Schlep Blindness

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获得 Y Combinator 的资助。

</td > January 2012 There are great startup ideas lying around unexploited right under our noses.

</td> 2012 年 1 月 在我们眼皮子底下，有很多尚未开发的伟大创业创意。

One reason we don't see them is a phenomenon I call schlep blindness .

我们看不到它们的一个原因是一种我称之为“笨拙失明”的现象。

Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US.

Schlep 最初是意第绪语单词，但已在美国广泛使用。

It means a tedious, unpleasant

意味着乏味、不愉快

task.

任务。

No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them.

没有人喜欢笨蛋，但黑客尤其不喜欢他们。

Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code.

大多数创办初创公司的黑客都希望他们只需编写一些聪明的软件，将其放在某个服务器上，然后看着钱滚滚而来，而无需与用户交谈，或与其他公司谈判，或处理其他人的损坏代码。

Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it.

也许这是可能的，但我还没有看到。

One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about

我们在 Y Combinator 所做的众多事情之一就是向黑客传授相关知识

the inevitability of schleps.

笨拙的不可避免。

No, you can't start a startup by just writing code.

不，你不能仅仅通过编写代码来启动一家公司。

I remember going through this realization myself.

我记得我自己也经历过这个认识。

There was a point in 1995 when I was still trying to convince myself I could start a company by just writing code.

1995 年的某个时候，我仍然试图说服自己，我可以通过编写代码来创办一家公司。

But I soon learned from experience that schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of.

但我很快从经验中了解到，失误不仅是不可避免的，而且几乎是商业的组成部分。

A company is defined by the schleps

公司是由 schleps 定义的

it will undertake.

它将承担。

And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in.

处理笨拙的方法应该像处理冰冷的游泳池一样：跳进去就可以了。

Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great.

这并不是说你应该寻找不愉快的工作本身，而是说如果它是通往伟大事业的道路，你就永远不应该退缩。

The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious.

我们对坏事的厌恶最危险的一点是，这种厌恶在很大程度上是无意识的。

Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps.

你的潜意识甚至不会让你看到涉及痛苦的笨拙的想法。

That's schlep blindness.

这就是失明。

The phenomenon isn't limited to startups.

这种现象不仅限于初创公司。

Most people don't consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example.

例如，大多数人不会有意识地决定自己的身体状况不像奥运会运动员那么好。

Their unconscious mind decides for them, shrinking from the work involved.

他们的潜意识为他们做决定，回避所涉及的工作。

The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is Stripe , or rather Stripe's idea.

我所知道的关于 schlep 失明的最引人注目的例子是 Stripe，或者更确切地说是 Stripe 的想法。

For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was.

十多年来，每一位曾经处理过在线支付的黑客都知道这种经历是多么痛苦。

Thousands of people must have known about this problem.

一定有成千上万的人知道这个问题。

And yet when they started startups, they decided to build recipe sites, or aggregators for local events.

然而，当他们开始创业时，他们决定建立食谱网站或本地活动的聚合器。

Why?

为什么？

Why work on problems few care much about and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the most important components of the world's infrastructure?

当你能够修复世界基础设施中最重要的组成部分之一时，为什么要解决很少有人关心、没有人愿意花钱的问题呢？

Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of fixing payments.

因为愚蠢的盲目性让人们根本没有考虑固定付款的想法。

Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on a recipe site began by asking "should we fix payments, or build a recipe site?" and chose the recipe site.

可能没有人向 Y Combinator 申请在食谱网站上工作时会问“我们应该解决付款问题，还是建立一个食谱网站？”并选择了食谱网站。

Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the complications involved.

尽管固定付款的想法就在眼前，但他们从未看到过，因为他们的无意识思维因所涉及的复杂性而退缩。

You'd have to make deals with banks.

你必须与银行达成协议。

How do you do that?

你是怎么做到的？

Plus you're moving money, so you're going to have to deal with fraud, and people

另外，你要转移资金，所以你将不得不应对欺诈和人们

trying to break into your servers.

试图闯入您的服务器。

Plus there are probably all sorts of regulations to comply with.

另外，可能还有各种各样的法规需要遵守。

It's a lot more intimidating to start a startup like this than a recipe site.

创办这样一家初创公司比开一个菜谱网站要可怕得多。

That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable.

这种恐惧使得雄心勃勃的想法变得加倍有价值。

In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that there's less demand for them among founders.

除了内在价值之外，它们就像被低估的股票，因为创始人对它们的需求较少。

If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because

如果你选择一个雄心勃勃的想法，你的竞争就会减少，因为

everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved.

其他人都会被所涉及的挑战吓跑。

(This is also true of starting a startup generally.) How do you overcome schlep blindness?

（一般来说，创办一家初创公司也是如此。）如何克服懒惰盲目性？

Frankly, the most valuable antidote to schlep blindness is probably ignorance.

坦率地说，治疗盲目性最有价值的解药可能就是无知。

Most successful founders would probably say that if they'd known when they were starting their company about the obstacles they'd have to overcome, they might never have started it.

大多数成功的创始人可能会说，如果他们在创办公司时就知道必须克服的障碍，他们可能永远不会创办它。

Maybe that's one reason the most

也许这是最重要的原因之一

successful startups of all so often have young founders.

所有成功的初创公司往往都有年轻的创始人。

In practice the founders grow with the problems.

在实践中，创始人是伴随着问题而成长的。

But no one seems able to foresee that, not even older, more experienced founders.

但似乎没有人能够预见到这一点，即使是年长、经验更丰富的创始人也无法预见到这一点。

So the reason younger founders have an advantage is that they make two mistakes that cancel each other out.

因此，年轻创始人之所以具有优势，是因为他们犯了两个相互抵消的错误。

They don't know how much they can grow, but they also don't know how much they'll need to.

他们不知道自己能增长多少，但也不知道自己需要增长多少。

Older founders only make the first mistake.

年长的创始人只会犯第一个错误。

Ignorance can't solve everything though.

但无知并不能解决一切。

Some ideas so obviously entail alarming schleps that anyone can see them.

有些想法显然会带来令人震惊的问题，任何人都可以看到它们。

How do you see ideas like that?

您如何看待这样的想法？

The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture.

我推荐的技巧就是把自己从画面中抽离出来。

Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" If someone who had to process payments before Stripe had tried asking that, Stripe would have been one of the first things they wished for.

而不是问“我应该解决什么问题？”问“我希望别人为我解决什么问题？”如果那些必须在 Stripe 之前处理付款的人尝试提出这个问题，Stripe 就会是他们首先希望得到的东西之一。

It's too late now to be Stripe, but there's plenty still broken in the world, if you know how to see it.

现在成为 Stripe 已经太晚了，但如果你知道如何看待的话，世界上还有很多破碎的地方。

Thanks to Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Aaron Iba, Jessica Livingston, Emmett Shear, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.

感谢 Sam Altman、Paul Buchheit、Patrick Collison、Aaron Iba、Jessica Livingston、Emmett Shear 和 Harj Taggar 阅读本文的草稿。