I want to start off today with some per­sonal news. After work­ing on Y Com­bi­na­tor for 11 years, I’m going on sab­bat­i­cal for the next year. I want to focus on some pro­jects and, to be hon­est, I’m a lit­tle tired. YC is one of my fa­vorite things in the world, but it’s also all-con­sum­ing, and it’s hard to work on some­thing all-con­sum­ing for 11 years with­out a break. I also want to spend more time with my sons. They’re 7 and 4 now, and I won’t be able to get these years back. So pretty much right after this con­fer­ence, I’ll be start­ing my sab­bat­i­cal. 

今天，我想先说一下个人消息。在YC工作了11年之后，我明年想去休假。我希望把精力放在一些项目上，说实话，我有点累了。 YC是这世界上我最喜欢的事情之一，但它也很费精力。11年不间断的耗费巨大精力工作是一件很难的事情。我也想花更多的时间与我的儿子们一起。他们一个7岁一个4岁，我将来无法再拥有他们的这个年纪。因此，这次会议结束后，我将开始我的休假。

And that brings us to the topic of my talk. I’m going to tell you what I want you to re­mem­ber while I’m away. I was think­ing about what I wanted YC’s founders to re­mem­ber while I was away, and I re­al­ized that every­thing I wanted to tell them was just as ap­plic­a­ble to all of you. So I’m giv­ing you the exact same ad­vice that I’d give to YC founders. 

接下来就是我要谈的话题。我会告诉你，我走了以后，希望你仍然记住的东西。我曾想过，如果我离开了，我希望YC的创始人们记住什么。我发现，我要对他们说的，也适用于你们所有的人。所以，我给你们完全相同的建议。

1. Make some­thing peo­ple want. 做别人想要的东西

This is YC’s motto, and after 11 years and more than 1000 star­tups, I know we picked the right one. Noth­ing else you do will mat­ter if you are not mak­ing some­thing peo­ple want. You can be the best spokesper­son, the best fundraiser, the best pro­gram­mer, but if you aren’t build­ing a prod­uct that sat­is­fies a real need, you’ll never suc­ceed. 

这是YC的座右铭，11年后，见过了1000多家的初创公司，我知道，我们选择了正确的座右铭。如果你不是做人们想要的东西，其他你做的事情都毫无意义。你可以是最好的代言人，最好的募资者，最好的程序员，但如果你没有不是在构建一个满足真正需要的产品，你就永远不会成功。

My ad­vice to those of you who are still look­ing for an idea is to solve a prob­lem that you your­self have. Then you’ll know it’s some­thing at least one per­son re­ally wants. And when you’re part of the tar­get mar­ket, you’ll have in­sights about it that you wouldn’t oth­er­wise. 

我对那些仍然在寻找一个想法的人的建议是：解决你自己的一个问题。这样你知道这东西至少有一个人真的想要。而当你如果是目标市场的一部分时，你就具备关于市场的洞见，否则你不会有。

But you should grad­u­ate from mak­ing some­thing just for your­self to mak­ing some­thing for other peo­ple as fast as you can. And to know what they want, you have to un­der­stand them. Do they like what you’ve made so far? If not, why not? Talk to your users as much as you can, even if that means doing things that don’t scale early on. I don’t know of a sin­gle case of a startup that felt they spent too much time talk­ing to users. 

但是，你必须尽快的从为自己做东西进入到为其他人做东西。要知道他们想要什么，你必须理解他们。他们是不是喜欢现在的产品？ 如果不是，为什么不喜欢？尽可能的和你的用户交谈，即使这意味早期你做的事情都是不能快速扩张的。我不知道有任何一家创业公司会觉得他们在和用户交流上花费了太多时间。

And be open to ad­just­ing your idea, be­cause most good ideas evolve. 

对于调整你的想法持开放的态度，因为大多数好的想法会不断演进。

The most fa­mous ex­am­ple of that sort of evo­lu­tion in the YC com­mu­nity is prob­a­bly Airbnb. They started with airbeds on floors for con­fer­ences, then airbeds on floors but with­out con­fer­ences, then ac­tual bed­rooms, then whole places. That final step hap­pened, be­lieve it or not, be­cause Barry Manilow went on tour. His drum­mer was an early Airbnb host, back in the days when the host was ex­pected to be there. One day he told the Airbnbs that Barry was going on tour and could he rent out his place while he was away? The Airbnbs re­ally had to think about it. They were still AirBe­dand­Break­fast back then, not Airbnb, so guests had to get break­fast! But in the end they said yes, and this type of stay is now most of Airbnb’s busi­ness. 

YC的公司里面，关于这种演进最有名的例子就是Airbnb。他们开始目标会议人群分享地板上的充气床，然后分享充气床但不限于会议，然后分享实际的卧室，然后整个房子。这最后一步的发生，信不信由你，是因为Barry要巡演去了。他的鼓手是一个早期的Airbnb的接待人，那个时候，每个房子都有接待人。有一天，他告诉Airbnb Barry要去巡演，能不能他离开的期间把自己的房子全部出租？Airbnb还真的不得不考虑一下。他们那个时候还是AirBedandBreakfast，而不是Airbnb，客人们都是要有早餐的。但是，最后他们还是说可以，而今天这种类型的住宿是Airbnb最主要的业务。

Your users are your guide­post. And the way you stay on the right path in the early stages of a startup is to build stuff and talk to users. And noth­ing else. 

你的用户是你的路标。创业的早期阶段，确保你待在正确的道路上的方法是开发产品并和用户交谈。没有其他的路。

2. Stay fo­cused. 保持专注

One of the most con­spic­u­ous pat­terns we’ve seen among the thou­sand star­tups we’ve funded is that the most suc­cess­ful founders are al­ways to­tally fo­cused on their prod­uct and their users. To the point of being fa­nat­i­cal. The best founders don’t have time to get caught up in other things. 

我们资助的1000多家的创业公司中，最显著的一个模式是：最成功的创始人一直完全专注于自己的产品和他们的用户。专注到狂热的地步。最好的创始人不会把时间花在别的上面。

Here’s a list of things that I see eas­ily dis­tract founders. These are like the startup equiv­a­lent of wolves in sheeps’ cloth­ing. 

下面的清单，是我常见的创始人分散注意力的地方。这些创业公司，就像披着羊皮的狼。

• Grab­bing cof­fee” with in­vestors  和投资者喝咖啡聊天
  


• Talk­ing with po­ten­tial ac­quir­ers 与潜在的收购者交谈
  


• Net­work­ing 社交应酬
  


• Re­cruit­ing boards of ad­vi­sors  寻找公司的顾问
  


• Doing a “part­ner­ship,” think­ing it will get you more users  建立一个“伙伴关系”，希望它带给你更多的用户
  


• Spend­ing time on PR be­fore you have made some­thing peo­ple want 还没有做出来人们想要的东西就花时间在公关媒体上
  


• Ar­gu­ing on so­cial media 在社交媒体上争论
  


• Going to con­fer­ences 参加各种会议

No­tice this list im­plies you shouldn’t be here. Here I am on stage at a con­fer­ence, telling you that you shouldn’t go to con­fer­ences. And hon­estly, as a rule you shouldn’t. That’s why we try so hard to make this con­fer­ence good– be­cause we know that it has to be more use­ful to you than spend­ing the same time build­ing things and talk­ing to users, and that’s a very high bar. 

请注意这个名单意味着你不应该在这里。在这里，在这样一个会议上，我告诉你你不应该参加会议。诚实的说，作为一项规则，你不应该参加。这就是为什么我们如此努力，希望办好这次会议。因为我们知道，它必须对你更有用，甚至超过你花时间在产品和用户对话上，这是一个很高的标准。

3. Mea­sure your growth. 度量你的增长

If you do the first two things I told you, make some­thing peo­ple want and focus, you’ll get growth as a re­sult. And that means you can use growth as a test of whether you’re doing those two things. If you have a good growth rate, which in a startup means at least 10% per month, you’re on the right track. And if you don’t, you’re miss­ing at least one of the two in­gre­di­ents I men­tioned. You’re ei­ther mak­ing the wrong thing, or not fo­cus­ing enough. 

如果你做了我讲的前两件事情，做人们想要的东西和保持专注，增长就只是个结果。这意味着，你可以使用增长来测试你是否做了这两件事情。如果你有一个很好的增长速度，对创业公司这意味着至少每月增长10%， 那么你就在正确的轨道上。如果你达不到这个速度，你肯定错过了我所提到的两件事的其中之一。你要么做了错误的东西，要么专注不够。

There’s a fa­mous sen­tence we often quote at Y Com­bi­na­tor: You make what you mea­sure. Pick a num­ber you want to grow, and focus on that. The best met­ric to choose is good old fash­ioned rev­enue. There’s no bet­ter test of whether you’re re­ally mak­ing some­thing peo­ple want. 

在YC，我们经常引用一句话：你做的事情必须能度量。选择一个你希望的增长速度，专注于它。最好的度量指标是收入，虽然老套，但是货真价实。没有指标比这更能说明你是否真的在做别人想要的产品。

Fo­cus­ing on growth also pre­vents you from being in de­nial, which is a big dan­ger for startup founders. For some rea­son, a lot of the prob­lems you face in a startup tend to pro­voke de­nial. Maybe it’s sim­ply be­cause these prob­lems are hard. 

专注于增长能防止你陷入拒绝接受现实的状况，这对创业者是一个巨大的危险。出于某种原因，你在创业中面临的许多问题往往会让你拒绝承认现实。也许只是因为这些问题都是很棘手的。

Founders who are mak­ing the wrong thing are often in de­nial about it. Founders who are wast­ing their time on inessen­tial stuff are often in de­nial about it. De­nial is the silent killer of star­tups. But if you hold your­self to growth tar­gets, you can’t re­main in de­nial. The num­bers, good or bad, are star­ing you in the face. 

那些没有做对产品的创始人往往拒绝承认。那些成天浪费自己的时间在无关紧要的事情上的创始人往往拒绝承认。拒绝承认现实是初创公司的无声杀手。但是，如果你让你自己坚持增长目标，你就无法停留在拒绝承认现实。这些数字，好或坏，都盯着你的脸。

Un­less of course you’re in de­nial about the need to hold your­self to growth tar­gets. And that, be­lieve it or not, hap­pens all the time. We con­stantly hear founders say­ing, “We’re not fo­cus­ing on growth right now.” There are times when that is the right thing to do, but I don’t even need to tell you how things usu­ally turn out after we hear that from founders. 

当然，如果你拒绝承认你需要保持自己的增长目标，那就没什么可说了。不管你信不信，这居然也时常发生。我们经常听到创始人说：“我们现在不会专注于增长。”有些时候，这么做没错。但我甚至不需要告诉你，当我们听到创始人这么说的时候，通常事情的下场都是什么样。

4. Know if you’re de­fault alive. 知道你缺省是死还是活

Growth isn’t enough, though. You can have a good growth rate and still die, if you run out of money and can’t raise more. 

尽管如此，增长是不够的。你有一个良好的增长速度，还是会死，如果你的钱用完了，并且不能筹集更多钱。

The crit­i­cal ques­tion is whether you’re what we call “de­fault alive” or “de­fault dead.” De­fault alive means if your ex­penses stay the same and your rev­enue con­tin­ues to grow at the rate it’s been grow­ing, you get to breakeven be­fore you run out of money. De­fault dead means you don’t. 

关键的问题是，你是否是我们所说的“缺省是死”或“缺省是活“。”缺省是活”意味着如果你的支出保持不变，你的收入保持现在的速度增长，你能在现金烧光之前达到盈亏平衡。”缺省是死“意味着你做不到。

We now ask all YC founders to begin their in­vestor up­dates to us by say­ing which of the two they are. As well as telling us how the startup is doing, it’s a good way to yank the founders out of de­nial. Be­cause being about to run out of money is an­other of those dan­ger­ous prob­lems founders are often in de­nial about. You’d be amazed how many founders don’t even know whether they’re de­fault alive or de­fault dead. 

我们现在要求我们所有的YC创始人在给我们投资人情况更新的时候，明确说明他们是哪一种状态。除了告诉我们公司的运行情况如何，这是一个逼迫创始人面对现实的，避免拒绝承认现实的好方法。因为快要烧光钱是另一个创始人常常拒绝承认的危险问题之一。你会惊奇地发现，多少创始人甚至不知道他们缺省是活还是死。

5. Keep ex­penses low. 压低开支

Why do star­tups run out of money? By spend­ing too much. And since the main ex­pense in most star­tups is salaries, spend­ing too much = hir­ing too many peo­ple. Over­hir­ing is the big mis­take in the sec­ond phase of a startup, as mak­ing some­thing no one wants is in the first phase. 

为什么创业公司会烧光钱？花费太高。而且，由于大多数创业公司的主要支出是工资，花费太高=雇佣太多的人。如果说，第一个阶段最大的错误是做一个没人要的产品，创业公司第二阶段最大的错误是雇佣太多的人。

I know how dan­ger­ous over­hir­ing is, be­cause YC star­tups con­stantly make this mis­take de­spite us con­stantly warn­ing them against it. 

我知道，雇佣太多的人是多么危险，因为YC的创业公司不断地犯这样的错误，尽管我们不断的警告他们。

The prob­lem with over­hir­ing is that it gives you less mar­gin for error. The faster you’re burn­ing through the money you have in the bank, the less time you have to make it prof­itabil­ity. But star­tups, be­cause they’re usu­ally both run by in­ex­pe­ri­enced founders and doing some­thing novel, are ex­actly the type of thing that takes longer to get right than you ex­pect. And that’s a deadly com­bi­na­tion, be­cause if you start to run out of money be­fore you have things work­ing right, you have to raise more dur­ing a phase when the com­pany is an “ugly duck­ling.” Even if you’re on the right track, you look bad right now. And in­vestors don’t like com­pa­nies like that. 

雇佣太多人的问题是，它让你失去犯错误的空间。你银行里的钱烧的越快，你需要达到盈利的时间越少。但初创公司，通常创始人也没有经验，而且做得都是新的事情，这种类型通常需要更长的时间才能到目标。这是一个致命的组合，因为如果事情还没有做出来，但是钱已经用完了，你就不得不在公司还是一个“丑小鸭”的时候去筹集更多钱。投资者不喜欢这样的公司。

So after you raise money, be very con­ser­v­a­tive about how you spend it. Hire for the pes­simistic case. As­sume it will take longer than you ex­pect to get things work­ing. If there’s one thing you can forsee in a startup, it’s un­forseen prob­lems. 

所以，你融资以后，一定要极其保守的花钱。按照最悲观的情况来招聘。要假设，事情需要更长的时间才能做出来。如果创业里有一件事你可以预见，它就是不可预见的问题。

I con­stantly see star­tups that die even though they’re on the right track, sim­ply be­cause they hired too fast.

我经常看到创业公司死去，即使他们是在正确的轨道上，仅仅因为他们招聘太快。

6. Fundrais­ing gets harder. 融资变得更难

The rea­son star­tups get so slammed when they have to raise money as an ugly duck­ling is that later rounds of fundrais­ing get much harder. Founders who had a fairly easy time rais­ing a seed round think it will be just as easy to raise a se­ries A. It’s not. 

现在，初创公司还是丑小鸭的时候，出去融资变得饱受抨击，是因为后期的融资变得越来越难了。创始人融种子轮时候很容易，以为A轮也是一样容易。事实不是这样。

We often get emails from star­tups say­ing “we’re run­ning out of money, so we’re going to raise a se­ries A now.” As if it were like mak­ing a sec­ond trip to the ATM. And when we ask how they’re doing, the an­swer is usu­ally a com­bi­na­tion of slow growth and high ex­penses. We have to tell them they have no hope of rais­ing a se­ries A and that they’ll have to make dras­tic changes even to sur­vive. 

我们经常收到创业公司的电子邮件说：“我们钱花完了，所以我们要融一个A轮了。”好像这就像去ATM提款机再取一次钱一样。当我们问他们做的如何的时候，通常的答案是：缓慢增长加上高费用的组合。我们不得不告诉他们，他们没有希望融到A轮，并且为了生存，他们将不得不做出重大改变。

Se­ries A in­vestors have a to­tally dif­fer­ent at­ti­tude from seed in­vestors. Seed in­vestors are look­ing for promise. Se­ries A in­vestors are look­ing for per­for­mance. They know that all the re­turns from ven­ture in­vest­ing are con­cen­trated in the big win­ners. So they want to in­vest in you only if you are clearly on a path to being a big win­ner. They’ll pay high prices if you are. But if you aren’t, they won’t in­vest at all. So even if you’re on the right path, but still in the mid­dle of con­vert­ing promise to per­for­mance, they still won’t in­vest. To them there’s not much dif­fer­ence be­tween a startup halfway along the right path, and a startup on the wrong path. If they don’t see suf­fi­cient progress, they don’t care why. 

A轮的投资者和种子投资人的态度完全不同。种子投资人寻找希望。 A轮投资者寻找业绩表现。他们知道，所有的风险投资的回报都集中在大的赢家。因此，他们只有清楚的看到你在成为一个大赢家的道路上，才会希望投你。如果你是，他们会付出高价格。但是，如果你不是，他们根本不会投资。所以，即使你是在正确的道路上，但仍处于从希望向业绩的转化过程中，他们仍然不会投资。对他们来说，一个创业公司，是在一个正确道路的中途上，还是在一个错误的道路上，并没有太大的区别。如果他们没有看到足够的进展，他们不在乎为什么。

Conclusion 结语

I’ve made star­tups sound pretty scary so far. I’m sorry, I can’t help my­self some­times, I’ve just seen so much. The good news is, this is a pretty com­plete list. If you avoid all the mis­takes I warn about here, you’ll be in re­ally good shape. If you start by mak­ing some­thing peo­ple ac­tu­ally want, focus on mak­ing users happy, make sure you have a good growth rate and don’t over­hire, you’ll be in a very happy po­si­tion. You will be mas­ter of your own fate in a way that very few peo­ple ever get to be. 

说到现在，创业公司听起来相当可怕。我很抱歉，有时候，我没有办法。我只是见过了太多。好消息是，这是一个相当完整的列表。如果你避免了所有我在这里警告的错误，你的情况相当不错。如果你开始就做人们真正想要的东西，专注于让用户高兴，保持一个好的增长速度，并且不过度招聘，你会处于一个开心的位置。你成为自己命运的主人，很少有人能够这样。

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