Paul Graham：“有机”创业点子 Organic Startup Ideas
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前言：好的开始是成功的一半。创业时找到一个绝佳的点子无比重要。你是否正在为寻找创业点子绞尽脑汁、殚精竭虑呢？创业者伯乐保罗·格雷厄姆的这篇《“有机”创业点子》或许能帮你找到一些线索。“有机”点子？是的，蔬菜是“有机”的好，创业点子也不例外。请继续阅读正文：
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如何寻找创业点子呢？最好的办法就是问自己这样一个问题：你想让别人为你做什么？
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The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you?
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创业点子分两类：一类是从你自己的生活中发现的“有机”点子；另一类点子是凭空想象的，你认为它们是某类用户必需的，而你不需要。苹果属于第一类。史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克想要一台电脑，所以创建了苹果。和大多数想要电脑的人不同，他会设计，于是他就设计了一台。并且，既然很多其他人也想要电脑，苹果就能靠卖电脑生存下来。巧的是今天苹果依然遵循这个原则。iPhone 正是史蒂夫·乔布斯想要的。[1]
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There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to be necessary to some class of users other than you. Apple was the first type. Apple happened because Steve Wozniak wanted a computer. Unlike most people who wanted computers, he could design one, so he did. And since lots of other people wanted the same thing, Apple was able to sell enough of them to get the company rolling. They still rely on this principle today, incidentally. The iPhone is the phone Steve Jobs wants.
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我们创建的 Viaweb 属于第二类。我们开发用于创建网店的软件。我们自己不需要这种软件。我们不是直销商（direct marketer）。我们甚至不知道开始时我们的用户被叫做“直销商”。但是，我们在创业时年龄都比较大了（当时我 30 岁，罗伯特·莫里斯 29），所以凭经验我们知道用户需要这类软件。[2]
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Our own startup, Viaweb, was of the second type. We made software for building online stores. We didn't need this software ourselves. We weren't direct marketers. We didn't even know when we started that our users were called "direct marketers." But we were comparatively old when we started the company (I was 30 and Robert Morris was 29), so we'd seen enough to know users would need this type of software.
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这两类点子之间并非泾渭分明，但创业成功的公司大都类似于苹果，而不是Viaweb。当比尔·盖茨为 Altair【注：第一台个人计算机】编写第一个 Basic 解释程序的时候，他正在使用 Altair，拉里和赛奇编写最初版 Google 时也是因为他们自己要用。
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There is no sharp line between the two types of ideas, but the most successful startups seem to be closer to the Apple type than the Viaweb type. When he was writing that first Basic interpreter for the Altair, Bill Gates was writing something he would use, as were Larry and Sergey when they wrote the first versions of Google.
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“有机”点子通常优于“人造”点子，如果创业者年轻的话更是如此。预测其他人的需求是需要经验的。有些年轻的创业者开发一些自以为老年人会需要的东西，这是我们在 Y Combinator 见过的最糟糕的点子。
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Organic ideas are generally preferable to the made up kind, but particularly so when the founders are young. It takes experience to predict what other people will want. The worst ideas we see at Y Combinator are from young founders making things they think other people will want.
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所以，如果你想创业但又无从下手的话，我劝你先把精力放在“有机”点子上。你在日常生活中缺什么东西或有什么东西不尽人意吗？有时如果你想想这个问题就会立刻找到答案。对当初的比尔·盖茨来说，只能用机器语言编写 Altair 程序显然看上去不尽人意。
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So if you want to start a startup and don't know yet what you're going to do, I'd encourage you to focus initially on organic ideas. What's missing or broken in your daily life? Sometimes if you just ask that question you'll get immediate answers. It must have seemed obviously broken to Bill Gates that you could only program the Altair in machine language.
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你可能需要跳出自我才能发现不尽人意之处，因为你很可能已经习以为常，并且认为它们天经地义。但你肯定会找到它们。好点子总是近在眼前。2004 年，哈佛本科生还在使用打印在纸上的 Facebook，真是荒谬，这种东西网上早该有。
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You may need to stand outside yourself a bit to see brokenness, because you tend to get used to it and take it for granted. You can be sure it's there, though. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. In 2004 it was ridiculous that Harvard undergrads were still using a Facebook printed on paper. Surely that sort of thing should have been online.
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现在你身边就有显而易见的点子。你之所以忽视这些点子，和你在2004 年没想到创建 Facebook 的原因是一样的：“有机”创业点子通常乍一看上去不像创业点子。我们现在知道 Facebook 非常成功，但在 2004 年并非如此。在当时，把本科生的资料放到网上看上去并不是一个创业点子。而且实际上，当初这的确不是一个创业点子。去年冬天在 YC 的一次晚餐中，Facebook 创始人马克称他当初编写初版 Facebook 时没想要创业，只是一个项目而已。
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There are ideas that obvious lying around now. The reason you're overlooking them is the same reason you'd have overlooked the idea of building Facebook in 2004: organic startup ideas usually don't seem like startup ideas at first. We know now that Facebook was very successful, but put yourself back in 2004. Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup idea. And in fact, it wasn't initially a startup idea. When Mark spoke at a YC dinner this winter he said he wasn't trying to start a company when he wrote the first version of Facebook. It was just a project.
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当沃兹开发第一代苹果机的时候也是如此，他没意识到正在创建一家公司。如果他们当初的确想创建公司的话，他们可能会试着做一些更“严肃”的事情，而那可能会被证明是一个错误。
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So was the Apple I when Woz first started working on it. He didn't think he was starting a company. If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been tempted to do something more "serious," and that would have been a mistake.
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所以，如果你想找到“有机”创业点子的话，我劝你把更多精力放在点子上，少放点精力在创业上。只管解决问题就好，别管这个问题是否重要到要为其创建一家公司。如果你坚持这样的思路，总会做出一些对很多人有价值的东西，一旦你做到了，你就会得到一家公司，让你大吃一惊。[3]
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So if you want to come up with organic startup ideas, I'd encourage you to focus more on the idea part and less on the startup part. Just fix things that seem broken, regardless of whether it seems like the problem is important enough to build a company on. If you keep pursuing such threads it would be hard not to end up making something of value to a lot of people, and when you do, surprise, you've got a company.
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如果有人对你刚开始做的东西不屑一顾的话，你千万别灰心丧气。实际上这是个好兆头，这很可能是别人忽视这个点子的原因。第一批飞机是这样诞生的，第一批汽车也是这样诞生的。目前，如果有人向我们推荐一些用户喜欢、但有可能被论坛里的灌水者不屑一顾的项目，它尤其能吸引我们的投资兴趣。
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Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest.
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年轻的创业者不善于找到“人造”点子，但他们能发现最棒的“有机”点子，因为他们处在技术前沿。他们使用最新的东西。是他们自己决定用什么东西的，为什么不呢？正是由于他们使用最新的东西，他们更容易在不尽人意之处最先发现价值。
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While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with made-up ideas, they're the best source of organic ones, because they're at the forefront of technology. They use the latest stuff. They only just decided what to use, so why wouldn't they? And because they use the latest stuff, they're in a position to discover valuable types of fixable brokenness first.
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如果一种尚未得到满足的需求正有望得到解决，那么没有什么比这更有价值了。如果你发现了某个问题，并且你能帮助很多人解决这个问题，那么你已经找到一座金矿。可是，和真正的金矿一样，你仍需要努力工作挖掘金矿。但至少你知道矿层在哪里，这才是最困难（关键）的部分。
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There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. If you find something broken that you can fix for a lot of people, you've found a gold mine. As with an actual gold mine, you still have to work hard to get the gold out of it. But at least you know where the seam is, and that's the hard part.
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注释：
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[1] 这暴露了苹果的弱点：史蒂夫·乔布斯不用的东西。比如我怀疑他不喜欢游戏。
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[2] 回首过去，我们本应该成为直销商的。如果我们再次创建 Wiaweb，我会选择创建自己的网店。如果自己开网店，就能更好地理解用户。不管多么难为情，我奉劝任何打算创业的人都要成为自己的用户。
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[3] 可能的例外：很难和开源软件直接竞争。你可以为程序员开发产品，但你必须找到能够收费的方法。
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