那些你视而不见的脏活累活
Paul Graham 在本文中提出“脏活盲视”概念，指出许多本可成就伟大公司的创业想法之所以被忽略，不是因为它们难以发现，而是因为它们伴随着大量令人厌烦的脏活累活。他回溯 Stripe 的案例：支付体验糟糕是每个程序员都知道的痛点，但长达十年间无人愿意正面解决，因为需要与银行谈判、处理欺诈与监管。这种无意识的回避使创始人更倾向选择轻松的“食谱网站”而非攻克基础设施核心。PG 给出了两层解法：一是无知——年轻创始人因不知困难有多大而敢于尝试；二是换位——从“我想解决什么问题”变为“我多希望有人能替我解决什么问题”。文章最后强调，世界依然有大量类似的脏活等待被正视。
There are great startup ideas lying around unexploited right under our noses. One reason we don't see them is a phenomenon I call schlep blindness. Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. It means a tedious, unpleasant task.
伟大的创业想法就在我们眼皮底下未被开发。我们之所以视而不见，原因之一是我称之为“schlep 盲区”的现象。Schlep 最初是意第绪语，但在美国已通用，意为繁琐、令人不快的任务。
No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it. One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps. No, you can't start a startup by just writing code. I remember going through this realization myself. There was a point in 1995 when I was still trying to convince myself I could start a company by just writing code. But I soon learned from experience that schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great.
没人喜欢 schlep，但黑客尤为厌恶。大多数创办初创公司的黑客都希望只需编写一些聪明的软件、部署到服务器上，就能坐等收钱，而无需与用户交谈、与其他公司谈判或处理他人的烂代码。也许这有可能，但我从未见过。在 Y Combinator，我们做的许多事情之一就是教导黑客接受 schlep 的必然性。不，你不能仅靠写代码来创办公司。我记得自己也曾经历过这一领悟过程。1995 年某个时候，我仍试图说服自己可以只靠写代码创办公司。但我很快从经验中学到，schlep 不仅不可避免，而且几乎就是商业的全部内容。一家公司由它愿意承担的 schlep 所定义。而处理 schlep 的方式应与处理冰冷的游泳池一样：直接跳进去。这并非说你应该刻意寻找不愉快的工作，而是说如果它在通往伟大成就的道路上，你绝不应退缩。
The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness. The phenomenon isn't limited to startups. Most people don't consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example. Their unconscious mind decides for them, shrinking from the work involved.
我们对 schlep 反感的最危险之处在于，这种反感大部分是潜意识层面的。你的潜意识甚至不会让你看到那些涉及痛苦 schlep 的想法。这就是 schlep 盲区。这一现象不仅限于创业。例如，大多数人都没有有意识地决定自己不能像奥运选手那样拥有好身材；而是他们的潜意识替他们做了决定，对所需的努力望而却步。
The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is Stripe, or rather Stripe's idea. For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was. Thousands of people must have known about this problem. And yet when they started startups, they decided to build recipe sites, or aggregators for local events. Why? Why work on problems few care much about and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the most important components of the world's infrastructure? Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of fixing payments. Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on a recipe site began by asking "should we fix payments, or build a recipe site?" and chose the recipe site. Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the complications involved. You'd have to make deals with banks. How do you do that? Plus you're moving money, so you're going to have to deal with fraud, and people trying to break into your servers. Plus there are probably all sorts of regulations to comply with. It's a lot more intimidating to start a startup like this than a recipe site.
我所知的 schlep 盲区最显著的例子是 Stripe，或者更确切地说是 Stripe 的想法。十多年来，每个需要在线处理支付的程序员都知道这种体验有多痛苦。成千上万的人肯定知道这个问题。然而，当他们创办初创公司时，却决定做食谱网站或本地活动聚合器。为什么？当你可以修复世界基础设施最重要的组成部分之一时，为什么要去解决那些没多少人关心、也没人愿意付费的问题？因为 schlep 盲区阻止了人们甚至考虑修复支付的想法。大概没有一个申请 Y Combinator 做食谱网站的人会问自己“我们是该修复支付，还是做个食谱网站？”然后选择了食谱网站。尽管修复支付的想法就在眼前，他们却从未看见，因为他们的潜意识畏惧其中涉及的复杂性。你得与银行打交道——怎么做？另外你还得处理资金流动，所以必须应对欺诈和试图入侵服务器的人。此外可能还有各种法规要遵守。创办这样的公司可比做一个食谱网站吓人多了。
That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that there's less demand for them among founders. If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved. (This is also true of starting a startup generally.)
这种吓人之处反而让雄心勃勃的想法价值翻倍。除了内在价值，它们就像被低估的股票——创始人对其需求更少。如果你选择一个雄心勃勃的想法，竞争会更少，因为其他人都会被其中的挑战吓跑。（创办初创公司本身也是如此。）
How do you overcome schlep blindness? Frankly, the most valuable antidote to schlep blindness is probably ignorance. Most successful founders would probably say that if they'd known when they were starting their company about the obstacles they'd have to overcome, they might never have started it. Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders. In practice the founders grow with the problems. But no one seems able to foresee that, not even older, more experienced founders. So the reason younger founders have an advantage is that they make two mistakes that cancel each other out. They don't know how much they can grow, but they also don't know how much they'll need to. Older founders only make the first mistake.
如何克服 schlep 盲区？坦白说，最有效的解药可能就是无知。大多数成功的创始人可能会说，如果他们在创办公司时就知道将要克服的障碍，他们可能根本就不会开始。这或许是那些最成功的初创公司往往由年轻创始人创办的原因之一。在实践中，创始人是随着问题一起成长的。但似乎没有人能够预见到这一点，即使是年长、更有经验的创始人也不行。所以年轻创始人之所以有优势，是因为他们犯了两个相互抵消的错误：他们不知道自己能成长多少，也不知道自己需要成长多少。而年长创始人只犯了第一个错误。
Ignorance can't solve everything though. Some ideas so obviously entail alarming schleps that anyone can see them. How do you see ideas like that? The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" If someone who had to process payments before Stripe had tried asking that, Stripe would have been one of the first things they wished for.
然而，无知并不能解决所有问题。有些想法明显涉及令人畏惧的 schlep，任何人都能看出来。如何看到这样的想法？我推荐的技巧是将自己从画面中移除。不要问“我该解决什么问题？”，而问“我希望别人为我解决什么问题？”如果那些在 Stripe 之前不得不处理支付的人试着问过这个问题，Stripe 就会是他们最先希望出现的东西之一。
It's too late now to be Stripe, but there's plenty still broken in the world, if you know how to see it. Thanks to Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Aaron Iba, Jessica Livingston, Emmett Shear, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.
现在成为 Stripe 已经太晚，但世界上仍有许多东西需要修复——只要你知道如何看见它们。感谢 Sam Altman、Paul Buchheit、Patrick Collison、Aaron Iba、Jessica Livingston、Emmett Shear 和 Harj Taggar 阅读本文草稿。