Why to Not Not Start a Startup

<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 > March 2007 (This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA.) We've now been doing Y Combinator long enough to have some data about success rates.

</td> 2007 年 3 月（本文摘自 2007 年创业学校和伯克利 CSUA 的演讲。）我们现在已经做 Y Combinator 足够长的时间了，已经有了一些关于成功率的数据。

Our first batch, in the summer of 2005, had eight startups in it.

我们的第一批是在 2005 年夏天，有八家初创公司。

Of those eight, it now looks as if at least

在这八个人中，现在看起来至少

four succeeded.

四个成功了。

Three have been acquired: Reddit was a merger of two, Reddit and Infogami, and a third was acquired that we can't talk about yet.

其中三个已被收购：Reddit 是 Reddit 和 Infogami 两个公司的合并，第三个公司被收购，但我们目前还不能谈论。

Another from that batch was Loopt , which is doing so well they could probably be acquired in about ten minutes if they wanted to.

该批次中的另一个是 Loopt ，它的表现非常好，如果他们愿意的话，他们可能会在大约十分钟内获得。

So about half the founders from that first summer, less than two years ago, are now rich, at least by their standards.

因此，从不到两年前的第一个夏天开始，大约有一半的创始人现在已经很富有了，至少按照他们的标准来看是这样。

(One thing

（一件事

you learn when you get rich is that there are many degrees of it.) I'm not ready to predict our success rate will stay as high as 50%.

当你致富时你会知道，致富的程度有很多。）我还没有准备好预测我们的成功率将保持在 50% 的高位。

That first batch could have been an anomaly.

第一批可能是异常情况。

But we should be able to do better than the oft-quoted (and probably made up) standard figure of 10%.

但我们应该能够比经常引用（也可能是虚构的）10% 的标准数字做得更好。

I'd feel safe aiming at 25%.

我觉得以 25% 为目标是安全的。

Even the founders who fail don't seem to have such a bad time.

即使是失败的创始人似乎也没有那么糟糕。

Of those first eight startups, three are now probably dead.

在最初的八家初创公司中，有三家现在可能已经倒闭了。

In two

分成两份

cases the founders just went on to do other things at the end of the summer.

在这种情况下，创始人在夏末继续做其他事情。

I don't think they were traumatized by the experience.

我不认为他们因这次经历而受到创伤。

The closest to a traumatic failure was Kiko, whose founders kept working on their startup for a whole year before being squashed by Google Calendar.

最接近惨败的是 Kiko，其创始人在其初创公司上工作了一整年，最后被 Google 日历压垮。

But they ended up happy.

但他们最终都幸福了。

They sold their software on eBay for a quarter of a million dollars.

他们在 eBay 上以 25 万美元的价格出售了他们的软件。

After they paid back their angel investors, they had about a year's salary each.

当他们还清天使投资人的钱后，他们每人大约有一年的工资。