上市公司的挑战与新任CEO的愿景

Cass: There are things you have to deal with in a public company that are amplified. In a private company, these problems are discussed with your VCs (Venture Capitalists: 投资初创公司以换取股权的个人或公司) at a board table. In a public company, they're discussed on Reddit and it's cut in the Wall Street Journal. So if you care a great deal about what's said about you in the Wall Street Journal, running a public company is incredibly difficult. It's just very difficult. Luckily, I just don't care.

Cass: 在一家上市公司，你必须处理的问题会被放大。在一家私人公司，这些问题是在董事会上与风险投资家讨论的。而在上市公司，它们会在Reddit上被讨论，并在《华尔街日报》上被刊登。所以，如果你非常在意《华尔街日报》上对你的评价，那么经营一家上市公司会非常困难。这真的非常困难。幸运的是，我根本不在乎。

Host: Cass, welcome to the podcast.

主持人: Cass，欢迎来到播客。

Cass: Thanks for having me, man.

Cass: 谢谢邀请，伙计。

Host: I feel like you're the man of the moment. You recently took over as Open Door CEO. It's been a few weeks, a month.

主持人: 我觉得你是当下备受瞩目的人物。你最近接任了Open Door的CEO，这已经几周或一个月了。

Cass: It's day 16, I think.

Cass: 我想今天是第16天。

Host: Day 16. And I feel like you're pioneering a new way of being a public company CEO. What was your mindset first? What got you excited about the opportunity? And then, coming into it, what was your mindset going into how you're going to be CEO of this company?

主持人: 第16天。我感觉你正在开创一种成为上市公司CEO的新方式。你最初的想法是什么？是什么让你对这个机会感到兴奋？然后，当你进入公司时，你作为这家公司的CEO，带着怎样的心态来经营？

Cass: Look, I think Open Door will become this generational company because I think people do a lot of things like when you go to business school, they're like you shall have a business plan and it should be 17 pages and it should have Porter's five courses (Porter's Five Forces: 波特五力分析模型，一种用于分析行业竞争强度的框架) on it and that's how it's going to work. And that's just generally not how great businesses are built. At least not that many of them.

Cass: 听着，我认为Open Door将成为一家世代相传的公司，因为我觉得人们在商学院学到很多东西，比如他们会说你应该有一份商业计划，它应该有17页，上面应该有波特五力分析，然后事情就会这样发展。但这通常不是伟大企业建立的方式。至少不是大多数。

Cass: I think it's important that great businesses start with a very simple statement that people can buy into or disagree with, right? That's actually important that you're saying something.

Cass: 我认为重要的是，伟大的企业始于一个非常简单的陈述，人们可以认同或不认同，对吗？你说出一些东西实际上很重要。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: I think home ownership (Home Ownership: 拥有自己住房的权利和状态) is good for the world. The more people that can own a home, the better off we are.

Cass: 我认为房屋所有权对世界有益。能拥有自己房屋的人越多，我们的境况就越好。

Cass: This is objectively a broken process so we can fix it. So I think I was just generally excited by the mission of the company.

Cass: 这显然是一个有缺陷的流程，所以我们可以修复它。所以我认为我只是普遍对公司的使命感到兴奋。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: And I've just been a fan of it for a while and looking from the outside in, I'm like this feels good type of problem that I can help with. So, you know, we're 16 days into this journey. Let's find out that ends up being true.

Cass: 我关注这家公司有一段时间了，从外部看，我觉得这是一个我能帮助解决的好问题。所以，你知道，我们才刚刚开始16天。让我们看看这是否会成真。

Host: Wow. Well, let's trace a little bit of the history. Alex, you led our investment into the company. What was the thesis or vision that got you so excited about it?

主持人: 哇。那么，让我们回顾一下历史。Alex，你主导了我们对这家公司的投资。当时是什么样的论点或愿景让你如此兴奋？

亚马逊模式：Open Door的灵感来源

Alex: Well, I'm going to talk for a little bit of the background and I'm going to start with Amazon and then I'll get to Open Door. So I remember I met Eric Woo when he had first started Open Door with Keith and I think they had flipped maybe like 70, 80 homes right around Phoenix.

Alex: 好的，我先谈谈一些背景，我会从亚马逊讲起，然后再讲Open Door。我记得我第一次见到Eric Woo时，他刚和Keith一起创办Open Door，当时他们大概在凤凰城附近转手了七八十套房子。

Alex: And the reason why Phoenix is a very interesting market is there's a term that I'm sure you're intimately familiar with called cap rate (Capitalization Rate: 衡量房地产投资回报率的指标，通常是资产收入除以资产价格) or capitalization rate. And think of it as the income of some asset divided by the price of the asset. So, the Bay Area (Bay Area: 指旧金山湾区，美国加州西海岸的都会区，以高房价闻名) has very low cap rates.

Alex: 凤凰城之所以是一个非常有趣的市场，是因为有一个你肯定很熟悉的术语叫做资本化率。可以把它理解为某个资产的收入除以资产价格。所以，湾区的资本化率非常低。

Alex: So you could buy a $20 million house in Pack Heights (Pacific Heights: 旧金山一个富裕的社区). If you wanted to rent it, it might rent for $10,000 a month or $20,000, which is a lot, but not as a percentage of the price of the asset. That is very, very low yield.

Alex: 你可以在太平洋高地买一套2000万美元的房子。如果你想出租，可能每月租金是1万或2万美元，这笔钱很多，但相对于资产价格来说，百分比非常低。这真是极低的收益率。

Alex: And a place like Phoenix, all the homes are pretty similar. I'm exaggerating for so don't I'm not trying to people live in Phoenix. But you would have a $200,000 house that might rent for $20,000 a year. So a 10%. So the net operating income divided by the asset that's your cap rate 10%, you can actually make a lot of things work because there's always a default buyer of somebody who will say, I can arbitrage (Arbitrage: 利用市场价差进行无风险交易以赚取利润的行为) this.

Alex: 而在像凤凰城这样的地方，所有的房子都非常相似。我这样说有些夸张，不是想冒犯住在凤凰城的人。但你可能会有一栋20万美元的房子，每年租金2万美元。那就是10%。所以，净营业收入除以资产，你的资本化率是10%，你实际上可以做很多事情，因为总会有一个默认的买家会说，我可以套利。

Alex: I'm holding a house. I don't have to sell it to another person that wants to buy a house. I can now rent it out. And because I can get a mortgage from a bank for like 5%, I can make the whole math work.

Alex: 我持有一套房子，我不必把它卖给另一个想买房子的人。我现在可以把它租出去。因为我可以从银行获得大约5%的抵押贷款，所以我可以使整个财务计算行得通。

Alex: So Eric had started flipping homes in Phoenix and made money on most of them. But I was like, I don't know, flipping homes seems kind of challenging. I mean, it sounds great when all prices go up.

Alex: 所以Eric开始在凤凰城转售房屋，并在大部分交易中赚了钱。但当时我想，我不知道，转售房屋看起来有点挑战性。我的意思是，当所有价格都上涨时，这听起来很棒。

Alex: But what I was really drawn to is the vision that he laid out. And when I finally invested, I thought he was pretty along towards getting that vision become a reality, which was this is what I mentioned. I'm going to talk about Amazon.

Alex: 但真正吸引我的是他描绘的愿景。当我最终投资时，我认为他已经很接近实现那个愿景了，这就是我之前提到的。我要谈谈亚马逊。

Alex: Amazon started off in the 90s basically selling every book in the world, hence Amazon, in Jeff Bezos's garage or basement or the warehouse or something. And by selling every book, having infinite supply of books, he got all of the demand.

Alex: 亚马逊在90年代初，基本上是在杰夫·贝佐斯的车库、地下室或仓库里，销售世界上所有的书，因此得名亚马逊。通过销售每一本书，拥有无限的书籍供应，他获得了所有的需求。

Alex: And then because he got all of the demand, he could say, all right, I want to now sell something that isn't books. I'm going to sell CDs and DVDs. That was next, but also still stock those in the warehouse.

Alex: 然后，因为他获得了所有的需求，他就可以说，好吧，我现在想卖些不是书的东西。我要卖CD和DVD。那是下一步，但仍然把它们储存在仓库里。

Alex: But eventually, it's like, I'm going to sell TVs. I'm going to sell something else. I'm not going to stock them, but I already have all the demand.

Alex: 但最终，他说，我要卖电视。我要卖其他东西。我不会囤积它们，但我已经拥有了所有的需求。

Alex: And I got the demand because I had all the supply for something else. So I start because this is the chicken and egg problem. Do you start off with supply or do you start off with demand?

Alex: 我之所以能获得需求，是因为我拥有其他东西的所有供应。所以我开始，因为这就是先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题。你是从供应开始，还是从需求开始？

Alex: And marketplaces we know are very, very valuable, but you have to start somewhere because nobody wants to sell if nobody wants to if nobody's buying, nobody wants to buy if nobody's selling.

Alex: 我们知道市场非常有价值，但你必须从某个地方开始，因为如果没有人购买，就没有人愿意出售；如果没有人出售，就没有人愿意购买。

Alex: So the Amazon model was find something in one niche, use that to get all of the demand, and then once you get all the demand, now you can actually attract the supply in a non-principal risk-taking way.

Alex: 所以亚马逊的模式是，在一个小众领域找到一些东西，利用它来获取所有的需求，然后一旦你获得了所有的需求，你就可以以一种非本金风险的方式吸引供应。

Alex: So fast forward to Open Door. So I remember when Eric was flipping all the homes in Phoenix, I was like, that's clever, but I don't know. Like I know other people that flipped homes in Phoenix.

Alex: 快进到Open Door。我记得当Eric在凤凰城转售房屋时，我当时觉得，这很聪明，但我不知道。我知道其他人也在凤凰城转售房屋。

Alex: But I think it got to the point where in one of the markets, I think it was Charlotte, if I remember correctly, almost 10% of homes in Charlotte that were under a certain price, call it like $600,000 homes, which actually buys you a lot of houses in Charlotte.

Alex: 但我想，在某个市场，我记得好像是夏洛特，当它达到某个程度时，夏洛特将近10%的房屋，如果价格低于某个限额，比如60万美元以下的房屋，这在夏洛特实际上可以买到很多房子。

Alex: 10% of the homes were bought by Open Door. So now imagine that I want to go buy a house in Charlotte. I can go to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS: 房地产经纪人用于列出待售房屋信息的数据库), the MLS (Multiple Listing Service), which is you see that on Zillow (Zillow: 美国著名的在线房地产平台), Redfin (Redfin: 美国著名的在线房地产平台), all of these other sites kind of they just mirror the MLS, but that's only going to show me 90% of homes for sale.

Alex: 10%的房子被Open Door买走了。所以现在想象一下，如果我想在夏洛特买房。我可以去多重上市服务，也就是MLS，你在Zillow、Redfin所有这些网站上看到的都是MLS的镜像，但它们只能向我展示90%的待售房屋。

Alex: The other 10% are only on this thing called opendoor.com. So you don't have to get 100% of the homes in order to get 100% of the users. You get 10% of the homes. You get 5%.

Alex: 另外10%的房子只在这个叫做opendoor.com的网站上。所以你不需要拥有100%的房屋才能获得100%的用户。你只需获得10%的房屋，甚至5%。

Alex: It's kind of like the Laffer Curve (Laffer Curve: 经济学理论，描述税率与税收收入之间的关系，这里比喻投入与产出之间的非线性关系). I can't exactly define what it is, but there's some quantum and I would call it 10% where if you get 10% of all of the supply, you get 100% of the demand.

Alex: 这有点像拉弗曲线。我无法准确定义它是什么，但存在某个临界点，我称之为10%，如果你能获得所有供应量的10%，你就能获得100%的需求。

Alex: And once you have 100% of the demand, now you could break this horrible monopoly. And I did this whole video on it, which I know I said to you, this horrible monopoly of real estate agent dumb and you can say you can list your house on open.com and we'll charge 1%.

Alex: 一旦你拥有了100%的需求，你就能打破这种可怕的垄断。我为此制作了整个视频，我知道我曾对你说过，这种房地产经纪人愚蠢的可怕垄断，你可以说你可以在open.com上挂牌你的房子，我们只收取1%的费用。

Alex: And if you pull that off, it's the biggest market in the world. And that's what made me so excited because eBay is a marketplace for everything except for homes. And it's a $45 billion company.

Alex: 如果你成功做到了这一点，那将是世界上最大的市场。这就是让我如此兴奋的原因，因为eBay是一个除了房子之外什么都卖的市场。它是一家市值450亿美元的公司。

Alex: There aren't actually big companies in residential real estate. It's kind of strange. Like the biggest ones are Co-Star and Zillow. There's no hundred billion dollar plus company in residential real estate, which is kind of bonkers because it's a bigger asset class than everything sold on eBay.

Alex: 住宅房地产领域实际上没有大型公司。这有点奇怪。最大的公司是Co-Star和Zillow。住宅房地产领域没有市值超过千亿美元的公司，这简直是疯了，因为它比eBay上出售的所有商品的资产类别都要大。

Host: And so why is that?

主持人: 那么，这是为什么呢？

Alex: Why is that? Because it's so hard to aggregate the supply and the demand. And what Zillow and others do is they just do lead generation. It's a terrible business model from a consumer perspective.

Alex: 为什么？因为它太难整合供需了。Zillow和其他公司所做的只是线索生成。从消费者的角度来看，这是一种糟糕的商业模式。

Alex: Like it should have negative 100 NPS (Net Promoter Score: 衡量客户忠诚度的指标) because you're just getting called all day by real estate agents. You're not actually improving the value proposition.

Alex: 它的净推荐值应该达到负100，因为你整天都会接到房地产经纪人的电话。你并没有真正提升价值主张。

Alex: And Open Door, it's not about flipping homes. Maybe it is, you run the company. It's about how do you build a marketplace, the biggest marketplace in the world.

Alex: 而Open Door，它不是关于转售房屋的。也许是吧，你来经营公司。它是关于如何建立一个市场，世界上最大的市场。

Alex: I mean to give you a sense of how crazy this is, there's a company called Copart (Copart: 一家公开交易的在线汽车拍卖公司，主要处理报废车辆), public company. You know what they do? It is auctions for like not used cars but for total cars.

Alex: 我的意思是，为了让你了解这有多疯狂，有一家叫做Copart的上市公司。你知道他们做什么吗？他们拍卖的不是二手车，而是报废车。

Alex: So if you get into a car accident and State Farm (State Farm: 美国大型保险和金融服务公司) is like, oh, that's a total loss. What do they do with the car? They sell it on Copart. Copart, I think it has like a $70 billion market cap.

Alex: 所以如果你出了车祸，州立农业保险说，哦，那是全损。他们会怎么处理那辆车？他们会在Copart上卖掉它。Copart，我想它有大约700亿美元的市值。

Host: Who buys it?

主持人: 谁买呢？

Alex: Who buys it? Like people in Russia. Well, no, no, Russia anymore, but all sorts of like I buy it for parts or I'm going to go fix it up. But Copart is a bigger company than Zillow, right? How is that possible?

Alex: 谁买它？比如俄罗斯人。哦不，现在已经不是俄罗斯了，但各种各样的人会买它，比如我买来当零件用，或者我要去修理它。但是Copart比Zillow还大，对吧？这怎么可能？

Alex: And it's just because nobody's tackled this. It's the biggest market in the world, but you have to build hopefully a capital-light marketplace.

Alex: 这只是因为没有人解决这个问题。它是世界上最大的市场，但你必须建立一个最好是轻资产的市场。

Opendoor：一家解决房地产问题的软件公司

Cass: I think this is actually deeply in the center as a company. Like I think you have to think about companies as category problems are real in public market investing.

Cass: 我认为这实际上是公司核心所在。我认为你必须将公司视为类别问题，这在公开市场投资中是真实存在的。

Cass: I remember when I first joined Shopify (Shopify: 一个著名的电商平台，为商家提供在线商店解决方案) in 2019, I think it was among the highest most shorted stocks on Wall Street because people made a category mistake about Shopify.

Cass: 我记得我2019年刚加入Shopify时，它大概是华尔街上被做空最多的股票之一，因为人们对Shopify犯了类别错误。

Cass: They're like, well, it's another e-commerce (E-commerce: 通过电子网络进行的商品或服务交易) company. What are the odds it will build all the warehouses that's going to that's it's Shop does e-commerce not e-commerce company? Like just the very real the the the leverage point for Shopify does not come from e-commerce. It obviously comes from software.

Cass: 他们会说，哦，这又是一家电子商务公司。它能建立所有仓库的可能性有多大？Shopify是做电子商务的，但它不是一家电子商务公司。Shopify真正的杠杆点并非来自电子商务，而是来自软件。

Cass: I think that's actually a problem that Open Door has had is that externally and for admittedly for some time internally the company thought of itself as essentially an investor in real like real estate as an asset class which is not job the company like this is not that's not what the company does.

Cass: 我认为这实际上是Open Door一直存在的问题，即外部和在某种程度上公司内部，都认为自己本质上是房地产作为一种资产类别的投资者，但这并不是公司的工作，也不是公司所做的。

Cass: It's a software company designed to solve that problem. I think if you if you attack it like that, you just fundamentally do different things, right?

Cass: 它是一家旨在解决该问题的软件公司。我认为如果你以这种方式处理，你就会从根本上做不同的事情，对吧？

Cass: If you look at I mean, it's a publicly traded company. You actually look at the numbers. The company has repeatedly been buying fewer and fewer homes every year, right? Because they're like cool. I'm going to buy an asset class. You only buy homes that are mispriced.

Cass: 如果你看看——它是一家上市公司。你实际上看看数字就会发现。公司每年都在反复购买越来越少的房屋，对吧？因为他们觉得很酷。我要买一种资产类别。你只买那些定价错误的房屋。

Cass: But turns out not that much in the world is mispriced for a very long time.

Cass: 但事实证明，世界上很少有东西能在很长一段时间内都定价错误。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: Right. And that just becomes a it may become a good business just won't become a big business. And that's, I think, a fundamental mistake the company has made in the past few years.

Cass: 对。那只会成为一个好生意，但不会成为一个大生意。我认为这是公司过去几年犯的一个根本性错误。

房地产经纪人：一个充满“委托-代理问题”的垄断行业

Host: Yeah. Let's understand this problem a bit deeper. Maybe Alex, you could share a couple points from the talk that you gave or maybe explain more the monopoly real estate agents have or give some more context here.

主持人: 是的。让我们更深入地了解这个问题。也许Alex你可以分享一些你演讲中的观点，或者进一步解释房地产经纪人的垄断，或者提供更多背景信息。

Alex: So, real estate agents, for a very, very long time, there are about two million registered real estate agents in the United States of America. And the stat that I quoted a couple years ago, I assume it's still the stat, but it is I looked it up.

Alex: 好的，房地产经纪人，很长很长一段时间以来，美国大约有两百万注册房地产经纪人。我几年前引用的数据，我猜现在仍然是这个数据，我查了一下。

Alex: So, if you remember mean, median, mode, mean is the average, median is the one in the middle, and mode is the most frequently occurring number. The mode number of transactions per agent per year is zero.

Alex: 所以，如果你记得平均值、中位数和众数，平均值是平均数，中位数是中间的那个，众数是最常出现的数字。每年每个经纪人交易的众数是零。

Alex: So, it's kind of like, well, I'm an actor. Oh, well, what was the last film that you're in? Well, I'm kind of a waiter right now. I'm waiting to get a film job. And that's what a lot of real estate agents are.

Alex: 所以这有点像，嗯，我是一名演员。哦，那你最近出演的电影是哪部？嗯，我现在是个服务员。我正在等一份电影工作。很多房地产经纪人就是这样。

Alex: So even the really good ones, they don't do that many transactions per year and they fundamentally are misaligned with their customers because if I'm a buyside agent, the more money you spend, the more commission I get.

Alex: 所以即使是那些非常优秀的经纪人，他们每年做的交易也不多，而且他们从根本上与客户的利益不一致，因为如果我是一个买方经纪人，你花钱越多，我得到的佣金就越多。

Alex: So I normally get two and a half to 3% as a buy side agent. So normally you have five to six% as a commission pool. Half of which goes to the sellside agent, half of which goes to the buyside agent.

Alex: 所以我作为买方经纪人通常能拿到2.5%到3%的佣金。所以通常佣金池有5%到6%。其中一半归卖方经纪人，另一半归买方经纪人。

Alex: And there have been numerous, numerous lawsuits, some of which have gone to the Supreme Court attacking this as this kind of like evil not oligopoly (Oligopoly: 少数几家公司主导市场的状况) but this monopoly behavior.

Alex: 而且已经有无数的诉讼，其中一些甚至上诉到最高法院，攻击这种邪恶的，与其说是寡头垄断不如说是垄断行为。

Alex: And there's an expression that I love, it's by the playwright George Bernard Shaw: "Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity." And it's very, very hard to deal with problems of concentrated benefit and diffuse harm.

Alex: 我很喜欢剧作家乔治·伯纳德·肖的一句话：“每一个行业都是针对外行的阴谋。”集中受益而分散受损的问题非常非常难处理。

Alex: So there's a concentrated benefit to the two million real estate agents, small number of whom actually do active transactions, but they conspire, literally conspire to keep these commissions very, very high because you buy a house once every 10 years.

Alex: 所以两百万房地产经纪人（其中只有少数人实际进行活跃交易）拥有集中利益，但他们共谋，确实共谋，以保持高昂的佣金，因为你每十年才买一次房。

Alex: And you are absolutely harmed because if you're a buyer, well, wait a minute, the more that you convince me to pay, you get more of that.

Alex: 而你绝对是受害者，因为如果你是买家，等等，你越是说服我支付更多，你得到的就越多。

Alex: And then why is it misaligned as a seller? Because the seller gets more like the sellside agent is getting more if you sell for more because they just want to move on and get their check tomorrow.

Alex: 那么作为卖方，为什么利益不一致呢？因为如果你卖得更多，卖方经纪人就会得到更多，他们只是想赶紧成交，明天拿到佣金。

Alex: So, if I say, okay, you're selling a $10 million house. That's a lot of money. And then there's another seller who will offer you 10 million, $10,000. Well, the sell side is like, well, I get 3% of that. I don't really care. But you get an extra $10,000. Like, you really do care about that.

Alex: 所以，如果我说，好吧，你正在卖一套1000万美元的房子。那是一大笔钱。然后有另一个买家会出价1000万美元零1万美元。卖方经纪人可能会想，嗯，我从中拿3%，我真的不在乎。但你却能多得1万美元。你确实很在乎那笔钱。

Alex: So there's just this is where the whole the phrase principal-agent problem (Principal-Agent Problem: 指委托人与代理人之间目标不一致，导致代理人可能采取损害委托人利益的行为) doesn't come from this, but it's like this is a personification or like a real life version of the principal agent problem.

Alex: 所以这就是为什么委托-代理问题这个词语不是源于此，但这就像是委托-代理问题的一个拟人化或现实版本。

Alex: So, there were just so many things broken where it's like every other auction is fair. It's like I see, okay, I want to go list at I can I can sell a used car on eBay. They actually do a pretty good job of that.

Alex: 所以，有太多东西都是坏的，就像其他所有拍卖都是公平的。就像我看到，好吧，我想在eBay上挂牌出售一辆二手车。他们在这方面做得相当好。

Alex: And I see there are 24 bids. Here's my reserve price. And it's just very opaque. And because it's a very infrequent transaction and you have concentrated benefit and diffuse harm.

Alex: 我看到有24个出价。这是我的保留价。而且它非常不透明。因为这是一个非常不频繁的交易，而且你集中受益，而损害却很分散。

Alex: There have been so many attempts to really, really violently disrupt this industry. And one of them and I should I should say I'm on the board of Rocket Mortgage which bought Redfin and Glenn Kelman is an amazing guy started Redfin and really wanted to disrupt real estate.

Alex: 已经有太多尝试，非常非常猛烈地颠覆这个行业。其中之一，我应该提到我是Rocket Mortgage的董事会成员，Rocket Mortgage收购了Redfin，而Glenn Kelman是一位了不起的人，他创立了Redfin，并且真心想颠覆房地产行业。

Alex: And said, okay, we're going to we're only going to charge you 1%. Actually let let me take a step back. The funny thing about real estate agents, I've bought many houses. I've never used a real estate agent.

Alex: 他说，好吧，我们只收你1%的佣金。实际上，让我退一步说。房地产经纪人有个有趣的地方，我买了很多房子，但我从未使用过房地产经纪人。

Alex: Actually that's not true. I did use a real estate agent one time to buy a house. I was trying to say, "I don't want to use a real estate agent to buy a house because you're going to charge me money."

Alex: 其实也不完全对。我确实有一次买房时用过房地产经纪人。我当时想说：“我不想用房地产经纪人买房，因为你会向我收费。”

Alex: He's like, "No, no, no. You don't pay me. The seller pays me." And I'm like, "Where does the seller get the money from?" They're like, "Well, from their bank account."

Alex: 他说：“不不不，你不用付我钱，卖方付我。”我问：“那卖方从哪里来的钱呢？”他们说：“嗯，从他们的银行账户里。”

Alex: I was like, "No, no, no. I send the money to the escrow agent and then the seller gets the money from the escrow agent and then pays you." No, no, no. It's different money. It's like, and I I remember like talking this is what I bought a house at Paul Alter.

Alex: 我说：“不不不。我把钱汇给托管代理人，然后卖方从托管代理人那里拿到钱，再付给你。”不不不。那是不同的钱。我记得我当时在Paul Alter买房时，就是这样说的。

Alex: I told the real estate agent, I will I will not name and shame him. I was like, you know, with all respect, or maybe whenever you say that, you mean no respect, but with all due respect, either.

Alex: 我对那个房地产经纪人说，我不会点名羞辱他。我说，你知道，恕我直言，或者你每次说这话时，其实都不尊重人，但恕我直言，两者都有。

Host: I mean, all due respect.

主持人: 我的意思是，恕我直言。

Alex: Yes, with all due respect, of which I give you none, you must think I'm an idiot or I think you're an idiot. And like those are the only two options because it's like it's just absurd to say that like it's free to be represented by a buyside agent.

Alex: 是的，恕我直言，但我对你并无尊重。你一定认为我是个傻瓜，或者我认为你是个傻瓜。只有这两种可能，因为说什么买方经纪人的代理是免费的，这简直是荒谬。

Alex: So what Redfin started doing and this actually did have a very, very positive impact on the industry was like, why don't we bring down the 3% buy side fee to 1% by rebating part of it back to the consumer.

Alex: 所以Redfin开始做的事情，确实对这个行业产生了非常非常积极的影响，那就是，我们为什么不把3%的买方佣金降到1%，通过将一部分返还给消费者呢？

Alex: But you know the state of Oregon bans that going back to "every profession as a conspiracy against the laity". If I say, hey, use use me Eric and not Cass to buy your house and I'm going to take that 3% that's that's advertised as a commission and I'm going to share it back with you. Nope. You'll go to jail. Can't do that. It's like that's absurd.

Alex: 但你知道俄勒冈州禁止这种做法，这又回到了“每个行业都是针对外行的阴谋”这句话。如果我说，嘿，用我Eric而不是Cass来帮你买房子，然后我要把那3%的佣金（广告上宣称的）返还给你。不，你会被关进监狱。不能那样做。这太荒谬了。

Alex: So, and then even if you say, I'm going to do buy side representation for 1%. Well, the seller still has to pay 4% now, right? Because if it's a 3% listing arrangement and then 1%, you know, maybe it's 6% all in, but of the 3%, 2% goes back to you. The whole thing is messed up.

Alex: 所以，即使你说，我将以1%的费用代表买方。那么，卖方现在仍然要支付4%，对吗？因为如果挂牌费是3%，然后是1%，你知道，总共可能是6%，但在这3%中，有2%又回到了你手里。整个事情都搞砸了。

Alex: So, the only way to really violently change this is to have your own marketplace. That's my perspective.

Alex: 所以，真正彻底改变这一切的唯一方法，就是拥有你自己的市场。这是我的看法。

稀有交易中的信任问题与Opendoor的解决方案

Cass: I think actually the key part here is that transactions that happen incredibly infrequently usually end up being full of fraud.

Cass: 我认为这里的关键是，那些极不频繁发生的交易，通常最终都充满了欺诈。

Cass: There's a reason why car needs leave town. That's a real thing, right? This like, I got your money. I'm out of here. Like the odds are you're going to buy maybe two homes in your lifetime.

Cass: 汽车需要离开小镇是有原因的。那是真实存在的，对吧？就像，我拿到你的钱了，我走人了。你一生中可能只会买两套房子。

Cass: And the odds are you're not going to use the same process to buy both of them.

Cass: 而且你很可能不会用同样的方式来购买这两套房子。

Cass: And it's like people people intuitively understand this about used car dealers, right? They're like, hey, like I'm not going to go to a used car dealer that doesn't offer certified pre-owned cars because I don't I don't trust a care party. I need someone else to certify this thing. Right? That's a very real thing.

Cass: 人们直觉上都明白二手车经销商的这一点，对吧？他们会说，嘿，我不会去一家不提供认证二手车的经销商，因为我不信任汽车经销商。我需要其他人来认证这个东西。对吧？这是非常真实的情况。

Cass: This is why as software we have a very hard time understanding this problem because in software, most of us get paid every month someone uses our product. It's a long-term relationship, right? The more you use it, the more money I make.

Cass: 这就是为什么作为软件行业，我们很难理解这个问题，因为在软件领域，我们大多数人是每月从产品用户那里获得报酬的。这是一种长期关系，对吧？你用得越多，我赚的钱就越多。

Cass: But it didn't also used to be proven software. And back then, software was also had this problem. Like you kind of want to the best way to align counterparties is to take the transaction and stretch it out over time.

Cass: 但过去它也不是经过验证的软件。那时，软件也存在这个问题。你有点想，使交易双方利益一致的最佳方式是延长交易时间。

Alex: To make sure that I'm interested in you liking me 10 years from now. And if you do that, most of these problems tend to get solved. But in order to do that, you need a counterparty or at least a third party to certify that this thing is good that has an interest outside that one transaction immediately.

Alex: 确保我关心你十年后是否还喜欢我。如果你这样做，大多数问题往往会迎刃而解。但要做到这一点，你需要一个交易对手，或者至少是一个第三方，来证明这个东西是好的，并且它在眼前这笔交易之外还有长远的利益。

Alex: And it's why Amazon works seemingly well. You buy things from Amazon, you don't like it, you can return it. Which by the way, we launched this yesterday at Open Door in Dallas, Texas. You buy a home from Open Door, you don't like it, you can return it.

Alex: 这就是为什么亚马逊看起来运作得很好。你从亚马逊买东西，不喜欢，就可以退货。顺便说一句，我们昨天在德克萨斯州达拉斯的Open Door推出了这项服务。你从Open Door买房，不喜欢，可以退房。

Cass: You can move in early.

Cass: 你可以提前搬进去。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: Try it out. Don't like it, return it.

Cass: 试试看。不喜欢，就退掉。

Host: Wow. And this is like no one would do that. This don't ever happen regularly with a regular real estate transaction, which is why if you've ever bought a house, your agent has said something along the lines of this.

主持人: 哇。这就像没人会这样做。这在一般的房地产交易中从来不会经常发生，这就是为什么如果你曾经买过房子，你的经纪人可能会说过类似这样的话。

Cass: Oh, they just turned down an offer exactly like that. Or, oh, they have another offer coming on Tuesday. They never have another offer coming on Tuesday. They didn't just turn down an offer like that.

Cass: 哦，他们刚刚拒绝了一个完全一样的出价。或者，哦，他们周二还会收到另一个出价。他们从来没有在周二收到另一个出价。他们也从来没有拒绝过那样的出价。

Cass: So I think there's a very real thing that you just need to have a counterparty who is interested in the long term, right? Start out a transaction and remove the I make all my money from this one thing transaction right now thing.

Cass: 所以我认为有一个非常真实的问题，那就是你需要一个对长期利益感兴趣的交易对手，对吧？开始一笔交易，并消除“我现在所有的钱都来自这一笔交易”的心态。

Cass: And that's both of those things just tend to in any market lead to bad outcomes where there are agency problems that lead to terrible outcomes.

Cass: 而这两者在任何市场中都倾向于导致不良结果，存在代理问题，从而导致糟糕的结局。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

房产金融服务的整合与次级市场机会

Alex: Well, there's a corollary to that as well, which is on the financial services side. So part of it is, well, if you if I only make a transaction happen every once every 10 years, I don't know it that well.

Alex: 嗯，还有一个推论，那就是金融服务方面。一部分原因是，如果我每十年才进行一次交易，我就不会那么了解它。

Alex: But if you're only doing two of these a year, candidly, you don't know it that well.

Alex: 但如果你每年只做两次这样的事，坦白说，你并不会很了解它。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Alex: And then you have this other complicated thing like, how do you buy a house? How do you afford a house? And to me, it's kind of crazy that like the financing stuff is totally divorced from the buying and selling, which is like, I mean, part of how we we became friendly is through Affirm (Affirm: 美国一家提供“先买后付”服务的金融科技公司), right?

Alex: 然后你还有另一个复杂的问题，比如，你怎么买房？你怎么买得起房？对我来说，像融资这种东西完全脱离了买卖，这有点疯狂。我的意思是，我们之所以成为朋友，部分原因就是通过Affirm，对吧？

Alex: Where how do you divorce buying and selling from financing? They are one and the same. And like I can't I can't buy a house until I sell my current house. And like the real estate agent is not going to help me with that. They don't have a big checkbook.

Alex: 买卖和融资如何脱钩？它们本为一体。就像我必须先卖掉我目前的房子才能买新房。而房地产经纪人在这方面帮不了我。他们没有大笔资金。

Cass: No, I think the agency problem that exists in real estate is actually multiplied along the chain because there's usually an agent involved in the mortgage. There's usually an agent involved in the insurance.

Cass: 不，我认为房地产中存在的代理问题实际上在整个链条上被放大了，因为通常抵押贷款会有经纪人参与，保险也会有经纪人参与。

Cass: There's usually like in every single thing you do sometimes even escrow like there's usually like, so you have like, let's say one principal agent problem is a bad one in a real estate transaction, you usually have five.

Cass: 几乎在你做的每一件事中，有时甚至托管，通常都有代理人。所以，如果你说一个委托-代理问题在房地产交易中就很糟糕，你通常会有五个。

Host: Yeah. So it's multiplied.

主持人: 是的。所以它被放大了。

Cass: And let's say one person making money off you once and never seeing you again is bad in a real estate transaction, you usually have at least five, sometimes bigger number like the guy who does the inspection for your house, you're never going to see that guy again.

Cass: 而且假设一个人只从你身上赚一次钱，然后就再也不见你，这在房地产交易中是很糟糕的。你通常至少有五个这样的人，有时更多，比如为你的房子做检查的人，你以后再也见不到那个人了。

Cass: Like it's a very, and I think that actually is I think people can have very good people along this chain of the whole chain and you end up with very terrible outcomes.

Cass: 这就像一个非常，而且我认为这实际上是，我认为人们在整个链条上可能遇到非常好的人，但最终结果却非常糟糕。

Host: Right.

主持人: 对。

Cass: Because the system is basically designed to not lead to good outcomes.

Cass: 因为这个系统基本上就是设计成不会产生好的结果的。

Alex: Well, and the thing is, you have a lot of these subscale things that actually are pretty cool that have never been productized and rolled out.

Alex: 嗯，问题是，有很多这些小规模的事情，它们实际上非常酷，但从未被产品化和推广。

Alex: So if you are an English professor at Princeton or Stanford, you probably can't afford to buy a house, right? The university helps you buy a house or they will subsidize a mortgage.

Alex: 所以如果你是普林斯顿或斯坦福的英语教授，你可能买不起房子，对吧？大学会帮助你买房，或者他们会补贴抵押贷款。

Alex: Or you know, one of my favorite examples is there's something called seller financing (Seller Financing: 卖方直接向买方提供贷款，而非通过银行)。So every now and then you'll see a house sold by a very rich person who was like, you know what? I don't need all the cash right now. You can pay me overtime.

Alex: 或者你知道，我最喜欢的一个例子是有一种叫做卖方融资的服务。所以时不时你会看到一套房子被一个非常富有的人卖掉，他们会说，你知道吗？我不需要现在就拿到所有的现金。你可以分期付款给我。

Alex: It's like BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later: 先买后付), I mean, a mortgage is BNPL, but like this is somebody saying, I will be your financing option and not a bank.

Alex: 这就像先买后付，我的意思是，抵押贷款就是先买后付，但这就像是有人说，我将成为你的融资选择，而不是银行。

Alex: These are all really interesting ideas, but like you know, only Stanford and Princeton and other schools do that for their English professors and only really rich people do this for homes where you could see, oh, here's a home that's listed for sale that has this special financing.

Alex: 这些都是非常有趣的想法，但你知道，只有斯坦福和普林斯顿等学校会为他们的英语教授这样做，也只有真正富有的人才会为房屋提供这种特殊融资，你可以看到，哦，这里有一套待售房屋带有这种特殊融资。

Alex: And that's done in like the brick and mortar, like retail world every day. That's called like every day that ends in Y. It's like, oh, we want to sell more stuff like Proctor, yeah, we want to sell more stuff here's a coupon.

Alex: 而这在实体零售世界中每天都在发生。这就像是每天都在发生的事情。比如说，我们想卖更多的东西，就像宝洁一样，是的，我们想卖更多的东西，给你一张优惠券。

Alex: Or Xbox wants to sell more things or you know Lexus wants to sell more cars, you know, 0% financing 0% APR (Annual Percentage Rate: 年利率) Labor Day sale like doing that for homes makes so much sense, but like the real estate agents are not they just don't they just don't know what they're doing.

Alex: 或者Xbox想卖更多东西，或者你知道雷克萨斯想卖更多汽车，你知道，0%融资，0%年利率的劳动节促销活动，对房屋这样做非常有意义，但房地产经纪人就是不懂，他们就是不知道自己在做什么。

Alex: There is one area in real estate where I think actually there's far fewer of these problems, which is when you buy a brand new home from a builder.

Alex: 房地产领域有一个方面，我认为这些问题实际上要少得多，那就是当你从建筑商那里购买全新的房屋时。

Cass: Yes, when you buy a brand new home from a builder. Like when you walk into a large community and buy a home from them, like they've solved most of these problems. The production one.

Cass: 是的，当你从建筑商那里购买全新的房屋时。比如你走进一个大型社区，从他们那里买房子，他们已经解决了大部分问题。生产环节的问题。

Alex: I know exactly what they're like.

Alex: 我知道他们是怎样的。

Cass: Yeah. Everything is bundled. You have very few agency problems. You have some still even then if you shop with your own financing, but the odds are you shouldn't just take that financing because it's not optimized for you.

Cass: 是的。一切都是捆绑的。你几乎没有代理问题。即使那样，如果你用自己的融资方式购物，仍然会有一些问题，但你很可能不应该只接受那种融资，因为它不是为你优化的。

Cass: And this is I think the second like a very classical problem in basically it's a marketplace problem that you have to solve and I agree with you the way to solve it is you need to just gather significant inventory and make it possible for counterparties to make it desirable for counterparty to come to you to buy it.

Cass: 我认为这是第二个非常经典的问题，基本上这是一个你必须解决的市场问题，我同意你的看法，解决它的方法是，你需要积累大量库存，并使交易对手愿意来你这里购买它。

Cass: Right? This is like we spend so much of our time in the first 16 days of this, like me being this company, working on buyer stuff because it must be beneficial to buy a home from us in a way it wouldn't be somewhere else.

Cass: 对吗？就像我们在公司运营的头16天里，我花了大量时间处理买家事务，因为从我们这里买房必须比从别处买房更有益。

Cass: So you can actually start the flywheel.

Cass: 这样你才能真正启动飞轮效应。

Host: Yeah. And you said a company that could do that will be one of the biggest in the world. Has a company like Amazon or other big companies tried to do something like this or is it just so far field that they would never?

主持人: 是的。你说一家能做到这一点的公司将成为世界上最大的公司之一。像亚马逊或其他大公司有没有尝试过类似的事情，还是这太遥远了，他们永远不会尝试？

Alex: Well, the other thing that's I think very unique about this industry is it's so fundamentally local. So if you say I want to beat the MLS, there is no MLS Inc.

Alex: 嗯，我认为这个行业的另一个非常独特之处在于它从根本上是地方性的。所以如果你说我想打败MLS，根本没有MLS公司。

Alex: It's not like I'm going to go beat those guys and the commander's intent of the general is like take that hill. You it's every market is different. And that's the thing.

Alex: 这不像是我要去打败那些家伙，将军的指挥意图就像是占领那座山。你看到的，每个市场都不同。这就是问题所在。

Alex: It's like just because you could dominate Charlotte and that does not make a single dent at all in Hawaii. And actually the one case where I used a real estate agent to buy my house was in Hawaii.

Alex: 这就像仅仅因为你可能主导了夏洛特市场，但这在夏威夷却丝毫不起作用。实际上，我唯一一次使用房地产经纪人买房正是在夏威夷。

Alex: I have a house in Hawaii and they don't use the MLS there. It's just like this captive system where it's just like they make sure that you go through and like those agents do so well because like it just shows the value of a marketplace.

Alex: 我在夏威夷有一套房子，那里不使用MLS。它就像一个封闭的系统，他们确保你通过他们，那些经纪人做得非常好，因为它展现了市场价值。

Alex: But you could have a company that decides I'm going to go run the table in XYZ place and it doesn't show up in a different geography.

Alex: 但你可能会有一家公司决定在某个地方称霸市场，而在另一个地理区域则完全行不通。

Alex: What you do see going back to these kind of pockets of esoteric, you know, products either financial or or real estate, executive moving, this is actually a big thing.

Alex: 你确实会看到，回到这些晦涩的、无论是金融还是房地产产品的小众市场，高管搬迁，这实际上是一件大事。

Alex: So imagine that you're hired as actually I have a friend who was hired as the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer: 首席营销官) at Home Depot (Home Depot: 美国一家大型家居建材零售商) and she and her husband lived in New York and guess what Home Depot is not in New York. They're in Atlanta.

Alex: 想象一下，你被聘用为——实际上我有一个朋友被聘为家得宝的首席营销官，她和她丈夫住在纽约，而家得宝不在纽约，他们在亚特兰大。

Alex: They're like, okay, we will buy your old house from you. And we'll pay top dollar cash. We'll help you buy a house over here. We'll put you up in an apartment for two months. We'll do all of these things. Why?

Alex: 他们会说，好吧，我们会从你那里买下你的旧房子。我们会以高价现金支付。我们会帮助你在这里买房。我们会让你住两个月的公寓。我们会做所有这些事情。为什么？

Alex: Because they want to get this person hired as the CMO of Home Depot. And they bundle in all these other things. They're not trying to say, "I want to go disrupt the MLS."

Alex: 因为他们想让这个人被聘为家得宝的首席营销官。他们把所有这些其他事情都捆绑在一起。他们不是想说，“我要去颠覆MLS。”

Alex: I mean, they should. I mean, I would hope that eBay, and I don't know the history on this. I'm sure you probably have looked into it. Like I know eBay has tried doing real estate and there's another company called auction.com (Auction.com: 美国一家在线房地产拍卖平台) that really got into the distressed commercial real estate space and some distressed residential.

Alex: 我的意思是，他们应该这样做。我的意思是，我希望eBay——我不知道这方面的历史，我确信你可能已经研究过。我知道eBay曾尝试涉足房地产，还有一家名为auction.com的公司真正进入了不良商业地产领域，以及一些不良住宅地产。

Alex: Because if it's distressed, you haven't paid your property taxes. Government seizes your home. Government doesn't want to hold on to home and pay its own property taxes to itself. So it auctions it off and it needs to close within five days.

Alex: 因为如果是不良资产，你没有支付房产税，政府会查封你的房子。政府不想持有房子并自己支付房产税。所以它会拍卖房子，并且需要在五天内完成交易。

Alex: Like that's what like something like auction.com is very well situated to do. But I find that you have some of these bespoke products for as an example executive moves and those were done in the very, very first class way.

Alex: 像auction.com这样的公司就非常适合做这种事。但我发现，你有一些定制产品，例如针对高管搬迁的，而且这些产品都做得非常一流。

Alex: Like why can't this is the cool thing about technology, it's like would you rather be the richest person in the world in 1900 with no penicillin and no iPhone and no Netflix or a middle lower middle class person in 2025 with penicillin and you know Netflix?

Alex: 为什么不能——这正是科技的酷之处，就像你愿意做1900年世界上最富有的人，没有青霉素、没有iPhone、没有Netflix，还是做2025年的中低产阶级，拥有青霉素和Netflix？

Alex: And I'd much rather be the lower middle class person than the richest person in the world in 1900. What technology often does is it helps diffuse these amazing products down to everybody.

Alex: 我宁愿做中低产阶级，也不愿做1900年世界上最富有的人。科技经常做的就是帮助这些优秀产品普及到每个人。

Alex: Like everybody gets the education of a billionaire. Like that's I think that's the motto of Alpha Score (Alpha Score: 一家提供考试准备服务的公司，这里可能指其普及优质教育的理念), right? Like let's do all of these things.

Alex: 就像每个人都能获得亿万富翁的教育一样。我想这就是Alpha Score的座右铭，对吧？让我们做所有这些事情。

Alex: So you have some of these products for executive moves and I kind of point to that as an example and you have had attempts at taking parts of the market and turning it into an actual either open outcry English auction or what's called a second price auction, a victory auction.

Alex: 所以你有一些针对高管搬迁的产品，我把它作为一个例子。而且你已经尝试过将市场的一部分转化为实际的公开叫价英式拍卖，或者所谓的第二价格拍卖，即维克里拍卖。

Alex: Like do all these cool things that are known to work that know that are known to maximize the price, but they'll work for one market. And then just because I got one market it doesn't help me at all.

Alex: 就像做所有这些已知有效、已知能最大化价格的酷炫事情，但它们只对一个市场有效。然后仅仅因为我赢得了一个市场，对我来说没有任何帮助。

Alex: And then by the way, you have like two million people but call it a subset of those two million people who are like, I want you dead and I will vote to change the law in Oregon to ban this product. So this is this is what everybody's up against.

Alex: 顺便说一句，你有大约两百万人，但其中有一小部分人会说，我希望你死，我将投票改变俄勒冈州的法律来禁止这个产品。所以这就是所有人都要面对的。

行业失败的结构性缺陷与Opendoor的突破点

Cass: Yeah. I think it's a hard problem, which is why no one's solved it and a lot of smart people have worked on this problem or at least some parts of it. But I think there's been three structural flaws that have basically killed every attempt to solve this.

Cass: 是的。我认为这是一个难题，这就是为什么没有人解决它，很多聪明人都在研究这个问题，或者至少是其中一部分。但我认为有三个结构性缺陷，基本上扼杀了所有解决这个问题的尝试。

Cass: The first one is, let me solve a part of it. Let me solve the tiniest most profitable part of it first, which objectively has failed every single time it's been tried.

Cass: 第一个问题是，让我先解决它的一部分。让我先解决其中最小、最有利可图的部分，而这在实践中每次都客观地失败了。

Cass: Like when Amazon started, they didn't say, hey, let me sell like selling books is not that profitable, but it's a really good way to get inventory. Right? You can get all inventory of all books a PDF you get and has literally every book.

Cass: 就像亚马逊刚开始时，他们没有说，嘿，让我卖书，卖书并不是那么赚钱，但它是获取库存的一个非常好的方式。对吧？你可以获得所有书籍的库存，你得到一个PDF文件，里面包含了所有书籍。

Cass: So like the first problem has been like essentially narrowing yourself down to one thing. The second problem has been basically a channel problem, which is that, hey, I'm going to solve this problem through the traditional channels and that objectively just has failed miserably every single time.

Cass: 所以第一个问题本质上就是将自己局限于一件事。第二个问题基本上是渠道问题，那就是，嘿，我要通过传统渠道解决这个问题，而这在客观上每次都惨遭失败。

Cass: And the third problem is that some people have gone relatively large. There are some relatively large businesses that do this in some pockets of the world. But they all essentially tip over and fail because they've solved it by throwing human beings and treating like an operational problem.

Cass: 第三个问题是，有些人已经做得相对较大。世界上有些地方存在一些相对较大的企业也在做这个。但他们最终都倒闭失败了，因为他们通过投入人力并将其视为一个运营问题来解决。

Cass: Like next three bucket of problems why no one's solved this. And I think before Carvana (Carvana: 美国一家在线二手车零售商) solved it for cars, this exact same problem was like the exact same set of problems, same way was existed for cars.

Cass: 这就像没人解决这个问题的另外三个问题。我认为在Carvana解决汽车问题之前，同样的问题，同样的方式，也存在于汽车领域。

Cass: It's a very I'm Carvana is like what 3% US car market? I don't know how much probably somewhere around there. So I think there's a very real like parallels of like there are things that probably could not have been solved in a way that was affordable and efficient 10 years ago.

Cass: 我认为Carvana在美国汽车市场占有大约3%的份额？我不知道具体是多少，大概是这个数字。所以我觉得存在非常真实的相似之处，就像有些问题在十年前可能无法以经济高效的方式解决。

Cass: Like I generally think it's actually a real thing. And there were other problems that were solved the wrong way because for a brief period of time, money was free.

Cass: 我通常认为这实际上是真实存在的。还有一些问题因为在短时间内资金免费而被错误地解决了。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: And like everyone made all the wrong decisions they possibly could. But I do think we're in this special time, this window where basically all the tools you need to solve this problem kind of exist.

Cass: 每个人都做出了他们可能犯的所有错误决定。但我确实认为我们正处于这个特殊的时期，这个窗口期，基本上所有解决这个问题所需的工具都已存在。

Host: We just get deeper there for a sec. How much is real estate like healthcare where the regulatory landscape has distorted the market and prevented mass and feel free to quibble with that framing of healthcare, but or is it just a hard is it like immer the the market dynamics you were describing is that just emergent in how real estate sort of works.

主持人: 让我们再深入一点。房地产在多大程度上像医疗保健一样，监管环境扭曲了市场，阻碍了大规模发展——你可以随意对医疗保健的这种说法提出异议，但或者它只是一个难题，你描述的市场动态是否只是房地产运作方式中自然出现的？

Cass: So I think that I think it's far more similar to automobiles than healthcare.

Cass: 所以我认为它与汽车的相似度远高于医疗保健。

Host: I agree.

主持人: 我同意。

Cass: Like it's just like basically identical honestly. Like if you look at like how cars cars were sold basically till Tesla.

Cass: 老实说，它们基本上一模一样。就像你看看汽车是如何销售的，直到特斯拉出现。

Cass: Everyone had a dealer network because once you had a dealer network one was required. But Tesla's like hold on a second. If I don't have one dealer, I don't have to have any dealers. And the answer is yes, outside New Jersey, I think. Right.

Cass: 每个人都有一个经销商网络，因为一旦你有了经销商网络，一个就成了必需品。但特斯拉却说等一下。如果我没有一个经销商，我就不必拥有任何经销商。答案是肯定的，我想在新泽西州以外的地方是这样，对吗。

Alex: And I think Texas, you're not allowed to buy a car unless it's sold at a car dealer. So again, regular couple of places.

Alex: 我想在德克萨斯州，除非在汽车经销商处购买，否则不允许买车。所以，又是一些常规的地方。

Cass: So for example, in North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, I think those three states, you can't close a real estate transaction digitally. You have to have wet signature. That's kind of annoying. That's a real thing.

Cass: 举例来说，在北卡罗来纳州、乔治亚州和路易斯安那州，我想这三个州，你不能以数字方式完成房地产交易。你必须有手写签名。这有点烦人。这是真实存在的问题。

Cass: But but it's not at all like the healthcare system. It's much more similar. Like there are regulations, some of them good, some of them terrible. But they're in nature much more similar to how cars were built.

Cass: 但它根本不像医疗保健系统。它更相似。就像有规定，有些是好的，有些是糟糕的。但它们本质上更像汽车的制造方式。

Host: How come we've solved this in cars? And it's just because it's

主持人: 为什么我们在汽车行业解决了这个问题？仅仅是因为……

Cass: Well, we hadn't solved this in car. We had not saw this in car until like five years ago. Like we saw this car for new cars. Tesla saw this and for used cars, Carvana saw this.

Cass: 嗯，我们还没有在汽车领域解决这个问题。直到大约五年前，我们才在汽车领域看到这个问题。就像我们在新车市场看到了这个问题。特斯拉看到了，二手车市场则由Carvana看到了。

Cass: And keep like those actually like they're very real operational challenges that Carvana has that don't exist for homes, right? Like Carvana moves every single car they buy. Like Open Door does not move homes. Like homes stay where they are.

Cass: 并且保持，实际上，Carvana面临着非常真实的运营挑战，而这些挑战在房屋领域并不存在，对吧？例如，Carvana会移动他们购买的每一辆汽车。而Open Door不会移动房屋。房屋会留在原地。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: So there's a very real like there are upsides to trying to solve this problem in homes that cars obvious downsides too. But I think there's like a very real and underwriting for what it's worth is like similarish.

Cass: 所以，尝试解决房屋领域的问题，既有汽车领域没有的优势，也有显而易见的劣势。但我认为，就其价值而言，承保过程非常相似。

Cass: The underwriting of a car is as is difficult underwriting of a home is difficult. They're not they're similarish difficult like different problems but similar is.

Cass: 汽车的承保难度与房屋的承保难度相似。它们虽然是不同的问题，但在难度上是相似的。

Alex: Well, this is the main thing is that you can really subsegment the market. And the reason why I I can we could talk for like 10 hours about why healthcare is messed up, but fundamentally there are no prices.

Alex: 嗯，关键在于你可以真正地细分市场。我之所以能——我们可以聊十个小时关于医疗保健为何一团糟，但根本上，它是没有价格的。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Alex: It's like how much does this cost? Like the doctor doesn't even know and then like, oh, well, we're going to bill your insurance company this much. They won't pay it. And then because they won't pay it like the doctor charges more. It's like the whole thing is messed up.

Alex: 这就像，这个多少钱？医生甚至都不知道，然后就像，哦，我们要向你的保险公司收取这么多钱。他们不会付的。然后因为他们不付，医生就收更多钱。整个事情都搞砸了。

Alex: And here you have price transparency for sure. Like I know exactly how much everything is going to cost. You get a little bit misled by some of the agents who say like, oh, buy side is free because the seller pays blah blah blah.

Alex: 而在这里，你肯定有价格透明度。比如我确切知道所有东西要花多少钱。你会被一些经纪人稍微误导，他们会说，哦，买方是免费的，因为卖方支付等等。

Alex: But there are you could you could chop this up into different markets, right? I mean, this is what's very helpful to understand like selling $50 million luxury homes and like how to price those.

Alex: 但你可以把这个市场细分成不同的部分，对吧？我的意思是，这对于理解如何销售价值5000万美元的豪宅并为其定价非常有帮助。

Alex: Like a $50 million house that's a speck home could sell for 25. Like there's not really but this is the cool thing like for real estate because you are almost more so than cars.

Alex: 就像一栋5000万美元的样板房可能以2500万美元出售。这不是真的，但这就是房地产的酷之处，因为你比汽车更重要。

Alex: Real estate people need to live somewhere and they either rent or they own. And then of course, there are different models in between. You can like, you know, rent to own. You can you can you can like get your friend to like give you a free spot and not charge you anything.

Alex: 房地产人们需要住在某个地方，他们要么租房，要么拥有房屋。当然，这之间还有不同的模式。你可以像，你知道的，先租后买。你可以让你的朋友给你一个免费的地方，不收取任何费用。

Alex: But you either rent or you own and then the floor on valuation is what's the rental price and how does that compare going back to like cap rates (Capitalization Rate: 衡量房地产投资回报率的指标，通常是资产收入除以资产价格). How does that compare to the cost of capital?

Alex: 但你不是租就是买，那么估值的底线就是租金价格是多少，以及它与资本化率相比如何。它与资本成本相比如何？

Alex: So the vast majority of homes in America, number one, they qualify for what are called conforming mortgages (Conforming Mortgages: 符合房地美和房利美标准，可被这两家机构购买或担保的抵押贷款). So there already is this idea of it's like where they're like really expensive homes, you get like a jumbo mortgage (Jumbo Mortgage: 超过常规抵押贷款限额的抵押贷款，通常适用于高端房产).

Alex: 所以在美国绝大多数房屋，首先，它们符合所谓的合规抵押贷款条件。所以已经存在这样的概念，就是对于那些非常昂贵的房屋，你得到的是一种大额抵押贷款。

Alex: And then there's like everything else and the pricing of everything else is a lot more like cars.

Alex: 然后就是其他所有东西了，而其他东西的定价方式更像是汽车。

Cass: It's actually transparent too. It's far more transparent than cars. Like this is a very real like you don't like this a very.

Cass: 它实际上也很透明。比汽车透明得多。这就像一个非常真实的情况，你不会喜欢这个非常。

Alex: Like with cars. There's a very real thing about repair of cars where it's very opaque. They can't really know like just very hard like structural damage.

Alex: 就像汽车一样。汽车维修方面有一个非常真实的问题，那就是它非常不透明。他们真的很难知道，比如结构性损坏。

Cass: Structural damage, I call like or like like your fan belt. I don't know what a fan like this very there's things are like difficult and there's OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer: 生产零部件或产品供其他公司销售的公司). Like this whole thing like like an OEM part, not OEM part.

Cass: 结构性损坏，我称之为，或者就像你的风扇皮带。我不知道一个风扇像这样非常，有些东西很难，而且有原始设备制造商。就像这整个事情，比如原厂零件，非原厂零件。

Cass: There's a variety of like things that the decision matrix is much bigger, whereas for homes it's relatively transparent. And by the way, to Open Door's credit, this is a thing Open Door is exceptionally good at.

Cass: 存在各种各样的问题，决策矩阵要大得多，而房屋相对透明。顺便说一句，Open Door在这方面做得非常出色。

Cass: Open Door is exceptionally good at pricing renovations and change. They have just like zero credit to me. They've dialed this in. And in a way that's actually surprisingly good. So.

Cass: Open Door在装修和改造定价方面表现出色。这与我无关。他们已经把这方面做得炉火纯青。而且以一种令人惊讶的优秀方式。所以。

Alex: Which makes sense because who's going to get a better shipping rate with UPS, right? Me who ships one package a year or like Amazon who eventually got such a good shipping rate that they couldn't get any better unless they started their own shipping network called Amazon Delivery (Amazon Delivery: 亚马逊自己的物流配送网络)?

Alex: 这很合理，因为谁会从UPS那里得到更好的运费呢？对吧？是我这样一年寄一个包裹的人，还是像亚马逊那样最终获得了极低的运费，以至于除非他们建立自己的配送网络——亚马逊配送，否则无法再改善了？

Alex: So, you have economies of scale that never go to the agent, that never go to the customer, but that should go to a company.

Alex: 所以，你拥有规模经济，这些经济效益从未惠及经纪人，也从未惠及客户，但它们应该归公司所有。

优化交易摩擦：Open Door的核心优势

Cass: Yeah. I guess the real thing and this is like actually the real thing. This is like I'm I'm relatively ideological about this. Like I think you can make it such a like Open Door is an exceptionally good business and the average person pays less for a house and average person sells a house for more.

Cass: 是的。我想真正的问题，这确实是真正的问题。我对此相对抱有理想主义。我认为你可以使它成为一个如此出色的生意，Open Door是一个非常好的业务，普通人买房花费更少，卖房获得更多。

Cass: Like I think you can l it's actually not the math here is not that difficult. How do you do that? Well, there's so much friction out like if just just let me just give you an example.

Cass: 我认为这其实并不难计算。你如何做到这一点？嗯，外面有很多摩擦，让我给你举个例子。

Cass: If Open Door does nothing else than help you time your closing of your new house with buying your new old like selling up your old house to closing of your new house. Like if just if that's all Open Door does, you now have avoided on average about three mortgage payments.

Cass: 如果Open Door除了帮助你协调新房交割与旧房出售的时间之外什么都不做，那么平均而言，你就可以避免大约三次抵押贷款付款。

Cass: Like like who was getting paid that money like why like why why like and that's a real thing that everyone like everyone pays at least one extra mortgage payment or one extra rent payment and it's frequently more that's just like one thing and not it's like a service that Open Door can deliver to most people even without buying their house.

Cass: 就像谁拿到了那笔钱？为什么？每个人都至少多付一个月的抵押贷款或租金，而且通常更多。这只是其中一件事，它就像是Open Door可以提供给大多数人的一项服务，即使不买他们的房子。

Cass: Like there's a very real thing. So like I think there's a bunch of these things that exist and like the the agency problem is real.

Cass: 这是一个非常真实的情况。所以我认为存在很多这样的问题，而且代理问题是真实存在的。

Cass: The very real thing on cost of capital which like when you aggregate lots of homes, your cost capital tends to be lower. Therefore like that's a real thing.

Cass: 资本成本方面的一个非常真实的问题是，当你整合大量房屋时，你的资本成本往往会降低。因此，这是一个真实存在的问题。

Cass: The very real thing about the level of underwriting you can do on warranties, like the reason Open Door can offer, you know, a 7-day trial of a home is because we own lots of homes.

Cass: 关于你可以在保修方面进行的承保水平的非常真实的情况，比如Open Door能够提供7天房屋试用期的原因，是因为我们拥有大量的房屋。

Cass: Like, you don't like this one. If we take it back, the odds are you're going to buy another house from us, right? So, this is like there's all these frictions in that exist because the system everywhere is subscale.

Cass: 比如，你不喜欢这套房子。如果我们收回，你很有可能会从我们这里再买一套，对吧？所以，这些摩擦之所以存在，是因为各地的系统都处于次优规模。

Cass: One, two, because there's so many principal agency problems (Principal-Agent Problem: 指委托人与代理人之间目标不一致，导致代理人可能采取损害委托人利益的行为), right? The second one and third because there's so many of these transactions are one time transactions.

Cass: 首先，其次，因为存在太多的委托代理问题，对吧？其次，再次，因为这些交易中有太多是一次性交易。

Host: Yeah. Okay. Let's zoom back into the company for a second. So Alex, you make the investment and you've got this vision for the company and the opportunity. What have we learned about the feasibility of the opportunity based on the company performance is another way of asking like for people who haven't been following the company trajectory, you know, how have things gone? What have we learned? What have the ups and downs been, etc.

主持人: 是的。好的。让我们暂时回到公司。Alex，你进行了这项投资，并且对公司和机会有着这样的愿景。我们从公司业绩中了解到了这个机会的可行性如何？换句话说，对于那些没有关注公司发展轨迹的人来说，情况如何？我们学到了什么？有哪些起伏等等。

Zillow的失败与宏观经济的冲击

Alex: Well, so there was a point in time where Open Door was such a good idea. You know, there's a saying that we use a lot of venture capital (Venture Capital: 对高增长潜力初创企业的股权投资) is like, you know, you want to invest in a bad idea that something that looks like a bad idea that's actually a good idea because if it looks like a good idea that it becomes a bad idea.

Alex: 嗯，曾有一段时间，Open Door被认为是一个非常好的主意。你知道，我们风险投资领域常说一句话：你想要投资那些看起来是坏主意但实际上是好主意的东西，因为如果它一开始就看起来是好主意，那它最终就会变成一个坏主意。

Alex: And Open Door was somewhere in between the two of these because Zillow (Zillow: 美国著名的在线房地产平台) was like, oh my God, like, you know, Rich Barton comes back to Zillow Spencer leaves and it's like I have to go do what Open Door does.

Alex: Open Door则介于两者之间，因为Zillow当时觉得，天哪，Rich Barton回到了Zillow，Spencer离开了，于是他们觉得自己必须做Open Door正在做的事情。

Alex: Everybody was getting into iBuying (iBuying: 指公司通过算法快速评估和购买房屋，然后再出售的业务模式) and Offerpad (Offerpad: 一家提供iBuying服务的房地产科技公司) popped up, but Zillow was the big one. And they couldn't do it.

Alex: 每个人都开始涉足即时买房业务，Offerpad也冒了出来，但Zillow是其中最大的。而他们却没能成功。

Host: Uh, well, so but but here's why they couldn't do it. It's an interesting story and like the other part of the story is like Ben Thompson (Ben Thompson: 著名科技分析师，以其Stratechery博客闻名) wrote a post that almost like kind of summarizes in a more eloquent form like what I was talking about with like, you know, if you get all the if you get all the supply or just a small sliver of proprietary supply, you get all the demand.

主持人: 嗯，好的，但是他们为什么做不到呢？这是一个有趣的故事，故事的另一个部分是，本·汤普森写了一篇文章，以一种更简洁的形式，总结了我所说的内容：如果你获得了所有的供应，或者只是很小一部分的专属供应，你就能获得所有的需求。

Alex: And once you have all the demand, then you can have your then supply just comes to you and that's how you finally build a marketplace. And I think rumor has it that Rich Barton reads Ben Thompson as everybody should because Ben Thompson is very, very smart. Like, holy we have to do this.

Alex: 一旦你拥有了所有的需求，那么供应就会源源不断地涌向你，这就是你最终建立市场的方式。我想有传言说Rich Barton读本·汤普森的文章，就像每个人都应该读一样，因为本·汤普森非常非常聪明。就像，天哪，我们必须这样做。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Alex: So they start doing this and they're making infinite money. But this is where cohort math (Cohort Math: 一种分析方法，通过跟踪特定时期内同一群体（同期群）的表现来识别趋势和模式) is so important because the first homes to sell are the positive selection homes.

Alex: 所以他们开始做这个，赚了很多钱。但这正是同期群分析如此重要的原因，因为最先出售的房屋是那些正面选择的房屋。

Alex: So imagine that, you know, what is it? It's October right now. Cass and I buy a thousand homes today. The best homes will sell tomorrow. And then the homes that we're stuck with two years from now, like, you know, there are ghosts that live in those homes or like the termites, like they're like mega termites.

Alex: 想象一下，现在是十月。Cass和我今天买了1000套房子。最好的房子明天就会卖掉。然后，两年后我们还滞销的房子，比如，你知道，那些房子里可能住着鬼魂，或者有巨型白蚁。

Alex: Like there are things that are wrong with it. So Zillow thought as a public company operating in the public limelight, they're like, we're making so much money on iBuying because we're holding everything that hasn't sold at NAV (Net Asset Value: 公司或基金的资产减去负债后的价值), a net asset value (Net Asset Value), and then we're yielding profits all along the way.

Alex: 房子总有些问题。所以Zillow作为一家在公众视线中运营的上市公司，他们认为，我们在即时买房业务上赚了很多钱，因为我们以资产净值持有所有未售出的东西，然后一路产生利润。

Alex: But you have to let the whole cohort cure as the term goes. And then it's like, uh oh, we lost a lot of money on that cohort.

Alex: 但你必须让整个同期群“治愈”，就像术语所说的那样。然后就像，哦，我们在那个同期群上损失了很多钱。

Alex: So what happened was Open Door now is getting outbid by because this was such a good idea. Everybody thinks it's a good idea. Kind of started becoming a little bit of a bad idea pre-marketplace.

Alex: 所以发生的情况是，Open Door现在被出价更高，因为这曾经是一个很好的主意。每个人都认为这是一个好主意。在市场形成之前，它有点开始变成一个糟糕的主意。

Alex: Zillow starts paying more. In fact, Zillow even had like, hey, don't sell to Open Door. Sell to us. We'll pay a dollar more.

Alex: Zillow开始支付更多。事实上，Zillow甚至会说，嘿，别卖给Open Door。卖给我们。我们会多付一美元。

Alex: And you always have to realize if you talk to anybody who's a professional trader in the equity markets, they're like, you have to assume that it's an adversarial process. Is that, you know, anytime that you have anybody somebody hits your bid, like there's something wrong, right?

Alex: 你总是要意识到，如果你和任何股票市场的专业交易员交谈，他们会说，你必须假设这是一个对抗性的过程。也就是说，你知道，任何时候有人接受了你的出价，就像有什么地方不对劲，对吧？

Alex: It's like you should assume that you're about to get taken advantage of. Zillow didn't really understand that, but they kind of muddied the waters for everybody else.

Alex: 这就像你应该假设你即将被利用。Zillow并没有真正理解这一点，但他们却搅浑了其他所有人的水。

Alex: Eventually, Zillow pulled out of that business. Money started becoming not free. And if you're stuck with a huge amount of inventory, you know, being a market maker.

Alex: 最终，Zillow退出了那项业务。资金开始不再免费。如果你被大量库存困住，你知道，作为做市商。

Alex: I mean, if you look at the most profitable companies in the world, like Jane Street (Jane Street: 一家全球领先的量化交易公司), Virtue (Virtu Financial: 一家高频交易和做市公司), Citadel Security (Citadel Securities: 一家大型做市商和对冲基金), is a market maker, they don't win all of the time because if they did, then they were doing something, you know, probably illegal.

Alex: 我的意思是，如果你看看世界上最赚钱的公司，比如Jane Street、Virtu、Citadel Security，它们都是做市商，它们并不会一直赢，因为如果它们赢了，那么它们可能做了些，你知道，可能是非法的事情。

Alex: They make money most of the time. They have a weighted coin and they hold inventory and they're making money on this bid ask spread (Bid-Ask Spread: 市场中最高买价与最低卖价之间的差额) from somebody who's hopefully not taking advantage of them, which is why they want retail flow.

Alex: 它们大部分时间都在赚钱。它们有一个加权硬币，它们持有库存，并通过买卖价差从那些希望不会利用它们的人那里赚钱，这就是它们想要散户资金流的原因。

Alex: And what happens though is that if you like a lot of the market makers in the equities world, they don't like to hold positions overnight because things could change. So Open Door is holding a lot of positions beyond just overnight.

Alex: 然而发生的情况是，如果像股票市场中的许多做市商一样，他们不喜欢隔夜持有头寸，因为情况可能会改变。所以Open Door持有的头寸远不止隔夜。

Alex: And then interest rates went from like 0% to like 4%. And 4% is not high in the history of the world, but is really high to go from like zero to like 4% in like a few months.

Alex: 然后利率从0%飙升到4%。4%在世界历史上不算高，但几个月内从0%涨到4%是相当高的。

Cass: Pace at which interest rate increased were, I mean, I think we can say in hindsight, this was actually too deeply irresponsible for the country.

Cass: 利率上升的速度，我的意思是，我认为事后看来，这对国家来说实在是太不负责任了。

Host: Like I don't think I think it was very I don't Silicon Valley Bank (Silicon Valley Bank: 一家曾服务于科技和创业公司的银行，2023年倒闭) went bankrupt, right?

主持人: 我觉得不是，我觉得这非常——我不认为硅谷银行破产了，对吧？

Cass: Asset prices went down. Yeah.

Cass: 资产价格下跌。是的。

Cass: I think this is like, look, I don't I think Open made lots of mistakes regardless of interest rates, but like there's a very real thing that happened which and companies shouldn't take credit or blame for macro.

Cass: 我认为这就像，听着，我不认为Open Door犯了很多错误，无论利率如何，但确实发生了一些非常真实的事情，公司不应该为宏观经济承担功劳或责备。

Cass: But what happened in the US with interest rates had basically never happened before and I think will literally never happen again because it was so obviously stupid.

Cass: 但美国利率发生的事情基本上前所未有，我认为也绝不会再发生，因为它太明显愚蠢了。

Alex: So, so basically what happens is like you're left with all this inventory. And the whole point is like if you're just buying and selling and you make money 51% of the time and you're earning a spread between like you know the basically you have the the top bid and the lowest ask and then there's like this this margin in between and if you just kind of keep buying, keep selling, you can actually make this work.

Alex: 所以，基本上发生的情况是，你剩下所有这些库存。关键在于，如果你只是买进卖出，51%的时间都在赚钱，而且你赚取的是你知道的，基本上是最高买价和最低卖价之间的价差，然后两者之间有这样一个利润空间，如果你只是不断买进，不断卖出，你实际上可以做到这一点。

Alex: And this is again how this is why Jane Street (Jane Street: 一家全球领先的量化交易公司) makes a lot of money or Citadel Securities (Citadel Securities: 一家大型做市商和对冲基金) or any of these companies that you've heard of. They're doing it very very frequently. They're typically not holding on to assets for a very long period of time.

Alex: 这又是Jane Street或Citadel Securities或你听说过的任何这些公司赚钱的原因。他们非常频繁地进行交易。他们通常不会长期持有资产。

Alex: Some of them never hold on to assets overnight just as a standing rule. And Open Door has a lot of assets and then what happens is when asset when sorry, when interest rates go up, what happens to asset prices? They tend to go down.

Alex: 其中一些公司甚至从未隔夜持有资产，这是他们的既定规则。而Open Door拥有大量资产，然后发生的情况是，当资产，抱歉，当利率上升时，资产价格会怎样？它们往往会下跌。

Alex: Because now it's like think of it in in terms of like a mortgage payment. Like well before my mortgage payment used to be a thousand, like I only have a thousand dollars a month to to switch from like my rental payment to buying a house because I can make a down payment.

Alex: 因为现在，你可以把它想象成抵押贷款付款。就像以前我的抵押贷款每月是一千美元，我每月只有一千美元可以从租金转换为买房，因为我能支付首付。

Alex: Well, wait a minute, now it cost me $2,000 a month. So therefore I don't want to buy the house. What happens when aggregate demand goes down? Well, prices go down.

Alex: 嗯，等一下，现在我每月要支付2000美元。所以我不打算买房了。当总需求下降时会发生什么？嗯，价格就会下降。

Alex: And actually this didn't happen as much in housing as would have been anticipated because we have a shortage of homes and that's a separate topic. But asset prices in general went down.

Alex: 实际上，这在住房领域并没有像预期的那样发生，因为我们房屋短缺，这是另一个话题。但总体而言，资产价格下降了。

Alex: Like SPB (Silicon Valley Bank), Silicon Valley Bank (Silicon Valley Bank: 一家曾服务于科技和创业公司的银行，2023年倒闭) went bankrupt because interest rates go up and if you're stuck with a bunch of like, you know, 75 basis point (Basis Point: 利率或金融产品价格变动的最小单位，1个基点=0.01%) 10-year T-bills (Treasury Bills: 美国财政部发行的短期政府债券), they're worth half as much as they were before. Now you have to go sell them. Uh oh, you're bankrupt.

Alex: 就像SPB，硅谷银行破产了，因为利率上升，如果你手里握着一大堆比如75个基点的十年期短期国库券，它们的价值只有以前的一半。现在你不得不卖掉它们。哦，你破产了。

Alex: So the pace that this happened was very very high. And nobody really I mean, people anticipated okay, our rates are are low, but it's like, oh, the Fed will raise by 25 basis point another 20. Like it wasn't like boom.

Alex: 所以这种情况发生的速度非常快。没有人真正预料到——我的意思是，人们预料到利率会很低，但没想到美联储会一次性提高25个基点，再加20个基点。这不像一声巨响。

Alex: And that was the like five sigma or making up the number of sigmas, but it was a many, many standard deviations beyond the norm in terms of what you can anticipate.

Alex: 那就像是五西格玛，或者说是编造的西格玛数字，但就你所能预料的而言，它远远超出了许多标准差。

Alex: And then it's like all of the risk cap actually it was kind of a double whammy because risk capital (Risk Capital: 风险资本，指投资者愿意承担更高风险以获取更高回报的资金) like, you know, venture capital (Venture Capital: 对高增长潜力初创企业的股权投资) is risk capital.

Alex: 然后，所有的风险资本实际上都受到了双重打击，因为风险资本，你知道，像风险投资就是风险资本。

Alex: So when interest rates are low, well, I don't want to earn 75 basis points on T bills. I'm going to invest in riskier things. I'm going to give it to venture capital (Venture Capital: 对高增长潜力初创企业的股权投资). I'm going to give it to private equity (Private Equity: 对非上市公司股权的投资，通常涉及杠杆收购).

Alex: 所以当利率很低时，我不想从短期国库券上赚取75个基点。我要投资风险更高的东西。我要把它投给风险投资。我要把它投给私募股权。

Alex: So risk capital kind of pulls back. Asset prices go down. Demand for homes goes down because interest rates went up. So my monthly So it was kind of like this everything went wrong at the same time.

Alex: 所以风险资本会有所收缩。资产价格下跌。由于利率上升，房屋需求下降。所以我的月供……就像所有事情都在同一时间出了问题。

Alex: And the vision of the company, at least my my vision of the I'm not the founder, but like my vision as an investor was like you guys have a chance at building a marketplace, but it's going to take time.

Alex: 而公司的愿景，至少我作为投资者的愿景（我不是创始人），是你们有机会建立一个市场，但这需要时间。

Alex: You can't just like snap your fingers and boom, you have a marketplace. Like how long did it take Amazon to build a marketplace? How many very, very sad despondent shareholder letters did Jeff Bezos have to write before marketplace appeared? A long, long time.

Alex: 你不能像打个响指那样，市场就突然出现了。亚马逊花了多久才建立起一个市场？杰夫·贝佐斯在市场出现之前，写了多少封非常非常悲伤、沮丧的股东信？很长很长时间。

Alex: And then Open Door I think was on the path that then just kind of got hit with this like triple quadruple or maybe quintuple whammy.

Alex: 而Open Door我认为原本走在正确的道路上，却不幸遭遇了三连击、四连击甚至五连击。

Cass: There's also a real thing. Look, I think companies, it's very good when companies are blamed for the mistakes. Actually good thing for the world. We should all admit our mistakes because that's how we learn.

Cass: 还有一个真实情况。我认为，公司为自己的错误承担责任是非常好的。这实际上对世界有益。我们都应该承认自己的错误，因为那是我们学习的方式。

Cass: The same thing happened to Amazon much earlier and to Carvana around the same time.

Cass: 同样的事情很早以前发生在亚马逊身上，也大约在同一时间发生在Carvana身上。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: But Amazon and Carvana reacted differently to that thing happening. Like I'm not like cool. Was the original idea a good idea? All right. What was the mistake? Let's just shed the mistakes and go.

Cass: 但亚马逊和Carvana对这件事的反应不同。我不是说酷。最初的想法是个好主意吗？好吧。错误是什么？让我们摆脱错误继续前进。

Cass: I think what Open Door publicly did was essentially abandon the original mission. Let's say cool. We're going to derisk this company a lot. We're just going to derisk the company across the entire segment.

Cass: 我认为Open Door公开做的是本质上放弃了最初的使命。让我们说酷。我们要大大降低这家公司的风险。我们将在整个业务领域降低公司的风险。

Cass: And I think that actually is a very hard spiral to recover from because you've now made it like you've now made a kind of mistake about who you are, which makes it really easy for everyone else to make the same mistake.

Cass: 我认为这实际上是一个很难恢复的螺旋式下降，因为你现在犯了关于“你是谁”的错误，这使得其他人很容易犯同样的错误。

Cass: And then I don't I think it's if Open Door is an old-fashioned operational house flipper, like that's not that it could be meaningful. It's not that big a business, right?

Cass: 然后我不知道，我认为如果Open Door是一个老式的、以运营为主的房产转售商，那它可能没有那么大的意义。它不是一个很大的业务，对吧？

Host: And they lost faith in the original vision and the feasibility of it or would explain to the sort of

主持人: 他们对最初的愿景及其可行性失去了信心，或者这可以解释那种…

Cass: I mean, I think look, I think there's a very real thing about being a public company that like there are things you have to deal with in public company amplified.

Cass: 我的意思是，我认为成为一家上市公司确实存在一个非常真实的问题，那就是在上市公司中你必须处理的事情会被放大。

Cass: But I think private companies basically all have the exact same problems. But in a public company, in a private company, these problems are discussed with your VCs at a board table.

Cass: 但我认为私营公司基本上都有完全相同的问题。但在上市公司中，在私营公司中，这些问题是在董事会上与风险投资家讨论的。

Cass: In a public company, they're discussed on Reddit and discarded in the Wall Street Journal. So if you care a great deal about what's said about you in the Wall Street Journal, running a public company is incredibly difficult. It's just very difficult. Luckily, I just don't care.

Cass: 在一家上市公司，它们在Reddit上被讨论，并在《华尔街日报》上被抛弃。所以，如果你非常在意《华尔街日报》上对你的评价，那么经营一家上市公司会非常困难。这真的非常困难。幸运的是，我根本不在乎。

Host: Right. So you so you've come back and you you you've joined and you've said, hey, let's let's go back. The original vision was a good idea. Let let's let's bring it or how.

主持人: 对。所以你回来了，你加入了，你说，嘿，让我们回去。最初的愿景是个好主意。让我们把它带回来，或者怎么做。

回归使命：持续创新与“进攻”战略

Cass: Well, look, I I think the mission is a worthwhile one. I think Open Door has made mistakes along the path and we should learn from our mistakes. But the company is not made better by becoming weaker, right?

Cass: 嗯，听着，我认为这个使命是值得的。我认为Open Door在发展过程中犯了错误，我们应该从错误中学习。但公司并不会因为变得更弱而变得更好，对吗？

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: Right. That's a very real thing. Will we will we make mistakes again? 100%. We will for sure make mistakes again. Like we just launched Tribe before this the seven-day trial of homes in Dallas, Texas.

Cass: 对。这是非常真实的。我们会再次犯错吗？百分之百会。我们肯定还会再犯错。就像我们刚刚在达拉斯、德克萨斯推出了Tribe，就是房屋的七天试用期。

Cass: It's day one. I don't know how it's going to go. We'll find out. But I was telling this to one of our product managers this morning. I got to Open Door and I felt, have you ever watched Braveheart (Braveheart: 1995年上映的史诗战争电影《勇敢的心》)?

Cass: 这是第一天。我不知道会怎么样。我们会知道的。但今天早上我跟我们的一位产品经理说了这件事。我来到Open Door，感觉就像，你有没有看过《勇敢的心》？

Cass: There's a scene where Mel Gibson standing in front of the Scottish army and the English are coming with weapons and Mel Gibson standing there saying, "Hold, hold." I'm like, "Don't hold, attack."

Cass: 有一幕是梅尔·吉布森站在苏格兰军队前，英格兰军队带着武器冲过来，梅尔·吉布森站在那里喊道：“坚持住，坚持住。”我当时想：“不要坚持，进攻！”

Cass: Okay, I got to Open Door and I felt like for three years someone had stood by a company saying hold, hold, wait like just wait for the macro to recover.

Cass: 好的，我来到Open Door，我觉得就像三年来，有人一直站在一家公司旁边说坚持住，坚持住，等等，就像只是等待宏观经济恢复。

Cass: And you just don't tend to build great software companies like that. I think you can build great hedge funds like that, but Open Door is not a hedge fund (Hedge Fund: 对冲基金，一种高风险高回报的投资工具). If it was a hedge fund, it needed to be six guys in New York with laptops.

Cass: 你通常不会那样建立伟大的软件公司。我认为你可以那样建立伟大的对冲基金，但Open Door不是对冲基金。如果它是一个对冲基金，它只需要六个拿着笔记本电脑的纽约人。

Cass: We're not that. We're a software company and software companies need to be basically always on attack.

Cass: 我们不是那样。我们是一家软件公司，软件公司基本上需要时刻保持进攻状态。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: Like always, always, always on attack. We'll attack some long hills. We'll accidentally lose some ships, but like always on attack.

Cass: 就像永远，永远，永远在进攻。我们会攻克一些艰难的高地。我们可能会不小心损失一些船只，但要时刻保持进攻。

Host: Yeah. Alex, what what advice have you given to Cass or what would you be thinking about in terms of what strategic decisions you have to make or what's important if you were taking over as CEO? Luckily, I'm not. So, thank you for doing the service for mankind.

主持人: 是的。Alex，你给Cass提了什么建议？或者如果你接任CEO，你会考虑哪些重要的战略决策？幸好我不是。所以，谢谢你为人类服务。

Alex: I think a lot of it. I think when I first heard that he was taking the job, I think I sent you my YouTube video. It's actually my most viewed ever video largely by real estate agents who hate me and want to kill me.

Alex: 我觉得很多方面。我想我第一次听说他要接这个职位时，我大概发了我的YouTube视频给你。那实际上是我有史以来观看次数最多的视频，主要观看者是那些恨我、想杀我的房地产经纪人。

Alex: This was like circulating speaking of Reddit and you know the courage to be disliked (The Courage to Be Disliked: 《被讨厌的勇气》，一本关于阿德勒心理学的畅销书). It's a good book. Courage to be disliked.

Alex: 这就像在Reddit上流传的，你知道《被讨厌的勇气》。这是一本好书。《被讨厌的勇气》。

Cass: Courage. It's an excellent book. I took a camera. Courage to be disliked is among the best books you to read as a founder. You must read it. Excellent.

Cass: 勇气。这是一本极好的书。我带了相机。作为创始人，你必读《被讨厌的勇气》，它是最好的书籍之一。太棒了。

Alex: It's this whole like Socratic dialogue (Socratic Dialogue: 一种通过提出一系列问题来激发批判性思维和揭示潜在假设的教学方法) in this Adlerian psychology (Adlerian psychology: 阿德勒心理学) mode. It's very, very interesting. So after giving that talk, oh my God, the number of real estate agent hate mail.

Alex: 这就像是阿德勒心理学模式下的苏格拉底式对话。非常非常有趣。所以在那次演讲之后，天哪，收到了大量房地产经纪人的仇恨邮件。

Alex: I didn't know that there was a such thing as real estate agent hate mail because I was basically saying like these people are like leeches on society. And lo and behold, they don't like being called that.

Alex: 我不知道竟然有房地产经纪人的仇恨邮件，因为我基本上是在说这些人就像社会的吸血鬼。结果果然，他们不喜欢被这样称呼。

Host: They don't like being called.

主持人: 他们不喜欢被称为。

Alex: And I know some real estate agents, but it's just like the whole process doesn't make sense. There should not be a 6% tax, which by the way, I make this point in the presentation, it's unique to America.

Alex: 我认识一些房地产经纪人，但整个过程就是不合理。不应该有6%的税，顺便说一句，我在演示中也提到了这一点，这在美国是独有的。

Alex: You go pick any other country in the world, it's nowhere near that that level of spread. And you don't have all this regulatory capture (Regulatory Capture: 指监管机构逐渐为它们所应监管的行业或群体的利益服务，而非公共利益) doesn't make any sense.

Alex: 你去世界上任何其他国家看看，都没有达到那种差价水平。而且也没有这种监管俘获，这完全说不通。

Alex: So I think my big thing was it's like if you have a marketplace for homes, it is the biggest marketplace in the world. Right? Like we know that the stock market is big, but you know what the residential real estate market is bigger.

Alex: 所以我认为我的重点是，如果你有一个房屋市场，它就是世界上最大的市场。对吧？我们知道股票市场很大，但你知道住宅房地产市场更大。

Alex: So we know that, you know, everybody like why is the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange: 纽约证券交易所) and NASDAQ (NASDAQ: 纳斯达克证券交易所) worth a lot. Like why is eBay worth like all of these things that do everything but homes.

Alex: 所以我们知道，每个人都像——为什么纽约证券交易所和纳斯达克价值很高。为什么像eBay这样除了房屋之外什么都做的东西价值连城。

Alex: If we if you stick to that, which I think the company, I mean, this is what Eric Woo was kind of committed to doing and it just became it was an untenable situation where it's like all of your public it's hard to do it in the public eye.

Alex: 如果我们坚持这一点，我认为公司——我的意思是，这就是Eric Woo一直致力于做的事情，但它变成了一个难以维持的局面，在公众眼中很难做到。

Host: For sure because

主持人: 当然，因为

Alex: I think it's harder, but I don't think it's like I think the company could have still done in the public eye, but just the company just had learned a bunch of wrong lessons.

Alex: 我认为这更难，但我不认为公司在公众眼中无法做到，只是公司学到了一堆错误的教训。

Host: Yeah, and that was that was the point. It's like when money is free, like success is a terrible teacher and it's like, oh, we're making all this money flipping homes and the real the real magic is going to happen if it's like open.com does not take principal risk on a house and it just means that like it's the lowest cost to sell.

主持人: 是的，这就是重点。就像当钱是免费的时候，成功是一个糟糕的老师。就像，哦，我们通过转售房屋赚了很多钱，而真正的魔力在于open.com不承担房屋的本金风险，这意味着它拥有最低的销售成本。

Alex: It's the it's the best way to buy and that's what by the way like buying stuff on Amazon is that's what buying stuff. I mean, eBay has kind of lost its luster, but still if I catch a new home run at a Giants game, where do I go sell that? Who has the deepest liquidity? It's going to be eBay.

Alex: 这是最好的购买方式，顺便说一句，就像在亚马逊上购物一样，这就是购买东西的方式。我的意思是，eBay已经有点失去光泽了，但如果我在巨人队比赛中接到了一个本垒打球，我去哪里卖呢？谁拥有最深的流动性？那会是eBay。

Alex: And I'm going to sell it there. And everybody who wants to buy a baseball, they go to eBay and like eBay does not have to take possession of the baseball. That's why they have an amazing business.

Alex: 我会在那里出售它。每个想买棒球的人都会去eBay，而且eBay不必实际拥有那个棒球。这就是他们拥有如此出色业务的原因。

Alex: They probably have too many people that work there. They have, you know, it's a shadow of its former self. Apparently, it's still using the same .NET library (.NET library: 微软开发的一种软件开发框架库) in like 1997.

Alex: 他们那里可能员工太多了。他们，你知道的，已是昔日黄花。显然，它仍然在使用1997年的相同点网络库。

Alex: So, all sorts of issues there, but like I'm just excited about this vision of having a housing marketplace and then also kind of coming up with creative financing options because finance it's like all these are one-offs to your point.

Alex: 所以，那里存在各种各样的问题，但我只是对拥有一个住房市场的愿景感到兴奋，然后还能提出创造性的融资方案，因为金融方面，就像你所说的，所有这些都是一次性的。

Alex: And then by the way, you can come up with like better insurance options. Like if you control the entire thing and to your point if you have like a lifelong relationship with that customer, there's so many things that you can do.

Alex: 顺便说一句，你还可以提出更好的保险选择。就像如果你控制了整个流程，并且正如你所说，你与客户建立了终身关系，那么你可以做的事情就太多了。

Alex: This is a this is a very I mean, look underwriting a home for mortgage and underwriting a home for insurance and underwriting a home for buying it like fundamentally not that different as exercises. They really they really aren't.

Alex: 这非常——我的意思是，你看，为抵押贷款对房屋进行承保、为保险对房屋进行承保、为购买房屋对房屋进行承保，这些练习从根本上并没有那么不同。它们真的没有。

Alex: But all the players in this space come up with different answers to these questions. Right? It's just like this this all should very clearly be done by one person.

Alex: 但这个领域的所有参与者都对这些问题提出了不同的答案。对吗？这所有的一切都应该非常明确地由一个人来完成。

Alex: Like it's very clearly one company should do this and I mean, you and I like are money nerds. So I literally wrote a book about that.

Alex: 就像非常清楚地，一家公司应该做这个，我的意思是，你和我都是金融迷。所以我真的写了一本书关于这个。

Host: Yeah. I know you did the US.

主持人: 是的。我知道你做了美国。

Alex: So I I think there's a very I'm I'm generally excited about this. I do think for what it's worth that the right model actually is much closer to Amazon than to eBay.

Alex: 所以我认为我对此普遍感到兴奋。我认为，就其价值而言，正确的模式实际上更接近亚马逊而非eBay。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Alex: Because I actually think for I think Open Door will have principal risk (Principal Risk: 指作为交易对手方之一，直接承担资产价格波动风险) on quite a lot of it inventory for a very long time now. Should only have that. Obviously not.

Alex: 因为我实际上认为Open Door将在很长一段时间内承担相当多的库存本金风险。应该只承担这些吗？显然不是。

Alex: And it's also not a binary thing. It's not like zero risk or 100% risk. There's like it's a gradient. You can live anywhere along the chain. You can deliver different values to like like we don't have to agree with a seller on the price of the home.

Alex: 而且它也不是二元化的。它不是零风险或100%风险。它是一个渐变。你可以在链条上的任何位置。你可以提供不同的价值，比如我们不必与卖方就房屋价格达成一致。

Alex: We can say, cool. We agree it's at least this.

Alex: 我们可以说，好的。我们同意至少是这个价格。

Host: Right. Right.

主持人: 对。对。

Alex: We'll give you at least that and then let's sell it. You take the rest of the risk. We'll take the risk for the first bit. Yeah.

Alex: 我们至少会给你那个价格，然后我们卖掉它。剩下的风险由你承担。我们承担第一部分的风险。是的。

Cass: And there's a lot you can do here. It's not like quite binary that becomes like a UX (User Experience: 用户在使用产品、服务或系统时的感受和反应) problem rather than underwrite problem but fixable.

Cass: 这里有很多你可以做的事情。这并不是一个完全二元的问题，它更像是一个用户体验问题而非承保问题，但却是可解决的。

Alex: Well, that's why Amazon is a last I checked $2 trillion company. eBay is a $40 billion company. So, so objectively I hope you become Amazon and not eBay.

Alex: 嗯，这就是为什么亚马逊上次我查是2万亿美元的公司。eBay是400亿美元的公司。所以，客观上我希望你成为亚马逊，而不是eBay。

Cass: Well, that's the thing. It's like there's a market order and a limit order.

Cass: 嗯，问题就在这里。就像有市价订单和限价订单。

Alex: Yes. Yes.

Alex: 是的。是的。

Cass: And there's a value there. There's a place for both.

Cass: 那里有价值。两者都有存在的空间。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: And there's a lot of liquidity, you know, beneath the kind of the top big and the lowest ask. There's always a lot of liquidity there. And those are the limit orders.

Cass: 而且，你知道，在最高出价和最低要价之下，存在大量的流动性。那里总是有大量的流动性。那些就是限价订单。

未来的方向：以用户为中心，持续进攻

Host: Gearing towards the the future, what else can you hint at in terms of the biggest priorities or decisions or strategic directions that you're you're focused on?

主持人: 展望未来，您能透露一些关于您目前关注的最大优先级、决策或战略方向吗？

Cass: Okay. I think it's very like, there isn't a five-year Soviet plan (Soviet Five-Year Plan: 苏联时期制定的国家经济发展计划，以其集中式、指令性特点闻名) here. Isn't one because I think that's just like not to work out anyway.

Cass: 好的。我认为这很像，这里没有一个苏联五年计划。没有的原因是，我认为那根本行不通。

Cass: It just doesn't work out that well. The thing I admired, deeply admired about my time at Shopify is that if you actually if you watch chess players like go back in time and like start chess, they'll teach you like opening strategies, open like this is what you should do.

Cass: 它就是行不通。我在Shopify期间最欣赏的一点是，如果你观察国际象棋玩家，回到过去，从零开始学习国际象棋，他们会教你开局策略，告诉你应该怎么做。

Cass: If you look at modern chess players to do something called positional chess (Positional Chess: 国际象棋中一种侧重于通过策略和长期规划来改善棋子位置和整体局面的风格，而非立即发动攻击), like always put yourself in a better position like play for the next position the one after that and just like give yourself more options and actually it's the right way to build a company transparently.

Cass: 如果你看看现代的国际象棋玩家，他们会玩一种叫做局面棋的下法，比如总是让自己处于更好的位置，为下一个位置着想，然后仅仅给自己更多的选择，而这实际上是透明地建设公司的正确方式。

Cass: Like you don't want to like, you want to hold the strategy very loosely, not the mission, the strategy. So I don't have like a secret bag of tricks. But I think there's a very real thing where Open Door does too little for its sellers and does almost nothing for its buyers.

Cass: 你不想——你想非常宽松地把握战略，而不是使命，是战略。所以我没有什么秘密锦囊。但我认为有一个非常真实的问题是，Open Door为卖家做得太少，为买家几乎什么都没做。

Cass: Like that's like we'll solve both of those problems. I think there's a very real thing where like I think due to some bad advice, the company tried for a little while to essentially only buy homes that were mispriced. Like we will only buy homes that are mispriced by 20%.

Cass: 就像我们正在解决这两个问题。我认为有一个非常真实的情况是，可能由于一些糟糕的建议，公司曾一度尝试只购买定价错误的房屋。比如我们只购买那些定价错误20%的房屋。

Cass: And turns out just again, you can build a hedge fund doing that. You can't really build a software company doing that. Like our goal is to buy and sell homes for a fair price.

Cass: 结果发现，同样，你可以通过那样做建立一个对冲基金。但你无法真正通过那样做建立一家软件公司。我们的目标是以公平的价格买卖房屋。

Cass: Like for a fair price, we will buy and sell homes. And I think those are like three big like like everyone that wayish.

Cass: 就像以公平的价格，我们会买卖房屋。我认为这些就像是三大方向，人人都在朝着这个方向前进。

Cass: And then what we'll do is we'll just like ask people to hold us to account against this mission. Like hold us to account against this mission that what we are going to do out there is try to be the the person you transact with quite frequently when buying selling homes.

Cass: 然后我们要做的是，我们会要求人们根据这个使命来监督我们。就像让人们根据这个使命来监督我们，那就是我们出去要做的是，在买卖房屋时，努力成为你经常与之交易的人。

Cass: Not just like 0.5% of the time, but a significant percentage of time. And then well, I I I think that's like and by the way, we've already like when I started at Open Door, Open Door was only available in 48 buckets in the US.

Cass: 不仅仅是0.5%的时间，而是很大一部分时间。然后，我想这就像——顺便说一句，我们已经做到了，比如当我开始在Open Door工作时，Open Door在美国只有48个市场可用。

Cass: It is now available in every market in the US because you can push pixel relatively easily.

Cass: 现在它在美国的每个市场都可以使用，因为你可以相对容易地推广数字产品。

Host: Yeah.

主持人: 是的。

Cass: So there's a bunch there a bunch of bad stuff that's like I think I think you should people should expect us to be a much more ambitious company.

Cass: 所以有很多糟糕的事情，我想人们应该期待我们成为一家更有抱负的公司。

Host: Well, in terms of holding you to account, what one thing that's so remarkable about the company, among other things, is how many people on the internet feel so passionate about the company, the the open army, how do we explain why why Open Door is a company that so many people feel so passionate about and how do you how does that, you know, impact at all sort of the the business or how how you think about?

主持人: 嗯，说到让你承担责任，公司一个特别引人注目之处（除其他之外）是互联网上有那么多人对公司充满热情，也就是“开放大军”，我们如何解释为什么Open Door是一家能让这么多人充满热情的公司？以及这又如何影响业务或你的想法？

Cass: But I I never um I never worked on Wall Street and until I started this job, I owned one ticker. It was Shopify at some point soon. Follow this ticker.

Cass: 我从未在华尔街工作过，直到我开始这份工作，我只持有一只股票代码。很快就会是Shopify。关注这只股票代码。

Cass: Once you know I'm allowed to, I'm not like a I'm not a stock analyst. I'm just not one. I build parts for a living. But I think there's a very real thing that happens where people feel like the natural intuitions of the average American is a very good indicator of what's true.

Cass: 一旦你知道我被允许，我不是那种股票分析师。我只是不是。我靠制造零件为生。但我认为有一个非常真实的情况会发生，人们觉得普通美国人的自然直觉是衡量真实情况的一个非常好的指标。

Alex: Like William Buckley (William Buckley: 美国保守主义作家、评论家和政治活动家) used to say you used to rather grab the phone book of Boston Massachusetts than go to Harvard professor's book for like advice.

Alex: 就像威廉·巴克利曾说过，你宁愿拿起马萨诸塞州波士顿的电话簿，也不愿去翻哈佛教授的书寻求建议。

Cass: Because it's a very real thing about the natural in intuition of people is real. And I think people look at real estate and how those transactions are done and they say, well, this is stupid.

Cass: 因为人们的自然直觉确实是真实存在的。我认为人们看待房地产以及这些交易是如何完成的，他们会说，嗯，这很愚蠢。

Cass: Like this is not how this should be and it makes it like I think that's what it is. I think like people are looking at saying, hey, this is not how this should work. There's a company out who's supposed to who has told us they're going to fix this problem, we want them to go fix it.

Cass: 就像这不应该是这样的，我认为就是如此。我认为人们正在看并说，嘿，这不应该这样运作。有一家公司本应解决这个问题，他们也告诉我们他们会解决，我们希望他们去解决它。

Cass: And what I think this is the most wonderful thing about this is that if you engage with the average person, they tend to be deeply reasonable, ask really good questions, have really good ideas.

Cass: 我认为最美妙之处在于，如果你与普通人交流，他们往往非常理性，会提出很好的问题，有很好的想法。

Cass: Whereas if you engage with like supposed experts, they have like pre perceived biases and they're like usually wrong. There's like a whole like pretense of knowledge thing that happens.

Cass: 而如果你与所谓的专家打交道，他们往往带有先入为主的偏见，而且通常是错误的。存在一种“知识的伪装”现象。

Cass: So I think it's actually deeply helpful for the company to be a company where like cool, you know who I want advice from the average person who owns the stock and is about to buy or sell a home. I want advice from that person.

Cass: 所以我认为，对于公司而言，能够成为一家——你知道我希望从谁那里得到建议？就是那个拥有股票，并且即将买卖房屋的普通人。我希望从那个人那里得到建议。

Cass: Because the odds are they have a wider aperture of possibility. Like this is real question that someone asked me the other day saying, hey, why can't why can I return what I bought on Amazon and not a home?

Cass: 因为他们更有可能拥有更广阔的视角。就像前几天有人问我的一个真实问题：“嘿，为什么我在亚马逊上买的东西可以退货，房子却不能？”

Cass: Like that's a really decent question. That's like the honest like from the time someone asked that question to the time we launched the product was maybe I think 12 days.

Cass: 这是一个非常好的问题。从有人提出这个问题到我们推出这个产品，中间大概只有12天。

Cass: Because there certain amount of like there's something broken here that is like it is intuition like is intuition is crystallized knowledge and intuition by lots of people is literally knowledge of like significant number of people. I think it's important.

Cass: 因为在某种程度上，这里有些东西是坏的，它就像直觉，直觉是结晶的知识，而许多人的直觉实际上就是相当多人的知识。我认为这很重要。

Host: Yeah. I think it's a good place to to wrap.

主持人: 是的。我想这是一个很好的结束点。

Cass: Can I do the thing I'm supposed to do and plug for a second?

Cass: 我可以做我该做的事情，趁机宣传一下吗？

Host: Please? Yeah. So, please, please, any plugs?

主持人: 请便？好的。那么，请尽管，有什么需要宣传的吗？

Cass: Uh, look, it is a bad thing for the world that people in this country can't afford to own their home. Like, people who own homes, kids that grow up in homes that are owned by their parents have better life outcomes.

Cass: 嗯，听着，这个国家的人们买不起自己的房子，对世界来说是一件坏事。就像，拥有房屋的人，在父母拥有的房屋中长大的孩子，会有更好的人生结局。

Cass: People who live in homes have better communities, lower crime, higher health results. If you're so inclined to solve this problem with us, my DMs are open. Find me. We are going to build the most aggressive team in software.

Cass: 住在自有房屋里的人有更好的社区，更低的犯罪率，更高的健康水平。如果你愿意和我们一起解决这个问题，我的私信是开放的。来找我。我们将打造软件领域最具进取心的团队。