金融生涯与创业动机

I was actually the youngest quant researcher (Quant Researcher: 运用数学和统计模型分析金融市场的专业人员) at a pretty big hedge fund (Hedge Fund: 一种采用复杂策略以获取高回报的私人投资基金), and so had started my career in finance, but had seen a lot of different areas, from very thesis-driven to just pure numbers and numbers crunching.

我当时是一家相当大的对冲基金里最年轻的量化研究员，我的职业生涯始于金融领域，但我看到了很多不同的方面，从高度理论驱动到纯粹的数字和数据处理。

When I was working in corporate finance (Corporate Finance: 涉及公司资金管理、投资和融资的金融领域), I would work 9-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, and if I was called in on a weekend, I would honestly be very miserable. 在企业金融工作时，我每天工作9到10小时，每周5天，如果周末被叫去加班，说实话，我会非常痛苦。

It just felt like it wasn't my own thing. Now I work every waking second and 7 days a week, but I've never been happier. 那感觉就像不是我自己的事情。现在我每周7天，清醒的每一秒都在工作，但我从未如此快乐。

I think I'm young, so that's one piece that gives me a little bit more optionality. 我想我还年轻，这是我拥有更多选择性的一点。

When it comes to what you want to do, though, this sounds very simple, but it's really just what feels right. 然而，谈到你想做什么，这听起来很简单，但真正重要的是感觉对不对。

The team feels that way, too. It's really like when you own a piece of something and you're really growing it from the ground up, it's easy to feel excited. 团队也有同感。当你拥有某样东西的一部分，并真正从零开始培育它时，很容易感到兴奋。

So my advice for a stable career versus a startup is, if you have the optionality, whatever makes you feel happy, whatever makes you feel excited to go to work every single day, and that you feel very fulfilled in what you're doing. 因此，我对稳定职业与创业的建议是，如果你有选择的余地，就选择那些让你感到快乐、让你每天都对工作充满热情、让你在所做的事情中感到非常有成就感的事情。

Solola：用AI重塑自动化

Hi, I'm Jessica, co-founder and CEO of Solola. Solola is an agentic process automation platform (Agentic Process Automation Platform: 一种结合AI，能自主执行复杂任务和工作流的自动化系统). 大家好，我是Jessica，Solola的联合创始人兼首席执行官。Solola是一个代理式流程自动化平台。

We help businesses automate their most critical and operational workflows using AI (AI: Artificial Intelligence: 模拟人类智能的机器系统) in a much easier and faster way than traditional RPA (RPA: Robotic Process Automation: 机器人流程自动化: 通过模拟人类操作来自动化重复性任务的软件技术). 我们帮助企业利用人工智能以比传统机器人流程自动化更简便、更快速的方式，自动化其最关键的运营工作流程。

Solola started out of YC (Y Combinator: 硅谷著名创业加速器) about 2 years ago. Solola大约两年前从YC起步。

Since then, we have raised a seed round (Seed Round: 初创公司早期的股权融资，用于验证商业模式和产品开发) led by Sarah at Conviction (Conviction: 一家风险投资公司). 从那时起，我们完成了由Conviction的Sarah领投的种子轮融资。

Most recently, we raised a Series A (Series A: 初创公司为扩大规模和市场扩张而进行的股权融资) led by A16Z (A16Z: Andreessen Horowitz: 硅谷著名风险投资公司) following an enormous amount of traction from our enterprise customers. 最近，在获得大量企业客户的巨大关注后，我们完成了由A16Z领投的A轮融资。

We have 5xed our revenue this year. Execution volume on the platform is doubling month over month since the beginning of this year. 今年我们的收入增长了五倍。平台上的执行量自今年年初以来每月翻一番。

We're proud to partner with some of the largest companies in the world, including the Fortune 100 (Fortune 100: 《财富》杂志评选的美国营收最高的100家公司), AmLaw 100 (AmLaw 100: 美国收入最高的100家律师事务所), and some of the largest private businesses in logistics and healthcare. 我们很自豪能与世界上一些最大的公司合作，包括财富100强、美国律师事务所100强，以及物流和医疗保健领域的一些最大的私营企业。

竞争精神与风险承受力

I grew up doing a lot of very competitive things. I played competitive piano and I did competitive math and things like that. 我从小就做很多竞争性很强的事情。我参加过钢琴比赛，也参加过数学竞赛等等。

I think that gives you a pretty hard will. It probably makes you very disciplined. 我认为那会让你拥有坚强的意志，也可能让你变得非常有纪律性。

I think I'm good at taking risks and putting myself out in places that I don't feel comfortable. 我认为我擅长承担风险，并把自己置于不舒服的环境中。

I think that builds up a lot of resilience, like doing something even if you don't feel like you're 100% ready. 我认为这能培养很多韧性，比如即使你感觉自己没有100%准备好，也要去做某件事。

I do that a lot, and just jumping into things and really going for it. I think that builds up a lot of character. 我经常这样做，就是跳进去，全力以赴。我认为这能培养很多品格。

麻省理工学院的独特经历与技术思维

When I was in high school, I had visited MIT (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 世界顶尖的理工科大学) a couple of times. I think it does a great job of the whole "you're the dumbest person in the room" kind of thing. 高中时，我曾多次参观麻省理工学院。我认为它很好地诠释了那种“你是房间里最笨的人”的感觉。

It's always the most fun when you're surrounded by a lot of people you can learn from. 当你被许多可以学习的人包围时，总是最有趣的。

I think MIT is a very unique place. It's the only place where it's really exactly as it's portrayed in the movies. 我认为麻省理工学院是一个非常独特的地方。它是唯一一个真正像电影里描绘的那样的地方。

You have people building roller coasters in the front lawn, and you have people training models in the dorm basement, and things like that, and it's every bit as real as it's described. 你会看到有人在前院建造过山车，有人在宿舍地下室训练模型，诸如此类，这一切都和描述的完全一样真实。

I think MIT really puts a ceiling on how technically difficult things get. 我认为麻省理工学院确实为技术难度设定了上限。

I've been working on this company for about two years now and have experienced a lot of different things since college, but never have I had to use so many brain cells to just think about a really hard problem. 我在这家公司工作了大约两年，大学毕业后也经历了很多不同的事情，但我从未像现在这样需要绞尽脑汁去思考一个真正困难的问题。

I think the most important thing you should do is jump into everything as quickly as you can. 我认为你最应该做的就是尽快投入到所有事情中。

MIT does a great job of showing you exactly what's on the forefront of what you should be paying attention to. 麻省理工学院在向你展示你应关注的最前沿事物方面做得非常出色。

You should absolutely go learn about all the new things that people are doing research about. 你绝对应该去了解人们正在研究的所有新事物。

You should absolutely spend as much time as you can with people that are doing said research. 你绝对应该尽可能多地与那些正在进行这项研究的人交流。

I think if you create a habit around trying to learn as much as you can and intake as much of what's on the frontier as possible, then you're better equipped, especially now, to learn and to work in an environment like today where things change so rapidly and there are so many things happening in the tech world. 我认为，如果你养成一种习惯，尽可能多地学习，尽可能多地吸收前沿知识，那么你就会更好地适应，尤其是在当今这个科技世界变化如此迅速、发生如此多事情的环境中学习和工作。

I think the thing that you get from a very technical background is you can break things down very easily. 我认为从扎实的技术背景中获得的一点是，你可以非常容易地分解问题。

If you can communicate what you're trying to solve in a very simple way, it makes it a lot easier to solve, and that just gives you a really good framework around solving things, especially in a landscape like today where a new model basically comes out every single week and things are constantly changing. 如果你能以非常简单的方式沟通你想要解决的问题，那么解决起来就会容易得多，这为你提供了一个很好的解决问题的框架，尤其是在当今这种每周都有新模型出现、事物不断变化的时代。

I think there's a lot of value in always centering back to what you're trying to solve for your customer or for your user, whoever that is, and then just building on top of that. 我认为始终回到你正在为你的客户或用户（无论是谁）解决什么问题，并在此基础上进行构建，这非常有价值。

I think once you narrow things down to the root problem, not just the problem that people are saying, then you can deliver an enormous amount of value to the people that are interfacing with what you're doing. 我认为一旦你将问题缩小到根本问题，而不仅仅是人们所说的问题，你就能为那些与你所做的事情打交道的人带来巨大的价值。

金融思维对创业决策的启发

Before I worked on Solola as a startup, I had no idea that I wanted to do a startup. 在我以创业公司形式开展Solola之前，我完全不知道自己想创业。

I had tried a lot of different things. I had worked in venture. I had worked at a couple of hedge funds. 我尝试过很多不同的事情。我曾在风险投资公司工作。我曾在几家对冲基金公司工作。

I was actually the youngest quant researcher at a pretty big hedge fund. 我当时是一家相当大的对冲基金里最年轻的量化研究员。

Finance was an interesting choice. I had an adviser who recommended to me that it's actually pretty good to spend some time in finance because it teaches you a way of thinking that's pretty special, especially if you're doing trading. 金融是一个有趣的选择。我的一位顾问曾向我建议，花些时间在金融领域其实很好，因为它能教会你一种非常特别的思维方式，尤其如果你从事交易的话。

It teaches you to be very objective, that you should always calculate odds for things. 它教会你要非常客观，你总是应该计算事物的概率。

I think I am someone who's guilty of not thinking in a very numerical or standardized way all the time. 我想我是一个不总是以非常数字化或标准化方式思考的人。

So I think working in finance for a couple of years gave me a lot of perspective on being objective, being able to calculate and just think through things in a very rational way. 因此，我认为在金融领域工作几年让我对客观性、能够计算并以非常理性的方式思考问题有了很多新的认识。

And that's something that stuck with me. 那是我一直铭记在心的。

Doing a startup can be very emotional, and I think always going back to first principles thinking (First Principles Thinking: 一种解决问题的方法，将问题分解到最基本假设，再从零开始重建解决方案) and trying to think in a more statistical way can be pretty helpful in terms of making decisions, even through a startup lens. 创业可能非常情绪化，但我认为，始终回归第一性原理思维，并尝试以更统计学的方式思考，在做决策时会非常有帮助，即使是从创业的角度来看。

Maybe you're looking at a super huge deployment, and that's something you have to really weigh, or someone is really looking at features; all of those things can be mapped out in a way that's more rational. 也许你正在考虑一个超大型部署，那是你必须认真权衡的事情，或者有人正在认真考虑某些功能；所有这些事情都可以用更理性的方式来规划。

You can say, what are the odds that this particular customer converts by this particular day? What are the things that I'm trading off? 你可以说，这个特定的客户在特定日期完成转化的几率是多少？我正在权衡取舍的是什么？

It gives you a very statistical framework to think about these decisions, rather than just saying "I really like this customer, so I want to work with them." 它为你提供了一个非常统计学的框架来思考这些决策，而不是仅仅说“我真的很喜欢这个客户，所以我想和他们合作”。

People tell you that you can learn a lot from playing poker, and that applies a lot to the startup world. 人们告诉你打扑克可以学到很多东西，这在创业世界中也同样适用。

I think that's true. A lot of it is just odds, being rational, and then making decisions in the best direction. 我认为这是真的。很多时候，这都关乎概率、保持理性，然后做出最佳方向的决策。

And it's actually very useful when you work on a startup. 当你从事创业时，这实际上非常有用。

发现痛点与Solola的诞生

At one of the hedge funds we worked at, they had a lot of manual work around interacting with this really old brokerage software that they built on top of. 在我们工作过的一家对冲基金，他们有很多围绕与一个非常老的券商软件交互的手动工作，这个软件是他们在此基础上搭建的。

At the time, I had been using RPA tools to try to automate that. 当时，我一直在使用RPA工具来尝试自动化这些工作。

I didn't really know how big the space of RPA was. So, RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. 我当时并不真正了解RPA领域的规模有多大。RPA代表机器人流程自动化。

RPA tools basically automate manual work by replicating workflows the way humans do. RPA工具通过模仿人类执行工作流程的方式来自动化手动工作。

This includes moving the mouse, typing things in, clicking, and interfacing with browser and desktop applications the way humans do. 这包括像人类一样移动鼠标、输入内容、点击以及与浏览器和桌面应用程序进行交互。

What I did know was that there is a lot of manual work at these larger companies. 我确实知道的是，这些大公司有大量的重复性人工工作。

There are no good tools out there that are really easy to use. 市面上没有真正易于使用的好工具。

Even though I have a computer science background, it was still really hard for me to just build a simple browser or desktop automation. 即使我有计算机科学背景，对我来说，构建一个简单的浏览器或桌面自动化仍然非常困难。

That was sort of where the seed of the problem happened. 那正是问题产生的根源。

My co-founder actually had a really similar experience. He was building out hospital systems at MGH. 我的联合创始人也有非常相似的经历。他在麻省总医院（MGH）构建医院系统。

They had used some very old tooling, and he was also surprised by how brittle it was and how hard it was to implement. 他们使用了一些非常老的工具，他也对这些工具的脆弱性和实施难度感到惊讶。

I think those were really good glimpses for us into what real-world work looks like. 我认为这些为我们提供了很好的机会，让我们了解真实世界的工作是怎样的。

When you're at MIT, you live in a very tech-forward world and you're surrounded by tools that are very easy to use, where everything has APIs (API: Application Programming Interface: 应用程序编程接口: 定义软件组件如何交互的一组规则和协议) that plug into each other, and you can build automations very easily. 当你在麻省理工学院时，你生活在一个非常技术前沿的世界，被非常易于使用的工具所包围，一切都有可以相互连接的应用程序编程接口，你可以非常容易地构建自动化。

But in the real world, when you're looking at most companies out there, they're doing really manual work. 但在现实世界中，当你观察大多数公司时，他们都在做大量的手动工作。

People operate across a ton of different systems that don't connect. 人们在大量不相互连接的不同系统之间操作。

As you can imagine, people doing operations will touch spreadsheets, internal portals, external systems, files, and just about everything in between. 你可以想象，从事运营工作的人会接触电子表格、内部门户、外部系统、文件，以及介于两者之间的几乎所有东西。

Those were two really lucky glimpses we had into what that actually looked like. 我认为那两次是我们非常幸运地瞥见了实际情况。

From there, when we went through YC, as I mentioned, we kind of came in without too much of an idea. 从那时起，当我们通过YC时，就像我提到的，我们进来时并没有太多具体的想法。

We spent about the first month or so just figuring out what we wanted to build. 我们大约花了一个月左右的时间来弄清楚我们想建造什么。

I think the RPA space was very exciting to us because we understood very well what that problem looked like and how we wanted to solve it. 我认为RPA领域对我们来说非常令人兴奋，因为我们非常清楚那个问题是什么样子以及我们想如何解决它。

Obviously, RPA is very big, and I think that piece is exciting to us. 显然，RPA是一个非常大的领域，我认为这部分对我们来说很令人兴奋。

The ambition of automating all digital work is a perennial and obvious one, and I think the aspects of being able to marry AI in the real world for enterprise companies, along with all the technical and model improvements on the flip side of things, was a very exciting combination for us. 自动化所有数字工作的雄心是一个永恒而显而易见的目标，我认为将人工智能应用于企业公司的现实世界，以及另一方面所有的技术和模型改进，对我们来说是一个非常令人兴奋的组合。

Solola的演进与挑战

Solola's MVP (MVP: Minimum Viable Product: 具有最少功能集，足以满足早期客户需求并提供反馈的产品版本) was very simple. We had a recorder just like today. Solola的最小可行产品非常简单。我们有一个录制器，就像今天一样。

That part is the same; it lets you take a recording of your workflow. 那部分是相同的；它让你能够录制你的工作流程。

You could upload it, but different from today, it didn't really do a great job of laying out what your workflow did. 你可以上传它，但与今天不同的是，它并没有很好地展示你的工作流程做了什么。

You could also run it, and it would just run on your own computer and repeat the same steps. 你也可以运行它，它只会在你自己的电脑上运行并重复相同的步骤。

Not quite as intelligent or easy to use as we had hoped. 它没有我们希望的那么智能或易用。

Since then, we've kept a lot of things the same. 从那时起，我们保留了许多相同的功能。

So, you can still record a workflow, you can still upload it to the platform, but now you can run it on hundreds of VMs (VMs: Virtual Machines: 模拟真实计算机功能的软件系统) at scale. 所以，你仍然可以录制一个工作流程，你仍然可以将其上传到平台，但现在你可以在数百个虚拟机上大规模运行它。

You can edit it and change things with very fine granularity. 你可以以非常精细的粒度编辑和更改事物。

You can add logic. You can add information on top. 你可以添加逻辑。你可以在上面添加信息。

And you have a lot of optionality on how you want to orchestrate and run these things at scale. 而且你有很多选择权，可以决定如何大规模编排和运行这些东西。

One thing we had probably underestimated was that there were a lot of trade-offs that we had to make. 我们可能低估的一点是，我们必须做出很多权衡。

But it is a big question of, you know, existing tools offer everything under the sun, and they've been building this tool for 20 years. 但这是一个大问题，你知道，现有的工具提供了包罗万象的功能，他们已经构建这个工具20年了。

How do you actually get up to speed? 你如何才能真正赶上进度呢？

One thing that we found to be a pretty big balancing act is getting to the point where we can be helpful for customers, but also being able to do so in a pretty timely fashion. 我们发现一个相当大的平衡点是，既要能够对客户有所帮助，又要能够及时地做到这一点。

There are a couple of hard moments that I can think of in the early days where we had to give up really exciting early revenue. 在早期，我能想到一些艰难时刻，我们不得不放弃非常可观的早期收入。

It was just a point where we had to really focus on building this core product, but we had to turn down customers at the very beginning. 当时我们必须真正专注于构建这个核心产品，但我们不得不在一开始就拒绝客户。

We had to turn down people when we were almost there, but not quite. And that was very difficult. 我们不得不拒绝那些我们几乎就要成功但还差一点点的客户。那是非常困难的。

I think in the early months you get pulled in a lot of different directions. 我认为在最初的几个月里，你会受到很多不同方向的拉扯。

There were some hard conversations where we had to say no to some huge names that we were very excited about. 我们进行了一些艰难的对话，不得不拒绝一些我们非常兴奋的大公司。

It didn't feel aligned with the direction that we wanted to go. 这与我们想要前进的方向不符。

We were capacity constrained, and it would mean giving up or sacrificing too many other things and other areas of the business. 我们受到产能限制，这意味着要放弃或牺牲太多其他事情和业务的其他领域。

YC的销售哲学与客户至上

I'm pretty big on advisors. I'm someone that asks for a lot of advice. 我非常重视顾问。我是一个经常寻求建议的人。

I like to surround myself with people that I think have a lot more experience. 我喜欢与那些我认为经验丰富的人为伍。

So, whenever I get panicked or I'm under pressure, the first thing I'll do is just go to all of my resources and get people's takes on things. 所以，每当我感到恐慌或有压力时，我做的第一件事就是利用我所有的资源，听取别人的看法。

I think usually that puts me in a pretty good place. 我想这通常能让我处于一个相当不错的位置。

We chose YC because we had heard really good things about it, and that was also the advice that we got early on: that you're going to be surrounded by a lot of really amazing people and you're going to have 3 months to lock in. 我们选择YC是因为我们听到了很多关于它的好评，这也是我们早期得到的建议：你将被许多非常优秀的人包围，并且你有3个月的时间来全力投入。

YC tells you to try and they really push you to try and sell something. YC会让你尝试，他们真的会推动你尝试销售一些东西。

This means that even if you don't have a working product, you can use a "lovable" fake front end or something similar, and then you should try and go sell it. 这意味着即使你没有一个可用的产品，你也可以制作一个“讨喜的”虚假前端或类似的东西，然后你应该尝试去销售它。

The good thing about that is, a lot of the times when you build something (I don't know if this applies as much to Solola, but in general when you build something), you don't know if you're going in the right direction. 这样做的好处是，很多时候当你建造东西时（我不知道这是否完全适用于Solola，但通常当你建造东西时），你并不知道自己是否走在正确的方向上。

The most clear way you know you're building something that people want is if they'll pay for it, right? 你知道你正在构建人们想要的东西的最明确方式是他们是否愿意为此付费，对吗？

And if they'll keep paying for it. 以及他们是否会持续付费。

YC does a good job in really pushing you to sell even if you may not be there. YC在真正推动你销售方面做得很好，即使你可能还没有完全准备好。

Don't spend 6 months to build a product; first try and sell something. 不要花6个月去开发一个产品；首先尝试去销售一些东西。

See if it works. You might burn a couple of bridges doing that, which is why I'm saying your mileage may vary, but at least you have a very clear picture: "I know this person would pay for this." 看看它是否奏效。你可能会因此烧断一些桥梁，这就是为什么我说你的情况可能有所不同，但至少你有一个非常清晰的画面：“我知道这个人会为此付费。”

I know a lot of people would pay for this and they would depend on it a lot, or "I'm solving some really meaningful problem." 我知道很多人会为此付费，他们会非常依赖它，或者“我正在解决一个真正有意义的问题。”

Selling a fake feature is not good when you get a little bigger. 当你公司稍有规模时，销售虚假功能是不好的。

It's still a pretty good mindset to operate with: even once you're working on the right product, there are a lot of directions you should go to try and experiment, build different mockups of things, talk to customers, get something out there, and then go from there to iterate and polish it afterwards. 这仍然是一个很好的运营心态：即使你正在开发正确的产品，你仍然有很多方向可以去尝试和实验，构建不同的原型，与客户交流，将东西推向市场，然后在此基础上进行迭代和完善。

I think we met our first customer very early on, around YC. We were in the phase of doing the thing where we sold a product that didn't really exist. 我想我们很早就遇到了我们的第一个客户，大约在YC期间。我们当时正处于销售一个实际不存在的产品的阶段。

The good thing was we were pretty honest with them and we told them, "This thing doesn't exist, but it will exist in a couple of months," and they were like, "Okay, well, come talk to us when it does." 好消息是，我们对他们非常坦诚，我们告诉他们：“这个东西现在不存在，但几个月后就会有了。”他们说：“好吧，等有了再来找我们谈。”

I think it's really hard advice. It's very unintuitive. 我认为这是一个非常难的建议。它非常反直觉。

You're taught your whole life to finish something and then go sell it, or then go present it, or whatever it is. 你一生都被教导要先完成某件事，然后去销售它，或者去展示它，等等。

And this is almost the entire opposite. It's like put up the most minimal fake version you probably can of something, then go sell it, and if it's good, then go back and build it. 而这几乎完全相反。这就像你尽可能地制作一个最简化的虚假版本，然后去销售它，如果反响好，再回去真正构建它。

I think it's not for the faint of heart, for sure. 我认为这绝对不适合胆小的人。

And sometimes, maybe you really succeeded and you actually sold the thing, and now you have to deliver. 有时，也许你真的成功了，你真的卖出了产品，现在你必须交付。

And YC's advice there is probably to spend a week in the basement coding so that you can get it out. YC的建议可能是在地下室编码一周，以便你能把它做出来。

It's not easy advice to take, and selling without actually having the thing is not very intuitive, but I think it at least puts you on the right direction. 这并不是一个容易接受的建议，而且在没有实际产品的情况下进行销售也并非直观，但我认为它至少能让你走上正确的方向。

It gives you a very clear yes or no for if this is something you should be doing at all. 它能给你一个非常明确的肯定或否定答案，关于你是否应该做这件事。

客户满意度与企业级服务的担当

One of my favorite books is called "Delivering Happiness." It's quite good. 我最喜欢的一本书叫做《传递幸福》(Delivering Happiness)。它非常棒。

It's about how the little things matter and how customer delight (Customer Delight: 客户对产品或服务感到惊喜和愉悦，超越预期) is a kind of North Star (North Star: 指引方向的指导原则或目标), but it doesn't just come in one form factor, like "I did this thing on time." 这本书讲述了小细节的重要性，以及客户满意度如何成为一种北极星般的指引，但它不仅仅表现为“我按时完成了这件事”这样单一的形式。

There are a million other ways you can build that up. 有无数种其他方式可以实现这一点。

If your customers are happy, most other things tend to fall into place, which is something we've found. 如果你的客户满意，其他大多数事情往往会迎刃而解，这是我们发现的。

Especially when you're building very critical software for a company, you're asking a company that's been around for decades or maybe even centuries to trust you to do their most critical operations. 特别是当你为一家公司构建非常关键的软件时，你是在要求一家已经存在几十年甚至几百年的公司信任你来执行他们最关键的操作。

That is by no means easy. 这绝非易事。

To this day, most of Solola's customers come through word of mouth. 直到今天，Solola的大部分客户都通过口碑而来。

And that's because existing customers have felt so happy with the experience. 那是因为现有客户对我们的体验感到非常满意。

You're small, you're early, so what can you do to make up for being a much newer tool? 你规模小，起步早，那么你能做些什么来弥补作为一个新工具的不足呢？

And that's usually: one, build a really great experience and really solve their problems. 通常就是：第一，提供非常棒的体验，真正解决他们的问题。

That's the obvious one. 这是显而易见的。

Second is to ship fast and really take in good feedback. 第二是快速交付，并认真听取良好的反馈。

This goes both ways. 这是双向的。

So you want to pick customers that will give you good feedback, and you also want to take in the feedback that they give you and move very quickly on what they're asking. 所以，你希望选择能给你良好反馈的客户，你也希望采纳他们给你的反馈，并迅速响应他们的需求。

There are a lot of ways that are more traditional than just building good tools where you can win enterprise companies over. 除了仅仅构建好工具之外，还有很多更传统的方式可以赢得企业客户。

You can be very supportive. You can listen to people. 你可以提供大力支持。你可以倾听人们的意见。

Listening is the most important thing you can do for customers. 倾听是你为客户做的最重要的事情。

For some of our early design partners, we still do; we hop on a weekly call with them. 对于我们的一些早期设计合作伙伴，我们仍然这样做；我们每周都会和他们通电话。

We basically take in their feedback week over week, and then we try to deliver at a pretty fast rate. 我们基本上每周都会收集他们的反馈，然后我们尝试以相当快的速度交付。

And that's the sort of thing that will make people pick the startup over the really old legacy incumbent. 正是这种做法，会让人选择初创公司，而不是那些非常老的传统企业。

Aside from just the tool being better. 除了工具本身更好之外。

One of our largest customers wanted to do a deployment of Solola last year. 我们最大的客户之一去年想部署Solola。

They wanted to do it during the most quiet period of the year, which was on Christmas Day, because they don't get a ton of volume then. 他们想在一年中最安静的时段进行部署，也就是圣诞节，因为那时他们的业务量不大。

I hope that we don't have to ask this of the team again. We all came in; we worked that week. 我希望我们不必再要求团队这样做。我们所有人都来了；我们那一周都在工作。

They had been using Solola for a long time, and they had been championing it internally and were very excited. 他们使用Solola已经很长时间了，并且一直在内部推广它，非常兴奋。

We were like, "Okay, if the deployment is going to happen on Christmas, we're going to do it." 我们当时想：“好吧，如果部署要在圣诞节进行，那我们就做。”

There have been moments like that. 有过这样的时刻。

In general, we try to really go above and beyond. 总的来说，我们努力超越预期。

People are trusting us to run their operations. 人们信任我们来运营他们的业务。

So, they'll use Solola to send their invoices and do their accounts payable, or they'll use it to actually send out shipments, or they will enter in patient data. 所以，他们会使用Solola来发送发票和处理应付账款，或者他们会用它来实际发送货物，或者他们会输入患者数据。

All these things are very critical; one thing that we realized when we built Solola is that we can never go down. 所有这些都非常关键；我们在构建Solola时意识到的一点是，我们绝不能停机。

That actually means that for a real business out there with hundreds or thousands of employees, their billing is going to be late that day. 这实际上意味着，对于那些拥有数百甚至数千名员工的真实企业来说，他们的账单那天就会迟延。

We've done a lot to basically maintain that. 我们做了很多来基本维持这一点。

It's one of those things where it's a little bit different from a consumer tool, or something that's AI generating copy or finding sales leads. 这有点不同于消费者工具，或者那种生成文案或寻找销售线索的人工智能工具。

If your tool goes down, it's a big deal and it disrupts people's work, but it's not the end of the world. 如果你的工具停机，那是一件大事，会扰乱人们的工作，但并非世界末日。

The nature of our business is that when we go down, it's sort of the end of the world. 我们业务的性质是，一旦我们停机，就有点像世界末日了。

So, we've done a lot for our customers. We stay up and running all the time. 所以，我们为客户做了很多。我们一直保持运行。

We've spent countless weekends and holidays in the office. 我们无数个周末和假期都在办公室度过。

But, I think along the way, it's been good. 但是，我认为一路走来，都是值得的。

We're extremely thankful to the people who trusted us to take care of these workflows and made the bet on an early new startup. 我们非常感谢那些信任我们来处理这些工作流程，并押宝在一个早期新创公司的人们。

And hopefully, we can continue to deliver on everything that we've promised. 希望我们能继续兑现我们所有的承诺。

创业的挑战与使命

I think building a startup is really, really unimaginably difficult. 我认为创办一家初创公司真的、真的难以置信地困难。

You're on a roller coaster, constantly experiencing very high highs and very low lows, and it's also compressed, so it's happening all the time: morning might be your best day ever, and then two hours later you're suffering from probably the worst news you've ever heard. 你就像坐过山车一样，不断经历极度的高峰和极度的低谷，而且这种体验是压缩的，所以它无时无刻不在发生：早上可能是你最好的一天，然后两小时后你可能正遭受着你听过的最糟糕的消息。

This happens pretty much every day, or maybe every week, not like an exact moment, but I think as a founder, you really just learn that things sort of return to the norm. 这种情况几乎每天都在发生，或者说每周，不一定是在某个确切的时刻，但我认为作为一名创始人，你真的会学到事情最终会回归常态。

You have this comfort in your head that things will be okay even if they don't feel okay, because they always end up being okay, provided that you are building in the right market and also that you have the right people around you. 你心里会有一种安慰，即使事情感觉不顺利，最终也会好起来，前提是你正在正确的市场中发展，并且身边有合适的人。

And with those two things, you might have some huge incidents happen. 有了这两点，你可能会遇到一些重大事件。

Really bad news, like someone leaves the team. 比如非常糟糕的消息，像有人离开了团队。

Maybe a customer who was your champion, whom you were selling to, left in the middle of the sales process. 也许你一直在努力销售的客户，那个曾是你的拥护者，在销售过程中离开了。

These things feel really bad. 这些事情感觉非常糟糕。

Once you get a little bit more used to them and they've been happening so often, you learn to take a step back and you're able to process a lot more of the things happening at a startup than before. 一旦你对它们习以为常，并且它们经常发生，你就会学会退一步思考，并且能够比以前更好地处理初创公司中发生的许多事情。

I think the early team also learns that as well and is able to look at the big picture, which tends to be much more helpful in terms of mental peace when you're doing this. 我认为早期团队也会学到这一点，能够着眼大局，这在你做这些事情时，对于心理平静来说会更有帮助。

What we're trying to build is a really big mission. 我们正在努力构建的是一个非常宏大的使命。

So there will be no problem of us having 10 years to spend on it. 所以，我们花费十年时间来做这件事，完全没有问题。

I think it's an enormous problem space. 我认为这是一个巨大的问题领域。

The other is that I really do believe in what Solola is trying to accomplish. 另一方面，我确实相信Solola正在努力实现的目标。

I think there's a lot of work that people shouldn't have to do that's very manual and very tedious. 我认为有很多工作是人们不应该做的，它们非常手动且繁琐。

If we can free people up, they can do things that are very fulfilling, creative, and very interesting. 如果我们能把人们解放出来，他们就能做那些非常有成就感、有创造性、非常有趣的事情。

I hope that businesses can start running on Solola and relying on Solola to do the things that are manual and rote, and that people don't really want to do, and instead spend time on things that are exciting and think through leadership, strategy, decision-making, and all the more interesting parts of work. 我希望企业能够开始在Solola上运行，并依赖Solola来处理那些手动、重复且人们不愿做的事情，从而将时间花在令人兴奋的事情上，思考领导力、战略、决策制定以及工作中所有更有趣的部分。