Lecture 20: Closing Thoughts and Later-Stage Advice 第20讲:结束语和后期建议

Lecture 20: Closing Thoughts and Later-Stage Advice

第20讲:结束语和后期建议

第20讲课程视频

图片[1]_Lecture 20: Closing Thoughts and Later-Stage Advice 第20讲:结束语和后期建议_繁木网

讨论地址:http://www.huomen.com/topic-show-id-103.html

Good afternoon. Welcome to the last class of How to Start a Start Up. This is a little bit different than other classes, which have been about things that you should think about at the beginning of a startup. Today we’re going to talk about things that you don’t have to think about for a while. Since I’m going to not going to get to talk to most of you again before you get to post-product market fit stage, I want to give you the list of things that you need to think about as your startup scales. The list of the things that founders usually fail to make the transition on.
下午好。欢迎来到最后一节如何开始一个创业的课程。这与其他类有点不同,这些类都是关于你在创业初期应该考虑的事情。今天我们将讨论一些你暂时不必考虑的事情。由于在进入产品上市后的合适阶段之前,我不会再和大多数人讨论这个问题,所以我想给大家列出在创业时需要考虑的事项。创办人通常未能完成过渡的事项清单。
These are the topics we’re going to talk about. Again, these are not writing code or talking to users, which means with a few exceptions that I’ll try to note, you can ignore them until after you have product market fit. For most companies, these things become important between months 12 and 24. Write these down somewhere and look back them when you get there.
这些是我们将要讨论的主题。同样地,这些都不是编写代码或与用户交流,这意味着除了我将尝试注意的少数例外情况,您可以忽略它们,直到您拥有适合产品市场的产品。对大多数公司而言,这些因素在第12个月至第24个月之间变得重要。把这些写在某个地方,到了之后再回头看。
The first area we’re going to talk about is management. In the beginning of a company, there is no management. This actually works really well. Before 20 and 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to founder. It’s totally flat. That’s really good. That’s what you want because at that stage, it’s the optimal structure for productivity.
我们要讨论的第一个领域是管理。一公司成立之初,没有管理层。这真的很有效。在20和25名雇员之前,大多数公司的结构都是由每个人向创办人汇报。完全是平的。真是太好了。这正是您所希望的,因为在该阶段,这是提高生产力的最佳结构。
What tricks people is when lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine at 20 employees is disastrous at 30. You want to be aware that this transition will happen. You don’t actually need to make the structure complicated. In fact, you shouldn’t. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is and for everyone to have exactly one manager. Every manager should know their direct reports.
让人感到错觉的是,当缺乏结构时,它会同时失效。在20名雇员中完全正常的工作在30名雇员中是灾难性的。你要意识到这种转变将会发生。你实际上不需要把结构复杂化。事实上,你不应该这样做,你需要的是让每一位员工都知道他们的经理是谁,让每个人都有一位经理。每个经理都应该了解他们的直接下属。
You ideally want to cluster people in teams that make sense but the most important thing is that there is a clear reporting structure and that everyone knows what it is. Clarity and simplicity are the most important things here. Failing to do this correctly is really bad. Because it works in the early days to have no structure at all, it feels cool to have no structure. Many companies are like, “We’re going to try this crazy new management theory and have no structure.” You want to innovate on your product and your business model.
理想情况下,您希望将人员集中在有意义的团队中,但最重要的是有一个清晰的报告结构,并且每个人都知道它是什么。清晰和简单是最重要的。没有正确地做到这一点真的很不好。因为在早期没有任何结构是有效的,所以没有结构感觉很酷。很多公司都会说,“我们要尝试这种新的管理理论,却没有架构”,你希望在产品和商业模式上进行创新。
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Management structure is not where I would recommend trying to innovate. Don’t make the mistake of having nothing, but don’t make the other mistake of having something super complicated. A lot of people fall into this trap. They think people feel cool if they’re someone’s manager and if they’re just an employee, they don’t feel cool. So people come up with convoluted circular matrices management structures where you report to this person for this thing, and this person for that thing, and this person for that thing, while this person reports to you for this thing. That’s a mistake.
管理架构并非我建议尝试创新的地方。不要犯一无所有的错误,但也不要犯另一件非常复杂的错误。很多人都会陷入这个陷阱。他们认为,如果人们是某个人的经理,他们会感到很酷;如果他们只是雇员,他们不会感到酷。因此,人们提出了错综复杂的循环矩阵管理结构,在这个结构中,你为这个人报告这个事情,这个人为这个事情,这个人为这个事情,而这个人为这个事情向你报告。这是一个错误。
This is the first instance of an important shift in the founder’s job. Before product market fit, your number job is to build a great product. As the company grows past 25 employees, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company and it stays there for the rest of your time. This is probably the biggest shift in being a founder.
这是创办人工作重要转变的第一个例子。在产品市场适合之前,你的首要任务是打造一个优秀的产品。当公司发展到超过25名员工时,你的主要工作将从打造一个优秀的产品转移到打造一个优秀的公司,而这将在你余下的时间里持续。这可能是一创始人最大的转变。
There are four failure cases we see all the time as founders become managers. So I am going to talk about the four most common ones. The first one is: “being afraid to hire senior people.” In the early days of a startup, hiring senior people is usually mistake. You just want people that get stuff done, and the willingness to work hard and aptitude matters more than experience. As the company starts to scale, and at about this time when you have to put in place the basic management structure – it is actually valuable to have senior people on the team. Executives that have built companies before. Almost all founders after the first time they hire a really great executive, and that executive takes over big pieces of the business and just makes them happen – the founder says, “Wow! I wish I had done that earlier!” But everybody makes this mistake and waits to long to do this. So don’t be afraid to hire senior executives.
在创始人成为管理者的过程中,我们一直看到四个失败案例。因此,我将讨论四个最常见的问题。第一条是:「不敢雇用长者」。在创业初期,雇用长者通常是错误的。你只希望有人能把事情做好,而努力工作的意愿和能力比经验更重要。由于公司开始规模化,大约在这个时候,当你必须建立起基本的管理架构时,在团队中拥有高级人员实际上是很有价值的。曾创建公司的管理人员。几乎所有的创办人在第一次聘用一位非常出色的执行官后,该执行官接管了业务的重要部分,并使其成为现实—创办人说,“哇!我真希望我早一点做到这一点但每个人都会犯这个错误,并等待很长时间。所以,不要担心聘用高级管理人员。
The second mistake is “Hero Mode”. I will use the example of saying someone that runs the customer service team. Someone who runs the customer service team — they want to lead by example. This starts from a good place. It’s the extreme of leading by example.
第二个错误是“英雄模式”。我将举一个例子,说明管理客户服务团队的人员。管理客户服务团队的人—他们希望以身作则。从一个好地方开始。以身作则是极端。
It’s saying, “You know what? I want my team to work really hard rather than tell them to work hard I’m going to set an example. I’m going to work 18 hours a day. I’m going to show people how to get a lot of tickets done.” But then company starts growing. They have the normal discomfort of assigning a lot of work to other people. So the company starts growing and the ticket volume keeps going up. Now they’re have to do like 19 hours a day, and then 20 hours a day. It’s just obviously not working. But they won’t stop and hire people because they’re like, “If I stop even for one day we’re going to get behind on tickets.” The only way to get out of hero mode in this case is to say, “You know what? We’re going to get behind on tickets for two or three weeks ’cause I am going to go off and I am going to hire three more support team members. I’ve calculated based off our growth rate that this is going to last this long. Next time I’m not going to make the same mistake. I’ll get ahead of it and hire again.”
它在说,“你知道么?我希望我的团队努力工作,而不是让他们努力工作,我要以身作则。我要每天工作18小时。我将向人们展示如何完成一张门票。他们通常不愿意把大量工作分配给其他人。因此,该公司开始增长,机票数量持续上升。现在他们必须每天工作19小时,然后每天工作20小时。这显然不起作用。但他们不会停下来雇佣员工,因为他们会说,“如果我停下来一天,我们的票就会过期了”,在这种情况下,走出英雄模式的唯一方法是说,“你知道么?我们将延迟二或三个星期买票,因为我要走了,我将再雇用三名支援团队成员。根据我们的增长率,我计算出这将持续如此之久。下次我不会再犯同样的错误了。我先走一步,再雇一次。」
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But you actually have to make a trade off. You actually have to say, “You know what? I need to hire more people and we’re going get behind on other stuff.” That is the right answer. The wrong answer is to stay in hero mode until you burn out. Which is what most people do.
但事实上你必须作出权衡。你不得不说“你知道么?我需要雇用更多的人,而我们会在其他方面落后。错误的回答是保持英雄模式,直到你精竭。这是大多数人所做的。
Third mistake: “Bad Delegation”. Most founders have not managed people before and certainly have not managed managers. The bad way you delegate is you say, “Hey, employee, we need to do this big thing. You go off and research it. Come back to me with all the data and the tradeoffs. I’ll make a decision and tell it to you and then you go off and implement.” That’s how most founders delegate. That does not make people feel good and it certainly doesn’t scale.
第三个错误:「委派不当」。大多数创办人以前没有管理过人,当然也没有管理过经理。不好的授权方式是你说,“嗨,员工,我们需要做这件大事。你去研究一下。把所有的数据和折衷意见都给我。我会做一个决定,然后告诉你,然后你就去执行。这并不能让人们感觉良好,也肯定无法衡量。
A subtle difference but really important is to say, “Hey – you’re really smart. That’s why I hired you. You go off. Here the things to think about. Here’s what I think. But you make this decision. I totally trust you. And let me know what you decide.” That’s how delegation actually works. Steve Jobs was able to get away with the former, and make every decision himself and people just put up with it. Every founder thinks they’re the next Steve Jobs. A lot of people try this. For 99.9 percent of people, this second method here works a lot better.
一个细微的不同,但真正重要的是要说,“嗨,你真的很聪明。这就是我聘用你的原因。你走吧。以下是需要考虑的事项。我是这样认为的。但这是你的决定。我完全相信你。让我知道你的决定。史蒂夫·乔布斯能够摆脱前者,自己做出每一个决定,人们都能容忍。每一位创始人都认为自己是下一个史蒂夫·乔布斯。很多人都这样尝试。对于99.9%的人来说,这第二种方法更有效。
Then the fourth area — it’s just a personal organization one. When you are working on product, you don’t actually need to be that organized in terms of how you run the company and how you talk to people about what they’re working on. But if you fail to get your own personal organization system right – where you can keep track in some way of what you need to and what everybody else is doing and what you need to follow up with them on – that will come back to bite you. Developing this early as the company begins to scale is really important.
第四个方面,这只是个人组织一。当你在产品上工作时,你实际上不需要在如何管理公司以及如何与人讨论他们在做什么方面有条理。但如果你不能建立自己的个人组织体系,在这一体系中,你可以以某种方式跟踪你需要做的事情、其他人正在做的事情以及你需要跟进的事情,这会让你反感。在公司开始规模化时尽早发展这一点非常重要。
Two other things that we hear again and again from our founders they wish that they had done early: simply writing down how you do things and why you things. These two things – the how and the why – are really important. In the early days, you just tell everyone. “Employee, when you’re sitting around having lunch or dinner, you know this is how we think about building product. This is how we push to production. You know, this is how we handle customer supper.”
我们从我们的创办人身上一次又一次地获悉,他们希望他们早做二件事:简单地写下你是如何做事情的,以及为何要做这些事情。这二件事—如何以及原因—非常重要。在最初的日子里,你只需告诉所有人员工,当你坐在一起吃午餐或晚餐时,你知道这是我们对建筑产品的看法。这就是我们推动生产的方式。你知道,这就是我们处理顾客晚餐的方式
Whatever. As you get bigger you can’t keep doing that. If you don’t do it, someone else is just going to say it. But if you write it down and put it up on a Wiki or whatever that every employee reads, you as the founder get to basically write the law. And if you write this down it will become law in the company. And if you make everyone read this – as the company hires a hundred and then a thousand employees – people will read this and say, “Alright. That’s how we do things.”
无论什么。当你变大时,你不能一直这样做。如果你不这样做,别人只会说出来。但是,如果你把它写下来,并把它放在维基上,或者每个员工都会读到的任何内容上,作为创始人,你基本上可以写下法律。如果你把它写下来,它将成为公司的法律。如果你让每个人都读到这封信,当公司雇用一百名员工,然后再雇用一千名员工时,人们会读到这封信并说:「好的。我们就是这样做的
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If you don’t do it, it will all be random oral transition of whatever the hiring manager or their best friend that they make it their first week in at the company tells them. So writing down how you do things and the why — the why is the cultural values. Brian Chest talked about this really well. Every founder I know wishes they written down both of these – the how and the why- earlier to just establish it as the company grows. And then this becomes what happens. It’s one of the highest leverage things you can do that people don’t.
如果你不这样做,无论招聘经理或他们最好的朋友在公司的第一个星期里对他们说什么,都会是随机的口头过渡。因此,写下你是如何做事情的,以及原因,这就是文化价值观。布瑞恩•金特对此谈得很好。我认识的每一位创办人都希望他们能早点把这两个字—如何以及为何—都写下来,以便随著公司的发展而建立起来。然后就会发生这种情况。这是你能做的最有影响力的事情之一,而人们却做不到。
Next area – “HR”. HR is another thing that most people correctly ignore in the first phase of start up because, again, it’s not writing code. It’s not talking to users. But it’s a huge mistake they continue to ignore it. The reason I think most founders ignore it is they have in their mind this idea of like TV sitcom HR, you know. Awfulness. But it doesn’t have to slow you down. Actually it speeds you up.
下一个区域-「人力资源」。人力资源是大多数人在创业的第一阶段正确忽略的另一件事,因为它又不是在编写代码。它不是在和用户说话。但这是一个巨大的错误他们继续忽视它。我认为大部分创办人忽视这一点的原因是,他们认为电视情景剧《人力资源》是个好点子。令人作呕。但这不一定会让你慢下来。事实上,这会加快你的速度。
Most founders will say out of one side of their mouth, “People are our most important asset.” And the other side, “We don’t want any HR.” So what they mean is that we don’t HR – we don’t want the bad kind TV HR. What good HR means is a few things. A clear structure. Which we already talked about you know a path for people about how they can evolve their careers. Most important, one of the most important things is “Performance Feedback.” Again, this happens organically early on. People know how they’re doing. As the company gets to 25, 30, 45 people – that gets lost and it doesn’t have to be complex. It can be super simple. But there should be a way that it happens and it should be frequent. People need hear pretty quickly how they’re doing. It should tell if they are doing badly to where you get them out of the company. Or if they’re doing well it should. There should be a clear path to how this ties to compensation. That’s the next thing.
大多数创办人都会从一个方面说,“人是我们最重要的资产”,而另一方面,“我们不需要任何人力资源”,所以他们的意思是我们不需要人力资源,我们不需要不好的电视人力资源。好的人力资源意味着几件事。一结构清晰。我们已经讨论过,你知道人们如何发展职业生涯的一条道路。最重要的是,其中最重要的一件事是“绩效反馈”,这在早期是有组织的。人们知道自己在做什么。当公司的员工人数达到25,30,45人时,公司就失去了员工,这并不复杂。它可以非常简单。但应该有一种发生的方式,而且应该经常发生。人们需要尽快了解他们的情况。它应该能告诉你,如果他们做得不好,你可以把他们从公司带出来。或者如果他们做的很好,应该。应该有一条清晰的道路将其与赔偿联系起来。这是下一件事。
In the early days of a startup, people compensation is whatever they negotiate with the founder and it’s all over the place. As you grow – it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these “Compensation Bands”. So a mid-level engineer is in this range. A senior engineer is this range. Here’s how you move from this to this. It keeps things really fair. Someday everyone will find out everyone else’s comp. If it’s all over the place, it will be complete meltdown disaster. If you put these bands in place early you will at least be fail. It will also save you a lot of crazy negotiation.
在创业初期,员工薪酬是他们与创办人协商的任何事情,而这一切都会发生。在你成长的过程中,这让你感觉到企业的无望,但这确实值得设立这些“薪酬范围”。所以一名中层工程师在这个范围内。一名高级工程师就是这个范围。以下是您如何从这个转移到这个。它让事情变得公平。总有一天,每个人都会发现别人的竞争对手。如果这一切都发生了,这将是一场彻底的灾难。如果你早把这些带子放好,你至少会失败。这也能帮你省下很多疯狂的谈判。
One thing that I think is really important when it comes to HR is equity. Most people get this right now for the early employees. They give a lot of equity. But you should continue to give a lot of equity all the way through. And this is one place that you investors will always give you bad advice. I think – not YC. But all other investors give bad advice here. Most do. You should be giving out a lot of equity to your employees. Now this dilutes everyone.
在人力资源方面,我认为有一件事是非常重要的。大多数人现在就为早期员工做到这一点。他们给予了大量的权益。但在整个过程中,你应该继续付出大量的股权。这是一个地方,你的投资者会给你坏建议。我认为不是YC。但所有其他投资者都给出了不好的建议。大多数都是。你应该为你的员工付出很多。现在这稀释了所有人。
Right? This dilutes you as the founder and the investors equally. For some reason founder usually understand this as good. Investors are very short-sighted and don’t want to dilute themselves so they’ll like fight you over every equity grant. But, we’ve seen a lot of data at YC now and the most successful companies – and the ones where the investors do the best – end up given a lot of stock out to employees. Year after year… After year.
正确的?这将摊薄你作为创始人和投资者的地位。由于某些原因,创办人通常理解这一点。投资者非常短视,不想稀释自己,所以他们会喜欢在每一笔股权授予上与你争斗。但是,我们已经在YC看到了大量的数据,最成功的公司,以及那些投资者做得最好的公司,最终都把大量的股票给了员工。年复一年。。。年复一年。
So I tell founders, “You should think about for the next ten years you’re going to be given out 3- 5 percent of the company every year ’cause you just get bigger and bigger. So the individual grants gets smaller but in actuality it’s a lot of stock. This is really important to do if you value your people you should be doing this. Specifically, you need to do this with refresher grants. And you should get a plan in place for this early. You never want an employee in a place where they vested 3 out of their four years in stock and they start thinking about leaving. So you should ALWAYS stay in front of peoples vesting schedules. And you know how they plan early where you have refresher grants in place.
所以我告诉创办人,“你应该考虑下一个十年,每年你将获得公司3-5%的股权,因为你只是越来越大。因此,个人补助金越来越少,但实际上是大量的股票。如果你重视你的员工,这是非常重要的。具体而言,您需要获得进修补助金。你应该早点制定计划。你永远不希望一个雇员在他们四年的股票中有3年是归属于这个地方,而他们开始考虑离职。因此,你应该时刻站在人民归属时间表的最前沿。而且你知道他们是如何提前计划的,因为你有进修补助金。
There are a lot of new structures that people have been using here. I personally like six year big grants – but six years of vesting. ‘Cause I think these companies take a while to build. There’s pyramid vesting where you back weight someone’s grant. In year four they get a lot more of the vesting than year one. There’s a concept – different names for it, but something like continuous forward vesting where people’s grants are automatically re-upped. Every year. At the same number of share. Whatever you decide, get an option management system in place at about this point. The normal way people do this is just someone keeps an Excel spreadsheet. I have seen mistakes that have cost employees or companies tens of millions of dollars because they didn’t get this right.There’s really good option management systems or software and you should get those in place around this point.
这里有很多新建筑物,人们一直在使用。我个人喜欢六年的大额补助,但要六年的归属期因为我认为这些公司需要一段时间来建设。有传销归属,让你重新衡量某人的补助。在第四年,他们比一年获得更多的归属。这有一个概念—名字不同,但有点像持续的远期归属,人们的补助金会自动增加。每年。相同数目的股份。无论你决定如何,在这个时候制定一个期权管理系统。一般人这样做的方式是有人保存一个Excel电子表格。我曾看到员工或公司因为没有得到这个而损失数千万美元的错误对,在那这是一个非常好的选择管理系统或软件,您应该在这一点上做好准备。
The other sort of HR stuff to touch on – there are a bunch of rules that change around 50 employees. Common examples are that you have to start “Sexual Harassment Training and Diversity Training”. There’s a bunch of others as well. But just put a little pen in your mind that when you cross 50 employees there’s a new set of HR rules that you have to comply with.
另一类关于人力资源的事情—有一系列的规则改变了大约50名员工。常见的例子是,你必须开始“性骚扰培训和多元化培训”。还有其他一个。但只要在你的心中放一支笔,当你与50名雇员交叉时,你必须遵守一套新的人力资源规则。
“Monitoring your team for burnout.” Again, it’s up to product market fit. It’s just a sprint. Now it becomes marathon. At this point you actually don’t want people to work a 100 hours a week forever. You want them to go on vacation. You want them to have new challenges and do new things. And if you let the whole company get burned out all at once – that is often a company ending thing.
再次强调,这取决于产品是否适合市场。只是一次冲刺。现在变成马拉松了。在这一点上,你实际上不希望人们一周工作一小时。你希望他们去度假。你希望他们有新的挑战,做新的事情。如果你让整个公司一下子被彻底烧光,这通常是一个公司的结束。
This is also a good time to put in place a “hiring process”. Another thing that most founders regret is they don’t hire – as soon as everything is working, you should hire a “full time recruiter”. If you do this early – that’s bad ’cause you’ll hire too fast. That usually implodes. But most founders get behind the ball on this. There are a lot of sort of hiring process tips.
这也是实施“招聘流程”的好时机。另一件令大多数创办人感到遗憾的事是,他们没有招聘——一旦一切正常,你应该招聘一名“全职招聘人员”。如果你早做这件事,那就太坏了,因为你的招聘速度太快了。通常内爆。但大多数创办人对此持保留意见。有很多种招聘流程的建议。
For example, I think most companies – even til they get up to say 3 or 4 hundred employees – should announce every offer on some internal mailing list or something before they make it. Because like half the time you do that. Someone in the company will know something good or bad about that employee. The companies that I know that have instituted this have been really happy. Also a good time to have a program in place to ramp up employees. So when someone starts, you know what their first week looks like. How did they get spun up? How do they learn everything they need to learn? Are they going to have a buddy that’s going to think through them? That’s going help them think through everything about the company.
例如,我认为大多数公司,即使到他们站起来说有3或400名雇员,也应该在他们提出要约之前,在一些内部邮件列表或其他地方公布每一项要约。因为有一半的时间是这样。公司里的某些人会对该雇员有所了解。据我所知,实行这一政策的公司都非常高兴。同时,也正是实施一个计划以提升员工的时候。所以当有人开始时,你知道他们的第一个星期是什么样的。他们是如何被分拆的?他们如何学习他们需要学习的一切?他们会否有一个会仔细考虑他们的朋友?这将有助于他们全面考虑公司的一切。
Here’s one that you do need to think about before the 12 to 24 month mark. Which is “Diversity on the team.” The most common place this comes up honestly is people that hire you know all guys on their engineering team for the first 15 or 20 people. And at that point you get a culture in place that sort of takes on a life of its own. Most founders that I’ve spoken to that have made this mistake regret it. They wish they had hired some diversity of perspective on the team earlier on. Engineering teams are not the only place where it comes up. But that’s where you see it the most often, and if you get this right early, you’ll be able to grow the team much more quickly over the long term.
在12至24个月大关之前,你需要考虑一个问题。这是“团队的多样性”,诚实地说,最常见的地方是雇佣你认识的所有人加入第一或20人的工程团队。在这一点上,你会有一种文化,它有自己的生活方式。我所接触的大部分创办人都对这个错误感到遗憾。他们希望早点在团队中采用不同的观点。工程团队并不是唯一需要帮助的地方。但这是你最常看到的,如果你能早点做到这一点,从长远来看,你将能够更快地发展团队。
The other thing to think about is what happens to your early employees. So a common situation that happens is the company past the early employees. You know the company – you hire a engineer who’s a really great engineer but then as the engineering team grows, you need a VP of engineering. The early engineer wants to be the VP of engineering. You can’t do that, but you don’t want the early employee to leave. They are an important part of the culture. They know a lot. People love them. So I think you want you be very proactive about this. You want to think about, “What’s the path for my first 10 or 15 employees going to be as the company grows?” And then just talk to them about it. Very directly. Be up front, you know. Sit them down and say, “I want to see where you want to see your career go inside of this company.”
另一件要考虑的事是你的早期雇员会发生什么。因此,发生的一个常见情况是公司早于早期雇员。你知道公司—你雇用了一名工程师,他是一名非常出色的工程师,但随着工程团队的发展,你需要一名工程副总裁。早期工程师希望成为工程副总裁。你不能这样做,但你不希望提前离职的员工。它们是文化的重要组成部分。他们知道很多。人们爱他们。所以我认为你希望你对此非常积极。你会想,“随着公司的发展,我的第一或15名员工的发展道路是什么然后再跟他们说。非常直接。站在最前沿,你知道的。让他们坐下来,说:「我想知道你的职业生涯在这家公司里的发展方向。」
Alright, so – “Company Productivity”. This is something that you don’t need to think in the early days because small teams are just naturally productive most of the time. But as you grow, it – the productivity – goes down with the square of the number of employees if you don’t make an effort. Because it’s sort of one these connections between nodes. Every pair of people add communication overhead. If you don’t start thinking about the systems that you’re going to put in place when the company is 25-50 people to stay productive as you grow – things will grind into a halt faster than you can imagine.
好吧,那么“公司生产力”。这是一些你在早期不需要考虑的事情,因为小团队在大多数时候都是自然高效的。但当你成长的时候,如果你不努力的话,生产力会随着员工人数的平方而下降。因为这有点像一个节点之间的连接。每对人都增加了沟通的开销。如果你不开始考虑在公司25-50岁时建立的系统,以在你成长的过程中保持生产力,事情会比你想像的更快地陷入停顿。
The second word that matters most to keep the company productive as it grows is “Alignment”. The reason companies become unproductive is people are either not on the same page and you know don’t know what the same priorities are. Or they actively working against each other. Which is obviously worse. But if you can keep the entire aligned in the same direction, you have won well over half of the battle. The way to start with this is just a very clear road map and goals. Everyone in the company should know what the road map for the next three or six months or a year – depending on where the company is in its life cycle.
第二个字,最重要的是保持公司的生产力,因为它的发展是“一致性”。公司变得没有生产力的原因是人们不是在同一页,你知道不知道什么是相同的优先事项。或者他们积极地相互竞争。这显然更糟。但如果你能使整个联盟朝同一个方向发展,那么你已经赢得了一半以上的胜利。从这一点开始,我们只有一个非常清晰的路线图和目标。公司的每个人都应该知道未来三、六个月或一年的路线图,这取决于公司的生命周期。
You know a classic test that I love to give – is if I walk into a company getting – beginning to struggle with these scaling issues – I’ll ask the founders, “Like, if I walked around and pulled 10 random employees and asked them what the top three goals for the company are right now – would they all say the same thing?” And 100 percent of the time the founder says, “Yes. Of course they would.”
你知道,我最爱做的一个经典测试是,如果我走进一家公司,开始与这些规模问题作斗争,我会问创始人,“比如,如果我四处走走,随机拉了10名员工,问他们公司目前的三大目标是什么,他们都会说同一件事么100%的时间创始人会说“是的。他们当然会的
Then I’ll go do it and 100 percent of the time, no two employees even say the same three top three goals in order. The founders can never believe it. Because they’re like, “Well I announced it in all hands like three months what are goals were going to be. And how can they not remember?” But it’s really important to keep reiterating the message about the road map and the goals. Almost no founder does this enough. And if you do it, you know the company will say, “You know, alright. These are our goals. We understand them and we’re going to get them. “ Self-organize around that. But if people don’t know what the road map of the goals are, it won’t happen.
然后我会去做,100%的时候,没有二个员工会按顺序说同一个三大三个目标。创办人无法相信。因为他们会说“我在三个月前宣布了所有的目标。他们怎么会不记得了但继续重申有关路线图和目标的信息非常重要。几乎没有创办人做到这一点。如果你做了,你知道公司会说,“你知道,好吧。这是我们的目标。我们了解他们,我们会得到他们。“围绕这个自我组织。但如果人们不知道目标的路线图,这将不会发生。
We already talked about figuring out your values early but I want to reiterate that. ‘Cause that’ll also really help company make the right decision. If everyone knows what the framework to decide it – they’ll make hopefully the same decisions if they’re smart people.
我们已经讨论过尽早了解您的价值观,但我要重申这一点因为这也将真正帮助公司做出正确的决定。如果每个人都知道决定的框架,如果他们是聪明人,他们会希望做出相同的决定。
You want to continue to be run by great products and not process for its own sake. This is a fine, fine line. Because you do need to put some process in place. But you never want to put process in place that rewards the process. The focus has to always be on great product. One easy way to do this that a lot of companies try is they just say, “We’re gonna ship something every day.”
你希望继续以优秀的产品而非为了自身的利益而进行加工。这是一条很细的线。因为你确实需要制定一些程序。但你永远都不想让过程有回报。重点必须始终放在优秀的产品上。很多公司尝试的一个简单方法就是说“我们每天都会运送一些东西”
And if you do that – you know there’s at least a continue focus on delivery. And then “transparency and rhythm” in how you communicate are really important. Most founders wait way too long on these but having a management meeting every week of just the people that report directly to the founder and the CEO – critical. All hands meeting – not quite sure how often is optimal for those. At least once a month. Where you go through the results and the road map of the entire company. Really important. Then doing a plan every quarter of what we’re going to get done over the next three months and how that fits into our goals for the year – also becomes really important.
如果你做到了,你知道至少有一家公司会继续专注于交付。在你的沟通方式中,透明度和节奏是非常重要的。大部分创办人在这方面等待的时间太长,但每周都有一次管理层会议,会议的成员都是直接向创办人和首席执行官汇报的关键人员。所有人都要举手会议—不太确定会议的最佳频率。至少每月一次。您将浏览整个公司的业绩和路线图。非常重要。然后每季度制定一个计划,计划我们在未来三个月将要完成的工作,以及如何符合我们的年度目标,这也变得非常重要。
I put “Offsite” up there, because people don’t do those nearly enough. A surprising number of the successful companies we’ve been involved with do a lot of off-sites. Where they take their best people for a weekend to a cabin in the woods or somewhere and just talk about what we want to be when we grow up. What are most important things to be doing? What are we not doing that we should be doing? But get people out of the office and out of the day today. Everyone I know that does thinks they’re well worth the time.
我把“非现场”放在上面,因为人们做的还远远不够。我们曾参与的成功公司中,有数量之多的公司在非现场进行了大量工作,令人意外。他们带他们最优秀的人去森林或其他地方的小木屋度一个周末,然后讨论我们成长后的梦想。最重要的事情是做什么?我们不该做的是什么?但今天要让人们离开办公室,离开一天。我认识的每个人都认为他们值得花时间。
So the goal in all of this productivity planning is that you’re trying to build a company that creates a lot of value over a long period of time. And the long period of time is what’s important here. You can avoid all of this and with the authority of the founder – make sure the company ships a great next version. But that won’t work for version 10. It won’t work for version 11. The single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows. If you look at the examples of this – most companies fail here. Most companies do one great thing where the founder just pushes to get it done and then don’t innovate that well on follow on products. It really takes founders that think about how I am going to do this second thing – this really hard thing to get something like an apple that can turn out great products for30 or 40 years. Or longer.
因此,所有这些生产力规划的目标是,你要努力建立一个在很长一段时间内创造大量价值的公司。长时间才是最重要的。在创办人的授权下,你可以避免所有这些—确保公司发布一个优秀的下一个版本。但这对版本10不起作用。它不适用于版本11。在商业上,最困难的事情就是建立一家能够不断创新的公司,并在其发展过程中保持这种持续的卓越文化。如果你看这些例子,大多数公司在这失败了。大多数公司都做了一件伟大的事情,创办人只会奋力去做,却不会在后续产品上创新得那么好。这真的需要创办人考虑我将如何做这第二件事-这真的很难得到像苹果这样可以在30或40年内生产出优秀产品的东西。或更长时间。
Alright – these are super tactical “Mechanics”. This is definitely just to put on a list and remember these things for later. Alright – in the early days. People basically ignore all accounting and maybe if they’re lucky have a shoebox full of receipts. They certainly don’t have anything that looks like a financial report. This is is a good time to get it in place. You know when things are working say month 18 or whatever – you can do this with an outsource person. Just say, “You know what? We like to get our books in order. We want to start getting audits every year. We want to start a relationship with an accounting firm.” Easy to do. Definitely worth it.
好吧,这些都是超级策略性的“机械师”。这绝对是为了列上一张单子,以后记着这些事情。好吧,在早期。人们基本上忽略了所有的会计,如果幸运的话,他们可能有一个装着收据的鞋盒。他们当然没有任何类似财务报告的资料。现在正是准备就绪的好时机。你知道当事情正在进行时,比如第18个月或任何时候,你可以和外包人员一起做。只需说,“你知道么?我们希望把书整理好。我们希望每年开始接受审计。我们想和一家会计师事务所开始一段关系。绝对值得。
This is also a good time to collect your legal documents because it’s easy to fix things now. If you actually assign someone to go through and collect every agreement that the company has ever signed, then when your landlord tries to screw you out of your lease and no one can find the lease… Which happens like half the time somehow. Someone will be able to find it. Also, you’re almost certainly missing something. Some employees didn’t sign their PIAA or whatever and you’ll find it now – it’s easy to fix now. It’s gets really hard to fix like in the middle of your next round of financing. So again this is time to bring like a little of the order to chaos.
这也是收集法律文件的好时机,因为现在很容易解决问题。如果你真的指派了一个人去检查和收集公司签订的每一份协议,那么当你的房东试图把你从租约中剔除而没有人能找到租约时。。。这种事总有一半发生。有人能找到它。而且,你几乎肯定会遗漏一些东西。一些员工没有在PIAA或其他文件上签字,现在你会发现—现在很容易解决。这真的很难像在你的下一轮融资中解决。因此,现在又是时候把秩序变得混乱起来了。
“FF Stock” is a special class of stock for founders that founders can sell in a later round without messing up the common stock valuation. It used to be that most people set this up right when they started the company. Founders fund sort of popularizes which is why it’s called FF stock. But it became a really bad signal. Right that were obsessed with their own personal equity when the company had nothing – turned out to fail most of the time. So investors learned if founders pushed on this in the seed round, it was a very, very bad sign. Most founders don’t actually want to sell stock until the company is worth like a billion dollars or something like. You can actually safely set this up after things start working in the next financing round and then you can sell it two, three, four years down the road. But it’s a good thing to remember by around the time you get to the B round.
“FF股票”是创办人的一类特殊股票,创办人可以在不影响普通股估值的情况下,在稍后一轮出售。过去,大多数人在创立公司时就已经建立了这个体系。创办人基金有点普及,这就是它被称为FF股票的原因。但这成了一个非常坏的信号。当公司一事无成的时候,他们对自己的个人权益很感兴趣,结果大多数时候都失败了。因此,投资者了解到,如果创始人在种子期推动这一计划,这将是一个非常非常不好的迹象。大多数创办人在公司价值达到十亿美元或类似金额之前,实际上并不想出售股票。在下一轮融资开始运作后,你实际上可以安全地设置这个,然后你可以在未来二、三、四年内出售它。不过,到了B轮的时候,你应该记得这是件好事。
“IP, Trademarks and Patents”. Actually just IP and trademarks. So, you have twelve months after you announce something if you want to patent it. And if you miss that window, it’s very hard to do. So eleven months after launch or first publically talk about what you’re doing – is a good time to file provisional patents. We recommend people just file provisional patents. All that does is hold your place in line at the patent office, and it gives you another year to decide if you want to patent something or not. It only costs about 1000 dollars. It takes way less effort than a full patent. And most of the time you’ll know whether or not you’ll need a fully patent a year later. But if you just do this one step, you’ll at least have the option.
「知识产权、商标及专利」。实际上只有知识产权和商标。所以,如果你想申请专利,你有十二个月的时间来宣布。如果你错过了那扇窗户,这很难做到。因此,上市后十一个月或第一次公开讨论你正在做的事情,是申请临时专利的好时机。我们建议人们只需申请临时专利。所有这些都是在专利局占有一席之地,这给了你另一年的时间来决定是否要申请专利。仅需1,000美元左右。这比一项完整的专利要容易得多。大多数时候你会知道一年后你是否需要一项完全的专利。但如果你只需迈出这一步,你至少可以选择。
It’s also a good time to file trademarks for the US and major international markets. Again, if you don’t do this at this stage – most people end up regretting it. And while you’re at it – a good time grab all the domains.
这也是为美国和主要国际市场申请商标的好时机。再次强调,如果你在现阶段不这样做,大多数人最终都会为此感到遗憾。当你在做的时候-抓住所有域名的好时机。
FP&A — good time, also to think about someone to start doing FP&A. Most companies don’t end realizing where they knobs on their financial model are until far too late. It turns out that if you have someone build a really great model of the business – and by really great, apparently Roelf Botha – who was the PayPal CFO and built their FP&A model – the top, like the top sheet of his spreadsheet was 15 hundred lines just a level of the detail people build these to. But you can really optimize the business and understand it at a level that most people totally miss. Most people don’t hire someone like this until their many hundreds of employees. It’s worth hiring earlier.
FP&A—是时候考虑一下有人开始从事FP&A了。大多数公司直到现在才意识到他们的财务模式的关键点已经太晚了。结果发现,如果有人构建了一个非常出色的业务模型,而由Roelf Botha(曾担任PayPal首席财务官并构建了其FP&一模型)构建的非常出色的业务模型,则其顶部(如其电子表格的顶部)为1,500行,仅为人们构建这些模型的一个详细程度。但你可以真正优化业务,并在大多数人完全忽略的层面上了解它。大多数人直到他们的数百名雇员才雇用这样的人。早点招聘是值得的。
Another thing that I think is worth hiring earlier that almost no one does is a full time fundraiser. Let’s say you hire someone really, really great and their full time job is to raise money for the company. You hire them after your B round. And you say, “You know what? By the time we raise our C round, we want the valuation be double what it would have been otherwise.” You almost certainly get better results than if you hire an investment banker or someone else if it’s just someone internal with the company. And you end up paying way less money and take literally half the dilution. This is one these slightly non-obvious optimization that people just fail to make.
另一件我认为值得早点聘用的事,几乎没有一个是全职筹款人。假设你雇用了一个非常非常出色的人,他们的全职工作是为公司筹款。B轮过后再雇用他们。然后你说,“你知道么?当我们提高C轮估值时,我们希望估值是原来的两倍,“与聘请投资银行家或仅为公司内部人员的其他人相比,几乎可以肯定,你会获得更好的结果。而你最终支付的金额会减少一半,甚至会被摊薄。这是其中一个稍显不明显的优化,人们只是做不到。
“Tax structuring”. This is another thing. Once things are working it would be worth you spending a little bit of time thinking about how you set up the tax structure for the company. I confess I don’t know a lot about the details here ’cause I just find it personally really boring. But like if you assign the IP to some corporation in Ireland that licensing it back to the US Corporation. You end up paying no tax. No corporate tax. But I know that you can only do that relatively early on. And this ends up being a huge issue for companies that don’t do it that compete with companies that do it you know once they’re big public companies. So that’s worth doing.
「税务架构」。这是另一件事。一旦一切正常,花点时间考虑如何为公司建立税务结构将是值得的。我承认我对这些细节不太了解,因为我个人认为这很无趣。但就如你将知识产权转让给爱尔兰的某家公司,而该公司又将其授权给美国公司。你最终不用缴税。无企业税。但我知道你只能在比较早的时候做。这最终成为了一个巨大的问题,对于不做这件事的公司来说,这是一个与做这件事的公司竞争的问题。所以值得一试。
A lot of people through the class have talked about “Your own Psychology” as a founder. Here’s what they haven’t said. It gets worse. Not better. As the company grows you continue to osculate. The highs are better but the lows keep getting worse. And you really want to think about this early on and just be aware that this is going to happen. And try to, try to manage your own psychology through the expanding swing that it’s going through.
作为创办人,课堂上很多人都在讨论“你自己的心理”。以下是他们没有说的。情况变得更糟。没有更好。随着公司的发展,你会继续密切合作。高的好,低的坏。你真的很想早点考虑这个,并且要意识到这将发生。试着,试着通过不断扩大的摇摆来管理自己的心理。
Another thing that happens as you begin to be successful as you go from being someone that most people rooted for – kind of the underdog. To someone that a lot of people hating on. You see this first in internet commenters who will be like, “I can’t believe this shitty company raised money. It fucking sucks. It’s like awful. And it only bothers you a little bit. But then journalists that you kind of care about it start writing this and it just goes on and on. This also will go on and on as you get more and more successful. You just have to make peace with this early. But if you don’t it will bother you all the way through.
另一件事是,当你从一个大多数人都为之奋斗的人走向成功时,你开始变得有点失败者。对一个被许多人痛恨的人。你在互联网评论中看到这第一条,他们会说,“我真不相信这家垃圾公司集资。这他妈的太糟了。真是太恐怖了。这只会让你有点不安。但你所关心的记者开始写这些,然后就一直写下去。当你越来越成功时,这种情况也会持续下去。你只需早点与此和解。但如果你不这样做,它会一直困扰你。
This is also a good time to start thing about how long of a journey this is going to be. Very few founders think long term. Most founders think kind of a year in advance and they think, “You know what? In three years I am going to sell my company and either I am going to become a VC or sit on the beach or something.” Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they’re building – the ones that do have a huge advantage. They’re in a a very rare flight class. So this is a good time to sit around with your co-founders and decide, “You know what – we’re going to work on this for a very long time and we’re gonna build a strategy that assumes that we’re going to be doing this for the next ten years.” Just thinking that way alone, it’s probably a very high leverage thing you can do for success.
这也是开始一段旅程的好时机。很少有创办人认为是长期的。大多数创办人都会提前一年考虑,然后他们会想,“你知道么?三年后,我将出售自己的公司,我将成为一名风险投资家,或是坐在沙滩上,或是其他什么的。因为很少有人会对自己正在建设的项目作出实际的长期承诺,而这些项目确实具有巨大的优势。他们坐的是非常罕见的航班。所以,现在是和你的共同创办人坐在一起决定的好时机,“你知道,我们将在这方面努力很长时间,我们将建立一个假设我们将在未来十年内这样做的策略”,单单这样想,这可能是一个很高的杠杆作用,你可以为成功做。
Take vacation. Another common thing that we see is founders will run their business for three or four years without ever taking more of a day of vacation. And that works for a year or two years or something like that. It really leads to a nasty burn out.
休假。我们看到的另一个普遍情况是,创办人将在三年或四年内经营其业务,而不会再休假超过一天。这样可以工作一年或二年或类似的时间。这真的会导致严重的消耗。
Losing focus is another way that founders get off track. This is a symptom of burnout. When you get really burned out on running business you want to do easier things or sort of more gratifying things. You want to go to conferences and have people tell you how great you are. You know what to do all these things that are not actually building a business. And the most common post YC failure case for the companies we fund is that they are incredible focused during YC on their company – and then after, they start doing a lot of other things. They advise companies. They go to conferences. Whatever. Focus is what made you successful in the first place. There are a lot of reasons people lose focus. But fight against that really, really hard.
失去专注是创始人偏离轨道的另一种方式。这是精力充沛的一种症状。当你在经营业务上真的精力充沛时,你会想做一些简单的事情或是一些更令人满意的事情。你想参加会议,让别人告诉你你有多棒。你知道怎么做这些事情,而这些事情实际上并不是在建立一个企业。对于我们资助的公司而言,最常见的YC失败案例是,他们在YC期间非常专注于他们的公司—之后,他们开始做很多其他事情。他们为公司提供建议。他们参加会议。无论什么。专注是你成功的第一要素。人们失去专注有很多原因。但要与之抗争真的,真的很难。
This is a special case of focus. As you start to do well – you will start to get a bunch of potential acquires sniffing around. And it’s very gratifying. You’re like, “Wow! I can be so rich.” And I’ll be so cool. And MNA negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies. Is that they entertain acquisition conversations. You distract yourself. You get demoralized if it doesn’t happen. If an offer does come in – it’s really low. You’ve already mentally thought that you’re done and so you take the offer. As a general rule don’t start any acquisition conversation unless you’re willing to sell for a pretty low number. Don’t ever just check it hoping that you’re going to have the one miracle high offer. If that’s going to happen you’ll know because they’ll just make you a big offer before you can meet them. But this is big company killer.
这是焦点的一个特例。当你开始做的很好的时候,你会开始发现一堆潜在的收购者。这非常令人欣慰。你说,“哇!我可以如此富有。MNA谈判真的很有趣。这是公司最大的杀手之一。是为了进行收购谈判。你分散了自己的注意力。如果不发生,你会士气低落。如果真的有人出价,那真的很低。你已经在心理上认为你已经完成了,所以你接受了邀请。一般来说,除非你愿意以相当低的价格出售,否则不要开始任何收购谈判。千万别只检查它,希望你会有一奇迹般的高报价。如果发生这种情况,你会知道的,因为他们会在你遇到他们之前向你提出一个很大的建议。但这是大公司的杀手。
And then – just a reminder to everybody – that things that kills startups at some level is the founders giving up. So sometimes you should quit but if you mismanage your own psychology and you quit when you shouldn’t, that is what kills companies. That is the final cause of death for most of these startups. And so if you can manage your own Psychology in a way that you don’t quit – don’t get to a place where you need to quit or give up on the startup. You’ll be in a far far better place.
然后—只提醒大家—在某种程度上,创业者的失败在于创业者的放弃。因此,有时你应该辞职,但如果你管理不当自己的心理,而你在不应该辞职的时候辞职,这会导致公司死亡。这是大多数创业公司的最终死亡原因。因此,如果你能以一种不放弃的方式来管理自己的心理,就不要到一个需要放弃或在创业时放弃的地方。你会在一个更好的地方。
So “Marketing & PR” is something that we tell companies to ignore for a long time. Everyone thinks in the early days that the press is going to be what saves them. We tell them all the time it doesn’t work that way. It’s definitely true. Press is not what’s going to save your start up. But as you start to be successful – this is something that the founders themselves need to spend time on. So once your product is working – switch from not caring about this to caring about it a little bit. The two most important things for the founder to do – the founders to do – figure out the key messaging yourselves. Never outsource to your head of marketing or PR firm. You founders have to figure out what the message of the company is going to bet. And once you’ve set that it kind of sticks. Very hard to change this once the press decides how they’re going to talk about you.
因此「市场推广与公关」是我们让公司长时间忽略的事情。在早期,每个人都认为新闻界将是拯救他们的力量。我们一直都是这样对他们说。这绝对是真的。媒体并不能为你的创业保驾护航。但当你开始取得成功时,这是创始人本身需要花费时间的事情。所以一旦你的产品开始运作,从不关心这个转变为关心它一点。创办人要做的二件最重要的事情—创办人要做的事情—自己找出关键信息。永远不要外包给你的营销或公关公司主管。你的创办人必须弄清楚公司的信息是什么。一旦你把它装得像根棒子。一旦媒体决定如何谈论你,这很难改变。
The other thing is getting to know key journalists yourself. PR firms will always try to prevent you from doing this because they need to have a reason to to exist… And so they’re like, “We’re going to handle the relationship with the journalist. We’ll just bring you in for interviews.” No journalist wants to talk to a PR flag ever. They’re so much happier to hear from to just hear from the founder. The biggest PR hack you can do is to not hire a PR firm. Just pick three or four journalists that you develop really close relationships with that like you. That understand you – which you get. Then you contact them yourself; they will cover every story you ever give them. And they’ll actually pay attention and get to know you and care about the company. This is so much better than the normal strategy of having a PR firm blast 200 contacts that never read their emails with every piece of news. This is something that I think is important to start doing.
另一件事是亲自了解主要记者。公关公司会一直试图阻止你这样做,因为他们需要有一个存在的理由。。。所以他们会说,“我们会处理好与记者的关系。我们只会带你来接受采访”,没有记者愿意与一公关旗对话。他们很高兴收到创始人的回复。你能做的最大公关黑客就是不雇用公关公司。只需挑选三或四名与你这样的人建立真正密切关系的记者。明白你的意思。然后你自己联系他们,他们将涵盖你给他们的每一个故事。他们会关注你,了解你,关心公司。这比一般的策略好得多,公关公司有200个联系人,他们从不会在每一条新闻中阅读他们的电子邮件。这是我认为重要的事情开始做。
This is also the time in a company when business development starts to matter. And so in the early days you can basically ignore anything that would be like doing deals. Except maybe fundraising and sales. This is a time when they’re important. And everything or many things that you do like even fundraising. It falls under the category of doing deals.
这也是一公司开始重视业务发展的时候。因此,在早期,你基本上可以忽略任何类似于交易的事情。除了筹款和销售。这是他们重要的时刻。以及你所做的一切或许多事情,甚至是筹款。属于交易范畴。
So there are – here’s my one minute crash course on this. There are five points that are important to understand here. We’ve talked about this a lot. Nothing will matter if you don’t “Build a great product”. So assume that you’ve done this before you go try to get anyone to do anything with you.
以下是我的一分钟速成课程。这里有五点需要理解。我们已经谈了很多次了。如果你不“创造一个伟大的产品”,那就无所谓了。所以,假设你已经这样做了,然后再去尝试让任何人对你做任何事情。
“Developing a personal connection” with anyone you’re trying to do any sort of big deal with is really important. For whatever reason, most founders fail to this. Or many founders fail to do this. But no one wants to feel like they’re this transactional thing. That you’re using them to get distribution for your product or to raise money or whatever. So figuring out some way to actually care about this person and care about what you’re doing with them. And not view them – you brave to in your own mind not just view them as this one off transaction. You have to actually care about them and what they’re going to get out of this.
与任何你正试图与之进行任何重大交易的人“建立个人联系”非常重要。无论出于何种原因,大多数创办人都未能做到这一点。或许多创办人未能做到这一点。但没有人愿意觉得自己是个交易型的人。你用它们来获得产品的分销或筹集资金或其他。所以想办法关心这个人,关心你和他们在一起的情况。你要勇于在自己的心目中,而不只是将其视为一笔一笔交易。你必须关心他们以及他们能从中得到什么。
“Competitive dynamics” – this is a basic principal of negotiation. Most founders learn this the first time in fundraising. But it actually matters for everything. The way you get deals done and the ways you get good terms is to have a competitive situation. You don’t do this deal with party A, you’re going to do it with party B. It’s not always an option but it usually is. And this is the single thing that makes deals happen and makes deals move.
「竞争动态」—这是谈判的基本原则。大部分创办人在筹款时都是第一次学会这一点。但这实际上事关一切。你完成交易的方式和获得良好条款的方式是要有一个竞争的局面。你不会和一方做这个交易,你会和B方做这个交易。这不一定是一个选择,但通常是。这是使交易发生并使交易移动的唯一因素。
Tyler talked about “Persistence” — the last lecture. So I won’t hit on that again too much other than to say you go beyond your comfort point here most of the time as a founder.
泰勒讲到「坚持」—最后一次讲座。所以我不会再谈这个了,我只想说,作为一个创办人,大多数时间你都会超越自己的舒适点。
And then the fifth point is that “You have to ask for what you want”. This is another thing – I still have trouble with this and certainly most of the founders we do have. If you want something in a deal – just ask for it. Most of the time, you won’t get laughed out of the room and might get it. But you have to be – at some point, you actually have to say, “You know this is what I’d like to do.” Even if it feels aggressive or an over-reach or whatever.
第五点是“你必须要得到你所需要的”。这是另一件事-我仍然有这个问题,当然大多数的创办人我们确实有。如果你想在交易中得到什么,尽管要。大多数情况下,你不会被房间里的人取笑,你可能会明白。但在某个时候,你必须要说“你知道这是我想做的”,即使这会让你觉得有进取心或是力不从心。
So I am going to close this part of the talk with an image. One of the Airbnb founders drew this on like a business card or something for another founder that starting a company and then I saw it once and took a picture of it. ‘Cause I thought it was such a good summary. And what he had tried to draw here was the YCombinator process as he remembers it. I love it ’cause it’s like so simple and it looks so doable when it’s written on a business card. But you’re trying to find product market fit. You’re trying to build a product and you’re trying to close the gap between those two gears. The only way to do that is to go off and meet the people. You can’t do this without getting really, really close to your users. And then he drew this graph that sort of on a white board that at YC and gotten kind of sort one of the YC rites of passage. But that’s the graph of how adoption goes for a new company.
因此,我将以一幅图像结束这部分对话。其中一位Airbnb的创办人就这样为另一位创办一家公司的创办人画了一张名片或其他东西,然后我看了一次并拍了一张照片因为我认为这是一个很好的总结。他在这画的是他记得的YCombinator程序。我爱它,因为它是如此的简单,当它写在一张名片上时,它看起来是如此的可行。但你正努力寻找适合市场的产品。你正在尝试构建一个产品,并试图缩小这二个齿轮之间的差距。唯一的办法就是离开去见见他们。要做到这一点,你必须真正地接近你的用户。然后他在YC的白板上画了这个图,得到了YC通过仪式的第一个。但这是一家新公司采用的图表。
So you launch on the press. You get a huge spike. It falls off to nothing. At some point at least one point things look like they’re going to completely die and kind of dip below the X access. They recover a little bit, you have this long, long troth of sorrow before things work. In Arabian B’s case, it was a thousand days before the graph started taking upward. You have these wiggles of false hope. And then finally, finally, finally, finally things start to grow. Three years later. So starting a startup ends being this very long process. It is – it can be very rewarding. It’s definitely long but it is doable. That’s what I love about that drawing.
所以你在媒体上发布。你得到一个巨大的穗。一事无成。在某一点上,至少有一个点的东西看起来会完全消失,并在X通道下方倾斜。他们恢复了一点,在一切开始之前,你会有一段漫长的伤痛。以Arabian B为例,一千天后图表才开始向上。你有这些虚假的希望。然后,最后,最后,最后,事情开始发展。三年后。因此,启动一家新公司的过程会非常漫长。是的,这是非常有意义的。肯定很长,但可行。这就是我喜欢这幅图的原因。
So with that. I have about ten minutes left. I can questions on this or anything else in the course that we’ve covered. If anyone has some.
就这样。我还有大约十分钟。在课程中,我可以就此或任何其他方面提出问题。如果有人有。
Yes.
对。
Audience member #1: You hold that diversity is important, but an earlier speaker said that diversity wasn’t important and that you should just hire people that are very much like you and trust you…
观众1:你认为多元化很重要,但一位之前的演讲者说多元化并不重要,你应该雇佣和你非常相似并信任你的人。。。
Sam: So the question is how you square the device of diversity being important with earlier speakers saying that you want people that are very similar.
山姆:所以问题是,如果早期的演讲者认为你需要非常相似的人,你该如何衡量多元化的重要性。
The difference is that what you want is diversity of backgrounds. But you don’t want diversity of vision. Like where companies get in trouble is when they have people that think very differently about what the company should be doing or don’t work well together. You don’t want that. You do want hire people that you know and that you trust and that you can work with, but if everyone on the team comes from exactly the same background you do end up developing somewhat of a monoculture. Which often causes problems down the road. Not always. Some companies have been successful with that.
不同的是,你需要的是背景的多样性。但你不需要多元化的视野。比如,当公司遇到困难时,他们的员工对公司应该做什么或合作不好的想法截然不同。你不想这样。你确实希望雇用你认识、你信任、你能与之共事的人,但如果团队中的每个人都来自完全相同的背景,你最终会发展出某种单一文化。这通常会在以后的道路上引起问题。并非一直如此。一些公司在这方面取得了成功。
So what we tell people is hire people that you know and that you’ve worked with before. But try to hire people that complementary and aligned towards the same goal. Not people that are exactly the same. ‘Cause you just get a better skill set.
因此,我们告诉员工的是雇用你认识的和以前共事过的人。但要尽量雇用相辅相成、志同道合的人。不是完全相同的人因为你只有更好的技能。
Audience member #2: So what are some examples of ways to make up productivity on a personal level? How do you do that on a personal level and also on an advance level?
观众2:那么从个人层面来看,有哪些方法可以提高生产力?在个人层面和高级层面,你是如何做到的?
Sam: How to keep track productivity systems. So, the one I use which I actually thinks works really well is I keep one piece of paper with my goals for sort of three to twelve month time frame. And I look at that every day. And then separately I keep one page for every day of my short term goals for that day. And so if I need to do something in like a week I just flip forward seven pages and I write down. And then I also keep a list of every person and what they’re working on and what I need to tell them and what I need to talk to them about. What we talked about last time. So every time I sit down with someone I kind of the full state and a list of things for that person that works really well.
山姆:如何追踪生产力系统。因此,我认为行之有效的一个方法是在三至十二个月的时间内保留一张有目标的纸。我每天都在看。然后,我就为当天的短期目标每天单独保存一页。因此,如果我需要在一周内做一些事情,我只需向前翻七页,然后记下。然后我还列出了每个人的清单,他们在做什么,我需要告诉他们什么,我需要和他们谈什么。我们上次讨论的内容。所以每次我和一个人坐在一起时,我都会有一个完整的状态,然后列出一张清单,上面列出了他能做得很好的事情。
Audience member #3: So we talked a lot about the startups growing but most startups fail. Any advice for how to fail gracefully?
观众3:所以我们谈了很多关于创业公司成长的事情,但大多数创业公司都失败了。有没有关于如何优雅地失败的建议?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. We should have covered that.
山姆:是的。是 啊。好问题。我们早该报道的。
How to fail gracefully. So, most startups fail and Silicon Valley almost goes too far on how it loves failure. Failure still sucks. You should still try not to fail. And this whole like thing of like “Ahh failure is great!” I don’t agree with, but it will happen to most people most of the time and it’s a very forgiving environment. As long as you are up front about it and ethical and don’t let anyone get into bad situation. So if you’re failing, first of all you should tell your investors, and second of all, you should not totally run out of money. What you don’t want is blow up which a bunch of depths that the company owe and everyone showing up to work one day and the door being locked.
如何优雅地失败。因此,大多数创业公司都失败了,而硅谷在如何热爱失败上几乎走得太远了。失败仍然很糟。你还是要尽量不失败。整件事都像是“啊,失败太棒了我不同意,但大多数情况下都会发生在大多数人身上,这是一个非常宽大的环境。只要你站在最前沿,讲道德,不要让任何人陷入困境。因此,如果你失败了,第一,你应该告诉你的投资者,第二,你不应该完全耗尽资金。你不希望被公司欠下的一个深度,所有人都来工作一天,门被锁上。
You’ll know when you’re failing and you’ll know the company – things just aren’t going to work. And you should just tell you investors, “Like hey. Sorry. This isn’t going to work.” No one will be surprised. Like I expect to lose my – or I’m willing to lose my money on every investment I ever I make. I know that happens most of the time and the winners pay for it you know still with a factor of a hundred. And so it’s ok, No one – people will be very understanding and supportive. But you want to tell people early. You don’t want to surprise them. And you want – you don’t want to like let your employees get shocked when they know they don’t have job. You want shut the company down in a graceful way. Help them find jobs. Make sure you give the two or four weeks of severance payment so they’re not suffering a cash flow problem. All that stuff is pretty important.
当你失败时,你会知道,你也会知道公司—一切都不会成功。你应该对投资者说“嗨。对不起的。没有人会感到意外。就像我预期会失去我的或我愿意在我所做的每一项投资上失去我的钱。我知道大多数时候都会发生这种情况,而胜利者仍会为此付出一百倍的代价。所以没关系,没有一个人会非常理解和支持你。但你要早告诉别人。你不想给他们惊喜。你不想让你的员工知道自己没有工作而感到震惊。你要优雅地关闭公司。帮助他们找到工作。确保你给他们二或四个星期的遣散费,这样他们就不会有一个现金流问题。所有这些都非常重要。
Audience member #4: How many immigrant founders have you seen in YCombinator?
观众4:你在YCombinator中看到过多少移民创办人?
Sam: How many immigrant founders have we seen in YCombinator? In the last batch – I think it probably went up for this next batch. In our last batch 41 percent of the founders we founded we’re born outside the US. From thirty different countries. So it’s a pretty big percentage.
山姆:我们在YCombinator看到多少移民创办人?在最后一批中,我认为下一批可能会上升。在我们的最后一批创办人中,41%的创办人出生在美国境外。来自三十个不同的国家。所以这是一个相当大的百分比。
Audience member #4: I was just thinking – what do you think are the good places to start start ups?
观众4:我在想,你认为创业的好地方是什么?
Sam: Apart from the Valley where do I think are other good places to start a startup. Well I still think the Valley is the best by a very significant margin. But I think it’s finally maybe beginning to weaken a little bit because the costs have just gotten out of control. To be clear – if I was going to start a company I still wouldn’t think about it. I still will pick Silicon Valley. And think if you look at the data of companies of over the last few years that is to wins by a lot. But Seattle, LA – Lots of places outside the US – I think all of these makes sense.
山姆:除了硅谷,我认为还有其他的好地方可以创业。好吧,我仍然认为这个山谷在很大程度上是最好的。但我认为这最终可能开始减弱一点,因为成本刚刚失去控制。明确一点,如果我要开一家公司,我还是不会考虑。我还是会选择硅谷。如果你看过去几年公司的数据,你会发现他们赢了很多。但西雅图,洛杉矶,许多美国以外的地方,我认为所有这些都是有意义的。
Audience member #4: Like places outside the US?
观众4:喜欢美国以外的地方?
Sam: I hesitate to make recommendations because I haven’t spent enough time in the cities to really have an intuitive feel. But like – you know as well as I do the common ones people talk about start up hubs. I just can’t make a personal recommendation there.
山姆:我不太愿意提出建议,因为我没有在城市呆足够的时间来真正产生一种直观的感觉。但我和你一样清楚,老百姓都在议论创业中心。我只是不能在那作个人推荐。
Audience member #5: So when should the founders start to thinking about hire a professional CEO – a senior guy?
观众5:那么,创始人何时应该开始考虑聘请一位专业的首席执行官—一位资深人士?
Sam: When should the founders think about hiring a professional CEO? Never. You – if you look at the most successful companies in tech they are run by their founders for a very long time. Sometimes forever. Sometimes they even hire professional CEO and realize that is not going to like build a great company and so Larry Page came to be CEO again. I think if you don’t want to be the long term CEO of a company – you probably shouldn’t start one. I am not totally sure about that. I think there are exceptions. But generally that the transition that I talked about today if you go from build ing a great product to building a great company being a founder for nine of the ten years is going to be about building that great company and if you’re not excited about doing that – I think you should think hard about it.
山姆:创办人什么时候应该考虑聘请一位专业的首席执行官?从未。如果你看一看最成功的科技公司,他们的创办人已经经营了很长时间。有时甚至永远。有时,他们甚至聘请专业的首席执行官,并意识到这将不利于建立一个伟大的公司,因此拉里·佩奇再次成为首席执行官。我认为,如果你不想成为一家公司的长期首席执行官,你可能不应该从一个开始。我不太确定。我认为也有例外。但一般而言,我今天所说的过渡,如果你从建立一个伟大的产品到建立一个伟大的公司,成为十年中的九个创办人,这将是关于建立一个伟大的公司,如果你对此不感兴趣,我认为你应该认真考虑。
Audience member #6: What are some of the most common and alarming warning signs you should be looking for when you’re trying to make the shift from building great product to building a great company?
观众6:当你试图从打造优秀的产品转向打造优秀的公司时,最常见和最令人担忧的警告信号是什么?
Sam: What are the most common mistakes to make when you’re shifting to building a great company? I think I went through most of them here. I tried to put everything here that I see people mess up most of the time. Yes.
山姆:当你转向建立一个伟大的公司时,最常犯的错误是什么?我想我已经经历了大部分。我试着把我看到的大多数人都弄得一团糟。对。
Audience member #7: Is there a way to get involved in the Yom community before getting accepted?
观众7:在被接纳之前,有没有办法融入Yom社区?
Sam: Is there a way to get involved with YC before getting funded? No and intestinally not. I say the one thing you can do is if you work at a YC company and then later apply – I think probably like – well not probably that definitely if you get a good recommendation from those founders will help with YC. So you know, working at a YC company helps but there’s not much you can do to help. And that’s intention. Like there is no pre start up in a way that there is premed. You should just focus on whatever doing and then when you start a start up – there are `things like YC and others that are structured to help you. Most of the founders we fund we don’t know at all before we do it. You know you really don’t need to get to knopw us or get involved. We’re all good that way.
山姆:在获得资金之前,有没有办法参与YC?不,也不同意。我说,你能做的一件事是,如果你在一家YC公司工作,然后申请—我想可能会—好吧,不太可能,如果你从这些创办人得到一个好的推荐,肯定会对YC有帮助。所以你知道,在YC公司工作有帮助,但你帮不上什么。这就是目的。就如同没有医学院预科课程一样。你应该专注于做任何事情,然后当你开始一个新的工作时,有一些像YC和其他的事情可以帮助你。我们资助的大部分创办人在我们投资前根本不认识。你知道你真的不需要了解我们或参与其中。我们在这方面都很好。
Audience member #8: The statistic you saying now harder to get into YCombinator than getting into Harvard. So I am curious the criteria’s that you use to pick up startups. Does it change over time?
观众8:你所说的统计数字比进入哈佛更难进入YCombinator。所以我很好奇,创业的标准是什么。它是否会随时间而改变?
Sam: The question is what criteria to pick startups and has it gotten harder? Has it changed? The two things that we need to see are good founders and a good idea. And without both of those we won’t fund the company. But that hasn’t changed. That is always been the case. The applicant pool to YC has grown quite a bit. But most of – a lot of the growth is people who shouldn’t be starting start up anyone that are just do9ing it ’cause it is sort of the cool thing now. So you know if you’re really passionate about an idea and the idea is good and you are smart and you get things done and your we executing – I still think you have a very reasonable shot at YC even though the headline number is bigger.
山姆:问题是选择创业公司的标准是什么,是否越来越难?它变了么?我们需要看到的二件事是优秀的创始人和一个好点子。没有这两项,我们将无法为公司提供资金。但这并没有改变。情况一直如此。YC的申请人数已经增长了不少。但大部分的增长是不应该启动任何一个刚开始工作的人,因为现在这有点酷。所以你知道如果你真的对一个想法很感兴趣,而且这个想法很好,而且你很聪明,你能把事情做好,你能执行我们的计划,我仍然认为你在YC有一个非常合理的机会,即使标题数字更大。
Audience member #9: There’s a certain market that you’re really excited about that don’t necessarily know all about yet – is there a certain track you recommend or ways to?
观众9:有一个你真正感兴趣但还不一定完全了解的市场,你有没有推荐或方法?
Sam: Sure – if there’s a market that you’re excited about but don’t a lot about yet what should you do? Two schools of thought on this. One is to just jump right in. Learn it as you go. That’s worked a lot of times. The other is go work at another company in the space or do something in the market for a year or two years. I lean slightly towards the second but as long as you are willing to really learn and really study and to get uncomfortably close to your users – either case would work. And I don’t even thinks that it’s that much of a disadvantage. I think all things being equal go spend a couple of years learning about it in detail but I don’t think you have to.
山姆:当然,如果有一个市场让你很兴奋,但还不太了解,你该怎么办?关于这个问题有二种观点。一是直接跳进去。边走边学。这已经行了很多次了。另一种是在另一家公司工作,或在市场上工作一年或二年。我稍微倾向于第二种情况,但只要你愿意真正地学习,真正地学习,并且不舒适地接近你的用户,任何一种情况都可以。我甚至不认为这是一个很大的劣势。我认为所有的事情都是平等的,花上几年时间去了解细节,但我认为你不必。
Audience member #10: I have a question related to YC – So I think YC did a fantastic job in promoting partnership in Silicon Valley. In fact, I plan to invest in some in the next three years. You guys pump 180 companies per year coming to the market it looks like its hard to follow each of the YC company any more. Do you think that this will create some – some people will walk away from YC because they cannot follow large batch of companies and the company had to be very polished and the firm had to be think of the world about ideas?
观众10:我有一个关于YC的问题,所以我认为YC在促进硅谷的合作方面做了非常出色的工作。事实上,我计划在未来三年投资一些。每年有180家公司加入这个市场,似乎很难再跟随着YC的每一家了。你认为这会创造一些-一些人将离开YC,因为他们不能跟随大批量的公司和公司必须非常擦亮和公司必须考虑世界的想法?
Sam: Alright so I think the question is do I think investors are going to fund less YC companies as we grow. No. Definitely not. Like certainly the trend in this is the other way. We have more and more investors saying that half their portfolio is not YC companies and they look forward to the day where it’s three quarters. No I don’t think that’s a problem at all. I think that so not on my top hundred problem list. The opposite of that maybe.
山姆:好吧,我认为问题是,我认为投资者会随着我们的发展而减少对YC公司的投资。不,绝对不是。当然趋势是相反的。我们有越来越多的投资者表示,他们的投资组合有一半不是YC公司,他们期待有一天是三个季度。不,我认为这根本不成问题。我认为这不在我的百大问题清单上。可能相反。
Alright. One more question.
好的。再问一个问题。
Audience member #11: When should a group of founders raise a seed round or Series A?
观众11:一组创办人应在何时发起一轮种子赛或一轮系列赛?
Sam: In general it’s nice to wait until you have the idea figured out and initial signs of promise before you raise money. Razing money puts some pressure on the company. Sometime pressure. And once you’ve raised money you can’t be in this exploratory phase in definitely. You end up having to rush and so like if you haven’t raised money and your idea is not working you can fall around and pivot until you really hit on the thing that’s working. But if you’ve raised money and your `idea doesn’t work – You’re in this oh shit moment. And you have to pivot and you pivot to whatever vaguely plausible idea is. And that’s bad. So I think if you can wait to raise any outside capital more than say like a hundred or 200 thousand dollars even necessary – but ideally not even that. Until things are working or at least pointed in the direction of working you’re way better off.
山姆:总的来说,在你筹款之前,最好等到你有了这个想法和最初的承诺。拆东墙补西墙给公司带来一定压力。有时压力。一旦你筹集到资金,你就不可能处于这个探索阶段。你最终不得不仓促行事,所以如果你没有筹集到资金,而且你的想法不起作用,你可以四处转转,直到你真正找到有效的方法为止。但如果你筹集到了资金,而你的想法不起作用,那你就是在这一刻。你必须转向任何看似合理的想法。这很不好。因此,我认为,如果你能等着筹集任何外部资本超过一百或20万美元,甚至是必要的,但理想情况下甚至不是这样。除非情况有所好转,或者至少是朝着工作的方向发展,否则你会过得更好。
Alright thank you all very much! This was fun!
好的,非常感谢大家!这很有趣!​​​​​​​

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