原文：
http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html
?February 2009
09年2月
One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
熟悉我的創業者都知道，我經常說：讓一小部分人很高興，好過讓大多數人半高興。如果我只能給創業者十條忠告，這會是其中一條。你會問其他9條是什么。我也認真思考過這個問題。
When I made the list there turned out to be 13:
當我最終將它們寫下來的時候，變成了13條：
1. Pick good cofounders.
1. 選對合伙人
Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard.?[1]?And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.
選合伙人就如同選地段，地段不對，房子再好，也是白搭。創業的時候，換想法是家常便飯，但是換合伙人？呵呵[1 嚴格來說，你想換合伙人，得靠穿越]。成功的創業就像是靠譜的合伙人組合之后的必然。
2. Launch fast.
2. 快發布
The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you're wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users.
讓你快點發布不是因為要早點搶占市場，而是想讓你早點真正開始。人生都是從犯錯那一刻開始的，刻骨銘心都是從失戀那一刻開始的。創業也是從第一次發布產品那一刻開始的，那一刻你才知道你需要提供什么東西。
3. Let your idea evolve.
3. 讓點子飛
This is the second half of launching fast. Launch fast and iterate. It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.
這是“快點發布”的下半句：快速發布，趕快迭代。有人覺得創業就是讓一個牛逼的點子變成現實的過程。這可真是大錯特錯。創業如同寫散文，多數的靈感都是在寫作過程中產生的。
4. Understand your users.
4. 懂用戶
You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives.?[2]?The second dimension is the one you have most control over. And indeed, the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second. As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
你可以將你的事業想象成一個矩形：矩形的一條邊是用戶數量，另一條邊是你對他們生活質量的提升。你只對第二條邊有掌控力，而且，對第一條邊的提升都是通過對第二條邊的提升完成的。如同在科研中，最難的是提出問題而非回答問題，在創業中，最難的是找出用戶缺乏的東西。你越懂你的用戶，你成功的幾率就越大。這也是為什么很多成功的創業者最初做的東西都是自己需要的東西。
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
5. 小部分人的愛強過大部分人的喜歡（腦殘粉）
Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. And perhaps more importantly, it's harder to lie to yourself. If you think you're 85% of the way to a great product, how do you know it's not 70%? Or 10%? Whereas it's easy to know how many users you have.
理想的情況是世界人民都愛你，但這是不太可能的。在最開始的時候，你得做一個艱難的抉擇：是滿足一部分用戶的所有需求，還是滿足所有用戶的一部分的需求？選擇前者。一個腦殘粉頂得上一萬路人粉。用戶用得爽，總會越來越多。用戶不喜歡，你能說別走啊我這就增加功能？還有，你可能會欺騙自己：你覺得自己已經完成偉大產品的80%了，你怎么知道不是70%？但用戶數量就客觀多了，70人就是70人，80人就是80人。
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
6. 提供好到令人流淚的服務（他們家服務好棒，我竟淚流滿面）
Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but?surprisingly good. Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
消費者已經習慣了被虐待。大多數公司的服務都很粗暴。你的金點子可能會不自覺的被這種經歷拉低體驗。你家公司的用戶體驗好，還不夠，得是及其特別的好。在這條路上努力一些，用戶會受寵若驚。在創業早期，如果你的服務質量不能讓用戶口口相傳，那將會是一個悲傷的故事。
7. You make what you measure.
7. 看著長
I learned this one from Joe Kraus.?[3]?Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
這一招我跟 Joe Kraus 學的：僅僅是測量什么東西，就能讓這個東西增長。如果你想提升用戶數量，就把用戶數量寫得大大的貼在墻上。數量上升，你就高興，數量下降，你就不高興。很快你就發現用戶數量提升了。當然：小心挑選測量值。
8. Spend little.
8. 花小錢
I can't emphasize enough how important it is for a startup to be cheap. Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly.?[4]?But it's more than that. A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.
低成本創業，再怎么強調都不為過。大多數創業失敗的原因是在錢花完之前沒有作出大家想用的東西。所以，省錢的重要性僅次于快速迭代。不僅如此，簡樸文化能讓公司保持活力，就像鍛煉之于身體一樣。
9. Get ramen profitable.
9. 餓不死
"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It's also great for morale.
“拉面利潤線”指的是賺的錢剛剛夠創業者的生活花銷。這并不意味著快速構建商業模型（當然，你這么想也可以），而是一種避免資本欺壓的方式。一旦你跨過了這條拉面利潤線，你面對投資者的時候就有底氣了，團隊的士氣也有了。一瞬間面子里子就全有了。
10. Avoid distractions.
10. 別分心
Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Paradoxically,?fundraising?is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.
分心是創業者的天敵。殺傷力最大的是那些能帶來錢的分心：正式的工作、咨詢、賺錢的支線任務。你的項目可能很有潛力，但你不能總是忙于應付那些能給你小錢的人。有趣的是，賺風投也是一種分心，所以在風投上花最小的精力吧。
11. Don't get demoralized.
11. 別灰心
Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company is run by stupid people (which can't be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized. Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it, just as you'd be careful to bend at the knees when picking up a heavy box.
雖然創業失敗的原因大多數是沒錢，但是根本原因通常是不再關注。要么公司由蠢人掌管：這人扶不起來；或者由聰明、但很低落的人掌管：這種人也很難扶起來。創業的精神壓力很大。站好了，不要被打倒。俗話說的好，搬金子得有個好腰，買iPhone還得要個好腎呢。
12. Don't give up.
12. 別放棄
Even if you get demoralized,?don't give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. There are a lot of people who couldn't become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. But startups aren't like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.
就算你灰心也別放棄。只要別放棄，你能跑多遠可能會超乎你的想象，我可不只是在談馬拉松。這不是雞湯：在數學領域有好多人堅持一輩子都不可能成為一個數學家。所幸創業不是搞數學。當然，僅僅堅持是不夠的，你還要經常改變自己想法。簡單得說：竭盡全力，不擇手段。
13. Deals fall through.
13. 正視失敗
One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.
我從?Viaweb 學到的有用的技能就是：不要有太高的期望。我們大概有20次交易失敗，其原因各不相同。我們漸漸明白，不要再關注這些失敗的交易了。如你的士氣依賴于這些交易，那可是太危險了。不僅因為它們通常會失敗，而且是因為如果你太關注，它們就更加可能會失敗了。
Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only keep one.Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.Understanding your users is part of half the principles in this list. That's the reason to launch early, to understand your users. Evolving your idea is the embodiment of understanding your users. Understanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy. The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users. And understanding your users will even ensure your morale, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going.
如果這13個句子，只能留一個，我會選哪一個？懂用戶。這是終極秘籍。創業的本質是賺錢，你只能通過改變用戶的生活來賺錢，而最難的部分就是找出他們需要什么。一旦你知道你該做什么，怎么做就不是大問題了，最差勁的黑客也做得出來。懂用戶其實占了13句中一半以上的句子，它就是早發布、懂用戶。創業過程中迸發的點子，就源自于你對用戶的理解。懂用戶使得你作出令一部分人極度喜悅的東西。感動用戶的服務也讓你更加深入的理解用戶。用戶也能保證你的士氣，就算是你一敗涂地的時候，只要還有10個人用你的產品，你就不會停止前進。
