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The 1992 book Merchants of Debt, a critical history of the private equity firm KKR, recounts the moment in the early 1980s when a firm executive came across VisiCalc, the spreadsheet software that would upend both KKR and Wall Street.
1992年出版的《债务商人》(Merchants of Debt)一书是关于私募股权公司KKR的重要历史，书中讲述了上世纪80年代初，一位公司高管偶然发现VisiCalc这款电子表格软件。这个软件颠覆了KKR和华尔街。
“KKR couldn’t rapidly stalk several companies at once, because its financial blueprints required weeks of calculations by hand,” George Anders wrote of the old way of doing business. But with the arrival of VisiCalc “all of a sudden, giant companies’ finances could be picked apart in an afternoon”.
“KKR不可能同时快速跟踪几家公司，因为它的财务蓝图需要手工进行数周的计算，”乔治•安德斯(George Anders)在谈到过去的经营方式时写道。但随着VisiCalc的到来，“突然之间，大公司的财务状况一个下午就能剖析得一清二楚”。
After VisiCalc came Lotus 1-2-3 and later Microsoft Excel. For investors like Martin Brand, who today runs Blackstone’s US leveraged buyout group, it is now possible to get a deal analysis done while still on the phone to the investment banker making the sales pitch.
VisiCalc之后是Lotus 1-2-3和后来的Microsoft Excel。对于像马丁•布兰德(Martin Brand)这样的投资者来说，现在可以在与投资银行家进行推销的同时完成一项交易分析。布兰德目前负责管理黑石(Blackstone)的美国杠杆收购部。
Blackstone has dozens of data scientists and engineers. They work alongside its investors to come up with automation tools able to ease the processing burden on junior employees without sacrificing the rigorous number-crunching needed to put billions of dollars to work.
黑石拥有数十名数据科学家和工程师。他们与投资者一起开发自动化工具，既能减轻初级员工的处理负担，又不影响数十亿美元投资所需的严格数字计算。
One such tool is BX Atlas, a standardised LBO model that gives Blackstone dealmakers a near-instantaneous readout of a deal’s feasibility and whether it merits a more detailed study. “It’s really cool,” said Brand.
BX Atlas就是这样一个工具，它是一种标准化的杠杆(LBO)收购模型，可以让黑石的交易撮合者近乎即时地了解交易的可行性，以及是否值得进行更详细的研究。“这真的很酷，”布兰德说。
Even with functionality increasing each year, 20-something bankers and investors had been stuck manually typing numbers and equations into cells and then linking and formatting those cells.
尽管功能每年都在增加，但20多岁的银行家和投资者仍不得不手动将数字和公式输入单元格，然后对这些单元格进行链接和排版。
That drudgery may be about to end with seismic advances in computing power. What that means for investment returns, the happiness of workers in the salt mines of Wall Street and the skills needed for the next generation of rainmakers has become the next interesting question.
随着计算能力的突飞猛进，这种苦差事可能即将结束。这对投资回报、华尔街盐矿工人的幸福感以及下一代“造雨者”所需的技能意味着什么，已成为下一个有趣的问题。
For firms lacking Blackstone’s internal tech developers, Ian Gutwinski is trying to fill the gap. The 2021 Harvard Business School grad and former PE investor sells LBO modelling software called Mosaic. Like Blackstone’s Atlas, Mosaic can spit out investment returns with just a few quick manual inputs.
对于缺乏黑石内部技术开发人员的公司，伊恩•古特文斯基(Ian Gutwinski)正试图填补这一空白。这位哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School) 2021届毕业生和前私募股权投资者出售名为Mosaic的杠杆收购建模软件。与黑石的Atlas一样，Mosaic只需几次快速的人工输入，就能生成投资回报。
Mosaic also delivers helpful visualisations that show whether those returns stem from operating improvements or sheer financial leverage. The whole process takes minutes. Gutwinski says that preliminary models are not only fast but defect-free, eliminating the chance of common human error such as entering the wrong number or link. Mosaic models can also be downloaded to Excel and then further customised as deemed necessary by the deal team.
Mosaic还提供了有用的可视化显示，显示这些回报是来自运营改善还是纯粹的财务杠杆。整个过程只需要几分钟。古特文斯基说，初步模型不仅速度快，而且没有缺陷，消除了输入错误数据或链接等常见的人为错误。Mosaic模型也可以下载到Excel中，然后根据交易团队的需要进一步定制。
Gutwinski’s clients so far include powerhouses such as Warburg Pincus and CVC Capital. One user, who declined to be identified, explained that junior associates had numerous daily responsibilities, including monitoring existing companies, that were better uses of their time. “Modelling is a commodity,” this person said.
迄今为止，古特文斯基的客户包括华平投资(Warburg Pincus)和CVC Capital等大公司。一位不愿透露姓名的用户解释说，初级员工有许多日常职责，包括监督现有公司，这些职责更能利用他们的时间。“模型是一种商品，”这位人士表示。
“One of the really striking things about the story of spreadsheets in the 1980s, particularly in the case of PE, is that spreadsheets allowed financiers to see and imagine differently,” said William Deringer, a historian at MIT and a former investment banker.
麻省理工学院(MIT)历史学家、前投资银行家威廉•德林格(William Deringer)表示：“上世纪80年代电子表格的故事，尤其是私募基金的故事，真正引人注目的一点是，电子表格让金融家以不同的方式看待和想象。”
“I think it is quite possible that new automation tools for financial analysis might offer similarly new kinds of vision and imagination.”
“我认为，新的自动化金融分析工具很可能会提供类似的新视野和想象力。”
In an academic paper, Deringer cited a 1989 New York Times article that captured the cultural shift sweeping Wall Street in the nascent VisiCalc era. “Sharp elbows and a working knowledge of computer spreadsheets suddenly counted more than a nose for dry sherry or membership in Skull and Bones”, it wrote — the latter referring to Yale’s blue-blooded secret society.
在一篇学术论文中，德林格引用了1989年《纽约时报》(New York Times)的一篇文章，该文章捕捉到了VisiCalc时代初期席卷华尔街的文化转变。文章写道：“突然之间，犀利的手肘和电脑电子表格的工作知识比对干雪利酒的嗅觉或骷髅会(Skull and Bones)的会员资格更重要。”骷髅会指的是耶鲁的贵族秘密社团。
At this time of year, investment banks are greeting their new trainee classes and teaching them the building blocks of spreadsheet modelling. The ultimate objective is not just understanding the mechanics but building critical thinking, intuition and problem-solving abilities. And the coin of the realm in these fresh cohorts historically has been slick Excel skills.
每年的这个时候，投资银行都在迎接新的实习生，教授他们电子表格建模的基本知识。最终的目的不仅仅是理解原理，还要培养批判性思维、直觉和解决问题的能力。而在这些新学员中，历来最重要的就是熟练的Excel技能。
It is possible that emerging black-box tools will soon mean that technical capabilities matter less, in the same way that software coders are expected to one day give way to AI “prompt” engineers. There has always been a gap between what makes a good junior associate — raw processing horsepower — and a senior executive — decisiveness, maturity, and a respectable golf game. Starting now, that disconnect may slowly begin to shrink.
新出现的黑盒工具可能很快就会意味着技术能力不再那么重要，就像软件编码员总有一天会让位于人工智能“提示”工程师一样。一直以来，优秀的初级助理（原始处理能力）和高级主管（果断、成熟和令人尊敬的高尔夫球技）之间都存在着差距。从现在开始，这种差距可能会慢慢缩小。