视频信息
- 标题: 斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第18集：法律和财务的基础知识
- BV号: BV1oWKpzoE1Z
- 时长: 48分19秒（2899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Y Combinator创业课程第17集，由General Counsel Kirstie和Carolyn主讲创业公司的法律和财务基础知识。课程强调创始人虽不需要精通细节，但必须了解基本框架以避免重大错误。内容涵盖四大核心领域：公司注册（推荐Delaware注册以保护个人资产并简化融资流程）、股权分配（强调执行比创意更有价值，股权应均衡分配并设置四年归属期）、融资机制（详解SAFE和可转换票据的运作方式及估值上限概念）、员工雇佣（区分员工与承包商、设立工资单服务的重要性）。此外还涉及投资者条款如董事会席位、按比例权利、信息权等。视频核心结论是：创业过程中法律和财务文件虽然繁琐，但保持简单、使用标准流程、做好文件归档是避免未来痛苦的关键。
核心要点
Delaware公司注册：推荐在Delaware注册公司，其法律明确稳定、投资者熟悉，可简化融资流程，避免类似Connecticut LLC转制失败的50万美元账单悲剧。
股权分配原则：执行比创意更有价值，创始人应抵制给点子王过多股权的冲动；股权分配严重不均是巨大红旗，可能反映团队信任问题。
四年归属期：标准归属期为四年带一年悬崖期，创始人购买股票后需签署股票购买协议和83B选择权，未签署将导致交易失败且无法修复。
SAFE融资机制：非定价轮融资使用SAFE或可转换票据，设定估值上限作为早进入投资者的回报；创始人需了解融资后的稀释比例并跟踪全流程。
投资者条款：需警惕董事会席位要求、顾问股票要求、按比例权利和信息权；明智选择真正能增值的董事，拒绝免费赠品式顾问要求。
业务费用管理：公司费用与个人费用严格分离，投资者资金仅用于业务发展；保留所有收据以便记账员和CPA理清可抵扣费用。
员工雇佣合规：区分员工与承包商（工作时间、设备、控制权等），必须设立工资单服务、支付最低工资、提供人工伤保险、核验工作授权。
创始人分手预防：通过给自己发工资、支付工资税来避免分手时的丑陋局面；将联合创始人工资视为婚前协议，防止被解雇创始人以未付工资为筹码。
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]
And General Counsel, Kirstie and Carolyn, and they’re going to talk about finance and legal mechanics for startups. This is certainly not the most exciting of the classes, sorry, but if you get this right, this is probably the class that will be the most exciting. So thank you very much for coming, and yeah. Okay. Okay, so like Sam said, this lecture is about the mechanics of startup. And Kirstie and I are going to be talking about some of the basic legal and accounting issues that your startup may face in the very beginning. I was watching Paul Graham’s video, and at one point he says, founders don’t need to know the mechanics of starting a startup. And I thought, oh no, that’s exactly what Sam titled this lecture.
[译文 1]
还有法律总顾问 Kirstie 和 Carolyn，他们将讨论 startups 的财务和法律机制。这确实不是最吸引人的课程，抱歉，但如果你能正确理解，这可能是最让人兴奋的课程。非常感谢大家的到来，嗯。好的。好的，就像 Sam 说的，这堂课讲的是 startup 的机制。Kirstie 和我会讨论一些你的 startup 在初期可能面临的基本法律和会计问题。我看了 Paul Graham 的视频，有一次他说，founders 不需要了解 starting a startup 的机制。我当时想，哦不，这正是 Sam 给这堂课的标题。
[段 2]
But what PG actually says is that founders don’t need to know the mechanics in detail, because it’s very dangerous for founders to get bogged down in the details. And that’s exactly right. And Kirstie and I can’t give you the details in 45 minutes anyway. So our goal here today is to make sure that you do know better than to form your startup as a Florida LLC. So as Sam mentioned, we were also worrying that it’s going to be pretty boring for you to listen to an accountant and a lawyer talking about this. You know, you’ve had some really amazing founders talking about really interesting things, but like Sam said, you know, this is the kind of stuff that if you know the basics, you can get yourself set up in the right way, avoid pain, stop worrying about it, and then concentrate on what you actually want to do, which is make your company a success.
[译文 2]
但PG实际说的是，创始人不需要了解具体的运作细节，因为创始人深陷细节是非常危险的。这一点完全正确。而且Kirstie和我也没法在45分钟内把所有细节都讲给你们。所以我们今天的目标是确保你们知道不要把初创公司注册成Florida LLC。正如Sam提到的，我们还担心听会计师和律师讲这些对你们来说会很无聊。你们之前听了一些非常出色的创始人讲非常有趣的话题，但就像Sam说的，这类东西如果你掌握了基础知识，就能用正确的方式为自己做好安排，避免痛苦，不用再为此担心，然后专注于你真正想做的事——让公司成功。
[段 3]
And so we refer to this term startup all the time, and probably in the back of your head you kind of know that by startup we mean there has to be some legal entity, and that’s some kind of separate legal entity. We’ll talk a little bit more about how we actually set that up and what that means to you. And you also probably know that a startup will have assets, IP, inventions, other things, and that the company needs to protect those. So we’ll talk a little bit more about that, about how to raise money, hiring employees, and entering into contracts. So there’s a few other things that you need to talk about whilst you’re setting up your company, which kind of ferrets out a few issues amongst founders, things like who’s going to be in charge and how much equity is everybody going to own.
[译文 3]
所以我们一直在使用创业公司这个词，也许在你的脑海中，你大概知道所谓创业公司就是指必须存在某种法律实体，也就是某种独立法人实体。我们会再详细讨论一下我们如何实际设立它，以及这对你意味着什么。你可能也知道，一家创业公司会拥有资产、知识产权、发明创造以及其他东西，而公司需要保护这些。因此我们也会再详细讨论一下这些内容，包括如何融资、雇佣员工以及签订合同。还有一些其他事情是你在设立公司时需要讨论的，这些可以揭示出创始人之间的一些问题，比如谁来负责以及每个人将拥有多少股权。
[段 4]
So those are really good things to talk about too. Oh, we’ve lost our slides. There we go. Okay, this is us. Kirstie has the calculator. I have like the geriatric glasses, which is actually pretty fair. Okay, so the first thing we’re going to talk about is formation. Kirstie actually just mentioned that. Your startup is going to be a separate legal entity, and you guys probably already know this, but the primary purpose for forming a separate legal entity is to protect yourselves from personal liability. And what that means is if your company ever gets sued, it’s not your money in your bank account that the person can take. It’s the corporation. So that’s why you form one.
[译文 4]
这些也都是很好的讨论话题。哦，我们的幻灯片丢了。好，开始吧。这是我们。Kirstie拿着计算器。我戴着老花镜，其实挺合适的。好的，我们要讨论的第一件事是公司成立。Kirstie刚才也提到了。你的创业公司会是一个独立的法律实体，你们可能已经知道了，成立独立法律实体的主要目的是保护你们免受个人责任。这意味着如果你的公司被起诉，对方能拿走的不是你银行账户里的钱，而是公司本身。所以这就是为什么要成立公司的原因。
[段 5]
So then the question is, where do you form one. And theoretically, you have 50 choices. But the easiest place is Delaware. And I’m sure you’re all familiar with that as well. But Delaware is in the business of forming corporations. The law there is very clear and very settled. It’s the standard. The other thing is that investors are very comfortable with Delaware. They already invest in companies that are Delaware corporations, most of their investments are probably Delaware corporations. So if you are also a Delaware corporation, then everything just becomes much more simple, right? There’s less diligence for the investor to do. You don’t have to have a conversation about whether or not to reincorporate your Washington company into Delaware.
[译文 5]
那么问题来了，你在哪里注册公司呢？理论上，你有50个选择。但最简单的地方是特拉华州。我相信你们也都熟悉这一点。特拉华州的主营业务就是注册公司。那里的法律非常明确，也非常成熟。这是标准做法。另一个原因是投资者对特拉华州非常放心。他们已经投资的公司大多是特拉华州注册的公司，他们的大部分投资可能都是特拉华州公司。所以如果你也是特拉华州公司，那么一切都会变得更简单，对吧？投资者要做尽职调查会更少。你不需要讨论是否要将你的华盛顿州公司重新注册到特拉华州。
[段 6]
So there’s a reason that so many companies do it. It’s standard. It’s familiar. So I’ll tell you a story. We had a company at YC about two years ago that was originally formed as an LLC in a state that I’ll say Connecticut. The founders had some lawyer friends there who said this is the right way to do it. And when they came to YC, we said, you guys need to convert to Delaware. So the lawyers in Connecticut did the conversion paperwork, and unfortunately they didn’t do it right. They made a very simple mistake, but it was a very crucial mistake. The company was recently raising money, like a lot, a lot of money, and this mistake was uncovered.
[译文 6]
所以这背后是有原因的，很多公司都这么做。这是标准做法，也是大家熟悉的做法。所以我来讲个故事。大约两年前，我们YC有一家公司，最初在康涅狄格州注册为LLC。创始人在那里有一些律师朋友，他们说这是正确的方式。当他们来到YC时，我们说你们需要转成Delaware公司。所以康涅狄格州的律师们办理了转换手续，但不幸的是他们没有做对。他们犯了一个很简单但非常关键的错误。这家公司最近在融资，融了很多很多钱，这时这个错误被发现了。
[段 7]
Basically the mistake was this company thought it was a Delaware corporation for a couple years, but in fact it was still a Connecticut LLC. And I’ll just say this, four different law firms were needed to figure that one out, two in Delaware, one in Connecticut, one here in the Silicon Valley, and the bill right now is at $500,000 for a conversion mistake. So what’s the takeaway here? Pretty simple. Keep it really simple and familiar for yourself. The reason we incorporate all companies the same way at Y Combinator is because it’s easy. So don’t get fancy, just save yourself some time and money. Okay, so once you’ve decided that you’re going to be a Delaware corporation, how do you actually set that up?
[译文 7]
基本上这个错误是这家公司以为自己是一家 Delaware corporation 已经好几年了，但实际上它仍然是一家 Connecticut LLC。我就这么说吧，需要四家不同的律师事务所才能弄清楚这件事，两家在 Delaware，一家在 Connecticut，一家在 Silicon Valley，而且目前的账单是 $500,000，就因为一个公司类型转换的错误。那么这里的教训是什么？很简单。保持简单，让自己熟悉。我们在 Y Combinator 用同一种方式注册所有公司的原因是因为这样简单。所以不要搞花哨的，这样能节省你的时间和金钱。好的，那么一旦你决定要成为一家 Delaware corporation，你实际上要怎么设立它？
[段 8]
And it requires a few different steps, but the first one is actually really easy. You literally just fax two pieces of paper into Delaware saying, we’re going to set up a corporation. All that does, though, is create a shell of a company. It doesn’t actually do anything within the company. So after that, you then need to complete a set of documents that, among other things, approve the bylaws of the company, it creates a board of directors, it creates officers of the company. Delaware requires that somebody has the title of CEO, President, and of Secretary. So also at this point you need to complete documents that assign any inventions or any code or anything that you as an individual create so that the company actually owns that.
[译文 8]
这需要几个不同的步骤，但第一步实际上非常简单。你只需要把两份文件传真到特拉华州，说明我们要成立一家公司。不过，这样做只是创建了一个空壳公司，它实际上不会对公司内部做任何事情。所以在完成这一步之后，你需要完成一套文件，这些文件除了其他事项外，还要批准公司的章程，创建董事会，并设立公司高管。特拉华州要求必须有人担任CEO、President和Secretary的职位。所以在这一点上，你还需要完成一些文件，将你个人创造的任何发明、代码或任何东西的所有权转让给公司。
[段 9]
And remember at this point it’s a really good thing to think about, you as founders have to think about things in two different ways. You always have to be thinking, am I doing this as an individual, as me, or am I doing this on behalf of the company which is a separate entity? So you have to maintain that split in your mind going through all of this, and we’ll talk more about where that comes in a little bit later. So there are services that can help you get incorporated, of course you can use a law firm, but there are also other online services that help, and the one that we often use with a lot of the YC companies is called Clerky, clerky.com, and they are set up so that all the standard, basic documents are used and they get you set up in a very vanilla way so that you can just move on and keep focusing on what you need to do.
[译文 9]
在这一点上要记住，这是一个非常值得思考的问题，你们作为创始人必须以两种不同的方式思考问题。你必须始终思考，我是以个人身份、作为自己在做这件事，还是代表公司——一个独立的实体——在做这件事？所以在整个过程中，你必须在脑海中保持这种区分，我们稍后会更多地讨论这在哪里适用。所以有一些服务可以帮助你完成公司注册，当然你可以使用律师事务所，但也有其他在线服务可以提供帮助，我们经常与许多YC公司使用的是Clerky，clerky.com，它们的设置是使用所有标准的、基本的文件，让你以一种非常标准的方式完成注册，这样你就可以继续前进，继续专注于你需要做的事情。
[段 10]
So a note on paperwork. You’re creating documents. These are really important documents that are going to be setting what the company does and what the company is. So it’s really, really important that you actually keep these signed documents in a safe place. And it sounds so basic, but we get so many founders coming in to us saying, oh, I don’t know, there’s some documents and they have no idea what they are or where they are. So really, really make sure that you keep them in a safe place. And let’s be honest, this is not the glamorous part of running a startup, you know, filing documents. But actually at the times where this is crucial are going to be at really high stress times in the startup’s life.
[译文 10]
所以关于文书工作的一点提醒。你正在创建各种文件。这些是非常重要的文件，它们将决定公司的运营方向和公司本身的性质。所以真的非常重要，你要把这些已签署的文件保存在安全的地方。这听起来很基本，但我们遇到太多创始人来找我们说，哦，我不知道，有一些文件，他们完全不知道那些是什么或者在哪里。所以一定要确保把它们保存在安全的地方。说实话，这并不是经营创业公司最光鲜的部分，你知道，整理文件这种事。但实际上，这些文件至关重要的时刻往往是在创业公司生命中最紧张的时期。
[段 11]
It’s likely to be if the company’s raising a big series A round or if the company is being acquired, the company will have to go through due diligence and there will be lawyers asking for all this stuff. And if you don’t have it and you don’t know where it is, it’s just making a really stressful situation even more stressful. So really the key thing here is, save yourself the pain. Like we say, keep it simple, but keep those documents in a safe place and keep it organized. It’ll make your life so much easier. Okay, so now we’re going to talk about equity, and we’re going to touch on a couple different things in this section.
[译文 11]
如果公司正在进行大额A轮融资，或者公司正在被收购，公司将不得不经历尽职调查，律师会要求提供所有这些材料。如果你没有这些材料，也不知道它们在哪里，只会让本已压力山大的情况更加令人焦虑。所以关键是要让自己免受痛苦。正如我们所说的，保持简单，但要把这些文件保存在安全的地方，并保持有序。这会让你轻松很多。好的，现在我们要讨论股权，在这个部分我们也会涉及到几个不同的话题。
[段 12]
The first thing that we’re going to talk about is equity allocation. So what am I talking about here? I’m talking about if your company’s stock is a pie, you’re talking about how to divide the pie, and you’re talking about this with your co-founders. Why is this important? Well, if you’re a solo founder, this really isn’t important. But, if you are a team of two or more, then this issue is absolutely critical. So the first thing that you need to know is that execution has greater value than the idea. What do I mean by that? A lot of founder teams give way too much credit, and therefore a lot of the company’s equity, to the person who came up with the idea for the company.
[译文 12]
首先，我们要讨论的是股权分配。我说的是什么意思呢？如果贵公司的股票是一个馅饼，你讨论的是如何分割这个馅饼，而且你要和你的联合创始人讨论这个问题。为什么这很重要？如果你是一个独自创业者，这确实不重要。但是，如果你是一个两人或更多的团队，这个问题绝对是关键的。所以你需要知道的第一件事是，执行比创意更有价值。我这是什么意思？很多创始人团队给提出公司创意的人太多的功劳，因此给这个人太多的公司股权。
[段 13]
And ideas are obviously very important, but they have zero value. Who’s ever heard of a billion dollar payment for just an idea. So value is really created when the whole founder team works together to execute on an idea. And so you need to resist the urge to give a disproportionate amount of stock to the founder who is credited with coming up with the idea for the company. The next thing you want to think about is, okay, so how much stock or should the stock be allocated equally among the founders? And from our perspective, the simple answer is probably yes. Our mantra at Y Combinator is that stock allocation doesn’t have to be exactly equal, but if it’s very disproportionate, that’s a huge red flag for us.
[译文 13]
当然，创意显然非常重要，但它们本身没有任何价值。谁听说过为了一个创意而支付十亿美元的？所以价值真正产生于整个创始人团队共同努力执行一个创意的时候。因此你需要抵制那种把不成比例的大量股份分给那个被归功于想出公司创意的创始人的冲动。下一个你需要思考的问题是，嗯，那么股份应该怎么分配，或者说创始人之内的股份是否应该平均分配？从我们的角度来看，简单的答案很可能是肯定的。我们在Y Combinator的口头禅是，股份分配不一定要完全平等，但如果有非常大的差距，那对我们来说就是一个巨大的危险信号。
[段 14]
We wonder what conversation is not happening among the founder team when the ownership isn’t equal. For example, is one founder secretly thinking that this whole startup thing is temporary? Is one founder over-inflating the work that he or she has already done on the company or over-inflating his or her education or prior experience? Do the founders really trust each other and have they been honest with each other about their expectations for this startup and for the future? So when ownership is disproportionate, what we worry about is that the founders are not in sync with one another. Thirdly, it’s really important to look forward in the startup, not backwards. And said another way, all the founders in it 100% are they all in it for the long haul.
[译文 14]
我们想知道，当股权不平等时，创始团队之间有哪些对话没有发生。例如，是否有一位创始人暗地里认为整个创业这件事只是临时的？是否有一位创始人在夸大自己已经为公司所做的工作，或者夸大自己的学历或过往经历？创始人们是否真正信任彼此，是否对彼此坦诚地说明了对这个创业项目和未来的期望？因此，当股权比例不均衡时，我们担心的是创始人们之间不同步。第三，在创业中非常重要的一点是向前看，而不是向后看。换句话说，所有创始人是否100%全身心投入，他们是否都准备打持久战？
[段 15]
If the expectation at your startup is that each founder is in it 100% and you’re all in for the long haul, then everything that happened before the formation of the company shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who thought of the idea. It doesn’t matter who did the coding or built the prototype or which one has an MBA. It will feel better to the whole team if the allocation is equal because the whole team is necessary for execution. So here’s the takeaway on this point. In the top YC companies, which we call those, you know, with the highest valuations, there are zero instances where the founders have had significantly disproportionate equity split. All right, so you’ve had the conversation about how to split the equity, but then what?
[译文 15]
如果你的初创公司的期望是每位创始人100%投入，而且你们都准备长期坚持，那么在公司成立之前发生的一切都不重要。谁想到这个点子并不重要。谁写了代码、谁做了原型、或者谁有MBA学位都不重要。如果分配是平等的，整个团队会感觉更好，因为整个团队对于执行都是必要的。所以关于这一点，关键在于。在顶级的YC公司中，我们称之为估值最高的公司，创始人的股权分配严重不均的情况为零。好，那么你们已经谈过如何分配股权，但然后呢？
[段 16]
Again, we talked to many founders who are actually surprised that they have to do something in order to own this stock. They think that talking about it is actually enough. And this again is another situation where you have to think about you as an individual versus you as a representative of the company. And if you equate this to a large company, if you worked at Google and you were told as part of your compensation package that you would be receiving some shares, you would expect to sign something to get those shares. And if you didn’t, you’d be thinking, oh, what’s going on here? Well, it’s the same thing with a small company as well. So in this case, the documents that you’re signing is a stock purchase agreement.
[译文 16]
再次，我们与许多创始人交谈，他们实际上感到很惊讶，他们必须做一些事情才能拥有这些股票。他们认为仅仅谈论这件事就足够了。这又是一个你需要思考的情况——你是作为个人还是作为公司的代表。如果你把这个与大公司进行类比，如果你曾在Google工作，被告知作为薪酬方案的一部分你会获得一些股票，你会期望签署某些文件来获得那些股票。如果你没有签署，你会想，哦，这里发生了什么？嗯，小公司也是一样的。所以在这种情况下，你需要签署的文件是一份股票购买协议。
[段 17]
So you as an individual buy the shares from the company. And in any situation, if you’re buying something, there’s a two-way transaction where you pay for something and you get something in return. And in this case, you’re getting shares in return for either a cash payment or for contributing IP or inventions or code to the company so that the company actually owns everything that you’ve done in the past. So we also refer to that stock being restricted because it vests over time, and we’re going to cover that next in more detail. But as a result of the stock being restricted and vesting, there’s one very, very crucial piece of paper that we talk about until we’re blue in the face to everybody because there’s actually no way to go back and fix this.
[译文 17]
所以你作为个人从公司购买股票。在任何情况下，如果你购买东西，都存在双向交易，你支付费用并获得相应回报。在这种情况下，你获得股票作为回报，可以是现金支付，也可以是贡献 IP、发明或代码给公司，这样公司实际上拥有你过去所做的所有东西。所以我们也称这种 stock 为受限制股票，因为它会随时间 vesting，我们接下来会更详细地讨论这一点。但由于股票是受限制的并且会 vesting，有一份非常非常重要的文件，我们会反复向每个人强调，因为实际上没有办法回头补救。
[段 18]
And this is actually one of the things that, because there’s no way to fix this, this has blown up deals in the past. We’ve seen companies where, because they haven’t filed what’s called an 83B election, deals have blown up. And I’m not going to go into detail about what that 83B election is actually about, but just leave it as it affects your individual taxes and it affects the company’s taxes. And so it can have a big impact. So, you know, here we have the main things. Here are sign the paperwork, sign the stock purchase agreements, sign the 83B election, and make sure that you actually have proof that you’ve sent that in, because if you don’t have the proof, it just goes into a black hole at the IRS, and investors and acquirers will walk away from a deal if you can’t prove that.
[译文 18]
这实际上是其中一个问题，因为没有办法修复这个问题，过去已经有交易因此告吹。我们见过一些公司，因为没有提交所谓的83B选举文件，交易告吹了。我不会详细解释83B选举的具体内容，只需要知道它会影响你的个人所得税和公司税。因此它可能产生重大影响。所以，你知道，这里有几个重要事项。包括签署文件、签署股票购买协议、提交83B选举，并确保你确实有证据证明你已经提交了，因为如果你没有证据，它就会消失在IRS的黑洞里，而投资者和收购者如果你无法证明这一点，就会放弃交易。
[段 19]
Okay, so the next thing we’re going to talk about is vesting, and I imagine that many of you are familiar with what vesting is, but just in case, really simply, vesting means that you get full ownership of your stock over a specific period of time. So we’re talking about the stock that, of course, you just said you bought your stock of your company, and you own it, and you get to vote it. But if you leave before this vesting period is over, then the company can get some of those unvested shares back. So, and I’m just going to, just so you guys know, the other ways to refer to vesting, you’ll hear restricted stock. That means that stock that’s subject to vesting.
[译文 19]
好的，接下来我们要讨论的是vesting，我想你们中的很多人对vesting已经很熟悉了，但以防万一，简单来说，vesting意味着你在特定时间段内逐步获得股票的完整所有权。我们讨论的是股票，当然，你刚才说你买入了自己公司的股票，你拥有它，而且你有投票权。但如果在vesting期限结束之前你离开，公司可以收回部分未vested的股票。所以，我想告诉你们，vesting的其他说法，你会听到restricted stock（限制性股票），这指的是受vesting约束的股票。
[段 20]
The IRS speak for this is shares that are subject to forfeiture. So there’s a little terminology there. Okay, so what should a typical vesting period be? In Silicon Valley, the so-called standard vesting period is four years with a one-year cliff. This means that after one year, the founder vests in or fully owns 25% of the shares. Then the remaining shares vest monthly over the next three years. So here’s an example. Founder buys stock on Christmas Day, let’s say, and then quits the company on the following Thanksgiving, so before the year has passed. In that case, the founder leaves with zero shares, right? Cliff period hasn’t been met. If the founder, though, quits the day after the next Christmas, so a year and a day later, he or she is vested in exactly 25% of the shares, right?
[译文 20]
美国国税局对此的说法是，这些是可能被没收的股份。所以这里有一些术语。好，那么一个典型的vesting期应该是多长时间？在硅谷，所谓的标准vesting期是四年，带一年的cliff。这意味着一后，创始人vests in或完全拥有25%的股份。然后剩余股份在接下来的三年内按月vests。所以这里有一个例子。比如，创始人在圣诞节购买股票，然后在接下来的感恩节离开公司，也就是在一年之前。在这种情况下，创始人离开时一股都没有，对吧？cliff期还没达到。但是，如果创始人在下一个圣诞节后的第二天离开，也就是一年零一天后，他或她正好vested in25%的股份，对吧？
[段 21]
In that case, the one-year cliff has been met. So what happens to the shares when a founder stops working at the company? The company can repurchase those shares. In the example I just gave where the founder quit a year and a day after purchasing the shares, 75% of those shares are still unvested, and the company will repurchase that full 75% of those shares from the founder. How? Just writes the founder a check. That’s how the founder bought it, right? So it’s the same price per share that the founder paid, and it’s really just giving the founder his or her money back. So then the question is, why would you have vesting? Why would founders do this to themselves, right?
[译文 21]
在这种情况下，一年的悬崖期已经满足。那么当创始人停止在公司工作时，这些股票会怎样呢？公司可以回购这些股票。在我刚才举的例子中，创始人在购买股票一年零一天后辞职，75%的股票仍未归属，公司将从创始人那里回购全部75%的股票。怎么回购呢？就是给创始人开一张支票。这就是创始人当初购买的方式，对吧？所以每股价格和创始人支付的一样，实际上就是把钱还给了创始人。那么问题来了，为什么要有归属机制？为什么创始人要这样对自己呢，对吧？
[段 22]
Because it’s just the founders. They’re doing this on their own shares, doing this to their own shares. So probably the number one reason why vesting is important has to do with founders leaving the company. So if you didn’t have vesting and a founder leaves, A huge chunk of the equity ownership leaves with him or her. And obviously, that is not fair to the founders left behind. And we’re actually going to talk about this a little bit more when we get to the founder employment slide. I’ll go into that in more detail. But the other reason to have vesting is the concept of skin in the game, the idea that founders need to be incentivized to keep working on their startup.
[译文 22]
因为这只是一群创始人。他们用自己的股份来做这件事，为自己的股份做这件事。所以 vesting 之所以重要的头号原因，可能与创始人离开公司有关。所以如果你没有 vesting，创始人离开了，大量股权就跟着他或她一起离开。显然，这对留下来的创始人是不公平的。等我们讲到 founder employment 幻灯片时，我们实际上会再多讨论一下这个。我会更详细地介绍这个。但 vesting 还有一个原因，就是 skin in the game 的概念，即创始人需要被激励继续经营他们的 startup。
[段 23]
If a founder can walk away with his or her full ownership at any point in time, then why would you stay and grind away? Startups are hard. So, do single founders need vesting? They do, and the reason is because the skin-in-the-game concept applies to solo founders as well. And investors really want to see all founders, even solo founders, incentivized to stay at the company for a long time. And the other reason that single founders should put vesting on their shares is to set an example for employees, because you can imagine it would be inappropriate for a founder to tell an employee that he or she has to have four-year vesting on his or her shares, but the founder doesn’t think that he or she needs any on their own shares.
[译文 23]
如果创始人可以在任何时候抽身离开并带走自己的全部股权，那你为什么还要留下拼命？创业很难。那么，单人创始人需要股权兑现吗？需要，原因在于利益绑定概念同样适用于单人创始人。投资者确实希望看到所有创始人，即使是一人创始人，也有动力长期留在公司。另一个原因是，单人创始人应该在股份上设定股权兑现，为员工树立榜样，因为可以想象，如果创始人告诉员工，他的股份必须要有four-year vesting，但创始人却认为自己不需要任何股权兑现，这是不合适的。
[段 24]
It’s really a culture point. A founder who has vesting on his or her shares then sets the tone for the company, saying, We’re all in it for the long haul. We all have vesting on our shares. We’re doing this together. So what are the takeaways from here? I would say vesting aligns incentives among the founders, if they all have to stick it out and grow the company before any of them get any of that company. And then number two, investors don’t want to put money in a company where the founders can quit whenever they feel like it and still have a big equity ownership stake in that company. Okay, so moving on, we’ve now got a beautifully formed corporation in Delaware.
[译文 24]
这确实是一个文化要点。一位创始人如果将自己的股份设置了归属期，那么他/她就会为公司定下基调：我们都是长期投入的。我们所有人的股份都有归属期。我们一起做这件事。那么从中可以得到什么启示呢？我认为，归属期能够使创始人之间的激励机制保持一致——如果他们都必须在公司成长起来之后才能获得公司的任何股份。其次，投资者不想把钱投到这样的公司：创始人可以随时想走就走，却仍然持有大量股权。好，接下来，我们已经成功在特拉华州成立了一家架构完善的公司。
[段 25]
Everybody’s got their stock. It’s all the plain vanilla standard paperwork. So then what? Probably the next stage of a company’s life is needing to raise some money. So we’re going to talk a bit more about that. And we know that you’ve already heard a lot from investors and from founders already in this set of classes. And they’ve been talking much more around the tactics and how to raise money. But what about the paperwork? What about when somebody actually agrees to invest? Then what? So first of all, in terms of logistics, in very simple terms, there are two ways to raise money. So either the price is set for the money that comes in, or the price isn’t set.
[译文 25]
每个人都有自己的股票。这都是些最普通的标准文件。那接下来呢？公司发展的下一个阶段可能就是要融资了。那我们来多聊聊这个。我们知道你们已经在这个系列课程中从投资人和创始人那里听到了很多。他们更多讲的是融资的策略和方法。但文件方面呢？当有人真的同意投资的时候呢？然后呢？所以首先，从流程上来说，非常简单地说，有两种融资方式。一种是资金进入时价格已定，另一种是价格未定。
[段 26]
And by price, we mean the valuation of the company. It’s the same thing. So rounds can actually be called anything. People can name them whatever they want. But generally, if you hear the term seed round, it would mean that the price has not been set. And anything that’s a series A or a series B would be something where the price has been set. So not setting the price is the more straightforward, fast route to getting money, and usually the way that this is done is through convertible notes or safes. And again, this is a two-way transaction, so there’s a piece of paper that says, for example, that an investor is paying $100,000 now and in return has the right to receive stock at a future date when the price is set by investors in a priced round.
[译文 26]
我们说的价格，指的是公司的估值。这是一回事。融资轮其实叫什么都可以，人们想怎么命名就怎么命名。但一般来说，如果你听到seed round这个词，它意味着价格尚未确定。而任何称为Series A或Series B的融资轮则是已经确定价格的情况。因此，不确定价格是获取资金更直接、更快速的路径，通常通过convertible notes或SAFEs来实现。同样，这是一笔双向交易，所以会有一份文件，例如说明一位投资者现在支付$100,000，作为回报，他有权在未来的某个日期，当投资者在priced round中确定价格时获得股票。
[段 27]
So it’s important to note that at the time the paperwork is set, that investor is not a shareholder, and therefore doesn’t have any voting rights on the company. They will have some other rights, which Carolyn is going to talk about separately. Of course, investors want something in return for putting in money at the earliest, i.e., riskiest, stage of the company’s life, and this is where the concept of a valuation cap comes in, which I’m sure many of you have heard mentioned before. So usually, the documents for an unpriced round set a cap for the conversion into shares. And that’s not the current valuation of the company. It’s actually an upper bound on the valuation used in the future to calculate how many shares that investor is going to get.
[译文 27]
所以重要的是要注意，在文件拟定之时，该投资者尚不是股东，因此对公司没有任何投票权。他们将拥有其他一些权利，Carolyn 稍后会单独讲解。当然，投资者希望在公司的最早阶段——也就是风险最大的阶段——投入资金以获得回报，这就涉及估值上限的概念，我相信你们中的许多人之前都曾听说过。通常，非定价融资轮次的文件会为股份转换设定一个上限。这不是公司当前的估值，而是对未来估值的上限，用于计算该投资者将获得多少股份。
[段 28]
So for an example, an investor that invests $100,000 on a safe with a $5 million cap, then a year later, the company raises a priced round with a valuation of let’s say $20 million, then the early investor would have a much, much lower price per share, about a quarter, and therefore their $100,000 would buy them approximately four times more shares than an investor that was coming in and putting in $100,000 in that series A priced round. So that’s where they get their reward for being in early. So again, this is another situation where you need to make sure you have the signed documents and you know where they are, because different investors may have different rights, and so you need to know what those things are.
[译文 28]
比如，一个投资者在有500万美元上限的SAFE上投资了10万美元，一年后，公司以2000万美元的估值进行了一轮定价融资，那么这位早期投资者的每股价格会低得多，大约是四分之一，因此他们的10万美元能够购买大约四倍于在A轮定价融资中投入10万美元的投资者的股份。这就是他们作为早期投资者获得的回报。所以，这又是另一种你需要确保已签署文件并知道它们存放在哪里的情况，因为不同的投资者可能有不同的权利，所以你需要了解这些条款具体是什么。
[段 29]
And again, services like Clerky can help with that. They have very standard documents that most of our YC companies use to raise money on. A couple of other things to think about when you are raising money. Hopefully you’ve got a really hot company that’s doing great, and it’s really easy to raise money. But you should be aware that all these people throwing money at you does have some downsides. So the first thing is to understand your future dilution. So if you raise, let’s say, $2 million on safes with a valuation cap of $6 million, then when those safes convert into equity, those early investors are going to own about 25% of the company. And that’s going to be in addition to the investors that are coming in at that priced round, who may want to own 20% of the company.
[译文 29]
还有，像 Clerky 这样的服务可以帮你处理这些。他们有非常标准化的文件，我们大多数YC公司都用这些文件来融资。融资时还需要考虑另外几件事。希望你已经有了一家非常火爆、发展很好的公司，融资变得非常容易。但你应该意识到，所有这些争相向你投资的人确实有一些缺点。首先是要了解你未来的股权稀释情况。比如，如果你通过 SAFEs 融资200万美元，估值上限为600万美元，那么当这些 SAFE 转换为股权时，这些早期投资者将拥有公司约25%的股份。而且这还不包括即将进入这轮定价融资的投资者，他们可能想拥有公司20%的股份。
[段 30]
So you’ve already at that point given away 45% of the company. So is this really what you want? And the answer might be yes. Remember that some money on a low valuation cap is infinitely better than no money at all, and if those are the terms that you can get, then take that money. But it’s just something to be aware of and to follow through the whole process so that you can see where this is going to lead you down the road. The other thing to bear in mind is that the investors should be sophisticated, and by that we mean that they have enough money to be able to invest and that they understand that investing in startups is a risky business.
[译文 30]
所以你在那时已经让出了公司45%的股份。所以这真的是你想要的吗？答案可能是肯定的。记住，带着低估值上限的一些资金绝对比没有资金好得多，如果这些是你能得到的条款，那就拿那笔钱。但这只是你需要意识到的事情，并且要贯穿整个过程，这样你就能看到这将引导你走向何方。另一件需要记住的事情是，投资者应该是成熟的，我们的意思是他们有足够的钱来投资，而且他们理解投资初创企业是一项有风险的业务。
[段 31]
We see so many companies coming into us that say, Oh yeah, my uncle put money in or my neighbor put money in, and they’ve put in $5,000 or $10,000 each. And often those are the investors that cause the most problems going forward, because they don’t understand how this is a long-term game. And so they get to the point where they’re sitting thinking, Hmm, I could actually do with that money back because I need a new kitchen, or this startup investing is not actually as exciting as all the TV shows and movies made it out to be. And those cause problems to the company if they’re asking for their money back. So just be aware that you should really be getting money from people who are sophisticated and know what they’re doing.
[译文 31]
我们看到很多公司找到我们时说，哦，是的，我叔叔投了钱，或者我邻居投了钱，他们每个人投了5000或10000美元。而这些人通常会是那些在未来造成最多问题的投资者，因为他们不理解这是一场长期游戏。所以他们会到这样一个阶段，坐下来想着，嗯，我其实可以把那笔钱拿回来，因为我需要装修厨房，或者这种创业投资实际上并没有电视节目和电影里演的那么刺激。而如果他们要求退款，这些会给公司带来问题。所以要意识到，你真的应该从那些成熟的、知道自己在做什么的投资者那里获得资金。
[段 32]
And the term that you’ll hear that refers to these people is that they are accredited investors. So really, the main points here is: Keep it simple. Raise your money using standard documents. Make sure that you have people who understand what they’re getting into and understand what you’re getting into in terms of future dilution. Okay. So you’re raising money. You understand what you’re selling. You’ve figured out the price. You’ve got down the logistics that Kirstie just described. But what you may find is that you don’t understand some of the terms and terminology that your investors are using. And this is okay, but you have a burden to go figure that stuff out. Don’t assume that just because you’ve agreed on the valuation or the price that all the other stuff doesn’t matter.
[译文 32]
你会听到的术语是指这些人被称为"合格投资者"。所以，归根结底，重点是：保持简单。使用标准文件来融资。确保你的投资者明白他们将要参与什么，以及在未来的股权稀释方面你将要面对什么。好，你正在融资。你知道自己卖的是什么。你已经定好了价格。你已经理清了Kirstie刚才描述的那些流程问题。但你可能会发现，你不太理解你的投资者使用的某些条款和术语。这没关系，但你承担着去弄清楚这些东西的责任。不要以为你们已经谈妥了估值或价格，其他的东西就不重要了。
[段 33]
Because it does matter, and you need to know how these terms are going to impact your company in the long run. At Y Combinator, Chris and I hear founders say all the time, I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know what I was signing. I didn’t know I agreed to that. So really the burden is on you to figure this stuff out. And we’re going to go over four common investor requests. So the first one is board seat. Some investors will ask for a seat on your company’s board of directors. And the investor usually wants to be a director either because he or she really wants to keep tabs on their money, or because he or she really thinks they can help you run your business.
[译文 33]
因为这确实很重要，你需要知道这些条款将如何长期影响你的公司。在 Y Combinator，Chris 和我经常听到创始人说，我不知道那是什么。我不知道我签的是什么。我不知道我同意了那一条。所以你真的需要自己弄清楚这些东西。我们会逐一讲解四个常见的投资者要求。第一个是董事会席位。某些投资者会要求在你公司的董事会占有一个席位。投资者通常想要成为董事，要么是因为他或她真的想密切关注自己的资金，要么是因为他或她真的认为自己能帮助你经营公司。
[段 34]
And you have to be really careful about adding an investor to your board. In most cases, you want to say no. Otherwise, make sure it’s a person who’s really going to add value. Having money is very valuable, but someone who really helps with strategy and direction is priceless. So choose wisely. The other thing is advisors. There are so many people who want to give advice to startups, and so few people who actually give good advice. Once an investor has given your company money, that person should be a de facto advisor, but without any official title, and more importantly, without the company having to give anything extra in return for the advice. So here’s an example.
[译文 34]
而且在把投资者加入董事会时，你必须非常谨慎。在大多数情况下，你应该说"不"。否则，要确保这个人真的能带来价值。有钱当然很有价值，但一个能在战略和方向上真正帮助你的人是无价的。所以要明智地选择。另一个问题是顾问。有很多人想给创业公司提建议，但真正能给出好建议的人却寥寥无几。一旦投资者给你的公司投了钱，那个人就应该是一个事实上的顾问，但不需要任何官方头衔，更重要的是，公司不需要为此付出任何额外的东西来换取建议。所以这里有一个例子。
[段 35]
At Y Combinator, we’ve noticed that whenever a startup manages to garner a celebrity investor, the celebrity almost always asks to be an advisor. We have a company that provides on-demand bodyguard services, and an NBA basketball player invested, asked to be an advisor, and then asked to be given shares of common stock in exchange for the advisor services. And the services that this person had in mind, this investor had in mind, would be to introduce this company around to all the other professional basketball players who might want to use an on-demand bodyguard. But this celebrity just made a big investment. Shouldn’t he want to help the company succeed anyway? Why does he need something extra? All investors who can help should do so.
[译文 35]
在 Y Combinator，我们注意到，每当一家初创公司成功吸引到一位明星投资者，这位明星几乎总是要求成为顾问。我们有一家提供随叫随到保镖服务的公司，一位 NBA 篮球运动员投资了该公司，要求成为顾问，然后要求以获得普通股作为顾问服务的报酬。这位投资者所设想的服务，是把公司介绍给所有可能想使用随叫随到保镖服务的其他职业篮球运动员。但这位明星刚刚投入了一笔大额投资。难道他不应该想帮助公司成功吗？为什么他还需要额外的东西？所有能够帮助的投资人都应该这样做。
[段 36]
Asking for additional shares is just an investor looking for a freebie. Okay, next we’re going to talk about pro rata rights. What are pro rata rights? Some of you may have heard of this before, but very simply, it’s the right to maintain your percentage ownership in a company by buying more shares in the company in the future. Pro rata rights are a way to avoid dilution, and dilution in this context means owning less and less of the company each time the company sells more stock to other investors. So this is a really basic example, but say an early investor buys shares of preferred stock and ends up owning 3% of the company once the financing has closed.
[译文 36]
要求额外股份只是投资者想要占便宜。好了，接下来我们要谈谈按比例权利。什么是按比例权利？你们中有些人可能以前听说过，但很简单，按比例权利就是通过在未来购买更多公司股份来保持你在公司中的百分比所有权。按比例权利是避免稀释的一种方式，而这里的稀释指的是每次公司向其他投资者出售更多股票时，你拥有的公司股份越来越少。这是一个非常基础的例子，比如说一个早期投资者购买了优先股，并在融资完成后最终拥有公司3%的股份。
[段 37]
Then the company raises another round of financing, and the company will go to this investor who negotiated and got pro rata rights, and say, Hey, we’re raising more money, so you’re welcomed to buy this many shares in the new round to keep your ownership at approximately 3%. That is pro rata rights at their very most basic. So pro rata rights are a very common request from investors, and they are not necessarily a bad thing, but you absolutely as a founder need to know how pro rata rights work. Especially because, Kirstie touched on this a little bit, the corollary to an investor having pro rata rights to avoid dilution is that the founders typically suffer greater dilution.
[译文 37]
然后公司进行新一轮融资，公司会去找这位谈判并获得了按 rata rights 的投资者，说：“嘿，我们正在筹集更多资金，欢迎你购买新一轮的这么多股份，以保持你大约 3% 的持股比例。“这就是 pro rata rights 最基本的定义。所以 pro rata rights 是投资者非常常见的要求，这不一定是一件坏事，但作为创始人，你绝对需要了解 pro rata rights 是如何运作的。特别是因为 Kirstie 稍微提到了这一点，投资者拥有 pro rata rights 以避免稀释，其推论通常是创始人遭受更大的稀释。
[段 38]
The final thing is information rights. Investors almost always want contractual information rights to get certain information about your company. Giving periodic information and status updates is not a bad thing. In fact, at YC, we encourage companies to give monthly updates to their investors, because it’s a great opportunity to ask for help from your investors, like introductions or help with hiring, that kind of thing. But you have to be really careful about overreach. Any investor who’s saying they want, like, a monthly budget or a weekly update, that’s not okay. So the takeaway here is that just because the type of financing and the valuation has been negotiated doesn’t mean that everything else is unimportant. You need to know everything about your financing.
[译文 38]
最后一点是信息权。投资者几乎总是希望通过合同条款获得关于你公司的某些信息。定期提供信息和状态更新并不是一件坏事。实际上，在YC，我们鼓励公司每月向投资者提供更新，因为这是一个向投资者寻求帮助的好机会，比如介绍资源或帮助招聘之类的。但你必须非常小心不要过度承诺。任何投资者说他们想要月度预算或每周更新的，都是不可接受的。所以关键启示是，仅仅因为融资类型和估值已经谈妥，并不意味着其他条款就不重要。你需要了解关于融资的一切。
[段 39]
Okay, so then moving on to after you’ve got that money, you know, you’ve raised some money, the company bank account’s probably showing more zeros in it than you’ve ever seen in your life. So then what? This is where you actually start incurring business expenses. And business expenses are the cost of carrying out your business. So things like paying employees, paying rent for an office, hosting costs, acquiring customers, that kind of thing. And business expenses are important because they get deducted on the company’s tax return to offset any revenues that are made, to lower the taxes that the company pays. And on the flip side, if it’s a non-business expense that the company incurs, then that is not deductible on the tax return, and so that can increase the profits that the company then has to pay tax on.
[译文 39]
好的，现在进入下一个环节。当你拿到那笔钱之后，我的意思是，你融到了一些资金，公司银行账户里显示的零可能比你这辈子见过的还多。那接下来呢？这就是你开始产生业务费用的时候了。业务费用就是开展业务的成本，比如支付员工工资、办公室租金、托管费用、开发客户费用，诸如此类。业务费用很重要，因为它们会在公司纳税申报表上扣除，以抵消所产生的收入，降低公司需要缴纳的税款。另一方面，如果公司产生的是非业务费用，那么这笔费用在纳税申报表上不能扣除，因此会增加公司需要缴纳税收的利润。
[段 40]
So again, this is a separation issue. The company will have its own bank account, and that’s where the company’s expenses should be paid out of. Again, thinking about this from a large company, if you were working at Google, you would not use a Google credit card to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste. So the other thing to remember is that the investors gave you this money, they trusted you with all these huge amounts of money, and they want you to use that money to make the company a success. It’s not your money for you to spend how you please. And believe me, we’ve had some horror stories of founders who take that approach. We had one founder that we knew of who took investor money and went off to Vegas, and boy, by his Facebook photos, did he have a good time.
[译文 40]
所以，再说一遍，这是一个资金分离的问题。公司会有自己的银行账户，公司所有的开支都应该从那里支出。再说一遍，从大公司的角度来思考，如果你在 Google 工作，你不会用 Google 的信用卡去买牙刷和牙膏。所以，要记住的另一点是，投资者给了你这笔钱，他们把这么大一笔钱托付给你，他们希望你能用这笔钱让公司取得成功。这不是你的钱，你想怎么花就怎么花。相信我，我们听说过一些创始人的恐怖故事，他们就是那种做法。我们认识一个创始人，拿了投资者的钱跑去 Vegas，从他的 Facebook 照片看，他确实玩得很开心。
[段 41]
Needless to say, he’s no longer with the company. But really, this is stealing from the investors. Think about it, the concept of business expenses can get a little bit blurry, especially in the early days when you’re working in your apartment and you’re working 24 hours a day. But the way to think about it is: if an investor asked me what I’d spent their money on, and I had to give a line by line breakdown of that, would I be embarrassed about telling them what any of those lines were? If you were, it’s probably not a business expense. The other thing to bear in mind is that you’re busy running your company at 90 miles an hour, just constant, constant, so you don’t have to necessarily think about the bookkeeping and accounting at that point, but it’s really crucial that you do keep the receipts so that when you do engage a bookkeeper or a CPA to prepare your tax returns, they can unpick all of this, and they can figure out what are business expenses and what aren’t business expenses.
[译文 41]
不用说，他已经不在这家公司了。但说真的，这是在偷窃投资者的钱。仔细想想，商务开支的概念可能会有些模糊，尤其是在早期，你在自己公寓工作，一天24小时都在忙。但思考这个问题的方式是：如果一个投资者问我把钱花在了哪里，而我必须逐条详细列出这些开支，我会因为告诉他们这些条目而感到尴尬吗？如果会尴尬，那可能就不是商务开支。另外需要记住的是，你正以90 miles an hour的速度忙着经营公司，一直持续不断，所以在那时候你不必非得考虑记账和会计工作，但非常重要的是你确实要保留收据，这样当你聘请簿记员或CPA来准备你的纳税申报表时，他们就能理清所有这些，并分清哪些是商务开支，哪些不是商务开支。
[段 42]
But they’re going to need your help as a founder because they aren’t going to know what all these things are. So there is some involvement from you, and the way to make the involvement the least amount possible is to keep those documents in a safe place so that you can refer back to them. So if nothing else that you remember, do not go to Vegas on investors’ money, and spend that money wisely. Okay, so in this section we’re going to talk about just doing business, and we’re going to hit a couple of topics in this section. So the first one is founder employment. Why are we talking about founder employment? Because, as we said a couple times already, the company is a separate legal entity.
[译文 42]
但作为创始人，他们会需要你的帮助，因为他们不会知道所有这些东西是什么。所以你需要参与一些事务，而让参与程度尽可能低的方法是把这些文件保存在安全的地方，以便你日后查阅。所以如果你只能记住一件事的话，那就是不要拿着投资者的钱去 Vegas，把那些钱花在刀刃上。好的，在这一节中我们要讨论的是如何开展业务，我们会在这节中涉及几个话题。所以第一个话题是创始人雇佣。为什么我们要讨论创始人雇佣？因为正如我们已经提过几次的，公司是一个独立的法律实体。
[段 43]
It exists completely separate and apart from you as founders. And so no matter how prestigious we in the Valley think the title founder is, you’re really just a company employee. And founders have to be paid. Working for free is against the law, and founders should not let their company take on this liability. You wouldn’t work for free anywhere else, so why is your startup an exception? And companies have to pay payroll taxes. We had a YC company that completely blew off their payroll taxes for three years. It was a huge, expensive disaster. Expensive disaster, and in extreme cases, people can actually go to jail for that. Fortunately, not in this case, but it’s bad. So the moral of this story is set up a payroll service.
[译文 43]
它与你们作为创始人完全独立分离。所以无论我们在硅谷认为“创始人”这个头衔多么有声望，你们实际上只是公司员工。创始人必须获得报酬。无偿工作是违法的，创始人不应该让公司承担这种责任。你在其他地方不会免费工作，那为什么你的创业公司是例外呢？公司必须缴纳工资税。我们有一家YC公司完全无视他们的工资税长达三年。这是一个巨大、昂贵的灾难。昂贵的灾难，在极端情况下，人们实际上可能会因此入狱。幸运的是，这个案例没有，但很糟糕。所以这个故事的教训是建立一套工资单服务系统。
[段 44]
This is something that is worth spending your money on. But, and I actually think, I’m sure some of the other lecturers have touched on this point, and actually Kirstie just mentioned it too, don’t go overboard on lavish salaries. Minimum wage. This is still a startup, and you have to run lean. So now I’m going to mention founder breakups. And first, well, what is a founder breakup? In this context, I’m talking about one founder on the team being asked to leave the company, which, because I’ve just said founders are employees, that means your co-founders are firing you. So why are we talking about breakups in the context of founder compensation? And it’s because at YC, we have seen a ton of founder breakups, and we know that the breakups get extra ugly when the founders haven’t paid themselves.
[译文 44]
这是值得你花钱的事情。但是，实际上我觉得其他一些讲师也提到过这一点，Kirstie刚才也提到了，不要在奢华薪资上过度开支。最低工资就行。这仍然是一家初创公司，你必须精打细算。所以现在我要讲创始人分手的问题。首先，什么是创始人分手？在这个语境下，我指的是团队中有一位创始人被要求离开公司，既然我刚才说过创始人员工，那么这意味着你的联合创始人正在解雇你。那为什么我们要在创始人薪酬的语境下讨论分手呢？因为在YC，我们见过大量的创始人分手，而且我们知道当创始人没有给自己发工资时，分手会变得格外棘手。
[段 45]
Why? How does it get ugly? Unpaid wages become leverage for the fired founder to get something he or she wants from the company, and typically that is vesting acceleration. So the fired founder says, hey, my lawyer says you broke the law by not paying me, but if you pay me and you give me some shares that I’m actually not really entitled to, I’ll sign a release and make all this ugliness go away. And if you’re the remaining co-founders, you’re probably like, sounds like a good deal. And so now you have a disgruntled person who owns a piece of your company. And even worse, in a sense, the remaining founders are kind of working for that ex-founder, right?
[译文 45]
为什么？怎么会变得很难看？未支付的工资成为被解雇的创始人向公司索取他或她想要的东西的筹码，通常是加速归属（vesting acceleration）。所以被解雇的创始人会说，嘿，我的律师说你没付我工资是违法的，但如果你付我钱并且给我一些我实际上并不真正有权获得的股票，我就会签署一份release，让所有这些难看的事情消失。如果你是在剩下的co-founders，你可能会觉得，这听起来是个好交易。于是现在你就有了一个心怀不满的人，他持有你公司的一部分股份。更糟糕的是，从某种意义上说，剩下的创始人某种程度上是在为那个ex-founder工作，对吧？
[段 46]
Because they’re building all the value in the company and the ex-founder who got fired is just sitting there with their shares going, that’s right, make it valuable. So what’s the takeaway here? Avoid problems by paying yourself, paying your payroll taxes, and thinking of your co-founder’s wages like a marital prenup. And as well as the founders, you are going to need to hire employees. And again, a lot has been spoken in previous classes here about how to find those people, what makes a good fit, how to make them really productive employees. But when you actually find somebody, how do you hire them? You know, what’s involved? And employment is governed by a huge raft of laws and therefore it’s important to get this right.
[译文 46]
因为他们正在公司中创造所有价值，而那个被解雇的前创始人只是坐在那里看着自己的股份——没错，让它变得有价值。所以要点是什么？通过给自己发薪酬、缴纳工资税来避免问题，并且要把联合创始人的工资看作婚前协议。此外，除了创始人之外，你还需要雇佣员工。同样，之前这里的课程已经讲了很多关于如何找到这些人、什么才是好的匹配、如何让他们成为真正高效的员工。但当你真正找到某个人时，你该如何雇佣他们？这其中涉及什么？雇佣关系受大量法律约束，因此正确处理这一点非常重要。
[段 47]
It’s again the kind of nitty gritty stuff that as long as you know the basics you can probably keep yourself out of most situations, but as soon as things get complicated you need to get yourself involved with a specialist. So the first thing you need to do is figure out if the employee or if the person is really an employee or a contractor. And there are subtle differences to this classification. And this is important to get right because the IRS takes a big interest in this. And if they think you’ve got it wrong, they will come after you with fines. Both an employee and a contractor will sign documents that assign any IP that they create to the company, and that’s obviously really important, but the form of the document is very different for each type of person, and the method of payment is very different.
[译文 47]
这又是那种细节性的东西，只要你知道基础知识，就可能让自己远离大多数情况，但一旦事情变得复杂，你就需要找专家来帮忙了。所以你需要做的第一件事就是弄清楚这个员工或这个人究竟是员工还是承包商。这种分类存在细微差别。这很重要，必须做对，因为IRS对此非常关注。如果他们认为你搞错了，他们就会对你处以罚款。员工和承包商都会签署文件，将他们创造的任何IP转让给公司，这显然非常重要，但文件的表单对每种类型的人来说是不同的，支付方式也非常不同。
[段 48]
So generally a contractor will be able to set their own work hours, they’ll be able to set their own location, they will be given a project where there is an end result but how they actually get to that and the means they use will not be set. They’ll be using their own equipment and they’ll not really have any say in the day to day running of the company or their strategy going forward. And a contractor will sign a consulting agreement and then when the company pays them the company doesn’t withhold any taxes on their behalf that’s on the responsibility of the individual but at the end of the year the company will provide what’s called a form 1099 to the individual and also a copy to the IRS which they’ll use to prepare their personal tax returns.
[译文 48]
所以一般来说，承包商可以自行设定工作时间，可以自行选择工作地点。他们会收到一个项目，项目有最终目标，但如何达成目标以及使用什么方式方法则没有规定。他们会使用自己的设备，并且他们实际上对公司的日常运营或未来战略没有发言权。承包商会签署一份咨询协议，然后当公司支付报酬时，公司不会代扣任何税款，纳税责任由个人承担，但到年底公司会向个人提供所谓的form 1099，同时也会向IRS提交一份副本，个人会用它来准备个人所得税申报。
[段 49]
The opposite side of this is an employee and an employee will also sign some form of IP assignment agreement but when the company pays them the company will withhold taxes from their salary, and then the company is responsible for paying those taxes over to the relevant state and federal authorities. And at the end of the year, the employee receives a W-2 form, which will then get used to prepare their personal tax returns. So, as Carolyn has said, the founders need to be paid, so do employees. It isn’t enough to just say, well, I’m paying them in stock, so that can be their compensation. And they need to be paid at least minimum wage. So in San Francisco, which actually has a slightly higher minimum wage than California as a whole, that works out about $2,000 a month.
[译文 49]
相反的一方是雇员，雇员也会签署某种形式的知识产权转让协议，但当公司支付薪酬时，公司会从工资中预扣税款，然后公司负责将这些税款支付给相关的州和联邦税务机关。到年底时，雇员会收到W-2表格，该表格将用于编制个人纳税申报单。所以，正如Carolyn所说，创始人需要获得报酬，员工也需要获得报酬。仅仅说"我用股票支付他们，这就是他们的报酬"是不够的。而且他们的报酬至少要达到最低工资标准。在San Francisco，这里的最低工资实际上比整个California略高，折算下来大约每月$2,000。
[段 50]
So, you know, it’s not a huge amount, but it can add up. There’s also another couple of things that you need to make sure that you have if you have employees. So the first thing is that you’re required to have workers’ compensation insurance. And especially if you’re in New York, where the New York authorities that look after this will send really threatening letters saying, you owe $50,000 in fine because your one employee that’s being paid minimum wage has not paid the $20 a month of workers’ compensation fees. So it is really important that you do set that up. And the other thing that’s very important is that you do need to see proof that the employee is authorized to work in the US.
[译文 50]
所以，虽然金额不大，但会累积起来。如果你雇佣员工，还需要确保满足另外几项要求。首先，你需要购买工人赔偿保险。特别是如果你在纽约，纽约的相关部门会发送威胁性信件，说你欠$50,000的罚款，因为你那一位领最低工资的员工没有支付每月$20的工人赔偿费。所以你一定要设置这个。另一件非常重要的事情是，你需要查看员工有权在美国工作的证明。
[段 51]
You know, founders are not payroll experts and nobody expects you to be one either. This is all just about the basics. But what that does mean is that you absolutely must use a payroll service provider who will be able to look after this for you. And services like Zen Payroll are again set up, they’re focused on startups and they help you get this set up in the easiest way possible so that again you can go back and concentrate on what you do best. And in the example that Carolyn gave just a few minutes ago, if that company had actually set themselves up with a payroll service provider, all of that heartache would have gone away because it would all have just been looked after for them.
[译文 51]
你知道，创始人不一定是工资单专家，也没有人期望你成为这方面的专家。这些都只是基础知识。但这就意味着你绝对必须使用一家工资单服务提供商，他们能够帮你处理这一切。像Zen Payroll这样的服务也是如此，它们专注于初创公司，帮助你以最简单的方式完成设置，这样你就可以回过头来专注于你最擅长的事情。在Carolyn几分钟前举的例子中，如果那家公司真的使用了工资单服务提供商，所有的痛苦都会消失，因为一切都会有人帮他们处理。
[段 52]
They were trying to save money by not doing it and look where it got them. So that’s really the key thing. Use a payroll service provider and make sure that you understand the basics of employment. We’re running short on time. Yeah. Okay. So I can breeze through really fast firing employees slide and then should we cut it off now for questions? What? Okay. Okay. Okay. So somebody at YC once said, you’re not a real founder until you’ve had to fire somebody. Why is that? Because firing people is really hard. It’s hard for a lot of reasons, including because founders tend to hire their friends, they tend to hire former co-workers, or they just get really close to their employees because working at a startup is really intense.
[译文 52]
他们为了省钱没有做这件事，结果你看落到什么地步了。所以这真的很关键。使用薪资服务提供商，并确保你了解雇佣的基本知识。我们的时间不多了。嗯。好的。那我可以很快带过解聘员工的幻灯片，然后我们现在停下来回答问题吗？什么？好的。好的。好的。所以YC的某个人曾经说过，在你解聘过一个人之前，你不是一个真正的创始人。为什么这么说？因为解聘员工真的很难。这很难的原因有很多，包括因为创始人倾向于雇佣他们的朋友，倾向于雇佣以前的同事，或者他们只是与员工走得很近，因为在创业公司工作真的很辛苦。
[段 53]
But in every company, there’s going to be an employee who doesn’t work out, and firing a founder, sorry, firing this employee makes a founder a real professional because he or she has to do what is right for the company instead of what is easy. So I have some best practices for how to fire someone. Number one, fire quickly. Don’t let a bad employee linger. It’s so easy to put off a difficult conversation, but there is only downside to procrastination. If a toxic employee stays around too long, good employees may quit. And if the employee is actually screwing up the job, you may lose business or users. Number two, communicate effectively. Don’t rationalize. Don’t make excuses.
[译文 53]
但是在每家公司，都会有员工表现不佳，解雇创始人，抱歉，解雇这位员工会让创始人成为一个真正的专业人士，因为他或她必须做对公司有益的事情，而不是做容易的事情。
所以我有一些关于如何解雇员工的最佳实践。
Number one，快速解雇。不要让糟糕的员工拖沓。推延一场艰难的对话是非常容易的，但拖延只有坏处。如果一个有问题的员工待得太久，优秀的员工可能会辞职。而且如果这位员工实际上把工作搞砸了，你可能会失去业务或用户。
Number two，有效沟通。不要合理化。不要找借口。
[段 54]
Don’t equivocate about why you’re firing the employee. Make clear, direct statements. Don’t apologize. Example, we’re letting you go. Not, I’m so sorry, sales didn’t take off this quarter, blah, blah, blah. Fire the employee face-to-face and ideally with a third party present. Number three, Pay all wages and accrue to vacation immediately. This is a legal requirement. We don’t debate or negotiate this. Number four, cut off access to digital systems. Once an employee is out the door, cut off physical and digital access. Control information in the cloud, change passwords, et cetera. We had a situation at YC where one founder had access to the company’s GitHub account and held the password hostage when his co-founders tried to fire him.
[译文 54]
不要含糊其辞地解释为什么要解雇这名员工。清晰、直接地说明。不要道歉。例如，直接说"我们要解雇你”，而不是"我很抱歉，本季度销售额没有增长，等等，等等”。当面解雇员工，最好有第三方在场。第三，立即支付所有工资并结算应计假期。这是法律要求，这点不容争议或协商。第四，切断对数字系统的访问权限。员工一离开，立即切断物理和数字访问权限。控制云端信息，更改密码，等等。在YC，我们曾遇到一种情况：一位创始人拥有公司GitHub账户的访问权限，当他的联合创始人试图解雇他时，他拿密码作为要挟。
[段 55]
And number five, if the terminated employee has any invested shares, the company should repurchase them right away. So the takeaway here is that, as surprising as this may sound, one of the hallmarks of a really effective startup founder is how well he or she handles employee terminations. Okay, so then we have this section that we call legitimacy, which actually goes into a little bit more about how to be a real company, how to be sort of a grown-up company. And we can totally jettison. Is this the last slide? No. We have our takeaway. Okay. So, Kirsten, you want to read the takeaways? Okay, so we’ve pretty much covered all of these anyway, but the basic tenet to all of this is: keep it simple, do all the standard stuff, and keep it organized.
[译文 55]
如果第五点，被解雇的员工有任何已投资的股票，公司应该立即回购。所以这里的要点是，尽管这听起来可能令人惊讶，一位真正高效的创业公司创始人的标志之一是他或她如何处理员工解聘。好的，接下来我们有一个章节，我们称之为"合法性"，这实际上更深入地讲述了如何成为一家真正的公司，如何成为一家成熟的公司。我们可以完全抛弃。这是最后一张幻灯片吗？不是，我们还有要点总结。好的，Kirsten，你想读一下要点总结吗？好的，我们基本上已经涵盖了所有这些，但所有这些的基本原则是：保持简单，做好所有标准的事情，并保持井井有条。
[段 56]
Make sure you know what you’re doing. Equity ownership is really important, so make sure that you’re thinking about the future rather than the three months of history of the company. And stock doesn’t buy itself, so again make sure you do the paperwork for that. Make sure that you actually know about the financing documents that you’re signing up to. It’s not enough to just say, Yeah, I’ll take your 100k. Make sure you actually know those rights. And you need to get paid. You and the employees need to be paid. And then everybody needs to assign IP to the company, because if the company does not own that IP, there is no value in the company. If an employee must be fired, then, as Carolyn was saying, do it quickly and professionally.
[译文 56]
确保你知道自己正在做什么。股权所有权真的很重要，所以要确保你在考虑的是未来而不是公司过去三个月的历史。而且股票不会自己买，所以再次确认你要做好文件工作。确保你真正了解你所签署的融资文件。仅仅说"好的，我接受你的10万美元"是不够的。确保你真正了解那些权利。你需要获得报酬。你和员工都需要获得报酬。然后每个人都必须将知识产权转让给公司，因为如果公司不拥有那些知识产权，公司就没有价值。如果必须解雇一名员工，那么正如卡罗琳所说，要快速且专业地处理。
[段 57]
The couple of things that we didn’t mention were: knowing your key metrics at any time. You should know the cash position, you should know your burn rate, you should know when that cash is going to run out, so that you can talk to your investors about that. And you know, a lot of running a company is following the rules and taking it seriously. It’s not all the glamorous bits that we see in all the movies and TV shows, so you do have to take that seriously. Okay, so it was shorter when we did it the first time. Sorry about that. Sorry. Can you get two questions in? Sure. How do you advise searching for an accountant, and when in the process do you need them?
[译文 57]
我们没有提到的几件事是：随时了解你的关键指标。你应该知道现金状况，你应该知道烧钱率，你应该知道现金什么时候会用完，这样你才能和投资者谈论这些。还有，你知道，运营公司很大程度上是遵循规则、认真对待。不是我们在电影和电视节目中看到的那些光鲜亮丽的全部内容，所以你确实需要认真对待这些。好的，我们第一次做的时候比较短。很抱歉。抱歉。你能问两个问题吗？好的。对于寻找会计师，你有什么建议？在什么阶段你需要他们？
[段 58]
So the question was: how do you advise searching for an accountant, and at what point do you do this? So there’s two different things. There’s a bookkeeper and there’s a CPA, an accountant. And generally, bookkeepers will be the ones who can categorize all your expenses, and CPAs are the ones that will prepare your tax returns. In the very, very early days, it’s probably fine for the founders to just be able to see the bank statements and to be able to see those expenses coming out. But tax returns have to be prepared annually. And so at some point in that first year of the company’s life, some service is going to need to be engaged to do that, because it’s just not worth the founder’s time to do it.
[译文 58]
所以问题是：如何建议寻找会计师，以及在什么时间点做这件事？所以这里有两件不同的事。有簿记员和CPA，也就是会计师。通常，簿记员负责分类所有支出，而CPA负责准备你的纳税申报表。在非常非常早期，由创始人自己查看银行对账单和支出记录应该就够了。但纳税申报表必须每年准备。所以在公司的第一年某个时候，需要聘请某项服务来做这件事，因为让创始人自己做这件事是不值得的。
[段 59]
There are services available like Indoneero, which kind of try to make things as effortless as possible from the founder’s point of view. So that kind of thing is quite useful. But you do need to get a CPA at some point, because you need to file your annual tax returns for the company. How do you find one? Finding one is kind of tough. Probably the best thing is recommendations from people. With any kind of specialist, a CPA or a lawyer or anything like that, it’s always best to use people who are used to dealing with startups. Again, not your sort of your aunt who lives in Minnesota and doesn’t actually know how startups work, so probably recommendations are the best way.
[译文 59]
有一些服务比如Indoneero，会尽量从创始人的角度让事情变得轻松。所以这类服务非常有用。但你确实需要在某个时候找一个CPA，因为你需要为公司提交年度纳税申报表。怎么找到一个呢？找到一个挺困难的。可能最好的方式是通过推荐。对于任何类型的专业人士，比如CPA或律师，最好找那些习惯与创业公司打交道的人。也就是说，不要找住在Minnesota的你姨妈那样的人，她根本不了解创业公司是怎么运作的。所以推荐可能是最好的方式。
[段 60]
Okay. All kinds of fitters, what’s your budget for incorporating with a lawyer, for getting legal advice for my first seed round, and then for hiring the first employee? How much money do I set aside for that? So in terms of incorporation, don’t spend a dime on that. You can do that online? Well, actually, I’m sorry. It does cost a little bit. Incorporating online, using a service like Clerky, which Kirstie mentioned, is inexpensive, like in the hundreds, not in the thousands. So you don’t need a lawyer for that part. When you actually need to hire a lawyer is, it kind of depends on what business you are starting and how complicated it is, in terms of: do you have a lot of privacy policies?
[译文 60]
好的，各位，关于与律师合作注册公司、种子轮融资的法律咨询，以及招聘第一位员工，你的预算是多少？我应该留出多少钱？ 所以说到注册公司，别在这上面花一分钱。你可以在线完成吗？嗯，实际上，抱歉，它确实要花一点钱。在线注册公司，使用像 Clerky 这样的服务（Kirstie 提到的），费用不高，大概几百美元，不是几千美元。所以那部分你不需要律师。实际上你需要聘请律师的时候，要看你创立的是什么类型的公司、有多复杂，比如：你的业务是否涉及大量的隐私政策？
[段 61]
Is HIPAA involved? I mean, you can imagine there’s like a ton. And also, then you mentioned when you’re raising your seed round, well, how much money are you raising, and who are the investors, and what kind of terms are in the term sheet? Sometimes that dictates whether or not you need to get legal counsel. And again, a service like Clerky can help if you are just using very standard documents for the fundraising. There are just very basic, vanilla fundraising documents, so you can use those. And again, they cost less than $100, I think, which can save you some legal fees. One more question. Do you want to pick? Shall we go back over this side?
[译文 61]
HIPAA 有涉及吗？我是说，你可以想象有很多。而且，当你提到融资的时候，融资多少钱，投资人是谁，term sheet 里有什么条款？有时候这些决定了是否需要聘请律师。同样，像 Clerky 这样的服务可以帮助你，如果你只是使用非常标准的融资文件。有一些非常基本的、普通融资文件，所以你可以使用这些。而且，价格不到 100 美元，我认为，这样可以节省一些律师费。再问一个问题，你想选吗？我们要回到这边吗？
[段 62]
I’m going to ignore the black. Let’s go up here. Do you guys have any advice or comment on the complexity that comes with working with cryptocurrencies or crypto equities in particular, like if you’re fundraising, since that’s becoming more and more popular? Oh, wow, that’s a tough question to end with. Yes, there are some issues. Often banks will struggle to deal with companies that are working in cryptocurrencies, because they haven’t quite figured out how to deal with it and that sort of thing yet. Generally, a lot of it, it’s very product specific, it’s not something that kind of has real general advice, unfortunately. Okay, thank you very much. You’re welcome.
[译文 62]
我会忽略黑色部分。我们继续。你对处理加密货币或特别是加密股票相关的复杂性有什么建议或评论吗，比如如果你在融资的话，因为这个越来越受欢迎了？哦，哇，这是一个很难的收尾问题。是的，确实有一些问题。通常银行在处理从事加密货币业务的公司时会遇到困难，因为他们还没有完全弄清楚如何处理这类事情。总的来说，很多情况下这都是非常具体的产品问题，不幸的是没有什么真正的通用建议。好的，非常感谢你。不客气。
Source: bilibili BV1oWKpzoE1Z