Moritz Links Sequoia Edge to Founder Childhoods, Refugee Instincts

莫里茨将红杉优势归因于创始人童年经历与难民本能 红杉资本资深投资人迈克尔·莫里茨认为，顶尖创业者的动力源于童年时期的局外人情结，并警告称市场饱和已抹平了早期风投资本家曾拥有的信息优势。 迈克尔·莫里茨回顾了自己在威尔士作为犹太难民后代的成长经历，这种背景赋予了他对体制的持久怀疑和局外人思维，指引着他在数十年职业生涯中通过剖析创始人性格形成的童年期来评估创业者。他详细讲述了自己从新闻业的意外转型——在为《时代》撰写的一篇具破坏性的特写导致与史蒂夫·乔布斯关系疏远后，其记者生涯受阻——随后在唐·瓦伦丁的领导下加入红杉资本，并与道格·莱昂内合作推动了机构化运作。结合对李·艾柯卡、亚历克斯·弗格森爵士和埃隆·马斯克等人物的研究，莫里茨捍卫了历史的“伟大人物理论”，同时也承认了创造过程中具有破坏性的偏执专注。在整场对话中，他透露出持久的个人焦虑，以及无法为自己里程碑式的辉煌生涯庆祝的心态，始终对文明脆弱的安全边际保持着敏锐的警惕。 莫里茨会仔细审视创始人人生最初的14年，因为早期童年经历和被压抑的父母抱负能为洞悉其核心动机提供最可靠的窗口。 (0:00) 作为德国犹太难民的孩子成长，让他终生葆有一种环境戒备感、对体制的怀疑，以及护照永远不嫌多的处事格言。 (5:00) 像李·艾柯卡这样的高成就者，往往受到局外人心态与被边缘化感觉的驱使，且这种感受在取得巨大财富和成功后依然存在。 (17:33) 提出“如果重来你会有何不同做法？”这类心理层面的问题，能绕过创始人排练过的宣讲套路，揭示其基本价值观和情感真实度。 (20:00) 莫里茨通过抵抗者、沉默的大多数和合作者这三种原型来看待极端逆境下的人类行为，并指出历史暴行的发生主要是因为大多数人保持沉默。 (26:03)

Michael Moritz attributes both extraordinary drive and institutional resilience to formative childhood imprinting and the permanent vigilance of an outsider, arguing that generational achievement in business and art demands monomaniacal focus while exacting heavy personal trade-offs. Formative Childhood Imprints and Outsider Psychology (0:00) Grounded in his upbringing in Wales as the child of German-Jewish refugees, Moritz views an individual's first fourteen years as the definitive window establishing lifelong emotional wiring, habits, and resilience. To illustrate how early temperament influences survival, he contrasts his paternal grandfather—a decorated Bavarian judge who placed conservative faith in German state institutions and his civil service pension until he was deported and killed—with his maternal grandfather, a nearly blind cattle trader who survived by his wits and escaped Germany seventy-two hours before World War II began. Moritz turned this biographical inquiry into his core diligence framework at Sequoia Capital, noting that because founders in their early twenties lack professional track records, probing their childhoods reveals their true psychological engines, outsider chips, and responses to the unfulfilled ambitions of their parents. The Cost of Monomania and Singular Leadership (36:58) Moritz argues that creating enduring work requires ruthless monomania that deliberately locks out personal distractions. Citing Cyril Connolly's aphorism that 'the greatest enemy of good art is the pram in the hall,' he points to German-British painter Frank Auerbach, who maintained a monastic painting routine 364 days a year for decades, rarely left his studio, and never visited his wife's coastal residence. Firmly endorsing the 'great person theory' of history, Moritz highlights leaders like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk for their rare ability to persuade others to execute seemingly impossible, multi-industry feats. However, he rejects uncritical hero worship, observing that world-changing creators are invariably flawed individuals whose singular obsession frequently fractures personal relationships. Venture Capital Evolution and Organizational Endurance (41:04) Hired by Don Valentine in 1985 despite lacking an engineering degree or operating background, Moritz developed his investing instincts through direct immersion alongside Valentine and Pierre Lamond. He expresses deep skepticism that an inexperienced outsider could replicate that path today, noting that the historic advantages of early-stage venture capital—imperfect information, local Silicon Valley networks, and intimate founder relationships—have been severely diluted by global information parity and market congestion. During his tenure leading Sequoia from the mid-1990s to 2012, Moritz institutionalized a day-zero mindset, expanded globally into China, and prioritized fiduciary duty to non-profit endowments. To sustain partnerships over decades, he drew lessons from co-authoring a book with former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, emphasizing behind-the-scenes pastoral support, individual motivation, and deliberate mutual tolerance between divergent personalities. Linguistic Compression and Post-Sequoia Renewal (63:40) After stepping down from Sequoia due to health concerns, Moritz chose a complete departure from leadership to avoid hovering over his successors, shifting his time toward philanthropy, writing, and co-founding The San Francisco Standard. He designed the publication to prove that local journalism can operate as an independent, commercially viable business without proprietorial interference. Across both journalism and investment memos, Moritz champions linguistic compression, arguing that a wide vocabulary allows complex, layered thoughts to be distilled into their essential elements, producing an unmistakable human voice that cuts through generic, synthetic content. Moritz rejects the assumption of guaranteed historical progress, warning that the boundary separating civil society from barbarism remains fragile across eras. Reflecting on his own inability to savor past successes—a posture inherited from his mother's perpetual anticipation of disaster—he concludes that enduring fulfillment ultimately rests in personal tolerance, family bonds, and the modest duty to leave institutions slightly improved.

前红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）合伙人迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）认为，个体的终极驱动力、危机本能与判断力均源于早年童年的情感烙印；在风险投资与组织建设中，真正的常青成就不仅依赖于近乎偏执的绝对专注，更取决于独立于体制之外的生存直觉与对人性脆弱的清醒认知。 童年烙印与难民本能：危机意识与人性洞察 (0:00) 莫里茨指出，人在14岁前形成的习惯与心理基调是伴随一生的“天使与恶魔”。作为二战前逃离德国的犹太难民后代，他在威尔士的成长过程伴随着强烈的局外人意识，这种家庭背景赋予了他时刻警惕灾难降临的本能。这一生存直觉在其两位祖父截然相反的命运中得到验证：其祖父曾是一战老兵与基层法官，因过分信任国家官僚体制与退休金保障，未能及时出逃而最终罹难；而外祖父双目几近失明，在体制外以牲口贩运维生，凭借敏锐的独立生存直觉在二战爆发前整整72小时携家人成功逃离。这种家族经历让莫里茨坚信必须永远保留退路（bolt hole），也成为他日后审视世界的核心底色。 在风险投资中，莫里茨将这一生物学视角的探针对准了创业者。由于20岁出头的年轻创始人缺乏成年职业履历，深入探究其前14年的童年经历与父母“未竟之志”，成为洞察其内在韧性与真实心理结构最有效的途径。莫里茨在面试中最看重的问题是询问对方“如果有机会，会做出何种不同的选择”，以此穿透精心准备的话术，借由受访者对过往耻辱或悔恨的真实情绪反应，拼凑出对方最本质的品格拼图。 极权阴影与人性光谱：沉默多数与媒介危机 (26:03) 透过历史透镜，莫里茨审视了人在极权与危机面前的道德光谱。他回顾了曾照料其父亲长大的巴伐利亚天主教女佣安娜（Anna），在纳粹统治的高压恐怖下，安娜与其丈夫始终坚定地为莫里茨家族提供避难庇护，展现了不屈服于外部环境的绝对道德操守。莫里茨借用法国二战剧集《一个法国村庄》的原型分析指出，在面对暴政时，人类社会通常分化为极少数坚决的抵抗者（如安娜，占比可能仅1%）、主动依附体制的合作者，以及绝大多数选择随波逐流、明哲保身的沉默者；历史性灾难的发生往往不是因为恶人占据多数，而是因为大众的普遍沉默。 这一观察直接映射至当下的现代社会。莫里茨对欧美弱势族裔的安全现状表达了深切忧虑，认为极右翼势力的抬头根源于被经济边缘化群体的绝望，并被威权民粹政客恶意利用。他强调，当代智能手机与互联网平台的算法机制将公众的愤怒货币化，极大地催化了谣言与极端意识形态的传播，其破坏社会理性的机制犹如1930年代广播被法西斯宣传垄断的超级演化版。 创投范式与常青之道：非传统路径与伟大人物 (41:04) 1985年唐·瓦伦丁（Don Valentine）力排众议将毫无工程与运营背景的莫里茨招入红杉资本，践行了一种不拘一格将外来者直接推入深水区自行摸索的投资哲学生死观。莫里茨直言，这种草莽跃升在当今创投市场已极难重现：40年前由于信息匮乏与地理隔绝，身处硅谷核心的投资人能够与创始人建立极为亲密的直连关系；而在当下，全球信息高度透明，资本过度拥挤碎片化，早期机构的传统护城河已被严重侵蚀。 在执掌红杉期间，莫里茨与合伙人道格·莱昂内（Doug Leone）始终践行“以明天为始（Day-Zero）”的危机感，积极拓展中国、以色列业务及Sequoia Heritage资产管理平台，并严守对非营利出资人的受托人道德，曾耗费十年精力将濒临亏损的基金挽回至平盘。莫里茨坚信历史的“伟大人物理论”，指出无论是史蒂夫·乔布斯，还是被其评价为或许是美国史上最伟大实业家的埃隆·马斯克，顶尖领袖凭借罕见的帝国雄心与说服力，能够跨越完全不同的复杂工业领域，强行改写客观现实的轨迹。 偏执的代价与退场艺术：专注、写作与宽容 (36:58) 莫里茨探讨了卓越成就背后残酷的心理机制。他援引英国作家西里尔·康诺利“门厅里的婴儿车是优质艺术的最大敌人”这一典故，指出无论创业还是艺术创作，产生传世杰作必须依托完全排除干扰的绝对偏执（monomania）。正如英国画家弗兰克·奥尔巴赫（Frank Auerbach）几十年如一日拒绝休假与繁琐社交、将全部生命献给画布一样，这种极致专注往往不可避免地以牺牲家庭与人际关系为代价值。 在因健康原因卸任红杉领导权后，莫里茨奉行彻底退出管理（cold turkey）的原则，避免为后继团队留下阴影，转而投身写作、慈善及创立独立地方媒体《旧金山旗帜报》（The San Francisco Standard），探索地方新闻的商业可行性与编辑独立性。在生成式AI制造的大量平庸文字冲击下，莫里茨重申具有鲜明作者独特声音的高密度表达愈显珍贵。他在暮年体会到，摆脱外部苛责期待以成为真实的自己是一生的抗争，而生命最终沉淀下的非凡价值，恰恰是对自身微小认知的清醒接纳，以及对他人缺点的深深宽容（Tolerance）。 迈克尔·莫里茨的自省揭示了一个核心悖论：驱使顶级投资者与企业家攀登巅峰的“局外人危机感”与“绝对偏执”，往往伴随着终生难以消解的不安全感与苛刻自我评价。尽管他对技术迭代速度与宏观政治保持着冷静甚至悲观的审视，但他最终将生活重心转移至家庭纽带与公民责任，表明在狂热追逐商业帝国的征程之外，学会在制度与人性脆弱处留有余地，才是对抗历史动荡的终极锚点。

## Background 本期节目由商业播客网络 Colossus 旗下的《Invest Like the Best》于 2026 年 9 月 16 日发布，主持人为帕特里克·奥肖内西（Patrick O'Shaughnessy）。节目围绕红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）传奇领导者迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）的新回忆录《异乡人》（Ausländer）展开，重点探讨了他逃离纳粹德国的犹太难民家族史对其性格的深远塑造、他数十年间探寻创业者童年经历的方法论，以及他与史蒂夫·乔布斯、唐·瓦伦丁、亚历克斯·弗格森和埃隆·马斯克等传奇人物的交集与反思。 ## TL;DR 迈克尔·莫里茨回顾了成长于威尔士难民家庭的边缘体验，阐述了这种与生俱来的危机感如何促使他形成探究创业者 14 岁前童年烙印的独特洞察方法。他深入复盘了自己的职业生涯，包括早年记者经历对凝练表达的训练、唐·瓦伦丁力排众议雇佣非技术出身的他、带领红杉资本进行全球化扩张与文化塑造，以及从曼联功勋主帅亚历克斯·弗格森身上学到的领导艺术。对话中，莫里茨剖析了伟大创作者普遍具备的“单一偏执（monomania）”特质及其沉重代价，表达了对埃隆·马斯克等推动历史进程之“伟人”的惊叹，并审慎乐观地看待 AI 对就业与创新的深远重构。退居管理二线后，他将精力投向慈善、非虚构写作与创办《旧金山旗帜报》，并在对历史的宏观审视下坦承个人的微不足道，强调唯有家庭温暖与对人性的包容才是人生的终极锚点。 ## Atmosphere & style 整场对话沉静、清醒且带有浓厚的自省意味，完全褪去了硅谷顶级投资人惯有的说教与自我标榜。莫里茨以近乎冷酷的诚实解剖自己的不安全感与“从不为成就感到骄傲”的心理宿命，在谈及父母经历与家庭情感时流露出深沉而内敛的脆弱。主持人帕特里克·奥肖内西以极高的同理心和精准的提问层层剥开话题，使整场播客如同一场穿越家族创伤、商业传奇与终极人生的深夜哲学对话。 ## Bulletin - `02:16` 前红杉资本负责人迈克尔·莫里茨出版回忆录《Ausländer》，探讨其作为德裔犹太难民后代在威尔士成长的边缘感，以及代际创伤如何塑造其终身警惕与求生直觉。 - `15:08` 莫里茨分享其核心尽调方法论：聚焦创始人14岁前的童年经历，通过询问“若能重来会改变什么”以探寻个体的底层道德感与动机源泉。 - `44:00` 回顾红杉岁月，莫里茨指出早期风投依赖信息高度不对称与硅谷地理红利，当今早期投资因信息平权和资本过度拥挤已发生根本性结构转变。 - `52:57` 莫里茨强调自己是历史“伟人理论”的信徒，认为马斯克是美国史上最伟大的实业家之一，并对AI长期的经济与岗位重塑效应持理性审慎乐观态度。 ## Key takeaways - `02:16` 个体在14岁前吸收的家庭微气候与无意识烙印，构成了成年后终生相随的“天使与魔鬼”。 - `04:30` 德裔犹太难民的家庭背景赋予莫里茨强烈的局外人心态与“靠机智求生”的危机预案本能，护照与避难所（bolt hole）成为其底层安全感象征。 - `07:35` 祖父笃信体制与养老金导致迟疑遇难，而外祖父凭借市井商业直觉在二战爆发前72小时惊险逃生，二者命运对照印证了局外人敏锐嗅觉的生死差距。 - `13:30` 现代互联网和移动通信算法放大虚假模因与极端言论，其机制与1930年代德国收音机普及被极端宣传垄断如出一辙，严重破坏政治温和派土壤。 - `15:08` 审视创始人14岁前的经历能透视其“未竟的人生”与深层动机，刻在童年骨髓里的边缘感是驱动年轻创业者早期破局的核心燃料。 - `20:00` 评估创始人如同画布作画，通过离散细节拼图并追问“若能重来会改变什么”，能够直击其道德罗盘与内心深处的羞耻感。 - `25:35` 极度危机面前，主动挺身而出的“抵抗者”永远不足1%，历史灾难的降临往往是因为绝大多数普通人因自保而选择沉默。 - `27:36` 莫里茨坦言骨子里缺乏享受成功的能力，这源于母亲终其一生的末日恐慌预警与对其成就的极致怀疑。 - `33:30` 为《时代》特刊撰写乔布斯小传因纽约编辑部恶意改稿引发二人关系彻底破裂，这也让莫里茨直视天才瑕疵，拒绝将任何伟人神化。 - `36:35` 非凡事物的诞生往往依赖于创造者“单一偏执”（Monomania）的狂热专注，但这种极致专注常以牺牲家庭与人际关系为代价。 - `41:04` 唐·瓦伦丁力排众议雇佣记者出身的莫里茨，证明光鲜的科技高管或工程背景绝非优秀早期风险投资人的必要条件。 - `46:44` 掌舵红杉资本的核心原则是“实力永远只取决于下一笔投资”，坚守受托人底线并花费10年将折价基金净值拉回本金。 - `50:00` 从曼联传奇教练弗格森爵士身上提炼的领导艺术在于：不追求被讨好或被恐惧，而在镁光灯之外、球员至暗时刻给予深层支持与包容。 - `52:57` 坚定信奉历史的“伟人理论”，认为极少数非凡个体始终在推动历史进程，亚洲创业者与AI杠杆正在改写商业帝国扩张速度。 - `01:00:36` 在低劣AI文本泛滥的时代，卓越写作的不可替代性在于字里行间能够让读者清晰听到“作者独一无二、不容错认的声音”。 - `01:03:40` 卸任红杉领导岗位必须采取彻底让路的断崖式退出；创办《旧金山旗帜报》旨在证明地方新闻业不仅能实现商业盈利，还能填补中间偏右的理性视角。 - `01:06:54` 育儿哲学的核心在于为孩子注入自信与自由感；而凝练写作的本质来自于广博词汇储备与底层的精准信息蒸馏能力。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### `02:16` 一个人从何处结束，另一个人又从何处开始 帕特里克·奥肖内西（Patrick O'Shaughnessy）在开场引述了迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）新回忆录《异乡人》（*Ausländer*）中极其触动人心的一个核心命题：“一个人究竟在何处结束，另一个人又从何处开始？”（Where does one person end and the next person begin?）这本书深入剖析了家族历史、血脉传承以及先辈遭遇对个体塑造的深远影响。奥肖内西指出，无论是从人性的本质、基因与环境（先天与后天）的博弈，还是从为人父母的角度来看，这都是一个发人深省的问题。 莫里茨坦言，撰写这本关于家族过去、尤其是关于父母的回忆录，带来了一个他未曾预料到的馈赠：他终于真正理解了自己究竟是谁，以及自己为何会成为今天的模样。通过深挖童年早期的记忆、家庭氛围以及成长环境，他看清了自己性格与反应模式的底层根源。在莫里茨看来，每个父母都会在潜移默化中给孩子打上无法磨灭的烙印。尤其是孩子长到 12、13 或 14 岁之前的那些成长期，无论是有意识还是无意识吸收的一切，都会终生相伴，化作一个人后半生必须面对与共处的“天使与魔鬼”（both the angels and demons）。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 莫里茨家族代际印记传递机制 accDescr: 展示难民背景与家庭微气候如何在早期形成个体的生存直觉与性格底色 subgraph Heritage["历史漩涡与代际渊源"] A["逃离纳粹德国的历史创伤"] B["威尔士的边缘客居环境"] end subgraph Transmission["无声的日常传递"] C["极少讲述宏大苦难往事"] D["日常行为与高度警惕的神态"] end subgraph Imprint["14岁前的性格烙印"] E["靠机智与本能求生"] F["对潜在危机的高度防备"] G["终生相随的坚韧与内驱力"] end Heritage --> Transmission Transmission --> Imprint ``` ### `04:30` 威尔士的异乡人与烙印在骨子里的生存直觉 莫里茨在数十年的投资与招募生涯中，最著名的一个习惯就是刨根问底地探寻创业者 14 岁之前的童年经历。奥肖内西好奇，当莫里茨将这个锋利的审查工具对准自己时，他究竟发现了什么。莫里茨解释道，他生长于 20 世纪 60 和 70 年代的威尔士，家庭成员全是逃离纳粹德国的犹太难民。难民本就是社会的绝对少数派，而在当年的威尔士，德裔犹太难民更是“少数派中的少数派”（a minority within a minority）。莫里茨自嘲说，今天外界看他不过是一个“年迈的白人男性”，认为他绝不属于少数族裔，但“局外人”的感受完全取决于个体内心，而非外在的社会标签。 他的父母于 20 世纪 30 年代逃离德国，并未进过集中营。出于对真正从死亡集中营幸存下来之人的敬畏，他的父母极力回避使用“幸存者”（survivor）这个字眼，更愿意称自己为难民。然而，在莫里茨身上，那种必须不惜一切代价活下去的强烈求生冲动被完全保留了下来。这种心态意味着个体必须“靠机智与本能生活”（living by your wits），时刻对周遭他人的真实意图保持敏锐的怀疑，警惕灾祸何时会从何处降临并提前设防。这种在危机边缘如影随形的家庭背景，赋予了他一种若非置身其中便无法获得的坚韧毅力（grit）与行动驱动力。 这种传承并非来自父母床头的受难演说。莫里茨强调，父母生前几乎从不向他细述过去的惨烈细节；直到他动笔撰写本书前，他对具体往事知之甚少，仅了解那段残酷历史的粗略轮廓。这种精神转移完全是通过日复一日的言行举止与日常微气候渗透进来的——那种“毁灭从未走远”（doom was not very far away）的隐秘氛围，以及在历史浩劫之后，必须时刻保持机警以渡过日常生活险滩的戒备神态。 ### `07:35` 截然不同的命运：留在德国与选择离开的两位祖父 奥肖内西引述了书中最具戏剧张力且令人唏嘘的一组对比：莫里茨的两位祖父在面临纳粹风暴初起时，做出了截然不同的抉择。这一案例精准展现了局外人直觉的敏锐与迟钝所带来的生死差距。 莫里茨首先回顾了他的祖父（父亲一方）。他曾是德国南部巴伐利亚省的一名基层公务员法官，曾在一战极其惨烈的凡尔登战役中幸存，并荣获铁十字勋章。他骨子里极度信奉德国国家机器的稳定与权威，认为国家能够提供绝对的安全保障。1933 年纳粹上台后，他失去了公职。但他天性保守、谨小慎微，对国家的韧性抱有极高幻想，坚信这场政治风暴终将过去；此外，政府发放的公务员养老金是他生存的重要经济来源。在这些因素的叠加下，他对离开德国犹豫不决，直到关口收紧。在纳粹统治下，离境不仅需要他国接纳，还得被纳粹当局剥削巨额的“帝国出境税”（Reich Flight Tax）。最终，这位笃信国家体制的祖父与妻子被强制押送遣往东方，自此在历史长河中彻底消失。 相比之下，莫里茨的外祖父（母亲一方）则来自完全不同的社会阶层。莫里茨坦言，外祖父在他大约 16 岁时去世，自己年轻轻狂时并未能深刻参透老人的生存智慧。外祖父是一名牛牲畜贩子——这是当年德国少数允许犹太人从事的职业之一。他年轻时视力便几乎丧失，到了莫里茨见到他时已经完全双目失明。然而，在德国西北部的偏远乡村里，这位近乎盲人的外祖父凭着敏锐的生存嗅觉、市井智慧与交易本能，硬生生在一片凶险中为全家闯出了一条体面的谋生之路。 - **家庭身份认同**：20 世纪 60 至 70 年代成长于威尔士的德裔犹太难民家庭，兼具多重少数派边缘身份。 - **父母流亡节点**：父母于 1930 年代离开德国，生前克制使用“幸存者”称谓，但将生存危机感融入生活细节。 - **祖父命运对照**： - 祖父：巴伐利亚基层法官，一战凡尔登幸存者，获铁十字勋章，深信国家体制与退休金保障，因迟疑滞留，最终被驱逐至东部遇难。 - 外祖父：德国西北部乡村牛贩，患有严重视力障碍并在晚年全盲，凭借商业机警与市井本能保障了家庭的生计与生存。 ### `10:00` 逃离纳粹、永远的避难所与安全感的缺失 迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）回顾了祖父当年惊险逃离纳粹统治的经历。他的祖父非常有江湖智慧（streetwise），极具创业精神，从不需要依附于任何国家退休金制度，始终凭借自身能力自食其力并规划未来。在第二次世界大战爆发前夕，祖父带着祖母在战争打响前仅仅 72 小时逃离了险境——哪怕再耽搁 72 小时，他们也将难逃厄运。这段家族记忆给莫里茨留下了不可磨灭的印记。他直言，这种本能未必适用于他漫长职业生涯中接触的其他人，但对他个人而言影响深远，尤其是在当下美国与西欧日渐严峻的社会氛围中：“你必须时刻准备好一个避难所（bolt hole），一旦局势彻底恶化、烈火烧得过热，你得有地方可逃。”他甚至半开玩笑地总结道，一个人“护照永远不嫌多”。 当被问及对当前世界格局的看法时，莫里茨直言不讳地指出，当下无论是在美国还是整个西欧，少数群体都处于极度不安的境地，无论是亚裔、穆斯林、黑人还是犹太人。他强调自己并非在抱怨反犹主义，因为反犹情绪已经存在了 2500 年之久，到了 2026 年或 2030 年也不会凭空消失；正视这种现实反而让他变得更加坚韧。莫里茨用一种极度直白的概括来形容美国当下的安全感现状：在美国，真正感到绝对安全的群体只有“拥有枪支的白人基督徒”，其余所有人都会感到某种程度的不安定感——无论是在外害怕被移民海关执法局（ICE）追捕，还是去祈祷场所时必须依赖武装警察在门外站岗。 - 欧洲与美国的极右翼抬头：从英国、法国到德国萨克森州（Saxony）极右翼势力的胜选，经济困境导致数以千万计被时代抛弃的人心怀绝望，这种情绪极易被带有威权倾向的政客煽动成危险的漩涡。 - 对未来温和派力量的审视：维克托·欧尔班（Viktor Orbán）等极端势力曾遭挫败，部分地区正向政治中间派回弹；美国接下来的中期选举及随后的 18 个月将决定未来十年的生活走向，而英国极右翼代表人物奈杰尔·法拉奇（Nigel Farage）或许巅峰已过，但法国勒庞（Marine Le Pen）以及德、西等国的选举仍面临巨大挑战。 --- ### `13:30` 媒介放大器与政治极端化 莫里茨对互联网是否从根本上破坏了社会文明和政治温和性给出了肯定的回答。他认为，从古登堡印刷机诞生起，任何新型媒介的出现都会伴随这种放大效应；而现代互联网与移动通讯技术的普及，更是让虚假模因（memes）与政治影射以前所未有的速度扩散。 这本质上是 20 世纪 30 年代德国收音机普及历史的巨型放大版。当年广播电台被极端宣传、种族主义言论和高频叫嚣的谎言所垄断；如今的信息网络同样以奖励极端言论与吸睛注意力为机制，极大地破坏了政治温和派的立足空间与理性对话的可能。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 媒介技术演进与极端言论传播路径 accDescr: 展示从印刷术、1930年代广播到现代移动互联网，信息技术如何逐步放大虚假信息与政治极端主义。 subgraph Historic["传统媒介时代"] P["印刷术革新"] R["1930年代广播普及<br/>（高频谎言与极端宣传）"] end subgraph Modern["现代数字网络"] I["互联网与智能手机"] A["算法奖励注意力与极端对立<br/>（虚假迷因与政治影射）"] end P --> R R --> I I --> A ``` --- ### `15:08` 父母“未竟的人生”与 14 岁背景审讯法 谈话转入莫里茨对创始人和人性观察的核心方法。卡尔·荣格（Carl Jung）曾提出过一个著名理论——审视“父母未竟的人生”（the unlived life of the parent）。子女往往通过观察父母放弃了什么、不敢冒何种风险，进而去活出父亲或母亲未能实现的人生，从而完成与原生家庭的分离与重塑。主持人询问莫里茨是如何形成他标志性的“深挖对象前 14 年人生轨迹”的探询方法。 莫里茨回忆，这一方法的雏形始于他早年在《时代》（Time）杂志担任底特律驻地记者期间。当时他与同事合作撰写了一本关于克莱斯勒汽车公司（Chrysler）及其传奇转折人物的书。这位主角便是 20 世纪 70 年代末到 80 年代初全美家喻户晓的商界巨头李·艾柯卡（Lee Iacocca）——尽管在今天很多年轻人甚至已经无法准确念出他的姓氏。 - 艾柯卡的出身与标签：作为在宾夕法尼亚州长大的意大利移民之子，艾柯卡始终怀揣强烈的“局外人（outsider）”心态。 - 汽车产业建制派的排挤：在底特律汽车行业核心高层中，艾柯卡始终受到亨利·福特二世（Henry Ford II）等老牌建制派精英的冷眼与戒备。 - 童年烙印的投射：艾柯卡童年所遭受的歧视，使他将日后职业生涯中的种种挫折（包括未能登上福特汽车最高掌舵人宝座）全数归咎于自己“意大利移民之子”的局外人身份。 --- ### `19:00` 局外人力量与创始人的内驱力 在谈及为何投资生涯中总要不厌其烦地探究创始人前十几年的人生成长时，莫里茨给出了一个非常朴素且务实的逻辑：红杉资本接触的大多数杰出创始人来找他们时，年仅 20 岁或 21 岁。“你不可能去问一个 20 岁出头的人 50 岁时的生活经验，要了解他们，前 14 年的生活自然占据了他们生命绝大部分的比重。” 针对“那些善于利用局外人能量取得成功的人，最终是否会随着社会地位上升而‘脱离’这种心态，进而丧失饥饿感与驱动力”的疑问，莫里茨给出了否定判断： > “我不认为人们能够彻底摆脱这种心理烙印。真正发生的变化是，人们在十几岁末期、整个二十几岁以及三十岁出头时，往往会以某种极致的专注和狂热去拼命工作。” 这种刻在童年骨髓里的边缘感与局外人本能，并不会因为财富或荣誉而被彻底洗刷；它所激发的超常冲劲，正是驱动许多年轻创业者在早期突破重围的最核心燃料。 ### `20:00` 画布上的点与最具揭示性的提问 在评估创始人时，迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）并不依赖单一的公式，而是将探寻人的内在特质比作画画。他坦言自己闲暇时喜欢画画，虽然画技不高，但过程极具启发性：在空白画布的不同角落点缀看似毫无关联的笔触——这里抹一点蓝色，那里添一块棕色，最初根本看不出任何构图与轮廓，但随着无数笔触与色点的层层累积，画面的最终面貌便逐渐浮现。了解创始人的背景亦是如此，通过捕捉那些看似微小的人生细节，投资人才能在心中勾勒出一幅完整而鲜活的人物肖像。 谈及最能看透一个人本性的问题，莫里茨分享了他常问的一个杀手锏：“如果你回首过去，有机会重新选择做一件事，你会改变什么？”这一问题曾引出令人动容的瞬间。在红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）面试一位拉美裔候选人时，对方在听到这个问题后当场失声痛哭。原来，他的父亲是一名以儿子聪颖好学、成绩优异为傲的初代移民；然而这名候选人在十二岁左右时，曾与玩伴在街角杂货铺偷过糖果。杂货铺老板认识他的父亲并告了状，父亲便揪着他的耳朵一路拖回商店，勒令他当众掏空口袋赔礼道歉。那种让整个家庭和父亲蒙羞的羞耻与内疚，深深烙印在他心底数十年，成为塑造其品格的关键支点。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 面试者画像勾勒与深度洞察流程 accDescr: 展示从琐碎生活细节到核心价值观的洞察过程 subgraph Canvas ["画布隐喻：细节拼图"] A["离散的成长碎片<br/>（童年经历、家庭背景）"] --> B["看似无关的色块累积"] B --> C["完整人格肖像逐渐浮现"] end subgraph DeepQuestion ["核心追问：道德与动机"] C --> D["关键问题：<br/>若能重来，你会改做哪件事？"] D --> E["触及深层羞耻感、<br/>道德底线与真实驱动力"] end ``` --- ### `22:30` 无法挽回的年少时光：对父母迟来的理解 当主持人将这一问题抛回给莫里茨时，他坦率承认，写新书《Ausländer》的过程让他不得不正视内心长久以来的羞愧。如果生命中真有一件事能够被抹去重来，那就是他早年与父母相处时的某些言行与态度。他与父母共同生活了十六七年，年轻时因急于确立个人独立，夹杂着不可一世的傲气，经常在与父母的互动中表现得极为不逊，直到成年乃至晚年，他才真正理解父母所承受的历史重压与苦难。 莫里茨感慨，年轻时的无知与傲慢导致他未能早日读懂父母的成长烙印以及纳粹大清洗在他们身上留下的创伤痕迹。“那就是我所经历的，无可挽回，”这种对过往迟钝的悔恨，成为他撰写家族回忆录时深层的情感暗流。 --- ### `23:45` 安娜与微小的善举：巴伐利亚乡间的义人 在谈及书中普通人展现出的伟大力量时，莫里茨深情回忆了在父亲与叔叔童年时期扮演关键角色的保姆安娜（Anna）。在20世纪20年代至30年代初的慕尼黑，即便是中产或下中产家庭也会雇佣女佣来打理未机械化的繁重家务，而安娜在莫里茨祖父家中不仅负责杂务，更成为了两个孩子的精神代理母亲。安娜是一位虔诚的罗马天主教徒，后来离开莫里茨家，嫁给了一位巴伐利亚铁路工人，夫妻俩靠自己的双手在乡间一砖一瓦盖起了房子。 即便在纳粹反犹浪潮席卷德国、犹太人被视为社会毒瘤的凶险年代，安娜夫妇也从未忘记莫里茨一家。他们冒着巨大的社会与政治风险，毅然向莫里茨的祖父母、父亲和叔叔敞开家门，邀请他们到巴伐利亚乡下度假避难，并竭尽所能提供庇护。二战结束后，莫里茨的父辈第一时间重返巴伐利亚探望安娜，维系了终生不渝的深厚情谊。莫里茨少时也曾到访那所充满纳粹阴影笼罩下历史记忆的屋子，他感叹安娜就是以色列大屠杀纪念馆（Yad Vashem）所认定的“国际义人”（Righteous Among the Nations）——她拥有任谁也无法撼动、扭曲的道德罗盘。 --- ### `25:35` 抵抗者、沉默者与附逆者：远程会议室里的道德审判 受一部展现二战时期法国乡村生活经典历史剧《法兰西小镇》（*Un village français*）的启发，莫里茨探讨了人在极端危机环境下的三类群体：极少数奋力反抗的“抵抗者”（resisters）、绝大多数随波逐流的“沉默者”（the silent），以及主动迎合恶行的“附逆者”（collabos）。莫里茨透露，在 COVID-19 隔离期间的无数次长途 Zoom 视频会议中，看着屏幕上格子里的十多位熟悉的面孔与商业伙伴，他常常在脑海中默默推演一个思想实验：“如果这群人生活在20世纪40年代被占领的法国村庄，谁会保持沉默？谁会挺身反抗？谁又会沦为通敌者？” 根据莫里茨的观察，无论在何种时代或环境，拥有安娜那样不屈脊梁骨的抵抗者永远是极少数（甚至不足1%）。国家的溃败与灾难的降临，往往正是因为绝大多数人选择了沉默旁观。当被问及他职业生涯中所投资支持的杰出创业者们是否属于“抵抗者”时，莫里茨并未盲目乐观，而是谨慎地回答：“我很想这么认为，但我无法确定。” - **极度罕见的道德勇气**：面对极权或生存危机，主动抵抗的人在任何群体中都是绝对的极少数。 - **平庸之恶的土壤**：历史上的悲剧往往不是因为恶人横行，而是因为绝大多数普通人因自保而噤声。 - **创业者的道德投射**：商业上的进攻性与突破常规，并不能直接等同于面临生死道德考验时的正义骨气。 --- ### `27:36` 无法享受成功的宿命：永恒的危机感与“末日预言家”母亲 当主持人探讨其早期职业导师比尔·迪兹（Bill Deedes）以及莫里茨何时初次意识到自己“极其擅长某件事”时，莫里茨给出了一个令人意外的回答：他从未觉得自己真正擅长过任何事。这并非虚伪的谦逊，而是一种源于骨子里的自我怀疑、极度好胜心与病态危机感。他承认自己天生缺乏庆祝胜利与享受成功的能力，任何成就都会被视作理所应当或充满瑕疵。 这种心理深植于家庭遗传。莫里茨的母亲是位典型的“末日预言家”，一生都活在灾难随时降临的恐慌之中。在莫里茨的童年记忆中，早餐时的收音机新闻总是伴随着母亲对空难、地震或世界各地可怕灾难的忧虑。母亲在 COVID-19 暴发前数周离世，莫里茨甚至带着一种荒诞的黑色幽默感慨，母亲似乎“被剥夺了亲历疫情的权利”，因为这场全球大流行病正是她一生都在预言的末日现实。这种“与悬崖仅一步之遥”的紧迫感和不安感，彻底渗透进了莫里茨的基因。 面对自己的作品与成就，莫里茨永远觉得它们是未完成的、粗糙的、亟待改进的。即使在他热爱的绘画上，虽然对比十到十五年前能看到技艺的进步，但只要踏入纽约现代艺术博物馆（MoMA）或大都会艺术博物馆（The Met），站在那些真正伟大艺术家的杰作面前，内心的渺小感与挫败感便会再度将他淹没。 ### `30:00` 旁观者的距离与真正的能量来源 当被问及是否曾为自己支持或撰写过的那些商业巨擘与非凡领袖（如亚历克斯·弗格森爵士 Alex Ferguson）感到骄傲时，迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）坦率地给出了否定的回答。在他看来，这种关系本质上是一场“好奇心的探索之旅”（voyages of curiosity）。他始终将自己定位为一个旁观者，那些非凡的成就属于创造者本身，真正有资格感到自豪的也是他们自己，而不是站在场边的观察者。在宏大的历史与成就面前，人最终会被还原成一颗微不足道的尘埃。 回溯自己漫长而充满奇遇的一生，莫里茨表示，给予他最充沛精神能量的并不是那些商业上的神话，而是极具私密性质的家庭生活。他与妻子哈丽雅特（Harriet）育有两个儿子，如今孩子们都已三十多岁，其中一个儿子还让他当上了祖父。对他而言，陪伴家人、见证孩子成长以及所有与家庭相关的温暖瞬间，才是真正赋予他最深层能量的核心。 --- ### `31:14` 舰队街的工会枷锁与比尔·迪兹的跨洋建议 莫里茨在英国长大，大学毕业时一心渴望成为一名记者，梦想进入当时闻名遐迩的“舰队街”（Fleet Street）大报社。然而在五十年前，英国印刷与新闻工会对各大报业施加了近乎窒息的严苛限制。工会担心直接招收大学毕业生会剥夺十六岁高中毕业生的就业机会，因此明令禁止报社编辑直接录用应届大学毕业生。这意味着，如果莫里茨想进入《泰晤士报》（The Times）、《金融时报》（Financial Times）或《每日电讯报》（The Daily Telegraph），他必须先在偏远的地方小报熬上两三年。对于雄心勃勃且缺乏耐心的年轻人来说，这完全无法接受。 转机出现在他与《每日电讯报》时任主编比尔·迪兹（Bill Deedes）的会面上。迪兹是一位传奇人物，在早年间曾是伊夫林·沃（Evelyn Waugh）著名讽刺小说《独家新闻》（*Scoop*）中主人公的原型。迪兹善意地回复了莫里茨的求职信，并在舰队街的办公室里给了他半小时的面谈时间。莫里茨至今清晰记得那个阴雨绵绵的冬日：当他向迪兹寻求职业建议时，迪兹感慨地告诉他，自己年轻时最后悔的一件事就是没有去美国，并极力鼓励莫里茨跨过大西洋。正是这次谈话将莫里茨推向了美国。抵达美国后，毫无工作经验的他迎来了人生第一个重大突破——《时代》（Time）杂志大胆起用新人，直接破格录用了这个年仅二十二、三岁的年轻人。 --- ### `33:30` 乔布斯与《时代》杂志：“联合收割机”酿成的破裂 莫里茨加入《时代》杂志旧金山记者站三年后，决定暂时休职去撰写一本关于苹果公司的传记（即后来出版的《小国寡民：苹果电脑的私密历史》*The Little Kingdom*）。杂志有限的篇幅无法完整呈现苹果早期的私密故事，这正是莫里茨渴望深入挖掘的内容。就在休假期间，《时代》杂志编辑部打来电话，要求他为史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）撰写一篇人物小传，用于该杂志极具开创性的一期特刊——《时代》历史上唯一一次没有选人类，而是将个人电脑评为年度象征（“年度机器” Machine of the Year）。 这篇报道最终演变成一场灾难，莫里茨将其形容为一段“痛苦的过往”。当时，乔布斯深信自己即将被评为《时代》“年度风云人物”（Man of the Year）。然而，莫里茨提交的原稿进入了纽约编辑部的“联合收割机”（editorial combine harvester）式加工流程，“从收割机末端打包掉出来的干草捆，已经完全看不出最初送进去的稻草模样”。整篇报道的最终基调充斥着恶毒、刻薄与阴险。乔布斯看到报道后愤怒至极，两人的关系彻底破裂且再未修复；而莫里茨自己也对编辑部这种暗中操弄的恶劣处理手法深感幻灭与厌恶，这成为他最终离开《时代》杂志的关键原因之一。 --- ### `35:28` 拒绝神化：近距离审视下的天才瑕疵 当被问及是否对乔布斯怀有敬畏（awe）之心时，莫里茨斩钉截铁地回答“没有”。面对主持人关于他是否曾真正敬畏过任何人的追问，莫里茨解释道，现实中那些成就了惊人伟业的人，本质上都是带有严重缺陷的个体（flawed individuals）。当你有机会与他们近距离接触并真正了解他们时，你会直视这些阴暗面与缺陷，这使得任何人都不可能成为毫无保留、完美无瑕的崇拜对象。 莫里茨澄清说，这绝不代表轻视。他极其尊重并由衷钦佩乔布斯，深刻认识到乔布斯所取得的非凡成就早已超越了自己所能达到的极限，乔布斯无疑是一位英雄般的历史人物。但他亲眼见过乔布斯性格中那些更阴暗的底色（darker shades），正是这些刺目的现实，阻止了他去将对方当作不可侵犯的偶像顶礼膜拜。 --- ### `36:35` 单一偏执（Monomania）与创造的代价 对话随后切入到驱动这些伟大创造者的深层心理特质——“单一偏执”（Monomania）。莫里茨指出，在创造任何具有非凡价值的事物时（无论是一首乐曲、一本著作、一幅画作还是一家颠覆性的企业），一代又一代的创造者都展现出了完全相同的特质：对眼前目标近乎疯癫的绝对痴迷（complete obsession）。他们将外部世界的杂音与干扰彻底屏蔽，剔除一切不必要的枝节。 然而，这种偏执的代价是巨大的： - **人际关系的牺牲**：为了维持绝对的专注，他们几乎没有时间留给家庭、伴侣或朋友，沿途往往会严重伤害身边的人。 - **不可逆的人生缺憾**：许多人在生命后期回望时，往往会因为偏执带来的严重后果而产生遗憾，甚至怀疑如果重来一次是否应选择不同的活法。 - **艺术家的残酷隐喻**：莫里茨引用了英国作家伊夫林·沃的名言——“走廊里的婴儿车（the sight of the pram in the hall）是伟大艺术的最大敌人”，生动揭示了家庭温情与极致创作野心之间那份不可调和的残酷冲突。 --- ### `38:04` 弗兰克·奥尔巴赫：一年只休一天的极致画痴 为了具体阐释这种偏执，莫里茨讲述了著名英籍德裔表现主义画家弗兰克·奥尔巴赫（Frank Auerbach）的真实故事。作为逃离纳粹德国的犹太难民，奥尔巴赫在莫里茨看来一直未在美国获得应有的崇高认可。莫里茨与奥尔巴赫略有交情，亲眼见证了他对艺术堪称极端的狂热： - **一生只休一天的作息**：多年来，奥尔巴赫一年三百六十五天几乎每天都在画室作画，每年仅仅给自己放假一天——在圣诞节那一天，他会前往英格兰南海岸著名的布莱顿码头（Brighton Pier）漫步，其余三百六十四天全部雷打不动地投入创作。 - **与家庭生活的割裂**：奥尔巴赫的妻子茱莉亚（Julia）在英格兰海岸拥有一处住所。莫里茨在一次晚餐中随口询问奥尔巴赫是否常去探望妻子，奥尔巴赫竟然平淡地回答：“我从来没去过那栋房子。” - **凝固的时间感与固定的模特**：在2012或2013年左右的一次交谈中，奥尔巴赫兴奋地向莫里茨表达对纽约的赞美，称赞时代广场充满喧嚣与活力。当莫里茨惊讶地问他最近何时去过纽约时，奥尔巴赫回答：“哦，那是1967年。”此外，奥尔巴赫几十年如一日保持着固定仪式，每周让同一批固定的坐席模特（sitters）轮流来到画室，反复描摹同一批面孔，将自己的一生彻底焊死在画布与画框之内。 ### `40:00` 偏执狂与全身心投入的创作者 迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）谈及英国具象派画家弗兰克·奥尔巴赫（Frank Auerbach）长达三四十年的创作状态。奥尔巴赫对绘画拥有常人难以企及的专注与执念，他的画作需要模特长年累月地坐在画室里，其中一位模特甚至每周专门从威尼斯飞往伦敦为他做坐像，模特们将这种枯坐视为一种心理治疗；然而一旦模特迟到，奥尔巴赫就会彻底陷入精神崩溃。无论是肖像还是同一处风景，他都成百上千次地重复涂抹与重新诠释。在莫里茨看来，奥尔巴赫的一生完全是在为艺术而活，虽然他有一个儿子杰克（Jake），但在他的世界里根本没有闲暇留给艺术之外的任何琐事。 谈到是否更容易从这种“偏执狂”（monomaniacs）身上汲取能量时，莫里茨表示，生活中有不同类型的朋友是件好事——有人将自己紧紧绑在桅杆上向死而生，也有人乐于闲散漫游、随遇而安。但他坦言，自己最难相处的恰恰是那些“看起来无所事事”的人。 ### `41:04` 唐·瓦伦丁为何押注一名记者 1985 年，红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）创始人唐·瓦伦丁（Don Valentine）力排众议雇佣了莫里茨。当时红杉规模极小，所有人围坐在一张桌子旁就能坐下。莫里茨此前一直是一名记者，当他对风险投资产生浓厚兴趣后，便给硅谷的五家风投机构手写了拜访信。除瓦伦丁之外，其他四家机构全部礼貌地拒绝了他，理由惊人一致：莫里茨没有技术背景，没有工程学位，毫无硬核技术知识，也没有任何硅谷科技公司的运营经历，对方因此建议他“或许该去公关或市场营销部门找份工作”。 唯独瓦伦丁愿意在他身上冒险。瓦伦丁的逻辑非常直接：他在行业里亲眼见过许多拥有光鲜科技巨头高管背景的人转做风投后惨遭滑铁卢；与此同时，他也见识过许多非技术出身却取得巨大成功的传奇投资人。最典型的例子就是刚刚度过百岁寿辰的阿瑟·洛克（Arthur Rock）——洛克最初只是纽约精品投行 Hayden Stone 的一名投资银行家，但凭着过人胆识，他主导了“仙童半导体八叛逆”（Fairchild Semiconductor）的独立与早期融资，并在 20 世纪 60 年代参与资助了亨利·辛格尔顿（Henry Singleton）的特利丹（Teledyne）、科学数据系统（Scientific Data Systems），而后更是成为英特尔（Intel）的第一天投资人兼首任董事长，数年后又支持了苹果公司（Apple）。瓦伦丁以此告诫团队：过往背景里没有任何标签能完全预测一个人在投资领域能否成功。 当被问及当初在瓦伦丁身上看到了什么时，莫里茨幽默而务实地答道：“一份工作。” - **瓦伦丁的“反教学”风格**：瓦伦丁根本不信奉循序渐进的导师制教学，他奉行纯粹的生存法则，习惯直接把新人推入深水区，“看他们会不会被淹死”。莫里茨完全是通过在旁边观察和倾听来摸索门道，学习什么是正确的、什么是错误的决策。 - **半导体先驱皮埃尔·拉蒙德（Pierre Lamond）**：红杉内部另一位对莫里茨产生深远影响的合伙人，作为半导体产业崛起的核心人物，拉蒙德的言行也为莫里茨形成独立的投资判断提供了重要参考。 ### `44:00` 早期风投的黄金时代与当下的结构性演变 莫里茨对“外行人能成为顶级早期投资人”的现象给出了极其冷静的反思。他直言，自己当年涉足的风投行业与当今的风险投资有着天壤之别，如果在今天入行，他完全不认为自己能取得当年的成就。 在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代，早期投资拥有当下早已消逝的巨大优势。首先是**信息不对称**：在互联网诞生之前，除非身处风暴中心，否则外界根本无法获知前沿动态；而今天信息高度平权，全球任何人在同一时间都能看到同等质量的资讯。其次是**市场竞争结构**：早年没有海量机构挤占市场，个人投资者能够与创始人建立极为亲密、直接的信任纽带；而如今从天使轮合投到巨型公募基金下场，中间层层中介阻隔。第三是莫里茨恰好被抛入了全球科技创新的绝对中心——硅谷。他自嘲道：“在 80 年代中期的风险投资行业里，任何一个头脑灵光的十四五岁少年只要机敏清醒，都能取得成功。” ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 早期风投环境与现代风投环境的演变对比 accDescr: 对比20世纪80-90年代风投的低透明度、少竞争、直连创始人与现代风投的信息透明、资金泛滥与中介重重。 subgraph EarlyEra["20世纪80-90年代：莫里茨入行时期"] A1["信息极度不对称<br/>（未联网，唯近者得知）"] A2["竞争者极少<br/>（机构小，资金专注）"] A3["人际直接信任<br/>（无复杂中介，深度绑定创始人）"] A4["地理红利垄断<br/>（硅谷独占创新风暴中心）"] end subgraph ModernEra["当今风险投资环境"] B1["信息瞬时平权<br/>（全球同步掌握项目动态）"] B2["资本极度拥挤<br/>（小微基金到万亿公募全线竞争）"] B3["中介环节重重<br/>（早期关系建立难度剧增）"] B4["创新全球分散<br/>（硅谷份额相对下降）"] end EarlyEra -.->|"经历 30-40 年产业演进"| ModernEra ``` ### `46:44` 掌舵红杉资本：如履薄冰与拓展边界 莫里茨常说自己最引以为傲的投资就是“红杉资本本身”。从 1995 年前后接掌红杉，到 2012、2013 年卸任管理合伙人，他带领这家老牌机构完成了脱胎换骨的蜕变。接手之际，他脑海中唯一的准则是“绝对不要把它搞砸”（Not to screw it up）。 莫里茨确立了红杉团队的核心文化：**“我们的实力永远只取决于下一笔投资”**，任何人都不准躺在过去的功劳簿上吃老本。随着硅谷在全球初创生态中的绝对主导地位开始分流，红杉开启了激进的全球化扩张与多元化布局： 1. **开拓海外市场**：率先进入以色列，随后全力进军中国市场，抓住新经济浪潮。 2. **创立独立资管平台**：孵化红杉传承基金（Sequoia Heritage），由凯文·韦尔斯（Kevin Welles）和基思（Keith）带领这支精悍高效的团队进行长线资产管理。 莫里茨特别强调对有限合伙人（LP）的受托人责任。红杉绝大部分出资人是大学捐赠基金与非营利性慈善基金会。他痛批许多金融服务机构在客户亏损时依然旱涝保收地抽取巨额管理费：“我绝不想身处一个哪怕表现糟糕却依然能大发横财的行业，很多金融机构赚得盆满钵满，而客户的收益还不如直接买指数基金。” - **坚守底线挽回折价基金**：莫里茨与道格·莱昂内（Doug Leone）曾花费整整 10 年时间，拼尽全力将一只遭遇重创的基金净值拉回本金水准（par）。莫里茨强调，他们原本完全可以两手一摊告诉出资人“你们过去赚了那么多，认亏一只也是正常的”，但这关乎职业尊严，“这绝不是我们的行事风格，这是一件关乎骄傲的事”。 ### `49:49` 团队协作的精髓与弗格森爵士的领导艺术 谈及与性格迥异的道格·莱昂内数十年的成功搭档，莫里茨总结的核心词汇是“包容”（Tolerance）。在团队中并肩作战，关键在于准确理解身边同事的深层心理诉求与驱动力，并主动去满足这种诉求，尤其是面对性格特质、思维回路与自己截然相反的人。莫里茨坦言，如果换到今天，自己在团队组建与领导力方面会比二三十年前成熟老练得多。 这种对个体动机的洞察，在很大程度上得益于莫里茨与曼联功勋主帅亚历克斯·弗格森爵士（Sir Alex Ferguson）长达数年的深度交流与合著经历（两人曾合作出版《领导力》（*Leading*）一书）。弗格森最卓越的才能之一，正是能够精确看穿更衣室里每一名性格各异的顶级球员内心深处到底由什么所驱动，并据此因材施教地激发其最大潜能。 ### `50:00` 亚历克斯·弗格森爵士的领导艺术与红魔曼联的常青之道 在谈及传奇教练亚历克斯·弗格森（Sir Alex Ferguson）时，迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）澄清了一个常见的误解：外界常常认为弗格森冷酷无情、作风强硬，但这只是他管理方式的一个截面。弗格森既不想成为一个让人盲目崇拜、讨所有人喜欢的人，也不想成为一个纯粹让人心惊胆战的暴君；他唯一追求的是赢得麾下球员发自内心的尊重。 很多外人未能看到的是，在球员陷入人生最灰暗、脆弱甚至落魄到“比蛇腹还低”的至暗时刻，弗格森总会第一时间出现在他们身边给予支持。莫里茨举了一个极具代表性的例子：当年大卫·贝克汉姆（David Beckham）在世界杯比赛中吃到红牌被罚下场，全英国媒体掀起了铺天盖地的口诛笔伐与冷嘲热讽，斥责贝克汉姆鲁莽愚蠢。当时弗格森特意亲自前往机场接机，因为他深知此时此刻这个年轻小伙子最需要的是有人搭一把肩膀、给予安慰。这种在镁光灯之外、摄像机拍不到的地方默默发生的事情，才是弗格森真正的领导力精髓。 莫里茨透露，自己之所以选择与弗格森合著《领导力》（*Leading*），是因为外界一直催促他写一本关于硅谷的书，但他早对这个选题感到厌倦。从红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）的角度来看，他真正着迷的是两件事： 1. **打造基业长青的投资机构**：硅谷有太多风投机构红极一时，随后却因为创始合伙人反目成仇、利益争夺而迅速分崩离析。红杉如何打破这一宿命？ 2. **识别能历经数十年风雨而不倒的企业**：什么样的组织能在时代变迁中持续屹立？ 莫里茨从小就是曼联球迷。弗格森自 1986 年接手当时陷入低谷的曼联，直到 2013 年功成身退，在长达 26 个赛季里铸就了几乎无可复制的辉煌战绩。当莫里茨作为隐形撰稿人完成书稿并给红杉的公关负责人审读时，那位负责人困惑地说：“我完全分不清书里哪部分是你写的，哪部分是弗格森说的。”莫里茨回答道：“这就对了，这正是我要的效果。” --- ### `52:57` 历史的“伟人理论”与埃隆·马斯克 关于塑造历史的动力究竟在于体制还是超级领袖，莫里茨毫不犹豫地表示自己是“伟人理论”（Great Man Theory）的坚定信徒。无论是在商业领域（如李·艾柯卡、史蒂夫·乔布斯、埃隆·马斯克），还是在政治舞台与军事战场上，历史的进程始终是由极少数卓越的个体所推动的： - **正反两面的巨大影响力**：历史上不乏带来灾难的独裁暴君，在数十年间将数千万人拖入深渊；但在积极的一面，伟大的领袖能够激发周围人的潜能，说服团队去达成外界认为绝不可能做到的奇迹。 - **对埃隆·马斯克的评价**：莫里茨作为马斯克早期创立 X.com 时的投资人，直言马斯克很可能是“美国历史上最伟大的实业家”。尽管马斯克饱受争议，但抛开政治偏见、仅从历史与投资的视角审视，莫里茨借用英国俗语表示自己被彻底“震惊得目瞪口呆”（gobsmacked）——一个人能在航天、电动汽车等多个完全不相干的硬核领域同时取得如此体量的成就，在商业史上绝无仅有。 --- ### `55:00` AI 浪潮、超级创业者与技术巨变下的乐观主义 随着现代科技与人工智能工具的普及，顶尖创业者获得了前所未有的杠杆率。在被问及未来的伟大创业者是否会摆脱单一领域的偏执狂模式、跨界掌控多个庞大商业帝国时，莫里茨指出这种现象在亚洲早已普遍发生： - **亚洲企业的庞大野心**：在中国和韩国，许多企业的创始人拥有极强的扩张雄心。例如小米从 2010 年作为 Android 系统的定制与手机制造商起步，如今制造的电动汽车在性能、品质及综合体验上甚至敢于对标保时捷。极具天资的顶尖人才一旦掌握强大的新型技术工具，其产能和掌控力将成倍放大。 - **超乎想象的资本裂变与扩张速度**：莫里茨坦言，当下 AI 初创公司的爆发式增长速度已经彻底超出了他过去的理解范畴。他回忆道，在互联网爆发初期，知名创业家汤姆·西贝尔（Tom Siebel）的公司市值达到百亿美元时曾感慨“那是 100 亿美元还是巨款的年代”；后来到了 Google 与 Facebook 上市时，人们感叹“那是 1000 亿美元才算巨款的年代”；而如今，仅成立五六年的 AI 公司估值便以数千亿乃至万亿美元计，这在过去是无法想象的。 面对 AI 是否会带来人类末日的恐慌，莫里茨表现出了理性且审慎的乐观： - **历史末日论的镜鉴**：莫里茨指出，历史上的技术飞跃往往伴随着灾难预言。第一颗原子弹爆炸时，世人曾预言世界末日即将来临，但近一个世纪过去，全面核毁灭并未发生；20 世纪 70 年代基因工程革命爆发时，舆论曾恐慌科学家将在实验室创造出怪物主宰地球，如今也未曾应验。 - **就业与重构的规律**：AI 无疑会在特定行业带来剧烈冲击与痛苦阵痛，但纵观近两三百年的技术革命史，没有任何一项重大技术进步从长期来看会导致整体就业人口减少。每次浪潮中虽然旧岗位消失，却会催生出大量今天连名字都无法定义的全新工种与经济需求。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 技术演进与经济就业规律 accDescr: 展示技术变革中短期冲击与长期繁荣的演进模式 subgraph TechDisruption["技术飞跃与短期冲击"] A["颠覆性技术涌现 (核能/基因工程/AI)"] --> B["公众末日恐慌与行业阵痛"] B --> C["特定岗位被替代与流程重塑"] end subgraph LongTermAdjustment["长期演进与价值创造"] C --> D["超级创业者杠杆率指数级放大"] D --> E["催生此前无法定义的全新产业与职业"] E --> F["长期总就业岗位与经济规模持续增长"] end ``` --- ### `01:00:36` 垃圾信息洪流中的卓越写作 针对主持人提出 AI 能够极速生成海量文本、导致互联网充斥低劣内容（AI Slop），因而人类卓越写作的价值反而逆势上涨的观点，莫里茨给出了关于“何为卓越写作”的核心定义： 卓越的文字不依赖辞藻的堆砌或程式化的技巧，它最不可替代的特质，就是让读者在字里行间能够毫不含糊地听见**“作者独一无二、不容错认的声音”（the unmistakable voice of the author）**。这种饱含个人烙印、真诚视角与沉淀思考的文字，才是穿透平庸信息噪音的终极力量。 ### `01:00:00` 成为真实的自我与母亲投下的阴影 迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）将写作的探索与人生旅程相提并论。他认为无论是弄清自己一生想做什么，还是决定在纸上写下什么，最艰难的事都在于充分倾听并贴近自己的内心世界与内在声音，从而战胜外界期望带来的巨大压力。主持人帕特里克·奥肖内西（Patrick O'Shaughnessy）提到了神话学者约瑟夫·坎贝尔（Joseph Campbell）的名言——“成为你自己是这一生最大的特权，也是最艰难的挑战”。莫里茨对此深表赞同，并坦言自己至今并不觉得自己真正做到了这一点。当被问及是什么阻碍了他成为真实的自我时，莫里茨剖析了自己性格中的弱点：他总是过于在意外部施加的压力与他人的期望，难以彻底放任自我去自由奔跑。 谈到为何如此高自知力的人却始终给自己打出严苛的低分时，莫里茨沉思后将根源归结为“母亲的阴影”。他的母亲虽然激发了他对艺术等诸多领域的兴趣，却总是在鸡蛋里挑骨头。无论事情多好、他取得了多大成就，母亲眼中永远只有瑕疵。莫里茨回忆起当年雅虎（Yahoo）上市时英国媒体对他连篇累牍的报道，母亲看后坚信他一定是个“骗子”，并且万分确信警察迟早会找上门逮捕他，因为在她看来，合法做生意绝不可能参与并取得这样的成果。莫里茨表示，到了那个阶段，母亲的反应带给他的更多是好笑而非伤害，因为这早已成为生活的一部分；但他也不得不承认这种童年印记会伴随终生——“你永远无法把小男孩从成年人的体内剥离出去”。 - 约瑟夫·坎贝尔名言：“成为你自己是这一生最大的特权”（The privilege of a lifetime is becoming who you are），莫里茨称这是每个人一生及落笔写作时最核心的挣扎。 - 莫里茨坦言自己余生会努力尝试摆脱外界期待，但始终摆脱不了追求外界认可的倾向。 - 母亲对成功的极致怀疑：在雅虎上市并引发全英关注时，母亲认定他是罪犯、甚至随时会惊动警方。 --- ### `01:03:40` 退出红杉资本、专注的代价与《旧金山旗帜报》 谈及因患病而卸任红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）领导职务的经历，莫里茨给出了极为决绝的原则：领导者一旦出于任何原因决定不再领导，就必须彻底让出道路，绝不能在管理会议中恋栈不去。因此他选择了“断崖式退出”（cold turkey），虽然仍作为独立贡献者协助部分被投公司，但彻底退出了管理核心。掌舵红杉期间的生活是彻头彻尾的“偏执与单向度沉迷”（monomania and obsessions），每一周的每一天都被完全填满。退下来后，他终于有时间重新拾起写作；大约25年前他与妻子创立了慈善基金会，如今投入了更多心力；近年来他还与合伙人格里芬·达夫尼（Griffin Gaffney）在生活了近50年的旧金山创办了媒体《旧金山旗帜报》（The San Francisco Standard），旨在帮助这座城市复苏并重新繁荣，同时他还在红杉传承基金（现已独立）担任顾问。 莫里茨坦承，这种多元的生活既让人满足又让人感到某种空虚，因为它不再具备以往将所有精力聚焦于单一目标的极致痴迷。尽管他怀念全情投入的“心流”状态，但他深知自己绝不愿再回到过去的生存模式中。如今的生活更加简单，因为他拥有了日程安排的完全自主权，而无需受外部力量支配。对于创办《旧金山旗帜报》，莫里茨阐述了三项核心原则： 1. **商业可持续性**：坚持不以非营利机构的形式运营，而是要证明地方新闻业完全能够成为一门实现盈利的商业实体。 2. **高质量本地信息源**：为旧金山及整个湾区关心这座城市的人群提供充满活力、有趣、引人入胜且高度可靠的新闻来源。 3. **新闻独立与温和立场**：绝不对新闻报道施加任何所有者层面的干预（即便是关于莫里茨本人、角度并不讨喜的报道也照常刊登）；而在观点与思想版块，该报保持中间偏右（center of right of center）的理性视角，填补旧金山极度稀缺的声音。 --- ### `01:06:54` 育儿哲学、历史的脆弱性与人生的终极意义 当主持人谈及莫里茨的新书《局外人》（Ausländer），并问到探讨家族历史对育儿的启发时，主持人提到自己的两个孩子分别是12岁和10岁，正接近莫里茨所说的“性格被彻底铭刻”的窗口末期。莫里茨幽默地打趣道：“帕特里克，你已经造成伤害了，他们终身受损了。”谈到育儿的核心理念，莫里茨给出了极度精炼的答案：为孩子注入自信。为人父母最关键的职责在于赋予孩子自信与自由感，并尽量克制自己苛求批判、横加指责的冲动。 从个人家族从纳粹德国逃亡的历史延伸到更宏大的世界图景，莫里茨警告人类切不可将“积极的进步”视作理所当然。纵观千百年的历史，在俄国、中国、伊朗、非洲和印度等地，数以百万计的人群遭遇了无数骇人听闻的灾难与倒退。在莫里茨看来，人与野兽之间的界限微乎其微，全人类共同的永恒挑战在于如何“坚守人性，而不蜕化为野兽”。回首研究家族血泪史并完成撰书的全过程，他认为自己获得了对自我更深层的理解。在人生的终极审视下，真正重要的只有两件事：一是珍惜与所在乎的人之间的关系；二是清醒认识到无论个人取得了多么辉煌的成就，个体在历史长河中都是彻底微不足道的，我们唯一能做的就是尽力让自己涉足过的世界比最初接手时变得美好一点点。 --- ### `01:09:00` 下一本关于伊朗的书、凝练表达与词汇量的力量 谈到下一本可能撰写的著作，莫里茨透露自己一直对20世纪40年代的伊朗（波斯）抱有强烈的好奇心，并进行了大量阅读。他认为那个时代伊朗本土人物与外部势力人物之间的剧烈碰撞，极其深刻地解释了今日世界的地缘格局。他构想的形式并非纯粹的非虚构作品，而是非虚构与虚构小说的融合，核心主题在于描摹来自完全不同世界背景、因彼此无法理解而走向悲剧碰撞的历史人物群像。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 莫里茨的信息蒸馏机制与词汇深度模型 accDescr: 展示莫里茨从记者训练中获得的凝练表达能力，以及庞大词汇量如何支撑复杂思想的极简输出 subgraph Input["思维输入与训练"] A["新闻记者实战训练"] B["海量深度阅读积累"] end subgraph Process["核心认知机制"] C["极致蒸馏与提炼能力<br/>(保留本质，去除冗余)"] D["广博的底层词汇库<br/>(精准词义选择)"] end subgraph Output["最终表达输出"] E["极简短书面备忘录<br/>(如 Stripe 投资备忘录)"] F["深入浅出阐释复杂概念"] end A --> C B --> D C --> E D --> F ``` 随后，主持人赞叹莫里茨在撰写投资备忘录时惊人的凝练能力——比如在投资Stripe时写下的短小精悍的备忘录。莫里茨将这种将复杂事物提炼为本质、保持短小精炼的能力归功于早年的大学教育和作为记者的职业训练。当被问及这种能力是否可以后天习得时，莫里茨强调这高度依赖于阅读量和词汇储备。如果一个人长期缺乏阅读、词汇匮乏，就很难把复杂概念表达得简单清晰。他举例说明美国历任总统的常用词汇量研究：唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）的词汇量在历任总统中极低，大约只有2,400词；而贝拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）的常用词汇量约为4,500词。莫里茨指出，只有指尖掌握着海量词汇并能随心所欲挑选最精准的词汇时，人才能真正用最简单的语言表达极其复杂的思想。 --- ### `01:11:44` 最善良的举动与包容 在访谈的最后，主持人提出了节目的经典收尾问题：“别人为你做过的最善良的事情是什么？” 莫里茨没有列举商业上的提携或传奇般的帮助，而是给出了极为真挚而简短的答案：“娶了我”（Marrying me，指其妻子海伦特·格里菲思 Harriet Heyman 与他结为连理）。当主持人追问他从妻子身上学到了什么时，莫里茨用了一个核心词汇作结：“包容”（Tolerance）——这也构成了他贯穿人生、反思家庭与审视自身处境的最终注脚。二人温暖致意后，对话在莫里茨谦逊的感谢声中圆满收尾。 ## Notable quotes > `02:16` Where does one person end and the next person begin? — Patrick O'Shaughnessy > `10:00` 你必须时刻准备好一个避难所（bolt hole），一旦局势彻底恶化、烈火烧得过热，你得有地方可逃。 — Michael Moritz > `19:00` 我不认为人们能够彻底摆脱这种心理烙印。真正发生的变化是，人们在十几岁末期、整个二十几岁以及三十岁出头时，往往会以某种极致的专注和狂热去拼命工作。 — Michael Moritz > `20:00` 如果你回首过去，有机会重新选择做一件事，你会改变什么？ — Michael Moritz > `36:35` 走廊里的婴儿车（the sight of the pram in the hall）是伟大艺术的最大敌人 — Michael Moritz > `44:00` 在 80 年代中期的风险投资行业里，任何一个头脑灵光的十四五岁少年只要机敏清醒，都能取得成功。 — Michael Moritz > `46:44` 我们的实力永远只取决于下一笔投资 — Michael Moritz > `50:00` 我完全分不清书里哪部分是你写的，哪部分是弗格森说的。 — Michael Moritz > `01:00:36` 作者独一无二、不容错认的声音（the unmistakable voice of the author） — Michael Moritz > `01:00:00` 成为你自己是这一生最大的特权，也是最艰难的挑战 — Patrick O'Shaughnessy > `01:00:00` 你永远无法把小男孩从成年人的体内剥离出去 — Michael Moritz > `01:06:54` 帕特里克，你已经造成伤害了，他们终身受损了。 — Michael Moritz > `01:06:54` 坚守人性，而不蜕化为野兽 — Michael Moritz > `01:11:44` Marrying me — Michael Moritz ## Mentioned Michael Moritz, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Ausländer, Carl Jung, Lee Iacocca, Chrysler, Time, Henry Ford II, Sequoia Capital, Bill Deedes, Evelyn Waugh, Scoop, Steve Jobs, Apple, The Little Kingdom, Frank Auerbach, Don Valentine, Arthur Rock, Fairchild Semiconductor, Teledyne, Henry Singleton, Scientific Data Systems, Intel, Pierre Lamond, Doug Leone, Kevin Welles, Sequoia Heritage, Sir Alex Ferguson, Leading, David Beckham, Elon Musk, X.com, Tom Siebel, Google, Facebook, Xiaomi, Joseph Campbell, Yahoo, Griffin Gaffney, The San Francisco Standard, Stripe, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Harriet Heyman ## Video description Michael Moritz led Sequoia Capital for nearly two decades and backed some of the defining companies of the internet era.&nbsp; In his new memoir, Ausländer, he turns his attention to his own family, Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany and rebuilt their lives in Wales.&nbsp; We discuss the imprint his parents left on him, the method he used for decades of asking founders about their childhoods and the Time profile that ended his relationship with Steve Jobs.&nbsp; We also also cover Lee Iacocca, why Don Valentine hired him, Alex Ferguson's approach to managing players, Elon Musk, and why Mike still struggles to feel proud of anything he has done. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Moritz. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.&nbsp; ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. 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Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:16) Where Does One Person End? (00:11:15) The State of the World Today (00:15:08) The Unlived Life of Parents (00:17:33) Lee Iacocca, Eternal Outsider (00:21:03) His Most Revealing Question (00:26:03) Resisters, the Silent, and Collabos (00:33:30) The Profile of Steve Jobs (00:38:04) Frank Auerbach's Total Obsession (00:41:04) Why Don Valentine Hired Michael (00:46:44) Building Sequoia (00:49:49) What Michael Learned from Alex Ferguson (00:52:57) The Great Man Theory (01:00:36) Defining Extraordinary Writing (01:03:40) Stepping Back From Sequoia (01:06:54) A Philosophy of Parenting (01:09:00) The Next Book: Iran (01:11:44) The Kindest Thing [Source](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CLS6587705018.mp3)

[2:16] Patrick O'Shaughnessy: Where does one person end and the next person begin? [10:00] Michael Moritz: 你必须时刻准备好一个避难所（bolt hole），一旦局势彻底恶化、烈火烧得过热，你得有地方可逃。 [19:00] Michael Moritz: 我不认为人们能够彻底摆脱这种心理烙印。真正发生的变化是，人们在十几岁末期、整个二十几岁以及三十岁出头时，往往会以某种极致的专注和狂热去拼命工作。 [20:00] Michael Moritz: 如果你回首过去，有机会重新选择做一件事，你会改变什么？ [36:35] Michael Moritz: 走廊里的婴儿车（the sight of the pram in the hall）是伟大艺术的最大敌人 [44:00] Michael Moritz: 在 80 年代中期的风险投资行业里，任何一个头脑灵光的十四五岁少年只要机敏清醒，都能取得成功。 [46:44] Michael Moritz: 我们的实力永远只取决于下一笔投资 [50:00] Michael Moritz: 我完全分不清书里哪部分是你写的，哪部分是弗格森说的。 [60:36] Michael Moritz: 作者独一无二、不容错认的声音（the unmistakable voice of the author） [60:00] Patrick O'Shaughnessy: 成为你自己是这一生最大的特权，也是最艰难的挑战 [60:00] Michael Moritz: 你永远无法把小男孩从成年人的体内剥离出去 [66:54] Michael Moritz: 帕特里克，你已经造成伤害了，他们终身受损了。 [66:54] Michael Moritz: 坚守人性，而不蜕化为野兽 [71:44] Michael Moritz: Marrying me

[11:15] Michael Moritz: The contingent of Americans who feel safe are white Christians who own guns. Everybody else feels a degree of insecurity [28:15] Michael Moritz: I've never felt I'm really good at something. [33:30] Michael Moritz: So what came out in the bale at the end probably didn't resemble very much of the straw that got fed in. And so the whole tone of the piece was malicious and nasty and underhanded. [36:58] Michael Moritz: the greatest enemy of good art is the pram in the hall [46:44] Michael Moritz: only as good as our next investment [52:57] Michael Moritz: the greatest industrialist in the history of America [60:00] Michael Moritz: You never get the boy out of the man. [60:36] Michael Moritz: sea of slop [60:36] Michael Moritz: hearing the unmistakable voice of the author [63:40] Michael Moritz: proprietorial thumb on the scale [66:54] Michael Moritz: You've already done the damage, Patrick... They're impaired for life. [71:44] Michael Moritz: Marrying me. [71:44] Michael Moritz: Tolerance.

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Instead of spending months building these mission-critical capabilities yourself, you can just use WorkOS APIs to gain all of them on day zero. That's why so many of the top AI teams you hear about already run on WorkOS. WorkOS is the fastest way to become enterprise-ready and stay focused on what matters most, your product. Visit workos.com to get started. Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at colossus.com. Transcription by CastingWords When I was reading your book, one of the lines or the ideas that has really stuck with me ever since is where does one person end and the next person begin? And this deep dive that you took into the impact of one's history, family history, heritage, history. on who a person is. I'm interested in this from so many angles as a parent person. as a person interested in history, as a person interested in genetics, nature versus nurture, If I were to sum up the book in that question, what is your answer to that? What did you come away thinking after this deep study of your own family's history? One of the things that came out of the book, which I didn't really expect, was... Discovering. who I am and why I became a Whatever it is that I've become... And that was an unexpected gift of the writing. And it came from this exploration of my family's past, in particular, the book. my parents. Going back and... excavating the deep memories of Childhood. the sort of atmosphere in our home and in the general media in which I grew up. Help me. understand a lot about why I am who I am and react to certain things in the fashion that I do because I, unwittingly obviously every parent leaves an imprint on a child. that's Obviously, especially true during the formative years, whatever the formative years are, I'm no sort of child specialist or scientist. But before you turn 12, 13, 14 years old, those. imprints that you've absorbed in some manner, consciously or unconsciously, those remain with you. And both the angels and demons, I think, that you deal with for the rest of your life. What were yours? I'm so curious that you're performing on yourself the exercise that you're famous for doing with others that you invested in or hired, focusing on these first 14 years. What new understanding of yourself came out of this exercise? I grew up in this family of refugees from Nazi Germany and Wales. Refugees, by definition, are a minority. Jewish refugees in Wales during the 1960s and 1970s were a for the minority. People look at me today and they think, oh, here's this old white man. He's not a minority. And I can understand that. But it's how an individual feels rather than how other people might look at you. [5:00] Yeah. It touched me in a variety of ways. My parents, they were never in the camps. They got out of Germany in the 1930s. And they were loath to use the word survivor because they always felt the word survivor denoted somebody who actually had survived the camps. But they were loath to use the word survivor. refugees and in their own way had survived that motive to survive no matter what the odds were, even though the odds that I faced growing up weren't like my parents. I think... The need to survive. When you think about surviving, you're thinking about... To some extent living by your wits. being very suspicious of the motives of others. Wondering where... and how bad things will occur and happen and God against them, I think it gave me, in retrospect, I didn't understand it at the time, sort of drive and grit that I wouldn't have had without that particular atmospheric backdrop. When you study it and you think about your own childhood, how did that transfer from your parents to you? Was it the stories they told? It was definitely not the stories they told because they didn't tell the stories. I didn't really... "'get to know the stories until I sat down and began... work on this book. What I did know was the general arc of history, History, obviously, is miserable, ferocious. catastrophic whirlwind in which they and millions of others were... caught up, but they didn't talk about the past in the real detail that I much later when I was thinking about the book became interested in. It was just broad sweeps. I think it was much more the daily behavior, the reaction to events, the reaction to things, the sense that Doom was not very far away. The fact that if horrors had occurred in the past, there was a real need to be vigilant. and wary about navigating daily life. There was a couple of stories in the book, one in particular, where you talk about two separate people, one who decided to stay in Germany and one who decided to leave. Quite a poignant and interesting on this topic of survivor outsider early instinct when things are changing to take notice and not. Double down and stick around. Maybe tell that story and explain what you learned. The two individuals, Patrick, that you referred to were my grandfathers, my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandfather. I'll start with my paternal grandfather. who was a civil servant. He was a sort of lower level judge in the judiciary in Bavaria province in southern Germany. He had fought In World War I, he had somehow or other survived the horror of Verdun. He had been given his iron cross, and he was, I think, a great believer in the German state. in the security that the state offered. And then much later in 1933, he lost his job. This is my assessment of the situation because he was... A civil servant. He was by nature conservative, by nature somewhat cautious. but also had this great belief in the state and the endurance of the state and the durability of the state, and that eventually the storm would blow over. He also had a pension and the pension was very important to him as a means for survival. It was a combination of all of those things. He wasn't oblivious, obviously, to what was happening around him. But it did make him more reluctant to leave Germany, I think, until it was too late. And people forget, even if somebody had decided to leave Germany, there are all sorts of obstacles in the way. You had to find a place elsewhere that would accept you. You had to pay big taxes to the Nazi government in order to be able to secure your exit visa. So there are all these sorts of obstacles. So that was my paternal grandfather. And he and his wife eventually were shipped off east and disappeared from history. My maternal grandfather was cut from a different cloth. I was too callow as a youth to really understand this, but he died when I was about 16. He had been a cattle trader, which was one of the occupations that Jews were really permitted to. to do in Germany, but he was almost blind as a young man and completely blind by the time that I met him. But somehow or other had been able to carve out a comfortable living for himself and his family by trading cattle in a rural village in northwestern Germany. My assessment of him in retrospect was that [10:00] He was more streetwise. He was more entrepreneurial. wasn't burdened by the need to remain and collect a state pension because he'd always been able to sustain himself and look out for his future. And he got out with his wife, my grandmother. but they've gone out. by the skin of their teeth. They got out 72 hours before war broke out. Seventy-two hours later, they too would have perished. What do you take from that? What is the big... lesson from that instinct? How does that instinct imprinted on you and on the people you back throughout your life and career written about? I'm not sure that it's all that relevant to the people I've encountered in this journey through life, but it certainly has had. consequences for me, particularly in times like the ones that we are living through at the moment and the atmosphere that is prevalent. to some extent in the US and also in Western Europe. I think the necessity for always feeling that you have a bolt hole, that you have some place to go if the fire gets too hot, That's the lesson that I took away from my family history, glibly saying that you can never have enough passports. Do you feel that especially true now? Say a bit about the state of the world, how you perceive the state of the world. It's an uncomfortable place for minorities. the United States and... Western Europe Rit Lange. It doesn't matter whether you're Asian or Muslim or... Black people. or Jewish. I understand the reasons and I want to be careful as well. I am not whining about antisemitism. I'm not complaining about it. I, I, long ago came to terms with the fact that It's just a fact of life. It's been around for 2,500 years. It's not going to disappear in 2026 or 2030. It's always going to be with us. And in fact... As we were talking about a few minutes ago, I think the fact that anti-Semitism was around and has been around and has been something I've been conscious of. or my life, or my sentient wife. It's made me stronger. But I think it's disquieting if you're living in a society where... In America, I think my simplistic way of thinking about who feels safe is... The contingent of Americans who feel safe are white Christians who own guns. Everybody else feels a degree of insecurity. whether you're pursued by ice or you... go to a house of prayer that has to be guarded by police to ensure that that's safe. And that exists in America. It exists in the United Kingdom, in France, in other countries around Europe where far-right Governments have... come to the fore. And obviously, everybody has read about the recent elections in Germany of a far right party in Saxony province. And I think in times of economic distress, where you have millions of people who've been tens of millions of people who feel they've been left behind, that feeling of despair is, can easily be whipped up into a horrendous stew by leaders with authoritarian impulses. - It forced you to put on your optimistic or hopeful hat, and thinking about the future as it relates to this problem, Well, Victor Auburn was booted from office. He was riding high a couple of years ago. In some places, there clearly are pushes to the center. which would be I think very consoling for people and a return to some modicum of civility in the various societies in which, you know, people like us travel. So here in America, clearly the midterms in the next 18 months after that are really going to shape how we're going to live in the next decade, because there's been the imprint of one person on the last decade in America, I think, in Britain. The person who's identified with the far right, Nigel Farage, may well have had his best day and his best day may well be behind him. I think it's different in France. With Marie Le Pen and the elections next year, it's different in Spain and it's potentially different in Germany. Do you think that the Internet fundamentally changes the potential for civility and political moderation? because it so rewards extremes and attention. I think the three-letter answer is yes. I think it's been true of every form of new media from the beginning of the printing press. But obviously the internet and mobile telephony has made it far easier. to spread false memes and... innuendo, but it's a much larger, more amplified version of what occurred in Germany when radio took off during the 1930s. [15:00] and where the radio waves were dominated. by extreme... propaganda and racist views and loud lies told frequently. 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Ridgeline is the first end-to-end system of record with embedded AI for investment management firms, running portfolio accounting, reconciliation, reporting, trading, and compliance on one unified platform. Firms are moving off legacy technology and onto Ridgeline because of how far ahead Ridgeline's AI features are compared to anything else in investment management software. Which is why I believe that firms that come out ahead in the AI era will be the ones running on Ridgeline's unified platform. If you're serious about your firm's AI strategy, Ridgeline should be part of that conversation. You can request a demo at Ridgeline.ai. Going back to your family's history, One of my favorite topics is this idea that you can learn so much about a person from what happens in their first 12, 13, 14 years, as you said. Carl Jung had this great idea of studying the unlived life of the parent. Another way of framing it would be, this is a little trite, but you should be like who your father is. was supposed to be. You should live... the life that he was unable to or didn't quite have. And that part of that imprinting is... children observing their parents. what they're not going after, the risks they're not taking. And maybe... Running in that direction is a great way to explore. Back to the point about where does one person end and the next begin, like the break from the parents. is really important. I'm curious how you arrived at this method of yours, this first 14-year interrogation method. When you first did it, how you do it, what the method is, and why you find it just so impactful in understanding a new person. I suppose I first came across it. oddly in Detroit when I was a correspondent for Time magazine. With a colleague, I wrote a book about the Chrysler Corporation, but more importantly, the person who turned around Chrysler at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. And a man who was, for a time, the best-known business figure in America, even though today most people struggle to pronounce his last name. But he was... a gentleman called Lee Iacocca. He was the Son of Italian immigrants. In writing this book, we... spent a fair amount of time interviewing Iacocca and what came through loud and clear. was how much as the son of Italian immigrants who'd grown up in Pennsylvania, Lee grew up in Pennsylvania, He felt like an outsider. He worked in the automobile industry and obviously in the upper echelons of the automobile industry where... I think he was always viewed with suspicion, most notably when he worked at the Ford Motor Company by Henry Ford II and the other people who, Obviously, everybody had immigrated, but who were much more members of the establishment. And Iacocca never felt like a member of the establishment and became very clear. But all of that stemmed from his childhood. As the years went by, he began to interpret many of the slights that then fell upon him, including not getting the top job at Ford. to the fact that you were seen as an Italian immigrant. If you think about the people who have harnessed that outsider energy, a lot of whom you've backed with great success. Have you seen people graduate out of it? And when they do, does their drive and motivation go away or suffer? I want to answer the previous question a little bit as well. You asked when I've met various people and various founders over the years, spent so much time on their backgrounds. Many of these people are only 20 years old or 21 years old. Just covering a big percentage. You're not exactly going to be able to ask them about their life in their 50s. So it's just natural to try to understand that. I don't think people grow out of it. I think what happens is that people work with a certain intensity of, in their late teens and their 20s and maybe their early 30s. [20:00] And that intensity for a whole variety of reasons. diminishes over time. I think that's what changes. The inner being doesn't change. The outward intensity changes. When you were asking these questions, was there any one thing or set of things that you tended to be looking for? Was it you coming away feeling as though someone had extreme drive? I tried to... paint when I have some time. I'm not a good painter, but I really enjoy it. At least the way that I paint. You make marks. in different parts of the canvas. And the marks seem unrelated. Maybe it's a color blue here and a color brown there. You're putting these marks and dots on the canvas. There doesn't seem to be any composition there whatsoever. And then eventually, in my case, the picture comes out and it's bad, but there's a picture at the end of it. And it's the accumulation of all these different marks. And I think that's what happens when you're talking to people about their backgrounds. You're looking for these little dots here, and then eventually you put together this portrait for yourself of the individual. In searching for those dots, did you come to favorite questions that you always found yourself asking? There's one that comes to mind, which I've always found interesting. quite revealing is to ask somebody if they think back and, and had a chance to do one thing differently, one action differently, what is it that they would do? And I remember one person we interviewed for Sequoia who burst into tears when I asked that question. It turned out that he'd grown up as the son of an immigrant here in America. He was Hispanic. His father was very proud to have made it here and that his child was bright, his son was bright, and he was getting good marks at school. And this fella, probably when he was 12 or so. had gone down to a corner grocery store with a pal of his. You've stolen some candy. The shopkeeper who knew his father complained to his father. And his father took him by the ear, took him back down to the candy store, made him apologize, made him empty his pockets. The man I interviewed was so chastened, so embarrassed by bringing shame upon his family and his father. He just burst into tears. What's your answer to the question? What would you have done differently? You're a good interviewer. People don't listen to answers very often when they interview people. I think every child of parents feels this in one way or another. I felt it as I was writing the book, that... I was embarrassed, and if I could... Erase. One thing it would be. Some of my interactions and dealings with... my parents, which... I feel ashamed about today, but there's no going back. And I spent the first 16, 17 years of my life with them. But there were many things probably that I wish. And also when I was... younger man and just encounters with them that I wish to gone differently because I didn't really understand who they were and So be it. Do you think that was mostly a natural drive to create your own independence? Like every child goes through it. Yeah, I'm sure that was some of it. Arrogance was probably. Another part of fail of comprehension of what they themselves had experienced. What had made them who they were, which I didn't understand. There's this notion of very small deeds in the book. I think the character's name is Anna. Yes. Can you talk about... what you learned about the impact of small deeds. It was more than small deeds. So this lady that you refer to, whom I knew as a child, Her first name was Anna. when my... Father and uncle were growing up in Munich in the 1920s and the early 1930s. Every sort of middle class, lower middle class household had a family servant. These were the days before washing machines and vacuum cleaners and all the rest of it. Those individuals... in these households, when children were born, invariably became nannies as well. For my father and my uncle, this lady Anna, who was that person in my grandfather's house, She became a surrogate. She was a nanny. She was Roman Catholic. eventually left the employment of my grandparents. She married a railway worker in Bavaria. who is also a Roman Catholic. They built their own house. with their own hands. She and her husband. Never forgot... the Moritz family. They, in the 1930s, opened their house to my grandparents and my uncle and father at a time when... it became very unpopular to... choose [25:00] come stay in rural Bavaria for their holidays. But they did it for as long as possible. They didn't have children, these two. They were horrified by that. Nazis, they did everything possible to help. my grandparents and "'My father and uncle,' And then after the war... Because the feelings were so intense between my father and my uncle and this lady, Anna. They went back to Bavaria very soon after the end of the war. developed this very strong connection with her until she eventually died. And I remember going and staying in her house. And the story of this house features in the book as well. As a young boy, surrounded by the specters of the Nazi past, But this lady... was, I think, what they say at Yad Vashem when they bestow acknowledgements on all the people who helped. Jews and others during World War II. She was one of the righteous. and had this ethical compass that she wouldn't allow anyone else to alter. What did you learn from these categories of people? I think you call them the resistors, the silent, and the collabos. This is a spectacular thing. series that came out maybe 12 years ago, shot in France. Maybe it's a six series series, tale about life in a French village. during World War II. And how some people... resisted the occupation for as long as possible. Most people remain silent. and some became active collaborators with the Nazis. And during COVID-19, when we were all on these long Zoom calls with lots of little pictures of 10 other participants that were in the Zoom room. I always used to look at each individual whom I knew on the whole. And I kept asking myself, well, If these people have been living in the French village in the 1940s, Who would have stayed silent? Who would have resisted? and who would have been collabos. So I was judging people whom I know and whom I work with. And it was an interesting exercise. I didn't tell anybody else about it at the time, obviously, but I knew everybody on these calls well enough to know who had... the sort of backbone that this lady that we were just talking about had. And they were always in the minority. How rare is it? Is it 1%? The resistors out of 100 people? How rare do you think that expression is? I think it's very rare because... Bad things happen in countries when most people stay silent. Very few actively resist. Do you think that most of the people that you've back in your career would be resistors? I'd have to think about that. I'd like to think so, but I'm not sure. Can you talk about the role that Bill Deeds played in your life? I'm always interested in these early moments of activation. And I'm curious when you first felt in life, whether it was with him or at some other time, when you first felt you were really good at something. I've never felt I'm really good at something. That's not false modesty on my part. To this day. How can that be in face of the evidence? Well, I think everybody is played by doubts. maybe competitiveness. It's a failure on my part. I have a very difficult time celebrating good things and celebrating success. Given that you're self-aware about it, Have you ever tried to reverse that? I think it's heritage. I think it's the fact that My mother always felt that... Disaster was always around the corner. Doom was always around the corner. She died a few weeks before COVID. My mother was the predictor of doom. I remember as a kid growing up, she would have listened to the radio and inevitably the talk when we're having breakfast would be about some natural disaster that had occurred or a plane crash or something dreadful around the world. She died a few weeks before COVID. I felt sorry for her in a way that she missed COVID because this was the disaster that she'd been predicting, or one of the natural disasters that she'd been predicting all her life. She was cheated out of COVID, but I think it's, that sort of sense of being one step away from the precipice. Have you ever, though, been proud of a piece of work that you've done or created or felt that pride, like the emotion of it? I think I've always felt everything is unfinished. and could be improved, and none of it's ever been perfect. So never a satisfied moment. Sometimes when I paint, and compare a painting to what I might have been able to paint 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So I see a road to improvement, but then you go to... Moomer or the Met. You're diminished. [30:00] And you're reduced to being an insignificant speck. What about feeling of pride for someone else, not so much for yourself? You back some of the most extraordinary people in business history, for sure. You've written about some of the most extraordinary leaders, Alex Ferguson, others. Have you felt proud of them? No, not necessarily. The relationship is different. And so those have been voyages of curiosity where... They're the people who should feel proud of their accomplishments. not me as a bystander. I'm so curious about, for someone that's been involved in so many... fascinating things, unlikely things. What jumps out as the highest energy moments? What were the things along the whole journey that gave you the most energy? I know you're a deeply curious person, so maybe it's something there. I think it's family, children, all the moments associated with Harriet, my wife and I, we have two sons and they're now in their 30s and one of them's got a couple of grandkids. I think it's... deeply personal stuff. Back to Bill Dees. I lost my train of thought there for a minute. I'm curious the impact that he had on you. And I'm always interested in early impact that people have on others. I grew up, as you know, in Britain, and... When I left college, I really wanted to be a journalist. My goal was to work on one of the big, at that point, what were called the Fleet Street newspapers. This is a long time ago. It's 50 years ago. that everybody read. And there were papers for different sections of the population. And I wanted to work on one of the big, really well-regarded newspapers. But there were trade union rules because the unions had a big clamp down on the way in which they held the operators of these newspapers in a straitjacket. And one of the consequences was that, The newspaper editors, they weren't allowed to hire college graduates directly from college because they, The fear of the unions was that it would impede their ability, interfere with their ability to hire 16-year-olds straight out of high school. The result was that if I'd wanted to go and work on the Times or the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, one of those papers, I would have had to go and spend two or three years working on a small provincial newspaper. And I just didn't really want to do it. I was impatient. I was ambitious and all that sort of stuff. And I met this fellow, Bill Deeds, who was the editor of the Daily and had actually in an earlier life been created, The figure on which Evelyn Waugh had modeled one of the characters in his famous satirical novel called Scoop. Bill Deeds very kindly responded to a letter that I'd written to him applying for a job at the Daily Telegraph. He gave me half an hour in his office in Fleet Street, and I remember it. It was in the winter. It was raining. And I asked him for advice. And he told me that what he had wished he had done as a young man. was go to America. And he encouraged me to... Move to America? I think that really helped propel me in this direction. So when you arrived here, what was the first big break or big move that you made? that kicked off the story? Well, I got very lucky. I got hired by Time straight out of school. without any work experience. They were very willing to take a risk on a 22-year-old or 23-year-old without any real prior experience. And that was my first big break. The episode with jobs and time was so fascinating in your history and I'm sure frustrating for you. What happened and what did you learn through that episode? It's a painful part of the past. This is three years after I joined Time. I'd taken a leave of absence. By then, I was working in San Francisco in the bureau there and had taken a leave of absence to write a book about Apple and for a variety of reasons, because it's a very good idea. The magazine didn't have room enough to tell the tale of the private days of Apple, which is what I was really interested in doing. And then I was on this leave and I got a call from Time asking me to contribute to a profile of Steve. that they wanted to run in what became a very famous edition of Time, which was The computer of the year, I think it was the only time in time's history where they'd picked an inanimate object to celebrate for their big annual issue. I worked on this profile of Steve. Steve was convinced that he was going to be named man of the year, even though nobody had told him that confirmed it. Yes or no. But worst of all, the profile, which he hated, uh, For very good reason, I might say, in his defense. And I was appalled by for different reasons. severed my relationship with Steve back then at time. These things went through an editorial process. combine harvester. [35:00] So what came out in the bail at the end? probably didn't resemble very much of the straw that got fed in. And so the whole tone of the piece was, was malicious and nasty and underhanded. As I said, Steve disliked it, and it was one of the reasons I left time. I felt very, very disenchanted by the treatment of it all. sadly, as a result of that, really never repaired the relationship with Steve. Were you in awe of him? No. Have you ever been in awe of anyone? That's a difficult question. The people that I've known who have done incredible, remarkable things. things are also flawed individuals. And if you get to know them well, you also see that aspect of it. So seeing that up close makes it difficult to hold anybody in awe because you see the flaws as well as all of their accomplishments and virtues. Why were you not in awe of Steve? It seems like he's the person that the most people in our world were in awe of in living memory. I want to be careful here because I respected him. I admired him tremendously. I was well aware of the fact that he had achieved things later, obviously, as well, that I couldn't ever possibly have accomplishment. But I think... I knew some of the... darker shades of him, which made it difficult to hold him up as an object of unalloyed admiration. But he's a heroic figure, obviously. What's the role of monomania in all of these character studies? And I'm curious to tie it back to this idea of the outsider, the survivor, the You see it now. This goes in generations. The monomania. when it comes to creating anything of value. It could be a piece of music, it could be a book, it could be a painting, it could be a company. complete obsession with the topic. at hand and locking out the rest of the world. eliminating every unnecessary distraction. Their downsides to this, people get hurt along the way. There isn't enough time for families or others or friends because of the monomania that you refer to. But then great things sometimes come out of it. Is the primary cost of monomania relationships typically? I suspect the answer is yes, or maybe for some of these people feeling that They may have lived life differently if they had to live it over again because there were consequences to this monomania. But yes, clearly relationships. Evelyn wore this People don't really know him. today but a very famous British author. who was capable of writing books, 10,000 words a week with ease. 10,000 good words, not rubbish. He said, the greatest enemy to good art. is the site of the pram. The stroller in today's parlance is the site of the stroller in the hallway. What about Frank Auerbach, the painter? Was he a monomaniacal? Frank Auerbach. has never got the recognition in this country that he deserves, although there's a retrospective of him coming here in the next two years to very significant museums around the country here. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany. He died maybe five years or so ago. I didn't know him well, but I got to know him a little bit. And he was a complete obsessive, completely obsessed with his art. Painted every day. except he treated himself to a day, one holiday. For many, many years, he treated himself to one day off a year. And every year he'd go to Brighton, where there's a famous pier. It's on the south coast of England and take the day off on Christmas Day. Every other day of the year, he worked. And I remember once talking to him. His wife had a house out on the English coast. And I asked him once at a dinner, I said, so do you ever go out and visit Julia, your wife? He said, I've never been to the house. Now, this is probably 10 years ago. We were chatting and New York came up. And he said, I love New York City. I just love it. It's so bustling with energy and going to Times Square and all the rest of it. And so this conversation was maybe in 2012, 2013. Frank, were you just in New York? Oh, yeah, I went there in 1967. And he had this routine where he had, and I knew some of these people who posed for him or know some of these people, that all his subjects are still alive. They posed for him once a week. He had this regular coterie of sitters, and he painted these same individuals for his figure. [40:00] Curative work. over the course of 30, 40 years. And there's one of the subjects who lived in Venice, of all places, who once a week flew to London for his session with Frank because I think the sitters found it like therapy. Sitting for Frank. but he'd go into an utter meltdown if the sitter was late. And then similarly, With his landscape paintings, he painted the same landscape over and over and over again, interpreting it. But he lived for art. Really, there was... No time for... We had a son, Jake. But there was no time for anything else. Do you get more energy from monomaniacs? You spend a lot of time around them. Do you prefer being with them over... Don't talk yourself. It's nice to have a mixture of friends and acquaintances, some of whom... have tied themselves to a particular mast, others who are prepared to wander around and live life more casually. But I've always found it more difficult to be around people who, and I like them and enjoy being with them, but who appear to be doing nothing. What did Don Valentine see in you and what did you see in him? So Don was the founder of Sequoia. He took a risk on me van 1985, hired me to join Sequoia when Sequoia is a very small firm. We're sitting around this table here in your studio. It's probably large enough to accommodate all of the people who worked for Sequoia at that point. I was a journalist, I've been a journalist, but wanted to get into the venture business because I've become interested by it and had... met some of the people who were running these firms, all of which were very small at the time, and had written to five of them. This was in the days when you didn't send emails, you actually wrote letters, and had gone to see each of them. They were kind enough to give me some time. All save Don said, we don't really know what to do with you because we're You don't have a technical background. You don't have an engineering degree of any sort. You don't really have any technical knowledge. You don't have any work experience in a Silicon Valley kind of company. you've been a journalist. So maybe you should go and find a role in public relations or marketing or something like that, which is not exactly what I wanted to do. And Don, who was more willing to take a risk. And the reason was fairly straightforward because he had seen people that he expected because they had big... operating backgrounds in technology companies. A few of them come into the venture business and not be very successful. And then he was aware of some who had carved out very successful lives as investors. There was a fellow called Tommy Davis, I think, who started a fund called the Mayfield Fund. There was... another guy who'd been in an insurance actuary, but the one that, Don pointed to more than anybody else was a gentleman called Arthur Rock, who just celebrated his 100th birthday. He was an investment bank at a small boutique here in New York called Hayden Stone. This is back in the 1950s. He had had the moxie to organize the original breakout and financing of Fairchild Semiconductor. And then. In the 1960s, people won't know the names anymore, but he had helped finance Taladine. Henry Singleton, right? Henry Singleton. Henry Singleton, who later became one of the early board members of our first board members at Apple, scientific data systems. And then... became the chairman original investor in Intel day one. And then a few years later, Back to Apple. Don said, look, there's nothing in this background that would have suggested to be successful. That was the main reason. And what did you see in him in the early days? A job. What did he teach you? Don didn't believe in teaching. He had a survivalist instinct. So he just believed in teaching. tossing people into the deep end and see if they drowned. But... I learned a lot by observation and listening. Good things and bad things. There was another gentleman at Sequoia named Pierre Lamond who... played a huge role in the rise of the semiconductor industry. And he too was something of an influence, but it was being... In the middle of that me, you're watching. Good things happen and bad things happen. gradually trying to form my own opinions about things. What do you think it teaches us about early stage investing that a journalist with no technical ability and no work experience can be one of the best entrepreneurs? investors of that type ever. The venture business that I got into way back when is very different from the venture business today. There aren't many parallels. I don't know that I would flourish in today's [45:00] venture businesses for a whole variety. Why not? I think it's become much more difficult. We had a variety of Benefits. Back in the 80s and 90s, I think they began to dissipate maybe... 15, 16 years ago. that don't exist today. One of them being imperfect information. The pre-internet, unless you were very close to things, you didn't know what was happening. Today, because the Internet and some of the stuff that we were talking about earlier, Everybody around the world knows exactly what's happening. Everybody's got access to the same information, you know, more or less the same information. So that's number one. Number two, There are just so many more entities of all stripes, individuals, two or three people banding together in a small firm, at the other end of it, huge mutual funds pouring money into it, that... The very early stage private market is very, very different. 40 years ago, 30 years ago, it was possible if you were an individual to form a relationship, a real relationship, close relationship with the people that you were. getting into business with. That doesn't exist today, particularly for a venture firm. There are just too many intermediaries in between. I'm not sure the the luck that I had back then. And, I was also catapulted right into the middle of the one place in the world where all of this stuff was happening. So that's a huge competitive advantage too. I'm not sure that any of that translates today. I think moderately intelligent 14, 16 year old who had his or her wits about him would have been able to succeed in the venture business in the mid 80s. Do you think the ecosystem is healthy today? I think it is if you're a founder. Pretty good. I like the quote that you've said often that your favorite investment was Sequoia. What was going through your head as you took it over. Not to screw it up. the Sequoia that was around in 1995, was very different from the one that was around when I sort of stepped down in 2012, 2013. Number one was not to screw it up. Number two was to ensure that everybody who... Work there felt that we were only as good as our next investment. And that we couldn't rest on the laurels of the past. And then number three... take advantage of the new market opportunities that began to occur. whether it was eventually going overseas, as Silicon Valley's share of startup. activity, though still obviously the best place to be, became smaller. So first of all, we went to Israel and we went to most notably to China. started another business called Sequoia Heritage, which is, um, Very different business. I know Kevin Welles, an incredible talent. Yes. And Keith and our small and mighty heroic investment team there. I don't want to sound like Joan of Arc here. I felt doing right by our investors was really important. Most of our investments, investors were not for profits. I think making sure that... We perform well for them. I didn't want to be in a business where if we didn't perform well, we still got paid very handsomely. I think that's part of the problem with a lot of the aspects of the financial service. providers of all sorts of different forms. And it has been for a long time, which is the firm that provided as well, but that clients may not. May have done as well just investing in an index fund. I did this with Doug. He told me the story of that one fund that you fought so hard to get back to par over 10 years or something like this. We could have said to investors, well, look, you've had a lot of good times with us and, You've just got to accept the fact that You've got a fund here that isn't going to make any money. I certainly wasn't wife like that. It was a matter of pride. What did you learn about working with someone like Doug that was so different than you? but you had such a fruitful partnership. Tolerance. They mark. I think you have to adjust when you're trying to work in a team. You have to try to understand what the other people around you need, what's important to them. and feed that need. with people who have wired, as you said, very, very differently. I think that's the most important thing I've learned about building a team or leading a team. I think today I'd be much better at it than I was 25 years ago, 30 years ago. And I learned a lot of that actually from the way that I did this book maybe 10, 11 years ago with a famous soccer manager. I was just going to ask about Alex Ferguson. I think one of his great... Skills was the ability to... understand what motivated each of his [50:00] individual players. How did you see him do that? I know he was famous for preferring players with tough upbringings. He's got this reputation, which is an unfair reputation of being very hard and harsh. That was certainly an aspect of the way that He managed. But he was a man who didn't want to be loved. He didn't want to be feared. He wanted to be respected by the individuals who played for him. So he was there for them, which people don't understand in their bleak, dark times. when they needed support, when they were feeling lower than a snake's belly. He was there for them. None of that really gets written about. There was an incident, I remember, I forget which year it was, but David Beckham had been playing for England in a World Cup competition where he got sent off, and the British press was merciless about Beckham's perceived stupidity. And Alex went to meet him at the Apple. because he knew he needed an arm around his shoulder. Those sorts of things. Little things that happen out of sight. People aren't aware of them. There are no cameras around. Do you think you were so interested in him for almost like autobiographical reasons? That description kind of sounds like you. He was much more skillful than I was. The reason the book came together was this. People, for whatever reason, had been badgering me to write a book about Silicon Valley and I was always very interested through the Sequoia lens. of what it took to build two things, one of which was a business that endured for ourselves, for Sequoia, because there are all these tales of venture firms that had a period in the limelight and then blew up for whatever reason. The founders killed each other or the partners killed each other and they all split up and, It all became ugly. And then also the byproduct of it being what it took to have an enduring standalone company that a firm like Sequoia could invest in. And I didn't want to do that through a Silicon Valley lens. And there are enough books about Silicon Valley. So I was casting around for the company or for an organization that had flourished in over the course of multiple decades. I'd been a bit of a fan of Manchester United Football Club since I was a kid. Here was this manager who took them over, I think, in 1986 and retired in 2013. When he took them over when they're in bad shape and then established a record over multiple seasons, 26 seasons. of astonishing success that will be almost impossible for anybody to duplicate. We had a PR guy who were, or communications guy who worked for Sequoia. And I'd shown him at that point when I finished the book and I showed him a draft of the book and he said, well, I'm. I can't tell because I ghosted the book, ghost wrote the book. And this fellow said to me, I can't tell what's you and what's Sir Alex. I said precisely. Do you believe in the great man theory of history? I'm asking this question because... I'm very interested by institutions that endure and what you've learned about how the ones that have endured have pulled that off like Sequoia. And I'm also pulled to people, of course, like Elon, who you were an early backer and partnered to and X.com. how they shape history. And it seems like we might have a few world historic figures alive and operating today. What do you think is the balance of shaping history between these world historic people, great men and women, and enduring institutions? The short answer to the question is I'm a great believer in the great person theory. All these people that we've talked about, whether you just referred to Elon or we were talking about the Iacocca or Steve Jobs or you go into the political realm or the field of battle. It is about great leaders. Great leaders... And obviously there are some terrible authoritarian figures that have... cast black shadows over tens of millions of people and over multiple decades in different countries around the world for hundreds of years. So for good and bad, I think the individual has an enormous impact. on what is around him or her. capable of on the good side of it, not the dark side of it. persuading others to achieve what's perceived as impossible. I'm a huge acolyte of that theory. Do you think Elon is the great exemplar of that today? Yes, he may well be... the greatest industrialist in the history of America. What would you say about him? I don't know that I have anything to add. Other than... It's impossible for me to understand how one individual... has been able to achieve. And I know he's a controversial figure, but I'm just looking at him through the lens of history and through an investment. [55:00] Lens. They have this phrase in Britain called gobsmacked. I'm completely gobsmacked by the scale of his achievements in a variety of different industries, which is the thing that sets him apart from others. What do you make of today's prevailing technology environment and how this changes all the things we've talked about? One of the other PayPal founders told me recently that he thinks people like Elon and other great entrepreneurs will probably do more things, more than one company. expand out of monomania because, you know, All these tools give them so much leverage. You think that this is like a true tear in history? That we now have intelligence? I don't know. If you go to China... You will find the founders of companies, or if you go to, I think, probably South Korea, which I know far less about, you will find that the creators of one company have really imperial ambitions. And the creator of a company is along the way, or they take their one company and convert it into, look at Xiaomi, the manufacturers, these cars today, the exceed the quality and performance and other attributes of Porsches, but began in 2010 as a phone maker, as an Android licensee, I think. creative people or these rare, rare people armed with this extraordinary selection of power in the tools that are at their fingertips or at the fingertips of the people who work for them, they're going to be able to do a lot more. in the future than somebody might have been able to do in the past. What is your model of this technology? Like as an observer of it, and I'm sure interested observer, How do you tell your family about it and what it will mean? Well, we don't talk about it. Well, not very much. I mean, people will always ask me, but I'm not a technologist. I'm not an AI soothsay. But you were so good at seeing what was going to play out. If I think about so many of your investments, the thing seemed small. But it was then something that became like infrastructure that the, you know, Instacart or something that the world was built on. Yeah. You're being too generous. I had... very little sense that a company could grow at the rate that some of these artificial intelligence companies have grown at today. I mean, it's beyond comprehension. I remember many years ago, this was at the dawn of the internet or probably after the dawn of the internet. And Tom Siebel, who started a well-known entrepreneur and had been seen as a very successful entrepreneur, billion. And he said very wistfully, that was back when $10 billion was worth a lot of money. Today, you look back and you say... whether it was Facebook's IPO or Google, that was back when $100 billion was worth a lot of money. I think the idea that you can have a six-year-old company with trillions of dollars, nobody would have imagined that. Are you mostly excited about this technology or scared or both? I read what everybody else reads and have heard the boogeyman of pine. And I think I'm probably a bit more hopeful than others. Again, I'm not an expert. I don't mean to diminish the dark side of, what may or may not happen with AI. I do take some solace in the fact that Armageddon was predicted or a form of Armageddon was predicted when the first nuclear bomb was exploded. And fortunately, here we are close to a century later, and that hasn't occurred. Or if you read all the stuff from the mid-1970s about the genetic revolution and how there were going to be scientists creating that they deemed suitable to walk on the face of the earth. That hasn't occurred either. And today, even though I'm absolutely certain that there's going to be enormous disruption, in particular job sectors caused by AI, I think that it's going to create more jobs than are going to be lost. Everyone can say that this time is different, but there hasn't been a huge improvement in technology that has changed. in the last two or three centuries led to lower employment in the long term. I mean, there have been depressions and massive disruptions in sectors, but overall employment has grown. So I'm a little more optimistic. I think there'll be a lot of jobs that get created that we couldn't categorize today. Because AI produces prodigious amounts of new text and writing so easily, I think the value of extraordinary writing is going up that can cut through and the CF slop. How would you define extraordinary writing, having done quite a bit of it yourself? Again, you're too flattering and kind about that on that particular topic. It's hearing the unmistakable voice of the author. [60:00] How do you do that as a writer? It's the same with the journey through life. The toughest thing, I think... For an individual, whether it's guiding them through what it is they want to do in life, or What they want to put on paper. It's being in touch enough with your inner feelings and inner voice. to allow those to conquer. the pressures of the expectations of others. Joseph Campbell said the privilege of a lifetime is becoming who you are. but also that that's the hardest thing to do. I wish I'd been clever enough to say that. I completely agree. I think that's the struggle everybody has. And it's also the struggle when you put things down on paper. Is there a moment in your own life that was the most important in becoming who you were, like the hardest part of doing it? It's so valuable to do and it's so hard to do. It makes me wonder about what the hardest part was for you. I don't think I've done it. Why not? What's the barrier that's left between you and who you are? It's one of my many weaknesses. I've always been too prone to live up to the pressures or expectations from the outside or from others than to let myself run free. Is it a goal of the remainder of your life to do so? I'll try. I'm so struck by how unbelievably self-aware people you seem but then you're giving yourself poor grades That seemed like objectively wrong. What is that? I'm just still struggling to understand. I don't know. Maybe it's the specter of my mother. Can you say more about her? We didn't talk too much about her other than her doom prophecies. Sayohara. many things. She aroused my interest in art and variety of things, but she would always find fault. And no matter. "'How good things, or what I had done!' I remember there was some newspaper coverage years ago in Britain when Yahoo became public and There were some stories about me in the British press. I mean, she was convinced I was a crook. She was absolutely convinced that the police should come for me because there was no possible way. that I could have participated in anything like this that could possibly be legal. Did that hurt? No. By that point, I was more amused by it than anything else. Early did it hurt that nothing you did was satisfactory? No, because it was just a fact of life. And yet it seems to have echoed. Yeah. You never get the boy out of the man. What is the experience of stepping back from Sequoia because you were sick? What has that taught you? Well, first of all, I don't think leaders should stick around. If they have decided for whatever reason not to lead, they've got to get out of the way. So I went cold turkey, even though I tried to help Sequoia in what ways I could. and was involved with a variety of companies, but it was as an individual contributor. but it was not as leadership. I got out of there as quickly as possible because I didn't think it was fair for someone to linger in those sorts of meetings. I'd lived through that myself. So it's allowed me to do things When I was running Sequoia, it was talk about monomania and obsessions. I mean, that was it. It was everything. every single day of the week. So it allowed me to do things I could write. My wife and I, about 25 years ago, we started a foundation, so we spent more time on that. In recent years, I spent... more time on trying to help San Francisco which is where I've lived pushing 50 years, not quite, but to turn around and flourish. along with a wonderful co-founder, Griff Daphne. I started a media business there as well. which is fun and I hope contributes to the life of the city called the San Francisco Standard. And then I'm involved with what used to be called Sequoia Heritage in a sort of advisory capacity. So there's plenty of stuff to do. which is fulfilling and unfulfilling at the same time, because while there are a whole variety of things, it's not the obsessive monomaniacal focus on one thing. Do you miss it? Yeah. The aspects of it. But I miss aspects of it, but I know full well that I would not want to... Return to that way of life. Is it the flow state of it that you miss? The feeling of total immersion and forgetting yourself? Maybe I get that when I'm painting. It's a simpler life. You don't have to make decisions about how you allocate your time. because your calendar is commanded by some other force. The difference between having your calendar dictated by others and being in complete control of your calendar yourself is my day. What's your hope for the standard? What are the principles that guide it? Griffin, I didn't set it up as a not-for-profit. One of the things that we wanted to do [65:00] was to show that local journalism can be a profitable business. Number one. Number two, it's to have a vibrant... interesting, diverting, but reliable source of information for people in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area for people who care about it. that sort of stuff. Number three... I've been very clear from day one that news coverage There's no proprietorial thumb on the scale when it comes to news coverage. Some of the stories in the standard I've been mentioned and referred to in ways that I wouldn't necessarily write myself. So that's fair game. But in the. ideas and opinions area, it's center of right of center. And that's what this is. And that's a much needed voice in San Francisco. As I think back to the book, And I put it down and wondered about what's going to last in me having read this. The thing I keep going back to, it's obviously selfish and context dependent, is parenting. I have two young kids. How old are they? They're 12 and 10. They're approaching the end of that window where you describe them as being imprinted. You've already done the damage, Patrick. I know. They're impaired for life. So I wonder if you turn the whole exercise of exploring your own history and your family's history into a how to think about the role of parenting. I'm curious what comes to mind. I think it's to arm the children with confidence. Simple as that. By doing what? I don't know, I have to think hard about the handbook of parenting. But I think it's to... Instill that feeling of self-confidence. and freedom. And to try as a parent not to be censorious. Do you think also thinking about the book that an important lesson is that we cannot take progress for granted? Positive progress. History is littered with examples of... terrible things that happened over periods of time. for millions of people all around the world. Russia, China, Iran. Africa, India. There have been terrible things that have happened over the last thousand years. I think there's very little that separates the human from the beast. And its remaining human. and not becoming the beast. That is everybody's challenge. How do you think you were most changed by the exercise of studying... your family and writing the book. Understanding myself a little better. And in the final analysis, What matters? I think it's two things. I think it's relationships with the people that you care about. Knowing that We're all completely insignificant, no matter what. what the individual has accomplished. trying to leave things a little better. than they were. before any of us got engaged with him. You had to write Our next book. What topic piques your curiosity? I've been playing around with this idea, which I don't know if I'll ever actually get around to writing, but I've been reading about it a fair amount. I'm very interested, weirdly, in the world. In Iran, Persia. of the 1940s. the collision of individuals from the, Inside and outside. Iran that explains so much about the world we live in today. I think what I've been thinking about is not nonfiction, but a blend of fiction and nonfiction. Now, as I said, I don't know if I'll ever get the... narrative and the structure and the composition right, but it's My view of what has happened in Iran, it's this collision of personalities from very different backgrounds in different parts of the world. that have failed to understand each other. It's pretty fascinating. One of the great things about your thinking and writing was how short some of the very famous memos and things were. Your what could go right understanding for a company like Stripe, where I understand the memo was quite short. I'm curious about that notion of compression and the power of compression. But if you were to sort of write something like that about the state of the world and give it to your grandson or something today, it's... You seem so good at identifying the things that matter that will determine where things will go. Again, you're too kind. For me, part of the training as a journalist, it's part of what I learned at college. being able to distill things to... their essence. Keep it very short. has stood me in good stead over the years. Can that be taught? Seems like more valuable than ever. So much information and... bombardment. I don't know. I think it depends a lot on reading. It's hard when people a fatted diet of a limited vocabulary. I am singling him out. But if you do these studies, [70:00] of the vocabulary of Presidents of the United States. Trump's vocabulary is by far the lowest. I think he's got a vocabulary of about 2,400 words. Obama was maybe 4,500 words, common vocabulary. And I think having... a huge vocabulary at your fingertips that you can select from. allows you to express complicated ideas in a simple manner. I love the book. I loved our conversation. I've loved all your writing. Oh, you're far too kind and flattering and gracious. The questions have been, as you can tell, thought provoking and wonderful. I ask one final question every time I interview someone. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you? Nally me. So beautiful. Simple. What have you learned from your wife? Tall words. Common theme. Mike, thanks so much for your time. Thank you. Really good. If you enjoyed this episode, visit Colossus.com. You'll find every episode of this podcast complete with hand edited transcripts. You can also subscribe to Colossus, our quarterly print, digital, and private audio publication profiles of the founders, investors, and companies that we admire most. Learn more at Colossus.com slash subscribe. Outro Music. You know how small advantages compound over time? That's true in investing and just as true in how you run your company. Your spending system is your capital allocation strategy. Ramp makes it smarter by default. Better data, better decisions, better economics over time. 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