从无到有之路 ZT

938fg8

作者：Seth Sternberg；译者：Willow

我是那种就是不能停止创业的孩子。我想我真的害怕给别人打工。问题是，我以前在创业这件事情上似乎糟透了。屡战屡败。某些时候我会想说，“管他的，我可以拿到一份高薪工作。”问题是，我就是不能不去想那些让我兴奋得有些可笑的下一件伟大的事情。事实证明，问题并不出在我自身。相反，我身边没有足够熟悉创业的人来指出我的方法错了。

这是系列文章的第一篇。这个系列将谈论如何从一无所有——没有关系网络、没有团队，也没有成功创业的知识——到运作一个蓬勃发展的事业。我跟 Mike Arrington 提起过要在 Meebo 的博客上写这个系列文章，但他建议我写在这里。我欣然同意！在第一篇中，我能给你的最好的建议是：加入一个最好的创始团队，并让你的产品尽快走出去。然后，忘掉一切，包括风险投资，集中精力在产品建设上。

作为一名已经到创业后期的项目创始人，我常做的一件事是与还在创业初期的企业家们会面，帮助他们把公司运作起来。这样的会议十次有九次以他们要求我介绍风险投资公司结束。但是他们不知道，即使可以找到风险投资，他们也只是开始走上错误的道路。所以，我告诉他们：

在某个时间你产生了一个想法，而实际上，还有另外十个人也会有同样的想法。是大环境中的某些东西让你们这些人在这个时间点有了这个想法。竞争已经开始了！谁能先执行起来？谁的执行最好？如果你想把九个月浪费在寻找风险投资上，那好。但是六个月后，你会因为看到别人拿出的东西跟你正在向我推销的一样而哭出来。就像我说过的，忘了其他的事情吧，集中精力把产品做出来。就在现在！

不可避免的，借口出现了：我需要雇人来做产品。我不认识开发人员。我需要钱购买服务器。我想先得到在现在这个公司最后的晋升机会。

这里的难题是：在消费互联网界（经常还有企业界），如果你的创始团队不能够拿出一个产品原型出来并由博客作者来测试它并写些文章，你可能已经给自己制造了很多麻烦——你成功不了。需要证明？只要看看过去十年最成功的高科技公司：eBay、YouTube、升阳、甲骨文、苹果、思科、Facebook、雅虎和谷歌。他们共享了一些特质：他们的产品在谈论外部投资之前就发布了，他们能够做到这一点是因为他们的创始团队有能力以自己的力量做出产品的最初版本。只有 eBay 是由一个人单独完成——其余的都是靠团队努力。

有了这样的背景，让我们谈谈从一无所有到成功起步中最重要的三件事情。

首先，找到一个伟大的创始团队。一个人几乎是永远不够的。你不可能做到一切。相反，找其他一两个人组成团队，成员的能力要协同——而不是重叠——再加上你自己的能力，以及你们相似的目标和激情。我都说不清楚听到多少次由三个商学院学生组成的团队跟我说他们要做出下一个伟大的消费互联网公司。当我指出他们全是商业人士并怀疑谁来做出产品时，他们几乎都说“我们可以找几个本科生来做”，或者，“我们可以外包。”如果我听到其中任一个，我知道这个创业已经失败了。对不起，朋友们。这很残酷，但是真实。

最好的组合或许是一个热衷于屏幕上一个个像素点的工程师以及另一个潜心于如何让比特们在服务器之间飞得更快的工程师。以 Meebo 为例，我很幸运可以和 Elaine 以及 Sandy 成为伙伴。Elaine 是个 JavaScript 大师，他能很好地读出虚拟世界的显示并确保每一个像素点都在正确的位置上。Sandy 是个 C 语言书呆子，只关心效率。他们一起从无到有创造了 Meebo 的第一个版本。现在，如果你还有一个商业人士一起，那也有用。但是我告诉你，在我们发布 Meebo 之前我的全部贡献就只是让我们合作起来（解读：这很容易）以及提出诸如“按钮在那里可能会好看些”这样的建议（解读：那也没多少）。在发布之后，如果你获得了支持，那就是商业人士来帮助技术人员解除负担的时候了。商业人士可以主持所有的会议并让技术人员专注于将产品做得更好。

第二，就像我说的，忘记其他所有事情，集中于将产品做出来。没有办公室。没有电话系统。没有雇员。没有新闻报道。没有法律问题。没有筹集资金。没有寻找合作伙伴（谁又会与您合作呢？）。你的产品是成功被人接受了还是失败了将会决定你公司初始价值的99%。如果没有人使用你的产品，你没有任何价值。噢，我有记录，获得风险投资对获得用户并没有帮助——在另一篇博客中，我会论证如果有风险投资的话，它反而会造成伤害。所以，忘掉一切，集中精力——将你产品的 Alpha 版本做出来，并给朋友和家人用一用。使用一些如 www.mygreatstartup.com/shhh.html 的网址。然后，一旦你已经解决了最初的错误，并纳入一两个大家都想要的功能，就开放上线吧。记住：保持简单。最初的产品是为你自己而建的——你不知道大家想要什么功能和特性。快速而轻巧地发布，然后聆听用户的反馈。在产品中，总有要求用户反馈的办法。记住，一旦 TechCrunch 或者 GigaOm 写到了你，你很可能会由于在同一时间内突然增加的流量而当机（我们深情地将之称为“博客高峰“），然后看着流量无规律地下降。利用这一高峰，学习并改进。

最后，找到良好的导师。如果当时有人告诉我“加入一个好的始创团队，集中注意力在产品上，忘掉其他所有事情，”我可以节省很多很多时间，也会少了很多烦恼。一个好的导师最好自己就是创业圈的一员——那些对创业的注意事项有着现实认识的人。你不需要很多——开始时一两个就行了。在 Meebo 的例子中，我们的两个朋友，Todd 和 Cam，在发布前给了我们无数的建议。每次我们偏离轨道走向错误的路线，像与风险投资接触或者甚至向与某些公司合作，他们就会问，“这对能够加速你们的产品建造么？”相信我，一旦你发布产品并取得成功，你会有很多导师、风险投资、合作伙伴还有法律费用的选择。

我希望这些可以正中某些正在创业的人的需要。在后面的文章章我会开始谈论一些更细节的东西，如雇人、筹措资金、什么是有前景的想法、寻找创始人，等等。你将会在 Meebo 博客上读到他们，所以给这篇文章做个书签，Mike 说他们会加上后续文章的链接。或者，可以在 Twitter (@sethjs) 上跟随我，发布新文章时我会提及的。

938fg8

his guest post was written by Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg. It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. We’ll update this post with links to his further installments.

I was one of those kids who just couldn’t stop trying to start a company. I think I just really feared working for the Man. Problem was, I seemed to suck at the whole startup thing. Multiple attempts followed by multiple failures. At some point I just said, “screw it, I’ll get a high paying job.” Problem was, I couldn’t stop thinking of the next great thing that got me ridiculously excited. Turns out, it wasn’t so much that I was the problem. Rather, I didn’t have anyone around me familiar enough with startups to tell me that I was doing it all wrong.

This is the first post in what’s going to be a series of blogs on how to go from nothing – no connections, no team, no money and no knowledge of how the startup industry really works – to operating a growing business. I mentioned to Mike that I was going to kick this series off over on the Meebo Blog, but he suggested I start it here. Gladly! So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. Then, forget everything else, VCs included, and just build.

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Nine times out of ten, the meeting ends with them asking me for introductions to VCs. Little do they know that, even if they could raise VC, it’d start them down the wrong path. So, this is what I tell them:

At the exact moment you had your idea, ten other people had the exact same idea. There was just something in the environment that made it the right time for folks to think that one up. The race has already begun! Who’s going to execute first? Who’s going to execute best? If you want to waste nine months trying to raise VC money for that idea, great. But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Now.

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. I need money for the servers. I want to get that last promotion at my current company first!

Here’s the rub: in consumer internet (and often enterprise), if your founding team doesn’t have the chops to get a prototype of your product out and in the hands of a blogger to test and write about, you might as well save yourself a lot of pain – you’re not going anywhere. Need proof? Just look at some of the most successful tech companies in the last decade: eBay, YouTube, Sun, Oracle, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Google. All of them share a couple common traits: they launched before taking outside investment, and they were able to do it because they had a set of founders with the skills to build the initial version of the product themselves. Only eBay was founded by a single individual – the rest were team efforts.

With that background, let’s get to the three most important things you can do to go from nothing to a kicking startup.

First and foremost, find a great founding team. One person is almost never enough. You just can’t do it all. Rather, team up with one or two other people who have skills synergistic – not overlapping – with your own, but with similar goals and passions. I can’t tell you how frequently teams of three business school students tell me they’re going to start the next great consumer Internet company. When I point out that they’re all business people, and wonder who’s going to build the product, they almost always fall back on “we’ll get a couple of undergrads to do it,” or, “we’ll outsource it.” If I hear either one of those, I know the startup’s already dead. Sorry, folks. Harsh, but probably true.

The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers. In Meebo’s case, for example, I was lucky enough to partner up with Elaine and Sandy. Elaine is a JavaScript wizard who has a great visual eye and makes sure every pixel is in its place. Sandy is a straight C nerd and is all about efficiency. Together, they built the first versions of Meebo from scratch. Now, if you have a business guy along for the ride, that works too. But let me tell you, the sum total of my contribution to Meebo prior to our launch was getting us incorporated (read: easy) and suggesting that “the button might look better over there” (read: not much). Post launch, if you gain traction, is where the business person will help take the load off of the technical folks. The business person can take all the meetings while the technical folks work on making the product better.

Second, like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. No office. No phone system. No hiring. No press. No legal muck. No raising money. No looking for partnerships (who’s going to partner with you anyway?). The success or failure of the adoption of your product is what will create 99% of the initial value of your company. If no one ever uses your product, you have no value. Oh, and for the record, raising VC does not help get traction – in another blog post, I’ll argue that if anything, it hurts. So just forget everything else and focus on what matters – getting an alpha of your product out the door and into the hands of your friends and family. Use some URL like www.mygreatstartup.com/shhh.html. Then, once you’ve fixed the initial bugs and incorporated a feature or two that everyone requested, go live. Remember: keep it simple. The initial product you build is for you – you don’t know what features everyone else wants. Launch fast and light, and listen to your users for feedback. In the product, always have a way to ask for user feedback. Remember, once TechCrunch or GigaOm writes about you, you’ll most likely get crushed with a single surge of traffic (we fondly call it the “blog spike”), only to watch almost all of it flitter away. Take advantage of that surge to learn and iterate.

Finally, get good mentors. If someone had been there and just told me “join a great founding team, focus on the product, and forget everything else,” I would have saved a lot of time and heartache. A good mentor is someone who has been part of the startup community themselves – someone who has a realistic understanding of some of the basic dos and don’ts of starting up. You don’t need many – one or two to begin. In Meebo’s case, two of our friends, Todd and Cam, gave us a ton of pre-launch advice. Every time we started straying down a wrong path, like flirting with just talking to that one VC or even thinking about approaching a company about a partnership, they’d always come out with something like, “is that going to get the product out faster?” Trust me, once you’ve launched and achieved traction, you’ll have your pick of mentors, VCs, partners and all the legal expenses you need.

I hope that some of this hit home for those of you who’ve been working on your own startups. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like. You can follow them over on the Meebo Blog, so bookmark this post and Mike tells me they’ll link to subsequent posts. Alternatively, follow me on Twitter (@sethjs) where I’ll mention when I put up a new post.

民工

很好的文章啊，还是英汉互译的