News from the Front
September 2007 A few weeks ago I had a thought so heretical that it really surprised me.
2007 年 9 月 几周前，我有一个非常异端的想法，这让我感到非常惊讶。
It may not matter all that much where you go to college.
你在哪里上大学可能并不那么重要。
For me, as for a lot of middle class kids, getting into a good college was more or less the meaning of life when I was growing up.
对于我来说，对于很多中产阶级的孩子来说，进入一所好大学或多或少是我成长过程中生活的意义。
What was I?
我是什么？
A student.
一名学生。
To do that well meant to get good grades.
做好这件事就意味着取得好成绩。
Why did one have to get good grades?
为什么一个人必须取得好成绩？
To get into a good college.
才能考上好的大学。
And why did one want to do that?
为什么要这么做呢？
There seemed to be several reasons: you'd learn more, get better jobs, make more money.
似乎有几个原因：你会学到更多，找到更好的工作，赚更多的钱。
But it didn't matter exactly what the benefits would be.
但到底有什么好处并不重要。
College was a bottleneck through which all your future prospects passed; everything would be better if you went to a better college.
大学是你所有未来前景的一个瓶颈；如果你去更好的大学一切都会更好。
A few weeks ago I realized that somewhere along the line I had stopped believing that.
几周前，我意识到我已经不再相信这一点了。
What first set me thinking about this was the new trend of worrying
首先让我想到这一点的是担心的新趋势
obsessively about what kindergarten your kids go to.
痴迷于你的孩子去哪个幼儿园。
It seemed to me this couldn't possibly matter.
在我看来这可能并不重要。
Either it won't help your kid get into Harvard, or if it does, getting into Harvard won't mean much anymore.
要么它不会帮助你的孩子进入哈佛，要么即使有帮助，进入哈佛也不再有多大意义。
And then I thought: how much does it mean even now?
然后我想：即使是现在，这意味着什么？
It turns out I have a lot of data about that.
事实证明我有很多这方面的数据。
My three partners and I run a seed stage investment firm called Y Combinator .
我和我的三个合伙人经营着一家名为 Y Combinator 的种子期投资公司。
We invest when the company is just a couple guys and an idea.
当公司只有几个人和一个想法时我们就进行投资。
The
的
idea doesn't matter much; it will change anyway.
想法并不重要；无论如何它都会改变。
Most of our decision is based on the founders.
我们的大部分决定都是基于创始人的。
The average founder is three years out of college.
创始人平均大学毕业三年。
Many have just graduated; a few are still in school.
许多人刚刚毕业；有几个还在上学。
So we're in much the same position as a graduate program, or a company hiring people right out of college.
因此，我们的处境与研究生项目或招聘大学毕业生的公司大致相同。
Except our choices are immediately and visibly tested.
但我们的选择会立即受到明显的考验。
There are two possible outcomes for a startup: success or failure—and usually you know within a
初创公司有两种可能的结果：成功或失败——通常你在一段时间内就知道
year which it will be.
它将是哪一年。
The test applied to a startup is among the purest of real world tests.
适用于初创公司的测试是最纯粹的现实世界测试之一。
A startup succeeds or fails depending almost entirely on the efforts of the founders.
一家初创公司的成功或失败几乎完全取决于创始人的努力。
Success is decided by the market: you only succeed if users like what you've built.
成功是由市场决定的：只有用户喜欢你所构建的产品，你才能成功。
And users don't care where you went to college.
用户并不关心你在哪里上的大学。
As well as having precisely measurable results, we have a lot of them.
我们不仅拥有可精确测量的结果，而且还有很多结果。
Instead of doing a small number of large deals like a
而不是做少量的大交易，比如
traditional venture capital fund, we do a large number of small ones.
传统的风险投资基金，我们做大量的小基金。
We currently fund about 40 companies a year, selected from about 900 applications representing a total of about 2000 people.
目前，我们每年资助约 40 家公司，这些公司是从代表总共约 2000 人的约 900 份申请中挑选出来的。
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