How to start a startup

Should You?

But should you start a company? Are you the right sort of person to do it? If you are, is it worth it?

More people are the right sort of person to start a startup than realize it. That's the main reason I wrote this. There could be ten times more startups than there are, and that would probably be a good thing.

I was, I now realize, exactly the right sort of person to start a startup. But the idea terrified me at first. I was forced into it because I was a Lisp hacker. The company I'd been consulting for seemed to be running into trouble, and there were not a lot of other companies using Lisp. Since I couldn't bear the thought of programming in another language (this was 1995, remember, when "another language" meant C++) the only option seemed to be to start a new company using Lisp.

I realize this sounds far-fetched, but if you're a Lisp hacker you'll know what I mean. And if the idea of starting a startup frightened me so much that I only did it out of necessity, there must be a lot of people who would be good at it but who are too intimidated to try.

So who should start a startup? Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to solve the money problem in one shot instead of getting paid gradually over a conventional working life.

I can't say precisely what a good hacker is. At a first rate university this might include the top half of computer science majors. Though of course you don't have to be a CS major to be a hacker; I was a philosophy major in college.

It's hard to tell whether you're a good hacker, especially when you're young. Fortunately the process of starting startups tends to select them automatically. What drives people to start startups is (or should be) looking at existing technology and thinking, don't these guys realize they should be doing x, y, and z? And that's also a sign that one is a good hacker.

I put the lower bound at 23 not because there's something that doesn't happen to your brain till then, but because you need to see what it's like in an existing business before you try running your own. The business doesn't have to be a startup. I spent a year working for a software company to pay off my college loans. It was the worst year of my adult life, but I learned, without realizing it at the time, a lot of valuable lessons about the software business. In this case they were mostly negative lessons: don't have a lot of meetings; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have a sales guy running the company; don't make a high-end product; don't let your code get too big; don't leave finding bugs to QA people; don't go too long between releases; don't isolate developers from users; don't move from Cambridge to Route 128; and so on. [8] But negative lessons are just as valuable as positive ones. Perhaps even more valuable: it's hard to repeat a brilliant performance, but it's straightforward to avoid errors. [9]

The other reason it's hard to start a company before 23 is that people won't take you seriously. VCs won't trust you, and will try to reduce you to a mascot as a condition of funding. Customers will worry you're going to flake out and leave them stranded. Even you yourself, unless you're very unusual, will feel your age to some degree; you'll find it  to be the boss of someone much older than you, and if you're 21, hiring only people younger rather limits your options.

Some people could probably start a company at 18 if they wanted to. Bill Gates was 19 when he and Paul Allen started Microsoft. (Paul Allen was 22, though, and that probably made a difference.) So if you're thinking, I don't care what he says, I'm going to start a company now, you may be the sort of person who could get away with it.

The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One reason I put it there is that I don't think many people have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week. I don't know if I could do that now.

Also, startups are a big risk financially. If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke. By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids.

My final test may be the most restrictive. Do you actually want to start a startup? What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four. And maybe end up with nothing-- though in that case it probably won't take four years.

During this time you'll do little but work, because when you're not working, your competitors will be. My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night. I had a girlfriend for a total of two months during that three year period. Every couple weeks I would take a few hours off to visit a used bookshop or go to a friend's house for dinner. I went to visit my family twice. Otherwise I just worked.

Working was often fun, because the people I worked with were some of my best friends. Sometimes it was even technically interesting. But only about 10% of the time. The best I can say for the other 90% is that some of it is funnier in hindsight than it seemed then. Like the time the power went off in Cambridge for about six hours, and we made the mistake of trying to start a gasoline powered generator inside our offices. I won't try that again.

I don't think the amount of bullshit you have to deal with in a startup is more than you'd endure in an ordinary working life. It's probably less, in fact; it just seems like a lot because it's compressed into a short period. So mainly what a startup buys you is time. That's the way to think about it if you're trying to decide whether to start one. If you're the sort of person who would like to solve the money problem once and for all instead of working for a salary for 40 years, then a startup makes sense.

For a lot of people the conflict is between startups and graduate school. Grad students are just the age, and just the sort of people, to start software startups. You may worry that if you do you'll blow your chances of an academic career. But it's possible to be part of a startup and stay in grad school, especially at first. Two of our three original hackers were in grad school the whole time, and both got their degrees. There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating grad student.

If you do have to leave grad school, in the worst case it won't be for too long. If a startup fails, it will probably fail quickly enough that you can return to academic life. And if it succeeds, you may find you no longer have such a burning desire to be an assistant professor.

If you want to do it, do it. Starting a startup is not the great mystery it seems from outside. It's not something you have to know about "business" to do. Build something users love, and spend less than you make. How hard is that?

如何创业（五）下定决心

（接上，黑客的定义见前文）

你有决心么？

问自己以下问题。我应该创业么？我行么？值得冒这个险么？

绝大部分人比他们自己所一直以为的更适合创业这件事，这是我写这篇文章的主要原因。世界上其实有比现在创业的人数更多10倍的潜在创业者，如果他们都进入市场，一切会变得更美好。

我现在才意识到，当时我的确已经是一个很适合创业的人，虽然这个想法曾经让我感到恐惧。作为一个LISP流的黑客，我是被迫创业的，因为我原先打工的咨询公司出了麻烦，而市场上又没有多少使用LISP的公司。因为我实在不能容忍用另一种程序语言写代码（在1995年，所谓另一种语言就是C++），我不的不考虑自己创立一家使用LISP写程序的公司。

我知道这听上去有点不可思议，但如果你也是一个LISP流的黑客你就会明白我的意思了。我在只有创业这一条路的时候才选择开设自己的公司，仅仅因为这件事情本身在当时的我看来太过于困难了。有鉴于此，世上肯定还有很多适合创业的人却因为被这件事困难的外表吓阻而没有这么做。

那么谁应该自己创业呢？一个23到38岁之间，想要一口气解决财政问题而不是在打工的地方无聊地消磨时光的黑客。

我不能给出一个优秀的黑客的定义。在一家一流大学里这个词可能可以指计算机专业排名前50%的学员。但其实你不需要在大学里学计算机就可以做一个黑客，比如我在大学里学的是哲学。

在你还年轻的时候，想要搞明白自己是不是真正优秀的黑客是很困难的。幸运的是，创业的过程会自动地对你们的水平做筛选。技术人员创业的动力在于，或者应该在于以挑剔的眼光看待现存的某项技术，并且发现他们的各种缺点和解决的方法。同时这也是一个优秀黑客所应该具有的特征。

我把创业的下限定于23岁是因为在创业之前，你需要自己看一下别人如何经营他们的公司，而不是因为你的头脑如何如何不成熟。你的学习对象并不一定要选择创业公司。我用了一年时间为一家软件公司工作以偿还我的助学贷款，而这真是我成人后最糟糕的一年。不过虽然当时还没意识到，我确实在那里学到了软件生意中一些很重要的知识。某种意义上来说，那家公司完全是反面典型：没有会议；没有多人掌握的核心代码；没有专门负责销售和运营的人员；不做高端产品；不让人写太长的代码；不理会售后人员对于程序bug的意见；不仅最大努力就放弃；不从客户那里吸取教训；不把办公室从Cambridge搬到Route128，等等等等。不过反面教材和正面教材一样有效，甚至更有效。因为灵光一现的创意是很难复制的，但是避免错误却总是可能的。

另一个23岁之前很难创业的理由，是人们不会把太年轻的你当一回事。风投不会相信你的能力，他们只把你当成一个骗取投资的小丑。客户们担心你的信誉，害怕你会突然撒手不管。正常情况下，就连你自己在某些方面都会怀疑自己。雇佣一个比你年长的人是很尴尬的，而21岁就当老板的你可能只想选择21岁以下的家伙，这样当然会更难发现人才。

有些猛人乐于在18岁就开始创业。当比尔大门和保罗艾伦一起创办微软的时候，他才19岁。（Paul是22岁，所以这件事情可能不是我们所以为的那样特别。）如果你觉得，无论别人说什么，你都必须立刻开始创业，那就尝试去做吧。

另一头，我选择38岁作为创业的底线，是有很多理由的。首先是因为我觉得自己做老板所需要的体力巨大，很难想象一个将近40的人还能支持住。那时候我能够坚持每天工作到凌晨两三点，而现在我很怀疑自己的体力能不能做到。

另一方面，创业是件冒险的事情。如果你尝试去做，结果在26岁的时候破产了，那还好，许多创业者大约26岁时都破产过。不过38岁的时候，你大概就很难承受这种危险了——尤其是为了你的孩子考虑，如果你有的话。

最后一个问题可能相当沉重。你确定你真的想要自己创业么？从经济角度来考虑，你的职业生涯可能从此走到一条独木桥上。你不再有安稳地工作40年的权力了，取而代之的可能是像地狱一样艰苦的四年。甚至你还可能破产——这件事倒是不需要四年那么久。

在创业的时候，你可能几乎没有时间做工作以外的事情。因为即使在你休息的时候，你的竞争者们也在前进。我唯一的娱乐活动是跑步，因为这是我保持健康的唯一手段，另加上15分钟的睡前阅读。3年中我只有两个月的时候有一个女朋友，而每两星期我去一次二手书店或者去朋友家吃一次晚饭，每星期回父母那里一次。其它时间，全都在工作上了。

鉴于我的合作伙伴都是我的好朋友，工作还算是有趣。在10%的时间里它甚至相当让人喜爱。对于另90%的时间，我能说的只是，事后回头看看它们，还挺有意思的。比如Cambridge断电的6小时，还有我们灾难性的在办公室里使用汽油发电机的尝试，不过我可不想再经历一次。

我并不认为创业的过程会比你的打工生涯发生更多的恶心事件。其实我想总数还要少一点，但是因为它们都挤在一段短短的时间内，所以看上去特别多。所以说，创业给你的最大回报就是时间。如果你在考虑开始做，首先想想你对自由的时间的感觉。如果你是那种不愿意勤恳工作40年，而是希望一次性地解决经济问题的人，那你应该选择创业。

很多人需要在创业和学业之间做出选择。大学生正处于合适的年纪，并且也正是软件业合适的创业人选。你可能会担心开公司会打乱你的学习计划而失去进一步深造的机会。不过在学校里就可以创业，在创业初期边读书边搞公司其实是很简单的。我们的三个创始人中有两个全天在学校里，并且都拿到了文凭。几乎没有什么比一个延期毕业的学生更有冲劲的人了。

如果因为创业你必须离开学校，好歹这种痛苦不会持续太长时间。如果创业是失败的，一般它都会在你失去回到学校的机会之前就结束。如果它成功了，你就不再留恋无聊的助教生涯了。

如果你真的想创业，尽管去做吧。开公司并不是什么难事，你不需要理解什么“做生意的奥秘”之类的玩意。创造一些人们会喜欢使用的东西，然后尽量节省开支保证有钱赚，仅此而已。不是很简单么？

（终于完结。。。感谢pestwave的推荐。。。鄙视他推荐这么长的文章。。。。）

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