Billion dollar startup ideas - YouTube

startup ideas. Oh my god. Why is it so hard to come up with a good startup idea? That's what we're going to talk about today. Let's get started. Everyone's making the same. Photosharing, podcasting, travel plans, local event apps. Probably because desire is memetic. We want what other people want. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook. It's the same ideas over and over again, especially the ones that have already been successful, because that's what's present to hand. That's what's obvious for people to try to follow when they want to start a startup. But you shouldn't do that. And this is really tricky because the most famous startups were not famous at the moment when they were started.

创业点子。我的天啊，为什么想出一个好的创业点子这么难？这就是我们今天要谈论的内容。让我们开始吧。大家总是想出一样的点子：照片分享、播客、旅游计划、本地活动应用。这可能是因为人们的欲望具有模仿性。我们想要别人想要的东西。如果你们是Facebook的发明者，你们早就发明了Facebook。相同的点子一遍又一遍地出现，尤其是那些已经成功的，因为这些点子显而易见，大家一想到创业就会跟随这些点子。但是你不应该这样做。这确实很困难，因为那些最有名的创业公司在刚开始时并不出名。

As Chris Dixon says, the great disruptive startup ideas are hard to spot because when they start, they're toys. The personal computer was a crazy idea. Why would anyone want a computer on every desk and in every home? That didn't make sense to most people. And then suddenly it made a lot of sense. So was Bitcoin, your magical internet beans or a joke, they said. So was social networking. How could Facebook ever make money? Those are real things that people asked when Facebook was new. These days, we wonder if anyone else will be able to make money.

And the danger now is there are not just hundreds, not just thousands, but probably hundreds of thousands of people who are all trying to do the same things. And as Peter Thiel says, infinite competition is for losers. How do you break free? How do you avoid the crowd? How do you avoid mimises just doing what everyone else is doing? Here's what Steve Jobs has to say about exactly this. I have your thought about what it is to be intelligent, probably some of you have.

现在的危险在于，不仅有成百上千，而是可能有几十万的人在试图做同样的事情。正如彼得·蒂尔所说，无限的竞争注定会失败。你如何摆脱这种状况？如何避免跟随大众？如何避免只是模仿他人？关于这一点，史蒂夫·乔布斯有他的看法。我想你们中的一些人也一定考虑过什么才是智慧。

A lot of it's memory, but a lot of it's the ability to sort of zoom out like you're in a city and you could look at the whole thing from about the 80th floor down at the city. And while other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B reading these stupid little maps, you can just see it all out in front of you and see the whole thing and you can make connections that just seem obvious. But the key thing is that if you're going to make connections which are innovative, you to connect two experiences together, that you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does, or else you're going to make the same connections and then you won't be innovative.

这很大程度上依赖记忆，但更重要的是要有能力从更高的角度去看待事物。就像你在一座城市里，如果你能站在大约80层高的地方俯瞰全城，而其他人还在看那些小地图，试图弄清楚如何从A点到B点。你可以一览无余并能轻松找到其中的联系，这样就显得很明显。但关键是，如果你想要做出创新性的联系，你必须将两种不同的体验结合起来，而不是和其他人拥有同样的经历，否则你会得出相同的结论，这样就不能实现创新。

What you've got to do is get different experiences than the normal course of events. You've got to zoom out, you've got to make connections, and you have to have different experiences. You can't have the same experiences as everyone else. It's okay to be weird. What makes you new, different, and unique in the world will be the exact thing that makes you succeed. You've got to embrace differences and that's why diversity matters a lot. If you do that and you find a problem that needs solving, you'll do something amazing here.

你需要做的是去体验不同于常规的事情。你要拉开视角，去发现关联，积累不同的经历。不能跟别人一样。做个“怪人”是没关系的。正是你在这个世界上独特、新颖、不一样的特质，会让你取得成功。你必须接受这些差异，这也是为什么多样性非常重要。如果你这样做，并找到一个需要解决的问题，你将在这里做出令人惊叹的事情。

Let's look at a few examples. I was an early investor in Flexport and meeting Ryan Peterson was an amazing moment because when you met him, you knew he had stumbled onto a huge market. My favorite pitch meetings are with founders who teach you something about the world you didn't know before. Global logistics was one of those things and he knew it intimately. Here's Ryan in a recent interview. And you were selling through Amazon 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Yeah, 10, 15 years ago.

让我们来看几个例子。我是Flexport的早期投资者，见到Ryan Peterson是一个令人兴奋的时刻，因为当你见到他时，你就会知道他发现了一个巨大的市场。我最喜欢的创业演讲是那些能教给你一些你之前不知道的世界知识的创始人。全球物流就是其中之一，而他对此非常熟悉。以下是Ryan在最近一次采访中的发言。你在十年前，十五年前通过亚马逊销售商品，对吧？是的，十年，十五年前。

Amazon introduced the third party seller. I remember I was one of the first people to sign up for it. And I thought it was amazing that for 40 bucks a month, I could become an Amazon merchant and add products to their catalog. But I would just make up my own brand name and create it. I thought it was amazing. Like, oh, wow, I'm on Amazon. It's live. It's legit. So our business was importing motorbikes from China. It was a tough business. So I lived in China for a couple of years. Actually, it was a big business. It went along for a while. We never considered it a startup. We were never trying to like change the world. It was like a couple of guys trying to earn a living.

亚马逊推出了第三方卖家服务。我记得我是最早注册的那批人之一。我当时觉得非常棒，每月只需40美元，我就能成为亚马逊商家并将产品添加到他们的目录中。我会自己编一个品牌名称并创建它。当时我觉得非常了不起，就像“哇，我在亚马逊上卖东西了，这是实实在在的”。我们公司的业务是从中国进口摩托车。这是一个艰难的行业。为此我在中国住了几年。实际上这是一个大生意，持续了相当长的一段时间。我们从未把它当作一个初创公司来看待，也从未试图去改变世界。只是几个家伙想要谋生。

I moved to China. I lived there for two years running supply chain for that business. So it was one of the first people to be an Amazon merchant. He imported motorbikes and electric scooters. And he learned a lot about the supply chain from his own personal experience. We invested in Flexport. I worked with Ryan, both at Y Combinator and with my fund initialized and Flexport is now worth more than $3.2 billion. I met Jack Conti and Sam Yam pretty early so early that they were just getting started with the idea of Patreon. I started Pompamus with my wife. We created our own YouTube channel. We bought Pompamus.com and we started posting videos and music under the name Pompamus. And we did that.

我搬到了中国，在那里住了两年，为那家企业负责供应链管理。我是最早的亚马逊商家之一。当时他进口摩托车和电动滑板车，并通过自己的亲身经历学到了很多供应链方面的知识。我们投资了Flexport，我在Y Combinator和我的基金Initialized中都和Ryan合作过，现在Flexport的估值已经超过32亿美元。我很早就认识了Jack Conti和Sam Yam，他们那时候刚刚开始Patreon的创意。我和我的妻子一起创建了Pompamus，我们开设了自己的YouTube频道，购买了Pompamus.com，并开始在这个名字下发布视频和音乐，这就是我们的经历。

Let's see. That was 2008. So we did that for a few years. We were in the very early first wave of people that were using YouTube to reach other musicians and fans. And eight years ago, the monetization methods for creators were just totally broken. And I remember looking up from this feeling like there's got to be a better way for creative people who are reaching millions of people online to make a living from that. Jack started a band with his wife and started posting YouTube videos. And because they saw that problem very early, they created something amazing that has funded a new generation of creator. It's like an online renaissance. Patreon is now worth more than $1.2 billion.

让我看看，那是2008年。所以我们做了几年。我们属于最早一批使用YouTube与其他音乐人和粉丝沟通的人。而在八年前，创作者的变现方式完全是个大问题。我记得，我那时在想，对那些在线上吸引了数百万观众的创意者来说，肯定有更好的生活方式。杰克和他的妻子组建了一个乐队，并开始发布YouTube视频。由于他们很早就发现了这个问题，他们创造了一件了不起的事情，资助了新一代创作者。就像一场网上的文艺复兴。Patreon现在的估值超过了12亿美元。

I don't have all the answers here. These are just breadcrumbs. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. We went through some great examples of billion dollar startups that started the right way. But don't do what they did. You have to go into your experience and find things that are unique to you. And here are a few other pitfalls that I want to be careful of. First, you don't have to be novel. The above examples certainly were relatively novel, but they're certainly not the first time they were tried. Remember if there's competition, you have to be better, faster, and cheaper in order to stand a chance. Competition is not your friend. It's fierce and will make your startup fail.

我不可能有所有的答案。这些只是一些线索。历史不会重演，但总是有相似之处。我们看了一些很成功的十亿美元级别的初创公司的案例，它们的起步方式很正确。但不要照搬它们的做法，你需要根据自己的经历找到独特的东西。这里还有一些需要注意的陷阱。首先，并不一定非要创新。上面的例子虽然比较新颖，但并不是第一次被尝试。记住，如果有竞争，你就必须比别人做得更好、更快、更便宜，才能有机会。竞争不是你的朋友，它是激烈的，并且会让你的创业失败。

Second, it's also okay if the first version of your startup is not quite perfect. In 2010, Chris Dixon pointed out that a lot of disruptive technology is dismissed as toys because the tech itself is still developing. They undershoot user needs. He writes, the first telephone could only carry voices a mile or two. The leading telco of the time Western Union passed on acquiring the phone because they didn't see how it could possibly be useful to businesses and railroads, their primary customers. What they failed to anticipate was how rapidly telephone technology and infrastructure would improve. And this was true of how mainframe computers viewed the pc and the microcomputer and how modern telecom companies viewed things like Skype.

其次，刚开始你的创业项目不够完美也无妨。2010年，克里斯·迪克森指出，许多颠覆性技术最初常被当作玩具，因为这些技术还在发展中，无法完全满足用户需求。他写道，最初的电话只能传输一两英里的声音。当时的电信巨头西联公司放弃收购电话，因为他们不认为这对他们的主要客户业务和铁路有用。他们没能预料到电话技术和基础设施的发展速度。同样的情况也发生在主机电脑对个人电脑和微型电脑的看法上，以及现代电信公司对Skype等服务的看法上。

So where do we go from here? Well, I think you should read Paul Graham's 2012 essay about startup ideas. There's a breadcrumb there that he left for us that I want to highlight here. How do you find good startup ideas? Here's what he said, work on hard problems, driven mainly by curiosity, but have a second self watching over your shoulder, taking notes of gaps and anomalies. Give yourself some time. You have a lot of control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind, but you have less control over the stimuli that spark ideas when they hit it. If Bill Gates and Paul Allen had constrained themselves to come up with a startup idea in one month, what if they'd chosen a month before the Altair even appeared? Major milestone for us was when we were walking through Harvard Square one time and saw this popular electronics magazine.

那么，我们接下来该怎么做呢？我认为你应该读一下Paul Graham在2012年写的关于创业想法的文章。他在其中留下了一些线索，我想在这里强调一下。如何找到好的创业想法呢？他说，应该专注于难题，主要由好奇心驱动，但要有一个第二自我在旁边观察，记录下出现的空白和异常。给自己一些时间。你可以很大程度上控制自己变得有准备的速度，但对激发想法的刺激因素控制较少。如果比尔·盖茨和保罗·艾伦在一个月内约束自己想出一个创业想法，那么如果他们选择在Altair出现前的一个月呢？对我们来说，一个重要的里程碑是我们有一次走过哈佛广场时，看到了这本流行的电子杂志。

We wrote these this company immediately and offered to do a basic for them. Altair Basic became a huge hit and the company they made ended up becoming Microsoft. The essay is linked in the description and you should go check it out. Before you go over there though, please click like and subscribe and hit the bell icon.

我们立即给这家公司写信，并提出为他们开发一个基本程序。Altair Basic 成为了一大热门，这家公司最终成为了微软。文章链接在描述中，请去看看。不过在那之前，请先点赞、订阅并点击小铃铛图标。

The world needs more startups. Good startups. The world doesn't need more photosharing travel plans, local event startups. Save yourself. Please be mindful. Find something new. Follow your interests. Take note of the gaps, anomalies and the things you genuinely believe the world needs.

世界需要更多新的创业公司。好的创业公司。这个世界不需要更多的图片分享、旅游计划、本地活动之类的初创公司。拯救你自己。请保持清醒。找到一些新的东西。追随你的兴趣。注意那些空白点、不寻常的事物，以及你真正认为世界需要的东西。

If you keep working on your creator skills, on your builder skills, being a great engineer, being a great product manager, becoming a better leader, becoming more consistent, more conscientious and a better communicator, you will create something amazing. Thanks for watching.

如果你不断提升自己的创作技能、建设技能，成为优秀的工程师、出色的产品经理，更好的领导者，更加稳定、认真和沟通能力更强，你就会创造出惊人的成就。感谢观看。