A lot of the advice we give startups is tactical; meant to be helpful on a day to day or week to week basis. But some advice is more fundamental. We’ve collected here what we at YC consider the most important, most transformative advice for startups. Whether common sense or counter-intuitive, the guidance below will help most startups find their path to success.
我们给初创公司的很多建议都是战术性的，旨在日常或每周的基础上提供帮助。但有些建议更为基础。在这里，我们收集了 YC 认为对初创公司最重要、最具变革性的建议。无论是常识性的还是反直觉的，以下指导将帮助大多数初创公司找到成功的道路。
The first thing we always tell founders is to launch their product right away; for the simple reason that this is the only way to fully understand customers’ problems and whether the product meets their needs. Surprisingly, launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product. This is true as long as the product contains a “quantum of utility” for customers whose value overwhelms problems any warts might present.
我们总是告诉创始人的第一件事就是立即推出他们的产品；原因很简单，这是唯一能完全了解客户问题以及产品是否满足其需求的方法。令人惊讶的是，尽快推出一个平庸的产品，然后与客户交谈并迭代，比等待构建“完美”产品要好得多。只要产品包含对客户有用的“量子效用”，其价值就会超过任何瑕疵带来的问题。
Once launched, we suggest founders do things that don’t scale (Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham1). Many startup advisors persuade startups to scale way too early. This will require the building of technology and processes to support that scaling, which, if premature, will be a waste of time and effort. This strategy often leads to failure and even startup death. Rather, we tell startups to get their first customer by any means necessary, even by manual work that couldn’t be managed for more than ten, much less 100 or 1000 customers. At this stage, founders are still trying to figure out what needs to be built and the best way to do that is talk directly to customers. For example, the Airbnb founders originally offered to “professionally” photograph the homes and apartments of their earliest customers in order to make their listings more attractive to renters. Then, they went and took the photographs themselves. The listings on their site improved, conversions improved, and they had amazing conversations with their customers. This was entirely unscalable, yet proved essential in learning how to build a vibrant marketplace.
一旦推出产品，我们建议创始人做一些无法扩展的事情。许多初创公司顾问劝说初创公司过早扩展。这将需要构建支持扩展的技术和流程，如果过早进行，将浪费时间和精力。这种策略往往导致失败，甚至初创公司死亡。相反，我们告诉初创公司通过任何必要的手段获得第一个客户，即使是手工工作，无法管理超过十个，更不用说100或1000个客户。在这个阶段，创始人仍在试图弄清楚需要构建什么，最好的方法是直接与客户交谈。例如， Airbnb 的创始人最初提供“专业”拍摄其最早客户的房屋和公寓，以使其房源对租客更具吸引力。然后，他们亲自去拍摄照片。网站上的房源改进了，转化率提高了，他们与客户进行了精彩的对话。这完全是不可扩展的，但在学习如何构建一个充满活力的市场方面证明是必不可少的。
Talking to users usually yields a long, complicated list of features to build. One piece of advice that YC partner Paul Buchheit (PB) always gives in this case is to look for the “90/10 solution”. That is, look for a way in which you can accomplish 90% of what you want with only 10% of the work/effort/time. If you search hard for it, there is almost always a 90/10 solution available. Most importantly, a 90% solution to a real customer problem which is available right away, is much better than a 100% solution that takes ages to build.
与用户交谈通常会产生一个冗长而复杂的功能列表。 YC 合伙人 Paul Buchheit (PB) 在这种情况下总是给出一个建议，即寻找“90/10 解决方案”。也就是说，寻找一种方法，只需10%的工作/努力/时间就能完成你想要的90%。如果你努力寻找，几乎总能找到一个90/10的解决方案。最重要的是，立即可用的90%解决方案比需要很长时间构建的100%解决方案要好得多。
As companies begin to grow there are often tons of potential distractions. Conferences, dinners, meeting with venture capitalists or large company corporate development types (Don’t Talk to Corp Dev by Paul Graham2), chasing after press coverage and so on. (YC co-founder Jessica Livingston created a pretty comprehensive list of the wrong things on which to focus [How Not To Fail by Jessica Livingston 3.]) We always remind founders not to lose sight that the most important tasks for an early stage company are to write code and talk to users. For any company, software or otherwise, this means that in order to make something people want: you must launch something, talk to your users to see if it serves their needs, and then take their feedback and iterate. These tasks should occupy almost all of your time/focus. For great companies this cycle never ends. Similarly, as your company evolves there will be many times where founders are forced to choose between multiple directions for their company. Sam Altman always points out that it is nearly always better to take the more ambitious path. It is actually extraordinary how often founders manage to avoid tackling these sorts of problems and focus on other things. Sam calls this “fake work”, because it tends to be more fun than real work (The Post YC Slump by Sam Altman4).
随着公司开始成长，往往会有大量潜在的干扰。会议、晚宴、与风险投资家或大公司企业发展类型的会面、追逐媒体报道等等。我们总是提醒创始人不要忘记，早期公司的最重要任务是编写代码和与用户交谈。对于任何公司，无论是软件公司还是其他公司，这意味着为了做出人们想要的东西：你必须推出一些东西，与用户交谈，看看它是否满足他们的需求，然后根据他们的反馈进行迭代。这些任务应该占据你几乎所有的时间/精力。对于伟大的公司，这个循环永远不会结束。同样，随着公司的发展，创始人将多次被迫在公司多个方向之间做出选择。 Sam Altman 总是指出，几乎总是选择更有雄心的道路更好。实际上，创始人经常避免解决这些问题而专注于其他事情是非常不寻常的。 Sam 称之为“假工作”，因为它往往比真正的工作更有趣。
When it comes to customers most founders don’t realize that they get to choose customers as much as customers get to choose them. We often say that a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you. In other words, recruiting 10 customers who have a burning problem is much better than 1000 customers who have a passing annoyance. It is easy to make mistakes when choosing your customers so sometimes it’s also critical for startups to fire their customers5. Some customers can cost way more than they provide in either revenue or learning. For example, Justin.tv/Twitch only became a breakout success when they focused their efforts toward video game broadcasters and away from people trying to stream copy written content (Users You Don’t Want by Michael Seibel5.)
谈到客户时，大多数创始人没有意识到他们选择客户的权利与客户选择他们的权利一样多。我们经常说，一小群热爱你的客户比一大群有点喜欢你的客户要好。换句话说，招募10个有迫切问题的客户比招募1000个有轻微烦恼的客户要好得多。在选择客户时很容易犯错误，因此有时初创公司解雇客户也很重要。有些客户的成本远远超过他们在收入或学习方面提供的价值。例如， Justin.tv/Twitch 只有在他们将精力集中在视频游戏主播上，而不是试图流媒体播放受版权保护的内容时，才取得了突破性的成功。
Growth is always a focus for startups, since a startup without growth is usually a failure. However, how and when to grow is often misunderstood. YC is sometimes criticised for pushing companies to grow at all costs, but in fact we push companies to talk to their users, build what they want, and iterate quickly. Growth is a natural result of doing these three things successfully. Yet, growth is not always the right choice. If you have not yet made something your customers want – in other words, have found product market fit, it makes little sense to grow (The Real Product Market Fit by Michael Seibel6). Poor retention is always the result. Also, if you have an unprofitable product, growth merely drains cash from the company. As PB likes to say, it never makes sense to take 80 cents from a customer and then hand them a dollar back. The fact that unit economics really matter shouldn’t come as a surprise, but too many startups seem to forget this basic fact (Unit Economics by Sam Altman7).
增长始终是初创公司的重点，因为没有增长的初创公司通常是失败的。然而，如何以及何时增长往往被误解。 YC 有时被批评为不惜一切代价推动公司增长，但实际上我们推动公司与用户交谈，构建他们想要的东西，并快速迭代。增长是成功完成这三件事的自然结果。然而，增长并不总是正确的选择。如果你还没有做出客户想要的东西——换句话说，还没有找到产品市场契合点，那么增长就没有意义。结果总是保留率差。此外，如果你有一个不盈利的产品，增长只会消耗公司的现金。正如 PB 所说，从客户那里拿80美分然后还给他们1美元是没有意义的。单位经济学确实很重要这一事实不应该令人惊讶，但太多初创公司似乎忘记了这一基本事实。
Startup founders’ intuition will always be to do more whereas usually the best strategy is almost always to do less, really well. For example, founders are frequently tempted to chase big deals with large companies which represent amazing, company validating relationships. However, deals between large companies and tiny startups seldom end well for the startup. They take too long, cost too much, and often fail completely. One of the hardest things about doing a startup is choosing what to do, since you will always have an infinite list of things that could be done (Startup Priorities by Geoff Ralston8). It is vital that very early a startup choose the one or two key metrics it will use to measure success, then founders should choose what to do based nearly exclusively on how the task will impact those metrics. When your early stage product isn’t working it’s often tempting to immediately build new features in order to solve every problem the customer seems to have instead of talking to the customer and focusing only on the most acute problem they have.
初创公司创始人的直觉总是做更多的事情，而通常最好的策略几乎总是做更少的事情，并且做得很好。例如，创始人经常被诱惑去追逐与大公司的大交易，这代表了惊人的、公司验证的关系。然而，大公司和小初创公司之间的交易很少对初创公司有好结果。它们花费太长时间，成本太高，往往完全失败。做初创公司最难的事情之一是选择做什么，因为你总是有一个无限的待办事项清单。初创公司在早期选择一个或两个关键指标来衡量成功是至关重要的，然后创始人应该几乎完全根据任务如何影响这些指标来选择做什么。当你的早期产品不起作用时，通常很容易立即构建新功能以解决客户似乎遇到的每个问题，而不是与客户交谈并仅关注他们最急迫的问题。
Founders often find it surprising to hear that they shouldn’t worry if their company seems badly broken. It turns out that nearly every startup has deep, fundamental issues, even those that will end up being billion dollar companies. Success is not determined by whether you are broken at the beginning, but rather what the founders do about the inevitable problems. Your job as a founder will often seem to be continuously righting a capsized ship. This is normal.
创始人经常会惊讶地听到他们不应该担心他们的公司似乎严重破碎。事实证明，几乎每个初创公司都有深层次的、根本性的问题，即使那些最终会成为十亿美元公司的公司也是如此。成功不是由你在开始时是否破碎决定的，而是由创始人如何处理不可避免的问题决定的。作为创始人，你的工作往往似乎是在不断纠正倾覆的船。这是正常的。
It is very difficult as a new startup founder not to obsess about competition, actual and potential. It turns out that spending any time worrying about your competitors is nearly always a very bad idea. We like to say that startup companies always die of suicide not murder. There will come a time when competitive dynamics are intensely important to the success or failure of your company, but it is highly unlikely to be true in the first year or two.
作为一个新的初创公司创始人，很难不痴迷于实际和潜在的竞争。事实证明，花任何时间担心你的竞争对手几乎总是一个非常糟糕的主意。我们喜欢说，初创公司总是死于自杀而不是他杀。会有一个时候，竞争动态对你公司成败至关重要，但在头一两年内这种情况极不可能发生。
A few words on fundraising (A Guide to Seed Fundraising by Geoff Ralston9). The first, best bit of advice is to raise money as quickly as possible and then get back to work. It is often easy to actually see when a company is fundraising by looking at their growth curve and when it flattens out they are raising money. Equally important is to understand that valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success (Fundraising Rounds are not Milestones by Michael Seibel10). Some of Y Combinator’s very best companies raised on tiny initial valuations (Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch, are all good examples). By the way, it is vital to remember that the money you raise IS NOT your money. You have a fiduciary and ethical/moral duty to spend the money only to improve the prospects of your company.
关于筹资的几点建议。首先，最好的建议是尽快筹集资金，然后回到工作中。通过查看公司的增长曲线，通常很容易看到公司何时在筹资，当它趋于平缓时，他们正在筹资。同样重要的是要理解，估值不等于成功，甚至不等于成功的可能性。 Y Combinator 的一些最好的公司在初始估值很低的情况下筹集资金（ Airbnb 、 Dropbox 、 Twitch 都是很好的例子）。顺便说一句，记住你筹集的资金不是你的钱是至关重要的。你有受托责任和道德/伦理责任，只能将资金用于改善公司前景。
It is also important to stay sane during the inevitable craziness of startup life. So we always tell founders to make sure they take breaks, spend time with friends and family, get enough sleep and exercise in between bouts of extraordinarily intense, focused work. Lastly, a brief word on failure. It turns out most companies fail fast because founders fall out. The relationships with your cofounders matter more than you think and open, honest communications between founders makes future debacles much less likely. In fact, it turns out that one of the best things you can do to make your startup successful, in fact, to be successful in life, is to simply be nice (Mean People Fail by Paul Graham11.)
在初创公司生活中不可避免的疯狂中保持理智也很重要。因此，我们总是告诉创始人确保他们休息，花时间与朋友和家人在一起，在极其紧张、专注的工作之间获得足够的睡眠和锻炼。最后，简要谈谈失败。事实证明，大多数公司快速失败是因为创始人分道扬镳。与联合创始人的关系比你想象的更重要，创始人之间的开放、诚实的沟通使未来的灾难性事件不太可能发生。事实上，事实证明，你能做的最好的事情之一，使你的初创公司成功，实际上，在生活中取得成功，就是简单地友好。
The Pocket Guide of Essential YC Advice
- Launch now - 立即启动
- Build something people want - 打造人们需要的东西
- Do things that don’t scale - 做一些无法扩展的事情
- Find the 90 / 10 solution - 找到90%问题与10%解决方案的平衡
- Find 10-100 customers who love your product - 找到10到100个热爱你产品的客户
- All startups are badly broken at some point - 所有初创公司在某个时刻都会遇到严重问题
- Write code - talk to users - 编写代码 - 与用户交流
- “It’s not your money” - “这不是你的钱”
- Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor - 成长是优秀产品的自然结果，而非先决条件
- Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want - 在你打造出人们需要的东西之前，不要扩展你的团队或产品
- Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success - 估值不等于成功，甚至不等于成功的可能性
- Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can - 如果可以的话，避免与大客户进行长时间的谈判
- Avoid big company corporate development queries - they will only waste time - 避免与大公司进行企业开发咨询 - 他们只会浪费时间
- Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers - 除非参加展会是获取客户的最佳方式，否则避免参加
- Pre-product market fit - do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble - 在产品市场契合之前 - 做一些无法扩展的事情：保持小规模和灵活性
- Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time - 初创公司在任何时候只能很好地解决一个问题
- Founder relationships matter more than you think - 创始人之间的关系比你想象的更重要
- Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you) - 有时你需要“开除”你的客户（他们可能会毁了你）
- Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder - 忽略你的竞争对手，你更可能死于自杀而非他杀
- Most companies don’t die because they run out of money - 大多数公司并非因为资金耗尽而倒闭
- Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk - 要友好！或者至少不要成为一个混蛋
- Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself - 睡觉和锻炼 - 照顾好自己