为什么创办 YC：一位黑客对经济的巧妙改动
Paul Graham 在本文中解释了创办 Y Combinator 的真实动机。他否认是为了赚钱或纯粹的利他主义，而是将其描述为一种“黑客式”的干预：通过微小的杠杆（提供种子资金和指导），释放大量本不会存在的创业公司，从而优化全球经济这台机器。文章还回顾了 Viaweb 的经历，指出创业本质上是辛苦的（schlep），而 YC 更像是一个乐队的重聚，让老朋友能再次共事。
March 2006, rev August 2009Yesterday one of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator. Or more precisely, he asked if we'd started YC mainly for fun.
Kind of, but not quite. It is enormously fun to be able to work with Rtm and Trevor again. I missed that after we sold Viaweb, and for all the years after I always had a background process running, looking for something we could do together. There is definitely an aspect of a band reunion to Y Combinator. Every couple days I slip and call it "Viaweb."
Viaweb we started very explicitly to make money. I was sick of living from one freelance project to the next, and decided to just work as hard as I could till I'd made enough to solve the problem once and for all. Viaweb was sometimes fun, but it wasn't designed for fun, and mostly it wasn't. I'd be surprised if any startup is. All startups are mostly schleps.
2006年3月，修订于2009年8月。昨天，我们资助的一位创始人问我为什么创办Y Combinator。更准确地说，他问我们创办YC是否主要是为了好玩。
算是，但不完全是。能和Rtm和Trevor再次共事实在太有趣了。卖掉Viaweb后我很怀念那种感觉，之后那些年我始终有个后台进程在运行，寻找我们可以一起做的事。Y Combinator确实有种乐队重聚的味道。每隔几天我就会说漏嘴，管它叫“Viaweb”。
创办Viaweb时我们非常明确地是为了赚钱。我厌倦了一个接一个的自由职业项目，决定拼尽全力工作，直到挣够钱一次性解决这个问题。Viaweb有时也有趣，但它并非为乐趣而设计，多数时候并不有趣。我不觉得有任何创业公司是纯粹为了乐趣的。所有创业公司大部分都是苦差事。
The real reason we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. We didn't start it mainly to make money; we have no idea what our average returns might be, and won't know for years. Nor did we start YC mainly to help out young would-be founders, though we do like the idea, and comfort ourselves occasionally with the thought that if all our investments tank, we will thus have been doing something unselfish. (It's oddly nondeterministic.)
The real reason we started Y Combinator is one probably only a hacker would understand. We did it because it seems such a great hack. There are thousands of smart people who could start companies and don't, and with a relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place, we can spring on the world a stream of new startups that might otherwise not have existed.
In a way this is virtuous, because I think startups are a good thing. But really what motivates us is the completely amoral desire that would motivate any hacker who looked at some complex device and realized that with a tiny tweak he could make it run more efficiently. In this case, the device is the world's economy, which fortunately happens to be open source.
我们创办Y Combinator的真正原因既不自私也不高尚。我们创办它并非主要为了赚钱；我们不知道平均回报率是多少，而且多年内也不会知道。我们创办YC也不主要是为了帮助年轻的潜在创业者，尽管我们确实喜欢这个想法，偶尔也会安慰自己：如果所有投资都打了水漂，那我们就做了一件无私的事。（这真是种奇怪的不可确定性。）
真正的原因是只有黑客才能理解的。我们这么做是因为它看上去像是一个绝妙的hack。有成千上万聪明人可以创办公司却没有行动，而只要在正确的地方施加相对较小的力，我们就能为世界催生出一系列原本可能不会存在的初创公司。
在某种意义上，这是高尚的，因为我认为初创公司是好事。但真正驱动我们的是一种完全非道德的欲望，任何黑客看到某个复杂设备，意识到只要稍加调整就能让它运行得更高效时，都会产生这种欲望。在这个例子中，这个设备就是世界经济，令人庆幸的是，它恰好是开源的。