Y Combinator - How To Build The Future: Parker Conrad
发布时间:2025-01-10 15:21:22
原节目
以下是将文本翻译成中文:
帕克·康拉德(Parker Conrad)是价值 135 亿美元的公司 Rippling 的创始人,他在“如何构建未来”(How to Build the Future)播客节目中分享了他的创业历程。 Rippling 旨在统一 HR 和 IT 职能,提供薪资管理和商业洞察。康拉德表示,他现在的业务状态更加可预测和稳定,对未来也有更清晰的愿景。
他回忆起自己早期对计算机的热爱,并在初中和高中时通过为亲友修理电脑赚钱。然后,他谈到自己在哈佛大学的经历,期间他积极参与学生报社的工作。这段经历让他对挑战既得利益产生了浓厚的兴趣。
从哈佛毕业并获得化学学位后,康拉德在一家生物科技公司工作,之后他决定与一位大学室友一起创业。他们的最初想法是建立一个“股票研究维基”,尽管获得了 250 万美元的种子轮融资,但还是失败了,这说明了消费者业务的不可预测性。康拉德的经历让他明白,追求投资者的潮流不如建立一个根本上强大的企业,让投资者无法忽视。他对融资变得非常愤世嫉俗,意识到投资者的注意力往往比建立一家成功公司所需的时间还要短。
在他第一次创业失败后,康拉德创立了 Zenefits,其灵感来自于通过将薪资、福利和保险等各种功能整合到一个系统中来简化 HR 管理。他加入了 Y Combinator (YC),最初的目标是筹集足够的资金来避免进一步融资。然而,该项目的强度和对快速执行的关注证明更有价值。他强调了创业公司中紧迫性的重要性,回忆起 YC 的负责人 PG 是如何敦促他比计划提前很久推出 Zenefits 的。
Zenefits 的产品市场契合度立刻显现,增长速度超过了所有预期。该公司迅速扩张,在加入 YC 后不久就达到了 20 万美元的收入,年底增长到 100 万美元,然后在第二年呈指数增长到 2000 万美元。
然而,Zenefits 面临合规问题,导致康拉德被解雇。尽管他离开了,但他相信 Zenefits 本来可以成功,但负面新闻和对其声誉的攻击阻碍了公司的发展。Y Combinator 支持康拉德,并基于他们之前对他的职业道德和诚信的了解,投资了他的新公司 Rippling。
凭借 Rippling,康拉德拥有重建一家公司,并对市场有深刻理解的优势。这一次,他旨在通过吸取过去的教训并专注于建立更可持续的商业模式来实现更大的成功。他将 Rippling 描述为“复合软件业务”,提供一套全面的互连应用程序,以解决组织内部更广泛的问题。他认为,狭隘的“点 SaaS”解决方案不足以应对复杂的业务挑战。
康拉德强调了软件行业销售和营销成本的上升和效率的下降。他将 AI 视为一种赋能企业的方式,使更小的团队能够实现更多。关键在于利用 AI 分析大量数据并提供洞察的能力,高管和经理可以利用这些洞察做出明智的决策。
他相信 AI 将导致软件更加垂直化,从而实现针对特定行业和企业量身定制的高度定制化解决方案。他还预计无代码软件开发将会复苏。
在反思“创始人模式”的概念时,康拉德同意创始人需要能够深入了解其业务的细节,尤其是在事情进展不顺利时。但是,他警告不要将创始人模式误解为不良行为的借口或避免聘用经验丰富的高管的理由。
他强调,Rippling 的愿景——通过数据驱动的解决方案和平台能力以不同的方式构建商业软件——仍在进行中。尽管公司发展良好,但他意识到还有很多工作要做,并且 Rippling 的软件开发方法是否最终会胜出仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。
Parker Conrad, the founder of Rippling, a $13.5 billion company, shares his entrepreneurial journey on the "How to Build the Future" podcast. Rippling aims to unify HR and IT functions, providing payroll and business insights. Conrad describes the current state of his business as more predictable and stable, with a clearer vision for the future.
He recounts his early affinity for computers, making money in middle and high school fixing computers for family friends. He then discusses his time at Harvard, where he was heavily involved with the student newspaper. This experience instilled in him a passion for taking on entrenched interests.
After graduating with a chemistry degree and working at a biotech firm, Conrad decided to start a company with a college roommate. Their initial idea, a "wiki for stock research," failed despite a $2.5 million seed round, illustrating the unpredictable nature of consumer businesses. Conrad’s experience taught him that pursuing investor trends is less important than building a fundamentally strong business that investors cannot ignore. He became deeply cynical about fundraising, realizing investors' attention spans are often shorter than the time it takes to build a successful company.
Following the failure of his first startup, Conrad founded Zenefits, driven by the idea of simplifying HR administration by integrating various functions like payroll, benefits, and insurance into a single system. He joined Y Combinator (YC) with the initial goal of raising enough capital to avoid further fundraising. However, the program's intensity and focus on rapid execution proved more valuable. He emphasizes the importance of urgency in startups, recalling how PG, the leader of YC, pushed him to launch Zenefits much earlier than planned.
The product market fit for Zenefits was immediately apparent, with rapid growth exceeding all expectations. The company quickly scaled, reaching $200,000 in revenue shortly after YC and growing to $1 million by the end of the year, followed by exponential growth to $20 million the next year.
However, Zenefits faced compliance issues, leading to Conrad's firing. Despite his departure, he believed Zenefits could have succeeded, but negative press and attacks on his reputation hampered the company's progress. Y Combinator rallied around Conrad and invested in his new venture, Rippling, based on their prior experience with his work ethic and integrity.
With Rippling, Conrad had the advantage of rebuilding a company with a deep understanding of the market. This time, he aimed for even greater success by learning from past mistakes and focusing on building a more sustainable business model. He describes Rippling as a "compound software business," offering a comprehensive suite of interconnected applications to solve broader problems within organizations. He believes that narrowly focused "point SaaS" solutions are insufficient for tackling complex business challenges.
Conrad highlights the rising cost and declining efficiency of sales and marketing in the software industry. He sees AI as a way to empower businesses by enabling smaller teams to achieve more. The key is leveraging AI's ability to analyze vast amounts of data and provide insights that executives and managers can use to make informed decisions.
He believes AI will lead to more verticalization of software, allowing for highly customized solutions tailored to specific industries and businesses. He also anticipates a resurgence of no-code software development.
Reflecting on the concept of "founder mode," Conrad agrees that founders need to be able to go deep into the details of their business, especially when things are not working. However, he cautions against misinterpreting founder mode as an excuse for poor behavior or a reason to avoid hiring experienced executives.
He emphasizes that the Rippling vision—building business software differently through data-driven solutions and platform capabilities—is still in progress. While the company is doing well, he recognizes there is much more to accomplish, and the question of whether Rippling's approach to software development will ultimately prevail remains open.