The Fatal Pinch

December 2014 Many startups go through a point a few months before they die where although they have a significant amount of money in the bank, they're also losing a lot each month, and revenue growth is either nonexistent or mediocre.

2014 年 12 月 许多初创公司在倒闭前几个月都会经历一个阶段，尽管他们在银行里有大量资金，但每个月的损失也很大，而且收入增长要么不存在，要么表现平平。

The company has, say, 6 months of runway.

比如说，该公司有 6 个月的跑道。

Or to put it more brutally, 6 months before they're out of business.

或者更残酷地说，距离他们倒闭还有 6 个月。

They expect to avoid that by raising more from investors.

他们希望通过从投资者那里筹集更多资金来避免这种情况。

[ 1 ] That last sentence is the fatal one.

[1] 最后一句话是致命的。

There may be nothing founders are so prone to delude themselves about as how interested investors will be in giving them additional funding.

创始人最容易自欺欺人的莫过于投资者对向他们提供额外资金的兴趣。

It's hard to convince investors the first time too, but founders expect that.

第一次也很难说服投资者，但创始人期望如此。

What bites them the second time is a confluence of three forces: The company is spending more now than it did the first time it raised money.

第二次让他们陷入困境的是三种力量的综合作用：该公司现在的支出比​​第一次筹集资金时要多。

Investors have much higher standards for companies that have already raised money.

投资者对已经筹集资金的公司有着更高的标准。

The company is now starting to read as a failure.

该公司现在开始被视为失败。

The first time it raised money, it was neither a success nor a failure; it was too early to ask.

第一次筹集资金，既不成功也不失败；现在问还为时过早。

Now it's possible to ask that question, and the default answer is failure, because at this point that is the default outcome.

现在可以问这个问题，默认答案是失败，因为此时这是默认结果。

I'm going to call the situation I described in the first paragraph "the fatal pinch." I try to resist

我将把第一段中描述的情况称为“致命的困境”。我试着反抗

coining phrases, but making up a name for this situation may snap founders into realizing when they're in it.

创造短语，但为这种情况起个名字可能会让创始人意识到自己身处其中。

One of the things that makes the fatal pinch so dangerous is that it's self-reinforcing.

致命的挤压如此危险的原因之一是它会自我强化。

Founders overestimate their chances of raising more money, and so are slack about reaching profitability, which further decreases their chances of raising money.

创始人高估了筹集更多资金的机会，因此在实现盈利方面懈怠，这进一步降低了他们筹集资金的机会。

Now that you know about the fatal pinch, how do you avoid it?

既然您了解了致命的夹伤，那么如何避免它呢？

Y Combinator tells

Y组合器告诉

founders who raise money to act as if it's the last they'll ever get.

那些筹集资金的创始人表现得好像这是他们能得到的最后一笔资金。

Because the self-reinforcing nature of this situation works the other way too: the less you need further investment, the easier it is to get.

因为这种情况的自我强化本质也以相反的方式发挥作用：您需要的进一步投资越少，就越容易获得。

What do you do if you're already in the fatal pinch?

如果你已经陷入致命的困境，你会怎么做？

The first step is to re-evaluate the probability of raising more money.

第一步是重新评估筹集更多资金的可能性。

I will now, by an amazing feat of clairvoyance, do this for you:

现在，我将以惊人的洞察力为您做这件事：