健身界的 Palantir Palantir for Fitness

真实世界里的健身经济，正在爆发。 The real-world fitness economy is booming.

去年，健身房到访多达七十亿次。跑步俱乐部翻了三倍，仅美国每年就要花掉六百亿美元。 Seven billion gym visits last year. Run clubs tripling, sixty billion dollars a year in the US alone.

可奇怪的地方在于：这一切，几乎跑在什么都没有之上。 And here's the strange part: almost none of it runs on anything.

它底下没有一套共用的基础设施。 There's no shared infrastructure underneath it.

今天这位嘉宾，想造的正是这一层。 My guest wants to build that layer.

Sig 是一位连续创业者，在十个国家、二十多家创业公司里都留过手笔。 Sig is a serial founder who's had a hand in more than twenty startups across ten different countries.

他是那种做完一件事就往前走的人。可这一次，他要把整整十年，押在同一个想法上。 He's the kind of builder who tries something and moves on. This time, he's betting a decade on one idea.

他管它叫健身界的 Palantir，因为真正的宝藏不是那个交易市场，而是它底下的数据。 He calls it the Palantir for fitness, because the real prize isn't the marketplace. It's the data underneath it.

这里是《雏形》。 This is Prototype.

在这档节目里，我们总是从创始人正在面对的问题讲起。 On this podcast, we always start with the problem the founder is facing.

人们正以前所未有的力度，把金钱和时间投进健身。2025 年，健身房和健身工作室的到访量大约有七十亿次，是有记录以来最高的一年。 People are pouring money and time into fitness like never before. Gyms and studios saw around seven billion visits in 2025, the highest ever recorded.

跑步俱乐部在全球翻了三倍，仅巴西就涨了 800%。 Run clubs tripled globally, Brazil alone up 800%.

美国人，甚至中国人，都被 Hyrox 这类健身赛事深深吸引。那么，人们花钱和花时间的方式，究竟正在发生什么变化？ Americans, and even Chinese, are drawn to things like Hyrox and these kinds of fitness events. So what is actually happening to how people spend their money and their time?

这主要是人们所说的新的 daylife（日间生活）潮流。有了教育，有了 AI，每个人都更在意自己的健康，更清楚要怎样才能长寿、赚更多钱、过上好日子。 It's mostly what people call the new 'daylife' trend. With education and AI, everyone is more aware of their health, of what it takes to live a long life, make more money, and have a good life.

过去人们愿意砸时间砸钱的夜生活，如今已经没那么有吸引力了，尤其是对年轻一代。 The whole nightlife scene that people used to pour time and money into isn't that appealing anymore, especially to younger generations.

而营销又在推波助澜，那些 App、社交媒体，把它烘托得更有趣、更好看、更诱人。 And marketing amplifies it, all the apps and social media, because it's just more fun, more attractive, more sexy.

运动本来就一直存在，但这股潮流是在提醒每个人：你是人，你需要动起来，而这会让你快乐。尤其是疫情之后，它背后的社群属性把人重新聚到一起，让大家意识到，这不只是健身那么简单。 People have always done sports, but this reminds everyone: you're a human being, you need to move, and it makes you happy. Especially after the pandemic, the community side of it brings people together and makes them realize this is more than just fitness.

而且除了人们实际在做的运动，还有一整块生意：他们穿的衣服、打网球要买的球拍、用来记录一切的可穿戴设备。那是一个独立的、规模达数万亿美元的市场，必须被纳进这整盘棋里。 And beyond what people actually do, there's the whole business side, the clothes they wear, the rackets they buy for tennis, the wearables that track everything. That's a separate, multi-trillion-dollar market that has to be part of the picture.

对，因为这是一个生态，所有环节都彼此咬合。 Right, because it's an ecosystem, everything works together.

你怎么看 Hyrox 这类东西？这样的赛事过去也有过，比如 Sparta 之类的，我想现在还在。但在我这个外行看来，这类赛事往往先火一阵，然后随着时间慢慢冷下去。 What's your take on something like Hyrox? We've seen events like this before, Sparta and the like, which I think still exist. But from the outside, these events seem to spike and then slowly die down over time.

所以，像 Hyrox 这样的兴起，你是怎么理解的？ So what's your read on the rise of something like Hyrox?

我觉得它其实是娱乐产业的一部分：是运动和健身，但被做成了一种带竞技性的赛事。它很有观赏性，周边有很多活动，也是绝佳的营销机会。 I think it's really part of the entertainment industry: sport and fitness, but in a competitive event format. It's entertaining, there's a lot happening around it, and it's a great marketing opportunity.

那感觉像去参加一场音乐节，某种程度上，又像古时候人们一起出征。人们享受置身于那个群体之中，它唤醒了我们身上某种部落般的本能，一种作为人类的心理需求。 It's like going to a festival, or, in a way, like going off to battle in the old days. People enjoy being in that group. It activates something tribal in us, our psychology as human beings.

当然，不是所有人都喜欢。连我有时都会想，人也太多了吧，而且在成千上万人面前脱掉上衣，总觉得有点好笑。但真正把这一切黏合在一起的，正是那份社群感。 Not everyone loves it, of course. Even I sometimes think, wow, this is too many people, and taking your shirt off in front of thousands is a little funny. But that's really what brings it together.

这种社群感，把同一类人，相同的心态、相同的生活方式，聚到同一个地方，而这件事用别的方式很难做到，它给人带来极大的快乐。 This community aspect gathers the same kind of people, same mindset, same lifestyle, in one place, which is very hard to do any other way, and it creates so much joy.

而且它几乎不花什么钱。对个人来说，参加这些赛事其实相当便宜。 And it barely costs anything. For an individual to take part, it's actually quite cheap.

Sparta 还在，他们其实还做了 Deka，类似 Hyrox，泰国这边也有个叫 Crucible 的要办起来。这类赛事太多了，而 CrossFit 一直都在。所以它并不算什么新鲜事，它一直都存在，只是人们在不断找新的切入点，把这些赛事重新做出来。 Sparta is still around, they actually started Deka, which is like Hyrox, and there's Crucible coming up here in Thailand. There are so many of these, and CrossFit was always a thing. So it's not really new, it has always been there, people are just finding new angles on how to build these events.

但奇怪的地方，也正是 AVA 存在的全部理由：这么多赛事火起来，底下却始终没有一套共用的基础设施，去支撑这个规模上千亿美元的市场。这是为什么？ But the strange part, and the whole reason AVA exists, is that with all these events, there's still no shared infrastructure running on top of this hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars economy. Why is that?

没有一套统一的系统在支撑这些赛事，你刚才提到的那些东西，可穿戴设备、能卖的商品，也没有一个共用的层。这个缺口，为什么会存在？ There's no single system that runs these events, and no shared layer for the things you mentioned, the wearables, the products you could sell. Why does that gap exist?

这些可穿戴设备、各种 App，不管是打匹克球还是别的，其实都是最近才冒出来的。整个健身和体育经济，骨子里相当传统。 These wearables and apps, for paddle tennis and everything else, are only just popping up. The whole fitness and sports economy is actually pretty traditional.

它一直是靠热情驱动的。想想那些足球俱乐部，我们过去总拿那种有钱人打趣：特别爱这项运动，干脆就买下一支球队。Ryan Gosling 和另一个人前不久买下了 Wrexham，还拍成了一整档节目。全凭热爱，对吧？ It's always been driven by passion. Think of football clubs, we used to joke about some rich guy who loves the sport and just buys one. Ryan Gosling and another guy recently bought Wrexham and made a whole show about it. It's pure passion, right?

所以大多数人从不去想底下的技术，也不想着怎么优化，因为凑合着就能用。连赞助商、连俱乐部里的人，都只是纯粹出于热爱，于是他们硬把事情办成，或者用最传统的方式雇个人来打理，活动经理、市场经理，一切全靠手工。 So most people never think about the technology underneath, or how to optimize it, because it just works. Even the sponsors and the people running these clubs are simply passionate, so they force it to work, or they hire someone the traditional way, event managers, marketing managers, doing everything by hand.

而且这才刚刚开始。我住在曼谷，匹克球正火得一塌糊涂，光是打匹克球现在就有五六个 App，巴厘岛更是有十几个。有了 AI，人人都能做自己的 App，所以这一切真的才刚起步。 And this only started recently. I live in Bangkok, where paddle is blowing up, and there are now five or six apps just to play paddle. In Bali it's ten-plus. With AI, everyone can build their own app, so it's really just beginning.

这正是我想造这套基础设施的原因：一个平台，在后端把围绕这种活力生活方式的一切都连起来。它不是要取代那些专门做某项运动的 App，但它会取代帮你找到它们的那一环，因为现在，你根本找不到。 That's why I want to build this infrastructure, one platform that connects everything in the backend around this active lifestyle. It's not replacing all these sport-specific apps, but it will replace the part where you find them, because right now you can't.

你出门旅行，就想现在打一场匹克球，可对方却让你去下载某个 App，而那个 App 在你所在国家的应用商店里根本没有。这样的问题太多了。这基本上就是我想做 AVA（或者按你的叫法，AVA）的原因。 When you travel, you just want to play paddle now, and they tell you to download some app that isn't even in your country's app store. There are so many problems like this. That's basically why I want to build AVA, or AVA, however you say it.

话说，你其实参与打造了曼谷最大的跑步俱乐部之一，对吧？ So you actually helped build one of the biggest run clubs in Bangkok, right?

我是帮着把它做起来，并不是在经营它。 I helped build it up, I wasn't running it.

但你看到了幕后有多痛苦。能不能讲几个，正是这些问题，启发了你想怎么去做 AVA？ But you saw behind the scenes how painful it is. Can you describe a few of the problems that inspired how you wanted to build AVA?

那是曼谷的 Sabai Run Club，后来成了全世界最大的跑团之一。大约两年前我加入了他们的团队，大概是第 14 号成员吧。 That was the Sabai Run Club in Bangkok, which ended up one of the biggest in the world. I joined the team about two years ago, I was maybe member number fourteen.

一开始很随性：在公园集合，跑个三公里，喝杯咖啡，聊聊天。后来一些网红和模特加入进来，他们在社交媒体上非常活跃，于是我们突然每周有五百多人。这来得毫无征兆，我们一下子就应付不过来了。 At first it was casual, meet in the park, run three kilometers, grab a coffee, chat. Then influencers and models got involved, very active on social media, and suddenly we had five hundred-plus people every week. It came out of nowhere, and we were overwhelmed.

最初只是一个 WhatsApp 群，后来就变得太复杂了，尤其是当我们开始变现、办其他活动、做自己的服装、甚至办时装秀之后。你不得不用上各种各样的 App，最后又退回到 Excel 表格，而这在多人协作、互相共享的时候，简直是一团糟。 It started with just a WhatsApp group, then it got too complicated, especially once we began monetizing, running other events, our own clothing, even a fashion show. You end up using all kinds of apps and falling back to Excel sheets, which is a complete mess to share and work on together.

这些工具根本不是为这个场景设计的，只是大家碰巧都会用的那一个，所以就凑合着用。而整个行业都是这样：流程勉强能转，却没人真去想，怎么把它做得更好、怎么从中赚到更多钱。 These tools aren't built for this, they're just the one thing everyone happens to know, so it works. And that's the whole industry: processes that just barely work, and no one really asking how to do it better or make more money from it.

于是一切都退回到卖周边、卖门票，赚点小钱，而不是去想：我们手上有 Adidas、Lululemon、Hoka 这么多赞助商，到底怎样才能和他们一起赚到更多钱，他们又到底需要什么？ So everything defaults to selling merchandise and tickets to make a bit of money, instead of asking: we have all these sponsors, Adidas, Lululemon, Hoka, how do we actually make more with them, what do they need?

哪怕到现在，做的也大多是社交媒体和品牌曝光：发点内容，盼着品牌自己长起来，却没有任何东西被真正记录下来。在 Instagram 上你能看到一些数据，仅此而已，可它从来无法直接换算成真正的投资回报，你为一场活动投入了多少，又收回了多少。 Even now it's mostly social media and brand awareness, make content and hope the brand grows, but nothing is properly tracked. On Instagram you see some metrics, but that never translates into real return on investment, what you put into an event versus what you get out.

团队这边呢，我离开时大概有 45 个人在每周张罗这些活动，全是志愿者。想想看，有品牌、有团队，本可以做的事情还有多少，可能性是无穷的，可我们当时就是没有工具。而这，正是我在造的东西。 And on the team side, when I left we had about forty-five people organizing these events every week, all volunteers. Think how much more you could do with a brand and a team, the possibilities are endless, but we just didn't have the tools yet. That's what I'm building.

这还带来一个盲区问题，对吧？组织者根本不知道谁来了、谁没来，年龄段是什么、男女比例是多少。所以到了事后复盘的时候，他们等于是在盲飞。 This creates a blindness problem too, right? The organizer doesn't know who showed up, who didn't, the age range, the gender ratio. So they're flying blind when it comes to analyzing afterwards.

我其实为 Wilder Training Club 做过一些功能，那是曼谷这边一家做电解质饮料的公司。他们的主打活动是每周日早上的训练营，但换成别的活动，比如名额有限的新品发布会，常常是很多人报了名，最后却不来。 I actually built features for the Wilder Training Club, an electrolyte company here in Bangkok. Their main event is a training club every Sunday morning, but for other events, say a product release with limited spots, a lot of people sign up and then don't show up.

如果是公园里的公开跑，那没关系，人来人往都行。可换成别的活动，就很难安排了：你得张罗餐饮、备够食物，还常常要按报名者的尺码准备免费周边，可一旦他们不来，那就是个大麻烦。 For a public run in a park it's fine, people come and go. But for everything else it's hard to plan: you have to arrange catering, enough food, often free merchandise sized to whoever signed up, and when they don't show, that's a real problem.

于是我做了这些功能：把你的 VIP 加进白名单，也就是那些每次都到场的人，这是你的社群；同时更好地追踪其他人：谁是放鸽子的、谁总报名却从不出现。全都汇总在一处，让组织者能把活动办得更好。 So I built features to whitelist your VIPs, the people who always show up, this is your community, and to track the others better: who's a no-show, who keeps signing up and never comes. All in one place, so organizers can run their events better.

这个你亲身经历的问题，是在什么时候变成了一个真正的决定，让你说：好，我要坐下来，围绕这一切做一家创业公司？有没有一个具体的瞬间？ When did this lived problem turn into a real decision, where you said, okay, I'm going to sit down and build a startup around all of this? Was there a specific moment?

没什么戏剧性的。今年年初，我手上另一家在做的创业公司渐渐收了尾，因为有了 AI，一夜之间人人都能造出任何东西，而我们做的那个产品，恰恰就是现在谁都能做出来的那类。市场和企业客户已经在释放这个信号了，所以我想，好吧，我得重新自己做点什么，于是我把目光投向了身边最迫切的那些问题。 Nothing dramatic. Earlier this year, another startup I was building was winding down, because with AI, suddenly everyone could build anything, and what we'd built was exactly the kind of thing anyone could now build. The market and enterprises were already signaling that, so I thought, okay, I need to start something of my own again, and I looked at the problems right around me.

与此同时，我看到曼谷冒出越来越多的跑团和训练营。突然之间，我认识的每个人都在做某种健身，或者加入某个社群，甚至自己办起来，还有几个朋友创起了自己的服装品牌。 At the same time, I saw more and more run clubs and training clubs popping up in Bangkok. Suddenly everyone I knew was into some kind of fitness, or joining a community, or even starting their own, and some friends launched their own clothing brands.

所以我想，如果说有什么时候该做这样一个东西，那就是现在。我和曾经的联合创始人聊起我们能做点什么，得是好玩的、能让我们四处旅行、能运动、能好好生活、同时又能赚钱的事。这个点子，就是这么成形的。 So I thought, if there's ever a time to build something like this, it's now. My former co-founder and I talked about what we could do, something fun, where we could travel, do sports, have a good life and make money at the same time. That's how the idea came together.

我们来聊聊你的产品。问题我们已经讲透了，那就请你用最朴素的语言把它讲清楚。如果一个用户登录进来，他会看到什么？如果是一个组织者登录，他在后台又会看到什么？ Let's talk about the product. We've covered the problem, so describe it in the plainest language you can. If a user logs in, what do they see? If an organizer logs in, what do they see on the back end?

现在他们打开的是一个首页，但我在考虑把它做得更像 Luma，因为在消费者这一端，核心其实就是找活动。理想的样子，是一个 explore（探索）页面，列出正在发生的各种活动，再配上筛选器，精确找到你想要的，尤其是当你是个游客，想知道这个周末巴塞罗那有什么活动的时候。 Right now they land on a home page, but I'm thinking of making it more like Luma, because on the consumer side it's really about finding events. Ideally there's just an explore page with all the events happening, with filters for exactly what you want, especially useful if you're a tourist wondering what's on in Barcelona this weekend.

在企业这一端，有一整套独立的工具，用来创建、组织和运营活动。当你创建一场活动，重点是找到合适的场地、找到摄影师和摄像师这样的自由职业者、再找到赞助商，为此你能接入一个已经注册在册的商家数据库。任何人都可以以活动、社群或品牌的身份创建活动，并把它发布到消费者一端，供人们发现和预订。 On the business side there's a whole separate suite to create, organize, and run events. When you create one, it's about finding the right venue, finding freelancers like photographers and videographers, and finding sponsors, so you get access to a database of businesses that have already signed up. Anyone can create an event, community, or brand and publish it on the consumer side for people to find and book.

真正有意思的是 B2B 这一端。活动实际进行时，你扫 QR 码就能追踪谁到场了、他们在做什么，用折扣码或餐饮券取代纸质小票，并把这一切都变成数据。事后，你的账户里就沉淀出一整套 CRM，可以用于营销和销售，也能更好地和赞助商合作，毕竟那么多活动，本质上都是品牌方的一次营销激活。 It gets more interesting on the B2B side. When the event actually happens, you scan QR codes to track who's showing up and what they're doing, hand out discount codes or food vouchers instead of paper slips, and capture all of that as data. Afterwards you've built a whole CRM in your account that you can use for marketing and sales, and to work better with sponsors, since so many events are really brand activations.

我尽量不去吹嘘那些还没做出来的功能，但未来的方向，是帮你读懂你的市场和你的行业。我的 AI 智能体正在做一个功能：一个日历，按你所在的城市显示，比如这个周六有多少个跑团。如果我想在周六办一场跑步活动，而那天已经有十个跑团了，那我大概应该改到周日。 I try not to over-promise features I haven't built, but the future is about understanding your market and industry. My AI agents are building a feature right now: a calendar that shows, for your city, how many run clubs are on this Saturday. If I want to launch a running event on Saturday and there are already ten, I should probably do Sunday instead.

又或者，我是个品牌，要花一万美元办一场有网红、有产品的活动，可我一看，周六早已被各种活动塞满，那我就知道我的大多数目标客户会去别处。如果我想触达 20 到 30 岁的女性，我可以按这个人群筛选，看看她们究竟什么时候有空。要是周六已经有一堆活动在争夺她们，那我就把自己的活动放到周日。 Or say I'm a brand spending ten thousand dollars on an event with influencers and products, and I see Saturday is packed with events, I know most of my customers will be elsewhere. If I want to reach women aged twenty to thirty, I can filter for that segment and see when they're actually available. If a lot of events already target them on Saturday, I'll run mine on Sunday.

而这些数据，如今在市场上根本就是空白，无论是用来策划活动，还是用来预订场地。有了你收集到的数据，你就能把自己的活动办得更好：该在哪里省钱、什么时间段合适、人们究竟什么时候才真正到场。 All of this data is simply missing from the market today, both for planning events and for booking venues. And with the data you collect, you can run your own events better: where to save money, what timings work, when people actually show up.

另一大块是社群：社群如何组织自己、彼此发现。平台里有聊天功能，凡是加入某个活动或社群的人，都能拥有自己的群聊，而不必再像今天这样，信息散落在 Instagram、WhatsApp、乃至如今 Luma 的聊天里，四处零碎，没有一个统一的工具。 The other big piece is community: how communities organize and find each other. There are chat features, so everyone who joins an event or community gets their own group chat, instead of today's mess across Instagram, WhatsApp, and now Luma's chats, where information is scattered and there's no single tool.

你还可以向社群出售不同的会员层级：免费会员、VIP 会员、创始会员等等，而当赞助商进来时，他们可以选择只把周边送给 VIP 会员。如今拿到免费东西的大多是网红，但你完全可以把这套机制内建进自己的社群，培养自己的品牌大使。 You can also sell membership tiers to your community, free, VIP, founder member, and when sponsors come in, they can choose to give merchandise to just the VIP members. Today it's mostly influencers who get the free stuff, but you could build that into your own community with brand ambassadors.

在我看来，最强的一块是数据层。它给组织者的东西太多了：既让活动更好办，又提供事后的分析。而你形容这个产品时，用过一个说法，叫健身界的 Palantir。 The strongest part, for me, is the data layer. It gives the organizer so much, both easier events and the analytics afterwards. And a phrase you use for the product is the Palantir for fitness.

对那些从没弄懂这是什么意思的人，你能不能解释一下，Palantir 到底是什么，以及你的数据，是怎样让 AVA 成为一个健身界的 Palantir 的？ For anyone who's never understood what that means, can you explain what Palantir actually is, and how your data makes AVA a Palantir for fitness?

这正是我想说的。Palantir 有好几条产品线，其中一条真正面向企业：把你所有的数据汇到一处，帮你做出正确的决策、做出更准的预测。做生意，你必须预测、必须管理投资、必须放长线去想。你不能只是说，哦，下周随便办个活动吧，这背后是有一整套策略的。 It's what I was getting at. Palantir has several products, one is really for businesses: pulling all your data into one place to make the right decisions and better forecasts. In business you have to predict, manage investments, think long-term. You can't just say, oh, let's throw an event next week, there's a whole strategy behind it.

尤其是和赞助商、场地方打交道，要协调的事情非常多，所以你需要把数据集中在一处来做优化。而且它不只是给活动组织者用的，也给社群、给管理场地预订的场馆、给那些想搞清楚该赞助哪场活动才能拿到某种效果的赞助商。 Especially with sponsors and venues, there's a lot to coordinate, so you need that data in one place to optimize. And it's not only for event organizers, it's for communities, for venues managing their bookings, for sponsors trying to understand which event to back to get a certain result.

这一切的核心，是一种如今彻底缺失的商业智能，连支撑它的底层数据都还不存在。所以我想把这块造出来，做到 Palantir 那样的程度：让你能做出这些预测，能在一个地方管理你所经营的任何业务，而这在当下，根本连边都摸不到。 It's all about business intelligence that's completely missing today, the underlying data isn't even there to do it. So I want to build that, and get to the Palantir point where you can make these predictions and manage whatever business you run from one place, which right now isn't remotely possible.

你还用过另一个说法，Sweatpals on steroids（打了兴奋剂的 Sweatpals）。这个 on steroids 指的是什么，是那些发现类 App 做不到的哪一点？ You also used another phrase, Sweatpals on steroids. What's the 'on steroids' part, the thing a discovery app can't do?

Sweatpals 是从社群起家的，如今正往健身房和工作室延伸，他们还刚宣布，下一步要做静修营和音乐节，和我想走的方向一样。他们现在也开始瞄准企业客户，但我是从零开始，同时为企业、为社群、也为所有参加这些活动和体验的人来搭建的。 Sweatpals started with communities and is now moving toward gyms and studios, and they just announced retreats and festivals are next, the same direction I'm heading. They're now targeting businesses too, but I'm building for businesses and communities from the ground up, and for everyone joining these events and experiences.

我看的是整个生态，这才是所谓的 on steroids。他们很擅长把社群组织起来、把它变现，但在我的 App 里，问题是怎样让每个人都能接入这些、拿到洞察，因为在 Sweatpals 上，你只能组织活动、留存一些 CRM 数据，却没法真正做预测，也没法把活动规划得更好。而这，正是缺失的那一环。 I'm looking at the whole ecosystem, and that's why it's 'on steroids.' They're very good at organizing a community and monetizing it, but with my app the question is how everyone taps into that and gets the insights, because on Sweatpals you can organize events and keep some CRM data, but you can't really make predictions or plan your events better. That's what's missing.

那么就今天的 Hyrox 赛事而言，据我理解，每一类赛事都各有各的 App。对吗？你本质上是想把这一切都集中到一处？ So for a Hyrox event today, my understanding is each type of event has its own app. Is that right? You basically want to centralize all of it?

像 Hyrox 这样的公司，更像是需求不同的企业客户，而他们如今其实没有 App，只是一个网页，你去买张票，仅此而已。长远看，对他们来说，能把数据也沉淀下来，是件有意思的事。 Companies like Hyrox are more of an enterprise client with different needs, and they don't really have an app today, it's a web page where you book a ticket, that's it. Long-term it'd be interesting for them to capture the data too.

我其实认识一个人，一个朋友的妻子，眼下负责操办亚洲所有的 Hyrox 赛事。她得管理分布在不同国家的不同团队，大多是活动执行公司，因为规模实在太大，每场赛事都是两万人起步。这已经复杂到一个 App 解决不了的地步。要服务这类企业客户，我大概得换一种方式来用我的 App，做一些不同的功能。 I actually know someone, a friend's wife, who organizes all the Hyrox events in Asia right now. She has to manage different people in different countries, mostly event agencies, because it's so big, every event is twenty thousand people or more. It's getting too complicated, and one app won't solve that. To serve enterprise clients like that, I'd probably have to use my app differently, build different features.

至少，他们可以用它来更好地读懂市场，看看下一场 Hyrox 该安排在什么时候、放在上海办，也可以借它接触到更多赞助商。但说实话，他们眼下并没有这个痛点，因为大家早就都知道 Hyrox 了。 At the very least they could use it to understand the market better, to see when to plan their next Hyrox event in Shanghai, and to get more access to sponsors. But honestly, right now they don't really have that problem, because everyone already knows Hyrox.

他们不太需要做营销，人人都认识，更多是执行层面的事，而因为规模太大，那都得靠大团队线下去做。但当然，未来为什么不能用 AVA 来做这些呢？我已经找过他们了，只是眼下我们太小，或者说，我太小了。 They don't need much marketing, everyone knows them, it's more about execution, which is in-person with big teams because it's so large. But sure, why not use AVA for that in the future. I already tried with them, but right now we're too small, or I'm too small.

但 Hyrox 在赛事结束后，总有某种数据分析吧？他们肯定有，对吧，只是没有你设想的那么先进？ But does Hyrox have some kind of analytics after their events? They must, right, just not as advanced as what you envision?

他们内部有，没错。这正是我的意思：AVA 还太小，还不足以让他们把自己用内部团队搭起来的一整套东西全部换掉。我的联合创始人 Chris，其实和他们的一位市场负责人是大学同学。他们已经有一整个市场部门、一整套工具在收集数据，只是这些数据既不集中，也不和别的系统相连。而这，正是 AVA 可以去打通的那块缺口。 They have it internally, yes. That's my point: AVA is too small for them to rip out everything they've built with internal teams. My co-founder Chris actually went to university with one of their marketing heads. They already have a whole marketing department and all the tools collecting the data, but it's not centralized and not connected to anything else. That's the missing piece AVA could integrate.

所以到某个阶段，他们会把它当作一个附加工具来用，或者把数据喂给它。但那是 AVA 的未来，一切都会是 AI，我们会把不同的数据库连起来，让 AI 去做预测和分析。可要做到那一步，我得先有信息，得先把基础设施搭起来。 So at some point they'd use it as an add-on, or feed data into it. But that's AVA's future, everything will be AI, we'll connect different databases and have AI do the forecasting and predictions. For that, though, I need the information first, I need to build the infrastructure first.

而正因为数据如此重要，它最终会变成一个飞轮，对吧？越多公司加入，你就有越多数据，预测就越准，反过来又带来更多数据。这就是你想随着时间慢慢造出来的愿景吗？ And because the data matters so much, it eventually becomes a flywheel, right? More companies, more data, better predictions, which brings more data. Is that the vision you want to build toward?

是的，而这会创造巨大的价值。作为活动组织者，你一加入，就立刻接入了整个市场：自由职业者、赞助商、运动员、场地方。而一个场地本身也是一门生意，同样连着所有这些数据点。组织者本来就有自己的人脉和关系，所以他们会把这些一并带上平台，这才是真正的飞轮。 Yes, and that's huge value. As an event organizer you join and instantly connect to the whole marketplace: freelancers, sponsors, athletes, venues. And a venue is itself a business connected to all those data points. Organizers already have their network and connections, so they bring them onto the platform, and that's the real flywheel.

这个生态其实早就彼此相连，他们只是缺一个可以共同运转的 App。这正是我现在在融资的原因：去办几场大型的品牌激活活动，把所有人拉上平台，而每个人又会带上自己整张关系网。一场活动就能引入上百家商户，把所有人连起来，然后它就会自发地爆发式生长。 The ecosystem is already connected, they just don't have one app to operate on. That's why I'm raising money right now: to run big brand-activation events, bring everyone onto the platform, and they each bring their whole network. Hundreds of businesses onboarded from a single event, connecting everyone, and then it just explodes organically.

所以只要这一步发生，它就会爆发，这基本上就是你越过冷启动难题的办法？ So once that happens, it explodes, that's basically your plan to get past the cold-start problem?

在开公司之前，我就找了几百家商户，去弄清楚痛点到底在哪，而痛点就是这个：每一家商户现在都要雇好几个人，专门去张罗活动、去收集数据、去做事后的规划。这很烧钱，你要招他们、管他们，万一他们生病了、离职了怎么办？整件事乱作一团，数据还四处散落。 Before I even started the company, I talked to hundreds of businesses to understand the pain, and this is it: every business is hiring several people just to organize events, gather the data, and plan everything afterwards. That's expensive, you hire them, manage them, and what if they get sick or leave? It's a mess, and the data is scattered.

所以他们都在找一个地方，能用更少的钱办活动、又能从活动里赚更多钱，同时解决营销这一块，而营销，本来就是他们办活动的全部初衷：怎样卖出更多产品、更多服务，怎样把健身房的会员数拉起来。这在今天是彻底缺失的。这也正是他们不得不雇这么多人的原因。 So they're all looking for one place to run events for less money and make more from them, and for the marketing side, which is the whole reason they host events in the first place: how to sell more products, more services, boost gym memberships. That's completely missing today. That's exactly why they hire all these people.

所以他们需要这样一个东西，而且都已经准备好去用了，难就难在这是个先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题：没有用户，就没有商家；没有商家，又没有用户。而要走出那个创业初期的阶段，让大家不再想着，万一你明天就没了呢，背后又没大团队、又没大笔融资，对这些公司来说，把整套运营搬到一个 App 上，风险实在太大。 So they need something like this, and they're all ready to use it, it's just a chicken-and-egg problem: no customers, no businesses; no businesses, no customers. And to get out of that startup phase where everyone thinks, what if you're gone tomorrow, no big team, no big funding, it's too risky for these companies to move their whole operation onto one app.

这很有道理。那隐私和信任呢？数据必然会记录下人们的行为。你打算怎么保护隐私，让每一个用户都觉得安全，尤其考虑到在西方国家，人们对隐私的敏感，要比东亚这边强得多？ That makes sense. What about privacy and trust? Data absolutely captures people's behavior. How do you protect privacy and make every user feel safe, especially since in Western countries the sense of privacy is much stronger than here in East Asia?

每个人都问我这个问题，而这挺好笑的，因为其实没人真在乎某个人的名字。重要的是搞清楚：买这个产品的是女性还是男性、大概什么年龄段，诸如此类。没人关心具体是哪个人，重要的是你在活动上收集到的数据点，因为归根结底，这是为了卖产品、做营销，或者做产品研发。 Everyone asks me this, and it's funny, because no one really cares about the individual's name. It's about understanding whether it's women or men buying a product, what age range, that kind of thing. Nobody cares about the specific person, it's the data points you collect at events, because ultimately it's about selling a product, marketing, or product development.

对社群来说则不一样，他们确实想知道名字，所以这对他们很重要。但这由你在注册时自己决定，你可以把账户设为私密，不透露姓名或个人信息。它也可以更偏社交一点，毕竟现在那么多活动都是在 Instagram 上办的，而那上面你本来也拿不到多少信息。 For communities it's different, they do want names, so that matters to them. But you decide when you sign up, you can keep your account private and not share your name or personal info. It can also become more of a social thing, since so many events are run on Instagram, where you don't get much information anyway.

对于那些确实愿意分享姓名和主页的人，这也可以成为一个核心功能。我试过一个来自英国、叫 Click 的 App，你甚至可以在上面约会，或者通过共同的运动爱好找到自己的社群、结识下一个挚友。所以这个以后可以做成可选项，也许是一整套单独的功能。 It could become a core feature for people who do want to share their name and profile. There's an app I tested called Click, from the UK, where you can even do dating, or find your community or your next best friend through the same activities. So that could be optional later, maybe a whole separate feature set.

但对企业来说，名字真的无关紧要，它不是你能拿去卖的数据。所以给企业的数据是匿名的，只是一些数据点，比如这场活动来了多少女性。那才是他们需要的，而且并不敏感，我不会透露确切的生日，只会给到年份，或者一个年龄区间。 But for businesses it truly doesn't matter, a name isn't data you can sell. So the data is anonymized for them, just points like how many women attended this one event. That's what they need, and it's not sensitive, I'm not sharing an exact birthday, just the year or an age range.

所以现在被分享出去的，没有什么真正敏感的东西，尽管未来会收集哪些数据，我也说不准。通常这是一个功能：当你创建活动时，可以做一份表单去询问特定信息。比如，我们会办一些一边打匹克球一边社交的活动，你可以在表单里问，你是创始人还是投资人，因为你必须是其中之一才能参加。 So there's nothing critically sensitive being shared, though I'm not sure what data might be collected in the future. Usually it's a feature where, when you create an event, you build a form to ask for specific information. For instance, we host networking events where we play paddle, and you can ask, are you a founder or investor, because you have to be one to join.

在那种场合，你会分享一些更私密、可能也更敏感的信息，但它只会被分享给那个特定的社群和组织者，而且是你自愿的。如果你不想分享某样东西，总有变通的办法，比如改用邮件联系他们。道理很简单：如果你不想透露关于自己的某些信息，你完全可以不透露。 There you share more private information that might be more sensitive, but it's only shared with that specific community and the organizer, and you do it willingly. If you don't want to share something, you can always work around it, contact them by email instead. The idea is simple: if you don't want to share something about yourself, you don't have to.

我想快速聊一下你的市场（marketplace）这个想法，因为我觉得它很妙。它不只是卖一些与活动相配的额外商品，它还会成为数据那一块的加速器，对吧，因为市场本身就在源源不断地产生数据。 I want to quickly touch on your marketplace idea, because I think it's brilliant. It's not just about selling extra items that match the event, it also becomes an accelerator for the data, right, because the marketplace itself generates data.

对，而这个市场可以是很多东西：可以卖的商品、找自由职业者、找赞助商。我把它想象得有点像 Kickstarter，你设置一些回报档位，赞助商可以点选；而在自由职业者这一端，它又像 Upwork，你发布一场活动说我需要一个摄影师，大家来竞价，或者由摄影师、摄像师主动来应征你的活动。 Yes, and the marketplace can be so many things: things you sell, finding freelancers, finding sponsors. I think of it a bit like Kickstarter, where you create perks a sponsor can click on, and on the freelancer side it's like Upwork, you post an event saying I need a photographer, and people bid, or freelancers apply to your event as a photographer or videographer.

至于商品，当你有一场活动、又有一个想卖货或发放周边的赞助商时，这一切都可以放进平台里，你在活动现场直接调用，生成一份类似购物清单的东西，这样人们就不必再各用各的 App 和系统了。 And with products, when you have an event and a sponsor who wants to sell or hand out merchandise, all of that can live in the platform, you use it at the event and get a kind of shopping list, so people don't have to use their own separate apps and systems.

所以在活动上，常常是每个人都得填一份要你扫码的表单，而总得有人去做这些表单。我以前办活动时，永远是那个做表单的人，因为别人都说自己不会，于是我就说，好吧，我来。我这辈子做过太多表单了，而这很花时间，并不轻松。 So often at events everyone has to fill out some form you scan, and someone has to build those forms. When I organized events, I was always the guy making the forms, because everyone else said they didn't know how, and I'd say okay, let me do it. I've made so many forms in my life, and it takes time, it's not easy.

现在是有一些 AI 做表单的功能了，但都是这种琐碎的小事，而这一切在 AVA 里都能很快搞定，再围绕它搭起一整个市场，因为这在今天根本还不存在。每次和赞助商合作，他们都塞给你又一份装满商品的 Excel 或 Word 文档，乱成一团。理想状态，是把一切都放进 AVA。 There are some AI form features now, but it's these little things, and all of it can be done in AVA quickly, with a whole marketplace built around it, because that really doesn't exist today. Every time you work with a sponsor they send you yet another Excel or Word doc full of products, it's a complete mess. Ideally, you just have everything in AVA.

这真的很有意思。我想把话题转到你的创业者旅程，因为我认为，一家创业公司能成功，最大的原因就是创始人和团队。眼下你基本上是一个一人公司，但你参与打造过二十多家公司，有些是作为创始人，有些是作为导师。 That's really interesting. I want to turn to your founder's journey, because I think the biggest reason a startup succeeds is the founder and the team. Right now you're basically a one-person company, but you've built over twenty companies, some directly as a founder, some as a mentor.

你做过 AR、游戏、旅行，甚至参与过 VR 版的《刺客信条》，那是虚拟现实领域里数一数二的 3A 大作。那么，一个走过这样一条路的人，怎么会最后来做面向健身房的活动基础设施？在外人看来，你一直在不停地造东西，一件事结束，就立刻奔向下一件。你是怎么一路走到这儿的？ You've worked in AR, games, and travel, and you even worked on Assassin's Creed in VR, one of the biggest AAA titles in virtual reality. So how does someone with that path end up building event infrastructure for gyms? From the outside, you're constantly building, one thing ends and you move to the next. How did you end up here?

其实，我做的第一家创业公司就是活动领域的，基本上就是 AVA 在做的事：找活动、找社群。这是我一直在做的东西，问题只在于时机和地点不对。 Actually, the first startup I ever built was in the event space, basically what AVA is, finding events and communities. It was always a thing I built, the problem was just timing and location.

从头讲起吧：我来自南非，一个农民家庭。家里每个人都是天不亮就起、干一整天的活，没有休息日，连周末也一样。你必须完全自给自足。十岁那年，我什么都自己来，自己剪头发、自己做衣服。十二岁我有了第一辆车，还把它整个拆开又装回去，因为你就得会这些。我爸六岁就在做这些了。 To go back to the beginning: I'm from South Africa, from a farmer's family. Everyone wakes up early and works hard all day, no days off, even weekends. You have to be completely self-sufficient. By ten I was doing everything, cutting my own hair, making my own clothes. I had my first car at twelve and fully took it apart and put it back together, because you have to be able to do these things. My dad was doing it at six.

那里没有超市，你得打猎，我会打猎、会给猎物开膛剥皮，我和我爸一起盖过房子，你能想到的一切我都干过。这会养成一种我什么都能做的心态，因为你几乎什么都做过，没有哪个问题是解决不了的。这已经成了我的一部分，我就是拼了命地干。 There are no supermarkets, you have to hunt, I know how to hunt and butcher an animal, I built a house with my dad, everything you can imagine. That builds a mindset of 'I can do anything,' because you've done almost everything, and no problem feels unsolvable. It's part of my identity, I just work incredibly hard.

十二岁我就开了头三家公司，创业的旅程就此开始。我的本科毕业论文，做出了我的第一个安卓 App，主题是大学城，因为在德国，很多大学都在大城市外围的小镇上。人们住在大城市，平日通勤到镇上，周末又开车回去，始终没真正了解自己其实生活着的那座镇子，也没能建立起该有的人脉。 I started my first three companies at twelve, and that kicked off the entrepreneurial journey. For my bachelor thesis I built my first Android app, about university towns, because in Germany a lot of universities sit in small towns outside the big cities. People live in the big city, commute to the town during the week, then drive back on weekends, never really getting to know the town they actually live in or making the right connections.

那还是互联网之前、App 之前的年代，大部分事情还发生在 Facebook 上。于是我做了一个 App，让这些大学城里的人彼此找到对方、发现本地的商家。问题是我人在德国，这是地点和时机的问题，那里当时几乎没有创业这回事。连我的教授都劝我，别拿一家创业公司来写毕业论文，因为根本没人知道那是什么。 This was pre-internet, pre-apps, most of it still happened on Facebook. So I built an app for people in these university towns to find each other and discover local businesses. The problem was I was in Germany, a location and timing problem, there were literally no startups. Even my professor told me not to write a bachelor thesis about a startup, because no one even knew what that was.

最后是一半一半，我的论文有一部分变成了创业到底是什么，以及在德国该怎么创业。因为在德国，直到今天人们几乎什么都还用现金支付，他们对新技术的接受非常慢。投资人给我的反馈也是这样：你太年轻、没钱、没经验，十年后再来吧。而我心想，不，我现在就想做出点东西。 In the end it was half and half, my thesis became partly 'what even is a startup, and how do you build one in Germany.' Because in Germany people still pay for almost everything in cash to this day, they're very slow to adopt technology. That was the feedback I got from investors too: you're too young, you have no money, no experience, come back in ten years. And I thought, no, I want to build something now.

在美国，你会看到年轻人被砸下数百万美元，因为他们有那种精力和冲劲，而我当年有、如今依然有。幸好我没有孩子、没有家庭负担，所以我可以把时间和精力全砸进去。过去这十年，基本就是这样：困在德国，拼命地尝试，尤其是在 AR、VR 和 AI 上，因为我们大学时就做过机器学习。 In the US you see young kids with millions thrown at them, because they have the energy and drive that I had and still have. Luckily I have no kids or family, so I can pour in the time and energy. That's basically the past decade, stuck in Germany, trying a lot, especially with AR, VR, and AI, since we'd done machine learning back at university.

但那一切都太新了，人们不理解，也没有市场。他们一看到这项技术，就会说，哇，这是未来，然后却从不真正去用、去投。所以我的很多创业项目都失败了，烧掉了数百万美元。后来元宇宙的浪潮来了，我和洛杉矶的一家工作室、和 Meta 合作，做了一个用虚幻引擎 5（Unreal Engine 5）打造的元宇宙版本，烧掉了一千万美元，却几乎没见到有人真正用起来。那真的很艰难。 But it was all so new, people didn't get it, there was no market. The moment they saw the tech they'd say, wow, this is the future, and then never actually use or invest in it. So a lot of my startups failed and burned through millions. Then the metaverse wave hit, I worked with Meta on an Unreal Engine 5 version of the metaverse with a studio in Los Angeles, and burned through ten million dollars and never really saw anyone adopt it. It was really hard.

在自己的创业失败之后，所有人都说先去找份工作吧，于是我加入了一家叫 Stadtflitzer 的公司，他们在为德国的城市做类似的东西。那时候德国大多数小城市连 Wi-Fi 都没有，你一离开大城市就没了网络，连 Google Maps 都用不了。于是我们把 Wi-Fi 热点铺进这些小城市，给他们一个 App 去了解周边，而这对游客很重要，能帮他们找到下一座城堡，或者火车站在哪。 After failing with my own startup, everyone said get a job first, so I joined one called Stadtflitzer, which built the same kind of thing for German cities. Back then most smaller German cities didn't even have Wi-Fi, the moment you left a big city you had no internet, couldn't even use Google Maps. So we built Wi-Fi hotspots into the smaller cities and gave them an app to explore the area, which mattered a lot for tourists, helping them find the next castle or the train station.

这些年里，我还做了一家旅行体验的创业公司，思路一脉相承：帮商家以一种去中心化的方式聚到一起，打造出人们可以预订的体验。那是 2020 年初，紧接着疫情来了，没人再旅行，于是我失去了那家公司。这也是为什么我做过那么多、最后却失败或不复存在的公司之一。疫情里我丢掉了好几门生意，然后搬去了越南。 Over the years I built a travel-experience startup in the same spirit, helping businesses come together in a decentralized way to create experiences people could book. That was early 2020, and then the pandemic hit, no more travel, so I lost that startup. That's part of why I've built so many that failed or no longer exist. I lost several businesses in the pandemic, then moved to Vietnam.

在越南，我又做了一个和 AVA 很像的 App，做的是时尚：你在线设计服装，再找到合适的裁缝把它做出来，同样是一个发现类 App，帮你对接到合适的服务。结果一年后，疫情又在越南暴发，于是我等于经历了两场叠在一起的疫情。我逃离欧洲，以为能换来自由，可并没有，尤其是在创业这件事上。 In Vietnam I built another app a lot like AVA, in fashion, where you design clothing online and find the right tailor to make it, again a discovery app to connect you with the right service. Then a year later the pandemic hit Vietnam too, so I had two pandemics in one. I'd escaped Europe thinking I'd have freedom, but I didn't, especially for starting businesses.

而这就把我带到了现在，在曼谷。我还在帮一个朋友做一家金融科技创业公司，给另一家做平台的游戏工作室当顾问，那和我以前做过的东西很像，另外还有一个点子，我实在腾不出时间，所以只能专注在 AVA 上。但这就是全部的旅程，它始终都和某个类似 AVA 的东西相连，这也是为什么我对这个领域了解得这么深，能相对快地把它做出来，因为我已经做过太多次了。 And that brings me to now, in Bangkok. I'm also helping a friend build a fintech startup, advising another gaming studio building a platform, similar to things I've built, and there's yet another idea I just don't have time for, so I have to focus on AVA. But that's the whole journey, always connected to something like AVA, which is why I know the space so well and can build it relatively quickly, because I've done it so many times already.

你能真切地看到 VC 和市场的思路在转变。过去，创始人必须技术过硬、经验丰富。而现在，更看重的是创始人和团队够不够拼，能不能像你这样不断转身，无论是打造产品，还是辗转于不同的国家、不断学新东西。 You can really see the shift in how VCs and the market think. It used to be that founders had to be deeply technical and experienced. Now it's more about whether the founder and team are scrappy, able to keep transitioning the way you have, whether that's building a product or moving through different countries and learning new things.

还有一点我很想聊：如今创业圈里非常流行公开构建，也就是把你正在做的东西摊开给全世界看。有了 AI，这一点变得更加重要，因为如果你看不到创始人亲手在做，你就无法对一个产品产生真实的信任感，毕竟现在市面上那么多东西都是 AI 造的。而你选择公开构建，能谈谈你背后的想法吗？ One more thing I want to bring up: something very popular in startups right now is building in public, letting the world watch what you build. With AI, that matters even more, because you can't get a genuine feeling for a product unless you see the founder building it, since so much out there is now built by AI. You choose to build in public, can you talk about the thinking behind that?

首先，我还开过一家做社交媒体的数字营销公司，所以我一直和那个圈子有连接，这也是我很早就学会的东西。看看美国那些最大的公司是怎么成功的，很大一部分就是公开构建，主要是当营销用，但它同时也在和公司、和创始人之间建立起真实的关系：品牌认知，以及你如何凝聚起自己的部落。 First, I also ran a digital marketing agency doing social media, so I've always been connected to that world, and it's something I learned early. Looking at how the biggest US companies succeeded, a lot of it is building in public, mostly as marketing, but it also builds a real relationship with the company and the founder, brand awareness, how you build your tribe.

而我之所以越来越看重它，是因为 AI，以及我从那些我为之打造 AVA 的商家那里听到的：他们正被各种 AI 公司和 App 狂轰滥炸，几乎每周都收到陌生消息，说自己在做下一个健身 App 或预订 App。乱成一团，而由于他们不是技术出身，他们没法过滤这些垃圾信息，也没法判断，自己到底认不认识这个人、用了这个 App 又会发生什么。 The other reason I lean into it, because of AI, is what I heard from the businesses I built AVA for: they're being bombarded with AI companies and apps, random messages almost every week from someone building the next gym app or booking app. It's a mess, and since they're not technical, they can't filter the spam or decide whether they even know this person, or what happens if they use the app.

他们会不会偷我的数据、我的支付信息，这东西到底能不能用？如今信任是零，而做这些 App 的骗子非常多。我就被一个别人用 Replit 做的 App 骗过一次，甚至都不是我在用的，我的银行账户突然就被掏空了。后来发现，有人做了个 AI App，在某处偷了信用卡信息，进而侵入了我的账户。太离谱了。所幸，我把钱要回来了。 Will they steal my data, my payment info, will it even work? There's zero trust these days, and there are a lot of scammers building these apps. I got scammed once by a Replit app someone had built, not even one I used, suddenly my bank account was drained. It turned out someone built an AI app that stole credit card information and got into my account. Crazy. I got my money back, luckily.

市面上的 AI 公司和凭感觉写出来的 App 实在太多了。我去看竞争对手，开始用他们的 App，结果一注册就是一道付费墙，你连产品的任何一部分都看不到，根本无从判断它是不是靠谱。如果你不认识创始人，又没有任何展示 App 运行的视频，那它要么是个骗局，要么就是某人凭感觉随手做的爱好之作，你根本没法把生意建立在上面。 There are just too many AI companies and vibe-coded apps out there. I look at my competitors and start using their apps, and the moment you register there's a paywall, you can't even see any part of the product to tell if it's legit. If you don't know the founder, and there are no videos of the app working, then it's either a scam or someone's vibe-coded hobby you can't build a business on.

所以我想让大家看到，我是谁、我在做什么，这就是我正在做的 App，以及我为什么做它。而说实话，这大概只是第二优先级。第一是产品的采用，第二才是融资。 That's why I want to show who I am and what I'm doing, this is the app I'm building and why. And honestly that's probably the second priority. One is product adoption, the other is fundraising.

因为我谈过太多投资人，而如今连投资人都开始拿着凭感觉做的 App 冒出来，有些甚至是假投资人，我就想，我到底怎么才能找到真的投资人、怎么和他们建立信任？眼下，为了让他们核实我是谁、我在做什么，我得跨过一大堆门槛。公开构建在这方面也帮了忙，我就有投资人通过我的 LinkedIn 帖子主动联系我。 Because I've talked to so many investors, and now even investors are popping up with vibe-coded apps, some are fake investors, and I'm like, how do I even find real ones and build trust? Right now there are a lot of hoops I have to jump through for them to validate who I am and what I'm doing. Building in public helps with that too, I've had investors reach out through my LinkedIn posts.

这在如今至关重要，因为每一个投资人同样被 AI 和凭感觉做的 App 淹没，他们很难分辨，谁是像我这样、真正学过工程、真能动手做东西又懂生意的人，谁又只是嘴上说自己有经验。这是个大问题，我到现在也还没完全解决。 It's crucial now, because every investor is also being bombarded with AI and vibe-coded apps, and it's hard for them to tell who's like me, a real engineer who studied engineering, who can actually build and understands business, versus someone just claiming to have the experience. That's a big problem, and I still haven't fully solved it.

因为如今大多数投资人已经不再碰早期的、没有收入的、种子前的公司了。他们只想要那些已经把凭感觉做的 App 变现成一门有收入、有成千上万用户的真生意的人，因为那就是验证。他们不愿意去翻我发过的每一条 LinkedIn 帖子，最理想的，是你已经把生意做起来了，那对他们来说就是概念验证。 Because most investors today won't touch early-stage, pre-revenue, pre-seed companies anymore. They only want people who've already turned their vibe-coded app into a real business with revenue and thousands of users, because that's the validation. They don't want to comb through every LinkedIn post I've ever made, ideally you've already built the business and it's proof of concept.

所以这是个我还没攻克的难题，因为我的生意有点太复杂，不是靠凭感觉就能写出来的。它关乎的是网络、是整套基础设施、是一切如何彼此连接，以及如何建立起人们开始使用这个 App 的信任，而这本身，又多少被卡在了融资背后。所以说到底，又是一个先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题。 So that's a problem I haven't cracked, because my business is a bit too complex, it's not something you can just vibe code. It's about the network, the whole infrastructure and how everything connects, and building people's trust to start using the app, which is itself kind of blocked behind funding. So again, a chicken-and-egg problem.

我们进入最后一部分，聊聊你的野心和未来的计划。对于任何在未来一两年里关注 AVA 的人，有没有一个具体的信号，能表明你们走在正确的路上？ Let's move to the last part, your ambition and future plans. For anyone watching AVA over the next year or two, is there a specific signal that shows you're on the right track?

这取决于你从什么角度看。对大多数人来说，关键其实是采用，人们得先用起来，才能看到价值。眼下它很难卖，因为愿景太大了，而大多数人只是想要一个 App 去解决某个眼前的小问题，他们并不想一头扎进所有功能里。那是要靠时间慢慢来的。 It depends on your perspective. For most people it's really adoption, people have to start using it to see the value. It's hard to sell right now because the vision is so big, and most people just want an app to solve one quick problem, they don't want to dive into all the features. That comes over time.

而对我来说，最理想的信号是投资人。我在找的，是一个能明白这一点的人：这是一个几乎尚未被开发的、规模数万亿美元的市场，是一个抢先搭建这套基础设施的巨大机会，而这需要前期投入。它没法当场就写出来，AI 也造不出来，因为数据散落在别的 App 里、散落在本地保存的 Excel 表格里，没有哪个 AI 能直接把它抓下来、再变出一个 App。 For me, ideally, it's investors. I'm looking for someone who understands that this is a basically untapped multi-trillion-dollar market, and a huge chance to be first to build this infrastructure, which takes upfront investment. It can't be live-coded, and AI can't build it, because the data is split across other apps and Excel sheets saved locally, there's no AI that can just scrape it and spin up an app.

你得真正把这套东西搭起来，然后用融来的钱去办品牌激活活动，把我人脉里那些商家全都拉上这个 App。因为光靠我自己，速度不够快，纯靠自筹要花上半年到一年，而到那时，窗口早就错过了，等于把时间和金钱拱手让给别人，去做我正在做的一模一样的事。所以归根到底，还是采用问题，就是让人们先用起来，和每一个交易市场都一样。 You have to actually put that in place, then use the investment for brand-activation events to get all the businesses already in my network onto the app. Because I can't get there fast enough alone, bootstrapping would take half a year to a year, and by then I've missed the window and given someone else with money the time to do exactly what I'm doing. So really, it's about adoption, just getting people to start using it, like every marketplace.

我们能看到 Sweatpals 在美国融到了很多钱。他们主攻的是美国市场，而你做的是东亚、东南亚，也许还有欧洲，世界的不同角落。外面有一个巨大的市场，也许你只是需要投资人给的一点助推，一切就会腾飞。 We can see Sweatpals raising a lot in the US. They're attacking the US market, but you're working across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and maybe Europe, different parts of the world. There's a huge market out there, and maybe you just need a little boost from an investor and it all takes off.

美国市场太容易了，那里投资人如此之多，尤其在体育和健身领域，而且整套基础设施早已就位。在亚洲，作为一个外国人，拿到投资极其困难。这里的每一个投资人都只想投本地人，他们要你专门为这个特定市场做东西，并不喜欢我做一个全球化产品的想法。 The US market is so easy, there are so many investors, especially in sports and fitness, and the whole infrastructure is already there. In Asia, as a foreigner, getting investment is extremely hard. Every investor here only wants to back locals, they want you to build for this specific market, and they don't like my idea of building something global.

而我觉得这很荒唐，因为钱就在全球化里。你要是想做出一家独角兽，或者一次大额退出，就必须放眼全球，只为一个小市场做东西，根本行不通。这也是为什么这里很多投资人举步维艰：他们既想聚焦在一个小市场、一小群人身上，又想要一个大到几乎不可能的东西。那就祝他们好运，去找这样一家公司吧。 Which I think is insane, because that's where the money is. If you want a unicorn or a big exit, you have to think globally, building for a small market just won't work. That's why a lot of these investors struggle here, they want to focus on a small market and a small group, yet build something so big it's almost impossible. Good luck finding a company like that.

而且在亚洲，很多 VC 如今正把重心转向美国，我之前的投资方，来自新加坡的 Iterative，就在转向，把更多钱投到美国去。这是另一个大问题：对投资人来说，亚洲市场太复杂、太新了。我希望自己能帮着改变这一点，把一切都汇到一处，我也和东南亚这边不少社交社群、投资人社群有连接，所以也许它很快就会有所转变。 And in Asia a lot of VCs are now shifting focus to the US, my previous investor, Iterative from Singapore, is moving to invest more in the US. That's another big issue: for investors, the Asian market is too complicated, too new. I'm hoping I can help change that, bringing everything into one place, I'm connected to a lot of networking and investor communities here in Southeast Asia, so maybe it shifts soon.

但这不是我能左右的。我能做的，就是待在这里，告诉每一个人：机会就在这儿，这个行业正在这里爆发，钱也在这里。但你必须承担风险，哪怕在美国也要冒险，你永远没法投下去就百分之百断言这会翻十倍、二十倍。至少在亚洲，这种可能性比在美国更大，而美国的市场，我感觉已经饱和了，一大堆像 Sweatpals 这样的公司在做着类似的事。 But it's not something I can control. All I can do is be here and tell everyone: this is where it's at, this is where the industry is booming and where the money is. But you have to take the risk, even in the US you take a risk, you can never invest and say with 100% certainty this will 10x or 20x. At least in Asia it's more possible than in the US, where the market feels saturated already, with a lot of companies like Sweatpals doing similar things.

最后一个问题，一个我会问每一位上节目的创始人的问题：对于一个正在收听的创造者，他像你一样尝试过很多事，却并非每一件都成功，如今在要不要做下一个东西上犹豫不决，你会对他说什么？ Last question, one I ask every founder on this podcast: what would you say to a builder listening who has tried many things, like you, and not all of them succeeded, and who's now hesitant about building the next thing?

就全力以赴。我是说，真正认准一个点子，然后快速执行，因为尤其是现在，有了 AI，发生的事情太多、变化也太快。所以你就先做点什么出来，看看反响，从市场那里拿到反馈。去拼、去闯，主动联系公司，告诉他们，我为你做了一个解决方案，如果他们不喜欢这一个，就问他们，那你们还愿意为什么付费？ Just go all in. And I mean really commit to an idea and execute fast, because especially now, with AI, too much is happening and changing too fast. So just start with something, see the response, get feedback from the market. Hustle, contact companies, say, I built a solution for you, and if they don't like this one, ask what else they'd pay for.

坦率一点、诚实一点，借由你的受众去筛选，就这么简单。然后把一切都发到网上，公开去做，因为这样一来，自然会有人主动来找你说，嘿，我其实正需要这样一个方案。你是让客户来找你。而这并不费什么劲，有人跟我说，发一条社交媒体帖子得费多大工夫，可我几乎都不去想我在做什么。 Be blunt and honest, filter through your audience, that's it. And publish everything online, do it publicly, because then people automatically reach out saying, hey, I actually need a solution like that. You let the customers find you. And it doesn't take much effort, people tell me it's so much work to make a social media post, but I barely think about what I'm doing.

我就是坐下来，录一段，讲个十分钟，就这样，然后我把它剪到一起，用一些工具和 AI 加工成点东西。我不会想太多，反正它永远不可能完美，别去纠结这个。关键只在于注意力：确保你是一个真实的人、在做真实的事、是真的在乎、真的有热情。至于其余的，谁在乎呢。 I just sit down, record it, talk for ten minutes, that's it, then I cut it together, use some tools and AI to make something out of it. I don't overthink it, it'll never be perfect anyway, forget about that. It's all about attention, just make sure you're a real person doing real things, who genuinely cares and is passionate. Then who cares about the rest.

就连我自己做 AVA 也一样，它最后到底更像 Palantir 还是更像 Luma，谁在乎呢。我只想解决问题、做得开心、赚到钱、让人们快乐，而不是再去做又一个日历排期 App，或者别的什么我压根提不起兴趣的东西。当你做的是一件你真心在乎的事，它就是真诚的，你会拥有一种完全不同的驱动力。 Even for me with AVA, who cares if it ends up more like a Palantir or more like a Luma. I just want to solve problems, have fun, make money, make people happy, and not build yet another calendar scheduling app or some crap I have no interest in. When you do something you genuinely care about, it's authentic, and you have a completely different drive.

我有时候从早上八点一直干到半夜，每天十到十五个小时，几乎天天如此，而这换作是给别的公司打工、整天坐在办公室里开会，我是绝对做不到的。但如果你做的是自己的点子，去和那些真正遇到这些问题的人交谈、并真正帮他们解决，那么回馈到你身上的东西、那种使命感，会多到难以想象，而在我看来，这是任何别的方式都给不了你的。 I sometimes work from eight in the morning to midnight, ten to fifteen hours, almost every day, which I could never do working for some other company, sitting in an office in meetings all day. But if you build your own idea, and talk to people who have these problems and actually solve them, there's so much reward and sense of purpose coming back to you, which in my opinion you can't get any other way.

这正是这档节目存在的意义之一：去找到那些愿意动手做点什么、哪怕只改变世界一小块的人。非常感谢你来上节目。 That's really one of the reasons this podcast exists, to find people willing to build something and change even a small part of the world. Thank you so much for coming on.