创业中违反直觉的地方,以及如何获得好的创业点子
作者:Paul Graham 译者:闻宇, Iceyl Tao, 高雪梨
Paul Graham 【视频前面还有点废话,讲稿里没有写,从视频里扒下来的】 就那么短! 长简介一点都不好。 Sam知道的。 好,大家准备好了吗? 我之前每节课都问麦克风开着没,不过今天不问了。 我假设它开了。 没??我靠! 好吧,谁给我搞定它啊! (开着的,开着的) 好吧,简直跟课程传统似的。 好,好。 我已经准备好了课程,过几天我就会把讲的写成文章放在网上。 所以,不用做笔记了,听课就行了
有孩子的一个好处就是,给别人建议的时候就可以先问问自己
One of the advantages of having kids is that when you have to give advice to people you can ask yourself,
我会跟孩子说什么
“what would I tell my own kids?”,
你会发现这特别有助于找到关键点
and actually you’ll find this really focuses you.
我孩子还小
So even though my kids are little,
今天我问我2岁的小孩,
my two year old today,
你2岁后该是什么了?他说他想当蝙蝠
when asked what he’ll be after two, said “a bat.”
正解是三岁
The correct answer was three,
可是蝙蝠有意思多了
but “a bat” is so much more interesting.
所以尽管我孩子还小,
So even though my kids are little,
我已经想好了他们大学的时候我要跟他们讲些什么关于创业的事
I already know what I would tell them about startups,
那就是我要跟你们讲的内容
if they were in college,
所以你们真的就要听到我会给我孩子的建议
so that is what I’m going to tell you. You’re literally going to get what I would tell my own kids,
你们的年龄也都差不多可以做我孩子了
since most of you are young enough to be my own kids.
创业往往是反直觉的事情,我也不知道到底为什么
Startups are very counterintuitive and I’m not sure exactly why.
可能很简单就是因为关于创业的理念还没有融入当前文化
It could be simply because knowledge about them has not permeated our culture yet,
但是不管原因如何
but whatever the reason
这是领域就是一个不能完全依靠直觉的领域
this is an area where you cannot trust your intuition all the time.
就很像滑雪,你们谁长大以后才学的滑雪吗?
It’s like skiing in that way - any of you guys learn to ski as adults?
第一次滑雪,想要慢下来时的第一反应是后仰,就像玩别的的时候一样
When you first try skiing and you want to slow down,
但是滑雪的时候后仰,就会冲着下坡直飞下去,反正我知道的是这样
your first impulse is to lean back, just like in everything else.Eventually you get new habits,
所以学滑雪的一部分就是要学着抑制这种冲动
But lean back on the skis and you fly down the hill out of control.
最终你都会建立新习惯
So, as I learned, part of learning to ski is learning to suppress that impulse.
但是滑雪的最开始,你得试着记住一长串东西
but in the beginning there is this list of things you’re trying to remember as you start down the hill:
换脚啦,S型滑啦,不要拖内侧脚啦,等等等等
alternate feet, make s-turns, do not drag the inside foot, all this stuff.
创业就和滑雪一样
Startups are as unnatural as skiing
就是一件很别扭的事情 创业也有要记住的一长串东西
and there is a similar list of stuff you have to remember for startups.
今天我要告诉你们的,只是这一长串的开头
I’m going to give you today is the beginning of the list,
你必须记住这些反直觉的东西
he list of the counterintuitive stuff you have to remember
才能防止已有的直觉让你误入歧途
to prevent your existing instincts from leading you astray.
第一条就是我刚才提到的
The first thing on it is the fact I just mentioned:
创业是很诡异的 如果你单凭直觉 它会把你带迷路
startups are so weird that if you follow your instincts they will lead you astray.
只要你记得这一条
If you remember nothing more than that,
当你要犯错误的时候 至少犯错之前会犹豫一下
when you’re about to make a mistake,you can pause before making it.
我运营YC的时候 我们老开玩笑说
When I was running Y Combinator we used to joke
我们的职责就是告诉创业者他们忽视的东西
that our function was to tell founders things they would ignore,
真的就是这样
and it’s really true.
我们为一批又一批创业者将犯的错误发出警告
Batch after batch the YC partners warned founders about mistakes they were about to make
创业者还是忽视它们
and the founders ignored them,
一年后他们回来的时候说 真希望当年听进去了
and they came back a year later and said, “I wish we’d listened.”
不过,那伙计现在已经融了资把股权控制权分了出去,无力回天
But that dude is in their cap table and there is nothing they can do.
Q: Why do founders persistently ignore the partner’s advice?
为什么创业者执迷不悟地忽视合作伙伴的建议呢?
A:这就是反直觉
That’s the thing about counterintuitive ideas,
它们和直觉不符
they contradict your intuitions,
因而看起来不对
they seem wrong,
所以你最初的反应就是忽视它们
so of course your first impulse is to ignore them and,
事实上 这不仅是YC的难题
in fact, that’s not just the curse of Y Combinator,
一定程度上 你也不需要那些推陈乏新的建议 对吧?
but to some extent our raison d’être. You don’t need people to give you advice that does not surprise you.
如果创业者的直觉总是对的
they would not need us.
那他们也不需要我们了
If founders’ existing intuition gave them the right answers,
这就是为什么有很多的滑雪教练
That’s why there are a lot of ski instructors,
却没几个跑步教练
and not many running instructors;
比起“滑雪教练”,你都不会太常看到“跑步”和“教练”这两个词放在一起
you don’t see those words together, “running instructor,” as much as you see “ski instructor.”
正因为滑雪是反直觉的
It’s because skiing is counterintuitive,
(滑雪教练)好像YC一样 YC就像商业滑雪教练
sort of what YC is—business ski instructors—
唯一的不同是 在理想情况下 让你走上坡路而不是下坡路
except you are going up slopes instead of down them, well ideally.
不过 你大可相信自己对人的直觉
You can, however, trust your instincts about people.
生活虽然不同于创业
Your life so far hasn’t been much like starting a startup,
但你在生活中和人的交往
but all the interactions you’ve had with people
正和在商业世界里是一样的
are just like the interactions you have with people in the business world.
事实上 创业者常犯的一个大错误就是在人际上不够相信直觉
In fact, one of the big mistakes that founders make is to not trust their intuition about people enough.
遇到看起来相当不错 但又觉得有些负面印象的人
They meet someone, who seems impressive,
之后事情搞砸了 他们就说
but about whom they feel some misgivings and then later when things blow up, they say,
你看吧 我就知道这人哪里不对
“You know I knew there was something wrong about that guy
可是却没重视 因为他起初看起来真的相当好
, but I ignored it because he seemed so impressive.”
在商场上 有一小类例子
There is this specific sub-case in business,
尤其如果你的背景是学工程的,我相信你们都有这背景
especially if you come from an engineering background, as I believe you all do.
你觉得生意是种有点铜酸臭 有点low逼的东西
You think business is supposed to be this slightly distasteful thing.
所以当你遇到看起来很聪明 但隐约感觉有点low的人的时候
So when you meet people who seem smart, but somehow distasteful,
你就想 好吧 做生意一定就是这样
you think, “Okay this must be normal for business,”
但是不对!
but it’s not.
选人才跟选朋友一样
Just pick people the way you would pick people if you were picking friends.
这是极少的,可以纵容自己还奏效的情况之一
This is one of those rare cases where it works to be self indulgent.
安全起见,选择你喜欢、敬重的人、而且足够了解的人
Work with people you would generally like and respect and that you have known long enough to be sure about
因为有些人非常擅长暂时表面上令人喜欢
because there are a lot of people who are really good at seeming likable for a while.
等到你们利益冲突了 你就会明白
Just wait till your interests are opposed and then you’ll see.
第二个反直觉点可能有点令人失望
The second counterintuitive point, this might come as a little bit of a disappointment,
但是创业成功的前提并非专长于创业
but what you need to succeed in a startup is not expertise in startups.
这让本课程和你们上的很多其他课不同
That makes this class different from most other classes you take.
如果你选了法语 好好学习 课程结束你就学会了说法语
You take a French class, at the end of it you’ve learned how to speech French.
可能你说的并不是那么像法国人 但是也已经很接近了 对吧
You do the work, you may not sound exactly like a French person, but pretty close, right?
本课程可以教你们关于创业的知识
This class can teach you about startups,
但是那不是你们需要知道的
but that is not what you need to know.
你需要明白 出色的创业者 并非专长于创业
What you need to know to succeed in a startup is not expertise in startups,
你需要专长于你的用户
what you need is expertise in your own users.
扎克伯格并不是因为他是创业的专家所以才造就了Facebook的成功
Mark Zuckerberg did not succeed at Facebook because he was an expert in startups,
他尽管在创业方面是个小白 但还是成功了
he succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups;
Facebook甚至起初把公司以LLC的型式注册在了弗罗里达
I mean Facebook was first incorporated as a Florida LLC.
你们都比他懂得多
Even you guys know better than that.
作为一个创业小白,他的成功来源于充分理解用户
He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups because he understood his users very well.
你们大部分人都不知道怎么筹集天使轮,对吧?
Most of you don’t know the mechanics of raising an angel round, right?
如果这让你们感觉不好 大可不必
If you feel bad about that, don’t,
因为我可以告诉你,扎克伯格可能也不知道筹集天使基金的方法
because I can tell you Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t know the mechanics of raising an angel round either;,
就算Ron Conway给他写那张巨额支票的时候他注意过(天使基金)
if he was even paying attention when Ron Conway wrote him the big check 他现在估计也已经忘记了
he probably has forgotten about it by now.
其实 我很担心 可能不仅没必要仔细学习创业方法论
In fact, I worry it’s not merely unnecessary for people to learn in detail about the mechanics of starting a startup,
学它可能甚至会很危险
but possibly somewhat dangerous
因为年轻创业者另一个标志性错误就是按照创业的步骤按部就班
because another characteristic mistake of young founders starting startups is to go through the motions of starting a startup.
首先想到一个看起来非常好的主意 They come up with some plausible sounding idea,
估个好价筹集资金 they raise funding to get a nice valuation
在SoMa租个不错的办公室 then the next step is they rent a nice office in SoMa
雇几个朋友当员工 and hire a bunch of their friends, 之后逐渐意识到自己已经被爆出了翔 until they gradually realize how completely fucked they are
因为当模仿所有创业的步骤时 because while imitating all the outward forms of starting a startup,
他们却忘记了最重要的事情 就是做人们需要的东西 they have neglected the one thing that is actually essential,
which is to make something people want.
刚才是唯一一次带脏话的地方
By the way that’s the only use of that swear word, except for the initial one,
我跟Sam确认过能不能说脏话
that was involuntary and I did check with Sam if it would be okay;
他说他也说过好几次
he said he had done it several times,
我是说,用那个词”翔”
I mean use the word.
这太经常发生了
We saw this happen so often,
不 我是说人们按部就班的创业
people going through the motion of starting a startup,
我们甚至给它起了个名字 “Playing House.” that we made up a name for it: 游戏屋(Playing house) 我终于意识到为何如此 Eventually I realized why it was happening, 年轻创业者创业时太按部就班 the reason young founders go though the motions of starting a startup is 是因为他们长这么大一直被训练得要按照某种清单来做事情 because that is what they have been trained to do, their whole life, up to this point. 想想你是怎么样才能进大学 Think about what it takes to get into college: 课外活动 勾掉 extracurricular activities? Check. (注,进入美国大学有一套按部就班的考核项目,比如课外活动、成绩、文书写作等等,Paul爷讲的就是这种通过勾掉清单来“完成任务”一样的做事方式,被年轻人用到了创业中来) 甚至在大学课程中,你们做的大部分事情都机械得跟跑圈一样 Even in college classes most of the work you do is as artificial as running laps, 我不是攻击现存的教育系统 and I’m not attacking the educational system for being this way, 不可避免的,学东西所经历的这个勾清单过程就是会有那么一点肤浅 inevitably the work that you do to learn something is going to have some amount of fakeness to it. 如果试图衡量人们的成绩, And if you measure people’s performance 不可避免的是 they will inevitably 他们会利用各种伎俩,以至于成绩无法反映他们的真实水平 exploit the difference to the degree that what you’re measuring is largely an artifact of the fakeness. 我承认 我大学的时候也这样 I confess that I did this myself in college; 实际上 有条建议可以帮你们拿到好分数 in fact, here is a useful tip on getting good grades. 我发现在每个课程里 I found that in a lot of classes 都只有20到30个概念适合做好的考试问题 there might only be twenty or thirty ideas that had the right shape to make good exam questions. 所以我的学习技巧不是掌握课程材料 So the way I studied for exams in these classes was not to master the material in the class, 而是试着猜测考试会是什么样 事先了解答案 but to try and figure out what the exam questions would be and work out the answers in advance.
对我来说 考试不是考考题的答案 For me the test was not like, what my answers would be on my exam, 而是考哪些问题会出现在考试里,对吧 for me the test was which of my exam questions would show up on the exam. 所以一入考场我就知道我能拿什么分数了 So I would get my grade instantly 走进考场 看看考题 就知道我能答对多少了 I would walk into the exam and look at the questions and see how many I got right, essentially. 对大多数课程都适用 尤其是CS课 It works in a lot of classes, especially CS classes 我记得Automata理论 关于Automata理论 只有很少几个问题可问 . I remember automata theory, there are only a few things that make sense to ask about automata theory.
所以就不奇怪了 高效训练那么久来玩这种游戏
So it’s not surprising that after being effectively trained for their whole lives to play such games,
年轻创业者创业的首个冲动就是寻找通关游戏的小把式
young founders’ first impulse on starting a startup is to find out what the tricks are for this new game.
创业有什么外挂的方法 哪些事情是在这个技巧清单上的
What are the extracurricular activities of startups, what are things I have to do?
他们总是想知道
They always want to know,
衡量创业的一个标准就是筹资 又一个新手错误
since apparently the measure of success for a startup is fundraising, another noob mistake.
他们想知道 有什么技巧来说服投资者乖乖送钱
They always want to know, what are the tricks for convincing investors?
我们每一次都会回答 说服投资者最好的方式
And we have to tell them the best way to convince investors
是创建一个不错的公司 增长迅速
is to start a startup that is actually doing well,
然后简单的如实告诉投资者 我有一个不错的公司 你投么
meaning growing fast, and then simply tell investors so.
然后他们就问 Then they ask okay, 好,所以迅速增长的技巧是什么 so what are the tricks for growing fast, Growth Hacks 这个词的存在更让它夸张 and this is exacerbated by the existence of this term, “Growth Hacks.” 你如果听说谁谈到Growth Hacks 自动翻译成“翔”就可以了 Whenever you hear somebody talk about Growth Hacks, just mentally translate it in your mind to “bullshit,” 因为我们说让初创公司增长,就是做让用户真正喜爱的东西 because what we tell them is the way to make your startup grow is to make something that users really love, 对吧 就这么告诉他们 and then tell them about it. So that’s what you have to do: 这就是你要做的 这就是Growth Hacks that’s Growth Hacks right there.
YC合伙人和创业者的许多对话
So many of the conversations the YC partners have with the founders
都从创业者说“我该如何…”开始
begin with the founders saying a sentence that begins with, “How do I,”
而合伙人的回答通常从“只要(just)”开始
and the partners answering with a sentence that begins with, “Just.”
为什么他们把事情搞得那么复杂?
Why do they make things so complicated?
困惑多年后 我终于意识到
The reason, I realized, after years of being puzzled by this,
他们想要耍小聪明
is they’re looking for the trick,
他们多年的训练让他们下意识去玩小伎俩
they’ve been trained to look for the trick.
下面是关于初创第三个反直觉点 So, this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: 创业意味着你你以前所熟知的那些游戏规则中的小伎俩都将被完爆 starting a startup is where gaming the system stops working. 如果你去大公司工作 , 或许这些小伎俩还能用用 Gaming the system may continue to work, if you go to work for a big company, 取决于这公司有多挫。 depending on how broken the company is, 可能巴结合适的人 你也能取得成功 you may be able to succeed by sucking up to the right person; 半夜发Email,建立努力工作的印象 Giving the impression of productivity by sending emails late at night, 或者如果你够聪明的话,改改自己电脑上的表 or if you’re smart enough changing the clock on your computer, 谁会看邮件页眉啊,是吧?(注,邮件页眉是根据服务器时间来的,而不是你随便改改电脑桌面的钟就可以改。但是很多人觉得改电脑桌面的表会让人觉得自己到很晚还在工作这种小伎俩还不错) cause who’s going to check the headers, right? 我喜欢你们这种听众,我讲的笑话你们都明白。 I like an audience I can tell jokes to and they laugh. 这要是放在商学院,那些学生只会蠢萌地问“啥是页眉呀” Over in the business school: “headers?” 擦,这课程有录像… Okay, God this thing is being recorded, 我刚发现! I just realized that.
好 从现在开始 我要严格按讲稿来了
Alright for now on we are sticking strictly to the script.
但是,在失败的创业中
But, in startups, that does not work.
没有可以哄骗的老板了
There is no boss to trick,
根本就没有老板 你去哄骗谁
how can you trick people, when there is nobody to trick?
只有用户
There are only users
而用户唯一关心的 你的软件是不是令他们满意 对吗
and all users care about is whether your software does what they want, right?
他们就像鲨鱼 鲨鱼太蠢 蠢到骗不了它们
They’re like sharks, sharks are too stupid to fool,
比如挥个小红旗,根本没用
you can’t wave a red flag and fool it,
它们只认有没有肉
it’s like meat or no meat.
你得看用户需求什么 你做的程度决定了你走多远。
You have to have what people want and you only prosper to the extent that you do.
危险的是 尤其对于你们
The dangerous thing is, especially for you guys,
危险的在投资者面前 假装是有一些效果的
the dangerous thing is that faking does work to some extent with investors.
如果你非常了解自己在忽悠什么
If you’re really good at knowing what you’re talking about,
就可以骗到一轮或者两轮的投资者
you can fool investors, for one, maybe two rounds of funding,
但是这和你自己的利益是相悖的
but it’s not in your interest to do.
我是说 你在挣自己的股权
I mean, you’re all doing this for equity,
就是在自欺欺人
you’re puling a confidence trick on yourself.
你在浪费自己的时间,因为这个开头就毫无价值
Wasting your own time, because the startup is doomed
你做的就只是花时间把它们写下来
and all you’re doing is wasting your time writing it down.
所以,别再玩小伎俩了
So, stop looking for the trick.
创业像很多领域一样 的确有窍门
There are tricks in startups, as there are in any domain,
但是窍门重要性远低于去解决真正的问题
but they are an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem.
有些人完全不懂融资 但是做了点用户真正喜欢的东西
Someone who knows zero about fundraising, but has made something users really love,
他们在融资上会远比那些知道所有书里技巧
will have an easier time raising money than someone who knows every trick in the book,
但是没有用户的人容易得多
but has a flat usage graph.
现在你明白了在原有游戏规则里面玩小伎俩已行不通 Though, in a sense, it’s bad news that gaming the system stops working now, 尽管从某种意义上来说这是个坏消息 因为你最强大的武器被收缴了 in the sense that you’re deprived of your most powerful weapons and, 毕竟你们用了20年,精于此道 after all, you spent twenty years mastering them. 但让我心存激动的是 世界上居然存在不能靠“上有政策下有对策”取胜的领域:创业 I find it very exciting that there even exist parts of the world where gaming the system is not how you win. 大学时候的我一定会兴奋坏了的 I would have been really excited in college 如果那时候知道居然有一个领域 if I explicitly realized that there are parts of the world 甚至完全不重要 where gaming the system matters less than others, 和系统玩花样远不如其他重要 and some where it hardly matters at all. 但是这是计划未来的时候需要思考的最重要的一件事 But there are, and this is one of the most important thing to think about when planning your future. 如何胜任每种工作 做这种工作想要赢取的是什么 How do you win at each type of work, and what do you want to win by doing it?
这就把我们带到了第四个反直觉点:
That brings us to our fourth counterintuitive point,
创业都是很消耗的。
startups are all consuming.
如果你开始创业 它会超乎想象地占据你的生活
If you start a startup, it will take over your life
而且如果你创业成功了 那它将会长期占据你的生活
to a degree that you cannot imagine and if it succeeds it will take over your life for a long time;
积年累月 少说十年 也许一辈子
for several years, at the very least, maybe a decade, maybe the rest of your working life.
所以机会成本摆在这里
So there is a real opportunity cost here.
可能你觉的Larry Page的生活非常让人羡慕
It may seem to you that Larry Page has an enviable life,
但是绝对也有完全不令人羡慕的部分
but there are parts of it that are defiantly unenviable.
世人觉得 他从25岁开始就全速冲刺
The way the world looks to him is that he started running as fast as he could, at age twenty-five,
从此以后却忙得连喘气的机会都没有
and he has not stopped to catch his breath since.
每天google帝国都会有各种傻逼事情发生 只有帝王自己才能解决
Every day shit happens within the Google empire that only the emperor can deal with and he,
而他 作为帝王 必须挺身而出
as the emperor, has to deal with it.
如果他去休假 哪怕只一周
If he goes on vacation for even a week,
一大堆破事就会积压起来
a whole backlog of shit accumulates,
而他必须忍受 毫无怨言
and he has to bear this, uncomplaining,
因为首先 作为公司的老爸 他不能表现出害怕或软弱
because: number one, as the company’s daddy, he cannot show fear or weakness;
其次 如果你是个亿万富翁
and number two, if you’re a billionaire
还抱怨生活艰辛 你根本得不到同情 可能还会被认为矫情
you get zero, actually less than zero sympathy, if you complain about having a difficult life.
这也伴生着一个奇怪的现象 Which has this strange side effect 谁都看不到创业者成功过程中的困难 that the difficulty of being a successful startup founder is concealed from almost everyone who has done it. 你要是走近奥运100米比赛的冠军 People who win the one-hundred meter in the Olympics, 就会看到他们已经喘不过气了 you walk up to them and they’re out of breath. Larry Page也是一样 但是谁都看不到 Larry Page is doing that too, but you never get to see it.
YC现在已经投资了许多可以说已有大成的公司 Y Combinator has now funded several companies that could be called big successes 每一个个案里,创始者都会说同样的话 and in every single case the founder says the same thing, 事情永远不会变得更加轻松 “It never gets any easier.” 问题不会减少 只是问题的内容在变化 The nature of the problems change, 所以你的担心可能变成更具逼格的问题 so you’re maybe worrying about more glamorous problems like 比如伦敦的新办公室施工延误了而不是办公室空调坏了 construction delays in your new London offices rather than the broken air conditioner in your studio apartment, 但是担心的总量从不会减少 而更多的情况是 担心的问题只会增加 but the total volume of worry never decreases. If anything, it increases. 创立一家成功的创业公司和养孩子很像 Starting a successful startup is similar to having kids;
就像是有一个按钮 it’s like a button
就像是有一个按钮,一旦按了下去它就会改变你的生活 而且无法倒带(编者:你不能把孩子塞回去) you press and it changes your life irrevocably.
当然,养育孩子是世界上最美好的事情 While it’s honestly the best thing—having kids—
但如果你只从本篇演讲中记住一点,记住这点 if you take away one thing from this lecture, remember this:
很多事情在你有孩子之前,比之后更容易做 There are a lot of things that are easier to do before you have kids than after,
这些事情会让你有孩子之后成为更好的家长 many of which will make you a better parent when you do have kids.
在富裕的国家,大部分人都把按这个按钮的时间一拖再拖 In rich countries, most people delay pushing the button for a while
(嘿嘿)而且我相信你们都对这个过程特别熟悉 and I’m sure you are all intimately familiar with that procedure.
但是谈到创业这个话题,很多人似乎认为他们应该在大学时候创业 Yet when it comes to starting startups a lot of people seem to think they are supposed to start them in college.
丫疯了么?大学们都在想些什么啊 Are you crazy? What are the universities thinking
他们应该尽可能去保证避孕套的供应 they go out of their way to ensure that their students are well supplied with contraceptive?s,
结果他们却搞各种创业的项目,弄得到处是创业孵化器 and yet they are starting up entrepreneurship programs and startup incubators left and right.
坦白来说,大学也有点迫不得已 To be fair, the universities have their hand forced here.
许多有想法的学生对创业很有兴趣 A lot of incoming students are interested in start-ups.
大学也确实应当为学生的职业生涯打好基础 Universities are at least de-facto supposed to prepare you for your career,
所以如果你对创业有兴趣 and so if you’re interested in startups,
理论上大学似乎应该提供创业的培训 it seems like universities are supposed to teach you about startups
不这么做的学校生源可能就会被这样做的大学抢走 and if they don’t maybe they lose applicants to universities that do claim to do that.
所以大学应该教创业相关的课程吗? So can universities teach you about startups?
嗯哼,如果不该的话,我们在这干嘛呢 Well, if not, what are we doing here?
到底应不应该,我已经针对创业这件事讲很多了 Yes and no, as I’ve explained to you about start-ups.
本质上来说,如果你想学法语,大学可以教你语言学 Essentially, if you want to learn French, universities can teach you linguistics.
这才是教育的题中之义 That is what this is.
这就是语言学的意义:我们告诉你怎么去学一门语言 This is linguistics: we’re teaching you how to learn languages
and what you need to know is how a particular language.
你们需要知道的是你们用户的需求 What you need to know are the needs of your own users.
如果不自己创业是不会真正懂这些的 You can’t learn those until you actually start the company,
这就意味着创业本质上说是一件只能通过实践学习的事情 which means that starting a startup is something you can intrinsically only learn by doing it.
我刚才也解释过你不可能在大学期间去创业 You can’t do that in college for the reason I just explained.
因为创业会占据你所有的生活 Startups take over your entire life.
大学创业本身就是一个悖论 If you start a startup in college, if you start a startup as a student, you can’t start a startup as a student
因为如果你创业了你就不再是学生了 because if you start a startup you’re not a student anymore.
你可能名义上还是学生,但这个名义也不会保持太久 You may be nominally a student but you won’t even be that for very much longer.
在这个分岔路口:你要向哪走? Given this dichotomy: which of the two paths should you take?
要么做一个真正的学生,不要去创业 Be a real student and not start a startup
要么就去好好做一家公司,不再当学生 or start a real startup and not be a student.
这个问题,不如我来代你们回答 Well, I can answer that one for you.
我也会这么对我的孩子说的 I’m talking to my own kids here.
不要在大学创业 Do not start a startup in college.
我真的希望我不会让在座的某些朋友失望 I hope I’m not disappointing anyone seriously.
对于很多有雄心壮志的朋友来说,创业可能是美丽人生的重要组成部分 Starting a startup could be a good component of a good life for a lot of ambitious people.
但这只是你要解决的大问题中的一小部分 This is just a part of a much bigger problem that you are trying to solve.
而大问题在于,怎么样去享受美丽的人生 How to have a good life, right.
在特定时间点上,创业可能是一件非常棒的事情 Those that are starting a startup could be a good thing to do at some point.
但20岁却不是最优时间 Twenty is not the optimal time to do it.
有些事情你只能二十岁出头做 There are things that you can do in your early twenties
之前和之后都不行 that you cannot do as well before or after.
比如仅凭心血来潮,完全不计回报得全身心地投入一个项目之中 Like plunge deeply into projects on a whim that seem like they will have no pay off.
比如不设时限地穷游四方 Travel super cheaply with no sense of a deadline.
事实上这些事情本质都是一样的 In fact they are really isomorphic? shapes in different domains.
对于没有野心的人来说,你的问题可能是太担心失败 For unambitious people your thing can be the dreaded failure to launch.
对于有野心的人,创业是场非常有价值的探险 For the ambitious ones it’s a really valuable sort of exploration and
如果你在20岁的时候创业,而且非常成功,你之后就不会再想做这件事 if you start a startup at twenty and you are sufficiently successful you will never get to do it.
马克扎克伯格肯定再也不能随心所欲的出国穷游了 Mark Zuckerberg will never get to bum around a foreign country.
他如果出国,要么会被看成接近各国元首规格的正式访问 If he goes to a foreign county, it’s either as a de-facto state visit
要么是在巴黎的里本斯酒店微服私访享受奢华假期 or like he’s hiding out incognito at George V in Paris.
基本不会去泰国之类的地方当背包客 He’s never going to just like backpack around Thailand
尽管现在其他人还很愿意这么做 if that’s still what people do.
人们现在还经常去泰国当背包客吗? Do people still backpack around Thailand?
这堂课讲到这才看到你们的一些火花啊 That’s the first real enthusiasm I’ve ever seen from this class.
看来我们应该在泰国做这个讲座 Should have given this talk in Thailand.
马克能做你们不能做的事情,比如搭乘私人飞机出国 He can do things you can’t do, like charter? jets to fly him to foreign countries.
超大的飞机哦 Really big jets.
但是Facebook成功已经成为他生活中最天降机缘的事情 But success has taken a lot of the serendipity out of his life.
就像他控制Facebook一样,Facebook也牢牢控制着他 Facebook is running him as much as he’s running Facebook.
能掌控自己视为毕生事业的项目当然是极好的 While it can be really cool to be in the grip of some project you consider your life’s work,
但是随缘而动也未尝不是一件乐事 there are advantages to serendipity?.
别的不说,当你不限制自己过早创业时,这些机缘会在你今后选择毕生事业时,给出更多的选项 Among other things, it gives you more options to choose your life’s work from.
这些选择甚至都不需要你付出任何代价 There’s not even a trade off here.
你20岁创业没有牺牲任何事情 You’re not sacrificing anything
你的等待只有可能让你更容易获得成功 if you forgo starting a start up at twenty because you will be more likely to succeed if you wait.
就算在非常不可能的情况下,20岁的你也恰好有一个像Facebook一样NB的项目成功了 In the astronomically unlikely case that you are twenty and you have some side project that takes off like Facebook did,
那你就会面临一个选择,到底是不是放下一切,去全力发展这个项目, then you face a choice to either be running with it or not
然后所有理由都指向你应该去做 and maybe it’s reasonable to run with it.
所以通常一家公司起航是创始人认为该起航了 Usually the way that start ups take off is for the founders to make them take off.
但是20岁时候去做还是很愚蠢的 It’s drastically stupid to do that at twenty.
任何年龄都能去创业吗?创业听起来很难 Should you do it at any age? Starting a startup may sound kind of hard,
如果你还没听明白我就再说一遍 if I haven’t made that clear let me try again.
创业非常难,如果你还没准备好迎接这个挑战该怎么办? Starting a startup is really hard. If it’s too hard, what if you are not up to this challenge?
答案是第五个反直觉的观点 The answer is the fifth counter intuitive point.
你活到现在已经有一点大致清楚你的人生目标是什么 You can tell. Your life so far has given you some idea of what your prospects might be
比如成为一名数学家或者相当一个专业的足球运动员 if you wanted to become a mathematician or a professional football player.
并不是很多听众都可以让我这么说的 Boy, it’s not every audience you can say that to.
除非你人生超奇葩 Unless you have had a very strange life
说实在的,你做过的其实很少,就好像刚开始创业一样 Indeed you have not done much that’s like starting a startup.
我的意思是,创业如果成功的话,真的会改变你很多 Meaning starting a startup will change you a lot if it works out.
所以你需要评估的不仅仅是现在的自己,更是你将成为的样子 So what you’re trying to estimate is not just what you are, but what you can become.
你能做到的 And you can do that.
反正我做不到 Well, not me.
过去九年我的工作就是猜测(我写的是“预测”,但说的确实“猜测”——另一个口误) for the last nine years it was my job to try to guess (I wrote “predict” in here and it came out as “guess”—another Freudian slip).
看别人有多聪明其实不难,十分钟内你就知道了 Seriously it’s easy to tell how smart people are in ten minutes.
抛几个问题过去,他们能回复吗,还是就此挂了? Hit a few tennis balls over the net, and do they hit them back at you or into the net?
最难也是最重要的部分则是,预测他们能变得多坚韧、多有野心。 The hard part and the most important part was predicting how tough and ambitious they would become.
估计这领域没有人比我更有经验了 There may be no one at this point who has more experience than me in doing this.
我能告诉你专家对看人这件事了解多少 I can tell you how much an expert can know about that.
答案是,没多少 The answer is not much.
我的经验教给我的是要有完全开放的心态 每一批初创公司中都有些会一跃成为明星 I learned from experience to keep completely open mind about which start ups in each batch would turn out to be the stars.
创业者有的时候也以为自己能预判结果 The founders sometimes thought they knew.
有些新进入YC的人以为他们能玩转YC Some arrived feeling confident that they would ace Y Combinator
因为他们历来都是学霸 just as they had aced every one of the few easy artificial tests they had faced in life so far.
有些团队进来的时候在想 不知道什么bug居然把自己放进来了 千万别被发现自己是学酥 Others arrived wondering what mistake had caused them to be admitted and hoping that no one discover it.
但这些不同的想法和最后的结果几乎无关 There is little to no correlation between these attitudes and how things turn out.
我听说军队中也是这样 I’ve read the same is true in the military.
神气活现的新兵日后也并不比安静的人更能养成坚忍的性格 The swaggering recruits are no more than likely to turn out to be really tough than the quiet ones
原因可能是一样的 and probably for the same reason.
创业面对的考验和这些人之前遇到的考验完全不同 The tests are so different from tests in people’s previous lives.
如果你非常害怕创业,你可能就不该下水 If you are absolutely terrified of starting a startup you probably shouldn’t do it.
除非你是那些专门喜欢挑战恐惧寻求刺激的人 Unless you are one of those people who gets off on doing things you’re afraid of.
如果你只是不确定自己是否有足够能力创业,唯一能告诉你结果的方法就是,去试试,只是不要现在就试 Otherwise if you are merely unsure of whether you are going to be able to do it, the only way to find out is to try, just not now.
所以如果你以后想创业的话 So if you want to start a startup one day,
你现在在大学时代应该做什么呢 what do you do now in college?
最开始你只需要两件事情,点子和合伙人 There are only two things you need initially, an idea and cofounders.
得到这两者的方法是一样的,这就是我们第六点也就是最后一个的反直觉点。 The MO for getting both of those is the same which leads to our sixth and last counterintuitive point.
得到创业点子的方法就是不要干想 The way to get start up ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas.
我为此写过一大篇文章,我不想在这重复全部的观点 I have written a whole essay on this and I am not going to repeat the whole thing here.
但是摘要就是,如果你费很大力气去想创业的点子 But the short version is that if you make a conscious effort to try to think of startup ideas,
这个点子不仅会很扯淡,而且会听上去貌似合理但实际上非常扯淡 you will think of ideas that are not only bad but bad and plausible sounding.
这意味着你和其他人都可能被这个点子蒙蔽 Meaning you and everybody else will be fooled by them.
你们会花很多时间,然后才认识到它并不是个好点子 You’ll waste a lot of time before realizing they’re no good.
要想出好的创业点子,就需要后退一步 The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back.
不是费很大力气为了想创业点子而想点子 Instead of trying to make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas,
而是不知不觉的想到这个创业的点子 turn your brain into the type that has startup ideas unconsciously.
事实上, 由于太不知不觉以至于你最开始都没意识到它们是创业的点子 In fact, so unconsciously that you don’t even realize at first that they’re startup ideas.
这是非常可行的:Yahoo, Google,Facebook, Apple都是这么创建的 This is not only possible: Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple all got started this way.
这些公司最初都没不是公司,都只是副业 None of these companies were supposed to be companies at first, they were all just side projects.
最好的点子几乎通常都是以副业开始的 The very best ideas almost always have to start as side projects
因为他们通常是那种你的不会把它们当成创业点子的点子 because they’re always such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.
那你怎么才能让自己不知不觉得想出点子呢 How do you turn your mind into the kind that has startup ideas unconsciously?
首先,去学习许多重要的事情 One, learn about a lot of things that matter.
第二,仔细琢磨你感兴趣的日常生活中遇到的痛点 Two, work on problems that interest you.
第三,多和NB的人或者你喜欢的人呆在一起 Three, with people you like and or respect.
第三点刚好在想到好点子的同时也找到了好的合伙人 That’s the third part incidentally, is how you get cofounders at the same time as the idea.
我第一次写这一段的时候,没写“学重要的事情” The first time I wrote that paragraph, instead of learn a lot about things that matter,
而写的是“在某类技术方面出类拔萃” I wrote become good at some technology.
但是我认为这个观点太狭隘了 But that prescription is too narrow.
Airbnb的创始人Brain Chesky和Joe Gebbia特别之处不在于他们是技术大牛 What was special about Brain Chesky and Joe Gebbia from Airbnb was not that they were experts in technology.
他们去的是艺术类院校,他们是NB的设计师 They went to art school, they were experts in design.
可能更重要的是他们更善于组织大伙把项目干好 Perhaps more importantly they were really good at organizing people in getting projects done.
所以你可以并不专攻技术本身,只要你有其他长处能扩大自己的能力范围 So you don’t have to work on technology per se, so long as you work on things that stretch you.
这些能够孵化出成功企业的要点是什么呢 What kinds of things are those?
其实目前很难说出一些放之四海皆准的 Now that is very hard to answer in the general case.
创业史上有很多年轻人专注于解决一些过去没有人在意的痛点 History is full of examples of young people who were working on problems that no one else at the time thought were important.
连他们的父母都不认为他们做的事情重要 In particular that their parents didn’t think were important.
当然另一方面,创业史上更多的例子是,好多父母觉得自己的孩子在浪费时间,而事实上他们确实在浪费时间 On the other hand, history is even fuller of examples of parents that thought their kids were wasting their time and who were right.
你怎么知道你是否在做一件有意义的事、解决真正的痛点呢? How do you know if you’re working on real stuff?
举个例子,当Twitch TC从Justin.tv这个项目变成Twitch TV这个项目的时候 I mean when Twitch TV switched from being Justin.tv to Twitch TV
他们想直播人们玩游戏的视频 and they were going to broadcast people playing video games,
我当时的反应时“纳尼?” I was like, “What?”
但是事后证明非常成功 But it turned out to be a good business.
我知道我是怎么判断哪些是有趣的点子的 I know how I know real problems are interesting,
而且我经常放纵自己:我总是喜欢研究我认为有趣的事情 and I am self-indulgent: I always like working on anything interesting things
即便没有其他人在乎它 even if no one cares about them.
我发现我很难做我认为无聊的事情 I find it very hard to make myself work on boring things
哪怕它看上去会成为一个大生意 even if they’re supposed to be important.
我的生活都是事情接着事情 My life is full of case after case
其实每个事情我之所以愿意付出精力去做,就是因为我认为它非常有趣 where I worked on things just because I was interested
最后他们都变得很有用、影响范围很广 and they turned out to be useful later in some worldly way.
最开始做YC就因为它看上去很有趣 Y Combinator itself is something I only did because it seemed interesting.
我似乎也很有天赋 I seem to have some internal compass that helps me out.
当然这是你们自己的事情,不是我的事情,我也不知道你们脑袋中有什么点子 This is for you not me and I don’t know what you have in your heads.
可能如果我再思考这个问题思考得多一些 Maybe if I think more about it
我会想到怎么去逐渐启发人们想到有趣的点子 I can come up some heuristics for recognizing genuinely interesting ideas.
但目前我能给你们的就是这些问题百出、毫无指望的建议 For now all I can give you is the hopelessly question begging advice.
恰好,这也正是“寻求问题”这个短语的意义 Incidentally this is the actual meaning of the phrase begging the question.
如果对什么问题感兴趣 The hopelessly question begging advice that if you’re interested in generally interesting problems,
就尽力去满足自己的兴趣,这也是为自己创业能做的最好的准备,也许也是最好的生活方式 gratifying your interest energetically is the best way to prepare yourself for a startup and probably best way to live.
尽管我不能具体解释什么才算一个好点子 Although I can’t explain in the general case what counts as an interesting problem
但我可以告诉你一个靠谱的方式 I can tell you about a large subset of them.
如果你把技术看作是四处不规则放射的射线 If you think of technology as something that’s spreading like a sort of fractal string,
那么射线的最前沿就能看到最好的点子 every point on the edge represents an interesting problem.
如果不是因为蒸汽技术是当时技术的前沿, 蒸汽机这个想法也不会被人想到 Steam engine not so much maybe you never know.
不知不觉不刻意是想到创业点子的最靠谱状态 One guaranteed way to turn your mind into the type to start up ideas for them unconsciously.
把你自己的项目做到某项技术的最前沿状态是最保险的一种创业方式 Is to get yourself to the leading edge of some technology.
就像Paul Buchheit形容的,“活在未来” To, as Paul Buchheit put it, “Live in the future.”
而且当你到了那个状态的时候 And when you get there,
对你而言显而易见的想法对于其他人而言就是惊奇与难以想象 ideas that seem uncannily prescient to other people will seem obvious to you.
有些时候人们没有意识到有人做了这些事情 You may not realize they’re start up ideas,
但当它们出来的时候你会觉得它们本来就应该存在(想想iphone、ipad) but you will know they are something that ought to exist.
举个例子,回到90年代中期的哈佛大学 For example back at Harvard in the mid 90s.
我的朋友Rober和Trevor的一个研究生同学用IP软件编写了他自己的声音 A fellow grad student of my friends Robert and Trevor wrote his own voice over IP software.
他并没想到这会是个生意,他从来没想着把它做成生意 It wasn’t meant to be a startup, he never tried to turn it into one.
他只是想跟他在台湾的女友聊天,当然不想花长途话费 He just wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan without paying for long distance calls.
因为他是互联网的专家 Since he was an expert on networks,
对于他而言把声音转化为编码然后通过因特网免费传播过去是轻而易举的 it seemed obvious to him that thing to do was to turn the sound into packets and ship them over the internet for free.
为什么其他人没有做这件事 Why didn’t everybody do this?
他们并不擅长写这种软件 They were not good at writing this type of software.
他从来没用它做其他事情 He never did anything with this.
没想着把它作为生意 He never tried to turn this into a startup.
这就是我前面提到的最棒的生意就是这么不经意、不象生意 That is how the best startups tend to happen.
所以很奇怪的是,如果你想创立成功的企业 Strangely enough the optimal thing to do in college if you want to be a successful startup founder
你不应该去读那种标新立异、专注于教导学生创立企业的大学 is not some sort of new vocational version of college focused on entrepreneurship.
而是用最传统最经典的教育方式教导学生学习方法的大学 It’s the classic version of college is education its own sake.
如果你想创立自己的公司,你应该做的是学习有用的东西 If you want to start your own startup what you should do in college is learn powerful things
如果你对某个领域有生来就擅长或者抱有强烈好奇 and if you have genuine intellectual curiosity
它就是你天然倾向去做的事情 that’s what you’ll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations.
创业家这个概念 The component of entrepreneurship,
哎 “创业家“ 这个词可真难说 can never quite say that word with a straight face,
其中重要的是在特定的方面做到出类拔萃 that really matters is domain expertise.
谷歌创始人Larry Page之所以成为Larry Page是因为他在搜索领域是专家 Larry Page is Larry Page because he was an expert on search
他成为搜索领域的专家是因为他生来对此感兴趣 and the way he became an expert on search was because he was genuinely interested
而并不是其他功利的的动机 and not because of some ulterior motive.
事实上最好的创业动机很少是功利性的 At its best starting a startup is merely a ulterior motive for curiosity
在最后的阶段才引入功利的动机往往会使你做得最好 and you’ll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive at the end of the process.
所以是对年轻的、想创业的朋友最终极的建议是:好好学习,天天向上 So here is ultimate advice for young would be startup founders reduced to two words: just learn. 创立一家成功的创业公司和养孩子很像 Starting a successful startup is similar to having kids;
就像是有一个按钮 it’s like a button
就像是有一个按钮,一旦按了下去它就会改变你的生活 而且无法倒带(编者:你不能把孩子塞回去) you press and it changes your life irrevocably.
当然,养育孩子是世界上最美好的事情 While it’s honestly the best thing—having kids—
但如果你只从本篇演讲中记住一点,记住这点 if you take away one thing from this lecture, remember this:
很多事情在你有孩子之前,比之后更容易做 There are a lot of things that are easier to do before you have kids than after,
这些事情会让你有孩子之后成为更好的家长 many of which will make you a better parent when you do have kids.
在富裕的国家,大部分人都把按这个按钮的时间一拖再拖 In rich countries, most people delay pushing the button for a while
(嘿嘿)而且我相信你们都对这个过程特别熟悉 and I’m sure you are all intimately familiar with that procedure.
但是谈到创业这个话题,很多人似乎认为他们应该在大学时候创业 Yet when it comes to starting startups a lot of people seem to think they are supposed to start them in college.
丫疯了么?大学们都在想些什么啊 Are you crazy? What are the universities thinking
他们应该尽可能去保证避孕套的供应 they go out of their way to ensure that their students are well supplied with contraceptive?s,
结果他们却搞各种创业的项目,弄得到处是创业孵化器 and yet they are starting up entrepreneurship programs and startup incubators left and right.
坦白来说,大学也有点迫不得已 To be fair, the universities have their hand forced here.
许多有想法的学生对创业很有兴趣 A lot of incoming students are interested in start-ups.
大学也确实应当为学生的职业生涯打好基础 Universities are at least de-facto supposed to prepare you for your career,
所以如果你对创业有兴趣 and so if you’re interested in startups,
理论上大学似乎应该提供创业的培训 it seems like universities are supposed to teach you about startups
不这么做的学校生源可能就会被这样做的大学抢走 and if they don’t maybe they lose applicants to universities that do claim to do that.
所以大学应该教创业相关的课程吗? So can universities teach you about startups?
嗯哼,如果不该的话,我们在这干嘛呢 Well, if not, what are we doing here?
到底应不应该,我已经针对创业这件事讲很多了 Yes and no, as I’ve explained to you about start-ups.
本质上来说,如果你想学法语,大学可以教你语言学 Essentially, if you want to learn French, universities can teach you linguistics.
这才是教育的题中之义 That is what this is.
这就是语言学的意义:我们告诉你怎么去学一门语言 This is linguistics: we’re teaching you how to learn languages
and what you need to know is how a particular language.
你们需要知道的是你们用户的需求 What you need to know are the needs of your own users.
如果不自己创业是不会真正懂这些的 You can’t learn those until you actually start the company,
这就意味着创业本质上说是一件只能通过实践学习的事情 which means that starting a startup is something you can intrinsically only learn by doing it.
我刚才也解释过你不可能在大学期间去创业 You can’t do that in college for the reason I just explained.
因为创业会占据你所有的生活 Startups take over your entire life.
大学创业本身就是一个悖论 If you start a startup in college, if you start a startup as a student, you can’t start a startup as a student
因为如果你创业了你就不再是学生了 because if you start a startup you’re not a student anymore.
你可能名义上还是学生,但这个名义也不会保持太久 You may be nominally a student but you won’t even be that for very much longer.
在这个分岔路口:你要向哪走? Given this dichotomy: which of the two paths should you take?
要么做一个真正的学生,不要去创业 Be a real student and not start a startup
要么就去好好做一家公司,不再当学生 or start a real startup and not be a student.
这个问题,不如我来代你们回答 Well, I can answer that one for you.
我也会这么对我的孩子说的 I’m talking to my own kids here.
不要在大学创业 Do not start a startup in college.
我真的希望我不会让在座的某些朋友失望 I hope I’m not disappointing anyone seriously.
对于很多有雄心壮志的朋友来说,创业可能是美丽人生的重要组成部分 Starting a startup could be a good component of a good life for a lot of ambitious people.
但这只是你要解决的大问题中的一小部分 This is just a part of a much bigger problem that you are trying to solve.
而大问题在于,怎么样去享受美丽的人生 How to have a good life, right.
在特定时间点上,创业可能是一件非常棒的事情 Those that are starting a startup could be a good thing to do at some point.
但20岁却不是最优时间 Twenty is not the optimal time to do it.
有些事情你只能二十岁出头做 There are things that you can do in your early twenties
之前和之后都不行 that you cannot do as well before or after.
比如仅凭心血来潮,完全不计回报得全身心地投入一个项目之中 Like plunge deeply into projects on a whim that seem like they will have no pay off.
比如不设时限地穷游四方 Travel super cheaply with no sense of a deadline.
事实上这些事情本质都是一样的 In fact they are really isomorphic? shapes in different domains.
对于没有野心的人来说,你的问题可能是太担心失败 For unambitious people your thing can be the dreaded failure to launch.
对于有野心的人,创业是场非常有价值的探险 For the ambitious ones it’s a really valuable sort of exploration and
如果你在20岁的时候创业,而且非常成功,你之后就不会再想做这件事 if you start a startup at twenty and you are sufficiently successful you will never get to do it.
马克扎克伯格肯定再也不能随心所欲的出国穷游了 Mark Zuckerberg will never get to bum around a foreign country.
他如果出国,要么会被看成接近各国元首规格的正式访问 If he goes to a foreign county, it’s either as a de-facto state visit
要么是在巴黎的里本斯酒店微服私访享受奢华假期 or like he’s hiding out incognito at George V in Paris.
基本不会去泰国之类的地方当背包客 He’s never going to just like backpack around Thailand
尽管现在其他人还很愿意这么做 if that’s still what people do.
人们现在还经常去泰国当背包客吗? Do people still backpack around Thailand?
这堂课讲到这才看到你们的一些火花啊 That’s the first real enthusiasm I’ve ever seen from this class.
看来我们应该在泰国做这个讲座 Should have given this talk in Thailand.
马克能做你们不能做的事情,比如搭乘私人飞机出国 He can do things you can’t do, like charter? jets to fly him to foreign countries.
超大的飞机哦 Really big jets.
但是Facebook成功已经成为他生活中最天降机缘的事情 But success has taken a lot of the serendipity out of his life.
就像他控制Facebook一样,Facebook也牢牢控制着他 Facebook is running him as much as he’s running Facebook.
能掌控自己视为毕生事业的项目当然是极好的 While it can be really cool to be in the grip of some project you consider your life’s work,
但是随缘而动也未尝不是一件乐事 there are advantages to serendipity?.
别的不说,当你不限制自己过早创业时,这些机缘会在你今后选择毕生事业时,给出更多的选项 Among other things, it gives you more options to choose your life’s work from.
这些选择甚至都不需要你付出任何代价 There’s not even a trade off here.
你20岁创业没有牺牲任何事情 You’re not sacrificing anything
你的等待只有可能让你更容易获得成功 if you forgo starting a start up at twenty because you will be more likely to succeed if you wait.
就算在非常不可能的情况下,20岁的你也恰好有一个像Facebook一样NB的项目成功了 In the astronomically unlikely case that you are twenty and you have some side project that takes off like Facebook did,
那你就会面临一个选择,到底是不是放下一切,去全力发展这个项目, then you face a choice to either be running with it or not
然后所有理由都指向你应该去做 and maybe it’s reasonable to run with it.
所以通常一家公司起航是创始人认为该起航了 Usually the way that start ups take off is for the founders to make them take off.
但是20岁时候去做还是很愚蠢的 It’s drastically stupid to do that at twenty.
任何年龄都能去创业吗?创业听起来很难 Should you do it at any age? Starting a startup may sound kind of hard,
如果你还没听明白我就再说一遍 if I haven’t made that clear let me try again.
创业非常难,如果你还没准备好迎接这个挑战该怎么办? Starting a startup is really hard. If it’s too hard, what if you are not up to this challenge?
答案是第五个反直觉的观点 The answer is the fifth counter intuitive point.
你活到现在已经有一点大致清楚你的人生目标是什么 You can tell. Your life so far has given you some idea of what your prospects might be
比如成为一名数学家或者相当一个专业的足球运动员 if you wanted to become a mathematician or a professional football player.
并不是很多听众都可以让我这么说的 Boy, it’s not every audience you can say that to.
除非你人生超奇葩 Unless you have had a very strange life
说实在的,你做过的其实很少,就好像刚开始创业一样 Indeed you have not done much that’s like starting a startup.
我的意思是,创业如果成功的话,真的会改变你很多 Meaning starting a startup will change you a lot if it works out.
所以你需要评估的不仅仅是现在的自己,更是你将成为的样子 So what you’re trying to estimate is not just what you are, but what you can become.
你能做到的 And you can do that.
反正我做不到 Well, not me.
过去九年我的工作就是猜测(我写的是“预测”,但说的确实“猜测”——另一个口误) for the last nine years it was my job to try to guess (I wrote “predict” in here and it came out as “guess”—another Freudian slip).
看别人有多聪明其实不难,十分钟内你就知道了 Seriously it’s easy to tell how smart people are in ten minutes.
抛几个问题过去,他们能回复吗,还是就此挂了? Hit a few tennis balls over the net, and do they hit them back at you or into the net?
最难也是最重要的部分则是,预测他们能变得多坚韧、多有野心。 The hard part and the most important part was predicting how tough and ambitious they would become.
估计这领域没有人比我更有经验了 There may be no one at this point who has more experience than me in doing this.
我能告诉你专家对看人这件事了解多少 I can tell you how much an expert can know about that.
答案是,没多少 The answer is not much.
我的经验教给我的是要有完全开放的心态 每一批初创公司中都有些会一跃成为明星 I learned from experience to keep completely open mind about which start ups in each batch would turn out to be the stars.
创业者有的时候也以为自己能预判结果 The founders sometimes thought they knew.
有些新进入YC的人以为他们能玩转YC Some arrived feeling confident that they would ace Y Combinator
因为他们历来都是学霸 just as they had aced every one of the few easy artificial tests they had faced in life so far.
有些团队进来的时候在想 不知道什么bug居然把自己放进来了 千万别被发现自己是学酥 Others arrived wondering what mistake had caused them to be admitted and hoping that no one discover it.
但这些不同的想法和最后的结果几乎无关 There is little to no correlation between these attitudes and how things turn out.
我听说军队中也是这样 I’ve read the same is true in the military.
神气活现的新兵日后也并不比安静的人更能养成坚忍的性格 The swaggering recruits are no more than likely to turn out to be really tough than the quiet ones
原因可能是一样的 and probably for the same reason.
创业面对的考验和这些人之前遇到的考验完全不同 The tests are so different from tests in people’s previous lives.
如果你非常害怕创业,你可能就不该下水 If you are absolutely terrified of starting a startup you probably shouldn’t do it.
除非你是那些专门喜欢挑战恐惧寻求刺激的人 Unless you are one of those people who gets off on doing things you’re afraid of.
如果你只是不确定自己是否有足够能力创业,唯一能告诉你结果的方法就是,去试试,只是不要现在就试 Otherwise if you are merely unsure of whether you are going to be able to do it, the only way to find out is to try, just not now.
所以如果你以后想创业的话 So if you want to start a startup one day,
你现在在大学时代应该做什么呢 what do you do now in college?
最开始你只需要两件事情,点子和合伙人 There are only two things you need initially, an idea and cofounders.
得到这两者的方法是一样的,这就是我们第六点也就是最后一个的反直觉点。 The MO for getting both of those is the same which leads to our sixth and last counterintuitive point.
得到创业点子的方法就是不要干想 The way to get start up ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas.
我为此写过一大篇文章,我不想在这重复全部的观点 I have written a whole essay on this and I am not going to repeat the whole thing here.
但是摘要就是,如果你费很大力气去想创业的点子 But the short version is that if you make a conscious effort to try to think of startup ideas,
这个点子不仅会很扯淡,而且会听上去貌似合理但实际上非常扯淡 you will think of ideas that are not only bad but bad and plausible sounding.
这意味着你和其他人都可能被这个点子蒙蔽 Meaning you and everybody else will be fooled by them.
你们会花很多时间,然后才认识到它并不是个好点子 You’ll waste a lot of time before realizing they’re no good.
要想出好的创业点子,就需要后退一步 The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back.
不是费很大力气为了想创业点子而想点子 Instead of trying to make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas,
而是不知不觉的想到这个创业的点子 turn your brain into the type that has startup ideas unconsciously.
事实上, 由于太不知不觉以至于你最开始都没意识到它们是创业的点子 In fact, so unconsciously that you don’t even realize at first that they’re startup ideas.
这是非常可行的:Yahoo, Google,Facebook, Apple都是这么创建的 This is not only possible: Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple all got started this way.
这些公司最初都没不是公司,都只是副业 None of these companies were supposed to be companies at first, they were all just side projects.
最好的点子几乎通常都是以副业开始的 The very best ideas almost always have to start as side projects
因为他们通常是那种你的不会把它们当成创业点子的点子 because they’re always such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.
那你怎么才能让自己不知不觉得想出点子呢 How do you turn your mind into the kind that has startup ideas unconsciously?
首先,去学习许多重要的事情 One, learn about a lot of things that matter.
第二,仔细琢磨你感兴趣的日常生活中遇到的痛点 Two, work on problems that interest you.
第三,多和NB的人或者你喜欢的人呆在一起 Three, with people you like and or respect.
第三点刚好在想到好点子的同时也找到了好的合伙人 That’s the third part incidentally, is how you get cofounders at the same time as the idea.
我第一次写这一段的时候,没写“学重要的事情” The first time I wrote that paragraph, instead of learn a lot about things that matter,
而写的是“在某类技术方面出类拔萃” I wrote become good at some technology.
但是我认为这个观点太狭隘了 But that prescription is too narrow.
Airbnb的创始人Brain Chesky和Joe Gebbia特别之处不在于他们是技术大牛 What was special about Brain Chesky and Joe Gebbia from Airbnb was not that they were experts in technology.
他们去的是艺术类院校,他们是NB的设计师 They went to art school, they were experts in design.
可能更重要的是他们更善于组织大伙把项目干好 Perhaps more importantly they were really good at organizing people in getting projects done.
所以你可以并不专攻技术本身,只要你有其他长处能扩大自己的能力范围 So you don’t have to work on technology per se, so long as you work on things that stretch you.
这些能够孵化出成功企业的要点是什么呢 What kinds of things are those?
其实目前很难说出一些放之四海皆准的 Now that is very hard to answer in the general case.
创业史上有很多年轻人专注于解决一些过去没有人在意的痛点 History is full of examples of young people who were working on problems that no one else at the time thought were important.
连他们的父母都不认为他们做的事情重要 In particular that their parents didn’t think were important.
当然另一方面,创业史上更多的例子是,好多父母觉得自己的孩子在浪费时间,而事实上他们确实在浪费时间 On the other hand, history is even fuller of examples of parents that thought their kids were wasting their time and who were right.
你怎么知道你是否在做一件有意义的事、解决真正的痛点呢? How do you know if you’re working on real stuff?
举个例子,当Twitch TC从Justin.tv这个项目变成Twitch TV这个项目的时候 I mean when Twitch TV switched from being Justin.tv to Twitch TV
他们想直播人们玩游戏的视频 and they were going to broadcast people playing video games,
我当时的反应时“纳尼?” I was like, “What?”
但是事后证明非常成功 But it turned out to be a good business.
我知道我是怎么判断哪些是有趣的点子的 I know how I know real problems are interesting,
而且我经常放纵自己:我总是喜欢研究我认为有趣的事情 and I am self-indulgent: I always like working on anything interesting things
即便没有其他人在乎它 even if no one cares about them.
我发现我很难做我认为无聊的事情 I find it very hard to make myself work on boring things
哪怕它看上去会成为一个大生意 even if they’re supposed to be important.
我的生活都是事情接着事情 My life is full of case after case
其实每个事情我之所以愿意付出精力去做,就是因为我认为它非常有趣 where I worked on things just because I was interested
最后他们都变得很有用、影响范围很广 and they turned out to be useful later in some worldly way.
最开始做YC就因为它看上去很有趣 Y Combinator itself is something I only did because it seemed interesting.
我似乎也很有天赋 I seem to have some internal compass that helps me out.
当然这是你们自己的事情,不是我的事情,我也不知道你们脑袋中有什么点子 This is for you not me and I don’t know what you have in your heads.
可能如果我再思考这个问题思考得多一些 Maybe if I think more about it
我会想到怎么去逐渐启发人们想到有趣的点子 I can come up some heuristics for recognizing genuinely interesting ideas.
但目前我能给你们的就是这些问题百出、毫无指望的建议 For now all I can give you is the hopelessly question begging advice.
恰好,这也正是“寻求问题”这个短语的意义 Incidentally this is the actual meaning of the phrase begging the question.
如果对什么问题感兴趣 The hopelessly question begging advice that if you’re interested in generally interesting problems,
就尽力去满足自己的兴趣,这也是为自己创业能做的最好的准备,也许也是最好的生活方式 gratifying your interest energetically is the best way to prepare yourself for a startup and probably best way to live.
尽管我不能具体解释什么才算一个好点子 Although I can’t explain in the general case what counts as an interesting problem
但我可以告诉你一个靠谱的方式 I can tell you about a large subset of them.
如果你把技术看作是四处不规则放射的射线 If you think of technology as something that’s spreading like a sort of fractal string,
那么射线的最前沿就能看到最好的点子 every point on the edge represents an interesting problem.
如果不是因为蒸汽技术是当时技术的前沿, 蒸汽机这个想法也不会被人想到 Steam engine not so much maybe you never know.
不知不觉不刻意是想到创业点子的最靠谱状态 One guaranteed way to turn your mind into the type to start up ideas for them unconsciously.
把你自己的项目做到某项技术的最前沿状态是最保险的一种创业方式 Is to get yourself to the leading edge of some technology.
就像Paul Buchheit形容的,“活在未来” To, as Paul Buchheit put it, “Live in the future.”
而且当你到了那个状态的时候 And when you get there,
对你而言显而易见的想法对于其他人而言就是惊奇与难以想象 ideas that seem uncannily prescient to other people will seem obvious to you.
有些时候人们没有意识到有人做了这些事情 You may not realize they’re start up ideas,
但当它们出来的时候你会觉得它们本来就应该存在(想想iphone、ipad) but you will know they are something that ought to exist.
举个例子,回到90年代中期的哈佛大学 For example back at Harvard in the mid 90s.
A fellow grad student of my friends Robert and Trevor wrote his own voice over IP software.
他并没想到这会是个生意,他从来没想着把它做成生意 It wasn’t meant to be a startup, he never tried to turn it into one.
他只是想跟他在台湾的女友聊天,当然不想花长途话费 He just wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan without paying for long distance calls.
因为他是互联网的专家 Since he was an expert on networks,
对于他而言把声音转化为编码然后通过因特网免费传播过去是轻而易举的 it seemed obvious to him that thing to do was to turn the sound into packets and ship them over the internet for free.
为什么其他人没有做这件事 Why didn’t everybody do this?
他们并不擅长写这种软件 They were not good at writing this type of software.
他从来没用它做其他事情 He never did anything with this.
没想着把它作为生意 He never tried to turn this into a startup.
这就是我前面提到的最棒的生意就是这么不经意、不象生意 That is how the best startups tend to happen.
所以很奇怪的是,如果你想创立成功的企业 Strangely enough the optimal thing to do in college if you want to be a successful startup founder
你不应该去读那种标新立异、专注于教导学生创立企业的大学 is not some sort of new vocational version of college focused on entrepreneurship.
而是用最传统最经典的教育方式教导学生学习方法的大学 It’s the classic version of college is education its own sake.
如果你想创立自己的公司,你应该做的是学习有用的东西 If you want to start your own startup what you should do in college is learn powerful things
如果你对某个领域有生来就擅长或者抱有强烈好奇 and if you have genuine intellectual curiosity
它就是你天然倾向去做的事情 that’s what you’ll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations.
创业家这个概念 The component of entrepreneurship,
哎 “创业家“ 这个词可真难说 can never quite say that word with a straight face,
其中重要的是在特定的方面做到出类拔萃 that really matters is domain expertise.
谷歌创始人Larry Page之所以成为Larry Page是因为他在搜索领域是专家 Larry Page is Larry Page because he was an expert on search
他成为搜索领域的专家是因为他生来对此感兴趣 and the way he became an expert on search was because he was genuinely interested
而并不是其他功利的的动机 and not because of some ulterior motive.
事实上最好的创业动机很少是功利性的 At its best starting a startup is merely a ulterior motive for curiosity
在最后的阶段才引入功利的动机往往会使你做得最好 and you’ll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive at the end of the process.
所以是对年轻的、想创业的朋友最终极的建议是:好好学习,天天向上 So here is ultimate advice for young would be startup founders reduced to two words: just learn.