Startups in 13 Sentences

<img src="http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif" height=15 width=1> Want to start a startup?

<img src="http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif" height=15 width=1> 想要创业吗？

Get funded by Y Combinator .

获得 Y Combinator 的资助。

</td > <img src="http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif" height=15 width=1> Watch how this essay was written .

</td> <img src="http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif" height=15 width=1> 看看这篇文章是如何写的。

</td > February 2009 One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy.

</td> 2009 年 2 月 我总是告诉初创公司的一件事是我从 Paul Buchheit 那里学到的一条原则：让少数人真正快乐比让很多人半快乐要好。

I was saying recently to

我最近说的是

a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them.

一位记者表示，如果我只能告诉初创公司 10 件事，这就是其中之一。

Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?

然后我想：另外9个会是什么？

When I made the list there turned out to be 13: 1.

当我列出名单时，结果是13：1。

Pick good cofounders.

选择好的联合创始人。

Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate.

联合创始人对于初创公司来说就像位置对于房地产一样。

You can change anything about a house except where it is.

你可以改变房子的任何东西，除了它的位置。

In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard.

在初创公司中，你可以很容易地改变你的想法，但改变你的联合创始人却很难。

[ 1 ] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.

[1] 初创公司的成功几乎总是其创始人的功劳。

2.

2.

Launch fast.

启动快。

The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched.

快速发布的原因并不是因为尽早将产品推向市场至关重要，而是因为在发布之前你还没有真正开始研究它。

Launching teaches you what you should have been building.

启动会告诉你你应该构建什么。

Till you know that you're wasting your time.

直到你知道你在浪费时间。

So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext

因此，无论你推出什么产品，其主要价值都是作为一个借口

for engaging users.

为了吸引用户。

3.

3.

Let your idea evolve.

让你的想法不断发展。

This is the second half of launching fast.

这是快速启动的后半部分。

Launch fast and iterate.

快速启动并迭代。

It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea.

如果将一家初创公司视为仅仅是实施一些出色的初始想法，那就大错特错了。

As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.

就像在一篇文章中一样，大多数想法都出现在实施中。

4.

4.

Understand your users.

了解您的用户。

You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you

您可以将初创公司创造的财富想象为一个矩形，其中一侧是用户数量，另一侧是您的收入