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When you started ButcherBox, you vowed not to take venture capital money, which is very much going against the flow, at least at that time certainly. Why did you do that?
当你创办ButcherBox时，你发誓不接受风险投资，而这在很大程度上是与潮流背道而驰的，至少在当时是这样。你为什么不接受风投?
Yeah. Before ButcherBox, I ran a company called CustomMade, and we had raised about $30 million of capital in five rounds of financing and lost everyone’s money.
在创办ButcherBox前，我经营过一家名为CustomMade的公司，我们在五轮融资中筹集了约3000万美元的资金，但最终所有人的钱都赔光了。
And in that process, I lost the culture, I lost my place of work, I lost the ability to create the direction of where the company should go. I lost friends.
在这个过程中，我失去了公司文化，失去了工作单位，失去了为公司指明方向的能力，也失去了朋友。
There was some good pieces of raising venture, but I experienced a ton of loss as a result of me raising venture capital.
虽然存在优质的风险投资筹集，但我却因此损失惨重。
And so when I started ButcherBox, my mentality was, I don’t care how small this business is, I’m not raising a venture.
当我创办ButcherBox的时候，我的心态是，我不在乎公司有多小，我不会去筹集风险投资。
And it turned out the business could be very large, and I believe as a result of not raising venture, we are where we are today.
事实证明，这个公司会发展壮大，我认为，因为没有筹集风险投资，我们才会有今天的成就。
The failure of a business sounds normal, like losing people’s money, losing your job, that happens. That’s almost the norm, right? It is the majority.
公司倒闭听起来很正常，把人们的资金赔光，丢掉工作，这是常有的事。这几乎是常态，对吧? 绝大多数都是这样子。
That’s almost the null hypothesis for what’s going to happen to your company, when you take venture capital money, most of them fail.
这几乎是对公司未来情况的原假设，接受风投的大部分公司都倒闭了。
So was it venture capital that caused that to happen, do you think?
你认为是风投导致了公司倒闭吗?
There was a moment where I believed that the incentives of the company and the incentives of the venture capitalists were not in alignment.
曾有一段时间，我认为公司动机与风投动机不一致。
For example, there was a moment where this online marketplace, we knew it just wasn’t going to work, but that was what the venture capitalists had funded.
例如，有一段时间，我们知道在线市场行不通，但这恰恰是风险投资人所投资的领域。
And so our ability to say, “This isn’t going to work, we’re pivoting in a different direction.”
我们极尽全力说，“这行不通，我们要转向另一个方向。”
They’re like, “No, keep doing the thing that we funded. You can’t go back to a listing service. We want this.”
他们却说，“不，继续做我们资助的领域。你不能返回，去做清单服务。我们想要这个。”
This is not what we signed up for. Right, this isn’t what we signed up for.
这不是我们签约时想要的。好吧，这也不是我们签约时想要的。
There was a time where we said, “Hey, in order for this thing to survive, we should let go of 75% of the staff, because we got to go bare bones and we got to figure out product market fit because this isn’t going to work.”
有一段时间，我们说，“嘿，为了让这个业务挺过去，我们应该裁掉75%的员工，因为我们必须精简结构，我们必须弄清楚产品市场契合度，因为当下行不通。”
And they said, “No, keep doing what you’re doing, because if you let everyone go, then we can’t sell the company or we can’t get a…”
他们说: “不行，继续做你正在做的业务，因为如果你让所有员工都离开，那么，我们就无法卖掉公司，我们也无法得到……”
At that point, they were gunning for my head, so it was, “We’re not going to be able to attract a great CEO in here if we downsized the company.”
他们那时都想要我的人头，他们认为: “如果我们缩减公司规模，那么就无法吸引到优秀的首席执行官。”
And so really I lost control. While the ship was sinking, we did not control what we were doing, or what the outcome was, our venture capitalists had taken over. That was really hard.
我真的无法控制。当船下沉时，我们无法控制当时的业务，也无法控制结果，因为我们的风险投资人已经接管了公司。真的很难。
