斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第03集：创业之前

视频信息

• 标题: 斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第03集：创业之前
• BV号: BV1oWKpzoE1Z
• 时长: 48分05秒（2885秒）
• 作者: 常春藤中英字幕课
• 原始链接: B站视频

视频摘要

Sam Altman 在斯坦福 YC 创业课上分享了创办创业公司前的六个反直觉观点。核心主题是：创业公司极其反直觉，不能依赖直觉判断。成功关键不在于懂创业知识，而在于深刻理解用户需求。创始人的典型错误是过家家——模仿创业的外在形式而忽略本质。玩弄系统在大公司可能有效，但创业公司没有老板可骗，只有用户说了算。创业会占据生活很长时间，有真正的机会成本，因此不应在大学期间创办。判断自己是否适合创业无法提前预知，唯一方法是去尝试。获得创业想法的最好方式不是刻意去想，而是退后一步，让自己沉浸在感兴趣的问题中，到达某个技术领域的领先边缘。总结为两个字：就学——大学期间应该纯粹学习，而非急着创业。

核心要点

1. 反直觉特性：创业公司像滑雪一样反直觉，新手的本能会将你引入歧途，需要刻意记住反直觉清单

2. 信任人的直觉：在识人方面可以相信直觉，尤其来自工程背景的创始人容易低估令人不悦的危险信号

3. 用户专业知识：成功靠的不是创业知识，而是对自己用户的深刻理解，Mark Zuckerberg 就是典型例子

4. 过家家陷阱：年轻创始人容易模仿创业的表面形式（融资、租办公室、雇人），而忽略唯一必要的事——做人们想要的东西

5. 玩弄系统失效：创业公司没有老板可骗，只有用户能决定成败，用户像鲨鱼一样只关心软件是否满足需求

6. 全神贯注成本：成功创业会不可逆转地占据生活数年，有真实的机会成本，20岁不是最佳创业时机

7. 无法预知适配性：除非人生经历非常特殊，否则无法判断自己是否适合创业，唯一方法就是去尝试

8. 副项目出发的想法：Google、Facebook、Apple 都是从副项目起步，刻意想创业点子会想出听起来合理但实际糟糕的想法

9. 大学期间最优选择：不是学习创业知识，而是跟随好奇心学习强大的东西，创业只是好奇心的副产品

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]

Like, long introductions are no good. Sam knows. Alright, ready everybody? I’m not going to ask if the mic is working like in every talk so far. I’ll just assume it’s working. No, fuck! Alright, well make it work somebody. It works, it works. This is like some kind of class tradition. Alright, alright. I wrote out my talk, and afterwards, in a couple days, I will turn it from a talk into an essay and put it online, so you don’t have to take notes. Just listen. All right, so one of the advantages of having kids is that when you have to give advice to people, you can ask yourself, what would I tell my own kids? And actually, you find this really focuses you.

[译文 1]

长的开场白没什么用。Sam知道的。好，大家都准备好了吗？我不会像之前每场演讲那样问麦克风是不是正常工作。我就假设它正常工作。不，该死！好吧，让它工作起来，某人。它工作了，它工作了。这就像是某种班级传统。好吧，好吧。我写好了我的演讲，之后几天内，我会把它从演讲变成文章放到网上，所以你不用记笔记。只管听。好吧，有孩子的一个好处是，当你要给别人建议时，你可以问自己，我会告诉我自己的孩子什么？然后你发现，这真的会让你更专注。

[段 2]

So even though my kids are little, my two-year-old today, when I asked what he was going to be after two, said a bat. The correct answer was three, but a bat is so much more interesting. So even though my kids are little, I already know what I would tell them about startups if they were in college. And so that is what I’m going to tell you. So you’re literally getting what I would give my own kids, since most of you are young enough to be my own kids. All right, so startups are very counterintuitive. And I’m not sure exactly why. It could be simply because knowledge about them has not permeated our culture yet. But whatever the reason, this is an area where you cannot trust your intuitions all the time.

[译文 2]

所以尽管我的孩子还很小，我两岁的孩子今天，当我问他两岁以后要成为什么时，他说一只蝙蝠。正确答案应该是三岁，但蝙蝠有趣多了。所以尽管我的孩子还很小，我已经在想如果他们在大学，我会告诉他们关于创业公司什么。这就是我要告诉你们的。所以你们实际上得到的就是我会给我自己孩子的建议，因为你们大多数人都年轻得可以当我的孩子了。好吧，创业公司非常反直觉。我不确定具体原因。可能只是因为关于创业公司的知识还没有渗透到我们的文化中。但不管原因是什么，这是一个你不能总是相信你直觉的领域。

[段 3]

It’s like skiing in that way. Any of you guys learn to ski as adults? You know, when you’re skiing, when you first try skiing and you want to slow down, your first impulse is to lean back, just like in everything else. But lean back on skis and you fly down the hill out of control. So, as I learned. So part of learning to ski is learning to suppress that impulse. Eventually, you get new habits. But in the beginning, there’s this list of things you’re trying to remember as you start down the hill. You know, like alternate feet, make S-turns, do not drag the inside foot, all this stuff. Well, startups are as unnatural as skiing.

[译文 3]

在这方面，它有点像滑雪。你们中有谁成年后才学滑雪的？你们知道，当你滑雪时，当你第一次尝试滑雪而想要减速时，你的第一个冲动是向后倾，就像做其他所有事情一样。但如果在滑雪板上向后倾，你会失控地飞下山坡。就像我学到的那样。所以学滑雪的一部分就是学会抑制那个冲动。最终，你会养成新的习惯。但在开始时，当你开始下山时，有一长串你需要记住的事情。比如交替脚步，做S形转弯，不要拖内侧脚，所有这些。好吧，创业公司和不滑雪一样不自然。

[段 4]

And there is a similar list of stuff you have to remember for startups. And what I’m going to give you today is the beginning of the list. The list of the counterintuitive stuff you have to remember to prevent your existing instincts from leading you astray. The first thing on it is the fact I just mentioned that startups are so weird that if you follow your instincts, they will lead you astray. If you remember nothing more than that, when you’re about to make a mistake, you may at least pause before making it. When I was running Y Combinator, we used to joke that our function was to tell founders things they would ignore. And it’s really true.

[译文 4]

对于创业公司也有一份类似的需要记住的事项清单。我今天要给你们的就是清单的开始。这份反直觉事项的清单，是为了防止你现有的本能把你引入歧途。第一件事就是我刚才提到的，创业公司太奇怪了，如果你跟随你的本能，它们会把你引入歧途。如果你只记住这一点，当你即将犯错误时，你至少会在犯错之前暂停一下。当我运营Y Combinator时，我们曾经开玩笑说我们的功能就是告诉创始人一些他们会忽略的事情。这是真的。

[段 5]

Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they are about to make, and the founders ignore them, and they come back a year later and say, I wish we’d listened. But that dude is in their cap table. There’s nothing they can do. Why do founders persistently ignore the partner’s advice? Well, that’s the thing about counterintuitive ideas. They contradict your intuitions. So they seem wrong. So, of course, your first impulse is to ignore them. And in fact, that is not just the curse of Y Combinator, but to some extent our raison d’etre. You don’t need people to give you advice that doesn’t surprise you. If founders’ existing intuitions gave them the right answers, they wouldn’t need us.

[译文 5]

一批又一批，YC合伙人会警告创始人他们即将犯的错误，而创始人们忽略他们，一年后回来说，我真希望我们当时听了。但那个家伙已经进入了他们的股权表。他们什么都做不了。为什么创始人会一直忽略合伙人的建议？这就是反直觉想法的特点。它们与你的直觉相矛盾。所以它们看起来是错的。所以，当然，你的第一个冲动就是忽略它们。事实上，这不仅仅是Y Combinator的诅咒，在某种程度上这是我们存在的原因。你不需要人们给你不让你惊讶的建议。如果创始人的现有直觉给他们正确的答案，他们就不需要我们了。

[段 6]

That’s why there are a lot of ski instructors and not many running instructors. You don’t see those two words together, running instructor, as much as you see ski instructor. It’s because skiing is counterintuitive. It says sort of what YC is, is like business ski instructors, except for going up slopes instead of down them. Well, ideally. You can, however, trust your instincts about people. Your life so far hasn’t been much like starting a startup, but all the interactions you’ve had with people are just like the interactions you have with people in the business world. So in fact one of the big mistakes that founders make is not to trust their intuitions about people enough. They meet someone who seems impressive, but about whom they feel some misgivings.

[译文 6]

这就是为什么有很多滑雪教练而不是跑步教练。你不太看到跑步教练这两个词放在一起，不像滑雪教练那么常见。这是因为滑雪是反直觉的。这有点像YC是什么，就是商业滑雪教练，只是爬坡而不是下坡。好吧，理想情况下。然而，你可以信任你对人的直觉。迄今为止，你的生活与创业没有太多相似之处，但你与人的所有互动都与你商业世界中与人的互动一样。所以事实上，创始人犯的一个大错误是不够信任他们对人的直觉。他们遇到一个看起来令人印象深刻的人，但对他们有一些疑虑。

[段 7]

And then later, when things blow up, they say, you know, I knew there was something wrong about that guy, but I ignored it because he seemed so impressive. And there’s a specific sub-case in business, especially if you have come from an engineering background, as I believe you all do. You think business is supposed to be this sort of slightly distasteful thing. And so when you meet people who seem smart but somehow distasteful, you think, well, okay, this must be normal for business. It’s not. Just like pick people the way you would pick people if you were picking friends. This is one of those rare cases where it works to be self-indulgent. Work with people you genuinely like and respect and that you have known long enough to be sure.

[译文 7]

然后后来，当事情搞砸了，他们说，你知道，我知道那个人有问题，但我忽略了，因为他看起来太令人印象深刻了。在商业中有一个具体的子案例，特别是如果你来自工程背景，就像我相信你们都是。你认为商业应该是有点令人反感的东西。所以当你遇到看起来聪明但有点令人反感的人时，你想，好吧，这对商业来说一定是正常的。不是的。就像选择你挑选朋友的方式一样选择人。这是你可以自我放纵的少数情况之一。和那些你真正喜欢和尊重的人一起工作，并且你已经认识足够长时间来确认。

[段 8]

Because there’s a lot of people who are really good at seeming likable for a while. Just wait until your interests are opposed, and then you’ll see. All right. The second counterintuitive point is that, and this might come as a little bit of a disappointment, but what you need to succeed in a startup is not expertise in startups. That makes this class different from most other classes you take. If you take a French class, at the end of it, you will learn how to speak French if you do the work. You may not sound exactly like a French person, but pretty close, right? This class can teach you about startups, but that is not what you need to know.

[译文 8]

因为有很多人在一段时间内非常擅长显得讨人喜欢。只是等到你们的利益对立，然后你就会看到。好吧，第二个反直觉的观点是，这可能会有点令人失望，但你需要成功创业的不是创业专业知识。这使得这门课与你上的大多数其他课程不同。如果你上法语课，在课程结束时，如果你做了作业，你将学会如何说法语。你可能听起来不完全像一个法国人，但相当接近，对吧？这门课可以教你关于创业的知识，但那不是你需要知道的。

[段 9]

What you need to know to succeed in a startup is not expertise in startups. What you need is expertise in your own users. Mark Zuckerberg did not succeed in Facebook because he was an expert in startups. He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups. I mean, Facebook was first incorporated as a Florida LLC. Even you guys know better than that. He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups because he understood his users very well. Most of you don’t know the mechanics of raising an angel around, right? And if you feel bad about that, don’t, because I can tell you, Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t know the mechanics of raising an angel around either. If he was even paying attention when Ron Conway wrote him the big check, he has probably forgotten about it by now.

[译文 9]

你需要知道在创业中成功，不是创业专业知识。你需要知道的是关于你自己的用户。Mark Zuckerberg在Facebook上成功不是因为他是创业专家。尽管他对创业完全是个新手，他还是成功了。我的意思是，Facebook最初是作为佛罗里达州有限责任公司注册的。你们都知道得比那更好。尽管他对创业完全是个新手，他还是成功了，因为他非常了解他的用户。你们大多数人都不知道天使融资的细节，对吧？如果你为此感到难过，不用，因为我可以告诉你，Mark Zuckerberg可能也不知道天使融资的细节。如果他当时甚至注意到Ron Conway给他写的大支票，他可能到现在已经忘记了。

[段 10]

In fact, I worry it’s not merely unnecessary for people to learn in detail about the mechanics of starting a startup, but possibly somewhat dangerous. Because another of the characteristic mistakes of young founders starting startups is to go through the motions of starting a startup. They come up with some plausible sounding idea, they raise funding at a nice valuation, they rent a nice office in Soma, hire a bunch of their friends, and then the next step after rent a nice office in Soma and hire a bunch of their friends is gradually realize how completely fucked they are because while imitating all the outward forms of starting a startup they have neglected the one thing that’s actually essential which is to make something people want.

[译文 10]

事实上，我担心人们详细学习创业机制不仅仅是多余的，而且可能有点危险。因为年轻创始人创业的另一个典型错误是走创业的形式。他们提出一些听起来合理的想法，在很好的估值下融资，在Soma租一间漂亮的办公室，雇佣一群他们的朋友，然后在Soma租一间漂亮的办公室和雇佣一群朋友之后的下一步是逐渐意识到他们是多么彻底地搞砸了，因为在模仿创业的所有外在形式的同时，他们忽略了一件真正必不可少的事情，那就是制作人们想要的东西。

[段 11]

By the way, that’s the only use of that swear word, except for the initial one that was involuntary, and I did check with Sam whether it would be okay. He said he had done it several times. I mean, use the word. We saw this happen so often. No, I mean people going through the motions of starting a startup. But we made up a name for it. Playing house. Eventually, I realized why it was happening. The reason young founders go through the motions of starting a startup is because that is what they have been trained to do for their whole lives up to this point. Think about what it takes to get into college. Extracurricular activities.

[译文 11]

顺便说一句，那是那个脏字的唯一用途，除了最初那个不由自主的，我确实问过Sam是否可以。他说他做过好几次。我的意思是，用这个词。我们经常看到这种情况。不，我的意思是人们走过创业的形式。但我们给它起了个名字。过家家。最终，我意识到为什么会这样。年轻创始人走过创业形式的原因是因为这是他们到目前为止一生中被训练去做的事情。想想进入大学需要什么。课外活动。

[段 12]

Check. Right? Even in college classes, most of the work you do is as artificial as running laps. And I am not attacking the educational system for being this way. Inevitably, it has to be. The work that you do to learn something is going to have some amount of fakeness to it. And if you measure people’s performance, they will inevitably exploit the difference to the degree that what you’re measuring is largely an artifact of the fakeness. And I confess that I did this myself in college. In fact, here is a useful tip on getting good grades. I found that in a lot of classes, there might only be 20 or 30 ideas that actually had the right shape to make good exam questions.

[译文 12]

打勾，对吧？即使在大学课程中，你做的大部分工作都和跑圈一样假。我不是在攻击教育系统是这样的。不可避免地，它必须是这样。你做来学习东西的工作会有一些虚假在其中。如果你衡量人们的绩效，他们必然会利用衡量的差异到你所衡量的东西很大程度上是虚假的产物。我承认我在大学里也这样做了。事实上，这里有一个关于取得好成绩的有用提示。我发现，在很多课程中，可能只有20或30个想法实际上具有正确的形状来出好的考试题。

[段 13]

And so the way I studied for exams in these classes was not to master the material in the class, but to try and figure out what the exam questions would be and work out the answers in advance. And like, for me, the test was not like what my answers would be on the exam. For me, the test was which of my exam questions would turn up on the exam, right? So I would get my grade instantly. I would walk into the exam and look at the questions and see how many I got right, essentially. It works in a lot of classes, especially CS classes. I remember automata theory. There’s only a few things that make sense to ask about automata theory.

[译文 13]

所以在这些课程中我备考的方式不是掌握课程内容，而是试图弄清楚考试会问什么，然后提前想出答案。对我来说，测试不是我在考试中会给出什么答案。对我来说，测试是我的考试题中有多少会出现在考试中，对吧？所以我会立即得到我的成绩。我走进考场，看题目，看我对了多少，本质上。这在很多课程中有效，尤其是CS课程。我记得自动机理论。关于自动机理论只有少数几件事可以问。

[段 14]

So it’s not surprising that after being effectively trained for their whole lives to play such games, young founders’ first impulse on starting a startup is to figure out what the tricks are for this new game. What are the extracurricular activities of startups? What are the things I have to do? They always want to know since apparently the measure of success for a startup is fundraising, another noob mistake. They always want to know, what are the tricks for convincing investors? And we have to tell them the best way to convince investors is to start a startup that’s actually doing well, meaning growing fast, and then simply tell investors so. So then they ask, okay, what are the tricks for growing fast?

[译文 14]

所以在他们一生中有效地被训练来玩这种游戏之后，年轻创始人创业的第一个冲动是弄清楚这个新游戏的技巧是什么，这并不令人惊讶。创业的课外活动是什么？我必须做什么？他们总是想知道，因为显然创业的成功的衡量标准是融资，这是另一个新手错误。他们总是想知道，说服投资者的技巧是什么？我们必须告诉他们，最好的方式是说服投资者是开始一个实际做得好的创业公司，意味着快速增长，然后简单地告诉投资者。所以然后他们问，好吧，快速增长的技巧是什么？

[段 15]

And this is exacerbated by the existence of this term, growth hacks. Whenever you hear anybody talk about growth hacks, just mentally translate it in your mind into bullshit. Because what we tell them is the way to make your startup grow is to make something that users really love, and then tell them about it. So that’s what you have to do. That’s growth hacks right there. So many of the conversations the YC partners have with the founders begin with the founders saying a sentence that begins with, how do I, and the partners answering with a sentence that begins with just. Why do they make things so complicated? The reason, I realized, after years of being puzzled by this, is they’re looking for the trick.

[译文 15]

这被"增长黑客"这个术语的存在所加剧了。每当你听到任何人谈论增长黑客，就在心里把它翻译成废话。因为我们告诉他们的是让你的创业公司增长的方式是制作用户真正喜欢的东西，然后告诉他们。这就是你必须做的。那就是增长黑客。YC合伙人与创始人之间的很多对话都以创始人说一个以"我如何"开头的句子开始，合伙人回答一个以"只要"开头的句子。为什么他们把事情搞得这么复杂？我意识到，在困惑多年后，原因是他们在寻找诀窍。

[段 16]

They’ve been trained to look for the trick. So this is the third thing, the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups. Starting a startup is where gaming the system stops working. Gaming the system may continue to work if you go to work for a big company. Depending on how broken the company is, you may be able to succeed by sucking up to the right person. You may be able to succeed by sucking up to the right person, giving the impression of productivity by sending emails late at night, or if you’re smart enough, changing the clock on your computer. Because who’s going to check the headers, right? I like an audience that I can tell jokes like that to and they laugh.

[译文 16]

他们被训练来寻找诀窍。所以这是第三件事，关于创业公司需要记住的第三个反直觉的事情。创业是游戏系统停止工作的地方。如果你去大公司工作，游戏系统可能会继续工作。根据公司的破败程度，你可能能够通过讨好对的人来成功。你可能能够通过讨好对的人来成功，通过在深夜发邮件给人留下高效能的印象，或者如果你够聪明的话，改变你电脑上的时间。因为谁会检查头部，对吧？我喜欢一个我可以讲这种笑话而他们会笑的观众。

[段 17]

Over in the business school, headers? Okay. God, this thing is being recorded. I just realized that. All right. From now on, we are sticking strictly to the script. All right. But in startups, that does not work. There’s no boss to trick. There’s no, how can you trick people if there’s no one to trick? There’s only users. And all users care about is whether your software does what they want. They’re like sharks. Sharks are like too stupid to fool. You can’t like wave a red flag at a shark and fool it. It’s like meat or no meat. So you have to have something people want, and you only prosper to the extent that you do. The dangerous thing is, particularly for you guys, the dangerous thing is that faking does work to some extent with investors.

[译文 17]

在商学院，头部？好吧。天哪，这正在被录音。我刚刚意识到。好吧。从现在开始，我们要严格遵守剧本。好吧。但在创业公司里，那不管用。没有老板可以欺骗。如果没有人可以欺骗，你怎么能欺骗人？只有用户。而所有用户关心的只是你的软件是否做他们想要的。他们就像鲨鱼。鲨鱼太傻了，骗不了。你不能在鲨鱼面前挥红旗来骗它。它就像有肉还是没有肉。所以你必须有用户想要的东西，而且你只有在这个程度上才能成功。危险的事情是，特别是对你们这些人来说，危险的事情是欺骗在某种程度上对投资者确实有效。

[段 18]

If you’re really good at knowing what you’re talking about, you can fool investors for one, maybe two rounds of funding. But it’s not in your interest to. I mean, you’re all doing this for equity. You’re playing a confidence trick on yourself. You’re playing a confidence trick on yourself. You’re wasting your own time because the startup is doomed, and all you’re doing is you’re just going to waste your time writing it down. So, stop looking for the trick. There are tricks in startups, as there are in any domain, but they are an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem. Someone who knows zero about fundraising but has made something users really love will have an easier time raising money than someone who knows every trick in the book but has a flat usage graph.

[译文 18]

如果你真的很擅长知道自己谈论什么，你可以欺骗投资者一两个融资轮。但这不是你的利益。我的意思是，你们都在为股权做这件事。你在对自己玩一个信心游戏。你在对自己玩一个信心游戏。你在浪费你自己的时间，因为创业公司注定失败，你所做的只是浪费你的时间把它写下来。所以，停止寻找诀窍。在创业中有技巧，就像在任何领域一样，但它们比解决真正的问题低一个数量级。如果一个人对融资一无所知但做出了用户真正喜欢的东西，他会比一个知道书中每一个技巧但用户使用图表平坦的人更容易融资。

[段 19]

Though in a sense it’s bad news that gaming the startup stops works, gaming the system stops working now in the sense that you’re deprived of one of your most powerful weapons and after all something you’ve spent 20 years mastering it is something I find it very exciting that there even exist parts of the world where gaming the system is not how you win. I would have been really excited in college if I had explicitly realized that there are parts of the world where gaming the system matters less than others and some where it hardly matters at all. But there are, and this is one of the most important things to think about when you’re planning your future.

[译文 19]

虽然在某种意义上，游戏创业停止工作的消息是坏消息，游戏系统停止工作，现在意味着你被剥夺了你最强大的武器之一，毕竟你花了20年掌握的东西是，我发现世界上甚至存在游戏系统不是你怎么赢的部分，这非常令人兴奋。如果我在大学时明确意识到世界上有些地方游戏系统的重要性比其他地方低，有些地方几乎完全不重要，我会真的很兴奋。但确实存在，这是你在规划未来时最重要的事情之一。

[段 20]

How do you win at each type of work and what do you want to win by doing? So, that brings us to our fourth counterintuitive point. Startups are all-consuming. If you start a startup, it will take over your life to a degree that you cannot imagine. And if it succeeds, it will take over your life for a long time, for several years at the very least, maybe a decade, maybe the rest of your working life. So there’s a real opportunity cost here. It may seem to you that Larry Page has an enviable life, but there are parts of it that are definitely unenviable. The way the world looks to him is that he started running as fast as he could at age 25, and he has not stopped to catch his breath since.

[译文 20]

在每种类型的工作中如何获胜，你想要通过做什么来获胜？所以，这把我们带到了第四个反直觉的观点。创业是全神贯注的。如果你开始创业，它会在某种程度上接管你的生活，这是你无法想象的。如果它成功了，它会在很长时间内接管你的生活，至少几年，也许十年，也许是你工作生涯的其余部分。所以这里有一个真正的机会成本。它可能对你来说Larry Page有一个令人羡慕的生活，但其中有些部分肯定是令人不羡慕的。这个世界看待他的方式是，他在25岁时开始尽可能快地奔跑，从那以后就没有停下来喘口气。

[段 21]

Every day, shit happens within the Google empire that only the emperor can deal with, and he, as the emperor, has to deal with it. If he goes on vacation for even a week, a whole backlog of shit accumulates, and he has to bear this uncomplainingly because, number one, as the company’s daddy, he can never show fear or weakness, and number two, if you’re a billionaire, you get zero, actually less than zero sympathy if you complain about having a difficult life. Which has this strange side effect that the difficulty of being a successful startup founder is concealed from almost everyone who’s done it. People who win the 100 meters in the Olympics, like they walk up to them and they’re going like, right?

[译文 21]

每天，Google帝国发生的事情只有皇帝能处理，而他，作为皇帝，必须处理它。如果他休假哪怕一周，一大堆破事就会积累，他必须毫无怨言地承受，因为，第一，作为公司的老爹，他永远不能表现出恐惧或软弱，第二，如果你是一个亿万富翁，如果你抱怨生活艰难，你会得到零，实际上少于零的同情。这有一个奇怪的副作用，成功创业公司创始人的困难几乎对每个经历过的人都是隐藏的。在奥运会上赢得100米的人，就像他们走向他们，他们正这样做，对吧？

[段 22]

Larry Page is doing that too, but you never get to see it. All right, where are we? Y Combinator has now funded several companies that could be called big successes. And in every single case, the founders say the same thing. It never gets any easier. The nature of the problems change. So you may be worrying about more glamorous problems like construction delays in your new London offices rather than the broken air conditioner in your studio apartment. But the total volume of worry never decreases. If anything, it increases. Starting a successful startup is similar to having kids in that it’s like a button you press that changes your life irrevocably. And while it is, like, honestly the best thing in the world, having kids, if you take away one thing from this lecture, remember that.

[译文 22]

Larry Page也在这样做，但你永远不会看到。好吧，我们在哪里？Y Combinator现在已经资助了几家可以称为巨大成功的公司。在每一个案例中，创始人都会说同样的事情。它永远不会变得更容易。问题的性质会改变。所以你可能担心更光鲜的问题，比如新伦敦办公室的建设延误，而不是你工作室公寓里坏掉的空调。但担忧的总量永远不会减少。如果有什么的话，它会增加。开始一个成功的创业公司类似于生孩子，就像你按下一个按钮，改变你的生活，不可挽回地。虽然它确实是世界上最好的事情，有孩子，如果你从这次演讲中只带走一件事，记住那个。

[段 23]

There are a lot of things that are easier to do before you have kids than after, many of which will make you a better parent when you do have kids. And so, in rich countries, most people delay pushing the button for a while. And I’m sure you are all intimately familiar with that procedure. Yet, When it comes to starting startups, a lot of people seem to think they’re supposed to start them in college. Are you crazy? And what are the universities thinking? They go out of their way to ensure that their students are well supplied with contraceptives, and yet they’re starting up entrepreneurship programs and startup incubators left and right. To be fair, the universities have their hand forced here.

[译文 23]

在有孩子之前，有很多事情比之后更容易做，其中很多事情在你真的有孩子时会让你成为更好的父母。所以，在富裕国家，大多数人都会推迟按下按钮一段时间。我确信你们都非常熟悉那个程序。然而，当谈到创业时，很多人似乎认为他们应该在大学里创业。你们疯了吗？大学在想什么？他们不遗余力地确保学生有充足的避孕措施，然而他们却在不断地启动创业项目和创业孵化器。公平地说，大学在这里是被迫的。

[段 24]

A lot of incoming students are interested in startups. Universities are at least de facto supposed to prepare you for your career. And so if you’re interested in startups, it seems like universities are supposed to teach you about startups. And if they don’t, maybe they lose applicants to universities who do claim to do that. So can universities teach you about startups? Well, not. What are we doing here? Yes and no. As I explained, they can teach you about startups, but this is not what you need to know. Essentially, if you want to learn French, universities can teach you linguistics. That’s what this is. This is a linguistics class, right? We’re teaching you about how to learn languages, and what you need to know is how to learn a particular language.

[译文 24]

很多新生对创业感兴趣。大学至少在事实上应该为你准备职业。所以如果你对创业感兴趣，大学似乎应该教你关于创业的知识。如果他们不这样做，也许他们会失去申请者到声称这样做的大学。那么大学能教你关于创业的知识吗？好吧，不。我们在这里做什么？是的，也不是。正如我解释的，他们可以教你关于创业的知识，但这不是你需要知道的。本质上，如果你想学法语，大学可以教你语言学。这就是这是什么。这是一堂语言学课，对吧？我们在教你如何学习语言，而你需要知道的是如何学习一种特定的语言。

[段 25]

What you need to know are the needs of your own users, and you can’t learn those until you actually start the company. And starting a company, which means that starting a startup is something you can intrinsically only learn by doing it, and you can’t do that in college for the reason I just explained, that startups take over your entire life. If you start a startup in college, if you start a startup as a student, you can’t start a startup as a student, because if you start a startup, you’re not a student anymore. You may be nominally a student, but you won’t even be that for much longer. So, given this dichotomy, which of the two paths should you take?

[译文 25]

你需要知道的是你自己的用户的需求，在你真正开始公司之前你无法了解这些。而创办公司，这意味着创业是你只能通过做来内在学习的东西，你不能在大学里这样做，原因我刚才解释过，创业会接管你的整个生活。如果你在大学开始创业，如果你作为一名学生开始创业，你不能作为一名学生开始创业，因为如果你开始创业，你就不是学生了。你可能名义上是学生，但很快你甚至不会还是学生了。所以，考虑到这种二分法，两条路中你应该选择哪一条？

[段 26]

Be a real student and not start a startup, or start a real startup and not be a student? Well, I can answer that one for you. I’m talking to my own kids here. Do not start a startup in college. I hope I’m not disappointing anyone. Seriously, honestly. Starting a startup could be a component of a good life for a lot of ambitious people, but this is just part of a much bigger problem that you’re trying to solve: how to have a good life. And though starting a startup could be a good thing to do at some point, 20 is not the optimal time to do it. There are things you can do in your early 20s that you cannot do as well before or after, like plunge deeply into projects on a whim that seem like they’ll have no payoff, or travel super cheaply with no sense of a deadline.

[译文 26]

做一名真正的学生而不开始创业，还是开始一个真正的创业而不做学生？好吧，我可以为你回答这个问题。我在这里对我的孩子说话。不要在大学开始创业。我希望我没有让任何人失望。认真地，说实话。开始创业可能是许多有抱负的人美好生活的一个组成部分，但这只是你正在解决的更大问题的一小部分：你如何拥有美好的生活。虽然开始创业可能在某个时候是件好事，但20岁不是做这件事的最佳时机。在你20岁出头时，有些事情是你在之前或之后都做不到的，比如一时兴起深入研究似乎没有回报的项目，或者毫无截止日期地超级廉价旅行。

[段 27]

In fact, those are really just isomorphic shapes in different domains. For unambitious people, this sort of thing can be the dreaded failure to launch. But for the ambitious ones, it’s a really valuable sort of exploration. And if you start a startup at 20 and you’re sufficiently successful, you will never get to do it. Mark Zuckerberg will never get to bum around a foreign country. If he goes to a foreign country, it’s either as a de facto state visit or like he’s hiding out incognito at the George Sank in Paris. But he’s never going to get to just like backpack around Thailand if that’s still what people do. Do people still backpack around Thailand? Okay, well that’s the first real sign of enthusiasm I’ve seen from this audience.

[译文 27]

事实上，这些在不同领域只是同构的形状。对于没有抱负的人来说，这种事情可能是可怕的无法启动。但对于有抱负的人来说，这是一种非常有价值的探索。如果你在20岁开始创业并且你足够成功，你将永远无法做到这一点。Mark Zuckerberg永远不会有机会在异国闲逛。如果他去一个异国，不是作为事实上的国事访问就是他像在巴黎的乔治桑克那样隐姓埋名地躲藏。但他永远不会只是像在泰国背包旅行，如果那仍然是人们做的事情。人们还在泰国背包旅行吗？好吧，那是这次观众第一个真正的热情信号。

[段 28]

I should have given this talk in Thailand. All right, he can do things that you can’t do, like charter jets to fly him to foreign countries, really big jets. But success has taken a lot of the serendipity out of his life. He, uh, Facebook is running him as much as he’s running Facebook. And while it can be really cool to be in the grip of some project you consider your life’s work, um, there are advantages to serendipity and, uh, among other things, it gives you more options to choose your life’s work from. There’s not even a trade-off here. You’re not sacrificing anything if you forego starting a startup at 20, because you’ll be more likely to succeed if you wait.

[译文 28]

我应该在泰国发表这个演讲。好吧，他可以做你做不到的事情，比如包机让他飞往异国，很大的飞机。但成功从他生活中带走了很多偶然性。他，Facebook在某种程度上和他经营Facebook一样多。虽然被你认为是毕生事业的项目所掌控真的很酷，但偶然性有优势，除其他外，它给你更多选择来选择你的毕生事业。这里甚至没有权衡。如果你放弃在20岁开始创业，你不会牺牲任何东西，因为如果你等待，你更有可能成功。

[段 29]

In the unlikely case that you’re 20, like astronomically unlikely case that you’re 20 and you have some side project that takes off like Facebook did, then you face a choice of either running with it or not, and maybe it’s reasonable to run with it. But usually the way startups take off is for the founders to make them take off, and it’s gratuitously stupid to do that at 20. So should you do it at any age? I realize I’ve made starting a startup sound kind of hard. If I haven’t, let me try again. Starting a startup is really hard. What if it’s too hard? What if you’re not up to this challenge? The answer is the fifth counterintuitive point.

[译文 29]

在不太可能的情况下你20岁，就像天文上不太可能的情况是你20岁并且你有某个像Facebook那样起飞的副项目，那么你面临一个选择，要么追逐它要么不，也许追逐它是合理的。但通常创业起飞的方式是让创始人让它们起飞，而在20岁时这样做是极其愚蠢的。所以你应该在任何年龄都这样做吗？我意识到我已经让开始创业听起来有点难。如果我没有，让我再试一次。开始创业真的很难。如果太难了怎么办？如果你不能应对这个挑战怎么办？答案是第五个反直觉的观点。

[段 30]

You can’t tell. Your life so far has given you some idea what your prospects might be if you wanted to become a mathematician or a professional football player. And boy, it’s not every audience you could say that to. But unless you have had a very strange life indeed, you have not done much that’s like starting a startup. Meaning, starting a startup will change you a lot if it works out. So what you’re trying to estimate is not just what you are, but what you could become, and who can do that. Well, not me. For the last nine years, it was my job to try and guess whether people would guess. I wrote predict in here and it came out as guess.

[译文 30]

你无法判断。你到目前为止的生活让你对自己想成为数学家或职业足球运动员的前景有了一些了解。而且男孩，不是每个你都能这样说的观众。但除非你的人生非常奇怪，否则你没有做过很多像创业那样的事情。意思是，如果创业成功了，它会极大地改变你。所以你要估计的不仅仅是你是谁，还有你可能成为谁，谁能做到。好吧，不是我。在过去的九年里，我的工作是尝试猜测人们是否会成功。我在这里写predict它出来变成了guess。

[段 31]

That’s a very informative Freudian slip. Seriously, it’s easy to tell how smart people are in 10 minutes. You know, hit a few tennis balls over the net, and do they hit them back at you or into the net? But the hard part and the most important part was predicting how tough and ambitious they would become. There may be no one at this point who has more experience than me at doing this, and I can tell you how much an expert can know about that. The answer is not much. I learned from experience to keep a completely open mind about which startup in each batch, which startups would turn out to be the stars. The founders sometimes thought they knew.

[译文 31]

这是一个非常说明问题的Freudian笔误。认真地说，在10分钟内判断一个人有多聪明是很容易的。你知道，把几个网球打过网，他们是把球打回给你还是打进网里？但困难的部分和最重要的部分是预测他们会变得多么坚强和有抱负。在这一点上，可能没有人比我在这方面有更多经验，我可以告诉你一个专家对此能知道多少。答案是不多。我从经验中学到，要对每批创业公司中哪些会变成明星保持完全开放的心态。创始人有时认为他们知道。

[段 32]

Some arrived feeling confident that they would ace Y Combinator just as they had aced every one of the few easy artificial tests they had faced in life so far. Others arrived wondering what mistake had caused them to be admitted and hoping that no one would discover it. But there is little to no correlation between these attitudes and how things turn out. I’ve read the same is true in the military, that the swaggering recruits are no more likely to turn out to be really tough than the quiet ones, and probably for the same reason, that the tests are so different from the tests in people’s previous lives. If you’re absolutely terrified of starting a startup, you probably shouldn’t do it, unless you’re one of those people who gets off on doing things you’re afraid of.

[译文 32]

有些人来的时候充满信心，他们会在Y Combinator中表现出色，就像他们迄今为止在生活中面对的一些简单的假测试中表现出色一样。其他人来的时候想知道是什么错误导致他们被录取，并希望没有人会发现。但这些态度与结果几乎没有相关性。我读过军事也是如此，趾高气扬的招募者并不比安静的人更可能变得真正坚强，可能出于同样的原因，那些测试与人们以前生活中的测试是如此不同。如果你对创业极度恐惧，你可能不应该做它，除非你是那种能从你害怕的事情中得到快感的人。

[段 33]

Otherwise, if you’re merely unsure of whether you’re going to be able to do it, the only way to find out is to try. Just not now. So, if you want to start a startup one day, what do you do now in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and co-founders. And the MO for getting them both is the same, which leads to our sixth and last counterintuitive point. The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. I’ve written a whole essay on this, and I’m not going to repeat the whole thing here. But the short version is that if you make a conscious effort to try and think of startup ideas, you will think of ideas that are not only bad, but bad and plausible sounding, meaning you and everybody else will be fooled by them, and you’ll waste a lot of time before realizing they’re no good.

[译文 33]

否则，如果你只是不确定自己是否能够做到，唯一的方法就是尝试。只是不是现在。所以，如果你有一天想创业，你现在在大学里应该做什么？最初你只需要两样东西：一个想法和联合创始人。获得这两样的方式是一样的，这把我们引向第六个也是最后一个反直觉的观点。获得创业想法的方式不是试图想出创业想法。我写了一篇关于这个的完整文章，我不会在这里重复整个内容。但简短版本是，如果你有意识地努力尝试想出创业想法，你会想出的想法不仅是坏的，而且是听起来合理但很坏的，这意味着你和所有其他人都会被它们愚弄，你会浪费很多时间才意识到它们不好。

[段 34]

The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of trying to make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your brain into the type that has startup ideas unconsciously. In fact, so unconsciously that you don’t even realize at first that they’re startup ideas. This is not only possible. Yahoo. Google, Facebook, and Apple all got started this way. None of these companies were even supposed to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The very best ideas almost have to start as side projects because they’re always such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies. Okay? So how do you turn your mind into the kind that has startup ideas unconsciously?

[译文 34]

想出好的创业想法的方式是退后一步。不要试图有意识地努力想出创业想法，把你的大脑变成那种无意识地有创业想法的类型。事实上，如此无意识以至于你一开始甚至没有意识到它们是创业想法。这不仅可能。Yahoo。Google、Facebook和Apple都是这样开始的。这些公司最初都不是公司。它们都只是副项目。最好的想法几乎必须作为副项目开始，因为它们总是如此极端，以至于你的意识会拒绝它们作为公司的想法。好吧？所以你如何把你的大脑变成那种无意识地形成创业想法的类型？

[段 35]

One, learn a lot about things that matter. Two, work on problems that interest you. Three, with people you like and respect. That third part, incidentally, is how you get co-founders at the same time as the idea. The first time I wrote that paragraph, instead of learn a lot about things that matter, I wrote become good at some technology. But that prescription, though sufficient, is too narrow. What was special about Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia from Airbnb was not that they were experts in technology. They went to art school. They were experts in design, and perhaps even more importantly, they were really good at organizing people and getting projects done. So you don’t have to work on technology per se, so long as you work on things that stretch you.

[译文 35]

一，学习很多重要的东西。二，研究你感兴趣的问题。三，和你喜欢的人和尊重你的人一起。第三个部分，顺便说一下，就是你如何同时获得联合创始人和想法。当我第一次写那段时，我没有写学习很多重要的东西，而是写成为某种技术的专家。但那个处方，虽然足够了，太窄了。Brian Chesky和Joe Gebbia在Airbnb的特别之处不是他们是技术专家。他们上的是艺术学校。他们是设计专家，也许更重要的是，他们非常擅长组织人和完成项目。所以你不一定要研究技术本身，只要你研究的是让你成长的东西。

[段 36]

What kind of things are those? Now that is very hard to answer in the general case. History is full of examples of young people who were working on problems that no one else at the time thought were important, and in particular, that their parents didn’t think they were important. On the other hand, history is even fuller of examples of parents who thought their kids were wasting their time and who were right. So how do you know if you’re working on real stuff? I mean, when Twitch TV switched from being Justin.TV to Twitch TV and they were going to broadcast people playing video games, I was like, What? But it turned out to be a good business.

[译文 36]

什么样的东西？那在一般情况下很难回答。历史上满是年轻人研究当时没有人认为重要的问题的例子，特别是他们的父母认为不重要的例子。另一方面，历史上有更多的例子是父母认为他们的孩子浪费时间，而他们是对的。所以你怎么知道你是在研究真实的东西？我的意思是，当Twitch TV从Justin.TV转变成Twitch TV，他们要播放人们玩视频游戏时，我就像，什么？但它最终成了一个好生意。

[段 37]

Well, I know how I know real problems are interesting, and I’m self-indulgent. I’m always interested in working on interesting things, even if no one else cares about them. And I find it very hard to make myself work on boring things, even if they’re supposed to be important. My life is full of case after case where I worked on things just because I was interested, and they turned out to be useful later in some worldly way. The Y Combinator itself is something I only did because it seemed interesting. So I seem to have some sort of internal compass that helps me out. But this is for you, not me, and I don’t know what you have in your heads.

[译文 37]

好吧，我知道我怎么知道真实的问题是令人感兴趣的，而且我很自我放纵。我总是对研究有趣的事情感兴趣，即使没有其他人关心。而且我发现让自己做无聊的事情非常困难，即使它们被认为是重要的。我的生活充满了案例之后又一个案例，我研究事物只是因为我有兴趣，后来它们在某种世俗的方式中被证明是有用的。Y Combinator本身就是我因为它看起来有趣才做的。所以我似乎有某种内在的指南针帮助我。但这是为你，不是为我，我不知道你脑子里有什么。

[段 38]

Maybe if I think more about it, I could come up with some heuristics for recognizing genuinely interesting ideas. But for now, all I can give you is the hopelessly question-begging advice. Incidentally, this is the actual meaning of the phrase begging the question. The hopelessly question-begging advice that if you’re interested in genuinely interesting problems, gratifying your interest energetically is the best way to prepare yourself for a startup, and for that matter, probably the best way to live. But although I can’t explain in the general case what counts as an interesting problem, I can tell you about a large subset of them. If you think of technology as something that’s spreading like a sort of fractal stain, every point on the edge that’s moving represents an interesting problem.

[译文 38]

也许如果我多想一想，我可以想出一些启发式方法来识别真正有趣的想法。但现在，我能给你的只是这个无可救药地循环论证的建议。顺便说一句，这是"循环论证"这个短语的真正含义。这个无可救药地循环论证的建议是，如果你对真正有趣的问题感兴趣，精力充沛地满足你的兴趣是为你创业准备的最好方式，而且，对于这件事，可能是最好的生活方式。但虽然我不能在一般情况下解释什么算是一个有趣的问题，我可以告诉你一个大的子集。如果你把技术想象成某种像分形污渍一样传播的东西，边缘上每一个移动的点都代表一个有趣的问题。

[段 39]

Steam engines, not so much. Although maybe, you never know. So one guaranteed way to turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in unconsciously is to get yourself to the leading edge of some technology, to, as Paul Buchheit put it, live in the future. And when you get there, ideas that seem uncannily prescient to other people will seem obvious to you. You may not realize they’re startup ideas, but you’ll know they’re something that ought to exist. For example, back at Harvard, back in the mid-90s, a fellow grad student of my friends Robert and Trevor wrote his own voice over IP software. It wasn’t meant to be a startup. He never tried to turn it into one.

[译文 39]

蒸汽机，不那么多了。虽然也许，谁知道呢。所以把你的大脑变成那种无意识形成创业想法的类型有一个保证方法，就是让自己到达某个技术的最前沿，就像Paul Buchheit说的，活在未来。当你在那里时，其他人看起来不可思议有先见之明的想法对你来说会是显而易见的。你可能没有意识到它们是创业想法，但你会知道它们是应该存在的东西。例如，回到哈佛，在90年代中期，我朋友Robert和Trevor的一个研究生同学写了自己的语音通话软件。它不是作为一个创业公司设计的。他从未试图把它变成一个。

[段 40]

He just wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan without paying for long distance calls. And since he was an expert on networks, it seemed obvious to him that the thing to do was turn the sound into packets and ship them over the internet for free. Why didn’t everybody do this? Well, because they weren’t good at writing that kind of software. He never did anything with this. He never tried to turn it into a startup. But that is how all the best startups tend to happen. So strangely enough, the optimal thing to do in college, if you want to be a successful startup founder, is not some sort of new vocational version of college focused on entrepreneurship.

[译文 40]

他只是想和他的台湾女朋友通话而不付长途电话费。因为他是网络专家，对他来说很明显的事情是把声音转换成数据包，通过互联网免费发送。为什么不是每个人都这样做？嗯，因为他们不擅长写那种软件。他从来没有做任何事情。他从未试图把它变成一个创业公司。但这就是所有最好的创业公司往往发生的方式。所以奇怪的是，如果你想成为一个成功的创业创始人，在大学里最优的事情不是某种专注于创业的新职业版本的大学。

[段 41]

It’s the classic version of college, education for its own sake. If you want to start a startup, what you should do in college is learn powerful things, and if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that’s what you’ll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations. The component of entrepreneurship — I can never quite say that word with a straight face — that really matters is domain expertise. Larry Page is Larry Page because he was an expert on search. And the way he became an expert on search was because he was genuinely interested in it, not because of some ulterior motive. At its best, starting a startup is merely an ulterior motive for curiosity, and you’ll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive at the end of the process.

[译文 41]

这是经典版本的大学，为学习而教育。如果你想要创业，你在大学里应该做的是学习强大的东西，如果你有真正的 intellectual curiosity，那就是你自然会倾向做的事情，如果你只是跟随自己的喜好。创业的组成部分——我从来不能面不改色地说那个词——真正重要的是领域专业知识。Larry Page之所以是Larry Page是因为他是搜索专家。他成为搜索专家的方式是因为他真正对它感兴趣，而不是因为某种别有用心的动机。在最好的情况下，开始创业只是好奇心的别有用心的动机，你会在过程结束时引入别有用心的动机时做得最好。

[段 42]

So here is the ultimate advice for young, would-be startup founders, reduced to two words: Just learn. Alright, how much time do we have left? Eighteen minutes of questions, good God. Do you guys have the questions? Sure, we’ll start with two questions online, or we can start with the audience. You guys are in charge, whatever you want to do. Okay, so to start with online questions, the most voted question today was — do I have to repeat them, by the way? Yeah. How can a non-technical founder most effectively contribute to a startup? How can a non-technical founder most effectively contribute to a startup? Well, if the startup is working in some domain, if it’s not a pure technology startup, but is working in some very specific domain, like if it’s Uber, right?

[译文 42]

所以这是给年轻的、有抱负的创业者的最终建议，简化成两个字：只管学习。好的，我们还剩多少时间？十八分钟的提问，天哪。你们有问题吗？确定，我们会先从网上两个问题开始，或者我们可以从观众开始。你们做主，你想怎么做都行。好的，先从网上问题开始，今天投票最多的问题是——我需要重复它们吗，顺便说一下？是的。非技术创始人如何最有效地为创业公司做出贡献？非技术创始人如何最有效地为创业公司做出贡献？好吧，如果创业公司在某个领域工作，如果它不是纯技术创业公司，而是在某个非常具体的领域工作，比如如果是Uber，对吧？

[段 43]

And the non-technical founder was an expert in the limo business, then actually the non-technical founder is probably doing most of the work, recruiting drivers and doing whatever else Uber has to do, right? And the technical founder would be just writing the iPhone app, which is probably less — well, iPhone and Android app, which is less than half of it. If it’s a purely technology startup, the non-technical founder does sales and brings coffee and cheeseburgers to the programmer. Okay. Oh, audience. Okay. Audience. Yes. Do you see any value in business school for people who want to pursue entrepreneurship? Do I see any value in… or if so, what value? I’m hoping that some — well, we probably won’t have to get to the second question, which I suppose is the answer to your first question.

[译文 43]

如果非技术创始人是礼车业务的专家，那么实际上非技术创始人可能做了大部分工作，招募司机和做Uber需要做的其他事情，对吧？而技术创始人只是写iPhone应用，这可能不到一半——好吧，iPhone和Android应用，不到一半。如果是一个纯技术创业公司，非技术创始人做销售，给程序员带咖啡和汉堡。好的。哦，观众。好的。观众。是的。你认为创业的人上商学院有价值吗？我认为…或者如果有，什么价值？我希望一些——好吧，我们可能不需要回答第二个问题，我想那就是你第一个问题的答案。

[段 44]

Okay, so the question is, is there any value in business school if you’re interested in entrepreneurship, and if so, what? So basically, no. I mean, it sounds undiplomatic, but the point is, what business school was designed for is to teach people management, right? And management is a problem that you only have in a startup if you’re sufficiently successful. So really, what you need to know early on to make a startup successful is developing products. You’d be better off going to design school if you want to go to some sort of school. Although, frankly, the way to learn how to do it is just to do it. One of the things I got wrong early on is that I advised people who were interested in starting a startup to go work for some other company for a few years before starting their own.

[译文 44]

好的，问题是你对创业感兴趣，上商学院有价值吗？如果有，什么价值？基本上，没有。我的意思是，这听起来不太圆滑，但要点是，商学院被设计来教的是管理，对吧？而管理是你只有在足够成功时才会有的问题。所以真的，你早期需要知道的是让创业成功的产品开发。如果你想要上某种学校，上设计学校会更好。虽然坦率地说，做的方法就是去做。我早期犯的错误之一是我建议对创业感兴趣的人在开始自己的公司之前去其他公司工作几年。

[段 45]

But honestly, the best way to learn how to start a startup is just to try and start it. You may not be successful, But you’ll learn faster if you just do it. So, not really. Business schools are trying really hard to do this, but honestly, they were designed to train the officer core of large companies, right? Which is what business seemed to be back when it was a choice of either the officer core of large companies or Joe’s shoe store. And then there was this new thing, Apple, which started out as small as Joe’s shoe store and then turns into this giant mega company. But they weren’t designed for that world. And they’re good at what they’re good at.

[译文 45]

但说实话，开始创业的最好方法就是尝试开始它。你可能不会成功，但你如果你只管做，会学得更快。所以，不是真的。商学院正在非常努力地做这个，但说实话，它们被设计来培养大公司的军官核心，对吧？这就是商业在过去看起来的样子，要么是大公司的军官核心，要么是Joe的鞋店。然后有这个新东西，Apple，开始像Joe的鞋店一样小，然后变成了这个巨大的 mega 公司。但它们不是为那个世界设计的。它们擅长它们擅长的。

[段 46]

They should just do that and screw this whole entrepreneurship thing just because it’s cool. Yes? You said management is a problem that you have only when you’re successful. Yeah. So what about those first two or three people as a founder that you try to manage? Okay, so management is a problem only if you’re successful. What about those first two or three people? Well, ideally you’re successful before you even hire two or three people, right? You even hire two or three people, right? Didn’t you say, Sam, that Airbnb took five months to hire their first employee? So ideally, you don’t have even two or three people for quite a while. When you do, you can sort of, the first hires in a startup are almost like founders.

[译文 46]

它们应该只做那个，别管整个创业的事情，就因为它很酷。是的？你说管理是你只有在成功时才有的问题。是的。那么关于你作为创始人试图管理的最初两三个人呢？好的，管理是你只有在成功时才有的问题。最初那两三个人呢？好吧，理想情况下，你在雇用两三个人之前就成功了，对吧？你甚至雇用两三个人，对吧？Sam，你不是说Airbnb花了五个月才雇用他们的第一个员工吗？所以理想情况下，你很长时间都没有两三个人。当你有的时候，你可以 sort of，创业公司的第一批雇员几乎就像创始人一样。

[段 47]

They should be motivated by the same things. They can’t be people. They can’t be people you have to manage. This is not like The Office or something like that. These have to be your peers, really. You shouldn’t have to manage them much. Is it just a big no-no? Someone has to manage? No way if they can be on the founding team? Well, never say never. I should repeat all these questions. So if someone has to manage, no way, they should be on the founding team. In the case where you’re doing something where you need some sort of super advanced technical thing and there’s some boffin, if you know that word, who knows this thing and nothing else in the world, including like how to wipe his mouth, then it may be to your advantage to hire said boffin and wipe his mouth for him.

[译文 47]

他们应该被同样的东西所激励。他们不能是需要你管理的人。这不像《办公室》或什么的。这些人必须是你的同龄人，真的。你不应该需要管理他们很多。是不是个大禁忌？必须有人管理？不，如果他们能在创始团队中呢？好吧，绝不说绝不。我应该重复所有这些问题。所以如果有人必须管理，不，他们应该在创始团队中。在你做一些需要某种超级高级技术的事情，而有一个书呆子——如果你知道那个词——谁知道这件事而世界上其他任何事情都不知道，包括比如怎么擦嘴，那么雇用那个书呆子并帮他擦嘴可能对你有利。

[段 48]

But as a general rule, you want people who are sort of self-motivated early on. They should be just like founders. Yes, questions? In the far back. Yes, questions. In the far back. Do you think we’re currently in a bubble? Do I think we’re currently in a bubble? Okay, so I’ll give you two answers to this question. One, ask me questions that are useful to this audience because these people are here to learn how to start startups and I have in my head more data about that than anybody else. And you’re asking me the kind of questions a reporter does because they can’t think of anything interesting to ask. But I will answer your question. There is a difference between prices merely being high and a bubble.

[译文 48]

但作为一般规则，你想要在早期有某种自我激励的人。他们应该就像创始人一样。是的，问题？在后面。是的，问题？在后面。你认为我们现在处于泡沫中吗？我认为我们现在处于泡沫中吗？好吧，所以我给你两个答案。一，问我对这群人有用的问题，因为这些人来这里学习如何开始创业，我脑子里有关于那个比任何人都多的数据。你在问我记者会问的那种问题，因为他们想不出任何有趣的东西来问。但我会回答你的问题。价格仅仅是高和泡沫之间有区别。

[段 49]

A bubble is a very specific form of prices being high, where people knowingly pay high prices for something in the hope that they will be able to unload it later on some greater fool. And that’s what happened in the late 90s. VCs knowingly invested in bullshit startups, thinking that they would be able to take those things public and unload them on the retail investors before everything blew up. And I was there. I was there for that at the epicenter of it all. And that is not what’s happening today. Prices are high. Valuations are high. But valuations being high does not mean a bubble. Every commodity has prices that go up and down in some sort of sine wave.

[译文 49]

泡沫是一种非常具体的形式的价格高，人们明知地为一个东西支付高价，希望以后能够把它卸载给某个更大的傻瓜。这就是90年代末发生的事情。VC明知地投资于废话创业公司，想着他们能够公开上市并在一切崩溃之前把它们卖给散户投资者。我在那里。我在那个中心经历了一切。那不是今天正在发生的事情。价格高。估值高。但估值高不意味着泡沫。每种商品的价格都在某种正弦波中上下波动。

[段 50]

Definitely prices are high. And so we tell people, if you raise money, don’t think the next time you raise money it’s going to be so easy. Who knows? Maybe between now and then the Chinese economy will have exploded and there’s another giant disastrous recession. Who knows? Assume the worst. Oh, disastrous recession, who knows, assume the worst. But bubble, no. Yes? I’m noticing a trend among young people and successful entrepreneurs where they don’t want to start one more great company, they want to start like 20. And so you’re starting to see the rise of these labs attempts where they’re going to try to launch a bunch of stuff. I don’t know of a really stellar example yet, but…

[译文 50]

价格肯定高。所以我们告诉人们，如果你融资，不要认为下次融资会这么容易。谁知道？也许从现在到那时中国经济会爆炸，又有另一次巨大的灾难性衰退。谁知道？假设最坏的情况。哦，灾难性衰退，谁知道，假设最坏的情况。但泡沫，没有。是的？我注意到年轻人和成功企业家中的一个趋势，他们不想再创办一家伟大的公司，他们想要创办大约20家。所以你开始看到这些实验室尝试，他们要尝试推出很多东西。我还不知道一个真正出色的例子，但是…

[段 51]

You mean like IDEO? Like no, like, like, like Idea Lab, like, uh, Garrett Camp’s new one, there’s North, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, okay. So there’s this new thing where people start labs that are supposed to spin off startups. It might work. That’s how Twitter started, in fact, I meant Idea Lab, not IDEO, that was another Freudian slip, because Twitter was not Twitter at first. Twitter was the side project at a company called Odeo that was supposed to be in the podcasting business. You’re like, podcasting business? Do those words even grammatically fit together? The answer turned out to be no, as Evan discovered. But as a side project, they spun off Twitter, and boy, was that a dog-wagging tale.

[译文 51]

你说的是像IDEO？像不，像，像，像Idea Lab，像，呃，Garrett Camp的新公司，有North，哦是的，哦是的，好的。所以有这个东西，人们创办这些应该分拆出创业公司的实验室。它可能会成功。Twitter实际上就是这样开始的，我指的是Idea Lab，不是IDEO，那是另一个Freudian笔误，因为Twitter最初不是Twitter。Twitter是Odeo公司的一个副项目，那家公司应该从事播客业务。你会想，播客业务？这些词在语法上能放在一起吗？答案是事实证明不，Evan发现的。但作为一个副项目，他们分拆出了Twitter，那可真是一个尾巴摇狗的故事。

[段 52]

So people are starting these things that are supposed to spin off startups. Will it work? Quite possibly, quite possibly, if the right people do it. You can’t do it yet, though, because you have to do it with your own money. Yes, far back. Thanks so much. I hate to step into sort of a gendered football, but what advice do you have for female co-founders who are pursuing funding? Female co-founders when you’re pursuing funding. Well, it probably is true that women have a harder time raising money, right? I’ve noticed this empirically, and Jessica is just about to publish a bunch of interviews with female founders, and a lot of them said that they thought they had a harder time raising money, too.

[译文 52]

所以人们正在创办这些东西，它们应该分拆出创业公司。会有用吗？很有可能，如果有正确的人来做的话。但你还不能做，因为你要用自己的钱。是的，很后面。谢谢你。我不愿意踏入某种性别足球，但你对追求融资的女性联合创始人有什么建议？女性联合创始人当你追求融资时。嗯，可能女性筹集资金确实更困难，对吧？我从经验中注意到了这一点，Jessica即将发表一大堆女性创始人访谈，她们中很多人说她们认为筹集资金也更困难。

[段 53]

So, what I would, you remember I said, like, the way to raise money, make your startup actually do well? Well, that’s just especially true in that case. If you have any, if you, if you miss the ideal target from the VC’s point of view in any respect, the way to solve that problem is make the startup do really well. So in fact, there was a point, like, a year or two ago, when I tweeted this growth graph of this company, and I didn’t say who they were. But I knew it would start people asking and it was actually a female-founded startup that was having trouble raising money, but their growth graph was stupendous. And so I tweeted it knowing that all these VCs would start asking me, who is that?

[译文 53]

所以，我要，你记得我说过，就像，筹集资金的方式，让你的创业公司实际上做得好？好吧，在这种情况下尤其如此。如果你在任何方面偏离了VC眼中的理想目标，解决那个问题的方法是让创业公司真的做好。所以实际上，大约一两年前，我发推了这家公司的增长图，我没有说他们是谁。但我知道这会让人们开始问，那实际上是一家在筹集资金方面遇到困难的女性创始人创业公司，但他们的增长图是惊人的。所以我发推它知道所有这些VC会开始问我，那是谁？

[段 54]

And growth graphs have no gender, so if they see the growth graph first, let them fall in love with that. So do well, which is good advice for startups generally. Yes? What would you learn in college right now? What would I learn in college? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Literary theory? No, just kidding. Let’s see. Well, you know, honestly, I think I might try and study physics. I feel that’s the thing I feel like I missed. For some reason, like, I was all excited. When I was a kid, computers were the thing. Maybe they still are, right? So I sort of got very excited about writing code. And you could do things with… You could do, you could write real programs in your bedroom.

[译文 54]

增长图没有性别，所以如果他们先看到增长图，让他们先爱上那个。所以要做好，这对你总体上对创业是个好建议。是的？你现在在大学会学什么？我现在在大学会学什么？嗯。嗯。嗯。文学理论？不，开玩笑的。让我们看看。嗯，说实话，我觉得我可能会试着学物理。我感觉这是我错过的东西。出于某种原因，就像，我非常兴奋。当我是个孩子的时候，电脑是东西。也许仍然是，对吧？所以我 sort of 对写代码非常兴奋。你可以用…你可以，你可以用…你可以在卧室里写真正的程序。

[段 55]

You can’t, like, build real linear accelerators. Maybe you can. So maybe, maybe physics. I feel kind of, I always, I sort of look, I notice I sort of look longingly at physics. So maybe. But I don’t know if that’s, what am I saying? I’m saying, I was about to say, I don’t know if that’s going to be helpful starting a startup. And I’ve just told you to follow your own curiosity. So who cares if it’s helpful? It’ll turn out to be helpful. Questions? Another question online. What are your recurring systems in your work and personal life that make you efficient? Ah, boy. Okay, so what are my recurring systems in my work and personal life that make me efficient?

[译文 55]

你不能，就像，制造真正的线性加速器。也许你可以。所以也许，也许物理。我有点，我总是，我 sort of 看，我注意到我 sort of 渴望物理。所以也许。但我不知道那是不是，我要说什么？我是说，我不知道那是否会对开始创业有帮助。而我只是告诉你跟随你自己的好奇心。所以谁在乎它是否有帮助？它最终会有帮助的。问题？网上另一个问题。你在工作和个人生活中有哪些反复出现的系统让你高效？啊，天哪。好的，你在工作和个人生活中有哪些反复出现的系统让你高效？

[段 56]

Well, having kids is a good way to be efficient because you have no time left. So if you want to get anything done, the amount of done you do per time is high. So, actually, many parents, many startup founders who have kids have made that point explicitly. It causes you to focus because you have explicitly, it causes you to focus because you have no choice. Let’s see. But that’s not, I wouldn’t actually recommend having kids just to make you more focused. So let’s see. You know, I don’t think I’m very efficient. I have two ways of getting work done. One is, like, during Y Combinator, the way I worked on Y Combinator is I was forced to, right?

[译文 56]

好吧，有孩子是高效的好方法，因为你没有任何时间了。所以如果你想完成任何事情，你每单位时间完成的量很高。所以，实际上，很多有孩子的父母，很多有孩子的创业创始人明确提出了这一点。它让你集中注意力，因为你明确地，你没有选择。让我们看看。但那不是，我不会真的推荐为了让你更专注而生孩子。让我们看看。你知道，我认为我不是很高效。我有两种完成工作的方式。一种是在Y Combinator期间，我做Y Combinator的方式是我被迫的，对吧？

[段 57]

Like, I had to set the application deadline, and then people would apply, and then there would be all these applications that I had to respond to by a certain time. So I had to read them, and I knew if I read them badly, we would get bad startups, so I tried really hard to read them well, right? So I set up this situation that forced me to work. The other kind of work I do is, like, writing essays, and I do that involuntarily. I’m, like, walking down the street, and the essay starts writing itself in my head. And so really, I either force myself to work on less exciting things, or I can’t help working on exciting things, and I don’t have any useful techniques for making myself efficient.

[译文 57]

就像，我必须设定申请截止日期，然后人们会申请，然后有很多申请我必须在某个时间回复。所以我必须读它们，我知道如果我读得不好，我们会得到糟糕的创业公司，所以我努力读好，对吧？所以我设置了这种情况迫使我工作。另一种我做的工作是，就像，写文章，我不由自主地做。我在街上走着，文章开始在脑海中自动写起来。所以真的，我要么强迫自己做不太令人兴奋的事情，要么我无法不做令人兴奋的事情，而我没有使自己有高效的任何有用技巧。

[段 58]

Sorry. If you work on things you like, you don’t have to force yourself to be efficient. Yes? When is a good time to turn a side project into a real startup? When is a good time to turn a side project into a startup? You will know. Right? What’s really the start? You can have the top rating when you’re ready. It starts when you—okay, so the question is when do you turn a startup into a side project, into a real startup? You will know that it’s becoming a real startup when it takes over an alarming percentage of your life, right? Like, when you find, like, my God, I’ve just spent all day working on this thing that’s supposed to be a side project.

[译文 58]

抱歉。如果你研究你喜欢的东西，你不需要强迫自己高效。是的？什么时候是把副项目变成真正创业的好时机？什么时候是把副项目变成创业的好时机？你会知道的。对吧？真正开始是什么？你准备好了就可以达到最高评分。它开始当——好的，所以问题是什么时候把创业变成副项目，变成真正的创业？当它接管了你生活的令人震惊的百分比时，你会知道它正在变成一个真正的创业，对吧？就像，当你发现，就像，我的天，我刚刚花了一整天在这个应该是副项目的东西上。

[段 59]

I’m going to fail all my classes. What am I going to do, right? Then maybe it’s turning into a startup. Yes, wait, I already answered your question. I should let somebody else ask it. I may get back to you. Yes. I know you talked a lot earlier about you’ll know when your startup is doing extremely well, but I feel like in a lot of cases, there’s just a bit of a gray line where it’s like, you know, you have some users, but maybe not explosive growth. The chart isn’t up to the right. What would you do or what would you recommend doing in those situations, considering you’re allocating time and resources? How do you balance in?

[译文 59]

我所有的课都会挂。我该怎么办，对吧？那么也许它正在变成一个创业公司。是的，等一下，我已经回答了你的问题。我应该让别人问。我可能会再找你。是的。我知道你在前面谈了很多关于你会知道你的创业公司做得非常好的时候，但我觉得在很多情况下，有一条相当模糊的线，就像，你知道，你有了一些用户，但也许不是爆发式增长。图表不是向右上方走。在那些情况下你会做什么或你建议做什么，考虑到你正在分配时间和资源？你如何平衡？

[段 60]

Okay, when a startup is sort of growing but not much, didn’t you tell them they were supposed to read Do Things That Don’t Scale? You, sir, have not done the readings. You are busted, therefore. Because I wrote a whole essay in answer to that question, and that is it. Do Things That Don’t Scale. So just go read that. Because I can’t remember everything I said. But it’s about exactly that problem. Yes, back there. What kind of startup should not go through incubation, in your opinion? What do you mean? Do you mean YC? What kind of startup should not go through YC? Definitely any that will fail, and or if you’ll succeed but you’re an intolerable person.

[译文 60]

好的，当创业公司 sort of 在增长但不太多的时候，你没有告诉他们他们应该读《做不规模化的事情》吗？你，先生，没有做阅读作业。所以你被抓住了。因为我写了一整篇文章来回答那个问题，那就是它。《做不规模化的事情》。所以就去读那个。因为我记不住我说的所有内容。但它就是关于那个问题的。是的，后面那个。你认为什么样的创业公司不应该通过孵化，在你看来？你的意思是？你的意思是YC？什么样的创业公司不应该通过YC？绝对任何会失败的，或者如果你会成功但你是一个无法忍受的人。

[段 61]

That also Sam would probably sooner do without. Short of that, I cannot think of any, because a large percentage—and founders are often surprised by how large a percentage—of the problems that startups have are the same, regardless of what type of thing they’re working on, and those tend to be the kind of problems that YC helps with the most, not the ones that are domain specific. So I can’t—is there, can you think of a class of startups that YC wouldn’t work for? I can’t. I mean, we had like fission and fusion startups in the last batch, or that they had. Yes? You mentioned that it’s good advice to learn a lot about something that matters. Yeah.

[译文 61]

Sam可能也宁愿没有那个。除非那样，我想不到任何，因为很大比例——创始人经常惊讶于有多大比例——创业公司有的问题是相同的，无论他们在做什么类型的事情，而那些往往是YC帮助最多的那种问题，不是领域特定的。所以我不能——你能想到YC不起作用的创业公司类别吗？我不能。我的意思是，我们在上批有裂变和聚变创业公司，或者他们有。是的？你提到学习很多关于重要的东西是好的建议。是的。

[段 62]

What are some good strategies to figure out what matters? Well, if you think of—okay, so how do you figure out what matters? If you think of technology as something that’s spreading as a sort of fractal stain, anything on the edge represents an interesting idea. Sounds familiar? So how do you figure out— like I said, that was the problem. You have correctly identified the thing where I didn’t really answer the question, where I gave this question-begging answer. I said that I’m interested in interesting things. If you’re interested in interesting things, work on them and things will all work out, right? But how do you tell what is a real problem? I don’t know. That’s like important enough to write a whole essay.

[译文 62]

弄清楚什么重要的有什么好策略？好吧，如果你把——好的，你怎么弄清楚什么重要？如果你把技术想象成某种像分形污渍一样传播的东西，边缘上的任何东西都代表一个有趣的想法。听起来熟悉吗？所以你怎么弄清楚——就像我说的，那是问题所在。你正确地识别了我没有真正回答问题的那个地方，我给了这个循环论证的答案。我说，我对我感兴趣的事情感兴趣。如果你对有趣的事情感兴趣，研究它们，一切都会解决的，对吧？但你怎么判断什么是真正的问题？我不知道。那足够重要到写一整篇文章。

[段 63]

I don’t know. That’s important enough to write a whole essay about, and I don’t know the answer. I probably should write something about that, but I don’t know. I don’t know. I figured out a technique for detecting whether you have a taste for genuinely interesting problems, which is whether you find working on boring things intolerable. And there are known boring things, like literary theory and working in middle management in some large company. So if you could tolerate those things, then you must either have stupendous self-discipline or you don’t have a taste for genuinely interesting problems. And vice versa. Yes? One more question. Okay, one more question. It better be good. I was just wondering how a company like Snapchat makes money off of these sort of things.

[译文 63]

我不知道。那足够重要到写一整篇文章，我不知道答案。我也许应该写一些关于那个的，但我不知道。我不知道。我发现了一个检测你是否对真正有趣的问题有品味的技术，那就是你是否发现做无聊的事情无法忍受。已知无聊的事情，比如文学理论和在某个大公司做中层管理。所以如果你能忍受那些事情，那么你要么有惊人的自律，要么你对真正有趣的问题没有品味。反之亦然。是的？还有一个问题。好的，还有一个问题。它最好是个好问题。我只是想知道像Snapchat这样的公司如何从这些东西上赚钱。

[段 64]

Snapchat? What do I know about Snapchat? We didn’t fund them. How about another question? All right, go ahead. So you’re talking about hiring people in the client, but it seems like that could lead to a monoculture. There are a lot of benefits to a monoculture, but how do you deal with the blind spots that arise? Okay, so if you hire people you like, you might get a monoculture. And how do you deal with the blind spots that arise? Starting a startup is something where many things will be going wrong. You can’t expect it to be perfect. And the advantages of hiring people that you know and like are far greater than the small disadvantages of having some monoculture.

[译文 64]

Snapchat？我对Snapchat了解什么？我们没有资助他们。换另一个问题怎么样？好的，继续吧。所以你谈到在客户中雇用人，但似乎这可能导致单一文化。单一文化有很多好处，但你如何处理由此产生的盲点？好的，所以如果你雇用你喜欢的人，你可能会得到单一文化。你如何处理由此产生的盲点？开始创业是这样一件事情，很多事情都会出错。你不能期望它是完美的。雇用你认识和喜欢的人的优势远远大于有一些单一文化的小缺点。

[段 65]

You look at it empirically. All the most successful startups—just like hires all their pals out of college. All right. Just like hires all their pals out of college. All right, you guys, thank you.

[译文 65]

你从经验上看。所有最成功的创业公司——就像从大学雇用他们所有的朋友。好的。就像从大学雇用他们所有的朋友。好的，你们，谢谢。

Source: bilibili BV1oWKpzoE1Z