Six Principles for Making New Things

February 2008 The fiery reaction to the release of Arc had an unexpected consequence: it made me realize I had a design philosophy.

2008 年 2 月 Arc 的发布引发的热烈反应产生了意想不到的后果：它让我意识到我有自己的设计理念。

The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy.

更善于表达的批评家的主要抱怨是，阿克看起来太脆弱了。

After years of working on it, all I had to show for myself were a few thousand lines of macros?

经过多年的研究，我必须向自己展示的只是几千行宏？

Why hadn't I worked on more substantial problems?

为什么我没有研究更实质性的问题？

As I was mulling over these remarks it struck me how familiar they

当我仔细思考这些言论时，我突然意识到它们是多么熟悉

seemed.

看起来。

This was exactly the kind of thing people said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most of my essays.

这正是人们一开始对 Viaweb、Y Combinator 以及我的大部分文章的评价。

When we launched Viaweb, it seemed laughable to VCs and e-commerce "experts." We were just a couple guys in an apartment, which did not seem cool in 1995 the way it does now.

当我们推出 Viaweb 时，风险投资家和电子商务“专家”似乎觉得可笑。我们只是住在一间公寓里的几个人，1995 年的公寓看起来不像现在那么酷。

And the thing we'd built, as far as they could tell, wasn't even software.

据他们所知，我们构建的东西甚至不是软件。

Software, to them, equalled big, honking Windows apps.

对他们来说，软件就等于大型的 Windows 应用程序。

Since Viaweb

自从 Viaweb

was the first web-based app they'd seen, it seemed to be nothing more than a website.

这是他们看到的第一个基于网络的应用程序，它似乎只不过是一个网站。

They were even more contemptuous when they discovered that Viaweb didn't process credit card transactions (we didn't for the whole first year).

当他们发现 Viaweb 不处理信用卡交易时（我们第一年都没有处理），他们更加轻蔑了。

Transaction processing seemed to them what e-commerce was all about.

对他们来说，交易处理就是电子商务的全部内容。

It sounded serious and difficult.

听起来很严肃，也很困难。

And yet, mysteriously, Viaweb ended up crushing all its competitors.

然而，神秘的是，Viaweb 最终击败了所有竞争对手。

The initial reaction to Y Combinator was almost identical.

对 Y Combinator 的最初反应几乎相同。

It seemed laughably lightweight.

它看起来轻得可笑。

Startup funding meant series A rounds: millions of dollars given to a small number of startups founded by people with established credentials after months of serious, businesslike meetings, on terms described in a document a foot thick.

初创公司融资意味着 A 轮融资：数百万美元按照一英尺厚的文件中描述的条款，向少数由有资历的人在经过数月严肃、务实的会议后创立的初创公司提供。

Y Combinator seemed inconsequential.

Y Combinator 似乎无关紧要。

It's too early to say yet whether Y Combinator will turn out like Viaweb, but judging

现在说 Y Combinator 是否会像 Viaweb 一样还为时过早，但要判断

from the number of imitations, a lot of people seem to think we're on to something.

从模仿的数量来看，很多人似乎认为我们正在做某事。

I can't measure whether my essays are successful, except in page views, but the reaction to them is at least different from when I started.

除了页面浏览量之外，我无法衡量我的论文是否成功，但人们对它们的反应至少与我开始时不同。

At first the default reaction of the Slashdot trolls was (translated into articulate terms): "Who is this guy and what authority does he have to write about these topics?

起初，Slashdot 巨魔的默认反应是（翻译成清晰的术语）：“这个人是谁，他有什么权力来写这些话题？

I haven't read

我还没读过

the essay, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it." Now there's a new generation of trolls on a new generation of sites, but they have at least started to omit the initial "Who is this guy?" Now people are saying the same things about Arc that they said at

这篇文章，但是，当拥有该主题学位的人已经写了许多关于该主题的厚书时，如此短的内容和以如此非正式的风格撰写的内容不可能对这样那样的主题有任何有用的说法。”现在新一代的网站上出现了新一代的巨魔，但他们至少开始省略最初的“这家伙是谁？”现在人们对 Arc 的评价与他们在

first about Viaweb and Y Combinator and most of my essays.

首先是关于 Viaweb 和 Y Combinator 以及我的大部分文章。

Why the pattern?

为什么是图案？

The answer, I realized, is that my m.o.

我意识到，答案是我的作风。

for all four has been the same.

因为这四个都是一样的。

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

就是这样：我喜欢找到 (a) 简单的解决方案 (b) 被忽视的问题 (c) 实际需要解决的问题，以及 (d) 尽可能非正式地交付它们，(e) 从非常粗糙的版本 1 开始，然后 (f) 快速迭代。

When I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something

当我第一次明确地阐述这些原则时，我注意到一些事情

striking: this is practically a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction.

引人注目的是：这实际上是引起轻蔑的初步反应的秘诀。

Though simple solutions are better, they don't seem as impressive as complex ones.

尽管简单的解决方案更好，但它们似乎不如复杂的解决方案那么令人印象深刻。

Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people think don't matter.

根据定义，被忽视的问题是大多数人认为不重要的问题。

Delivering solutions in an informal way means that instead of judging something by the way it's presented, people have to actually understand it, which is more work.

以非正式的方式提供解决方案意味着人们必须真正理解它，而不是通过其呈现的方式来判断它，这需要更多的工作。

And starting with a crude version 1 means your

从粗略版本 1 开始意味着您的

initial effort is always small and incomplete.

最初的努力总是很小而且不完整。

I'd noticed, of course, that people never seemed to grasp new ideas at first.

当然，我注意到人们一开始似乎从来没有掌握新的想法。

I thought it was just because most people were stupid.

我认为这只是因为大多数人都很愚蠢。

Now I see there's more to it than that.

现在我发现事情远不止这些。

<!-- This particular m.o.

<!-- 这个特殊的方式。

is practically tuned to hit everyday stupidity square on.

实际上是为了应对日常的愚蠢行为而调整的。

--> Like a contrarian investment fund, someone following this strategy will almost always be doing things that seem wrong to the average person.

--> 就像逆势投资基金一样，遵循这种策略的人几乎总是会做对普通人来说似乎是错误的事情。

As with contrarian investment strategies, that's exactly the point.

与逆向投资策略一样，这正是重点。

This technique is successful (in the long term) because it gives you all the advantages other people forgo by trying to seem legit.

这种技术是成功的（从长远来看），因为它为你提供了其他人因试图显得合法而放弃的所有优势。

If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to discover new things, because you have less competition.

如果你致力于解决被忽视的问题，你就更有可能发现新事物，因为竞争较少。

If you deliver solutions informally, you (a) save all the effort you would have had to expend

如果您以非正式方式提供解决方案，您 (a) 可以节省您本来需要花费的所有精力

to make them look impressive, and (b) avoid the danger of fooling yourself as well as your audience.

让它们看起来令人印象深刻，并且（b）避免欺骗自己和观众的危险。

And if you release a crude version 1 then iterate, your solution can benefit from the imagination of nature, which, as Feynman pointed out, is more powerful than your own.

如果你发布一个粗略的版本 1 然后进行迭代，你的解决方案可以受益于自然的想象力，正如费曼指出的那样，它比你自己的更强大。

In the case of Viaweb, the simple solution was to make the software run on the server.

就 Viaweb 而言，简单的解决方案是让软件在服务器上运行。

The overlooked problem was to generate web sites

被忽视的问题是生成网站

automatically; in 1995, online stores were all made by hand by human designers, but we knew this wouldn't scale.

自动； 1995 年，网上商店都是由人类设计师手工制作的，但我们知道这无法规模化。

The part that actually mattered was graphic design, not transaction processing.

真正重要的部分是图形设计，而不是事务处理。

The informal delivery mechanism was me, showing up in jeans and a t-shirt at some retailer's office.

非正式的送货员是我，穿着牛仔裤和 T 恤出现在某个零售商的办公室。

And the crude version 1 was, if I remember correctly, less than 10,000 lines of code when we launched.

如果我没记错的话，我们推出时，粗略的版本 1 的代码还不到 10,000 行。

The power of this technique extends beyond startups and programming

这项技术的力量不仅仅局限于初创公司和编程

languages and essays.

语言和论文。

It probably extends to any kind of creative work.

它可能延伸到任何类型的创造性工作。

Certainly it can be used in painting: this is exactly what Cezanne and Klee did.

当然它可以用于绘画：这正是塞尚和克利所做的。

At Y Combinator we bet money on it, in the sense that we encourage the startups we fund to work this way.

在 Y Combinator，我们对此下了注，从某种意义上说，我们鼓励我们资助的初创公司以这种方式工作。

There are always new ideas right under your nose.

总有新想法就在你眼皮子底下。

So look for simple things that other people have overlooked—things people will later claim were

因此，寻找其他人忽视的简单事情——人们后来声称是的事情

"obvious"—especially when they've been led astray by obsolete conventions, or by trying to do things that are superficially impressive.

“显而易见”——尤其是当他们被过时的惯例引入歧途，或者试图做一些表面上令人印象深刻的事情时。

Figure out what the real problem is, and make sure you solve that.

找出真正的问题是什么，并确保解决它。

Don't worry about trying to look corporate; the product is what wins in the long term.

不用担心让自己看起来很企业化；从长远来看，产品才是赢家。

And launch as soon as you can, so you start learning from users what you should have been making.

并尽快推出，这样你就可以开始向用户学习你应该做什么。

Reddit is a classic example of

Reddit 就是一个典型的例子

this approach.

这种方法。

When Reddit first launched, it seemed like there was nothing to it.

Reddit 刚推出时，似乎没什么可说的。

To the graphically unsophisticated its deliberately minimal design seemed like no design at all.

对于图形上不复杂的人来说，其刻意简约的设计似乎根本就没有设计。

But Reddit solved the real problem, which was to tell people what was new and otherwise stay out of the way.

但 Reddit 解决了真正的问题，那就是告诉人们什么是新的，否则就不妨碍他们。

As a result it became massively successful.

结果，它取得了巨大的成功。

Now that conventional ideas have caught up with it, it seems obvious.

现在传统观念已经迎头赶上，这似乎是显而易见的。

People look at Reddit

人们查看 Reddit

and think the founders were lucky.

并认为创始人很幸运。

Like all such things, it was harder than it looked.

就像所有此类事情一样，这比看起来更难。

The Reddits pushed so hard against the current that they reversed it; now it looks like they're merely floating downstream.

Reddit 人如此努力地逆流而上，以至于他们逆转了潮流。现在看起来它们只是顺流而下。

So when you look at something like Reddit and think "I wish I could think of an idea like that," remember: ideas like that are all around you.

因此，当你看到 Reddit 之类的东西并想“我希望我能想到这样的想法”时，请记住：这样的想法就在你周围。

But you ignore them because they look wrong.

但你忽略它们，因为它们看起来不对。