How Y Combinator Started
March 2012 Y Combinator's 7th birthday was March 11.
2012 年 3 月 3 月 11 日是 Y Combinator 的 7 岁生日。
As usual we were so busy we didn't notice till a few days after.
像往常一样，我们太忙了，直到几天后才注意到。
I don't think we've ever managed to remember our birthday on our birthday.
我想我们从来没有在生日那天记住过我们的生日。
On March 11 2005, Jessica and I were walking home from dinner in Harvard Square.
2005 年 3 月 11 日，我和杰西卡在哈佛广场吃完晚饭步行回家。
Jessica was working at an investment bank at the time, but she didn't like it much, so she had interviewed for a job as director of marketing at a Boston VC fund.
杰西卡当时在一家投资银行工作，但她不太喜欢它，因此她面试了波士顿一家风险投资基金的营销总监职位。
The VC fund was doing
VC基金在做
what now seems a comically familiar thing for a VC fund to do: taking a long time to make up their mind.
对于风险投资基金来说，现在看来这是一件司空见惯的事情：花很长时间才能做出决定。
Meanwhile I had been telling Jessica all the things they should change about the VC business essentially the ideas now underlying Y Combinator: investors should be making more, smaller investments, they should be funding hackers instead of suits, they should be willing to fund younger founders, etc.
与此同时，我一直告诉杰西卡他们应该改变风险投资业务的所有事情——基本上是现在 Y Combinator 的基本理念：投资者应该进行更多、更小的投资，他们应该资助黑客而不是诉讼，他们应该愿意资助年轻的创始人，等等。
At the time I had been thinking about doing some angel investing.
当时我一直在考虑做一些天使投资。
I had just given a talk to the undergraduate computer club at Harvard about how to start a startup , and it hit me afterward that although I had always meant to do angel investing, 7 years had now passed since I got enough money to do it, and I still hadn't started.
我刚刚在哈佛大学的本科生计算机俱乐部做了一场关于如何创办一家初创公司的演讲，后来我突然意识到，虽然我一直想做天使投资，但距离我有足够的钱去做这件事已经过去了 7 年，我仍然没有开始。
I had also been thinking about ways to work with Robert Morris and Trevor
我也一直在考虑如何与罗伯特·莫里斯和特雷弗合作
Blackwell again.
又是布莱克威尔。
A few hours before I had sent them an email trying to figure out what we could do together.
几个小时前，我给他们发了一封电子邮件，试图弄清楚我们可以一起做些什么。
Between Harvard Square and my house the idea gelled.
在哈佛广场和我家之间，这个想法凝结在一起。
We'd start our own investment firm and Jessica could work for that instead.
我们会创办自己的投资公司，而杰西卡可以为该公司工作。
As we turned onto Walker Street we decided to do it.
当我们转向沃克街时，我们决定这么做。
I agreed to put $100k into the new fund and Jessica agreed to quit her job to work for it.
我同意向新基金投入 10 万美元，杰西卡也同意辞去工作为其工作。
Over the next couple days I recruited Robert
在接下来的几天里我招募了罗伯特
and Trevor, who put in another $50k each.
特雷弗（Trevor）每人又投入了 5 万美元。
So YC started with $200k.
所以 YC 从 20 万美元开始。
Jessica was so happy to be able to quit her job and start her own company that I took her picture when we got home.
杰西卡很高兴能够辞去工作并创办自己的公司，所以我们回家时我给她拍了张照片。
The company wasn't called Y Combinator yet.
该公司当时还不叫 Y Combinator。
At first we called it Cambridge Seed.
起初我们称之为剑桥种子。
But that name never saw the light of day, because by the time we announced it a few days later, we'd changed the name to Y Combinator.
但这个名字从未出现过，因为当我们几天后宣布它时，我们已将名称更改为 Y Combinator。
We realized early on that what we were doing could
我们很早就意识到我们正在做的事情可以
be national in scope and we didn't want a name that tied us to one place.
我们的目标是全国性的，我们不希望这个名字将我们与一个地方联系在一起。
Initially we only had part of the idea.
最初我们只有部分想法。
We were going to do seed funding with standardized terms.
我们打算以标准化条款进行种子融资。
Before YC, seed funding was very haphazard.
在 YC 之前，种子资金非常随意。
You'd get that first $10k from your friend's rich uncle.
你将从你朋友富有的叔叔那里得到第一笔 1 万美元。
The deal terms were often a disaster; often neither the investor nor the founders nor the lawyer knew what the documents should look like.
交易条款往往是一场灾难；通常投资者、创始人和律师都不知道文件应该是什么样子。
Facebook's early history as a Florida LLC shows
Facebook 作为佛罗里达州有限责任公司的早期历史表明
how random things could be in those days.
那些日子里的事情是多么随机啊。
We were going to be something there had not been before: a standard source of seed funding.
我们将成为前所未有的东西：种子资金的标准来源。
We modelled YC on the seed funding we ourselves had taken when we started Viaweb.
我们根据我们在创办 Viaweb 时获得的种子资金来建立 YC。
We started Viaweb with $10k we got from our friend Julian Weber
我们用朋友 Julian Weber 提供的 1 万美元创办了 Viaweb