the boundaries of how we would achieve this mission day in and day out. 因此，我们需要引进的人必须非常聪明、非常勤奋，并且必须与这项使命以及这项使命的抱负水平保持一致，这样他们才能长期持续地为此努力，并日复一日地推动我们实现这项使命的界限。

If AAN is to be successful, we will drive the single biggest change in the cost of capital in American history. 如果AAN要取得成功，我们将推动美国历史上资金成本的最大变革。

We need to find the absolute best talent in the world so we can do that. If we can't find the absolute best technical talent, we will not be successful. 我们需要找到世界上最顶尖的人才才能做到这一点。如果我们找不到最顶尖的技术人才，我们就不会成功。

That is why we spend so much of our time and so much of our energy on this specific problem. It's probably the most important thing I ever learned at Microsoft and at Facebook. 这就是为什么我们在这个特定问题上投入如此多的时间和精力。这可能是我在微软和Facebook学到的最重要的事情。

创始人对产品与行业的深度理解

AAN's flagship product, the first product we wanted to build, was a home equity-backed credit card. AAN的旗舰产品，我们最初想要打造的产品，就是一张房屋净值担保信用卡。

It was very important for us to understand the legal and regulatory landscape for this product because this is a very highly regulated industry. 对我们来说，理解这款产品的法律和监管环境至关重要，因为这是一个受到高度管制的行业。

It is both a mortgage product and a credit card product. 它既是抵押贷款产品，也是信用卡产品。

It's very important for me as the founder to have a deep understanding of the regulatory landscape for this product to: a) understand if we can build it, and b) to make sure we build it in a safe and compliant way. 作为创始人，对我来说，深入了解这款产品的监管环境非常重要，以便：a) 了解我们是否能构建它，以及 b) 确保我们以安全合规的方式构建它。

That's why I went through and personally read a lot of the regulations in this space, whether it be the Dodd-Frank Act (多德-弗兰克法案: 美国在2008年金融危机后通过的金融改革法案), the CARD Act (信用卡问责、责任和披露法案: 旨在保护消费者免受不公平信用卡操作影响的美国联邦法律), TILA (Truth in Lending Act: 贷款真实法案，要求贷款机构披露贷款条款以保护消费者的美国联邦法律) and others. 这就是为什么我亲自阅读了这一领域的许多法规，无论是《多德-弗兰克法案》、《信用卡问责、责任和披露法案》还是《贷款真实法案》等。

I think it is very important for founders and CEOs to be very deeply involved in the details of the products that are being built by the company. 我认为，创始人兼首席执行官们深入参与公司所开发产品的细节非常重要。

I think in the case of founding a new company or building a new product, even at a big company, often the core value is the invention of something new, something that hasn't existed before or hasn't been built yet. 我认为，无论是创立一家新公司还是开发一款新产品，即使是在大公司，核心价值往往在于发明一些新东西，一些以前不存在或尚未被打造出来的东西。

In order to build something new, you must first understand the history of what has been tried before so that you can efficiently build something new. 为了创造新事物，你必须首先了解前人尝试过的历史，这样才能高效地构建新事物。

Most new ideas are terrible, most new ideas are bad; there are very, very few new ideas that are actually better than all the old ideas. 大多数新想法都很糟糕，大多数新想法都不好；真正比所有旧想法都好的新想法非常非常少。

So in order to assess that, in order to deeply understand whether or not your idea is better, it is often very useful to understand what were the ideas, at least the big ones, that have been explored and built before. 因此，为了评估这一点，为了深入理解你的想法是否更优，了解前人探索和构建过的想法，至少是那些重要的想法，通常是非常有用的。

Why is your new idea better than what has already been built before? 为什么你的新想法比以前已经构建的更好？

In order to do that, you must often invest the time to understand and learn very deeply about this industry and this domain and all the smart people that have come before you so that you can come up with good new ideas and assess that they are indeed better than what has been built before. 为了做到这一点，你通常必须投入时间，深入了解这个行业、这个领域以及所有在你之前出现的聪明人，这样你才能提出好的新想法，并评估它们确实比以前构建的更好。

早期产品决策与用户信任的建立

In the first two or three years of building AAN, we made a series of product decisions, people decisions, and process decisions. 在AAN成立的头两三年里，我们做了一系列产品决策、人员决策和流程决策。

I think regarding the product, we would have been even more ruthless in prioritizing the feature set that we were building for in the first version. 我认为在产品方面，我们本可以在第一版中对要构建的功能集进行更无情的优先排序。

This is generally true for most PMs (Product Managers: 产品经理，负责产品规划和生命周期管理) when they launch a new product. 这对于大多数产品经理在推出新产品时普遍适用。

If you were to look back and ask any product manager what products they've launched before and what they would do differently, almost all of them would tell you, "I would have cut five out of these ten features and shipped a smaller, narrower version of this product to a fewer set of people, and really deeply gone into a more focused product feature set." 如果你回顾并问任何产品经理他们以前推出过什么产品，以及他们会如何做得不同，几乎所有人都会告诉你：“我会砍掉这十个功能中的五个，向更少的人群推出一个更小、更精简的产品版本，并真正深入研究一个更集中的产品功能集。”

I think that also applies to AAN and the product that we built. I would have made it narrower and simpler in the first version. 我认为这同样适用于AAN以及我们构建的产品。我本会在第一版中将其做得更精简、更简单。

The other big thing is, in the early days, there were these really funny stories of consumers going through our origination process but not sure that this was real. 另一件大事是，在早期，有一些非常有趣的故事，关于消费者通过我们的发起流程，但却不确定这是否真实。

We would get tickets and calls asking, "We don't know if you guys are a scam or not." 我们会收到工单和电话，询问：“我们不知道你们是不是骗局。”

We would have to respond, including sometimes myself, saying, "No, we're very real. We're a real company and we're here to help you get access to your home equity, and we have a real product that you can use." 我们不得不回应，有时包括我自己，说：“不，我们是真的。我们是一家真正的公司，我们在这里帮助你获取房屋净值，我们有一个你可以使用的真实产品。”

Sometimes it was the ability to talk to somebody at the company and hear their voice that gave them the confidence to continue and go through our application process. 有时，正是能够与公司里的人交谈并听到他们的声音，才给了他们继续并完成我们申请流程的信心。

I do think one of the interesting things that happened with AAN is that we were able to find people who were on the border of potentially considering a home equity line of credit. 我确实认为AAN发生的一件有趣的事情是，我们能够找到那些可能正在考虑房屋净值信用额度边缘的人。

Many folks were sometimes in the process of applying for a home equity line of credit to other lenders, and then they would see an ad from us and go, "I wonder if this is true. Can I get a home equity line of credit in as fast as 15 minutes?" 许多人有时正在向其他贷款机构申请房屋净值信用额度，然后他们会看到我们的广告，然后想：“我不知道这是否是真的。我能这么快在15分钟内获得房屋净值信用额度吗？”

They would almost test us out like an experiment to see if this is real. 他们几乎会像做实验一样来测试我们，看看这是否真实。

And when they went through the process, they would be amazed and shocked. Then they would actually book an account with us instead of whoever they had started off a home equity line of credit application with before us. 当他们走完流程后，他们会感到惊讶和震惊。然后他们就会真的在我们这里开户，而不是选择之前开始申请房屋净值信用额度的其他机构。

So that was an interesting lesson learned. Many people in the beginning didn't believe that this was possible to do. 所以那是一个有趣的经验教训。很多人一开始不相信这是可能做到的。

理性领导力：可预测与可复制的决策

My ideal form of leadership is one that is maximally rational. 我理想的领导形式是最大程度的理性。

I observed and learned a lot of that from Mark at Facebook. 我从Facebook的马克那里观察并学到了很多。

The reason this is important is because being extremely rational is a very predictive behavior, and being predictable as a leader is very important because people can then replicate or predict what you would do even when you're not there. 这之所以重要，是因为极度理性是一种非常可预测的行为，而作为领导者可预测性非常重要，因为即使你不在场，人们也能复制或预测你的行为。

That is important for people to be able to reproduce your decision-making system even when you're not present. 这对于人们在你不在场时也能复制你的决策系统非常重要。

My goal as a leader is to make decisions that are so rational that if everyone else also had the same information that I had, they too would all make the same decision. 我作为领导者的目标是做出如此理性的决策，以至于如果其他人也拥有我所掌握的相同信息，他们也会做出完全相同的决策。

The two incremental things that I provide as a leader that an individual contributor (个人贡献者: 在团队中主要负责具体执行而非管理职责的员工) in the company doesn't necessarily have is that I have significantly more context and a lot more information sometimes than others. 我作为领导者提供的两个增量价值是，公司中的个人贡献者不一定拥有：第一，我有时比其他人拥有更多的背景信息和大量信息。

And my job is to actually make sure as many people have that context as possible. Second, I have the privilege of being able to optimize for a much longer time horizon than anyone else in the company. 我的工作是确保尽可能多的人拥有这些背景信息。第二，我拥有优先考虑比公司其他任何人更长远时间范围的特权。

So these two things are the incremental value propositions that I bring to a decision that is not always possible for every other individual contributor to always bring. 因此，这两点是我为决策带来的增量价值主张，而其他每个个人贡献者并不总是能够带来这些。

But if they were to actually have those two things in their mind, they should be able to compute to the same conclusion that I come to. That is my goal as a leader. 但如果他们心中确实有这两点，他们应该能够得出与我相同的结论。这就是我作为领导者的目标。

If I were to just make decisions because I emotionally felt like this was a good decision or not, the problem with that, even if I'm occasionally right, is they're very difficult to scale. 如果我只是凭情感觉得某个决定好不好就做出决定，那么问题在于，即使我偶尔是对的，这种决策也很难规模化。

Because if I can tell somebody that decision that I felt we should do X, and because of my authority, some people will do X. 因为如果我告诉某人我觉得我们应该做X这个决定，并且因为我的权威，一些人会照做X。

But when that person needs to explain it to two more people, it is very difficult for that person to explain it to two more people other than just saying, "Well, Saddy feels that way." 但当那个人需要向另外两个人解释时，除了说“Saddy就是这么觉得的”之外，他很难向另外两个人解释清楚。

Instead of explaining, "Here's the logic of why we made this decision," and that logic is a very scalable form of decision-making that you can then actually send to a lot more people to execute effectively. 相反，如果能解释“我们做出这个决定的逻辑是这样的”，那么这种逻辑是一种非常可扩展的决策形式，你可以将它传递给更多人，从而有效地执行。

This is really important because a lot of what an early-stage startup or frankly any company does is try to perfect its execution. 这非常重要，因为无论是早期创业公司还是任何公司，很多时候都在努力完善其执行力。

The only way to perfect execution is to have extreme clarity, and to have extreme clarity in what we are trying to do, you must often have extreme clarity on why we are doing it in the first place. 完善执行的唯一方法是拥有极高的清晰度，而要对我们正在做的事情拥有极高的清晰度，你首先必须对我们为什么要做这件事拥有极高的清晰度。

And I think that clarity must stem all the way from the CEO and the founder to the individual contributor who's working on the smallest and the minutest of diffs that need to go out the door. 我认为这种清晰度必须从首席执行官和创始人一直延伸到负责处理最微小、最细致的差异并需要交付的个人贡献者。

企业可持续发展的核心：使命与盈利的统一

I think it stems from a philosophy of trying to be maximally rational. 我认为这源于一种追求最大理性化的哲学。

The reason for this is quite simple. If we were to achieve our mission of reducing the cost of capital for as many consumers as possible, the first most imperative item we must achieve is we must first not die. 原因很简单。如果我们要实现为尽可能多的消费者降低资金成本的使命，我们必须首先实现的最重要一点是：我们绝不能倒闭。

If we are dead, then we aren't helping too many people reduce that cost of capital. 如果我们倒闭了，那我们就无法帮助太多人降低资金成本。

In order to not die, we must make sure we generate profit and are to a certain extent a good business. 为了不倒闭，我们必须确保我们能产生利润，并在一定程度上成为一家优秀的企业。

Then we derive, "Well, how many people can we save how much money for?" And that becomes the maximal optimization function in a sustainable way. 然后我们推导出：“我们能为多少人节省多少钱？”这便成为以可持续方式实现的最大优化功能。

Therefore, I think having a very disciplined approach to the profitability of the business while at the same time maximizing our mission is actually quite rational for us to pursue. 因此，我认为在最大化我们使命的同时，对业务盈利能力采取非常严谨的方法，对我们来说实际上是相当理性的追求。

The most important goal for everyone, any company, and any person is to create a lot of value in the world. 对每个人、每家公司以及每个个体而言，最重要的目标是在世界上创造大量价值。

And profitability comes from capturing some amount of that value that you create for the company and doing it efficiently. 而盈利能力则来自于为你公司创造的价值中获取一部分，并高效地完成这一过程。

If you think about it, today there's $1 trillion of credit card debt in the United States. 如果你仔细想想，今天美国有1万亿美元的信用卡债务。

Consumers today are paying almost $200 billion a year on just interest payments—not the principal, just the interest payments on it. 消费者每年仅仅在利息支付上就花费近2000亿美元——这不是本金，仅仅是利息。

If we can reduce that by 50%, then we will have saved US consumers $100 billion every single year. 如果我们能将其减少50%，那么我们每年将为美国消费者节省1000亿美元。

Our profit should come from savings that we bring to the consumer because that's the value we've created. 我们的利润应该来自于我们为消费者带来的节省，因为那是我们创造的价值。

And our goal is to be profitable by saving people money. I think that achieves our mission and is very rational and mission-aligned to what we are trying to achieve in the world. 我们的目标是通过帮助人们省钱来实现盈利。我认为这实现了我们的使命，并且与我们在这个世界上努力实现的目标非常理性且使命一致。

高效决策框架：优先轴线而非优劣清单

One of my somewhat controversial opinions around decision-making is that I really hate pros and cons lists. 我在决策方面有一个有点争议的观点，那就是我非常讨厌优劣清单。

They're maybe one level below useless. 它们可能比无用还差一个等级。

I think a much more effective framework to make a decision is to first lay out what are the axes of this decision that are most to least important to this decision that you're going to make. 我认为一个更有效的决策框架是，首先列出你将要做的这个决定中，从最重要到最不重要的各项“轴线”。

Then to list out each of the options and to lay out where this option sits relative to that particular axis. 然后列出每个选项，并说明该选项相对于特定轴线的位置。

For example, let's say you need to make a decision on what car you want to buy, and the axes that matter are things like price, performance of the car, reliability of the car, and style of the car. 例如，假设你需要决定购买哪辆车，而重要的“轴线”包括价格、汽车性能、汽车可靠性和汽车款式。

Much more effective than trying to build a pros and cons list between, let's say, a Toyota Camry or a Honda Civic, is to list out what is your priority for each of these axes. 比起试图在比如丰田凯美瑞或本田思域之间建立一个优劣清单，更有效的方法是列出你对这些“轴线”的优先级。

Is it speed/performance? Is it style? Is it cost? Is it reliability? 是速度/性能吗？是款式吗？是成本吗？是可靠性吗？

Once you prioritize this set of axes, then you can look at your option space and see which one fulfills the highest order priorities for your decision-making. 一旦你对这些“轴线”进行了优先排序，你就可以审视你的选择空间，看看哪个选项最能满足你决策的最高优先级。

I'm such a big believer in this. We actually teach this process in our boot camp (新兵训练营/速成训练营: 一种短期、高强度的培训课程) at AAN. 我对此深信不疑。我们实际上在AAN的新兵训练营中教授这个流程。

I tell people in boot camp that this is a process that I've used to make almost all my decisions in my life. 我告诉训练营里的人，这是我人生中几乎所有决策都使用过的方法。

And I would argue this was also a process that I implemented when I was looking to get married very early on in my life. 我甚至可以说，这也是我人生早期寻求结婚时所采用的方法。

This is a very important framework to help people make decisions not just in their professional life, but I still think in their personal life. 这是一个非常重要的框架，不仅能帮助人们在职业生活中做出决策，我认为在他们的个人生活中也同样适用。

And I think the simple focus away from the options and more into the prioritized list of axes that matter is much more functionally beneficial to the quality of a decision-making. 我认为，简单地将注意力从选项转移到那些重要的、经过优先排序的“轴线”清单上，对决策的质量在功能上更有益。

极简生活：专注使命的个人哲学

I will add that I wear the same clothes every day: the long-sleeve black T-shirt, blue jeans, and a vest. 我还要补充一点，我每天都穿同样的衣服：长袖黑色T恤、蓝色牛仔裤和一件马甲。

I am a very big believer in simplifying as much of my life as possible. I have a very boring personal life. 我非常相信尽可能简化我的生活。我的个人生活非常乏味。

I live 5 to 6 minutes away from the office. I moved my home to be near the office. 我住在离办公室五到六分钟路程的地方。我把家搬到了办公室附近。

I don't drink. I don't party. I don't really go out that much. 我不喝酒。我不参加派对。我也不怎么出门。

I enjoy spending time with my family. I like to cook twice a week. 我喜欢和家人共度时光。我喜欢每周做两次饭。

I have a very regular routine with my family on the specific nights of the week that I cook for my family. 在每周我为家人做饭的特定晚上，我与家人有非常规律的作息。

I go to the gym and I work because I have a very simplistic life. 我去健身房，我工作，因为我过着非常简单的生活。

Another thing that I, for example, like to optimize is my computer keyboard, mouse, and chair layout. 例如，我喜欢优化的另一件事是我的电脑键盘、鼠标和椅子布局。

So I have three workstations: one at the office, two at home. All of them have the exact same mouse, exact same keyboard, and exact same monitor layout so that I can very optimally get to my workstation and begin working instead of setting up or adjusting my keyboard or my mouse. 所以我拥有三个工作站：一个在办公室，两个在家里。所有这些工作站都配备了完全相同的鼠标、键盘和显示器布局，这样我就可以非常高效地进入工作状态，而不是需要设置或调整我的键盘或鼠标。

You probably know this already: if the keyboard is off by even a millimeter, your typing error increases massively because you have to adjust. 你可能已经知道这一点：如果键盘哪怕偏移一毫米，你的打字错误率也会大幅增加，因为你需要进行调整。

One of the reasons our company is located in South Bay and not in a major city like San Francisco or San Jose is that we want to provide our employees some calmness, some serenity so that we can focus on the mission at hand and not be distracted by the hustle and bustle around us. 我们公司位于南湾而不是旧金山或圣何塞等大城市的原因之一是，我们希望为员工提供一些平静、一些宁静，以便我们能够专注于手头的使命，而不被周围的喧嚣所干扰。

I like to have, frankly, a very boring life. I think I told somebody this: if I were to know everything that will happen to me between today and my death, I'll be very happy. 坦白说，我喜欢过一种非常无聊的生活。我想我曾对某人说过：如果我能知道从今天到我去世之间会发生的一切，我会非常开心。

I have no need for surprises or excitement. I love boring. Boring is great. If my life could be just boring, I'll be very happy. 我不需要惊喜或刺激。我爱无聊。无聊很棒。如果我的生活能一直无聊下去，我会非常开心。