如何赚取10亿美元

Since this is apparently the future prime ministers' club, I'm going to tell you about something it would be good if more politicians understood: I'm going to tell you how people become billionaires. I hope this will be useful to you even if you don't plan to go into politics. Those of you who don't become prime minister can become billionaires instead.

既然这里显然是一个“未来首相俱乐部”，那我就来讲一件我希望更多政治家能够理解的事情：人究竟是怎么成为亿万富翁的。即使你们将来不打算从政，我也希望这对你们有所帮助。那些最后没能当上首相的人，还可以改行去当亿万富翁。

The reason I know about this topic is that 21 years ago Jessica and I started something called Y Combinator. If you haven't heard of Y Combinator, it's a cross between an investment firm and a school for startup founders. Since we started it in 2005 we've funded about 6500 companies.

我之所以对这个话题有所了解，是因为21年前，我和 Jessica 创办了一个叫 Y Combinator 的东西。如果你没听说过 Y Combinator，可以把它理解成一家投资机构和一所创业者学校的结合体。自从我们2005年创办它以来，已经投资了大约6500家公司。

Starting a successful startup is the most common way to become a billionaire, so in effect I've spent the last 21 years training people to become billionaires. So far about 30 of them have, but there are many more in the pipeline.

创办一家成功的初创公司，是成为亿万富翁最常见的方式。所以从某种意义上说，过去21年，我一直在训练别人如何成为亿万富翁。目前大约已经有30个人做到了，而且后面还有很多人正在路上。

So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible.

所以你们可以想象，上个月当我听到一位美国政治家说“一个人不可能挣到十亿美元”时，我有多么惊讶。那感觉就像一个花样滑冰教练听到有人说“三周半跳是不可能完成的”。当然可以完成。很难，但完全可能。

She wasn't saying, of course, that it's impossible to become a billionaire. Obviously that's possible. Nor was she talking about the distinction between income and capital gains. She wasn't making a point about accounting. What she meant was that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way.

当然，她并不是说“成为亿万富翁”这件事本身不可能，显然这是可能的。她也不是在讨论收入和资本利得之间的区别，更不是在谈什么会计问题。她真正想表达的是：一个人不可能在不做坏事的情况下变得那么有钱——换句话说，你一定得通过某种方式作弊。

A couple days later I was talking to the founder of a startup I'd funded. I began by asking, as I usually do when I meet a founder, what her growth rate was. 93% last month, she said. I pointed out that this meant her net worth was also growing at 93% a month. She was getting richer at a stupendously rapid rate. And yet she hadn't been doing anything bad. The reason her startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong that politician was. She wasn't exploiting anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy, and as a result the users had been telling their friends. And that gets you exponential growth.

几天后，我和一个我投资过的创业公司创始人聊天。像我每次见创业者时一样，我一开口就问她：你的增长率是多少？她说，上个月增长了93%。我告诉她，这意味着她的净资产差不多也在以每月93%的速度增长。她正在以一个惊人的速度变得越来越富有。但她根本没有做任何坏事。她的公司之所以增长这么快，原因非常简单：用户真的很喜欢她做出来的东西。所以，仅仅从自己的亲身经历，她就能感受到那位政治家的说法错得有多离谱。她没有剥削任何人。事实上，恰恰相反。她的公司增长得这么快，是因为她和联合创始人拼了命地工作，努力让用户满意。于是用户开始主动把产品推荐给自己的朋友。而这，就会产生指数级增长。

Later that day I was talking about her case online, and someone replied that having a few million and growing at 93% a month was radically different from being a billionaire.

当天晚些时候，我在网上讲到她的例子，有人回复说：手里只有几百万美元，即使每个月增长93%，和成为亿万富翁也完全是两回事。

I suspect many people would agree with this statement. But it turns out not merely to be false, but false in a very illuminating way.

我猜很多人都会赞同这个说法。但事实上，这句话不仅是错的，而且它错得非常有启发性。

So I would like you all to do me a favor please. I would like you to take out your phones and calculate a number. I know this may seem contrived, but I promise it will be useful for you. I'm going to have you do the most common kind of calculation I do as an investor, and the experience will bring home to you what startups are all about.

所以我想请大家帮我一个忙。请你们把手机拿出来，算一个数字。我知道这样做可能显得有点刻意，但我保证，这个计算对你们很有用。我要让你们亲自做一次我作为投资人最常做的计算。而当你们自己算过以后，你们会真正理解，初创公司究竟是怎么回事。

If we interpret his statement in the most conservative way and assume that a few means 2, her company has to grow 500x for her to become a billionaire. So we are going to calculate how many months of 93% growth it takes for something to grow 500x.

如果我们按照最保守的方式理解那个人的话，假设“几百万”就是200万美元，那么她的公司只需要增长500倍，她就会成为亿万富翁。所以接下来我们算一下：如果每个月增长93%，要多少个月才能增长500倍？

To do this we want to calculate the log base 1.93 of 500. The easiest way to do that is to go to Google search, which lets you do calculations right in the search box. So go to Google search and type log(500, 1.93). If you typed that right, the answer you get is about 9.45.

我们需要计算以1.93为底、500的对数。最简单的方法就是打开 Google，因为你可以直接在搜索框里做计算。在 Google 里输入：log(500, 1.93)如果输入正确，你得到的答案大约是9.45。

That is how many months of 93% growth it takes to become a billionaire, starting from 2 million. A couple million and 93% growth are not, in fact, radically different from a billion. They're nine and a half months apart.

这就是从200万美元开始，以每月93%的速度增长，达到10亿美元所需要的时间。所以，“几百万美元并且每月增长93%”和“十亿美元”，其实根本没有那么遥远。它们之间只差九个半月。

Now you see why, when I meet a founder, the first thing I ask about is their growth rate.

现在你们应该明白了，为什么我每次见到创业者，第一个问题总是：你的增长率是多少？

But I don't want anyone to accuse me of using unrealistic numbers, so let's take a more conservative growth rate. Let's see what happens at 15% a month. That's not rare at all. I constantly encounter startups growing at 15% a month.

不过，我不希望有人指责我拿一个不现实的数字来举例，所以我们换一个更保守的增长率。看看每月增长15%会发生什么。这个数字一点也不罕见。我经常遇到每个月增长15%的初创公司。

If your revenues grow at 15% a month, how much more will you be making 5 years from now? To calculate that, we need to find 1.15 to the 60th power (since 5 years is 60 months). So go to Google again and this time type 1.15^60. The answer should be about 4384. Meaning in 5 years your startup will be making 4384 times as much. If you're currently making ten thousand a month, in five years you'll be making about 44 million a month, or 526 million a year. And at that point, if you own as much of the company as founders typically do, you will be a billionaire.

假设你的收入每个月增长15%，那么五年以后，你的收入会变成现在的多少倍？要算这个数字，我们只需要算1.15的60次方，因为五年一共有60个月。所以再打开 Google，这次输入：1.15^60。答案大约是4384。也就是说，五年之后，你的创业公司每个月赚的钱会变成现在的4384倍。如果你现在每个月收入1万美元，那么五年以后，每个月大约会收入4400万美元，一年就是5.26亿美元。到了那个时候，如果你仍然持有一家创始人通常会持有的股份比例，那么你就已经是亿万富翁了。

In the real world, growth rates tend to slow down a bit. A very successful startup will probably be growing faster than 15% a month in year 1 and slower than 15% a month in year 5. But you end up in about the same place. If you start a startup in your early twenties, it's definitely possible to be a billionaire by the time you're thirty. Hard, but possible.

当然，在现实世界里，增长速度通常会逐渐下降。一家非常成功的初创公司，第一年每个月的增长率可能高于15%，到了第五年则会低于15%。但最终到达的位置差不了太多。如果你二十出头就开始创业，那么在三十岁之前成为亿万富翁，绝对是可能的。很难，但可能。

I wanted you to feel this by doing the calculation yourselves, because now you understand one of the reasons people start startups. Exponential growth is like magic. It generates outcomes that seem impossible. And that's why some politicians distrust it. They don't understand the math of exponential growth, so when they see people becoming what seems to them impossibly rich, they assume they must have cheated.

我之所以希望你们亲手把这个数字算出来，是因为这样你们才能真正感受到，人们为什么会去创业。指数增长就像魔法一样。它能够创造出一些看起来根本不可能出现的结果。这也正是为什么有些政治家会对这种财富抱有怀疑。他们不理解指数增长背后的数学，所以当他们看到有人变得富有到超出他们想象时，就会自然地认定：这个人一定作弊了。

But now you at least understand, from having done the math yourselves, that you don't have to cheat to become a billionaire. You've seen for yourselves that there are only two numbers in the calculation, the growth rate and how long it continues. If it's impossible to make a billion dollars without cheating, which of those two numbers is impossible? It's certainly not impossible to grow at 15% a month without cheating. Startups do that all the time. And how long you can continue to grow at that rate depends on the size of the market. Obviously for you to grow 4000x, there has to be at least 4000x more demand. But that's all you need. And how could you possibly cheat to increase the market size?

但现在，至少你们已经亲手算过了，所以你们知道：成为亿万富翁，并不需要作弊。整个计算里其实只有两个数字：增长率，以及这个增长率能够持续多久。如果“不作弊就不可能挣到十亿美元”，那么请问，这两个数字里到底是哪一个不可能？显然，不作弊的情况下做到每个月增长15%，完全是可能的。创业公司一直都在做到。至于这个增长率能够持续多久，则取决于市场有多大。很明显，如果你想增长4000倍，那么市场里至少得存在4000倍于现在的需求。但你需要的也仅仅是这些。而你又怎么可能通过“作弊”，把整个市场的需求规模凭空变大呢？

If you're only planning to become prime minister, you can stop paying attention now. We've proved that it is in fact possible to earn a billion dollars, because it only depends on two numbers, one of which startups routinely hit without cheating, and another that cheating couldn't possibly affect.

如果你只是打算以后去当首相，那么从现在开始，你其实可以不用认真听了。我们已经证明，一个人确实有可能挣到十亿美元。因为这件事只取决于两个数字：其中一个，创业公司在不作弊的情况下经常能够达到；另一个，则根本不可能通过作弊来改变。

But if you actually want to become a billionaire, we should go into more detail. Especially about that first number, the growth rate. To grow at a consistent rate every month, you have to make something so good that people tell their friends about it. And in fact that's the other reason I always begin by asking founders their growth rate. It shows whether they've built the right thing.

但如果你是真的想成为亿万富翁，那我们就得再深入一点。尤其是第一个数字：增长率。如果你想让一家公司每个月都以一个稳定的速度增长，你就必须做出一个好到让用户愿意主动告诉朋友的东西。事实上，这也是我为什么每次见创业者，都首先问他们增长率的另一个原因。增长率能够告诉你：他们到底有没有做出正确的东西。

So how, exactly, do you make something people like so much that they tell their friends about it? The problem with market economies, and also the great thing about market economies, is that it's hard to make something customers want that they don't already have. As soon as a new, satisfiable need is discovered, people rush to satisfy it. So you're going to have to discover a need that no one else knows about yet.

那么，到底怎样才能做出一个让用户喜欢到愿意主动推荐给朋友的东西？市场经济的问题——同时也是市场经济最厉害的地方——就在于：想找到一种“用户想要、但现在还没有”的东西，非常困难。因为一旦某个新的、能够被满足的需求被发现，人们就会立刻蜂拥而至，想办法满足它。所以，你必须找到一种别人还不知道存在的需求。

How do you do that? By feeling the need yourself.

怎么找到？你自己先感受到这个需求。

You're young, and usually young founders should make something that they themselves want. You don't have enough experience yet to know what other people need. But at the same time your own needs are uniquely valuable, because your needs predict future demand. You're the age when people start using new things. Whatever you and your friends start using now, everyone is going to be using in ten years. Since your intuitions about other people's needs are usually a crap signal, and your own needs are an especially valuable one, you should usually listen to the second signal; you should make something you and your friends want.

你们都还年轻，而年轻的创业者通常应该去做自己真正想要的东西。因为你们还没有足够的经验去判断其他人到底需要什么。但与此同时，你自己的需求又有一种独特的价值：它能够预测未来的需求。你现在正处在一个人最容易开始使用新事物的年龄。今天你和你的朋友开始使用的东西，十年以后，很可能所有人都会开始使用。既然你对“别人需要什么”的直觉通常是一个很糟糕的信号，而你自己的需求却是一个特别有价值的信号，那么一般情况下，你应该相信后者。去做一个你和你的朋友自己就想要的东西。

Making something you and your friends want doesn't mean you have to build a consumer product. Maybe you and your friends are molecular biologists, and there's something cool that could be done now to DNA that everyone else has overlooked. Maybe you and your friends are into drones. The idea doesn't have to have a wide appeal. It literally just has to appeal to you and your friends.

“做一个你和朋友想要的东西”，并不意味着你一定要开发一个面向普通消费者的产品。也许你和朋友都是分子生物学家，而现在 DNA 领域里刚好出现了一件很酷、却被所有其他人忽略的事情。也许你和朋友特别喜欢无人机。这个想法不需要一开始就对大量人群有吸引力。它真的只需要吸引你和你的朋友就够了。

Don't worry about the second number, the market size. Since you predict future demand, the market will grow. And it's always possible to expand into adjacent markets. All you need is a beachhead in the territory of unsatisfied need that you can expand from.

不要太担心第二个数字——市场规模。既然你能够预测未来需求，那么市场本身也会增长。而且你永远可以继续向相邻市场扩张。你真正需要的，只是在那片“尚未被满足的需求”领地里找到一个滩头阵地，然后从那里不断向外扩张。

How do you get an idea like that? The answer is one of the most counterintuitive things about startups — which is saying something, because there are a lot of counterintuitive things about startups. But the way to get the very best startup ideas is not to look for startup ideas. If you're consciously looking for startup ideas, it will make you too conservative. You'll lop off the outliers. Because the very best startup ideas tend to sound so lame, at first, that you'd reject them if you were consciously looking for startup ideas. That's what has prevented them from being discovered.

那么，怎样才能得到这样的创业点子？答案是创业领域里最反直觉的事情之一——这么说本身就已经很说明问题了，因为创业里反直觉的事情实在太多了。但真正找到顶级创业点子的方法，是：不要刻意去寻找创业点子。如果你有意识地坐在那里“想创业点子”，你的思维反而会变得过于保守。你会自动把那些离群值删掉。因为最好的创业点子，最开始往往听起来蠢得要命。如果你当时正处于“我要找一个创业项目”的模式里，你很可能会直接把它否掉。而这恰恰就是为什么它们此前一直没有被发现。

Imagine what a bad idea Apple or Facebook or Airbnb seemed at first. How many people are going to want their own computers? How is a company going to make money from undergrads stalking one another online? Who's going to pay to sleep on an airbed on someone's floor? We know how these ideas turned out, so it's easy to rewrite history, but I remember very well how bad Facebook and Airbnb sounded at first. We funded Airbnb, and we thought the idea was bad. The reason we funded them was just that we liked the founders.

想想看，Apple、Facebook 或 Airbnb 最开始听起来有多像坏点子。会有多少人想拥有一台属于自己的电脑？一家公司怎么可能靠大学生在网上互相“偷窥”赚钱？谁会愿意付钱，跑到陌生人家里的地板上睡一张充气床垫？现在我们已经知道这些公司的结局，所以人们很容易重新改写历史，把它们描述成“显而易见的好点子”。但我非常清楚地记得，Facebook 和 Airbnb 当初听起来有多糟糕。我们当年投资了 Airbnb，但我们其实觉得这个点子不怎么样。之所以还是投了，只是因为我们喜欢那几个创始人。

So how do you find startup ideas without looking for them? By working on projects with your friends. That's where the very best startups come from. Initially they're not even meant to be companies. They're just something people built because they thought it would be cool. That's how Apple and Google and Facebook all started. None of them were meant to be companies at first.

那么，如果不能刻意寻找创业点子，又该怎么找到它们？答案是：和你的朋友一起做项目。最优秀的初创公司，往往就是从这里诞生的。最开始，它们甚至根本没打算成为一家公司。人们只是觉得：“做出这个东西应该挺酷的。”于是就动手做了。Apple、Google 和 Facebook 都是这么开始的。一开始，它们没有一个是奔着“成立一家公司”去的。

The reason this works is what I told you earlier: you predict future demand. So if you just build random stuff you think would be cool, the things you build will actually be far from random.

这种方法之所以有效，原因就是我之前说过的：你能够预测未来的需求。所以，即使你只是随手去做一些“自己觉得很酷”的东西，你最终做出来的东西，其实远远没有你想象中那么随机。

This is one of those cases where your unconscious mind knows more than your conscious mind does. Anything that genuinely seems to you like it would be a cool thing to build has a high probability of leading to a good startup idea, no matter how preposterous it sounds. Whatever you build couldn't possibly sound more preposterous than a startup we funded in 2006 called Justin.TV. It consisted of one guy, Justin Kan, walking around with a camera on the side of his head, live streaming everything that happened to him. But this company ended up doing quite well. In fact you've probably heard of it, but under its new name, Twitch.

在这种事情上，你的潜意识往往比你的意识知道得更多。任何一个让你真心觉得“把这个东西做出来一定很酷”的项目，不管听起来有多荒唐，都很有可能最终把你带向一个优秀的创业点子。而且不管你做出来的东西听起来多离谱，都不太可能比我们2006年投资的一家创业公司更离谱。它叫 Justin.TV。

整个产品最开始基本就是一个叫 Justin Kan 的家伙，脑袋旁边架着一台摄像机，走到哪儿拍到哪儿，把自己生活里发生的一切实时直播到网上。但这家公司最后发展得相当不错。事实上，你们大概都听说过它。只不过现在它换了一个名字：Twitch。

The key to starting a successful startup is to understand some group of users so well that you can make exactly what they want. If you're young you can, and should, use the hack of making something for yourself. You understand yourself. But this is just an instance of the more general rule. Only by understanding users very deeply can you make something they love so much that they tell their friends about it, and only that can get you the exponential growth you need to make a startup really successful.

创办一家成功的初创公司，关键在于：你必须深刻理解某一群用户，深刻到能够准确做出他们真正想要的东西。如果你还年轻，你可以——而且应该——利用一个捷径：给自己做东西。因为至少你了解自己。但这其实只是一个更普遍原则的特殊情况。只有真正深入地理解用户，你才有可能做出一个让他们喜欢到主动告诉朋友的产品。而只有做到这一点，你才能获得一家真正成功的初创公司所需要的指数级增长。

There are other ways to get rich than by starting startups. Some of those do require you to exploit people. But startups are the most common way to become really rich, and if you want to start a successful startup, the key is not exploitation but empathy. What do users really want? What could you do for them that would make their lives dramatically better? That kind of empathy is what we look for in founders, and what we cultivate in the ones we accept.

除了创业，当然还有其他变富的方法。其中一些方式，的确需要你去剥削别人。但创业是一个人真正变得非常富有最常见的方式。而如果你想创办一家成功的初创公司，真正的关键不是剥削，而是共情。用户真正想要什么？你能为他们做什么，让他们的生活发生巨大的改善？这种共情能力，正是我们在寻找创业者时最看重的品质之一，也是我们会在被 YC 录取的创始人身上不断培养的东西。

How people become rich in your society is one of the most important things to understand about it. You can't let your beliefs about this be determined by ideology, or movies, or historical examples that are centuries old. You must look at the world around you and see how it's actually done. If you want to do it yourself, obviously you'll be forced to understand how it's done. So I don't worry too much about you. The ones I worry about are the future prime ministers. You need to remember this talk. So for you I'm going to summarize the key ideas.

一个社会里的人究竟是如何变富的，是理解这个社会最重要的问题之一。你不能让自己对这件事的认知，由某种意识形态、电影，或者几百年前的历史案例来决定。你必须真正观察自己身边的世界，看看财富在现实中究竟是怎样创造出来的。如果你自己想变得富有，那倒不用太担心，因为现实会逼着你去理解它。所以我其实并不太担心你们这些未来想创业的人。我更担心的是你们当中那些未来要当首相的人。你们得记住今天这场演讲。所以最后，我专门为你们总结一下最重要的几个观点。

There are two numbers that determine how big a startup gets, and thus how rich its founders become: the growth rate and how long it continues. You get the first by making something users like so much they tell their friends. You get the second by being in a big market. If you grow exponentially into a big market, your startup will become valuable, and you, as a shareholder, will become rich. You not only don't have to cheat to make this happen, it will happen automatically if you just keep making customers happy.

决定一家初创公司最终能够长多大，以及它的创始人最终能够变得多有钱的，其实只有两个数字：增长率，以及这个增长能够持续多久。第一个数字，来自你做出一个用户喜欢到愿意主动推荐给朋友的产品。第二个数字，来自你身处一个足够大的市场。如果你能够在一个巨大的市场里保持指数级增长，那么你的公司自然会变得越来越值钱，而你作为公司的股东，也自然会变得越来越富有。要做到这一切，你不仅完全不需要作弊。事实上，只要你不断让自己的客户满意，这一切就会自然而然地发生。