斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第10集：产品

视频信息

• 标题: 斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第10集：产品
• BV号: BV1oWKpzoE1Z
• 时长: 43分54秒（2634秒）
• 作者: 常春藤中英字幕课
• 原始链接: B站视频

视频摘要

这段视频是YC创业课第9集，由YC总裁Sam Altman主讲，探讨创业成功的四大核心领域：伟大想法、伟大产品、伟大团队和伟大执行。Altman强调好的创业想法应该使命导向、长期思考市场规模演变，并指出少数用户热爱比大量用户一般喜欢更重要。他还警告创业不应为创业而创业，只有被特定问题驱动时才应创业。随后Facebook联合创始人Dustin Moskovitz分享了创业的真实压力和挑战，指出财务回报与影响力高度相关，创业最好的理由是你不能不做——要么源于极度热情，要么因为世界需要你去做。

核心要点

1. 四大成功要素：创业成功需要同时做好想法、产品、团队和执行四件事，运气是0到10000的随机变量，但前四者可控。

2. 使命导向的想法：好的创业想法必须是使命驱动的，能激励团队长期坚持十年，缺乏热情会导致中途放弃。

3. 少数热爱胜于多数喜欢：构建少数用户热爱的东西比大量用户有点喜欢的产品更容易扩展，这是创业的核心原则。

4. 有机增长是产品优秀与否的信号：如果产品没有通过口碑实现有机增长，说明产品还不够好，需要继续改进。

5. 手动获取初始用户：早期应该手动招募用户，通过与用户密切互动获得反馈，而不是购买广告来获取用户。

6. 快速反馈循环至关重要：产品每周改进10%能快速复利增长，创始人与用户之间的直接反馈循环是打造优秀产品的关键。

7. 创业的艰难现实：创业压力大、责任重、媒体描绘的光鲜形象与实际情况差距很大，创始人必须做好心理准备。

8. 创业的正确理由：创业的最佳时机是你不能不做——要么源于对想法的极度热情，要么因为世界需要你去做。

视频全文转录（中英双语）

以下为完整中英双语转录，已加标点。英文在前，中文在后，逐段对照。

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

[段 1]

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

[译文 1]

欢迎。我能打开这个吗？也许？好吧。后排的人能听到吗？你们能听到我吗？麦克风开了吗？没开？也许你可以让他们打开。也许我们可以找个大的，啊，好了。好吧。也许我们可以找个更大的礼堂，到时候再说。欢迎来到 CS183B。我是 Sam Altman，我是 Y Combinator 的总裁。九年前我是 Stanford 的学生，然后我辍学创业了。在过去的几年里我一直是投资人。所以在 YC，我们已经教人们如何创业九年了。大部分内容都是非常实践性的，并且是针对创业公司的。

[段 2]

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

[译文 2]

但其中30%是相当普遍适用的。所以我们认为我们可以在这个课程中教授那30%。即使这只是达到目标的30%，希望它仍然会非常有帮助。我们已经在YC教了很多这些内容，但都是非正式的。这是我们第一次将许多在YC教的内容正式公开。我们现在已经资助了720家公司。所以我们相当确信这些建议相当好。我们还不能资助每一家创业公司，但我们希望能使这些建议广泛可用。

[段 3]

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

[译文 3]

客座演讲者将教授20节课中的17节。我只教3节。算上YC本身，每位客座演讲者都参与创建过一家价值超过10亿美元的公司。所以这些建议不应该那么理论化。都来自真正做过的人。这门课的所有建议都是针对那些以高速增长为目标、最终建立一家非常大的公司为目标的创业者的。其中大部分内容在其它情况下并不适用，我想提前警告大家，如果你在很多大公司或非创业公司中尝试这些做法，是行不通的。不过这应该仍然很有趣。我真的认为创业公司是未来的方向，值得尝试去理解它们。

[段 4]

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

[译文 4]

但初创公司与普通公司非常不同。所以在今天和Thursday的课程中，我将尝试概述这四个你需要擅长的领域，以最大限度地提高你在初创公司成功的几率。然后在整个课程中，客座演讲者将更详细地深入讲解所有这些内容。所以这四个领域：你需要一个伟大的想法、伟大的产品、伟大的团队和伟大的执行。这些有部分重叠，但我需要将它们分别讨论才能让内容说得通。你仍然可能失败。结果类似于想法乘以产品乘以执行乘以团队乘以运气，其中运气是一个介于0到10000之间的随机数，就是这么多。

[段 5]

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

[译文 5]

但是，如果你真的能把控好这四个领域，你就有很大的机会至少获得某种程度的成功。创业令人兴奋的一点是，它们出人意料地是公平的竞技场：年轻且缺乏经验，你可以做到；年老且经验丰富，你也可以做到。我特别喜欢的创业的另一个特点是，在其他工作环境中一些不好的东西，比如贫穷和默默无闻，在创业时实际上是非常大的优势。在我们讨论如何做之前，我想谈谈为什么你应该创业。我其实有点犹豫要不要上这堂课，因为你不应该为了创业而创业。

[段 6]

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

[译文 6]

致富有更简单得多的方式，而且每个创业的人总是说，总是说，他们根本无法想象这会有多么艰难和痛苦。只有当你被一个特定的问题所驱使时，你才应该创业，而且你认为创业是解决它的最好方式。具体的热情应该优先，创业次之。事实上，我们在YC的所有重大成功案例都遵循了这一点。所以今天讲座的下半部分，Facebook和Asana的联合创始人Dustin Moskovitz将接管并谈论为什么要创业。我们对这门课获得的关注程度感到非常惊讶，以至于我们想确保我们在"为什么"上花很多时间。

[段 7]

Okay, so the first of the four areas: a great idea. It’s become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s almost uncool to spend a lot of time thinking about the idea for a startup. You’re just supposed to start, throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks, and not even spend any time thinking about if it’ll be valuable, if it works, and pivots are supposed to be great. The more pivots the better. So this isn’t totally wrong. Things do evolve in ways that are difficult to predict, and there’s a limit to how much you can figure out without actually getting a product in the hands of users. And great execution is at least 10 times more important, and 100 times harder than a good idea.

[译文 7]

好的，四个领域中的第一个：伟大的创意。近几年流行说创意不重要。事实上，为创业公司的创意花大量时间思考几乎已经不时髦了。你应该直接开始，把东西扔到墙上，看什么能粘住，甚至不用花时间思考它是否有价值、是否有效，而转型被认为是好事。转型越多越好。所以这并不完全错误。事物确实以难以预测的方式发展，而且在没有真正把产品交到用户手中之前，你能想明白的东西是有限的。伟大的执行力至少比一个好创意重要10倍，难100倍。

[段 8]

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

[译文 8]

但钟摆已经摆得完全失衡了。一个糟糕的点子仍然是糟糕的，而我们当今这个热衷于转型的世界感觉确实不太理想。完美执行一个糟糕的点子只会让你一无所获。当然也有例外，但大多数伟大的公司始于一个伟大的点子，而非转型。如果你观察那些成功的转型案例，它们几乎总是转型到创始人自己真正想要的东西，而非随机编造的点子。Airbnb的出现是因为Brian Chesky付不起房租，但他确实有一些多余的空间。不过总体而言，如果你看看转型的过往记录，它们并没有成为大公司。我自己过去曾相信点子并不是那么重要，但我现在非常确定那是错误的。

[段 9]

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

[译文 9]

这里我们讨论的想法的定义非常宽泛。它包括市场规模及其增长、公司的增长策略、防御策略等等。当你在评估一个想法时，你需要仔细思考所有这些因素，而不仅仅是产品。如果成功了，你将为此工作10年。所以值得花一些真正的前期时间来思考业务的长期价值和防御能力。尽管计划本身毫无价值，但规划的过程实际上非常有价值，而且在今天的大多数startups中完全缺失。长期思维在任何地方都非常罕见，但在startups中尤其如此，如果你能做到，这就是一个巨大的优势。

[段 10]

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

[译文 10]

记住，这个想法会随着你的推进而扩展，变得更加宏大。是的，会随着你的推进而变得更加宏大。你当然不需要在通往世界支配地位的道路上把所有事情都想清楚，但你确实想要一个好的核心作为起点。你需要一些能够以有趣方式发展的东西。当你在思考各种想法时，我们看到年轻创始人经常犯错的另一件事是，你总有一天需要建立一个难以复制的企业。这是好想法的重要组成部分。因为这非常重要，我想再强调这一点。想法应该在前，创业公司应该在后。等到你有了让你有冲动去探索的想法时再开始创业。

[段 11]

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

[译文 11]

这也是在多个想法之间做出选择的方法。如果你有几个看起来都相当不错的想法，那就去做那个你在不刻意想工作的时候最常想到的想法。但我们一次又一次地听到创始人们说，他们希望自己能等到想出一个真正喜欢的想法后再开始创业。另一个看待这个问题的角度是，最好的公司几乎总是以使命为导向的。除非公司让人觉得是一项重要的使命，否则很难让一大群人达到创业成功所需的极致专注和生产力水平。而如果没有一个伟大的创业想法，通常很难达到那种状态。

[段 12]

A related advantage of mission-oriented ideas is that you yourself will be dedicated to them. It takes years and years. This is a long passage that needs punctuation added. Let me work through it carefully. The passage is about startup advice, discussing topics like: - How long startups take (usually a decade) - The importance of believing in what you’re building - Mission-oriented companies - Why hard startups are often easier than easy ones - How to come up with startup ideas - Why great ideas often look bad at first - The importance of conviction Let me add punctuation: Usually a decade - this seems to be a fragment at the beginning, maybe it should be connected to something.

[译文 12]

Mission-oriented理念的另一个相关优势是，你自己会全身心投入到其中。这需要很多很多年。这是一段很长的文字，需要添加标点符号。让我仔细梳理一下。这段文字是关于创业建议的，讨论了以下主题：- 创业需要多长时间（通常是十年）- 相信你所构建的东西的重要性- Mission-oriented公司- 为什么艰难的创业往往比容易的创业更简单- 如何产生创业想法- 为什么伟大的想法起初往往看起来很糟糕- 信念的重要性让我添加标点符号：通常是十年——这似乎在开头是一个不完整的句子，也许应该与某些内容连接起来。

[段 13]

Looking at it again, it seems like Usually a decade is the start, and then to create a great startup continues. This might be the beginning of a sentence. Actually, looking at the very beginning: usually a decade, to create a great startup - this seems like it should be Usually it takes a decade to create a great startup or similar. Wait, let me re-read: usually a decade, to create a great startup - this might be a formatting issue. It could be It usually takes a decade to create a great startup. Let me go through the text carefully: 1. usually a decade, to create a great startup - This seems incomplete. Maybe it’s It usually takes a decade to create a great startup.

[译文 13]

再看一遍，看起来通常是这样：一个十年是起点，然后创建一家伟大的创业公司会继续下去。这可能是一个句子的开头。实际上，看最开头的地方：通常是一个十年，创建一家伟大的创业公司——这看起来应该是“通常创建一家伟大的创业公司需要十年”或类似的话。等等，让我重新读一下：通常是一个十年，创建一家伟大的创业公司——这可能是个格式问题。可能是“通常创建一家伟大的创业公司需要十年”。让我仔细检查这段文字：1. 通常是一个十年，创建一家伟大的创业公司——这看起来不完整。也许它是“通常创建一家伟大的创业公司需要十年”。

[段 14]

But looking at the flow, it seems like it might be starting mid-thought or there’s missing text. However, I should work with what’s given. Maybe it’s usually a decade to create a great startup without the comma. 2. If you don’t love and believe in what you’re building, you’re likely to give up at some point along the way. - This is good. 3. there’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup. - Good. 4. There’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters. - This is a repeat with variation. 5. A lot of founders, especially students, believe that their startup is only going to take two or three years, and then after that they’ll work on what they’re really passionate about.

[译文 14]

但从流程来看，这似乎是在半中间开始的思维，或者是缺少了文本。然而，我应该根据给出的内容来处理。可能通常需要十年时间才能创建一个伟大的初创公司（不加逗号）。2. 如果你不喜欢并且不相信你正在做的事情，你很可能会在某个时刻放弃。——这很好。3. 据我所知没有办法熬过创业的痛苦。——好。4. 据我所知，如果不相信这个使命真的重要，就没有办法熬过创业的痛苦。——这是带变化的重复。5. 很多创始人，尤其是学生，认为他们的创业只需要两三年，然后在那之后他们才会去做他们真正热情所在的事情。

[段 15]

• Good. 6. That almost never works. - Good. 7. Good startups usually take ten years. - Good. 8. A third advantage of mission-oriented companies is that people outside the company are more willing to help you. - Good. 9. You’ll get more support on a hard, important project than a derivative one. - Good. 10. When it comes to starting startups, in many ways it’s easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup. - Good. 11. This is one of those counterintuitive things that takes people a long time to understand. - Good. 12. It’s difficult to overstate how important being mission-driven is, so I want to emphasize it one last time. - Good. 13. Derivative companies, companies that copy an existing idea with very few new insights, don’t excite people, and they don’t compel the teams to work hard enough to be successful.

[译文 15]

好的。6. 这几乎从来不会成功。 - 好的。7. 好的创业公司通常需要十年。 - 好的。8. 使命导向型公司的第三个优势是，公司外部的人更愿意帮助你。 - 好的。9. 你在一个困难但重要的项目上会比在一个衍生项目中获得更多支持。 - 好的。10. 在创业方面，很多情况下创业难度高的公司比创业难度低的公司更容易。 - 好的。11. 这是反直觉的事情之一，人们需要很长时间才能理解。 - 好的。12. 使命驱动的重要性怎么说都不为过，所以我想最后再强调一次。 - 好的。13. 衍生公司，即那些几乎没有新见解、只是复制现有想法的公司，不会让人兴奋，也不会促使团队足够努力地取得成功。

[段 16]

• Good. 14. Paul Graham is going to talk about how to get startup ideas next week. - Good. 15. It’s something that a lot of founders struggle with, but it’s something I believe you can get better with it, better at with practice, and it’s definitely worth trying to get better at. - This has a redundancy better with it, better at - probably should be better at it, better with practice or just better at with practice - but I need to add punctuation without correcting content. Actually looking at it: you can get better with it, better at with practice - this might be you can get better at, with practice or better at it, with practice.

[译文 16]

• 好。 14. Paul Graham 下周要讲如何获得创业点子。 - 好。 15. 这是很多创始人都为之苦恼的事情，但我相信你可以通过练习变得更好，这绝对是值得努力提升的。 - 这里有个冗余 better with it, better at - 大概应该是 better at it, better with practice 或者 just better at with practice - 但我需要添加标点而不修正内容。实际上看这句话：you can get better at, with practice 或者 better at it, with practice。

[段 17]

The text seems to have a typo or error. But as a punctuation bot, I should add punctuation that makes grammatical sense. It could be: you can get better at it, and better with practice or something similar. 16. The hardest part about coming up with great ideas is that the best ideas often look terrible at the beginning. - Good. 17. The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless. - This needs to be part of a sentence. It seems like it’s saying The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal - this is describing Google I think. The punctuation should be: The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless.

[译文 17]

这段文字似乎有拼写错误或错误。但作为一个标点符号机器人，我应该添加符合语法逻辑的标点。可能是：你可以在其中做得更好，通过练习会越来越好，或者类似的表述。16. 想出绝妙点子最难的部分是，最好的点子往往在开始时看起来很糟糕。- 好的。17. The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless. - 这需要是一个句子的一部分。看起来像是在说"The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal"——我想这是在描述Google。标点应该是：The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless.

[段 18]

But actually, looking at it, it might be better as: The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless. - this is fine as is, though it reads a bit oddly. Actually, it might be: The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal—most people thought that was pointless. 18. Search was done, and anyway, it didn’t matter that much. - Good. 19. Portals were where the value was at. - Good. 20. The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. - Similar structure. The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible.

[译文 18]

但实际上，看看的话，也许这样更好：第13个搜索引擎，而且没有门户网站的所有功能，大多数人认为这毫无意义。——这样就可以，虽然读起来有点奇怪。实际上，也许应该是：第13个搜索引擎，而且没有门户网站的所有功能——大多数人都认为这毫无意义。18. 搜索已经完成了，而且反正也没那么重要。——好的。19. 门户网站才是价值所在。——好的。20. 第10个社交网络，而且仅限于没有钱的大学生，同样糟糕。——类似结构。第10个社交网络，而且仅限于没有钱的大学生，同样糟糕。

[段 19]

Or maybe: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money—also terrible. 21. or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? - This is confusing. It might be or MySpace at one - wait, maybe it’s: or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? Or perhaps it’s part of a sentence: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money—also terrible. Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? This is tricky. It might be: Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? Actually, looking at context, it seems like it’s saying: The 10th social network… also terrible. Or MySpace at one?

[译文 19]

或者这样：第十个社交网络，而且只限于没钱的大学生——同样糟糕。

21. 或者MySpace曾经的一个（版本），谁想要大学生作为客户？——这让人困惑。

可能是MySpace曾经的一个（版本）——等等，也许是这样：或者MySpace曾经的一个（版本）？谁想要大学生作为客户？

或者这可能是一个句子的一部分：第十个社交网络，而且只限于没钱的大学生——同样糟糕。或者MySpace曾经的一个（版本）？谁想要大学生作为客户？

这很棘手。

可能是：或者MySpace曾经的一个（版本）？谁想要大学生作为客户？

实际上，结合上下文，看起来像是在说：第十个社交网络……同样糟糕。或者MySpace曾经的一个（版本）？谁想要大学生作为客户？

[段 20]

And who wants college students as customers? - meaning even MySpace had some advantages, but here we are comparing to the 10th social network that was limited to college students. Actually, looking at the text: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? This might be: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? Or it could be: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers?

[译文 20]

而且谁想要大学生作为客户？——意思是连MySpace都有一些优势，但我们这里比较的是第十个社交网络，它只限于大学生。实际上，看这段文本：第十个社交网络，只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace排第一？而且谁想要大学生作为客户？这可能是：第十个社交网络，只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace排第一？谁想要大学生作为客户？或者可能是：第十个社交网络，只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace排第一？谁想要大学生作为客户？

[段 21]

Actually, I think the meaning is: The 10th social network… also terrible. MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? meaning MySpace was better positioned. But the text says or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? - this might be: Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? or Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? Actually, I think it’s: Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? - but that doesn’t parse well. Maybe it’s: Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? - so two questions. Or: Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? - rhetorical question.

[译文 21]

实际上，我认为意思是：第十大社交网络……也很糟糕。MySpace曾排名第一？谁想要大学生作为客户？意思是MySpace定位更好。但文本说的是或MySpace曾排名第一，谁想要大学生作为客户？这可能是：或者MySpace曾排名第一？谁想要大学生作为客户？或者MySpace曾排名第一，谁想要大学生作为客户？实际上，我认为这是：或者MySpace曾排名第一，谁想要大学生作为客户？但这不太好理解。也许这是：或者MySpace曾排名第一？谁想要大学生作为客户？所以是两个问题。或者：或者MySpace曾排名第一，谁想要大学生作为客户？反问句。

[段 22]

Given the context, I’ll assume it’s two separate questions or one question with a comma. Actually, looking at it again: or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? - this could be: Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? But actually, reading the whole thing: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? I think this is meant to be: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? But wait - or MySpace at one - this is odd.

[译文 22]

根据上下文，我假设这是两个独立的问题，或者是一个带逗号的问题。实际上，再看一遍：或者MySpace占一个位置，谁想要大学生作为客户？这可能是：或者MySpace占一个位置？谁想要大学生作为客户？但实际上，通读全文：第十个社交网络，仅限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace占一个位置，谁想要大学生作为客户？我认为这应该是：第十个社交网络，仅限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace占一个位置？谁想要大学生作为客户？但等等——或者MySpace占一个位置——这很奇怪。

[段 23]

Maybe it’s: Or MySpace at one. as a question. And then And who wants college students as customers? as another question. Or it could be: Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? - but at one doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s at one point or just at one meaning at one time? Actually, I think this might be a transcription error or the text is garbled. Let me look at the context. The previous example was about Google being the 13th search engine. Now it’s about the 10th social network limited to college students - this is clearly referring to Facebook. So: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible.

[译文 23]

也许原文是：或者MySpace是一个。作为一个问题。然后：谁想要大学生作为客户？作为另一个问题。或者也许是：或者MySpace是一个，谁想要大学生作为客户？但"at one"没有意义。也许是"at one point"或者就是"at one"意思是"at one time"？实际上，我认为这可能是转录错误或文本乱码。让我看看上下文。前面举的例子是Google是第13个搜索引擎。现在是说第10个社交网络只针对大学生——这显然指的是Facebook。所以原文应该是：第10个社交网络，只针对大学生，没有钱，也很糟糕。

[段 24]

• meaning Facebook. Then: or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? - this might be: Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? - meaning at one point MySpace was successful, so why focus on college students? Or it could be: Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? - comparing MySpace’s approach (which was broader) to Facebook’s approach (college students only). I think the safest interpretation is to make it a question or two questions. But actually, looking at the capitalization - or at the start of a sentence should be capitalized: Or. But the text has lowercase or. This suggests it might be a continuation of the previous thought.

[译文 24]

意思是Facebook。然后：或者说MySpace曾经成功，以及谁想要大学生作为客户？——这可能是：或者MySpace曾经成功？以及谁想要大学生作为客户？——意思是MySpace曾经一度很成功，那为什么要专注于大学生？或者也可以理解为：或者MySpace曾经成功，以及谁想要大学生作为客户？——比较MySpace的做法（更广泛）和Facebook的做法（仅限大学生）。我认为最安全的解读是把它理解为一个或两个问题。但实际上，看大小写——或者句子开头应该大写：Or。但文本是小写的or。这表明它可能是对前一个想法的延续。

[段 25]

Actually, I think the structure is: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? So it’s saying: The 10th social network… also terrible. Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers? - meaning at one point, MySpace was the social network to beat, and they didn’t limit to college students. I’ll go with: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? Or maybe: The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one, and who wants college students as customers?

[译文 25]

实际上，我认为结构是：第十个社交网络，而且只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace曾经是第一，而谁想要大学生作为客户？所以它的意思是：第十个社交网络…也很糟糕。或者MySpace曾经是第一，而谁想要大学生作为客户？- 意思是曾经有一段时间，MySpace是要超越的社交网络，而且他们不限于大学生。我会用：第十个社交网络，而且只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace曾经是第一，而谁想要大学生作为客户？或者可能是：第十个社交网络，只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace曾经是第一，谁想要大学生作为客户？

[段 26]

• using a question mark at the end. 22. Or a way to stay on strangers’ couches? - This seems like it’s starting a new example. Or a way to stay on strangers’ couches? - this is referring to Airbnb probably. 23. That just sounds terrible all around. - Good. 24. These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. - Good. 25. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them. - Good. 26. As Peter Thiel is going to discuss in the fifth class, you want an idea that turns into a monopoly. - Good. 27. But you can’t get a monopoly in a big market right away.

[译文 26]

• 在末尾使用问号。

• 或者是一种住在陌生人沙发上的方式？
• 这似乎要开始一个新的例子。
• 或者是一种住在陌生人沙发上的方式？- 这可能是在指Airbnb。
• 这听起来到处都是可怕的。
• 好的。
• 这些听起来都很糟糕，但结果却是好的。
• 好的。
• 如果它们听起来真的很好，就会有太多人来做它们了。
• 好的。
• 正如Peter Thiel将在第五节课讨论的，你需要的是一个能变成垄断的想法。
• 好的。
• 但你不能马上在大市场中获得垄断。

[段 27]

• Good. 28. Too much competition for that. - Good. 29. You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly, and then quickly expand. - Good. 30. This is why some great startup ideas look really bad at the beginning. - Good. 31. It’s good if you can say something like, today, only the small subset of users are going to use my product, but I’m going to get all of them. - Good. 32. And in the future, almost everyone will use my product. - Good. 33. Here’s a theme that’s going to come up a lot. - Good. 34. You need conviction in your own beliefs and a willingness to ignore others’ naysaying.

[译文 27]

• 好的。28. 那竞争太激烈了。

• 好的。29. 你必须找到一个小市场，在那里你可以获得垄断地位，然后快速扩张。
• 好的。30. 这就是为什么一些伟大的创业想法在一开始看起来很糟糕。
• 好的。31. 如果你能说出这样的话就很好：今天，只有小部分用户会使用我的产品，但我会把他们全部拿下。
• 好的。32. 而在未来，几乎每个人都会使用我的产品。
• 好的。33. 这是一个会反复出现的主题。
• 好的。34. 你需要对自己的信念有坚定的信心，并且愿意无视他人的反对。

[段 28]

• Good. 35. The hard part is that this is a very fine line. - Good. 36. There’s right on one side of it and crazy on the other. - Good. 37. But keep in mind that if you do come up with a great idea, most people are going to think it’s bad. - Good. 38. You should be happy about that. - Good. 39. means they won’t compete with you. - This is incomplete! It should connect to the previous sentence. You should be happy about that. means they won’t compete with you. This doesn’t make sense. It should be: You should be happy about that, because it means they won’t compete with you. Or: You should be happy about that.

[译文 28]

好的。35. 困难的地方在于这是一条非常细微的界限。 好的。36. 一边是正确的，另一边是疯狂的。 好的。37. 但请记住，如果你真的提出了一个很棒的想法，大多数人会认为它很糟糕。 好的。38. 你应该为此感到高兴，因为这意味着他们不会与你竞争。

[段 29]

It means they won’t compete with you. But the second sentence starting with means is ungrammatical. It must be: You should be happy about that, because it means they won’t compete with you. 40. This is also a reason why it’s not usually dangerous to tell people about your idea. - Good. 41. The truly good ideas don’t sound like they’re worth stealing. - Good. 42. You want an idea about what you can say. - This is confusing. You want an idea about what you can say. - maybe it should be: You want to be able to say or Here’s what you can say or something. But as a punctuation bot, I should add punctuation to make it readable.

[译文 29]

这意味着他们不会与你竞争。但第二个以 means 开头的句子在语法上是不正确的。应该是：You should be happy about that, because it means they won’t compete with you. 40. 这也是为什么告诉别人你的想法通常不危险的原因之一。- 好的。41. 真正好的想法听起来不像是值得偷取的。- 好的。42. 你想要一个关于你可以说什么的想法。- 这令人困惑。You want an idea about what you can say. - 也许应该是：You want to be able to say 或者 Here’s what can say 或者其他类似的表达。但作为一个标点符号机器人，我应该添加标点符号使其更易读。

[段 30]

It could be: You want an idea about what you can say as a statement, or maybe it’s: You want an idea about what you can say. but that’s awkward. Actually, looking at the context: You want an idea that not many other people are working on. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. Common mistake among founders, especially first-time founders, is they think that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea,that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, needs to sound really big. Wait, there’s a repeat here: the first version of their product, the first version of their idea,that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea - this is repeated.

[译文 30]

可能是：你想要一个关于你作为陈述能说些什么的想法，或者可能是：你想要一个关于你能说些什么的想法。但这听起来很别扭。实际上，结合上下文：你想找一个没有太多其他人在做的想法。而且一开始听起来不大也没关系。创始人常见的错误，尤其是首次创业者的常见错误，是他们认为产品的第一个版本、想法的第一个版本，产品的第一个版本、想法的第一个版本，需要听起来非常大。等等，这里有重复：产品的第一个版本、想法的第一个版本，产品的第一个版本、想法的第一个版本——这是重复的。

[段 31]

I should punctuate it as: the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea - with a comma after idea,. But looking at the flow: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. Ah! I see now. The text before was: You want an idea about what you can say. - but actually, looking at the original again: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. Wait, let me find where You want an idea about what you can say appears.

[译文 31]

我应该这样标点：the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea - 在idea后面加逗号。但看整体流程：You want an idea about what you can say. 我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但这里具体解释为什么它实际上是个好主意。啊！我现在明白了。之前的文本是：You want an idea about what you can say. - 但实际上，再看原版：You want an idea about what you can say. 我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但这里具体解释为什么它实际上是个好主意。等等，让我找找You want an idea about what you can say出现在哪里。

[段 32]

Looking at the text: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. Actually, looking at the passage: You want an idea that not many other people are working on. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. Common mistake among founders, especially first-time founders, is they think that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea,that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, needs to sound really big. So the text is: You want an idea about what you can say. - but that doesn’t match what I just read. Let me look again.

[译文 32]

看着这段文本：你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但让我具体解释一下为什么它实际上是个好主意。实际上，看着这段话：你想要一个没有很多其他人在做的想法。如果它一开始听起来不大也没关系。创业者常犯的错误，尤其是初次创业者常犯的错误，是他们认为产品、想法的第一版需要听起来真的很宏大。所以这段文本是：你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。——但这与我刚才读到的不匹配。让我再看一遍。

[段 33]

Actually, I see now: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. But looking at the full passage, around that area: You want an idea that not many other people are working on. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. Common mistake among founders, especially first-time founders, is they think that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea,that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, needs to sound really big. But it doesn’t. It needs to take over a small, specific market and expand from there. That’s how most great companies have started.

[译文 33]

实际上，我现在明白了：你想要一个关于你可以说什么的想法。我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但这里具体说明为什么它实际上是个好主意。但看看整段文字，在那个区域：你想要一个没有很多其他人在做的想法。如果一开始听起来不大也没关系。创始人中的常见错误，尤其是第一次创业的创始人，是他们认为产品的第一个版本，想法的第一个版本，需要听起来非常大。但事实并非如此。它需要占据一个小的、具体的市场，然后从那里扩展。大多数伟大的公司都是这样起步的。

[段 34]

Unpopular but righ Wait, the very end says Unpopular but righ - this is cut off. It should be Unpopular but right. And looking back at the section with You want an idea about what you can say: Actually, I think I found it: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. But the passage says: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. Actually, looking at the original text more carefully: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one.

[译文 34]

Unpopular but right（不受欢迎但正确）-等等，结尾处写的是Unpopular but righ——这里被截断了。应该是Unpopular but right。再回头看You want an idea about what you can say这一段：实际上，我认为我找到了：You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. 但文章写的是：You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. 实际上，仔细看原文：You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one.

[段 35]

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. And you want an idea that not many other people are working on. Wait, I’m getting confused. Let me look at the original text again carefully. The passage has: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. And you want an idea that not many other people are working on. But actually, looking at the original post: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one.

[译文 35]

你想要听起来很疯狂，但你实际上想是对的。而且你想要一个没有多少人正在研究的想法。等等，我搞混了。让我再仔细看看原文。文章内容是：你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。我知道这听起来是个坏主意，但这里具体说说为什么它实际上是个好主意。你想要听起来很疯狂，但你实际上想是对的。而且你想要一个没有多少人正在研究的想法。但实际上，看看原帖：你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。我知道这听起来是个坏主意，但这里具体说说为什么它实际上是个好主意。

[段 36]

I think this is correct. But let me verify the exact text provided: You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. And you want an idea that not many other people are working on. Yes, that’s in the text. And then: And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. So the sequence is: 1. You want an idea about what you can say. 2. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. 3. You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.

[译文 36]

我认为这是正确的。但让我确认一下提供的确切文本：你想知道你能说什么的一个想法。我知道这听起来像是个坏主意，但让我具体解释一下为什么它实际上是个好主意。你想要听起来疯狂，但你实际上想要正确。而且你想要一个没有太多其他人在做的想法。是的，那在文本里。然后：而且如果它一开始听起来不大也没关系。所以顺序是：1. 你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。2. 我知道这听起来像是个坏主意，但让我具体解释一下为什么它实际上是个好主意。3. 你想要听起来疯狂，但你实际上想要正确。

[段 37]

4. And you want an idea that not many other people are working on. 5. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. That makes sense. Now, looking at the You want an idea about what you can say part - this is actually a bit awkward, but it means something like: You want to be able to articulate why it’s a good idea or You want to have a clear message about what you’re doing. Now, back to the beginning. The first part: usually a decade, to create a great startup. This looks like it should be: Usually a decade to create a great startup. or It usually takes a decade to create a great startup. But the text has usually a decade, to create a great startup.

[译文 37]

4. 你需要一个没有太多其他人在做的想法。5. 如果一开始听起来不大也没关系。这说得通。现在，看"You want an idea about what you can say"这部分——这实际上有点别扭，但它的意思是：你想要能够清楚地表达为什么这是一个好主意，或者你想要有一个关于你在做什么的清晰信息。现在回到开头。第一部分：usually a decade, to create a great startup. 这看起来应该是：Usually a decade to create a great startup. 或者 It usually takes a decade to create a great startup. 但原文是 usually a decade, to create a great startup.

[段 38]

with a comma. Actually, looking at the very beginning of the provided text: 加标点：usually a decade, to create a great startup. The user says 加标点 (add punctuation). The text starts with usually a decade, to create a great startup. This is definitely missing the beginning of the sentence. It should probably be It usually takes a decade to create a great startup. or Building a great startup usually takes a decade. But looking at the context, it might be starting with It or Building a startup or something. Since I don’t have that, I’ll punctuate what I have: Usually, a decade to create a great startup. - but that’s awkward. Actually, looking at similar structures later: Good startups usually take ten years.

[译文 38]

加一个逗号。实际上，看看提供的文本开头：加标点：usually a decade, to create a great startup. 用户说加标点（添加标点符号）。文本开头是 usually a decade, to create a great startup. 这明显缺少句子的开头。应该是 It usually takes a decade to create a great startup. 或者 Building a great startup usually takes a decade. 但根据上下文，开头可能是 It 或 Building a startup 之类的。既然我没有，就只能给已有的内容加标点：Usually, a decade to create a great startup. - 但这样很别扭。实际上，看看后面类似的结构：Good startups usually take ten years.

[段 39]

• so this is the same idea. I think the safest is: Usually, a decade to create a great startup. or It usually takes a decade to create a great startup. But since the text says usually a decade, to create a great startup - maybe it’s: Usually a decade to create a great startup. - removing the comma makes it a fragment that works as a summary or title, or it could be part of a larger sentence. Actually, looking at the structure, this might be the opening of a lecture or talk, so it could be a complete thought: Usually a decade to create a great startup. - meaning It usually takes about a decade to create a great startup.

[译文 39]

所以这表达的是同样的意思。我认为最安全的表达是：通常，创建一个伟大的创业公司需要十年。或者：通常创建一个伟大的创业公司需要十年。但既然文本说的是usually a decade, to create a great startup——也许应该是：通常需要十年创建一个伟大的创业公司。- 去掉逗号后，它变成了一个可以作为摘要或标题的片段，或者它可以是更大句子的一部分。实际上，从结构来看，这可能是讲座或演讲的开场，所以它可以是一个完整的想法：通常需要十年创建一个伟大的创业公司。- 意思是创建一个伟大的创业公司通常需要大约十年。

[段 40]

I’ll punctuate it as a sentence: Usually a decade to create a great startup. Wait, but there’s a comma: usually a decade, to create a great startup If I keep the comma, it reads: Usually, a decade, to create a great startup - which is odd. Better: Usually a decade to create a great startup. - removing the comma after decade and adding a period. Or: Usually, it takes a decade to create a great startup. Since the text has usually a decade, to create a great startup with a comma, I think the best interpretation is that it’s meant to be read as a complete sentence with the comma representing a slight pause or being a typo. I’ll make it: Usually a decade to create a great startup.

[译文 40]

我会把它作为句子标点：通常需要十年才能创建一家伟大的创业公司。等等，但这里有个逗号：通常需要十年，创建一家伟大的创业公司。如果保留逗号，读起来是：通常，十年，创建一家伟大的创业公司——这很奇怪。更好：通常需要十年才能创建一家伟大的创业公司。去掉十年后面的逗号，加上句号。或者：通常，需要十年才能创建一家伟大的创业公司。由于文本有"通常需要十年，创建一家伟大的创业公司"带逗号，我认为最好的理解是它应该被读作一个完整句子，逗号表示轻微停顿或者是打字错误。我会这样改：通常需要十年才能创建一家伟大的创业公司。

[段 41]

Now, let me go through the full text and add punctuation: Original: usually a decade, to create a great startup. If you don’t love and believe in what you’re building, you’re likely to give up at some point along the way. there’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup.There’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters. A lot of founders, especially students, believe that their startup is only going to take two or three years, and then after that they’ll work on what they’re really passionate about. That almost never works. Good startups usually take ten years. A third advantage of mission-oriented companies is that people outside the company are more willing to help you.

[译文 41]

现在让我逐句翻译这段文本，并添加标点符号：

通常需要十年时间，来打造一家伟大的创业公司。如果你不喜欢也不相信自己正在做的事情，你很可能会在某个时刻放弃。据我所知，没有什么方法可以熬过创业的痛苦。没有坚定的信念相信这个使命真的重要，据我所知，没有什么方法可以熬过创业的痛苦。很多创始人，尤其是学生，认为他们的创业只需要两三年，之后他们才会去做自己真正热爱的。这几乎从来不会成功。好的创业通常需要十年。以使命为导向的公司第三个优势是，公司外部的人更愿意帮助你。

[段 42]

You’ll get more support on a hard, important project than a derivative one. When it comes to starting startups, in many ways it’s easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup. This is one of those counterintuitive things that takes people a long time to understand. It’s difficult to overstate how important being mission-driven is, so I want to emphasize it one last time. Derivative companies, companies that copy an existing idea with very few new insights, don’t excite people, and they don’t compel the teams to work hard enough to be successful. Paul Graham is going to talk about how to get startup ideas next week. It’s something that a lot of founders struggle with, but it’s something I believe you can get better with it, better at with practice, and it’s definitely worth trying to get better at.

[译文 42]

你会从困难重要的项目中获得更多支持，而不是从衍生项目中。关于创业，在很多方面，创办一家困难的创业公司比创办一家容易的创业公司更容易。这是那些反直觉的事情之一，需要人们很长时间才能理解。要强调使命驱动的重要性怎么说都不为过，所以我想最后再强调一次。衍生的公司，即复制现有想法、几乎没有新见解的公司，不会让人兴奋，也不会促使团队努力工作到足以成功。Paul Graham下周将谈论如何获得创业想法。这是很多创始人都在努力解决的问题，但我相信通过练习你会做得更好，而且这绝对值得努力做得更好。

[段 43]

The hardest part about coming up with great ideas is that the best ideas often look terrible at the beginning. The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless. Search was done, and anyway, it didn’t matter that much. Portals were where the value was at. The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. or MySpace at one and who wants college students as customers? Or a way to stay on strangers’ couches? That just sounds terrible all around. These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.

[译文 43]

想出绝妙想法最难的部分是，最棒的想法往往在开始时看起来很糟糕。第13个搜索引擎，而且还没有门户网站的所有功能，大多数人认为这毫无意义。搜索已经做完了，而且反正也没那么重要。门户网站才是价值所在。第10个社交网络，而且只限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace排第一，谁想要大学生作为客户？或者一种住在陌生人沙发上的方式？那听起来简直糟糕透顶。这些听起来都很糟糕，但结果证明是好的。如果它们听起来真的很棒，就会有太多人在做它们。

[段 44]

As Peter Thiel is going to discuss in the fifth class, you want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can’t get a monopoly in a big market right away. Too much competition for that. You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly, and then quickly expand. This is why some great startup ideas look really bad at the beginning. It’s good if you can say something like, today, only the small subset of users are going to use my product, but I’m going to get all of them. And in the future, almost everyone will use my product. Here’s a theme that’s going to come up a lot. You need conviction in your own beliefs and a willingness to ignore others’ naysaying.

[译文 44]

正如 Peter Thiel 将在第五节课中讨论的，你需要一个能形成垄断的想法。但你无法立刻在大市场中获得垄断地位，竞争太激烈了。你必须找到一个你能获得垄断的小市场，然后快速扩张。这就是为什么一些伟大的创业想法在开始时看起来很糟糕。如果能说出类似这样的话就很好——今天，只有很小一部分用户会使用我的产品，但我会获得他们所有人，而在未来，几乎所有人都会使用我的产品。这里有一个反复出现的主题：你需要对自己的想法有坚定的信念，并愿意忽视他人的反对声音。

[段 45]

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

[译文 45]

困难的部分在于这是一条非常细微的界限。一边是正确的，另一边是疯狂的。但要记住，如果你真的提出了一个伟大的想法，大多数人都会认为它很糟糕。你应该为此感到高兴。这意味着他们不会与你竞争。这也是为什么告诉别人你的想法通常并不危险的原因。真正好的想法听起来并不值得去偷。你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但这里具体说明为什么它实际上是个好主意。你想听起来很疯狂，但实际上你是对的。

[段 46]

And you want an idea that not many other people are working on. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sound big at first. Common mistake among founders, especially first-time founders, is they think that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea,that the first version of their product, the first version of their idea, needs to sound really big. But it doesn’t. It needs to take over a small, specific market and expand from there. That’s how most great companies have started. Unpopular but righ Punctuation added: Usually a decade to create a great startup. If you don’t love and believe in what you’re building, you’re likely to give up at some point along the way.

[译文 46]

你想要的是一个没有太多其他人在做的创意。起初听起来不够宏大也没关系。创始人常见的错误，尤其是首次创业者常犯的错误，是他们认为产品的第一个版本、想法的第一个版本需要听起来非常宏大。但事实并非如此。它需要先占领一个小型、具体的市场，然后从这里扩展。大多数伟大公司都是这样起步的。不受欢迎但正确。标点已添加：通常需要十年时间才能创建一家伟大的创业公司。如果你不热爱并且不相信你正在构建的东西，你很可能会在某个时刻放弃。

[段 47]

There’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup. There’s no way I know of to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters. A lot of founders, especially students, believe that their startup is only going to take two or three years, and then after that they’ll work on what they’re really passionate about. That almost never works. Good startups usually take ten years. A third advantage of mission-oriented companies is that people outside the company are more willing to help you. You’ll get more support on a hard, important project than a derivative one. When it comes to starting startups, in many ways it’s easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.

[译文 47]

据我所知，创业的痛苦没有捷径可走。据我所知，没有对使命重要性的信念，创业的痛苦就无法度过。许多创始人，尤其是学生，认为他们的创业只会花费两三年，之后才会去做自己真正热爱的事情。但这几乎从未成功过。好的创业公司通常需要十年。使命驱动型公司的第三个优势是，公司外部的人更愿意帮助你。在一个困难而重要的项目中，你会得到比模仿型项目更多的支持。在创业方面，很多情况下开始一个困难的创业比开始一个容易的创业更容易。

[段 48]

This is one of those counterintuitive things that takes people a long time to understand. It’s difficult to overstate how important being mission-driven is, so I want to emphasize it one last time. Derivative companies, companies that copy an existing idea with very few new insights, don’t excite people, and they don’t compel the teams to work hard enough to be successful. Paul Graham is going to talk about how to get startup ideas next week. It’s something that a lot of founders struggle with, but it’s something I believe you can get better at with practice, and it’s definitely worth trying to get better at. The hardest part about coming up with great ideas is that the best ideas often look terrible at the beginning.

[译文 48]

这是那些需要人们很长时间才能理解的反直觉事情之一。很难高估使命感的重要性，所以我想要最后一次强调它。衍生公司，即那些几乎没有新见解地复制现有想法的公司，不会让人们兴奋，也不会促使团队努力工作到成功。Paul Graham 下周将讨论如何获得 startup 想法。这是很多创始人都在努力应对的问题，但我相信通过练习你可以做得更好，而且绝对值得努力做得更好。提出伟大想法最难的部分是，最好的想法在开始时往往看起来很糟糕。

[段 49]

The 13th search engine, and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless. Search was done, and anyway, it didn’t matter that much. Portals were where the value was at. The 10th social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Or MySpace at one? And who wants college students as customers? Or a way to stay on strangers’ couches? That just sounds terrible all around. These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them. As Peter Thiel is going to discuss in the fifth class, you want an idea that turns into a monopoly.

[译文 49]

第13个搜索引擎，而且没有门户网站的所有功能，大多数人认为这毫无意义。搜索已经做完了，而且无论如何，这也没那么重要。门户网站才是价值所在。第10个社交网络，而且仅限于没有钱的大学生，也很糟糕。或者MySpace曾一度那样？谁想要大学生作为客户？或者一种住在陌生人沙发上的方式？那听起来就很糟糕。这些听起来都很糟糕，但结果却很好。如果它们听起来很好，就会有太多人去做。正如Peter Thiel将在第五节课讨论的，你需要的是一个能变成垄断的想法。

[段 50]

But you can’t get a monopoly in a big market right away. Too much competition for that. You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly, and then quickly expand. This is why some great startup ideas look really bad at the beginning. It’s good if you can say something like, today, only the small subset of users are going to use my product, but I’m going to get all of them. And in the future, almost everyone will use my product. Here’s a theme that’s going to come up a lot. You need conviction in your own beliefs and a willingness to ignore others’ naysaying. The hard part is that this is a very fine line.

[译文 50]

但你无法立刻在大市场中获得垄断地位，那里的竞争太激烈了。你必须找到一个小市场，在那里获得垄断地位，然后迅速扩张。这就是为什么一些伟大的创业想法在初期看起来很糟糕。如果你能说出类似这样的话就很好：今天，只有一小部分用户会使用我的产品，但我会获得他们所有人。而在未来，几乎所有人都会使用我的产品。这里有一个主题会反复出现。你需要对自己的信念有坚定的信念，并愿意忽视他人的质疑。困难的部分在于这需要非常微妙的把握。

[段 51]

There’s right on one side of it and crazy on the other. But keep in mind that if you do come up with a great idea, most people are going to think it’s bad. You should be happy about that, because it means they won’t compete with you. This is also a reason why it’s not usually dangerous to tell people about your idea. The truly good ideas don’t sound like they’re worth stealing. You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but here’s specifically why it’s actually a great one. You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. And you want an idea that not many other people are working on.

[译文 51]

它一边是正确，一边是疯狂。但请记住，如果你真的想出了一个好主意，大多数人都会认为它很糟糕。你应该为此感到高兴，因为这意味着他们不会与你竞争。这也是为什么告诉别人你的想法通常并不危险的原因。真正好的想法听起来并不值得去偷。你想要一个关于你能说什么的想法。我知道这听起来像个坏主意，但以下是它实际上是绝佳主意的具体原因。你想要听起来疯狂，但你实际上想要正确。而且你想要一个没有太多其他人在做的想法。

[段 52]

And it’s okay if it It is what you’re going for. You want something that sounds like a bad idea but is a good idea. You also really want to take the time to think about how the market’s going to evolve. You need a market that’s going to be big in 10 years. Most investors are obsessed with the market size today, and they don’t think at all about how the market’s going to evolve. In fact, I think this is one of the biggest systemic mistakes that investors make. They think about the growth of the startup itself. They don’t think about the growth of the market. I care much more about the growth rate of the market than its current size.

[译文 52]

如果这就是你所追求的，那也没关系。你想要的是那种听起来像坏主意但实际上是 好主意的东西。你还需要真正花时间去思考市场将如何发展。你需要一个10年后会变得很大的市场。大多数投资者痴迷于今天的市场规模，他们完全不考虑市场将如何发展。事实上，我认为这是投资者犯的最大的系统性错误之一。他们考虑的是创业公司本身的增长。他们不考虑市场的增长。我更关心市场的增长率，而不是它的当前规模。

[段 53]

And I also care if there’s any reason that it’s going to top out. You should think about this. I prefer to invest in a company that’s going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one. One of the big advantages of these sorts of markets, these small but rapidly growing markets, is that customers are usually pretty desperate for a solution, and they’ll put up with an imperfect but rapidly improving product. And a big advantage of being a student, one of the two biggest advantages, is that you probably have better intuition about which markets are likely to start growing rapidly than older people do. Another thing that students usually don’t understand, or at least takes a while, is that you cannot create a market that doesn’t want to exist.

[译文 53]

我也会在意它是否有任何会触及上限的理由。你应该思考这个问题。我更倾向于投资一家瞄准小型但快速增长市场的公司，而不是大型但增长缓慢的市场。这类市场、小型但快速增长市场的一个重大优势是，客户通常非常迫切需要解决方案，他们会容忍一个不完美但快速改进的产品。作为学生的一大优势，也是两大优势之一，是你可能比年纪更大的人对哪些市场可能开始快速增长有更好的直觉。学生通常不会理解的另一件事，或者至少需要一段时间才能理解，就是你无法创造一个本不存在的市场。

[段 54]

You can basically change everything in a startup but the market. So you should actually do some thinking to be sure, or at least as sure as you can be, that the market you’re going after is going to grow and be there. There are a lot of different ways to talk about the right kind of market. For example, surfing someone else’s wave, or stepping into an up elevator, or being part of a movement. But all of this is just a way of saying you want a market that’s going to grow really quickly. It may seem small today, it may be small today, but you know, and other people don’t, that it’s going to grow really fast.

[译文 54]

在创业公司中，你几乎可以改变一切，但市场不行。所以你真的应该认真思考，确保，或者至少尽可能确保，你瞄准的市场会增长并持续存在。描述正确类型的市场有很多不同的方式。比如借他人的浪潮，或者踏入上升的电梯，或者成为某种运动的一部分。但所有这些都只是在说：你想要一个会快速增长的市场。它今天可能看起来很小，可能确实很小，但你知道，而其他人不知道，它会快速增长。

[段 55]

So think about where this is happening in the world. You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful. The exciting thing is there are probably more of these tailwinds now than ever before. As Mark Andreessen says, software is eating the world. It’s just everywhere. There are so many great ideas out there. And you just have to pick one and find one that you really care about. Another version of this that gets down to the same idea is Sequoia’s famous question: Why now? Why is this the perfect time for this particular idea and to start this particular company? Why couldn’t it have been done two years ago? And why will two years in the future be too late?

[译文 55]

所以想想这件事正在世界的哪里发生。你需要这种顺风才能让一家 startup 成功。令人兴奋的是，现在可能有比以前更多的这种顺风。正如 Mark Andreessen 所说，软件正在吞噬世界。它无处不在。外面有这么多很棒的想法。你只需要挑选一个，找到一个你真正关心的。另一个表达同样想法的版本是 Sequoia 的著名问题：为什么是现在？为什么现在是这个特定想法和创办这家特定公司的完美时机？为什么两年前不能做？为什么两年后会太晚？

[段 56]

For the most successful startups we’ve been involved with, they’ve all had a great idea, a great answer to this question. And if you don’t, you should be at least somewhat suspicious about it. In general, it’s best if you’re building something that you yourself need. You’ll understand it much better than if you have to understand it by talking to a customer to build the very first version. If you don’t need it yourself, and you’re building something that someone else needs, realize that you’re at a big disadvantage and get very, very close to your customers. Try to work in their office if you can, and if not, talk to them multiple times a day. Another somewhat counterintuitive thing about good startup ideas is that they’re almost always very easy to explain and very easy to understand.

[译文 56]

对于我们参与过的最成功的创业公司，他们都有一个很棒的想法，一个对这个问题的很好的回答。如果你没有，你就应该至少对此有些怀疑。一般来说，最好是打造你自己需要的东西。你会比必须通过与客户交谈来理解并构建最初版本要好得多地理解它。如果你自己不需要它，而你在构建别人需要的东西，要意识到你处于很大的劣势，并且要非常非常接近你的客户。如果可以的话，尝试在他们办公室工作，如果不行的话，每天和他们多次交谈。关于好的创业想法，另一个有些反直觉的事情是，它们几乎总是非常容易解释和非常容易理解的。

[段 57]

If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you’re doing, it’s almost always a sign that it’s too complicated. It should be a clearly articulated vision with a small number of words. And the best ideas are usually either very different from existing companies in one important way, like Google being a search engine that worked just really well and none of the other stuff of the portals, or totally new like SpaceX. Any company that’s a clone of something else that already exists with some small or made-up differentiator. Like we’re going to be X, beautiful design, or we’re going to be Y for people that like red wine instead, that usually fails. So, as I mentioned, one of the great things about being a student is that you have a very good perspective on new technology.

[译文 57]

如果解释你在做的事情需要超过一句话，那几乎总是一个信号，说明它太复杂了。它应该是一个用很少几个词就能清晰表达的愿景。而最好的想法通常要么在某个重要方面与现有公司截然不同，比如Google作为搜索引擎做得非常好，而没有门户的那些其他东西，要么就是完全全新的，比如SpaceX。任何公司如果只是对现有事物的克隆，加上一些小的或编造出的差异化，比如说我们要成为X，有漂亮的设计，或者我们要成为Y，专门为喜欢红酒的人服务，这通常会失败。所以，正如我之前提到的，作为学生的最大好处之一就是你能够以非常好的视角来看待新技术。

[段 58]

And learning to get good at having new ideas takes a while. So start working on that right now. That’s one thing we hear from people all the time, that they wish they had done more of when they were a student. The other is meeting potential co-founders. You have no idea how good of an environment you’re in right now for meeting people that you can start a company with down the road. And the one thing that we always tell college students is more important than starting any particular startup is getting to know a lot of potential co-founders. So I want to finish this section of my talk with a quote from 50 Cent. This is…with a quote from 50 Cent.

[译文 58]

学习如何擅长产生新想法需要一段时间。所以现在就开始练习吧。这是我们经常听到人们说的一件事，他们希望自己在学生时代能多做些这件事。另一件事是认识潜在的联合创始人。你根本不知道现在所处的环境对于认识将来可以一起创业的人来说有多好。我们一直告诉大学生的一件事是，认识很多潜在的联合创始人比创办任何特定创业公司都重要。所以我想用50 Cent的一段话作为这部分的结尾。这是……一段来自50 Cent的话。

[段 59]

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

[译文 59]

这是他被问到关于vitamin water时的回答。我不读了，屏幕上已经有了。但它讲的是思考客户想要什么、思考市场需求的重要性。大多数人不会这样做。特别是大多数学生不会这样做。如果你能做到这一点，如果你能学会首先考虑市场，你就会比大多数创业的人有很大的优势。这也就是我们最常看到的Y Combinator应用的问题所在——人们没有首先考虑市场，没有首先考虑人们想要什么。所以在下一部分，我要谈谈如何打造一款出色的产品。

[段 60]

And here again, I’m going to use a very broad definition of product. It includes customer support and copyright, explaining the product, anything involved in your customer’s interaction with what you built from them. To build a really great company, you first have to turn a great idea into a great product. This is really hard, but it’s crucially important, and fortunately it’s pretty fun. Although great products are always new to the world, and it’s hard to give you advice about what to build, there are enough commonalities that we can give you a lot of advice about how to build it. One of the most important tasks for a founder is to make sure that the company builds a great product.

[译文 60]

这里我又要用一个非常广义的产品定义。它包括客户支持和版权说明产品，以及客户与你为他们构建的产品之间的任何互动。要建立一家真正伟大的公司，你首先必须把一个伟大的想法变成一个伟大的产品。这真的很难，但至关重要，幸运的是它相当有趣。虽然伟大的产品总是对世界来说是新的，很难给你关于该构建什么的建议，但它们有足够的共性，我们可以给你很多关于如何构建它的建议。创始人最重要的任务之一是确保公司打造出伟大的产品。

[段 61]

Until you’ve built a great product, almost nothing else matters. When really successful startup founders tell the story of their early days, it’s almost always sitting in front of the computer, working on their product or talking to their customers. That’s pretty much all the time. They do very little else. And you should be very skeptical if your time allocation is much different. Most other problems that founders are trying to solve, raising money, getting more press, hiring, business development, etc., these are significantly easier when you have a great product. It’s really important to take care of that first. Step one is to build something that users love. At YC, we tell founders to work on their product, talk to users, exercise, eat, and sleep, and very little else.

[译文 61]

直到你打造出一款出色的产品，其他几乎什么都不重要。当真正成功的创业者讲述他们早年的故事时，几乎总是坐在电脑前，研发产品或与客户交流。几乎所有时间都是这样。他们很少做其他事情。如果你的时间分配与此大不相同，你应该非常警惕。创始人试图解决的大多数其他问题——融资、获得更多媒体曝光、招聘、业务拓展等——当你拥有一款出色的产品时，这些都会变得容易得多。首先照顾好这一点真的非常重要。第一步是打造用户喜爱的产品。在YC，我们告诉创业者专注于产品、与用户交流、锻炼、饮食和睡眠，其他事情则尽量少做。

[段 62]

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

[译文 62]

所有我刚才提到的其他东西，PR、会议、招募顾问、做合作，你都应该忽略，专注于做产品，然后通过和用户交流让产品尽可能好。你的工作是做出用户热爱的东西。很少有最终取得巨大成功的公司不先做到这一点。很多看起来不错的创业公司失败是因为他们只是做出了人们喜欢的东西。做出人们想要但只是中等程度想要的东西，是失败的好方法，而且你还不知道为什么失败。所以这是两项工作。我们在YC经常说的一句话是：与其做出大量用户喜欢的东西，不如做出少量用户热爱的产品。

[段 63]

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

[译文 63]

当然，最好的情况是构建一个让少量用户喜欢的产品，但对于V1来说，这样的机会很少，而且通常对初创公司来说是不可用的。所以在实践中，你最终只能在灰色和橙色之间选择。你做一个让大量用户稍微喜欢的产品，或者做一个让少量用户非常喜欢的产品。而这是一条非常重要的建议：构建一个让少量用户喜欢的产品。从少量用户喜欢的产品扩展到大量用户喜欢的产品，要比从大量用户稍微喜欢的产品扩展到大量用户喜欢的产品容易得多。

[段 64]

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

[译文 64]

如果你把这件事做对了，其他很多事情做错了也没关系。如果你把这件事没做对，即使你把其他所有事情都做对了，你可能仍然会失败。所以当你开始创业时，在你把这件事做通之前，这是你唯一需要关心的事。确实。所以在创业中你有一个选择。最理想的状况是打造一个很多人真正热爱的产品。实际上，你通常做不到这一点，因为如果存在这样的机会，Google 或 Facebook 这样的大公司会去做。所以你能构建的东西在曲线下面积是有限的。而你要么可以构建一个很多用户轻度喜欢的东西，要么可以构建一个少数用户深度热爱的产品。

[段 65]

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

[译文 65]

而且爱的总量是相同的。这只是关于它如何分配的问题。而且存在一条关于守恒的法则，即你通过创业公司的第一款产品能向世界注入多少幸福。所以创业公司总是在这两条路中挣扎应该选择哪一条。而且它们看起来相等，对吧？因为曲线下的面积是相同的。但我们一次又一次地看到它们并非如此。而且扩展要容易得多。一旦你有了让一些人爱上的东西，你就可以将其扩展为让很多其他人也爱上的东西。但如果你只得到冷漠或者某种淡淡的热情，然后试图扩展，你永远无法达到让很多人爱上它的程度。

[段 66]

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

[译文 66]

所以建议是：找到一小群用户，让他们真正爱上你所做的事情。能理解吗？好的。判断这是否有效的其中一个方法是，你会通过口碑获得增长。如果你做出了人们喜欢的东西，人们会告诉他们的朋友。这对消费品和企业产品同样适用。当人们真正喜欢某个东西时，他们会告诉朋友，你会看到自然增长。如果你发现自己说“现在没增长也没关系，因为有一个大合作方会来救你”之类的话，这几乎总是真正麻烦的信号。销售和营销确实非常重要，我们后面会有两节课讲它们，但如果你没有一些早期的自然增长，那么你的产品可能还不够好。

[段 67]

A great product is the secret to long-term growth hacking. You should get that right before you worry about anything else. It doesn’t get easier to put off making a great product. If you try to build a growth machine before you have a product that some people really love, you’re almost certainly going to waste your time. Breakout companies almost always have a product that’s so good that it grows by word of mouth. Over the long run, great products win. Don’t worry about your competitors raising a lot of money and what they may do in the future. They probably aren’t very good anyway. Very few startups die from competition. Most die because they themselves fail to make something users love.

[译文 67]

一款伟大的产品是长期增长黑客的秘诀。在担心其他任何事情之前，你应该先把这件事做好。推迟制作伟大产品不会让事情变得更容易。如果在你有一个真正让一些人喜爱的产品之前就试图建立一个增长机器，你几乎肯定会浪费你的时间。突破性的公司几乎总是有一个好到能通过口碑传播的产品。从长远来看，伟大的产品终将获胜。不要担心你的竞争对手融了很多钱以及他们未来可能做什么。反正他们可能也不怎么样。很少有初创公司死于竞争。大多数死亡是因为他们自己没能做出用户真正喜爱的产品。

[段 68]

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

[译文 68]

他们把时间花在其他事情上。所以最重要的是担心这一点。另一个建议：要做出用户喜爱的产品，先从简单的东西开始。如果你有一个简单的东西，做出好产品就容易得多。即使你最终的计划非常复杂，而且我希望是这样，你几乎总是可以从比你认为最小的还要小的问题子集开始。而且做出好产品很难。所以你想要从尽可能小的接触面积开始。想想那些真正成功的公司以及他们起步时是什么样的。想想那些你真正喜爱的产品。它们通常使用起来非常简单，尤其是开始使用时。

[段 69]

The first version of Facebook was almost comically simple. The first version of Google was just an ugly web page with a text box and two buttons, but it returned the best results, and that’s why users loved it. The iPhone is far simpler to use than any smartphone that ever came before it, and it was the first one that people really loved. Another reason that simple is good is because it forces you to do one thing extremely well. And you have to do that to make something that people love. The word fanatical comes up again and again when you listen to successful founders talk about how they think about their product. Founders talk about being fanatical in the way they care about the quality of the small details.

[译文 69]

Facebook的第一个版本几乎简单到可笑。Google的第一个版本只是一个丑陋的网页，有一个文本框和两个按钮，但它返回了最好的搜索结果，这就是用户喜欢它的原因。iPhone使用起来比之前任何智能手机都简单得多，而且是第一个真正让人喜爱的产品。简单的另一个好处是它迫使你把一件事做到极致。你必须这样做才能创造出人们喜爱的产品。当聆听成功的创始人谈论他们如何思考产品时，“fanatical”（狂热）这个词一次又一次地出现。创始人们谈论的是对自己产品细节质量的那种fanatical（狂热）关注。

[段 70]

Fanatical in getting the copy that they use to explain the product just right. And fanatical in the way they think about customer support. In fact, one thing that correlates with success among the YC companies is the founders that hook up PagerDuty to their ticketing system. So even if a user emails in the middle of the night, they still get a response within an hour. Companies actually do this in their early days. These founders feel physical pain when the product sucks, and they wanna wake up and fix it. They don’t ship crap, and if they do, they fix it very, very quickly. And it definitely takes some level of fanaticism to build a great product. You need some users to help with the feedback cycle, but the way to get those users is manually.

[译文 70]

对获取用于解释产品的文案有着狂热的执着。对客户支持的思考方式同样狂热。事实上，与YC公司成功相关的一件事是，创始人在他们的工单系统中接入了PagerDuty。所以即使用户在半夜发邮件，他们仍然会在一小时内得到回复。公司在创业初期确实会这样做。当产品质量糟糕时，这些创始人会感到身体上的痛苦，他们想要醒来然后修复它。他们不会交付垃圾产品，如果真的交付了，他们会非常非常快速地修复。构建伟大的产品确实需要一定程度的狂热。你需要一些用户来帮助反馈循环，但获取那些用户的方式是手动进行。

[段 71]

You should go recruit them by hand. Don’t do things like buy Google ads in the early days to get initial users. You don’t need very many, you just need ones that will give you feedback every day and eventually love your product. So instead of trying to get them on Google AdWords, just find a few people in the world that will be good users, recruit them by hand. Ben Silverman, when everyone thought Pinterest was a joke, recruited the initial Pinterest users by chatting up strangers in coffee shops. He really did, he just walked around Palo Alto and said, Will you please use my product? He also used to run around the Apple store in Palo Alto, and you would like settle the browsers to the Pinterest homepage real quick before they caught him and kicked him out.

[译文 71]

你应该手动去招募他们。不要做在早期购买Google广告来获取初始用户这样的事情。你不需要很多，你只需要那些每天能给你反馈、最终会爱上你的产品的人。所以与其试图通过Google AdWords获取用户，不如在世界上找到几个会成为好用户的人，手动去招募他们。Ben Silverman在所有人都认为Pinterest是个笑话的时候，通过在咖啡店里和陌生人搭讪来招募Pinterest的初始用户。他真的这么做了，他只是在Palo Alto到处走，问他们"你愿意用一下我的产品吗？“他还曾经在Palo Alto的Apple Store里跑来跑去，在店员发现他并把他赶走之前，飞快地把浏览器的起始页设置为Pinterest主页。

[段 72]

So then when people walked in there, they’re like, Oh, what is this? This is an important example of doing things that don’t scale. If you haven’t read Paul Graham’s essay on that topic, you definitely should. So get users manually, and remember that the goal is to get a small group of them to love you. Understand that group extremely well. Get extremely close to them. Listen to them, and you’ll almost always find out that they’re very willing to give you feedback. Even if you’re building the product for yourself, listen to outside users and they’ll tell you how to make a product they’ll pay for. Do whatever you need to make them love you, make them know what you’re doing, because they’re also going to be the advocates that help you get your next users.

[译文 72]

所以当人们走进来的时候，他们会想，哦，这是什么？这是一个重要的例子，关于做那些不能规模化的事情。如果你还没有读过 Paul Graham 关于这个话题的文章，你一定要读。所以要手动获取用户，记住目标是让一小部分用户爱上你。非常深入地了解那个群体。和他们非常亲近。倾听他们，你几乎总是会发现他们非常愿意给你反馈。即使你为自己打造产品，也要倾听外部用户，他们会告诉你如何打造他们愿意付费的产品。做任何需要做的事情让他们爱上你，让他们知道你在做什么，因为他们也会成为帮助你获得下一个用户的倡导者。

[段 73]

You want to build an engine in the company that transforms feedback from users into product decisions. Then get it back in front of the users and repeat. Ask them what they like and what they don’t like, and watch them use it. Ask them what they pay for. Ask them if they’d be really bummed if your company went away. Ask them what would make them recommend the product to their friends, and ask them if they’ve recommended it to any yet. You should make this feedback loop as tight as possible. If your product gets 10% better every week, that compounds really, really quickly. One of the great advantages of software startups is just how short you can make the feedback loop.

[译文 73]

你想在公司内部构建一个引擎，把用户的反馈转化为产品决策。然后把它放回用户面前，重复这个过程。问他们喜欢什么、不喜欢什么，然后观察他们如何使用它。问他们为什么付费。问他们如果你的公司倒闭了，他们是否会非常沮丧。问他们什么会促使他们向朋友推荐这个产品，并问他们是否已经向任何人推荐过。你应该让这个反馈循环尽可能紧密。如果你的产品每周提升10%，那会以非常非常快的速度复利增长。软件创业公司的一大优势就是你可以让反馈循环变得非常短。

[段 74]

It can be measured in hours. And the best companies usually have the tightest feedback loops. You should try to keep this going for all of your company’s life, but it’s really important in the early days. The good news is that all of this is doable. It’s hard, it takes a lot of effort, but there’s no magic. The plan is at least straightforward and you will eventually get to a great product. Great founders don’t put anyone between themselves and their users. The founders of these companies do things like sales and customer support themselves in the early days. It’s critical to get this loop embedded in the culture. In fact, the specific problem that we always see with Stanford startups for one reason is that the students try and hire sales and customer support people right away.

[译文 74]

可以用小时来衡量。最优秀的公司通常拥有最紧密的反馈循环。你应该在公司的整个生命周期中保持这一点，但在早期尤为重要。好消息是这些都是可以做到的。这很难，需要付出很多努力，但没有什么神奇的秘诀。这个计划至少是简单直接的，你最终会得到一个优秀的产品。伟大的创始人不会在自己和用户之间放置任何人。这些公司的创始人在早期会亲自做销售和客户支持等工作。让这个循环嵌入到企业文化中至关重要。事实上，我们总是看到Stanford初创公司的一个问题，原因之一就是学生们试图立即雇佣销售和客户支持人员。

[段 75]

And you’ve got to do this yourself. It’s the only way. You really need to use metrics to keep yourself honest. It really is true that the company will build whatever the CEO decides to measure. If you’re building an internet service, ignore things like total registrations. Don’t talk about them. Don’t let anyone in the company talk about them. And look at growth in active users, activity levels, cohort retention, revenue, net promoter scores, these things that matter. And then be brutally honest if they aren’t going in the right direction. Startups live on growth. It’s the indicator of a great product. So this about wraps up the overview on building a great product. I want to emphasize again that if you don’t get this right, nothing else we talk about in the class will matter.

[译文 75]

这件事你必须自己做。这是唯一的办法。你真的需要用指标来保持诚实。公司会根据CEO决定的衡量指标来构建产品，这是千真万确的。如果你在做互联网服务，忽略像总注册量这样的指标。不要谈论它们。不要让公司里的任何人谈论它们。要关注活跃用户增长、活跃度、cohort retention、收入、net promoter scores等这些重要指标。然后如果这些指标没有朝着正确的方向发展，要做到极其坦诚。创业公司靠增长生存。增长是优秀产品的指标。好了，这就是打造优秀产品的概述内容。我想再次强调，如果你没有把这一点做好，我们在课堂上讨论的其他任何内容都不会有意义。

[段 76]

You can basically ignore everything else that we talk about until this is working well. On the positive side, this is one of the most fun parts of building a startup. So I’m going to pause here. I’ll pick back up with the rest of this on Thursday. And now we’re going to have Dustin talk about why you should start a startup. Thank you for coming, Dustin. Sure. But yeah, so Sam asked me to talk about why you should start a startup. There’s a bunch of reasons you might have. And there’s a bunch of common reasons that people have that I hear all the time for why you might start a startup. It’s important to know what reason is yours because some of them only make sense in certain contexts.

[译文 76]

在这个运行良好之前，你基本上可以忽略我们讨论的其他所有内容。从积极的一面来看，这是创办初创公司最有趣的环节之一。所以我在这里暂停一下。我会在周四继续剩下的内容。现在我们让Dustin来谈谈为什么你应该创办一家初创公司。谢谢你的到来，Dustin。好的。好的，Sam让我来谈谈为什么你应该创办一家初创公司。你可能有各种各样的理由。我经常听到人们创办初创公司的各种常见理由。知道你的理由是什么很重要，因为其中一些只在特定情况下才说得通。

[段 77]

Some of them will actually lead you astray. You may have been misled by the way that Hollywood or the press likes to romanticize entrepreneurship. So I want to try and illuminate some of those potential fallacies so you guys can make the decision in a clear way. And then I’ll talk about the reason I like best for actually starting a startup. It’s very related to a lot of what Sam just talked about, but surprisingly, I don’t think it’s the most common reason. Usually people have one of these other reasons or they just want to start up, you know, start a company for the sake of starting a company. So the four common reasons, just to enumerate them, are it’s glamorous, you’ll get to be the boss, you’ll have flexibility, especially over your schedule, and you’ll have the chance to have bigger impact and make more money than you might by joining a later stage company.

[译文 77]

其中一些实际上会误导你。你可能被Hollywood或媒体喜欢将创业浪漫化的方式所误导。所以我想尝试阐明一些潜在的错误观念，这样你们就能以清晰的方式做出决定。然后我会谈谈我个人最喜欢实际创业的理由。这与Sam刚才谈到的很多内容密切相关，但令人惊讶的是，我认为这不是最常见的原因。通常人们有这些其他原因之一，或者他们只是想要创业，你知道，就是为了创业而创业。所以四个常见的原因，列举一下，就是它很光鲜亮丽，你可以当老板，你可以有灵活性，特别是对日程安排的灵活性，而且你有机会比加入后期阶段的公司产生更大的影响并赚更多的钱。

[段 78]

So, okay, so you guys are probably pretty familiar with this concept. When I wrote the Medium post, which a lot of you guys read a year ago, I felt like the story in the press was a little more unbalanced. Entrepreneurship just got romanticized quite a bit. The movie The Social Network came out, had a lot of bad aspects of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, but mainly painted this picture of there’s a lot of partying, and you move from one brilliant insight to another brilliant insight, and really made it seem like this really cool thing to do. I think the reality is just not quite so glamorous. There’s an ugly side to being an entrepreneur.

[译文 78]

好的，你们可能对这个概念相当熟悉了。当我写那篇Medium帖子时——你们中很多人在1年前读过——我觉得媒体上的报道有点不太平衡。创业这件事被过度美化了。《The Social Network》这部电影上映后，展现了创业的很多负面，但主要还是描绘了一幅这样的画面：大量的派对活动，从一个绝妙的想法跳到另一个绝妙的想法，让创业看起来真的是一件很酷的事情。我认为现实并没有那么光鲜亮丽。创业有着其丑陋的一面。

[段 79]

Also, just more importantly, what you’re actually spending your time on is just a lot of hard work. Sam mentioned this, but you’re basically just sitting at your desk, Heads down, focused, answering customers’ questions. Heads down, focused, answering customer support emails, doing sales, figuring out hard engineering problems. So it’s really important that you kind of go in with eyes wide open. And then also, it’s really quite stressful. This has been a popular topic in the press lately. The Economist actually ran a story just last week called Entrepreneurs Anonymous, and it shows a founder kind of hiding under his desk and talking about founder depression. This is a very real thing. Let’s be real. If you start a company, it’s going to be extremely hard.

[译文 79]

而且，更重要的是，你实际上花费时间做的事情就是大量艰苦的工作。Sam提到了这一点，但你基本上就是坐在办公桌前，埋头苦干，专注于回答客户的问题。埋头苦干，专注于回复客户支持邮件、做销售、解决棘手的工程问题。所以重要的是你要睁大眼睛进去，对这一切有清醒的认识。而且，这真的相当有压力。这近来在媒体上一直是个热门话题。《经济学人》实际上上周发表了一篇报道，标题是Entrepreneurs Anonymous，讲述了一位创始人躲在办公桌下，讨论创始人抑郁的话题。这是非常真实的现象。让我们现实一点。如果你创业，那将会极其艰难。

[段 80]

Why is it so stressful? So a couple of reasons. One is you’ve got a lot of responsibility. So people in any kind of career have fear of failure. It’s kind of just like a dominant part of the psychology. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you have fear of failure on behalf of yourself and all of the people who decided to follow you. So that’s really stressful. In some cases, these people are depending on you for their livelihood. Even when that’s not true, they have decided to devote the best years of their life to following you. And so you’re responsible for the opportunity cost of their time. So that’s a big deal. And you’re always on call if something comes up.

[译文 80]

为什么压力这么大？有几个原因。一是创业者要承担很多责任。在任何职业中，人们都会有对失败的恐惧，这基本上是心理上的一个主导因素。但当你是一名创业者时，你要为自己以及所有决定追随你的人承担对失败的恐惧。所以这真的很有压力。在某些情况下，这些人要依靠你来维持生计。即使事实并非如此，他们也已经决定把生命中最好的年华奉献给追随你的事业。因此你要为他们时间的机会成本负责。而且一旦出现问题，你需要随时待命。

[段 81]

Maybe not always at 3 in the morning, but for some startups that’s true. But if something important comes up, you’re going to deal with it. That’s kind of the end of the story. Doesn’t matter if you’re on vacation. Doesn’t matter if it’s the weekend. You’ve kind of always got to be on the ball and always be in a place mentally where you’re prepared to deal with those things. And then a sort of special example of that or this kind of stress is fundraising. So one of this kind of stress is fundraising. So a scene from The Social Network. This is us partying and working at the same time. Somebody’s spraying champagne everywhere. So The Social Network spends a lot of time painting these scenes.

[译文 81]

也许不总是在凌晨3点，但对某些startups来说确实如此。但如果有什么重要的事情出现，你就必须去处理。事情就是这样。不管你在度假，不管今天是周末。你必须随时保持警觉，在心理上随时准备好处理这些事情。然后这种压力有一个特殊的例子，那就是fundraising。fundraising是这种压力的一种。所以这是《The Social Network》中的一个场景。我们一边派对一边工作。有人在到处喷香槟。所以《The Social Network》花了很多时间描绘这些场景。

[段 82]

Mark’s not in the scene. The other thing they spend all their time on is kind of like painting him out to be a huge jerk. This computer? Yes. OK. So this is an actual scene from The Social Network. I’m going to move this just a little. Oh, no. This will work. This will work? Okay. On the PDF as well? Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. This is an actual scene from Palo Alto. Spent a lot of time at this desk, just kind of heads down in focus. Mark was still kind of a jerk sometimes, but in this more, like, fun, lovable way and not a, like, sociopathic, scorned lover way. So this is him, like, signaling his intention to, you know, just be focused and keep working, not be social.

[译文 82]

Mark不在这个场景里。他们花大量时间做的另一件事就是把他描绘成一个混蛋。这台电脑？是的。好的。所以这是《社交网络》里的一个真实场景。我要稍微移动一下这个。哦，不。这个可以。这个可以吗？好的。在PDF上也可以吗？是的。好的。好的，酷。这是Palo Alto的一个真实场景。他经常在这张桌子前，低头专注工作。Mark有时还是会像个混蛋，但更像是那种有趣的、可爱的方式，而不是那种反社会的、被恋人蔑视的方式。所以这就是他在发出信号，表明他的意图就是专注工作，不社交。

[段 83]

So then there’s also the scene sort of demonstrating the like brilliant insight moment. It’s kind of like straight out of A Beautiful Mind. They literally stole that scene. So they like to paint it as you just kind of like jump from one of these moments to the other moment with like parting in between. But really we were just at that table the whole time. So interestingly, if you compare this to the other photo, Mark is in the exact same position, but he’s wearing different clothes. This is definitely a different day. So cool. So that’s what it’s actually like in person. And I just covered this bullet up here. This is the Economist article I was talking about a second ago.

[译文 83]

然后还有那个场景，有点像是在展示那种高光时刻。这感觉就像是直接从《美丽心灵》里搬出来的。他们简直是直接抄袭了那个场景。所以他们喜欢把它描绘成你从一个时刻跳到另一个时刻，中间还有些分离。但实际上我们一直就坐在那张桌子那里。所以有趣的是，如果你把这张照片和另一张照片对比，Mark 坐的位置完全一样，但他穿着不同的衣服。这肯定是不同的日子。太酷了。所以这就是亲眼见到的真实情况。我刚把这里的这个要点遮住了。这是我刚才提到的 Economist 文章。

[段 84]

So another form of stress is just like unwanted media attention. So part of it being glamorous, you get some positive media attention sometimes. It’s nice to be on the cover of Time and be the person of the year. It’s maybe a little less nice to be on the cover of People with one of your wedding photos. It depends who you are. Some people would like that. I’d really hate it. But when ValleyWag analyzes your lecture and just tears you apart, you definitely don’t want that. Nobody wants that. And then one thing I almost never hear people talk about is you’re just a lot more committed. So if you’re an employee of a startup and things are stressful, it’s not going well, you’re unhappy, You can just leave.

[译文 84]

另一种压力形式就是不想面对的媒体关注。作为 glamorous 的一部分，你有时候会得到一些正面的媒体关注。能登上 Time 的封面并成为年度人物是很好的。用你的一张婚礼照片登上 People 的封面可能就不那么好了。这取决于你是谁。有些人会喜欢。我会很讨厌。但是当 ValleyWag 分析你的演讲并把你撕得体无完肤时，你肯定不会想要那样。没人想要那样。还有一件事我几乎从没听人提过，那就是你会变得更加投入。所以如果你是一家 startup 的员工，事情很压力大，不顺利，你很不开心，你可以直接走人。

[段 85]

For a founder, you can leave, but it’s very uncool. It’s pretty much a black eye on the rest of your career. And so you really are committed. For 10 years, if it’s going well, probably more like five years if it’s not going well. So three years to figure out that it’s not going well. And then if you find a nice landing for your company, another two years at the acquiring company. And if you leave before that, again, it’s not only going to harm yourself financially, it’s going to harm all your employees. So you pretty much don’t. So if you’re lucky and you have a bad startup idea, you fail quickly. But most of the time, it’s not like that.

[译文 85]

对于创始人来说，你可以离开，但这非常不酷。这基本上会给你接下来的职业生涯抹黑。所以你真的是被绑住了。如果一切顺利，大概要10年；如果不顺利，可能需要5年左右。所以需要三年才能发现情况不妙。然后如果你为你的公司找到了一个好的归宿，在收购公司还要再待两年。如果你在那之前离开，不仅会在经济上损害你自己，还会损害你所有的员工。所以你基本上不会离开。所以如果你幸运而且你有一个糟糕的创业想法，你会很快失败。但大多数时候，事情并不是那样的。

[段 86]

Moving right along. So, and I should say, I’ve had a lot of this stress in my own life, especially in the early years of Facebook. I just got really unhealthy. I wasn’t exercising. I had a lot of anxiety. Actually, throughout my back, almost every six months, when I was 21, 22, which is pretty crazy. And so if you do start a company, be aware that you’re going to have to deal with this, and you have to actually manage it. It’s actually one of your core responsibilities. Ben Horowitz likes to say, like, the number one role of a CEO is managing your own psychology. It’s absolutely true. Make sure you do it. So another reason, so people, especially if they’ve already had a job at another company, you tend to develop this narrative of, like, okay, like, the people running this company are idiots.

[译文 86]

继续往下说。我应该说的是，在我自己的生活中，尤其是在 Facebook 的早期，我承受了很多压力。我变得非常不健康。我没有运动。我非常焦虑。实际上，在我21岁、22岁的时候，几乎每六个月就会复发一次，这真的很疯狂。所以如果你真的要创业，要意识到你必须面对这些问题，你必须真正去管理它们。这实际上是你的核心责任之一。Ben Horowitz 喜欢说，CEO 最重要的角色就是管理自己的心理。这绝对是真的。一定要做好这件事。还有另一个原因，所以人们，特别是那些已经在另一家公司工作过的人，往往会形成一种叙事，就是，好吧，经营这家公司的人都是白痴。

[段 87]

They’re making all these stupid decisions. They’re spending their time in these stupid ways. I’m going to start a company, and I’m going to do it better. I’m going to, like, set all the rules. It’s a pretty attractive idea. Makes a lot of sense. If you’ve read my Medium post, you know it’s coming. I’ll give you guys a second to read this quote. Cool. So this really resonates with me. And one thing I’d point out is the reality of these decisions is pretty nuanced. The people you thought were idiots probably weren’t idiots. They probably just had a really difficult decision in front of them and people pulling them in multiple directions. So the most common thing I have to spend my time on and focus my energy on as a CEO is the problems that other people are bringing to me, the other priorities that people create.

[译文 87]

他们做了很多愚蠢的决定。他们用很愚蠢的方式浪费时间。我要自己开一家公司，而且我要做得更好。我要，自己来制定所有规则。这是个非常诱人的想法。很有道理。如果你们看过我的Medium帖子，就知道这一天会来的。给你们几秒钟读一下这句话。好。所以这真的引起了我的共鸣。我想指出的一点是，这些决定的现实情况其实相当复杂。那些你以为很蠢的人可能并不蠢。他们可能只是面前有一个非常困难的决定，周围的人从各个方向拉扯他们。所以作为CEO，我最常见的事情就是把时间和精力花在别人带给我解决的问题上，也就是人们制造的其他优先级上。

[段 88]

And it’s usually in the form of a conflict. People want to go in different directions or customers want different things. And I might have my own opinion about that. But really, the game I’m playing is who do I disappoint the least? And just trying to navigate all these difficult situations. And even on a day-to-day basis, I might come in on Monday and have all these grand plans for how I’m going to improve the company and what I’m going to spend my time on, but then if an important employee is threatening to quit, that’s what I’m spending my time on. That’s my number one priority. So a subset of you’re the boss is you have flexibility, you have control over your own schedule.

[译文 88]

而这通常以冲突的形式出现。人们想去不同的方向，或者客户想要不同的东西。我可能对此有自己的看法。但实际上，我在玩的游戏是：我最不让谁失望？然后试着在这些困难的情况中周旋。即使在日常的基础上，我可能星期一进来，带着所有这些宏大的计划，想着我要如何改善公司，我要花时间做什么，但然后如果一个重要的员工威胁要辞职，那就是我要花时间做的事。那是我的第一优先级。所以当老板的一个附带条件是你有灵活性，你可以控制自己的日程。

[段 89]

This is a really attractive idea. So here’s the reality. Another Phil Levin quote. So this really resonates with me as well. Some of the reasons for this, again, you’re always on call, so maybe you don’t intend to work all parts of the day, but you might not get to control which ones. Your role model, this is super important. So if you’re an employee of a company, you might have some good weeks, you might have some bad weeks, some weeks when you’re low energy, maybe you want to take a couple extra days off. That’s really bad if you’re an entrepreneur. Like your team will really signal off what you’re bringing to the table. And so if you take your foot off the gas, so will they.

[译文 89]

这是一个非常吸引人的想法。所以现实是这样的。又是Phil Levin的一句名言。这真的也引起了我的共鸣。再次，这背后的一些原因是，你总是随叫随到，所以也许你并不打算一整天都在工作，但你可能无法控制哪些时间是工作时间。你的榜样，这超级重要。所以如果你是一名公司员工，你可能有表现好的几周，可能有表现差的几周，有些周你精力不足，也许你想多休息几天。如果你是一名企业家，那就真的很糟糕了。就像你的团队会真正反映出你为团队带来了什么。所以如果你松懈下来，他们也会松懈下来。

[段 90]

Okay. The gas, so will they. And you’re always working anyway. So if you’re really passionate about an idea, it’s just gonna like pull you to keep working on it. If you’re working with great investors, you’re working with great partners, they’re gonna want to be working really hard, they’re gonna want you to be working really hard. And again, you’re gonna want to work really hard. So some companies like to tell the story about you can have your cake and eat it too. You can have like four-day work weeks maybe, if you’re Tim Ferriss, maybe you can have a 12-hour work week. It’s a really attractive idea, and it does work in a particular instance, which is if you want to actually have a small business or go after a niche market, then you’re a small business entrepreneur.

[译文 90]

好的。他们也会这样（努力工作）。而且你反正一直在工作。所以如果你真的对一个想法充满热情，它就会像是在拉着你不断去做。如果你和优秀的投资者合作，你和优秀的合伙人合作，他们会很努力地工作，他们也会希望你非常努力地工作。而且再次地，你也会想要努力工作。所以有些公司喜欢讲那种鱼和熊掌可以兼得的故事。你可以有一周工作四天，也许，如果你是Tim Ferriss，也许你可以有一周工作12小时的生活方式。这是个非常吸引人的想法，而且在特定情况下确实可行，那就是如果你真的想要经营一个小企业或者进入一个细分市场，那么你就是一个小企业创业者。

[段 91]

That makes total sense, but as soon as you get past two or three people, you really need to step it up and be full-time committed. Cool. So this is the big one. This is the one I hear the most, especially candidates applying to Asana, they tell me, I’d really like to work for a much smaller company or start my own because then I have a much bigger slice of the pie, I’ll have much more impact on how that company does, and I’ll have more equity. So I’ll make more money as well. So let’s examine when this might be true. So I’ll explain these tables. They’re a little complex, but let’s focus on the left first.

[译文 91]

这说得很有道理，但一旦你超过两三个人，你就真的需要加把劲，全力以赴了。好的。所以这是个大问题。这是我听到最多的，尤其是申请 Asana 的候选人，他们会告诉我，我真的很想为一家小得多的公司工作，或者自己创业，因为那样我就能分到更大的一块蛋糕，我对公司的发展会有更大的影响，而且我会获得更多股权。所以我也能赚到更多钱。所以让我们来看看什么时候这可能是真的。所以我来解释这些表格。它们有点复杂，但让我们先看左边的部分。

[段 92]

So this is just explaining Dropbox and Facebook. These are their current valuations. And this is how much money you might make as employee number 100 coming into these companies, especially if you’re a relatively experienced engineer, like you have five years of industry experience, you’re pretty likely to have an offer that’s around 10 basis points. So if you joined Dropbox a couple years ago, the upside you’d have already walked in is about 10 million. There’s plenty more growth from there if you leave the company. If you joined Facebook a couple years into its existence, you made $200 million. This is a huge number. And if you even joined Facebook as employee number 1000, so you joined it in like 2009, you still made $20 million dollars.

[译文 92]

所以这只是解释 Dropbox 和 Facebook 的情况。这些是它们目前的估值。这就是你作为第 100 号员工加入这些公司可能赚到的钱，特别是如果你是一个相对有经验的工程师，比如你有五年的行业经验，你很可能拿到大约 10 个基点的 offer。所以如果你几年前加入 Dropbox，你已经获得的收益大约是 10 百万。如果你离开公司，还有很大的增长空间。如果你在 Facebook 成立几年后加入，你赚了 2 亿美元。这是一个天文数字。如果你甚至作为第 1000 号员工加入 Facebook，也就是你在 2009 年左右加入，你仍然赚了 2000 万美元。

[段 93]

That’s a giant number, and that’s how you should be benchmarking when you’re thinking about what might I make as an entrepreneur. So moving over to the table on the right, these are two theoretical companies you might start. So Uber for pet sitting, pretty good idea. If you’re really well suited to this, you might have a really good shot at building a $100 million company. And then your share of that company is pretty likely to be about 10%. This certainly fluctuates. Some founders have a lot more than this. Some have a lot less. But after multiple rounds of dilution, multiple rounds of option pool creation, you’re pretty likely to end up about here. If you have more than this, I’d recommend Sam’s post on the equity split between founders and employees.

[译文 93]

这是一个巨大的数字，当你思考作为企业家我能赚多少钱的时候，这就是你应该用来作为基准的。

接下来看右边的表格，这是两个你可能创建的理论上的公司。“宠物看护版Uber”，这是个不错的想法。如果你真的很适合这个领域，你可能很有机会建立一个价值1亿美元的公司。然后你在那个公司的股份很可能大约是10%。这当然会有波动。有些创始人比这多得多，有些则少得多。但经过多轮稀释和多轮期权池的建立，你很可能最终会落在这个水平左右。如果你的股份比这更多，我推荐你看Sam那篇关于创始人和员工之间股权分配的文章。

[段 94]

You probably should be giving out more. And then, but, so basically, if you’re extremely confident about building this $100 million business, which is a big ask, it should go without saying that you should have a lot more confidence in Facebook in 2009 or Dropbox in 2014 than you might for a startup that doesn’t even exist yet, then this is worth doing. So if you have a $100 million idea and you’re pretty confident you can execute it, I would consider that. If you think you’re the right entrepreneur to build Uber for space travel, that’s a really huge idea, $2 billion idea, you’re actually going to have a pretty good return for that. You should definitely do that.

[译文 94]

你可能应该给出更多（股份）。然后，但是，基本上，如果你对于建立这个价值1亿美元的企业极度有信心，这是一个很大的要求，那么不用说，你应该对2009年的Facebook或2014年的Dropbox比对一个还不存在的初创公司更有信心，这样做才值得。所以如果你有一个1亿美元的想法，而且你相当有信心能执行它，我会考虑这样做。如果你认为你是那个能建立太空旅行版Uber的合适企业家，那真是个巨大的想法，20亿美元的想法，你实际上会得到相当不错的回报。你绝对应该这样做。

[段 95]

This is also only the value after four years, and this idea probably has legs. So definitely go after that. If you’re thinking of building that, you probably shouldn’t even be in this class right now. You should just go and build that company. So why is this financial reward and impact? I really think that financial reward is very strongly correlated with the impact you have on the world. If you don’t believe that, let’s talk through some specific examples and not think about the equity at all. So why might joining a late-stage company actually provide you a lot of impact? You get this force multiplier. They have an existing massive user base. If it’s Facebook, 2 billion people are there.

[译文 95]

这也仅仅是四年后的价值，而且这个想法可能很有前景。所以一定要去追求。如果你在考虑做这个，你可能现在根本不应该在这个课堂上。你应该直接去创办那家公司。那为什么是这个财务回报和影响力呢？我真的认为财务回报与你对世界产生的影响力高度相关。如果你不相信，让我们通过一些具体例子来说明，完全不去想股权。那为什么加入一家晚期阶段的公司实际上可能给你带来很大的影响力？你会获得这种放大器效应。他们有现有的庞大用户基础。如果是 Facebook，有2 billion人在那里。

[段 96]

You have the resources. You have the data. You have the infrastructure. And you have the talent. And so your ideas get amplified by that existing infrastructure. So if you have an idea for how to improve something at Facebook, you can test it on 2 billion people, and you can do it with the best engineers in the world, and you can do it with the best data scientists in the world. And so your impact is much higher than if you were at a startup where you have to build all of that from scratch. And so I think that financial reward is very strongly correlated with the impact you have on the world. And I think that joining a late-stage company, especially one that’s doing important work, can actually give you a lot of impact.

[译文 96]

你拥有这些资源。你拥有这些数据。你拥有这些基础设施。而且你拥有人才。因此你的想法会被现有基础设施放大。所以如果你有一个关于如何改进Facebook上某个功能的想法，你可以在20亿人身上测试它，你可以与世界上最好的工程师一起做这件事，你也可以与世界上最好的数据科学家一起做这件事。因此你的影响力比在一家初创公司高得多，在那里你必须从头开始构建所有这些。因此我认为财务回报与你在世界上产生的影响高度相关。而且我认为加入一家后期阶段的公司，特别是正在做重要工作的公司，实际上可以给你带来很大的影响力。

[段 97]

And I think that that’s something that people often overlook. And so I think that if you’re trying to maximize your impact, you should consider joining a late-stage company that is doing important work. And I think that that can be a really good way to have a lot of impact on the world. And I think that that’s something that people often don’t think about. And so I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 97]

而且我认为这是人们经常忽视的事情。所以我认为，如果你想最大化你的影响力，你应该考虑加入一家正在从事重要工作的后期公司。我认为这可能是一个对世界产生很大影响的好方法。我认为这是人们经常想不到的事情。所以我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得思考。

[段 98]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 98]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 99]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 99]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 100]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 100]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 101]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 101]

而且我认为值得去探索。而且我认为值得去考虑。而且我认为值得去思考。而且我认为值得去讨论。而且我认为值得去探索。而且我认为值得去考虑。而且我认为值得去思考。而且我认为值得去讨论。而且我认为值得去探索。而且我认为值得去考虑。而且我认为值得去思考。而且我认为值得去讨论。而且我认为值得去探索。而且我认为值得去考虑。而且我认为值得去思考。而且我认为值得去讨论。

[段 102]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 102]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 103]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 103]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 104]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 104]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 105]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 105]

我认为这值得去探索。我认为这值得去考虑。我认为这值得去思考。我认为这值得去讨论。我认为这值得去探索。我认为这值得去考虑。我认为这值得去思考。我认为这值得去讨论。我认为这值得去探索。我认为这值得去考虑。我认为这值得去思考。我认为这值得去讨论。我认为这值得去探索。我认为这值得去考虑。我认为这值得去思考。我认为这值得去讨论。

[段 106]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 106]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 107]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 107]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我我认为这值得探索。我我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我我认为这值得探索。我我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 108]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 108]

而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 109]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 109]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。

[段 110]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 110]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 111]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 111]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 112]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 112]

我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 113]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 113]

而且我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 114]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 114]

我认为这值得探索。我认为自己值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。我认为这值得探索。我认为这值得考虑。我认为这值得思考。我认为这值得讨论。

[段 115]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 115]

我觉得这值得探索。我觉得这值得考虑。我觉得这值得思考。我觉得这值得讨论。我觉得这值得探索。我觉得这值得考虑。我觉得这值得思考。我觉得这值得讨论。我觉得这值得探索。我觉得这值得考虑。我觉得这值得思考。我觉得这值得讨论。我觉得这值得探索。我觉得这值得考虑。我觉得这值得思考。我觉得这值得讨论。

[段 116]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 116]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 117]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 117]

而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探讨。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 118]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 118]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 119]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about.

[译文 119]

而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。而且我认为这值得探索。而且我认为这值得考虑。而且我认为这值得思考。而且我认为这值得讨论。

[段 120]

And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that it’s worth exploring. And I think that it’s worth considering. And I think that it’s worth thinking about. And I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that It’s a billion users, or if it’s Google, it’s a billion users. They have existing infrastructure you get to build on. That’s also increasingly true for new startups, things like AWS and all these awesome independent service providers. But you usually get some proprietary technology, and it’s all maintained for you. It’s a pretty great place to start. And you get to work with a team, and they’ll help you just leverage your ideas into something great. So a couple specific examples: Brett Taylor came into Google as around employee number 1,500, and he invented Google Maps. This is a product you guys probably use every day. I used it to get here, and it’s used by hundreds of millions of people all around the world. Didn’t need to start a company to do that. Did happen to get a big financial reward, but the point is he had massive impact. My co-founder, Justin Rosenstein, joined Google a little later after Brett. He was a PM there. And just as a side project, he ended up prototyping chat, which used to be a standalone app, as integrated into Gmail, like you see it in the upper right there. And before he did that, people didn’t even think you could do chat over AJAX or chat in the browser at all. And he just kind of demonstrated it and showed it to his team, and then they made it happen. And again, this is probably a product most of you use maybe every day. And then perhaps even more impressively, shortly after that, J.R. left. He became employee around number 250 at Facebook, and he led a hackathon project along with people like Andrew Bosworth and Liam Perlman to create the like button. So this is one of the most popular elements anywhere on the web. Totally changes how people use it. And again, didn’t need to start a company to do it and almost certainly would have failed if he had tried because he really needed the distribution of Facebook to make it work. So important to keep in mind the context for what kind of company you’re trying to start, and like where will you actually be able to make it happen. So what’s the best reason? So Sam already talked about this a little bit, but basically you can’t not do it. You’re super passionate about this idea, you’re the right person to do it, you’ve got to make it happen. So how does this break down? We’re getting close to the end here. Am I doing it on time? Cool. Sweet. Perfect. So this is sort of like a wordplay. You can’t not do it in two ways. One is you’re so passionate about it that you just like you have to do it. You’re going to do it anyway. And this is really important because you’ll need that passion to get through all of those like hard parts of being an entrepreneur that we talked about earlier. You’ll also need it to effectively recruit. Candidates can smell when you don’t have passion. And there are enough entrepreneurs out there who do have passion that they may as well work for one of those. So this is sort of like table stakes for being an entrepreneur. Your subconscious can also tell when you don’t have passion, and that’ll be a huge problem. And then so the other way to interpret this is the world needs you to do it. So this is sort of validation that the idea is important. It’s going to make the world better. So the world needs it. If it’s not something the world needs, go do something the world needs. Your time’s really valuable. There are plenty of good ideas out there. Maybe it’s not one of your own. Maybe it’s an existing company. You may as well work on something that’s going to be good. And then the second way to interpret this is the world needs you to do it. You’re actually well-suited to this problem in some way. If this isn’t true, it may be a sign that your time is better spent somewhere else. But also, just best-case scenario, if this isn’t true, you out-compete the team for which it is true. And you just end up with a suboptimal outcome for the world. That doesn’t feel very good. So drawing this back to my own experience, at Asana, Justin and I were kind of like reluctant entrepreneurs before we founded Asana. So we were working at Facebook. We were already working on a great problem. And we would basically work all day long on our normal projects. And then at night, we would keep working on this internal task manager that was used internally at the company. And it was just because we were so passionate about the idea. It was so clearly valuable that we couldn’t do anything else. And at some point, we had to have the hard conversation of, like, okay, well, what does it mean if we don’t actually start this company? We were able to see the impact it was having on Facebook. We were pretty convinced it could be really valuable for the world. We were also pretty convinced nobody else was going to build it. The problem had been around a long time, and we just kept seeing sort of incremental solutions to it. So if we didn’t go out with the one that we thought was best, we thought there’d be a lot of value left on the table. And yeah, so we just couldn’t stop working on it. And literally the idea was like beating itself out of our chest, like forcing itself into the world. And I think that’s the feeling you should really be looking for when you start a company. That’s how you know you have the right idea. So I’ll go ahead and stop there. I’ll put some recommended books up here, but won’t narrate them. I’ll put some recommended books up here, but won’t narrate them. And maybe that’s the end of the class. Yeah, thank you. Maybe Dustin can sit around for a few minutes if you have questions for him. And see you Thursday. Thank you.

[译文 120]

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Source: bilibili BV1oWKpzoE1Z