Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"

章节 1：从 YC 第一批到今天：Paul Graham 与创业的黄金时代

📝 本节摘要：

Garry Tan 开场欢迎 Sam Altman，两人感叹如今创业学校规模远超当年。Garry 认为，AGI 将至，现在是创业的最好时机。Sam 回忆 2005 年作为 YC 首批创业者开发位置共享应用 Looped 的经历：当时创业一点也不酷，他们窝在剑桥的小楼里，三个月才能做完的东西，如今编程智能体几分钟就能完成。Sam 称 Paul Graham 是几十年来创业领域最重要的力量。PG 每周为大家做晚饭，能凭空给人带来乐观与信念，硬是让 YC 从无到有地诞生。

[原文] [Garry Tan]: Sam, thanks for joining us.

[译文] [Garry Tan]: Sam，感谢你的到来。

[原文] [Sam Altman]: This is something.

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 这场面真不得了。

[原文] [Sam Altman]: This is like a lot bigger than the earlier startup schools.

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 比以前的创业学校（Startup School）规模大太多了。

[原文] [Garry Tan]: Yeah, I mean, startups are a lot bigger now than they have ever been. So—

[译文] [Garry Tan]: 是啊，现在创业的规模比以往任何时候都大。所以……

[原文] [Sam Altman]: Sure.

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 确实。

[原文] [Garry Tan]: I mean, they're bigger than they've ever been because of the vision that you had for AGI, which is nigh. I think this is going to be the best time in the world to do a startup, and it's gonna be quite amazing to see.

[译文] [Garry Tan]: 之所以前所未有地大，是因为你对通用人工智能（AGI）的愿景，而 AGI 已经近在眼前。我觉得现在将是创业的最好时机，接下来会非常精彩。

[原文] [Garry Tan]: So I wanted to start with, you know, a time and place, which is: you were in the very first batch of Y Combinator in 2005 with a location sharing company called Looped. What do you remember about that, and what was your best PG, Paul Graham, story?

[译文] [Garry Tan]: 我想先从一个特定的时间和地点聊起：2005 年，你在 Y Combinator 的第一批，做的是一家叫 Looped 的位置共享公司。关于那段经历你还记得什么？你最难忘的 PG，也就是 Paul Graham 的故事是什么？

[原文] [Sam Altman]: I think if it were possible to get as, like, far from this moment as, like, I can imagine, it was, you know, startups were not cool at all. We were, like, hiding out in this little building in Cambridge. PG was making us dinner. And, you know, what took three months to build at the time, what each company built over the whole YC batch, could now be done in, like, seven minutes by a coding agent.

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 我觉得那时候跟现在简直是两个极端，差到我能想象的极限。那时创业一点都不酷。我们就像躲在剑桥的一栋小楼里，PG 给我们做晚饭。当时每家公司在整个 YC 期间花三个月才做出来的东西，现在一个编程智能体大概七分钟就能搞定。

[原文] [Sam Altman]: And it was only, I mean, only 20 years ago. And I think the difference in what's possible for a startup now, what a startup can take on, you know... I think you could either be sad and be like, "Oh man, like, a Codex prompt is a whole startup," or you could be like, "I can go start the world's most ambitious, crazy company. I can have, like, experts in every field working together. I can do these very hard technological things that were just impossible." And it's going to be amazing. But at the time it felt nothing like that, and it was very difficult to get anything to... I think Paul Graham is probably the most important force in startups of the last few decades, and—

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 而这距今也才 20 年。现在创业公司能做到的、能挑战的事情已经天差地别。你可以为此沮丧：“天哪，一条 Codex 提示词就等于一整家创业公司了。”你也可以这么想：“我可以去创办世界上最有野心、最疯狂的公司。我可以让各个领域的专家一起协作，去攻克那些过去根本不可能实现的高难度技术。”那会非常了不起。但当年完全不是这种感觉，想把任何东西做起来都非常难……我认为 Paul Graham 可能是过去几十年里创业领域最重要的推动力量，而且……

[原文] [Garry Tan]: Without question. Yes.

[译文] [Garry Tan]: 毫无疑问，没错。

[原文] [Sam Altman]: No question. And my kind of Paul Graham memory is: we would all, every week, come, I think it was on Tuesdays, and he would, like, cook, he himself would cook us dinner. And we would all walk in feeling, like, very hopeless and very dejected. There were eight companies. And then we would all go home at the end of it, and he had convinced, like, each of us that our startups were about to, like, take over the world, and we were going to be, like, the next Google or whatever, Facebook maybe at the time. And that ability to sort of, like, create optimism and momentum and belief out of nothing was, like, a real PG special. And in the early days, when YC seemed like a terrible idea, and startups seemed like a bad idea, and certainly startups that were, like, young technical founders with

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 毫无疑问。我对 Paul Graham 的记忆是这样的：我们每周都会去，好像是周二，他会亲自下厨给我们做晚饭。我们进门的时候都觉得前途渺茫、垂头丧气，当时一共八家公司。可等到散场回家时，他已经让我们每个人都相信，自己的公司马上就要征服世界，会成为下一个 Google，或者当时可能说的是下一个 Facebook。这种凭空创造乐观、动力和信念的能力，堪称 PG 的独门绝技。早年间，YC 看起来像个糟糕透顶的主意，创业本身也不被看好，尤其是由年轻技术创始人组成的、

[原文] [Sam Altman]: no business people, seemed like a terrible idea, PG just sort of, like, willed it into existence.

[译文] [Sam Altman]: 团队里没有任何商务人员的创业公司，更被认为是馊主意。可 PG 硬是凭着意志让它成真了。

[原文] [Garry Tan]: But it also takes someone who actually... I mean, you're sort of famously, par excellence, an agentic person, like, even before we thought about agents, period. I mean, you just—

[译文] [Garry Tan]: 但这也需要有人真正去……我是说，你是出了名的、最典型的“能动型”人物，甚至早在我们开始谈论智能体之前就是如此。你就是……