How to Start a Startup
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获得 Y Combinator 的资助。
</td > March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible.
</td> 2005 年 3 月（本文摘自哈佛计算机协会的一次演讲。）创建一家成功的初创公司需要三件事：从优秀的人才开始，制造客户真正想要的东西，以及花尽可能少的钱。
Most startups that fail do it because
大多数失败的初创公司都是因为
they fail at one of these.
他们在其中一项上失败了。
A startup that does all three will probably succeed.
一家同时具备这三点的初创公司很可能会成功。
And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable.
当你想到这一点时，这有点令人兴奋，因为这三个都是可行的。
Hard, but doable.
很难，但可行。
And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too.
由于成功的初创公司通常会让其创始人变得富有，这意味着致富也是可行的。
Hard, but doable.
很难，但可行。
If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it.
如果我想传达关于初创企业的一条信息，那就是。
There is no magically difficult step that requires
没有什么神奇的困难步骤需要
brilliance to solve.
光彩来解决。
The Idea In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around.
想法 特别是，你不需要一个绝妙的想法来创办一家初创公司。
The way a startup makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now.
初创公司赚钱的方式是为人们提供比现在更好的技术。
But what people have now is often so bad that it doesn't take brilliance to do better.
但人们现在所拥有的往往是如此糟糕，以至于不需要才华就能做得更好。
Google's plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn't suck.
例如，谷歌的计划只是创建一个不那么糟糕的搜索网站。
They had three new ideas: index more of the Web, use
他们提出了三个新想法：索引更多的网络、使用
links to rank search results, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads.
链接对搜索结果进行排名，并拥有干净、简单的网页以及基于关键字的广告。
Above all, they were determined to make a site that was good to use.
最重要的是，他们决心创建一个好用的网站。
No doubt there are great technical tricks within Google, but the overall plan was straightforward.
毫无疑问，谷歌内部有很棒的技术技巧，但总体计划很简单。
And while they probably have bigger ambitions now, this alone brings them a billion dollars a year.
虽然他们现在可能有更大的野心，但仅此一项就每年为他们带来十亿美元。
[1] There are plenty of other areas that are just as backward as search
[1] 还有很多其他领域和搜索一样落后
was before Google.
是在谷歌之前。
I can think of several heuristics for generating ideas for startups, but most reduce to this: look at something people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't suck.
我可以想到几种为初创公司产生想法的启发式方法，但大多数都归结为：看看人们正在尝试做的事情，并找出如何以一种不糟糕的方式去做。
For example, dating sites currently suck far worse than search did before Google.
例如，目前的约会网站比谷歌之前的搜索糟糕得多。
They all use the same simple-minded model.
他们都使用相同的头脑简单的模型。
They seem to have approached the problem by thinking about how to
他们似乎通过思考如何解决这个问题
do database matches instead of how dating works in the real world.
进行数据库匹配而不是现实世界中的约会方式。
An undergrad could build something better as a class project.
本科生可以将一些更好的东西作为课堂项目来构建。
And yet there's a lot of money at stake.
然而，这涉及大量资金。
Online dating is a valuable business now, and it might be worth a hundred times as much if it worked.
在线约会现在是一项有价值的业务，如果成功的话，其价值可能会增加一百倍。
An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning.
然而，创业的想法仅仅是一个开始。
A lot of would-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is the
许多潜在的初创公司创始人认为整个过程的关键是
initial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute.
最初的想法，从那时起你所要做的就是执行。
Venture capitalists know better.
风险投资家更清楚这一点。
If you go to VC firms with a brilliant idea that you'll tell them about if they sign a nondisclosure agreement, most will tell you to get lost.
如果你带着一个绝妙的想法去风险投资公司，如果他们签署保密协议，你会告诉他们，大多数人会告诉你滚蛋。
That shows how much a mere idea is worth.
这表明一个想法的价值有多大。
The market price is less than the inconvenience of signing an NDA.
市场价格低于签署NDA的不便。
Another sign of how little the initial idea is worth is the number
表明最初想法价值有多大的另一个迹象是数字
of startups that change their plan en route.
中途改变计划的初创公司。
Microsoft's original plan was to make money selling programming languages, of all things.
微软最初的计划是通过销售编程语言来赚钱。
Their current business model didn't occur to them until IBM dropped it in their lap five years later.
他们并没有想到目前的商业模式，直到五年后 IBM 将其抛弃。
Ideas for startups are worth something, certainly, but the trouble is, they're not transferrable.
对于初创企业来说，创意当然是有价值的，但问题是它们不可转让。
They're not something you could hand to someone else to execute.
它们不是你可以交给其他人来执行的东西。
Their value is mainly as starting
它们的价值主要是作为起始
points: as questions for the people who had them to continue thinking about.
要点：作为让他们继续思考的人的问题。
What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them.
重要的不是想法，而是拥有想法的人。
Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people.
好人可以纠正坏主意，但好主意救不了坏人。
People What do I mean by good people?
人 我所说的好人是什么意思？
One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire.
我在创业过程中学到的最好的技巧之一就是决定雇用谁的规则。
Could you describe the person as an animal?
你能把这个人形容为一种动物吗？
It might be hard to translate
可能很难翻译
that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means.
翻译成另一种语言，但我想每个美国人都知道这意味着什么。
It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
这意味着某人对自己的工作过于认真；一个人把自己擅长的事情做得非常好，以至于他们直接通过了专业，并进入了痴迷状态。
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR
这具体意味着什么取决于工作：一个不会接受“不”答案的销售人员；一名黑客会熬夜到凌晨 4:00，而不是留下带有错误的代码上床睡觉；公关
person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
会用手机给《纽约时报》记者打电话的人；当某些东西错位两毫米时，会感到身体疼痛的平面设计师。
Almost everyone who worked for us was an animal at what they did.
几乎每个为我们工作的人在他们所做的事情上都是动物。
The woman in charge of sales was so tenacious that I used to feel sorry for potential customers on the phone with her.
负责销售的女士是如此顽强，以至于我常常为与她通电话的潜在客户感到难过。
You could sense them squirming on the hook, but you knew there would be no
你可以感觉到它们在钩子上蠕动，但你知道不会有
rest for them till they'd signed up.
让他们休息一下，直到他们报名为止。
If you think about people you know, you'll find the animal test is easy to apply.
如果你想想你认识的人，你会发现动物测试很容易应用。
Call the person's image to mind and imagine the sentence "so-and-so is an animal." If you laugh, they're not.
脑海中浮现这个人的形象，想象“某某是一种动物”这句话。如果你笑，他们就不会笑。
You don't need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies, but you need it in a startup.
在大公司中你不需要甚至可能不需要这种品质，但在初创公司中你需要它。
For programmers we had three additional tests.
对于程序员，我们进行了三项额外的测试。
Was the person genuinely smart?
这个人真的很聪明吗？
If so, could they actually get things done?
如果是这样，他们真的能把事情做好吗？
And
并且
finally, since a few good hackers have unbearable personalities, could we stand to have them around?
最后，既然有一些优秀的黑客性格恶劣，我们能忍受他们的存在吗？
That last test filters out surprisingly few people.
最后一项测试过滤掉的人少得惊人。
We could bear any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart.
如果一个人真的很聪明，我们可以忍受任何程度的书呆子。
What we couldn't stand were people with a lot of attitude.
我们不能忍受的是态度恶劣的人。
But most of those weren't truly smart, so our third test was largely a restatement of the first.
但其中大多数都不是真正聪明的，所以我们的第三个测试很大程度上是第一个测试的重述。
When nerds are unbearable it's usually because they're trying too
当书呆子难以忍受时，通常是因为他们也在尝试
hard to seem smart.
很难显得聪明。
But the smarter they are, the less pressure they feel to act smart.
但他们越聪明，他们感到表现得聪明的压力就越小。
So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people by their ability to say things like "I don't know," "Maybe you're right," and "I don't understand x well enough." This technique doesn't always work, because people can be influenced by their environment.
因此，一般来说，你可以通过说“我不知道”、“也许你是对的”和“我对某件事的理解不够好”之类的能力来识别真正聪明的人。这种技术并不总是有效，因为人们会受到环境的影响。
In the MIT CS department, there seems to be a tradition of acting like a brusque know-it-all.
在麻省理工学院计算机系，似乎有一种表现得像个唐突的万事通的传统。
I'm told it derives
有人告诉我它源自
ultimately from Marvin Minsky, in the same way the classic airline pilot manner is said to derive from Chuck Yeager.
最终来自马文·明斯基，就像经典的航空公司飞行员礼仪据说源自查克·耶格尔一样。
Even genuinely smart people start to act this way there, so you have to make allowances.
即使是真正聪明的人也会开始这样做，所以你必须要体谅。
It helped us to have Robert Morris, who is one of the readiest to say "I don't know" of anyone I've met.
罗伯特·莫里斯对我们很有帮助，他是我见过的最愿意说“我不认识”的人之一。
(At least, he was before he became a professor at MIT.) No one dared put on attitude around
（至少，在他成为麻省理工学院教授之前。）没有人敢在周围摆出态度。
Robert, because he was obviously smarter than they were and yet had zero attitude himself.
罗伯特，因为他显然比他们聪明，但他自己却态度为零。
Like most startups, ours began with a group of friends, and it was through personal contacts that we got most of the people we hired.
和大多数初创公司一样，我们的公司是由一群朋友开始的，通过个人联系，我们雇佣了大部分人。
This is a crucial difference between startups and big companies.
这是初创公司和大公司之间的一个关键区别。
Being friends with someone for even a couple days will tell you more than companies could ever learn in interviews.
与某人成为朋友，即使是几天的时间，也能告诉你比公司在面试中学到的更多的东西。
[2]
[2]
It's no coincidence that startups start around universities, because that's where smart people meet.
初创公司在大学周围起步并非巧合，因为大学是聪明人聚集的地方。
It's not what people learn in classes at MIT and Stanford that has made technology companies spring up around them.
人们在麻省理工学院和斯坦福大学课堂上学到的东西并不是科技公司在他们周围涌现的原因。
They could sing campfire songs in the classes so long as admissions worked the same.
只要招生工作保持不变，他们就可以在课堂上唱篝火歌曲。
If you start a startup, there's a good chance it will be with people you know from college or grad school.
如果你创办一家初创公司，很有可能是和你在大学或研究生院认识的人一起创业。
So in theory you ought to
所以理论上你应该
try to make friends with as many smart people as you can in school, right?
尝试在学校里与尽可能多的聪明人交朋友，对吧？
Well, no. Don't make a conscious effort to schmooze; that doesn't work well with hackers.
嗯，不。不要刻意去闲聊；这对黑客来说不太有效。
What you should do in college is work on your own projects.
你在大学里应该做的就是从事自己的项目。
Hackers should do this even if they don't plan to start startups, because it's the only real way to learn how to program.
即使黑客不打算创业，他们也应该这样做，因为这是学习编程的唯一真正方法。
In some cases you may collaborate with other students, and this is the best way to
在某些情况下，您可能会与其他学生合作，这是最好的方式
get to know good hackers.
结识优秀的黑客。
The project may even grow into a startup.
该项目甚至可能发展成为一家初创公司。
But once again, I wouldn't aim too directly at either target.
但我再说一次，我不会太直接地瞄准任何一个目标。
Don't force things; just work on stuff you like with people you like.
不要强迫事情；和你喜欢的人一起做你喜欢的事情。
Ideally you want between two and four founders.
理想情况下，您需要两到四位创始人。
It would be hard to start with just one.
如果只有一个就很难开始。
One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear.
一个人会发现创办一家公司的道德负担难以承受。
Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder.
即使是看起来能够承担很大道德责任的比尔·盖茨也必须有一个联合创始人。
But you don't want so many founders that the company starts to look like a group photo.
但你不希望有太多的创始人，以至于公司开始看起来像一张合影。
Partly because you don't need a lot of people at first, but mainly because the more founders you have, the worse disagreements you'll have.
部分原因是一开始你不需要很多人，但主要是因为创始人越多，分歧就越严重。
When there are just two or three founders, you know you have to resolve disputes immediately or perish.
当只有两三个创始人时，你知道你必须立即解决争端，否则就会灭亡。
If there are seven or eight, disagreements can linger and harden into
如果有七八个，分歧就会持续存在并加剧
factions.
派系。
You don't want mere voting; you need unanimity.
你想要的不仅仅是投票；你需要一致同意。
In a technology startup, which most startups are, the founders should include technical people.
在大多数初创公司中，创始人应该包括技术人员。
During the Internet Bubble there were a number of startups founded by business people who then went looking for hackers to create their product for them.
在互联网泡沫期间，有许多由商界人士创立的初创公司，然后他们寻找黑客为他们创建产品。
This doesn't work well.
这效果不太好。
Business people are bad at deciding what to do with technology, because they don't know what the options are, or which
商界人士不善于决定如何利用技术，因为他们不知道有哪些选择，或者哪些选择
kinds of problems are hard and which are easy.
各种各样的问题有困难的，也有容易的。
And when business people try to hire hackers, they can't tell which ones are good .
当商界人士试图雇用黑客时，他们无法判断哪些人是好的。
Even other hackers have a hard time doing that.
即使是其他黑客也很难做到这一点。
For business people it's roulette.
对于商务人士来说，这就是轮盘赌。
Do the founders of a startup have to include business people?
初创公司的创始人必须包括商人吗？
That depends.
这要看情况。
We thought so when we started ours, and we asked several people who were said to know about this mysterious thing called
当我们开始我们的项目时，我们是这么认为的，并且我们问了几个据说知道这种神秘事物的人
"business" if they would be the president.
如果他们成为总统，那就是“生意”。
But they all said no, so I had to do it myself.
但他们都说不行，所以我只好自己做。
And what I discovered was that business was no great mystery.
我发现商业并不是什么神秘的事情。
It's not something like physics or medicine that requires extensive study.
它不像物理学或医学那样需要广泛研究。
You just try to get people to pay you for stuff.
你只是试图让人们付钱给你买东西。
I think the reason I made such a mystery of business was that I was disgusted by the idea of doing it.
我认为我对商业如此神秘的原因是我对这样做的想法感到厌恶。
I wanted to work in the pure,
我想从事纯粹的工作，
intellectual world of software, not deal with customers' mundane problems.
软件的智力世界，不处理客户的平凡问题。
People who don't want to get dragged into some kind of work often develop a protective incompetence at it.
那些不想被拖入某种工作的人往往会在这方面产生一种保护性的无能。
Paul Erdos was particularly good at this.
保罗·埃尔多斯（Paul Erdos）尤其擅长这一点。
By seeming unable even to cut a grapefruit in half (let alone go to the store and buy one), he forced other people to do such things for him, leaving all his time free for math.
他似乎连把柚子切成两半都做不到（更不用说去商店买一个），他强迫其他人为他做这样的事情，把所有的时间都留给数学。
Erdos was an extreme case, but most husbands use the same
鄂尔多斯是一个极端的例子，但大多数丈夫都用同样的方法
trick to some degree.
某种程度上的诡计。
Once I was forced to discard my protective incompetence, I found that business was neither so hard nor so boring as I feared.
当我被迫放弃自己的保护无能时，我发现生意并不像我担心的那么难，也不像我担心的那么无聊。
There are esoteric areas of business that are quite hard, like tax law or the pricing of derivatives, but you don't need to know about those in a startup.
有些深奥的业务领域相当困难，比如税法或衍生品定价，但在初创公司中你不需要了解这些。
All you need to know about business to run a startup are commonsense things people knew before there were business
经营一家初创公司所需了解的有关业务的所有知识都是人们在业务出现之前就知道的常识
schools, or even universities.
学校，甚至大学。
If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school.
如果您在福布斯 400 强中，在每个拥有 MBA 学位的人的名字旁边画一个 X，您就会学到一些关于商学院的重要知识。
After Warren Buffett, you don't hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike.
继沃伦·巴菲特之后，只有排名第 22 位的耐克首席执行官菲尔·奈特 (Phil Knight) 才能获得另一个 MBA 学位。
There are only 5 MBAs in the top 50.
前50名中只有5个MBA。
What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical backgrounds.
你会注意到福布斯 400 强中有很多具有技术背景的人。
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison,
比尔·盖茨、史蒂夫·乔布斯、拉里·埃里森、
Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore.
迈克尔·戴尔、杰夫·贝佐斯、戈登·摩尔。
The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business.
技术行业的统治者往往来自技术，而不是商业。
So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA.
因此，如果你想花两年时间做一些能帮助你在商业上取得成功的事情，有证据表明，你最好学习如何黑客，而不是获得 MBA 学位。
[3] There is one reason you might want to include business people in a startup, though: because you have to have at least one person willing
[3] 不过，您可能希望在初创公司中吸纳商业人士的原因有一个：因为您必须至少有一个人愿意
and able to focus on what customers want.
并能够专注于客户的需求。
Some believe only business people can do this-- that hackers can implement software, but not design it.
有些人认为只有商业人士才能做到这一点——黑客可以实现软件，但不能设计它。
That's nonsense.
那是无稽之谈。
There's nothing about knowing how to program that prevents hackers from understanding users, or about not knowing how to program that magically enables business people to understand them.
知道如何编程并不能阻止黑客理解用户，或者不知道如何编程也不能神奇地让业务人员理解他们。
If you can't understand users, however, you should either learn how
但是，如果您无法理解用户，您应该学习如何
or find a co-founder who can.
或者找到一位可以的联合创始人。
That is the single most important issue for technology startups, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else.
对于科技初创企业来说，这是最重要的问题，也是让它们沉沦的最重要因素。
What Customers Want It's not just startups that have to worry about this.
客户想要什么 不仅仅是初创公司需要担心这个问题。
I think most businesses that fail do it because they don't give customers what they want.
我认为大多数失败的企业都是因为他们没有为客户提供他们想要的东西。
Look at restaurants.
看看餐馆。
A large percentage fail, about a quarter in the first year.
很大一部分失败了，第一年大约有四分之一。
But can you think of one restaurant
但你能想到一家餐馆吗
that had really good food and went out of business?
那家食物真的很好吃却倒闭了？
Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what.
无论如何，提供美味佳肴的餐馆似乎都很繁荣。
A restaurant with great food can be expensive, crowded, noisy, dingy, out of the way, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming.
一家提供美味食物的餐厅可能价格昂贵、拥挤、嘈杂、肮脏、偏僻，甚至服务很差，但人们还是会不断光顾。
It's true that a restaurant with mediocre food can sometimes attract customers through gimmicks.
确实，食物平庸的餐厅有时也能通过噱头吸引顾客。
But that approach is very risky.
但这种做法风险很大。
It's more straightforward just to make the food good.
让食物变得美味更简单。
It's the same with technology.
科技也是如此。
You hear all kinds of reasons why startups fail.
你会听到初创公司失败的各种原因。
But can you think of one that had a massively popular product and still failed?
但你能想到有一款产品广受欢迎但仍然失败的产品吗？
In nearly every failed startup, the real problem was that customers didn't want the product.
几乎在每一个失败的初创公司中，真正的问题是客户不想要该产品。
For most, the cause of death is listed as "ran out of funding," but that's only the immediate cause.
对于大多数人来说，死亡原因被列为“资金耗尽”，但这只是直接原因。
Why couldn't they get more funding?
为什么他们不能获得更多资金？
Probably because the product was
可能是因为该产品
a dog, or never seemed likely to be done, or both.
一只狗，或者似乎永远不可能完成，或者两者兼而有之。
When I was trying to think of the things every startup needed to do, I almost included a fourth: get a version 1 out as soon as you can.
当我试图思考每个初创公司需要做的事情时，我几乎包括了第四个：尽快推出版本 1。
But I decided not to, because that's implicit in making something customers want.
但我决定不这样做，因为这隐含在制造客户想要的东西中。
The only way to make something customers want is to get a prototype in front of them and refine it based on their reactions.
制造客户想要的东西的唯一方法是在他们面前提供一个原型，并根据他们的反应对其进行改进。
The other approach is what I call the "Hail Mary" strategy.
另一种方法就是我所说的“万福玛丽”策略。
You
你
make elaborate plans for a product, hire a team of engineers to develop it (people who do this tend to use the term "engineer" for hackers), and then find after a year that you've spent two million dollars to develop something no one wants.
为一个产品制定周密的计划，聘请一个工程师团队来开发它（这样做的人往往用“工程师”这个词来形容黑客），然后一年后发现你花了 200 万美元开发了一些没人想要的东西。
This was not uncommon during the Bubble, especially in companies run by business types, who thought of software development as something terrifying that therefore had to be carefully planned.
这种情况在泡沫时期并不罕见，尤其是在商业类型经营的公司中，他们认为软件开发是一件可怕的事情，因此必须仔细计划。
We never even considered that approach.
我们甚至从未考虑过这种方法。
As a Lisp hacker, I come from the tradition of rapid prototyping.
作为一名 Lisp 黑客，我来自快速原型设计的传统。
I would not claim (at least, not here) that this is the right way to write every program, but it's certainly the right way to write software for a startup.
我不会声称（至少在这里不会）这是编写每个程序的正确方法，但它肯定是为初创公司编写软件的正确方法。
In a startup, your initial plans are almost certain to be wrong in some way, and your first priority should be to figure out where.
在初创公司中，你最初的计划几乎肯定在某些方面是错误的，你的首要任务应该是找出错误所在。
The only way to do that is to try implementing them.
唯一的方法就是尝试实施它们。
Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly.
像大多数初创公司一样，我们临时改变了计划。
At first we expected our customers to be Web consultants.
起初，我们希望我们的客户是网络顾问。
But it turned out they didn't like us, because our software was easy to use and we hosted the site.
但事实证明他们不喜欢我们，因为我们的软件易于使用并且我们托管了该网站。
It would be too easy for clients to fire them.
客户很容易解雇他们。
We also thought we'd be able to sign up a lot of catalog companies, because selling online was a natural extension of their existing business.
我们还认为我们能够与很多目录公司签约，因为在线销售是他们现有业务的自然延伸。
But in 1996 that was a hard sell.
但在 1996 年，这一点很难推销。
The middle managers we talked
我们谈论的中层管理人员
to at catalog companies saw the Web not as an opportunity, but as something that meant more work for them.
在目录公司看来，网络不是一个机会，而是意味着他们需要做更多的工作。
We did get a few of the more adventurous catalog companies.
我们确实找到了一些更具冒险精神的目录公司。
Among them was Frederick's of Hollywood, which gave us valuable experience dealing with heavy loads on our servers.
其中包括 Frederick of Hollywood，它为我们提供了处理服务器重负载的宝贵经验。
But most of our users were small, individual merchants who saw the Web as an opportunity to build a business.
但我们的大多数用户都是小型个体商人，他们将网络视为开展业务的机会。
Some had retail stores, but many only existed
有些有零售店，但很多只是存在
online.
在线。
And so we changed direction to focus on these users.
因此我们改变了方向，将重点放在这些用户上。
Instead of concentrating on the features Web consultants and catalog companies would want, we worked to make the software easy to use.
我们没有专注于网络顾问和目录公司想要的功能，而是致力于使软件易于使用。
I learned something valuable from that.
我从中学到了一些有价值的东西。
It's worth trying very, very hard to make technology easy to use.
让技术变得易于使用是值得非常非常努力的尝试。
Hackers are so used to computers that they have no idea how horrifying software seems to normal people.
黑客对计算机已经太习惯了，他们不知道软件对普通人来说是多么可怕。
Stephen Hawking's editor told him that every equation
史蒂芬·霍金的编辑告诉他，每个方程
he included in his book would cut sales in half.
他在书中写道，这将使销量减少一半。
When you work on making technology easier to use, you're riding that curve up instead of down.
当你致力于让技术更易于使用时，你就会沿着这条曲线向上而不是向下。
A 10% improvement in ease of use doesn't just increase your sales 10%.
易用性提高 10% 不仅仅会让您的销售额增加 10%。
It's more likely to double your sales.
它更有可能使您的销售额翻倍。
How do you figure out what customers want?
你如何弄清楚客户想要什么？
Watch them.
观察他们。
One of the best places to do this was at trade shows.
做到这一点的最佳场所之一是贸易展览。
Trade shows didn't pay as a way of getting new customers, but they were worth it as market
贸易展览并不能作为吸引新客户的一种方式，但作为市场，它们是值得的
research.
研究。
We didn't just give canned presentations at trade shows.
我们不仅仅在贸易展览会上进行预制演示。
We used to show people how to build real, working stores.
我们过去常常向人们展示如何建立真实有效的商店。
Which meant we got to watch as they used our software, and talk to them about what they needed.
这意味着我们必须观察他们使用我们的软件，并与他们讨论他们的需求。
No matter what kind of startup you start, it will probably be a stretch for you, the founders, to understand what users want.
无论你创办什么样的初创公司，作为创始人，了解用户的需求可能都需要付出很大的努力。
The only kind of software you can build without studying users is the
唯一可以在不研究用户的情况下构建的软件是
sort for which you are the typical user.
您是其典型用户的类别。
But this is just the kind that tends to be open source: operating systems, programming languages, editors, and so on.
但这只是倾向于开源的类型：操作系统、编程语言、编辑器等等。
So if you're developing technology for money, you're probably not going to be developing it for people like you.
因此，如果您开发技术是为了赚钱，那么您可能不会为像您这样的人开发技术。
Indeed, you can use this as a way to generate ideas for startups: what do people who are not like you want from technology?
事实上，你可以用它来为初创公司产生想法：那些与你不同的人想从技术中得到什么？
When most people think of startups, they think of companies like
当大多数人想到初创公司时，他们会想到这样的公司
Apple or Google.
苹果或谷歌。
Everyone knows these, because they're big consumer brands.
每个人都知道这些，因为它们是大消费品牌。
But for every startup like that, there are twenty more that operate in niche markets or live quietly down in the infrastructure.
但对于每家这样的初创公司来说，还有二十家在利基市场运营或安静地生活在基础设施中。
So if you start a successful startup, odds are you'll start one of those.
因此，如果您成功创办一家初创公司，那么您很可能会创办其中一家。
Another way to say that is, if you try to start the kind of startup that has to be a big consumer brand, the odds against succeeding
另一种说法是，如果你尝试创办一家必须成为大型消费品牌的初创公司，那么成功的可能性就很小
are steeper.
更陡峭。
The best odds are in niche markets.
最好的机会是在利基市场。
Since startups make money by offering people something better than they had before, the best opportunities are where things suck most.
由于初创公司通过向人们提供比以前更好的东西来赚钱，所以最好的机会就是事情最糟糕的地方。
And it would be hard to find a place where things suck more than in corporate IT departments.
很难找到比企业 IT 部门更糟糕的地方了。
You would not believe the amount of money companies spend on software, and the crap they get in return.
你不会相信公司在软件上花费的金钱和他们得到的回报。
This imbalance equals opportunity.
这种不平衡就等于机会。
If you want ideas for startups, one of the most valuable things you could do is find a middle-sized non-technology company and spend a couple weeks just watching what they do with computers.
如果你想要初创公司的想法，你可以做的最有价值的事情之一就是找到一家中型非技术公司，花几周时间观察他们如何使用计算机。
Most good hackers have no more idea of the horrors perpetrated in these places than rich Americans do of what goes on in Brazilian slums.
大多数优秀的黑客对这些地方发生的恐怖事件一无所知，就像富有的美国人对巴西贫民窟发生的事情一无所知一样。
Start by writing software for smaller companies, because it's easier to sell to them.
首先为较小的公司编写软件，因为向他们销售更容易。
It's worth so much to sell stuff to big companies
卖东西给大公司太值钱了
that the people selling them the crap they currently use spend a lot of time and money to do it.
向他们出售他们目前使用的垃圾的人花费了大量的时间和金钱来做到这一点。
And while you can outhack Oracle with one frontal lobe tied behind your back, you can't outsell an Oracle salesman.
虽然你可以用一个额叶绑在背后来破解 Oracle，但你的销售却无法超过 Oracle 推销员。
So if you want to win through better technology, aim at smaller customers.
因此，如果你想通过更好的技术取胜，就瞄准较小的客户。
[4] They're the more strategically valuable part of the market anyway.
[4] 无论如何，它们是市场中更具战略价值的部分。
In technology, the low end always eats the high end.
在技术领域，低端总是吃掉高端。
It's easier
更容易
to make an inexpensive product more powerful than to make a powerful product cheaper.
让便宜的产品变得更强大，而不是让强大的产品变得更便宜。
So the products that start as cheap, simple options tend to gradually grow more powerful till, like water rising in a room, they squash the "high-end" products against the ceiling.
因此，一开始价格低廉、简单的产品往往会逐渐变得更加强大，直到像房间里的水上升一样，将“高端”产品压到天花板上。
Sun did this to mainframes, and Intel is doing it to Sun.
Sun 对大型机采取了这种做法，而 Intel 也在对 Sun 采取这种做法。
Microsoft Word did it to desktop publishing software like Interleaf and Framemaker.
Microsoft Word 对 Interleaf 和 Framemaker 等桌面出版软件做到了这一点。
Mass-market digital cameras are doing it to the expensive
大众市场的数码相机正在向昂贵的方向发展
models made for professionals.
为专业人士制作的模型。
Avid did it to the manufacturers of specialized video editing systems, and now Apple is doing it to Avid.
Avid 对专业视频编辑系统制造商采取了这种做法，现在苹果公司也对 Avid 采取了这种做法。
Henry Ford did it to the car makers that preceded him.
亨利·福特对他之前的汽车制造商做到了这一点。
If you build the simple, inexpensive option, you'll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you'll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of the market.
如果您构建简单、廉价的选择，您不仅会发现一开始更容易销售，而且您还将处于征服其他市场的最佳位置。
It's very dangerous to let anyone fly under you.
让任何人在你下面飞行是非常危险的。
If you have the
如果您有
cheapest, easiest product, you'll own the low end.
最便宜、最简单的产品，您将拥有低端产品。
And if you don't, you're in the crosshairs of whoever does.
如果你不这样做，你就会成为任何这样做的人的瞄准目标。
Raising Money To make all this happen, you're going to need money.
筹集资金 为了实现这一切，您需要资金。
Some startups have been self-funding-- Microsoft for example-- but most aren't.
一些初创公司一直是自筹资金的——例如微软——但大多数都不是。
I think it's wise to take money from investors.
我认为从投资者那里拿钱是明智的。
To be self-funding, you have to start as a consulting company, and it's hard to switch from that to a product company.
要自筹资金，你必须从一家咨询公司开始，而且很难从一家咨询公司转变为一家产品公司。
Financially, a startup is like a pass/fail course.
从财务角度来看，初创公司就像一个通过/失败的课程。
The way to get rich from a startup is to maximize the company's chances of succeeding, not to maximize the amount of stock you retain.
从初创公司致富的方法是最大化公司成功的机会，而不是最大化你保留的股票数量。
So if you can trade stock for something that improves your odds, it's probably a smart move.
因此，如果您可以通过股票交易来提高赔率，那么这可能是明智之举。
To most hackers, getting investors seems like a terrifying and mysterious process.
对于大多数黑客来说，获得投资者似乎是一个可怕而神秘的过程。
Actually it's merely tedious.
事实上这只是乏味而已。
I'll try to
我会尽力
give an outline of how it works.
概述其工作原理。
The first thing you'll need is a few tens of thousands of dollars to pay your expenses while you develop a prototype.
您首先需要的是几万美元来支付开发原型时的费用。
This is called seed capital.
这称为种子资本。
Because so little money is involved, raising seed capital is comparatively easy-- at least in the sense of getting a quick yes or no. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called "angels." Often they're people who themselves got rich from technology.
由于涉及的资金很少，筹集种子资金相对容易——至少从快速获得同意或反对的意义上来说是这样。通常你会从被称为“天使”的个人富人那里获得种子资金。他们往往是靠技术致富的人。
At the seed stage, investors don't expect you to have an elaborate business plan.
在种子阶段，投资者并不期望你有一个详尽的商业计划。
Most know that they're supposed to decide quickly.
大多数人都知道他们应该迅速做出决定。
It's not unusual to get a check within a week based on a half-page agreement.
根据半页协议在一周内收到支票的情况并不罕见。
We started Viaweb with $10,000 of seed money from our friend Julian.
我们用朋友 Julian 提供的 10,000 美元种子资金创办了 Viaweb。
But he gave us a lot more than money.
但他给我们的不仅仅是金钱。
He's a former CEO and also a corporate lawyer, so he gave us a lot of valuable advice about
他是前CEO，也是一名公司律师，所以他给了我们很多宝贵的建议。
business, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company.
业务，并完成了我们成立公司的所有法律工作。
Plus he introduced us to one of the two angel investors who supplied our next round of funding.
此外，他还向我们介绍了为我们提供下一轮融资的两位天使投资人之一。
Some angels, especially those with technology backgrounds, may be satisfied with a demo and a verbal description of what you plan to do.
一些天使投资人，尤其是那些具有技术背景的天使投资人，可能会对演示和对您计划做的事情的口头描述感到满意。
But many will want a copy of your business plan, if only to remind themselves what they invested in.
但许多人会想要一份你的商业计划副本，哪怕只是为了提醒自己他们投资了什么。
Our angels asked for one, and looking back, I'm amazed how much worry it caused me.
我们的天使要了一个，现在回想起来，我很惊讶它给我带来了多少担忧。
"Business plan" has that word "business" in it, so I figured it had to be something I'd have to read a book about business plans to write.
“商业计划”中有“商业”这个词，所以我想它必须是我必须读一本关于商业计划的书才能写的东西。
Well, it doesn't.
嗯，事实并非如此。
At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you're going to make money from it, and the resumes of the founders.
在这个阶段，大多数投资者所期望的只是您计划做什么、如何从中赚钱的简要描述，以及创始人的简历。
If you just sit down and write out what you've
如果你只是坐下来写下你所经历的
been saying to one another, that should be fine.
一直互相说，那应该没问题。
It shouldn't take more than a couple hours, and you'll probably find that writing it all down gives you more ideas about what to do.
花费的时间不会超过几个小时，您可能会发现将其全部写下来可以让您对该怎么做有更多想法。
For the angel to have someone to make the check out to, you're going to have to have some kind of company.
为了让天使有人结帐，你必须有某种陪伴。
Merely incorporating yourselves isn't hard.
仅仅融入自己并不难。
The problem is, for the company to exist, you have to decide who the founders are, and how much stock they each have.
问题是，为了让公司存在，你必须决定创始人是谁，以及他们各自拥有多少股票。
If
如果
there are two founders with the same qualifications who are both equally committed to the business, that's easy.
有两个具有相同资格的创始人，并且都同样致力于业务，这很容易。
But if you have a number of people who are expected to contribute in varying degrees, arranging the proportions of stock can be hard.
但如果你有很多人预计会做出不同程度的贡献，那么安排股票的比例可能会很困难。
And once you've done it, it tends to be set in stone.
一旦你完成了它，它往往是一成不变的。
I have no tricks for dealing with this problem.
我没有处理这个问题的技巧。
All I can say is, try hard to do it right.
我只能说，努力把事情做好。
I do have a rule of thumb for recognizing
我确实有一个识别的经验法则
when you have, though.
不过，当你有的时候。
When everyone feels they're getting a slightly bad deal, that they're doing more than they should for the amount of stock they have, the stock is optimally apportioned.
当每个人都觉得自己的交易有点糟糕，他们的库存量超出了应有的水平时，库存就会得到最佳分配。
There is more to setting up a company than incorporating it, of course: insurance, business license, unemployment compensation, various things with the IRS.
当然，设立公司不仅仅是注册公司：保险、营业执照、失业救济金、国税局的各种事务。
I'm not even sure what the list is, because we, ah, skipped all that.
我什至不确定清单是什么，因为我们，啊，跳过了所有这些。
When we got real funding near
当我们接近真正的资金时
the end of 1996, we hired a great CFO, who fixed everything retroactively.
1996 年底，我们聘请了一位出色的首席财务官，他追溯性地修复了所有问题。
It turns out that no one comes and arrests you if you don't do everything you're supposed to when starting a company.
事实证明，如果你没有做好创办公司时应该做的一切，就没有人来逮捕你。
And a good thing too, or a lot of startups would never get started.
这也是一件好事，否则很多初创公司将永远无法开始。
[5] It can be dangerous to delay turning yourself into a company, because one or more of the founders might decide to split off and start another company doing the same thing.
[5] 延迟将自己转变为一家公司可能是危险的，因为一个或多个创始人可能决定分拆并创办另一家公司做同样的事情。
This does happen.
这确实发生了。
So when
所以当
you set up the company, as well as as apportioning the stock, you should get all the founders to sign something agreeing that everyone's ideas belong to this company, and that this company is going to be everyone's only job.
你成立公司，以及分配股票，你应该让所有创始人签署一份文件，同意每个人的想法都属于这个公司，这个公司将成为每个人唯一的工作。
[If this were a movie, ominous music would begin here.] While you're at it, you should ask what else they've signed.
[如果这是一部电影，不祥的音乐就会从这里开始。]当你在看的时候，你应该问他们还签了哪些东西。
One of the worst things that can happen to a startup is to run into
初创公司可能发生的最糟糕的事情之一就是遇到
intellectual property problems.
知识产权问题。
We did, and it came closer to killing us than any competitor ever did.
我们做到了，而且它比任何竞争对手都更接近杀死我们。
As we were in the middle of getting bought, we discovered that one of our people had, early on, been bound by an agreement that said all his ideas belonged to the giant company that was paying for him to go to grad school.
当我们正处于被收购的过程中时，我们发现我们的一个人很早就受到了一项协议的约束，该协议规定他的所有想法都属于支付他读研究生费用的大公司。
In theory, that could have meant someone else owned big chunks of our software.
从理论上讲，这可能意味着其他人拥有我们软件的大部分内容。
So the acquisition came to
于是这次收购就来到了
a screeching halt while we tried to sort this out.
当我们试图解决这个问题时，突然停止了。
The problem was, since we'd been about to be acquired, we'd allowed ourselves to run low on cash.
问题是，自从我们即将被收购以来，我们就让自己的现金短缺了。
Now we needed to raise more to keep going.
现在我们需要筹集更多资金才能继续前进。
But it's hard to raise money with an IP cloud over your head, because investors can't judge how serious it is.
但如果头上有知识产权云，就很难筹集资金，因为投资者无法判断事情的严重性。
Our existing investors, knowing that we needed money and had nowhere else to get it, at this point attempted certain gambits which I
我们现有的投资者知道我们需要资金但没有其他地方可以得到它，因此在这一点上尝试了一些我所尝试的策略。
will not describe in detail, except to remind readers that the word "angel" is a metaphor.
不会详细描述，只是提醒读者“天使”一词是一个隐喻。
The founders thereupon proposed to walk away from the company, after giving the investors a brief tutorial on how to administer the servers themselves.
在向投资者提供了如何自行管理服务器的简短教程后，创始人提议离开公司。
And while this was happening, the acquirers used the delay as an excuse to welch on the deal.
当这种情况发生时，收购方以延迟为借口终止了交易。
Miraculously it all turned out ok.
奇迹般的是，一切都好。
The investors backed down; we
投资者做出了让步；我们
did another round of funding at a reasonable valuation; the giant company finally gave us a piece of paper saying they didn't own our software; and six months later we were bought by Yahoo for much more than the earlier acquirer had agreed to pay.
以合理估值进行另一轮融资；大公司最后给了我们一张纸，说他们不拥有我们的软件；六个月后，我们被雅虎收购，收购价格远高于先前收购方同意支付的价格。
So we were happy in the end, though the experience probably took several years off my life.
所以我们最终很幸福，尽管这次经历可能让我少活了好几年。
Don't do what we did.
不要做我们所做的事情。
Before you consummate a startup, ask everyone about their previous IP history.
在你完成创业之前，询问每个人他们以前的 IP 历史。
Once you've got a company set up, it may seem presumptuous to go knocking on the doors of rich people and asking them to invest tens of thousands of dollars in something that is really just a bunch of guys with some ideas.
一旦你成立了一家公司，去敲富人的大门并要求他们投资数万美元来购买实际上只是一群有想法的人的东西似乎是自以为是。
But when you look at it from the rich people's point of view, the picture is more encouraging.
但当你从富人的角度来看时，情况就更令人鼓舞了。
Most rich people are looking for good investments.
大多数富人都在寻找好的投资。
If you really think you have a chance of succeeding, you're doing them a favor by letting
如果你真的认为你有成功的机会，那么你就让他们帮了他们一个忙
them invest.
他们投资。
Mixed with any annoyance they might feel about being approached will be the thought: are these guys the next Google?
与他们接触时可能感到的任何烦恼混合在一起的是这样的想法：这些人是下一个谷歌吗？
Usually angels are financially equivalent to founders.
通常天使在经济上相当于创始人。
They get the same kind of stock and get diluted the same amount in future rounds.
他们获得相同类型的股票，并在未来几轮中稀释相同数量的股票。
How much stock should they get?
他们应该获得多少库存？
That depends on how ambitious you feel.
这取决于你的雄心壮志有多大。
When you offer x percent of your company for y dollars, you're implicitly claiming a certain value for the whole
当您以 y 美元出售公司 x% 的股份时，您就隐含地要求整个公司具有一定的价值
company.
公司。
Venture investments are usually described in terms of that number.
风险投资通常用这个数字来描述。
If you give an investor new shares equal to 5% of those already outstanding in return for $100,000, then you've done the deal at a pre-money valuation of $2 million.
如果您向投资者提供相当于已发行股票 5% 的新股，以换取 10 万美元，那么您的交易前估值为 200 万美元。
How do you decide what the value of the company should be?
你如何决定公司的价值应该是多少？
There is no rational way.
没有合理的方法。
At this stage the company is just a bet.
现阶段公司只是一个赌注。
I didn't realize that when we were raising money.
当我们筹集资金时我没有意识到这一点。
Julian
朱利安
thought we ought to value the company at several million dollars.
认为我们应该对公司进行数百万美元的估值。
I thought it was preposterous to claim that a couple thousand lines of code, which was all we had at the time, were worth several million dollars.
我认为声称我们当时仅有的几千行代码价值数百万美元是荒谬的。
Eventually we settled on one million, because Julian said no one would invest in a company with a valuation any lower.
最终我们定了 100 万，因为朱利安说没有人会投资估值再低的公司。
[6] What I didn't grasp at the time was that the valuation wasn't just
[6] 当时我没有意识到估值不仅仅是
the value of the code we'd written so far.
到目前为止我们编写的代码的价值。
It was also the value of our ideas, which turned out to be right, and of all the future work we'd do, which turned out to be a lot.
这也是我们的想法的价值，事实证明这些想法是正确的，以及我们未来要做的所有工作的价值，结果证明这是很多的。
The next round of funding is the one in which you might deal with actual venture capital firms .
下一轮融资中您可能会与真正的风险投资公司打交道。
But don't wait till you've burned through your last round of funding to start approaching them.
但不要等到你耗尽了最后一轮资金才开始与他们接触。
VCs are slow to make up their minds.
风投们做出决定的速度很慢。
They can take months.
他们可能需要几个月的时间。
You don't want to be
你不想成为
running out of money while you're trying to negotiate with them.
当你试图与他们谈判时，钱已经用光了。
Getting money from an actual VC firm is a bigger deal than getting money from angels.
从真正的风险投资公司获得资金比从天使投资公司获得资金更重要。
The amounts of money involved are larger, millions usually.
涉及的金额较大，通常为数百万。
So the deals take longer, dilute you more, and impose more onerous conditions.
因此，交易需要更长的时间，更多地稀释你的利益，并施加更苛刻的条件。
Sometimes the VCs want to install a new CEO of their own choosing.
有时风险投资家希望任命一位自己选择的新首席执行官。
Usually the claim is that you need someone mature and experienced,
通常的说法是你需要一个成熟且有经验的人，
with a business background.
具有商业背景。
Maybe in some cases this is true.
也许在某些情况下这是真的。
And yet Bill Gates was young and inexperienced and had no business background, and he seems to have done ok.
然而比尔·盖茨年轻、缺乏经验、没有商业背景，但他似乎做得还不错。
Steve Jobs got booted out of his own company by someone mature and experienced, with a business background, who then proceeded to ruin the company.
史蒂夫·乔布斯被一个成熟、经验丰富、有商业背景的人赶出了自己的公司，然后他又毁掉了公司。
So I think people who are mature and experienced, with a business background, may be overrated.
所以我认为那些成熟、有经验、有商业背景的人可能会被高估。
We used to call these guys "newscasters,"
我们过去称这些人为“新闻播音员”
because they had neat hair and spoke in deep, confident voices, and generally didn't know much more than they read on the teleprompter.
因为他们有着整齐的头发，说话的声音低沉而自信，而且通常除了提词器上读到的内容外，他们所知道的并不多。
We talked to a number of VCs, but eventually we ended up financing our startup entirely with angel money.
我们与许多风险投资公司进行了交谈，但最终我们最终完全用天使资金为我们的初创公司提供了融资。
The main reason was that we feared a brand-name VC firm would stick us with a newscaster as part of the deal.
主要原因是我们担心一家知名风险投资公司会让我们与新闻播音员作为交易的一部分。
That might have been ok if he was content to limit himself to talking to the press, but what if he wanted to
如果他满足于限制自己与媒体交谈，那也许没问题，但如果他想这么做怎么办？
have a say in running the company?
对公司的经营有发言权吗？
That would have led to disaster, because our software was so complex.
这会导致灾难，因为我们的软件非常复杂。
We were a company whose whole m.o.
我们是一家公司的整个运作模式。
was to win through better technology.
是通过更好的技术取胜。
The strategic decisions were mostly decisions about technology, and we didn't need any help with those.
战略决策主要是有关技术的决策，我们不需要任何帮助。
This was also one reason we didn't go public.
这也是我们没有上市的原因之一。
Back in 1998 our CFO tried to talk me into it.
早在 1998 年，我们的首席财务官就试图说服我这样做。
In those days you could go public as a
在那些日子里，你可以作为
dogfood portal, so as a company with a real product and real revenues, we might have done well.
狗粮门户网站，因此作为一家拥有真实产品和真实收入的公司，我们可能会做得很好。
But I feared it would have meant taking on a newscaster-- someone who, as they say, "can talk Wall Street's language." I'm happy to see Google is bucking that trend.
但我担心这意味着要聘请一位新闻播音员——正如人们所说，“能讲华尔街语言”的人。我很高兴看到谷歌正在逆势而上。
They didn't talk Wall Street's language when they did their IPO, and Wall Street didn't buy.
他们在首次公开募股时没有使用华尔街的语言，华尔街也没有购买。
And now Wall Street is collectively kicking itself.
现在华尔街正在集体自责。
They'll pay attention next time.
下次他们会注意的。
Wall Street learns new languages fast when money is involved.
当涉及金钱时，华尔街学习新语言的速度很快。
You have more leverage negotiating with VCs than you realize.
你与风险投资人谈判的筹码比你想象的要多。
The reason is other VCs.
原因是其他VC。
I know a number of VCs now, and when you talk to them you realize that it's a seller's market.
我现在认识很多风险投资家，当你和他们交谈时，你会意识到这是一个卖方市场。
Even now there is too much money chasing too few good deals.
即使现在，仍有太多资金追逐太少的好交易。
VCs form a pyramid.
风投形成了一个金字塔。
At the top are famous ones like Sequoia and
排名靠前的是红杉资本和
Kleiner Perkins, but beneath those are a huge number you've never heard of.
凯鹏华盈 (Kleiner Perkins)，但在这些数字之下，还有一个您从未听说过的庞大数字。
What they all have in common is that a dollar from them is worth one dollar.
它们的共同点是，它们的一美元值一美元。
Most VCs will tell you that they don't just provide money, but connections and advice.
大多数风险投资家会告诉你，他们不仅提供资金，还提供联系和建议。
If you're talking to Vinod Khosla or John Doerr or Mike Moritz, this is true.
如果你正在与维诺德·科斯拉、约翰·杜尔或迈克·莫里茨交谈，这是真的。
But such advice and connections can come very expensive.
但这样的建议和联系可能会非常昂贵。
And as you go down the food chain the VCs get rapidly
当你沿着食物链往下走时，风险投资家就会迅速崛起
dumber.
更笨。
A few steps down from the top you're basically talking to bankers who've picked up a few new vocabulary words from reading Wired .
从顶部往下走几步，您基本上是在与银行家交谈，他们从阅读《连线》中学到了一些新词汇。
(Does your product use XML?
（你们的产品使用 XML 吗？
) So I'd advise you to be skeptical about claims of experience and connections.
）所以我建议你对经验和人脉的说法保持怀疑。
Basically, a VC is a source of money.
基本上，风险投资是资金来源。
I'd be inclined to go with whoever offered the most money the soonest with the least strings attached.
我倾向于与谁提供最多的钱、最快、附加条件最少的人一起去。
You may wonder how much to tell VCs.
您可能想知道该告诉风投多少。
And you should, because some
你应该这样做，因为有些
of them may one day be funding your competitors.
其中有一天可能会资助您的竞争对手。
I think the best plan is not to be overtly secretive, but not to tell them everything either.
我认为最好的计划不是公开保密，但也不要告诉他们一切。
After all, as most VCs say, they're more interested in the people than the ideas.
毕竟，正如大多数风险投资家所说，他们对人比对想法更感兴趣。
The main reason they want to talk about your idea is to judge you, not the idea.
他们想要谈论你的想法的主要原因是为了评判你，而不是这个想法。
So as long as you seem like you know what you're doing, you can probably keep a few things back from them.
因此，只要你看起来知道自己在做什么，你就可以对他们隐瞒一些事情。
[7]
[7]
Talk to as many VCs as you can, even if you don't want their money, because a) they may be on the board of someone who will buy you, and b) if you seem impressive, they'll be discouraged from investing in your competitors.
与尽可能多的风险投资家交谈，即使你不想要他们的钱，因为a）他们可能是收购你的人的董事会成员，b）如果你看起来令人印象深刻，他们就会不愿意投资你的竞争对手。
The most efficient way to reach VCs, especially if you only want them to know about you and don't want their money, is at the conferences that are occasionally organized for startups
接触风险投资家的最有效方法是参加偶尔为初创公司组织的会议，尤其是当您只想让他们了解您而不想要他们的钱时
to present to them.
呈现给他们。
Not Spending It When and if you get an infusion of real money from investors, what should you do with it?
不花钱 当你从投资者那里得到真金白银的注入时，你应该用它做什么？
Not spend it, that's what.
不花钱，就是这样。
In nearly every startup that fails, the proximate cause is running out of money.
几乎每一个失败的初创公司，其直接原因都是资金耗尽。
Usually there is something deeper wrong.
通常有更深层次的错误。
But even a proximate cause of death is worth trying hard to avoid.
但即使是直接死亡原因也值得努力避免。
During the Bubble many startups tried to "get big fast." Ideally
在泡沫时期，许多初创公司试图“快速壮大”。理想情况下
this meant getting a lot of customers fast.
这意味着快速获得大量客户。
But it was easy for the meaning to slide over into hiring a lot of people fast.
但这个含义很容易转变为快速雇用很多人。
Of the two versions, the one where you get a lot of customers fast is of course preferable.
在这两个版本中，能够快速获得大量客户的版本当然是更好的选择。
But even that may be overrated.
但即便如此，也可能被高估了。
The idea is to get there first and get all the users, leaving none for competitors.
我们的想法是首先到达那里并获得所有用户，不给竞争对手留下任何用户。
But I think in most businesses the advantages of being first to market are not so overwhelmingly great.
但我认为，在大多数企业中，率先进入市场的优势并不是那么巨大。
Google is again
谷歌又来了
a case in point.
一个恰当的例子。
When they appeared it seemed as if search was a mature market, dominated by big players who'd spent millions to build their brands: Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista, Inktomi.
当它们出现时，搜索似乎是一个成熟的市场，由花费数百万美元打造自己品牌的大玩家主导：Yahoo、Lycos、Excite、Infoseek、Altavista、Inktomi。
Surely 1998 was a little late to arrive at the party.
1998 年的到来确实有点晚了。
But as the founders of Google knew, brand is worth next to nothing in the search business.
但正如谷歌创始人所知，品牌在搜索业务中几乎一文不值。
You can come along at any point and make something better, and users will gradually seep over to you.
你可以随时加入并做出更好的东西，用户会逐渐渗透到你身边。
As
作为
if to emphasize the point, Google never did any advertising.
如果要强调一点的话，谷歌从来没有做过任何广告。
They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.
他们就像经销商；他们出售这些东西，但他们知道最好不要自己使用它。
The competitors Google buried would have done better to spend those millions improving their software.
谷歌埋葬的竞争对手如果花数百万美元改进他们的软件，效果会更好。
Future startups should learn from that mistake.
未来的初创公司应该从这个错误中吸取教训。
Unless you're in a market where products are as undifferentiated as cigarettes or vodka or laundry detergent,
除非你所在的市场产品像香烟、伏特加或洗衣粉一样没有差异化，
spending a lot on brand advertising is a sign of breakage.
在品牌广告上投入大量资金是破裂的迹象。
And few if any Web businesses are so undifferentiated.
很少有网络企业能够做到如此无差别。
The dating sites are running big ad campaigns right now, which is all the more evidence they're ripe for the picking.
约会网站目前正在进行大规模的广告活动，这更加证明它们的时机已经成熟。
(Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell a company run by marketing guys.) We were compelled by circumstances to grow slowly, and in retrospect it was a good thing.
（Fee，fie，fo，fum，我闻到了一家由营销人员经营的公司的味道。）我们被环境迫使缓慢成长，现在回想起来这是一件好事。
The founders all learned to do every job in
创始人都学会了做好每一项工作
the company.
公司。
As well as writing software, I had to do sales and customer support.
除了编写软件之外，我还必须从事销售和客户支持工作。
At sales I was not very good.
我在销售方面做得不是很好。
I was persistent, but I didn't have the smoothness of a good salesman.
我很执着，但我没有一个优秀推销员的圆滑。
My message to potential customers was: you'd be stupid not to sell online, and if you sell online you'd be stupid to use anyone else's software.
我向潜在客户传达的信息是：如果你不在线销售，你会很愚蠢；如果你在线销售，你会愚蠢地使用其他人的软件。
Both statements were true, but that's not the way to convince people.
这两种说法都是正确的，但这并不是说服人们的方式。
I was great at customer support though.
不过，我很擅长客户支持。
Imagine talking to a
想象一下与一个
customer support person who not only knew everything about the product, but would apologize abjectly if there was a bug, and then fix it immediately, while you were on the phone with them.
客户支持人员不仅了解有关产品的所有信息，而且如果出现错误，他们会道歉，然后在您与他们通电话时立即修复它。
Customers loved us.
客户喜欢我们。
And we loved them, because when you're growing slow by word of mouth, your first batch of users are the ones who were smart enough to find you by themselves.
我们喜欢他们，因为当你通过口碑慢慢成长时，你的第一批用户是那些足够聪明的人自己找到你的。
There is nothing more valuable, in the early stages of a startup, than smart users.
在初创公司的早期阶段，没有什么比聪明的用户更有价值的了。
If you listen
如果你听
to them, they'll tell you exactly how to make a winning product.
对他们来说，他们会确切地告诉您如何制作成功的产品。
And not only will they give you this advice for free, they'll pay you.
他们不仅会免费为您提供这些建议，还会向您付费。
We officially launched in early 1996.
我们于1996年初正式推出。
By the end of that year we had about 70 users.
到那年年底，我们拥有大约 70 个用户。
Since this was the era of "get big fast," I worried about how small and obscure we were.
由于这是一个“快速做大”的时代，我担心我们是多么的渺小和默默无闻。
But in fact we were doing exactly the right thing.
但事实上我们正在做完全正确的事情。
Once you get big (in users or employees) it gets hard to change your product.
一旦你规模变大（用户或员工），就很难改变你的产品。
That year was
那一年是
effectively a laboratory for improving our software.
实际上是改进我们软件的实验室。
By the end of it, we were so far ahead of our competitors that they never had a hope of catching up.
到最后，我们远远领先于我们的竞争对手，他们根本没有希望赶上。
And since all the hackers had spent many hours talking to users, we understood online commerce way better than anyone else.
由于所有黑客都花了很多时间与用户交谈，因此我们比其他任何人都更了解在线商务。
That's the key to success as a startup.
这是初创公司成功的关键。
There is nothing more important than understanding your business.
没有什么比了解您的业务更重要的了。
You might think that
你可能会认为
anyone in a business must, ex officio, understand it.
企业中的任何人都必须理所当然地理解这一点。
Far from it.
远非如此。
Google's secret weapon was simply that they understood search.
谷歌的秘密武器很简单，就是他们了解搜索。
I was working for Yahoo when Google appeared, and Yahoo didn't understand search.
当谷歌出现时，我正在雅虎工作，而雅虎并不理解搜索。
I know because I once tried to convince the powers that be that we had to make search better, and I got in reply what was then the party line about it: that Yahoo was no longer a mere "search engine."
我之所以知道这一点，是因为我曾经试图说服当权者，我们必须让搜索变得更好，而我得到的答复是当时党的路线：雅虎不再仅仅是一个“搜索引擎”。
Search was now only a small percentage of our page views, less than one month's growth, and now that we were established as a "media company," or "portal," or whatever we were, search could safely be allowed to wither and drop off, like an umbilical cord.
搜索现在只占我们页面浏览量的一小部分，增长还不到一个月，而且既然我们已经成为一家“媒体公司”，或者“门户网站”，或者无论我们是什么，搜索就可以安全地被允许枯萎和脱落，就像一根脐带一样。
Well, a small fraction of page views they may be, but they are an important fraction, because they are the page views that Web sessions start with.
嗯，它们可能只是页面浏览量的一小部分，但它们是一个重要的部分，因为它们是 Web 会话开始时的页面浏览量。
I think Yahoo gets that now.
我认为雅虎现在明白了。
Google understands a few other things most Web companies still don't.
谷歌还了解大多数网络公司还不了解的其他一些事情。
The most important is that you should put users before advertisers, even though the advertisers are paying and users aren't.
最重要的是，您应该将用户放在广告商之前，即使广告商付费而用户不付费。
One of my favorite bumper stickers reads "if the people lead, the leaders will follow." Paraphrased for the Web, this becomes "get all the users, and the advertisers will follow." More generally, design your product to please users first, and then think about how
我最喜欢的保险杠贴纸之一上写着“如果人民领导，领导者就会跟随”。对于网络来说，这就是“吸引所有用户，广告商就会跟随”。更一般地说，设计你的产品首先要取悦用户，然后考虑如何
to make money from it.
从中赚钱。
If you don't put users first, you leave a gap for competitors who do.
如果你不把用户放在第一位，就会给这样做的竞争对手留下差距。
To make something users love, you have to understand them.
要做出用户喜欢的东西，你必须了解他们。
And the bigger you are, the harder that is.
而且你越大，就越难。
So I say "get big slow." The slower you burn through your funding, the more time you have to learn.
所以我说“慢慢做大”。你消耗资金的速度越慢，你需要学习的时间就越多。
The other reason to spend money slowly is to encourage a culture of cheapness.
慢慢花钱的另一个原因是鼓励廉价文化。
That's something Yahoo did understand.
雅虎确实明白这一点。
David Filo's
大卫·费罗的
title was "Chief Yahoo," but he was proud that his unofficial title was "Cheap Yahoo." Soon after we arrived at Yahoo, we got an email from Filo, who had been crawling around our directory hierarchy, asking if it was really necessary to store so much of our data on expensive RAID drives.
他的头衔是“首席雅虎”，但他很自豪自己的非官方头衔是“廉价雅虎”。到达雅虎后不久，我们收到了一封来自 Filo 的电子邮件，他一直在我们的目录层次结构中爬行，询问是否真的有必要将如此多的数据存储在昂贵的 RAID 驱动器上。
I was impressed by that.
我对此印象深刻。
Yahoo's market cap then was already in the billions, and they were still worrying about wasting a few gigs of disk space.
当时雅虎的市值已经达到数十亿，他们还在担心浪费几G的磁盘空间。
When you get a couple million dollars from a VC firm, you tend to feel rich.
当你从风险投资公司获得几百万美元时，你往往会感觉很富有。
It's important to realize you're not.
重要的是要意识到你不是。
A rich company is one with large revenues.
一家富有的公司是一家拥有大量收入的公司。
This money isn't revenue.
这笔钱不是收入。
It's money investors have given you in the hope you'll be able to generate revenues.
这是投资者给你的钱，希望你能够创造收入。
So despite those millions in the bank, you're still poor.
因此，尽管银行里有数百万美元，你仍然很穷。
For most startups the model should be grad student, not law firm.
对于大多数初创公司来说，模型应该是研究生，而不是律师事务所。
Aim for cool and cheap, not expensive and impressive.
目标是又酷又便宜，而不是昂贵和令人印象深刻。
For us the
对于我们来说
test of whether a startup understood this was whether they had Aeron chairs.
检验初创公司是否理解这一点的标准是他们是否有 Aeron 椅子。
The Aeron came out during the Bubble and was very popular with startups.
Aeron 在泡沫时期问世，深受初创公司的欢迎。
Especially the type, all too common then, that was like a bunch of kids playing house with money supplied by VCs.
尤其是那种在当时很常见的类型，就像一群孩子用风投提供的资金玩过家家。
We had office chairs so cheap that the arms all fell off.
我们的办公椅太便宜了，扶手都掉了。
This was slightly embarrassing at the time, but in retrospect the grad-studenty
这在当时有点尴尬，但现在回想起来，研究生
atmosphere of our office was another of those things we did right without knowing it.
我们办公室的氛围是我们在不知不觉中做对的另一件事。
Our offices were in a wooden triple-decker in Harvard Square.
我们的办公室位于哈佛广场的一座木制三层楼里。
It had been an apartment until about the 1970s, and there was still a claw-footed bathtub in the bathroom.
直到 20 世纪 70 年代左右，这里一直是公寓，浴室里仍然有一个爪足浴缸。
It must once have been inhabited by someone fairly eccentric, because a lot of the chinks in the walls were stuffed with aluminum foil, as if to protect against
这里一定曾经住过一个相当古怪的人，因为墙上的很多缝隙都塞满了铝箔，好像是为了防止
cosmic rays.
宇宙射线。
When eminent visitors came to see us, we were a bit sheepish about the low production values.
当知名人士来看望我们时，我们对低产值感到有点羞怯。
But in fact that place was the perfect space for a startup.
但事实上那个地方是初创公司的完美空间。
We felt like our role was to be impudent underdogs instead of corporate stuffed shirts, and that is exactly the spirit you want.
我们觉得我们的角色是成为无礼的失败者，而不是公司的填充衬衫，而这正是你想要的精神。
An apartment is also the right kind of place for developing software.
公寓也是开发软件的合适场所。
Cube farms suck for that, as you've probably discovered if you've
立方体农场对此很糟糕，你可能会发现，如果你
tried it.
尝试过。
Ever notice how much easier it is to hack at home than at work?
有没有注意到在家中进行黑客攻击比在工作中要容易得多？
So why not make work more like home?
那么为什么不让工作变得更像家呢？
When you're looking for space for a startup, don't feel that it has to look professional.
当您为初创公司寻找空间时，不要觉得它必须看起来很专业。
Professional means doing good work, not elevators and glass walls.
专业意味着做好工作，而不是电梯和玻璃墙。
I'd advise most startups to avoid corporate space at first and just rent an apartment.
我建议大多数初创公司一开始就避开公司空间，直接租一套公寓。
You want to live at the office in a startup, so why not have a place designed
您想住在初创公司的办公室里，那么为什么不设计一个地方呢？
to be lived in as your office?
作为你的办公室居住？
Besides being cheaper and better to work in, apartments tend to be in better locations than office buildings.
除了更便宜、更适合工作之外，公寓往往比办公楼位置更好。
And for a startup location is very important.
而对于一个初创公司来说，选址非常重要。
The key to productivity is for people to come back to work after dinner.
生产力的关键是人们晚饭后回去工作。
Those hours after the phone stops ringing are by far the best for getting work done.
电话铃声停止后的几个小时是迄今为止完成工作的最佳时间。
Great things happen when a group of employees go out to dinner together,
当一群员工一起出去吃饭时，伟大的事情就会发生，
talk over ideas, and then come back to their offices to implement them.
讨论想法，然后回到办公室实施它们。
So you want to be in a place where there are a lot of restaurants around, not some dreary office park that's a wasteland after 6:00 PM.
因此，您希望去的地方周围有很多餐馆，而不是下午 6:00 后变成荒地的沉闷办公园区。
Once a company shifts over into the model where everyone drives home to the suburbs for dinner, however late, you've lost something extraordinarily valuable.
一旦公司转变为每个人都开车到郊区吃晚饭的模式，无论多晚，你都会失去一些非常有价值的东西。
God help you if you actually start in that mode.
如果你真的以这种模式开始，上帝会帮助你。
If I were going to start a startup today, there are only three places I'd consider doing it: on the Red Line near Central, Harvard, or Davis Squares (Kendall is too sterile); in Palo Alto on University or California Aves; and in Berkeley immediately north or south of campus.
如果我今天要创业，我只会考虑三个地方：中央、哈佛或戴维斯广场附近的红线（肯德尔太贫瘠了）；位于 Palo Alto 的 University 或 California Aves；以及伯克利校园的北面或南面。
These are the only places I know that have the right kind of vibe.
这是我所知道的唯一具有合适氛围的地方。
The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people.
不花钱最重要的方法就是不雇人。
I may be an extremist, but I think hiring people is the worst thing a company can do.
我可能是一个极端主义者，但我认为雇用员工是公司能做的最糟糕的事情。
To start with, people are a recurring expense, which is the worst kind.
首先，人员是一项经常性开支，这是最糟糕的一种。
They also tend to cause you to grow out of your space, and perhaps even move to the sort of uncool office building that will make your software worse.
它们还往往会导致您超出自己的空间，甚至可能搬到那种不酷的办公楼，这会让您的软件变得更糟。
But worst of all, they slow you down: instead of sticking your head in someone's office and checking out an idea with them, eight people have to
但最糟糕的是，它们会拖慢你的速度：你不必把头伸进某人的办公室并与他们一起检查一个想法，而是需要八个人
have a meeting about it.
开个会议讨论这个问题。
So the fewer people you can hire, the better.
所以你可以雇佣的人越少越好。
During the Bubble a lot of startups had the opposite policy.
在泡沫时期，许多初创公司采取了相反的政策。
They wanted to get "staffed up" as soon as possible, as if you couldn't get anything done unless there was someone with the corresponding job title.
他们希望尽快“配备人员”，仿佛没有相应职称的人就无法完成任何事情。
That's big company thinking.
这就是大公司的想法。
Don't hire people to fill the gaps in some a priori org chart.
不要雇用人员来填补某些先验组织结构图中的空白。
The only reason to hire someone
雇用某人的唯一理由
is to do something you'd like to do but can't.
就是做一些你想做但做不到的事情。
If hiring unnecessary people is expensive and slows you down, why do nearly all companies do it?
如果雇用不必要的人成本高昂并且会拖慢你的速度，那么为什么几乎所有公司都这样做呢？
I think the main reason is that people like the idea of having a lot of people working for them.
我认为主要原因是人们喜欢让很多人为他们工作的想法。
This weakness often extends right up to the CEO.
这种弱点往往会延伸到首席执行官身上。
If you ever end up running a company, you'll find the most common question people ask is how many employees you have.
如果您最终经营一家公司，您会发现人们问的最常见的问题是您有多少员工。
This is their way of weighing
这是他们的称重方式
you.
你。
It's not just random people who ask this; even reporters do.
不只是随机的人问这个问题；甚至记者也这样做。
And they're going to be a lot more impressed if the answer is a thousand than if it's ten.
如果答案是一千，他们会比答案是十更印象深刻。
This is ridiculous, really.
这真的很荒谬。
If two companies have the same revenues, it's the one with fewer employees that's more impressive.
如果两家公司的收入相同，那么员工较少的公司更令人印象深刻。
When people used to ask me how many people our startup had, and I answered "twenty," I could see them thinking that we didn't count for much.
当人们过去问我我们的初创公司有多少人时，我回答“二十”，我可以看出他们认为我们没有多大意义。
I used to want to add "but our main competitor, whose ass we regularly kick, has a hundred and forty, so can we have credit for the larger of the two numbers?" As with office space, the number of your employees is a choice between seeming impressive, and being impressive.
我曾经想补充一句，“但是我们的主要竞争对手，我们经常踢他的屁股，有一百四十，所以我们可以相信这两个数字中较大的一个吗？”与办公空间一样，员工的数量取决于“看起来令人印象深刻”和“令人印象深刻”之间的选择。
Any of you who were nerds in high school know about this choice.
你们中的任何一个高中书呆子都知道这个选择。
Keep doing it when you start a company.
当你创办公司时继续这样做。
Should You?
你应该吗？
But should you start a company?
但你应该创办一家公司吗？
Are you the right sort of person
你是合适的人吗
to do it?
去做吗？
If you are, is it worth it?
如果是的话，值得吗？
More people are the right sort of person to start a startup than realize it.
适合创业的人比你意识到的要多。
That's the main reason I wrote this.
这是我写这篇文章的主要原因。
There could be ten times more startups than there are, and that would probably be a good thing.
初创公司的数量可能比现有数量多十倍，这可能是一件好事。
I was, I now realize, exactly the right sort of person to start a startup.
现在我意识到，我正是最适合创业的人。
But the idea terrified me at first.
但这个想法一开始让我感到害怕。
I was forced into it because I was a Lisp hacker.
我是被迫这么做的，因为我是一名 Lisp 黑客。
The company
公司
I'd been consulting for seemed to be running into trouble, and there were not a lot of other companies using Lisp.
我一直在咨询似乎遇到了麻烦，而且没有很多其他公司使用 Lisp。
Since I couldn't bear the thought of programming in another language (this was 1995, remember, when "another language" meant C++) the only option seemed to be to start a new company using Lisp.
因为我无法忍受用另一种语言编程的想法（记住，那是 1995 年，当时“另一种语言”指的是 C++），唯一的选择似乎就是使用 Lisp 创办一家新公司。
I realize this sounds far-fetched, but if you're a Lisp hacker you'll know what I mean.
我意识到这听起来有些牵强，但如果你是一名 Lisp 黑客，你就会明白我的意思。
And if the idea of starting a startup
如果有创业的想法
frightened me so much that I only did it out of necessity, there must be a lot of people who would be good at it but who are too intimidated to try.
吓到我了，我只是出于必要而这样做，肯定有很多人很擅长，但不敢尝试。
So who should start a startup?
那么谁应该创办一家初创公司呢？
Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to solve the money problem in one shot instead of getting paid gradually over a conventional working life.
一个优秀的黑客，年龄在 23 岁到 38 岁之间，想要一次性解决金钱问题，而不是在传统的工作生活中逐步获得报酬。
I can't say precisely what a good hacker is.
我无法准确地说出什么是好的黑客。
At a first rate
首先
university this might include the top half of computer science majors.
大学这可能包括计算机科学专业的前半部分。
Though of course you don't have to be a CS major to be a hacker; I was a philosophy major in college.
当然，你不必是计算机科学专业的学生才能成为一名黑客；我在大学主修哲学。
It's hard to tell whether you're a good hacker, especially when you're young.
很难判断你是否是一名优秀的黑客，尤其是当你年轻的时候。
Fortunately the process of starting startups tends to select them automatically.
幸运的是，启动初创公司的过程往往会自动选择它们。
What drives people to start startups is (or should be) looking at existing technology and thinking, don't
促使人们创业的动力是（或者应该是）关注现有的技术和思维，而不是
these guys realize they should be doing x, y, and z?
这些人意识到他们应该做 x、y 和 z 吗？
And that's also a sign that one is a good hacker.
这也是一个人是一名优秀黑客的标志。
I put the lower bound at 23 not because there's something that doesn't happen to your brain till then, but because you need to see what it's like in an existing business before you try running your own.
我将下限定为 23，并不是因为在此之前你的大脑中不会发生某些事情，而是因为在你尝试经营自己的企业之前，你需要了解现有企业的情况。
The business doesn't have to be a startup.
该企业不一定是一家初创公司。
I spent a year working for a software company to pay off my college loans.
我在一家软件公司工作了一年来偿还大学贷款。
It was
原来是
the worst year of my adult life, but I learned, without realizing it at the time, a lot of valuable lessons about the software business.
这是我成年生活中最糟糕的一年，但我当时并没有意识到，学到了很多关于软件业务的宝贵经验。
In this case they were mostly negative lessons: don't have a lot of meetings; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have a sales guy running the company; don't make a high-end product; don't let your code get too big; don't leave finding bugs to QA people; don't go too long between releases; don't isolate
在这种情况下，它们大多是负面的教训：没有太多的会议；没有多人拥有的代码块；没有销售人员来管理公司；不做高端产品；不要让你的代码变得太大；不要让 QA 人员去寻找 bug；发布之间的间隔不要太长；不要孤立
developers from users; don't move from Cambridge to Route 128; and so on.
来自用户的开发者；不要从剑桥移动到 128 号公路；等等。
[8] But negative lessons are just as valuable as positive ones.
[8] 但负面的教训与正面的教训一样有价值。
Perhaps even more valuable: it's hard to repeat a brilliant performance, but it's straightforward to avoid errors.
也许更有价值的是：重复精彩的表演很难，但避免错误却很简单。
[9] The other reason it's hard to start a company before 23 is that people won't take you seriously.
[9] 23岁之前很难创办公司的另一个原因是人们不会认真对待你。
VCs won't trust you, and will try to reduce you to a mascot as a condition of funding.
风投不会信任你，并且会试图将你贬低为吉祥物，作为融资的条件。
Customers
客户
will worry you're going to flake out and leave them stranded.
会担心你会崩溃并让他们陷入困境。
Even you yourself, unless you're very unusual, will feel your age to some degree; you'll find it awkward to be the boss of someone much older than you, and if you're 21, hiring only people younger rather limits your options.
即使你自己，除非你很不寻常，也会在某种程度上感觉到你的年龄；你会发现成为比你年长的人的老板很尴尬，而且如果你 21 岁，只雇用比你年轻的人会限制你的选择。
Some people could probably start a company at 18 if they wanted to.
有些人如果愿意的话，可能可以在 18 岁就创办一家公司。
Bill Gates was 19 when he and Paul Allen started Microsoft.
比尔·盖茨 (Bill Gates) 19 岁时与保罗·艾伦 (Paul Allen) 创办了微软。
(Paul
（保罗
Allen was 22, though, and that probably made a difference.) So if you're thinking, I don't care what he says, I'm going to start a company now, you may be the sort of person who could get away with it.
不过，艾伦 22 岁了，这可能会产生影响。）所以，如果你在想，我不在乎他说什么，我现在要创办一家公司，你可能是那种可以侥幸逃脱惩罚的人。
The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it.
另一个界限是 38，其中还有更多的发挥空间。
One reason I put it there is that I don't think many people have the physical stamina much past that age.
我把它放在那里的一个原因是，我认为很多人都没有超过那个年龄的体力。
I used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week.
我以前每周工作 7 天，每天晚上工作到凌晨 2:00 或 3:00。
I don't know if I could do that now.
我不知道我现在是否能做到这一点。
Also, startups are a big risk financially.
此外，初创企业在财务上也面临着很大的风险。
If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke.
如果你在 26 岁时尝试了一些失败的事情，结果导致你破产，那就没什么大不了的了；很多26岁的人都破产了。
By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids.
到了 38 岁，你就不能冒那么多风险了——尤其是如果你有孩子的话。
My final test may be the most restrictive.
我的最终测试可能是最严格的。
Do you actually want to start a startup?
你真的想创业吗？
What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space.
从经济角度来说，这意味着将你的工作生活压缩到尽可能小的空间内。
Instead of
而不是
working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four.
以正常速度工作40年，你就拼命工作了四年。
And maybe end up with nothing-- though in that case it probably won't take four years.
也许最终会一无所获——尽管在这种情况下，可能不会花四年的时间。
During this time you'll do little but work, because when you're not working, your competitors will be.
在此期间，除了工作之外，您几乎不会做任何事情，因为当您不工作时，您的竞争对手就会工作。
My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night.
我唯一的休闲活动是跑步，无论如何我都需要跑步来继续工作，以及每晚大约十五分钟的阅读。
I had a girlfriend for a total
我总共有一个女朋友
of two months during that three year period.
这三年期间的两个月。
Every couple weeks I would take a few hours off to visit a used bookshop or go to a friend's house for dinner.
每隔几周我就会抽出几个小时的时间去逛二手书店或者去朋友家吃晚饭。
I went to visit my family twice.
我两次去看望我的家人。
Otherwise I just worked.
否则我只是工作。
Working was often fun, because the people I worked with were some of my best friends.
工作通常很有趣，因为和我一起工作的人是我最好的朋友。
Sometimes it was even technically interesting.
有时它甚至在技术上很有趣。
But only about 10% of the time.
但只有大约10%的时间。
The best I can say for the other
我能为对方说的最好的话
90% is that some of it is funnier in hindsight than it seemed then.
90%是事后看来，其中一些事情比当时看起来更有趣。
Like the time the power went off in Cambridge for about six hours, and we made the mistake of trying to start a gasoline powered generator inside our offices.
就像剑桥停电大约六个小时一样，我们犯了一个错误，试图启动办公室内的汽油发电机。
I won't try that again.
我不会再尝试了。
I don't think the amount of bullshit you have to deal with in a startup is more than you'd endure in an ordinary working life.
我不认为在初创公司中你必须处理的废话数量不会比你在普通工作生活中忍受的多。
It's probably less, in fact; it just seems like a lot because it's
事实上，它可能更少；看起来很多，因为它是
compressed into a short period.
压缩成很短的一段时间。
So mainly what a startup buys you is time.
所以初创公司给你带来的主要是时间。
That's the way to think about it if you're trying to decide whether to start one.
如果你想决定是否开始一项工作，那就应该考虑这个问题。
If you're the sort of person who would like to solve the money problem once and for all instead of working for a salary for 40 years, then a startup makes sense.
如果你是那种想要一劳永逸地解决金钱问题而不是为了薪水工作 40 年的人，那么创业是有意义的。
For a lot of people the conflict is between startups and graduate school.
对于很多人来说，冲突发生在初创公司和研究生院之间。
Grad students are just the age, and just the sort of people,
研究生就是这个年纪，就是这样的人，
to start software startups.
启动软件启动。
You may worry that if you do you'll blow your chances of an academic career.
你可能会担心，如果你这样做，你会失去学术生涯的机会。
But it's possible to be part of a startup and stay in grad school, especially at first.
但成为初创公司的一部分并留在研究生院是可能的，尤其是在一开始。
Two of our three original hackers were in grad school the whole time, and both got their degrees .
我们最初的三名黑客中有两人一直在读研究生，并且都获得了学位。
There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating grad student.
很少有比拖延症研究生更强大的能量来源了。
If you do have to leave grad school, in the worst case it won't be for too long.
如果你确实必须离开研究生院，在最坏的情况下，也不会持续太久。
If
如果
a startup fails, it will probably fail quickly enough that you can return to academic life.
一家创业公司失败了，它可能会很快失败，以至于你可以回到学术生活。
And if it succeeds, you may find you no longer have such a burning desire to be an assistant professor.
如果成功了，你可能会发现自己不再有成为助理教授的强烈愿望。
If you want to do it, do it.
如果你想做，就做吧。
Starting a startup is not the great mystery it seems from outside.
创办一家初创公司并不像外界看起来那么神秘。
It's not something you have to know about "business" to do.
这不是你必须了解“商业”才能做的事情。
Build something users love, and spend less than you make.
打造用户喜爱的产品，并且花的钱比赚的少。
How hard is that?
那有多难？
Notes [1] Google's revenues are about two billion a year, but half comes from ads on other sites.
注释 [1] Google 的收入每年约为 20 亿美元，其中一半来自其他网站上的广告。
[2] One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses.
[2] 初创公司相对于老牌公司的优势之一是没有关于创业的歧视法律。
For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon.
例如，我不愿意与一个有小孩或可能很快就有小孩的女性一起创办一家初创公司。
But you're not allowed to ask prospective employees if they plan to have kids
但你不能询问未来的员工是否打算生孩子
soon.
很快。
Believe it or not, under current US law, you're not even allowed to discriminate on the basis of intelligence.
不管你相信与否，根据美国现行法律，你甚至不允许基于情报进行歧视。
Whereas when you're starting a company, you can discriminate on any basis you want about who you start it with.
然而，当你创办一家公司时，你可以根据自己的需要对与谁一起创办公司进行歧视。
[3] Learning to hack is a lot cheaper than business school, because you can do it mostly on your own.
[3] 学习黑客技术比商学院便宜很多，因为你可以自己完成。
For the price of a Linux box, a copy of K&R, and a few hours of advice from your neighbor's fifteen
只需花费一个 Linux 盒子的价格、一份 K&R 的副本以及来自邻居十五岁的几个小时的建议
year old son, you'll be well on your way.
一岁的儿子，你会走得很好。
[4] Corollary: Avoid starting a startup to sell things to the biggest company of all, the government.
[4] 推论：避免创办一家初创公司来向最大的公司——政府——出售产品。
Yes, there are lots of opportunities to sell them technology.
是的，有很多向他们出售技术的机会。
But let someone else start those startups.
但让其他人来创办这些初创公司吧。
[5] A friend who started a company in Germany told me they do care about the paperwork there, and that there's more of it.
[5] 一位在德国创办公司的朋友告诉我，他们确实关心那里的文书工作，而且还有更多。
Which helps explain why there are not more startups in Germany.
这有助于解释为什么德国没有更多的初创企业。
[6] At the seed stage our valuation was in principle $100,000, because Julian got 10% of the company.
[6] 在种子阶段，我们的估值原则上是 100,000 美元，因为朱利安获得了公司 10% 的股份。
But this is a very misleading number, because the money was the least important of the things Julian gave us.
但这是一个非常具有误导性的数字，因为钱是朱利安给我们的东西中最不重要的。
[7] The same goes for companies that seem to want to acquire you.
[7] 对于那些似乎想收购你的公司来说也是如此。
There will be a few that are only pretending to in order to pick your brains.
会有一些人只是假装这样做，以便听取你的意见。
But you can never tell for sure which these are, so
但你永远无法确定这些是什么，所以
the best approach is to seem entirely open, but to fail to mention a few critical technical secrets.
最好的方法是看起来完全开放，但不要提及一些关键的技术秘密。
[8] I was as bad an employee as this place was a company.
[8] 我是一个糟糕的员工，就像这个地方是一家公司一样。
I apologize to anyone who had to work with me there.
我向所有在那里和我一起工作的人道歉。
[9] You could probably write a book about how to succeed in business by doing everything in exactly the opposite way from the DMV.
[9] 你也许可以写一本关于如何通过与 DMV 完全相反的方式做事来取得商业成功的书。
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston,
感谢特雷弗·布莱克威尔、莎拉·哈林、杰西卡·利文斯顿，
and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this essay, and to Steve Melendez and Gregory Price for inviting me to speak.
感谢罗伯特·莫里斯阅读了本文的草稿，感谢史蒂夫·梅伦德斯和格雷戈里·普莱斯邀请我发言。