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October 2015
2015 年 10 月
When I talk to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first thing I want to know is almost always the same. Assuming their expenses remain constant and their revenue growth is what it has been over the last several months, do they make it to profitability on the money they have left? Or to put it more dramatically, by default do they live or die?
当我与一家已经运营超过 8 或 9 个月的初创公司交谈时，我几乎总是想知道的第一件事情是一样的。假设他们的支出保持不变，而他们的收入增长与过去几个月的情况相同，他们还能否凭剩下的资金实现盈利？或者更戏剧化地说，按默认情况他们是生存还是灭亡？
The startling thing is how often the founders themselves don't know. Half the founders I talk to don't know whether they're default alive or default dead.
令人震惊的是，创始人们自己经常不知道。我与一半的创始人交谈时，他们不知道自己是默认活着还是默认死亡。
If you're among that number, Trevor Blackwell has made a handy calculator you can use to find out.
如果你是其中之一，Trevor Blackwell 制作了一个方便的计算器，你可以用来查找。
The reason I want to know first whether a startup is default alive or default dead is that the rest of the conversation depends on the answer. If the company is default alive, we can talk about ambitious new things they could do. If it's default dead, we probably need to talk about how to save it. We know the current trajectory ends badly. How can they get off that trajectory?
我想首先了解一家初创公司是默认存活还是默认倒闭的原因是，接下来的对话取决于答案。如果公司是默认存活的，我们可以谈论他们可以做的雄心勃勃的新事物。如果它是默认倒闭的，我们可能需要讨论如何拯救它。我们知道当前的轨迹会以糟糕的方式结束。他们如何才能摆脱这种轨迹？
Why do so few founders know whether they're default alive or default dead? Mainly, I think, because they're not used to asking that. It's not a question that makes sense to ask early on, any more than it makes sense to ask a 3 year old how he plans to support himself. But as the company grows older, the question switches from meaningless to critical. That kind of switch often takes people by surprise.
为什么很少有创始人知道他们是默认活着还是默认死亡？主要是因为他们不习惯问这个问题。这不是一个早期就有意义问的问题，就像问一个 3 岁的孩子他打算如何养活自己一样没有意义。但随着公司变老，这个问题从毫无意义变得至关重要。这种转变经常让人措手不及。
I propose the following solution: instead of starting to ask too late whether you're default alive or default dead, start asking too early. It's hard to say precisely when the question switches polarity. But it's probably not that dangerous to start worrying too early that you're default dead, whereas it's very dangerous to start worrying too late.
我提出以下解决方案：与其在太晚的时候开始询问你是默认活着还是默认死了，不如早点开始询问。很难准确地说问题何时转变极性。但很可能早点担心自己是默认死了并不那么危险，而晚点开始担心则非常危险。
The reason is a phenomenon I wrote about earlier: the fatal pinch. The fatal pinch is default dead + slow growth + not enough time to fix it. And the way founders end up in it is by not realizing that's where they're headed.
原因是我之前写过的一个现象：致命的困境。致命的困境是默认死亡+缓慢增长+没有足够的时间来解决它。创始人最终陷入其中的方式是没有意识到他们正朝着那个方向前进。
There is another reason founders don't ask themselves whether they're default alive or default dead: they assume it will be easy to raise more money. But that assumption is often false, and worse still, the more you depend on it, the falser it becomes.
创始人们不会问自己是默认活着还是默认死去的另一个原因是：他们认为筹集更多资金会很容易。但这种假设通常是错误的，更糟糕的是，你越依赖这种假设，它就越不真实。
Maybe it will help to separate facts from hopes. Instead of thinking of the future with vague optimism, explicitly separate the components. Say "We're default dead, but we're counting on investors to save us." Maybe as you say that, it will set off the same alarms in your head that it does in mine. And if you set off the alarms sufficiently early, you may be able to avoid the fatal pinch.
也许将事实与希望分开会有所帮助。与其带着模糊的乐观主义思考未来，明确地分开各个组成部分。说“我们本来注定要倒闭，但我们指望投资者来拯救我们。”也许当你说这句话时，会在你的脑海中引发与我相同的警报。如果你能够及早引发这些警报，也许就能避免致命的困境。
It would be safe to be default dead if you could count on investors saving you. As a rule their interest is a function of growth. If you have steep revenue growth, say over 5x a year, you can start to count on investors being interested even if you're not profitable. [1] But investors are so fickle that you can never do more than start to count on them. Sometimes something about your business will spook investors even if your growth is great. So no matter how good your growth is, you can never safely treat fundraising as more than a plan A. You should always have a plan B as well: you should know (as in write down) precisely what you'll need to do to survive if you can't raise more money, and precisely when you'll have to switch to plan B if plan A isn't working.
如果你能指望投资者拯救你，那么默认死亡将是安全的。通常，他们的兴趣是与增长相关的。如果你有急剧的收入增长，比如每年超过 5 倍，即使你没有盈利，你也可以开始指望投资者感兴趣。但投资者是如此善变，以至于你永远不能做更多的事情，只能开始依赖他们。有时，即使你的增长很好，你的业务也会让投资者感到不安。所以，无论你的增长有多好，你都不能安全地将筹款视为不超过计划 A。你应该始终有一个计划 B：你应该知道（写下来）如果无法筹集更多资金，你将需要做什么才能生存，以及如果计划 A 不起作用，你将何时转向计划 B。
In any case, growing fast versus operating cheaply is far from the sharp dichotomy many founders assume it to be. In practice there is surprisingly little connection between how much a startup spends and how fast it grows. When a startup grows fast, it's usually because the product hits a nerve, in the sense of hitting some big need straight on. When a startup spends a lot, it's usually because the product is expensive to develop or sell, or simply because they're wasteful.
无论如何，快速增长与低成本运营远非许多创始人所认为的尖锐对立。实际上，创业公司的支出与增长速度之间的联系非常微弱。当一家创业公司增长迅速时，通常是因为产品触及了某种重大需求。当一家创业公司支出很多时，通常是因为产品开发或销售成本高，或者仅仅是因为它们浪费。
If you're paying attention, you'll be asking at this point not just how to avoid the fatal pinch, but how to avoid being default dead. That one is easy: don't hire too fast. Hiring too fast is by far the biggest killer of startups that raise money. [2]
如果你在关注的话，你现在应该不仅仅是在问如何避免致命的困境，而是如何避免陷入默认的死亡。这个很简单：不要过快地雇佣人。过快地雇佣人是那些筹集资金的初创公司最大的杀手。
Founders tell themselves they need to hire in order to grow. But most err on the side of overestimating this need rather than underestimating it. Why? Partly because there's so much work to do. Naive founders think that if they can just hire enough people, it will all get done. Partly because successful startups have lots of employees, so it seems like that's what one does in order to be successful. In fact the large staffs of successful startups are probably more the effect of growth than the cause. And partly because when founders have slow growth they don't want to face what is usually the real reason: the product is not appealing enough.
创始人告诉自己他们需要招人才能实现增长。但大多数人往往高估了这种需求，而不是低估。为什么呢？部分原因是因为有太多工作要做。天真的创始人认为，只要能招到足够多的人，所有事情就都能完成。部分原因是因为成功的初创公司有很多员工，所以似乎这就是成功的做法。事实上，成功初创公司的大量员工可能更多是增长的结果，而不是原因。还有部分原因是，当创始人面临增长缓慢时，他们不愿面对通常的真正原因：产品吸引力不够。
Plus founders who've just raised money are often encouraged to overhire by the VCs who funded them. Kill-or-cure strategies are optimal for VCs because they're protected by the portfolio effect. VCs want to blow you up, in one sense of the phrase or the other. But as a founder your incentives are different. You want above all to survive. [3]
刚刚筹集到资金的创始人经常被资助他们的风险投资者鼓励过度雇佣。杀鸡取卵的策略对风险投资者来说是最佳选择，因为他们受到投资组合效应的保护。在某种意义上，风险投资者希望让你破产。但作为创始人，你的激励是不同的。最重要的是你想要生存。
Here's a common way startups die. They make something moderately appealing and have decent initial growth. They raise their first round fairly easily, because the founders seem smart and the idea sounds plausible. But because the product is only moderately appealing, growth is ok but not great. The founders convince themselves that hiring a bunch of people is the way to boost growth. Their investors agree. But (because the product is only moderately appealing) the growth never comes. Now they're rapidly running out of runway. They hope further investment will save them. But because they have high expenses and slow growth, they're now unappealing to investors. They're unable to raise more, and the company dies.
这是初创公司常见的死亡方式。他们制造了一些适度吸引人的东西，并且有相当不错的初期增长。他们第一轮融资相当容易，因为创始人看起来很聪明，想法听起来也很有道理。但是因为产品只是适度吸引人，增长还可以但并不是很好。创始人们说服自己，雇佣一群人是促进增长的方法。他们的投资者同意。但是（因为产品只是适度吸引人），增长从未到来。现在他们的资金快要用完了。他们希望进一步的投资能够拯救他们。但是因为他们的开支很高，增长缓慢，现在对投资者不再吸引人。他们无法再筹集到更多资金，公司就这样倒闭了。
What the company should have done is address the fundamental problem: that the product is only moderately appealing. Hiring people is rarely the way to fix that. More often than not it makes it harder. At this early stage, the product needs to evolve more than to be "built out," and that's usually easier with fewer people. [4]
公司应该做的是解决根本问题：产品只是有些吸引力。雇人很少是解决问题的方法。往往情况更加困难。在这个早期阶段，产品需要更多地发展而不是“建设完整”，而这通常更容易做到少人。
Asking whether you're default alive or default dead may save you from this. Maybe the alarm bells it sets off will counteract the forces that push you to overhire. Instead you'll be compelled to seek growth in other ways. For example, by doing things that don't scale, or by redesigning the product in the way only founders can. And for many if not most startups, these paths to growth will be the ones that actually work.
询问你是默认活着还是默认死去可能会拯救你脱离困境。也许它引发的警钟声会抵消推动你过度雇佣的力量。相反，你将被迫寻求其他方式的增长。例如，通过做一些不可扩展的事情，或者通过以创始人独有的方式重新设计产品。对于许多初创企业，如果不是大多数，这些增长路径将是实际奏效的路径。
Airbnb waited 4 months after raising money at the end of Y Combinator before they hired their first employee. In the meantime the founders were terribly overworked. But they were overworked evolving Airbnb into the astonishingly successful organism it is now.
Airbnb 在 Y Combinator 结束后筹集资金 4 个月后才雇佣了第一名员工。与此同时，创始人们工作过度。但正是这种过度工作，让 Airbnb 发展成为现在如此成功的组织。
Notes 笔记
[1] Steep usage growth will also interest investors. Revenue will ultimately be a constant multiple of usage, so x% usage growth predicts x% revenue growth. But in practice investors discount merely predicted revenue, so if you're measuring usage you need a higher growth rate to impress investors.
陡峭的使用增长也会引起投资者的兴趣。收入最终将是使用量的一个恒定倍数，因此 x％的使用增长预示着 x％的收入增长。但在实践中，投资者仅对预测的收入打折，因此如果您正在衡量使用量，您需要更高的增长率来打动投资者。
[2] Startups that don't raise money are saved from hiring too fast because they can't afford to. But that doesn't mean you should avoid raising money in order to avoid this problem, any more than that total abstinence is the only way to avoid becoming an alcoholic.
不筹集资金的初创企业因为无力支付而免于过快扩张。但这并不意味着你应该避免筹集资金以避免这个问题，就像完全戒酒是避免成为酗酒者的唯一途径一样。
[3] I would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push founders to overhire is not even in their own interest. They don't know how many of the companies that get killed by overspending might have done well if they'd survived. My guess is a significant number.
如果风险投资者倾向于推动创始人过度雇佣，我不会感到惊讶，甚至这并不符合他们自身的利益。他们不知道有多少公司因为过度支出而倒闭，如果它们能够幸存下来，可能会做得很好。我猜想这个数字是相当可观的。
[4] After reading a draft, Sam Altman wrote:
阅读完草稿后，山姆·奥特曼写道：
"I think you should make the hiring point more strongly. I think it's roughly correct to say that YC's most successful companies have never been the fastest to hire, and one of the marks of a great founder is being able to resist this urge."
我认为你应该更加强调招聘的重要性。我认为大致可以说，YC 最成功的公司从来不是最快招聘的，一个伟大创始人的标志之一就是能够抵制这种冲动。Paul Buchheit adds: 保罗·布赫海特补充道：
"A related problem that I see a lot is premature scaling—founders take a small business that isn't really working (bad unit economics, typically) and then scale it up because they want impressive growth numbers. This is similar to over-hiring in that it makes the business much harder to fix once it's big, plus they are bleeding cash really fast."
我经常看到的一个相关问题是过早扩张——创始人会扩大一家实际上并不运作良好的小企业（通常是因为单位经济效益不佳），因为他们想要令人印象深刻的增长数字。这与过度招聘类似，因为一旦企业变得庞大，要修复问题就会变得更加困难，而且他们会迅速耗尽现金。
Thanks to Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Joe Gebbia, Jessica Livingston, and Geoff Ralston for reading drafts of this.
感谢 Sam Altman、Paul Buchheit、Joe Gebbia、Jessica Livingston 和 Geoff Ralston 阅读本文稿。