Making Startups Powerful

September 2026 One of the most useful heuristics I have when doing office hours with startups is to ask: what would make this company more powerful?

2026 年 9 月 在办公时间与初创公司打交道时，我最有用的启发之一就是问：什么会让这家公司变得更强大？

Asking how the company could make more money is a good heuristic too, but it tends to yield incremental improvements.

询问公司如何才能赚更多钱也是一个很好的启发，但它往往会带来渐进式的改进。

Whereas thinking about how to make it more powerful will sometimes make it orders of magnitude more valuable.

然而，思考如何让它变得更强大，有时会使其更有价值。

There are a lot of different variants of this question, depending

这个问题有很多不同的变体，具体取决于

on the type of company.

关于公司类型。

Is there a way to transform the company from a mere component supplier into the one that owns the relationship with the customer?

有没有办法让公司从单纯的零部件供应商转变为拥有客户关系的公司？

Or the related question: is there a way to make the money flow through it?

或者相关的问题：有没有办法让钱通过它流动？

It's always good when money flows through you.

当金钱流经你身边时总是好的。

[ 1 ] Is there a way to create something akin to an app store, where other companies can build upon your product?

[ 1 ] 有没有办法创建类似于应用程序商店的东西，让其他公司可以在您的产品上进行构建？

Then all their efforts to

然后他们所有的努力

create valuable things make you more valuable too.

创造有价值的东西也让你更有价值。

Ideally this is combined with owning the customer relationship and making the money flow through you.

理想情况下，这与拥有客户关系和让资金通过您流动相结合。

[ 2 ] Network effects make companies more powerful, and I almost always think about how to introduce them.

[2]网络效应让企业变得更加强大，我几乎总是在思考如何引入它们。

I treat it as a kind of challenge to see if there's a way to get network effects even in things you wouldn't expect to have them.

我将其视为一种挑战，看看是否有办法获得网络效应，即使是在你意想不到的事情上。

[ 3 ] It's surprising how often it

[ 3 ] 令人惊讶的是，它出现的频率如此之高

can be done.

可以做到。

And when it can, this sometimes transforms the idea completely; what had been a service is now a marketplace.

如果可以的话，有时会完全改变想法。曾经的服务现在变成了市场。

The deluxe version is full app store, but if there's no more direct way to do it, you can often induce network effects by letting your users share something.

豪华版是完整的应用程序商店，但如果没有更直接的方法来做到这一点，您通常可以通过让用户共享某些内容来引发网络效应。

For example, if you opt in, we'll tell you how you're doing compared to other users.

例如，如果您选择加入，我们会告诉您与其他用户相比您的表现如何。

The obvious AI variant is to let your users opt in to training your model on their interactions with

明显的人工智能变体是让你的用户选择在与他们的交互上训练你的模型

it.

它。

Many will resist that, but if some don't, the model they get to use will outperform the vanilla one used by the others.

许多人会抵制这一点，但如果有些人不这样做，他们使用的模型将优于其他人使用的普通模型。

Often you can induce network effects by generalizing the idea, which makes the startup doubly more powerful.

通常，你可以通过推广这个想法来引发网络效应，这使得初创公司变得更加强大。

For example, if I were talking to a startup building a way for agents to pay for things, the first question I'd ask is whether the agents could also pay one another.

例如，如果我正在与一家初创公司交谈，为代理商建立一种支付方式，我会问的第一个问题是代理商是否也可以互相付款。

If they can do that, you become a marketplace.

如果他们能做到这一点，你就成为一个市场。

And being

和被

a marketplace is so valuable that if it wasn't immediately obvious what agents could pay one another for, it would be worth spending a lot of time trying to think of something.

市场是如此有价值，以至于如果代理商之间可以相互付费购买什么产品不是一目了然，那么就值得花费大量时间来思考某些事情。

If you could, it might be worth tilting the whole company toward that, and if necessary even becoming a market maker to get it rolling.

如果可以的话，也许值得让整个公司朝这个方向倾斜，如果有必要，甚至可以成为做市商来推动它的发展。

These hypothetical transformations of the original idea don't always yield anything promising.

这些对原始想法的假设转变并不总是产生任何有希望的结果。

Far from it.

远非如此。

But they're always worth considering;

但它们总是值得考虑的；

if nothing else, trying to transform an idea helps you understand it better.

如果不出意外的话，尝试改变一个想法可以帮助你更好地理解它。

There are certain kinds of thinking where ideas start to seem almost physical.

在某些类型的思维中，想法开始看起来几乎是物理的。

Most programmers have probably experienced it.

大多数程序员可能都经历过。

Manipulating startup ideas feels this way too.

操纵创业想法也有这种感觉。

One transformation that feels especially physical is the strategy of going full stack: instead of selling your technology to companies doing x, you use the

一种感觉特别实际的转变是全栈战略：您不用将技术出售给从事某项业务的公司，而是使用

technology yourself to do x in competition with them.

自己技术来与他们竞争做x。

You can almost see the idea stretch as it engulfs what had been the customer.

你几乎可以看到这个想法被延伸，因为它吞没了曾经的客户。

And now that you own the outside surface, the shape of that probably changes too.

现在你拥有了外表面，它的形状也可能会改变。

There's a variant of going full stack where you eat your way gradually through the customer by doing all their hardest work for them.

有一种全栈的变体，你可以通过为客户做所有最困难的工作来逐渐吸引客户。

In the limit case, you're doing all the brainwork and they're just

在极限情况下，你正在做所有的脑力工作，而他们只是

running errands for you.

为你跑腿。

At which point, as in the full stack case, the real customer is their customer; the initial customer is now just a kind of hand puppet.

在这一点上，就像在全栈情况下一样，真正的客户是他们的客户；最初的顾客现在只是一种手偶。

Another thing I'm always looking for is tails that could wag the dog.

我一直在寻找的另一件事是可以摇狗的尾巴。

The history of startups is full of these.

初创公司的历史充满了这样的例子。

Paypal started out doing security for hand-held devices.

Paypal 最初是为手持设备提供安全保护。

They created Paypal as a demo of their security software.

他们创建了 Paypal 作为其安全软件的演示。

But then eBay sellers started using it

但后来 eBay 卖家开始使用它

to take payments, and after a couple months the founders acknowledged that this was the business they were now in, even though they hadn't meant to be.

几个月后，创始人承认这就是他们现在从事的业务，尽管他们无意这样做。

So whenever founders build something peripheral to the main product I always ask: could this be the real product?

因此，每当创始人构建主要产品的外围产品时，我总是会问：这可能是真正的产品吗？

It's exciting when you notice users "misusing" your product to do something you hadn't intended.

当您发现用户“滥用”您的产品来做您无意的事情时，您会感到很兴奋。

This means there's something they want so desperately that they'll not only use any solution you

这意味着他们非常想要某些东西，以至于他们不仅会使用您提供的任何解决方案

offer, but even use things that aren't meant to be solutions.

提供，但甚至使用并不意味着是解决方案的东西。

When you see something like that, don't be annoyed that your users are using your product wrong; listen for the message they're sending, because it could be valuable.

当您看到类似的情况时，不要因为用户错误地使用您的产品而烦恼；倾听他们发送的消息，因为它可能很有价值。

The reason Paypal grew so fast was that it helped users make money.

Paypal之所以增长如此之快，是因为它帮助用户赚钱。

Few things make you more powerful than that.

没有什么比这更能让你变得更强大了。

When you help users make money, they're (a) quick to adopt your product and (b) will

当您帮助用户赚钱时，他们 (a) 会很快采用您的产品，并且 (b) 会

pay a lot for it.

为此付出很多。

So your revenues grow doubly fast.

这样您的收入就会加倍快速增长。

Most of the most successful companies we've funded help their users to make money, as does YC itself.

我们资助的大多数最成功的公司都帮助他们的用户赚钱，YC 本身也是如此。

Playing the long game makes you more powerful, because most other people you encounter won't be.

长期的游戏会让你变得更强大，因为你遇到的大多数其他人不会如此。

Most startups competing with you will be run by opportunists hoping to be acquired.

大多数与你竞争的初创公司都是由希望被收购的机会主义者经营的。

Most big companies you deal with will be run by executives who don't expect to be there

大多数与你打交道的大公司都是由那些不希望出现在现场的高管来运营的

for more than a few years and are only thinking about this quarter's numbers.

已经有好几年了，现在只考虑本季度的数字。

So tradeoffs that only pay off in 10 years will usually be underpriced.

因此，仅在 10 年内获得回报的权衡通常会被低估。

The classic one is to offer great terms in order to acquire users.

经典的方法是提供优惠条件以获取用户。

I generally advise startups to sell as cheaply as they need to at first; get all the users, then worry about your margins.

我通常建议初创公司一开始就按照他们需要的价格出售；获得所有用户，然后担心你的利润。

But there are usually also deeper, structural ways to play the long game.

但通常也有更深层次、结构性的方式来进行长期游戏。