Learning from Founders
In the foreword to Jessica Livingston's 'Founders at Work', Paul Graham contrasts the real productivity of startups with the superficial professionalism of big companies. He argues that the earliest phase of a startup is the most productive, resembling a Formula 1 car rather than a sedan with fake spoilers. The book aims to show what actual high-output work looks like, urging corporations to aspire to startup-like efficiency instead of startups mimicking corporate conformity. This essay is suitable for founders, managers, and anyone interested in organizational effectiveness.
Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least. It's that way with most startups too. The earliest phase is usually the most productive. That's when they have the really big ideas. Imagine what Apple was like when 100% of its employees were either Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak.
显然，短跑运动员在起跑时达到最高速度，然后在比赛的剩余时间里逐渐减速。赢家减速最少。大多数创业公司也是如此。早期阶段通常是最富有成效的。那时他们拥有真正伟大的想法。想象一下，当苹果公司的员工百分之百是史蒂夫·乔布斯或史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克时，那是什么样子。
The striking thing about this phase is that it's completely different from most people's idea of what business is like. If you looked in people's heads (or stock photo collections) for images representing 'business,' you'd get images of people dressed up in suits, groups sitting around conference tables looking serious, Powerpoint presentations, people producing thick reports for one another to read. Early stage startups are the exact opposite of this. And yet they're probably the most productive part of the whole economy.
这个阶段引人注目之处在于，它与大多数人心目中商业的样子截然不同。如果你在人们的脑海里（或库存照片集里）寻找代表“商业”的图像，你会看到人们西装革履、一群人围坐在会议桌旁表情严肃、做PPT演示、互相编写厚厚报告的场景。而早期创业公司恰恰相反。然而，它们可能是整个经济中最具生产力的部分。
Why the disconnect? I think there's a general principle at work here: the less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate. More often than not the energy they expend on seeming impressive makes their actual performance worse. A few years ago I read an article in which a car magazine modified the 'sports' model of some production car to get the fastest possible standing quarter mile. You know how they did it? They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it look fast. Business is broken the same way that car was. The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely wasted, but actually makes organizations less productive.
为什么会有这种脱节？我认为这里有一个普遍原则：人们在实际行动上花费的精力越少，就越会在外表上花功夫来弥补。很多时候，他们为了显得令人印象深刻而投入的精力，反而使实际表现更糟。几年前，我读到一篇文章，一家汽车杂志改装了某款量产车的“运动版”，以便在静止起步四分之一英里加速赛中跑出最快成绩。你知道他们怎么做的吗？他们把制造商为了让它看起来更快而加装的所有垃圾都切掉了。商业就像那辆车一样出了问题。为了显得有生产力而付出的努力不仅白费，实际上还降低了组织的生产力。
Suits, for example. Suits do not help people to think better. I bet most executives at big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and go downstairs in their bathrobe to make a cup of coffee. That's when you have ideas. Just imagine what a company would be like if people could think that well at work. People do in startups, at least some of the time. (Half the time you're in a panic because your servers are on fire, but the other half you're thinking as deeply as most people only get to sitting alone on a Sunday morning.)
就拿西装来说吧。西装并不会帮助人们更好地思考。我敢打赌，大公司的大多数高管在周日早晨醒来，穿着浴袍下楼煮咖啡时，思路最清晰。那才是你产生想法的时候。想象一下，如果人们在工作中也能那样思考，公司会是什么样子。创业公司里的人确实能做到，至少在某些时候（一半时间你在恐慌，因为服务器着火了，但另一半时间你能像大多数人只有在周日早晨独坐时那样深入思考）。
Ditto for most of the other differences between startups and what passes for productivity in big companies. And yet conventional ideas of professionalism have such an iron grip on our minds that even startup founders are affected by them. In our startup, when outsiders came to visit we tried hard to seem 'professional.' We'd clean up our offices, wear better clothes, try to arrange that a lot of people were there during conventional office hours. In fact, programming didn't get done by well-dressed people at clean desks during office hours. It got done by badly dressed people (I was notorious for programming wearing just a towel) in offices strewn with junk at 2 in the morning. But no visitor would understand that. Not even investors, who are supposed to be able to recognize real productivity when they see it. Even we were affected by the conventional wisdom. We thought of ourselves as impostors, succeeding despite being totally unprofessional. It was as if we'd created a Formula 1 car but felt sheepish because it didn't look like a car was supposed to look.
创业公司与大公司所谓生产力之间的其他差异，大多也是如此。然而，传统的专业主义观念如此牢牢地控制着我们的思想，连创业公司的创始人都深受影响。在我们的创业公司，当有外人来访时，我们努力显得“专业”：清理办公室、穿上好衣服、设法让很多人在常规办公时间出现在公司。但实际上，编程工作不是由穿着得体的人坐在整洁的办公桌前在办公时间内完成的。它是由穿着邋遢的人（我因其编程时只穿一条浴巾而闻名）在堆满杂物的办公室里凌晨两点完成的。但任何访客都不会理解这一点，甚至投资者也一样——他们本应能够识别真正的生产力。连我们自己都受到传统观念的影响，觉得自己像冒牌货，成功纯粹是因为完全不专业。就好像我们造出了一辆一级方程式赛车，却因为它看起来不像汽车该有的样子而感到难为情。
In the car world, there are at least some people who know that a high performance car looks like a Formula 1 racecar, not a sedan with giant rims and a fake spoiler bolted to the trunk. Why not in business? Probably because startups are so small. The really dramatic growth happens when a startup only has three or four people, so only three or four people see that, whereas tens of thousands see business as it's practiced by Boeing or Philip Morris.
在汽车界，至少有一些人知道，高性能汽车看起来像F1赛车，而不是加装巨型轮圈和假扰流板的轿车。为什么商业界不是这样？很可能是因为创业公司太小了。真正戏剧性的增长发生在只有三四个人的时候，因此只有三四个能看到，而成千上万的人看到的是波音或菲利普·莫里斯那样的商业实践。
This book can help fix that problem, by showing everyone what, till now, only a handful people got to see: what happens in the first year of a startup. This is what real productivity looks like. This is the Formula 1 racecar. It looks weird, but it goes fast. Of course, big companies won't be able to do everything these startups do. In big companies there's always going to be more politics, and less scope for individual decisions. But seeing what startups are really like will at least show other organizations what to aim for. The time may soon be coming when instead of startups trying to seem more corporate, corporations will try to seem more like startups. That would be a good thing.
这本书可以帮助解决这个问题，它向所有人展示了迄今为止只有少数人能看到的东西：创业公司第一年里发生了什么。这才是真正生产力的样子。这就是一级方程式赛车。它看起来很奇怪，但跑得很快。当然，大公司无法完全模仿创业公司的做法。在大公司里，总是有更多政治，个人决策的空间更小。但看到创业公司的真实模样，至少能让其他组织知道自己的目标应该是什么。也许很快，不再是创业公司努力显得像大公司，而是大公司努力显得像创业公司。那将是一件好事。