斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第01集：创意，产品，团队与执行（一）

视频信息

• 标题: 斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第01集：创意，产品，团队与执行（一）
• BV号: BV1oWKpzoE1Z
• 时长: 43分53秒（2633秒）
• 作者: 常春藤中英字幕课
• 原始链接: B站视频

视频摘要

本视频是YC总裁Sam Altman在斯坦福大学CS183B课程的开场讲座，分享YC九年来验证的创业核心方法论。课程涵盖创意、产品、团队与执行四大成功要素，公式为：成功 = 想法 × 产品 × 团队 × 执行力 × 运气。Sam强调想法应置于创业之前，伟大的想法往往在起步时看起来很糟糕，需要使命驱动并思考市场长期演变。随后联合创始人Dustin Moskovitz补充为什么要创业的话题，指出创业被严重浪漫化，实际充满压力和挑战，财务收益并非最佳创业理由，唯有你不能不做的内在激情才是创办公司的核心驱动力。

核心要点

1. 四大成功要素：想法、产品、团队、执行力构成创业成功的核心框架，四者相乘决定最终结果，而运气是不可控的随机变量

2. 使命驱动创业：伟大公司几乎都以使命为导向，创始人必须真正热爱并相信所建设的东西，否则难以熬过十年创业周期中的痛苦

3. 好想法起初很糟糕：Airbnb、Facebook等成功案例起初都被认为是不值得做的坏主意，正因如此才没有竞争对手，这是辨别伟大想法的关键特征

4. 市场演变比当前规模更重要：投资者和创业者应关注市场未来增长趋势，而非仅看今日规模；快速成长的小市场优于缓慢增长的大市场

5. 用户热爱优先于用户数量：构建一小群用户真正喜爱的产品，比拥有大量用户略有喜欢的产品更容易扩展，口碑增长是产品成功的核心指标

6. 创始人必须亲力亲为：早期成功创始人几乎所有时间都在打磨产品或与客户交谈，自己做销售和客户支持，亲近用户而非通过中间人获取反馈

7. 创业的现实代价：Dustin Moskovitz揭示创业被媒体浪漫化的真相，创始人面临巨大心理压力、持续待命状态和高度承诺，抑郁症是真实存在的风险

8. 激情而非利益是创业动机：真正应该创业的时刻是你不能不做——对某个想法有不可抑制的激情，且世界确实需要你来解决这个重要问题

视频全文转录（中英双语）

以下为完整中英双语转录，已加标点。英文在前，中文在后，逐段对照。

由 Groq Whisper 转录 → M2.7 B 方案整文标点 + 分段 → M2.7 段号保留翻译 → 逐段对照。

[段 1]

Welcome. Can I turn this on? Maybe? All right. Can people hear you back? Can you guys hear me? Is the mic on? No? Maybe you can ask them to turn it on. Maybe we can get a big… Ah, there we go. All right. Maybe we can get a bigger auditorium. We’ll see. So, welcome to CS183B. I’m Sam Altman. I’m the president of Y Combinator. Nine years ago, I was a Stanford student, and then I dropped out to start a company, and then I’ve been an investor for the last few. So at YC, we’ve been teaching people how to start startups for nine years. Most of it’s very hands-on and specific to the startups, but 30% of it is pretty generally applicable.

[译文 1]

大家好。我能打开这个吗？也许？好了。后排的人能听到吗？你们能听到我说话吗？麦克风开了吗？没开？也许你们可以让他们打开。也许我们能弄个大礼堂。我们看看。所以，欢迎来到 CS183B。我是 Sam Altman。我是 Y Combinator 的总裁。九年前，我是斯坦福大学的学生，后来我退学去创业了，然后在过去的几年里我一直在做投资。所以在 YC，我们已经教人们如何创业九年了。大部分内容是非常实操的、针对具体创业公司的，但有 30% 是相当通用的。

[段 2]

And so we think that we can teach that 30% in this class. And even though that’s only 30% of the way there, hopefully it’ll still be really helpful. We’ve taught a lot of this at YC already, but it’s all been off the record. And this is the first time that a lot of what we teach at YC is going to be on the record. So we’ve invited some of our best speakers to come and give the same talks they give at YC. We’ve now funded 720 companies. And so we’re pretty sure that a lot of this advice is pretty good. We can’t fund every startup yet, but we can hopefully make this advice very generally available.

[译文 2]

所以我们认为我们可以在这堂课里教那 30%。即使这只是 30% 的路途，希望它仍然会非常有用。我们已经在 YC 教了很多这样的内容，但都是非公开的。这是第一次，我们在 YC 教的很多东西将被公开。我们邀请了一些最优秀的演讲者来给出他们在 YC 发表的相同演讲。我们现在已经投资了 720 家公司。所以我们非常确定这些建议是相当不错的。我们还无法投资每一家创业公司，但我们可以希望让这些建议非常普遍地传播。

[段 3]

Guest speakers are going to teach 17 of the 20 classes. I’m only teaching three. Counting YC itself, every guest speaker has been involved in the creation of a billion-plus dollar company. So the advice shouldn’t be that theoretical. It’s all from people who have done it. All of the advice in this class is geared towards people starting a business where the goal is hypergrowth and eventually building a very large company. Much of it doesn’t apply in other cases, and I want to warn people up front that if you try and do these things in a lot of big companies or non-startups, it won’t work. It should still be interesting. I really do think that startups are the way of the future and it’s worth trying to understand them.

[译文 3]

客座演讲者将教授 20 节课中的 17 节。我只教三节。包括 YC 本身在内，每一位客座演讲者都参与创建了一家价值超过十亿美元的公司。所以这些建议不应该那么理论化。都是来自亲身实践过的人。这门课的所有建议都是针对那些以高速增长为目标、最终建立一家非常大的公司的人。很多内容在其他情况下不适用，我想提前警告大家，如果你试图在很多大公司或非创业公司中做这些事情，那是行不通的。它仍然会很有趣。我真的认为创业公司是未来的方式，值得尝试去理解它们。

[段 4]

But startups are very different than normal companies. So over the course of today and Thursday, I’m going to try to give an overview of the four areas that you need to excel at in order to maximize your chances of success at a startup. And then throughout the course, the guest speakers are going to drill into all of these in more detail. So the four areas: you need a great idea, a great product, a great team, and great execution. These overlap somewhat, but I’m going to have to talk about them somewhat individually to make it make sense. You may still fail. The outcome is something like idea times product times execution times team times luck, where luck is a random number between 0 and 10,000, literally that much.

[译文 4]

但创业公司与普通公司非常不同。所以在今天和周四的过程中，我将尝试概述你需要精通的四个领域，以最大限度地提高创业成功的几率。然后在整个课程中，客座演讲者将更详细地深入探讨所有这些内容。所以这四个领域是：你需要一个伟大的想法、一个伟大的产品、一个伟大的团队和伟大的执行。这些有重叠，但我必须将它们分开讨论才能说得通。你可能仍然会失败。结果类似于想法乘以产品乘以执行乘以团队乘以运气，其中运气是一个介于 0 到 10,000 之间的随机数，就是这么多。

[段 5]

But if you do really well in the four areas you can control, you have a good chance at at least some amount of success. One of the exciting things about startups is that they are surprisingly even playing field. Young and inexperienced? You can do this. Old and very experienced? You can do this too. And one of the things that I particularly like about startups is that some of the things that are bad in other work situations, like being poor and unknown, are actually huge assets when it comes to starting a startup. Before we jump in on the how, I want to talk about why you should start a startup. I’m somewhat hesitant to be doing this class at all, because you should never start a startup just for the sake of doing so.

[译文 5]

但如果你真的在这四个你能控制的领域做得很好，你至少有相当的成功机会。创业公司令人兴奋的事情之一是，它们是出人意料的公平竞技场。年轻且缺乏经验？你可以做这个。年纪大且经验丰富？你也可以做这个。我特别喜欢创业公司的一点是，一些在其他工作环境中糟糕的事情，比如贫穷和默默无闻，实际上在创业时是非常大的优势。在我们进入如何做的部分之前，我想谈谈为什么你应该创业。我对开设这门课有些犹豫，因为你绝不应该为了创业而创业。

[段 6]

There are much easier ways to get rich, and everyone who starts a startup always says, always, that they couldn’t have imagined how hard and painful it was going to be. You should only start a startup if you feel compelled by a particular problem, and that you think starting a company is the best way to solve it. The specific passion should come first, and the startup second. In fact, all of the big successes we have at YC followed this. So for the second half of today’s lecture, Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook and Asana, is going to take over and talk about why to start a startup. We were so surprised by the amount of attention that this class got that we want to make sure we spend a lot of time on the why.

[译文 6]

有更容易的方法致富，每一个创业的人总是说，总是说，他们无法想象这会有多艰难和痛苦。你只有在被一个特定的问题所驱使，并且你认为创办公司是解决这个问题的最佳方式时，才应该创业。具体的热情应该先来，创业其次。事实上，我们在 YC 的所有大成功都遵循这个模式。所以今天讲座的下半部分，Dustin Moskovitz，Facebook 和 Asana 的联合创始人，将接手并谈论为什么要创业。我们对这门课受到的关注感到非常惊讶，所以我们想确保我们花很多时间在为什么上。

[段 7]

Okay, so the first of the four areas: a great idea. It’s become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s almost uncool to spend a lot of time thinking about the idea for a startup. You’re just supposed to start, throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks, and not even spend any time thinking about if it’ll be valuable if it works. And pivots are supposed to be great. The more pivots the better. So this isn’t totally wrong. Things do evolve in ways that are difficult to predict, and there’s a limit to how much you can figure out without actually getting a product in the hands of users. And great execution is at least ten times more important and 100 times harder than a good idea.

[译文 7]

好的，所以四个领域中的第一个：一个伟大的想法。近年来，说想法不重要已经变得很流行了。事实上，花很多时间思考创业想法几乎是不酷的。你就应该开始，把东西扔到墙上，看看什么能粘住，甚至不花任何时间思考如果它成功了是否会有价值。枢轴被认为是伟大的。枢轴越多越好。这并不完全错误。事情确实会以难以预测的方式发展，在真正将产品交到用户手中之前，你能弄清楚的有限。伟大的执行至少比好想法重要十倍，难一百倍。

[段 8]

But the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot-happy world that we’re in today feels really suboptimal. Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere. There are exceptions, of course, but most great companies start with a great idea, not a pivot. If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something the founders themselves wanted, not a random made-up idea. Airbnb happened because Brian Chesky couldn’t pay his rent, but he did have some extra space. In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don’t become big companies. I myself used to believe ideas didn’t matter that much, but I’m very sure that’s wrong now.

[译文 8]

但钟摆已经摆得太远了。一个坏想法仍然是坏想法，我们今天这个热衷于枢轴的世界感觉真的不是最优的。对一个糟糕的想法进行出色的执行不会让你有任何进展。当然有例外，但大多数伟大的公司都是从伟大的想法开始的，而不是从枢轴。如果你看看成功的枢轴，它们几乎总是转向创始人自己真正想要的东西，而不是一个随机编造的想法。Airbnb 发生是因为 Brian Chesky 付不起房租，但他确实有一些多余的空间。但总的来说，如果你看看枢轴的记录，它们并没有成为大公司。我以前确实相信想法不那么重要，但我非常确定那是错误的。

[段 9]

The definition of the idea, as we talk about it, is very broad. It includes the size and the growth of the market, the growth strategy for the company, the defensibility strategy, and so on. When you’re evaluating an idea, you need to think through all these things, not just the product. If it works out, you’re going to be working on this for 10 years. So it’s worth some real upfront time to think through the long-term value and the defensibility of the business. Even though plans themselves are worthless, the exercise of planning is really valuable and totally missing in most startups today. Long-term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups, that it’s a huge advantage if you do it.

[译文 9]

我们谈论的想法的定义是非常广泛的。它包括市场的规模和增长、公司的增长策略、防御策略等等。当你在评估一个想法时，你需要思考所有这些事情，而不仅仅是产品。如果它成功了，你将为此工作 10 年。所以值得在上花一些真正的时间来思考长期价值和业务的可防御性。尽管计划本身毫无价值，但计划的过程是非常有价值的，而且在今天的大多数创业公司中完全缺失。长期思考在任何地方都很罕见，但在创业公司中尤其如此，如果你这样做，这是一个巨大的优势。

[段 10]

Remember that the idea will expand and become more ambitious as you go. You certainly don’t need to have everything figured out, from a path from here to world domination, but you really want a nice kernel to start with. You want something that can develop in interesting ways. As you’re thinking through ideas, another thing that we see young founders get wrong all the time is that someday you need to build a business that’s difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea. I want to make this point again because it’s so important. The idea should come first, and the startup should come second. Wait to start a startup until you come up with an idea you feel compelled to explore.

[译文 10]

请记住，随着你的进展，这个想法会扩展并变得更加雄心勃勃。当然，你不需要把从现在到统治世界的所有路径都想清楚，但你确实需要一个好的核心开始。你想要一些能够以有趣方式发展的东西。当你在思考想法时，我们看到年轻创始人一直犯错的另一件事是，有一天你需要建立一家难以复制的企业。这是好想法的重要组成部分。我想再强调这一点，因为它非常重要。想法应该第一，创业应该第二。等到你想出一个你感到必须探索的想法时再创业。

[段 11]

This is also the way to choose between multiple ideas. If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about most often when you’re not trying to think about work. But we hear again and again from founders that they wish they had waited to start a startup until they came up with an idea they really loved. Another way of looking at this is that the best companies are almost always mission-oriented. It’s difficult to get large groups of people to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need for a startup to be successful, unless the company feels like an important mission. And it’s usually really hard to get that without a great founding idea.

[译文 11]

这也是在一多个想法之间做出选择的方式。如果你有几个看起来都相当不错的想法，就做那个当你不试图想工作的事情时你最常想到的想法。但我们一次又一次地听到创始人们说，他们希望自己等到想出一个他们真正热爱的想法再创业。另一种看待这个问题的方式是，最好的公司几乎总是使命驱动的。除非公司感觉像是一个重要的使命，否则很难让大群人达到创业成功所需的那种极端专注和生产力水平。没有一个伟大的创始想法，通常真的很难做到这一点。

[段 12]

A related advantage of mission-oriented ideas is that you yourself will be dedicated to them. It takes years and years, usually a decade, to create a great startup. If you don’t love and believe in what you’re building, it’s very unlikely that you’ll put in the kind of work that’s required to make it great. You’re likely to give up at some point along the way. There’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters. A lot of founders, especially students, believe that their startup is only going to take two or three years, and then after that they’ll work on what they’re really passionate about. That almost never works.

[译文 12]

使命驱动想法的一个相关优势是你自己会全身心投入。创建一个伟大的创业公司通常需要很多年，通常是十年。如果你不爱也不相信你正在建设的东西，你非常不可能投入那种使之伟大所需的工作。你很可能会在某个时候放弃。没有我知道的方法可以在不相信这个使命真的重要的情况下度过创业的痛苦。很多创始人，尤其是学生，相信他们的创业只会花两三年，然后在那之后他们将致力于他们真正热情的东西。这几乎从来没有成功过。

[段 13]

Good startups usually take ten years. A third advantage of mission-oriented companies is that people outside the company are more willing to help you. You’ll get more support on a hard, important project than a derivative one. When it comes to starting startups, in many ways it’s easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup. This is one of those counterintuitive things that takes people a long time to understand. It’s difficult to overstate how important being mission-driven is, so I want to emphasize it one last time. Derivative companies, companies that copy an existing idea with very few new insights, don’t excite people and they don’t compel the teams to work hard enough to be successful. Paul Graham is going to talk about how to get startup ideas next week.

[译文 13]

好的创业通常需要十年。使命驱动型公司的第三个优势是，公司外部的人更愿意帮助你。在一个艰难的、重要项目中，你会得到比一个衍生项目更多的支持。当谈到创业时，在很多方面开始一个艰难的创业比一个容易的创业更容易。这是那些需要人们很长时间才能理解的反直觉的事情之一。很难夸大使命感的重要性，所以我想最后一次强调它。衍生公司，复制一个现有想法而几乎没有新见解的公司，不会让人兴奋，也不会促使团队足够努力地工作以取得成功。Paul Graham 下周将讨论如何获得创业想法。

[段 14]

It’s something that a lot of founders struggle with, but it’s something I believe you can get better at with practice, and it’s definitely worth trying to get better at. The hardest part about coming up with great ideas is that the best ideas often look terrible at the beginning. The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless. Search was done, and anyway, it didn’t matter that much. Portals were where the value was at. The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. MySpace had won, and who wants college students as customers? Or a way to stay on strangers’ couches. That just sounds terrible all around.

[译文 14]

这是很多创始人都在纠结的事情，但我相信你可以通过练习变得更好，而且绝对值得努力改进。想出伟大想法最难的部分是，最好的想法在开始时往往看起来很糟糕。第 13 个搜索引擎，而且没有网页门户的所有功能，大多数人认为那是毫无意义的。搜索已经完成了，而且无论如何，它也不是那么重要。门户才是有价值的所在。第 10 个社交网络，而且只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。Myspace 已经赢了，而且谁想要大学生作为客户？或者一种留在陌生人沙发上的方式。这听起来到处都是可怕的。

[段 15]

These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them. As Peter Thiel is going to discuss in the fifth class, you want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can’t get a monopoly in a big market right away. Too much competition for that. You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly and then quickly expand. This is why some great startup ideas look really bad at the beginning. It’s good if you can say something like, Today, only the small subset of users are going to use my product, but I’m going to get all of them, and in the future, almost everyone will use my product.

[译文 15]

这些听起来都很糟糕，但它们结果都很好。如果它们听起来很好，就会有太多人在做这些。就像 Peter Thiel 将在第五节课讨论的那样，你需要一个能变成垄断的想法。但你不能立即在一个大市场获得垄断。那样竞争太大了。你必须找到一个你可以获得垄断的小市场，然后快速扩展。这就是为什么一些伟大的创业想法在开始时看起来真的很糟糕。如果你能说类似这样的话就好了：今天，只有一小部分用户会使用我的产品，但我会得到他们所有人，而在未来，几乎每个人都会使用我的产品。

[段 16]

Here’s a theme that’s going to come up a lot. You need conviction in your own beliefs and a willingness to ignore others’ naysaying. The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There’s right on one side of it and crazy on the other. But keep in mind that if you do come up with a great idea, most people are going to think it’s bad. You should be happy about that, because it means they won’t compete with you. This is also a reason why it’s not usually dangerous to tell people about your idea. The truly good ideas don’t sound like they’re worth stealing. You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one.

[译文 16]

这里有一个会反复出现的主题。你需要对自己信念的坚定，以及忽视他人反对意见的意愿。困难的部分是这是一条非常细微的线。一边是对的，另一边是疯狂的。但请记住，如果你真的想出了一个伟大的想法，大多数人都会认为它很糟糕。你应该为此感到高兴，因为这意味着他们不会与你竞争。这也是为什么通常告诉别人你的想法并不危险。真正的好想法听起来不值得被偷。你想听到一个你能说的想法。我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但这里具体来说为什么它实际上是个好主意。

[段 17]

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. And you want an idea that not many other people are working on. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. Common mistake among founders, especially first-time founders, is they think that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, needs to sound really big, but it doesn’t. It needs to take over a small, specific market and expand from there. That’s how most great companies have started. Unpopular but right is what you’re going for. You want something that sounds like a bad idea, but is a good idea. You also really want to take the time to think about how the market’s going to evolve.

[译文 17]

你想听起来疯狂，但你实际上是想对的。你想要一个没有其他很多人在做的想法。一开始听起来不大也没关系。创始人中常见的错误，尤其是第一次创业的创始人，是他们认为他们的产品的第一个版本，他们的想法的第一个版本需要听起来真的很大，但不是这样的。它需要占领一个小的、特定的市场，然后从那里扩展。这是大多数伟大公司的开始方式。不受欢迎但正确是你的目标。你想要一些听起来像坏主意但实际上是好主意的东西。你也真的想花时间思考市场将如何演变。

[段 18]

You need a market that’s going to be big in 10 years. Most investors are obsessed with the market size today, and they don’t think at all about how the market’s going to evolve. In fact, I think this is one of the biggest systemic mistakes that investors make. They think about the growth of the startup itself. They don’t think about the growth of the market. I care much more about the growth rate of the market than its current size. And I also care if there’s any reason that it’s going to top out. You should think about this. I prefer to invest in a company that’s going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one.

[译文 18]

你需要一个十年后会很大的市场。大多数投资者痴迷于今天的市场规模，他们根本不考虑市场将如何演变。事实上，我认为这是投资者犯的最大系统性错误之一。他们考虑的是创业公司本身的增长。他们不考虑市场的增长。我更关心市场的增长率而不是它的当前规模。我也关心是否有任何原因表明它将达到顶峰。你应该考虑这个。我更愿意投资一家追求小但快速增长的市场，而不是大但增长缓慢的市场。

[段 19]

One of the big advantages of these sorts of markets, these small but rapidly growing markets, is that customers are usually pretty desperate for a solution, and they’ll put up with an imperfect but rapidly improving product. And a big advantage of being a student, one of the two biggest advantages, is that you probably have better intuition about which markets are likely to start growing rapidly than older people do. Another thing that students usually don’t understand, or at least takes a while, is you cannot create a market that doesn’t want to exist. You can basically change everything in a startup but the market. So you should actually do some thinking to be sure, or at least as sure as you can be, that the market you’re going after is going to grow and be there.

[译文 19]

这些类型市场的一个大优势，这些小但快速增长的市场，是客户通常非常渴望一个解决方案，他们会忍受一个不完美但快速改进的产品。作为学生的最大优势之一，两个最大优势之一，是你可能比年长的人对哪些市场可能开始快速增长有更好的直觉。学生通常不理解的另一件事，或者至少需要一段时间才能理解的，是你无法创造一个不想存在的市场。你几乎可以改变创业公司的一切，但市场不行。所以你实际上应该做一些思考来确保，或者至少尽可能确定，你要进入的市场将会增长并存在。

[段 20]

There are a lot of different ways to talk about the right kind of market. For example, surfing someone else’s wave or stepping into an up elevator or being part of a movement. But all of this is just a way of saying you want a market that’s going to grow really quickly. It may seem small today, it may be small today, but you know, and other people don’t, that it’s going to grow really fast. So think about where this is happening in the world. You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful. The exciting thing is there are probably more of these tailwinds now than ever before. As Mark Andreessen says, software is eating the world.

[译文 20]

有很多不同的方式来谈论正确类型的市场。例如，乘他人的浪潮，或者踏入上升的电梯，或者成为运动的一部分。但所有这些只是一种说法，你想要一个会快速增长的市场。它今天可能看起来很小，它可能今天很小，但你知道，而其他人不知道，它会快速增长。所以想想世界上正在哪里发生这种情况。你需要这种顺风来使创业成功。令人兴奋的是，现在可能有比以往更多的这种顺风。正如 Mark Andreessen 所说，软件正在吞噬世界。

[段 21]

It’s just everywhere. There are so many great ideas out there. You just have to pick one and find one that you really care about. Another version of this that gets down to the same idea is Sequoia’s famous question. Why now? Why is this the perfect time for this particular idea and to start this particular company? Why couldn’t it have been done two years ago? And why will two years in the future be too late? For the most successful startups we’ve been involved with, they’ve all had a great idea, great answer to this question. And if you don’t, you should be at least somewhat suspicious about it. In general, it’s best if you’re building something that you yourself need.

[译文 21]

它无处不在。有这么多好想法。你只需要选择一个并找到一个你真正关心的。还有一个版本可以归结为同样的想法，那就是红杉资本的著名问题。为什么是现在？为什么现在是这个特定想法和创办这个特定公司的完美时机？为什么两年前不能做？为什么两年后会太晚？对于我们参与的最成功的创业公司，它们都有一个伟大的想法，对这个问题的出色回答。如果你没有，你至少应该对此有所怀疑。一般来说，最好是你在构建你自己需要的东西。

[段 22]

You’ll understand it much better than if you have to understand it by talking to a customer to build the very first version. If you don’t need it yourself, and you’re building something that someone else needs, realize that you’re at a big disadvantage and get very, very close to your customers. Try to work in their office if you can, and if not, talk to them multiple times a day. Another somewhat counterintuitive thing about good startup ideas is that they’re almost always very easy to explain and very easy to understand. If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you’re doing, it’s almost always a sign that it’s too complicated. It should be a clearly articulated vision with a small number of words.

[译文 22]

你会比你必须通过与客户交谈来理解它要好得多，要构建最初的版本。如果你不需要它，你正在构建别人需要的东西，意识到你处于很大的劣势，要非常非常接近你的客户。如果可以的话，试着在他们的办公室工作，如果不行，每天多次与他们交谈。关于好的创业想法，另一个有些反直觉的事情是，它们几乎总是很容易解释，很容易理解。如果解释你在做什么需要超过一句话，这几乎总是一个信号，表明它太复杂了。它应该是一个用少数几个词清晰表达愿景。

[段 23]

And the best ideas are usually either very different from existing companies in one important way, like Google being a search engine that worked just really well and none of the other stuff of the portals, or totally new like SpaceX. Any company that’s a clone of something else that already exists with some small or made-up differentiator. Like, we’re going to be X: beautiful design, or we’re going to be Y: for people that like red wine instead, that usually fails. So, as I mentioned, one of the great things about being a student is that you have a very good perspective on new technology. And learning to get good at having new ideas takes a while, so start working on that right now.

[译文 23]

最好的想法通常要么在一个重要方面与现有公司非常不同，比如 Google 作为一个真正很好用的搜索引擎，而不是门户的所有其他东西，要么完全是全新的，比如 SpaceX。任何公司都是对已经存在的某物的克隆，带有一些小的或编造的不同点。比如，我们将成为 X：美丽的设计，或者我们将成为 Y：针对喜欢红酒的人，那通常会失败。所以，正如我提到的，作为学生的一个很棒的事情是你对新科技有非常好的视角。学会善于产生新想法需要一段时间，所以现在就开始努力吧。

[段 24]

That’s one thing we hear from people all the time: that they wish they had done more of when they were a student. The other is meeting potential co-founders. You have no idea how good of an environment you’re in right now for meeting people that you can start a company with down the road. And the one thing that we always tell college students is: more important than starting any particular startup is getting to know a lot of potential co-founders. So I want to finish this section of my talk with a quote from 50 Cent. This is… With a quote from 50 Cent. This is from when he was asked about vitamin water. I won’t read it.

[译文 24]

这是我们经常从人们那里听到的事情之一：他们希望当他们是学生时做了更多的事情。另一件事是结识潜在的联合创始人。你不知道你现在所处的环境对于结识那些你以后可以一起创业的人来说有多好。我们总是告诉大学生的是：比开始任何特定的创业更重要的是，认识很多潜在的联合创始人。所以我想用 50 Cent 的一句引言来结束我讲话的这部分。这是……用 50 Cent 的一句引言。这是当他被问及维生素水时说的。我不会读它。

[段 25]

It’s up there. But it’s about the importance of thinking about what customers want and thinking about the demands of the market. Most people don’t do this. Most students especially don’t do this. If you can just do this one thing, if you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups. And this is something — this is probably the thing that we see wrong with Y Combinator apps most frequently — is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first. So for the next section, I’m going to talk about building a great product, and here again I’m going to use a very broad definition of product.

[译文 25]

它在上面。但它是关于思考客户想要什么和思考市场需求的重要性。大多数人不这样做。尤其大多数学生不这样做。如果你只做这一件事，如果你只学会首先考虑市场，你将在大多数创业的人中拥有很大的优势。这是我们看到 Y Combinator 申请中最常出错的事情——人们没有首先考虑市场和人们想要什么。所以对于下一部分，我将谈论构建一个伟大的产品，在这里我再次使用一个非常广泛的产品定义。

[段 26]

It includes customer support and copyright, explaining the product, anything involved in your customer’s interaction with what you built from them. To build a really great company, you first have to turn a great idea into a great product. This is really hard, but it’s crucially important, and fortunately it’s pretty fun. Although great products are always new to the world, and it’s hard to give you advice about what to build, there are enough commonalities that we can give you a lot of advice about how to build it. One of the most important tasks for a founder is to make sure that the company builds a great product. Until you’ve built a great product, almost nothing else matters.

[译文 26]

它包括客户服务和版权，解释产品，你的客户与你所构建的任何交互。要建立一个真正伟大的公司，你首先必须把一个伟大的想法变成一个伟大的产品。这真的很难，但它是至关重要的，幸运的是它相当有趣。虽然伟大的产品总是对世界来说是新的，给你关于构建什么的建议很难，但我们有足够的共同点可以给你很多关于如何构建它的建议。对于创始人来说，最重要的任务之一是确保公司构建了一个伟大的产品。在你构建了一个伟大的产品之前，几乎其他一切都不重要。

[段 27]

When really successful startup founders tell the story of their early days, it’s almost always sitting in front of the computer working on their product or talking to their customers. That’s pretty much all the time. They do very little else. And you should be very skeptical if your time allocation is much different. Most other problems that founders are trying to solve — raising money, getting more press, hiring, business development, etc. — these are significantly easier when you have a great product. It’s really important to take care of that first. Step one is to build something that users love. At YC, we tell founders to work on their product, talk to users, exercise, and sleep, and very little else.

[译文 27]

当真正成功的创业公司创始人讲述他们早期的故事时，几乎总是在电脑前工作于他们的产品或与客户交谈。几乎所有时间都是这样。他们做很少的其他事情。如果你的时间分配与此有很大不同，你应该非常怀疑。大多数其他创始人试图解决的问题——融资、获得更多媒体报道、招聘、业务发展等——当你有一个伟大的产品时，这些都会容易得多。首先照顾好这一点真的很重要。第一步是构建用户喜欢的东西。在 YC，我们告诉创始人专注于他们的产品，与用户交谈，锻炼，睡觉，很少做其他事情。

[段 28]

All the other stuff I just mentioned — PR, conferences, recruiting advisors, doing partnerships — you should ignore all of that and just build a product and then get it as good as possible by talking to your users. Your job is to build something that users love. Very few companies that go on to be super successful get there without first doing this. A lot of good-on-paper startups fail because they merely make something that people like. Making something that people want but only a medium amount is a great way to fail and not understand why you’re failing. So these are the two jobs. Something that we say at YC a lot is that it’s better to build a small number — it’s better to build something that a small number of users love than a large number of users like.

[译文 28]

我刚才提到的所有其他东西——公关、会议、招聘顾问、做合作伙伴关系——你应该忽略所有这些，只是构建一个产品，然后通过与用户交谈让它尽可能好。你的工作是构建用户喜欢的东西。很少有最终超级成功的公司没有首先做到这一点。很多纸面上看起来不错的创业公司失败是因为它们只是做出了人们喜欢的东西。做出人们想要但只是一般程度喜欢的东西是失败且不理解为什么失败的好方法。所以这是两个工作。我们在 YC 经常说的一件事是，构建少量用户非常喜欢的东西比构建大量用户有点喜欢的东西更好。

[段 29]

Of course it’d be best to build something that a small number of users love, but opportunities to do that for V1 are rare, and they’re usually not available to startups. So in practice you end up choosing either the gray or the orange. You make something that a lot of users like a little bit, or something that a small number of users love a lot. And this is a very important piece of advice: build something that a small number of users love. It’s much easier to expand from something that a small number of people love to something that a lot of people love than from something that a lot of people like to a lot of people love.

[译文 29]

当然，最好是构建大量用户非常喜欢的东西。但在实践中，V1 这样做的机会很少，而且它们通常对创业公司不可用。所以在实践中，你最终会在灰色或橙色之间选择。你要么构建大量用户有点喜欢的东西，要么构建少量用户非常喜欢的东西。这是一条非常重要的建议：构建少量用户非常喜欢的东西。从少量人喜欢的东西扩展到大量人喜欢的东西比从大量人有点喜欢的东西扩展到大量人非常喜欢的东西要容易得多。

[段 30]

If you get this right, you can get a lot of other things wrong. If you don’t get this right, you can get everything else right and you’ll probably still fail. So when you start in the startup, this is the only thing you need to care about until it’s working. Sure. So you have a choice in a startup. The best thing of all worlds would be to build a product that a lot of people really love. In practice, you can’t usually do that, because a big company — if there’s an opportunity like that, Google or Facebook will do it. There’s a limit to the area under the curve of what you can build. And you can either build something that a lot of users like a little bit, or you can build something that a small number of users love a lot.

[译文 30]

如果你做对了这一点，你可以犯很多其他错误。如果你没有做对这一点，你可以把其他一切都做对，但你可能仍然会失败。所以当你在创业公司开始时，这是你唯一需要关心的直到它运转起来。是的。所以在创业公司你有选择。最好的情况是构建大量用户非常喜欢的产品。在实践中，你通常不能这样做，因为一个大公司——如果有这样的机会，Google 或 Facebook 会去做。曲线下面积有你所能构建的是有限制的。你要么构建大量用户有点喜欢的东西，要么构建少量用户非常喜欢的东西。

[段 31]

And like the total amount of love is the same. It’s just a question of how it’s distributed. And there’s like this law of conservation of how much happiness you can put into the world with the first product of a startup. And so startups always struggle with which of those two they should go. And they seem equal, right? Because the area under the curve is the same. But we’ve seen this time and again that they’re not. And that it’s so much easier to expand. Once you’ve got something that some people love, you can expand that to something that a lot of other people love. But if you only get ambivalence, or sort of like weak enthusiasm, and then try to expand that, you’ll never get up to a lot of people loving it.

[译文 31]

而且爱的总量是一样的。这只是一个如何分配的问题。就像有一个守恒定律，关于你用创业公司的第一个产品可以为世界创造多少幸福。所以创业公司总是在纠结应该选择这两者中的哪一个。它们看起来相等，对吧？因为曲线下的面积是一样的。但我们一次又一次地看到它们不是。而且扩展要容易得多。一旦你有了人们喜欢的东西，你就可以将其扩展到其他很多人也喜欢的东西。但如果你只得到矛盾，或者某种弱的热情，然后试图扩展，你永远不会达到很多人喜欢它。

[段 32]

So the advice is: find a small group of users and make them really love what you’re doing. That make sense? All right. One way that you know when this is working is that you’ll get growth by word of mouth. If you make something people love, people will tell their friends about it. This works for consumer products and enterprise products as well. When people really love something, they tell their friends about it, and you’ll see organic growth. If you find yourself talking about how it’s okay that you’re not growing because there’s a big partnership that’s going to come save you or something like that, it’s almost always a sign of real trouble. Sales and marketing are really important, and we’re going to have two classes on them later.

[译文 32]

所以建议是：找到一小群用户，让他们真正喜欢你正在做的事情。合理吗？好的。知道这正在起作用的一种方式是，你会通过口碑获得增长。如果你让人们喜欢某样东西，他们会告诉他们的朋友。这对消费者产品和企业产品都有效。当人们真的喜欢某样东西时，他们会告诉他们的朋友，你会看到有机增长。如果你发现自己谈论说虽然你没有增长但没关系，因为会有一个大合作伙伴来拯救你或类似的事情，这几乎总是真正麻烦的信号。销售和营销确实很重要，我们稍后会有两节课讲它们。

[段 33]

But if you don’t have some early organic growth, then your product probably isn’t good enough yet. A great product is the secret to long-term growth hacking. You should get that right before you worry about anything else. It doesn’t get easier to put off making a great product. If you try to build a growth machine before you have a product that some people really love, you’re almost certainly going to waste your time. Breakout companies almost always have a product that’s so good that it grows by word of mouth. Over the long run, great products win. Don’t worry about your competitors raising a lot of money and what they may do in the future. They probably aren’t very good anyway.

[译文 33]

但如果你没有一些早期的有机增长，那么你的产品可能还不够好。一个伟大的产品是长期增长黑客的秘密。你应该在担心其他事情之前先把这一点做好。推迟制作一个伟大的产品不会变得更容易。如果你在有一个人们真正喜欢的产品之前就试图建立一个增长机器，你几乎肯定会浪费你的时间。突破性的公司几乎总是有一个通过口碑增长的好产品。从长远来看，伟大的产品会胜出。不要担心你的竞争对手融了很多钱以及他们未来可能做什么。他们可能不太好。

[段 34]

Very few startups die from competition. Most die because they themselves fail to make something users love. They spend their time on other things. So worry about this above all else. Another piece of advice: to make something that users love, start with something simple. It’s much, much easier to make a great product if you have something simple. Even if your eventual plans are super complex — and hopefully they are — you can almost always start with a smaller subset of the problem than whatever you think is the smallest. And it’s hard to build a great product. So you want to start with as little surface area as possible. Think about the really successful companies and what they started with.

[译文 34]

很少有创业公司死于竞争。大多数死于他们自己未能做出用户喜欢的东西。他们把时间花在其他事情上。所以最重要的是担心这件事。另一个建议：为了做出用户喜欢的东西，从简单的东西开始。如果你有一些简单的东西，制作一个伟大的产品要容易得多。即使你最终的计划超级复杂——而且希望你确实如此——你几乎总是可以从比你认为最小的更小的问题子集开始。制作一个伟大的产品是很难的。所以你想从尽可能少的表面积开始。想想那些非常成功的公司以及它们开始时是什么样的。

[段 35]

Think about products that you really love. They’re generally incredibly simple to use and especially to get started using. The first version of Facebook was almost comically simple. The first version of Google was just an ugly web page with a text box and two buttons, but it returned the best results, and that’s why users loved it. The iPhone is far simpler to use than any smartphone that ever came before it, and it was the first one that people really loved. Another reason that simple is good is because it forces you to do one thing extremely well, and you have to do that to make something that people love. The word thematical comes up again and again when you listen to successful founders talk about how they think about their product.

[译文 35]

想想那些你真正喜欢的产品。它们通常使用起来非常简单，尤其是开始使用起来非常简单。Facebook 的第一个版本简单得可笑。Google 的第一个版本只是一个丑陋的网页，上面有一个文本框和两个按钮，但它返回了最好的结果，这就是为什么用户喜欢它。iPhone 比之前任何智能手机都使用简单得多，它是第一个人们真正喜欢的。简单的另一个原因是，因为它迫使你把一件事做得非常好，你必须这样做才能做出人们喜欢的东西。当你听成功的创始人谈论他们如何思考他们的产品时，“狂热"这个词会一次又一次地出现。

[段 36]

Founders talk about being fanatical in the way they care about the quality of the small details, fanatical in getting the copy that they use to explain the product just right, and fanatical in the way they think about customer support. In fact, one thing that correlates with success among the YC companies is the founders that hook up PagerDuty to their ticketing system. So, even if a user emails in the middle of the night when the founders are asleep, they still get a response within an hour. Companies actually do this in the early days. These founders feel physical pain when the product sucks, and they want to wake up and fix it. They don’t ship crap, and if they do, they fix it very, very quickly.

[译文 36]

创始人们谈论在他们关心产品质量的小细节方面是狂热的，在他们用来解释产品的文案方面是狂热的，在他们思考客户服务的方式方面是狂热的。事实上，在 YC 公司中与成功相关的一件事是创始人将 PagerDuty 连接到他们的票务系统。所以，即使用户在半夜发电子邮件，而创始人正在睡觉，他们仍然会在一小时内得到回复。公司在早期确实这样做。这些创始人在产品糟糕时会感到身体上的疼痛，他们想醒来修复它。他们不会发布糟糕的东西，如果这样做了，他们会非常非常快地修复它。

[段 37]

And it definitely takes some level of fanaticism to build a great product. You need some users to help with the feedback cycle. But the way to get those users is manually. You should go recruit them by hand. Don’t do things like buy Google Ads in the early days to get initial users. You don’t need very many. You just need ones that will give you feedback every day and eventually love your product. So instead of trying to get them on Google AdWords, just find a few people in the world that will be good users. Recruit them by hand. Ben Silverman, when everyone thought Pinterest was a joke, recruited the initial Pinterest users by tagging up strangers in coffee shops.

[译文 37]

制作一个伟大的产品确实需要某种程度的狂热。你需要一些用户来帮助反馈循环。但获得那些用户的方式是手动的。你应该亲自去招募他们。在早期不要做像购买 Google 广告来获得初始用户这样的事情。你不需要很多。你只需要那些每天给你反馈并最终喜欢你的产品的人。所以不要在 Google AdWords 上试图让他们找到，只是在世界上找几个会成为好用户的人。亲自招募他们。当每个人都认为 Pinterest 是个笑话时，Ben Silverman 通过在咖啡店里给陌生人打标签亲自招募了最初的 Pinterest 用户。

[段 38]

He really did. He just walked around Palo Alto and said, Will you please use my product? He also used to run around the Apple store in Palo Alto, and he would set all the browsers to the Pinterest homepage real quick before they caught him and kicked him out. So then when people walked in there, they were like, Oh, what is this? This is an important example of doing things that don’t scale. If you haven’t read Paul Graham’s essay on that topic, you definitely should. So get users manually, and remember that the goal is to get a small group of them to love you. Understand that group extremely well. Get extremely close to them. Listen to them, and you’ll almost always find out that they’re very willing to give you feedback.

[译文 38]

他真的这样做了。他只是在 Palo Alto 走来走去，说，你愿意使用我的产品吗？他也曾经在 Palo Alto 的 Apple 店里跑来跑去，他会在他们抓住他并把他赶出去之前快速将所有浏览器设置到 Pinterest 主页。所以当人们走进来时，他们会想，哦，这是什么？这是做不能规模化的事情的一个重要例子。如果你没有读过 Paul Graham 关于那个主题的文章，你绝对应该读。所以手动获取用户，记住目标是让一小群人喜欢你。非常了解那个群体。非常接近他们。听他们说，你几乎总是会发现他们非常愿意给你反馈。

[段 39]

Even if you’re building the product for yourself, listen to outside users, and they’ll tell you how to make a product they’ll pay for. Do whatever you need to make them love you, make them know what you’re doing, because they’re also going to be the advocates that help you get your next users. You want to build an engine in the company that transforms feedback from users into product decisions. Then get it back in front of the users and repeat. Ask them what they like and what they don’t like, and watch them use it. Ask them what they pay for. Ask them if they’d be really bummed if your company went away. Ask them what would make them recommend the product to their friends, and ask them if they’ve recommended it to any yet.

[译文 39]

即使你是为自己构建产品，也要听外部用户，他们会告诉你如何构建一个他们会付费的产品。做任何你需要做的事情让他们喜欢你，让他们知道你在做什么，因为他们也会成为帮助你获得下一个用户的倡导者。你想在公司中建立一个将用户反馈转化为产品决策的引擎。然后把它放回用户面前并重复。问他们喜欢什么，不喜欢什么，看他们使用它。问他们为什么付钱。问他们如果你的公司消失了他们是否真的会非常沮丧。问他们什么会让他们向朋友推荐这个产品，问他们是否已经推荐了。

[段 40]

You should make this feedback loop as tight as possible. If your product gets 10% better every week, that compounds really, really quickly. One of the great advantages of software startups is just how short you can make the feedback loop. It can be measured in hours, and the best companies usually have the tightest feedback loops. You should try to keep this going for all of your company’s life, but it’s really important in the early days. The good news is that all of this is doable. It’s hard, it takes a lot of effort, but there’s no magic. The plan is at least straightforward, and you will eventually get to a great product. Great founders don’t put anyone between themselves and their users.

[译文 40]

你应该让这个反馈循环尽可能紧密。如果你的产品每周改进 10%，那会非常快速地复合。软件创业的优势之一就是你可以让反馈循环有多短。它可以用小时来衡量，最好的公司通常有最紧密的反馈循环。你应该试着在你的公司整个生命周期中都保持这一点，但在早期尤为重要。好消息是这一切都是可行的。它很困难，需要很多努力，但没有魔法。计划至少是直接的，你最终会得到一个伟大的产品。伟大的创始人不会在自己和用户之间放置任何人。

[段 41]

The founders of these companies do things like sales and customer support themselves in the early days. It’s critical to get this loop embedded in the culture. In fact, the specific problem that we always see with Stanford startups for some reason is that the students try and hire sales and customer support people right away. And you’ve got to do this yourself. It’s the only way. You really need to use metrics to keep yourself honest on this. It really is true that the company will build whatever the CEO decides to measure. If you’re building an internet service, ignore things like total registrations. Don’t talk about them. Don’t let anyone in the company talk about them. And look at growth in active users, activity levels, cohort retention, revenue, net promoter scores, these things that matter.

[译文 41]

这些公司的创始人在早期自己做销售和客户支持之类的事情。将这个循环嵌入文化中是至关重要的。事实上，我们总是在斯坦福创业公司看到的一个具体问题是，学生试图立即雇用销售和客户支持人员。而你必须自己做。这是唯一的方法。你真的需要使用指标来让自己保持诚实。确实是这样，公司会构建 CEO 决定衡量的任何东西。如果你在构建一个互联网服务，忽略总注册量这样的东西。不要谈论它们。不要让公司里的任何人谈论它们。看看活跃用户增长、活动水平、队列留存、收入、净推荐值这些重要的事情。

[段 42]

And then be brutally honest if they aren’t going in the right direction. Startups live on growth. It’s the indicator of a great product. So this about wraps up the overview on building a great product. I want to emphasize again that if you don’t get this right, nothing else we talk about in the class will matter. You can basically ignore everything else that we talk about until this is working well. On the positive side, this is one of the most fun parts of building a startup. So I’m going to pause here. I’ll pick back up with the rest of this on Thursday. And now we’re going to have Dustin talk about why you should start a startup.

[译文 42]

然后如果它们没有朝着正确的方向发展，要残酷地诚实。创业公司靠增长生存。这是伟大产品的指标。所以这基本上就是构建伟大产品的概述。我要再次强调，如果你没有做对这一点，我们在课堂上谈论的其他任何事情都不重要。在这一点运转良好之前，你基本上可以忽略我们讨论的其他所有事情。从积极的一面来看，这是构建创业公司最有趣的部分之一。所以我在这里暂停。我将在周四继续讲剩下的内容。现在我们将让 Dustin 谈谈为什么你应该创业。

[段 43]

Thank you for coming, Dustin. Sure. But yeah, so Sam asked me to talk about why you should start a startup. There’s a bunch of reasons you might have, and there’s a bunch of common reasons that people have that I hear all the time for why you might start a startup. It’s important to know what reason is yours, because some of them only make sense in certain contexts. Some of them will actually lead you astray. You may have been misled by the way that Hollywood or the press likes to romanticize entrepreneurship. So I want to try and illuminate some of those potential fallacies so you guys can make the decision in a clear way. And then I’ll talk about the reason I like best for actually starting a startup.

[译文 43]

谢谢你出席，Dustin。是的。但是的，Sam 让我谈谈为什么你应该创业。有很多你可能有的理由，有很多我经常听到的人们创业的常见理由。知道你的理由是什么很重要，因为其中一些只在某些情况下有意义。其中一些实际上会误导你。你可能已经被好莱坞或媒体浪漫化创业的方式误导了。所以我想尝试阐明其中一些潜在的谬误，这样你们可以以一种清晰的方式做出决定。然后我会谈论我最喜欢创业的真正原因。

[段 44]

It’s very related to a lot of what Sam just talked about, but surprisingly I don’t think it’s the most common reason. Usually people have one of these other reasons, or they just want to start a company for the sake of starting a company. So the four common reasons, just to enumerate them, are: it’s glamorous, you’ll get to be the boss, you’ll have flexibility, especially over your schedule, and you’ll have the chance to have bigger impact and make more money than you might by joining a later stage company. So, okay, so you guys are probably pretty familiar with this concept. When I wrote the Medium post, which a lot of you guys read a year ago, I felt like the story in the press was a little more unbalanced.

[译文 44]

它与 Sam 刚才谈到的很多内容非常相关，但令人惊讶的是，我认为它不是最常见的原因。通常人们有这些其他原因之一，或者他们只是为创业而创业。所以四个常见的原因，列举一下：是 glamorous的，你可以成为老板，你将有灵活性，尤其是对时间表的灵活性，而且你将有比加入后期公司更大的影响力和赚更多钱的机会。所以，好的，你们可能对这个概念很熟悉。当我写 Medium 帖子时，你们中很多人在一年前读过它，我觉得媒体中的故事有点更不平衡。

[段 45]

Entrepreneurship just got romanticized quite a bit. The movie The Social Network came out, had a lot of sort of like bad aspects of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, but mainly sort of painted this picture of like there’s a lot of partying, and you kind of move from like one brilliant insight to another brilliant insight, and really made it seem like this really cool thing to do. And I think the reality is just not quite so glamorous. There’s an ugly side to being an entrepreneur. And also just more importantly, What you’re actually spending your time on is just a lot of hard work. Sam mentioned this, but you’re basically just sitting at your desk, heads down, focused, answering customer support, focused, answering customer support emails, doing sales, figuring out hard engineering problems.

[译文 45]

创业被相当浪漫化了。电影《社交网络》上映了，有很多关于创业是什么样子的负面方面，但主要描绘了这样的画面：有很多派对，你从一次辉煌的洞察力跳到另一次辉煌的洞察力，真的让它看起来像是一件很酷的事情。我认为现实并不是那么 glamorous。创业有一个丑陋的一面。更重要的是，你实际上把时间花在什么上面只是很多艰苦的工作。Sam 提到了这个，但你基本上只是坐在你的办公桌前，低头专注，回答客户支持，专注，回答客户支持电子邮件，做销售，解决困难的工程问题。

[段 46]

So it’s really important that you kind of like go in with eyes wide open. And then also it’s really quite stressful. This has been a popular topic in the press lately. The Economist actually ran a story just last week called like Entrepreneurs Anonymous and shows like a founder kind of like hiding under his desk and talking about like founder depression. This is like a very real thing. Like, you know, let’s be real about this. If you start a company, it’s going to be extremely hard. Why is it so stressful? So a couple of reasons. One is you’ve got a lot of responsibility. So people in any kind of career have fear of failure. It’s kind of just like a dominant part of the psychology.

[译文 46]

所以真的很重要的是你要睁开眼睛走进去。然后它也真的很有压力。这最近在媒体上是一个热门话题。《经济学人》实际上上周刊登了一篇名为《创业者匿名》的报道，展示了一个创始人躲在办公桌下谈论创业者抑郁症。这是一个非常真实的事情。比如，让我们诚实面对这个。如果你创办一家公司，它将会极其艰难。为什么它如此有压力？所以有几个原因。一个是你有很多责任。所以任何职业中的人都有对失败的恐惧。它在某种程度上只是心理学的一个主导部分。

[段 47]

But when you’re an entrepreneur, you have fear of failure on behalf of yourself and all of the people who decided to follow you. So that’s really stressful. In some cases, these people are depending on you for their livelihood. Even when that’s not true, they have decided to devote the best years of their life to following you. And so you’re responsible for the opportunity cost of their time. So that’s a big deal. And you’re always on call if something comes up. Maybe not always at 3 in the morning, but for some startups that’s true. But if something important comes up, you’re going to deal with it. That’s kind of the end of the story. It doesn’t matter if you’re on vacation.

[译文 47]

但当你是一个创业者时，你为自己和所有决定跟随你的人承担失败的恐惧。所以这真的很有压力。在某些情况下，这些人依靠你获得生计。即使那不是真的，他们已经决定将他们生命中最美好的岁月奉献给你跟随你。所以你要为他们时间的成本负责。所以这是一件大事。而且你总是随时候命。如果有事情发生，也许不总是在凌晨 3 点，但对一些创业公司来说是真实的。但如果有什么重要的事情发生，你就会处理它。这是故事的结尾。不管你是否在度假都没关系。

[段 48]

It doesn’t matter if it’s the weekend. You’ve kind of always got to be on the ball and always be in a place mentally where you’re prepared to deal with those things. And then a sort of special example of that stress is fundraising. So a scene from The Social Network, this is us partying and working at the same time. Somebody’s spraying champagne everywhere. So The Social Network spends a lot of time painting these scenes. Mark’s not in the scene. The other thing they spend all their time on is kind of like painting him out to be a huge jerk. This computer? Yeah. OK. So this is an actual scene from Palo Alto. I spent a lot of time at this desk, just kind of heads down in focus.

[译文 48]

不管是周末都没有关系。你基本上必须始终保持警觉，始终处于一个准备好处理这些事情的精神状态。然后一种特殊的压力例子是融资。《社交网络》中的一个场景，这是我们同时派对和工作的地方。有人到处喷香槟。所以《社交网络》花了很多时间描绘这些场景。Mark 不在那个场景里。他们花所有时间做的另一件事是把他描绘成一个巨大的混蛋。这台电脑？是的。好的。所以这是 Palo Alto 的一个真实场景。我在这张桌子前花了很多时间，只是低头专注。

[段 49]

Mark was still kind of a jerk sometimes, but in this more like fun, lovable way and not a like sociopathic, scorned lover way. So this is him like signaling his intention to just be focused and keep working, not be social. So then there’s also the scene sort of demonstrating the like brilliant insight moment. It’s kind of like straight out of A Beautiful Mind. Literally stole that scene. So they like to paint it as you just kind of like jump from one of these moments to the other moment with like parting in between, but really we’re just at that table the whole time. So interestingly if you compare this to the other photo, Mark is in the exact same position but he’s wearing different clothes.

[译文 49]

Mark 有时仍然有点像混蛋，但更多是这种有趣的可爱的方式，而不是那种反社会的、被抛弃的爱人的方式。所以这是他表示他打算专注工作、不社交的意图。所以还有另一个场景展示那种辉煌洞察力的时刻。它有点像直接从《美丽心灵》中偷来的。 literally 偷了那个场景。所以他们喜欢把它描绘成你就这样从一个时刻跳到另一个时刻，中间有派对，但实际上我们一直都在那张桌子前。所以有趣的是，如果你比较这张照片，Mark 在完全相同的位置，但他穿着不同的衣服。

[段 50]

This is definitely a different day. So cool, so that’s what it’s actually like in person. And I just covered this bullet up here. This is the Economist article I was talking about a second ago. So another form of stress is just like unwanted media attention. So part of it being glamorous, you get some positive media attention. Sometimes it’s nice to be on the cover of Time and be the person of the year. It’s maybe a little less nice to be on the cover of People with one of your wedding photos. It depends who you are, some people would like that. I’d really hate it. But when Valleywag analyzes your lecture and just tears you apart, you definitely don’t want that.

[译文 50]

这绝对是不同的一天。所以好的，这就是它实际上在现实中的样子。我刚刚盖住了这一个要点。这是《经济学人》文章，我刚才提到的。所以另一种压力是不想要的媒体关注。所以 glamorous 的一部分是你得到一些积极的媒体关注。有时登上《时代》杂志的封面并成为年度人物是很好的。也许上《人物》杂志的封面和你的婚礼照片之一就不那么好了。这取决于你是谁，有些人喜欢那样。我真的会讨厌那样。但是当 Valleywag 分析你的演讲并把你撕成碎片时，你绝对不会想要那样。

[段 51]

Nobody wants that. And then one thing I almost never hear people talk about is you’re just a lot more committed. So if you’re an employee of a startup and things are stressful, it’s not going well, you’re unhappy, you can just leave. For a founder, you can leave, but it’s very uncool. Pretty much a black eye on the rest of your career. And so you really are committed for 10 years, if it’s going well, probably more like five years if it’s not going well. So three years to figure out that it’s not going well, and then if you find a nice landing for your company, another two years at the acquiring company. And if you leave before that, again, it’s not only going to harm yourself financially, it’s going to harm all your employees.

[译文 51]

没有人想要那样。然后我几乎从未听到人们谈论的一件事是你承诺得更多。所以如果你是一家创业公司的员工，事情很有压力，不顺利，你不开心，你可以离开。对于创始人，你可以离开，但这是非常不酷的。几乎是你职业生涯其余部分的污点。所以你真的承诺了 10 年，如果进展不顺利，可能更像是 5 年。所以三年后发现进展不顺利，然后如果你为公司找到了一个好的归宿，在收购公司再待两年。如果你在那之前离开，再次，它不仅会在经济上伤害你自己，还会伤害你所有的员工。

[段 52]

So you pretty much don’t. So if you’re lucky and you have a bad startup idea, you fail quickly, but most of the time it’s not like that. All right, moving right along. And I should say I’ve had a lot of this stress in my own life, especially in the early years of Facebook. I just got really unhealthy. I wasn’t exercising. I had a lot of anxiety actually throughout my back. Almost every six months, when I was 21, 22, which is pretty crazy. And so if you do start a company, be aware that you’re going to have to deal with this, and you have to actually manage it. It’s actually one of your core responsibilities. Ben Horowitz likes to say, like, the number one role of a CEO is managing your own psychology.

[译文 52]

所以你基本上不会离开。所以如果你幸运，有一个糟糕的创业想法，你会很快失败，但大多数时候不是那样的。好，继续前进。我应该说我在自己的生活中有过很多这种压力，尤其是在 Facebook 的早期。我变得非常不健康。我不锻炼。实际上我的后背有很多焦虑。在 21 岁、22 岁的时候，几乎每六个月都有一次，这相当疯狂。所以如果你真的创办了一家公司，要意识到你将不得不处理这个，你必须实际管理它。这实际上是你核心职责之一。Ben Horowitz 喜欢说，CEO 的首要角色是管理你自己的心理。

[段 53]

It’s absolutely true. Make sure you do it. So another reason, so people, especially if they’ve already had a job at another company, you tend to develop this narrative of, like, okay, like, the people running this company are idiots. They’re making all these stupid decisions. They’re spending their time in these stupid ways. I’m going to start a company, and I’m going to do it better. I’m going to set all the rules. It’s a pretty attractive idea. Makes a lot of sense. If you’ve read my Medium post, you know it’s coming. I’ll give you guys a second to read this quote. Cool. So this really resonates with me. And one thing I’d point out is the reality of these decisions is pretty nuanced.

[译文 53]

这是绝对正确的。确保你做到这一点。另一个原因，所以人们，尤其是如果他们已经在另一家公司工作过，你往往会形成这种叙事，好吧，像，运行这家公司的人是白痴。他们在做所有这些愚蠢的决定。他们以这些愚蠢的方式度过他们的时间。我要创办一家公司，我会做得更好。我会制定所有规则。这是一个相当有吸引力的想法。非常有道理。如果你读过我的 Medium 帖子，你知道它要来了。我给你们几秒钟读这个引言。酷。这真的引起了我的共鸣。我要指出的一件事是，这些决定的现实相当细致。

[段 54]

The people you thought were idiots probably weren’t idiots. They probably just had a really difficult decision in front of them, and people pulling them in multiple directions. So the most common thing I have to spend my time on and focus my energy on as a CEO is the problems that other people are bringing to me, the other priorities that people create. And it’s usually in the form of a conflict. People want to go in different directions, or customers want different things. And I might have my own opinion about that. But really, the game I’m playing is who do I disappoint the least? And just trying to navigate all these difficult situations. And even on a day-to-day basis, I might come in on Monday and have all these grand plans for how I’m going to improve the company and what I’m going to spend my time on.

[译文 54]

你认为的白痴可能不是白痴。他们可能只是面前有一个非常困难的决定，以及人们从多个方向拉扯他们。所以作为 CEO，我必须花费时间并集中精力的最常见的事情是其他人带给我解决的问题，人们创造的其他优先事项。它通常以冲突的形式出现。人们想朝不同的方向前进，或者客户想要不同的东西。我可能对此有自己的看法。但实际上，我玩的游戏是让谁最失望？然后只是试图驾驭所有这些困难的情况。即使在日常基础上，我可能周一进来，有所有这些关于我将如何改进公司以及我将把时间花在哪里的宏伟计划。

[段 55]

But then if an important employee is threatening to quit, that’s what I’m spending my time on. That’s my number one priority. So a subset of you’re the boss is you have flexibility. You have control over your own schedule. This is a really attractive idea. So here’s the reality. Another Phil Levin quote. So this really resonates with me as well. Some of the reasons for this again, you’re always on call. So maybe you don’t intend to work all parts of the day, but you might not get to control which ones. Your role model, this is super important. So if you’re an employee of a company, you might have some good weeks, you might have some bad weeks.

[译文 55]

但然后如果一个重要的员工威胁要辞职，那就是我花时间做的事情。那是我的首要任务。所以你是老板的一个子集是你有灵活性。你控制你自己的时间表。这是一个非常有吸引力的想法。所以这是现实。另一个 Phil Levin 的引言。所以这也真的引起了我的共鸣。一些原因再次，你总是随时候命。所以也许你不打算整天工作，但你可能无法控制哪些部分。你的 role model，这是超级重要的。所以如果你是公司的员工，你可能有一些好周，有一些坏周。

[段 56]

Some weeks when you’re low energy, maybe you want to take a couple extra days off. That’s really bad if you’re an entrepreneur. Like your team will really signal off what you’re bringing to the table. So if you take your foot off the gas, so will they. And you’re always working anyway. So if you’re really passionate about an idea, it’s just going to pull you to keep working on it. If you’re working with great investors, you’re going to want to keep working on it. You’re working with great partners, they’re going to want to be working really hard. They’re going to want you to be working really hard. And again, you’re going to want to work really hard.

[译文 56]

有些周你精力低，也许你想多休几天假。如果你是一个创业者，那就非常糟糕。就像你的团队真的会从你带来的东西中发出信号。所以如果你放松了，他们也会放松。而且你总是在工作。所以如果你真的对一个想法充满热情，它就会不断地拉着你继续工作。如果你和伟大的投资者一起工作，你会想要继续工作。你和伟大的合作伙伴一起工作，他们真的想要非常努力地工作。他们会希望你真的非常努力地工作。然后再次，你会想要真的非常努力地工作。

[段 57]

So some companies like to tell the story about you can have your cake and eat it too. You can have four-day work weeks maybe. If you’re Tim Ferriss, maybe you can have a 12-hour work week. It’s a really attractive idea and it does work in a particular instance, which is if you want to actually have a small business or go after a niche market, then you’re a small business entrepreneur that makes total sense. But as soon as you get past two or three people, you really need to step it up and be full time committed. Cool, so this is the big one. This is the one I hear the most especially candidates applying to Asana, they tell me, I’d really like to work for a much smaller company or start my own because then I have a much bigger slice of the pie.

[译文 57]

所以一些公司喜欢讲述你可以两全其美的故事。你可以有四天工作周。也许。如果你像 Tim Ferriss 一样，你可能有 12 小时工作周。这是一个非常有吸引力的想法，它确实在特定情况下有效，那就是如果你真的想要有一个小生意或追求一个细分市场，那么你是一个小生意创业者，这完全有意义。但一旦你超过两三个人，你真的需要提升并全心投入。酷，所以这是大的一件事。这是我听到最多的，尤其是申请 Asana 的候选人，他们告诉我，我真的想为一家小得多的公司工作或创办我自己的，因为那样我有一块大得多的馅饼。

[段 58]

I’ll have much more impact on how that company does, and I’ll have more equity, so I’ll make more money as well. So let’s examine when this might be true. So I’ll explain these tables. They’re a little complex, but let’s focus on the left first. So this is just explaining Dropbox and Facebook. These are their current valuations, and this is how much money you might make as employee number 100 coming into these companies, especially if you’re a relatively experienced engineer, like you have five years of industry experience, you’re pretty likely to have an offer that’s around 10 basis points. So if you joined Dropbox a couple years ago, the upside you’d have already locked in is about $10 million.

[译文 58]

我将对公司的发展有更大的影响力，而且我会有更多的股权，所以我会赚更多的钱。所以让我们检查一下这什么时候可能是真的。我会解释这些表格。它们有点复杂，但让我们先看左边的。所以这只是解释 Dropbox 和 Facebook。这些是它们当前的估值，这是你作为第 100 号员工加入这些公司可能赚到的钱，尤其是如果你是一个相对有经验的工程师，比如你有五年的行业经验，你很可能有一个大约 10 个基点的 offer。所以如果你几年前加入 Dropbox，你已经锁定的上行空间大约是 1000 万美元。

[段 59]

There’s plenty more growth from there if you leave the company. If you joined Facebook a couple years into its existence, you made $200 million. This is a huge number. And if you even joined Facebook as employee number 1000, so you joined it in like 2009, you still made $20 million. That’s a giant number and that’s how you should be benchmarking when you’re thinking about what might I make as an entrepreneur. So moving over to the table on the right, these are two theoretical companies you might start. So Uber for pet sitting, pretty good idea. If you’re really well suited to this, you might have a really good shot at building a $100 million company. And then your share of that company is pretty likely to be about 10%.

[译文 59]

如果你离开公司，还有很多增长。如果你加入 Facebook 几年后，你赚了 2 亿美元。这是一个巨大的数字。如果你甚至作为第 1000 号员工加入 Facebook，所以你在 2009 年左右加入，你仍然赚了 2000 万美元。那是一个巨大的数字，这是你应该如何基准化的，当你考虑作为一个创业者你可能赚什么。所以转到右边的表格，这些是你可能创办的两家理论上的公司。所以 Uber 遛宠物，是一个相当不错的想法。如果你非常适合这个，你可能真的有机会建立一家 1 亿美元的公司。然后你的那部分大约是 10%。

[段 60]

This certainly fluctuates. Some founders have a lot more than this. Some have a lot less. But after multiple rounds of dilution, multiple rounds of option pool creation, you’re pretty likely to end up about here. If you have more than this, I’d recommend Sam’s post on the equity split between founders and employees. You probably should be giving out more. And then, but, so basically, if you’re extremely confident about building this $100 million business, which is a big ask. It should go without saying that you should have a lot more confidence in Facebook in 2009 or Dropbox in 2014 than you might for a startup that doesn’t even exist yet. Then this is worth doing. So if you have a $100 million idea and you’re pretty confident you can execute it, I would consider that.

[译文 60]

这当然有波动。有些创始人比这多很多。有些比这少很多。但在多轮稀释、多轮期权池创建之后，你很可能最终会在这里。如果你比这多，我会推荐 Sam 关于创始人和员工之间股权分配的帖子。你可能应该分发更多。然后，但是，基本上，如果你非常有信心建立这个 1 亿美元的业务，这是一个很大的要求。不言而喻，你应该对 2009 年的 Facebook 或 2014 年的 Dropbox 比对一家甚至还不存在的创业公司更有信心。然后这是值得做的。所以如果你有一个 1 亿美元的想法，你相当有信心可以执行，我会考虑那个。

[段 61]

If you think you’re the right entrepreneur to build Uber for space travel, that’s a really huge idea, $2 billion idea. You’re actually going to have a pretty good return for that. You should definitely do that. This is also only the value after four years, and this idea probably has legs. So definitely go after that. If you’re thinking of building that, you probably shouldn’t even be in this class right now. You should just go and build that company. So why is this financial reward and impact? I really think that financial reward is very strongly correlated with the impact you have on the world. If you don’t believe that, let’s talk through some specific examples and not think about the equity at all.

[译文 61]

如果你认为你是建造太空旅行 Uber 的正确创业者，那是一个非常大的想法，20 亿美元的想法。你实际上会有相当不错的回报。你绝对应该做这个。这也只是四年后的价值，而且这个想法可能有潜力。所以绝对追求那个。如果你正在考虑构建那个，你可能现在甚至不应该在这个课上。你应该直接去构建那家公司。所以为什么这是财务奖励和影响力？我真的认为财务奖励与你对世界的影响非常强烈相关。如果你相信这个，让我们通过一些具体例子来谈谈，根本不要考虑股权。

[段 62]

So why might joining a late stage company actually provide you a lot of impact? You get this force multiplier. They have an existing massive user base, if it’s Facebook it’s a billion users, or if it’s Google it’s a billion users. They have existing infrastructure you get to build on, that’s also increasingly true for new startups, things like AWS and all these awesome independent service providers, but you usually get some proprietary technology and it’s all maintained for you. It’s a pretty great place to start, and you get to work with a team and they’ll help you just leverage your idea into something great. So a couple specific examples. Brett Taylor came into Google as around employee number 1,500, and he invented Google Maps.

[译文 62]

那么为什么加入后期公司实际上可以为你提供很大的影响力？你得到这个力量倍增器。他们有一个现有的庞大用户群，如果是 Facebook 就是 10 亿用户，如果是 Google 就是 10 亿用户。他们有你将要构建的现有基础设施，这对新创业公司也越来越真实，像 AWS 和所有这些很棒的独立服务提供商，但你通常会得到一些专有技术，而且都为你维护着。这是一个相当好的起点，你将与一个团队合作，他们将帮助你把你的想法变成很棒的东西。所以几个具体例子。Brett Taylor 作为大约第 1500 号员工加入 Google，他发明了 Google Maps。

[段 63]

This is a product you guys probably use every day. I used it to get here. And it’s used by hundreds of millions of people all around the world. Didn’t need to start a company to do that. Did happen to get a big financial reward. But the point is you add massive impact. My co-founder, Justin Rosenstein, joined Google a little later after Brett. He was a PM there. And just as a side project, he ended up prototyping chat, which used to be a standalone app, as integrated into Gmail, like you see it in the upper right there. And before he did that, people didn’t even think you could do chat over AJAX or chat in the browser at all.

[译文 63]

这是你们可能每天使用的产品。我用它来这里。它被全世界数亿人使用。不需要创办一家公司来做那个。确实得到了很大的财务奖励。但要点是你增加了巨大的影响力。我的联合创始人，Justin Rosenstein，稍后在 Brett 之后加入 Google。他在那里是一个产品经理。作为一个副项目，他最终原型化了聊天，它曾经是一个独立的应用，集成到 Gmail 中，就像你在右上角看到的那样。在他做到那个之前，人们甚至不认为你可以用 AJAX 做聊天或在浏览器中做聊天。

[段 64]

And he just kind of demonstrated it and showed it to his team, and then they made it happen. And again, this is probably a product most of you use maybe every day. And then perhaps even more impressively, shortly after that, JR left, he became employee around number 250 at Facebook, and he led a hackathon project along with people like Andrew Bosworth and Liam Perlman to create the Like button. So this is one of the most popular elements anywhere on the web, totally changes how people use it, and again, didn’t need to start a company to do it, and almost certainly would have failed if he had tried, because you really needed the distribution of Facebook to make it work.

[译文 64]

他只是向团队演示了它，然后他们让它实现了。再次，这可能是你们大多数人可能每天使用的产品。然后也许更令人印象深刻的是，在那之后不久，JR 离开了，他在 Facebook 成为大约第 250 号员工，他与 Andrew Bosworth 和 Liam Perlman 等人领导了一个黑客马拉松项目，创建了点赞按钮。所以这是网络上最受欢迎的互动元素之一，完全改变了人们使用它的方式，而且再次，不需要创办一家公司来做那个，而且几乎肯定会失败如果他试图的话，因为你真的需要 Facebook 的分发渠道来让它工作。

[段 65]

So important to keep in mind the context for what kind of company you’re trying to start and where will you actually be able to make it happen. So what’s the best reason? So Sam already talked about this a little bit, but basically you can’t not do it. You’re super passionate about this idea. You’re the right person to do it. You’ve got to make it happen. So how does this break down? So we’re getting close to the end here. How am I doing on time? Cool. Sweet. Perfect. So this is sort of like a wordplay. You can’t not do it in two ways. One is you’re so passionate about it that you just like you have to do it.

[译文 65]

所以重要的是要记住你要创办什么样的公司以及你实际上在哪里能够实现它的背景。所以最好的原因是什么？Sam 已经稍微谈过这个，但基本上你不能不做这件事。你对这个想法超级热情。你是做到这件事的合适人选。你必须让它发生。那么这怎么分解呢？我们快结束了。我时间用得怎么样？酷。完美。所以这有点像文字游戏。你不能不做这件事有两种方式。一个是你对它如此热情以至于你就是必须做它。

[段 66]

You’re going to do it anyway. And this is really important because you’ll need that passion to get through all of those like hard parts of being an entrepreneur that we talked about earlier. You’ll also need it to effectively recruit. Candidates can smell when you don’t have passion. And there are enough entrepreneurs out there who do have passion that they may as well work for one of those. So this is sort of like table stakes for being an entrepreneur. Your subconscious can also tell when you don’t have passion, and that’ll be a huge problem. And then, so the other way to interpret this is the world needs you to do it. So this is sort of validation that the idea is important, it’s gonna make the world better.

[译文 66]

无论如何你都会做。这真的很重要，因为你需要那种热情来度过我们之前谈论的所有创业的艰难部分。你也需要它来有效地招募。候选人能闻出你没有热情的时候。而且外面有足够多有热情的创业者，他们不妨为其中一个工作。所以这有点像创业的入门要求。你的潜意识也能告诉你什么时候你没有热情，那将是一个巨大的问题。然后，另一个解释这个的方式是世界需要你做这件事。所以这是对想法重要性的验证，它会让世界变得更好。

[段 67]

So the world needs it. If it’s not something the world needs, go do something the world needs. New times really valuable. There are plenty of good ideas out there. Maybe it’s not one of your own. Maybe it’s an existing company, but you may as well work on something that’s gonna be good. And then the second way to interpret this is the world needs you to do it. You’re actually well suited to this problem in some way. If this isn’t true, it may be a sign that your time is better spent somewhere else. But also just best case scenario if this isn’t true, You out-compete the team for which it is true, and you just end up with like a suboptimal outcome for the world.

[译文 67]

所以世界需要它。如果这不是世界需要的东西，去做世界需要的东西。新时代真的很有价值。有很多好主意。也许不是你自己想出来的。也许是一家现有的公司，但你不妨做一些会是好的事情。然后第二种解释是这个世界需要你去做这件事。你实际上在某些方面很适合这个问题。如果这不是真的，这可能是一个迹象，表明你的时间在别处更好地度过。但也只是最好的情况如果这不是真的。你会胜过对此为真的团队，而你最终只会得到一个对世界来说不是最优的结果。

[段 68]

That doesn’t feel very good. So drawing this back to my own experience at Asana, you know Justin and I were kind of like reluctant entrepreneurs before we founded Asana. So we were working at Facebook. We were already working on a great problem. And we would basically work all day long on our normal projects. And then at night, we would keep working on this internal task manager that was used internally at the company. And it was just because we were so passionate about the idea. It was so clearly valuable that we couldn’t do anything else. And at some point, we had to have the hard conversation of, OK, well, what does it mean if we don’t actually start this company?

[译文 68]

那感觉不太好。所以回到我在 Asana 的个人经历，你知道 Justin 和我在创办 Asana 之前有点像不情愿的创业者。所以我们在 Facebook 工作。我们已经在做一个很棒的问题。我们基本上会在白天为我们的正常项目工作。然后在晚上，我们会继续开发这个内部使用的任务管理器。这只是因为我们对这个想法如此热情。它是如此明显有价值以至于我们不能做任何其他事情。在某个时刻，我们必须有一个艰难的对话，好吧，如果我们实际上不创办这家公司意味着什么？

[段 69]

We were able to see the impact was having on Facebook, we were pretty convinced it could be really valuable for the world. We were also pretty convinced nobody else was going to build it. The problem had been around a long time, and we just kept seeing sort of incremental solutions to it. So if we didn’t go out with the one that we thought was best, we thought there’d be a lot of value left on the table. And yeah, so we just couldn’t stop working on it. And literally, the idea was like beating itself out of our chest, like forcing itself into the world. And I think that’s the feeling you should really be looking for when you start a company.

[译文 69]

我们能够看到它在 Facebook 上产生的影响，我们相当确信它对世界真的很有价值。我们也相当确信没有其他人会构建它。这个问题已经存在很长时间了，我们只是不断看到对它的增量解决方案。所以如果我们不推出我们认为最好的那个，我们认为会有很多价值留在桌面上。是的，所以我们就是不能停止开发它。从字面上看，这个想法就像从我们的胸口挣脱出来，强行进入世界。我认为这就是你创办公司时真正应该寻找的感觉。

[段 70]

That’s how you know you have the right idea. So I’ll go ahead and stop there. I’ll put some recommended books up here, but won’t narrate them. I’ll put some recommended books up here, but won’t narrate them. And maybe that’s the end of the class. Yeah, thank you. Maybe Dustin can sit around for a few minutes if you have questions for him. And see you Thursday. Thank you.

[译文 70]

这是你如何知道你有一个正确的想法。所以我就停在这里。我会把一些推荐书籍放在这里，但不会解说。我会把一些推荐书籍放在这里，但不会解说。也许这就是下课了。是的，谢谢。也许 Dustin 可以留下来几分钟，如果你有问题要问他。周四见。谢谢。

Source: bilibili BV1oWKpzoE1Z